Tried this once here and none of that is strictly wrong, but I just wrote a killer blurb so weâre going again.
How would you fare if you became omnipotent on your fourteenth birthday? I imagine you might be able to figure something out given some time to get a handle on your newfound powers, but Hera Elizabeth Riderâs deicidal brother accidentally transporting her out of the universe while trying to turn her into a weapon is not giving her that luxury. It takes her a deal with the devil, unwitting service to a vampire hunter, the creation of several gods, and one eccentric genius before sheâs able to do anything with her powers on purpose, and by then itâs really not clear what the right thing to do even is.
Relevant tags (searchable on my blog)
Forever project: all tag games, short stories, random thoughts, and if I ever do them character intros for this work are tagged with this tag. Itâs the one to block if you are mainly here for Twilight content.
Elise Godslayer: This is the tag for the MC, Hera Elizabeth Rider. She goes by Elise because thereâs too many Heraâs in her family (in her world Mary goes by her syncretized Greek name, and so most European historical figures that in our world are named Mary are named Hera there) and Elizabeth is too long for her tastes. The godslayer part is arguably a spoiler, but it happens in chapter three so Iâm not too worried. Elise is a fairly normal fourteen-year old, outside of her godlike powers. She likes music (she can play violin and fiddle), was just starting to figure out she might like some girls as more than friends, is wary of responsibility, and has a crushing need to be liked.
Davriel Godslayer: This is Eliseâs twin brother, though he was born human. Because he was human, he wasnât seen as a threat like Elise was, and so while his sister was sent to live among humans with her powers locked away, Davriel was raised by their godly parents and named himself David after the king when he realized he was trans. Mount Olympus is not a great place to raise a kid, and rants by his uncle Ares left him with a certainty that he could do better. Hence his plans to kill all of the gods and become ruler. This is not to say that he wouldnât make a terrifyingly competent and entirely benevolent god-king, it is simply that his understanding of what heâs working with (the world) is a scoche incomplete. As for why I and his tag call him Davriel and not David, well that is a smidge more of a spoiler, though Iâm sure itâs decipherable from my writings in his tag.
Eric Melior: This is the blurbâs vampire hunter! What the blurb does not mention is that he is also a vampire (and a wraith) and was born in 1892. Since making the tag Iâve Polanized his name to Eryk, though future me and his pro-Tzarist parents might have something to say about that. He is a very dutiful son, which means odd things for a Nihil whose mother has been drawn into a cult promising protection from (read extinction of) the vampires that are beginning to spread through the Russian Empire.
Sorceress: Here we have our eccentric genius. The only person (selkie, dragon, centaur or siren) to discover how to use magic on a sentient creature! She used this power to give herself a pair of legs and a sealskin, having been born a siren but being too curious about the world to confine herself to the water. Even though Elise created her world, Sorceress is likely its most consequential figure.
Mlle Nefara: The most recent character to get a tag, Mlle Nefara is just trying to get rich. Unfortunately, honest means are not particularly available to her as a black woman in 1890s Europe, and so she has chosen the slightly easier route of lying to a bunch of rich people, telling them all about the supernatural threats only she can teach them how to defend themselves against. Her charisma and talent are serving her well in this endeavor until 1897, when a plague of monsters begins to creep through the land. Theyâre similar enough to the ones sheâd made up for her sect to become increasingly popular, but she canât be so lucky that the techniques she made up would actually defeat them.
Sirenâs meet nada: Nada is the word for city among the most magically reckless group of humans on Globe, Sorceressâs world. They call the city that has built up around Sorceressâs first home on land Sirenâs Meet, not because they really ever meet Sorceress (and very few know she was ever a siren regardless), but because the estuary has collected extremists and eccentrics from human and siren communities. While it was Sorceressâs presence (and her geologic engineering) that drew the first few citizens to the place, it continued to thrive long after she went to Nadalitas. I use this tag mainly for short stories and worldbuilding facts that take place in the city.
Nihil hunters: A nihil is the most dangerous of the monsters that have begun to infect Eryk and Mlle Nefaraâs world. They are at once vampire and wraith, and so lose many of the vulnerabilities of both. The tag is nihil hunters for their whole world, because vampire hunters, what they call themselves, is simply too generic.
Southern dragons: These are mostly a world building project, as their interaction with the magic system and spatial/temporal laws Iâve built for this project is generally quite illustrative. While they originated in the southern continent of Sorceressâs world, hence their name, they have since spread to other worlds, moving through space and reality with a degree of mysterious ease I think is suitable for dragons.
Spacewhaling: It may not be correct to include this tag with this project; in fact, it started as an independent concept. If it does intersect with Eliseâs story, it would only be in the third or maybe even fourth book.
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Solarpunk has failed. It's time for the Solar Gothic. Show me an environmentally conscious world that is haunted by its past; where its failures still intrude upon the present. Where the characters live in the shadow of a decadent but much more materially wealthy past whose crumbling edifices mock them with the waste and the missed opportunities they represent. Show me characters who remember the promise of modernity, the story of ever-growing progress, and either lament that it is not for them or continue to cling to it like madmen. Show me a world that's trapped, claustrophobically, in an anthropocene that they are only gradually learning to manage, and where all former illusions of mastery or permanence have been dispelled.
i think more robots should be disabled actually. robots whose bodies keep falling apart and need much more consistent repairs. robots whose bodily upkeep is hard and laborious and exhausting. robots who physically cant do things without help from another individual. robots who are imperfect and dont fit the bill of a flawless machine. i want more of this waiter please bring me more disabled robots
Ok, so, a realistically depicted robot, in my opinion, would HAVE to be disabled. Anyone with any robotic/mechanical parts could tell you that.
So, backing up, many people say that they suddenly "feel their age" around 30 because their body, if they keep using it like they're 20, will stop healing faster than they can hurt it. Many chronically ill folks deal with this slowed recovery starting at a much earlier age, and more dramatically. When we die of 'old age' that's in large part due to your healing factor being slowed down so much, the act of being alive wears you down faster than your body can heal.
Robots can not heal.
Sure, they can have parts replaced, but all mechanical parts are installed with an expected number of uses and hours of operation, not even accounting for any traumatic damage.
These legs are rated for three years of use, or 20,000 miles of walking. I'm one year and 3,000 miles over, and can no longer hit my top speed, and tend to veer left if I'm not careful.
These eyes were supposed to be good for 5 years, but the bright lights of the desert and the frequent sand storm mean that after two years in, some of the sensors are burnt out, and the lenses are scratched and difficult to replace, and the same thing is just going to happen to the next pair, so is it really worth it?
My oil tank is cracked, and until I get a new one, I need to drink a new bottle every morning instead of every two months, and I can't bend over forward without spilling some.
This heart has 3 million beats in it. At 60 bpm, that will last me over 11 years. At 120 bpm, it won't last six, until I need a new one.
My CPU was made to last for 5 years with average use. At 3 years, I can think at 65% of the speed I started with. How slow do I have to be before it's worth it to replace that?
Every robot is built dying in a way that a healthy able bodied person cannot fully understand. The idea that every part of your body is ticking down, that taking a rest day only delays the inevitable, that once something is broken, it stays that way until you can get it fixed.
Sure, some cars are brand new, owned by someone with a garage and nearly infinite money to pour into upkeep. Some of them are old beaters that are just trying their best to get their 20-something owners to class and back, desperately hoping that it can hold its timing belt together until they can afford to replace it, but please drive slow until then?
Do you think that old beater car might also be worried about the day it becomes cheaper to replace than maintain? That "being bale to afford it" might refer to a new car, not a new belt?
Who among us know the fear that me might be easier to replace than to maintain?
dian. my dude. i forgot you did this to this poor old man. your FAVORITE poor old man (chill librarian at the university library that lets them check out books and shit even though they aren't students)
for context dian had not lost an arm when this guy last saw him. mayyybe 6 months ago.
AUGH okay. very quickly hit a point where i realize i have to do some actual editing-editing instead of just enjoying reading. alas.
the editing thoughts behind the cut have a lot of (hopefully fairly vague) spoilers so read at your own risk
so i dropped nimbus's storyline partway through fate weavers because it was just. a Lot to balance, on top of everything else going on, and his whole shit is entirely separate from literally Everyone Else, both in theme and literal location. but i've now drafted all of it, it's just... putting his chapters into the book(s) where they would fit best.
there's one chapter that i think is going to be shuffled back into goddess-touched. if i DO do that, it has to be sometime BEFORE chapter 26, because that's the chapter i cannot put it after because, well. nimbus's last two chapters in GT are 26 and 29, and 29 ends on a Huge Reveal that basically justifies the fact of him having a story arc of his own at all. and the chapter i want to shuffle in, while initially drafted to come after that, was drafted for FW. so it wasn't being treated like an end-of-book point. you know? 29 is where nimbus's story in GT hits the hardest and makes the most sense to stop between books.
however.
the chapter i'm thinking about shuffling in will need a decent amount of reworking to make sense in the context of GT, because in said chapter he has a significantly less antagonistic relationship with Xiv, who throughout GT Does Not get along with him. like, this chapter getting shuffled in is where they start going from reluctant roommates to lowkey friends, and nimbus has his first moment of "oh shit wait she's attractive to me" (we'll never see fulfillment of that on screen, but it's an important aspect of his character To Me that they've got that kind of tension in a sort of seesaw of tension in alternating directions throughout. also, t4t 5ever. (she's also not canonically mentioned as trans. YET. she might be in arc 2 if lakia ever manages to seduce her which is a potential thing also.))
also, aside from the relationship standpoint, this chapter getting shuffled in specifically has him trusting her skill on a hoverboard more than his own feet and sense of balance beneath him. and. until chapter 26. he has not seen her be particularly skillful on a hoverboard yet.
the kicker: the chapter i want to shuffle in could arguably be deleted entirely. BUT I LIKE IT. AND NIMBUS HAS FEW ENOUGH CHAPTERS ACROSS 2 BOOKS AS IT IS, EVEN WITH THE EXTRA 14K I DRAFTED LAST WEEK
No no I see it. Perfect level of problem solving for him. The scale of the stakes is pretty high but itâs at most national, the only tier of organizing heâs really proven himself to be able to manage.
And really, the goal is still the same as the one thatâs been crushing him for a full thousand years: prevent disaster, without anyone having to worry. Except when itâs âseal the tracks on this train line to increase operational efficiency and reduce weather damageâ or âdesign a bridge that wonât collapseâ itâs a goal that a single person managing a team of people who donât necessarily understand the whole thing can actually accomplish.
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Hello person having transgender thoughts but convinced they aren't trans because they don't have the requisite amount of dysphoria they think they need
Hi I transitioned without even thinking I had dysphoria. Like later in hindsight I can go "oh that's probably what it was" but for the first year of my transition I was straight up like "I like being a guy but I like being a girl WAY more" and you can do that!! There is no prerequisite amount of suffering needed to make yourself happier.
Being cis to me is actively loving being a woman, and a sort of confused disdain for the concept of being a man (which is how I know trans men are real bc no one with the same gender as me would do that, clearly those are just men). Now, plenty of people have fine lives with a sort of quiet ambivalence towards gender and so the hassle of transition (any life change that touches your interactions with others is a hassle never mind adding a new medication) so not having my experience doesnât strictly mean you would benefit from transition. But I promise, it is super possible to be actively in love with your gender, and so if you arenât consideration of other genders is super worth it.
this house hates you. this house loves you. this house wont ever let you leave. this house has eyes & a mouth. you could make this house speak. you could make this house cry. this house has seen the worst parts of you & wants to keep you inside it forever. this house will die with you. etc.
You thought you left the house when it sold; the house itself was old as dust, but the land was worth something. You couldnât afford to keep it up (neither had your Uncle, really, by the end, but heâd done his best), and anyone with the money to buy that view your great-grandma had claimed for pennies would surely knock it down. It was sad but it was reality. Youâd said goodbye to the ghost of the house when you locked it up last, but with the rooms all empty it had somehow seemed less haunted than it had when youâd attended family gathers there as a child.
You figured youâd just grown up, but really, youâd taken the ghost with you.
ok i know i'm one to talk but genuinely if you think đ or â¤ď¸ is "passive aggressive" you might be spending a bit too much time on your phone jeez louise
If I ask nicely will people reblog this and tell me what their most common breakfast is? Not your favorite necessarily, just what you have for breakfast most frequently? đđ˝
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explain your gender in 10 words or less without using boring words like âmaleâ, âfemaleâ, ânonbinaryâ, âmasculineâ, âfeminineâ or âandrogynousâ.
I forgot to clarify that this excludes deanaming you if you've changed your name. I specifically meant the "brain offers the wrong word" kind of accidental name mix-up.
This was prompted by me and my boyfriend discussing handedness and being able to tell apart left and right. And me, being ambidextrous, was baffled by how do people with an obligate dominant hand mix up which side is the one with their Writing Hand and which one isn't?? And my boyfriend pointed out that I go "turn left - no I mean right" so much when giving directions that I have lost my navigator privileges.
I argued that mixing up the words isn't the same thing as mixing up the directions. Like if your mom accidentally called you the dog's name doesn't mean that she literally can't tell you apart from the dog. And he looked at me like this
Because evidently not only has this never happened to him, he has never heard of this being a thing. And he was so confident in this that I had to double-check that I'm not the only person this has ever happened to.
My grandmother had four boys, and of course they all had friends, so her house was always full of small boys. So she took to calling them all Sam, because none of them were named Sam, and otherwise it would absolutely be the "JohnâDaveâMarkâ" running down the list problem.
Ok, so. The fundamental issue with an age gap relationship is power imbalance. Itâs the same problem as dating your boss or someone with significantly more financial or social wealth. You are at risk of being pushed by someone with enough leverage you canât readily push back.
I want to talk about what about your age gives you that power. Among adults, in large part itâs experience. A 50 year old is likely to know more about people and how they react to things than a 25 year old, because theyâve had twice as much time looking at people to learn it. There are exceptions to this: a sheltered 50 year old who cares more about her personal projects than paying attention to others might know less than a 25 year old aspiring actor who has being deliberately and meticulously observing everyone they encounter to discern their motivations. But age works well as a general measure before youâve come to know a person.
But thatâs not all. Especially among teenagers and young adults, being young changes how you are treated, and importantly, the extent to which you are believed, by strangers. In general, people are more willing to take the word of an adult over the word of a teen if they disagree. A person perceived to be young is less likely to have access to other sorts of power too: financial freedom, freedom of movement, these things are easier to access when youâre older.
Now: the part I care about. We have a vampire that looks 20 but is 90. He wants to date a middle aged woman (letâs make her 45). Ignoring any other abilities his vampirism gives him: who has more power from their *age*.
Traditionally, we would say him. He has all the experience of a 90 year old without the physical frailty. But does he? A 20 year old is not going to be able to interact with adult society that much. Even if he can call it baby face and join the workforce, are you really telling your baby faced 25 year old colleague the same things you are the guy about to retire? Are you inviting him to the same events as the coworker celebrating her 15 year tenure at the company? Our vampire can look, but he canât experience the life of someone older. The best he has is secondhand research, the kind you can get by talking to neighbours and family friends (though that route would have dried up early for him).
Our middle-aged human also has access to much more secondary sources of power. While less guaranteed than I would like, she is more likely than her vamp boyfriend to have access to family support, lifelong friends, a stable salaried job, and a home in her own name. We might call some of these benefits of age, but theyâre really benefits of a continuous life. Even humans can lose those to being cut off/disowned, moving long distances, having a disabilityâŚ
Which of the two of them can ask for help? She certainly has more personal resources, while he is relying on formalized help. We have gotten better at believing younger men who say they are being abused by older women (though again, not so much as I would like) but many formal supports are gonna fall through when he doesnât have an ID that matches his age.
Now that this has fully become a metaphor for the various things that can give you the resources of someone much younger than you without the societal supports of someone of that chronological age, we see that the vampire is at a disadvantage, unless he has Vampire Specific Support. Usually this is Magic Powers, which tend to be pretty effective. A Vampire Peer Group can be pretty helpful at subbing in for some of the social supports you lost with your unusual life path. Ideally, social programs would also recognize that age does not give everyone power equally, and leave options open for vampires so they can ask for help, even from people their age or younger.
Sorry, my what? My pronouns? Oh, yeah I'm between genders at the moment. No, it's cool, I quit my last gender a little while ago because it really wasn't working out. I don't know if I even have a dream gender anymore.
Oh yeah, it did come with benefits, but they weren't really worth it. The culture was really toxic. To be honest I think I'd prefer a part-time gender so I can just be self-described in my spare time.
I mean, in a perfect world we wouldn't need gender, you know? We could just voluntarily be perceived as much as we're able, as much as makes us feel fulfilled. Having a full-time gender shouldn't be a prerequisite for food, shelter, and healthcare.
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These character designs??? Are awesome???? All of them are unique despite being recognizable and simple. It is very easy to imagine them as full characters in a who framed roger rabbit style live action/cartoon mix.
The show would be pretty simple, probably aimed at children but in the way that takes them seriously and thus can be appreciated by adults. The protagonist loses one or more of them (physically) each episode. Sometimes they try to chase after their lost creature, which never works. Sometimes they try to work on their art without all three, which usually chases off a second one. Both options are always pursued reasonably: the protagonist thinks they might work this time because of some differentiating factor: the project is small, time is just right there I can probably catch him. The resolution is always a legit skill to bait the missing creature(s) back. Meditation, planning, a good nap, whatever. Children are encouraged to submit their own art to be featured as the final product that gets produced each episode after the coping skill is used.
