December 1, 2021

Advent of Code 2021, Day 1

Advent of Code is here again, and I’ve been looking forward to this! I’ve been doing AoC since 2019, so this will technically be my third year, though I’ve done some older puzzles in the meantime. My work from past years is available on my public git repository, and this year’s will be too. I started out with 2019 in Python, because Python was safe and familiar, while AoC was new and a little intimidating.

November 24, 2021

Short story: Dragon Cave

You ever get struck by a bit of inspiration that won’t go away until you write it down? I got one of those today, and somehow wrung nine thousand and change words out of it. If I had to sum this up, I’d say: Terrana tries to write dungeoncore fic and ends up with a touching story about trust, consent, transformation, and idealism. So here it is. Dragon Cave. “It’s a dragon shrine,” the kobold said with a nod.

October 31, 2021

Health, Mobility, and Having to Reevaluate Everything

So. I have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. As you might imagine, this came as something of a surprise to me. If you’ve been following along, you know it’s been a wild few months for me. I’ve been having to look at basically my entire life history in a new light, and a few friends in particular have been helping a lot with that. Most of them don’t like having attention called to them, so I won’t give any names, but you know who you are.

October 13, 2021

Further Composite Thinking

I think enough has changed in the last couple of weeks to warrant another post. You can see all of my writing on this subject so far in the {{ “plurality” | tag_link }} tag. [Last time]({% link _posts/2021-09-28-being-composite.md %}), I spoke about the idea of each of me having an individual name, more of a distinction than simply being one-fifth of Terrana. This has had several unexpected effects, mostly positive.

October 8, 2021

Story Snippet: Out of Our Depth

I’ve had a story idea rattling around for quite a while. I’m not sure if I want to develop it into anything, but I did want to get this intro scene written down. I paged through the report again, not really reading it any more. More trying to distract myself at this point, page after page of text fading into a slow dance across the screen of my pad. They could crush us if they wanted to.

September 28, 2021

Being Composite

Over the last month, I’ve been exploring exactly what being plural means for me. I felt that I wanted a specific way of referring to the unusual arrangement I find myself in, and settled on the word Composite to refer to it. The word was carefully chosen: a composite material is one made up of multiple constituents, and gains new strengths that none of them would have alone. I think that’s a good way of describing what I became post-fusion.

September 6, 2021

Worldbuilding: Demon Invasion, part 2

Following on from [part 1]({% link _posts/2021-09-03-worldbuilding-demon-invasion.md %}), in which I talked about some of the world background, I’ve been thinking about how demons work and what life is like for them. Changing forms One thing I touched on but didn’t elaborate much is that the Land Form can change. They’re based on local animals, with the ability to go bipedal at will if not already, with the initial shape chosen based on whatever happened to be nearby when the demon first arrived.

September 3, 2021

Worldbuilding: Demon Invasion

Been thinking about worlds I might like to use for a potential TTRPG, and here’s one idea. Eight years ago, the demon invasion began. No part of the world was untouched by it; entire landscapes have changed beyond recognition. But now it’s over. The portals have closed and it’s time to pick up the pieces. No one is sure which side opened the first portal, but it’s generally thought to have been an accident.

July 21, 2021

Some Introspection

I’ve been doing some introspection over the last week and it’s taken a while for me to work out how to put all this down, but here we finally are. It’s no secret that I used to be part of a plural system. My former headmate Korran is long gone; I still miss her a lot. Looking back on that time with what I know now from having spoken to numerous other plural systems and having learned a fair bit of terminology puts some things in a context I was lacking at the time.

June 13, 2021

Reverse Engineering Earth 2150, Part 7: Mesh Files

Next thing I’m trying to make sense of is the mesh format. This one is going to be difficult. Some background to begin with. A 3D model needs to define, at a minimum, a set of polygons defined by three or more coplanar vertices, each of which will have an x, y, and z coordinate. It may also include normal mapping and UV data for each face, though I’m not sure if Earth 2150’s do.