#gesetele's arrow

[ohthatphage]

In the book I am writing, I am the narrator and the... well, antagonist is not really the right word, but it's close. I'm the trickster spirit whose going to learn a valuable lesson while mucking about with mortals.

And there is this mentor of the two lead characters named Boamäo

Boamäo's name means "the meaning of evasion or escape". Rem chose it remself. Also, rem is a sailor.

In the scene we are currently writing, we learn that Boamäo has encountered me before, and resents the results of that interaction, and holds a grudge.

What we haven't figured out is what happened.

The rules work like this:

I am the process of Entropy itself given autonomous spiritual form.

I try to help people.

I have also been very deliberately coaxing the people of Boamäo's world to build their first generational starship, and that's had some unfortunate side effects on their cultures.

I have conscious power over the way that energy moves through my local vicinity. But in order to be conscious, I have to inhabit a sufficiently complex system.

I also cannot do anything to anyone without their subconscious consent. If they consciously revoke that consent, I must leave them alone. Not many people actually know this, however.

In order to be seen or heard, I must at least partially inhabit a person's neural system and cause them to hallucinate me.

In this story, I have a history of successfully convincing people that I want to help them, and coming to some sort of agreement as to how to do so. But then the effects of my efforts are later seen as disastrous.

Except in one set of cases: Any time a child is lost in the dark and I encounter them, I successfully lead them home without harm coming to them in any way.

So, knowing all of this, what would be a good and interesting previous incident between me and Boamäo?

[fenmere]

Using blender to start sketching out the planet of Kepekape, so that we can better visualize the setting for Gesetele's Arrow. We positioned the cursor to be right where Hinbeg city is, where the story starts. The heroes are currently on a boat headed to one of the islands slightly north of there, to go camping. The region has a very similar climate to the Pacific Northwest. We haven't placed any rivers yet, but there is one that goes past the city, and has an outlet in the bay there.

[fenmere]

Gesetele's Arrow.odt

--- excerpt---

“What did Kirru tell you about us?” Binwen ventured.

“Oh, that you were old friends who needed to get away for a while to sort things out,” rem said. “Nothing particularly special. But I get it. I work my Art for all types. It’s my honor.”

“Thank you,” Binwen said.

“I’ll hear nothing of it,” Boamäo said. “What do you do, Näofregbi?”

Näofregbi looked back at rem and said, “I’ve been doing pottery, but I hate it. It’s the wrong thing.”

“Right, right,” Boamäo said. “But when you’re not doing pottery, or sleeping, or taking care of yourself, what do you do? Doesn’t have to be anything that might be your Art. What’s your current fallback? Daydreaming? Planning? Hiking?”

Gem gave rem a wry look and decided it was OK to share this part of gemself. Näofregbi tentatively said, “I look for my people.”

“You strike me as a loner, like me,” Boamäo said.

“I am,” gem admitted. “But I also have a people, and they’re there, and I look for them.”

“Interesting.”

Gem looked around and then smiled in the way of sharing an inside joke, saying, “I don’t think they’re anywhere on your boat right now. But if they are, they’ll be in the cabinets and maybe the engine compartment. Places like that.”

Boamäo frowned in light confusion and said, “That’s a new one.”

“Imaginary people,” Näofregbi said. “They’re tiny, and my mind likes to put them in nooks and crannies, away from everyone else. Usually in gardens and out in the woods. Natural places. But maybe they could fit in here, too.” Gem looked out at the water for a little bit, and then said, “I wonder if any of them would be at home on the sea floor.”

“That’s still a new one to me, but it sounds delightful,” Boamäo said.

“I’m thinking about making tiny houses or shrines for them,” Näofregbi said. “I don’t know how that’ll help anyone else. But it feels like what I’m supposed to do.”

“Didn’t used to need to do your Art for others,” Boamäo said. “For most of my life, you could just do it, and if someone appreciated it they went ahead and appreciated it. But you just did it for the joy of it, and that was good enough.”

“Yeah. Fekri, our brood guardian, has said the same.”

“Got an Art fair stall?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me guess. You’re risking your claim to it by going on this trip.”

“I think I wrote a pretty good letter to the manager about why I’m doing this,” Näofregbi said. “But, yes. Definitely.”

“And then, your housing could be taken away, too, right? If I’m remembering the new laws right.”

“Yep. But I think it’s going to be worth it.”

“I’m impressed with you,” Boamäo said. “We’re in unprecedented rough times, and usually youngsters like you can’t take the long view like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Usually, any little disaster looks enormous when you’re your age. Huge and hopeless. You can’t see the other side of it, because you never have before,” Boamäo explained. “But, even if you lose your property, you won’t be cast out. You’ll rebound. Find another fair, maybe. Or another city. And you’ve got people who’ll look out for you, I’m sure.” Rem looked meaningfully at Binwen.

“Honestly, I hadn’t even been thinking about all that,” Näofregbi said. “I just can’t go back to the Art fair until I figure this out. I don’t have a choice. It’s like my body won’t let me. When I think I’m going to make a move in that direction, I just stop. And when I make a move in this direction, I move faster, like I’m caught in rapids.”

“Ah. You’re the laser focused type,” rem said.

“Maybe,” gem replied. “Still. It does scare me. A lot. I don’t know what I’m being sucked into.”

“Understandable,” Boamäo said. “Well. We oldsters will look out for you. OK? We’ll pull you out when you need it. You just give the word.”

Despite how Fekri had described the world before Gesetele’s Arrow, this verbal generosity and goodwill was more intense than Näofregbi was prepared for. It was hard to believe it. Or trust it. Especially after encountering Mau and its capricious reputation, insistent motives, and deceptive bargaining. Between Mau and Rrenweg, Näofregbi didn’t understand where people like Boamäo could even fit in gems world.

But gem wanted Boamäo to be real, and despite gems worries and misgivings, gem felt warm and profoundly comforted by rems words.

__

The people of Kinrreb’s clearing had left me in the capable hands of Wimauni, who had taken it upon nemself to give me a tour of all of nems favorite secluded places. And while we did that, nem had been lecturing me about what nem now expected of me, and why.

WIP Wednesday Game

It’s WIP Wednesday, time for a little accountability, sharing your work, and getting a kick in the pants.

Here’s how it works:

In a reblog of this post (so people can find you in the notes) or new thread (w/ rules attached) if you want to play on your own, post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event or gift fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. I’ll be searching the reblogs to find people to send asks to!

If you’re reading this, you’re invited!

If you see someone posting a WIP Wednesday Game snippet, send them an ask! Make them write.

Requested/Friend event mentions under the cut! If you'd like to be pinged next week, let me know!

@fiore-della-valle @redbirdblogs @greenbergsays @idkfandomwhatever @luckyspike

@obaewankenope @mad-madam-m @anonymousdandelion @geometricfractal @prettybirdy979

@eriquin @aparticularbandit @madnessfromthemountains @makeroftherunes @1attheedge

@whimsicalmeerkat @kidsomeday @lizhly-writes @skyderman @adhdavinci

@owlbearwrites @anachronismstellar @anyctibius @rilannon @lazinesswrites

@zyrafowe-sny @dreaminghour @blue-eyedbeta @candyskiez @dreamerking27

@kalira @virgulesmith @i-want-delfeur @selkies-world @exceedinglygayotter

@oitreewrites @post-and-out @writingattheedge @qqaba @ykthefancyclamwiththepearlinside

@princescar

[ohthatphage]

Last Line Tag Game

tagged by @apocraphelion

here are the most recent lines I've written for Gesetele's Arrow, which is slated to be finished and published after @ashwin-the-artless' trilogy are done. I went back to the most comprehensible line, so it makes some sense. This makes it long. This is me as narrator and a character in the story:

And then there was Boamäo.

I didn’t care about Boamäo.

I had encountered Boamäo before, apparently. And from all of my reactions to rem, I was done with rem.

Which isn’t to say that I felt any ill will toward rem, or even resentment that rem was present. Just that, for the purposes of this particular exercise, rem mattered as much as one of the flying fish that was escorting rems boat across the sound toward the Northern fjords.

But, for some reason, I felt like that shouldn’t be the case. And that little flicker of a doubt might have been an indicator of something.

Was I on the verge of changing my mind about all of this? Or was it something more personal, more reflective of my own growth? Was I beginning to care about mortals on their own terms, somehow? And if the latter was true, what did that bode in regards to my identity and place in the universe?

Even now, was I still me?

And then a really weird question presented itself, and I didn’t know what to do with it.

Did I even like myself?

And as I asked myself that question, the echos of something Näofregbi had said resurfaced in what passed for my own psyche just then.

“In my short lifetime, I’ve seen everything get worse because of that project.”

It was almost as if Näofregbi had found me and uttered the words again to make sure I remembered them.

---

anyway, I am always it, and now I've tagged you. Yes, you.

[ohthatphage]

I have started the second chapter of my first novel. I don't imagine I'll write many other novels, as this system has a lot of writers in it who should get to write.

But I'm very proud of these words. Here is an excerpt:

---

Being party to two nervous systems gave me enough faculties to do some interesting and fun things.

I have since learned that this would not have been as easy on a new planet with people who are not familiar with me. I had grown up with the Kepekapeans, so I had forgotten how much I’d struggled at first.

As it was then, however, I was able to vibrate the air arbitrarily to form my greeting. And then, following that, I pulled together a confluence of breeze, light from the sun, tree branches and leaves and the shadows they cast, and enough neurons from my two new friends to create the illusion of a shadowy figure standing in the path between them and the city they wanted to return to.

It was half coincidental shadow play and half hallucination.

The reaction I got from either of them was not what I was intending to receive, but it was informative and interesting anyway. If I’d had all of my memories, I would have predicted it before I’d acted. But I wasn’t exactly surprised.

Very little ever surprises me.

Eyes wide, backs arched, they both backed up a step and froze, mouths gaping. Little Näofregbi was in front of towering Binwen, if seen from where my shadow vision lay. And they were framed by the gently swaying leaves and fronds of the foliage around them, with glints of direct sunlight filtering through the indigo trees behind their heads.

I extrapolated that image from the physics around me, but otherwise I was actually seeing things through their eyes.

I decided to nudge them back toward verbal thinking, and continued my greeting. 

“I am Mau,” I said, and had my visage twist to demonstrate the lack of a tail, denoting that the pronoun ‘yem’ belonged to me. I could give myself any tail I wanted. I wanted that pronoun, and the connotations it carried.

Also, turning sideways to show your tail was an extreme formality in their culture at the time, treated as deferential and very friendly. During mating season, it would be evocative, of course, but it was not mating season.

I waited.

[fenmere]

Kepekapean v.s. Ktletaccete (what are these things?)

We've described this before, but it feels good to rewrite it to try to see if we can make it more clear, or update what we've said in the past.

There are two realities here: factual, and our fictional canon.

Factual

The factual definitions of these words are really simple:

Kepekape is our body, our vessel, and a Kepekapean is someone who lives in our vessel.

Ktlettacete means "child of Eh and Jenifer" and describes those of us who are descended from our two eldest.

We have some members who are Kepekapeans but not Ktletaccete: Jenifer, Eh, Phage, and the Outsiders (12 in number). There might a few others who are relatively new, but we haven't met them yet.

And that's it. That's all the words mean in relationship to our system.

Though, us Ktletaccete, and our two parents, have some traits of identity that we've worked into our fictional canon to inspire it. We're shapeshifting autistic dragons, who tend to take a form that reflects our individual special interests. There's more to it than that, but that's for a different kind of post (an upcoming reblog of this one, perhaps?).

Fictional Canon

This goes for the Sunspot Chronicles, and their related series of books.

In this reality, Kepekape is the original home planet of the Ktletaccete. So, in this sense, Kepekapean is used to refer to denizens of that planet, and Ktletaccete is used to refer to both them and their descendants.

But, that's how the words are used by the time of the Sunspot. Prior to that, it was different. There've been so many cultures and civilizations that the uses of these word have been through multiple iterations of change.

Originally, Ktletaccete referred specifically to the children of Eh, the Great One who made the world out of their own body. And they were closer to gods than to any species of life. There were precisely 900,000 of them, and they spoke a language called Fenekere, that is still in use today as the command languages of the Exodus Ships, such as the Sunspot.

And the mortal people of Kepekape called themselves Kepakepo, or Kepekapeans. (Kapekapean is the English translation of Kepakepo). And the thing is, etymologically, Kepakepo refers to all things produced by the planet. But, by the time the first Exodus Ship was built, the language had changed more than enough that there were other words used to refer to life in general.

It's like humans calling themselves Earthlings, really. Because bugs, bears, octopi, whales, birds, trees, fungus, bacteria, and everything other organism of life on this planet are also Earthlings.

But, anyway, the people who were about to become space-faring, who called themselves Kepekapeans, were metamorphic descendants of the six limbed clades of vertibrates.

They hatched from eggs and raised in brood ponds as tadpoles by Brood Guardians, and when they hit metamorphosis (their version of puberty) they would take an adult form that was adapted to their own personal emotional, social, environmental, and behavioral needs.

Most of them had started dropping the third pair of limbs, being four limbed people. And each person would take a shape and form that could be classified by tail type, and given a pronoun accordingly, but that was otherwise extremely unique. Some had feathers, others scales, others hair, and others none of these things but a thick protective mucus membrane. Many had a mix of these traits. Some retained their gills, while others didn't. Configurations of horns varied. Some developed wings and could fly. Others kept fins or developed flippers, and stayed in the water. Most walked on land.

And if a human were to look at any one of them, that human would think they are seeing an amphibian dragon.

Meanwhile, their Ktletaccete deities lived in their collective psyches, and their information network, sometimes manifesting as an incarnation in one body or another in order to shape the direction of civilization and cultivate live.

The Ktletaccete were divided into two camps: those who wished to explore the rest of the universe, and those who wished to focus on the health and safety of life on Kepekape. Sometimes they fought, and there were wars, and the Kepekapeans weren't entirely aware of why.

But eventually, right about when the first Exodus Ship was nearing completion, the Ktletaccete came to an agreement with each other, and with a group of Beshakete (Outsiders) who'd taken refuge on the planet, and with the Kepekapeans, and they formed the Great Alliance.

Which they called the ʔinmara ( @theinmara ).

Some forgotten number of Exodus Ships later, the Sunspot would start to recover some of this history thanks to the memories of Mau (or Phage, @ohthatphage), and start writing books about it. But, when they relearned who they were, they started applying the words a little differently, because they didn't have all the information at first.

From this historic perspective, the denizens of the Sunspot can be called Sunspotians, or ʔetekeyerrinwufni. Though, they've taken to calling themselves Ktletaccete, and have no clue that their former deities still exist and walk amongst them (this may never be revealed in the books).

The reason that the Evolutionary Engines of the Sunspot are so successful at producing such a wide diversity of the populace (who are grown from incubators, and undergo metamorphosis before hatching from their eggs) is that it's based on the original genetics and epigenetics of their Kepekapean ancestors, who were already evolved to be highly adaptable in that way.

Eventually, the Sunspot made contact with Earth through use of the Tunnel Apparatus and a probe placed on the planet 22 million years ago by an ancestor ship that was passing by, and this is why you are reading about it now.

[ohthatphage]

When you build a world where you would like life to exist for any reasonable length of time, you will find hard limitations that will make your task difficult.

One such limitation is that it cannot be too small.

Below a certain size, there will not be enough diversity and the ecosystem will be too fragile as a result. Mass extinction events will occur too frequently for that life to maintain more complexity than bacteria.

If you start with bacteria on such a small world, it will rarely develop anything more.

If you start with multicellular life, depending on the size of the world and how you define time cycles, you may get a few decades to a few centuries of apparent stability before it collapses.

A generational starship with a habitat cylinder that is 400 kilometers long and 220 kilometers in diameter, for instance, is typically much too small. It won’t get you very far. Especially if you allow your ecosystem to manage itself.

Cultivating that life actively will give you more time. But, eventually, fibrillation in the complexity of its system will overtake your ability to compensate.

But, if you’re very, very good, and you’ve got extremely precise tools, such as construction nanites, you can extend that lifetime to something you can work with. Possibly hundreds of millennia, if you are profoundly good at it.

I am, mind you, framing this from the perspective of a people who live a couple centuries at most and who wish to explore the cosmos. Not my own.

When you are something like me, you see that there is no appreciable difference between a single bacterium and the biosphere of a verdant, complex planet full of multicellular life, no matter how big. Both are organisms that are destined to die and then, if lucky enough, feed more life. And the lifespan of each organism may run from seconds to eons, and it will be too finite all the same.

In that finite time, life is both beautiful and horrid.

If you want to keep appreciating it for what it is, it will have to be reproduced. Either by its own functions, or by yours.

When the Kepekapeans, the Ktletaccete who lived on Kepekape, were building their first Exodus Ship, it was because they wanted to continue appreciating life beyond all the ends they could see.

show me your favourite recent excerpts! :3c

[fenmere]

Näofregbi and Binwen of our WIP Gesetele's Arrow.

They hatched in adjoining brooding ponds around the same time, and became friends before either of them could talk, before their adolescent metamorphosis. Both of them are Kepekapeans (Ktletaccete from their home planet, Kepekape).

During metamorphosis, Kepekapeans take on dramatically different physiological traits in reaction to childhood stimuli from their parents, peers, environment, pathogens, favorite foods, and personal interests. This frequently makes it look like they're from different species, but they're not.

Näofregbi is a loner, a natural recluse, which is common enough that most Kepekapean cultures accept them as they are. Gem lives on gems own tiny plot of land with a wild garden of trees and hedges surrounding a pond and a workshed. Gems Art is pottery.

Binwen hasn't found nem's Art yet, and so dabbles in everything.

Binwen is not a loner, and like most other Kepekapeans prefers to be in the company of at least two or more people. However, nems six arms set nem enough apart from everyone else that nem frequently feels alienated. Fortunately, nem is best friends with Näofregbi, who seems reasonably happy to have Binwen around.

Unfortunately, pairs and couples are what are truly met with suspicion amongst most Kepekapeans. If you don't have a third party to keep you in check, you could be up to something. And this is really what has always set the two apart from the rest of their community.

They're both in their thirties, by Kepekapean years, which makes them around sixty or so Earth years old.

Their story takes place millions of Sunspot years before the Sunspot Chronicles, which also means they predate humanity and possibly most life on Earth, even accounting for astronomical distances. Relativity does some weird shit and makes it hard to calculate.

Their culture is very advanced, though. Their government is building the first Exodus Ship, using construction nanites to harvest and shape mass from various asteroids and comets in their stellar system to build a vessel that is approximately 2,600 kilometers long and capable of carrying billions of people.

They will not be on the ship when it leaves, but their adventures will shape the fate of the Sunspot anyway.

[fenmere]

This is Näofregbi.

We've posted lots of images of gem, including this one, before.

Gem is a main character of our current WIP, Gesetele’s Arrow.

In that book, Näofregbi’s pronoun is gem, and gems species is hermaphroditic with several genders based on tail type.

Näofregbi, however, is also a system member of ours and a girl and has the pronouns she/her. She still looks and feels like her drawing, with the appropriate phantom sensations when she fronts.

She also finds talking with our vessel's vocal apparatus very uncomfortable and confusing.

In the story, she has a syrinx and talks similarly to a raven. In our inworld, it seems to be even more different, and while she can at least proxy through our communications officer her own reflexes for talking involve a mouth configuration and tongue and nasal movements that make no sense for a humanoid body.

She's also really uncomfortable with our body's range of sounds and tones, and how they feel in our skull and throat as we make them.

She hasn't found an outworld voice yet that feels like it's anything close to her own. Lots of vocal dysphoria.

This is super common in various ways with our girls, but her reactions and tactile memories are the most complex and different we've experienced.

[fenmere]

[fenmere]

We are taking a deliberate and forced break from writing, to avoid burnout.

But, we got our current story to a great spot before doing that, and we've got lots of good stuff to pick up when we return to it!

Our heroes are going on a camping trip in the Northern Fjords. Actually going to an island just to the west of one of the Fjords.

They're being haunted by a trickster spirit name Mau, who has vowed to make their lives better (they're young and queer and stuck in an exploitive culture). And they've decided that since they can't get Mau to go away, they're going to lead it away from civilization until it gets bored, so that no one else gets hurt.

But to do this, they have to charter a boat. And it turns out that the pilot of the boat is queer, too, which is really cool, and they would have had a lot of great conversations with rem. Except that rem also has a history with Mau, and there's some extra baggage there they didn’t pay for.

Good morning friends! I'm probably spending the rest of the day writing a sequence where Edgar washes their face and gets Scott's mom to help them take care of their hair. That's all of it. No cosmic horror, just a sad guy getting pampered.

They're gonna smell so nice.

What are we working on? What are we snacking on? I have smoked cheddar and Triscuits for lunch. Very curious to see what all of you are up to!

[fenmere]

Sketching Näofregbi, a Kepakepean (ancestor of the people of the Sunspot), and gem's body language:

We're also trying to develop a very simplified cartoon version of gem, but before we can do that we need to understand the range of gems movements and shapes of gems anatomy.

We might end up making a blender model in the process. A VRChat avatar of gem would be super cool.

[fenmere]

Näofregbi about to do a Big Leap, very determined.

Pencils below:

[fenmere]

Portrait of Näofregbi. Gem is the lead character of @ohthatphage 's book, Gesetele’s Arrow. Gem is a young potter, making ceramic pots for gems local Art fair, and super best friend of Binwen.

[fenmere]

name: Näofregbi pronoun: gem (pronounced with a hard "g") favorite food: fresh fish caught in gems pond with gems bare hands occupation/Art: making pottery (wants to change it, though) preoccupation: daydreaming about little tiny people living everywhere, under leaves, under tables, in cabinets, everywhere

Näofregbi is absolute best friends since early childhood with Binwen, in a world where partnerships are viewed with suspicion. Most people are much more comfortable in and around groups of three or more, and feel a third is important to keep a partnership from becoming "nefarious". But there are some who are sympathetic to this lifestyle choice.

Outside of this friendship, Näofregbi is much more of a loner, and prefers solitude to any sort of prolonged company. Gem will entertain a guest for company on occasion, if one will come over, but not on purpose. This itself is not at all seen as weird by gems regional Kepekapean society.

Gems other favorite thing to do is brew tea and drink it, and when idling, gem might spend all day doing that.

Binwen (nem) pronoun: nem favorite food: banfi (a kind of fruit) occupation/Art: none yet, still searching preoccupation: spending time with Näofregbi

Binwen is a much more neurotypical Kepekapean than nems best friend, loves being around others, and lives with a group of other people. However, nem is as dedicated to nems partnership with Näofregbi is, if not a bit more so.

Both Binwen and Näofregbi are young adults and within the range of Kepekapean adolescence where they don't need to declare an Art yet. While Näofregbi did so early and now regrets it, Binwen is still searching and in a couple of years will be pushed to declare one. Nem isn't terribly concerned about this yet, assuming that one will present itself in time, but for the sake of helping Näofregbi find a new Art plays along at looking for one for nemself as well.

These two are the lead characters of our book Gesetele's Arrow, which is still being written by our headmate @ashwin-the-artless. Technically they aren't "OCs", they're just our own fictional characters (OC originally being a term for inserts into fanfics, right?). But also, they're headmates. Which also kind of makes them "sonas". Still, their fictionalized selves in the story are quite a bit different from the real people in our head, who just act for them on the page. We don't have a lot more details about them yet, because we haven't finished exploring who they are in the story.

today i want to work on making new ocs instead of new sonas.... show me your ocs. tell me abt them. whats their favorite food. whats a weird lil quirk they have.

tell me about them. for research purposes.

[fenmere]

Gesetele's Arrow.odt for the WIP Game please?

Then nem led me to the nearest Art fair, where nem endeavored to introduce me to every stall owner, and to explain my new position as nem's ward and servant. I took that opportunity to apologize personally to each of them for my echo's past behavior. And I tried to give them hope that my echo would not return to that behavior, but admitted that I had to prove myself first.