#Conflict

[ladytanithia]

WIP whenever tf

I've had practically nothing in progress writing-wise in ages. Lost my mojo. But I'm trying to get back into a groove. Not happy with how I've done BLP so far, so I'm rewriting it, from the beginning, and incorporating Miranja's journal into it.

However, this scene from Out of the Ashes came up in a conversation the other day, and OotA technically still counts as a WIP, since it's not finished (dammit - NONE of the parts of Miranja's story is truly finished!). So I figured what the hell. It's been a long time since I had any writing to share, and this is one of the best scenes to really show how Miranja's mind works. Not even any sex here. <gasp!>

Tagging friends whose writing I've been enjoying whilst not producing anything myself. @dirty-bosmer @lillxart @mareenavee @skyrim-forever @thequeenofthewinter @theoneandonlysemla I hope you enjoy it.

It was just about eight o’clock in the evening when they arrived back in Solitude. Before doing anything else, Miranja went directly to Castle Dour.

Tullius was sitting on the bench in the corner by the enchanting table in the foyer. Miranja had gone straight to the war room looking for him, hadn’t found him, had checked his bedroom, still hadn’t found him, and had backtracked to the front door before he finally spoke to her and drew her attention.

“Looking for me, Auxiliary?”

Surprised, Miranja turned toward the sound of his voice and approached him.

“Yes, sir. Here’s the Jagged Crown. Legate Rikke sent me to deliver it to you.” She handed over the Crown, and Tullius took it and turned it in his hands, examining it with interest as he replied.

“Excellent work, soldier. I have to admit, I had my doubts it even existed. Did you run into any trouble?”

Tears filled Miranja’s eyes, but she kept a stiff upper lip. Teldryn’s hand in the middle of her back certainly helped give her fortitude.

“We lost a lot of good men. I hope it was worth it.” Tullius didn’t need to know that she was also talking about the Stormcloaks who died.

“That’s not for you to decide, soldier. I wouldn’t have sent you in the first place if it wasn’t going to be worth it.”

Miranja’s pride stung at those words, while at the same time, her sense of justice was offended. She was the gods-damned Dragonborn, as well as a Thane in this hold, and she had become largely unaccustomed to people talking down to her. And in her opinion, this stupid war wasn’t worth the loss of ANY people, if you got right down to brass tacks. No one should be dying over what she felt was a deeply personal religious issue. It was tantamount in her mind to killing people for what they did in their own bedrooms.

“You seem to forget who you’re speaking to, General. May I be candid with you, sir?”

“By all means, Auxiliary. Let’s hear it.” There was a challenge in his voice and in the way he jutted out his chin.

“With all due respect, sir, I don’t like you very much.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Tullius replied indifferently. He rose and brushed past her to carry the crown into the war room. “I’m not here to win popularity contests. I’m here to keep the Dominion out of Skyrim, and to quell this dissention.”

Miranja followed him, and Teldryn tagged along quietly behind her. “The Dominion is already in Skyrim, whether you want to admit it or not. I pass Thalmor on the road every day taking Stormcloak prisoners to gods-know-where to do gods-know-what to them. The only reason I don’t kill them is that I don’t want a bounty on my own head.”

“Wise choice,” Tullius acknowledged briefly, but added, “Think what you want, Auxiliary. It could be much worse.”

“I’m sure it could. I just want you to know that I think you’re a cold, insensitive…” She hesitated for a moment, searching for a milder word than ‘asshole.’ “…jerk. I wonder if you have a compassionate bone in your body, and if you really care about the people of Skyrim at all.”

Tullius’ face darkened with anger. “Listen up, Auxiliary. I’m here to do a job. Not that it’s any of your damned business, but I have family back in Cyrodiil who I love and miss terribly. I’ve been in Skyrim longer than I ever wanted to be. I’m doing what I’m paid to do, what I believe is for the greater good in the long run. I hope that’s also what you’re doing, why you joined the Legion in the first place.”

“Of course it is,” Miranja glowered back. “But I’d like to think I’m going about it in a more personal, compassionate way. I’m not sitting in a fancy castle ordering everyone else around. I’m on the ground, learning about the people and helping them in more ways than just killing Stormcloaks and getting Imperial soldiers killed.”

“Well, good for you,” Tullius replied with overt sarcasm. “Imperial Generals don’t have that luxury. I didn’t get to my station in life by being compassionate.”

“That may be so, General, but it’s obvious you’re not particularly happy. And there’s no reason to take it out on others. You chose your path.”

“And you chose yours when you joined the Legion, Auxiliary. You can either follow orders or take up residence in the Solitude prison. Which will it be?”

She was sick of being addressed as a title. “My name is Miranja. Miranja Laurentius. And I will follow orders, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“You’re absolutely right, Miranja. We all have to do things we don’t like to bring about things we do like.” He stopped and regarded her with a scrutinizing look, as Miranja stared back with some surprise at his unknowing echoing of her father’s words.

“You said your name was Laurentius?”

“Yes.” She didn’t bother with the ‘sir.’

“Your father was in the Legion, wasn’t he?”

“Yes… sir.” Where was he going with this?

“Ah, yes, I see the resemblance now. I worked with your father briefly in Hammerfell some twenty-five years or more ago. I remember him because he had the same bleeding heart and lack of respect that you do.”

“I’m proud of my father and his work for the underprivileged,” Miranja said, jutting out her chin as Tullius had earlier. “And both my father and I give respect where it’s due. We just feel morally compelled to point out injustice regardless of who’s perpetrating it, and that includes the Empire.”

“Well, his soft heart is what kept him from advancing past Captain. He could have been a general himself, if he’d been tougher.”

“My father and I don’t measure success by titles and wealth. We measure our riches and our station in life by the happiness we create and the love we give and receive. My father retired a happy, peaceful man, and he’s still bringing joy to those around him and earning respect for his deeds.”

“Well, that’s a heartwarming story, Auxiliary, and your opinions are duly noted, but it’s time we got back to business.”

Miranja heaved a resigned sigh and closed her eyes for a moment, then spoke tiredly. “Very well, sir. What’s next?”

“I need someone I can trust to deliver a message of great import to Jarl Balgruuf of Whiterun.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have it on good authority that Ulfric has raised enough men to attack the city of Whiterun. The Jarl, however, refuses the Legion’s support. This missive should convince him. Be aware, soldier, these documents contain sensitive intelligence for the Jarl’s eyes only.”

Yes, yes, she’d overheard the conversation between Rikke and Tullius when she’d first walked into Castle Dour yesterday. “Of course, General. We may not see eye-to-eye, but we are on the same side, and you can trust me. Balgruuf was one of my first friends when I came to Skyrim. I’ll see this gets delivered.”

“You do that,” Tullius replied, eyeing her thoughtfully. “You’re dismissed.”

Once they were outside, Tel whistled – or tried to, and only partially succeeded with the scarf over his face – and shook his head. “Damn, woman, I can’t believe you spoke to a General like that and didn’t end up in the stockade.”

“Speaking your mind isn’t a crime, Tel, and I didn’t disobey any orders. I asked him for permission to be candid, and I also made sure to include ‘with all due respect.’ My father taught me that. I know when I’m within my rights.”

Teldryn chuckled. “I like a woman with cast iron balls. I bet your dick is bigger than his.”

Miranja grinned and blushed with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment. They were still standing between the door guards, and there was no way the guards hadn’t heard the whole conversation, but they were wisely keeping their mouths shut. She knew the barracks would be abuzz later, though.

“So, what are we going to do with the rest of the evening, boss?”

[desultory-suggestions]

Stopping yourself mid-conflict to change your perspective is allowed! It’s okay and normal to be mid argument with someone and realize you disagree with your own stance. Often I find myself and others caught up in trying to win the argument (not the point of arguments!) or too embarrassed to back down and be wrong. I promise there is so much more pride in going “Stop! I’m wrong. I hear you and I see how I wasn’t in the right and I want to amend my view” than digging your heels in.

[alwaysbewoke]

[animentality]

[atavist]

Layan Albaz is one of thousands of Palestinian children who had lost limbs in Israeli air strikes since October 7—and one of the very few evacuated to the U.S. for medical care. 

The new Atavist story, COMING TO AMERICA, is now live, and also available in Arabic:

The average U.S. public school has about 550 students. Imagine eight or nine schools in an area roughly the size of Philadelphia where every kid is missing at least one limb. Imagine also that their amputations happened alongside a torrent of other tragedies: the loss of family members, friends, neighbors, schools, houses.

Now imagine that the only hope to reclaim some semblance of physical normalcy required those children to leave home. Gaza’s sole manufacturer of prosthetics and its affiliated rehabilitation center were destroyed in an air strike months ago; as a result, many families of children who have lost limbs are trying to evacuate them so they can receive medical care abroad. Social media is brimming with their desperate pleas, and only a few get what amounts to a lucky ticket for the mortally unlucky: Countries willing to take pediatric amputees from Gaza are doing so in relatively small numbers.

The kids who do find a way out board planes for distant places. In Layan’s case, that place was more than 6,000 miles away from everything and everyone she knew.

[spider-artdump]

[illustratus]

Death as General Rides a Horse on a Battlefield by Edgar Bundy

[eelhound]

"I think Homer outwits most writers who have written on the War [fantasy archetype], by not taking sides.

The Trojan war is not and you cannot make it be the War of Good vs. Evil. It’s just a war, a wasteful, useless, needless, stupid, protracted, cruel mess full of individual acts of courage, cowardice, nobility, betrayal, limb-hacking-off, and disembowelment. Homer was a Greek and might have been partial to the Greek side, but he had a sense of justice or balance that seems characteristically Greek — maybe his people learned a good deal of it from him? His impartiality is far from dispassionate; the story is a torrent of passionate actions, generous, despicable, magnificent, trivial. But it is unprejudiced. It isn’t Satan vs. Angels. It isn’t Holy Warriors vs. Infidels. It isn’t hobbits vs. orcs. It’s just people vs. people.

Of course you can take sides, and almost everybody does. I try not to, but it’s no use; I just like the Trojans better than the Greeks. But Homer truly doesn’t take sides, and so he permits the story to be tragic. By tragedy, mind and soul are grieved, enlarged, and exalted.

Whether war itself can rise to tragedy, can enlarge and exalt the soul, I leave to those who have been more immediately part of a war than I have. I think some believe that it can, and might say that the opportunity for heroism and tragedy justifies war. I don’t know; all I know is what a poem about a war can do. In any case, war is something human beings do and show no signs of stopping doing, and so it may be less important to condemn it or to justify it than to be able to perceive it as tragic.

But once you take sides, you have lost that ability.

Is it our dominant religion that makes us want war to be between the good guys and the bad guys?

In the War of Good vs. Evil there can be divine or supernal justice but not human tragedy. It is by definition, technically, comic (as in The Divine Comedy): the good guys win. It has a happy ending. If the bad guys beat the good guys, unhappy ending, that’s mere reversal, flip side of the same coin. The author is not impartial. Dystopia is not tragedy.

Milton, a Christian, had to take sides, and couldn’t avoid comedy. He could approach tragedy only by making Evil, in the person of Lucifer, grand, heroic, and even sympathetic — which is faking it. He faked it very well.

Maybe it’s not only Christian habits of thought but the difficulty we all have in growing up that makes us insist justice must favor the good.

After all, 'Let the best man win' doesn’t mean the good man will win. It means, 'This will be a fair fight, no prejudice, no interference — so the best fighter will win it.' If the treacherous bully fairly defeats the nice guy, the treacherous bully is declared champion. This is justice. But it’s the kind of justice that children can’t bear. They rage against it. It’s not fair!

But if children never learn to bear it, they can’t go on to learn that a victory or a defeat in battle, or in any competition other than a purely moral one (whatever that might be), has nothing to do with who is morally better.

Might does not make right — right?

Therefore right does not make might. Right?

But we want it to. 'My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.'

If we insist that in the real world the ultimate victor must be the good guy, we’ve sacrificed right to might. (That’s what History does after most wars, when it applauds the victors for their superior virtue as well as their superior firepower.) If we falsify the terms of the competition, handicapping it, so that the good guys may lose the battle but always win the war, we’ve left the real world, we’re in fantasy land — wishful thinking country.

Homer didn’t do wishful thinking.

Homer’s Achilles is a disobedient officer, a sulky, self-pitying teenager who gets his nose out of joint and won’t fight for his own side. A sign that Achilles might grow up someday, if given time, is his love for his friend Patroclus. But his big snit is over a girl he was given to rape but has to give back to his superior officer, which to me rather dims the love story. To me Achilles is not a good guy. But he is a good warrior, a great fighter — even better than the Trojan prime warrior, Hector. Hector is a good guy on any terms — kind husband, kind father, responsible on all counts — a mensch. But right does not make might. Achilles kills him.

The famous Helen plays a quite small part in The Iliad. Because I know that she’ll come through the whole war with not a hair in her blond blow-dry out of place, I see her as opportunistic, immoral, emotionally about as deep as a cookie sheet. But if I believed that the good guys win, that the reward goes to the virtuous, I’d have to see her as an innocent beauty wronged by Fate and saved by the Greeks.

And people do see her that way. Homer lets us each make our own Helen; and so she is immortal.

I don’t know if such nobility of mind (in the sense of the impartial 'noble' gases) is possible to a modern writer of fantasy. Since we have worked so hard to separate History from Fiction, our fantasies are dire warnings, or mere nightmares, or else they are wish fulfillments."

- Ursula K. Le Guin, from No Time to Spare, 2013.

[workersolidarity]

🇸🇾🇵🇸 🚨

THOUSANDS OF SYRIANS MARCH IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINIANS FACING GENOCIDE IN GAZA

📹 Scenes from Syria where thousands of local residents marched in solidarity with Palestinians under siege and facing genocide at the hands of the Zionist occupation army.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[bettsfic]

i am begging you, writers: let your characters make hard decisions.

a great many of us feel compelled to force our characters into action, but it is so much more interesting if your characters take action of their own volition and potentially against their best interests (and maybe they don't know that! or maybe they do and they do it anyway!). your work as a writer is not necessarily to shove them into action but to lure them away from inaction. the members of the fellowship don't have to accompany frodo. all of them can turn around and go back at any point without any personal consequence. but they go anyway.

when your characters are forced into action, it doesn't really lend the story meaning. but when there's always an option to turn around and go home and crawl into a comfy cozy bed, and they choose the harder thing? the worse thing? the thing that's bad for them, that may even get them killed? that speaks to who they are and allows their own choices to change them.

[philosophybits]

Cold water added to cold water, makes no disturbance. Error added to error causes no jar. Selfishness and selfishness walk together in peace, because they are agreed; but when fire is brought in direct contact with water, when flaming truth grapples with some loathsome error, when the clear and sweet current of benevolence sets against the foul and bitter stream of selfishness, when mercy and humanity confront iron-hearted cruelty, and ignorant brutality, there cannot fail to be agitation and excitement.

Frederick Douglass, "The American Apocalypse (1861)"

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games

[wordsofwisdomandsoul]

[nemfrog]

"Harvest mice attacked by snake." Brehm's Life of animals. 1895.

Internet Archive

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Worksheets: "Move" Your Character

Worksheets & Templates Character Change; Adding Action; Conflict

HOW CHARACTERS CHANGE

Write internal & external changes your character undergoes...

During your character's beginning state:

When your character reacts to an impetus:

When they enter a new world:

When the "beginning state" is proved to be unsound:

When they undergo a paradigm shift:

When they experience loss/failure:

When your character discovers what they truly need:

End state:

ADDING ACTION

The problem your character is trying to solve:

External solution:

Break the solution down into smaller tasks:

What need/motivation is behind this task? How does the need/motivation turn into action?

What is the reaction to this action?

What new needs/problems does the reaction create?

CREATE CONFLICT

Who or what is opposing your character?

What are they at odds?

Who or what else is involved?

How does your character react internally? Externally?

What governs your character's reactions?

Is your character motivated to resolve this conflict?

How long does the conflict last?

How and when should the conflict be resolved?

How does the character develop through this conflict?

How do the other (opposing) characters develop through this conflict?

How does the story develop through this conflict?

Worsen/Resolve a Conflict

What is the conflict?

Do you need to make it worse/resolve it?

Brainstorm some ways to worsen/resolve it through...

Conversation:

Questions:

Violence:

Empathy

Threats:

Requests:

Supplication:

Persuasion:

Complaints:

Honesty:

Apologies:

Dishonesty:

Punishment:

Incentives:

Outside Help:

Death:

Advice:

Inattention:

Inaction:

Information:

Orders:

Error:

Haste:

Discovery:

Departure:

Other:

Source ⚜ More: Conflict ⚜ Character's Journey ⚜ Worksheets Writing References: Worldbuilding ⚜ Plot ⚜ Character

[writingwithfolklore]

How Conflict Causes Character Change

              You’ve heard me say over and over again that your character arc is your plot and it’s driven by conflict. But that’s easy to say and a lot harder to do. How does conflict actually inspire change? Let’s talk about it:

1. Choose your conflicts

Not every conflict is equal, and it may be harder to justify change for some conflicts over others. The type of conflict that’s going to inspire change will force your MC to come face to face with their flaw.

       Okay for example maybe your character’s flaw is that they self sabotage whenever things are going well for them. A conflict they could run into is that they’re working on something with someone they care about, and their sabotage not only impacts them, but the person they’re working with as well.

              While they may be used to and fine screwing over themselves—facing the consequences of hurting someone they care about may inspire them to try to work through their flaw or make a real change in their life.

2. All conflict comes with consequences—or it’s not really a conflict

Leading from the last point, note that it’s the consequence of something happening that truly makes it a conflict, and allows it to inspire change. One thing my screenwriting prof always used to ask us was, “why hasn’t your character reached their goal yet, and why haven’t they already overcome their flaw?” You have to justify why they are in the place they are in at the start of the story.

If their flaw is self sabotage, just facing the consequences of their self sabotage wouldn’t be enough to inspire a change—because if it was, why haven’t they changed yet? So consider what consequences to their flaw they’d have to face to really force them to change. Hurting people they care about, taking away things they want, allowing their enemy to gain the upper hand, etc. are all good consequences outside of their usual that may inspire change.

3. One conflict spurs another

To help with driving the story with conflict, consider how each conflict you create can spur the next. Following our example, maybe our MC screws something up for someone they care about, then that person decides not to stay friends with them, or tells someone else what happened.

Conflict can also come from seemingly good or harmless acts, like holding the door open for someone about to rob a bank, or writing an article for a relatively unknown newspaper that turns out takes an extreme political stance in your world, etc. Each action should have its consequences that leads to more action that leads to more consequences. With enough of that cycle, the gradual change of your MC will be believable and propel their story.