tournamentsofroses:

squirrelwrangler:

More long post WIP original story, directly continuing off of this post. Stopped at a point so the post would be shorter than the first snippet (five pages is not a snippet, I know).

…

“I enter the dry hall of the king, my shell dress still dripping wet, which is a faux pas, and I could not describe to you my hair. All my journey I fret that I must make a good impression, and here is how I arrive. The dry hall is wood, semi-open to the elements, unlike other portions of the palace complex which are of coral and stone. Had I been escorted to one of those rooms, my anxiety would have overpowered me. But I was tired from swimming and determined to have this position at court, to learn under Queen Gara, so the magnitude of what surrounds me is deadened. So dark is it, I cannot not see the details of wealth around me. There are curtains of sea-wool, like gold made into mist, hanging from the ceiling. Just enough of that cloth to make a pair of lady’s gloves is worth a lord’s ransom in your land. Metal objects, which are more rare and precious in the islands, decorate the room, and the hinges and furnishings on the doors are made of brass. The first time I saw one of your temples with doors of solid bronze, every carving cast in metal and not carved, I sat on the steps and just stared for hours in sheer wonder. But the palace of Iro was the first wonderful and wealthy place that I came to. What else can I say to describe it that morning? Flowers are grown around the outer walls to provide a sweet scent to combat the scent of salt. The winds bring it in through the open panels. I have found only a few perfumes that come close to matching those flowers. And how strongly a smell is, or its qualities, is highly dependent on my current form. Scent memory is therefore strange for me. Alas, it would have been nice to stand there for while and dry, but I am immediately shuffled onward.

“The king himself, not any master of servants, is the one to collect me from the guard escort. He wears no crown; King Isore rarely did, but he did not need to, for how recognizable he is.” Amabel paused. “The man that Great Lady Manon spoke to in Stonegift, her banker with the stupid feathered hat, you recall him?”

“I liked his hat,” Gislin said.

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“The dry hall” This is beautifully described.

“Terrible taste in colors” is that a joke about dogs’ poor color vision?

The paragraph about Iro anticipating an attack – again, there’s a sense, as a reader unfamiliar with this world, of being a bit adrift in a sea of names and concepts.  Fortunately, they’re really cool names and concepts.  Amabel’s curse is a lovely piece of world-building through incidental dialogue, rather than the flood of expositional dialogue she provides through most of the story.  The switch to unusual/archaic grammar makes that last sentence pop – “only evil it stirs up to the surface waters.”

Let me be frank – most of my investment in the Big Two’s superhero comics comes through their animated versions.  Those shows were my earliest exposure, and are, en masse, still my favorite versions of the canons.  I can’t keep up with the endless retcons in the print comics, the live actions tv shows have never quite clicked with me, and the movies are enjoyable but too popcorn-y for me.  (I don’t mean just the quippy Marvel Movies here, and I don’t mean either don’t have depth.  I just mean that for me, they’re ephemeral.)  So the paragraph that’s basically about thinly veiled Garth and Kaldur and Amabel-as-Tula is pure catnip for me, because my favorite version of Atlantis is the Young Justice cartoon version. 

Oh boy, Gislin teasing Amabel and her sniping back is very cute.  I’m enjoying this story of Amabel’s, but if you ever feel like just writing the travel group bantering with each other, I’m very here for that.

Please do explain proper architecture sometime, Amabel, I’m curious.

Squees up to high heaven. On my lunch break at work so I must be quick and quiet.

First of all, praise and thank you for replying, and to a side story off of original fic. All the bonus points there. XD

I struggle between wanting scientific grounding and justification and embracing the point of fantasy- so mermaids have bugged me because the bottom half are fish? But humans are mammals. So I’ve always liked Selkies more. And knowing enough Greek mythology that the sirens were originally bird women, not mermaids. Thus Amabel’s species, the idea that mermaids and harpies are the same species and that they can switch, and the delightful world that creates. But that means that Amabel’s ‘fish form’ isn’t fish but reptilian or avian (yes, still uncertain). And thus my merfolk can’t breathe underwater. Hold their breath a long time, water based magic and culture, skin like hippos needing submersion to stay healthy. But thus an architecture a mix of dry rooms and pools.

The dry hall you should be thinking a little Polynesian. Just a tad.

Gislin is based off of Shonen main hero – but stuck as the side support character. And thanks to DBZ and especially Naruto, that means eyesearing orange. Plus the dog thing and the medieval taste for bright colors in motley and oversized patterns. Gislin’s personal look is based off a red-capped crane, but he wishes for bright colors as tied to wealth displays.

This passage would be, ideally, something like fifteen to twenty chapters into the main story, so the basic tenants of the world and story are established (forest-taint and the priests purify/terraforming the world. The empire more like the Holy Roman Empire than Medieval England. Rohese’s companions) so I’ve writing this info-dumping both. Mites, btw, for Amabel’s bird nature and how deadly those are for feathered things.

The archaic sounding phrasing is….an oft unintentional product of my writing. I’d trace it back to reading a lot of not modern literature and fantasy as a child and that the Texan dialect preserves or creates turns of phrase and wacky sentence construction that sounds old fashioned.

Yay! You caught it. I’m constantly in a push-pull on the renames if to match, go same letter, wildly different. Ironically, Amabel herself has as one of her main inspirations another comic book character: Mystique. (Now you know a secret). It’s more apparent when you meet Lee, her son. And yes her original name was Annabel solely for the pun Annabel Lee. But I found that writing in Garth and Kaldur, Amabel actually worked for the missing Tula insteadung adding another new name.

Insofar as Rose Red has plot beyond setup and backstories and visuals for some key battles, its plot is the group listening to stories as they travel. (And a cross dressing tourney arc because every shonen needs a tournament arc. Mandatory cliche)