Shay the Maker @shay-the-maker - Tumblr Blog

~WIP Masterlist + Self-Intro~

Hello and welcome to the madness! I'm Shay~ (it/he/they) A variety artist, writer, and self-inserted Maker-God of the world Exhalo which all my stories take place in. Death to cringe, encourage whimsy. I stream when I can, working on either my writing WIPs or my art on twitch (18+).

Tag and ask game friendly~! Asks and conversation encouraged~!

I am slow to respond sometimes, but I try to answer what I can and am more scared of you than you are of me.

I'm currently working on several WIPs (and counting~) in various stages of development (mostly the state of "vibes," but they're being counted).

Volume of projects is not indicative of me being put together, it is quite the opposite actually.

Tags listed in ~ABOUT~ tab of blog for ease of access.

v ~WIPS info dump~ v

#writblr intro #WIP intro #Dread Secrets WIP #Eclipse for Remnants WIP #Tinnitus WIP #Escapism WIP #Deja Vu WIP #Medicine and Healer WIP #Love AfterLife WIP #Forsaken Heroes WIP #Found Family WIP #Not a Story a Prophesy WIP #Stories of Exhalo WIP #Shadow of Doubt WIP #Soul-Strings WIP #writblr

krakenteacups

hemipenal-system

hey if you're transfem you don't have to call yourself amab just so you know. if you're transmasc you don't have to call yourself afab. if you're nonbinary you don't need to use either. no one needs to know. thats a thing that happened to you once. you wouldn't call yourself a walmart resident because you needed pasta one time and that was the only thing open

cuppatealove

Me and a fellow writer lovingly describing our extensive lists of plot bunnies to each other:

runasulienadanika

come on😀mention my favourite character😀i am well adjusted😀and will act very normal😀i assure you😀

dickgraysonsptsd

i think MORE characters should be rape survivors. i think more characters should be csa survivors. i think more characters should be dv survivors. i think strong and noble and attractive and charming and brilliant characters with indomitable spirits should be survivors. i think the most powerful characters in the world should be survivors. i think characters who are cultural icons should be survivors. i think victims and survivors should see ourselves in the most admirable and beloved characters around! i think we should be protagonists!!!

dickgraysonsptsd

#‘it’s so unnecessary’ . okay . god yea this one drives me CRAZY. people will yap all day long about how it's "unnecessary" to make a character a survivor like do you think it was necessary for any of us to be abused or raped irl? was it narratively essential? did it teach the audience an important lesson? why do we, who have to justify our experiences and existences and reactions all the time in real life, also have to justify why we should exist in fiction? people act so repulsed by the thought of us. i've really fully and truly had enough of that. there is nothing so uniquely disgusting or repulsive or unspeakable about our victimhood or our survival that justifies this obsession with keeping the reality of our existence hidden

dualcasterjay

"oh but talking about it can be triggering for victims :(((" you know what else is triggering? living in a world that insists that we cannot be open and honest about what happened to us. maybe if we had, oh, i don't know, prominent examples in our cultural stories of people who are victims and are competent and strong it might be easier (for everyone, not just victims) to have the discussions we actually need to have about our trauma.

rhinco

unhealthy codependency is really a top tier dynamic. like they need each other to survive but god. should they.

#tropes

succubusboyfriend

you have permission to pick that 2 year old "abandoned" project back up. it's not mad at you for setting it aside. and maybe time and distance have helped ease or erase the things that made you put it down in the first place.

mushroominawaterbottle

there is the line between bisexual and aroace and i am using it as a jump rope

definitely-not-an-alb

Fascinated by everyone's but especially American's desire to give medieval keeps, especially in colder regions, central heating (and I think Winterfell is to blame for this trope, where, to it's defence, the hot springs were not a matter of comfort but survival wrt the deadly fantasy Winter that's not real irl), because I'm always like. okay I know they told you in middle grade that castles were all cold and drafty but like ... no also what

There's generally going to be rooms dedicated to and build for warmth, the living quarters, both for nobles and their servants. This will be the central living tower, or parts of it called a Kemenate (literally 'room with a stove'), the great hall and work spaces around the kitchen. You can put the Kemenate on top of the hall to catch the big fires' and daily living's heat through the wooden floor, but you often can't put wooden stuff on top of the kitchens (that's a fire risk). If you have the money and space, you build a whole separate comfy place for living because you don't have to stay in the most defensible part of the castle all the time. These separate living buildings are also called Kemenate and are often build from wood, cob, brick etc.

People used to wear much more clothes indoors, including while sleeping, and those clothes were much thicker and sturdier than what we largely wear today. Every time you think of how cold those stone walls are, think about everyone wearing a linen shift + two-ish layers of wool on all body parts except hands and head + stockings and shoes + some kind of head-covering. In Ye Old Middle Ages, women are probably wearing a wimple, which is kind of like a modern Hijab in terms of coverage. People wear shifts, socks, and a head-covering to bed.

I think people used to radiators also really underestimate how much a large open fire/tiled stove heats up a room. Also, middle and northern Europe (as well as parts of Northern China) had and to this day have beds and benches build into tiled and cob stoves. Those fuck.

Beds are enclosed so you stay warm in them, either by curtains, in wall niches or with wood. There's also a type of bed that's inside a chest (like a coffin) so you can stuff your stuff inside during the day and put down the lid to use it as a bench. That's also another reason for people to always sleep in groups. Depending on the era, one of the jobs of a lady's maid or a retainer might literally be warming their master's bed. In early times and among servants, people also sleep in large groups in rooms together in general even outside a farming context, often with animals like pet dogs, too, which further warms everything up.

Walls are not bare, cold stone, but covered with a layer of plaster or cob, tiles or wooden panels, sometimes layered, and believe me, this makes such a difference. Source: I lived in a Ye Olde German Farmhouse with 70 cm thick stone walls and flag stone floor and all that converted to modern flats for a while.

On top of that you hang tapestries on the wall, which are not like modern printed cloth but basically wall rugs, sometimes several inches thick, and rugs or rushes (like a light cover of hay) on the floor on top of stone, tile, wooden panelling or a cob floor cover that goes over the heave flag stone. Pillows and blankets on all sitting surfaces, often on top of panelling (in the case of benches build into the stone). The roof of a room is also tiled, panelled or plastered. Upper stories will generally have wooden floors. Stories in a tower heat each other upwards, so the nicer rooms are further up.

The inner stone walls of a castle, even if stone and very thick, will heat up a few degrees in comparison to the outside walls if the castle is continually heated/lived in, and also trap heat inside, and this will make a difference. Inner walls might also be thinner and made of wood, cob or brick. You're defending against the outside, after all.

You put stuff in the windows. Holy shit. Screens of wood, horn, cloth or leather/hide, often treated for extra insulation. Why are these fantasy castles all so drafty.

Like, idk, I know Americans especially can't pop down to their nearby castle museum to have a look around, but even with people who can and do: The castles you'll see, even the ones who aren't 'ruined' are ruins. They're stripped down. I remember touring Norman towers in England, and those places do look dire and are cold because even if they're still standing, they're ruins. It makes such a difference to get to look at a castle that is still lived in, has been inhabited until recently, or has been historically restored where these amenities are preserved. The exact amenities will depend on the era, of course, but they'll be there. The publicly accessible parts of Burg Eltz are a great example to google, especially since I promise you, you have seen this specific castle before. They have pictures on their English language website here, and the German National Geographic has a few further inside pictures here. Seeing a place like that that isn't a ruin with bare, stripped walls, nothing in the windows, no decorations and furniture etc. makes you realise that yeah actually. My characters are probably just gonna go grab a pillow if their ass is cold on the window's stone bench. Blankets are a pretty old technology, humans (elves, dwarves, whatever) can figure that one out.

overfedvenison

Oh these links are a FANTASTIC reference!

#castle resources #resources #buildings resources #references

elleldoe

my wip is cracking its knuckles. and i'm shaking in my boots as i ask it for a little more time. i'll get you your words. i swear. you know i'm good for it.

ladyignatius4

Mentally making a cup of tea and giving a gentle forehead kiss to every struggling writer on my dash right now.

Your story matters, your ideas are good, and someone out there is going to fall in love with your world.

girlbossfranziskavonkarma

people are literally so boring a male character will kill 10000 people and steal candy from babies and theyll be like omg thats my king! but a female character is rude once and theyre like i hope she dies violently

evilkitten3

reblog to support female characters violently killing people

star-crossedloverboy-official

I'm a tumblr vampire: I can't enter your home (dms) without explicit permission or risk death

Happy WBW! It wouldn't be the first WBW of Pride Month if I didn't make it 🌈. Talk to me about queer existence in your world, or specific cities/towns/etc.

Happy WBW and Pride Month~!

I have put, perhaps, too much thought into this lmao (surprise, surprise Shay overthinks something in its world-building xp)

Queer existence in the world of Exhalo is quite common and normalized in every realm. To the point that there is even a greeting/introduction used almost everywhere (probably popularized by The Maker themself using it from time to time).

I'll use a bit of Neph and Xinyi's first conversation/interaction from Dread Secrets as an example of the greeting/introduction. (may be a bit clunky and bare bones since it's still somewhat a work in progress of a greeting and scene)

"The name is Neph. Pleased to be your savior this evening." "Ah...Thank you for the help. Neph?" "I am they. May I know you?" "I am Xinyi." "Ah, Xinyi?" "I am he."

The idea of the greeting is the person says your name back to you and you respond with how to refer to you/your pronouns. Still figuring it out though xp

The Maker would introduce itself kind of like "I am it and they. I am he." or something similar.

It's also not much an issue who you are attracted to either. Famously, Xadrian and Runais are both bisexual and their parents know it so they planned to marry the two together to improve the relations between their families.... which famously Xadrian and Runais ran from the night they were supposed to be married to solely because neither of them were interested in being forced into a marriage with someone they didn't know. Turned out fine though, when a door closes another opens and the parents of Xadrian and Runais got married with one another.

On that note, it's a non-issue to have more than one romantic partner too (regardless of species). Ataraxy, Annwyl, and Nymphaea have been together for a couple hundred years (polyamory lesbians my beloved).

Being Aroace is also not particularly strange or unheard of either. The king of the Kingdom of Rosha famously has never taken a lover and is sometimes called "the king with no equal" since he has never married. His successor is an orphan who succeeded in passing the royalty exams after being recommended by Rosha's King. (ironically just checked and the successor is also aroace somehow... when did I do that?)

In other news, soulmates are a thing in the world of Exhalo and they aren't always romantic. Can't say much more on that though otherwise I'll spoil things for my Soul-Strings WIP... sad day.

Annd.... I think that's all the bases covered... Thank you for the ask~!

#shay answers #I have quite a number of aroace and bisexual characters now that I'm really thinking about them...#WBW #world-building wednesday #world of Exhalo #this was such fun~#writblr

luna-azzurra

Stages of writing a novel: (1) this is a great idea (2) this is a good idea (3) this is an idea (4) what even is this (5) i have made a terrible mistake (6) okay there's something here (7) this is actually good (8) this is too good, something is wrong (9) wait did i accidentally write something real (10) close laptop. do not think about it for three days. open laptop. start over from stage 4.

Fleshed out a bit more backstory for two of the characters of Eclipse for Remnants so now I'm more happy with their relationship and characters~! I think these two characters may be fun to write and/or see in the story proper~

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