I just don't want to be falling into Rape Is The New Dead Parents - one of the characters I listed definitely wasn't sexually abused, but the others either were or may have been. Of the ones which were/might have been, their situations are very different, and what happened to them always has an actual point beyond eliciting pity. It's possible for me to leave it ambiguous with all of them, so should I, or would saying it outright be better regarding representation of different circs and ways of processing?
i put this in my vent thread to see if it worked and it seems to work how i wanted it to! choose your own adventure with spoilers!
I basically conceived all my characters as furries, but I want to write them as humans (or similar mythical beings). I think there should be some magic or something in the setting with an animal theme, a la daemons or Patroni, but can't think of anything that hasn't already been done.
Everything has already been done. Make your own flavor of it and don't worry if it's been done before.
i was just about to say what @Lissa Lysik'an said - i spent years not writing anything because i was paralyzed that it had already been done. EVERYTHING'S been done, though. what makes your work your own is your own spin on it and the words you use. "human with animal connection in some way" is definitely a broad enough concept that if you use that as a jumping-off point youll get something that is your own. good luck!!! i look forward to seeing what you get out of it :D
I have one character who's a fox spirit and one who's a werewolf, I feel like their powers should be involved in revealing others' animal connections in some way. Or maybe the elves, they're all nature-y and shit.
That feel when you write the first part of a work, and you already hate it, and have to kick yourself into going "REVISE LATER"
Bit of worldbuilding; do people think it'd work to have a species that humans assume are evil because they don't feel romantic love, but they do still have empathy and strong bonds of different kinds? I have an aro-ace human protag and I think it'd be a nice bit of help for her to work herself out since in the setting they wouldn't have the modern terminology.
I think I need more female characters with magic. In the cast of the story I'm currently playing with almost all the young boys have an ability and the girls don't - the girls get to do entirely different cool things, though, and the cast of another story set in the same world have the ratio reversed.
You are, I presume, human. Would you assume a species is evil for not having romance? I think most people probably correlate it with intelligence more than they have any reason to, thinking it over -- I imagine human-analogous aliens, for instance, that didn't have a concept of romance would be off-putting to most humans, but I am fairly sure my dog has very strong emotions and is capable of recognizing emotions in me without having any romantic pursuits, yet nobody holds that against her. As long as it's apparent that "this particular assortment of girls just happen to not do the magic thing" and other females in the world do, I think it should still be fine? I never object to more magic in general, of course, or girls getting to do cool things with magic.
the suffering of not being able to have your protagonist interact with the rest of your main cast yet...
I was thinking humans would miscommunicate and assume this race (my goblins, specifically) couldn't love at all, which isn't true. It is set in a Victorian-esque milieu so yeah, a lot more racist than now. It's too bad I'm trying to keep the story set in my 'verse PG-13, because I'm so very sorely tempted to include Thirty H's penis-covered ape as a legitimate piece of folklore in it.
Okay so I've had a writing idea kicking around in my head for a little while Hear me out Autism is Literally Magic Spoiler: long thoughts Like it's a pretty traditional fantasy setting except that everyone knows "wizards" are weird and obsessive and don't look you in they eye and might not even talk depending on circumstances. Some wizards are entirely nonverbal and don't interact or respond much to outside stimuli, others are only a little bit weird, and some people are kind of borderline, like Grandpa Jorgi who didn't care much for manners and made suspiciously good barrels. The "wizard" school is called the Tower and, in addition to being a school, functions as a support/help center for the problems that "wizards" get, like becoming overwhelmed in crowds and hyperfixating on a thing for days at a time. The school is run by a mix of wizards with enough practicality to help run it and non-wizards who can run interference (and who require fewer resources themselves than most wizards). The students get to live among a diverse group of other wizards, all of whom possess varying levels of independence and magical ability. It's not perfect by any means. Some wizards are kept and exploited by their families, others have more power than control and can cause harm with magic. There are still sexist stereotypes about magic and girls have to be much more overtly wizard-y before they're acknowledged as such. Magic itself is extremely difficult to master and dependent on one's understanding of the interest in question, and some of the most common interests (like the Cloudgazers, who are so common they get their own nickname) are too complicated to properly master. Some wizards require a high level of care and are unlikely to contribute anything useful in return, but the ones at the Tower are still accommodated as much as possible. For this setting I'd basically have to develop a culture that's based upon autistic people and their needs, what kind of community might develop from a high level of collaboration and accommodation, and also how magic might manifest according to special interests. I personally like to keep magic mostly subtle right up until the point where it becomes dramatically and undeniably magic. Most of the flashy stuff would be the stuff of legend/really rare/only for those who have given up outside distractions like learning to socialize. I imagine there are several stories about wizards who did nothing but stare into space and stim for years until they one day suddenly vanished, presumably to a higher plane of existence. I'm also interested in creating an offshoot wizard group where the concept of disability is reversed, with such a high concentration of wizards that the needs of non-wizards are dismissed and ignored. That would probably be a stretch, but it could also be interesting to explore if wizards are normalized enough.
When someone wants to make a Lovecraftian or Old Testament-y nonhuman nightmare, they generally go for lots of eyes or mouths. And that makes sense, because things with lots of eyes or lots of mouths are definitely nonhuman and yet those are features that we recognize as such, so we try and fail to fit them into our understanding of how faces work and fail and thus comes terror. But we do have other facial features to experiment with. What about a flaming wheel covered in noses? An amorphous darkness whose only identifiable features are ears of various sizes? The heavens open and down comes a being of wings and more wings, and littered upon those wings like stars are hundreds of chins, each with a beard more vast and terrible than the endless void itself, and it proclaims "Fear not!"
is this a place to show off a poem I'm proud of? I was directed here after I tried to share it in a thread about sharing poetry that the creator decided was just a showcase for their own poetry. (personally i think a public forum isn't the place for that, but that isn't my call to make)
I feel like many hands/arms or legs edges back toward terror zone, but agreed, hundreds and hundreds of toes poking out of a celestial, otherworldly being is just funny.
