Getting Bullied

On the post Getting Terrorized, I talked about this a little, but not as much as I’d meant to.  Our country was taken over by your high school bully.  This is what has happened.  There are people who look at a bully and think, great, we need somebody like that to keep the dweebs in line, or to show the bitches they ain’t shit, or whatever.  Or just think, that guy creates a tough environment, which is what we need, so people can get hard or go home, burn the losers, allow the winners to reap the rewards of their righteous might.

What’s wild to me is that many victims of bullying share this mentality – become bullies themselves, or the enablers and fanboys of bullies.  If that wasn’t you, great.  I don’t get these fools.  I know a guy that did a lot of primary research on gamergate, and found a very informative chat log.  The one thing GGers had in common was feeling frustrated in their attraction to women.  There were actually cisgender lesbians in that chat, which may surprise you.  But more relevant to this discussion, whenever a stereotypical bully came into the chat and started calling people slurs and nerds, basically shoving them in lockers, they welcomed their new bully overlords.  Few had the spine to tell off somebody with bully swagger, even though it was an entirely online situation – jock muscles didn’t figure into it.

And so you see the incels / PUAs / MRAs and their juniors flocking to fascism.  Andrew Tate could literally call them shit, to their faces, and they’d accept it.  These are a non-zero amount of people who voted orange last november.  Bullied bully fans.

And then there are magats that are just bullies themselves.  Your high school bully never changed.  They just learned to hurt people in more socially acceptable ways.  A non-zero amount of them became murderers, the majority are just republican.  Which might as well be murderers, to be fair.  Cruelty is the point, hurting those they perceive as weak gets them off.

Of the quarterish of USians that voted bully, many of them are not bullies proper.  They’re para-bullies.  Second string bullies.  The people who didn’t bully you, but did laugh when you were bullied.  Thoughtless, social cowards, creeps.  But not active bullies themselves, unless their victim is extremely powerless against them – like infants, or small animals.  I’m guessing the average GOP wife abuses her children, or animals, or disabled people, in small ways whenever they can.  You know.  The kind of nurses you pray you won’t get when you’re laid up at the hospital.

Hey maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe those fucking shitheads are just outrageously foolish rubes.  Easily led sheep for the sacrifice.  What is it, conservatives.  Are you fools or fascists?  Ain’t no third option under your big nasty tent.

I meant to talk about the guys in office (or privileged to be in the criminal syndicate), not the voters.  I just get mad and lose focus.  Yeah.  Orange man bad.  Not even a man.  There is no agenda except brutality and brazen theft, and cruelty for you and I.  Cruelty specifically for anybody who thinks cruelty is bad.  The cry of the bully, when confronted with their moral superiors: “Ya think you’re better than me?”  Yes, I know I’m better than you.

Motherfucken jeffrey dahmer was arguably a better person than the current president.  Huge piece of shit, thought his orgasm was more important than the human lives that he stole.  But ya know, scale matters.  No question orange worm has a massively higher body count – including so very very many of his own followers!  And he’s such a soulless gasbag I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he’s killed people for sexual pleasure.  He’ll probably be bragging about getting away with it by the time midterms roll around, just to test how badly they’ve broken the political system by then.

Ahh… still still still, too mad.  Gotta cool it.  Gotta cool it.

Would anybody be terribly disappointed if I avoided political topics for a good long while here?

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Unthinkable Bastards

Can you even imagine what it’s like to have the mindset of the rich?  It’s like imagining the mindset of a bully, but even more exotically evil.  You’ve got all those resources, and all you can do is sit with them in your castle, petulantly chanting to yourself day in day out that you deserve it all.

Looking at the greedy shits around you and imagining that’s representative of humanity – that we, down here in the streets wondering how we’re gonna pay for housing are somehow thirsting after your shitty hot rod.  Motherfucker, I can’t live in your hot rod.  I don’t want a house so big I need to pay other people to clean it for me, because there are not enough hours in the day to do it myself.  I don’t need that bullshit and I don’t want it.

I don’t want a billion dollars, but if I magically had it?  If you, my readers, magically had it?  Can you imagine giving a fuck to keep it?  To squat over it like a dragon while people are feeling real pain and deprivation around you in the world?  Can you imagine being that petty and twisted?

Economic inequity does harm my morals.  It doesn’t make me lust for wealth.  It makes me indifferent to the lives of the wealthy.  I should care about all people, but if you’re wealthy enough?  I wouldn’t shed a tear about your tiny milk-fed infants being bayonetted by bolsheviks.

I can’t see you as human because y’all never show any of the positive traits associated with my species.  You’ve turned yourselves into something else, and it’s not something that’s worth a drop of my concern.  Seriously.  Rich people can fuckin’ die, man.

But we shouldn’t kill them, of course.  I keed, I keed.  This is why I often think of people who are supreme pacifists, who would not see the worst person in the world put to death, and I have affection for them.  That’s what we should all be like, if we were able.  We should be kind.  I admire it.

And I blame bullies, and I blame con men and thieves and crooked politicians, and above these I blame the rich, for taking that kindness from me.  Maybe I could have tried harder to hold onto it.  I don’t know.  But seriously?

The rich, and all of their possessions, and all that they know, these are worth less than shit to me.  If I live to see the consequences of their actions flush their existence down the drain, I’ll smile.  It won’t feel good – I don’t like to feel hatred – but it will feel right.

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Besteningening

I’ve made lists of my husband’s favorite things before, for various purposes.  These were in sketchbooks, so I’m gonna try to distill and elaborate on them here, for use with my upcoming zany writing schemes…

LIKES

Movies:  Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, The Thing, Cure, The Shining, Jacob’s Ladder, Gothic, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tetsuo: Iron Man, Akira, Perfect Blue, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Session Nine, Vampyre, Tale of a Vampire, The Cat, Kairo, Night of the Living Dead, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Little Otik, Crimson Peak, Videodrome, Event Horizon

Some take-aways from that:  character-centric horror, indelible imagery, iconic qualities, if it ain’t literally the end of the world it feels like the end of the world.  dreams.  monsters.  beautiful people.  beautiful people who are monsters.  small central casts.

Stories, Books, and Comic Books:  The Metamorphosis, Fall of the House of Usher, Lost Souls, The Strange Tale of Panorama Island (both versions), My Sweet Audrina, The Necrophiliac, Hellstar Remina, The Laughing Vampire

Some take-aways from that:  gothic drama, cold-hearted beauties, violence, style, ultimate corruption.

Visual Art:  Edward Hopper, Francis Bacon, Hieronymus Bosch, Malcolm Liepke, JC Leyendecker, Stephen Gammell, Suehiro Maruo

Some take-aways from that:  That stuff is pretty varied, but a lot of it ranges from spooky to horrific, from stylish and elegant to exploding with lurid detail.

Games:  Silent Hill (best to worst 3 2 1 4), Sanitarium, The Dark Eye, The Secret World, Rule of Rose, Fallen London, Kult

Some take-aways from that:  good storytelling, it’s all horror games, an emphasis on parallel / hidden worlds.

Music: The Cure, Bauhaus, Tr/st, Drab Majesty, Qual, Joy Division, The Pixies, Fad Gadget, Grauzone, Depeche Mode

Some take-aways from that:  dark romance, frenetic agony, convulsive energy, awkward alienation, depression, laughing at one’s own depression, literary references, intellectualism.

Keep it Short:  Short stories, even so short as to be simple vignettes, like Fuan no Tane.  He always likes this better than long form fiction, which is funny, because he wants more of what he likes, right?  The best compromise if I’m shooting for longer length, I think, is to make sure each part holds up well on its own – has internal interest and its own arc.

Fashion:  Description of what characters are wearing, or other things related to their milieu or subculture – the food they eat, the things they drink, the music they listen to.  I don’t think he always needs this – many of his favorite short stories don’t get much into those details – but he likes it when it shows up.  Describing what characters are wearing, or what they look like at all, can throw a brick on your story’s pace.  I think the writers most concerned about that would be people like myself who are heavily influenced by cinema, but it’s a mistake to forget what medium you’re working in.  Sometimes people wanna know what stuff looks like, sometimes they don’t.  Gotta find your audience and play to it.  In this case, easy, it’s just one guy who I know well.

Looking back at the original notes, he specifically said he likes to see “makeovers.”  That’s tremendously gay.  I’m into it.  Not sure how well suited it will be to gothic genre fiction, if that’s what I make.  What the hell am I going to make?

Colorful Color:  My dude may be goth, but at heart he retains some element of that childhood attraction to green pterodactyls and purple dragons.  New Wave fashion, the makeup on New Romantics, the colors of Lisa Frank art.  Black paired with rainbow.  This is more a thing he is drawn to in visual art, but a reference to nifty colors in a book might go over well.

Simple Language:  I don’t think my dude is as much into this as he was when he made the older of the lists I was reading.  Since then, he has read and enjoyed The Turn of the Screw and Blood Meridian.  Though he did not read the latter in a linear fashion; he hopped around in it, reading parts at random until he was done.  He said it was what he imagined xtians get out of reading the bible – open to a random page for inspiration.  That book was a lot less about the overarching plot than the vignette and the character, I think.

Just the same, I think I know what he was getting at when he added “simple language” to the list.  We’ve both read amateur writing that tried to impress by using strange sentence structure or confusing metaphors.  Best to avoid that kind of shit, I’m sure.

Descriptions:  My husband has mixed opinions on how much description to include or not include in a story.  He has a piece of Stephen King advice memorized that he finds useful – that what’s left to a reader’s imagination is something they can make their own, actually immerse them in the story more effectively than telling them what to see.  His example was having a character step into a bar for a short scene, and only mentioning two details – like the bar being sticky or the bartender having hairy arms.  Something like that, I don’t recall specifics and didn’t feel like looking it up.

That is sound advice, but by contrast, sometimes an author wants to cast a spell, pull us more fully into their own world, and my dude has enjoyed that kind of writing a lot as well.  Since he has this flexibility, I think it might behoove me to use another metric for deciding how much and how little description to include.  Here’s a good one:  The more description you include, the more time slows down; the less, the faster it goes by.  I’ll just use description to control pace, or cover important details…

I say that, but I’ll probably just fall back on my evil ways and describe stuff however I please.  It’s a real hard habit to change – maybe those kind of changes are best left to subsequent drafts.  Looking back at the original notes, one says, “vivid description but not too dry.”  I think I tend to hit this mark with no effort.

Writing Actions:  A caution against excessive blocking.  Most of us are thinking visually, or acting out what a character does in our heads, so we feel the need to say “he put his hand on his chin” forty-seven times in a book, when one would probably suffice.  How often does it really matter if something happened on the right or left side?

Environmental Activism:  Not actual environmentalist themes, which would be an intrusion of depressing realities best left to other authors.  When my husband is looking at the work of amateur writers, the number one thing he harps on is that they do not establish what the hell is happening – the first element being where it’s happening.  They’re too eager to get into dialogue between their fun funboys, but are they in a rundown apartment or the Gobi Desert?  That shit kinda matters.

Establishing shots are a thing in cinema; descriptions of where your story opens have been de rigueur for hundreds of years for a reason.  In fair Verona where we lay our scene…  I don’t think I’m going to have a problem with this.  I don’t think like those kids.  RIP to them, but I’m different.

Identifiable, Well-Conceived Characters:  Stephen King does well enough at this most of the time, but his failures are notable.  As a boomer, he can maybe detect the subtle differences between white people with strained marriages and kids they don’t pay adequate attention to, better than we can.

Lovable Characters:  I don’t think he’s as much about this now as he used to be, but he’s still 100% not into unlikable characters, which is something a surprising amount of writers and readers are fond of.  I know he hates anything that feels twee or like it’s for babies, so even the beloved Dale Cooper is pushing it a little, sometimes.  People having likable flaws is good.

Romance Beginning or Being Renewed:  A lot of drama is wrung out of relationships going bad; he is not interested in that.  I’ll avoid it.  He does like to see a romance begin, or be reaffirmed in the course of a story.  Less depressing.

Humor:  My husband doesn’t like a lot of humor writing, but the humor in the writing he likes?  He likes it a lot.  He also tends to include elements of humor in most of his stories, at least a tiny dash here or there.  The kind of humor I’d be reaching for: Kiyoshi Kurosawa (wry, dark, feminist, humanist), David Lynch (people acting like wacky monsters, other people having gentle quirkiness, awkward situations as long as they aren’t too humiliating, parody like Invitation to Love or What did Jack Do?), parody of the banal things of life such as brand names and TV shows, breaks in tension at dramatically appropriate moments, etc.

Horror:  Typically of the surreal, science-fiction, or fantastical origin – a menace you would not encounter in real life.  Feeling disempowered in real life, he cannot relate to the power fantasies of being able to action hero your way out of danger.  He likes the Raid movies some, but not as much as me.  Horror as a genre is incredibly diverse.  On one end, there are action horror stories, where the characters survive and / or defeat the evil because they are so cool.  Not his jam.  Another expression is lurid interest in physical and psychological trauma, as one sees in “torture porn,” or edgelord films like Last House on the Left.  Also not his main interest, though occasionally there’d be some appeal in some amount of that.  Lastly, you have the disempowered character being confronted with a source of mortal fear, and doing their best to escape or survive.  That’s the stuff.  Another use of horror as a theme rather than a genre is to express a powerful feeling, as the surreal elements of a David Lynch film.

Survival Horror:  Of his favorite things, not a lot in this category.  Significantly Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo and the Silent Hill games.  What does he like about it?  I’m guessing it isn’t the “chance to return to zero, and make your way by wits and steel” like the main run of zombie genre fans, or the desire for a faceless mob you can mow down without compunction either.  Maybe there’s some allure in not having as many people around, since he has the shyness.  There’s another way that could interact with social anxiety – the circumstance gives an obvious way to bond with strangers, to overcome shyness.  If you’re a survivor, you have something in common.  But I think, broadly, this is just an extension of what he likes about horror.  It is believable and relatable to be in a circumstance you must react to, exciting when it’s a scary circumstance that is not one you would actually experience in real life.

Ambiguous or Inhuman Enemies:  This can be true in both survival horrors like Kairo and Silent Hill, and in works that include surreal horror like Twin Peaks and Lost Highway.  I haven’t seen all of the new / final season of Twin Peaks yet, but I somehow doubt that within it Lynch and Frost spelled out exactly wtf Bob and the doppelgangers were.  One has to wonder to what extent even the writers themselves left things intentionally undefined.  Spirits?  Aliens?  Alien spirits?  What does it mean to be a “magician” in that world?

While as a writer I tend to spell this shit out pretty specifically, I think I can manage the restraint to make an ambiguity work.  On the other hand, people did express some confusion about Josefina and Blasfemia, so I should tread carefully.

Suspense:  I don’t tend to instinctually think like this, as a writer – gotta force it.  Remember when I said I was going to aim to write a Dan Brown-style thriller?  I very thoroughly planned and outlined it, but didn’t get very far into writing.  Nonetheless, I can’t wait to get back to that project, because the preparation did help a lot.  The writing was very fun.  But making it suspenseful?  For this I had to make a conscious effort in my outline to include all the tips and tricks famous people like Brown and (much more importantly) Hitchcock have given on the subject.  It’s a cool way to make a story compelling.  Even cheap tricks can work well; they exist for a reason.  But I may have to take a very different approach if I want to land on David Lynch instead of John Grisham, you know what I mean?

Mystery:  Silent Hill, Mulholland Drive, Cure, these works all had a significant sense of mystery to them.  Not a whodunit among them, but still, you are led to wonder a lot, which is compelling to a guy like him.  I’m a basic bitch for stories spoonfeeding me.  Perhaps I’m a touch incurious – too assured that I understand everything I need to understand in life, and that anything outside of that domain can stay mysterious if it so desires.  But I think this’ll be a lot easier than suspense to work into any given story idea.  All I gotta do is come up with a bunch of stuff that is never shown on the page – only alluded to – and thereby invite speculation.

Should be important stuff, something you might actually care to know.  I’ve seen amateurs put a mysterious but uninteresting character in front of you, and in asking for feedback say “what do you want to know about this guy?”  Gotta make sure the answer, in my case, isn’t “not much.”

DISLIKES

Story Too Long:  He much prefers short stories to novels.  Contradiction:  He writes novels.  What’s up with that, man?  He also wants to see a lot more of the things he likes – like Silent Hill games, which turned to shit before their time.  You can’t get more of what you love without said thing going long, one way or another.  For my part, I’ll probably keep what I write on the short side for a novel, with room for a sequel.

Description Too Dry:  Too much description, or description that creates a dull, uninteresting tone.  I’m a lazy writer.  Won’t catch me penning anything like the first chapter of Mysteries of Udolfo, so I think this is not a problem.

Unnecessary Information / Overlong Exposition:  When we develop a sci-fi or fantasy setting, or an elaborate web of conspiracy or intergenerational intrigue, we tend to want to lay out all of our work on the page.  Big mistake, for any audience except the ultragork, and my dude has a low tolerance for it.  I don’t expect this’ll be a problem for me.  On the other hand, maybe J & B would’ve made more sense if I spent more than the odd short paragraph on explanation…  Contradiction:  None; he’s pretty consistent about this.

Too Much Relationship Drama:  He probably has Post-raised-by-women-who-watch-Dynasty Stress Disorder.  A lot of stories get their mileage out of ups and downs in a relationship.  Oh no, is he cheating?  Is she jealous?  Is he planning to leave her?  Will absence make these hearts grow cold?  Contradiction:  He’s OK with including one of these things, but generally is true to this principle.  It just doesn’t interest him – or me.

Too Much Conversation:  When word count is tilted toward dialogue, this is a pet peeve for him.  Especially if the dialogue is redundant or adds nothing but mild character development to the story.  Contradiction:  None; even in real life he’s pretty stoic.  Maybe he doesn’t like chatty characters because he doesn’t relate.

Graphic Sex:  A lot of people agree with this, just find it tasteless to see a lot of dirty words in print, feels better when something is left to the imagination.  Contradiction:  How much sexual content is in David Lynch films?  In books he loves?  I suppose that can hinge on how one defines “graphic.”

Judgments / Shaming:  Too easy to relate to a character who is on the spot, beloathed.  As a child he used to identify with the villains in superhero stories, like Wesley Willis assuming Batman would kick his ass.  Contradictions:  If he hates an antagonist enough, they might get some amount of this.  But even then, not for long.  He once wrote a rush limbaugh -inspired character that was mocked by a demon for like two seconds before being sent to hell.  Don’t dwell on it.

Embarrassment Comedy:  You ever notice how much comedy – especially sitcoms and Farrelly brothers movies – revolves around humiliation?  You ever been humiliated?  How you responded to that experience may be the deciding factor in whether or not this humor works for you.  Personally, I fucken despise it.  Nuke it from orbit.  My dude has expressed as much to me, and I can’t see myself writing a scenario like this, even by accident.  Incidentally, the fetish some people have for humiliation is also beyond my comprehension, except insofar as I understand any intense experience could be sexualized.  Not my cup o’ tea.  More broadly, my husband doesn’t like reading about people being embarrassed, on the spot, upset, but… Contradiction:  The sad ending of Mulholland Drive hinges in part on the social horror of humiliation.  At least we’re not expected to laugh at it.

Realistic Characters as Impediment to Story:  It might be realistic for characters to have a slow time adjusting to a fantastic circumstance, but if they’re still getting used to the idea of zombies existing when the credits are about to roll, that shit is annoying.  Real life people tend to not have bold personality traits that line up with tropes, just being a muddle of contradictions and mild feelings about things.  Archetypes and tropes exist because they help storytelling, and shouldn’t be shunned to make your guys more boring.  Contradiction:  My husband, as a writer, does tend toward understated characters that don’t hew closely to existing archetypes, and can have complex motivation.  A sort of realism can work, if it doesn’t impede the story.  I don’t think I’ll have a hard time writing characters for him, in this way at least.

Inscrutable Characters:  Not everybody has to wear their heart on their sleeve or be obvious from go, but if you haven’t made at least a false sense of the character within a few chapters of their introduction, they’re kind of a non-entity, not interesting.  The Man of Mystery can’t be too mysterious.  Contradiction:  He’s down with the antagonist from Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, who seems to have amnesia throughout the picture, and has indecipherable motives.  What’s up with that, man?

References to Attractiveness:  Nobody is universally attractive.  Even if they look remarkable, different people will be struck by that differently.  I’ve only seen people with noteworthy eye color less than ten times out of thousands of people I’ve seen, and I wasn’t “arrested by their limpid pools,” hollering after them or trying to get those digits.  Some readers want a fantasy of everybody being horny for the character they identify with, but it reads like the insecurity of the author to me.  Not compelling, unrealistic in a bad way – a way that limits the narrative.  Contradictions:  My man likes the early works of Billy Martin, which have the sexy-to-everyone specialest boys in them.  I do think we’re mostly simpatico on this one and I’m not likely to transgress, but could I dip into it just a bit, for cheesy charm?

Self-Important and Self-Pitying Characters:  When the author identifies too much with the character, there’s a tendency to treat them even more preciously than we treat ourselves in real life.  At least, I’m hoping that’s the reason characters are sometimes written like this, because if they are reflecting their authors accurately, those authors are not appealing people.  It comes off like more insecurities.  Sometimes it will be a character clinging too tenaciously to the comforts of their cute little status quo.  Sometimes they’ll overreact to perceived slights and disrespect.  Sometimes they will just seem absolutely uninterested in other characters in the story.  Sometimes they’ll react to any suffering imposed by the narrative with too much sniveling and whining.  Not every character has to be stoic manjobs, but this stuff sucks.  Especially when the Universe of the story agrees with their point of view – everybody around them is unreasonable, every inconvenience they experience truly is a cosmic injustice, etc.  Contradictions:  My dude likes gothic writing, which does have a lot of self-pity on display.  But, y’know, when you’re being poisoned by your grandma and your uncle is driving you insane with snakes in the parlor so he can steal your inheritance, self-pity might be in order.  He’s clarified this for me more recently – impotent rage is the least appealing expression to him, reminiscent of incels.

Characters too Edgy:  Stories that expect you to identify with a rapist – why are there so damn many of these?  Ditto other stripes of creep.  This is easy enough to avoid.  Contradiction:  My husband likes some stories with grody MCs, altho the out for that is when the author is not asking the reader to agree with them, like EA Poe with his various murderer-narrators.

Gross-outs:  We personally know a talented new writer who loves to write about sloppy piles of guts and excrement.  My dude has a reasonable amount of respect for her, but is decidedly not on the same page for that stuff.  Contradiction:  The part in Ranpo’s Panorama Island which luridly describes the double’s sorta-fresh corpse gets a thumbs up, as does the writing of Gabrielle Wittkop, such as The Necrophiliac.  Hm.  I suppose, for horror, a good metric would be how it compares to Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive (originally Brain Dead).  That is clearly grody as hell for the sake of being grody, which is a no-go.  One of our writer friend’s short stories was very much like Dead Alive, or Reanimator.

Scary Animals:  It amuses me that this was on one of the lists because he has done extensive work on at least three novels with prominent use of animals for scares.  He has complex feelings on beasties.  I do hope he gets them ready for self-publishing; they are compelling.

Children and Babies:  Something about stories involving children or babies is extremely uninteresting to my dude, which makes sense for a non-breeder, but there’s more to it than that.  He also doesn’t like most literature written for children, no matter how much it works for the masses.  That’s part of why he never had to feel the disappointment of queen terf’s heel turn the way many people close to his age do.  Even if the characters are over eighteen, if they’re “coming of age” or “figuring themselves out,” it feels like kid stuff to him.  Contradiction:  I think he’s cool with scary kids, like Damian Omen and Sadako The Ring.

Boring Settings:  He just finds certain milieus uninteresting and boring – deserts, prisons, courtrooms, corporate / professional settings, extravagance and wealth.  Contradiction:  He has a line from The Trial tattooed on his body, the joaker.  Plus gothic stories are usually set in an environment of extravagance and wealth, if a decaying one.

Overly Detailed Settings:  Can’t have so much detail that it’s hard to remember or understand.  Contemporary setting is by far the best, if sci-fi or fantasy keep jargon constrained, minimize learning required.  For my part on this project, I’m definitely using a contemporary setting.

Crime Stories:  Again, a setting or milieu he finds uninteresting.  For me, it depends on the execution and the focus.  If the characters are all competent and cool criminals executing a hojillion dollar heist, less interesting than grotty fuckups getting into trouble.  But the grotty fuckups can easily become too unlikable.  For me Pulp Fiction really pushed the limit.  I generally can’t get behind those assholes, but the actors helped a lot.  Professional charisma havers.  You do not get this benefit in print!  Of topic.  Lessee… Contradictions:  He liked The Raid movies.  Twin Peaks is a murder mystery -esqe thing.  More than one Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie has police procedural elements.

Cars / Vehicles:  Like a boring setting to him, but also connects to a general lack of interest in action.  No Fast No Furious.

Action:  He doesn’t like action adventures – he does not like scenarios that show a character’s power, because it is unrelatable to somebody with chronic feelings of disempowerment, even as wish fulfillment.  Contradiction:  He is OK with action scenarios that are more about just barely surviving, horror content or scenarios that feel like horror content.  The Raid movies are relentless action, but horrifying.  He especially liked a scene of the dude from Matheson’s I Am Legend arriving late at his fortified home, which was swarming with vampires.

Too Many Enemies:  Not sure what he meant by this one.  May have just been an extension of how he doesn’t like longer form or overly complicated stories.

Heavy Topics:  Environmentalism, war, global strife, politics, homophobia, transphobia, racism, ignorance – even in antagonists.  It’s too real; my husband goes to literature to see problems that are not affecting him IRL.  Contradiction:  I think he can tolerate traces of this, but he’s pretty consistent about it.  The villain should be scheming to steal your kidneys for Satan, not hurting you because you are gay.

From Recent Discussion With Him:  Best stories are simple at their core, which is why he favors short form.  If I do something long, the length must not come from complexity within the story, or too many side plots and characters.  Asked which David Lynch movie involved the least time-wasting foolery, he said Blue Velvet.  I bet he’d say that of Eraserhead as well, if he had thought of it.  Asked for an example of something more like novel length that didn’t waste too much time, The Haunting of Hill House was mentioned, and Frankenstein.  He emphasized that fairy tales are a good model for elemental storytelling.

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This is more notes to myself and I have no special idea on what people should comment, if anybody feels like commenting, but as you please…

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Thinking About Comments

In the past, I’ve put up at least one post with closed comments, where I didn’t even want to see agreement about it, just wanted to get my word out and leave it.  I may take that approach more going forward, depending on the nature of the post.  Most of the time comments will be open, occasionally they may not – if I remember my thinking from this particular morning.

It has to do with why I’m making a post in the first place.  You may have noticed I cover a broader range of post types than some others on the network.  Sometimes it’s a creative exercise I’m making public for fun, sometimes it’s creative writing.  Sometimes it’s art criticism or response.  Sometimes I’m reacting to a shitty news or opinion article, sometimes expressing my view of the world, which is different enough from the mainstream that I feel justified in casting another voice into the void.  I probably have a few more post types I’m forgetting.

In mind of that, which posts would I not want comments on?

Mainly political things.  Not all of them, but some of them.  Sometimes I wonder if I should even discuss politics because it ain’t always great for my health.  I’ve been queuing (jeezis what a spelling on that word) posts so that by the time you read them they are days old, sometimes over a week, and you are about to see a few political posts, but eh…

Man I’m tired.  Woke up too early, no choice about going back to sleep on this particular morning.  I hope I can retire someday.  So tired.

–

New Sura Just Dropped

Should I call them suras?  My emerging personal religion has disparate influences, which could be read as holy texts, and as they are not currently part of a consolidated canon, they could be considered supplemental writing in the sense that islam’s suras.  I dunno.  I wouldn’t say apocrypha because that term denotes status as non-canon, which isn’t possible if there isn’t a canon.  Or wait, maybe there’s nothing but apocrypha.  A belief system of pure apocrypha.  I dunno.

I want people to regard these beliefs as earnest, and as religion.  Y’all jesus fucklers who use “atheism is a religion” as a gotcha, it still doesn’t make sense for atheism, but you can use it for whatever this thing is I’m putting together over here.  Especially if the schedule F party boss comes ’round the factory floor to inquisite about my unusual practices and appearance.

Before I introduce the new principle, let us contemplate these other mysteries of Chaos:

Ian Malcolm.  This level of control we attempt, it is not possible.

The Two Maxes.  Max Headroom shows us the blipvert of our current cyberpunk dystopia, Mad Max shows us the sorrow of the coming post apocalypse.

Hellstar Remina.  This text shows the way of being good when the whole world goes bad.

The Adversary.  Satan speaks truth to sanctimonious power – the truth that in the end there is no real power that a human can possess.

To these I add:

Restoring Biological Truth.  January 22 2025, the second most powerful man in the world decreed that all prior science on gender and sex was invalid, and the government of what is, for now, the most powerful nation in the world set about erasing from science all mention of sexual variation or ambiguity in the natural world or in human beings.

When I was an atheist I clung to the idea that science was the truest arbiter of reality, and so I must concede that whatever is allowed to exist of science in this new world must be the only truth of reality.  Mans and womans are the only thing, nothing else exists, and gender is the delusion of insane sex criminals like myself.

However.  If my belief that gender and biological sex are both spectra is not scientifically valid, then it must come from somewhere other than science.  It must come from Revelation!  From a higher power!  That is the power that I believe, ardently and piously in, the power of Chaos to rend asunder clean boundaries, and make a mess of everything.

It is my religious duty to embody the power of Chaos, in specifically dressing counter to my state-mandated sex.  For if I do not carry the truth of Chaos upon my visage, I am disrespecting the highest power in the cosmos.  I do not love my god; I fear it, and live in this way to avoid its wrath.

Respect my religion.  Allow me to wear the garments of my faith.  Or concede that you do not actually care about freedom for any religion except a narrow range of christian denominations, and just fuck right off the planet in a spaceX deathtube at your earliest convenience.

Thank you.

–

Slices of You

Things are easier to cook when they’re thin.  You don’t have to cook them as long, so there’s less risk of overcooking if you watch what you’re doing.  And more importantly, less risk of some shit being burnt on the outside and raw or cold on the inside, which is an absolutely vile result.  I’m willing to bake or nuke something that comes with simple instructions, but otherwise it’s slicin’ and using a frying pan.

It’s also cool because you can get more of that crisp element of frying.  The outer edges and surface get crisp, and the thinner what you’re cooking is, the more of each bite that will posses that quality.  If it’s a vegetable I’m cooking, thin slices.  I don’t like the crunch of veggies, and thin veggies get soft faster in the pan.  Soft veggies for flavor, crisp meat or cheese… That’s the goods.

Even when cooking isn’t a consideration, I cut thin.  I got the idea from David Lynch.  Not to sound like a freak; feel like I’ve been mentioning him too much recently.  Some years ago I was watching an episode of Twin Peaks where Joan Chen was being tormented by (spoiler), losing her mind in the kitchen.  Her mental state was illustrated by having her slice an apple.  In America we almost always slice apples in wedges of roughly equal dimensions, but she was slicing it thin, like cheese or deli meat.

The scene had a sensuous quality, but maybe I just imagine that because Joan Chen is too beautiful.  Surely, she wasn’t supposed to be seen as erotic or romantic in that moment, not exactly.  But she can thin slice me any day, I tell you whut.

There’s an Electric Six song called Slices of You, and it’s not one of their best.  It’s fine.  But I think of this part from the breakdown, sometimes when I’m joanchenning an apple: “Everywhere I go, people ask me Valentine, what’s your recipe for love?  And I always tell them the same thing.  Cook the hell out of it, and SLICE IT.”

Anyway, I think about this often enough that I wondered if I’d already written a blog post on the subject, and I searched the archive here.  You know how many occurrences of the word “slice” there are on this blog?  I haven’t written about this exact subject before, but I’m starting to wonder if I have a problem here.

–

Furry Rights Now

Seriously.

Transgender people were a big wedge issue used to flip who knows how many fools to voting fash, or just not bothering to vote against them.  Scumbags look for somebody to hate, smash the hate speech button until they find one that doesn’t make people feel too bad about themselves, and get everybody disgusted about some disgusting weirdos that don’t deserve rights.

If social progress somehow makes it through the barrier of fuckery that has been erected against it right now, if transgender people become more accepted, who is the next target for nazis?  They never stopped targeting Jewish people and racial minorities and the disabled and women, just tuned that whistle high enough to harvest a few demographic traitors.  In this election it was all about “illegals” and “perverts trying to trans your kids.”  And somewhere in all that ruckus, they tried on a new target for size.

Furries.  They’re going after furries next.  I am not shitting you.  The time to try and move the needle on furry rights is now.  Get people to accept furries whenever you can.  Turn the conversations around, when people talk about how disgusting and creepy they are.  Who are you to judge, Nancy?  I seen what you’re into, Fred.

Anyway, for my part, I’m throwing open the barn stables right now.  Bébé Mélange is a furry ally.  I may not always be the best ally, but I’ll try to improve.

This gets into a territory of “is this an immutable characteristic,” like can you change this about yourself if you want to?  People will try that on as a way to say furries don’t need protection.  But I think, nuh.  I know the transgender experience is highly variable, and for some of us, it might feel like a choice – like for safety, some of us could detrans and ride out the rest of their life, without committing triple turbo suicides immediately.  But even for those people, they deserve trans rights.  Likewise, if being a furry is totally optional for all furries?  So what?

There are some lines I’ll have to scribble here and there on the big perv tent, like, I’m not gonna stump on Capitol Hill for age regression RP and diaper play.  People should be able to do that too, but it feels less like something you could do non-sexually at the office on Monday… I dunno.  I don’t know anything.

But I know this.  Furry rights now!

–

Dreamposting – Close Again

Feeling sick and shitty on Tuesday the 11th, I did that thing where I wake up before dawn to go to the bathroom, and on getting back to bed fall into turbosleep.  Woke up after ten, from this dream.

I was helping make a video game on a contract basis for etcn mxck, working with these other two guys, who happened to be the brothers in the band Twin Tribes.  Mostly I was working for the brothers, and they were dealing with the creep more directly.  We were doing ground work for somebody with less technical knowledge to come in and make the game – putting together assets and animation and test levels, etc.  There was an AI system for NPCs that needed tweaking – they wanted to be able to have a crowd realistically moving around a public place.  The shitty rich guy insisted on having the brothers come in for a meeting, and I got dragged along.

The building was a huge corporate thing with every level secured in a haphazard of rfid locks and poorly manned security checkpoints, escalators and elevators didn’t all get where you were supposed to be.  Architecturally inspired by the Seattle Public Library, I think.  The brothers and I got to where we were supposed to meet mxck.  We walked around the corner and boom, there dude was, and he told us to get in bed with him.  It wasn’t a very big bed, but we were able to crowd in.

So there’s four people on this bed.  Apartheid Junior, Twin Tribes, and me.  It’s shifting and awkward and our heads keep bumping into each other.  The point is, in this dream I was so close, yet again.  I could just reach out and put my fingers through his eyeballs.  I could grip his throat and push in on the larynx with my thumbs.  Pop.  I coulda got him, and I definitely thought about it.

Not sure why this dream didn’t end with me killing the bastard.  I probably woke up right before doing it.  Anyway, say hi to my coworkers in video game development.  They make goth music and probably do not make video games.

–

OK, Fine, One Last AI Post

On the issue of AI, FreethoughtBlogs has gone Point, Point, Counterpoint, Another Consideration, and … OK, I’ll give my thoughts on that, briefly.  LLMs and AI image generators are fundamentally different, so I’ll give each a brief look.

LLMs memorizing and leaking personal info:  It’s been demonstrated, it’s a problem that should get sorted ASAP.  I’d say if any business or agency was found to have revealed personal info through use of an AI – and at this point, OpenAI surely has – then they should incur the same legal penalties as non-AI leaks.  I don’t know enough about LLMs to hazard a guess on the best way to address these issues, but I’ll reiterate a few things I’ve said about them, about which my opinions have not been swayed:

LLMs, like all this new generation of AI tech, have genuine usefulness, which left discourse completely ignores.  Various problems of them need to be addressed, but the usefulness should never be dropped from that conversation, and the idea of going full Ludd on the tech is abominable to me, because what I regard as the most important use of LLMs is not something I’m willing to lose ground on.  Also, they will quickly be better at many human jobs than humans are, and that saves money, saves humans the humiliation of working jobs where their intellectual shortcomings are thrown into sharp focus, and can definitely save lives.

Regarding the idea it will steal somebody’s writing, that’s a risk that human authors take every time they hit a fucking keyboard.  Who did JKR rip off the most?  That Worst Witch lady?  Rapist Neil Gaiman?  She did rip both of them off, to an extent.

I’m not saying she did it on purpose.  Human minds unknowingly rip off other human minds all the damn time.  How closely we want to prosecute these things is a matter for intellectual property law of various flavors, but the more strictly those are interpreted, the worse things will be for the flourishing of art, and especially for independent artists.  Be careful what you push for.

I still abso-fucking-lutely am not the slightest bit convinced yet that AI art generators are reproducing images from their training sets to an actionable extent, any worse than human artists do every time they look at reference or aim toward a given style.  You got it to reproduce one of the most reproduced images in existence, like the mona lisa or the coke logo?  Ooh.  You got it to reproduce something at all more obscure?  I’m betting you directly fed that image into it as an “image prompt,” and ran the prompt a hundred times, and picked the closest result.

This has never happened to me in the entire time I’ve been doing AI art.  I asked for certain styles or images in a thousand ways, even fed in images of a particular artist’s style, and it still did not come back with anything like their original images.  I get smushy signaturesque things in the corner of pics sometimes.  Derivative works may be covered by X and X laws, but if a snippet of a cloud or an eye happens to look 85% like artist Y’s work, on an image that is 95% nothing like that work, it is not fucking derivative.  Don’t insult my intelligence.  The leftists pushing the case online have demonstrably used bad information and outright fabrications to make their cases, and the Asswipe Corporate Stooges using this as an excuse to push expansion of copyright law in court?  They are an enemy of every artistic freedom you can imagine.

Did AI art generators successfully create a file compression system an order of magnitude greater than any that ever existed before, where they can take less than a bit of data and recreate your 1.5 megabyte .png from it?  Sounds like the “zoom and enhance” cliché.  Sounds like scifi bullshit and magical thinking to me.

Have exploit hunters been able to tease personal data out of these programs?  Yes.  How?  It’s literally impossible for it to be in the image information.  It’s in another aspect of their architecture, which can absolutely be fixed, and should be.

As to the issue of consent that was brought up in comments here.  I think that’s fair and fine.  I think it’s based on feelings instead of the tech that is in front of us right now and what it’s actually doing, but feelings are a legit consideration.  We should develop a new generation of AI to get rid of all training data from non-consenting artists.  People on both sides might tell you this cannot be done, but they are wrong.  It can be.  Might take a while, certainly will take a lot more expense, and it will involve some greenhouse gas excess during the training phase.

But I want this done, more than the anti-AI people do, because I want this part of the conversation to fucking stop.  You know what would be a hilaribad way to retrain LLMs without the personal info?  Tell LLMs to say everything they know except the personal info, and retrain them on that output.  That’s silly, but I hope it shows that there must be a way to do this.

For my part, I hope this is the last time I feel compelled to make a post on the subject.  Because I’d like my personal part in the conversation to stop.  Yes, I should be able to control myself and just bow out.  Maybe I will get the hang of that someday.  But for now?  The only reason I have a blog is because I don’t have that sense of restraint.

I know you’re bored of this too.  I’ll shut up about it as soon as I’m able.  I’m workin’ on it, man!

–

Centennial Hills – It’s Over!

Centennial Hills, the first draft, is done!  Who knows if it will get additional work and see some more mainstream form of self-publication?  This might be the final version of it.  Neighborhood of 75K words – light for a sci-fi, low end for a thriller.  You can click the Centennial Hills tag to see ’em all, tho I don’t have a convenient way to arrange reverse chronological / oldest first.  Maybe someday I’ll add previous and next buttons to them.  Or just sell an e-book!  Can you imagine?

Content Warnings:  Drug Use, Mental Illness, Big Feels, Inequitable Class Systems.

 

CENTENNIAL HILLS: THE END

by Bébé Mélange

Snar propped theirself up with enough drugs to survive the night without killing Tmai, and after some sleep, was able to do much more competent work at finishing the repairs.  The humans stayed with the Vinudians and the bgrudjh let them, at last releasing all of them, on the condition nothing of their fight got back to the authorities.

Snar had to confess their trauma to the big man, to excuse their own behavior, and get on a course of treatment for it.  But they were staying.  One could not go against the way of the worlds, try as one may.  It was for a doctor of Vinudian medicine to serve Vinudians.  It was for Vinudians to be unjust to each other, unequal in distribution of that healing hand.

And it was for the uncontacted to remain on their worlds, and for space escorts to ferry bodies where they were meant to be.  Once again, there was little time for a proper goodbye; High Jdibitong wanted Tmai and the Earthlings gone.

The Earthlings waited in the clinic while the Ainavians said their farewells in Snar’s quarters.  The room still had the feel of an alien hand in design, and nothing of the personal from Snar’s life or interests.  Someday that would change.

For the moment, the doctor was focused on getting well enough to function, using a more sensible drug and dosage to curb the worst spikes from their trauma disorder.  It didn’t have a noticeable effect on their personality, from Tmai’s point of view.  They saw them hunched, tired, distracted – lounging nervously on a long chair.

The captain had been ready to jet, under pressure from the bgrudjh, but suddenly let their pack hang low, and sat down on a stool near the doctor’s more luxurious seat.  “I don’t think we’ve settled this.  I don’t want to leave you, feeling like we don’t understand each other, like…”

“That I haven’t forgiven you,” Snar signed.  “Tmai, I have.  Though I don’t want to talk about it.  Please spare me.”

Tmai considered it for a moment, looking at their hands.  Then they signed, “That is your right, and it’s reasonable.  But can I just say how I feel?”

Snar shrugged.  “We all have to do that sometimes.  Keep it as plain as you can, and please don’t contact me again.  Maybe … if you must, in a few years.”

“Thank you very much.  I need this much; you are right.  I recognize that I messed up in my duties, unforgivably so.  Terribly so.  And you may feel you have to forgive me just to help yourself forget.  I don’t mind that; I don’t need to be punished forever.”

“This sounds like the beginning of a therapy session.”

“I can keep it brief, I swear.  I just… hm… Let’s say, we just go through this Universe, through our lives, without really understanding each other fully.  And true, full understanding is genuinely impossible.  Abstractly, we get that everybody is a thinking and feeling individual with their own experience of life, but it isn’t always real for us, and that can feel isolating.  We’re all alone, as they say.”

“Preface for something maudlin?”

Tmai pulled an expression of wan amusement and continued.  “Maybe.  I just want to say, I feel you.  Of course not in a way that’s of any use to you, but it is of use to me.  You saved my life.  I care about your life.  We’ve been close to the limits of our lives together – of course, always apart – but also together.  It isn’t meaningless.  I’ll never forget you, Snar.”

Snar sunk more fully into their seat, close to feeling overwhelmed, but steadied just enough by the drugs to avoid a completely embarrassing display.  They couldn’t quite raise a hand to sign back.

Tmai said, “This was for me.  You don’t have to say anything.  I love you.”  They stood, walked to the door, and looked back one time.  “Goodbye.”

Then they were gone.

Snar covered their head and allowed theirself a long moment of physiological sadness response.  They knew, all the while, that their connection with Tmai was over, and that this was a good thing.  But it was a heavier thing than they had expected, and the weight would pull them down for a while.

Out in the clinic, Tmai said their names, “Scudz, Shammy, Elidza.  We go.”  The terse basic language was hard to speak without feeling rude, so they were learning to punctuate these things with the practiced expression of a human smile.

They were all eager to leave the Vinudian enclave, not at all hesitant.  Though at the door, Eliza cast one look back toward the door of Snar’s quarters.  She had a sense that of everyone who had been on the misadventure together, Snar might be the closest to a kindred spirit with her, but that they could never come close to sharing that with each other.

It was only a moment, and then she was gone.

Back in the big city, the humans figured out how to keep their heads low, and Tmai arranged for all of them to stay together in a miserable vermin-infested hostel.  It took an unbelievably long week for Tmai’s spaceship to be properly repaired, during which they all busied themselves with learning or with computer games.

As a charitable offering, the humans had received mobile computers of their own, and learned to call each other on them.  Unfortunately, no human language – or even numbering system – was accounted for anywhere in the user interfaces of the devices.  Eliza, and to a lesser extent Shammy, could muddle through in Ainavian mode.

They took turns cleaning their clothes in a sonic washing machine, washing their bodies in a luke-warm saltwater shower, and hoped nothing too vile would come of the grotty circumstances.  Scuzz stared out the tiny window, wondering similar things to Eliza, but in different ways…  How was Pep gone forever?  How did it come to that?

At last Tmai announced it was time to take them home.  No one protested.

The ship was a flying saucer again.  Or had it been replaced?  The humans would never know the difference, just that Pep’s Millennium Falcon was no more.  The interior was barely furnished with a handful of large ottomans and ugly hospital curtains.  No windows.  At least it was a lot more spacious, without the cramped cosplay interior design.

“Scudz, Shammy, Elidza, go Eardh widh Chnai now.”  They smiled at their passengers, looked at them for any kind of response.

Shammy said, “Thank you kindly,” and nodded in polite dismissal.  You have permission to do your thing, Captain.

The humans were alone, insofar as they could be, with nothing but curtains between them and wherever Tmai had gone to push buttons.  The ladies caught Shammy looking some kind of way, and asked him about it.

“Shamar, what is this look about?”

Scuzz looked expectant as well, but said nothing.

“I know we hafta go back.  We don’t belong out here.  But … this is it?  This is all that comes of it?  I just don’t know how ta feel, I guess.”

Scuzz said, “I think I get it.  I’d probably feel like that too, if it wasn’t so crazy for me there.  Not that it wasn’t crazy for you!  But…”

Eliza scowled.  “You have a reservation about going home?  To the place where we are not treated like dogs?  Where we have rights and jobs and condominiums?”

“Do we have jobs?,” Shammy asked.

She nodded and rolled her eyes in annoyance.  “Still.  You cannot honestly want to play spaceman like Pep did, can you?”

He stared into the middle distance, wondering.

Scuzz said, “That’s interesting.  What would you do, if you could stay out here?  In outer space?”

“Don’t rightly know.  Tmai don’t need a copilot.  Flyin’ this UFO is a one-alien job.  Maybe they could use a mechanic?”

Eliza asked, “Do you want to spend your senescence in an alien housing project, or in a luxury nursing home, with nice clean sheets?  And nurses who know what orifice you shit from?”

Scuzz crinkled her nose.  “You’re nasty.  Heh.”

“You’re right, but I can’t help think I’m missing out on something.  On seein’ things nobody ever seen before.”

Eliza mock-strangled him.  “No.  You.  Don’t!”

Scuzz laughed, and blushed when they kissed.  She left them for another curtained-off wedge of the saucer, and let herself sink into an identical ottoman there.  She did feel it too, on reflection.  The call of the unknown, of the amazing.  But Earth was pretty cool too, in its way, and she never wanted to come within a thousand miles of being a slave, ever again.  She imagined a bed of human design, reflecting that when she was a child, she always wanted something more exotic.  A room full of translucent pillows ten feet deep, a waterbed covered in koosh ball rubber.  Now four posts and a mattress seemed like perfection.

 

The flying saucer moved faster than the speed of light, an expression of the impertinence of thinking beings, when confronted with the physical limitations of their material existence.  From the time a simple cell first develops an organelle or chemical process that decides what to do in response to change, a soul is born – a thing that is of the body but separate, larger.  Never free but always striving for freedom.

This time, the refurbished machine flew straight and true, finding the planet Earth small – easy to reckon with, a tidepool on a beach that could be ignored or examined as one pleased.  It set down, detected by defense systems that would be far too slow to do anything about it.  A seagull with no fear of a slow dog.

Tmai let the ship go to the coordinates it had left from, but at the last moment diverted some distance into the desert hills.  Best to not be landing in somebody’s back yard.  The portal opened onto cold dusty night air, rich with the miasma of life.  There was no symphony of insects and night birds crawling out of their nests, everything within a kilometer spooked silent by the change in air pressure as the unnatural object descended.

Everybody came out, more awkwardly than when the UFO had a proper ramp.  Eliza nearly injured her shoulder.  But once on solid ground, they all began to feel that weight again.  The Earth’s gravity had them.  It was more powerful than the artificial gravity of the ship, or that of the slightly smaller Erbin 2.

Standing in that Nevada desert, looking up at the spacecraft, so much had changed.  It was no Millennium Falcon.  Its Han Solo was rotting scraps of flesh on a city street, unspeakably far away.  And the doctor was not in.  Snar would never have to face that terrible world again.

Tmai shook their hands, each in turn, saying their names, and “Goodbye.”

Shammy held his head in his hands, hearing that wind, smelling that life.  No small amount of cow shit in that aroma.  Space had been full of unwelcoming sensations as well, but still…

He signed to Tmai, “Shammy with Tmai.  I engineer.”

Tmai shook their head, and Eliza protested.  “We talked about this, Shamar.  It’s horrible out there.”

He signed to Tmai, “Please please please,” and said to Eliza, “I got to try.  It’s the only chance I’ll ever have to see what’s out there.  I know Erbin 2 was a hot mess, but what else could there be?  It’s got to be amazin’.”

Scuzz felt the call of her inner child dragging her forward, and forced herself to take a step back, just to keep that thing in check.  “Shammy, it’s too dangerous for us.  We don’t have any rights in space.  I don’t know why they’re so prejudiced against us, but they are.  It’s bad.”

“We got space welfare for a minute.  That ain’t nothin’,” and to Tmai, “Please please please.”

Eliza could see it was true, even though she could barely see his expression in the deepening shadows of dusk.  Shamar was in the thrall of wonder – that childish hedonism for curiosity itself.  Reveling in the unknown, in poking it with a stick, with putting household cleaning products in your mouth.  “It’s horrible.  I can’t stand this.”  Her smoky voice broke apart.

Tmai considered it.  Uncontacted aliens were generally in bad shape under galactic law, but they could apply as individuals for protections and eventual citizenship.  Could Shammy’s skills be of any use to Tmai?  Possibly.  The man had much more practical experience with the tools involved in repairing and modifying machines such as the ship.  They wouldn’t see the same tools he had used before, wherever they went, but the principles would be the same.

“Ogay, Shammy.  But maybe maybe, ogay?”  They meant to say, “think about it for a minute,” but the words eluded them.

Scuzz folded her arms and looked at the old guy in admiration.  “That’s so brave.  Ya know, even aside from all the heavy stuff, the big reasons not to go, I couldn’t do it just because of how uncomfortable everything is.  The water was gross, the food was gross, the temperature was always too hot or too cold, none of the furniture was any good.  It’ll be like camping out forever, but no marshmallows and wieners.  You’re a crazy guy.  I respect that.”

Eliza felt a sinking sensation she couldn’t understand.  She had experienced so many firsts recently – emotionally profound things, life-changing things – that she didn’t know which one this was related to.  All of them?  “Shamar… Please.”

He turned to her and put a hand on her shoulder.  “Eliza hon, I got to do it.  I never knew I needed this, but I need it.  I just couldn’t stay here and always have ta think, what am I missing?”

She nodded weakly and turned away, but he caught her mid-turn for a big hug.

Scuzz looked at Tmai.  “Sorry.  Humans always have to do this kind of stuff.”  She thought about that for a moment.  *I’m a human*.  She leaned in to hug Tmai.  “Thanks for trying to save Pep for me.  Thanks for trying to save me.”  She was certain they couldn’t understand her, but tried to reciprocate the human gesture.

Scuzz pulled back enough to talk directly to Tmai.  Would they understand?  “You are a hero.  I’ll never forget you, Captain Tmai.”  She kinda wanted to smooch them again, but thought better of it.  They had already imposed so much of their human goosh on the awkward alien.  Time to step away.

She said, “C’mon, Eliza.  Time to hitch a ride on a tumbleweed, or rustle some cattle, or whatever.”

The specificity of that plan clarified something in Eliza’s mind.  What was she coming back to?  Interrogation by the DoD, probably a lifetime of surveillance.  Work.  Bills.  She didn’t have a family, just some half-assed internet friends.  But if she went back to space, what would she be doing there?  God knows.  What would she be missing out on, as Shamar put it, if she stayed on Earth?

“Alright,” Eliza said, “Scuzz, you can hitch that ride alone.”

“Eliza?,” Shammy asked.

“Really?  Aww,” Scuzz said.

“Apologize to the Air Force for us.  It was all Pep’s idea.”

“It sure was,” Scuzz said, folding her arms against the gathering chill of the evening.  “You two are the cutest.  I hope you have all the space babies and colonize Mars.”

Shammy mumbled, “Gosh, shoot, dang.”

Eliza said, “You know I don’t have a womb… whatever.  I can’t say it was always a pleasure knowing you, but in the end, I respect you.  Have a good life, Scuzz.”

“I like that you never asked my birth name, Eliza.  You too, Shammy.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to it, ma’am.”  He was still holding Eliza close, feeling her warm hair bunching around his cheek, grateful.

“It was real.  Goodbye everybody!”  Scuzz pivoted on her heels and staggered away over uneven desert terrain, cheerfully flapping her arms as she went.  Maybe she could ride a cow home.  Wouldn’t that be a trip?

Tmai could see that Shammy and Eliza were not intending to stay on Earth.  There would be more bureaucracy to contend with, but why break up a mated couple of beings?  They nodded their agreement, and clambered up the portal, leaving it open for the Earthlings to follow.

 

Years passed.  The Earth moved around the sun again and again.  Olivia graduated from college, accepting her diploma at a lofty, glass, heavily air-conditioned convention center in Los Angeles.  After the ceremony, she exchanged hugs and phone numbers and business cards with dozens of people.  Randomly, in the middle of it all, she encountered a dark-skinned middle-aged couple she’d never seen before, who seemed intent on speaking with her.

They were wearing grey robes over white jumpsuits and were very well-groomed, like members of a cult.  Not speaking ASL or wanting to rely on any uncertainty in lip reading, the woman held up a cellphone for her to read.  Olivia hesitated.  She didn’t like the look of their smiles, their weird presence.  But alongside the phone, the woman made a hand-sign she recognized.

“Tmai.”

The text on the phone read, “Tmai wanted to know if you would be amenable to an internship in outer space.”

Whatever menace she felt from the strangers blew away in an instant.  She understood that smile – the look of a person who knows we are not alone in the Universe, and knows that you know.  But she couldn’t see them because tears filmed her eyes in a second, turning all lights into spiderwebs, all colors into quivering impressionist splotches.

She nodded and signed, “Yes.  Yes, yes, yes.”

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I thought I was going to include more in the last chapter, discussion between the humans about what happened with Snar, etc., but this seemed like a good place to end it.

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