cryptid-crafted

[cryptid-crafted]

WEIRDLY SPECIFIC BUT HELPFUL CHARACTER BUILDING QUESTIONS

What’s the lie your character says most often?

How loosely or strictly do they use the word ‘friend’?

How often do they show their genuine emotions to others versus just the audience knowing?

What’s a hobby they used to have that they miss?

Can they cry on command? If so, what do they think about to make it happen?

What’s their favorite [insert anything] that they’ve never recommended to anyone before?

What would you (mun) yell in the middle of a crowd to find them? What would their best friend and/or romantic partner yell?

How loose is their use of the phrase ���I love you’?

Do they give tough love or gentle love most often? Which do they prefer to receive?

What fact do they excitedly tell everyone about at every opportunity?

If someone was impersonating them, what would friends / family ask or do to tell the difference?

What’s something that makes them laugh every single time? Be specific!

When do they fake a smile? How often?

How do they put out a candle?

What’s the most obvious difference between their behavior at home, at work, at school, with friends, and when they’re alone?

What kinds of people do they have arguments with in their head?

What do they notice first in the mirror versus what most people first notice looking at them?

Who do they love truly, 100% unconditionally (if anyone)?

What would they do if stuck in a room with the person they’ve been avoiding?

Who do they like as a person but hate their work? Vice versa, whose work do they like but don’t like the person?

What common etiquette do they disagree with? Do they still follow it?

What simple activity that most people do / can do scares your character?

What do they feel guilty for that the other person(s) doesn’t / don’t even remember?

Did they take a cookie from the cookie jar? What kind of cookie was it?

What subject / topic do they know a lot about that’s completely useless to the direct plot?

How would they respond to being fired by a good boss?

What’s the worst gift they ever received? How did they respond?

What do they tell people they want? What do they actually want?

How do they respond when someone doesn’t believe them?

When they make a mistake and feel bad, does the guilt differ when it’s personal versus when it’s professional?

When do they feel the most guilt? How do they respond to it?

If they committed one petty crime / misdemeanor, what would it be? Why?

How do they greet someone they dislike / hate?

How do they greet someone they like / love?

What is the smallest, morally questionable choice they’ve made?

Who do they keep in their life for professional gain? Is it for malicious intent?

What’s a secret they haven’t told serious romantic partners and don’t plan to tell?

What hobby are they good at in private, but bad at in front of others? Why?

Would they rather be invited to an event to feel included or be excluded from an event if they were not genuinely wanted there?

How do they respond to a loose handshake? What goes through their head?

What phrases, pronunciations, or mannerisms did they pick up from someone / somewhere else?

If invited to a TED Talk, what topic would they present on? What would the title of their presentation be?

What do they commonly misinterpret because of their own upbringing / environment / biases? How do they respond when realizing the misunderstanding?

What language would be easiest for them to learn? Why?

What’s something unimportant / frivolous that they hate passionately?

Are they a listener or a talker? If they’re a listener, what makes them talk? If they’re a talker, what makes them listen?

Who have they forgotten about that remembers them very well?

Who would they say ‘yes’ to if invited to do something they abhorred / strongly didn’t want to do?

Would they eat something they find gross to be polite?

What belief / moral / personality trait do they stand by that you (mun) personally don’t agree with?

What’s a phrase they say a lot?

Do they act on their immediate emotions, or do they wait for the facts before acting?

Who would / do they believe without question?

What’s their instinct in a fight / flight / freeze / fawn situation?

What’s something they’re expected to enjoy based on their hobbies / profession that they actually dislike / hate?

If they’re scared, who do they want comfort from? Does this answer change depending on the type of fear?

What’s a simple daily activity / motion that they mess up often?

How many hobbies have they attempted to have over their lifetime? Is there a common theme?

[cryptid-crafted]

i think that ghosts can and should decay. i think they should blur and fade, like a tape rewound too many times, or a photograph taken out and unfolded and then refolded again until it's nothing more than a vaguely recognizable smear of what was once a snapshot of time and memory. i think that clinging too tightly to a ghost should only destroy it faster, eroding it away until there's nothing left to hold on to.

[cryptid-crafted]

Telling myself this every day so here's a meme

[cryptid-crafted]

No, you know what? I DO think the villains are cool, fun, sexy, lovable, appealing, admirable and in the right.

I condone and promote villainous behavior. I will glorify/fetishize/romanticize villains 100% genuinely and sincerely for the rest of time, forever.

[cryptid-crafted]

i keep seeing soooo many ppl saying the canada post workers are selfish for striking right around christmas time and that they shouldve waited until january or whatever like omfg that is the point are you stupid!!!

[cryptid-crafted]

we have GOT to abolish the paperback only being released a year later scheme brother i simply am not purchasing your $40 hardcover book

[cryptid-crafted]

The greatest thing about OCs is that they take zero resources. You just make em up in your head in literal seconds. No one said they have to be super meaningful. For instance while typing this post I just imagined a character he's 3milimetres tall and a stickman and plays soccer his name is Fentanyl . Boom done. I'm having a great time

[cryptid-crafted]

Lesser-known steps of the writing process:

Finding all the paragraphs where you used some hyper-specific word more than once

Rearranging paragraphs that you swear you wrote in the right order but turned out to be totally backwards

Going for a walk, coming up with the perfect line, and forgetting it as soon as you get home and open your laptop

Creating a separate document where you can dump all of those nice sentences that no longer fit in anywhere

Waking up in a cold sweat because so-and-so was supposed to be barefoot but never actually took his shoes off

[cryptid-crafted]

me when a character who was completely powerless gains power and proceeds to lose themselves in the intoxication of it before coming to and being horrified by their own capacity for bloodlust

[cryptid-crafted]

why must the guard dog characters unquestioning devotion to their master be born from trust or some shit cant they be manipulated into it. raised into it. brainwashed even

[cryptid-crafted]

November Writing Update

(for @creators-club monthly round-up event!)

Plotting:

Hit the 75% mark (second iteration outline) in in that bright and bitter dawn

Began picking at the first iteration of Invader of Stars outline; currently making research plan

Writing:

(it might not seem like a whole lot, but it's more than I've written consistently in a while and that is a-ok with me)

250 words on a Durgetash (Baldur's Gate 3) fic

2.4k on a Captive Prince fic

1k in short character sketches for ITBABD

Other:

Miscellaneous admin tasks, including migrating material off of gdocs and into LibreOffice/Ellipsus

Looked over a contract for a large project to be signed next month!

Finally posted a WIP intro for ITBABD

Participated in a panel on planning/pantsing for the @duckprintspress Patreon (and had a GREAT time, highly recommend becoming a patron so you too can have a great time)

2024 has been a weird year for me, writing-wise. I've written...very little. Embarrassingly little, actually.

However!

I finished up with my most stressful and time-consuming projects near the end of October, and that weight has been slowly easing. I feel better about moving forward with actual writing again. Moreover, I've spent a lot of the year refilling my creative well. I've been doing a LOT of reading, which I haven't done in ages, and really sitting down to check in with myself about my process.

Turns out, I'm less of a pantser than I thought! Sitting down and plotting in that bright and bitter dawn (as well as chatting shop with some publishing friends about their own processes) has really forced me to look at how I approach original work vs fanwork (but also, short stories vs novel-length work).

I'm hoping to finish a lot of my other miscellaneous stuff in the first week of December (and I have a bunch of beta reading to do for a Trigun zine). Ideally by the new year, I will have:

Completed second iteration outline of ITBABD

Completed Invader of Stars outline entirely; sent off for approval

Completed and published that damn BG3 fic that I've been picking at for OVER A YEAR

Completed and published the Captive Prince fic

Hit the 75% mark on my own submission for that Trigun zine

[cryptid-crafted]

WIP Intro: In That Bright and Bitter Dawn

Title: In That Bright and Bitter Dawn

Genre: Fantasy, queer romance

POV: third person, present, multiple narrators

Tags: #project: itbabd

Status: Outlining, second iteration

Themes: grief; abuse and recovery; self-acceptance

Tropes: myths and magic; politics and diplomacy; prejudice; hurt/comfort; death and mourning; physical and emotional trauma; physical abuse; angst with a happy ending; messy relationships; childhood friends-to-enemies-to-lovers; mutual pining; forced proximity; found family; wide variety of queer relationships/characters

The Very Very Very Basic Bullet Points:

Mysterious disappearance of Sylas Merrick, soldier and second son of a prominent border lord

Unexpected lordship of Oren Freyn after his sister, scion of House Freyn, is killed

Crafty plotting and illegal magical contact between countries (anti-magic Avetri and pro-magic Riisch)

Glorious and unexpected reappearance of Sylas Merrick Kestrasson, Mage

Political prisoner Oren Freyn learns that maybe mages aren't all bad

Political prisoner Oren Freyn remembers how to be Oren Freyn, friend and lover

Oren pushed to (and past) the limits of his endurance as he watches Riisch prepare for war with Avetri

Oren returns to Avetri; fails to convince everyone (including himself) that he's ready to fight against Riisch

Oren discovers that there is an upper limit to how much he can and will take; becomes Oren Freyn, Mage, in the midst of a particularly pitched battle and proceeds to have a breakdown about becoming what he's spent so long hating

Oren Freyn, Mage, makes his way back to Sylas, allies with Riisch, and helps change the world

Major Players (links to individual posts to be added as they're made)

Oren Freyn

Age: 25

Gender/Sexuality: cis man, begrudgingly bisexual, demiromantic

Role: Protagonist 1

From: Avetri, northeastern border territory

Important Relationships: Sylas (love interest, past best friend and almost lover); Kerra (wife through arranged - and not really wanted - marriage); Jagoda (eventual bestie and instigator of the Plot To Help Sylas/Oren Fall In Love)

Sylas Merrick Kestrasson

Age: 29

Gender/Sexuality: cis man but open to experimentation, pansexual, can (and does) fall in love with anyone

Role: Protagonist 2

From: Avetri, northernmost border territory

Important Relationships: Oren (love interest, past best friend and almost lover); Inzali (father of her children, best friend turned lover turned QPR); Jagoda (bros [affectionate]); Arion (bros [derogatory, hateful])

Kerra Freyn-Erus

Age: 19

Gender/Sexuality: nonbinary (closeted), aromantic asexual

Role: Antagonist 1

From: Aethrun, the Avetran capital

Important Relationships: Oren (wife through arranged marriage); Arion (admiration turned lust turned horror, one-sided); Inzali (friend and mentor after the final battle)

Arion Merrick

Age: 35

Gender/Sexuality: cis man, not aromantic not asexual but a secret third thing (so filled with rage he can't conceive of the concepts)

Role: Antagonist 2

From: Avetri, northernmost border territory

Important Relationships: Sylas (brother [hates him])

Inzali Krynnsdottir

Age: 32

Gender/Sexuality: woman...ish, heterosexual, heteroromantic

Role: Support 1

From: Dageda, the largest Riischan port city

Important Relationships: Jagoda (husband); Sylas (mother of his children, best friend turned lover turned QPR); Kerra (friend and mentor after the final battle)

Jagoda Tammen

Age: 35

Gender/Sexuality: trans man, bisexual/biromantic disaster

Role: Support 2

From: Baneston, Riischan city famous for its mercenaries

Important Relationships: Inzali (husband); Sylas (metamour, bro [affectionate])

[cryptid-crafted]

shoutout to everyone who wants to infodump but cant string together coherent thoughts to form sentences and instead just look at you like this

[cryptid-crafted]

sometimes a theme recurs in your work without your permission. and sometimes it reaches a threshold where you're like. well now i think this is saying something about me against my will. don't know what though

[cryptid-crafted]

[cryptid-crafted]

This is your signal to let yourself write the deranged, uncomfortable, disgusting fiction that you've been thinking about.

[cryptid-crafted]