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Marsh/cover ideas: Difference between revisions
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Here are some cover ideas in no particular order. Some will make better front or back covers, of course, but I am not really a designer, so, who knows! Here are the descriptions of the various characters listed below: | |||
* The Marshans (all somewhat similar with a common down-tree): | |||
Once it becomes clear that something awful has happened, most of the Marshans meet up with Dry Grass, who catches them up on the current state of the world — billions have disappeared, more than a year of time has gone missing — as they walk along the streets in a costal town called To Limáni Ton Khromáton, The Bay of Colors. There is a boardwalk along the shore where people can walk, a sandy beach where people draw designs in the sand when the tide is out, only to have them washed away when it comes in, and then the town is covered on every flat surface in brightly-colored tiles which are placed by those who visit. They are placed in designs such as murals or mosaics on the ground, in abstract patterns, realistic images, or even just a static of random colors. | ** Reed: transmasc, white (French Canadian), shortish wavy brown hair, a bit stubbly, thin with little muscle mass, short sleeve button-up plaids and khakis type, | ||
** Sedge: cis fem, white, strawberry blond hair in an undercut, freckles, very queer style, a bit more filled out than Reed | |||
** Tule: rather like Reed but cis | |||
** Rush: darker skin from a tan, like if Reed got super into gardening | |||
** Cress: quite a bit smaller than the rest (~5ft to their 5'6"), aggressively androgynous, fashion forward, expressive features | |||
** Lily: a bit taller (5'8"ish), a bit frumpy, strawberry blond, freckly, the type to earnestly get into hiking gear | |||
* Dry Grass: human Odist, 5'4", pudgy, curly/tousled black hair, pasty white, round face, real mom-core vibes. (Picrew take [[Dry Grass|here]]) | |||
* Vos: tall (6'2") black woman, short/shaved natural hair, high cheekbones, very chic | |||
* Pierre: short (5'4"), tousled dark brown hair, real French Artiste vibes, childlike to the point of appearing fragile | |||
== To Limáni Ton Khromáton == | |||
Once it becomes clear that something awful has happened, most of the Marshans meet up with Dry Grass, who catches them up on the current state of the world — billions have disappeared, more than a year of time has gone missing — as they walk along the streets in a costal town called ''To Limáni Ton Khromáton'', The Bay of Colors. There is a boardwalk along the shore where people can walk, a sandy beach where people draw designs in the sand when the tide is out, only to have them washed away when it comes in, and then the town is covered on every flat surface in brightly-colored tiles which are placed by those who visit. They are placed in designs such as murals or mosaics on the ground, in abstract patterns, realistic images, or even just a static of random colors. | |||
Dry Grass, Reed, Cress, Tule, Sedge, and Rush all meet up at the default entry point on the boardwalk and slowly make their way up into the town as Dry Grass explains the dire situation.<blockquote>We stepped from the quaint, small town sim and directly into warmth and sunlight, into the salt-tang of sea air and the low rush of waves against a beach. We stood atop a stone walkway of sorts, which seemed to run along the edge of a town. On further inspection, it appeared to be a retaining wall of a sort, holding up the town that meandered up a hill to keep it from sliding inexorably down into a bay. | Dry Grass, Reed, Cress, Tule, Sedge, and Rush all meet up at the default entry point on the boardwalk and slowly make their way up into the town as Dry Grass explains the dire situation.<blockquote>We stepped from the quaint, small town sim and directly into warmth and sunlight, into the salt-tang of sea air and the low rush of waves against a beach. We stood atop a stone walkway of sorts, which seemed to run along the edge of a town. On further inspection, it appeared to be a retaining wall of a sort, holding up the town that meandered up a hill to keep it from sliding inexorably down into a bay. | ||
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One by one, we took our turns standing on that box and setting our tiles into place. I reached up as high as I could to flesh out the glowing rim of the green glass-shaded lamp. As soon as my tile touched the edge of the tile Tule had placed, it snapped into place with a satisfying click. It was completely immobile after that. No amount of nudging could get it to slide more perfectly into alignment.</blockquote> | One by one, we took our turns standing on that box and setting our tiles into place. I reached up as high as I could to flesh out the glowing rim of the green glass-shaded lamp. As soon as my tile touched the edge of the tile Tule had placed, it snapped into place with a satisfying click. It was completely immobile after that. No amount of nudging could get it to slide more perfectly into alignment.</blockquote> | ||
== The morgue sim == | |||
All of the crashed instances lost in the attack, represented by a matte black sphere about a foot in diameter, are placed in a single sim, arranged in a three-dimensional grid with each spaced out by about a yard from its neighbors. When one is focused on a single core, the rest fade to translucent, leaving only one dark black sphere. | All of the crashed instances lost in the attack, represented by a matte black sphere about a foot in diameter, are placed in a single sim, arranged in a three-dimensional grid with each spaced out by about a yard from its neighbors. When one is focused on a single core, the rest fade to translucent, leaving only one dark black sphere. | ||
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“Get ''out!''” Vos shouted. “Get out get out ''get out!''“</blockquote> | “Get ''out!''” Vos shouted. “Get out get out ''get out!''“</blockquote> | ||
== | == Serene's marsh == | ||
For something more abstract, there is the mock-up cover that was used for the Kickstarter, leaning on some trends that have taken off in the last decade or so: an image of plants or some stylized animal with the text partially obscured by the design: | For something more abstract, there is the mock-up cover that was used for the Kickstarter, leaning on some trends that have taken off in the last decade or so: an image of plants or some stylized animal with the text partially obscured by the design: | ||
[[File:Marsh-banner.jpg|none|thumb|Cover mock-up]] | [[File:Marsh-banner.jpg|none|thumb|Cover mock-up]] | ||
Doesn't need to be this, of course, but there is a scene where the Marshans, Dry Grass, and Serene walk through an actual marsh on a raised boardwalk. Either that scene or something featuring reeds, rushes/tule, sedge, lilies, watercress, hyacinth, or a water plant like anubias might be neat.<blockquote>The entry point — a platform of wood slats set upon stilts above stagnant water — was far smaller than I had anticipated, and my foot rocked against an uneven plank set along the rim of the platform, forcing me to lean against Sedge. One edge of the platform led into a narrow, somewhat rickety wooden walkway that headed out over the water in a straight line until it came upon a tall patch of grass, where it turned a few degrees to the right to make its way to another. It appeared to meander in this way from island of vegetation to island of vegetation in an uneven zigzag toward a copse of trees — the word ‘banyan’ floated to mind, though I wasn’t sure if that was actually the case — where it disappeared into shadow.</blockquote> | Doesn't need to be this, of course, but there is a scene where the Marshans, Dry Grass, and Serene walk through an actual marsh on a raised boardwalk. Either that scene or something featuring reeds, rushes/tule, sedge, lilies, watercress, hyacinth, or a water plant like anubias might be neat.<blockquote>The entry point — a platform of wood slats set upon stilts above stagnant water — was far smaller than I had anticipated, and my foot rocked against an uneven plank set along the rim of the platform, forcing me to lean against Sedge. One edge of the platform led into a narrow, somewhat rickety wooden walkway that headed out over the water in a straight line until it came upon a tall patch of grass, where it turned a few degrees to the right to make its way to another. It appeared to meander in this way from island of vegetation to island of vegetation in an uneven zigzag toward a copse of trees — the word ‘banyan’ floated to mind, though I wasn’t sure if that was actually the case — where it disappeared into shadow. | ||
That shade looked delightfully appealing as the humid heat pressed in around us. | |||
“What the hell is this place?” Tule asked, wrinkling his nose at the scent of rotting vegetation in the air. | |||
“A swamp,” Dry Grass said simply, a lopsided smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “A marsh, perhaps.” | |||
If it had been intended to be a joke, it fell flat. We remained in silence for a few awkward moments. | |||
She sighed. “My apologies. It is still important to me, however. It is– Ah, there she is.” She raised an arm and waved to a figure crouched at the edge of the walkway just before the next platform. With the heat-haze and mugginess, their form was somewhat indistinct. They wore a frowzy white dress, along with some sort of hat — or perhaps a rather tall hairstyle. As we walked toward them in single file, she explained, “This sim was designed by Serene; Sustained And Sustaining, whom you shall meet in a moment. She is my cocladist from the ninth stanza, and one of my favorite people in the world. I asked her to meet us here.” | |||
As we got closer, the strange hairstyle that I had noticed on the figure resolved into a pair of tall canine ears, and what I had assumed was a mask of some sort turned out to be a short, pointed muzzle. Serene stood up and stretched, smiling wanly to us before bowing in greeting.</blockquote> | |||
== Reed and Dry Grass on a date == | |||
They visit a Horn & Hardart's automat in NYC on a date to talk about how they wound up at this point.<blockquote>Once we stepped off the train, still holding hands both out of affection and so as not to lose each other in the crowds, we walked the short distance to the replica Horn & Hardart’s, still talking of life on Lagrange. We talked of when we had uploaded, of the first things that we did sys-side, of the origins of the System that Dry Grass’s root instance still remembered. | |||
“The 2110s were a horrible mess,” she said once we sat down with our cups of shitty coffee and small bowls of clam chowder. It was too thick, too grainy from the flour used to thicken it, and it needed copious amounts of pepper to make it in any way interesting. It was, as far as I could tell, a perfect reproduction. “Governments trying to disappear anyone who knew too much in the worst way possible, which accidentally led to the creation of the System. Turns out, it’s a pretty good place to store your undesirables, so most of the Founders were loud, opinionated, politically obnoxious people.” | |||
I laughed. “You were loud, opinionated, and politically obnoxious?” | |||
“Do not be silly, Reed. Of course I was,” she said primly. “It was our friend that made this place what it was, yes? Ey was the one who is the template for this world, yes? But all the same, it became a cherished place. We uploaded in the System’s second year, as soon as we could afford to, and even the System was a mess. Consensual sensoria had yet to be implemented, building and object creation had yet to progress to where it was today, the ability to eat was not added until the fifth year — this is all before systime was even a thing, remember, so this is ''very'' early — so those who uploaded hungry remained so for years at a time. I loved it all the same.” | |||
“You still do, sounds like.” | |||
She laughed. “Of course I do! It is more than just a love of life, the System is my baby. It is ''our'' baby, the Ode clade’s. We ushered into being and raised it up to be what it is today. All of this–” She gestured around at the automat, the tables crowded with lines of cladists before the windows bearing the more popular dishes. “–is our baby. The people, the automat, the city, all of those abandoned sims and all of those overcrowded hubs. It belongs to everyone and no one. It belongs to itself.” | |||
I listened, rapt, as she grew more animated and eloquent; watched as she sent out an instance to fetch us some of our favorite plates of plain-yet-filling food. | |||
“We all played our part. I dove into tech, Warmth coaxed the System into letting her make weirder and weirder objects and more and more delicious foods, True Name and her stanza guided it as any parent might. Even if her methods came off as unsavory, I believe her — believe Sasha, I mean, who she became — when she says that her goal was only ever the security of our existence. | |||
“I feel like my baby has stumbled. The System stumbled and fell, knocked its head, forgotten some of what it knew. I feel like our existence stumbled, as some group or another got so frustrated as to trip it up. When I dump my energy into all of this work, I am doing my best to nurse it back to health. We all are. I am working the tech angle, the eighth is working the political angle — I think even Sasha has poked her nose in once or twice — even the third stanza is there with us, sitting ''shiva'' and praying as they will.” | |||
We sat back as her ephemeral instance set down a few pot pies and a plate piled high with hash browns before us before quitting. Dry Grass sectioned off a large portion of the hash browns to start dousing it in hot sauce. | |||
“All of this to say that we have stumbled, taken a blow that has left us dazed, but we will do our best to come back from it.” | |||
“You’re sounding more hopeful than you were last night, at least.” | |||
She laughed, fork of heavily spiced potato already on its way to her mouth. “Yes, well, I am not freshly back from a cemetery, am I?” | |||
I nodded, getting a few bites of my own (less heavily spiced) share in. Horn & Hardart’s hash browns were quite good, but only while warm. | |||
“You use a lot of family language when you talk,” I said once I’d washed the hash browns down with coffee. “Which makes sense from what you’ve said, of course, but it got me thinking last night about what Marsh was to us. Couldn’t decide whether they were a parent or a sibling of some sort.” | |||
She nodded, already starting in on her pot pie, breaking open the lid to let the steam escape. “It is not a dynamic that works for everyone. Even within our own clade, it does not make sense in some cases. Motes and Warmth are my little ones, but while A Finger Pointing and Beholden — Motes’s guardians — feel like siblings to me, Dear, Rye, and Praiseworthy — Warmth’s down-trees — definitely do not. They are friends, Rye especially, perhaps, but little else.” | |||
“Yeah, and I guess that’s been coloring my feelings on the whole idea of cross-tree merging.” | |||
Dry Grass frowned but remained silent as she ate, gesturing for me to continue. | |||
“We’ve been poking at the possibility of merging the whole clade to…I don’t know, actually. Reconstruct, I guess? It wouldn’t be Marsh, but if nothing else, maybe it’d be someone who could carry on in their stead.” | |||
“Alright,” she said once she finished a few bites. “I am glad that you see that it would not be Marsh. What do you think this new person will do? What will you do?” | |||
“We had this idea while laying in bed last night, it’s not exactly matured much beyond that,” I admitted, laughing. “I don’t know, though. Maybe we could at least talk and share memories. They’ll feel all the stuff we talked about at the funeral yesterday, right? Maybe they can work out some differences and such. Maybe they’ll join the clade. Maybe they’ll just quit.” | |||
After a moment’s thought, she sighed. “Well, I have checked in with my down-tree, and Jonas is losing ground on a request to remove that functionality, so you may well have the chance to play around with this, but do be careful to manage your expectations, my dear. There is much that this offers, but also much at risk.” | |||
“You don’t think it’s dangerous or anything, do you?” | |||
“Much at risk socially, Reed. There is the potential for that friendship and love, yes, but also the potential for pain.”</blockquote> | |||
== What Right Have I's dream == | |||
From the short story [https://post-self.ink/stories/prophecies/ "Prophecies"], What Right Have I has a dream about the Century Attack:<blockquote>The skunk nodded, paused to gather her thoughts, then spoke slowly. “I am disembodied, yes? I am floating and I see a figure, and they begin to weep, and they dissolve into a cloud of black specks, and these specks float away on a breeze, and each one enters the heart of a cladist, and they cry out in agony and dissolve into clouds of their own, and so it ramifies until all are dust. I see you, yes, and I see If I Dream, and I see Should We Forget and I see No Longer Myself.”</blockquote>This figure refers to the attacker, 8-stanza-1, who set off a 'bomb' that ramified throughout the System, crashing each individual it came into contact with, but not before searching out everyone they know the clade details of:<blockquote>“Regardless of our opinions of each other,” Speaking said, picking up the prior thread. “Speaking with 8-stanza-1 was a frustrating experience. I am told that I was the instance sent to discover their presence, relying on tools developed by my down-tree instance, I Have Sight But Cannot See. I have no memory of this, but it does sound like something that I would do.” | |||
“What about it was frustrating?” Selena asked. | |||
“They are…emotional. Very emotional. Understanding their voice through their sobs or wild laughter was difficult. All the same, they are a very grounded individual. They speak concisely and with no misdirection in their words.” She shrugged. “They just speak in coherent, well-formed sentences and paragraphs about untrue things. Their every word is part of a lie. Their very existence is built up around lies. They breathe lies out on every breath.”</blockquote> | |||
== Hotpot dinner == | |||
Dry Grass, Reed, Cress, and Tule go out for hotpot and talk about feelings. At this point. Cress, Tule, and Dry Grass are a triad, with Reed struggling with feelings left over from a merge. Cress has a hysterical laugh-cry, Tule laughs at Reed for catching feelings.<blockquote>So it was that Cress, Tule, Dry Grass, and I sat around a table, hotpot bubbling away in the center, in a nearly deserted restaurant. We said nothing, each doubtless lost in our own thoughts, as we dredged veggies and tofu, thin strips of fish and surimi, and thinly sliced lamb through the spicy broth, carefully fishing them back out after the scant few seconds it took for them to cook so that we could eat them atop bowls of rice. | |||
It was Tule who broke the silence. “This is all incredibly fucked, but at least the food is good.” | |||
We all bust out laughing. Cress, most of all seemed caught up in the humor, laughing uncontrollably until tears streamed down its face. That laughter briefly veered into hysterical sobs as it hunched over in its seat. We had long since set up a cone of silence, and I think we were all glad for that now, as it made the space feel more intimate, more comforting as Tule and Dry Grass bookended Cress and rubbed their hands over its back. | |||
“Sorry,” it said once it was able to sit back up. Its voice was round, stuffed up. “I don’t even know why it hit me like that.” | |||
“Too many emotions at once?” I suggested. | |||
It shrugged. “Maybe. I mean, that’s definitely true, but I don’t know if that’s why I fell apart.” | |||
“You do not need to know why, love,” Dry Grass said gently. “You are allowed to be a confused mess in this confusing mess of a life.” | |||
I nodded, dredging a skewer of fish through the bubbling hotpot and waiting for it to cool enough to eat. “I have no clue how to feel, myself. I keep alternating between tired and down on myself for not doing enough, and working frantically on what feels like a good idea until another comes up.” | |||
Dry Grass tilted her head, a curious gesture I’d noticed in her cocladists as well. “Are you still feeling conflicting emotions from your merge?” | |||
I stiffened in my seat. | |||
“Only if you are comfortable discussing it, of course,” she continued, voice soft. “I just imagine that there is no more appropriate crowd than this.” | |||
Both my cocladists had a blank look on their face before Tule fell once more into laughter. “Oh my ''god,'' Reed.” | |||
“What?” Cress asked. | |||
“I merged down before New Year’s.” | |||
“Yeah? And? I don’t–” it began, then flushed red in its cheeks. It started to laugh as well, “Oh no, Reed. You kept the memories?”</blockquote> | |||