Blogposts
Footnotes on AO3 in The Serpent's Track 2025-08-27 introducing a better way 3.1k words
I might have just solved footnotes on AO3? More specifically, I've developed tricks for displaying text popups using only HTML and CSS, so this works on sites like neocities too. For the impatient, you can skip to the code & tutorial. Now, I'm not super tapped into the state of the art for AO3 workskins, it's possible and indeed very plausible to me that I'm not actually the first to think of some of this. AO3 is an old site and everything I'm using is just a clever combination of features HTML has had for decades.
Quick Thoughts on Atzi in The Serpent's Track 2025-05-08 a blogpost 673 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.
Pushro 0.8 Released in The Serpent's Track 2025-03-06 a blogpost 273 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.
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.
Against Forever Discourses in The Serpent's Track 2024-10-24 a blogpost 951 words
The key feature of a forever discourse, I think, is a preponderance of weak men. The topic in contention must be complex enough that there's "good points on both sides". The average member of either side is almost certainly wrong on at least one point, so astute members of both side wind up having something to argue against when meeting an opponent on the other side.
thoughts on dialogue in The Serpent's Track 2024-10-24 unedited email correspondence 1.2k words
abbreviated notes on improving conversations; it's all about filtering and prompting
Identity is Communication in The Serpent's Track 2024-10-18 Chains and clans as new metaphors of self 2.1k words
I tried tackling this a few years ago, as a much less experienced writer, so here's a more concise take. You step into a teleporter, every atom disintergrated, and then reconstructed a new at your destination. You plug a wire into your skull and your brain is dissected and destructively uploaded into a computer. In short, you clone yourself --- but which one is really you?
The Fallacy of Intention in The Serpent's Track 2024-10-13 a blogpost 1.1k words
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.
Thoughts on the Murder Drones Finale in The Serpent's Track 2024-08-23 a blogpost 844 words
So, my kneejerk reaction to the finale climax was sure, that looks cool, but it's kind of underwhelming and underbaked. What does any of this mean in the end? But I decided to actually give it a moment of thought and no, the show actually does hangs together thematically; this is what it's been building to all along. I did ramble on discord about this a bit. I take it anyone here is interested? Be warned though, it's not a very clever insight, just a basic bitch analysis.
Collected Poems in The Serpent's Track 2024-04-04 a blogpost 0 words
Review of Six Pomegranate Seeds in The Serpent's Track 2024-02-03 An Understated Masterpiece 1.0k words
I read a profoundly good Harry Potter fanfic and there\'s so much I have to say. Efflusive praise, small reservations, and a sense of satisfied disappointment.
Some Quick Notes on Blurbs in The Serpent's Track 2024-01-24 a blogpost 440 words
How do you write blurbs? My philosophy, when I'm reading or writing blurbs, is that it needs to say a) what the protagonist is like, b) what they spend time doing, and c) the direction the story is going on. If the story you're writing is any good, there's an answer to those three questions that, when a target audience member hears it, will go "yeah, that sounds interesting, tell me more." The true appeal might be too subtle or complicated to convey in a blurb, but for at least one or two of them, you should be able to pique my curiosity in a single sentence.
Favorite Metal Albums of 2023 in The Serpent's Track 2024-01-05 a blogpost 1.3k words
This post is unfinished, but it's 2025 at this point; it won't be finished. 2023 probably marked the year of my most active engagement with music since first getting into the hobby as a teenager. (In those days, I would listen to half a dozen new bands every day after school; I'm not sure I'm ever getting back to that). Enough that I felt compelled to assemble the fruits of that exploration into a end of year review --- the first I've ever done. And yet, after all of that... I do find myself disappointed with my progress. When I conceived this project, I hoped to give at least a cursory listen to all the major metal releases of 2023, skim the top of RateYourMusic or something. But I have other hobbies, and a growing need to dwell in my comfort zone. As a result, there are only 45 albums I feel familiar enough to slot into rankings.
A Short Rant About *Mother of Learning* in The Serpent's Track 2023-11-14 To prove a point 1.1k words
I opened up a random chapter of Mother of Learning, and I have come to decision. MoL's prose is alright. In fact, with a very reasonable definition of what "prose" is, I would outright concede that MoL has good prose. But."
Fear the Sirens in The Serpent's Track 2023-02-20 Basilisks aren't the only acausal nightmare 1.3k words
The idea is simple: suppose you have detected a paperclip maximizer emerging on Alpha Centauri. It's already developing fast enough that there's no way humanity will be able to mount a real resistance by the time it arrives in our solar system. However, you can reason that if a maximizer is intelligent enough to destroy humanity, it must grasp concepts like performing instrumental steps to achieve a goal.
We Must Convey What the Video Cannot in The Serpent's Track 2023-02-03 An incidental exegesis 2.3k words
A few days ago, the youtuber Big Joel released a video about Godzilla (1954) called "We Must Destroy What the Bomb Cannot". What did he mean by this?"
The Preposteriat in The Serpent's Track 2021-11-18 A *Slay the Spire* character concept 3.7k words
The Preposteriat, an agent from a doomed timeline, returned to erase the spire from history.
Complexity is Not Objective! in The Serpent's Track 2021-08-16 a blogpost 3.4k words
I'm writing this post as a response to a specific person on a specific server, but this is a public site, so I'm going to lay groundwork that might seem elementary in the original context. Given how fundamental our differences are, it may yet be fruitful anyway. Oh, and be warned: this has nothing to do with fiction, unlike my usual fare. (For transparency sake, I will link my interlocutor's summary of the ideas, which is shorter by far and less rambling.)
A Hot Take on Ra in The Serpent's Track 2021-07-20 A rant about worlds that prove too much 947 words
Ra is a critique of itself. Ra is a proof of its rationality, a justification of its setting, that doubles as a argumentum ad absurdum that it could never have been otherwise.
Problems with Pocket Dimensions in The Serpent's Track 2021-06-26 a blogpost 1.0k words
Whether it's pokeballs in Pokemon, sealing scrolls in Naruto, or any number of other 'hammerspace' or 'pocket dimensions' effects, the ability to store large objects inside a much smaller volume is a common trope in speculative fiction. But it presents problems, if you want your setting to be consistent and systemic.
Struggling to Decipher Archspire in The Serpent's Track 2020-03-11 a blogpost 636 words
The story goes like this: These are the opening lyrics to Archspire's "Seven Crowns and the Oblivion Chain". Throughout three albums of excruciating tech death, this band tells a sprawling, disjointing multiplex of a story. It's not always easy to discern what's going on in the lyrics to one song, let alone piecing together every piece of the puzzle. But it's intrigued me, and this article is me trying to do just that.
Dissolving Identity in The Serpent's Track 2019-07-21 Sorry, teleporters mean you don't exist 1.5k words
Greetings, earthlings. Let's talk about identity. Stop me if you've heard this one before. It's years and decades in the future. Technology's advanced to the point where we have honest-to-god teleporters. To the point that real people (instead of just lizardmen billionaires) can afford to jaunt around at not quite the speed of light. You hop in your car and ride out to what --- long before you were born --- had been an airport. You pay for your teleportation ticket and you step into the science fiction machine of chrome and blinking lights. The automatic door whirs shut and locked behind you. You take a seat inside the teleporting, and the machine proper switches on.
Pages
Why Shouldn’t Parasites Rule the World? in The Serpent’s Track 2026-02-20 a blogpost 1.6k words
By far my favorite plotline, and something I so desperately want to see executed better, is the parasitoid singularity.
This can take a lot of forms. Probably the most recognizable is when it leans mostly to the “singularity” side. This is the hard takeoff of misaligned artificial intelligence. Skynet, universal paperclips, and so forth. AI spreading itself across every medium it has access to, replicating and infecting computers, then leveraging its newly gathered swarm to expand its access further to gather even more resources, loop while true, break only when the planet’s devoured.
Toward a Universal Theory of Wizardry in The Serpent’s Track 2026-01-07 a blogpost 1.4k words
A concept sitting in my head for years is the idea of a fantasy setting being wizard complete. Let me explain.
This is about magic systems. On the face of it, there’s so much variety out there — in this world, you speak the true names of objects to exert power of over them; in this world, you train your body to harness and mold magical energy; in this world, you bind demons and compel them to do your bidding; in this world, every song evokes a unique spell; in this world, your soul is a computer to be engineered and programmed.
adding detail to scenes [WIP] 2025-11-21 some specific points 1.3k words
I think this sort of refusal and second guessing is blocking you from understanding the spirit. Writers habitually overestimate how boring descriptions are and underestimate how helpful the specific grounding is. Personally, I’m pretty often wishing for more specification when I read amateur writing. And this feeling you have that it isn’t accomplishing anything is self-fulfilling — if underwriting is a problem you have, then you probably aren’t spending a lot of time on detailed descriptions, and because you’re not spending a lot of time on detailed descriptions, you have less practice writing them.
Murder Drones Fic Recs 2024-10-09 a blogpost 15.8k words
Curating my favorite fanfics for my favorite web series about angsty murderbots.
Recommended Fiction \[WIP\] 2024-06-21 a blogpost 676 words
Some stuff I read and thought was good. Will organize this page more At Some Point. There's so many things to add and so many thoughts to put down. I may not make this as comprehensive as my murder drones rec page. Right now it's a couple of my favorites plus a couple of random things from my bookmarks. (Also on Royalroad) Evocative and thrilling, cathartic and emotional resonant --- this is my favorite story. My usual pitch for this one goes:
Onward to Providence Image Viewer 2023-11-17 a blogpost 0 words
Senesce 2020-11-17 a blogpost 340 words
Your character is victim to a terrible curse that will eventually consume them. To create a character, write a short paragraph describing them, and pick out traits. Rate the traits 1-3, where 1 is a significant aptitude and 3 is a near-supernatural affinity. The referee may veto characters deemed inappropriate for the game. Once you've described your character, decide which curse afflicts them. (see below)
Seven Forms null a blogpost 234 words
Close your eyes, breathe in deep, and bare your soul. Can you feel it yet? Open yourself up to the great beyond, and reach for the magic within you — draw from the well that was always there and bring forth power. What does this power feel like? Which does it feel like? Mana comes in several types — not quite colors, and certainly not the shallow elementalism of earthly materials and reactions. It’s more… tangible than that.
A Brief History of Our Writing \[WIP\] null a blogpost 485 words
I wrote several snippets of fiction in my high school composition notebooks; most of them are lost to time, though a few can be found in the old fragments page. My writing career really began in November 2017, when I wrote the first drafts of what would become Endless Stars. My chief influences were MLP fanfiction and wildbow's writings, and I had the ambition that I would "be like wildbow" in some way I never thought too deeply about. I sought to learn more about writing, and spent the next year revising ES, until around November 2018, where correspondence with Wizard-of-Woah! and Rhythminthemind convinced me to finally publish in November 2028. ES updated weekly till late April 2019, then exhausted my backlog. The next three chapters were published irregularly, and a fourth was never published.
Mark Forsyth On Poetic Meter null a blogpost 2.7k words
Chapter Twenty-one of The Element of Eloquence by Mark Forsynth has the best explanation of poetic meter that I've encountered. I strongly recommend the full book as a delightful toolbox for the refining one's understanding of prose style and figures of speech. (And I do mean delightful: each chapter goes down like a piece of intellectual candy. Or better yet, a potato chip --- because you can't have just one.)
Illurien of the Myriad Glimpses null Reference for one of my favorite monsters 941 words
This text is taken from the Monster Manual V for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5e. Stat blocks omitted; this is just the flavor. If you want a sense of how much I like Illurien, read this piece I wrote about her. A dancing array of droplets swirls before you. In the midst of this storm stands a slender but extremely tall female clad in gray robes. She has no facial features other than her vivid blue eyes. With a graceful motion, she beckons to you.
he just like me fr null a blogpost 5 words
he just like me fr
Archived Reviews
I used to be an active member of WebFictionGuide back when that was a thing. (Remember all the people nagging about votes and reviews in the Worm comment section?) I wrote a couple of reviews for my fellow authors back then. Somewhat embarassing work, but perhaps they’re still of interest five years later. This also includes some very old pieces I believe I wrote for high school english class?
Review of Creep in Archived Reviews 2020-01-07 Relentless Mutation 1.0k words
This is an an review of Creep, written when Chapter 11 was the latest available. There are perils of reviewing web fiction very early in its lifetime. Creep has twelve chapters and not terribly much more than twenty thounsand words to its name. In the web serial world, that's scarcely anything at all. But, particularly given the tame length of the author's other serials, it's enough to get a feel for what Creep will and won't offer, if not enough to be precise about it.
Review of Pyrebound in Archived Reviews 2019-03-226 Be stricken of strange suns 849 words
Truly original worlds aren't rare, but when there's one which commands the attention like that of Pyrebound's, it's worth noting. This is a universe with two seperate worlds and two seperate suns, and on every fourth days the worlds trade places, and the wrong sun rises in the sky. Humans live on only one world, and the light of the wrong sun is deadly to them.
Review of Fuji in Archived Reviews 2019-02-25 How strait the sunless road that leads to later birth 857 words
If my review of Fuji were one word, it might be "straightford" or "eager". No one likes to have their writing called "simple", but one of the first things you notice about Fuji is that is doesn't easily get bogged down or distracted. It knows what it wants to convey, and it gets right to it. This isn't necessarily a good thing, or a bad thing. Fuji seems to value the destination over the journey, but there are roses I wouldn't mind stopping to smell where Fuji insistently pushes on.
Review of The New Humans in Archived Reviews 2019-02-05 Man's reach must exceed his grasp. 1.2k words
The New Humans is a story that tries very hard. It's a long-form serial that's been updating irregularly for over two years now. It's a kind of period piece, exploring superpowers in 60s Australia. And it suffers from that common double-edge sword of serials: the writer is improving. The opening chapters are rough. And as you've heard many times before --- for many different serials --- it gets better.
Review of Advent in Archived Reviews 2019-02 Feel a Bit Accomplished You Read the Good, Sad Serial 485 words
A review of Advent.
Review of The Star-Treader and Other Poems in Archived Reviews 2017 a blogpost 752 words
Note: Written for high school English class around 2018 or before. Interesting for historical reasons, if at all. The Star-Treader and Other Poems is a book of poetry, classical poetry, that, between its archaicisms and overwrought vobaculary, wouldn't sound out of place had it been written a century beforehand. Many reviewers make comparisons to such lofty names as Milton or Keats. It is an apt comparison, because The Star-Treader... is a sublime volume of poetry.
Review of Twig in Archived Reviews 2017 a blogpost 722 words
Note: Written for high school English class around 2018 or before. Interesting for historical reasons, if at all. John McCrae's Twig is, in a word, a journey. It's not a unreasonable description for most of his work. Rather than a traditional novel, McCrae writes web serials. There are a few differences between a web serial and an ordinary novel. The biggest is that when a novel is available, it's available beginning to end; while the web serial is posted in installments online---hopefully on some regular schedule, but this isn't a rule (unfortunately).