Pro: I've started planning out another Halt centric rangers apprentice fic
Con: this is almost certainly a way my brain is procrastinating on Short Swordsman
Pro: it should only be a one-shot! And one with a very interesting premise at that!
Con: I am also procrastinating on this fic by studying 15th century German fechtbuche for Short Swordsman
Pro: it will be studying a dynamic between Halt and Duncan that I haven't seen before
Con(. . ?): the more I plan, the more the dynamic falls into Halt/Duncan. I am aromantic. That would be difficult to write.
Pron: I am still studying fechtbuche (Psuedo-Peter von Donzig is my GOAT) ITS BEEN DAYS
Pron: the concept is very funny but I fear it will be heart wrenching
Pron: it's basically gonna be like-- 4k words of Duncan going, "you're the crown prince of Clonmel" and then Halt going, "nu-huh" "we literally played together as children" "nuh-uh" "You're my best friend!" "NUH-UH!"
Pron: I don't know where I was going with this post, but that's an update on what's going on with me with Ranger's Apprentice
Pron: I'm currently calling the fic Familiar Faces. If anyone has a better idea, please give me suggestions
Pro: I've started planning out another Halt centric rangers apprentice fic
Con: this is almost certainly a way my brain is procrastinating on Short Swordsman
Pro: it should only be a one-shot! And one with a very interesting premise at that!
Con: I am also procrastinating on this fic by studying 15th century German fechtbuche for Short Swordsman
Pro: it will be studying a dynamic between Halt and Duncan that I haven't seen before
Con(. . ?): the more I plan, the more the dynamic falls into Halt/Duncan. I am aromantic. That would be difficult to write.
Pron: I am still studying fechtbuche (Psuedo-Peter von Donzig is my GOAT) ITS BEEN DAYS
Pron: the concept is very funny but I fear it will be heart wrenching
Pron: it's basically gonna be like-- 4k words of Duncan going, "you're the crown prince of Clonmel" and then Halt going, "nu-huh" "we literally played together as children" "nuh-uh" "You're my best friend!" "NUH-UH!"
Pron: I don't know where I was going with this post, but that's an update on what's going on with me with Ranger's Apprentice
Pron: I'm currently calling the fic Familiar Faces. If anyone has a better idea, please give me suggestions
Hello my dear rangers! I know I've never interacted with this fandom directly but just gauging general interest: who wants to see a fic of Halt fucking around with a sword?
Let me elaborate. People like to theorize that a big reason why Halt is the one who trained Gilan is because, as royalty, he must have SOME experience with swordsmanship. Yet, I don't think I've ever seen a fic actually explore this (please link me to any you may know). So the idea is "Fives times people see Halt with a sword, and one time it makes perfect sense".
So yeah! Interact with this post in any way to help me gain motivation to actually put this into reality! Also go find @pangolinsandnewts because they are one of my very best friends who helped me brainstorm this idea and may end up co-authoring/betaing if this thing ever gets written.
Coming soon to an Ao3 near you! I just want to make sure to at least have a solid draft for all the chapters written first, if it's a smaller project like this I don't want any chances of lengthy hiatuses!
(Note: "soon" is subjective and is entirely reliant on me not procrastinating on it by writing for my fic that's been on a 5 year hiatus in an entirely different fandom)
(Note note: can I still say it's on hiatus if I posted for it within the last month while procrastinating?)
Well I might've gotten a little carried away with my PHM Starfleet AU, but I hope y'all enjoy! Uniforms are based off TOS/AOS. You're probably wanna click for quality, as I'm sure tumblr absolutely destroyed it.
I cannot stop thinking about the fact that Vulcan and Erid are both in the 40 Eridani system and how things might go if they exist in the same universe. Like, what if the Vulcans noticed and intercepted the Hail Mary when it entered their system? Come, walk with me...
(Longish read, spoilers for Project Hail Mary under the cut)
The events of PHM start in the late 2010s or early 2020s and have Grace and Rocky getting to 40 Eridani in the late 2030s. Vulcan's first contact with Earth takes place in Star Trek canon in April 2063, and by that point they had been quietly monitoring Earth for some time. They definitely knew a LOT about humans by the 2030s - physiology and disease conditions, human languages, Terran technology, probably a general grasp of Earth geopolitics and cultures too. They would have known about the Petrova line in our system and may have even known about PHM to some extent.
Generally speaking, though, Vulcans are arrogant dicks about pre-warp cultures in a "white man's burden" kind of way, and they do not interfere with pre-warp civilizations, even technologically advanced ones facing a world-ending crisis. They wouldn't have gotten involved with Stratt et al. or tried to help us in any way, even though Earth and Vulcan were dealing with the exact same crisis. They would detect us launching the Hail Mary, make note of it, and set some kind of unmanned probe or attach a device to the hull to track it and see where it's headed.
However, I don't think any Vulcans monitoring Earth would believe we'd have even a slight chance of pulling off a manned interstellar mission with the resources we had available, even with cutting edge Earth tech powered by astrophage fuel. Hell, they might have even tracked Grace all the way to Tau Ceti but assumed the ship and remaining crew was lost during the fishing trip, like if their sensors were destroyed or detached when Grace was trying to pull the ship out of the atmosphere.
As for Erid, Vulcan may not have even noticed the Eridians. They're pre-spaceflight right up until they launch Blip-A, don't use light- or radio-based communication, are silicon-based and subterranean, and live on a planet completely inhospitable for carbon-based life. As far as the Vulcans know, Erid is a barren planet in their home system with an intensely hot, high-pressure ammonia-based atmosphere that can't support any form of life as they know it.
For that matter, even Blip-A could have gone mostly unnoticed when it was launched. Eridian tech is made out of xenonite, an exotic material they either a) have never seen or thought possible, as with Grace, or b) have possibly seen before but don't know how to synthesize or use. Rocky's ship would most likely appear on their scanners as a big pocket of xenon gas surrounding some chunks of rocky material and a quantity of astrophage, which exits a barren planet's atmosphere and then leaves their system. They'd for sure want to study it and would likely send an exploratory mission to investigate and track it - to them, it looks like a barren planet in their system just ejected a plume of astrophage, planetary atmosphere, xenon gas, and rocky debris, so logically they're going to follow up on it.
Once they get a visual on it and see it's a construction clearly made by some kind of sentient life, though, non-interference principles kick in. Their scanners won't pick up any life signs or breathable atmosphere on board, so it will look like it's an unmanned probe propelling itself somewhere. This, of course, would be its own mystery for the Vulcans and they will still keep tracking and studying it. Nonetheless, it still wouldn't point to there being life on board or native life on Erid, since the Vulcans otherwise wouldn't learn about silicon-based life until the crew of the USS Enterprise discovers it in the 23rd Century, and thus wouldn't think to look for it.
With all that said, I'm imagining the Vulcans' absolute shock when their sensors pick up something entering their system, only to discover it's that same primitive Earth spaceship they started tracking almost 20 years earlier, the one they thought was lost at Tau Ceti. It's battered all to hell but still working - not only that, it's got A HUMAN LIFE SIGN ON BOARD. It can't be hailed so they tractor it in, and inside they find one human scientist, alive and mostly lucid but also very unwell, who goes bug-eyed when he sees them. He goes to speak but can't get his words past his astonished stammering. He shakily holds out an odd-looking Earth device, and finally manages to get out,
"Grace. *points at self*
Friend Rocky. *points to the enclosure behind him*
Taumeba. *points to a door across the room*
Translator."
He hands them the device and flashes a delirious, wide-eyed grin before hitting them with the LLAP 🖖🏼 and collapsing. After the Vulcans rush Grace to medical and get him examined, stabilized, nourished, and rested, they are able to debrief them via Grace and Rocky's homebrew English-Eridian translator and the English-Vulcan translator they've developed during their years surveying Earth.
The Vulcan Science Academy is buzzing with excitement (in their subdued Vulcan way) once the findings are published, and they all find themselves marveling at the extremely improbable story of Dr. Ryland Grace, Earth scientist, who:
survived 18 continuous years in space against all odds with no other humans on board (including extended time in an unsupervised medically-induced coma, and multiple dangerous spacewalks) on a ship they believed to have likely been destroyed years ago.
never trained for space flight before he was shanghaied into space and then lost his pilot and engineer before he even woke up
successfully collected biological samples from another planet in a risky upper-atmosphere maneuver that nearly killed him, and then used them to develop a cure for the astrophage that's also killing Vulcan's star (in a small lab on his ship and with only the resources he had available).
had no means of rapid communication with Earth, zero chance of rescue if anything went wrong, and had initially understood he was going to die in space whether or not his mission was a success.
was the first human in Earth's history to make first contact with a sentient alien species of any kind.
learns to communicate with said alien, and, when they discover their common goal, immediately starts working together as a team to complete their mission, forming a profoundly deep friendship in the process.
might have actually made it back to Earth after all, had he not sacrificed his chance at going home by going back to rescue the alien friend he made and make sure he gets home with his batch of the astrophage cure, saving both Sol and 40 Eridani.
And his friend 🎶🎵Rocky 🎶🎵:
Who comes from a neighboring planet in Vulcan's system that they always thought to be completely uninhabitable and devoid of life
Who belongs to a technologically advanced race of silicon-based lifeforms, which they had never seen before and thought was theoretical at best
Whose species learned to synthesize a previously-unknown metallic alloy of a noble gas into an extremely versatile building material and can spin filaments of this material into objects manually like a Terran spider spinning a web.
Whose species has no innate or learned concept of relativity, no concept of light and radiation and no sense of sight, and navigates using a highly developed form of echolocation...
...and, despite all of that, achieved interstellar travel, in a ship so alien to the Vulcans that they first mistook it for a giant pocket of gas and then tracked it for years believing it was unmanned and constructed by another space-faring civilization.
like Grace, was the first member of HIS species to make first contact with a sentient alien species and immediately befriends him.
Engineered an entire system so he and his new friend could work and live together despite their drastically different atmospheric needs.
Risked his life by leaving his atmosphere bubble to save his friend's life at Tau Ceti, severely injuring himself in the process.
Gives Grace some of his fuel to get back to Earth because he loves him and cannot bear the thought of him dying in space, knowing that doing so will add another six years until he finally gets home to his people and his mate.
Grace still takes all the time he wants to decide what he's going to do with the rest of his life. Vulcan, having warp technology and faster-than-light travel, develops a plan to seek out and inoculate affected stars with Taumeba. The science academy acknowledges that they owe their existence to members of two species who successfully traveled to distant stars without FTL travel, leading them to rethink their approach to encounters with pre-warp civilizations.
Grace has a standing invite to study, research, and teach at the science academy. Sometimes he does, and he'll be the first to admit that it's still a trip to know that Vulcans exist and they actually do the 🖖🏼 thing in real life.
Ultimately though, Erid, along with Rocky and Adrian and all their pebbles, becomes his real home.
Friend, your MIND! I'm obsessed! The recursive media (no matter how improbable) is HILARIOUS!
Imagine if Gene Roddenberry knew a LOT about IRL Vulcans (or alternatively was one himself). So everything in seen in Trek about Vulcans WAS 100% accurate. Imagine the panic IRL Vulcans would have with humans knowing Far More About Them then they even imagined. Roddenberry, you crazy Vulcan bastard.
Anyway the 2063 "First" Contact happens and earth would 100% know about Eridians because of PHM and Vulcans because of Roddenberry but also like-- "WHAT DO YOU MEAN RYLAND GRACE IS STILL ALIVE LIVING IN A ZOO ENCLOSURE ON AN ALIEN PLANET?"
Grace eventually gets a large statue in Starfleet for bringing together 3 major species together for what would eventually become Starfleet. Rocky is still alive and is at the unveiling.
Hmmm. Based on Eridian Lifespans Rocky would probably be able to meet Spock and Kirk. Who . . . Wouldn't actually exist because wrapping my mind around recursive media is biting me in the ass now. Would Starfleet even exist or is it just Roddenberry imagining the best future he can?
If anyone is curious the quote comes from M*A*S*H 5.08 'Mulcahy's War'. I know this because the episode came up in my binge almost immediately after seeing this post.
Sometimes an episode is just so stuffed with really good line deliveries theres nothing i can do except put em together in a compilation its out of my control im powerless to stop it. Goodbye.
I perhaps have too many ideas for a Grace, Rocky, and Stratt in Starfleet AU (completely inspired by the realization that 40 Eridani houses both Vulcans and Eridians).
Bullet pointed ideas are going to be below a read more because I fear the length
- Grace teaches upper level biology at Starfleet Academy
- Captain Stratt of the USS Hail Mary is hanging around with some fellow captains and admirals and such
- Grace is getting into a heated debate with a fellow professor about biology (as he does)
- Stratt is just like-- "That one. That's my new XO."
- The poor admirals try to tell her but you know what Stratt is like on a mission
- Now every time they go on landing missions she's stuck with a partner who Will Contact Chief Engineer Rocky the Eridian for transport whenever there's danger
- This man will do everything possible to not get Red Shirted
- despite never wearing a red shirt but whatever
- She takes the cowardice with the competence
- Grace got headhunted for the Mary and didn't even realize he was XO for like-- a week and a half.
- don't ask him how. He was mortified when he found out.
- "Man it's kinda cool being part of the science team on a ship"
- someone else: "yeah, you get to be Chief Science Officer AND Second in command!"
- ". . . I'm what and what."
- "Strattttttt people think I'm? Your XO?"
- "That is correct"
- " . . . "
- "Who did you think it was?"
- " . . . Rocky?"
- " . . . The engineer? The engineer that spends 80% of his time in the vents . . ?"
- anyway the first month of their mission is chaos.
- the Eridians and Vulcans may be nextdoor neighbors planet wise
- but they both hiss at each other whenever they get too close
- Cain instinct.
- Touch Telepathy vs. Echolocation
- GO!
- the only thing they agree on is music.
- Rocky and Grace become fast friends obviously
- Rocky is charmed by Grace constantly asking to be Beamed Up
- Grace finds himself in the vents when too many people try to talk to him
- I think they have a lot of fun trying to get Grace to learn Eridian without universal translator
- Also I just need y'all to imagine Rocky in his shirt from the books but like-- as a red Starfleet uniform
- let's also just handwave away the need for different atmospheres
- anyway this is like already half-way to becoming a fic and a plot
- but like--
- time is not on my side.
- I already have like-- 2 WIPS and more in the wings
It has come to my (belated) attention that the Vulcans and Eridians come from the same star system (40 Eridani). I propose a plot bunny that is free for the taking, in fact I may write it myself one day if I figure out logistics.
Consider: Instead of Grace making first contact with Eridians (and Rocky), he makes first contacts with Vulcans (possibly Spock if you want to bend the timeline). This would make Vulcan's first contact with earth happen approximately 40-50 years before it occurs in Star Trek.
Oh boy, I just realized. The Vulcans initially made first contact with earth after monitoring them for ages, even learning their language beforehand. I propose that this occured because of their Resident Human who Saved Their World.
It has come to my (belated) attention that the Vulcans and Eridians come from the same star system (40 Eridani). I propose a plot bunny that is free for the taking, in fact I may write it myself one day if I figure out logistics.
Consider: Instead of Grace making first contact with Eridians (and Rocky), he makes first contacts with Vulcans (possibly Spock if you want to bend the timeline). This would make Vulcan's first contact with earth happen approximately 40-50 years before it occurs in Star Trek.
Oh boy, I just realized. The Vulcans initially made first contact with earth after monitoring them for ages, even learning their language beforehand. I propose that this occured because of their Resident Human who Saved Their World.
