WarmasterPalak

#ScribesAndMakers 23. If you were going to tell a story about a cryptid, which would you choose?

Technically, Shadowpaw is a cryptid on his own homeworld. On a Hazard 6 planet (where everything is trying to kill/eat you) his kind are considered the boogymen to frighten pups who don't listen to their elders about not playing in the long bloodgrass.

Shadowhunters look like any other Tyrolean, except they're about 50% larger, covered in even more horns and spine, and fall squarely into the not-Tyrolean (not-deer) cryptid space for other Tyroleans. They kidnap young hunters on their rite of initiation and corrupt them in mind and spirit while defiling their bodies, or so the stories go.

Shadowhunters are pretty much unkillable monsters, by lore, but they are also really both solitary and loenly. They're among the most peaceful creatures on Tyrol, as nothing can actually harm them, and so there is nothing for them to fear. The youths they "kidnap" are brought to their lairs for conversation, a nice meal, and a trophy they can bring back to their village along with the story of how they managed to just barely get away from their captor.

Both Tyroleans and Shadowhunters are descended from chaser stock, though Tyroleans are pack hunters while Shadowhunters are solitary stalkers. One sees themselves as the apex predator on a world of predators, while the other actually does occupy that slot.

#wordweavers 22. If your MC came with a warning label, what would it be?

Palak: Warning: Contains sharp edges.

Dellyn: Warning: Contents under pressure. May explode is shaken or damaged.

Callon: Warning: Object is smarter than you. Do not engage in philosophical debate. Object may trap you in a hyperdimensional realm to study. Object is immune to logical paradoxes. Object is capable of trapping you inside your own mind. Object known to solve Tree(3)-based problems for fun.

Alec: Warning: Object is already aware of you. Object has been aware of you since before you were born. Object has already planned to every contingency for interactions with you. There is no need for you to interact with object. Object already knows what you were planning to say and will act accordingly. If object wants to interact with you, that will at the objects discretion, not yours.

#writersCoffeeClub 22. How well would your current WIP work as a play?

No. Space battles rarely work on the small stage.

#scribesandmakers 22. Which book world would you like to live in for a week, and why?

My own, obviously. But I doubt I would stay for only one week. Even as dangerous as it is, it is more the world I want than the one in which I live. It is the opposite of our world, where money affords you no privilege, talent takes you far, and the powers that be are beholden to all of the people and not just a cabal of ultra-rich tyrants. Seeing as I'd probably be infected with SERRA within a few minutes of arrival, I'd have a very long life to look forward to, and I'd definitely make friends with a Gulo who would teach me how to fight, or at least how to take a hit. I see that as being an important skill in our world, given how things are going.

Other than my own world? Not Middle Earth. It has many of the same problems I want to get rid of here in this world. Maybe spend a week adventuring through space and time with the Doctor, or joining Star Fleet. While I love them, Star Wars, Firefly/Serenity, and so many others are straight out because the powers that be in those worlds are just... no, thank you. I'm not a chosen one. Or maybe I am, but I have no idea what to do other than write about it. Either way, I'm neither the hero they need nor the one they deserve. And if they do deserve me, gods help them.

#TimeTravelAuthors 19. How organized are your characters?

Palak, as Warmaster of the 5th Fleet, is very organized. Compartmentalized. Even Callon has a hard time breaking into his mind. Not that he's tried. More than a few times.

Dellyn is as organized as someone with ADHD, PTSD and Anxiety/Depression can be. He's on the spectrum, so he's OCD within an inch of his life, but his organization is anything but. It makes sense to him, and he can tell if something is out of place.

Callon is the polar opposite. He is so organized no one can tell where anything is. His organization schema, like his thought patterns and search algorithms, is labyrinthine. Everything is locked behind encryption that will take until the heat death of the universe and beyond to crack, which is what he uses to warmup his brain for tackling scenarios and conundrums deemed impossible by lesser minds. When one looks up the phrase "to clever for his own good" Callon's picture is in full color on the opposite page.

And then there's Alec... He'd rather die than let anyone get a glimpse of what he Knows. He has multiple redundancies keeping everything in its place, everyone working on things that don't touch the Unknowable, and an almost neurotic level of organization and compartmentalization. And as a failsafe, he does, actually, die to protect his secrets.

#WordWeavers 16. Would your WIP still work if you changed the gender of your MC?

Palak has neither a sex nor a gender. Using the masculine pronouns is an affectation of his faith and religion (those are two different things, not to be confused as being the same thing). Thus, he cannot change something he does not have.

Dellyn is pansexual, so being female wouldn't change anything.

And if Alec was female, she would be the literal mother of the Overlooked, and her subordinates would have an even more intimate connection to her leadership, so...

#WordWeavers 12. What role does romantic love play in your story?

It has its place, but I make a clear distinction between romance and sex, and there is a lot of both particularly among the biological characters, who form sexual relationships primarily to promote the spread of their genetics. They form romantic relationships to satisfy socialization goals.

Dellyn and Callon have both. They are absolutely devoted to one another to the point that Callon searched for Dellyn when he went missing for several million years, and finally decided to wait for him to come back on his own, which he did, though accidentally. Their sexual antics are the stuff of legends, and none of it is safe to relate without a great deal of euphemism. Dellyn is a Gulo and not particularly gentle as a lover, and Callon is completely into that. But Dellyn would kill or die for Callon, too, as he's completely into him.

At the other end of the spectrum is Palak who, having neither a sex nor a gender, has an extremely simplified sex life. He does, however, have several "lovers" and a small stable of "mates." He loves them with an intensity one would expect from a dragon, and they come around to understanding that he has obligations he has to honor in addition to loving them. Courtly life doesn't make any aspect of Palak's life simple, really.

#WritersCoffeeClub 12. If not in your current format (novel, play, music, etc.), in what format would you write?

To be honest, I've been writing novels and short story formats, but I started this project hoping to create a MMO. Realizing what goes into such, I have abandoned that as unrealistic, but I still have hopes of adapting it into a multiplayer adventure with modding hooks for players to create their own adventures within it, add resources to individualize the campaigns, and treat it like the original NWN was supposed to be. The visual format is extremely attractive, and I think that the setting has a lot to offer. I'd like to make cutscene software available for players to make voiced and/or acted cutscenes for their mods, too.

#ScribesAndMakers 12. Our next featured creator is a Table Top Role Playing Game designer. Do you play, or have you played, TTRPGs.

Of course. I've played, run or owned just about every TTRPG that has ever bee in print, and a couple that weren't. I'm currently in two DnD5e campaigns, running a Shadowrun 5e game, and about to get into a SF2e game. I'm writing a supplemental AU guide for Blue Planet: Recontact, as well as adapting its rules to my literary setting, which I hope to work with the developers to publish under their branding.

#TimeTravelAuthors 11. Do your characters ever undo anything?

Time is special in that it is not fundamental to any universe. It is special in that there is nothing inherently special about it. The "Arrow of Time" exists only because of a specific interpretation of the laws of entropy and our inherent bias to only see those things which we can readily understand.

Entropy is the "natural" inclination of structures to become uniform, less organized (complex) over time, which is not what we observe in the real world. Things are constantly organizing themselves into grand structures from termite mounds to massive gigastructures that span millions of light years in which galaxies are only small pearls long their strands.

If we're wrong about entropy and entropy is the standard by which we determine the flow of time, we must therefore also be wrong about the flow of time.

Mathematically, there is nothing to prohibits traveling through time, providing information before the precipitating event occurs, nor creating any manner of paradox, none of which will create the apocalyptic events that most writers wish to bestow on them.

If you went back in time and killed the person who would become your grandfather before he had a chance to sire your father, you would now reside in a timeline where your lineage exists only in you, but at the wrong point in time from a consistency standpoint. You wouldn't cease to exist because in your past timeline, your grandfather did live, but your bloodline, assuming no other relatives persist after you time travel to the new timeline, is dead in your original timeline. And, since every timeline is possible from the origin of your universe, you were always supposed to kill your grandfather before he had a chance to sire your father, so there are no paradoxes.

And the great part is that free will and predeterminism coexist simultaneously. You will make every choice you can make, and every outcome will be sorted into every appropriate timeline, so you will experience every possible choice. Well, some version of you will. Or won't, depending on how bad those choices are, or what choices others make that affect you.

The primary takeaway for this is that you shouldn't worry about choices you can't control. They will be what they are. The universe has already considered them and created a timeline to encapsulate them. You only need to guide your consciousness down your own timeline and understand that whatever timeline you are experiencing, the consequences of your actions and of those around you are what you have to live with.

By the long way around, yes, there are actions that my characters have had to undo, or redo, or change how they do them at all, and there are time travel shenanigans as they try to make the timeline they are all personally following become the final timeline that ends the Prophecy and protects Life in every universe. So long as they do not fail utterly, the cycle will restart if there is no conclusive end, but now that certain players are on the board, so to speak, the stakes are high enough to provoke a good ending or a bad ending. And regardless of which, both Darkness and Mother have agreed there will be no do-overs. If Mother wins, Life continues, Darkness abates, fades, and returns to being just a voice among the choir of collapsed universes. If Darkness wins, all Life in every universe will be snuffed out and the timelines of every universe will be reduced to a boring straight line with nothing left to influence events other than physics.

And both of these timelines already exist...

#writerscoffeeclub 10/5: What wisdom do you wish you could share with your younger self?

Let's see...

Hardware is a dead industry and tech support is slavery. Don't try to have a career working in tech. You aren't enough of a psychopath to climb the corporate ladder. Don't bother with that degree in computer science. No one respects it. It will do NOTHING for you. Get a degree in Lit. You can do more with that.

Mom was wrong. Don't focus on trying to have a normal career. They don't exist anymore. Her generation pulled the ladder up behind them, and you're not rich enough to buy your way in and never will be.

Focus on your writing. It won't make you rich, but you'll be happy with your life. And you can move to new places and travel, so you can learn about new things and maybe new languages.

Being modest and living within your means is going to take you far. Never dabble in credit. It's an even bigger trap than you think it is.

@georgetakei When seen, believed. Until then, just words. I don't trust any politician. And I consider the Democrats to be the new Right wing, and all GOP to be far right and irredeemable. We need to abolish the fascists and form a new Left wing party to bring us back into progressive ideals.

@cstross@wandering.shop @klepsydra@wandering.shop #PennedPossibilities It's the open ended nature of the question that gives insight into the minds of those who answer. How did they interpret the question? What do they think the question means? I can only look at how I have answered some of these and wonder what others must think of my thought processes.

@kiaun@meow.social @flann@boosts.squirrel.pictures Watch out for Red Squirrels.

@GaymerGeek@mstdn.games Capy Birthday!

@FoxesInLove@social.neonpaws.digital I've no more fox to give My fox have all run dry I tried to go fox shopping But there're no more fox to buy

@stux@mstdn.social OMG! Let them get up!

@janeishly@beige.party I'm American. Many of us do believe the way you do. Many of us want what you want. The ones who don't own, or are owned by, the rich people who want everything for themselves. We don't want them. But we have no way of getting rid of them. The barking dog in the White House was not elected by the people. Money put him there. We lack the will to do what is required to remove him because money lies to us and says it can get better, but it never does, and it never will. Don't change to be like us. Learn why we have fallen so far and take steps to make sure it doesn't happen to you. There are no jobs here. There is no way to flee. We cannot save ourselves. Save yourselves from what happened to us.

@MissingThePt@mastodon.social Invert that stack. The sun will be passing behind the moon east to west, so the moon will appear to be moving west to east.

@CadeTheCat@tiggi.es Turns out there are fewer neurotypicals than neurodivergents out there. Maybe we're the neurotypicals, and they're the aberrations.

@jamie@crab.garden That is clearly a pup.