“It is with the utmost sorrow that I must announce the night prior’s passings of Ethern Litwell, Duffy Parth, Perris Winters, Rikiar Helchen, Teja Mills, Emelia Mills, Erwin Mills, and Flo and Nevil Holmes.” [Balthazar] hangs his head, as much as his thick neck allows, and the silence grows into a soft murmur of prayer and grief. “As ever, we must remember them for who and what they were, and never what they became.”
“You are forgetting someone.”
All heads turn to the stark voice, and Bram recognizes it at once, even with its cracks and edges. Athios, hood drawn over his ever-vacant eyes, a blue flower wilting betwixt his pale fingers.
“Oh?” Balthazar asks, head tilted and lips threatening a cruel smirk that perhaps only Bram would recognize. “And whom might that be?”
“Pennant Bertram.”
“Is that so?” Balthazar unfolds a crumpled paper in his left hand, eyes darting back and forth while his plump lips purse in consideration. “Afraid I don’t see his name here.”
“He wasn’t—the Fangs weren’t responsible for his death.”
“Pray tell, then, what was?”
An uncomfortable shift of Athios’s weight and the clearing of his throat is all that follows.
Happy STS! Where does your character retreat when they need a little space? - reininginthefirewriting
Happy STS, thanks for the ask! Gonna answer for my Bent Nails guys:
Sutton would go outside on a walk with her puppy, or maybe just to sit on a swing, or also to her bedroom.
Jacob starts a new project (luckily he's renovating a house rn so there are plenty of those) and get really involved in it for five hours or so before resurfacing and taking a hot shower.
Michael...does not have healthy coping mechanisms. I think he'd either take a long drive and think about never coming back or go into his room and have a panic attack on his bed. Or go over to Jacob's and hit things with a hammer, which would probably be best for his health lol
Happy STS!! How has your OC’s relationship with their parents (or lack there of) influenced their life? - reininginthefirewriting
Happy STS @reininginthefirewriting also, lovely URL, very cool, 10/10
I straight-up read this as ‘partners’ rather than ‘parents’ and was ready to twist your words, but parents! Yes! Okay! I can do that most of them have parents.
I think the most applicable/interesting characters for this from wip4 are Mika, Percival and Abby, and it’s very much not for any good reason. Mika was raised in a very Catholic house, then turned out to be very queer, and his relationship with his entire family got quite... rocky. He’s still fundamentally accepted by his family, but it’s strained. He only visits on major holidays, and when he does, he’s treated like the person they want him to be, not who he is.
So that whole interaction isolated him for a while, but taught him to be loud and proud about who he is, and taught him that blood relations aren’t the be-all and end-all of life.
Percival and Abby, on the other hand, are more on the spectrum of ‘lack of’ relationship with parents. They both have parents, the same parents (they’re... siblings lmao) but the parents worked a lot. Busy jobs, busy people, they weren’t there a lot when the two were growing up. And when they were, they almost egged conflict on, encouraged competitions and didn’t do a lot to support either of them.
So; Abby got quite bitter about Percival beating her in most competitions, and Percival got to the point where he was always trying to please everyone as much as possible, at the cost of his own wellbeing. As a result, Abby is... kinda abusive to Percival. It results in him becoming an antaognist in the story, due to various very fun experiments that are definitely enjoyed by everyone taking part.
Happy STS!! Are your characters inspired by anyone in your life or are they entirely your own? - reininginthefirewriting
Thanks for the ask! :D I mostly make them up, but I do tend to put bits of myself into the characters and spread that around. Adair is most like me in terms of personality, though. Blythe was inspired by my muse @ageekyreader -- I admire her strength and courage and "take no crap from anyone" attitude and how hard she works at the things she does. I realized a few years into writing Blythe that Ruthie was the inspiration and it makes sense considering that I admire Blythe as a character. The antagonist, Feren, is *definitely* inspired by someone I knew, which I also realized much later after creating him, but I'm going to hold my tongue on this one.
I was tagged by the lovely @reininginthefirewriting, thanks hon! 💖
Tagging (feel free to ignore) @halrose @tentelltales @relevy @writerightmegpie to answer the same questions!
1. How long have you been writing? I started writing when I was 7, so I’ve been on and off for 13 years!
2. What are the major themes of your current WIP(s)? Freedom/individuality, obsession, subjective morality, death, love... understanding/what it means to be understood.
3. What do you want people to take away from your story once they’ve read it? I don’t really... concern myself with take-aways? If my readers finish my books and spend any amount of time chewing on the complexity of the subjects and themes I write about... that’s all I can ask.
4. Would you be excited if people wrote fanfiction about your WIPs? YES. Yes, yes, yes!!! I’ve written a lot of fanfiction in the past and for someone to put in enough dedication to write fanfiction for something I created... That’s like, a fever dream, I can’t even comprehend it. The only problem is I’d want to read it and I couldn’t asdfghjkl
5. What’s your go-to writing beverage? Coffee with lots of cream, and/or a can of sparkling water!
6. Who is your favorite OC? i-i uh, love them equally like any good parent I love, love, love León. I see so much of myself in him--he’s definitely developed on his own and is far from a self-insert, but he’s kind of cycled around to share a lot of things with me that I didn’t intend. He’s also got a lot of things in his own head that he’s tried to keep on lockdown, but there’s a lot of self-destructive elements to him, and that puts him on this precipice and it’s super fascinating to watch what happens when you give him a little shove.
7. Do you feel mistakes are important learning tools in the writing journey? For sure! Mistakes are important in every journey, and you don’t stop making them just because you’ve journeying for a while, either (although theoretically the mistakes you make shouldn’t be the same ones over again lol)! I make mistakes all the time, but they’re different mistakes (or at least fewer) than the ones I made when I was, say, 11.
8. Rank your OCs by their capability in a foot chase (either running from or after something, your choice).
LMAO. Okay uh starting with fastest:
Benjie
Seven
Violeta
León
Ana
Vicente
Sylvia
Eliza
9. Does your WIP have romance? Tell us about it! If not, tell us about an important friendship/relationship/dynamic! Yes! The romance between Vicente and León is central to the story--they’re able to meet and interact with each other on a lot of levels that most people couldn’t. They’re both kind of coy about their crimes and engage in a lot of wordplay, and they’re both very immoral, and their traumas have a lot of overlap. But their relationship hits on so many levels that it allows them to reveal a lot that they wouldn’t otherwise, and it loops back around to León’s self-destructiveness.
10. Do you believe in the advice kill your darlings? Mm... like all advice, it has a time and a place, and that place is not universal. I, personally, am not a huge fan of it, but I also generally don’t prefer writing/stories that are too lean and I’m sure that’s related.
11. Do you prefer plotting or worldbuilding? Why? Worldbuilding, for sure! I’m not very good at plotting--I almost never follow any plotting I do in advance, so it usually just stresses me out and I’m at the point where I almost skip over the plotting stage entirely--but worldbuilding is so, so much fun. I love creating new places and cultures and systems, and doing research to incorporate realistic aspects, and I have so much fun with slipping small pieces of that work into my stories.
🦖 🫘 and 🪩 am only sending the dino because it needs to be done :p cross out fandom and use any of your current or past projects
🦖 Are there any fandoms projects you wrote for in the past that you'd like to return to? I would love to get back into writing Neon Bloodlust, but am trying to avoid it until after I have finished rem draft 2.0 and gotten at least some work done on mtd. To which you might ask, but Raven, are you not working on Macetakes as a side project, why not Neon Bloodlust instead? and to which I say, the latter requires much more brain power lol
🫘 Spill the beans. What's a new project you're doing this year? You just want me to ramble about Mace, I am not fooled. You know everything that I do, though, so far, probably, but I suppose I could divulge the facts to everyone else :
The gist of the plot is that a man named Mason ‘Mace’ Cummings grew up in the system, tossed between varying shitty families, all of whom failed him in one way or another, and his teenage years were lost to drugs and abuse. He gets clean in his early twenties and dedicates his new free time and clear mind to working for that same system that failed him as a caseworker for at-risk kids, hoping to ensure the kids under his care don’t face the same shitty upbringing that he did.
He’s in his mid thirties at the start of High on My Mistakes, aloof and perpetually exhausted. Has only one close friend, Piers : an art teacher who is also Mace’s long-term fuck buddy, and is also in a long-term relationship with his asexual girlfriend Poppy, who set Mace and Piers up early into both relationships and it’s been going on ever since.
He has zero interest in a full-blown relationship and thus Piers is the perfect solution for him to get off without complications and dealing with strangers.
Somewhere in the midst of the plot, he will relapse, the aftermath of which will leave him more devastated than he has ever been, because it will lead to a Mistake of extreme proportions.
Are you seeing now why it’s called what it is?
Anyway. He lives out of his office at the youth center because of a disagreement with his landlord, whom he tells to piss off before abandoning the apartment and most of his belongings altogether. A coworker catches him sleeping in said office and he gets in trouble with management. Kicked out on the streets in a snow storm. Seeks refuge in a thought-to-be-abandoned house.
Finds a boy there who looks an awful lot like the boy on the missing person posters stapled around town.
Boy pleads for him not to take him in to the police, his parents aren’t who they say they are.
The rest shall remain a mystery for everyone else.
🪩 Do you have any "good" writing habits you want to cultivate? None of my current writing habits are good. They are all broken and need remedied. I need a routine and motivation. Which I aim to work on this week, hopefully.
Triceratops - share a scene where one character is protecting or caring for another
from neon bloodlust, and is also maybe my favorite scene from it so far
A snap of fingers and a soft, “Hey, stay with me, Graves,” lures Vex back to the surface. Detroit hovers above him in a haze of shifting lights and colors.
“M’not going anywhere,” Vex manages to choke out, hand slipping where it cups his side to stop the blood flow. Detroit secures his hand over Vex’s, draws it back in place and presses down. “Fuck,” he hisses, “You trying to hurt me or help me here?”
“Less talking, more focusing on staying alive.”
Vex mumbles a response. Thinks he does, anyway, but judging by the frantic pat of Detroit’s other hand against his cheek, he must be slipping under again.
“Said you weren’t going anywhere.”
“M’not.”
“I don’t believe you. Medics are due in under ten minutes, hold on for me until they get here.”
Vex sighs. Would roll his eyes if he thought himself capable right now. “Got it.”
“Promise?” A beat of silence follows. Another nudge of Detroit’s palm against Vex’s cheek. “Vex. Promise me.”
A rumble of laughter fills the hollows in Vex’s chest, softening to something almost unbearable, because Detroit’s got his pinky finger raised in expectance. Vex lifts his hand away from the crushed glass underneath him, hooks his pinky around Detroit’s. “Promise.”
