Author Topic: The SSSS Scriptorium  (Read 768222 times)

Ragnarok

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3030 on: March 17, 2017, 07:50:33 PM »
Posting on behalf of Llama!
Soulmate AU
Emil/Lalli ship
General rating
Little snapshots of the expedition and Lalli finding his soulmate ;D
Read it here!

Adorable. Yes.
Survived: Chapters: :chap8::chap9::chap10::chap11::chap12::chap13::chap14::chap15::chap16::chap17::chap18::chap19::chap20::chap21: :A2chap01: :A2chap02::A2chap03::A2chap04::A2chap05:
Books: :book3: :book4:

I wrote a thing. It has consumed my life.

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LooNEY_DAC

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3031 on: March 18, 2017, 02:33:23 PM »
Oh, look; it's back.

Alphabet Soup
A “Stand Still. Stay Silent” fanfic collection
Series 3, Part 3
Complete Links to Complete Links post
Spoiler: The Cat in Scout’s Clothing • show
Once, there was a cat that watched the scouts every night as they went out and about their duties. Light or dark, wet or dry, hot or cold, they went, and the cat watched all the while.

After a time, the cat told himself, “You know, I do believe I could do that as well as any of those humans do, if I wanted to.” But he didn’t want to, so the cat just stayed where he was.

Over the next while, the cat told himself several more times that he could go a-scouting just as well as any of the humans he watched, if he wanted to; but he never wanted to, so he didn’t.

Finally, one night the cat said it aloud, where he thought no one would hear him.

“I don’t believe you.” So said a young fox lazily lounging in a nearby tree. “You didn’t spot me, so how can you say that you’d be as good as the humans?”

“I would so,” the cat protested, “and I totally knew you were there!”

“Then prove it,” the puppy-fox sneered. “Unless you’re all talk.”

“OK.”

So the cat went to the master of scouts and told him that he wanted to join the scouts.

“Well,” the master of scouts said doubtfully, “you’re a fine, big cat, but all my scouts have to be human.”

“Why?” the cat demanded angrily.

“The good townspeople made us these uniforms, and it would be insulting if we didn’t use them.” The master of scouts held out one of the uniforms for the cat to examine.

The uniforms included long boots that came up over the knees, and long gloves that reached past the elbows. The cat looked at them dubiously.

Eventually, the cat asked, “If I wear the uniform, can I join the scouts?”

“You’ll have to try out first,” the master of scouts replied. “That’s the way it’s done.”

“OK.”

So the cat strained and struggled and finally managed to get into the uniform. It made his balance all wobbly, though, so when he tried out for the scouts, the others just laughed at his efforts to get through their obstacle course.

This only made the cat more determined than ever to show the others that he could be the most best of them all; so every night after that, instead of watching the scouts, the cat practiced.

After a very long time, the cat went back to the master of scouts, who told him, “You already failed your try-out, so I can’t let you join; those are the rules.” But the master of scouts agreed to let the cat try again in front of the town leaders, to see if they might change their minds.

This time, the cat did everything right; he even set a new speed record going through the obstacle course. The town leaders did not want to change their minds, though, because that would mean admitting that they had been wrong.

While the town leaders were busy deciding not to do anything, the cat scouted out the entire town and drew out a map showing where everyone and everything was. This was something not even the best of the other scouts could do, and the master of scouts was both pleased and impressed.

The town leaders still would not budge, so the cat would not become one of their scouts.

“I’ll take him on as a Cub Scout.”

The town leaders gasped, for the speaker was none other than the feared Bear Warrior, Sigrun, the fiercest Bear Warrior ever ever ever!

“Right, Mikkel?” she said, turning to her massive Bear Warrior companion.

“M’yes. This cat could prove most useful as our Cub Scout.”

And that’s how Lalli the cat became a Cub Scout and the Third Bear Warrior...

Spoiler: Authorial Notes • show
I’m certain none of you were expecting me to revisit this, were you?

Buteo

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3032 on: March 18, 2017, 04:53:08 PM »
Oh, look; it's back.

Spoiler: Authorial Notes • show
I’m certain none of you were expecting me to revisit this, were you?


Not expecting, no, but glad to have it happen!

Róisín

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3033 on: March 18, 2017, 05:51:37 PM »
Nice, LooNEY! Sometimes your tone reminds me of the Just So Stories, especially in the matter of cats.
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LooNEY_DAC

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3034 on: March 19, 2017, 02:01:12 AM »
Here's something I haven't done in a while: a multi-update post!

Alphabet Soup
A “Stand Still. Stay Silent” fanfic collection
Series 1, Part 4
Complete Links to Complete Links post
Spoiler: A Dynamic Encounter • show
There was no warning that the world was about to change; it just did while they slept, twisting from a green and Silent world to an utterly empty desert. They only saw this through their vehicle’s windshield, however, as Lalli, suddenly awake once more, physically blocked the exits until the rest of the group could see how the world had changed.

They had finally come to rest after their wild flight out of Copenhagen in a broad, open, but quite marshy field surrounded rather distantly by trees on most every side. In the deeper background, there were buildings that suggested this area had once been farmlands.

The camp had been pitched (as it were) in haste, but the exhausted crew had still managed to drag a camouflaging cover over the bulk of their vehicle.

The scene outside as dawn broke was utterly different. Instead of a marshy field riddled with ponds and thoroughly green with the gone-to-seed-for-ninety-years vegetation of Silent Denmark, their vehicle rested on a slab of bare rock surrounded by a barren mix of rock and sand, with not a scrap of verdure in sight as far as could be seen.

Lalli had lost his luonto, but the great shift had sent it flying back to him rather than driving it further away, though Lalli thought he’d seen a hint of a red tail vanishing into the distant depths of the dreamworld as Lalli and Lynx reunited.

The first attack was not long after that, before they had even decided on what they should do. It was a quick fusillade of shots followed by a determined pounding on the main door.

“Why aren’t they shooting at the windows?” Sigrun wondered.

After a final shot, the pounding ceased. A long and heavy silence ensued.

“Let’s try the radio,” Tuuri eventually suggested in a quiet and shaky voice, so they did. The results were even more frightening than the attack: instead of the usual screaming interference from the local trolls, there was only a mild static, with no response from anyone, regardless of what tricks Tuuri and Mikkel tried.

It was hours before any of them dared to go out of the vehicle.

*

In the distance, right about where Copenhagen ought to be, rose a gargantuan assemblage of towers that glittered and shone as the sun moved in its arc across the sky.

Sigrun thought they needed to make a sortie at it, but she was persuaded to wait until Lalli had scouted the immediate area out before they went at it.

What Lalli found was disturbing, to say the least. The area looked flat, but there were wrinkles enough nearby to conceal dozens or even hundreds of vehicles just like theirs, all of them empty, cold, and abandoned. Near a few, several crude graves had been dug into the sand; some of these had been emptied shortly thereafter.

The area still seemed to roughly correspond with their old-time maps, enabling Lalli to have Tuuri mark every last spot where he’d found another vehicle, with special notations to designate the graves. Whoever they had been in life, they should be remembered in death, all of the six agreed.

None of them knew what it all meant, but when they finally crept into what should have been Copenhagen, they would find out...


Spoiler: Authorial Notes • show
Oh, look. It’s the Paratime crossover I was talking about. What a surprise.

I’m definitely going to revisit this one, too.


+
Alphabet Soup
A “Stand Still. Stay Silent” fanfic collection
Series 2, Part 4
Spoiler: Deus Ex Mikkeli • show
Tuuri Hotakainen and Reynir Árnason only survived because they were making out in the aid station supply closet when the attack happened.

They weren’t even supposed to be in that area, as they weren’t immune; Reynir’s own aid station and Tuuri’s workshop were both in the area set aside for the non-immune at the center of the camp.

Lalli Hotakainen and Emil Västerström had been assigned to guard the aid station in general and medic Mikkel Madsen in particular as a punishment; now, it seemed the punishment would prove their salvation. The two boys picked off troll after troll while Mikkel struggled futilely to save as many of the wounded flooding the aid station as he could.

Captain Sigrun Eide fought her way over to the aid station with one of the last of the wounded to reach that place: the idiot Major who’d spoken so boastfully of “the glorious victory that shall soon fall into our hands” just that morning.

Sigrun, Mikkel, Emil, Lalli, Tuuri and Reynir were the only ones who lived through the night.

*

The reclaiming of Mikkeli was to be an international affair: Sweden sent Cleansers; Norway sent Hunters; and Denmark and Iceland sent support troops (mostly medics). Finland supplied the bulk of the force, including as many mages as they could spare.

A minor scandal occurred when it was discovered that one of the Icelanders was a stowaway. Reynir told Tuuri all about it over dinner that night, in the communal dining area in the compound the non-immunes had to share.

“I almost did something like that myself,” he’d confessed, explaining how he’d almost signed on as part of a freighter’s crew before learning the Icelandic military’s medical services would accept him without his having to lie about his non-immune status.

The morning before the Cleansers were to go out in their first foray, there was a mass meeting in the immune area, where the major commanding the Cleansers had blathered a bunch of sententious bromides that he obviously thought would inspire his Cleansers to “great heights of glory” (one of his favorite phrases) in the days to come.

Everything was set up for what was expected on the following day: the aid stations were manned and equipped; the scouts were ready to probe the depths of the nearby city that night; the Hunters were primed to go after the grosslings outside the preliminary Burn Zone; and the Cleansers had laid their plans and checked and double-checked their equipment.

When the grosslings attacked the encampment at high noon, to say the expedition was caught off guard would be a masterpiece of understatement.

Defying all expectations, the grosslings burst out of the ground, and only the aid stations with their concrete floors were spared in the initial assault.

By the evening, it was all over.

*

“Our only hope is to reach Keuruu.”

When Tuuri translated her cousin’s bald assessment of their predicament to the others (Mikkel simultaneously retranslating to Reynir), Sigrun, their leader both de jure and de facto, nodded grimly. “We need to move before the grosslings realize they missed us. Are we all fit to move?”

“Marching through the Silent World without the kind of protection we can’t carry on our backs is a recipe for suicide; I suggest we see if any of the vehicles are still working,” Mikkel said.

*

“It looks like a cat,” Lalli opined.

“Well, whatever it looks like, it’s what we’ve got,” Tuuri replied.

“OK, Short Stuff!” Sigrun enthused as they piled into the vehicle. “Off to Keuruu!” And with a whine and a whir, they were off, but very slowly...


Spoiler: Authorial Notes • show
Oh, look. An AU that doesn’t mirror the comic storyline.

Didn’t think I’d do it, did you?


...And hopefully more will come soon.

Buteo

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3035 on: March 19, 2017, 02:57:21 AM »
A multi-pleasure to see, LooNEY!

Róisín

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3036 on: March 19, 2017, 03:38:29 AM »
LooNEY: Hooray! Do go on!
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wavewright62

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3037 on: March 19, 2017, 05:01:12 AM »
I have posted chapter 27 of the superhero AU fic, 'Assembly.'
http://archiveofourown.org/works/6610714/chapters/22899141

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wavewright62

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3038 on: March 19, 2017, 06:10:56 AM »
Double-post to praise LooNEY_DAC on his AU stories.  Fun!
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Róisín

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3039 on: March 19, 2017, 06:17:05 AM »
Wavewright, this is getting really interesting. I'd forgotten that Onni doesn't know where Lalli is. He is going to be apoplectic when he finds out!
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Lazy8

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3040 on: March 19, 2017, 09:52:21 AM »
I... couldn't make up my mind which song to use. So this time you get three!

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:norway: can hold a basic conversation

:chap5: | :book2: | :book3: | :chap17: :chap18:

LooNEY_DAC

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3041 on: March 19, 2017, 02:35:26 PM »
I will catch up to you, Lazy8! I'm only 3 back now, so I'm making progress!

* LooNEY_DAC laughs maniacally

...

And now, the story.

Alphabet Soup
A “Stand Still. Stay Silent” fanfic collection
Series 3, Part 4
Complete Links to Complete Links post
Spoiler: The Dawn Can Come Too Late • show
Throughout human history, the dawn has brought safety and respite from the terrors lurking in the night. Even before the Year Zero, this was true, but as the grosslings came after the few survivors of the outbreak, it became more and more undeniable that the light of the sun had its own special power against the encroaching creatures of darkness.

But even as the First Rule was not a sure defense against a grossling attack, neither was the dawn.

Marten lowered his chisel momentarily in order to wipe the sweat from his brow. He had engraved a mere thirty names so far, and there were hundreds yet to go. Most were the names of strangers, but for even such a virtual shut-in as Marten had been, there were a few names he had carved--and a few he still needed to carve--that were achingly familiar.

There were names from Rønne, names from Nexø, names from every other bit of Bornholm, and even names from the settlements on the few Cleansed Islands; no part of the Remnant of Denmark had escaped loss in what was supposed to have been their greatest triumph.

The worst part was the complete lack of divulgence on the part of the Armed Forces on any aspect of the Kastrup Disaster: it amounted to a total blackout, with even the few survivors unwilling to say anything about that horrible day. The cloud of failure that hovered over their heads tainted everyone around them, as though the Danes as a whole had been shown to be unworthy of their survival, though even that had not been easy.

Marten carved a name or two more before climbing down to get some water. The tunnel was stuffy and humid, which the heat turned to rank and stifling. While the Old Time builders had built it well, their heirs had failed to maintain their works well enough for the tunnel to be bearable for any length of time in summer; and why should they, some among them asked, when the tunnel led only to death, and especially as the year waxed hot--though this was merely an excuse, and everyone knew as much.

That in itself might have warned the wise that what was really lacking in the Danes was the vigor of their forebears: over the years, the old indefatigability had slowly devolved into an unwillingness to put forth the requisite effort to do something the proper way when such effort exceeded their inborn sloth; so even the concept of the proper way itself had devolved into a blind adherence to protocol in order that the Sons of Bornholm might be spared the necessity of the ardor of critical thought to prompt proper and vigorous action.

The Danes were deep in a night of their own making, now more than ever after Kastrup; the question was whether a new dawn could come for them that would awaken them to renewed vigor and perseverance.

And if or when this new dawn came, would it be too late?

Marten sighed and picked up his chisel, leaving aside his gloomy reflections to get back to the work that needed to be done...


Spoiler: Authorial Notes • show
Oh, look: an Authorial Note that starts out “Oh, look”.

Please note also the use of the word ‘led’, the past tense of ‘lead’. I’ve noticed the misuse of ‘lead’ for ‘led’ becoming more prevalent recently, so I thought I’d put that out there.

This may seem a bit hard on the Danes, but I think the evidence exists for such an interpretation in canon; of course, others may and probably will disagree. Oh well.

Buteo

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3042 on: March 19, 2017, 04:31:11 PM »
LooNEY, you have your Dane doing something that has been common to any period of history that I can think of:
Judging a people, your own or another, with sweeping generalizations, against some theoretical standard that may or may not ever have actually applied.

The in-story historian(s) who wrote about the nations that had survived the Rash offer good examples. You meet that tone very closely.

wavewright62

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3043 on: March 19, 2017, 07:10:24 PM »
Wavewright, this is getting really interesting. I'd forgotten that Onni doesn't know where Lalli is. He is going to be apoplectic when he finds out!
Thanks for that!  There are lots of bits that I need to clean up,  & quite a few details such as this that are being incorporated into these last chapters.  I will go through and make a revised version at the end  (haven't decided if before or after the planned Epilogue), complete with the final title for the whole work  (which I do have now). 
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Lazy8

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Re: The SSSS Scriptorium
« Reply #3044 on: March 19, 2017, 07:46:54 PM »
I will catch up to you, Lazy8! I'm only 3 back now, so I'm making progress!

Well, given that you're doing all 3 at once, and I'm doing only anarchrous to start...

Is this one of MIkkel's relatives Marten, or just some random Dane named Marten?
:usa: native
:spain: comes back in an emergency
:vaticancity: rusty
:china: can usually manage to order food
:norway: can hold a basic conversation

:chap5: | :book2: | :book3: | :chap17: :chap18: