Lodestar: Ahni & Kes, 10 + 11
Tag: worldbuilding
Lodestar: Ahni & Kes
Lodestar: Ahni & Kes 8
Lodestar: Ahni & Kes, 5
More About the Lodestar Series: Kestrel out of Jenk-Father next?
The earliest version of the series had the whole of each character’s POV chapters following on from one another. Ahni I, then Kestrel II then Srese III, then Sard IV.
Then, because Ahni’s chapters and Kestrel’s chapters often trod the same ground at the approximately the same time, I started a melded version. I seem to recall deciding that introducing Kestrel at the beginning of Ahni’s trials would prevent reader-resistance against their romantic liaison … him being born an ‘enemy’, after all.
Numbering of chapters might seem confused, though the sequence of posting should make perfect sense. Let me know if I make a mistake?
Lodestar Series: The SkinGifters 2
4, About the Lodestar Series
an image sourced from light shining on stainless steel
Although I began writing this series well before the others, the Lodestar featuring was always the alien spaceship. The people making Souzadelay Island their country had no inkling of the Lodestar’s reality. They saw it as a peculiar stationary star that sometimes grew bigger, as when it came nearer to Earth, and sometimes shrank.
At the end of the Back to Earth series, the alien spaceship-in-a-doughnut situation resolved itself the hard way. It was Kosi Lionhair’s uploaded mind, you may recall, who in a moment of boredom, wedged the alien spaceship in the center of the Ark Ship’s torus.
When the amalgamation touched the Earth’s atmosphere, the torus tore loose. Parts of it burned, parts fell to Earth. Jeb and some of her people landed on Aerk Island in the Australia Archipelago where they then lived for millennia, watched over by Kosi in the starship that, with time and forgetting, became known as the Lodestar.
Remember that this is all imaginary, Space Opera ‘science’? Though Earth is, of course, a real planet!
The series begins with the SkinGifters, an unfortunate people who had to make more and greater sacrifices than seem possible for them to continue to exist.
I: Ahni SkinGifter is the main character, as well as the title of her story.
Lego: MILS Base-plate
The minute I saw a Lego base-plate, I knew I’d have to find an alternative.
Most of the building I’m doing is on my smallish round dinner table. When I have guests stuff has to be able to be moved easily to shelves. Just how weak and bendy the original base-plates are was amply illustrated to me by Darryl of Bevin’s Bricks on Youtube cutting one up with a box cutter.
I already searched through possibilities like glueing base plates on cardboard and building on ordinary plates and joining those with other ordinary plates. Neither of which attracted me. The first because it’s hard to stay accurate. The second because of heavy and awkward builds springing apart when you least expect it. I’ve read about builds grievously falling apart while being transported from one table to the next. Not ideal, in other words.
Then, on one of the FB groups I joined, I saw mentioned the MILS plate as the next development in the search for a strong base plate. Following that up, I saw a good explanation on Bevin’s Bricks. [Though I have again forgotten what ‘MILS’ means. I have a life-long memory glitch in relation to acronyms.]
Me constructing a ‘proper’ MILS base plate right now would’ve meant ordering the required parts, and weeks of waiting on covid-struck postal services in several countries. Even getting supplies by post from my local brick resales outlet a few suburbs away, usually takes a couple of weeks.
Not helped this week that I’m house-bound again, waiting to be told whether I have covid or another lurgy. Well, I know I have a lurgy. Ten days of coughing.
But … I have six alternate-lego base plates, lots of blue 2×2 bricks and red 2×2 bricks that I have no idea where to use, a few 30-year-old Technic 1×6 bricks, and a bunch of blue sun-damaged plates of all sizes. Can I achieve something with them?
I could. Very likely the ordered honeycomb of professionally built MILS base plates is not present in the internals of my sandwich base plate (below) because I spaced the reds and blues according to need, not design. I’m very happy with it and am aiming to put another one together tonight.
Learning Lego
Yesterday I was reminded that Bosley & Co need at least 2 more hard hats to be able to pass building inspections. Off went another order to BrickResales.com.au for hard hats, a few other building site necessities, and a trio of frying pans for the new outdoor dining setup. LBT’s (Australian delicacy: lettuce bacon and tomato sandwiches) coming up.
While most of the structures I build are MOCs, aka My Own Creations–for the ongoing story– every so often I buy a set for what I can learn from them.
This week, I tackled the (shown above) Campervan Model #Lego60283. Took me a couple of thoroughly enjoyable hours to put it together at the same time learning two techniques that’ll help me keep the interiors of my own models accessible.
First there is the camper’s easily lifted off roof. This has made access to the vehicle’s roof spaces so easy, I’m planning to use the technique for some of the apartments in Bosley & Co’s proposed multi-storey build.
Starting with the ground-floor cabins, I discovered that once you put a roof on a place, the windows and doors are too small for adult fingers to access the interior. Furniture, for example, that needs to be installed inside, has to be done during the build, or the build carefully dismantled and done again with extras included.
In that mode, there are cabins on the site that have been built three times. Jackie and Jed Cranedriver’s now very fancy hut is a case in point. Version One looked like a grey box. Version Two had some color in it.
Third time, this time, it has a swing-open wall similar to the one in the camper-van. I love it. Though it will take further study to get the colors matching where they are meant to. I can foresee a fourth rebuild.
Media: ‘Lost in Space’
https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80104198
I just finished watching Lost in Space, the 2018-2021 version, three seasons over about 2 weeks, and thoroughly enjoyed the series. One reason is that I manage suspense and stress by previewing story-lines. Spoilers are an unimportant concept for me, these days.
Since suffering the recent trauma of cancer, I’ve been unable to watch any really suspenseful fiction due, I think, to the ongoing uncertainties of real life. Will I die if/when I catch Covid? Will the cancer come back? Will we all go to perdition due to climate change? Will we frizzle up in a nuclear disaster?
While the Robinson family are portrayed as nothing less than super at their various jobs, they are also good people even when quarreling. That feels over the top, a bit. Then I remember series like this are not made for cynical old crones like me and I think, Just enjoy it.
When Maureen and John, the parents, become aware of their children’s emotional problems launch right into the right kind of positive affirmations the kids need to overcome their doubts. The realism is in the long time that it takes Maureen, for example, to discover her daughter Penny’s insecurities.
All these familial resonances happen at the same time that life-threatening decisions, intricate repairs, instant inventions, and numerous other events are having to be dealt with. Despite their rate of failure, they’re confident they’ll come through the next impossibly impossible technical problem. They always do because the show is so squeakily wholesome, death does not feature front and center.
The only person, other than robots, that I recall dying was on the screen for less than ten seconds before he was blown out of an airlock. And get this, the person who organized that, agreed to her just desserts. More than that I will not say, in case you do care about spoilers. The robots, where they did survive, were transformed from bad into good.
The ‘science’ was interesting and was made to seem logical. The actors were very convincing even when they obviously had to interact with a green-screen dummy representing Robot or Scarecrow or SAR.
Don, a space mechanic whose best friend was Debbie, his pet chicken, was a welcome contrast to the perfection of the three genius children, their genius mother and their ex-Navy SEAL hero father.
Dr Smith, while also extremely smart, was the frustrating antithesis to them all. Many were the times that she plain outwitted them. An extremely able antagonist, where the bizarre planets and even the robots were cast as forces of nature.
A clever enjoyable series.
Rita de Heer 