someday we will see part 4 of Lattices?
a greeting and continue with the incredible stories :D

lol i had a feeling this would be asked :P

short answer is: yes, i do intend on continuing (and finishing) Lattices. when that will happen is another story.

Recent watcher, here! I think I came here linked from Ping's posting of the story you wrote (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/39199120/), so if you've had a sudden influx of watchers, I'm wondering if a few others did the same. I caught up on a bunch of reading this past weekend but still need to get to that one.

So, first question. Is there a story behind your username? Is "danger noodle" a slang you came up with for sneks? I like it.

Second, you're clearly a fellow fan of the UTOverse, so I'll ask, what is it that you love about it?

I have, in fact, noticed the influx at around that time. I hope you enjoy it when you do get around to reading it! :D

Story behind username: long and short of it is, I needed something for FA and thought it would suffice (and no, it was the Internet's idea to call snakes 'danger noodles' :P). Honestly I kinda regret using this specific username. I've come to be better known in my Discord circles as Seemir Brandy, which was the name of an NPC I used in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign of my design. At the time I didn't think it'd eventually become my online persona, sooooo..... yeah XD

What I love about the UTOverse: hmm, well, for starters, aside from some scenes in Integration, it has a lot of gentler macro/micro themes to it, the whole complementing each others' strengths and weaknesses thing so that a diverse enough group could accomplish just about anything - like having the right tool for the right job. I get that people can get caught up in the 'stinkier' elements of the genre (I'm guilty of that too), but it's always nice to fall back to something where the giants actually care about the little ones, whether the humans are the abnormally small ones or the non-humans are the abnormally huge. It was a big reason why I was working on Lattices and even joined the sanctioned Anatalay University roleplay with my arkatian Jaanada. ^,..,^

Ah, I had never heard the term “danger noodle” before, but I’m also not very current on all the lingo that the interwebs spew forth these days, and I didn’t think to google it.

The phrase in your response that struck me the most is, “...whether the humans are the abnormally small ones or the non-humans are the abnormally huge.” I think anyone who tries to put aside their bias as a human when looking at the size of the races in the UTOverse would probably decide that humans are the abnormally small ones. That’s certainly the overall feeling that I get when reading UTOverse stories, and it’s sometimes pretty much stated explicitly, like when Jaanada tells Jiono in “Booty Call from Earth” that Earth is “a world that will make ANYONE look big”--emphasis hers. Earth doesn’t make humans look big, of course, but it drives home the point that any “normal-size” person whose species is not native to our planet--who would go to a settlement built by any other civilization and generally have a pretty similar experience, with size differences among them maybe causing a need for some extra ducking or climbing to navigate the environment, at most--isn’t going to even fit inside the vast majority of buildings constructed for human purposes. It really makes you step outside your own perspective, and it’s a humbling feeling. This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t ever call non-humans “giants,” especially if I were to see them on Earth, outside of an environment scaled to them, like Jaanada. It would feel really weird to see her looming overhead and say, “Whoa, look at that normal-size person!” I mean, even among non-humans, she’s kind of gigantic, but...I think you know what I mean. It’s fun to think how being in the presence of even a “small” alien like Jiono would inspire almost as much awe.

But, yes, absolutely, the idea of all these species with their own unique strengths and weaknesses working together is a beautiful thing. I can actually see a lot of parallels between the experience of being human-size in the UTOverse and some other traits that exist in humans--like deafness and autism--that much of society may tend to think of as a “disability” but which many in those communities see as part of their identity, not something that needs to be “fixed.” Being relatively tiny has a number of advantages--like stealth, attention to detail, and the ability to more easily work with small parts and fit into small spaces--and when complemented by adequate infrastructure, technology, and helpful size-typical folks, would allow a human to live a fulfilling life outside of Earth.

What are your specific favorite scenes in Integration? I don’t feel like there was any one scene or few scenes that stood out to me; I loved it all.

> The phrase in your response that struck me the most is, “...whether the humans are the abnormally small ones or the non-humans are the abnormally huge.” I think anyone who tries to put aside their bias as a human when looking at the size of the races in the UTOverse would probably decide that humans are the abnormally small ones.
I was speaking more broadly than just UTOverse context, but yes, that goes without saying. :D

You do make good points in your second paragraph, though, and I feel it's partially because of my bias as someone who prefers to be the macro while almost everyone else I know prefers to be small. That's part of the reason why Lattices exists: as a personal exercise in how to experience life as a small human in a giant's world.

As for my favorite Integration scenes... had you asked me like 18 months ago I would've had a more definite answer. :P

I think probably my favorite scenes were the ones that had the so-called 'daily struggles' of a guardian and their charge, like when Kira got defensive because someone in line at the cafeteria looked at Dylan like the unusual alien he was to them, and ones that showed just how easy it was for anyone to do grave harm to a human, like the scene where the guardians-to-be were practicing with human-sized drones. Because it really put into perspective the responsibility and care these guardians have to have when handling anyone or anything small enough to crush in a single mindless step, and, to me, the best displays of power are those where it's an "I could have but I did not" kind of thing. Like: "I could have kicked that house into splinters, but I didn't because the inhabitants of that house are people even though they're smaller than me and I want to respect that." Or: "I could have squished that scumbag of a human into pulp with my hand, but I didn't because that would make me just as scummy as they are."

It was these kinds of power dynamics that inspired Zherisan and Nathan as guardian and charge, as well as for Jaanada becoming a scientist to explore Earth from an outsider's enamored perspective. I like to think I've learned a lot about writing gentler macro themes, or macro themes in general, from them.

I kind of started to wonder whether you were speaking more broadly than the UTO as I read that statement more, although I thought the implication that humans are always going to be relatively small compared to other species is interesting if we’re not limiting ourselves to the UTOverse. I mean, it makes sense: like you said, most people prefer to be small, and they probably relate most to humans, so...most like to see humans small. Even in my introduction on my userpage, I mention that I like to see humans in the micro role, because that’s pretty much where I assume they’ll be, if they’re present.

But I’m intrigued to hear that you like the idea of being the “macro,” because I enjoy both roles. There’s a (non-anthro) story I read that starts out from the perspective of a humanoid alien race, and one woman describes being on a planet where she thought she was swatting at flies, but they turned out to be aircraft. And we hear that the biggest races they’ve encountered are about twice this woman’s size...until they find Earth, where they’re relatively only a couple inches tall to Earthlings. To flip Jaanada’s words on their head, Earth is a world that will make ANYONE look small. I love the thought of an anthro version of that, a sort of reversal of the UTOverse, where even the largest aliens would be no more than ankle high to us.

In both cases, humans’ size makes them unique and special in the universe, but to me, it’s less about where humans fall in the size spectrum, even if they’re somewhere in the middle, than the fact that humans are mixed in with the anthros at all. Some of it may be about being a human and relatability, but I think it’s more that using a real race of people grounds the scenario in reality a bit...and since humans are the only race of people that we know exist in the universe...well, humans it is.

And yes, absolutely, there are so many more creative ways to convey a macro’s awesome power without having him or her cruelly, knowingly knocking down buildings and squishing people, whether it’s more unaware situations, like the woman swatting at “flies,” or the power of restraint that would be needed as a giant to not simply force your will upon smaller folk; to look past the relative sizes of your physical bodies and engage them as as equal soul.

Honestly, for me, there comes a point where the macro is simply too big for anything more meaningful than a one-off, so to read something like that would be intriguing. Similarly, I don't really like going too far down the scale, either, since it runs into my desires to keep things reasonably consistent with reality... yes, I know, reasonable consistency in macro-themed fiction. Who knew? XD

Plus, call me biased, but I like my anthros too much to let them be too much smaller than my humans. :P

How much cooking oil is enough so the food doesn't stick?

that i think would be best left for Google :)

Darn