i had to keep lowering the book to go 'how dare this be so fucking good!' and shake my fist at Alexandra Rowland's skill. and then i'd pick it up and read like 80 more pages in a frenzy. insane book. incredible book. i LOVE IT

(--@space-writes)

YESSSS. I'M SO GLAD YOU LIKED IT!!!!!!!!! I also sped through the whole thing in like, two days, so I very much understand the frenzy feeling.

I absolutely fucking adore that book. The blend of humor and heart and INSANELY CLEVER worldbuilding? Like, HUH???? Can we talk about the worldbuilding??? Sea serpent mating season? And a CRITICALLY PLOT IMPORTANT cake competition? A fucking MASTERPIECE.

And of course, Avra, my most beloved. It is a little bit odd to read about another character named Avra, since my beloved D&D oc for whom I've done a a lot of writing has that name, but I loved him so much, so it's fine!!! And yeah, his relationship with Tev is both hilarious and perfect. The fact that Avra is literally blessed by the goddess of luck and still doesn't believe in luck is so fucking funny and I love him for it.

(Also, I'm aroace and minorly sex-repulsed (I can handle sex scenes and will read them, but they're not my MOST favorite thing and if a book is TOO focused on them/the technical bits of sex, I tend to get a little bit of an ick. But sexual humor is fine, and even funny to me.), and the way this book managed to handle sex and still be unapologetically sexy without veering into explicit sex was just the right blend for me, which was a plus! Not a lot of books can thread that line in a way that works for me, personally.)

Also, in case you didn't know, Alexandra Rowland just finished(?) a kickstarter for a deluxe edition of her next book, which I think also sounds of interest of you, maybe? I'm certainly curious about it! Very different vibes, but I'm very intrigued by the framing of it. (It's called "The Wisdom of Emperors", and has to do with a roman-inspired society and archaeology and queer people in history (including modern takes on them).)

Anyways, I'm glad you enjoyed it!! 💖💖💖💖 I would have been very sad if I hyped it up so much and then you were disappointed, ajsdkadjs.

Oh no I'm ready. PLEASE tell us about margays' ankles. Weird animal facts are my favourite!

hahaha, thank you for asking!!! Weird animal facts are also my favorite!! (<- zoology major who works at a zoo)

So, margays are the only fully arboreal cats in South America, meaning they spend most of their time in trees. They hunt in trees, they sleep in trees, they live in trees. They mostly hunt birds, and are really really good at it.

Part of the reason why is...

They're able to rotate their ankles 180 degrees and walk headfirst down trees.

There's a clip near the end of this video. (Embedded in post, bc fuck youtube right now.)

This is the best still image I could find (yay enshittification of search engines!):

DELIGHTFUL. AMAZING. TOP-TIER.

I honestly just adore stories where long-gone civilizations are still causing problems.

One of my favorite examples is actually The Lies of Locke Lamora. Not necessarily causing problems, per se, but the entire city of Camorr is built around Eldren Glass, this weird material that no human methods can damage. It's literally never explained one tiny bit, but it's one of the most fascinating elements of the city to me (and there's so many good ones to choose from).

I think my personal fave is the Eldren Glass "rose garden" belonging to one of the Dons. The roses are made of glass, and their thorns absorb the blood of anyone they cut. And the Don uses it to train kids how to swordfight.

(I actually was so inspired by this the first time I read the book that it led to me creating my first ever homebrew dnd monster, a bloodsucking rose garden that's all one gargantuan entity.)

I also adore the way Red does this in @comicaurora. Voidy may have been locked up in the center of the planet, but he's still causing Problems like crazy. And there's the stuff about Ferin heritage, and also, the whole reason Erin has Voidy in him in the first place is because he wanted to explore some Old Shit.

I actually once wrote something that KIND OF fits this theme. Not really, but it is interesting to talk about, and I think you'd enjoy it. It was a short story I wrote way back in middle school titled "We only know their name for certain". The title was taken from the opening lines:

We only know their name for certain. We found it carved into every cliff face, written on every wall, visible everywhere we turned: We are human.

(Mind you, I typed this from memory before going back to check and the only thing I needed to change was the order of wall and cliff face.)

The story is essentially framed as a scientific paper or other publication by a member of an alien race that visited Earth, only to find it completely devoid of all animal life. In it, the author describes some of humans' notable constructions and speculates on their purpose.

(The list is ecclectic and rather amusing. It includes the pyramids, Mt. Rushmore, the Great Wall, the Titanic, airports, highways, and (my personal favorite) The Big House.)

Hello!! Thank you for the ask! Since you didn't choose an OC, I'm going to answer this for my boys Rook and Carrion, if that's okay!

8. What does your OC's family look like?

Rook's biological family (aka, the only family he has. He hates that word and all things associated with it and would never call the people he truly cares about family, even if that's what they are to him) is... complicated. His father, Lord Alistair Lockwood is a wood elf nobleman from the country of Arborcea. His mother is an unknown human woman who (as far as Rook knows, the truth is more complicated) left him with his father and bailed immediately after he was born. He doesn't even know her name. He grew up in his father's manor. Also living there was his father's wife (Lady Evangeline Lockwood, a high elf from another noble family) and his three half-brothers: Silas, Byron, and Theodore. (All of them were decades older than him, on account of being full-elves.) Unfortunately for him, Rook looks a lot like his father. He does have some of his mother's features (curlier hair, freckles), but otherwise he's almost a clone of his father.

16. Is there anyone your OC has lost contact with? What happened?

Many, many people. Firstly there was his biological family (described above). He lost contact with them intentionally, running away from home when he was 17. He would gladly never see any of them again if he could help it, especially after learning of his father's involvement with Dr. Purity and the Children of the Enlightened (Purity's genocidal mad scientist cult). Other than that, there's obviously Zara and Jay (and everyone else on the Tide Breaker, but he doesn't care about them). In that case it was due to him being kidnapped by Wolf (with assistance from members of Zara's crew who did not like him) and kept on her ship for over two years. After he escaped, he thought he would never see Zara or Jay again, especially after he ending up hiding in the Feywild. But he unexpectedly ran into one of the people who sold him to Wolf, who was able to tell him where Zara was. And after being rescued from Wolf's clutches again, the town she lived in happened to be the nearest port. (And Jay happened to be the doctor there, which meant that the first she saw of her best friend for the first time in three years was him mostly-dead in a stranger's arms.)

[Carrion's answers under the cut.]

what are some of your favorite characters/relationships/WIPs from around writeblr? hype up your friends!

oooh, this is a hard question!! There's so many good answers! But uh, let's see. In no particular order, and definitely forgetting several people:

Quintin and Nikolaos by @oh-no-another-idea

Isi, Robin, and SB + Aella and Theo by @akindofmagictoo

Ailin by @diphthongsfordays

Literally everyone from the Valloroth universe by @space-writes

Maura and Keelan by @reneesbooks

Aspen by @ashen-crest

9, 11, 15, & 22 ! for whoever!!

- @dragon-swords-prophecies

Hi Copper!! Thank you for the ask!!!

9. Describe a mundane day in your OC's life.

Hm. Let's go for Rook for this one. He's certainly not had any mundane days in his life recently, but when he was sailing on the Tide Breaker, his days usually started out with breakfast (alone, or with Jay if she was available), followed by doing whatever chore Van assigned him. (When he was new, it was usually lookout in the crow's nest, but later it could be anything from maintenance to the actual sailing of the ship). He usually had some kind of lesson with Zara in the late morning or the afternoon. (Sword work, sailing, navigation, management of a ship, or just hanging out in her cabin and asking questions while she worked.) Dinner would be eaten with Jay most of the time, unless she was needed in the infirmary. (They liked to take their food and go sit up on the deck if the weather was nice.)

11. What does your OC carry around in their pockets? What about their bag?

I'm going to go with Carrion for this one, because it's kind of funny. He's basically the party's pack mule. He has relatively little in his pockets (a small coin purse, maybe a couple of rations in case of emergency, etc.), but he has this massive pack that is full of whatever the party needs him to carry. This includes (but is not limited to): javelins, rations, water, most of the party's money, a hand-drawn map of Drakkenheim, and the occasional magically radioactive crystal, as well as protective gear for handling and storing said crystals.

15. What is your OC's fatal flaw?

Rook's fatal flaws are his recklessness and his loyalty, particularly when the two are working together. (Aka, the extreme and unthinking lengths to which he will go to protect the people he's loyal to.) The recklessness is self-explanatory, but his loyalty is interesting because most of the time he's an extremely untrusting and paranoid person (and often rightfully so!! Especially given that his friends are often a bit too quick to trust strangers.). However, when people show him genuine kindness, he will get very attached very quickly. (Very much a "You've done two nice things for me, and now I'm ready to die for you" kind of situation.)

22. How good is your OC at apologizing, if they do this at all?

Carrion is absolutely fucking AWFUL at apologizing. Like, unbelievably bad. I think he's only made ONE decent apology in the whole campaign, and he's done many things that probably deserved them (and has made multiple failed attempts). A lot of the time he doesn't even try to apologize, and when he does it usually doesn't go over well. He has an almost supernatural talent for saying the absolute wrong thing, even if he means well. (As @akindofmagictoo once said "He puts his foot in his mouth and his fist in other people's faces.") (I should note that his only decent apology was made under a Zone of Truth spell.)

Hello and thanks for the ask!!! I hope you're having a good day/night!

So you want to hear about my idiot bastard man? I will gleefully reply!

🙃 — A weird little habit they have

Rook has a lot of weird little habits. But here's one: On the Tide Breaker (the pirate ship he's currently the captain of, formerly belonging to his mentor, Zara), as captain he has his own cabin, which includes the luxury of an actual bed instead of a hammock. However, he doesn't ever actually sleep in the bed. Instead he sleeps on the window seat at the rear of the cabin. The reasons for this are several. He feels more comfortable there because he has good memories of sitting there from when he sailed under Zara. He still thinks of the ship -- and by extension the cabin -- as Zara's that he is merely borrowing (not true). And also, there's the matter of the demon curse that doesn't let him sleep much. Being able to look out the window at the sea helps calm him down after the demon-sent nightmares. (And the regular ones.) Added bonus weird habit: No matter how much space he has to sleep, he always sleeps as if he's on a tiny, tiny bed, be it curled up in a little ball (his preference), or trying to take as little horizontal space as necessary. He does it automatically, on muscle memory, a hold-over from his two years in a 6'x8' cell on Wolf's ship.

🛏️ — How they act when they’re tired

So, there's two important things about Rook you need to understand. First and foremost: He's a liar -- a damn good one. He will never, ever, ever willingly admit to being anything other than perfectly fine. (If he does, that's a huge red flag because it means he's probably on his way to death's door.) Secondly, he's always tired. He is cursed by a demon lord, giving him horrific nightmares that allow him little more than an hour or two of sleep each night. Third, he has an enchanted ring that projects a low-level illusion to hide his physical appearance. (The original goal was to make him look healthy and not exhausted when the party didn't know about the curse.) Fourth: After Sigmar found out about the curse, he started making Rook a potion of sorts that prevented him from literally dying of exhaustion from so little sleep. (Mechanically it removed the permanent level of exhaustion I had been playing with for weeks.) After Sigmar's "death" and Rook's subsequent capture and rescue, another party member started making it. Anyways, point is: Rook is always tired, and he's very good at hiding it. If he starts to act tired (stumbling over words, irritable, clumsier than usual), it likely means something is seriously wrong. Even sans-enchanted ring he managed to keep the party from knowing anything was wrong until he literally passed out in the middle of a tavern. (And even then he was able to ensure that Sigmar was the only one who found out. He would have kept it hidden too, if an arcanaloth hadn't forcibly revealed it to the party. (And then later tried to kidnap him about it, right after the party had rescued him from Wolf. That was a fun session.))

🎧 — A song that fits them

Luckily for you, I happen to have an entire playlist of Rook songs! (Feel free to ask for elaboration on any of them. Though I will admit I don't really have a good reasoning for Oracle. I just can't seem to take it off the playlist, idk why.)

- @zinabug-writes

Thank you for the ask, Quinn!! 💖

Rook

11. What does your OC carry around in their pockets? What about their bag?

In his pockets, Rook mostly just has his coin pouch and his thieves' tools. In his bag he usually has a healing potion or two, a couple of daggers, and various bits of adventuring gear (rope, his bedroll, a tinderbox, some water, a bit of food he never remembers to eat, etc.). There's also some more unique things he's picked up during his adventures. (Notable items from his character sheet include "Circus ruby", "Creepy temple booze" (he did end up drinking that one and it caused a lot of problems, and a knock-off MtG deck (given to him by a child). He also has a small wooden ship and miniature figure of himself wearing a captain's hat that was carved for him by the bard at the request of Cherry after he passed out in Torsek. And, it's not in his bag right now (it's currently locked in a hidden drawer in his desk on the Tide Breaker) but he also has a book he found at Sigmar's house with the margins absolutely full of notes Sigmar made of how to be a better mentor for Rook.

[putting the rest under the cut] (tw for mentions of self-harm (both intentional and accidental) under the cut)