iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 07/09/2026

#WordWeavers 7 Sep Describe a moment when one of your characters realizes they’ve made a terrible mistake. Although in this case Joreth is blaming Calnor for making the mistake. His brain situation is complicated.

Text:
All my life, my anger had been righteous. What was that worth now? My revenge would be a mean thing now I was just one more sinner lashing out at the world. And what's more, any plans I had to re-integrate myself into Ascension as a wronged man worthy of a second chance had just been burned. I had drawn up all these lines not to cross, and in the end my stupid fake conscience had thrown me over them right into the shit.

000 0

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 12/08/2026

The sun might be being weird right now, but it's a bit too cloudy to tell even where it is.

A patch of sky with lots of layers and wisps of light cloud.

000 0

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2026

Avanti West Coast Line are giving their trains weird Culture ship names now

Light blue round-cornered plate on the side of a train, reading "Rethink Mental Illness" in white oblique sans-serif lettering.

000 0

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 05/08/2026

#WritersCoffeeClub 5 Aug Share a small selection of something you wrote recently that you're [satisfied with] From the new thing I'm working on...

“Strange,” he said. “Strange how many possible histories are written down, books warning about a future that never happened, that are so loved and cared for that they are still read when that future is long in the past.”

I replied, “I think it was more a comment on trends in 1948 that Orwell intended, rather than a prediction of what 1984 would be like. Before my time either way, but I remember first watching 2001: A Space Odyssey around 2025, so I see your point in general, yeah.”

020 2

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 25/07/2026

So, I'm told about 37 fash showed up at Glasgow Green today. I didn't bother counting them myself. The counter-demo is at least 500 so far, at a guess, with more coming in.

257 7

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 26/06/2026

This doesn't just look tectonic to me, so it'll be interesting to see what develops. #iceland #langjōkull […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

On the left a map of part of Iceland, showing the langjōkull glacier and a cluster of dots representing earthquakes at the south-west end of it.
On the right, a 3D plot of the quakes showing a fairly tight vertical column down to about 20km depth.

020 2

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 15/04/2026

#ScribesAndMakers 15 Apr What's a smell that has featured in your work? Got a couple from disOrder:

The air had a sharper smell out here. Chemical, like iodine and
salt. A wild, un-airconditioned smell.

I lifted my right hand to look at the injury. The flesh along the
edge of the hand was tight and swollen, the whole hand numb but
shot through with stabbing pains. I got a waft of burnt-plastic-and-
ammonia stench.

“What is that smell? It smells like someone pissed on an
electrical fire. It's nearly as bad as the pain.”

"Ha!"

“I'm glad you find it funny. Is it just my way with words, or the
fact that I'm in agony?”

“Yeeah,” Nolene said, noncommittally.

010 1

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 08/04/2026

#ScribesAndMakers 8 Apr Victuals? Not a word in my dialect. Scran, grub, nosh, even, perhaps.

Nolene was wandering through the park, stepping carefully around any vines and clumps of plants that had crept out onto the gravel path. Cal was sitting on a bench ahead of her, stirring a paper box of Green Farms lunch noodles. He was picking out pieces of vegetable and holding them up in the sunlight. Didn't look like he fancied eating them much. Mind you, they were cheap garbage, so that was fair.

000 0

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 08/04/2026

#WordWeavers 8 Apr Do any of your characters tell jokes? If so let them tell us a joke, please. I think I tend towards dry humour or humour from the absurdity of what the characters do rather than setup/punchline jokes.

# Teaspoons

“Mary, would you enter the library to assist me with a conundrum?”
asked Mr Cowell.

“Yes, Father?”

“It revolts reason that a household of three adults should contain
only two teaspoons, but the evidence of my eyes is incontrovertible.”
“We are in straightened circumstances, Father.”

(Needless to mention, as Mr Cowell's “library” was now one corner
of the kitchen, between the stove and a small book-case).

“Indeed, and without servants, I would have expected one of a
teaspoon's usual escape routes to be blocked. Oh well, perhaps there
are several in Julia's room. From a conundrum to a dilemma: I have
agonized over how your future and Julia's may be assured, and I am
convinced that a good marriage is the only honourable course. We
have invites to a ball at Horsefield tomorrow evening, and although I
balk at the impropriety, I fear we must attend.”

“But Julia is not yet out, Father!”

“I know it, but if she remains in, she will dine on yesterday's
porridge, whereas at Horsefield there are sure to be sandwiches.

100 1

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 27/03/2026

Actually, I think you need to see this to appreciate it properly. Check out this wee guy

Diagram, a small line illustration. Caption: arcella is inclosed by its hemispherical shell. The pseudopods extend from the hole on the underside.
It does indeed show a kind of flattened bell shape with dots and circles inside for the cell contents, and a blobby, antler-like protrusion from the middle of the base extends out to both sides.

000 0

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 25/02/2026

OK I present what it shall please me to call Darwin's Dartboard The space of changes that make things worse is infinite, unbounded, nearly all the changes it's possible to make. A few changes are irrelevant and make no difference to what you're trying to do […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

A diagram labelled Darwin's Dartboard, with "make things worse" in the unbounded blank space, a small grey circle labelled "irrelevant" and a much smaller pink circle partly overlapping its edge, labelled "better"

100 1

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 26/01/2026

Did an AI make these emoji? Also I wonder if there's a tendency to make emoji of animals and people that are turned side on face left because we have left-to-right writing, facing into the reading direction, like Egyptian hieroglyphs used to?

Close up of bottom left corner of Slack's emoji search window, what is clearly an entire standing giraffe facing to the left, called "giraffe_face". You can't see much of the giraffe's face and it's maybe about 2% of the whole image area.

000 0

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 28/12/2025

About as tense and menacing as my prose gets, from disOrder. I think the only style thing I'm doing here is dropping dialog tags and jumping in a panicked way between dialog and internal thoughts. Don't know that's the kind of thing the question's about.

“Now shut up and listen. I wanted to visit your daddy, and he isn't here, and I'm in a hurry. Disappointing. But instead, here you are. See the princess there on the floor? How do you think daddy would feel finding his little girl there with her?”

She renewed her struggle, until he pressed harder with one hand, pulled with the other. Her neck started to really hurt.

“Hush. I'm not going to hurt you. Much. Just half a turn clockwise and your annoying noise stops forever.”

She wanted to say: it would hurt. It would hurt worse than anything. It would hurt for the rest of her life. She just wouldn't be able to scream. Tears started pouring down her face, but she couldn't say anything.

He stopped smiling, and his eyes narrowed slightly. She tried to get ready. How do you get ready to die? What difference would it make a second later, whether you'd been ready or not? It's not fair.

000 0

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 25/12/2025

I greatly underestimated the amount of pastry needed for the amount of filling I made.

On the left, a baking tray with a long pastry-wrapped parcel on baking paper. On the right a white bowl with a blue rim, half full of a red-brown granular mixture.

100 1

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 09/12/2025

@martin I feel like it needs a better surface area to volume ratio so the coffee stays warm longer.

A cafetiere that is at least 3 times as wide and twice as tall as a normal one.

010 1

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 03/12/2025

#ScribesAndMakers 3 Dec Describe an action scene involving only non-sentient inanimate objects. I'd go for the end of the first scene of The Source of Fire...

The Heart fell through air without noticeably slowing, and then through rock as though through water, barely making a ripple. The rest of the ship arrived, too fast, too hot, breaking apart. It splashed a mountain aside like a heap of wet mud, throwing a cloud of fire and molten glass and crushed, glowing rock into the sea. The sea rose around the impact in an explosion of steam, flew aside in a boiling wave that spread, and lowered, and calmed as it rippled out across the wide ocean. Rolling out over the deeps, it was long and low. Bobbing on the surface, you would hardly feel it rise and thrust you a little higher, drop you a little lower. It would seem like nothing.

The wave bore down on a distant coast ahead. It was still almost imperceptible, a flotilla of fragile little boats passing over it without knowing. But as the water shallowed, it gradually steepened, and gathered itself, and churned the sea bottom, and towered, and fell.

000 0

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 02/12/2025

#ScribesAndMakers 2 Dec Whatever? night in the city was once a quiet yellow place, not day, not dark, not indoors, not the wild outdoors an alien space, keeping the gold of sunset through to the dawn.

A stylised glass painting in mostly blues and dark purples and browns, with a white moon in the upper left, and a two story building with lit windows in the middle ground. In front of that a representation of a street light, an old yellow sodium lamp lighting up the road beneath it.

000 0

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 01/12/2025

#ScribesAndMakers Dec 1 What creative projects do you hope to work on this month? More writing of course, but also finish carving and painting this:

An oval section of a log. A design with a twig, leaves and fruit, has been roughly carved in outline on it.

000 0

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 23/11/2025

#WordWeavers 23 Nov Finding good cover artists, beta readers, & editors is hard. Shoutout who has helped you. Writers' groups: @gsfwc and @GlasgowWriters for helpful feedback. Support and encouragement from Mark Nixon and the other Shadows at the Door writers […] [Original post on mastodon.scot]

A book cover, in mostly shades of yellow, yellowish brown and highlights of blood red. The pattern is of strange leaves, flowers and berries. The title "disOrder" is slightly askew in the centre. There are several small quirky details hidden among the foliage, such as a lizard-like creature and a smiley face.

100 1

Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫ @petealexharris.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 19/11/2025

A huge "fuck this I'm out" if so. I can only say this was brought to mind

Screenshot from the Simpsons. A grey-haired ex-civil servant stands at a podium with a red curtain behind him. He has been asked back to his job to fix problems caused by his successor. He says:
"It's so gratifying to leave you wallowing in the mess you've made. You're screwed. Thank you. Bye."

000 0