Trapezius muscles of doom.png
I tried some other patterns in the clipping mask and something went horribly right.
Reasons I made this: 1. I forgot how to draw my own character WTF 2. Pattern abuse
It’s actually pretty rare. So much so, it didn’t even happen to Tully. What is more common is for magically constructed intelligence to contain vagueness in the spell that leaves room for magic to solve the problem of making a thing that does x, y and z, and that leaves open the possibility that magic’s solution will be to make it sapient enough to understand what it’s being asked to do and how to do it and when. It’s a bug/feature.
When Tully was created, the vagueness was in place on purpose and the results expected and accounted for. His growing into sentience was really more a matter of growing beyond constraints that concealed what was already there.
Somewhat inspired by the reaction I got to Ruins of Melancholy.
Parker “what did I do” is not an appropriate reaction to a hug from a friend.
So I found out purple sweet potatoes exist, and the plants they grow from are also purple, and immediately I wanted one. And then, as luck would have it, I found a place selling purple sweet potatoes.
So now the sweet potato plant has a purple friend. I’m thinking I’ll plant the slips together in one pot for some sweet contrast.
oscyllarus replied to your post: Within universe, how do creatures like Agents and…
so what about hat?
Hat is another “just liked the way it sounded” one, though for different reasons. Smudge just didn’t care what humans called her and didn’t feel like translating, Hat specifically wanted to keep them from knowing something that personal.
Magiphages make theirs up, and sometimes do so while in the process of coming into existence, permanently imprinting the name into the spell in their bodies, making it an unchangeable reality for them. Some magiphage’s names are combinations of past generation’s names, they inherit them like it’s an eye color or some such, it was written in the spell material so it ended up in the mix.
Agents come up with thought-names for themselves, made up of sounds, sights, sensory experiences and feelings (basically anything that can be thought of or remembered). Other Agents shape an Agent’s name with their input as well.
Names change with the Agent, though they tend to build rather than change completely. A young Agent’s name might be just a few notes of bird song or the image of a single flower, and slowly it accrues into a complex scene, a bird perched on a dead tree singing that song in bright sunlight, that flower blooming out of snow.
Verbal Agents may try to translate this name into a name that can be spoken outloud or may come up with something totally unrelated. Non-verbal Agents often acquire names in unusual ways, and some guide the name they are given by responding to names they actually like being called and totally ignoring those calling them names they don’t like. But others just do not care, and their spoken names are about as related to them as the names we give wild animals.
Parker’s name is an example of a translation. His “real” name is something like a memory of being in a place full of trees and manicured-looking green lawns.
Smudge’s name is an example of just making something up - her thought-name is totally unrelated, she just likes the way “Smudge” sounds.
The Autumn Man’s name is an example of guiding others into a name. Since he is non-verbal, he can’t communicate what his name is or choose a translation. Humans just called him whatever they wanted to call him, and were usually just being obvious (The orange man, the man with one eye) - when someone finally called him The Autumn Man he was so surprised that someone got close to his name that he perked up and looked them right in the eye. That caused the name to catch on.
“Ruins of Melancholy”
Parker spent almost a hundred years in the ocean, isolated and exiled, before he finally just gave up. He did not feel that he could keep going. He beached himself, entirely intending to let himself rot there and die.
But he’d beached himself near a town, and he was soon found by a man named Ernest.
When Ernest found him, he was already so broken and listless he figured he was going to die and there wasn’t much he could do about it.
So he just stayed with him. He visited him, talked to him. He picked out debri and dirt that fell into his broken, wounded body.
And that was enough.
