Archive | October 2015
The Autumn of her Discontent (a ficlet of Stranded World/Autumn)
After Tangles and Knots, Snarls and Combs. Stranded World has a landing page here.
Autumn took a long, hot shower, paying for a motel room to do it in, taking the time and the soap and a brush from the dollar store. It was the end of Faire season. It was the end of her and Tatters, and she still hadn’t quite processed that. It was… it was time to clean up all the old marks.
She washed every piece of ink off of her skin, scrubbed the skin raw where the ink had stained, washed herself until she felt, should she do more, she would have to start quoting MacBeth.
She dressed herself in clothes cleaned every bit as thoroughly although, because it had been at the laundromat, with slightly less soliloquy. She left her van with a friend she still trusted, rented the smallest car she could find, and started driving.
It did not occur to her until quite some time later that she was running away. But, skin bare of connections, clothing bare of scents and memories, she had detangled herself from both the heartache and the embarrassment and now she felt she just had to keep going until the strands shook loose from her.
When she reached the Pacific, she finally felt as if she could breathe again.
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The Leviathan of World/Story Development, part One (For Into Lannamer)
I found this thing: http://kittyspace.org/leviathan0.html and I’m gonna play with it because I’m finding it instructional!
1. DETERMINE YOUR SCOPE
Oh hey I know this one it’s in the title!
The personal scope of Into Lannamer is very tight – it’s Rin and Girey. It’s their struggle to cope with the world being over, and what that means for both of them.
The background, the villains – that’s three personal stories, too, thee people with reasons to want to hurt Rin and/or Girey and one person who wants to pull Girey back to the far South. They all have very intimate reasons.
The background, that’s far wider, but it’s all out of focus. That’s the struggle of peace (of losing the war/of winning the war) after generations of war. It’s shaking everything. But we’re only seeing the tremors as they shake Rin and Girey.
Geographically, the scope is most of the continent, from [City continually renamed] in Bithrain to Lannamer up in the north of Calenta.
2. DESCRIBE YOUR CHARACTERS
Rin is a career army medic faced with the end of the war. She’s a royal daughter who never sought to climb the army’s hierarchy further than the authority she needed to do her job with minimal interruption, and thus she’s an Optio (lieutenant)
Girey is the only son of the king of Bithrain, and while he has not been “spoiled rotten,” he has been pampered and spoiled more than is probably healthy. He took to the field with a given rank, and had not truly earned his way up to that rank in duty, sense, and respect before he was captured by the Bithrain.
Esnees, Esnetrennesnees, is Rin’s uncle, older than her mother and the Emperor’s second-born child. He long ago accepted that he would not inherit his father’s title, but he has been grooming a specific set of his nieces and sisters as options for rule; if they rule, he believes he has a better chance of being the power behind the throne.
[2 more redacted]
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An Invitation (a story of the Foedus Planetarum in Earth’s early days of knowing of it)
The giraffe-people (“Cortcheczocko”) and the beetle-people (“Dezzirezz’hezz”) had not been the first of the Federated Planets to visit Earth, but their delegation had come with the formal ribbons and banners, the formal papers and, most importantly, the engraved invitation to visit the Federation (“Foedus Planetarum”) and see if they wished to engage in the paperwork to join.
“Send twenty delegates from each of your five largest countries,” the Cortcheczocko ambassador had said, its (his? Despite the giraffe-like horns and spotted skin, the Cortcheczocko looked decidedly human, and the ambassador both handsome and male.) – or his translator working madly to keep up. “Send your science-people and your entertainment-people, your mechanics-people and your representative-people. Send no more or no less than one hundred, and the shuttle will take them in forty-five days.”
The smirk on the ambassador’s face had suggested he knew that humans did nothing that important that quickly. Behind him, the Dezzirezz’hezz ambassador (female, probably, although hairless, with iridescent blue patterns over much of her skin) smirked as well.
It was thus that Etel found herself on a shuttle between a mechanic from Jersey and a famous rapper, bound for – well, bound for somewhere, at least, and somewhere that promised to be interesting.
The mechanic had introduced herself first. “Amy Colivanni. I fix imported cars. Think the Cortcheczians gonna need their oil changed?”
“Etelvina Escarrà. Friends call me Etel, and we might as well be friends. I’m a biologist from New York – upstate New York,” she added by reflex. “By the lake. I don’t know what they want.” Personally, she thought the translator had mangled “mechanical engineer”, but she wasn’t going to say that. “I think they want to make sure we understand them as best as possible, inside and out – and vice-versa.”
“Hunh. Well, they’re gonna get a fun picture, ain’t they? Hundred people picked in a rush.” She cracked her knuckles. “I already wanna see under the hood of this shuttle. I got a chance to look at Space Ship X once. That was a blast. This is absolutely nothing like this… and yet it’s a lot the same. You know?”
Etal nodded fervently. “Yeah.” She was having the same feeling about the Cortcheczocko and the Dezzirezz’hezz. They looked too human, too similar and too different. “Yeah, I know the feeling.” She wanted to get under their hoods, too.
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Brainstorming: Roddenberry Aliens / Variations on humanoid
I’m playing with Foedus Planetarum to give myself something to, uh, play with.
Yira’s people, the Medusas, have tentacle braids and tend large in stature.
Jahnan’s people tend brown-and-green, very dexterous, with prehensile toes and prehensile, forked tongues.
I am looking for a couple more variations on the humanoid theme and have not yet found a generator for that /goes looking/
Ideas?
Edited to add: ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inventrix had provided these links:
http://www.scifiideas.com/alien-species-generator/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=alienrace
and this one
http://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/humanoid.htm
and
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=fantasyrace
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Notes on Rin and her place in the royalty of Calenta
Rin is the fourth? in line for her grandfather’s throne. Some of those before her in line have recused themselves – not interested in leadership, focused on a calling in the priesthood, interested in romance with someone who didn’t want to be in a leadership position, or not interested in creating heirs for one reason or another. Many have died. Her grandfather is quite old, and has outlived handfuls of his heirs.
More than half of the royal heirs went into the army. Calenta has a heavily meritocratic society – their rulers were originally war-chiefs of nomadic tribes – and earning a high position in the Army is one way to prove your merit. However, it’s also a good way to die, especially with an active war boiling on the front.
When Rin left to study healing, she was fourteenth in line. When she left for the army she was ninth in line. Her cousin Elen was three behind her and now is one behind her.
Her mother recused herself long ago. Her mother is a scholar and prefers her books to people.
Probably –> recusing yourself is acceptable (being removed from the inheritance is not, is considered very shameful, and it /does/ happen), but it is a one-way street. You can’t decide to un-recuse yourself.
While I decided to get rid of the immensely complicated inheritance system I’d originally thought of, it still flips genders. I.e., since the Emperor is male, his heir WILL be female, his daughter or a granddaughter THROUGH a daughter, or, if one suitable cannot be found, from his mother’s or grandmother’s line.
This has made Rin’s uncle, who needs a name (though he might have one in an earlier draft), exceedingly cranky.
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Journals of Loss, a story of the Aunt Family for Patreon
Rosaria and Willard kept journals when he left the family. This story covers the beginnings of those journals: anger, fear, and loss.
I told Rosie I’d write down my experiences, but it’s been three days since I left the family formally, and this is the first time I’ve been able to stand putting pen to paper.
It is still unpleasant to think about, much less to analyze, but the knowledge is rare, even if the situation is unpleasant. When people leave the family – which happens so rarely Rosie and I could think of only two – they do not normally leave behind notes on their departure….
(read on…)
For just $1, you can read all the Patreon stories!
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So I’ve been playing with paper dolls (Reiassan fashion…)
And I made up a bunch of them to fit This paper doll to see if I could get the layering down.
…there really should be at least one more skirt layer…
This is Rin-Era, someone working in a middle-status job, like a city bureaucrat and –I just realized I didn’t check the buttoning side–
Oh, good. they all button to the right hip. Even if there’s a sort of excessive amount of decorative buttoning.
I tell you, button-maker has to be a high-status job in Reiassan.
Edited to add: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/photo/album/3134?page=1 the whole scrapbook!
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Note to self (re. planning wordcount)
Having a 10,000-word project (novella), a 6,000-word project (Edally), and a 4,000-word project (Ghost) in a month and a 25K goal for the month only works if you have less than 5K additional work.
Patreon is approx. 2.5K now.
There’s that commission you just finished, that was ~3K this month.
Then there’s the 6K submission story…
Math is one’s friend.
(also, I need to leave at least 1.5K for fun projects, and since I really want my “fun” to run about 10-20% of my wordcount, I need to allow for that, too. That means for a 25000 work-wordcount goal, I need to write ~27,700-31,250 words).
Conclusion: I need to shrink my project goals per month. Or increase my wordcount by 10-25%.
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