Penumbra, A Poem

Published: May 22, 2020
Word Count: 113

Penumbra is a short poem to express some imagery I had in my head today--also an exercise in trying not to describe things directly. Doing some stargazing at night, did you really see what you thought you saw?

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List of References in Strange Attractor

There is power in knowing a name, it's said; more power still when you know what the name means.  With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to list out all the little nods and Easter eggs in Strange Attractor.  There are quite a few, and I'm proud of a couple.  Here we go!

Strange Attractor - the name of the tale itself is a mathematical term.  An attractor is a value toward which a system of equations' solutions tend to hover.  A strange attractor has a fractal element to it.  I originally just liked the name, but it sort of fits Portia, scaling large and small and still having the same pattern.  Her physical attraction is rather strange in a non-mathematical way, too!

Portia Schwarzchild - Portia is named after Brutus' wife in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  Schwarzchild has a double meaning in the story.  Karl Schwarzschild is the physicist/astronomer for whom the Schwarzschild radius--the size of the event horizon of a black hole--is named.  One meaning of Schwarzschild taken literally in German is "black shield," which nicely describes Portia's outer mass, shielding the universe from the effects of the singularity within.  Portia's surname is not spelled exactly the same, as there's no s after the z.

Thaxter Bassari - Thaxter is just an uncommon name that I thought was neat-sounding, two traits that seem to pop up a lot in my character names.  Bassari is a variant of the genus name Bassaricyon, a member of the family Procyonidae, which includes raccoons, though raccoons aren't part of the Bassaricyon genus.  I thought Procyon was a bit overused, and Bassari sounded like a better last name for our protagonist.

Pinback - Our caustic porcupine (and really, what else could he be with that name?  Hmmm, a hedgehog, perhaps.) is a reference to a character in Dark Star, a 1974 movie dealing with the crew of a ship purposed with blowing up planets, similar to the Adephagia.  It's a very quirky low-budget film, but fun!

Captain Fyerser - The "crazy old" captain Thaxter makes reference to is a nod to the main character in Wendingo's Anomlies of Scale, the story that helped prod me to finally write this one.

Adephagia - The ship on which Portia and Thaxter serve is named after the Greek goddess of gluttony.  Fitting, huh?

Cygnus - The ship Portia talks about being stationed aboard during the accident is a nod to the main ship in Disney's movie The Black Hole.

Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha - These were Earth's space coordinates in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.  As Earth was demolished in that story to make way for a "hyperspace bypass," I thought it made a neat reference here.

Nozz-A-La - a soft drink from some of the parallel Earths in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.  It seems to be roughly analogous to Coca-Cola, so it might be found in mixers.  No literary reason for this one's inclusion, but I do very much enjoy that universe and wanted one small connection to it.

There are also a few nameless references to other people's characters.  The black wolf next to Thaxter on the bridge is meant to be Shockwave, a character created by Allen Kitchen, who wrote a number of furry space-themed stories back in the day.  The Labrador and squirrel at the bar are based on Camelia and Irene from Dogs Chase Squirrels and other stories by Becky Cascane.

So there you go!  Sticking references like this into a story is a fun way to pay homage to sources of inspiration, and I enjoy finding ways to get them in.  I hope this was an interesting peek behind the curtain!

Strange Attractor

Published: May 7, 2020
Word Count: 6,616

More than the other things I've written, it has a tale of its own.

Portia is my oldest OC. She came into being sometime during my high-school days (I can remember thinking Portia would be a great name for her when we read Julius Caesar in English class.), so she's even older than Mataki by a few years. She played the same role then as the brown wolf does now, sort of an uber-big cosmic femme fatale. I envisioned her as something like the version that appears in Strange Attractor, although I think she came by her ability originally by growing too large and collapsing...you know, how people normally become black holes, I guess. When Mataki came along later on, she sadly took a back seat in my mind, and she curled up for a decades-long long cat-nap back there.

I'm not sure what woke her up. I mentioned her to a friend of mine once and tried a bit of roleplaying, so that definitely had her poking her head up over the seat and asking "are we there yet?" I got to enjoy her company again in my thoughts, and when I started sharing stories on FA, she dropped hints that she really ought to have a story of her own. I thought about what she might be and do now since Mataki had since usurped her place as the greedy too-big-for-anyone's-good character in my mind, and I decided it would be neat if she used her abilities to get rid of potentially dangerous space objects.

Two things finally got me to sit down and write it. The first was Anomalies of Scale, by Wendingo. It's a story very much in the vein of Strange Attractor, so if you like one, you'll probably like the other. Read it if you haven't! It stars a brown wolf instead of a black panther, though, and Portia's poking about a story got a bit more desperate after that. The second thing was this whole Covid-19 mess we still find ourselves in at the time of writing. Working from home with a very downsized workload, I suddenly had a lot more free time, and Portia finally said, "no more excuses!" so I outlined, then wrote.

I figured the story would be around 2000 words, my typical length. Once I'd written the section where Portia does her thing to Tau Ceti I, I started to think about an ending, but I realized I couldn't leave poor Thaxter there with all his questions--that'd drive him nuts. I also wanted to try to come up with a (sort of) believable way one might actually turn into a living singularity, so I wrote the scene in the bar where Portia finally gives her origin. I've often heard writers talk about a story writing itself, and I sort of understood what they meant, but it really happened here! It fleshed her out quite a bit more, and I'm happy with the way she emerged. She had to be different from Mataki, and I found the difference--she's much more level-headed about her condition. Not that Mataki isn't nice most of the time (as a lot of you will point out), but man, she can turn the evil on when she's of a mind. Portia's more careful.

As to the tale itself, I'm the type that loves sneaking references into a story. There are quite a few here. Some are homages to books, short stories, and movies that have to do with cosmic demolition, and most people that aren't Portia or Thaxter are shout-outs to friends' characters. I'll tackle those in another post--this one's getting kind of long!

Finally, a big thank you to Wendingo again and to Becky Cascane for all the inspiration and encouragement. You both rock.

---

Read Strange Attractor

Read Anomalies of Scale, by Wendingo, on FurAffinity

Browse Becky Cascane's stories on FurAffinity  (content warning: some adult themes and imagery)

Bus Stop

Published: March 16, 2019
Word Count: 2,004

Have you ever had an art piece that really grabbed your attention, even beyond the way it might display a particular like of yours? That happened to me with a piece by Pantheric on FurAffinity, a link to which I will include below. It portrays a rather well-built black jaguar sitting on a bench in a bus stop. I've always enjoyed art that seems to tell a story, the background and subject suggesting a before and after to the now that we can see.

That definitely happened with this picture, and with the picture being what it was (and with me being me), that jaguar seemed to be getting bigger. I wrote Bus Stop with that as the theme, and well, hopefully he and the bus made it to where they were going intact.

Read Bus Stop

See Pantheric's "Waiting For The Bus"

SCP-9653

Published: January 24, 2016
Word Count: 1,737

A little history, if you’ll indulge me:

The year I wrote this, 2016, marked the 20th anniversary of Mataki’s journey as a character. She was created a few years earlier, but she didn’t really come to life until she got on FurryMuck in 1996 and started interacting with other people. She started small, but grew, both physically and conceptually.

As she did so, it became more and more of a challenge to portray her in a manner that didn’t come off as powergamey, God-mode, Mary Sue…whatever name you want to give it. I’d been on the receiving end of such characters, and I found them as annoying as everyone else. For that reason, she became more subdued, mysterious, and enigmatic. She gave hints here and there of her capabilities rather than announcing them to the room over and over and doing some Herculean task every other pose. I liked that about her, though she probably drove people crazy with her refusal to give a straight answer about herself. It was by design and by necessity in order to keep her interesting to me, and hopefully, to others.

Unfortunately, I think I went a little overboard with it, and that led to a lot of her story not getting told. I’ve spent a lot of time building Mataki’s world (and it’s a big one!), but it has only been completely shared with maybe three people. Perhaps that’s why these stories are starting to come out after twenty years; I’ve decided it’s time to let more of her out, and the roleplaying world has more or less moved on from what it was back in 1996.

That brings us to this story. I am a big fan of the SCP site, a place full of stories about creepy, dangerous, and bizarre objects and people. It’s a favorite time-sink of mine, and I love the approach and challenge of telling a story in such a bureaucratically awkward format. It’s what creepypasta would be if your manager at work made you write it and submit it to Corporate.

I wanted to write Mataki up as an SCP entry. I thought it would give me a chance to lay out a bit more of her structure without giving the whole thing away, as another thing I love about the SCP is the strategic (and often maddening!) use of redaction blocks to hide information. Teasing is also Mataki’s thing, though she doesn’t come out and say it in the story.

I doubt this will ever be submitted to the official site, and I have no intention of doing so. I think it’s too out there and personal for a wide audience, and I probably goofed on some of the established canon since I wrote this piece only from my own experience reading SCP entries. It was written mostly for my own enjoyment and the challenge of doing it.

Finally, and before this intro become s longer than the story itself, this work echoes some ideas from my previous two stories, Revelation 3:14 and Spiritbreaker. Some of those similarities are annoying to me as I don’t want to keep writing essentially the same story over and over, but I think this one’s different enough to be enjoyable. As to the "9653" number, it has no special significance other than being the numbers you get if you transcribe "WOLF" using a telephone keypad.

(Image credit in story: Nobody/NB/Enbee)

Read SCP-9653

Visit the SCP Foundation site

Spiritbreaker

Published: December 27, 2015
Word Count: 1,223

Spiritbreaker was written for Squeaks/CivilNuker as a three-page-long joke.  The name itself is a play on words for the title of the movie it parodies.  I had a lot of fun with this one, and it may still be my favorite thing I've written.  Rereading it just now, I was surprised how much of Mataki's lore is included in there.

Blue Sky Green, referenced in the story, is a wonderful tale on its own written by Scott Grildrig.  I will most probably give it its own post in the future, but I'll include a link at the bottom here for immediate reference.

Read Spiritbreaker

Read Blue Sky Green (FurAffinity link)

Revelation 3.14159...

Published: December 26, 2015

Word Count: 2,037

Revelation was written for a dear friend starring one of his characters, Wendingo. Giving credit where credit is due: the plot element involving a search for a hidden message in an irrational number is borrowed lovingly from Contact, the novel by Carl Sagan. Please read it if you haven't. It was much better than the movie. Disclaimer: This may not be your cup of tea. Some may find blasphemy, and many will find passages that induce eye-rolling. If you are part of its intended audience (read "those enamored with god-like beings"), enjoy! Without further ado, I give you the story of a wolf who takes a bit too close of a peek at the fabric of the universe...and finds a message there.

Read Revelation 3.14159...

Visit Wendingo's FurAffinity page

One Percent

Published: October 31, 2003
Word Count: 448

One Percent is a short essay I posted on the Macrophile.com discussion boards in order to illustrate just how fast exponential growth rates can be.  How big would I grow if I got 1% taller every minute?  The answer is probably bigger than you'd guess!

This is more of a short mathematical essay than a story, but I still think it's a fun read.  It's also the first thing I ever dared to put out in public.  I remember checking the math over and over, dreading making a mistake!

Read One Percent

MPI for Sizeshifters and Shapeshifters

Published: August 22, 2004

This was originally a page in my old website.  Its aim is to help someone with a character on a muck be able to write a dynamic description that is easily changeable by setting a few variables.  The time of relevance for this article may be past, but if you find yourself on a muck making a character, this may be of use to you!

Read MPI for Sizeshifters and Shapeshifters