I was working on an outline based on the Romancing The Beat formula but I’m gonna go off the rails now.Â
also every time a post goes around about rivals to lovers am like “oh fuck I gotta start another diagram in my outline file” gjkld so anyway! here’s the current romance progression (and each point is experienced either by one or both characters, I haven’t decided who is going to be carrying each scene. Lefty has way more Damage than Ruka does)
so it goes from hateful Rivals to
Ugh, we have to work together and its really important so I’m tolerating you JUST enough to get things done. And I’m gonna specifically be unhelpful to you so that I can get all the credit.
to
It pisses me off when you do cool impressive things because I see how cool and impressive they are, but I’m not ready to give you credit for ANYTHING.
to
Ok MAYBE I don't hate you deeply anymore but I'm used to our snark so I can’t start trying to be nicer to you.
to
I'm gonna have a show of trust but I'm gonna downplay the significance of it.
to
Oh no. I just realized how ride or die I am for you because we were put on the spot by an intense situation. fuck
to
Uh oh time to wrestle feelings. oh no im aware of the sexual tension. I'm freakin out a little so im backing away. Â
to
Ok so, backing away makes me feel like shit, actually. I'm gonna cautiously get closer again [Plot stuff makes reconciling more difficult than it should be]
to
oh my god ok I'm so done with these walls we've put up between us can we fuckin KISS NOW
41. Does your character’s family affect your character in any way?
oh definitely, she has high expectations from her family to be a leader within the family business. Her stint as an arena fighter is MOSTLY a break from her duties, though her mother has her lending a hand managing a new bath house thats being constructed within the city.
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42. Is there anything in your character’s past that they regret, haunts them, or they wish they could change?
Nothing particularly or at least not one singular event. Minor things, perhaps, like issues with past lovers that could’ve been resolved better, but those mistakes aren’t terribly haunting.
Some of her early relationships probably informed her (bad) perceptions about romance- once she unlearns the bad stuff she thinks about relationships, she would probably name that mess as a regret, but over the course of the current story, she really doesn’t understand yet that they were a problem.
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43. Does your character have a switch that changes aspects of their personality whether they are around friends, family, etc. Is there someone who gets to see their true self?
Lefty absolutely has walls up. She doesn’t like being vulnerable to others. When shes courting or spending time with casual lovers / romantic interests, she is even more guarded. She expresses some vulnerabilities with her mother and maybe a few people involved in House Mahomet- people she meets a lot and has a familial or near-familial relationship with.
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44. Is there a particular event that would emotionally devastate your character?
Besides the obvious kinds of tragedies- anything that would permanently impact her ability to do her physical work. Before she did pit fighting, she traveled around to maintain her family’s guest houses. That work and now her pit fighting are very fulfilling jobs. Not only would she be sad to give up such work, but she also thinks she isn’t capable or talented enough to do any other kind of work or activities.
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45. Is your character the kind to hide their true emotions or do they wear their heart on their sleeve?
Lefty has a cool head- if she’s mad or upset she can keep a lid on it. She’s not a stoic though - except in a few situations she doesn’t have any issues expressing her emotions. Those situations are 1) she’s with a lover and doesn’t want them to see any of her bad sides and 2) if expressing herself would show vulnerability she will probably suppress it instead.
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46. What is some random affectionate thing that your character always does to their lover?
Can’t think of one specific thing common to all her lovers (If you haven’t gathered by now Lefty is a complete CHAD) but in general, Lefty is a gentleman when they’re on dates and ehehe she’s a generous top.
for lovers that seem to enjoy that kinda thing, she REALLY likes picking out or making small trinkets as gifts. She did this a lot more often when she was traveling a lot.
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47. Is your character outgoing? Would they be the leader of the friend group, or the quiet one that gets dragged along?
Lefty is friendly and works well in a group, but doesn’t enjoy leadership. She can deal with it and does a fine job with it now and then, but she vastly prefers to work on her own or to be given tasks to do.
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48. Is there anything in particular that would ignite your character’s jealousy? Or does your character not get envious?
Initially? Lefty doesn’t get terribly jealous at all but she also hasn’t developed a deep connection with anyone. It’s connected to her shallow attitude regarding romance.
After development happens and her romance with Ruka happens, she... doesn’t correctly identify jealous feelings, rather it’d be like- “Oh, I see Ruka is getting along with his old crush again. Guess this is the end of our lil fling. Time to abandon ship.” Anyway, maybe that’s less jealousy and more anxiety in dealing with her first real relationship.Â
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49. What is something that your character has nightmares about? Are these frequent? Do they heavily affect your character’s mood?
She might occasionally have nightmares featuring common work hazards (while she was maintaining guest house: bandit attacks, dangerous animal encounters, other travel dangers) but she’s not terribly anxious about them while she’s awake. She’s vigilant about dangers so sometimes that hyper awareness will seep into dreams on a bad night.
there’s a plot point in the story that induces mild nightmare but, spoilers.
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50. If your character confessed love to their crush, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc, what would they say?
While she’s in Casual Lovin’ mode, she’s very frank, honest, and low-pressure. “I’m really enjoying our time together, can we do this again?” and other straight forward invitations.Â
when deep feelings get involved she beats around the bush a bit. She’d rather show her deeper affections that to say it. as for the exact wording, yall just gonna have to wait until I actually get off my ass and write the moment lkmfg
07. Is there a catchphrase or sound that they tend to make a lot (likely without being aware of it)?
He definitely says a lot of standard sarcastic quips (”oh, perfect” and similar things when things are going badly) and he sighs and huffs when annoyed.
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08. What is, perhaps, their biggest flaw? Are they aware of this or oblivious to it?
Having unnecessarily high standards for both himself and others. He’s a bit more self aware about perfectionism impacting himself, but often doesn’t realize he’s projecting it onto others.
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09. Do they have a favorite season? What about a favorite holiday?
Winter- he’s fond of snow days and winter revelry. He’d be very into uhh Fantasy Christmas (I haven’t worldbuilt many holidays yet)Â
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10. Is your character more feminine or masculine?
Masculine, though people who have narrow views about gender might think otherwise.
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11. What is something that would make your character fly into a rage?
He hates losing control of a situation. If he loses control of it due to his own failings, it’s all anger at himself, but if he can blame that loss of control on anyone else he’ll be SO mad at them.Â
Related to that, he hates people trying to make choices for him even if well meaning. He highly value having agency. (And that extends to making sure other people are granted the agency they deserve)
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12. Is there some particular talent, skill, or attribute that they simply could not give up?
Acting / Showmanship / being some sort of entertainer was always a small passion, but it was never applicable to his work when he was a scholar of magic. Being able to ham it up as an arena fighter has been a creative outlet for him.
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13. What are your character’s sleeping habits? Heavy or light sleeper? Blanket stealer? One that always rolls onto the floor? Pushes their lover onto the floor? Sleep talker or walker?
Nothing too notable, though he does tend to stay up late more often than not. His schedule gives him time to sleep a bit late in the mornings. Can have a rough time when he has to wake up earlier than normal.
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14. Do they live alone or with family? How do they feel about their family/roommates?
He lives in a dormitory provided by the arena. His bestie Guinevere lives there as well, but he hasn’t gotten chummy with any of the other residents yet. He doesn’t spend a lot of time there.
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15. Is there a certain person in this world that they cannot stand? The very mention of this person’s name makes them tremble with anger or fear.
lmao well, we doin rivals to lovers so you know he’s gonna HATE Lefty for a little while. He’s also a bit loath to talk much about his dragonlord, Andromalius
Might make Ruka the type of person that always sounds like he’s being a sarcastic lil shit even when he’s being sincere and that’s why it’s hard for him to make friends sometimes
His best friend (Twice Shy/Guinevere) is also a sarcastic lil shit but she can shit it off when she needs to
Every so often, Attainer Brava would arrive in the training grounds and magnanimously provide in depth training to the pit fighters. There was no question that this training was extremely valuable. But god, it was one of the most exhausting things one could experience. The Attainer was a brutally thorough teacher.Â
That old lady had Ruka nearly crawling out of this training session. Even Lefty, who had annoyingly high fortitude, was staggering and sweat drenched as the two of them put away training equipment. Ever since the two of them began training together, they usually wrapped up their sessions by discussing- or more often arguing over how the session went, and what can be worked on next time. This time, however, they wasted no breath on petty jabs- and had no need for constructive review since the Attainer had fulfilled that role today.Â
They stored their equipment in silence. Neither of them spoke until after they visited the well. Mercifully, other parched fighters were already around and had drawn plenty of water for everyone. After taking a long, long drink, Lefty let out a satisfied sigh, the cast a sidelong glance at Ruka. “Hey, are you hungry?”
Ruka took a moment to finish thoroughly wiping his face with his dampened handkerchief. “Yeah?” It wasn’t a question that he was hungry, after the wringer they both had gone through. It was the fact that she was inquiring at all that made him confused. Usually, this is where they - happily - went their separate ways.
“We got some fresh venison in this morning. At our inn, I mean. Just been wondering what the cooks made for dinner with it.”Â
He met her eyes. The invitation remained unspoken, but he could see it in her eyes- an expectation of a reply.
“Guess I could go for some venison.” Ruka said with a shrug.Â
I think I’m gonna make the arena season just be a team battle season and Ruka and Lefty have to team up for it. It’s still tied to Portia’s assassination plot because Portia is the one organizing and officiating team battle events.Â
Portia’s a prince of one of the Holy Kingdoms that neighbor the Goet Region (where the arena is) and the recent history of the Holy Kingdoms has it just a bit isolated. He sees an opportunity to improve relationships with other regions by having a big fun arena season.Â
So, this event going well has political ramifications.Â
Portia’s enemies are gonna be a complicating factor, but it’s not something Lefty and Ruka need to be wholly focused on. Their goals are basically making sure no one fucks up this event.Â
maybe im repeating myself lol but the point is! I’ve just been tinkering on focusing things better around the arena so plots and motivations and such aren’t scattered here and there.
Oh and families in the cord of houses now all yoinked their bloodline magic from dragons and their family is named after those dragons, many of whom are still alive. There’s a few houses that are on good terms with the dragon that gave them magic tho.
Bloodline magic doesn’t use inscribed spells like it did in FR (I repurposed those mechanics for a different type of magic tho) but instead it’s one of very VERY few ways that humans can have innate magic.
Because I love rehashing fr lore, I assigned Lefty to House Mahomet, which was my Earth based House that got so little lore representation lol that their only involvement was that the regent of House Sagini was married to a Mahomet. I had laid ground work for House Mahomet to be more relevant but never really got there.
So in converting the lore to headworld, for a hot second Lefty and Bonito were gonna be siblings. But I remembered River exists and she was the heir apparent to House Sagini and I think she makes a better foil to Lefty. So River is now her one and only sibling (and Bonnie is their cousin)
More importantly River and Lefty both have Anime Protagonist Blue hair color so this just makes sense
ok so here’s the original main plot, before I decided I needed to consolidate things
Someone wants to do harm Portia, who is a prince from a neighboring kingdom and he’s currently an arena fighter sponsored by a really powerful Dragonlord.
Lefty and Ruka only learn of this plot by accident (On a rainy evening, Portia lends his cloak to Ruka- Portia’s enemies mistakenly jump Ruka- they assailant gets away but they figure that Portia must have been the target)
When Lefty and Ruka get enlisted to keep an eye on Portia, look for the person who attacked them, and generally keep a lid on this situation. Portia’s Dragonlord is very protective and would really cause some chaos if he knew Portia was under threat.Â
Idk if I mentioned the world building here but the Arena is such a big important thing because the Dragonlords LOVE watching matches and so as long as they’re entertained they’ll be nice to the humans in the region. Anyway that’s why this plot and the arena goings-on were connected.Â
maybe instead of scrapping it all together I’m just gonna pare it down- It’s a stretch that Lefty and Ruka are responsible for this whole investigation even if the goal was to have as few people involved in the search as possible
I think I’m gonna make their involvement solely on keeping an eye on what’s going on within the Arena. I also want to think about how just pursing their arena careers can be more directly related to that plot. Some of Portia’s enemies are arena combatants. Portia and Lefty don’t need to be the ones to take down the WHOLE plot- they can just handle the stuff going on within the arena. Maybe specifically targeting baddie tournament participants so they get out of the running and then lose access to arena facilities.
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