Alistair Young @cerebrate@schelling.pt

Incidentally, if anyone reading this has a spare Bluesky Social invitation, I'd appreciate one.

(No plans to defect: partly, I'd just like to try it out, and partly, I'd like to secure my usual username before that ransomware-writing fucknugget is able to.)

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

Professionally? It's possible - the Watch Constabulary is willing to work with the little bads to take down a big one - but there are limits.

"All debts must be paid," says the Code, which she's fully on board with, and so turning yourself in is a non-negotiable part of the deal. Nonetheless, working with her to stop worse evils *is* meritorious conduct, and she *will* scrupulously note it down and speak for you. That's *her* debt.

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#WritingWonders July 4: Would your MC ever work with one of their enemies? Why/why not?

Jynne doesn't really have personal enemies. (Or at least, she doesn't think so - a few may disagree, but since they're be a long way from Seranth and unable to return, they're not available to ask.)

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(Also, however sarcastic I may be feeling, I probably shouldn't rename our guest network to "Russian Cyberterrorist Hangout & Pirozkhi Baking Circle".)

Y'know, the random WiFi network in our neighborhood that the owner named "FBI Surveillance Van" is going to seem a lot less funny now.

The protractor in question’s a very nice instrument, actually.

If family history is accurate, it was originally my paternal grandfather’s, who picked it up in Archangelsk during the Second World War. Both he and my father were British Merchant Navy.

Today in small malicious pleasures I allow myself: imagining the headache of a profiler trying to figure me out from the weird crap in my desk:

Yarn, lockpicks, 60A circuit breaker, jigsaw pieces, souvenir NASA patches, Geiger counter, hypodermic syringe, electronic Game of Life, perspex corporate reward plaque, Chinese meditation balls (proof positive, no doubt, that I'm in bed with Xi, or worse, TikTok), steel navigator's protractor in the original case, labeled "Fabrication de l'U.R.S.S"...

This is also why my readers won't see any viewpoint characters from, say, the Iltine Union or the Theomachy of Galia. Writing a character from inside their head is an even more intimate experience than reading one.

Sociopath admirals, rogue emergent evil-overlord AIs, crime bosses, corrupt executives, the Fifth Directorate Ethics Committee, even politicians, those I'll do.

But some mindsets are like taking a swim in raw sewage, and those ones I'm only going to show, or write, from the outside.

July 3 #WritingWonders : Is it important for an MC to be likeable?

Hrm. Up to a point. I don't need them to be want-as-a-friend likeable, or have-a-drink-with likeable, or even able-to-work-with likeable, but as a reader, we're going to spend a lot of time in their headspace, and they need to be likeable enough to tolerate that.

If it feels squicky down to your bones to be there, you're not going to get much out of the book, never mind enjoy it. I've had to drop a few for this reason.

#WritingWonders July 2: Do you think readers will find your MC likeable?

I'd like to think so. She hasn't shown up much in work that's out there, so they haven't had a chance to meet her properly, but she is a genuinely good person who really believes both in actual-justice-with-a-J and in helping people elsewise, preferably at the same time, with all of her idealistic heart.

(Unless you're one of those folk whom that would make feel all guilty and judged and possibly inadequate, I suppose.)

...Jynne's high principles and love of abstract justice. In her own world and culture, they only let the cream of the ethical crop do her job, and that's exactly who you want on your side in times of trial.

(If, of course, you're innocent. But even the guilty would be assured of honest, decent, kind treatment at her hands.)

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#WritingWonders July 1: Your MC shows up on your doorstep; what do you say or do?

Drop to my knees and cry out "Please, for the love of justice, get me off this rock!"

Well, okay. Not the knees thing; by her cultural standards, that would be a serious insult. And there are many of my characters I'd probably ask for help in getting into their comparatively Utopian chunk of universe.

But for reasons which are all about my recent events, I'd definitely make that appeal to someone with...

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Oh! Also, since I work predominantly in the nanofiction space, I don't really have MCs, as such, for most of my works. I do have a lot of ongoing characters, though, and so I shall pick one for each month's prompts.

This month's character will be Jynne Cerron, an Enforcer with the Watch Constabulary, last seen keeping the Empress’s peace on the much-visited Mer Dinévál Countermass Station, Seranth.

#WritingWonders #introduction