trees are harlequins, words are harlequins

adzolotl asked: (reading Floornight now) You had me at "Boltzmen". Reminds me of Greg Egan -- Permutation City, many stories, "The Infinite Assassin" especially. I identify with Ratio. I'm recording typos as I read, out of habit. You want them?

Glad you’re enjoying it. I like Greg Egan, more or less (I liked Distress more than Permutation City).

When you’re done I would love to see the typo list, although I’ve committed to not revising the story at all until some future thorough editing pass, since I don’t want to constantly be making minor changes that I then have to propagate to the various existing versions, like the ebooks.

15th May 2015

archiveev-blog asked: i'm thinking about reading floornight, but i thing i remember seeing someone mention that there was some sort of accidental trans thing in there that didn't work out so well. would you mind giving some more details, so i can figure out whether i'll feel comfortable/safe reading it?

This is a spoiler but I figure I should just say it for maximum clarity (there are plenty of other things in the story that it doesn’t spoil for you).

Keep reading

14th May 20155 notes

responsible-reanimation:

Floornight, by nostalgebraist, is one of the most compellingly weird things I’ve ever read. [It’s all available for free, to boot!]
I’ve been meaning to take a look at Nylon Gelatinous Evangelism for a while, mostly because the promise of truly original, memorable cosmic/psychological horror sounds fantastic. However, I probably can’t relate to all the slow-burning emotional buildup before the payoff; I respect how intensely people can get into it, but I’m just not one of them.
But once I started reading Floornight, I got a beautiful dose of what I’m pretty sure is the same thing: a story told through surreal interlocking pieces that inevitably fit together beautifully, along with dazzlingly strange story elements that rise above technobabble and become something sublime.
Parts of it have a great Isaac Asimov feel to them, especially the descriptions of [rot13 for spoilers] gur nygreangr jbeyq'f pvgl gung ehaf ba fbhy-fcyvggvat. The story weaves together vintage high-concept sci-fi, action scenes and character drama that would be at home in anime, and so much more.
Nearly any description of plot details would be some degree of spoiler, but trust me: if something apparently makes no sense, wait a chapter or two and it’ll be cleverly tied in with the established story.
I’ve already recommended this to vee-charlotte, but anyone else who’s interested in bizarre sci-fi needs to take a look. It’s not that long; I finished it in about a week while being busy with other things. Besides, I need other people to discuss it with.

Thank you for the art and the very flattering review!

#floornight

14th May 201535 notes

noahtheduke:

nostalgebraist:
Someone left a comment complaining about aspects of the transgender subplot in Floornight and I had to basically say “yeah, I agree, that is one of those things I wish I could do over again”
And point out that if you think that’s bad, imagine how I feel about the giant unintentional 9/11 allegory
I’m mostly really happy with Floornight (relative to my expectations, which were pretty much zero), but it did reveal to me a downside of making things up as you go along that I had never appreciated, which is that you may do things unintentionally that look very much like they were “intentional, but stupid”
The advantage of letting your unconscious drive the car is that it will have great ideas you never would come up with through conscious planning, and the disadvantage is that it will also have very bad ideas that you won’t notice it has implemented until after it has done so
Would it be possible to rewrite some of it? Or do you wish to preserve it as an artifact of your mindstate over that period?

If I ever want to, say, get the story published, I would probably rewrite a lot of the kind of stuff I’m talking about (because I’m sure an editor would want me to rewrite stuff anyway for pacing and so forth, and I could change aspects I personally dislike in the process).

But rewriting anything at all would be a headache and would feel very strange and awkward to me. I feel a lot like the plot came fully-formed, warts and all, from some place I don’t understand and can’t locate, and trying to replan it to make it more “sensible” would feel like tampering with a structure I don’t fully understand.

(via noahtheduke)

#floornight

14th May 201514 notes

Someone left a comment complaining about aspects of the transgender subplot in Floornight and I had to basically say “yeah, I agree, that is one of those things I wish I could do over again”

And point out that if you think that’s bad, imagine how I feel about the giant unintentional 9/11 allegory

I’m mostly really happy with Floornight (relative to my expectations, which were pretty much zero), but it did reveal to me a downside of making things up as you go along that I had never appreciated, which is that you may do things unintentionally that look very much like they were “intentional, but stupid”

The advantage of letting your unconscious drive the car is that it will have great ideas you never would come up with through conscious planning, and the disadvantage is that it will also have very bad ideas that you won’t notice it has implemented until after it has done so

#floornight

14th May 201514 notes

sleepnoises asked: i'm almost certain i'm not smart enough for your writing (not in a self-deprecating way, just there's a degree of effort i'm willing to put into reading and it's probably less than your stuff deserves) BUT i really like the human aspects of tnc. it only took me like two chapters to develop an intense fondness response to glasswave. what a little nerd. so, you have ~something for everyone~.

I know you said you’re not being self-deprecating, but man, aren’t you always talking about Les Miserables and its little details and various translations? Didn’t you read in a plane flight a book (American Elsewhere) that took me months? I think this is probably best described as “different reading styles.” I read really slowly and tend to assume everyone else is too so I like to make things dense, I guess?

Anyway, thanks. If you haven’t read Floornight, I am fairly proud of some of the characterization in that too.

13th May 20158 notes

anoteinpink:

some very quick little draws from friends’ writing projects! blanchefleur and camille are from amarguerite‘s novel about an 1830s concert pianist in Paris; fran/lina is from shwetanarayan‘s novelette-in-progress set in the 17th century, in an AU where the british raj doesn’t happen; and miranda is from nostalgebraist‘s Floornight, which is sure something

excellent

11th May 201551 notes

cerulean-vulpine:

“i [,,,,] you”

maria is still my favorite <3

from floornight, by @nostalgebraist (for some reason mentions aren’t used)

!!!!!

This is (I think) the first piece of Floornight fanart

11th May 201518 notes

itsbenedict asked: In chapter 36, "2048 randomly chosen Citizens consented to..." was interesting- was it that all 2048 of the randomly chosen citizens actually consented because they didn't mind, or that 2048 out of some larger number of citizens consented, or... was some nonstandard definition of consent at play?

Keep reading

#floornight

11th May 20154 notes

aprilwitching replied to your post:aprilwitching replied to your post:ogingat replied…

anyway, it feels weird to compliment you on this, but ALSO thanks for being a dude writing genre fiction that has gay/bi women in it but that *isnt* at all skeevy/clueless/patronizing about those characters! ime thats…more unusual than i wish.

Thanks. It’s reassuring to hear that my characterization wasn’t those things (I mean, I didn’t think it was? but you know).

In Floornight in particular I figured I could include a lot of characters with very different backgrounds from me without getting everything wrong, because the characters’ present-day situation is so strange and deserving of story focus there isn’t as much need to fill in their backgrounds in great detail, except for certain especially relevant bits.

#floornight

11th May 20159 notes