Artist, engineer, designer and visionary - [BAD STAR] (or [ ], as she came to be known) was one of the most notorious creative personalities ever to set foot on the Bastion stage. Yet the stories that remain are all in fragments. Follow her early career as a stylist/designer, and you'll find splendour: innovations in glamour, and the groundbreaking use of Wasteland-derived materials, and beneath it all, an almost painful desire for transcendence - a delicate exploration of the boundaries between human, Monster and machine. Yet, within this, there are only flashes of the woman she would come to be.
There is, of course, the famously-titled 'Fanfic Beam': a series of light-based codes that suffused the skull of Metrovore with tens of dozens of the city's most successful fanworks, in addition to a number of popular stories from the Wasteland. This was nothing less than Bastion fragmented: proof of culture, in pieces - the totality of the written works that made up who we were. Even then, it seems clear that she was attempting to express something monumental - some aspect of literary culture that was greater than the sum of its parts, and somehow added up to nothing less than Bastion's identity. The fact that it worked was almost beside the point: it was the sheer, unrelenting ambition that carried it. The image of [BAD STAR], winged by light and fighting to express the inexpressible - to express an entire city - was one that Fandom would not soon forget.
Then, we come to Bastion: A Storybook - and, indeed, what is that if not a collection of fragments. Here, however, she dug still deeper, accessing Bastion's unremembered history in order to gift us with something even greater than what she had given us before: a founding myth. In the Storybook, the Moon falls, and civilisation crumbles. Out of the ashes rises a city that is no mere domicile, but also an idea: a symbol that stands for humanity, Monstrosity, culture and transcendence in turn. The central thesis is that in order for humanity to thrive, the Arena - or something akin to it - is not a luxury, but a necessity. It is something to rally around; it is the focal point of art; it inspires love, friendship and hatred all in quick succession. With a deft artistic touch, [BAD STAR] touched upon the very core of what it means to be a citizen of Bastion.
Some criticise her work as too authoritarian: everywhere one turns, her stories are full of wise mentor figures, quasi-divine mechanical guides, and fairy godmothers. Others, however, claim that this too is a necessity: a city as grounded in stories as Bastion requires a narrator.
— From Your City Will Rise: The [BAD STAR] Legacy, by Cloud
—
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences
Archive Warnings: None
Category: Multi
Fandom: Bastion: A Storybook
Relationship: Magnet/Pulsar, Magnetar, Moon/Reader (platonic)
Characters: Magnet, Pulsar, a whole bunch of others
Additional Tags: hurt/comfort, resolved sexual tension, political thoughts, othering of monsters, arena corruption, pulsar is not as subtle as he thinks he is
Title: We'll See How Things Play Out by Silicone
Summary: Magnet knows that their professional relationship with the Creative Executive will only last as long as they are able to play their role as Vice Executive without making a mistake. Any sign of weakness, and the ambitious Pulsar will make his move. But what happens when they mess up completely? Is Magnet's career over - or will they receive help from an unexpected source?
—
“I told you, darling, I'm done with talking about [BAD STAR]. No, not me - her. It's over and done with. Kaput. Cliche. Reread my memoirs if you're so desperate to hear about the woman who made me - today is about what I make.
“Yes, I know she told me to go on and make things, but that's not the -
“Win? No! She cheated! That was her thing - surely you must know that: if she lost, she'd only go and change the nature of the game itself, and that's - no, not clever, abominable, if you must know -”
— {ASTER DIS} (otherwise known as [BAD STAR]), declining to comment any further on the matter of her former nemesis
—
In light of it all (hah!), the responsibility she bequeathed to me was enormous. Not only did she tell me that the city's entire aesthetic legacy lay in my hands - she hinted that, in pursuing this, I would be forever losing the battle of wits between us, forever at the mercy of her final creative imperative.
And yet, like a fool, I did it anyway. She was very good at that.
— The [BAD STAR] I Knew, by {ASTER DIS}
