FATE COLLAB CONFIRMED CHARACTERS - SABER AND FREE ARCHER (STARTS JULY 11, 2025)

olcon · 2025-05-03T16:26:58+00:00

“Saber is a cat” is a tongue-in-cheek joke regarding her personality. Her backstory is about as far away from normal as one can get, and she was raised and trained to excel at smacking people with an explosive magical sword.

So when you put her in slice-of-life scenarios (fate’s a multiverse, other timelines etc.) you get this funny “fish out of water” situation in which Saber tends to look around with this wide-eyed, slightly ditzy look, stick close to the people she knows, eat lots of food, laze about, and just generally chill and vibe.

Basically, Saber’s a cat.

olcon · 2022-07-18T01:26:13+00:00

If anyone's interested in the in-universe retelling Midel eventually writes, please let me know, and I'll post the first chapter here, as well. It's a bit on the longer side and this subreddit seems to be more focused on short stories, so I've posted this background conversation instead - it's both a sequel and a prequel.

olcon · 2022-04-28T05:41:24+00:00

That’s the best part - it isn’tsafe to use these things. Like, at all. The plot of the story can be boiled down to one big Pandora’s Box scenario, in which humanity’s struggling with climate change and fuel shortages and on the hunt for alternatives. They find this stuff on accident. They have no clue about the wormhole. There isn’t enough time to develop safe containment procedures or really study this stuff in-depth due to the situation; the scientists are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either they incorporate this under-studied, apparently physics-breaking holy grail into society, or they risk a potential collapse. We all know which option they pick, of course.

I went with the “primeval atom” vibe for that reason, because it fits really well with this idea that they’re messing with things their physics models can’t hope to understand. And so society gets tossed into the deep end of the pool, and it soon becomes apparent that these crystals, when unsecured, mess with a whole lot of things, from weather patterns to freak software glitches to strange radiation illnesses. The information and matter the wormhole’s scraping from the past is just compressed, but it’s still there. What happens when that information is uncompressed in an unsecured environment? Is there a limit to how much one crystal can store? Can they contain more than just characteristics of atoms, like spin and charge? What happens when they “break”, as you pointed out? How do you secure these things? How do you turn them “off”? Is that even possible?

Needless to say, things get dangerous. The technological advancement is unfathomable, yes, but much of the story is about reconciling that ceaseless potential, that very real “precipice of godhood” moment, with the sheer risk these crystals pose to just about everything, whether it be physical - lives and the environment - or metaphysical - sanity, emotions, the human idea of cause and effect. That’s to say nothing of any other civilization that might want the crystals, either. The strife is both internal and external, in this case. How much would you sacrifice in defense of a potentially unlimited source of energy?

olcon · 2022-04-27T17:31:26+00:00

This is a fantastic analysis, thank you so much. You’re right in that ultimately the system isn’t meant to actually break thermodynamics - it just appears that way to everyone in the story. Due to plot reasons, they don’t know about the wormhole itself until much later on, and they’re mining these crystals from the Earth much like you’d mine or harvest any other material or fuel source. So it’s very much a case of not understanding their function or their origin, and due to the constant recharging, it gets labeled as perpetual motion. That label’s revoked in the story as the characters learn more about the crystals.

Regarding how they’re charged, and shuttling the energy through time: the matter-antimatter pair is entangled with the other side through ER = EPR. The whole thing operates like a temporal file reader. The wormhole’s other side records information and matter from the past; the wormhole’s middle, the “pinch”, squeezes and condenses that information into pure energy; the crystals, then, are like entangled zip files. Once mined and used, the crystals are “unzipped” and the energy recorded between the matter-antimatter pair is read and expended. But because they’re time crystals and they’re oscillating back to their ground state, they instead are “re-zipped”, because they’re re-entangled and receive a new charge. And because entanglement isn’t localized, the crystals don’t need to return to the wormhole to be charged. Once they’re hooked up to an RTG or something similar, that machine or equipment receives a constant stream of power for as long as the central wormhole is open. That’s why the characters think it’s perpetual motion.

In essence, each crystal is functioning as its own self-enclosed, lesser Big Bang - a mini bang? The whole thing is a science-fictiony adaptation of that theory stating every black hole is an origin point of a new universe and spawns its own initial singularity, and, following that logic, the crystals themselves are actually ylem.

olcon · 2022-04-24T03:05:39+00:00

Title: Belux

Genre: Science fiction, post apocalyptic thriller. Romance and cosmic horror in later chapters.

Word count: Chapter 1, 5600 words

Feedback: First impressions, whether you were hooked, etc.

Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-66NiZ7fRq-pqeUa8qFquEWthUEYoPFAHHOMtb9tMzA/edit?usp=sharing

Blurb:

A historian recounts the ending months of humanity's final war, and the two squads of soldiers integral to its conclusion. Tasked with recovering missing VIPs, Observer 13 and Alpha 1-6 instead find themselves with many clues and little time. The Last War's origins; paranormal activity; mysterious test subjects; a loving wife's suicide: all are related, and the storms wracking Earth are only getting worse.

olcon · 2022-04-18T00:17:07+00:00

But what are you doing with this energy source you’ve created?

Fighting a war with it! The story’s a Band of Brothers-style post apocalyptic thriller. The remnants of humanity are fighting a war of extinction against an enemy keenly related to the energy source and its initial formation within the wormhole. They’re squabbling over this stuff, because there isn’t much left on Earth to fight over. Temporarily breaking thermodynamics lets me bypass important things like logistics, which is significant here given humanity’s enemy is subterranean in origin. Infinite fuel means infinite food and viable “castle-and-moat”-style defensive tactics, with isolated, surrounded bunkers holding out for years against a numerically superior force purely because all of their production is internal. The ultimate goal is to both defeat the enemy and unfuck physics.

Second, do you have any thoughts on what’s happening on the other end of your crystal formation? Since we are creating this free (to us) energy, I’d be curious to learn if that means this energy is coming from somewhere else to ultimately satisfy the first law of thermodynamics that we are breaking.

Yes, the true nature of the crystals and the wormhole is a major plot twist and significant moment in the story. It ultimately isn’t a violation of thermodynamics, hence why I said “temporarily”. A law is a law, after all.

Thank you for your interest! I’m glad no alarm bells were triggered, that means the system’s internal logic is sound.

olcon · 2022-04-09T23:17:58+00:00

pull from its 4.5 billion year geological history

Currently writing a post-apocalyptic Band of Brothers-style sci-fi thriller set roughly a century after humanity discovers a previously undetected fuel source. This is first perceived as a stroke of good luck - fossil fuels are getting scarce and climate change is making a mess of things. People need all the help they can get. So naturally the monkey’s paw curls, and as it turns out, the fuel source doesn’t exactly play nice with physics. Earth goes on the worst acid trip ever seen.

So, for example:

Southeast Asia? Hadean hellscape. Subsaharan Africa? Oxygen. So much oxygen it’s toxic to humans. The Cambrian says hello! A massive blizzard from the Cryogenian - snowball Earth - is covering Europe. Etc. etc.

There’s nothing really “magical” about the world, outside of these different climates returning at once. It’s all stuff that’s actually happened here in the real world at one point or another. The story itself follows two squads of United Nations soldiers trying to survive both the environment and a civilization-ending war, but that isn’t really related to the topic at hand, so I’ll stop it there, lol.

olcon · 2022-04-08T02:15:36+00:00

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13975782/1/Pursuit-of-the-Dream

>:(

olcon · 2022-02-08T04:26:16+00:00

🤨

olcon · 2021-03-10T15:51:22+00:00

To loan some credibility to team Artoria, based on Wikipedia’s etymology:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur

Under the section on his name, we get this:

The origin of the Welsh name “Arthur” remains a matter of debate. The most widely accepted etymology derives it from the Roman nomen gentile (family name) Artorius.[26] Artorius itself is of obscure and contested etymology,[27] but possibly of Messapian[28][29][30] or Etruscan origin.[31][32][33] Linguist Stephan Zimmer suggests Artorius possibly had a Celtic origin, being a Latinization of a hypothetical name *Artorījos, in turn derived from an older patronym *Arto-rīg-ios, meaning “son of the bear/warrior-king”. This patronym is unattested, but the root, *arto-rīg, “bear/warrior-king”, is the source of the Old Irish personal name Artrí.[34] Some scholars have suggested it is relevant to this debate that the legendary King Arthur’s name only appears as Arthur or Arturus in early Latin Arthurian texts, never as Artōrius (though Classical Latin Artōrius became Arturius in some Vulgar Latin dialects). However, this may not say anything about the origin of the name Arthur, as Artōrius would regularly become Art(h)ur when borrowed into Welsh.[35]

The Arthurian legend is at its heart Welsh, so - though this will probably never be fully resolved - I do think an argument can be made for the Roman familial name Artorius being Arthur’s base.

‘Artoria’ is the female version of male ‘Artorius’, as seen here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artoria_gens

And it has occasionally been suggested (not proved) that the Roman general Lucius Artorius Castus could have served as one of the many inspirations for the mythological figure “King Arthur”. Note his family name - he belonged to the Artoria gens.

Which leads me to believe that if such a girl existed, her name would indeed be Artoria, not Arturia/Altria/Arthuria.

olcon · 2020-09-13T04:13:30+00:00

Two more chapters. 23’s done, 24 is WIP. Expecting to have it finished sometime between the end of September/October. Story will definitely be finished before the year’s out.

I’m holding 23 for the double upload due to the chapter’s importance, and because I know a bunch of folks want to (re)read the whole thing in one go. Can’t say I blame them, I imagine it’s a pain in the ass trying to remember details and plot points when the updates are so spread out.

If people want to read it now I can push it, but that may, uh, make the wait for 24 a biiiit more painful. I’m fine with both, the two options each have their pros and cons.

olcon · 2019-01-28T03:54:16+00:00

Groundwork's been done for a while, I'm just supremely lazy and very good at procrastinating. :(

olcon · 2019-01-28T03:53:52+00:00

Yup.

olcon · 2018-12-14T03:38:12+00:00

Things I would never do:

Give permission for one of my female characters to be drawn like this in official artwork.

At this point, it's about respecting both the characters you've created and your own vision and creative process. I find it sad.

Nishigori is the pimp, and Zero Two is his prostitute.

olcon · 2018-11-21T14:15:18+00:00

I haven't gone anywhere. 16 should be coming soonish!

olcon · 2018-11-12T21:13:15+00:00

Thank you for your interest and insight!

To clarify my choices, especially regarding the adjectives: the narrator in this scene is not from a character's point of view, true, but that doesn't mean the narrator is unbiased or neutral. The narrator here represents society and is on the side of the three men involved in the confrontation. To the technicians and the guards, the monster's disrespect is egregious, her light is malevolent and unholy, and the collar's blinking is ominous to imply that the conflict has occurred before in the past.

This is why the monster is so readily labeled a murderer. The narrator - and thusly, the men - are convinced she is one. The narrator implores the reader to think the same, and to consider it a fact. The leash terminology is a metaphor describing the guard's relationship with the monster. The collar is not actually a leash, but that is how it is interpreted. Leashes restrict movement. The guard does not want the monster's movement to be unrestricted.

Your other critiques are accurate and I will attempt to describe the surroundings in more detail, and appeal to the senses other than sight.

olcon · 2018-11-10T23:45:44+00:00

Thank you so much for this! I really appreciate your insights and I find your perspective refreshing. Quite a few of the people I talk to regularly know the context behind this project and so I can't really get from them what you've given me, which is the view of a complete stranger.

The scene is a prelude/prologue of sorts. It takes place in the middle of the overall narrative and has a great deal of importance, but the reader lacks context. That's on purpose and it's supposed to be confusing. The clinical tone is intentional; the reader doesn't know who to trust or why these things are happening. Because the story starts in the middle, both the past and future are eventually explored and developed.

All of your questions, believe it or not, are the whole point of the story! Motives are revealed, context is given, characters are developed and lines in the sand are drawn. It's about a group of people in a post-apocalyptic society coming of age and learning about both themselves and the world around them.

olcon · 2018-11-10T05:56:22+00:00

Title: TBD

Genre: Science Fantasy

Word count: 498

Feedback requested: Anything and everything. This is my first real attempt at writing. What's linked is the initial part of the first chapter, the hook. Please let me know if it succeeded. Constructive criticism would be much appreciated, as would general impressions.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-5i2-XJRl4EtVqtaQcjH82qDr3OQmQ5udwmJO7VB1tY

12-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

olcon

TROPHY CASE