#sunai tau

[ihathdroppedminecroissant]

just started archive undying and my initial impression is giving me big rainworld vibes??? these city-states and the almost omnipotent AIs is feeling familiar i want Sunai to have a slugcat

[emcandon]

fresh Silly question for you, if you'd like one:

what animals would TAU characters be?

Lucky you, wife and I had the daemon debate years ago and have OPINIONS:

Sunai is a mongoose. Reasonably cute looking but actually extremely adept at very specific violence. Action twink at it again to keep the colony safe.

Veyadi is a raccoon -- hear me out!! Too clever! To the point that he is a constant problem for himself and others! LITTLE KING TRASHMOUTH. HE'S GAY.

Jin is the largest and most regrettable parrot. Has figured out how to open doors and we are all suffering for it.

Imaru is the coolest person on deck because she probably is legitimately like, a wolf -- but the kind that's on the verge of domesticating itself.

Gonna do a few more under a cut bc they're not really spoilers, but they take up more room later in the book, so if you want to go in cleaner! Avoid! I just want to talk about them! You're welcome!

Ruhi is a police dog. A dog, with all the positive prosocial instincts that come with being a dog, but unfortunately also a cop.

Madam Wei is a swan. I often compare her to some kind of terrifying raptor bird, but I think swan fits better overall bc of how she seems elegant from a distance but up close is just the most frightening thing in the pond.

The Maw is one of those poor rhesus monkeys raised in a lab with terry cloth mothers.

The passenger is a robot.

And because my wife would not help me finish this list until I added her other blorbo: Ueda is a scrungly old lioness who is still not dead, much to her own surprise as much as anyone else's.

[cerebrobullet]

sorry to be insane on your blog and reboot everything but you’re the only person on tumblr who’s as obsessed with TAU as me and your takes on veyadi and sunai and everyone are CORRECT how does it feel to be right and have correct opinions

👀👀👀👀👀👀 NO APOLOGIES NEEDED i wanna talk about TAU So Bad, like, all the time right now!!! pls be insane with me i'm begging!!!

yell at me, yell about all the things!!! i will yell back!!! (tho i will maybe not immediately be able to yell back because i am in bed right now lmao)

[negru-diana]

Nu voi uita niciodata, #26mai2015

Buna, cel ce imi bantui in fiecare zi gandurile.. Ma mai cunosti? Ma mai iubesti? Se pare ca ai uitat cu totul de mine… Se pare ca a fost doar ceva temporar… Dar eu.. inca ma gandesc la tine #D… Nu stiu daca mai ai tumblr, nu stiu daca te mai uiti la ce postez… Imi aduc aminte cu drag ziua in care te-am cunoscut pe un simplu joc online… Am inceput sa ma ingrijorez ca nu am mai vorbit de 3 luni.. Apropo, imi pare foarte rau pentru prietenul tau.. Condoleante… Pai.. nu stiu.. Imi aduc aminte de certurile noastre constante… De momentele frumoase… Cand ne-am vazut prima oara pe Skype.. Ohhh Doamne.. imi aduc aminte ca ma “dadeam” intr-un fel la tine.. si iti placea dar nu recunosteai.. Imi aduc aminte cat de prostuti eram cand ne certam ca eu castigam la joc si tu nu.. dar stiu ca ma lasai sa castig ca sa ma vezi zambind.. Cu toate astea.. as fi vrut sa ne intalnim.. Sa te strang in brate si sa incep sa tip si sa plang de bucurie ca atunci cand te intorceai de la scoala si ma sunai sa vorbim si nu stiam cum sa ma bucur.. Am trait timp de un an momente frumoase, certuri copilaresti si mai mult, inca tin minte cand ne prosteam si cantam impreuna melodia noastra..DOAMNE CAT SPER SA VEZI ASTA SI SA-TI AMINTESTI. Mai mult ca sigur iti vei aminti de colegii mei din tabara, de mama care tipa sa imi fac temele si sa nu mai pierd vremea… Acum, lucrurile s-au schimbat.. nu am mai vorbit si mi-e dor de tinee. Doamne, ai fost cel mai bun prieten eveer

[emcandon]

I return from my bg3 stupor with a fresh 2 am question:

was the TAU story and world a concept you were baking for a long time until you had a chance to write it, or was it a more recent creation?

Do you find it easy or hard to build out new story concepts? Like, do you need to sit on them a while until they feel right, or does it just come pouring out of you from the start? Or a secret, third thing?

Just anything about your personal creation process!

lol hi it might not surprise you to learn that i am also steeping in bg3 (i am still stumbling around act 1! i'm not allowed to play until i hit daily sequel writing quota, which is healthy, i'm sure, but does mean i am somewhat behind just about everyone i know who is also playing :P)

(my first Tav is an enormous nb tiefling bard named Faretheewell who is, imo, perfect. very beautiful. very kind. definitely does drag. lying a lot, but mostly just for funsies. has turned astarion into their little purse dog.)

ANYWAY, TO THE ACTUAL QUESTION:

TAU's an interesting case because it was cannibalized from a couple different ongoing projects into something entirely new.

The characters had been floating around in different iterations since about 2013, and their final forms in Archive are quite distinct from the original seed! Imagine Sunai as an exiled diplomat who got involuntarily apprenticed to a cursed king/the last magician in the world; imagine Veyadi as a disowned god-child tasked with murdering the last magician! I'm still probably going to use that world somewhere so I'll mum about it now (it's the one I call "grandma heist.")

((imo that's why you should always yoink characters you like from whatever source you enjoy, be it your own or something else -- they will inevitably change in their new context, often so substantially that they are nigh unrecognizable.))

The story concept also originated in 2013: "Pacific Rim, but the mechs are built out of the kaiju, and pilots must have survived being poisoned by those kaiju." The addition of strange and upsetting AIs of divine power was somewhat inherited from the story Sunai and Adi came from, where divinity was fraught, fractured, and hungry.

Here's a funny. In 2017 I thought TAU would be a nice, simple, clean project. However. I know some folks who turn out gloriously clean first drafts. I AM NOT ONE OF THEM. My brain is a hazardous work environment, very non-OSHA compliant. Basically I do a lot of thought work in the drafting, so the drafts are consequently messy, and there are a LOT of changes from concept to actual workable manuscript.

Which I suppose is to say that story concepts nest in my brain quite often when it is healthy. The frequency with which I land on new and interesting story thoughts is actually a pretty good indicator of how well I am doing ambiently! Right now I'm storing up a lot of them, some of which I am fairly rabid about -- nearly as rabid as I am about Archive, which is the real indicator of a project that is ready to transition from Thought to Work. They are described here as "apocalypse magicians" and other such things. There's one that's going to be kind of an argument with Lovecraftian unknowability via desconstruction of Enlightenment epistemologies + queer identity destruction, and another that's going to be the Le Carré approach to espionage + magic as divinity meets public service + interplanetary empires intruding on your bumfuck planet offering the solution to climate change might still be bad actually. (I want to write that last with my wife and we are making SUCH GOOD FUCKING SHIPS FOR IT.)

How to summarize this? 1) find a story notion/concept about which i can obsess, 2) actually start writing it, 3) mess up spectacularly for a few drafts, 4) finally whittle together something more or less correct, 5) that's my editor's problem now!!

[emcandon]

fresh midnight Question for you:

are there any TAU worldbuilding elements or character facts or whatnot that you wanted to include in the book, but ended up cutting? or alternatively, have any specific story elements you have a burning desire to talk about?

Hm! Some thoughts on queer stuff! Which is ambiently in the text but not so much defined.

I was interested in writing a world with multiple competing theories of queerness, none of which are "perfect" -- in the sense that none of these societies have managed genuine queer liberation (i.e., everyone has the freedom to be who and love however they want). They're not necessarily awful, though some definitely are, but none of it's ideal.

The dominant queer culture originates in the Immaculate Empire and gives us "hermit" and "widow" -- pretty binary terms for a specific variety of desire, often linked with a kind of gender performance. There is no similar term for bi/pansexuality, at least not in the common parlance, so if you're, say, a cis bisexual woman, you'd still be described as a widow, were you engaging in widow-like conduct. The understanding and room for transness is highly dependent on where you are; some states have done that particular brand of evil thing where they see providing trans care as a way to enforce state power, because it's a way to police the binary and deviations from it.

Outside the empire, we get the legacy of downworld "third gender" -- which is actually a catch-all term for queerness. It also...doesn't have any further distinctions. They lump the entirety together in this one category -- which is itself somewhat binarist, as it distinguishes "cishet" from "not that," even though it's on a different axis. So if it's particularly important to you to be perceived in a more specific way, welp! Good luck!! This might actually be pretty chill in a world where authoritarian powers weren't keen on destroying your existence. Unfortunately!

I also have thoughts abt the ways different character relate to these systems of identity and meaning; like Sunai is pretty comfortable swimming between them and has a more fluid sense of self, while Veyadi cleaves more to "hermit" as a term, even though he has a somewhat complicated relationship with it. Jin has latched onto "third gender" even though they're not as bound up in downworld culture as say, Oyu, who is from a downworld caravan, third gender, and presents in a distinctly hermit-like way. And Imaru is the ur-lesbian! Widow supreme! Next question!

[emcandon]

hi! i have a tau question: when sunai says "Veyadi gives him a look of Don’t fucking patronize me, you goddamn clown man, mixed, horribly, with concern," does that mean clowns still exist in the tau universe?

i mean probably not in a pennywise kind of way, but then again, maybe in a pennywise kind of way!

the ruling aesthetic genre notion for The Archive Undying is that it should punctuate the eldritch divine and technologically arcane with the absolutely mundane. i have a lot of thoughts about its pop culture that aren't really on the page outside of reference to radio dramas, esp. the relic dramas, which are essentially Harbor copaganda. there's a huge bootleg culture, definitely doujinshi, and i'm pretty sure the empire has something akin to idol culture -- as well as scads of trashy literature about AIs and their human favorites.

[emcandon]

Hi! Cerebros gf here, who bought me your book and i just read TAU in 5 days and finished yesterday and had to lie down. I just want to say... lots of things actually. Most importantly: i love your book! And in no particular order - veyadi. Absolute chefs kiss! Would love to stick him in a jar and shake! And also, dont mind me sticking jin in my pocket for later. I have a collection going. They are the most baby of my assassin and assassin adjacent spicy characters but i love the variety! I hope they will return in the next book!! Sunai. *Sunai*. I really, really get the urge to murder him a little bit here and there in the hopes that he developes an Opinion on being murdered. Turns out all it took was some robot vore. Kinky bastard ;) Also. What are the tenbeast shapes? There are more than 10 varieties, right?? But why are they called tenbeasts... And please tell me you can like... install a firewall in them and keep them as pets... pls? Pretty pls?

HELLO HI THANK YOU, YOU ARE LOVELY AND HAVE A WHOLE SLEW OF CORRECT OPINIONS

without getting too spoilery about book 2: 1) i feel like most scenes have been my version of jar-shaking veyadi, 2) jin is also getting some jar-shaking which lol; they asked for this, 3) you are absolutely not the only person who often feels like shaking sunai, because i also do, so into the jar he goes!! 4) tenbeasts! there are five broad varieties because they come from combinations of the ten divine beasts in downworld folklore/mythology. there are also more tenbeasts in book 2 and tbh they have also been shaken.

[emcandon]

here's a question: can you describe the characters in TAU as cocktails/liquor? and explain the reasoning behind it

OKAY OKAY OKAY i've had to think abt this for a couple days but here are some thoughts:

I want to say Sunai is just good ol' bathtub jungle juice but that's really more what he's trying to convince you is true. He's actually the most suspiciously delicate and complex jello shot you've ever had.

Veyadi thinks he's some kind of offputtingly potent one-note moonshine but in truth he's a clear cocktail of at least two different complimentary liquers and a nice sharp seltzer, maybe some citrus notes.

Imaru seems like she'd be a mellow blend that burns nice, a whiskey on the rocks, but I'm afraid of what else might be mixed in just under the surface. Good stuff but unexpectedly intense.

Jin is a vibrantly hued multi-colored cocktail that looks like danger, tastes like a mistake, and does indeed punt your brain straight across the room and out the fucking window.

Can I start talking about other characters? MAYBE. IDK. MORE ASKS FOR MORE DEETS.

[emcandon]

OH actually I have another ~Question~: which TAU character changed the most from first conception? Or are there any bits of TAU in general that are drastically different in the final version and would be fun to talk about?

NO SPOILERS!

But in short, the story changed DRAMATICALLY from first draft to final -- the first version took place entirely in Khuon Mo! -- though I suppose the underlying problems remained consistently the same. I knew characters first by their roles in the narrative, some of which are super spoilery, so I'm unlikely to ever share them!

In terms of characters who've most drastically transformed, er, probably Jin? Kind of. Their root personality has been fairly consistent, but I didn't really let them off the chain until I realized they should be nonbinary, at which point I suddenly cared about them way more and was willing to let them get away with some truly dire shit -- which is a thing I typically reserve for the characters I am most interested in. (Do you have deeply conflicted feelings about one of my characters and their behavior? I probably actually love them.) (It will likewise probably not surprise to learn that I am especially unable to write an antagonist until I understand them enough to pity them.) (Tho I am interested in figuring out how to write an antagonist who I simply don't pity at all. I think that would be an invigorating challenge.)

Also Jin started out way more in charge of their life; bringing their aunt into the picture was for the better, in no small part bc I am terrified of their aunt in that way where I find scary old ladies terrifically attractive ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

(Other changes: Veyadi was at one point way more sheltered; Sunai was at one point way better at hiding his feral tendencies; there are a bunch of characters who I loved who got straight-up cut from the story bc they were taking up too much space. Some will turn up in Book 2 tho!)

[emcandon]

I’m I think 10 chapters in to the archive undying and I just wanna say. Fuck a movie, I want a tau video game. Because the scenery in my mind is immaculate, but also I feel I’d enjoy experiencing The Horrors alongside sunai because that’s my type of gaming experience

Real talk, I have at multiple separate points been asked if I conceived of TAU as a video game or TTRPG world before it was a book -- the answer is no! But it's also true that my brain has absolutely been shaped by both video and tabletop games in ways that filter into the way I worldbuild, even unconsciously.

(Relatedly I've thought about engineering something like a Beam Saber scenario or hack for Archive because that seemed apropos.)

Anyway: more Horrors be upon you /positive

[cerebrobullet]

me piecing together all the POV and tense changes with the second reading of TAU and just HHHHHHHHH

suddenly, the scene on the boat when veyadi touches his throat the same time as sunai- and then he does not ever touch sunai's throat again and and- *lays down on ground and starts sobbing* 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺