#sarandipitywrites

[did-i-do-this-write]

If Sky could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

Ooohhhhh, this is such a good question. Thank you so much for the ask!

The during-canon answer for this is way too easy, so I'm going pre-canon haha. If she should change anything pre-canon, she probably would have taken athletics in high school more seriously. She let her mom push her into focusing more on academics and going to college instead. She still regrets that a lot (until the plot happens and it becomes much less important).

[oh-no-another-idea]

Happy Worldbuilding Wednesday!

What's a worldbuilding detail from your setting that you haven't talked about as much as you'd like? Ramble at me, please :D

Thanks so much for the ask, Saran! It is now Friday, but I've got a small ramble still in me. :)

In my sci fi WIP Stars and Ships, there's a city they travel through at one point, where there's a huge strip inspired by Times Square in New York, with pedestrian traffic waaay down on the street and then huge lights and signs all the way up the skyscrapers on either side, the air full of spaceship and hover car traffic. Several places take advantage of this and have shows off a thirtieth floor balcony. And some of the signs are holograms, and you can pay for a chunk of time to display your ad, even while you're flying through, by calling a number and transferring the units. They have digital artists to work on your design instantly and then you can fly past it within minutes! (Do I know this sounds like a terrible job for the graphic artists. Yes. But for the sake of this fun detail, we're going to somehow give them great wages and incredible tech to achieve this) Anyways, it's a traffic nightmare, but sometimes you've gotta brave it for the view :)

[starscribes]

☂️ for the WIP ask game!

Thank you so much for the ask, Saran! This is from that WIP excerpt ask game I’ve been doing! It’s been so much fun!

For this excerpt, this is the description of the crescent pendant Astrid wears which is obviously a central part of the story because the book is named for it!

From Crescent Unbound under the cut!

The crescent had been with her since the End, found in the rubble of her home, one of the only things to survive, besides her. She couldn't remember either of her parents wearing it, but it must have been her mother’s, maybe one she saved for special occasions. It was gold filigree with three precious stones inlaid, two small blue ones and one larger green one. There was a fitting on the top to attach it to a chain. There was also one on the inside of the top for another gemstone to hang freely into the middle of the crescent, but she had never been able to find one that looked right.

[oh-no-another-idea]

hi cass, happy blorbo blursday! it's the end of the world as we know it, and your characters have banded together for survival. how are they taking it? has anyone become the leader? who's in charge of food? shelter? are they keeping to themselves, or interacting with other groups of survivors (be it with good or nefarious intent)?

Thanks for the ask, Saran! This is a good one 🌈

Omg I think the Invisible Girl crew would all pee their pants and drop dead--they're all such city people! So we'll do the Stars and Ships guys.

Thresh is in charge of food. He's already the best chef out of them all, and an ex-assassin too, so he can hunt and cook and protect the stores. Jax is the captain, so he's still the leader. He also leads meetings with other survivors so they can trade or turn around and steal from them. Aakov and Aaliyah work on shelter and haggling/trading. Selene, Sepia, and Quin's skills are all kinda worthless here unless there's tech to hack, politics to dish out, or planes to fly...maybe they get really good at weaving ;)

[oh-no-another-idea]

happy storyteller saturday!

do you find that there are certain themes, tropes, or motifs that tend to come up in your projects? are they intentional, or do they more show up on their own?

Thank you so much for stopping by, @sarandipitywrites! I'm sorry it's taken me a while to answer, it's been a busy few days. (life. it's been a busy life) 😭 But happy Monday, thanks for this awesome question!

Found family

Friends to Lovers

Sibling dynamics

Food as a love language/descriptions of food

Jokes

Strong platonic relationships

Pining, usually, if there's any romance involved

Half Asian characters

I would say a lot of this shows up on its own but I am happy and welcoming when I spot them. 😁 Family and friendships and navigating all the ups and downs that come with is definitely something that interests me...and as a half Asian gal myself, I often absently sprinkle in the representation I want for myself 💛

[starscribes]

happy storyteller saturday!

do you find that there are certain themes or tropes or motifs that tend to show up in your projects? is it intentional, or do they just end up appearing?

Happy STS! Thank you for the ask!

I tend to structure a lot of my character-building around families or other similar relationships, a lot of found family tropes here. It's mostly intentional, I had a close-knit but complicated family situation growing up. I lived in a multi-generational and multi-faceted home with a lot of different relationship dynamics going on all at once. So most of my stories involve at least one family relationship which plays a big role in the plot. In my current WIP for NaNo it's actually a reversal/parallel of the previous work. In Otherworld, Jonas goes missing and his son (Sebastian) and his niece (Maxine) go to another world to rescue him. In Shades of Night, Sebastian goes missing and his dad (Jonas) and his sister (Samantha) go looking for him. But the differences in the family dynamics and who is doing the looking and who is lost changes up how events play out dramatically. The main character arc of Otherworld is Maxine's coming-of-age, as in her finding her confidence as a monster hunter. Shades of Night is Sebastian's coming-of-age (even though he's 25 instead of the usual 18ish like Maxine) not as a monster hunter but as a man, finding his confidence just in general, because he's been held back by his father for so long. So in the end when he is found it's not as joyous a reunion as it was in Otherworld but more bittersweet because he's finally found himself and defined himself as a leader on his own and in the end...kind of didn't want to be rescued.

Thanks again for the ask! I do so love getting to talk about my characters and my process! It helps me figure it out for myself a lot of the time when someone else asks the question because I'll never think to ask it of myself!

[i-can-even-burn-salad]

Till Death bonus chapters? 👀👀👀

! :D

While this doc mainly contains the Winter AU, I had the idea for one or two bonus chapters for a while, but out of inspiration, motivation and time, you can only ever get two, so nothing happened.

In April, there is a whump event for disabled characters: @/disabledwhumphurtcomfort, and though I have mixed feelings about a lot of the prompts, I wanted to see if I can get four or five things down. So far, I have written 2, one of which is a TD bonus chapter.

That one is for day 30 - Adapting intimacy - and we will have another, even more awkward talk about sex.

“Finnian?” He jerked awake. He hadn’t heard the bells, and gods, he had fallen asleep *outside*, but there were no birds, there was only Eilis, and— “What are you doing out here?” —that was probably bad in a whole different way.

[i-can-even-burn-salad]

Hi Elli, it's still Saturday for me, so happy STS! If a video game were set in your world, what kind would you want it to be? Would any of your established characters show up? Would it tie into an existing story, or be something totally different?

Happy STS!

It definitely wasn't Saturday anymore for me 💀 Can someone please stop me from modding until 4am.

So, uh, yeah. If. Haha. if a video game—

My world is just a (worse) ripoff of GW2, so if you wanna play a cool world, play that, the base game is free :D

Which leaves me with a story-focused game, and honestly, my dream would be an isometric RPG in the style of pillars of eternity, and even though I prefer real time combat, for the sake of all my OCs as party members, I could live with semi-turn-based.

My world has, kind of, an underlying "we gotta save the world" plot, it just hasn't really made an appearance yet, because I hate writing big casts and high stakes and rather write one more book of some randos suffering 😆

Something has happened to the god of death and the souls of the deceased are running wild. Anything bad happening in my books that isn't caused by human greed is the consequence of that, and we need to stop it before the one responsible rises to godhood.

A few of my guys would be part of the party to save the world: Caldyn, Seyonna, probably Josephine, Breannan, I could send Riordan, too. Would probably have to figure out a plot about gathering a party and finding the clues instead of slowly letting background characters figure it out over the course of several decades.

Shhh, don't look at the similarities of that plot to Pillars of Eternity, whose graphics I want to steal 👀 I have a type, ok.