What time of the year is the least eventful for your characters?
Thank you for the ask Sleepy! Happy Second Day of Slow Down Monday
In And May the Moon, it's the middle of the summer. Elves from this continent usually hate bright and hot days, and there's even a, hm, holiday? during which elves just go and hide in their homes. Everything stops for a couple of days. It has its theological roots too, since sun and/or summer is commonly an evil/dangerous diety in this continent's cultures.
Yes, this is because I hate hot and sunny days, what about it
Hi Sky! Thank you for the ask!
Here's the ask game
13. Which story has the most lore?
Oh, definitely And May the Moon. This universe has a dumb amount of lore. Fashion, religions, all the ethnic and political tensions, geological changes, you name it, I have it. It's also planned from the first seconds of the universe to the end of it. I love it, but I haven't made any progress on it for a while ehh
Happy STS! How do you come up with your characters’ names?
Hi, thank you for the ask :DDD
First, I LOVE COMING UP WITH NAMES. That's why in And May the Moon every character has unholy amount of names and I have a ton of fun with different types of names and nicknames in Mirage of Spring.
For And May the Moon, the process is quite long lol. First, I need to find the right notes about the grammar and a wordlist matching for the time period. Then I usually make up some stuff, and arrange it, rearrange it, change some letters, harmonize it to sound right and so on, and so on.
For Mirage of Spring, it's simpler. I usually start with a chart of mandarin Chinese syllables and choose 2-3 (for surname and name) that sound good together. Then I open a dictionary and look for some good meanings. Usually I have to change some parts so the name makes sense for the character, eg. if I can't find a good meaning for qing, I'll try jing or qin. Sometimes I steal names from sayings or books tho.
So yeah, that's it! The process is different for basically every work, so I won't dive into another which I'm not actively working on haha
Happy Storyteller Saturday! You mentioned that And May the Moon Shine Over Your Ways was inspired by your own experiences with anhedonia, does a character in this story also have anhedonia? Please tell us more!
Hi, thank you for the ask!!
Yes, the main character from this wip, Tiv, struggles with anhedonia a lot. It goes from him starting to develop it to the point in which he starts to fight it. A lot of his emotions (or lack of thereof) are closely tied to what I've been going through but a bit quicker, because I've been struggling with anhedonia for years and that would take like, a whole series in which mc mostly stares at a wall lol
Happy WBW! As I continue my reading saga of death and grief, tell me a little about the subject in your world. How is death treated and thought of? How do your characters-- or the world at large-- handle grief in relation to it?
Going into And May the Moon again fienfndn
Thank you so much for the question!! It's perfect, I could talk about funeral traditions and their revolution in this universe for so long... Let's try to focus on death itself
So in ancient times, before the elvish culture* split into multiple cultures, elves were living on the trees. They also treated death as something nearly unnatural, because, well, they're pretty much immortal. A death of a person was a BIG deal and they didn't really believe that this person died for real. Sure, animals or plants could die for real, but they were immortal creatures created as something above all the other creation. So they built houses for their dead. The dead person would be just sat in a fully furnished treehouse, with their name, age and “milestones” (eg. having a child, getting a special achievement, making an official friend etc.) written on a wall. The dead had their own designated cities for the dead. With time, elves started to mummify their dead to preserve the bodies and tone down the stinking a bit.
Later, when more complex political structures evolved, more people were being murdered or died in battle. Also at this point they were like 90% sure that dead people don't come back to life, it became something more like the Christian idea of apocalypse and people being revived with their mortal bodies. Anyways, this is when the idea of “natural” and “unnatural” death appeared. “Natural” death was basically everything that was not caused by another person. Drowning, being killed by an animal, various diseases etc. included. It was regarded as something still tragic but kinda... neutral by itself? “Unnatural” was murder, accidents caused by people, suicide, physical or psychological torture leading to death etc. It was the worst crime. The worst the worst. No one had a right to kill an elf, not a lord, king or some god. The punishment was often some kind of torture or slavery. This was also when different groups started to emerge and separate so those ideas are not fully universal, but still some variations were preserved among most of the elves.
After that there came an era of wars and destruction which lead to the domination of Noverentos. This is the time in which And May the Moon is set! A problem of burring hundreds of people quickly arose. The traditions around death started to diverge quickly between the cultures. Noverentos were putting the bodies on a pile and making a quick shelter around them. The western elves** were carving out the hearts, making small buildings for them (something like a block of flats? kinda?) and burning the bodies. Also the fact that the dead are not rising, not any time soon at least, was proven with the discovery of necromancy. I don't want to dive too deep into that because it's very important in Tiv's story – which means a lot of spoilers.
And then the topic becomes ridiculously broad. I can share some funfacts though.
Noverentos' royals had a special city practically covered in gold just for their dead. Generally, yellow/gold became a color of mourning among Noverentos,
Also, among Noverentos funeral practices became highly regulated by religious leaders and oh boy, they weren't cheap,
When humans and elves finally met, elves were believing that killing an elf is a much worse crime than killing a human “because humans would die anyway”. You can tell that the racial and cultural differences really made this meeting successful ahaha,
A bit unrelated, but there's an elvish culture nicknamed the Mourners because of one myth. In reality they're like, the most chill, mentally health and least strict culture lol. Maybe they're mourning the sanity of everyone else.
Well, that's it for now. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk! This is just a tip of an iceberg btw :"D
*I call it “the elvish culture” because on the continent I'm speaking about pretty much all elves ended up knowing about each other and making a semi-coherent culture in ancient times
**I have a specific name for them written somewhere but my notes are a mess rn
happy STS! How long have you been working on your WIP, and has it changed a lot since then?
Hi and happy STS Sky! Thank you for the ask<3
Feeling And May the Moon today so let's stay with it. It changed a lot. I've been working on it since... 2021? The worldbuilding evolved a lot since then and I also evolved a lot - it used to be much more focused on religion but in the meantime my opinion on organized religion... eh... let's say it did a 180. Tiv evolved as well, my boy became less passive about his life. So yeah, it's basically a whole different story now lol
Happy STS! What part of your story has been your favourite to write, or what part are you looking forward to most? (feel free to share a snippet 👀) - @trixierosewrites
Hi Trixie! Thank you for the ask and happy STS!
This goes for And May the Moon because I still haven't started writing Mirage of Spring. In full honesty, the latter has just a basic plot for now, I'm taking my sweet time with OC creation and god, I'm having a great time
ANYWAYS, my favorite part to write was definitely Tiv's first big breakdown. Basically I reached the part of the story which forces my boy to rethink his morals and religion, right after getting terribly traumatized. This writer sure loves angst, ha
