Cherry Red, Crimson Blood Lore Posts Masterlist
Here is a semi-organized list of lore and world building posts for my Cherry Red, Crimson Blood series to clear things up, add detail, answer any questions, etc.
You can search #crcb lore on my blog if you'd like to just scroll through all of these for funsies.
Lore Masterlist Part 2
Other Fun Ideas Masterlist
CRCB Barracks Sims Build Screenshots
Fic Masterlist
FAQ
When are new chapters posted?
How long is the story going to be?
What pairings are in this fic?
How old is everyone
Who all is in the story?
Are there deltas or gammas in the fic?
What is the "42" reference in Chapter 3?
Will there be pregnancy in the fic?
General Omegaverse Questions
Werewolves vs omegaverse
How I pick characters' statuses
Female Alpha/Male Omega pairings
Heats
What is a heat and how do they work?
What happens when the guys are deployed?
Is Price the only one that can help with reader's heats?
Can betas help with heats?
Heat Sickness
Can omegas get heat sickness more than once?
How alphas act during heats
Are heats different with purebred alphas and omegas?
Do omegas go into heat when they're pregnant?
Kneeling
How does kneeling work?
Do betas kneel?
Where do they kneel?
Positioning during kneeling
Could kneeling happen while giving head?
The kneeling incident at the institute
Scenting
How do scents work?
How does scenting work?
Johnny passed out during scenting
Presentation
What is the presentation process like?
Genetics behind presentation
How statuses know who's who
Institutes
What do average alphas and betas know about institutes
What was the institute like?
Omega relationships in the institute
How do omegas get sent to institutes
Were domestic tasks taught at institutes?
Bonding and Claiming
What is bonding?
Is a claiming bite permanent?
How many alphas can an omega be claimed by?
Relationships
Omega and alpha relationships
Classism and relationships
Can alpha/alpha pairings work?
Omegas
Distressing
What happens when the omega takes over?
Hunting
Omega rights
Could omegas have side hustles?
Could reader mark the others?
Can betas and omegas have pups?
Can only omegas get pregnant?
Scruffing
Alphas
Do alphas rut on their own?
Alpha urges
What makes purebred alphas different
Do alphas mark each other?
Betas
Do betas nest?
Beta possessiveness
Beta aggression
Purebred betas
Do betas feel left out emotionally?
Packs
Can packs split?
Soulmates
Fraternizing
Can Jealousy Happen in Packs?
Accidental Pregnancies
What kind of housing do large packs live in?
Other Characters
Laswell
Other characters and their statuses
Dr. Keller's brother
Other Questions
Why did Laswell choose the reader?
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HOW TO KILL A CHARACTER
(A Writing Spew)
I'm trying to archive some of my old Twitter writing spews on Tumblr. You know, because of things. So here's a rather big one. HOW TO KILL A CHARACTER.
/BeginSpew
Okay, you’re a writer. You’ve got a mess of characters. You want to move your audience. So, it’s time to take out the old writer’s ax and chop chop chop! But how do you do it with maximum impact without your audience turning against you forever?
Pull up a chair and Uncle Robert will explain it to you!
(Warning, there may be spoilers ahead for stuff that if you haven't seen it by now it's your own damn fault.)
Luckily, there are a lot of reliable tricks to kill that character. Any of them can work for both #TVWriting and #Novels. Some of them can backfire. Here are some proven approaches…
Death #1: The Intro Death!
Want to set the stakes for your world? Introduce a character or characters and fool the audience into thinking they will be a big part of the story. Then… CHOP! OMG THEY’RE DEAD! SHIT JUST GOT REAL! AKA the Hello-Die.
The Hello-Die pretty much always works because the audience hasn’t had time to really get invested, but they’re invested enough to feel the sudden shock.
Examples: Psycho. Buffy (S1E1). GOT Teaser. #DS9 pilot. Hill Street Blues (averted).
The Hello-Die is often used by shows to shake up your expectations in what has usually been a fairly safe genre. And yes, I did this in #Andromeda. You think this is a nice safe Fantasy/SpaceOpera/CopShow/FamilyDrama? NOPE! Hello-Die! Watch out for exploding Helmsbugs.
Death #2: The Mentor Death
Your character learns cool stuff from the smart old person. Then the smart old person dies! OMG! “But I had so much more to learn!” “True, but don’t you see? This was the real lesson.” AKA The Obi-wan.
The Mentor Death is pretty safe too. We all know the old people we learn from are going to kick it soon, right? But that’s okay, because WE GOT THIS! Circle of Life, ya’ll!
Examples: Star Wars. Star Wars again. Star Wars that other time too. Harry Potter.
Death #3: The Hero’s First Kill.
Your hero lives in a violent world, but they’re a good person. They don’t want to be a killer. Alas, the world needs them to kill. And you want to portray how that impacts your hero. And so that minor villain must die!
The HFK can be tricky. For best results, the victim should need killin’. Because you want the audience to still like your hero. Plus it’s your hero’s first kill, so you need to overcome their reluctance. Or maybe it’s an accident? (OR IS IT?)
Either way, now your hero is transformed and all it took was offing a minor character. WARNING: Often involves hero puke!
An excellent example of the HFK is the Stable Boy in GoT. Arya asked him to let her go. He wouldn’t. She insisted. He said the Queen would pay her handsomely for her. She lashes out with Needle and… OOOPS! Or was it an oops? Well now he’s dead & Arya’s on her way.
Death #4: The Villain’s First Kill
The opposite of the HFK. The villain is bad, but he hasn’t killed… yet. Then he takes his first victim (usually someone either plucky or gross) and he just can’t help himself! Afterward, unlike the hero, the villain feels good.
He’s got a taste for this now. It’s going to happen again. Cue dramatic (or ironic) music!
The VFK can also sometimes be the Intro Death. Maybe it’s not the villain’s 1st kill, but it’s the first we see. Either way, the VFK is relatively safe, though there's a risk that if the victim is too likable, the audience won’t just hate the villain, they’ll hate the author.
Which is why the VFK is often someone gross or “disposable” or even theoretically somewhat deserving. In American Psycho, the first kill is a homeless man, the second is a Wall Street asshole.
Another VFK example: In the Bone Collector, the first death is a man no one cares about, and he dies off-screen, but the next is a plucky woman who dies horribly onscreen. The story eases you into it.
Still, the VFK is fairly safe. It needs to be just bad enough to shock, but no so awful that you completely lose the audience. You can get awful later once you've built up good will.
Now come some of the tougher deaths to pull off, starting with...
Death #5: The Season One/Book One Death
An important character dies relatively early in your tale. This is usually done because you want to drive home the stakes even more. Also the death launches/twists the story. AKA The Boromir AKA The Ned AKA The Sean Bean.
The Sean Bean is tricky because you’ve spent a fair amount of time getting the audience invested. You may have even tricked them into thinking the Sean Bean is a major hero. The more invested they are in TSB, the higher the risk you might lose your audience.
To minimize audience hate, make sure they understand it’s kind of Sean Bean’s fault. Or a noble sacrifice. Or if the character is minor enough (Hi Tasha Yar) it's a way to show the random awfulness of the universe. The important part is your real heroes will learn from this.
There will be crying and anger and thirst for revenge (or Data will struggle to understand death and we’ll all love him for it.)
The Purpose of the Ceremony - YouTube
Now part of why the Sean Bean works is its earliness. The later in a story a character is killed, the more their death needs to have meaning. You can kill Tasha randomly in Season One but you would never do that in Season Six.
In Season Six, if a regular dies, it better not be random or the audience will feel angry and… Oh. Yeah. Her. I wasn’t on staff then. IT’S NOT MY FAULT!
Anyway, the later you get, the more meaning a death needs to have, ideally.
Now we’re getting into the Big Earned Deaths. So let’s talk about them.
Death #6: The Big Bad Death
This is pretty easy, honestly. The easiest. The audience has been waiting for this bastard to die for years! They will cheer. Even if you’ve run this asshole through the Face/Heel Revolving Door a few times (Hi Gul Dukat), by now, they’re past redemption.
The Big Bad needs killing. KILLING THEM IS KINDA THE POINT. Go for it. Make it as horrific and painful as you’d like. Make them fall a LOOOOOOONG way before they hit something. Make them bounce a bit. The audience will love you for it.
Death #7: The Sacrificial Hero Death
Solid option. You might want to foreshadow the heck out of this. Maybe even near-death your hero a few times. But still, the audience usually gets this one. After all, messiahs die. It is known.
There will be tears, but we all know sometimes the only way to save the world is to die. If the good done by the hero’s death outweighs the sadness the audience feels, this can even be uplifting. Bittersweet chocolate is the best, right?
The SHD is a perfect way to kill a beloved character late in a novel or show. They died for our sins! If not for them, we’d be toast. Very satisfying when done correctly. I mean, there are entire religions based on this. Do it right and it packs an immortal punch.
Death #8: The Shakespearean Tragedy
Your hero isn’t really a hero. They might’ve started that way and/or had good intentions, but they’ve slippery-sloped themselves into full blown villainy… and they know it.
They’ve had their moment of tragic awareness. They realize theirs is a tale told by an idiot. Time to go out in the blaze of glory/late heel-face-turn sacrifice/by their own hand. My kingdom for a horse! Lay on Macduff! Good night sweet prince!
The classic ST is incredibly satisfying for the audience. They’ve enjoyed watching a good person descend into villainy, living vicariously through his/her badassery. They felt bad when the badassery turned to madness. SO MUCH METH!
Now the villain realizes how wrong it all was, and how flawed they are, they deliver a final moral lesson, then CHOP! And... cue Baby Blue, maybe some passing prince gives speech... then... curtain.
Death #9: The Final Wrong
Remember how bad that bad guy is? Gee, when’s the last time they were really, really bad? Time for them to shockingly kill a beloved character right before the final confrontation with the hero! I know you traveled a long way to help, but die Scatman Crothers!
Now there’s no going back. Now the villain can’t be redeemed. They must die. Cue the final chapter/episode/season/third act.
This one is risky as hell and maybe don't kill one of your few/only female POC protagonists this way but hey, you be you.
Death #10: The Sidekick Sacrifice.
Your hero can’t just win clean, right? That’s boring. There has to be a cost. And sometimes that cost is Robin’s life. Often this is a minor heroic sacrifice in its own right, but by someone other than the hero.
The sidekick takes the bullet, goes into the warp core, etc. Can be combined with the Final Wrong. Either way, "I have been... and always shall be... your friend." Cue tears.
Death #11: The War is Hell
A variation on the Sidekick Sacrifice. Beloved character dies randomly in a final great battle because War is Hell.
Sometimes the WiH is just A Bad Break. The bullet came from nowhere. WTF?!? Sometimes this happens in the Fog of War. No one saw it. The hero finds the body afterwards and feels the cost of victory. It’s high, man. So very high.
And yes, I used this one in #TheGoblinCrown. War is Hell even in YA fantasy novels.
Death #13: I Couldn’t Save Her
The riskiest variation on the late character death. The kid your hero has been protecting all along dies. The hero tries to save her/him but fails. Generally, only done in the Darkest Timelines. Or at the start of Alien 3. Fuck Alien 3.
The ICSH tells your audience this is not a hero’s story. This is a brutal examination of the inherent unfairness of life. Surprise!
WORDS OF CAUTION!
WARNING: Beloved Characrer Deaths often do not go over well. Use with caution.
The Final Wrong, the Sidekick Sacrifice, the War is Hell, and the I Couldn’t Save Her/Him are all somewhat risky. Sometimes you kill the very character that the audience most cares about. You know, like Glen. Or Lexa. OMG Lexa!? You can lose big chunks of your audience this way.
Still all four can be effective ways of turning on the feels late in a story. If you use them, make sure they either feel super well-earned or that they fit your theme so well that the audience will accept it.
But be careful. The biggest danger here is when the audience doesn’t realize you’re going to go this bleak and then you do and they feel betrayed. Can be a deal-breaker.
The more innocent the victim, the more horribly they die, and the more pointless the death, the bigger the risk you run of turning off your audience completely. And if it's an underrepresented character that a percentage of your audience deeply identifies with? Oh boy. Run.
Death #14: The Glorious Last Stand
This character was a prick all along, really. No one liked them. But when the chips were down, when our backs were against the wall, the they pulled the pin in their grenade and blew up a crapton of Aliens. Hurray!
The GLS can be supercool. The GLSer wasn’t the hero or the villain. Somewhere in the middle really. But we admire the way they went out. Their death redeemed them. If done right, audience will cheer for their bravery, finally loving them just as they die.
Death #15: The Everybody Dies
Rare. Tricky. Deeply powerful when done right. The time for characters like these is done. Their world is over. Their final great sacrifice, or noble last stand, or tragic Bolivian gunfight was inevitable. But oh how brightly they burned in the end.
Look at how badass they were. Look how bravely they faced death. And remember what it meant! Perhaps we would not be alive today if not for their transformative deaths. We will never forget them. Also their death may spur us all on to victory/change/redemption.
Or maybe the Western is just over. We're gonna miss you, Butch and Sundance! Cue montage!
Death #16 (but not really): Apotheosis
Your character dies technically, but really they become one with the Prophets, God of Light, Force. AKA The Sisko. You can only really pull this off in genre or stuff that pretends not to be genre but really is. Modern variation: Uploaded into the A.I.
Apotheosis can work extremely well if done right. Star Wars does it a lot and it works pretty much every time. You get the OOMF of killing a major character, but you reassure the audience that "They will always be with us."
If handled poorly, it can feel like a huge cheat, but when done well, can be a very satisfying way to kill off your awesome main character at the end of a long series without totally pissing off your audience. Like I said... The Sisko.
FINAL WORDS!
There are lots more ways to kill characters, of course. Including the bad ways to kill.
The It Was Supposed to be a Cliffhanger &Then We Got Cancelled and Now They’re All Dead I Guess.
The That Actor Was a Prick So We Offed His Character and Didn’t Care How We Did It.
The Oh, I Realized I Didn’t Need That Character So Gave Them a Perfunctory Death.
But I think I’ve covered the major and better ways to handle offing a character.
So yeah. Sometimes characters need killing. Just remember, you need to make their deaths satisfying in terms of plot, character, and/or theme or you risk losing your audience.
There are no small deaths. Every character is some off-screen mother’s child. Make it count. Make it matter. Make it worth the pages/screen time.
But think about your favorite movies/books/tv show. I bet they all had memorable deaths. I bet you cried. ADMIT IT, YOU CRIED! Look, I cried when Mike died in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I CRY EVERY TIME I READ IT.
(Mike = War is Hell/Sidekick Sacrifice/Fog of War)
Character Death is one of the most powerful tools in a writer's arsenal. Like all powerful tools, it should be used sparingly, thoughtfully, and for maximum impact. Give them the deaths they deserve!
And with that, I officially pronounce this spew dead. But don't feel bad. This spew will always be with us.
/endspew.
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Hi! Sorry if it was asked before, but could you please explain how werewolf hierarchy works? I think that I kind if understand that alphas are on the very top like chieftains of a tribe, what about the rest? Who is next? What is delta? Is omega the lowest ranking member? And what do packmates do according to their ranks? Especially deltas. Finally, ate there any other designation except for alpha, beta, delta and omega? And what do they represent?
Sorry for bombarding you with questions, I just got very curious about the werewolf lore, especially yours because each author writes werewolves differently.
Hello, dear anon! I loved receiving this many lore questions <3 let's start from the beginning
Your comparison to a tribe is completely on point because packs were born in ancient times as sort of tribes and they have kept some of the structures and rituals to this day. There isn't a proper hierarchy, though. Just, everyone has its place and specific role.
There is only a sort of line of command when hunts are concerned, with alphas at the top and omegas being the ones to either stay home or act more according to their instincts (usually, alphas don't order omegas around. They just allow them to do their thing and most importantly alphas protect the vulnerable members of their pack). So this means that there isn't a lower ranking member per se.
In the pack, there are in total five designations: alphas, betas, gammas, deltas, omegas. (There may be more werewolf designations, but I will explain them if they are relevant to the plot)
Alphas are the ones who ultimately make the decisions in the pack. Not because they are dominant, but because they are the first to put themselves in line to protect the pack, or to bear the blunt of any decision that might go badly. Alphas are built to be resistant and deadly. Also to feel incredibly protective and territorial of their pack.
Betas follow alphas in hunts, and generally they are built for teamwork - in contrast with other roles who work better alone. Betas are intelligent and sensitive to the mood of the pack, they are quick to react and follow directions. They, too are quite protective, but not as territorial as alphas.
Gammas are the ones who guard the territory. Or scout the land. They are incredibly silent, and the fastest type of were (if you don't count omegas when they are feral). They generally work well with betas, and are in tune with other werewolves, responding to directions as the others decide. They can, though, disobey and fight if they don't feel like their orders are fair.
Deltas are the hard working wolves of the pack. Physically built for resistance and stamina, they aren't fast or agile. Instead, deltas usually help gammas guard the pack territory and rarely leave it (Indigo and Raine, the two deltas, weren't with Bela at the djinn lair). They experience strong urges to provide for the pack, and to protect it (they can be even quite possessive of the pack).
Omegas are, at the same time, the strongest designation and the most vulnerable. Strong because they are built to kill anyone that might threaten the pups/injured pack members - including strong supernaturals or even other werewolves. Vulnerable because omegas have a docile nature and can be exploited by supernaturals who are aware of this. Omegas are rarely aggressive, but they can go feral if their pack is gravely threatened.
In a way, omegas are kept in high regard by the pack. They are looked after and respected (in good packs) for their role.
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