#c: Kirnus

[void-botanist]

Bunny picrew tag

@outpost51 tagged me for this one!

Here's the picrew.

And here are four lil bunnies that languish in the back of my mind: Aza, Keearo, Kirnus, and Sheri.

I'll tag @sarahlizziewrites, @sam-glade, @sleepyowlwrites, @writernopal, and anyone else who wants to join in!

[void-botanist]

Find the Word: Triad round 2

Another set of excerpts from Triad, this time thanks to @autumnalwalker. My words were green, dozen, sound, send, and alive.

I'll tag @kahvilahuhut, @sarahlizziewrites, and @vacantgodling for the words romantic, wretched, rile, round, and revenge.

Green

As they passed into the rows of trees, Kirnus started listing off what was in season, pointing out the trees as he went. At one tree he plucked off a long, flat fruit. "These are good green—better than when they're ripe, I'd say." Keearo took the fruit offered to him, took a bite, and made a face that made Kirnus laugh. Ugh, his laugh was good too.

Dozen

The breeze ruffled the feathers of the bird Kirnus was brushing, disrupting the smooth lines he had created. It didn’t matter—the bird had been de-burred and could care less about the exact angle of its fluff—but it annoyed him slightly all the same. He patted it on its black and white spotted side and it ambled away on its long naked legs, back out into the field with a dozen others of various patterns.

Sound

(Aza and her twin brother Seriito are out for a drink.)

“You’re sure he’s not going to be like, ‘wow thanks for dragging me to a morning event with your sister’?” “That would be rude,” he said, putting all his sass on the last word. “I’ve been to so many morning things with his sisters. Well, at least two.” “Tit for tat sister times seems like a poor idea.” But she was smiling. “I’ll do what I have to do. He’s gotta at least tolerate you or I’m gonna have to find another doctoral candidate to fuck.” She’d started a sip with his first sentence and struggled to finish it for laughing at the second. Through probably more luck than skill all the wine somehow stayed in her mouth. “Sorry,” he said, half-laughing at her plight. When she’d recovered, he said, “We can’t all be as fortunate as you, with two guys to hook up with.” “Sounds like a you problem,” she joked. “Rude.”

Send

The breeze was constant, sending long orange strands of hair into her vision and the condensation on her glass of water and occasionally, unfortunately, the herbed cheese spread on her biscuit. With a sigh, she reached up to tie her hair back with the elastic she always kept in her pocket.

Alive

(interestingly the only instance of this word in Triad.)

The legal and emotional morass they’d waded through was deep and crushing and yet they’d pulled themselves out on the opposite shore, alive and victorious, but with all the confidence in them washed out and replaced with impervious grief. And just—just a drop of what happened where the confidence and the grief met: a raw, injured urge for revenge.

[void-botanist]

OC Kiss 2023 Day 1: Dance

[Image description: a digital color drawing of two men, Keearo and Kirnus, kissing while slow dancing on a mottled blue and purple background. Keearo has medium brown skin and dark brown hair in an angled bob with thick bangs. He's wearing a black choker, a short sleeveless light turquoise dress and matching eyeshadow and nail polish. His hands rest on Kirnus's shoulders, fingers mostly curled, but starting to loosen up. Kirnus has light skin and short, messy dirty-blond curls, and is wearing a dark green shirt with a collar and short sleeves and khaki shorts. He faces away from the viewer, arms around Keearo's waist, leaning into the kiss. /End description.]

Tomorrow's OC Kiss will be more timely, but for now, enjoy Kirnus and Keearo being cute and gay. This is based on nothing - I don't even know where they're slow dancing or why - but I like the idea of them slowly opening up to each other in the process.

Also they have body hair I swear I just forgot it (I forgot Keearo's matrimonial choker too at first but it was faster to draw in than hair). But I would believe that Kirnus shaved his face for whatever this event is.

[void-botanist]

Find the Word

It's find the word time again! I'm taking the open tag from @theskeletonprior to find day, black, chill, deft, and thick in my WIPs.

I'll also put out an open tag with the words jacket, blink, enough, star, and green.

Day

The Fourth Android

Anni dipped a piece of pretzel into its chocolate sauce as she studied Urma’s crossword. Like Julian, they did the newspaper crossword every day. Unlike Julian, they would sometimes ask for her help on the same day the crossword came out if they got stuck enough. "Five down is wrong," she said.

Black

Triad (Aza's POV; bonus: this is Kirnus and Jas Jas)

Kirnus was calling for a bird called Jas Jas, which maybe wasn't a funny name in Swietse but sure sounded funny to her. Jas Jas had wobbly black stripes, and once Kirnus was on her back, he was able to see Aza's amused smile. "Jas Jas hatched when I was seven," he said. "That's the only name she answers to now."

Chill Cold

Triad (Kirnus's POV)

He wandered along the water line, his wet skin going warm and then cold as the sea rushed over his feet, then withdrew and let the night air get to them. The air itself was warm and sticky, subjectively twice as humid as Enost. A full moon and a waning gibbous peered down at him, lighting the long coastline in greyscale. He wasn’t convinced coming out here was helping him think about things, but at least he was less likely to be found and interrupted out here than in his room. There was also space in the darkness for him to fully unreel his vast and tangled thoughts.

Deft(ly)

The Fourth Android

The book Jaccson held up, Blob and the Garden, had a picture of what looked like a round blue slime on the front, with two tall elliptical eyes and a purple flower growing from a pile of dirt on top of it. Dez could see why Lacey had dubbed him a blob, and he was prepared to like the idea more after this story. Jaccson deftly opened the book right to the first page and started to read.

Thick

Triad

Between the orchard and the corral fence, the ground sloped down to a little pond thick with the voices of frogs. Its only patrons were a weeping tree growing out of the bank at a forty-degree angle and a grey stone bench with green lichen for legs.

[void-botanist]

Happy WBW! What does entertainment look like in your world? Are there movie/tv or sports equivalents?

Happy WB...M...! I talked about this for my settings in a long-ago post but I think it would be fun to talk about some specifics.

I'm not super interested in reinventing sports as a whole, so the people in my worlds do pretty much the same sports as we have on earth, with some occasional modifications like riding birds instead of horses. On Pajiir, Kirnus is extremely dedicated to watching televised avestrian (bird-equestrian) competitions, and also tends to listen to baseball over the radio while he works. With other media, some places, like the Confluence (which combines Tree and Mushroom Forests with an Akkanswl and a lot of humans), make big money from movie and tv studios looking to film in a highly interspecies environment. You'll also find that a lot of nonroot media that takes place in Forests is filmed in the Confluence, because it's hard to get film access to Forests elsewhere.

Since I've been talking about Elbas Island I also want to bring up a genre that's fallen out of favor in the modern day but used to be a big deal: reality tv about the so-called "dying network families" in the Confluence. With the advent of the satellite and later fiber internet (metal/glass networks), the old money uep and neriem families who had built their wealth through being involved with the mycelial internet (just "network") were feeling extremely dramatic about the whole thing and the tv studios of the time were more than happy to lend an ear and a camera. Herric didn't really want to get involved in that whole trend, despite the fact that they were big news for establishing Elbas Island, the first offshore location to be connected to the network via satellite, but their old-money wife was not going to take no for an answer (there was a good chunk of time where she thought Elbas Island was gonna be a haven for the wealthy). So there are a few different shows from a little over a century ago that feature Herric, their Southern belle of a wife, and their two kids, with whole episodes devoted to trying to convince everyone that there was something going down between Herric and the island's co-founder, Urielte. They weren't entirely wrong, but they kinda missed the warning signs of Herric and his wife's spectacular divorce, which really wasn't about Urielte at all (she discovered Herric was for real about being a communist and didn't actually care secretly about currying favor with the Forest government).

General taglist: @kk7-rbs

[void-botanist]

ashen-crest asked:

trick or treat!!

Moving this one to my writeblr for organization purposes! I shall also give you a BG3 themed treat, with the Triad crew as BG3 classes:

Aza: Beast master ranger with a dire raven familiar, possibly multiclassed into warlock with a fiend pact (read: my mom the queen sold my soul to the monarchy)

Keearo: Divination wizard because I think this is the funniest combo for a man who likes reading, meteorological forecasting, and wearing fine skirts

Kirnus: Circle of the Land druid, to no one's surprise

Sheri: Wild magic sorcerer, because he is simultaneously doing great and having a bad time of it. Optional multiclass into warlock/fiend pact for the same reason as Aza.

Negleeglo (Sheri's boyfriend): Gloom stalker ranger but he's only in the shadows because he's awkwardly standing in the corner being very quiet

Imeret (Keearo's parent): should also be an artificer but I'll take Oath of the Ancients paladin, known for shield bashing

Vash (Keearo's uncle): Wild magic barbarian, where he complains about something to enter rage and then hopes that he doesn't have additional bad (magical) luck

Careli (Vash's wife): Cleric of Yondalla or Tymora, Knowledge Domain. Direct, decisive, and full of Guiding Bolt

Tharn (Kirnus's mom): Circle of the Moon druid, to enable being a literal mama bear

Kaelu (Kirnus's older brother): College of Lore bard, a singing telegram of a combatant and the most charismatic roller skater you have ever met

[void-botanist]

✅ for the wip adaption ask game

Which character/plot point/etc would be your favorite to see on screen?

Definitely Kaelu, Kirnus's older brother. He's cheerful, sassy, and spends a good chunk of his time in the book at work, waiting on train dining car tables in roller skates.

But there's also a kind of throwaway moment in my many Triad fragments where Vash is explaining to Kirnus how the city train system works, because Kirnus had tried to show up unannounced to surprise Aza and Keearo but had gotten so stymied by the train system that Vash ended up coming to get him. In a screen adaptation you could do an animation of the explanation, showing the map and tracing the route and hearing Vash wonder why foreigners always seem to struggle with it so much. (I know I've seen this in a TV show before but I just can't think of an example!)

[void-botanist]

🪩🥀 <3

hehe thanks for the return ask!

🪩 Would you want a movie adaption, TV, or something else? Animated or live action?

I'm 50/50 on animated or live action, because 95% of what I watch is animated, but I like the idea of someone actually paying attention and pulling off a good live action adaptation of Triad. But if they're gonna try to Hollywoodify the look of it, no thanks. I was also gonna say movie to keep the story tight, but a short TV series could do that but also give more room to explore things from each partner's perspective. And if I do end up keeping the full on train journey, TV feels like it makes more sense. So TV I think. 🥀 Which character/plot point/etc is most important for an adaption to get right?

If I say ten and I get an animated adaptation that misses them all is that top ten anime betrayals

To be honest I wouldn't want to budge on anything lol but four specific things come to mind.

Aza's hair needs to be extremely orange. Like so orange it looks dyed and it probably would be in a live action adaptation (or a wig). And if her dad shows up in a flashback or something, you gotta bring the appropriate saturation for his red hair too.

Kirnus has to be fat. Yeah, he's extremely muscular, but you can't tell that by looking at him. In technical terms he has to be light enough to ride an avestrian course, but you can't talk me down from him looking soft. It's important that he's not a "sexy ranch hand" kind of guy - he's just some guy, and Aza and Keearo are super into that actually.

Keearo is the high femme of this story and that just is what it is. Nobody's like "I'd be more attracted to him if he didn't dress like that" or whatever. If someone tries to put him through a "manly" makeover plot we're burning everything down and starting over.

Keearo's parent is genderqueer and it's not a thing. Kirnus isn't familiar with the title "dama" but he doesn't need a full rundown on gender because that's just normal. There shouldn't even be the suggestion that anyone has Feelings about this, especially not Keearo's late father.

[void-botanist]

Find the Word: Triad edition

I have approximately 1 million tags I'm working my way through. Today, have a find the word courtesy of @kahvilahuhut. My words were train, house, tree, climb, and eye.

I'll leave an open tag for the words sofa, shadow, slightly, sigh, and several.

Train

Kirnus was unlocking the back door of the stable where it formed part of the fence. "You can take my brother's mount. I mean, at this point she's basically my second, since he's not home much." The door cracked open into the wide, lowlit central corridor of the stable. He shut and locked it again behind her. "Where is he?" she asked. "He works on the Continental as a full-time waiter." That was another one of those Wall things she had only experienced recently, riding the train south from Svend into Swiets. It had been less touristy than she'd expected, probably because the novelty experience was concentrated into the eating and entertainment cars, where everything was just a little over the top. To prove how stable the train was, the waitstaff swooshed up and down the aisles on rollerblades.

House

(bonus: this Vash)

“The house is unnecessarily fancy,” Keearo said. “You mean impractical,” Vash said. “Which is why they’ll never move out. They’ll never find a house that ridiculous again.” “Yoma used to call it the Mausoleum,” Imeret said. “I forgot about that,” Vash said. “That’s exactly what it’s like. I mean, it’s our home, so I love it, but it’s just as over the top as people buying whole sheds for their dead bodies.”

Tree

"We harvested the last batch of ipurs yesterday, so I haven't got any of those, but I have got one more…" He pulled himself up into the fork of a tree and started squeezing the smooth fruits. They looked about the perfect size for his hands, maybe as big as two fists together. Or a smallish titty. Once she had that thought, she couldn't unsee Kirnus testing his way through a dozen tree titties, and she had to try hard to hold down her laughter.

Climb

Not found, despite the number of trees Kirnus gets into

Eye

As he waited on the platform for the west loop Continental, the tears started to come. But shit, this was Kaelu's train. He couldn't be crying about leaving, not when he was about to go get lunch. Patting his eyes dry with his unabsorbent fingers, he boarded the train and drifted through the crowd to the dining car. "Oh, so today's the day?" Kaelu asked him a few minutes later after finally sailing up to his table. "Yeah." "Well, hey. I'm on break in a couple hours. Come see me in the lounge then."

[void-botanist]

Athu getting back and discovering his family is now full of people with some manner of absent father and decides to be everyone's dad. somehow

[void-botanist]

Wrapped Scenelets No. 55: lakeside

I'm writing scenelets for (most of) my Spotify Wrapped top 100 songs. Here's number 55, Confianzas Raras by Grandes Tardes.

━━━━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━━━━

Keearo’s skirt ruffled against her calf in the breeze, half-lit by the dregs of the pasture lights behind them. It felt almost wrong to be out here alone, even though they wouldn’t be missed in the house for a while. Aza looked out across the moss-edged lake, mostly dark at this time of evening beyond the faint shimmer of dual moonlight.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” she said quietly.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” he said. He put a hand on her thigh, and she took it in her own hand.

“Has it been all right for you?” She wasn’t supposed to worry about him, and he seemed to be fine, but the longer they were here the more obvious it felt that this trip was just for her.

“The birds stay on their side of the fence and I stay on mine. It works out.”

“But really, though.” She looked over at him.

He met her eyes before he spoke. “It’s a little bit boring. That’s all. But I like it here. Tharn has been so nice.”

“I guess she hasn’t noticed you making eyes at Kirnus.”

He pulled a face. “I’m not that obvious, am I?”

She grinned. “No, I don’t think so. But now that you’ve told me, I always see it.”

“And you really don’t mind?”

“I flirt with him more than you do.” She had more opportunity to, but still.

“Yeah, fair enough.”

━━━━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━━━━

Scenelets wrapped taglist: @kk7-rbs

[void-botanist]

Here's an STS question that I just thought of: how and when did you go from old canon:tm: to the stuff you're writing now? Was it a gradual process or were you like "okay time for me to scrap these characters/concepts and write new stuff"?

This is an excellent question, thank you!! I took a minute to dig up my canons post to make sure I was remembering right, but for the most part it was a gradual process. With Pajiir especially I had a tendency to take the exact same characters and shuffle them into a completely different plot setup, but as I got better at writing they got more personality (I started Pajiir when I was 8 and what became locality space when I was 16). Old and Middle Canons for Pajiir break on what my focus was (you'll notice that Middle Canon was basically all about Zalen) and how much Delphonus stuff was involved. It's kind of the same for locality space - Old Canon ended when I abandoned the faery police stuff and tried to make better, funner, more reasonable settings for the stories (and also to be honest everything got kinkier in Middle Canon).

I got New Canon for Pajiir when I, coming off of years and years of thinking Aza had to be a princess and she had to choose between Keearo and Kirnus, decided that neither of those things needed to be true because I didn't want to write either of them even though I still really wanted to write Aza. And then I kind of realized this world could be my sandbox and I also missed the whole Dez and Delphonus shenanigans so I started rebuilding that. And from there it just snowballed. But the setting changed significantly as I moved into New Canon, and despite all the other changes I think that's still the major difference (that and I got my act together and said "no but Zalen should actually be with Silas fr").

I got New Canon for locality space when I was rereading Spinder and Georg which...is an absolute disaster of a book but it was fun to yell about to my friend who actually remembers being around when I was writing it. I was also thinking about Isabelle and Spynder and just generally how much I love the two of them as a couple, but I wanted them to be as actually cool on the page as they were in my head. Add a little Expanse and Cowboy Bebop &c. and this is when I said fuck it I want to write space nonsense and no one can stop me:

(if your characters don't canonically have a world is it an AU to put them on a spaceship under the command of Spinder's gruff nephew-in-law probably in an allied fleet with the tall action hero lesbian rebels and the whole thing is kind of Alice Isn't Dead but like...in space)

"if your story is bad, just put it in space" -me, kind of

The more I thought about it the more this actually worked, lol, though obviously the plot changed from my initial concept. Then I just sort of shifted all my other Faeryland stories over to this new world.

I guess the short answer is I rarely scrap characters, but sometimes they get very recycled/remodeled. It's usually missing writing those characters that makes me start a new version. But I cannibalize settings and plots all the time until I find something that speaks to me.

Nicea taglist: @kahvilahuhut @kk7-rbs @outpost51 @writernopal @athenswrites

[void-botanist]

[Image description: a drawing done in black ink on white paper, with the blue pencil sketch partly visible. It shows a man with short hair from the waist up. He's facing away from the viewer and has one hand on the long, feathery neck of a bipedal bird standing next to him. The bird is two feet taller than him, has a dull beak and dark eyes like an ostrich or emu, and is enjoying being petted. The artist's username, NavarenWizard, is written by hand in the bottom right of the drawing. /End description.]

Artober day 2: Texture (the prompt list I'm using) The texture of the day is feathers!

This is Kirnus with his personal mount, Jas Jas. I decided to leave in the blue lines partly because they add additional texture and partly because I was having a hard time getting them to edit out properly. After I put in a little extra ink to fix a contour issue, I went all in on suggesting the sunset backlighting I was imagining for this moment. It didn't end up super consistent, but oh well - I had some more brush pen fun.