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[writing-prompt-s]

"My name probably means nothing to you, but I used to be a god worshipped here in long forgotten times. Except the remnants of my last temple were bulldozed to build a parking lot this morning, so now I'm kind of homeless. Can I stay here?"

[murdercat3]

"Long forgotten times?" "Yes, before humans invented writing--" "I'm a historical anthropologist. Get in here, I'll make you dinner, and then you're telling me EVERYTHING. How do you feel about co-authoring a paper? Or several?"

[murdercat3]

There's something that I wish I got to see more in writing. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places? I notice that it's often either, "sci-fi and aliens are real but magic and the supernatural? haha, that's not real dummy" or "magic and the supernatural are real, but aliens? haha they're not real dummy" I want to see a story where there's both, but both sides have zero idea the other exists.

My favorite example of how this has so much potential for hilarity is this: An alien disguises xemself as a human and goes to Earth to learn about human culture.

A faerie is disguised as a human and hiding from their responsibilities in the faerie realm.

And then there's a random human, let's call him Steve. Imagine the chaos of an alien, a supernatural creature, and a clueless human all ending up roommates to share the rent. No one knows Steve is the only human. Steve just assumes his roommates are Weird and doesn't question why one of them called children "larva" and keeps eating raw meat, and the other hates touching iron and sometimes looks like they're glowing. The alien (or a robot or whatever sci-fi thing) and faerie (or whatever supernatural creature you want) are both like Yes We Are Normal Humans We're Doing So Good At Pretending Alternately, there is no human in the equation, and it's a sitcom of, like, an alien, a robot, a faerie, and a demon are all living in the same apartment desperately pretending they're human and thinking they're the only one that isn't human. I've seen this ^ before, but I want more crosses between sci fi and fantasy where there's magic and aliens, and they're both like "psh that doesn't exist"

[murdercat3]

last night i was writing a scene that required creative insults and it got me thinking. how do you write good, unique, appropriate insults?

i came up with some that i really liked, so here's the strategies i used 1) don't use swears unless absolutely necessary. swears make it too easy to fall into common vulgarities.

2) adjective-noun is a good pattern but don't overuse it, be creative

3) metaphors are your friend

4) think about the tone of your insults. are you going for afraid? Disgusted? Condescending? Offended? Enraged? Desperate? Defensive? Pick appropriate words that's about it here's an example i came up with. sadly it does not fit my story but i am inordinately proud of this

boring: you shitstain

better: you are a stain on the tapestry of life

best: You are an airport tuna sandwich. You are dry and tasteless and common, yet overpriced. The people who chose you only chose you because they had no other choice. The people who refuse you, because they have standards, are actively repulsed by your existence. No one really wants to be around you. Ultimately, your legacy will be a minor discoloration on page 103 of a cheap and poorly written novel where someone dropped you briefly, that will be thrown away when the book is done.

bonus:

you: *airport tuna rant*

them: what

you: You clearly have the same intelligence as a sandwich as well; you can't even tell when you're being delivered a sick burn

[murdercat3]

random writing half-a-prompt thing that popped into my brain and won't leave i'm envisioning this as a high fantasy or medieval type setting (honestly my brain's got this as Ancient Rome but you could set it wherever/whenever, really) what if there was some fancy, relatively well-respected lady courtesan somewhere, and she's doing well for herself and one day, she's hired to go to some other city where her face isn't known (bonus points if people know her reputation but not what she looks like) and she goes off in a carriage or something these people do not know what she looks like. and so what happens is she goes to meet whoever hired her, but it turns out there's been a mishap, and now this lady has been mistaken for a visiting princess (i imagine this would be bc some noble had a meeting with a princess and the courtesan was meant to be there afterward) but the princess never showed up, and the guy who hired her thinks she's the princess, and suddenly before she can explain wait no, i'm not the princess, the courtesan is swept up into some kind of political intrigue. she's also strangely good at it, since she ends up just having to play along because at some point it went too long and now it would just be weird for her to say "so uh actually i'm, uh, not the princess..." so she just goes along with it i feel like the natural progression of this is that she winds up accidentally stopping a war or something and if you feel like it, as a bonus: the courtesan ends up having to save the princess and eventually has to admit that she was never the princess at all but she did such a good job that everyone's like nah keep doing what you're doing miss

bonus for the bonus: the princess doesn't want to deal with the politics either and she either makes the courtesan not tell anybody, or she just agrees with everyone else that the courtesan did such a good job ruling a city or stopping a war or whatever she did that she should just keep doing that triple bonus: the princess and the courtesan fall in love (lesbians <3)

do with this idea what you will

[murdercat3]

writing thoughts

i'm tired of seeing magical creatures that have normal anatomy. do you know how fucking weird the animal kingdom is? i want more of that in my fantasy stories. give me weird shit.

give me dragons that spray blood from their eyes like those creepy lizards. give me faeries with tapeta lucida. give me creatures that have weird-ass traits and it's normal for them because that's just What They Are one of my favorite personal examples of this is mermaids I don't want mermaids that are just a pretty lady with a shiny fish tail. no that's boring

i want a mermaid with a ten foot long brown slimy eel tail, who's an obligate carnivore with rows of terrifying pointy eel teeth (look up a picture of moray eel teeth if you want to know what I mean), who secretes protective slime and can see in the dark and her olfactory sense is way stronger than a human's and SHE CAN SMELL YOUR FEAR. i want an asexual eel mermaid who doesn't understand sex at all because her species reproduces by external fertilization, she just lays eggs, why are these humans staring at her in terror and confusion. i want a mermaid who can't be out of water for too long because she'll dry out, who has to be in water that's the right tonicity just like aquarium fish (i.e. a saltwater mermaid can't be in freshwater bc her cells will explode. yes that's real biology)

these creatures in our stories aren't human. they are people, but not human. i want to see them treated like what they are and not like a human with a quirk.