#maya brown

[elysiumheart]

My vision of Isadora's two kids, Mia and Maya

[danimia]

“Can you make dinner happen?” I almost asked, but I caught myself in time; it had been my turn to make dinner tonight, and so what I was asking him was a favor, and that meant I needed to use politer language. Thus, “Do you suppose you could do something about dinner?” was what I actually asked. I was too exhausted to give him the puppy-dog eyes that were the emoji part of that particular speech pattern, but I trusted him to get the message anyway.

I love writing Maya, she is such an utter delight, especially when she is at her most goblin-like 😂

I almost feel bad for all the shit I'm gonna put her through

[danimia]

I wrote a little bit of advice for @max-rambles a bit ago, and I thought I'd share an example of what I mean about "using words to measure time" from my WIP, below the cut.

I needed to convey that it took a long time for Raymond to arrive at the office after Riley called him there, and that means that I need the prose to continue for at least a few paragraphs. So first, Maya gets distracted by her body (her thirst, her discomfort), which takes a little time. Then I think, who's around? Well, Riley's around, what could they do? They could get her another bottle of water, and I can make them look a little mysteeeerious by being sneaky about it.

Okay, so she takes the water. How does she do it? Well, she's still feeling a little manic, so she snatches it up... but maybe she's starting to calm down, so she catches herself forgetting her manners, and that uses up a little more time, and there's a fun little made-up fact banter scenelet.

That leaves Maya, and the reader, relaxing on the tail end of a higher-intensity scenelet before Raymond finally gets there and the scene proper can start, and it feels like a long time since the message because it was.

...or something like that. that's how my imaginary hypothetical reader reacts, at least 😅

“Raymond, can I get you in here for a moment?” they spoke, turning their head slightly to address the standing microphone on their desk, their voice shifting timbre in some way I could never quite pinpoint, but which I suspected was their “computer voice.” They glanced at me and then back to their monitor, adding, “Priority two, send.” They looked back towards me, and I set the empty bottle down on their desk slightly harder than I intended, opening my mouth to speak, but they held up their hand again. Their eyes flicked to their monitor for a moment and they nodded once before adding, “Give it a moment more, Maya. Raymond will be here in a moment, and I'm sure he'll want to hear this as much as I do.” My need to start talking, to get this idea out of my head and begin to make it real, warred angrily with the urge to show off for my crush, and in the confusion I nodded sullenly, settling back into the chair as my breathing continued to slow. I stewed in silence for what seemed like an eternity. I didn't dare to look down at my computer, because I did not trust myself not to get absorbed in it, not even a little. I wished, at that moment, that I hadn't finished the water so quickly, just so I'd have had something to do while I waited. I glanced down to see whether I'd left any liquid at all in the bottle, which was when I discovered that Riley had swapped out the empty for a full one without my even noticing. I grabbed for it, which was when the part of my brain that had been screaming bloody murder for the past five minutes finally got through to me. I froze for a moment, and then I gently picked it up off the desk. I deliberately forced myself to look up and meet Riley's gaze, and I said, “Thank you,” with all the grace I could muster. “Not a problem, Maya,” they reassured me, their eyes crinkling slightly. “After all, they say Archimedes was autistic too.” I blinked in surprise. That was not a factoid I'd ever heard before. “Wait, he was?” I asked curiously. “Well, he was reported to have had such a brilliant insight that he leapt out of a bathtub and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse,” they mused. “You tell me, Maya,” “He was,” I breathed, and I let my wonder show on my face, feeling a sudden kinship with the long-dead philosopher. “As long as you can restrain yourself from streaking through the office during business hours, I think we'll be fine,” they teased, and I could tell that I was coming down off my victory high because I caught the teasing note in their voice. I still flushed, but since I knew it was a tease, I knew they didn't actually need reassurance that I would never under any circumstances have done any such thing. Instead, I gave them a cheeky grin and asked, “Does that mean I can streak through the office after business hours?” “Not if I ever catch wind of it,” they countered, so quickly that I knew they'd been baiting exactly that response out of me. The repartee was so satisfying that it sent me into a giggle fit, tears of mirth welling up in my eyes. I loved having a boss who knew how to properly banter. “Come on in,” they added, which made very little sense to me until I looked up and saw they were speaking to Raymond, who had presumably just shown up, “and close the door, because Maya's about to get loud.” I bristled with indignation—I knew how to moderate my own volume!—but that melted away when Raymond spoke up. “Sounds exciting,” he replied in his gorgeous low baritone as he shut the door behind him. “Whatcha got, Brown?"

[danimia]

Drove myself to tears today thinking about the horrible stuff I'm gonna be putting my blorbo through a few chapters down the line. I'm so sorry honey! I promise it's for a good reason!

[danimia]

Twenty-Five Percent teaser

I've started writing a new story in an original world, and I thought I might share a bit here. I suppose I might call the genre "hard comp-sci-fi," and here's a little blurb:

Autistic software engineer Maya Brown makes an unbelievable discovery: exactly one quarter of all computing power in the world is being wasted because of one error in a single line of code. When the manufacturer ignores her bug report, she turns to other methods to distribute the fix and in so doing, Maya unknowingly sets off events that will change the face of software forever.

Yes, I know this has a very specific audience 😅

[danimia]

I feel really bad about all the shit I'm about to put my main character through.

I mean, that's not gonna stop me, but I do feel bad about it.

[danimia]

Twenty-Five Percent excerpt

First draft of chapter 1 is finished and around 6k! I've excerpted a spoiler-free bit of the draft under the cut; I'll probably start serializing it to scribblehub once I manage to get a few beta eyes on it, but I'll also post here when I do.

Let me know if you'd like a tag when the full chapter is up!

Two hours (by the wall clock) or two minutes (by my own reckoning) later, I finally leaned back in my chair, stretching my legs out in front of me and my arms behind me as my computer compiled and integrated the fix I’d written. I took a deep breath which turned into a yawn that I couldn’t suppress, and I wasn’t in the least surprised to find my sleeves damp from when I must have repeatedly wiped sweat from my brow. I glanced up at the small light pinned to my cubicle wall and was surprised to see it still dark; apparently, no one had stopped by while I was working. I shrugged and stood up, wandering off in search of a snack. My mind was still whirling in the aftermath of my hyperfocus, and so I wasn’t at all surprised when my feet took me to the floor-to-ceiling windows on the outskirts of the floor, rather than the break room. I spread my hands on the railing and leaned forward slightly, closing my eyes in pleasure as the slight breeze from the ceiling vents whisked some of the damp from my face. Nameless software concepts and programming techniques flitted chaotically through my thoughts and I paid them little heed; my brain might have been feeling the need to jog for a couple minutes after such an intense sprint, but the only thing I cared about was the feeling of the afternoon sun warming my rapidly-drying skin. Eventually, my thoughts clearer and my sleeves drier, I resumed my search for nourishment. Detouring to the windows also brought me past Raymond’s cubicle, where I found the engineer staring intently at a display of rapidly-scrolling text, occasionally hammering out a rapid-fire burst on his keyboard but otherwise motionless. I was aching to tell him about what I’d discovered, but I would no more interrupt his hyperfocus than he would have interrupted mine. I glanced at his attention light, affixed just outside his peripheral vision the same way mine was, but his was lit green; I double-tapped the “doorbell” button pinned to the outside of his cube, and the light upgraded to yellow. That’d have to do.

[unt-transmedia]

The Massacre of Black Wall Street

In 1921, White rioters destroyed a beacon of Black prosperity and security. They killed as many as 300 black Tulsans, left thousands homeless, and ransacked an entire neighborhood. At the time, there were no prosecutions of the instigators. Almost a century later, there have been no reparations. This is what happened, and why it still matters today.

This article gives information on the Tulsa riots and how it plays into the Watchmen universe.