The Birth of Suilong

Krispy and I decided that we needed another cosmic serpent (who doesn't?) and so we decided that we'd rather create one than steal borrow one from an existing mythology. Then we decided that we should have this cosmic serpent be the Asian-inspired one we'd talked about before, and therefore being Asiatic, this cosmic serpent needed an appropriately Asiany name, as I continue to abuse and create various Asian-related adjectives.

We'd talked before about Japanese/Chinese/Asian names and words, including hebi (Japanese word for "snake") and nure (what Alz believes might be a possible alternate reading of the kanji for "snake" in Japanese, but isn't sure) and various other Japanese and non-Japanese names and words, which lead to a discussion of how sucky it would be for said snaky to be a snake named rabbit (Japanese, "Usagi"), a snake named lion (Arabic, "Usama"), or a snake named bear ("Ursus", Latin). I also suggested the combo name of Usaginure ("Rabbitsnake"), but we eventually got distracted and moved on, never deciding on a name for our new serpent.

Last night we once again turned to the name problem.



Says the Alz, "What's the Chinese word for dragon?"

To which replies the Krispy, "Well, dragon is Long."

Says the Alz, "What about the Chinese word for snake?"

To which replies the Krispy, "The word for snake sounds like you're saying 'uh' but with an S in front and the tone goes upward at the end."

What followed was Alz trying out various combinations of potential spellings in order to mentally sound out this word (remember, this was all text via instant messaging): Su, sa, si, sui? And since sui means "water" in Japanese, we decided to randomly moosh languages together to create a semi-bastardized Asianish name for our newly-designated water-elemental cosmic serpent. We did go through a number of variations concerning punctuation, including Sui-Long, Sui Long, and Sui'long, and I since I had come up with the name, I got to force Krispy to decide on the spelling of it. Reasoning that the apostrophe looks a bit weird in the name and apostrophes in names is off-putting to many people (yours truly often included), she settled on Suilong.

After a bit more discussion concerning a rather nebulous previously-envisioned-but-still-unnamed cosmic serpent, we decided the color scheme of the previous nebulous cosmic serpent we'd envisioned wouldn't match Suilong because the previous serpent is bony-white and spiky. This wouldn't really suit a water-themed snake, we thought, and so we went all out on Suilong, whom we also decided is female because we have too many males running around.

She can fly without wings à la Asian dragons, we decided, and Suilong is seriously deadly lethally viciously venomous. Her venom eats through glass. It'd probably kill you just from a drop touching your skin, never mind getting injected into your body. Or at least that's what I so far imagine.

But what color to make her? Blue? White? Blue and white? We already have cosmic serpents that are on the white/silvery color scheme, so Suilong ought to be different. And then Krispy said, Omg maybe she should be gold, and Alz said, Ooooho I like gold it's shiny omg like a goldfish?

We talked about koi fish, being tricolor with black and white and gold/orange/red, and the beautiful shiny gold of goldfish scales, and Krispy suggested gold with red markings around her eyes, with an orange fin running along her spine. For a while we mused on eye color, because while I thought blue would make a nice contrast in all her gold and red glory, the aforementioned other cosmic serpents already have blue eyes. We talked about her having dark eyes or golden eyes or dark golden eyes like various kinds of fish. Red we discounted because her eye markings are already red, and when I suggested creepy pearly white eyes, Krispy said it was too creepy and too much like a cooked fish. With that image in mind, I was inclined to agree.

Finally I suggested dark red eyes, midnight-red, while Krispy suggested copperishly colored eyes like a shiny penny. Now, I happen to be very partial to shiny things (this may have been evident earlier when talking about making Suilong gold), and when Krispy threw the choice on me because she'd decided on Suilong's name format, I chose coppery eyes for our water snaky. More contrast against the red and gold, I said.

Krispy is supposed to draw our new cosmic serpent, by the way. That's right, Krispy, I'm putting this in the blog. DRAW SUILONG. And in color would be nice too. ♥

We also plugged along further plot-wise last night, found Suilong a nice place in the story to settle in, did a little chronological rearranging of points, added to and clarified some scenes, started a new scene, and worked out some "research" for our researchers to, well, research. Things are coming along nicely—our baby is developing steadily and well. I'm so proud.