#i am So sorry i didnt expect this to be so longgggg AH

[butchniqabi]

Okay so for the past week I’ve been meaning to make a list of my current WIPs and I’ve been putting it off so...procrastinating no longer! Most of these stories I started sometime after my last story “A Voice Only Heard in the Dark” (which I posted 6 months ago oops). I didn’t feel like adding to my original WIP list bc it was long and annoyed me to look at. Anyways without further ado:

And How Do the Peasants Die? (Soft SciFi with little technology): Several years after being deposed, the region’s former emperor finds himself reaching the end of his life, living off the charity of a young woman. Though he has concealed his identity from her, he slowly begins to suspect that she knows more than she has let on. (The title is the alleged last words of Tolstoy. Themes center around: relationships between a country and its ruler(s), race and gender dynamics, atonement, and what forgiveness means)

Gethsemane: A Guide to Losing to the One You Love (SciFi, told in 2nd person): Your lover tells you that the planet’s orbital defenses have been shut down. She tells you that she is the one who did it. At the very least she has the decency to look guilty, ashamed of the devastation yet to come. You want to ask how long she had been thinking of this. Why would she deliver a death sentence to her own people? Did she even love you? Outside, satellites and space junk fall to the surface, lighting streaks of red across the sky. (Title refers to that place Isa (as) went to pray before he was...well you know. The title was originally “Sweeter Than Death, a Deception” before just becoming “A Guide to Losing to the One You Love” I heard Gethsemane mentioned on something I watched and, context aside, I loved the name so I wanted an excuse to use it hehe. Themes are: race and class dynamics, betrayal (in both the interpersonal and social sense), imperialism)

The Sea, The Sea, The Open Sea (SciFi): After sustaining heavy damage, the starship Love-In-Winter has lost most of her crew and is unable to use faster-than-light travel. The two survivors set to work repairing as much as they can, attempting to find a way to make it home faster than the projected 97 years. One of the women suggests that they make use of a highly experimental technology to ease them on their way home: a device that risks making them inhuman. (Title is the opening line to Barry Cornwall’s poem “The Sea”, because the sea is space and the vacuum of space is the sea, y’know? Themes revolve around: humanity and identity as a marginalized person, isolation, technology as a means of harm, recognition of the self through the other)

A Mote of Dust (Realistic Fiction, Soft SciFi): Qadira finds herself floundering after the death of her cat proves to be the proverbial straw which breaks the camel’s back. She goes through the motions of life: going to work, calling her dad, going to her appointments, taking her medication, and spending time with her alien spotting group (which devolved into an excuse to smoke weed and watch DS9). However, she slowly finds herself withdrawing from the world as her 28th birthday approaches. She begins to reckon with her own place on Earth and the unaddressed trauma of witnessing her mother’s abduction by extraterrestrials. (Title is from a Carl Sagan quote about Earth, “A mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.” There’s more but I’ll leave that to you to look up. Concept came about while looking into the Fermi Paradox: with the overwhelming evidence pointing to proof of intelligent life outside Earth, why haven’t we come in contact yet? Themes are: what we owe each other, mental health and mental illness, ableism, the “other”, and what makes an alien an alien?)

Special Dreams, in Which You Exist (SciFi, Tragedy): Mercedes Imperial was a figure that haunted the Nor-Am continent, credited with killing politicians, scientists, and wealthy patrons alike. Through discovering and stealing various technology, she was able to extend her life and cause disorder for roughly 200 years. Twenty years after she was caught and executed, archivists revive her by using her cyberorganetic data, hoping that they could interview her and learn the secrets of her resistance. To everyone’s surprise, Mercedes -the old Mercedes- installed a fail-safe in her data, effectively erasing every memory and experience she had past her 23rd birthday. The new Mercedes awakens to a world where she is both folk hero and boogeyman, her person already defined for her. Unsure of what is true, she must discover for herself who she used to be and determine what it means to exist. (Okay I know, I KNOWWWWW, that I’ve been writing this story on and off for 2 years but I’m on again so you’re going to get Mercedes Content damnit. Title is from Harlan Ellison’s “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer,” the quote itself is long so I’m not going to type it all out. Themes include: identity, stories as a form of oppression, stories as a form of idolatry, sacrifices for a greater cause, hauntings, all forms of American Bigotry, and strength through love/connection)

#my writing #i am So sorry i didnt expect this to be so longgggg AH #anyways these are a teensy bit corny but you all get the gist! #any questions or whatever just shoot me an ask bc i honestly only explained like 1/3 of the things i wanted to about each story