#it scratches the parts of my brain that likes to piece together stories and worldbuilding | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

minidigidestined · 4 years

Text

Coiled Hope Part 1

This is mostly just worldbuilding and first-meeting explanation kinda-sorta-diary-style-ish thing for my very self indulgent fair folk/magical creature story featuring my darling and I’s nagasonas. I was thinking of rewriting it since it’s kinda blocky, but I like this diary first person pov for my planning and plain ol blurb stage. I’m excited to do more with this and other ideas, vore and otherwise–but first I’m excited to figure out the magic system and history of this world.

Anywho, a sand boa is brought to a remote mountain forest after keeping fair folk in captivity or servitude has been outlawed, whisking her away from a contented life with her human master. The small, pampered naga reminisces on life as she tries to figure out what to do next, and is shocked when she comes face to face with a wild fair folk–a massive rainbow boa many times her size.

I huddled, cold and silent, within the gnarled roots of an old willow. The ground was still damp with yesterday’s rain and the croaking of toads rung out like some sort of haunting choir–the realization that I had never been so alone seemed to smash into me face first. Like a sack of bricks.

Just yesterday, life was perfect. My Master had been stern, but she was kind. She adopted me from a lab study when I was still a juvenile–when the laws restricting the lab testing of fair folk became illegal–and had nurtured me in her home ever since.

I had become accustomed to human food, neverending warmth, and plenty of nice plants, sand and shredded bark to burrow through and had not wanted for anything since my youth in the labs. I had an entire room to myself in her home, and though I was never allowed out, I knew to be grateful to have come into the possession of such a wealthy and caring woman. I never asked many questions, but there wasn’t much I wanted to know anyways. I was just happy to be safe and content.

…Perhaps I was isolated too, but I certainly didn’t mind–nagas, after all, are solitary in nature, and so long as I had good food, a few books and a constant hot spot? Bliss.

Now that was all over though. Keeping the fair folk as pets or slaves was outlawed mere days ago, and my kind were granted citizenship in the human world–both captive and wild roaming “renegade” folk alike.

Thinking of my days back at the lab made me glad to have my “humanity” realized for sure, but… I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy being with my Master. Even if other humans may have deemed me a mere pet, she always treated me like something more, something precious and worth protecting. She gave me humanity after a childhood of being nothing more than a beast, desperate to survive test after grueling test.

A wash of cold dread came over me in a wave, a lump forming in my throat. I clenched my jaw and desperately willed the old memories away, scratching at the skin of my arms anxiously with my stubby claws. Not here, not now… I couldn’t afford a meltdown, especially since I wasn’t sure if the tranquilizer the FFC–Fair Folk Control–officers had used on my last fit in the van would still affect me if my blood pressure rose or if adrenaline started to flow. I imagined the drug turning my blood syrupy and blanketing my brain, hissing through my teeth and forcibly controlling my breaths. Think of Master. She was always so sad when you got like this.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss her silent appraisal and warm smile with all my broken heart, for sure. It was certainly better than this miserable mountain forest those FFC officers dumped me in after seizing me from my master, whisking me far away from human civilization. It was starting to sound a lot more like segregation than freedom the more I thought about it… I don’t think they even realized this was nowhere near my “natural environment”. Citizenship my tail.

For a small-sized sand boa like me, the damp air seemed to chill with a vengeance. I anxiously drew my chubby fingers over the nubby end if my tail, a nervous habit I formed in the labs. I distantly remembered both my master and scientists discussing portals to the Other–my birthright as fair folk, but a world I had never seen since being bred on Earth. Was that an option for me now?

My stomach began to knot painfully during my pondering, and I nearly keened with distress from imagining my master serving me my favorite dumpling soup in my flower bowl with the chipped paint.

No more dumplings. No more bowls. No more Master.

My senses seemed to heighten with my sharpening hunger, my tongue flicking out to scent the air. As much as the idea distressed me, I could smell the breathing creatures around me and knew that my wild kin would already be hunting… But I had only ever fed on pellets or human food, and though the idea of a full belly sounded nice, a belly full of cold, wriggling toads did not.

Miserable, I forced myself to slither from the roots. Maybe there would be another fair folk in these woods–if Master had thought so highly of my kind, then surely they would be willing to band together? Perhaps we could even talk about how much we loved our Masters together! Maybe we could find our way back. Maybe I could even learn more about the Other! For the first time since being taken away, I let myself begin to hope.

I winced at the mud caking on the pearly white underbelly of my tail and made a note to take a bath–or at least find a lake. I slithered along, clutching the hem of my baby pink dress tightly, my nerves utterly shot. I had always loved my adventure books, but going on an adventure myself? Not as exciting as I had dreamed.

I lost myself in the twisting anxiety and hope of my thoughts, barely registering twigs snapping loudly beneath the bulk of my tail or sharp stones scraping against my scales. I twisted the fabric of my dress thoughtfully over my knuckles, contemplating the fact that this was the last piece of my Master I would ever have, hand sewn and worn thin with love.I stopped, forcing myself to breathe evenly again.

I looked down into a muddy puddle, smiling sadly at my full-moon face. Even in my despair my eyes twinkled a soft pink, my round cheeks flushed and tangled brown curls tied to the side of my head, spilling over and hiding one of my pointed ears. I flex my tail and lift upwards a little to inspect my dress, pulling off stray leaves and admiring the roundness of my fat frame, all soft without an edge in sight.

My hips slipped seamlessly into a serpentine tail, in particular, the sausage-like shape of a sand boa. My scales are patterned pale brown and white with speckles of soft pink, the trio of colors almost like delicately flicked paint splatters. Master always told me I had the look of sweetness, if not a bit ditzy–but she always said it with a smile.

I tighten the band holding my curls together, ensuring the volume of the small poof at the crown of my head. I’m so utterly focused on my simple task that I almost blacked out in pure fear when another face appeared next to mine in the muddy pool.

I scramble forward with a cry and twist around, thrusting my hands out in a questionable showcase of self defense. I slap against something soft but firm–the slight yield of the intruder’s belly?–and jerk my hands back with a squeak as I look up to face the forest-dweller.

And up, and up, and up…

The creature before me is looming and massive, but sleek at the same time. I realize with a start that he’s a naga like me, but that seemed to be where the similarities end. Whereas my humanoid half is smaller than the average human, he was much, much bigger. His tail, though thin like the rest of him, is coiled with lean muscle and a deep red color like an apple, a few ebony markings ringing his spine.

“Hey, sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.” His smile was easy and genuine, but fear still made my heart race. “Are you okay?”

He was thin, a deep red cape draped across his shoulders and trailing the ground, its edges dirty and worn. Red scales speckled up his hips, torso and chest like freckles, blending in with the fuzz on his belly. His fingers were tipped by deadly sharp claws, his earthy brown hair long and messy. He looked equal parts ridiculous and regal, wild and in control.

I gaped like a fish out of water, pressing a hand to my chest when the clouds shifted and light came pouring over us… The massive naga seemed to suddenly swim with colors, his tail glittering and iridescent. I locked eyes with him and felt myself growing lost in the golden pools. “What are you?” My voice was a breath. Even in the labs, I had never seen another fair folk who…who shined. Not like this.

He smiled gently, opening his mouth to speak when a low grumble, slipping into a sharp growl, interrupted him. “Sorry, I’m starving,” He explained sheepishly, his long fangs glinting.

A chill ran down my back when I remembered the huge pythons back at the lab at feeding time, how they’d swallow human or fair folk prisoners whole since they couldn’t subsist off of engineered pellets alone. This guy definitely looked like a snake that would choose a whole person over a bowl of soup for a meal–but I wasn’t about to stick around and find out, pretty as his tail was.

It was as if my flight response finally kicked in as I whipped around to flee, but I was quickly halted by a glittering wall of scale and muscle. White noise filled my brain, my vision, my entire being.

Master… I thought. Please help me. Please save me again. I pressed the heel of my hands into my eyes, both trying to stop the tears and deluding myself into thinking I could hide.

“Yo, wait! You don’t wanna run that way. There’s some big gators there, they’d have you for a snack. You aren’t from here, are you?”

I still didn’t turn to look at him, but the naga’s voice held both concern and a trickle of amusement. He… he didn’t seem like a predator…

I tried to steady the stream of tears, turning to face him once more. “No, I’m not.”

His eyes widened at the glimmer of tears on my cheeks. “Hey, what’s wrong? You’re okay here, I promise. It’s okay.”

And before I knew it, it all came pouring out–both the unrelenting tears and my story. The huge naga listened intently, his lips pursed into a line of concern and his golden eyes focused right on me. I felt embarrassed by his rapt attention, but at the same time…seen. Really, truly Seen.

“I’m really sorry.” The larger naga reached down, his huge hand hovering inches above my plump little arm. “Is it okay if I touch you?”

I stared up at him with bleary eyes. “I’m so sorry. That all just burst out and I couldn’t stop and I just… You don’t have to comfort me.” I paused, heart twisting with a cocktail of shame and sweetness. “But uh…you can. Thank you. For being here. You don’t even know me and you’re…”

His hand was cool and firm, the skin rough. He gently stroked my arm with the pad of his thumb, his eyes looking far away. “You don’t need to apologize. Humans do bad things. They make bad choices, and then good people are left to pick up the pieces.”

His attention snapped back, his lazy smile returning as if he had never frowned in his life. “That’s why the forest is better, especially up on a mountain like this. I’m glad your…caretaker was good, but I promise a friend is even better.” The world ‘caretaker’s rolled off his tongue like a poison. Odd.

I couldn’t stop the rush of heat to my cheeks. “Thank you… Who are you, actually? I’ve dished out my whole life story and I don’t even know your name!” Now that my meltdown and blubbering had faded, I felt as if I could curl up into a ball and roll right away into nothing.

“Spectrum Maximus.” He grinned at my cocked eyebrow, flicking his lengthy tail to show off its iridescence. “I chose it myself! Now, who’re you?”

“You can do that?” I asked shyly, giggling at the name. “Well, in the study labs I was 42… My Master liked to call me Clover.”

Spectrum’s eyes fluttered with mischief. “I guess it’s appropriate, since it’s good luck that I found you here, but it sucks you never got a say. Who do you want to be?”

I couldn’t halt the flustered blush spreading across my face, though I couldn’t understand why. Who…did I want to be?

I looked downward, fiddling with the hem of my dress. I thought of every book, play and poem I had ever read, every bird and bug at the window, every season and holiday. Names and words flashed through my head, but still I came up blank. What in the world is a name? I never cared that Master called me Clover, but it didn’t feel like…

Home.

Maybe that’s what a name was–home. I thought of soft evenings in my room, Master smiling as she set down a bowl of homemade soup or curry or pasta on my desk and flipping open my favorite book. I thought of curling up next to her legs to eat, her slender fingers playing through my curls as she read to me. I thought of her teaching me how to read, how to write, how to sing along to a melody… I thought of one of our favorite treats to share together beneath my heat lamps, hot cocoa with peppermint chips and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Cinnamon. Warm, cozy and inviting.

“I’m Cinnamon.” I felt a warmth spread through my chest. Maybe those days were gone, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t carry them with me. That didn’t mean I couldn’t define who I was today. Who I wanted to be today.

“Cinnamon,” He repeated, speaking my new name as if it were something holy and special. “I think it suits you.” I felt a different kind of warmth surge through my cold blood at the way the corners of his mouth dimpled.

“Please, you barely even know me! You’ve just seen me a blubbering mess.”

“Well if that’s your worst, you must be pretty great,” He grinned, eyes twinkling with mirth. “I really hope you never see me cry. It’s about as gross and snotty as a snake can get.” His stomach snarled pitifully once more and he slapped it, brow quirking. “Shut up, you! You’re scaring our new friend!”

I winced. “Oh… You noticed?” At the rate my blush was growing, I might’ve well have been a rosy boa!

“You gasping in fear and trying to run away right into a bog? Yeah. It’s fine though, I usually have that affect on ladies.”

I rolled my eyes, unable to stop the smile bowing my own lips now. “So… You don’t y'know…eat people?”

“I’m not going to eat you if that’s what you’re asking. I am hungry though–I can take you back to my cave if you’d like. I cook a mean stew.”

“I could actually cook for you if you’d like. My Master taught me a few things for fun. It’s the least I can do.”

Spectrum smiled, his eyes the color of honey dripping from the comb and just as warm. “If it’ll get you to stop thanking me over and over when I’ve literally done nothing but sit here? Sure. Plus the mean is literal. I’m a really bad cook, so maybe it’s better if the homebody cooks something instead of the weird forest hermit.”

I couldn’t help but smile back even wider–the man’s mirth was positively infectious. “Well, you did keep me from being eaten by a gator.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” He slithered around me, coils whispering across the ground. How was such a massive creature so silent–if not in voice, then in movement? “Sometimes they like to visit my cave.”

I scrunched up my nose and flicked my tongue out instinctively as he passed. He smelled wild–dirt, sweat and trees. So different from my old homes, but welcome all the same. Maybe this wouldn’t be the end of the world after all.

And so, I followed him.

#g/t #giant/tiny #implied vore #extreme cuddling #gianttiny #mini giant #naga #my writing

30 notes · View notes

avelera · 5 years

Text

Lessons for (prose) writers from the McElroy’s “The Adventure Zone” -

So I just finished listening to the “TAZ” podcast Balance Arc and I’m not the first person to observe that it’s wonderful, transcendent, hilarious, heartbreaking, etc etc. But I also found the podcast to have some great lessons for prose authors.

- I should start this by saying that in general, translating your tabletop RPG campaign into prose and doing it well is extremely hard to do. In fact, it’s probably much easier to just start from scratch. So I’m not advocating taking TAZ as an example of how to start your novel, and here’s why: the moments that felt powerful to you and your gaming group generally don’t translate well because they tend to be 1) deeply personal 2) deeply situational 3) relying on tools like tone of voice and comedic timing which are not as available in prose and 4) structured differently from prose stories in terms of set up, story beats, etc. I certainly recommend that you steal wildly from your campaign, if that’s a story you want to tell! But direct translation?? Hooo boy, best of luck with that!)

- As I stated elsewhere in my essay about why “My Hero Academia” does an excellent job with its set up, Griffin as a great DM does an excellent job with matching the plot, setting, and overall story to the characters.

- The lesson for writers that I want to address has to do with some writers’ difficulty with how to link together 1) characters 2) situations 3) settings and/or 4) stories/plots that just refuse to cooperate with one another and what “TAZ” and Griffin’s DMing can teach us with regards to addressing those issues. I should add I do not speak as someone who has figured this all out herself, but rather as someone who appreciates Griffin’s work in this regard.

- To dive right in, Griffin is extremely good at matching and intertwining the story to the characters.

- One problem I often see authors struggling with, especially those who have grand notions of writing a fantasy epic with a ton of worldbuilding, is what to do when you’ve got all these separate pieces you’ve come up with that just refuse to go together.

- In this, we can learn from DMs like Griffin. Certainly we’ve all seen cruddy DMs who railroad their players into the situation they’ve planned in advance, but a good DM adjusts to the situation presented by the players.

- Where a prose writer differs is that we control all elements. It can be a lonely task in some ways, and one of the dangers is it can lead to predictability. We often have a sense that the story “should go” a certain way, but that way is often the most cliche and predictable way. The reason our brains tell us it “feels” right is because we’ve seen that exact story a thousand times before.

- One of the strengths of tabletop RPGs and other collaborative methods of storytelling is there’s a chaos factor. Maybe the DM, or the writer with their characters, want you to talk to the spooky looking ranger in the corner ominously smoking his pipe, but the players, and frankly any sensible person in that situation, would probably rather talk to someone who looks a bit more friendly, like the bartender. This appeal to common sense, humor, and genre-savviness can of course threaten to stall out a story, but it could also lead to a much more interesting one where the DM must think fast to combine the campaign they already planned with the actions of the player. Maybe instead of going on a quest with a spooky ranger, the friendly-looking bartender they talk to instead actually is a spooky ranger in disguise, combining the two characters into one that may in the end turn out to be much more interesting!

- So if you have a situation where, for example, you have main characters who just refuse to link up ( a problem reported by a commenter on one of my other posts), perhaps the problem is that you’re not listening to your characters and finding a story that best adapts to them the way that a good DM would.

- But, unlike a DM, you don’t always have to give the characters the right-of-way! It could be that your setting is the strength and so your characters need to change to better match the world you’ve built. For example, if your heroes are too headstrong to meet up with one another and refuse to trust each other when they need to in order to advance your plot, perhaps you can adjust it so they’re all already part of the same family or organization and have been working together for years! They already trust each other and are on the same page, thus skipping the need to show them all meeting up so you can better dive into your plot. They are your characters. Nothing is set in stone.

- To go back to The Adventure Zone, let’s look at Amnesty. Certainly Griffin put a lot of work into his setting of urban fantasy town Kepler, West Virginia. But likewise, Justin, Travis, and Clint matched their characters well to the setting, by having Duck be a forest ranger, by having Clint’s character run a shop about cryptids in a setting that’s about cryptids. The least matched character to the story is probably Aubrey, she needed to be brought into the story to a larger extent, but Griffin clearly adjusted the story to take a magic user into account and Travis did an excellent job matching Aubrey’s motivations to move the story along instead of hold it back. As authors, we’re often alone in playing both parts but we can learn from the interplay, flexibility, and back and forth needed so that the characters, themes, story, driving action, Big Bad guy, etc etc etc all link up to create a strong central-through line around which the story can coalesce.

#taz #maggie rambles #writing #writing advice #taz amnesty #used as an example

39 notes · View notes

threewaysdivided · 3 years

Note

Thanks for the advice! I've found that, when I write, it's an eclectic mix of plan-n-pants. Planning in one direction, pantsing in the important (actual story) direction. The planning inevitably ends up going into the world building - to the point where I found myself studying water tables to make sure that a river could conceivably exist in a location, just so a piece of planned dialogue was accurate. Definitely going to step back, play with your method, and see what sticks. -cont-

-cont- My characters too often start as cameras with pre-planned voice lines. Hence why they tend to "escape" when I actually sit down to write - their personalities and motivations evolve on the fly, and I realize mid-prose that the vague direction I pointed them in is not, in fact, conducive to their development. I'm essentially playing DnD with myself, and have probably gotten too comfortable with that method. Day job willing, I can't wait to figure out what story I'm trying to tell. Thanks!

(Following on from this ask.)

That's an interesting approach!

If you're looking for more detailed advice on crafting original characters and worlds (either because you're writing an original story, or an AU/ OC-heavy fanfic) you'd probably be better off getting advice from some of the excellent writblr blogs on here or maybe checking out youtube channels like Hello Future Me and Overly Sarcastic Productions. A big part of why I write fanfic is that I'm just... not very good at from-scratch character and world-building, and fanfic lets me springboard over that into telling stories with an existing world and cast. Usually when I do come up with a semi-original setting or character it's to serve a specific story purpose, and given my approach to story-crafting I'd probably need to have a particular story in mind to tell so I could build a world and characters that served it.

That being said, though, it's totally okay if you don't know what your story is going to be about or who your characters are in the first draft.

My personal approach comes from a combination of hard-core plannerism and the fact that one of the main ways I tend to engage with and enjoy media is through analysis. I like texts that are able to be engaged with beyond a surface level, I enjoy asking questions, trying to fit the details of plot/ character/ worldbuilding/ foreshadowing that are given together to figure out where the story might be going, I like thinking about what a story might be trying to say in terms of theme/message/ideas and the things it might actually end up saying (possibly even by accident). So when I sit down to craft a longer story at least for an audience, my brain is full of self-indulgent nonsense that will never be let free I tend to ask those questions early on; because they interest me and because I find I get personally frustrated with stories that don't give satisfying answers relative to the time investment they require from the audience. And also because I'm actually pretty self-critical and have a decent amount of performance anxiety so I like to feel somewhat certain that my story has at least some kind of point or something meaningful to add before launching into that kind of commitment.

But the thing is... that's just my personal approach based on my personal priorities and preferences as both a reader and a fanwriter. It's certainly not the only approach to story-telling and absolutely not the only "correct" or valid one. Like I said in the previous ask, it's a subjective difference in focus depending on what things you like to tackle at the pre-writing, writing and editing/revision stages.

It's totally okay if you want to start by just writing things that you find emotionally resonant or interesting or fun, and without a fixed idea of who your characters and world are. It's almost always easier to work on refining something than to work with a blank page. It's okay if you want to find the story in the process of writing it; to look back, figure out who your characters have evolved into and any recurring ideas/themes that have floated to the surface, and then write a second or third or fourth draft to capture that core once you've worked out what it is. It's okay to go back and make major character, world, thematic, structural and any other narrative changes between drafts.

In fact one of my favourite books (and one that I've used as stylistic inspiration for parts of YJ:DW) is written by an author who's openly talked about pantsing big chunks of his novels - some of my favourite (and narratively important) scenes and characters either did not exist or were practically unrecognisable in his initial draft. It's one of the reasons why I'm okay with him taking decades-long hiatuses between books; those kind of major structural overhauls and rewrites take time, but they work for his writing style and I'd rather have something good eventually than something okay soon.

As for the research thing, I totally understand going down completely niche rabbit holes as part of the process. Work smart not hard; there's no reason why you shouldn't springboard off real life information/ history/ ideas from existing stories to help build yours. (Also, if you're having trouble with your characters, maybe consider the world and cultural attitudes/values of the places they were raised in/ are currently staying and how they relate to/feel about them - it could be a good starting point).

When it comes to YJ:DW, some of the buckwild things I've found myself researching include:

Obscure and minor DC comics villains

Layout and location of a real-life American military base

Experimental osteoporosis treatments

Haunted and abandoned buildings in and around Washington DC

Astrological charts for the viewing of planets in 2011

Geography of North Korea

Body language of Gorillas

So yeah... go nuts, have fun, figure out what works for you.

Good luck!

#I am probably on at least one watch list at this point #writing #story-crafting #Planner and pantser #do what works for you #It's kind of funny #I am so much of an architect type writer #that when I do personality tests (which yes I know are a load of old bolloxs in terms of actual psychology)#I almost always fall into the category literally subtitled 'The Architect'#anonymous #3WD Answers

4 notes · View notes