ashwin-the-artless

[ashwin-the-artless]

So, it's not quite as wild as the above, but I invented a conlang called Fenekere that has 31 consonants, 5 vowels, 923,521 root words, and 577,200,625 derived words.

Not all of the words have been defined. I'm still working on that. But with the taxonomic tree of life and an automated database system, I can fill it up pretty quick.

Anyway, you can write an entire page of text without repeating a single word, if you do it right. And each word is 8 characters long. Which makes it fairly cryptographically sound. A lot of people looking at the text won't even recognize it as a language and will assume it's computer data of some sort. And if you don't have the dictionary, you're screwed for trying to translate it.

Learning how to speak it, though? HAHAHAHA!!!

do you have any opinions of conlangs like at all

I think studying conlangs has been edifying because it's helped to put into perspective that a lot of the things that annoy me about the English language are probably just inherent features of the act of communication. It's one thing to be told in academic terms that all communicative acts will necessarily express certain shortcomings, and quite another to see it illustrated via demonstration that, oh, a lot of people who are way more autistic than I am have been trying for hundreds of years to invent a language that doesn't have these problems and met with comprehensive failure!

[ashwin-the-artless]

Never underestimate the power of subtle body language to help those around you without causing a scene.

I use “stepping in front of insensitive/nosey assholes to block their view of a person they’re starring at” a lot. No words exchanged. Just getting between them (sometimes while starring back at them if they’re being extra weird) and they always seem to either realize what they’re doing or be jolted out of it. Either way it has never ended in a confrontation, just silent looks.

A kinda weird use of body language happened some time ago while I was standing at a bus stop near a train station. Right next to me stood a very short woman who I guessed to be from India based on her looks and dress, and around us were nothing but men. I’m very standard height for a Scandinavian woman so I’ve never felt short or tall in any group, but she looked tiny next to all these men packed tightly around us. I’m not sure why but I felt like she was uncomfortable with all these men towering over her and for some reason my response to that was to subtly change my stance so my front faced her a bit more. Not full on, but the way most friends stand next to each other, while still looking away from her. I don’t know why I thought that would be comforting to her because it could just as easily have come off as threatening, but after a few seconds she moved a bit closer to me. And then a bit closer. And then slightly closer. All without anyone else in the group moving. We stood like that until the bus arrived and then we went to separate seats.

So never be afraid to silently signal to strangers that you’re on their side or that they can fuck right off. People tend to respond better to that than words in my experience unless they’re already looking for a fight.

[ashwin-the-artless]

Bonus Material: my map of Katofar Peninsula - https://sunspot.world/bonus-material-my-map-of-katofar-peninsula/ Excerpt:

Here is the map of Katofar Peninsula that I drew for Sarah and Goreth and their friends.

As I wrote and implied in chapter 8 of The End of the Tunnel, this is really close to what you’d see if you stood in my home city and stared up at the posted by: Ashwin Pember

[ashwin-the-artless]

Hey, Ahswin,

How would you feel about answering questions about yourself such as about your history, the people you live with now, or what it's like to write a book for an Earth audience?

Oh, yes please!

I've been wanting to write more to this blog more often, but I too often at a loss as to what to write. Prompts would be great!

Also, aside from my hosts and their friends, I don't really get the chance to talk to a variety of people. I'd appreciate the chance to maybe make some friends online.

Maybe a bit more of an introduction to give people context is in order.

My name is Ashwin Pember and my pronouns are either they/them or nem. Mixing them up is cool, but you can stick to either one if you want.

I am the author and narrator of The End of the Tunnel, the first book of the Tunnel Apparati Diaries. Which we published on July 31, just a few weeks ago!

Despite the fact that my hosts, Sarah and Goreth, were born here, I am not an Earthling myself. Like Fenmere, I'm ktletaccete. Which is to say, my vessel hatched in the nurseries of a generational starship nesrly 500 of your years ago.

Like humans, we Ktletaccete can develop to be plural, which is what happened with my system. I was conceived during our adolescence and remained attendant to our vessel until the day it passed away, which is when I ascended to Crewhood and started participating more frequently in the Council of the People.

But, when the opportunity arose to visit another world via the Tunnel Apparatus, I was the first to volunteer and the first to be accepted. It was a whole process.

But Phage (@ohthatphage) had moved the Terran end of the Tunnel into the psyche of Sarah and Goreth Ampersand. It chose to do this to protect Earth from unscrupulous individuals. And it could do it because it can manipulate spacetime and energies as if they are its own hands.

Anyway, this meant that when I projected my consciousness through the Tunnel I became a member of Sarah and Goreth's system.

And my book is about this! It's about my first few months on Earth, and figuring out how to integrate into Earth culture while also rectifying some mistakes my ancestors made.

For instance, the reason that there was a Tunnel Apparatus on the Earth in the first place is because a Ktletaccete ship called the Weaver's Shuttle dropped in here around 2 million years ago. And with that Apparatus there was also a bin of self replicating construction nanites. So, we had to figure out what to do with those before someone else found them.

It's a whole thing and the plot of the book.

Anyway, I'd love to answer any and all question about any of this.

I'll put spoilers below a cut, so you can even ask what happens in the book and I'll tell you. Because I know that that sometimes helps people get into a story. But anyone can avoid reading it if they want.

I just ask that, if you've read the book, don't put spoilers in the ask. If you do, I'll find a way to put your ask under a cut, but then you might not get the notification I answered it.

Thsnk you!

[ashwin-the-artless]

helen “trans people are perpetuating gender steriotypes” joyce is now upset that the scientific american is writing about how women were hunters too back in the day, not just mothers and caretakers. feminist win!

[ashwin-the-artless]

Me, an amateur writer of original fic: *opens trenchcoat to display an array of characters hanging from loops ingeniously sewn to the lining* May I interest you in a sad meow meow? A blorbo, perhaps? Do you need a new chew toy? I've a got a special on The Second Law of Thermodynamics manifest as a self tortured immortal soul mistaken for an imaginary friend! You'll love it! Half off of nothin', just for you!

me, a fanfic writer: *touches my new fav character’s face* *whispers* I’m gonna get you laid

[ashwin-the-artless]

Ah, yes! This is very much Goreth’s thing

Dragon: “HALT TRAVELER! THIS BRIDGE IS UNDER MY CONTROL! PAY THE TOLL OR CROSS THIS RIVER ELSEWHERE!”

Knight: “Nay foul beast! These are the lands of men! I shall pay no such toll, and what’s more I shall slay you rid this land of your tyranny!”

Dragon: “TYRANNY!? FOOLISH MAN! THIS BRIDGE IS OVER A HUNDRED YEARS OLD AND IN DIRE NEED OF REPAIRS! THE STONES ARE ERODING AND THERE ARE TERMITES IN THE WOOD!”

Knight: “… what?”

Dragon: “I GIVE THIS BRIDGE ANOTHER FIVE YEARS BEFORE IT COLLAPSES! I’D RATHER AVOID THAT AND PREVENT SOME POOR HUMAN FROM GETTING HURT!

Knight: ”…“

Dragon: “THE TOLL IS TEN GOLD PIECES.”

Knight: “… Okay.”

Dragon: “ALSO, DOWN THE ROAD, A FRIEND OF MINE IS RAISING FUNDS TO FIX A FARMER’S ROOF! IF YOU COULD ASSIST THEM AS WELL WE’D BE VERY GRATEFUL!”

[ashwin-the-artless]

The Audreys (they/them)

cast of the End of the Tunnel

The Audreys don't like their picture being taken and we don't have any sketches of them yet for similar reasons.

They are taller than Erik and shorter than our own system (Sarah and Goreth), and they stand out by being fairly skinny, especially in comparison to Erik and us.

They like to dress in patterned tights and baggy tops, and do bind their chest when they have the endurance for it. And they have a bright yellow backpack, and a black metal cane with a silvery scale pattern etched into it that they bought on sale at a pharmacy for $15. They do seem to need the cane to walk.

Like all three of us, they are autistic, trans, and plural. And as far as they can tell, they're all essentially agender and prefer to use they/them.

It's sometimes hard for them to be sure about those things, though. There are a lot of them. Over a 140 members.

A fairly high number of those members are fictive introjects of characters that they've identified as also autistic (whether or not the writers intended them that way).

This includes Brock, Donnie, Ray, and a number of others I've yet to meet.

They think that Shelly and Mill, who appear in my book, are among the number they call their core. But they don't really treat either introjects or core members very differently.

They report that they are commonly fairly co-conscious and fairly switchy, but also blurry. And only a few members, such as Brock or Donnie, are capable of identifying themselves clearly when they front. At least right away. They do have some mental tricks to tease out identities, that aren't 100% reliable, if they want to bother with it.

It's never mentioned in the books, but they do use Simply Plural to try to keep track.

They've been good and tight friends of Erik and Sarah and Goreth since the they met with them by chance in Aunti Zero's, but despite the celebrity of their fictives also have a tendency to feel like the odd ones out in most of the conversations. A little behind the pace of the discussion. But they seem to have made peace with that, too.

They've also been very quiet about their own personal life and romantic pursuits, if they even have any. Nobody knows if they're dating or not. And nobody asks, because it's not really anybody else's business.

When they're not hanging out with us and Erik, however, they do seem to be spending most of their time either on the computer entertaining themselves, doing their freelance design work for some unnamed international corporation, or sleeping. They sleep during the afternoon, and get up before midnight to get most of their work done when it's dark. Noon is their evening.

Despite this reclusiveness, they do end up playing a pretty significant role in the integration of Ktletaccete into Portland society, along with Erik and, of course, my hosts, Sarah and Goreth.

We owe them quite a bit for their hospitality and insight.

[ashwin-the-artless]

booze please? or manager. I'll talk to your manager, yes

let's do that

Therians whenever they need to buy groceries :)

[ashwin-the-artless]

Our Alternate Universes

So, while we're writing about our own history in The Sunspot Chronicles and the Tunnel Apparati Dairies, we've already got three alternate universe canons going on.

We've put a couple of them on AO3 and the Sunspot Chronicles page in the form of stories you can read: Star Trek Mercury and The Adventures of Molly Rocketcoil

And these two were done in celebration of the traditions of science fiction found on Earth.

But there's this third AU of ours that some of us seem to really enjoy writing for. And it's deceptively elaborate, because there's no actual book or story written for it. Instead, it consists of countless social media and blog posts written as if everything regarding our Earthly system, the Inmara, was different in some way.

You might be familiar with this AU through @fenmere's blog.

In that universe, the vessel was born much earlier in Earth's history, almost two full decades before Sarah and Goreth's vessel was actually born. And we're supposedly all products of that vessel. Except for Phage (@ohthatphage), who is still a walk-in of the same identity it has in real life.

Which brings us to the name of this AU, actually.

As kind of a joke, and I believe this was Fenmere's idea, the only significant historical difference between our world and this AU is that in this AU there was a T.V. show that aired on MTV called "the Real World", and it spurred this whole genre of T.V. called "Reality TV" that's just absolutely terrible.

And that's not real, of course. We don't have that here in the actual real world.

So, in full irony, Fenmere's taken to calling this blog-based literary baby of hers "the Real World AU".

Anyway, we consider the Real World AU to be open, and you can write for it all you want.

[ashwin-the-artless]

[ashwin-the-artless]

Sarah and Goreth Ampersand

Cast of the Tunnel Apparati Diaries

Note: although the Vanderkemps chose to do so in their premature fanfic of our work, I'm not going to deadname Sarah and Goreth here.

In short, in the books we're writing, Sarah and Goreth are my hosts. And before they hosted me, they were hosts of Phage (@ohthatphage).

There is an alternate universe canon where we actually all live in a vessel originally owned by Jenifer and Eh, with a totally different backstory, different parents, everything. Though it still does hew pretty closely to Sarah and Goreth's story in some ways. But I'm not writing about that, I'm writing about The Tunnel Apparati Diaries and my book, The End of the Tunnel.

Sarah and Goreth Ampersand are an autistic transgender plural system who grew up in Tumwater, WA. They went to college at the UW, and moved down to Portland shortly afterward. This much can be learned from reading the book. There's actually a lot of autobiographical detail in there.

Instead, I'm going to use this post to tell you my impressions of my favorite two Earthlings.

This will be a little bit of a long post, but it should be fun to read.

And, I'm going to start with Sarah, because while they're effectively twins, of the two of them she spent more time closeted and not fronting.

Sarah Ampersand

Pictured here is Goreth's attempt at drawing how they see Sarah in their inworld, and a photo of the dress that Sarah likes to wear the most while inworld.

Ethnicity-wise, Sarah and Goreth are what they like to call Scermutch. Scottish, German, and Dutch. At least, their ancestors were. But Sarah adores Irish iconography and mythology, and really just loves that Irish wedding dress and wishes she could wear it in real life. She doesn't claim it to be her heritage, though. But it's become part of her 'residual self image' as the kids say.

I mean, they are both U.S. Americans and born and raised in Washington State. Their cultural upbringing is mochas and almond poppy seed muffins. But that dress is described in Goreth's upcoming book, and I thought it would be nice to include it here so that you can visualize it easier when you get to that part. And then I start feeling like I have to give it context.

Anyway, there's way more to Sarah than that dress.

But, that photo is useful in another way.

Probably due to a quirk of their brain, Sarah and Goreth's psyche tends to interpret the presences of other headmates in sensations of warmth, softness, smell, and colors. And when Sarah is coming toward the front to share it with me, I perceive her bubble of consciousness as having the range of colors of that photo. She even smells of linen and dandy lions, and has a sunny warmth to her, with the softness of a light breeze.

I think this description pleases her to no end, too.

You can usually tell when she's fronting when our voice becomes softer and lighter, and takes on the inflections of a Canadian radio hostess. She worked really hard to learn how to talk like that, too.

She's also a little bit more dour, demanding, and reluctant to accept things than Goreth. Which fine. Those are not actually negative traits, like Earthlings like to treat them. She's spent most of her life hiding from the world and watching Goreth adapt to their birth assignment of 'boy'.

In coming forward during their transition, she often had to deliberately carve out time and space for herself and assert who she was to family, friends, and classmates. And later, for the brief time that they worked, to coworkers and clients.

Legally, their system is now known under her name, Sarah Ampersand, and their extended family uses that name when they aren't deadnaming them.

And while, at the beginning of their transition, she was bright and cheerful and as girlish as she could be, that struggle to get respect - and then also their struggle to find accommodations for their disabilities and find a place to live in Portland - really took a toll. She developed new habits of behavior in the necessity to protect her system.

Both Phage and Goreth helped a lot, but because they were all doing it under her name she shouldered the most of the emotional burden.

She could really use a break, honestly. To find a time and place where she can actually be herself. And, by the time you get to the end of the whole trilogy, you'll see that maybe she has a chance at that.

Other things about her that our readers might be interested in?

Like Goreth, she's ace. Unlike Goreth, she's primarily attracted to men, but she's still technically bi-romantic. She doesn't pine for a relationship quite as heavily as Goreth does, perhaps because her cynicism gets in the way of that, but she does feel their touch starvation, and doesn't really know what to do about it.

At least, that's how it was when I first met the two of them. Over the following years, things kinda worked out. Maybe not how either of them hoped or expected, but in a comfortable way anyway.

Goreth Ampersand

Pictured here is Sarah's drawing of Goreth as they appear in their inworld, and a Blender rendering of Goreth flying in the Garden of the Sunspot done for the cover of Goreth's upcoming book, The Sun Also Hatches. (an explanation of that would be spoilers - you'll just have to speculate)

If you've been following my blog, and definitely if you've been following @fenmere, you've seen these before.

So, of the two of them, despite developing in parallel together since birth (they are twins), Goreth has fronted far more often than Sarah and is the one of them that people actually know best from their childhood and teen years.

People may think they knew Sarah as her pretransition self and persona, but that was actually mostly Goreth, with Sarah and Phage interjecting in moments of extreme safety or duress. Sarah tended to come out more often when they were safe, and Phage more often in danger or discomfort.

Goreth is a therian, and has known that they were a dragon since they were three years old. And has never, ever wavered from that identity and self image. Even when they thought their parents were right in calling them a boy and naming them their deadname.

These days, Goreth lists their gender as dragon and calls it maverique, sometimes using aporagender depending on mood and who they're talking to.

They take great pride in being a dragon, too, and have shaped their life and habits around it.

Now, there are about three words in Sunspotian culture that get translated to "dragon" (gerbesh'i, ktleteccete, and whatever it is that the Collective of the cuttlecrabs speak - I don't know how to render that word in any Earth typography as it uses flashes of color and dancing as well as vocalizations). And, I think Goreth and Sarah's linguistic cortex translates those words to "dragon" due to numerous superficial similarities, but also because the word "dragon" is such a broad category of things anyway.

Living with Goreth, however, has taught me a lot about the differences between their kind of dragon, and what gerbesh'i and kletaccete are (I'm a ktleteccete, not a gerbesh'i).

For instance, Goreth hoards things that they consider valuable to them, and makes a point of patrolling what they call their territory (which they don't actually own, but is a number of places they visit regularly and pretend belongs to them). They also, to my own chagrin, eat a considerable amount of meat.

Goreth's presence in our system smells coppery, is cool and metalic in feel, and to me is actually colored in oranges and reds, brassy and rusty, with a green tarnish around it. Sarah reports that, to her, they're all greens and blues.

Goreth is completely ace, but curious and needy enough about intimate physical contact that if someone close to them proposed something they'd probably try it out. But they are deeply, deeply bi-romantic and daydream constantly about the kinds of partners they might have someday. And fret about it, and get into spirals of self doubt and depression over their lack of prospects.

"Fortunately", ever since I came aboard, they've been able to be distracted by other things, such as how to manage an influx of alien beings barging into their psyche.

But they manage pretty well, and their astute nature has been integral to our survival on Earth.

---

If you want to read more about Sarah and Goreth Ampersand, we have a website for that where I'm telling their story:

You can skip right to the web serialization of my book, here:

And if you want to read it in its entirety right now, or invest in its archival preservation with a printed paperback, you can order it here:

[ashwin-the-artless]

That one pterosaur

[ashwin-the-artless]

@fukurouonthesea

Now that I'm on our computer instead of a phone, I'm having better results:

Though, with the listings above, that appears to be it for what we've published to Tumblr. We didn't get around to everyone, and should work to fill in the gaps in the coming weeks.

Ooh, and a bonus! You'll get to a chapter in a couple of weeks that features this!

And also this:

Hi! I have been very excited by the first chapters. They've made me want to reread your character portraits (at least i seem to remember those existed). But i've been through some of your blogs for a bit now ans not found them again. Maybe you'd have more luck?

Thank you!

I'm having trouble finding everything we might have written, but I was able to dig up at least one of the portraits we'd intended to do, and three related posts. Most with artwork.

[ashwin-the-artless]

I’m just thinking about how many times I’ve heard my dad on a long call with an obvious scammer and I’ll start begging him to get off the phone because I always think he’s a very easy mark and he’ll just keep going and then after a while he’ll say something like “I died 20 years ago” and hang up.

[ashwin-the-artless]

Chapter 1: Not Alone - https://sunspot.world/chapter-1-not-alone/ Excerpt:

On Thursday, December 7, 2023, in Aunti Zero’s Coffee Hut, Portland, Oregon, at the request of a being I’ve called Mau, I found myself in the middle of a conversation with a set of Earthlings. “So, you’re a walk-in,” Erik said. He was wearing a black, sleeveless garment with a hood on posted by: Ashwin Pember

[ashwin-the-artless]

Hi! I have been very excited by the first chapters. They've made me want to reread your character portraits (at least i seem to remember those existed). But i've been through some of your blogs for a bit now ans not found them again. Maybe you'd have more luck?

Thank you!

I'm having trouble finding everything we might have written, but I was able to dig up at least one of the portraits we'd intended to do, and three related posts. Most with artwork.