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Chewing on Character Motivations

Aug8

[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith was talking about character motivations, and it occurs to me that I could use some work on that topic.

Err, my writing that is, although I couldn’t exactly tell you what my motivations are, either…<.<

This is placeholder post until I get some more time to think about this.

So! Either:

* Name a character of mine, any character of mine, and I will come up with a piece of their motivation.

* Say “random,” and I will use a random date generator to pick a day & a piece from that day, and tell you something about /their/ motivation.

* Tell ME something about a character’s motivation (mine or someone else’s), and we can discuss.

Posted:
* Rozen
* Maureen, Lady Foxglove
* Rin
* Caitrin
*Morrigan

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/766913.html. You can comment here or there.

#Promptcall signal boost

Aug8

K Orion Fray has a Prompt Call open for fiction – the theme is revenge.

[personal profile] inventrix is looking for demifiction prompts for her Saeland (Invisible Dragons) setting.

And I’m looking for demifiction prompts for my Reiassan (Edally, Rin & Girey) setting

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/766565.html. You can comment here or there.

Three-Word-Wednesday: The Job

Aug6

To Three-Word-Wednesday (Today’s words are Liberated, Muddy, and Vicious). It’s been so long since I’ve done one of these, I had to go digging in my tags.. April 29, 2011!

It was dirty, it was vicious, and it was illegal, even by the lax regulations that counted as law in the wastelands. But it was necessary to get the job done, and nobody had ever said of the Rangers that they did not do the job.

They slipped in at night, like raiders, like bandits. They slid through the cracks in the outpost’s defenses, like assassins, like thieves. They took what they needed and were gone without being sighted, like ghosts in the night. When they moved on, there no proof they’d been there, except the holes in the storeroom.

It was muddy, it was nasty, and it was immoral, even by the standards of the gods who would have wastelanders and rangers as subjects. But they had to do it, and so they did it. Rangers prayed for forgiveness rather than petitioning for permission.

They collected their supplies from seventeen small outposts and villages, townships, farmsteads, way-stations and junkyards. They left no payment, note, IOU, nor apology. They left three corpses behind, none of them their own, and did not miss a single piece of their equipment.

Raiders, their victims assumed, monsters and ghosts. The rangers preferred those assumptions.

It was messy, it was close to monstrous, and it was exactly what they had been recruited to do. They had a job to do, and they had not been hired to keep their hands too clean.

They built a machine out of blood-soaked gears and mud-caked pipes. They hammered it together with stolen tools and liberated rivets; they fueled it with oil seasoned with widows’ tears and their own tired prayers.

It looked like an abomination, and there were some – even among the Rangers – that would say that it was. But it would get the job done.

They were muddy, they were vicious, and they were at the border for only one reason. The laws that the wastelands pretended to honor ignored them, and the only gods that would have them as subjects were looking the other way, lest they see something they shouldn’t.

The Rangers couldn’t care. They had a job to do, and a city to take back from the monsters. Their task was bloody and violent, dirty and nasty, but it was what they had been recruited to do, and there was no-one who would say that the Rangers did not do the job.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/765332.html. You can comment here or there.

Test Story the Second: A Promotion

Aug6

The base of this came from a 7th Sanctum generator. Not sure about this one, either, but it’s another interesting beginning

“It’s not like we need to learn this shit anyway. I mean, what’s there to learn? The world was there and then it ended. Everything blew up and here we are.” Benji kicked the ground. “I could be doing something useful, like scrounging the wrecks or hunting down Ovarod spawn.”

“Or helping Malcom with the still he’s building.” Thad had slightly different priorities than Benji, but they agreed on the basics: History class was a sad, Ovarod-feces waste of time, and Math and science weren’t much better.

“The still would be nice. I can’t remember the last time I had some nice…”

“Benjamin Widdowson-Chatwyn?” The voice cut over Benji’s reminisces.

“I didn’t do it!” He twisted, yelped, and jumped all at once. His mother did that to him, complete with full name. Nobody but her ever called him Benjamin.

Next to him, Thad sniggered. Oh, Benji was going to be living this one down for weeks. He coughed and tried to redeem himself.

“That is, yes, I’m Benjamin Widdowson-Chatwyn.” He bowed, smiled, and managed to look the woman in front of him up and down all at the same time.

Her hair was so blonde as to almost be white, her smile was just a little too amused, her ankles were beautiful, and the rest of her was covered in a Recovery Service uniform. “How can I service, ah, help the Service?”

“That is the proper question.” Her smirk was growing to a full-fledged grin. “Your uncle thought I might be able to use you; he said you were eager for promotion.”

“Promotion? I mean – graduation, sure. But it’s not like I have a ow Thad what the Ovarod-trails?” He danced away from his friend, who seemed to have suddenly developed a twitch in his leg.

“What Benji means is that of course he wants the promotion, Corporal. Doesn’t he?”

“What? Oh, yes. Yes, Corporal.” If you moved past the severe nature of her field gear, the Corporal was a stunning woman. And anything had to be better than learning the history of a destroyed world. “Is Thad up for promotion too?”

“That remains to be seen. For now, however, Private Widdowson-Chatwyn, we have a quest for you.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/764658.html. You can comment here or there.

June 22 – June 30 in the Apocalypse

Aug4

The Apoc

In the end of May, 2011, strange things started happening all over the world. Follow along with [personal profile] faeapoclive, [twitter.com profile] faeapoclive, and [tumblr.com profile] faeapoclive as the apocalypse unfolds

ACROPOLIS REBUILT

ATHENS, Greece(AP): The Acropolis of Athens, built in the fifth century B.C., is an ancient citadel located on a high rocky outcrop above the city of Athens. It encompasses the ruins of several famous buildings, including the well-known Parthenon.
However, in the past weeks, the citadel has gone from ruins to complete buildings. The stone and marble gleam. Tapestries hang from the walls. And in the center of the Parthenon, a throne is being occupied by an eight-foot-tall man.

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BIRDS GO MISSING

KUSHIRO, Hokkaido(AP): Residents first noticed a lack of birds over a week ago, but nobody was certain about the loss until yesterday, when scientists confirmed what people were saying.

According to ornithologists, there are no birds within a 20-mile circle of Kushiro, not flying in nor out nor around.

Scientists are baffled by this, but continue to work on theories. Many residents, fearing the worst, have already evacuated.

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PROPHECIES ON THE UN FLOOR?

United Nations Building, NYC(AP): Chasidy Royal, a translator for the Sudanese delegation to the UN, stood up today in the middle of a closed session and began shouting.

“All hail,” she is quoted as saying. “The almighty, the most beautiful, the powerful are coming. All hail she who is Queen of them all. All hail she who will lead the armies across the plains. Bow down now or be destroyed.”

Royal then proceeded to repeat the phrase in Sudanese, French, and Italian before she was removed from the room.

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SHOWDOWN IN VEGAS?

LAS VEGAS, Nevada(AP): The mayor of Las Vegas has ordered the woman calling herself Aphrodite – who has declared herself Queen of Las Vegas – removed from the city limits on pain of arrest. Although no formal charges were drawn up, police – and a number of non-uniformed self-appointed enforcers – have gathered to carry out the Mayor’s word.

Neither the Queen nor the Mayor could be reached for comment.

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RED MOON OVER AFRICA

AFRICA: Reports from across the continent today all say similar things: anywhere in Africa and the Middle East last night, anyone looking at the sun saw instead a bloody orb, red and fiery, twice the size as the moon normally is.

Even satellites, if orbiting over Africa at the time, report the same images, and telescopes and film evidence rule out mass hallucination.

Scientists are, as they have been for several weeks, completely baffled.

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APHRODITE CLAIMS VEGAS; MAYOR, GOVERNOR, POLICE, DISAGREE

LAS VEGAS, Nevada: The woman calling herself Aphrodite, the Queen of Las Vegas, has issued a statement. In it she declares “I am the sovereign leader of the City of Las Vegas. All others who claim to be in charge are false idols and liars and will be removed as such.”

The Mayor of Las Vegas, in a separate statement, declared, once again, that Aphrodite was to be removed from Las Vegas; the Governor of Nevada seconded this and the Nevada State Police have issued a warrant for Aphrodite’s arrest.

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ZEUS’S DEMANDS ESCALATE

ATHENS, Greece(AP) The man calling himself Zeus has declared that all of Athens will be shut down to accommodate his wishes – not only virgins, as he first demanded, but feasts and luxuries “as befits the king of gods.”

In a country beset by austerity, crisis, and chaos, such things are hard to find, but the people of Athens seems to be doing their best to accommodate their new “god.”

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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/762605.html. You can comment here or there.

Clockwork Apoc Test ficlet

Aug1

Because every good adventure should start in a tavern – although this is currently more fantasy/medieval than it is steampunk or apoc.

The dice rattled across the table and landed in a spray: 6, 8, 5, 3, 10, 3.

Anjzeny pushed the threes around with a desultory finger. The dice weren’t being kind tonight – perhaps it was all for the better that there was no-one here to throw against.

“If your dice mislike you, perhaps you should consider cards… if you are in the mood to gamble.”

He could pretend not to hear the voice, a melodic alto with a strange twist to the consonants. He could pretend to be drunk, or engrossed in his drink.

Anjzeny looked up, instead. “I am, in a general sense, in a mood to gamble.”

In a pub such as the Laughing Bull, it was more likely to see a stranger than a common face; this stranger’s face was both more strange and more welcome than most.

Blue eyes pinned Anjezeny to his chair; a blue scarf wrapped around the stranger’s head and face, covering everything except those eyes. Blue robes concealed everything else.

Anjezeny found himself swallowing. He recovered with a lazy smile. “I am almost always in a mood to gamble.”

The stranger fell gracefully into a seat. “This is what I have heard of you, yes. And so I ask you, Anjzeny Clever-Fingers: how much are you willing to bet?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/761337.html. You can comment here or there.

New Serial by K Orion Fray!

Aug1

Quest to Karantiri begins today with Chapter One – here.

Rion’s new serial is set in a fantasy world, following young Celita as she learns new & exciting things about the world around her.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/761013.html. You can comment here or there.

Escape from Rochester – Camp Nano Day 28/29

Jul30

First Line of Monday:

I tried not to hold on to the railing too much as I exited the bus.

Last Line of yesterday:

“…The thing is – he’s way late for a Change, past twenty-one, and he never showed any signs at all before this. And, considering our group, I was watching.”

Current Word Count:
36,307

Words Monday/Yesterday:
977/888

Par:
37,050

Death Count:
I’ve lost count

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/757711.html. You can comment here or there.