Dammit, written myself into a corner with that fic where I was ranting about having to have a big timeskip for age purposes. I also need a reason why the Seer the captives' relatives know wouldn't have been able to tell them the captives weren't dead ten years back.
I think I made a mistake in trying to work two fics wildly different in tone into the same AU. The timelines are a complete mess and I don't know how to fix it :( Anyone any good at timelines?
hmm, well, i guess i’d need more info? i have one AU where one fic handles fucked-up happenings with a heavy dose of humor, while the other portrays different fucked-up things through a much less funny lens. what about the tone change makes you think it might bork the timeline? is it to avoid tone whiplash, or because the events themselves contradict each other? for me, i think very visually, so opening up mspaint and actually making a timeline is how i do it. for other folks, making a bullet-point list describing the events in order could work. it might also help to bring the snaggle of events to a thread, or to a friend, and have people help you untangle it.
One's a Dead Dove-y slavefic, the other is romance between royal children of opposing kingdoms whose story will hopefully end with the abolition of slavery so the first one can't keep on happening. It's Homestuck and I don't like ageing the players from each batch too differently from each other, and the first one has to continue long enough that the character's old enough that I can comfortably do horrible things to him, but currently both fics are at the point when the cast are twelve and I don't know how I can drag it out longer to get to the point where things can happen. I might have to go back and rewrite from the start...
i think, in that case, a timeskip could work? it’s not nearly as much, but the main body of my au happens four years after the fics i currently have written. would it be possible to perhaps do a chapter or two’s worth of vignettes, signalling time passing without actually writing six or more years’ worth of plot?
I was kind of enjoying the romance one as cute hand-holding kids, but I guess they can't solve anything at that stage of their lives.
okay, would it work to establish that they’re taking place at the same time, timeskip the dead-dovey one to get to the fun stuff, and enjoy writing the puppy love until they catch up?
Okay, I need to figure out where the plot of the cute story is going so I know what's going on in the background of the other one. Political upheaval could be tied to why the treatment of the victim suddenly gets so much worse (he's from the enemy country)...
I found a typewritten short story I'd done around age 12 of a "superhero" created by the us government to torture war criminals with their own worst fears titled "A Day Off For The Crucifix", because if anyone needs a mental health day now and again, it's that guy. ETA: I think I'm gonna make a zine with that as a feature comic.
After seeing how badly Terry Goodkind handled it, I now want to see if it's possible to create a convincing pacifist villain.
@IvyLB made me play DDLC, and me being the kind of nerd I am actually writes the poems that include the words from the damn word list. 1) Adventure, Vivid, Bouncy, Whistle, Fantasy, Portrait, Promise, Breathe, Hope, Empty, Unending, Color, Vibrant, Dark, Fireflies, Imagination, Landscape, Uncanny, Raincloud, Infinite I sought an adventure between my brushes A vivid memory of a place I've never seen Green hills, bouncy, the clouds less so The whistle of the hare train A less effervescent fantasy The portrait of the old dragon lies unfinished A promise made in folly Under the paint, the scales breathe Is there still hope left? The pots are not empty yet My search is in vain, unending No color can match its eyes Nothing so vibrant Or dark as the night sky Dancing stars, like fireflies In my imagination I painted it A beast like a landscape, vast, beautiful Its entirety an uncanny face Rainclouds flow down its craned neck And off my infinite canvas 2)Eternity, Fireflies, Feather, Contamination, Inferno, Crimson, Judgement, Vertigo, Disarray, Massacre, Breathe, Uncontrollable, Question, Insight, Ambient, Determination, Spinning, Waterfall, Existence, Embrace There is an eternity just past my windowsill Above me, the fireflies are dancing still No feather pen to break the spell Ink would be a contamination That only an inferno could cleanse The only liquid here is crimson spray But I'll save it until judgement day Besides the vertigo is here to stay Between the mirrors and the disarray I take this massacre in stride Breathe in, out, in, out I watch the uncontrollable, and doubt It begs a question, one I'm without What is it that bestows insight? Is it just... ambient? Determination leaks from my marrow and bone My compass is spinning away from my home A waterfall that eats through stone What existence is it worth to hone? But I embrace the path before me 3) Starscape, Unending, Incongruent, Calm, Explode, Afterimage, Portrait, Ocean, Time, Essence, Melody, Whisper, Philosophy, Existence, Hair, Landscape, Promise, Covet, Raindrops, Pure We carved starscapes into the soil I am unending, infinite, vast Made from an erratic, incongruent past And deep in the calm of the dark night sky From where we watch stars explode, up high The afterimage is burnt into your eye A portrait of you drawn in the sands From the ocean of paint dripping from my hands Time is key, yet still it stands Pours out essence no one understands If I'm quiet, I can hear its melody Barely a whisper, but in it I am free Screw the courts and halls and the philosophy For my bones are existence of godly degree Plucked a lock of your hair for my oldest pen And cannot wait to see that landscape again For the promise I made to paint for you then Did you covet the view from there? Or I the raindrops falling on your hair? Will it be pure, or bring turmoil? The words are a challenge. Third poem was an attempt to shake my usual scheme up a bit, but I'm not sure it worked. The line "under the paint, the scales breathe" is still the one I'm proudest of.
A young wix who grows up with love and support and people who teach them about magic. But they are not allowed in the swamp alone. There's monsters there. Talk of dead things that still move. Running works if you know where to go but they (the adults, the witches and wixes of many generations) haven't yet figured out how to appease them. Creatures like that tend to have been robbed of something, but no attempt at communication has succeeded, and it can't be destroyed, for some reason or other. Even if the swamp is the one the Wandering Witch and her entourage came through on their way to found a place where magical folks could gather for research, and where she could collect all the knowledge she had acquired. No playing the Wandering Witch there. Even she left the things that are dead but still move alone. One day the young wix takes a ball of colourful yarn because theyve read their stories and breadcrumbs are really not visible on swamp ground and go into the swamp anyway. They find the dead thing alright. It was human once and is missing its lower jaw and tongue but it screams and lunges at the young wix who goes "nope, ma was right" and follows the yarn back out. They get scolded, of course they are, but also commended for their use of the yarn and booking it anyways. Sometimes kids need their lessons. The wix grows, and studies with and under others, far away from home, befriending crafters and enchanters and people who excel at finding things, and they return with a bare bones teenaged coven and a box, and the wix takes a ball of yarn to the swamp while the others help out the old witch. Based on the pictures (light captured on paper! What an idea) the thing in the box gets adjusted, and at some point the crafter says that she really needs to work on the subject itself at this point. She needs to know what she's dealing with here. So into the swamp they go, armed with a picnic basket and the thing in the box and each with their own set of tools. The thing that is dead but still moves avoids them because it knows, it knows groups are dangerous to it, and the finder needs another day to adjust to the terrain. They've never been in a swamp before. Everything is sticky and smells weird. The wix just laughs. The thing that is dead but still moves never sleeps and does not tire, either, but between the one who excels at finding things and the enchanter they manage to trap it. It struggles and tears at the webs and creams and the wix takes out the thing in the box, and the thing that is dead stills, eyes bulging, and now it just stares. It's a lower jaw, complete with a tongue. The wix approaches slowly, holding it out. The thing screams again, but not as loudly or long as before. (At least until the crafter approaches.) In the background, the enchanter and the finder debate the finer differences between gjenganger, wiedergänger, and revenant, but it couldve been a spriggan or a dybbuk and maybe it's still a dybbuk, but it couldve been a träskra no shut up träskra totally exist, no they don't they'd be huldra or skogsra or maybe sjöra because this one's in the water but it's very definitely not a nature spirit but a corpse, stars above. The wix asks the dead thing if it understands them. Nod for yes, headshake for no. The dead thing hisses, one of its eyes rolls down so both are locked on the wix, and it very slowly and deliberately nods. The wix remarks that they should've tried that earlier. (The dead thing nods again.) Between the wix and the crafter they get the jaw attached to old bone and the dead thing moves it and the new tongue around. It has not spoken in many thousand seasons. But it has picked up the language shifts from all the folk who came to deal with it over the years, and all those it dragged into the swamp because they looked like the thieves who stole its life and its belongings. (Most of that is conjecture.) The enchanter produces something to write on, because he's been writing along, of course he's been, this is going to give them an entry in the records for sure. The thing that is dead -- not even it knows what it is, it just knows that there's something that's keeping it here -- draws a medallion on the page. It looks like the one extremely cursed item in the vault, the enchanter remarks. Very powerful. Said to glow like the sun and dry any rain. Instead it drops people dead. The thing that is dead coughs out air in staccato, like it's laughing. (It's laughing.) The finder immediately vetoes trying to break it out, before anyone can say anything. >ou should not even have been in there, enchanter. I should have never taken you along while exploring the place. The veto is immediately counter-vetoed by everyone else. This is a stolen item that would lay the thing that is dead but still moves to rest and make the swamp a little bit safer. The thing that is dead yet still moves tugs at the wix's bag, and holds up its two of its remaining fingers. A second thing. Group, they make out between the careful but difficult enunciation and old words for things. Separated, lost. Another symbol on paper. This one, they all recognize. It's the symbol of the school. The symbol of the Wandering Witch.
Messing about with my 'verse's version of elves, and I've got them as small and fragile with wings and with hollow bird-like bones so they can fly easily; if that was the case, they probably wouldn't be strong enough to draw a bow or use a sword, though. Would pistol recoil also cause problems? I can see them using a really light firearm, maybe with both hands, or a miniature bow to launch darts as a medium-range weapon.
Actually, I'd argue it's the other way around--I could see handgun recoil snapping some of the wrist bones pretty easily, but the musculature going into wings and flying is absolutely massive, so firing a bow wouldn't be unreasonable. Birds are muscular as hell.
.... no actually i would not give them pistols at all and stick with bows. Birds have some buff fucking musculature in their chests and backs, depending on where you have the wings anchored and which muscle groups they connect to a bow would probably be able to be fired with higher tensions than humans can reasonably use.
That said, if you're married to the idea of guns, a small caliber rifle would have almost no recoil at all, but guns can be pretty fuckin' heavy, so if your elves are fragile enough that drawing a bow is hard to swing, carrying, hefting, and firing a rifle in the air might be too difficult too. Small caliber hunting rifles are usually .22 or .30 cals, and especially good for small game. You can take out something bigger with them if you hit right, but you can't blow a big hole in someone with a tiny bullet, so keep that in mind.
The wings aren't really muscled the way a bird's are, though. For that to work, a humanoid's breastbone would have to stick out about six feet and the wings would have to be the size of the room. I have them flying by magic, light-boned so that it takes less power and they can still cast other things while flying, and the wings are for steering, more or less tacked on their backs a la traditional fairy butterfly wings. Strong muscles are good but I'm concerned they might snap the bones if they hold a sword wrong or something. I was thinking of a character I have who's half-elf and uses revolvers, not rifles. He could have just inherited sturdier bones from his human parent though.
right but. even if they don't flap their wings that's a lot of mass sticking out of the back as counterweight so their chest muscles would still be buffer than a human's.
