Inshadowsidream

Oh the imagery this brought to mind. I scared my puppy when I read about granny not making it. I could just see a teen shouting "Yes!" and doing a fist pump when his laptop won the saving throw, and then telling his stricken grandmother, "Sorry, but you should have listened when I told you that leather can't beat chain mail. Maybe if you had put more points in intelligence, instead of pouring it all into charisma, you would have known that with mom being a phone operator, that jerk of an orc was going to come after us. I don't care if you do have have 18 in charisma, you're 80, very wrinkly, smell like Bengay, and have a shitty armor class, of course you were going down! I will come back and bury you after I fry his ugly self with the laser app on my laptop."

What you said makes sense. Characters are people, and people are not the same. I know a couple who started off as a one night stand, and have been together for twenty years. I know another couple that held off for years, and then broke up after having sex. My cousin and his wife rarely argue over anything, and all my neighbors do is argue. I need to think in terms of what is right for the characters, and not worry about what anyone else has to say. Thank you.

There really isn't going to be much of a "calvary" to call in, and if you think about how even now, there are blank spots where you can't get a signal, especially with cheap phones, you have that tension, to a point, already. Throw in that I plan to use lightning beetles to provide the energy to charge phones, and those stations are the only place where a phone or computer can be charged, people will find themselves unable to make calls at times. Characters facing challenges, and not always being able to get around them, is an mandatory element as far as I am concerned. It gets boring if every obstacle is easy to solve.

I now wish I had waited to post anything on the other site. I came across as a fool because I kept running into issues that caused me to rewrite chapters several times. If I had talked to people here first, I could have avoided a lot of hassle. Of course, if I would have been able to get my hands a beta, some of the problems could have been avoided. The only one I found willing to take me on, only looked for errors like dropped words or wrong tenses. I need someone that will point out flaws in my logic, and other problems, as well as make suggestions, not just point out misspellings or typos. I am hesitant to look for one here after getting so many rejections on it being slash, and a mesh up/crossover that is by no means Canon. Maybe I will wait to post it here until I get it completed on the other site, and then rewrite it to include my new ideas on how things work. The more I read what is said here, the sillier it seems to me as it is. You people are smart, lol.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_farming I googled it. This was all it had to say about it.

It sounds like it. I haven't understood much of what has been said. I would love to get back into playing, but all my game buddies have either moved away, or have lost interest in it. On well, it is what it is.

See, this is something I wouldn't have thought of doing. I came up with the alternative to the floo system, and got as far as thinking on how someone might carry a mirror with them in case they needed to return home in a Muggle environment, but how magic users would make a call among Muggles, never got past phones.

Thank you all. I had no idea how to handle it as I have never tried writing something that required the gender of a person being concealed. This is why I came back, the people here are so willing to help. It is so nice.

A friend of mine decided to try her hand at writing and asked me a question I couldn't answer. If you don't want the gender of a character to give clues as to their identy, how do you go about hiding it? Her protagonist is being helped by an unknown person, a person with fair hair. All her character sees is this person from the back, and since they wears baggy clothes, the gender isn't clear. If she types "blonde" it gives away the gender, if she uses "blond" it misleads the reader into believing it is a male helping out, which would later be discovered to be a lie. She wants to keep the reader guessing, but with the gender specific spellings, that is proving impossible. After reading what she has written so far, I agree, using "fair haired person" or a variance, is awkward in many of the situations.

I can't remember exactly when I started playing. However, I do remember pouring over books, rolling dice that seemed very odd to me as I had only seen six sided dice until then. The DM had only one character sheet so everything had to be copied onto loose leaf paper, and I agonized over what sort of character to make. I ended up making a druid and a cleric. One of the other players kept barging into rooms, and although the DM was going easy on us until we learned the ins and outs, this guy didn't seem to learn. He barged into a room and a grey ooze dropped on his head. He was our first casualty, and I was hooked. After that, if it had oddly shaped diced, and characters with attributes, I was in. Some of my fondest memories are of playing D&D or one of its spin-offs. Being able to print things out just isn't the same as browsing the books and other needed items at the hobby store, at least in my opinion.

You say Wizards of the Coast and I think Magic the Gathering. I am sadly out of date in that area as well. I suddenly feel so stuck in the past.

Okay, you have completely lost me, I haven't played D&D in well over a decade, and all I know about it now is that it has changed drastically. My 14 year old nephew was trying to tell me about a campaign he had just joined and I just sat there going wft? I had to ask if he was sure we were talking about the same game.

In The Lord of the Rings, they had a crystal ball like thing in which Sauron and Sarumon communicated with. I don't know why this popped in my mind, but I thought that maybe the angels could have scattered something similar about, but they worked as transceivers instead of direct communication. Not sure if this is plausible, but maybe phones are the results of humans improving on the original means of communication? I hated those lightning beetles. They killed me more than anything in the game other than the bosses. However, I can see them being used as a source of energy. Maybe they are confined, and computers at least, can be charged by placing it on the cage, for lack of a better word.

In The Lord of the Rings, they had a crystal ball like thing in which Sauron and Sarumon communicated with. I don't know why this popped in my mind, but I thought that maybe the angels could have scattered something similar about, but they worked as transceivers instead of direct communication. Not sure if this is plausible, but maybe phones are the results of humans improving on the original means of communication? I hated those lightning beetles. They killed me more than anything in the game other than the bosses. However, I can see them being used as a source of energy. Maybe they are confined, and computers at least, can be charged by placing it on the cage, for lack of a better word.

I scared the crap out of my cat when I read this, because I just burst out laughing. I wish I could write something like this. Unfortunately, my humor doesn't make it well when crossing over to the written word. I am now left scratching my head and thinking ugly thoughts about my muse, as she got me into this mess. Yeah, I blame her. She came bursting awake, shouting "Oh Yeah!" like a demented version of the Kool Aid man, and planted the idea in my head. Now, I can't see phones being an option. Computers could be something like a traveling library on demons that updates itself in each town, but there is the deal with batteries. Solar maybe? I don't know what to use to replace phones. Radios, walkie-talkies and other like items have too limited a range. Owls carrying packages and letters works for wizards and witches, but what about Muggles? I have people waiting on an update on the other site, I am waiting to post here until I do some editing, but now I am snagged on this.

Thank you. I wonder if anyone has told you lately that you are a nice, helpful person. Patient too, at least with me, and I appreciate it.

Good idea. I had planned to leave angels in the back ground, but after talking to a friend, I decided to bring Castiel in. Someone else suggested that maybe the world was post apocalyptic, with the manufacture of cars, phones, and computers being among the few technologies that survived. That rises the question for me if maybe instead of a smartphone, they had just the ability to make calls.

That made me spew juice all over my cat, and now he is peeking out from under the coffee table glaring at me, fluffy tail just a swishing. I can just see Seamus doing that, lol.

I have seven chapters of a Supernatural/Harry Potter crossover on another site. I am getting next to nothing in feedback, so I thought I would post it here as well. I don't have a beta, and the readers here have never been shy about offering constructive criticisms. I am half way through the eighth chapter and realized I have a huge problem, at least it is to me. You see, the fic is a request where I was asked to find away to blend the two worlds, but place them in a setting such as can be found in the game, Diablo. If you are unfamiliar with the game, let me explain a bit, before getting to my problem. Diablo is basically about hunting down demons. There are no guns or cars, and no electricity. You come across a lot of ruins and abandoned places in which you fight zombies, demons, and demon spawn. There is also the occasional evil spirit. Everyone knows about demons. However, Dean would not be Dean without the Impala, Sam would not be Sam without his laptop, so I tried making the setting less archaic. So here is my problem. Large stretches of land is barren of cities or farms. Humanity is huddled together in cities or what is essentially groups of farmers banding together. Here and there you will find villages. You can't buy gas, only a synthetic fuel. If cars and laptops exists, would cell phones? I don't want to loose the feeling of desolation, and I am unsure if something as sophisticated as a smartphone, would require more in the way of technology than would be plausible. Building a car wouldn't take a lot of technology. Computers could be simple devices used solely for information. The smartphone has me stalled in my tracks. Any words of wisdom on this?

Thank you all so much. Your responses made me realize that I had been thinking more in terms of readers, when I should have been thinking solely on what was right for the characters. That was what had been causing my confusion. The bad thing is, I broke a promise I made to myself without realizing it. I gave up writing years ago because of reviews. I promised myself that this time, I was writing for me, and wasn't going to worry about pleasing readers. It is impossible to please them all, no matter what you write, or how how good you are.

I have a friend in real life who is like that. Her problem is that she was brought up to be perfect in all situations, and that is impossible. As a result, she has a huge inferiority complex, and I swear, sometimes it feels like I am dealing with different people depending on the situation.

I have read of someone ghosting a kiss or a touch. Mound is a term I have seen used in reference to the vagina. In oral sex, I have seen where it was called "folds". Compared to others I have encountered, these have never made me cringe. Love muffin put me off eating muffins for a while.

One more question and I will leave everyone alone, at least for awhile. I hate it when characters jump into bed right away, but I hate it just as much when it is dragged out. How do you know when the time is right? In my story, I have one character that expects it to happen right away because he is sort of whoring himself. The other isn't opposed to it, but only with someone he doesn't plan to keep around. They will eventually become a couple, but how do I know, for the sake of the story and for readers, when the time is right? Like I said, I do not want them to seem as if they are jumping into a relationship too quickly, but I don't want readers to feel as if I am stalling at bringing them together. I have stopped reading stories where it felt as if that were happening.

I read a book years ago, where there were no bodies of water on the surface of the planet. The only way to get it was from huge cactus like trees that had roots long enough to reach the water beneath the surface. My reason for telling you this is because nature has a way of adapting/evolving to suit the environment. Plus, the fact you are writing fiction is clear in the presense of dragons. That allows you leeway to create the world as you need it to be. Look at all the Muggles in Harry Potter that rarely seem to notice all the weird things going on. In real life, that type of thing would have been noticed to a much greater extent than it was in the movies and books.

Thank you. I hadn't thought about needing to hook the reader, and I should have. That is what gets me to continue reading most of the time.