Tag: cross post

Cross-Post: Haggled (main story brainstorm)

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original here. dated 2011-11-20.

~

Haggled has all the hallmarks of a traditional fairytale, but I’m fairly sure it doesn’t actually exist and it will be told in a grittier, factual way. It starts, much like other fairytales, with the royal couple having difficulties producing an heir; this, unlike other fairytales however, results in marriage and more importantly political troubles and the situation becomes dire. It’s implied that the king had successfully impregnated a servant girl, which proved that the issue was not with the king (figures), which puts further pressure on the queen. Furthermore, her brother, the prince of the neighboring kingdom of which her marriage sealed the alliance, tells her that there are signs of war and that their home kingdom will need time to prepare and to accept him as acting king (since their father has not yet died but is sickly and old). In order to save her marriage and most importantly her kingdom(s), she goes to the mysterious witch and makes a deal.

The witch will agree to give the queen a child, if the queen agrees to concede her control of the throne to the witch. She asks for time to decide and intelligently weighs the pros and cons while consulting with her brother: she takes the deal because ten months will be sufficient enough time to prepare her native kingdom, her brother has promised to accept her and her child back into the fold, she figures she doesn’t actually have any significant control over the throne, the royal magician (though unable to help her conceive) is a powerful battle magician etc. etc. So the queen becomes pregnant, war is averted, and all is well for a while.

The queen gives birth to a son and everything is amazing because now they have a male heir and won’t have to go through the madness of infertility again. The witch sends reminders of their deal or requests a meeting with the queen or whatever, which goes unanswered, though the queen tells the royal magician to be on guard and etc. The day of the prince’s official ceremonial debut-thing with all the neighboring dignitaries and important people the witch crashes the party, because defenses are lowered and stuff, to disclose the secret of the deal and to vow the fulfillment of it. Defenses are raised, everyone’s on guard, etc.

Everyone is expecting this huge theatrical attack or widespread curse, but the night passes and it seems like nothing happens. In the morning, however, it is discovered that in the prince’s crib is another identical child, with a note from the witch to take care of the children she gave them. Basically, one of them is the real prince, the other is a golem or something but it is impossible to tell them apart. There isn’t really anything to do but to raise both of them and hope with time they can tell the difference.

Time passes, the twins grow up, and it’s noticeable that one is the… better twin… but there’s still no way to tell which one would be under the witch’s control. The not-as-competenet twin turns out to have magic, which he keeps a secret since a) that might imply he is the golem, b) magicians have been mistrusted/discriminated against since the debut, c) he’s never had anything for himself, etc. etc. But soon he’s not able to hide his magic, though luckily he only reveals it to his only close, loyal friend. They come up with the idea to travel to the old court magician in order to learn how to control his magic. The journey makes him more independent and stronger, they meet new people along the way, and it turns out that by traveling, the prince is actually learning how to control his magic on his own.

Meanwhile back at the castle, the royal family assume that the missing son was kidnapped by the witch and in which case it is also assumed that the competent twin is the golem. I’m not too sure if the queen wants to keep that idea to herself to protect the kingdom and her not-son, and etc. or if they just straight up imprison him? But anyway, they send out search parties to find their other son, which the traveling party misinterprets as hunting the incompetent twin because they think he’s the golem. The competent twin is plagued by visits and visions of the witch who is trying to exert her influence on him because the other twin is protected by his own magic. The magic twin doesn’t fully experience her oppressive visits, he is able to see what his brother is being put through, because even if they are different they are twins and brothers and friends! We still have no idea which is the golem, and I think I’d like to keep that a mystery.

At some point, the magic twin meets the old court magician who at first refuses to teach him. Soon after, it is the twin left behind is sentenced to death because the idea that he is the golem has spread and people want action done. The magic twin decides to go back to save his brother, which… I’m not sure how that’ll work out? I guess his plan is to show up and wing it… His party follows because they are loyal and etc. The old magician doesn’t, but he does tell the magic twin that as the golem’s power source, killing the witch will also kill the golem.

The magic twin goes to save his brother, the witch appears because it’s the climax and there’s a magic battle… I don’t know how this ends to be honest. I guess the happiest ending would be that the protagonists are able to kill the witch but the golem, the competent twin in this case, gets his power from the magic twin so no one has to die since the threat is gone. There’s the option where the competent twin sacrifices himself (or goes crazy and commits murder suicide) to help his brother defeat the witch, where the competent twin is the golem but is able to overcome the witch’s influence to do the right thing. There’s also the possibility that neither of them are golems but that one or both the actual children of the witch. I mostly wanted the idea of an evil witch getting her revenge not by obvious killing attempts and curses but by causing suspicion and things to taint already strained relationships and politics.

Cross-Post: Triangles and Other Three Sided Things

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original here. dated 2011-11-04

~

They’re not really sure when it started. Well, no, that’s a lie. All of them are sure about when they think it started, but none of them agree:

Timmy says it was that Friday the 13th dance all those years ago; “we were dancing together—and Cindy even admits she went to the dance with both of us.”

“She went to the dance with both of us, yes, and she was both of our dates, but we didn’t go to the dance with each other.”

“Actually, Neutron, since we all arrived at the dance at the same time and from the same place together, we all three did, in fact, go to the dance with each other.”

“Haha! See, I am so right! Take that, boy genius!”

“Oh, Timmy, you really aren’t.”

Cindy thinks that that’s far too early—they were just kids, they didn’t really know anything back then, boy genius aside. “If it had any specific beginning,” she argues, “it was in high school.”

“What?”

“No, no, now you’re too early. You were my girlfriend in high school.”

“Only because Timmy was still living in his old dimension—”

“Then how would it have started in high school?”

“Let me finish! Only because Timmy was still living in his old dimension and you know how high school is, peer pressure and all that. And plus, the two of you were still shy—it took you forever to kiss.”

“Well, that just proves my point then, Vortex.”

Jimmy knows it didn’t really start until even further after that, it was definitely in college.

“Look, the facts don’t lie, it can’t have started before Timmy came to live in this dimension. And like you said, high school wasn’t really the best place to foster any kind of relationship that didn’t match the accepted social norms. We couldn’t really accept ourselves a-as a… as a…”

“I believe the phrase you’re looking for is ménage à trois, Neutron.”

“I can’t believe he still stutters at that. Just call it a threesome, no need for fancy words. But it’s okay, I love both of you for your bodies, not your minds… nerdy babes, the things I put up with.”

At this point in the disagreement, they lose their train of thought or get distracted by other topics or end up in a bit of roughhousing that turns a lot friendlier. It’s a conversation they’ve had before, rehashing the same things over and over, so it’s easy to drop it. Because what really matters isn’t when it started, this relationship of theirs, only that it exists.

~

College was fraught with a lot of surprises. Mostly the fact that he even went to college. Timmy that is. To be honest, with all of the poor schooling and sadistic teachers and limited attention span, he’s still kind of surprised to have even graduated from elementary school let alone high school. And no one really expected him to continue on to higher education. Least of all himself.

Actually… no one really expected him to do anything with his life. (Why does that seem wrong to him, somehow? He feels like there was someone, maybe two someones, who cared about him. But why wouldn’t he be able to remember them then?)

… Well, no one in his old dimension anyway.

What are you going to do now? Will you be going to college? Why don’t you live in this dimension? Wouldn’t you like to come with us? What are you going to do now?

They had asked. And he had answered. Through the inter-dimensional portal he went. (None of them can remember what inspired Jimmy to invent the inter-dimensional portal, they’re pretty sure that Timmy came through first but they’re not too sure how that would have happened.)

He had only two sets of clothes and his favorite comic books in his backpack, money not working across different dimensions and not really having much else of value. (He had considered bringing his goldfish bowl, even if there were no more goldfish in it and he wasn’t sure why. He had gone back to get it when the three of them finally got a place of their own. Cindy always asks why they don’t get some fish for it, but he feels like it just wouldn’t be the same.) And he had gotten used to living without much stuff, his parents constantly forgetting his existence and Vicky destroying most of what he did have.

He wouldn’t really have been prepared for college even with more stuff. He’s still not actually sure how he got accepted, though it he thinks it might have to do with Jimmy giving him credit on some inventions—he hadn’t actually done any of the science-y stuff, but he had come up with the ideas, and no college is going to say no James Isaac Neutron—and maybe with Cindy’s family’s connections—and practically nothing on Earth is going to say no to Cynthia Aurora Vortex. [It’s actually neither, the school wanted the honor of having the first inter-dimensional student, regardless of how mediocre his application was.]

But he did get accepted into college. Even if he did struggle in introductory general education classes and hop from major to major with no clear idea of what he wanted to do. Even as his friends blazed ahead: Cindy getting a heady combination of degrees in business, political science, and biochemistry and Jimmy dominating all levels of the engineering department like he had been born to do so.

And at some point, Timmy, being one of the few people not driven off by the constant inventing and in desperate need of a place to stay [though that’s not at all why Jimmy chose to do all of his noisy tinkering in the middle night while his previous roommates were trying to sleep. Not. At. All.] moved into Jimmy’s apartment. And at some point after that, Cindy, already practically living with them—eating, studying, sleeping, even bathing there—officially moved in, bringing whatever hadn’t already migrated it’s way there.

It confused the hell out of their peers and professors. But that didn’t matter at all.

~

Money is… kind of not an issue for them. Definitely not for her, and surprisingly not for him either. Jimmy that is. Sure, his brain’s wired almost exclusively for science, but he’s not a total idiot when it comes to finances. It’s just simple arithmetic. But anyway, the point is that he knows how to handle money—the resources for his inventions don’t just pop out of thin air and there’s more to engineering than just making things. He had to get his inventions out in the market somehow, and it’s not like he’s going to let Cindy handle all of their business and financial needs [Jimmy has to at least pretend like he’s still got some pride, even though Cindy and Timmy know the truth.]

But money is not an issue for them. They work because they want to and because, honestly, they’d be horrifically bored otherwise. They do still have the tendency to go on crazy adventures, or maybe stop the occasional menace, but it’s not like they’re superheroes or anything [though there was that one Halloween…]

Cindy alternates her time between her family’s company [Vortex Incorporated has a hand in almost everything from televisions to sports equipment to pharmaceuticals to you name it] and being an associate of the law firm Manson Pataki & Sanchez [the three managing partners are very impressive and inspirational ladies, and are noticing her work ethic]. Her boys aren’t all that sure how she does it, but they do make sure she gets enough rest and relaxation.

Timmy is an elementary school teacher and counselor. He’s very good at his job. His students love him and it’s educational and fun in a way school never was for him. He gets to be a child again, and he missed that (he really does and it seems like more than just nostalgia). He also writes children’s books about magic, to his scientifically-inclined lovers’ despair, about kids with fairy godparents. (He knows that it’s all his imagination, but it doesn’t always feel that way).

Jimmy comes up with some new invention every once in a while and passes it off to the R&D department of whichever company he’s showing off to [usually a certain Vortex Inc, because it’s more fun that way]. If they can reverse engineer it he lets them mass produce it as long as he gets a percentage of the profits; if they can’t he gets to play around with whatever they have in their labs [because not even he can think of everything, but either way it is a win-win situation].

So, yeah. Money isn’t a problem. They can afford the occasional sick-leave-that-really-isn’t and they use that time to maintain what really matters, even if it’s just the three of them all being at home at the same time or even some distant locales like desert islands or outer space. It works.

Cross-Post: Untitled (Thurs Oct 27)

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original here. dated 2011-10-27

[A/N: First cross-post so you know what to expect in the upcoming week(s). Anything after the tilde is pretty much lifted straight off my livejournal so… be kind?]

~

My first sip of alcohol was champagne. My father had some kind of celebratory social event–he wasn’t the one being celebrated, but he, and thus I, was invited. The sun was bright and our clothing pretty but impractical–I was uncomfortably warm.

A toast! To the initiates or cadets or graduates, I don’t remember. I remember the amusing artwork on a neighboring building–stick people trying to climb into windows. I remember the white plastic fold out chairs with blue balloons tied at the end of each row.

The champagne was served in those cheap, wannabe glasses that aren’t made out of glass at all. I took a sip and immediately regretted it. The alcohol seared my young tongue and the carbonation fizzed unpleasantly in my nose. I gave my not-glass glass to my father. He had already finished his.

My second taste of alcohol was, in contrast, at night. My older sister, of a legal age to drink, had begun an exploratory campaign to find what she liked. Multiple tiny colored bottles appeared in the refrigerator. They disappeared soon enough.

One night, almost alone in the apartment, I had been preparing to sleep. My younger sister entered our dark shared room, her silhouette revealing little else but her height which I envied. Try this, you’ll probably like it, she said. In her hands was a tiny porcelain mug, the kind for children with cartoon characters painted on it.

How do you know that? I asked. It was hard lemonade–I do have a soft spot for lemonade. Okay, I said, only a little. She transferred that cool tiny mug into my own hands, and I took a sip. I know what real lemonade should taste like and that just accentuated the alcohol. She may have finished the mug or poured it down the drain, but not long after she returned and we said good night.

My third experience of alcohol was not actually as a drink. At a family reunion–the large kind where you don’t really know that many people and it take a while to figure out how exactly people are related–my sisters and closer cousins sat in the shade of a short tree. Too numerous to fit around our allocated table, some of us sat on the grass or along a brick ledge.

My older cousin, who I would say to almost be a brother to me if I had any experience with male siblings, or perhaps my first crush if you believe in Freud’s Oedipal complex, sat beside me. A few inches apart, close enough for familiarity and far enough not to add to the summer heat or jostle our elbows. I looked over at his white disposable cup, curiously, for his movements were not as smooth as usual.

A mischievous and secretive grin, he tilted the cup in my direction. Dark red wine and floating pink blocks of watermelon. He held it out to me and I took the smallest cube, cool in my mouth. That alone was worth a smile. I placed it under my tongue, away from my taste buds, and couldn’t tell him that I didn’t really like it.

Cross-Posting Announcement

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IRL stuff is going to be interfering with my ability to use a computer, so instead of have missed posts for a week I’m going to set up a queue of some of my favorite / semi-relevant (in that I’ve already done some drabbles here in the same series/universe) entries from my livejournal. I’ll do oldest to most recent, so the posts I’ve queued so far are from 2011-2012, please be kind. 😛

Hopefully I will be back after a week to do new things (I’m especially bummed that it’s cutting into my Running Backwards groove) but if not I should have enough queued up to last me until I do get back.

Goodbye for now!