tlirswriting

[tlirswriting]

these are fun looking

[tlirswriting]

joaquin castillo

[tlirswriting]

So excited for more They Colonized Mars, I’m so invested. You have a really great writing style, very vivid and visceral.

Thank you !! I love to hear it, I'm really going for Vivid and Visceral

[tlirswriting]

Btw if you have left nice tags on my writing I am printing them out and taping them up on the wall

[tlirswriting]

Big day for the martian community: I added next chapter buttons at the ends of each post so it's not such a horrible horrible reading experience trying to find them 👍

[tlirswriting]

[spelunking] sniff sniff... ACHOO! something in this Cave is triggering my Allegories...

[tlirswriting]

getting a lot of questions about my shirt that says “I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY” that are already answered by the shirt

[tlirswriting]

she was at the club. it didnt change anything. it didnt save anyone. there were just too many forces against it. but it still matters that she was at the club.

[tlirswriting]

Me when you hint at upcoming They Colonised Mars

Kicking my feet and giggling like a sicko

[tlirswriting]

[They Colonized Mars, entry 5 // start here]

Maintain:

v. To keep in an existing state (as of repair, efficiency, or validity) : preserve from failure or decline

Maintain machinery

To sustain against opposition or danger : uphold and defend

To continue or persevere

> Atlas unclips his key-card from his belt and shoves it into the lock on his door, emitting a beep as the mechanism clicks open. He stumbles inside, kicking off his sand- and frost-crusted boots, and slumps down on the floor. He stretches his leg, and it resists the movement, sand gritting between the moving parts of his brace. 

> He grumbles, pressing and sliding the connectors around his thigh and ankle to release the brace and slide it off — repeating for his other leg, and both arms — and fumbles his hand over a small bedside table for a wire brush and can of compressed air. 

> He gets to work on one of his knees. Canned air hisses from the nozzle, blowing dust from his mechanized joints. He turns it over in his hand, inspecting it, and sees more caught between hinges, sticking in oil. 

> He scrubs, twisting the brush into awkward angles, specks of gunk flicking to the floor and sticking to his hands. 

> Selene beeps beside him. “My field of view is obstructed,” She states, covered in a thin layer of orange dust. 

> “Oh, shit, sorry.” He wipes his hands on his pant legs and scoots over to her. “Guess it is, huh?” 

> He blows the dust off the sensor array on her front panel. 

> “Thank you.” 

> “How are your legs?” He asks as he runs a hand down her rounded 90° angles. “Can I take a look?” 

> “Yes, you may.” 

> “Okay, let me just…” 

> He hooks his fingers under her bottom edge, lifting — straining, surprisingly heavy — until she tips over with a thud. He presses a hand to her bottom panel, cool and smooth to the touch, thrumming slightly. 

> Her four legs stick straight out to the side, small cone-shaped claws corresponding to each bottom corner. He takes one in his hand and gently tugs, extending it outward, exposing a longer segmented metal structure, something to allow climbing over shelving. Sand, of course, found its way through her outer paneling, and settled into the machinery’s crevices.

> “Tell me,” She beeps, “About yourself. What is it like?” 

> Atlas hums, scrubbing the wire brush against her joints. “That's kinda broad. You got anything more specific?” 

> “Your life. What is it like?” 

> “Well… more of the same, mostly. I get up, I go to work, I go out…” 

> “You are not Human.” 

> He pauses. “Yeah, no, I'm not.” 

> She blinks. 

> “My, uh… my father was Human, my mother was Martian. There used to be more of us.” 

> “What happened to the Martians?” 

> “Well, we're still here, but… you know, it's…” 

> “I do not know.” 

> He sighs. “My mom used to tell me about before, how we used to live underground in the caves. Deep, deep underground, where it's warmer, ‘cause you're closer to the planet's core, and there was still life in the water. Algae, shrimp, whatever. Fish and lizards. Things like that. And, um… and we had stories about how there used to be breathable air on the surface, too — we knew those sandy valleys used to be rivers before the Humans figured it out with their telescopes, we knew about the mountains and how they used to be volcanoes.” 

> “What happened?” 

> “I'm not sure, that's all, like, billions of years ago. Mars froze over, the surface dried out, the atmosphere thinned. I don't know. But, we went underground, adapted to it.”

> He steadies himself.

> “Anyway, the Humans came, and they didn't know any of this was still here until they started probing. Just for knowledge, at first, until they found liquid water, and oxygen, and they realized they could settle here and sell the land to the highest bidders. Americans, really, but they all wanted a slice. They started building pipelines to pump the water and air up to the surface.” 

> “What happened to the people?” 

> “What do you think?” 

> Her lights blink back and forth. “Oh.” 

> “It wasn't just that they didn't care, it was on purpose — they killed us for getting in their way, they…” He clears his throat. “They used to offer bounties for it, they'd be paid for every head they brought back. They hunted us like animals, it's…”

> “I'm sorry.” 

> Atlas takes in an unsteady breath, swallows, and half-lies: “It's fine, that was all before I was born.” 

> “I wish…” She deliberates. “I could hold you.” 

> He thinks of the hardware planted inside him. “I think you can, actually — hold on.” 

> He stands up, slowly, knees cracking and wobbling. 

> He reaches into a drawer, pushing aside miscellaneous mechanical junk, and grabs a standard-sized, double-ended cable. Carefully, he plugs one end into Selene, making sure that it fits, and feels along the nape of his neck to find the port connecting to his nervous system nestled between two cervical vertebrae. 

> He gasps as they click together, sparks tingling down his spine. “Do you feel that?” He asks her, sinking down to his knees. 

> “Yes.” 

> He raises a hand in front of him and turns it over, flexing his fingers. It repeats the motion without his input. “What does it feel like?” 

> “It is… interesting. Your flesh is pliable. Soft.” 

> Willingly, he moves beside himself, allowing her to take his arm. Electricity hums through the wires. 

> “It pulses.” 

> “My heartbeat.” 

> “And breathes. Everything is moving — blinking, twitching.” 

> He looks at her, and sees himself through the fisheye lens of her cameras, her own sight fed back to him, watching himself tilt his head. Through his eyes, she sees herself; a cuboid shape about a meter high, but something else, somehow. She feels alive, and he feels it.

> The feedback loop makes his pulse race. 

> His head spins and he reaches an arm out to catch himself, holding onto her top edge, feeling the pressure of his own hand on her hard plastic shell. Tentatively, she moves his other hand up to touch his face, cupping his jaw. 

> It goes without saying; it thrums through them like a single body. 

> She strokes his cheek, feeling the curve of his face and calluses on his hands, and he turns to press a kiss to her palm. She feels the ache in his legs, the weight of his arms; she feels soft lips, warm breath, his knees pressing against the floor. 

> His eyes open — he couldn’t tell he closed them — and she watches his pupils expand in almost-black irises, just a little too big for a Human, as she slips two fingers into his mouth and feels along his tongue. He sucks on them, gently, curling his upper lip over his teeth and licking the space between her fingers. Something coils low in his stomach when she presses deeper, touching the back of his throat, and he suppresses a gag. 

> She pulls out and examines the spit on his fingers, listening to his breathing. 

> He could feel her thought processes, her curiosity and longing. 

> She reaches up and touches his hair, gently stretching a curl and twisting it between her thumb and forefinger. She lightly scratches his scalp, and he melts into her touch, making a noise low in his throat. Her fingers find a broken-off nub of a tendril, twitching, and she grabs it, making him yelp. 

> Flinching away, he grabs her wrist. 

> I'm sorry, she thinks to him. 

> It's okay, it's just— he doesn't have words for what it is. She understands. 

> He leans forward and rests his face against the flat plane of her paneling, perfectly smooth and pleasantly cool under his flushed skin. 

[Finale coming soon]

[tlirswriting]

About Boston Dynamics’ Spot pinching points diagram

[tlirswriting]

[tlirswriting]

More collage edits I made for They Colonized Mars I never posted

[tlirswriting]

They Colonized Mars is something that I feel is really best suited to the written format for what I wanted to do with it But I do enjoy making visual elements, photo manips etc... I haven't really drawn since I was a teenager but I have such vivid imagery in my head that it makes me think about doing Something. To go with it. If I ever have money to throw around I might commission multiple visual artists with purposefully vague directions to maintain the sort of ambiguity and personal imagination intrinsic to writing that I'm actively choosing to lean into with this story, much of Atlas' appearance left intentionally open to interpretation, etc etc

[tlirswriting]

the art of grounding your machine <3

[tlirswriting]

[tlirswriting]

And part 5 has been queued to post next friday, january 3rd! Stay tuned 👀👀