So, wow. I have seen an uptick in followers lately. I presume it is from RavensDagger putting the link in the SCS Notes doc.

Before anyone gets too much of their hopes up, I just want to be super upfront about things; I am in no way able to commit to an update schedule. I do have a plan for the story, but I deal with a few mental health issues (ADHD, undiagnosed but highly probable autism, depression, general lack of "spoons"... yeah).

If I were to make a promise of "updates on day X" I would fail to meet it, so I am not going to make that promise.

That all said, I have been working on the next bit of story, and struggling with what amounts to "structure" issues. I wanted to have one chapter as a flashback to show why Marcus has a problem with the AIs.

Yeeeeeeeeeah...

Looks like it's gonna be three chappies. Probably longer ones, too. Well, long for me. Maybe. We will see.

BTW, something interesting happened over at "Rise of The Living Forge" (Not sure if the link worked? if not, see below.) where debate broke out if (And, minor spoilers...) a given character was "fridged." (TV Tropes link to "Stuffed in the Fridge" trope below. WIKI WALK WARNING IS IN EFFECT!!!!)

I mention this because in the next few chapters, which are flashbacks, no-one save the MC and one other character are safe, and in fact a few of them do exist in order for them to die so that the MC has a logical reason for his views on AIs.

To quote from the TV Tropes page:

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

> When a loved one is hurt, killed, maimed, assaulted, or otherwise traumatized in order to motivate another character or move their plot forward.

...

> "Fridging" is often given a very negative connotation as it is all too often a hallmark of supremely lazy writing — quickly hurting or killing an established character as "cheap anger" for the protagonist, and devaluing the life of that character in the process, instead of giving the villain something actually interesting to do that can involve all three characters and more emotions than simple anger and angst.

I should note that much of the original issue was the use of a minority character (The MCs female S.O.) as a victim in order to motivate the action of the narrative, at least as I understand it. I could be wrong, but I do think care must be taken when choosing to knock off someone close to the MC and to make sure it is narratively justified.

As an author, I have to earmark some people to die. That's just how life works, otherwise, as David Weber puts it, it's just combat porn. All the action and none of the real life consequences. Yet I also wish to avoid wanton slaughter, so to speak, as that serves no purpose. (And I don't care for it, TBH.) I mean, The Antithesis are gonna do what they are gonna do, but that doesn't mean I am gonna feed you a hundred death scenes of rando civvies as they get eaten. That's a whole DIFFERENT kind of... eh... combat porn...

I feel dirty writing that. Shudder.

Anyway. I am still working on this. I have the chapter titles for the next three chapters (the Flashbacks), the one after, and some thoughts for after that. I've had to do (a surprising amount of) research into several elements I realized I was not as familiar with as I thought I was. (Side note, I think I need to go back and edit the info on the Claymore. I think it has a deeper effective range than I wrote...)

I am a nitpicker, and even if I am the only one who cares about the details, well... I care. So I work to get them correct.

Which, btw, I had trouble finding out just how loud the interior of the cargo section of a C-130J Super Hercules is when transporting troops. I saw one article saying 111 decibels, and another saying it was lowered by like 3-5 decibels... Does anyone have recent experience and can let me know?

Thanks all! Theswerd.