#trance chat

[trancetales]

What about a vampire who bites her prey, but then finds out that her prey was already a vampire.

It turns out the prey was a vampire hunter who is also a vampire. She doesn't hunt them to kill them she just likes getting her neck bitten but she is afraid of intimacy. Instead of pursuing a relationship with physical intimacy, she pretends to hunt vampires to justify getting near to them so she can get neck bites without any awkward questions or uncomfortable intimacy.

[swordsmantrance]

I wish people would stop saying stuff like "I'm not interested in romantic relationships in media because I'm aroace" as if that's a black and white correlation.

Just because you, as an aroace person, aren't interested in them, doesn't mean that applies to all people who fall under that umbrella. Why are you trying to create this rhetoric where being aroace is seen as synonymous with thinking romance and sex in media is always a bad thing?

As an ace person myself, I'm constantly seeing posts that justify the mindset with "because I'm ace" or "because I'm aroace", and it's like, okay but you're making it seem like that's a given. "well I'm aroace so of course I don't care about that". Except there are people in the ace community who do, who you're distancing by making it sound like it's a hard criteria.

Obviously, it's fine to not be interested in it yourself, and maybe being aroace is a factor in that, but don't make it sound like aroace = not interested in seeing it at all. By doing that, you create a damaging image that there's a fixed perception that all aroace people have towards these things, which both breeds misconception in people outside of the ace community, and makes it harder for people to feel welcome in it when they see sweeping statements like this which don't apply to them, creating questions like "well if I do like seeing romantic relationships, does that mean I'm not really aro?"

Asexuality can already be hazy enough to both people outside, and people wondering if they are, and stuff like this really doesn't help that.

[trancetales]

Hello hello,!

My old pinned introduction was 2 years out of date, so I'm replacing it at last!

~~About Me~~

I am Trance (he/him), and I am a 31 year old writing hobbyist. I write stuff, though as much as I like to talk about characters and settings, I often lack the confidence to share full pieces. I'm open to asks and tag games and all that, though! Most of what I write is fantasy, with some sci-fi stuff, and the occasional contemporary setting.

Outside of writing, I am interested in ants 🐜, and otherwise I like to play videogames. I enjoy strategy games and things I can play with friends. The thing I like best is just to chat with people and make friends, though. Everyone has a story that they're already writing, and I think there is so much you can learn from listening to what other people can tell you. I hope one day to have a rabbit when my living circumstances can accommodate having one (or two, ideally).

🐇

~~Writing~~

I'm really into world building, and I used to find myself getting caught up far more on that that the characters or the actual narrative. Although this is probably still the case, I do actually write actual stories much more than I used to. Despite this, sometimes it can still get off its leash when I try to keep it under control!

I swap between a couple of projects here and there depending on what mood takes me, so progress isn't always a straight line. Anything relating to my writing can be found tagged with #Trance's Tales, and several of my existing projects have their own tags as well:

• #🌓The Veiled World🌗 is a fantasy world with magic and stuff, where they had to invent a second magic system because the first one started going wrong.

• #🌌 The Trace Systems is my dystopian sci-fi setting in which a security company has complete control. This also has supernatural elements to it.

• #⚰️ Aikaterini is a contemporary real world setting. A light-hearted(?) spin on occult and cultist themes. Unlike the previous two, this one is an individual story rather than a wider world.

There are a couple of other projects which currently hold my focus, but we'll wait until they have more development before they get their own tags!

🥦🐇

I'm always up for a chat about stuff so feel free to pop me a message if you want to chat!

[trancetales]

Does anybody know if googledocs is actually a safe place to keep stuff I've written? A good while back, I took all my stuff away from it because it became hard to trust big companies.

Cloud saving is something I value highly though, especially that I can access from both PC and phone, and there's no denying that googledocs did provide that service.

These days you hear all about companies sneaking clauses in their T&Cs that they have the right to use uploaded information to train generative ai or whatever, and it's hard to trust a company like Google but, as usual, there's not really an equivalent service that I've been able to find.

[trancetales]

On naming and language in creative writing

I've been thinking recently about writing and specifically, coming up with names and terms within the setting. It can be easy to think to yourself about your own, or indeed of someone else's, choices of terms and names when you're creating a world and setting. "This name is so uninspired", or "This term sounds stupid." You might think it stands out like a sore thumb because it isn't an overly flowery term. That is fine.

Have you ever thought that about real world things? If, like myself, you've found yourself thinking that way about such things, maybe looking at some real world examples with a little more scrutiny can help put some of those thoughts at ease.

Lets start by looking at a few real world terms, first of all. Lets say you have a magic system, and it depends on something that you've called "manapools". Its a simple name, and its to the point. Its not the most out there name, but why should it be?

Have you ever thought about that time at the end of the week? You know, when the week ends, and it becomes the "weekend"? Its what we really called it in English. Its not very creative, but its what we call it, and nobody bats an eyelid. Why should they? That's what its called. Nobody thinks "the weekend should be called something more imaginative.

Another example is the word "waterfall". It couldn't possibly be more straightforward. It is where water falls. Water is falling, so, waterfall. Simple enough, and even someone who doesn't know what a waterfall is could probably piece together that a waterfall is that bit where the water is falling.

This is especially the case when you're talking about a fantasy or scifi term that will be completely new to someone. You actually want someone to recognise the term at a glance and have an idea what's going on. Not just because it makes it easier for the reader to recognise it easily, but because its more convincing from a storytelling perspective - even if there's a more scientific word in the world, are people really going to be using it? Have you ever heard anyone talk about Trochilidae? Probably not. Because when people see a bird that's making a humming sound, they're going to call it as they see it. A hummingbird.

Next, I'm going to touch on place names. Maybe your big city is called "King's Court". Maybe you're thinking that its not very inspired, in a world of Arendelles and Coruscants. If so, you might want to think about two things - real world place names, and the origin of the place names in media.

So we'll start with those two examples. Firstly, Arendelle, the setting for the film Frozen. Yes, it sounds like a fanciful name, but in actuality, its just a regular name but in the language. One source suggests that Aren would translate as eagle, and Delle is derived from the word for Valley. So if it were a name in English, it would just be Eagle Valley. The other example, Coruscant, is a planet from Star Wars. It sounds fancy, sure. But its actually just, a word. An unusual one, yes, but its just a word. Star War also features a city called Cloud City.

It's actually even less creative in real life. Here in the UK for instance, we have 25 places named "Kingston". This is literally just a contracted version of "King's Town", and when they had to distinguish them, they just stuck a bit on. Kingston upon Thames and Kingston upon Hull just put the river they were next to. And then there's Kingston near Lewes. The town is literally just called, "King's Town. The one near that other town." And don't get me started on how many places were just named after Alexander the Great.

The final thing I want to touch on is days and months of the calendar. If you choose to deviate away from the real world calendar, it can feel tricky to get a month that sounds like a month, and days can be even harder. That is, like before, less glaring if you think hard about the real ones.

Starting with days of the week, the simplest point I can make is this. In German, the word for Wednesday is Mittwoch, which literally just means, midweek. They didn't even bother giving it an actual name.

For months, again, its easy to overlook it because of how used to it we are, but not only are half of them really unimaginative, but they're also wrong. Everything up to June is based on parts of the pantheon and such, but when we hit July and August, these are literally just because Julius and Augustus wanted months named after them. So these two are just slight alterations of their names. After those two, we have September, October, November, and December. These ones are just names after the number of the month. Dec, meaning 10, is famously the 10th month, of course... So, not only is it basically just called "month number 10", about as unimaginative as it gets, it is also wrong.

On thinking these points over, I've personally found myself thinking less critically of my naming in all areas. If the UK can have 25 King's Towns, why can you not have a King's Court. If we have Hummingbirds, why the heck wouldn't your people call that fire-breathing dragon a Fire Dragon? And nothing could be worse than the months we have in our real calendar. So don't sell your naming prowess short, because you can't do much worse than the Romans did.

[trancetales]

Recently I've been writing a crossover piece with one of my friends' setting and characters, which is quite interesting.

For a long time I was averse to working with someone else's characters, for not being able to get into the right headspace for them. Still now, every piece is like "hey I hope I haven't defiled your characters here please tell me if you hate it"

So far he's liked every segment, but I still can't settle in and stop thinking "but what if I'm mischaracterising in this context!"

How do fanfic authors do it, man...

[trancetales]

Hello! Tell me more about the project(s) you’re working on right now! What aspect of your current WIP excites you the most, and what inspired it?

Hello hello!

My main focus at the moment is provisionally named "Velvetverse" solely because it originally formed around a character called Velvet.

Honestly the aspect that excites me most about it is that there's no overarching narrative, so I can just kinda write whatever. Its like a cartoon where each "episode" can largely have whatever going on and its all fine at the end of the piece. Its honestly quite liberating in a way because I'm not having to spend the whole time thinking "how am I going to get from here to there?" or "whats the climax, how do I write out this villain?" or whatever, I don't have to write everything with an end-goal in mind, just maybe some progressive characterisation without significant narrative progression. At the end of the day, they will escape the evil Count Corduroy's clutches until the next time! Though it's actually a lot more mature-themed than it sounds. It also an excuse to write some kinda smutty stuff too, as well as some dark stuff.

In terms of inspiration, its a funny thing, because as I said, it formed around the character Velvet. She was literally just a throwaway character I created in Soul Calibur 6, but when I used her, one of my friends said he was a "big fan", which enticed me to give her some backstory. She became a vampire who used illusions and manipulation to lure prey. Then, she developed to be a minion of a greater vampire, Count Corduroy, which I thought was funny at the time because of the theme of fabrics and materials (he has another minion named Latex). At some point I decided I wanted a pantheon, partly inspired because I'd been playing Age of Empires 2's Battle of Greece, I think. Then I had temples and priestesses, and Fey came into the picture because who doesn't love nature spirits. Anyway, the strongest inspiration for me comes from positive feedback from friends, since the whole thing came from one offhand compliment from one friend!

[trancetales]

I started trying to create a plan for a disaster story, but in doing so I realised that I don't have a plan. I don't even have a story. All I actually have is a disaster.