In B3: The Art Museum I use birth/death imagery to skip most of the school year. It ties the section to the ever-present idea of reincarnation, but more importantly it keeps the plot moving. “Don’t worry,” it says, “this isn’t a high-school slice-of-life.” When my mom read the rough drafts of the early chapters (hi, Mom) she said B was the boring one; I’ve rewritten it entirely. The draft of B3 I posted today is more interesting and efficient.

In the first three paragraphs we know the setting and which characters are involved. Dan and Jillian remind readers who they are by contributing potent images: Dan brings up the Harrowing of Hell, which parallels his eventual descent to the underworld; Jillian talks about two mirrored pillars housed in different countries, echoing her own separation from her past life Dan. We even meet Princess Lucy, a title star of LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration, on Dan’s shirt. I’ve introduced LLSTA slowly over B2 and B3 to acclimatize the reader for B4, when we finally watch an episode.

The next paragraphs create tension: Dan is caught between a painting he’s too scared to look at and the girl he’s too scared to talk to. Jillian builds the tension by encouraging Dan, but the situation is deflated when the reader sees Faith and Beatrice are together. There will be no romantic confrontation today. Nevertheless even this threat of a conflict encourages the reader to continue, contributing to the momentum of the story by exploring the relationships between our established characters. I hope.

I did the same thing last section. In section B2 Jillian was worried about finding friends in a new school. Then she met Dan and Faith and Beatrice, which really just raises more questions than it answers. That was the book’s last heartbeat—our hearts go lub-dub, lub-dub, but a book’s heart goes tension-resolution, tension-resolution. I try to make the most of anticlimax.

As a bonus we’ve increased the tension between Dan and Beatrice. This section avoids one conflict but adds to an overarching conflict, Dan’s unrequited love for Beatrice. Over the course of the novel the tension will rise until the conflict finally comes to a head.

By this point Dan’s self-destructive tendencies are well-established. He confronts the painting he doesn’t want to look at, a Bosch rendering of Hell, and describes images he is clearly uncomfortable witnessing. Dan’s conflicts were internal.

Besides, you didn’t think I would introduce a Bosch and then never come back to it, right? Use every part of the antelope. If you set up a domino, knock it down. And other metaphors.

Over the Summer, Faith and Jillian smoke a cricket while watching LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration. I’m considering making this into it’s own section because a lot of things happen in B3, but since I want to leave the high-school setting ASAP this scene can stay here for now.

Before the penultimate episode of LLSTA Jillian reveals she remembers being Dan in Chapter A. She comes out as trans and asks Faith to call him Jay. DanJay. This integrates their gender identity into the story and setting (and title), which may make it easier for some readers to swallow. After all, readers already accepted Dan turning into Jillian. They’re used to name changes and pronoun swaps by now.

After another time skip (which readers should also be familiar with by now) Jay will have fully transitioned and he’ll be ready for an adventure. We’ll keep the story moving and I don’t have to embarrass myself by getting basic facts about transitioning wrong. Not all trans people want to have any kind of surgery or hormones, but it would be nice if Jay happened to look a bit like Dan down the line. I hope all this comes off as respectful, because I’m trying my best; let me know if anything is off.

Faith and Beatrice aren’t dating because I had a lesbian quota, and Jay isn’t trans just to be inclusive (though I am happy it’s come out this way). The relationships between characters fell naturally out of the story I wanted to tell. Jay being trans gives readers insight into the nature of the afterlife. We’re reading DanJay’s two lives simultaneously, and the more we read the more the pieces fall into place.

In the next section we’ll meet Professor Akayama. See you there!

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If you’ve read B2: Late for Class, you know I’ve thrown away all artistic integrity by talking about an anime. Secretly Akayama DanJay is just fanfiction for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, but we’ll get to that later. For now let’s talk about Dante’s Inferno.

Jillian Diaz-Jackson has been reincarnated conterminously with their past life, Dan Jones, who loves Dante’s Inferno. This is the second book I’ve name-dropped after The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but referencing famous 14th-century epic poetry is more respectable than contemporary humor/sci-fi titles, so I’m sure to keep this one. Especially because Dante’s Inferno is so instrumental to the images I want to convey!

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, a trilogy of epic poems of which the Inferno is first, Dante is led through Hell and Purgatory by an ancient Roman poet named Virgil. Near Heaven Dante meets his dead courtly love Beatrice and she leads him through the pearly gates. In writing parallels to the Divine Comedy we might perform a thorough investigation of the afterlife, but I think this approach is overdone. In Chapter A Virgil Blue sends Dan to the afterlife where he meets Anihilato (a stand-in for Satan). That’s enough to get the message across.

Instead, the relationship between Dan Jones and Beatrice will echo the relationship between the real Dante and Beatrice. In real life Dante was infatuated with a woman named Beatrice Portinary, but she married another man and then died. Even after her death Dante was so devoted to her he had a dream God made Beatrice eat his flaming heart. That’s some intense shit. It’s where we get the phrase “Beatific Vision,” meaning an ultimate direct message from God. Wow.

In Akayama DanJay Dan can’t stop looking at Beatrice. In coming sections he will love her and she will be unattainable. He will build her up in his mind until she is taken forever, and then he will idolize her. Faith will be his only remaining connection to Beatrice until she, too, leaves him. Then Dan Jones will be lost in a dark wood until he finds his Virgil.

By focusing on this relationship instead of touring the afterlife, I get to use the Divine Comedy as context for my story instead of just retreading old ground. Lots of people know about Dante’s Inferno but barely anyone knows the obsession Dante had for Beatrice, so their story is ripe for stealing and fictionalizing. Sometimes writing is like poaching stories from the wild and mounting their bodies in exciting poses.

Since Dan has been reincarnated as Jillian backwards in time, readers have seen the conclusion of Dan’s story already. They saw him cleaning out the furnace, touching soot with his bare hands—he might be Dainty in High School, but when he’s in his mid-thirties he won’t mind getting his hands dirty. Readers saw him gamble his soul to save others and lose, done in by his desire to do good. Presenting this resolution first signifies to the reader that Dan—that is, the Dan that Jillian is observing—is a story of secondary importance. When we brush it aside later to focus on Jillian’s story the reader won’t mind. While Dan, Beatrice, and Faith act out an allegory, Jillian will get to the bottom of this whole ‘existence’ business.

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If you’ve read B1: Dan Wakes Up, you might be intrigued—or just confused. At the very least I hope you understand this wasn’t just a “Surprise! It was all a dream!” scenario. In the draft published today I used an unreliable narrator to help the reader understand Dan Jones has been reincarnated as a four-year-old girl named Jillian Diaz-Jackson, remembering his encounter with the King of Dust as a nightmare.

When we read a story we often have to take the characters’ words at face value. There is no other source of information other than the words as written on the page, so writers can misdirect their audience. Lots of short stories make use of this, like those sci-fi pulps where it turns out the mysterious planet was earth all along, or the two survivors of the apocalypse are named Adam and Eve. Movies do it too: Remember in the Sixth Sense (spoiler alert) it turned out that dude was dead the whole time? He didn’t think he was dead so he didn’t act dead, and we viewers believed him. Well, in writing, we can pass off even more bold-faced lies, like making your main character secretly be a tomato or something. It’s great when done well, as I hope I’ve done here.

To ease readers into the transition between calling the character ‘Dan’ and calling them ‘Jillian,’ I refer to Jillian Diaz-Jackson as Dan in the text repeatedly. Even the title of the section, Dan Wakes Up, tells the reader they are following Dan Jones. While Jillian’s parents call her Jillian the narration says Dan. I only call the character Jillian when her mother specifically says her full real name, because I hope by then the reader has caught on. Transitioning to ‘Jillian’ outside the dialogue also hints that Dan’s self-image has changed. Now they’re Jillian even in their inner monologues!

There are subtler lies, too. I describe Dan as being in his mid-thirties in section A1, but I don’t warn the reader that he’s a toddler now. Instead I made Dan pick up his Teddy Bear, be afraid of the dark, speak in simple language, and get distracted by his cat. Jillian’s mother picks her up in one arm, so we’re clearly not dealing with a full-grown, thirty-something-year-old man. By showing these details I hope to create a cognitive dissonance in the reader which warns them something is amiss. I want to keep them on their toes, analyzing everything the characters do and say, so they understand the narrative trick I’ve pulled on them.

As a little bonus, the cat’s name is Django. The silent D hints at the transition from Dan to Jillian. (Also my childhood pet was named Django and I wanted to include him. Mrow.)

Anyway, thanks for reading! Until next time, keep eating your worms!

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Now that we’ve finished Chapter A with A4: The Little Blue Bird, (which you should read before this), let’s look it over. These first four sections establish the conflicts we’ll be seeing for the whole novel even while offering a self-contained story which I hope holds up in its own right.

We established two major settings, the monastery and the Mountain in a desert. By surprising the reader with the transition we build a sense of mystery into the setting itself. Did Dan die? Is the Mountain in the afterlife? What happened here? These questions aren’t answered, so the reader must continue.

We introduced four characters: Dan, Virgil Blue, Faith Featherway, and Anihilato. For each pair of characters we presented the relationship between them, and those relationships provided conflict. Dan and VB have an obvious student/master relationship; it’s the first relationship the readers see so I want it to be easily understood. Dan and Faith are friends but their friendship presents another mystery: why do these two know each other? Dan tests their friendship by seeking out Anihilato, who has their own beef with everyone involved. These relationships are not terribly complicated, but that’s a good thing: as the novel goes on, readers will come to understand the characters and their interactions more fully.

Dan alluded to two more characters, Beatrice and Jay, in section A4. I think it’s a good idea to mention characters before they appear so you avoid introducing everyone’s best friend that everyone knows in, like, Chapter Eight. When I rewrite these early sections I might mention Beatrice and Jay in A1. Jay is in the title, after all.

Finally, even while setting up the pieces for the rest of the novel, we tell a story. The first section sets up the conflicts as Dan and VB discuss Dan’s journey to the Mountain and Dan’s obsession with Beatrice. Dan’s immolation in a furnace is the inciting event which sets off the rest of the chapter, the threshold crossing. In the second section Dan meets Faith, a helper for his journey, but tensions are still high because he is in a strange environment and only digging deeper after Beatrice. In the third section we meet antagonist Anihilato, who presents an obstacle to be overcome. All hope is lost as Faith is annihilated and Dan is left alone. In the fourth section Dan triumphs over adversity to save his friend Faith—but then throws away his victory to challenge Anihilato again for Beatrice, an act of hubris which acts as another inciting event setting off the rest of the book.

We’ve also set up the makings of an allegory: there’s a character nicknamed Dainty who travels across the afterlife for a character named Beatrice at the behest a character named Virgil Blue, guided by a character named Faith. Maybe in Chapter B’s commentary we’ll talk about my plans for this allegory.

I’ll have Section B1 up next Friday, the 5th of May. Until then, eat your worms!

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Before I posted A3: The King of Dust (which you should read before this) I edited it. I cut out some unnecessary paragraphs, rearranged some dialogue, clarified the action, and kept it punchy. Let’s look at excerpts from the shitty first draft (pardon my french) and compare them to the second draft.

First, instead of these cool worms in the current draft:

Worms fled sand and sought moisture, eating into the deep. Larger worms left tunnels in their wakes. The largest worm carved caverns with twenty arms and twenty legs. When it exhaled it filled its labyrinths with frost.

I had this angst-filled teenage poetry:

The cold earth invaded every aspect of the dark silence. Icy pangs leaked into crevices and corners. The bite of chilled sand fell in every opening and scraped every inch. The heat from each limb and fingertip evaporated into the cruel depths.

The creature moved. It forced two hundred fingertips through hard-packed sands, undulating its long torso to shift tons of cool earth. Forty feet kicked against the dark.

—

After eons and eternities, the movements carved subterranean tunnels and burrows. Empty rooms filled with frozen air, and when the creature exhaled, he filled his network with impenetrable white fog.

When you write a lot you can cut out as much as you want—you know you’ll be able to fill the space back up if you need to. That’s why I didn’t flinch when I deleted these paragraphs (and occasionally tens of pages, if I don’t like where a story has ended up). The new intro focuses on some wormy imagery which builds up to Anihilato, a giant worm guy. As I wrote Section J2 (which should be posted on this website in a few months I guess) I noticed that worms were appearing more and more often, so I decided to edit them into the early sections for a sense of cohesiveness. Motifs are only motifs if you remember to use them!

Next, let’s take a look at how I described Anihilato in my first draft:

The creature ambled to a dark corner of its cavern, forty legs shifting and undulating like roused millipedes. It carefully placed each egg into holes in the wall, whispering quiet gibberish to each one.

“Anihilato, my name is Dan Jones. This is my friend, Faith Featherway.”

The egg holes leaked clear, protective jelly.

The creature turned to face them.

“I am. The King of Dust.”

For a minute it stared. He was twenty feet long, pairs of legs attached to twenty consecutive pelvises, his forty pairs of arms cramped on a human torso eight feet long, but ordinary thickness. Six eyes blinked, each bright like the watery reflection of stars in a deep well. Its face was dry and cracked.

“Anihilato, right?” said Dan. “We were looking for you.”

Compare this to the second draft, posted today:

It crawled on twenty legs to a dark corner of its cave. It whispered gibberish as it stuck each egg in the wall.

“Anihilato, I’m Dan Jones. This is my friend, Faith Featherway.”

The worm blinked its six eyes. “I am the King of Dust.” Its face was cracked and dry. It had ten pelvises connected in series, Dan noticed, and ten stacked human torsos. It was held upright with snake-like musculature.

The egg holes leaked jelly.

“Anihilato, right?” Dan held out the cricket. “Do you have a lighter?”

I have to be careful with phrases like “for a minute,” or “for a second.” I use them too often and when I edit they slip by me. In the second draft I don’t have to say that Anihilato stared for a minute because the description fills the space, and gives the impression that time is passing. The imagery is less flowery in this draft, because Anihilato is a complicated creature. The worms took care of the cool imagery; Anihilato’s description must be clear and concise.

Adding “Dan noticed” lets this description pull double-duty: it’s not just a description of Anihilato, but of Dan. He’s the kind of person who counts how many legs the monster has. You and Dan also might notice that Anihilato used to have forty arms and forty legs and I reduced it to twenty of each.

Next, let’s look at the first draft again (when the Mountain was called Mala):

“Everything in that box belongs to me.” Anihilato smiled. The teeth had no gums. “From formless dust, the Great Lord Mala created you. As the King of Dust, ruler of Nihilism, you belong to me.”

Dan flipped the paper over. There was no writing on the back. Only a few complicated symbols cluttered the front. “Well, I’m afraid that as a celestial, I’m supposed to merge with Mala as a Zephyr. So I’ll be taking my Eternity Card, if you don’t mind.”

Anihilato paused, then smiled. “I don’t think you quite understand. When you attained earthly enlightenment, you understood your place at the godhead–you became a living celestial. But your soul belongs to me until Mala claims your Eternity Card and declares you as a Zephyr. And having fallen into my domain, you remain in the realm of death and dust.”

“Mala hasn’t claimed my Eternity Card?” Dan delivered the question with a tilt of his head, as if in disbelief.

“Mala declares Zephyrs by claiming their Cards,” said Anihilato, driving the point home with ten jabbing fingers. “If the Great Lord Mala has not claimed your card, perhaps you are less enlightened than you anticipated.”

“There’s something wrong here,” said Dan, tapping the paper with two fingers. “You don’t have my Eternity Card in your box of soul receipts.”

Blah blah blah. Readers are smarter than this; cut it down, make the details into a joke so they’ll remember it.

“The Eternity Cards are my deed to creation.” Anihilato smiled. Its teeth had no gums. “The Mountain made you from dust. I’m the Master of Nihilism, King of Dust. I own you. I tire of bureaucratic nonsense. I have the right to obliterate you.”

“You sure would.” Dan folded the paper. “If you had my Eternity Card.”

Anihilato’s jaw hung open. “…I do.”

“Then what am I holding?”

The King of Dust shook its head. “You saw me take that from my box moments ago.”

“I sure did.”

Last but not least improved, let’s look at Faith being sucked into Anihilato’s mouth. Here’s the old version:

“Do not make small talk. You are still mine, wisp,” said Anihilato. “If you are not a Zephyr, then your soul belongs to me now.”

Anihilato inhaled. From every corner of the endless caverns, the winds blew towards him.

There was a crack in the air like shattering glass.

Dan grabbed the arctic fox in both hands, snow falling through his fingers. The humble happiness fell from his face, leaving sheer panic. “Anihilato, stop now.”

As the King of Dust inhaled, Faith’s fog drifted towards him. “What the hell? Help!” She turned to Dan. “What’s he doing?”

He had ceased inhaling. Instead, the caverns themselves seemed to produce the wind, horrible howls pulling at Faith from deep within the network of catacombs. Anihilato spoke over the irresistible forces. “Whether ordered here by Mala or not, your soul is in my box, and now it is mine.”

“I’m so sorry, Faith, just–” Dan watched her eyes fill with terror as each limb vanished into thin air.

“Do something, please!”

“I’m sorry, I’m panicking, I’m–”

She was gone.

Dan spoke with seriousness in every muscle of his face. “She’s a friend. Let her go.”

Even just comparing the white space in the two drafts tells you how much verbiage could be compacted:

“Don’t speak like you’re leaving, wisp,” said Anihilato. “Your soul still belongs to me.” The worm’s next breath sucked wind from every corner of the endless caverns.

Faith yelped as her airy tail drifted towards the King of Dust. “Help! Dainty! What’s it doing?” She tried to run but slipped backward each step.

Dan grabbed the fox in both hands. Snow flew through his fingers. “Anihilato, stop! Now!”

Faith fought the wind that ripped her snowflakes away. “Help, help!”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t—” Dan watched her body vanish until finally her terrified eyes flew into Anihilato’s lipless mouth. “She’s my friend. Let her go.”

This draft makes it clearer who’s talking when, and I think Faith’s reaction is a little more genuine. Also, why could Anihilato speak while inhaling like that? That’s just confusing.

Someday, when the bones of this story are all out of the ground, I’ll come back and edit these early sections again. Maybe I’ll rewrite them entirely, making these edits pointless. That’s just the nature of the beast; we can’t let it discourage us. Until next time, enjoy your worms!

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Let’s talk about A2: Faith, that White Fox, posted today and which you should read before coming here.

In this section I introduce a new character, and thank goodness, because we can only listen to monks set up exposition for so long. Faith Featherway is a cloud-fox-thing wandering the desert and taking ‘lost souls’ to that Mountain we heard so much about last section. I’m hoping her casual attitude is a breath of fresh air for the reader after those stuffy, orderly monks.

Dan and Faith recognize each other, apparently, and used to be friends. Now the reader can relate to them because they’re the kind of people who have friends. That might sound simplistic, but building likable characters is important. Who would care what kind of mystical quest Dan and Faith had ahead of them if they were just jerks? By establishing positive relationships between characters we reassure the reader that these are protagonists worth rooting for. In addition, their interactions through dialogue allow me to show their personality to the reader. It’s easier to get characters to open up to friends; then readers have context for conflicts with antagonists later.

The characters recognizing each other is, I hope, funny. At this point the reader might be completely lost. What alien world is this? Is this the afterlife? The characters celebrating a relationship the reader didn’t know of is a sort of punchline defusing the rising tension I’ve built. As a bonus, if I can make the reader laugh I can make them remember anything, even when the timeline gets more complicated.

Also notice that Dan said he was worried about Anihilato in the last section, and Faith reinforces this concern, but Dan wants to meet Anihilato anyway. We learn about characters through their decisions and this decision is made to get the reader’s attention. Why is Dan seeking out Anihilato? In the next sections we’ll come to understand this decision as indicative of one of Dan’s character flaws.

So what’s up with the cricket? Strange things, I promise.

Until next time! If you have any comments, questions, or criticisms, put ’em in the comments.

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I’ve just posted the first section and it’s a doozy. Read that first if you haven’t already, and let’s get discussing. In these commentaries I’ll talk about my writing process or just shout opinions at you. I’m not, like, a professional writer, but I’m having fun and I think I have something to contribute.

The first pages of a book are important. They set the tone for the whole piece and color the reader’s expectations for the rest of the book. To that end, the title of the section is made to grip the reader: Dan is Immolated in a Furnace. Who is Dan? Why is he being immolated in a furnace? Akayama DanJay is made to engage via curiosity. It is to be explored. The first section heading sets the stage for a dreamlike mystery.

In the first sentences Virgil Blue looks over an ocean and two small islands from his monastery on a larger island. Then he descends like a mist. Images of nature, especially mountains and clouds, will be repeated over and over again in different contexts throughout the book; we must start them early.

The characters discuss a cosmic journey with a matter-of-fact style which reinforces that surreal atmosphere and presents the reader with new names and concepts at a reasonable pace. There is not too much to absorb in one section, and it outlines our character’s goals and concerns.

I debated including the reference to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I hope it conveys the “strap in for the ride” attitude I’m going for, where anything can happen, but I’m worried that it’s a bit on-the-nose. Maybe it won’t be in the final draft. When I read this at Seance, my campus writing club, a friend said they wanted to bring up HGttG when I had finished reading, but I had preempted him by mentioning it in the piece itself. I hope it got a laugh out of you, because I sure giggled when I wrote it. That’s generally a good sign.

During exploratory writing the deity these monks apparently worship was named “Mala.” Changing the name to “the Mountain” reduces the complexity of the system I’m teaching to the reader. It also hammers in the images I’m going to bring back again and again in stranger and stranger contexts.

I’m quite proud of how the ending comes as a shock even though it’s spoiled by the title of the section. We know Dan is to be immolated in that furnace, but the speed with which it occurs and the lack of reactions from the characters can come as a sucker-punch. When I read this to Seance there was panicked laughing, which I thought was the perfect reaction. My favorite line is Virgil Blue’s “I have never been good at saying goodbye.” To know Dan is to be burned alive with little more fanfare makes me think “wait, really?” each time I read it. It seals the deal on the dream-like atmosphere—couldn’t this be the end of a nightmare?

I’ve rewritten the first sections to paint a better picture of the monastery. It is a setting we revisit before the end of the book, so I want to make sure readers remember it when they see it and differentiate it from the other monasteries I might show them. In a story involving time-travel and alternate universes, readers need landmarks by which they may orient themselves spatially. I’ve put the monastery on the largest of three islands; when readers see islands again, they’ll be on the lookout.

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In Chapter R. The Wheel of Fortune Commander Lucille’s Galaxy Zephyr fires its own heart at the Enemy Hurricane. Besides being an oblique reference to Moby Dick* this initiates the rest of Akayama DanJay‘s story. The heart injures the Enemy Hurricane and becomes a Wheel which Akayama claims is a torus, a donut-shape.

In this donut, Professor Akayama sifts through the ashes of Earth to reconstruct its population. She’s not totally clear about how the process will work (which makes it easier for me to bullshit about it with plausible deniability) but she mentions principal components. Instead of recreating Earth’s population all at once, she plans to generate a few “orthogonal unit-vectors” which can be combined into any specimen from Earth.

This Wikipedia article provides an example of principal component analysis pictured below. Notice the gray data-points are smeared diagonally; describing the position of points using typical x,y coordinates would be unnatural. Instead we find two arrows (vectors) at right angles (orthogonal) which more naturally express the spread of data. The longer arrow points in the direction of maximum variation so that if we were limited to only one principal component, we would know which best exemplifies the diversity in the data.

A more visually interesting example is found in this paper from Nicolas Le Bihan and Stephen J. Sangwine where a single image is broken into principal components and reconstructed. The original image is this mandrill (a glorified baboon):

If we’re limited to just one principal component, the mandrill looks like this:

Essentially there’s one row of pixels which best represents the diversity of colors in the image and their placement. We see horizontal bands made by scaling that row of pixels, but aside from this scaling, each row is the same. If we use three principal components, we find the following:

With linear combinations of three principal components, we may render the mandrill in a symbolic grid-like pattern. With 20 and 100 principal components, the mandrill looks about as good as its original image:

If, instead of a baboon photo, we wanted to reconstruct the population of Earth, we might imagine making a collection of people-like-entities. For any person on Earth, we’d add/subtract scalar multiples of these principal-component-people to approximate that person.

That’s why Professor Akayama takes her role as guardian of the afterlife. She’s looking for outputs of her machine-learning process, choosing principal components to reconstruct Earth’s population. When she eats worms, she’s gathering data and refining those components as much as possible. Apparently one of those components was Beatrice.

Philosophically speaking, even if linear combinations of principal components accurately resembled Earth’s population to an arbitrary degree, could that really be called Earth’s original population? As a trivialist I’d say sure, why not. In the fiction of Akayama DanJay Professor Akayama is the universe’s leading expert in mind-merging; I’d trust no one else to reassemble my phenomenology—my notion of consciousness and personal experience.

But we’ll just have to see how it turns out. See you next week.

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*”He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.”

You might know the Star Trek version of the quote better: “And he piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it.”

Other noteworthy references I try to make in this section:

Lucille says “War’s all I’m good at!” which I want to echo demon Moloc’s statement in Paradise Lost, “My sentence is for open Warr. Of wiles more unexpert, I boast not.” In inverting elements of Paradise Lost I want Lucille to basically be Satan aligned alongside God (Akayama) against Hell (the human hubris of the Enemy Hurricane). Rolling lines from demons into her character feels appropriate.

The Galaxy Zephyr’s heart boils “so violently the bursting bubbles howled like hounds eager to slip for war.” Besides the obvious relation to “let slip the dogs of war” from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, I want this to echo the character Sin in Paradise Lost. Sin was born from Satan and gives birth to Death; her labor is described thusly:

…about her middle round
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark’d
With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung [ 655 ]
A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb’d thir noyse, into her woomb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark’d and howl’d
Within unseen…

“…my womb
Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown
Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes. [ 780 ]
At last this odious offspring whom thou seest
Thine own begotten, breaking violent way
Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew
Transform’d: but he my inbred enemie [ 785 ]
Forth issu’d, brandishing his fatal Dart
Made to destroy: I fled, and cry’d out Death;
Hell trembl’d at the hideous Name, and sigh’d
From all her Caves, and back resounded Death.”

While Sin gives birth to Death, the Galaxy Zephyr uses its “hounds” to recreate Earth’s population.

Lucille tells the Enemy Hurricane “I introduced you to pain!” In Paradise Lost Satan first feels pain at the sword of archangel Michael when Michael cuts him in half:

with swift wheele reverse, deep entring shar’d
All his right side; then Satan first knew pain,
And writh’ d him to and fro convolv’d

So Lucille isn’t just associated with demons; she represents angels, too, albeit in a bloodthirsty way.

Lastly, Lucille calls her Wheel the wheel of fortune. This isn’t a reference to the game-show, but to Dante’s Inferno. Says Brown University:

Dante merges the pagan and Christian beliefs in his scheme of the universe by elevating [Fortune] to the “rank” of a Divine Intelligence, God’s “general minister and guide,” who controls the empty wealth and splendor of the world of men. She is inscrutable, swift and powerful within her licensed limits. Though often slandered, she dwells above in bliss, untroubled.

“Your wisdom cannot withstand her: she foresees, judges, and pursues her reign, as theirs the other gods. Her changes know no truce. Necessity compels her to be swift, so fast do men come to their turns. This is she who is much reviled even by those who ought to praise her, but do wrongfully blame her and defame her. But she is blest and does not hear it. Happy with the other primal creatures she turns her sphere and rejoices in her bliss” (Inferno, VII.85-96).

The Enemy Hurricane will find no leniency from Lucille. To her, this isn’t a fight for the sake of Earth. She’s never been to Earth and couldn’t care less for it. Akayama’s recreation of Earth, the Wheel, is merely Lucille’s weapon. Ironically, that’s exactly what Earth needs at this point in the story.

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In Chapter Q: Under the Thumb Professor Akayama returns to her water world to tell Nemo what she’s doing with his planet. With “a lot of statistics” she will conjure Earth’s vaporized population. I’ll share more details next week, but for now, let’s discuss how this reflects on the rest of the story.

Akayama DanJay has two halves. In the Akayama half, a giant anime space-robot fights a cosmic horror at light-speed while reconstructing Earth. In the DanJay half, human simulacra bumble around Earth’s reconstruction unaware of their cosmogonic origin. Dan, Jay, Faith, Beatrice, Leo, and everyone else in the ‘real’ world are actually placeholders in a machine-learning process generating Earth’s original population.

I wrote the DanJay half first for two reasons: one, I’m making stuff up as I go; two, I thought it was a better reading experience to have the Akayama half as a big reveal. To be fair to myself, I still think it’s fun to watch Jay puzzle over a mysterious desert and eventually eat a centipede in search of answers. Nevertheless, with the benefit of hindsight, a theoretical final draft might look a little more like this:

We’d start with Princess Lucia’s piloting exam. Then we’d skip twenty years to Lucille meeting ZAB. ZAB would show Lucille how her parents died. At the end of the first chapter, we’d go BACK twenty years to Akayama’s fall to her Hurricane Planet. From there we follow Akayama until the reconstruction of Earth.

As soon as Earth’s reconstruction begins, we’d zoom in on Dan being immolated in a furnace. We’d follow Dan/Jillian/Jay until Jay watches an episode of anime with Faith. In this ordering, the episode would no longer be a detour from the main story, but a RETURN to the main story. The episode would show the ongoing battle between Lucille’s Galaxy Zephyr and the Hurricane, keeping tensions high.

After the episode we’d return to following DanJay. When Jay visits the afterlife, there would be a sense of irony: Jay has no idea what’s happening, but the reader would know exactly why smoking centipede sends him to a desert. Akayama, under the name Nakayama, meaning “inside the Mountain,” introduces herself as the Heart of the Mountain, presumably because after twenty years imprisonment she’s lost the finer points of human interaction. The reader would know why Akayama is a giant bird-thing, but Jay would still see her as a monster.

From there, we’d keep following DanJay while occasionally watching anime to showcase how the two halves of the story interact with one another.

Rearranging the sections of Akayama DanJay like this would take some rewriting and editing. If I change which anime episode the characters are watching in any section, I’d need to edit the dialog before and after. Jay will have to watch more anime, as well, to keep the reader updated on the fight between Commander Lucille and the Hurricane. But this would be worth it, because characters in DanJay‘s half are generally reactive, not proactive, and couching their story in universal conflict helps validate that passivity by contrasting it with action. DanJay‘s half lacks tension until the reader understands the nature of their world as subsidiary to a giant anime space-robot fight, but currently this reveal occurs too late in the narrative.

I didn’t realize this, of course, because I understood the nature of their world since the beginning (or, at least, I had rough plans). Therefore the order of sections on akayamadanjay.com was a natural order for writing, even if it’s not the optimal order for reading. A difficult aspect of writing is stepping back to look at work with fresh eyes, and understanding how a natural writing order must be warped into a natural reading order.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I’m having lots of fun.

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In Chapter P. The Robot the Size of the Galaxy Professor Akayama meets Commander Lucille. They pool their resources into a Zephyr with all the mass of the Milky Way. Unfortunately this isn’t a huge improvement in their quest to take down the Hurricane, which is as big as the observable universe minus the Milky Way.

Obviously I’m not aiming for scientific accuracy. The easiest place to see this is in my treatment of the speed of light: not only can robot-spaceships travel faster than light, but characters can see events too far away for light to reach them in reasonable time.

The clearest example is the peculiar eye-movement-communication manifested by the Hurricane. I decided to let Hurricane Planets communicate visually like this to get around the “no noise in space” issue, but now that I need characters to communicate across thousands of light-years, I have to swallow my pride and pretend it just works. Half the fun of anime fights is watching characters shout at each other, and it would be a shame to cut that just because it wouldn’t be scientifically accurate. Call it artistic liberty.

Giant robot stories can be compelling even while adhering to physics, but since Akayama DanJay involves enemies the size of the universe and other impossible situations, concessions must be made. The larger-than-life subject-matter of Akayama’s story is meant to contrast DanJay’s more down-to-Earth narrative: while DanJay investigates the afterlife in a mundane, drug-induced manner, Akayama essentially becomes a god when she makes a new Earth and spawns life. It feels natural for Akayama’s story to involve robots attacking each other with punches faster than light because hers is the otherworldly celestial realm, where entities of unimaginable power combat each other in incomprehensible manners.

This contrast between the mundane and the impossible is the heart of Akayama DanJay. What DanJay calls reality is overshadowed by a more ‘real’ reality which, paradoxically, comes across as less real to the reader: a fight between giant anime robots who treat light-speed as a suggestion. Dan, Jay, Faith, Beatrice, and Leo are realistic and grounded compared to Commander Lucille, whose bombastic leadership style probably wouldn’t fly in any legitimate military organization.

I hope this reflects our own reality: our day-to-day lives are influenced by fictional stories—for example, political propaganda—perhaps to a greater degree than any ‘objectively real’ aspect of life. The line between ‘reality’ and ‘fantasy’ is blurred when we understand that ‘fantasy’ is created by people influenced by ‘reality,’ and those ‘fantasies’ in turn influence ‘reality.’ In truth, there is no difference: Harry Potter is as real as anything else in the sense that it influences ‘objective reality.’ Writers should let ‘reality’ interrupt their ‘fantasy’ only to the subdued degree that ‘fantasy’ gets to interrupt ‘reality.’

Next week I’ll explain my ideal reorganization of Akayama DanJay. I think portions of Akayama’s story should occur before we see DanJay’s story, even if DanJay’s story starts on such an intriguing note.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Reality is shared between us now.

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