and uh, then I didn't write anything for a million years, so I will now give you some (prequel) Esther Sinclair from Dimension 20/The Unsleeping City because that is the only thing in my brain now
Esther loses her mother to rage and feels the sorrow lift in her in response. Even as young as she is, she knows she can't let it in, can't let it out, can't let it be. But it's too much to bear, especially as young as she is, so she screams and pounds her fists and kicks her heels against the floor until she can't breathe and she passes out.
When she wakes she hurts and remembers her mother's rage and claims it instead of sorrow.
She kicks her bed, her shelves, her door; her father tries to hold her and she bites him and he flinches and she screams until she loses her voice and her breath and cannot cry.
Her father dresses her in black because a dead mother is easier to explain to the outside world than magic, and she despises her father for giving up so quickly, for believing that her mother would never, could never come back, and she keeps herself angry enough she won't cry.
She fights everyone and everything because it helps her turn pain into an attack, sends it out and out and out, clawing and boxing and kicking and learning a smile that shows her teeth and doesn't let the tide inside her rise. When people hit back, when friends leave, when possibilities die, even when she loses and loses and loses, she never cries.
Somehow she makes it through the next five years, eight, ten, her father a ghost behind her who doesn't dare feel things because then she'd feel them too, and he won't survive losing a daughter the same way he lost a wife. (They've already lost each other, and they both know it, but they pretend, because it's that or drowning, and drowning is salt, is tears, is the end. He drifts away when she's nineteen, disappears somewhere as far from the sea as he can, somewhere he can feel again without her. She never sees him again.)
She doesn't cry, she refuses, and for now that's enough.
But she also refuses to just wait until it's not, because everyone falls eventually, and she will not be like her mother and embrace hope to the point of ignorance, will not start a family and then leave them when she fails. She can feel the magic inside her, that deep deep sea of the pain that comes after rage fades, but her mother's rage will never fade, so Esther's doesn't either, not yet, and she doesn't fall in.
Esther dives instead into the deep end of the Unsleeping City, lets herself fall into other types of magic. Magic can be dormant, can be awakened, can be innate and felt, can be gifted and uplifted, can be observed and analyzed, can be learned.
So she learns.
Magic is versatile and dangerous and beautiful. She can't risk the power within her; she builds new power outside of it, around it, fencing and framing it in until it's as far from her thoughts as possible. Until her thoughts stay as far from her heart as she can make them. But she's still human, can't break that connection completely. She's still Cursed, and that Curse is in her blood and her heart and her desires, and however tightly she covers them up they're still there, and she knows it.
There isn't much else she knows, despite all her research and training. Every curse has a counter-curse, but sometimes the counter is just as bad, and even if this one isn't, the Furies are old, older than written history, and nothing she can find has any information on the Curse itself, no known way to take it apart and look at its pieces, only scant observations of the effects, the aftermath.
Most curses have very specific goals, and once those goals are met they're gone. One big push of magic and intention, too strong to easily break or dispel, but sometimes they can be mitigated, or dodged, or simply endured, and one can come out the other side of them changed but free.
Or dead.
That is the most common way to end a curse.
That won't work for her.
Not that Esther wants to die, but she'd be tempted if she knew that this would end, that she would be the last one.
This is not that sort of curse.
It endures, more than any other hex or curse or spell she can find and she doesn't know why.
She is forced to guess, to hypothesize, to wonder rather than to know. She wonders what some distant fore-mother did to incite such an endless vicious consequence, a Curse that follows their bloodline and cannot be banished or cured or even killed. Because it had to have been a woman, they're all women, only women, mother to daughter as far back as anyone can trace. Usually only one, but sometimes more, just often enough that if the eldest daughter dies before she falls, the Curse doesn't fail, doesn't end. It moves, and claims, and destroys someone else.
Their bloodline never dies, despite centuries of women who married less, had fewer children, who tried to hide and dodge and change and still endured, still had daughters, still survived even when they weren't really living. Esther wonders if the Curse is tied somehow to the Fates, some light touch of precognition, just enough to make sure their family keeps going, despite logic or desire, despite the odds suggesting that they should have been devoured by the Furies ages past.
If Esther dies, she's sure the Curse will find someone else, some distant relative far enough away to be ignorant, but not far enough to be safe. (There's no such thing as safe, not really. Safer, maybe, but even that is only for other people. Not her. Never her.)
She wonders how much worse a Fury could get, one who didn't even know what she was, had no idea how magic worked, had no chance at all of tempering the Fury's power as it rose, of retreating to the refuge (the cage) her family had made of Tompkins Park.
The Curse lives on, so she will too.
It would be such a relief to know why, even if it didn't mean she could stop it, maybe it would ache less, somehow. Just a little.
But instead it's always there, cold and bitter and deep, salt and tears and eternal sorrow. She wonders if that pool inside her feels the way it does because this Curse is somehow tied to the sea, eternally shifting tides that will never ever end.
She stops wondering about that, because she can feel her balance waver. She needs a little hope, no matter how pragmatic she has to be to get through most days. She learns to avoid some thoughts, but she never outright lies to herself if she can help it. She will never let her guard down, never pretend she is safe when she knows she isn't. She's still angry at her mother for that, for falling when Esther was still so young, when she needed a mother, when she needed to be able to cry.
She has to be angry. She grips it tight, because it's the only shield she has; anger works, but only for so long. Eventually she'll burn out, and she'll drown, and she'll take everyone and everything with her.
She wonders what her mother held onto when she couldn't risk anger, wonders if perhaps her mother cried, was as different from the woman Esther has made herself as it is possible to be. She wonders if her mother's rage feels like a storm, a tsunami, if it's salt and depth just like her hidden sorrow, if her grandmother's grief is the quiet but endless rain that still floods, and drowns, and carries everything, eventually, down to the sea.
She wonders, but she doesn't believe. That seems too kind.
She would bet that the Furies can't even have that, can't share the taste of the Curse as it overwhelms them. She remembers faint lost stories of her grandmother, whispers of soft warmth turned remote and grey, remembers the bright explosion of magic and pain when her mother fell. She thinks that her mother burns, fire and sparks in her bones and her blood, believes that her grandmother is the stretch of a tundra far from any town, empty and solitary and rock hard beneath each step. She can feel it, somehow, in the depths of the tides within her, that when she falls they'll still only give each other pain, opposite and opposing sides of the same terrible magic.
She wonders if the Curse manifests in different elements, if her Great-Grandmother had been an air Fury, cold and fierce as arctic wind, or as heavy and cloying as the tropics. Imagines, for a moment, the soft warmth of a spring breeze instead. She wonders if there's a clue to the counter-curse there, balancing element and temperament with four instead of three.
She realizes she's half recreated the theory of humors, and wonders how she got herself caught up in such nonsense. There's no known way to make another Fury, and even if there were she wouldn't risk it somehow making the Curse more powerful. There has never been a fourth Fury. There are three of them, vicious and deadly and inhuman. The have always only been three Furies, though sometimes it takes a generation or two for the next woman to fall.
Always.
The more she learns, the harder it is to hold onto that one small drop of hope. She's not the first to try and break this Curse, it's sheer hubris to think she'll somehow be the last.
Hubris is probably what got her into this, judging by most mythology. Might as well use it to try and get out, right? She won't give up, she'll never give up, but maybe there's a way around it instead of through, an evasion rather than a breaking.
She learns.
She experiments.
She talks to people, learns to smile without baring her fangs so that they're willing to talk back.
She doesn't make friends, not really, but she learns to be friendly enough. Alejandro and Kingston, Misty and Mike and Willy, Rovias and Orlando and Frank, Ana and Amelia and occasionally even Jackson, though the Monastery's always been a little sideways to the practice of magic, and she's certainly not ready to accept that her life is what it is.
She's careful with her questions, so only Alejandro has managed to put any of the pieces together. (No one else knows her well enough to bother, which is entirely on purpose, but doesn't make her feel better. Not that she needs to feel better. She just can't risk feeling worse.) None of them give her any leads, however, and Esther knows she's running out of time.
If she can't break the Curse, she'll just have to get in its way by cursing herself with something else before it takes hold.
She does not explain this plan to Alejandro, because she knows exactly what he'd say, and also that then he'd keep much too close an eye on her, and that might make her think about how much he means to her, and that is something that has to be avoided.
Esther can't pull off anything as nasty as the thing she's already dealing with, so a new curse seems a reasonable enough risk to her, and her opinion is, in the end, the only thing she's got. She just has to find the right school, the right structure to use.
Necromancy was out; death moved the Curse.
Both healing and destructive Evocation spells had been attempted by every sort of spellcaster she'd heard of (and a few she still hadn't translated into anything she recognized) whenever the Furies showed up throughout history; she hasn't been able to come up with anything new to try there.
Transmutation would carry a bloodline curse with the transformation, so she can't turn herself into a swan or something. Animals still have emotions, and while a Swan Fury is an odd enough mental image to make her snort out a laugh when she first thinks of it, it's also terrifying, so that's not worth the risk. (The cure for most transformation curses involve someone who loves you doing something to help, quests, vows of silence and nettle shirts, or even just a kiss, and she has gone out of her way to try and prevent herself from loving anyone, from letting anyone else love her, and she's learned too much not to know that, and she values her knowledge too much not to think about it, and that way lies almost as much sorrow as the loss she's trying to avoid might cause.)
Divination doesn't really do curses, except of blinding someone to obvious consequences, and that's the opposite of helpful here. If she cobbles one together it might prevent the Curse from continuing whatever weird shit it does that means her family doesn't die out, but it would take a few generations to know if it had worked or not, and well. She'd be gone and unable to do the follow-up by then, and she doesn't know where more of her family might be, so she can't ask someone else to keep an eye on them after she's gone. (And that still doesn't help save her or anyone around her right now.)
Conjuration would just be adding something else to the Curse, and since she can't figure out what was in it to begin with, there's no telling what that would do. She can't use abjuration to shield herself from it without shielding herself from her own blood, which would again be fatal, and if she banishes herself it would, just like in transmutation, come with her. She could throw herself into a pocket realm, so at least she wouldn't hurt anyone, but then she'd just be stuck as a Fury for a subjective eternity until she died and the Curse could do its thing again to someone else. Without even that much time passing here, probably, considering how small pocket realms were in comparison to everywhere and everywhen else.
Illusion or Enchantment magic wouldn't change the Curse itself, just the way she could see it or interact with it, so that wouldn't help. It might even make it easier to trigger, rather than limiting it to sorrow.
She'd considered a sleep spell, of course, as the one exception. She had even gone so far as to doodle a vine covered tower in the margins of one of her notebooks, thorns poking around her sentences, but what if she had bad dreams and woke up a Fury, with no idea of where or when she was, or how she'd drowned in sorrow?
Even so, she couldn't seem to come up with anything better.
She'd have to make an anchor, something small enough that she could keep it on her at all times, sturdy enough that it wouldn't easily break down after she triggered it. Something to keep the spell steady so she'd be deep enough to avoid dreaming, to sleep through the shifting of magic or noise around her, but not so deep she'd die, freeing the Curse to find its next victim.
Her test run on a curse anchor was a spindle, because she did allow herself a sense of humor, but that would be a bit hard to explain as a keepsake in her pocket.
Her next run was a set of rings that would trigger if she put them both on the the same finger. She wore enough magical jewelry that even if someone went looking, they wouldn't be able to tell exactly what they were for.
And she could keep them on all the time, easy to access if she started to lose control before she found a cure.
From the table I DM it's probably our witch's find familiar spell which consists of 10 minutes of walking around rhythmically and chanting "WHERE IS THE DUCK" - that always legitimately breaks me for about 10 minutes before I can DM again
From the one I play in, it's us insisting that the god (that heaps of people in the material plane worship) that we're trying to keep locked away is "just some guy" - despite a lot of evidence to the contrary
I was tagged by @theladyw for this book questionnaire!
1- how many books are too many books in a series?
Eh... depends on the series. I've never really read much beyond eight or ten in a series, so it depends on the quality and the storylines and the characters. Are they still progressing and growing without feeling like we're rehashing the same thing over and over again? Is it still interesting, digging deeper into the lore without feeling tacked on and "oh shit I need to make up random junk so sell this book" rather than "oh man I can expand this part here so I can tell this story now", I'm all for it.
2- what do you think about cliffhangers?
If there's enough of the storyline wrapped up at the end of the book where it can feel like and ending but there's more mystery after that, I'm cool with it. If it feels like I'm totally left in a lurch? Nah, that sucks.
3- hardback or paperback?
I'm not too pressed on either, I read both and I also read e-books. If I had to choose, I'd probably say hardcover? Only because it's a bit easier to stack them that way.
4- least favourite book?
5- Love Triangle, yes or no?
Love Triangles are rarely done in a reasonable fashion anyways, but I don't really like them. Also because most love triangles aren't real love triangles (they're love arrows/chevrons u_u), there's no chance of a polyamorous relationship in 99.99% of stories.
But sometimes I like drama, except I like a particular flavour of it that's also sorta rare. *shrug*
6- the most recent book you just couldn’t finish
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. It's honestly a good book in theory, but it was so harsh and critical and depressing I couldn't get through it. The views it held were the antithesis of my own, so I couldn't.
Luckily my dad "spoiled" it for me anyways and we can discuss it on that level, haha, maybe I'll try again one day.
7- book you are currently reading
Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's a book about... spiders, I suppose? It's sci-fi and WEIRD but it's fascinating. On a new planet a science mission wanted to recreate humans, so they launched monkeys with a neurovirius at the planet (except it happened during a coup that launched human civilization into the dark ages and the monkeys died but the neurovirus infected local spiders instead which evolved in their own unique way).
It's so weird. This is the second in the series, but I highly recommend it.
8- last book you recommended to someone
Not including the one above, I recommended Neon Leviathan by T.R. Napper. It's a collection of stories set in a cyberpunk/dystopian universe set in Australia (and I think southeast Asia; Vietnam, mostly). It's all about the outsiders and the nobodies. It was fascinating and hard to read at times, but good.
9- oldest book you read
Beowulf, the Danish Saga. My dad read this to me when I was young. I feel like... I think I was six? Maybe seven or eight. Then I read it again in ninth grade for fun. My dad would read a page and then explain what was going on, it was so fun and weird, especially when Beowulf got into Grendel's lair and confronted the mother.
We named two of our kitties Beowulf and Grendel actually.
10- the most recent book you read ?
Neon Leviathan by T.R. Napper, I just finished it. Torn between finishing Harrow the Ninth and Children of Ruin, but my family has finished it and are wanting to discuss it so I gotta get cracking.
I read so slow these days... ugh.
11- favourite author?
Eh.. I really like Becky Chambers, Martha Wells, and James S.A. Corey. Those are the ones I've been excited for recently. Back in the day it was Eric Nylund cause he had a great style that caught my attention.
12- buying books or borrowing books?
Both. Buy what I want for myself and borrow before I buy them myself (or trade for them).
13- a book you dislike that everyone else seems to love
Game of Thrones. I legit do not care about it.
14 - bookmarks or dogears?
Bookmarks only because I like making them and I always lose the dogears anyways. But I don't care, books are just words on paper, they aren't sacred. It's the ideas that are sacred in their own way. Folk have a lot of weird ideas with books.. like you can't crack the spine or bend a page or whatever, but seriously it's not that deep.
I love seeing well-loved books. Notes and creases and frayed edges, even torn or weathered pages. Coffee stains, pen marks, misprints and weird shit. It's just a story, and honestly the only books that shouldn't be damaged are the antiques. That's cause of history.
15- The book you can always reread?
The Murderbot Diaries and the Expanse Series.
16- can you read while listening to music?
Yes, but I can't listen to music with lyrics, confuses my silly little mind.
17- one POV or multi POV?
Either, but it has to be clearly marked or indicated somehow. Like the chapter has a name as the title or they have very distinct ways of speaking or acting or thinking. And never multiple POV's in the same chapter, I cannot keep it straight.
18- do you read book in one sitting or in multiple days?
..........I have to take like... a month to read a book it's so upsetting.... I used to read them in days or a week at most.
Hi. I'm trying to track down a short fic where Aziraphale basically sheds minor miracles the happier he gets. Takes place in a sushi restaurant. Thanks!
Dearest T: pacing in stories (story progression not repeative walking). What are your thoughts on it? How does one find the right groove? P.S. You are a lovely lady and I wish you all the best for 2019. ^3^
You are such a joy and delight; I can’t tell me how many times you’ve sent something my way just when I needed it. (I still have one of your lovely cards on my inspiration/nice people saying nice things cork board in my office, too <3)
I’ve been thinking a lot about story progression lately, actually. I’m not sure I’m finished thinking about it. Back in the autumn, I spent some time reading about plotting/outlining and some of it was very helpful and informative, but it also made me think about the differences between fanfiction and published (especially traditionally published) original fic.
Most people are told over and over and over again that, when writing a story, plot is paramount. We’re taught from a super young age (or, at least I was) that you have to hit specific plot points (inciting incident, rising action, climax, denouement, with some little peaks in the rising action section). This is the basis of the all-hallowed three-act structure.
The three-act structure is a really good structure; honestly, I don’t have an issue with it. It’s popular because it works. It’s familiar, and a lot of readers (unconsciously, mostly) shy away from the unfamiliar. However, especially in published fiction, being a slave to plot points means, quite often, that character moments get lost or sacrificed because they don’t ‘serve the plot’ or ‘drive the story.’ (This is a generalization, of course.)
Fanfiction, then, tends to take already-established plots and characters and really delve into characterization. Instead of cutting a scene or a conversation or a moment because it doesn’t directly feed the plot, fanfiction authors let themselves settle into moments and mine characterization. Even when fanfic authors write plotty multi-chaptered fic or novels, often, they allow themselves time to linger in moments and focus on characterization. Fanfiction lets writers (and readers) get more of what they want, or what they felt was missing from the original source material.
I think original fiction could learn some things from fanfiction, to be honest. I think there’s a middle ground between fast-paced plot and a 200,000-word coffee shop AU. Moving the story forward doesn’t always mean hitting the next plot point. Sometimes it means learning more about the characters via dialogue or a scene that doesn’t have ~*action*~ in the physical sense. I know I would like juicy dialogue and character-based scenes in the published fiction I read, even if it means a slight delay before the next plot-based beat.
At the end of the day, pacing is a subjective sort of thing. When I’m editing (both my own work and the work of others), I judge pacing by the “when did I put the book down” metric. Did I put the book down because I got bored, confused, or irritated? Was it because the author started repeating themselves? Did I put it down because I felt satisfied and was ready for a break before diving in again? Did I only put the book down because something pulled me away, leaving me desperate to get back to the book as soon as possible? Generally speaking, I think good pacing involves a mixture of action (of the big picture type: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. whatever), character development (i.e., learning new things about the character, or seeing the character respond to things in a new/different way), and plot (the cumulative actions that lead to the climax and resolution of the story). It’s like baking with a recipe that has ingredients but no amounts; it takes a lot of trial and error (and tasting) to discover what you like best (and what works best for you).
eponymous-rose replied to your post “I try to bite the gelatinous cube.”
Forbidden jello!
We tried to carve up the jello so everyone could have some, but it must not have set properly because it just fell apart into a big mess.
Now I’ve been biting some black puddings, which are even less tasty. Mmmm, acid on my mandibles.
theladyw replied to your post “I try to bite the gelatinous cube.”
My group befriended the last gelatinous cube we came across. Highly recommend.
That does sound handy, but tricky! They’re not very smart. (Of course, we befriended Augie the cat, and he isn’t that much smarter than a gelatinous cube. Sorry, baby cat, but it’s true.)
Kiss Prompts for Writers and Artists: Lily x Tibs -- 3. Surprise Kiss
She can’t resist - it’s to good of an opportunity, really, she’d be passing up a clear invitation.
Tiberius is just so into his current match - leading the Tribe through a final set of quests to clear the dungeon, mandibles flaring in and out in excitement as he clears gate after gate.
Lily’d been out with Rose when he’d first started the dungeon, so she’s been sitting beside him and watching in amusement as he forges a way through the obstacles and enemies, enjoying listening to him mumble about maneuvers and attacks.
So, really, it’s just to hard to resist - he finishes off the dungeon and trills in excitement, throwing one arm up and turning towards her-
Lily catches him with an arm around his neck and her lips pressed firmly to his mouth plates, grinning at his startled chirp that shifts swiftly into a low, rumbling purr.
She hums happily against him when one long arm wraps around her waist to pull her bodily into his lap, his tongue slipping smoothly past her lips and quickly stealing her breath. They pull back after a moment, both panting and eyeing each other giddily.
Then Tiberius rumbles out a laugh, nuzzling at her neck. “Not normally one for surprises, you know… but that’s a surprise I rather enjoy.”
Lily just laughs and pulls his head up to kiss him again.
( @wafflesrock16 I can apparently function well enough to write snippets yay. Thank you @theladyw for the prompt! )
