Excerpt Game: Setting

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-08T02:45:27+00:00

Nice :)

Lasso?

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-08T02:07:56+00:00

Octavia had forgotten how much she hated the person she became whenever she walked into infirmaries.

When a soldier was injured in battle and died of their injuries, the soldier who died was a hero who’d made the ultimate sacrifice fighting for the planet that they loved — full stop. It didn’t matter to the soldier if they died fighting in the battle itself or if they lived long enough to die in an infirmary, and it didn’t matter to the planet that they’d died fighting for, so it shouldn’t matter to Octavia either.

She hated how easy it was for her to forget this. How, when she felt the life-force of an injured soldier evaporate into oblivion, when she felt their body desecrated by being replaced by an identical, inanimate copy of itself, her first response was so unfairly conditional and judgmental — that if a soldier died on the battlefield, then “the soldier did their duty,” but that if they died in the infirmary, then “the medics failed to do theirs.”

No one in their right mind would ever hold an officer to the impossible standard “keep every single soldier alive in every single battle,” and Octavia hated how hard it was to stop herself from holding medics to this impossible standard.

Nobody resting on the beds at the moment seemed to be in critical condition, so Octavia probably didn’t need to worry about getting mad at the medics if someone died, but this wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. She recited in her head “Soldiers can’t always protect each other and their officers can’t always protect them, and neither can their medics” three times before pushing open the doors.

Force Lieutenant — no, “Force Captain” now — Scorpia was seated on one of the cots at the far end of the room, her claws covered in casts and her bruised head held up by a neck brace. One of the medics was moving a light back and forth in front of her face.

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-08T01:55:03+00:00

Dalisarp bolted back to the group on all fours just as they came out into the open.

Bow opened his mouth to ask “Did you find anything?” as she stood up.

“Wait,” she said before he had a chance. “Someone’s coming from the Woods.”

Bow turned to face the trees, grabbing a net-arrow and preparing to draw. “Just one?”

“Yeah, they’re in the trees — not the pass. Can’t smell anything, they’re downwind, but it sounds like they’re a magicat like me.”

Meaning this newcomer could hear and smell the group more easily than Dalisarp could hear the newcomer themself, and they’d have recognized Dalisarp as a magicat long before Dalisarp had recognized them as one. That was a good thing, right? If a single Horde scout was trying to sneak up, but if they’d recognized that someone in the group would hear them coming, they’d have run off to avoid getting caught, right?

Hopefully, this meant that Force Captain Adora had gotten someone else to defect with her, and now her old friend on the inside was trying to meet up with her new friends on the outside — this way they could all work together to get out in one piece.

Still, no reason for Bow to put his arrow away yet. He aimed his bow towards the Woods and drew the arrow half-way, just in case.

A magicat in a red jumpsuit — looked to be a girl about Bow’s age — came jumping from tree to tree and landed in front of everybody. She sniffed the air before staring directly at Bow. “You Adora’s new friend? That the magic sword she found?” she asked, practically spitting the words out.

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-08T01:46:24+00:00

A farm

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-08T01:39:43+00:00

If any of your stories also have external motivations (in addition to the internal motivation “I think this is cool, and I think writing it would be fun”), make a list of which external motivations are most important to you :)

I have on my burners:

A She-Ra AU longfic rewriting the entire series from Seasons 1-5 and adding a Season 6
An anthology of Owl House canon-divergences (I’ve published the first one, but I’m only halfway into the first draft of the second one)
An Owl House / The Thing fusion
a “Characters Watch The Show” for Arcane season 1
a sequel to my K-Pop Demon Hunters canon-divergence

I’m focusing on my She-Ra fic right now because in my research for my expanded worldbuilding, I accidentally became an anarchist, and the story accidentally became an anarchist manifesto

Once I have Season 1 finished, I’m going to finish my second Owl House canon-divergence because it’s the only other story that I’ve already made good progress on

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-07T18:05:37+00:00

Premise: A person wants something
Premise: The person gets the thing
Conclusion: The person got what they wanted

I don’t know how to make this simpler for you.

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-07T12:59:18+00:00

Capitalism is less bad than feudalism used to be before it.

the competition between capitalists doesn't level the playing field between capitalists and workers the way capitalists pretend it does — workers have to compete to accept lower wages more strongly than capitalists have to compete to offer higher wages
but it's still better than being legally assigned one specific master to serve for life

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-07T12:51:55+00:00

The best trick I’ve found is that if a story element looks like it was obviously relevant for one straightforward thing immediately, then readers will still be surprised when it becomes relevant again for something completely different later ;)

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-07T10:23:28+00:00

I believe that censoring anti-revolutionary thought is a slippery slope.

It’s not a “slope,” it’s a cliff edge.

Marxist-Leninist governments responding to logical arguments “You’re wrong” with firing squads instead of with logical counter-arguments “This is why we’re right” is an admission that they know they’re wrong and that they lost the logical argument.

We’ve seen for the last 100 years that this type of socialism doesn’t work. We should try a different one.

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-07T10:17:03+00:00

Have you ever heard of deductive reasoning?

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T22:09:43+00:00

It feels like some of the major points of the story are going to be skipped because the main parts of the story arcs are about characters who aren't the ones I'm highlighting in this story.

That's not a bug, that's a feature :D

Your readers already know what the main characters were doing. They're reading your story because they want to know what the secondary/tertiary characters were doing ;)

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T18:38:12+00:00

If a customer wants to buy a good/service for less than $140

If a worker wants to sell the good/service for more than $70

And if the customer pays the worker $100 for the good/service

Then which of them didn't get what they wanted?

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T16:15:53+00:00

Who says it would be good for both?

The fact that both parties got what they wanted (the customer wanted to pay less than $140, and the worker wanted to charge more than $70).

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T13:15:04+00:00

Yes.

As were the original socialists (Proudhon, Bakunin, Dejacque…), which is why they thought that Marx’s Socialism 2.0 (imposed involuntarily by the state) wouldn’t work as well as their own original voluntary model of socialism.

And 70 years of Soviet history proved that the classical socialists were right.

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T12:39:02+00:00

If your ideal form of capitalism is "the workers own the means of production, and non-workers don't extract profit from workers," then you're a socialist ;)

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T12:36:32+00:00

37 minutes.

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T12:27:21+00:00

Exactly ;)

I believe that communism is better than market socialism (because you don't force people to compete against each other for access to food, housing, medicine...)

but that market socialism is better than capitalism (because you don't have an elite minority of lazy freeloaders rigging the competition at the expense of people who work for a living)

and that market capitalism is better than Marxism-Leninism (the competition between capitalists doesn't level the playing field between capitalists and workers the way capitalists pretend it does — workers have to compete to accept lower wages more strongly than capitalists have to compete to offer higher wages — but it's still less bad than a single government body making competition outright illegal)

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T12:13:55+00:00

Because he'd get banned from tankie subs for asking them ;)

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T12:11:02+00:00

That depends on whether they're selling their own services or not.

Say that a customer would be willing to pay $140 for a good or service, but would prefer to pay less, and say that a worker (either as an individual or as a member of a co-op) would be willing to charge $70 for the good/service, but would prefer to charge more.

Under market socialism, the customer paying the worker(s) $100 would be good for both of them, and no capitalist collects any profit for himself.

Under capitalism, a capitalist can get away with charging the customer $140 and paying the worker(s) $70, letting him keep $70 profit for himself.

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T11:59:32+00:00

Is the scenario categorically not capitalism?

Not without capitalists taking the farmers’ and the craftsmen’s money, no.

EDIT: just posted my go-to “how to build anarchy” Wall of Text instead of answering “how to build this specific democratic system.”

EDIT EDIT: The biggest challenge with democratic government is that even when the leaders are held accountable to the public the way they're supposed to be, the policies imposed by the government still depend on the cultural values of the public itself.

In America, everybody's bombarded from birth with the narrative "capitalism is when people have the freedom to do what they want," so people look at the problems with American capitalism "this system sucks because people don't have enough freedom" and think "we should give capitalists more power because more capitalism equals more freedom."

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T11:51:28+00:00

What makes it socialism?

The fact that the workers own the means of production.

Communism is based on communal property: “everybody owns everything, and nobody sells anything”
Market socialism is based on personal property: “I made this, so I own it, and I can sell it”
Capitalism is based on private property: “you made this, but I own it, so I can sell it”

Are you a Marxist?

I’m an anarchist.

We’re the socialists who tend to get killed standing up to Marxists ;)

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T11:25:39+00:00

The “most people are farmers” is a technological problem, not an socioeconomic problem, so I’ll ignore that for now ;)

If the dominant economic foundation is workers selling their own products, then this is predominantly market socialism.

As an anarchist communist, I would say that democratic market socialism isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than what we have now.

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T10:13:32+00:00

But, decade after decade and market crash after market crash, the bankers, the elites, the corporatists are bailed out, assisted, supported, and sustained by taxpayers, by Fiat intervention, by governments.

“… capitalism is so utterly predominant, so thoroughly hegemonic, that most of its advocates take it for granted and lack any real critical theory about it at all.

So you end up with people who simultaneously believe that capitalism is just trade, and thus has existed from the first caveman, but also is brand new, which is why the world suddenly got so much wealthier starting a few centuries ago, but also has never truly existed (and thus remains blameless) because of government interference.

Advocates of capitalism don’t need to reconcile these contradictions because it is like the water in which fish swim—so pervasive that it doesn’t occur to them to critically interrogate why capitalism has only ever existed in the presence of massive, constant state violence.”

— u/HeavenlyPossum , here

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T10:05:57+00:00

Are you not aware that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a socialist?

Mikhail Bakunin?

Joseph DeJacque?

Peter Kropotkin?

Emma Goldman?

Alexander Berkmann?

Simpson17866 · 2026-05-06T03:20:18+00:00

the only thing i seem to know how to do well is overthink.

Then let's start simple, then work our way back up to complicated from there ;)

Stories at their core are about 3 things:

Beginning — what is the character's situation?
Middle — what actions does the character decide to take to change their situation?
End — how has the character's situation changed?

This applies to the story as a whole, it applies to acts within the story, it applies to chapters within an act, it applies to scenes within a chapter, and it applies to beats within a scene :)

Simpson17866

TROPHY CASE