#glovedfoxwriterchat

🐉 Dragon Arrow (a vibrant blue drink make of sparkling blueberry and blackberry juice, with "scale" ice cubes, served in a glass with a silver arrow stir stick with an ace of spades for fletching):

Tell me more about Alex and Victor. How long have you been writing them? How many journeys have you been on together?

ooh, a bonus drink!

(also absolutely obsessed with that cup/drink description)

I’ve been writing about Alex and Victor for somewhere between one and two years

I’d say we haven’t been on as many journeys together as I’d like, but that is certain to change over time. Alex, Victor, and Skylar are my comfort trio. When I’m feeling down, or I simply am not feeling motivated to write, I come up with some kind of theme or prompt and just stick them in there. So far the main unintentional short stories that have come out of this were of them having a snowball fight and going to the beach (Alex, the person that he is, created a whole ass Sand City. I’m still not sure how he achieved this). I just love the friendship dynamics between them all (though Alex and Victor lean towards oblivious romantic)

I’ve also got so many ideas about what stories I could tell about Alex and Victor in the time that Skylar is out on their revenge arc with Cipher. One day I’m going to do irreversible damage to them both, but for now I’m having fun with the fluff

[from here]

Ella here. *leans on the Tavern bar* Soooooo....

🧜‍♀️Shadowed Depths (Salty burnt caramel mixed with soda water sprinkled with blue sugar crystals. Served in a carved oak goblet): What out-of-your-usual genre or subject did you dive into reluctantly? Or perhaps very willingly… >:D

Also if you are up to a bonus....

🍒Bloody Cherry Soda (club soda with tart cherry puree, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, pinch of ground almond. Served chilled in a crystal gothic goblet with bat-shape ice.) : Tell me about your vampires. Are they of the common tropes? Are they different? Anything you wish to share!

HI I am so sorry I am late with this, I feel like I've been on every side quest lately besides sitting at my computer to answer, some good (writing more, touching grass) and some not so good (go to the mall order a coffee drink most of it find a surprise seed (???) of some sort in the coffee) BUT !! I am computing now :D

Shadowed Depths..... 2!!!! I wrote a murder mystery book for the first time this past year. I love mysteries, and the combination of reading some really good mystery fiction, watching procedural television, and listening to a song with detectives in it too much made for the three-hit combo that blasted me into the mystery fiction stratopshere. All for a Fortune exists now.

It was my first time not writing any true fantasy for a novel-length project. There are some pseudo-occult and pseudo-metaphysical elements—one of the characters believes she can see the future, another runs an energy healing service—but without spoiling too much, the credibility of their claims is dubious.

Considering I started writing my first novel in 2016, and I wrote All for a Fortune in 2026, it took about ten years for this dog to learn a new trick.

I like mystery. I might (very likely will?) write another one someday. But there's some other stuff knocking at the door of my brain, too, lately.

Bloody Cherry Soda - my vampiressss 😍 I really like my vampires. Regards is my vampire book, and it follows a model of vampire speciation.

As Sol Ryding would explain, thinking everyone knows quite what he does, it's sort of like Darwin's finches.

The vampires of Ridglade Falls and the nearby city have some features that are significantly vampiric: they drink blood, and they feel terrible when they do not get to drink blood. They burn in the sunlight (ranging from an unpleasant little burn with quick exposure and great agony if they are kept in the sun) and accomodate for this with sun hats, umbrellas, or going out on cloudy days. Likely, they are naturally nocturnal, but the ones we meet in Regards spend much daylight time awake. This is due to living in diurnal human society and attempting to fit in. If living in vampire society, they would probably be more active at night. Some keep nighttime work hours, and some try to keep a human schedule. The vampires in this area can engage in vampire hypnosis, administered through eye contact, though the vampire often has to be trying intentionally to make this happen. Others may find them particularly charismatic when this occurs, and people who are more eager to appease others' expectations are particularly likely to be afflicted.

They do differ in some aspects, though. They are able to subsist on vampire blood (though I assume this is like eating TV dinners all the time; I imagine it's not as gourmet as human blood is). There is no substitute option for them to get blood, because it's my vampire book and I can put interpersonal violence and vampire attacks in it if I want to >:) Too much garlic can kill them, but the Ridglade Falls vampires are more resistant to it than some other types of vampires are, so have a reputation for being strange because of the common habit of RF vampires getting high on garlic. Specifically, they bite each other to create wounds, then press garlic, either the cloves or flowers (it comes down to personal preference) into the wounds to get, as one might say, zonked out of their gourd. Some RF vampires don't like this. Adrienne tried it once and got rather ill. These vampires can die, though will not die of old age. They can age. Some vampires have always been vampires, and others have been turned, which is done via vampire bite UNLESS 1) the vampire has consumed coffee or some other Rubiaceae plant in the last six hours, which negates the effect that transmits vampirism due to a chemical reaction, or 2) an object that suppresses vampiric energy is possessed by the person who would otherwise be turned.

Adrienne, the protagonist of Regards, spends a lot of time and thought trying to figure out what is real of vampires and what is myth, if any of it is indeed real (it is) and if any of it is indeed myth (she'd have to talk to more types of vampires to know). She commits a lot of microaggressions against vampires, sometimes accidentally, because of this. Sol does not make this any easier, bringing her on a date to an old-timey vampire movie and watching it like it's a comedy instead of a horror film.

🌠Galaxy Shooting Star Swirl (shimmering opalescent soda with little ice cube planets, served in a retro bottle with a stripey straw):

Do please ramble about the gender rules of your universe. I am dreadfully curious.

And if you want to list some tropes in Shackle and Noose... I won't object!

And most importantly: Justice for the Queer Dinos!!!

Hey! Thanks for the bonus question Ella! Lol my queer dinosaurs appreciate it 🫡

For sex and gender in Shackle and Noose, I wanted to play around outside the bounds of the binary, because even here on Earth we've got lifeforms that don't adhere, so why would aliens be relegate to strictly peen in vageen for reproduction?

There are races that DO have this type of genital setup, but there are others who have something more along the lines of a cloaca, and then others who don't have what we would consider genitals at all, and like some insects will pass on something like a spermatophore instead.

Some races reproduce asexually, parthenogenesis style, so they only have one sex/gender. Some races have only one gender because sexually they are hermaphroditic, and didn't really learn about other genders until they encountered other races. I've got one race that has three sexes/genders (one produces sperm cells, another produces egg cells, while a third has the womb that those two will get combined in), and another with four (simplifying things, but basically two have half-sperm cells while two have half-egg cells, and all four have wombs, so a quad partnership like that can all be pregnant at the same time, and those four separate kids would all be genetic siblings). I've also got a race that, seahorse style, the male carries the babies to term instead of the female. Another race, each individual basically has dormant sex organs year round, entirely separate from their gender presentation, and will only have their sexual organs manifest when they and their partner go into heat once a year. In that case, whatever type of genitals the first going into heat activates, their partner will activate the opposite, since this is strictly for the purpose of reproduction. It isn't something these people are able to consciously control, just a luck of the draw thing that one's environment can contribute to, but even that isn't a guarantee. Some people will activate the genitals that would match their gender presentation every time, while others bounce between the two from heat to heat. For this race, sex and gender are completely divorced from one another, and they find it straight up bizarre how other races will more closely tie the two.

And aside from races that bear live young, there are plenty of egg laying races out there. One race is modelled off of bees, so they've got three sexes - queens, males, and drones. Queens and males breed while drones don't. Despite this, they only recognize two genders - male and female - since drones can become queens, and therefore drones are female by default. Some races are like salmon, in that fertilization happens outside the body in some other medium (water being the most common), while others, like chicken, will have fertilization happen internally, and then lay an egg about it later.

Some of the races have sex for pleasure on top of for procreation, but others view sex as nothing more than a transaction for genetic material, deriving nothing physically stimulating about it. With how wildly different so many of these race's reproductive methods are, in the broader scope of galactic society, no one cares about who's banging who, or if they're even banging at all. There's much bigger problems out there than worrying about what kinds of uglies are getting bumped or not!

Gender, too, is also viewed pretty loosely goosely, because there's a lot of them out there, and again, there are more pressing issues than what someone identifies as. Except for weirdo outliers (and unforch, what's a society without narrow minded bigots to cause problems on purpose?), no one really bats an eye if someone gets a little funky with their gender. If someone doesn't want to deal with gender at all, no one is going to give a shit. If a person from one race finds a gender from another race to be more their style, the biggest reaction they're going to get is a, "Huh, okay. What pronouns are you using now?"

And since this is a high tech sci-fi setting, there's medical technology available to make transitioning a very easy process. Transing one's gender is no more difficult or remarkable than a person dyeing their hair.

And now...

TROPES!!!!!

(lol this is going under the cut)

#1:47 am. right on time! 😎👍 << as is tradition >:D

Oohhh a fire that lingers long after it burns out! Very intriguing this Marchall is. Perhaps murder was not the correct route to take to bury his secrets...

Here's to you one day finally catching those plot mer-bunnies!

And yes yes, we all know how much you love Priestess of the Seventh Magpie :D

As is tradition! What is sleep compared to the Gloved Fox Writer Chat? Sleep, I don't know that word! >:D

Thank you so much! Richard Marchall was a lot of fun to write. Despite none of his scenes taking place during his life, he has a way of enduring in the work he left behind and the anecdotes told by those who knew him (it helps that two people taking their first shot at investigating a murder are spurring on many of those anecdotes with their questioning...). What a shame [CULPRIT REDACTED] put an end to him. Alas, murderers don't often jump for better solutions...

Thank you! Maybe I can catch them with a really large net. A fishing net. A fishing net for merpeople? That sounds unethical. There's got to be some board or initiative against that.

Vampires! Obviously these exist in What Was Borrowed- they were the whole inspiration behind starting to write it in the first place. I had a hankering for combat, and decided almost at random during a conversation with a friend that I'd write about a vampire hunter.

Vampire media isn't my favourite thing, I'd say; I tend to find it a tired trope unless it's more like set dressing to something more interesting. So I knew I had to spice up my portrayal of them somehow. I like the archetype of the alluring, sexy vampire in theory, but it can be one-note. I'm also- if you couldn't tell from anything else I've ever written- very into the portrayal of weird horrible monsters, so I figured, why not combine the two a little bit? So I ended up with vampires that work quite well as a pretty lure, but are pretty monstrous in the way they actually behave and hunt. I won't spoil, but they can be a bit... ew-y.

Werewolves remain their natural enemies and opposites. It's one of those things that's so old nobody can quite remember where it started or who started it- but go anywhere in the world where both species exist and have prior overlap, and you'll hear the same old story. They hate one another, any contact will result in conflict if not out-and-out war, and both see the other as unnatural and strange. Werewolves view themselves as closer to humanity, much more natural, in harmony with the world, all that. Vampires see themselves as evolved hyper-predators, much stronger than the wolves, and almost as though the wolves are... wasting or biding their time somehow? Like they should be preying on humans more, but they don't. And they don't know what the plan is with that, so it sort of freaks them out.