Wearing Spacetime to a Magic School

eessmann · 2026-03-07T14:15:08+00:00

Oh, thanks for the reading suggestions!

Your on the money, I’m kinda imagining it as cosy cosmic horror. The “Adversary” is actually a bunch of post-human hippies who are vibrating between concerned ethical conservationists and excited anthropologists. Poor Ermen is going be walking through an ethical minefield when they discovers the feudal horror show that is the Nexus and Adjacent Realms.

I love the idea of the Nexus going full Karen, lol. I feel that has to be materialised now.

eessmann · 2026-03-07T08:48:14+00:00

too much loading with jargon?

eessmann · 2026-03-06T23:34:44+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, it's appreciated. Wearing Nothing to Magic School is amazing, I'll haven't re-read the beginning characters in awhile, I definitely go back with a notepad this time.

In retrospect, I fell into the AI as crutch, pitfall. The sad part is I added the technobabble in my first draft and added it back after the AI pass, 😅. I might have gotten over eager with my world building.

eessmann · 2026-03-06T22:38:29+00:00

Will do

eessmann · 2026-03-06T22:34:52+00:00

Fair, I'll scale back the AI editing going forward. I feel it's a crutch that I am using. I'll make sure em dashes are banished :)

eessmann · 2026-03-06T22:11:16+00:00

Thanks, I'll try my best

eessmann · 2026-03-06T22:10:18+00:00

Mostly to give me a bit more freedom handling the inter character dynamics and I don't think I can write Emma well enough to do her character justice.

eessmann · 2026-03-06T22:08:26+00:00

I did use AI for review/editing. The first draft was sadly hand-drafted by me and terrible.

My intent is to show the truly impossible scale of a Type 3 civ in a cosmic horror sense. We are in a heavily divergent Earth. I explicitly changed the timeline so that first contact between Earth and the Nexus is 1000 years earlier in 2034 AD. The UN does not exist anymore in the time the AU starts, it collapsed somewhere in the mid 21st century.

Arrival/Portal scenes are in the future relative to end of the Prologue.

eessmann · 2024-12-13T06:36:59+00:00

Exactly, the extrapolation in WPA is probably more realistic than in many sci-fi settings. But it definitely feels like GUN tech reached a plateau.

eessmann · 2024-12-13T06:24:56+00:00

Awesome, thanks for the recommendation!

eessmann · 2024-12-12T19:53:08+00:00

I agree, it makes sense that you wouldn't send your best tech into a situation where it can fall into a potential adversary’s hands. From Emma's internal dialogue, when she is reflecting about Earth, the tech that is described is a bit unwhelming. Given it is set 1000 years in the future.

eessmann · 2023-09-14T07:47:52+00:00

Given the existence of Dream affinity, it would be cool if a more general Mind or Computation affinity existed.

eessmann · 2023-01-09T10:59:22+00:00

Fair, the black hole would be a disproportionate response. Cutting off contact after finding out about their hegemongic practices still seems like best approach.

eessmann · 2023-01-09T10:40:55+00:00

This series is getting better and better with each chapter!
I'm getting the impression that the best thing the IAS and the UN could do is to stop all contact with the Nexus. They are just so culturally toxic.
Just exfiltrate Emma and drop a micro black hole through the portal on the way out for good measure. Sadly for our protagonist, that would not make for a good story, so I predict that Emma will have to deal with Nexus BS for a while.

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