#story telling saturday

[author-a-holmes]

I wish I could schedule asks. It would make my life a lot easier. For example;

Today is Tuesday. I've just thought about World Building Wednesday. I could send out asks now, and schedule them to be delivered in about 24 hours. Storytelling Saturday! I can answer my asks, and schedule the posts to go out on Saturday, but will I remember to send asks out ON Saturday? Unlikely. But if I could write the asks now and schedule them to send on Saturday...

Well. You see my point.

[mx-ryder]

Storyteller Saturday: Shit Show; obviously the Novo Flu of 2022 may be based on the Corona Virus of 2020; did both diseases occur in the world of Shit Show or was Covid replaced by Novo Flu? Tell us a little more about the Novo Flu please!

So, Shit Show first came into being as a YA novel I wrote when I was 17. About......15 years ago. So Covid actually had zero influence on Novo Flu, or at least not in that direct of a way.

Novo has replaced Covid in-universe, though. It was just Novo, with very similar world-wide repercussions. People had similar attitudes to Novo, with denialists, people believing it was a punishment from god, and of course, people who gladly scapegoat and hate the surviving Deviants.

I've pretty much made my peace with people assuming Novo is a direct Covid equivalent. It's just a fun coincidence that baby-teenager me was playing with the idea of a world-wide pandemic decades before one actually happened lol

[bookish-karina]

It's still Saturday in my time zone so I'll wish you a happy Story Telling Saturday (STS)!

Inspired by the ask you sent me:

If you were to publish your WIP as a novel, what would it say in the blurb on the back/inside dust jacket flap? (or post to Ao3 with a spoiler-free summary).

hiiii thank you so much for the ask!! not containing spoilers will probably be a little hard lol but here goes nothing...

Maeve met Jace last year by the off chance of winning a contest to get concert tickets. Though she had never heard of him before, she quickly became one of his top fans. When she decides to see him again on his next tour, she can't help but feel connected to him.

The moment Jace laid eyes on her, he knew there was something about Maeve that drew him to her. He wants to be friends with her and get to know her better, and when the chance presents itself, he invites her on tour with him.

As soon as she agrees to join him, she wonders if it's a good idea. With the long time on the road together, her feelings for him seem to gravitate to something more than friends. The more she fights her feelings, the deeper they run.

He's a rockstar, it would never work out... right?

also this will be up on AO3 hopefully the first week of May! I'm waiting for the invite to create an account (which will hopefully come May 3rd) and in the meantime, I'm adding more of Jace's point of view to what I currently have written!

[primroseprime2019]

Happy STS! In honor of summer just around the corner, what're your characters favorite summer activities? Who's hitting the beach? Who's sleeping all day? Who's immediately diving into their to-read list?

Delphine, Natalia, Demetrius, Charlotte, Marley, Edwin and Sarafina love going swimming so they would most definitely hit the beach. Paige and the thirteen year old munchkins love to get popsicles and go for a sightseeing walk around a park.

Ember, Paul, Priya and Russell are most likely to sleep all day (Russell, cause he wants to have peace and quiet)

And Trinity would most definitely dive into her to-read list. She enjoys reading like there's no tomorrow

[cintipede]

Martin Blackwood's terrible, no good, very bad 19th november (iteration #67)

fanart based on @formiana 's time loop fic! go check it out its incredible

[differentprincedinosaur]

December writing challenge

This is a December writing challenge. Have fun right some fics, poetry, short stories. Improve your wrighting meet other writers or show of your books.Please put your submissions on #adventadventure.

[alastyr-not-alastair]

Hhhungryyyyyyyyyyy

[rita-rae-siller]

Okay this is an absurdly specific ask for Storyteller Saturday....what is one wip outside of your posted/main one you'd like to talk about? Or alternatively, what is something within your main wip you want somebody to give you an excuse to talk about?

Feel free to answer either or both!

Oooooo, I’ve been looking for an excuse to rave about my vampire WIP!!!

So this is my longest story. The Price of Blood currently sits at over 120k words in draft 1. Almost 30 chapters. I took a break from working on draft 2 to work on The Lies They Tell during a fiction writing workshop I took in the spring semester at school.

It’s my other queer fantasy novel, featuring one very tall princess (Her name is incredibly long, but she goes by her first middle name, Victoria) that’s abducted by a vampire cult to harbor the soul of the God of Shadows and Subterfuge, AKA the vampire anti-christ. Her entire homeland Halaafin, ruled by the Halaa—sort of half elves basically? They’re one of the only people in this world that have magic. Pure humans can’t use magic—is overrun by this cult and basically destroyed. She makes a bargain with a spider witch that's also been betrayed by the cult to save her life and that of her unborn child. The ritual to summon the vampire anti-christ is sabotaged, but the vampires don’t know it. She manages to escape not long after.

Queue 15 years of living alone with her son in the middle of the woods of the neighboring empire until he’s old enough to help her fight the vampires and retake their kingdom. But things don’t go according to plan. The spider witch tells her she has to get a jump on their plans to destroy the cult early, before her son is ready by Victoria's standards. Queue her teaching her son a lot about his history and also her running into her childhood best friend/almost lover, a duchess in the empire that serves the empress as a professional monster hunter. The two reconnect to fight the cult, fall back in love with one another, and also work on healing from the trauma of losing their families to the cult. It's a very gay story full of angst, dry humor, and lots of dead vampires. Also stresses the importance of family and loved ones in the healing process, and how grieving is inherently ugly. (I wrote a lot of this WIP while my own grandmother was dying, so loss is a big theme in it, as well as love continuing after death)

Also guns. Victoria has been removed from modern society for almost twenty years, so when she comes back to civilization, she's introduced to more modern monster hunting equipment used by non-magic people. And let me tell you: nothing makes this giant bisexual disaster happier than getting to shoot vampires and monsters in the head point blank with a revolver.

[eesttm]

Greg on Saturday Kitchen when asked if it was Alex who didn't like his Thai curry

[kingofsuckballzmountain]

Because he WILL say, talk about, or do one or more of these things, guaranteed!

[vonlipvig]

i'm very new to 👄🧼 and while everyone seems perfectly lovely and i've read so many interesting takes and interpretations, i does give me the faint idea that this is a fandom that tends to both love and hate the characters not quite as characters, but as people, yknow? like, i feel like if i say i find jimmy to be a really interesting and compelling character i'm going to get nailed to a cross.

[author-a-holmes]

Not Storyteller Saturday...but there's something on every day of the week right? How does any of your current WIPs(I couldn't pick a favorite to poke you about) compare to the first story you ever wrote/told yourself? ~@duckingwriting

Hello lovely! @duckingwriting Sorry it took me so long to answer!

The first story I ever remember writing down as a full story was one I had to write for class. And that was about a rabbit, called Rosie, who broke out of her hutch and went on an "adventure". I think I was six or seven years old.

I don't often count it as my first story because although I did tell it, and it was complete, it was classwork, and it wasn't something I wanted to write, it was just a story I thought I could complete in the 45 minutes we had to work on it.

But it's still got remnants of what I consider my style in that it's a main character who ends up leaving home and having something exciting happen to them.

There's even fantasy elements in that Rosie, being a rabbit, could speak to the reader.

At six or seven I had alreaady read The Hobbit, and I can see how Bilbo getting pushed out of the front door by Gandalf may have inspired that little two page short story. But being a speaking-animal main character was so clearly influenced by my childhood favourites of Beatrix Potter books that it's kind of funny in hindsight.

But as for how it compares to my current pieces, I think that desire to send characters somewhere outside of their comfort zone has carried forward. In the first five chapters of Changeling, I send Lizzy from the only world she's ever known to another world entirely.

Stella in Stolen spends most of the first book in an enviroment she isn't used to, doesn't understand, isn't sure how to navigate, and there's a lovely scene about 2/3rds of the way through the book where another character suddenly realises they've underestimated her just because she's been so consistently wrong-footed up until that point.

So, I really enjoy taking charactes and putting them in situations where they are forced to sink or swim.

[elvenbeard]

20677

“What happened in 2067?” Kerry asked.

“Hm?”

V, still somewhat zoned out, needed a moment to register fully what he had said. It was oddly quiet in his apartment, as if the city hadn’t fully awoken yet either. Nibbles dozed on her favorite pillow on the sofa and the sun was shining, dust swirling in the light. Everything seemed strangely peaceful, normal even… as if there was anything normal about having Kerry-fucking-Eurodyne casually lounge in his bed after an emotional rollercoaster of a day and night yesterday. Yet, with all that had happened over the past two months, V grasped at every semblance of "normal" he could.

“I mean… don’t have to tell if ya don’t wanna,” Kerry added, sitting up properly now, and moving to join him at the edge of the bed, “Was just curious.”

He had every right to be… V had grown so used to being silent about his past, his private life, that it had become quite hard to open up when prompted. Even with people he felt safe around. To a degree, his silence felt unfair towards Kerry, whose life had been on public display for decades – more or less accurately depicted. He literally carried his past on his sleeve, but even if he didn’t, by Johnny’s presence alone V already seemed to know so much more about Kerry than the other way around.

Kerry trailed a finger or two down V’s spine, making him shiver in a pleasant way. A caress of something he had almost forgotten about, at least for a moment taking his mind off his uncertain future. Reminding him of where he once had been and how far he’d come, who he had become since then.

“Ah, the tattoo…” he realized.

“Guess you can put two and two together ‘bout mine,” Kerry said with a sad smile, looking to the floor for a moment, “2023… hell of a year.”

“Pah, he can talk,” Johnny scoffed somewhere in the back of his mind, but V decided to not humor him right now. Honestly, he doubted Johnny really meant what he said half of the time. They weren’t so different after all, in that regard at least: hiding their hurt behind sarcasm and snark…

This thought alone made V want to spill his entire life’s story right then and there. But no matter how much he wanted to do it just to prove Johnny wrong, spite wasn’t strong enough a weapon to break down the walls he’d built up around himself. As much as he’d set himself free in 2067, it had somehow also marked the beginning of a downhill race – sure, with a few peaks in-between, but the overall trend hadn’t been that positive in hindsight. There was little glory in his past, and he dreaded the moment he’d have to come clean about his time with Arasaka. Not in the sense that he regretted having worked there, he still didn’t and probably never would… but not being sure at all about how Kerry would take it.

As if he could hear his thoughts, Kerry looked back up at him, almost expectantly, but V still didn’t know where to begin, or what he was even ready to share.

“Could say 2067 for me was what 2023 was for you, in a way,” he decided to say, lame as it was as a reply, “Something ended, and something new began.”

Deep down he knew Kerry would understand. You didn’t get a year and wings tattooed across your whole back if it didn’t hold significant meaning, usually even in a painful way. Yet all that had happened then seemed so minor and unimportant to what was happening to him now… If he made it out of it alive, he’d have to get the six covered up with a seven.

He realized he’d been quietly staring at his own intertwined hands for a little too long now, abruptly turning to look Kerry in the eyes again. The thin golden rim around his gorgeous, piercing blue irises gleamed in the morning sunlight and the sight took V’s breath away for a moment.

“As I said, no need to tell right now. Or ever,” Kerry repeated softly, lips then curling into a cheeky grin, “Like me a man with secrets. Somethin’ to look forward to unravelling further down the line.”

V’s heart first jumped then sunk at that notion.

“Kerry…” he hesitated, voice barely more than a murmur. Then he sighed.

“In 2067… Felt like I was at a point of no return then. I thought I’d never be as scared and lost again as I was that year. But now…”

He hesitated for a moment.

“Ironically what scares me the most is knowing exactly what I’ll have to do next. My path is clear, seems to be set in stone, I didn't have that certainty back then… but at the same time it’s like I’m ‘bout to walk straight off a cliff.”

Kerry looked him in the eyes intensely, and V wanted to believe he recognized understanding and sympathy in his expression.

“I’m not gonna say I understand even half of whatcha goin’ through right now,” Kerry said and scooched a little bit closer, their hips and thighs touching now, his arm around V’s back. Kerry sighed, and his face was so close to V’s, his breath brushed past his cheek and neck and chest. Had he wanted to, he could have counted all his freckles, reminding him so much of the stars in the night sky he’d always been so desperately looking for as a kid.

“You asked me yesterday if I was sure about this. Us,” Kerry said quietly, “Knowin’ what’s potentially gonna come.”

V’s heart was beating so hard, so fast, as if it wanted to climb out of his throat.

“Yeah,” he said, voice cracking slightly, grasping at his own fingers even more tightly now, shoulders tense. Then Kerry pulled him closer, just a tiny bit, less than an inch really… but it was still somewhat startling and unexpected. Kerry wasn’t shy about touch, that much was clear, and V was still somewhat overwhelmed by it now and then. But this now was different, subtle, soft… and he liked it a lot.

He looked back up at him.

“Still no doubts,” Kerry then said, gently and firmly at the same time. V was frozen in shock for a moment, but the warmth of Kerry’s smile started to melt his tenseness away, little by little.

“Thing is… ya never know what’s gonna come. Sometimes you just gotta take the leap and hope for the best. Take all chances you can, cause life’s only gonna throw so many at ya.”

He had a point. All he could really do was continue moving forward. No matter how much he wanted to put off the inevitable, it would arrive sooner or later.

Kerry tilted his head slightly and smiled, and V couldn't help but do the same, heart beating hard and fast again. Fuck... it was way too soon to say "I love you", but in this moment he was certain that this was exactly what he was feeling. He hadn't fallen so hard and so fast for someone in a while, hadn't even thought he'd ever be capable of it again.

"Guess the odds of us ever meeting and ending up here were pretty slim, too," he then said instead.

"Nothin's impossible if you set your mind on it. You've shown me as much, and I'll keep it in mind for sure..." Kerry smiled as he leaned in to capture V’s lips in a soft, warm kiss, his hand reaching out to hold V's, the sun embracing them.

Maybe it was worth risking it all, if on the other side of the abyss waited a future with more of this. And even if not… V was certain, whatever time he had left, he wanted to spend it at Kerry’s side.

[incandescent-creativity]

It Saturday ❗Tell Story 💣

“You said everything was fine until the first storm. So is that where you got…?”

She traces a line in the air over her mouth, the same side where I have my scar.

“Oh. No, that happened because of a blade. You haven’t seen them yet, but there are these… sharpened fish, I guess? They have long tails that they whip around, and these pointed fins, and spiky sails on their backs that help them fly through the air. But the worst is this sort of spear type thing sticking out of the front of its face.

“A whole swarm of them came through the Oasis. We think they were fleeing from the storm—the blades are fast swimmers. The storm itself didn’t hit us until a day or two later, bringing stunners with it, and you know what those are.”

River nods, her face falling. She remembers all right.

I'm caught up in my own memories. Most of the time, I try not to think about the howling of the wind and the splintering crack of our boats, but the first Oasis storm was almost a welcome distraction. The stinging rain driven by the wind had stopped me from seeing most of the damage that was happening, and it was entirely different from the swarm of blades that preceded it. The sun had been shining brightly that day; the only distraction I’d had was the warmth of my blood running down my face.

“It was headed straight for me,” I remember. “Terra jumped out in front of me. She took most of its blade through her throat. That slowed it down most of the way, but the tip of it managed to slice my face open as they fell to the ground.”

I hadn’t really registered the pain at the time. I had other shit to do.

“She was dead by the time I got to her,” I say, knowing I have to finish the story soon. “But I couldn’t leave her like that, with the fish in her throat. So I took its head off and used it as a sword for the rest of the day. And I still… I still have it.”

That’s all I can get out before my throat closes up and the fastest tears I’ve cried in a while make a break for it. I hear River moving across the bed covers more than I see her through the film of tears for my attempts to scrub them away. She somehow finds the energy, probably driven by stew, to fold me up in her arms.

“Oh, God, Aspen. I’m so sorry. It must’ve been terrible to lose your guys’ leader like that.“

The lengths to which she doesn’t understand actually makes me laugh a little bit. The irony of talking to River about this, now that we're together, makes me laugh again. Neither of them sound very cheerful.

“She wasn’t just a leader, River. She was a friend. And I’d hoped that she would be more than that, to me.”

River doesn’t move, but her not moving is a distinct change from the ease with which she was holding me just a few seconds ago.

“Oh.”

“And I never got to talk to her about it before…” I make a horrible, disgusting sniffling sound that might actually offend her more than hearing about how I still have feelings for someone other than her.

“Before she died,” I managed to finish my sentence.

For an agonizing moment that stretches out far longer than it actually is, River doesn’t say anything.

Then she uses all the strength in her currently weakened arms to crush me tight against her chest. Despite having felt stronger hugs from other members of my crew before, she still manages to squeeze a sob out of me before I get it under control.

[primroseprime2019]

Happy STS! Stick a character (or several) in a different setting, genre, time period, whatever, etc. and tell me how they're dressing! For instance, send a modern character back to Ancient Rome or throw a futuristic character into a high fantasy. Anything to analyze how they'd dress without their current options. 🥰

If I were to place my OC character, Orestes, a modern-day character, in a high fantasy setting, he might wear a tunic made of fine silk with intricate embroidery and gold trim. His pants would be fitted and made of soft leather, adorned with silver buckles and decorative designs. Orestes would wear leather boots that lace up to his knees, protecting his feet while still being stylish.

For accessories, Orestes might wear a decorative belt with a silver clasp, a cloak made of rich velvet lined with fur for warmth, and a silver pendant around his neck. His hair might be styled in elaborate braids with silver clasps and beads woven throughout.

Overall, in this high fantasy setting, Orestes would be dressed in luxurious fabrics and ornate details that reflect the elegance and grandeur of the fantastical world around him.

[plusultraetc]

little snippet of Brave the Dark chapter 8 for fic bday <3

(boy I sure love this funky little bard, I hope he doesn't do anything foolish like tell lies or listen to his brain instead of his gut)