#opus tag

[savrenim]

I noticed a lot of your works involve seers, may I enquire as to what inspired you to expand on this particular trope?

so at this point there are pretty much two major works that I have which revolved around Seers specifically: ifmlam, my longest fic, and trash novel/the opus series, which is the series of books that I'm writing right now. (I'm leaving wriu out of this because that was less "Seers" and more "the cast all gets told the plot of the show, what do they do" which is a slightly different trope).

to a certain degree, both of those works involved Seers because there was a cool world background story idea that just so happened to involve Seers -- the Seer bit in opus comes from a discussion that three of my friends and I were having when we were teenagers at some ungodly hour in the morning at a sleepover about how cool it would be for there to be some sort of sci fi story galactic chess game where quantum computers could predict everything but the actions of other quantum computers with those abilities, and I took the concept and folded it into a tech-magic fusion setting because why not it was trash novel and I wanted to do every single fun idea that I'd ever had at once. and then ifmlam was me trying to convert the dramatic irony and emotion from the musical of Burr being joint narrator and character and what I was reading as increasing panic esp towards twwwe about how he was trapped in the story he was telling, into a medium where the breaking of the fourth wall wasn't really a thing-- how do you translate the same emotion at being trapped knowing the future and unable to change it in the moment-- well, I went with Seers. seemed like an obvious choice.

but I think there are pretty much two main reasons why the idea is so deeply fascinating to me? and they're both pretty much either shameless self-projection or shameless "it's my universe I can turn my favorite headcanons into reality"

the first is I'm a mathematical physicist, and if I reach my life goal (or at least one of them I have many life goals), the life goal of everyone trying to do theoretical physics interested in quantum, the white whale of physics, well: then I'll be contributing towards a Universal Theory Of Everything. which, like. literally, theoretical physicists have the gall to decide that they will predict the universe at least probabilistically if not completely from its current state. any form of future foreknowledge is the magical wish fulfillment of that: if I could just be good enough, if I work hard enough, have an idea just mad and right enough, I could see the whole future from the present. of course I'm obsessed with characters who can see the future. I'm spending my life trying to see the future, at least the physics half of my life. fuck yeah do I want to think about and write about characters who are on a fundamental level succeeding at doing what I've dreamt my whole life of doing. that is the ultimate empowerment.

the second is that time is so weird. first of all time maybe isn't very different from space, it's spacetime??? like its coordinate signature is different but it fundamentally cannot be separated from space in computing distance. whether or not two events happen simultaneously, one before the other, or one after the other depend on how close they are together and how fast you are moving. time goes slower when you are moving fast. time goes slower when you are in a gravitational field. time can loop back in on itself in black holes, but that's fine, that's behind the event horizon, ignore it. time is entropy. time is decoherence. time may or may not exist. time fucks with our ability to try to write a cohesive picture of the universe, so why not write a story that fucks with time, it's revenge I am perfectly entitled to.

[savrenim]

trash novel trope inversion that I’m still not over how much I love, part 296

so you know how it’s like. Traditional. for the protagonist of esp a YA-style novel who has an internal narration to at one point describe themselves and be like. “I am so plain, and/or ugly and weird-looking. who could possibly think I am anything special. there are people around me who are So Beautiful. I could never possibly compare. even after I have gone through this dramatic beautification sequence and can barely recognize myself I still am nowhere near as beautiful as other people.” 

and then everyone goes “yOu ArE tHe MoSt BeAuTiFuL pErSoN I hAvE EvEr SeEn” but esp the Hot Love Interests Who Have Crushes On Them, and they Deny it, but you can definitely tell that they are supposed to be Incredibly Beautiful and just Insecure

of Saes and Luka, Luka is defs more the ingenue who would be in that position than Saes

except Luka’s internal narration is basically “I walk into a room and everyone does a double take. which, yeah they do, I am fucking hot, I am a classic beauty, and I know how to look super elegant and walk around like I’m the most important person in any room, of-fucking-course they’re all looking at me. also I don’t need beautification sequences but I know how to do it myself because I like how I look and am not self-conscious about flaunting it.”

“you are the most beautiful person I have ever seen” “yes I know, I have mirrors.” 

Saes is definitely the one who doesn’t really think that she is beautiful

except she mostly doesn’t care

“yOU ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PERSON I HAVE EVER SEEN”  “okay. that sounds like a you problem.”

“I’m just vibin here you’re the one who is looking at me why are you trying to make this my problem too”

“thanks though I guess glad you’re having fun looking at me. Luka picked my outfit.”

[savrenim]

trash novel base cover art and super approximate title text, by the incredible Sadia Bies

[savrenim]

What's the red blue gold system? Can you use examples?

so I think the best post I wrote about it is this one but the tl;dr, it was actually something my fiance (and just flat-out my gold, that’s what we are) came up with gods, like, six ish years back now and very kindly allowed me to steal it for trash novel

I’m going to frame it here slightly more as in terms of how Kaltans in trash novel do it and not irl polyamory, the prior post frames it a lot more about real world applications. but the idea is essentially that different relationships fulfill different needs in one’s life, and relationships that the same amount of effort and acknowledgement goes in as might be considered “romantic” to Kaltans (who, like.... have a very communal living setup and also are a magical society that uses magic and are organized very differently than us), are:

red: it is a sign of deep physical trust. this is someone that you get together to spar with, or dance with, or wrestle with, or have sex with. red relationships are usually characterized by feeling chemistry with a person, and burning hard and fast, and maybe half the time burning out 

blue: is deep emotional and mental/intellectual trust. this is your best friend, the one you cry to at 2am, the one helping you bury the body, the one who knows exactly what song or meme to send you, the one who’s listened to you special interest about your latest special interest, whose novel you’d help beta, who knows you and you know them and whom you’ll always do your darndest to be there for and they for you

gold: this is a political arrangement. it is a promise that is never to be broken. you have permanently tied your names and your ambitions together in the public eye; your accomplishments are their accomplishments, your failures their failures. you aren’t expected to love each other, or even like each other (although that is much preferred). you are expected to trust each other as you trust yourself, and to work well together for mutual gain, because at the end of the day, it is you against the world and your gold is the only person you can rely on like gravity to have your back without question

in the conception of the system, you can have and are expected to have many reds, blues, and a gold potentially all at the same time; these are different needs that are met by different people in your life. (you only have one gold but again that’s bc historically the gold was a contract about power; its specific monogamy I think is a cool twist to the poly system but is there for the practical reason of “you can only have one gold bc if you have two and the two noble families go to war you can’t side with both like not just emotionally but physically and materially but you need to side with both because that is what a goldbond means” kind of a deal and not because of any inherent superiority of monogamy). I think what we call a romantic relationship in our society is a mix of red and blue which Kaltans call “purple”, and when the only close relationship one has in one’s life is a purple one, Kaltans view that as maybe codependent and bad and call that bruised because this system is fuck yeah aro rights too  Kaltans live communally and kind of in concurrence with the magical clans that they join so the idea of “who do I raise my child with” is “the child is probably being raised communally by like six people, some of whom might be blues, OR, if there are a pair of golds, by the golds but also like the four or five folks they live with” and people living with their friends who are not necessarily red/blue/gold to them is very common, so “romantic” relationships are way less of a pressure in their society as there is not really a financial need to be in a relationship to achieve independence, or childrearing duties associated with any of said relationships

but yeah blue basically boils down to being the same as moirail? or at least a very very similar tone. which I think is a super cool relationship and deserves to be appreciated more. and the rest of the system isn’t built around an alien murder society with different needs that human maybe-less-murder society, so the whole system idk I think is pretty fun and I would frickin love if it one day was the sort of thing that I could reference and everyone immediately know what I was talking about or idk run into someone referencing it that I’d never personally explained it to

[savrenim]

today’s weekly patreon reflection is basically me rubbing in winning a grammatical argument with my mother over copyedit corrections in the first draft of my novel, which resulted in perhaps my favorite thing that my little brother has ever texted me:

[savrenim]

me, writing my incredibly incredibly self indulgent trash novel: bUT SECRETLY THE MOST POWERFUL AND COOLEST CLUB OF COOLKIDS ARE THE MATHEMATICIANS 

[savrenim]

my mother as her Meaningful Holiday Present to me is copyediting trash novel for typos before I wheee start to go into hardcore editing but also, like, is making sure that everyone makes sense etc and is giving me her reactions 

and currently by far her favorite character is Asterna Okkide 

which is both funny and also in hindsight so expected bc she doesn’t talk about it a lot but she is bi and had a few flings with women back in the day and like. of course. of course she would fall for the “over 6 ft tall badass warrior huge biceps hypercompetent commander of the Kaltan army butch noble but did I mention badass” character like that’s mildly my expected audience reaction for a fair subset of the people I expect will be reading this thing

I just didn’t expect it from my mom

mom your gay is showing 

[savrenim]

most incredibly valid female authors: do you ask male authors if their main character is a self-insert, I do not see how this character is a self-insert

me, trying not to be rabid about trash novel: not only is Saes a self-insert, Luka is a self-insert, Asterna is a self-insert but like a ‘you’re in a DnD world’ kind, Kieta’ka is a self-insert, Alan’Liata is not only a self-insert but was the character I was planning on playing when this was a LARP, Sirrem-Rakta is a--