Talking about my writing: once and for all

 Like I said the other day, I want to talk about my writing more because there’s a lot that I want to say that I don’t want to put in authors notes (usually cause I think of stuff in the shower and then don’t remember to edit it in when I’m at my computer later), but there’s also no better place to put it. Also this is an official threat (not in a violent way) that if you ask me a question about something I wrote I will answer, and answer in depth. 

So this is about my latest fic, once and for all, which is a city spies and murderbot crossover, and it’s basically an excuse to do a roleswap but across universes and also to drag in multiverse shenanigans in general (one of my favorite things). Go read it, right now it’s pretty short, and while this isn’t spoilery for the fic, it doesn’t really make sense without that context. And I had this idea in the shower last night and absolutely have to talk about it somewhere at some point  

This… *drumroll*… is backstory. 

Monty and Mother swap nicely into the Murderbot universe. Monty is the scientist. She just takes Mensah’s place. Mother may not entirely be the silent, sarcastic, bruiser type, but he’s certainly less intellectual than Monty is, and besides, protection is kind of His Thing too. He fits into Murderbot’s place well enough. 

The problem is going in reverse. Monty’s the one who takes the position to be “close to home and far from office politics” (or whatever that quote is exactly) but that’s more a Murderbot thing to do, and I want it to still be the legally dead one like Mother. So I’ve had to make a lot of edits to Monty and Mother’s backstories to make them fit MB and Mensah, but unfortunately their fake memories are never going to be able to come up in depth bc they all get their real memories back quickly. 

And guess what I want to talk about? That backstory!

Mensah is most directly swapping with Monty — Mensah’s now cryptographer, biophysicist, baker, and legal guardian to the kids. She’s the Oxford graduate, the genius, and the cryptographer, just like Monty. 

However, she was put into field duty spy tasks more than Monty, so she’s a field agent at the time she discovers Paris. And she’s the one who was married… to a certain Clementine Griffiths. But with no children this time, because Clemmie didn’t try to kill her… no, here Clementine tried to kill Emby (the name of murderbot in mother’s role), and thinks she succeeded. 

To go back a second, Emby is short for Emmett Baer, and it still uses it/its. It and Mensah have been best friends since basic training (I removed the age difference between Monty and mother for this fic, it’s like 35 and she’s 37, enough that she can tease it but not enough that there’s an actual difference). Emmett had a few assignments at the FARM, adopted a couple local kids who Clementine and Mensah co-parented, then Mensah invited it to come with her on Operation Gumdrop, because she needed a person to be in that factory (she may have been a field agent but she is also a queer woman of color still and she knew that if she were found out there’s a lot more bad things that would happen to her than to someone like Emby who’s tall and imposing and looks less femme). 

And then Clementine sold it out to Umbra and tried to kill them while basically leaving a note saying “I’ve taken the kids and we’re leaving forever.” So as can be expected now they both want the kids back but also Emby is legally dead and they’re hiding at the FARM with Paris because Mensah told Tru she wasn’t leaving it alone there this time. 

Emby still wants the kids back, so it keeps going around the world and looking for them and finding spies instead. It introduces itself to Sara as just Emby (the kids don’t know Emby is short for Emmett Baer, they just know the two adults as Mensah and Emby), and maybe it’s having a bad day or something because it comes back upset and angry and then Mensah shows up and helps it calm down. By accidentally giving both of them their true memories back. Whoops. 

I don’t know, I think this is fun. Maybe I’m just rambling and nobody will read this but me and Dad, but who cares. I had fun writing it even if I lost a bunch between last night when I had this idea and this morning when I wrote it all down.