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As much as I love a character who is opposed to but slowly develops a connection to another character over the course of a story, eventually unable to do their job or unable to deal a killing blow because of that connection, you know what else I love?

A character trained all their life to make that killing blow, to the point where when there might have otherwise been a moment of hesitation that results in them finally coming to terms with their attachment for the other character, instinct takes over and they kill before they have a chance to stop themself.

Others present are confused as they see the move made with such grace, and with no hesitation, but immediately followed by the attacker dropping to their knees beside the fallen, weeping paradoxical tears and wailing in defeat the way that can only be born from self hatred and regret.

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If I had a nickel for every time I had a great idea that didn't fit into my current story and decided that I'll just remember to put it in "another story sometime" knowing full well that I'm nowhere close to being able to start something new, I could melt them all down and make a suit of armor.

Or maybe a sword, born from a pauper's patience, which they now wield to take petty revenge on the wicked who brought them low as they are. Maybe I could fit that in a story some time, write it down.

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The Calling Star

Everyone knows what happened after the Beacon was ignited on Allenoria. Monsters, disaster, general chaos. But for the rest of the Mural? What did that look like?

As soon as it was lit, the Beacon poured out waves of... something, into the universe, drawing the attention of most anything that could think. Hence why so many monsters and gods and whatever showed up to check it out.

Plenty of planets and peoples had no way of "checking it out," and were instead left to deal with the call of the Beacon in their own ways.

On Cathoul, they called in The Calling Star. It soundlessly cried out just on the edges of the Tamr people's conscious, and on the dark side of the planet you could feel it with only a few moments of focus. At this point none of the Cathoulites were very aware of life on other planets. The appearance of The Calling Star surprised even Ectanmr, and the serpent god immediately set to work trying to find out what it was and where it was coming from.

The Calling Star may have actually been the catalyst that set off the cultural movement for Tamr to become Tamr. The people of The Eye, Ectan's watchers in the dark, looking out over the vast nothing to find secrets hidden in the star swept void.

Eventually the Beacon was deactivated, and suddenly the Tamr people were quite dismayed. The silence of the Star did not feel like an appeased silence, but like a stifling. Like call for help suddenly cut short. Whether or not you sympathize with this belief, the deactivation certainly was sudden, and though the Star no longer called from the night sky, its memory in the eyes of the Tamr people never faded.

I like to think some day they may depart from their planet and have the opportunity to seek it out themselves. I can still see the look on Cansibr's face when I told him I'd just been there a week before.

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Wdym there's no way for me to see a rendering of a 90ft tall 190ft long feline with less than five minutes of searching?

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I want more just blatantly inaccurate worldbuilding to show up in stories.

You're telling me that this old fisherman or scholar or king knows anything about What Happened Here 800 years ago? How do they know this? Who wrote it down, and how do we know they're telling the truth?

No, I want multiple characters that the protagonist meets to have varying accounts or understandings of world or local events. I want them to be wrong about how to appease the spirits. I want to discover that that ancient king that everyone hates for ruining everything never actually existed because he was a scapegoat the scholars created to cover up their wildly corrupt meritocracy that fell to revolution. Have the immortal demigod you've been taking advice from lead you to the wrong spot, and you realize that the one person you thought you could trust for an accurate representation of a bygone era has got a screw loose, and now you can't trust anything he's said up to this point.

History may be objective, but the telling and retelling of it doesn't have to be.

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And just like that you've created a culture of floating castle vampires that are ridiculously advanced with music theory, so you'll have a typical bard or troubadour going up there and discussing music, only for the vampire to realize that the musician has no idea what they're talking about.

Bard: "Wait, so you're telling me you can have multiple instruments playing at the same time???"

Vampire, surrounded by synth pads and subwoofers: "Yeah...?"

I also love the image of a peaceful mountain town, suddenly terrorized by the sudden appearance of a gothic castle blaring organ pop music.

So a tidbit about vampires in Kovaud. The most powerful and influential of them have flying castles. These castles are powered by blood magic and piloted using arcane harmonics. In order for a vampire to steer their castle they must vibrate the enchantments keeping it aloft in a certain manner. They commonly do so by blasting organ music which can be heard long before the castle is seen as it approaches.

So in essence some vampires have flying castles which move by playing an instrument.

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Obsidian Graph 8/9/23

Sadly it looks like the image quality isn't great here, but this is the current state of the Obsidian graph, for future reference. I've kinda gotta build Handal, Haziren, Shaben, and Daciel from the ground up cause they're not really represented here yet, so maybe we'll see some major change soon.

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A character based on the "the the" thing.

You know, the stupid thing where your brain skips over the the second "the" and then at the end they give you that smirk and say "No go read the sentence again" and I want to throw my brain away and congratulate it at the same time.

You've got two twins or partners or whatever, but some weird magic has made the second one resistant to perception, so they just kinda creepily hide behind or near the other. You keep forgetting they're there and flinch every time they say something, or just flat out don't know about their existence until you're being threatened by the first one and you just kinda become aware of The Other One's knife at your throat.

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Fantasy Tropes I Like Too Much #2

"The King's Assassin"

You know the one. Every so often there's a country where the ruler has this living weapon they deploy to hunt down criminals/political rivals/people who looked at them funny.

Sometimes no one knows who they are. They go by many names and theories abound regarding their true identity. Perhaps it's even someone in the court? Maybe they're not even real, and those recent --and very convenient-- deaths among the kingdom's nobility and in those government prisons were really coincidental, separate instances? Wishful thinking.

Other times everyone knows who they are. They stand at the left side of the throne, always balancing on the knife edge of honor and disgrace, surveying the court with unblinking eyes of steel. People look down upon meeting their eyes, making a mental note to visit a priest later.

Many times this is the protagonist, actually. Sold into slavery or exploited by their family, the royal family. Personally, I'd like to see more of this trope approached from the outside more often. Take it a step further. Make them more than just brutal and untrusted, make them inhuman.

Characters shiver in the dark, part from the cold, but part from the constant terror that a set of etherial, piercing eyes will appear from the folds of darkness in the alleyway.

A too-wide smile opens like a gleaming scar in the peaceful night and two knives flash in the low light, soundlessly removed from their sheaths. Maybe they don't smile at all. Maybe they're a soulless and uncaring killer. They don't flinch at pain, they make no noise, and the only indication that you're even fighting anything are those flat, dead looking eyes that seem to look through you, even as they open up your chest.

They appear where there was no way for them to have entered, and seem to be everywhere you look, from the moment the crime is committed to the moment they finally emerge from your peripheral vision to strike.

Took me this long to realize it's essentially the fantasy equivalent of a government sponsored batman.

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Feel like this could work with a slavic witch type character. Would most likely have to be an Inertia thing but maybe you could fit it under Artifice. Actually that could be really nice.

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Malchik tossed the key onto a nearby table, along with his patchy coat. "Just put your things wherever there's space. I've been meaning to reorganize all this, but there is so much going on around here that I haven't had the chance. We'll get around to it eventually."

Isana stepped through the crooked doorframe and looked around the hovel. Various desks and counters lined the wood paneled walls, and she could imagine that the place had once been a workshop of some kind. Now dusty piles of clutter crowded every surface. Not the 'magical curiosities' kind of clutter either, just the normal 'I wouldn't touch that if I were you' kind. She closed the door behind her --which took a good three tries before it stuck-- and gingerly stepped over piles of fabric on the ground before moving to inspect a nearby shelf.

This one seemed to be occupied by a host of small wooden figures, mostly what looked like horses or donkeys. There were maybe fifteen, but standing in the center of them was a much taller, ornately carved horse.

Sinuous lines flowed up its legs and across its back, sometimes ending in tight curls or flourishes that wove together to form the creature's mane and face. It was a masterwork, a near perfect rendering, and Isana guessed that it had to have taken weeks to create something so detailed, so graceful. The other carvings around it were not only much smaller, but barely passable as horses. Pitiful attempts at recreating their idol, which they surrounded like a Shepard's herd.

"Malchik, what's this?" Isana called.

"What's it look like? If it's a jar I'd suggest washing your hands," Malchik responded from the other room, likely trying to put on a kettle.

"A wooden horse?" Malchik peeked his head in from the other room.

"Ah, that's just Yaudna's thing. Said she can see through it or communicate with it --something like that, not that you can trust anything she says. Even if it does work, she probably stops in once a year or so to scoff at the mess, the old hag." He said it with a mocking huff, but Isana could hear the feigned indifference in his tone.w

She set the carving back down on the shelf, feeling foolish as she realized she was avoiding making eye contact with it, and went to join Malchik in the other room.

What if a magically inclined character of yours could carve small strange little figurines out of wood (or whatever other materials are available) and then look through said figurines eyes when closing their own.

These figurines if placed outside the carvers home could effectively work as a magical security camerasm

Maybe the eyes of the figurines could be looked through by others with the same ability, unless the carver has the necessary skill to restrict others sight through them.

Oh and if a antagonistic character uses this ability why not have them over rely on it to the point to the point of absurdity.

Perhaps have them work with others, using the eyes of the figurines to locate and send enemies to the protagonists locations almost seeming where they'll go before they do.

Then when one of the protagonists vanishes from their eyes they could start looking through every figurine over and over thinking it'd be impossible to get through network of eyes they have set up around the place.

That is of course before the vanished protagonist becomes un-vanished directly Infront of the oblivious antagonist who has forgotten to check through their own eyes.

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All of this

ways to start writing more efficiently

stop writing with the word count on!

use a font like comic sans -- trick your brain into thinking that it's not important, that the writing can be stupid, if it's in a stupid font (if you can't tell i despise comic sans)

time yourself to get to a goal

or give yourself a certain amount of time

quantity >> quality in the first draft(s)!

jot down what you want to happen in that chapter

try organizing your writing (nanowrimo, for example)

do *not* reread! it doesn't need to make sense, it just needs to be there

try not to stick yourself to something you saw on tumblr. what works for someone else doesn't necessarily work for you!

take breaks. time those breaks.

practice writing short stories / oneshots of your characters.

try getting all your writing done within a certain goal (as much as I can for 30 minutes) rather than writing 5 minutes on or off

write down every little wormy idea that comes into your brain! sure, it's probably for a different plot, but maybe you can work it in somehow?

on that note, mash elements of your plots together rather than starting a whole new story

see maybe what little writing competitions you can submit your work to

proclaim your goal to the wide web for some peer pressure

rewards yourself. cheer on every thousand-word milestone. brag to your friends that you've written something, anything.

don't think of the big goal—don't think of publishing, or posting, etc. think of the end of your chapter, the development of your character, where it goes.

switch your writing environment! where are you most productive?

make a playlist only for when you write. never for anything else.

getting off tumblr, probably.

have people remind you of your goals.

remember that it all comes with discipline, but also your mental health is the most important!! don't sacrifice half your sleep to meet your nanowrimo goals. try to recognize when it's taking you too long and close the document. do something else. come back later.

take care of yourself. <3 use this post as a breather (or reminder to start!)

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Write what you learn

You don't always have to "write what you know." You can write what you learn!

Don't have experience in something to write it convincingly? Read, research, and ask questions. It's the best way to grow as a writer.

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Curse my hatred of entropy and unwillingness to create dysfunction in my pet universe.

I'm sitting here thinking "okay what problems are going on on this planet that I can exploit for a story", only to find that everything is working just fine actually and the natural order is in perfect harmony and the gods are happy and the different nations are only in the regular amount of turmoil.

Conflict is the soul of a story, so how do I make a story if I built the setting to avoid rubbing on itself and creating friction?

It's at this point I realize it's time to go get the bag of wrenches and inflict some major trauma in somebody.

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That's sick like some deep sea monster gives you a jar of something and tells you that air exhaled from deep in the heart of the planet can grant visions or smth. Maybe it's even true and deep sea gas grants some kind of Augmented Sight to the one who inhales it. Sounds like an Urelyan idea.

Contacting Xilitir via nasty sea gas

Recently I found out about nitrogen narcosis, a phenomenon where inert gasses in breathing tanks become narcotic to divers due to the effect of the pressure on the human body (the greater the pressure the more intense the narcotic effect).

So anyway what if there was a deep water gas extracted from earthen vents down in the crushing depths by water-dwelling peoples, sealed within jars the deep water gas is then brought to the surface for use as either a medicine or as a weapon used to incapacitate.

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Sorta like the 'god died and bled all over the planet' type situation.

You encounter a pile of extra dimensional paradox goop and nobody can really tell what it is or how it got there, but you get the feeling it's very not safe but also that it might be just what you need to power your doomsday weapon.

A broken dimension sounds interesting too. All kinds of good hooks you could draw from that, and it's the kind of thing that will have consequences that bleed across time.

I think a neat idea would be having the remnants of some sorta higher plane of existence which was at some point shattered and broken be scattered across the planes that it was above.

It's once incomprehensible near intangible form now being mostly lost and warped into the mundane materials of the planes it now resides in.

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Big Picture Magic and mini magic

Been thinking about the idea of large scale magic systems that exist over the whole of the Mural, and their relationship to smaller systems present on specific planets or in specific cultures.

On the one hand this can mean the really big stuff, in the case of the Mural being Focus, vrishi, Ebron, and Artifice magics, as those are the four that everything else really falls under. You could argue about Inert magic but that kinda fills in the cracks.

But see, if Artifice is the Big Picture Magic, then Soul Anchors on Lathian is the mini magic. Both involve creating an object to fulfill a certain magical purpose, but the smaller scale magic doesn't totally understand how it works or the full extent of their magic's potential. They know they can lock down certain aspects of themself and hold them at the same level as when the Anchor was activated, but do they really know what that's actually doing? They have no idea about Shapes (at least not more than an elementary "It's your soul" understanding), or the variety which the Artifice they're using allows them.

Not sure if I explained that super clearly, but think about the possible uses for this principle. People from different worlds start interacting and realize their magics bear some distant similarities. They start learning from one another and discovering new, previously impossible ways to use their magic based on the apparent capabilities of the other planet's magic.

Maybe a scholar or wizard from another planet is in hiding on a backwater planet with very primitive magic, but using their centuries old theory and the absolute basics known on Backwater Planet to decode age old mysteries about magic and the universe elsewhere.

Make themes in the magic. Build secrets and tricks that characters will spent generations figuring out. Let a reader make connections and theories across the whole of the universe by slowly introducing pieces of the puzzle.

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Fantasy Tropes I Like Too Much #1

Characters becoming mythology in later stories

Like not even the other direction either. Sure, it’s cool to hear about somebody in myths and then go back and see a POV or meet them through another character or whatever, but on the other end you have a character you’ve followed for maybe hundreds of pages, through hardship and decision, through triumph and tragedy, and then you see them in the history books.

In order for a good story to work, you need to care about your protagonists, so the author has been building up that relationship between you and the characters, meaning that when you see that Painting hanging on the wall in some gallery or a statue in a city depicting their glorious visage you can point and say “hey I know them!”

You just don’t get the same thing in reverse as easily. Bonus points if they get the history wrong and you utterly confuse the reader or any characters who are still around that we’re with the protagonist.

The best I’ve seen this done is in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series, since you have a whole trilogy set in like 18th-19th century and following your little band of crooks, murders, and weirdos, but then a time jump after book three sends us into the industrial revolution and now those weirdos are the subject of religions and stuff.

Now you’re here watching the new protags going through a graveyard and seeing a statue of Vin and being all “ah, the Ascendant Warrior. What would she have said, were she here, I wonder? She was so wise and powerful if only I was more like her” and you’re reading like “nah man she was a gremlin for the first several years and even after that she was still really murdery”

I want to care about your history, and though this is the most time intensive and difficult way to do it, it’s super super effective for establishing a connection to the world.