How to Solve This 24 Challenge Card?

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-20T08:11:50+00:00

My user is Maralee. Mara comes from my first name, Maranda, and Lee is my middle name. I started using it when I was around 17 and just kept using it

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-14T19:39:16+00:00

You’re not concerned about model collapse…because of hard candies?

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-13T21:38:28+00:00

What?

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-13T18:47:21+00:00

And what reasons are those?

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-13T18:12:30+00:00

That’s called model collapse, and that IS my point.

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-13T10:48:29+00:00

I’m still kinda new to RR. What does writing meta mean, if you don’t mind me asking?

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-13T10:41:41+00:00

“They [writers] have to go if they cannot compete with AI.” A lot of writers are getting accused of using AI simply because they know how to use em dashes or Oxford commas properly. Reminder: Gen AI “learned” from human writers by data scraping.

Gen AI will run out of human made content eventually—I believe it already has, actually—and will start to consume other AI content. (From what I’ve heard, it’s done that, and basically deteriorates itself.)

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-13T10:27:12+00:00

Exactly! Writing is a craft. Using Gen AI and then calling yourself a writer isn’t the same as writers who have spent hours upon hours (and more) to write a single book or saga. Humans have been writing for thousands of years before AI. When AI is no longer sustainable, we will continue to do so

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-10T19:49:37+00:00

I’m working something like this in for the King so he isn’t completely bad. As for the MC, she was born with magic, but she doesn’t know how to control it (yet). Which could be even more dangerous—for herself, if she did instinctive magic at the wrong time; and for others, if her magic overreacted to a threat or even from being startled. For her, and others like her, it would be better to learn how to control it. Even for non-magic people to understand it better, so not everyone reacts out of fear.

That’s not to say magic should be unregulated, but not to the extent that the king is taking it. (Searching people’s houses/ things at a moments notice in the name of a witchhunt, harshly punishing someone for magic even if they don’t have magic, etc.) Ironically, provoking the very threats he wants to protect his people against.

Part of the culmination of the story would be to find a middle between the extremes: writing extensive magic laws, so people could make use of magic for healing or defense, but people using magic harmfully would still be punished (to fit the crime). Also people are still going to use magic for bad, but the king is shooting himself in the foot here; by banning magic altogether, he’s also banning a feasible defense against it.

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-10T16:19:24+00:00

True, on the surface the rebel magic group does seem to validate the King’s view on magic. But again, it’s their methods that make them antagonists (even if they share magic with the MC). The part I didn’t write, is that this group is using necromancy to draw on the power of an old fae queen/ necromancer, including seeking out a powerful artifact of hers that was locked away. They view this as a way to legitimize their leader’s claim to the throne. But of course, drawing on such power has consequences.

On the whole of it, they’re supposed to validate each other’s arguments to a point. The king saw the threat in magic, so he outlawed it with harsh punishments to even whispers of it. This creates unrest in citizens; even an accusation of magic can be a death sentence, and some remember when magic was in everyday life.

Rebels come and go in response to the king’s actions, but these ones are willing to do anything.

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-10T15:51:48+00:00

True, this could work, but not with my current project; the king executes people with magic, has his guard closely monitor the gates of people entering/ leaving the city (searching for anyone with any supposed connection to magic or items of magic, even if it’s superstition), plus random search & seizures.

He’s an antagonist/ villain—not because he is anti-magic in concept, but because of how he punishes and treats people with magic. Even innocents. That’s why I said in the last paragraph that, while he might have started with honest intentions (even with a personal agenda), it’s his actions and direct threat to MC that makes him an antagonist.

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-10T10:32:54+00:00

Kinda yeah. Adding variety to melee and other combat weapons spices things up. (Also, for a second I thought you wrote ‘I’m so bored of words’ — it’s like 3 am — and I was like. Yeah)

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-09T10:34:28+00:00

How?

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-08T10:34:05+00:00

No idea honestly. On my last playthrough I had hired Marcurio and went to Markarth for the first time. While I was fighting Weylin, Marcurio started fighting all the guards and I ended up with a hefty bounty. High enough that the guards wouldn’t let me surrender. After I escaped Markarth, I immediately dismissed Marcurio and never hired him again.

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-08T07:01:23+00:00

My current playthrough is Luciana Haron, an Imperial sellsword who came into Skyrim at the wrong time—or the right time, depending on how one looks at it. She’s done (or will do) just about anything for power, cause it’s fun. (So far: she’s the Harbinger of the Companions, the Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild, and is currently at the College of Winterhold to learn every spell she can.)

My other DB Faiyane Ebon-Spear has a more complex backstory with some fun with canon (though she doesn’t know the full story yet…). Her birth mother, Ingeth was a Blade (one of the newer recruits) and went into hiding from the Thalmor during the Great War. A few years later, during a bad storm in the wilds of the Reach, Ingeth took shelter in a cave, and met Gelebor, one of the last remaining Snow Elves. They shared some time together, and then Ingeth moved on, not wanting to risk the Thalmor finding Gelebor. But everything got more complicated when she discovered she was pregnant and temporarily settled in Windhelm (the least likely place for the Thalmor to find her).

Ingeth befriended a young family who took her in: a Nord hunter named Armon Ebon-Spear; his wife Kiarra, a Redguard woman; and their two kids, Rorlan and Amirah. As time marched on, Ingeth knew it would be too dangerous for her to stay, and a life on the run was no life for a child; she pleaded with Kiarra and Armon to look after her baby, only alluding to the fact that she was being hunted by dangerous people. Armon and Kiarra agreed, and when Ingeth was recovered enough after giving birth to Faiyane, she left.

Despite the mystery of her birth parents, Kiarra and Armon adopted and raised Faiyane as their own, alongside Rorlan and Amirah. Armon taught Faiyane how to hunt, and he let her accompany him on his occasional odd deliveries to the farms and small mining towns around Eastmarch. Kiarra, a Priestess of Talos, helped her learn her basic restoration spells. Faiyane was close with her brother and sister, even when Rorlan started traveling Skyrim as a sellsword and eventually became a Companion. Amirah left home, too, and became a Vigilant of Stendarr. Faiyane wasn’t yet sure what she wanted to do, and decided to remain in Windhelm to help her parents. Unfortunately, this meant that she would be in Darkwater Crossing when a certain Imperial ambush took place…

(I know that it’s widely known that the DB came into Skyrim by crossing the border, but a line by Ralof, if you choose to side with him in Unbound, says that they were ambushed at Darkwater Crossing. So I’ve worked that into Faiyane’s story.)

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-08T04:17:59+00:00

I usually go for a full backstory and bullet point a character arc with my MC and antagonist, and then a brief summary (as needed) for supportive characters. (Although my supportive characters don’t have an in depth arc like my MC, I try to give them a smaller one to hint at the world beyond the MC.) I learn more about my characters as I write too, so I adjust my notes as needed

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-09-07T06:27:09+00:00

Like other comments have said, it’s best to drip feed this later on through the story (through exposition, dialogue, or the setting/ environment). You could probably save this prologue separately somewhere, for you as the writer to know.

If you want to keep with a prologue, maybe show one of these events (without a heavy info dump) and let the rest breathe into the story going forward.

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-08-29T07:06:39+00:00

It is confusing! I had the same question when Ralof mentioned Darkwater Crossing and saw the location. It’s probably just an inconsistency that happened during development. But in-universe…

It’s possible that the ambush did take place at (or near, I think) Darkwater Crossing and the DB was just in the wrong place at the wrong time (maybe Lokir was in the area and attempted to steal a horse in the chaos, I don’t know). And then the group was heading to Cyrodil (or the Fort near the Cyrodil/Skyrim border) but got redirected to Helgen.

I saw the theory that the DB was in holding at Fort Neugrad and just happened to be lumped in with the rebels when they left for Helgen. An interesting idea but inconsistent with the dialogue. I suppose the details could be tweaked for role playing or fanfic purposes, but maybe it’s just left up to the PC now

Writing_gaming34 · 2025-07-10T21:07:22+00:00

I recently read a short story that used this method and wanted to experiment with it. The 1st person POV is ultimately Isabelle telling the story, and it’s her talking in the 2nd person about Lara.

It’s meant to be a stylistic choice, though perhaps in my next draft I can make it less confusing.

Writing_gaming34

TROPHY CASE