Day 5 - Husky / Enchanted
Day 5 - Husky / Enchanted
Couldn’t help but notice that some of the prompts could do with a little overlap. So to make things a little easier on myself, I fused some concepts together. Should be interesting from here on out. Wish me luck.
...
Mal Mute, a Husky Kaiju famous for his wicked fighting style, pushed the door of the locker room open and tumbled inside. He ripped off this muzzle-mask and heaved heavily. His lips trembled, fangs dripping with saliva, muscles clenched and his body quaked. He dropped to his knees and clutched his head. Fighting to get control of his heart and his breathing, he curled into a ball on the locker room floor. The collar around his neck was glowing an ominous red light, radiating heat and digging into his furred neck. He gasped for air, fighting to get under control, fighting against a darker desire.
The locker room door pushed open. A looming figure in a long, dark cloke, stepped into the locker room and presided over the scene. He looked down the bridge of his beak, the master of the Dark Arts, Psychopomp. He tapped his crooked staff on the linoleum floor. Mal Mute brought a blood-shot eye up to him and a sweeping, clawed hand lashed out at him. Psychopomp didn’t flinch as the raking claw missed his face by mere inches.
“Good to see you again, too,” The Raven Kaiju said. “And how have you been?”
Recoiling his strike, Mal Mute shrank back against a locker. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated, his color was white hot. His voice eeked out in choked whining.
“Okay,” Psychopomp said, “Let’s try this again.”
He tapped his staff on the ground again. The crystal at the top radiated a black energy that released a purple vapor. Snaking through it air, is slithered over to Mal Mute’s collar and encircled it. The blazing accessory began to cool, falling limp as if it had lost some kind of manic power it once held.
Mal Mute slumped against the lockers, dropping his head to his chest and heaving a sigh of relief.
Psychopomp stayed a relatively safe distance away, but spoke up, “Feeling better?”
The wolf Kaiju Fighter continued to focus on breathing. But managed to clear his throat to respond. “Much better. Thank you, Psy.”
At this prompt, Psychopomp set his staff aside and went to Mal Mute’s side to help him to a bench. Once seated, Psychopomp pulled out a small bone-shaped treat.
“Here, Mal Mute” He said, “Eat this. It should help.”
Mal Mute nodded and took the treat, scarfing it down.
“You know,” He said, licking his fingers, “When I’m out of the ring, you can just call me ‘Buster’. Mal Mute is just the ring name.”
Psychopomp sighed, “I am well aware of your name, Mal Mute, it is more a matter of keeping this relationship professional. I am, for lack of a better term, your caretaker, as of now.” He glanced at the collar around Mal Mute’s neck. “You said you had it under control.”
Buster scratched at the collar around his neck. The source of his power and the reason he was a Kaiju in the first place. “I did.” He said, his voice meek, “But then the guy got a second wind. I had to raise the stakes to take him down.”
Psychopomp shook his head, “I warned you against using that...what did you call it?”
“Malignant Assault,” Mal Mute said.
“Right, that. I warned you against using it more than once. If you tap into that power too much you will lose yourself to it. I don’t have to remind you what happened last time.” Psychopomp put a hand on Mal Mute’s shoulder. “You have to accept your limits.”
Mal Mute nodded along, as he had always done before. But when the hand touched his shoulder, he felt something inside crack a little.
“No, I refuse.” He said, his voice was dark and sinister. “I refuse to accept limits.” He lifted his head to look at Psychopomp, his eyes getting red. “I promised him. I promised I would always be the strongest. That I wouldn’t lose to anyone!”
He stood up, at his full height, he managed to tower over the raven Kaiju. Psychopomp stood, unruffled, but he had picked up his staff and the purple vapor was already swirling around the crystal.
“It was the last thing I promised him before they came for him. He was not the best guy in the world, I knew that, but he fed me and gave me a home and a name. I will never forget his kindness, even if it means tearing everything apart!” He flexed his fist and slammed it against the lockers, causing them to warp considerably.
“And then you killed him,” Psychopomp said. His voice was flat and cold. The purple smoke lashed around his body, ready to defend.
Mal Mute grit his teeth. “Yes, yes I did! He should have listened to me! He should have gotten behind me! There was no need for him to run onto the battlefield like that. He shouldn’t have tried to…” His voice cut out. Red eyes clouded with tears and words failed.
Buster dropped his head, “He shouldn’t have tried to save me.”
The collar around his neck radiated heat, but in a dull ache. He let the pain bring his mind away from painful memories.
“I know I am cursed,” Buster said, “But what am I supposed to do?’
Psychopomp let out a relieved sigh. “Not cursed, not necessarily.”
Mal Mute looked up, “What do you mean?”
Psychopomp stepped closer, but hesitated. “Do you mind if I touch the collar?”
Mal Mute shook his head and craned his neck to expose the pendant hanging from the collar. Psychopomp grabbed it and lifted it up. On the underside, there was an inscription. Part boiler plate, part eldritch magic.
“Your entire form runs on forbidden eldritch magic, yes,” Psychopomp said, he fished a small treat-shaped charm from his robe and snapped it onto the collar beside the pendant, “But with a few alterations, it can be honed.”
The heat of the collar died down immediately. Mal Mute’s eyes went wide. As Psychopomp stepped away, he gingerly touched his collar.
“I...I don’t feel it anymore.” He looked at the raven Kaiju, “How did you do that?”
Psychopomp grinned, “Your caretaker happens to be the greatest master of the dark arts, a little eldritch enchantment was no match for me.”
Buster rushed forward and lifted Psychopomp in a bear hug. The raven Kaiju gasped for the breath that was being crushed out of his lungs.
“Holy tennis balls, Psy! This is the best thing ever!” He put the ruffled raven back down. “I don’t know how to repay you! I got some tickets to a big party coming up. Do you want to go? We could go together? You wanna go? You wanna go? You’re such a good boy! You wanna go?”
Psychopomp straightened himself out, “For a Fighter named ‘Mute’ you really prattle on.”
“Oh, that’s just the stage handle. You know, cause, a husky is like a malamute. But I’m a heel, a bad dog, so it’s a play on words. I thought it was really clever. And I get to wear a cool mask. But it is hard to breathe sometimes. Maybe I should get a new one?”
Psychopomp raised his hand, “Alright alright, easy there, Mal Mute.” He cleared his throat, “You have been given a new chance. I wanted you to step down, but it seems you are hellbent on staying in the ring.”
Mal Mute nodded intently.
“Then the medallion should help you remain under control. But try to keep the Melodious Assaults to a minimum.” He said, tapping his staff to summon a swirl of purple mist.
“Malignant Assaults.” Mal Mute added, helpfully.
“Whatever.” Psychopomp said. “Oh, and yes, I will join you for the party. Send me an email, would you?”
With that, the grand master of dark magic vanished from the locker room in a swirl of mystical purple haze. Mal Mute smiled and gave a thumbs up to no one. He would later pay a hefty fine for busting the lockers.
More Posts from Brushlesprouts and Others
My favourite things about Scrivener
1. Navigation. You can see all your chapters, scenes, character & setting planning at one glance and switch between them very easily - compared to scrolling up and down in one long word processing document. Every file can also be a folder, so you can have collapsible items underneath it.
2. Word count targets. The “Project Targets” are particularly useful for NaNoWriMo so you don’t have to keep looking back at the website to see how you’re doing for the day, but more so outside of it, when you want to keep yourself working to a target but don’t have Nano’s charts and daily word counts. It also gives you a nice ding when you hit your session target.
3. How many pages? I only recently discovered this, but it’s very nice to be able to see in Project Statistics approximately how big your manuscript would be in pages without worrying about formatting.
4. Outlining. Scrivener has two methods of outlining - one is Corkboard, which is exactly what it sounds like, a digital corkboard with notes pinned on it that represent your chapters/scenes with their summaries. The screenshot above is called ‘outliner’ and lists collapsible chapters/scenes with various statistics you can select as shown in the tick menu. Generally I prefer Corkboard, but Outliner is useful if you just want to see everything in a clear order.
5. Full screen. I get distracted very easily when writing, so the full-screen writing mode is wonderful for me to avoid that - but you can still choose certain windows from the normal Scrivener view to show up. I have my targets and my summary, so I can stick to my plan when I’m writing and also see what progress I’m making.
6. Notes. No screenshot, but it’s a simple post-it note style box to the side of every document (chapter, scene, character etc.) that allows you to add notes. This may sound very simple, but it’s far more useful than I’d expected. During NaNoWriMo when I’m not meant to be editing at all, but I know something needs fixing, I will jot down something in the side like ‘Take out the horse’ so that when I go through again to edit I know exactly the things to focus on immediately but which would have taken too much time before. It’s linked to the scene so I don’t just have a pile of notes in one document at the end and then have to work out where it needs fixing.
Overall
I downloaded Scrivener for the first time two years ago, and now I can’t imagine working without it. It’s so nice to have the planning and the writing all combined into one place where I can easily switch between the two. I haven’t yet got as far in a novel created in Scrivener to use the compile features so I can’t comment on those, but so far all my experiences of it have been good.
One thing to note is that if transferring project between a Windows and a Mac version of Scrivener, it’s generally best to zip the file first.
[Screenshots from my current novel Kindling Ashes using the Mac version of Scrivener - some features may not be available in Windows yet.]
More of my wonderous work! Gaze in awe as Baron Von Blight sets about his joyous work. #inktober2016 #doodles
I’m depressed today and all my friends and my boyfriend are too busy to talk to me, or just don’t want to, u don’t know. Do I have the right to be sad about it?
Absolutely you do. It’s always hard when the people you care about don’t have the time to hang out and it’s completely valid to be sad about it. Be sad as long as you need to. I’ve spent weeks being sad before because I needed it.
After that though, there are some decisions to be made.
When I was in a similar position, one of my friends told me that, if I wanted to be part of the group, I needed to ask.
I wasn’t hopeful that asking would help. And, to be honest, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes people didn’t follow up when I asked them to hang out or they made it clear they’d rather be somewhere else.
Sometimes they said yes and then they invited me to hang out later.
If/when they say no, there’s another decision to be made. It’s about how you want to live your life. If being with people is important to you, maybe it’s time you join a club or online group where you can find people who are looking for friendship. Look for people that make you happy, that don’t make you second guess when you ask for what you need.
For me, it meant that i didn’t want to wait for people to be my happiness anymore. I wanted to make stuff and learn things without waiting for friends who always seemed to have something else going on. I spent more time writing and I went to a different college than some of my best friends. I learned to do a lot of things on my own and, for me, that was the best turn of events imaginable.
When people say no, it’s important to find something that fulfills your needs. It’s hard and there are a lot of false starts, but the important thing is you keep trying different things until you find something that sticks. Stop giving others chance after chance and give yourself a couple instead.
not even Burt and all of his Bees could save me this time
This is a neutral post
Feel free to stop here and rest before journeying to the posts below.
Writing without a story
I’ve got a couple of asks in my inbox about my prompt fills on here as well as how long I spend on them exactly. So here’s a bit of my process!
1) Find a prompt you like.
There are a lot of great prompt blogs out there! @writing-prompt-s, @gingerly-writing, @witterprompts, @yetmoreprompts and @corvidprompts are some of my favorites to go for inspiration.
For this post, I’ll be using this one (X) from writing-prompt-s! Don’t think too hard about it–that’ll just keep you from writing! Pick one you’d be interested in learning more about and open up a new document!
Prompt: You are a lonely young child. Your parents are always working and you don’t have any friends. To cope, you decide to start talking to your stuffed animal. After you ask it a question one day, it responds
2) Choose your genre.
I tend to stick to urban fantasy or high fantasy, but maybe that’s not what you’re interested in writing! If you like writing out suspense, maybe thriller is more your speed or mystery! The world is your oyster.
3) Write the first line.
I favor my 10th grade english teacher’s advice here and try to write “one true sentence!” Technically it’s Hemingway’s advice, but he can go ahead and stay the frick out of this post!
Here’s my thought process: Young children need physical/verbal/emotional affection. Without the parents around, their reliance on stuffed animals makes sense. They probably hug the animal a lot and, from my experience, well loved stuffed animals aren’t quite as soft as they once were.
First line: Mr. Kili’s mane feels more like the fraying mop in the kitchen than yarn the night that Janet decides he’s the only friend she’ll ever need.
Keep reading
Another entry from the Stupid Dream Diary. I saved the dumbest for last: my affordable-healthcare-as-a-self-employed-person nightmare. ————————— Lackadaisy is on Patreon - there’s extra stuff!
Human Moment
Alright, writeblr—
When you see this, reblog it with three things that make you (unconventionally) beautiful— or just something you LIKE about yourself. We have a lot of negative self-talk and self-deprecating humor in this community, and it’s time to take it back.
Here are mine:
I have countless freckles.
I’m good at making children feel seen and heard.
I like the stories I write!
And you’re going to see this and be like, “Oh, but this isn’t for me,” but it IS and it’s time to own YOU.
Inspired by a conversation with @madammuffins. And I’m tagging @mvcreates @pens-swords-stuff @jojoscoffeeandwriting @caitwritesstuff @crowswritetoo and @scottishhellhound to help me get this started, too?
“All that talk about the power of friendship,” the antagonist murmured, as they circled the protagonist. “And it never even occurred to you that perhaps your enemies might have friends too, did it? How arrogant a thing, you are…”
date a selkie, but don’t hide her cloak. let her go home and visit her family now and then, knowing that she’ll come back and hang her seal cloak in the closet like she always does. trust is important.
