Random Questions Thread

If there are no proof that the people existed, they will be put into the same category as "Santa Claus" and the "Easter Bunny".

But quite frankly, the kid might just end up listening to those stories just to make the parents happy over the chance to tell them, not wanting to let them down by denying them the opportunity.

Which is going to be pretty sad once the parents finds out the truth of why the kid kept listening to their stories without interrupting them for all that time and just doing it out of pity for the parents than anything else...

@ Tarlonniel:

The stories these children will hear about their respective deceased relatives will definitely vary, some describing them as evil monsters while others will call them heroes.

In the case of the brother, his entire room in the house was left as-is and so all the normal possessions a teenage boy would have are pretty much there. There are books he read and other prized possessions, but definitely no shortage of things that he liked, and interacted with. In the case of the single parent trying to raise a child with the memory of the lost parent there aren't any relics leftover. They lived a nomadic life where they had to flee at a moment's notice so all that is left are stories. The only real "personal" possessions left in this case are the tales of mundane and emotionally intimate things that wouldn't be told by the public since they weren't there with the family.

@ Titan Jump: I can see the "just listen to him ramble because it makes him happy" thing going on in the case of the parent trying to teach the child about the deceased parent. The entire dynamic is different and could be overbearing at times if it's just the two of them. With the brother...I guess it could also be like that as well, but it has a chance to at least make the dead brother someone his little sister is thankful for since he did die to save the whole family, and maybe wishes she could meet.

It could be, yes...although maybe that could be turned into a heartwarming moment since it shows how much these people value the happiness of their loved ones, if they were willing to sit through those boring (maybe sometimes repeated; there's a limit to them if the person's dead after all) stories.

It occurred to me that, in the case of the sibling, the child might come to resent the dead sibling her parents keep marvelling about, for instance thinking that no matter what her parents will always compare herself to him and that she will never be able to outdo him in their eyes. I'm not saying this is what will automatically happen, but it could also be an alternative outcome if the parents take a too heavy-handed approach when it comes to talking about the dead brother.

@ C105:

This is something that I contemplated a great deal (I've read and seen media where parents trigger deep resentment in their child by comparing them to a dead sibling; it was actually the motive behind a criminal in one Law and Order episode I believe). I guess my idea was that the left behind sister was never compared to her brother, simply told about who he was, his adventures and life, and made aware that he literally died to ensure that she and their parents were able to live. So while they don't exactly put him on a pedestal, they honor his sacrifice (while expressing their own grief and perhaps feelings of inadequacy that he had to save them. But they always let their daughter be her own person with her own faults to be corrected and virtues to be praised.

How do you go about turning ideas/vague outlines into stories?

I'm an idea guy, but i have trouble actually writing the whole thing and deciding on what should actually happen and how.^note  I also do english so much that i find it easier to express some things or concepts in english than in my own native language, and my dialogue sounds stiff/wonky/off because literally all of my actul production has been for the internet and consequently in english (for example, my native language lacks words for many color shades or specific concepts that english has, and englis also feels somehow easier to write prose in which is propably a bad thing). My decriptive sentences in general end up kind of choppy when i try to express a character's panic or fixation or something, which is propably bad because i write in third person.

Edited by Nukeli on Jun 13th 2021 at 1:02:36 PM

Ah, I'm the same way with ideas. The way I go about it is I write down my idea in one place, then I think about what ramifications the events of the idea would have on a setting and write that down separately. That way the setting is separate.

Edited by Altris on Jun 13th 2021 at 3:05:38 AM

My usual style is to write "by the seat of my pants", which means that I do minimal outlining and just see what happens. You might be able to do that too; try just taking the basic idea you have and throwing some characters into the beginning, and then see where it goes from there.

This does sort of require you to understand your characters really well, since their actions will determine the outcome of the story, but you should know your characters that well anyway.

The things I know when I start a new story are the setting, some of the characters and the most likely end of the story.

Then I ask myself: "How these characters will go from here to there?", Then I just start wtriting what happens and one scene follows the other.

And everytime I´m going to make a big change, a death or a new character showing up, for example, I stop and think about it trying to see if it makes sense or not.

That works for me and sometimes you can even surprise yourself writing something you did not expect.

Once one of the main characters in my longest, still unfinished, story ended fleeing the battlefield because I realised he would just be too afraid of dying to stay.

Edited by Oculto on Jun 13th 2021 at 1:02:06 PM

I usually improvise too, but i have an actual overall series/character arc concept for this. Aside from what i write now, i don't relly have any further plan or elaboration except for one draft that was so bad and felt so rushed that i threw it out. I have to invent things to happen in the beginning, because i can't cut them or have too many time skips (this is about 1 and 2 through their whole lives, i can't skip the childhood).

There's also a Corrupt Corporate Executive involved but i haven't yet worked out which part of the revision she'd fit into, and i have an idea that the queen would step down later and arrange elections, but i also don't know where to go with that.

Edited by Nukeli on Jun 14th 2021 at 11:39:15 AM

Trigger Warning: Depression

So I think I may have accidentally written a character to have depression, but I'm not 100% sure. Obviously if this was a planned thing I'd be trying to incorporate symptoms, but as I said, I'm a pantser and I've written characters with disorders before without intending to (such as insomnia, alcoholism or PTSD). This character is The Empath and happens to be so attuned to things that she can sense the feelings of animals and, in general, is always very alert to how people are feeling. This is something that she tends to dwell on, especially if the emotions are particularly strong or negative.

In a lot of scenes she's alluded to there being an odd, heavy, unsettling but hard-to-describe atmosphere that she keeps picking up on, and she has no idea where it's coming from. She also has a lot of scenes where she's affected physically by this and stays in bed all day, and in scenes with her boyfriend she's often pretending to be enjoying the date just so he doesn't worry about her. I think it's possible that I wrote a character with depression, but whose status as an Empath means she doesn't initially realize these emotions are hers and has no idea how to address them.

If I do decide to roll with this concept and actually write her as a character with depression, I want to make sure that I'm not just slapping a label onto something and calling it a day; I want to be accurate, especially when dealing with mental health. So is there anything I might need to know about depression before I go forward with this? I don't have it, and while I've had a lot of friends who've had it, I know that in and of itself isn't experience, and I don't have enough personal understanding to draw from. So far, I know that she fits some symptoms, such as staying in bed and not having enjoyment in activities she should be enjoying, such as getting ice-cream with her boyfriend. Because I keep alluding to this issue of hers I do feel like I need to address it beyond just "a weird feeling", and depression makes sense to me, however I don't want to accidentally offend or be inaccurate in my portrayal.

So long story short, I'm asking for some advice on how to write a character with depression, in a way that lines up with what I have currently (the whole confused Empath angle). I don't know if I'll necessarily be explicit with it, if only just because I'm not sure how to address it directly in-universe without being too on-the-nose, but I feel that if I portray it well enough the audience will understand what's going on. That said, advice on how to have her discover and talk about the issue will also be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

What are examples of vengeful ghosts from European cultures?

Lack of appetite.

Expect her to be isolating herself whenever she can on her spare time, doing nothing in her room but thinking and thinking and thinking into the void.

Weight loss due to loss in appetite.

Suicidal thoughts at its worst.

Stays away from her friends and family.

Expect nobody knowing her to get a clue or even realize that she even is depressed in the first place.

Have her stop talking all together, answering only with things that won't cause for alarm in people asking if she is "all right?"

She is going to lie every time and answer "Yes."

Among other things...

In the Vengeful Ghost trope you can find a couple, but in some countries people dont use different names for each kind.

I remember reading about the belief that the most brutal criminals should be hanged or left to rot in a crossroads because that would render them unable to find their way to the people who sentenced or dared to testify against them but they did not have as specific name.

Edited by Oculto on Jun 14th 2021 at 12:47:38 PM

Sweden got something of a vengeful ghost-type called "Gengångare", which are vengeful ghosts that suffered violent deaths and returns to kill those responsible for it. With innocent people that could end up as collateral damage as well in their grudges.

Edited by TitanJump on Jun 14th 2021 at 4:14:06 PM

If a person is hot enough that human skin blisters or at least incurs painful burns just via touching them, would it stand to reason that any soft materials (sheets, carpet, mattress, etc) will catch on fire from that same heat? Kind of an oddly phrased question I know, I can elaborate if it is confusing or needs clarifying.

I wouldn't think so; the temperatures required to cause burn injuries (50-70 °C) often are considerably lower than these needed to ignite materials (>>90 °C).

@ Septimus Heap:

That’s good; the idea was that there is a character who is a great deal of physical and mental distress, and their body temperature rises to the point where it burns the hand of someone trying to give aid. I just realized that there was a hazard that the bed or sheets would catch fire and turn a serious/dramatic situation into a comedic affair.

There was something similar in the mediaeval "revenant"—of which I gather that there was a particularly great number of sightings.

See here for more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenant

I also recall the spirits of babies abandoned to the elements returning to haunt their parents.

Otherwise, this article might provide a few leads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vengeful_ghost

Let me note here that this is, I think, not universally true.

Well that is how my depression went and I am only going after myself as reference in answering this question.

Edited by TitanJump on Jun 14th 2021 at 6:51:53 PM

And that's very fair. But there's a big gulf between "this is how it was or is for me" and "this is how it will be for anyone, anywhere".

To my mind, 'She is going to lie every time and answer "Yes."' indicates the latter—that, regardless of who this character is, they will so lie.

Or let me put it this way: I'm not gainsaying your experience. I'm only arguing against universalising it.

Hard to not universalize something when you only got yourself to go for reference.

To be fair, this character has lied in a lot of points so far to claim that she's feeling fine, but she's also made the effort to tell her boyfriend about that "weird aura" she keeps picking up on. In one scene she realized he has no idea what she's talking about and got sad because of that, in part because being an empath is generally sort of an isolating thing to experience but also because this particular issue is overwhelming her and she does just want help. I think the fact that she doesn't even realize these are her own feelings means that she's less likely to lie every time, because she doesn't think there's anything to hide here.

Loss of appetite I might've already touched on as well, in tandem with the "lack of interest in the date" part. The rest of the symptoms (thanks for the list, by the way, very helpful and I mean that sincerely) are things that I'm not sure I can really pull off, if only because I'm aiming for something close to a PG "rating" here or at least that's the tone I want to strike- dark, but not too dark for the audience of the original work (as this is an Original Flavor fanfic).

She's already sort of self-isolated at times where she just sleeps in her bedroom or lays low because she's not feeling well, but the only person she lives with is her boyfriend and she does make an effort to spend time with him, even if it means him sitting in bed with her all day. If things get really bad she might reach that point, though, and it'd definitely be a huge red-flag that something is really, really wrong.

I don't think that it's necessarily so, to a degree at least.

(Although even someone well aware of the possibility may still at times mistakenly universalise, I do daresay!)

I don't have much to add to Titan Jump's list, save these few possibilities:

From an internal perspective, the "weird aura" might feel like it's isolating her, cutting her off from others. It might also come with the suggestion that there's little point in doing anything against it, and that it's easier to remain under it.

From an external perspective, her personal upkeep may suffer. This might take the form of reduced washing or infrequent changes of clothes, or of poor posture (even when it's pointed out to her)—or likely other things besides.

Yeah, those are all definitely things that could happen...especially if she sticks to staying in bed all day! I can see her becoming more or less resigned to everything and not attempting to fight it anymore.

The clincher is that in earlier scenes it was implied her negative emotions were caused by the supernaturally-induced, extreme weather patterns, such as endless rain. She felt physically sick as a result of the weather, or at least that's how she justified it, and at certain points if the weather stopped she'd feel better. But I don't necessarily think this is at odds with her being depressed, since I do know that emotions can fluctuate and her being in a good mood at the same time the rain's gone might just be a coincidence. Or I can say the weather, the intense magical energy, and the suffering of the wildlife is crushing on her so hard that she is starting to fall into an actual, literal depression that mimics the way the world itself is feeling. And it'll probably linger even after things calm down, because it'd have had such an impact on her that there's no bouncing back.

Or maybe I shot myself in the foot and she's not depressed at all, in which case I can go more for a Does This Remind You of Anything? vibe and mimic the symptoms of it without trying to retcon things that've already been established.

Again, I don't want to offend here, but it's hard to write about these sort of things when I wasn't initially planning for it to go in this direction. When I realized though that I was striking upon some unintentional symptoms and a recurring theme, I wanted to at least get some advice so if I do decide to make her depressed I can do it properly and not half-ass it. If it turns out to be an impossibility, so be it.

The idea of an empath who has lost track of which emotions she is experiencing actually belong to her is fascinating. I hope you develop it.

What you are describing comes closest, I think, to chronic clinical depression (as opposed to, say, bipolar). There are lots of resources on the internet: here is one, here is another. I teach psychology at the college level, and both of those sites seem accurate to me.