And you have to accept my request
@titus_the_human
I’d like to remind a couple of people in this thread to edit your posts. Don’t double post! Editing the last post of a thread bumps the thread up to the top of latest and adding a @-mention works correctly even when editing a post to trigger a notification.
It’d be impossible to forget Mark and Jake, the main duo.
My view is the commonplace Odd Couple trope: Mark is an asexual, happy-go-lucky young military intersystem pilot with a great social intellect, whereas Jake is an aromantic, realist, little-older time-traveling bandit who has logical intellect. Sanguine and Melancholic. It’s also symbolized by their favorite foods. Mark loves pancakes, as they’re soft and sweet and overall fun like him, but not to be eaten in excess. As for Jake, he shares the ouchy exterior of a pineapple that protects a juicy and festive interior. They’re both sweet if you get to known them.
The story proper starts off like this: Mark works for the Alliance, but Jake is working against it, aka rebelling. Jake, in particular, is trying to smuggle Tlep away from the Alliance, as they chose to use force. Specifically, they abducted the entirety of Chara U’s sapient population and exploded its crust, preventing the molten mantle from cooling and forming into a new planet. Tlep’s family have trusted him and Jake with a few of their eggs and asked them to not stop running from the Alliance until they find a new home to populate with Kalmanders. It’s not that Mark is oblivious to the alliance’s crimes, nor is it pure evil (they have their reasons). It’s that Mark is only a pawn in their game and feels as though he’s not meant to have control over his life. But he hesitates to do his job. See, the Alliance is rather discriminatory towards humans because of our tribalism, constant need for change, and atypical body plan. It doesn’t matter what you do, you’ll get the Rudolph treatment from society. This is one of the reasons Mark tries not to fight Jake, recognizing that their shared oppresion under this Grey Goo of a government links them. And although Jake has always just wanted to live in isolation from civilization, he quickly realizes through this meeting that he won’t be able to run away any longer, and he has no choice but to run towards the enemy.
After the duo engage in a battle of both comedic wits and lasers, their bumbling manages to send both parties back in time, to Earth! And not just any old time, but 1862, the American Civil War. Their crash site? The outskirts of Tennessee, Florida. Being a future boy, Mark has absolutely no experience with neither Earth nor time travel, so this is by far the craziest situation he’s ever been in. And Jake has to drag the boy’s clumsy behind along the town to look for a sufficient source of energy to repower their ships. Tlep has to stay behind.
Mark is in utter awe of his home’s planet’s beautiful history right in front of him and wants to enjoy it while he can, but Jake is sternly focused on not altering the course of the war, as it could potentially affect mankind’s evolution into the Space Stage. Mark abides to his co-strandee’s objective, but complications occur when he falls head over heels in love with a Southern Belle named Sadie. She loves her princess lifestyle, but as of late has yearned to have adventure beyond her daddy’s slave farm, risk her life for freedom, wear whatever she wants whenever she wants. Mark and Jake try to keep up their facade, but Sadie knows something is up with them and dutily follows. To Jake’s dismay, Mark spills the space-flavored beans to her, overcome by his feelings. Because she already likes him back, Sadie agrees to help them, if they promise to show her the future. Jake begrudgingly accepts, they repower the ships using a windmill’s machinery, and together blast back to the future.
That’s all the plot I have right now, but just know that there will be no love triangle whatsoever. Mark and Sadie only have eyes for each other, but they want to always consider themselves friends, before engaging in the romantic stuff. A quasiplatonic relationship.
Love the story!
(Also, your text is duplicated btw, the entire post I mean)
Yeah I fixed that. And thank you! Can you tell me which parts you liked?
I liked the time travel and really I like Jake. That’s the kind of character I like (I’ve recently been reading a series called ‘Murderbot’)
He’s the kind of character that has to deal with a bunch of crap caused by other peoples illogical decisions, and he gets stuff done too.
That’s him alright. The Only Sane Man in this dramatic, upside-down universe. He does learn to cut loose later on in the story.
That being said, I need more plot. Dissapeared Earth is a complete no here.
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After our early space stage, we colonized mars and the asteroid belt. After leaving our solar system and finding another habitable planet, we cleared earth of all traces of our civilization and made earth a giant nature preserve, like all other creatures home worlds are, very important to all sides in a war and as such left untouched by the ravages of war
Basically, still there but written out of story
Oh hey, and this way we could have a sapient Dino race that made the Earth a preserve, and then left, and then we came along and did the same thing.
Basically meaning it lets us create really cool earth-life based races.
Ooooh that’s going on the list, but I meant the plot thickening when the trio return to the future. Something always happens in the return.
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Maybe they return to a different time? (Example, they return to before they left and have to relive and escape the planet explosion again, or the windmill tech sends them back in time by accident to dinosaur time, etc.)?
Or, because the flux capacitor or whatever is still broken, they jump through random Terran time periods and cause several historical accidents , including but not limited to: C-T extinction, Titanic, Sphinx’s nose, London fire, Kennedy’s death, Pearl Harbor, Mt. Vesuvius, Great Kanto, and Apollo 13.
Edit: On second thought, escaping Chara U’s destruction fits the theme of time much more, a slight difference to the original event.
Are Jake and Jack the same person?
Ooops I didnt notice I used differnet names
I guess Jake is just his second name.
He’s also black. Of Malawi descent, to be precise.
Speaking of, here’s some notes concerning Sadie. Just like Mark and Jake, she’s treated with ridicule. The antebellum and bellum South society was politically, culturally, economically, and spiritually built around the institution of slavery. Race and gender determined a person’s status with white slaveholding males at the top of the social hierarchy. With both sexes, slave ownership elevated social status, thus giving women power in a system that they would not typically have power in. The sense of power that came from the institution of slavery fueled white women’s acceptance for the institution of slavery, which they advocated for based on paternalism, and in effect maternalism. In layman words, racism = social status.
Sadie, however, is not fueled. It’s not that she wishes she was born a man. She’s a lady, she likes being a lady, she just doesn’t fathom why the capacity for her expression of her gender can only be at the expense of anyone else’s, black or white. She also realized at a young age that she will never be perfectly feminine all the time, what society expected of Southern women at the time. Regardless of what she presents herself as, Sadie wants to use her femininity outside of wooing rich, young, and stupid perverts. Still, the perfect image has to be maintained. So for a majority of her life, she was socially shunned by fellow members of high estate. This is why she grows attached to Mark - a future of freedom, to look ugly sometimes.
Bout time we gave this a name. THRIVE: Self Selection is a fan favorite at the moment.
It also has a working Campfire page. THRIVE: Self Selection (campfirewriting.com)
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Maybe not cause, but witness these things?
(Replying to the post talking about them causing historical disasters)
Maybe along the way they could pick up and befriend people who ‘died’ in these incidents. (Could become side characters that help the cause when they are back in the future, as they wouldn’t be able to go back to their own times)
That’s a thought. It’ll have to wait.
The focus of this story isn’t Earth, 'cause then it wouldnt be a space opera. The planet is still a vital part of the story, as it directly affects their character growth (explaining after you answer). Upon returning to the 26th century, Mark and Jake are arrested, because backwards time travel is illegal in this universe except for the elitest of the elite. The further back you go, the longer your sentence. For our duo, it’s approximately 800 years, minimum. For comparison, most humans can barely live for a quarter of that same time. As for Tlep, he was dutely thrown in with the rest of his kind in the relocation into the Alliance. Of course, the prisoners are entitled to one message per year. It doesnt matter who it’s from, just that one is all you have. And guess who wrote the message Mark chooses? Yep, Sadie. In her now centuries-old letter, she confesses that Mark was the first man she’s ever had real feelings for (In the sudden absence of husbands, fathers, brothers and beaus during the War, white Southern women discovered a newfound freedom, one that simultaneously granted them more power in relationships and increased their likelihood of heartbreak. “One looks at a man so differently when you think he may be killed tomorrow,” one South Carolina woman mused. Of course, Sadie’s family cannot stand this change or of Black freedom, leaving Sadie stifled. And even without high status, Mark’s instant connection to her was forbidden locally, since he has a New Yorkian accent, and thus is taken for a Union spy, resulting in the spilled beans and promise), and she’d give anything to rejoin him in the future, no matter the consequences. In something of a twist, Mark’s heart is set aflutter. Jake realizes that he had the wrong idea about this white-y. To make up for the mistreatment, he formulates an escape plan out of this “impenetrable” fortress, which Mark actually follows this time, but in a way that shows that he still has a lot to learn. Coming to help midway is Lorena, a Latin direct descendant of a freedman that Sadie released from her slave farm. Just goes to show how much of an impact he’s made in her life. As a trio, they come back for Tlep and free his species from the Alliance’s tight grasp. To return the favor, the Kalmanders combine Mark and Jake’s ships, giving them the best of both dimensions - Space and Time - so they can keep Sadie’s promise. Upon returning to 1862 Tennessee, Mark and Sadie have a heartfelt reunion and share their first kiss. Don’t worry, it’s not that passionate.
The way time travel works in this multiverse is intriguing. Whenever an object is relocated from its home time to another, its very presence automatically creates an alternate timeline, which is perceived by the rest of that universe. That’s how Lorena can still exist if Sadie left her period.
Also, Mike calls Jake “Jack” on purpose, then Sadie “Sarah”. Nicknames are one of his things, and they later become affectionate.
Say, what is Tlep’s language?
since they live chara u, a colony of the alliance, tlep speaks Latin. this is because it is controlled by a mechanized julias caeser.
also tlep is non binary.
also kalmanders is what tlep farms, not what species they are. kalmanders are large amphibians bread for meat that are descended from earth hellbenders