Joyouz

“So Mango, what are you?” Skizz asks, catching Grian and Gem off guard by that question.

“Skizz,” Gem says.

“What? We have to know if we want to give him a health potion. Not everyone can take health potion, some people melt.” Skizz says.

Grian stares at him.

He doesn’t want to become goop.

Gem opens her mouth but quickly closes it as she seems to think for a moment and gives a short nod. “Ok, you’re right. But there were better ways to word it.”

“How? Ask him what planet he was from?” Skizz says.

“Well—no. But there has to be a better way than asking ‘what are you’,” Gem says.

Before the two can banter even more, Grian breaks it with something that has been pestering him since he woke up in the cell.

“Grian,” he says, earning looks from Skizz and Gem.

“You’re a Grian?” Skizz asks.

“I never heard of a Grian,” Gem says.

When writing, I have a skeleton baseline of what events I want for that chapter and rough concepts of how they should happen.

But the key words are ‘skeleton baseline’, cause while writing things tend to easy shift and I have this thing called a brain that won’t shut off with different ideas.

So now I have a few scrap ideas that didn’t make it into chapter 5!!

And instead of boxing them in, I want to show them off. While they didn’t make the cut, it doesn’t mean that they were bad. They just didn’t fit anymore.

So here we go!

Jelly is basically a cat sized biased mood ring. She has orange eyes, twin tails, and smoky grey fur normally.

Now I say normally cause she’s a biased mood ring. Her fur can shift colors to show emotion whenever she wants.

Yellows, pinks, and oranges typically mean happiness, love, and give me more treats.

Blues and greens can mean sadness, surprise, and disgust.

Purples show a mark of curiosity, focus and deep interest while browns show an array of caution and hesitation.

Dark reds however mean fear, anger, distress and she wants to kill it.

Now, again, biased mood ring. Her fur shows off her emotions and therefore her opinion. For example, she may show dark reds if she sees something that she wants to eat. All based off of her opinion.

Other features the Jelly does are her head rotation and the sounds she makes. She can rotate her head almost 180° and instead of the normal purring sounds ya would expect from a cat, Jelly makes a trilling sound with soft clicks.

Chapter 5-

Please Don’t Eat Me

What did Scar call her again? Mau something. Maukin? Mauque? Maukun?

Yeah, that last one sounds about right.

Jelly sits, tails flicking, head tilting almost completely to the side, eyes locked onto his.

Oh, come on. He can do this.

Exhaling, Grian slowly crouches, careful not to scare her off. He raises his hand out towards her.

She rises, approaching more slowly. They watch each other carefully, neither moving too fast.

“Please don’t eat me. I taste like mango cubes and they’re awful.” Grian says, as she sniffs his hand, whiskers twitching against his skin.

Remembering Scar mentioning something about scratching behind her ears, Grian reaches up to do just that. Almost immediately warm streaks of yellows, pinks, and oranges ripple across her grey fur where Grian touches her. She presses into his hand, a low trilling sound rising out of her, broken up by strange small, quiet clicks.

“Oh, aren’t you adorable,” Grian says, his other hand joining in on petting her.

The device turns slowly in the projection, its edges flickering faintly as it displays a small, blocky unit about the size of a thick book, with a set of narrow rings wrapped around its middle.

“It’s a thruster sync unit,” Impulse says. “The one we have now is cracked. Without it, the ship won’t handle cleanly.”

Grian straightens in his seat. He doesn’t recognize the part, but that sounds like a—

“Control response,” he says under his breath, before he can stop himself.

On the feed, Impulse glances up briefly before looking back at the projection. Gem’s ears flick once, weight shifting slightly.

“A what?” Skizz asks, all four eyes narrowing, earwings tilting to the side.

Scar glances up a second late. “Wait. What?”

“It won’t stop where you want it to,” Grian says, glancing toward the console. “You turn, and it keeps going. You have to fight it to keep it where you want it.”

Impulse grins wider. “Yeah! That’s it!”

I had a ton of fun creating the alien designs for Impulse, Gem, Skizz, and Scar. While working on them, I kept thinking about their species and how they function.

So here we go! I gather a couple of fun facts that I really loved and imported into the final designs!

Impulse

Impulse’s species are the Manur.

Impulse is consider quite tall for his people, standing at 4’8

Some Manur have 6 arms

The dust coating on Manur is not decorative, it’s apart of their skin

Stone-like clusters naturally grow in these areas dust coated areas

These areas act as natural armor

Gem

Gem is a Luzmori

The reason why Gem is so brightly colored is because it’s a natural camouflage on her home planet

Gem has really good hearing

Her split ears help with directional hearing

The raised heels stance that Gem has ain’t really a choice, she’s basically on permanent tippy toes

Skizz

Skizz is a Caelrok

He has 4 eyes, the smaller 2 often half lidded unless they’re focusing

While he can fly, Skizz’s 4 wings are not built for speed, instead they are built for power

The earwings are very expressive

The Caelrok have strong lungs, able to breathe fine in high altitudes

Scar

Scar is a Vexlar

As well as Cub

Yes, the Vexlar are based off the Minecraft mob Vex

The Vexlar are cannibals to their own kind, hence the sharp teeth

Vexlar wings allow them to glide only

Some of Scar’s scars are from surging attacks from other Vexlars

Scar can glide but not as long as other Vexlar

In the Definitely a Real AI, the hardest thing by far has to be picking finalized alien descriptions for Skizz, Gem, Scar, and Impulse.

I’ve been trying to imagine those 5 as aliens before I even started writing and let me say, there has been many ideas.

General Goals

Designing Skizz, Gem, Scar, and Impulse as aliens was somewhat challenging. So I set up 3 goals for myself.

Alien yet not Alien

Embody the Character

Simpler the better

1. Alien yet not Alien

When designing alien designs, it can be very easy to get lost in the rabbit hole of alien designs. I could come up with hundreds of designs.

However the more alien a design gets, the more it loses focus and too complicated. I did not want to over complicate the design and lose the character.

2. Embody the Character

Another key thing I knew I needed to do to make the designs good was embody the character.

I can’t just throw darts to a wall and see what lands. No, what I wanted to do was pull elements that had prior connections to said character.

Example: Skizz and angels. He is commonly associated with angels in fan arts.

This way, people can read the descriptions along and have a good chance of figuring out who’s who without seeing the name.

3. Simpler the Better

Alien designs can get out of wack quick. So many cool features could be added. But with all these cool features, the easier it is to over complicate things and get lost.

So without further ado, let me stop blabbering and start talking the reject concepts. I have rejected whole concepts and also rejected single features that at the time felt cool but ultimately threw away.

Finalized Designs of the GIGS

Here is a more detailed version of each alien character. I’ll have another post about the rejected versions I had before.

Impulse

Standing at 4’8, Impulse is considered tall for his species. He has broad shoulders to help balance his 4 arms with 6 fingers.

Impulse has brown hair with a brown beard. He has 2 short curved horns on his forehead. Rounded ears, regular eyes, and human like face.

Special feature Impulse has are these brown dust-like cluster areas that are at his joints. More so the elbows, knees, and shoulders rather than the finger joints. There are embedded rock-like that are slightly sticking out. These areas are actually act like natural armor.

Gem

Gem is a brightly colored alien with her lavender skin, dark purple speckles on her hairline and shoulders, vivid red hair, and bright green eyes. She stands at 5’3.

Cool thing about her eyes is that she has double eyelids. Her ears are long and sharply angled, each one splitting near the end into two distinct tips, the upper extending slightly farther than the other.

Now she has 2 legs however she has a slightly elevated stance, her heels rarely touching the ground. She has no need for shoes, as she has a smooth, split contact surface. Hoof-like structure to help ya picture it more. Her legs are not a full Z like structure but they are not straight either.

Skizz

Skizz has black hair and 4 blue eyes. 2 regular sized eyes where eyes normally go with 2 smaller ones below and slightly offset to the side. The smaller eyes are normally half-lidded.

Skizz also has 2 off white earwings, right where one would find ears. These earwings are very expressive.

Skizz has a broad, solid, body structure. He has a deep slate-tone with scars mainly on his arms. He has 5 fingers.

Finally, Skizz are 4 off-white wings. The upper pair, when spread out, go past Skizz’s arm stretch. Meanwhile his lower set just cut short of his arm stretch.

Scar

Being the lanky, tall, alien that he is, Scar stands at 6’1. Scar has an overall light-blue tone with light blue scars all over. He has green eyes, sharp pointy teeth, and pointy ears to match. Scar also has 4 fingers.

Scar has 2 membrane wings extending from his back. When spreading out his arms and wings, Scar’s wings barely past his elbows.

Scar’s wings were never meant for flying, only gliding. His wings are tattered, edged uneven, with small tears that never healed quite right.

Chapter 4:

We’re Calling That a Win

The answer was immediately.

The moment he said yes, the aliens whooped in celebration. No. The GIGS whooped, loud enough that Grian flinched in his seat. They left soon after that, voices overlapping as they talked about repairs, most of it going over Grian’s head. The only thing he caught was that they’d be back in the morning with their own ship.

That night he tried getting some sleep, but he just ended up tossing and turning all night. The ‘what ifs’ haunted him, dragging him from the edges of sleep. Honestly, he wasn’t surprised when the roar of a ship split through the quiet, rattling the walls and jolting Grian wide awake as he stumbled out of bed.

One member of the GIGS, Skizz, if Grian had it right, announced their presence again. He told ‘Mango’ not to worry. In no time, the ship wouldn’t be running on emergency power, and they would be back soon.

Half an hour passed before the lights and buttons lit up as the ship hummed with power. A low vibration running through the floor. However, Grian didn’t hear the GIGS return after that. He tried waiting, listening for them to come back. Straining for any sound beyond the hum of the ship.

One minute passed.

Then two.

Then ten.

Then more.

Chapter 4 (We’re Calling That a Win) Sneak Peak:

“Gosh, darn it. Why won’t you just stay- stay!” Scar hisses, cutting himself off mid-ramble about galactic zoos. Something clatters to the floor. “Dang it,” he grumbles. “That’s the third time. Third! Same panel!”

Tools clink. Scar’s probably back at the panel again.

“Say, Mango,” Scar says, like the thought just hit him. “What do you do all day, anyway?”

A pause.

“-not that you don’t do anything! I mean-” Scar rushes to correct. “Like… when we’re not here, what do you do? Just… think ship thoughts?”

Grian bites the inside of his cheek. He should stay silent. An AI wouldn’t answer that.

Grian hesitates, then activates the speaker.

Still.

It’s been a long time since he’s had a real conversation. And it’s not like one answer will give him away.

…Right?

If you are interested, come read Definitely a Real AI to catch up before chapter 4 drops! Click below if ya wanna check it out.

Chapter 3:

This Was Named Under Duress

A dull thud echoes, followed by the scrape of something metallic being shifted outside. “Okay, doors are not responding and the thrusters are down. The engine looks good-“ a quick tap against metal, “-we just have to clean them. Navigation’s corrupt, security is fine. The AI is active but on the glitchy side. Got some missing internal plating and wires, “ another light knock, “but we can definitely fix this.” The alien, Dippledop, explains.

“Awesome! How long are we talking?” Skizz begins to ask but Grian’s mind catches on one word Dippledop said.

Security.

Slowly, carefully, Grian rises from his seat. If there’s security then there has to be cameras. He moves towards the console as quietly as he can. Maybe if he can get the cameras working, he can figure out who he’s dealing with.

Eyes focused on the console, his hands hover above the unfamiliar buttons. He’s about to click a yellow one when his elbow knocks into a tool he had sitting on the console. The tool clatters to the ground, all too loud.

Grian freezes and so does the conversation outside. Movement answers him. Low shuffling, a series of clicks and the faint scrape of something solid against metal.

Grian holds his breath.

Silence.

Then-

“Hello?” Scar calls out, his voice careful now. “Who’s there?”