You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
^^ That idea has potential.
^ I guess that's true.
I worry I'm wasting my time by writing out my own fantasies, but I guess if I balance it out with "real" writing it's ok...
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Is the whole "supernatural stuff happens in a mundane setting" concept too cliché?
Because I've been thinking lately about how I'm familiar enough with boring ol' American suburbs that I could probably play with the concept a bit in my writing, but I'm not sure if this is something worth pursuing...
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
So, do peeps usually do like outlines or write notes for their stories or what have you?
For me, it's like I have tons and tons of ideas floating around my head, constantly clawing at the walls to get out, so writing is just sort of taking an idea that's probably 50% baked then adding details as I type.
Notes, excerpts and character sketches are usually in abundance, but outlines are usually cursory synopses illustrating what I want to happen or entirely in my mind.
So, do peeps usually do like outlines or write notes for their stories or what have you?
For me, it's like I have tons and tons of ideas floating around my head, constantly clawing at the walls to get out, so writing is just sort of taking an idea that's probably 50% baked then adding details as I type.
I have a text file of brainstorm runoff for a project I wanted to do -- like, just ideas, punchlines, research, and brief dialogue scenes that I add to as stuff pops into my head, with almost no actual prose -- that when I copy-pasted it into Word is over 100 pages and 45,000 words.
Actually writing prose tends to be one of the most excruciating things ever though.
I have another one for a video game that's about half as long, and a folder of concept art and UI sketches I doodled out in biology class.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I guess I should be so lucky that my thoughts and dreams are constantly being besieged by ideas and dialogue. I'm almost 4,000 words into my next chapter and probably about 50% of it is stuff I just made up on the spot...
And I already know what the next several chapters will look like in great detail...
Kinda similar to how I do RPGs I GM, I just sort of come up with an idea and execute it, I have lots of ideas on where I want the setting and characters to go before I even begin, yet almost zero notes.
The lesser moon Iorich had long since set, and the greater moon Barza hung in the center of the sky. It was midnight on the plains, and noon’s sweltering heat had only slightly subsided. Darius, publican of Goldenwheat Inn, was dismissing the few remaining patrons from his inn, using his truncheon when needed. By midnight, the warmth and merriment generally occupying a bar after sundown had given way to an atmosphere of solemnity and depression of men who had no home, men who lost their home, and men who didn’t want to return home.
Darius hated removing the unconscious ones the most, and he hardly considered it fortunate that there was only one this night. The old drunkard Ulfyr lay, drooling slightly, at the center of the bar, with little more than an occasional breath to betray the fact that he was still alive. Darius picked up Ulfyr as gently as he could and lay him out sideways on the bench on the porch. Darius glanced back at Ulfyr before going back inside and barring the door. Darius grabbed his ledger and ascended the staircase, leaving dusty footprints on the steps. He checked on all his rooms and received no response.
“So,” he thought. “I have Goldenwheat to myself tonight.”
He sighed, returned downstairs, and rested himself in the large chair before the fireplace, ledger resting on his lap. He flipped to Ulfyr’s page, and sighed at the sight of it. Darius had known Ulfyr for years, and Darius had learned very quickly that Ulfyr was a poor man, a quality that didn’t mix well with his penchant for running large tabs. But Ulfyr was old and decrepit; the veteran of two wars and the witness of more than anyone should see in one lifetime. With this in mind, Darius tore out Ulfyr’s tab, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it into the fire. As the owner of one of the most visited places in a poor, sparsely-populated area, Darius felt he had several obligations. Among these was the plains’ people’s need to be educated. For this purpose, Darius had paid a large sum to have couriers go over a hundred miles outside their normal route to deliver news to the Inn, which Darius would then post above the fireplace. He eyed the paper on the mantle and groaned. Conditions in the southeast had heated up. War on the horizon as many rebelled against the lords of their city-states.
“That’s enough news for today,” Darius sighed, closing his eyes.
He awoke about two hours later to the sound of thunder. It was the first rain in almost a month. Darius threw open the window and was unable to see past the light of the porch’s lantern. Brief bursts of lightning illuminated a small figure in the distance. Darius rushed out to the porch.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Ulfyr, is that you?”
The figure shouted back something inaudible and began to amble towards the Inn. Slowly, the figure became more distinct until it stood fully enveloped in the light from the porch lamp. What appeared at first to be an inexplicably mobile brown lump revealed itself to be a wizened old man in a gargantuan brown coat. Though in the rain mere seconds beforehand, the man was, curiously enough, almost entirely dry. Darius could scarcely make out the man’s face; the man’s mouth was shrouded behind his snow-white beard and his beady eyes were so small they were almost enveloped by his brow. He flashed Darius a warm, grandfatherly (mostly toothless) smile, and began to speak.
“Hullo. Any open rooms?”
“Depends. Do you have anywhere else to stay?”
The old man cackled. “No, I don’t suppose I do.” Darius motioned him inside and barred the door after they both entered.
“Rooms are upstairs. Take whichever you want.”
“Thanks. But for now, I just need to rest my legs.” The old man took a seat on one of the bar stools. Darius stood behind the counter, grabbed a glass, filled it, and took a swig.
“What brings you here, anyhow?” Darius asked.
“Just a whim, I suppose.”
Darius took another sip, this one long and slow, and stared at nothing in particular for while, rolling the old man’s words around in his head for a while. The old man broke the silence.
“In my travels,” he said, searching the many pockets of his brown coat and pulling out three old, yellowing papers, “I have amassed quite a collection of tales.”
“Interesting. I amass quite a collection of tales, and yet…” Darius said, motioning towards the paper on the mantle, “I stay right where I am.”
“You don’t say…” The old man’s voice trailed. There was another long silence. Darius sighed.
“Well, go ahead and tell me one,” he relented. The old man smiled, put the papers back in his coat, and began to tell his story.
“Everyone called Garret Bromsson a hero, and he certainly felt he was one. He slew dragons after all. He’d slain hundreds, maybe even thousands, he fancied. They were slain in a heroic manner, he thought. Garret never used brute force alone. He fought with guile. Such as the time he pierced a dragon’s wing with an arrow from what must have been a mile away, sending the beast plummeting into a forest and avoiding a dangerous confrontation with it. Another time he tricked a dragon into ramming headfirst into the stony surface of a tower, crushing the foul beast’s skull. Or, his personal favorite, when he sent a dragon crashing through an armory. If it survived the fall, it certainly didn’t survive the hundreds of spears and swords embedded in its torso.
The interesting thing is, however, that no soldier who had to go without a weapon because of the destroyed armory thought garret was a hero. For that matter, neither did the woodsman who lost an acre of forest because of the rotting dragon corpse in its center. Neither did the people who had to repair the crumbling tower. Or, for that matter, anyone who had to clean up a dead dragon in Garret’s stead. No one who met Garret thought he was a hero. Only people the next town over.”
The old man finished. Darius rubbed his chin. “Well,” Darius said, after a brief silence. “What was the point of any of that?”
“People have a warped definition of ‘hero.’ Now, if you’ll excuse me…” The old man gathered himself, dropped some coins on the counter, and went upstairs. Darius sighed, returned to his chair, and fell asleep instantly. The following morning the old man was gone, as overnight patrons are wont to be in the morning. Surprisingly, however, there was not a single footprint in the dust, and not a single sheet on any of the beds was disturbed.
Baron Ylna Niels sat atop the throne in his nearly vacant castle. Though he was only baron of a small, unimportant, scarcely populated stretch of forested mountains, news of the rebellions a few hundred miles west had shaken him deeply. Almost all of the castle’s staff had been dismissed because of the Baron’s paranoia, and he had even sent his family away to their beachside villa, over a hundred miles away. Whether he did so for fear of his family’s safety or only affected concern and actually suspected treachery in his own family is known only to the Baron. Regardless, only six remained in the castle; the Baron, his food taster, his steward, and three cooks. It was an hour past midnight. All in the castle were asleep except for the Baron.
The Baron had neither slept nor eaten for two days, and it showed. Dark circles lined his drooping eyes. His hair was a disheveled heap. His mouth hung slightly agape, yet not a single muscle on his face twitched. His wakefulness did not last long. His eyelids slowly grew heavier as his thoughts became more and more scattered until finally he drifted off to sleep entirely.
An hour passed and the Baron was loudly brought back to consciousness by the sound of the heavy wooden doors to the castle closing. At the bottom of the staircase leading to Ylna’s throne there stood a haggard old man clothed in loose brown rags, with a white beard running down to his chest and a bald head, and beady black eyes that were somehow piercing, vivacious, and gentle all at once. Ylna quickly rose and drew his sword.
“What are you doing here?” Ylna demanded, advancing to the old man. “Tell me now, or I will run you through without a second thought!”
“My apologies, Baron, I only sought shelter from the rain. I had figured this castle to be long since abandoned. Might I stay for just one night?” the old man asked. It was strange, Ylna thought, how the old man asked. Ylna found himself unable to say no. He sighed.
“Very well. There is a cot in the cellar that you may use.”
The old man beamed and profusely thanked Ylna. He started to hobble in the direction of the stairs, but as he did so a scrap of faded parchment fell out of one of the many folds of his jacket. Ylna roughly grabbed the old man and held the parchment to his face.
“What is this, old man? A plot? A conspiracy? Instructions to usurp me?”
“No,” replied the old man in his oddly serene manner. “It’s a story.”
Ylna was taken aback at how easily he accepted this answer. He was even more surprised at what he felt himself saying next.
“I can’t read. What is the story about?”
The old man smiled. He held the paper in front of his eyes and then, realizing he had the story memorized, folded it and placed it in one of the seemingly infinite pockets of his ragged coat. He then withdrew a clay cask from the coat, and taking a hearty swig, began his story.
“Hundreds of years ago, in a forest long forgotten, there was settled a small clan of elves, who were in that day eight feet tall with eight inch ears tapered to a point much sharper than the ears of modern elves, with pearl-white skin. The clan was presided over by the Matriarch Avealonia, whose sole consul was a seer named Iantoliar, and they both lived in a wooden longhouse overlooking all of the clan’s settlements.
Iantoliar was also a priestess of sorts. Hunters of the clan would ask for her to come along on hunts to bless teir spears and bows. On one such occasion she returned from the hunt to the Matriarch beset with deep wounds.
“Oh Iantoliar,” the Matriarch cried out. “these wounds, where do they come from?”
“A wyvern,” said the seer, “has raked me deeply with its talons. I will certainly die within the hour. But that is not why I come to you. I have received my final vision.”
She continued. “I see you, surrounded on all sides by lashing whips of fire. Through your chest a knife is thrust, and holding that knife is a horrible creature, its eyes, fiery rubies, its skin, a disgusting gray, its heart,” she paused and gathered what would be her last breath. “its heart, a gaping hole.” She collapsed where she stood and later that night her body was interred in one of the forest’s few bare hils. In the coming years, a tree bloomed there, and it is said its seed first sprouted in Iantoliar’s chest.
Prior to Iantoliar’s death, Avealonia was a fair and just, albeit wholly unremarkable matriarch. After the vision was revealed to her, however, a marked change took place in her disposition. Rarely a day went by that she didn’t interrogate multiple members of the clan. She would call upon them and bring them into her longhouse, where they’d be questioned for hours about any oddities they had seen, in the hopes that one would know of the beast that would kill her.
A month passed and every member of the clan had been questioned at least thrice. She decided further measures must be taken. She stopped sleeping as she feared being caught off guard, and as such also began carrying a dagger in her boot. A week passed with no sleep, and she became delirious. On the seventh day, she called all the clan into her longhouse, to again inquire about the prophesied beast. However, as the clan gathered, the Matriarch saw them not as elves, but in her delirium saw them all as grey skinned, red eyed beasts. She flew into a rage, and began tossing embers from the fireplace at them, setting the entire longhouse ablaze.
“Demons! All of you!” she bellowed at the amassed elves. “I will never allow you to draw my blood!”
The elves shrieked in terror and tried to escape, but the Matriarch never saw if they succeeded. She retreated to her chamber, seeking the secret tunnel previous Matriarchs and Patriarchs had used to escape the longhouse in the event of a siege. Roaring flames surrounded her on all sides. Before she could escape, however, she saw herself in her mirror’s polished bronze surface, and wailed at the sorry sight of herself. Thick gray ashes coated her skin. Her eyes were bloodshot. Singed hairs covered her scalp.
“Surely I must have be dead, I’ve been cast into hell!” Then, rather than allow the Devil to take her soul, she drew the dagger from her boot and thrust it into her chest. As smoke and ash choked her and she felt her life ebbing away, she felt her dagger pass straight through her chest and out her back, touching nothing in between.”
The old man finished. Ylna stared at him.
“Your story,” Ylna asked, in a hushed voice. “What does it mean?”
The old man gave a wan smile and answered.
“A lord’s deadliest enemy is himself.” Ylna nodded. He suddenly felt more tired than he’d ever felt before. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the old man was gone and Ylna didn’t know if merely a second or hours had just passed.
Aeylrich sat on the rocky ground of a mountain where, a few hours earlier, a battle had taken place. He was resting his back on the crumbling wall of a long-forgotten castle, its decay greatly accelerated by the battle.
“So,” he thought, rolling a pinch of tobacco into a cigarette and lighting it, “this is revolution.” He looked around himself and saw blood, grapeshot, and occasionally a body littering the ground. The battle itself was certainly an exhausting affair, but after seeing its aftermath Aeylrich found himself so enervated he could barely move. So, for the past few hours, he simply stayed where he was. He turned his head to the sky and stared at the moon and stars. The greater moon Barza hung in the center of the sky.
“Midnight,” he muttered, flicking his cigarette off a cliff and into a river. Most of the dead had been carried off earlier that night, to prepare them for their elaborate funeral rites. All of the dead soldiers would be laid out in a circle, holding a sword or rifle or whatever their favored weapon was on their chest with their right hands and and touching the shoulder of an adjacent soldier with their left. Then, wood was gathered and placed in the center of the circle and the soldiers would be anointed with oil and the pile of wood ignited, cremating the dead. The rebels and the soldiers defending the city-states were kin, and as such performed the same funeral rites. Aeylrich saw plumes of smoke coming from the right and far off to the left. Thanking the gods that the wind was blowing away from him, Aeylrich tossed his pack off his back and laid himself down and, head rested on the pack, slowly fell asleep.
He awoke, sputtering, about two hours later. Smoke clouded his eyes. He grabbed his pack and bolted away from the thick black clouds, his eyes tightly shut. Aeylrich would have run right off a cliff, but as he first felt his foot step on air, he felt himself roughly jerked back. He lay splayed on the rocky ground, one leg still dangling off the precipice. He opened his eyes, and saw another pair staring right at him. He sat up and got a better look at the man who saved him.
It was a small old man with a bald head and a beard down to his chest, dwarfed by his massive ragged coat, with a seemingly unending number of folds and pockets. The jacket seemed oddly sturdy and reliable despite it appearing to be made of loosely stitched, mismatched cloth of varying shades of brown.
“Thank you!” Aeylrich gasped as he got up. “But what is a man like yourself doing in a place like this?” The old man gave what would likely have been a toothy smile back when he had more teeth.
“I’m a traveling storyteller.”
“You’re miles away from the roads. Who do you tell stories to?”
“People who need them.”
Aeylrich thought about this for a moment and turned his head up to the sky. He rubbed his chin and began to speak.
“Do I need one?” he asked.
“Do you want one?” the old man replied.
“I suppose.”
The old man grinned and fished out a few tattered scraps of paper from his coat, briefly examined them, and put all but one in his pocket.
“So he can read,” thought Aeylrich. “Must be from the northwest.”
“Most storytellers memorize them, you know,” Aeylrich said aloud.
“I do too. But the written word is a powerful thing.”
Though this non-answer only raised further questions for Aeylrich, he held his tongue. After all, the old man was beginning his story.
“Long ago, in the rocky southern shore of The Tail, there lived two dwarfs; a man and wife. They were simple, humble farmers, and though modest in means it was rare that they hungered. One day, as the wife tended to the goats, she saw a bright light upon a nearby hill. She ran up to the light, and figuring it to be a divine phenomenon, reverentially bowed her head and kneeled before it. The light subsided and before her stood one of the mighty gods she worshipped with a name and shape long forgotten. The god spoke.
“Gakia, wife of Tarrian, you have been a good servant to me over the course of your life, so I come bearing a gif of that most forbidden knowledge. Your husband Tarrian will die on this day three years from now.” And at this, the god left.
Gakia was by no means an educated woman, but she knew the perils of fighting fate. So, after receiving the message she immediately ran to her husband and tearfully recounted what she was told. They spent a week doing nothing, as Death’s heavy, oppressive specter hung over them and held them down like a cloud of lead. But then, on the eighth day, a kind of grim acceptance took them both, and the week following, the torpor of depression had cleared outright, as both set out to fulfill as much as they could before Tarrian’s foretold day of death. Over the following years, Gakia collected as much money as she could to build a glorious tomb for her husband. The day came, and Tarrian showed no sign of sickness nor were there any ill omens in the sky telling of his death. Tarrian was as full of life as he was three years prior. This, neither of them questioned. Tarrian’s fate had long been accepted. The only matter left unresolved was his tomb. A single pillar was missing. This, they had also accepted. If the pillar did not arrive before his death, that was fine. Tarrian had no desire to see a completed tomb anyway, and Gakia could wait longer. They sat before the tomb, sitting in quiet contemplation, when the sound of hooves and wheels interrupted them. The last pillar, in all its granite glory, had arrived by carriage. The charioteer jumped off, and prepared to untie the ropes binding the pillar down, but the horse on the front and right of the carriage was an especially neurotic animal, and was jolted as the charioteer passed her by, spooking the rest of the horses, and releasing the pillar, which began its descent from the carriage. Seeing the pillar was heading in her and her husband’s direction, Gakia bolted away, but Tarrian, in his fear, stayed rooted where he sat.
The pillar passed over him and into the tomb, leaving him a stain in the dirt and the tomb nothing but rubble.”
Aeylrich sat in silence, wide-eyed.
“That’s it? I don’t understand. What’s the point? What’s the moral?”
The old man guffawed. “Moral? There is none. I just thought it was a funny story.” The old man gathered himself and walked into the smoke. A minute passed, the smoke blew elsewhere, and the old man was nowhere to be seen.
“Say it… out loud.” Fluttershy commanded. “Say it…if that’s okay with you, that is.” She added sheepishly.
The nice thing about writing fanfiction is that your audience will already have a good grasp of the character and their patterns of speech.
So when you tell me that Fluttershy says "Say it…if that’s okay with you, that is." I can perfectly envision it without the additional description, which just serves to make things clunkier.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Fair enough.
For what it's worth, my writing style would probably be considered pretty spartan in terms of me describing what's going on. Especially in regards to FimFiction.
I have more of this written, but this is all I've transferred to Google Drive so far.
A mile in the air flies a ship of copper, clockwork, and steam, sailing the sky in a predetermined path, its only cargo being five persons of great wealth who’d elected to spend the voyage’s duration in a frozen sleep. The airship’s destination was a small Atlantic island housing the mansion of the eccentric billionaire and business mogul Nicholas Harrisonsborough, who’d invited the five to his residence for a meeting, as they all had stock in his particular enterprise. The ship had a pilot, who, owing to the fact that an airship’s course was permanently set from its creation, the only room for variation being in landing to refuel, mainly served to send and receive messages in the captain’s cabin and manage the passengers’ cold sleep pods. A few hours after setting off, the captain was told, for reasons unknown, to land at a refueling station as soon as possible.The captain was a man of slight stature that sharply contrasted the deep lines, thick brown mustache, and square jaw that adorned his face. His logbook (of which only one page, with the message EMERGENCY/LAND/IMMEDIATELY/AT/NEAREST/STATION and neat rows of dots and dashes, was immediately visible.) lay on his lap as he sat and stared out the lone window of his cabin on the starboard side. Then, at the first sight of a speck on the horizon, began adjusting various buttons and levers and felt the ship slowly begin to land. * * * Beatrice Thurman awoke, choking on water. She hacked and coughed for a few moments, and when she felt the water leave her throat began to take in her surroundings. She was lying horizontally on a wet grate in a small, white, oblong chamber. Inches from her face was the chamber’s ceiling, with a wheel labelled “OPEN” and a small, nearly opaque, frosted window. The interior was damp and cold and quite uncomfortable. Though there was little space for her arms to move, she reached up, turned the wheel and almost immediately felt the top open and was met with a rush of hot, humid air. Beatrice sat up and examined the area she was in. She was at the far end of a rectangular room in the center of a semicircle of open pods similar to the one she awoke in. It was a reddish-brown room, its walls and ceiling criss-crossed with copper pipes that occasionally let out blasts of thick, white steam. The floor was heavy grating through which could be seen a complex network of gears, pipes, and pistons. Beatrice hoisted herself out of the pod and made her way to the open end of the semicircle. “Why,” she thought to herself, “did the cold sleep pods stop working in the middle of the flight?” She stepped through the doorway and into a cramped, poorly-lit hall and followed the path for a few moments before finding herself in an octagonal room where the hallway branched off in several directions. The leftmost hallway had a sign indicating it led to the captain’s cabin, so she headed towards it. She walked through passages for a few minutes, and noticed the space was gradually widening. Before, she had to keep her arms at her side due to the how cramped the halls were. but now the space could easily accommodate a second person beside her. It eventually gave way to a triangular chamber, and at the end of it lay the heavy brass door to the captain’s cabin. Beatrice reached towards the doorknob, but jerked back her arm and jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned on her heel and stared into the face of a large, bearded, man. He had a grandfatherly air about him, but seemed weighed doewn with something of great gravity at the moment. His broad shoulders were slumped and his blue eyes were downcast. “I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said, sadly. “But I doubt you want to go in there. The captain has been killed.”
The rain spilled from the gutters as the Orca sipped his sake. Poor weather for anyone else, especially this late at night, but a nice change of pace for him. The sushi bar was almost empty; even the regulars were out sleeping in their warm beds. Every couple of minutes, he saw the flash of headlights at the window: the only signs that anyone else was awake besides him, the staff, and...well...
"Hey! Stop dozing off, Panda! We haven't even gotten our food yet!" said the Shark, her eyes flashing with mischief. "If you fall asleep, I'm taking your nigri and making you pay both of our bills." The Orca slowly turned from the window, regarding the Shark with a slight smile.
"Hmm? I thought letting the guy pay for the dinner was supposed to be archaic."
"Well, only an archaic savage would ignore his dining partner for a window." They both grinned at each other, the tension broken.
It was their first meeting in weeks. The local aquarium had the Orca performing more and more often, as he was popular with the children. The Shark, likewise, had gotten a role as a stunt shark for Deadly Waters, one of the various Sealife Terror films trying to make a buck off of the recent influx. They barely had time to schedule a date, much less go to one.
"So, how's the filming going?' said the Orca. The Shark narrowed her eyes.
"Those hacks! They had me do a scene over a dozen times because my performance didn't seem 'authentic' enough to them. Like they'd know how to tear a man's arm off with nothing but their teeth!" The Shark suddenly put her fins together and stared angrily into the wall. The Orca got the feeling that the Shark knew exactly how to tear a man's arm off with her teeth.
The Orca heard a small cough next to them. The waiter, a young merman with drooping eyes, waited patiently by the table, carring two plates of nigri. The Orca takes the plates from him, reminding himself to give a large tip.
I just wrote a ton about dwarfish gender and culture and the the differences between elf, human, and dwarf languages.
I know world building is ultimately meaningless without a good story to back it up but it sure is addicting. And it's better on paper than floating around in my head I suppose
Idea: Certain dwarf cultures have four genders. Gender is incidental to sex, and is expressed by the presence or lack of a beard and hair.
Huhr (bald and cleanshaven): Expected to be subservient, affectionate, open, and diligent.
Huhrkul (cleanshaven with hair): Expected to be active and to be natural leaders.
Huhrtel (bald with a beard): Considered superficial and carefree. (this isn't always true although societal expectations for gender do make these qualities more common)
Huhrkultel (beard and hair): Expected to be dignified, reserved, polite, and independent.
Certain sects of the dwarfs who have this system of gender are more rigid with it than others, and not all dwarfish culture adheres to the quaternary gender system, although only a few isolated cultures use a gender binary (and theirs are either based on or are a primitive form of other dwarfish gender systems)
Gender isn't tied to sex. Generally it is considered proper to marry the "opposite" gender (e.g. if you have a beard and no hair marry someone with hair and no beard)
Same as humans. It's only considered incidental to their personality, although female dwarfs are expected to be somewhat maternal. The father has a role that varies depending on his gender.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
I'm thinking again about Mary's role as an unreliable narrator.
A quick recap, since I haven't discussed this project in a while: Mary is a teenage girl whose family runs a rural Midwestern motel. She investigates various paranormal/supernatural phenomena with her cousin Ben, and details their "adventures", for lack of a better word, on her blog.
Anyway, I'm thinking I'd like to add just a twinge of arrogance to the way Mary writes. At the outset, she's coming from a sheltered suburban existence, and openly admits that this paranormal stuff is all new to her...but I think it would be interesting if she let her newfound knowledge go to her head fairly quickly, and began writing as if she viewed herself as an "expert". I need to find a way to hint to the reader that the conclusions Mary draws, while usually fairly solid, aren't always a 100% accurate picture of events.
Comments
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
you know Mr Darcy was saying in the Trash Heap just yesterday that more fantasy should be set in the real world
Also, as the particle said, it is a very general premise. There are a zillion things you could do with it.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
If only I could do something with these...
Actually writing prose tends to be one of the most excruciating things ever though.
I have another one for a video game that's about half as long, and a folder of concept art and UI sketches I doodled out in biology class.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
But I wasn't reposting that story.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
It's over in Trevorland now!
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I also like these dwarfs. Although I wonder about how they reproduce.