the difference between cooking scrambled and fried eggs is almost comical
scrambled eggs: just give us a few stirs in the pan and we're good :)
fried eggs: The Day of Judgement has come and you have been found Wanting. We will rain Boiling Oil upon your sinful flesh. We will break our yolks in the pan for No Reason. We will cleave to the metal so tightly that you will Scrape and Scrape and not be rid of us. You wanted a "little something" in your bagel? Woe! Woe be upon ye! The only things you'll be putting on that bagel are Scraps and Regret
🌧Rain: What is one thing that can immediately ruin your character's mood?
for various characters, in no particular order:
- being kept from something because "you wouldn't understand" or "you're a kid" ("well, you wouldn't know if i 'couldn't understand' unless you told me, no?")
- the threat of discovery ("nobody saw anything. nobody saw anything, right?")
- having to boil bandages for the fifteenth time in a row ("i could be doing literally anything else.")
- disappointing someone else, again ("why can't i ever get it right?")
ahahaha i did not have the answers to most of these before this. time to get to making decisions lmao
while i do like to imagine that many of my stories take place in the same world, this is unfortunately impossible for my main two due to magic system differences. thus, each question here will be answered for both!
🏔 - What's the highest place in the world/setting?
- in Linset's world: the tallest mountains they know of belong to the Kervel range north of Pestle; the Academy of the Arcane is built into one of its mountainsides. the highest mountains to exist are probably somewhere in Yimri's home continent. while the question doesn't specify mountains specifically, the attempts by the Academy at hot air balloons... weren't really going for height (and weren't going to get up very high anyway), so mountains it is
- in Wyn's world: the tallest mountains are probably to the west somewhere, in the country of Cinarei across the ocean. the country of Rithyl's mountains, though, are much closer to where the story takes place despite being shorter. and yeah no one's made any contraption that lets them get higher than a mountain here either.
🏘 - How large is the population?
- in Linset's world: recently suffered a pretty huge dip due to the spread of ashwater fever; once-thriving towns are now husks of themselves trying to stay afloat. ashwater hasn't yet reached Yimri's home continent in noteworthy amounts, which explains why they have to be like "oh yeah the plague exists", and which might also explain why they're at the Academy in the first place—more demand for people, i guess
- in Wyn's world: heaven knows i'm not giving numerical estimates for world population for either of these lmao. but the House in the Glade had to be pretty small; you'd run into supply issues otherwise. so there's probably like a hundred people in there maximum. there haven't really been any drastic changes in population like in Linset's world, though more children in rural areas have been strangely reported missing as of late
🏨 - What is the healthcare like?
- in Linset's world: while doctors and clergyfolk used to clash quite heavily in the field of medicine, their relationship has since mellowed out, and you can now find both of them chatting amicably with each other in healers' halls. the same cannot be said for mages—they're seen as volatile, and their magic is regarded as "dangerous" and also "cheating". Linset, creator of the first known healing spell ever, is working to change this. as for the hospitals themselves, they're currently extremely overworked due to. yknow. plague happening
- in Wyn's world: healers are beloved and respected members of their communities, and there's probably an organized group of them in one of the bigger cities. they work closely with apothecaries and spellworkers—literally stitching a wound closed isn't unusual, and neither is singing someone out of illness. dreamer's daisies can be used as a sedative for more critical procedures in the right doses, but that's expensive since the flowers are painstakingly difficult to find. they never grow singly; there's always a whole big cluster of them, and before you know it your daisy-gatherer's breathed too much and been soundly lulled to sleep for a week. and your daisy-gatherer-finder. so on and so forth
🚂 - How easy is transport?
- in Linset's world: the Academy absolutely could make it easier, but since when has the Academy cared for the pitiful masses in their mountain's shadow? so carts and carriages and dirt roads between cities it is. could Yimri's letter-sending spell be modified to expedite the transport of people as well? quite possibly, but i haven't written that bit yet
- in Wyn's world: Semlinn's (formerly Gizemlinn; i changed it) a pretty flat country, all in all, so i can't imagine putting in paved roads between major cities would be too difficult. the forest to the south is known for being totally impassable, though (much to Frel's chagrin), and you're still gonna be on wagons and stuff. spellcraft can make one's lovingly-cobbled shoes eat up slightly more distance than they should, but good luck finding the number of wheelwrights to make faster caravans something more than a rarity
✈️ - How common is it to travel between countries/kingdoms/etc?
- in Linset's world: intercontinental travel is rare enough that Yimri my poor beloved international student is still getting grief for it /hj; they probably got to the Academy by boat. the Academy is bringing in more of them though, so we'll see how that turns out. between countries is more common—Rhemme successfully relocated from Aechre to Bysatter and back without any complications
- in Wyn's world: once again, this will vary by country! Semlinn and Rithyl are fairly friendly trading partners, so it isn't surprising to see at least a few Rithylli folk in Semli cities, and vice versa. people from Rithyl will travel through Semlinn if they want to see the coast, and Rithyl will get Semli visitors who want to "get a taste of the mountain air" or some such. as for other countries: Cinari people are quite uncommon in Wyn's home continent, and Orrethi people will clump together while traveling and randomly show up all at once to places
🌦 - What is the weather like?
- in Linset's world: Pestle is fairly rainy! Rain is where the Academy gets much of its water, and the city has had to build protections against the nearby river flooding.
- in Wyn's world: most days and nights are clear in Mesanthe, though Semlinn is not without its rainy days come winter. it's pretty warm, so it doesn't get that much snow
let me tell you about my brother's unhinged eating habits
firstly he cannot stand the taste of egg. this is baffling to me but may be the most normal item on this list. he used to run out of the room whenever someone else peeled a boiled egg. now he's fine with it in food as long as he "can't taste or smell it", but once our mom tricked him into eating some by telling him it was tofu, so.
he also used to hate cooking eggs as well, but i have recently coaxed him to crack a few while making pumpkin pie. i'm so proud of him :))
secondly he likes sparkling water, to the point where he will drink it in place of regular water. i do not understand this and i'm not sure i want to.
thirdly he used to make the most unholy concoctions known to man. he once poured pepsi into tomato soup and thereby dubbed it "poop". he said it was good. he has poured potato chips into a glass of milk and drank it (i forget what he called that one).
he also once dipped a slice of pizza into a glass of sparkling water and named the resulting abomination "spizza water". then proceeded to finish both the pizza and the water. i firmly believe he is a menace to society.
> i think it was something related to Sky: Children of the Light on Quotev, since that's what i was into in middle school. i also read a bunch of web originals on Wattpad, but i forget whether there was fanfiction among them or not
yes i also wrote sky: cotl fanfic in eighth grade... i have improved my writing since lmao
7. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
> when i was really little i wanted to be a doctor (shoutout asian parenting) but i decided i didn't want to deal with gross insides. and ever since then i've had no idea what i wanted to be when i grew up.
in terms of career, anyway... nowadays if you ask me, "alive and happy" is my go-to answer
aaa sorry this took so long! i've been a bit busy lol
anyway yay yippee here we go!!! it's time to spoil (almost) everything in my story!! those three chapters i wrote years ago are a bit outdated now lol
wyn and frel are the two characters that i've fleshed out the most. so...
(disclaimer that some of the lore is tenuous and may be changed later!)
Wyn (technically short for Elowyn, don't call her that though) had been raised in the House in the Glade, an ominous institution/orphanage, for as long as she can remember. Days were spent doing chores, studying, assisting Housekeepers with unknowable "projects", and hoping you wouldn't get sent into that room in that hallway.
What happened in the room?
No one who came out of it remembered what went on in there. All they knew is the all-consuming dread they felt when they thought about it.
Friends were discouraged, so the few friendships that did form were far between and made in secret. The individual was more easily controlled than the united group.
But what is the House, really?
A long time ago, a group of people got really into spellwork. Like, really into it. Enough that they set up Houses (there are multiple, scattered about) in order to study how it worked—possible effects, what causes it, how far one can push it, etc. Naturally, they turned to children as a useful resource, being pliable, curious, and having nimble enough fingers for more delicate spellcraft.
So how were the Housekeepers supposed to acquire a steady supply of children?
They turned to the feyfolk—ideally, the ones who lived in higher Courts, the ones for whom kindness was a more foreign concept than trickery and caprice—and asked if they would like to make a deal:
We give you the chance to revive the changeling trade (which had largely fallen out of use but for a very vocal minority).
You give us the human children resulting from that trade.
We give you, when the children grow too old for our purposes, servants brimming with spellwork.
The feyfolk accepted.
Currently, the House is probably formulating some kind of magic anathema to all laws of nature and plotting a future takeover of the fey Courts. which i'm sure will go well for everyone involved.
Wyn doesn't know about any of that (yet), but there have been enough incongruities lining up (perhaps the Housekeepers don't think the children will notice? perhaps they've gotten lax? decades of treating them as mere resources will do that...) that she's fairly certain the place is up to Some Dubious Stuff™.
She's not entirely sure how to be her own person yet.
In earlier drafts, Wyn was a budding spellsinger, able to hear the world's melodies and respond in kind. I think she still is, but it's been tainted by the House. She's going to have to learn how to reclaim it as her own.
Frel is a changeling (representing the other side of the House's equation). This means that the Folk wove thin threads of sunlight and shadow into greenwood branches, added in enough magic to make them a person, and put them in the place of one of the children they stole.
You can imagine how well that went for them (it turns out people don't particularly like it when the child they were raising is suddenly a stranger). Once it became apparent that the "real" child wasn't going to come back, Frel's village (can they still call it their village? they don't know) came to an agreement, dug a hole in the forest, and shoved them in, burying them alive.
Frel thinks it was an attempt to trade them back. Frel knows it didn't work (they're still here, after all).
What they don't know is how they ended up getting out from under several feet of dirt. They're not sure they want to remember it anymore (and they still avoid the underground whenever they can help it), but sometimes they feel like the forest has been watching them more closely since that night.
They've kinda just been wandering ever since (hiding what they are since most towns don't take kindly to changelings).
They're not entirely sure they deserve to be loved as themself.
Frel knows that they're connected to the forest, but they have no idea how far the trees would bend for them if they asked. The fact that it was even possible for them to get lost in the forest near where the House was is going to be a big red flag in the future.
(and by god, they're going to be furious once they realize that the House is the reason changelings like them have been made to suffer.)
some fun (or, well, "fun") facts about each!
wyn's hair is tangled as all hell because of a rumor that said that Housekeepers could stitch your shed hair onto a map to track you. she just... stopped brushing it to avoid pulling any hairs free. (it doesn't do anything. she knows she sheds hair anyway. she knows. why is she still—?)
wyn has a really good memory for plants, especially the deep forest herbs she was taught to gather. she's also the type to absorb knowledge like a sponge and then infodump it all back out at you later
frel has a few (metaphorical) wires crossed in regards to how their senses are supposed to work. the natural human inclination towards sweet flavors (and distaste for bitter ones) is entirely lost on them, so they have no idea why wyn lights up at the sight of pastries.
what they do like is fun and crunchy textures. and tea. they like the act of making it because the ritual calms them down, and they also put way too many lemon slices in it. they call it "refreshing". (wyn calls it "utterly insane". she has no idea how someone could drink that with a straight face.)
