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itstimetowritecl · 3 years

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Writing Advice: Borrowing Another Culture’s Aspects is Not Pokemon - You Do NOT Get to Catch Them All

A lot has happened since I last logged into this website, and hopefully so has my writing quality.

What hasn’t changed sadly, is the continued trend of cultural appropriation within literary publications, particularly borrowing a culture’s important customs by a majority group outside of said culture. When juxtaposed against the fact those from said culture face greater difficulties in getting published and allowing their own voices to tell the story, this bodes an alarming trend that further marginalizes them.

I deem this the Catch-Them-All Effect (please don’t sue me Pokemon! I’ve got a lot of student loan debt to pay off still), the habit where writers borrow from another culture they are not a part of, but fail to execute its usage appropriately. It is akin to grabbing a new shiny item off the shelf, or rather, collecting that Pokemon, disregarding whether it is yours to grab or not.

The Catch-Them-All Effect is notable within Sarah J Maas’ most recent publication, House of Sky and Breath, the second book in her Crescent City series. While I certainly do not believe Maas had malicious intent when constructing this novel, a few worldbuilding aspects and characterizations fall into the Catch-Them due to the execution and portrayal of cultural elements within the text.

Thus, below is a case study of how the Catch-Them-All Effect applies to this novel and suggestions for how it can be revised to avoid these pitfalls.

Borrowing a Sacred Object and Making it Non-Sacred: Using the Pokeball (Thunderbird) to Capture an Oppressed Group

Example: During the prologue, we are introduced to Sofie, a member of the Thunderbird, an oppressed race that is being hunted for their magical gifts by the Vanir, the non-human majority group. Sofie ends the prologue by being cast under the sea for her inevitable death.

Why is this Problematic:

The Thunderbird is a sacred, respected mythological creature within NA indigenous people’s culture, especially the Navajo. It is a supernatural being that protects, and provides as a spiritual guide, and should retain a high importance when being used in literature.

Treating an important creature such as a Thunderbird and making it ‘non-sacred’ demonstrates a lack of research on the culture and can impart negative reactions by your readers. Always think about how someone from that culture would react by reading your work.

By using the Thunderbird as the name of a group facing genocide, it makes light of real-world oppression given that indigenous people faced for centuries and treats something of great value within their culture as a disposable entity.

How to Rework:

Change the name - this can easily rectify the issue given this is a fantasy world and there is no need to use the Thunderbird as an oppressed race’s name. Instead, create a new name that links directly to the powers these people have (it also is an easy way to further build your world). Why not have regular humans once harbor magic but was stolen by the Vanir? This can tie into the Drop plotline and further the narrative.

Pay homage through a more respectable manner that doesn’t change the Thunderbird’s meaning, such as a naming a in-universe bird after it and emphasizing some known characteristics, but not for the character’s usage. Remember, when in doubt, if its not your story to tell, don’t tell it.

Allow the oppressed character to have their own voice outside of tragedy porn. By introducing a character to meet an unfortunate fate immediately, it further establishes the inability of an oppressed group to have their ‘own voice’- an established major/minor character would better serve as the voice for this group.

Characters and/or Universe Profiteering from the Culture: Treating the Pokeball (Cultural Icon) as a Collectible on the Shelf

Example: The main protagonist, Bryce Quinlan, laments that she was not able to get a Starlight Fancy, a [blue-and-white-unicorn-pegasus who could wield all types of energy] that was based upon the Thunderbird’s powers. She hadn’t been able to [get her hands on one, though she’d yearned to].

Why is this Problematic:

Having toys that are readily available for consumer purchase promotes the notion it is okay to profit off of a marginalized group without their consent. We see this in the real-world, where wearing headdresses are seen as ‘cute,’ which is rather offensive to indigenous peoples’ culture that was decimated by imperialistic actions of others.

It also treats the culture as it is a cute or fun thing to have. Just because you want something doesn’t make you entitled to it, nor should it be treated as a collectable especially given their in-universe plight. Bryce’s focus on the toy instead of the implications demonstrates this attitude. Culture is not something that can be bought off a shelf.

Gives the impression your protagonist is utterly clueless and frankly unlikable - Bryce in this case, comes across as materialistic and insensitive. She shows no concern about the Thunderbird being exploited in such a manner. There is no questioning of why the plushie was allowed to be created in the first place.

How to Rework:

Instead of allowing your characters to be passive, challenge the system by calling out the exploitation of the Thunderbirds’ culture while they remain oppressed. This can be a segway into showing the damages that capitalism can have on marginalized groups and how those in power benefit from it.

Adding on to this, who are making the toys, and where are the profits going? This can be a good motif to move the plot forward by contrasting it against the death camps and violence that these groups are being inflicted upon - oppression does not end with violence; it is deeply entrenched in all facets of society.

Reshift the tone to have characters be more critical of this. By showing concern and opposition to this behavior, it shows another layer in your character’s development for challenging the systemic oppression. The more ingrained your characters are in challenging all facets of oppression, the more powerful their narratives come across.

Using Your Oppressed Group as Collateral: The Pokeballs (Thunderbirds) Only Matter to Their Owner If They are ‘Useful’

Example: During the course of the novel, Bryce and her group are searching for Emile, a Thunderbird who is the younger brother of Sofie. They run across a group of fire sprites, one named Ariadne. She is too expensive to ‘purchase for freedom,’ but since her dragon fire is valuable, Bryce wants to free Ariadne for their own purposes against the princes of Hel.

Why this is Problematic

This further highlights the systemic issue we often see in society which is that ‘unless they are helpful, I won’t be helpful.’ One again, someone of a marginalized group is only being helped because the privileged stand to gain something from this. It only perpetuates the cycle of oppression.

Bryce shows the ability to understand children should not be weaponized, however, never comments on the Thunderbirds’ plight nor trying to aid the sprite’s situation. By bringing up the opportunity to ‘buy freedom’ undermines the difficulties in oppressed groups having freedom (e.g. having to live in fear, struggle to find jobs, travel, etc)

This falls into the unfortunate category of classism - that humans/beings are bound by their monetary ‘worth,’ and only those with a value can be purchased from freedom. Oppression should not be gate-kept by money, however, the characters do not take action to challenge this at any point and instead allow the systemic issues to continue.

How to Rework:

Make the characters challenge the system by taking more interest in the Thunderbirds/humans as a whole group and not just Emile, and extend this to the Sprites. The characters should at some point express concern for the death camps and targeted oppression earlier in the novel.

Allow for the narrative to give them opportunities to speak up, and criticize the characters who choose to not speak up and/or have a narrower, selfish focus. This will allow your characters to grow but highlight the importance of addressing the injustices head on.

The usefulness of a character should not be the impetus to free them, nor should they be expected to agree to help the protagonists. The Sprites should be freed because they are oppressed, without any expectation of helping them - if anything, their decision to help should be based upon their own virtues being in-line with the protagonists.

Using Reality’s Pain to Establish Artificial, Inconclusive Drama: Throwing Out Pokeballs (Real-Life Allegories) Without a Clear Plan

Example: The Thunderbird alongside regular humans face violent oppression from the Vanir, such as genocide, cannibalism, death camps, etc. However, this is the backdrop of the story and while the heroes beat the ‘big bad,’ the oppression isn’t solved. No mention is made to address this larger issue.

Why this is Problematic:

Makes your protagonists seem very ignorant and doing the bare minimum to fight against the real issue. I killed the bad guy, what more do you want? This is a common sentiment we find in the real world by the majority groups and only fosters to allow oppression to further exist because the root causes are never addressed.

Comes across as artificial given there was no attempt to address the oppression but rather there for ‘shock effect.’ Oppression is a real and insidious, and should be treated with care. Thus, your characters, unless the intent is to subvert passiveness, must demonstrate that same attitude.

Makes light of real-world issues and further propagates a ‘well it doesn’t really affect me’ mindset. It takes away from the story’s narrative and makes it considerably weaker given the main roots of oppression are never resolved. What will be done to address the death camps, the slavery of humans, cannibalism, etc?

How to Rework:

The introduction of Thunderbirds comes across as a bit jarring since no mention was made of their existence in the first novel. The prologue should either be moved to the first book or the final few chapters of book one be revised. This will help offset the jarring nature of this worldbuilding piece and set the tone to connect into book two.

Add dynamicism to your characters by tackling the systemic issues head on. Have them show concern for the death camps, actively discuss how to liberate the people, etc. While these issues do not have to be resolved in this novel, lay the ground work for how real systemic change can happen.

Revise the work to become more personal - none of the characters have personal attachment to this issue, weakening the effectiveness. While Bryce certainly does have influence from her deceased friend Danika Fendyr to take action, not once has she established the link between her human heritage and oppression - make her show concern for humans that are being oppressed.

#cultural appropriation #writing advice #worldbuilding tips #addressing oppression within novel writing #case study: writing execution #own voices #catch-them-all effect #avoiding writing pitfalls #allyship perspective #writing

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ask-healthy-light · 2 years

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In the library, close to the entirety of history was available. From the start of Equestria, to the emergence of the Pillars, through the growth of the Tree of Harmony and the return of Princess Luna, books dating back to hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. Works from folks of all walks of life, reaching through history to readers of today.

Over the last few years, due to the efforts of the Royal Princesses, and especially the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, connections were made outside of Equestria, and the tales and accounts of many races throughout history became available, from Griffons to Yaks, Hippogriffs and Seaponies to the area of Klugetown and beyond.

Though the collection was vast, it was not entirely complete. Whether through vandalism, negligence or any other malicious reason, intended or otherwise, there are perspectives, knowledge, experiences lost to the ages. Due to the loss of these fragmented periods of history, some notable occurrences would be forever unknown.

Searching through the entire library one book at a time would take beyond an eternity to complete; therefore Light created a system, which they advised the others to follow: Look for books that could be of use, write down the titles and details of these books, and after a set number of volumes found, quickly search through the chapters. If something interesting is in the books, write down the chapters next to the titles, and continue on.

As the group was looking through the shelves of history, Banana realised something and gathered the group; He explained that the history of the last one thousand years, after the banishment of Princess Luna, would be of little use, as the land was peaceful under the rule of Celestia, and there would be no need for dark tunnels and secret passages, or anything of the sort.

After thinking for a moment, Light agreed with Banana, and mentioned that they thought the catacombs themselves may not have been built during the sole rule of the Princess of the Sun, though there could still be accounts of others who discovered the tunnels before Banana built the park over the dark passages.

Many hours passed, and piles of books lined the tables spanning the Halls of the Library. So far, nothing more than a few small references to old constructions lost to the ages, like the Castle of the Two Sisters in the Everfree Forest, and the Ruins of Ponehenge. A number of scrolls, written by the group, noting the titles and details of many books from before the banishment of Luna, were scattered about as well.

Looking at the others with a gentle gaze and seeing they felt exhausted and bored, losing their focus, Light sighed quietly, and started clearing up the books on the tables, confusing the group. They explained they were not giving up, but they knew spending too long trying to focus on one thing would not be beneficial to anyone.

They also explained that fresh air, a proper meal and a good night's rest would be helpful, and balancing research with relaxation would be best for them. As Caff started helping Light, Violin said he was headed home to make preparations for dinner, followed closely by Banana, while Boom appeared to be very focused on one book in particular.

Using their magic, Light carefully moved the books, one by one, to their rightful places on the shelves of the Library. Though Caff was unable to fly, and was not able to reach the higher shelves, she went up and down the tables, grabbing books to balance on her wings, moving them closer to Light.

Boom, meanwhile, stayed focused on his book, surprising both Light and Caff, who continued clearing up. When they were nearly finished, they lightly tapped Boom on his shoulder, asking for his book, startling the Unicorn, who then closed the book and walked towards the Librarian, politely asking to borrow the book.

Caff and Light looked at each other in confusion, and as the trio walked out of the library, finding the sun was very low in the sky, they asked Boom what the book was about, to which he replied:

"I vaguely remember some things that have been noted in this book, and I think I might have found something, but not about tunnels, nor blasting powder, or anything. Just… I'll… let you know."

The three walked back to Violin's house, and when they arrived there, as the sun approached the horizon, Light said they would head to the park again, both to stretch their legs and to get some fresh air before dinner. Caff and Boom smiled and waved off the Kirin as they entered the house, while Light moved to the park, hoping to find, again, what they found that morning.

(Thanks for reading! Please feel free to send a question or a thought you had!)

Start at the beginning! | Next part!

Featuring: Banana Pie from @askbananapie Caff from @askcaffeinehazard Violin Sunrise from @ask-violinsunrise Boomlord from @thedumbguywithaheart43

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jq37 · 5 years

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The Report Card – Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 7

Moms, Meltdowns, and Mayhem

Hello and welcome back to Fabian’s worst nightmare, already in progress!

We rejoin the Bad Kids who have linked back up the next day and are on their way to the library of the city Leviathan--The Compass Point Library. On the way there, they see the Crow’s Keep burning but Fabian, assuming it has to do with what happened to him, tells everyone to leave it alone.

Adaine questions why Riz hasn’t had any nightmares (Riz: In a way, my life is a nightmare) and the whole group goes into another round of Shadowcat speculation. Is she protecting Riz from nightmares for some reason? Why can Tracker and Garthy suddenly see her in the picture despite not having seen her irl or had any weird dreams? Is she masquerading as someone else?

Anyway, they reach the library which is the cool, cobbled together and largely stolen (to Fig’s delight) pirate-y library of Alexandria type place. They meet an old pirate wizard named Rollins with a book of pirate spells that Fig immediately wants to steal and Adaine wants to borrow (or steal, she’s flexible). They all sign up for Compass Point library cards and go up to the observatory to look for Ayda Aguefort.

In the observatory, they find a huge orange-yellow bird on a perch and this is the part of the recap where I have to inform you that Aguefort had not only banged a phoenix, he somehow managed to procreate with it. Meet Ayda Aguefort, the half-phoenix (shout-out to the anon from last week who called Ayda as Aguefort’s daughter). She’s got wings and arms, bird legs, a plume of red fiery hair, and eyes which are basically just fire.

Fig thinks she’s the creature Aguefort made for her for reasons I cannot begin to fathom. She tries to feed her but Ayda rejects the food, not wishing to be in anyone’s debt. Ayda is kind of intense, abrupt, and anti-social when they meet her. She’s fully is about to fly away instead of helping until Fabian yells that Garthy sent them and Adaine remembers she has the letter from Garthy asking her to help them. After some back and forth, she agrees to give Adaine the spell (which will take 6 hours to learn) for 150 gold. But these are the Bad Kids so, of course, we have several tangents before the plot goes anywhere, during which we learn Ayda is a divination wizard (like Adaine), she asks if her father has talked about her (Fig successfully lies that he has), and Gorgug spouts out some fortune cookie nonsense (“What is a telescope but a spyglass pointed at the stars?”) that convinces Ayda that he could be the greatest wizard of their age (Adaine does a spit take and Fig is loving it).

Adaine hits the books to learn the sending spell with Sandra-Lynn keeping watch while everyone else splits up suchly:

Fabian wants to go out to check on the Hangman but Kristen absolutely vetoes that. Buddy. System. Ragh agrees to go with him and she lays off. He tries to see what the damage on the Hangman is. Nat 1. As far as Fabian can tell, the Hangman is full dead. Not only that, Fabian is poor people sick which he isn’t used to at all. Ragh isn’t doing much better on the emotional front. He just started making progress with processing his emotions and now his mom might be dead. Saddest Hoot Growl ever (seriously, it’s heartbreaking). Cathilda comes in, loving as ever, with food and kind words and an old lullaby, but that’s not enough to stop Fabian from rolling another Nat 1 and gaining 2 levels of exhaustion (which means disadvantage on ability checks and speed halved). Lou, please burn those dice.

Kristen and Riz are researching the Nightmare King. They go into a religious studies section of the library and (on a 20+ check from Riz) find texts about a temple to a forgotten god in Sylvere (the forest of the Nightmare King). The god is never named in any of the texts which Kristen finds weird. Riz decides to steal the book and is able to do it, despite Kristen’s “help”. Later, Kristen cross-refs Riz’s info with her world religions book and, on a dirty 20, she finds with frustration that there’s a lot of information but none of it really matches up. The fairies, treants, and especially the unicorns all had mysterious deities but none of them really match with the forgotten god. [Note: Last time we heard about unicorns was in episode one and we learned that the last time people saw the great unicorn was the last time the NK showed up.] At the same time, it seems like there are elements of the god in all five of the cultures in the forest. Adaine checks and there’s nothing magic with the book so it’s just the contents of the book that are weird, not the book itself. Kristen thinks there might be a connection to her weird dream about not being able to draw the face of her god. Adaine wonders if Kristen might have been worshipping this unnamed god by mistake. Gorgug wonders if the god is erasing themselves (a theory backed up late when they talk to Aguefort).

Fig looks for information on cursed gems and (with a 19) she finds a good amount--no surprise in a pirate library. She finds a book called Breaking the Evil Eye in one of the forbidden sections and learns that it could be possible to planeshift into the gem, dispel magic from the inside and get rid of the trap, before breaking the original curse. She finds all of this out after she steals the book (disguised as Rollins). Planeshift is a level 7 spell though so Adaine has a while to go before she can learn it (she gets her first at level 13).

Gorgug asks the real Rollins for books about cheering up a friend. He’s brought to a small, dusty section of the library. Gorgug rolls a nat 1 on an insight check and thinks that Rollins must be messing with him. Rollins is confused because he super wasn’t. Adaine takes a break and uses this pointless argument borne from misunderstanding to steal his book. Dirty 20. Rollins instantly skelatizes. She hastily puts the book back. He comes back Wrong and in incredible pain. He begs them to take the book out and Gorgug does. Adaine peaces out to finish studying, leaving Gorgug to deal with her mess. Gorgug decides to keep looking at the friendship books. Even on a 5, he finds a secret door into a HUGE friendship library. Guided by his library card, Gorgug finds a book called Cheer Up Me Hearties. When he gets out, Gilear is being accosted for killing Rollins, but Gorgug is able to get them to stand down. Gorgug Thistlespring, winning pirate hearts and minds. They take the book and Rollins’ bones to get him put back together.

Adaine finishes up as Ayda comes to check on her. Ayda is about to make another quick exit but Adaine tries again to make friends with Ayda, this time by directly asking and offering to let her hold Boggy. Ayda is immediately obsessed with Boggy (and Adaine’s backpack terrarium AND the backpack she makes for him at Ayda’s suggestion) and extremely impressed with Adaine’s spellwork in manifesting Boggy. It’s a very cute scene and Adaine has made a useful ally. Ayda can’t believe she met the two greatest wizards of the age in one day. Wild.

Everyone regroups to call Aguefort now that Adaine knows Sending. He sends them back some more powerful magic so he can talk for longer than the 25 word response. Think of it as magic Skype. He very casually tells them that Ragh’s house is a smoking crater and his mom is super dead. He takes far too long to follow up with the information that, a long time ago, he hid Lydia’s real body under the school, made a clone of her, and used the Magic Jar spell to basically hook up her consciousness to the clone body (which held a fake demon shard). The clone body is what got destroyed. Lydia’s real body and consciousness are fine. Way to bury the lede dude! Upon being asked, Arthur says that he used to remember the name of the god of the unicorn but he forgot. Suspicious and troubling. He and Fig also renew discussions on the creature she ordered but never paid for. He says the cheapest option is a pentacorn for 30k gold (which sounds like a unicorn w/ 5 horns and pretty useless but I refuse to get dragged into this insanity, I am just the messenger here).

Aguefort leaves to deal with the situation at home. Meanwhile, Gorgug notices smoke again but he also notices that it’s on the wrong side to be related to what happened to Fabian. After giving Fabian and Ragh oranges to prevent scurvy--a tip from the pirate friendship book--he brings it up to Fabian who thinks it’s probably Captain Wicklaw making a power play and they should probably stay out of it. What? says Adaine. Nah, we should fight him. Yeah, says Fig. You deserve revenge! Fabian just wants to lay low so they can get their C+. Adaine is not here for that C+ and she’s not here for Fabian’s concerning attitude shift. None of the Bad Kids are. However, the cast is very here for absolutely roasting Lou for all of his choices by having their respective characters inadvertently reference every bad thing that happened last episode. When Adaine suggests that Fabian might be cursed, Fabian finally haltingly comes out with the entire story (which Lou has to laugh-cry himself through in one of the best scenes of the episode) and everyone interjects with comments that they (out of character) know will just make Fabian’s storytelling even more uncomfortable. It’s a very wild combination of very emotional (in game) but deeply funny (out of game). Like:

Ally (who knows good and well that Chungledown Bim told Fabian he was gonna shit in his mouth): Did Chungledown Bim help you?

Zac (who also knows good and well that Chungledown Bim told Fabian he was gonna shit in his mouth): Chungledown Bim probably saved you.

Murph (yet another person who knows good and well that ChungledownBim told Fabian he was gonna shit in his mouth) You know what we should do? We should go see Chungledown Bim.

Amazing.

Fabian finishes his recounting of the 20 car pile-up that was last episode by repeating his earlier opinion that they shouldn’t go after Captain Wicklaw because it will just end with all of them dead. Kristen tries to slap him back to normal and tells him to lose the Gilear energy. Led by Gorgug and Adaine, the gang tells Fabian that being Bill Secaster’s son isn’t the only worthwhile thing about him (in fact, it’s pretty annoying). He’s worthwhile all on his own. Tracker chimes in and says that she thinks Fabian might have some issues with depression so maybe their well intentioned efforts to get Fabian to buck up weren’t the best way to handle things. Adaine and Riz are skeptical that Fabian is like, capital D, Depressed but Tracker sticks by her read on the situation. The group eventually decides to at least check out what’s going on with the smoke but before they arrive, an interlude:

As they walk to Crow’s Keep, Cathilda walks with Fabian and Cathilda starts dropping information about herself and about how her own children died before Fabian was born and about how she sees him as a son--though she’s tried to keep the proper professional distance. She comforts Fabian on his bad day and then her eyes go full Terminator and she mentally buts Wicklaw on her “People I Need to Murder Today” list (more on this later).

When they arrive at the place where the smoke is coming from, they find that the Ramble (kind of a pirate meetinghouse/Courthouse) has been burned down. Jemina Joy is there and she lets them know that Wicklaw asked what was necessary to become the new pirate king. He was told that all he needed to do was get the crown from the former pirate king (because respect for/fear of Bill was the only thing keeping there from being a new king). He just burned down the Ramble to be a dick. Adaine damn near gets her ass beat by Jemina by arguing politics with her (her point being that she wants to install Jemina as Pirate Queen while Jemina is like, “I just keep this place from sinking. Lay off.”) but Riz, mindful of the fact that this is a time sensitive situation, takes off to Gibbety Square where the pirate king’s crown is (and where Wicklaw is headed).

They make it to Brennan’s latest battle mechanic: The Row and the Ruction.

This is the crazy, pirate bicameral legislative system. The Row is a huge fistfight (no weapons allowed--or really they are allowed but everyone will gang up on you if you use them) at ground level. It’s always in session and has been for 150-ish years. Above that, is the Ruction which is a fight with full weapon and magic usage alone. The idea is that you need enough support on the ground in the Row so you can use them to get up in the Ruction. It’s a king of the hill situation up there and if you can hold your position up there for long enough, you can make laws. Got all that? Good.

They get there just barely after Wicklaw and his men who haven’t yet entered the Row. Wicklaw starts talking mad trash to Fabian but his friends back him up. They give him back his sword, his eye-patch, and Kristen hits him with a Warding Bond (which means that he gets +1 to AC and saving throws if he stays close to her plus resistance to all damage and, more importantly, she takes all the damage he takes). Fig gives everyone Countercharm. And, to top it off, Cathilda shows up with in an all black, super-badass pirate uniform to say she’s gonna feed him his own freaking brains! Let’s goooooooo!

But, Wicklaw has some new allies as well. Three elves bamf in from Falinel (same people who Kristen felt scrying on them earlier) and they’re there to bring Adaine back, and it doesn’t seem like they’re gonna just ask nicely.

Detention

Adaine for Unnecessary Theft and (Accidentally) Killing a Man

Adaine was kind of on one this episode. Not only did she inadvertently kill* a man while stealing from him, Adaine also ghosted at the first sign of trouble, leaving Gorgug and Gilear to catch all the flak for her attempt at pulling a Fig. Bad form, girl!

*She probably didn’t technically kill him but she turned him into a skeleton and he called the pain upon reconstitution worse than death so let’s not quibble about the details.

Honor Roll

Cathilda for Being a Badass Mom

Oh man, oh man, oh man.

I’ve low-key been waiting for Cathilda to go full pirate since we learned that was an option and especially since Fabian got attacked because it was a pretty safe bet that was going to be her berserk button and boy did she deliver.

When did she have the time for a costume change? Is she that stealthy? Did she magic it on? Or did she just manifest the outfit on the power of her rage alone?

The scene where she says Wicklaw is gonna pay? Chills. Not only pledging to eat your enemy’s brains but also saying you’re going to feed him his own brains and describing exactly how you’ll serve it? So raw.

But I also have to shout out the non-murderous mom stuff she did this ep. The little talk she gave Fabian about no one being defined by their worst day was very sweet and good advice out of game too.

But honorable mention to Gorgug for being an absolute sweetheart all episode. Zac’s improv about pirates giving their friends oranges to prevent scurvy bodied me.

Random Thoughts

Some very useful posts from @jamiebluewind: Character Descriptions, Location Descriptions, Transcripts of Cathilda’s speeches from this ep.

During the initial discussion with Collins, we learn that the transmutation exchange rate is 50 Parrots=10 Bananas=1 Gold. How are bananas more complex than parrots?

Adaine: May we steal books?

Her later actions aside, I think it’s funny that Adaine’s first move is basically always to sweetly ask for what she wants and Fig’s first move is, “Gotta steal that book!” Adaine is like the most polite person in the group but also ready to fight 100% of the time. The role reversal in the Jemina scene where Fig was the one who asked an on point question and Adaine was the one who made it almost spiral into an actual fight was great.

I was just saying this re: Harry Potter in a different context but clearly marked but not blocked off forbidden sections of libraries are more a dare than a deterrent.

Fig as a horned parrot (done by Rollins for trying to steal his book) is adorable. Please somebody draw that.

I love that when they see the bird that turns out to be Ayda and Murph is like, “I don’t think that’s a bird,” Zac is like, “Yeah, Gorgug doesn’t know that.” Zac (like Travis as Grog in CritRole) has a real talent for playing dumb while actually being really smart.

“My principal scammed me?”

Brennan truly did not have to follow through on Aguefort saying he slept with a bird. He really, really did not have to but he was like, “Nope! I said it so it’s happening! This is happening!” I really wish you guys could have seen my face as I realized in real time that the madman was actually doing that.

Adaine to Fig who thinks Ayda is her creature: This is a full person.

“I like school.”/“You would.”

Lol at Fig trying to draw parallels between Ayda’s prickliness and her own behavior and getting absolutely shut down. “I think people think you’re really tender.” The running thing of Fig’s perception of herself as this standoffish loner being constantly reality checked by literally everyone she knows being like, “You tell us you love us literally every day,” is one of my favorite group dynamics. It’s even funnier because, besides probably Adaine and Fabian, the rest of the Bad Kids probably knew Fig (or at least had seen her around) before she started going through her emo phase. So they totally remember her in 8th grade wearing preppy clothes and carrying a unicorn backpack and listening to Fantasy Taylor Swift and all that.

All ep they were calling Kalina a cat and I was thinking, “I feel like—in game—that’s gotta be offensive.” And then Aguefort straight said it. Wild for it to come from him since he’s the craziest person ever but I’m glad it came up.

“You seem simple to me.”/“Thank God.”

Aww at Ayda asking if Aguefort ever talks about her. Brennan, you gotta stop putting little emotional traps into otherwise funny scenes. I can only handle so much!

The gang did some experimentation with the photo in this ep with these results: Ayda and Aguefort both couldn’t see Kalina in the picture. They also took a picture of the picture but that picture had the same properties as the original picture. Weeping Angel rules I guess.

There’s speculation in this episode about why Riz isn’t having nightmares. I have another question kinda on that topic. In episode 2/3, we see the lie/mirror/Baron thing that happened with Riz. And that was for sure super nightmarish. But it doesn’t match what happened to Adaine and Fabian. Both of them seem to have had more ephemeral experiences that quickly vanished. And they weren’t borne from lies so much as fears. Riz’s monster came from a direct lie and it didn’t seem to be a nightmare. It came out of the mirror and attacked not only him but his friends later. No one saw Fabian or Adaine’s nightmares besides them (although, that could just be because they got away). And no other lie-monsters have showed up as far as we know. I’m just wondering if there’s maybe something else going on or if it was a different NK follower who did that or just a different power of the same dude. Just something I wanted to note because it’s been bugging me a little and no one’s brought it up yet.

Cool quirk of the sending spell Adaine learned: Because it was modified by pirates, curse words don’t count towards the 25 word limit. What I immediately thought (and what Aguefort actually ended up doing more or less) was that you could easily send very long messages with, say, Morse code. Just designate one curse as a dot, one as a dash, and one as a space, and you’re good to go. It’d be slow, but totally workable.

Also, after watching Laura as Jester absolutely flying by the seat of her pants with every sending spell, it was wild to see the group take the time to carefully craft the perfect message.

I said two recaps ago that I wouldn’t be surprised if Gorgug multiclassed into a casting class soon and boy do I hope this episode means he’s gonna do it for real. Adaine’s total disbelief at Ayda’s interest in Gorgug’s wizarding potential was sending me.

Oh also. Ayda has forbidden Gorgug from reading any wizarding books so he doesn’t lose is totally uncomplicated mind. I guess he’s supposed to learn everything the savant way? Imagine Adaine diligently studying her wizard books, trying to master some complicated spell and Gorgug is like, “I woke up and I guess I can use Mage Hand now? Neat.” Absolutely maddening.

Besides Cathilda, Gorgug was the MVP in this episode. Dude has a knack for making friends that I think will eventually pay dividends.

Also, speaking of, everything Brennan said during the secret shelf section was so good as to sound planned, however, how could you predict that that was a thing a player was going to ask to find? Brennan is just always 7 seconds of prep time away from giving an elaborate and super specifically themed speech about friendship I guess.

Big ups to Kristen for not letting Fabian go off by himself again. Like, for the sake of the party of course but also the, “We almost lost you,” was sweet. She also helped buff him going into the coming fight with Warding Bond that means she takes all the damage he takes. I am SO glad they brought another healer with them because that’s such a risky move. Kristen is a LOT but she’s also very ride or die and all heart. I really love that the last time she used this spell it was on Gilear for a joke and now it’s getting used seriously. It’s a perfect establish existence of power to audience/bring back at plot relevant time setup. Improv storytelling is so inexplicably good.

Technically, to cast Warding Bond, you’re supposed to have matching rings with the person you’re casting it on so imagine Kristen blinged out with a ring for each party member and each of them having a corresponding one in case she needs to cast it on them.

Little bit concerned that Tracker still doesn’t know about Sandra-Lynn/Garthy. The longer it takes for her to find out, the higher the chance it blows up and becomes a Thing.

Fig: *Meandering philosophical question about why Ayda watches the stars*/Ayda: I study it so I can know where this big city is floating.

RIP to the Hangman. I don’t think he’s gone for good but it seems like he is for now. On my first watch, I thought that, on a 1, Fabian just fully thinks that the Hangman is gone but, the second time it seemed more like he’s just dead. Now, I’m not Brennan, but if I was in this situation, you know what I would do? I would have someone save the Hangman’s soul (or whatever he has instead of a soul) and store it in the Hangvan temporarily. Imagine how much he’d hate that. It’s full of potential for “roommate” shenanigans.

Is there anything stopping them from just, ramming the Row with the Hangvan? Like, I know it’ll get them ganged up on, but will they be able to do much against a full van?

Also, if/when they hold the Ruction, I wonder what law they’re going to try and make. They didn’t really go in with a plan (understandable under the time pressure) so they’re really gonna have to improvise something on the fly.

Also, I’m assuming Fabian stabbed the Hangman while he was asleep? I don’t think we were ever shown that scene, but Fabian must have been under some kind of compulsion since he woke up in the river (and the same happened to Ragh).

Aguefort casually mentions that he has many children and this episode proves that Brennan can and will back up every single crazy thing that comes out of his mouth, so I’m excited to see if there is a single Aguefort out there that isn’t crazy.

Oh, also, the acknowledgement that occasionally that phoenix is a child is appreciated because that was def a question I was going to ask. Squicky to say the least but I guess that’s how phoenixes work so what are you gonna do?

Ally needing to roll a 10, rolling, being happy, checking Kristen’s modifier, and realizing it’s a negative 3 for a total of 9 is peak D&D.

Fig as Rollins: Look at how fast I can run!

I love Fig thinking Adaine could plausibly have 7 level spells. She’s like, idk bro. She’s the eleven oracle. She cares about school. She could know this too. Who knows? Certainly not Fig who thought she could buy wizard spells to use as a bard.

“Please speak more enthusiastically on my behalf.”

“It’s my brain guys.”

Fig mind controls Gilear into believing in himself and he fails his save. I wonder if this is could be valid therapy technique in this world.

Aguefort mentions that a Wish spell can destroy a Magic Jar just fyi. That makes 3 pretty high level spells mentioned in this ep. Magic Jar is 6th level. Planeshift is 7th level. And Wish, basically the strongest spell in the game, is 9th level. We’re starting to deal with some serious magical mojo.

The whole thing with people in pictures that not everyone can see and memories that you know you once had but don’t anymore and information that should exist but doesn’t is hitting a very specific storytelling sweet spot for me.

This is a little meta-gamey to be thinking about but I’m kinda wondering, why sideline Gorthalax? Obviously, it’s a good plot hook for Fig and that might be all it is. But I’m lowkey wondering is there something Gorthalax knows or can do that would solve the plot in 30 seconds if he was around? Like, was he roommates with the Nightmare King in hell or something?

Kristen finds it weird that the god’s name isn’t written anywhere but I’m sure that’s gotta be fairly common. Or at least not unheard of. Like, I know in Judaism you’re not supposed to do that. Anyway, watch the great unicorn be the Nightmare King just for the Nightmare/Night Mare pun.

Adaine being on brand no matter the situation: Everybody shut up I have to do my homework!

The, “Do you want a friend?”/“Desperately.” interaction killed me.

“I don’t have any wizard friends.”/“I’m a wizard.”/(beat)/“I don’t have any wizard friends.”

Arthur cloned a woman, forgot to tell her, and then straight forgot. So business as usual from him.

Fabian’s, “Nooooooo,” with the rising intonation every time someone made an assumption during his story and he had to correct him was amazing. Also, “He told me he was going to shit in my mouuuuwth.”

Ragh, Fig, and Adaine all crying about their parental issues at the same time. This has been, like, the longest week ever. I wonder if the 7 Maidens are unpacking this much trauma on their quest.

“Absolutely timbered.”

Lol at Brennan dropping the cool pirate sending spell “curses don’t count” detail and then being told from off camera that he needs to keep it PG-13. But then Cathilda needed to go beast mode so, like, what can you do?

Another cool worldbuilding detail is pirate clerics just keep shrines to every deity they’ve come into contact with to hedge their bets like Beni from The Mummy.

I know Lydia was attacked on orders from Kalina but I wonder if they knew about/had plans for the demon shard too.

When Emily said she disguised herself as Rollins, I fully thought she was going to walk out the door the real Rollins was guarding and not go out the back door like she did. The idea of a back door didn’t even occur to me. I just thought we were in for some classic Axford insanity.

Riz: You’ve gotta get better at talking to kids.

Riz: This is real Gilear energy.

Kristen: We brought one Gilear. We don’t wanna make that mistake twice.

Everything that happened with Fabian was really funny because there’s nothing I love more in D&D than players having a good time dunking on each other but, in game, Fabian is really going through it. Fabian low key has mom friend energy so to almost die and then for all of his friends to jump into the exact fight that almost killed him (including taunting the dude! Adaine!) against his advice must be giving him a level of anxiety and dread that I don’t even have the words to describe. Like, now is not the time for him to digging into that because things are life or death. Gotta save your life before you can fix it. But he def needs to at some point. Too bad Jawbone’s not around for a quick mid-battle therapy sesh like he had with Adaine during prom.

Tracker suggested that Fabian might be depressed. I’m not an expert on depression. He could be depressed and, in any case, he definitely needs to see a therapist for a Lot of reasons. But having a breakdown because you saw 14 people die, almost died yourself, and were told that a man wanted to shit in your mouth less than 24 hours ago seems less like a sign of depression and more like the only rational human reaction.

Adaine calls the above, “a vaguely mediocre day”. Michael Scott Voice: Adaine you ignorant slut.

Also Adaine: You got that bike because you won it fair and square because we killed a lot of people.

This is the second time Adaine has said that Fabian’s lineage is actually the most annoying thing about him and these are the kind of tiny continuity details I live for.

Semi-relatedly, Fabian’s relationship with his parents v. Adaine’s relationship with hers is endlessly fascinating to me. Because they have such similar backgrounds but coming from, like, opposite directions of the same spectrum, you know? Can’t wait for those sweet, sweet parallels as we jump into her trauma! (What is D&D but group therapy interspaced with murder?)

Speaking of Adaine’s trauma, it looks like we’ll be getting to it very soon as those FBI Falinel operatives have shown up to force her (and the plot) back to Falinel. This is Concerning to me for two reasons. First off, remember the Aelwyn fight from season 1? Remember how annoying that was? Now imagine that times three and also 2 separate pirate brawls are happening. That sounds like a Bad Time for our kids. They’ve leveled up some and they’ve been known to make some very clutch battle decisions, but this is gonna be tough any way you slice it. This is like two entirely separate encounters at the same time. A small good point: I looked up the language for teleportation and it can only be used to transport a willing creature. So they can’t just bum rush her and poof out. But they could give her an ultimatum to make her agree. The second reason this Concerns me is that Adaine high key doesn’t want to work with/for Falinel and they know this. The fact that they’ve resorted to kidnapping (fun international law fact: when a government kidnaps someone, it’s called rendition) tells me that they’re done playing nice which opens up two options to them they might not have otherwise used. They could coerce Adaine’s consent to be their oracle by threatening her life/her friends’ lives. Or, more troubling, they could just kill her. I mean, she became the elven oracle when the old one died, right? So, if she died, someone else would get the job. Probably someone less troublesome to deal with. I doubt they’re gonna go straight for that because they seem to want her alive, at least for now. But it is a concern.

Of course, we’re assuming that what’s happening on the face of this is the whole story, but that’s not necessarily true. Iirc, all we heard was that they found the oracle and they were gonna bring her back to Falinel. For all we know, the elves could be working for Adaine’s mom. Of Adaine’s mom could be working with Falinel. Or she could be working with Falinel just as a way to get to her daughter. We really don’t know. The last person on this show that got kidnapped was Fabian and that was a friendly kidnapping. Anything is possible.

Something that struck me as a possibility: This fight seems like it’s gonna suck. There is a world where the ideal move for Adaine is to pull an Evy (from the Mummy--two Mummy refs in one recap, did not plan that, I just love the Mummy) and agree to go with the Falinel elves if they help them instead (or at least stop helping Wicklaw) with the faith that her friends will come rescue her. I doubt they actually care much about what happens in the government of this pirate junk city. I’m curious about how they ended up together anyway. I’m guessing the elves clued into what was going on while scrying on the group and decided an alliance might be useful.

Brennan about both Ally’s Applebees Reference and Fig using a Leviathan phonebook: That is nothing.

Shoutout to Fruzzinoid in the chat who said Ally’s alignment is chaotic-chaotic. Accurate.

I love the laughing-squawk that Brennan does for Ayda as much as I hate the fact that he made the Choice to spell it that way.

Truly, the entire scene where Lou is recapping the fight from last episode and he’s laughing uncontrollably but Fabian is clearly crying and he’s expressing both of those things simultaneously is beautiful.

A Fabian line that really hit but that I haven’t mentioned yet: “I probably have one follower running around. Never mind he’s my father’s just like everything else I have.” Ow. Such a deep cut but so off the cuff from Lou. As a writer, this show makes me so mad because that’s such a good line of dialogue that Lou just dropped out of his mouth like it was nothing. How dare he?

Another good line I didn’t mention before, this tie from Riz: “We all draw strength from each other. You went in without your crew. What’s a pirate without his crew?” Ugh, Murph. Who gave you the right?

This episode has made me extremely curious about what Cathilda thinks about Hilariel. Because she sees herself as Fabian’s mom--which she essentially has been in a lot of the ways that count since Hilariel has been mentally out to lunch for the past however many years. To be clear, I do think Hilariel loves Fabian. She just hasn’t really been present even though she’s been literally present. The way Cathilda phrased some of the things she said and the way she seems to talk about Fabian’s dad so much more than his mom makes me wonder if she doesn’t...resent isn’t the right word exactly. Maybe, disapprove? It makes me wonder if she doesn’t disapprove of Hilariel’s parenting choices more than she lets on.

Kristen’s, “Do you listen to music?” in the middle of actually useful questions for Ayda.

Rich people sicknesses include having eaten too much caviar or smoked a cigar for too long in case you’re wondering.

“You want an orange, pal?”

On a practical note, we have two more episodes to go until the show breaks for the year so prepare yourselves from now people!

Riz, Adaine, and Gorgug each rolled one Nat 20 apiece. Fig, Gorgug, and Adaine each rolled a Nat 1 (but Adaine presumably cancelled out hers rolling with advantage because of Boggy). Fabian, who is still living his worst life, rolled three Nat 1s. Tragic.

#fantasy high #fantasy high spoilers #dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #report card

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omniversalobservations · 4 years

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Fallout: Equestria (2011)

Fallout: Equestria is a crossover fan-fiction between the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic television series and the Fallout video game series, and was written by Kkat. First published in April 2011 and completed on Christmas of that year, Fallout: Equestria spans 45 chapters (as well as a prologue, introduction, epilogue, and afterword), and contains over 620,000 words, making Fallout: Equestria one of the longest self-published works of derivative fiction in existence.

It has become one of the most critically well-received derivative works in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic community, and has a substantial cult following that has produced thousands of new works of art, literature, and music dedicated to the fan series.

Plot Fallout: Equestria is set entirely within the universe of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, with only superficial ties to the Fallout universe via borrowed concepts and inspired-by technology. The story occurs two centuries after a war between the pony nation of Equestria and a zebra empire which ends in a megaspell holocaust that decimates much of Equestria and the known world. It takes place in a region known as the Equestrian Wasteland, which includes several locations featured in Friendship is Magic, including the ruins of Ponyville, Canterlot, Manehattan, Fillydelphia, and the surrounding countryside.

The Wasteland is home to various environments ranging from barren wasteland to the decimated ruins of pre-war cities, and there are numerous environmental hazards that plague the countryside. The region is perpetually covered by a layer of near-impenetrable clouds which prevents direct sunlight from reaching the ground, restricting the growth of healthy plant and animal wildlife, which is mostly mutated and irradiated.

Cultural, social, and technological advancements have stagnated since the end of the Great War. Numerous small settlements dot the region, home to descendants of survivors from the war, though population remains low due to the perpetual state of lawless anarchy. The lack of any large-scale civilization in the Wasteland has allowed the propagation of numerous violent bands of raiders and slavers, who terrorize and harass the last bastions of civilization. Various Stables, underground installations constructed by Stable-Tec in order to house and protect the citizens of Equestria in the event of a megaspell attack, also populate the Wasteland; some in states of decay, and some still well-preserved and even functioning after centuries of operation.

Story The story follows the adventures of a clever young unicorn mare named Littlepip who departs her underground Stable and treks across a toxic, ravaged Equestria that was devastated by a war two centuries past, initially in search of her fellow Stable dweller, Velvet Remedy. Throughout her travels in the Equestrian Wasteland, she struggles to cope with the realities of post-apocalypse life whilst doing what she can to restore hope and light to a land plagued with suffering and darkness. Along the way, she combs the ruins of the world that came before, piecing the together the mysterious events surrounding the long-deceased wielders of the Elements of Harmony and learning of the heated political atmosphere precluding the war.

She is accompanied on her travels by a group of five companions, whom she meets throughout her travels: Calamity, a steadfastly loyal pegasus stallion with a southern drawl, a talent for sharpshooting, and a penchant for scavenging; Velvet Remedy, a kind and merciful unicorn mare with a talent for singing, diplomacy, and medicine; SteelHooves, a stoic earth pony stallion and a Steel Ranger paladin who specializes in heavy weapons and has a wealth of knowledge regarding the history of pre- and post-war Equestria; Pyrelight, a balefire phoenix that takes a liking to Velvet, becomes her pet, and assists the group as a scout and aerial melee combatant; and Xenith, an aloof zebra mare skilled in martial arts, alchemy, and medicine.

Source: Fallout Equestria Wiki

Fallout: Equestria is a Fusion Fic between My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the Fallout universe.

Stable 2 is an okay place to live, for most ponies at least. Littlepip, on the other hoof, is a rather underwhelming pip-buck repair pony, and is stuck in the monotony of one of the lowest ranking jobs in the Stable when she must leave in search of Velvet Remedy, the Stable's singer idol.

Outside, she must learn to survive in a blasted, poisoned land... And possibly, with the aid of friends made along the way, bring new light into the darkness of the Equestrian Wasteland.

Has a character sheet.

The story is enormously popular and has inspired hundreds of side stories, including Project Horizons, Pink Eyes, Heroes, and Murky Number Seven, which have their own articles on this wiki. More information, including other side stories and art, can be found on its fansite.

Source: TV Tropes

(image via Fallout Equestria The Book)

#unofficial #My Little Pony #Fallout

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24stiles920 · 6 years

Text

Wolf Moon

Teen Wolf Rewrite

Pairing: Stiles x Reader

Warnings: Ages 16+, swearing,

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf or Harry Potter. I am just borrowing the spells and potions from the wonderful Harry Potter Universe, not stealing them.

Words: 7512

A/N: So here is my new rewrite! As you can see things are a little different, but some things are the same. I really hope you like it, and stick with me through this adventure.

Series Masterlist

Season 1 Masterlist

“Lumos.” I whispered clearly, holding my wand over the book that I wanted to read. The tip of my wand lit up, allowing me to read the words of Harry Potter, a book that was near and dear to me.

JK Rowling was a witch like me, and she decided to make a cover for our species by writing the Harry Potter series. Most of the book’s elements were fictional, like the candy, the schools, the government, and the age restrictions, but the spells and potions were real.

There were very few witches and wizards left in America, my dad and I being two of them, as they were hunted down by families of supernatural hunters. Families like the Argents, who didn’t care if they were splitting families apart just because someone was a little bit different than them.

Creak!

I perked up anxiously at the loud noise outside my bedroom, just past the French doors that led to my balcony.

I slowly stood from my massive bed, hid my wand, (mahogany, 9 ½ inches, unicorn hair), and approached the doors, opening them cautiously.

“Stiles!” I exclaimed as I witnessed the boy climbing over the railing of the balcony.

“I’m here, too.” A voice to my left made me jump about fifty feet in the air.

“Scott!” I whispered harshly. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

“You weren’t answering your phone.” Stiles complained, standing up and towering over my five-foot frame.

“And you decided to come here, why?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“Look, I know it’s late, but you gotta hear this.” Stiles started, holding up his hands. “I saw my dad leave twenty minutes ago. Dispatch called. They’re bringing in every officer from the Beacon Department, and even State Police.”

“For what?” I asked, a little interested.

“Two joggers found a body in the woods.” Stiles answered.

“A dead body.” Scott added.

I gave Scott a deadpan look, to which he looked away sheepishly.

“Like murdered?” I guessed, looking back to Stiles.

“Nobody knows yet.” Stiles shrugged, putting his hands on his hips. “Just that it was a girl, probably in her twenties.”

“Hold on, if they found the body, then what are they looking for?” I asked curiously.

“That’s the best part.” Stiles said excitedly. “They only found half.”

“How in the hell is that the best part?” I pursed my lips at him.

“I don’t know, but we’re going.”

“Are we seriously doing this?” I questioned as the three of us got out of Stiles’ jeep.

“You’re the one always bitching that nothing ever happens in this town.” Stiles joked, patting me on the shoulder as he passed me, turning on the flashlight.

“Don’t worry, Y/N,” Scott gave me an assuring glance. “He got me up, too.”

“You were awake!” Stiles protested.

“I was trying to get a good night’s sleep before practice tomorrow.” Scott replied scathingly.

“Right, cause sitting on the bench is such a grueling effort.” Stiles scoffed.

“No, because I’m playing this year.” Scott informed us. “In fact, I’m making first line.”

“Hey, that’s the spirit.” Stiles exclaimed sarcastically. “Everyone should have a dream, even a pathetically unrealistic one.”

“Stiles, be nice.” I scolded, elbowing him in the ribs. “At least Scott’s out there trying to follow his dreams.”

“Yeah, Stiles.” Scott mocked from behind me. I rolled my eyes. Boys.

“I’m following my dreams, thank you very much.” Stiles insisted. “My dream is to find this body, so shut up and keep looking.”

I huffed and kept my eyes peeled, looking down at the ground for the body. We walked in silence until Scott spoke up, clearly not caring about Stiles’ rule.

“Just out of curiosity, which half of the body are we looking for?” Scott asked.

“Huh!” Stiles laughed nervously. “I didn’t even think about that.”

“Are you kidding me, Stiles?” I asked harshly, sending him a glare. I was about to take my wand out of my rain boot and full-body-bind him when Scott spoke again.

“And, uh, what if whoever killed the body is still out here?”

“Also something I didn’t think about.” Stiles acknowledged as he started up a small, but steep hill.

“It’s comforting to know you’ve planned this out with your usual attention to detail.” I spat, out of breath as I climbed after him, glancing at his ass out of the corner of my eye.

“I know.” Stiles called out.

“Maybe the severe asthmatic should be the one holding the flashlight, huh?” Scott wheezed from behind us, causing me to turn around to find him collapsed against a tree, using his inhaler.

Stiles ignored him though, grabbing my hand and dragging me down to the muddy ground to look at the group of lights up ahead. Scott dropped down next to us, effectively squishing me in the middle.

“Wait, come on!” Stiles exclaimed, grabbing me again and pulling me to my feet. He started running, and, not wanting to be left behind with a killer on the loose, I followed him, ignoring Scott’s calls.

“Stiles, Y/N!” Scott yelped. “Wait up! Stiles! Y/N!”

Stiles and I turned around to look for Scott, but fell to the ground, surprised, when a dog barked at us.

“Woah!” I shrieked, flailing my arms as Stiles rolled on the ground.

Stiles eventually got a hold of himself and stood before offering me a hand up like a true gentleman.

“Hold it right there!” Someone yelled harshly at us. I squinted in the sudden bright light to see that it was a cop screaming at us.

“Hang on, hang on.” I heard the tell-tale drawl of Noah Stilinski, other wise known as the sheriff of Beacon Hills and Stiles’ father. We were in deep shit. “These little delinquents belong to me.”

Stiles grabbed my hand and pulled my arm, heaving me to my feet with surprising strength. I wiped the mud off my jeans and glanced at Noah sheepishly. This man was my Godfather, and I hated letting him down.

“Dad, how are you doing?” Stiles greeted his father casually.

Noah pursed his lips, looking at Stiles unimpressed. “So, do you listen in to all of my phone calls?”

“No, heh.” Stiles laughed awkwardly. “Not the boring ones.”

The rain had started to really pour down now, soaking my canvas jacket and freezing me to the bone.

“Now, where your other partner in crime?” Noah asked.

“Who, Scott?”

“Who’s Scott?” I babbled, my nerves taking control of my mouth. Stiles put his hand over my mouth, his calloused fingers connecting with my lips.

“Sc-Scott’s at home.” Stiles told his father. “He said he wanted to get a good night’s sleep for the first day back at school tomorrow. It’s just Y/N and me. In the woods. Alone.”

Noah got a weird glint in his eye as he looked at Stiles and I, before he turned towards the tree line, shining his flashlight to look for Scott.

“Scott, you out there?” Noah called out. “Scott?”

When there was no response, Noah sighed and nodded his head in disappointment. He walked over to Stiles and grabbed the back of his neck.

“Well, young man, I’m gonna walk you both back to your car and you’re going to take Y/N home. And when I get home, you and I are gonna have a conversation about something called invasion of privacy.”

We started walking back to Stiles’ jeep, the awkward silence deafening.

“So, you guys were alone?” Noah asked. “Like, alone-alone?”

“No!�� Stiles quickly exclaimed before I even understood what Noah was talking about. “Y/N and I aren’t like that.”

Now realizing what Noah meant, my cheeks flushed, and I was a little hurt. I’d had a crush on Stiles for years. Literal years. I loved his goofy sense of humor, the way he researches everything, his sense of style, his sarcastic personality, and his looks were nothing to complain about, either.

“Oh.” Noah said, looking somewhat disappointed.

We came up to the entrance of the preserve now, spotting the blue of Stiles’ jeep easily.

“Okay, Stiles, get Y/N home and come straight to the house, got it?” Noah asked, looking at his son sternly.

“Yes, sir.” Stiles mumbled, starting the jeep.

“Uh, Noah?” I asked, leaning forward so I could see him. “You’re not going to tell my parents, are you?”

“Of course, I am, Y/N.” Noah said, shaking his head. “But it can wait until morning.”

“Good morning, Beacon Hills! It’s a great day for the kiddos to go back to school after a long winter break—”

I shut of the alarm on my iHome by slamming my fist on the button forcefully, tired of hearing the chipper voice of the radio DJ. I groaned as I sat up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and blinking rapidly to clear my blurred vision.

“Tired?”

I jumped at my mom’s voice, nearing falling out of bed. I looked to see my mom and dad, standing there with raised eyebrows and pursed lips.

“Mom! Dad!” I whined, throwing my arms in the air.

“I just got a call from Noah.” Dad said in a fake casual voice. “Want to explain?”

I sighed and told them the story about how Stiles came to the house, but I twisted it a little, trying to make it seem like I went so Stiles wouldn’t get himself in trouble. It was a selfish move, but my parents were brutal with groundings.

“Fine.” Mom exhaled. “I can see that you were trying to keep Stiles out of trouble, but next time, you’re grounded, clear?”

“Crystal.” I said solemnly.

“Good.” Mom nodded, her curly bob bouncing. “We’ve got to get to work, so get dressed for school.”

My parents shuffled out of my room and shut the door firmly, leaving me alone to get ready for school. I took a quick shower, washing off the rest of the grime from last night, before drying and curling my hair.

I entered my closet and picked out a taupe colored t-shirt, a plaid skater skirt, and some black mary-jane wedges, before topping it off with a black peacoat. I grabbed my wand and shoved it in my Michael Kors tote bag with the rest of my school stuff and ran downstairs, hopeful that my parents didn’t leave without me.

After being dropped off at school, I stood waiting for Stiles to arrive. While I was waiting my phone chirped with a text message from Scott.

Was attacked by something last night. Tell you more later.

I sighed as I read the text, my nerves bubbling inside my stomach. What the hell could’ve attacked Scott but left him alive? It just didn’t make sense.

“Hey, Y/N.” Stiles greeted as he approached me.

“Where’s Scott?” I asked, not even acknowledging his greeting. “Is he okay? Oh, my God, we shouldn’t have left him. This is not okay!”

“Y/N!” Stiles yelled, grabbing my upper arms tightly and pulling me closer to him. “Scott was obviously well enough to text us, okay? You need to calm down and use your brain sometimes.”

“Hey, I’m smarter than you.” I pointed out, extremely offended. Sure, I didn’t have the most common sense, but I had a 5.0 GPA, which was second in the class. “Anyway, did Scott give you any more information?”

“Well, he was bit by something.” Stiles sighed, “But that’s all he told me.”

“Oh, my God, Stiles, this is all our fault.” I groaned. “I—”

“Hey, guys!” Scott greeted us, sounding very chipper. I turned to face him with a bewildered face.

Before I could say anything, Stiles spoke up.

“Okay, let’s see this thing.” Stiles said excitedly to Scott. Scott lifted up his dark gray t-shirt to reveal a large path of blood speckled gauze taped haphazardly to his tan skin.

“Ooh!” Stiles cooed, reaching forward to touch the covered wound. Before he could make contact, I grabbed his hand and pulled it away from Scott’s body, so he couldn’t poke at it.

“So, what it the hell attacked you?” I asked, clearing my throat.

Scott shrugged on his backpack. “It was too dark to see much, but I’m pretty sure it was a wolf.”

I looked at him in quiet confusion. There were no wolves in California. Stiles and I had to do a report together one time about animal migration and we concluded that there hadn’t been wolves in California in sixty years.

“A wolf bit you?” Stiles asked, his tone doubtful.

Scott nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“No, not a chance.” Stiles denied, shaking his head.

“I heard a wolf howling.” Scott declared as we started walking towards the entrance of the school.

“No, you didn’t.” Stiles insisted.

Scott gave Stiles a glare, annoyed by the taller boy’s defiance.

“What do you mean, no, I didn’t? How do you know what I heard?”

Stiles walked ahead a little then abruptly turned around, stopping Scott and I in our tracks.

“Because California doesn’t have wolves, okay? Not in, like, sixty years.” Stiles informed Scott.

Scott tilted his head at the new information, soaking it in. “Really?”

“He’s right, Scott.” I said gently. “There are no wolves in California.”

Scott sighed, but then perked up. “All right, well, if you don’t believe me about the wolf, then you’re definitely not gonna believe me about when I tell you I found the body.”

Stiles flailed his arms excitedly, almost hitting me in the boob. “You—are you fucking with us?”

Scott grinned. “No, man, I wish. I’m gonna have nightmares for a month.”

“I can give you some tea to help you with that, Scott.” I spoke up, thinking about the Dreamless Sleep potion my dad often made.

“Oh, god, that is fucking’ awesome!” Stiles said loudly, ignoring my offer to Scott. “I mean, this is seriously gonna be the best thing that’s happened to this town since—”

He looked past Scott and I with a dreamy look in his eyes. I turned around to see Lydia Martin, the queen bitch of the school.

Stiles has been in love with her since the third grade. It was seriously depressing, and I hated the feeling I always had when he talked about her.

I scowled at the ground as Stiles continued, “Since the birth of Lydia Martin. Hey, Lydia—” He called out. “You look—like you’re gonna ignore me.”

Lydia did indeed ignore him. She walked past us and chatted with her air-headed friend. Stiles stared wistfully after her before turning back to Scott and I.

“You two are the cause of this, you know.” He accused us.

Scott and I shared a look. Scott’s was amused, mine was annoyed.

“Uh-huh.” We said in unison.

“Dragging me down to your nerd depths.” Stiles continued. “I’m a nerd by association. I’ve been scarlet-nerded by you guys.”

The bell rang, and I started walking off to class, not bothering to wait for the boys.

“Y/N, where are you going?” Stiles called out.

I turned back to him and said bluntly, “To prove how nerdy I am by going to class.”

Scott laughed, and Stiles shook his head grinning as they both ran to catch up with me.

"As you all know, there indeed was a body found in the woods last night." Mr. Curtis announced in front of the class in English. Scott and I looked back at Stiles where he shot us a wink, followed by a snicker.

"And I am sure your eager little minds are coming up with various macabre scenarios as to what happened." Mr. Curtis continued. "But I am here to tell you that the police have a suspect in custody, which means you can give your undivided attention to the syllabus which is on your desk outlining this semester."

Mr. Curtis held up a thick, white packet of paper and the entire class groaned in annoyance.

I was on page nine of the syllabus (seriously, how many pages were there?) when the door to the classroom opened and Mr. Donovan, the vice-principal that no one ever sees, walked in with a tall, stylish girl with dark curls that fell down to her waist.

"Class, this is our new student, Allison Argent." Mr. Donovan declared. "Please do your best to make her feel welcome."

I sneered at her last name, but ultimately decided to get to know the girl and decide for myself whether or not she was a threat.

Allison ducked her head as she walked to the only empty seat, which happened to be right behind Scott. I watched curiously as Scott reached for the extra pen on his desk and turned around, handing the pen to her.

Allison, who looked confused, grabbed it delicately. "Thanks."

Mr. Curtis cleared his throat then. "We'll begin with Kafka's Metamorphosis, on page one hundred and thirty-three."

•

At the end of the day, when I was opening my locker, I noticed that Allison was right next to me, struggling to open hers.

"You have to jiggle it a little bit." I advised her. "Otherwise it gets stuck."

Allison smiled over at me before giving the lock a jiggle. The locker popped open.

"Thanks." She sighed, putting her books in the metal case.

"No problem." I said. "I'm Y/N Stark. We have English and Econ together."

"Oh yeah," Allison breathed. "Nice to meet you. I'm Allison Argent."

"Well, Allison Argent, you are my new bestie." I declared. "Forget Stiles and Scott. You're cooler and more fashionable."

"Oh, thank you." Allison said dramatically. "I was beginning to think I would never make friends!”

We laughed together but a voice interrupted us, "That jacket is absolutely killer. Where'd you get it?"

Lydia Martin stood before us, her hand held up in a preppy way.

"My mom was a buyer for a boutique back in San Francisco." Allison told her.

Lydia nodded and turned to me. "And you," she glanced down at my outfit and slowly smiled. "Your outfit is adorable. Are you new too?"

"Lydia, we've been in the same classes since third grade." I deadpanned.

Lydia nodded slowly. "Right. Well," She clapped. "You two are my new best friends."

Fucking great.

Jackson Whittemore, the captain of the lacrosse team and the most popular guy in school, walked up to Lydia and kissed her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

"Hey, Jackson." Lydia greeted before slamming her lips back to his. Finally, after they were done disgusting Allison and I, Lydia turned back to us.

"So, this weekend, there's a party."

"A party?" Allison repeated.

Jackson nodded. "Yeah. Friday night. You both should come."

Allison grimaced. "Uh, I can't. It's family night this Friday. Thanks for asking."

Jackson looked at her in disbelief. "You sure? Everyone's going after the scrimmage."

"You mean like football?" Allison asked hopefully.

Jackson scoffed, causing the brunette to shrink away from him. "Football's a joke in Beacon. The sport here is lacrosse. We've won the state championship for the past three years."

Lydia beamed and cupped Jackson's cheek. "Because of a certain team captain."

Jackson preened under her attention before turning back to Allison and I. "Well, we have practice in a few minutes. That is, if you don't have anywhere else—"

"Well, I was going to—"

"Perfect—" Lydia interrupted Allison. "You're coming."

Lydia grabbed both mine and Allison's hands and dragged us down the hall to her locker. She opened it up quickly and pulled out a dressy coat and a hat.

"I'm Lydia Martin, by the way." She hummed, fixing her hair in the mirror. "What are your names?"

"Allison Argent." Allison responded.

"Y/N Stark." I said dully.

Lydia blew a kiss at herself in the mirror and turned back to us. "Wonderful. Come on, practice is going to start soon."

We made our way to the lacrosse pitch and climbed the small set of bleachers. Stiles and Scott stood by the bench and I waved at them.

Stiles looked at me in astonishment and subtly pointed at Lydia. I rolled my eyes and shrugged in return.

"Who's that?" Allison asked, nudging me with her super sharp elbow.

"Oh, that's Stiles, my best friend." I answered her.

Allison nodded, a secretive smile of her face. She nodded to the player in goal. "What about him?"

I squinted at the player and saw a number eleven etched on the back of his practice jersey. Holy shit, Scott was in the goal! He never plays!

"Him? I'm not sure who he is." Lydia answered, butting into our conversation. "Why?"

Allison shook her head. "He's in my English class."

"That is Scott McCall. He's like my brother, and is, indeed, in our English class." I whispered to her.

Allison grinned widely.

The assistant coach blew his whistle prompting the practice to begin. I watched as Scott clutched his helmet, squirming around.

Was he in pain? What's wrong with him?

The first player in line booked forward and shot the ball straight towards the goal. The ball hit Scott right on the helmet, making him fall to the ground.

"Hey, way to catch with your face, McCall!" Jackson yelled to Scott as everyone else laughed.

Scott stood back up slowly, ready to prove everyone wrong.

"C'mon, Scott." I whispered, clenching my hands into fists.

The next player in line ran forward and shot the ball. It landed right in Scott's net.

"Yeah!" I heard Stiles call out, while I clapped enthusiastically.

The line of players dwindled down. They each threw the ball and Scott caught it every single time.

I was so proud of my son.

"He seems like he's pretty good." Allison observed.

"Oh, very good." Lydia purred.

Jackson angrily strutted up to the front of the line and put his stick out in front of the next player, effectively cutting the line. He started running towards the goal in an almost dramatic way. He twisted his stick and jumped into the air, whipping the ball towards the net.

I held my breath, but I didn't need to, because Scott caught that damn ball in one swift maneuver.

Stiles jumped up and screamed out in joy, throwing his arms up in the air. I bounced in place, clapping madly as I grinned at Scott. Even Lydia got up and cheered loudly, which surprised me.

"That is my friend!" Stiles yelled loudly, causing me to laugh loudly.

“I don’t—I don’t know what it was.” Scott said in an amazed tone as he splashed through a creek in the preserve. We were trying to find Scott’s inhaler, which he lost last night, and the subject of lacrosse practice came up.

“It was like I had all the time in the world to catch the ball.” He continued. “And that’s not the only weird thing. I-I can—hear stuff I shouldn’t be able to hear. Smell things.”

“Smell things?” Stiles asked in an amused voice. “Like what?”

“Like the coconut scented lotion Y/N uses and the mint-mojito gum in your pocket.” Scott proclaimed, pointing at Stiles’ jacket.

Stiles paused and dug his hand into his jacket pocket. “I don’t even have any mint-mojito—”

Stiles pulled out a piece of green gum and looked at it in amazement. Scott gave him an ‘I-told-you-so’ look.

“So all this started with a bite.” Stiles stated, running to catch up with Scott and I, who had continued to walk while he had paused.

“What if it’s like an infection,” Scott worried. “Like, my body’s flooding with adrenaline before I go into shock or something?”

“You know what? I actually thing I’ve heard of this—It’s a specific kind of infection.” Stiles told Scott.

“Are you serious?” Scott asked Stiles with a horrified expression.

“Yeah.” Stiles nodded, putting his hands on his hips. “Yeah, I think it’s called—lycanthropy.”

I pursed my lips and gave Stiles a glare. Lycanthropy was not something to joke about, and if Scott was actually a werewolf, then he was screwed. Especially if the Argents were in town.

Scott, my dear Scott, didn’t know what lycanthropy was, though.

“What’s that?” He asked. “Is that bad?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s the worst.” Stiles confirmed Scott’s worst fear. “But only once a month.”

“Once a month?” Scott asked before looking at me for confirmation. “Like a per—”

“No, Scott, you won’t have a period.” I toned, rolling my eyes while Stiles snickered.

“It’s on the night of the full moon, Scott.” Stiles declared before howling loudly.

Scott scowled at Stiles and shoved his shoulder while Stiles chuckled.

“Hey, you’re the one who heard a wolf howling.” Stiles laughed, raising his arms in defeat.

“Hey, there could something seriously wrong with him, Stiles.” I spoke up, annoyed.

“I know! He’s a werewolf!” Stiles exclaimed before fake growling. Scott and I both gave him an unamused look. “Okay, obviously I’m kidding. But if you see me in shop class trying to melt all the silver I can find, it’s because Friday’s a full moon.”

Scott stopped walking suddenly, looking around as though he recognized where we were at.

“No, I-I could have sworn this was it.” Scott said as he crouched down, sifting through some dead leaves. “I saw the body; the deer came running. I dropped my inhaler.”

“Maybe the killer moved the body.” I suggested solemnly.

“If he did, I hope he left my inhaler.” Scott said, looking up at me. “Those things are like eighty bucks.”

Stiles and I snickered, but all of a sudden, Stiles pulled me behind him, protecting me from whatever he saw behind me.

“Stiles, what?”

“Shh.” He whispered.

I leaned around him to see a young man, probably a couple years older than us, approach. He looked eerily familiar, but I couldn’t place him.

“What are you doing here?” The guy asked harshly. “Huh? This is private property.”

Private property? The only house near here was the old, burnt down Hale house. How could he know about that? Then it clicked. This was Derek Hale, one of the only survivors of the Hale House fire.

“Uh, sorry, man, we didn’t know.” Stiles apologized, rubbing his head nervously.

“Yeah, we were just looking for something, but—” Scott said, pausing when Derek gave him an expectant look. “Uh, forget it.”

Derek whipped something at Scott, who caught the thing easily, and turned to leave, but not before giving me a curious glance. I turned to Scott to see him holding his lost inhaler, staring at it curiously. When I looked back up, Derek was gone.

“Uhm. All right, come on, I gotta get to work.” Scott said, starting to walk away when Stiles stopped him.

“Dude, that was Derek Hale.” Stile told him. “You remember, right? He’s only like a few years older than us.”

“Remember what?” Scott asked.

“His family.” Stiles explained. “They all burned to death in a fire, like, ten years ago.”

“It was six.” I murmured, remembering the event quite clearly. I had woken up in the middle of the night screaming my head off, telling my mom about a house caught on fire. The next morning the story about the Hale’s was in the paper.

“What?”

“The fire was six years ago.” I spoke louder. “I wonder what he’s doing back?”

Stiles scoffed, shaking his head. “Who knows. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

I sighed as I relished in the soft, but toned physique of Stiles’ chest, resting my head on his right pec. One of his arms was wrapped around my body, his hand resting on my lower back, while his other arm tapped a rhythm on his toned stomach.

We cuddled often, which was weird to say since we’re just friends. It mostly came up when one of us was feeling vulnerable, or even just tired, and we needed someone to hold on to.

The sound of my phone ringing brought me out of my sleepy daze and Stiles groaned, burying his face in my hair. I slowly untangled myself from his form and grabbed my phone, taking a seat at my desk.

“Hey, Allison.” I chirped. My tone was perky, but I was really feeling the opposite.

“Oh, my God, Y/N, I have so much to tell you.” Allison gushed as a greeting. “I hit a dog—"

“You hit a dog?” I asked in shock. “You hit a pour doggo?”

“Yeah, but—” Allison started to say, but was interrupt by Stiles’ loud groan.

“Y/N, come on.” Stiles groaned.

“Who was that?”

“I’m talking to Allison right now, you’ll have to wait.” I told Stiles.

“Y/N, who’s that?” Allison repeated.

“It’s Stiles.” I answered her reluctantly, scared of what questions she was going to ask.

“What were you doing? Did I interrupt something?”

“No, we were just cuddling.” I assured her. “He can wait.”

“You guys cuddle? Are you together?” She asked.

“Yes, to your first question, no to your second.” I sighed. “Now tell me what happened.”

“So, I hit a dog, right? Well, I figured I should take it to the animal clinic, and it turns out that Scott was there. He totally repaired her leg and put a cast on it. Then—”

“Spit it out!”

“Okay, okay, jeez. Anyway, Scott asked me to go to Lydia’s party with him!”

“No!” I gasped. Scott ask a girl out? Never in a million years did I think this would happen.

“Yes!” She squealed.

“What’d you say? What about your family night?”

“Family night was a total lie and I told him yes!”

“Yes!” I hissed in celebration. I turned to Stiles, who looked at me expectantly. “Scott asked Allison on a date and she said yes!”

“Whoopee!” Stiles said sarcastically causing me to scowl at him.

“Anyway, I have to go Y/N.” Allison said. “See you later.”

“Bye!” I sang into the receiver before hanging up. I twirled around in my chair to face Stiles, who opened up his arms.

“C’mere.”

I sighed and stood up, walking over to my bed and crawling over to him. We situated ourselves so that he could be the little spoon. He sighed in content as he laid his head on my breasts.

“You have nice boobs.”

“Thanks, I think.” I snickered.

“It was a compliment.”

The rest of the week went by quickly with more weird behavior from Scott. He was doing really well in lacrosse, even though he sucked horribly before, he didn't use his inhaler at all, and he even told Stiles and I that he slept walked into the woods one night.

"Y/N, you'll never guess what I overheard on the phone." Stiles panted as he ran up to me before the last elimination round practice.

"What?"

"The fiber analysis came back from the lab in L.A. They found animal hairs on the body from the woods." He informed me.

"What animal?" I furrowed my eyebrows.

"It was a wolf." He said solemnly.

"But I thought that there are no wolves in California?"

He nodded. "But what if— Y/N, what if my joke the other day was true?"

"What, the werewolf joke?" I asked astonished. I hoped it wasn’t true, but all the signs pointed to it. From what my dad told me about werewolves, Scott could very well be one.

"Look, I know how dumb it seems," Stiles started. "But the new reflexes, the sensitive hearing and sense of smell? He doesn't even need his fucking inhaler anymore—"

Stiles was still rambling cutely but stopped once I interrupted him.

"I believe you."

"You do?" He asked in disbelief. "I mean, great!"

"What do we do?"

Stiles paused for a minute, clearly thinking of a plan.

"Alright, you go to the library, get as many books on lycanthropy as you can find, them meet me at my house at seven." He ordered.

"Yes sir." I nodded, causing Stiles to look at me with a strange expression. "What?"

Stiles shook his head. "N-nothing."

It was me who was giving him a look now. I shook my head before running to my bike.

•

I arrived at Stiles' house with a bag full of books and let myself in my own key. I made my way up to his room and swung the door open, causing the boy of my affections to jump in his seat.

Stiles turned to me and saw I was struggling with the sack of heavy books I was carrying. He walked over to me and surprisingly kissed my cheek and took the bag from me.

My face burned from where he kissed it, so I ducked my head so he wouldn’t see me blushing.

"You look nice." Stiles smiled gently at me.

"Oh." I squeaked in surprise. "Thank you. Uh, the party's at ten, so I figured we could head over there after we tell Scott."

He sat down in his chair heavily, a gloomy look on his face. "I wasn't invited to the party."

“Well, Lydia said to invite anyone we wanted, so now you’re invited.” I said with a smile.

“Thanks, Y/N.” Stiles grinned.

I smiled back at him genuinely and took a seat on his bed, taking a book out to start reading.

Two hours later, Stiles' floor was covered with print outs of information about werewolves. I had almost fallen asleep twice already, but Stiles shouted my name each time to wake me up.

There was a knock on the door causing both Stiles and I to jump in our seats. Stiles closed his MacBook and wandered over to his door. He opened it, revealing a smiling Scott.

“Get in.” Stiles sighed. “You gotta see this thing.”

He ushered Scott in and Scott set his backpack down next to me.

“Y/N and I've been up all night reading—websites, books. All this information.” Stiles rambled.

Scott looked on amused. “How much Adderall have you had today?”

“A lot.” I told Scott. I had seen Stiles take at least three pills since I’ve been here.

“Doesn't matter.” Stiles shook his head. “Okay, just listen.”

Scott sat down on the bed. “Oh, is this about the body? Did they find out who did it?”

“No, they're still questioning people, even Derek Hale.” Stiles informed him.

“Oh, the guy in the woods that we saw the other day.”

“Yeah!” Stiles exclaimed. “Yes. But that's not it, okay?”

“What, then?” Scott asked.

Stiles sighed. “Remember the joke from the other day? Not a joke anymore.”

Scott looked confused, so I jumped in to help him remember. “The wolf, Scott—the bite in the woods.”

“We started doing all this reading.” Stiles said before standing up. “Do you even know why a wolf howls?”

“Should I?”

“It’s a signal.” I said, remembering the passage from the lycanthropy book I read. “When a wolf’s alone, it howls to signal its location to the rest of the pack.”

“So, if you heard a wolf howling, that means others could have been nearby.” Stiles took over. “Maybe even a whole pack of ‘em.”

Scott perked up, his eyes wide. “A whole pack of wolves?”

“No—” Stiles grimaced. “Werewolves.”

Scott stared at Stiles with a blank face before heaving himself to his feet. “Are you seriously wasting my time with this? You know I’m picking up Allison in an hour.”

Scott grabbed his backpack and started to leave, but Stiles put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“I saw you on the field today, Scott. Okay, what you did wasn’t just amazing, all right? It was impossible.”

“Yeah, so I made a good shot.” Scott mumbled, going to leave.

Stiles stopped him again and grabbed his backpack, slamming it down on the bed.

“No, you made an incredible shot, I mean—the way you moved, your speed, your reflexes. Y’know, people can’t just suddenly do that overnight. And there’s the vision and the senses, and don’t even think we don’t notice that you don’t need your inhaler anymore.

“Okay!” Scott exclaimed. “Guys, I can’t think about this now. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?!” I shrieked. “What? No! The full moon’s tonight. Don’t you get it?”

“What are you guys trying to do?” Scott spat, his eyes narrowed. “I just made first line. I got a date with a girl who I can’t believe wants to go out with me, and everything in my life is somehow perfect. Why are you trying to ruin it?”

Stiles sighed as he sat down in his desk chair. “We’re trying to help. You’re cursed, Scott. You know, and it’s not just the moon will cause you to physically change. It also just so happens to be when your bloodlust will be at its peak.”

Scott stared down at Stiles blankly. “Bloodlust?”

Stiles nodded. “Yeah, your urge to kill.”

Scott breathed in deeply. “I’m already starting to feel an urge to kill, Stiles.”

I picked up the book I had discarded and held it up to my face. “You gotta hear this: “The change can be caused by anger or anything that raises your pulse.”” I read out loud. “All right? I haven’t seen anyone raise your pulse like Allison does.”

Stiles stood up and crossed the room to the bed. “You gotta cancel this date.” Stiles rummaged through Scott’s backpack. “I’m gonna call her right now.”

“What are you doing?” Scott groaned.

Stiles grabbed Scott’s cellphone from the front pocket of his backpack and walked back to his desk. “I’m canceling the date.”

“No, give it to me!” Scott shouted, grabbing Stiles firmly by the biceps and pushing him into the wall. He held up a fist to Stiles’ face as if to punch him, but he paused at my yelp.

“Scott!”

Scott roared in anger and swiped at the desk chair, knocking it over. His heavy breathing evened out in puffs as he looked back at a disgruntled Stiles.

“I’m sorry.” Scott said, pulling away from Stiles. “I—I gotta go get ready for that party.”

He walked to me and I picked up his backpack, silently handing it to him.

“I’m sorry.” Scott repeated as he opened the door, giving Stiles one last look before shutting the door.

I rushed over to Stiles and reached up to cup his face in my palms. “Are you okay?”

Stiles eyes gazed into my own and I felt my heart melting at the emotion in them.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “I’m okay.”

“Good.” I whispered. “That’s good.”

I slowly pulled away from him and turned, picking up the desk chair. I gasped as I set the chair back on it’s wheels, my gaze on the three claw marks ripped into the fake leather.

“What?” Stiles asked, looking over at me.

I wordlessly pointed to the scratches.

“Fuck.”

My phone dinged then and I went to pick it up out of my clutch. It was a text from Lydia.

Don’t forget about my party!

I huffed loudly and turned to Stiles. “Get dressed. We have a party to get to.”

The music was so loud at the party I thought my ear drums were going to burse. Allison and Scott arrived ten minutes after me and Stiles, and since then we’ve been watching them dance.

When I say ‘we’, I mean me, because Stiles was too busy laughing with some of his lacrosse buddies.

I was taking a sip from the water bottle in my hand when a hand grasped my shoulder. I gasped and turned around, only to find myself standing face to neck with Stiles.

“Do you want to dance?” Stiles shouted through the music.

I nodded hesitantly and together we walked out onto the dance floor. Stiles put his large, veiny hands on my waist and pulled me close.

We were about to start moving when someone ran into us, knocking me further into Stiles. I looked to see a tan guy that looked suspiciously like Scott plow into us, looking dazed. The full moon must’ve been affecting him.

“Yo, Scott, you good?” Stiles asked, letting go of me.

Scott didn’t answer, moving forward by me.

“Are you okay?” I questioned loudly. Scott shook his head and stumbled away. Two seconds later Allison came through and marched after him.

I looked at Stiles. “We should probably go help him.”

“Yeah.” Stiles nodded, taking my hand and pulling me through the crowd once again. We left the house just as Allison was getting into a black Camaro with Derek Hale.

What was he doing at a high school party?

I didn’t have time to ponder this as Stiles yanked me towards his jeep. I got into the passenger seat and Stiles pressed on the gas, speeding to Scott’s house.

Once we got to the McCall residence we ran up to Scott’s room and pounded our fists on his locked door.

“Go away.” I heard Scott say weakly.

“Scott, it’s us.” Stiles called. “Let us in, Scott. We can help.”

There was a thump against the door and the door opened a little, locked together by a chain.

“No! Listen, you gotta find Allison.” Scott insisted.

“She’s fine, all right?” I told Scott. “We saw her get a ride from the party. She’s—she’s totally fine, all right?”

“No, I think I know who it is.”

“You just let us in. We can try—”

“It’s Derek.” Scott interrupted. “Derek Hale is the werewolf. He’s the one that bit me. He’s the one that killed the girl in the woods.”

Stiles and I looked at each other with horrified glances.

“Scott—Derek’s the one who drove Allison from the party.” Stiles broke the news.

The door slammed shut.

“Scott!” I yelled, but it was no use. He was gone.

I turned to Stiles. “We have to check on Allison.”

“No, we have to go find Scott!” He argued.

I sighed in frustration. “Neither of will can do anything against Scott when he’s like this.”

Stiles nodded. “You’re right.”

“Aren’t I always?” I quipped.

He simply rolled his eyes at me in response.

We pulled up to the Argent’s house and Stiles jumped out, leaving his door open and running to the front door. He pressed on the doorbell three times, then pounded his fist on the door.

The door opened and from my position I could see a tall lady with short, red hair answered the door. She looked at Stiles in confusion.

“Hi, Mrs. Argent. Um—you have no idea who I am.” Stiles greeted her so loudly that I could hear him clearly.

“I’m a friend of your daughter’s.” He continued as I slapped my hand to my forehead. “Uh—look, this is gonna sound kind of crazy, um—really crazy, actually. You know what? Crazy doesn’t even describe—”

He was interrupted my Allison’s mom. “Allison! It’s for you.”

Minutes later, after talking to Allison, Stiles jogged back to the jeep and got in. He buckled his seatbelt and stomped on the gas pedal.

“Now we find Scott?” I asked him.

He nodded, looking at the road determinedly, his tongue sticking slightly out of his lips.

“Now, we find Scott.”

The sun was rising when we finally found our furry friend. He was walking slowly on the side of the road. He was shirtless and clutching his right arm in his left hand.

Stiles slowed down and pulled up beside him so he could get in. As I climbed to the back seat, Scott climbed into the passenger seat. It was silent as Stiles started to drive again.

“Are you okay, Scott?” I asked him softly. Scott smiled weakly at me as an answer.

“You know what actually worries me the most?” Scott mumbled miserably.

Stiles glanced at him, a hard look in his eye. “If you say Allison, I’m gonna punch you in the head.”

“She probably hates me now.” Scott moaned.

“I doubt that Scott.” I comforted him. “But you might want to come up with a pretty amazing apology.”

“Or,” Stiles started, a grin on his handsome face. “You know, you could just—tell her the truth and revel in the awesomeness of the fact that you’re a fuckin’ werewolf.”

Both Scott and I gave him dirty looks, causing him to sigh.

“Okay, bad idea. Hey, we’ll get through this.” Stiles patted Scott on the arm. “Come on, if we have to, Y/N and I will chain you up ourselves on full moon nights and feed you live mice. I had a boa once. I could do it.”

Scott didn’t look assured by this statement, so I tried to assure him myself.

“We’re here for you Scott.” I said gently. “You won’t go through this alone.”

Tag List:

@julzdec @karamelcoveredolicity @thegirlalmighty01 @avadakedabitch @supernaturallover2002

#stiles x reader #teen wolf rewrite #stiles stilinski imagine #stiles stilinski smut #Stiles #stiles stilinski #stiles stilinski x reader #teen wolf #teen wolf imagine #stiles x oc #oc x stiles #reader x stiles #stiles series #stiles stilinski series #soulmate au #teen wolf fanfiction #stiles fanfiction #dylan o'brien smut #dylan o'brien

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madammuffins · 6 years

Text

11/11/11

Tagged by @writingonesdreams to do this tag game, which has been sitting drafts for my WHOLE FUCKING LIFE now. Dear God.

Rules are simple. Answer 11 questions, tag 11 people, write 11 new questions. I can’t say I’ll be able to do all of this (partly why it’s been gathering boss-level dust but... I’ll try).

How much of your writing is influenced by your daily life? Like does what happened during the day affect what and how you write?

I think all of my daily life goes into what I write. I think that’s true for all authors. All our experiences, small and large, goes into our creations - from the pain of a burn to the pain of a heartbreak or the loss of a loved one. Life is the tool of creation. It’s how we build fictional people - from our own odd quirks and the ticks of those close to us.

How much of you is inside your characters?

All of it and none of it. I don’t think anyone can create a character that doesn’t have a part of them there, no matter how small. On the same hand that character isn’t me. They have a different personality, they do things I don’t want them to do or wouldn’t do myself. It’s... complicated.

Do you start writing from the beginning or somewhere else?

It... depends. Honestly. The actual writing I try to start with the beginning. I have a very hard time if I don’t write from the start. But the ideas usually come from different places, the actual story comes from various scenes I imagine at different times and places within the plot itself. That’s fun.

Like connect the dots in the fog.

What is the most difficult for you about writing?

Hmm. Probably actually writing. I’m dyslexic and have a hard time writing at home since I have to do it on my cell phone. After that it’s those pauses in plot - the character development moments where things feel (to me) stagnant and calm. THAT’S SO HARD?!? HOW DO YOU GUYS DO IT?

What is the hardest part about creating characters for you?

Not being repetitive in their appearance.

Ah shit, that’s four characters with brown eyes, gotta try again!

What are the themes of your wip and what do they mean to you?

I guess the one thing they all have in common is love and fantasy. Apart from that it’s all wildly different in my opinion. I think it also shows what matters the most to me. I staunchly refuse to believe that magic isn’t real - and yes, I do mean in the most ridiculous way. Leprechauns and unicorns and fairies included. I’ve gone so far as to leave out oats and honey to appease a house goblin.

And, you know. Love. Who doesn’t want love? I guess I’m just a hopeless sap.

What books/movies/series whatever inspired or influenced your current wip the most?

Hmm. All of them. I can’t say any one has influenced me more than another. I’m sure there are elements that you can see in each work (each one being vastly different) and to list them all would be exhausting. Lord of the Rings, Fall Out, Last of Us, Tithe, Valiant, Girl who Heard Dragons, Talking to Dragons, etc...

What would be the biggest appreciation of your work for you?

Literally anything. Comments, reblogging, fanart, fanfiction (I don’t give a shit if it gets published I’m reading the fanfiction fuck the laws I’m sure there’s shit I can do to cover my ass), playlists, mood boards, anon comments about the characters... honestly anything.

Why did you choose to write this wip and not something else? What’s so special about it?

Uhm. Haha, man I don’t know. The idea just was there so I did. Right now I’m just trying to get my ducks all in a row so my old work is in order before I produce more new work that is subpar and needs more work. Better to have 7 things that are in good standing and 2 things half done that needs work than 9 half finished shit-shows.

What kind of scenes do you not want to write/don’t enjoy writing but can’t get around them?

The lulls in action and plot advancement. Those quiet moments you can’t avoid because that’s where the character development happens and usually are the great spot for some much needed “reader rest“ but I detest them. They’re so hard for me to do!!!

What part of the writing process is your favourite? (Coming up with the idea, thinking, outlining, researching, writing itself, editing, reading what you have written, etc)

All of it. I genuinely love writing and I always have. It’s honestly the best kind of magic to me. Sure it’s hard work and sometimes more effort than I have inside of me, but fuck is it actual magic. Fuck I love it.

Tagging @connieturnpenny @pens-swords-stuff @quillowtree @marniebalboa @quilloftheclouds @write-gallagher @cookiecuttercritter @igotablankpage @ourpasteldream @comfypitbull @latechickadee

no pressure to play my peeps, as always. And, if you weren’t tagged you’re free to play. Like, that’s just the unspoken Writeblr Rule (tm) by now I think.

My Questions:

Uhhhggggggg I goota write fucking questionnnnnssssssss FUCK.

Do you title your chapters, why/why not? Do they pertain to what happens in the chapter or are they random?

Do your main characters seem to have common traits or characteristics?

Why do you think this is?

Do you borrow real life people or parts of real life people to insert into your novels? Why/why not?

Do you stick to a word count in your novels/chapters? Why?

What do you want your book to say to those who read it? What do you think your book says about you?

If your WIP gets published and goes far would you sign over your rights for a movie adaptation, even if it means it gets butchered like the Eragon (or similar) series did?

What is your favorite kind of character chemistry to write? Sexual tension, anger, resentment, jealousy? What about it do you like so much?

Which settings are your favorites? Chill cafe, Gorey battle field? Why?

What element represents your main character and why?

If you could pick an AU for your WIP (alternate universe) for a fan work, what au would you choose and why would you choose it?

I just want you all to know I fucking love you guys. I’m so excited to be a part of such a large and positive community and I genuinely am interested in your wip’s and your answers so please don’t hesitate to go off. I may not interact much (between kids and work I’m not really on Tumblr that much) but I love seeing this stuff when I get my “free hour” at night between building up my queue and browsing.

#tag games #writeblr tag game #writeblr community #writeblr game #11/11/11 tag #games #positive

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charlottedabookworm · 6 years

Note

Not-entirely-serious-thought - You've already turned Nyx into a dragon and a phoenix; honestly, now all that's left to complete the trifecta of Magical Beings is to turn him into a unicorn.

A unicorn!Nyx would have blood on his horn and ‘say something, I fucking dare you’ in his eye.

Damn you, because you are right and the moment that you pointed it out my OCD would not let me rest until I’d written something for this. So have like, 1600 words of Unicorn Nyx - featuring a very dead DRautos and also, ‘Say something, I fucking dare you’

—

When Nyx learns how the world outside of Galahd views his kind, he has to fight to keep a straight face.

Because, peaceful beings representing innocence and purity?

He doesn’t know whether to choke in outrage or to cry tears of laughter or to stare in complete disbelief. Peace, purity, innocence – none of those things are represented by a being that quite literally has a weapon attached to its skull.

Fuck knows how people haven’t realised this. But then, the world as a whole doesn’t seem to realise that his kind exists outside of mythology – so he could maybe forgive people for the insults that they pay to his kind.

Maybe.

(Because, honestly, it doesn’t take much digging for someone to realise that the majority of the mythology about his kind originated in Galahd – before being twisted so completely that it was almost unrecognisable.

And, if people would just stop and think, they would realise that no creature like that in their myths would have ever be borne of Galahd.

But people are fucking stupid and Nyx can blame them for that)

It would be easier if all of Galahd didn’t tease him about it though.

(He keeps the plushie that Libertus lobs at his head as a gag gift though. No matter how much he had grumbled about it.

It might be a horribly insulting representation of his kind done up in hot-pink and sparkles, but it’s also soft and fluffy cuddly and honestly sort of hilarious when he can forget to be outraged about the entire thing)

—

It wasn’t completely unexpected when it happened.

Everyone had known that the Nifs were planning something – they’d been too quiet, had pulled back slightly at the fronts, and attacks at the borders were more small half-hearted skirmishes instead of actual battles – but, even so, they weren’t prepared for what happened.

Of course, nobody expects a spy.

Nobody ever fucking expects a spy. Just like no one ever expects a bomb in a place that they deem safe – like the Citadel. Just like nobody ever expects an attack from within, instead of from outside. Just like no one ever expects their magic to suddenly stop working – without the Kings say so.

Just like nobody ever expects someone that they trust and respect to try to kill them.

(and Crowe and lib are never going to let this go – when they could all think past the anger.

Because there had always been a part of Nyx that hadn’t trusted the man – a purely instinctive urge that had whispered threat in the back of his mind – but he had ignored it after years had passed with nothing happening.

He’d ignored it – despite everything that he’d been taught about trusting his instincts – because he’d wanted to be wrong, because he couldn’t deal with another betrayal.

But he had known, and Crowe and Lib wouldn’t let that go – not after nearly a decade surrounded by Lucian depictions of his kind. He was going to spend the rest of his life haunted by the idea that unicorns knew whether someone was trustworthy or not.

Fuck his life)

They didn’t expect it. But that didn’t mean that they didn’t react.

It’s the Glaive that react first – they’re the people who practically live on the front lines, the ones who are used to bombs and disorientation, the ones who half expect safe places to be suddenly not, they’re the refugees who are used to this sort of thing, and to be a glaive you had to be adaptable or you didn’t last long.

(And the Glaive is mostly staffed with Galahdians. Nobody – not Niflheim, not Lucis – stops to think about what that actually means. But the Galahdian Glaives saw the fall of Galahd – they fought in it, watched people they loved die one after another and their home burn as they tried their best to get their children to safety – and they are used to betrayal in a way that the Lucians are not. They fought – even as their King fell, even after their home was taken, even after everything was lost – because that is who they are. And so they are surprised, but they are experienced, and that makes all the difference.

They react first, instinctively, and the rest of the Glaive follows their lead)

When the bomb goes off, when the traitors reveal themselves and attack, when Drautos turns against them (reveals himself as Glauca – and how dare he. Galahd remembers the monster who had slaughtered his way through their people and they hate the man who was once their Captain with a quiet rage) and attacks the King in the chaos, they fight back.

Or, they try to.

It takes about half a second for them to realise that they have a problem, and several seconds more to share confirming glances between them as they fought. By that point, the nearest glaives have already been tossed aside, taking blows when they weren’t able to warp away as they normally would be.

Because their magic wasn’t working.

None of it – no warping or spells or elemental manipulation or weapons storage, hells but Nyx could hardly feel the space where the Kings magic had made itself home all those years ago. He glanced over at the King even as he drew his kukri’s, but the man looked just as shocked as the glaives and – from where he, Cor, and Lord Clarus were battling against Glauca – his own magic was noticeably sluggish.

‘Whatever it is that the NIfs have done,’ Nyx mused, even as he spun away from an attack to strike from behind, relying on his two decades of training and fighting without Lucian magic. ‘Obviously affects Lucian magic. Enough that the glaive and our borrowed magic is completely affected but the King himself is only weakened.’

‘It’s incomplete,’ he concludes, ‘but they’re pretty confident about it to use this as a test run.’ Nyx grimaced, taking out another assassin – this one dressed in a servants uniform.

“Lib! Down!” His friend dropped instinctively, and Nyx’s thrown blade buried itself in the eyes of the man dressed in a Crownsguard uniform that had been sneaking up on him. The next time that someone told him that he was paranoid for carrying so many weapons on him at all times he was going to fucking laugh at them.

A brief lull in the battle allowed Nyx to take another glance at the King. Lord Clarus was doing his best to defend his King against Glauca, even with a rather serious wound to his leg, while Cor had been drawn away by several other attackers – Niflheim had obviously thought this through, sending several of their best against the Marshall of the Crownsguard so as best to have an opening to attack the King while everyone else was held up and unable to help.

They’d planned this well, Nyx could admit that.

Even as he watched, Glauca struck again – this time with a blow that Nyx could tell would be fatal for Lord Clarus, with the way that the wound and exhaustion were slowing the man.

And Nyx? Nyx couldn’t just stand there and let that happen.

“Fuck.”

There was no chance that he would be able to make it across the room – not without being able to warp – at least, there was no way that he could as a human being.

Without another thought, he gave in to the burning in his veins.

The shift – always natural, because Nyx was as at home on four legs as he was on two, because for all that he played at it he wasn’t human – came easily. Easier than it had since the fall of Galahd, because his friends – his family, his people, his home, his pride – was in danger, and a predator’s instincts to protect his territory and what was his was a powerful thing.

He’s moving before he’s even finished shifting, hooves pounding against the stone floor – a sense of freedom filling his heart even as rage burned in his blood. There was nothing more freeing than being himself, all of himself.

(And maybe there was a little smug pride there as well.

Because the Nifs hadn’t even thought to block this, and now they were going to find out exactly why his kind had been so feared by the world over centuries ago)

Head down as he charged, the few enemies who weren’t frozen in shock ended up impaled on his horn or trampled underneath his hooves when they tried to attack - even with his instincts at the fore, Nyx still knew better than to attack allies – Nyx slammed into Drautos’ back even as the spy (oathbreaker, betrayer, traitor – his brain whispered to him) swung his blade.

With his speed and his strength and the sharpness of his horn, it slid past the armour that he was wearing – parting it as easily as it did the skin and muscles and bones in the way – until he reached the heart. Glauca’s dying gasp echoes in the room – despite the few fights still finishing up – even as Nyx jerked his head sharply, flinging the body to the side.

Whinnying, he kicked out at the traitor’s head and torso – crushing the skull and ribcage – annoyed at the lack of suitable revenge for his betrayal.

Tossing his head in irritation, Nyx turned – catching movement out of the corner of his eye.

Lib, who was moving towards him having finished off his own opponents, took one look at the gaping faces of the Lucians – including King Regis, and he felt a spark of pride for having made someone who was literally trained since birth to hide his emotions gape in shock – around them and opened his mouth with a shit-eating grin.

Flicking excess blood from his horn, and ignoring the blood that already stained his mane, he glared at him.

Say something, I fucking dare you.

Libertus, the little shit that he was, just carried on grinning at him. However, before he could actually say anything, one of the younger – non-Galahdian – glaives spoke up.

“Okay, since when is Ulric a fucking unicorn?”

#ffxv #my fic #nyx ulric #Unicorn!Nyx #who is so fucking done with the Lucians and their shit #unicorns are possessive arseholes who are nothing like the myths #so basically they're Galahdian #snippet #prompt #hamelin-born

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lesmiserabby · 3 years

Note

Clouds and mochi for the ask game?

Thanks for the ask!

clouds - describe one of your favorite dreams?

It's really vague and half remembered now, from years and years and years ago, and technically a daydream, but it was the beginning of my fantasy world that I've developed over the years and am now writing stories about and as it's the beginning of all of that, it remains a favourite.

I was on a quest with a few friends to retrieve a special jewel to help save our kingdom. Even then the friends weren't people from real life, at least not entirely, maybe one or two details borrowed from reality but mostly fictional. There were unicorns and dragons as well, of course. Not a lot happened in that initial little daydream, but it stuck and grew into something much bigger over time, so it will always be special to me.

mochi - favorite studio ghibli film?

Ahh, this is a really hard one! They're all so good in different ways, especially with the storytelling and handling of themes.... Howl's Moving Castle was so much fun to watch, My Neighbour Totoro hit me hard in feelings when I watched it for the first time in several years last summer, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke are both so different but each so well done in how they handle thematic elements as well as storytelling and there is so much more I could go on about with each of them and so many more movies....

#these are fun

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ferretly · 7 years

Text

my 2018 reading list/challenge:

beneath the cut it’s long

(these are all options in each section; i won’t read every book in each section. if anyone has recs for which book i should read tho that would be appreciated!!)

a book made into a movie you’ve already seen

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Misery by Stephen King

Holes by Lois Sachar

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

true crime

No Place Safe by Kim Reid

The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater

the next book in a series you started

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas

Fearless by Cornelia Funke

Among the Free by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

Through the Ever Night by Veronica Rossi

UnSouled by Neal Shusterman

a book involving a heist

White Cat by Holly Black

American Gods by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

nordic noir

October is the Coldest Month by Christoffer Carlsson

a novel based on a real person

Crank by Ellen Hopkins

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

a book set in a country that fascinates you

Ogniem i Mieczem by Henryk Sienkiewicz

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

a book with the time of day in the title

Dawn by Octavia E. Butler

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

The Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson

a book about a villain or antihero

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

Feast of Souls by C.S. Friedman

a book about death or grief

The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe

Sanctum by Sarah Fine

The Everafter by Amy Huntley

Ferryman by Claire McFall

Beauty of the Broken by Tawni Waters

a book with a female author who uses a male pseudonym

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree

a book with an LGBT protagonist

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older

a book that is also a stage play or musical

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Elliot

a book by an author of a different ethnicity than you

Dawn by Octavia E. Butler (Black)

Fledgeling by Octavia E. Butler (Black)

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (Black)

Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler (Black)

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu (Chinese-American)

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older (Afro-Latino)

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Japanese-American)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alaire Saenz (Latino)

More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera (Latino)

The Education of Margot Sanchez by Lilliam Silvera (Latina)

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Black)

a book about feminism

Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi

a book about mental health

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

a book you borrowed or that was given to you as a gift

Accessible Gardening for People with Disabilities: A Guide to Methods, Tools, and Plants by Janeen R. Adil

Women of Valor: Polish Resisters to the Third Reich by Joanne D. Gilbert

Tarot: Plain and Simple by Anthony Louis

Fairest by Marissa Meyer

Poles in Wisconsin by Susan Gibson Mikos

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

a book by two authors:

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

a book about or involving a sport

Wing Jones by Katherine Webber

Openly Straight by Bill Koningsberg

Finding the Edge: My Life on the Ice by Karen Chen

a book by a local author

The Girl who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu

a book with your favorite color in the title

The Red Chamber by Pauline A. Chen

Redheart by Jackie Gamber

Silvered by Tanya Huff

Green by Jay Larke

Red Branch by Morgan Llywelyn

Iron Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill

Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga

The Golden Day by Ursula Dubosarsky

The Golden Mare, the Firebird, and the Magic Ring by Ruth Sanderson

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

a book with alliteration in the title

Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin

Tiger Burning Bright by Marion Zimmer Bradley

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings

Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman

Stray Souls by Kate Griffin

Fox Forever by Mary E. Pearson

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat

a book about time travel

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

The False Princess by Ellis O’Neal

Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox

a book with a weather element in the title

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Storm Glass by Maria V. Snyder

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Frostfire by Amanda Hocking

Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis

After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga

Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin

The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

a book set at sea

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

Above World by Jenn Reese

a book with an animal in the title

The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

Tiger Burning Bright by Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Lions of Al-Rasson by Guy Gavriel Kay

The Shark God by Charles Montgomery

Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

The Bees by Laline Paull

Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm

Dov Arising by Karen Bao

White Cat by Holly Black

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

The Golden Mare, the Firebird, and the Magic Ring by Ruth Sanderson

Ferrets (Barron’s Complete Pet Owner’s Manuals) by E. Lynn Fox Morton

The Ferret: An Owner’s Guide to a Happy Healthy Pet by Mary R. Shefferman

Black Canary #1 by Brennden Fletcher

Lumberjanes, Vol.1: Beware the Kitten Holy by Noelle Stevenson

a book set on a different planet

Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald

Coyote by Alan Steele

Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

Salvage by Alexandra Duncan

Dove Arising by Karen Bao

Stitching Snow by R.C. Lewis

a book with song lyrics in the title

Don’t Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon

All These Things I’ve Done by Gabrielle Zevin

Yesterday by C.K. Kelly Martin

a book about or set on Halloween

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

a book with characters who are twins

Nightfall by Jake Halpern

Affinity by Sarah Waters

a book mentioned in another book

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

a book from a celebrity book club

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

He, She, and It by Marge Piercy

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

a childhood classic you’ve never read

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

Winter of Fire by Sherryl Jordan

a book that’s published in 2018

Unearthed by Amie Kaufman

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

These Rebel Waves by Sara Raasch

Reign of the Fallen by Sara Glenn Marsh

The Apocalypse Guard by Brandon Sanderson

The Diminished by Kaitlyn Sage Patterson

Sea Witch by Sarah Henning

Hullmetal Girls by Emily Skrutskie

Witchmark by C.L. Polk

Inkmistress by Audrey Coulthurst

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

Hurricane Child by Kheryn Callender

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

a past Goodreads Choice Awards winner

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

A Work in Progress by Connor Franta

a book set in the decade you were born

The Miseducation of Cameron post by Emily M. Danforth

A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar

a book you meant to read in 2017 but didn’t get to

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

a book with an ugly cover

Poison by Chris Wooding

Starters by Lissa Price

a book that involves a bookstore or library

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

your favorite prompt from the 2015, 2016, or 2017 reading challenges

Explorer: The Mystery Boxes by Kazu Kibuishi

Watchmen by Alan Moore

Lumberjanes, Vol.1: Beware the Kitten Holy by Noelle Stevenson

Habibi by Craig Thompson

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

Fearless by Cornelia Funke

Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra

The Boy at the End of the World by Greg Van Eekhout

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Advanced:

a bestseller from the year you graduated high school

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Dewey: the Small-town Library Cat who Touched the World by Vicki Myron

a cyberpunk book

Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Vurt by Jeff Noon

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress

a book that was being read by a stranger in a public place

lol i don’t like ... even go to public places; if anyone’s reading this do u wanna help me out

a book tied to your ancestry

Polish Roots by Rosemary A. Chorzempa

Women of Valor: Polish Resisters to the Third Reich by Joanne D. Gilbert

Poles in Wisconsin by Susan Gibson Mikos

a book with a fruit or vegetable in the title

Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

an allegory

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Carcia Marquez

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

a book by an author with the same first or last name as you

A Dirty Rose by Nannah Marnie-Claire

[censored] sorry

a microhistory

Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Dorris Pilkington

Earth Then and Now: Amazing Images of our Changing World by Fred Pearce

Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexualty by Hanne Blank

a book about a problem facing society today

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

UnDivided by Neal Shusterman

a book recommended by someone else taking the reading challenge

anyone wanna help me out???

#to read #reading challenge 2018

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pagerunner-j · 7 years

Text

Tonight I was thinking through the betrothal of a certain couple on CR, and in the process of wondering how it might have come about, I came around to the Winter’s Crest ball that happened during the year-long timeskip. My original idea there was fairly simple, rather fairy-tale like, and was entirely about Percy and Vex. Then I started writing it, other characters showed up, and banter happened. So this is going to turn out somewhat longer than planned. :) Since I’m enjoying how things are proceeding so far, though, have a sample of the WIP. More to come later.

Spoilers (minor, since the ball happened off-camera) through Episode 95, and will eventually allude to certain things in 104.

The masquerade was a game as much as a dance, and it had always been so. Tonight, however, on this Winter’s Crest, it felt especially momentous. Percy knew he was on the cusp of discovering just how significant the night might become.

In the halls of Castle Whitestone were dozens of masked figures, some of them more anonymous than others. All of them, of course, had been carefully vetted at the gates, so if Percy wanted he could identify everyone with ease. A few observant glances here, a whispered question to the guards there, and he could unravel every disguise in an instant. But this masquerade ball—the first proper one Whitestone had held in years—had its charms tied up in pretense, and in the occasional true flash of art. So Percy avoided picking at the threads. He observed the costumes with only detached interest, caring to find one thing and one thing alone.

He was searching for one singular dancer, not yet obvious in the crowd.

“Spotted her yet?” Tary said, nudging up close to Percy’s side. He sounded suspiciously amused. He’d helped with Vex’s costume, after all, as had others of their friends, and between the lot of them they’d kept Percy well away from any clues. Still, instinct kept pricking at him, suggesting ideas, whispering of potential.

Something flickered in Percy’s peripheral vision, but it was gone by the time he turned his head.

Tary came clear in the motion, at least. He stood tall and gleaming as ever, bedecked as the masked hero of an adventure story Percy remembered from childhood. He didn’t remember quite so many frills and furbelows on his outfit, to be fair, but it seemed churlish to critique. Tary was in his element. Percy felt somewhat less so, but he held his head high as he addressed his friend.

“You know I haven’t seen her yet. If I had, I’d be in her company, not studying everyone from the balcony.” Percy shrugged lightly and leaned on the railing. “Still, it is quite the spectacle.”

“I’m impressed. Everyone’s been so resourceful and creative. Did you see Emmeline Alden’s fascinator? The birdcage? It’s charming.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“No, I mean, it’s literally charmed. The paper bird inside it sings on command. And there’s a young man down there in an incredibly fetching owlbear mask. I didn’t think owlbears could look that fetching.”

“I suspect what you’re finding attractive isn’t the mask, so much.”

“Well.” Taryon chuckled. “Maybe not.”

Percy cracked a smile, then surveyed the crowd again. The smile became something more pensive. He’d invited everyone from Vox Machina to the festivities, of course, and even in this swirl they were difficult to miss. Pike was especially unmistakable, standing as she was on a riser behind the refreshment table. She was cheerfully passing out drinks and imbibing enough of her own that her glittery unicorn horn was tilting askew, unnoticed. Grog, too, was impossible to disguise, especially in his favorite helmet. “It’s Vex’s big night,” he’d solemnly told Percy upon arrival. “We all ought to look our best.”

Percy glanced down, tugging absently at his jacket, and hoping he could say the same of himself. Choosing an outfit had been a complicated process. He’d reisisted the suggestion of a known character; wearing any guise but his own seemed somehow wrong. Instead, it became a process of assembly. In a nod to the ways he’d begun remaking Whitestone, Percy had augmented his clothing with custom clasps and metal settings, the accents gleaming at the edges of otherwise simple gunmetal gray. And while he’d made a point of patronizing the town’s craftspeople and tailors who were outfitting so many of the guests, he’d felt compelled to make the mask himself. He still hoped he’d done the idea justice. The shape was simple, but the construction complex: a fine silvery filigree whose shapes suggested elements of his family crest.

He was holding it in both hands now, thinking of other masks he’d worn, and was still tracing one thumb over the edge of a star when another voice burst to life behind him. “Percy!”

He turned, surprised, only to end up with an armful of enthusiastic half-elf. It was Keyleth, having materialized from her dressing room upstairs for a hug that was at least three-quarters tackle. Behind her, more restrained but still looking amused, was Vax, clad in borrowed formal wear but wearing a mask that suggested the spread of raven’s wings. How literal of you, Percy thought but didn’t say, in part because he was still muffled by Keyleth’s hair.

At last she drew back, though, and he blinked in surprise. “Keyleth, you’re…”

“A dryad!” she said cheerfully, pointing at her magically altered skin. “A druid dryad. It’s barkskin. Remember?”

He did, suddenly, although the effect on Keyleth was striking. She’d modeled the look on birch, pale and delicately mottled, and her new tattoos were subtly visible as part of the pattern across the bark. Birch leaves twined through her antlers as if they were branches, and her dress, simple and sheer, was silvery-green to match. The gown would have been almost immodest—and certainly cold for the weather—if not for the fact that she was every bit as much a walking tree as a woman, and it made any of the details beneath the fabric somewhat abstract. Still, she looked lovely, and entirely like Keyleth.

Percy smiled as he told her, “I do remember, although you’ll have to forgive me for forgetting the details. I was blind last time, after all.”

“You were blind?” Tary asked. “When was this? And hello again, milady.”

Keyleth bore his hand-kiss with grace, even though Vax good-naturedly scoffed. “It was the first time we were in the Feywild,” he explained. “Long story. Like I said when we visited: don’t pick the flowers.”

“Well, I’m especially grateful for the warning now,” Tary said. “It would be a shame to miss such beauty as what’s before me.”

This time it was Keyleth’s turn for an unladylike snort. “You know, Tary,” she said, “it’s a good thing I know you’re not actually interested in women, or I might have to smack you.”

Tary grinned back at her. Vax stepped in, however, before the banter could continue. “So, Freddie,” he said with a crooked smile. “I’m surprised not to see the lady of the hour on your arm already. She still leading you on a merry chase?”

“A bit,” Percy admitted. “Although the way the rest of you keep leering at me about it, I suspect I might be the only one to have missed her.”

“I saw her earlier!” Keyleth piped up, rather proving his point. “I helped with her mask.”

“As did I,” Tary put in.

“And Pike advised on the dress,” Vax said. “She wouldn’t listen to me about it. I mean, not that I know her at all or know what might suit her.”

“Oh, don’t take it personally, Vax,” Keyleth said. “Some things you just want to entrust to other girls.”

“And to…” Tary hesitated. “Well. I’m just going to let that part go.”

“Anyway, Percy,” Keyleth said, “I think you should make your way to the dance floor. I mean, you keep telling me you know how to dance—“

“Because I do.”

“Then you should prove it. You and I can dance first, and then I’ll go dance with Vax, and…well, I have the feeling that given the chance, Vex might just find you.”

That made another half-formed thought cross Percy’s mind, the idea that something important was just nearby but eluding his grasp. He didn’t have the time to puzzle it out before Keyleth plucked his glasses off, tucked them neatly into a pocket, and settled his mask over his face instead. He felt the odd roughness of her barkskin for a moment, but before he could react, she’d fastened it in place and tugged him toward the stairs.

“Be back before midnight, darling,” Vax called, singsong, after them.

“Don’t be creepy, Vax,” Keyleth shot back.

“Wasn’t talking to you!”

“Still creepy,” Percy said, but by then, Keyleth was guiding him down the slightly blurry curve of the staircase, and whether he was ready for it or not, she led him into the dance.

#critical role #fic #wip #spoilers #perc'ahlia

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myupostsheadcanons · 7 years

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Myu Reads

I am making a list of books/series that I read and enjoyed over the past few years, especially since I began listening to audio books regularly. I am making this list not in order of favorite to least but In The Order of Fluff to Grimdark.

The Wind in the Willows.

Charming characters, each with unique personalities, a classic, well-written series of short stories that has lessons for all ages to learn.

The Wizard of Oz.

Experience the magic of Oz. Much of which was removed in the classic movie adaptation. It wasn’t a dream after all.

Anne of Green Gables.

The tale of a spunky orphan girl being taken in by an middle-aged brother and sister duo.

A family dynamic that is not seen in modern westernized settings any longer.

Slice of Life. Light reading. The first book is the best book.

Howl’s Moving Castle.

Howl is a roguish wizard out to have fun and games manipulating the world around him. Sophie just wants to make hats and live a simple life, but is forced by a curse into adventure and into the path of Howl.

The movie and book are only alike on the surface. There is more charm in the books and Howl actually has a backstory.

Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH

A tale of a mom wanting to save her children, told on top of the story of humanity corrupting nature and abusing animals.

A true “strong female protag” without the need of the female being either cruel, cold, or emotionally distant.

A Wizard of Earthsea

The movie Tales from Earthsea used the character’s names only and lifted elements from all the books rather than just adapting the first one.

Honestly I remember more from the sequel books more than I do the first one.

The Chronicles of Prydan (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron)

A hero’s tale of a simple boy, an assistant pig keeper, wanting to become something greater and finding out that being a hero it isn’t all glory and fame.

Characters and Lands based off of old Welsh mythologies, the same ones that also inspired the Welsh folk heroes that later became King Arthur’s Court.

The Once and Future King

The Sword in the Stone half of the book would have made it closer to the top of the list. But the second half involved some rather graphic deaths and fights (a gory depiction of killing a unicorn among them).

Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars (Barsoom) and Tarzan

Both characters helped define what would later become the modern super hero genera.

John Carter was a direct inspiration to Super Man and the Tharks popularized the idea of little “green men” of Mars. (The entire population of Barsoom are very color-coordinated, tbh. Green, Red, Black, White, Yellow). Many ideas created in this series are prolific in Science Fiction of today.

Tarzan of the Apes can be read by itself, no need to get into the later books. The original character is so popular that any attempt to stray too far from the core characterization leads into disaster. The movie “Greystoke” is perhaps still the best adaptation of the character to screen, and it was a deconstruction of the character.

Redwall

It is easy to get away with whole-sale death when it is done with animals, however many of the animals act human-like and that needs to be taken in consideration

Baby’s first “Dark Fantasy”. Dialog is written plainly for younger audiences, but subject matter is straight out of adult fantasy (mass murder, kidnapping, slavery, war of attrition).

Harry Potter

If you just watched the movies you are missing out on a lot of the descriptions and world-building in the books, especially in the second half of the series: Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hollows.

The second half is when the series went from older-child reading to young adult as the characters went from child to teenagers in the books themselves.

Ready Player One, Armada

An easy introduction to retro 80′s and 90′s pop culture, old computer games, and science fiction dystopia.

If you are a layman, a young adult, or didn’t pay attention to most of the media during that era the books do gloss over and explain most of the references made.... sometimes too often.

Armada is not as well seeped in pop culture as RPO, but it is a much more streamlined story and you can get a clearer judge on the author’s actual writing capabilities without the kick-back of nostalgia.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

There are just somethings that can’t translate well from text to screen.

One of those series that is best when read in High school or if you are a fan of British Humor.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

A masked hero come to save French Aristocrats and Nobility from the guillotine of the Revolutionist Government. Among one of the first novels to set down the common tropes for heroes with secret identities to come.

History and backstory might be a bit too heavy for younger audiences to understand.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection

There are two great audio book versions of this: one by Simon Vance, the other by Stephen Fry. Vance is a long time audio book professional and also narrated the Dune books and in general just having him read the book is a good indicator that it would be done well. Fry is a famous comedian and colorful character actor and was in the recent Holmes movies as Mycroft Holmes.

Barns n Noble has a beautiful leather-bound hardback edition of the Complete Collection as well for $25, if you are the type of person that reads the book and listens to the audio at the same time. The book will look nice on your shelf afterwards.

Victorian/Edwardian Horror-Romance: Frankenstein, Dracula, Phantom of the Opera

Classic stories, adapted and retold many times, it is always nice to get a perspective on the original works if you are only familiar with their newer incarnations.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Darker than the movie.

A reminder that all N*zis are bad.

Children characters get killed just as often as adult characters

Deals heavily with mental issues and adults/authority figures gaslighting children.

Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Stardust

A couple “lighter” examples of Gaiman’s work.

Stardust is classic fantasy with a bittersweet ending.

Ocean is told mostly through the POV of an adult remembering his “magical” neighbors as a kid and his traumatic experiences with his parents and babysitter.

The Lost Fleet Series

What the modern space battle genera should be.

The battles are in real-time, using real physics. It may take hours or even days to find out if that heavy ballistics missile is going to hit its target or if the target moved out the way.

The characters are typical for the genera, but are still engaging. Though the love-triangle rears its ugly head.

NPC’s (Spells, Swords, and Stealth Series)

A new game is hitting select markets. One that has consequences not only for the characters in the game, but the players. NPCs inside the game find themselves thrust into the role of adventurers when a PC party drops dead in their small town.

Classic “role reversal” or unconventional class/char combos (Gnome Paladin? Half-Orc Wizard? Noble Lady Barbarian? City Guard Rogue?) It’s kind of the norm now days after the whole “Drizz’t the Ranger Dark Elf” became so popular in the 90′s.

Star Wars: Heir to the Empire (Trilogy)

The first official trilogy of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, now known as the Legacy series.

It is always interesting to read through some of the EU to see what the Cinematic Universe is “borrowing” from.

Grand Admiral Thawn was such a popular character that he survived being rebooted.

2001: A Space Odyssey

If you have no idea what was going on in the movie. The book will help.

H. P. Lovecraft’s Collection of Horror

There are lots of copy cats, but only one original H. P. Lovecraft.

Mild in terms of today’s standards, but still thought provoking.

Good you are still wanting something creepy/spooky with out it being full of gore, swearing, or other ‘adult’ content, or looking for nothing exceedingly long

A “next step up” after reading Dracula, Frankenstein, and other fiction of that era (penny dreadful, or horror romances).

Heinlein’s Lazarus Long Universe (basically, most of his books)

It is decent until the last 5 books when things really get duct-taped together, then you’ll want to pull your hair out

Time Enough For Love, Number of the Beast, Cat that Walks through Walls, and To Set Sail Beyond the Sunset are some of the worst offenders.

An Incest warning is needed.

The ideas of these stories are timeless, the writing not so much. Characters are antiquated and firmly in the “men’s club” of old-school science fiction. (Even the “strong female protag” in some of the stories still find time to be a wife and mother above all else. Many of the relationships are “open relationships,” so frequent wife/girlfriend swapping)

Starship Troopers

If you ignore the rest of Heinlein’s work, make an exception to at least read this one

Warns of the dangers of being in a global totalitarian society.

POC main character. Juan “Johnny” Rico. Something that was unheard of at the time of publishing.

The Silo Series (Wool/Rust)

Post-Apocalypse science fiction.

Not as dark as say something like bleak The Road or the bloody Red Rising, a PG-13 book.

Set firmly in the middle-ground of fiction despite the setting, the characters aren’t one-note, a solid little series of books and short stories

With some editing it could have been an other dystopia YA series.

The Great Book of Amber (The Amber and Chaos Chronicles)

High fantasy written with a modern voice. A Shakespeare and Arthurian setting. Avalon, Oberon, The “fairy realm,” Civil War. Court intrigue, back stabbing, fratricide. Unicorns.

Written in the 70′s and 80′s. Likely inspiration for other series like ASOIAF, Dresden, and The Witcher. Suggest reading this one before either of them.

The two main POV characters are enjoyable with a snarky sense of humor. The side characters have personality as well.

Multi-dimensional universe, one of the better ones.

Has a Table Top Game.

Welcome to Nigh Vale: A Novel.

Quarkie, Mysterious, and odd.

Heavily inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, X-files, and other conspiracy theory genera, but treated in a mundane manner which makes it unnerving in itself.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (AKA: Blade Runner)

The book that inspired Blade Runner. To the point that many further publications of the book often call itself Blade Runner instead of its actual name (including the audio version).

The book and moves are only alike in theme, and some plot points

The book is bleaker, more Fallout than Ghost In the Shell.

Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune

The “Lord of the Rings” of Science Fiction.

What started out as a “deconstruction” of campy science fiction like John Carter and Flash Gorden, and a “take that” to Issac Asimov and Heinlein’s style of writing shaped all science fiction written afterwards.

GRRM (A Song of Ice and Fire) is often compared to Herbert... for good and bad reasons.

Neuromancer.

The book that brought us the first REAL Cyberpunk in the 80′s.

It is interesting to see the ways they thought computers would be part of 21st century society back in the Cold War Era.

Mort(e)

Animals take over the world killing most of mankind along with it.

A mysterious “virus” sweeps through the animal population, and the Ants in charge began culling the animals to remove it.

The Hunger Games Trilogy.

There is a lot less HAM in the books than in the movies.

Upper Young Adult. Class Warfare. Post Apocalyptic Dystopia. Children killing children.

You can get into Katness’s head a lot easier, understand her reasons for being emotionally distant with people.

Jurassic Park, The Lost World

Dinosaurs and Assholes. Perfect Michael Crichton books.

The second one should be read just for the fact that the movie is nothing like it. The first movie had a passable resemblance, with some character tweaks... the second movie barely resembles the book at all.

The second attempt of Crichton writing a series about “high-tech theme parks gone wrong” (the first being Westworld)

Android’s Dream (John Scalzi)

When you find out why the book is called “Android’s Dream”... feel free to be grossed out.

Let’s just say the book isn’t about androids...

The Illuminatus Trilogy

Written in the 70′s. Plenty of Sex, Drugs, and Rock-and-Roll.

Some of the conspiracy theories will throw you for a loop, then suddenly you’ll remember that this is a comedy/parody book and gods are real.

fnord.

Cryptonomicon

A long fictional account about the invention of computers. Told against the backdrop of WWII and the Early 2000′s internet boon.

I feel this one is on par with the Illumanatus Trilogy when it comes to tone and feel, but with no magic-chaos-cults involved.

Parodies of Historical figures, large a corporation with their fingers in many-o-pot, main characters that would be considered counter-cultured for their time period finding themselves in over-the-top situations.

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods

Personally I found the book to be slow and meandering, but interesting as a whole.

Basically defines what people think Gaiman’s style is. Dark imagery, weird shit happening, and lots of contemplating your navel.

The Comoran Strike Detective Novels.

What J. K. Rowling is doing whenever she isn’t milking the corpse of Harry Potter.

Would be a better series in general without the fake love triangle...

The Godfather

The movie is better than the book, but then the movie is like in the top-5 best movies of ALL TIME.

The movie does follow the book for the most part, with some variation for time and content.

The Guns of August (Non-Fiction, WWI novel)

Accounts what caused WWI and the events of the first two months of the war.

It doesn’t demonize the Germans, Russians, or any of the sides in particular. It explains quite clearly as to what all their motivations were getting into this war and how the war ended up becoming a complete slog.

Realm of The Elderlings Series (Robin Hobb)

If you ever want to experience “the feelz” in book form.

The relationship between FitzChivalry and the Fool is one of the most anguished you’ll ever read about.

There is a lot of ship baiting however, as the Fool is genderfluid and Fitz refuses to believe their relationship is anything other than close-brotherly love...

About 60% of the entire series is seen through FitzChivalry “head as thick as a brick” Farseer ‘s POV, be prepared for lots of PTSD.

The Mists of Avalon

The classic tale of King Arthur imagined and told through the eyes of the women of the court.

There are no real villains in the series, even the most morally dark among them have justifiable reasons for what they are doing. Unlike something like Once and Future King. Mordred, Morgause and Morgan are not evil stereotypes, they have human real-world reasons for what they do.

The Red Rising Trilogy

The Adult Fiction version of The Hunger Games.... In SPACE.

Color-coded for your convenience.

All the surrounding characters are more interesting than the main character.

Your favorite character is likely going to die.

Darrow always reminding you about his fridged wife... even after he finds a replacement goldfish.

The Cycle of Arawn, The Cycle of Galand

In a world of black magic and white magic, it isn’t always clear on which side is good or evil.

Plot holes you can drive a truck through, or at least hope will get resolved/remembered in later installments.

Most of the charm of this series is the relationship between Dante and Blaze. The way they both converse with each other and the people around them is very reminiscent of Buffy Speak.

The Dresden Files (Harry Dresden... Wizard)

Dresden has a great mix of humor and cynicism.

Plenty of action, not entirely predictable in plot, and a heaping helping of stopping the forces of evil from destroying all existence.

A modern-era fantasy with plenty of demons, fairies, vampires, and ghost. Never loses the feel that it is set in the modern times.

Stephen King’s Horror-Fiction (The Stand, Under The Dome, IT, The Shining/Doctor Sleep)

The human condition at its worse told in speculative horror fiction.

The Forgotten Warrior Series (Son of the Black Sword)

Future Earth, brought back to an age of magic (or science-like magic) when demons fell from the sky and ravaged the planet. An entire race, the last survivors of the people that turned away the demons and drove them to the sea, are forced to live as slaves, vagabonds, and in perpetual poverty.

The Witcher Novels

Books are published OUT OF ORDER in America. Please read The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny short-story collections before the Saga books.

CDPR Games are a Fan-created sequel to the books, so the games spoil the books (especially the third game).

Netflix is making a (new*) show adaption of the novels with the author’s approval and getting advice from the game makers as well.

*we don’t talk about the old show.....

The First Law Trilogy

It will get worse. When ever you think things can’t get any worse. It always does. And you watch the characters struggle all the way through it and everybody around them dying along the way.

Don’t get too attached to anybody without a POV.

A Song Of Ice and Fire

The modern “Gold Standard” for Dark Fantasy when Game of Thrones brought it to the mainstream.

Just about everything black and grim can, has, and will happen.

Nothing is glorified, everything is awful. When something problematic to our modern society happens within the narrative, it is often treated with the weight that these issues are a problem and part of their corrupt society (things like incest, child murder, rape, abuse....)

Hannibal Lector Series (Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal)

humanizes the most horrible of mankind.

if you had at least watched any of the movies and/or the show, read the books as well.

Dogsland Trilogy (J. M. McDermott)

Nothing good will come out of this. There is no hope for any of the characters. It starts out black and will end just as black. It is like a slice of life for the dirt poor and shunned. Forever on the run from hunters and discriminated against just because of being born. It ends where it began.

The Road

A story about a father and son at the end of humanity. There is nothing that can be done, a harsh struggle to delay the inevitable death of man kind.

#book recommendations #book rec #myu reads

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byrdieprose · 7 years

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Lonely God

We know the Lonely God existed before she awoke.

The Lonely God had somehow always existed, and yet was never quite there. She was a gentle watcher, a passive spirit, an observer of a space too vast and endless for her comprehension, too strange for her own understanding. But she still observed, piece by piece, until she realised she had learned far more than she ever thought she would.

The Lonely God realised one day that she could speak words in whatever order she wished and they would come true. She could mark lines with her finger and her pencil and her brush, and her creations would come to life. And she could breathe life into whatever she wished, whatever she cared about, and it would be. That was when she truly came into being. She could never see or hear or touch what she made, but it was there. It was there to her.

The Lonely God would experiment with things. She would take two drawn lines and join them from the neck down, making strange monsters. She would take wire and twist and turn it into some definite shape, making animals and plants. She would narrate the lives of bugs, mice, cats, dogs, men, horses, dragons, even the things she simply could not explain, and they would be true, no matter how much she understood.

Then the Lonely God realised something. “I want to be powerful”, she cried, “I want the world to read my words and see what I see. I want the world to look at my pictures and my twisted wires and know what I know. The world I live in is too confusing, things happen every day that I do not understand. I don't want to live in a world that I don't understand. I don't want to learn about it either. I want others to see through my eyes instead. But how can I show others my world if it does not exist?”

She took two slabs of rock and formed them into a crude ball, set a sun in the daytime and a moon in the night, set upon it creatures both of her own and borrowed, and she would watch them. They were of all different colours, shapes and sizes. And she though, “This is a story people will like. This is a story that I can tell. It has everything I want. This is what I was meant to do.”

The world evolved over the course of years. Many things happened. There were giant birds, huge disembodied hands on strings, children that were half dragon and half human, gorgeous technicolor unicorns. Technology advanced from natural settings to bustling towns and city's so tall they reached into the world's atmosphere. Every story that could be told was told. Every piece of music sung, every scratch against a surface meant something.

But the Lonely God realised “I am not happy with this anymore. This world has become so grand I cannot do anything with it anymore. No one understands it. I don't want the story to change this much. And what about the things I took from other people? What if they find out I am holding their creations captive? I will start anew. I will focus on something original, something I can relate to, something that can be transposed into as many mediums as possible. This is what I was meant to do.”

The Lonely God took a bird and a dragon and fused them together. She conceptualised stories, made felt structures and stuffed them with clouds so they would fly. She would continue to scratch lines into paper and stone and whatever she wanted with whatever she needed. Eventually this concept evolved too. Her felt toys had wire bones and button eyes. There were hundreds of them, or so it seemed, all different yet all the same, unique but unified. Her stories were not spoken word now; they were written in lead, made permanent with ink. She could paint her words in candy hues and soft purple, or retract her sentences into stoney greys and straightforward blacks. She would practise, should the time ever arise for her to speak these ideas to someone who could make them true.

And then the Lonely God thought, “I have enjoyed this process thoroughly. I have enjoyed turning the things I see in my head into things I can touch with my hands and see with my eyes. I like seeing others look at what I can do and enjoy it. But I want to make more, and to do it a little bit differently this time. Maybe this is it. This is what I was meant to do.” And so she did.

She took another rock and moulded it into a better sphere; one with better characters and more interesting things to do. She would take man and animal and put them together. She would explain that there were no men because they had caused their own downfall, and the animals rose up and became man instead, learning to walk on two legs, to use tools, to communicate with one-another. She did not follow everyone's paths this time, instead focusing on a lone pack of people. And she did something new this time. This group would be her disciples. They would learn all there was to learn from the scriptures she wrote. They would come to realise that their God was from a time long past, that their God a human, an old warrior race, and that worshipping a species hell-bent on making others lives miserable was a product of their own misfortune. They would realise if they did not start to truly help one another, just as the humans before them had refused to, they would become angry, warlike beings.

But one day, the Lonely God decided something. “I don't want this to happen anymore. I have stories in my head now that I cannot write for fear that the words will not make sense, or that i simply do not understand the concepts like I should. I cannot say the things I want because I am scared no one will understand. I want people to understand my world so I can learn to understand theirs again. I will start at again, better this time. I want to make things, real, living things that breathe and think and laugh and cry. I want to tell stories from all sorts of points of view. I want to turn this concept into something better, to focus on one species exploring a world they do not understand, in a time they don't understand, doing things they don't understand and livings prophecy they do not even know of. I want to tell my story through these characters, whoever I choose, and I want the story to be short, but take a long time to tell. I want to explore new ways to tell stories. This is what I was meant to do.”

So the Lonely God wiped her world of its history and started from the dawn of time. She took five heroes and sent them into what was both the future and the past. She wanted to teach them the power of friendship, of trust, of love in all its forms. The heroes would do the impossible; they would find God, chain and harness the elements to their own liking, bend the laws of the universe. She planned out her worlds future. She would take each hero and form a line, and from those lines would be the roots of trees that would twist and turn around one another. When the world was sure to end, she renewed the lines and made a loop. The universe she created was endless, and when the last story ended, the first story begun, forever and ever. And she found new ways to make things. She found ways to turn flat lines into full shapes, and from flat shapes into full forms. She found ways she could take both picture and word and combine them in a way that they would harmonise perfectly. She improved her skill at drawing, she improved the quality of her words. She improved, and she genuinely though this concept was going to come into fruition.

But the Lonely God realised something else. “I have made this story far too complex again, and far too long. No one will understand the way this works. I should settle for something more familiar. I remember the old world, the first world I ever created. Maybe I should work on that one again. But first, I think I'm going to stop for a while. I have grown tired and exhausted myself with all these abstract concepts like time and space. So I will rest. I will watch and learn from the world around me instead. It is what I am meant to do.”

So the Lonely God took the opportunity to stop. And when the Lonely God came back, she had learned so much.

The Lonely God found ways to make things move, ways to combine all her pursued fields into one. She found stories that spanned for universes, stories that challenged the human condition, stories that could joke and think and even bring tears to the eyes. She found better ways to write, ways that made her sentences sound far better than they ever had before. She found ways to draw, and found that she could morph her lines into whatever shapes she wished and they would still be recognisable as what she wanted. She found ways to help others in their troubles, in their darkest moments. She took a stab at prose and song, but never found a way to do it right. She learned about herself, learned who she wanted to be, who she was. She made friends, friends who saw the world in a different way, friends who saw the world the same way she did, or at least, similarly. And she observed. She observed how the people around her acted, how they spoke and how they were spoken to. She saw how they felt, and felt along side them, their laughter, their pain, thier solitude, even… their loneliness. And she came to realise again that she was not entirely alone in being a Lonely God; those who she looked up to, those who became gods in their own right, they all had lonely origins, they all had worlds they made their own, they all had ideas that flourished and those that failed. She was not the first Lonely God, she would not be the last; but she was the first like her, and that was enough.

And finally, the Lonely God though, “I don’t want to wait anymore. I want to make things that move and talk. I want to teach the world what I know, what I have observed. I want to take the elements I liked from my other stories and put them into one. I want to write a story about that world I forgot about all those years ago. I want to write a story about the human condition, seen from the eyes of an outsider. I want to write a story about a group of heroes who travel and save the earth. I want a story that is very long, yet not long at all. I want a story with magical, mythical creatures, but with human characters too. Humans are easier to relate to after all. I want a story that can be anything; a mystery, an adventure, a romance, a thriller. And I want to make it move. This is the thing that I want to be responsible for, because in all my thinking and resting, it became apparent to me that I want to be responsible for something’s existence. This is it. It is what I am meant to do.”

And so it was. And so it is. And so it will be.

#writing #abstract #original #lonely God #byrdieprose #got bored one night and made this.

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wjwilliams29 · 6 years

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Copy: 23 Rarely Used Copywriting Techniques to Create Fascinating Content

Writing is an art and discovering the secrets of boosting your readers’ engagement can transform you into a master of copywriting. Setting the right tone, answering to questions, drawing attention, adding personality and bringing your content alive with visuals or interactive data are just a few techniques that can get you where you want.

You know that warm feeling you get when you speak with one of your friends? You talk, he listens, he asks questions and so on. You understand each other. A similar feeling can be established with your readers as well. How, you may ask? It’s not a bulletproof formula but for sure it will be extremely helpful to follow the next 23 rarely used copywriting techniques to help you boost your engagement.

Use the Serial Position Effect

Make Your Visitors Feel Important by Offering Exclusive Content

Use the “Bizarreness Effect” to Draw Attention

Use “Powerful” Keywords like “New”, “Free”, “Now”

Use Copywriting Formulas to Create Captivating Content

Be a Unicorn in a Field of Horses

Take Advantage of the FOMO Technique

Include Emotions, Promise, and Main Keyword to Make Your Headlines Viral

Create a Persona Based Content Strategy

Be the First to Jump on Trends

Ask Your Target Audience to Contribute

Pack More Personality into Your Content

Perfect Your Writing Tone to Your Readers

Craft Good Stories That Sell

Give Your Content a Quick Credibility Boost

Leverage Emotional Triggers in Your Content Marketing

Build Social Media Friendly Content

Use Statistical Data to Enhance Your Content Marketing

Transform Your Q&A into an Article to Help Your Audience

Use Social Proof to Back up Your Content

Make Your Content More Visually Interactive

Define the Purpose Behind Everything You Write

Make Your Content Familiar to Resonate with Your Audience

1. Use the Serial Position Effect

The serial position effect refers to the situation when a person recalls the words from the beginning and the end of a list rather than the ones from the middle. According to a study made by Indiana University, the participants were able to remember the first and last words from a list of 20.

Following this technique, you should write the key points of your sales pitch or any other important information at the beginning and end of your blog post.

Source: https://copyhackers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/serial-position-effect.png

2. Make Your Visitors Feel Important by Offering Exclusive Content

Another technique you can use to boost your engagement is to offer content your readers couldn’t find elsewhere. Make them feel important; they will start to appreciate you more. Don’t you love it when someone is sharing with you a piece of information that has never been said to anyone else?

Exclusive content comes in different forms: a webinar with a script for those who sign up, training opportunities, e-books for subscribers, news from conferences and events in the industry turned into blog posts.

3. Use the “Bizarreness Effect” to Draw Attention

Using ridiculous material to be better remembered instead of common material translates into the bizarreness effect. This technique is borrowed from Psychology. Studies have shown that people were able to recall nouns presented in bizarre sentences such as “The dog rode the bicycle down the street” rather the nouns from the common counterpart “The dog chased the bicycle down the street”. On the other hand, some specialists say the bizarreness isn’t the thing that enhances the memory, but rather the distinctiveness of the meaning.

You can use the bizarreness effect to be spontaneous and say something indubitably wild.

4. Use “Powerful” Keywords like “New”, “Free”, “Now”

Another valuable copywriting technique is taking advantage of powerful keywords in your content. Persuading words can have a stronger impact compared to other types. When talking face to face, it is easier to make a point due to the use of intonations and body language. In writing, it is a bit harder. The best call will be to use strong keywords to point out key notes in your content.

You can take advantage of powerful words in order to convey emotions. For example, you could use:

ridiculous instead of stupid;

entertaining instead of funny;

delightful instead of nice;

magnificent instead of beautiful.

Beside using vivid adjectives, you might try having verbs that are more expressive. It is recommended to use first person pronouns such as “I” and “you” to give the impression of having a dialogue with your reader. Also, try to use causal prepositions such as “because” or “due” to give arguments and demonstrate your affirmations. It was proved in a study where people have shown more will to heed to a request after the word “because” was used.

Words like “new”, “now” and “free” can also have a strong impact on the audience if they are used at the right moment.

5. Use Copywriting Formulas to Create Captivating Content

Whether we want to tell a captivating story, write a killer content or have inspiring headlines, you can use these formulas to boost the engagement. Until now, I’ve mentioned the 4 U’s Formula: Urgent, Unique, Useful, and Ultra-specific. A similar formula is the 4 C’s: Clear, Concise, Compelling, Credible.

If you want to offer benefits through a blog post, you could use the Before – After – Bridge formula. “Before” is the situation where you imagine a problem that doesn’t exist. “After” is the situation where you resolve the problem. The “bridge” is the way to get there.

A formula that has been used for a long time is AIDA, where you have to grab the reader’s attention, offer interesting information, develop desire and create the action.

You could also try the Picture – Promise – Prove – Push (PPPP) formula. Using it, you can paint a picture to grab the reader’s attention, then make a promise, provide support for your promise and determine your reader to take action.

A good way to catch the reader on the “hook” is by using the Open Loop tactic. It is used more often in books to create suspense through a cliffhanger. At that moment you hold back information to grab your reader’s attention and make him read the whole post.

The “3 reasons why” is another formula to help you write engaging content. You have to answer three questions, as the name says it:

Why are you the best?

Why should I believe you?

Why should I buy right now?

On the web, you’ll find lots of other formulas that can help you discover what works best for you.

6. Be a Unicorn in a Field of Horses

Be smart and seek guidance from tools such as BrandMentions to spy on your competitors who write about topics you’re interested in. Search and read what they’ve written to find ways to have vivid content, and different approaches to the topic to “steal” their audience. If you have something new to write about, make a research to see if your competitors wrote something similar and how they handled the topic.

After you’ve done your homework, tie it all together with a value proposition. A well-known quote says “Be a unicorn in a field of horses”. For that you can apply the 4 U’s formula: be urgent, unique, useful, and ultra-specific.

If you follow some of the lesser-known copywriting techniques we’ve talked about so far you can create your own formula to differentiate yourself from the competition.

7. Take Advantage of the FOMO Technique

FOMO is the acronym for fear of missing out, and some of you may know this feeling. Taking advantage of this technique involves using information such as limited offers, discounts, and other exclusive events, to lead your readers towards an action.

An example of a limited offer from Starbucks can be seen in the next photo:

This technique works very well for millennials. From a study made by Eventbrite of 2,100 adults (507 of whom were millennials aged 18 to 34) it resulted that 69% of millennials fear missing out social events.

Due to FOMO, it is a blooming era for live events. It works very well for “selling” experiences through blog posts out of a product such as meeting your favorite influencers at a conference, having a personalized balloon ride in your holiday, exceeding your dreams by doing the sport you like, listening live your favorite singers at a festival and so on.

8. Include Emotions, Promise, and Main Keyword to Make Your Headlines Viral

Headlines have a significant impact on whether your content gets opened or not. You have a headline for a blog post, for a SlideShare presentation, for a video, for an infographic, for a news article, for an ad, for a webinar, for a guide, for an e-book, for almost everything you write online.

Around 80% of readers never make it past the headline, leaving almost 20% of them who will read. But before that you need to past the test of showing awesome in the search engines. And these statistics say a lot about how important the headlines are. You should have clickbait headlines to increase the open rate.

We live in the fastest phase of human history, and we can’t afford to make the reader lose interest in our site/blog after reading the headlines. We must create desire and interest from the beginning. Say no to low CTR!

Below you can see an example of a compelling headline for a webinar. Isn’t it true that it makes you sign-up?

It gives you the guarantee you’ll find out hints to recover your site if it got hit by the Penguin penalty.

While searching online, you’ll find lots of useful resources that can offer you guidance on how to create top headlines. Learn how to write killer headlines and to increase your readers’ engagement by following Jeff Goins’ formula. There are five elements. If you combined them, you would be able to trigger the desired actions.

Number – 3, 10 are best used in the headlines. Using a number in the headline is highly convertible. 36% of headlines use now a number.

Adjective – use unique adjectives to create a powerful emotion. For example: brilliant, atrocious, stunning, smart, bizarre, dazzling.

Rational – the way you offer added value such as reasons, tips, secrets, hacks, tricks. Please, don’t ever use things.

Keyword – a short phrase that tells us what the content is about.

Promise – what’s in it for me? For example, our headline promises “copywriting techniques that will boost your engagement”.

This is the formula designed for success: Number + Adjective + Rational + Keywords + Promise

Using Jeff Goins’ formula, you can transform lifeless headlines into sparkly ones. For example, “Best Travel Destinations in Europe” can turn into “5 Brilliant Travel Destinations in Europe That Will Spark Your Wanderlust” having “travel destinations in Europe” as a keyword.

Below you can see an example of an inspiring headline for a webinar following the formula written above:

Source: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/buzzsumo-webinar-march-20161-160323161442/95/10-ridiculous-hacks-to-5x-clickthrough-rates-1-638.jpg?cb=1458838636

Also, you can try using BrandMentions to help you to find inspiration for your headlines by looking at your competitors.

It’s important that your content covers all the elements you wrote in the headline.

9.Create a Persona-Based Content Strategy

It is mandatory to know your audience before you even start writing. Start studying what your reader likes, dislikes, what his habits are, what type of content he consumes, in what part of the day he prefers to read, where he comes from, where he is from and other similar demographic and interest characteristics.

After you’ve collected data about your audience, use it to create your content marketing persona. Track your analytics and set metrics to help you deploy trends.

10. Be the First to Jump on Trends

Every copywriter should follow trends in his industry to bring fresh content. A smart way to engage your audience and attract new readers to your site is having worthy content. You can do that by keeping up the news to bring valuable information to your visitors.

A good way to start would be to subscribe to news sites, specialists in the field, watch Google Trends, read publications in your industry, create a Twitter list of influencers you know they deliver hot news as they happen, follow trending hashtags about your main interest. These are just a few ways to keep your eyes open to trending stories. After you’ve gathered all the information, you need to start writing about a trending topic to make your blog post newsworthy.

11. Ask Your Target Audience to Contribute

Smart copywriters know that asking their readers to contribute is an influential copy writing technique. People are anxious to see their work promoted by a brand.

One of the most used ways to ask your audience to contribute is to share photos on social media. Sending emails to contacts to answer a survey, asking questions on blogs or using real reviews to write a blog post are other ways to contribute. Be bold, and try other unique ways to do that.

Kenneth Cole came with an excellent way to make people contribute. The company organized a selfie contest. The brand offered fans the possibility to take a selfie and enter a contest to win free shoes every month for a year.

If you know you visitors take selfies, you should try something similar. Selfies are widespread, and it’s simple to engage with the audience. They are personal and can easily lead to an action. The owner will receive likes, comments, and new followers. You can write an article about the pictures you receive and start a story.

Another example is the Christmas Story by the travel agency Rolandia Travel. Last December, the company wanted to offer its readers a soft presentation of how the Holidays are celebrated in Romania.

Travelers could send a short story about how they spent their Christmas in Romania along with a few pictures as a gift of sharing for those who were far from home, but not only. The best stories were published on the blog every week.

12. Pack More Personality into Your Content

Personality is that something that makes you unique. Personality is that something that can differentiate you from the mass, is that something that defines your personal style. Just like a person has it, a brand should have it also. Brands have been developing through the time; they began to have anthropogenic qualities and be more humanized. The personality of a brand can be translated into a unique selling point, a motto or other forms of expression in order for people to know that is about the brand and nothing else.

For example, the personality of Coca-Cola might be connected with happiness, fun, friends, family, being together due to the images and messages communicated consistently in numerous Coke campaigns. Below, you can see how a Coca-cola ad looked like in the 1940:

Source: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/coke-ads

Now, in the 20s this is how an ad from Coca-Cola looks like:

Source: http://www.realites.com.tn/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/coca-cola.jpg

You can see that the message and the way of showing smiling people remain. Both images express happiness, friends, fun.

For a content, personality can be expressed through a unique voice, a style, maybe a personalized closing or a type of personalized covers for articles and so on. Besides that, the content should always reveal the personality of the brand.

13. Perfect Your Writing Tone to Your Readers

For a copywriter having the right copy tone is like having the perfect light for a photographer to shoot the subject. For a painter it can be the right muse.

Your writing tone can either create interest or kill it. The wrong tone can wreck a good piece of information.

When you talk with someone and use a certain tone, you can determine how your interlocutor will respond. A similar situation can be when you use a specific tone in your writings. If the piece of information is entertaining, then the reader will feel cheerful, if it expresses anger he will get angry, if it’s painful he will feel the pain, if it’s boring he won’t have the patience to read it entirely and will leave your site.

There are multiple ways to express your opinions. Take a look at this questions, for example:

Would you mind if I borrowed your pen, please?

Can I have your pen?

Pass me that pen.

Make a difference between formal and informal writing. If you started writing in a casual mood, then stick to it. Don’t make sudden changes, inject unexpected signs of cuteness to become casual or start using a technical language to become more formal than usual. If you have multiple collaborators that write on your blog, make sure they follow the same language. Avoid being inconsistent.

Here are a few marketing tips to help you shape your tone:

don’t be too casual or too stiff;

don’t use dialectic or slang language;

don’t use offensive language (swear or use racism);

be clear by ordering your words properly in a sentence;

use singular pronouns (me, you);

have a personal way of expressing your opinions and wisdom within a topic.

Now, ask yourself: “Do I sound like my visitors expect me to?”

14. Craft Good Stories That Sell

There is no doubt that a good story can captivate us really bad. Let’s be honest. Hasn’t it happened to you to stay up at night reading a good story to find out how it ends? If you succeed sketching a story in the right manner you could transport the reader down the funnel in order to determine him to take an action.

A good story has the gift to help the reader get into a state of well-being.

But how could you do that, you might be asking? I’ve picked up a few tips to help you with that:

paint a picture: use imagery and lots of details to be more expressive.

appeal beyond those 5 senses: remember that there are different types of people. Some of them are more visual, others more auditory or olfactory and so on. Make sure to take advantage of sensory words.

suspense: you can capture their attention by adding a tint of tension and get them to finish the whole article. Try giving your audience something exciting to read.

killer opening paragraph: a good story can be used as an opening paragraph to allure the audience into getting to the main part of your topic.

have a model: To make your arguments stronger, you can use a model to show the changes it suffered. You can take examples from your experience or the ones you’ve heard of. Your audience can relate with the people who went through a similar situation.

15. Give Your Content a Quick Credibility Boost

It is ok to write your opinion and give advice, but are you credible? Are people trusting you?

Credibility can be a point sale. People can decide to buy your product depending on whether they trust you or not. Your affirmations should be based on data.

You can build trust if you follow a few guidelines:

cite sources: well-known field specialists usually offer credibility due to their background. Search for credible sources and specialists to back up your claim.

take advantage of your years in business and your experience.

name innovations and awards: if the context asks for such kind of references, use them. These are evidence of your success.

offer independent survey results: if you’ve run a small research, use the data to back up your arguments.

have media coverage: a great impact on your readers’ credibility would be to have presence in the news and business publications. If your brand is newsworthy, then you will also get authority in the field.

16. Leverage Emotional Triggers in Your Content Marketing

On the web, you can find lots of bloggers that offer great advice, write captivating content and give informative tips, but don’t know how to connect with their viewers on an emotional level.

The content can have emotional or rational triggers if we follow the classification regarding consumer behavior from psychology. Leveraging emotional triggers is a technique used in psychology to persuade. It can also be used as a copywriting tip, for the same purpose.

In order to stimulate emotions, you have to write content that helps the reader and make him experience a sensation while reading. You can be informative, but try not to exaggerate using a cold voice. If you do so you risk losing your readers because they won’t recall a thing and might never return to your site. We must remember that we write for people, to create a connection with them and to be on the same wavelength. This means you could talk from your experience in a friendly manner, share personal examples, be authentic, ask your audience questions and try to answer to them, share experiences together.

“Emotions are complex and move in various directions. Modeling emotional feelings and considering their behavioral implications are useful in preventing emotions from having a negative effect on the workplace.” – Boundless

Psychologist Robert Plutchik created a wheel of emotions. The most comprehensive way to illustrate the emotions experienced by a human being.

Source: http://www.efoza.com/postpic/2014/03/plutchik-s-emotion-wheel_309528.png

Studies have shown that the positive emotions toward a brand have a higher influence on the loyalty of the consumer rather than its trust. Also, they can help you to communicate more effectively.

Negative, as well as positive emotions, have an influence on a person. When someone experiences something like that they want to do something to avoid the bad feelings. If you talk to your readers and provoke them negative emotions, they will follow you more carefully to reduce their discomfort.

When people are involved with the message, they listen attentively and process using the central route. Emotional appeals create involvement.

One of the most important characteristics of the emotional triggers used as a copywriting technique is they can lead to actions.

Before you take a step forward, it is crucial you know your business and your audience very well. Although connecting with your readers on an emotional level is important, make sure you resonate with them. Be careful to make your audience feel the emotions you wanted it to experience.

17. Build Social Media Friendly Content

After you wrote your post, you should promote it. To make your life easier and not work twice as much, try and make your visual data expressive and relevant to your content. Always make a cover for your content to boost your reach. It is proven that tweets with images receive 18% more clicks and 150% more retweets.

The cover can be used as social media content. Also, I recommend you to make a short description about your topic that you can write as an intro or meta description, as well as a tweet on Twitter or as a post on Facebook and so on.

If you follow these simple guidelines, your readers could easily share your content, too. The visibility of your content will be improved, and other Social Media metrics could experience growth.

18. Use Statistical Data to Enhance Your Content Marketing

Cartograms, scatter plots, time series, diagrams, charts, histograms, matrix, dendrogram, area maps are just some ways of portraying statistical data in your content to make it more animated. To have traffic-driving content type you can create visual content out of statistics.

You can try and create interactive charts or use gifs to maintain your audience focused on your content and increase the user experience. This is just an example:

Source: https://d13yacurqjgara.cloudfront.net/users/57127/screenshots/1917495/attachments/329078/productpage2-2.gif

You can use Visme for animated charts and Canva or Piktochart for static charts. Below, you can see how a chart in Piktochart looks like.

If you use charts, it is easier to understand and to visualize the information, rather than reading chunks of text and numbers.

19. Transform Your Q&A into an Article to Help Your Audience

You can find value in your Q&A. More than that, you could find value in the questions you receive from your readers. First, you should make a list with all the questions you have, then categorize them. Make them sound actionable and sell the idea behind. After you’ve done the final list, you can start writing your blog post, give examples.

Another great source of this kind is Quora. You can search for the best answers in your industry in Quora and transform them into a new blog post. There is a good chance you will get some helpful information and good feedback from your readers.

20. Use Social Proof to Back up Your Content

“Social proof” is a phenomenon where people think that how others are acting in a given situation is the right way to respond in a similar event.

Imagine you want to go to a restaurant and have dinner. You have the possibility to choose from a crowded restaurant with a waiting list and an empty restaurant. You probably think the second one has crappy food. The waiting list is proof that the first restaurant has good food, right? You’d chose the crowded one, wouldn’t you?

Psychologists name this behavior “social proof”. If there is a crowd, that means it is good. The more the people, the more it means something better must happen there, you’d think. Following the crowd is in our nature. It is a simpler decision.

You can attract your audience with the “social proof” technique if you make a blog post out of reviews for your product, have endorsement for your brand, use testimonials in an e-book, write a best practice post from your clients’ experience, write case studies from the data you extrapolated about your customers.

21. Make Your Content More Visually Interactive

Visual content includes infographics, videos, gifs, pictures, presentations. Images are a great asset because they are stored in our long-term memory. It’s not a secret that infographics are highly shareable.

70% of all your sensory receptors are in your eyes. Sources say it takes us less than 1/10 of a second to understand a visual scene.

The article’s cover comes first on the content. You should be very careful how it looks since it’s the first image the reader sees. Having puppies wearing boots might be captivating, but they are not always relevant.

Source: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9a/57/db/9a57dbd3367259a2db12a34a71cbcd0c.jpg

Along with a strong headline, the cover is a core element for boosting engagement, so make sure you chose wisely.

Get creative and combine the visuals to be interactive, to surprise the visitor and engage him and make him stay more on your site. For example, you could create an interactive how-to guide, or you can simply display unique information. Check the next screenshot to see an example:

Source: http://blog.thinglink.com/marketing/interactive-infographic-arsenal

If you hover over the plus sign (+) you can see a pop-up box with additional information.

Biz Brain created an interesting way of displaying information about “where does coffee came from”. It shows a journey from bean to cup through a fun and attractive infographic.

It gives the right amount of information without overwhelming the reader. You can scroll down the page to see the whole process.

It is one of the most detailed infographics I’ve seen. More than that, it offers an experience. The fact that is interactive gives you the feeling you take part in the whole process. In the end, you “receive” a cup of coffee. You engage in the act of planting the seed, harvesting, processing the beans, milling, exporting, inspecting, roasting, grinding and brewing.

It is an excellent way to captivate the reader and share useful information in a way he can remember. You can work with an agency or a freelancer if you want something more complicated or search for tools to help you create the desired visual impact.

More tips to create interactive content:

make an interactive calendar to follow past and future events;

have a virtual assistant for an online product or service right on your site;

create an infographic from a how-to video;

turn presentations into gifs;

compile interviews into an e-book;

upload customer’s videos about your product on your website;

22. Define the Purpose Behind Everything You Write

While the content is blooming and lots of marketers start to write for the sake of having news content on site, the internet becomes crowded. Don’t get me wrong, it is fine to have a big library of content as long as the information is useful, it has a purpose and answers pertinent questions. Don’t get lost in the pile of dull blogs and boring content.

Make a list of topics, research and see which one will bring more traffic, correlate with the trends and what your audience wants. After you’ve done the analysis you can make a plan/structure for your topic to cover it all. Then implement it. Start writing and always remember what you’ve promised in the headline. Your purpose is to bring arguments and examples, show case studies or other types of information that will confirm your affirmations.

23. Make Your Content Familiar to Resonate with Your Audience

Your content should provide value to the readers. What better way than make it personal? But what does personal mean?

Personal content can be written from your own experience. You can collect data and present it through case studies on the blog, convert your presentations into new articles. Below, you have an example of a SlideShare presentation turned into a blog post.

Another way to have personal content is by sharing information from a conference you’ve been to or follow up from a webinar you’ve organized. Beside that, you should use informal writing such as “don’t” instead of “do not” or use the first person pronoun: “We have the possibility to look at our analyzed site and make a conclusion”.

Conclusion

Writing has never been an easy job. Especially now when the internet is constantly changing and the readers are harder to attract on the site.

Think about the fact that you need to be convincing and express more in words to draw attention. People can be easily distracted if you don’t captivate them and keep them engaged. If you are using words that have more sway than others, you might have a positive change in their engagement. Following the “seductive” techniques we’ve talked until now, you’ll have a good change to get the results you’re expecting. Make sure they follow your brand guidelines.

Design your plan and try to implement it correctly. After that, always follow the results and your metrics to increase conversion rates.

The post Copy: 23 Rarely Used Copywriting Techniques to Create Fascinating Content appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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