Procrastinating With Coffee

Pixel: they're 30-ish and autistic and nonverbal and live in the "underworld," which is basically the caverns carved out beneath the surface of Mars for factories. They're taken care of by their older brother Wire, but since he's also disabled they don't even have the security of a factory job and have to get by selling scraps and illegally fixing mods. My favorite thing about them is that, even though they need more support than me, I gave them a lot of my autistic traits and the inability to push through certain things that I sometimes wish I couldn't and thus didn't have to. Plus they're such a goofy nerd

Ri: he's in his early 20's and was perfectly healthy, if a bit reckless. He just made one mistake in trusting the wrong person to give him the newest illicit mods, and now his brain doesn't work that well anymore. He hallucinates and has extreme "staticky" brain fog that interrupts both his thinking and his sensing of the world around him. At the start of the book, he's homeless on the surface of Mars, which is rough but even more than that there's always the danger of being thrown down into the underworld, which is even worse. He desperately misses his brother but at the moment his only friend is Wolfy, a schizophrenic old lady who took him under her wing to make sure he didn't starve. My favorite thing about him is writing from his perspective, because I really enjoy telling stories through the eyes of characters who can't fully process or understand what's happening

Za'Niyah: she's 30-ish but still lives with her parents, because she's disabled and has that luxury among the spires of Mars where the wealthy and educated professionals live. I gave her a slightly more severe version of my ataxia, but otherwise she's a normal woman, with friends, who likes to read and go to cafes but feels stifled by her family. The thing is that the reasons she's disabled is because she was a perfectly genetically designed baby to her parents' specifications, when that was wildly popular but before they knew the genetic risks of it. My favorite thing about her is getting to figure out how to describe symptoms that I spent much of my life learning to hide and even ignore

Peppermint: they're a genetically engineered cat-human hybrid, originally intended for military research, but between the genetic mixing being unstable (all the others died) and the lack of violent instincts, the project was abandoned. It is illegal, however, to purposely for any reason kill a sentient being, and so they remain in a nearly-empty lab on Deimos, while January the head scientist tries desperately to find some other use for them, since they aren't legally a person. Their only reprieve is their friend Void, an early prototype of artificial sentience, and the endless games of trivia the two play. My favorite thing about them is that I basically just wanted to write a cat person so threw them into my sci fi story to have fun with it

My works are usually just one POV, but I think I'm gonna stick with the central three characters of Soul 206 to match you better!

Neoma Liu: a 23-year-old small-time bassist turned boneless zombie person. Being the central POV, the narrative flips between their past self and their present self. Past Neoma is outwardly enthusiastic and inwardly insecure. They constantly feel like an outsider, and their desire to belong leads them to making some really bad decisions. Meanwhile, Present Neoma is still trying to figure out who they were, let alone who they are, and their journey is about unpacking both of those things and discovering what type of person they want to be. What I really like about them is the challenge of trying to separate and yet link those two characterizations together.

'Ash': a 22-year-old member of an Outsider community who was the first person to find Neoma. They grew up as an Outsider, but their past is full of traumas and pains that keep them from moving forward and becoming the type of person they truly want to be. As such, they're obsessed with the past, from their obsession with pre-apocalypse media, all the way down to their magic being able to see the past memories and emotions embedded into objects. My favorite thing about them is that it actually took a while for me to figure them out (up to and including their name), and I'm still learning more about them. It's like they're having to open up to me in addition to Neoma and the other characters.

Pixel: they're 30-ish and autistic and nonverbal and live in the "underworld," which is basically the caverns carved out beneath the surface of Mars for factories. They're taken care of by their older brother Wire, but since he's also disabled they don't even have the security of a factory job and have to get by selling scraps and illegally fixing mods. My favorite thing about them is that, even though they need more support than me, I gave them a lot of my autistic traits and the inability to push through certain things that I sometimes wish I couldn't and thus didn't have to. Plus they're such a goofy nerd

Ri: he's in his early 20's and was perfectly healthy, if a bit reckless. He just made one mistake in trusting the wrong person to give him the newest illicit mods, and now his brain doesn't work that well anymore. He hallucinates and has extreme "staticky" brain fog that interrupts both his thinking and his sensing of the world around him. At the start of the book, he's homeless on the surface of Mars, which is rough but even more than that there's always the danger of being thrown down into the underworld, which is even worse. He desperately misses his brother but at the moment his only friend is Wolfy, a schizophrenic old lady who took him under her wing to make sure he didn't starve. My favorite thing about him is writing from his perspective, because I really enjoy telling stories through the eyes of characters who can't fully process or understand what's happening

Za'Niyah: she's 30-ish but still lives with her parents, because she's disabled and has that luxury among the spires of Mars where the wealthy and educated professionals live. I gave her a slightly more severe version of my ataxia, but otherwise she's a normal woman, with friends, who likes to read and go to cafes but feels stifled by her family. The thing is that the reasons she's disabled is because she was a perfectly genetically designed baby to her parents' specifications, when that was wildly popular but before they knew the genetic risks of it. My favorite thing about her is getting to figure out how to describe symptoms that I spent much of my life learning to hide and even ignore

Peppermint: they're a genetically engineered cat-human hybrid, originally intended for military research, but between the genetic mixing being unstable (all the others died) and the lack of violent instincts, the project was abandoned. It is illegal, however, to purposely for any reason kill a sentient being, and so they remain in a nearly-empty lab on Deimos, while January the head scientist tries desperately to find some other use for them, since they aren't legally a person. Their only reprieve is their friend Void, an early prototype of artificial sentience, and the endless games of trivia the two play. My favorite thing about them is that I basically just wanted to write a cat person so threw them into my sci fi story to have fun with it

My works are usually just one POV, but I think I'm gonna stick with the central three characters of Soul 206 to match you better!

Neoma Liu: a 23-year-old small-time bassist turned boneless zombie person. Being the central POV, the narrative flips between their past self and their present self. Past Neoma is outwardly enthusiastic and inwardly insecure. They constantly feel like an outsider, and their desire to belong leads them to making some really bad decisions. Meanwhile, Present Neoma is still trying to figure out who they were, let alone who they are, and their journey is about unpacking both of those things and discovering what type of person they want to be. What I really like about them is the challenge of trying to separate and yet link those two characterizations together.

'Ash': a 22-year-old member of an Outsider community who was the first person to find Neoma. They grew up as an Outsider, but their past is full of traumas and pains that keep them from moving forward and becoming the type of person they truly want to be. As such, they're obsessed with the past, from their obsession with pre-apocalypse media, all the way down to their magic being able to see the past memories and emotions embedded into objects. My favorite thing about them is that it actually took a while for me to figure them out (up to and including their name), and I'm still learning more about them. It's like they're having to open up to me in addition to Neoma and the other characters.

Esther started off as The main character of Emerald Outpost, but now she’s one of 4 pov characters, largely because I so wanted to have her as a narrator After. And After she is the definition of unreliable narrator—traumatized, broken, cognition and memory problems from a brain injury. She dissociates and loses large gaps of time. Has trouble processing what’s happening or the correct response. The only reliable constants are her wife Phuong and her best friend Nasir. She doesn’t even feel like she knows her children anymore

She’s been barely surviving, barely living, as a ghost of herself for years. But after Nasir gets sick, she grabs at any chance to save him, even if it means risking herself and her family again. Part of her welcomes the chance to be herself again, but herself isn’t who she was, and she has to figure out how to accept that

And…

Pixel: they're 30-ish and autistic and nonverbal and live in the "underworld," which is basically the caverns carved out beneath the surface of Mars for factories. They're taken care of by their older brother Wire, but since he's also disabled they don't even have the security of a factory job and have to get by selling scraps and illegally fixing mods. My favorite thing about them is that, even though they need more support than me, I gave them a lot of my autistic traits and the inability to push through certain things that I sometimes wish I couldn't and thus didn't have to. Plus they're such a goofy nerd

Ri: he's in his early 20's and was perfectly healthy, if a bit reckless. He just made one mistake in trusting the wrong person to give him the newest illicit mods, and now his brain doesn't work that well anymore. He hallucinates and has extreme "staticky" brain fog that interrupts both his thinking and his sensing of the world around him. At the start of the book, he's homeless on the surface of Mars, which is rough but even more than that there's always the danger of being thrown down into the underworld, which is even worse. He desperately misses his brother but at the moment his only friend is Wolfy, a schizophrenic old lady who took him under her wing to make sure he didn't starve. My favorite thing about him is writing from his perspective, because I really enjoy telling stories through the eyes of characters who can't fully process or understand what's happening

Za'Niyah: she's 30-ish but still lives with her parents, because she's disabled and has that luxury among the spires of Mars where the wealthy and educated professionals live. I gave her a slightly more severe version of my ataxia, but otherwise she's a normal woman, with friends, who likes to read and go to cafes but feels stifled by her family. The thing is that the reasons she's disabled is because she was a perfectly genetically designed baby to her parents' specifications, when that was wildly popular but before they knew the genetic risks of it. My favorite thing about her is getting to figure out how to describe symptoms that I spent much of my life learning to hide and even ignore

Peppermint: they're a genetically engineered cat-human hybrid, originally intended for military research, but between the genetic mixing being unstable (all the others died) and the lack of violent instincts, the project was abandoned. It is illegal, however, to purposely for any reason kill a sentient being, and so they remain in a nearly-empty lab on Deimos, while January the head scientist tries desperately to find some other use for them, since they aren't legally a person. Their only reprieve is their friend Void, an early prototype of artificial sentience, and the endless games of trivia the two play. My favorite thing about them is that I basically just wanted to write a cat person so threw them into my sci fi story to have fun with it

celebratory group shot + lloyd I did as a lil thank you to my mailing list :3

I'm writing a story about octopus merfolk and while reading about octopi I found out about how they reproduce only once in their life and then their body breaks down and they die, as if a programmed self-destruct. I thought it could make for some interesting angst for the protagonists but it got me thinking about the broader implications for how their society and culture would view this biological reality.

Octopi, salmon, many insects. There are a lot of species that do this! I think for an actual civilization to be created with this form of reproduction, there would need to be other adults present who are not involved in reproduction who can then gather the infants and raise them. Raising young is how generational knowledge passes on, after all! So somewhere in the early years, someone must be available to support these little ones.

For something like octopus people, maybe the egg dens with their dying mothers are a sort of sacred space. A mother might pass along her life story to another adult, someone tasked with keeping her record to pass it down to her children. There could be a whole religion around mothers, honoring their great sacrifice.