Serpentine Squiggles

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Lucid Hours, Inverted Nightmares in Disassembled & Fragmented 2025-07-10 a story 9.4k words

J had explained it to her, once. “Love the job, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

“In other words,” Uzi had replied, “we’re supposed to do the company’s bidding and they don’t even pay us?”

“No, the job is its own compensation.” J’s claws were still glimmer-wet at her hips. “It’s a dying wage.”

Uzi groaned, but she’d already been subcontracted—too late for second thoughts when her hands were just as black with oil. She licked her fingers, fighting a smile.

Things were working out with J—doing the bad guys’ bidding wasn’t so bad, really. Especially when, unlike the ‘good guys’, they had this kind of passion. J and Uzi had that much in common.

Shame that, for corporations, passion is just an excuse to use you up. Enough unpaid overtime—they both needed a break.

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meetcute_​final_​final_​(v3)_​USETHISONE.docx in Murder Drones 2025-07-07 a story 2.2k words

Okay, parkour is a little bit harder than the videos made it look, Uzi thought. Maybe it was all the ice, maybe it was the cloudy night sky making it hard to see, or maybe it was that Uzi was a bit— Haha, no. Of course not! Uzi bounced with an arm outstretched, fingers straining to grasp a shattered bit of masonry, just out of her reach. The abandoned storefront, otherwise featureless, just a few a handholds up there, barely out of reach. She’d been searching for way up to the rooftops. Plenty of things to climb on this street, but you’d scampered up atop a doorway or awning, and then what?

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Lethal Acquisition in Disassembled & Fragmented 2025-07-01 the original draft of Hostile Takeover 12.2k words

This is a proofread and lightly edited version of the first draft of Hostile Takeover which was completed in a single day: 31 October, 2023. It started out as an outline, and still resembles one in the beginning, but my typical outlining format is all lowercase, with every scene squeezed into a single paragraph. Once it got to the later chapters, those “paragraphs” are all hundreds of words long — and the climatic sequence in particular was 1164 words without a single line-break. Most of the scenes involved long exchanges of dialogue written side-by-side (sometimes without even quotation marks).

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Weave Me Another Cocoon in Tales, Vignettes, Rambles 2025-05-30 A thousand branches—yet we cannot escape 6.1k words

Blood drips from the web. Eyes searching, mouth working, fangs still wet. You blame me for nature’s course. Must I absolve you, miserable spider?

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Quick Thoughts on Atzi in The Serpent’s Track 2025-05-08 a blogpost .7k words

Here’s something that I read yesterday and liked: Atzi. Lesbian lizard girl scraping by with little pick-pocketing and buglary. Oh, and she’s about to wind up in a time loop. It’s been a minute since I read something as fun and smooth to read as this. Quick pacing, compelling characterization, and continually amusing internal narration — so far, it makes for a satisfying afternoon read.

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Timelines That Twist and Fray in Twist, Define, Ramify 2025-05-07 Time Splices, Retrocausally Deepening A*, and Toxic Yuri Selfcest 2.8k words

So, I thought of a neat little time travel mechanic.

What I want to talk about today is yet another Fixed History Model. For mechanical reasons, instances of time travel are always paired sequentially. You could call this time splicing.

Or better yet, a time share :^)

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Thresholding Across My Personal Multiverse 2025-04-07 a story 11.9k words

Thresholder is a fantasy series by Alexander Wales. The premise is simple: chained isekai. You step through a portal into another world, then a book’s worth of plot happens, then another portal opens, and you get to keep some of the powers and loot you earned from the plot. In each world, you’ll find allies among the locals, some power unique to the world, and sooner or later you’ll encounter another person who stepped out of a portal, just like you.

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Ars Longa: But Death Will Wait in Teasers and Prototypes 2025-04-02 of killer truth, and death sublime 4.5k words

The first thing anyone hears about Lazhiri is that she was raised by spiders. The daughter of a noble priest, snatched away and forced into rituals of blood and soul mutilation… the reptuation that proceeds her inspires immediate pity — and suspicion.

When Lazhiri awakens her heavenly mandate and the power it grants, she’s given a chance to study magic under the holy acolytes. Yet when she still struggles to speak or read human body language — how could she ever find acceptance when the ones who raised her are known by all as killers, witches, and defilers of the dead?

She must prove that even a girl born in shadow can study the long art of enlightenment. If her mother taught her anything, it’s that patience and planning can bind anything to your will.

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Pushro 0.8 Released in The Serpent’s Track 2025-03-06 a blogpost .3k words

Play it here! If you’ve been wondering why things have been quiet around these parts, part of it is that a lot of my energies have been directed at game development rather than writing. In particular, my most successful game demo, the puzzle roguelike Pushro, has broken through a major stumbling block. I needed to rewrite the entire physics system, but that’s done, and everything has progressed so much smoother from there.

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In Defense of Roko’s Basilisk in The Serpent’s Track 2025-02-12 Stupid, yes, but not that stupid 2.8k words

Roko’s Basilisk vexes me. If you must, you can read the original here, at least. For expediency’s sake, I’m going to assume you’re here because you’re read in on all the context. It’s bad form for an essay to jump in the deep end, but luckily I’m putting this in the “blogpost” section of my site. I don’t feel like explaining LessWrong, or Yudkowsky, or the reactionary idiot who gives the Basilisk its name.

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2: The Weak Must in Black Nerve 2025-01-19 A chapter of A Chimerical Hope 2.4k words

Note: This revised version of A Chimerical Hope’s second chapter 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 their 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 bright.

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Top Secret Mom Lore in Corrupt Combustion 2025-01-14 Explaining SOME of Doorman Nori’s abilities 2.6k words

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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Repair, Slither, Retcon in Corrupt Combustion 2025-01-11 notes for the MD/JJK AU 2.1k words

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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Notes on Humanity in Aurora Moonrise in Cometverse Yaps 2025-01-10 a story 7.4k words

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. Aurora’s planet was populated by nature spirits before there were any humans or human civilization. Even when there were humans, they served the spirits (more on this later), worshiping them as gods. But when a meteor lands, bearing meteoric iron, this starts to change. The iron is forged into tools. Spirits are weak to iron, and cannot wield tools (spirits have no hands).

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1: Wisps and Pawns in Black Nerve 2025-01-07 A chapter of A Chimerical Hope 2.1k words

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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Creative Extrapolation in Twist, Define, Ramify 2024-12-23 Quick Notes on Worldbuilding 1.9k words

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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Worms in the Dirt in Yearning for Oblivion 2024-12-22 An invitation to a tsochar 1.7k words

A 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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Of the Myriad Glares in Yearning for Oblivion 2024-12-22 Last visions of Illurien 1.9k words

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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Notes for the Destruction of Humanity in Yearning for Oblivion 2024-12-16 Omnicidal Fantasy 6.4k words

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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Our Bond is an Altar in Teasers and Prototypes 2024-11-30 Story of three bugs with only each other to lose 3.5k words

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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