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So, my second entry into the 
Thursday_Prompt, and this one got rather out of hand. The prompt was 'sport', and while going over ideas, I thought 'Well, gee, motorcycle racing is a sport', and 'Huntress can ride motorcycles and she actually knows a professional racer'... and then over four thousand words later I was wondering what I had gotten myself into.
In any case, Huntress is a character from a cyberpunk novel that I'm currently cleaning up. Most people are relatively baseline humans, anybody who can afford it has some modifications to allow for things like skillchips and the ability to plug into your equipment, and some years ago some plastic surgeons started offering the chance to get yourself surgically altered into more of an animal form if you wanted it. Huntress took advantage of that to make herself into a tigress as well as bulk up a bit more, in part because the psychological advantage of being able to snarl at people cannot be understated. She's a fairly highly-paid mercenary, and essentially a commando, good enough with stealth to get into places she shouldn't, and good enough with combat to smash back out again if things go wrong.
A few years ago, when I was about 80% of the way through writing the novel, I actually created her as a character in Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. rules (and Chromebook 2 includes rules for 'Exotics' like animal biosculpts). Of course she was a 'Solo' under those rules. Myself and a few others were in a game that ran for some time.
Cruikshank here was created by the Referee of the game as part of an adventure hook; Huntress needed a new vehicle, and there was this old-school motorcycle racer with some new design ideas who was willing to hire someone to get him some equipment he needed that was in a secure facility. Huntress acquired enough to build two models, then helped Cruikshank run tests, and she got to walk away with the prototype as payment when they were done. She then paid someone else for a few more black-market upgrades.
(I did get explicit permission form the Referee to work Cruikshank into my stories later.)
And yes, having the race announcers as pretty much just floating voices with no actual descriptions was a deliberate choice. Because, let's be honest, for the most part they are just replaceable talking heads, and in a cyberpunk world they may actually be AI-generated instead.
I'm going to have to try and keep myself more in line next time so it doesn't run away on me quite so much...
ETA: As a note, I know that MotoGP races aren't normally long enough to actually require pit stops... which is why I made this one more of an endurance race to allow for the swap. And yes, 'Open Class' is a thing that exists in real world motorcycle racing, for pretty much the reason mentioned in-story: you give the small and private operations a little more leeway on the equipment requirements so that you get some people who aren't the big companies with thousands of engineers still able to show up and race. It keeps things more interesting, as well as acting as a place where the big companies can scout out design ideas that nobody had been willing to pay to look into.
Thursday_Prompt, and this one got rather out of hand. The prompt was 'sport', and while going over ideas, I thought 'Well, gee, motorcycle racing is a sport', and 'Huntress can ride motorcycles and she actually knows a professional racer'... and then over four thousand words later I was wondering what I had gotten myself into.In any case, Huntress is a character from a cyberpunk novel that I'm currently cleaning up. Most people are relatively baseline humans, anybody who can afford it has some modifications to allow for things like skillchips and the ability to plug into your equipment, and some years ago some plastic surgeons started offering the chance to get yourself surgically altered into more of an animal form if you wanted it. Huntress took advantage of that to make herself into a tigress as well as bulk up a bit more, in part because the psychological advantage of being able to snarl at people cannot be understated. She's a fairly highly-paid mercenary, and essentially a commando, good enough with stealth to get into places she shouldn't, and good enough with combat to smash back out again if things go wrong.
A few years ago, when I was about 80% of the way through writing the novel, I actually created her as a character in Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. rules (and Chromebook 2 includes rules for 'Exotics' like animal biosculpts). Of course she was a 'Solo' under those rules. Myself and a few others were in a game that ran for some time.
Cruikshank here was created by the Referee of the game as part of an adventure hook; Huntress needed a new vehicle, and there was this old-school motorcycle racer with some new design ideas who was willing to hire someone to get him some equipment he needed that was in a secure facility. Huntress acquired enough to build two models, then helped Cruikshank run tests, and she got to walk away with the prototype as payment when they were done. She then paid someone else for a few more black-market upgrades.
(I did get explicit permission form the Referee to work Cruikshank into my stories later.)
And yes, having the race announcers as pretty much just floating voices with no actual descriptions was a deliberate choice. Because, let's be honest, for the most part they are just replaceable talking heads, and in a cyberpunk world they may actually be AI-generated instead.
I'm going to have to try and keep myself more in line next time so it doesn't run away on me quite so much...
ETA: As a note, I know that MotoGP races aren't normally long enough to actually require pit stops... which is why I made this one more of an endurance race to allow for the swap. And yes, 'Open Class' is a thing that exists in real world motorcycle racing, for pretty much the reason mentioned in-story: you give the small and private operations a little more leeway on the equipment requirements so that you get some people who aren't the big companies with thousands of engineers still able to show up and race. It keeps things more interesting, as well as acting as a place where the big companies can scout out design ideas that nobody had been willing to pay to look into.
Category Story / Miscellaneous
Species Tiger
Size 50 x 50px
File Size 23.8 kB
That's understandable.
I haven't actually written a story with an explicitly trans character yet, though one of the other players in the Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. game I was in could certainly give me tips on that as she started transitioning about that time. I mean, Huntress here had herself surgically altered to look like an anthropomorophic tiger rather than a normal human, but she was still female before then, even if always a little on the 'butch' side.
I haven't actually written a story with an explicitly trans character yet, though one of the other players in the Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. game I was in could certainly give me tips on that as she started transitioning about that time. I mean, Huntress here had herself surgically altered to look like an anthropomorophic tiger rather than a normal human, but she was still female before then, even if always a little on the 'butch' side.
Thanks! Honestly, I'm not a big racing fan either, but the characters I had available were...
When I do this sort of prompt, conbook story, or 'artist's ambush', I usually start working from one of the several background worlds already in my head, because that means I can get started faster. And, well, most of my characters aren't sports fans either.
When I do this sort of prompt, conbook story, or 'artist's ambush', I usually start working from one of the several background worlds already in my head, because that means I can get started faster. And, well, most of my characters aren't sports fans either.
It can be. Pretty much, take something like the Thursday Prompt (here's an idea, write or draw something on that subject, go!) except that you only have a couple of hours at most to work on it. I've seen them done at conventions, and SpinDizzy MUCK used to have a regular one as well.
I just moved all the older stories from 'ambush' events into the same 'My Stories - Writing Prompts' folder on the sidebar.
I just moved all the older stories from 'ambush' events into the same 'My Stories - Writing Prompts' folder on the sidebar.
Honestly, half of what's in here in terms of things like 'Open Class' and the 'motorcycle brakes are moisture sensitive so it's common practice to change bikes if the weather changes' I got off of Wikipedia. I knew what sort of story I wanted to tell, I knew enough to know that the story should be possible, and then I did some research on the details to make it all fit together. Which meant I had to invent a new kind of race because motocross races are all off-road, MotoGP are normally too short, and SuperMoto is kind of a cross between the two when I wanted a longer GP-style.
I like to do at least enough research so that somebody who does understand the subject won't be complaining too loudly at the common mistakes.
(I've done computer security work before. Most cyberpunk hacking scenes are almost painful. William Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a mechanical typewriter and wouldn't use an actual computer for years... I still say the most realistic hacking scene ever in a movie was in War Games, where the hacking involved a whole lot of social engineering and research to figure out what sort of password Dr. Falken would likely have used...)
I like to do at least enough research so that somebody who does understand the subject won't be complaining too loudly at the common mistakes.
(I've done computer security work before. Most cyberpunk hacking scenes are almost painful. William Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a mechanical typewriter and wouldn't use an actual computer for years... I still say the most realistic hacking scene ever in a movie was in War Games, where the hacking involved a whole lot of social engineering and research to figure out what sort of password Dr. Falken would likely have used...)
That's part of why I started with the Thursday Prompt thing, yes.
As for mess, well... the background from the original game involved getting the magnetic coils for the induction drive from a military equipment supplier testing facility. They'd been building robots with railguns for use against tanks and the like, unfortunately the magnetic effects from the railgun coils damaged the IFF receivers on the robots, so they treated everybody as an intruder and tried to kill anybody who tried to shut them down. Since the robots were still programmed to guard the testing facility, all the company did was seal up the testing facility and walk away, as it was cheaper to just write off the site and wait until their power systems ran out than to try to fix it.
So, yeah, getting more of the coils will not be easy.
As for mess, well... the background from the original game involved getting the magnetic coils for the induction drive from a military equipment supplier testing facility. They'd been building robots with railguns for use against tanks and the like, unfortunately the magnetic effects from the railgun coils damaged the IFF receivers on the robots, so they treated everybody as an intruder and tried to kill anybody who tried to shut them down. Since the robots were still programmed to guard the testing facility, all the company did was seal up the testing facility and walk away, as it was cheaper to just write off the site and wait until their power systems ran out than to try to fix it.
So, yeah, getting more of the coils will not be easy.
Thanks! Yes, I thought that was a good way to handle various time gaps... I was actually involved in an amateur stage production once where the main play took place on the main stage, but there was a 'framing sequence' of a court trial that was in the orchestra pit (the main show being flashbacks to the events leading up to the trial), and they would get lifted up to the level of the main stage to do the framing sequence while the main stage was being rearranged for the next scene, allowing the show to run pretty much without pause by swapping back and forth. I was probably thinking somewhat of that while writing this.
I say 'probably' because, honestly, even I don't always consciously know where my bits and pieces of inspiration come from.
I say 'probably' because, honestly, even I don't always consciously know where my bits and pieces of inspiration come from.
Yes, it was. Then, just because some of the people involved were old Perry Mason fans, they decided to make the court room scene as much 'black and white' as possible, so everybody there was dressed only in black or white and had lighter makeup than usual on their faces. It helped that one of the actors was an albino, then we just made sure that all the rest had really dark hair so there wasn't much colour on the stage.
This is the troupe: http://fass.uwaterloo.ca/ Being at a University and largely composed of students, there was a LOT of turnover, but it was fun.
(The plot involved someone selling their soul to get good student housing. It was very silly. "You do have a lakeside view, just as was in the contract!" "I wasn't expecting it to be a lake of brimstone.")
This is the troupe: http://fass.uwaterloo.ca/ Being at a University and largely composed of students, there was a LOT of turnover, but it was fun.
(The plot involved someone selling their soul to get good student housing. It was very silly. "You do have a lakeside view, just as was in the contract!" "I wasn't expecting it to be a lake of brimstone.")
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