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I been experimenting with proto Oberon, here is where I am so far. Work in progress.

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Episodes that are backstage documentary bits that also completely ignore that this weird 80s band is just performing during the fall of Pompeii (or something) in The year 79 (with a passing joke about how it's basically the 80s if you squint at the date but it's never the focal point of the conversation of the scene). And the entire time the time traveling main character is just kind of doing things in the background just barely in frame for the documentary crew, fighting a lava monster or something. End of the episode the main character gets a special backstage pass or something and awkwardly asks for an autograph while looking like they've just been in the radius of a large explosive blast and the band just being like "dang dude, that's the most punk look I've seen all day" and the main character responding with a "thank you... I... I needed to hear that."

Doctor Who but instead of traveling through all of time and space he's basically just like a Deadhead and only time travels to specific concerts of a specific band in his Tardis.

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Power word

Power word kill isn't enough. I need power word explode. Power word combust

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Comedically, despite the band being a human band from earth in the 80s, these concerts happen throughout the vastness of time and space. The show functionally recreates Doctor Who almost perfectly except for the context that the doctor is only there for the band somehow performing just out of view of the science fiction procedural plot.

Doctor Who but instead of traveling through all of time and space he's basically just like a Deadhead and only time travels to specific concerts of a specific band in his Tardis.

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Yeah this is gonna suck for me. I'm probably gonna get some of the worst of this.

y'all it's about to get really fucking humid and hot

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I find myself surrounded with an abundance

of nothing in particular

or anything at all,

an invisible force with weight and sound

and so much of everything;

life today, it is much the same as life yesterday--

full of coded messages to unravel and

sent to everyone else but me.

But here I am hearing

here I am unraveling ravening words

like counting tufted black birds on a power line.

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I admit openly that I am tired, that often the world passes without my notice, that my ink has turned invisible, my language a mere desperate vying for sound; I admit that, somewhere, I hear the waves of unknown oceans break on shorelines I will never see. That I recognize what is impossible in my life: Dreams, travel, love’s bright-star. I can say that I bear it, this knowing, and that I recognize it briefly, from time to time, as a stranger amongst Loveless faces does. And that I do this because I must. I want to be real. And then not. Here, another twilight, absent of ceremony, passes as the wind does. Siteless and like a phantom, I am carved from my own wish for reaching.

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Writing is great because… words. Yeah. That’a it.

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merp & berp

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I don't like sharing my writing. I would call it advertising, but I'm not selling anything; most of my writing is freely available online. But telling other people that I have writing they could read, and then actually asking people to go read my writing... I don't like it. Kind of feels like I'm begging. Doesn't help that I know I don't edit my work particularly well. I consider myself a writer, but I know people (who aren't writers) expect writers to be able to basically print out a finished draft whenever they write, and I know I can't do that (I don't think this really changes whether I am a writer or not, but it doesn't feel great, you know?). Hell, I don't even consider myself a particularly good writer in practice.

Anyway, I'm forcing myself to share my writing because I have two stories in particular that I would appreciate more readers on. I'm not selling my work, I'm not paying to have my work reviewed. I kind of just want to figure out if I really am just writing for myself, because I don't think my writing resonates with anyone else. But also there are other more substantial reasons.

I write, primarily, on RoyalRoad because most of what I write is original fiction. However, I know my preferred genres do very badly on RR because RR is a bastion of litrpg and gamer fiction and I'm not particularly fond of either. However, I do actually really like the build of the website itself (it does suck that it got eaten up by Amazon, but the influence is limited and bearable). Anyway. I'm stalling. See? If no one wants to get through this wall of text they'll never scroll down to where I actually link my writing. I'm also posting late at night for the same reason. They'll never know I suck, because they'll never read this far and actually get to the stories.

Whatever.

First story is called Vanisher. I started it almost four years ago because I had an action movie dream that ended with jumping off of a sky scraper and that being a good thing. While it was originally an action story, it very quickly became about "who are you? is that who you are in your head or who people think you are? what if who you are meant to be is dead, but you could change that?" Which was more of a paranormal-ish intrigue story. And then stopped writing the story for nearly four years (because I'd been a lot less stressed... for reasons, and wasn't writing as much). Then I came back to it (because I got a lot more stressed... for reasons, and started writing more) and I realized that that core of the narrative also lent really well to a sort of romantic self discovery, and then I made the main characters kiss. And that went well. But the thing I'm concerned about is that the first five chapters are missing something. I know they're missing something, but I can't really put my finger on it. And the only way to really figure it out is to have a bunch of people read the whole thing. The only problem is that it's longer than Twilight now and not quite finished (though it will be soon). But it is queer media, and the main relationship is poly, and I quite like writing both.

Second story is called Aether Drop. This one is simultaneously new and also very very old. You know that thing you did (maybe you still do) when you're a passenger in a car and you look out the window and imagine a guy running on the power lines or look at the clouds and imagine there's a massive airship up there or people walking around on top of the clouds? That is this. The airships. The sky people. When I was a kid I imagined those airships a lot. I loved Castle in the Sky and everything even close. And in order to make that image of an airship in the clouds a story, I came up with a world for it. Earth, but re-formed and inhospitable. The kind of earth humanity would never survive on, so they'd have to make big stupid helicarrier type airships to keep humanity safe but still moored to the rock they came from. And of course that would cause some serious complications for the survival of humanity, because you can't just live in the upper troposphere forever, it's not exactly hospitable. So it's about the next evolution of humanity inheriting the wreckage of the earth horizon zero dawn style (though I swear I came up with my version of the re-terraformed earth setting before horizon, they're different in practice but similar in general concept). It's told through the lens of two boys from different airships being stuck on the surface. And I wanted more eyes on it because it's been entered into a contest and I think better metrics on the fiction page might give it a better shot of getting in the top twenty out of the three hundred and forty submissions. Also just getting some actual readers on it would be nice. Like I said earlier, this kind of genre is not popular on RR.

If you're actually reading this part of this post... why? It's mostly just for me to shout at the clouds. But also. Go ahead.

I like writing Vanisher. As a story, it's special to me. It represents a lot of what I've discovered about my own identity. I started writing it when I was question whether I was cis or trans (turned out not quite either), and I thought the story would resonate with people that went through that same self-questioning process. So far it hasn't, though I'll grant anyone that's read it, transness hasn't exactly been a focal point. It's a long road from trying to fit in like a very normal cis straight person to even questioning if that's what you want to be. You have to question other aspects of who you are or think you are first. And this story is really only into those early questioning stages so far. Mostly it kind of lingers on the villains of 1) wanting to be alone so that you don't hurt other people and also wanting to not be alone because that hurts just as bad... and also everyone else kind of feels the same way, and 2) social and economic equity are sort of impossible and success in life, as nebulous as that is, does stem from the sociopolitcal station of the family you grow up in and that sucks. I like envisioning a world where you can buck the forces in life that tell you that you need to conform to survive, because there is a world out there where you actually can but it's actively being attacked by the people trying to convince you that you need to conform. And writing this kind of story, that exists in that exaggerated version of our world, makes the part of my brain that thinks about philosophy and social systems and how beautiful other people are... it makes that part of my brain happy.

And I've tried to write Aether Drop a few times. I've called it Aether, Up in the Aether, Aetherum, stuff like that. Aether Drop just sticks better (at least that's my current opinion). And I've tried to frame it as a lot of different things over its various iterations, mostly about the importance of telling stories to your kids and grandkids and leaving behind a legacy. But I don't think I've ever been set on going very far with the story itself. The longest draft I have, which isn't the one I'm currently writing, has a lot of thinking about it and has gone nowhere over a lot less words. I think I get a little too in my head with establishing story elements, and spend too much time setting things up and then getting distracted and forgetting to pay them off soon enough. But I try, above all else, to have fun with this version of this story. I was laughing to myself earlier because my shortest possible summary of the story (thus far) is "Shadow the hedgehog, Tails, and Treebeard are stuck on a mountain and there's a big cat that wants to kill them." And while it's not literally those characters, it isn't far off. I also had a good long chuckle about the character I'm describing as Treebeard poking said big cat in the nuts with a stick to ward it off, because the text kind of just spilled onto the doc without my thinking about it too hard. You know, every now and then you just let your fingers write and don't pay attention and you read it back and there's a dirty joke or something? It was like that.

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So... People on the left agree more often than not on what are often considered polarizing issues, while people on the right are more likely to argue amongst themselves about those same polarizing issues. So the right has more infighting than the left? The right is less idea logically stable than the left? The right has less coordination and solution based thinking than the left?

Because when you can't agree with your allies about what you should do, you tend to lose allies when you do things the way you want anyway.

I'll take, "Things we already knew" for 300-

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When I tell you I snorted!

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This reminds me of the "cockpit problem." It's probably better called the problem with averages, but I like using the analogy of the cockpit. The story goes that the US air force in the 50s, when designing the cockpits for their fighters, took the measurements (leg length, torso length, arm length, etc.) of a few thousand pilots and averaged them out to create an ideally sized cockpit for every pilot. The problem was that the average was not accurate for any pilot across all points of adjustment. The stick was too far or too close due to variance in arm length, the seat was too far back or too far forward, and so on. Every pilot was uncomfortable because none of them had the average of all their combined measurements on every measured metric.

This is accurate to the human experience socially. We have, collectively, averaged out human experience into often binary or truncated categories because the human brain craves simplicity and the reduction of variety (I suppose this is in order to simplify the things we experience so that they can be remembered more easily but ignoring variant factors also allows us to assimilate better). When it comes to gender and sexuality, the binary male/female heterosexual experience does stem from the average of collective experience socially. However, what we actually feel we are and experience is unique. And while we can fit ourselves in a very general venn diagram based on externally visible factors, it does not change the fact that we are all very specifically built things; our parts are not interchangeable (without fairly extreme modifications when you think about it, and even then only barely), and our thoughts are almost never the same.

While someone may fit into the "male" group they do not exist purely as a universally male person because "male" on its own is an extremely shallow examination of identity while we often ascribe far too many details to it to make the general vann diagram category smaller to reduce variety. Consequently we try to squeeze everyone that could have fit in the larger version of the category into the smaller box and anyone that pops out because they refuse to conform we call deviant. But in reality, virtually no one belongs in the hyper specific category, yet everyone has an urge (of varying strength) to conform to in in order to reduce variety and assimilate into a group for safety.

And when we create a separate venn diagram circle where we can keep it as general as possible and include as much as possible, we end up with LGBTQ+. It is merely the circle with the most accepted generalization, the big tent of gender and sexual identity. It includes more than the idea of male and female and heterosexual and homosexual and everything in between. Ultimately, I believe, it is the compassionate alternative to the average; a categorical open pasture where we just let variety exist.

I'm convinced the actual percentage of people who are functionally LGBTQ is much higher than we think. Everyone has a relative who's *totally straight* except for that one intense same-sex romance in college. Everyone knows someone who claims that demisexuality shouldn't be a thing because it's "just being normal." If I've learned anything in life, it's that normal doesn't exist.

People are complex and labels are useful but only go so far. If we all just accepted that nearly every human state is on a spectrum of some kind and that almost nothing is truly binary, we would all be better off.

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I grew up in a very conservative state in the US. Age of consent here is hypothetically 16. But with the caveated that below 18 you had to be within the same grade range. 16 could be with 16 or 17, but not 18. And there were other technical loopholes that could be invoked or ignored as law enforcement pleased. This meant that hypothetically a 15 yo could marry a 40 yo with parental consent and then assume the legal ability to consent regardless of age (which is a truly monstrous loophole that should get that 40 yo mobbed), and also that a 16 yo dating someone who is 17 and about to be 18 could get their partner arrested and put on a sex offender registry because "sex crimes" always had the "perpetrator" tried as an adult.

My personal experience growing up in that environment reinforced to me that I should really wait till college to do anything more serious than kissing; and even then I saw kids get arrested for making out on the bus because of public decency laws. So. You know. Play it safe. I also wasn't surveiled like kids are now, which means odds are even worse today than the decade or so ago when I was in public school.

hi💜 im 15 (literally tomorrow) and I think I may be starting a situationship w a 19 year old will I be arrested? What should I do bruh

you wont be arrested! you will be groomed. dont do that. thats insane. if you do not do that you will save yourself a lot of mental damage. there is no way for this to go well. i am twenty one and the idea of “starting a situationship” with someone about to turn 17 is nuts to me. no 19 year old in their right mind would do that. this person will be arrested! and they KNOW THAT!

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Legitimately the BS I have to deal with when writing one story I work on just for myself and never publish. I don't know why I give myself headaches for the sake of story boarding something no one else will probably ever read. But, darn it, I need to figure out how an entity with a linear perception of time can see both past and future simultaneously and also interact with someone who hypothetically does not experience time in a linear fashion and experiences only the present from a meta-narrative superposition that encompasses only what the reader reads.

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