Tag: thyvae

New version of “Tough as Blades” short story

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Some time ago I took to the short story I posted here years ago and edited it rather significantly, using the knowledge I’d gained from having an editor go over Slubes. Although it’s not entirely something new for this month, there are new scenes, including one that show how Master Hydra met Crawmaster, and all the old scenes have been thoroughly edited to be much better. “Tough as Blades“, the story whose title was the result of me forgetting that the actual phrase is tough as nails and that nails and blades don’t really have all that much in common??

One more month of 2016. On January 1st, Wandering Fortunes begins. A new world. New characters. New species. New nonsense. New beach ball. Around mid-December (the 16th or a few days after) I’m going to post some information to start diving into the new setting and everything of Wandering Fortunes. We saw Mintop over two books. Now we’ll see two planets over one book.

Of course, if you want to see this story start half a month early, you can become a patron over at Patreon!

ART (or at least some facsimile of it): Thyvae

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

I said I maybe might! Doodled up in about I don’t actually know how long but it couldn’t have been more than 10 or 20 minutes, maybe 30, the simplest-looking species from the CCC on Mintop, the thyvae. The original inspiration was hydras. You know, from nature.

thyvae

These doodles are by no means meant to be a final word on how these things look. I just like having stuff to actually post for once.

Darmenzi Chapter 13 now up

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Oh, um, er, eh, April Fool’s! Yes, it was totally intentional that I didn’t post the new chapter yesterday. ha ha ha ha hahahahahaHAHAHAHAHA HA HA HA HA HA. HA. HA. HA. HA.

ha

So here’s chapter 13 of Darmenzi, Aquasphere. It features water and a brief discussion of anime and was rather significantly edited a few years ago after I played the demo of a little game called Undertale, maybe you’ve heard of it.

I’ve had about 5 hours of sleep now so I need a nap. Mention of Patreon, which I think I just discovered every post I’ve made announcing new chapters up have only been available to patrons?? I like don’t even know. I’m confused now. Gee, what else is new?

Darmenzi Chapter 9, Hospitality to Hostility, now up

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Darmenzi Chapter 9

I’ve never quite figured out how I want to write the titles for these posts. I don’t just want to put the chapter name, but… Anyway, chapter 9. It’s a big one, it’s an important one, but only in the second half. The first half is a hotel, woo.

Also, I just noticed it looks like WordPress post adding writing thingy has changed since I last didn’t avoid using the older one. Because I still use the old one when I can. As long as I can avoid everything being shifted several inches and a lack of easily-accessed most used tags, and an overdone amount of only parts of the page scrolling, and… a preview feature that’s just an inset window on the same page? I feel like it may have been designed for mobile. I feel like everything now is designed for mobile. I feel like I want to plant myself in place like a tree just to make a point. I feel like I shouldn’t have written this paragraph because now I’m going to be late for dayjob. I feel like I stopped caring.

Maybe someday I can care even less if my Patreon starts jumping. Maybe you should take a look at what a future might hold. (For the record, I have complaints on Patreon’s post creator, too, but I feel like they’re at least working towards a good direction.)

Anyway, superbusydayjobwork season ends in a week, maybe then I can be uplifting! Or at least updrafting.

Tough as Blades: First (fully-public) Short Story!

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

… is not the subtitle!

So my new(?) short story, as well as my first(?) short story, “Tough as Blades” is now available for viewing. For free! On the internet!!

It stars a minor character (perhaps one could call him a minor antagonist) from Slubes and what happened to him after and a few months later. That’s what I’ll usually write with short stories: smaller events featuring minor characters from novels. They’re not quite as polished as the novels, I’ll admit–those get looked over by other people and are given detailed attention to… detail… or something… unlike these blog posts… but that doesn’t mean I don’t revise them 3 or 4 times.

You can read more summary of “Tough as Blades” at the new Short Stories page (located underneath the old Cloudy Cuckoo Cosmos page), or you can jump right in either directly on WordPress here, read it on Google Drive here, or download a Microsoft Word file here because hey why not??

Stories like this one will show up every so often, probably announced a week or two ahead. I have quite a few plans, indeed. For now, the next thing to see will be my second novel, Darmenzi, but that will be after the upcoming National Novel Writing Month. Here’s to looking ahead, I guess!

Species Profile: Thyvae

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Today’s topic is something somewhat based on the hydra of reality. Then it turned into a cucumber. Wait, what?

And don’t forget, I will be posting the short story “Tough as Blades” later today!

Quoted from the species appendix in Slubes:

“Thyvae are a species that look a bit like rectangular cucumbers: their bodies are entirely green and have six sides (including a square top and bottom), with the edges being rounded. Their heads are cubes, with the torso rectangular cuboids. Their arms and legs are black and as thin and flexible as cooked spaghetti noodles. Thyvae have a very patriarchal society where the males have traditionally had all the power and the females very little say, though this has changed in modern times. Their average lifespan is about 50 years.”

Physical Characteristics

The outward appearance of the thyvae, as quoted from my personal encyclopedia: “Thyvae are about the same height as slubes. They look a bit like cubic cucumbers; their bodies are entirely green and have six sides (including the top and bottom), with the edges being rounded. The head is nearly indistinguishable from the body, the neck being nothing more than a short, smoothed groove between the head and body. Thyvae have two small eyes and a small mouth; their arms and legs are thin as spaghetti noodles with the same flexibility as cooked noodles. Despite being so thin, they do have a strong grip.”

Thyvae have a lifespan of about 50 years, with maturity coming in just 10 years. In the distant past thyvae would breed asexually, splitting a new thyvae from their body over a short period of time, but as time went on they split into male and female sexes and began to reproduce sexually. They still have the ability to reproduce asexually, though, but it is more difficult now, taking a year to complete it and leaving both the parent and the offspring with about half of their full life left.

History and Culture

Thyvae have a particularly hierarchical society, one governed strongly by powerful authority figures, as well as the aspirations of becoming those authority figures. Due to this, many thyvae have roles of leadership on Interp, but mostly the males. Thyvae also have a rather patriarchal society, although in recent years more female thyvae have been pushing for more rights and equality. This has also led to some attempting a return to asexual reproduction.

No matter what side they’re on, though, most thyvae seem like big jerks, though they’re usually just looking out for themselves, and the authority figure culture stems less from following authority and more from becoming it.