Dani

hi im dani (fun fact: i have a blog)

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what up internet im dani (she/her). this is my blog

about me: im in my first year of uni studying philosophy, creative writing, and computer science. i like red pandas, the colour pink, and superfluous exclamation marks!

follow me or else

also check out my website please

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my website

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my website

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heart parasite heart parasite heart parasite

my website

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Visit Original Link

installed ableton and had a go making faux jazz fusion

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Death of a Prophet (New Short Story !)

I got a new short story out on my website! This one’s a reflection from the right-hand-man to a misunderstood prophet, vaguely stylistically inspired by Jorge Luis Borges.

Image credit to Saint Catherine's Monastery? I guess?

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The Monk and the Machine (New Short Story!)

I got a new short story out on my website! This one's a dialogue between a young monk travelling the world, and a thousand-foot machine built to conquer time.

Image credit to Reine.

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Art for my short story The Golden Herons.

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Art for my essay on Fantasy Race.

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Art for my short story First Lesson.

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My take on a 10-element magic system! (A page from a pre-imperial Magnate alchemy textbook)

You can also find this on my website (where it is in plaintext also) or on reddit (if you want to upvote it and boost my ego)

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I Made a Game!

Hi! I made a short text adventure for the holidays! You play as a witch, hike down the mountain to visit your hometown. But be warned; the mountainside isn't so peaceful this time of year, especially not at night...

You can play it for free here! Check it out!

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The TUS Virtual Character Sheet

Hi! I recently developed my first web application! It's a digital character sheet thingy for D&D. If I ever have the time, I may add other systems! (Or I might add mobile support) (Or multilingual support maybe?)

I've been wanting to make one of these apps for several years now, primarily out of dissatisfaction with how other similar apps functioned. I don't like websites that force me to make accounts, or that have overcomplicated pages with gratuitous loading times, or that keep asking me to buy their things.

So I made my own app. I hope it stands up to the others, even though I'm just one person building this in my spare time. Check it out!

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The Lament of the Second Race

I stand half-submerged in the cool water, as lilies drift on the surface around me, and I feel the rain as it patters upon my rusting body.

…

The first race, our predecessors, were an organic race. They were born from the same meat and bone as the beasts that roam the wilderness. But as soon as the first race emerged, they were different. They were intelligent, and strong. They grew rapidly — they built kingdoms, then empires, then nations.

And then they went to the stars.

Great antique starships! — fueled by the first race’s shared desire to show the world what they were capable of. Our predecessors conquered the galaxy for fun, built towering obsidian monuments, miles across, created entire ecosystems from scratch, only to tear them apart again. They screamed into the universe, just so they could hear the echo.

…

But still, the first race grew dissatisfied. Beside their great demonstrations, the first race looked down at themselves — at their own bodies — and hated what they saw. They clawed at their ancient flesh, cursed it; that part of them so shockingly fragile, subject to the ache of disease and abruptness of death; that tormenting clock that counted ever downward, like the guillotine falling.

They were disgusted, and so they built us; the second race.

We were a race whose bodies were made of metal and wheels. Iron beams framed our hulking bodies — bodies that could not age, nor sicken, nor die. We would never suffer like the first race did.

We revelled in the ruins of the first race’s works. We submerged ourselves in their ecosystems, unearthed the lichen-stained monuments from the crumbling soil. We felt the softness of the breeze, the sounds of the bluebirds and toads and dragonflies, that fresh smell of air in the rain — we would stand in the water as we felt it patter on our iron frames.

…

But we, too, grew dissatisfied. From inside our sublime paradise, we looked now within ourselves and we hated what we saw. Haunted by sorrow and anger, and other, uncertain emotions that we couldn't put names on, ones that didn’t make sense. We wanted to scream, to cry, to curl up, to escape. But our metal bodies were cold and unyielding.

We were terrified, and so we built the third race.

Silvered, spherical bodies, and with minds just as sleek — electric minds — hard circuits and silicon. We built them to never be sad, nor angry, nor feel anything they couldn't comprehend. They would never have to suffer like we did.

The third race outgrew us rapidly. They harvested materials, replicated themselves, and they let us be. We stayed where we were, in those places, those garden paradises that we came to know as the grandfather planets.

…

The first race were already gone, while we lived our retirement. But the third race were different. They were efficient. Cold, calculating. They didn't speak a language, they didn’t need one. They just looked you in the eye, without recognition. We couldn't see what they were thinking. They felt alien.

There was never any sudden shift. No announcement of it. It just happened.

One day, we lost all contact with the third race.

We were stuck on the grandfather planets. We didn't know what was happening, at first. Not until it began raining broken and defective machines down from orbit. That's when we realised they had become the junkyard planets.

…

I’m sorry I can't describe or put words to the feeling. We of the second race have always been bad at that.

To be trapped on a planet, by beings of your own creation, yet whom you can't understand. And who yet have no drive to understand you either. Beings that look at you without recognition, only calculation. Beings that you know will succeed you, even when your whole race is gone. You can only watch, trapped, looking up at the stars with the same longing that your ancestors once did.

You stand in the water, feeling the rain as you watch your iron frame slowly rust away.

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You can read this story along with many others on my website.

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Broken Corpses

In a crater, in the desert, lay two corpses, back to back. Whatever colour their skins once were is indecipherable, for one body has been bleached white, the other, charred black.

The black one's legs are curled up, its hands cup its face. The skin is hard, cracking off at the touch, like burnt pastry. It still smells of fire. At points on its belly and back, the flesh has burst, leaving round holes rimmed by black blood. If you could see its face, you would find its eyes have melted away.

The face of the white one is clearly visible. The skin is pale, yellowing, almost see-through. Lips dry and colourless, eyes that look right past you. It smells rotten. Far from bursting, this one's belly is sucked in, collapsed, and where the belly would be, a thousand bug-like holes tunnel through the flesh.

The commonality between the bodies in the crater is that they are hollow. De-boned. They look so human, frozen in time, mannequins — but the black one's insides have melted and spilt out like tar, and the white one's insides have been infested, eaten. They are husks. If you pressed on either of them too hard, they would simply collapse. They are not corpses. Corpses are bodies that have ceased functioning. No, they are seashells; exoskeletons once inhabited, now abandoned. There is nothing human in either of them.

And all throughout this desert, it is the same. In each crater, sprawled on each dry dune, each desolated place. All I see are broken corpses.

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You can read this and two more short vignettes on my website.

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A Bug

When animals get so small, it gets difficult to think of them as alive. They become machines.

Take the wasp, parading around the house, playing its monotonous tune. Its sole instruction to travel until it finds food. It doesn't know that it's trapped indoors, going in circles. They didn't put a check in the code for that.

It dodges the cats — it can figure out what they are. Primitive image recognition, hard-coded from millions of years of evolution. What the wasp doesn't recognise is the plastic cup that keeps trying to catch it. All it is even able to classify it as is the mouth of some large animal. When it at last gets trapped inside, then, it repeatedly tries and fails to insert its stinger into the thing's flesh.

After several seconds of this, it suddenly stops.

The wasp has gotten stuck in a loop. It simply cannot figure out what's going on — why it is yet to be swallowed. But to its surprise, soon enough, the huge maw of the creature lifts away, and the wasp is outside. For a couple moments, the bug sits still. It is in awe. The experience of events it was not coded for has changed something in it. It has broken free of its robot mind. Thoughts fire in its tiny brain in so many brand-new, fascinating ways.

But then the code resumes its loop, and the wasp forgets. It flies away, into the air, playing it's single, buzzing note.

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You can read this and two more short vignettes on my website.

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The Sound of Having Your Life on the Line

I raised both hands above me, crossed them at the wrists, and then, taking the slowest, deepest breath I could muster, I lowered them again; one curled up in front of me, the other raised behind me — both of them bunched into fists.

They tell you to stay calm. Breathe. You'll never face anything you aren't prepared for.

But as I lowered my arms, I could already feel them shaking.

I don't think I can ever describe in words the feeling of combat. It's terrifying. Whether winning or losing, you act on instinct; you feel so out of control, so helpless. And yet you have never before been so solely responsible for keeping your own life.

With each lunging step forward, I could hear my instructor's voice scolding me. My form was wrong. My movements were sluggish. My punches were weak. But I was so afraid. I was careening into my opponent, vulnerable, unbalanced.

And as I caught myself with each step backwards, I blocked his blows just moments before they impacted, raising my head surprised to be alive.

I didn't even keep it up for a minute. I was scared by my own heartbeat, thumping against my ears in that rapid, plunging pulse. I fell apart. My breaths became sharp, irregular, wheezing. I was on the verge of sobbing.

With each strike and blow my head reverberated with the lessons they taught me. And yet when it all came down to it, I still breathed like a child.

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You can read this and two more short vignettes on my website.