Welcome to the first book in my Days Past Ratchet and Clank fanfiction series: The Beginning of Days.
As this story has grown, it eventually seemed necessary for me to have some version of an 'intro chapter' to explain a few things about the series to new readers. The rest of this chapter will include a detailed description of the book's genre/premise, some tidbits about my own personal headcanon used in the story, and some notes on my word style and writing quirks.
However, you'll be relieved to hear that it's not absolutely necessary to read beyond this point in the chapter and, if you just want to get started without havign to read a whole starting manual, you can skip it. Later, if you find that you liked the first few chapters and want to commit to finishing the book, then you might want to come back and go through this intro.
Story Premise
This story is a prequel to the Ratchet and Clank video game series timeline. The main character of Days Past: The Beginning of Days is Ratchet's father, Kaden. This first book will follow him through most of his first year of what is essentially a prestigious Lombax College/Academy of learning called Nova Academy. The story is set in the Ratchet and Clank universe, so, regardless of what your concept of school life is, you can guarantee it will be far from normal.
An important fact to note is that i consider my story to 100% canon conforming. If it happened in the Ratchet and Clank games, it happened in my version as well, just maybe not yet chronologically. I also try my best to ensure that no future Ratchet and Clank games or movies will disavow what I've written. For example, Kaden's last name, which would be Ratchet's original last name, has never been mentioned in any official canon media, but I'm sure that at some point it will be revealed. In my story there is a running gag that every time the opportunity to say Kaden's last name comes up, the person about to say either can't remember it, is interrupted, or whatever they are reading is either damaged or glitches so that what is written after his first name is illegible.
Genre Breakdown
I would estimate that this book is roughly 50% Action/Adventure, 30% Sci-fi, and 20% Romance. Humor is mixed in equally among this ratio at probably 85% humor and 15% serious. This is based on my own estimates of how much of the physical writing is dedicated to these aspects, however, it will likely feel as if that measurement should be more Action or Sci-fi and less romance as my Action and Sci-fi writing throughout this book is much more impactful than the Romance. This essentially means that you should expect half the words in the story to be directly related to some description of action or dialogue aimed at instigating/resolving conflict or adversity (this will include all forms of mystery and suspense). Thirty percent of all words written will be some form of technical description of a weapon, physical law in the R&C universe, or a cultural understanding that explains the rationale as to 'why' something can/is happening. The remaining twenty percent will typically be allusions to romance and awkward, heavily sub-texted dialogue/actions.
Further Breakdown and Caveats:
Not 'that' Kind of Fanfiction - I personally am a huge fan of Romances that occur between deep and fleshed out characters, but more often than not, a story only has time to offer one or the other and must choose a dedication as either 'action' or 'romance' themed. In my experience I often come across amazing, action-packed story lines with great characters who all demand to be shipped due to lack of canon matchmaking. In contrast, most 'romance' specific stories usually go crashing head first into clichés and tropes with the sole purpose of furthering a set of characters' relationships while often skimping on the characters' depth and personalities themselves. This has greatly fueled my desire to make an action packed thriller, with fun characters and awesome/deep storylines that also have just the right touch of romance in it.
Violence
I have to warn you though, that I write pretty gritty stuff. A broad examination of the Ratchet and Clank series finds that the games and story are about a small, furry creature and his small, robotic friend who almost single-handedly annihilate entire legions of enemies across three galaxies repeatedly.
In just Tools of Destruction alone, Emperor Percival Tachyon once owned half of Polaris and yet his entire empire was laid to waste almost exclusively by the actions of Ratchet and Clank. That's not even mentioning their defeat of the most feared pirate legion in the galaxy(and subsequent beheading of its leader), stealing a prized artifact from the violent and territorial Kerchu homeworld, and sending back the suddenly revived Cragmite scourge that had been considered a plague on an entire galaxy.
In order to create a deep world where all of these events are a reality, I had to tweak the founding concepts of what we'd consider normal. As you read you'll frequently note the sheer lack of concern most people have for damage to limbs, lives, and/or property.
This story is set in an advanced society, one where the canon concept of Nanotech exists to help heal characters from even the most horrific wounds. So far advanced is this society that the idea of getting one's own arm blown off becomes a minor concern as it is relatively easy to replace in most cases.
This is a warning that many of the combat scenes I describe involve visceral descriptions of said damaged body parts, broken bones, and people fighting onward even after suffering wounds that would have killed most humans in real life. In many cases, these wounds are healed past the point of fatal risk by Nanotech almost seconds after they are inflicted and the blue, miracle liquid often acts as a pain inhibitor as well, but that doesn't change the fact that some scenarios are downright gruesome. I believe that the characters having this medical safety-net is what pushes the seemingly ridiculous level of violence that Ratchet and Clank's world is filled with and I chose not to shy away from this fact.
Destruction and Value
With a galaxy that is so advanced that robots are as commonplace as people, the idea of destroying a building is much less worrisome, since rebuilding them is not very difficult.
Think of it this way: in real life, with the economies of one planet constantly at odds with one another, a single country's government's spending on repair after natural disasters is usually quite high and in most cases the majority of damages are rebuilt within a few years. However, it doesn't usually affect neighboring countries to any extreme, and nations even further away might never even know about it. Now, think about a galaxy, where hundreds of trillions of lives toil away and interact with other galaxies. If we think of one planet/civilization in the R&C universe as one government/country in our universe and then we think of a single galaxy in R&C as a counterpart to our planet with its many countries/planets, yet the comparison is still not enough since, in R&C, there are still many more galaxies out there with which to trade. When things reach that scale, the annihilation of even an entire city of a single planet becomes little more than a budget earmark for some obscure government official and most of the galactic population never even bats an eye.
As for value of people's lives, well, as I said, there are hundreds of trillions of people in the universe (population estimates include sentient-level robotic beings), so a few thousand deaths here and there are hardly galactic news. Even the fall of an entire advanced civilization like the Lombaxes can be brushed off and forgotten in only a few years.
A real life example would be the fall of the Soviet Union. While in itself a huge, planet altering-event, it happened in 1991, so not that long ago as of this writing. I know the importance of this matters more to some than others, but from where I live and have grown up, in America, the fall of the Soviet Union was nothing more than a few chapters in my history book at school to me. I have, of course, researched more on my own, but it remains widely a side note in American history. This goes to show how even something so big can seem so historically small from only the other side of the planet, let alone the other side of a galaxy.
Value of life also differs greatly from species to species in my book. An advanced race like the Lombaxes take great care to protect the lives of its citizens with the use of advanced Nanotech and medical facilities, while the more tribal and violent races like Agorians, despite being a sentient race with feelings and emotions, tend to, er… well, die… a lot. Just like in the game.
Lombax vs Human
One persistent issue I've had with writing about characters who are from another species comes from the emotional connotation and preconception that is attached to words like 'human'.
As a human being, when you read the word 'human' you often read it with deeper meaning than as a simple name of the creature/species it represents. You often find in literature that it can easily replace words like 'normal', 'mortal', or 'not perfect' to various degrees.
It's not unusual to say "that isn't the human way" instead of "that isn't the normal way."
You might also hear, "of course you can die, you're only human" instead of "of course you can die, you're only mortal."
And finally, "So I made a mistake, I'm human after all" as opposed to "So I made a mistake, I'm not perfect after all."
In this book, whenever a Lombax character uses the word 'lombax', they would feel the same connotation as you would when you used the word 'human'. Many times I've had to choose not to write a sentence like "It seemed so... inlombax," because, obviously, it just sounds weird without that cultural connotation. The emotional impact just isn't there as if you had read "It seemed so... inhuman."
There is also a disconnect with a species name in my book that needs to be addressed as well. I constantly use the word 'Lombax', referring to the species in an objective way throughout the story. This is usually just to prevent me from saying a character's name too many times to frequently, like "the tan-furred Lombax jumped down" is usually just an alternative way of saying "Kaden jumped down."
I've always debated whether I should try and work around this issue by simply avoiding using 'lombax' like 'human', but after a certain point I finally just decided to use it wherever and whenever it would fit. I ask that you read 'lombax' as 'human' whenever it's being used by a Lombax character in their own thoughts or words. I will also try to make it clear when the connotation for 'human' should be used by writing 'lombax' with a lower-case 'L'. Example:
"He's a runty Lombax, ain't he?" (Lombax = objective species);
"That's just what it means to be lombax." (lombax = 'human').
I apologize if this is confusing, but it is important.
Tails vs Genitals
As I've said, my story is strictly canon conformative, which means that after the declaration about female Lombaxes not having tails like the males do (as controversial as it is), it means that my story will also feature tailless female Lombaxes.
As such, I believe that the tail also has a cultural significance amongst Lombaxes. Much the same way humans have colorful uses for words describing male genitalia in a way that often signifies masculinity, courage, willpower, and everything related to being 'manly', so too has Lombax culture related these things to tails.
As a reader, this relation is relatively easy to understand, it simply replaces the term 'dick', 'penis', or 'balls' for 'tail'. Example:
"You don't have the tail to fight me" is the Lombax equivalent of saying "you don't have the balls to fight me."
There are also references to size and their supposed relation to masculinity, as is typical amongst humans. Saying someone has a thin or short tail is the Lombax equivalent of saying they have a small penis or tiny balls.
While I personally dislike the fact that Female Lombaxes don't have tails (both from a personal and scientific standpoint) I can't deny that working with the concept has been a great benefit to me as a writer for many reasons. Not least of which is now getting to say "Eat my tail!" without being vulgar.
Polaris After The Great War
Just like any good fanfiction writer, I have had to draw many, many headcanon conclusions based on careful examination of the Ratchet and Clank universe that would both explain the evidence seen in canon media, as well as set up a good narrative. One of my most important foundations is the Lombax race's position in Polaris after defeating the Cragmites.
The first important concept to decide was the chronology of the Great War. According to the game nobody remembers the Cragmites from first hand experience (minus specific characters like the Loki of All 4 One). Along with this, the Iris supercomputer says that the war happened 'eons' ago. Officially, the real-life definition of the word states that an eon is not an actual measure of time, but is in fact a general term meaning a really long time. This is relative opinion, but I would think that it still happened many generations ago.
The only contradiction is Alister Azimuth's famed quote: "After the Great War, Polaris was a dangerous place." I choose to believe that this means that Polaris was a dangerous place after the Great War, which happened a long time ago, and has simply never truly recovered even up to Alister and Kaden's generation.
To explain why this is, I have to map out the political climate of the Polaris Galaxy before and after the war. Before the war, it's been said that Cragmites either ruled or had devastated most of the galaxy, leaving only a few sentient races still breathing. It's said that the Lombaxes were the ones who finally rose up to defeat the Cragmite 'plague' using advanced technology to counter their opponents strength and numbers. I make room in my story for mild aid from other races like the Markazians, the Kerchu, the Terachnoids, etc., but I believe the main fighting was done by Lombaxes.
We all know how the war ends: The Lombaxes send every Cragmite on their homeworld of Reapor into another dimension. For this to have happened, I believe that Lombaxes had to have defeated the Cragmites everywhere else and driven them back to their homeworld where they delivered their final blow. My headcanon explains that the Cragmites abandoned their colonies and positions outside of Reapor fairly easily because they were said to simply capture other worlds in order to drain them of resources. To me, this means that Cragmites never settled or setup permanent bases on any other worlds, or if they did, the bases/refineries they created were likely small enough to be easily destroyed or captured.
Now for the current galactic political climate: obviously, with the evil race that had controlled most of Polaris suddenly wiped out, there was a huge power vacuum. The good races, who's fighting strength must have been extensively exhausted after nearly a hundred years of war, could do little to stop this vacuum from quickly filling with all the violent races, such as the Agorians, the recently homeless Terraklons, the Robot Space Pirates*, the Space Valkyries, the Grungarian Raiders, and any other race that has yet to be mentioned or has been wiped out in the time since the Great War to until the R&C games (Tachyon's empire probably managed to control half of Polaris by taking territory owned by other factions that were destroyed in the process). I should also note the Paladrone and Argonoid races, which were exclusively seen as gladiators in Tachyon's battle arena during Tools of Destruction, though I don't count them as a 'faction' unless they are seen terrorizing/defending something outside of an arena.
I do think you can actually see this difference between Polaris and the Solana/Bogon galaxies. In every game, so far, Ratchet has had to fight creatures who were simply natural predators from a single planet, such as swamp monsters and tribal natives. I don't count these in my 'factions' list, nor do I count gladiator arena-only races, but other than that, usually each game would have a single faction to fight like the Blarg or the Tyhrranoids that were instigated by a single character like Ultimate Supreme Executive Chairman Alonzo Drek or Dr. Nefarious.
Polaris, however, has you fighting that list of factions two paragraphs above within the same relative time line and in some cases more than once. There is also not always a direct instigator. Terraklons are just mentioned as being rambunctious throughout the galaxy, but only fought in the arenas (minus Flint Vorselon), Agorians especially attack everything all the time, and even the Space Pirates had to be fought again after Slag is defeated.
This all becomes more significant to the story as the races (the Lombaxes especially) regained their military power. At the point where Ratchet and Clank come to Polaris, almost nobody in the galaxy knows about the Dimensionator. I assume, in my story, that neither did the vast majority of the Lombaxes' own population as I don't think an entire race can keep a secret like this.
In the eyes of every other race, however, it would have appeared as if the Lombaxes possessed what amounted to a galactic-level, nuclear bomb/weapon of mass destruction. Just as the nuclear bomb caused a cold war in real-life, a war in which both sides were poised to utterly annihilate each other, a similar thing happened in Polaris. When the Lombaxes refused to divulge or share information about their secret super-weapon, most of the other races saw this as the Lombaxes' attempt to garner territory and power in the wake of the Cragmite defeat.
Any move by the Lombaxes to try and fight off the numerous new evil factions was viewed with great suspicion by other races. The Terachnoids especially did not trust the Lombaxes as they were supremely jealous of Lombax technology. After all, Lombaxes were skilled as well as brilliant. Their cleverness and imagination trumped the Terachnoids' more powerful, but linear thinking and being the smartest race was all the Terachnoids had going for them.
This explains why the Lombaxes didn't cleanup the galaxy, but there are reasons for the other races as well. The Kerchu were and are very territorial. They protect their lands so violently that even though they are inherently a 'good' race, they still attack Ratchet without a second thought whenever he comes across them in the game. This means they were extremely unlikely to work well with other races.
The Markazians are the diplomatic race of Polaris. They are deeply interested in learning about and persevering other races' culture. They choose to fight with words rather than guns. This proves to be a problem, however, when everyone else brings guns to the debate chamber.
The Terachnoids' method of fighting can be summed up with one look at their home planet of Terachnos, with its giant planetary shield that keeps out any intruders (at least any that don't have a standard ship-mounted grapple tether).
The rest of the races, such as the Fongoids, the Tharpods, the Vulards, etc. never really had any chance to begin with. This is why, in my humble, headcanon opinion, that even during Alister and Kaden's time, Polaris was a dangerous place.
I also have a theory that the Lombaxes had a relatively close relationship with the Kerchu. I believe this is because they are both one of the few, fur-covered, sentient races in the galaxy. My evidence is that there is a defunct, Lombax research facility in Kerchu territory on Sargasso (which I admit might have just been there before the Kerchu moved in) as well as the fact that the Kerchu guarded the Dimensionator. This may have just been a favor for Max Apogee, but I chose to believe there is more to it.
* I have heard rumors, and I know it's written on the Ratchet and Clank Wikipedia site, that the Robot Space Pirates were built by Tachyon to collect material for his secret army. If anyone would like to refute me, they can and I'd appreciate the Private Message, but I don't remember this particular piece of canon ever happening in the games or other media. Because of things like the long history of the different pirate captains, Darkwater's famous obsession with the Zoni, and the fact that Slag doesn't turn the Dimensionator over to Tachyon, I chose to believe that Tachyon did 'not' build the Space Pirates. If there is any truth to this rumor, I would say either Tachyon made a deal with the pirates in the past or even built a crew of robots that masqueraded as Space Pirates.
Real-life Objects In Ratchet and Clank
Anyone who's played through even the first Ratchet and Clank game will notice certain things that exist in this fictional universe are directly and unapologetically ripped from real-life.
The general assumption is that the Ratchet and Clank universe is one where planet earth and humans do not exist and, despite what a few people say, I do not believe Captain Qwark is a human being, either. Typically, if a fictional universe does not include a variation of the real-life earth, then the creators will go to great lengths to ensure that their universe has their own versions of everything. I even exemplified this in my book by creating a creature I called a 'norig' which is essentially an alien cow. However, I later realized that Insomniac Games never really gave much concern to these general rules with many examples being displayed throughout their games.
Most notable, of course, are the animals used in the Morph-type weaponry. The Morph-O-Ray/Gold Morph-O-Ray, Sheepinator/Black Sheepinator, Quack-O-Ray/Quack-O-Blitzer, Boar-Zooka, Mootator/Armoogeddon, Pork Bomb Gun/Meat Mortar, The Transmorpher device (which should have been 'The Penguinade' in my opinion), Chimp-O-Matic/Chimpositron, Critter Strike/Elite Critter Strike, Morph Mine, and Winterizer/Blizz-O-Matic all turn enemies into Chickens, Sheep, Ducks, Boars, Cows, Pigs, Penguins, Chimpanzees, Baby T-rexes, Bunnies, and Snowmen respectively.
All of these are animals/things that exist in real-life and have not been redesigned to be some form of 'alien' version that would better fit an alternate universe. The snowmen I wouldn't call unusual in this situation, but most of them were made with some form of Candy-cane as well. Added to this is also the mutant squirrels from Going Commando.
This is also followed up with situations where other real-life objects have been used. I haven't kept a detailed record of them all, but off the top of my head there are several references to pizza, prunes, bananas, meatloaf, and bratwurst (ironically almost all of these references were mentioned by, or relative to, Captain Qwark).
Due to these numerous references, and in my ideals of keeping with the tone of the story, I too will ignore this issue whenever and wherever it appears. One example where I've taken this liberty is with a description of instrument sounds. There is a scene in the story where different sounds are compared to several real-life instruments, but typically, I should have created 'alien' versions of these instruments. However, that would be an incredible hassle with no real gain in the immersive value of the story, so I didn't.
My 'Tick' Marks - I have a few writing conventions that I'd like to describe beforehand:
"Whenever I put something in double quotations, it is dialogue and is being said out loud," the author explained.
Every piece of dialogue my characters say out loud is in double quotes and (as far as I remember) I don't put anything else in double quotes.
'Single quotes' are used more freely with multiple functions. Typically in literature, they are only used when quoting something within a quote. I do this on occasion, but my most common use of the single quote is for emphasis.
In most cases, in order to show that a particular word or phrase is being emphasized, a writer will embolden it, WRITE IN ALL CAPS, or use italics. First off, has had many issues with keeping my formatting in the past. They (understandably) don't allow many unique formats or fonts to be published with a story and as of my writing this intro, DocX files ( 's inter-user transferable document system) still won't save bold or italic formatting, so I've naturally tried to steer away from using formatting to confer meaning as much as possible.
I also don't like to use capitalized or bolded words because I have a tendency, when I read, to jump to things that are out of place. When I'm reading a paragraph and I see an all caps or bolded word which are several lines ahead in my peripheral, I often accidentally read those words too soon. This is made compoundedly worse by the fact that things which are capitalized or bolded are often the words that divulge some shocking revelation or twist and so it decreases, if not ruins, the enjoyment of my reading experience. This is likely a problem few, if any besides me, actually have, but... since it's my book, my issues are everyone's issues.
I will also use 'single quotes along with italics' to represent direct dialogue said through thought. My typical voiced dialogue usually looks like this: "Blah blah blah," he said.
Explanations of thoughts and feelings are often spoken from the narrator's observational perspective.
You will see direct thought quotes like this: 'Blah blah blah,' he thought.
I use this format because, with my fear of 's italic removing, I figured that even if this formatting were gone, the context and single quotes would be enough to explain what was happening without breaking the story flow.
Finally
That's all I have for this 'manual on how to read this freaking book'. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. And please, don't hesitate to message me or write a review about any thoughts you have while reading, whether positive or negative. I'm always eager to talk with fans, so don't be shy.
I would especially like to hear about any spelling mistakes or plot holes in my story. I try to keep everything as tight as possible, but this book has taken me over five years to finish completely and is several hundred thousand words long. It's hard to keep everything straight sometimes. Also, the conversion of my document files onto FanFiction doesn't always translate perfectly, so some mistakes might just be technical glitch that I'd love to rectify.
I guarantee that if you send me a Private Message, I will respond to it and I respond to most of the reviews written as well. I've yet to come across feedback that I didn't enjoy hearing.*
*There is one exception to this. Somebody once wrote a review as a guest under the name "Meep" and the only words written in the review itself were "Meep." I choose to believe that this person meant they enjoyed the chapter, but did not know how to express it, or that this is a cultural reference that I do not understand. Regardless, I chose to delete the review as it seemed out of place.