#WritingWonders August 8: "What is your MC's bedtime routine like?"

Saki was trained (or tortured, depending on one's perspective) to sleep anywhere, anytime, because War taxes what it's already taken. She'll sneak a bath first, if at all possible. The only possession she lets affect her piece of mind is her pair of bandanas gifted to her by an old friend, but those are always in her hair.

Now that she has a real bedroom, with a roommate and growing cohort who care that she sleeps well, not just that she's ready for orders, she'll start to adjust! Until then, you may find her with arms crossed and eyes covered under the stars, in the corner of the gym, or slumped in the back of a train car. Just don't interpret her unconsciousness as unreadiness - she'll spring into action faster than you could constrain her!

#ScienceFiction #Writing #C8y #MaidenHeretic

#WritingWonders August 1 Extremely Late Catchup: "Intro Day. If you could hang out with one of your side characters for a day, who would you choose? Why?"

(1/2) Hi! I'm Ariadne, a far-future #ScienceFiction author slowly publishing my first webnovel, The Maiden-Heretic of Laclathan. It's set in my own Known Universes, a long-term worldbuilding project I've had as a side project since 1999 when 2023 was still The Future. This universe and all its IP are an open culture project under a Creative Commons license. The idea is that, someday, other authors or artists will have a curated, obsessively-detailed world to add their own voices to without fear of stepping on a megacorporation's toes. The first two chapters of Maiden-Heretic are out already! https://canonicity.org/works/TMHOL

#Writing #C8y #MaidenHeretic

#WritingWonders July 19: “Does your MC support the status quo in their world?”

Saki’s between worlds right now, quite literally. Her former planet of Laclathan was a paranoid hermit-world desperately hiding its imminent demise. She never critically analyzed it, which I suppose we can forgive her for since she became government property at age 5 and the whole thing imploded when she was 15, but in the back of her mind she always fantisized about escape, about a freedom she couldn’t quite imagine.

Now, she has the chance: as a refugee in a voluntary, anarchic society, no one will make life choices for her. Her new status quo is flux. Her new comrades-in-giant-robot-arms have a literal religious devotion to the flowing Chaos they hold as the root of all creation. It’s scary, having lived her whole life under stringent control. Before she can judge, she must re-learn how to live… and meet herself for the first time.

#C8y #MaidenHeretic #ScienceFiction #AmWriting

#WritingWonders July 19: “Does your MC support the status quo in their world?”

Saki’s between worlds right now, quite literally. Her former planet of Laclathan was a paranoid hermit-world desperately hiding its imminent demise. She never critically analyzed it, which I suppose we can forgive her for since she became government property at age 5 and the whole thing was imploded when she was 15, but in the back of her mind she always fantisized about escape, about a freedom she couldn’t quite imagine.

Now, she has the chance: as a refugee in a voluntary, anarchic society, no one will make life choices for her. Her new status quo is flux. Her new comrades-in-giant-robot-arms have a literal religious devotion to the flowing Chaos they hold as the root of all creation. It’s scary, having lived her whole life under stringent control. Before she can judge, she must re-learn how to live… and meet herself for the first time.

#C8y #MaidenHeretic #ScienceFiction #AmWriting

#WritingWonders July 10: “MC POV: In a fight, what is your weapon of choice?”

Saki looks askance, her exposed eye focusing off into space. Snapping back to your attention, she sets her teacup down with a definitive click and begins:

“It’s all about velocity and range. Transorbital, I try not to, but nothing beats a multi-vector torpedo barrage, the proper warp-cloaked ones. Landed, load me up with skirmish missiles. I think you call them cruise missiles, but for us they get focused down after a couple seconds. In a pinch, nothing beats a surprise megaton or two!”

“Closer, and we paint the targets’ shields with our Particle Beam. No matter what it’s made of, it can only get so hot… If we’re still opposed, time for my favorite part: my blade’s 80 meters long, my swing tops out at 500 meters per second, the edge is MADE of a linear quench in my Crown Shield…”

“Oh, you meant, like, personal combat? Fistfights? I hate that shit.”

#C8y #ScienceFiction #Worldbuilding #Writing

#WritingWonders July 5: “Has your MC ever been involved in a physical altercation? If so, why?”

Filtering out war and corporal abuses, Saki’s had two spectacular physical altercations in her backstory. The latest was six years ago, the day her planet ended. The cold, brutal man who’d served as her handler since she could remember now stood in her way. She NEEDED that mecha, and with the world at stake, she did what she’d prepared to do: six rounds to the chest. What she hadn’t prepared for was the breaking of his facade at her moment of betrayal. The way he reached out to her as he fell, genuine fear on his face, haunts her to this day.

The first time was less of a necessity. When Saki was 13 years old, she planned and executed the murder of her rival in the showers. Believe it or not, I intend to sell this to the reader well enough for them to like her!

#C8y #ScienceFiction #Writing #Worldbuilding

#WritingWonders June 29: “How would you feel if your book got banned?”

I’ve always had an attraction to righteous infamy, so I’d probably be oddly happy about it! Book banning is one of those times where the quality of the company trumps whatever statement’s being made by the ban implementers.

#C8y #Writing #ScienceFiction #ReadBannedBooks

#WritingWonders catchup 25 June: “Do you have any characters over 50 in your book?”

Yes, depending on who counts! Many entities live for centuries or millennia, but I suppose we’re thinking about humans. Leonan was first born over 150 years ago, but I doubt any of his 8 iterations have lived 50 consecutive years without incident. As a Veilene, his memories and sense of self will continue emerging from his home engram pool until his identity becomes too weak. Even then, the pieces that made him will scatter and contribute to a new metageneration. Culturally, each iteration is considered a continuation of the same person.

He has a friend and longtime colleague, Sama, whose passion is the safety and facilitation of Cohort Atsuvan’s practice ranges, exercises, and festivals. I don’t have an exact calendar, but he probably hasn’t died in the past 50 years. No guarantees…

#C8y #Writing #ScienceFiction

#WritingWonders June 23: “Would your MC/hero stand out in our world?”

Saki’s a trained zealot, taken as a child and taught to survive and kill without remorse. The world her handlers painted around her is rigid, harsh, and threatened by everything beyond it. Paradoxically, she’s also pampered and raised to mingle with the rich and powerful. Out of uniform, they’d never tell her apart from their own daughters: it’s better for the defense budget that way.

Oamadh gives Saki the support and space to grow beyond her conditioning and become herself. Earth would make her into a monster. If she were poor once she got here, homelessness is almost certain and serial killing isn’t out of the question. If she were rich, the results would be far worse…

#C8y #ScienceFiction #Writing

#WritingWonders June 22: “What sort of transportation or vehicles does your MC use?”

If they can help it all, Saki and Sinóle prefer to travel while nestled deep within their Tethyan hosts, Apricity Interrogator and Tahlonessa respectively. Since adult Tethyans exceed 100 meters in length, they’re usually consigned to less-exciting bikes, trains, or the Monolith transports the Cohort maintains for both peace and war.

Most of their vehicles are amphibious and spaceworthy, the result of millennia of shared craft. Whenever there’s a need to get somewhere faster-than-light, nothing can beat a ride from a Vimana, simulated nature’s fastest and possibly most accidental self-contained starships! https://wiki.canonicity.org/index.php/Vimana

#C8y #ScienceFiction #Writing

Veilene whose whole personality is their unwieldy robot lizard #C8y #ScienceFiction #Writing

#WritingWonders June 20: “Do you have any LGBT+ characters in your story?”

Yes, but they wouldn’t necessarily think of themselves in those terms. Humans across the Known Universes have had a culture of custom bodies for ~1 million years, so we’d have to explain the concept of a gendered body to them! Their worldview on gender, sexuality, and everything else is completely composite and relational.

One deuteragonist, Sinóle, is in what we’d call an FF relationship with a friend she’s known from childhood. At some point, her closest caretaker Leonan (she sees him like a Dad, but there’s no compulsory relationships under TTMA) probably noticed she and Kepherlia had really ramped up the sleepovers and concluded, “Hey, looks like we’re in the same fan club!”

Also being a fan of what we’d call a Dad joke, this would be little more than an excuse for Leonan to prepare a couple pointers if she asks, or to lift her mood in an eye-rolling fashion.

#C8y #AmWriting #ScienceFiction

#WritingWonders June 12: “MC POV. How do you feel about Marriage?”

“It doesn’t matter what I feel about marriage anymore,” Saki starts, “there’s another one that passed right by me. I wasn’t allowed to marry before, being government property and all. In this new world, the Arcaelits treat permanent contracts like the worst heresy, hushed threatening tone and all. Oh, you shouldn’t say it like that. They also treat the idea of heresy the same way!”

She continues: “I suppose I never really thought about it, and it’s too late. No great loss, right? For now, I’ve got to figure out if I can trust anyone at all. If I can, someday, maybe this kind of stuff will matter to me.”

#C8y #ScienceFiction #AmWriting

#WritingWonders June 9: “Do natural calamities play a role in your story?”

That depends on what we mean by nature! The mechanics of advanced systems are known so far in advance, not even volcanoes or asteroids are surprising.

On the other hand, the Known Universes are home to beings with the power to control spacetime itself around them. Even in a “normal” conflict, Superheavy combatants can trigger storms, quakes, or avalanches just by moving… and often do.

#C8y #ScienceFiction #AmWriting

#WritingWonders June 7: “MC POV: name one place in your world you try to avoid. Why?”

Saki spends several seconds in scrunch-nosed thought.

“Everywhere I knew before is gone. Here, there’s more places I don’t go than ones I do. Until I can make sense of this,” she pauses to sweep her open hand through the air to indicate the closed arc of the station, verdant land and striated clouds wrapping 60 kilometers above your heads and back, “I’ll stick to what I know.”

#C8y #ScienceFiction #AmWriting

#WritingWonders June 1: “Intro Day. You’re transported into your WIP world, where is the 1st place you’re going? Why?”

(1/2)

Hi! I’m Ariadne, lifelong worldbuilder, finally sending my ideas out into the one world we truly have to share. My WIP is The Maiden-Heretic of Laclathan, an ongoing webnovel set in a preposterously-far future where nothing but the iron laws of Thermodynamics still hold. https://canonicity.org/works/TMHOL

#C8y #AmWriting #ScienceFiction

#WritingWonders May 30: “What colors do you associate with your WIP, and why?”

Hunter Green, Goldenrod, and a slightly lighter, slightly redder Eggplant, of course 😄

…this one’s a no-brainer because my WIP is Manga/Anime-adjacent and those are Saki, Sinóle, and Leonan’s respective key colors!

#C8y #AmWriting #ScienceFiction

(2/2) Everyone else calls it the Arcaelit Empire, and the Arcaelits go with it largely because it takes too long to explain otherwise! Besides, if it’s good for your enemies to fear you, how much better that they toss concession after supplication to a dragon of their own imagining?

#C8y

#WritingWonders 29 May: “What type of government exists in your story?”

(1/2) They say TTMA supersedes the State and its supporting concepts, including Law itself. TTMA signatories are said to flow with it rather than attempting to control their environment. Anything that looks or acts like a coercive social structure gets swept away in this flow.

https://wiki.canonicity.org/index.php/TTMA

#C8y #ScienceFiction #AmWriting

#WritingWonders May 21: “MC POV: If you had to give your you get self a piece of advice, what would it be?”

(1/2)

Saki’s mouth twists into a wry smile as her good eye tracks over to meet yours. After her gaze darts around your expression for a moment, she blurts out “I bet you meant that as a rhetorical question when you asked, huh? Well, a funny thing happens when my mind meets my host’s.”

(continued)

#C8y #ScienceFiction #AmWriting