eller

Spell Bottle (530 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Chess, Fantasy, Magic, Dark Magic, Curses, Humor
Summary:

Oh, the things that can happen at chess tournaments... But no worries. Thilo has help from Henrik.

Very loosely based on a writing prompt from yhlee - thank you!!!

Shadow Introductions (759 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Summary:

Vinn is sent to a chess club. Fennar, everyone's favorite shadow theater performer, handles the introductions. Everyone is being their charming selves.

A shorter and funnier scene today. :)

Remember how I was threatening to send poor Vinn to a chess club? Well. I did. XD For a simple "introduce the characters" scene, this was surprisingly hard: I first tried this from Vinn's point of view, but FAILED BADLY because Vinn doesn't have enough understanding of social dynamics to offer any kind of insight beyond basic physical descriptions. Which would be boring. So, uh, Fennar gets the honor. I almost wrote "no violence today", but that would be a lie. Anyway. No physical violence today. XD

I am not going to offer any further commentary, except, if you ever encounter this personality type in real life, I hope you know to RUN in the opposite direction, unless you know for sure he's a friend. He's fun to write, though. LOL

AAARGH. I just wanted chatgpt's help to structure a text. You know - what should be in the introduction, how long should each part be for easy reading, and so on. Unsurprisingly, I'm shit at this stuff, but usually, the AI is of great help - at least when it comes to nonfiction with clear structural requirements. (Letting the AI write texts is, of course, hopeless, so I won't even try. Letting the AI organize text structures before I just write stream-of-consciousness stuff, however? I mean, that could save me some headaches.) Trying to let it organize fiction, however? Wow. WOW. Today, I learned that chatgpt is really Very Fucking American.

Things I learned:
- The AI will not just try to reorganize the plot around an acceptable novella structure (which, after all, is what I asked it to do) but flag any character behavior for editing that does not conform to American cultural standards.
- The AI told me that my characters are too obsessed with honor and duty and I should consider editing that. I'm like... WAIT... I'm actually writing a Fantasy!Medieval!North!Germany setting. With Fantasy!Medieval!North!German characters with according cultural background and mindset. (Come on. It's fucking Germany. At least some of the characters take their oaths seriously...) Apparently, Germany written by a German is not acceptable by genre standards...
- The AI completely unasked (!) changed a scene description from a male character making tea for the group to a female character making the tea. Thanks for the casual sexism, I guess.
- The AI described a female character as "flirtatious". She's... not. She is, however, speaking to male characters. In, you know, plot-related ways. Apparently, that's yet another thing the AI can't handle. (Not a problem with the technology itself, I know, but definitely with the training dataset. WTF.)
- The AI completely unasked (!) tried to give a genderfluid character an issuefic subplot centered around Gender!Angst!American!Style. I mean, I onbviously don't expect an American piece of software to understand historical German ways of gender expression... which is why I didn't ask it to. This character has a perfectly acceptable subplot centered around military technology and espionage, and.no gender issues whatsoever, thanks.
- The AI really wants to change the magic system (which is, of course, North German as fuck, considering the setting) to something ripped off Tolkien.
- The AI is shit at interpreting character motivations in ways that are actually pretty hilarious.

Thanks for the non-help. -_-

Triple drabble for a drabble exchange. :) As if I could avoid a prompt involving a blacksmith... It had to happen. XD Also, the general feedback on this consists of variations on "so cute", which I guess means that I don't write what I read. ;)

The Hammer (300 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Dragon, Knight - Character, Blacksmith, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Triple Drabble, Fantasy, Dragons
Summary: A tiny dragon covets a blacksmith's hammer. A knight covets a blacksmith.

Three (naturally) very short pieces for seasonsofdrabbles. This time, it's crackfic only - it's what I produce automatically when I don't take pains to avoid it. Also, I mean, the prompts were fantastic. I had a lot of fun!


The Next Verse (200 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Male Wandering Bard / Holy knight who has sworn an oath of chastity but there might be loopholes
Characters: Original Male Character(s)
Additional Tags: Double Drabble, Humor
Summary:

A holy knight has found creative ways around his oath of chastity. A wandering bard takes inspiration.

ISBN (300 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: sentient book - Character, Original Human Character(s)
Additional Tags: Triple Drabble, Humor, Magic, Fantasy, Libraries, Sentient Magic Book - Freeform
Summary:

A necromancer's grimoire ends up on a shelf in a municipal library. Adapting to an entirely new target audience is not easy! Fortunately, the right kind of reader comes along.

Pizza (100 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Drabble, Humor, Dinosaurs, Palaeontology, Science, Dubious Science, Cooking
Summary:

A ghost dinosaur just wants pizza. A palaeontologist disagrees.

This is all your fault. Paranormal romance was winning the poll, so I... went and practiced a bit. :D Took me something like one and a half hours. If you ever wanted to know what my unedited word vomit looks like: now is your chance!

The Gnat Shifter (1394 words) by EllerWrites
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Characters: Shapeshifters, Original Characters, Original Female Character(s), Original Male Character(s)
Additional Tags: Paranormal Romance, Shifter Romance, Parody, Humor, Inappropriate Humor, Crack, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Writers, Why Did I Write This?, Spanking, gnats are annoying
Summary: It was a dark and stormy night when the world’s worst writer sat down at her laptop with a cup of rapidly cooling tea and began to type.

Life's busy but okay. :3

- I had mail! A lovely handmade New Year's card from goss and a letter from yhlee. Also a few cards from postcrossing. They really seem to deliver international mail in batches.

- I've almost finished my Chocolate Box assignment! And I'm even having fun writing it. That's a surprise. :D

- I love my ice cream machine. I made apricot ice cream with yoghurt and it was great!

- Still experimenting with handmade watercolors, the mad scientist way. If I continue this hobby I should probably invest in scales at some point. LOL

So here's my next experiment: skin tones!



These were overdue: I'm super annoyed that, if you try to buy pre-mixed skin tones they always contain opaque white so you can't go as dark as you want with them. Also, I really dislike having to use "earth pigments" like PBr7 or PY42 for brown skin because they look like, well, earth - not skin. (It's the texture.) I wanted transparent and staining and absolutely-not-granulating skin tones that I can use for dark skin and dilute for light skin.

So... I actually produced these from the primary colors. :D All three skin tones contain the same pigments, just in different ratios. I'm pretty confident I can render almost all skin colors with a combination of these three, and maybe the help of an indigo or dark purple (which I don't need to produce: there are enough on the market) - but, importantly, they're not orange-pink-whiteish mud...