Alistair Young @cerebrate@schelling.pt

(Some species developed submission instincts to get along with each other, pro-survival-wise. For various reasons, eldrae developed MURDER TO DEATH THE INTERLOPER THAT DARED TRESPASS UPON YOUR SELFNESS instincts instead.

Which made civilization rather harder to attain, but possibly more civilized - in the "we have learned to walk carefully, not presume, and reach out with gentle hands" sense - once attained. Or so it is argued.)

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 23: Have you ever wanted to smack the MC? Why?

Everyone: "We don't do that here."

You: "What, never?"

Everyone: "No, never."

You: "What, *never*?"

Everyone: "Hardly - well, no, okay? For our species, this is the sort of thing that - outside controlled and formalized circumstances - tends to escalate with terrifying speed to 'now everyone's dead and I've lost my hat'. So you DO NOT get into physical altercations unless you're happy with that outcome."

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 21: What is your MC's drink of choice?

Morrí: "She drinks esklav. Constabulary esklav. Like a walking cliché."

Jynne: "It's just esklav."

Morrí: "Normal esklav isn't blacker than a singularity's ass, so stiff with sugar and stims that they precipitate out at the bottom, and most importantly, doesn't _stain_ like that. Or corrode spoons."

Jynne: "It does if you make it right!"

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 20: Secondary character PoV: what's the biggest sacrifice you're ready to make for the MC?

Morrí shrugs.

"My life, obviously. Just as she'd do for me. We're sentinels. It says it right there in the service oath.

( https://eldraeverse.com/2022/05/29/service/ )

"Of course, people say that's an easy promise to make, given how hard permadeath is to inflict these days. But no-one passes out of the Academy without being tested on that point, and believing it real."

#eldraeverse

Also, on the topic of what exactly the Empire delivers?

"Having established as an ethical principle that to be sophont is to be entitled as of right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, it must necessarily follow that the proper function, in accordance with virtue, of the technical organs of a civilization is the abolishment of death, constraint, poverty, and misery."

- "Eternal Progress", Ianthe Claves-ith-Claves, ch. 1.

#eldraeverse

On the gripping hand: Not about elsewhere, because that's where all the crime-type problems come from, as opposed to all the other things she's trained to handle. Their status could *definitely* be made a lot quo-ier.

...not her department. But still.

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 19: Does your MC support that status quo in their word?

On the one hand: Yes. She lives in a utopia - what's not to like? If it didn't already have two mottos on its letterhead, the Empire could add "We Deliver" (see followup).

On the other hand: No. Because back in ethics & civics class, they covered the whole "how you live in utopia, why it needs constant maintenance, and that the status is never so quo that it can't be made a little *more* quo".

#eldraeverse

Farísa Cerron, incidentally, lives in a *really* awesome stalactite house suspended from Mer Dinévál's uppermost floof, and this is where I must once again curse my near-total lack of artistic talent and thus inability to show y'all the picture in my head.

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 18: Do you have a muse in any sense of the word?

I surely do.

Thing is, though, it's not a person. It's a *place*.

(Like my blurb says, I woke up one day with a universe in my head. That's a clear sign of either insanity or literature, so I chose literature.)

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 17: MC POV: Who was the last person you hugged and/or kissed?

"My grandmother. I don't get down to Mer Dinévál proper as much as I'd like, but I always make time for a meal or two with her when I do. She was one of my biggest supporters in my career.

"...no, she wasn't a sentinel herself. Her last job was running Kindness Monitoring at the Indenture Exchange. She's taken a few years off now to breed skaldfish. But she gets it."

#eldraeverse

...no, not really, to the first; and because I'm really *not*, to the second.

Mostly for the reasons mentioned back on July 11, here - https://schelling.pt/@cerebrate/110697503750936981 - which makes them very difficult for me to write and even harder to read.

(It also doesn't help that I'm ace-though-not-aro, which makes some areas of human behavior harder for me to interpret than the tentacle-dances of the methane-breathing brain slugs of Balahara IIIa.)

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 14: MC POV: When was the last time you got into a fight (physical or verbal)? Why?

"Last shift, as usual. A gentlesoph lifting goods from freight containers had some rather unkind aspersions to cast upon my profession and ancestry. And then ran. Why do they always run? It's a _space station_. There is literally nowhere to go unless you fancy taking a walk outside.

"I had to get the stunner out, even. I hate that."

#eldraeverse

Catching up with #WritingWonders, 'cause I finally got access to my backups and've spent the last week obsessed with rsync.

July 13: When did you start writing and what inspired you?

Writing, about ten years ago now, mostly because my lovely wife kept looking at my piles of world-notes and telling me I really ought to actually _write_ something in it. Start small, see where it goes. And wouldn't stop telling me that until I actually got off my ass and did it.

I regret nothing.

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 12: What is the best compliment or review you've got about your writing?

Well, there's this from a review of my first book:

"They have a lilting satirical tone but are built on a rock-solid foundation of scientific understanding. Sort of like a cross between Greg Egan, Douglas Hofstadter, Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett."

Which, well, damn. Those are some big names to be compared to when you're just starting out. Got a lot to live up to, now!

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 11: What about your writing would you like to improve?

The emotional texture, primarily. I have moderately severe chronic depression (et al!), and thanks to the viscissitudes of my upbringing tend to treat intense emotionality as something to flee from at speed.

This is, charitably, Not Good for my writing. Needs work. Probably also really good brain drugs and a shit-ton of therapy, but so it goes.

#eldraeverse

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

"Reason. And authority - the proper kind, the kind that comes from competence and respect, not brute intimidation.

"Or cunning, which will do if that fails. I have this trick with the station autodrags - killing the motors for a couple of seconds will flip a handguide rider into mid-air, which isn't dignified, but won't hurt them and then it's all over but the pickup.

(1/2)

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 6: MC POV: Name one thing that is guaranteed to make you angry? Why?

"Angry? The cases that fall into, in our legal code, 'destructionism'.

"Why? Because I don't understand it.

(1/4)

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 8: What's your least favorite stage of writing a story? Why?

Not that it comes up a lot in the nanofic work that is my bread and butter, but filling in the intermediate details.

My muse is great at filling in the overall arc of the story and a whole bunch of great vignettes set here and there throughout it. Filling in all the gaps between them, though - that's where the "dragging ideas out of my brain with rusty razor wire" bit comes in.

#eldraeverse

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

Well, yes. It comes with the job, and so she's been specially trained in Constabulary martial arts, designed to hold and restrain without doing harm.

Most of the time, it's been to prevent people from hurting themselves, which pleases her. Otherwise - well, it's always a failure to have to use force as a poor substitute for authority.

But sometimes, despite everything, they run.

#eldraeverse

For those curious, incidentally, the Code in question is Saravoné’s Code, seen here: https://eldraeverse.com/2012/04/03/saravones-code/ . It's not law itself, strictly speaking, but it remains an ethical core relied on by those who make laws and judgments.

(The earliest laws *there* originated with lawspeakers and wandering deemsters who followed Her.)

#eldraeverse