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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

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A year in illustration, 2023 edition (part one)

(This is part one; part two is here.)

I am objectively very bad at visual art. I am bad at vision, period – I'm astigmatic, shortsighted, color blind, and often miss visual details others see. I can't even draw a stick-figure. To top things off, I have cataracts in both eyes and my book publishing/touring schedule is so intense that I keep having to reschedule the surgeries. But despite my vast visual deficits, I thoroughly enjoy making collages for this blog.

For many years now – decades – I've been illustrating my blog posts by mixing public domain and Creative Commons art with work that I can make a good fair use case for. As bad as art as I may be, all this practice has paid off. Call it unseemly, but I think I'm turning out some terrific illustrations – not all the time, but often enough.

Last year, I rounded up my best art of the year:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/25/a-year-in-illustration/

And I liked reflecting on the year's art so much, I decided I'd do it again. Be sure to scroll to the bottom for some downloadables – freely usable images that I painstakingly cut up with the lasso tool in The Gimp.

The original AD&D hardcover cover art is seared into my psyche. For several years, there were few images I looked at so closely as these. When Hasbro pulled some world-beatingly sleazy stuff with the Open Gaming License, I knew just how to mod Dave Trampier's 'Eve Of Moloch' from the cover of the Players' Handbook. Thankfully, bigger nerds than me have identified all the fonts in the image, making the remix a doddle.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/12/beg-forgiveness-ask-permission/#whats-a-copyright-exception

Even though I don't keep logs or collect any analytics, I can say with confidence that "Tiktok's Enshittification" was the most popular thing I published on Pluralistic this year. I mixed some public domain Brother's Grimm art, mixed with a classic caricature of Boss Tweed, and some very cheesy royalty-free/open access influencer graphics. One gingerbread cottage social media trap, coming up:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

To illustrate the idea of overcoming walking-the-plank fear (as a metaphor for writing when it feels like you suck) I mixed public domain stock of a plank, a high building and legs, along with a procedurally generated Matrix "code waterfall" and a vertiginous spiral ganked from a Heinz Bunse photo of a German office lobby.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/22/walking-the-plank/

Finding a tasteful way to illustrate a story about Johnson & Johnson losing a court case after it spent a generation tricking women into dusting their vulvas with asbestos-tainted talcum was a challenge. The tulip (featured in many public domain images) was a natural starting point. I mixed it with Jesse Wagstaff's image of a Burning Man dust-storm and Mike Mozart's shelf-shot of a J&J talcum bottle.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-and-j-jk/#risible-gambit

"Google's Chatbot Panic" is about Google's long history of being stampeded into doing stupid things because its competitors are doing them. Once it was Yahoo, now it's Bing. Tenniel's Tweedle Dee and Dum were a good starting point. I mixed in one of several Humpty Dumpty editorial cartoon images from 19th century political coverage that I painstakingly cut out with the lasso tool on a long plane-ride. This is one of my favorite Humpties, I just love the little 19th C businessmen trying to keep him from falling! I finished it off with HAL 9000's glowing red eye, my standard 'this is about AI' image, which I got from Cryteria's CC-licensed SVG.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Though I started writing about Luddites in my January, 2022 Locus column, 2023 was the Year of the Luddite, thanks to Brian Merchant's outstanding Blood In the Machine:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/26/enochs-hammer/#thats-fronkonsteen

When it came time to illustrate "Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk," I found a public domain weaver's loft, and put one of Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes in the window. Magpie Killjoy's Steampunk Magazine poster, 'Love the Machine, Hate the Factory,' completed the look.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/12/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk/

For the "small, non-profit school" that got used as an excuse to bail out Silicon Valley Bank, I brought back Humpty Dumpty, mixing him with a Hogwartsian castle, a brick wall texture, and an ornate, gilded frame. I love how this one came out. This Humpty was made for the SVB bailout.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/23/small-nonprofit-school/#north-country-school

The RESTRICT Act would have federally banned Tiktok – a proposal that was both technically unworkable and unconstitutional. I found an early 20th century editorial cartoon depicting Uncle Sam behind a fortress wall that was keeping a downtrodden refugee family out of America. I got rid of most of the family, giving the dad a Tiktok logo head, and I put Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes over each cannonmouth. Three Boss Tweed moneybag-head caricatures, adorned with Big Tech logos, rounded it out.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/#good-politics-for-electoral-victories

When Flickr took decisive action to purge the copyleft trolls who'd been abusing its platform, I knew I wanted to illustrate this with Lucifer being cast out of heaven, and the very best one of those comes from John Milton, who is conveniently well in the public domain. The Flickr logo suggested a bicolored streaming-light-of-heaven motif that just made it.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/01/pixsynnussija/#pilkunnussija

Old mainframe ads are a great source of stock for a "Computer Says No" image. And Congress being a public building, there are lots of federal (and hence public domain) images of its facade.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/04/cbo-says-no/#wealth-tax

When I wrote about the Clarence Thomas/Harlan Crow bribery scandal, it was easy to find Mr. Kjetil Ree's great image of the Supreme Court building. Thomas being a federal judge, it was easy to find a government photo of his head, but it's impossible to find an image of him in robes at a decent resolution. Luckily, there are tons of other federal judges who've been photographed in their robes! Boss Tweed with the dollar-sign head was a great stand-in for Harlan Crow (no one knows what he looks like anyway). Gilding Thomas's robes was a simple matter of superimposing a gold texture and twiddling with the layers.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

"Gig apps trap reverse centaurs in wage-stealing Skinner boxes" is one of my best titles. This is the post where I introduce the idea of "twiddling" as part of the theory of enshittification, and explain how it relates to "reverse centaurs" – people who assist machines, rather than the other way around. Finding a CC licensed modular synth was much harder than I thought, but I found Stephen Drake's image and stitched it into a mandala. Cutting out the horse's head for the reverse centaur was a lot of work (manes are a huuuuge pain in the ass), but I love how his head sits on the public domain high-viz-wearing warehouse worker's body I cut up (thanks, OSHA!). Seeing as this is an horrors-of-automation story, Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes make an appearance.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Rockefeller's greatest contribution to our culture was inspiring many excellent unflattering caricatures. The IWW's many-fists-turning-into-one-fist image made it easy to have the collective might of workers toppling the original robber-baron.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

I link to this post explaining how to make good Mastodon threads at least once a week, so it's a good thing the graphic turned out so well. Close-cropping the threads from a public domain yarn tangle worked out great. Eugen Rochko's Mastodon logo was and is the only Affero-licensed image ever to appear on Pluralistic.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/16/how-to-make-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads/

I spent hours on the sofa one night painstakingly cutting up and reassembling the cover art from a science fiction pulp. I have a folder full of color-corrected, high-rez scans from an 18th century anatomy textbook, and the cross-section head-and-brain is the best of the lot.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Those old French anatomical drawings are an endless source of delight to me. Take one cross-sectioned noggin, mix in an old PC mainboard, and a vector art illo of a virtuous cycle with some of Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes and you've got a great illustration of Google's brain-worms.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/14/googles-ai-hype-circle/

Ireland's privacy regulator is but a plaything in Big Tech's hand, but it's goddamned hard to find an open-access Garda car. I manually dressed some public domain car art in Garda livery, painstakingly tracing it over the panels. The (public domain) baby's knit cap really hides the seams from replacing the baby's head with HAL9000's eye.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

Naked-guy-in-a-barrel bankruptcy images feel like something you can find in an old Collier's or Punch, but I came up snake-eyes and ended up frankensteining a naked body into a barrel for the George Washington crest on the Washington State flag. It came out well, but harvesting the body parts from old muscle-beach photos left George with some really big guns. I tried five different pairs of suspenders here before just drawing in black polyhedrons with little grey dots for rivets.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

Illustrating Amazon's dominance over the EU coulda been easy – just stick Amazon 'A's in place of the yellow stars that form a ring on the EU flag. So I decided to riff on Plutarch's Alexander, out of lands to conquer. Rama's statue legs were nice and high-rez. I had my choice of public domain ruin images, though it was harder thank expected to find a good Amazon box as a plinth for those broken-off legs.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

God help me, I could not stop playing with this image of a demon-haunted IoT car. All those reflections! The knife sticking out of the steering wheel, the multiple Munsch 'Scream'ers, etc etc. The more I patchked with it, the better it got, though. This one's a banger.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

To depict a "data-driven dictatorship," I ganked elements of heavily beribboned Russian military dress uniforms, replacing the head with HAL9000's eye. I turned the foreground into the crowds from the Nuremberg rallies and filled the sky with Matrix code waterfall.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/26/dictators-dilemma/#garbage-in-garbage-out-garbage-back-in

The best thing about analogizing DRM to demonic possession is the wealth of medieval artwork to choose from . This one comes from the 11th century 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros.' I mixed in the shiny red Tesla (working those reflections!), and a Tesla charger to make my point.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Yet more dividends from those old French anatomical plates: a flayed skull, a detached jaw, a quack electronic gadget, a Wachowski code waterfall and some HAL 9000 eyes and you've got a truly unsettling image of machine-compelled speech.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

I had no idea this would work out so well, but daaaamn, crossfading between a Wachowski code waterfall and a motherboard behind a roiling thundercloud is dank af.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

Of all the turkeys-voting-for-Christmas self-owns conservative culture warriors fall for, few can rival the "banning junk fees is woke" hustle. Slap a US-flag Punisher logo on and old-time card imprinter, add a GOP logo to a red credit-card blank, and then throw in a rustic barn countertop and you've got a junk-fee extracter fit for the Cracker Barrel.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

Putting the Verizon logo on the Hinderberg was an obvious gambit (even if I did have to mess with the flames a lot), but the cutout of Paul Marcarelli as the 'can you hear me now?' guy, desaturated and contrast-matched, made it sing.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/10/smartest-guys-in-the-room/#can-you-hear-me-now

Note to self: Tux the Penguin is really easy to source in free/open formats! He looks great with HAL9000 eyes.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

Rockwell's self-portrait image is a classic; that made it a natural for a HAL9000-style remix about AI art. I put a bunch of time into chopping and remixing Rockwell's signature to give it that AI look, and added as many fingers as would fit on each hand.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

(Images: Heinz Bunse, West Midlands Police, Christopher Sessums, CC BY-SA 2.0; Mike Mozart, Jesse Wagstaff, Stephen Drake, Steve Jurvetson, syvwlch, Doc Searls, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mosaic36/14231376315, Chatham House, CC BY 2.0; Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; Mr. Kjetil Ree, Trevor Parscal, Rama, “Soldiers of Russia” Cultural Center, Russian Airborne Troops Press Service, CC BY-SA 3.0; Raimond Spekking, CC BY 4.0; Drahtlos, CC BY-SA 4.0; Eugen Rochko, Affero; modified)

#pluralistic #illustration #collage #fair use #creative commons #stock art #blogging #art #practice makes perfect

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racxnteur · 4 months

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Incomeless; will proofread your fics! (Or anything else.)

I'm not sure how to head this with a snazzy, attention-catching image given I'm not offering an obviously graphic service like art commissions, but let's give it a go...

Hello, I'm your friendly neighborhood disabled unemployed transgender queer on the internet. I have not posted a great amount about the details on this blog for privacy reasons, but I am currently in an untenable familial/financial living situation, which I am actively working to get out of. My primary barrier to disentangling myself from the pertinent parties is a lack of income. I've been unable to pursue traditional means of work due to being multiply disabled (slash chronically ill, slash treatment-resistant, et cetera...), but I do not qualify for SSI or unemployment, so I am stuck trying to find other ways of making money.

This is where you come in... If you'd like to help, you can:

$$ Hire me $$ to proofread your fics, essays, and more!

Click below for info! (I also may add separate posts for diversity reading and/or other writing- and editing-related services.)

For $0.00855/word *OR BEST BID*, I will vet your work of writing before you publish it, checking for mistakes in spelling, capitalization, & punctuation, missed words, inconsistencies of tense, formatting, & POV, and miscellaneous grammatical errors. Never again need you fear posting a finished chapter and discovering a slew of typos after the fact; no matter how sleep-deprived or late at night the state of writing, I will ensure your text is ship-shape. Or, if you happen to be interested in having other types of writing proofread before submission--essays, comics or webtoons, letters, transcripts, compositions of a personal nature, so on--I will happily take these on at a comparable rate.[1]

Qualifications:

Bachelor's degree in English with a minor in writing

Initiate of international collegiate honors society for English scholarship, Sigma Tau Delta

Active member of the International Association of Professional Writers and Editors (IAPWE)

Former lit editor for award-winning university literary arts magazine

Prior employment in tutoring and teaching English, as well as copy-editing and content writing

Nearly 20 years' writing experience

Previous experience as both fic writer and beta

Incisive eye for typo-hunting and tenacious attention to detail (I have high standards and will make those everybody else's problem... now for pay!)

I will read for content of any genre and all ratings, and am broadly[2] open to any subject matter, kinks, et cetera. I'll also post more detailed guidelines (booking process, any exclusions, additional criteria) on a separate, unrebloggable post so that any edits and updates are always current.

Message me via the chat feature on Tumblr, or send me an e-mail (I will post it on my more info post) to request a quote, bid for a slot, or just to see what I can offer for whatever project you have in mind. And please feel encouraged to share or boost this post! I am in urgent need of any income I can get, and every share counts 😭🙌

. . . . . . . . . .

Proofreading Full Details · Other Services · Support Me (alternatively, Tip this post!)

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] There will be some exclusions to this, such as academic assignments/papers that have style guide requirements; i.e., I will not be your online MLA style checker or anything.

[2] As with anything, there will be sporadic exceptions to this as well, but I will always be up-front about such cases.

#proofreading #fanfic #writing help #for hire #authblr #ficblr #writers on tumblr #writeblr #other tags??? idk help me out here #proofreading post #this is tumblr let's all pretend this post is as professional as it gets and that i don't have any obsessive compulsive disorders at all

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louroth · 1 year

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Well, well, well. Would you look at what the cat dragged in. (it's me, Lou!)

The time is here, and oh man, do I have a lot to say! Ever since this post was posted on my personal tumblr, on the fifth of may, I have been working like a machine on all things OUROBOROS. I had originally planned for this to just be a progress report/ announcement on what I will be working on now that I am free of the shackles of work, but, somehow, I managed to finish all bullet points, and more. So, let's get into it!

First off, the title. Ouroboros becomes all capitalized OUROBOROS. Idk. It's neat. Next!

Art. Whew. I didn't think I could draw like this anymore- drawing has been more of a struggle than writing has been, forever, always- it was something I really strived to become good at, for a time. And I gave up. Only to pick it up again when I started ouro, and ever since I released that pressure, something just clicked and I have been churning out art like never before. I don't know if this is a fluke, a stroke of luck or if all that hard work I once did slaving away with menial art practice… but I'm grateful nonetheless. (A note on official RO art: I lost my ipad pencil somewhere on the lawn, lmao. I haven't been able to get a new one yet, so there is a slight delay here.) I am hoping that I get to make some commissions too, in the near future. Visit the forum to see some works in progress (amongst them, Yor's RO portrait!)

Onto the hellscape that is coding! I have been growing more proficient with CSS and html with the help of the ones that run so that we can walk; I have studied and researched and tested and tinkered until my eyes crossed, finding my way into this medium with the incredible guidance of the giants of whose shoulders I stand on. I will talk about this in detail on a later date. So I think it's finally time to reveal that yes, I am working on a twine version of ouro. I will develop it in tandem with choicescript; the porting over from one to the other isn't the herculean task I thought it would be.

Why am I doing this? Because I need to have a save system. I am continuing to write the whole alpha draft in choicescript in hopes that CoG will announce the ability to have a native save/checkpoint system, but if that doesn’t happen, I can’t publish this story without one. Unfortunately, I am not willing to code in a savesystem in choicescript myself, because this will be a large game, with far too many variables for that to be sustainable. Trust me, no one is more disappointed by that fact than me. If it comes to the point that twine publishing will be what I do, I will set my sights on writing a smaller game for hosted games.

Now the meatier announcements!

New Socials!

Tumblr: You are looking at it! This is the new, exclusively OUROBOROS blog where I will share all announcements and sneak-peeks, and future updates. I worked together with the dev of the theme and made it oh, so pretty and functional. Please check out their portfolio here, if you are ever in the market for sprucing up your (desktop version) of tumblr. They were a pleasure to work with. Amongst other things, it has a gorgeous header (again, only if you visit on web and not mobile) where I am showcasing fanart and official art. Go check it out! This month, I am showcasing a truly breathtaking art from KAIRELART, and you can find the full art here, or follow the links in the “FEATURED ARTIST” tab in the top bar.

I hope you enjoy this new haven for OUROBOROS! I will be answering questions once a week (saturday) and ramping up as I adapt to this new schedule, more on that further below.

My old tumblr, honeypeabrain, will revert back to being my personal blog. Feel free to keep following me there, but know that it will be inundated with shitposts, crass humor and the occasional poetry dump and personal post. You’ve been warned!

Discord!

By the good graces, this was ROUGH to set up. Working with discord bots is akin to wrangling code, and it was well and truly, a war. But with the help of many, it is finally all done and ready for anyone to join and talk to me and others about OUROBOROS and anything else between heaven and earth.

I will also greatly appreciate if any future bugs and feedback are submitted through here, so I can keep easier track of it. Come join us! (18+ ONLY.)

Patreon & Ko-Fi

Yep! Ko-fi is just a place to toss me a coin if you wish to help me towards the goal of new PC parts to make testing easier, or to just show appreciation for those that have it to spare. Patreon however, already has a multitude of posts and will be a hub for exclusive NSFW sidestories that you get to vote on, loredives and extensive sneak peeks, Q&A’s, polls and weekly dev logs.

Right now, there are only two tiers, but I expect it to grow as my story does. I have many plans, but I am going at a steady pace.

Amongst tiered content, there is a (free) NSFW story with female MC and Idren to read there right now, if you want to check it out! I am mgoing to post it on tumblr and the adult thread here over the weekend.

NOTE: I stupidly didn't realize that patreon had a review process after I pressed launch, which I did just a few minutes ago. Sigh. I am going to post the short on tumblr and the adult forum thread as soon as I get to it.

It is not mandatory by any means, so if you do choose to support me, you have my eternal gratitude as these places will be the sole source of income for me.

Onto writing:

The best news out of this whole bunch is that I have worked so hard on editing and writing, that in the past month I have all but finished a two chapter update! I have a chunk of about 5-6 thousand words left to write, and I am going to buckle down over the weekend to see it through. I wanted to have it done so badly for today, but I lost three days of writing time last week due to still being weighed down with work. I hope it isn’t too disappointing to have to wait until monday for the demo update! I am going to post a link to an as-I-write updated demo on Patreon and Discord, if you want to see the ugly face of raw wip drafts. Otherwise I will post the demo update here on Monday with a comprehensive post!

And now! the biggest news is… from now on, I am writing full time!

This is what I have been tossing and turning about every night ever since Easter. It started as a silly idea while talking to some friends and family about how I was looking for a change in career. And then, little by little, that idea whittled down to a plan, carefully carved by my partner and his whispers of a happy future, a finished dream project, and something to be proud of until the day I wither and die.

Somewhere between then and now, I grasped a tiny sliver of bravery and held on for dear life.

I quit my job as a teacher, and instead of accepting a cushy office job, I started behaving as if OUROBOROS and writing was my work (for all the moments I could afford). I have researched and tried different methods from week to week, and although I was still tired from work, I felt like I was onto something that could build into a sustainable future.

I have no doubts that this journey will be bumpy and long, but sometimes all it takes is to take that first step, and do it with determination. It might all crash and burn and fail in a spectacular way, or with a whimper, but then I will know that I have tried. I will know that I gave myself the chance to be who I want to be, work on what means so much to me.

And that’s it. I think the hardest part of formulating this post (I’ve written about 50 versions of it!) is getting to the point; the kernel of what makes it so special to me. So, in my heart of hearts, what I'm trying to tell you is that I'm gonna give it my all- and while I know the road to having a sustainable career in writing is rough and ever winding, I do know for sure that I am ready for a challenge, to pour my heart and soul into it until the day I rush out of the office screaming IT IS DONE. IT IS DOOOOONE!!!

If you decide to join me, I will treasure your company like a lantern in the dark. Hand in lovable hand, let’s fucking go.

#OUROBOROS #ouroboros-if #interactive fiction #hosted games #CYOA #twine #dev log #progress update #honeypeabrain #smacking tags on this post like they're skittles im aiming into a beasts mouth #I DIDN'T REALIZE PATREON WAS GOING TO REVIEW MY PAGE (literally cried about it because I planned everything so meticulously) SOB #anyway :') but a small stepping stone on the long journey ahead #I am going to take the dog for a long walk and then upload the demo/spicy short as I say hello to anyone joining the disc #I hope to see you there :>

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ghostinthegallery · 9 days

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I can't believe The Silence and the Storm is over a year old! The first anniversary was May 27th (yes I missed my own fic's birthday in my defense I was traveling and forgot how time works).

I'm trying to compose my thoughts because this sure feels like a time a blog post would be fitting. However, my engrams are scrambled because...wow do I have too many feelings.

As some background, I've been a writer for a long time. And I've written 3-5 books (depends on how you count "completing" a book but it's 5 full drafts, 3 of which were heavily edited). I wanted to be a trade published writer (still do) and for a while I was feeling good about my chances! I got lucky and received some wonderful professional mentorship (and met one of my best friends during that program!). I took that guidance to query agents (a necessary step for access to most big/medium US publishers). I knew it would be hard and take time but...4 years later all I have to show are a few requests, hundreds of rejections, and one agent who asked me to rewrite my entire book only to reject me anyway (me, bitter? No not at all nooooo).

I'm a creative person and sharing my work feels like sharing a part of myself. Something that is not easy for me to do. After a while I just assumed I was missing something necessary. My work didn't resonate, but I didn't know how to fix it. I’d never reach anyone in the way I so desperately craved, and it was my fault for not being good enough. I felt broken.

During one of many major depressive episodes my spouse bought me a copy of The Infinite and the Divine. That book has changed my life. I was never much of a fanfic writer before. Either I thought the original work was too good and I didn't think I had anything to add or it was too bad so why would I bother with it when I could just go read/watch something better? 40k inspired me though. The ideas are incredible but underutilized enough that I felt like I had something to add.

So I started writing necron fic because why not? There wasn’t enough for me to read, and I needed more robot stories. Maybe I could rediscover my love of the craft, make some friends, make some robots kiss. Distract my mind from the horrors. So I posted a little OC fic and actually got some nice comments. Hey! Positive reinforcement! Hadn't had that in a while.

Emboldened, I continued in the most normal way possible. Going from a 7 chapter OC story to a giant civil war epic including every named necron character I could find with 6 (then 7...then 9) POVs. It was the type of grand space opera I've always wanted to write but never did because I didn’t think I had the skill and it's harder to sell. Luckily AO3 is free. Ain't no playing to the market there!

Now, a 40k necron civil war space opera is...niche. So I wasn't expecting much. I would have been happy with some kudos, some comments. Fan art felt like a pipe dream, but what are writers if not dreamers? The main goal was to enjoy myself. It was low pressure fun, I love the characters, what could go wrong?

Nothing, but I was wholely unprepared for things to go as right as they did. Y’all have been amazing. So many great comments and ideas exchanged, gorgeous art, fun asks, a lot of screaming (it’s fine probably don’t worry). I’ve never had such a strong outpouring of support for my work. It feels incredible. But also sometimes confusing. I’ve trained myself so well to handle rejection that I kind of forgot how to handle acceptance. Especially for something so personal. This is a weird story about undead space robots, there’s a lot of politics, sometimes the robots have sex. It’s got out there head canons, and 99% of the tyranid parts are pulled out of my ass because nobody knows how the space bugs work okay. My weirdness being embraced on this scale is one of the greatest feelings of my life. But it’s also new, and way out of my comfort zone. I’m being seen and adjusting to that.

Still, writing in this space has been one of the most consistently joyful things in my life for…well, over a year now! It’s changed how I view my art. I actually can create stories that touch people and make them feel things. I can take risks and have them pay off. I know not everyone will love this, but some people really seem to love it. That is mind blowing to me.

It’s making me reassess a lot about how I approach my art. Writing and other. I still plan to pursue publication. I want to get paid for my work, but this is making me consider alternate paths that might fit my style (and psyche) better. I don’t know what the future holds, but if you’d told me a year and a half ago that a big part of it would hinge on an AO3 gay robot skeleton space opera…I would have thought you were nuts, but also hoped you were right because that sounds rad as hell.

So in conclusion, thank you all so much for reading <3

#Personal post #very very personal post #The silence and the storm #happy one year anniversary folks #Thanks again

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clangenrising · 1 month

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Wow <3

Thank you guys so much for all of the amazing feedback during the Battle with Razor. And another, special thanks to @tiritirimatangi and the ClanGen team for the amazing game and for the special easter eggs included in the Myths and Mysteries update that is soon to be published. Seriously, without any of you guys, my fans included, I could not have made RisingClan what it is and I am SO thankful.

We recently passed the one year anniversary of this blog which is CRAZY to me. I have never stuck with a project this consistently for this long and I am amazed at the kind of stuff I've been able to put out. I have big plans for the story going forward that I am so excited to share with you guys.

However, this blog is a lot of work. I spend days a week writing for RisingClan and lately I haven't had the time to draw much art to go along with it, especially since I've had to get a day job. I want to do more with RisingClan, but at the moment, that's tricky. Several people have recommended that I start a Patreon or something to help and I was hesitant because I didn't want to get into any legal trouble but I recently learned that, as long as you don't use any official Warrior Cats branding, Warrior Cats is completely fine with people making money off of their fan works which is such a relief.

SO! I have some questions and I would love to hear your feedback on them.

If I started a Patreon, what kind of Patreon rewards would you be interested in seeing? What would you be willing to pay for those rewards? Is this something you would be interested in at all?

I think this could be a really good next step for this blog that would allow me a bit more freedom to pursue creative projects but I also am hesitant to get over excited when it comes to something like this. I'm sure you all saw the fiasco with Watcher.TV and I definitely don't want to make the same mistakes they did.

No matter what happens with the Patreon, I will never put any of the stuff you've been seeing behind a paywall. RisingClan is a project I want to share with my community and I'm not going to charge people to engage with my art. I also want to make sure that what I might provide on my Patreon feels like it is worth whatever you are being charged, even if that's just 1 dollar a month. I'm not here to get rich. I don't want anyone putting themself at financial risk on my behalf. All I want is to be able to feel a little more able to spend time on RisingClan without worrying that I'm being irresponsible.

Thank you again for following me so far and for being so amazing. I really could not ask for a better audience. I look forward to hearing your feedback, whatever it may be.

With so much love, ~ Rowan

#not art #housekeeping #important #patreon #RisingClan

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michaelsfavgirl · 5 months

Text

‎‧₊˚✧[navigation]✧˚₊‧

˖⁺‧₊˚🎞️✮☎️✮🧸˚₊‧⁺˖ Welcome <3

Blog info, about me, masterlist, my socials, tag system, request rules & and taglist can be found here.

⁎₊✧˚ masterlist, tiktok, twitter, wattpad ˚✧₊⁎

— If you want to be added to my taglist please comment under this post

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡ Before you continue ⟡˚౨ৎ⋆

✎ᝰ! MDNI + DNI if you're racist, homophobic, sexist/misogynistic, transphobic, ableist, xenophobic, fatphobic etc. Any hate will be blocked/ignored. I will not tolerate any kind of discrimination.

✎ᝰ! English is not my first language, therefore, there may be minor mistakes in my writing.

✎ᝰ! This blog will include nsfw material, such as smutty fanfics or me just thirsting over mike lol. So viewer discretion is advised. If this makes you uncomfortable do not engage with my blog, simply block me and move on. Any negativity will be deleted.

✎ᝰ! Keep in mind that I am a university student so I may not be able to publish fics as frequently as you'd like. Be patient with me pls and thank you. (๑･̑◡･̑๑)

✎ᝰ! To add to that if your request hasn’t been answered it’s not because I’m ignoring it but probably because I have someone else’s (who requested earlier) to post before yours. Again, please be patient.

✎ᝰ! I hope you enjoy your time here! My blog is a safe, judgment-free space for anyone who chooses to visit.

✎ᝰ! I don't give permission for any of my works to be copied, translated or reposted in any kind of way and to any other platform.

✎ᝰ! The support and mdni banners are from @cafekitsune

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡ About me ⟡˚౨ৎ⋆

✎ᝰ! My name is Kate, I'm nineteen, a Taurus and from West Asia.

✎ᝰ! I have been a fan of Michael Jackson since I was a child but I became a part of the fandom around 2019. My man is my no. 1 on Spotify every single year (yup, yup).

✎ᝰ! I actually had a book on wattpad about mike a few years ago and it was HURRENDEOUS, but I promise that my writing abilities have gotten better :)

✎ᝰ! Please feel free to send me anything in my inbox. (questions, requests, or if you want to simply chat anonymously) I would love to make friends on here and chat with my fellow moonwalkers! So don't hesitate. <3

Here are some random facts about me:

✎ᝰ! My hobbies: watching films, feeding into my delusions (writing fics about michael), playing the guitar, skiing, doing my makeup.

✎ᝰ! My top 5 musicians: Michael Jackson (obvi), Madonna, Queen, Nina Simone, Amy Winehouse.

✎ᝰ! My favorite films: Portrait of a lady on fire, Amelie, Mary & Max, The shape of water, The grand Budapest hotel and Knives out.

✎ᝰ! More facts: i LOVE cinema, it is an art form that should be cherished forever, professional procrastinator, reality shifter, fav color is green, big pop culture nerd, a little acoustic (autistic), addicted to watching edits on tiktok.

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡ Request rules ⟡˚౨ৎ⋆

✎ᝰ! For now I only write for mj.

✎ᝰ! I will write: smut, fluff, angst, fem!reader, plus-size!reader, most kinks tbh (just ask don't be shy), creampies, dp, somnophilia, ddlg (sexual and non sexual), voyeurism/exhibitionism, watersports, age difference as long as both are of age, threesomes (only mmf).

✎ᝰ! I won't write: male/trans/non-binary!reader, ocs (I only write x reader), hard kinks, knife/gun kink, scat kink, drug consumption, pedophilia, rape, breeding kink, pregnant!reader, pregnancy kink, incest/stepcest, mommy kink, sub!michael, pegging, dom!reader, abuse, degradation kink.

✎ᝰ! Requests are always open unless stated otherwise in my bio.

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡ My tag system ⟡˚౨ৎ⋆

✎ᝰ! For answering asks: annie’s calling

✎ᝰ! For my writing: kate's writing

✎ᝰ! For thirst posts: dirty diana

✎ᝰ! For misc. posts: wanna be startin somethin

✎ᝰ! For reblogs: reblog

Last updated: May 26th, 2024

Thank you so much for reading! Have a wonderful day/night. ✶𓏲ּ꩜ .ᐟ

#navigation #blog info #blog navigation #about me #tag system #request rules #masterlist #taglist #tiktok #wattpad #twitter #michael jackson

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emmettworld · 3 months

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Okay I promise this is genuine and I don't want to send hate, and if you don't believe it, fair...but why post the works involving minors and nsfw (yes that includes the incest) ? I do believe that you can write whatever you want, and I don't think you're some boggeyman that get his kick of writing about abused kids or whatever bullshit. But there's a difference between writing it and publishing it, and while I think it's unfair your blog was straight up deleted and not flagged, I can also understand why Tumblr did it : I read the ToS, and I don't think they're just for real minors (but it's my personnal interpretation). This type of work (text, art, etc) can be shared with a group of friends or a group of people who're all used to this kind of content, and maybe it would prevent the risk of people stumbling unto texts involving Logan and David for example (happened to me once, oof) and more importantly, Tumblr throwing a fit? You're an amazing artist and while I haven't kept up with your content for a while (I unfollowed when you started posting about incest and non-con against minors sorry, it's a topic I really don't like), I don't want you to keep on being flagged and banned forever.

the simplest answer i have is because it's part of who i am as a creator, and sharing those parts has not just been extremely liberating and cathartic for me, but for others too.

that's one of the most important things to me. it would be different if all i got was hate and not a shred of support or positivity -- if nobody told me that they liked it, that it helped them be more comfortable with themselves and their own work, then i don't know if i would. it's hard to say whether i would just get bogged down by hate and give it up or if it would keep going regardless.

but aside from that, it's the principle. it's the fact that i, as well as similar creators, am not forcing anyone to see this content. i am not posting things uncensored for anyone to stumble upon. i always use very specific warnings, read mores, and links. not once would you encounter a post of mine like that and see anything explicit unless you chose to view it.

and that's the principle i'm fighting for: choice.

this website used to be place where you could pretty much post anything, way before the Naughty Ban, because we understood it was all about personal choice. about curating your own content, blocking tags and blogs you didn't want to see, unfollowing if you had to (which you have EVERY right to do, and don't need to apologize for!). most of us followed online etiquette and those who didn't, again, you can just choose to unfollow or block. not report them just for posting shit you don't like.

the TOS explicitly states real minors. if they wanted to include fictional, they should have stated that. if they wanted to include fictional, they should not only reference the actual crime, but the thought crime of creating things that don't adhere to morals in reality.

personally, i think it's one or two people throwing a fit, but that's just me. i think my content, which is not even posted directly to this site and is by no means being shoved in anyone's face, is the least of this site's problems or concerns.

but anyways, that's why i'm ready to die on this hill. because i've met so many wonderful people from being open about what i post, no matter how disturbing it may be, and because we should all be able to post freely as creators if we're not directly showing anything explicit that could violate TOS.

#answered asks #anonymous #tw purity discourse

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forfluxsake · 5 months

Text

a personal slash solitary blog where i publish my doodles, have hobbies, and do anything typical of the average person

utmv server ad

before i write anything else, i’m promoting my utmv (undertale multiverse) server. JOIN PARTYCHROMA TODAY! FOREVER LINK: https://discord.gg/sATaZ8WZDh

if you aren’t sensitive to bold text, fonts, weird symbols, and eyestrainy gradient rainbow themes, join partychroma. it’s a neverending party for people who’re into undertale or deltarune aus and the like. it’s quiet for the time being, which is why i’m hoping people find this post

we are welcoming of anybody who’s willing to have a good time. the server provides funny roleplay channels, a place to showcase your creations, roles, incredible people, and more. i put effort into it and stuff so that’s great

…a better, less half-hearted advertisement can be found on disboard. hope to see you there!

about me

if you’re wondering who i am, hi

i’m flux.

i am a male and i use he/him/she/her pronouns. that’s all you need to know to respect my existence. if you have any questions direct them to the asks feature i just enabled

what do i like doing? doodling, writing, listening to some funky tunes; learning… i’m not picky about creative activities, but i do tend to procrastinate. my hyperfixations are seasonal and i suffer from being unable to let go of past phases. the list of my interests is infinite. if you care, i enjoy a variety of indie rpgs, object shows, args slash creepypastas, webcomics, and television shows.

cartoon series pique my interest the most.

boundaries

(be my friend)

i’m a minor. this much information is self explanatory as to how you should approach me. obviously don’t interact with me if you are a nsfw age-restricted page, but also don’t attempt to send me weird asks

i don’t talk about politics.

i think being friends with me requires a lot of patience. sure, you may friend me on my discord, o5fo, but understand that i’m terrible at one on one conversation. if you don’t get straight to the point, i will most likely not respond.

preferably keep contact with me through our shared communities or mutual servers and not direct messages.

if i’ve crossed a line, i encourage people to express their discomfort. nothing is gained from radio silence. (it’s not like i’m not anxious as well LOL don’t be shy to contact me [on dis] if it’s important)

what to expect

this blog is sfw, though it’s prone to having violent and dangerous content, mostly because i’ve drawn a fair amount of works with blood or upsetting themes. be wary of who you follow, always, and take steps to protect yourself online. take advantage of the filter tool to block tags that trigger you.

i will occasionally open art requests. but i won’t do too many at a time.

i might touch on some uncomfortable topics while i’m maintaining this nostalgia-seeking blog, especially about past controversies in the communities i was in since i was a child. and depending on the post, i will treat the flaws in said communities seriously or jokingly. please do not take it the wrong way if i redraw those memories.

assume everything i say is light-hearted for the sake of everybody; spare yourself the trouble of thinking i’m trying to invalidate people’s experiences. i never want to come off that way

fanart. expect a handful of art in general. uncolored/whiteboard doodles are abundant. i have ocs- but i’m anything but organized.

that’s a wrap

i wasn’t prepared to end this post

#utmv #undertale #deltarune #sans au #undertale au #undertale multiverse #underverse #filename2 #baldi’s basics #baldis basics #bbieal #multifandom

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parkitaco · 1 year

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ok people. i really don't want to have to be saying this but i am once again being struck by the lack of etiquette in the byler fandom and just in current fandom in general so i just. have to say something ok

first off i'm gonna say that fandoms come from a place of love and i know everyone most people have good intentions and love their fic authors but the etiquette around fics and art and all that lovely stuff is,, how shall we put it,, literally nonexistent.

listen. i love writing fic. i love that people like reading my fics that's insane hello?? i love getting comments and kudos and getting messages from ppl who are excited about my future projects it's great!!!

that being said, when i receive messages asking when things will be out/comments on wip wednesday snippets asking if the fic is out yet/messages asking me to tag them when the fic is published, regardless of how good the intentions are it comes off as very demanding and doesn't make me feel good as a writer who is doing this Voluntarily and For Free.

fanfic writers do this for fun!! we are not machines, we are people with our own lives outside of fandom and those lives have to take priority most if not all of the time. this means that yes!! sometimes fics take a while to write!! sometimes chaptered fics take a while to update!! and guess what?? that is totally ok. fanfic writers taking their time is not a bad thing. it means they care and are taking their time to create quality content. it means that they are spending time tending to their real personal lives, which is a normal and healthy thing to do.

there are plenty of posts about why demanding faster updates is bad, and i think that's pretty common knowledge, but i want to talk specifically about these very enthusiastic comments/messages/etc because i don't think anyone means harm but the thing is that fic authors simply do not owe you anything. we don't owe it to you to let you know when a fic will be out, we don't owe it to you to tag you when it is, and we definitely don't owe it to you to provide information that you can easily find out for yourself. as a writer i'm already putting insane amounts of pressure on myself and receiving it from other people, even if that's not the intention, is just not a good feeling.

especially because much of this information is readily available to you!! while you may not be able to find out when a fic will be out (which is probably because the fic author doesn't know either), you are entirely capable of checking the timestamp on a post to see how old it was, then using a little thing called Critical Thinking Skills to determine whether it's likely the fic has been posted or not. if so then great!! most authors have their ao3 accounts linked somewhere on their blog page so YOU (yes, you!!) can go look for the fic on ao3!! if you don't find it, ao3 has a super cool feature where you can subscribe to an author, so you'll get an email notification whenever they post!! and while you're there, if you're truly desperate for something to read, you can always go through the fics they've already posted, and if you've read everything there already and/or they haven't posted anything yet, check their bookmarks and see if there's anything there you like!! and as a last resort, there's always the trusty old search bar on ao3, which you are capable of filtering to every last preference!! the byler fandom is huge and there are tons of fics out there so undoubtedly something will fit your taste.

i know that can feel daunting, and i know it's disappointing when a fic hasn't been posted or updated yet, but the good news is that if you're seeing a snippet it means the author is working on it!! a little patience never hurt anyone, and taking those steps to determine for yourself what's going on with the fic rather than bugging an author who is just trying to go about their life and work on content during whatever free time they have just proves that you care. the simple fact of the matter is that fic authors don't do this for attention, they do it for fun, and therefore we can't cater everything to you or answer questions that you should find the answers to yourself. it's not our responsibility to keep track of people who want to be tagged when a fic is published or want to know when it will be out, because all our energy is going into creating the content you so desperately want!! i'm just begging everyone to be a little bit independent. asking an author for this information just shows you don't care enough to find it for yourself and this sort of laziness is part of why fandoms die.

tldr: fic authors are not machines designed to please you, use some critical thinking once in a while, and please for the love of GOD just go touch grass. breathe some clean air. you'll feel better i promise

#:)))#am not trying to be mean i'm just so fuckign tired #byler fandom #st

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iceinwhb · 4 months

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Welcome, take and see what you want.

● This blog has diverse content, which is divided into sections, depending on the theme, and the publications.

● It is recommended that you do not review certain topics. The recommended age to be on my blog, is +18.

● The only important thing is your enjoyment. I'm just a Icegloo passing by, and write as much as I can before I melt.

Lucifer (Selfie) ｡⁠.ﾟ ⟵ Available (June)

Leviathan (School Uniform) ｡⁠.ﾟ ⟵ Available (August 20th)

[OPEN]

[RULES FOR NSFW:

● There will be censorship for: Necrophilia, sadomasochism, sadism, physical abuse, sexual abuse, autozoophilia, autopedophilia, necrophilia, sacrificial paraphilia.

● Anything else is permissible, as long as it comes from “What in ‘hell’ is bad?”

RULES FOR SFW:

● Everything is permissible.

The more details your request has, the easier my work will be, and the faster it will be to bring it to you, so, don't forget to correctly express the idea.]

[Ordering options:

Written work: Can range from 500-5000 words. It will be my choice if you do not describe the length of the text. The more words you choose to order, the longer it will take to be published.

Drawn work: It absolutely depends on the details, which must be clear and descriptive. The more details given, the better. I am not a professional draftsman, so, I will tell you in advance that it may not be what you expect. The minimum time is 3-4 weeks, because of my lack of learning in drawing, but don't doubt that I will do my best to put all my effort into it.

Requests are ABSOLUTELY FREE.]

Leviathan:

[Explicit content, nsfw.]

● Babytrap.

Mammon:

● Exotic pet

● Stalker

Lucifer:

● Minhyeok visited PL.

Minhyeok:

● For a moment.

Beelzebub:

● Happy trap.

Silly moments:

● Among us.

● A random moment.

● Foras.

● If... Satan selfie.

● Little cleaning.

● Mammon's perfection.

● Pyong flew to infinity and beyond.

● February 14th.

● 500 seals.

● Paradise Lost is like:

● Levi's ass.

Foras:

[Explicit content, Foul language.]

● Invisible necessity.

Gusion:

[Explicit content, Foul language.]

● New tattoo.

Mammon:

[Sensitive content, Explicit content.]

● Delicate position.

Naberius:

[Explicit content, Foul language.]

● Fair.

Raphael:

[Sensitive content, Dark and explicit content, Violence]

● Pitiful whimper.

Dark headcannon:

● Kings

● Leviathan

Cards:

Beel:

● Promotional art.

● Selfie.

● Bath.

[Expired]

● Butt

● Bloodshed

● Attack of kings.

Leviathan:

● Promotional art.

● Selfie.

● Left.

● Bloodshed.

● Bath.

● Attack of kings.

Lucifer:

● Promotional art.

● Promotional art II.

● Selfie

● Ruler's trophy

[Coming soon]

Mammon:

● Promotional art.

● Selfie.

● Left.

● Butt.

● Bath.

Satan:

● Promotional art.

● Selfie.

● Left.

● Bath.

Promotional art:

● Levi and Beel attack of king.

● Mammon and Satan attack of king.

● Two stars

● Lucifer selfie

● Let's give a lot of love

● Old video

● Levi school uniform

● Levi bath and Mammon butt rerun

Starting screen

● Event

{4/4} ｡⁠.ﾟ⁠+⁠ ⁠⟵ Beel's birthday

{4/24} ｡⁠.ﾟ ⟵ Leraye (Nostalgia)

• Cards

{4/10} ｡⁠.ﾟ ⟵ Lucifer (Selfie)

{4/1} ｡⁠.ﾟ⁠+⁠ ⁠⟵ April Fool's Day

{5/4} ｡⁠.ﾟ⁠+⁠ ⁠⟵ Leviathan (School Uniform)

{6/9} ｡⁠.ﾟ⁠+⁠ ⁠⟵ Mammon's birthday

Chapters:

● Chapter 5 - MH Sub story

● Iceberg

Profane board:

● Beel butt

● Am I dreaming?

Events:

● [Unknown]

● Abolition of censorship

[Content warning]

● Poor king of lust.

● [Unknow]

● Who knows?

● Why Ra-on is.

#marterlist

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aswegoalong72 · 5 months

Text

As We Go Along FAQ

Who are you?

I don’t like to put my name on the internet, but you may call me GB; those are my initials! I’m 24, chronically ill, and gay + trans. I have a girlfriend, three cats, and like to cook and clean when I’m not working on this novel series! I do art as well, although my condition usually prevents me from doing too much. I follow from @tolbachik, and my art blog is @tolbachik-art. (More about the novels under the cut!)

About the novels

What’s the story about? As We Go Along is a multi-novel series documenting the history of the Lyratet, and their history from the discovery of a safe passage to the northern hemisphere of their homeworld, to the eventual settlement of the galaxy.

So, science fiction? Yes, although I try to keep it as realistic as possible. No warp drives, no replicators, no energy swords; just good old regular physics and technology! Expect relativistic travel between stars, quantum computing, fusion power, and O’Neill cylinders as the most advanced stuff you’ll see. What even happens in it? A lot! I try to portray day-to-day life, with less of a focus on the science-y side of things and more on personal interactions and character growth. Ultimately, it’s about finding your place in the world and universe, and loving one another.

How many books are there going to be? One collection of short stories, three “prologue” novels at about 72k words each, with three larger novels following them and one last short story collection. Originally, it was going to be a stand-alone with only one book (the book I’m currently writing), but I’ve since expanded the universe very heavily. There’s a lot to explore!

72k word prologue novels? That’s already a lot! How many words will the regular novels have? At least 200k each, if not more. This is a saga, documenting their entire history and every little detail in it. It’s going to be a lot, but chances are I will cut the larger books into halves for easier readability, and to not deter people from getting into them. Still up in the air, really!

When can we expect to read it? When it’s done. I’m chronically ill, so it takes me awhile to get even typical household chores done, let alone a book! That being said, as of 1/1/24, I’m close to halfway done with the first book. I will be starting the prologues when I can, at which point I will start releasing them slowly. That way I have time to get the others finished!

Are there any other aliens in it, besides the Lyratet? Yes. I won’t elaborate further, though; I don’t want to ruin any surprises! Is it gay or trans? I mean, I guess? The gender binary on Reyal doesn’t exist in the same way it does here on Earth; “male” and “female” are very loosely defined. Physically, the only difference between the sexes is genitalia and a bit of height/face shape. On top of that, being equal to one another is an important part of life, so there’s practically no discrimination for relationships not following traditional “male/female” as on Earth. The author (hi) is gay and trans, so I guess if you count that too, yes.

What kind of “read” is it? Slow. I focus a lot on worldbuilding and character development. The Lyratet live a slow-paced life, and as such, I wish to reflect that in my work. I do try to keep it entertaining and interesting, though.

Is it family friendly? Yes and no. I would give it a PG/PG-13 rating, personally. It covers some very dark topics, like cults committing terrorism, some heavy violence, swearing, and there is some drug use. On the same note, there aren’t any references to sex really apart from a couple maybe wanting to have a child together. I’ll have a comprehensive list of warnings once I go to publish it!

Can I read it early? No. I will need beta readers at some point, but I won’t release any early versions to the public until it’s ready.

Where does the name "As We Go Along" come from? This Monkees song! I feel it describes the whole feel of the project very well. I have playlists for the story, but I'm going to refine them more before I put them out here. Where does "72" in your blog title come from? You'll see :)

What inspired you? Silent Running and folk music from the 1960s/1970s! Also, The Millennial Project by Marshall T. Savage.

About the Lyratet

Lyratet? Lyrat? Which one is it? Lyrat is singular, like human. Lyratet is plural, like humans. This is in Trel, a diplomatic language made to facilitate goodwill between nations on their homeworld, Reyal. Pronounced lee-raht, lee-raht-ett. Lyrat stands for child, as in “Child of Tenav” (Tenav a Lyrat), and Lyratet is “The Children of Tenav” (Tenav a Lyratet). “The” is usually defined by the suffix “te” in Trel, but the word Lyratet is special in this case.

Who are the Lyratet, even? They’re a cold-loving, communalistic, and herbivorous race from a planet slightly larger than our own, orbiting a K7V class star some 41LY away. They’re also incredibly religious. What conflicts should I expect to see? On Reyal, warfare isn’t very common. Religious wars died out centuries ago, primarily due to both sides not wanting to lose any followers before reaching “salvation”, whatever that may mean to them. Slaying one another is considered exile worthy, since they’re descended from prey animals. Keeping together and keeping each other safe is above all else. Nowadays, conflicts are settled through heated debates and international court.

I mean like, conflicts in the book. Man vs. nature for the first four including the prologues, man vs. man for the last few books. Of course, it isn’t just all that; conflicts between people will arise.

Can I make my own Lyrat character? Give me time to make a comprehensive historical timeline and get some reference sheets, but yes. I won’t consider them canon, but you do you! Just don’t like, claim the entire race concept as your own or sell designs based off it. Typical stuff, y’know?

I don’t think herbivores can become civilized. What’s your explanation? Starchy, fast growing, calorie dense tubers. That, and their social structure and their early languages helped to keep them safe from predators. If you ask them, though, they’d probably say Tenav, their star, guided them.

Why are they religious? Are you? Surviving the early days of civilization wasn’t easy, and they made sure to thank whatever powers they believed in (mostly Tenav) for making it through the day. Since then, their religious fervor has grown heavily. Atheists are in the minority, with only ~700,000 out of Reyal’s surface only 2024 population of ~13,000,000,000 not believing in anything. Also, no; just agnostic. Three eyes? Why? That's overdone! I will be honest, the Lyratet are based off of a design I got yeaaaaars ago from a friend, @bubbykat! I've tweaked it a bit since then, giving reasons as to why they evolved like that. Reyal has many, many fearsome predators. Through evolution, they took up an extra eye in the center of their head, giving the impression that they were more dominant than they actually were. It doesn't move, and is more vestigial than anything.

What’s Reyal like? Reyal has no seasons, and is divided into three “bands”; Northern Hemisphere, Equator, and Southern Hemisphere. It has a 33 hour long day, two moons, and a thick atmosphere. It isn’t tidally locked to its star, and has an orbital period of 3.27 months. It’s about 1.28x the size of Earth. It's dominated by numerous freshwater and saltwater lakes, with only one major ocean in the Southern Hemisphere. There are large cyclones above both poles, where the temperatures regularly drop to -153f on the surface.

If they don’t have seasons, how do they keep time? Nowadays, they use Tenav’s solar cycle and pulsars to keep time. As of 2024 in the Gregorian calendar, it is 23,514. It adds up as follows: their first cultures emerged 231,388 years ago, they count in base 8, and the average solar cycle of Tenav is 23 years long. So, it all adds up to the current date being 23,514! Still working on how to subdivide it.

What other objects are in their system? Order from Tenav is as follows: Syt, Inner Belt, Kouteb (dwarf), Omat (dwarf), Reyal, Alkan, Olena, Lejag, Outer Belt.

Reyal has two moons; Ro and Velgae. Alkan has one, Fel. Olena has six major; Heva, Thrallit, Eynaje, Selex, Lipeya, and Prasto.

#my posts #sophont #sophonts #specbio #i know i know hominid aliens are overdone but i have reasons for it i promise #and there's a ton more specbio aside them so don't worry #writing #writeblr #faq

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 1 year

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Thank You and Goodbye

Hello everyone, I suppose you have all noted that the Empyrean iris stories have finally ended. I sincerely hope that all of you enjoyed what I had to offer and that I helped to bring some enjoyment to your life. In return I thank you all for everything you have done for me, and thank you most for the people who interacted with the story with questions comments and likes. Some of you have private messaged me, and said the nicest things that have helped me to keep going through the years. I cannot say how much I appreciate you.

A few things before I leave, I am leaving the Empyrean Iris universe on this blog for anyone who wishes to read, start reading or keep reading. You are free to play with the Empyrean Iris universe all you wish, as well as with its characters and locations. As long as credit is left where credit is due.

I will not be writing for this series again, though I may post some art if the thought takes me. I will still have access to this blog to answer questions and interact, so PM me here if you want, I will most likely be available.

The past few years have made me a much better writer.The change in my skill from beginning to end is incredible, but one of my greatest regrets is I never got to show you all what I could really do. These short form stories, written early in the morning before school sometimes lacked the quality I know that I can produce, maybe not grammatically, but at the very least you all never got to see my true writing abilities at their full potential: writing abilities I gained thanks to this series and thanks to you.

So with that in mind I have made a decision. I want you all to see the fruits of my labor, and what this series has done to its author (if you care to look, I wont force anyone :). But down below I will post chapter 1 of two independent side projects I have worked on during the time of this series. The first is a book I worked on sometime during the middle of the series, and that I finished more than a year ago which I plan on posting online to wattpad and A03 in the coming months, the second is the first chapter from my most recent project and which I hope to traditionally publish some day. I hope that at least one or two of you might read them and see the change in me that has resulted from this series

Chapter 1

Children of the Affliction

The Outbreak moved up the street in a wave of fetid flesh, their feet shuffling in an uncoordinated, stilted shamble as they dragged their diseased bodies through the ankle-deep filth of Veerus city.

As they walked, they moaned softly, their rotting vocal cords shivering with every breath they took.

The outbreak was not a quiet thing, and Eli was thankful for that as he pressed his back against the desiccated crumbling wall of the rotting city, as desiccated as its occupants.

He crouched low, but didn’t allow his hands to touch the ground and the filth that rested there. He closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath before peering out from the crack in the wall.

And so they continued on their shuffling, staggering way, their red decomposing flesh peeling back from rotting bone. A tidal wave of rancid air fogged up the lenses of his glasses with a stench so vile he had to swallow to keep from gagging. It was the kind of smell that burrowed its way into your nose like hungry maggots,leaving a sour penetrating taste behind on your tongue.

Eli wiped his glasses silently with a hand, and immediately regretted his ability to see as he watched a pale worm wriggle its way from the rotting folds of what had one been a nose, only to twist wetly before turning back to slither between ragged, purulent lips..

Eli turned away from the hole pressing his back against the wall and covering his nose and mouth with a hand. He forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply, an action which he immediately regretted as the filth rose up to seep into his nose and mouth.

Their groaning grew distant, and a small voice hummed in his ear.

“I thought you said you weren’t afraid of the Outbreak.”

His mouth was watering, a sure sign he was about to throw up. He let the saliva drip from his mouth and onto the ground, where it couldn’t cause him to vomit.

“Just because I’m not afraid of them doesn’t mean I want to give one a hug.”

“And all of this isn’t fear?.”

“This isn’t fear, this is nausea. Those things are disgusting. Why anyone would willingly serve Affliction is beyond me.” He looked down to where a large baleful eye peered out from under the flap of his satchel.

The Eye blinked wetly once and then twice before “The same could be said about people who willingly visit affliction.”

Eli sighed, “You of all people should know that our visit here is hardly willing.”

The eye rolled at him, “Still going on about your father are you.”

Eli’s shoulder’s stiffened slightly jaw tightening even as his fingers went white around the strap of his bag, “This isn’t just about that and you know it.”

“Your Hope,” the eye said, his voice a high pitched reedy quaver through the fog “Your little obsession always seems to bring us to the most loathsome cesspits: hiding under rocks or in the bowls of trees.”

Eli adjusted his glasses, “This entire world is a Cesspit, Wink. and it isn’t hope it’s research. Hope is blind without action, research might just be able to help me before ....” Eli trailed off then not entirely willing to voice the concerns that had become so pressing in the proceeding months. Instead, adjusted the shoulder strap of his satchel and stepped down from the crumbling building and onto the street below. He tried not to think about how his feet squished through the filth or how his weight seemed to depress against the soil, as if he was walking across great slabs of meat.

A pallid mist rose up around them, and he was thankful for the protective shroud he wore over his face. It didn’t keep out the smell, but he was at least relatively sure it would keep the Affliction at bay,

He stepped over a small creek of cloudy water, and tried not to think about the strange spongy chunks that bobbed just under the surface.

Wetness squished under his feet as he walked, and he stopped, reaching into his bag for a pen and notebook.

Wink moved to the side as he passed his hand in and then out, coming back with a faded leather-bound journal -- once his father’s journal now his, bound with something that might possibly have been human skin, though he did his absolute best not to think about that, and flipped open to an inner page, past pages and pages of spidery writing and jagged sketches until he found a fresh page. He allowed his hand to rest momentarily on the familiar course paper, taking comfort from the journal: an item that represented the only piece of his family he had left: his father’s research.

Wink stretched up from inside the bag, his long, gelatinous body elongating and stretching like a string of black slime , “What are you writing?”

“Just a reminder to throw away these clothes when we get back.”

“Afraid of getting sick are we?”

Eli tapped his chin and passed the notebook back into his bag, “out of all the Dreads, Affliction is, admittedly, one of my least favorite.”

“That implies you have a favorite?”

“I think that is generally the whole point, don’t you think? Why else would anyone choose to Serve the Dreads? You have to pick a favorite .”

Wink settled back into the bag, filling it’s contours like some sort of inky black puddle, “I feel like there is a distinct difference between having a favorite and having a, I dislike this thing the least.”

“I thought semantics was my thing.

Wink wiggled a little bit inside the bag, “Just getting back at you for all those times I had to listen to one of your pretentious lectures on the nature of fear.”

Eli adjusted his bag one more time, “That is assuming you even listen to me, which we both know you don’t.”

“No, no I don’t.”

The two of them lapsed into morose silence as the outskirts of the city passed away, and the twisted trees of the nearby swampland faded into the backdrop of fog. Up ahead, looming in the half illuminated mist, he could see the outline of Veerus city, less like a city and more like a cancerous growth on the face of the world seeping corruption and disease into the brackish feted bog that surrounded it.

He could see it now, canals of pollution leaking out from inside the city by way of giant corrugated pipes, which dumped cloudy water into the bog. The smell was indescribable, like a thousand rotting corpses. It came in gusts and waves steady one moment and then a sudden wall the next.

His mouth began to water again, and he stopped in the street to bend over and gag.

He wouldn’t allow himself to throw up, simply wanting the comfort and relief of expressing his disgust with this place. His hands tightened around the straps of his bag, the leather of the black gloves he wore creaking slightly as he moved up towards the looming shadow.

Overhead a black bird croaked, and Eli traced its stilted path through the sky, watching as a feather drifted down from above.

He was surprised the creature had enough feathers to fly.

Approaching the gates of Veerus his eyes fell on a pack of mangy dogs --with rotting skin and eyes so encrusted with yellow discharge he wondered how they could even see. They were huddled by the roadside, surrounding something that lay unmoving on the ground before them, tearing at it with their rotten teeth.

It looked like it had once been a cat.

Or maybe a rat.

He heard the rats in Veerus were almost as big as cats, but either way it didn’t matter. The thing was so diseased it had probably expired right there in the street so unrecognizable it didn’t matter what it HAD been once upon a time.

He made sure to keep to the other side of the street, eying the mangy mongrels as they chewed on their meal, not relishing the idea of what a bite from one of those infected things might do to him.

As he came upon the gate, he found himself held up at the back of a long line of people all crowding around the entrance, in a long line of hunched shoulders and ragged clothing. Looking at the mass of flesh before him, he found himself purposely distancing himself from the filth of bodies.

By the looks of them, he could see that most were peasants from the outlying marshland. They had that look about them, with scaly red skin, and bare feet with yellowed nails overgrown such that they were twisting back upon themselves. He grimaced as he imagined how it must feel to walk these streets, the rot squishing up between their toes. Their hair was lank like swampy weed and hung about their shoulders like wet moss while their skin hung loose and baggy around their faces.

Even despite all that, none of them were repulsive enough to be mistaken for one of the outbreak, or even one of the city dwellers, who were characteristically marred by leperous pockmarks and spongy patches of skin.

Granted, the swamp peasants lived on the land the affliction held dominion over, and many of them served the being in some way or another, but none of them were directly subject to it, so they had a little more safety than did their city dwelling brethren

Unfortunately for them, that meant they were still subject to disease as a natural course of things, as evidenced by their jaundiced skin. Just ahead of him, he saw an elderly woman hunched over a bundle of rags. peering out from those rags was a face, a feverish red face swollen and puffy with dark blue bags encircling the eyes.

He doubted the child had long to live.

Anyone who managed to grow up in a place like this and survive until adulthood was a miracle on their own.

The gate approached now, and just as the gate guards came within sight, the man before him collapsed suddenly convulsing in the filth of the street before going still. Barely anyone stopped to look. Eli barely flinched, watching as a group of leprous individuals hurried from an opening in the gate hauling a hand cart behind them.

The body was lifted by liver spotted hands and tossed into the back of the cart before being dragged away, to be tossed into one of the plague pits, the contents of which drained from those massive pipes and out of the city.

As he waited for his turn at the gate, Eli reached into the bag and pulled out his notebook and pen scratching a quick sketch of the scene before him

The men standing at the main gate were less diseased than the others: the only suggestion of their sickness being the pallid nature of their skin, and the glossy sheen of clammy sweat that acted as a constant veneer over their bodies.

He couldn’t tell if they were bald on purpose, or if the sickness had taken their hair.

“State your business.” One of them said, and Eli followed the man’s eyes as they ran up and down his body. Eli shrugged off the crawling sensation that ran a course over his spine as the man’s eyes paused to linger on the unblemished skin of his face….. Almost hungrily.

“State your business,” The second man repeated, voice raising with impatience.

Eli clenched one hand around the strap of his satchel, “I am here in the capacity of my work, as an information broker.”

One of the men snorted and hawked a thick filmy wad of phlegm onto the ground, “And what information do you have to broker?”

Eli looked the man in the face, the corners of his mouth turned slightly down, “What kind of information are you looking for. I have information on the safest trade routes, weather predictions, medicinal recipes-“

He was cut off.

“Let us see your identification.”

Eli nodded, dropping a hand into his bag to retrieve the little booklet of papers which he then passed over to the first man who looked it over with the same suspicious gaze..

In the end, it was his eyes that gave him away, running across the page too quickly and in such a strange pattern that he couldn’t have been reading. So either, he was lazy, or he couldn't read.

The man waved a dismissive hand, “Let him through.”

Eli was quickly sent on his way as the first man moved quickly onto his next subject.

As soon as they were out of hearing range a grumble rose up from the depths of his bag “He lies.”

Eli resisted the urge to brush a hand through his hair, “ It wasn’t totally a lie, besides What would you rather I had done? Tell them why we are really here?”

Wink stared at him from the shadow of the pouch contemplating his words before, “You are hardly likely to find your father here, and we both know it.”

Eli set his jaw forcing himself not to take Wink’s comments personally, “I know, but this isn’t about that, this is about…. Me.”

Wink hummed, “About that, what makes you think you are worth saving anyway. I thought you were erudite enough to know a lost cause when you see one”

Eli snorted “Big words from a wad of goo I might have just scraped from the bottom of my boot….. do you even know what it means?”

“I know plenty of large words, because unfortunately the only reading material I have in here during our long journeys just so happens to be your creepy journal and Cripman’s Thesaurus fifth edition. The least you could do is drop in some decent reading material every now and again.”

Eli huffed, “Yeah, perhaps, perhaps something with lots of pictures and very small words.”

“You cheeky bastard.”

“That’s me.” He looked up at the pale sky above and sighed. Besides, the wink was only half right. This wasn’t about stopping fear anymore; This was about saving his life. Eli only had so many days left, and those days were numbered.

He turned up another side street, following the map he had memorized earlier towards the center of the city. As he kept going, evidence of rot and sickness became more evident. More and more of those hand pulled carts trundled down the streets hardly even bothering to cover their gruesome cargo, all a mass of limbs and flesh melted together until it seemed to create one massive creature rather than just a pile of human bodies.

A metaphor, Simile or perhaps a close facsimile to the physical avatar of Affliction itself.

His mind was brought back to a page in his father’s Journal, where in was written an excerpt from one of the many books he had read, before leaving the journal to Eli. , “The Dreads and their incarnations” He could almost see the page upon which its description had been written, penned neatly in his father’s steady hand.

The creature lies within a pit in the ground-- a strange place for a god, though it is somehow fitting. The pit is filled a tenth of the way with brackish feted water, and flies churn in great wheeling circles overhead. When the creature moves it shifts with a great squelching sound that rips and rends like diseased flesh being peeled from bone. The pit itself is wide, almost unfathomably so, stretching out for what must be miles, and inside rests Affliction, a god of sickness, disease, and plague.

To look upon it is to understand unfathomable corruption and disgust as its great amorphous blob of skin seems to churn and undulate below. Its outside are bruised in the many colors of a rainbow, sour and perverted into this strange and unholy facsimile. It cannot be fathomed from where it starts and where it ends, and the limbs that wave above its head could be hands or feet or tentacles.

Not many but the Outbreak have seen the creature’s true form, for the power it holds, means that, to look on its body is to embrace the sickness, be permitted by it to become one with it.

To rot right down to the marrow of one’s bones.

Eli had some pity for the writer, for if he had seen what he had described, it was likely he was either one…. Dead, or two, a shambling corpse labeled as one of the Outbreak

He couldn’t say he felt entirely sorry for the man, as his first hand account saved Eli the curiosity of having to look at himself….. and the horrible boils that likely would have resulted. Overhead the sky had turned orange as the sun disseminated through the fog of corruption which shrouded the city.

It was a horrible place, and if it wasn’t for the Outbreak, the people would likely have fled long ago. but the Affliction had claimed them, and it wasn’t likely to let them leave any time soon.

Eli was close now, maybe a few blocks away from the library, and overhead, a rolling bank of clouds was passing its first shadow over the city.

Looking at the library, he could only hope that it would be cleaner on the inside than it was on the outside.

It would be best for him to keep his head low lest he attract the attention of one of the Outbreak. He didn’t want to become like these poor trapped souls, subject to their dark god.

It was never a good idea to catch the eye of one of the dreads.

Things tended to go generally very poor once that happened.

For everyone involved.

He was only delayed once on his way to the library, cutting behind a low stone archway as a contingent of the outbreak moved up the street, shambling and moaning like the deadmen that they were. He couldn’t tell what they were doing, but had suspicions that they were out hunting…. Looking for someone like him perhaps to bring into their fold, or to infect , their dark offering of fear to their hungry waiting god.

They passed up the street, and he slipped out from his hiding spot, hurrying forward to the one building in this place that seemed somewhat clean.

He said somewhat but there was still something about the building that didn’t sit right with him.

At one point, it had probably been constructed out of large blocks of white marble, though the city had stained the pure stone with yellow over the years, like

He paused just outside the door and took a long deep breath, looking up at the words that hung before him.

The Parvus School of Learning.

And then he reached out with two gloved hands and pushed the doors inwards.

Chapter 1

Oculus

He scurries through the streets like a rat, his feet trailing whispers behind him as he goes, and even from here I can see the drops of salty, sweat condensation clinging to his skin like a dancer’s paste on jewels.

I know this man, though he doesn’t know me.

But even if he did, he certainly wouldn’t want to.

A curtain of fog rises in a slow undulating wave from the Swampdark [may change this name] below, like the ghosts of the damned leading a procession towards the stars. When the fog touches me, I can almost feel the lifeless caress of those ghosts, the souls of all those the Swampdark has claimed.

The man turns a corner and I follow him, were it not for the midnight mirth echoing down from the upper city’s pleasure tier, he might have been able to hear the warning hiss of my mechanical joints. Luckily for me, the city humms, and my body hums with it, and in that hum I disappear.

Music drifts languidly down from above pulsing with a slow, mindless beat.

The man walks past a line of rickety storefronts, their windows and doors barred, and the message is clear: this city quarter bears no welcome for strangers. As he walks, his profile is painted by swatches of glowing blue neon, and now I can see the bottle in his hand more clearly. Neon light scatters through the container’s glass, and the light it refracts follows him down the street as a pale spector, his only companion in the night.

I slip closer, stealing strides of distance between us, a luxury he doesn’t even know he has.

I know this man.

I know him the way I know the thousands of men just like him, He’s got an iron lung, and it clings to the side of his bare torso like a bulging Nightleach, it's skeletal appendages burrowing into his body where it keeps anchored, The iron lung’s bellows spasm and pulse, struggling against the slow buildup of corrosion and rust, fighting to filter stagnant air into something the blood can use.

It looks painful, the eternal weight of the iron lung acting as his ball and chain that adds a perpetual twist to the man’s spine. Dying early might have been preferable to dragging around a botched suborgan.

I know this man.

He drinks hoping to abandon his pain in a bottle, he chews the bitter fungi to hang up his soul for the night, but when the ecstasy leaves him, abandoned like a one night lover he seeks to give his anger away: A gift no one asks for.

And who to give it to, but his starving, skeletal wife, and their seven, ghostly children.

Why would it matter to him? They'll all be corpses soon anyway, who will care if he speeds up the process, gives himself some relief.

I know this man.

And I am here to return his gifts.

The man pulls to a stop, lifting a desiccated hand to his pale, cracked lips. He coughs, and an unnatural sound is birthed from between his rotting teeth: wet and filmy, with saliva blackened by decay and rust.

He turns another corner, passing silently into the lurking darkness. A path waits there, beckoning us downward until the city is lost above us behind miles of desperate metal and concrete.

We step off the path, enfolded at once within an oppressive forest of towering iron

stilts collectively called the hands of salvation: baseless rhetoric streaming like piss from the mouths of upper tier clergy. I doubted a single one of those godless men had ever even laid eyes on a support pillar, less like a saintly hand lifting its inhabitants towards the sky, but more like a diseased arm, holding a plate cruelly above child’s grasping fingers

I am behind him now, no more than a few precious feet of feted atmosphere occupies the space between us

If he turned now, he could reach up and pluck away my eyes.

Overhead, the support beams creak and chitter, as if conversing among themselves.

The swamp dark is never silent.

The man’s steps are slow, plodding out the beat of his own funeral dirge against the hard-packed pathway.

Those unfortunate creatures that dwell here in the Swampdark are never without sound or even light, rocked to sleep by the tittering lullabies of rusted metal, and bathed in the malicious green glow of the trinity fields.

Wobbly, stilt legged hovels huddle together in lopsided clusters over the uneven ground of the Swampdark,desperate to avoid coming within close proximity of one of the pillars.

Despite living in truth’s overwhelming shadow, the people of the swamp dark still refuse to look her in the eye.

We are halfway to the first rickety settlement, and I don’t know what it is he senses first. The man doesn’t have many natural senses at his disposal as, One by one, a lifetime of hardships has robbed his bodily coffers clean of taste, smell, and touch. But still, I watch the chill as it licks down his spine, alerting him to my presence and causing him to turn.

Robbed of his taste and smell, life left one parting insult on its way out the door, and the man is shorter than me by almost a foot, but despite all that he is lacking, he still has the good sense to be terrified.

He backs away jaundiced eyes as wide and pale as the cryptcap mushrooms beneath his feet.

I know this man.

And now, he knows me too.

Knows me by my mechanical augments, my wire implants, my external regulator, and the large silver eye that blinks at him from the upper right side of my chest.

A word condolences from thought and forms as a word on his lips

Oculus

But he never gets the chance to speak it as my hand cuts off whatever piffling speech he was about to make, but

I know this man.

And I have heard his speech before muttered, screamed and pleased from a hundred quivering lips. They all offer the same excuses, passed between each other like an unwashed pair of socks.

And when the excuses fail to soften me, please and promises, empty and echoing like the bottles in their hands.

I lift the little man into the air kicking and struggling. He is heavier than he looks, iron lung dragged ever downward by the crushing weight of gravity, but my augmented limbs whirring to life with a hungry hiss.

Yun Johnov

I am here to equalize your sins.

I start with a headbut to the face, the cruel ridge of my mask biting into the delicate cartilage of his nose, which snaps without much protest. He howls, blood escaping eagerly from his nose to trace a getaway down his lips and chin.

With his feet back on the ground, I reel back and punch him hard in the gut, brutalizing his already corroded liver.

He doubles over retching.

I knee him, this time in his chin, and he reels backward, tripping over a huddle of mushrooms and staggering to one knee. His iron lung screeches in protest, but I’m not quite done just yet.

I step forward, casting the dim impression of my shadow over his quivering body. He casts his hands high, shielding me from his sight.

But I want him to look at me.

I kick his hands out of the way, feeling as one of his brittle bones crumbles beneath my kick.

His face is open and uncovered now, chin and mouth glazed in blood, thinning hair slick with sweat.

I pull back one more time.

He falls to the ground a moment later, bearing my signature, signed with the judicious application of my open palm. My mark will last for days, the broken nose for a few weeks, but the memory of my intervention will remain until the bellows of his miserable lung stops choking in air.

“An eye for an eye.” I say, making my pronouncement to no one in particular as I stand over his battered body.

We are close enough to the nearest cowering settlement for the occupants to have heard us, but they are unlikely to come to the man’s aid. Either he will negotiate his way back upright, or he will decay there in the mud, fertilizing the trinity fields with his juices, leaving only an iron lung as his headstone.

I bar thoughts of the man from my mind as I turn and trace my way up the pathway and into the lower city.

The lower city isn’t really part of the city proper, but a minefield of ghostly shanty towns, stacked in dangerously unbalanced heaps in the shadow of the upper city. The people here aren’t well off, but at least they are blessed to sit cupped in the palms of salvation, or at least that’s how some try to justify their miserable existence.

In reality, people in the lower city aren’t much better off than people in the Swampdark, in fact the only real difference between the two groups is a matter of a few IQ points and a false sense of superiority.

Despite the abundance of ramshackle dwellings, I don’t see many people here, and I don’t expect to. Generally, I am the first person most people see, and the last person most people want to see, and as a result, my very existence tends to thin a crowd.

I pass through the ghost shanties, as much as a ghost myself.

From there, I find my way up to the pleasure tier, its streets glazed with candy-bright colors spilling down from vibrant neon signs, and refracting through grimy panes of glass.

The music crawls its sinuous way down into the street and vibrates up through the souls of my feet, stopping to pulse, and dance to the beat of the blood in my ears.

Men and women writhe and dance before me, bathed together in the neon light. I can sense a few wary eyes turned my way, but the vast majority of people hardly notice me. The tang of trinity hangs heavy on the air, its presence announced by the thick, sweet smoke, and the bitter taste that makes itself manifest on the back of my tongue. A young woman staggers past me, the white underbelly of her eyes on full display, and her arms are flung out to either side as trinity guides her through fields of ecstasy for the night.

Curvaceous shadows dance low, and slow beyond a red-shrouded window.

“Over here, Oculus.”

Tangled between strands of real human hair, delicate fibrous cables lift themselves from my scalp tugging me towards the origin of the sound.

The owner of that voice, does not attempt to hide, quite the opposite in fact

She stands in a nearby doorway, allowing glowing neon the privilege of kissing her skin as she stands. A ruby red gown blooms from her body stretching in languid curves down her legs and towards the floor. A wave of long dark hair spills down the side of her face and onto her shoulder, which is bare, and open to the night air.

I am surprised to see she is mostly organic, none of her curves borrowed, leased or welded on.

She motions me over with a finger, “You look like someone who could use some company.” The same rote phrase trails from her lips, like it has from thousands of lips just like her since time immemorial.

I raise an eyebrow, and the fiber optic cables in my hair rise with it, “Is that so?

She smiles, and I am almost impressed to see she has all her teeth, either that or an excellent set of dentures, “I believe it is.” When she breathes, a gentle fog of steam obscures the clear plastic of her external regulator, her only non-implanted augmentation.

I tap my wrist, and her corresponding hand lights up. She looks down and then back to me, “That’ll get you an hour.” But even as she begins to speak, I have already waded my first few steps back into the flow of the crowd.

“Hey! Where are you going! You know, I don’t do third party locations.” she says shouting to be heard over the music.

I turn my head internally, dialing down the background noise so I can hear her more clearly, “Keep it.” I say allowing the crowd to flow around me on either side.

St stands, resting her hands on her full hips. Somehow, even her hands are beautiful: long and slender against the ruby hue of her dress, “I don’t accept charity, Oculus.”

“It’s not charity.” I say, calling back over my shoulder.

She tosses her hair, which whips itself into a proud mane around her shoulders,“Then what is it!”

“A thank you.”

That response seems to catch her off guard. She stands, a pillar of stillness in a sea of flashing lights, and stares at me through the ebbing tide of the crowd, “For what?”

I turn away from her, and when I finally give her my voice, it is a quiet offering falling from my lips like shredded paper fluttering down from the upper city, “For being the first person to talk to me like a human tonight.”

I make sure to be gone before she can answer, allowing myself to be swept away by a torrent of light and noise, bodies pressed around me filling my nose with the sulfurous odor of sweat, and the bitter tang of trinity.

Leaving the pleasure district, I shed neon and sweet smoke like water, the night air of the manufacturing district scrubbing my skin clean of revelry only to apply its own unique perfume.

Industry.

A distant line of massive, black smokestacks cuts a violent edge across the diffused, blue glow of the city skyline, huffing great clouds of rancid black smoke into the already hazy blue air. Lines of steel cables, electrical wires and bridges cut an impressionist pattern between the towering buildings.

The trinity factories are never quiet, run perpetually by ghostly night shift laborers fed with a steady stream of liquid stim. Some with company- subsidized ports directly into their bloodstreams for easier dosing. I’d seen it close up on several occasions, once as a boy when I was briefly employed on the refinery floor: employed until a steel hatch severed three of my fingers, and I was made redundant.

I flex my hand at the phantom memory of pain, before abandoning the memory on the streetside, though it would inevitably follow me home and find its way back into my head.

Until then, I would force peace upon myself.

The industry district occupies a long, single stretch of road that cuts like a scar through the central stacks of the city, always no more than a few miles from any possible origin point, offering no excuses for workers who found themselves running a few minutes late. Beyond this, only the trinity fields stretching for miles of back breaking labor beneath the city offer any consistent source of work.

I make my way past these buildings, hunching gloomily against the perpetually dark sky, and finally find my feet plodding along more familiar paths.

My place of work sits sandwiched somewhere off and to the side of both the industry district and the administration/government district ostracized from the bulk of the city by high concrete fences topped with a thin, blue electrical field. Additionally, the outer perimeter is surrounded on three sides by a murky perimeter of marble black water serving as a secondary deterrent to anyone already stupid eough to get to close to begin with.

I approach the front gate, a massive slab of silver metal with a barely visible hairline seam running a track down the middle.

At the center of the gate, the large, silver mockery of an eye blinks open, its external sensors connecting to the eye on my chest.

It blinks once issuing a series of robotic sounds followed by an inhuman mechanical voice.

Oculus Ailanthus 3

The gate cracks open, splitting the eye in half to invite me inside.

The courtyard and training fields lie silent and abandoned this time of day. My footsteps echo in protest to the silence as I lead my one man procession up to the grand double doors, which slide open for me without a sound. A thin beam of green/yellow light pours in a torrent from the open door, sweeping me up in a blinding spotlight as I step through the doors and into the grand atrium.

My eyes shed a small torrent of tears as they adjusted to the light, pouring down from our one greatest symbol of power and glory.

The tree.

Tall enough and wide enough, to take up the entire far wall of the large atrium, the plant stands proud within its environmentally controlled glass enclosure. A shroud of golden light filters gently through the emerald leaves and onto the ground where a curtain of lazy grass sways slowly in an artificial breeze. As far as I know, the tree is the largest of its kind, at least thirty feet tall, with a trunk as thick as a man’s thigh, and a tangle of branches forking out like the delicate veins and capillaries of a man’s heart. The leaves that sprout from its branches are smaller than my palm, and shaped like gently tapering spades.

As usually, the tree robs me of both my breath and attention, but I’m not one to complain.

“Oculus…”

Everything inside that class container is so clean, and gentle, even the lacy patterns of golden light cast onto the ground seem so much brighter than the grungy blue neon that paints the walls of the city.

“Ailanthus!”

Reality makes its unwanted appearance, barging in on the back of our front desk administrator’s nasally voice. I turn my eyes on the little man, no larger than five foot four, fighting with an aggressively retreating hairline, in a losing battle for his scalp. The son of some mid level administrator, he had been granted little enough power, and an even smaller amount of respect.

He glares at me expectantly, his small black uniform hanging in bags around his armpits and chest.

Usually, I might have had a little sport with the tiny man, but not today.

I walk up to the counter, and stand still, while the little man, can’t remember his name, unlocks the Observer from my chest, unplugging the bionic eye with a pop. He turns in his chair, plugging the camera into a waiting port, “Report?”

I rest the palms of my hands flat on his countertop, smudging its polished surface with the imprint of my fingers, “I have completed three sanctioned beatings, two retaliatory robberies, and returned three truancies. It must be noted that one retaliatory robbery resulted in compulsory amputation when no item of equal or greater value could be provided.”

Behind him, the observer unit blinked and chimed a long, low note.

The small man gave an aggressive stamp to a sheet of paper and handed it over.

“Bring this to-.”

“The records office, I know.” I held up the paper, eyes scanning lazily down the page as I made my leisurely way from the room, red ink glistening like a smear of blood on the white paper circular red letters reading.

Government of the Coladium: Department of the Seer Collective

Oculus 336 Ailanthus.

Certification of case completion.

I dropped my hand to the side, letting the piece of paper fall with it, turning only once to look back at the tree glowing like a beacon in the atrium behind me.

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