#mecharose

Bones! That word appears in the draft eight times.

My favorite is this one:

From this ask game

8/49. which ocs use/would use technology the most? which ocs will let a device run to low battery? which ocs will charge a device at 80%?

Circuit and Mobo are definitely the techies of the War Machines. While they both find satisfaction in knowing their tools are at 100%, neither of them like to interrupt their work to charge anything. They're at their best when they have duplicate devices so they can trade them off when one has a low battery.

I've always kind of kept it vague on purpose because I feel like it wouldn't just be one event? Like it would be several things overlapping and people would just be trying to survive it, sort of like we're doing in real life lol.

The story originally was only defect and it branched out so much that I had to come up with a general tag for the whole verse/world all the stories take place in, and there was a line jed says in defect, "this is a country of orphans," so it just kind of stuck.

Anyway lol that's not what you asked. Um, so some factors went into the apocalypse. These aren't all of them, but they're in there:

- global warming. the coasts flooded and hurricanes and tornadoes tore up a bunch of shit and people had to try to move further inland to not die. half of "texas" is flooded and the towns in Paper Heart and the blackwood school wip are like around the top of texas close to oklahoma. Supposedly.

- A zombie plague hit that made it so anyone who dies reanimates and eats human flesh. So basically your only options are cremation or weighing the body down with heavy stones so they can't climb out of the grave and kill people.

(There's also a fungus or pollen that makes people go into berserker mode but that's a separate issue.)

- The united states collapsed. in the present day stuff of OCV america isn't really a thing. There aren't states. The area outside the cities are just referred to as the Wasteland.

- there was a high mortality rate at one point. people struggled to have children. this is one of the reasons people in OCV will just adopt kids sometimes.

- all the death made spots where the veil between our world and places like Limbo became thin, so beings like demons and gods come through easier.

- there are a lot of cults.

Send me a Trope and I’ll rate it!

No | rather not | I dunno | I guess | Sure | Yes | FUCK yes | Oh god you don’t even know |

I love this trope. The mutual respect they have as friends, and then the feelings growing deeper, and the possibility of mutual pining? Yes please!

I think the one that hits the hardest for me is the screamers / the crinoid zombies.

The FLOAT world is difficult to survive in. Even in a stable, looped current, there are storms, starvation, dehydration, sickness--people die. And rather than let their bodies float around in the current with them, the Oasis chooses to sink their bodies.

This wasn't a problem until a spawn of passive parasites got caught in the current. Passive in the sense that they reproduce the way jellyfish do: blasting out a bunch of gametes into a current and hoping they match up. And parasitical in the sense that they hijack the brain of whatever they land on!

Their whole life cycle is based on getting eaten, like other parasites. Here's Aspen's explanation of them:

“They latch onto whatever creature they bump into and sink their tendrils into the brain. Most of the time, it’s supposed to happen while the victim is alive, but they can also work on dead things before the muscles have hardened.” “Okay, gross. Also, why?” “They make distress sounds that get the attention of predators." That's when I figure out what their references to "screamers" earlier means. I don’t know what kind of distress sounds fish make, but I know what humans sound like. “There are screaming zombies down there?" "Get eaten, then lay their eggs in the predator’s internal organs, and then the little baby screamers burst out of its corpse once they’ve grown up.”

For reference, this is a crinoid:

8. what are three things you're looking forward to next year?

I know I said this for 2024 too but I really want to finish the second draft of SOLE Project Book 2. It’s so close to happening and I really want to get to editing! Just let me finish the draft!!

I’m looking forward to working with Fiona more, too. I’m counting that as two because we need to finish drafting and edit FLOAT.

10. which character(s) turned out differently from what you had planned? how so?

Interesting question! I’ve had to nerf River a bit more from previous drafts. When I’ve tried to write FLOAT before, she adapted to the whole alien planet thing way too quickly.

I made her more insecure this draft so she can keep more secrets from people out of fear of their reaction and so she can have a confidence character arc!

9. create a meme or moodboard that captures your past writing-year!

11. Write a 5 star review for your WIP.

5/5 entirely queer cast

12. Write a 1 star review for your WIP.

LOWKEY ACCURATE Mal does stupid shit. And gets drunk. Sometimes at the same time!!!

I think if Ash 1. Loosened up or 2. Had a Mental Breakdown she’d get sloshed and well she’s already reckless so