#tsenpha

[cheshirequeenwithoutaheart]

hi! Share five fun facts about your favorite oc maybe?

hi! thanks for the ask, sorry it took me... a short while to get to it.

my favourite (i guess, if i was forced to pick one) oc at the moment is called galatea.

shows little to no emotion, ever, out of what she believes to be necessity after a lifetime of people falling in love with her at first sight and being incapable of taking no for an answer, leading to several wars, kidnappings, almost forced marriages and many fallen dynasties.

draws inspiration from several areas: helen of troy, galatea from myth, sirens and vampires, i guess. is sort of an exploration into the ways being born fully adult and then expected to act like it would fuck a person up.

is very sparkly. her blood is gold, her few scars glow gold, her tears are unnaturally glittery, and her hair has streaks of literal silver.

a foodie, eventually, once she starts finding joy in the world once again. also a pretty good cook, but she prefers decorating.

very creative. on the one hand that could be put down to her role as the spirit of sculptures (and all the messiness that entails) but on the other hand her talents extend far beyond sculpting. immortality has to be good for something, i guess.

[lampea-by-lamplight]

orion 2: “look! i’m alastair! i’d rather be anywhere but here! i’m all about long sullen silences, followed by mean comments, followed by more silences!” so what’s it gonna be, huh? long silence or mean comment? go on.

alastair: …you got me in a box here.

[cheshirequeenwithoutaheart]

historically there were flying ships (like... boats... that flew), however the way of making them was lost and eventually they were all destroyed... until an adventuring party stumbled upon one of them whilst looking for cursed treasure, that is.

technology is very... victorian. mostly. somethings are more modern, like plumbing, but for the most part... it's old fashioned. and also powered by imps. except for the trains.

it's probably sucks when half of a continent has to deal with its long imprisoned dictator trying, and sort of succeeding, to break out of said prison because he found out the people who caused him to become a dictator (not literally, but their disappearance/presumed death led to all of his decisions) aren't actually dead.

love it when three sisters die and are resurrected/wake back up as a result of being god chosen, especially when only one realises she died, and they all just progressively more... corrupted? changed? by their powers and the fact they died.

sometimes people will be dared to enter this old mansion in the woods/mountains and 9 times out of 10 they're never seen again. rarely, however, someone will return but you won't get much out of them aside from "death", "sculpture", "spirit", and "galatea".

Let’s follow that first prompt up, and take this chance to share some fun facts about our story! You can either do a five point bullet-style list of fun facts about what’s going on in your wip, or just use this as an opportunity to ramble!

Looking more guidance? Make them come from the center of the story!

[lampea-by-lamplight]

griffin: we’re like a dynamic duo!

orion: we are not a duo of any kind

griffin: well, you at least can’t deny that there’s two of us.

orion: watch me.

[lampea-by-lamplight]

flannery: assassins are just serial killers who take requests 

hemlock: excuse you, we take commissions

[lampea-by-lamplight]

dracul: here’s the thing though. is it still a murder if i give them a head’s up?

kyria: i’m think that’s called a threat 

[lampea-by-lamplight]

briony: we need to distract these guys

dracul: leave it to me 

dracul: centaurs have six limbs and are therefore insects. discuss. 

orion 1, orion 2 and kyria: *immediately begin arguing*

[lampea-by-lamplight]

orion 1, to orion 2: you were so high you made a 14 page powerpoint on why santa would beat peter pan in a fight

orion 1: and i must say you were very persuasive 

[cheshirequeenwithoutaheart]

werewolves, and other monsters, are very good ways to explore different themes yes!

i absolutely should make a group of ocs themed around horror movie doll characters (the vibes alone... maybe that'll be the theme for the behind the scenes villains of another story... anyway), but! for this character specifically, she's loosely inspired by various horror movies centred around dolls and more directly inspired by the concept of haunted porcelain dolls in general.

in tsenpha, dolls coming to life isn't that unusual! either because they were loved so much they developed a soul or because they were nearby when ghosts merged together to form a complete soul and made a decent enough vessel. it's to the point where there's a decent market in making full sized doll bodies so they don't have to go about life with the ever present fear of being crushed. in general, i guess all of the living dolls are somewhat inspired by horror movie dolls by virtue of how they come to be (possessed dolls are very common).

i have a big fondness for living doll characters, so i've given it a lot of thought.

wisteria, the character i was talking about, is both a living doll and somewhat able to control other dolls. she's directly inspired by haunted porcelain dolls in the sense that she has the look of one (big glassy eyes, long eyelashes, an ever present smile etc) and loosely inspired by various horror movie dolls in that she utilises her deceptively sweet demeanour and the fact no one ever believes the dolls will actually hurt them to terrorise and commit murder - usually with a specific goal, like testing new members or supporters of the organisation she works for and killing the ones that fail, but sometimes just because. if she's feeling really twisted, she'll make dolls of her victims and keep them as trophies (which is directly inspired by a horror movie aptly titled dolls.)

for the fact swap: in tsenpha, i like to give the characters themes! usually this means their group will be themed around something like tarot cards or the seven deadly sins, but sometimes they just have individual themes, as is the case in a group where one character is themed after frankenstein whilst the other is themed after horror movie dolls. sometimes there'll be more than one theme (one set of ocs is themed around the land, sea and sky, as well as the heart, mind and soul)

Okay, but this sounds absolutely killer, and I desperately want to know more about the ones themed after horror movie dolls? Like, that has so beyond caught my interest and sounds like such a cool idea!

Let's see here, a similar fact to swap back!

I'm huge into using the concept fo werewolves to explore other themes. It varies from story to story (I love coming up with new ways to make werewolves different and stand out from each other!) but in Howl, it's most heavily meant to represent the themes of depression and lost childhood!

It's one that I'm super excited to keep playing with too, since it comes out more clearly in the second and third books!

[cheshirequeenwithoutaheart]

5. What are the overall aesthetics of your current WIP?

thanks for the ask

forests illuminated by sunlight, by firelight, by moonlight. glowing figures walking amongst mortals. rain hitting leaves. overgrown gardens of wildflowers and roses. the distant sound of a wolf's howl. the sound of twigs breaking. blood on snow. the creak of a ship. the splintering of ice. dice hitting the table. the sound of laughter and drinking. singers and dancers performing. a fleeting glimpse of a glowing blue deer. a three eyed raven there and gone again. a golden dove shining in the sunlight. the cackle of a fox wearing bangles and earrings. the steady gaze of a blood coloured shark. the feeling of being held by someone long gone.

[cheshirequeenwithoutaheart]

kind of funny how i'll go through long periods of inactivity and then start posting again

[cheshirequeenwithoutaheart]

i've been trying to organise dlwp into a cohesive timeline/series of years (my brain says absolutely not let's never do that again) because i do not make one and done stories, apparently, but i digress.

the issue is that dlwp features time travel three times (atm) and some handwavy consequences of said time travel (i am not here to debate logical consequences of time travel)

so the answer i've settled on is to just. never mention a year. oh sure mention dates and years ending and people growing up, but never a specific year. if i was feeling particularly wild i could, of course, give wildly inconsistent years lmao (i don't know the year and neither do you).

[cheshirequeenwithoutaheart]

in lampea, there are two main spirits related to destiny and luck (alternatively i'll probably create more but for now two seems good. also spirits are basically just gods, but they're called spirits so.)

moira is the spirit of destiny, one of the children of death. they have such siblings as the spirit of deer and spirit of decay, but that's beside the point. most of death's children have antlers, bc death is represented by a deer, but one superstition specifically related to moira involves the finding of said antlers. more specifically, where the antlers are found. there's a whole thing where, depending on if you found an antler on a riverbank or in a clearing for example, you're either marked for death or will have good fortune.

which leads me to destiny's official spouse, the spirit of luck.

tyche, child of change, is characterized as being a tricky devil and changing someone's luck with a flick of their ears depending on their mood. in actuality, they're a lot more hands off when it comes to a person's luck, but they'll still change it if they're in need of entertainment. they're also commonly associated with a gambling game, as in it's often attributed to them. the game itself is just known as claw and involves dice, cups, trinkets and a lot of guessing.

Happy Worldbuilding Wednesday! Let's talk Fate! I wanna know about everything: deities of fate, gambler's games, superstitions--anything and everything related to destiny and luck. This is an open ask, for anyone to answer! For more open asks, check out@worldbuildingwedasks

[cheshirequeenwithoutaheart]

the house on lemon tree lane. part one.

“why is it that whenever we let percy pick the day out, we wind up going to either a library, a haunted house, or a haunted library?” a girl, with blonde hair and green eyes and too much orange eyeshadow on if you listened to other people, asks her companions. this time, his pick had been a haunted house.

percy, floating several inches off the dusty path thanks to the fact he's dead and usually a source of hauntings himself, sniffs. “i happen to like haunted buildings and libraries, nat. history, entertainment and education, what more could you ask for?”

“some variety,” nat, or natasa, retorts.

“is the haunted house we live in not enough for you?” carina, who had previously been looking around the outside of the house on lemon tree lane, joins in. “do you really need to visit other haunted houses to, what, compare notes?”

“can’t you ever decide on something else, like a gallery or a mall? something less typical?”

percy glares at the final speaker. “when it’s your turn to pick the day out, aisling, we can go to a gallery or a mall or a bloody opera if it takes your fancy, but it is my turn and i want to explore a haunted house.”

a loud, piercing whistle cuts through the air. the four of them turn to look at the final member of their group, branwen, who stands on the steps leading up to the house, her hands on her hips and a severely unimpressed look on her face.

“are you going to stand around arguing about what we’re doing until the day ends or are we actually going to go inside?”

the thing about o’sullivans, both by blood and by adoption, is that they are notoriously difficult to frighten, scare, terrify or otherwise through conventional means. a haunted house, to them, is much the same as visiting an amusement park, regardless of the stories told, the reputation of the house, and whether or not it’s actually haunted by anything remotely spooky.  

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so i'm taking part in @writeblrsummerfest again! and for the first time in... a while... i'll be using a different wip to tsenpha! i'll still probably use tsenpha, and some other random ocs, but for the most part i'll be using the daily life of a witch PI (which is a. no longer applicable title but i do not want to change it because i am lazy like that. anyway)

[lampea-by-lamplight]

many chapters later...

heya, i'm louise. chesh or other variations on cheshire are also accepted. my pronouns are she/they.

farious pages, or tsenpha, is a very expansive, self indulgent, entirely for fun project.

there's no real way to describe farious pages, at least not one that'd be put on a book if i ever decided i wanted to publish it (which, as of right now, i don't), since it's less one singular story and more an amalgamation of different stories, with different characters and different genres, set in various different countries within the world of tsenpha.

the majority of the stories in farious pages lean more on the generally light hearted, if occasionally dramatic and angsty, romantic comedy side of things, with a semi-reasonable amount of action technically thrown in there for variety (examples include mission statement not as advertised, an adventuring party walks into a tavern, and convenient marriages of the royal kind). however, some of them do stray more towards drama and angst (examples include harvest of light, the cursed grudge, and it's about the journey). a happy ending is, usually, guaranteed because i don't care for sad ones.

links

directory (links to writing)

tags (really just a breakdown of the tags i use, which might be helpful... or not! it exists anyway).

[cheshirequeenwithoutaheart]

it's actually kind of interesting thinking about a completely different story after so long thinking about tsenpha.

not that daily life of a witch pi (which is an outdated name but i cannot be bothered to change it asdfghjkl) is new or particularly abandoned, but i haven't really thought about it much for a few years.