Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Right, so, there’s been some interest in this?  So here, this is like a 1.5K snippet that I wrote yesterday, a conversation between the main character (Brenneth) and Crispin, with a little bit of Krei (the Tall Tree Lesbian) at the end there.  I think this is…pretty much self-explanatory, but here is the ‘Earth is where the trouble comes from’ novel explanation.

Crispin was in the last cell to the left of the door, with the wall beside him, and on the side facing the entrance—no windows. His hands were bound with fresh apas cord, the wrists pressed together tightly enough that he could struggle if he attempted to break free.  He seemed in good health, uninjured from what I could see. His hair was even clean, the curls falling around his face like copper wire in the lantern light.

Crispin, I thought with a bitter rush of guilt, probably had not been given the luxury of fine soaps and a private bath.

He seemed to catch the thought on my face and pointed at me.  “Hey, none of that,” he said in his most commanding voice.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I said automatically, and scowled when he grinned at me.  “And don’t be an ass, I’m trying to help you.”

Crispin’s good humor faded, leaving a small, sad smile behind as he glanced me over, eyes lingering on the spike in my hair and the new belt around my hips.  “They got you a sword,” he noted quietly, and my hand dropped to the pommel at my side, smoothing over the unornamented hilt.  

The weight of the sword was a strange dual sensation—it was intrinsically familiar and reassuring to the part of my that had hated to walk unarmed for a decade and a half on Earth, but my muscles didn’t remember how to compensate for it, had never learned how to walk without bumping the scabbard with my leg.  I was feeling the ache from the time I had spent in the training grounds, trying to force my body to accustom itself to the weight of a blade again, and I would pay for it tomorrow.  My palms would blister and my legs would tremble.  For the first time in years, I felt like a stranger in my body again, hating the way that my hands hurt from the hilt and the way my shoulders complained bitterly at me. The sword was a small token comfort against it.

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Are you kidding? I’m waiting for the day when you publish this thing so i can read this sweet shit. Because it sounds epic. :D

SCREAMS oh my god you’re too nice

littlestartopaz asked: For the fic you'd never write: Diana/Steve Rogers "Running Parallel, but Never Meeting (Until Now)"

(YES GOOD)

AO3 summary: By the time she sits down at his table, Steve thinks he’s aspired to be this woman for his entire life.

Actual summary: As a little boy in New York, Steve hears from his mother, who was a nurse in the Great War, about the people she worked with.  A man in a greatcoat, his sleek black hair tied into twin braids, runs into them one day and she hugs him and introduces him (the Chief, Stevie, he kept us all smiling) and he tells Steve fantastic stories about a woman who could charge a trench all on her own.  

Steve grows up and remembers her and tries to join the Army and gets the 4F stamp a lot before Erskine finds him.  He asks Erskine, curious, about what inspired the super soldier formula, and Erskine tells him about his sister’s daughter, who lived in a little village in Germany and who saw a woman in a black cloak and armor demolish an entire occupying battalion.  (Diana hears about the man who saved a child by using a taxi door as a shield–no sharp edges–and she smiles as she lays out a map and tries to decide where to go, where the war needs her most.  This…this is a worse war.)  Steve thinks about the woman, about the shield the Chief described (the Chief is in his sixties, now, but he still keeps the soldiers smiling), as he breaks into a HYDRA prison with a dinky tin shield, and again when he picks a vibranium disc rather than Howard’s high-tech alternatives.  (Diana hears about Captain America and laughs a little–they have started to call her Wonder, the Wonder Woman, so she can’t laugh too much–and wishes that the war didn’t need her so much elsewhere, so that she could meet him.)  Steve and the Howlies pass through a little village in Germany one day, and there’s a picture in their tavern, in a place of honor, like a shrine, of a woman in armor looking stern and triumphant, with a much-younger Chief at her shoulder, and it makes Steve smile.  (Diana wanders to the States, after the war is over, because she has heard the tragedy of Steve Rogers and she wants to see the place that produced that man, and she meets a woman with sad eyes and dark curls.  They talk about their respective Steves and kick some ass and maybe one time Peggy kisses her and maybe Diana kisses her back.)

Diana arrives from her job in London (it’s hideous, but she’s used to it) three days after the Chitauri destroy a huge portion of New York.  She works for two weeks straight, moving debris, searching for the missing, reuniting families, doing whatever she can to help, sleeping for as little time as she can manage.  The Avengers are out helping too, and she smiles to see them, even when Tony Stark treats her like something of a fool and Dr. Banner mistakes her for a patient.

She goes to an old diner that she remembers from the last time she was here, in Brooklyn (Peggy always said to start in Brooklyn, in New York), and sees a blond head propped on a fist and she smiles, slipping into the booth opposite him.

“Hello, Captain Rogers,” she says, and he startles to attention.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I–oh my God,” he blurts.  “You’re her!“

Anonymous asked: Is your magical gf's thing from your fantasy book? Sorry if this seems rude but I am like SO invested in your novels from what you've given us.

NEVER RUDE NEVER RUDE NEVER RUDE

ALWAYS TALK TO ME ABOUT MY NOVELS

And yes, my magical gf’s are from one of my fantasy novels, which I generally call Alleirat because I’m a lazy fuck who doesn’t title things until the last available second.  This novel is also called the “Earth is where the trouble comes from” book, which sums it up pretty well.  The Very Tall Tree Person is the right hand woman of the main character, and the Smol Death Machine…um, starts the novel as the bad guy buT IT’S A NOVEL ABOUT REDEMPTION AND IT’S NOT HER FAULT AND I LOVE HER V MUCH.

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know what’s going on: THIS is a basic rundown of the story, and THIS is some basic outlining of the way magic works, and this and this are about the couple in question.  The novel is currently like 35K and I’m doing it for Camp NaNoWriMo.

And like, IDK y’all I feel guilty forcing my weird original stuff on you, but if you’re interested I could post a section I wrote yesterday that I’m…pretty pleased with.

thejovianmute:

rage-quitter:

I was getting pretty fed up with links and generators with very general and overused weapons and superpowers and what have you for characters so:

Here is a page for premodern weapons, broken down into a ton of subcategories, with the weapon’s region of origin. 

Here is a page of medieval weapons.

Here is a page of just about every conceived superpower.

Here is a page for legendary creatures and their regions of origin.

Here are some gemstones.

Here is a bunch of Greek legends, including monsters, gods, nymphs, heroes, and so on. 

Here is a website with a ton of (legally attained, don’t worry) information about the black market.

Here is a website with information about forensic science and cases of death. Discretion advised. 

Here is every religion in the world. 

Here is every language in the world.

Here are methods of torture. Discretion advised.

Here are descriptions of the various methods used for the death penalty. Discretion advised.

Here are poisonous plants.

Here are plants in general.

Feel free to add more to this!

An exceedingly useful list of lists for writers.

(Source: sapphiccowboy, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

gods-only-daughter:

I just got back from watching Wonder Woman and I’m 110% sure that Antiope was gay and the woman who screamed when she got shot was her lover. I’m only stating facts here.

(via ifeelbetterer)

vitoliel:

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate the pitch perfectness that was setting Wonder Woman during WW1? I mean, at first I was like…WWI? Why WWI? There was no clear cut bad guy in WWI. It was one of the most tragically pointless wars in human history.

But then I realized that was the point. In WWII it’s easy to point at Hitler and the Nazis and say, that’s them! that’s the bad guy. Just KILL THEM AND BE DONE WITH IT.

But the Point of Wonder Woman is that people, all people, are part of the problem. From Steve Trevor, who’s people, my people, massacred the Native Peoples, to the teenage German soldiers putting gas canisters on a plane, EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING IS  MIX OF GOOD AND BAD CHOICES, and a victim and a perpetrator of choices that lead to death and suffering and tragedy.

And that makes Diana’s choice to keep fighting for peace even better. Because she’s not out to defeat one big bad and get it over with. She’s out to fight for peace, and that is a war that will NEVER end. How is that not 10000 times braver than just killing one person and ending a war?

It is Tolkien’s long victory, the victory you only see after the end. And that fight is braver than anything else you can do because it is step by step, day after day, choice after choice.

(via slyrider)

Anonymous asked: I watched Wonder Woman on its premiere and none of my friends have watched it yet - it's absolutely killing me not being able to talk about it in case I spoil it for them! But I just want to say that it is such a beautiful movie and the message it conveys is brilliant. Gal and Chris were a great casting and the acting was so so so heartbreaking. I am in awe. And I am not the same person that walked into the theatre.

Oh my God, dude, same, that movie was so…electric.  Like, it felt like a jolt of lightning right to the heart.  Everything was so beautifully saturated and powerful and the women were treated so phenomenally well and the heroism was so sincere and the relationship between Steve and Diana was so unbelievably good.  I haven’t felt so purely and authentically loved by a movie for quite a while.

It was amazing.  Absolutely amazing.