'eyup, just makin' a new one bc the old had inaccuracies and while I could just keep updating it. I may also be procrastinating on things.
Anyway. Hi. Hello. I'm Ace (by name and nature), 30s, Scottish, they/them mostly. Sometimes it, occasionally he(hehe). Technically I work as a librarian, but realistically I largely write at the desk. and play dnd*.
ask & tag game friendly, but I can & will take an age to answer things.
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CHARACTERS
What you're going to find here is character creation like it's going out of style! It's fully [turns around, another falls out of my pockets] at any given moment. That being said, the ones I'm. most? likely to talk about are Syn and Maverick, and also the Llinos/Kaua&Jasper trifecta
SYN; a restless shapeshifter who volunteers to become a spy because actually, they're the best person for the job. Pretending to be someone else is what they do for a living. what. Also goes by Lance/Vale/Armoniel
MAVERICK; a frost dragonborn with guard dog tendencies that wanted to travel the world. And they get to do that! They just have to uhhh bite some throats out along the way
LLINOS/KAUA&JASPER; also known as the Mercenary Mages, these three are caravan guards and a tight knit family and the Kaua/Llinos angle is possibly one of the sappiest things you will ever see me write
Except I can and will bring up so many other names at any given time like sometimes I wish I was joking.
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some wip intros and the world building spiel below the cut
WIPS
Three main ones right now;
SHAPESHIFTER WIP; when things start getting tense between neighbouring countries, Syn volunteers to slip across the border and pass information back in an attempt to avert the looming war. They may have underestimated how hard it was going to be to go back when no one recognises them and their own best friend hates them (ft. pining, layers of secret identities, some not smart decision making, hand wavy world building, questionable morality, questionable spying techniques, A Certain Level of Dumbassery, some Fucked Up Shapeshifting). I'm putting it here now; THIS DOES NOT END WELL FOR ANYONE. be WARNED, but Syn DIES (allegedly) (it's complicated)
DUMB OF ASS, SNAKE OF TITS; in which Maverick leaves their monastery to see the world, ends up with a Morally Dubious Courtesan for a travelling companion, gets cursed (twice), has a slight corruption arc, but somehow still comes out better than they started and with a boyfriend to boot (ft. travelling, fights, the unwillingness to wear a shirt in camp and making that everyone else’s problem, revenge, What Sharp Teeth You Have, unquestioning kindness until it isn’t kind, overthinking but eventually manage to communicate about it, slight pining, one vaguely horny dragon) (DnD) [AO3]
MERCENARY MAGES; less a novel and more a series of vaguely connected moments in the lives of Kaua/Llinos & Jasper, going from when Llinos and Jasper met right through to. hm. Kaua and Llinos getting married...? (ft. siblings, magic, travel, sword fights, animal companions, just generally a good time, obligatory family trauma)
but also about. hm. I'm not going to count how many others occasionally get a skotch of focus but we've had; vampires, fair folk, time travel, superheroes, pirates, werecreatures, storytellers, a whole lot of wings, and technically there's even more linked in with Dumb of Ass up there.
All of the WIPS can be found on this page in chronological order
(and also I do have EtF for sale. I published it for the bit! We have kofi for ebooks and lulu for paperbacks and we don't acknowledge amazon at all)
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WORLD BUILDING
apart from the Shapeshifter WIP and the DnD stuff, all of them are in a big ol' portal fantasy collection called the Mist Worlds
There is an Overview post, a Magic post, a bit on the Mist Itself, and also the Worlds (and a page where this is collated)
some bits are incredibly handwavy and made up on the fly, other bits I have been thinking Too Much about for Too Long
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SECRET FIC THING
I've been going. uhhh Very Focused on this for the past. Year? and a bit? now and I will mention it in passing and literally nothing else but;
Dragon Age revamping of Inquisition & Veilguard to suit my accidentally-a-family-business bunch of elves, with my flatmate's. hm. enabling in the background. It's available on AO3 and is technically finished but also. There's always going to be more, isn't there?
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*technically it's wrangle a bunch of kids into playing DnD but I'll take what I can get
If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.
1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.
2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.
3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.
4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.
5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.
Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.
Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.
Every time I go to space out the fights for my dnd group I am reminded of yet more things that the 2024 rules have just. made worse. from a narrative standpoint.
like the betrayal’s always going to be worse if they cared about you and it didn’t matter. someone discards you because they didn’t give a shit, then you can be angry about that, you can feel vindicated in that, you can get over it. but if they can look you in the eyes and say “I love you. I would make the same choice again.” You will never sleep peacefully again, is all.
“I thought they cared about me, but they were lying this whole time.” <- tired. boring. removes all the nuance of this relationship to make it easier to move on from.
“I thought they cared about me, and I was right, and every minute they were there for me, every time they said they were proud, every laugh we shared leaning against each other bruised and breathless, all of it was real. and they still left me behind. They could put their love aside. I couldn’t.” <- insane. will never leave you alone. reminds you that even the worst people are still people and can still care about even the ones they hurt the most and that undoes neither the harm nor the love.
I love that Paige learnt vocabulary, fairytales, and the rules of chess from Arcturus, and in return taught him sarcasm, pickpocketing, how to make a molotov cocktail, and the various ways to cheat at cards. they are the definition of “I can fix her” boyfriend and “I can make him worse” girlfriend
Combining a last line and 7-9 lines tag from @willtheweaver, @toribookworm22, @queen-tashie, @touloser-lautrec, @starboard-writes, @abitscripturient, and @orphanheirs!
"What happened?" she asked as she placed a bandage over the biggest one.
"…I fell."
"You fell?"
Her daughter nodded.
"…you've been falling a lot, recently," Rosita tried. "Are you sure that's all that's happening?"
Amarya gave a quick nod again.
She should push. The scrapes looked more like light burn marks and the bruises looked alarmingly like fingers and knuckles.
I'll tag, with no pressure, @ace-malarky, @winterandwords, @gaslightwestern, @elkieselkiewrites, @axl-ul, @ettawritesnstudies, @talesofsorrowandofruin, @sunnydwrites, and @sunset-a-story.
Ok yes I did stumble out of that dnd session going "ahahaha remind me why I'm doing this again" bc while I love the storytelling of it all I do not love the wrangling of 7ish kids-and-teens of it
anyway someone remind me that is a work-thing-only and therefore I should definitely not be planning the next ep tonight at home however I have fun flavour text ideas and what if I just
I sure am glad these two characters cannot be anything close to normal with each other. Yeah, it’s terrible for their mental health and a lot of people have gotten hurt or worse because of it. But damn, it is so entertaining to watch, so I kind of want them to just keep going.
🌸Cherry Blossom: How does your character feel about death? Have they experienced a lot of loss in their life?
OH SHIT HI I DIDN'T FULLY FORGET ABOUT THIS UNTIL NOW
Anyway hi thaanks <3
I feel like Syn is low hanging fruit here considering their ending but also;
for shapeshifters death isn't so much - so the young shapeshifters, the ones just setting out, they don't think of death as death; it's the end of their journey, it's returning home, it's going back to the bulk of themselves and sharing everything they've learnt, and becoming part of a whole again.
For the older shapeshifters, who've been away long enough to be their own people (Syn, the actor cohort I still haven't named but it's fine they haven't appeared on page yet), returning home is way more death as we know it; that's the end of them, baby!! When they return, they will no longer be the sum of where they've been and loved and learnt. They'll just be a small part of the whole, inconsequential except for the knowledge-without-feeling of the outside world that they brought back.
So Syn in their... ooh I can't remember how many years I said it had been - anyway, they haven't experienced much loss (yet) but like. they're aware of the concept as others understand it.
Obviously, the biggest loss they've experienced (technically) is the moment they were sent out and the companionship of being All One Mass in the shapeshifter conglomerate (have I given that a proper name? unlikely) just sort of. Stopped.
that was fun for them :3 Truly alone for the first time, and what do they do?
Decide it's the best feeling ever and run away for as long as they can, of course*
yes excellent ok page 126 is a shapeshifter wip page! It's Halliel's "Blowing Off Steam" chapter/scene (in red ink) which is perchance a bit of a misnomer right now but it's whatever :3
Ketch nodded, zir gaze straying back to the book in zir hands. Ze placed a finger on the page and looked up again. "The new liaison for Hult starts today, do they not?"
Halliel nodded. "Winter. Silver just brought him up."
Ketch nodded again.
Halliel smiled slightly. "I didn't mean to disturb you, Ketch, it's fine."
"It's going to feel strange with someone else at their desk."
"Still quieter."
Ketch let out a small laugh. "Like I said; strange."
Ooh you want to send me a number between 1 and 174 so bad.
evidently "maybe this weekend" was code for "How about I pick out the next notebook and choose stickers for the front" but anyway, I'm on a train later so like. Perchance I shall update you with News later and then we know what that means!!
