I'm Chandra , indian tguy, and I was ABOUT to convert this blog into a devlog for my game 29 Days of Fog, but that's only going to be properly in devlog in late 2026 and I'm also now primarily working on some other different stuff and................................ this blog desc already has the description of 29 Days of Fog and it's a good explanation so I'm keeping it there. I'll probably update this whole thing later.
29 Days of Fog, which is an indie turn-based RPG in which you, a young warrior apprentice, fight alongside a wizard called the Almost-Immortal. The curse/blessing which gives them (almost-)immortality also creates 29 days of fog all around them, during every February of a leap year. The fog is alive. It hibernates within the flower on the Almost-Immortal's head most of the time, and when it comes out, it attracts magical monsters for food. These monsters must be killed so that the fog can be fed, and so that everyone in the surroundings is safe.
The curse/blessing makes it so that, with each friend the Almost-Immortal makes, 4 years are added to their life. But eventually they started narrowing down the definition of what 'friend' means, because soon they decided they don't want to live forever. Now they have only 4 fogs remaining.
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Hello writeblr! I'm back to Tumblr because I remembered that I can simply yap about my works here and sometimes the void will actually yell back , which only occasionally happens with Instagram or with my friends
So the main setting I'm doing stories in is the rip in reality. If any of you knew me when I was active here before, you'll know I was mostly working on the setting of Fillor. It got way too large in scope though (& same goes for the projects in that setting) so I shelved it till I developed more skills. Especially since I'd have to rework a bunch of stuff to make sense together.
Anyway here's an intro to the rip in reality
2040s to 2060s From the intro of Toxic Sludge Fountain (WIP serialized visual novel): The surface of the earth is pockmarked with distortio
I'm working on multiple stuff which I'll talk about too, but mainly I want to go for talking about this one
Current main WIP: Welcome to the Real World
A visual novel which has something of a Frankenstein plot and even some Jekyll & Hyde type stuff.
Our main character is Kabir. He's doing a master's & doing research related to malleable moh-maya (which is one theory of how people conceptualize the 'rips in reality') & how it can be used for consumer products (the fabric of reality ripped up in 2042 and then it all stabilized in a few years, and ppl managed to use the new fragility for good purpose). At college he is closeted. But he has a triple life: one where he freely lives as a trans man (that's where his name Kabir) and one where he's a "cis woman" (the name is not revealed in the narrative because it's HIS narrative + it's none of your business as the audience) doing the master's about moh-maya for consumer products stuff and one where he's an anonymous researcher (pseudonym is Moksh) working on less scrupulous research (note: academia is overall more disorganized in the new world anyway, MOST research is done in the shadows under pseudonyms now; this is in the 2070s) and he achieves something great. this great thing is a creature , constructed w/malleable moh-maya, with sapience , actually able to think.
The prev "conscious" beings before the creature. They're like genAI of now, they can't think, they just take in a lot of sensory info as data , and the physiological responses as data too , and you can see/hear/feel from said data if you share their "minds" but it's just… plugging into the sensory data being connected. And they behave in response to the physiological responses of the body (for example, when the body touches something hot), they're really elaborate but closer to philosophical zombies…………. they're called "conscious" but that's by the specific definition that moh-maya researchers have. This is "false consciousness", contentiously considered practically the same as the consciousness of something like a bacteria or simply a machine that can have sensory information inputted and then it behaves according to said information based on its programming (again, philosphical zombies). but my head hurts let's leave it there
the creature itself: 1. it's a shapeshifters w/ a fluid not necessarily defined form 2. Kabir has to pilot its body to teach it & its nervous system how to perceive touch, have proprioception (i.e. the sense of where your body is) and how to perceive light and how to hear things like a parent holding a child's arms as the child walks for the first time. (yes during this his own body just lays sprawled on a chair; he can control what senses he's piloting and which of his own senses to turn off, v impotrant in the early stages to avoid overwhelming the creature while it learns the basics of being alive)
soon enough, 'piloting' becomes 'copiloting' as finally, finally he finds out this creature is genuinely conscious, genuinely sapient . . . . . the research the goes further
Kabir dies at the end.
At some point he starts using this creature to do vigilante justice because the world sucks and there are horrible people (including those who hurt people he loves or is mildly fond of or just happens to know + the justice system doesn't work) and also its body is much healthier than his and at some point it's just exhilarating to do this stuff regardless of the morality. It's an Indian metro city, people die in random accidents all the time. The creature's shapeshifting helps a lot with this. Sometimes people fall into a nala and that's that. Sometimes a drunkard stumbles into a vortex of turbulent spacetime (after having all the oxygen sucked out of him). Someone might be on the CCTV getting beaten to a pulp by a figure that's foreign to anyone and everyone before being dissolved with no trace, and the murderer seeming to dissolve too, making it seem like the camera could've hallucinated (happens sometimes in the rips in reality), who knows! The whole thing is some combo of a Frankenstein + Jekyll & Hyde narrative. The creature hates it so much but Moksh ends up becoming a very manipulative parent as he gets a taste for bloodlust. At the start it's just about eliminating someone who wouldn't be walking free if the justice system worked. After that, yeah, he DOES keep targetting awful people, but many may not deserve such awful deaths + their awfulness is on a personal level, abuse and all, and he slowly starts ignoring whatever the hell the victims may have wanted (prev he'd at least TRY to figure out if they might want the person dead, whether through conversation or by having the creature shapeshift into a random stranger at some tapri engaging them in the sort of deep conversations you often only have with people you'll never meet again; he starts disrespecting both the agency of the creature and that of the people he's supposedly helping. it's so suspicious to his community at some point too, he keeps disappearing and then abusers giving trouble to them and their friends keep dropping like flies, and he slowly stops thinking through the consequence of killing , say, someone who holds financial power over someone, etc etc
the main story takes place over almost a year. starts from 1st sem of masters', where he's doing internships & knows what he wants professionally, to the tail end of the degree where he can still kinda manage the degree alongside this other research -- which he's managed before [minus some difficulties w/depression] because he has "barely any social life" (according to him, the unreliable narrator) to take up his time -- but he knows the discrepancies will kill him eventually and in the last 2 months or so he's pretty much given up (VN choice branching: the last choice he takes is right before these last 2 months; the canon one is he gives up on himself, the alternative is he stops the vigilantism and stops using his creation as a tool and starts talking to his friends again, picking up the pieces).
As some people remember, I published a short story in an anthology last year, and then... I forgot to post it (it was a non-exclusive agreement) because there was a lot going on.
So here it is! Also thanks for the encouragement @lesleymoonwriter and @spideronthesun :D
Under the cut, the fantasy romance short story about an emperor who accidentally asked his betrothed to bring him the sun as a marriage gift, which got me into an anthology:
Four rings comprised my emperor’s palace: one for the guards, one for the servants, one for his court, and the innermost chambers that only we could enter. His ancestors had built it thus to keep him safe, or so said his advisors. He could never leave it, and neither would I—ever again—once we were married. For now, I was merely his betrothed, but I hadn’t seen sunlight in a week.
The palace was a single building with no doors to the outside, except at the first gate. There were few windows. Endless passages curled around themselves like a serpent; you followed them in and out of rooms without ever going out, only in, until you were drowning in innerness.
Even the patter of rain barely reached us in the inner courtyard to which my emperor had taken me, but a sliver of white dawn showed through a narrow opening high on the wall, between two stone bars.
If I were a bird… Useless daydreams.
When I squinted, I could make out the faintest dampness on the window ledge. I don’t think rain ever came in there. Neither did people, for dust powdered the floor and the bench where we sat. We might’ve been the only ones to step in this room in a decade.
Still it rained, a muted but pervasive sound, and it was a relief to know of rain, to hear it, to see a sky. I let its song wash over me, while my emperor’s face puckered in anxiety.
His quiet voice broke the silence. “It isn’t here today.”
We’d been waiting there because something troubled him. In this courtyard, one morning, magic had visited him.
Out of the greyness of dawn, in streaks of lilac and red—a powerful spell, as he described it—a golden coin had appeared, guided by some magician’s hand to his window. An enchanted coin. Everything it faced was turned into gold: the floor, the bench, the walls. His soft skin was gilded. His clothes, already rich, were made into a marvel. For a short while, he watched in wonder as all glittered and gleamed around him, even the dust motes in the air.
Yet it ended too soon.
Suddenly the spell was broken. The invisible magician snatched away the coin, and everything felt drab in its absence.
They had taunted him, then left. The light was once again common and pale. The window lay empty.
I looked at my emperor’s face. He must be mocking me. Yet his sorrow seemed genuine, and I’d had enough time by then to realize his naivety.
After all, he was a baby when his parents were assassinated, and his guardians forbid him to ever set foot outside, so he was raised, safe and secluded—an unknowing captive—under their power. No one intervened. His inner circle held a special kind of courtier, who didn’t mind living in a labyrinth lit by scented candles, never tasting fresh air, never feeling the touch of grass or rain or sunlight, only to have their emperor’s ear.
To me they were more wolves than people. If all lights went out, I could picture their eyes glowing red in the dark.
I had been seeing too much of them since my parents arranged my betrothal. Sometimes I cursed at my mother and father for subjecting me to this powerless prestige.
They called this a palace, but it was the stuffiest and loneliest cage, which I would soon be sharing with my husband. For how long? Who knew. Our whole lives, but our regents would decide how long—or short—these might be.
My emperor’s problems, now mine too, were far more serious than magic. He had no idea, as he prattled on to me of what he thought to be a coin.
“I came back a thousand times to see it. Every time, I ask it to stay, but I can’t tempt the magician.” He hung his head. “I don’t understand what they want me to offer. I just know I can’t command them or their golden spell.”
In the faint light of overcast dawn, I nearly missed his tears, only noticing them by the wetness on my fingers when I touched his face.
I brushed them away; I kissed his cheek and lay his head on my shoulder. His body felt so small and frail in my arms.
I hadn’t arrived at court expecting to love him, but he was young and lonely and in danger. I was also young and grieving my old life. When I held him like this, my heart broke for both of us. And then how could I stop love from sneaking into the wound? My emperor burrowed into my chest, seeking my warmth, and I wanted to close around him like a shield.
I loved him as much as I hated his palace. Because we were fellow prisoners, that didn’t cause any contradiction yet.
At that moment, though, he raised his face to mine with such hope! To his eyes, I was a hero. I could do anything.
He breathed out the words that freed me and doomed us: “Would you bring me that golden coin?”
For a moment, all I could hear was my own heart singing. A door opened. There would be open air and rain falling outside, and I longed to rush into its embrace.
I should’ve known better, but I tricked myself into believing we were living in the kind of story where lovers take on impossible missions as a wedding gift, vanquish them, and come back unharmed. We would go into poems and be remembered for the ages.
I also told myself I needed only a moment outside. One last look at the world I was leaving behind. After that, I would return to him with his miracle.
“I will,” I gave him my word.
Then reason caught up with my tongue, and I crashed back to reality. Had I gone mad?
How could I bring my love the sun?
Our resident magicians told me there was a palace of the Sun. They showed me charts and incantations and gave me a box carved with spells to trap it at dawn, while it was still drowsy.
Their words were honeyed; they smiled and praised the lovely wedding gift I would surely bring our emperor, but their mocking gazes told me otherwise, so I paid them a gold piece each and forgot the box somewhere. I didn’t trust the way they licked their lips as I left, anticipating the chance of picking my bones clean. I was better off on my own luck.
There was one single task left before I went, but when I sought my emperor to say goodbye, I found him sobbing in the courtyard.
A fist squeezed my heart.
“Why are you crying?” I put on a smile and wiped away his tears. “Aren’t you pleased? I will bring your magic coin.”
He clung to me. “But you’re leaving.”
“I’ll come back.”
Somehow, as I puffed my chest in a show of bravery for him, I managed to pretend even to myself that I could find a palace of legend and bring him the sun trapped between my fingers. The urge to run out of his palace doors was too strong, although a mild discomfort prickled through my defenses like a badly placed hairpin.
A little voice within me whispered I could only die searching. If I left, I would never return to his side, and it would be glad to have its tomb out in the open, far away from this den of carrion eaters. I closed my ears to its chilling prophecies.
I kissed my emperor’s brow, combing his hair with my fingers. I kissed his cheeks. Cupping his face in my hands, I kissed him full on the lips.
He tasted of salt, like sorrow.
When I drew back, he kept leaning towards me. One last kiss—softer now—and I left him.
I passed many villages and walked countless miles, but it was all for nothing. There’s no use dwelling on it.
Wherever I went, the wealthiest and highest officials of our empire greeted me. They invited me to their houses, to dine and drink with them; they bid me stay as long as I wished, and their smiles congealed like old fat on their faces, when I asked them the way to the palace of the Sun. From them, I never had any answer.
I went on and told my story to travelers, tinkerers and roaming priests. Sometimes I received a wary nod the way they’d come. Best not to anger a mad noble.
When I found a cottage, I stopped farmers’ wives in their work to question them. They giggled at me behind their hands and pointed East. Surely that’s the Sun’s home, where it rises each morning?
So I kept walking and asked the children playing by fields or village wells. They conferred solemnly among themselves before taking me to the most magical place they knew. This way, they told me, must lead to the palace of the Sun.
Still I couldn’t find it.
I was as far away from my own nightmare palace as anyone could go when my legs finally folded beneath me on a dusty stretch of road with nothing to see but marshes from horizon to horizon. I dropped crying to the dirt, too tired to go on. Not even the giddiness of freedom could carry me any farther.
Then, I had to face everything I’d been hiding from myself. There was no palace of the Sun. My quest was doomed, and my heart was about to fail.
Back by my emperor’s side, dying hadn’t seemed possible—not while I was stepping on clouds, so eager to leave I would entrust myself to any fool’s hope. Yet my lips weren’t parched back then.
I hadn’t been able to find the simplest homestead for days. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten. Every night I shivered out in the weather.
Now I could feel death coming, so I feared it. I didn’t want to die alone, half a world away from him.
I was gripped, at once, by both the need to go back and a fear of returning. If I were lucky, return would mean being walled alive until I crumbled over myself from old age.
It would be torture… though torture was also the thought of my love crying for me, alone in his palace of wolves, without a shield, without even a hand to hold. Soon he might be dead too: my emperor couldn’t fend for himself if his advisors tired of him.
Do you understand my impasse?
It tore my heart in two. I watered the dust of that road with my tears; I beat it with my fists, and then I started laughing, sobbing, until my stomach and my chest both hurt. I couldn’t breathe, but I couldn’t stop either. What a ridiculous way to die!
Imagine one who has everything: an emperor. Above him, only a god.
Yet here were we: my beloved, who never knew anything but darkness. Myself, trapped in the same prison while trying to bring him some light.
I wanted some for myself too, instead of wasting away in that crypt of a palace. Who was I, though, to think I could escape reality and write down a better story?
“He never felt sunlight on his face. There are no windows… There is no air in his palace.” Hoarse ironic laughter mingled with my tears. “Everyone has a piece of the sun, even the poorest peasant.
“Can’t I have just a piece to take him? He’d be happy with a coin. Is that too much? Doesn’t the Sun have enough treasures?” Dropping my forehead to the road, I fell into mumbling and quiet tears that tasted like dirt.
I missed him. I didn’t want to die like this. I also prayed: if only I could go back, I would brave even that palace, for as long as it took.
As the thought crossed my mind, though, it also struck me with its uselessness. I was dying. There would be no going back.
My eyes were about to flutter closed when it happened.
Would you take it for love? a little voice whispered in my ear.
I opened my eyes and then lifted myself off the dust, for a miracle stood before me.
A path of glittering cobblestones led off the road, over the marshes, towards a palace of bright yellow and red brick floating high above the ground. A halo of light surrounded it, blindingly strong.
It looked like a mirage. I thought it must be a dream.
Yet when I rose slowly and unsteadily to my feet and stepped onto the path, it held my weight. On and up, away from the ground and the mortal world, I followed it like a sleepwalker. If I glanced back over my shoulder, the road through the marshes faded in the bright haze as if the earth were the dream.
The bridge of light ended at the golden doors of the Sun, which lay open for me to enter. So I did, wandering into a grand hall of gold marble that was completely empty.
There I stood in a daze until my eyes found the stairs at the back. My gaze climbed its steps. At the very top, about six feet off the floor, there floated a golden orb of light.
I drifted towards it.
That little voice whispered to me: The light of the Sun. It has been stolen many times. For greed… For power. Yes, even for love, but beware. There is always a price.
As I ascended the steps, I saw it. I watched a creature of monstrous beauty and scorching light holding the sun in its hand. It flew over the land, and behind it, the fields were cast into gloom. Starved of sunlight, the earth turned winter-barren. Crops failed and babies died from the cold.
I watched a queen of old in her treasury. She also held the undistilled power of the Sun. Everything it touched—coins and cups, wood and tile, even her skin—turned to gold. She danced and hopped in joy, but outside her palace walls, an angry crowd gathered. There’s only so much the strongest gates can take before they fall and the hallways overflow with peasants coming for your head.
They caught and killed her. I tried not to see my emperor’s face on hers, her head at the tip of a spear, a metal tongue jutting, bloody, out of her mouth.
It could have been us.
All of it could become us.
The voice challenged me: Take it if your love is true to the bitterest end. You chose it. You swore it.
If I were to go back, I needed the Sun, and I didn’t wish to die out here in the wilderness. I wanted to go back.
Even then I hesitated with my hand half-outstretched. This wasn’t what I intended. To doom him.
Did it have to end in tragedy either way?
Steeling myself, I reached up; I took the orb, and it burned me. Sunlight poured into my veins, down my arms, over my chest, through my bones. My body couldn’t hold it all, so it splashed onto the marble tiles, scalding my feet. I would have screamed if my throat weren’t gilded and burning.
Molten gold blurred my vision instead of tears. My back itched, then arched, and I fell to the floor. Something grew between my shoulder blades.
I held on to the Sun, pressing it tight to my chest despite the pain, and slowly its touch became bearable. Either I was growing warmer, or it was growing colder. Maybe both. The orb gleamed fainter every second, winking, about to expire in my hands.
In a moment, it would all be mine, that cruelty and those horrors ours to inherit, because I said I would bring him the sun. It was this or exile.
I don’t know if I love my emperor more than my own freedom or my life. At that moment, though, I realized it wasn’t mere pity that bound me to him. It wasn’t duty: a promise. I thought again of bringing him his death, and I shivered.
I did love him.
I couldn’t deliver him such an ill fate.
So I let go of the light and all my hopes of returning.
The orb floated back to its place. Slowly, despite my abuses, it built up light and heat. The halls of the palace of the Sun were again drenched in sunlight, which flooded out of doors and windows, into the world.
I waited for the magic in me to also fade, but nothing seemed to happen. Golden sunlight coursed my veins and shone faintly through my skin. The tears I wiped away were still molten gold hardening on my fingertips. Wings of light fluttered on my back.
The realization slowly dawned on me.
“Are we free?” I whispered.
No voice answered me this time.
With my golden sun wings, I flew through what was left of the day and well into the night, looking like a falling star, probably, to any who saw me go by. The whole world stretched beneath me, from horizon to horizon.
So many miles I had walked in my journey. It had taken me weeks. Now I covered the same distance in a day and a night, and as the cock crowed in the dark before dawn, I alighted at the window of my emperor’s inner courtyard: back to the beginning.
My skin let only a faint gleam onto the floor many feet below, but even that seemed bright in my love’s palace. As long as I stayed, nearby dust motes might be gold.
And I wasn’t alone.
Someone else was also up before daybreak, sitting on that bench. My heart nearly leapt out of my mouth when he lifted his gaze to me.
On my way to him, I must admit, I’d feared his reaction. I looked changed.
Yet he rushed to the window, and under my pale beam of sunlight, his face glowed with amazement. His eyes were puffy and rimmed with red, but they twinkled up at me.
“You are back! Have you found it?”
I nodded and, leaning down, I offered him my hand. “I can show you, and all the rest too. The whole world for seeing.”
On my lips, unsaid, were the words, If you want to come, and a plea, Escape with me.
Love is something, isn’t it? I would go to the ends of the earth and beyond—to the palace of the Sun—for him. And he would follow me anywhere on trust alone.
He reached up and took my hand. With my new sun strength, I hoisted him up to the window. The stone bars were spaced barely wide enough for a slip of a young emperor to pass between them and flee.
Had his guardians thought he might try, they would have made those even narrower, but now it was too late. Away we could go, anywhere. We could roam this beautiful world until we tired, and then rest in an otherworldly palace.
“You’re warm. I missed you,” he mumbled, his face buried in my shoulder.
I kissed his head and wrapped my arms around him. As I fell away from the ledge, my sun wings carried us both into the sky.
Okay I am in a horrific pain spike (heat; I'm learning to get better about consuming electrolytes cuz that helps) but I remember yes I have this blog here. Which means I have this place to yap about this story. Unfortunately I can't organize the thoughts enough yet so here's some stuff vaguely
This is in Obsidian, I love how file structures work in Obsidian. The two things which I shall focus on the most for now (before I move down the queue of tasks): the first draft outline, and "O god I think it's happening", which is a short story set before the main story
"what if victor frankenstein was a disabled mentally ill Indian trans man and he loved the creature to start with, his child, and shared its consciousness in order to give its mind priors to FUNCTION off of so it can start using its 5 senses and proprioception (like a parent holding a child's arms as it learns to walk) and then slowly do 'person' stuff (this is the first creature ever in this world to have TRUE consciousness; prev ones were essentially unconvincing philosophical zombies which nonetheless served their purpose) and then he did vigilantism with its body cuz it's a shapeshifter and so getting away with it is easy ESPECIALLY because we're in an Indian metro city, accidents HAPPEN, lives are given less value unless you're really rich and the justice system is broken and so what if someone who should not be walking free just so happens to get strangled by a mysterious mist that fled the scene w/no trace? (the nature of the copiloting: after the creature learns to be, ) + there's also the mc's fucked interpersonal relationships, he is doing a triple life, how does he live ?"
the creature is an "it" when it's a phenomenon or beast and a "they" in humanoid form. currently mostly saying "it" since i'm drafting the early parts
i had a few hesitations here & there about the mc feeling like a self-insert since I AM a disabled mentally ill Indian trans man, but people self-insert all the time and it just so happens that this is an UNUSUAL type of person/character and , MORE IMPORTANTLY , i have an interetsing perspective + the entire point of doing this in FICTION is to i. have a character who may have a lot in common with me but is different ni some incredibly fundamental ways i.e. fully buying into a self-fulfilling prophecy about how he WILL fuck himself over and die at the end (he does ; there's non-canon good endings imagined by the creature where he doesn't ; it's tragic, meaning that we give a fuck about what happened [not dismissed, not seen as "it is how it is, the world is just like this" , it fucking MATTERS], and it's more tragic because it DIDN'T NEED TO END LIKE THAT, IT WAS NOT INEVITABLE but he never ever lets go of that fallacy) , examining the whole thing ii. bring out my voice & everything by exploring someone whose... mind's architecture is obviously a whole lot like mine . Cuz that's just NOT explored much . and there's stuff to fuckin explore . iii. it's what i would call "FANTASTICAL SCI-FI". the worldbuilding matters a lot (see my pinned post!), it shapes how a person IS as well
Anyway , here's the WIP 3d model of him as well. The story will be a visual novel (in case i didn't mention that) , sprites & CGs will be made in blender and honestly if i can make animations and such , I will make those as well. So, here's Kabir! just posting this screenshot i realise his arms look really noodley here. they're not. he's meant to be of a short and stocky figure, fantasy dwarfesque and i need to give him the sideburns in the 3d model too and make the hair more of a 'sketchy' quality. His colour's mainly going to be blue. All the..... mindfucky stuff is going to be all associated w/blues & greens & slight purples (accents?), that'll be part of the visual language
I used grease pencil in Blender for this and i'll use it a lot more too. 2d animation basically.
here he is in colour
from the side view with the light really near his hair & eyes. hair's KINDA stylized w/blue highlights (not an actual thing he does, too high-maintenance for him) , and in this u can see the spiral eyes protrude too
I've only recently started using Obsidian, what's all this customization you're doing? Only plugin I have so far is one to save my cursor position
I have one file for character descriptions so far and I want their character descriptions to update as the story goes on. I just realised that i could absolutely just link to those updated portions in my drafts ^_^
Okay I am in a horrific pain spike (heat; I'm learning to get better about consuming electrolytes cuz that helps) but I remember yes I have this blog here. Which means I have this place to yap about this story. Unfortunately I can't organize the thoughts enough yet so here's some stuff vaguely
This is in Obsidian, I love how file structures work in Obsidian. The two things which I shall focus on the most for now (before I move down the queue of tasks): the first draft outline, and "O god I think it's happening", which is a short story set before the main story
"what if victor frankenstein was a disabled mentally ill Indian trans man and he loved the creature to start with, his child, and shared its consciousness in order to give its mind priors to FUNCTION off of so it can start using its 5 senses and proprioception (like a parent holding a child's arms as it learns to walk) and then slowly do 'person' stuff (this is the first creature ever in this world to have TRUE consciousness; prev ones were essentially unconvincing philosophical zombies which nonetheless served their purpose) and then he did vigilantism with its body cuz it's a shapeshifter and so getting away with it is easy ESPECIALLY because we're in an Indian metro city, accidents HAPPEN, lives are given less value unless you're really rich and the justice system is broken and so what if someone who should not be walking free just so happens to get strangled by a mysterious mist that fled the scene w/no trace? (the nature of the copiloting: after the creature learns to be, ) + there's also the mc's fucked interpersonal relationships, he is doing a triple life, how does he live ?"
the creature is an "it" when it's a phenomenon or beast and a "they" in humanoid form. currently mostly saying "it" since i'm drafting the early parts
i had a few hesitations here & there about the mc feeling like a self-insert since I AM a disabled mentally ill Indian trans man, but people self-insert all the time and it just so happens that this is an UNUSUAL type of person/character and , MORE IMPORTANTLY , i have an interetsing perspective + the entire point of doing this in FICTION is to i. have a character who may have a lot in common with me but is different ni some incredibly fundamental ways i.e. fully buying into a self-fulfilling prophecy about how he WILL fuck himself over and die at the end (he does ; there's non-canon good endings imagined by the creature where he doesn't ; it's tragic, meaning that we give a fuck about what happened [not dismissed, not seen as "it is how it is, the world is just like this" , it fucking MATTERS], and it's more tragic because it DIDN'T NEED TO END LIKE THAT, IT WAS NOT INEVITABLE but he never ever lets go of that fallacy) , examining the whole thing ii. bring out my voice & everything by exploring someone whose... mind's architecture is obviously a whole lot like mine . Cuz that's just NOT explored much . and there's stuff to fuckin explore . iii. it's what i would call "FANTASTICAL SCI-FI". the worldbuilding matters a lot (see my pinned post!), it shapes how a person IS as well
Anyway , here's the WIP 3d model of him as well. The story will be a visual novel (in case i didn't mention that) , sprites & CGs will be made in blender and honestly if i can make animations and such , I will make those as well. So, here's Kabir! just posting this screenshot i realise his arms look really noodley here. they're not. he's meant to be of a short and stocky figure, fantasy dwarfesque and i need to give him the sideburns in the 3d model too and make the hair more of a 'sketchy' quality. His colour's mainly going to be blue. All the..... mindfucky stuff is going to be all associated w/blues & greens & slight purples (accents?), that'll be part of the visual language
I used grease pencil in Blender for this and i'll use it a lot more too. 2d animation basically.
here he is in colour
from the side view with the light really near his hair & eyes. hair's KINDA stylized w/blue highlights (not an actual thing he does, too high-maintenance for him) , and in this u can see the spiral eyes protrude too
Okay I am in a horrific pain spike (heat; I'm learning to get better about consuming electrolytes cuz that helps) but I remember yes I have this blog here. Which means I have this place to yap about this story. Unfortunately I can't organize the thoughts enough yet so here's some stuff vaguely
This is in Obsidian, I love how file structures work in Obsidian. The two things which I shall focus on the most for now (before I move down the queue of tasks): the first draft outline, and "O god I think it's happening", which is a short story set before the main story
"what if victor frankenstein was a disabled mentally ill Indian trans man and he loved the creature to start with, his child, and shared its consciousness in order to give its mind priors to FUNCTION off of so it can start using its 5 senses and proprioception (like a parent holding a child's arms as it learns to walk) and then slowly do 'person' stuff (this is the first creature ever in this world to have TRUE consciousness; prev ones were essentially unconvincing philosophical zombies which nonetheless served their purpose) and then he did vigilantism with its body cuz it's a shapeshifter and so getting away with it is easy ESPECIALLY because we're in an Indian metro city, accidents HAPPEN, lives are given less value unless you're really rich and the justice system is broken and so what if someone who should not be walking free just so happens to get strangled by a mysterious mist that fled the scene w/no trace? (the nature of the copiloting: after the creature learns to be, ) + there's also the mc's fucked interpersonal relationships, he is doing a triple life, how does he live ?"
the creature is an "it" when it's a phenomenon or beast and a "they" in humanoid form. currently mostly saying "it" since i'm drafting the early parts
i had a few hesitations here & there about the mc feeling like a self-insert since I AM a disabled mentally ill Indian trans man, but people self-insert all the time and it just so happens that this is an UNUSUAL type of person/character and , MORE IMPORTANTLY , i have an interetsing perspective + the entire point of doing this in FICTION is to i. have a character who may have a lot in common with me but is different ni some incredibly fundamental ways i.e. fully buying into a self-fulfilling prophecy about how he WILL fuck himself over and die at the end (he does ; there's non-canon good endings imagined by the creature where he doesn't ; it's tragic, meaning that we give a fuck about what happened [not dismissed, not seen as "it is how it is, the world is just like this" , it fucking MATTERS], and it's more tragic because it DIDN'T NEED TO END LIKE THAT, IT WAS NOT INEVITABLE but he never ever lets go of that fallacy) , examining the whole thing ii. bring out my voice & everything by exploring someone whose... mind's architecture is obviously a whole lot like mine . Cuz that's just NOT explored much . and there's stuff to fuckin explore . iii. it's what i would call "FANTASTICAL SCI-FI". the worldbuilding matters a lot (see my pinned post!), it shapes how a person IS as well
Anyway , here's the WIP 3d model of him as well. The story will be a visual novel (in case i didn't mention that) , sprites & CGs will be made in blender and honestly if i can make animations and such , I will make those as well. So, here's Kabir! just posting this screenshot i realise his arms look really noodley here. they're not. he's meant to be of a short and stocky figure, fantasy dwarfesque and i need to give him the sideburns in the 3d model too and make the hair more of a 'sketchy' quality. His colour's mainly going to be blue. All the..... mindfucky stuff is going to be all associated w/blues & greens & slight purples (accents?), that'll be part of the visual language
I used grease pencil in Blender for this and i'll use it a lot more too. 2d animation basically.
here he is in colour
from the side view with the light really near his hair & eyes. hair's KINDA stylized w/blue highlights (not an actual thing he does, too high-maintenance for him) , and in this u can see the spiral eyes protrude too
Hello writeblr! I'm back to Tumblr because I remembered that I can simply yap about my works here and sometimes the void will actually yell back , which only occasionally happens with Instagram or with my friends
So the main setting I'm doing stories in is the rip in reality. If any of you knew me when I was active here before, you'll know I was mostly working on the setting of Fillor. It got way too large in scope though (& same goes for the projects in that setting) so I shelved it till I developed more skills. Especially since I'd have to rework a bunch of stuff to make sense together.
Anyway here's an intro to the rip in reality
2040s to 2060s From the intro of Toxic Sludge Fountain (WIP serialized visual novel): The surface of the earth is pockmarked with distortio
I'm working on multiple stuff which I'll talk about too, but mainly I want to go for talking about this one
Current main WIP: Welcome to the Real World
A visual novel which has something of a Frankenstein plot and even some Jekyll & Hyde type stuff.
Our main character is Kabir. He's doing a master's & doing research related to malleable moh-maya (which is one theory of how people conceptualize the 'rips in reality') & how it can be used for consumer products (the fabric of reality ripped up in 2042 and then it all stabilized in a few years, and ppl managed to use the new fragility for good purpose). At college he is closeted. But he has a triple life: one where he freely lives as a trans man (that's where his name Kabir) and one where he's a "cis woman" (the name is not revealed in the narrative because it's HIS narrative + it's none of your business as the audience) doing the master's about moh-maya for consumer products stuff and one where he's an anonymous researcher (pseudonym is Moksh) working on less scrupulous research (note: academia is overall more disorganized in the new world anyway, MOST research is done in the shadows under pseudonyms now; this is in the 2070s) and he achieves something great. this great thing is a creature , constructed w/malleable moh-maya, with sapience , actually able to think.
The prev "conscious" beings before the creature. They're like genAI of now, they can't think, they just take in a lot of sensory info as data , and the physiological responses as data too , and you can see/hear/feel from said data if you share their "minds" but it's just… plugging into the sensory data being connected. And they behave in response to the physiological responses of the body (for example, when the body touches something hot), they're really elaborate but closer to philosophical zombies…………. they're called "conscious" but that's by the specific definition that moh-maya researchers have. This is "false consciousness", contentiously considered practically the same as the consciousness of something like a bacteria or simply a machine that can have sensory information inputted and then it behaves according to said information based on its programming (again, philosphical zombies). but my head hurts let's leave it there
the creature itself: 1. it's a shapeshifters w/ a fluid not necessarily defined form 2. Kabir has to pilot its body to teach it & its nervous system how to perceive touch, have proprioception (i.e. the sense of where your body is) and how to perceive light and how to hear things like a parent holding a child's arms as the child walks for the first time. (yes during this his own body just lays sprawled on a chair; he can control what senses he's piloting and which of his own senses to turn off, v impotrant in the early stages to avoid overwhelming the creature while it learns the basics of being alive)
soon enough, 'piloting' becomes 'copiloting' as finally, finally he finds out this creature is genuinely conscious, genuinely sapient . . . . . the research the goes further
Kabir dies at the end.
At some point he starts using this creature to do vigilante justice because the world sucks and there are horrible people (including those who hurt people he loves or is mildly fond of or just happens to know + the justice system doesn't work) and also its body is much healthier than his and at some point it's just exhilarating to do this stuff regardless of the morality. It's an Indian metro city, people die in random accidents all the time. The creature's shapeshifting helps a lot with this. Sometimes people fall into a nala and that's that. Sometimes a drunkard stumbles into a vortex of turbulent spacetime (after having all the oxygen sucked out of him). Someone might be on the CCTV getting beaten to a pulp by a figure that's foreign to anyone and everyone before being dissolved with no trace, and the murderer seeming to dissolve too, making it seem like the camera could've hallucinated (happens sometimes in the rips in reality), who knows! The whole thing is some combo of a Frankenstein + Jekyll & Hyde narrative. The creature hates it so much but Moksh ends up becoming a very manipulative parent as he gets a taste for bloodlust. At the start it's just about eliminating someone who wouldn't be walking free if the justice system worked. After that, yeah, he DOES keep targetting awful people, but many may not deserve such awful deaths + their awfulness is on a personal level, abuse and all, and he slowly starts ignoring whatever the hell the victims may have wanted (prev he'd at least TRY to figure out if they might want the person dead, whether through conversation or by having the creature shapeshift into a random stranger at some tapri engaging them in the sort of deep conversations you often only have with people you'll never meet again; he starts disrespecting both the agency of the creature and that of the people he's supposedly helping. it's so suspicious to his community at some point too, he keeps disappearing and then abusers giving trouble to them and their friends keep dropping like flies, and he slowly stops thinking through the consequence of killing , say, someone who holds financial power over someone, etc etc
the main story takes place over almost a year. starts from 1st sem of masters', where he's doing internships & knows what he wants professionally, to the tail end of the degree where he can still kinda manage the degree alongside this other research -- which he's managed before [minus some difficulties w/depression] because he has "barely any social life" (according to him, the unreliable narrator) to take up his time -- but he knows the discrepancies will kill him eventually and in the last 2 months or so he's pretty much given up (VN choice branching: the last choice he takes is right before these last 2 months; the canon one is he gives up on himself, the alternative is he stops the vigilantism and stops using his creation as a tool and starts talking to his friends again, picking up the pieces).
hi chaucery it's chandra! if i tried to do a life update i wouldn't know where to start. the most notable stuff: I started T this tuesday (17 march), just a few days after they tabled a new bill to fuck up trans rights here (i got the testosterone itself a week or so before that but syringes got delayed). when i opened the package i saw a box of erectile dysfunction medication. The vial was inside that but I really thought they sent the entirely wrong thing for a bit. I also came out in college back in September but then i kinda isolated for some months cuz frankly i was out of willpower to power thru the physical leg pain but it's better now, so I'm kinda socializing, 3rd yr of college is happening and we have a mandatory internship for this but it may be fucked.
Also one of my flatmates took in her friend's cat cuz there's work going on at their place so he's staying with us for a while. His name is Paneer and he's an idiot. I love him. He's only partly orange so a lot of it is truly just him. Someone ordered his cat food and it was in the amazon pack just lying in the hall and he ripped it up but he didn't even eat from it, he just ripped it up to rip it up.
HI CHANDRA :D
Yay that's great congrats on the T!! But also oh no the other stuff D: Wishing you the best of luck with that and the chronic pain and the internship. (That's a lot of stuff to deal with, tbh.) My college internship here was during lockdown; we translated like two news articles so they could sign us off and that was about it?
But a temporary kitty friend! Committing crimes in your flat! My sister's cat did that with her entire package of toilet paper the other day ._. Some cats just have hatred and destruction in their heart, I guess. Not Kikinha, her only crime is waking me up multiple times a night for cuddles. And always vomiting her hairballs on the single rug we have at home.
Yeah the internship thing involves the placement committee trying to find companies (which I GUESS they're doing? but they also have drama amongst themselves? who fucking knows) and us trying to get internships on our own and frankly i've been too unwell to build up enough certifications etc etc to have a good chance so for the most part it's just, "Idk I guess I'll try to do projects & improve my resume or sometihng, I don't know, I'm just doing an MBA after this" (degree is data analytics rn, the actual syllabus & scheduling and everything has been so badly mismanaged it's such a clusterfuck, i'm only worried about actually getting an internship but they'll just want dashboards and "construct a narrative w/the data!" stuff for the "actually doing stuff" part , which is fine but i don't have even a quarter of the interest i used to have for this , maybe I'd regain it after the "Holy fuck holy fuck" of the "trying to get an internship" wore off but also the job market generally is fucked so who knows.)
"Yay that's great congrats on the T!! But also oh no the other stuff D:" is a REALLY good summary of how it's going
here's paneer, he does not have hatred in his heart but he DOES have destruction, he's very stupid.
Character is the Almost-Immortal from 29 Days of Fog. This is a prototype for the 'spell-casting' animation in combat. It'll have more vfx + the design will be more detailed & such (Madhubani patterns on the kurta, scarf will be draped differently, the staff will be cooler too, the bags on the belt as well,replace shoes w/chappal)
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29DoF is an indie turn-based RPG in which you, a young warrior apprentice, fight alongside a wizard called the Almost-Immortal. The curse/blessing which gives them (almost-)immortality also creates 29 days of fog all around them, during every February of a leap year. The fog is alive. It hibernates within the flower on the Almost-Immortal's head most of the time, and when it comes out, it attracts magical monsters for food. These monsters must be killed so that the fog can be fed, and so that everyone in the surroundings is safe.
The curse/blessing makes it so that, with each friend the Almost-Immortal makes, 4 years are added to their life. But eventually they started narrowing down the definition of what 'friend' means, because soon they decided they don't want to live forever. Now they have only 4 fogs remaining.
The art style is a combination of 3D art & the Madhubani art style. I've made some music for it, and am going to continue writing / making art & animations & designs / making music for it. And basic game dev stuff as well, I'm getting a hang of Unity right now.
Here's a picture of the Fog, by the way. It has cavities within its body (empty space within the fog) and these are safe rooms in the game. And it has eyes there.
You can find progress video for the music of this game at this YouTube playlist
Once there's good progress on the demo, I will make an itch.io page as well
Converted main blog to gamedev blog (used to be zindagi-toh-bewafa-hai) , reblogging this post from my old writing blog to here as a result
More about the use of Madhubani art: Family is Maithil, grew up w/Madhubani art casually on the walls or on caps and stuff. I like how the style plays with density in details (an example just picked up from a search)
bonus here's this random encounter music (prototype) w/an example of a minor enemy
