soft-horns

[soft-horns]

Ref Recs for Whump Writers

Violence: A Writer’s Guide:  This is not about writing technique. It is an introduction to the world of violence. To the parts that people don’t understand. The parts that books and movies get wrong. Not just the mechanics, but how people who live in a violent world think and feel about what they do and what they see done.

Hurting Your Characters: HURTING YOUR CHARACTERS discusses the immediate effect of trauma on the body, its physiologic response, including the types of nerve fibers and the sensations they convey, and how injuries feel to the character. This book also presents a simplified overview of the expected recovery times for the injuries discussed in young, otherwise healthy individuals.

Body Trauma: A writer’s guide to wounds and injuries. Body Trauma explains what happens to body organs and bones maimed by accident or intent and the small window of opportunity for emergency treatment. Research what happens in a hospital operating room and the personnel who initiate treatment. Use these facts to bring added realism to your stories and novels.

10 B.S. Medical Tropes that Need to Die TODAY…and What to Do Instead: Written by a paramedic and writer with a decade of experience, 10 BS Medical Tropes covers exactly that: clichéd and inaccurate tropes that not only ruin books, they have the potential to hurt real people in the real world. 

Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction: Increase Realism. Raise the Stakes. Tell Better Stories. Maim Your Characters is the definitive guide to using wounds and injuries to their greatest effect in your story. Learn not only the six critical parts of an injury plot, but more importantly, how to make sure that the injury you’re inflicting matters. 

Blood on the Page: This handy resource is a must-have guide for writers whose characters live on the edge of danger. If you like easy-to-follow tools, expert opinions from someone with firsthand knowledge, and you don’t mind a bit of fictional bodily harm, then you’ll love Samantha Keel’s invaluable handbook

[soft-horns]

All the Knights together and in order.

Out of curiosity

[soft-horns]

Started out as replicating a pulp detective novel cover for fun... accidentally turned out pretty good.

Original cover below the cut

[soft-horns]

All the Knights together and in order.

Out of curiosity

[soft-horns]

I think some people forget that some literature and some media is meant to be deeply uncomfortable and unsettling. It's meant to make you have a very visceral reaction to it. If you genuinely can't handle these stories then you are under no obligation to consume them but acting as if they have no purpose or as if people don't have a right to tell these stories, stories that often relate to the darkest or most disturbing parts of life, then you should do some introspection.

[soft-horns]

Heck it... here's another one.

Can ya guess which Hazbin character she's based on?

It's...

Cherry Bomb!

Okay, finding a creative way to convert a one eyed character into my setting is a challenge, but that's the fun part!

Possibly because I have a bit of experience doing art for motorcycle enthusiasts, I ended up gravitating toward the big headlight to represent the single eye.

Next was figuring out an animal and I ended up landing on salamander. This fit nicely for an explosive/fire motif. This also led me to name this gal Hellbender, after the salamanders with the most metal name an amphibian could hope for.

And since City of Whispers takes place in late 1930s, she is now dressed as an early bike chick.

[soft-horns]

Etheldred is blind and Hephaestus is technically using a mobility aid in the form of his mechanical armor.

[soft-horns]

Concept drawings for my fantasy story.

Cave wolves, a little smaller than a grey wolf, built for climbing over rocks and the many crevasses across Krestoza. They hunt in packs, driving prey off cliffs or into fissures where they can overwhelm their quarry.

Tatzelwurms are solitary ambush predators. They tuck themselves into the rocks and wait for prey to pass by then spring. They are awkward when traveling over land, they do not have the belly scutes of a snake so they mostly drag themselves over the ground.

[soft-horns]

Seventh Knight Hephaestus

No one knows what he looks like underneath

[soft-horns]

Lucien and Swan Song

[soft-horns]

And now the Rosie redesign.

Pictured here in a walking dress, the skull of a child adorns her hat, wolf's jaws erupting from her face, and roses blooming at the hem of her walking dress with thorny vines trailing behind her.

Before continuing, Content warning for references to infanticide and cannibalism

This version of Rosie, Rosemary, suffered from postpartum psychosis after the birth of her first child. She had never wanted to be a mother, but such was her lot in life, and the doctors assured her and her husband that she just needed more time with the baby to bond. Alone, effectively locked int he house, she eventually succumbed to her delusions, killing and cooking the baby before ending her own life.

Originally I left her dress red, but I decided to change it to yellow as a reference to The Yellow Wallpaper.

[soft-horns]

Argent and Skinner having a little complication

[soft-horns]

The Goat

[soft-horns]

Yeshuah finally getting his update.

More about his design history below

His design has changed a lot since his creation. At first I didn't have much of Whisper's lore thought out so he was just a mash-up of features I found appealing.

Horns of a Jacob sheep, two sets of arms, a long tufted tail, and even wolf teeth... all for looks, not really much reason to them.

After I started to develop the world and the rules, he did NOT fit at all. However, he was still relevant to the plot I was concocting, so I was stuck with either rewriting things to remove him, or redesign him so he blended with the rest of the cast.

First pass was... less than stellar.

I was still dead set on the goat imagery, he is after all a stubborn old bastard who constantly over estimates his abilities and importance. The two-faced theme was also important, and I arrived at the skull sticking out the back of his head. I wasn't in love with the look but just stuck with it for a while, telling myself it would do.

But no. It would not do. Hence you see the Yeshuah of today; a goat torso overtaking a human form, and concealed within his goat head is the human skull, damaged by the gunshot that took his life.

[soft-horns]

Sinclair and Athene

[soft-horns]

Larch

[soft-horns]

Lucien and Swan Song