Tag: writing

Concerning Celestial Horror

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Byrd

In my earlier writing, celestial higher beings were benevolent and kind and all-knowing. The older I get, the more they’ve become alien and unknowable and horrific. Horrific in the sense of never knowing or understanding these higher beings.

Celestial horror for me is a mix of the impossibility of establishing communication (Orson Scott Card’s Descoladores) the cosmic unknowable (H. P. Lovecraft’s Cosmicism), topped with a bureaucracy that is crushing and insurmountable (Douglass Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide).

I’m sure not all of that communicates in these, but I’m working on it. These are the beings that Zenith calls to Earth in This Bitter Earth.

Concerning the Hiring Practices of Absolution Corp

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Byrd

This guide is to be used in interviews for potential testers of Total Virtual Reality (TVR.

Interviewer: Welcome to TVR Debugr Training! We’re glad you’re here. What’s that you ask? How do you know this isn’t a TVR simulation? I’m glad you asked!
QUESTION: Do you believe in god(s)? Y/N?
– If yes: Do you believe in a kind god(s) or malevolent god(s)?
– If no: congratulations! You have been offered conditional employment as a TVR Debugr!
– If kind god(s): why do they allow bad things to happen (Multiple Choice)?
1) Because we need bad things for a believable simulation = REJECT CANDIDATE
2) Because god(s) are testing us = REJECT CANDIDATE
3) Good point, if I were god(s), I would make a better simulation = ACCEPT CANDIATE
– If malevolent gods(s): congratulations! You’ve been offered a position in our live simulation
validation division; where you continuously validate that all bad things happen for verifiable
reasons, thus validating that no bad things happen because of the choice of malevolent god(s),
thus proving this reality is not a simulation.
Interviewer: At Absolution Corp, we continuously validate that our reality is the prime, so you can rest easy, knowing that your work is fulfilling, rewarding and most important of all; REAL!

Concerning First Contact

Posted on March 26, 2024 by Byrd

“The purpose of life is to consume the energy of the Grand Producer. Creatures who learn to cultivate the Grand Producer inherent the Mantle of Domination. We are not here to witness the universe, but to imbibe it.

The Eruenik Race is one such creature. In our vast and expansive travels of space, we are the only creature we have found with such a holy appetite.

But these hairless apes, they do as we do. They cultivate and they dominant. They elevate their imbibement of the Grand Producer to an intelligent level.”

Excerpt from Daily Logs of Absolution Values Agent Pakasha
Aggregated First Contact Logs, Earth

Concerning Percolation

Posted on September 11, 2023 by Byrd

I have a part-time gardening job. My employer is very proud of her garden, but she still has a hard time appreciating it. For example, it’s being considered as part of a garden tour show, and it’s in the top percentile in terms of quality. She was quite surprised by this assessment by the garden show committee, but admits, she’s a bit too close to provide an impartial opinion of her work.

Frequently, with my own work, I have to immediately walk away from it once it’s been expressed. If I don’t, I’ll think it’s shit. But I’ve found that if I leave it alone for a while, I can provide a more impartial opinion.

So there’s 2 legal pads sitting below my desk with a script called This Bitter Earth written on them.

I wrote this script because I really liked the idea of an orphan boy living on a ferry in the Puget Sound, using the car deck for skate boarding, and spending is free time reading books, drinking tea, and feeding mutated orca whales.

Earth’s sea levels have risen substantially and the dominant life form is mold and fungus. This monoculture of fungus is choking the planet and Zenith spends his days sending signals into deep space, a practice handed down to him from his father. The lore goes that a scientific expedition left the Earth long ago, and that if they can call that scientist back, they can help fix the planet. But, fungus doesn’t want that…

Percolation is also a great method to make coffee.

Concerning Humans, Elves and Buggers

Posted on September 6, 2023 by Byrd

So, I’m done illustrating Enter Cedar. There’s still an epilogue to sketch and ink, but I think I’ll wait to finish those 15ish pages before posting. So it might be a minute before I add new content to the comic on this website.

In the mean time, here’s a concept I’ve toyed around with, that I think applies to some of the “big picture movers” of the upcoming series. I call it “Humans, Elves and Buggers”. Or, the Imbibe version would be, “Beasts, Bots and Boos”.

Humans (or “Beasts”) are beings with finite lives. They must procreate to proceed forward in time and they must teach knowledge to subsequent generations. Titus Waiting is not entirely human, but he is a parasitic being who needs hosts to live. This, combined with his reliance on human culture to build his technology, makes him pretty human.

Elves (or “Bots”) have infinite life (think Lord of the Rings). While they still procreate, they don’t do it to further the species. However, elves still need to be taught knowledge. But because they live forever; once learned, forever kept. The KBR is an infinitely living robot who definitely has no urge to procreate, but continuously learns through this knowledge retention programing.

Buggers (or “Boos”) like humans, have finite lives and must procreate to continue their species through time (think Formic Queens from Ender’s Game). But because they have a hive mind and collective knowledge, they don’t teach or pass down knowledge, they just know everything. Cedarface is part of the spiritual hivemind. While his mothers may not procreate, Cedarface was made. It is quite possible that Cedarface’s golem nature may make him mortal. I haven’t figure that one out yet.

I’m not sure if these 3 characters perfectly resemble these 3 definitions. It could be argued that Cedarface, the KBR and Titus Waiting all have infinite live and don’t spend time procreating, which makes them all Bots, which makes the Imbibe Universe a story of Bots vs Beasts, with no Boos present. But it could be argued that Cedarface’s mothers are Boos, because while they live forever in human minds, they are ultimately reliant on the mortality of those human lives. Cedarface’s mothers must cultivate belief of themselves within humans to continue existing

Concerning the Tracking of Labor Stats p2

Posted on July 5, 2023 by Byrd

I started digitally illustrating Deep Circuity (DC) around March 2020
I finished digitally illustrating in March 2021
1 year 0 months
400 pages in 52 weeks
Actual average is 7.7 pages a week
Intentional output was 3 pages a week

I started analogue illustrating Enter Cedar (EC) in Nov 2021
I’m gonna finish analogue illustrating in August 2023 (Note, I estimated 7.5 months back in Nov 2022)
1 years 8 months
100 pages in 60 weeks
Actual average is 1.7 pages
Intentional output was 1 page a week

That’s a pretty terrible decrease in my average. But I’m still pushing out illustrations for a full, finished 120 page script in a year’ish. So I got that going for me.

I think the better way to look at the data is that it’s taken my roughly the same time to finish the same amount of pages.

But, I could look at the extra 8 months for EC and round up, and then the takeaway that it’s taking me twice as long to illustrate by hand. Shit, am I saying I could have finished EC earlier this year and now be finishing up Where the Highway Meets the Corridor, had I just digitally illustrated it?

BUT, also decreased by weekly page output from 3 to 1. So I can’t be too hard on myself. Had I kept that up, I probably would have finished EC in a similar time to DC.

Yeek. Here’s a scene from East of Everett.

Concerning Aliens Wearing Flannel

Posted on April 23, 2023 by Byrd

I think I’m identifying a advantageous pattern. I post 1 page a week right now. This 1 page is focused on linearly progressing the Imbibe narrative forward. These blog posts are separate. They are meant to explore other areas of Imbibe, if only to provide some relief to the hyper focus necessary to carry the linear work. I should attempt to always have some new sketch or concept done for Sunday, as it will give me something to blog about.

This is a sketch for “Where the Highway Meets the Corridor”(WHMC), which is the next big project in Imbibe. You’ll recall Gray in “Enter Cedar” mentioned a brother cousin, who is responsible for crashing the saucer that left Gray stranded. Allen (above) is that brother cousin, playing the banjo. Allen has been on Earth for a long time, possibly 30 years. If we place “Enter Cedar” in the early 1980s, WHMC does not have smart phones, so it’s early 2000’s.

Allen has been on Earth long enough to develop affinities for Earth culture like playing banjo, wearing moccasins, sporting flannel, and obsessing over the collection of firewood (the cousin subspecies of Erueniks don’t like to be cold). David (the mustachioed fella on the right) has kept Allen a secret for a long time. WHMC is the story of attempting to get Allen to safety once that secret is revealed.

Allen’s personal style was actually a relic from when this project was intended to be a live action mockumentary. It would have been a low budget indie film. To cover up a potentially underfunded makeup job, our alien was going to wear bulky clothing, a hunters cap and cataract sunglasses. There’s even some footage on a hard drive of me holding a styrofoam head, painted gray, with 2 green Easter egg halves over the eyes. The eggs had motion tracking marks on them, I was going to create “alien eye goggles” the actor could wear, and then we’d add the eyes in post.