Paul And (No) Company

Worldbuilding Wednesday

Paul Writes Fanfiction: 3

This time for Ciaran! In which two of my characters meet one of his (by his request) and then stuff happens. The first paragraph is something he wrote, but it’s all me after that.

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Caia & Ilf: 17

I feel really rusty writing-wise sobs.

Despite being most likely being entirely mad, the designer of the massive room had earned a grudging sort of respect in Caia’s mind. Although it seemed similar to a prison to her, it was a painstakingly accurate one. The cobblestones that she stumbled across were suitably weathered and cracked, and she even found a few sprouts struggling to live in the cracks just during their four or five minute walk. The air smelled familiarly of the river and city life in general. There were even enough bathrooms for a block’s worth of people even though she had barely seen enough people to warrant one. It was close to being a prison, but it was also close to being part of the city.

Caia ran into Ilf when he stopped walking. It was not a particularly sudden stop, but she had been devoting so little of her attention to walking that it was a miracle that she had not simply collapsed earlier. Ilf propped her up silently, if a little reluctantly, and when she was back on her feet he turned to unlock rough metal door next to them. Despite being back on her feet, Caia needed to lean against a wall to keep her balance. It felt slimy against her bare arm, and when she glared at the stones petulantly she realized that everything seemed too dark. 

There was only enough time for her to decide that she was in an empty sewer before Ilf swung the heavy door open. It screeched loudly, the poor acoustics of the passage doing nothing positive for the jarring sound. Caia barely managed to get through the doorway, and only with the help of its frame. The room behind the door was shockingly normal. In a day full of strange things, Caia had expected yet another shock in such a well hidden place, but the only things inside the small space were a hammock and a small mountain of boxes.

“What’s this?” Asked Caia a little weakly. She desperately wanted to sleep, but her new companion was odd enough that she was having second thoughts about even coming to such a secluded place with him.

“Home,” replied Ilf. He unclasped the belt that his scabbed hung off on and leaned it against the wall next to the hammock. Without even a second glance at Caia he crawled into the hammock and passed out.

Descriptions: Lis

Laboratory information system, databases oriented towards medical laboratories. 

The cloak that Lis always wore was so terribly normal that it was almost memorable in that regard. It billowed around her as she walked, covering everything except the sickly pallor of her face. Despite how young she should have looked, everything about her seemed terribly old. Her eyes were orbs of solid gray, her white hair was pulled back in a rough knot behind her head, and to most she was the image of the poor and disabled beggar. Deep blue feathers drifted lazily out of the insides of her cloak as she wandered through busy streets and abandoned alleys alike, but she was always gone before anyone wondered where they came from. The scales that occasionally fell out were often found as well, though they were regarded with more fear and less intrigue than the feathers that became prizes along her route. The few that ever had any contact with her would all agree that they had never heard a word out of her mouth but despite whatever sickness she was afflicted with, it seemed like she never vanished from the city’s streets.

Descriptions: Mar

So I guess I’m doing that monsterchildren thing. All of these are only vaguely canon but SHRUGS FOREVER. Since Ele’s name actually meant something, take Mar to be named after “To Impair the appearance of; disfigure.”

Although he had lived in The Grand University since before the school itself even occupied the towers, Mar drew nothing but passing interest from the people around him. The tangle of brown hair that topped his head would not sit straight no matter how often the more senior children tried to brush it, but more often than not it was hidden by the hood that he insisted on wearing. Instead of just his canines, all of Mar’s teeth looked exceptionally sharp despite the misuse that he put them through. The first time they met him, people often noted that his pupils seemed too large for his eyes, and indeed on closer inspection it was clear that only a thin ring of orange surrounded them. Upon leaning in to inspect them, it was always realized that Mar’s breath smelled truly awful.

I think I might… write descriptions in a dumb way? Some feedback would be cool! P.S. He spits acid at people and can digest most things.

marowak-ghost replied to your post: Since I’ve just been talking about dumb stuff all…

How often do you end up scrapping or rejecting ideas that you were attached to, but just didn’t fit?

I scrap ideas for my main story very, very often! I’m really bad at staying on track with anything, so I have to make a very conscious effort to maintain a consistent feel for the entire thing and that usually means cutting stuff that doesn’t fit by even a little bit.

But! Most of those ideas end up in one of the things that I post on here. For example: Caia & Ilf are basically what the initial versions of Surt & Eir were before I decided that they didn’t work so well as protagonist personalities. So I guess not many actually disappear overall actually.

heysawbones replied to your post: I kind of just want someone to get mad at me for…

You know, I worry a little about that myself. But you and I are both writing fictional cultures. The only misinterpretation is likely in the mind of the reader.

Ah I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks about it though. Some people are just so sure in their own interpretations that they’re going to refuse to admit that they have it wrong and I have no idea how to deal with people like that.

I think maybe people read into stuff too much sometimes.

I kind of just want someone to get mad at me for misrepresenting a group or getting offended about something I wrote just to get it over with already. 

I feel like it’s going to happen sometime and it’s kind of worrying that it might just happen at a bad time so now would really be better.

Oops spilling my guts on tumblr.　

Paul tries again to explain the lack of romance/sex in his story

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The Story In Which Some Of My Characters Meet: 1

 “Why steal it if you’re not that hungry?” Asked Surt petulantly. He was left holding half of what had already been a stubby loaf of warm bread while Eir gnawed loudly on the other.

“I paid for it!” She objected through her full mouth. Bits of mushy bread came out with the words. Surt only shrugged. He did not think that leaving behind a few coins counted as paying, but arguing so early in the morning was exhausting. “Anyway, I am hungry,” continued Eir after swallowing a mouthful of bread.

More than anything else, Surt was surprised that Eir had not been noticed. It was early enough in the morning that the streets were still mostly empty. The biggest number of people they had passed so far was a group full of boys and girls probably a few years their senior running down the street. When no one chased down the street after them, Surt decided that his friend must have managed to pay the right amount somehow. Or perhaps the woman behind the stall was just less attentive than he had thought.

“Hey!” Someone shouted from behind them just as Surt was finished soothing his own worries. He began to turn to see who was yelling, but Eir pushed him sideways into the alley that they were in the process of passing before he could see.

“Run,” she demanded through the piece of bread still in her mouth.

As soon as he regained his balance, Surt ran down the alley as fast as he could. Some of the narrow gaps between buildings were full of trash or gated off, but the one that Eir had picked was as clean as the street it branched off from. Unfortunately for the two, it was also one of the passages that came to an abrupt dead end.

“Augh! Get out of the way,” grumbled Eir as she shoved Surt to the side again. It did not give her much more room, but she pushed past him to stare angrily at the wall that was blocking them.

“Why are we running?”

“I don’t feel like wasting time today explaining myself.” Eir tapped on one of the bricks in the middle of the obstructing surface and after a spark of blue light, the area spot that she had touched exploded inwards. Anyone standing on the other side of the wall would not be happy, but only if they were still alive.

terribullshit asked: im just going to ask you the same q because im curious: illegal technology/sciences in your world?

Explosives and generally any sort of weapon that has the potential for high collateral damage. The five schools generally agree that nothing good comes of them, and so they all actually adhere to the ban instituted by the government. Poison gas also falls into the collateral damage inducing category, as do firearms.

Besides those things, the only other field of research that is explicitly illegal is anything for the purpose of creating humans. The ban is mostly practical since the government is acutely aware of the problems they’ll start to face if the city actually fills up, but there’s a sprinkling of moral outrage too. 

Whenever I see people writing about how male or female characters should act it always really confuses me…

As long as characters act like themselves, isn’t that enough?　

Sial: -73

This does not feel very… good. Oops.

The water of the lake outside Sial’s house was near-black at night. Even during the day it was a midnight shade of blue, but when the sun sank and all that was left in the sky were the dim pinpoints of stars, it appeared as if there was a hole in the world just a few paces away from her doorstep. Sometimes Sial stood on the shore and stared at the lake when she could not sleep, and on days of prayer she was reminded that her patron slept beneath the surface, but most other times she preferred not to think about the inky waters at all.

On the nights where she did stare into the darkness instead of lying in bed Sial often found herself thinking about her parents. They were so long dead that she did not even remember their faces, but she was certain that they had told her something important about the lake. Remembering exactly what her parents had said was a different matter entirely.

The house that Sial’s grandparents had build sat just off the only strip of land that could actually be called a shore. The land rose up around the lake from either side of the sandy strip, wrapping up and around the waters to meet the mountainside behind them. Sial had always thought that it was an awfully strange place for a lake, but then again, it was an awfully strange lake.

One thing the lake did not usually do was bubble, and when she stumbled out of bed one night and found it doing so, Sial was understandably perplexed. It was not her duty to care for the lake or the area around it, but it was in her back yard practically, and it had been the same for so long that any change seemed horribly wrong. The bubbles rose to the surface one at a time, each big enough that Sial could hear their popping. She stared at them until the sun rose, and then crawled back into her bed. Nothing changed besides that for almost a week.