Wanderers

Returning!?

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 11:41:25 GMT

I said possibly I'd come back following a name change- this name change has now been scheduled and I have gotten my life mostly back in order, and since exams are finished for now...

First things I will post are those pieces owed from ages back. Then I will update people on currently ongoing projects as well as future projects planned.

Stay tuned! Or don't, really. At this stage I wouldn't mind if you didn't.

Looming changes

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:59:37 GMT

Right, name change coming soon.

Also, I finish up in Horsham in a week. It'll be neuro after that but on the flip side I have better access to stuff so I can do things (nice and vague).

For a moment I panicked when I checked out the journal and hadn't logged in and there were advertisements and I was like OMG WHAT NO WAI but phew, so long as I don't have to look at them while working on the journal, I don't care!

What else...all projects are getting set up. I'm really gonna do this. Not so sure about bloody NaNo though. That may end up being a total bust this year. Yeah.

Today I played a proper game of soccer for the first time in six years. As a goalie. And I accidentally sent somebody to hospital with a bout of temporary short-term amnesia and concussion- yeah, it was a pretty big collision. I feel a bit bad about that but fortunately he seems to have recovered.

So with that said, I'll go back to study. *limps away*

Soon to come name change

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:03:23 GMT

Okay, I'm slowly coming back to the idea of becoming more active again on this journal. There are a number of things I need to do first.

Finish my clinical rotation in the middle of woop-woop.
Change the name of this journal. It will no longer be solely about Anthropometry but about all the projects I'm working on: Anthropometry, Pandora and Strugglers currently, plus a few other side things.
The journal will remain fairly impersonal though.

Things I am doing now:

A few pieces I'm owing some people including my sister and meerclar_heidi. And Tam. Yes, I haven't forgotten you :P
Sorting out stylistic details so I can start Strugglers as either a webcomic or graphic novel. I have already written a fair bit of the script and the story is falling into place. At this rate it will be a coupla thousand pages which would keep me busy for many years, haha.
Rethinking the backstory to Anthropometry. I *accidentally* signed up for NaNo '08, despite the fact I have my neuro rotation and exams immediately following. Before then I need to briefly sort out chapter 4 and get some notes jotted down and away I go again!
Getting used to the tablet. I finally managed to get my pen settings right, now I'm just waiting on a new laptop, get the software sorted out and hopefully that will take off too!

That's it for the art stuff. I'll also be posting other things eventually. But don't expect any further activity on this page before mid-October.

Why I'm still not progressing

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:35:56 GMT

Week 5 of hospital placement. I go to Horsham in a fortnight. Very busy.
I've decided to take breakdance casually and taekwondo seriously. The good part is that you only need a yellow belt to compete in taekwondo and once I learnt that the movements in Rhee and WTF are almost identical save for certain stance transitions, I wasn't particularly interested in learning the forms. I'll just learn the first one and I'm good to start sparring training.

However breakdance isn't completely out of the picture. I can windmill now.
I'm also doing other projects. In particular, one with the working title Pandora. Maybe I might explain it somewhere.
I got a Wacom Intuos3. I'm still getting used to it, though.

Now I think I owed some people some drawings, didn't I? Unless they don't read this journal...

Progress report

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:57:25 GMT

Since I'm now what the senior staff at the hospital like to call a trainee doctor (i.e. not an M.D. but getting into the practices expected of one), I'm not going to have much time to write things. Therefore if you read long enough, you will come to see "progress report" used as a euphemism for "no, I haven't done anything since the last update".

Currently I'm working on preliminary animations for another large project as well, so my creative pursuits are definitely divided. As far as Anthropometry goes, I'm still (as I was after November last year) rewriting that much vaunted Chapter 4. For some months I found myself significantly stuck because I didn't know what I wanted to do with it, but having drawn a geographical map of the area, I've got a clearer idea and will finish it hopefully within the next week.

Then, following some posting of some discussion pieces, I will resume posting with Chapter 2 etc.

Also on the to do list: Get some suitable avatars...

dongstyle_ltd is no longer active (technically) due to increased workload (and life).

1- Homecoming

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:36:14 GMT

Posted in its entirety

PRELIMINARY NOTES:

Word count- 2451 words (the footnote is relatively tiny.)
Synopsis- The protagonist is introduced, and subsequently shanghaied.
Comments-

I've made this chapter public because I decided it would be nice to post a sample for everybody to access. I won't do this for most or even any of the other chapters, though, just to make things easier on myself.

This is chapter 1 because technically it's the first chapter set in the world of the protagonist's consciousness. This is important because the narrative voice, even being in third person, is not omniscient. It only serves to convey perspectives, perceptions and states that the conciousness is aware of. As such, the experience should remain immersive- things are shown but not told, or told but not explained. At the same time, I have to relate the connection that this consciousness holds to the reality it processes, so it's hardly like a post-modern stream-of-consciousness narrative.

The other thing to note is that the plot is hardly original once all the clothing has been removed. I don't consider the plot structure to be a main driving force of the book so much as the themes, the questions that manifest itself through the characters. I mean, seriously. Protagonist gets shanghaied. Cliché much?

* * *

He had lost track of the time.

Streaks of light shone through the hazy mist, coiling densely over the forest floor, blanketing the bottoms of blackened, skeletal trunks. Surely it was dawn, but, with the fog on the ground mirrored by the clouds in the sky, the day had already taken a timeless quality upon itself.

Not that it mattered. This place was forgotten, and, strangely even, unmonitored. It had been countless generations since it had last been publicized as one of the starkest manifestations of the effect of human toil upon Mother Nature’s creation. Its political purpose served, it was hastily covered up by other more pressing, more sensational things, but if anybody passing through had bothered to take a closer look, they would have seen those trees still bore the scars from the acid tears of the heavens.

Less subtle were the scores of jagged grooves that ran across those trees in altogether different patterns. Claw marks? In this enlightened age, could one believe that such things as, say, werewolves still roamed the wild? Most would have admitted that yes, such was a clear possibility, for this was a time far beyond the fearful speculations of ignorant minds, and even the hubristic posturing and dismissals of the arrogant minds that closely followed them.

The world had seen, finally, and some things they just couldn’t ignore.

Still these excoriations were not the product of mere claws- they were far too deep, as if the tree itself had been rent by some unworldly grip. They were, after all, the mark of talons. But what manner of talons would be so large as to appear on the side of tree trunks?

As the light increased, the trees cast spidery shadows across the caked dirt and stone, and across each other in a silent pantomime. Slowly, they parted, revealing another silhouette, slumped against the slope of one of the trunks. It was strangely organic for such a deathly landscape. Even more strangely still, it was moving, if only with an almost imperceptible oscillation.

Then the light shone directly on the silhouette, and it stirred. A beady eye fluttered open, roved around, shut, and then opened fully, so that the yellow bordering the opaque, reflective pupil was visible. Then the silhouette rose, shrugging the shadows off, shaking its beak rapidly and clicking in displeasure.

He could feel the wet of the fog: it was seeping into his plumage, water logging it, making it heavy and chilling him to the core. He tried puffing himself up, unfolding his wings and flapping, ran his beak through as much as he could reach, but to no avail. Struggling upright, he scraped his talons along the ground experimentally. Bright and gaudy as they were, he could barely see their movement.

For him, these kind of godforsaken mornings were not to be enjoyed, so much as endured. Then again, he was so used to it that, such were the nature of habits, there was a certain enjoyment to enduring. One that stoked his fires, inflamed his spirits, gave him an edge to his routines and his movements that he lacked even as his talons would slip hopelessly on the slick, mushy bark and his muscles would seize up, his body and his limbs dull and unresponsive to his instincts.

As much as he could manage it, there was no denying damp was the true weakness of peregrines.

For one obsessed so long and so hard with such a thing as perfection, this bothered him greatly. All the while he could reassure himself that he was still a living being, inherently imperfect, for he was still attached to the laws of life, or, failing that, even the greater natural laws. He could claim that he was something greater than human, or other than human, for it was humanity in all its metaphysical queries that locked itself in its own state of forever questing. And he was not human, well, not entirely. Feathers, talons, his beak, eyes, tail and his wings for arms would tell anybody that, despite his body.

Still, here he was. Living, shivering in the damp cold, alone, and, come to think of it, rather hungry.

This was very much his concern- from where to procure his next meal. He was long convinced that any animals that he might have hunted in this forest would have been saturated with toxins, else already dead or fled long before he arrived. Occasionally, various bands of people would venture through- for an unmonitored route was a safe route from the eye of the law. However, he knew well enough of the nature of people, their organization and their uniforms to know what the regularity of these trips meant: it wouldn’t have surprised him if such clandestine activities were merely an extension of the law. Regardless, he had no qualms either way about swooping in and snatching his fill, mostly unnoticed, sometimes watched with a quietly fearful, voyeuristic eye, and forcing down the over-preserved strips of jerky or whatever other packaged horrors a man might be compelled to bring on a journey through the wilds.

He allowed himself the pleasure of knowing he was watched, and no more. He couldn’t afford the indulgence.

All things considered, this period, it wasn’t the easiest stint he had ever lived through, no. In fact it had been pretty horrible. But this forest was the one place that he knew as his domain, at least for now. His…what did that exactly mean to him? He struggled to banish the thoughts of ownership, dominion, or even a sense of belonging. It was merely that he had become accustomed to this place and its harsh ways, and the barest of facilities by which he would learn to forge a life for, and learn about, himself.

In an unusual lapse he had failed to stick to his routine, and slept well past daybreak, despite the damp and cold. He first wondered what had happened in that extra time- surely the bootlegging patrol would have come and gone by just a few horizons yonder…then he wondered what this blemish upon his impeccable habit could mean. It required some form of penance- a forfeit.

His stomach growled just at that moment, so he decided he would skip the search for food and go straight to his morning training.

He took a moment to breathe in, and out, loosening himself and allowing his senses to drift, then focus again. He could feel the energies of the various parts of his body slowly coming together, the flows regulated by his every movement, tension and relaxation, that dictated the aperture of his gates. No matter where he was, whether in a concrete jungle or this extinct forest, this was something he would always find and always feel, and it needed no more than him.

The flow changed as he began to lift his leg, slowly, until he had raised it as far as his hips would let him. Still keeping his focus steady, he paused to gaze at his talon, sticking vertically into the air, his legs in a split. These inner arts were ancient, far more ancient than even he, and yet they were still so relevant, at least to him. They were all that mattered to him right now. He did have to adapt them, given his differences from his ancestors, but after so long, he was confident that he had risen to that challenge.

Eventually he changed stance, paused, then repeated, progressing through the varying postures, gradually shifting the concentration of his energy from his extremities to his core, then to his head. He did not count in seconds, only by the breaths and the beating of his own heart.

He had lost track of the time.

How long had it been since he had walked amongst civilization, shoulder to shoulder with his former brethren? None of those he had ever known would have lived this far, down generations, the world changing and expanding and collapsing and branching off to create new worlds, so really, would they be his people anymore? For a life stretching limitlessly, all the ages seemed to meld and mould into a singular cycle, each part being more or less indistinguishable from the next. It was life, life and this Earth, and other planets. Really, now, what difference did it make?

He’d enough sense to keep a watchful eye out on this corner of the world, saw how it changed, for better, for worse, or the same going round and round. But still it could not be denied that these humans could trigger such profound effects in nature’s balance. This forest stood as testament to that, for while the rain here was now clean and pure, even that could not break the bounds of irreversible death.

So even while there was a cycle, things moved on, always progressing. That was the nature of beings, and time. This, he surmised, was also the true nature of his slavish adherence to routine. Always doing the same thing, yet through it, also evolving. But as his body gradually took over, his stances hastening to movements until his talons were lost in a flurry of kicks and shredded dewy bark, he had to admit- they were parallels, running in completely opposite directions.

For people as a whole were always trying to break away from this routine, and always lapsing and doing the same thing, never learning. The world they lived in changed but as far as he could tell, humans were still complaining about the things they did so habitually to each other. The falcon decided that when his glass was half-full, that it was the world changing while its constituents danced in a circle. When his glass was half-empty, it was vice-versa.

He then decided to concentrate fully on his tasks, claws scraping the trunks as he leapt from tree to tree, explosive crunches echoing through the graveyard. Harder, he had to push harder, jump higher, go longer and react faster- he had to find his limits and push them, because that was what made his life now. Wings beating furiously to stabilize and fine-tune his direction, he could barely see the branches as he whipped by, spots starting to appear before his eyes as he could hardly draw breath before his legs slammed into the next trunk. At last, here it was- he had fallen into his very reason for living, and all there was left was to live in a cacophony of speed, concentration, fear, and pain. He could no longer think, simply shoot his leg out anywhere it might land, twist his body and crane his neck to sail through the gaps wrought by the trunks and branches. In the space of a heartbeat, everything was crystal clear to him, and yet he was moving so fast he could see naught but a blur.

It was only when he missed, his leg coming up but in a split-second, spasming and locking as it would do no more, his shoulder instead colliding with the trunk with a sickening thud as stars and nausea overtook his world, that he stopped, tumbling and barely steadying himself on his other talon before toppling onto his back. Wetness be damned, he was done for the morning.

He lay there, breathing heavily, and gazed blankly at the sky, waiting for his vision to return. Along with it, he could feel a throbbing in his shoulder, a cramping in his leg, his wings, too, were pretty sore, and a dull ache was starting in his back…he hurt all over. And there was little point to it, now, as there had always been. Rationalizations aside, it was just something that he did, out of force of habit, perhaps.

Once again, he was reminded, as he had been for longer than he bothered to remember, that maybe he shouldn’t bother to consider himself any differently from a human, concurrent or opposing parallels or not. Not least because it had been one of the few lessons taught to him- they were all living creatures, one living creature having that same property as any other. So it didn’t matter, either.

But then again, it obviously did, for him to have chosen this isolated vagrant’s path for himself. He was hiding for a reason, after all. At least, there had to be some kind of motivation for him to stick to these empty places, shunning, avoiding all human contact. After a while of digging through memories, he asked himself whether he actually preferred it this way, but of course he didn’t really know that.

Now that his breath was coming back and the pain from his shoulder was fading, he was starting to feel extremely uncomfortable. Not only were all the feathers down his back now waterlogged, but he himself was parched. He struggled into a standing position and tried to preen himself again with about as much success as earlier that morning. Turning his attention to his thirst, he glanced at the tree he was leaning on and noticed water had collected in the junction of its branches, so he gratefully leaned forward. And froze.

Rippling in the water’s reflection, he could see the black, sleek outline of a hovercar¹, silent and brooding, directly above him.

Immediately his head snapped to his surrounds, but he knew it was already too late. No less than two-dozen humans were closing on him, some hovering in the air, some planted on the ground, completely covering him in a hemispherical formation. Every one of them wore the identical blue underclothes and white armored vest, and every one of them was pointing what he could only assume were weapons squarely at his chest.

The falcon clicked his beak again, head turning to size up this force, and fanned his tail briefly before forcing himself to relax. Now was not the time to fight. According to his way, he would see this situation as it really was and nothing more, and he would accept it in complete equanimity. Besides, it was all very curious, this. It might even turn out convenient.

And, possibly, that might be the last thing he ever thought.

He stood still even as he saw a flash far to his left and he felt something solid lodge in his thigh. He looked down and realized, as a creeping numbness spread through his leg, that he had been tranquilized, and toyed, for a few moments, with the idea of focusing his energy and resisting, as he was confident of doing, but realized this would achieve nothing.

Moments later, the numbness overtook his mind, he swayed, and unceremoniously crashed to the ground.

* * *

FOOTNOTES:

I am assuming that there is a way for a vehicle to hover and travel in the air in full 720 degree motion without exerting significant force upon its immediate surroundings.

Obviously feel free to link back to this page but don't redistribute blah blah...just had to throw that one out there for the record. Before I post Chapter 2, I will start posting other materials, including character sheets and whatnot.

Now commencing posting

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:50:13 GMT

That's right, in just a moment the first two chapters of the first draft of Anthropometry will be posted to the readers' filter. Don't miss out!

I'll format the posts as follows:

CHAPTER No.- TITLE OF CHAPTER

(part no. if the chapter has been split into multiple posts)

PRELIMINARY NOTES:

blah blah blah. Don't read this if you want an 'unadultered' reading experience as I'll be explaining what I was thinking while I wrote this chapter, and how I might change it. Meaning do read this if you're interested in giving feedback on how to rewrite.

---

BODY TEXT (the rest is under a cut)

---

FOOTNOTES

And that should be about it. Away we go!

Background art

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:19:27 GMT

I was going to slap this on the tail-end of the previous post but thought it would do better as separate.

The page background that I've *just* uploaded (on the left) provides a good summary on the thematic foci of the novel, provided you're familiar with the references and enjoy reading into things way more than is healthy :P In case you haven't guessed already, the crude sketch of the anthro falcon is Orlestat, and he appears to be standing in the midst of a tongue-in-cheek allusion to Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man- a sketch outlining the Vitruvian principles in the human. I never found out what any da Vinci's reverse-mirror script that liberally crossed his sketches actually said, so I wrote my own little blurb- this image is cropped for styling purposes so I'll write it in full:

...this work has secured a landmark breakthrough despite the well documented fact that the practice of anthropometry has endured a history of controversy- with the ruling in SD 0131.286 that anthromorphs[sic] are to be included in the Sentient Registry. Be that as it may, the thrust of this article strives chiefly towards unlocking the mysteries of this creature, purportedly neither man nor beast.

Great, only now do I realise I screwed up: I don't like using "anthromorph" so much as "anthropomorph". Anyway, the text continues below:

FIGURE 1: PRINCIPLES OF AVIAN ANTHROPOMORPHISM

It is apparent that we encounter a significant physiological conflict in the configuration of bodily systems which must be rectified. The major parts of concern are as follows: 1) Positioning of the shoulder girdle. In a strict avian, the glenohumeral joint is angled such that range-of-motion allows for the flexion of the limb to the dorsal aspect. In an anthropomorphic being the limb is relatively restricted in this range, which has ramifications for posture and function...

Great, now is not a good time to realise I wanted to say "reconciled", not "rectified". And I wrote that text with the mouse, too. Oh well, it's kinda pretty.

What is 'Anthropometry'?

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:15:46 GMT

A reasonable question to ask, provided you're actually interested in the literary pursuits of your friends, is to ask them what they're writing about. Hence I've had to field the question "what's your novel about?" dozens of times.

As far as Anthropometry is concerned, I would be happy to answer if only I knew how to! There are a number of issues regarding the actual description of the work which I'll cover in my musings here, but first I'm going to *try* to give you a general idea by summarising the various aspects.

In a word, Anthropometry is about life. Specifically what defines life, what the characteristics common to life, and more importantly our perception of it, are. You're probably thinking this is either an extraordinarily ambitious aim or I'm taking the piss/being a wanker, and I'd agree: it's enormously broad and high-sounding, but finding constant themes in any group on any level is a fundamentally simple task- it's what drives our cognition (and I guess this is where I find the beauty in the work).

However, the plotline is hardly original when reduced to its bare essentials: somewhere in a future millenium, an ancient vagrant who has spent the past several eons secluded away from all people (this is Orlestat) is inevitably captured and brought to society, where he must learn the conditions by which civilised peoples live. Through this he must also face and piece together reminders of his original motives for his former way of life, and come to terms with himself via an intergalactic journey of searching, confusion, madness, vengeance, despair and fellowship. See, really not hard. Actually, I was somewhat miffed when I read the blurb to the just-released Lost Odyssey.

Naturally there are a number of other relatively topical themes that the plot and the setting would lend themselves to, so you can expect commentary and speculations on technologies, colonialism and expansion, the notion of progress and growth as a driver of humanity, environmental conservationism, spiritual and moral dimensions. I'm looking to do this through contrasting characters and their environments, and exploring their natures. To this end, I've found the most convenient vehicle through which to do this (at least with the characters and the fictional universe I have) is the setting of science-fiction. Note, though, it's the setting and not the genre- I don't intend to emphasise the 'science' elements as while instrumental and definitely ostensive, they are not central to the primary concern of the novel. I'll go into this in more detail in a separate post.

What is important to note, for now, is that much of the commentary takes place on an interspecies level. Given my own interests in anthropomorphism (read: furry), I've included a whole raft characters in the cast that are based on human anatomy but hybridised with animal characteristics or are more xenomorphic. Orlestat himself is an anthropomorphic peregrine falcon (my choices will be explained in most-likely-excruciating detail in a separate post), and as such finds himself being constantly alienated, unable to adequately identify with any of the beings that he meets on the basis of having the anatomical and physiological characteristics that leave him effectively disenfranchised in a world where one simply cannot live 'free as a bird'.

This provides a hint as to why the title "Anthropometry" is so significant. If you don't know, I'll also explain what that is in a future post, and more importantly how it relates to the work.

In real life, I am loath to answer questions of "what is your story about" without at least outlining all of the above, so my best hope is to draw the hapless fool who asked into a protracted conversation and hope that they are as curious about life as I am. Failing this, I really need to find a quick-release failsafe, so that I may blow a cloud of ink and escape the clutches of being the source of dull conversation. Right now, it's directing attention to the scale of the work via the wordcount, because I usually elicit a "wow!" from that.

I am not proud!

Introduction

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 05:59:47 GMT

Hello!

As stated in the userinfo, this journal is an archive of material relating to a personal literary project I've been undertaking since the middle of 2007. Seeing as this is the first post, I'll devote it to narrating the events that led to this point:

In February of 2006, I randomly cooked up a character, and even more randomly assigned him the name "Orlestat". I gave him characteristics and a personality, but without a world to live in, he was a husk inhabiting some musty shelf of my imagination.

Early last year, my partner, strawcat drew my attention to a new text-based roleplay project being run by some mutual friends (notably pouncehyena). Admittedly my interest in roleplay in general is fairly incidental to other creative pursuits but I decided to sign up because it was a social thing and I'm usually up for a good time. Unfortunately people had things happen in their lives and as far as I can tell the roleplay never took off.

In the months that things were brewing however, I'd brought Orlestat on board and was toying with various backstories and other characters with my partner. We were experimenting with the effects of collaborative effort on the freeform experience and exploring the limitations of complex backstories- in fact we'd done this with a previous world set up by the same people a year before that!

By June 2007, the difficulties in our approach were obvious, and it was also apparent that the roleplay wasn't going to happen in the near future. My partner had been trying to develop another character and we sketched out a hasty interaction between his and mine. I thought that it might be nice to rewrite it as a narrative as I quite like writing prose. Then it occured to me that I should 'flesh it out a bit.'

This 'fleshing out' quickly turned into "maybe I should write a novella" into "maybe I should write a novel" into something more like "I'm writing a freakin' epic". Over the past few years I've tried to develop my other literary projects and get the real content on the road in whatever format but this had been proving difficult as I was more fond of drawing plans than jumping in. This time round, I was swimming before I even realised I'd jumped in, which is just fine by me.

Two months passed and I racked up several thousand words, passing individual chapters to close friends and asking for feedback. After a while it occured to me that what I was writing might just be a little more interesting to people other than myself than I originally envisaged. Then I heard that NaNoWriMo was coming to town, and, realising that this was my single best chance in a long time to give it a burl free from the relative pressure of exams, I broke the official NaNo rules and completed the challenge having already written about 30k words in the work (bringing the total wordcount to around 80k, just in case you thought I cheated :P).

Immediately after the conclusion of NaNoWriMo 2007, I asked whether anybody would be interested in actually reading what I had and what I presumably would write in the future. Seeing as I got more than zero responses in the affirmative, and I had this journal on standby from a long-ago era, here it is!

So yeah. In the coming posts I'll provide some more background information as well as starting to post the drafts of the novel itself. Later I'll also be posting questions and thoughts about various aspects of the writing process and related thoughts and...oh, well I guess you'll see.

That's all for this post!