AFF Holiday Party 2019

[GeorgeGlass]

45 minutes ago, JayDee said:

Yeah, the angel used to be a demon after falling during that unpleasantness with Lucifer. My flowery description probably didn’t help! Does the plot make any more sense knowing she is a vampire or is it still just a mess? Be honest, I can take negative reviews. I’ve had little choice over the years

I’m afraid I still don’t get it. It appears that she was a heavenly angel, then became a fallen angel, then became a heavenly angel again. When and how she became a vampire, or married a mortal man, I don’t know. 

[JayDee]

12 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:

I’m afraid I still don’t get it. It appears that she was a heavenly angel, then became a fallen angel, then became a heavenly angel again. When and how she became a vampire, or married a mortal man, I don’t know. 

The old lady is a vampire. She’s old and tired in spirit, and doesn’t want to keep living mortal lives where friends/lovers grow old an die around her. She married a mortal guy when she was still in her 20s or so but is now 87 and still looking 18ish, while he grew old and died the year before. Still an old lady if she’s 87 tho’ The angel who shows up later used to be a demon for a while and got to be an angel again thanks to some incident in the past, and probably also years of trying to do the right thing by people. Some demons never really had the heart for it.

I was trying to hide the fact that the old lady was a vampire as a bit of a reveal later on, but obviously ballsed it up some and ended up with this confusing mess that would have been swiftly banned from any holiday jam with even the most minimal of quality standards! Still, it filled another weekly prompt challenge so what the heck. Some of my contributions there are even more dire.

[GeorgeGlass]

On 1/1/2020 at 3:48 AM, JayDee said:

The old lady is a vampire. She’s old and tired in spirit, and doesn’t want to keep living mortal lives where friends/lovers grow old an die around her. She married a mortal guy when she was still in her 20s or so but is now 87 and still looking 18ish, while he grew old and died the year before. Still an old lady if she’s 87 tho’ The angel who shows up later used to be a demon for a while and got to be an angel again thanks to some incident in the past, and probably also years of trying to do the right thing by people. Some demons never really had the heart for it.

I was trying to hide the fact that the old lady was a vampire as a bit of a reveal later on, but obviously ballsed it up some and ended up with this confusing mess that would have been swiftly banned from any holiday jam with even the most minimal of quality standards! Still, it filled another weekly prompt challenge so what the heck. Some of my contributions there are even more dire.

Ah, so it seems my problem was that I couldn’t tell that you were talking about two different characters. Maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention.

[InBrightestDay]

On 12/30/2019 at 2:52 PM, JayDee said:

Ahh man, you shouldn’t feel any need to self censor just because of my own thoughts on what I read and what I don’t. If you were really keen for me to read it, you could have sent me a “TV edit” version (“is he… is he finding a stranger in the alps?”) with the sex scene/romantic lines removed and I could have reviewed that for you. Whatever you’re into, you’re not hurting folks just writing stories after all. Although since you’ve got those plans for ‘em I guess it all works out anyway waiting ‘til he’s 20.

I kind of go back and forth about whether or not to ever write a scene with someone under 16.  Course, I’ve yet to write anything with a character under 18, so…

Actually, “a character under 18” might happen next year.  I know what my entries for the next two parties are going to be.  In an inversion of the pattern from this year (where the Halloween story had sex in it and the holiday story didn’t), next Halloween will be Fury of the Storm, another yōkai story with a blizzard theme and no sex, while the holiday story doesn’t yet have a title, but it will be me, um, revisiting my roots in terms of adult fiction, with a hopefully-sweet Christmas story about sibling love, which means exactly what you think it means.  The younger brother might be 16 in that one, though I haven’t decided yet.

Of course, with Aldreda and Elis, it really was mostly that I had plans for the characters and thus wanted to wait until their main story was going.

And now, on to your reply for the review of Memories.

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That was absolutely what I was going for – introducing her as the old lady she is in spirit, and then revealing a little more until it is obvious she’s a vampire.

I really enjoyed it.  I love stories like that, where the whole thing looks different on a second read.  Well, usually.  Every Daenerys scene in Game of Thrones looks different now, but in a way that makes me not want to watch the show again.

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I figure it would have been a bit of an internal conflict for her because while there’s a few things she likes about being a vampire on the whole she’d rather not have had to become one, and wouldn’t want to force it on someone else – and she’d probably have not really pushed it either. Made all the negatives clear, but also that giving him the option to avoid aging, and death from old age. If he knew the angels, knew for certain there was a good chance of avoiding Hell, I figure he decided he’d rather live and then wait for her, however long it took.

It seems very in character for her, not pushing the guy, but still offering it.  His response is also kind of why I love stories like this.  “I’ll wait for you, no matter how long it takes” is an idea I’ve always found very romantic, and knowing the personality of this vampire, I love thinking about her very tsundere-ish response to it.

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She wasn’t just deciding “Ah, I can’t live without this man.” it was more, she’d existing for a life, she’d had a good one with someone she loved, and friends, and the rest, and having to keep going through losing people except for maybe a couple other immortals just didn’t appeal at all.

Oh, I totally got that.

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Probably safe to say one of them isn’t that well dressed fellow who made such a splash in California.

No, he’d be under punishment by the time of that story.  Shit-talked his boss a bit too much.

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The ol’ happy reununion with deceased loved ones in paradise trope – overly sentimental for centuries!  Glad I touched ya tho’ Not like that.

Well, as George Lucas once said, “They’re cliches because they work!”  I started explaining why this makes me feel the way it does, but I got rather nervous about upsetting people, so I’ll just say that overly sentimental or not, it really, really affects me.

I’ll get to your review of Moonlit Snow soon!

[Thundercloud]

On 12/28/2019 at 4:33 AM, InBrightestDay said:

So I didn’t know about Lucky Luke, but I did figure something like this might happen.  “Dalton” is from the Old English meaning “valley town” (a valley being called a dale, and thus “dale town”), but plenty of English names were derived from the place the person lived in, so I figured it might sound like somebody.  Sorry about that.

No problem really...another obvious reference is by the way the scientist John Dalton that has given name to the dalton unit than in recent years have replaced the unified atomic mass unit.

On 12/28/2019 at 4:33 AM, InBrightestDay said:

Thank you, and now we bring back that thought you were holding above.  Much like After Party was an introduction for Yua and Cody as a couple, who will later have their own story, Moonlit Snow is one for Aldreda and Elis.  There will be three more stories set in this world, one starring a human named Reynard and a giantess named Sigrid, and the other two starring Aldreda and Elis.  The first one will take place when Elis is twelve and he first meets Lady Aldreda and, as you might expect, won’t feature any sex due to his age.  The second, longer one will happen when Aldreda and Elis have to stop a huge supernatural threat.  That one will take place when Elis is twenty and Aldreda 32, and that’s when the sexual relationship will happen.  Since Moonlit Snow is in between these stories, I figured I could show them inching toward that eventual relationship, growing just that little bit closer to one another.

I find it remarkable how you are able to plan out plenty of stories set in the same world that you intend to write later. Myself I might have plenty of stories in progress at any given time, but it is very rare that I have two stories planned/in progress for the same setting. I look forward to read your stories.

[Thundercloud]

On 12/29/2019 at 4:05 PM, GeorgeGlass said:

Actually, it takes hours for the reindeer and days for Santa, because the reindeer aren’t aware of it when Santa stops time. 

Suppose Santa spend 30 seconds of stop time on each child….days would be less than a week of stop time….lets round it to a week..24*60*2*7 => 20160 nice children in the world.

[JayDee]

14 hours ago, GeorgeGlass said:

Ah, so it seems my problem was that I couldn’t tell that you were talking about two different characters. Maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention.

Any problems of confusion definitely lie with the poorly written story rather than the reader, especially when the reader is pretty much an expert at close reading and proofing and the like

I mean, 66% of all reviews point out some level of confusion!

13 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

 a hopefully-sweet Christmas story about sibling love, which means exactly what you think it means. 

A brother and a sister help each other find completely non-related people to love? :p

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I really enjoyed it.  I love stories like that, where the whole thing looks different on a second read.  Well, usually.  Every Daenerys scene in Game of Thrones looks different now, but in a way that makes me not want to watch the show again.

Way I hear it, series 8 made half the internet not want to watch the show again. I still haven’t seen any of it sadly. Am glad you enjoyed it tho, thanks!

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It seems very in character for her, not pushing the guy, but still offering it.  His response is also kind of why I love stories like this.  “I’ll wait for you, no matter how long it takes” is an idea I’ve always found very romantic, and knowing the personality of this vampire, I love thinking about her very tsundere-ish response to it.

Yeah, he’d wait for her… but he wouldn’t become undead for her. What a beta male cuck! 

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No, he’d be under punishment by the time of that story.  Shit-talked his boss a bit too much.
 

I’m sure his boss will relent eventually. He’s not known for his pride and stubbornness, right?

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Well, as George Lucas once said, “They’re cliches because they work!”  I started explaining why this makes me feel the way it does, but I got rather nervous about upsetting people, so I’ll just say that overly sentimental or not, it really, really affects me.

I don’t think you can upset most of the people here. Well, unless you suggest Naruto’s wife might stay faithful to him, or that Dumbledore isn’t utterly evil. But it’s cool, I hope I didn’t upset you too much with it! You can always explain in private message if you did want to unload.

[GeorgeGlass]

13 hours ago, Thundercloud said:

Suppose Santa spend 30 seconds of stop time on each child….days would be less than a week of stop time….lets round it to a week..24*60*2*7 => 20160 nice children in the world.

Yeah, that’s about right.

[InBrightestDay]

On 1/3/2020 at 12:43 PM, JayDee said:

A brother and a sister help each other find completely non-related people to love? :p 

Uh...yes!  That’s exactly what I meant.  They...play matchmaker for one another and then...go on a double date.  It’s definitely not something else.

And now onto JayDee’s review of Moonlit Snow!

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Wait, is Elis a vampire? I know you liked that whole Let The Right One In vibe…

Oh, shut up, you!

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You got the action scene and also the post-action and that wonderfully thoughtful ending which didn’t go the way I expected but absolutely lived up to the title.

I’m genuinely curious, how did you expect the ending to go?

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I remember when you’d originally talked about people not being so keen on the condition and I wondered how it would work in the society with the religion, and the way you’ve handled it is really effective. Hopkin as the face of the uneducated type being blatant with it, while the more subtle nobles with one eye on church come up with insults that cut far more deeply than the eye-rolling response to the vampire gibe (…when a vampire turns a page… no I’ll stop). How you got it playing on her own insecurities like.

Thank you!  This is in large part thanks to you asking that very question.  I think (though I can’t remember precisely) you may have even offered me the idea that there were those who felt the prejudice, but had to be careful not to offend the church.  It was only while writing the bandit fight that I realized that Hopkin could serve as a representative of the less devout, who would just openly insult Lady Aldreda over her albinism, which brought up the idea that she can pretty well handle blunt insults like that, but that the more “polite” ones hurt worse because of how she just has to take them.

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The fight with Hopkin and his bandits was cool – showing her tactical thought and also her advantage in having the plate armour; and the scene with the Serenity echoes still makes me chuckle.

The tactical stuff was part of my research into medieval combat, which was where I got both Lady Aldreda’s swordplay moves and the knowledge that plate armor more or less makes you immune to a sword (unless it’s stabbed into the chain mail in the joints), but a mace is still dangerous.  As for the Serenity moment, I just loved the idea of it so there was no way it wasn’t making it into the story!

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I feel like amateur banditry is going to be a career with a short lifespan in this setting, but I wondered if there was something driving them to it, failed harvest or similar? I wondered if the thought of relatives waiting back home was more of an influence for not taking the surviving pair for some justice at Mercy Harbor?

I didn’t end up settling on precisely why Hopkin and his bandits started doing this, but they’re definitely somewhat lower class people (hence Hopkin’s “m’lady” as opposed to “my lady”) and my vague idea was something like what you suggested, and a failed harvest seems the most likely thing.

Either that or his restaurant chain, IHOPkin, recently went under.

The whole “stealing due to hard times” thing is actually what’s behind Aldreda just letting Hopkin and Mack go.  She gets the impression from their amateur status that these men may be jerks, but they’re probably only doing this out of desperation, so she wants them to have a second chance.

On the “m’lady” thing, Elis is also originally from a lower class background (farm work), but he addresses Aldreda like that so much that when I wrote him saying it as “m’lady”, I kept imagining him donning a fedora.  I figure he may have picked up the more formal manner of saying it due to being around Lady Aldreda for the last three years.

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the training at the start – I had no idea what Elis was doing wrong either, so got to find out at the same time as him. It certainly sounds plausible; the fighting/combat elements as a whole feel very like you’ve done your research.

Thank you!  That was another thing picked up through research.  Some of the videos I watched were analyzing Hollywood sword fights, and one of the most common things that came up is that movie choreographers love big wide swings because of how cool they look, but in actual combat that’s a bad idea for exactly the reason Lady Aldreda gives.  The videos called it “telegraphing”, but given the setting I obviously couldn’t use that term.

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The first mention of Fire Flowers – I have to admit, I half wondered if they were trading with Mushroom Kingdom, before I realised it was a pretty cool name for Fireworks. Some of the explosive displays can look very petal like!

Yeah I was trying to come up with a word other than “fireworks” and I thought of how when several of them go off in a cluster they can almost look like bouquet of flowers.

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Elis’ obvious attraction to Lady Aldreda is pretty clear throughout and pretty much in character for a 15 year old boy raging on hormones. That hope that she’ll see him as a manly man rather than a kid, and the embarrassment when he realises he’d taken the joke seriously comes across very realistic

That was exactly what I was going for.  Elis is kind of like the kid with a crush on his teacher, albeit because of her rescuing him she’s more than just a teacher, she’s his idol; his personal hero.  There is absolutely that desire on his part to grow up faster, to be the man he thinks she’ll want.  Which, of course, leads directly into…

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although, fuck it, it did work! That inexperienced bandit got twatted by a kid with a pommel. I mean, I growing young adult with a pommel.

That was another thing that came up in research, that there was this swordplay treatise where it was recommended to “end your opponent rightly” by throwing the pommel of the sword at them.  Every video I saw said this had to be a joke, so I had Lady Aldreda use it like that, and then decided to compound the joke by having it actually used to end the fight.

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I figure by the time he’s 20 there’s gonna be more of a distance between “mighty warrior” and “poor little’n rescued from goblins” and a relationship would feel like it was on a more equal basis.

To an extent yes.  He’ll be a more proficient fighter and more adult, though I’d imagine he’ll still look up to Lady Aldreda.  That’s kind of a thing in my writing, I guess, where the woman is the man’s protector or teacher or mentor.  People seem to be enjoying it thus far, though, so hopefully it will continue to be fun to read.

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…so who wins in a fight between Yua and Lady Aldreda?

I believe there’s a different thread for that.

Edited January 7, 2020 by InBrightestDay

[JayDee]

17 hours ago, InBrightestDay said:

Uh...yes!  That’s exactly what I meant.  They...play matchmaker for one another and then...go on a double date.  It’s definitely not something else.

I mean, that does sound like a fun story!

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Oh, shut up, you!

...werewolf?

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I’m genuinely curious, how did you expect the ending to go?

I’m not entirely sure now. I think more violence, fighting and the like. The ending you went with is great tho’ It is all good.

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Thank you!  This is in large part thanks to you asking that very question.  I think (though I can’t remember precisely) you may have even offered me the idea that there were those who felt the prejudice, but had to be careful not to offend the church.  It was only while writing the bandit fight that I realized that Hopkin could serve as a representative of the less devout, who would just openly insult Lady Aldreda over her albinism, which brought up the idea that she can pretty well handle blunt insults like that, but that the more “polite” ones hurt worse because of how she just has to take them.

Well that’s cool! The complexity and levels of piousness definitely feels like a more realistic society.

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The tactical stuff was part of my research into medieval combat, which was where I got both Lady Aldreda’s swordplay moves and the knowledge that plate armor more or less makes you immune to a sword (unless it’s stabbed into the chain mail in the joints), but a mace is still dangerous.  As for the Serenity moment, I just loved the idea of it so there was no way it wasn’t making it into the story!

Hey, it’s a great moment! I loves how you and some of the others really research your stuff and make it realistic. It feels like a big part of writing a proper story rather than the ham fisted porn scenes some of us crap out.

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I didn’t end up settling on precisely why Hopkin and his bandits started doing this, but they’re definitely somewhat lower class people (hence Hopkin’s “m’lady” as opposed to “my lady”) and my vague idea was something like what you suggested, and a failed harvest seems the most likely thing.

Either that or his restaurant chain, IHOPkin, recently went under.

Hahaha :D Him and the probably-fucked-anyway-from-infection other survivor could always set up a waffle house instead. 

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On the “m’lady” thing, Elis is also originally from a lower class background (farm work), but he addresses Aldreda like that so much that when I wrote him saying it as “m’lady”, I kept imagining him donning a fedora.  I figure he may have picked up the more formal manner of saying it due to being around Lady Aldreda for the last three years.
 

“M’Paladin” *Somehow tips coif*

Makes sense tho – you do tend to pick up word patterns of folks around you, and given how much he admires her he’d probably be consciously trying to emulate her manners rather than his upbringing?

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Thank you!  That was another thing picked up through research.  Some of the videos I watched were analyzing Hollywood sword fights, and one of the most common things that came up is that movie choreographers love big wide swings because of how cool they look, but in actual combat that’s a bad idea for exactly the reason Lady Aldreda gives.  The videos called it “telegraphing”, but given the setting I obviously couldn’t use that term.

I’m kind of wondering what term they did use before “telegraphing” because the concept must have been around a long time.

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Yeah I was trying to come up with a word other than “fireworks” and I thought of how when several of them go off in a cluster they can almost look like bouquet of flowers.

Not to late to meet the merchant and have him introduce himself as “It’s a me, Mario!” mind :P

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That was exactly what I was going for.  Elis is kind of like the kid with a crush on his teacher, albeit because of her rescuing him she’s more than just a teacher, she’s his idol; his personal hero.  There is absolutely that desire on his part to grow up faster, to be the man he thinks she’ll want.  Which, of course, leads directly into…

*Hot for Teacher, scored for mandolin, begins playing*

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To an extent yes.  He’ll be a more proficient fighter and more adult, though I’d imagine he’ll still look up to Lady Aldreda.  That’s kind of a thing in my writing, I guess, where the woman is the man’s protector or teacher or mentor.  People seem to be enjoying it thus far, though, so hopefully it will continue to be fun to read.

Everyone’s got a thing and it made for some good stuff so far for sure. I’m sure it’ll go down well!

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I believe there’s a different thread for that.

Yes, but at the time you said nobody knew your characters yet so you couldn’t answer :p