#He's excited about Omphalos

[kaidawrite-a]

I am on time don't judge me. 30 - Amity

Between saving more worlds, fighting gods, and running around helping anyone who needed it, Krile's summons for coffee felt like a reprieve. Post-EW, some actual spoilers.

Thank you as always to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for hosting this!! It's fun every year :)

[memoriesofgelmorra]

FFXIV Write: Prompt 13: Butte (hehehe)

Everyone is making that joke, including us on this challenge. Spoilers for zone 4 of DT, with a small prompt this time.

Chantelle may have been born under the thick trees of The South Shroud, in a village that boasted dwellings of wood-made and carved from caves both. But ever since The Dragonsong War, where she traveled through Dravania, The Churning Mists and the Sea of Clouds….she had sought out the skies and tall vistas on her travels ever since.

The Tonawawta locals in Shaaloani had recommended a trek to Mount Loazensasaya, citing a view like few others in Tural. They had been right during the cloudy morning she had partook in the climb. Her chocobo, Baronet wasn’t as excited about the geography as she was, but was still happy to breathe in the clear air at this altitude. Such was clear and crisp at this height, no wonder that the ancestors here had thought to commune with the wind and land. Such good views were religious in their own ways.

Had it been before she had been to the Omphalos, Chantelle might have thought to give a prayer to Oschon. Now, she simply wondered if Deryk would ever make it over to this western continent, and discover the same sights she had. If he ever did, she would have to show him the dawn cresting up from Mount Loazensasaya.

[dumpsterfireofsubtext]

what kind of science fiction does emo beatrice/1930s au beatrice tend to write? is it “oh no! aliens!/oh no! creatures!” ala war war the of worlds and like, godzilla

dystopias like 1984 & episodes of black mirror, humans doing fucked up stuff that comes to bite them in the ass aka frankenstein and like every 1960s sci fi film about some giant creature that came about because of nuke bombs (which were pratically all the films then it seems), Weird Shit Happens ala the twilight zone, Exploring Them Oceans, Exploring Them Earth, or Exploring the depths of the earth ala journey to the center of the earth

Woag, space, ala more star trek esque stuff (spef tos), boom bam in space ala more star wars esque stuff? Normal people with normal problems but in sci fi settings! Among Us? (Side note that gave me the mental image of jonty in an among us costume thx to ava who convinced beatrice to let her dress him up via them puppy dog eyes and now i’m laughing my ass off.

semi related do you think beatrice would be the type to have a bunch of random & obscure dog merch? feel like she isn’t, that’s more ava’s thing, and ava’s thing is more on weird ass clothes for the dog that she deems cute, but i feel like beatrice probably has the occasional impulse buy or something that in hindsight was either stupid and/or the dog didn’t like collecting dust in her attic or something

((pls tell me beatrice has had the often universal pet owner experience of buying something more expensive than usual only for that money to just go to waste as the pet is near apathetic and likes something cheaper. i’m in hysterics imagining beatrice being Extra MopeyTM because she got some new relatively expensive dog food that was highly recommended by dog owners & vets w a bunch of Nutritional Benefits and she was excited to gift it to jonty, only for jonty to just sniff at the food, not touch a morsel of it and then whine that he didn’t get his usual birthday bone))

but i feel like beatrice might have like, a bunch of pictures of her dog and/or her & the dog, maybe even a whole album for them, and beatrice might have like a bunch of silly and/or matching pictures, like taking a picture in one of these type things, etc etc

Great questions.

I think (unsurprisingly) Beatrice would be suuuuper influenced by H.G. Wells and definitely Shelley. The sci-fi she writes would be along the lines of what if the world was the same as it is now except for this one fucked up thing or like The protagonist meets this one character or thing that changes them and flips their world on its head.

Her novels were probably verging on social satire and were inspired heavily by the war. She retaliated against her upbringing through her books. her father was absolutely Oxbridge educated and had a lot of books/subscribed to literary journals so Beatrice had a lot of material as a kid.

(The more... ahem frowned upon books she had to source herself. she definitely read Flowers of Evil and Carmilla etc and was left feeling very 123?!!13XZSDVFGH4????!!!1f?? by them. Also definitely read The Well of Loneliness and hated it a little bit.)

Short stories like The Croquet Player and A Dream of Armageddon were a reference point for her early writing probably. (she definitely had a wild time reading the time machine, as did I) Themes around Duty vs Love etc are just very very Avatrice so A Dream of Armageddon felt very them. It was sort of like what if Avatrice chose to leave together instead of fight etc and rejected their responsibilities in favour of being together and unbothered and in love and ran away back to Switzerland (but in the story it's Capri) idk it just made me think of that a little bit.

I imagine one of her more popular novels would be something about the intersection between religion and Science and some sort of reconciliation and/or divide between the two. Like maybe a new theory/invention/revelation that seemingly disproves a major theological belief, a la Ted Chiang's 'Omphalos' except in 1930 lol. Idk I'm not about to write an entire novel inside of this fan fic. Or am I... probably not,,, but who knows??? (not me).

I don't think Bea would hem herself in too much though. So there'd totally be weirder more experimental books the older she got (and the more comfortable she got in being a bit weird). Overall she'd lean more towards speculative/dystopian fiction rather than full-blown Star Trek-type sci-fi. Like, imagine how fucked up we can be as opposed to how fucked up things from outer space can be.

In regards to the pet tangent:

Beatrice has a million comfy dog beds for Jonty but (a lot like my own dog) he sleeps on none of them, much preferring cardboard boxes, people's shoes, or the windowsill. The Cardinal (Beatrice's cat) appreciates the beds though.

Jonty is far too wriggly to be still enough to have his picture taken/be put in clothes. The Cardinal on the other hand is perpetually :| and chill with everything so Ava would probably convince Bea to spend money on buying a camera or paying for professional pictures of him like these:

Beatrice would scoff but then, a few days later, would have them framed and put up.

This hc spiralled a bit but god was it fun. Thanks as always for the great question/thoughts.