Aliens: Bad Company
| Fanwork | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Aliens: Bad Company |
| Creator: | TheSailingRabbit, Denal Douglas |
| Date(s): | 2018- |
| Medium: | Digital writing |
| Fandom: | Alien (film series), Alien: Isolation |
| External Links: | Boreal Nightmare on ff.net (unavailable); Fan Site;YouTube Channel |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Overview
The series takes place in a canon divergence AU, with a massive part of the current and pre-Prometheus extended universe erased and replaced. It follows the Marines from Aliens, but has a couple of stories that go back into time of Alien: Isolation to focus on other characters that are connected to the Marines. The majority of the series is first-person from the perspective of Pvt. Mark Drake, written in a journal format. Several other stories are third-person, from the perspectives of other Marines. It primarily takes place before and after Aliens, and is a character-driven psychological drama with themes of mental illness, family, relationships, and overcoming one's past.
History and Inspiration
The original first book in the series, Boreal Nightmare, was written and published to FanFiction.net in February 2018. TheSailingRabbit was new to the Alien fandom at the time, and felt there was a need for more fan material for Drake, seeing him as an underrated character. She did not intend to write more for Alien, until feedback started coming in for Boreal Nightmare. The series primarily focused on Drake until a three-chapter short from Pvt. Jenette Vasquez's perspective was published in late 2018. Shortly afterward, a full novel from Cpl. Dwayne Hicks's perspective was published, kicking off a trend of third-person spinoff novels that focus on other characters.
Originally, Drake's story was going to end with the film Aliens, as he dies in the movie. Several frequent readers convinced Rabbit to write an alternate version of the movie where Drake survives, and a story where Drake survives was planned, though it was definitely going to be dark and depressing given every other character who dies in the film would die in the book. One reader proposed an entirely different scenario where none of the characters die, and that became Ice Star, the novel that birthed the "Bad Company"-verse.
Since the original version of Ice Star was published, the series became more open to possibilities since none of the characters die and could live full lives. It also broke away from official Alien canon, ignoring Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant, keeping only the first two movies and Alien: Isolation.
The series kept to the Aliens era until Rabbit proposed a fan theory that Scott Gorman is related to Isolation's Jethro Waits. Since then, several stories taking place in the Isolation era have been published, focusing primarily on Waits.
SailingRabbit and her husband created a WordPress site in late February of 2021 to host the written books and their audio versions, as well as general information about characters and technology. A podcast about the series and the Alien fandom as a whole has been released, hosted on multiple platforms.[1]
Fan Reactions
As of 2024, the original fic was no longer available on fanfiction.net, the only Twitter mentions were by a marketing account that was promoting it, and searching google for "Aliens: Bad Company" yielded only ten webpages mentioning it.
In 2019 two fan groups each made audio dramas based on Boreal Nightmare.[2][3]