#c: Imjen

[void-botanist]

"1. What was learning like for them as a child? Did they attend a school setting or learn in another way?" for all the androids!! and iirc a couple of them went to university so wondering if education was different for them compared to non-androids lol

YEAH ANDROIDS

The most general thing to know about android education is that they all went through some form of having their brains pickled in encyclopedias prior to being assembled into full working systems. This process was most refined with Dez, since he's the youngest and has benefited from all of the developments of the earlier androids, and least comprehensive with Mizzat, because the university team that built vim was like, "vi mostly just needs to know about math, sooooo…"

Mizzat is the only one who has had a truly Formal education. Since vi was built to be a math professor vi had an honorary degree from the University of the Second Akkanswl when vi started out, but vi went on to not only get an actual doctorate in math - I'm gonna tentatively say with a focus on discrete geometry but that just seemed like the best choice from ten minutes of trying to understand what Cornell's math PhD concentrations are - which vi did so the degree part wouldn't seem like such a lie but also because there's way more to math than just the calculus vi was pickled in and teaches. Vi did have the benefit of having a very personable build team that was happy to teach vim stuff and also to accept their own mistakes in their approach. But vi has learned a lot just by being extremely curious, with unrestricted access to both the network and the university library. Vi has considered going for more degrees, because vi has a ridiculous amount of time on vis hands despite being a teacher (vi has literally all hours of the day to do things) and really needs to pick up another research project or five.

Imjen had a quasi-formal education via the medical school and hospital at the University of the Fifth Akkanswl, where zi was built. Zi was taught how to interact and later to do schedustrar and nurse work by various experts, but was essentially a privately tutored student. But there was a lot of stuff that zir supervisory team didn't bother to teach zim, probably because they just expected zim to pick it up like a normal swl child. Which zi kind of did, by taking all of zir opportunities to just sort of wander the city. They mostly didn't try to stop zim but they also didn't love it when zi started to have political opinions and such. Because Imjen looks extremely like a normal swl, it's easy for zim to dip in and out of normal swl areas and learn by watching other people. That has also fueled zir weird relationship with passing as nondroid. In recent years Imjen has started attending night classes about random non-computer-science things, which zir supervisors like. But it's partly just to befriend the professors so they'll teach zim more things. Zi feels oddly comfortable around professors, probably because zi has known a lot of them, but the comp sci ones always look at zim a little bit like a cut of meat.

Syndy was extra extra pickled in her prebuild stages because Gweltsen knew that they weren't going to have the opportunity to teach her much - because of their terminal illness, but also because of hiding her sapience from everyone else. But they did walk her through the legal questions surrounding her and teach her a random assortment of things from their own experience. Hoven was around for a small fraction of the time she was with Gweltsen, too. She also learned more than she cares to admit from her memories of her unconscious time as a postal robot ("Sintii-bot"). There's a lot of data in there about the ways people interact. Plus there was a fair amount of time at night where she was conscious but unsupervised and so could fuck with the computer system or peel open packages she wasn't supposed to look at or mess with the ceiling tiles. But everything else she's pretty much learned from romcoms and period dramas.

Dez was moderately pickled, closer to Syndy's level than the others'. He has never even looked upon a school (unless you count the one on Elbas Island), let alone been in one. He's technically been homeschooled, in a very laissez-faire fashion that has mostly been penmanship, art class, and a lot of tooling around in Anni's workshop that we could call shop class. A huge chunk of what he knows has been gleaned from watching documentaries, and also becoming obsessed with something (spies, astrogeology, snow) and reading up on it with an introductory textbook open next to the super high level article he wants to read Right Now. He hates reading physical books, though, so he's always reading them in his internal viewer. Anni is neither his teacher nor his mom but she's kinda played the role of both, as has Julian. Julian works from home and also manages the bills so he's done a lot of explaining about things. Peter could be considered a guest lecturer in art and dogs. Zel and Urma are more like the substitute teachers who come in and have you watch a movie in class, except Zel also gives him his vicarious video game fix, and he has seen a lot of interactions via moderating her stream chats.

[void-botanist]

Dead darlings tag game

Thank you @touloserlautrec for the tag!

Rules: Share a part of your writing you love that got cut for the greater good. It doesn't matter if it's a line or a paragraph. It doesn't matter if you might work it back in. If it's not currently in a WIP and you want to share, please do.

In an earlier version of TFA, Mizzat is the first to encounter (still deactivated) Syndy when Hoven brings her to vis university. It was all very exciting and dramatic but in the end I decided it added too many extra names and steps on Hoven's journey - this was the big thing that made me decide that Anni and Gweltsen were already friends.

For context, "K" is the person Hoven came to talk to, the professor that led Mizzat's build team and was a friend of Gweltsen's. "H" is Hoven.

Dez: She really is okay, though, right? Just off? Mizzat: Yes. Vi hadn’t stopped typing when Imjen interrupted with, But what about K’s grant project? How is his team going to have time for Sintii? Mizzat: I’m getting to that let me type Imjen responded with a four by three emoji grid composed of weary face, mouthless face, and melting face, which he understood as yeah yeah, I’m shutting up, but how dare you call me out for literally melting with anticipation over here. Mizzat: While we were in the meeting, K sent an email to Anni to ask if he could pass her information on to H. Dez: !!!!!!!!!!!! He deliberated his next move for all of a quarter second before adding, should I message her she’s at work right now and going straight to his chat with her. She was online for some reason. Most likely she was just looking something up on her node and had chat open in the background, which half the time made it say she was online when she wasn’t really. Imjen: do it came the notification from the side of his display region while up from the bottom came a message from Anni. Dr. K just sent me an email about an android?

I'll tag @vacantgodling, @sarahlizziewrites, and @kudzucataclysm, plus anyone else who wants to join in!

[void-botanist]

Ngl I'm curious about how the TFA androids organize their chats too, like how does that technology work in this setting?

Honestly I always imagined it being like Telegram (just because that's what I use the most lol) but they have a folder for all of their chats - I guess kind of like groups in Telegram but the chat system isn't specifically based on Telegram. They have the primary general chat where they talk the most, but they also make chats for specific projects, such as S Chat, which was for their efforts toward locating Syndy. Their organizational structure is pretty much based on whether they want to keep all the resources for one topic in one chat. Which is interesting now that I think about it because I don't think any of them have a strict folder hierarchy in their internal storage in general. Dez might for his movies, but they all use a similar linked data sort of structure for most information.

They do differ in whether they have a superfolder that contains their 2-3 android chats plus the all-android chats. Mizzat does because vi wants to keep android stuff separate from vis academic stuff (I've kind of been imagining that there's one message app that everyone uses, technologically like texting but feature rich like other messaging apps. I suspect it's an open source base that gets built on so it's not 100% identical across nodes). Imjen also does, but because zi wants everything to be very organized and also because zi's paranoid and wants to enforce separation between University/job shit and zis fun real life. Dez likes his quasi-flat hierarchy of all his individual friend chats just hanging around, but he specifically has reordering based on who most recently messaged turned off so he can go DMs > group DMs > full on folders/groups. I think Syndy doesn't bother to group her chats but since her interface is all command line I wonder if that changes how she handles other things.

[void-botanist]

for the sunset-themed ask game: saturn!

Thank you for the ask! This is an amusing one for TFA.

🪐Saturn: Who’s keeping a secret in your WIP? What is it?

Zel is keeping secrets that are spoilers. So are a number of people around her, though not Anni, who really wants to know what the secret is (it's not about her, I'll say that much).

Dez is keeping secrets that are about how his citizenship adventure is going. He's discovered that it's possible none of the islanders even want him to be there, and he fully believes that telling Anni about it means that she will come and whisk him back home. He also generally operates under the assumption that what everyone else doesn't know won't hurt them, so I suspect he's always keeping a lot of secrets.

Anni, meanwhile, is trying to keep a lid on the fact that she wishes she hadn't let Dez skip solstice, but she can't really take it back at this point.

Also, because I should talk about them more: Mizzat and Imjen are also in a constant state of keeping secrets, such as the fact that Mizzat can pick locks and occasionally "borrows" things from other professors' offices, and Imjen was the one who hacked every netsite in the comp sci department at Mizzat's university, a still-unsolved prank.

[void-botanist]

OC/Writing Art Asks for one of those android characters you have! They sound neat :)

pencil, Copics, charcoal, eraser, and palette

Thank you so much for this! I never don't want to talk about my androids. I haven't talked about Imjen much though, so I'll answer for zir.

Pencil: does this character have any "sketchy" habits? Have they ever broken the law? Do they regret it? Imjen has broken the law multiple times in zir attempts to figure out what happened to Syndy before she reappears in TFA. As practice, zi hacked into all of the math department netsites at the University of the Second Akkanswl where Mizzat works, then tried to get into Syndy's builder's website. Zi did not succeed, but when the lockout period is 24 hours and you have all night, every night, just try again.

Copics: what is this character's most expensive habit or hobby? Do they ever feel guilty about the money they spend on it? Zi actually lives in zir own little house in the city, which zi has been indecisively redecorating for a while. It wasn't meant to be a hobby or a habit, but it kind of turned into one. At the start of TFA, zi actually gets a brand new sofa. And zi would feel guilty if there was anything else zi had to spend that money on, but so far there's not (not needing to eat, drink, or sleep helps a lot), and it's so easy to justify it anyway by saying it's preparation for a future first android party.

Charcoal: share any unique physical features about this character that are not scars or tattoos. For the most part, Imjen looks exactly like a swl, the bipedal dragonlike species that built zir. But the brown stripe pattern on zir sides actually hides a number of single-battery racks (in this case batteries are discs about the size of a CD but half an inch thick, which zir internal mycelium wiring feeds off of).

Eraser: what's one way this character has changed over time? Either over the course of their story, or over the course of designing them as an author. Imjen came to be in the earliest drafts of TFA, so zi hasn't been massively revamped from an old concept like Syndy and Dez have. But over the course of TFA & sequels zi has to come to terms with officially cutting ties with the university that built zir and the hospital zi has worked at since activation, for the last 8+ years. Zi's not trying to burn bridges but zi also hasn't been willing to take that final step into the unknown. (I think it overlaps with Dez taking a step into the unknown as an astronaut?)

Palette: list four of your character's primary skills, then share at least two ways these skills might blend or overlap

Hacking. Failure to find Syndy notwithstanding, zi is actually pretty good at getting into things.

Hypothesizing. Imjen is the leading source of theories about android life.

Blending in with nswl. It takes more than just looks - zi is an expert on how to get people to not notice the things zi can/'t do as an android.

Knowing where all the weird dives in town are. Not because zi has fantasy google maps in zir head, but because zi's actually been there.

3 and 4 are inherently linked because it's easier to hang out in weird dives if you blend in with everyone else. But 1 and 2 are linked in a sort of philosophical way? Like, hacking someone's website isn't some kind of portal to the self for an android, but it does open up a lot of questions about how zi is different from other computers and why. 2 and 4 are also very much an "I'm bored and I never sleep" kind of a thing lol.

[void-botanist]

One Song for Every OC

@outpost51 how did you tag me for this only four days ago. I have made four new character playlists as a result of this assignment.

Rules: Assign a song that fits the vibe of your OC.

And we are not doing this for all of my OCs either because that is too many! So here's some TFA folks (and also I cheated and did more than one for some of them because I forgot it was one song and I am not letting this work go to waste).

If I get tagged again I'll do it for the Nicea folks.

Full Spotify playlist

Dez Fireflies by Owl City [youtube] If I Could Be Like You by Castlecomer [youtube]

Syndy Just a Girl by No Doubt [youtube] I Love It by Icona Pop and Charli XCX [youtube] Made to Last by Semisonic [youtube]

Mizzat DARE - Soulwax Remix by Gorillaz and Soulwax [youtube]

Imjen Mustache Man (Wasted) by CAKE [youtube] (lyrics aren't that related but idk this feels very Zir)

Anni Junk Of The Heart (Happy) by The Kooks [youtube] Connectivity by By Jove [youtube]

Zel Belfast by Orbital [youtube] Island In The Sun by Weezer [youtube]

Julian (literally the hardest to find a song for. I looked for so longgg) Check It Out by The Friends of Distinction [youtube]

Hoven Que Sera by Wax Tailor [youtube]

Bonus: Peter A Little Bit Like Magic by King Harvest [youtube]

I'll leave this an open tag for anyone who wants to share!

[void-botanist]

Sapling

A Fourth Android AU

Dez Gaenopol is the brainchild of mad home improver Tirias Nenatopol and networks expert Patience Gaenlan. It's absolutely critical that you know he's not their actual child, though, because that would be weird. Despite being blue he takes after Patience in appearance because it was easier to build a shorter android and he wanted big flowers, even though he knows they're bracts. He lives in Orchardridge North, the empty house Tirias converted into an android-building space, but he's only there at night once everyone else - even Vinnek - has gone to bed. During the day there's too many people to see, and too many little jobs to get sucked into. Most recently, the elusive Binna returned from the fifth Akkanswl, and has been regaling him with exciting tales of astronaut training. Maybe by the time they send another crewed trip to Delphonus, he'll be eligible…

But for now his more immediate concern is that Tirias and Patience have decided that some cultural exchange would do him good. And instead of just sending him across the strait to Hoscha, where he could already stay with Tirias's assistant, Silas, they've cooked up a plan to send him all the way to Deridis, where Silas's sister Zel lives. He's not scared, though. He's met humans before, and nawwenn too. It's just that Silas will be the only person he knows there - at least while Silas is there - and while he knows lots of neriem live in Deridis, he's never been in a place where it was possible to never run into an uep.

Patience says humans are a riot and he'll have a great time. Tirias says Zel is a riot and he'll have a great time. Either way, there doesn't seem to be any way to get out of it. The only thing keeping him from hugging Tirias and not letting go is that there are movie theatres in Deridis, and he needs to go to one. He sets out to Hoscha with Nidilaenn, then boards an airship at the spike with Silas and his partner Zalen. The people on Hoscha usually don't look at him funny because they know him, but the tourists on the airship definitely do. He holds the concept of movie theatres in his head more tightly and busily messages his android friends and doesn't look at anybody. He'll be fine.

It takes several long, boring days of mostly hiding in the cabin to reach Winchester. He expects that everyone is going to be staring him down when he disembarks, but here people seem to mind their own business, giving him a glance or a momentary raised eyebrow before continuing on. Maybe this won't be so bad. Winchester is beautiful, too - tinged with ice and covered in snow, which he didn't think really existed in real life. But when they arrive at Zel's apartment, she's not there. Instead, she's coming down the hallway, and when she sees them, her face says oh shit.

"Sorry," she says, rushing to unlock the door, "I just got back from Ermotlift" - the capital - "with Anni" - her girlfriend - "and I left things a little messy in here, so…"

The door swings open. What lies beyond looks like the accumulated detritus of a week at the pub, except no one has cleaned up anything that entire time, and also there are clothes everywhere.

Zalen is laughing and Zel is pressing knuckles to her forehead. "I'm so sorry."

"Well, looks like your first exchange activity will be excavating your space," Zalen says.

Zel turns on him from two steps into the room. "Absolutely not. I'm going to clean this up. Here, let me make a space for you." She takes an armful of clothes off the sofa, leaving just enough space in the explosion of stuff for the three of them to sit down.

The more he looks at the mess, the more he sees, and there's more than one thing here he can't identify the purpose of: that little finger-shaped thing, the slim triangular thing that seems to just be a couple of strips of metal put together, and underwear - well, he's never really understood the point of underwear. He decides to ask about these things later. In the meantime Zel has gotten everything cleaned up, aside from the many dishes she says she'll wash later.

"Okay, sorry. Hi," she says to him, sitting on the edge of the coffee table. "I'm Zel."

He discovers over the next week that she spends a lot of her time inside streaming games, because she "hates winter in the city". At first he can rely on Zalen and Silas to give him something else to do, but when they leave, he's left to his own devices. He starts editing Zel's videos, but that's only a few hours of work each day. One day after they go to the movies with Anni, Dez decides to hang around with her, and discovers she does a whole lot more than Zel. He starts going on walks around the city with her, seeing the bookshop where she works and the books cost money, meeting her coworker who looks old in the hair but young in the face, talking to her uncle who is apparently permanently half bald because humans don't have personal winter, petting a dog (!!), and getting caught up in the surprise arrival of Hoven and the planet's long-lost fourth android, Syndy. A plan starts to take form: when Syndy's awake, he'll finally go home and gather all his android friends to Orchardridge, and they'll have the best time.

The only problem is Syndy seems to resent this plan in every way, and is determined to do her own thing, without him or his friends. Because she's not like them: she's basically human, and she has a family.

Starring

Dez Gaenopol

basically exactly like canon Dez except he has root-shaped feet and a leaf wig

Tirias Nenatopol

just decided one day that it would be fun and enriching to build a little guy

Patience Gaenlan

had the necessary networking knowledge to build a little guy and also thought it would be funny

Vinnek Bastien

Dez's best friend, possibly, and the one who introduced him to Calennec

Mizzat Keh

the first android, a math professor and the most even-keeled of them

Imjen Hoat

the second android, a nurse and the most anti-establishment of them

Zel Tillain

more interesting in the summer when it's "worth going outside"

Silas Tayerlow

not Zel's brother by birth, but in every other way

Zalen Tillain

Zel's brother by birth, which she seems to resent

Anni Chalbis

has a master's degree in robotics but found the robotics industry exhausting

Urma Pelarkin

turns out the old hair was just dyed, which is also really cool

Julian Astatine

Anni's uncle, who illustrated a Calennec zine that Dez has read, which makes him a celebrity

Peter Brebnant

Julian's friend, who has offered to give Dez his first carvings

Tulip

Peter's dog <3

Hoven Lolimmo

librarian without a library but with an extremely fluffy winter coat

Syndy Gweltsen

hateful hater who Dez desperately wants to be friends with

H. O. Gweltsen

Syndy's deceased family, who nevertheless seems like the main thing preventing her from being Dez's friend

[void-botanist]

Wrapped Scenelets No. 6: four am

I'm writing scenelets for (most of) my Spotify Wrapped top 100 songs. Here's number 6, Love Song by Sara Bareilles.

━━━━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━━━━

Imjen spread out on the sofa, enjoying for the first time the experience of no one being there, because now they had been. Zis house still felt alive from it, even though everything was cleaned by now. Zi could almost still see them there, Dez picking at the shag carpet, Mizzat sitting straight next to zir feet pulled up on the sofa, Syndy in the chair perpendicular leaning in like they were gossiping away from the nondroids. Which, in a way, they were, always having two conversations at once, internal and external, for hours after the nondroids left. At four a.m., just about the time it was now, zi’d complained about not wanting to go to work in the morning, in three hours.

“Why didn’t you take the day off?” Dez said, laying in the carpet like it was a meadow, his face off.

“They need me there,” zi said. “I can’t just take off for one party.”

“You’re allowed to quit, right?” Syndy asked.

“I mean, they can’t stop me.”

“I think you should.”

“Yeah, but what am I going to do instead?” Dez at least would understand that the boredom was worse than zir job.

“Anything,” Syndy said. “You could come with me to Hosburg.”

“I can’t leave my job that fast.”

“The Strip, then. Or inner Boeni.”

Zi still thought outer Boeni would be better. Or maybe that was just an indication that zi needed to get out of the city already. Take a couple weeks off, and…the thought of coming back to the hospital after weeks away gripped something in zir, a lockdown vice that zi had never felt before. A certain feeling. That wasn’t enough to act on, but…

“I just want you to be less miserable,” Mizzat said. “Think about it.”

━━━━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━━━━

Scenelets wrapped taglist: @kk7-rbs

[void-botanist]

pen emoji for all ur android ocs hehe

aaa thank you Red!!! ✨ android time ✨

So one thing I haven't talked about with them is orientations. They're all nonsexual by default (I count that as diffferent than ace because their species literally cannot be sexual, much like uep and neriem). But they have their own perspectives on romantic orientations. Imjen, ever the theorizer, is convinced that androids do have the capacity for romantic attraction - not least because zi is slightly obsessed with passing as a nondroid - and one day zi is going to prove it and maybe have a dramatic personal romance.

Syndy doesn't really believe in this but more than anything she is certain that she is aro, specifically loveless aro (she's the reason I extra need more loveless aros because this is not just an android thing obviously, and I also need loveless aros who are not mean like she is lol. I could believe that Gweltsen was also a loveless aro but they're busy haunting the narrative so I need some more). But even then the two of them kind of agree that there's something fundamentally different about how androids experience love, romantic or otherwise.

Mizzat likes the concept of romantic love because vi likes shipping and hangs around in fandom spaces a lot, but vi isn't sure that that's a feeling vi can feel - and likewise isn't sure that that's because of being an android, because nondroids are like that too.

Dez is the one least convinced of anything. He's not even sure whether he would know if he felt something romantic, because what would it feel like? But out of all of them he cares the least one way or the other, and he doesn't want to talk about it because he doesn't like not having any answers, and he knows this can be kind of a loaded topic with nondroids.

🖊️ send me a pen and get some cool OC facts 🖊️

[void-botanist]

Happy Blorbo Blursday! Which one of your characters would benefit from modern medication the most? If your characters are modern, what medication would help them that they're not on?

Thank you for the ask!

This was a tough one because my characters are modern, and they're typically already on the medication they need. But extrapolating a bit, I think Imjen (who is an android) could honestly use some antidepressants? Since zis internal systems are mycelial I think that would technically be possible. But unlike Syndy (also an android), who is coping with things by believing that being an immortal machine basically makes her a god, Imjen can only see a future full of jobs zi tires of after a few years, arguing with a robotics team that still fancies itself zir handlers, buying more new sofas until life is only New Sofa. Obviously zi needs some other changes too but no one yet realizes how far the despair has crept.

[void-botanist]

Hi sapling

If your ocs were rooms in a house, which room would they each be and why? (This can be a very unusual house, I don't care)

This worked really well for the TFA crew:

Anni is a workshop that appears to be 50% operated via Rube Goldberg machine.

Zel is the basement under the workshop, cool and intriguing but also storage for secrets.

Julian is that one chair that never seems to make it back to the deck, arguably not a room at all but very comfortable.

Hoven is a dining room with a heavy dark table, perfect for spreading out all your important papers, setting down your tea, and putting your head in your hands.

Dez is a bedroom with the biggest four-poster bed you've ever seen. It's super soft and has fifty pillows and purple curtains with a flower pattern.

Syndy is a balcony, the perfect place to contemplate your questionable plans while the breeze ripples your skirt.

Mizzat is a home office, the kind that also has a futon in it for when you're not doing work but you're pretending to.

Imjen is a storage closet with just enough room for one bored android.

[void-botanist]

13, 17, 18, 27 for the weird writers ask

From this ask game.

These took a while to think about and write answers to.

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy? I have a hard time with any kind of romantic relationship that is not A) already established or B) friends to lovers or C) both. I just don't understand how to make it go from 1. meet cute/first date to 2. real deepening relationship. Which was one of the downfalls of early iterations of Zel and Anni's relationship and also to some extent Triad (but Triad had other problems too). It probably stems from my weird brain plus just not having much personal experience with dating as opposed to, well, friends to lovers.

On the flipside, friends who have been friends forever - or act like it? Easy. Their dynamic flows and so does my writing.

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

Oh boy. I have a habit of fitting those things into the text as much as possible and then deciding whether to cut them later. They often pull my story in a slightly different direction and honestly make it more fun. Because TFA is about androids and also differences between different places a lot of the transport and technology minutiae does show up. But here's some stuff that most likely will not (or is kind of meta):

Anni's current design is actually a merge of two characters. An Annie who was a Julian's niece and an android's co-builder existed in old drafts, and in Triad I briefly threw in a librarian character, Tavitta, who had an impeccable sense of light, blue, bow-laden fashion. She wasn't very good in Triad but I couldn't get that concept out of my head so I applied it to new Anni.

Monster trucks exist in this world because I think they're too fun not to and I'm not sure Dez realizes this until post-TFA when Syndy becomes obsessed with them.

I have a reference map that I crafted from my old childhood maps for this world plus some climate and weather research. It has a grid (which is basically latitude and longitude except not skewed for the curvature of the planet so…inaccurate) that I use to estimate distances for travel, time zone notation, and general climate zones (frigid, temperate, subtropical, tropical). It helps me keep my climates consistent and also showed me where Elbas Island has to go to not be in a hurricane zone.

I have so far done a bad job of integrating Dez's relationships with Mizzat and Imjen into the story. I've unironically considered moving his citizenship adventure to one of their locations, but unless I fully transplant Elbas Island (which disrupts everything about it that relies on remoteness) I don't think that makes sense. Unless one of the nAkkanswl have decided to be Good Actually and just hand out android citizenship which would be fun but also a very different story than what I have currently.

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

The nawwen looked out the elevator door as they waited for it to close, but before she could raise a hand to signal them to hold the door, their eyes met hers and went huge. Then they leaned into a different button in the panel. She thought the door would close in her face as she crossed the last few feet to the elevator, but they were still holding the button and the door was still open when she got there. “Thank you,” she said, with the tiniest question in her voice. She was glad to be in the elevator, but she wasn’t really sure what had just happened there. The nawwen let go of the button and the doors started to close. “Of course,” they said in an accent that reminded her of her grandparents’. They still looked a little spooked by her presence, like she’d caught them at something. She gave them a smile and checked her node. If she’d gotten this wrong, she might never find Syndy. But the connection was almost at max strength, and it didn’t budge as they rose past the second floor, then the third. “Excuse me,” the nawwen said from the other side of the trunk. She looked up, slipping her node hand back in her coat pocket. “Are you Anni, by chance?” She blinked. “Uh…why do you ask?” “Because if you are Anni—Anni Chalbis—then you’ve just saved me an email.” The relief on their face said ‘email’ was an understatement of their narrowly avoided trials. “I’m Hoven, he-him, though I believe you know me as ‘the bookish friend’.” Her eyes widened as the pieces came together. “So you’re looking after Syndy?” Hoven nodded, then glanced to the floor number on the elevator’s screen. “We can talk in my room.”

This is from like the fifth major version of Anni meeting Hoven I've written, and it's one of the best. Not only is it just more interesting to have this accidental meeting, but Anni is actually directly involved in the whole setup instead of having someone else tell her what's happening or telling Hoven to reach out to her. She would have met Hoven anyway because he was coming to see her. But why schedule over email when you can get a weird connection request and then go on a hunt for a missing android?

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why? The most stressful in terms of "character is having a Bad Time" is Sid from Tales of Tobar Si (which I've been thinking about again recently. It's becoming interstellar sci-fi?). He's going through the early stages of realizing his parents are abusive and figuring out what to do about it and how to stay away from them. But the most stressful in terms of "why won't you let me write you" is harder to pin down. Zalen and Aza have both been difficult because I've had them as characters forever and I've been recycling them into new better characters that look basically the same. I've been slowly breaking my habit of second-guessing myself about all of Anni's POV scenes, especially about whether she reads too much like Dez. I think it also got easier to write her after I sort of let Hoven be the anxious one instead of her (they were both gonna be the anxious one. Not sure why I thought that would work).

Thank you for letting me ramble lol. I hope you enjoyed :)