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What can I say? You clearly have good taste in friends

Well, now, I’ve found most of the local republicans are lovely people when you have them for tea, with a little watercress, on very thinly sliced sourdough bread delicately smeared with hand-churned sweet butter from local cows. (Democrats are best on artisan bagels, with a smear of cream cheese and some very thinly sliced red onion. I can’t say I recommend libertarians at all—they’re always that little bit sour no matter what you do, although independents appeal to the white bread set since they tend to be rather bland.)

I actually live fairly near to Sleepy Hollow and Mount Pleasant, so I do know the area.

Also known as republicans?

While I saw this earlier today, I was at work and couldn’t exactly type out a lengthy reply. My idea is to research the military, like average boot camp times, and training times for the elites like army rangers, navy seals, that sort of thing. As there’s aliens involved, maybe slip some “bad-ass-powder” formulation into X’s food to accelerate the progression?

Many sympathies. I’ve got an episode/chapter of one of my stories that took a darker direction because I was starting to draft it when I lost a fur baby… (and I’m the human that discovered the queen cat had kittens).

I have never personally encountered any headless people at all in Sleepy Hollow, but yes, when you come and visit again, we’ll go there. It’s a lovely little town, actually!

Yes, I read that in the “Adopt a Story” section. But I’m thinking of it in terms of inspiration. I’m not even entirely sure that I could contact the original authors if I wanted to. Though I’m open to the attempt. Instead I’m thinking in terms of what I mention with @BronxWench. The story would be inspired by the other author’s work but not an adoption, in the same way that my first fanfic was inspired by an AU story in a fandom I love where a character gets amnesia. It inspired me to write an in canon scenario where the same character gets amnesia. In fact, theoretically, I could tie it into a story I’ve already written. I wrote a story in which one character becomes essentially goddess of the universe, able to manipulate reality to their whim. Ultimately a multiverse was created out of the conclusion to the story. I could just say “Here’s a version of reality where this happens” and write that.

Abandoned stories are so frustrating. This was very common when I first delved into the realm of potter fanfic, because of the number that would get dropped whenever a new book was released. I think my current potter fanfic (the sequel) is an exception to that trend. On AFF, it’s quite clear, you’d need explicit permission from the author of that other story relayed to the mods here.

Absolutely. I think I did when I originally posted it. But it was before any sites like this existed. Or at least before I was aware of them and they’re now gone. However, there are also stories that I’ve read here where they’ve posted a couple chapters and the last chapter set up something fun that didn’t end up happening. The story just stops, and I can’t get the idea of what would’ve happened next out of my head. Sometimes I even write down some plot bunnies of what would’ve happened. But I know if I were to write the actual story I wouldn’t be able to post. At least based on the way the “Adopt a Story” section explains it. So I’m starting to think about how I could write it differently to make it more my own and not dependent on the story that inspired it.

Still, give that other author/fanfic a shout-out for inspiration. Always good to know when one story inspires another.

My first fanfic, the one that got me hooked on writing, isn’t coming to AFF because it was inspired by another fanfiction. My head was full of ideas of where it ought to go—thankfully I didn’t message that author with where their story ought to go. I began to sketch things out, immediately wrestled the narrative into my own story, and I’ve not stopped. Like any other fanfiction, I credited the original (and that other fanfic) for inspiration, cobbled together some badly written prose, kept their names for Mr. & Mrs. Granger, kept the name for what might’ve been a Mary Sue muggle that Harry spent his entire fifth year Christmas Holiday...snogging. It’s sequel is the one I’m still working on, and that’s so different that it’s definitely mine. (Outside of the name for Harry’s GF.)

My question would be what sort of weaponry X is being trained to use along with the special abilities. If the guardian spirit is piggybacking on X, then learning the cues from the spirit isn’t going to take as long as learning how to fight with a bladed weapon with reasonable proficiency. Learning to use a projectile weapon is faster since it doesn’t require building both skill and muscle memory. As far as physical conditioning, if the training is daily and intense, X might make it to badass in under 300 days given X is starting out as fit and healthy. Kickboxing and daily runs implies a seriously good foundation to build on.

Or make the training/fight itself a seven book series… (cough, cough… JKR) More seriously, some episodes to the training might be realistic, portray an evolution from that elliptical wanna-be of the local fitness gym to the badass you want them to be. Some mishaps along the way? Is their life at a complete standstill? Perhaps take something like… early on, being unable to open the pickle jar at the family reunion, to smashing the glass to shards toward the completion of their bad-ass training?

Like with search, anything that could be used as part of an injection attack was stripped. I know it’s a bit of an annoyance, but for now please bear with the quirks as I work through the code to re-enable stuff without further risks. The big priority was to just to be able to safely come out of read-only mode.

From InvidiaRed on February 15, 2023 Re: “Horseman” Thank you! The spinner landed on Happy Ending this year.

From BronxWench on February 15, 2023 Re: “Horseman” I don’t know terribly much about sororities or secret societies myself, but my wife went to an all-women’s college that was a lot like a giant sorority. Her school was used in my mental model of Mount Pleasant College. FYI, the town of Mount Pleasant, NY is the home of the village of Sleepy Hollow. *chuckle* I went with the vegetable motif in part because I figured no one would see it coming. Thank you! You’re a class act, BW.

Just a quick word. I’m putting writing on the back burner for a while. When I started this topic last night, I didn’t expect to get word this morning that my parents lost another furbaby. I grew up with that particular furball, and I’m devastated. I’m going to spend a few days just hugging my cats. I’ll come back to this when I’m less likely to cry. This was the last thing I needed right now.