InvidiaRed

Like rolling dough thinner and thinner, every time I “rewrite”, things inevitably get longer.

Its true though. Absolutely is that age old question brought to life.

Why are things happening? Because people are flawed drama llamas living in a world where gods and monsters are active make no pretense of being human or having human values and the horrors of the dark age just barely passed.

Characters w/o flaws?  Tends to make for rather short & boring stories.

Personally, My money is on who has the greater authority. average faerie vs vamp defintely money is on the faerie

An elder vamp vs faerie= probably the elder vamp

A primal vamp vs faerie noble probably closer to an uneasy armed truce rather than any feeling of Tea time.

So, who supplied the tea?  I’d wager whoever poisons it is more likely to come out on top.

That’s the thing. Following the rules of hospitality means it’d be more of who spiked the wine of the vein =p

Assuming that doesn’t breach the rules of hospitality.

….

Think of it like what happens if you wrote the two towers

Before the fellowship of the ring.

Or Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix before  harry potter and the philosopher’s stone.

Or even the empire strikes back

It sounds like they want a bit of world building or stage setting up front.

Well, not super bad then, I mean, there’s a certain popular film franchise that started off with episode number four.

To measure or not to measure, that’s the debate    Some dishes, this ain’t required, like number of bacon strips to cut up for the scrambled eggs.  Some flavoring ingredients, like cinnamon or vanilla or even garlic, can be easily increased in measure, so for french toast, I’ll eyeball it.  That soda mix I made, that required the syringes.  And the rocket propellant, that required the digital scale down to the milligram precision.

I remember asking my grandmother how much of a seasoning she used, and she cupped her hand and said, ”This much.” Drove my mother nuts, but I totally understood it. I just had her measure it out and pour it into my hand. Worked like a charm!

“Looks about right” is really a unit of measure, really, I swear

And trust me, I’d mangle your native language far worse, Neko-baby!  

Word order seems to vary substantially among languages. According to linguist John McWhorter, there are even a few languages in which the order of words is meaningless; they have other mechanisms for identifying subject vs object, etc.

If I remember correctly, Japanese is one of those languages where the word order isn’t fixed. It’s not meaningless, but the word order isn’t nearly as fixed as it is in English  

Naughty Alexa!

Who knows what’ll happen when a AI and werewolves team up. We’re fine at least until she starts quoting the godfather.

Werewolves need AI?

1..2..3..4.. 

I like the keyword density feature. That’s useful if it highlights it as you go along, rather than having to wait for your editor to point out how well you’ve abused certain words.  

The ability to find overused words is invaluable. Now i’m trying my hand at finding filter words

Tentacles are easy, they can go pretty much anywhere…

Yeah but if I ever did it I’d want a happy ending for everyone.

Tentacles are good for gripping, whatever needs to be gripped.  The suction can be applied as needed.  One or two per office.  So, yeah, any human involved could certainly get a happy ending.  Though, not sure how the tentacle monster would get a happy ending too.   Now, my smutty short (as a dream for the MC) implied that urine of adolescent teenage boys was an addictive substance to the alien kind (ie a hallucinogenic or an opioid etc) so “drinking” it was its own reward for the service.

True, But the fact remains evil exists. I would probably put at least a watch team on those who do evil for evil’s sake. Always a few who confuse mystery with the banality of what they espouse. Which I will always profess to be one of the great tragedies.

The true threats have always been those willing and able to ignore all moral and ethical boundaries to get what they want no matter the cost.

There are psychopaths with no remorse or sense of guilt, always trying to get away.  Some become harden criminals, others become CEOs and/or politicians.  Still, even they’re not doing evil for the sake of evil, they’re doing it for some reason.  Anyways, your story, write them as serving evil gods if you want

Here’s a secret I know from RPing Evil characters.

There’s always a reason to serve outright evil demons and or gods. Not a good reason, but a reason be it vengence, spite. Its even possible to serve an evil god out of nothing but genuine thanks because when you were at rock bottom, they were the only ones that listened.

You have to get something out of it. influence, power, wealth and or a fully stocked harem of your choice. All of the above etc… Even if it is nothing more than a reprieve from the eternal torture they promise.

The evil deities know very well how duplicitous and self-serving you are. They’re using you just as you are using them. They know very well well the moment you get a chance to taste great power. You’ll try to usurp them, and they’re counting on it. But in the mean time you poor dupe, there’s a nunnery in need of pillaging,that orphanage is oppressing you and the goody two shoes high priest isn’t going to ritually sacrifice himself in a rhapsody of torturous ecstasy.

Since the deal is a form of spiritual bribery. The more horrid and evil you are the less your assuredly damned afterlife is going to be. Because you got a ^{I did big bad} sticker and the evil spirits aren’t going to torment you as much.

There’s an interesting way to relatively date something.

Prior to the 19^th century Natural Philosophy was the word for what we’d call Science. It’s a nifty little signifer that adds more to story.

Progression Goes Natural Philosophy to Natural Science to Science. Scientist wasn’t really used until it was coined in 1833 by William Whewell 

So anything essentially prior industrial revolution. To be accurate you’d use Natural Philosopher

Miniature horseless clown carriage crashes into the cemetery – oh, all those bodies!

… You laugh but I already sorta used that joke

Calliope from the Nightmare Grotesquerie does crash into a cemetery.

If I go to my trusty IEEE754 compliant computer:
try infinity == nan (FALSE)
try infinity != nan (FALSE)

@Desiderius Price has a point. The editor needs to focus on the elements of the story, rather than act as a proofreader. If you don’t want to do an editing pass, have someone who’s good at it beta-read for you, and listen to them. 

I rely on my editor for things like making sure I haven’t screwed up the chronology between events and chapters, haven’t left some dangling threads or gaping plot holes, and that my characters won’t cause the average reader to think they’ve stumbled into the literary equivalent of Madame Tussaud’s. My editor also watches for repetitive phrasing, run-on sentences, and other abominations against the language. We both rely on the proofreader to catch any spelling or grammar mistakes we missed (damn those homophones!) and to keep an eye out for anything else that rings false on a clean read-through. But first and foremost, it’s my job to turn over a manuscript that I’ve read, re-read, proofread, spell-checked, grammar-checked, and cleaned up to the best of my ability. If I piss off my editor by being sloppy, or lazy, you can bet the publisher is going to be less willing to take another manuscript from me. Authors are a dime a dozen; good editors are rare, and therefore precious. 

I’m grossly simplifying of course, but at if you want to be an author you do need at lest a couple pair of eyes to catch what you can’t.

my editor was well compensated and tipped in gratitude.

I always try to respect the hired help, because they’re people too.  (Good plan in life, TBH.)

There is a copyright lawyer on youtube, by the name of Leonard French, if you want to watch about copyright and other cases.  Might be easier than reading through law, though few of his videos are short.

Ah the pitfalls of doing this thing solo^.

Maybe, but it’s also there to help dissuade people from ripping your stories off and claiming them as their own.

True, that said 70 years after my death if people would still like my stuff I’d like them not to ruin it with whatever bile that is the propaganda of the day.