Trapped Inside the Dream Forever

Some time ago I did a LiveJournal meme where the poster is supposed to make something for the first five people who reply. This is what I wrote for Porku. It’s the first of the five things that I started, and also the first that I finished, albeit several months later. The start and finish of the writing both came in a great burst of motivation, and hopefully you’ll be seeing even more writing from me in the near future.

Hopefully the story is comprehensible without too much outside explanation, but it takes place in a setting I call “Nine Towers,” which I originally conceived of as a D&D campaign setting. In it the powerful and expansionist Empire of Man has conquered a world inhabited by a vital native race (the wild folk) and established a city called Nine Towers. It’s a bit anime, a bit steampunk, and some other stuff besides. Octavia is my D&D character (a human warlord), here cast as an imperial noblewoman whose family recently relocated to Nine Towers. Admittedly this was a bit self-indulgent on my part, but I think her part in the story fits the overall theme.

I probably need to do another draft to really get the story right, but as a first draft I’m very happy with how it turned out. At the very least it says what I wanted it to say. :3

(And for the record, the bond between Tara and Rose is wholly platonic, though very strong.)

Text on DeviantArt
Dandelion Audiobook

This story was inspired by some paintings by Makoto Aida (the “Edible Mi-Mi Chan” series), though at the time I saw them I didn’t know that he had a back story to go with them. It took me awhile to finish writing the story because while I had a good science fictiony idea, I still needed to figure out what the heck the story was actually about. Even when I figured out that it was actually a story about confronting impermanence, it still took me awhile to get my creative mojo going enough to finish writing it. But, here it is.

Text on DeviantArt
In Miniature Audiobook

For the Fantasy and Science Fiction class I took I had a choice of writing an essay or a short story for the final project… This story is the result. The setting was inspired by Shambleau by C.L. Moore and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Princess of Mars, with psychic powers inspired by Babylon 5 and Firefly, and some teen (or at least college-age) angst.

I like how it turned out, though I think the ending needs work… I was originally thinking of having it be so that Selene and Peter have to fight a Martian beast that only Peter can see (because of his block), and then because he saves Selene’s life, Venusian custom they’re supposed to get married… But it wasn’t working and it would’ve made the story too long for the assignment.

Text on DeviantArt
I Hate Mars Audiobook (12 minutes, 1 second/5.5M)

This story is a follow-up to “Another Catgirl.” I wrote it because Nekomimi Land satirizes a lot of things about American society (American and not others only because, oddly enough, it’s the society I know best), but not politics, which I find hopelessly depressing. The world would be a better place is no one listened to pundity talk radio, but them’s the breaks.

I also inadvertently wound up expanding the catgirl setting a bit, not to mention alluding to the results of Erin and Kaylee meeting face to face.

Oh, and the Tama and Snowball in this story have nothing to do with the ones in Neko Machi; I just needed good cat names.

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Audiobook Version (11 minutes, 34 seconds/5.34M)

This story is a sort of “spinoff” of Nekomimi Land, a novel I’ve been working on. It started off as an epilogue to that story, but in trying to fix it and make it less pretentious I hit on the idea of taking a cue from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis; the result was too different to be a part of Nekomimi Land, but too fun to abandon, so it became a separate story. It has a sequel of sorts, “Animal Town,” which I’ll be posting up next.

Text on DeviantArt
Another Catgirl Audiobook (14 minutes, 37 seconds/10.6M)

This blog exists to present a podcast with recordings of my various stories (and occasionally poems). I’m not the best speaker for this kind of thing, but I think my voice is at least tolerable. (Though if anyone reading this has a burning desire to make recordings of my writings–especially someone of the female persuasion–I am definitely interested.) Regardless, these stories will also appear in text for on my DeviantArt account. The actual podcast is going to be exceedingly irregular, though I’ll be starting with weekly updates to work through the stories I’ve already got recorded.

“Trapped Inside the Dream Forever” is a line from, of all things, Paul Robertson’s surreal animation, Kings of Power 4 Billion %. Sometimes I feel like imagination and delusion are overtaking my life.