Question The Case is Afoot!!!

Hey WA, and good evening from Australia. I'm about to do a little bit of detective work to try and track down some of the MIA authors, and I'd like to get some info. I'm doing this not to intrude on them, or to be in any way malicious. I'm doing this because I'm geniunely interested in what happened to the authors we have no idea about their status. I managed to find a story posted by someone on Fanfiction who just got a post up that has a mention of one of Bab's stories (sorry, by mention I mean a small joke that is almost a exact copy), but the story got taken down by Fanfiction last week in one of their cleaning bonzannas. One of my chapters got taken out as well, namely the third chapter of Life, Loyalty and Eternal War (a Warhammer 40k Tau story). Anyway, I couldn't find the author after that, but it was quite possibly Babs. I mean, the writing style was almost identical, and the story was about a Girl who can summon a dead sisters ghost and was a Tenchi Muyo story. I don't know about you, but that sounds remarkably simular to Generator and Shroud, and also has mention of a anime mentioned a lot in the early canon. I'll try and track down the author, since their profile should still be there as you can't get rid of author profiles. Anyway, I'd also like to know about the author who was apparently in the Navy, and went missing after deployment. If they were in the navy, they shouldn't have gone down with the ship, as there have been no major sea battles in...well...years. I think I can find them if I look up every US navy ship that has gone down, and then look up the database of missing soldiers, and then look for anyone from those ships. I need their name though to narrow it down. I'm sorry if I'm suddenly just jumping at this, I just thought it might be a good way to spend a week where a) the Field Robotics centre is currently closed for maintenance due to a busted crane system; b) The EB games store I work at is closed for reno, and all staff are on paid leave for six months and c) University hasn't resumed for me, as I'm on a belated gap year between my degree and my masters. So, I'm taking some well-deserved time off, and spending it doing some community service. Oh, and the RPG is going well. The team met up (well, just me and Ebola as Anne hasn't gotten onto the discord, and Malady forgot that it was on (this Saturday I won't be there as I have to tutor some students in maths for $100 at 12:00, so you guys meet without me OK), and we've discussed some things about how we're going to do things. And also remicesed on past RPG experiences. But anyway, I think we'll release a progess update on the RPG forum some time between now and three weeks time. It'll include a sample of what we've got so far. Actually, I should probably clear that with the other team members first. I'll talk about that more on the RPG thread. But anyway, WA-tson, the Game is Afoot!!

Thing is, in some cases not even the still-around original Canon authors know a lot about the RL of the missing author. Such as RL name, age, birth gender and such.

Liliandra was the one who "went quiet" shortly after posting some excerpts of the Wild Times story, which was to be the origin story of Feral and the New Olympians. That was early Whateley, that is, some... thirteen years ago or thereabouts? At the time, the only thing that had come out was that she was in the Navy (although I don't think it was even made clear which Navy), going into active deployment and would be offline for some time.

Remember, at the time there was a lot of activity in the Gulf and thereabout. If Liliandra has been lost, there are lots of ways it could happen that do not involve a ship being sunk.

Poor Liliandra. We hope desperately that she just got a dressing down from the CO about 'inappropriate pass times' and gave up Whateley, but more than likely she was KIA. Unfortunately we likely won't ever know.

And we still haven't figured out what to do about those "Wild Times" excerpts. They were available in the old Forums, which are gone (but some of us kept copies), but were never actually made available as a finished story. So they don't fall under the procedures for republishing the canon stories. But they were important.

The same applies to the few posted snippets of the third Heyoka story ("Survival Class"), and the "lost" fourth Fey story ("Learning Curve") -- they had snippets posted to the forums but that's it. Well, I suppose that's theoretically possible to get permission from Maggie and Motley -- they haven't been around very much, but they do show up now and then -- but not from Liliandra...

E. E. Nalley wrote: Poor Liliandra. We hope desperately that she just got a dressing down from the CO about 'inappropriate pass times' and gave up Whateley, but more than likely she was KIA. Unfortunately we likely won't ever know.

As several accidents at sea these last two years prove, your ship doesn't have to sink for you to die on duty. How many were lost when the Cole was hit? And really these are just the tip of the iceberg as it were. There is always simply having a medical problem like a heart attack or something mechanical on or in the ship getting you. I worked at a place with a lot of forklifts running around. I had to leave because I felt that I was going to have panic attacks right on the floor over the way they drove those things! But easily could have ended up DEAD!

Very true Anne... When I was on active duty we had many incidents that resulted in lost Sailors. The USS San Francisco hit a sea mount and a Sailor was killed. Another submarine had I think three Sailors lost over the side in the Atlantic. My submarine was hit by a super-tanker while submerged, no deaths but a few injuries (all minor thankfully). We got an incident report from a surface ship where a Sailor was killed while blowing a steam trap. Just before I got to my ship a Sailor was killed while cleaning around a hydraulic system...the ram moved and he was crushed... Those are just some of the ways your number can get called without enemy action even being a factor.

Then you have things like the USS Cole (17 killed, about 40 injured as I recall).

There is also the IA program, which can put Sailors on land in support of the Army, Marines and Air Force where they sometimes end up in fire fights or attacks there. Then there are the SEALS and other spec-ops types doing their operations...

The sea is a cruel and unforgiving mistress, adding in military service on top of going to sea just makes the odds a bit worse.

I don't know anything about Liliandra. Not which Navy, what sort of platform or even rating. KIA is a possibility. Dead through some other means is a possibility. While in theory the CO could have said something, that is unlikely (unless he/she knew about Whateley and Liliandra's writing) but in theory possible. It is also possible (I dare say highly possible) that the demands of service just made Liliandra "move on", deployments tend to result in either lots of down time or very very little down time to do something besides Navy stuff. Go long enough doing Navy stuff and other things get dropped, once you stop doing something, it is often harder to get back to doing it again.

Hopefully, Liliandra is still doing well and doing her thing and has just dropped Whateley to focus on whatever that is (that leaves open the chance of a return at some point, long odds are better than nothing, plus I hate to lose a Sailor for any reason).

Now, as for tracking down missing authors. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself. You might even find one or more of them. If you do, great. Maybe some of them are just on extended sabbaticals for whatever reason(s). Just be prepared for the reality that you may not find any of them or that you may find that some don't want to be found and don't want to discuss why they disappeared.

From memory Babs posted reviews to Fanfiction.net without logging in. I remember stumbling across a couple.

May not have had an account there.