#WordWeavers 2404.30 — Does your MC have any pets? If so, what are they?
/Pets/ is a bad word for Wintereyes. It's the word the very irritating Thaumaturgy Dean uses whenever one of her wolf family makes themself seen on campus, as in, "They're frightening the other students!" She's human, but doesn't understand the term (upbringing). To her they're beasts that humans keep around that are neither food nor work for them, which makes them subject to unpredictable human whim. She "befriends" beasts, but that's a totally different thing...
Wintereyes has little experience beyond the most basic of basics, though she's fairly expert with footwear, having built her own. She really wants to get it right so she can ensure she can fade into the background and not be noticed—but failed big time her first day in the Townships. She's shy. Being shy doesn't mean she doesn't want to communicate; it doesn't help that she fears babbling in this aspect of human language. There's so much to learn! In her drawing class, she's concentrating on fashion though it seems like an advanced language course at the moment!
#WordWeavers 2404.29 — Who's feeling shame in your story? Is it justified?
/It's'a [#brainfog#fibromyalgia day, but I'm gonna write this to get something out. Hoping it's coherent. —RS/]
This question made me think hard for quite awhile until I—like an artist or a photographer deciphering how shadow defines volume and dimension—saw /negative space/ in a story... where something wasn't. Emptiness.
Wintereyes /doesn't/ feel #shame, and I'm realizing this is an #emotion with which I can make a #feminist point in my story. Whilst shame is IMHO used more often to control women than it is men, it is both incidious and /learned./ Shame is a combination of built-in emotions programmed into a person to make a person self-punish for "wrong" behavior even if it's secret; it's related to, but not the same as guilt.
Wintereyes was raised by wolves, but not until she was 7 when her "gift" caused her to seek a second set of parents. Her early childhood will require investigation in another story, but I'm pretty sure her human parents didn't teach her the emotion; it's not that she forgot. Forced to live again amongst humans over a decade later, to become more human, people's behavior baffles her. Late in the story, when she's asked to disrobe by stylist at a modeling shoot, and does without a thought, the stylist observes, "You don't feel shame, do you?" This is where Wintereyes will go off like a firecracker, and it should be very interesting.
The stylist may actually feel ashamed...
The author is [#actuallyautistic and retains copyright (c)2024 R..S.]
This comic should amuse #writers. I did some research on the #etymology of the cited #homonyms and wrote this to my lit friend. My thoughts, anyway, which may amuse ewe:
It is obvious from an orthographic perspective that many sounds represented by groups of letters in English ought be pronounced differently and emphasized, putting aside that Germanic and French derivatives are also different. Problem is that human hearing and blurring of sounds due to regional accents mean we do a lot of error checking so accurate sounds don't always matter. As such, we have homonyms which shouldn't logically exist because we learn language by hearing not reading. But humans aren't logical (and are lazy speakers) and language is living. Scent = sss sen t. Sense = sen sss with a weak seh at the end. Scent without emphasis on the introductory s sound, sent, and cent are homonyms. Scent is from the French and cent from the German. Sent is the past tense of send so doesn't count.
#PennedPossibilities 300 — How does your MC or SC react to change? Do they struggle to adjust or go with the flow?
Like her reactions to stress (299), my MC leans in. She was raised to be responsible, and if the change is posed as helping or saving people, or helping the MC reach goals she has or would find desireable, she'll often agree. (This is how she ran away from home to learn magic, to train to be a prizefighter, and later become a bodyguard for the mob.) She hates she does this, though, and change often makes her life difficult. Let's say that good reactions to stress and dealing well with change aren't necessarily a good thing!
How many times now has she nearly died? As of the current novel in serialization?
Stress is almost always due to problem she hasn't solved or a situation she isn't in control of. Whereas running away was a solution she's employed a few times, it was to take control of her life again not giving up. She does tend to become tense and irritable, visibly worrying. Since she discovered her love of physicality, having discovered she likes to fight despite the pain, and that training herself makes her better than just physically, if she can't find her solution, she'll hit the heavy bag and the speed bag. Better, if she can find someone who's a better fighter than her, she'll fight until she learns something. Sparring with equals or teaching makes her feel like she's trying to procrastinate. In tense situations, she may end up bullying to see if she can shake alternative solutions out of subordinates or gatekeepers. Lastly, she'll act out doing things that are clearly not solutions hoping that by trying, she'll blunder into something effective, or someone will find it to get her to stop.
In a sense, stress makes her keener. That said, she doesn't like it. Her ideal life would be as an ascetic, practicing her miracles and martial arts, studying new ones, and reading a lot. Oddly, she doesn't think of relaxing with a good book to clear her mind. Maybe I'll have her discover that one day.
Now that's she's discovered male companionship, I may have her think of that as a stress reliever, but that'll be in sequels.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 8 Nbr 29 — Do you share your name with other writers?
Now, in publications or on the Internet, no. People do call me R.S. I first used this pen name when I went to Clarion. I used it to obfuscate my gender in email before the workshop for reasons of what I write. The gender of the author adds subtext to gender fiction. Statistically, most people guess wrong. In person, and when money is involved, it's inescapable and I share my name. I use a different name in photography and a different ungendered pen name when writing non-speculative fiction. Who I am isn't hidden, but I'd ask you not to investigate or reveal it for the reasons stated above.
Seen elsewhere: name 10 authors of whose books you've read more than 5:
Elizabeth Moon >5
Margaret Atwood =5
Stephen King >5
Dean Koontz >5
Jennifer Roberson >5
Anne Rice >5
CS Lewis >5
Octavia Butler =5
Susan Cooper =5
JRR Tolkien >5
Thank you @courtcan, I like reading these lists. My five or more books/or stories read by #author list. This isn't all of them; I haven't got to the attic bookcase, yet. A pattern emerged. Can you see it?
Lissanne Norman
Patricia Briggs
Clare Bell
CJ Cherryh
Andre Norton
Lois McMaster Bujold
Joan D Vinge
Connie Willis
Anne McCaffrey
Tamora Pierce
Nancy Kress
Nicola Griffith
Barb Hendee
Julie Kenner
Diana Rowland
Agatha Christie
Phyllis A Whitney
Danielle Steele
I hope everyone takes this #challenge to write up their list, too.
#WordWeavers 2404.28 — Do you have an irrepressibly good-humoured character? How do others react to them?
Not entirely. The devil-girl is autistic to start with, and whilst she was well trained to host major parties and lead people, dealing with people isn't her favorite thing to do. In one story, she meets a very cheerful fellow she has no real choice but to deal with. He was mid-level gangster (and a smooth operator) who was a gatekeeper to her becoming a transporter. She didn't kill him, though she wondered if she might. An irrepressibly good-humored person quickly gets on her nerves because she can't fathom what makes such a person tick, or properly predict how they'll behave.
Yes. My MC. One of the times she nearly died, her opponent threw her into a book case, shattering the bones in her lower leg and foot. It was so bad, they were replaced—but damaged nerves couldn't be replaced. Parts remain numb. She was told that though she might walk again, not to expect much more. She didn't accept this. As a former championship prizefighter and a now injured bodyguard, she was no stranger to intense training. She relearned walking, running, and her martial arts.
It took the better part of a year for her to feel she was back in fighting trim. (She's obsessive about being able to protect herself.) That doesn't mean she isn't handicapped, however. She must constantly pay attention lest her leg and foot do something she doesn't expect: Her foot suddenly drags. It trips her up.
She doesn't have a high degree of tolerance for those that claim a disability as an excuse that she judges isn't trying. This creates a major conflict when she excoriates an officer, then later not understanding her actual disability (it was hidden), becomes convinced she caused the injury through her selfish pride and lack of empathy.
#WordWeavers 2404.27 — Who's blaming who in your story?
The MC blames herself. She either didn't solve the problem, misjudged her superior, didn't delegate properly, or taught others inadequately. She's good at getting rid of incompetents, which is anyone who repeats the same mistake twice. In the big picture, she does blame the main antagonist for making her life intolerable and causing her to run away from home. (This is not a relative.) She owns running away as her choice, however, including that she got savaged because she was naïve and took too many chances as a result. She looks back at her mistakes only to ensure that the next time it's a new mistake.
This resilience and self-reliance doesn't make her Buddha-like. She deals with people mechanically though efficiently. She doesn't let people into the shell this allows her to make because she doesn't trust easily.
Even in our litigious world, changing over 10% of an idea makes it derivative, though how would we quantify it for a story? Really, there aren't any unique ideas, only our approach to the idea as well as our characters and world building that make our writing unique in fiction. In non-fiction, some very high-profile people have recently been caught copying passages (or more likely having copied for them) and passing off as their own ideas. With people not learning enough to cross-check, and especially now with the advent of AI that plagiarizes by design, I expect a lot more people are going to find themselves outed as stupid or ignorant.
Clichés are a minefield. Someone coined them. Some of them are actually quotes, and if you happen to remember one and write it down perfectly, someone could point to you and say the p-word. I have inadvertently done this, and I hope I've caught all my instances during revision. If not, it's been /much ado about nothing./