Not Just Homestuck, How About:

Day 20 (26 in base 7) of rewriting my novel.

I did a lot of planning today, but I didn’t add any words to the novel today.

Also, a new character just kinda… popped out of nowhere yesterday while I was writing?

Find the Word

A tag from @theothersideofthewoods.

The goal is to find these words in my WIP: charm, bubble, poison, kiss

Your words are: gloom, shimmer, muck, home

Charm

Tonight, the chef had left a couple sliced apples with grilled salmon next to it. Irotijv, I thought to myself. The national dish of Zeneste. Definitely a good-luck charm for tomorrow. The apple was sweet and juicy, and the fish was seasoned and seared perfectly. I fell into my bed soon after having supper.

Bubble

I jumped back, ducking beneath the stream of flames when she turned around. Hota crossed their arms and closed their eyes. “I’m casting a blanket of tranquility,” they yelled, spreading their arms. A blue bubble enveloped the whole train car, dimming the flame in her mouth, but not the orange in her eyes.

Scar

[Taguchif] was sitting by a large window in another empty train car, staring out at the coast while the moon shone over it, reflecting over the water. Her gauntlets laid beside her, exposing her scarred hands. She did nothing when I sat beside her.

Poison

(Is it bad that this word literally doesn't show up in Meiste in the first ~50,000 words???)

Paging: @foxgloves-garden and @reedandstorm, along with open tag.

~WIP Intro~

What's up guys! Recently I started a new WIP and I'm honestly really vibing with it, so I thought I would take some time to do a proper introduction before I started talking about it elsewhere!

Title: Starstruck

Genres: science fiction, fantasy, action-comedy

Progress: just started first draft! (as of July 2024)

Synopsis

The story is written in first person from the perspective of a person called Miffy, a semi-organic being created to hold unimaginable amounts of energy. Via a series of unfortunate events, she is infused with the most powerful energy weapon in the universe, and finds herself at the centre of a galaxy-wide manhunt. Eventually she ends up joining a small crew of travelling adventurers dedicated to helping anyone that needs them, and becomes embroiled in a plot on a nearby planet that might be more personal than it first appears...

I got the first ideas for the story while reading Frankenstein, so there are some similarities with the creator/creation subplots. It also has kind of Treasure Planet-ish vibes, with the big 18th century pirate ship in space and all. It's a bit hard to accurately describe in a synopsis, so if you're interested, setting/characters ect are under the cut, since it's a little long :)

(oh, and. minor warning for blood, though it's only once and in a cartoon style)

Setting

The story has two main settings: the first one is a station that is essentially a space university, except only for like, really smart people. It's the main base of the Fellowship of Gifted Individuals, and the residency of those applying to graduate into the FGI. Our main character Miffy is born here, as she's the creation of one of the students as part of his thesis project.

However, she quickly joins a crew of space explorers and travels to our second location: the planet Oduseus. This planet is relatively backwater, and stays out of the galactic loophole, with somewhat outdated technology... at least, that's what the travel books say. In reality, the crew finds the planet powered by some mysterious, renewable energy, filling the city with beautiful light. But something darker lurks beneath the surface, as citizens keep dying under mysterious circumstances...

The general galaxy is obviously space and therefore draws inspiration from many traditional sci-fi tropes, but I've also tried to include some older elements to it, for example the ship they travel in, and some hints of celestial mythology as well, like the starmaids that swirl around in the vacuum.

Content/themes

In terms of adult content, the WIP is actually pretty tame. There's no sexual (or romantic) content, and minimal swearing. The only thing I would say is there's moderate violence, mostly fantasy (like, throwing magic lasers at each other and stuff) but there are a couple of deaths that might be a bit gruesome.

The main themes of the novel are finding who you are in a world that you don't recognise and choosing to help others even when you don't have to. Other themes dealt with include responsibility, loss, rebellion against an unjust monarchy, found family and unsafe scientific practices.

Cast of Characters

(I've added Picrews to this that I made a while ago, credit goes to @elena-illustration, it's her little guy maker if you're interested)

Miffy

Name: Miffed, nicknamed Miffy

Age: physically? 19. time-wise? 3 days. mentally? unclear.

Pronouns: she/they

Miffy is the main character, and the story is told from her first-person perspective. She was created in a lab by Bikuta, but soon leaves home to explore the galaxy, and satisfy her need to help others. Due to the vast amounts of energy contained within them, they are incredibly powerful, and hunted by many, especially the malicious Dark Eyes Society. She is not particularly emotive, and can be blunt, although once she discovers the concept of lying, she uses this to her full advantage. Her sense of humour is mostly only funny to her.

Strength: 20

Stealth: 6

Intelligence: 12

Wisdom: 8

Social Skills: 5

Fun Facts!!!!!

- she has no intestines

- she chose her own name based on a random word she heard once (because she thought it sounded cool)

- her hobbies include hitting things with a big stick and not being able to read

Cecilia

Name: Cecilia

Age: 15 (it's complicated)

Pronouns: she/her

Cecilia is the youngest member of the crew, and loves to have fun. She smiles a lot, and enjoys making friends, although I must admit, she doesn't fully understand the concept of personal boundaries. Her signature weapons are two silver daggers that she keeps on her at all times.

Strength: 14

Stealth: 17

Intelligence: 9

Wisdom: 9

Social Skills: 7

Fun Facts!!!!!!

- she has a teddy bear named Bookaloooka

- she enjoys stealing her crewmates' clothes (and is VERY disappointed Miffy for only having one outfit)

- whenever she feels sad for no reason, she tells herself that it's because she's been assigned to mourn the death of a stranger

North

Name: North (unclear if this is his legal name)

Age: 25

Pronouns: he/him

North is a member of the crew, and wields incredible mystical powers. He is very serious, and tends to keep himself to himself, preferring to meditate in solitude. He likes playing board games. You get the sense that he's running from something...

Strength: 18

Stealth: 12

Intelligence: 15

Wisdom: 10

Social Skills: 3

Fun Facts!!!!!!

- he's deathly scared of children

- occasionally he will just make the worst pun possible, because he knows that it's good to be funny he just doesn't know how

- coincidentally, said puns are the only things Miffy will laugh at

Reginald

Name: Reginald Bleaks

Age: 38

Pronouns: he/him

Reginald is another member of the crew, and their main source of information. He's very British (despite the fact that Britain doesn't exist), and is knowledgeable about the more criminal aspects of society. He can be pretty salty sometimes, but also cares deeply about his family.

Strength: 15

Stealth: 10

Intelligence: 19

Wisdom: 12

Social Skills: 10

Fun Facts!!!!!!

- his hair is #D2B48C

- Raven and North found him in a dive bar

- the entirety of the FGI hates his guts with a passion. They deeply loathe him. They wish he was pushing up daisies

Raven

Name: Raven Shimmerseat Hortensia Twinkle the Third

Age: 39

Pronouns: she/her

Raven is the unofficial leader of the crew, and the owner of the ship. She's very caring and empathetic, and has a special fondness for collecting strays, opening both her ship and her heart to anyone that wishes to join them. She is, however, from a very wealthy background, and can sometimes struggle to connect with others due to her wildly different upbringing.

Strength: 13

Stealth: 9

Intelligence: 11

Wisdom: 15

Social Skills: 9

Fun Facts!!!!!

- sometimes she and Reginald just sit on a bench throwing shade at passerbys

- she has six younger sisters

- when she was in her early twenties, she released a rap album full of songs about interstellar economics. It won a space grammy. She doesn't like to talk about it

Bikuta

Name: Bikuta Ashikaga

Age: 21

Pronouns: he/him

Bikuta is the man who created Miffy. He's working towards his acceptance into the Fellowship of Gifted Individuals, and gets very upset when Miffy leaves him, since he needs them to complete his thesis project. He is highly unethical and willing to do almost anything for science. He refers to Miffy as his sister, since he claims to be 'too young to be a dad'.

Strength: 4

Stealth: 7

Intelligence: 19

Wisdom: 7

Social Skills: 6

Fun Facts!!!!!!!!

- his hair is actually black, he dyes it midway through the story so that he can match Miffy

- he specialises in semi-organic matter and its potential as a vessel for renewable energy

- he unironically uses uwu when texting

Cobalt

Name: code named Cobalt

Age: 42

Pronouns: he/him

Cobalt is a bounty hunter who spends most of the book trying to kidnap Miffy. He's part of an elite Guild and highly professional, stopping at nothing to complete his assignment. While not exactly the most innocent person in the book, he's not necessarily amoral, and views Miffy as a job rather than an enemy.

Strength: 17

Stealth: 14

Intelligence: 13

Wisdom: 11

Social Skills: 9

Fun Facts!!!!!!!!!!

- now, dear reader, you may not have noticed this, but he is, surprisingly, a little bit fond of swords

- he has beef with not one but two feral teenagers

- these two teenagers happen to be a) his best friend's son and b) his boss

Aaand that's it! I hope y'all enjoyed :) feel free to ask me any questions, I will take literally any excuse to ramble lmao

hmm another cool Tagalog thing that isn't in modern English (to the extent of my knowledge, that is) - and which can be found in other languages too! - are gender neutral pronouns and words for people. this wasn't something I noticed until I started reading more and more English books, because I realized that a lot of these words have no direct equivalent in English.

the word siya, meaning he/she, singular. I wouldn't say it's an equivalent to the English gender neutral "them" as it is purely used as a singular pronoun.

anak, meaning son/daughter. For me the English translation "child" is not 100% accurate, since child could also mean a random kid that isn't your son and daughter, while anak quite literally means child as in offspring.

a few more familial terms like pamangkin (nephew/niece), bienan (parent-in-law), manugang (child-in-law).

and then there are ones like kapatid, sibling, and asawa, spouse, but I think these are more often used in casual conversation compared to their English equivalents.

and then we have the aspects of the language that were directly influenced by Spanish, so we have some gendered words in usage, hence the terms Filipino/Filipina. however, in these instances, people generally aren't very strict on using the "correct" gendered word when talking casually. really threw me for a loop when I started learning romance languages that had gendered nouns, lol. thank you for listening to my random rambling~

Cursed Low Zeneth Translations

Consider this a makeshift guide to how Low Zeneth works.

Overview

Low Zeneth is a language and group of dialects spoken Southwestern Zeneste (the state of Tolftorrijv.) Its last common "ancestor" with Ipol was Classical Zispoel, but it had already started to diverge before the time of the Hero of Life. Low Zeneth is radically different than Ipol in many ways, though it's been influenced substantially by Ipol, too.

I will focus here on the prestige variety of Low Zeneth: the kind spoken in the city of Tolftorrijv.

Phonology/Romanization

Rendered Phonemically:

Stops: /p/ /b/ /t/ /d/ /k/ /g/

Nasal Stops: /m/ /n/

Affricates: /t͡s/ /t͡ʃ/

Fricatives: /f/ /θ/ /s/ /ʃ/ /h/

Approximants: /w/ /l/ /j/

Tap/flap: /ɾ/

Trill: /r/

Vowels:

/iː/ /i/ /yː/ /y/ /uː/ /u/

/eː/ /e/ /øː/ /ø/ /oː/ /o/ 

/ə̃/ /ə/

/a/ /ɑː/

That makes 34 total phonemes broken down from 20 consonants and 14 vowels.

Romanized:

p, b, t, d, k, g

m, n

ts, q

f, th, s, sh, h

w, l, j

r

rr

ij i üü ü uw u

ee ê öö ö oo o

v e

a aa

If you can't tell, I had fun deriving this phonology from the restrictive, Classical Zispoel phonology. Maybe a little too much, but oh well.

Morphology and Syntax - Grammar

Technically Low Zeneth is a VSO language, but that's not the full picture.

Basically, auxiliary verbs get sucked up into the (head-initial) tense-phrase. The tree below describes the translation "fijsesê bv hijfrê" which literally translates to "have I money" and means "I have money."

The result is that most subordinate clauses have the structure SVO, while the main clause has structure SV(A)O.

Low Zeneth has very slim morphology, only inflecting for a simple plural in nouns with -o, and no morphology at all in verbs. A series of sound changes rendered the T/A distinctions of Classical Zispoel basically indistinguishable, so to compensate, speakers of Low Zeneth employ heavy periphrasis.

Cursed Translations from Today

Fijatsia bv io dv luw êraanva ijrenva

Phonemic: /fi.ˈja.tsi.a ˈbə̃ ˈi.o ˈluː e.ˈɾɑː.nə̃.a ˈiː.ɾe.nə̃.a/

Lit. Translation: Will I give you of news urgent.

Meaning: I will give you urgent news/I must give you urgent news.

Üümen ijnvth Dvrr Ilaajote hijthen-luwario

Phonemic: /ˈyː.men ˈiː.nə̃θ ˈdə̃r i.ˈlɑː.jo.tə ˈhiː.θen.lu.wa.ɾi.o/

Lit. Manages Zeneste Emperor Tolftorrijv fight-people.

Meaning: The Emperor of Zeneste (now) manages the Tolftorrijv army.

Conclusion

I just figured I'd talk about Low Zeneth today because I haven't talked about it a lot but have been producing a bunch of translations. I realize only now that I didn't go over forming questions in this post, but maybe later I will. Feel free, as always, to request that I translate random words/phrases into this language.

me when the plot won't plot like it should

Actually, 273 is kinda interesting for this one property I thought up: consider the prime numbers in order, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13.

Take only the oddly ordered primes from this list: 3, 7, 13.

273 = 3*7*13.

Idk abt you, but if I were a chosen one, I would be even more excited for something so elegant /j.

“You are the chosen one. The prophecy says that every 273 years-” “Wait, why isn’t it a round number? Sorry, no can do” “Are you really denying your destiny over this?” “Uhh… yeah?”

luoman_art on Instagram

Random but I'm a linguistics nerd from the Southern US here: am I the only one that says /ˈfʌk.ˌal/? With the stress on the "fuck?"

Although, in these sentences, I actually pronounce "fuck all" like it's still two separate words, with the stress on both syllables, like /ˈfʌk#ˈal/.

If you know about vpns do you also know about pirating stuff? Because id need some help😞

"Fuck all" means "nothing."

There are solid piracy guides on reddit, but I'm not really the correct person to answer questions about piracy.

Day 50 (1:42) of rewriting my novel

Today I continue my quest or rewriting this stuff in reverse. I wrote the "capture" of Ir Nouzonif. (It is a tragedy: the President has already fled with the magic, but not the Heroes' bodies.)

I haven't been too active on here in the past couple days, and that will continue to be the trend as we continue into the fall. (American schooling, as it were.) That doesn't mean I'm not writing, or paying attention to anything y'all send me! I swear I'll get around to tag games when I'm able.

Usual suspects: @quillswriting and @oldfashionedidiot

If you'd like to be tagged in my posts, either DM me or reply to this post directly!