On a Backwater Planet, a Commander Builds a Metal Extractor is a fanfic by Glitchrr36, and is one of the many Commander Self-Insert fanfics to have emerged since the writing of Commander.
The name says it all: after finding himself in the body of a Planetary Annihilation commander, Glitch begins setting up a base before going across the multiverse to acquire new technologies and make the multiverse a better place... well, at least the first part is true. Glitch isn't exactly all there in the head.
Due to violating both the Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity codes of conduct, the story was closed, but the author has since negotiated with the Spacebattles moderation team to get it reopened after rewriting the sections deemed most objectionable.
Spacebattles Link
. Sufficient Velocity Link.
On a Backwater Planet, a Commander Builds a Metal Extractor provides examples of:
- Back from the Dead: The entire story was closed down for several months, then reopened on Spacebattles.
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Crosses the Line Twice: Practically EVERTHING that Glitch does. - Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Glitch isn't exactly all there.
- Deconstruction: Of Commanders as a whole: giving someone practically unlimited power to alter the destinies of entire universes could easily drive them off the deep end.
- Eldritch Abomination: Glitch, to an extent, after he more or less eats the entities.
- Fix Fic: Glitch tries to fix all of the wrongs he comes across, but whether or not he is successful, or even fixing them correctly, is up to debate.
- Internal Reveal: Glitch casually reveal to Cauldron about the threat posed by Zion from reading Worm while making jabs at Cauldron's canonical actions.
- Nominal Hero: It's very hard to call Glitch anything else, as he casually breaks the Trio's bones (which is noted In-Universe to be a crime since he attacked without provocation, even if the girls deserved it), render's Bonesaw a vegetable, and putting Jack Slash on a one way trip to a star that will take 131 thousand and eight years to complete. Turned down post retcon (with most of those events being what was retconned), though still present to some degree.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: What Glitch does to Bonesaw before the retcons.
- Retcon: Due to the infractions, most of the more...questionable sections were rewritten to be significantly less horrible to get permission to reopen the fic.
- Save the Villain: Defied by Glitch, who will gladly kill off villains when necessary (often violently).
- Sociopathic Hero: Glitch, in a nutshell. While he does a lot of things to help others, he's also very obviously insane.
- Tested on Humans: Glitch makes the Neo-Nazi Kaiser as his first test subject to learn how Shards work. His research involved flooding Kaiser's had with construction nanobots via a tiny wormhole in his Corona Pollentia. Kaiser ends up with a few seizures while Glitch found a way in simulating a Shard's powers.
- Troll: Glitch again. When he gets an infraction on Parahumans Online for (anonymously) justifying his own actions, he promptly removes it and mocks the mod (who just happens to be Dragon.
