Hello writing compatriots and fellow consumers of fiction.
Regrettably, my scheduled posts for Metanoia are reaching their end. I’m running out of content and am not where I am with my writing goals after enduring several months of emotional and mental upheaval. I am very much a tired adult contending with loss and the exhausting effort of landing a position in my field that will feed me and provide a secure job that lasts more than a couple of years.
Thankfully, I’ve mastered the art of resting, not quitting. For any of you who are patient enough, Metanoia will eventually resume arriving in your inbox, if you give me the chance.
A quick update for those of you who have been loyally following this serialized journey (thank you so much btw, you have no idea how much I appreciate you):
The next chapter (Chapter 5, Life Path 5) is mostly written. I have about 3,000 words left to write. However, it’s taking me a long time to conceive exactly how this chapter ends and I want to be careful about it rather than jotting down anything for the sake of having content to publish. Because I don’t want to leave you hanging right in the middle of a lifetime, I’m going to refrain from publishing the beginning of this chapter with the peace of mind that I can give it to you all at once. I apologize in advance.
To hold you over, I’d like to share some behind the scene content with you (shout out to the Warthog Report for requesting this). Please let me know if there is anything else you want me to write about or share here as I am writing for you guys until I can continue to publish my passion project.
As many of you know, I used Numerology to write the character states, but the worlds, civilization, culture and species are a product of my imagination and the circumstance I want my main character to be in for each Life Path. In this post I want to share with you the part of the animal kingdom each sentient civilization resides in and the kind of world their species evolved in. It was fun using a sliver of my background in biology for this (and I hope this is fun for you too).
The First Life
The moon Bellaphron is a water world and I perceive Aurea as a kind of salamander being. Her species is separated by many interlocking volcanic islands and shallow reefs. My thinking is that their kind evolved directly out of the water, where their intelligence began and eventually migrated onto land. The planet their world revolves around has a prominent place in the sky. It’s a large gas planet with rings like Saturn. This world was meant to be a kind of paradise. I wanted my main character’s soul to start off on a clean slate where they begin with knowing what life can be like before the cancer of separation consciousness takes root. I imagine them with a grayish skin tone with dewy, porous skin and darker pigments on their temple.
The Second Life
The planet Galem is much like Earth. It is dynamic, possessing ocean, desert, jungles, prairies and the like. Xenia is apart of an avian species that possess feathers on their neck. Like us, their people have migrated many times and settled in many different locations. They have also forgotten the past like us. Each civilization finds their own way of navigating having their physiology and personalities/skillset interwoven. I thought it would be interesting to have a species that had an evolutionary advantage with being able to identify people by their physiology when it came to group dynamics. This, of course, presents unique challenges when higher sentience is involved.
The Third Life
Bogarth is a stormy planet. I imagine the settlement of the population I write about to be similar to that of coastal Ireland or Scotland as it lies on the ocean. There are tropical zones with jungles and are mostly taken up by land dispersed amongst fresh water bodies. Their species is a kind of rodent. They’re highly resilient, but not always the most adaptable with a sheep-like mentality. Despite being advanced, much of their species still fears predation as they share their planet with many predatory species (also much like earth). It is hard overcoming the fight or flight response to life that keeps them in fear and this is the main thing they’ll have to overcome to evolve. The settlement I write about has a religion that manifested out of the admiration for a binary reality. Its a guided practice born out of the philosophy of everything comprising of 2 parts with binary opposition. Egg and sperm, man and woman, right and wrong, light and dark, etc. All things true, although limiting.
The Fourth Life
Elsreth is reptilian and lives on the planet Pax. Their species is both militarized and corporate, which work very well in tandem. I imagine this world as being very swampy, with areas that are more dry and desert-like. In the time period I write about, that’s where all the major cities reside, and the people who choose to live closer to or alongside the swamp-like regions are apart of an inferior race known as sub-paxans. These people live rurally and have their own code of ethics. The paxan’s religion is materialism. The divine exists on the material plane, and everything that can’t be seen or touched by physical means is not considered real, and therefore ungodly. Rather than having governance with geography, their society comprises of three sectors: production, energy, and medical. All three sectors have their own military and live amongst one another in each city.
You
Are
Now
Heading
Into
Unpublished territory…
I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I should spoil the rest of the book in this way. I’ve decided to to compromise by going into detail about the next chapter and leaving out the rest.
The Fifth Life
Lyra is a planet holding a semi-advanced feline species. Their world has a lot of desert landscape interrupted by oasis jungles. This species has a kill mechanism that they haven’t evolved out of that makes them susceptible to violence. Known as the Moira, they take medications to suppress it so that they may live peacefully. They are unaware of the negative numbing effects this drug has had on their civilization over generations. An elite population has access to space travel while the rest are confined to Lyra where they spend their lives maintaining their industrial existence.
The Last 4 Lives
Eventually my main character evolves to a species with incredible capabilities in the following 2 lives. This is where everything they’ve learned is integrated. However, this is not where the story ends. There is work to be done. This is where the soul finds themselves on Earth.
That’s all for now. Let me know what you think!
I didn't pick up on the exact nature of some of the species, the avians and lizards were clear to me, but I didn't realize that the characters in the third life were rodent like to me. It can be hard to describe the alienness of the people whose perspective you're writing from, I think it's more of a strength that the characters don't explain their species in detail when they don't need to.
Also thanks for the shout out. Battles Beneath the Stars is a bit similar to Metanoia in terms of having sections with distinct beginnings and ends, so I get wanting to complete the next life path before you start posting it, I try to do the same while still sticking to my weekly upload schedule. I hope you get through whatever troubles you've been facing in your life.