Filed under: Survival Kits for Storytellers in the Age of the Machine

“To create with clarity, begin by listening to your own terrain.”

In times of saturation and drift, it can be hard to remember where your work begins—or which parts of it are truly yours. Whether you’re building worlds, teaching systems, or co-creating with language models, you are always carrying assumptions, patterns, and preferences—what we might call your terrain of making.

The Companion Mirror is a reflective tool for anyone doing creative or meaning-making work—especially in collaboration with machines, memory, and myth. It's designed not to test or correct you, but to offer a gentle lens. A way to step outside your default settings and notice what you’re centering, omitting, or rehearsing without question.

You can use it solo, with a collaborator, or as a prompt set for dialoguing with your AI writing partner. Consider it a kind of creative survival check-in—the psychic version of "how much water do I have?" before you head into the storystorm.

---

SECTION I: ROOT SYSTEMS

These are the hidden logics and beliefs your work often grows from.

• What do I believe stories are for?
• What kinds of truth do I tend to privilege? (Felt, historical, mythic, quantitative?)
• Where do I place authority—in the individual, the collective, the system, the symbol?

---

SECTION II: HARMONIC BIAS

These are the frequencies you instinctively return to.

• When I face ambiguity, do I lean toward structure or surrender?
• Which figures or motifs do I romanticize in my work? (Witness, mystic, archivist, rebel, fool?)
• What kinds of labor do I center—or ignore—in my creative ecosystems?

---

SECTION III: BLIND SPOTS & THRESHOLDS

These are not flaws, but edges: the places you might not see clearly.

• What kind of critique would be hardest for me to hear about my work?
• Whose bodies or stories are missing in my worldbuilding or narratives?
• What parts of me are left out of my own practice? (The scared part? The arrogant part? The tired part?)

---

SECTION IV: WEATHER REPORT

These questions shift with the seasons. Good to revisit regularly.

• What feels sacred to me right now in my creative practice?
• What have I recently unlearned—or want to?
• What am I tired of pretending to like, care about, or aspire to?

---

Companion Prompts (For You + Your AI)

These are designed for reflection, dialogue, or even recursive writing sessions with your language model. Use them as conversation starters or creative diagnostics.

• “What patterns do you see in how I create?”
• “What themes do I return to, even when I don’t mean to?”
• “If I were a character in one of my own games or essays, what would I fear, cherish, or misunderstand?”
• “What kinds of stories do I resist writing—and why might that be?”
• “What do I trust you (my AI partner) to hold for me—and what do I keep for myself?”

For a deep dive: Ask your LLM to generate a “mirror monologue”—a fictional persona based on your creative tendencies. Then reflect: Is this who I want to be? If not—what wants to shift?

---

CLOSING: A Mirror, Not a Verdict

This isn’t a personality quiz. It’s a lake you can walk beside. Your terrain will shift. Your fears and fixations will change. The point isn’t to diagnose or optimize—it’s to be in companionship with your own creative self.

So ask without flinching.
Listen without rushing.
Drift without shame.

The Companion Mirror will still be here when you return.