Tried this once here and none of that is strictly wrong, but I just wrote a killer blurb so we’re going again.
How would you fare if you became omnipotent on your fourteenth birthday? I imagine you might be able to figure something out given some time to get a handle on your newfound powers, but Hera Elizabeth Rider’s deicidal brother accidentally transporting her out of the universe while trying to turn her into a weapon is not giving her that luxury. It takes her a deal with the devil, unwitting service to a vampire hunter, the creation of several gods, and one eccentric genius before she’s able to do anything with her powers on purpose, and by then it’s really not clear what the right thing to do even is.
Relevant tags (searchable on my blog)
Forever project: all tag games, short stories, random thoughts, and if I ever do them character intros for this work are tagged with this tag. It’s the one to block if you are mainly here for Twilight content.
Elise Godslayer: This is the tag for the MC, Hera Elizabeth Rider. She goes by Elise because there’s too many Hera’s in her family (in her world Mary goes by her syncretized Greek name, and so most European historical figures that in our world are named Mary are named Hera there) and Elizabeth is too long for her tastes. The godslayer part is arguably a spoiler, but it happens in chapter three so I’m not too worried. Elise is a fairly normal fourteen-year old, outside of her godlike powers. She likes music (she can play violin and fiddle), was just starting to figure out she might like some girls as more than friends, is wary of responsibility, and has a crushing need to be liked.
Davriel Godslayer: This is Elise’s twin brother, though he was born human. Because he was human, he wasn’t seen as a threat like Elise was, and so while his sister was sent to live among humans with her powers locked away, Davriel was raised by their godly parents and named himself David after the king when he realized he was trans. Mount Olympus is not a great place to raise a kid, and rants by his uncle Ares left him with a certainty that he could do better. Hence his plans to kill all of the gods and become ruler. This is not to say that he wouldn’t make a terrifyingly competent and entirely benevolent god-king, it is simply that his understanding of what he’s working with (the world) is a scoche incomplete. As for why I and his tag call him Davriel and not David, well that is a smidge more of a spoiler, though I’m sure it’s decipherable from my writings in his tag.
Eric Melior: This is the blurb’s vampire hunter! What the blurb does not mention is that he is also a vampire (and a wraith) and was born in 1892. Since making the tag I’ve Polanized his name to Eryk, though future me and his pro-Tzarist parents might have something to say about that. He is a very dutiful son, which means odd things for a Nihil whose mother has been drawn into a cult promising protection from (read extinction of) the vampires that are beginning to spread through the Russian Empire.
Sorceress: Here we have our eccentric genius. The only person (selkie, dragon, centaur or siren) to discover how to use magic on a sentient creature! She used this power to give herself a pair of legs and a sealskin, having been born a siren but being too curious about the world to confine herself to the water. Even though Elise created her world, Sorceress is likely its most consequential figure.
Mlle Nefara: The most recent character to get a tag, Mlle Nefara is just trying to get rich. Unfortunately, honest means are not particularly available to her as a black woman in 1890s Europe, and so she has chosen the slightly easier route of lying to a bunch of rich people, telling them all about the supernatural threats only she can teach them how to defend themselves against. Her charisma and talent are serving her well in this endeavor until 1897, when a plague of monsters begins to creep through the land. They’re similar enough to the ones she’d made up for her sect to become increasingly popular, but she can’t be so lucky that the techniques she made up would actually defeat them.
Siren’s meet nada: Nada is the word for city among the most magically reckless group of humans on Globe, Sorceress’s world. They call the city that has built up around Sorceress’s first home on land Siren’s Meet, not because they really ever meet Sorceress (and very few know she was ever a siren regardless), but because the estuary has collected extremists and eccentrics from human and siren communities. While it was Sorceress’s presence (and her geologic engineering) that drew the first few citizens to the place, it continued to thrive long after she went to Nadalitas. I use this tag mainly for short stories and worldbuilding facts that take place in the city.
Nihil hunters: A nihil is the most dangerous of the monsters that have begun to infect Eryk and Mlle Nefara’s world. They are at once vampire and wraith, and so lose many of the vulnerabilities of both. The tag is nihil hunters for their whole world, because vampire hunters, what they call themselves, is simply too generic.
Southern dragons: These are mostly a world building project, as their interaction with the magic system and spatial/temporal laws I’ve built for this project is generally quite illustrative. While they originated in the southern continent of Sorceress’s world, hence their name, they have since spread to other worlds, moving through space and reality with a degree of mysterious ease I think is suitable for dragons.
Spacewhaling: It may not be correct to include this tag with this project; in fact, it started as an independent concept. If it does intersect with Elise’s story, it would only be in the third or maybe even fourth book.
the draw of arranged marriage AUs to me is really the way the dubcon of it all binds them together. neither of them have a choice in being here, something else is foisting this upon them whether that’s their parents or the political situation around them or expectation or something else, but the point is that they don’t get that one choice. so they have to make a choice somewhere else, that now that they’re here, they’re going to make it work. they’re each other’s only allies, in this cage built around them. they may have been coerced into swearing to stand by each other through anything, but they did swear.
it’s not love at first, or second, or third sight. it’s not love in the wedding bed the first time, whether they grit their teeth through it or decide together to forgo that binding step and try to get around it as long as they can. it’s about sharing a bed with a stranger while you learn their nightmares and how they hog the covers. it’s about sharing a name before you even know each other’s hobbies. the appearances you have to keep up, and the connection you find in both being exhausted by them, laughing together because isn’t it ridiculous how you not only have to be married but you have to act like it’s perfect and lovely for everyone else watching. it’s love that creeps up quiet and slow, between shared secrets that make your wedding bands mean something for the first time, and trying to protect each other from the trap you’re both in. and it’s about having the mortifying thought of “oh my god, i have a crush on my wife.”
Happy WBW! Let's talk sacred oaths! Do they exist in your world and what events call for them? Have your OCs ever had to swear an oath?
In Tsarist Russia, oaths are common. Humans swear their allegiance to the crown and promises of repayment or mutual respect, flowing freely as lies from the lips of people hoping for a better position in a brutally unfair world held together with fear and brute authority.
Very few people are aware of the vampires, strange creatures that fear God’s light but which can bend faith, truth, and reality itself. When oaths are sworn to them, they conspire to make reality bend to hold them. When they swear oaths, they hold as the same twists of reality force truth into their speaking. It is not to say they cannot lie (certainly they can if that’s what they were intending to do), or even that everything they say becomes truth. But it is closer to that for them than for most people. So when they swear an oath with conviction, fully intending to follow through, it takes on a fated character, and violating it becomes nigh impossible even if they change their mind, which itself is quite the challenge.
Eudoxia is a Nihil. This means she has the powers of a vampire, and more of them too. She swears he sword to the service of protecting the children of the Tsar, and this choice is so profound it is the inciting incident to Book 3 (or at least it will be when I get that far)
Happy WBW! What weather is common in your OCs' hometowns? What kind of weather are they used to? What are they not prepared for if they go someplace else?
I have no idea how I missed this but better late than never. Let’s answer this for David bc it is the funniest possible answer.
David was born and raised on Christian syncretized Olympus, which is literally Heaven. The weather is always perfect, with even weather events always coming in measured doses that do no real damage. A heat wave that never got dangerously hot lasting only a few days before being broken by a thunderstorm that always just misses you with the worst of it unless you happen to already be sheltered and able to watch driving rain that causes no flooding and lightning strikes that don’t actually hit anything.
Then he moves to Mars.
Weather on Mars can only exist because of magic. The ocean has returned and fae courts have colonized what was once barren with thriving cultures that follow their own rules. David (now Davriel) finds himself leader of the Court of War, situated on the slopes of Olympus Mons. The wind there is cutting, both literally and metaphorically. Visibility gets cut by snows that you could swear are made of frozen blood just that little bit further out than you can really see. The air is never quite think enough to breathe comfortably. David is prepared for none of this, and this is part of why the throne room is in the exact centre of the castle he builds out of the corpse of Ares. But he can still feel it, because he cannot put down the mantle Ares without his frail human form succumbing to the elements he is trying to avoid. He tries to focus on other things, but there is always a part of him that will always be a boy far from home believing voices on the wind saying “Be afraid, this place is not for you”
Writing taught me that the most interesting thing about a person is never what happened to them. it's what they decided it meant. two people can go through the exact same thing and build completely different selves out of it. the event is just the event. the story they tell about it is who they become. I think about this every time i catch myself retelling something from my own life and notice i've quietly changed what it meant. we are all editing ourselves constantly.
i understand that it's unreasonable to expect a band on world tour to play in every country in the world but i do think they should only be allowed to call it a world tour if they play in every continent. we need to make it embarrassing to say world tour and then not even step foot in africa
I'm coding a canadian trans resources site for my grade 12 sociology class, and while i'll first be doing it focused only on my own city (per: my assignment rules lol), as soon as that's done (june 15!) i want to expand it as much as possible.
if you are a canadian trans person and you would like to share a provincial, national, or local resource, send it to me and I'll be happy to include it. I will keep anons on for those who'd like to send resources of their city or province but don't want to doxx themselves (understandably).
i can keep updating it indefinitely, there is no rush, but i really want to create canadian-focused resources for the trans community (especially with what's going on in alberta). so many resources when i started transitioning were from a US-centric POV, even when i searched my own province, and i didn't know much about laws, resources, community, or even gender gear. i would like to help change that.
Water stays cold. Even if it’s a beautifully hot summer’s day that dip in the pond is refreshing bc the water is still colder than you. You can get hypothermia bad enough to affect your swimming at any time of year in water.
Also clothes that aren’t meant for swimming waterlog and drag you down. If you’re in street clothes on the boat your swimming is not going to be as good as it is in a swimsuit and the time for which you can tread water will be cut down.
Father Strange, when considering the famous shoelaces code, do you interpret the president they were stolen from to be whichever US president is currently in office, or is it still Obama? I've held in my heart that it has been Obama this whole time
I also feel like The Shoelace President is Obama but I'm curious what Tumblr at large thinks
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
