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

tips for writing void and water navies

fourtygay:

So, since I actually work around boats all day and also have a thing for blathering about the voidfaring life, here’s a few things I wanted to share that maybe other people might find helpful for adding some realism and believability to their own fictions involving the same things. 

Naming Conventions: 
Ships are often referred to incorrectly in fiction. A ship’s name does not have “the” in front of it, unless that is actually part of the name of the vessel. Example sentence: 

Correct: Vengeful Spirit was an exceptional vessel, the only Scylla variant-build ever constructed of the ancient and intimidating Gloriana pattern. 

Incorrect: The Vengeful Spirit awaited them, a hulking monstrosity cruising slowly just above atmos as she waited in low orbit.

Now, this is not a hard and fast rule. There is a time that you can call a ship “the -name-,” and that is if the ship has been destroyed/sunk/decommissioned, is a piece of history thought to be destroyed, etc. Examples of this: The Black Pearl, the Edmund Fitzgerald. Just be aware that, generally, if your ship in question is still in service and has not become a legend yet, she probably doesn’t have “the” in front of her name. However, you /can/ name a vessel The Fickle Female, or something like that,in which case “the” is part of the name and is fine. Also, pirate ships and privately-run vessels may have “the” in front of their names, though this can make them sound a bit hokey and corny. Another semi-exception is when using the vessel’s full name/title, example “the U.S.S. Enterprise” or “the H.M.S. Titanic” (although Titanic could also call under the “historical indicator from “the.” Passengers who are not familiar with shipfaring may also think of the vessel as “the Glorious Name,” but your crew, and most likely your omniscient narrator, would not. 

Long story short? If your vessel left for her maiden voyage ten or a hundred years ago and hasn’t yet left service… no need for “the”– especially if it’s a crewman doing the talking.

Terminology:
Ships have their own words for everything. Here’s a quick rundown: 

Berth/Berthing: places where crew or possibly passengers sleep.
Quarters: Same as above, but generally insinuating more luxurious accommodations.
Bow: The front/nose of the ship, as a noun
Stern: The rear/ass end of the ship, as a noun.
Prow: The very front of the bow, the “nose” of a ship.
Transom: The flat “ass” of a ship. 
Engines: Whatever makes your ship go. Boats may have motors, but ships have engines. 
Bulkhead: An interior wall of a ship. 
Gunwale: Pronounced “gunnel.” The outside “wall” of the ship as created by the hull.
Hatch: A door or doorway. You can close a hatch or walk through a hatch.
Hatchway: Doorway. You cannot “close” a hatchway, but only walk through it. 
Porthole: a window
Ahead: To engage the engines in a way that the ship moves forward, as in “full steam ahead.”
Astern: To engage the engines in such a way that the ship moves backward/in reverse.
Deck: Any “floor” in or on the ship. Stuff you walk on.
Topside/abovedecks: the “outside area” of a boat. Where you can stand and feel the air on your face.
Belowdecks: “inside” the ship’s hull. “below” is a shortening of this. 
Bilge: A pump that removes water (or whatever) from inside the vessel.
Scuttle: to trash something or throw it out.
Scuttlebutt: Rumors and gossip, trashtalking.
Galley: The kitchen.
Head: bathrooms
Bridge: The part of the ship where it is controlled.
Helm: Phrase for describing the person actually controlling the ship’s movements. The person “at the helm” is the person making the decisions, not the person with the wheel in their hands. If your captain tells his first mate, “Six degrees to starboard, steady on”, the captain is at the helm. If the first mate is making that decision himself because the captain can’t, he’s “at the helm.” 
Moorings: attachment to a dock. “moored” meaning attached in this way.
Flotsam: Stuff floating in the water, or in space.
Masts: Big posts that sails fly from.
Boom: Big post going across the mast that sails attach to.
Make fast: tie shit down
Eye: a round thing to tie to or pass a rope through. 
Cleat: a thing for tying shit to.
Lines: Ropes.
Hold: Any large space inside of a ship to put shit, or “stow” it.

There’s lots more, and lots if you want to get into sailing vessels involving the names for the different sails and masts and such, but this is enough to get you started.

Directions and time: 

Ships have their own way of designating the “directions” on  the ship. Aft and stern are not synonyms: aft is a direction, the stern is the actual physical part of the ship. Same with forward and bow. 

Forward: The “front” direction, anything from the middle of the ship to the very tip of the prow.

Aft: The ass end direction. Anything from the middle to the very farthest back part of the ship.

Port: If you are standing on the ship and looking forward, this is going to be on your left. It’s easy to remember because “left” and “port” both have four letters.

Starboard: Pronounced “starberd.” The “right” side of the ship, if you are standing on the ship, looking forward. Two R’s in starboard– “right.”

This is helpful in writing because you can use these words to describe how your characters move about their surroundings, IE, “She looked up, lost, heading what she assumed was aftward.”

Ships generally have their own clock and specific time. Even today in real life, submarines will have their own times and clocks, often with each crewmember on his own clock.

Summary: Idk people, talk about the cool shit in your spaceships more! Hope this helped.      

(Source: grettir-dun, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

Anonymous asked: So, you mentioned there are different type of magic users in your Alleirat story. Any chance we could get a break down of the different types?

GODDAMN RIGHT YOU CAN

So I suppose the thing that bears mentioning that the way magic works in Alleirat is that a magic user (called a ‘worker,’ except for those who use fire magic) has inherent ability for a mode of using magic—they can channel magic in fire, in water, in plants, in metal, whatever, but they can’t do magic in anything else.  Someone who can channel magic through living plants can’t do the same with thread or water or fire, and they’ll never be able to learn.  So this can get REALLY specific really fast—someone might specifically be a silk worker, for example, or a bronze worker.  It’s more common, however, to specialize into a wide category, like ‘weather’ or ‘metal,’ so I’ll cover a few of the more common and/or pertinent ones.

• Fire magic, obviously.  Fire magic is revered as blessed by the Wanderer, the Alleirai god of fire, battle, and lies.  Brenneth, the main character, is a smith, which—in this universe—means that she’s specifically a broadly trained blacksmith with the ability to work in fire magic.  (Fire magic users are called fire smiths, not fire workers.)  This is pretty much what it says on the tin, with one major exception: unlike most fantasy universes where a mage can summon and throw fireballs, this is mundane fire, which means it needs fuel.  A fire smith of sufficient power can project a pillar of fire, but it’s incredibly short lived and impractical as a weapon.  Combat fire smiths generally carry small grenade-like packages that splash flammable oil over their target, when they can then ignite with ease.  

• Brenneth is something of an exception to this rule, because her trademark is something called white fire—white in Alleirat indicating death/deadly.  White fire isn’t actually white in color, but it’s the colloquial name for dragon fire, which needs no oxygen and no fuel save for the magical power and anger of the wielder. Brenneth earned her title of Fireheart by her preferred fighting style of igniting her sword with white fire—she refuses to teach this trick to anyone on the argument that it’s a dangerous technique with the potential for mass destruction, and she expects it to die with her.

• Weather magic, also obviously.  Weather magic is revered as blessed by the Lady of Stars, the Alleirai goddess of storms, stars, and fallen things.  Crispin is a powerful weather worker—and a fallen thing, and yes I am very pleased with that goddess.  Again, pretty much what it says on the tin, although to varying degrees.  Some weather workers expend themselves completely bringing down a single lightning strike, others—like Crispin—can rally hurricanes and still be standing.  Crispin is one of only a very few weather workers in history to be powerful enough to summon winds that are sufficiently strong and precise to carry him.  Much like fire smiths, combat weather workers often use an aid to direct their magic—it’s energetically taxing to aim lightning strikes, more so the further from one’s self the strike is going, so many weather workers carry rapiers.  They strike the rapier, which is close to themselves and strongly conductive, and then direct the charge at their target.

• Plant workers are also pretty much what it says on the tin, with the exception that a lot of plant workers have actual plant heritage—briatan are tree-people, descended from the universe-equivalent of dryads.  The briatan are more powerful, but less precise than pure human planet workers.  Isla Akekrei, generally known as Krei, the daughter of Brenneth’s old right hand woman and Brenneth’s new military ally, is briatan and a powerful plant worker—akekrei means oak. Krei, like many briatan plant workers, has tattoos in various plant-based inks on her arms, which she can manipulate and move around at will, and, also like many plant workers, she wears cuttings of vines and other plants on her person, which she can use as weapons.  You know that scene in Sky High where Layla flips out?  Yeah, like that.

• Flesh workers, ironically, are probably the most feared people in Alleirat, save Crispin himself.  Flesh workers channel magic through living flesh, which means they’re the magical healers in-universe.  However, a flesh worker is equally capable of healing a mortal wound or of clapping their hand to someone’s chest and making their heart explode, making every bone in their body shatter, or flaying them alive. The moment blood stops moving through the body, a flesh worker’s power is no longer capable of affecting an individual, but up until that point…  As long as they have skin-to-skin contact, a flesh worker can do pretty much whatever they want, no matter how physiologically improbable it is.  The only thing they really can’t do is reattach a completely severed limb. Incidentally, this is the most common kind of worker overall—and again, there are degrees—and the most common type of worker to go full dark side.  There’s a whole cadre of flesh worker assassins because, shocker, they’re the best at it.

• Death workers, on the other hand, are viewed in a similar way to healers in most fantasy universes—people literally cannot fathom a death worker going dark side.  Death workers are basically a variant on necromancers, with the ability to see spirits who’ve become trapped on the “wrong side of the day” (Alleirai religion says that spirits exist between days/on the other side of a day, and keep watch on their loved ones) and raise the dead as…puppets, I guess.  It’s very rare that the latter ability is used, and generally death workers are sort of like grief counselors/priests, responsible for performing funerals and speaking to the bereaved.  

• That being said, death workers are fearsome in combat.  There are stories from back when Alleirat was a bunch of small warring city-states, millennia ago, about death workers at war, and this is how they usually go.

• Two armies have been at war for years, and one, City-State A, is finally losing.  They know that if City-State B wins the war, they’ll sweep in and slaughter everyone left in City-State A, burn their cities—the traditional Sack of Magdeburg-esque situation.  So, a powerful death worker who’s been serving to ensure that all the spirits of the dead are safely on the other side of the day goes to her lord.
• “Lord,” she inevitably says, “I have the power to end this war, here and now.”  
• Her lord demurs, because what she’s offering is horrific in the Alleirai culture—you never ever tamper with a dead body except to put them to rest in the manner specified by the dead person.  This is a capital crime.
• “I will do this, and you cannot stop me,” she says.  “So bring in all the guards and tell the camp to go to sleep, and I will save us, and then I will die for what I’ve done.”
• Her lord agrees, because what other choice is there?  And the camp goes to sleep, and the death worker walks out onto the battlefield, where the bodies of the dead are neatly laid out and waiting to be laid to rest.  She stands in the middle of the dead, and she reaches out her hands, and all around her, they stand and take up weapons and march toward the enemy lines.  There is a single night of battle.  Every enemy soldier who falls is raised to march in the death worker’s army, and there are always more dead bodies to drive forward.
• The sun rises. The camp wakes.  The enemy lines are decimated, littered with dead bodies, and some distance away, somewhere with a clear view of the entire battle, the death worker lies dead.

• The worker wreaking havoc as a weapon of a lordling when Brenneth and Crispin come back to Alleirat?  A death worker fallen through from Earth named Hoshiko, with no friends, no support, and a conviction that she’s going insane.  ILY Shiko, I’m sorry I’m mean.

rederiswrites:

Okay guys, for writing/general reference, a bit about what a ‘blacksmith’ is and isn’t:

A blacksmith is a generalist, a person who uses tools and fire to work iron.  Some blacksmiths work more specifically, so you get, say, an architectural blacksmith, who focuses more or less exclusively on things like gates, rails, fences, or an artist blacksmith, who makes wacky sculptures or what have you.  These days, though, that’s a pretty blurry line.  ‘Blacksmith’ is a pretty damn broad term, but it’s nowhere near broad enough to cover everything encompassed in ‘metalworker’, which is how I often see it used.  There are a LOT of different skills for working metal, and no one knows them all.  Some other terms:

A farrier shoes horses.  They may make the shoes, or they may buy them and then size them, but they actually do the shoeing.  Unless the blacksmith is also a farrier, they don’t know shit about horses’ hooves and are not qualified to deal with them and probably don’t want to.

A blacksmith works IRON (or steel), usually almost exclusively.  They might work with bronze or do a bit of brazing, but those are really separate skillsets.  If you work, say, tin and/or pewter, you are in fact a whitesmith.  You could also be a silversmith or a coppersmith, and so on.

Knifemakers and swordsmiths have their own highly specialized and fairly complex specialties, and usually a blacksmith wouldn’t mess with that unless they want to pick up a new skillset or if they’re really the only game going for a long way around.  By the same token, a swordsmith might never have learned the more general blacksmithing skills.  They’re not the same thing is what I’m trying to say here.  Likewise armorers.  There’s overlap but it’s not the same thing.

If you make metal items via molds and casting, you work at a foundry and are a foundryman.

Look, when metalworkers and individual shops and masters were the height of industry, this shit got REALLY specific.  There were people who spent their whole lives making pins.  Just pins.  Foundries specialized and made only bells, only cannon, only cauldrons, etc.  This is scratching the surface, I just wanted to make the point that ‘blacksmith’ is not the same thing as ‘magical muscly person who knows how to do everything related to metal’.

(via skymurdock)

silver-soliloquy asked: WOW, your novel sounds fantastic!!

Thank you so much!  I’m kind of relieved it sounds like fun to people, because it has eaten my whole brain and put every WIP fic on hold and demanded not just a language but also a functional harbor code for drums/horn/lanterns, and it has haunted me that I might be wasting my time on something boring.

Anonymous asked: I love your writing a lot, esp your original writing. Could you tell us about your current novel? The 'earth is where trouble comes from' one? Pretty pretty please?

OH MY GOD ANON YES I WILL.

Okay, so you might know how at the end of every third YA book where there’s a trip to another world and a prophecy and magic and world-saving, the protagonist gets popped back into their life on Earth all “Welp, good to have you here, kid, have fun with your nice Life Lessons and PTSD and what-not, about your business.”  Like, Narnia, for example.  I had a lot of issues with Narnia and the whole “You’re too old now, you can never come back, leave and go live out your life and forget about magic and wonder and miracles” shtick when I read it as a little kid.  Yeah, this novel is the product of maybe twelve years of stewing over that kind of ending.

So, this book, which I’m currently just calling Alleirat, is about the hero of one of those novels and the villain of one of those novels, once they’ve grown up to twenty-somethings.  

The general plot of the YA novel (which won’t be written, it’s the backstory) was that a ten-year-old girl and boy both fell through a thin spot between worlds to Alleirat, where magic is the norm and there’s a standing prophecy someone got off a ghost a long time ago about a worldwalker who will save them from a great evil.  Since they manage to fall through to a time where sexism is kind of A Thing, they leave the girl, who takes the name Brenneth and has an ability for fire magic, to be raised as a blacksmith, and take the boy, Crispin, with an ability for weather magic, to be trained as a hero–and spend the next ten years telling Crispin that it’s his destiny to save them all.  Crispin, unsurprisingly, snaps, when he’s twenty years old.  He suffers a nervous breakdown, and the logic he follows is that, in order to save everyone, he needs to be in control, and he consequently sets out to take over the world.  Which goes over great–so great, in fact, that he’s given the nickname the White Wolf (their society associates white with death and wolves with evil/hunger/rage).  Increasingly desperate to stop him, the Alleirai leaders call on Crispin’s oldest friend Brenneth to fight for them, and she agrees.  About four years (and one sword through the chest very narrowly survived Because Magic) later she manages to stop Crispin (and also cuts off his arm, which he understandably takes personally).

And then…they get popped back into their ten-year-old, perfectly intact bodies on Earth.  No destiny.  No magic.  No one who understands why these two kids who were perfectly normal an hour ago suddenly act like soldiers fresh off the battlefield, jumping at every loud noise and picking fights and waking up from screaming nightmares.  Except each other.

Fast forward fourteen years (take two, On Earth Version) and we’re at the start of the novel.  Brenneth and Crispin have a very strange relationship, the sort of relationship you might expect from two people who have transitioned from friends, to close friends, to mortal enemies, to calling each other just to listen to someone scream at them in Alleirai, to drinking weekly and talking about how much they hate being stuck on Earth.  They have Issues, is the point here, and the primary life lesson they took away from their time in Alleirat is “magic is great, and just because you were born on one planet doesn’t make it your home.”  So, naturally, they fall through to Alleirat again.

Which is great.

Except for the fact that, in order:

1. Crispin is probably going to be executed for his crimes, which he understands but Brenneth is Not Okay with (and willing to take a stand against)
2. It’s been four centuries since they left
3. Brenneth is highly uneasy with having gone down in history as a hero of legend
4. It’s been four centuries and everyone they knew is consequently dead
5. They’ve come back just in time to deal with another worldwalker fucking shit up, this time with death magic (necromancy, woo! *throws flowers*)
6. It’s been FOUR CENTURIES and they’re officially in history books and constellations

Now, the reason that Earth Is The Problem Planet, is that, basically, there are hundreds or thousands of worlds (the Alleirai know this for sure) and they all intersect at Earth.  The problems with this are that, A, Earth is the only world without magic (since all the other worlds basically cancel it out) and therefore a lot of people on Earth have truly massive magical potential built up over the millennia, which turns terrifying once they can actually use it (Crispin figured out how to fly using weather magic, and Brenneth can cast unquenchable dragon fire), and, B, people from Earth keep falling through the cracks.  Since they’re distributed across all these worlds, Alleirat can and has gone several centuries without one, but they’re also common enough that Alleirat does have a word specifically for them.  And they usually cause trouble, because it’s always the ones with strong magic who fall through.

So yeah, that’s basically the novel.

Some other things I find to be highlights:

• Alleirat has actual high fantasy diversity!  The mountainous Northern part of the continent has fair-skinned folk, whereas Brenneth (whose family is from southern India) looks more like the people from the fertile Southern plains, closer to the equator of the planet.  The Outrigger Islands scattered around the south and east/west tend to have skin tones ranging between maybe Morocco and Nubia, depending on how far from the midline of the planet they are.

• Alleirat, having been schooled by Brenneth last time, now has a warrior/civilian divide rather than our masculine/feminine divide (it looks similar, though, because Humans Are Problematic).  This manifests itself most intensely in a distinction in dress.  Civilians are expected to dress more modestly, whereas any gender of warrior is accepted to be shirtless pretty much whenever.  Hair length is also considered to be more of a marker of social rank than skin tone–long hair equates to higher status, shorter hair means you work as a laborer or another low-status job (this has been a thing for a long while, though, since before Crispin and Brenneth).

• Alleirat has dragons (crafted and blessed by the god of fire, battle, and lies, of whom Brenneth is a devotee) and griffins (crafted and blessed by the goddess of stars, storms, and fallen things, of whom Crispin is a devotee).  Dragons breathe unquenchable magical fire, and griffins can send lightning along their wings.  I think they’re pretty cool.

• Alleirat has an arrangement called amuniasa, which is an unrequited or courtly love arrangement, as an accepted part of society.  The amdri, or the lover, tells the object of their feelings how they feel, and that person can either accept a romantic/sexual relationship or proclaim themselves amiasa, or the beloved, indicating that they don’t return the feelings, but recognize the honor they are being given.  It’s very poor form to pressure your amiasa into returning your feelings, and likewise it’s very poor form to lead your amdri on–your window to change your mind is limited.  Amuniasa is generally considered to be about as binding as marriage, although plenty of amdri also have a spouse whom they love sincerely–basically, polyamory.  Example: Brenneth’s right-hand woman last time around was her amdri, although her feelings were completely committed to Brenneth and she never took a spouse.  Also, she has a daughter that joins Crispin and Brenneth this time (their specific race is incredibly long-lived) whose coloring suggests that she specifically took a lover who looked like Brenneth.

• Brenneth is pretty much the beauty standard these days (they take their heroes of legend seriously in Alleirat), meaning that they revere women with lush black hair, broad shoulders, and dark skin.  I dunno, it felt right at the time that I made that decision.

• The primary port city on the East, Dase, has a port that is literally carved straight into a four-hundred-foot cliff face.  Like.  The city is on top of the harbor.  I stole this from the D&D campaign I ran last semester, but I did invent it in the first place for a completely different novel that will never be finished, so.  It’s not plagarism because I wrote it, basically.

• I am literally creating a language for this bullshit universe that has taken over my life.  I am ilala–an idiot.

THE 19 FUNNIEST EXPRESSIONS IN ITALIAN (AND HOW TO USE THEM)

la-sicilienne:

BY RICHARD BRUSCHIMARCH 11, 2015

1. Italians don’t “play dumb”… they “do the dead cat” (Fare la gatta morta).

2. Italians aren’t “wasted”… they are “drunk as a monkey” (Ubriaco come una scimmia).

3. Italians don’t “scold” somebody… they “shave against the growth” (Fare il contropelo).

4. Italians don’t “disrespect”… they “treat you with fishes in your face” (Trattare a pesci in faccia).

5. Italians don’t “have a bee in one’s bonnet”… they “have a fixed nail in one’s head” (Avere un chiodo fisso in testa).

6. Italians don’t “arouse somebody’s doubts”… they “put a flea in the ear” (Mettere la pulce nell’orecchio).

7. Italians don’t “do it with hands tied behind the back”… they “jump ditches the long way” (Saltare I fossi per il lungo).

8. Italians don’t say “it rains cats and dogs”… they say “it rains from washbasins” (Piovere a catinelle).

9. Italians don’t say “well cooked”… they say “cooked to the small point” (Cotto a puntino).

10. Italians don’t say “not the sharpest tool in the box”… they say “merry goose” (Oca giuliva).

11. Italians don’t “take things too far”… they “pull the rope” (Tirare la corda).

12. Italians aren’t “fidgety”… they “have live silver on themselves”(Avere argento vivo addosso).

13. Italians aren’t “dumbfounded”… they “remain as stucco” (Rimanerci di stucco).

14. Italians don’t “keep their mouth shut”… they have “water in the mouth” (Acqua in bocca).

15. Italians don’t “go to bed early”… they “go to bed with the chickens” (Andare a letto con le galline).

This story was produced through the travel journalism programs at MatadorU.

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16. Italians don’t “sleep like a log”… they “sleep like a dormouse” (Dormire come un ghiro).

17. Italians are not “out of their mind”… they are “outside as a balcony” (Fuori come un balcone).

18. Italians don’t “bite the hand that feeds them”… they “spit in the plate they eat from” (Sputare nel piatto dove si mangia).

19. Italians don’t say “it’s the last straw”… they say “the drop that made the vase overflow” (La goccia che ha fatto traboccare il vaso).

(via lathori)