#sal astrum

[abyssaldyke]

Re: earlier reblog about self-lubricating alien dick: I made myself sad thinking that when she was underway, Sal was paradoxically invisible while also in extremely high demand as a sexual novelty, to the point where the other girls pursue her. She fascinates them: an alien somewhere between a boy and a girl, who doesn't speak their language and can and will go all night without asking for anything in return. They can't even dehumanize her, because she isn't human to begin with. And she knows this! She knows this and she lets it happen because playing green casanova gets her out of her head for a little while, even though it's shallow and degrading and does not at all resemble the sex she wants (if she can even imagine it). The fact that she can't recognize the connection between zoning out due to stress and the blankness she feels having sex! Makes you think!

[abyssaldyke]

2 and 11 for the ask game!

Ahh thank you!

2. what sort of music would they like? have you thought about what genres or bands do they lean towards? do they have a favorite song?

I'll do both Sal and PK if that's cool? PK in particular is a musician and leans heavily towards classical music, but the type of classical music that makes you feel torn asunder by the sheer force of it. However, she probably listens to whatever music she can get her hands on, from all sorts of different planets, and has strong opinions on form and technique.

Sal, unfortunately, would fuck up some ska or like 2005 pop punk or klezmer. Do not give her the aux.

11. what do they have in common with you? how are they different? would you get along with them?

Tiff this question is diabolical. It kept me up last night. Yes, both of them are very much like me, but in perhaps the least flattering ways possible. Both Sal and PK suck in somewhat specific ways, and these are ways that I also sucked in my early to mid twenties.

Sal's character in particular arose from the experience of coming home after a traumatic event and being unsure how to exist in a place that used to feel familiar, full of people who love you but are unsure how to now. Her impulsiveness, alexithymia and volatility very much arise from my own. I had to learn a lot of things about myself in order to write this very silly book and not all of them were things I wanted to learn (though I'm glad I've learned them now). I do think I'd like Sal, but I don't think she'd like me. Maybe she'd come around, but we probably wouldn't hang. We differ in that Sal has mechanical know-how that I lack, but I would not join the military, not even to piss off my mother.

PK is also like me in the past in terms of her repression and performance of hyperfemininity, though I have enough distance from that part of my life that it doesn't feel so fresh and so I can write her a bit easier. I think she would be curious about me, but despite my penchant for writing acid-tongued mean girls, I don't really like them in real life.

Phew, sorry for the soul-baring! Character ask game here.

[abyssaldyke]

I'd love to hear about 5, 9, 33, and 34 for Sal!

Aw thank you for asking! I really liked reading yours about Gareth last night.

5. how do they typically dress? does their wardrobe lean more towards practicality or aesthetics?

This is a great one for Sal because she is all function on the page, but I think she has expensive taste (if not the funds to back it up). She lives on a spaceship which is typically quite cold, but she does physically taxing work, so she wears a lot of layers that come on and off all day: t-shirt, maybe a thermal, then a sweater and her fatigue jacket, which is black. She wears a lot of chunky knits and natural fibers and huge clodhopper boots with treads you could trap a finger in. When we meet her in Space Trash, she's lost a lot of weight, so her wardrobe is somewhat lacking and she wears her fatigue trousers most of the time (because they actually fit, plus they have great pockets). She's very butch (despite the lack of gender) and doesn't have a lot of time to slay, but I do think she would lounge around in silk boxers and have like seven waxed cotton jackets in different colors if she could.

9. favorite food? least favorite? are they a picky eater? do they have any dietary restrictions?

Another really good one for Sal, since Cellovim (the type of alien she is) eat primarily mushrooms and vegetables. Despite her various problems, Sal is something of a garbage disposal (a vegan one) and when she has an appetite, a mushroom HATES to see her coming. The idea of eating eggs or milk squicks her out pretty bad, but she'd eat a lab-grown steak if it was around (and probably get quite sick after). I think her favorite meal would be some kind of mushroom fried rice situation, or something sauteed in gravy. Anything that's hot and not too far away.

33. if applicable, how would your other characters describe them? i mean specifically the people around them.

Man this post is going to be miles long I'm so sorry. The crew of Virdigris (Sal's mother's ship) have known her either from birth or childhood, and they alternately think she's tremendously precious or a pain in the ass. She's not the most pleasant to be around for a lot of Space Trash, but everybody's at least somewhat fond of her at some point. They think she's smart but not terribly driven (true), funny but sometimes bad at reading when it's appropriate (true) and ultimately a good kid who fucks up an average amount. PK thinks she's the most earnest, open-book sucker ever born, and also blisteringly intelligent and kind in a way that makes PK want to chew glass.

34. how would your character describe themselves? it doesn't have to line up with how they really are.

Oof! Sal does not think highly of herself. She doesn't feel in control of her circumstances at all, and experiences extreme near-constant shame and self-loathing. At the start of Space Trash, she has recently blown up her whole life (and the lives of the crew) and is facing down a mountain of debt. I think she views herself as an ultimately capable, somewhat smart but solipsistic piece of shit, paralyzed by indecision and fear. This improves somewhat, but never really goes away.

Woof, that was a lot but I really liked writing it! Character ask game here.

[abyssaldyke]

Ooh #31 for Sal and PK!!

Damla my beloved!

31. Do they like receiving gifts? giving gifts? what is their ideal gift?

This is an excellent question. PK is in an interesting spot where she's never truly wanting for anything, and I imagine that the gift-giving practices of the oligentry are oblique and socially complex, so there are lots of rules and implications to gift-giving that are lost on the crew of Virdigris. I think PK was at one point a very thoughtful and generous gift-giver, but has somewhat lost her passion for it amidst extreme opulence (though she doesn't realize this outright). Her ideal gift to receive would absolutely be musical instrument-related, though I think later on she'd be pleased with interesting trinkets. Anything with personality.

Sal is less of a gift-giver, but she is a sharer, which I think is kind of the same thing. She's less enthused about trinkets than PK (they take up lots of space) so would probably be more excited by like, a trip or an activity. She likes to do stuff and there have been a lot of things she's hasn't gotten to do. Catch PK taking her to the symphony and secretly being worried that Sal won't like it or will be bored and Sal is like. Weeping openly through the first overture.

Thank you so much for asking! Character ask game here.

[abyssaldyke]

17 & 20 for both Sal & PK!

Bri!!! Thank u!

17. How did they spend their summers/free time as a child?

Sal, I imagine, went inside to sleep and eat and very infrequently otherwise. She lived in subsidized housing planetside for most of her childhood and early teens and so went to school with a wide variety of kids, with whom she was quite popular. She also had between 3-6 adults at her disposal at any given time, so I like to think she did a lot of stuff like catching fireflies and swimming in lakes and kissing girls on the cheek in the forest.

PK was either in her room or in testing until she was like. 10. She interacted mostly with scientists and robots, sometimes with Marko. She was an intensely lonely and confused child, absolute wire mother baby. She also only ever had private tutors and the few friends she has been able to make are the kids of Marko's friends, who suck. I imagine Marko did take her to the theater and out to eat and things once he was sure she could behave herself, but she was more of an exotic pet than a person (and still is!) (Writing these is making me realize how sad PK's life is, oh my god. My poor girl! <- guy who invented her)

20. Can they drive? If they have their own, what color is their vehicle? Is it neat and tidy or a mess?

Sal can drive a minihauler (sort of like a space golf cart/forklift) and can fly smaller ships if need be, but she cannot fly a big one. Esspern attempts to teach her more than once and there are just too many buttons. If she was living on Earth, I bet she would be eating it up in like a green 2005 Toyota Corolla with a bumper sticker on the back that has a really oblique, esoteric sex joke on it and you get in and it's a little cluttered but she always has a full tank and knows to the day when she last changed her oil. She does not like to drive in snow.

PK cannot drive and thank God for that. She'd be one of those girls in like an orange jeep going buck twenty on the 10 sitting on a phone book so she can see over the wheel. She has an air freshener (it smells bad) and always has time to pick you up from the airport but you never, ever ask her.

Thinking about them in modern times is really fun! Character ask game here.

[abyssaldyke]

Sometimes I'll see a post that's very Sal but is just too sad and on the nose to put in her tag so I just kind of butch nod and continue on but. I did see it.

[abyssaldyke]

1, 4, 12, and 19 for sal and pk?

KAMMMMMMM my beloved thank u

What was the original thought that led to the creation of this character?

OKAY so back in 2021 I had just realized that my novel, which I had been working on for over 6 years, was no longer viable as a work and that I had outgrown in. I fell almost instantly into a terrible depression, and was sitting at my desk at work one afternoon too depressed to move anything but my hand, so I was doodling on a Post-It note. Ollie and I had watched the trailer (the TRAILER) for Space Sweepers, a scifi movie that came out in 2019 I believe, the night before and in that trailer, the characters learn that the child on their ship had a bomb wired inside her (sidenote: years later when we actually watched Space Sweepers, you can imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be a cozy found family story and not an examination of the inherent horror of making a human weapon, and that nobody has a bomb in them at all). So I'm doodling, thinking about human weapons, and I draw a young woman with a long ponytail. And then I stop, and draw her again, better this time. And then I think, well, it can't just be her. Let me draw an alien. And by the end of the day, I'm kicking in the front door to our shitty little apartment like WHAT IF I WROTE A SPACE ROAD TRIP ABOUT AN ALIEN AND A HOT MEAN WOMAN WHO'S A MONSTER. The rest, as they say, is history.

4. Which of the four things (name, appearance, personality or role in the story) did you struggle with the most?

Both Sal and PK came out as characters quite easily! PK's name actually arose from her nickname (I called her PK as an abbreviation for Planet Killer in my notes and it stuck) and I did a little workshopping on names and appearances in the first days of working on the story. I think Sal's role evolved the most, and PK's personality the most over the drafts I've done, so those have probably been the two things I've had to work through.

12. Do you have a playlist for these characters? What songs do you associate with them and why?

I DO but it is a very silly and incongruous playlist full of pop music and also the Mountain Goats and I can really think about them to any song so it changes all the time. The playlist is here

19. What is your general favorite thing about the character? What is your least favorite?

Oh really good question. My favorite thing about Sal is she will not stay down. She will be having the worst time and still gets back up and is like okay well let's try that again. My least favorite thing about her is she's stubborn and impulsive, but I did make her that way so we can't fault her too much. My favorite thing about PK is how she talks and how she navigates social situations. She's super fun to write and I enjoy mapping out her thought processes while I'm writing her. My least favorite thing is that she's passive, but again, I did make her that way.

Thanks for asking!! These were great pulls omg

[abyssaldyke]

Adding ...is a real boy to the list of salbums (albums to think about Sal to) (Sal is my miserable stinky dyke alien) (there's only one other album on the list) (it is beat the champ) (they're both very good)