Alistair Young @cerebrate@schelling.pt

#WritingWonders 8/4: Share art, pics (face claims), and/or mood boards of one (or more) of your side characters.

This one, I'm going to have to beg off, due to possessing the artistic talent of a cluster of color-blind hedgehogs in a bag.

(And a near-complete lack of funds to hire artists.)

Which prevents me, sadly, from being able to put anything on paper or screen which in any way comes close to approximating what I see in my head.

(Sorry.)

Having mentioned the Cilmínár ballad "Girl, Your Marginal Benefit Far Outweighs Your Marginal Cost", I should perhaps mention other entries in this genre, such as "Under the Balance Sheets", "No Asset I Value More", "Positive-Sum", and "Illiquid Love".

#eldraeverse

(3/3)

And Líse Varavelen has a deplorable liking for the 4300s ballad, "Girl, Your Marginal Benefit Far Outweighs Your Marginal Cost".

#eldraeverse

(2/3)

"Oh, infinite knowledge awaits us in space -
We'll seek out and contact with fervor and grace.
New worlds and new sophonts we simply adore -
Let's party where no-one has partied before."

(The tune, and the spirit of the thing, is that of _Space Shanty_, by The Senate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDXfQTD_rgQ .)

#WritingWonders 8/3: If your favorite side character(s) had a theme song, what would it be?

(1/3)

A tricky one, seeing as I need to create the songs, first, being a different universe and all.

But Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar, first-in scout, is well known for subconsciously humming a particular shanty sung wherever Exploratory Service personnel gather to consume heinous quantities of liquor:

#WritingWonders 8/2: How much do you know about your side characters prior to the first draft?

Usually quite a lot. Unless they're mere voices heard in passing, I have quite a lot of trouble conjuring up a character without getting to know them in my head first, and quite a few details come out in that process. Plus, I use a worldbuild-first process, and so many of my side characters were well-developed in the course of that.

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders 8/1: If you could hang out with one of your side characters for a day, who would you choose? Why?

Elíne Septimiel. Because I'm practically guaranteed to have something to talk about with a fellow bibliophile, and since she's First Reader at what is almost certainly the galaxy's largest library, she definitely counts.

(As she's been known to point out, "It does not say Repository of _Some_ Knowledge above my door.")

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 31: Does your antagonist love anyone that's still alive and in their life?

"I don't know. But I hope so. I truly do."

#eldraeverse

#WritingWonders July 30: Does your MC have a good fashion sense?

"Well, I -"

"Yes, she does. Not that you'd know it, most of the time."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Jynne, you'd wear your Service reds to bed, if you could. Probably everywhere else, too, if we'd let you."

#eldraeverse

Man, after being distracted by failing ACs and flagpoles and other physical things, I really need to get back to #WritingWonders . Maybe I can finish off July's this evening, and then move on to this month.

Raised at last!

(I deem this the perfect flag for the Actual Libertarian Movement, composed of those of us disdaining both rightist sociofascism and leftist econofascism. And, increasingly these days, vice versa.)

#DontTreadOnAnyone

Today I have programmed a microcontroller to emit the WiFi SSID "International Space Station" for four minutes out of every 92.

I should like to encourage more people to do this and we'll see who notices first.

*July 29.

Continuation (2/2):

A voice from the next pod rumbles:

"That's hot crap, kid. You never worked a day in your life, robots built most of what passes through here, and this is the Core besides. If you *needed* it, any free cornucopia would have given it t'you. You wanted it. Now shaddup. You're making the rest of us dodgy folk sound like idjits, and I wanna get some sleep before they load us on the transport."

#WritingWonders July 2: Antagonist POV: How do you feel about what you do?

In two parts (1/2):

"Just tryin' to live, aina? The corps and the rich'd not miss it, and they make all this stuff on the backs of us-kind anyway. If'n I take some of it back from, who's to say I'm not the right one -"

#eldraeverse

...well, sometimes it's inconvenient to have an immune response that screams and leaps on any UNIDENTIFIED POSSIBLE PATHOGEN.

#WritingWonders July 28: Is your MC ever minorly inconvenienced by illness?

No and yes.

Not directly, because she has a top-of-the-line artificial immune system. Regular illness just bounces off it.

But it's a top-of-the-line AIS with the Constabulary first-responder, hazmat, and anti-bioterror packages installed, so when some new disease is borne in by a ship from somewhere off the main routes, however mild...

#eldraeverse

Whenever I am asked what I regret most in life, I shall say 'arguing with nihilists and failing to point out that it is logically inconsistent for them to give a damn what I think'.

#WeBelieveInNothingLebowski