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Aurora Universe Links

08 Jun 2019 17:35 #64264 by brantley
Aurora Universe Links was created by brantley
The links at the Bright Empire's main link to the Tripod site of the Aurora Universe Writers Group have all gone dead.

To reach them now, you cam use a Wayback Machine archiive from 2014:

web.archive.org/web/20140924170830/http:...ersgroup.tripod.com/

--Brantley
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08 Jun 2019 17:42 #64265 by Monty
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brantley wrote: The links at the Bright Empire's main link to the Tripod site of the Aurora Universe Writers Group have all gone dead.

To reach them now, you cam use a Wayback Machine archiive from 2014:

web.archive.org/web/20140924170830/http:...ersgroup.tripod.com/

--Brantley


Thanks Brantley. What happened to AU?

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08 Jun 2019 17:54 #64266 by shadar
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brantley wrote: The links at the Bright Empire's main link to the Tripod site of the Aurora Universe Writers Group have all gone dead.

To reach them now, you cam use a Wayback Machine archiive from 2014:

web.archive.org/web/20140924170830/http:...ersgroup.tripod.com/

--Brantley



Same may happen to my main branch of the AU... the AUOW. 

My velorian.net domain expires in July and I don't have the credentials to get in and renew it (forgot user names and passwords). I'll talk with my web provider and see if they can get me back in, but may not be able to figure it out given the email address I established with the domain has expired, and I gave them as little personal info as possible at the time. So grab what you want this month... in case I can't keep it alive. 

Link is:  velorian.net/auow/
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09 Jun 2019 14:01 #64271 by j2001
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Here I saved all the AU content I could find: aurorarchive.altervista.org/?path=Aurora%20Universe
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10 Jun 2019 01:33 #64274 by pithlit
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Can you re-post the link to your AU2 and AU1 homepage?

I want seem to have lost them and I want to get what I can of the old Kira Zor'El stories.

P

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10 Jun 2019 01:39 #64275 by pithlit
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And what was the URL of the original Aurora Universe stories? Do you still have a link to those for a few weeks?

P

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10 Jun 2019 03:17 #64276 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Aurora Universe Links
The AU1 and AU2 stuff has been offline for probably ten years for more. But I've got it all, right from the beginning. One major storyline from that era, Little Firebug, is available here on SWM. 

The stuff that's online now, AUOW, is the successor to the AU10, and that's what might go offline in July. 

But I've been publishing AU-related material here on SWM for the last few years, including the current story, Earth Rise, which is kind of a throwback story to the late 90's. That will become more apparent as I add additional Parts. 

I suppose I need to make the committment to gather all the old stuff up and put it back up on a new web page. It's literally hundreds of stories, some of them novel-length. Most of it was written in the 1990's and reflects some of the sensibilities of our genre in that era. Which is to say violent, highly sexual and not very well crafted (IMO), and politically incorrect in several ways. It was focused more on genre kinkiness. 

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10 Jun 2019 04:18 #64279 by Random321
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shadar wrote: Which is to say violent  Shadar


I was re-reading some stories a month or so ago and I was surprised by how violent some of the stories were.  I had forgotten how brutal they could get (bone breaking and assault).  I still enjoy supers being stretched to the limit but I'm glad things have evolved.

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10 Jun 2019 04:44 #64280 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Aurora Universe Links

Random321 wrote:

shadar wrote: Which is to say violent  Shadar


I was re-reading some stories a month or so ago and I was surprised by how violent some of the stories were.  I had forgotten how brutal they could get (bone breaking and assault).  I still enjoy supers being stretched to the limit but I'm glad things have evolved.



I remember the old stories fondly until I actually read them, and then I cringe a little. They don't reflect where I'm at now.

But that's me... other folks still like 90's vintage genre stuff. That's cool too. The audience was HUGE and highly interactive back then. at least as compared to now. 


Shadar

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10 Jun 2019 09:48 #64285 by j2001
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shadar wrote: Most of it was written in the 1990's and reflects some of the sensibilities of our genre in that era. Which is to say violent, highly sexual and not very well crafted (IMO),


Hey! That's the kind of stories I'm still reading to this day! :D
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10 Jun 2019 17:14 #64290 by mastadon
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While i too enjoy your new stories and find them totally amazing it is also nice to go back and read again the stories that got me into the genre to get an appreciation for how things have changed.

It show s how much the genre has matured and gone from total action to more carefully crafted story and character development .

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10 Jun 2019 17:17 - 10 Jun 2019 23:58 #64291 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Aurora Universe Links
I posted this link a few years ago, but not everyone may have read it then. People are still reading my AU-3 stories; the most popular by far is Empress of the Dawn. My emphasis has always been on storytelling and world creation, not mere brutality.

brightempire.com/Points.htm

---Brantley
Last edit: 10 Jun 2019 23:58 by brantley.

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10 Jun 2019 19:11 #64292 by Klaus
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Some of us perverts don't really like stories with more brutality then your average slasher movie.

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11 Jun 2019 01:26 #64295 by shadar
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Klaus wrote: Some of us perverts don't really like stories with more brutality then your average slasher movie.


<grin>. Slasher movies set the bar very high. A little setup and then blood galore. 

Don’t think we’ll cross that threshold. 

But as I see it, given the Homo Supremis in the AU are a sub-species  (super-species?) of human, their violence is also going to be a high-octane version of human. 

Especially given the Arion race of Supremis view us as an inferior species and have no laws that criminalize killing Homo Sapiens, who they simply call Frails. Terror serves their purposes.

Thank goodness for Velorian Protectors. 

Shadar
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11 Jun 2019 15:53 #64300 by Klaus
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Okay, I might have come off as being down on the AU from my last post. I like the AU. I like the stories. I like the Velorians. I like the protectors.

There's a few things that makes my hair stand on end, but they can be mostly ignored. I've even considered writing for the AU once or twice in the past, although the yahoo groups thing put me off and I didn't realize that the AU community was so active on SWM until recently.

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18 Jun 2019 18:11 #64332 by brantley
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Any consensus here as to why people have lost interest in the AU and other original fiction as opposed to DC and Marvel stories in the movies and on TV? Even in the heyday of our fiction, there were some movies and TV shows, as well as the new incarnations of Marvel and DC heroes and hero groups.

--Brantley

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18 Jun 2019 19:34 #64333 by Woodclaw
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brantley wrote: Any consensus here as to why people have lost interest in the AU and other original fiction as opposed to DC and Marvel stories in the movies and on TV? Even in the heyday of our fiction, there were some movies and TV shows, as well as the new incarnations of Marvel and DC heroes and hero groups.

--Brantley


I can only speak for myself, but my big problem with the AU in general is: where do I start?
While most stories are really good as stand alone pieces, the general feeling is that no matter which one you read there will always be some missing bits and pieces. It's like trying to start reading Asimov's novel from Second Foundation, but knowing that there are both the Robot and Empire series, but having no way to find those books.

There is also a second element, but this is more particular to some of the writers that contributed to the AU over the years. Sometimes the strict adherence to the original tropes, especially the portrayal of Arions and Vels seem often too one-sided.
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18 Jun 2019 20:34 #64335 by shadar
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Woodclaw wrote:

brantley wrote: Any consensus here as to why people have lost interest in the AU and other original fiction as opposed to DC and Marvel stories in the movies and on TV? Even in the heyday of our fiction, there were some movies and TV shows, as well as the new incarnations of Marvel and DC heroes and hero groups.

--Brantley


I can only speak for myself, but my big problem with the AU in general is: where do I start?
While most stories are really good as stand alone pieces, the general feeling is that no matter which one you read there will always be some missing bits and pieces. It's like trying to start reading Asimov's novel from Second Foundation, but knowing that there are both the Robot and Empire series, but having no way to find those books.

There is also a second element, but this is more particular to some of the writers that contributed to the AU over the years. Sometimes the strict adherence to the original tropes, especially the portrayal of Arions and Vels seem often too one-sided.


I've heard similiar criticism many times before. In fact, I can't keep track of things myself.

This is one of the reasons I'm writing Earth Shine, which I guess could be called "AU-lite" given the reader doesn't have to know anything about the AU. I reveal the minimum number of things that are important along the way.

Kind of an "alternate universe AU story that takes place on Earth", where I also take some license with some AU lore and concepts to make them work better in this story. 

Also. my goal is to give the Arions and Velorians roughly equal page time.

Episode 3 will be posted this weekend, and this episode is distinctly tilted in the Arion direction. 

That forces me to mostly write in the third-person omniscent voice, which isn't my favorite but allows me to tell a story with fewer restrictions and fewer words.  

Shadar

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19 Jun 2019 10:29 #64338 by HendrixLives
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Hi Brantley -it may not be true that they have. In the heyday of the original AU, the demographic of the internet (at the risk of extrapolating from my own experience) was far more, uh, academic... In other words people in 1994 who had heard of the Internet were young students, predominantly male, doing STEM subjects. If where there is smoke there is fire, and stereotypes are based on facts, then there were a disproportionate number of people quite happy to use limited college bandwidth to download comics and pictures of supermodels. AU fiction was a logical extension.

As the Internet matured, things slightly away from the center have been crowded out more to the edge. I'm pretty sure AU stories were posted on Usenet. Find someone under 35 who has heard of that. In other words the commercialization and ubiquity of the modern Internet has made its most popular uses a refashioning of what people were already doing (news, music, chatting). No-one knows to look for genre fiction even if they are interested in it - and clearly we are some way from the Darkweb...

As to the one sided portrayal of the Vels and Arions: clearly, an invention of the Scribe's propaganda...
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19 Jun 2019 16:52 #64340 by shadar
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HendrixLives wrote: Hi Brantley -it may not be true that they have. In the heyday of the original AU, the demographic of the internet (at the risk of extrapolating from my own experience) was far more, uh, academic... In other words people in 1994 who had heard of the Internet were young students, predominantly male, doing STEM subjects. If where there is smoke there is fire, and stereotypes are based on facts, then there were a disproportionate number of people quite happy to use limited college bandwidth to download comics and pictures of supermodels. AU fiction was a logical extension.

As the Internet matured, things slightly away from the center have been crowded out more to the edge. I'm pretty sure AU stories were posted on Usenet. Find someone under 35 who has heard of that. In other words the commercialization and ubiquity of the modern Internet has made its most popular uses a refashioning of what people were already doing (news, music, chatting). No-one knows to look for genre fiction even if they are interested in it - and clearly we are some way from the Darkweb...

As to the one sided portrayal of the Vels and Arions: clearly, an invention of the Scribe's propaganda...


That's a very insightful perspective, and as accurate as anything I've read, IMHO. Actually, the seeds of the AU were on the earlier BBS system and migrated to the Usenet alt.* feeds, where a ton of stories wound up. But it wasn't really a "universe" until Usenet morphed into the Internet and the concept of Web Servers and Browsers evolved. I had a very early Internet site hosted on Oznet down in Oz, thanks to a fan who had the resources. The AU rapidly exceeded its bandwidth allowance, over and over, until I relocated it to Boulder, CO as the concept of commercial shared web servers evolved. That was the first site I created myself, and it was done with code and not the fancy graphical interfaces of today. 

The AU began on Unix (actually, DEC's version called Ultrix running on PDP11's) and written in the Emacs editor. Once Emacs was ported to MSDOS and eventually to the Macintosh, I moved my editing work there. Using employer's computers was Ok at first, but less so over time as system managers began to manage stuff. 

All of the early stuff was written by comic book fans of Supergirl and her ilk who wanted to play around with erotica and explore all those stories the comic books could never do. And it had to be non-infringing because DC was going after Supergirl erotica once it moved from Usenet alt.* feeds to web sites. Thus the concept of Velorians and Arions. 

What I find cool today is that the SWM is the closest thing left standing to the mid-90's on-line neighborhood that the AU grew up in. The idea of everyone sharing their visions/fanatasies/kink, etc. in stories, to be enjoyed freely by the rest of the community. No paywall or ads, just a community of fans (with very different likes) who worked together to keep things going on donations and generous grants of time from the hosts and admins. That obviously had to change a bit with video productions since they cost money to produce. 

I personally have never grown beyond the concept of a young superheroine with Kryptonian-esq abilities who seeks out a human man as mentor/guide/partner/lover to save the world from other superpowered beings from the dark side, so to speak. The setting is either a SF world or current time on Earth.  I still tell that same kind of story in various ways because that's what I enjoy.  The AU in general may have become very large with much better world-building and connectness and logic thanks to Brantley, and as a result is a more significant body of work, but I still like to keep things fairly simple and aligned with my original formula. 

If the AU can hang its hat on anything, it's that with the emergence of hypertext, it was one of the first story sites that embedded images in the text. I had a very early copy of Photoshop and learned to tweak images I'd pulled off the Net and link to them. That hasn't changed either. 

Shadar

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19 Jun 2019 17:46 #64341 by ballen
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Woodclaw wrote:

brantley wrote: Any consensus here as to why people have lost interest in the AU and other original fiction as opposed to DC and Marvel stories in the movies and on TV? Even in the heyday of our fiction, there were some movies and TV shows, as well as the new incarnations of Marvel and DC heroes and hero groups.

--Brantley


I can only speak for myself, but my big problem with the AU in general is: where do I start?
While most stories are really good as stand alone pieces, the general feeling is that no matter which one you read there will always be some missing bits and pieces. It's like trying to start reading Asimov's novel from Second Foundation, but knowing that there are both the Robot and Empire series, but having no way to find those books.

There is also a second element, but this is more particular to some of the writers that contributed to the AU over the years. Sometimes the strict adherence to the original tropes, especially the portrayal of Arions and Vels seem often too one-sided.


I understand this issue given the enormous body of work - which in itself is a real credit to the quality and dedication of the authors.  But for some reason I never felt "lost" in the universe.  Perhaps it was because I was unaware of the other bodies of work out there or maybe I started early enough there was only one place to begin.  I discovered The Aurora Universe in 1997, around the same time I discovered DTV.  I remember the blonde and wonderfully muscular superwoman in the red and white costume at the home page of the site who I assumed was Aurora/Fairchild.  At the top of the page she was described as the erotic superhero and that's what you got.  My first story was "Adventures of Aurora" which was VERY well done IMO of describing the conflict btw Velorians and Arions and Aurora's place in the story. 

There was some violence as one would expect given we were in the middle of a war but I didn't find it too gruesome - although admittedly, the description of Kara's death was pretty shocking and graphic.  And men did die from the throws of Fairchild's passion.  What are you going to do?  She is a o woman of steel.  Maybe that is what the group is referring to here but I wasn't put off from it.

I did discover other stories, but after "Adventures of Aurora" I felt pretty comfortable with the arc and looked at the other works as spins-off which provided other places to play.  Maybe I was lucky in finding one of the first stories, maybe I was naive but I never felt lost or overwhelmed.    

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19 Jun 2019 19:33 #64344 by Klaus
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I look forward to more of "bull" betraying his oath, which is very on the nose right now.

And yeah, the last couple of posts neatly sum up my thoughts about the AU's history. It a shame, AU fiction was some of the first stuff I found when I first went looking for muscle women fiction. It wasn't (and still isn't) exactly to my tastes but its damn close.

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21 Jun 2019 19:39 #64351 by shadar
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Not sure if I've shared this image before, but this comes from the 1990's ero of the AU.  Xara is the daughter of Kara in a story that was a blend of Kryptonian and Velorian lore. 

She is a bit of a free-spirit when it comes to her uniform. The colors and design are Kryptonian, but at least one of the details is definitely Velorian. 



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21 Jun 2019 19:46 #64352 by Sarge395
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That was early awesome sauce for many fantasies of mine.  

Just checked my AU folder and it has 733 files in it.  163 MB.  Quite the large body of work.  

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