Archive | March 13, 2014

March Is Women’s History Month – day one: Shahin as a Tween

March is Women’s History Month, and so for March I’m doing vignettes about or questions regarding any of my female characters, one/day from the 10th-31st.

The prompt post is here; please add more prompts 😉

This one comes from [personal profile] clare_dragonfly, who asked for Shahin as a tween.

Shahin is one of the three main characters in Addergoole, which also has a landing page here. (Stay tuned for the entirely-new rewrite of Book One of Addergoole, coming soon!)

“Who are you?”

The new boy, Shahin decided, was rude.

“Shahin Laskaris.” She raised her chin and stared at the stranger. “And who are you?

“Steve Talbot.” He grinned like he was proud of himself for being Steve Talbot. Shahin raised her eyebrows, unimpressed.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” She was still working on the delivery of that line. Teachers chuckled at it, but her fellow classmates –

“What, you had to think about it?”

– were less cultured, she supposed. “Time will tell.”

“Yeah, while I’m getting a pretty firm opinion of you already. Why are you so stuck-up?”

Stuck-up? “I am not!” Whoops. She glared at the new boy, only to find him grinning back at her.

“There you go. Look, it’s fine to be fancy and formal but you have to unwind once in a while too, you know? Come skateboarding with me.”

“Come… what?” She took a step backwards and watched him. She didn’t think he was joking. But nobody had ever offered anything like that. “Not now.”

“No, I don’t think skipping my first day of school is a good idea. But what about after school?”

“Your parental figure won’t mind?”

“Nah, what about yours?”

“Mine won’t notice.” She looked down at her outfit, mostly to point it out to him. She’d spent a lot of time picking it out – little heels, the tallest her aunt would let her buy, and a cute ruffled plaid skirt. She looked like something out of an anime, which was the idea. She didn’t, though, look like she could go skateboarding.

“I can lend you sneakers, I’ve got small feet.” He didn’t seem to ever stop smiling. Shahin found it fascinating. “Say yes?”

“If I must.” And she found she was smiling, too.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/693095.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Thirty-One: Fae Apoc

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I answered question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here.

The fourth question comes from an offline friend and is for the Faerie Apocalypse

What does the world look like in the year 2150?


The short answer is: I don’t know yet. I’ve only specced out in any detail at all through about fifty years after the apoc.

What I know:

Starting from a noncimated population of about 31,000,000 at the end of 2012, the American population did not grow for at least a generation (say, until 2035) – disease, starvation, contaminated water and food sources, and a lack of expected medical supplies, as well as remaining returned gods, isolationism, small territory wars, and monsters spawned by the Collapse conspired to keep the population very low, actually trickling down a bit more to around 29 million people.

By 2050, the population was beginning to grow again:
33 million in 2050, 57 million by 2080. By that rate, it’s safe to assume that, by 2150, the population of what had been the United States might get to be around 120,000,000 or a little over 1/3 of what it is IRL today.

140 years is a long time in terms of oral history and predjudice; the first generation of humans after the war almost universally hated fae; even those who had experienced positive relationships with specific fae didn’t like all Ellehemaei. There were maybe “a few good apples” in an otherwise rotten bunch.

And predatory Ellehemaei did not help that impression: especially directly after the war, there were more than a few fae who set up their own little nation-states – some not so little. There were humans who did the same, of course, but the fae “cheated,” using magic and their innate durability and longevity to hold positions of strength over “lesser” humans.

In general, by 2060, there are some humans who believe that fae are all right, maybe less than 25% of the whole population. By 2150, the numbers have shifted in the other direction, and nearly 75% of the population believes, if not that Ellehemaei the equals of humans, at least that they should be allowed to co-exist. And many in both eras know they can be useful (“just get someone who can make the collaring stick and use it!”)

By 2060, Addergoole and Addergoole East were already having a strong influence on the world around them: their graduates became teachers, mayors, despots, doctors, city-builders. By 2150, two creations of Addergoole grads are also shaping the world: a teaching hospital and Doomsday Academy, both formed around 2060.

~

This is a bit all over the place, back to government for a moment. In 2060, the remains of the United States is governed in primarily settlement-based city-states, with as little contact with other settlements as possible, save by those who wander, either to sell goods or offer services. By 2150, many of those settlements have begun to coalesce into small countries; there are 6 major-geographic-area nations and at least 25 smaller ones, many of who battle over land on a semi-regular basis.

The world will never again be what it was before the Collapse, but what it could become is still wide open.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/692874.html. You can comment here or there.

Food Log, in which snowed in and can’t go to gym (whoops)

But still not a bad day.

3/12/2014

Coffee
Cheerios
egg salad w/ tomato and lettuce
Coco multigrain pop cake, x3
Soup w/ egg – broth, dehydrated veggies, two handfuls of spinach, and an eg.
(munching)
2.5 crescent rolls (the low-fat pillsbury kind)
Butternut Soup
w/ tofu
Carob-Olive Oil Chocolate chip cookies

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/692581.html. You can comment here or there.