Maybe somebody’s already made a post about this but consider, in the vein of “humans are space orcs”: humans are the only spacefaring group seemingly unfazed with ship malfunctions. Continuous ones. We just roll with it. Red lights on the dashboard indicating “hull breach”? Those have been on for a month, it’s fine. Rear engine stuck? Nah, just jiggle the throttle a little. AI on the fritz? Yeah, he’s been like that, just give him a sec to wake up. We come from a long tradition of ignoring lights in our cars and running our computers so hot we can heat small houses you better believe that’s following us out into space.
Also ducktape. Ducktape is the answer to everything.
On the first Friday of every month Elder Rose ordered her standard 10 lb of flour, so that on the second Monday of every month she could give Meryl everlasting baked goods to sell, of which Meryl was allowed to keep a small profit.
So I decided two days ago that I'm going to NoWriMo (Novel Writing Month) outside of the national month of November and outside of CampNaNo in July/April. At the end of June I better have a 50,000 word novel drafted on my computer. And as an extra treat every day I'm going to post the best line of the day. This can not end well.
The football field was still bright green, and the stadium was still bright blue. The white dome of the gymnasium stood out against the yellowed trees and hills of evergreens. The horizon was dotted with an assortment of trees, producing a bumpy looking meeting of sky and land.
I wish I could say there were no cars out, but I knew, even though I couldn't see the road, the road wasn't empty. People still had to go to their jobs.
I just wanted things to go back to normal. It was a pity they probably wouldn't.
We stated at each other, him in earnest hope and I in blank confusion.
"What?"
"Is it legal for students to learn from cadavers?" Hamilton asked again.
"Yes!" I told him.
"One of my associates was injured while protecting students who were using cadavers. I'm happy he helped change the law." Hamilton spoke with such assuredness, I felt uncomfortable trying to correct him.
"Oh boy," I sighed, "I don't even know how to respond to that."
Pick Five Random Words And Use All Of Them (Sentence, Paragraph, Scene)
My words are Invisible, Brawl, Spin, World, and Plant.
Sentence: The world spins while invisible plants brawl.
Paragraph: I felt invisible while looking down at the world. It spun so slowly I could not see it, and yet I knew it did. Swirls of whites and blues marked clouds and oceans passing by. Small plants showed lush green spaces on the beautiful world I'd left behind. Brawling was the furthest thing from my mind.
Scene: Matt watched the world below him from the safety of the ship's observatory. It was no earth, but it wasn't so bad to look at either. The large bodies of water were a deep indigo, and swirls of mint green clouds obscured the view.
The plants were off looking. The added swaths of beige to an otherwise beautiful planet. Matt didn't like it.
"What'cha staring at?"
Matt spun around to look at one of the natives of the planet. They were humanoid, but with unsettling large eyes and hair like gem stones.
"Your planet. I wanted to know if the the emotions I feel when I look at the Earth are carried over to other planets."
"Are they?" Asked the alien.
"Not as strongly. Did you need something?" Matt said.
"I wish to brawl with you." The alien said.
"That's not what that word means, but sure, I'll go spar with you."
I am living for this lock yourself in the house concept. I wish I hadn't been fired, but I'll get a new job. Right now I get to live my teen fantasy of staying home all day and reading. I love every part of this!
Okay, so maybe I don't love the probability of someone I love dying. That's not fun. But I don't think it's productive to be sad and anxious all the time. Sometimes, you just need to party at home in your underwear. Right?
These are probably the final lines, so um, if you don’t want to be spoiled do not click the read more.
“I apologize for not introducing myself earlier,” the Goblin Lady says, “I am Ithe, and you should consider me the head accountant for the Potter accounts.
Ithe proceeds to pull a tome of parchment from a compartment in her desk and sets it heavily on the desk. Dust rises from the text, causing Harry to sneeze. This tome looks old, with some of it’s pages mildewing. Harry isn’t sure if the cause is it’s age, or poor conditioning, but the mildew is certainly more than a little off putting. The book is taller than the width of Harry's hand. Infact, Harry would guesstimate that the book was as tall as the average goblin, and they were at least the height of six year olds.
“With all due respect Mr. Potter,” Ithe searches in her desk for another item, “You’ll need to read this in order to fully understand the scope of all your properties.”
***
“Oh you poor boy,” Ithe says, “You have no idea....”
***
“But wait,” Harry asks, once he has finished reading the first quarter of the tome, explaining all of that, “Aren’t Gringott vaults tied into bloodlines?”
“You’d think that they were,” Ithe gives Harry a toothy smile, “But you’d be very wrong. Let’s use the Malfoy family as an example. See, the Malfoy family vault belongs to whoever the head of the family is. Usually the head is in fact a Malfoy, and the Malfoy has heirs and they inherit the vault and add to their family wealth, and it’s all great. But, because of the liege lord oath Voldemort became the head of the Malfoy family, thus their vaults became his vaults.”
***
Ithe released a breathy little sigh, “Basically each title comes with a few votes for Wizengamot, since that’s run by noble houses. Now these votes are usually covered as the precious little treasures wizards seem to think of them as, though there have been instances of votes being traded to other wizards for favors.”
“So, I have like, five votes, cool,” Harry said.
“Not quite,” Ithe denied, “More like one hundred or so....”
***
“Sorry,” Harry apologized, “My life already belongs to all of Wizarding Britain. I don’t think you can have that.”
Ithe laughs at that, “No Mr. Potter. I’m not actually your head Manager of Accounts until we both sign a parchment stating so. Of course, if you’d prefer, you should be able to get another goblin to manage your accounts should you prefer it.”
***
Hermione stabs her frozen treat with a spoon, “First of all, goblins believe females are really bad at banking-”
“Oh geez,” Harry interrupted, “Sorry, but that made something she said click.”
“Oh?” Hermione asked.
Harry told her about his parting conversation with Ithe, to which Hermione replied, “I can’t believe she thought you cared.”
my problem with the ‘harry becomes lord of 2/¾/5 ancient noble houses’ trope is so unbelievably petty because its that fic writers don’t take it to the potential extreme. like, okay, you wanna make harry the bossest of bitches i get that, i understand, i have that urge too from time to time, but c’mon, be a little more creative about it please
so how about a fic where harry goes to gringotts after the fighting is all over to try to make peace with the goblin nation because this boy does not need more problems and after much hostility and some groveling and promises of future payments for damages caused a plucky goblin lass comes and shuffles harry into her tiny cube office to discuss the nature of his financial situation
(this is a grave insult among goblins. getting handled by a female, first of all, because they are supposedly less capable bankers, hello misogyny among other species, and because they consider anyone who needs help with his money to be lower than cave scum. harry doesn’t know about his. and if he did, he wouldn’t care because he does, desperately, need help)
and plucky goblin lass (who we will call PGL for short) brings out this MASSIVE tome of parchment and slams it down on her desk. a cloud of dust rises. harry sneezes and gets a terrible feeling. some of the parchment is mildewing. the stack is taller than his hand is wide. this can only end badly
PGL tells him that he’ll need to read the entire book to fully comprehend the new scope of his property and harry kind of weakly says “what??”
and it turns out that heyo, when the death eaters swore to follow voldemort with all their lives and souls and magic in their little racist hearts they actually swore a modified liege lord oath which also has the coincidental side effect of ceding all titles (and property connected to said titles) held to the lord in question too. haha how funny who knew
and that’s an ongoing thing. so voldemort was the de facto head of two dozen magical houses at the beginning of the war and he just picked up more as he gained more followers and he probably could have just voted himself and his crew into every position of the government and run the country like that if he cared to do it but voldemort was not about dat political life. he wanted change and he wanted it now. he wanted to MAKE AMERICA MAGICAL BRITAIN GREAT AGAIN. so he started a civil war and just never informed his loyal death eaters of that little fact because they didn’t need to know.
and you might think that gringotts vaults are tied into bloodlines but they’re really not. the malfoy family vault belongs to whoever is the current head of the malfoy family. normally, that’s a malfoy and his malfoy spawn becomes the next head and so it passes through the family, accumulating inherited wealth. it was a working system until voldemort got involved and exploited the ever-living hell out of it.
now this all becomes harry’s problem because it turns out that Right of Conquest is an actual thing. what was voldemort’s is now his and voldemort has has the time to accumulate A Metric Fuck Ton of stuff.
also connected to titles are votes in the wizengamot. and whoo boy, this is where harry’s problem becomes really really really problematic. because the noble families squabble over those votes like children, hoarding them and passing them down, occasionally trading them for advantageous marriages and such, but mostly jealously guarding them like the politcal gold they are. it’s such a bitterly tight-fisted market that any one family has ~maybe~ three or four votes.
and now harry bloody potter has a hundred of the things and a completely unintentional stranglehold on the government. whoops
and then hermione would shotput harry straight into the wizengamot against his protests and things would become so hilarious i just
some jerkass attempts to increase his own salary for doing basically nothing
“how about no,” harry and his hundred votes say.
somebody attempts to tighten restrictions on where magical creatures like vampires and werewolves can work
“how about no.” harry crosses his arms. “actually, how about we repeal those bullshit laws already in place that make it almost impossible for werewolves to get a job right now, hmmmm? and how about we put something in place to catch abusive owners of house elves? and make sure they get paid? and vacation days? and healthcare? actually how about we get healthcare for EVERYBODY HOW ABOUT T H A T?”
ten generations of purebloods cry out in horror. look upon him ye mighty and despair.
the years after voldemort’s defeat don’t go down in history as The Golden Era. in fact, thanks to harry bloody potter (and some incessant nudging by hermione granger), they go down as The Decade of Frankly Astonishing Strides Toward Equality *cough* enforced by a semi-plutocracy.
(all thanks to a third tier plot never really explored by a would-be dictator YOU’RE ALL WELCOME)
If I were to ever write any kind of urban/modern magic story, the one piece of worldbuilding that would be non-negotiable for me would be the background presence of a public broadcasting show that is an almost exact replica of The Joy of Painting, but instead it’s The Joy of Summoning.
Just half-hour installments teaching you some different techniques for summoning monsters, malevolent spirits, and even minor demigods, in a gentle and instructional way. There’s a warlock with a fro and a soft voice encouraging you that, contrary to what people think, you don’t have to spend half your life in mage school to summon a demon; all you need is the right tools, a little practice, and a nightmarish vision in your heart. You don’t need to be cursed by a dark entity upon birth: anyone can do it!
“Now, let’s make a happy little blood circle on the floor, just like this. Don’t think about it, don’t measure it out. Doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be big enough to hold the hell portal later on. Once we’ve done that we can add some black candles right here, all around it. Look at that! See how easy that is?”
“We always use the same materials, every week. The names of the items you’ll need for this particular ritual are gonna appear right there at the bottom of the screen. If you want to, you can perform a summoning right along with us, or just relax and watch for now.”
“Remember that this is your world, in your world you can create anything that you desire.” (I didn’t even make that one up that is just a straight-up quote from The Joy of Painting)
“Make sure you don’t mix that graveyard dirt and blood of an innocent too much, otherwise you’re gonna lose that texture which is so important. See how I’ve done it just here? You want it to be still be clumpy when you smear it on the mirror. Juuuust like that. Perfect.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Is that the second chapter already? Oops, my finger slipped, so here’s the last part of LWD. Don’t worry, there’s going to be more in the future, it just might take a while to get written up.
So for that riffing story I’m working on, I told my sister I had the first two chapters (which is technically the first story done. She wants in on it, so Leon is about to get a major voice change. If you don’t like Leon right now, that’s okay, he’s about to sound a whole lot sassier, and Rene is about to sound a lot less bitchy.
So you remember that story I posted about, like a month ago? Well I’ve finally finished the first two chapters. Yay. The bad news is that now I have to code it. Boo. But it’s going to look sweet as hell when I’ve finished. Yay! And the coding I’m doing is really simple. Double yay! But it’s time consuming and one chapter can take and hour to code. In fact, yesterday I spent an hour coding it, and it’s still not done. Boo! What I’m trying to say is that the first chapter of this story should be done either later today, or tomorrow.
Jeanne Parker Writes @nanostuffs - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
