Ghost-of-a-Chance

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.

So, apparently when I wrote this out, I didn’t word it as well as I thought I did. (Overnights suck.) I also left plenty out because I didn’t want to include anything which could be used to identify the story when it’s finished. Privacy is important when you’re a closeted disaster-bi in the Bible Belt. Let me try again. X being character in question, A being the non-human allies, K being the non-human enemies, and D being the idjit who got kidnapped by the enemies and who now needs to be brought home. D also has a piggybacking spirit (nope, this one doesn’t do anything useful beyond keep people alive) and he and X are related. The training is only part of the story—a means to an end rather than the whole plot—and other than one outburst from the piggybacker, I’m not pushing X’s abilities beyond anything humanly possible. The intention of her trainers (A) is to teach X to use the spirit’s abilities, or at the very least, how to not get killed during the final confrontation. Because X is human, however, she’s going to be fighting a losing battle. She’s fit, more so than the average American, perhaps, but trying to make her superhuman is impossible without breaking the rules I’ve laid down for the world. This is fantasy realism, not ‘screw it, tiny children can save the world and Santa Clause gives away weapons.’ It’s a spoiler, but…X is going to fail. Fantastically. She won’t be able to harness the spirit’s abilities—it’s an entirely separate entity, not a buff. She won’t be able to take down the baddies, or even fight the baddies. She’s human, and they’re far tougher with fewer weaknesses. She will, however, become a much stronger human, learn how to fight non-humans defensively without getting gutted, and discover that her humanity—or, more specifically, the critical way the C view her on account of her humanity—is one of her greatest strengths. Compare it to a tiny angry monkey demanding a fight while her big buff friends sneak in the back door and free D, then they all make use of a distraction to escape. X is the tiny angry monkey; all she has to do is scream loudly enough and keep their eyes on her. Fighting-wise, I’m planning on the majority of said training involving endurance, strength, the usual, and some hand-to-hand, mostly defensive. I might include non-lethal weapons like staves at one point; the C mostly use their fists, claws, and teeth, but the use of bladed spears and daggers isn’t uncommon. I’m intentionally giving X only enough time to make marked improvements, but not enough to become, say, John Wick. The timing is important because the date of the attack is supposed to coincide with another event, and that event occurs regularly. (For instance, a full moon, or something like it.) The first number of days (plus some) represents the number of days in a year on the A’s planet, while the second represents the number of days in a year on the C’s planet. Choosing a time closer to the first number would allow more opportunities to immerse X in the world of the A, the lives they live, and her love interest’s friends and family, but it might open up confusion regarding the timing of the event. Choosing a number closer to 600 would leave X experiencing all of this twice and risk her coming home to find herself declared dead despite the protective measures taken, but it would give more time for the romance between X and her love interest to grow more organically. …I think I got the most of it this time. Anything else I missed, just ask. I really appreciate y’all’s help with this; Reddit’s writing sub is surprisingly judgy about asking for help with your writing, and you can only ask on the Fanfiction sub about original fiction so many times before getting the boot.

Simply put, my character X is fit-healthy—she kickboxes weekly, runs with her dogs daily, and has a regular routine—and she’s getting dragged to another world to be made into a badass for plot-identifying purposes. Part of that process will include possibly learning to harness some abilities imparted by a guardian spirit piggybacking on her like she’s the neighbor’s wi-fi. X will be trained by people of a much stronger species and there aren’t any shortcuts. How many days would be reasonable to allow for building X from fit to badass? I’m leaning toward between 400 and 600, but considering I’m comfortably chunky and too old and decrepit to care, it’s like a vegan offering opinions on steakhouses. We also have to keep in mind that the world keeps spinning while she’s gone; too long, and she’s likely to come back and find her bank account empty and all her shit on the auction block. …anyone got any advice?

Thank you, both for taking the time to answer and for fighting the good fight against the hacker spawn. I can be patient. Best of luck!

I’m still locked out of my account. (I had to put writing aside for awhile; depression sucks, and it and all its little assbuddies can go jump off the dirty end of a cow with poke intoxication.) Well, now when I try logging in, I get a different error: “The email you provided may not be registered or is registered multiple times.” …any possible way this is due to the site being in read-only, or is this still the same problem as before. 😣 EDIT: the pen name is correct now, at least. No doxxing risk, yay!

That’s still accomplishing nothing. Is there any way someone could send a link for me to reset my password, because I’m not getting the emails when I try that. They aren’t in junk or spam, either. I’ve tried signing in, resetting, clearing, and everything else I know how to do dozens of times on three different devices now and I’m still locked out and unable to fix it. I’m starting to panic here.

Yes, but I’ll give it another try. Maybe the nth time is the charm.

I tried clearing my cache/cookies/website data on my iPad, and nothing changed. My password has a non-alphanumerical character, which according to other posts here, may be causing problems. Either way, how do I log out if I can’t log in??? The only option I see on the page is “log in,” and it won’t show any of the shortcuts you see when you’re logged in.

I need to get into my account to correct an unexplained ‘problem’ on my profile that could result in doxxing/outing me to my homophobic family. My password isn’t working, the password reset isn’t working, I’m not getting emails for the reset – even in junk/spam – and I haven’t heard back from tech support. I’ve tried all of this – aside from contacting support – on three different browsers and devices, so it’s not a problem with my browser or computer. This is the screen I get after using the “password reset” link at the left, but that’s as far as it goes. The longer this goes unfixed, the higher the odds that someone I’m related to will find my profile, connect the problem to me, and out me to my homophobic parents as the bisexual delinquent that they can’t know I am. Please, help me fix this!