InsaneJournal

So I'm having plotbunny difficulties. As if I didn't have enough to write what with the Founders, of course, and my various other unfinished projects -- Martin Umbo, and the ... the thing which only Kitty knows entirely about that is basically one of those awful romcoms where Nerd Girl falls for Popular Guy, gets a makeover and changes her ENTIRE PERSONALITY, Popular Guy finally realizes how hot wonderfully intelligent she is, and they live happily ever after. Except it's written by me, so none of those things happens. Especially not the ending. And I think the characters involved would horrify some of my flist, so I'm waiting until it's posted to talk about that.

Anyway, then I've got this original-fiction cyberpunk superhero thing with character-seeds mostly taken from the Founders. I'm wibbling about race right now, because the thing is set in the Chicago of about fifty years in the future, and while it's ...not so weird to have an entirely-white main cast in a European medieval setting, I do not expect Chicago in 2060 to be populated entirely by white people. (I especially want to do this thing right because Girls Read Comics was both my introduction to the wider world of feminist and progressive blogs, and is still sort of my jumping-off point into superhereoes and comics.) The main characters are two ex-pat Brits, because try as I might, I could not make Rowena American. I once tried to make an elflilke race and ended up with a slave race of giant intelligent horseshoe crabs, so it's a little weird that she refuses to be American, but whatever. Anyway, Livia (by which I mean Rowena) is a pyrokinetic superheroine (by which I mean she's just starting out and trying not to die or kill anyone) and an independent political blogger (by which I mean she is a recently laid-off bookstore cashier). Her plant-controlling restoration ecologist best friend from university ends up becoming a supervillain. (There are reasons. They just encompass a large plot arc which is difficult to explain in less than a paragraph.) Then we have the technopathic Batman wannabe, his dad who works for Daley III, the terrified-of-heights postdoc student who can fly, and the superhero-hating FBI agent on the evil restoration ecologist case. The whole thing also largely baffles me because while I didn't create her as one specifically, the protagonist is a bisexual English major girl gamer.

The other plot gnawing on me at the moment is one that just kind of started bugging me again after a year or so of dormancy. Originally, the plot was, Kid from Our World is dropped into Fantasy World, realizes the whole setup sucks, takes over, becomes well-intentioned Evil Overlord, realizes he will be conquered by later Kid Heroes from Our World, and is doing his damndest to keep that from happening without hurting his people. Now it's... different. The necromancer ruler in my head seems very sad and worried for the country he's been trying to rule, and at this point I think that if he is indeed from Our World (as he doesn't seem to be from Fantasy World) he's from somewhere else. At this point I'm wondering if being From Our World but sometime in the past would be better. Anyway, the Fantasy World seems to be in the middle of an ice age, this being an ideal time to have armies of the undead, since they wouldn't rot. I also kind of want to have volcanoes in there, but I'd rather have more Inuit inspirations than Scandinavian ones -- mostly because there are already a lot of Scandinavia nerds in fantasy fandom and Inuit mythology is... different. Oh, and there will be Neandertals in there somewhere, as well as "modern" humans. But I need to have more characters sorted out first. Mostly I'm annoyed with Necromancer Dude for giving me only emotional impressions (sorrow, hope that the heroes won't fuck up his hard work after he's dead, hatred because they killed his lover's daughter) and nothing concrete about who he was beforehand. I think probably he was in a war earlier, because that would explain both his fighting skill, and his willingness to take over his area and end the fighting.

Anyway, more random picspam: Godric and Rowena illustrate several tropes at once. The much better-looking pencilsketch of Rowena. A sketch of Edwina Espis, Unspeakable and ex-convict. Me on Halloween, in a meticulously-planned costume which I never bragged about on LJ. (Sadly, you cannot see my awesome boots in it, or the gun's paintjob. However, they are there.)