bloombeard

[bloombeard]

Poem of the Comet

I do not pray for hope. This poem is not a prayer. The One Who Climbs eats prayers. It holds them in store to turn against their casters. It turns hope into a starving dog. I leave my hope at the crumbling gates of the dead emperor's castle. I forget my prayers at the top of the stairs. I leave faith behind, and descend.

The One Who Climbs swells like mold in the dark. It crawls out from under the bedrock. Deeper than the dungeons, below the oubliettes and the sewers. It climbs from under the foundation of the old castle. The one beneath this one. The one we pretend we've forgotten about. The One Who Climbs would and drag us down to remember, or it would paint us a picture when it drinks the sun to wash down our prayers.

For a thousand years, it knew only one axe. A heavy, butcher's thing carried down every comet's return by the emperor's black knight, whose prayers had been alchemically removed by his master. That was why the emperor made himself ageless, he said. To keep The One below us. To stop its climb. But the emperor had more to worry about than an old thing in the dark. He should have been more worried about us.

What is The One waiting for, now that the throne is vacant and the emperor's un-rotting corpse stands strung up in our fields to scare crows? Now there is no black knight to stop it? The hero who slew the knight, and her friends who emptied the throne were driven by grief, desperation, and hate. But we are no fools. The knight was dead, but the axe remained.

The comet returned last night. Now I hold the axe. I the hero who slew the knight. But I need no alchemy to steel myself. I've seen a revolution through to the end, and I know the hopelessness that road demands. The One Who Climbs carves faith into doubt and asks questions that only prayers can answers. But I already need to know what I need to know, and I don't need faith to know it.

I know for what the deep thing waits.

It waits for me.

[bloombeard]

last day to back Nerve Gardens

after the dust of the kickstarter settles you can probably find it on @bloombeard 's store here

[bloombeard]

NERVE GARDENS has less than 2 days left on kickstarter! It's a sci-fi horror comic illustrated by @jonasgoonface and written by yours truly.

#scifiart #scifi #sciencefiction #comic #comics #kickstarter

[bloombeard]

It gets cold in the drift, but we're almost across. We have glow sticks for light, we have each other for warmth, and no-one is skulking down by the engines.

NERVE GARDENS, illustrated by @jonasgoonface, has less than a week left on kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forreststorrs/nerve-gardens

[bloombeard]

Some more concept stuff for NERVE GARDENS. Art by @jonasgoonface Less than a week left to go on the kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forreststorrs/nerve-gardens

#scifi #scifiart #conceptart #conceptarts #characterdesign #comic #comics #kickstarter

[bloombeard]

The life support purrs. The engines sleep. Forward we drift—into the zone, the hungry vacuum, the endless middle distance. NERVE GARDENS, illustrated by @jonasgoonface, has 7 days left on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forreststorrs/nerve-gardens

[bloombeard]

I feel very lucky to call @jonasgoonface a friend. He's one of my absolute favorite artists and a great pal on top of that. Now I feel even luckier that I got to work with him on Nerve Gardens. The kickstarter is still going! Nine days left to join and snag yourself a copy! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forreststorrs/nerve-gardens #comics #conceptart #scifiart #characterdesign #scifi #kickstarter

[bloombeard]

Page 5 of NERVE GARDENS. Illustrated by @jonasgoonface. Join the kickstarter to read the rest! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forreststorrs/nerve-gardens/description

[bloombeard]

Page 4 of NERVE GARDENS. Illustrated by @jonasgoonface. Currently on kickstarter!

[bloombeard]

Page 3 of NERVE GARDENS. Illustrated by @jonasgoonface. Currently on kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forreststorrs/nerve-gardens/posts/4360461

[bloombeard]

Page 2 of NERVE GARDENS. Illustrated by @jonasgoonface . Currently on kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forreststorrs/nerve-gardens

[bloombeard]

Page 1 of NERVE GARDENS. Currently is kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forreststorrs/nerve-gardens/description

[bloombeard]

Nerve Gardens has a TRAILER?! I know I'm suprised and excited too! Huge thanks to Mallory Brangan for putting this together! Back us on Kickstarter here. NERVE GARDENS is a sci-fi horror comic I made with @jonasgoonface. #comic #comics #scifi #sciencefiction #horror #kickstarter #trailer

[bloombeard]

I wrote a new comic! NERVE GARDENS is a sci-fi/horror comic illustrated by @jonasgoonface. The Kickstarter launches today!

A company ship goes dead, hoping to drift across a restricted sector without being spotted by the eldritch AI living there.

[bloombeard]

We stopped calling them "grammar nazis" because, you know, nazis, but they're still out there. The grammar pedants, I mean. The language prescriptivists. Commonly found amongst avid readers and beginning writers still hypnotized by purple prose. That's where I find them most often, anyway. They scoff at sentence fragments and reel away from any sentence ending in a preposition like a vampire from a crucifix. They probably have a sarcastic t-shirt about oxford commas in their dresser.

I say "they" but I'm probably just projecting. I was this person in college, and I still have this voice inside me. It turns it's nose up at my em-dashes. It sneers whenever I use italics for emphasis. My every unnecessarily-hyphenated compound elicits a derisive chuckle. But it's only one of two wolves inside of me, and I keep that motherfucker starved.

I don't care what we're called grammar pedants now. I'd rather define the alternative. Allow me suggest the grammar goblin. The grammar goblin doesn't know what a preposition is, and it doesn't need to. It'll write parentheticals longer than their containing sentences. Every night, the grammar goblin climbs into its a bed-shaped hole cut out of the inner pages of Strunk & White's Elements of Stye, and curls up with its favorite book: the thesaurus.

[bloombeard]

Influencer's Homily

[[This is a fun writing prompt thing, not actual life advice. -Forrest]]

Like all those that have been on this stage before us, we are subject to the whim of the algorithm. We're lucky to work after the days of no metrics, analytics, or ad revenue. But we also work after the days of the algorithm being written by committee, opaque as it was, before they handed it over to the model, which is opaque even to its masters (if they can even be called that).

Comment as we might on the helplessness we feel, it changes nothing. We can rail against the unknowable magics on which our income depends, or we can cast our own spells. Ask of yourselves, fellow creators, are you the rock the water flows around, or are you the river?

Subscribe to the notion that you are the river, my dear fellowship, to the idea of change. Commit to changing course, and no change can halt you. Let not the algorithm contest your unmoving station or it will erode you down to a pebble. Instead let it steer you into new country, where metrics ascend and revenue flows. The algorithm is our collaborator and the model is our shepherd.

As always, meditate on the mantra (if you need a reminder, assemble it from the first word of each preceding paragraph), and don't forget to Ring That Bell.

[bloombeard]

[slab city cell wiretap, 2043-06-18T15:037:02Z]

ANVL - Black Anvil Coffee Roasters SLAB - I'm supposed to tell you to come get us. We're all set. ANVL - [pause] Who is this? SLAB - I know I know. I can hear the click too. But it's Chaudary's orders. ANVL - [pause] Does this not, like, blow the whole thing? ANVL - [simultaneous] Are we being burned? SLAB - [simultaneous] It's Chaudary, we never-- SLAB - No it's *Chaudary*. He's OFP, like, a lot. ANVL - I wasn't in the army dude I don't know all your algorithms. SLAB - Algorithms? ANVL - Oh my god, acronyms! Whatever! ANVL - [simultaneous] Are we fucked or not?! SLAB - [simultaneous] Own Fucking Program. SLAB - OFP means he's on his Own Fucking Program and no, it's just Chaudary being Chaudary. You might not get it. *I* don't get it. But just go with it. Remember the thing with the snake pit? ANVL - I thought it was a lion pit? SLAB - No it was-- Where would we get lions? ANVL - Like mountain lions? SLAB - You think there's mountain lions in the Mojave? What, like, hanging out up in Joshua Tree or something? ANVL - You don't have to be a dick about it dude. SLAB - [pause] You're right, sorry. You okay? ANVL - I'm stressed out! I feel like we're about to get nabbed. [pause, quieter] I thought it was a lion pit. SLAB - It was a snake pit, and we thought that was too stupid to work the whole time we were digging it. ANVL - So did the spooks I guess. SLAB - Exactly. So come get us, yeah? It'll work out. ANVL - Okay-- shit. Aubrey didn't come in today. I'll have to close up. SLAB - Aubrey's here. Just come now it'll be fine. ANVL - Is this one of those things where we give the spooks so much gold they get stuck on whether it's good? SLAB - I. Don't. Know. *Dude*. It's. SLAB - [simultaneous] **Chaudary**. ANVL - [simultaneous] Chaudary. ANVL - Fine I get it. I'm coming. SLAB - Oh and watch the road coming into Slab. Don't drive over any big piles of leaves.