Tag Archive | meta

Blue Highways and Autumn at the Ren Faire – Stranded Meta

Everyone gets their inspiration from somewhere; every setting has its seeds in something.
Stranded – well, Autumn – came out of the book Blue Highways.

According to Wikipedia, this book came out in 1982. I don’t think I read it that early at all – I would’ve been six – but someone recommended it to my father, and I read it. I was probably in my early teens.
read on…

Autumn at the Ren Faire

I was playing around a little with Pinterest and Image Search today.
Here’s some pictures that are pretty close to Autumn’s garb at the Ren Fest, although her costumes are almost always in red, orange, gold, and brown.

read on…

Blue Highways – Other People’s Prose (A blog post for Patreon)

Jan8

Everyone gets their inspiration from somewhere; every setting has its seeds in something.Stranded – well, Autumn – came out of the book Blue Highways.

The story, as I remember it, involves someone making their van into something like an ad-hoc RV and driving around the county – specifically on the back roads, the non-highways, the ones marked blue on old maps.

The idea really spoke to me, lodged in my mind. Sometimes I would fantasize – who am I kidding, would? – Sometimes I fantasize about loading up a van and doing travel writing, meeting people in small-town diners and taking pictures of little waterfalls you can only see if you take the back roads.

Autumn started out that, that and my wish to be able to draw and the small fantasy of living in a Ren Faire that I sometimes still indulge in. I mean, Autumn as a character in a story started with a three-word-Wednesday prompt (abrupt, kernel, wield; I have no idea how I got from there to

“I heard you did divinations.”

“You want the blue tents over in Psychic Alley.”

“Not that sort of divination, not those fake-Rom shams. You do the skin-painting.”

But Autumn, travelling around to small towns and solving problems –

– she came from William Least Heat-Moon’s stories, traveling around the blue highways of America, meeting people, being harassed by the police, building stone walls.

I can’t promise it’s a good book. I read it probably 2/3 of my life ago. But it definitely stuck with me, and in sticking with me, it gave us the core of Autumn and her travelling, mystery-solving ways.

But here’s a fun map of where he travels – I didn’t realize it was so large an area – http://littourati.squarespace.com/storage/moon-files/moon_map.htm

And here’s the Wikipedia page on it – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Highways

This paragraph:

Stories that arose from Least Heat-Moon’s research as well as historical facts are included about each area visited, as well as conversations with characters such as a Seventh-day Adventist evangelist hitchhiker, a teenage runaway, a boat builder, a monk, an Appalachian log cabin restorer, a rural Nevada prostitute, fishermen, a Hopi Native American medical student, owners of western saloons and remote country stores, a maple syrup farmer, and Chesapeake Bay island dwellers.

That almost sounds like a set of prompts for Autumn, doesn’t it?

Continue reading →

Hallowe’en in Fae Apoc – a Meta Post for Patreon

Aug11

Speaking of Magical dates…here is the Day of Magic in Fae Apoc!

🎃

In the world of the Faerie Apocalypse – Addergoole, Doomsday, etc. – there is something that is colloquially called The Blindness of the Gods, and something called a Mask.

Actually, I have to back up a step.

There are, in Fae Apoc, three groups of human(oid)s:

* Those who are fae, who have Changed and have magic: Fae, ellehemaei

* Those who are 100% human, or near enough as to make no difference: Humans

* Those who have fae blood but are not fae, have not Changed, and often can only access a little bit of magic, if any: Faded Continue reading →

Cya, Leo, and Boom – untangling the timelines

Mar31

So, it turns out, when you get inventrix and I together, what you end up with is a whole lot of different timelines for the same characters.

This is as comprehensive as I can come up with a list of Cya-Leo-Boom timelines we might have posted stories for.

inventrix, if I’ve missed something, misrepresented something, or mislaid something, please let me know!

It appears that the turning points are:

1) When Leo (and thus Cya) gets sane. In canon, and in timelines that could be canon, that happens after Cya builds Cloverleaf, which itself is ~40 years after they attend Addergoole (see Ghost Story).
2) Whether Cya Keeps Leo or he swears an oath of obedience and service to her.
3) If/When they come to the realization that what Cya wants from Leo is not what Leo can provide

“Cya cried,” he says, a little too matter of fact, “because she’s accepted I’m not going to love her back.”
“…The fuck you say?”
“Not the way she wants, at least.”
…
“So, the basics are simple enough, you’ve got me,” he holds out one hand, “and Cya,” he holds out the other, “and we both care about each other way too much. The problem is, Cya has like a tragic romance thing going on because she wants me to be in love with her back, but like… whatever the hell I feel, it’s not that, and I don’t care what that stupid kid says,” he adds in an annoyed mutter, “I’m not going to go pretending to feel something I don’t when it’s just going to fuck everything up in the end and it’s none of his fucking business anyway.”
Leo pauses and clears his throat a little awkwardly. “…anyway, so. Her side, nice, fairly straightforward, normal romantic obsession. My side, some kind of weird martyr Kept knight thing. Which would be fine except like, the one thing Cya wants more than anything in pretty much the whole world is to be attached to just one guy who will actually, you know, love her back? You’d think after–” He stops himself from tangenting this time. “So since I’m obviously not that guy, I talked her into trying dating so she’s at least meeting people who aren’t fresh Addergoole grad Kept with issues.”

4) Whether they all flip the F out and kill everyone their first year.

Is Absolutely Canon
Addergoole: Year Nine
Addergoole: A Ghost Story

Probably Canon
That story about Cya ordering Leo not to die.

Could be Canon but aren’t Yet.
The Sword and Lady Timeline — this includes most of the currently-posted stuff on DW/LJ, where Leo gets punched by Carew, Luke tries to apologize to Mike, etc.

The Thistle Timeline — hey, it couldtotally fit within canon! This is the one in which Cya dies but resurrects(reincarnates) and Leo has to cope with all of that while Thistle-Cya copes with being 10 years old with memories of a 100-year-old in love with Leo.
I’d just re-read Thief of Time.

Definitely Not Canon
Sane!Cya Timeline — I think the only thing posted of this is something called “Sane!Cya and Panlong,” in which the man who unwittingly participated in Cya’s son Yoshi’s torment as a Kept, Panlong, actually doesn’t end up getting TOO horrid of a deal…
This is the timeline where Leo has a psychotic break after Cya locks him in the barn (this is a fixed moment in time) and comes out the other side sane.

Black Knight/Chess Timeline — In which Leo gets an army, starts taking over the West Coast, and achieves godhead. Also in which Luke ends up Kept by Cya, flappy wing bongage, and such things.

Expelled Timeline — in which we’re not entirely sure what happened but Boom gets expelled in their first year, their memories wiped, and sent home, or in Cya’s case, to a foster home.

Leo Dies — in which we misread Inventrix’s rp, Leo suicides, Cya tries to blow up the earth with Abatu Eperu (destroy Earth), and in the end Howard talks her down and she and Zita heal Leo’s body, find his soul, and shove it back in.
Cya feels strongly about Leo dying, okay? 🙂

Fixed Moments in Time
These happen in pretty much everything but Expelled

The Ranch: As the end of the world looms, all of Boom, their kids, and their closest allies (and some allies’ kids) go to live on a ranch in wyoming and slowly take over the territory.
Cya Locks Leo in a Barn: She has a cell for such things, because Cya believes in being prepared. So when delusional!Leo decides he’s going to leave them all so he can go fight monsters and probably die but they’ll survive, the crew tracks him down, literally force him into the van, and tie him up in the cell until he promises not to do that
Cloverleaf and Doomsday: Cya gets sick of putting Addergoole people back together after the fact and builds her own school in what was once Montana. Because she’s like that, she also builds a city around it. And then starts trade routes. And then…

I might add links later. I might bribe people to add tags to things later – I’m totally willing to do that! But for the nonce, this is what I’ve got.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1293966.html. You can comment here or there.

Conlang all year round – Augovernust in September

Sep13

I’m going through 365 Conlang thingies beyond #Lexember (which is missing October…) one month a day (or so) up to September.(?) I just realized I wrote a Julectuary last week and never finished filling things in, so that will come soon.

In the meantime… Augovernust. Today I thought I’d write my “quotes and excerpts” policy, especially pertinent in light of sites like (link) that like to strip your blog content and repost it.

For published works, please see the publisher in question for excerpt rights.

For works published online — on my blogs or one of my serials, for instance — you may quote up to 50 words or 10% of any given piece*, whichever is smaller, without permission — simply provide a link to the site the piece is posted on and give credit to Lyn Thorne-Alder.

Please do not post longer excerpts without explicit written permission from me, which you may request via PM or via e-mail. In all cases, please provide a linkback to the original work and credit to Lyn Thorne-Alder, or an appropriate bibliographical listing.

* For the purposes of this policy, a “piece” is considered the entirety of a story, regardless of the number of posts. Edally Academy is a piece; Fourth Husband is a piece.

Morphambruary 1
Febmanteau 1
Polysemarch 1
DisMayCourse
Juneme 1
Julectury 1
Augovernust 1
Morphambruary 2
Febmanteau 2
Polysemarch/Juneme2
Juneme 2/2.5
✒️
Julectury 2

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1171979.html. You can comment here or there.

Landing Page notations

Aug25

At the suggestion of alatefeline I have started adding a "try starting here" section to the tops of my landing pages, offering easier ingress into settings that can be a little bit overwhelming.

Landing pages that have been thus updated are:

Stranded World (LJ Link)
Reiassan (LJ Link)
Tir na Cali (LJ Link)
Faerie Apocalypse (LJ Link)
and
Doomsday

For those settings which are a serial – Addergoole, Edally, Inner Circle, Expectant Wood – the serial itself is generally the best introduction, so I’m skipping those pages.

Let me know if the format works out for you?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1163901.html. You can comment here or there.

Regarding Tír na Cali and Technology

Aug23

This month’s Patreon theme is Tír na Cali, which got me thinking…

One of the things that always gets me about Tír na Cali is the way it started out slightly sci-fi and, more and more, ends up being modern-era in terms of the technology.

When I started working on Cali, smartphones had not yet come into existence. I thought I was making somewhat magical technology:

Collars with a chip that could be read by any police officer with a reader (probably a smartphone ap now) and tracked by anyone with the right information. Collars with technology small enough to carry all of a slave’s “papers” in an easily-transferable format right on the collar. Electronic “keys” the size of a pen (micro-usb?) with a thumbprint reader and the ability to change a collar’s permissions, update or download the data therein, and so on.

And those permissions: collars that “knew” where a slave was allowed to go and, in one case, a “smart home” with doors that would not unlock if the collar approaching it didn’t have the right permissions.

Certainly, Cali still has a wide range of things that can’t be done by modern tech — changing someone into a cat-person hybrid, changing someone’s gender at the genetic level, complete rebuild of a limb, just for a few examples — but that is all covered under their magic, not under their tech.

Basically, in the time I’ve been playing with this setting, their tech has gone from being cutting-edge stuff that didn’t exist in the mainstream to being — if I hadn’t updated it as I went along — a little backwards. I mean, really, shouldn’t that collar be able to serve as a Bluetooth headset? What do you mean, you can’t text from your slave collar? No streaming videos?

…okay, now I’m wandering off on a whole new brainstorm. *wanders off, muttering about wi-fi hotspots*

*pops back in* New to Tír na Cali? I updated the landing page with a few suggestions for starting places.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1162884.html. You can comment here or there.

Conlang all year round – Augovernust in August

Aug23

Hey, we’re up to August!!

I’m going through 365 Conlang thingies beyond #Lexember (which is missing October…) one month a day up to August. Not sure which way I’ll go in September.

August is Augovernust – Write down a clause of your user agreement, license, patent, copyright notice, lawsuit, Community Commons notice, membership rules, mailing list behavior guidelines each day of the month.

So below, and being transferred to my webpage soon, is my…

Fanfiction Policy

You are welcome to write fanfiction or create fanart of any of my universes, as long as you do the following:

Do not ask or accept money for any works created in my worlds(*).
Post a link back to my web page, the landing page for the setting, or (in the case of the serials) the webpage of the serial (Edally, Addergoole).
If on AO3: tag the setting. Addergoole already has its own tag, huzzah.

In addition, I would appreciate but do not require:

Send me a link to your fanwork.

I am available to discuss setting details in any setting as time allows.

Fanfiction is not considered canon in my worlds except in immensely rare situations by arrangement between myself and the creator of said fic.

(*) The exception to this would be situations in which I directly commission a piece and pay for it.

Morphambruary 1
Febmanteau
Polysemarch
DisMayCourse
Juneme
Julectury
✒️
Morphambruary 2
✒️
Augovernust 2

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1162334.html. You can comment here or there.

Shot in the dark: Help migrating Addergoole to WordPress requested

Feb26

Some time ago, I started migrating Addergoole from its old roll-your-own to a wordpress site: http://www.addergoole.com/TOS/

However, if you look at the original table of contents (http://addergoole.com/TableofContents.html), you can see that this is a monumental project.

Is there anyone willing to be bribed with promises of future fiction to help me with this work?

Moving a page involves:

Copying and pasting it from the original page
Checking formatting – it took me a couple tries to find what worked for me
Checking for two name changes from original canon to new
Scanning the chapter for all characters and tagging them in the correct tagging format
Marking each chapter in the correct categories

As I said, it’s rather monumental, but I am drowning in long-term writing & personal projects and am not doing well at getting it done myself.

Help?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1069360.html. You can comment here or there.

April A-Z Blogging Challenge: D is for Dragons

Apr6

The Meme Master Post

D is for Dragons, with gold for a bed

You know, I don’t remember being a dragons sort of girl. The winged-cat-people people don’t have dragons. Most of my early fantasy doesn’t have dragons. Elves, yes, horses, lots. Not so many dragons.

Addergoole got dragons on a whim. After all, Aelfgar needed something big to be fighting! (Actually, I think the parent story of Addergoole, Whisky Lullaby, first introduced the dragons. The same concept, though: so’jers have been fighting dragons as long as the faerie apoc ‘verse has existed.) Dragons Next Door was born as a 15-minute fiction prompt: “obnoxious dragons.” (here).

More than that: I came late to Pern, and read very little other fantasy involving dragons. I’ve enjoyed dragon movies, mostly for their spectacular effects, even when everything else in the movie (*cough* “The D&D Movie”) sucked. But dragons… dragons for me are more common as a metaphor.

I went through a period where my favorite phrase was “sometimes the maiden is safer with the dragon.” I was playing – in a LARP (Changeling: the Dreaming) – a satyr seer paired with a redcap (in that setting, the most violent of the “acceptable” “non-monster” fae). There were times when someone tried to convince my little satyr she was safer with the “good guys” – that’s where the concept came from. Dragons are the honest monsters, the safe ones. You know where you stand with something fifty feet long with scales and claws. Safer, maybe, then a would-be-white-knight.

…I should write that story sometime. I wonder what I’d do with it now, a decade later.

I think my favorite dragons story I’ve actually gotten to read would be the Dragon Librarian story eseme was writing many years ago. And this may be my favorite dragon art, by M.C.A. Hogarth.

Dragons ho!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/919247.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder