Malachite

that one of the protagonists of The Eating of Names is an uwu bean with damsel in distress vibes while also being 8 feet tall at the shoulder¹, probably almost ten thousand pounds, and trained nearly from birth in personal combat.

Arwen Tachht may be more physically strong than their partner Cchaiit, but Ar is definitely the one who would get bridal carried off into the sunset² and Cchaiit is definitely the one who'd do the carrying.

1. This is actually rather short for a varsit Ar's age. Cchaiit is quite a bit taller than Arwen.

2. Metaphorically speaking, of course. The anatomy of the varsit species isn't exactly conducive to bridal carrying, and even if it were, the sunset doesn't have the same romantic connotations to them as it does to us.

Imagine spending over ten years working on a sci-fi setting/story and only developing one of the supposedly numerous alien species in the setting until very recently. Couldn't be me. (It's me.)

Anyway, as of this week, the third new species for The Eating of Names is a go! They're called evvat'sa-i (plural; the singular is evvat'sa and the demonym is evvat'sa-nin), they resemble caterpillars/slugs with many pairs of limbs, and they're the survivors of a nuclear winter thanks to their homeworld's deep cave networks and thriving subterranean biosphere. They also didn't develop FTL tech on their own. Rather, they were just starting to explore their star system with STL tech when the rest of the then-young People's United Interstellar Council stumbled upon them and decided to violate the Prime Directive from Star Trek (which doesn't exist in this setting, resulting in many Tangled Ethical Quandaries™️ regarding technological and biological uplifting, both of which the evvat'sa-nin civilization went on to become pioneers in, to much in-universe controversy).

I also now have an evvat'sa-nin character for the main cast! Their name is Va'rish-eph and they're a talented multi-species medical doctor who got blacklisted from the industry for saying they'd provide medical care to someone even if they were a varsit and an enemy of the PUIC. Now they run a back-alley clinic for those who can't afford to get care through official channels (sadly, for-profit medicine is alive and well in at least some of the PUIC member states). And then they get a chance to do exactly the thing that got them blacklisted lmao, which is how they get involved with the protagonist squad. Also I'm debating the idea of Va'rish-eph having an unrequited crush on Srié, pending the development of lore on how evvat'sa-nin social dynamics tend to work. I have extensive lore on how varsit social dynamics tend to work (both in a vacuum/naturally and in the context of the Imperium/unnaturally), but since the evvat'sa-i are new I haven't quite decided yet.

Earlier today, I did something I haven't done in a very long time: I finished writing something! Namely, a ship fic about two of my Lancer OCs that started out intended as a crack ship and quickly ballooned into 11k words about the beginning of what is definitely no longer a crack ship. You can find it here!

It feels so good to have actually completed something! Granted, it's unedited, and the AO3 version linked above is in desperate need of HTML formatting, but those can come later when my ADHD isn't making my eyes glaze over at the thought of doing so.