#wip: starcrumbs

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

It’s very simple, you wake up and you are entirely free because god died before he could give you any purpose and so there is no string pulling you in any one direction. The stars unfurl in front and behind and above and below (as much as there is an in front and behind, or, for that matter, an above and below, when you do not know where you might be headed) and they’re singing some silly song between them but just as you try to make out the tune a stranger asks you who you might be. You tell them you don’t know, on account of you were born today - or maybe yesterday just around midnight, maybe you were alive for about a minute before yesterday tipped over into now and anyway time is relative and you haven’t been around for long and god died before he could give you any instructions so you don’t really have the hang of anything yet. They ask you if you have a name of any kind and when you say you don’t they ask if you’d want one. You say you haven’t really figured out what wanting feels like yet but you’d give a name a try, just to see how one would fit. They offer you some but they’re all just words - pretty words, Azrael and Uziel and Abaddon, but none of those sound like something that would have a you attached to it, whoever you might end up being. The stranger asks if you are an angel or something else (it might help with the naming, they say, to figure out at least what you are if not who) and you say you don’t know on account god dying right after making you, and you don’t see how this would matter much seeing how whatever you are you are not driven to any grand purpose, not part of a great plan any more than the stars or the dust between them or anything else there might be, you’d just like to listen to the stars sing, wander and look for questions to look for answers to - like what else there might be besides stars and dust - and maybe talk to the stranger if they wouldn’t mind. It occurs to you to ask the stranger if they have a name and they say they’re between names, between many things really. That they had a name but then everyone who knew them by it died so the name seemed obsolete and then there was a name they were given over and over so that it seemed easier to take than refuse even though it didn't really fit and then when they did choose a name they weren't at their best and it's intertwined with too many ghosts to wear it for too long. They are thinking of Sun not because it's how they feel but because how they want to feel, what they want to be like - a name doesn't have to be a statement of fact, it can also be a memory, or a hope. So you can call them Sun but they do like stranger, and they aren't sure they're a they either but stranger is too long to say every time and nothing else fits better and they is appropriately in between of certainties and just outside of knowing. Your first worry reaches you and you ask if god dying right after making you is cause and effect or correlation rather than causation and the stranger says they don't know but either way you cannot bear the blame for other people’s choices, the actions of those that came before you shape the world and yourself but do not decide your fate, let alone your guilt. You say okay, okay. You ask the stranger where they're going and they say wherever they feel like going, and at the moment that's about here. You ask them if they could listen to the stars with you for a bit and they smile and say why not and you're not sure what a sun is but if the stranger is one of those you would really like to see them. 

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

I couldn't choose between these to have:

The sentient apocalypse loves you sooo so much n thinks you're neat. Yeah no that's the problem.

And

Local baby is secretly the solution to perpetual motion.

ok the last post was infodump friendly. this one is NOT.

i expect you to explain your/something about your magic system as badly as possible. i want to be confused. i want to lack context.

i'll start:

big wyrm gives off radiation that is also magic. ohhh no gas.

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… may I ask you about Nap?

// @cryptid-s-wips

OKAY this has been marinating in my askbox for too long sorry here is the lore-

Nap uses it/its pronouns, speaks in creature noises because its creator was busy learning how to die when making it so they kind of just. Forgot to add parts. Including a mouth, nose or any hair. Also it looks like it's made of patchwork for the aforementioned reason.

They're 6'5 (about 2 meters) tall, grey-ish, with multiple pinks wings and heart-shaped pupils. They love pastel colors and usually wear soft, fluffy things if possible. Very much autistic-coded.

They're an angel, no, I mean literally - a non-human being made by a god (there are many gods in this setting, which are giant primordial whales floating in space creating more space in the process. Also they're like super poisonous to humans. Don't worry about it) - but the problem is that the very unusual god that made Nap learned to die before they told Nap what they made it for, which is kind of the whole deal with angels, them being made for some purpose.

Also at this point in the Starcrumbs universe humans have been hunting angels for divinity (the stuff gods make angels out of) for over a century now because it can override laws of physics and can be used as oil++, but also extracting it from an angel requires making said angels very much not alive. And the god put all of their divinity into Nap, so now it's a walking oil deposit ready to be cut up and used, on top of having an ongoing existential crisis. I love this little guy I am putting it through all the trauma always-

Oh, and angels are poisonous, too. Less than gods but crude divinity either fucks up humans very badly or miracles them into other forms of existence, usually unorganic, so Nap is also always concerned with accidentally hurting/killing its human friends :))

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

Sum up your WIPs. Poorly.

Hiii Inara :D

We Shall Be Fools:

Man attempts saving the world, instead gets adopted by an ex-god and his nephew, becomes a Creature, and fucks up saving the world so bad he kind of almost destroys it. And he's trans. It is far more relevant to the plot than it should be.

CLH:

Remember those old-timey fics where nothing happens but a group of cool queer characters live in a house together? It's that but an almanac of short stories. Also there's a character named ? and the four horsemen are in a polyamorous QPR. That's all you need to know.

Starcrumbs:

What if? Steampunk? But in space? And with religious themes? And what if I make a very sweet, very trusting creature unable to communicate clearly, terrifying, poisonous, and constantly going through an existential crisis?

Tuned Teeth and Sour Symphonies (tagging @euphoniouspandemonium for this one 'cause we're co-writing it):

Young superhero joins superhero team coming-of-age story, only the focus is entirely on tired traumatized middle-aged people, including the superhero team's leader and said girl's father, the Big Bad Villain guy (yes of course they have a thing going on with the superhero). There's a canary named Cacophony. Even she has a tragic backstory, which should tell you enough about this whole mess.

Aand just one more, Marble Knight:

Epic fantasy with court intrigue, wars and fighting for a better world, only all of that is backstory and the focus is on the characters healing from all that shit and finding kindness in the world.

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

*stands here like a kid holding out an empty candy basket* Trick or treat, hehehe!!

MIDNIGHT! Treat :]

Let's talk about Nap, Starcrumbs' protagonist. It looks kind of spooky and is somewhat dangerous to humans due to being very very poisonous, but it's an absolute darling who wants to explore the world and make friends and not hurt anyone ever. It looks like this:

It looks patchy because a dying god created it in a hurry. It tries to look less scary by dressing in soft pastel-colored clothing and communicating in soft, quiet noises - it cannot speak any human languages, although it does understand them. It likes communicating with plants and animals. Somebody please give it a hug.

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

An angel's really bad no good day and also it might be a god (still hunted for sport though)

EVERYONE QUICK describe your oc story in the worst way possible

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

Oooooh, the whole concept of divinity being "pollution" is super fascinating. Is it like, actively harmful or is it just causing weirdness that then becomes harmful? (For example, does it kill people/animals that drink the water, or does it just make everything that drinks the water glow and turn in potatoes.)

How does it make the Earth unstable? What's the "last straw" that forces humanity to leave the planet? And since you said this all happened in the 1860's (or 1640's?), does space travel get invented earlier than in our universe (since technically we haven't perfected long-term space travel yet), or do things just not get Really Super Bad until ~200 years after that?

Also, is the Earth completely uninhabitable? Or are there still people and/or animals left down there? How far in the future does Starcrumbs take place? Is there a good record of how all of this happened, or is it mostly legends and guesswork?

Sorry for the massive question spam. I'm just absolutely fascinated by this WIP now!! Consider this a mega WBW ask, I guess!

~Morri🗡 (@memento-morri-writes)

HELLO Sorry it took a while to answer, I love long questions btw - you absolutely made my day!

1 - is divinity poisonous or does it just do weird stuff?

Yes and yes! To answer more coherently, it does weird stuff, but, above a certain concentration, the weird stuff becomes quite certainly deadly.

Divinity conducts 'miracles', or changes the properties of things in ways that should not be possible. Uncontrolled divinity usually tries to make all things equal, turning unusual instances, like living creatures, into the more 'natural' state of things, like mud or water. Fun fact - this is also how space is created! Ancient giant gods that look a lot like whales travel through space, and through their large concentration of divinity naturally create more of similar space around them.

Back to out question, if a human plummets into a liquid that's 30 or more percent divinity, they'll probably turn liquid. Is it's 10%, they might turn into a fish or another aquatic lifeform, and 1% would mean drastic changes to their physiology. 0.1% and under, however, would mean that the human would gain some water-related properties, from transparency to being able to breathe underwater, without changing their shape - pretty neat and kinda cool! A lot of research went into making those changes more controllable. The smaller the concentration, the more tame and favourable the results. Trace concentrations would still have noticeable effects.

2 - How do humans fuck up the earth? When do they abandon ship?

Earth gets seriously messed up during the 1860s-1870s because of

1) a select few countries trying to conduct experiments with divinity, which resulted in divinity contamination (areas where the local water and soil gained too high a level of divinity for it to not warp humans/animals/plants) and

2) divinity wars, which were caused by the other countries trying to get access to said divinity-containing material, aka a part of the angel's corpse (yes, they all fought over the corpse of one (1) angel.)

This resulted in most of North America and Europe being kind-of-not-habitable, and the rest of the world slowly experiencing the changes as small concentrations of divinity spread through the oceans, plus divinity powered weapons being... quite destructive.

The final drop that made people start leaving, however, was not necessarily a bad thing, and here we get to question no.3

3 - divinity, science and space travel

Having a gimmick that lets you bypass the laws of physics but comes with its own set of eldritch rules makes technology develop in bizarre patterns. For example, flight, including space flight, was exceedingly easy to master, seeing how the divinity stored in angel's wings already provides with flight capabilities, and things like pressure, heat, and atmosphere can be hand waved by infusing humans with tiny amounts of divinity until they adjust to their surroundings.

Telescopes, microscopes and all thing sight were also easy to make with angel's eyes, and the great migration began when someone spotted an angel in space - something of a second gold fever, the idea of space travel and angel poaching as the new course for humanity's development became the frenzy for the 1870s and early 1880s. There are, in fact, still humans on earth, some parts of it are in fact habitable, but the previous socio-economical and geopolitical environments are more or less nonexistent.

4 - how does the history look in-universe in Starcrumbs, and when does it take place?

Starcrumbs is technically set in the near past, the 2010s, although the alternative history splits quite far from the modern world for a number of obvious reasons.

There is no set history all people agree on - those that stay on earth mostly consider the angel's appearance a sort of test most of humanity failed but their ancestors didn't, a near-apocalyptic event to weed out the wrongs - the less religious ones consider it a sign of underlying tendencies of human nature. Still, the general earth-dweller consensus is "earth folk good, space folk not as good".

The beliefs of those that migrated to space and quite different, seeing for the solar system in an agglomeration of Holy Roman Empire-esque tiny state-settlements, but the general gist of it can be summed up to "earth-dwellers backwards and counter-progressive, space-dwelling and divinity gathering (not known as angel poaching because that sounds unseemly) good and progressive".

Sorry if I missed any points! This was super fun to think about, I have a better feel for the world now and would be glad to clarify on any points :-]

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

Things that are now canon in the Starcrumbs universe:

1. Gay cowboys in space, Walt Whitman included

2. Space lesbians occupying the moon

3. Dostoevsky raises young Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker the found family (yes, you guessed, it, in space)

4. Queen Victoria and a bunch of other important world leaders poison themselves trying to eat an angel

Every day I love this WIP a little more, anyways please ask me about Starcrumbs,

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

The great OC alphabet caper, letter A

I will probably try to do this by letters, a letter a day perhaps? We'll see how this goes.

name: Arc

age/pronouns: late 30s/early 40s, ze/zir. Ze uses gendered words: wife/spouse, father/dad, sibling. Ze prefers sir to ma'am but captain is always better than any other options.

brief physical description picrew:

brief list of defining traits: calm and chill, person-smart, pacifist, the dad friend, always tired, the captain of a spaceblimp, ze has all the braincells on zir ship but wish ze had somebody to share them with. An I Love My Husband guy - you will probably hear about zir husband and kids five minutes into a conversation with ze. Pictures will appear on first sign of any interest in the subject. Named zir ship after zir husband: Noah.

***

name: Afteshi

age/pronouns: early 40s, she/her

brief physical description: a short, plump woman with straight, long brown hair and black eyes, bronze complexion. Wears practical, toned-down clothing.

brief list of defining traits: kooky scientist who uses the remnants of an ancient demon to perform experiments on souls (she's lovely and not a villain at all I promise), I Love My Wife lady, cheerful and book-smart but not all that good with people. Most likely has ADHD.

***

name: Alex

age: ???, somewhere over 300, they probably lost count themself. Appear to be in their mid-20s. they/them, he/him and occasionally she/her, although almost always comfortable with they/them.

brief physical description: a lanky, androgynous person with straight long black hair, light brown eyes and a pale complexion. They wear bright colors and like to dress fancy.

brief list of defining traits: I Am Literally Just A Baker (runaway evil lord of a dark empire that has collapsed a few centuries ago), they've seen enough shit and now just want to live a quiet life, with new cookie recipes being all the excitement. Kind because they tried everything else and settled on this option. Usually put up a flirtacious, carefree persona.

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

Angel guy gets adopted by neurodivergent theologists while the rest of the galaxy hunts it for sport

Explain your work in progress badly:

“Only this ragtag band of plucky teenagers have got the gumption to stop the second coming of Christ”

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Can't wait to finish outlining Starcrumbs so I can make a proper WIP intro so I can post long semi-coherent rambles about my love for every character and worldbuilding detail and line of this story. When I said "divinity spilled is a filthy thing" and "a creature feared is once again a monster" and "the sun trusts Icarus to know how high to fly (the sun trusts too much)" and-

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

Absolutely in love with Starcrumbs' worldbuilding. WIP intro coming soon-ish but I am not a patient person, so first ramble coming now:

It's sort of steampunk but in space and also with a religion-based magic system.

Blimps and hot air balloons in outer space, coated in angel heathers to withstand the cold and pressure of the near-vacuum. Spacesuits that look like regular suits and work on blessings. Angel poachers who are also space pirates (yes, on regular pirate ships. Which are flying. In space).

Theologists traveling to study the remains of a dead god floating in space and a god fall is like a whale fall and all that is left when they arrive are the bones and the tiny, holy, hungry things that tore off everything else and the bones shine like stars because this is the god that made the stars but at this point nobody cares the stars are there the god isn't the bones will be put to use there will the a boat sailing through stars with a sturdy carcass the carcass will shine like the stars and it will not be any more holy than any other boat.

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trick or treat!! 👻🎃🦇

~Morri🗡 (@memento-morri-writes)

MORRI! TREAT FOR YOU <3

Let's have a bit of spooky scary worldbuilding from Starcrumbs! TW for blood, death and war mention, stay safe out there

So, Growing Things In Space (without knowing shit about terraforming). Tough, right? But! You have divinity, and that thing can bypass the laws of physics and is especially tailored for Creating Things, so growing stuff with it should be easy, right? No <3

Life is a cosmic outlier, a rare thing divinity usually registers as Wrong Wrong Incorrect Erase, so watering plants with diluted divinity usually results with them turning into inorganic matter, if surviving at all.

However, by coincidence, humans discovered conditions in which divinity is not hostile to life - if mixed with enough organic liquid, blood, especially, the soil watered by it grows plants very well, even if the plants do turn out... unusual.

The battlefield where the first angel died was already well-rinced with human liquids, and so soil + divinity + blood = fucked-up, yet very fertile blood forest :D the fruits on trees and bushes there turned out to be edible to humans (even if red and uncannily fleshy and don't-look-at-their-shape-for-too-long-it's-fine).

That method was used to grow the first harvest on Moon and Mars, leading to farmers having... bad, bad reputations in space overall. However, the tradition of using human or animal blood for divinity-fertilizers has been abandoned in favour of using plant juices, which turned out to both work better and produce much, much less fucked-up plants.

[calexslackerlife]

Uhhh I don't really write anything fandom (I do love fanfic but the idea of writing characters that aren't mine and therefore can be OOC terrifies me beyond reason-) but here are some WIP Files that I have for original writing 'cause well, I do like the titles here

Marble Knight brainrot doc

Starcrumbs fa&fo (aka fuck around & find out)

Starcrumbs organising doc

And All the Lovely Beasts

The Sun is a Coin WIP

TTaSS draft doc

VillainXhenchman (my beloved idiot found family QPR WIP)

Miscelleanous shenaniganary

On weather and everybody's health

The cursed knight WIP

A Jolly Merry Doomsday

Yeah, 'tis about it :3 not tagging anyone 'cause I don't interact with nearly enough people here, so, open tag!

WIP game

Rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have wips. (You can make your own post or reblog this one!)  I have deemed that this isn’t just for writing either. Sketch titles? Comics? Dnd campaigns? If you have an unfinished project, it counts!!

ty @zivazivc for tagging me you have made me confront the number of WIPs in my google drive (these are all fics, no art bc my ipad recently died and I lost all my drawing wips 🤧)

thirteen

anastasia au (dimitrien)

brushstrokes

call it even

wherever you go, apollo

I’d have to think about it

brighter as he breaks

hmm I tag @peachcitt @sha-nwa @carpisuns @tizzymcwizzy @sabertoothwalrus @picayunearts @shameboree & anyone who wants to!!

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Okay I am using a Poll for a Science Survey bear with me guys

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Hey hey hey! It’s @writerfae here :D

I just wanted to come and say hi now that I’m back from my tumblr break! What did I miss? Are you doing fine? How’s writing? I hope the muses have blessed you with lots of inspiration ^^

Have a nice day/night! ✨

Hiii Fae! I missed ya! I'm doing fine, even good actually. How've you been???

Got myself a few more pronouns and names, as one does, and writing's been going very well.

I've written a few poem thingies which I love dearly and have been exploring the fairytale retelling / fairytale-styled original stories side of the fantasy genre, in short story format and somewhat longer-ish story format. The highlight of that is the finished short-ish (10k words) story Cinders, the queerest cinderella retelling and my pride and joy.

Outside of that, the shiny new WIP that lives in my head is Starcrumbs, a sort of sci-fi thing but spacetravel and technology work entirely on divinity either granted by or stolen from gods, and gods are giant eldritch whale things floating through space, and the setting is one of my most favorite things ever. The protagonist is an angel named Nap (it/its) and it's a weird mix of endearing and... biblically accurate. It wasn't given a purpose - all angels are created with some purpose in mind - but its creator god died before granting it one so it just sorta. Hangs around. Tries to comprehend life. Gets kidnapped abd almost murdered by angel poachers and later adopted by a theologist. The usual.

It's a little terrifying and poisonous to the touch and even though it can understand human words it can only speak starsong, a divine language that is at times painful for humans to hear, so although it has a near-human consciousness it has a lot of trouble getting along with humans. Also it's a sweetheart, somebody please give it a hug (but do wear a spacesuit or one of those anti-radiation suit thingies. It is highly poisonous).