Concerning Inauthenticity

I’m writing a story that takes place in the County I grew up in. It has aliens and an antagonistic federal government. In my mind, if that were ever to happen, the local tribes would be the ones to defend an extraterrestrial from the feds. Especially if that alien provided technology for that defense. The alien provides both a reason and the technological resources.

But the aliens have a troubling history. A long time ago, some of them left behind parasitic ghosts that feed on humanity’s faith and thoughts. These are real beings that exist in humanity’s collective unconsciousness. They appropriate our gods and spirits and they have drastically different ambitions than we do. Through coercion and deceit they manipulate our characters into doing things against humanity’s collective interest.

As the writer, I have my own issues with appropriation, colonization, and toxic masculinity. When I first started writing, I tried very hard to keep these subjects out. My characters were frequently people of color and/or women and I didn’t think it was a bad thing to include indigenous imagery. To avoid offending anyone, I made up an entire fictional County so I didn’t have to refer to real tribes or peoples. I didn’t have the time or energy to really learn about the real indigenous customs to really do them justice, so I figured a fictional County would be more appropriate.

I thought I was being inclusive when I made my stories feature main characters that weren’t white, cis gendered men (me). But I’ve learned that this is not real inclusivity. Deep down, I gravitated towards this form of inclusivity because it meant I didn’t have to write about me, or my story. This was very attractive because attention makes me uncomfortable.

I want to write stories that take place in the place I grew up in, but I realize the land I grew up on has a history, and trying to include those people in the stories I want to tell is not as simple as picking up a pen. I happen to have more time and energy these days and I’d like to learn more about the place I grew up in so I tell my stories in a way that is respectful and in a way that is authentically mine, and not someone else’s story to tell.

And so far this has been a really positive experience for me. I’ve found changing main characters to someone that more closely resembles me allows me to enter the story on a more intimate level. It makes it more engaging and fun for me, which makes the entire creative process more enjoyable. The added benefit is that I know I’m not taking up the seat of someone who has been marginalized.

This is not over-edited story telling. It’s not inauthentic or too sensitive or too “politically correct”. I’m telling the story, and I am an imperfect vessel, and those imperfections will change the timbre of that story. Ignoring my imperfections to focus on someone else’s is not what I want to do.

But, the crux of the story still centers around the alien contact in a small rural community and how that would actually play out. So I need to do research on who those people really are. The fictional County was called River County. So far I don’t think I’ve written myself into too deep of a hole narratively. I think I refer to River County in the Algorithm Interviews Part II, and I think there’s a road sign in Enter Cedar that mentions River County.

So I’ll be taking a break to complete the following courses:

  • “Writing the Other” workshop book by Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward
  • The Great Courses: Native Peoples of North America
  • Field trips to places like the Hibulb Cultural Center, the Duwamish Longhouse, and the Yakama Nation Cultural Center.

Concerning Celestial Horror

In my earlier writing, celestial higher beings were benevolent and kind and all-knowing. The older I get, the more they’ve become alien and unknowable and horrific. Horrific in the sense of never knowing or understanding these higher beings.

Celestial horror for me is a mix of the impossibility of establishing communication (Orson Scott Card’s Descoladores) the cosmic unknowable (H. P. Lovecraft’s Cosmicism), topped with a bureaucracy that is crushing and insurmountable (Douglass Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide).

I’m sure not all of that communicates in these, but I’m working on it. These are the beings that Zenith calls to Earth in This Bitter Earth.

Concerning the Hiring Practices of Absolution Corp

This guide is to be used in interviews for potential testers of Total Virtual Reality (TVR.

Interviewer: Welcome to TVR Debugr Training! We’re glad you’re here. What’s that you ask? How do you know this isn’t a TVR simulation? I’m glad you asked!
QUESTION: Do you believe in god(s)? Y/N?
– If yes: Do you believe in a kind god(s) or malevolent god(s)?
– If no: congratulations! You have been offered conditional employment as a TVR Debugr!
– If kind god(s): why do they allow bad things to happen (Multiple Choice)?
1) Because we need bad things for a believable simulation = REJECT CANDIDATE
2) Because god(s) are testing us = REJECT CANDIDATE
3) Good point, if I were god(s), I would make a better simulation = ACCEPT CANDIATE
– If malevolent gods(s): congratulations! You’ve been offered a position in our live simulation
validation division; where you continuously validate that all bad things happen for verifiable
reasons, thus validating that no bad things happen because of the choice of malevolent god(s),
thus proving this reality is not a simulation.
Interviewer: At Absolution Corp, we continuously validate that our reality is the prime, so you can rest easy, knowing that your work is fulfilling, rewarding and most important of all; REAL!

Concerning First Contact

“The purpose of life is to consume the energy of the Grand Producer. Creatures who learn to cultivate the Grand Producer inherent the Mantle of Domination. We are not here to witness the universe, but to imbibe it.

The Eruenik Race is one such creature. In our vast and expansive travels of space, we are the only creature we have found with such a holy appetite.

But these hairless apes, they do as we do. They cultivate and they dominant. They elevate their imbibement of the Grand Producer to an intelligent level.”

Excerpt from Daily Logs of Absolution Values Agent Pakasha
Aggregated First Contact Logs, Earth

Concerning Percolation

I have a part-time gardening job. My employer is very proud of her garden, but she still has a hard time appreciating it. For example, it’s being considered as part of a garden tour show, and it’s in the top percentile in terms of quality. She was quite surprised by this assessment by the garden show committee, but admits, she’s a bit too close to provide an impartial opinion of her work.

Frequently, with my own work, I have to immediately walk away from it once it’s been expressed. If I don’t, I’ll think it’s shit. But I’ve found that if I leave it alone for a while, I can provide a more impartial opinion.

So there’s 2 legal pads sitting below my desk with a script called This Bitter Earth written on them.

I wrote this script because I really liked the idea of an orphan boy living on a ferry in the Puget Sound, using the car deck for skate boarding, and spending is free time reading books, drinking tea, and feeding mutated orca whales.

Earth’s sea levels have risen substantially and the dominant life form is mold and fungus. This monoculture of fungus is choking the planet and Zenith spends his days sending signals into deep space, a practice handed down to him from his father. The lore goes that a scientific expedition left the Earth long ago, and that if they can call that scientist back, they can help fix the planet. But, fungus doesn’t want that…

Percolation is also a great method to make coffee.

Concerning Humans, Elves and Buggers

So, I’m done illustrating Enter Cedar. There’s still an epilogue to sketch and ink, but I think I’ll wait to finish those 15ish pages before posting. So it might be a minute before I add new content to the comic on this website.

In the mean time, here’s a concept I’ve toyed around with, that I think applies to some of the “big picture movers” of the upcoming series. I call it “Humans, Elves and Buggers”. Or, the Imbibe version would be, “Beasts, Bots and Boos”.

Humans (or “Beasts”) are beings with finite lives. They must procreate to proceed forward in time and they must teach knowledge to subsequent generations. Titus Waiting is not entirely human, but he is a parasitic being who needs hosts to live. This, combined with his reliance on human culture to build his technology, makes him pretty human.

Elves (or “Bots”) have infinite life (think Lord of the Rings). While they still procreate, they don’t do it to further the species. However, elves still need to be taught knowledge. But because they live forever; once learned, forever kept. The KBR is an infinitely living robot who definitely has no urge to procreate, but continuously learns through this knowledge retention programing.

Buggers (or “Boos”) like humans, have finite lives and must procreate to continue their species through time (think Formic Queens from Ender’s Game). But because they have a hive mind and collective knowledge, they don’t teach or pass down knowledge, they just know everything. Cedarface is part of the spiritual hivemind. While his mothers may not procreate, Cedarface was made. It is quite possible that Cedarface’s golem nature may make him mortal. I haven’t figure that one out yet.

I’m not sure if these 3 characters perfectly resemble these 3 definitions. It could be argued that Cedarface, the KBR and Titus Waiting all have infinite live and don’t spend time procreating, which makes them all Bots, which makes the Imbibe Universe a story of Bots vs Beasts, with no Boos present. But it could be argued that Cedarface’s mothers are Boos, because while they live forever in human minds, they are ultimately reliant on the mortality of those human lives. Cedarface’s mothers must cultivate belief of themselves within humans to continue existing

Concerning the Tracking of Labor Stats p2

I started digitally illustrating Deep Circuity (DC) around March 2020
I finished digitally illustrating in March 2021
1 year 0 months
400 pages in 52 weeks
Actual average is 7.7 pages a week
Intentional output was 3 pages a week

I started analogue illustrating Enter Cedar (EC) in Nov 2021
I’m gonna finish analogue illustrating in August 2023 (Note, I estimated 7.5 months back in Nov 2022)
1 years 8 months
100 pages in 60 weeks
Actual average is 1.7 pages
Intentional output was 1 page a week

That’s a pretty terrible decrease in my average. But I’m still pushing out illustrations for a full, finished 120 page script in a year’ish. So I got that going for me.

I think the better way to look at the data is that it’s taken my roughly the same time to finish the same amount of pages.

But, I could look at the extra 8 months for EC and round up, and then the takeaway that it’s taking me twice as long to illustrate by hand. Shit, am I saying I could have finished EC earlier this year and now be finishing up Where the Highway Meets the Corridor, had I just digitally illustrated it?

BUT, also decreased by weekly page output from 3 to 1. So I can’t be too hard on myself. Had I kept that up, I probably would have finished EC in a similar time to DC.

Yeek. Here’s a scene from East of Everett.