writings of mysterious happenstance.

Discussion in 'Make It So' started by OtherCat, Aug 15, 2018.

  1. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    So I am definitely doing Eldritch Rhythm for NaNoWriMo! I have even put my word count and title in on the official site! I am going to be posting it on my Patreon as a Patron Only thing because if I can get to 50,000 words/finish it I'll probably try to self publish it.

    I have generally had problems with getting high word counts in the past, so I generally haven't done very well with things like NaNo. However, I've been getting better at word count, though it was generally with several different fics that I was also working on. Now the big problem is maybe going to be Maintaining Focus and Somehow Doing Research Because The Real World is Strange and Confusing and I Don't Know How Anything Works, while writing.

    Heres the title and blurb:

    Eldritch Rhythm

    Mirah is a runaway high priestess of a cult that worships Mysterious Entities Beyond Time and Space. Mirah would rather be a singer. Sadly her career has hiccups such as random entities summoned by hack sorcerers, demon hunters and idiots who want to join her Dark Crusade of Darkness. (There is no Dark Crusade of Darkness. There is only alt-pop with throat singing and a hint of R and B.)

    Getting attacked by a demon hunter is just Tuesday for Mirah. When she’s attacked by demon hunter Jenna Blackwell at a gig she goes through the usual procedure of veiling memories questioning and returning the hunter to their base (and destroying all of their notes) before wiping their memories. This time around, the hunter’s apartment is wrecked, and everything of value stolen, including their gear.

    Well hell.

    Jenna finds herself being Mirah’s plus one at the coronation of Mirah’s babysister.

    What the fuck.
    _______

    I probably need to build more on Jenna's half of the the blurb.
     
  2. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    So I ended up with an earache and was sick and I am very behind on the Nano. >_< Mostly I ended up doing worldbuilding and reading fan fic because of the earache/headache. I'm not happy, but I'm trying to go easy on myself.
     
  3. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    It is so hard to for me to get prompts when I ask for them. Which is fine, technically, because I often have trouble with writing prompts. (Okay, I tend to not get a lot of reader interaction in general, which is both frustrating because anxiety and a relief also because of anxiety.)
     
  4. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    A random line "...because this is how you get shaman."

    I have no idea what it is that is "...because this is how you get shaman." eating strange mushrooms? out of body experiences? conversing with strange spirits?

    This reminds me of two for mirth where I had the line "I set nothing in place that was not intended to lance a boil," for weeks and weeks, in addition to other bits of dialog, weeks before I could write anything down. Sadly, I'm not currently writing anything where there would be shaman...?
     
  5. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    Because I'm still annoyed about it: On the most recent chapter of (they flow from form to form) Karkat gets some details from Light, which he passes on. I have him give some of the details, intending to expand in the next chapter.

    And I get a comment from someone who thinks I "forgot" to have Karkat mention said details in that chapter. As if it couldn't have been possible that it was you know, deliberate because the end of the chapter is mostly focused on Karkat and Kankri having a fucking Moment, not on Shit That is Relevant to the Gamzee Situation.

    I should not be mean about it, but bluntly, it makes me want to scream. Because they're going to think they helped me fix a problem that did not actually fucking exist.
     
    • Witnessed x 1
  6. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    I am still playing with a story idea where in it's a medieval stuck and the Prospit heirs carry off the Derse heirs because marriage-by-abduction. (Because it's hilarious, and I've seen several stories with a similar set up, though it's usually "Prospitians do terrible kinky things to Strider battle captives/hostages.) What I have planned is something a little different.

    I think it's going to start with Dave being set up very comfortably in a Very Important Prisoner suite, he even has two servants! (Meanwhile, Rose has gone a little grimdark and gets caught because she rushed into a trap.)
     
  7. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    I think the Prospitians were semi-nomadic raider/herder types who decided to settle down/expand their range/influence by conquering Skaia. (The concept of settling down having been brought to the old queen due to having been "fostered" by the Alternian Empress.) Derse had a mutual defense treaty with Skaia and took in many of the Skaian nobility, which is why Derse and Prospit-Skaia are at war.
     
  8. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    I have gotten very, very little writing done for the past couple months! This is mostly because of Real Life difficulties and my attempts to distract myself from said real life difficulties. So I have been mostly reading fan fic, listening to podcasts (Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap and Productivity Alchemy) and trying to catch up on a web comic I hadn't read in three (3) years. I've also been poking around at older original writing projects that have never seen the light of day and so on.

    So! I have been re-reading my own fan fic in hopes of getting some inspiration and figuring out where I'm going with the plot for each of the stories. The current WIPS I'm looking at are: Eriond: be the Rogue of Hope, two for mirth, (they flow from form to form), (glaciers melting in the dead of night) and Build a Life from Scratch. I should also be reading through Crooked Little House, but I am not, so there.

    I'm not sure which of the stories I want to work on first. All of them are giving me problems in some sense, though for different reasons.

    Build a Life from Scratch: Feels flat and I can't decide on a good chapter title. I have a vague idea that we're going to reveal a little more about the source of Bro's heart trauma dreams, plus some interaction/weird horrible flirting with/from GHB.

    Eriond: be the Rogue of Hope: I want Signless to meet Eriond, and have them talk. I want more stuff from Relg and/or Taiba, and maybe for Belgarath to show up. (Probably walking out of the pantry like he owned the place.)

    (they flow from form to form): more information gathering/teaching and Karkat's date with Light. (which is likely to go much better than his date with Heart.) I've written a little of it already and it does not seem to suck.

    (glaciers melting in the dead of night): is grotty and horrible and I'm poking at my plans with this fic with sticks. (Porn. Porn with plot is where it's going, plus a battle or two and Dirk feeling Conflicted.)

    two for mirth: I am stuck. It's close to being done which is why I'm stuck. I have no idea of what I'm doing and everything is terrible.

    Original Fic:

    I've been thinking about my "orcs are people" fic. Which is not on my journal but which I had posted on the old Baen webboard. (People seemed to like it, including Mr. Baen at the time.) It didn't get very far because like a lot of my original work, I had trouble figuring out where I was going. (This is also a problem with my fan fic.) Our Protagonist, an orc, wakes up in the middle of a snowy forest that shouldn't be where it was, and has to figure out how to find his way to a safe place. Also, there are dead people. I have several drafts of the story, which doesn't get longer than a few thousand words each time. Very frustrating, because I liked the character I created.

    Eldritch Rhythm and the "Marriage Alliance Complicated by Assassination Attempt" stories are still active, though I haven't written anything since I posted the last chapters I've worked on of Eldritch.
     
  9. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    I have been writing so much grotty stuff in discord fic jam servers and I don't even know why. I have to be actually angry to do that stuff normally. :\ Non con is generally hard for me to write anyway, because I don't have the ability to do the endless whump it seems to require. Also, I want a happy ending and generally don't want to fuck up the pairing. :\
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2019
  10. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    TFW you lose writing you can't recover after the computer decides to restart, and when you try to open and save the auto saved document you close it without saving it because you can't rename it the right name.
     
  11. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    I made a spreadsheet to track my word count! I am not sure how accurate it will be, since my writing pattern tends to be back fill, move text around and edit while writing. (I know people say you shouldn't edit while writing, but I don't write linearly so I can't help but edit and change stuff I'm writing.) This means that the actual document word count will fluctuate a bit.

    I spent a LOT of time messing around with the design of the spreadsheet, because of course I did. Design is Important, okay? And I am still fiddling with it.

    I was able to get out two chapters of Build a Life from Scratch out, and also a bit of two for mirth, which completed the chapter, which I posted. I'm currently working a little on "the heroes of the imperium and the av club." Sadly I fell asleep due to evening meds before I could get much written.
     
  12. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    TFW you have a whole bunch of crossover bunnies for a fandom that you aren't completely conversant in. (I am getting lots of bunnies for Bleach. One of them has already been written. It was a crossover with the Sector General novels by James White. ahahahaha. Now I want to crossover with the Young Wizards, lord help me.)
     
  13. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    They said: Your fic is useless if keef tops tssss
    I replied: Aahahahahahahahahahahaha
    What I did not write but was tempted to: This entire fandom is useless because it's fully of nasty little shit-gremlins.

    other alternates possible comments that comments that come to mind:
    "your opinion is useless if you can't spell."
    "It's little bitches like you, that are the reason why my Voltron fics are comment moderated."
    "My fic must be awesome then, because Keith is not by nature a top in this fic, you spoon."
    "You, yourself are useless if you're reading Voltron fan fic."
    "It's my fic and I write what I want, you stupid bitch."

    (The best part is that no, Keith at no point tops in the damn fic. He is beset by a cultural expectation that he be "dominant" but the person actually in charge is more or less Shiro, who himself can't disobey him. There is so much service topping in this fic.)

    I am still filled with spite over the Incident Where I Got into An Argument over Hate in the Tags.
    I do not like anxiety spirals, which is what happened. (Basically, I got yelled at because one of my posts was a complaint about a fic, but I didn't mention the writer or the name of the fic because anonymity. I was told that my post was way too mean, but the other person refused to communicate/mediate with me, and pitched fits when others sided with me, but praised the people who sided with her. I had a neutral party to check it out to see if I really had been that mean and everything, and they said no. Meanwhile I'm having the anxieties, and this is why I left the Voltron fandom, but not before finishing the nastiest grottiest fic I ever wrote.)
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2019
  14. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    Sequel: They replied and I let them have it. :D

    They said: So is he the one that tops from the bottom (power bottom) I'm tired of seeing langst or simply lance as a victim when I search for SHEITH.


    I said: I see your spelling has more or less in improved. Congratulations on sounding slightly less like a fucking moron. It is truly bitches like you that are the reason why my Voltron fics are moderated, and I only stayed long enough to finish writing this grotty, nasty fic.

    1. There is actually no point where Keith actually tops in this fic. There is a cultural expectation that he be sexually dominant (and actually dominant, as in outside the bedroom so to speak) but he is not and he takes pains to make sure no one knows this. It's evident that Shiro is the dominant partner from the first fucking chapter if you had anything resembling comprehension, despite also being unable to disobey commands from Keith.

    2.a. Even if I had written Keith as a top, the quality of my fic would have nothing to do with whether or not he was a fucking top.

    2.b. Also, I write what I want to write, you stupid little shit gremlin. If I want to write Keith as a top, then I'm going to write him as a fucking top. If I want to write him as a goddamn bottom I'll write him as a goddamn bottom. The opinions of little shit gremlins at no point weigh into this creative endeavor.

    3. I would ask what the presence of Lance having to do with whether or not Keith bottoms or tops (your original issue) but I don't care that much because you're a fucking moron who can't read pairing tags or the fucking summary of the goddamn fic. (Shiro/Keith/Lance Keith/Shiro, KEITH/LANCE and the part where the summary is a fucking quote from the first goddamn paragraphs with oh, look, KEITH FREAKING OUT BECAUSE LANCE ATTEMPTED SUICIDE Which would indicate oh look, Lance is the fucking victim in this fucking fic!)

    Any of the above would have told you to avoid the fucking fic since it is obviously not to your taste, but since you are a little fucking bitch you had to come into my inbox to try to be a little fucking bitch to me about it. This is due to the fact that you are a nasty, entitled little bitch who needs to be told "Don't Like? Then Don't Fucking Read." Also, don't fucking comment, don't fucking interact, and go to fucking hell you stupid nasty rude little bitch.
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2019
  15. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    They eventually struck back with a very random flailing around, apparently hoping to find sensitive spots, but largely failed to upset me. Next time I'll just delete comments, which is what the moderated comments are for, or just kept going "ahahahahahahah!" every time they replied.

    Also, they did the thing where they log "lol, I didn't even read your response!" then proceed to go through a point by point rant about why everything you wrote was wrong. On one hand I should feel guilty because I now suspect they were a teenager, but on the other hand, they were a little shit.
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2019
  16. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    In other, much better news, I have been writing Bleach fanfic. Bleach crossover fanfic. (It has been the only writing I've been able to get done due to Real Life and stress related to same.) The first crossover was Bleach/Sector General and based somewhat on a fic being written by Askerian, who is largely why I ended up reading the Bleach manga. (Goddammit).

    The current crossover is Bleach/Young Wizards, where Ichigo is offered the Oath, and he becomes a wizard because he wants to protect everyone. Because of course. A snippet of what I've gotten so far:

    Soul Wizardry

    His wizard’s manual looks like the first volume for a tankoban titled Black Moon, and the significance of that doesn’t come up until years later. (There are no coincidences.) He sees ghosts but actual magic doesn’t seem like a thing at first, so he reads it without thinking about it at first. (No matter how much he reads there’s still more to read.) This universe is a dangerous one for wizards, the manual is very specific about that. This is a universe under the aegis of the Lone Power, and wizards are very few. (This feels like a challenge.)

    Ichigo takes the Oath. He feels the way the air listens, the way each word is an effort to speak. He’s excited and terrified all at once.

    He’s ten.

    (He wants to protect everyone.)

    Ichigo’s Ordeal, his first battle with the Lone Power is weird and internal and mostly involves making friends with a weird bleached-white kid with gold and black eyes living in a weird sideways world. There’s also an old guy who tells him a story about his mother. (He passes his Ordeal. The Old guy smiles at him, the weird kid, the “hollow” kid punches him in the arm. He punches back, and wakes up.)

    Dad’s hands are covering his nose and he’s accusing Ichigo of being a terrible, mean son. Ichigo has neither mercy nor compassion. He laughs and follows up with a thrown pillow.

    (They talk for the first time in a long time. Ichigo wants to pull everything back together in their flung-apart family. He knows that he can, now. He knows how.)

    Being a wizard is hard. There are polluted rivers to clean, trees to set upright when they fall during storms, lost kids to find before something happens. (And in Karakura Town “something” is going to be very bad indeed.) His Advisory runs a bookstore in Tokyo and he visits at least once a month when he’s able to. There are very few other human wizards, so a lot of his work is done alone or on occasion with the assistance of the non-human human wizards.

    It is sometimes very scary and very dangerous and he learns from a cat wizard how to sew shut illegal gate patents because for some reason Karakura Town has a lot of them, all the time because there are two side worlds and people there keep trying to come through. One side world is called “Soul Society” and the people there “purify” souls and take ghosts there after they die--it is not that great of a place, and certainly no Timeheart, where all that’s loved goes. The other side world is called Hueco Mundo and is full of cannibal ghost-people that may or may not be perytons. (There are so many papers in the Manual on the topic on the similarities between the cannibal ghosts and perytons, and the ways the two “species” differed. Ichigo is assigned to read them. Ichigo’s eyes glaze over.) The Soul Society people are considered somewhat benign, so their gates are allowed to run more or less patent, the Hueco Mundo gates you have to sew shut almost immediately on discovery and it’s dangerous and scary.

    (Zangetsu and the old man are almost like wizarding partners so it’s okay, and he never really feels lonely.)

    He gets into fights over his orange hair and beats up bullies and makes friends. He gets bumped up to Senior Wizard before he’s fifteen and he has a rough interest in social work. (His Advisory thinks this is hilarious given how often Ichigo gets into fights. Ichigo maintains that he is absolutely helping by making bullies sorry for being bullies.) When he’s fifteen is also when one of the Soul Society people almost dies trying to kill one of the cannibal ghost people. The battle is a complete mess, and something horrible happens when he tries to heal the Shinigami: something within her takes the spell as an attack, which wakes Zangetsu up. (The asshole frigging swallows it, what turns out to be her powers as a Shinigami, and won’t cough it back up.)

    So he has to help the shinigami, a teeny little girl called Rukia out. He does not want to, and having a Shinigami at such close quarters makes his actual job a little difficult. There is a lot of talking with his Advisory who gets on Accord with him and the goddamn Planetary over the feasibility of revealing himself as a wizard. (How much Shinigami know about wizardry isn’t known.)

    It turns out, not a whole hell of a lot. Mr. Hat-and-clogs however is fascinated. (Ms. Yoruichi knew more about cat wizards but had not seen fit to tell Mr. Hat-and-clogs about it. This is both hilarious and also very Ailuran.) Ichigo spends a lot of careful, cautious time explaining wizardry and teaching Mr. Hat-and-clogs the very basics of Speech. There is a lot of back and forth exchanges about Shinigami versus Wizards and he helps Rukia, though not always in a way that Rukia approves of.

    Then there’s Ishida. Ishida who sets off some kind of weird Quincy lure to draw in cannibal ghosts, which causes a legion of cannibal ghosts to come in through an unpatented gate. Ichigo looks up at the sky opening up, calls Ishida a number of very rude things in Speech and then runs up a staircase of air to sew the damn gate shut. Then he has to sew another one shut. And then another. He decides he’s going to shove Ishida’s bow up his ass as soon as he closes the gates. (He almost wishes the cannibal ghosts would learn to fucking worldgate. It’s fucking ridiculous.)

    When he comes back down, Ishida is still standing there, gaping. “What the fuck are you doing? I thought you were going to go off and prove how big your dick--I mean your bow was,” Ichigo snarls.

    Ishida’s a little pale when he says, “You’re a wizard?”

    Dai stiho cousin, I am on errantry, and I greet you,” Ichigo says slowly in Speech. “Do you have something against wizards too? Is there something we did that offends you?”

    “But you’re a Shinigami,” Ishida says weakly.

    “Yeah, so? Now we have a bunch of Hollows to take care of, move it Ishida.”

    That seems to break through whatever mental panic the Quincy’s going through. He heads off, and Ichigo heads off in a different direction. If there’s any winning involved, it’s mostly Uryu because Ichigo is winded and annoyed and gets sidetracked by a member of the Karakura Gate Technician Team, a one eyed ginger tom named S’hha who wants a precis of what the fuck just happened. “Well, that’s going to be work for us,” S’hha says. “We’re going to have to take down the catenary branch and restring everything.” The tom grooms a paw.

    “Sorry cousin,” Ichigo says.

    “Not your fault, kit,” S’hha says with an amused, thoughtful twitch of his tail. “Go pounce on that stupid kit’s tail. Dai stiho.” The orange tom sidles and wanders off.

    Dai cousin,” Ichigo says and continues on the race.
     
  17. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    Writing got done today, and also yesterday! Not a lot of writing, but it did get done. :D It was both fan fic and also some original fic. I've also created a tumblr to reblog some of the prompts from the writing tumblr blog.
     
  18. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    I've been slowly updating my other wips! None of them are even close to being complete chapters, but I am working on them, some of them more than others. Such as the Wizard! Ichigo fic. And a few others.

    I've also been posting a fic jam I'd written for a karkat discord. It's a Fuchsia!Kat and Dave is a hapless rebel who at last has been captured by Karkat and so on. I'm going more for forced marriage than slave fic, though it might be hard to tell. :\ Non-con and also pheromones make them do it.

    I am slightly annoyed by someone who keeps correcting things. Granted, these are generally things that needed to be corrected, such as dropped articles and stuff like that, but still. :\ I dun know them. It is less annoying when someone you know does it, okay.

    I am slightly anxious I might have scared off a commenter who was giving me some very detailed positive commentary. But then, that's me. (I have also driven off otherwise positive commenters because I was arguing with their positive commentary. ^_^; )

    With the Wizard! Ichigo fic, I'm going to be doing some interesting things, I think. Next chapter is the start of the arrancar arc. I need to go on the Bleach wiki and try to absorb some actual terminology because it's been a problem. :\ So much terminology. (Okay, Young Wizards also has Terminology, but I feel that Bleach has more than its fair share of Terminology.)

    In other news, I am only up to the Fullbringer arc. I hate the fullbringers. So much.
     
  19. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    I have finally started the "write original shit on Patreon and pray I get Patrons" plan! Which kept getting put off because of reasons. (Also, most of my patrons are actually in it for my fan fic.) I have a back log of 4 fics, all of them prompts from the Writing Prompts tumblr.

    One fic involves a sad little robo who is slightly traumatized by all the evil robots causing robopocalypses in media. One fic involves a roboapocalypse and is depressing as fuck. One fic is about a famous wizard whose name is never pronounced correctly (I know that feel bro.) One fic is about finding out the prophecy you're the chosen one of is false. (also depressing as fuck.)

    First fic will be up Tuesday for patrons on the Patreon. Then it will be up on the tumblr/and I'll put it on the dreamwidth. (One of the few bad things about dreamwidth is that you can't schedule posts.)
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2019
  20. OtherCat

    OtherCat a being of mysterious happenstance

    I got some short prompts of the original persuasion done and put up on my original fiction blog and tumblr. Speaking of tumblr I might start using it again since they're switching companies. We will see if the new company is any good. I have been writing Bleach fan fic. I blame one of my favorite writers from the Homestuck fandom.
     
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