A user under the handle of Ryan Pendergast recently posted this to the Juhlin forum. It’s too good not to preserve and repost. This is a briefing map for the summer 2000 NATO offensive in the first edition Twilight: 2000 timeline. It really illustrates how far out on a limb 5th Infantry Division was even before they ran into the Soviet counterattack.
Sometime around the turn of the millennium, I ran across a Twilight: 2000 fanfic novel titled Black Winter. At the time, my T2k fandom was largely dormant. Everyone in my usual gaming groups was invested in the World of Darkness scene, GDW wasn’t publishing anything for T2k, and I didn’t have anyone to play it with. I took note of the work, read it, and promptly lost track of it.
A few years later, when I got involved with the Twilight: 2013 project, I went back to look for it. Couldn’t find it – I hadn’t bookmarked the site, and every search turned up a dead link. I didn’t find it again until the summer of 2020, when a random synapse fired and my need to resolve the question led me to archive.org’s stored copy.
Today, while scrolling through Reddit over lunch, I found a thread in which someone was inquiring about Black Winter. By the time I got home and was able to start formulating an answer, the original poster had answered his own question and posted a link to a PDF of the story. I grabbed it because I’m a digital packrat, and that’s when I had a bit of cognitive dissonance and no small amount of resurgent guilt.
The archive.org copy was credited to an author whose identity I never knew, posting under the address cadillacofthesky@ntlworld.com. The PDF, however, bore a handle I didn’t think I’d see again: Twilight2000v3MM.
Twilight2000v3MM was the nom de net of Max “Moose” Messina. Max had been a fairly prolific writer in T2k fan spaces in the early 2000s, doing quite a bit of design work for a proposed third edition of the game. He was a natural fit for the Twilight: 2013 dev team, and his contributions were invaluable. I can’t recall ever being aware of his fanfiction work, though, only his game design pursuits. Until today, I didn’t know the novel was his. I feel like a shittier friend for not knowing that. I wish I’d had a chance to tell him that I’d enjoyed it.
Max passed away on 10 September 2020, reportedly from cardiac complications after a too-brief fight with pancreatic cancer. He left behind a wife and two sons. His final contribution to Twilight: 2000 was as one of the advance readers on The Pacific Northwest. His feedback was still in my inbox when we lost him.
His novel is preserved below.
Saving this classic blog post from Walter Jon Williams because it needs to be preserved. Fantasy GMs and designers, take note.
I’ve had it with Chosen Ones. You know, the people we are told by the wise old wizard or some other Explicator of Plot who “are Chosen to save the world/kill the Dark Lord/become king/bring balance to the Force/whatever.”
Who the hell is it who does the Choosing, here? Lazy writers, that’s who.
Listen up, writers. Two things happen when I’m told that a person is Destined to accomplish something.
First, it removes all suspense. Because the character is Destined, you know the character’s going to succeed. Big yawn.
Second, it just makes me want to yell at the character, “Get on with it, won’t you? Don’t futz around for thirteen episodes, go kill the evil usurper and make yourself king. After all, you’re Chosen. It’s your damned job.”
Writers, if you’re going to give your characters a Destiny, at least give them one that isn’t so straightforward. Something like these:
Your character is Destined to fight a long rear-guard action against evil, until she makes a mistake or gets unlucky, and then she dies. (That would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)
Your character is Destined to defeat the enemy, but will then be despised forever because of the means necessary to achieve that victory. (Ender’s Game)
Your character is Chosen to defeat the evil monster, but will die in the attempt; and without his leadership, his kingdom will fall. (Beowulf. Heard of the Geats lately?)
Your character is Chosen to wield the most powerful magic in the universe, but is also Destined to use it to destroy the world. PS, no exceptions. (The Wheel of Time)
Writers, what these examples do is add irony, which is a vital component of successful literature. They also open the story to at least the possibility of tragedy, which you really want. If a tragic ending isn’t possible, and demonstrated to be possible (kill Boromir!), the eucatastrophe or happy ending will have no power.
Give me Destiny if you must, but also give me Doom.