Shrinepunk chapter 4 is out now! This one has a noticeably different tone from the other three chapters so far. Read it here first, as after this point, we're going to get into chapter discussion, and it's going to contain spoilers. Thou hadst been warned!
Chapter 4 starts out with a bit of a cold open. It's vague, but enough to hook the reader. Then it hard cuts to a completely different scene, a rich and opulent corporate ball. I really leaned hard into how wealthy and warm this scene felt, but with this undercurrent of vileness. Whitewashed tombs and such. The hologram scene teases some stuff about how the physics in Shrinepunk works, which I think is worth its own page (really, worth its own category on the wiki).
Then there's the eye scene. This is definitely the most graphic Shrinepunk has gotten so far, I even squirmed a bit while writing it. I have a sensitivity to eye stuff in body horror, so it was especially hard for me to write, but I thought it would be a really interesting way to come at the biological side of the cyberpunk genre. More specifically, the class gap between those who use cyberware and those who use bioware. Hope it didn't come across as excessively gross, I wanted it to be uncomfortable but not offensive.
Then there's the scene climbing to the roof. I didn't put a lot of thought into it, she's just goin up. Something I did try was mixing the apparent temperatures in the elevator shaft to provide a smooth thematic transition between the warm interior to the cold exterior. I described the hot air and the cold metal to indicate where the aesthetics of the scene were transitioning to. From a warm, opulent, well-lit region to a cold, industrial, dark exterior. I think it landed okay.
Now we get into the intrigue. Two rabbits, chilling on the roof, 1 foot apart 'cause they are gay. I hope to god that my audience is young enough to catch that. This is where I hit the biggest challenge in the writing of this chapter: how the fuck do I distinguish between two female rabbit characters who are both named Reisen???? This single hurdle had me write this section of the chapter over, and over, and over trying to come up with creative ways to make the text make sense and not be ambiguous. I eventually landed on giving them both cover names, Yi Tsong and Pyrrho. I think it worked well enough while also giving some background intrigue into why these characters use these specific cover names. Let me know if it got confusing at any point so I can take it into account next time.
The political intrigue in the Moon's involvement with the corporate world is on full display here, and I really want to work that into the script more. I have a pretty pedestrian understanding of global politics, but I do my best to read theory and current news when its relevant to the worldbuilding of Shrinepunk. Lots of questions are left here.
The combat scene was probably the easiest part of this chapter to write. They teleport around and shoot each other while blasting each other with psionic attacks. Cool sci-fi shit.
The ending gave me a lot of trouble writing in a way that felt satisfying. In the original draft, Reisen U just shoves Reisen 2 into the fan, chops her ears off, then dips. And that felt super unsatisfying. I wanted there to be at least some dialogue afterwards so that Reisen 2 can really express how absolutely terrifying and painful of an ordeal this was. But even after publishing the final draft, it does feel like it's lacking something. But maybe that's the point. I wanted it to feel bad. I wanted the reader to feel how much it sucks to be ripped away from the only system of life you've ever known, even if that system was inherently exploitative. Parallels to capitalism and wage labor exploitation and such. There's a fear of "what now" that Reisen 2 is going to have to grapple with, just like Reisen U did, and as we will if we ever manage to dismantle capitalism.
So yeah, overall it's not my favorite chapter that I've written so far, but I think it does the job of being very different from the other chapters. But I'm dying to get back to the grungy and grimy cyberpunk angle, so expect that for the next chapter. Haven't started drafting it yet, but I've got some ideas. As usual, let me know your thoughts either by commenting on the chapter on AO3 or by sending me an