In transformative fandom, the song of my people is a lonely tune

[extrapenguin]

So, after a very hectic week of work featuring lots of overtime, I daydreamed about what sorts of things I'd write for my letter for the 520 Guardian Reverse Exchange (I will totally write a letter of prompts for my author to choose from, because how else am I supposed to do an exchange???), and basically the answer is "porn prompts, cute scenes, plotty plot ideas, all the worldbuilding, and all the worldbuilding, except this time as if it were for a science fiction novel". The latter category includes stuff like relativity.

Assuming Shen Wei were slapped on a relativistic space ship that accelerated at 1 G for 5 000 years, then did some funky gravity assist swing stuff and decelerated at 1 G for 5 000 years more, he'd have from his POV spent 18 years on a relativistic space ship while the rest of the Universe ticked along by 10k years. This is obviously the best solution for reconciling Shen Wei saying he's sought Zhao Yunlan for 10k years yet have him not be an immortal!

(But seriously, someone sing me the song of my people. I would love to have someone take the chance to explain how the Hallows time travel is totally somehow due to the fact that they are e.g. a FTL drive left behind by a more advanced civilization that turned Zhao Yunlan into a tachyonic construct with imaginary mass who could thus break the speed limit and time travel! The pains of wanting science fiction/space AUs that aren't Star Wars or Star Trek based...)

(Guardian rewatch post ep 5 will take another few hours.)

Comments

[teaotter]

I really do wish I'd been in Guardian fandom before worldbuildingex had their fandom nominations this year. Maybe next year a bunch of us can sign up?

[extrapenguin]

It's sort of awkwardly atop my space_swap nowadays, which also allows for worldbuilding matching. I'd definitely be down for worldbuilding, though the second category of worldbuilding I list up there is more ... "turn this into a science fiction novel, instead of a TV show where the expected result on the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness is ‘soggy toilet paper’." (All science fiction TV is at roughly that rate of hardness.)

[firestar]

I would read the shit out of this. *_* Alas, I can't help with the science stuff. I can barely BS my way through Star Trek/Wars/Gate AU fic let alone anything actual science realted. >.>

[extrapenguin]

A youth misspent reading Hard SF and getting a physics degree have left their marks on me, let's say. *g* And lately I find I have to skip over pages in Hard SF books because I already know the scientific principle they're infodumping about! /o\ (Add to that that they mostly include unnecessary het, and I'm grumpy. Go back to no-romance science fiction if you can't write a romantic relationship!)

[firestar]

I've never got on with Hard SF, though admittedly I haven't read anything recent* with more wimminz getting their hands and feelings all over it, how dare they. XD

I tried reading some Peter F. Hamilton back when I started uni and ended up peacing the fuck out, though I don't recall why now given that that *winces* about 15 or so years ago.

*Actually, that may be a lie. I'm not sure how Martha Wells' Murderbot books or Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice fall on the Hard SF scale.

[extrapenguin]

Murderbot and Imperial Radch are pretty solidly Space Opera (as is Peter F. Hamilton) – Hard SF is typically characterized by complete focus on the worldbuilding and little to no feelings. Poul Anderson's Tau Zero is perhaps the ur-example, though very noticeably a product of its time re: sexism. Stephen Baxter writes some decent Hard SF that I read recently (which prompted my sadface about the terribad romance and the infodump I already knew everything about). Other authors I'd name would be Alastair Reynolds and Greg Egan, who're generally good with female characters.

The three big subgenres I'm into are Hard SF, MilSF, and Space Opera; they're generally concerned with feelings other than romance-related ones. (For Hard SF, curiosity and the sense of wonder; for MilSF, loyalty and determination and sacrifice; for Space Opera, loyalty and larger than life things and here romance might exist but I prefer the epic spy plots.) There's a good chunk of romance with science fiction, but it seems to approach it from the romance end and thus write the tropiest crappiest science fiction backdrop for the romance, and I'm also just ... utterly done with heterosexual romances. Give me MilSF where the good Captain is a lesbian! Write space opera where there's a planet where sexes are segregated and same-sex attraction is normal and there's no "heterosexuality conquers all" plot! Argh.

[firestar]

Ooh, that breakdown is super helpful, thank you. I grew up more on the F side of SFF, so I'm used to the subgenres of fantasy but not so much SF. Seems like Space Opera is more my thing in that particular arena, though given that B5 and DS9 are my big tv SF loves that's... probably not a surprise. XD

I enjoyed Tanya Huff's Valour series but I came to her through her fantasy books and was more curious about her SF would work for me than checking it out for the MilSF itself. I am curious about the Honor Harrington books and the Vorkosigan (guess who had to look that name up >.>) books. I think I have Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books somewhere as well. Hm.

But yes, saaame on the romance front. I mean, I picked up Ancillary Justice more because it was doing different things with gender. That's something I appreciate about Elizabeth Bear's work as well, the wider range of gender and sexual orientations is satisfying. SF as a genre has so much potential on that front and it frustrates me that more writers don't explore that.

[extrapenguin]

Honor Harrington is very enjoyable MilSF, though the author has, uh, views that are on occasion a bit too clear in the text. The Vorkosigan saga is more space opera, and I'd actually class some installments as romance-y, though each book is in a slightly different subgenre. (I liked the plotty warfare books and was baffled by all the main romances. Lots of people like them, though, especially the first one, so I guess het has been ruined by oversaturation for me. *g*) Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books are pretty hard IIRC, and I definitely enjoyed them.

I'm also in the hardish place of enjoying stories about things (cosmology, Ringworld, etc) and events more than about people or societies, but of course the people writing about things and events tend not to casualy include queer people, and the people who include queer people tend to be more into writing about people and societies.

[firestar]

*sighs* Oh dear. One of the ~old school~ then? Are said views along the same lines as Orson Scott Card and Robert Heinlein, perchance?

Ah, yes, that would be a bit awkward indeed. XD I'm the opposite on that, I think. I love worlds where I can sink my teeth into the worldbuilding of people and societies and focusing on things like cosmology and events tends to fly right over my head and not hold my interest. *laughs* I guess that's why I majored in history and not science. XD

[extrapenguin]

David Weber is pretty recent IIRC, but while the Honor Harrington series has a setting where sexism and racism don't exist (the Queen is black, half the military are women, etc), he completely forgets the existence of queer people and also the planet of the sexist Space Christians got narratively redeemed much before the planet of the socialists. His economic views are very right wing, and that on occasion shines through. I haven't read anything by Orson Scott Card or Robert Heinlein, so can't compare.

Ah, the pains of being in physics and wanting queer physicists to exist in media like the default-het ones do. (A lot of especially early, especially Hard SF was actually decent autism representation, even if accidentally. No Very Special Episodes, everyone agrees that the Science Thingy Of The Book is the most interesting thing ever and it's natural to be obsessed by it, and there's no judgement about being terrible at being a regular human.)

[firestar]

I shall keep that in mind, then. FWIW, I haven't read Card or Heinlein either but I've heard things about their sexism and homophobia that mean I don't really want to, either.

*squishes* Yeah, I get that. It'd be nice if more content creators outside of fannish spaces remembered that queer people exist and are right here, thanks. And huh, that sounds really cool, even though, yeah, I doubt it was intentional. Though maybe some of those early HSF writers were somewhere on the spectrum themselves, even if the terminology wasn't there.

[dhampyresa]

Give me MilSF where the good Captain is a lesbian!

Yoon ha Lee's Machineries of Empire? (Disclaimer: am friend of author, have not read.)

[extrapenguin]

Read it and enjoyed it! :)

[dhampyresa]

Yay!

[rheasilvia]

I would also love to have some hard scifi elements make their way into Guardian! There is such a huge wealth of stories bound up in the spaceship backstory - not just the FTL/time travel and other scientific aspects, but also the story of the aliens leaving their own planet.

Sounds like a great prompt to me! :-)

[extrapenguin]

I know! I was so delighted to get back into a science fiction fandom, but 1. I forgot that the rest of fandom generally doesn't interact with Science! the way I'm interested in, and 2. it's based on a fantasy novel so half the fandom wants to secretly write fic for the fantasy novel instead and add reincarnation and Ghost Kings.

I'd love to see things that dealt with the generation ship thing (or did they have FTL travel?) and handwaved a scientific-sounding explanation for dark energy and Dixing powers and just engaged with the worldbuilding of the show on its own merits, instead of basically treating it like a version of the novel that went through a cipher and the point of the exercise being undoing the effects of the cipher... And, of course, I'd happily read the version where it's a Space AU (even if it's a Star Wars AU of some stripe – the Black-Cloaked Envoy dresses like a Sith Lord, after all) or where hard SF elements are added in, and there is a three-page infodump on relativistic rocket equations.

[rheasilvia]

Well, the drama pretty much ignores the space alien and hard scifi aspects of the backstory too, so I don't blame fandom for doing the same most of the time. :-) But YES, it does hold intriguing possibilities! I would love to see stories that engage with the scifi worldbuilding the show itself doesn't go into.

generation ship thing (or did they have FTL travel?)

I don't have an actual reason for this, but I always assumed the aliens spent at least a few generations on the ship - whether or not they had FTL travel. It's just that I like to imagine what effect this had on their society and mores, and how you could still see the results today. (I... might have a story touching on that a bit in the pipeline. ;-) )

engaged with the worldbuilding of the show on its own merits, instead of basically treating it like a version of the novel that went through a cipher

THIS. Whether it goes into a hard scifi direction or stays the kind of handwavey soft scifi the drama itself embraces, as long as it stays true to the drama world, I am happy.

(And BTW, I am all drama, but I think reincarnation would fit into the drama!verse (Kunlun *does* look exactly like ZYL, after all). In my headcanon, Kunlun is a previous incarnation of Zhao Yunlan who was killed by the bandit king because Ye Zun meddled with the past from his pillar; that's why ZYL was sucked back in time to fill a vacuum, and history restored itself to the same general shape it would have had if the original Kunlun had teamed up with Shen Wei & Friends. /excursion )

[extrapenguin]

I don't blame people, either, but: there's so much interesting science fiction to delve into!

I don't have an actual reason for this, but I always assumed the aliens spent at least a few generations on the ship - whether or not they had FTL travel. It's just that I like to imagine what effect this had on their society and mores, and how you could still see the results today. (I... might have a story touching on that a bit in the pipeline. ;-) )
This makes more sense than the alternative, because this'd mean that the aliens would have the opportunity to lose the knowhow to build/run interstellar spaceships, and also install in a bunch of them the fear of open spaces (a phobia of rooflessness – what's keeping the atmosphere in???) that'd lead to them voluntarily settling beneath the ground. Maybe with the generation ship burying itself so it becomes Dixing? I have Ideas, and a story that touches upon it that will enter the pipeline at some point.

(Huh! I just ... am not into reincarnation as a concept or trope. Original Kunlun does look exactly like Zhao Yunlan, but to me this is more trivia than anything interesting. A reincarnation is not the original, so a lot of the reasons people cite for liking reincarnation stuff – "second chances" etc – seem to me like they don't apply, as it's at best getting a replacement goldfish of a character. *g*)

[rheasilvia]

the aliens would have the opportunity to lose the knowhow to build/run interstellar spaceships

This is a very good point! Alternately, perhaps they weren't the ones who *built* the spaceship. Perhaps they never knew more than the basics of how to maintain it for long enough to reach their destination (if they even had one and weren't just flying away from something, rather than to something).

Yes, I also thought of Dixing possibly having resemblance to the spaceship! I look forward to reading your story. :-)

A reincarnation is not the original, so a lot of the reasons people cite for liking reincarnation stuff – "second chances" etc – seem to me like they don't apply, as it's at best getting a replacement goldfish of a character.

Oh, I agree - that's not what interests me about reincarnation. There are a lot of other possible plots that work better for me; I never liked the "second chance" thing much either, because it's not the same person without their original memories (although things are complicated with the drama's ending, argh).

This, though? A time-twisty double twist with ZYL replacing himself? I love that thought. (And seriously, why does Ye Zun know that it's useless to try to change the past because time will right itself? It's like he TRIED, and failed. *g*) And I love the idea of Zhao Yunlan someday grabbing up Shen Wei's weapon in the heat of the fight and using it with instinctive expertise, and being at a loss to explain how he knew how to fight with a sword - and perhaps always having had nightmares he put down to an overly active imagination. And then more and more strangeness coming out... just that kind of creepy thing. :-)

Remembering flashes of a life the character never lived, along with the resulting identity issues, could be a very nice element in a story, I think.

[extrapenguin]

This is a very good point! Alternately, perhaps they weren't the ones who *built* the spaceship. Perhaps they never knew more than the basics of how to maintain it for long enough to reach their destination (if they even had one and weren't just flying away from something, rather than to something).
Ooh, so a third species gave them the spaceship so they could escape? (Or, more sinisterly, so they could invade Earth. Or so they could be used as slaves by a member of that third race.) Now I want to see the angry spaceship rental agent come and try to get it back... *g*

Remembering flashes of a life the character never lived, along with the resulting identity issues, could be a very nice element in a story, I think.
It would, but I think I like them best in a context other than reincarnation – have them be clearly scenes from someone else's life with magical memory implantation or Hallows handwaving or something, instead of this ... "oh but you're a reincarnation, so you're technically sort of the same person". Commit or get out, none of this half-way stuff!

[rheasilvia]

Ooh, so a third species gave them the spaceship so they could escape?

Possibly! Or they stole the spaceship to escape when the space-faring species invaded their original planet. Or they were actually slaves on their home planet (but of the same species as the people who had the knowledge to build spaceships). Or ...

Now I want to see the angry spaceship rental agent come and try to get it back... *g*

LOL! That'd be a great crack fic - they are bound to have violated the lease in so many ways. I wonder what the contractual penalty is...

Commit or get out, none of this half-way stuff!

*g* Looks like that's where our tastes differ! I am *so weak* to identity issues - and to me, the identity issues loom more threateningly when the memories are from someone who can technically be seen as the same person, but who still acts and thinks in ways completely foreign to the person in question. Reconciling that... that can be rough.

Someone else's memories would be fascinating in a different way, though, and I would very much love to read that story, too!

Basically, I just want to read ALL THE STORIES, and am glad the reincarnation plots weren't taken off the table with the time loop. Guardian lets us have our cake and eat it, too. :-)

[extrapenguin]

Or they stole the spaceship to escape when the space-faring species invaded their original planet. Or they were actually slaves on their home planet (but of the same species as the people who had the knowledge to build spaceships). Or ...
Damn you, I already had *one* idea for the next fic involving the Dixing spaceship, why did you give me another one??? Blast. (Whatever his flaws, Zhao Yunlan is pretty sure that he'd remember crashing a spaceship, no matter how drunk he might have been at the time!)

I am *so weak* to identity issues - and to me, the identity issues loom more threateningly when the memories are from someone who can technically be seen as the same person, but who still acts and thinks in ways completely foreign to the person in question. Reconciling that... that can be rough.
Huh, interesting! I might read a reincarnation story that took that approach, but as a chronic nonbeliever in souls, "reincarnation" just reads as "completely different person" in the absence of magic stuff (and no, Guardian the drama has science stuff, not magic stuff!), and thus I am baffled.

One of my other lingering plotbunnies if that Zhao Yunlan asks the Hallows to bring Shen Wei back, and they do - except there wasn't enough Shen Wei left, and they had to use what was left of Ye Zun to patch the gaps, leading to the Hallows giving him a "Shen Wei" who is half Shen Wei, half Ye Zun, and has a selfhood and consciousness separate from either. I imagine the crisis of self and reconciling being born from two conflicting sets of memories would very much up your narrative wheelhouse.

[rheasilvia]

Damn you, I already had *one* idea for the next fic involving the Dixing spaceship, why did you give me another one???

Muahahahahahaaaaaa! My evil plan has come to fruition!

Whatever his flaws, Zhao Yunlan is pretty sure that he'd remember crashing a spaceship, no matter how drunk he might have been at the time!

Ooooh, now you have me very intrigued. This is an amazing opening line - I very much hope you write the rest of the story!

as a chronic nonbeliever in souls, "reincarnation" just reads as "completely different person" in the absence of magic stuff

I absolutely see where you're coming from - in a strictly scifi world, reincarnation (rather than clones or the like) does seem out of place. For me, though, Guardian is a special case in this regard, because the drama allows science to step in for so many phenomena that are standard fantasy/magical fare. In a world where the Hallows are scientific artefacts and people are filled with dark and light energy that explodes when it mixes, reincarnation as the result of natural energy transfer seems absolutely logical and fitting to me. ;-)

But in the end, hey - if the reincarnation plot bunnies aren't hopping for you, there are plenty of others out there. Guardian seems to breed them in industrial quantities.

I imagine the crisis of self and reconciling being born from two conflicting sets of memories would very much up your narrative wheelhouse.

It should be, you are absolutely right! It's a fascinating idea - and I could definitely see an accident like this happening through reckless Hallows use. (Oh, Zhao Yunlan.)

All in all, this scenario sounds a bit too dark for me, though... I think the absolute and irreversible loss of self, and the actual destruction of Shen Wei as a person, would take it more into the horror genre for me.

[extrapenguin]

Noooo! *shakes fist at sky from which plotbunnies are raining*

Ooooh, now you have me very intrigued. This is an amazing opening line - I very much hope you write the rest of the story!
It would be in the summary, but in the actual fic, more like the 4th line. He has to get accused of crashing the spaceship first!

But in the end, hey - if the reincarnation plot bunnies aren't hopping for you, there are plenty of others out there. Guardian seems to breed them in industrial quantities.
Indeed it does! I'll focus on my own infinite plotbunnies. :P

All in all, this scenario sounds a bit too dark for me, though... I think the absolute and irreversible loss of self, and the actual destruction of Shen Wei as a person, would take it more into the horror genre for me.
Huh, I conceptualize it more as an extreme case of Came Back Wrong, since Shen Wei already died. With the idea, I'm torn between the played for drama option of Zhao Yunlan realizing this person isn't Shen wei (or Ye Zun) and then the relationship fallout and the whole concept of second love with eventual Zhao Yunlan/Shen San - and playing it for comedy, where after Zhao Yunlan reconciles himself with being together with Shen San only, Shen San starts oscillating between a state of being himself and a state of being Shen Wei and Ye Zun as two separate beings. Then Zhao Yunlan has to figure out how to stabilize things and grapple with which option he wants: Shen San dead in favor of the twins, or Shen wei (and Ye Zun) dead in favor of Shen San, and how to solve the problem while having all three Dixingren live. (Even if one of them is his least favorite Dixingian.)