Now That Im Thinking About It - Tumblr Posts

So. It’s 2am wich is peak scary stories hour, and i had a passing thought that it’s been 3 YEARS since i listened to a narration by Corpse Husband

I don’t even know if he does narrations any more

inspiration, privilege, and a new character ✨

Hello friends!

This is my first update on my writing progress - just about a week after my first post (give or take a few hours)! I’m still not entirely sure how to go about writing this even as I am in the process of doing it. So, first and foremost, apologies for any awkwardness or stiltedness. Please bear with me as I continue to figure this blog thing out! ᕱ__ᕱ

A quick overview for those of you who want to speed through my rambles and get to the good creative development bits: This week I wanted to gripe about the fickleness of inspiration, discuss unrealised privilege, and give some details about a character I am developing! 

Inspiration

Okay, let's get the complaining out of the way first. Inspiration is so annoying!  Ideally, I would have a steady, gentle flow of inspiration, so I’m able to take my time to pick out the good ideas and discard the rest. But, noooooooo. Instead, my brain decides that I get one of two extremes most often: either I’m overflowing with inspiration, stuck, unable to even process the sheer volume of ideas that are floating about my brain, or my idea stores are dryer than the Sahara desert. It’s so frustrating!!!!!! Is this just a me thing? Do other writers deal with this? Ugh! I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.

I bring this up because this week has been really dry for me. It just figures that as soon as I buckle down and decide to commit to working my creative writing muscles once more, my brain decides that - nope! no ideas for JP this week!

I did eventually get hung up on one idea, during a conversation with my friend about how much we both love morally grey characters. They are just so fascinating to read/think about! When we were having this conversation though, my friend ended up doing a google search on moral alignment charts and this was the first image she clicked on:

Now, regardless of your opinions about the comic book characters on this chart, what caught my attention was the top left corner. Upon seeing everyone’s favorite boy scout in red and blue spandex, I remarked, “Clark Kent seems like a good guy and all, but lawful good characters are so boring.”

  🌟

ᕱ__ᕱ

(Thus, an idea was born.)

A lawful good character that I, at the very least, don’t find boring. What an inspired idea! I rolled the idea around in my head for the next two days as I made my way through classes and finally (while I was taking a shower of course because the best ideas are shower ideas), I decided that I would rework and expand upon a character I had already started creating. One of the characters from my failed creative writing attempt from over the summer. 

Privilege

Because I have to make things terribly difficult and overly complicated for myself, I decided that I wanted to stretch out my graphic design muscles as well and draw my character. But I had a very clear vision of her in my head and wanted to bring her to life for you all to see. It mostly went well, which is good, seeing as I am still quite the novice in most artistic endeavors, until I got to her hair. My character is some type of fae creature (perhaps an elf? I haven’t determined that part yet) and has dark skin. I was originally going to give her straight hair, but ultimately decided that there was no reason she couldn’t have more textured, coily hair, so I set out to try and see if someone had created an accessible brush, or at least a tutorial on how to make one, to help me with drawing out my character hair. 

I found zero. My style is generally on the simplistic, cartoon-like end of the realism spectrum and I was going to style my character’s hair into long bubble-puff twin tails, so the brush type I was searching for wasn’t terribly complicated. And what about braids? I wasn’t able to find a single brush or tutorial for making a textured hair brush that was easy to search or accessible to me. So, I said screw that and ended up figuring out how to make my own. 

It is insane to me how some forms of privilege are so invisible until they smack you right in the face. I am white. I was able to find several downloadable brush options and tutorials on how to make brushes for straight hair. But not a single one for coily, textured hair, or even hair put in protective styles. It’s truly baffling, and I recognize even that feeling as a little privilege on my part because I’ve never had to think about it until this past week.

I’m glad I made the decision to give my character textured hair.

Character

As I stated before, I like to make things difficult for myself and of course with the snags I had drawing my character, much of the time I could have spent writing her was eaten away. However, here are some key details I hope to develop further:

Her name thus far is Ailidh (eyy-lee)

She is some type of fae folk (perhaps an elf - that’s what she started as but I may create my own magic system/world lore so who knows)

She is a noble 

Not royalty I don’t think (I’m fairly certain I don’t want the fae folk to be a monarchy)

Her family is very high ranking though (enough so that they may be part of a ruling class - perhaps and oligarchy type situation - they care for the fae living in there neck of the woods at least)

She is engaged (ooo drama!)

She does not want to be engaged

Ooo plot!

She is skilled with herbs and healing (and also poison) but terrible with weapons of any kind

She is very indignant that her parents send her around with more bodyguards than both of them have combined

She loves her parents and her fellow fae and has a strong sense of loyalty and duty

That, unfortunately, is all I have for now. Hopefully it wasn’t too bland. ᕱ__ᕱ Some world-building crept out at me as I was coming up with her character and story which is very exciting and gives me all sorts of new inspiration! At the very least I have 2 new characters to come up with (her fiance and a surprise). ᕱ__< But, I feel this has been quite long enough (4 pages of the doc I used to draft this on) and so I shall leave you all here for now. Kudos to those who managed to make it here through all my rambles!

And remember, dot your j’s and cross your t’s!

~Clementine J Quincey🪷