InCryptid Q&A, Part II: Cuckoo to you too.

[seanan_mcguire]

So remember when I said that I would answer ten questions about the InCryptid universe? Well, I'm still taking questions, but here's your second answer!

ashnistrike says

Comments

[seanan_mcguire]

I live here!

[brightlotusmoon]

Which is why it is awesomely scary.

See, that is why writers like you are so extraordinary and unique. You get to live in your brains. ALL THE TIME. I want to be like you when I get published by Tor grow up take over the world...

Wait, my own brain is awesomely scary enough.
But I want to visit your brain some day. I truly do.

[beccastareyes]

So, if you can answer this, how common are non-receptive (or non-projecting) cuckoo telepaths? I'd imagine the ones who can't project would be pretty screwed for 'normal' cuckoo parasitism if they can't influence human minds. The ones who can't receive would be better off* -- well, unless they met another cuckoo, who could take advantage of their relative ignorance of what they are. Also, is the cuckoo ability to camouflage when in danger (the way Sarah sort of fades out when she's stressed so potentially-dangerous people don't notice her) instinct or imprinted by the mother?

The original Johrlar culture sounds really interesting, albeit a place that I most certainly wouldn't want to live.

* In having both sanity/empathy and abilities that can be used for protection, while the non-projecting cuckoos seem to lack either (though increased ability to pick up on human emotions probably could be used as some form of defense/hiding.)

[seanan_mcguire]

Non-receptive and non-projecting are both considered "deformed." Non-projecting are discovered almost immediately, and are killed by their birth mothers as aberrations. Non-receptive can generally escape detection until adulthood, because their birth mothers aren't trying to communicate with them in infancy. Both types of telepathic "deformity" occur in approximately one out of every three thousand live births. So out of six thousand babies, you'd statistically have one of each.

The "cuckoo fade" is instinctive. Sarah would have more control if she hadn't been de-conditioned by Angela. She'd also be killing everyone for funsies.

[beccastareyes]

Yeah, I think everyone is happier that Sarah is not killing people in between her math classes.

[aliciaaudrey]

So basically their race used earth as a gigantic mental asylum/place to contain their arch-nemesis. I'd go WHAT KIND OF INSANE RACE DOES THAT? And then I recall that we tend to dump the mentally ill in with the criminally insane, and realize the answer is "also us."

Wooo, very excited for next book!

[seanan_mcguire]

Not Earth; another, emptier dimension. How they got from there to here is classified until it comes up in the series itself.

[bzarcher]

...hmm. We know that at least one member of the Price family is stuck elsewhere because of dimensional conditions / collisions. We've seen portals get busted through now and then by trains, and there's a mention in the family history of some Michigan demons who presumably came from another dimension, too. (Insert Detroit Joke).

If enough creatures are unwittingly punching holes in our dimension's integrity, I bet it makes it a lot easier for other things to slide through.

[_dante_sparda_]

This is fucking brilliant. Can't wait to see what else you do with them.

[seanan_mcguire]

Bad things.

Bad, bad things.

[shanejayell]

*cue ominous laughter*

[shanejayell]

Yeah, I'm looking forward to this.

(Wonder what it says about me?)

[seanan_mcguire]

Bad things, again.