memento-morri-writes

[memento-morri-writes]

Dealing with Healing and Disability in fantasy: Writing Disability

[ID: An image of the main character from Eragon, a white teenage boy with blond hair in silver armour as he sits, with his hand outstretched. On his hand is a glowing blue mark. He is visibly straining as he attempts to heal a large creature in front of him. /End ID]

I'm a massive fan of the fantasy genre, which is why it's so incredibly frustrating when I see so much resistance to adding disability representation to fantasy works. People's go-to reason for leaving us out is usually something to the effect of "But my setting has magic so disability wouldn't exist, it can just be healed!" so let's talk about magic, specifically healing magic, in these settings, and how you can use it without erasing disability from your story.

Ok, let's start with why you would even want to avoid erasing disability from a setting in the first place. I talked about this in a lot more detail in my post on The Miracle Cure. this line of thinking is another version of this trope, but applied to a whole setting (or at least, to the majority of people in the setting) instead of an individual, so it's going to run into the same issues I discussed there. To summarise the points that are relevant to this particular version of the trope though:

Not every disabled person wants or needs a cure - many of us see our disability as a part of our identity. Do difficulties come with being disabled? absolutely! It's literally part of the definition, but for some people in the disabled community, if you took our disabilities away, we would be entirely different people. While it is far from universal, there is a significant number of us who, if given a magical cure with no strings attached, would not take it. Saying no one in your setting would be disabled because these healing spells exists ignores this part of the community.

It messes with the stakes of your story - Just like how resurrecting characters or showing that this is something that is indeed possible in the setting can leave your audience feeling cheated or like they don't have to worry about a character *actually* ever dying. healing a character's disability, or establishing that disability doesn't exist in your setting because "magic" runs into the same problem. It will leave your readers or viewers feeling like they don't have to worry about your characters getting seriously hurt because it will only be temporary, which means your hero's actions carry significantly less risk, which in turn, lowers the stakes and tension if not handled very, very carefully.

It's an over-used trope - quite plainly and simply, this trope shows up a lot in the fantasy genre, to the point where I'd say it's just overused and kind of boring.

So with the "why should you avoid it" covered, let's look at how you can actually handle the topic.

Limited Access and Expensive Costs

One of the most common ways to deal with healing and disability in a fantasy setting, is to make the healing magic available, but inaccessible to most of the population. The most popular way to do that is by making the services of a magical healer capable of curing a disability really expensive to the point that most people just can't afford it. If this is the approach you're going to use, you also typically have to make that type of magic quite rare. To use D&D terms, if every first level sorcerer, bard, cleric and druid can heal a spinal injury, it's going to result in a lot of people who are able to undercut those massive prices and the expense will drop as demand goes down. If that last sentence didn't give you a hint, this is really popular method in stories that are critiquing capitalistic mindsets and ideologies, and is most commonly used by authors from the USA and other countries with a similar medical system, since it mirrors a lot of the difficulties faced by disabled Americans. If done right, this approach can be very effective, but it does need to be thought through more carefully than I think people tend to do. Mainly because a lot of fantasy stories end with the main character becoming rich and/or powerful, and so these prohibitively expensive cure become attainable by the story's end, which a lot of authors and writer's just never address. Of course, another approach is to make the availability of the magic itself the barrier. Maybe there just aren't that many people around who know the magic required for that kind of healing, so even without a prohibitive price tag, it's just not something that's an option for most people. If we're looking at a D&D-type setting, maybe you need to be an exceptionally high level to cast the more powerful healing spell, or maybe the spell requires some rare or lost material component. I'd personally advise people to be careful using this approach, since it often leads to stories centred around finding a miracle cure, which then just falls back into that trope more often than not.

Just outright state that some characters don't want/need it

Another, admittedly more direct approach, is to make it that these "cures" exist and are easily attainable, but to just make it that your character or others they encounter don't want or need it. This approach works best for characters who are born with their disabilities or who already had them for a long time before a cure was made available to them. Even within those groups though, this method works better with some types of characters than others depending on many other traits (personality, cultural beliefs, etc), and isn't really a one-size-fits-all solution, but to be fair, that's kind of the point. Some people will want a cure for their disabilities, others are content with their body's the way they are. There's a few caveats I have with this kind of approach though:

you want to make sure you, as the author, understand why some people in real life don't want a cure, and not just in a "yeah I know these people exist but I don't really get it" kind of way. I'm not saying you have to have a deep, personal understanding or anything, but some degree of understanding is required unless you want to sound like one of those "inspirational" body positivity posts that used to show up on Instagram back in the day.

Be wary when using cultural beliefs as a reasoning. It can work, but when media uses cultural beliefs as a reason for turning down some kind of cure, it's often intending to critique extreme beliefs about medicine, such as the ones seen in some New Age Spirituality groups and particularly intense Christian churches. As a general rule of thumb, it's probably not a good idea to connect these kinds of beliefs to disabled people just being happy in their bodies. Alternatively, you also need to be mindful of the "stuck in time" trope - a trope about indigenous people who are depicted as primitive or, as the name suggests, stuck in an earlier time, for "spurning the ways of the white man" which usually includes medicine or the setting's equivalent magic. I'm not the best person to advise you on how to avoid this specific trope, but my partner (who's Taino) has informed me of how often it shows up in fantasy specifically and we both thought it was worth including a warning at least so creators who are interested in this method know to do some further research.

Give the "cures" long-lasting side effects

Often in the real world, when a "cure" for a disability does exist, it's not a perfect solution and comes with a lot of side effects. For example, if you loose part of your arm in an accident, but you're able to get to a hospital quickly with said severed arm, it can sometimes be reattached, but doing so comes at a cost. Most people I know who had this done had a lot of issues with nerve damage, reduced strength, reduced fine-motor control and often a great deal of pain with no clear source. Two of the people I know who's limbs were saved ended up having them optionally re-amputated only a few years later. Likewise, I know many people who are paraplegics and quadriplegics via spinal injuries, who were able to regain the use of their arms and/or legs. However, the process was not an easy one, and involved years of intense physiotherapy and strength training. For some of them, they need to continue to do this work permanently just to maintain use of the effected limbs, so much so that it impacts their ability to do things like work a full-time job and engage in their hobbies regularly, and even then, none of them will be able bodied again. Even with all that work, they all still experience reduced strength and reduced control of the limbs. depending on the type, place and severity of the injury, some people are able to get back to "almost able bodied" again - such was the case for my childhood best friend's dad, but they often still have to deal with chronic pain from the injury or chronic fatigue.

Even though we are talking about magic in a fantasy setting, we can still look to real-life examples of "cures" to get ideas. Perhaps the magic used has a similar side effect. Yes, your paraplegic character can be "cured" enough to walk again, but the magic maintaining the spell needs a power source to keep it going, so it draws on the person's innate energy within their body, using the very energy the body needs to function and do things like move their limbs. They are cured, but constantly exhausted unless they're very careful, and if the spell is especially strong, the body might struggle to move at all, resulting in something that looks and functions similar to the nerve damage folks with spinal injuries sometimes deal with that causes that muscle weakness and motor control issues. Your amputee might be able to have their leg regrown, but it will always be slightly off. The regrown leg is weaker and causes them to walk with a limp, maybe even requiring them to use a cane or other mobility aid.

Some characters might decide these trade-offs are worth it, and while this cures their initial disability, it leaves them with another. Others might simply decide the initial disability is less trouble than these side effects, and choose to stay as they are.

Consider if these are actually cures

Speaking of looking to the real world for ideas, you might also want to consider whether these cures are doing what the people peddling them are claiming they do. Let's look at the so-called autism cures that spring up every couple of months as an example.

Without getting into the… hotly debated specifics, there are many therapies that are often labelled as "cures" for autism, but in reality, all they are doing is teaching autistic people how to make their autistic traits less noticeable to others. This is called masking, and it's a skill that often comes at great cost to an autistic person's mental health, especially when it's a behaviour that is forced on them. Many of these therapies give the appearance of being a cure, but the disability is still there, as are the needs and difficulties that come with it, they're just hidden away. From an outside perspective though, it often does look like a success, at least in the short-term. Then there are the entirely fake cures with no basis in reality, the things you'll find from your classic snake-oil salesmen. Even in a fantasy setting where real magic exists, these kinds of scams and misleading treatments can still exist. In fact, I think it would make them even more common than they are in the real world, since there's less suspension of disbelief required for people to fall for them. "What do you mean this miracle tonic is a scam? Phil next door can conjure flames in his hand and make the plants grow with a snap of his fingers, why is it so hard to believe this tonic could regrow my missing limb?"

I think the only example of this approach I've seen, at least recently, is from The Owl House. The magic in this world can do incredible things, but it works in very specific and defined ways. Eda's curse (which can be viewed as an allegory for many disabilities and chronic illnesses) is seemingly an exception to this, and as such, nothing is able to cure it. Treat it, yes, but not cure it. Eda's mother doesn't accept this though, and seeks out a cure anyway and ends up falling for a scam who's "treatments" just make things worse.

In your own stories, you can either have these scams just not work, or kind of work, but in ways that are harmful and just not worth it, like worse versions of the examples in the previous point. Alternatively, like Eda, it's entirely reasonable that a character who's been the target of these scams before might just not want to bother anymore. Eda is a really good example of this approach handled in a way that doesn't make her sad and depressed about it either. She's tried her mum's methods, they didn't work, and now she's found her own way of dealing with it that she's happy with. She only gets upset when her boundaries are ignored by Luz and her mother.

Think about how the healing magic is actually working

If you have a magic system that leans more on the "hard magic" side of things, a great way to get around the issue of healing magic erasing disability is to stop and think about how your healing magic actually works.

My favourite way of doing this is to make healing magic work by accelerating the natural processes of your body. Your body will, given enough time (assuming it remains infection-free) close a slash from a sword and mend a broken bone, but it will never regrow it's own limbs. It will never heal damage to it's own spinal cord. It will never undo whatever causes autism or fix it's own irregularities. Not without help. Likewise, healing magic alone won't do any of these things either, it's just accelerating the existing process and usually, by extension making it safer, since a wound staying open for an hour before you get to a healer is much less likely to get infected than one that slowly and naturally heals over a few weeks. In one of my own works, I take this even further by making it that the healing magic is only accelerating cell growth and repair, but the healer has to direct it. In order to actually heal, the healer needs to know the anatomy of what they're fixing to the finest detail. A spell can reconnect a torn muscle to a bone, but if you don't understand the structures that allow that to happen in the first place, you're likely going to make things worse. For this reason, you won't really see people using this kind of magic to, say, regrow limbs, even though it technically is possible. A limb is a complicated thing. The healer needs to be able to perfectly envision all the bones, the cartilage, the tendons and ligaments, the muscles (including the little ones, like those found in your skin that make your hair stand on end and give you goose bumps), the fat and skin tissues, all the nerves, all the blood vessels, all the structures within the bone that create your blood. Everything, and they need to know how it all connects, how it is supposed to move and be able to keep that clearly in their mind simultaneously while casting. Their mental image also has to match with the patient's internal "map" of the body and the lost limb, or they'll continue to experience phantom limb sensation even if the healing is successful. It's technically possible, but the chances they'll mess something up is too high, and so it's just not worth the risk to most people, including my main character.

Put Restrictions on the magic

This is mostly just the same advice as above, but for softer magic systems. put limits and restrictions on your healing magic. These can be innate (so things the magic itself is just incapable of doing) or external (things like laws that put limitations on certain types of magic and spells).

An example of internal restriction can be seen in how some people interpret D&D's higher level healing spells like regenerate (a 7th level spell-something most characters won't have access to for quite some time). The rules as written specify that disabilities like lost limbs can be healed using this spell, but some players take this to mean that if a character was born with the disability in question, say, born without a limb, regenerate would only heal them back to their body's natural state, which for them, is still disabled.

An external restriction would be that your setting has outlawed healing magic, perhaps because healing magic carries a lot of risks for some reason, eithe to the caster or the person being healed, or maybe because the healing magic here works by selectively reviving and altering the function of cells, which makes it a form of necromancy, just on a smaller scale. Of course, you can also use the tried and true, "all magic is outlawed" approach too. In either case, it's something that will prevent some people from being able to access it, despite it being technically possible. Other external restrictions could look like not being illegal, per say, but culturally frowned upon or taboo where your character is from.

But what if I don't want to do any of this?

Well you don't have to. These are just suggestions to get you thinking about how to make a world where healing magic and disability exist, but they aren't the only ways. Just the ones I thought of.

Of course, if you'd still rather make a setting where all disability is cured because magic and you just don't want to think about it any deeper, I can't stop you. I do however, want to ask you to at least consider where you are going to draw the line. Disability, in essence, is what happens when the body stops (or never started) functioning "normally". Sometimes that happens because of an injury, sometimes it's just bad luck, but the boundary between disabled and not disabled is not as solid as I think a lot of people expect it to be, and we as a society have a lot of weird ideas about what is and isn't a disability that just, quite plainly and simply, aren't consistent. You have to remember, a magic system won't pick and choose the way we humans do, it will apply universally, regardless of our societal hang-ups about disability.

What do I mean about this?

Well, consider for a moment, what causes aging? it's the result of our body not being able to repair itself as effectively as it used to. It's the body not being able to perform that function "normally". So in a setting where all disability is cured, there would be no aging. No elderly people. No death from old age. If you erase disability, you also erase natural processes like aging. magic won't pick and choose like that, not if you want it to be consistent.

Ok, ok, maybe that's too much of a stretch, so instead, let's look at our stereotypical buff hero covered in scars because he's a badass warrior. but in a world where you can heal anything, why would anything scar? Even if it did, could another healing spell not correct that too? Scars are part of the body's natural healing process, but if no natural healing occurred, why would a scar form? Scars are also considered disabling in and of themselves too, especially large ones, since they aren't as flexible or durable as normal skin and can even restrict growth and movement.

Even common things like needing glasses are, using this definition of disability at least, a disability. glasses are a socially accepted disability aid used to correct your eyes when they do not function "normally".

Now to be fair, in reality, there are several definitions of disability, most of which include something about the impact of society. For example, in Australia (according to the Disability Royal Commission), we define disability as "An evolving concept that results from the interaction between a person with impairment(s) and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others." - or in laymen's terms, the interaction between a person's impairment and societal barriers like people not making things accessible or holding misinformed beliefs about your impairment (e.g. people in wheelchairs are weaker than people who walk). Under a definition like this, things like scars and needing glasses aren't necessarily disabilities (most of the time) but that's because of how our modern society sees them. The problem with using a definition like this though to guide what your magic system will get rid of, is that something like a magic system won't differentiate between an "impairment" that has social impacts that and one that doesn't. It will still probably get rid of anything that is technically an example of your body functioning imperfectly, which all three of these things are. The society in your setting might apply these criteria indirectly, but really, why would they? Very few people like the side effects of aging on the body (and most people typically don't want to die), the issues that come with scars or glasses are annoying (speaking as someone with both) and I can see a lot of people getting rid of them when possible too. If they don't then it's just using the "not everyone wants it approach" I mentioned earlier. If there's some law or some kind of external pressure to push people away from fixing these more normalised issues, then it's using the "restrictions" method I mentioned earlier too.

Once again, you can do whatever you like with your fantasy setting, but it's something I think that would be worth thinking about at least.

#personally my world's healing magic usually works by 1) only healing what your body could heal on it's own (or maybe a tiny bit more) #and 2) works better the faster you apply it. So an injury that heals wrong and is left that way for months/years can't be cured w/ magic #but the same kind of injury that is treated as soon as it happens could be healed and might be able to prevent some of those side effects. #also I like to say that the more serious the wound the more magical energy required to heal it / the less effective the magic. #so a non-lethal wound is pretty easy to heal but one that should have killed the victim is much harder. #and a person who is ''revived'' (particularly in a D&D setting) will likely bear some kind of scar or side effect from that. #so kind of a mix of several things OP talked about plu some additions for my own magic systems. #reblog #for reference #magic #healing magic #magic systems #writing disabilities

[memento-morri-writes]

I love stories that are love stories but aren’t about romantic love!!!!!!!!! even if they contain romantic love it’s not the focus!!! and love for friends and community and strangers is shown as valuable and worthwhile!!!

#all of my stories are love stories but not all of them are romantic or have any romance at all. #reblog #about me #inspo #tropes

[memento-morri-writes]

i love this character so much......i hope they get seriously injured and almost die

#ABOUT ME #especially me with #oc: Rook #reblog

[memento-morri-writes]

Fascinated by stories of the - I guess you'd call it the "stolen identity" genre, like, of the Anastasia Romanov variety. But - from both sides.

Your husband has been at war for thirty years. You married when you were teenagers. The man who returns bearing his name looks... plausible, you don't remember his eyes being quite so blue, but it's been thirty years and it's not like you could ever afford to have a portrait painted. He knows your name and the names of your children and your parents, but there are curious gaps in what he remembers. But war does things to the mind. And if he's kinder than you remember? Kind enough that, maybe, you let yourself believe...

No one has ever looked twice at you, since you're just the maid, until the day a revolutionary bomb goes off, blowing a crater in the summer palace. The famously reclusive duchess and the rest of her household lie dead in the rubble. You know that you and she were the same dress size. You know where her jewels are kept. Most importantly, you know the location of the secret tunnel that leads down to the docks, and to a life overseas that would be torturously hard going for a poor maid, especially one suspected as a thief, but a lot more comfortable for a royal in exile...

The old king's most faithful retainer swears this is the heir to the throne, raised in secret and trained to one day step into his father's shoes. As the usurper as dragged off the throne, she screams that the old king's children are all dead, she made sure of it; no one pays her any heed. (Maybe they should have...)

The man in the tavern is buying drinks for the whole bar before he sets sail tomorrow for the far side of the world. He's got it all figured out - a ship of his own, retirement to a tropical paradise when he gets sick of the pirating life. His lip curls as he talks about the stultifying boredom of the aristocratic world he's already left behind. You find out that his parents recently died, and the estate is in the care of his younger sister, who was only six when her brother first left home two decades since. Between the lines, they sound like a good family; they sound like they love him, the way your family never did. Your heart aches. He shows you portraits, letters, before shoving them carelessly back in his coat pocket. They would be so easy to lift...

It's a surprisingly common concept and I just love it. It's The Return of Martin Guerre; it's multiple 90s romcoms; Agatha Christie pulls it half a dozen times. Sooner or later, it crops up in fanfic for just about any fandom with a royal or aristocratic main character.

And I can see why, because there's so much richness to it. From the outside, it can be anything from a horror story to an unlikely love story; from the perspective of the person pulling off the con, a heist movie or a tragedy or a heartwarming tale of found family. And then there are the longer-term implications: What happens if you wear a mask so long that it becomes who you are? What happens if you come to love the "replacement" to the point where you don't want to find out the truth? What is it like to uncover such a deception a century down the line, to find out that your great-grandfather... wasn't?

Just. Identity stories, man. <3

#one of my friends has a dnd character like this. #she’s a changeling and was raised to be the doppelgänger of a specific powerful person. #but she was led to believe that she IS that person. #it’s fascinating. my friend is the deity of fucked up dnd characters #reblog #inspo

[memento-morri-writes]

jumping on this open tag bc I really really wanted to use this picrew.

Not a representation of me, per se, but a cool cat nonetheless.

YOU FOOLS, you've fallen right into my trap. You thought this post was just an innocent picrew chain, made out of the kindness of my heart, but NO. For you see dear mutuals, it was all a ploy, a ploy to get you comfortable.

I know this may come to a shock to some of you, but it is true. I have a master plan, the end goal? Turn you all into cats. Then, with my army of kittys, I will... ok actually I haven't gotten that far yet, but trust me we'll do something super evil like knock paper off of desks or something.

Now that you have fallen for my scheme, I present to you one of many cat picrews. For I am not turning the frogs gay, I am turning the queers into cats and no one can stop me.

Picrew

Tags // @piney-45 @fizzello @ellalily @championofapollo @cr0w-covered0n-m0ss @x-ca1iber and anyone else who wants to take part

#reblog #long post #picrew tag #tag game

[memento-morri-writes]

All I'm saying is, if a fic refers to characters by their physical attributes instead of their names or pronouns ("he smiled at the older" "the blonde laughed") when we know who the character is, and ESPECIALLY if the descriptions include "ravenette" or "cyanette" or other ridiculous words--

I'm clicking out of that fic so fast my AO3 history won't even register I've been there.

#reblog #for reference #writing tips #grammar

[memento-morri-writes]

#epic fantasy is one of my favorite subgenres and fantasy is my favorite genre in general. #reblog #polls #writing polls

[memento-morri-writes]

Your Kisses Burn Into My Skin (Only Love Can Hurt Like This)

CHOO-CHOO! ALL ABORD THE ANGST TRAIN :DDDD!!! Hope you all brought tissues. This is the potential last chapter I have for draft 0 of The Little Pirate, starring our two favorite sapphic pirates Cassandra and Erica of course. Buckle up folks :))). Cassandra (due to past trauma) thinks that Erica betrayed them, can she learn the truth before it's too late?

Wordcount: 1360

Warnings: fantasy violence, brief gore (someone's hand gets cut off), blood descriptions, major character death :))) (and a very angsty one at that), angst galore, due to trauma there's a little bit of miscommunication but it gets resolved, many feels, also most likely inaccurate depiction of how a volcano acutally works (it's not about realism its about the visuals and drama ok), lack of editing (i only did grammar edits)

The Little Pirate, Draft 0 - Character, Dynamic, and Plot Exploration

Inside the volcano was sweltering hot, visible heat waves rising from the black rock and sand. As they made their way deeper inside, they found the center of the volcano, where a large pool of lava bubbled. The lava didn’t rise or fall, which was a good sign. Across the pool, there were some rocks peeking out of the fiery liquid, creating craggy and unstable paths.

Erica gently grabbed Cass’s arm. “What’s wrong?” She signed slowly, trying to get the motions correct.

Cass stood there for a second, staring at her. Even in the rising waves of heat and boiling temperature, she was beautiful. 

Erica blinked, knitting her brow. “Why are you looking at me like that? Cass?”

Salty tears burned in Cass’s eyes. She signed, sharply and deliberately, “Did you lead him to us?”

She stared in dumbfounded shock, mouth slightly open. “What?” Her signs became sharper and more deliberate as well. “You think I’d do that?”

“No, but how else did he follow us?”

“I don’t know how he followed us, but it was not me!” Erica signed the last part again, harder. “It wasn’t me!”

Cass took a step back, shaking her head as tears started to leak out. Her hands started to shake uncontrollably as she signed. “How can I trust you?”

Erica stood there for a moment, staring at Cass with a wounded look. Finally after a minute, she said, “I would never hurt you. I would never lead them to us. I love you, Cass!”

Those words. Those three beautiful, cursed words.

She swallowed, breath catching in her throat like a bubble that wouldn’t pop. “No one loves me. Not like that. No one can.”

Tears streaked down Erica’s face as she stared at Cassandra with a stricken look in her infinitely beautiful dark brown eyes. “I do. I love you.”

“No. I’m not worth it.” Her hands wavered now as she signed. Tears rolled down Cass’s face in burning trails, she couldn’t stop them now. She had to swallow another lump in her throat.

“You are to me.” Erica stepped closer, and this time Cass couldn’t pull away as she reached out and gently cupped her cheek.

“But everyone leaves me, I’m not worth staying around for.”

A big tear rolled down Erica’s face as she signed almost perfectly, “Not me. I won’t abandon you. You are worth staying for.” She leaned forward, gently pressing her forehead against Cassandra’s.

Cass shuddered, wrapping her arms around Erica and pulling her closer.

Then Cass felt vibrations under her feet of quickly approaching footsteps. Lots of footsteps.

She quickly signed to her crew, “They’re here! Get ready for a fight!”

She and Erica both drew their swords and the rest of the crew drew their weapons as well, as they all retreated across the unstable paths over the lava.

Gar Face’s crew exploded into the cavern, following them onto the rocky paths.

Cassandra blocked the first sword that was swung at her, pushing her opponent back and sending them into the lava. 

Two more came at her as she felt the unstable path under her about to crumble away. She quickly stepped back, and when the two pirates stepped onto the crumbling section of path, it gave way and they both fell into the lava.

Behind her, Erica took on three pirates, throwing two off the path. Cassandra felt the path under Erica starting to crumble, and grabbed her arm, pulling her back.

The third pirate fell into the lava as Erica leaned against her. They both smiled, and stood back to back as more pirates charged at them from the remaining paths.

Cass blocked swords with hers, and threw one pirate after the other back into the lava.

No more pirates were charging up the paths on her side so she turned to help Erica.

As she did, she saw Gar Face charging up the path at her, lunging with his sword. Cass raised her sword, and blocked his.

They pushed against each other, swords scraping against each other. Cass could feel the scraping vibrations all the way down in the handle of her sword.

His momentum pushed her back until her heels were at the edge of the lava, but not for long. She used her size and strength to push back, pushing him to the edge, ready to throw him off.

He whipped a knife out of his boot, slashing at her legs. 

Cass stumbled back, gripping her sword tighter as she glared. She should’ve known he’d play dirty.

He slashed again, too fast for her to counter. Pain flared in her arm as the knife slashed her forearm, almost making her drop her sword.

Cass grit her teeth, determined to keep a hold of her sword, even as the blood dripping down her arm made the handle slick.

He came at her again, and this time she swung her sword in a deadly arc, slicing through Gar Face’s wrist. The now disembodied hand holding the dagger fell into the lava as his mouth opened in a shriek she could barely even hear.

His face became red with pure rage, and he lunged at her, swinging his sword.

Cass attempted to block, but the handle started to slip out of her grasp. His sword connected with hers, and her sword went flying. The blade clattered onto an isolated rock over a river of lava that would be far too wide to try and jump across.

Gar Face grinned maliciously, his mouth moving and saying something that Cassandra couldn’t hear. Probably some prideful speech about how he won, and it was all over- or something like that. Felicity told her they were all the same.

Then with a shark toothed grin, he pulled his sword back to stab.

To her side, there was a muffled yell, and before she knew it, Erica was pulling Cass behind her.

Cass watched in horror as the sword pierced through Erica’s stomach and then back instead of hers.

Gar Face ripped his sword out and threw his head back, mouth open in a wide cackling laugh. The rock under his heels crumbled, and he fell backwards into the lava, mouth open in a terrified shriek. His body quickly disappeared into the lava, leaving only bubbles of molten rock.

Erica stumbled back, hand flying to the wound instinctively. Cass let out a silent gasp as she caught Erica and sunk to the ground with her. Blood was pouring out of both wounds quickly. Too quickly to do anything to stop it.

She desperately pressed down hard on the one in front, trying to stop the blood loss. She cradled Erica close to her, tears burning down her face.

Erica tried to push her hands away. Cassandra frantically shook her head, trying harder to slow the blood, but her hands were slipping and her trousers were already soaked with more blood where she knelt with Erica in her lap.

Hand shaking, Erica signed in broken fragments, “Can’t stop it- no use- too much-”

Cassandra shook her head harder, starting to sob. The last time she cried this hard had been five years ago, on a beach as she watched a boat sail away without her while her throat and legs painfully burned with what she’d given up to get there.

This time was almost worse.

Erica signed again, barely able to finish words, “I’m sorry- I said I wouldn’t- I wouldn’t- leave- I’m sorry- Cass-”

Cassandra gave up on the wounds, cradling Erica’s head with both hands and kissing her, desperately hoping it would keep her tethered to the earth. She leaned her forehead against Erica’s, clinging to her as she cried.

Erica reached up with a shaking hand, and brushed a lock of hair out of her face. Her lips were moving, forming words Cassandra almost recognized.

“I love you.”

Erica’s eyes closed, and Cassandra could no longer feel her breathing, she couldn’t feel her heartbeat.

She shook Erica, trying to wake her up, bring her back. Cassandra’s mouth opened in a silent scream, small noises escaping her throat as she leaned her head on Erica’s shoulder and sobbed.

#I forgot to reblog this the other day and I have no idea why. #it's so fucking painful and which is GOOD. #Anna why do you hurt me like this???? #but also..... pirates...... I love pirates. #reblog #other's writing #friends <3

[memento-morri-writes]

My current obsession with both my boy Rook and Black Sails is making me really really want to work on one of my pirate WIPs, but sadly neither of them have a plot or even developed characters.... :'(

#morrigan.text #delete later

[memento-morri-writes]

Reblogging for anyone else who didn't know about this!! It's not a 5-tag per post limit, but rather a 5-tag per block limit. It makes your taglists take up more space, but at least it works!! (And I know a lot of people put their taglists under a cut anyways.)

[id: A comment by memento-morri-writes that reads: "if you hit enter and make a new block after the first 5, it works. And then after the next 5 and so on." /end id]

RIP at tumblr only linking the first 5 urls in a taglist now

#reblog #idk why I never posted this on my own blog but anyways. #important #tumblr shenanigans

[memento-morri-writes]

trying to motivate myself to be a little more active here, i want to discover some new writeblrs to follow!! feel free to reach out if you wanna!

i'm particularly interested if you...

🎧 write adult fiction, especially literary fiction, horror (gothic or otherwise), gothic romance, fantasy, or really anything with a gritty/emotional feel

🎧 like any bands from the 90s grunge scene (or 80s hard rock) (i can and will yap for days)

🎧 like vampires, pirates, or cowboys

🎧 are a fellow college student (we can struggle together!!)

even if we don't have any of this in common, i'd love to chat anyway! hopefully this finds some folks <3

#hiii! I'm a college student who writes fantasy and is obsessed with pirates!! #reblog

[memento-morri-writes]

gossamergrove ➳ writeblr introduction.

hi there! i'm ashley {they/she, nineteen years old} and i figured it was about time i returned to writeblr! i'm known to pop up around here for a short while before disappearing again, but hopefully i can manage to stick around this time!

here's a little bit of background info about me!

i've been around on writeblr on-and-off for at least 2 years now! i'm always open to making new friends within the community, and i'm 100% okay with being tagged in things, including writeblr games or even just snippets of others' writing!

my ask box is always open, but fair warning that i get easily overwhelmed, so it might take me a while to answer whatever is in my inbox. please don't let this deter you from sending asks about me, my projects, or anything you want go share with me!

this blog is 18+ as i don't have the mental energy to censor myself or my writing to accommodate for a demographic any younger, so please respect that! if i find out that you follow me and are a minor, i will block you.

read about my works in progress under the cut!

let's talk about those works in progress i mentioned! i currently have one primary project i'm in the early stages of working on, but this masterlist will be updated whenever i have a new project i'm ready to start posting about.

amaranthine ➳ adult romantasy.

status: planning [est april 2024]

Freya grew up surrounded by royalty, but it was always just shy of her grasp. Having grown up in the castle as the child of the royal family's political advisor and most trusted maid, Freya has witnessed firsthand what being royal is like, even if her status as a high class commoner resulted in relentless teasing from the crown prince and his friends. She's never been more than an outcast among her supposed "inner circle" and a spoiled brat to those outside the castle walls. Until one night, during a royal ball meant as a prerequisite to political negotiations, the crown prince is found bloody and bruised in the gardens. When Freya finds him passed out at the back entrance to the castle, it sets off a chain of events, leaving Freya at the center of everything. It's up to her to figure out what's going on, and quickly, before the world she knows comes tumbling down around her.

that's all for now! i hope you enjoy your time in my little corner of writeblr, and thank you for reading through my rambling!

#please go perceive my best friend. <3 #reblog

[memento-morri-writes]

Okay, super weird qn but do y'all ever dream of being your OCs?? Like having dreams where you actually are them and are living through their plot and stuff?

I'm asking this because according to my friends that's not normal

Reblogs are appreciated because the more people who respond to this, the more likely my friends are to believe me when I say I'm totally normal

#I am never in my own dreams. Almost never anyways. #I'm usually either some random dream person or just a camera watching things play out. #but I did have a dream where two of my OCs were there and having a really weird conversation with an Elf King #who does not exist in the story they're from nor does he exist at all actually. In any WIP of mine or book I've read or anything. #my brain just made him up. #it was my favorite dream I've ever had though and it ended up in a weird roundabout way inspiring one of my favorite lines of the wip. #so yeah I'd say it's not weird to dream about your OCs and I really don't think dreaming AS your OC even begins to touch on weird. #like you gotta got WAY wilder than that for it to be a werid dream. #reblog #polls #writing polls #(kind of)

[memento-morri-writes]

#GHOSTS. I fucking love ghosts so much. They just have so much potential that people rarely explore to the fullest. #and as prev said... haunting stories are very very fun. Both in the literal and metaphorical senses of a haunting. #reblog #polls #writing polls

[memento-morri-writes]

There exist another dimension called The Empty World. It's very much like ours, in fact it seems to have been identical up until a few weeks ago, but it always seems that way. If you go there today, it was identical in late february, and if you go there this october, it'll have been identical until september.

It's empty, as you might guess. There's no humans, and no animals bigger than a cockroach. The sky is grey, and it slowly rains ash. It's colder than our world by a bit, enough to require a jacket even in summer. The streets are empty, the cars parked neatly in their garages or in lots, but they're all empty and abandoned, their doors locked like they expect their owners to return any minute now.

The newspapers left on stands don't mention any oncoming disaster. We have no idea what the TV or internet would have said: the power is out. The power is very, very out. Not just the grid, but batteries are drained. The cars won't start, the emergency lights are out, and anything with solar panels seems to be getting less energy than you'd expect, even with the perpetually overcast sky.

It's a very silent world, like the calm after a snowstorm. Sounds don't seem to echo as much as they should, nor does sound seem to travel as far. The radio spectrum is empty except for static, there's no one transmitting on any frequency.

There's fewer fires than you'd expect. Even places you'd expect to soon catch fire without human intervention are still standing, undamaged. Campfires can be lit but with difficulty: something is keeping them from burning as they should. Even if you pour kerosene on a campfire it'll barely grow, it's like something sucked the energy out of everything.

All the locked buildings are still locked. Alarms don't sound if you break in (understandable, given the power situation), and of course no one comes to investigate. So The Empty World is your oyster: you can break in wherever you want (provided you can physically do it: some doors are pretty hard to pry open even with tools), take whatever you want, and bring it back here.

Everything resets when you leave. You always enter The Empty World like it's your first time there, like this just happened and you're late to the party... but the party keeps getting rescheduled. You can even take something multiple times if you want.

When you enter The Empty World you get there at the same relative position as you are on this world. If you're in New York, you show up in the empty New York. If you're in Topeka, you show up in empty Topeka. So you have to travel around this world to get to where you want, and you can't just appear in the middle of a bank vault... unless you break into the vault from this world. (So it's great if you work at a bank and want to steal from your employer without repercussions, but not so useful otherwise).

You don't just have to take things, you know. You can take computers and files and books and diaries. You will have to deal with recharging laptops and breaking through any security when you get back, but it's doable.

So, imagine you've just gotten access to The Empty World. What are you going to do with it? What will you take, and where will you go?

#oh I fucking love this. And fun fact in middle school I wrote a short story that was rather similar in some regards. #aliens found Earth an untold many years after Something happened and there are no living (animals) on the planet. #but there's no bodies no signs of distress. It's just like they all vanished. #but they didn't just vanish because they took the time to write ''we are human'' on every surface they could find. #from cliff faces to table tops to subway walls and on and on. #the first line of the story was ''we only know their name for certain''. #I'd love to revisit that story someday and write it better. But it was very fun. #formatted like it was written by one of the aliens for a scientific or academic setting. #reblog #prompts #writing prompts #inspo #faves #we only know their name for certain #woktnfc

[memento-morri-writes]

i want 60 thousand votes by next thursday

#No. I've never felt the desire to write or read fanfic. #I admire the people who do one or the other or both but it's not my thing. #I think it stems from a feeling of ''they're not my characters.'' #which I realize is kind of a weird feeling to have but yeah. I feel very very Wrong writing characters that aren't my OCs. #or at the very least a join creation between me and someone else. Like the DM of my dnd games for example. #again nothing against fanfic. It's just not my thing. #reblog #polls #also op I think you're gonna get way more than 60k votes lmao.

[memento-morri-writes]

this is lowkey weird that I'm all three at once

#I'm a little bit of all of these but mostly the oc maker. #but I'm also never in the mood to write and have too many empty notebooks. #but yeah... #sadly for me rn that OC that I'm obsessed with isn't even a writing OC but a dnd oc... :'( #reblog #about me