Parthia/Ta'regi was freaking out in the #Tavernn this morning while I was finishing up writing #TCotWS
She was having an anxiety attack that she'd disappear once I finished writing down her story.
She's still there...
She's calmed down a good bit.
I had to remind her I've only painted /one/ of her stories, and I would be dishonouring her if I only wrote about her trauma.
I want to celebrate the beauty of her and Pintac's love.
And I wouldn't let her fad away even if TCotWS was to be the only story I write down.
There's an acrid smell that is significant.
The ritual that transformed Parthia produces an acrid scent.
The creature from the previous experiment smells of this constantly because it is a corruption/stagnation of nature, where as Parthia/Ta'regi became hyper-natural creature so she only briefly smelled of it /during/ the ritual.
She ends up using the smell to tack and run down the creature.
#WordWeavers#Writing 24-03-31 For a giveaway, what swag would you love to offer with your book?
This took me a long moment of thinking.
Like way way more than I think others probably had to do.
First thought was a limited run of a functional replica of Pintac's arrow & sickle brooch.
But more practical and just as heavy emotional weight would be a durable bookmark with the phonetic lyrics for Bayu-Bayushki-Bayu on one side and a translation on the other.
Less practical, two mini posters, one depicting Parthia & Pintac napping in their meadow,
the other depicting the somber moment when Parthia is looking at herself in a mirror post transformation, with the William Blake poem "The Tyger" written/integrated along one side, as there is a blink-and-you-miss-it reference to Blake's poem in that scene
#WroughtWorlds : Characters : Music :
Do you have theme songs for characters, or places, in mind when writing?
More frequently these days.
#TaRegi has a playlist that's 90% set, but may end up with additional tracks as I round out Cantata Of The Wild Soul.
Amara ( #Dulcamara ) has a playlist that's set. Amara canonically sings sea shanties including a slightly different version of Sleeping In The Cold Below,
The Island of Myrkur from Wytch-Fork, sounds like Yulunga (Spirit Dance) by Dead Can Dance. It's a profoundly spiritual place, and where witches drift to when they start hearing The Song of Wyytra.
#WordWeavers 2024-01-20 What things that others enjoy would be tedious for your MC?
Limited social parties in the vein of office parties. #TaRegi is all in on communal festivals such as Harvest of Solstice celebrations. But things like Tea+Gossip are anathema. She grew up in a village that had an ethos of "We live together, we celebrate each other" so exclusionary functions/parties are a bit "Why in the hells are you doing this?" for her.
Side bar:
At first blush that mentality might seem to conflict with her decision to self-exile after her ordeal. But that choice came from an acute awareness that she'd become too monstrous + /other/ to just resume what was left of her life in the village.
And in a very rare instance with people I meet at the #Tavernn I know something that Ta'regi doesn't.
Since the event where Parthia took up the name Ta'regi and exiled herself, her friend Kairii put up a memorial, and the stories about a "ta'regi" being a monster lurking in the woods that were used by parents to scare/teach their kids not be out after dark, those stories have turned into stories about "The Ta'regi". A guardian of the woods that protects the village.
I've tried to tell her this, but she's stubborn and won't listen. Which I don't fault her for since hwen she left, things where a hair's breadth from being pitchfork + torches like what happend with Frankenstein's creation
The Cantata of the Wild Soul is now officially my longest work at 8k words and a way to go.
Part of me yearns for the validation from being published. But I don't know if I ever will.Trad Publishing is a mess, and I don't have the energy to self publish (I don't even have the energy to keep up with the day job I'm force to work less I want to starve or go homeless)
I'm writing firstly for myself, and I don't know if there's an audience that'll say "You're seen."
#PennedPossibilities 193 — How easy is it to gain your MC or SC's trust? Once their trust is broken, how might one go about mending it?
Ta'regi : You earn her trust slowly and with deliberate purpose. If you weren't working towards her trust and she say "I trust you." that really means "I have several contingency plans." You can't break her trust if you never earned it. If you do break it, you're fucked for life. If you sufficiently screw her over, she will kill you at some point in the future. Or you will live with the knowledge that she actively stalking you, an will catch you the second your guard is dropped. Her patience and memory are on par with a Tome of Grudges.
Parthia (aka pre-Ta'regi) wasn't so guarded with her trust, but in that life she also never experienced a significant or non-understandable breach of trust.
Amara on the other hand.
She has 2 tiers of trust. There is "trust" then there is "TRUST.". If she "trusts" you, it's not 'leeway of faith', rather it's more she has you figured out, and she's 95% certain about how you'll act and react. If she says "I trust you." it means she's confident your ability or how you'll react if a situation goes off plan. You don't break this level of trust so much as she re-asses what she can expect from you.
"TRUST" takes years if not decades. Her wife, The Sisterhood, and Oma Isley+husband, are the only people she "TRUSTS".
#WordWeavers 2024-01-13
What convictions or values drive your characters?
This is an interesting one
Amara ( #Dulcamara ) has been pretty open to me about the ethos that drives her & the Solanum Sisterhood.
“Don’t kill if you can wound, don’t wound if you can subdue, don’t subdue if you can pacify, and don’t raise your hand at all until you’ve first extended it”
Ours is the law of Rekinding.
We do not make pacts of servitude, or kiss the arse of gods in expectation of favour and power.
We worship with reverence and due respect.
There is agreement, consent, and reciprocation in kind."
There are a few exceptions where Amara 'breaks code' as it were. She was badly abused as a kid, and if she sees someone hit, or else wise mistreat a kid, she will set upon the abuser with fierce vengeance.
If you hit a kid and she sees, BAM! there's a fist in your face if you're lucky, a bear biting offf your hand if you're unlucky. Amara doesn't fuck around, and she doesn't hold back.
#TaRegi Though.. That question gets tricky. I know her spiritual beliefs, and the intense affinity and connection to nature. I know she has a very strong sense of what belonging to a community and family means and the responsibility there of (which is why she makes the choice she does after battling the creature that killed her husband).
Those wheel spokes I know well, and how they keep her rolling.
But there is something else there that she doesn't talk about.
It's not something she hides out of shame.
The vibe I get when talking to her is a very staunch "This subject is not open for conversation, even in vague terms."
So I curb my curiosity, and leave that mystery alone. She'll talk /if/ she wants to.
#PennedPossibilities 188 — Is your SC one to be loyal in relationships, or are they likely to quickly move from one bond to another?
From what I've gathered listening to #TaRegi tell me her story, Pintac had that same fierce devotion. If things had been reversed, I don't doubt he would have made a similar grief wrought rash decision. Maybe he'd end up a victim of Rau's experiments like Ta'regi did, or maybe just grab every last spear and blade in the village and set ambush upon the creature to get vengeance.
Like her, he wouldn't move on, it was only her, and the hole that would be left in her absence.
#PennedPossibilities 187 How's MC or SC's relationship with nature and the natural world.
Amusingly I just touched on this in 186.
" #TaRegi and her husband Pintac are animists. Their rhythm is with nature and the environment they live and hunt in."
Nature and what they experience of it tints their thoughts and shapes their practices, mundane and spiritual.
"They bound themselves under the moon of a Spring equinox. / .... /. They then cut themselves at the base of their neck and recited “This is my life, I give of it freely to you “ then drank of each other's blood, a symbolic parallel of when a predator goes for the throat." ~notes that exists, but is not mentioned directly in The Cantata of the Wild Soul. I'd love to write about her and Pin', and their lives before everything. But that depends on if she wants to talk about it.
Even after her transformation from Parthia (human) into Ta'regi, she still sees herself as a part of nature. Possibly even more-so since she is now a hybrid or sort of cross-evolution. (in contrast to the creature that killed her husband, which is a chimeric abomination twisted and torn from any proximity to a natural existence)
#WordWeavers Jan 8: Is betrayal an element of your WIP/book
Kind of¿?
Rau Mored put on a false image as a hermit/studious recluse to deflect unwanted attention.
Parthia ( #TaRegi ) and Pintac only ever interacted with that facade, with their services as hunters being used to get fresh meat at certain times of the year. They weren't close to Rau, he was 'just a guy' on the far end of the woods.
So Rau dropping the facade and drugging Parthia's tea was less a betrayal and more of a shitty act by an opportunistic bastard viewing her as a new test subject.
#PennedPossibilities 186 — Does your MC believe in magical or cosmic forces, or are they more likely to think that their life is ultimately a matter of their own control?
Ooooh. One that I don't even have to go bother people in the #tavernn about since we've talked about it in other conversations.
#TaRegi and her husband Pintac are animists. Their rhythm is with nature and the environment they live and hunt in. They understand that the gods exist and they know the gods can influence people's lives. Their stance is to leave the gods to their affairs, and not bother them less the gods take unwanted interest in them.
Magic is the reason Ta'regi exists as she does now, and is why she no longer thinks of herself as Parthia Sreting. She doesn't consider this to be some deity's whim or "divine plan", just a result of a bastard's machinations and screwing with things they shouldn't have.
"Rivers have a natural course. Some times you can influence it's direction. You can move within and with it. You can swim against it for a time, but in the end it flows to it's due course."
~Parthia Sreting
#WroughtWorlds 2024 01-05 : World Building :
Do you have'in universe' poetry, prose, or music?
Oh absolutely.
I have a note book rife with songs, folk sayings, nursery rhymes, and etc.
Amara ( #Dulcamara ) ear-wormed me once by singing " 🎶Avrashii! Avrashii! Dance a little dance with me!🎶 "
It took a month to work out the rest of the song.
Then there's things that are a part of a story but not featured in a story. Such as the children's rhyme from #TaRegi / Parthia's village
🎶Ta-regi, ta-regi,
Lurking in the woods,
Ta-regi, ta-regi,
Sleeping in a tree,
Little kids get,
Home by dark,
Or Ta-Re-Gi,
They will see🎶
Well #TaRegi was the only one in the #tavernn for me to ask directly.
But, I won't ask her out of respect that the grief of loosing her husband periodically comes back out of the blue and just devastates her.
I don't want to accidentally set her to drowning by asking.
From the way she's talked about Pintac, and how she describe how she felt at the news of his death when she woke up from being unconscious for a month+.
I would say that she does. She might not have those words to describe it as such, but she does. You don't experience that level of despair and unmooring if you don't believe in something like soul mates.
Rook and her husband Sisa? (#siebyn)
I don't know if they ascribe to the idea of soul mates, even if they are mad lil' love birds.
I don't know them well enough to wager a guess.
Their daughter Maggie? Probably not? She's has only had 2 maybe 3 relationships.Nothing long term or serious (at least none she's spoken of)
Nimue and Veil (#531L) Hell if I know, hell if they'd tell me if I asked.
#WritersCoffeeClub 1/2: Do you have other artistic leanings? How do these affect your writing?
I sketch and draw. Frequently I sketch out apparel for the characters I chronicle such as #TaRegi and #Dulcamara
Even the icon I use for this account is for the NHP (non human person) #531L or "VEIL" as they go by
Being able to draw helps me visualize what the characters describe to me.
Ta'regi's story, Cantata of the Wild Soul, would translate well into a comic book or animated film with how she speaks and relays her story to me.