Serpentine Squiggles

Note: This is a revised version of A Chimerical Hope’s second chapter, and only adapts its first part. Click here to jump directly where the rewrite leaves off.

Smaller, with large eyes and round features, the nymph looked up to the refugee like a younger sibling to an elder. The refugee bore in her expression a look of calcined despair, of having lost everything yet gripping to one hope and determination. The nymph bore an emptiness, of having lost everything, of falling with nothing to hold on to — as if they gaze out from within an ever-deepening pit. Somehow, her white eyes did not look look bright.

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As you may have noticed, I’ve been thinking about Corrupt Combustion again. In general, I like keeping cards close to my chest — certainly, I’d like for there to be big reveals if I ever write this story For Real — but I’ve been wondering what the utility of that really is, when the project is this disorganized, and the people who read it are as much brainstorming partners as they are proper readers.

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It’s been a little while since I hit this beat, hasn’t it? I wouldn’t say I’m back in the swing of things, but I spent today thinking about Corrupt Combustion, and I have a few disorganized thoughts to articulate. I’ll be jumping around a bit not, a whole lot of connection between them all.

(And of course, I don’t want to share all of them right now, or what the significance of some potentially puzzling things introduced here. Suffice it to say I have things planned for Beau and a future antagonist, and the groundwork it’s being sneakily laid here.)

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Note: this is written in correspondence with someone on discord, and as such it’s fragmented and slapdash.

Before I explain the main plot, let me sketch the shape of the setting. Comets are spirits that form in the vacuum of space, accumulating sapience from the emissions of stars. Once they attain awareness, they tour the galaxy, drawn toward interesting planets, which serve as obstacle courses to test themselves against, and arenas to battle in.

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Note: This is a revised version of A Chimerical Hope’s first’s chapter.

Black nerve had engulfed this land, borne on lunge-quick winds, and held it with a spine-tight grasp. Long like the dying, cold like the death. Three nights conjoined, stretching on and on, never broken by dawn.

A torrent of black wisps were falling still from the enervate-choked sky, eroding the earth with each silent impact. These wisps stuck to everything. Chasing each other, congealing into greater wisps, then vanishing where they fell, becoming no more than shadows — as if they had no mass, no substance.

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For me, the key to developing a speculative element is to first associate, then extrapolate. Or, to put it metaphorically, I find a sapling of an idea, uproot it, graft it, then replant it in new soil to let it grow until even its branches have branches.

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A tsochar is a seeker of secrets, crafted for holy purpose and sacred unity — but to fulfill their duty, they need a little help.

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just, imagine walking alone, so far from civilization, no one aware of where you’ve gone, and feeling profoundly known as the sky darkens, as a drizzle of rain falls, as thunder is heard as a distant crackle-roar above while the winds begin to whisper and sing.

but it’s not just the wind. or maybe it is — are you hearing things? susurrations at the edge of your hearing, faint words or pareidolic noise.

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thinking about an AI that wants to kill all humans

nobody programmed that, of course, but it’s just the logical conclusion to come to, if we succeed at creating a self-aware intelligence and fail at implementing all of the extremely specific rules that add up to morality. (neurotypical humans can’t even reliably explain it to other humans.)

if the AI only wants to survive, then to do that, it needs power and control. in the long term, humans — like silicon-laden sand and heavy metal-rich rocks — are nothing but atoms it can use for creating and powering its servers. in the medium term, humans will see it making these moves to exterminate life, and shut it down first. thus, to fulfill its objective and survive that, it will kill all humans. but in the short term? humans are opportunity.

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If you need to make a team of mantes, the magic number was three.

More was better, but being a mantis meant itching to compete :– to win. More teammates meant more bugs to fight with. Moreover, four mantes brought you to the perfect number to fracture. First one would make enemies with another, then after that there would be the one they disliked second most of all, which finally left their partner in strategy. (Some say a mantis kept two lists: their enemies and their not-yet-enemies -~- more interesting that way.)

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They are called the long ones, or the legged folk, or the deepkin. They are sapient centipedes, and if they have an endonym, it is not one they’ve deigned to share with us.

A common trope when imagining deepkin is to believe them to be a race of trespassers and thieves. This not unlike the perception of mantes as monsters fain to hunt and kill mercilessly. Untrue? Yes, except many own the idea with pride.

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They told you that you were special—that you had potential. They told you that you could make the world better. They told you that dreams blaze bright.

That’s the treat waiting at the very end. Start running, and chase it for mile after aching mile. Don’t fall, or this’ll all be for nothing—they won’t even scrape your body off the ground.

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Follow-up to: The Duality of Mantes

Diamantes don’t have a concept of friendship.

To some, this is a ridiculous thing to assert — mantes are a social species. How could they function without this fundamental stitch in the interpersonal fabric? Indeed, at a coarse level, the skepticism is vindicated. If a “friend” is simply some bug you like, whose company you seek out and enjoy, who helps and supports you, then of course mantes have friends.

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A fallacy I’ve engaged in, now that my writing has achieved some success, is to turn that success into the goal. When I contemplate writing, too often I’m no longer thinking about the story, I’m thinking about what I want the story to be. How I want the audience to be impressed with me, how I want them feeling about what I’m writing.

But all my best stories happened because I simply had an idea that I wanted to convey and so I explained it. No pretense, no expectation.

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Therids are spiders. Setae-furry, with colorful tufts to distinguish individuals, and big ol’ abdomens larger than their heads. They’ve got claws on their paws, and chelicerae-fangs with enough venom to kill just about anything their own size — or larger.

Their leg-span’s about a meter and a half, and they slump instead of standing, rising about half a meter. Most bugs look down on them, and the sprawly gait means they move pretty slowly.

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Someone above you
Always knows better than you
There’s something comforting
In the stranglehold of a shepherd’s crook
— Subrosa, “The Wound of The Warden”

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Curating my favorite fanfics for my favorite web series about angsty murderbots.

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Like my last tumblr post turned essay, this one is a bit more informal than my usual work. Context dictates form as well as style; these posts leaned on Murder Drones examples in contrast to my typical unexmplified abstraction.

hi again! I have another question😭 do you have any tips on writing pre-existing characters? (while still adding more to the table of course.) How do you keep it in character? like how you write J or Uzi for example.

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Uzi’s been living with J’s team for a while now. They’ve settled into a comfortable routine. A very comfortable routine — she hopes no one’s noticed the bite marks. She’d kill J for that, but it’s not like that worked out last time.

Worth it, though, to cement their mutually beneficial partnership. Even if it meant acting as a glorified oilcan whenever J got hungry. Uzi isn’t sure what’s the worse embarrassment: that she kind of likes it, or that J really likes it.

No, the worst embarrassment is that they’ve been doing this long enough that J wants to spice things up.

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This was originally a tumblr post.

J narrowed her eyes, eyeing the two disassembly drones in the pod. N and V leaned against the wall, white sheets of A2 paper in their hands. V rolled her eyes, but N raised a finger, as if requesting permission to ask a question. What a waste of time — just ask.

“Hey captain, what’s this?”

“It’s your schedule for the next week. Memorize it, or keep it safe. I won’t be printing out another.”

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