#jancaryn too

[virmillion]

//ignore me

okay so think how you hold your breath going over that new bridge or how some people hold their breath past cemeteries? i think that’s the sort of superstition isaac would have, like in the middle of the conversation he cuts himself off and everyone stares at him and pascal goes ‘dude wtf’ and he refuses to answer until the cross the bridge whereupon he explains [superstitions], and pascal teases him about it a good bit but isaac’s perspective boils down to ‘science and superstition can coexist within the same mindset’ sort of situation, so pascal makes fun of him for being smart but still wishing on [shooting stars] and that’s isaac’s rebuttal

#usk #usk talkativity #usk isaac #usk jancaryn #anyway what im saying here is that isaac is the Superstitious One of the squad #jancaryn too #to a leaser extent but she still like. Participates #hey actually bonus lore - what if you switch jancaryns pronouns to xe xem or ve vir? cause youre really inconsistent there and just. yeah

[virmillion]

//ignore me

if you ever find yourself so lucky as to have a beta reader for this thing, here’s some questions worth asking probably (and even if not, you should ask them of yourself once you’ve finished and set it aside for a few weeks/months)

is the real reason that jancaryn repeats pascal too preachy/too in-your-face wrt the beginning of pascal’s character arc? is it organic enough in the way that the true reason is revealed, or is it just stuck in there to make it obvious that pascal has developed? has pascal developed by this point? can he develop further? will knowing this  reason help or hinder his progress in his own character arc? would  that then lead to him second  guessing every decision he makes? (no such thing as a good deed mindset - yeah, you saved that basket of kittens, but did you do it because you could or because you wanted to get praise and feel good about yourself?)

#labhrambles #usk #usk talkativity #usk jancaryn #usk pascal #usk future #/if u ever get a beta/ hA dont kid urself lab

[virmillion]

//ignore me

hey lab don’t forget you’re working with functional children here. like legally they’re adults yeah whatever (nail down those ages btw and Stick To Them) but they do have families

now for pascal this is obvious that’s literally what spurred his backstory

isaac’s is a little less obvious, but i feel like if his family is that tight, they would be concerned that he’s In Jail within the first ten pages of the book. also his age might be more complicated bc half elf, so you can dive into that in a couple ways: (1) his parents are full elf/full human, so they’re gonna see him (and Aoife by association) as incomplete failures. dig into that. we love angst (2) his parents are BOTH full [elf/human], and him being a half elf implies one of them had an affair (presumably the mom, given how biology and pregnancy work), so there’s gonna be hatred and tension there from all directions (plus the discord then between him and aoife since aoife isn’t a product of adultery) (again don’t forget to translate his age between being human and being half elf bc there could be some sticky situations when he and pascal like each other but age is a Yike)

sixer is weird. look into how dragonborns age i guess? to see how old she would be? because you don’t know how that works yet. then also figure out if she has family, where they are, why they’re unconcerned with her jaunting off on this quest - or have them Be Concerned and try to keep her from going, and this can stir up issues because isaac is adamant she comes and pascal literally does not care and just wants to leave (so it could be That Akward Moment When you’re waiting around the corner as your friend asks their parents if you can stay the night, but on a much grander scale)

tanra is a ghost. their parents either disappeared in the castle after You Know What, or they left tanra to fucking die in a closet and ran out in which case tanra should have no problem cutting their losses

jancaryn. um. ok for starters nail down that age obviously. and this could be a fun one, because you actually See jancaryn’s town in canon. maybe since their town is the first one bba descended upon, this is a good way to introduce that concept without laying it on too thick: jancaryn realizes Hey My Family Is Here I Need To Go Find Them I Haven’t Seen Them Since Everything Fell Apart right? so they go off (with the other four in tow) and hunt down their family, who is very nice and friendly and welcoming and everything a good family should be!!!!! and then when there’s a lull jancaryn makes up an excuse, gets the squad outside, and says ‘that isn’t my family. we need to Leave.’ this for obvious bba reasons, but also it gives jancaryn a stake in the quest beyond ‘fix my words please.’ it also (because you’re in pascal’s POV) allows for pascal to feel conflicted over this family versus his own (only a little bit for obvious reasons), but that’s some good character development too because maybe (depending on how you do his family) isaac can seem to blend right in, as if that spot at the table has always belonged to him (which makes pascal feel worse :)))) it’s great :)) we have fun here)

#usk #usk talkativity #usk pascal #usk isaac #usk sixer #usk tanra #usk jancaryn

[virmillion]

//y’all know the drill

• right now tanra is your only nb character and they’re a ghost so that’s bullshit. jancaryn is enby now too. write that in. she uses she/her and they/them pronouns. she is the epitome of ‘girly girl’ media a la that picrew and that Does Not Invalidate Their Non-binary-ness. also jancaryn is human. This Is Crucial. She is a Normal Ass Human and not a disfigured Monster or a cold robot or an alien, they are just a Human. thatse it

#labhrambles #usk #usk talkativity #usk jancaryn

[virmillion]

//ignore me, warning for long post ahead

future lab: it’s questions tiiiime!! get out ur pen and paper bitch we got a Book To Write

Do people have glasses in this universe? if so, who makes them? are they coveted or free? cool or frowned upon? can you sidestep the necessity with magic? do people think those that need glasses are smarter (like, they study so much their eyes go bad)? do glasses look the same as ours? are there contacts? bifocals? sunglasses? are they stylish and designer or purely functional? are they even called glasses? Maybe there are no glasses. would people with poor vision just be screwed? would they again be able to solve it with magic? do some people think repairing their vision is unnatural re: boomers against tattoos and multiple piercings? are there optometrists in this universe? is it a tough position to get? to keep? are there too many or not enough optometrists?

What’s the travel like? does everyone go everywhere on foot? horseback? alternative bikes? are there cars and buggies? landboats™️? do people go skiing in winter? snowboarding? skateboarding (not winter specific)? are there special Travel Songs to pass the time faster (re: the song that goes on forever, 99 bottles of [ale] on the wall)? can you pay extra money for a long distance piggy back ride?

What do people do for fun? do people read? draw? write? paint? sing? dance? are these coveted ‘“skills”’ or just things people Do? are some hobbies considered more uninteresting/unfulfilling than others? does cooking count as a hobby or a necessity? how does the outward appearance/physical task of doing these differ in this universe? is it an art form to draw in mud and sand because it’s impermanent?**

**i actually like this one, and once you hit culture, i would like if you would have a holiday around impermanence, or temporariness, or something like that, where the celebration is to Do Art in the sand and the dirt and the mud (perhaps scheduled for the day before what is expected to be the seventh rainfall of the year or something significant like that), and people do art in all different ways of all different things - you would need to work out if this carries across all races or is (for example) human-specific. i like worldwide better, because it’s easier, but that’s boring, so it might be cute if it’s just humans (shortest general lifespan, so of course they’ll be more aware of how temporary they are), and the other races don’t really get it or care because their time is less fleeting. you would then be able to have pascal adamant about celebrating it but NOT forcing it on the others (read: the pervasiveness of xmas on modern culture and media), and maybe jancaryn participates in a different way, and she and pascal explain it to the others, and while t and s don’t see the point, isaac (half elf half human) is down and willing to pay attention and learn for the sake of learning. the significance of What is drawn in the mud/sand/dirt can also come into play, like either they draw things that ARE temporary (money, food, objects basically) to remind themselves that it will all go away eventually, or things that are LESS temporary, more abstract and intangible (so loved ones, warm hearts and full tables, that sort of thing). i like the meaning behind the second one better, and obviously you’ll flesh it out more later, but it could be cute if they explain it to isaac while s and t are off on their own adventure (after making it abundantly clear that they aren’t disrespecting p and j’s culture by doing so), and then isaac draws all their faces super cartoony (think sok/ka drawing the gang in ava//tar, really poorly drawn), and pascal’s face just Lights On Fire, and jancaryn goes ‘honey no that’s, that’s not quite—never mind, you interpret it how you think best.’ obviously room to grow, things to fix up, but i really like this as a holiday. you do of course have to think up HOW this holiday came about, gained significance and notoriety, but the end result is really cute and endearing i think (make sure you aren’t belittling any existing religions or cultures in the process though)

how’s the food? what’s the significance of it? are there any dishes saved solely for celebrations/specific occasions? why? what are the common foods to each region/race? how do these clash, especially within the main squad? say jancaryn is vegetarian, would this butt up against, say, sixer’s ideals and core foods? is this a point of tension that whoever is involved has to work through? are there culture/race-specific foods that Taste Like Home? are there staple dishes for regions? does pascal miss out on this because of Obvious Reasons? does pascal get confused when eating a Human Celebration Staple because it tastes so familiar, and jancaryn has to gently explain to him the significance of the food to their culture? does this lead to jancaryn giving him a crash course in all things Human™️? does pascal try not to feel hurt/guilty that he doesn’t already know all these things? does he think he’s failing his own culture for the same reasons? does he try to avoid learning about his culture because Backstory Reasons, he doesn’t think he deserves to participate because he wasn’t raised as part of That Culture? does he hesitate to call it His Culture?

how do cultures in general clash among the squad? i mean, you’ve got a [tabaxi] ghost, two humans, a dragonborn, and a half elf, so obviously there’ll be some cultural differences, so how carefully do they need to step around each other? work out if there’s any history of conflict between, say, half elves and tabaxi, and whether that will become evident in their interactions - maybe the half elves were the antagonists, so isaac feels bad and is constantly deferring to tanra’s opinions and decisions, which annoys tanra to no end because they just want to move past it, or something like that - there’s a lot of ways to do this sort of conflict, but make sure you tread carefully, because there’s also a lot of ways to Mess Up this sort of conflict and come across as offensive

obviously humans need food water shelter air, but how does this change for the other races? what are their priorities? preferences? are any of them traditionally nocturnal? this is gonna be a little different in tanra’s case, but you should still work it out - even though they’re a ghost, habits are hard to break, so maybe they still instinctually look for a below ground cave or thicket of bushes when bunkering down for the night (for example, just broadly thinking of what a tabaxi might do). specifically, for tanra at least, you’re gonna want to figure out a [tabaxi]’s habits and preferences, then filter that through the lens of Technically Tanra Doesn’t Really Have To Worry About That Anymore

more on tanra, but ghosts are normally expected to have a way to Move On To The Next World or whatever in a lot of fiction. is tanra trying to move on? do they HAVE to? do they even want to? do they know that’s an option? do the others know it’s an option? if it is, what are the requirements? presumably it won’t be possible for them to Come Back to this plane once they move on, is everyone aware of that? since they’re functionally already dead, would them Moving On at the end be like a sort of character death? would that then be a mockery of a non-binary character? that is, pascal is trans and jancaryn is also non-binary and they’re both human, but does that make it okay to ‘kill off’ (so to speak) one of the main non-binary characters? the ratio left behind would be 1 trans dude, 1 non-binary girl, 1 [unstated] girl, and 1 [unstated] boy, but that’s still a Yikes to be killing a non-binary character - you could switch tanra to be Not non-binary, or maybe Everybody is non-cis, but this in general is a rough and rocky situation to deal with, so definitely get Multiple Trustworthy Opinions before you go around destroying everything (not to mention that like. you really don’t Have To have tanra move on. they could meet all the requirements and you build up to what should be a tearful goodbye and they’re like ‘wtf y’all i’m not moving on’ and everyone is just ‘??’ and tanra goes ‘my parents left me to die in a castle, everyone i know has presumably been dead for [thousands??] of years, i’m closer with you four than i ever was with any of them, so why would i go be permanently dead and unhappy over there when i can be kind of unalive not dead and considerably happy over here?’ situation. i don’t know. we’ll get there later, obviously it needs some work, but i kind of actually really like that chunk you just spat. so.)

sixer. my gORL. she doesn’t have enough exposition yet for obvious reasons but i feel lonely for her so sixer here’s a paragraph for u bb i lov u. work out the appearance and attitude. her motif is red, her season is fall, her whole deal is obviously fire, so does she like that or hate it? is it a stereotype to be a fiery dragonborn? does she try to rebel against it, try to immerse herself in water and get frustrated when it evaporates? what’s her deal with pascal and their kinda sorta antagonistic vibes with each other vis-a-vis the tavern scene in j’s town? is that an arc that needs to be resolved or just bad writing? an arc would be better, because you’ve kind of had her go stiff since finding out pascal is trans, but that’s bullshit because you deleted transphobia in this world (and pascal isn’t supposed to have told anyone besides isaac anyway so. go back and fix that lmao). maybe they butt up against each other just by virtue of their personalities, which i think you did really well demonstrating in the castle basement, like that whole scene just completely nailed their whole dynamic in one go which i LOVE. you need to do more of that, have them both kind of pushing back against each other, and at the beginning it’s maybe a little more on the antagonistic side, until it grows to a head and they’re forced to confront their issues with each other (and uh lab this is Your Job to figure out what those issues even are, especially before you go tying them in to this whole situation). from their it can be a sort of decrease down into still pushing back on each other, but now it’s more like friendly competition (and maybe more Serious Competition than isaac would prefer but at least they aren’t at each other’s throats anymore... much), so they’re making each other better in the process, and you still get to have that sort of clash between them the whole way through (this meaning that part of sixer’s arc and part of pascal’s arc coincide, since they both grow from and around this situation, so you NEED to make sure you resolve this if you end up including it)

#long post #long post tw #usk #usk talkativity #usk logistics #usk disaster gays #usk pascal #usk isaac #usk jancaryn #usk tanra #usk sixer #wow this got. Long #damnb #guess we just got a lot to say

[virmillion]

//same bat time same bat channel

-isaac is gay, pascal is bi (questioning - definitely likes dudes, maybe more, it’s complicated and he isn’t sure)

-include in earlier with isaac trying to make conversation pascal saying “you know most adventures don’t normally have this much talking” as a way to shut down isaac’s prying and isaac goes ‘oh’ and then they walk in silence again

-show someone else being Capable™️ as they escape the castle, this being a catalyst for notecard D

-in keeping with notecard D, maybe pascal notices isaac hanging around tanra to learn about Ghost And Royalty Junk which is part of what makes pascal go is ‘he’s got someone else to bug so i don’t have to hang around now’

-also with notecard D, isaac brings him back and there’s Tension where pascal assumes isaac is bringing him back bc he misses him (tho ofc they don’t say any of this outright), but isaac Staves The Gay Away by saying they made a deal (re: the whispering lime conversation)

-u do have to have One Token Straight Character or else the cishets will be Angory, so i don’t know which character that would be (maybe jancaryn can be straight and non-binary, like they define their attraction as being heterosexual bc it’s possible for nb’s to identify that way)

-addendum: it’s possible for pascal to be into jancaryn too and them into him, but he just doesn’t feel that way about her and she tries at first but then realizes they just like being friends with him and they’re both respectful and chill about it

#usk #usk talkativity #usk plot #usk pascal #usk isaac #usk jancaryn #one more tag so it's not six

[virmillion]

// ignore me i’m cleaning out my notes

• hey maybe since ghosts are pound to a creature object or location maybe tanra is bound to an emerald lamp or something set in the wall (this would have to be part of their backstory, like they loved the green lights or played with them growing up in the castle or something (they were definitely royalty)) BUT ANYWAY they’re attached to one specific lamppost and when the castle is crumbling at the end of the chapter, maybe sixes is like ‘we gotta take them with us! tanra cmon lets go!’ and tanra can’t obviously so everyone is like ‘we can’t just leave them what do we do how do we stop the castle from collapsing!’ and either isaac or pascal is like ‘you’re all being idiots’ and rips tanra’s lamp off the wall and straight up carries it out and it? works?? so now in order to keep tanra alive they have to keep the lamp from being destroyed or stolen or something

• remember the post with the killjoy saying if you’re invisible you’d be blind bc your eyes are invisible too so they can’t reflect light? maybe tanra can be semi-transparent most of the time and their visibility is inversely related to their sight, so like they CAN go full invisible for a sneaky mission, but they won’t be able to see for Shit

• the main arc is pascal learning to trust other people but that’s boring on its own so you have to supplement it - this doesn’t mean you can slap some friendly side characters in and have everything be fixed, there needs to be real conflict and that needs to be reflected in the relationships. for example, he shouldn’t act so annoyed with isaac (as he has up to 100) only to never actually be angry with him - he needs to get mad at people for legitimate reasons beyond Edgy Emo Myspace reasons. this, then, can be reflection in further interactions how he views his relationships - he’s surface level mean to isaac, maybe he outright HATES sixer (which you can explore in tanra’s castle), he’s idly annoyed by jancaryn but he tolerates her, all of these add up and you need to have plausible backstories for every character that inform their personal decision making, the end result of which is the Only Thing pascal sees and can make decisions based on

• figure out the magic for pascal, like right now it’s just wood but is it any wood? could he mold a desk? could he mold a rose? it’s kind of just life if you leave in that rose at the beginning, so maybe he molds life as a whole but focuses on wood because it seems less alive, and he could TECHNICALLY mold a human Life but he wouldn’t EVER do that (wink wink nudge nudge), so he sticks to trees that don’t talk and shies away from anything else because he’s afraid one day he’ll go too far (ie he’ll mess with a human life AND it’ll be so severe that his hands are permanently petrified so he won’t even be able to fix it)

• you need an antagonist. i don’t know how else to say this but the antagonist cannot just be jancaryn’s situation. at some point the gang Will arrive at jancaryn’s town and they Will expect some answers and You are going to have to provide them

#usk #usk talkativity #usk pascal #usk plot #usk tanra #usk isaac #one more tag so it's not six

[virmillion]

//ignore me

hey uh lab uhhh it’s kinda lame and at least a little sketch that your only non-binary rep so far is a (tabaxi??) ghost with they/them pronouns, a human (??) with she/her pronouns, and a bartender with xe/xir pronouns that doesn’t have a fucking name. that’s bullshit, and i know you can do better. right now you’re running with the ‘complete and total androgyny’ image which is Fine, but not valid enough representation because through pascal and isaac you’re demonstrating that there’s more than one way to be a boy, so there’s more than one way to be non-binary. prove that. have something better than vaguely feminine but wears men’s pants. That’s Not Good Enough. definitely branch out in terms of multiple sets of pronouns and in terms of neopronouns as well as gender presentation (just because jancaryn looks/dresses and acts feminine doesn’t automatically mean Girl With She/Her Pronouns), but do so with a few grains of salt. remember that tweet from shaun david hutchinson (i think it was actually in dear ally how do i write a book), where you shouldn’t make a character gay just for the sake of having that representation. it should Matter and Count For Something why you give each character the pronouns and appearance and behavior that you do, and you have to explore that in their individual arcs, all through the subjective lens of what will probably turn out to be an unreliable narrator. just, like, do better, because what you’ve got right now isn’t good enough

#labhrambles #usk #usk talkativity #usk jancaryn #usk tanra #@future lab: this post was prompted by one on kyl//ie’s blog about the penu//mbra po//dca//st #where it talks about how theres several ways to be nonbinary beyond basic androgyny #especially since this whole universe is supposed to have zero transphobia. maybe some misunderstandings but not intolerance and certainly- #-not ostracism #if you set up the world to be open and welcoming then that should be reflected in the freedom of the characters to be who they are #whatever this is. Too High And Mighty lmao literally just. just Be Better sweetie come on #don////t re///blo/////////g

[virmillion]

//ignore me

okay so once you actually get back to working on the dang thing, you’re gonna pick up from them being in the bar and about to encounter the Real Heroes™️ which is all fine and good, but taverns have Food. tanra is a ghost so you need to work out whether they need to eat/if they even can. that’s your own problem to deal with, but if they can’t, consider;

bartender: and for the see-through one?

the disaster squad: *sucking air through their teeth noises*

jancaryn(?): oh my [god] bartender you can’t just offer food to a ghost (in the tone of oh my god karen you can’t just ask someone why they’re white)

bartender: visibly goes pale (ha ha you could make a joke about ‘paler than tanra’ if it doesn’t seem to be in poor taste upon writing)

tanra: i’ll take a plate of [nachos]

everybody: *doesnt dare question it*

later, when the food arrives, tanra kinda pokes at it, maybe eats some (if u decide it’s possible but not necessary, in which case you do have to figure out what sustains ghosts, be it fire wrt the green ring or just time bc there’s something left to be done on this realm but that could affect what they do at the end of the book bc you said earlier you want to keep tanra “‘alive’”

pascal, because everyone else is being too much of a wuss to ask (and it’s first person pov so you can include that in the narration): bro wtf i thought u didn’t need to eat

tanra: well no but it’s nice to be included

pascal: bro

tanra: what

pascal: bro

tanra: wHAT

:| ||

pascal: u owe me seven dollars bc u didn’t actually Need that food

#labhrambles #usk #usk talkativity #usk plot #usk tanra