#wip; GLMGK

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Happy STS! :D How well do your characters know each other? What are the things they don’t really know about each other? BQ: Free ramble if you want!

cilly! :D thank you so much!

ariel and evelyn don't actually know each other at all. they do consider each other close friends and hold each other in high regard, i would say they platonically love each other or learn to love each other during heart of silver. but what they know about each other is rather superficial, actually. evelyn doesn't know much about ariel outside of their curse work and some family stories they shared over take-out and ariel doesn't actually know much about evelyn's past.

to get each other better and to have clear boundaries is a part of their friendship i want to explore more in the following stories (if i ever get to write those actually rip).

for the free ramble:

uni and working on the five senses takes up most of my time lately. it's a bit sad because i haven't interacted on here much at all and i feel i am not much connected to the writeblr community anymore? but i used to be! where did all the interactions go? x) i really want to interact more and get to know more people and their wips again :')

that said, even if it's going slow and i am incredibly impatient with myself, the five senses' current draft actually looks so good i am so so happy about it. the first quarter is, dare i say, readable? very satisfied with that work :D i am a bit melancholic about it because it's german i won't have time to translate it for english beta readers but y'all just have to trust me x) i hope i'll get the full draft done by the end of the year :3

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3 and 15 for the OC tech ask game!

thanks!!

3. Do they use nicknames for their contacts or do they list contacts by full name?

Evelyn saves people by name and where the people are from. like "Kyla Uni" or "Mareike (summer party)"

Ariel saves people by everything except their names (Evelyn is saved as Best Curse Vicitim)

Cosima doesn't save any numbers that would be ridiculous, who would she even talk to? The peasants?

15. Describe their computer. Is it a sticker covered laptop? A high-tech gaming computer?

Evelyn has some stickers on her laptop, just positive and motivational ones. Some pride flags, stuff like that.

Ariel's laptop is actually super neat and tidy. It's very old and clunky but it still works perfectly so there's no reason to get a new one!

Cosima doesn't have a laptop, it would get wet in the forest.

this is the ask game

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For as many characters as you'd like: 9. What are their most frequently used emojis?

perfect thanks x)

Evelyn: 😴🙄☺😂😖 Ariel: xD :3 >:)))) :] <3 (the phone is very old, in their heart their emojies are very colourful and context-less)

Cosima doesn't use emojies, such silly things are beneath her. As are peasants.

this is the ask game

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Question 12 for the questiony question thing pls !!!

guess who reblogged the ask game and then like. immediately got sick. anyway, thank you x) 12. Open the notes/note-taking app on their phone. What’s there?

Evelyn:

half finished shopping lists (none of them used while grocery shopping)

random songs or names of bands without context

a list where she writes down the dates of her period

09.05. 10.30 am (also no context, she doesn't know what this appointment was for)

a list with all her passwords

Ariel's phone is too old for notes, they take notes by hand.

Cosima's phone is the latest iPhone but she doesn't use notes because she actually has a working memory and doesn't need to write stuff down like a peasant.

this is the ask game

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10 First Lines Tag

@byjillianmaria tagged me in this, thank you so much! i also highly recommend checking out jillian's first lines, they're very fun.

Rules: List 10 first lines of chapters, scenes, or short stories, and tag 10 people

Revolutionary Achievement! (wip; The Five Senses, 1st chapter)

Margo kicks the pebble with mathematical precision so it lands in a puddle, only for it to be swallowed by the sad excuse of water as if it fell into nothingness. (flash fiction; to keep us both warm)

„You‘re only alive because I made a promise,” she hissed. (short story; A Heart's Promise)

The silence should have been warning enough. (short story; breaking out of darkness, finding it between us instead)

The House came alive like every living being does: with another’s cry of pain, blood and too much light after blissful darkness. (wip; House in Mourning (GLMGK 3))

While, up in the north, a dragon emerged from heavy fog, Dahlia found herself very troubled to take the first step to emerge from her forest. (wip; in the land of twilight, 3rd chapter)

It is really hard to clean out your cupboards if you don’t own any cups. (flash fiction; accidental soul disposal)

“Beautiful,” my mum says as she looks me up and down. (flash fiction; Dystopian Plotting)

"Jeanne, after all this time?” The voice of her old mentor sounded hollow in the old study room. (wip; invincible)

Despite the late summer, the air had grown cold with the night’s storm. (novella; Heart of Silver, 1st chapter)

tagging (only if you want, of course): @cilly-the-writer @fourohfourrealitynotfound @soul-write @scifimagpie @somealienquill @cwritesfiction @gailynovelry @knightsofeclipse @stuffaboutwriting and @the-orangeauthor

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WIP INTRO

A GUIDE TO LIMINAL MATTERS AND GHASTLY KINDS

general facts

novella series

genre: Urban Fantasy | New Adult

setting: south-west Germany

status: Part 1 (Heart of Silver) completed and readable here. Part 2 (Words Long Spoken) is currently being drafted, find out more about it here. Part 3 (House in Mourning) also being drafted because I have no self-control. Part 4 (Other People’s Dreams) brainstorming. Part 5 (untitled) brainstorming. extra (Busstop) planned.

themes/other: depression & friendship, episodic storytelling

synopsis

Evelyn is a tired university student who works somewhat illegaly as a ghost hunter in her freetime. Ariel is a professional curse-broker with questionable google reviews. Together, they fight monsters and curses until they both find what they’re looking for: appreciation.

characters

Evelyn - Evelyn grew up as a ghost hunter and tried to leave that life behind her. But after her good friend Ariel brought her back to the ghosts, monsters and curses, she decides to embrace that work in her freetime. However, she not only fights harmful creatures, but her own demons as well.

Ariel - Ariel is a curse-broker with passion. They hand them* out, break them*, experiment with them* to their heart’s content. What comes first in life? Curses! So they will do everything (!) in their power to become the best curse-broker in the whole wide world. (*referring to the curses, not Ariel’s clients; please don’t believe all those google reviews, thanks!) 

Joshua - Joshua is a ghost living at Ariel’s apartment (living, hehe, you get it?). He is absolutely not trapped there. And it is also not boring at all. Helping Evelyn and Ariel with his ghostly connections is still more exciting than fighting with the  cat. It also just makes him feel more... alive?

minor characters:

Amanda - Evelyn’s sister who lives in the USA and is a professional ghost hunter Herbert Müller - a public official who only wants to take care of his dachshunds, but has to deal with Ariel’s requests first Cosima - *looks at notes* uhm. sort of immortal battle cryptid magical girl.

links to more stuff

Frogs and Fogs - oneshot

Dying For Your Touch (lyrics) - fictional song lyrics

Herbert Müller’s Very Not Good Very Bad Day - oneshot (set after Heart of Silver)

Fall from Grace - oneshot, Cosima’s backstory, set waaaay before all this

Evelyn’s and Ariel’s friendship - meta post

picrews of the crew!

art of Evelyn!

Ariel’s reviews

the tag for this WIP is #wip; GLMGK

-

ask to be added or removed from the taglist!

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heads up, seven up!

I got tagged (ages ago) by @gailynovelry, thank you!! Here’s a bit from House in Mourning. Trigger Warning for mentioned blood.

rule: share your last 7 lines and then tag 7 people!

But this house. This house did not want to. Still dormant it felt warm and cared for and not at all like a dead house. Of course it would have been easier to let the blood dry. To let it sink in and settle. To note this moment of life in its core and then to quickly die again. Yet the house enjoyed the feeling of the woman’s footsteps on its ground. Loved the way she smiled at the half-finished renovations. Gloated in all this attention. So in its sleep, it smiled back and stayed.

Feel free to pass this by or snatch a tag if you want to join in! @pheita @the-orangeauthor @happystarfishnightmare @enchanted-lightning-aes @dustylovelyrun @stuffaboutwriting and @tc-doherty

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loot box tag game

@pheita tagged me for this one, thank you so much! I’m doing this for A Guide to Liminal Matters and Ghastly Kinds ^^

RULES: make up what would be in a limited edition loot/gift box for your WIP! 

I feel like there would be two versions, an Evelyn box and an Ariel box. So for Evelyn it would be:

1. a mug that says “Best Curse Victim” 2. a bookmark with her character as art on it 3. an Elwetritsch plushie 4. a fork that has “cursed” engraved into it 5. five GLMGK-themed stickers, focussed on ghosts

for Ariel:

1. a mug that says “Best Curse-Broker in the Whole Wide World” 2. a bookmark with their character as art on it 3. heart-shaped sunglasses 4. some lolly-pops 5. five GLMGK-themed stickers, focussed on curses

I’m tagging (only if you want, and all who see and want to do it): @cilly-the-writer @tc-doherty @cwritesfiction @thewalkingnerdx and @catharticallysarcastic

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did i just spend ~3 hours on a comic sans wip intro for one wip instead of trying to catch up on my nano goal for another wip for which i am 10810 word behind on?

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picrews! The A Guide to Liminal Matters and Ghastly Kinds crew!

Done with this picrew maker! Absolutely lost it over the details in this one ^^ Under the cut: the characters and image descriptions from left to right and top to bottom.

Evelyn: A white girl with dark blonde hair, bangs and ponytail. She has a worried look on her face and holds her phone in the right hand. She wears a black hoodie with a skull on it. The background is a starry sky, there are yellow/black police tapes in the foreground of the image.

Ariel: A brown person with short soft pink hair. They wear heart-shaped pink glasses. They wear string worm earrings. They have a pink lollipop in their right hand and wear a red t-shirt with an anatomic heart printed on it. On the left bottom is a black cat. The background looks a bit like a lab with phials and glasses with liquids in it. The wall is white/yellow.

Joshua: A white boy with short black hair and black eyeliner. He wears many piercings and black emo clothes. He does a peace sign. There are candles in the corner, the background is white/red/black pattern.

Cosima: A white girl with fair blonde long hair. She wears a black dress with frills, a silver and blue diadem/tiara and fancy silver/blue necklace. Gives off big royalty vibes but looks sceptical. Blood on her cheek and burger in one hand. The background is transparent, there are red flowers in the bottom corners.

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A Guide to Liminal Matters and Ghastly Kinds - short story

A glimpse behind the scenes of curse-broker bureaucracy, written for @flashfictionfridayofficial, 666 words (hehehe). Set after Heart of Silver and before Words Long Spoken. Just a quick thing for fun!

Herbert Müller's Very Not Good Very Bad Day

It was a perfectly fine Tuesday by all standards that concerned Herbert Müller. Such were: the coffee machine had just recently been decalcified, his coworker Gisela had called in sick (so he would be able to get actual work done, instead of being forced to listen to her rants about horoscopes), and there were only three letters on his desk. The latter was the best news out of all of them, because it meant he would be able to get home early and see his dachshund puppies quickly again. 

There was nothing that would be able to sour his mood. At all. 

He filled his favourite coffee cup (it read I can’t work faster, I am a public official in bold black letters), sat down at his desk and started to sort through the letters. By eleven am, he had read and filed them, leaned back in his chair to wait for the time to pass. 

Safe to say, after a few minutes he was dozing off, listening to the clock tick and his co-workers chatting about the latest Tatort, when the fax machine rang and shocked him out of his sleep. With a rumbling noise it pushed through one paper after the next, a whole sheet of paper! And this at half past eleven, half an hour before his break! Not that he wouldn’t be used to such inconsiderate behaviour, but it was astounding every single time. 

His hands shook from anger as he collected one pile after the other and carried them over to his desk. Froze, when he read the letter head. 

“B-Bir-Birgit!” he called out with a huff. This was bad. This was so very bad. In every single aspect but especially for his blood pressure. 

“Herbert? What is it? Is the printer running low on ink again?” his colleague asked as she walked up to his desk, the red glasses low on her nose bridge. However, she stopped short when she saw his face. 

“Herbert?” she now asked with more urgency, “Is it a heart attack again?”

He only held up the faxed letter. As she read, her hands began to shake. 

“Oh no. Oh no, this is very not good. This is very bad”, she mumbled, read one page after the other. 

“What do I do?” he wondered, hoarsely. 

“You can only follow protocol and pray that this goes by smoothly. I know we’re all still shaken by what happened to poor Klaudia, may she rest in peace, but this doesn’t have to mean trouble. This can be simply what it is, a Curse Coding Form for you to register.”

Herbert was certain that he popped a vein. 

“Doesn’t have to mean trouble?” he roared. “This is Ariel Bilge we’re talking about! The one curse broker that always means trouble!” Now the whole citizen’s administrative office looked towards them with horror, including three citizens sitting at other official’s desks. He lowered his voice. “What will I do? I am doomed. This will cost me overtime. I just adopted puppies!”

“Take the files with you at home?” Birgit suggested. 

Herbert gasped. “But that is against the rules.”

Birgit only shrugged. “Maybe it’s time for you to start some trouble, too, Herbert.” And with those words she quickly retreated to her own desk. 

A deep sigh escaped him as he sat down, glanced over the letter again. It was polite and formal, had the request forms attached. And ended with,

I am awaiting your answer,

Best wishes,

Ariel Bilge

Which, as far as he knew about their not-short-of-scandalous and borderline-criminal past, might as well have been a threat.

He skimmed about the request that looked decent at least, until he caught an empty field. The curse they wanted to register the acquisition of had no curse code? But how was he supposed to register it then? 

A dreadful Tuesday. Truly dreadful, he thought as he started to form a reply that would only be the start of a week-long disaster to come. 

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au tag game

i got tagged by @pheita! thank you! i’m tagging @cilly-the-writer @enchanted-lightning-aes @thewalkingnerdx and @astridmayewrites, only if you want to! and all of you who want to do this, feel tagged ^^

Rules: I dare you to make an AU of a WIP on the spot and fill in the following intro categories...

AU Title: running on fumes

Setting: an unknown, but very long time in the future. space has been conquered and we find ourselves on this space ship that already has seen better days. it may or may not be kept together with duct tape.

Concept: Ariel, human, has spent their entire youth inventing Fuel2, a fuel to save civilazation as a whole. To market this Fuel2 and get renowned as the greatest scientist in the whole wide universe, they have to carry it to the other end of the galaxy--but they have one problem: Their space-ship is rather old and can’t be fuelled with Fuel2, but they’re running on fumes and aren’t 100% certain they’ll make it there. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they receive a distress signal from a close-by moon. Their best friend and robot Joshua urges them to follow the signal, even if it worsens their whole situation (and flair!!). On the moon, they find the Moonan, Evelyn, an alien species that lives on moons. Evelyn has had bad encounters with humans before, so in order to have this trip be peaceful, she pretends to be human too, despite being obviously alien. Her help might sabotage this whole adventure more than it does good, so will they make it to the end of the galaxy before they’re running out of fuel?

Aesthetic: endless black of the universe, stars, galaxies, oils, old metals, neon pink liquids, beep boop robot sounds, such silence, being the only person around but not being alone, so much solitude

Tiny Scene/Line:

Evelyn looked away and took a deep breath before she answered.

“Yes, I can also have my hair grow pink. It’s very common where I am from.”

Ariel raised an eyebrow. “Grow it pink? Where I am from, you can only dye it.”

In the back, Joshua beeped three times in a way that sounded like laughter.

“That’s what I meant. I can grow my hair and then dye it pink”, Evelyn quickly said despite the fact that her hair resembled algae more than anything close to keratin. Ariel wondered if they could get a probe of it, in fact, and put it under the microscope.

They just felt courageous enough to ask the alien/human about it (better be sensitive, in case the hair was capable of sensation?), when the alarm sounded. The electronic voice echoed through the cockpit:

“Fuel at 20 percent. Error 7234. Error 7234. Fuel at 20 percent. Error 7234-”

“Joshua! Make her shut up!” Ariel yelled and Joshua pushed the button to kill the noise and flashing red lights. Not just that the fuel was getting lower and lower, the oil filter needed to be replaced too. Ariel grabbed the duct tape and turned to explain it to Evelyn.

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Happy STS! :D If your characters had to give each other handmade gifts, what would they give each other?

thank you!!

so, i just think Ariel's love language is cooking for someone else, so they would just give Evelyn her favourite food but Arielnized. this is self-explanatory.

Evelyn is really bad at handmade stuff, so she would probably gift something to ghost-hunt, like lavender bags or smth to calm restless spirits. (the true gift is Evelyn showing up and we all know it)

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last line tag

I got tagged by @conteur-writeblr, thank you very much! I was sitting on these lines for a while now and this gave me a great reason to share them ^^

Just as she sat down, a groan went through the house.

Not the kind of sound that slipped with the wind from a storm outside into the warmth inside, no. This groan had been birthed from its core, reverberating through the beams, the stones, the mortar. A groan like a heavy animal’s, a creature’s last efforts for complaint before its breath ceased forever.

Evelyn startled, stumbled upright instantly. It still resonated in her bones, in the light tremble of her legs. This had been too much. No poltergeist could create such sounds, such uprooting of the place they were haunting. They simply were lesser. Too small and insignificant to convulse the whole house at once.

I'm tagging, only if you want to: @cilly-the-writer @dustylovelyrun @stuffaboutwriting and @the-orangeauthor

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Happy STS! :D In the GLMGK universe, how often do people deal with curses? Have most people been cursed at least once in their life? And are there any laws against cursing people? Alternative/bonus question: Free ramble! ^.^

hooo boy have i been looking forward to answering this ask xD thank you!

How often do people deal with curses?

well, there are Professionals of course, who do it all the time. like ariel! they're usually called curse-brokers cause they extract a curse from someone, give them a new one and usually try to sell the old curse on the market (they gotta live from something). to the standard person who does not work in this field, it's a bit rarer. imagine a curse to be a fox, some people see them every day on their way to work and for others it's a super rare occasion!

Have most people been cursed at least once in their life?

no, it is a bit more rarer than that. there are certain people who are more prone to get cursed (liminal people for example) than others, but overall i'd say it's maybe every fifth person getting cursed once in their life. fun fact: once you've been cursed you are closer to liminality which makes it more likely to get cursed again! also, if you have a good curse-broker, you will just get a new curse that might as well stay until the rest of your life, so!

And are there any laws against cursing people?

yes! cursing people is highly illegal! it's just that from ancient times there's still many curses around, waiting in their medium until they can latch onto some person. also there are times when curses where just A Thing, like the big boom in curses in the seventies spanning until the early '00s, so there are currently still a lot new curses going around. because the curses only truly disappear once it withers. but still you might find people who are.... skilled in the art of curses if you know where to look and only if you're ready to pay the correct price.

i don't have anything to report for a free ramble i think, i rambled a bit about news over here a while ago and i still have two more weeks of free time until uni starts, so!

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Happy STS! :D Let’s say your characters had to steal an expensive ring from someone at a fancy party (maybe the person wearing it stole it first). How would they do it? What kind of distractions would they use? What is their getaway plan?

okay, first of all, the cast of A Guide to Liminal Matters and Ghastly Kinds would be a total disaster xD

So, imagine. This is a super fancy party of a company that deals with curses and monsters and ghosts, a company everyone knows, it's working international and all. Evelyn, Ariel and Joshua and Cosima managed to get inside because Evelyn asked her parents for invitations (her parents also have such a company, after all, so they're invited naturally).

Joshua is usually invisible to human eyes, but liminal people (those who have been touched by curses, monsters or ghosts) would always be able to see him, so this is a dangerous place for him, lest someone give him a human touch and he goes onto the afterlife!

Cosmia would stand out so much with her 17th century gown and longsword.

Ariel would keep forgetting what they came for and try to talk to important people to get themself out there.

Evelyn would be trying to hide but people would recognize her and "catch up" with her.

So. Nothing goes according to plan. In the end, Evelyn would be able to get her hands on the ring (more or less by accident) while Cosima holds a speech about compassion and leadership or something, she's a great distraction.

Since no one noticed their meddling, hopefully, they just quickly disappear as they came x)