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Petals of Carbon Steel -- You're a Pilot, Not an Ace. Try your best.

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Incidentally, I scrawled out that little AU except above on the spot on my phone without my glasses right after getting out of the shower, so I do not vouch for quality.
 
Imrix said:
Sorry, you were saying something about 'justifications [that] are so detached, fatalist, and cavalier It's genuinely annoying.'?
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Fair point. I suppose I am all those things when it comes to nameless, largely undefined millions instead of tangible, relatable characters that are the linchpin of my interest in a story. I acknowledge the hypocrisy of the main point of my argument and concede that I'm just arguing over the semantics of what was sacrificed in such a manner. Bravo for catching me out like that.
Gazetteer said:
Incidentally, I scrawled out that little AU except above on the spot on my phone without my glasses right after getting out of the shower, so I do not vouch for quality.
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Surprising. It's a rather excellent piece of tragedy, and the final Sentence is particularly sharp barb. Anja's portrayal certainly isn't suffering from a lack of frequent use in Carbon Steel. I guess we might see more of her in this battle. Given her position as a heavy better suited to an attack run on the ship itself, is there any chance Kana gets attached to the accompanying stealth ship as part of an ambush as a result of knowing where there coming from and ends up working with Anja instead of Naz? I imagine Anja has quite a few words for her about the Hullcracker Gambit.
 
Gazetteer said:
Incidentally, I scrawled out that little AU except above on the spot on my phone without my glasses right after getting out of the shower, so I do not vouch for quality.
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Honestly I liked it.

Reminded me of something my mum told me once about a friend who had suffered a bereavement. They said that you never really "get over" something like that, it always stays with you, and you will never stop remembering. Instead you just have to become a different person, and some of the light goes out of you. If there's one weakness, I think it's that it's still relating the loss primarily in terms of people who are close to Amani.

The (harder) task with mass civilian casualties might be to attempt convey to the reader that the lives of those we don't know are still precious, and their loss will send out little spider cracks of pain and loss. A series of vignettes with surviving crewmembers and pilots trying to find out if their loved ones on the station are alive (and mostly that they're not) might do that. You could even steal from Battlestar Galactica, and have something like a wall of photos which the crew of the Rose have put up in a corridor, as the death toll is still being verified by authorities and no one knows if their boyfriend/mother/friend is among the dead or not.
 
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