Talk:FreeRIDErs (setting)

Are there any plans to let writers stray into the Earth-Zharus War scene? I've got a story idea or two that I'd love to set in that period, but I'm short on the context that Jon, RM and the others have in mind. That is, I don't really have any idea how you intend the war to play out. Although my idea wouldn't actually involve much in the actual frontlines/war, it would be good to have some idea of the kind of materiel and hardware and general strategy and social climate and the such, because nothing concrete seems to have actually been laid out so far for that period (or have I missed something?). Which is why I thought I'd ask your permission before getting started. If needed, I'd be more than pleased could draft out the general idea. Thanks in advance! --Wayward Coyote (talk) 18:05, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest here, but there's a lot of ground to cover between the present and that future in the setting before we get there. We can't guarantee that anything you'd write taking place during that period would remain canon. --Buck (talk) 19:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, what Jon said. Our ideas for the war are very very nebulous at this point, more possibilities than anything else. There are things we don't even know quite yet about how we're going to end "Integration", let alone what comes between that and the war. Any number of things could change between now and then. So just be patient, or else think on how to adapt your ideas to the setting's "present". —Robotech Master (talk) 23:23, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I understand. I might just follow the main series for now and wait until it hits that time period; I'm quite keen to see where it's going anyway. Or maybe I'll see what I can do with some other ideas I have lying around. Either way, though, thank you for your replies! --Wayward Coyote (talk) 07:38, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Possiblity of FreeRIDErs Cross-Over Stories

Hello, fellow FreeRIDErs! I've read pretty much all of the stories here and like them a lot, but I was wondering if there might be any chance that any of you would be interested in helping me hash out this idea that I had about the possibility that we as a community might be able to confirm (at least in this story universe) the hunch that Madison Brubeck had about the possibility that the 'Many Worlds' theory might actually be real near the end of 'Madison Brubeck and the Spotted Stowaway' by coming together to write some stories about characters from other story universes getting transported to this one somehow and having an impact on its history. The universes that I think I might like to involve in this story arc are currently the 'MORFS' universe and the MAU ('Morphic Adaptation Unit') universe. I've already started discussing how I might bring somebody from the 'MORFS' universe into this one here, so you guys are quite welcome to go on over there if you want to help me hash out the details of such a story as I start writing it.

Since it's rather ambitious of me to undertake such a large endeavor as my first published story, I also have one other idea that could fall back on if the one that I discussed above doesn't pan out (although I really hope that it will work out well!) I was thinking about how somebody who has elected to have their body preserved with cryonic freezing on Earth today might still be alive enough to be revived by Zharusian cryotechnologists if they could get their hands on his or her now–cryonically-frozen body and if this body had gone through cryonic freezing soon enough after its owner had died, hopefully in accident of some kind (I know that it does sound kind of sick for me to be wishing somebody in this story universe's past bad luck, but such bad luck would actually turn out all right in the end since whoever originally owned the body found by Zharus cryo-techs could be revived as somebody relatively young.)

The reason that I'm suggesting this is because of how I think that it might be useful to have somebody with technological knowledge similar to that of the Totalians and cultural knowledge of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries similar to that of people from Zharus along during the trip to Totalia which the prelude of the 'Return to Totalia' story arc of FreeRIDErs, among other stories in the FreeRIDErs universe, says is going to happen in the next part of its 'Return to Totalia' arc in order to help smooth relations between Zharus and Totalia over somewhat. As such, I might write a story about somebody from modern-day Earth whose frozen body is obtained by Zharusian cryo-techs somehow either if my other idea from earlier doesn't pan out or after it does if it does. All in all, what do you guys think? — RandomDSdevel (talk) 14:47, 17 September 2014 (EDT)

Hey, RandomDSdevel! I'm really glad our stories moved you enough to want to consider adding to them. Not to brag or anything, but I've always thought that one of the things that made a great story great is how much it catches the imagination of its readers and wants to make them come up with stories of their own.

Crossovers are a fun idea in general. Back when I was writing for Superguy Listserv, I wrote a series called "The Grand Tour" which took characters from my Superguy stories into several other Internet fiction universes of the day. It was a lot of fun. However, I don't think FreeRIDErs is really the kind of comic-book setting that lends itself to that kind of crossover. Well, it's still definitely comic booky, but in a different way.

That being said, there's no reason you couldn't write them anyway. There's a lot of fun to be had in non-canonical "What If" stories. I've written a couple of them myself, a couple of far-future stories in the Chakona Space and Paradise settings that took ongoing trends in the series and extrapolated them to their logical conclusions. In fact, the ones I did for Paradise, "The Future is Paradise" and "Paradise Forever" impressed Jon enough that he invited me to work on FreeRIDErs with him, and the rest is history. (In fact, part of the idea behind "Paradise Forever" was to provide a sort of "Riverworld" style space where characters from different settings might meet and cross over with each other.)

The 20th century cryonic freezing idea is interesting. I'd even considered it myself, and sort of used elements of the idea in my "Slightly Foxed" story, though Chuck/Charlene is from a couple centuries further along than the 20th. But it's a little bit of a cliché, and it feels a little hard to justify scientifically in the setting. (It's not clear that anybody being cryonically frozen now will ever be revivable.) Anyway, the concept has already been done so well in novels like A World out of Time by Larry Niven that doing it in FreeRIDErs feels like gilding the lily. Not to say I couldn't be convinced if someone came up with a plausible enough treatment of it.

In any event, I'm so busy lately I barely have time to write on any of Jon's and my stories, let alone crossovers with settings I'm not familiar with. If you were to write such a thing, I'd be happy to read it, though. Good luck! And no matter what, I hope you keep enjoying our stories.

P.S. About the date thing, you might want to click on "Preferences" up at the top left, then "Date and Time," and select the city closest to you in your time zone setting.

—Robotech Master (talk) 16:24, 19 September 2014 (CDT)