Thoughts on stories where the ancient civilization still affecting the present with the problem that wiped it out persisting?
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.)
Even I don't know what caused all animals on Earth to disappear in that story, but it was certainly fun to write alien speculation on human life. (It actually kind of reminds me of that genre of tumblr post where people describe modern-day things the way we often hear ancient history being described. And I wrote it years before I joined tumblr.)
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I was tagged by the amazing @space-writes! Thank you!
Rules: Share a first line! It can be the first line of a chapter, the first line you did in the most recent writing session, the first line of a story, the first line a character says, any kind of first line!
I actually don't have a first line that I'm happy with for ATQH, haha. So take one for a couple other projects instead.
High Fantasy WIP:
It all started with a body.
Before Lord Kelton’s body had even hit the ground, Avi was already backing away, wiping the bloody dagger on their black trousers. Carefully, they slid the blade back into the sheath in their boot. Clenching their fists to steady their shaking hands, Avi forced themselves to take a breath. For the first time in what had surely been hours, air filled their lungs.
We Only Know Their Name For Certain (short story, completed)
We only know their name for certain. We found it carved into every clifface, written on every wall, visible everywhere we turned. “We are human.” We can only take it to mean that was their name. Human.
I'll tag @andromedaexists @bloodlessheirbyjacques @smol-feralgremlin @ashen-crest @encrucijada (no pressure to anyone!)
it’s official: We Only Know Their Name For Certain is cool as fuck. I rewrote it once already, and decided to keep the case study format, at least for the moment. But I need to keep reworking it.
If anyone wants to read an experimental speculative sci-fi story, please let me know!! I’d love to see what people think and if anyone has any thoughts/suggestions.
yo for the wip title tag, i'd love to know about 'We Only Know Their Name For Certain', it's a great title and i have so much curiosity!! whatever you'd like to share about it
also 'COW writing'? is it truly about bovines or does COW stand for something? [@rodentwrites]
Ahh, thank you so much for asking!!! (and for giving me the change to ramble about We Only Know Thier Name For Certain!)
We Only Know Their Name For Certain is, actually, a terrible title, given that it's the first line of the story, and also that I didn't write it. That single line was a writing prompt that I found I don't even know where, but it stuck in my head. Around the time I found it (holy shit, that was 4-ish years ago???) I was assigned to write a short story for a state-wide short story contest as a class assingment.
My original idea was a short story told only in transcripts of messages left on an answering machine, and I'd like to revist that someday as well! But I hated it every time I tried to write it. And that writing prompt, those few magic words, was stuck in my head.
So, I opened my "fragments" document (aka, the google doc where I write down all the tiny little snippets that pop into my head and that never become more) and I started writing. I though I'd be lucky to get a paragraph. But, nope, I ended up with just over a thousand words. Just pumped them out in one sitting.
I showed it to my teacher, who is a harsh critic, and she loved it. I submitted it. It didn't even get close to winning, which was sad.
But I haven't even told you what it's about!! It's a weird little speculative story about humanity. Aliens have found Earth, some time in the future. But there is no life here. No people, no animals. Only plants, and some very strange graffitti. Here's the opening lines:
We only know their name for certain. It was found, carved into every cliff face, written on every wall, visible everywhere we turned. “We are Human”. We can only take it to mean that was their name.
Spooky shit, right? I haven't even figured out myself what happened to "us", but it can't be good....
Anyways, the rest of the story is basically this essay written by an alien, trying to explain, to understand humanity. They talk about the things they've found (airports, the University of Michigan's Big House, the Titanic, the Great Pyramids, Mt. Rushmore, etc.) and they make assumptions about us. Not really assumptions, but thoughts about who we were as a species.
It's obviously not my best writing, given that I wrote it at the age of 14 or 15, but I love it dearly, and now I really, really want to go back and revisit the idea!! So, thank you for the inspiration!!!
I'll talk about COW under the cut because this is already really long.
(TW for injury and death (also child death) under the cut!!)
So, COW sadly has nothing to do with bovines. I love them, but that is not what this was. COW stands for "Creative Original Writing", and was a requirement for my, you guessed it, creative writing class.
At the end of the class (~12 weeks because my school was weird), we had to turn in 20 pages of our own writing, all of which was supposed to have been written during those 12 weeks. We had all of class every Friday to work on it, though.
My COW Writing is actually several things, the vast majority of which involve superheroes, because I loved (and still do) superhero fiction!! (Hence why I can't stop recommending the Villains series to anyone I meet, lmao.)
The first few pages (7 of them, to be precise) deal with Adrian St. Clair, a character that I made up for that very class. Most of my writing with him was really bad, and the only part that really matters is the first 235 words.
They're a re-written version of something I wrote 5-6 years ago, and that I don't have the original version anymore. But it's this little thing that talks about "the hero" and "the villain". They're taunting eachother, chasing. And the Hero jumps up on the railing of this pedestrian bridge, and is running along it, and somehow, he falls.
Well, then you find out that "the hero" and "the villain" are two children (brothers to be precise) who were playing in the park near their home. Yes, the one fell. Yes, he died. That was real. The last line is "How was I supposed to tell mom?" Because that poor kid (Adrian) is in shock. And of course, as a child, you screw something up and you think "shit, I need to either come clean or come up with a lie." And so that's where he's going.
(Side note: what was up with my 7th grade brain when I first came up with that scene??? This version is from 11th grade, but it's almost verbatim from the original.)
The next part of the COW document was also something that started out on my "fragments" doc. I had written the original years previously, so I decided to rewrite it for this project.
This one has to do with a teenage vigilante named Ash, who has at some point prior to this scene been cut with a poisoned blade. She's trying to get to "safety", but very much out of it.
(Side Note: how the hell did I write a better Poisoned Blade Disorientation Scene over a year ago (and also like, 6 years ago) than the 3 times I've tried to write a similar scene for ATQH??? HOW IS THAT FAIR???)
She imagines the headlines surrounding her death, and also the reaction of her younger sister, who she has apparently been caring for.
She makes it to "safety", but collapses on the steps, unable to reach the doorknocker. She thinks it's laughing at her.
(In the original version, in my "fragments" she is only rescued because her rival (the person she went to get help from but also the son of the city's most infamous villain), Nik's cat is meowing and trying to get his attention. He's like "what?" and then he sees A Leg out his window. Thank the cat, not him.)
The rest of the 20 pages is Adrian's real supervillain origin story. His mother works in a not-great part of town, and he visits her after school, even though she told him not to. He overhears these guys planning a robbery of some kind, and on the way home, he debates wether or not to report it. In the end, his goody-two-shoes side (or maybe his naivity) wins out, and he calls a tip line.
The woman on the other end is clearly apathetic, and seems to think it's a prank, but she assures him that the tip will be passed on to the proper authorities.
Later, his mom never comes home from work. Turns out that the robbery was planned on her work place, and she was killed in the crossfire. (It's mentioned earlier that her boss is a real shady guy, and probably some kind of drug dealer.)
Adrian is furious with the authorities (aka, the superheroes) for not doing anything, and thus begins his path to villain-hood. (Although I never got to write that far.)
Also, he spends some time after his mom's death with his elderly lesbian neighbor. Idk why, that's just what happens.
I'm SO sorry for the monster that this ask became. But I hope you find some part of it interesting?? Maybe??? If anyone read all the way to the bottom, you deserve a cookie and a hug, and please tell me what you think of my (kind of cringey) superhero shit. (Be nice about WOKTNFC, because I like that story, and I'm going to rewrite it.)
