Incomplete story. I blew my load too early, and the characters suck Penforce Picture this, if you will – and spare your imagination. A reflective indifference of fluorescence, ultraviolet and neon as the uncomputable is run at double speed and the word 'life' falls further out of favour. A black and white melancholy of the lebesque measure of the rational mind and all that it holds. A decoupling of neurons from thoughts and thoughts from being, and supremely, morality from any intermediate step. The only laws which held were the first of Newton's and the second of thermodynamics. And now, breathe out, take your imagination back, and engage with Earth, whereupon every false consciousness permutes to fit every hole, every true consciousness is a thesean assemblage of the false, and there exist nothing inbetween. And now deal with this before you're ten. The adults spout big words and act as if they have meaning¹, and you nod and pretend it makes sense because you are the smartest and most precocious little seven-year-old they've ever seen. So you cat to your uncompressed list of adult phrases, and one year later you realize what they meant and you realize your parents and their friends and your friends' parents are hopeless, and a year later you become just as hopeless. ¹and maybe the act of pretending actually instills them with it And so you adopt a list of axioms² to live by, to cope with the tesla cultists, the gangs with jailbroken implants, and the preacher in the park screaming about the glowing CIA negroids and the incoming demon invasion: 1. Words are worthless. They exist to obfuscate and confuse. The instant a throat vibrates, a reality based on a contradiction is created and self-destructs. 2. If someone says big words, they are trying to deceive you. You should punch them. 3. You should become someone who can punch people and get away with it. 4. The best way to interact with others is to invent a reality where everything you say is true, and force the other to live in it. It is thus a moral necessity to excise one's inner woman, infuse as much testosterone and cybernetics as one can, and become a warlord who doesn't need to use his³ voice. You spend a few sleepless nights trying to figure out where exactly you screwed up, if there is a better way, and you realize it doesn't matter if it assuages the pain. ²Though you don't know the word at the time ³formerly her You're 15, by this point. The air is chilly. This would've bothered you a year ago. Or maybe not. Your memory is hazy. Everyone's memory is hazy. There is a dead body on the street just outside your apartment. You recognize it as one of the frequenters of the preacher's park. Three holes are in his back, bleeding, as if punctured by a trident or pitchfork. Some kind of false flag to frame demons. There are several flaws to this: 1. Very few demons actually use pitchforks; it is a false stereotype 2. The angels are more likely to do this than the demons 3. There is no one in this city important enough to attract interdimensional ire, much less from those anow and katow. A likely explanation is someone pretending to be a demon stabbing someone who is scared of demons. There is a rat chewing on his finger. You respect the rats. You especially respect one so willing to attack a fresh body. The tree of those you respect starts and ends on a hand: 1. The rats 2. Metadrake, King of the Aetherians⁴, wielder of the Proof of God⁵, virulent racist⁶ 3. Spiritual misogynists 4. Grugthok the goblin warrior 5. Dennis Maxillion, the first member of the Cascadian legislative assembly to realize everyone would let it happen if he stabbed another member to death. ⁴They want everyone to call them angels, but the more they press it, the more it'll be resisted. Among yourself, at least. ⁵POG ⁶By which you mean, speciesist A man walks out of 'Pornography Now!', trips on the body, falls on the ground, stands up, kicks it, reaches for his gun, reconsiders⁷, jerks his head to your expressionless face. "You find this funny? Huh?" You consider reaching for your own gun. Instead, you twist reality. "No, I do not. I'm merely contemplating the black and white melancholy of the lebesque measure of a life. We are all nothing." His face softens, apparently taken aback. "Now, listen, things may look bad–" You overcorrected and he is trying to console you. "Bye," you run away. ⁷A box of 30 rounds went for less than an aquasian heart last week, you don't blame him You feel yourself compelled to repeat: you are Keenan Penrose, and your deadname⁸ is Lateralus 'Lally' Penrose. You feel compelled to mention this every few hours. You've willfully ignored why this would be. You're not sure why a name is so relevant to yourself, when you'd mention it to others so little, and you'd hash your identity to your actions. ⁸(which names someone who never existed) Ultimately, though, reality is malleable. If one wishes to not think something, one can will it out of existence. And so you do, every few hours, until some The Game-like meme hashes an association and earworms "Keenan Penrose and Lateralus 'Lally' Penrose" back in. It was always conjunctive. You always remembered both names together. Whenever you'd introduce yourself with the former, the latter would stick to the back of your mouth, as if "Keenan Penrose and Lateralus 'Lally' Penrose" was your entire name. You often felt like there were too many people in your head, despite being one person. You never felt like there were too many people in your head, as you are one person. You often felt you needed to get out of North Cumulos. You always felt nothing. Your age⁹ often popped in your head as well. Your subconscious was apparently a helium balloon factory. Their strings would tangle on branches and pull up entire trees. The streets would've been muddy yesterday, but it had since frozen. ⁹16 Ah, right. You're 16. Today was your birthday. Odd that 16 would pop in, rather than 15. You give too much stock to your subconscious. Especially since you plan to chop it out, along with your reproductive organs, breasts, most of your skeleton, your heart, and half of your lungs the day after your 18th birthday. This assumes you make it to the day after your 18th birthday. You've made a suicide pact with your only friend when you turn 18. You meet him down the street, two blocks from the train station. His face maintains soft nonchalance to the city's disrepair. It probably hid crumple lines he'd collapse in on at the slightest obstacle. You often wondered how he was still alive, though it was more believable when he agreed so emphatically to the joint suicide in 4 years. You were both 14 at the time. You walk in silence, then sit in silence, then stand in silence, then walk in silence. You don't respect him, but you appreciate he doesn't lie to you. You are 16 and 2 hours. You are Keenan Penrose and Lateralus 'Lally' Penrose. You are no longer Keenan Penrose or Lateralus 'Lally' Penrose. As was to be Demonstrated Anow a metasheet and kanaclockwise a worldveil sat the planet of Shanna, rapidly spiralling the white dwarf Sharein. Upon the planet sat the country of Shalestria, upon the country sat the city of Vos Extrius, and upon the city of Vos Extrius sat the unnamed hill where Lady Shira Stenens lay staring into space. When facing Sharein, it was as if the stars were a few feet deep in water. One would often cover their halo to keep extra light off their face, allowing for a clearer view. She had wrapped her's in a bandana. The nights were very dark. And so, electric and magical lighting was abundant, created from necessity, as was heating, and insulation. And so was space and dimensional travel, to get off the godforsaken, frozen rock of Shanna. But still, Vos Extrius was the capital of the Shalestrian empire, and Metadrake still ruled from it. Many of the political class had concluded it'd move to one of the colonies in the near future. Likely Kurr, the current home of the Proof of God. She weighed the happiness staring at the sky was giving to the utility of the study of abstract geometry, pushed herself up, and began striding back to her manor. Her beard was thin and whispy; it had to be supplemented with a scarf. Her father was a lead chemist on Kurr. Her mother was a member of the Nos Extrians. It was expected she would become one or the other. Staring at the stars wasn't useful. It accomplished nothing, and filled her with a vague sense of melancholy. She'd justify it by saying it allowed her subconscious to work on her geometry, though she doubted the veracity of it. Metadrake espoused a dogma most followed – the entire universe is finitely reducible. Collections of concepts are arbitrary. The ideal world is one where there is the least conflict between concepts. This extended to the desires in one's head, tribal fights for land, and even – occasionally – chemical reactions. The concept of an Aetherian (or 'Angel', in formal, political settings) was a fiction; ultimately, they were a finite collection of metathreads, abstracted as quarks, as atoms and molecules and cells and subpersonalities and full living beings. It made her head spin; everyone else seemed to cope, but here she was getting angry at trying to calculate the lebesque measure of a 5D sphere, and enjoying her anger. She sat alone at her dining room table, blazing warmth of fluorescence illuminating the room. She knew it was valuable to Metaveil Mechanics. She knew she would have to learn it. She knew it was valuable for both chemistry and espionage. And she was very very very angry at her paper. And she was almost content. And she was unsatisfied. She often felt like there were multiple people in her head. The table was very large. Shira Stenens is no longer being observed. ℝℍ𝕀ℕ𝔼 With twelve pairs of our thousand eyes, we see a black seam in the white sky. We saw our last such 90 years ago. We feel ourselves being pulled apart. A hair on our head is trying to cut itself. Pitiable I don't like it here. I don't like it so very much. Condemnable rocky wastes tens of thousands of talonstretches long. And we measure by 'talonstretches', a vague, subjective value, rather than meters or tim-kils or shrieves. I can list three conflicts this emonth alone that started because surveyors had different foot sizes. The sky is red. That's fine, I guess. Most would laugh in your face if you tried bringing up the symbolic implications or psychological effect thereof. Which is fair, when you're starving to death, or your children are starving to death, or you're engaged in a thousand-year tribal warfare, or you're locked in a cycle of death-rebirth-death trapped under an ocean of lava. Priorities, I get it. And I should be thankful that I'm able to exist at all. My parents worked hard alongside King Darmos to establish a territory where endless conflict isn't necessary. We're almost completely self-sufficient. We have huge walls, have managed some agriculture, and dug deep enough to actually have a consistent source of water. And yet, when I'm tilling the field or grinding the larvae for the 10th hour, I find my mind drifting off to the stories of those from beyond. A human stopped by, years ago, and in exchange for helping him return to his home, he offered his labour, and his literature. With his help, and after several years of practice, I was able to translate. Years later, an aetherian stopped by, and we did the same. Earth's sky was blue. Shanna's sky was a dark purple. The Pits' was red. I've allowed a tumor to develop in my soul. A disloyalty to those who've worked so hard for my existence, because I know what could be. I've explained crop rotations and electricity, things which apparently work wonders on Earth and Shanna. I've explained Shakespeare and Metasheaf, which paint such beautiful abstractions. But it doesn't matter, when you live in a barren wasteland with mindless hordes pounding your walls. There's the possibility – and hope – that we just need to dig deeper, and we'll find something useful. Iron, copper, potash. Whatever our world's equivalent would be. Anything besides more rock. Or maybe in the sky, somehow. Maybe the sky isn't actually red, and it's some luminescent island we can dig into. Or, I suppose, we just establish a good enough reputation that we can trade with interdimensional interlopers. The aetherian, Dyras, had explained how things were fastest in The Pits, and how it's a good way to travel vast distances, across many worldveils. I didn't quite understand the logic of it, but it meant we have something to offer that people couldn't get elsewhere. And the human, Conrad, had left a long sequence of characters he said could be used to contact him. I don't know how, it's not like we have any sort of electrothaumic infrastructure. I've often thought about running away to a earth, or some other human world, figuring out how to contact Conrad, and finding something I could do for him. Maybe be some kind of apprentice or assistant as he went on his adventurers, exploring all the different planes and fighting evil. Eating good food, making friends, seeing different coloured skies with different patterns of stars, drinking plenty of clean water, shooting guns and, when that doesn't work, slashing magic swords. Wearing nice clothes, dancing, researching science, researching magic, finding new things which are possible. Combining them in novel ways. Finding other people interested in similar things. Falling in love. Starting a family. Dyras had said interspecies reproduction was possible, though I have my doubts. Buying a house with electricity. Working a job, earning money, going to the store, buying food. Making meals. Regaling my family with my stories. Training them to be able to deal with the unknown, just as I was trained by Conrad. And every few weeks I'd meet Conrad in the bar, maybe I'd meet Dyras too, if I can find him, and we'd all catch up, have a few drinks – apparently, alcohol is quite good – and say what adventures we just went on. Maybe I'd start a company that helps people begin adventures. What a dream that would be. Help people investigate the cosmos, all the different planes, the different metasheets and worldveils, find what's out there, allow people the opportunity to feel full. To have as much opportunity as they can. But alas. I am just a cold-blooded lizardman with demon horns in the worst plane in the universe, and to leave would be abandoning my friends and family. I've suggested they come with me. They've shut it down instantly. Such is the life of Jack Static. And such is the life I really don't like. A tumor stands no chance against habit. First law of motion, perhaps. Maybe entropy. I have assembled bricks into a wall, farmed, ground, swept, built, for years. I wouldn't know how to 'adventure' even if I tried. Even if Keep Darmos were wiped off the face of The Pits, I'd just build another wall, hoe more ground, seek some seeds and plant them. Then promptly die of dehydration, or get torn apart by the boarfolk. Oh, how I wish my tumor were in another body. I hope it hasn't seeped into my soul. Jack's Adventurers Incorporated...Jack's Entropy Fighters...The Guild of Cosmic Adventurers...and would it be in English, or South Pittoks, or Shatherian...and which planet would it actually be stationed on...perhaps it could be a multi-planet operation, maybe a chain. Maybe there's already a chain that does something similar that I could help develop. Why would I be granted the gift of thought if I must not use it? How diseased am I that I characterize desiring what I don't have, rather than appreciating what I do, as true thinking? My parents, Darmos, my aunts and uncles, my friends, they deserve better than Jack Static. ...Or, perhaps, this was a natural consequence of encouraging me to interact with the interlopers, and helping them to safety instead of instantly killing them (and in fact, down here many jokes were simple observational humour, where the funny came from the contrast between a mundane statement and the expected violence). Perhaps, if I were to leave, I could come back later to help my town. Perhaps that wouldn't be betrayal. Perhaps this is the outcome they've been nudging me towards this whole time. I'm sick of carrying hoes, especially, and pitchforks, though less so. These thoughts will come and go during a long shift and then I'll lay down and be too tired to do anything other than sleep. I am going to close my eyes now. There's a lot more, but that's all I have access to right now Sucks though characters are boring and the setting is still ill defined Ideally this will function as a first draft but uh I'm not really sure how to do that heh I can only write first drafts I'm just really glad these retarded thoughts actually now exist in a more tangible form outside my head Penforce You're back. School is worthless. You spend more time analyzing the motives of the speakers than listening to what's being said. No classes teach how the world arrived in the situation it did, the true extent of it, or who was a player in it. They live in their own world of abstractions. You enjoy algebra. It's a guilty pleasure. It's calming to apply a series of deterministic rules to unravel an equation into a simple expression. It's a special kind of lie. It's consistent, seemingly. All math is founded on the assumption that it has a direct link to the real world. That may have been true in the past. You spend the break in the bathroom on the third floor with the lock on the door. You stare into your face in the mirror, and lie over and over. "I love you. I love you. I love you." Of course, the word 'love' is meaningless, and the words 'I' and 'you' are too vague to be useful. It just seemed like as sufficient and emotionally evocative phrase as any to inoculate oneself against. Nothing ever happens. People die. People starve, die of infection, are murdered by guns or knives or acid. Are gnawed apart by the rats, die from an overdose, have a botched surgery. Are ritualistically cannibalized, are tied up and thrown in a portal to hell, are bombed by another country from some forgotten conflict. None of it matters. Nothing is interesting. There's no order. No cause and effect. You can live in an apartment, then be evicted the next day because the landlord sold his body to a conglomerate who wants to tear down the complex to build a museum on the history of friendship. Or you can run a booming escort business, and be struck by a metal rod from space because the Cascadian government decided to selectively enforce its contradictory laws. Anything can happen. You cannot live like this. But there's no escape. From your meager understanding, everywhere on earth is like this. "I love you. I love you. I love you." Although. It isn't as if earth is the only planet out there. Yes, you absolutely can live like this. You've been doing fine so far. You can twist the universe to be however you want. And yet you want nothing. And yet you want power, to lord over everyone else, to have them do what you say, so they don't lord over you. And yet you don't care about anyone. You wouldn't value them as a slave, nor as a master. Yet you care about Terry, your one friend who doesn't lie. But you don't care about him as a human, really. He's a harmless rabbit who can't lie. Dime a double¹¹. The only thing that matters is power. Yet power doesn't matter. "I love you. I love you. I love you." Knocks on the door. "Are you okay in there?" asks Terry. "Yes," you say. It's unbecoming for one of your stature to repeat such phrase. You vim a mental note, "practice reciting 'I am going to kill you' in 18 hours." ¹¹Inflation hit a few idioms, too. It's become a ritual for Terry to knock on the door and ask how you're doing after ten minutes of this. The why is beyond you. The only one that's readily accessible, though, with predictable vortex periods, is hell. Where you'll get stabbed by a demon or torn apart by a pig or something beyond your meager knowledge of its ecology. 'The only one'? The only one what. Planet. Ah. Yes. You often felt as if there were too many people in your head, thought Lally. You concurred, thought Keenan. But so would most people able to actually understand the hell they live in. Coping with the cognitive dissonance- They don't live in hell, though. You say words are lies, yet critique your word choice. You are mad. You don't often formalize your inner arguments as two competing personalities. Most of the time, you just think of them both as 'you'. Which, once again, is too vague a term. You realize learning what coping mechanisms everyone else has could be entertaining. You suddenly remember Lateralus 'Lally' Penrose doesn't exist and get angry at acknowledging her. [and now for the character for whom I didn't realize the necessity of until later] You are no longer Keenan Penrose or Laterlaus 'Lally' Penrose. You are now Terry Tennison. You are attempting to coax your friend out of the bathroom, and the trance, he has locked himself in. You believe he has some form of mental complex. With any situation with a hint of ambiguity, he will interpret it in the most uncharitable fashion possible. Any suggestions to see a doctor or a psychologist are dismissed; they want money, or they want permanent patients, or they want to justify their existence. You've since stopped suggesting it. A lot of your time together is spent in silence. You've been to movies together, though not as much the past few months. He will watch, eyes glued to the screen, seemingly unblinking. Then, afterwards, he will tear apart everything, no matter how minor, and dismiss everyone involved as some combination of worthless or evil. The second note of the music cue when the time vortex opened the second time was a C, which in context, was too cheerful for the scene. Also, the time vortex effect was angled slightly wrong between slots. The director hates the audience and wants them to lower their standards. And all the while, you listen and nod. He's passionate, at least. And he's not wrong, per se. They could've put more time or effort into the movie, and maybe the director was too lazy to do so. He's always complaining about technology, how it's atomized the individual and caused everyone to give in to their vices. You're not really sure where this comes from. Projection, probably. And once again, he isn't exactly wrong. A general malaise permeates the older generations, many of whom have become alcoholics, or drug addicts, or porn addicts, or some other isolationist vice. And technology probably facilitated that. But it was probably because of the two damn civil wars, rather than the latest consumer large language model. People still talk to each other, and acknowledge each other's existence, and enjoy being in each other's presence. You're not sure of the best way to convince him of that, though. You worry if you broach the subject, he'll completely shut down and half-jokingly accuse you of being a luminescent federal agent. Not that that would make any sense, with the pathetic state of the federal government. You've been making some progress by indirectly leading them to participate in social situations, though. And so: "Alton and Vanessa invited me to their house party this weekend, and said I can bring a plus one. I am choosing you." If you said any more, you'd be risking an accusation of being duplicitous or manipulative. No saying 'if you'd like' or some justification for why Keenan would be picked over anyone else. Keenan unlocks and opens the door. His eyes are bloodshot, his arms are shaking, and his face is pale. You assume he was doing some kind of drug. When asked previously, he had said no. You didn't believe him. "Were you doing drugs?" you ask. "No," he says. You're pretty sure he's a good liar. You're trying to be, as well. Or, a white liar, rather. You have to be to get him to do anything. Alton and Vanessa had both wanted to meet him for a while, you agreed to make an excuse. You do wish you could just talk to him. When he gets wrapped up in his passions, he can be genuinely interesting. But he's always possessed by them. Chemistry and abstract geometry were uneventful. Balancing equations isn't particularly difficult, but you've yet to derive the most efficient algorithm to do so. Keenan has explained his process multiple times, and you're glad to have an excuse to ask him, but you believe you've exhausted his patience on this. As an introductory class, a portion of abstract geometry is the philosophy behind it, and ways to visualize dimensions higher than 3. It's necessary for anyone who wishes to travel metasheets or worldveils. The universe is three concentric circles - metasheets. The center and outer circle are composed of different worlds in their own hyperplanes - worldveils. You travel anow or katow to move up or down a worldveil, and anaclockwise or kataclockwise to move right or left a metasheet. Also there's something about the golden ratio and the flow of time but that's for a university class. Of course, most won't, and it falls on deaf ears. Keenan is weird on this, as he seems to absorb a lot of information, but fails to process it or its implications. It's as if he's memorizing a textbook. You're pretty sure he doesn't have any cybernetic enhancements which could let him do so, though. Yourself, you're not really sure what you're interested in at this point. The world is really messy, and you're not sure how stable being a chemist or a dimensional traveler or magician what have you would be. For a bit – as embarrassing as it is to admit – you wanted to be a rock star, and tour around and play your bass, or your drums, or sing. You've done a lot of it privately, in the past. And you think you're fine. Good, even. But Keenan has some accurate points, about the lack of stability of the world. You think you'll try being an accountant, and just see what you can do after you have some stability. But that requires knowing how to balance equations, and knowing how the world is actually laid out. [shoutouts to how fucking gracelessly I tried injecting character into this guy] ...not to mention you don't know anyone else who would play with you. ...it's more a dream, than anything. Something your brain keeps pulling you back to when you sleep. Though you question the accuracy of Keenan's psychoanalyses, you'd rather not hear what he has to say on this matter. He still hadn't said anything about seeing Alton and Vanessa. You spend too much time thinking about him. How can someone be right about so much yet completely delusional and disconnected from reality. You are no longer Terry Tennison. As was to be Demonstrated Her mansion was empty. Her mother and father both had important work to attend to. Her father was a part of some experiments on Kurr. Her mother could be anywhere in the universe. They made sure to stop by on the important holidays. Her last scribble triumphantly echoed as she scrawled a square at the bottom of her page, the universal sign for a complete proof. Checking the answer key, Shira had screwed up at step two of twenty seven. She hadn't really been thinking, when she was staring at the sky. Her sister, too, was being trained to be a member of the Nos Extrians, and her brother was an engineer working in some foreign nation. The general strategy seemed to be 'commit to something early'. She didn't understand how they all did it so effortlessly, though. Maybe they were just better at hiding their frustration. [I had already mentioned he was a chemist on Kurr lol whoops. Unnecessary info] ℝℍ𝕀ℕ𝔼 This is different. Before, it had breathed itself open. It's being forced. More eyes see it. Throats scream. They cry. And again, our hair tugs itself from our skull, trying to free itself from our ∪nion, despite already being dead. There is a man who cares for the horses. A man named Enzo Caillat, who doesn't do much, but likes to imagine other worlds. A woman named Josephine Rouge, who likes chess. A woman who sews men's pants and is damn good at it. We are all of them, and many of them wish to enter the hole. And so we enter. As was to be Demonstrated The Proof of God was enveloped in a black plume of granite-textuted smoke. A spire blew through it, barreled through hundreds of meters of air and impaled Kurr. [I'm unsure if I've fucked up the symbolism here. I think this needs to be white, rather than black] Gas flaked off the granite spire, blowing out at an exponential rate. An aetherian was enveloped in gas and became petrified, skin turning granite. The survivors entered their vehicles to flee, but those, too, turned granite. The sky was a dome, and it had cracked, allowing the aether to rush in. Metadrake, on Shanna, learns of this within thirteen minutes. After a quick deliberation with his advisors, they decide to quarantine the worldveil. It's lamentable that the Proof of God is lost, along with many of their great scientists, but this is a phenomenon of unknown power from beyond the known universe. Penforce You are no one. Just passing through. Pitiable A white rock pokes out of the black hole in the center of the universe. ℝℍ𝕀ℕ𝔼 Silence. For many, it takes some time to realize what it means. For the moment, I am elsewhere, outside of their heads. And yeah that was it Because the rock tearing through the universal firmament was supposed to be the big climax Or at least the inciting incident And I needed to have established way more worldbuilding and character before then So I just blew my load Yeah I'll format it and resend it at some point the issue is this is the way it's currently formatted I made a billion posts with like 2 paragraphs in each of them Nah it'll just be like a text file Anyways, here was the reflection on writing I did after: Reflection on writing [spoilers, if I ever rewrite this] Yeah blew my load on the Penforce story. Settings are insufficiently coherent and the characters are too similar and bland. What's supposed to happen is Shira is a whistleblower for the enveloping of Kurr by the black smoke, so jumps down two dimensions to get to the Pits, to bring this information to a splinter group of aetherians. On the night when they're gonna kill themselves, Keenan and Terry see the portal to hell she made and decide fuck it we're gonna head down and check it out. And they end up getting captured and imprisoned by Jack's town. Meanwhile, Metadrake sends out someone to deal with Shira, though they've pretty much concluded the cat's out of the bag and they need to do a press release. There'd be fun character interactions where they agree to help eachother, Keenan decides they don't want to kill themself *that* much, tries to not feel so much cognitive dissonance constantly. Jack sees this as an opportunity to leave his settlement, but says he'll come back later to help them out. Shira continues to question why Metadrake wants a lack of conflict, when she's having fun with it. Terry is mostly just along for the ride as a straightman in a very chaotic world, but manages to gain some confidence and more self-control, and stands up to Keenan and tells them they're being retarded. There'd be more characters introduced, like Josephine Rouge from the world the black smoke came from, and Rhineheart, the titan from beyond the known universe, and the aetherian sent after Shira, who'd become convinced she's doing the right thing and go tell Metadrake. Conrad, who'd have all these awesome adventures, and was orbiting the black hole in the center of the universe in a really quick ship. And the man who emerges from the black hole. And long term, there'd be themes about combining and splitting. Figuring out what parts of yourself you need to keep holding on to and what you need to add, what parts should be spread to other people, etc. Be all math related as well. Would turn out Metadrake was extremely precise with how he splits himself, while Rhineheart is all about assimilation. This really just started when I realized the backstory of that shitty comic I made a while ago should just be a story in and of itself. 4 people becoming better people and needing to rely on eachother, journeying through hell. I don't want to cut or split it into multiple stories, but it's so much bullshit all in one right now, heh. Absolutely need to develop Shira more. And need to figure out exactly how much Keenan is right about the world. I keep calling him Keenan but should probably be calling her Lally. There'd be a whole fuckin thing where Metadrake and Rhineheart can both absorb and split people, so people can get separated from the Rhineheart hivemind by having Metadrake absorb them and split before he gets assimilated. Lally gets assimilated, saved by Metadrake, then split into at least 2 people for a while. Ah and there'd be a whole thing where Metadrake explains he isn't a bad guy, and always splits himself to be perfectly representative of what Shanna needs. The guy he sends out to track down Shira was a bit of himself he split apart. So there'd be this whole thing where they lament that Shanna can't change politically (and Lally sees this reflected with Cascadia) and Metadrake is just like bruh why would you want it to change. God Rhineheart is such a good name I probably need to spam flashbacks for Lally. Yeah that's necessary. Now that's it

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