This is a blog for the series Stories From The Michigan Fleet, a very queer series by three very queer authors, set in an imagined future after the fall of America, centered on a civilization living entirely on boats spread across the surface of Lake Michigan and a very big and sad and shy bi cinnamon roll recovering from trauma there. It's got the drama, it's got the hurt/comfort, it's got a giant anxious guy learning that sex can be nice and having emotions about people being kind to him. It's also got kittens, genetic mods, and elephants in it. Links to read free/illustrated or purchase and support the authors below the cut!
This blog primarily exists as a place to compile art and reference made by the authors, or occasionally to answer questions by readers. It's moderated/run by splickedylit. It features
art presented without context, including characters that haven't been introduced yet
art/writing that may not be canon or accurate anymore (especially as you scroll back)
art/writing not suitable for minors. It's an 18+ series y'all, minors should not be here anyway!
After The Storm - Smashwords | Royal Road | Wattpad
Athena Merrill and the Midnight Chicken - Smashwords
Learning the Ropes - Smashwords
The Art of Boytoy Maintenance - Smashwords
Cross My Heart - Smashwords
The Taste of New York - Smashwords
Run Aground - Smashwords* | Royal Road | Wattpad
*Run Aground is currently being released every Sunday on Royalroad, Wordpress and Wattpad free with illustrations; at the end of the first act, an option will be released to buy the entire novel. Posts will be tagged "Run Aground Spoilers" to avoid spoiling anyone who wants to wait until the full release.
VARIOUS POSTS:
(Because I end up trying to find these on my own blog pretty regularly lol)
A variety of fusion thoughts for fun and nonprofit
Connor/Sol (Sunny?) is extremely purpose-driven and doesn't stay fused well once the requisite ass is kicked--both because Connor and Sol are very different people, and also because the way he looks makes both of them differently uncomfortable if they stop to think about it.
Sol/Rafael I have drawn before but he's back baby!! Absolutely dominates hostile social gatherings with a beautiful gilded fist--after taking several hours to get ready.
Rafael/Carraway is entirely an extension of Carraway's enjoyment of power and control. He's also a beautiful menacing werewolf from a Dark Romance Novel werewolf. But also it's all bad and sucks
Sandaway is an enormous sadistic killing machine who Carraway regards as a convenient but mildly embarrassing means to an end, too prone to loss of control--and which Sandgren thinks about being every single day they're not fused.
Rich/Carraway briefly makes a guy who has the worldliness and experience AND the self-control and genuine kindness to be a Good King--but only briefly, before the absolutely fundamental clash of morals and priorities violently destabilizes him.
Rich/Rafael is strong, beautiful, eloquent and loves himself dearly--but is also the most people-pleasing person you have ever met in your life. You want the emotions of every other person in the room watched like a hawk?? He's your guy.
Sol/Andy is a beautiful elf prince with star freckles. If you serve him the wrong cheese with his wine or imply to him that New York is inferior to another city, he will say the meanest shit you have ever heard or imagined in your entire life.
I'm catching up with the Council of Darkness Adventuring Party eps and Siobhan says in episode 4 "I have one point in fencing...if that comes up, I'll be able to fight a little bit" which is very #Rafael a few chapters ago. The boy has a single point and he's ready to use it!
lskdfjs there are in fact several things that Rafael has in common with Madelaine D'Artois including. Their number one blame deflection strategy lol
I get to add to my dice pool because I'm Beautiful. :)
Rafael: If fucking men bad, why does it alight my soul with glorious pleasure? Why men so lovely, as though cast by an artist's hand? Why, indeed, should the sight of their flesh excite me so, yea, even from the bloom of my adolescence when first pleasure came to me in the shape of--
Connor: If fucking men bad, daddy Satan is gonna have fun with my choice ass when I go to hell for it.
Andy: If fucking men bad, who cares? I don't owe you shit, and I do what I want.
Solace "Got One Of His First Boners When The Hot Young Priest In His Work-Study Program Gave Him Communion" King: I am not discussing this with you. But if fucking men bad it's a good thing I am so incredibly diligent and correct and inside parameters in every other way and will pay it back. I will pay it all back. I'm normal about pleasure.
Rich: Hey wait hold on why would fucking men be bad. what's wrong with landside.
Basil: Yeah no yeah, since when is fucking men bad??? Man it's weird out here.
Do you have a roundup anywhere of all of the AUs y'all have kicked around for the Run Aground gang? Any chance that the extras in the final version would include any AU snippets?
Well the FIRST question is fairly easy to answer because I recently went through and compiled all of our extremely scattered side-fic documents into collection docs so we would stop losing things lmao. I categorized them thus:
CANON DIVERGENT - Mostly aligned with the canon plotline or world, but riffed on, shifted, or alternate in some way:
Patron+Patrician - Rafael makes it big on the west coast as an actor instead of *waves hands at canon* and takes Rich on as a sexy hoverboarding patron. Then gets brought over to visit NYC and meet Rich's east coast patron. Sol has. A night.
1950s Reskin - a brief little style experiment from Ray about how the writing style/dialogue and the tech of the Fleet might differ if it was written several decades ago.
Sympatico Basil (Flavor I)- Instead of Rich having been sent off to deathboat, Basil went; he comes back to the Reliant deeply burned out in the brain+implants+emotions from storm piloting with a baseline brain.
Basil/Rich But Watch Out - Rich doesn't have Trimmer in his corner on the Sympatico and comes back to the Reliant much pushier and meaner, with the expectation that people wanting sex with him is a play for his protection. Basil does a sort of a horse girl+beast tamer thing in between Nasty Fuckin.
Babydoll!Rich - Little snips of Hastings+Babydoll!Rich, centered around the scene in After The Storm where he meets (in this version, SS-modded) Liam. And they fuck about it. That part is going to be a theme in many of these lmao.
PRT!Rich - Thena comes and finds Rich on the Sympatico and bails him out, and gets him an interview and subsequent job on the PRT ship that Liam's mom and his friend Jordan work on. Fucking ensues but honestly probably not as much as you'd think.
Sympatico Basil (Flavor II) - Rich's shitty Sympatico supervisor kicks it, and Rich becomes supervisor and hires Basil in. Culture clash ensues.
Sympatico Basil (Flavor III) - Instead of the Sympatico getting gutted and flipped, the admiral sends a fixer captain with a mandate to get the place in order, who very quickly pegs Rich as a really helpful guy to have on his side and makes him department head. Basil gets hired in but this time also has to deal with the fact Rich is completely starstruck about an authority figure being nice to him and has definitely contrived to blow the new captain.
Mars Boys - Kind of a borderline case with the full AUs below; Trimmer ends up actually in a Mars program like his genetics were intended for, and gets bundled into a space station pod with a huge extremely nervous Hastings kid.
NYC!Rich - Rich does actually get run aground after the last fight on the Sympatico, and ends up in New York, where he saves a pretty little guy from being run over by a hover-taxi and Sol offers him a couch to stay on in return while he gets his feet under him. And they fuck about it. Also there's daemons in there.
Young Carraway - Back-shifts several decades to catch Arthur at the point in his life when he just stole his mansion and needed a quartermaster, and inserts a Hastings Rich in there. Who has high standards and no patience for Sandgren and redirects things in a way that would make a lot of peoples' lives a lot nicer if it had happened lol. EDIT there are daemons in this one, it appears.
Catch-And-Release - Hard to sum up! Run Aground adjacent situation but messing around with how the guys would interact and what would keep them coming back if they were disparate visiting booty calls instead of prisoners? Came with the terrible realization that in this situation Connor would not actually go for Carraway as much and would instead default to just the worst hookups with Sandgren the world had ever seen.
Conditional Freedom - almost put this in the "snippets that didn't end up in the novel" doc, but for a second there was going to be a point in Run Aground where Rich argued Liam into being allowed to come out and be around the other prisoners. Didn't end up happening because of Liam's temperament, but a few hundred words remain.
Harem Redistibution Logistics - Angela Bane's squad of Hastings soldiers break open some old lykoi guy's compound; Rich is put in charge of getting some rich boy back to his weird little boat commune, along with some other hotties that tag along for the ride.
CANON ADJACENT - These started out as non-AUs that could have happened or did happen off-page, and I don't know if they're of much interest? I will briefly pause to call out:
Various AtS scenes but there's daemons in
Various RA scenes but there's daemons in
Various (Upcoming/Redacted) scenes but there's daemons in
Quite a few scenes cut from RA, largely fun but unhelpful fucking.
Two docs-ful of fragments that would eventually hammer into the shape of Run Aground--character introduction scenes (now very OOC and wrong) character dynamic scenes (several of them no longer correct) and a prologue and part of a chapter from Rich's POV of meeting Rafael, who then got an idle fragment of same written from HIS POV, and who quickly grew into an interesting enough guy we pivoted lol.
FANTASY ETC - Full AUs, usually sorted as such because of fantastical elements that aren't part of the main canon.
Demon Lord Merrill - Basil gets isekai'd into a tech on the Michigan Fleet, the backstory/origin of the cool scary landside warlord character in his favorite sexy fantasy novels--and finds out he's uh. Some guy with trauma named Rich.
Soulmarks (Fleet) - "When you touch (one of) your soulmate(s) a representative image appears in that place and them touching it feels nice" edition--brief little snip of Trimmer finally unbending enough to let Rich touch the little sparrow-holding-a-human-heart on his arm and everybody involved is relieved that theirs isn't the kind of "feeling nice" that's kind of horny.
Soulmarks (Landside) - Similar to the above but it's flowers that fill in with color when touched and then wither or bloom depending on the love and attention given to the relationship. Rafael meets a big Hastings soldier in the woods and comes away with a colored-in soulmark and a lot of questions, and Rich Bane following him around like 🥺💞
AB/B/A/O Shenanigans - Listen I know there are only like three people in the world who have any knowledge or interest RE: my blood-type-based homebrew A/B/O hack. And yet!!! Various configurations of characters fucking and having extra gender be upon ye except not because it's all in a doc lol
Various fantasy creature bits - Largely in the form of sex, lol. Establishing shapeshifter!Rich, classic Vampire+Werewolf friends Basil and Mitch, vampire/fae Rafael, half-elf Sol, still a witch!Andy, and Carraway primarily as a werewolf/vampire/(other stuff?) mix.
Raksura - I don't know enough about the Books of the Raksura to speak much on this one, but if you do, it appears Ray has made the Merrills 1/8th Kethel arbora, Connor and Basil mentors, Rafael a consort, Sol a queen, and Carraway a ruler-consort. 👍
Red Knight - Superhero Rich, mad scientist Liam, and the pretty actor Rich's human alter-ego is dating, all get picked up by some Hastings aliens and go on an adventure.
Rich/Liam Swap - Exactly what it says on the tin, lol. Liam and Rich inexplicably switch bodies, Liam gets to deal with being scary and much too big and stronger than he knows how to control, and Rich gets to deal with emotional dysregulation and being a small pretty guy who has to work to get taken seriously. And a dick that simply will not quit.
Deluxe/Fleet Swap - Rich has been Key's OC since long before all this, and was utilized in crossovers with the show Motorcity before he was in the Fleet. Swapping Fleet Tech!Rich with Dystopian Detroit!Rich provides quite a lot of culture clash.
Future/Past Swap - "Sympatico Rich shows up in (post-RA situation) and is SO small and horny and skinny and scared" Edition with corresponding "Huge Future Merrill shows up and upends Trimmer's whole life on the Sympatico" and "Six months into Rafael's imprisonment a huge Hastings shows up, breaks open the garrison, and presents Sam and Rafael with some compelling plans and invitations--and also Rafael's siblings".
Dream Boys - Rafael, in his troupe caravan, starts seeing Rich like a ghost visible only to him--it turns out they're jumping to each other when they sleep. Their blooming romance is of concern and confusion to Rafael's friends and loved ones, and Rich's Trimmer.
WHOO. So. That's not even all of the side-writing, just the stuff that's describable and of interest lol. RE: posting them somewhere, this has been an ongoing discussion! We would like to share, but almost all of (^^^) those are loose collections of scenes with no plot or solid beginning/end. (And also as you may have noticed Ray likes to write daemons from His Dark Materials into things, which is obviously not something we can sell as a novella).
The most doable concept to me is a google doc of the most shareable bits and pieces, and to just share a link! But figuring out which stories would be in there, and doing the amount of work it would take to keep them from being professionally embarrassing to post.... tricky!
SO: it's unfortunately not currently in the cards to put any of them in the extras for the novel. Although we do have about uhhhh...fuck I hadn't counted........we have about 30K of extra bits and bobs that are slated to go on there, lol. The current list including flashes of how the various guys got caught by Carraway, a novelette about a turning point in Sol's young life, and a few key Run Aground scenes re-narrated through Rich and Sol, because Rafael is a very odd character who experiences the world very differently from them, and it's fun to explore what they saw/noticed. :)
I have a friend who is a full time travelling/camping musician, with a focus on Ren Faires. Half his social media is 'Love travel and music with my friends, Faire Life Forever :)' and half is 'Another problem with the FUCKIGN vehicle.' I think of Rafael often, seeing this. I wonder if he has any practical camping skills that haven't come up in his years of captivity, and I think how useful it would be for a travelling crew on bad roads to have a buff Tech, should Rich be road inclined (he isn't)
Rafael's car-repair experience is mostly through his utility as a dexterous and willowy guy who gets summoned to stick his arm into engine blocks and shimmy under trailers and trucks. He was quite a young man when his life went off the rails, so he wasn't usually making decisions or taking on big important tasks around the camp--more running chores and running lines and going out to try to bring in interest and extra cash whenever there was a town nearby. But he can use a compass, read a map, check the troupe's clunky old Geiger counter, set up the water filtration system at a nearby stream, build a fire, and pick from one or two ways to cook commonly-available game animals over it, even if it's not going to be Fine Cuisine.
RE: buff techs, there is a quite tangential AU in our documents where traveling player Rafael meets Hastings backliner/medic apprentice/logistics guy Rich Bane and Rich pretty happily jumps ship to playing mechanic and strong man instead of trying to be a soldier. If he already has the Fleet he's not going to be tempted, but compared to other lives he could make for himself landside, it would be a promising offer!
truly thought his name was willem sandgren... he doesn't deserve the extra vowel
TRUE LOL take it away from him!!!! Wllm Sndgrn. Someone actually also sent me an ask a while ago calling him "Sandgreen" with an extra E. 🤣 Which is excellent, he deserves it.
8oat 8oys Text Posts 8: 8onus 8dition!! With a few additions from our comment section so far that happened to be formatted in a particularly illustratable way, lol.
Someone was sharing the Mystery of the Chopped Up Guy SNL skit the other day, and the way Bill Hader chewed the scenery struck me as Rafael-adjacent: Sol: "My ideal diet consists entirely of coffee and cigarettes." Rafael: "I must paint you."
Ray Sketches gleaned from the groupchat, part ?/???.
There are a nonzero number of Fleet natives, several of them fourhands in Trimmer's large and extended family, that manage flight with a combination of float tube antigrav technology and light prostheses. Genetic modifications attempting to achieve flight without any modification has so far been unsuccessful and usually scrapped in early testing, but the Fleet's unusual levels of manufacture and use for float tubes has given enterprising biohackers some new options.
I'm trying to remember the last time I've enjoyed the interactions of an ensemble cast this much... and I think Run Aground has dethroned Star Trek TNG for me, which is odd to think about, because the tones of the two series are so wildly different.
What a lovely compliment! I haven't watched any Star Trek but from what I know of it. You're totally right that it's a different tone and vibe, BUT the leap from the Michigan Fleet to Star Fleet feels weirdly intuitive lol.
God tho. Bad vibes on a bad ship are bad enough, but a Sympatico-style situation on a spaceship sounds absolutely nightmarish. Nowhere to go but the vacuum of space, baby!!!!!
(I was going to draw some of the Run Aground guys as well but I got hung up on whether Sol would be some kind of beautiful space elf or like. One of the hyper-capitalist alien guys with the big whorly ears. Ferengi?? Don't @ me lol)
I stumbled over a guy who makes a really good Finn Merrill faceclaim and wanted to do a face study, and then diverted almost immediately into doodling, and so midnight o clock is Finn o clock.
I can't draw but I just finished Run Aground and I'm overcome with the need to make fanart. So. May I please have more info about some of the Family Fleet puppets 👉👈
(I wanna make a Facsimile Fact puppet SO BAD you have no idea)
Aw, I'm glad you liked it! :D I'm afraid none of us have any experience designing puppets, but I can certainly compile them for you--some we've mentioned on tumblr, some we've mentioned in text, and some we've only brought up in the groupchat.
Ivanna Inchworm is a sweet little inchworm who started in educational episodes about numbers, but also branched out after her first few episodes into more general prosocial messaging. After all, Everybody Counts! :D
Captain Otter Ortiz and his husband Alfred Otter are the gentle but firm dad lessons puppets. Captain Ortiz is captain of the Marlinspike, the ship where many of the Family Fleet lessons implicitly take place. The Otters usually give hard but important lessons like "I know you love your toys but space is important in the Fleet, so let's figure out what we still need" and "water is all around us and it can be fun, but it can also be dangerous! Let's talk about storm-docking."
Facsimile Fact, the Know-It-All Cat likes to pretend to sleep when faced with a question he doesn't know the answer to, and then pretend he knew the answer all along when someone else figures it out; if pressed, he'll make up increasingly ridiculous lies. Something of an episode heel, but in a comedic and well-beloved way.
Curiosity Cheesewell plays opposite Facsimile, and is humble and honest about his ignorance and excited to learn more. He's also an anxious, neurotic little guy. When Facsimile is bullshitting, Cheesewell goes from "Oh! I didn't/don't know about that! :D" to "Ohhh I don't know about that.... 😬"
Sharon the Sharin' Heron a cool prosocial older sibling/cousin type. Loves sharing the workload, sharing her toys, and sharing her feelings, and is very impressed when the kids do the same. Lots of peoples' first weird crush.
Brenda Beaver the tough, badass, no-nonsense captain of an unnamed manufacturing boat; for generations, older kids have passed along a hundred names like the Dam Straight, the Dam Good Work, the Dam It All, or something similar, all claiming they heard one time it was canon. Cpt Beaver imparts lessons on "we all have to pull our weight" and the importance of every part of the system doing its job so the whole system can continue, and has a paw in several of Rich's deepest neuroses.
Risky Raccoon a little scamp who continually flaunts things like storm tethers and safety checks, and has to be scolded regularly about the risk to himself and others. Baby's first edgy preteen Family Fleet Hot Take is that Risky has had his chances and should be run aground for being a detriment to society.
Mrs Goose and Mr Gander are landside stand-ins, although it's not usually said so much as implied by their weird beliefs, flashiness, aggressive personalities, and the fact that they're consistently affronted and confused when Mr Gander is assumed to be Mrs Goose's butch wife (because landsiders don't understand that birds are women, etc etc.)
Monstro the Megacarp a rare addition but one that haunts the nightmares of a lot of Fleet kids; Monstro represents The Danger Of The Water and has been known to vore a whole-ass child on occasion. They usually get spit back out at the end, but still.
Bonus mention for Finn Merrill, Rich's dad, who took part in quite a lot of episodes before his accident landside, explaining important landside news and basic facts about the local political climate in child-friendly ways.
This little doodle on the front of Rich's shirt is as close as I could find to a drawing of a Family Fleet puppet, and I was very clearly thinking of the Muppets when I drew it lol.
We mostly have POV characters that are going after men, so do you have any Fleet vocab for lady romance that hasn't made it onto text? We know about 'steelheads' and 'being hooked or reeled in' or 'school' of boys, but what about women? And do they have a saying about the worth of birds in the hand vs those in the bush or are they cowards?
I imagine it's less that there are new sayings around the hand and bush and more that you can now say that with an eyebrow wiggle involved lol. RE: various fish metaphors: it's certainly ripe for just as many turns of phrase as the fish situation is!
roach —
we call thena a sparrowhawk
and she catches other women off the wing
i.e nails em midair
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
I feel like there's something in "cuckoo"
potentially even a cuckholding joke
[Note: I then go on to not elaborate on this. But I do stand by it lol.]
roach —
women who go after men are often called ospreys
i think even tho sparrowhawks aren't the most normal bird around the fleet the phrase is so obvious-- a bird that eats bird-- it's the most common term
also i think women who go after men tend to be called ospreys rather than herons just because... it's a little sexier
women who chase old men could be called vultures haha.
Splickedylit, RN, BSN
with birds there's so much more size and shape variation you have the freedom to like, imply a lot of descriptive stuff with it
roach
i think it's probably something where there isn't a SUPER logical and methodical labeling system, it's just kind of like how our language has a lot of horse words mixed in. language is dynamic and memes tend to trump factual and logical conclusions.
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
you could CALL a lady a heron. as a jokey way of pointing out she's tall and gawky and way bigger than her boyfriend
or meaningfully call somebody a peregrine because she dives SO fast for the first fish she sees
[note: not as any kind of 'role' per se, but as a conversational turn of phrase]
.......the lady version of Sandgren being a "lamprey" might in fact be a "gull". if he was a terrible old woman instead
somebody who's annoying and steals shit and is up in your business and has to be constantly yelled at and waved away or she's shitting on your deck
roach —
yeah i think gulls tend to be unrepentantly dirty old women. the kind that pinch your butt and make awful jokes and love embarassing teenage boys.
I keep thinking about how Sol reacts to one of his friends being injured. He's gonna be Very Close, Very Angry, checking things out. Is he gonna provide first aid? No, Rich and Connor do that. Is he at least going to be soothing or sympathetic? Christ no! But he's gonna be Mad and There. Almost as unhelpful is Rafael's bitchy narration about the aesthetics of suffering. If someone is having a bad time (including Rafael) Rafael is going to judge them if their sniffs are "inelegant." Love them.
Accurate lol. It comes along pretty naturally with their respective baggages--Sol's self-worth is so tied up in his independence and pride, he finds it mortifying to be fussed over and comforted when he's hurt or upset, and so he's completely uncomfortable getting Soppy And Emotional about other people getting hurt. Rafael has spent so long curating and self-critiquing the performance of his own existence, some internal part of him automatically reads what everybody else is doing as intentional performance as well, and judges it as such.
