Oh wait what? I feel like I find the central conceit very clear? There was an alien invasion, things escalated, and now everyone on Earth is in a variety of matrix like virtual reality setups with weird laws of physics that try to accommodate both humans and alien sensibilities (to mixed effect)

Yeah that stuff is more or less clear – I think @russianmurders was talking about the explanations involving spears and hands, and stuff in that general territory

nostalgebraist:

Chapter 9 of Almost Nowhere is up here

Morning reblog

Chapter 9 of Almost Nowhere is up here

You may have noticed me posting terse “new chapter is up” notes on this tumblr a few times, but I might as well say something slightly more substantial. 

I am writing fiction again, after stopping for nearly a year!  It’s more of my ongoing project Almost Nowhere, which I started way back in October 2016, wrote at a glacial pace, and then stopped writing entirely.

When I stopped, in March 2017, there were 5 chapters.  Then, just over the past three weeks, I’ve written and posted a new chapter every week, so there are 8 now.  That’s a lot faster than I was writing it before!

I don’t know if I’ll keep up with the chapter-a-week thing – it’s less an update schedule and more the result of me committing to working on it every weekend, and then frequently wanting to finish a chapter once I’ve started writing it.

But, while you may not be able to count on a new chapter each week, I can tell you that I have momentum for this project, I’m working on it every weekend, and I’m thinking about the plot/world/characters very regularly, the way I was when writing Floornight and TNC (which I wrote comparatively quickly).

So, if you had avoided this story because or because you didn’t want to wait (following the earlier update rate) a month or two between chapters, or (later) because it looked like it’d been abandoned, this may be a good time to start it or catch up with it.

Also, I really value it when people say things about a story while I’m writing it (either as AO3 comments, or here, or whatever) – not just because I like attention or whatever (although there is that), but my fiction tends to do a lot of hinting and implying as opposed to just stating, and I am actually never clear on what actual human readers know at any point in the text (as opposed to the hypothetical reader in my head, who knows all the things I think I’ve made “sufficiently clear” and is otherwise uncertain between all the possibilities I think I’ve made “sufficiently plausible” etc.)  Instead, real reader inferences involve lots of categories like

“I thought I’d made this ‘obvious,’ but many generally perceptive readers miss it“

“I thought this was a fun riddle or easter egg, but everyone finds it obvious“

“Instead of the thing X that I thought I was aggressively hinting at, readers tend to conclude some thing Y instead, and read the story as aggressively hinting specifically at Y“

“People notice these fine-scale details that I thought would go overlooked, yet miss ‘bigger’ things that I had assumed would be comparatively easy to get“

Etc., etc.  And then there’s the auxiliary question of whether the level and type of ambiguity perceived by the reader – which is never exactly the level and type I assume they’ll perceive – interfere too strongly with investment in the characters and the “what will happen next?? stay tuned” kind of plot-enjoyment.

Anyway, hearing what people think is going on – not so much evaluative comments as theories, remarks on what (you think) we know so far, and the like – would fill in some blank spots for me, and would help me a great deal.  I know some of you have already been posting this kind of material, so let me express my gratitude for that now.

Again, you can read the thing here.  I wish I could come up with some exciting blurb indicating what it’s about, but I’m not sure how to say anything about the plot without nontrivial spoilers.  (This has also stumped me when I’ve tried to come with text for the AO3 “Summary” field.)

nostalgebraist:

Chapter 8 of Almost Nowhere is up here

Evening reblog

Chapter 8 of Almost Nowhere is up here

nostalgebraist:

nostalgebraist:

Chapter 7 of Almost Nowhere is up here

Morning reblog

@itsbenedict left a comment saying the explanation in this one didn’t make sense to him, and in retrospect I realize it could make a lot more sense with some edits, so I may do that later today.  This won’t affect anything plot-relevant or thematic and you’re free to read it now, it just might be less comprehensible in a certain part than it will be later.

I’ve edited the chapter, and I think the relevant part makes a lot more sense now.  (If you didn’t see the pre-edit version, you really didn’t miss anything significant, trust me.)

(via nostalgebraist)

nostalgebraist:

Chapter 7 of Almost Nowhere is up here

Morning reblog

@itsbenedict left a comment saying the explanation in this one didn’t make sense to him, and in retrospect I realize it could make a lot more sense with some edits, so I may do that later today.  This won’t affect anything plot-relevant or thematic and you’re free to read it now, it just might be less comprehensible in a certain part than it will be later.

Chapter 7 of Almost Nowhere is up here