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paeanssong replied to your post “So on Friday I cut-pasted everything that wasn’t the current story out…”
So I’d totally read and love a book with those kind of world building details
Aww <3
I mean… the thing is, there’s world-building details, and then there’s uhh we’re at 39,000 words and she’s still admiring the teapot level of world-building. I need to fix my pacing.
However! Bitching about it on here helped, I went back and immediately as soon as he poured the tea she figured out the Plot and it got good. (I think.)
Alik shook his head. “I don’t know what the right answer is,” he said. “But if you stayed here as a reminder of just why we need to go fix the repeater so the mammoths aren’t all mute and helpless on their migration, that would probably take some of the pressure off Amina, and I could go by myself and get it done and get back faster than anyone else could.”
“I’m not staying here,” Ula said. “Edurni can’t stay in the city, there are too many men with guns who think it’s their job to stare at her and wait for her to sneeze threateningly.” She shook her head. “And I thought we established that the approach of outrunning bandits wasn’t going to work when you had to be in a specific place.” It struck her, then, suddenly, what Alik had to be dancing around. “Oh my gods you have allies out there, that’s why. You know somebody. Did you just bribe them so hard last time you were out there, or what?”
Alik went still, eyes a little wide, for just a fraction, and then his eyebrows drew down and he scowled at her. “That’s– it– it’s not that,” he said, but he was a little flustered.
“That’s absolutely it,” Ula said. And then it struck her, what she’d overheard the unpleasant man saying. Mongrel bastard.
The bandits were made up of people exiled from settlements, mostly. The vast majority of them were non-citizens, people without any legal presence in any of the administrative entities on the planet. In a society where it was no longer necessary for two parents to be married to produce legitimate offspring, that was what the antiquated term of bastard had come to refer to: someone without citizenship, and therefore without lineage. She stared at Alik, whose face had shuttered itself, eyelids gone hooded, mouth gone flat. “Oh Ancestors,” she said softly. He’d said he was from a settlement, but. That didn’t mean his lineage was.
Alik watched her for a moment, opaque, and then picked up the teapot and poured tea into both cups. “There’s honey, if you want it sweet,” he said, expressionless, gesturing with the teapot spout to a little jar on the table.
Alik had said Amina was the first friend he’d had when he’d come to the city. “If you two have known each other so long,” Ula said, “how does Amina not know–” How to say that without it sounding like an insult. She racked her brain. What you are, was her first impulse, and she knew that wouldn’t serve to advance her point at all. “That you have. Connections.”
Alik’s expression tightened a little, still ostensibly neutral but noticeably grimmer, as he stirred honey into his tea with the kind of focus Ula would expect if he were instead wiring an explosive. “Is that the kind of thing you’d brag about?”
No. But Ula had never really considered it; her lineage was impeccable, so far as she knew, and any outcasts stayed outcast and were excised from the recitations of ancestors, so she didn’t know about them at all. “That horrible man knows, though,” Ula said.
Alik looked up at her. “What people know is that I don’t have a lineage,” he said. “My mother was a citizen but she’s dead. My father’s nothing but a genetic profile, and everyone knows what that means.”
(Your picture was not posted)
paeanssong replied to your post “So on Friday I cut-pasted everything that wasn’t the current story out…”
So I’d totally read and love a book with those kind of world building details
Aww <3
I mean… the thing is, there’s world-building details, and then there’s uhh we’re at 39,000 words and she’s still admiring the teapot level of world-building. I need to fix my pacing.
However! Bitching about it on here helped, I went back and immediately as soon as he poured the tea she figured out the Plot and it got good. (I think.)
Alik shook his head. “I don’t know what the right answer is,” he said. “But if you stayed here as a reminder of just why we need to go fix the repeater so the mammoths aren’t all mute and helpless on their migration, that would probably take some of the pressure off Amina, and I could go by myself and get it done and get back faster than anyone else could.”
“I’m not staying here,” Ula said. “Edurni can’t stay in the city, there are too many men with guns who think it’s their job to stare at her and wait for her to sneeze threateningly.” She shook her head. “And I thought we established that the approach of outrunning bandits wasn’t going to work when you had to be in a specific place.” It struck her, then, suddenly, what Alik had to be dancing around. “Oh my gods you have allies out there, that’s why. You know somebody. Did you just bribe them so hard last time you were out there, or what?”
Alik went still, eyes a little wide, for just a fraction, and then his eyebrows drew down and he scowled at her. “That’s– it– it’s not that,” he said, but he was a little flustered.
“That’s absolutely it,” Ula said. And then it struck her, what she’d overheard the unpleasant man saying. Mongrel bastard.
The bandits were made up of people exiled from settlements, mostly. The vast majority of them were non-citizens, people without any legal presence in any of the administrative entities on the planet. In a society where it was no longer necessary for two parents to be married to produce legitimate offspring, that was what the antiquated term of bastard had come to refer to: someone without citizenship, and therefore without lineage. She stared at Alik, whose face had shuttered itself, eyelids gone hooded, mouth gone flat. “Oh Ancestors,” she said softly. He’d said he was from a settlement, but. That didn’t mean his lineage was.
Alik watched her for a moment, opaque, and then picked up the teapot and poured tea into both cups. “There’s honey, if you want it sweet,” he said, expressionless, gesturing with the teapot spout to a little jar on the table.
Alik had said Amina was the first friend he’d had when he’d come to the city. “If you two have known each other so long,” Ula said, “how does Amina not know–” How to say that without it sounding like an insult. She racked her brain. What you are, was her first impulse, and she knew that wouldn’t serve to advance her point at all. “That you have. Connections.”
Alik’s expression tightened a little, still ostensibly neutral but noticeably grimmer, as he stirred honey into his tea with the kind of focus Ula would expect if he were instead wiring an explosive. “Is that the kind of thing you’d brag about?”
No. But Ula had never really considered it; her lineage was impeccable, so far as she knew, and any outcasts stayed outcast and were excised from the recitations of ancestors, so she didn’t know about them at all. “That horrible man knows, though,” Ula said.
Alik looked up at her. “What people know is that I don’t have a lineage,” he said. “My mother was a citizen but she’s dead. My father’s nothing but a genetic profile, and everyone knows what that means.”
(Your picture was not posted)
