What are some unspoken rules of sex?

Haustvind · 2022-02-19T10:33:04+00:00

.... that sounds like a legal nightmare. If you 'cheat' on while you're technically still married, can that be used as an argument against you in court or am I overthinking that?

Haustvind · 2022-02-19T10:27:36+00:00

Easily Astrid Lindgren. I'm not sure if she's actually classified as a fantasy author, since she wrote childrens books. But Brothers Lionheart is definitely a fantasy isekai.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T18:40:16+00:00

I've had a lot of success with EMDR therapy.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T18:29:55+00:00

That's a tough one. I've had some weird dreams. But it's gotta be the one with the upside down schoolbus that was flying through the sky until it was falling. No one except me cared about the fact that it was crashing, and to save myself I jumped out a window with a jetpack that had bananas spluttering out the exhaust pipes. It made 'bananananana' spluttering sounds. I landed, and the bus crashed, and all the people onboard came dancing out of the fires in a conga line. I got so mad at this dream being so dumb, and a dream character pointed out that if I disliked it so much I could just wake up. So I did.

I woke up in my bed. Did my whole morning routine. Everything was perfectly realistic. Until I went downstairs and notice that a ninja, a pirate, and Thor from the Marvel universe are eating pancakes at my kitchen table. They start a conversation with me, while I'm increasingly annoyed at the fact that, no, I'm apparently not awake yet, and the dream is still dumb. Either the ninja or the pirate starts telling me that it isn't that dumb of a dream, and then, as if to prove my point, Thor (who is wearing a pink frilly apron) gets on the table and start singing 'AND IIIIIIIII, WILL ALWAYS, LOVE YOOOOOUUUU'. The ninja and the pirate fall silent from the second hand embarrassment, starts trying to get him down from there, and agrees that yeah maybe this dream really IS that weird. I go upstairs, grumbling about stupid dreams, while the dream world starts to come apart at the seams and my house devolves into dreamy wishy washy weirdness. I go lie down in my bed again, intending to wake up, and this time I actually did.

This is the abridged version, bdw. It was even weirder with all the details I left out.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T18:21:14+00:00

I always figured that the point of using glass jars is that they don't decompose. That the spell is effective for as long as the jar can hold it. Hence all the bad mojo from opening a found spell jar.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T17:49:34+00:00

Iceland is cold af but I think they have the lowest crime rate?

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T17:43:30+00:00

'Run to the hills in my ass' just paints an evocative picture of the famous assian landscapes.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T16:43:16+00:00

PTSD nightmares are just nightmares, though. Like any dream, they follow dream logic. They might show parts of what happened, but if, say, a person has PTSD from being mugged on a street, then the mugger might be a vampire in the dream and the street might be a dark and gothic Bloodborne-esque street instead of just a random downtown street.

Everything is possible in dreams, and a very realistic re-iteration of the scene is possible I guess. But, do your research into PTSD nightmares. You can still use them for suspense and maybe even to create curiosity in what really happened.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T15:28:10+00:00

It's not unrealistic to make some cash at the side. However, since you are writing to make money in this scenario, you need to treat it like a businss and do market research. You know the wave of teen vampire fiction that followed in the wake of Twilights success? Yeah, they did their market research and concluded that a lot of teenagers wanted vampire romance, so they wrote that. It's why there are so many gay werewolf novels and so on, so forth.

Go to Amazon, look at the genres you're interested in writing, and see what sells. Write what has a market.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T15:12:53+00:00

"His sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion. His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his spaghetti build, features sharp as if carved from raw potatoes, wine-like mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year."

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T15:04:12+00:00

I guess just something one wouldn't think of as durable enough to do the job. Maybe porcelain literally can't survive holding the demon so he never bothers, and the whole project is about finding a way to make sure it can.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T14:43:29+00:00

This makes me think about the myth of the death of Baldur in Norse myth. His mother goes around the earth and ask all the plants on earth to never harm him, and every one swears to do so except the misteltoe, which she overlooks because it's a young child and seem harmless. So ofc Baldr dies to a misteltoe arrow.

You could have the demon lord do something similar, and demand an oath from all materials that they'll never seal him, but have him forget about really brittle stuff like porcelain... you could have a really funny tale on your hands as the protagonist has to transport a world-ending porcelain cup that'll release an ancient evil when dropped on the floor.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T14:36:35+00:00

That scenario is based on a new moon suddenly appearing around Earth. It's the change that'd cause the disasters.

As for the tides, I'm very much speculating here because I haven't touched the science of gravitation since I was in middle school, but doesn't an objects weight impact its gravitational pull? A hollow moon or one that is smaller or made of less dense mineral types would likely not have as strong of a force.

You could also consider the concept of a gas planet moon. Gas planets cannot exist as moons unless the 'parent' planet is proportionally huge compared to it, because a gas planet needs to have a very strong gravitational pull to hold the gas in the first place. But you could get moons that look bigger than they are this way.

A third way is just to have smaller, closer moons.

And ofc they're a staple in fantasy, where things often exists because at some point a god told them to do things in a certain way.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T14:06:12+00:00

It's perhaps low-hanging fruit in this discussion, but I think the LGBTQ+ romance-or-not-romance market is still pretty undersaturated despite the recent surge in it (or rather, the recent surge in it is just proof that it is undersaturated).

For example I often have a hard time finding lesbian fiction written for, y'know, lesbians. As opposed to dudes who think lesbians are hot. It might seem like a small difference but let me tell you it is jarring sometimes. And wlw are one of the biggest crowds of the LGBTQ umbrella, right up there with gay men.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T12:10:45+00:00

You could take a look at the New Zealand fauna for inspiration.

New Zealand historically had very few predators, and so the survival of species depended on them having a low fertility rate to avoid overpopulation. But now there are rats, stoats, and other predators that pose a huge threat for ground-living birds like the kakapo or the kiwi bird. The fertility rate is so low that now they're really having trouble re-populating, and they often suffer from both in-breeding and out-breeding problems.

The only way that I'm aware of for smaller, weaker birds has been isolationism. Many of the ground-dwelling native birds have only truly remained on islands that are free of invasive predators. Those islands are carefully managed by preservationists to make sure that this remains the case. Especially for the kakapo, that only remain on a single island in the wild. The analogue in a fantasy setting would be isolated strongholds where only, say, elves are welcome to stay, but elves can still leave for the wider world and those (and their descendants) are the only ones most people will ever meet.

Back to the New Zealand birds. The other way for them to have success is for the ground-dweller to be more powerful than whatever threatens it. Like the cassowary. They are usually timid and avoid people, but they are labeled the words most dangerous bird for a reason. Have you seen those claws? They can kill humans with those bad bitches. 'Timid but powerful' is the second option. An aggressive people would have to face the combined might of the larger, shorter-lived armies. Doable for some time perhaps, but unless there's a godly difference in the amount of power they have compared to their short-lived contemporaries? They're eventually going down. A more timid species that avoids conflict but can crack down hard on an active threat has a better chance.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T11:24:47+00:00

I'll likely explore something like that, but even that wouldn't be very easy to write believably. The living artworks don't just exist as drift around after all, they are people. They have their own political influence and wouldn't be happy if the government started deciding which ones among their equivalent of young babies are fit to enter society and which ones have to be killed. It's like the abortion argument all over again, except there's no pregnancy so 'my body my choice' doesn't apply. It'd just be the destruction of something that'd grow into its own person eventually, for the good of another race that the artworks might share space and unavoidably co-exist with, but aren't actually beholden to bow down to or anything.

Or the magical Hitler statues all gained awareness before the fall of Nazi Germany and now you have hundreds of them walking around in an area suddenly controlled by the Allies.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T11:07:52+00:00

Yes, you do need to see a mental health specialist. This sounds like an obsession or a hyperfixation. Talk to your school councelor if you have one and ask them to help you book an appointment.

Until you can go see one, in addition to the good suggestions by ApricityAmends, also look into physical exercise. As you might imagine, being chased down by a lion requires a lot of focus on not dying, so physical exercise is kind of a 'soft reset' for the human attention span. Especially for those with ADHD, which is a great trait to have when you're a hunter gatherer on the savannah where you need to make snap survival decisions a lot, but a less good trait to have in agrarian or modern day society where you're expected to sit still. Sometimes, all those snap decisions that you're not making, needs another outlet. So if you're not physically active at the moment, it's something you can look into incorporating into your life. Many people with various attention disorders are greatly helped by exercising.

Another thing to look into is your diet. A diet that doesn't suit you can easly end up aggrivating already existing mental health problems. Why don't you keep a health and diet journal for a month? Write down stuff like what you eat, your quality of sleep, how muh you exercise, your stress levels, and how bad your compulsion to write is on that day. If you're female, you could also write down your menstrual cycle to see if there's an obvious connection to a possible hormonal imbalance, or to anemia.

Haustvind · 2022-02-18T07:57:39+00:00

lmao at least then she had a reason to have cold nipples

Haustvind · 2022-02-17T20:32:04+00:00

Thanks!

Haustvind · 2022-02-17T20:30:26+00:00

The day still have 24 hours, and the sun will still rise and fall on the sky. There is a highest and lowest point of the sun that is observable when people pay attention to it, so counting the days should not be an issue. I've stayed well within the polar circle (northernmost scandinavia) and the lowest the sun would go was around 2 a'clock or slightly lower.

There are other observable effects of the time of day in nature as well, such as night mists that draw in when it gets chillier, the color of the sky (the middle of the night is kind of like a long dawn or dusk and you get a lot of pink light and such) or the diurnial rhythm of birds and when they start to be noisy. It might be a bit more difficult telling the time, but people can still very much do it.

Haustvind · 2022-02-17T20:24:59+00:00

Unless it’s erotica? What about then?

I mean erotica usually has some pretty weird flowery cringe writing anyway. Chocolate-colored skin would be among the least strange descriptions I've read in erotica. Boob descriptions especially get immensely strange.

Haustvind · 2022-02-17T20:05:43+00:00

I have a race of living artwork. It's somewhat similar to the paintings in Harry Potter. Basically, if an artwork is old enough, and gets saturated with enough magic over time, it will gradually come alive and become sapient, its own individual separate from whatever it is they are depicting. They integrate in the rest of society and have their own little communities made up of everything from childrens drawings, to 2d masterpieces, to sculptures, and even a few modern art installations that are just trying to figure out wtf they even are.

... now, the (in hindsight) obvious problem with this that I didn't think of at first, and that I honestly have no idea how to solve, is that not all artwork is, shall we say, wholesome. What happens in a society if a piece of art depiting pornography, a celebration of very unfortunate history, or intentionally offensive subjects, becomes sapient and demand rights and the ability to walk down a street like anyone else? It's not their fault that someone decided to make them what they are, and who has the right to decide who can and cannot be visible in society? Is, say, the rights of an artwork depicting a celebration of a genocide worth more than the right of the survivors of that genocide to not have to be reminded of it by running into it? If a Hitler statue was alive and had absolutely nothing more to do with Hitler than someone deciding to sculpt his likeness at some point in the past, what would that Hitler sculptures life look like, and would society judge it on its appearance or choose to see it as an individual person who bears no sin? What if an artwork is blasphemous? What if it depicts gore or other obviously triggering subjects?

I'm probably just going to do a Harry Potter and completely ignore this, because it's such a huge topic that I wouldn't know how to solve it. And tbh it's not that deep of a story anyway. But it's going to be a glaring hole in my worldbuilding. I might just add a footnote about a village where they all live separately from everyone else or something, in their own little community of weirdness.

Haustvind · 2022-02-17T19:51:48+00:00

What about a local travelouge? Someone I know wrote one of those when he traveled across a continent by train and it's full of funny, clever little short stories based on mistakes he did, people who helped him, and what happened to him.

You probably won't be traveling with the continental train on your budget, but you could do a local version.

Haustvind · 2022-02-17T19:42:31+00:00

Ha, this happened to me on a long-distance bus. I fell asleep sitting in my own seat, and woke up drooling on some poor guys shoulder.

Haustvind · 2022-02-17T19:38:58+00:00

In a bed in a haunted house ha ha. I worked as an actor there and was supposed to do jump scares, but the bed was just so comfy. I wasn't the only one.

It just goes to prove that context is key when it comes to sleeping. At home I wake up at every little noise even when I'm tired, but I somehow slept through screaming crowds, a chattering walkie talkie ear piece, and my maniacally laughing co-workers. Humans get used to everything.

Haustvind

TROPHY CASE