the (meg)iverse

my name is meghan and this is my universe. here you will find information and world-building about my current projects, organized by world.

[sosuperawesome]

The Key Monster on Instagram

Follow So Super Awesome on Instagram

[spider-hands-mannos-deactivated]

There is a specific and terrifying difference between “never were” monsters and “are not anymore” monsters

“The thing that was not a deer” implies a creature which mimics a deer but imperfectly and the details which are wrong are what makes it terrifying

“The thing that was not a deer anymore” on the other hand implies a thing that USED to be a deer before it was somehow mutated, possessed, parasitically controlled or reanimated improperly and what makes THAT terrifying is the details that are still right and recognizable poking out of all the wrong and horrible malformations.

[spider-hands-mannos-deactivated]

hey I totally fucked up and forgot the 3rd type, which is “Is Not Anymore And Maybe Never Was” monsters “The thing which was no longer a deer and maybe never was” implies a creature that, at first glance, completely appears to be a deer, but over time degrades very slowly until you realize (probably too late) that it is not a deer anymore, and had you seen it in this state first, you wouldn’t have recognized it as a deer at all, and there’s a decent chance that it was never actually a deer to begin with but only a very good mimic, and what makes this one scary is the slow change from everything being right to everything being wrong, happening slowly enough that you don’t even notice it until its too late, as well as the fact that something now so clearly not a deer could have fooled you to begin with.

[endreal]

No idea if this commentary adds anything or not but since monsters are generally couched in terms of danger and threat, and therefore fear, in my mind these posts broke themselves down kinda like this:

The “was not a deer” monster speaks to fear born of deception, dangers that approach under the guise of familiarity, with varying levels of success to infiltrate the familiar before lashing out

The “not a deer anymore” monster speaks to fear born of coercion. Whatever it is was once familiar and perhaps even comforting but through the action of another agent the familiar has become grotesque and dangerous.

The “…and maybe never was a deer” monster speaks to fear born of self-doubt. Most people spend most of the time in a sense of vague assurance that they’re doing the right thing, or at least a right thing, in the situation they find themselves in. This fear lies in the danger of *thinking* you understood, only to be eviscerated by the cruelty of “no…you were never correct, and this is your consequence.”

[hamenthotep]

[tlbodine]

Yes this. Good analysis. 

[supreme-leader-stoat]

Actually, in light of this I’d like to propose yet one more type of monster to this list. The monster is a deer. But you realize you were very, very wrong about what deer are like.

The deer itself has not changed, you were just wrong about deer from the very start.

[normal-horoscopes]

I would like to add a fifth here.

The “Thing That Was Almost A Deer” something that, despite it’s best efforts, was never able to truly attain deerhood, and now spends it’s days being something wholly different.

Something that wanted to be a deer so very badly, but was turned away from the gates of deerhood, condemned to lurk in lonely the wilderness of liminality.

Monsters are monsters because they can’t be classified. The fear stems from our inability to understand what we are seeing. They are, by their very nature, unable to be understood. Which is why this is the most tragic kind of monster to me.

Something that, maybe now or in the past, didn’t want to be a monster.

[prayforelves]

Smiley, the shark dragon

He just wants friends and is very loud

[saccharinescorpion]

Parasite and Girl

[dovewithscales]

This is gold. @kunabee

[fluffmugger]

#This is venom isn’t it?

[taraljc]

i would like an emotional support alien parasite please

[keiseravendimensjonukjent3]

Water springs out of the Mulberry tree at Dinoša, Montenegro. For the last two decades, during the spring floods, the water has been running out of this old mulberry tree in a village of Dinoša in Montenegro.

[bonesnail]

I know everyone’s like “hahaha the tree is peeing” but if I saw that in a fantasy setting, that water is either going to make you immortal, crumble to dust, or age back into a zygote.

[welcometotheravenclawcommonroom]

I’ve had enough “boy falls in love with girl” redemption arcs. Give me “bad guy to dad guy.” Give me “villain’s favorite bakery has a ‘no villains’ policy and they had really good croissants so they reformed.” Give me “got bored, accidentally did something good, stumbled into being city’s greatest hero” type villains. Give me “villain worked for evil assassin agency, got their marks mixed up, accidentally killed bad guy instead of good guy, lol oops nothing left to do but switch sides” villains. Give me unconventional, fresh, and sometimes cheesy redemption arcs.

[acelania]

“…villain’s favorite bakery has a ‘no villains’ policy and they had really good croissants so they reformed.”

This made me die of laughter within thirty seconds - well done, sir/madam/entity/frog.

[welcometotheravenclawcommonroom]

“Sir/madam/entity/frog” is now my new royal title thanks

[tarantula-veins-deactivated2023]

the idea of the bad guy wanting to be the best role model for their child or nephew/neice/etc is adorable and that would’ve been nice is uncle aaron hadn’t died

[jas-ercising]

Villain helps one (1) old lady across the street and suddenly acquires a taste for charity

[990000]

source

[grossgiirl-deactivated20200228]

This is how I used to teach a couple of students how to create vehicles or weird creatures when they had trouble coming up with ideas

[xenosaurus]

Story concept: an orphanage/group home for chosen ones whose families were killed by ~destiny~

[xenosaurus]

It’s run by a chosen heroine whose adventure was 2 decades ago and the sweet team-mom healer from her team, who she has since married.

[xenosaurus]

It’s mostly trope comedy with moments of real emotion, here are some ideas for kids:

—two teenaged boys who WERE barreling towards a tragic rivalry that ends in one of them falling to darkness… until one of them confessed that he was just trying to show off because he has a crush on the other one. They’re now dating and the comedy comes from the universe CONSTANTLY trying to get them to fight and failing.

—an eight year old who keeps tattling on the demons who are whispering to her and then getting into sibling fights with them

—a brooding, edgy fire-wielding boy and a brooding, edgy fire-wielding girl who can’t figure out which mystical signs belong to who

—like six kids named Hope who go by names like “Pink Hope”, “Hope the second” and “I’ve been told I’m not allowed to shorten my name to ‘Ho’ so I will now be going by Dick just to spite them”

[xenosaurus]

IDK if I’m going to write this but it’s fun to worldbuild so here’s some more!

The two fire kids have a big age gap, with the girl being 10 and the boy being 17. They spend so much time together trying to untangle their destinies that they wind up developing a brother-sister relationship. The girl is one of the Hopes and the boy’s name is Fox, which results in the following exchange being commonplace.

A: so then Hope—

B: which Hope?

A: oh, baby fox.

[xenosaurus]

Oh, character consolidation idea: Fox is also one of the boys who dodged a fatal rivalry, obviously being the ‘tempted to the dark side’ half of the equation. His full name is Foxglove, and his boyfriend’s name is Raven. Raven is the one to confess and Fox was so shocked he needed to sit down for like 5 minutes to re-evaluate his entire perspective on reality.

[xenosaurus]

Fox is the EPITOME of “oh shit, I didn’t hate him, I was just gay.”

Fox two years ago: Whenever he laughs I get all sweaty and agitated, and that stupid ‘oh look at me I’m so handsome’ grin is so obnoxious it bothers me for hours after I have talk to the guy! God, Raven’s the worst.

Fox now: yeah, turns out the only thing I hated about Raven is that he wasn’t kissing me right that second

[xenosaurus]

The owner’s wife is a subversion on the “cute, sweet, gentle healer love interest who dies in act 2” trope, and her name is Maribelle. She’s just under five feet tall and built like somebody replaced all her bones with toothpicks— she’s TINY.

She is also, as the villain discovered in spectacularly violent fashion when he kidnapped her, the most dangerous member of the party by far.

Because she ISN’T a cleric and she wasn’t using light magic at all. She uses raw magic, which is a rare talent for humans because it’s hard to control and tends to destroy the weirder before their enemies. Maribelle’s love for her friends was LITERALLY the source of her healing magic, because she uses her emotions to shape her spells.

On the other side of that, the emotions associated with trapping her and threatening to kill her girlfriend? She WRECKED him and took the whole hideout down in the process.

[xenosaurus]

OKAY I named the woman who runs the place, her name is Summer!

A lot of people just know her as “the farner’s daughter” because her particular journey of heroics started with a prophecy that said a farmer’s eldest daughter would bring about the death of the tyrannical king. Which, uh, she did, except that it was Maribelle who killed the guy in Summer’s defense.

[unamedwatcher]

A prophet rolls in on wheely shoes with a starbucks Frappuccino: IT TECHNICALLY WASN’T WRONG!

[xenosaurus]

This comment made me laugh omg

[catcvlts]

[lunarriviera]

look I don’t want to tell anyone what to do but if you go down that path you will wake up a thousand years later and all your great-grandchildren will be dead

[optimysticals]

But I get a thousand year nap out of it?

[kadabura]

This started out with me just wanting to sketch a lace dress and then poof levitating witch making either the sickest pumpkin pie you’ve ever eaten or some poisonous concoction. Or both.

★ Patreon!

[be-happy-and-enjoy-the-life]

[meridiangrimm]

I want to read a story about a wizard whose only spell is “fix this”, but the specially-crafted magic takes their intent into account.  "Fix this" can mean repairing the wheel on the adventurers’ cart or healing a broken arm or “fixing” a lock so that it’s in what the wizard considers the “correct” (unlocked) position.  Imagine the other mages getting increasingly frustrated as the wizard stubbornly refuses to learn any other spells.

[meridiangrimm]

Wizard: *points at a canyon* Fix this

Other casters: That’s not really how spells -

Wizard: Oh look, one of our blankets is now a magic carpet.  Guess we don’t need a bridge.

Casters: How -

[meridiangrimm]

Wizard: *points at logs that won’t catch fire* Fix this

Other casters: There’s been too much rain, it won’t -

Wizard:  I fixed it so that it’s in the same state it was yesterday.  Someone here knows how to start a fire, right?

Casters: What -

[meridiangrimm]

Wizard: *points at charging dragon*: Fix this

Other casters: THAT’S NOT HOW MAGIC WORKS YOU IDIOT WE’RE GOING TO DIE

Dragon: *coughs* Did you just… cure my intestinal problems?  I’ve been trying to stop breathing fire for weeks, but it just kept spilling out, and every time I tried to ask for help, I burned everything down.  I won’t forget this kindness.

Casters: *ripping their hair out* H O W

[scrap-patch]

I’m dying 😂👌

[dappermouth]

It spoke your name on the stairs that night.

[cwunch]

[eilooxara]

The tooth fairy is fae propaganda

It teaches your kids that it’s ok to invite the Fae into your home and sell them parts of your body

[eilooxara]

The 8 kinds of commenters I see on this post:

• Well actually, it’s fine because you didn’t need the tooth and you even get money

• What’s a “fae”?

• In my country it’s a mouse instead

• No! We they are totally nice and not sinister!

• Ohhhh shit my eyes are open now

• Let the children have fun, you monster

• Yeah be polite but don’t fuck with the fae, I am Irish/Scottish/etc and I have seen some shit

• Have sex today! Click here!

[cleocatart]

The scriptures tell us a dying leader lead humanity to the promised land.

And unto the leader, they gave a vision of serpents numbering two and ten, as a sign of things to come.

[brynwrites]

What not to write in fantasy.

I’ve seen some posts going around on what not to write in fantasy, many of which amount to:

Don’t write evil kings.

Don’t write people who are evil for the sake of evil.

Don’t write bullies.

Don’t write villains at all actually.

Don’t write mentors.

Don’t let your characters learn how to do hard things on their own though.

Don’t write people on adventures.

Don’t write people fighting evil governments.

Don’t write any fantasy species ever written before.

Don’t write any fantasy trope ever written before.

Don’t write any fantasy plot ever written before. 

Just… don’t fucking write fantasy I guess??

And this is such utter bullshit, my friends.

We do need more originality and diversity in fantasy, but we don’t need to remove everything that fantasy is and has been in the process.

(Especially, especially, when diversity is being included in traditionally cishet white male protagonist fantasy stories.)

Maybe the chosen one with special magic powers and a royal bloodline going on a quest with a group of friends to defeat the evil king has been done before with a white cis man a thousand times over, but how many times has a black trans woman got to go on that adventure? 

Maybe elves and orcs have been written into the dust, but they still make great templates on which to tell stories with original twists, and there’s nothing about them that stops a good, emotional story from hitting you straight in the heart.

Maybe dragons have been done by every writer ever to write fantasy, but you know what? Dragons are fucking awesome, my dudes. Many readers are always gonna love them.

Maybe we have told the same fantasy stories over and over again, but every step you take away from the known template is a step you have to spend more and more exposition on before the reader will understand your original creation.

So don’t let anyone make you feel like that your (inclusive) fantasy story is too ‘traditional’ to be good. As long as you produce a well written story you’ve put your heart into, it’ll be a story many readers will love.