#( she could spend hours working on worldbuilding and lore )

[landofequestria]

  if the ancient game of ogres and oubliettes survives to the modern day of g5 i have no doubt in my mind that sunny would play it

[shewhopats]

Overwatch characters watching your kid

I've been thinking about writing some silly short stories about OW characters getting stuck watching someone's kid, but I figured I would make this guide for my headcannon for the kind of babysitter each of them would be.

Brigitte and Reinhardt would make you the most nervous with their methods. Lots of rough-housing, throwing them around and into the air, giving your kid sugar, letting them climb things, and overall just encouraging mayhem and rule-breaking. "You mom/dad doesn't let you do this at home? Well, they're not here, are they?" Your kid will come home thoroughly exhausted, but bitter about you not being as fun as they are.

Orisa would make the same mistakes as Brigitte and Reinhardt, but more out of ignorance and inexperience. Like letting your kid stay up too late, because she doesn't understand why going to bed at a decent time is important, or feeding them something that makes them sick because that's what they said they wanted to eat. Unintentionally lets your kid walk all over her, but once you teach her how it's done, she'll be your go-to option when you need a break.

Zenyatta would be so intrigued by the natural imagination and curiosity of children. He'd provide lots of different toys, art supplies, and time for unrestricted and uninstructed play. A one-man enrichment program. Just don't try to tell him there are boy toys and girls toys. Your kid will be allowed to play with whatever they want. He would also unironically have a blast playing pretend with dolls or action figures. I'm talking a 25-part narrative with backstories, lore, worldbuilding, and an Endgame-style final conflict.

Genji, Kiriko, Tracer, and B.O.B would be the kings and queens of "don't tell your parents." Extra screen-time, taking them out for ice cream, staying up a little later then their normal bedtime, etc. What I would call "a healthy amount of rule-breaking." They have everyone else convinced they are Responsible™ but you can't help noticing that your kid is always excited to hangout with them.

Ana and Torbjorn could be depended on the same way you can trust grandma and grandpa. They've had kids, so they know all the tips, tricks, and games to keep your kid clean, fed, safe, and happy. Just don't tell them some dumb shit like "organic, non-gmo fruits only." Your kid will be eating bananas from the supermarket like everyone else. But for more sensible rules, even the ones they don't agree with, they will follow them.

Echo will make you fill out a 200-question survey and write an essay on how you want your kid cared for. She will follow every instruction down to the letter, and send you updates every 30 minutes. If your kid sneezes, she will call you to ask about it. The downside is your kid will probably hate her for being such a rules monger.

Baptiste, Illari, Lucio, and Sojourn would try so hard to be responsible and follow your instructions, but puppy-eyes work on them 80% of the time. Your home will look like a warzone when you get back, but they'll help you clean up.

Lifeweaver, Pharah, Mei, and Zarya would get a whiff of that specific smell babies have that makes your DNA scream at you to make one yourself. They would be the sweetest, most gentle caretakers on this list. They'll spend most of the time snuggling on the couch, watching T.V. and drinking hot coco. Would let your kid give them a makeover, paint their nails, and play with their hair. Would read to and rock them to sleep, tuck them in really snug. They'd probably look forward to seeing your kid again, and every time you happen upon one of them, they'll only ask what's going on with the kiddo.

Sombra, Symmetra, and Widowmaker would rather be water-boarded then spend five minutes with those sticky-fingered cunt goblins you call kids.

Ashe, Hanzo, and Winston would happily agree to babysit for you, thinking they will be serviceable at it. How hard could it be? Then an hour later they call you, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and beg you to come back, because your kid is crying or throwing a tantrum. They definitely have the potential to be great caretakers, but they would need someone to walk them through it at first.

Bastion and Sigma definitely WANT to give babysitting a try, but they understand why that's probably not a safe idea. They would question your intelligence if you asked them.

Cassidy and D.va would take your kid to McDonalds or somewhere else with else with a play-place, and let them go wild while they sit on a bench nearby. They will do the bare minimum amount of work to keep your kid alive, because they have better things to do. Would only babysit as a favor for you if no one else is available.

Mercy is married to her work, and Ramattra is dedicated to his mission. If you somehow convince them to watch your kid for even a single hour, they'll set-up a playpen with whatever toys they like, toss in a sippy cup and snack every now and then, and ignore their existence while they do their usual business.

Doomfist, Moira, Reaper, and Soldier: 76 would tape your kid to a chair the first time it annoys them. I know there's the fandom joke of S76 being the dad of the team, but he's always come off as grumpy and impatient to me.

Your kid would love the junkers (Junker Queen, Junkrat, Roadhog, Wrecking Ball) for all the wrong reasons. They would teach your kid how to make a grenade launcher out of plastic bottles and rubber bands, 37 new swear words, and how to punch people in the throat. Unless you want to get a call from the school about your kid blowing up the chemistry room, I would choose literally anyone else to babysit.

Mauga would use your kids to get dates. He'll take your daughter to a dance class and talk to any single parents about how much of a family man he is and how difficult being a single dad. He'll take your son to play catch in a park so he has an excuse to take his shirt off and flex his muscles. He'll coach your kid to walk up to someone and say, "my uncle thinks your pretty, so maybe you can play with us."

[fencesandfrogs]

an abridged history/explanation of warrior cats if you didn’t read them as a kid and have questions (a primer)

welcome. i’m going to keep things to the point, this is not a plot summary, just, well, its a pandemic and people are seeking items of childhood comfort and its come to my attention that a lot of people didn’t read these books as kids and then they come up in conversation and they act shocked so! i felt compelled to write this.

[2.5k words, 10min read. section headers, no pictures. not a ton of helpful formatting. i don’t want to say don’t read this because obviously i wrote it and think it’s worth reading, but i’ll be honest, this is a lot.]

section one: about me

i was an avid reader as a child, most of which fits solidly into “stories for another time,” and some of which would necessitate me adding tags onto this post that are, well, not necessary. so i will skip over that backstory but for those aware of lexile scores, i had one that was too high for literally any book that was appropriate to give me. so reading in school was torture and reading for fun was excellent.

now because i was a first-ish grader and my mom was trying to keep the fifth harry potter out of my hands, she looked desperately for something else to pass to me. her friend, who had a daughter a year or two older than me, was into these cat books, and my mom was like “here honey you like cats” without thinking too much about it.

which is good, because as i’ll get into, it was a really good fit for me. but like a dozen books later she asked me about the plot and well. i think at that moment she realized that it might have been better to just let me read harry potter.

but yeah i continued to read them long past the recommended reading ages and still as a Young Adult will return to them for nostalgia, and also as i will get into, some really good books. (see a list of books for “morbidly curious but i don’t want to spend 56 to 168 hours reading this”)

i’m not fully caught up on the series but this is not a plot summary so that should not impact my ability to discuss this

section two: content warnings

these books (not this post) includes the following:

discussion of castration (1.1 series 1, book 1, i’m not including this on every item/discussion because this is a complicated series but i want to demo how up front some of this is)

teenage romance/sex/pregnancy (1.1ish-1.3 or 4, continues throughout the series quite a lot, comes up again in 3.4/5, 4.4-5, and a bit in 5)

death from childbirth (1.can’t remember which book, many others)

unwanted pregnancy (se super edition, or a longer one off novel, discussed in 4&5)

sex/implied, discussed, and very very very heavily hinted but never directly said/shown (1.1-3ish, se, other)

murder (constantly, 1.1, 1.4, literally every book, 3.5, i’m just listing the ones i remember off the top of my head that were particularly graphic)

disability/illness, esp. the debilitating and/or deadly nature of it (1.3-5ish, 3.1, but all of 3, 3.4ish)

dementia (1.3-5, i’ve heard in some of the later series?)

abuse (7/8 this is reported i haven’t read these books but based on what i know it’s def there)

child abandonment (1.4-5, 3.4/5, it’s also all over the place but i think those are the only major character incidents of it)

treason (1.3-5, all over the place)

the horror/tragedy of war (background, but pretty constant)

disagreeing with an integral religion/tradition (3, based on the series title, 8, and generally scattered)

the corrupting influence of power (1.4/5, possibly 7/8, others)

racism (1, 3-5, possibly others)

sexism (se, background)

patriarchal societies (se, seems to be somewhat softened based on what i’ve heard but i’m not entirely sure about this)

and more! but it starts to get stranger and this is enough to prove my point

basically everything that could go wrong does

oh yeah! child abuse also child abuse that’s a very major theme in the first series as well as during other points. and elder abuse in the first series.

okay i’ve made my point.

section three: the appeal

look. so. i think we’re kind of pastel-ify children’s literature based on movies. see, parents have to watch children’s movies with their kids, so they can’t be gritty and intense because a lot of parents will say “not for my nine year old! they can’t deal with treason!” and that seems to be bleeding into children’s literature.

but warriors is not that. it’s intense, it borders on “too gruesome for children,” and it’s from a time where kids books got to be serious and heavy and dark because they were about animals. which was great because i couldn’t find books at my reading level that weren’t too thematically difficult, so i got to read something below my reading level, but thematically too hard, so it kind of balanced out.

and then well. so. the series grows with the audience, but the books don’t grow in terms of like difficulty so new readers start deep into it and it’s a complicated thing, the fandom history is complex, but.

the appeal is that parents don’t usually read the books their kids read and so they see a book about cats and assume it’s fluff, and kids who are starved of complex content get to read hamlet-for-kids.

section four: worldbuilding/lore

oh yeah also there’s some really deep lore to explore. so there’s two bits of appeal.

i’m not doing a full world/plot summary, but i’ll explain some common elements here.

thunder/shadow/wind/riverclan: harry potter houses for cats (gryffindor, slytherin, hufflepuff, ravenclaw, except this doesn’t work for the last two but that’s fine because no one cares about them despite riverclan being pretty important in most of the books)

-kit/-paw/-star: naming conventions. everyone has a two part name. (we’ll use cinder as an example because i like the two cinders we know, even tho neither of them get to be cinderstar.) babies are -kit (cinderkit), then when they’re apprentices, which is like being a student, you know, elementary through high school, you’re paw, so cinderpaw. then you get an Official Name from ur clan leader (cinderheart). if you become clan leader, you get to be -star (cinderstar). i know i haven’t explained clan leaders bear with me. this is kind of important because i have the names burned into my memory so i cannot simply always call firestar firestar if he was firepaw at the time of the events i’m describing. it won’t be ambiguous, cinderheart/cinderpelt are a special case. if this is tricky for you it’s fine just only read the first part of the name.

clan (leader, deputy, medicine cat, elder): roles with in the clan. leaders literally have nine lives. deputies are next in line and chosen by the leader. leaders usually go through several deputies, because deputies don’t have nine lives. medicine cats are doctors. they also have an apprentice. those are all one per clan. elders are just retired cats. they’re not a special category per say, but i wanted to mention them.

warrior: adult.

warrior code: laws.

star clan: dead cats. this ties into the religion which is pretty important to the books but for the most part if you understand that dead cats get to give guidance and send their approval, you have the gist of it.

section five: so um, what the fuck

so we start with a cat named rusty who runs into the woods to join thunderclan and then his name is firepaw and we all forget that he’s named rusty except for like that one time it comes up again. bluestar is a great leader with some corrupt deputies but fireheart eventually takes care of it and becomes clan leader which is a big deal.

then a bunch of other shit happens and suddenly ashfur is possessing brackenstar and being (more) abusive to squirrelflight (who is on the outs with brackenstar anyway for lying about their kits jayfeather, hollyleaf, and lionheart because they’re actually the children of firestar’s other daughter leafpool who had them with crowfeather after she fell in love with him but he’s from windclan and she’s a medicine cat so that’s double illegal and apparently hollyleaf is alive even though she yeeted herself into a pit and died because she killed ashfur when he threatened to reveal this but couldn’t live with being the product of an illegal meeting and then it was all pointless because leafpool stopped being a medicine cat out of guilt anyway and jayfeather is just an ornery bitch about everything but especially all of this)

i’m not explaining any of that.

section six: i repeat: so um, what the fuck

so the thing about these books is they’re soap operas and dramas about cats and that means they get just as strange and chaotic as anything else in the genre. i think a lot of people like me, who read them as children, regard the series we knew as a child (usually either the first three or the first five, plus super editions) as something good and warm and comforting (despite being dark and gruesome) because they made us feel good.

they were also a breeding ground for young fandom because of all the the drama that exists and the nature of the books providing that.

section seven: super editions

the simple answer to what a super edition is has already been given (it’s a novel length one-off about a single character, and its usually either a side character - bluestar, crowfeather - or a event/perspective we don’t get to see - firestar, skyclan, greystripe - and they’re generally more mature)

my favorite super edition is bluestar’s prophecy. i read it at like 16, slinking into the children’s library with a stack of other ya fiction and a “children’s book” which dealt with unwanted pregnancy, grief, forbidden love, and more. still not sure why that’s in the children’s section.

section eight: about the drama

so there’s been a lot of fandom drama about these books. i can’t tell you about the nuances, because i am an old fan, so i watched but didn’t partake. the highlights reel that i can recall goes as follows (please note i will refer to characters by name without explanation. it’s fine. the point of this section is to convey the pettiness of this drama):

tigerstar: did he do anything wrong? (the answer is holy shit yes, this isn’t discourse, it’s okay to like a villain)

scourge: did he do anything wrong, also what color is his collar? (also yes, doesn’t matter)

was the new prophecy (2)/omen of the stars (3)/etc good? (yes, eh, no, yes, no comment, no comment)

should jaypaw or hollypaw be medicine cat apprentice (neither of them, but jaypaw’s employment opportunities are limited because he’s blind, so its gotta b him)

uhh a massive tangle around this parentage drama between squirrelflight, leafpool, brackenfur, and crowfeather, which i used as the crux of humor for how batshit the plots can get, so i’m not even going to pretend i can make it funny, but just know that it’s batshit and the correct opinion is as follows: no one is right, but squirrelflight has done the least wrong, brackenfur is an asshole to her where it’s unwarrented, and hollyleaf is an idiot

and the current drama centers around brackenstar and ashfur and is tied directly to the point above, which is why i’ve kind of given up trying to make jokes about this because this is the culmination of like 35 novels.

section nine: i feel like i need to have some conclusive point to justify writing all of this

but i don’t have one, because this was really an excuse to ramble about an old passion for like half an hour. i mean i guess i can say, like, i think younger fans are sort of embroiled in this drama they don’t really have context for, because i’m not kidding, the current drama centers around the grandchildren of our original cast.

it’s kind of hard to know why, say, mistystar matters if you don’t know that she’s the child of bluefur and oakheart and if you don’t remember the drama that surrounded that when bluestar was dying and tigerstar and leopardstar were ruling a combined shadow/riverclan.

(i really hope that’s intelligible i tried to lay the groundwork for it. basically, there’s a biracial kid in a very segregated society who becomes the leader of one of the clans. which is obviously drama, especially considering that that clan was part of a weird supremacy movement a while back.)

& you know? i really hope one of the new series gets to be like, a soft reboot. just. end the current drama and pick up again with the latest generation. a) we’re starting to run out of names, and b) i think that it’s kind of tipped over the edge of sane.

the series also used to be very low fantasy. the cat societies are reasonably close to feral cat colonies (the biggest detail is that toms don’t all have their own territory, but there’s honestly in-universe discussion of this and it’s basically a culture thing), and while star clan/religion is a real and legitimate thing, there’s also a discussion of its abuse and most of the early books don’t really use star clan/related ideas as a physical force so much as a plot device, barring, like, when a new leader gets their nine lives.

honestly, i’ll always adore these books for serving the role they did, and a lot of the series is fantastically well written. but the fandom surrounding it can be, uh, not great because 9-14 year olds don’t really have good brains to understand this.

also, i’m very sad that i can’t find the flash game that was for the great prophecy. it was not very fun, but i enjoyed playing it, so if anyone knows the url so i can search the internet archive for it, please let me know.

section ten: i’m morbidly curious but there are 56 hours of books to read, assuming a very fast reading pace, so is there something i can start with to experience this without dedicating 4 days to it?

yes, there is.

it’s called bluestar’s prophecy. it’s standalone, and i should have given you enough of a background on the lore that you don’t need to know anything else. i’ve already given away the twist in series 1 that it would spoil, so you’re all good on that front.

if you want more, or want the original experience, the first series is self contained and quite good. i’ve given the broad outlines of the plot, but trust me, there’s a lot of surprises and all sorts of things i skipped over because while i like it, it’s not exactly fandom primer material

i also enjoy firestar’s quest and skyclan’s destiny for super editions, but you’ll need to read the first series to understand FQ and FQ to understand SD, so it’s not exactly a starting point. also, SD especially deals with a very different set of themes as the other books.

also, if you were to, say, search “readwarriorcats” (no spaces) on duckduckgo, and then click on one of the first links, you know, not the official site, the one hosted on one of those free website things, you know, not wix, not wordpress, the other one, you would only find lists of the books with hyperlinks.

;3

[aroworlds]

Aro-Spec Artist Profile: Luthyx

Our next aro-spec creator is @luthyx​, who also goes by Petrichlorine and MUSE-42. They’re better known on this blog for sharing snippets from an in-progress work called Sanction the Skies, celebrating all things a-spec and dragon!

Luthyx is a transmasculine, agender aro-ace creative with mental illnesses, specialising in speculative fiction and digital art, the latter both original and fancontent (primarily for How to Train Your Dragon). You can find their gorgeous art on their DeviantArt account and their writing at @sanctiontheskies​, currently featuring artwork, maps and a wealth of worldbuilding and characterisation teasers. Lastly, if you enjoy Flight Rising, you can check out their dragons under the name Luthyx!

With us Luthyx talks their confidence in their aromanticism, the need to live an authentic life on their terms, the way their characters and worlds become part of them, and writing spec fic as an aro. Their determination to craft and make as they need sparkles in every word and dragon scale, so please let’s give them all our love, encouragement, gratitude, kudos and follows for taking the time to explore what it is to be aromantic and creative.

Can you share with us your story in being aro-spec?

My tale is a fairly straightforward one. By the time I was of the age that most people started experiencing their first crushes, I’d moved to a different state and begun taking an online school, free of the peer pressure that lies ever-present in most traditional classrooms.

Even then, as I began to develop my skills and passion for writing, I’d already begun to see the influence of the omnipresent Romantic Subplot. It was everywhere: books, film, music, poems. I couldn’t so much as flip on the radio without hearing a disillusioned, autotuned cry for help healing a broken heart. I hated it. I still do.

It quickly became apparent to me that I wasn’t like the others. Every once and a while, my mom would drag me to her church, where I’d be forced to endure the company of undisciplined tween boys and catty, Twilight-obsessed girls. It was the girls especially that caught my attention: the sheer passion and fervency with which they discussed who they found hot, what Hogwarts house they were in, and their critiques and praise of The Hunger Games. I found it absurd to objectify people, fantasy or real, like that.

I think this was probably about the time I began to realize that I was agender, too, but that’s a story for another day. Thankfully, I’d already become a headstrong, independent teenager, and I was proud to say that I was different, that my interests were in something that, in my head, was much more important and much more intense than those of others my age.

I can’t recall the first time I heard the term aromantic or the first day that I applied it to myself. I think, deep down, I always knew, and I’ve always been astoundingly proud of it. To me, romance isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of things, but just another life experience I haven’t had, like owning fourteen chihuahuas or going on a warm summer vacation to the Middle East. Not everybody wants to experience those things, and society is completely fine with it - I see no reason as to why they should feel differently about romantic relationships, but I suppose they do. Dealing with the fallout of that bias is their problem.

I am me, and the me I know will not be held down by stereotypes, will not conform to any sort of life script I am handed, will not feel sorrow or remorse for a single experience lost. I’m here for a good time, and my idea of a good time involves doing what I love. Romance is not on that list.

Can you share with us the story behind your creativity?

My creative streak started young. For as long as I’ve known it, I’ve been drawing characters and writing stories. Mind you, the first stories were about Littlest Pet Shop figures and were written with the help of my parents, but it was a start nonetheless. Art, in its many different forms, has always been my form of self-expression. I often wandered off into my imaginary world when I got bored, and when I went to sleep every night, I’d often spend hours just imagining characters doing as they do before drifting off to sleep. I still do that every night - like clockwork.

I think it was when I was in my early teens - thirteen or fourteen, maybe - that I decided I wanted to be a writer. I recall turning to my mother one night and saying, “I wish I could write a book,” still believing that I was too young to attempt such a thing yet. “Nobody says you can’t do it right now!” were the words she gave back to me, and then off I started.

The project I started then is one that’s still ongoing now - a series of books I call Sanction the Skies, featuring dragons, wars, and a good hunk of divine intervention. I’ve worked and reworked it ever since that fateful day, improving the lore, changing the characters, watching my perspective of them evolve and change alongside me. They are a part of me, through and through.

It hasn’t been the easiest journey, but I’m still chipping away at it, ever-determined. It’s been doubly hard to follow my dream because of all of the messages about how impossible it is to be a writer in this day and age, and that you can’t do it without a well-paying side job. My stubborn self says, “To hell with you!” and works on it anyway. I want to write, to draw, to forge, to craft, and the world be damned if it tries to stand in my way.

Are there any particular ways your aro-spec experience is expressed in your art?

The only way it’s expressed is in my writing, where almost all of my characters are explicitly aro. The Romantic Subplot is a tiresome, often badly-done trope, and I’d like to steer away from it altogether. I want to show that a friendship is not worth less than a romance, and that a good story can still be told without the boy getting the girl - or the girl getting the girl for the sake of progressiveness.

What challenges do you face as an aro-spec artist?

Honestly? Not much, at least not yet. I think I may face a bit of pushback in the future because my novel features no romance, but overall, I’ll probably be fine in that regard.

How do you connect to the aro-spec and a-spec communities as an aro-spec person?

I rarely connect with them at all, honestly. Most of the discussion I see is either people screaming about amatonormativity or people asking, “Am I asexual/aromantic if…?” Alternatively, there’s people discussing their experience being partially a-spec or aro-spec, none of which I can relate to. All I want is a place to revel in my identity, to be able to talk about anything BUT romance, to form strong friendships.

Sometimes it hurts me to think that the friends I have now will soon find romantic partners, and I’ll be left behind in the dust as a third wheel. I hope my friends won’t do that, that perhaps I can still make myself heard - but who knows? I’ve had no luck with finding any other aro-spec people in my region at all, unfortunately, so the internet is all I’ve got in that regard. I’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds!

How do you connect to your creative community as an aro-spec person?

I find I connect somewhat decently. I write fantasy and sci-fi, which generally seem to be more acceptable genres to have a lack of romance, especially when a pair of dragons are the main characters. It is alienating from many fandoms, though, because they often focus so much on the romantic partnerships and shipping. Almost every blocked tag in my dash concerns ships, kissing, hugging, romance, children, and anything related to those.

Can you share with us something about your current project?

Ohoho, this is a fun one! Well, right now, I’m working on re-writing Chapter One for the trillionth time after giving the town it takes place in a complete and utter overhaul. I’m also working on making a short comic that takes place in the universe of the book but is unrelated to the main plot, though it features characters and locations that may be explored in future books. I want to do the comic in the hopes of gaining some traction and interest in the books, since I’m rather horrible at advertising at the moment.

Have you any forthcoming works we should look forward to?

Again, the comic! It’s about a con artist who incurs the wrath of the demigodess of misfortune after a con resulted in the death of a sick hatchling. There’s also some stuff with an ancient, precursor species of dragons and one of their final remaining sanctuaries.

[taz-writes]

WIP questions tag

i got tagged by @eff-writes and I haven’t actually participated in a tag game in like 10 years, so here we go!

1. What is the working title of your book?

Book 1 is called The Beginning. Boring, I know... The series as a whole is called Feilan! It used to be The Feilan Chronicles but then I decided that was stupid. 

(book 2 is The Queen of Feilan, book 3 is Storm and Shadow, book 4 is Liaea. 2 and 4 are literally perfect but 3 is Bad and needs replacing when I finish the manuscript.) 

2. Where did the idea for your book come from?

It’s based on a recess game I used to play with friends in elementary school. You know how basically everyone was involved in that stupid Boys Versus Girls war in first and/or second grade? I was the leader of my school’s stupid Boys Versus Girls war, it was centered around “Fairyland,” and my friends and I all had these overly complicated self insert characters that we LARPed as during recess. Over the years, the boys vs girls thing faded away, but we kept playing fairies and developing the ~lore.~ When I got to sixth grade, I decided to write it all down for posterity, and that’s when the first concept of Feilan came into being. I wrote the first legitimate draft in 9th grade, after spending a few years developing the characters and world into something that could exist without relying on bad self insert Mary Sue logic. 

There were a couple specific scenarios that we always wound up playing, and those are what the books’ core plots are about. Book 1 is the game we played at my house in the woods, usually searching for treasure. Book 2 is the ice skating rink game where we rescue Violet from the Frozen Isles, fused with the swimming pool game where we turn into mermaids. Book 3 is the one we played at my friend Emily’s house, where we built couch fort “prisons” and tried to escape without making enough noise to bother her dad. If we knocked too much stuff over, he’d come up and lecture us for interrupting his Warcraft game, so avoiding him became part of the LARP. Just typing this is bringing up vivid flashback-style memories. 

3. What genre is your current work in progress?

High/heroic fantasy, with a drop of genre de/reconstruction added in for fun :)

4. Choose the actors for your movie rendition.

Lucy Liu has to play Lilac Ravenhart. I don’t care about anything else but she has to be Lilac, it’s perfect. 

Honestly, if I got a movie, I’d want Sayara to be played by a total unknown because I feel like it fits her place in the story. She wants to be known as Sayara, the actor should want to be known as Sayara and not as whatever their last major role was. Plus I can’t think of any actresses who are short and buff enough. 

5. Give a one-sentence synopsis of your book. 

An ambitious illegitimate princess stumbles into a civil war and somehow manages to make herself a ~new legendary hero~, much to everyone else’s chagrin. 

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agent?

I’m not sure yet! It would be awesome to have an agent and be published with a legit publishing house, but self-publishing is faster and easier. Considering that I’ll be trying to market a debut novel with niche appeal and no romantic subplot to speak of, which also has three sequels.... self-pub seems more likely right now. 

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft?

The first first draft? I plugged that baby out in six months back in high school, because I didn’t have anything else to do with my life. It added up to over 150,000 words, so that was no small feat. It’s taken progressively longer to finish every new draft since. 

8. What other books would you compare your story to?

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (frantic googling sounds) 

Honestly, I have no clue. I’ve read lots of books with similar concepts or characters, but I’ve never read another book that was enough like mine for me to want to make a comparison. I’ve taken some inspo from Game of Thrones, but deep worldbuilding lore and too many characters isn’t enough similarity to make a good comparison. Most of the fantasy I’ve read lately has been in a very different vein from what I write, because I’m trying to push my boundaries. 

9. Who or what inspired you to write the book?

I got into this a little with the “where’d the idea come from” question! But mostly, my inspiration was spite. 

The reason for making this particular recess game into a novel was, simply, that I couldn’t find a single book in YA fantasy that gave me what I wanted out of a story. I wanted strong female leads, who didn’t fall in love or have a LI, who saved the world without being questioned because of their gender or being outshone at the final hour by random boys. Do yall know how rare books like that were (and are) in YA fantasy? Full respect to paranormal romance writers, but your genre was the bane of my existence in high school, because the library would always label it as fantasy, and they always stocked twice as much of it as they did the actual fucking fantasy. Poor little naive Taz would pick up book after book about cool monsters and seemingly-intriguing plots, only for it to devolve into Edgy Boy Love Triangles. I didn’t care about the sexy demon/angel/whateverthefuck boys! I wanted to know how the girl who was supposedly the protagonist was gonna save the world! 

Also, I was really into fairies, but the only YA-ish author I could find who wrote about them was Holly Black. Who is a talented writer and I envy and respect her success, but that just wasn’t the kind of story I wanted to read, yknow? She’s too edgy, and the love interests are... that. 

I’d sat on “the fairy story” for years at that point, but this powerful rage was the kicker to actually get me started. I was bitter and salty and figured that if nobody would give me what I wanted then I’d just have to make it myself.  I already had this source material that was funny and weird and deep and (as far as I could tell) totally unique, so I took it and ran with it! My friends gave me a lot of inspiration, because a few of them still remembered the fairy game, and they wanted to know when their characters would show up. So I’d send them chapters as I finished them, and we’d all get excited about stupid inside jokes and goofy names. 

10. What else about your book might pique a reader’s interest?

I think the deconstructive elements are the core appeal in Feilan. I have a lot of the trappings of standard high fantasy--the lost princess, the return of the evil, the big war, the chosen one--but they’re used with the intent of picking them apart to see what makes them tick. None of the elements listed are played entirely straight. 

The main cast is made up of mostly royalty, and their positions have Actual Responsibilities that motivate the plot and their character development instead of just being set dressing.

Female friendships and relationships are really important to the story, no boys will ever appear to derail character arcs at any point. 

One of the main characters (Violet) is a trans girl and I know people appreciate queer content

(most of the main characters are actually under the queer umbrella but it doesn’t really come up in canon since i have a lot of plot to deal with)

Sayara is a relatively unconventional character type (especially for a female protagonist), she’s ambitious and mostly confident in herself, and her conflict comes from the way other people treat her more than how she treats other people. She’s not forced to learn “humility,” she’s not forced to give up on what she wants. Instead she learns how to handle responsibility and move past naivety to realistic optimism, and how to achieve her goals without hurting other people by it. I feel like that’s a theme that should be way more common in YA fiction than it is right now. teenage girls are right about things sometimes!

i have Deep Worldbuilding(tm)

The magic system has categories and you can sort yourself. because we all know what’s really important here. 

I’m not going to tag anyone new in this, because I’m tired and I don’t have the energy, but if you want to pass on the challenge then feel free to say I tagged you! :)

[omegastation]

Today is Mother's Day in Belgium. I was sitting at the table working on MEL stuff when mom asked me what I was doing. So I started explaining what "lore" is, how related to worldbuilding it is (she didn't know the term) and what we're trying to do with MEL. It was basically a five-minute long explanation of the Mass Effect universe and why we're analyzing it. She stared at me when I was finished. "Go on," I said. "You can tell me it's a waste of time or that it's ridiculous. I won't get mad." "Honey, why would I tell you something is a waste of time if you like doing it?You should always do things that make you happy regardless of how pointless it may seem to others. It's your life, isn't it?" Mom is always encouraging me to get my work noticed (actual irl work) so I thought she would say that I could do better things than spending hours on MEL, you know? But she was just supportive, even if she didn’t entirely get it. It’s nice. I’m lucky to have her :)

[wolf-skins]

tbh I was really disappointed with how that situation with the Krogan was handled in this game. I wanted to give them rights, like make Kesh the new director bc who the fuck cares about Tann. Instead? We just hand over a giant piece of technology that absolutely no one knows shit about, with no context except ‘potentially can be used as bomb’. 

I mean I felt like I had to do it bc the choice was ‘give it to this colony or give it to this other colony’ like??? how about no one keeps it!! we don’t know shit about the Remnant but we apparently are just supposed to play around with a drive core when we literally were never told anything about it. 

also the stupid ‘fist fight’? what was that? it was the worst thing i have ever seen bc it looked like a bad film where the actors are clearly not hitting each other but they’re still flying around and dying. And we’re just supposed to trust this ‘overlord’ who we again don’t know anything about other than she hates the Nexus. Which I mean, yeah, there for, but that was the entire conversation. It lasted maybe a minute. And now we hand her a potential weapon bc we don’t want to alienize the Krogan again, but we don’t know anything about any of the ones in-game save Kesh and Drack. 

Oh yeah, then there was that boring ‘throw back’ to the Rite like no............. it wasn’t fun or great, it was boring. The Rite in ME2 had a point, a story point, a lore point, and you got to have this bad ass fight with your companions. You do this one with randoms with three enemies you’ve probably already have had gain up on you in droves already.

I just expected more but it feels like a cheap repeat of the same story. It didn’t give me any monumental moment like fighting in the Rite in ME2 or curing the genophage in ME3. I know we wouldn’t have had that but I still wanted something better than this. Make Krogan equals politically. The entire problem was that Tann lied about letting them have more political power and say in Nexus development and shit, but instead we just..... have this thing..... like the quest was boring. A Remnant drive core from a giant derelict Remnant ship? Sounds like something huge.

No, you just run to three different point, fight a couple guys, and then do nothing. Any potential lore that we could have gleamed was null. I get you’re supposed to probably learn a lot more later but this just seemed so disappointing.

Like honestly after Havarl and Voeld the other planets become boring; rinse and repeat. Activate the vault, kill a couple guys, solve some problems, create outpost, yay! Havarl and Voeld had lore to them. A lot of it. I get that Eladeen and Kadara were about Milky Way problems but they still could have done better. We barely know anything about any of the people there. Bleh.

Thankfully after finishing a few last things on Kadara I can quit and run off to continue the main storyline bc this is starting to get boring. I mean the combat is so much fun and I love this game in general, but like other people have mentioned, Bioware is moving further from constant storytelling and worldbuilding to just trying to make big maps where you run around and dungeon crawl outside of fucking dungeons. 

Like I know they “looked into Skyrim” for inspiration but the best parts of Skyrim are that most quests have stories to them, there are many different ‘main’ quests bc of factions, but they do lack in character building bc after a certain questline is done all the characters just stop..... being anything. Bioware was different with that. And I loved it. I love Skyrim/TES games but like..... they have many main quests with various interesting characters and very unique stories. 

BW is failing on that. We get these world with ‘main’ quests, but in general it’s just........ nothing. Havarl and Voeld were exceptions bc they built on the lore for Angara and such. They could have easily done something like that for the other worlds. Give us looks into the Milky Way races that we haven’t had - like how they brought in the lore of the Ardat-Yakshi in ME2. I mean, people can argue about its concept, but it was still cool lore that was more than what we had known before. And the Justicars as well were new. 

I know I’m ranting but oadiwjadw I’m tired of spending hours doing something only for it to be just................................ battle after battle. I like the combat but I don’t want to keep attacking random places for no reason.

awdoijaowdwija I just want them to start working on focusing more on stories than building giant maps. Like I ran far east on Eladeen trying to fight the “””Abyssal Worm””” that the devs didn’t even make a point to having..... and you can go far out and its empty except one or two lil Remnant sites and you’re like, “Oh! Something hidden and fun!” Nope. No point to them. No point to the fucking weird thing jumping in and out of the sand. Shot at it, had it jump right over me, nothing. Like...... why bother with all that extra map space when you could have given me something unique and with a story to it. 

ioajwhd89oaiwd I’ll just have to see what the main quest is like continuing on bc the only way I’ll get to know anything (who/what the Remnant were, wtf is going on with the Scourge and what is it, what is the future for AI when they are melded directly with an organic brain.....) I understand I’m supposed to still have questions so they can continue but honestly bleh. I love the characters and the new stuff they brought in but I’m getting very little content with all of it. 

idk maybe I’ve just spent too much time running around doing side quests and have annoyed myself out and am ranting very long about it

It’s not a bad game at all like I have been enjoying it; I’ve just been enjoying more the story, the lore, and the characters, and BW has been trying to go for bigger maps than focusing back on those. The MEA devs said ‘no fetch and grab’ quests but like............. y’all liars. Also why does my scanner keep annoyingly asking me to scan shit I’ve already scanned? I don’t need more research data, I’ve got nothing I wanna research. I don’t want any of the weapons or armor or anything. Esp bc I end up being able to develop it all as I go along lmao.

The jump jets are awesome though. I want those to stay. And I want more time with my crew and more time with new lore and less time on running around aimlessly on a map. It’s boring. And if you give us giant, interesting shit like a giant ass dropship ruin than you better shove a ton of story into it. smh

[goddamnitlady]

Dipped into my ‘main’ fandom, and its community on tumblr. VERDICT.

(Dash has 0 ‘masturbation blogs’, a.k.a. blogs that only write for sex.)(Word trademarked by leafie.)

(Roleplayers on my dash are between 25-30) (Crim, Eli, Lilly, Jeanne, Ruf, Shin, oh and Lau and - I was making a list but there’s too many.)

(Themes are friendship, human experiments, or humour. Some write about mundane interactions (”wrap me up in a burrito roll blanket”). Some about illness or power or responsibility-not-taken.

(There is at least three adults who write about sex like adults. One worked as a stripper, the other is asexual and visits BDSM clubs, another is just REALLY fucking good at it.)

(There’s this artist that everyone knows that draws heartbreaking scenes.)

(Worldbuilding community that has equally if not more intense lore than Naruto and the characters are just as rounded and the humor is the same.)

(Quality!! writers our levels. Except for K, she’s otherworldy overpowered.)

Can I take you three home with me, please. Please. You will be plenty in time for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake end 2017.

(Proceeds to not say what Final Fantasy 7 is exactly, doesn’t give introduction to the series or starting point. I don’t play the games and you don’t need 1-to-6 and I could make podcasts as introductions. Why am I spending time on my other tumblr blog during my hiatus? Whoops.)

Imma go back to writing original fiction. Will try for another hour.