Literature / The Future Is Also A Memory

"The first desire is to feel that one is Desired, not just wanted but preferred."

— JD Mcclatchy, THE DIALOGUE OF DESIRE AND GUILT

The Future Is Also A Memory (often referred to as simply TFIAAM) is an ongoing work of original web fiction written by neocities user vocalintel, posted on their website of the same name. Set after the closing acts of a centuries-long interstellar war between the Democratic Alliance of Sapient Species and the Starka Empire, it follows the budding relationship between two key figures from opposing sides of the conflict: the carefree DASS Commodore General William Masterson, and the taciturn Starka crown prince, Nova, who is visiting the DASS's territories on a diplomacy tour.

Though it updates with relative frequency (if not always consistently) pages are often short, dialogue-heavy, and prone to significant Mood Whiplash. It is not divided up into chapters, but rather is listed as having arcs and sub-arcs on the main index page; in the story itself, these divisions are not noticeable at all. After a relatively simple opening act establishing the setting, it branches off into complicated webs of non-chronological storytelling unraveling the psychological states of its lead characters.

Yeah, it's one of those.

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This show provides examples of:

• Alternate Character Reading: Kirie's name is Japanese, but is only ever shown in English; how it's actually meant to be written is completely up to audience interpretation.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: Nova's father. For now.
• A Mistake Is Born: Irdat's attitude towards Nova. She's apparently never shown him any maternal affection.
• Anachronic Order: Though the early parts of the story are entirely chronological, it begins relying on flashback sequences with increasing intensity in order to shed light on why the characters are the way they are in the present.
• Artistic License – Military: Well, it is set thousands of years in the future.
• Big Brother Attraction: Nova develops a severe complex towards Ifrit as a result of being abused and neglected by his other family members for years, though it's completely unreciprocated. The eventual turnout of this unfortunate crush scars him for years to come and he has traumatic nightmares about it.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Despite being mostly humanoid, Starka reproductive biology is at least referenced as being different.
• Boring, but Practical: Despite seeming glaringly anachronistic, both the Starka Empire and the DASS use paper in their respective administrative sectors; the simple reason being that it's better to have a physical copy of something than a electronic database that could be hacked or deleted at any time.
• Cast Full of Gay: The number of canonically straight characters can be counted on one hand.
• Cat Folk: The Starka are extremely catlike and humanoid.
• Coming Straight Story: William makes Prima admit to being straight while teasing him about his fan club.
• Covered with Scars: William's entire body, besides his hands and face, is covered in scars. He keeps them covered up and develops paranoia about others seeing them.
• Duels Decide Everything: Starka are extremely fond of this trope in general, though they tend to follow Victory by First Blood rules and rarely escalate to a Duel to the Death.
• Empty Shell: Lesa before she comes to stay on the Theologica.
• Evil Chancellor: Mordau qualifies as a Morally Ambiguous Chancellor at best; his relationship with Nova is rocky for a reason.
• Evil Matriarch: Irdat is practically the trope codifier for this. She used to lock Nova in a cage for misbehaving, and Prima confirms that she's continued to do so with their other siblings.
• Field Promotion: How William worked his way up to Commodore General so fast; overlaps slightly with You Are in Command Now, because he was the highest ranked officer left alive after the Technologica was attacked near Ferni-1a and the only one willing to take control of the situation.
• Flashback Nightmare: Both Nova and William have frequent nightmares about their pasts; both events that occurred during their time in the war and beforehand.
• Foe Romance Subtext: TFIAAM was written because of this trope.
• Gender Rarity Value: There are far fewer Starka women than there are men.
• Healing Factor: All Starka have some degree of this, though they can still be killed and suffer from extreme injuries.
• Heir Club for Men: Nova's seemingly endless parade of brothers are all technically eligible to become crown prince; if they're able to defeat him in a duel, at least.
• Hello, Sailor!: Subverted, as there are just as many women in the DASS's fleets as there are men. Not to mention the aliens that come in both genders and multiple others.
• Heroic BSoD: William after the Technologica is destroyed and Kirie's father, Commodore General Honda, dies.
• Honest Advisor: Kirie, and to a lesser degree, Mordau. Hannan is a bizarre subversion of this; despite being a smug Deadpan Snarker and generally unpleasant, she doesn't question Nova's decisions or undermine his actual authority.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: William's intense, borderline obsessive Survivor Guilt over Robert Honda's death and Kirie losing her arm is one of his primary motivations as a character.
• Improbable Age: William is in charge of an entire fleet at 22, and ended a war at 17. To be fair, he's apparently a strategic mastermind.
• Interspecies Romance: TFIAAM revolves around it.
• Iron Lady: TFIAAM is full of these; you could count the number of female characters who aren't Iron Ladies on one hand, and over half of them are the cadets in Prima's fan club. A potential case of Author Appeal.
• Jerkass Has a Point: General Rosenthal and Pollianna Morey both display an attitude of Fantastic Racism towards Starka, but their behavior can be considered surprisingly civil given that a war spanning their entire lives ended only five years ago. Both of them lost family and friends to the Starka Empire.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: When he discovers that Vivan had attempted to hurt Nova while he was away, Ifrit apparently does something so awful to him that Vivan never goes anywhere near Nova again. He's also implied to have threatened Diurn in a similar fashion at some point.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Kirie has long hair (later cut to a bob) and often wears dresses or at least skirts.
• Little Bit Beastly: The Starka are based off of cats and have cat ears, tails, and retractable claws. They're also much taller than humans.
• Mark of Shame: Diurn's neck scar from his duel with Nova, and later the Glasgow Grin he receives from William.
• Mental Health Recovery Arc: The whole work seems to be a slowburn version of this, though whether that recovery is actually going well has yet to be seen.
• Mistaken for Gay: It's easy for first-time readers to initially mistake Lesa for a lesbian. He's not.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ifrit is stated to have crossed this during the war and is consistently referred to as 'having committed every war crime imaginable', though we're spared any details. Overlaps with Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse; his desperation to prove that he's worthy of Irdat's affection seems to make her dislike him even more, if anything.
• Multicultural Alien Planet: Both Siluria and Larananda-3 are referenced as having multiple cultures and ethnic groups.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Ifrit is named after a demon, and he lives up to his reputation.
• No Antagonist: Despite a number of lesser antagonistic characters, the story doesn't have an over-arching Big Bad.
• No Hero to His Valet: While William is viewed as a great war hero by most of the DASS, this perspective is rarely seen in the work itself as it focuses on his closer relationships outside of his work. Kirie especially doesn't really care that he's several ranks above her in the hierarchy; he's still the errant and overly-dependent kid she's always picked up the slack for.
• No Woman's Land: The Starka Empire is implied to have been this before the DASS's victory led to intense women's rights reforms.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Though initially portrayed as ditzy and somewhat incompetent, William is revealed to be responsible for the DASS winning the war somewhat early on. It's not entirely clear how much of his supposed cluelessness is actually an act.
• Pragmatic Hero: William has made it clear on several occasions that he doesn't have a very firm grip on morality and will do whatever it takes to get something done if it's necessary.
• Prosthetic Limb Reveal: Kirie is revealed to have a prosthetic arm.
• Proud Warrior Race: The Starka play off of the familiarity of this trope, though they don't fit entirely into it.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Because of William's maverick nature, he's often reigned in or directed by other characters, principally General Dawson.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Nova is specifically on his diplomacy tour to show that he supports upholding peace with the DASS when he becomes emperor, but on a personal basis is often standoffish, cynical, and cold.
• Royally Screwed Up: The Starka royal family to an extreme degree. Most of them can't so much as look at each other without getting into a fight.
• Sassy Secretary: Overlapping with Servile Snarker, though Kirie isn't either a secretary or a servant. She does a lot of menial work for William, and doesn't mind telling him when he's being lazy or irresponsible.
• Science Fiction: On the very soft side of the scale, overlapping heavily with Military Science Fiction.
• Sexy Cat Person: Nova.
• Sexy Man, Instant Harem: Prima gets a fan club within a week of coming back to the Theologica after his transition.
• Shrinking Violet: Lesa is introduced as this. That changes.
• Smash Cut: Because of the shortness of the pages and their sometimes abrupt endings, there are many scene changes that can come across as jarring; William's nightmares almost all involve this trope. This overlaps heavily with the sense of Mood Whiplash noted in the description to great effect.
• Smug Snake: Hannan qualifies as this.
• Space Is an Ocean: To the point that it's encoded in all of the setting's main combat philosophies.
• Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: William is the Admiral General of the DASS's 13th Fleet, and helms its flagship, the Theologica. Other DASS fleets are occasionally referenced.
• Stepford Smiler: Take a shot every time it's mentioned that William is smiling. He didn't even know what a smile was until he was almost ten years old, and had to teach himself how to.
• Subordinate Excuse: Kaama to Nova, with a heavy dose of Unequal Pairing. It's unsurprising that their relationship in the present is strained and bitter.
• Sugary Malice: William is almost always smiling. You're completely, completely fucked if he isn't.
• Switching P.O.V.: Even though the entire work is in third person, the viewpoint switches between William, Nova, and after his introduction, Prima.
• The Captain: Though he only held this title for two or three actual battles, William serves this purpose narratively. Unlike other examples of the trope, though, he does get drowned in the endless stacks of paperwork his position comes with.
• The Casanova: Prima is so popular with the women on the Theologica that he has his own fanclub.
• There Are No Therapists: A lot of the deeper issues in the plot could be resolved if the Theologica had a therapist on staff.
• The Twink: William.
• The Un Favourite: Irdat towards Ifrit and later Nova.
• The Unfettered: When William sets his mind to something, there's no changing it.
• Trans Relationship Troubles: Prima's one-sided affections for Neda and inability to keep just one steady girlfriend.
• Trial by Combat: Lesa is subject to this in order to transition legally and begin presenting as male.
• Trolling Creator: The author's only response to genuine concerns from the readers is often a simple smiley face, and most of the art on the work's associated art page is joke redraws of memes. If you only looked at the fan content and meta, it would almost be possible to mistake TFIAAM for some sort of comedy.
• Tsundere: Nova is of the Classic variety, to a stereotypical degree.
• Vast Bureaucracy: The DASS suffers from this almost to the point of active detriment; Nova points out how needlessly complicated he finds it on several occasions.
• Wanted a Son Instead: Irdat hates Nova because she wanted a daughter and got him instead.
• Working with the Ex: Both William and Nova are subjected to this at different points.
• Young and in Charge: Stheno Madoka is the CEO of his father's company despite only being in his mid-twenties.