@quilloftheclouds / quilloftheclouds.tumblr.com
"The stars in his eyes weren't reflections."
AHHHH STAR MAGIC!! I LOVE STAR MAGIC (or magic-seeming) SO SO MUCH.
Alas, mine is a lot more... painful.
Stars danced behind my eye when something hard connected with my ribs, knocking me to my side, knocking another searing bolt of pain through my body as I rolled onto my back, chest shuddering with uneven breaths.
10, 11, and 12
Dice say Sindre! Ohhhh~
10. What are some of your oc’s pet peeves? How do they handle it when the annoyance doesn’t stop?
Sindre doesn’t have much that annoys him (at least, not that he shows), but if someone extinguishes a light nearby without telling him they’re going to, he gets spooked real easy. Same comes with suddenly opening curtains or doors to bright sun. Lighting a fire or lamp is fine, since it starts slowly before brightening, but anything to do with a sudden light change, and he gets rather annoyed if you keep doing it after he tells you not to. He doesn’t like mirrors being pointed his way, either.
Some of the sailors of the Compass’ crew unfortunately figured this out, and as they have a bit of a hobby teasing (bullying) the poor soul, they very well didn’t listen to his requests to stop. Those lights started mysteriously going out without reason. The sun clouded over. Mirrors broke. Wonder what that’s about...
11. Does your oc have a good sense of direction? Do they get lost easily?
Sindre’s navigation skills are remarkable! He’s been a sailor for a while and a seafarer even longer, and has the sun and stars to travel by! Even when it’s cloudy, he always seems to know where things are~
12. How well would your oc handle being placed in a leadership position?
Sort of well...? With people that would actually listen to him, wonderfully! He knows what orders to give and he’s able to dole out roles to what’s best, but... finding a team that would actually listen to him, well. That’s the unlikely thing. Sindre unfortunately has quite a difficult time with getting other people’s respect, seeming a bit too shy and a bit too flustered despite his admirable skills and experience.
Io began wearing gloves on a daily basis immediately after the pirate attack on her home village. At the time, she solely had access to the gloves she wore for practicing fencing, so they were quite a bit hot and chunky and difficult to do... well, pretty much anything with. She absolutely refused to take them off for any purpose. Dr. Charlie Mellor, the family friend who was named her guardian after her parents... mm, became... unavailable, had enough experience with the girl to know her stubbornness wouldn’t let up for anyone. Besides that, many believed it was some way of coping with the trauma for the young girl, and after just losing her family, no one wanted to take that away from her.
Charlie instead purchased her a much lighter pair of silk gloves that extending back nearly to her elbows, with pretty little floral embroidery in gold thread--dainty and in-fashion enough that it wouldn’t be questioned for a girl of her social status to be constantly wearing them. After much convincing, the girl finally exchanged them out.
Upon getting her own pay from working in the Navy, Violet pretty much immediately went out and bought a simpler, wrist-length white silk pair, something far more practical for her situation.
🔎 Dione
@howdy-writes and @chayscribbles also asked for Dione! I’m not entirely sure how to format this, so... messy bullet points it is!
ALRIGHT IS THAT ENOUGH DETAIL? I just. Have a very vivid idea of what she looks like. XD She also looks very different later on in the series but those are spoilers!
First things I think of are the ocean, pirates, and mermaids
Ohhhhh, all to do with my wip One Siren’s Soul!
For you: sparkly stars! So many stars. Magical images that give me fantasy vibes! And books, like? A magic library!!
spoiler!
It wasn’t just a pirate raid. They were commissioned to find someone.
Shard! I guess we're calling it the word search game?
alkfjslkdgjsdg I dunno, you can call it what you want as long as I can figure out what you’re talking about. XD Word search of find the word, all’s fine~
For later analysis, and so the shedmagic would not go to waste, I set to snapping away as many of the largercrystals as I could, using a small and sturdy knife from the pockets at mywaist to pry them from the stone floor. The mineral was fragile, fracturingeasily--although the act of breaking their anchor was not difficult, it was achallenge to garner large enough pieces to make the effort worth it. I was onlyable to add a few adequately sized shards to my pockets before the door bashedopen, the sound shocking me backwards and off balance.
It says just a line but too bad I feel like more.
Thanks for the ask! ^u^
🤙 you’re pretty cool
Mate, you are too!! Thank you~
STS! How much has OSS changed since you first thought of the idea?
Happy Storyteller Saturday!
And your answer? A LOT
For one, OSS was originally planned to just be a silly side project to get my writing skills up, and to attempt to write a single, stand-alone novel without too much planning and backstory. It was supposed to be lightttt
And then that went out the window.
First off, the Ascendants weren’t even a thing. Now they’re so integrated into the plot that removing them would legitimately destroy the story, so.
And Colin was always going to be cursed, but I! Had no idea he was going to be a dog for the majority of the book! WHAT
Anyways there’s just a lot of weirdness and worldbuilding that I did and the project basically grew to a size that would not fit one single book so! NOW IT’S A TRILOGY I GUESS.
And there’s bound to be a bunch more to change too, so. We’ll see what happens.
Thanks for the ask!!
🍔 — Tell you a writeblr that I admire!
HELLO, YES, @royalbounties is the writer of A Killing Song, which is the first story I’ve ever beta-read! I know I don’t have much experience with beta-ing whatsoever but it was absolutely so much fun and their writing! Is spectacular! And if I recall correctly, they finished almost the entirety of the first draft through Camp Nano, which is such an admirable achievement on its own!
Jaecyn’s world of Faerth is lovely with so many worldbuilding details, and I adore their characters oh so much! Not only that, but their art is lovely, and I’ve been loving all the wonderful looks are their marvelous characters~
🥞 — Talk about how much I love an OC of mine!
I’m basically going to be going through each of my characters at this point, huh. XD
Okay Celestine, how much can I reveal about you without spoiling literally everything? Hm.
Celestine is a little brat. And when I say little, I mean it---they’re barely 4′9. They also look really young, and use that to their advantage quite frequently by feigning sweet child innocence whenever someone suspects them of stealing something. The shift to their other side once their mask is seen through is incredibly distinctive, as they’re far more prone to making rude comments and hissing at people.
They’re also always mistrustful, so their narrative is always full of quick assumptions to a manipulative motive behind other characters doing something nice for her, even when it’s the most innocent good deed.
I just, I really enjoy writing such a different character from my own personality. Being mean for once is so much fun. XD
Thank you for the ask!
What's your characters' relationships with their families? Are any of them in contact with them?
Happy Storyteller Saturday! And an interesting question indeed~
Most of my characters in One Siren’s Soul aren’t in contact with their families anymore. But of the ones that have family members that make an appearance, there are certainly some interesting dynamics at work there:
George’s mother is actually Sheila, and they both make an appearance in the book! Of course, his ma thinks he died more than 20 years ago in a ship battle, but nah. He just joined the pirates that attacked him. XD They reunite at the end of the first book, and it’s really super sweet! But also Sheila throws a shoe at him because she’s Not Happy that he didn’t think to visit Even Once.
And speaking of George! Technically Colin was adopted by George and Isabel! They all work on the same ship so they see each other all the time, and they’re all the absolute bestest of friends and care immensely for each other, it’s the sweetest thing. Much better than Colin’s relationship with his biological father---guy’s a neglectful jerk. It’s questionable what Colin’s relationship with his mother would be, since she mysteriously left and never came back when he was about four years old. She was very kind to him before that, though.
Isabel occasionally runs into her siblings! She’s got a huge family, and a lot of them are also pirates, so she meets up with them in pirate havens and the like rather frequently! They’re not very close, but they still do have sibling rivalries---all in good fun, though~
Iiiii can’t talk about Celestine or Dione’s families because that’s an incredibly important plot point.
Thank you for the ask!!
Storyteller Saturday! I have so many questions about the Scientist that I don't know where to start. Is there anything else you can tell about them?
kasjlksdjglksjglkf
OKAY SO
THE SCIENTIST’S GLASSES ARE REAL IMPORTANT KAY?
(FIRST OF ALL, I use they/them pronouns in place of The Scientist’s actual pronouns or do I??? ‘cause yeah even that’s a spoiler I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
This is a tad spoilery but not really:
The Scientist was the sole survivor of a shipwreck. The vessel had been lured into the rocks by a group of Mist sirens, who proceeded to basically, well... they weren’t very nice to the crew, let’s just say that.
The Scientist managed to make it off the ship, but when one of the sirens came for them, they were pretty much done for. Until their glasses caught the moonlight, catching and holding the siren’s attention. They recognized this, throwing the glasses as far as they could, and managed to get away from the ocean alive while it was distracted.
Anyways that’s how The Scientist came to know about sirens so!!! Yeah!!!! They have a bit of a grudge against them tbh.
Thanks for the ask!!!
Storyteller Saturday! Do any of your characters have any pets or anything close?
Happy Storyteller Saturday!
No one of my characters have pets in the first book... unless you count Colin, the cursed pup, as Dione’s familiar or something. Which is technically what’s going on but shh, you’re not supposed to know that yet. Otherwise, it’s quite difficult to keep a pet aboard a pirate ship, especially if you’re up North where it’s much too cold for most animals in the winter. ^^
In the second book though, I’m planning on Phoenix getting a pet hen! Because I think it would be absolutely hilarious, in addition to just being darn fun. And! Eggs! Cool! Also, several sirens in the second book have pets as well---sea turtles and other marine life, that sort of thing.
Thank you for the ask!!
Aesthetic-wise, I always think of clouds over the ocean because of your name and icon. But also gold, for some reason.
The gold part is probably Celestine or Xuân’s fault. XD
Okay so, this was mostly inspired from your username!
I see a young wizard dressed in star specked robes, the cloak and pointed hat much too large for them. In one hand is an open tome, the book leatherbound with gold leaf details, the pages browned from age and singed from previous magic mishaps. With their free hand they swirl a spell of captured stars, a whirling galaxy in miniature that hangs in the air, spinning slowly~
After the fact swap, I have to ask, how much treasure does Captain Xuân have? Where is it kept?
You’re giving me the excuse to rant about my favourite character. Thank you.
OKAY SO. Captain Xuân’s ship isn’t actually very fast because it’s usually very weighed down by the amount of treasure and decor she carries! But it’s such a decked out vessel in artillery, and the Rồng Naga usually sticks to areas where no one else dare sail, so Xuân normally doesn’t have to worry about being attacked!
How much changes quite frequently. I imagine most of the classical metallic treasure, like jewels and coins and such, are stored in the regular storage hold of the ship, and if they can’t be made useful elsewhere, are sold off for more versatile currency or for resources needed by the crew or the ship. Precious fabrics are used often by the ship’s tailor (yes the ship has a tailor---she’s also the gardener), Hana, to be made into wonderful clothing for the captain and her crew/guests.
Mainly Xuân is known for their hoarding habits because they surround themself with incredibly rich furnishings and dresses in extraordinarily expensive things. And the fact that their constant ability to locate shipwrecks for pillaging is a definite contributor to why there’s constantly treasure on board~
Thank you for the ask!
Since dragons exist in my wip, Rorey definitely wants one, even if his parents say no. He's snuck small ones into the house before.
OKAY THAT IS ADORABLE, BUT I SURE HOPE THEY DON’T BREATHE FIRE IN YOUR WIP BECAUSE THAT COULD BE VERY BAD
Captain Xuân is often known through stories as The Dragon of the Seas, due to her unusual treasure hoarding obsession collecting hobby, her notable green eyes, and her rather… unsettlingly vicious strategies. She keeps forgetting this, though, instead thinking people are referring to her ship, the Rồng Naga. You know, since that’s “Dragon” in Vietnamese? She’s quite confused whenever it’s brought up.
