[note: please scroll to bottom of post if you want a more detailed explanation (with tangential ramblings) on singular gender-neutral pronouns you may see in this blog, namely:
e = singular of 'they', used instead of 'he', 'she'
em = singular of 'them', used instead of 'him', 'her'
er = singular of 'their', used instead of 'his', 'her']
Now... an intro. What is this blog? This is where I turn loose writing ideas I have that are surplus to my requirements. I have built up a stockpile of countless writing ideas of various kinds, and in going through my old files I sometimes identify ones that I am certain I will never use because they don't fit into my current (or planned) projects, and I am now reluctant to build new writing projects around my surplus ideas, having what may easily be considered as far too many unfinished projects already. So I put them here, like baby animals in a cardboard box marked: "free to a good home".
If you see an idea here that you want to adopt for your very own, please do. (though someone else seeing it may also use it, that's not up to me... but if you want to use one seriously for a real writing project of your own, I don't mind if you post a reply saying so, so that others might be aware that you claimed it, if they see your comment)
Also note: sometimes here, I use singular third-person neutral (non-gender-specific, gender-neutral) pronouns that are derived from the English language plural third-person neutral pronouns. This is generally when I am either writing about a situation where someone speaking doesn't know what gender pronoun to use (ex: speaking of someone whose identity is unknown) or, more often, when my notes are describing situations where the characters are undefined and gender doesn't matter to the situation being described and it's left up to later development of the idea, to assign gender specifics to characters. (which actually is most of the time, I think)
I have been using such neutral singular pronouns in my own writing notes for myself, literally for decades. [I decided at a young age that it was a deplorable deficiency in the English language not to have them, and decided to make my own out of the plural versions, though for a REALLY long time I didn't use it in writing that would be seen by others, because I didn't want to confuse people with it back when it was an almost-unheard-of concept generally, but I don't really like using the plural pronouns to denote singular (except maybe in slang speech out loud), so to appease my teachers, I had a long-standing habit of "writing around" it by using turns of phrase such as "one's own preference" when writing things others would read. (a sometimes awkward convention that has been in the English language long enough to be truly venerable in age, but which never really could fully make up for the lack of neutral singular third-person pronouns)
[side note: I was actually horrified as a school-kid, when a (female) English teacher who one might otherwise think was pro-feminism (based on her book recommendations and interpretations) actually told me that it was acceptable in English to use the male-defined pronouns in situations where one meant to indicate a person of unknown (or undefined, unspecified, unspecific) gender, where plural pronouns would clearly not be allowed by rules of English grammar. (at the time, using 'they' them' and 'their' was not so common in slang use as singular pronouns, and considered unacceptable by English teachers regardless) ...even though using male pronouns (for anyone generally) may have been acceptable back in the 1800s and earlier, I had thought that after the 1960s at least (when the teacher in question was probably a college student) ...even if women still had inequality in the workplace by the time I was a school-kid (and still do, in some ways, though in many jobs not QUITE as much as it was then) ...I thought that society should have gotten past that kind of inequality in the written word. THAT'S when I started having 'one' be commonplace in my writing for English classes, because I never wanted to hear any English teacher ever again tell me to (by default) use male pronouns for something that SHOULD potentially refer to anyone of any gender. (and it's also about that time that I made up singular versions of the plural pronouns for my own private use)]
I have since read that others have at some point also made the same or similar singular pronouns (as what I like to use) in the same way or by a similar process of derivation; I know many people have made many different versions of neutral singular third-person pronouns over the past couple decades... however, I remain partial to the ones I use, in part just because they've been in my own personal writing vocabulary for so long, and in part because I haven't (so far) come across any that make better sense to me]
Occasionally I may come across some old notes where I used the English plural third-person pronouns in a slang manner to denote a singular person (it would save me time over using 'one'), and really it's just laziness (I do suffer from chronic tiredness, forgive me) to not re-word it now when I type it up to share here. Note that regardless of what anyone else in the world chooses to use for one's own personal pronouns related to whatever definition any particular person may wish to use to designate gender... when I use these here, it is specifically to denote neutral pronouns, where gender is not indicated, just the same as with the English plural third-person pronouns being used for any persons of any gender.
Here are the ones I use, which you may see at any time in my notes in this blog:
e = singular of 'they', used instead of 'he', 'she'
em = singular of 'them', used instead of 'him', 'her'
er = singular of 'their', used instead of 'his', 'her'
My thought process in deciding on these:
I started with 'they', 'them', and 'their'... and removed the 'th' from each, leaving 'ey', 'em', and 'eir'. However, 'eir' would sound like 'ear' in north american English, and visually would look like it should sound different when compared to parts of other languages from Europe. So, I removed the 'i' to leave 'er', which rhymes with 'her' and is not already (to my knowledge) a word in the English language. For 'ey', I didn't like that it sounds like 'a' (a word in the English language, obviously) and looks like one possible (though maybe out of use now?) spelling of Canadian slang 'eh' as well as sounding the same... so I dropped the 'y' to leave an 'e' by itself, which rhymes with 'he' and 'she' anyway.
Usage examples:
"I don't know what e was thinking, I already said that jalopy-rocket wouldn't start, but e insisted on trying until the thing exploded!"
"The boss said to 'take care of em', and I thought it meant 'take em to the hospital'... how was I supposed to know it meant 'bury em someplace the cops will never find em'!"
"That kitten sure knows er place. Been here three hours, and has already claimed the top shelf for er throne, and has the chihuahua cowering under the bed in fear of er claws!"
So, the (presumably human) sovereign ruler of a prosperous nation has an eldest child who is impossibly attractive and, thus far, unmarried. Before the ruler dies and passes the governance of the nation on to this heir, e wants to personally select someone for the heir to marry, because that's how the rules and traditions of the land go.
The sovereign declares to everyone in not only er own nation, but also all surrounding nations: Anyone who can tame a specific, unique, and impossibly cantankerous creature living in a cave up on a certain mountain... which is known to kill (or maim) on sight anyone who approaches the cave... and bring the tamed creature to the castle and present it - tamed - in the sovereign's throne room, gets to marry the heir to the nation.
How many of you think that's a setup for the unmarried heir to actually be the creature in disguise, be guarded by that creature, or even to be not in disguise at all, but the sovereign has a non-human child, isn't really human to begin with, or else the "creature" is a physically "normal" human being but who has the absolute worst disposition and most anti-social nature and manners ever?
Or, the creature really is a creature that is the most difficult to deal with (ever) and it's what one must learn in order to tame the creature, that are skills one would need in order to be able to get along with the heir, or advisors, or parliament, or other tasks in keeping with running the country...
...so what if the whole thing was just a setup, for the sovereign to look for someone to adopt as an heir, who wasn't seeking to rule the nation emself, but who would have all the necessary skills to deal with even the most difficult of creatures. (bonus points if creature-taming skills actually have nothing to do with ruling the nation, and it's just an antiquated idea of the ruler to think so. Maybe e wrote the book on creature-taming... literally.)
I think it's kinda weird when steampunk settings are portrayed as though steam power is some kind of magically-clean power source, where the only potential pollution it may cause would be an excess of humidity in the air.
What, do people forget that in order to make steam power, something has to be burned in order to create heat, to make the steam? And you can't just save steam power up like in a battery, because it only works while the heat source is being applied and the liquid is actively boiling to make steam. That means that the more steam power you use, the more smoke and soot you get from burning coal or wood or something else.
If you have some kind of special power source (such as long-running electric batteries, or some magical, supernatural, or physically-improbable sci-fi solution for creating heat to boil the steam WITHOUT burning things that cause smoke and soot... then it would be humongously impractical, if instead of using it for the power you need, you use it to generate steam power, and then use the steam power as an energy source.
What would your solution be, if you were determined to have a steampunk setting anyway? Ignore the natural consequences of a world full of smoke and soot? Portray a terribly gritty setting where the steam is mixed with tons of smoke, soot, and residue of burnt oil (such as for oil lamps, or else have gas lamps and the consequences thereof in terms of air pollution)
...or... does your steampunk world exist in a supernatural setting where there is such a thing as small fire spirits or fire sprites or something, which do not need to burn wood, coal, or anything else, but can magically burn indefinitely, never being fed? What would the consequences be, of enslaving the countless such creatures that would be required in order to power a modern society that has air ships, electric lighting, and all kinds of other transportation and modern appliances... using only steam power?
Ever think about the way that so much fiction with immortal people (or just REALLY long-lived characters) have the immortals be like, "Oh yeah, I was totally there when Pompeii erupted. And I was like, personally acquainted with Alexander the great, Joan of Arc, Rasputin, Socrates, and pretty much any famous person you could name from all of recorded history. Oh, yeah. True story. Totally not making up any of it, because if you can believe I've been around that long, you'll believe pretty much anything I say about it." (character looks askance while sipping a truly pretentiously-aged beverage)
I view it as kind of like when someone from one country is talking to someone from another country (or alternate states/territories in a geographically large country) and one person says something like, "Oh hey, this one time I met someone from (or had a relative move to) your region (country, state, territory, or metropolitan area). Do you know that person?" Or, better yet, "Oh hey, there's a famous person who is from the same region as you are! Do you KNOW that person? Personally?" "Oh yeah, I totally know every major celeb who lives in my same country, even though I'm not famous myself."
That one. Person. In a geographical area that holds millions, or even one that only has thousands of people in it, what percentage of them who are NOT celebrities, are actually, literally, on first-name basis with a celebrity who remembers their faces? You know what those odds are like? So, take it into the realm of linear time, instead of geography. (even just staying within the same geographic region, and not world-traveling like many fictional immortals are assumed to have done) How many other people were alive at that same time, in that geographic area? Just having lived through the same time period as a famous person doesn't guarantee personal acquaintance; the immortal would have to have had some valid reason for cozy-ing up to famous people, one after another.
Do you seriously think that Marie Antoinette was personally acquainted with every person in France (or even just one city there) or all of Europe? What are the odds that a (supposedly) immortal person living in the same time period (who was not well-known enough at the time to have become a famous historical person as well) would have actually been in Marie's inner circle? Maybe given enough time, an immortal person wouldn't have simply seen or heard of every famous person from the times the immortal lived through, but actually known one or two personally... but to have known a LOT of historical figures? That's like an autograph hunter (of normal lifespan) putting in an awful lot of time and effort into collecting autographs, and claiming that just having collected the autograph means having a personal relationship with every celebrity in the autograph collection. Sure, you saw or met them. Once. Maybe. Or possibly worked for them in a near-anonymous capacity. You could have, right? Riiiiiight?
Immortal person: "Oh yeah, I was one of Shakespeare's closest friends."
(If you could travel in time and ask Shakespeare yourself) Shakespeare says: "Who? Look, I'm not personally acquainted with every person who came to see my plays. I wish time travelers would stop asking me things like this."
An immortal character who claims to have personally known more than two famous historical figures from different times and places had better have a REALLY good story about how they predicted who would be best remembered by history, and then went and befriended them all while still keeping in the background so as to not also become famous, and to keep the secret of their immortality... or else the immortal character actually WAS a lot of different famous people through history, who would have good reason to know other famous people, and who might be on record, but have great ways of faking death and showing up later as someone else who nobody would EVER suspect of being the same person.
Or else it's all BS. Raise your hand if you think it'd be funny if an immortal character was also a pathological liar, and never met ANY of the people e claims to have met. E just thinks it's fun to mess with the perceptions of non-immortals.
There is a superhero who has the reputation of being one of the most powerful ever, and also one of the most reclusive, who is hardly ever seen, usually only appearing when a very powerful villain shows up that no one else can stop.
There is also a sidekick to a completely unrelated (and much less powerful) mid-level superhero, who has the reputation of being the sidekick with the most laughably ridiculous powers ever, but is still thought of as loyal and helpful (even if a bit silly).
They are never seen in the same place at the same time.
One day, when a mid-level villain wants to mess with the mid-level hero with the ridiculous sidekick, and captures one or both... and it turns out that the mid-level villain was only fronting for (playing henchman to) a new and super-powerful villain...
The world learns that the most powerful superhero of the day, and the most ridiculed sidekick... are the same person. Turns out that the superhero's main powers, while truly awesome, are balanced by absolutely absurd secondary powers. So, instead of creating a mild-mannered and supposedly "normal" alter ego, the superhero in question created an alter ego (as someone else's sidekick) that e could use to test out the secondary powers without having those powers get associated with er superhero persona.
Who's the first to say, "Ha, I knew it all along!" ...?
"You would have died already, if not for my intervention. I am here to make you an offer..."
Someone is a broker with a barter system whereby spirits who are already dead, can return to life in the body of a person who is believed to have had a near-death experience, but really it is a transfer of ownership of the body; the person's soul moves on, and someone else (previously dead) moves in. Someone whose health is such that the person would have lived a long life until natural death, except for being killed in an accident or some other unexpected way (unnatural causes) ...a person 'saves' them, but makes them an offer of selling "the rest of (their) natural life" that they would have lived if not for the accident... in return for what? What do dead spirits have to offer for currency? Information. Information that the broker can use. What does the person selling their (hypothetically remaining) life get? Perhaps it is always someone who would have died anyway without the broker's intervention, and for one reason or another, would not be able to move on, remaining as a ghost unhappily haunting the living, an eternity of misery that the broker can spare them from by helping them move on to wherever the spirits go after death.
If this barter system has been around for a long time, then perhaps there are 'repeat customers' ...souls who just never want to move on, and are always wanting instead to return to life, even if the life wouldn't be all that great.
Also, perhaps sometimes the person who is having a near-death experience, hates the life they have and happens to have information that is so good, they can trade it to the broker for a nicer life in someone else's body (the next time someone is dying whose life is considered 'worth' the information. Meanwhile, someone else who died previously, who didn't have as good of information, gets the life (and body) of the person who is currently leaving that body.
The lives which are considered the worst, most tortured existences, that no one wants except for the people most desperate to return to the land of the living, who have almost nothing to bargain with, might be referred to either in slang terms about wht level of information they are worth, or in terms that only people already dead are likely to understand, such as "worse than two minutes in the electric chair" or "worse than drowning".
The broker would have to be someone with the following powers:
1. Converting an accidental death to a near-death experience, either with power to alter reality, or by having seen it beforehand and doing something to change what is about to happen.
2. Ability to transfer souls in and out of bodies, or 'swap' them.
3. Ability to help dead spirits move on so that they won't be left hanging around haunting the living (unless they want to)
Possibly, such a person might be working as some kind of 'exorcist' or 'ghost hunter', getting the living to pay them to remove ghosts from their property. They might think this person is either destroying ghosts or forcing them to move on, when in reality the broker is always offering them a choice of a way to end the misery of being stuck haunting people... return to the living world (in someone else's body) or move on.
On occasion, maybe someone who died and was willing to let someone else take over their body, might not want to move on, and instead chooses to stay and haunt people... until they eventually get tired of it and then need help moving on.
A van with decals that look like pinstripe marks, stencil-painted design (even faux-wood strips) or bumper stickers, parking stickers or something else that normally would not be easily removed, but the decals are. (Might even have some that imitate rust or other damage)
With decals removed (however quickly) the van looks like an almost-new vehicle (of a very common, unremarkable type), and under close inspection shows no signs of having been painted over or damage recently repaired (while on the other hand, adding decals to look like those things afterwards wouldn't hold up under close inspection, but when applied beforehand and removed immediately after, might convince bystanders at a crime scene who aren't looking at the van close-up)
(might they also use a paint color that would look like one thing at night, and something else in the daytime?)
Someone uses blinking/twinkling geostationary satellites (or some other method) to play connect-the-dots with constellations, such that from the surface of the planet, the shapes of constellations are easier to see. Or, alternatively, someone creates an illusion of entirely fictional constellations. Why?
A telepath who only ever hears people's conscious, waking thoughts, but otherwise has difficulty controlling it... may well find that the best time of day for em is when the majority of people are asleep; that's when there are less distractions and e can get more work done.
Imagine you are an immortal person, who has been alive ALWAYS. Immortal from the beginning of everything, to the end of everything. The problem? You don't experience time in a Linear way, unlike humankind, who experience all of time in a linear, sequential way. For you, everything is present to your mind at all times and all places that you ever have been and ever will be.... EXCEPT... you have now been forced into an ordinary human form (though an immortal one) and are now capable of seeing time in a linear way; but you also still see it non-linearly, and having all of it both happening and also NOT happening all at the same time is literally maddening.
One day you wake up in the psych ward of a hospital and decide that none of it is real except NOW. You may know everything that will ever happen to you, both past and future through eternity, but you now conclude that both past and future are nonexistent illusions. How do you convince the doctors that you are 'cured' without referring in any way to what made you 'crazy' before now (because you won't admit that there exists a 'past' in which you were crazy), and without talking about what you are going to do if they let you out (because the future is an illusion, so why plan for it)?
Or maybe you decide instead to either stay or break out? Either way, you can't really plan it any more than you can think ahead about what to say to the doctors.
[I may actually have characters in some stories who would be capable of viewing time non-linearly, but... this particular scenario (and similar situations) is one I am not using, and I would be interested to find out how other people would write a character like this.]
There is some person who secretly accomplishes amazing feats of skill (whether in martial arts, sleight of hand, parkour, or something else) ...by using spirits of people who had those skills in life, allowing them to temporarily take over some control, in a form of partial possession. Perhaps this person is working as some kind of bounty hunter, spy, thief, or mercenary of some sort, but the main thing is that this person does not expect anyone to know who they really are and what work they do; and especially not how it is done.
One day, this person starts getting anonymous fan mail, sent to a real home address or post office box, under their real name, by someone who might know how e does what e does.
But why should e have any fans at all? Who would know about any of it?
Something fun to try when writing any humorous work:
Make a list of all the character types, and pick names that would be very obviously indicative of those types, or otherwise thought to be 'a good fit' for such types as, hero, villain, romantic interest, fool, leader, sidekick... names that people might stereotypically think fit one type more than another, etc.
Then mix the names all up randomly, assigning them to characters without knowing which will get which. (ex: draw the names from a hat, or assign numbers to one list or the other and use a random-number generation method, or both)
Use those names for the characters, without changing anything about any characters to 'fit' their names. (though it might be fun to make up stories about how they could have gotten such names, such as why a hero might have gotten a sinister-sounding name, or why a weak comical sidekick may have a tough-sounding name, or a damsel named... 'Bruno'? Maybe a tough guard dog is named 'Mrs. Timmons'; a kindly, jolly landlady is called 'Sir Mortimer'; and a severe, uncompromising judge is named 'Sunshine Anders McHerringbone'.)
Somewhere in the world, there is a person who has exceptionally vivid dreams, but afterwards cannot recall all the details of them.
Somewhere else in the world, there is a second person, who, if ever told about the dreams of the first person, will realize that their own dreams are of the exact same place, and would be able to fill in the details that the first person can't recall (but would recognize if reminded)
Somewhere entirely else in the world, there is at least one person, who, if the first two people ever compared their dreams, and if this third person heard about the experience... would be absolutely certain that it is evidence of alien abduction, even if (and especially if) the dreams happened at completely different times... and even if the place in the dreams does not contain anything at all that would suggest a different world, has no evidence of advanced (or even any) technology, and no signs of any form of non-human beings, or even any living creature. That third person would still be absolutely convinced that the only explanation possible MUST be alien abduction.
Because really... what other explanation could there be?
We are conducting a survey on which methods of execution are the most humane. Anyone who is able to confirm having established contact with the soul of a person who was successfully executed, please fill out this list by asking the executed person’s ghost the following (personal details only included to avoid duplication in the event that the same ghost is contacted and surveyed by more than one medium, or in the event that further clarification may be needed as regarding the details of how the execution method was carried out):
Name of Executed Person:
Place and Date of Execution:
Method of Execution:
Please Rate the Execution 0-5 where 0 represents “Painless” and 5 represents “Excruciating”
Please Rate the Execution 0-5 where 0 represents “Instantaneous” and 5 represents “Tortuous Slow”
Please Rate the Execution 0-5 where 0 represents “Recommend” and 5 represents “Please God, No”
Please Rate the Overall Perceived Humaneness of the Execution Method 0-5 where 0 represents “Completely Humane” and 5 represents “The Person Who Thought of This Method Should be Executed via the Same”
**Please append the name and Badge Number of the Registered Medium who conducted or certifies the spiritual contact with the Executed Person interviewed, and submit completed survey forms to your local chapter of the Universal Guild of Mediums.
(Please note that a separate, though corresponding, survey of UNSUCCESSFUL executions is being carried out among the incarcerated persons so concerned. Only include for submission in this survey responses from DECEASED persons who were executed)
(Also please note that the scope of this particular survey only includes INTENTIONAL, officially sentenced Execution as a means of death. Murder (including unofficial or unauthorized 'executions' by persons not holding any legal authority), Assassination (even if sanctioned by the state or one of its duly appointed agents), death in battle or brawl, acts of war or of nature or deities, all instances of 'self-defense' and accidental deaths are NOT to be included in this survey)
...because for every single time that someone invents time travel, assuming a theoretically infinite future timeline, at least one person with access to time travel will decide to use time travel to go back and prevent it from being invented, for each and every incidence of time travel having been invented. If such a person fails to prevent time travel being invented in their target incidence, then again, given a potentially infinite future, since time travel continues to exist, eventually at least one other person will decide to use time travel to go back and prevent time travel from being invented, until such a time as someone succeeds in the attempt. For every person who might fail, there eventually would be at least one other who would try it again, up to an infinite future of theoretically infinite attempts. Thus, for every single time anyone were to invent time travel, there would be a theoretically infinite number of future people who would use time travel to go back and prevent it. Only one of those attempts need succeed in order for that particular instance of time travel invention to be prevented, and given an infinite number of possible attempts, it may be assumed that at least one will succeed.
Thus, no matter how many times the invention of time travel may occur, up to an infinite possible future number, that number to the power of infinity becomes the number of times people will try to stop time travel being invented, and each instance of invention only requires one successful attempt at stopping it, which theoretically is guaranteed, given an infinite number of potential attempts at stopping it.
Possible name for the theory: Time travel invention paradox. The very fact of time travel being invented, most assuredly causes it to NOT be invented, for each and every possible instance of the invention of time travel.
(or 'unknown intruder') in what counts as one's most important/private sanctuary...
can highlight differences between characters, in how some will react different from each other and also may react differently depending on what TYPE of stranger is encountered.
For your consideration, an example~
Me when I discover that an unknown stranger is in MY BED. My reaction may differ as follows, depending on What the Stranger is:
An arachnid/arthropod or insect: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!" (disgust)
Small reptile or rodent: "WTH you B*" (anger)
Feline (any): "Why, hello there." (curiosity)
Canine: "Get out, fool." (annoyed or dismissive, depending on type)
Does it seem odd to anyone that my probable reactions would be the most similar to each other, when the unknown intruder is either the largest or smallest size?
some phrases take on deeper meaning than they might otherwise have.
For example, "Look what the cat dragged in" can be more clearly understood in the context of seeing just WHAT cats bring home, which are generally things that humans find distasteful and have no desire to see those things in their house.
So... in your fictional world, what is the worst thing that a cat (or catlike being) might bring home, to others who do not appreciate the appeal of whatever it is...
