Once again i always love the description of the city as this great, dead thing- an open mouthed grimace from buildings, blood vessels from a carcass, just as much a skeleton as the dead humans littering the remains of this place.
As soon as Khan cut himself enough that oil leaked out i had the biggest :evilgrin: imaginable. Something tells me that it isnt a little papercut out there for no reason... not when his natural predator is on the loose. Related, I love the very specific things about drones you write into the narration that really hammers it home that theyre very natural in their movement and communication, very humanlike, but also very much /machines/, like the gyroscope compensation and Khan's- basically a welding visor. And iirc i already commented upon the genius of the perspective of vermin/parasites, and the injustice thereof when it becomes a 'tidy way to conduct genocide', when u posted wips on discord but it is still Incredible. 10/10 no notes.
I like the emphasis that though it's way more survivable for drones, the bunkers are /not/ fit to sustain life indeterminably, and this esp hammers home why they were scavenging in the first place in ch1. Drones don't need to eat organic matter, or regulate their temperature so exactly, but they do /need things/ to continue operating, build a home, and make more of themselves.
BOUNCING AROUND. WHISPERS IN THE SKY, PRAY YOU DONT DIE. god the writing for DDs is insanely good all the time in your work it makes me want to bite something and shake it around. Like the shadow of a hawk covering the rabbit- you know its there, but you havent seen it /yet/ in this setting. you're just as blind to its position as Khan is. And! i love how he's using the technique humans have used since time immemorial- smear yourself in something rank, and hope your predators cant smell you. On earth thousands of years ago or a robot on a collapsed exoplanet, Survival From Thing That Wants To Eat You Is The Same. Also, hey, hi V! Also, hi Makarov! I'm sure he will be fine :)
Disassembly drones is bugs descriptions. Yippee! Love the NOISES too, from them.
Makarov's death scene was absolutely brutal, horrifying for all that his bravery, and the gritty hope and defiance up to and including spitting in the face of the thing about to eat him alive, there's still the very real chance that he won't survive. As long as the core is intact, there's a chance, indeed. Which, hey, love the repeated use of that mantra, it both hammers in the nail of tension for the reader, and def feels like khan reassuring himself that there /is/ a chance.
I SNORT LAUGHED AT V TRIPPING OVER THE DECAPITATED HEAD LIKE A CARTOON VILLAIN. unexpected bit of comedy that was also perfectly timed lmao.
ending off with prob my favorite line: 'As always, his thoughtlines turned to the reason he commandeered a defunct shelter before angels descended to scythe through sinner and saint alike'. excellent imagery, death has no thoughts for the sinner or the saint, the adult or the child. everyone's just wheat.
Describing and imagining cityfall was probably one of the most fun things I wrote about in Great Tribulation so far. Trying to come up with unique vocabulary for it. Imagining how each part of a city might map to an actual bit of biology. It was a lot of fun, even more so after all the worldbuilding rotations I've done that make me wonder if these bioarchitectural terms might actually be the official terms used by humans now.
Very interesting to think about!
I mentioned it briefly in the little dms we have, but I did have a moment with this bit of mentioning Khan cutting himself where I had to go and look back at my work in the chapter it happened. Check to make sure I didn’t have logical errors I forgor about. But it was all good, I’m a gOD!
Thinking about worker drones (in his case, Labor Drones) and the ways in which they differ from disassembly drones was an interesting thought experiment. In a lot of ways, what would make DDs alien to the likes of humanity are the same ways they’re alien to worker drones. So in my head, I figured there is actually a lot of crossover in the subjective experiences of a WD and that of a human. The differences in how much of an overlap depending on if it is a labor drone, domestic, industrial or a specialist. Yet this also runs up against the fact, my desire to explore the differences between human and WD subjectivities, that it’d be really odd if Khan was even thinking about this stuff.
Kind of like when we think about how we breathe or how we blink, it’s just how we always work and don’t ever think about it. Which is why I really liked writing out the ways in which this city that Khan might well have helped build isn’t natural to him anymore. Walking down streets requires his gyroscope to provide extra compensation. Shock absorbers are giving stronger readouts. But also just showing off little things that are unique to his productline’s chassis type like the ability to tint the visor to protect the visual array as well as a method to map out an interior and have dynamic spatial awareness by just sound alone. These are more than just “humans but metal!” after all.
Also, c:, that vermin/parasite bit is going to become recurring, just you watch! This first chapter of Great Tribulation has already seeded at least twenty later heartbreak reveals.
With the bunker, especially after the ‘reveals’, I really tripled down on the idea that the bunker was something of an emergency evacuation shelter. Those kinds of places meant to hold people in like well-equipped modern cities during disasters, which also explains why there are cryopods—a method to try and extend the shelter’s ability to preserve people in times of long-winded crisis. But, ultimately, these places are *not* meant to be permanent habitation.
They’re just not designed for that and Khan knows this *intimately.*
Also yes, hi! Whispers in the sky, pray you don’t die! A new lullaby!!
I have gone in a long talk with you already about how hrm, in a good way, writing disassemblers from the perspective of Khan was. They are so bizarre. So odd. Monstrous. But there is no ounce of like for the weird in that way from Khan, there is no curiosity, there’s no mesmerized amazement, there is only disgust. Disgusted hateful disdain for the things murdering all his people. Threatening his wife. Robbing his daughter of the future he thought he could finally provide without humans around.
And in this way, he has no notion of fighting them fair or kindly. He will die like a nail driven through their head, and until then, he’s going to keep escoriating them just for the chance to escape to piss them off another day.
Living, kids, that’s how he sticks it to the man!
Writing out the descriptions and thinking of what the noises they’d make was also really fun, got to engage in premier creature imaginings. Need to get better at it, though. Hyphen descriptors aRE THE WAY, I MUST STEAL THE FIRE FROM OLYMPUS.
The scene with Makarov was even more fun to write, imagining how a disassembler might go about toying with a prey item while also still trying to kill it. Stress testing the body. Treating it like a stress toy. And enjoying the way the body slowly deforms and gives out. It was just mindless fun, really, would do it again.
Especially since the premise of the Core being the only part of a drone’s self and ability to exist allows for kind of even the most extreme deaths and there is a chance for them to continue.
ALSO FINALLY SOMEONE COMMENTED ON THE V BIT!
I loved writing it, it made me laugh so hard imagining it because, yeah, she’d definitely forget she still has a person’s head speared on her foot when she goes to walk. Of course she’d then flail at trying to correct herself.
And yea, there is no clemency with Death—it comes for all with its rictus grin.
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Nosferatank on Chapter 2 Sun 13 Oct 2024 01:49AM UTC
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The_Caretaker on Chapter 2 Sun 13 Oct 2024 10:03PM UTC
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