Cosmic Potato musings

It's the last week before Nanowrimo 2016 starts, and of course all of my pre-writing ruminations are about a project other than any of the ones I mentioned in my previous post.

Since my teens when I first started doing serious worldbuilding projects, I've thought that the human reproductive system is really stupid, and there must be something better than what we're stuck with. The sentient species on one of my planets, Siram, doesn't have two distinct sexes. There's only one, and they all release eggs externally into a stream, which hatch and develop into young that Someone Else has to worry about taking care of by the time they flow to the ocean.

Later on while getting a masters in marine biology, I learned about aggregate broadcast spawning in some fishes, so hey, it even exists (sort of). I also learned about plants in college, which have something called "alternation of generations" - where in the more primitive species, the haploid form is actually separate individual plants, and not just gametes. (They're technically separate individual plants in the derived species too, it's just that they either stay inside the flowers of the parent or they're pollen). I also learned that in a number of marine invertebrate taxons, including urochordates, there's a motile larval form, that settles out into a sessile adult form, that reproduces to make more motile larva; from a certain warped point of view, all vertebrates (humans included) technically have life cycles like those, except we've evolved to skip the sessile adult form.

All of which is background for the ideas floating around in my head at the moment, about a species that instead of having males and females, they have haploids and diploids. In the simplest version, there would just be two forms (one haploid, one diploid); if I wanted to get really complicated about it, there could be four (two of each type that are male and female). Two haploids have to come together to make a diploid, but a diploid (in the simple version) would be able to make haploids by itself. This would obviously have all sorts of subtle effects on what they look like and whether and how they socialize.

The most appropriate place to put such a species would be in Cosmic Potato. They're already cliff-dwelling birds with a very season-based cycle of putting nearly 100% of their time and resources into reproduction for half the year, and then they have time to do other things (sentient things, like explore the world) during the off-season. It would be pretty easy to have them also be haploids and diploids.

Then of course on the other side of the planet is the sentient plants. The plants could be a sessile adult form that also includes a motile juvenile form that runs around Doing Things before they have to settle down in one spot for the rest of their lives.

It also occurs to me that I can't really start the story when they start the sea voyage to get to the other side of the world. There needs to be a lot more backstory buildup for why they're going, and the surprise gas giant would be a lot more of a surprise if it was closer to the end of the story than the beginning. I think I was realizing this the last time I tried to write it too. So. To ensure that I'll have lots and lots of material to put into the backstory buildup, having them be cliff-dwelling birdlike haploids and diploids leading season-based lives should help quite a bit.

It's Prep Time for Nanowrimo 2016

I'm kicking around several ideas, but so far leaning in favor of working on Fortress Launne some more. It's the only thing I've tried during a Nanowrimo where I actually get more than 50k words, and it's been long enough since the last time I looked (Nanowrimo 2014, basically). Reading back over the blog posts from Nanowrimo 2014, I think what would make the most sense is to rewrite Temple.

It also occurred to me that what Aliacorba gave to Iorli in exchange for the protection of the spirit cougars on his family line was the pearl. I was reading a post where I was pondering this out loud and the thought just popped up: "the pearl of course." Of course. Hmm.

Other options: well, I could more-or-less fanfic Numenera. In the first game of it I was in, I had a character named Lanash Jahat. Lanash didn't like the less than stellar morality of the rest of the group, and so I wanted to have him wander off while I replaced him with a different character that was more suitable (a mercenary type who wouldn't care how money was earned, as long as he got his share). The GM didn't agree, and decided on a complicated way to throw out the whole rest of the game in favor of everyone following Lanash around when he wandered off. He neglected to mention he was going to do this to the rest of the players, however, and it didn't go over well, and although everyone else gamely tried to follow along, all of the spark died, and the game ended soon after.

Anyway, so I had thoughts for what Lanash was going to do after he left the rest of the group - basically pursue his original goals from his backstory. So I could write a whole adventure focused around that. Maybe put in some other characters. I also had other character ideas before the game, including one for a lattimor, that might work as another focus for a story.

I also have a Numenera game running on rpol. Pretty sure I could come up with stories out of that, too. Especially since Brent mentioned that he was going to write backstory for his character in it. So we'd be working on very similar things and presumably our brainwaves would sync up better during write-ins...

I guess I have almost a month to decide. I'm starting early because Alcar and Kelli have both started talking about it and seem stoked. Kelli and I might've also convinced Regina to give it a try. Guess we'll see if that pans out.