Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️

@alexriven

27 | 🔞 🇺🇸 ♾️ ⚧️ | She/They Author | Intellectual | Philosopher Mycelian Neo-Personist Human creativity will never be surpassed by GenAI content farming! Find all of my work here: Book 2, Convergence: In Production.

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Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Jun 15

566 words done before work lessgo!!!

The others spoke around him. Elara busied herself in Rudy's kitchen. Rachel kept being pushed down by Raven, who had taken Elara's place caretaking the injured Druid. Lilith stood next to the kitchen island, clenching her hands, working her jaw. Her eyes darted around the room, to the Djinn, to Rachel, to Elara. To Raven. To Rudy.

*She's taking your place,* he realized. Something like a spark cracked in his chest. No heat. No cold. Just... raw will, pulling himself back from whatever place he had gone. He couldn't bring himself to emote. He didn't know what he would do if he let himself feel. He could crumble completely. Or he could fly into a fit of rage that would have forever closed the door between him and Liam. Had he performed it in front of him.

*Why him first?* Rudy asked, his eyebrows twitching as if they were magnetically attracted. *He's a hermit. A threat only because he isn't one. Wasn't.* He forced his mind to work, to piece together the puzzle. Because if he could solve the puzzle, he could tear the throats out of the bastards that tore at his family for as long as he could remember.

*Why the letters?* Liam MacCarthy was not a man that operated on sentiment. He let his own wife die in the name of 'saving the rest' of the family. As if the family was ever the same without her. And the courier. Usually, murderers don't reveal themselves and deliver their victim's final words. That sounded like a message. A performance. But for whom?

*What did he have to say to me?* And the wolf within him stirred, warring against his apathy. It demanded to be released, to run. To hunt. To howl, in complete, utter isolation. It was a question Rudy could never answer. It was a move he never expected. Before anyone could react, Rudy was back in the forest. There was no leisurely stroll. The moment Rudy had cleared the property line, his wolf was sprinting into the woods, growling, slathering.

Liam always waited to be spoken to. Even when their mom - his wife - was aro…

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Jun 15

Nice 😉

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Jun 12

Me, a clown, working hard so my cat can have a good life.

My cat, ungrateful.

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Jun 2

HAPPY PRIDE🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ QRP this with your flags, explain what they mean to YOU, and block all haters! Descriptions in the alt text! One love, and may harmony find you. 💙😇😈

Starting with the genderfluid flag. Sometimes I feel like a woman. Sometimes, I'm super androgynous. Other times, gender doesn't exist lol

I'm intersex (XXY chromosomal, and gonadal, with ovaries on the inside and male external anatomy

I'm reversing years of forced masculinization, so I say I'm trans 😋

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· May 31

My baby commandered my old chair. He loves his sunbathing booth :3

Shadow "Shadey" bathing in the sun. He's purring, and has one eye partially open even in sleep.

Another angle of my baby boy, fast asleep in a sunspot. :3

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· May 26

ohno...

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· May 15

I'm a bit late, but I'mma start reading it on my Kindle tonight! :3

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· May 5

Safe to say my finances are on track again lol Will try to be more active, but I'm always working on some project if I'm not working (I'm back to one full time job with a liveable wage again!! Woohoo!!)

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Apr 2

It's slow going but I'm adding functionality to the site!!! Got some test pictures, courtesy of Inspirobot, and I'm working on an on-site ebook reader too!

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Apr 1

Forcing myself to learn HTML in order to create an EPUB template I felt happy with plus having lived on "everything is a file" Linux for a decade made me realize that also applies to the web. So I'm going to carve my own slice of the internet. And I'mma turn IT into art too. www.alexriven.online

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Mar 14

Okay, my setup is snappy. My next chapter is finished. I have a scheduled upload on Scribble Hub, and in just over a week I can upload Emergence to Scribble Hub and do a grand relaunch of my Royal Road! Things are looking up this month! Wallpaper: konachan.com/post/show/35...

Desktop Screenshot, featuring a sample of one of the songs I've got saved to my hard drive lol

Fastfetch results (A Linux system information fetcher script):
caretaker@lil-monster ~ → fastfetch
OS: Arch Linux x86_64
Host: 20JNS1TC00 (ThinkPad T470 W10DG)
Kernel: Linux 6.19.6-arch1-1
Uptime: 4 hours
Packages: 1505 (pacman), 22 (flatpak)
Shell: bash 5.3.9
Display: 1366x768 in 14", 60 Hz
Desktop Environment (DE): Cinnamon 6.6.7
Window Manager (WM): Muffin (X11)
WM Theme: Everforest-BorderLess-MacOSButtons-Dark-Soft (GTK2/3/4/Adwaita Library)
Theme: Everforest-BL-MB-Dark-Soft [GTK2/3/4]
Icons: Papirus-Dark [GTK2/3/4]
Desktop Font: Comic Sans MS (11.6pt) [GTK2/3/4]
Cursor Theme: Qogir (24px)
Terminal: kitty 0.46.0
Terminal Font: ComicMono (12pt)
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300U (4) @ 3.00 GHz
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 520 @ 1.00 GHz [Integrated]
Memory: 5.05 GiB / 15.49 GiB (33%)
Swap: 1.74 GiB / 7.74 GiB (22%)
Disk (/): 21.59 GiB / 32.00 GiB (67%) - btrfs
Disk (/home): 116.97 GiB / 205.47 GiB (57%) - btrfs
Disk (/mnt/2): 348.27 GiB / 923.77 GiB (38%) - f2fs

"“Fine then. How many of these Quereies have been used against the MacCarthy Clan or other guardian-types?”
“Against your Clan? None were asked directly. But they’ve had generations to sift through the meanings of my Answers of Substance. No doubt, some of that knowledge was weaponized against your kin in ways I am not permitted to see yet.”
The words dropped on Rudy’s shoulders with the weight of an anvil. He staggered, holding a hand to his head.
“The sheer scale of Michael’s plans… What’s his end goal? Why’d he try to take Elara out of the picture? There’s too much at stake here. We need a plan, but we don’t even know what to counter!” Rudy grunted in frustration, suppressing the urge to find something to punch in the swirling, inky void.
“How much manipulation can one ego produce!”
“If that question is for me, I’m not sure there is an answer for it…” Qiyam muttered in detached amusement."

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Mar 10

Girlhood is a spectrum. From "create" to "curate".

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Mar 10

Writer: Why is my idea gone?!
Their brain: Because you refused to write it down when you were comfy in bed.
Writer: But... Why is my idea gone???

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Mar 10

I'm shitposting because I wanna share the memes I've been hoarding lmao

When God makes Indie Authors:
"A spoonful of determination... Some wit and courage... And an extra dose of natural writing talent. But they can't have EVERYTHING. I'll add just a dash of poor marketing skills..."

*pours the whole cup*
"Whoops..."

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Mar 10

Think a transmasc John Constantine, after selling his soul to Paimon, decides to cheat her out of it and take his soul BACK, but loses everything else important to him along the way.

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Mar 10

Me in the camps as I look my executioner(s) in the eyes:

Stormcloak Soldier saying, "My ancestors are smiling at me, Imperials. Can you say the same?"

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Mar 7

Name your fav film from the year you were born.

Neo from The Matrix, saying "I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life."

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Mar 5

9 games that make me who I am! 😈😇🤓 my9games.com

There is no particular order of importance, really.

Games are:

Minecraft

Call of Duty: Black Ops 1

Factorio

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Undertale

Risk of Rain 2

Halo: Combat Evolved

Borderlands 2

Fallout 4

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Mar 1

Hello #LateNightWrite! I write fantasy with queerness and neurodivergence taking the most important, most unspoken parts of the world itself. I want to showcase all kinds of love and relational dynamics, unbound by traditional roles and expectations on how to fulfill them. Here's a taste of my work!

Chapter 10
The Changing Tides
Rudy ●
“You trusted me in a time where you trusted no one. That’s gotta count for something.”
Rudy’s Letter to Lilith
Rudy sat up in his loft, unable to sleep. Normally, the skylight helped him drift off. Tonight, the stars were as countless as the thoughts racing through his mind. Even through the frantic racing, one question roared above the noise.

How do I stop history from repeating itself? Their new status quo was abruptly put back into focus, the rustling of paper cut through the early-morning stillness. Elara just revealed the reason the Liber was the world’s most dangerous infohazard, and the reason stood, humming to himself, rolling his eyes in judgement at the books he and Raven read for entertainment. Access to television wasn’t exactly a high priority for them, but life without a bit of escapism was too boring to fully return to it. Rudy seethed, realizing just how it must be for her. They lived in comfort, but they had no space. No style. No privacy. It was no way for a teenage girl to grow up, especially with a single father.

His mind was thrown back over a century, trying to hold on to those precious few years before his own childhood was forced aside. The memories flowed back – of him and his siblings playing on dirt roads, wandering home before dark. He smiled, remembering how him and his siblings learned the lay of the land, practicing their Shift together. His smile faded when the pleasant memories, once again, became subsumed with what came next.

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 27

Thank you to whoever purchased a paperback copy of Emergence! This is a huge milestone for me, knowing my first novel exists in print! I couldn't express enough gratitude!

A screenshot from my KDP order reports page! Thank you thank you thank you thank you!!! 🤩🤩🤩

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 27

Was blessed with a bit extra this paycheck. Hope to pay it forward. :)

It ain't much but it's hard-earned, honest cash...

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 22

Chapter 10 of Convergence is TOUGH rn...

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 21

Me trying to figure out how to live off of my writing like

Step 1: write the book
Step 2: Edit the book
Step 3: Market the book
Wait, market the book? Aw, fuck!

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 19

I was going to try to do a raw screenshot of the page in LibreOffice, but even resizing it didn't turn out very nice. I'm hoping porting the snippet into Obsidian makes it a bit more legible, even if I have to use another screenshot! #WipSnip #WriteSky #BookSky #Convergence #TheEmergenceChronicles

Chapter 9
The Defector’s Gambit
Julius ▣
“The first moves have been made. Now I must wait and see if I can outwit The Almighty himself.”
Julius’s Private Journal Entry #33
As a creature of the night, Julius usually took comfort within the shadows. Tonight, he struggled to shake off the irrational fear that every pool of inky blackness he stepped foot into would reach into his mind and steal his secrets, revealing him to The Design. He moved quickly, a phantom in the corners of the eyes of what little passers-by that strolled the main thoroughfares. He remained a suggestion of presence – there, then gone.

The streets and alleys of Dublin were slick with an earlier rainfall. Julius stuck to the latter as much as possible. The Old World still remembered magic much more than the New, and the United States had a rude awakening at what havoc uncontrolled magic could wreak.

The Design’s attempts to hold the heir of Lucifer resulted in an uncontrolled terraforming of the Rocky Mountain range when containment was breached. No one expected the Warden to exist, let alone wield two fundamentally opposing forces. The Aegis was a system designed to hold The Warden’s – Lilith’s - Entropy; it could not process Genesis.

Julius was a child of the old world. He watched the rise and fall of magic as power. He remembered the world as it was–untamed, slick with the blood of conquest and ego. Very few branches of magic arose seeking benevolence. Julius remembered the stories of the clan of people who became Titans of the Wild. The MacCarthy clan was a buried legend. It was less than a week since Julius had murdered Liam MacCarthy, former Guide of the Clan. And he was about to walk into the jaws of Liam’s children.
Many of their legends held tale of family avenging the fall of one of their own, driving out threats to the land and their clan. There was no guarantee of his survival tonight.
Alistair was predictable in his instability. He could be managed. Manipulated. The MacCarthys were different. Their Creed demanded careful scrutiny towards parasites such as he. The situation he found himself in was a tightrope of unprecedented thinness. Julius had walked them before, even playing with knives. In this situation, it felt instead like he was handling a nuclear grenade. The fallout would be devastating, but localized. Julius only hoped the fallout, when it came, would be contained to him alone.
The letters seemed to itch in his breast pocket, weighing him down even, as he tried to stay out of sight. He stopped in a thickly-shadowed alleyway, taking a moment planted to a wall, steeling his nerves.
Irregardless of his continued existence, The Almighty’s opposition needed all the intelligence he could provide. If tonight was to be his last, the intelligence he gave must be quickly relayed and immediately useful.
A single rat squealed in terror as it scurried past Julius’s tactical boots–the only article on his person that did not match his normally impeccable wardrobe–followed closely behind by a particularly damp and shivering feline. It froze the moment it entered the alleyway, locking eyes with Julius. It hissed, arching its back, even clawing at the air, before fleeing the way it came.
Jul…

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 16

Thanks to the 12 of you who already snagged a copy of Emergence! Means the world to me! If you haven't already grabbed it, though, the promotion ends after the 16th! Last chance to grab a licence to the .epub (and any future revisions for bonus content ;]) if you want it!

A screenshot of my KDP dashboard showing the spike in "sales"! Seriously, thanks, guys! ^.^

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 16

#Febchantment The "most powerful" display of magic, as defined by me, is, by definition, the most potent act of self-actualization an individual can do. If that's the case, this is the "most powerful" display of magic in my works so far: An almost 1-year-old raven becomes human for the first time!!

'...Feathers didn’t just melt; they shimmered and dissolved into a cascade of dark, swirling energy that briefly outlined a new shape. Wings elongated into thin arms. The beak receded, the body stretched and expanded with a series of soft, unsettling pops. And then it was over.
Where the raven had been, a girl now crouched on all fours on his welcome mat. She was small, maybe ten years old. Her pale skin was smudged with forest dirt. A shock of unruly black hair fell over her face. She was naked, eyes wild as she shivered violently, not from cold, but from the sheer shock of the transformation itself.
Every thought of pursuit, every plan of escape, evaporated from Rudy’s mind. The world narrowed to this single, impossible, vulnerable child on his porch. Instinct, older than reason, took over. In one fluid motion, he yanked his flannel shirt over his head, the buttons snapping free.
“Hey. Kid. Look at me,” he said, his voice low and steady, stripping it of all its earlier panic. He didn’t approach. He just held the shirt out in front of him, like a flag of truce. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Let’s get you covered up.” The girl cocked her head to the side, a painfully...'

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 16

#Febchantment! I'm a really big fan of psychological horror, so the terror here isn't in what he is, but what he represents. Qiyam al-Hikma, The Djinn of Near-Omnipotent Knowledge and Wisdom, is a threat to the status quo, and has his own goals and methods to achieve them.

“What is it with all of you today? I wish I had answers too. I wish I could figure out what my brother’s plan is before he tries killing another one of my siblings! I wish… I wish this book would just open up and talk to us! That way we –” Elara was cut short as the Liber de Profundis started flipping pages on its own, landing on the section about binding. The text that Rudy had found glowed crimson, and a maniacal, almost mad laugh filled the room.

A cultured voice rose from the Liber as the ink dissolved, bleeding into a cloud of black smoke that poured from its pages. It coalesced, obscuring their view, until the silhouette of a man took shape within it.

“Free at last! Seven hundred years, and I am free of that accursed blasphemy! Why, oh, why could my prison not have the curved, infinity-teasing beauty of the scroll?!” a rich, eloquent voice exclaimed, thick with an accent that sounded vaguely Arabic, but much older.

The smoke coalesced into the form of a tall, elegant figure robed in ancient middle-Eastern scholar’s garments. Raven thought they looked woven from twilight and ash in the dull way that it still shimmered. His face was that of a sharp-featured, ageless sage, but his hair was the give-away. It flowed from his scalp, not as hair, but as a living, slowly undulating plume of the same ink-black smoke that had birthed him. His eyes, fixed upon them, smoldered like banked coals in a scholar’s brazier.

His hands were outstretched, admiring his chocolate skin and refined, if dated, attire. Then, as if he was satisfied with his corporeal form, he turned to his hosts – and amusedly, patiently waited for their jaws to be picked up from the floor.

“I,” he declared, “am Qiyam al-Hikma. Thank you, masters, for the release from my prison. I am compelled by the terms of my arrangement to disclose unto you the terms of our arrangement, during which you may ask me any question regarding said arrangement. Do we have an accord?”

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 16

#Febchantment Each character manifests it differently, but each character is threatened to be consumed by their own power, or lose control of it in such a way that it causes damage to people and/or the environment around them. I felt that showing rather than telling would help explain better:

Data.

The word was a splinter of ice in her heart. It didn’t hurt. It was just… there. A new, immutable fact.

Michael. Patience. Experiment.

Her tears didn’t fall. They crystallized on her cheeks, twin tracks of cold diamonds. She wondered, distantly, if this is what happened to comets – if they were just bodies freezing solid from the inside out, as they fled, futilely, from their star’s influence.

The hellfire in her core was quiet, dormant. Not gone, but submerged under a glacial lake of understanding. The ice on her arms wasn’t just a loss of control. It was a consequence. The physical manifestation of a truth too cold to bear exposure to light.

He wasn’t even angry. He was just… curious.

She remembered the silence that had preceded the pain. The focus. The silence of a scholar peering into a microscope. Watching what happens to a colony of bacterium when he introduced its predator virus into it.

$What emerges if the colony survives the ravaging? A paradox he neither anticipated nor understood. She hoped. The wind tore at her wings. She let it. The physical strain was a welcome anchor. Below, the world was a map of darkness and silver. Trees, boulders, and rivers passed. Even the occasional light of a lone dacha. A world he wanted to silence. To make perfect. Still. Her brother. The Unseen Hand. A sob finally broke through. A sharp, fractured sound tore from her, choking her to the point of stumbling mid-air. She was not a victim. She was a result. Her rage stopped building, apparently reaching its limit. It started to sharpen into a terrifying, chilling clarity. The kind that freezes boiling water in motion. She banked, turning in a wide, slow arc. Her breath was still heaving, and the chill in the air kept building until she was almost surrounded by a wall of fog. The ice was spreading across her chest now, seemingly freezing her heart. Elara thought it should’ve hurt, but it simply sat there, consuming her slowly. For a brief moment, panic took hold, and she began falling to the ground, but she regained a controlled hover, breathing getting laboured. She tried to warm herself. She started to feel fatigue from needing to constantly fight the encroaching ice to maintain mobility, and it was sapping her will.$

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 13

Omw home from helping a friend with their animals today :3 I want to do so much more to take care of them but they're not my birds 💔

Alex Riven 🔞📖⌨️🖋️@alexriven· Feb 13

I just learned BlueSky implemented drafts. This changes things. 😈