Writing What You Don't Know: The Assistants

Hmm i tend to remember them in said language, as translating is often a conscious effort that can remove or alter context, while I tend to remember things as events. If I’m thinking of trying to articulate something to a friend that don’t speak language, I will sometimes translate it and then I may remember that new version also, but generally if I hear it in one language it stays in that language

 

This is about the languages I’m equally fluent in, not sure how the exchange would go if I was only partially fluent. But I suppose it would be like a mix of known words and filler in native tongue

 

that's so so helpful, thank you!

 

oh, for context--i'm writing a story in which a character remembers an event and conversation that happened in the language he spoke at home. but he hasn't spoken that language in a long time, and has been in an almost entirely english-speaking environment. so i'm imagining that it might be a sort of mix--he remembers it mostly in his home language, but some english has gotten mixed in over the years.

also losing part of a memory to another language kind of fits the story's themes of alienation.

 

Hmm I can’t speak on that as I am a 50/50, but I suppose that might happen, especially if they don’t hear it for a while, maybe mixing English in or making it vauge would help?

 

oh sorry that i wasn't clear, the entire story is in english, i would just have had the character think something like "he knows that they were probably speaking his home language, but over time some of the memory has slipped into english. (when did he start remembering things in english?)" or, if it seems more true to life, i just might mention that the memory is happening in a different language, and have the character reflect on that for a line or two.

 

What's a good way to deal with characters being magically brought back from death or near-death which explains why people don't just do that magic thing all the time?

 

Make it stupidly hard/expensive? Make it something that's only available at very particular times or very particular circumstances? Make it have horrible additional consequences? Religious or philosophical taboos against it? Lots of options.

 

The price to pay. If the character themselves isn't exceptional somehow (for instance, having God Tiered properly without having a Just or Heroic death after the fact) then make sure there's a hefty price to pay for bringing them back.

Is it that the one who raises them has to sacrifice themselves (or parts of themselves) for it? (Fullmetal Alchemist plays with this.)
Is it that there's some incredibly rare resource that needs to be used for it? (Tangled plays with this.)
Is the magic that's used to bring people back from the brink twisted somehow, leaving corruption in the core magic of the person brought back? (The Witches of Eileanan plays with this.)

Is the experience so deeply traumatic that the people resurrected often kill themselves again? Is it so heavy of a magic sink that it drains the land of magic for a period of time, leaving everyone without the ability to cast? Is it that they always come back wrong, or not the same person at all, making the whole intent of the spell useless?

Generally, if you want a "why don't people do this all the time" the answer has to be 'the MC is exceptional' or 'the price is too high'. It's just a matter of figuring out where you want to set 'too high'.

 

Some other options:

• It only works if the person has a really, really pressing reason to come back
  
• It only works if they're only mostly dead
  
• It only works if they died a certain way
• It doesn't fix much beyond immediate deadness, so they have to be able to pull through whatever killed them on attempt #2
  
• It requires a complex, finicky, and time-consuming ritual and few people have the knowledge to do it at all
  
• The resurrection is temporary and/or conditional
• It requires intervention by deities/similar forces that don't generally feel like intervening
  
• It destabilizes the Cosmic Balance(TM)
• It isn't normally possible, and only happened as an unreproducable fluke (e.g. other magic going out of control)

 

Also, if you go the "the price is too high" route, you could also take a page from D&D and literally make it incredibly expensive to do. Not necessarily that there's an incredibly rare resource needed, but that the resources needed are finicky and need to be gathered at specific times and processed in precise ways (and, if you want to make it harder, the more crucial elements don't keep very well). In D&D, you need a diamond that's worth a minimum of 5,000 gold in order to pull off a resurrection - and the spell needs to be cast within a year of the death, and the material components are destroyed in the process of casting (so you can't just re-use the same diamond over and over).

The material components needed for resurrection might be difficult or time-consuming to source, or require being gathered at the right time of year. For example, "the first fruits and vegetables of the harvest" - you need to know which harvest (spring? summer? autumn?) and be able to get them and be able to keep them intact until the spell can be cast - ideally in a way that doesn't affect their ability to be used as spell components. Ocean water or sea salt might be harder to come by, if they're far inland. Herbs that need to be gathered on the first day of summer and then dried for a year and a day aren't going to be that hard to gather, but you can't speed up the drying process.

And there could be ethical concerns about the components! Does the spell require body parts from animals? If so, are these parts which can be sourced by means of normal hunting or slaughtering (or even just keeping the animal), or would a whole industry need to be built around sourcing these parts in order to obtain them on a consistent basis? Could the requirement for the components result in the animals being overhunted?
Or more Problematique: does the spell require body parts from people? Can these parts be willingly donated by other deceased people? Do the parts require the person dying? Do the parts need to be harvested from a living person? Are there specific requirements for the kind of person that needs to be the donor?

 

In the vein of 'only mostly dead' one of my worlds (feel free to steal) resurrection only works if the soul hasn't fucked off. And the body is in decent condition, rot-wise. So you've got a time limit, and some (actually many) people's soul just goes 'fuck this shit I'm out' as soon as they die. The older the corpse is the more likely the soul is gone, and bringing a soul back from wherever they go is FUCKING HARD. Not impossible, but you'll need to find someone who can talk to them which takes time while the body's slowly getting less viable. People who die of age also can't be brought back

There are also methods of killing someone that severs the body/soul connection, so that person Cannot be brought back, no matter where their soul is or who's performing the ritual.

 

Also, I don't know whether your goal here is "avoid opening the can of worldbuilding worms that is easy resurrection" or "have one character be revivable without losing the tension of potentially killing off other characters," but if it's the latter, some more off the top of my head:

• In the Dragaera books, resurrection is so common that within the Jhereg criminal syndicate, having someone killed is considered a warning/threat. However, it requires hiring a sorcerer, which is out of the budget for the majority of the populace, and it doesn't work if there's damage to the central nervous system (which also means it has to happen in the first hour or two). Therefore, the standard Jhereg assassination methods when they want it to stick are a knife through the eye or severing the spinal cord. There are also cursed weapons that eat souls, removing them from the cycle of reincarnation entirely; killing someone this way is a really, REALLY big deal.
  
• Final Fantasy XIV's "dead" status is technically "unconscious": raise spells and Phoenix Downs get you back on your feet, but don't bring you back if you're actually dead. One major character death happens when the character is hit by an attack that, when it appears as a boss mechanic, applies a debuff that prevents healing the target.

Re: DnD, it also has different power levels and restrictions on the different levels of spells. In 5e, Revivify is only a 3rd-level spell and takes just a few seconds to cast, but it only works in the first minute after someone dies, and all it does is puts them back on 1 HP. Raise dead works on things that have been dead up to 10 days and cures nonmagical diseases and poison, but can't regrow missing body parts, and the character has a -4 penalty to everything for a while. Resurrection puts the whole body back together and works on someone who's died in the last century, but they still get the -4 penalty and if they were dead for more than a year, the caster is totally useless until they can sleep. Only true resurrection- one of the most powerful spells in the entire game, which requires a 17th-level cleric and 25,000 gp worth of diamonds to cast- can completely restore someone with no ill effects, and it's the only one that works without a body or if they've been turned into an undead. And even true res doesn't work if they died of old age.

EDIT: Oops, I spent so long looking all those up I forgot the DnD spell I originally got out the book for: reincarnation. It brings the target back completely! ...In a new body, the species of which is determined by a dice roll. In 5e they're all humanoid species, but in other editions, you can easily come back to life as a badger.

 

Oh, and can't forget the old supervillain standby of "can be resurrected because of contingency plans made in life." Horcruxes, etc.

 

I'm thinking massive psychological trauma would be involved. All the carnage of a slowly-dying brain, played back in a healthy one able to fully experience it... would not be happy fun time. And being dead itself would be total sensory deprivation added on to those memories.

I saw a documentary on a guy with anterograde amnesia, and he was constantly 'waking up' with a decade of utterly blank memory, but with his time-sense completely intact.... he would speak with utter horror of being blind, deaf, numb, etc for years.

An extraordinarily resilient person who died very suddenly and was resurrected right away might come back ok-ish.

Alternatively... what if most dead people, regardless of how passionate in life, simply treated life as an old, faded meaningless dream that they'd long since left behind?

 

What I'm going for is a Homestuck AU which doesn't have SGurb; Dave and Jade die or nearly do, and the magic which brings them back involves sacrificing an animal and merges that animal into them; this was the best way I could think of to have the sprites/dog-tier be a thing in this AU. So I've got at least a start for what's needed, but it needs higher stakes. If it massively drains the power of the performing mage/witch and possibly all other magic users in the area, that's a start too...

 

Immediacy could also be a good one if "nearly" is on the table. Dave got stabbed/Jade got shot and whoever brought them back had the 30 seconds until they bled out to find a recently-deceased animal for the healing ritual. They got lucky; not everyone would.

 

I was picturing them sacrificing Bec to bring Jade back. That specific crow didn't really mean anything to Dave though...

 

needed deceased animal, grabbed nearest one, it was a crow, maybe it messes up the ritual some because of lack of emotional connection or something and it makes it harder for Dave to come back but in the end Dave pulls through?

 

So I've fallen into a fic hole for the first time since I was like 13, and of course it's for a show where most of the characters are either korean or japanese. I need a name for a japanese oc, and I'm trying to make sure it's not either offensive or ridiculous, because my american ass doesn't know anything on this one.

He'd be a samurai around the turn of the century if that helps at all. I'm ok researching cultural stuff but I feel like names are harder to get right.