Tippetarius

The day 2 writing meme question is difficult for me to answer without giving away spoilers, so I'm jumping over to this one:

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway).

My answer isn't so much a scene as a collection of scenes that want to be a story. I've long wanted to do a short fanfic with Rumarin as a kid, something that offers a glimpse of his life with the traveling artists and shows how his relationship with Otero developed. It would be fun to write about such a group; aside from bards, dancers, and actors, I have in mind a puppeteer, a fortune teller, and an archery sharpshooter. I struggle to come up with a story to make it all work, but maybe one of these days I'll finally do it.

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It's a brand new year, so it feels like a good time to post more Rumarin headcanons. Contains very minor spoilers for the Skyrim fanfic I keep working on.

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For a long time I've wanted to write a list of my Rumarin headcanons, but I was waiting until the most important ones were revealed in my Skyrim fanfic series. That finally happened in chapter 15 of Throat of the World, so here it goes. Spoilers ahead!



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Lonesome Dreams by Lord Huron is another song I've started associating with Rumarin. The narrator describes traveling through a beautiful but lonely world "where the only souls I see are ghosts"; it feels like something Rumarin might experience when he's alone in a land that's new and unknown to him. I believe he came to Skyrim to run away from his troubles in Cyrodiil, but the ghosts of his old life still follow him.

I see Rumarin as a lonely person. Even when he has companions, he keeps them at arm's length and never lets them know who he really is. Ask him a question, and you're lucky if he gives you a real answer; most likely he'll deflect or make a joke. At first it seems all in good fun, but sooner or later people begin picking up on the pattern. They start finding Rumarin tiring, annoying, or even suspicious. Eventually they go their own way, and Rumarin finds himself alone once again. Rumarin knows he's trapped in a cycle of his own making, but he doesn't know how to break out of it. Sometimes he's not sure if he wants to.

A couple of old Skyrim screenshots of J'zargo, Mehra, and Rumarin at Candlehearth Hall in Windhelm, based on a scene from chapter 1 of The White Phial. Rumarin approaches J'zargo and Mehra to convince them to help him fetch a valuable artifact from a haunted crypt. The apple on the table gets to be part of a juggling act later.

Challenge #2

In your own space, talk about your fannish history.

Sonic the Hedgehog was my first obsession. Well, the first obsession that led to fannish activity. I played the Sonic games for the Sega Genesis, bought Archie Comics' issues of Sonic the Hedgehog, watched the Sonic Saturday morning cartoon (Sonic SatAM), and created my own little Sonic website on GeoCities. Sonic is basically the reason I learned HTML.

There were other fandoms over the years, but mostly I lurked. I remember something of LiveJournal's heyday in the early and mid 2000s, because that was the place to go if you wanted to read Lord of the Rings fanfic.

About five years ago, my husband bought a copy of Morrowind for me. I like playing old games sometimes, and he thought I would enjoy Morrowind not only because of the fantasy setting, but also because you can "mod" it. I had never before played a game that you can overhaul to your liking, and I was hooked. I downloaded a bunch of other people's mods to make Morrowind a little prettier and more fun to play, but the best was Kateri's Julan Ashlander companion mod. Julan's story is woven into the main quest in a way that feels natural, and over time he changes and grows as a person. Julan isn't optional for me; if he isn't in my game, then Morrowind is missing a piece of its soul.

Then I moved on to Skyrim. While I think Morrowind has a better story and atmosphere, Skyrim is my go-to Elder Scrolls game. It's fun, it doesn't demand much from my brain, and there are tons of mods for it. There's a lot about Skyrim I can criticize, but the flaws are probably part of what compelled me to write fanfic about it in the first place. I almost look at fanfic as a form of modding, which is all about making the game more what YOU want it to be.

One of my must-have mods for Skyrim is Kris Takahashi's Interesting NPCs (also called 3DNPCs). It adds tons of voiced NPCs to the world, although I mostly keep it installed for a handful of characters like Rumarin. I like having him around, and he has a lot of fun lines. But the thing about Rumarin is that he's almost never serious, and his constant humor starts feeling like a front for something he doesn't want you to know. It's like you never truly get to know him. I wanted to get to the bottom of this and find out who this guy really is, and the only way I could do that was by writing a story about him. That's how The White Phial came to be, the first in a Skyrim fanfic series that I've been working on since 2016. I'm a very slow writer, unfortunately... but so far I'm persistent.

That brings us to now. I'm still trying to finish writing that series, and my husband beta reads my work. Proofreading and catching typos is the least of what he does; I rely on his feedback on whether the characters feel authentic, whether the situations make sense, and whether the story is headed in a good direction. The final results carry a lot of his influence.

I have to say that certain fandoms have helped shape me into who I am today. And that's likely to continue.

Despite the fact that I've been working on chapter 14 almost every day for more than a month, it's still not finished. It seems like I should be a faster writer by now, but instead I seem to be getting slower.

In any case, Rumarin has become the POV character, taking the role back from Mehra. It's like Mehra is too exhausted and overwhelmed to fully process everything that's happening. Rumarin is preoccupied with his own problems too, but at least he hasn't climbed any mountains lately.

Rumarin usually brings more cynicism to a chapter. He's more skeptical of people than Mehra is, and he's more likely to assume the worst. It's not that Mehra doesn't ever pick up on bad vibes; it's just that she's more likely to second-guess her instincts and give people the benefit of the doubt.

[The following was originally posted to Tumblr on December 31, 2017.]

Dialogue from Rumarin of the Interesting NPCs mod. Only spoilery if you've never commented on his healthy sense of humor.

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[The following was originally posted to Tumblr on July 16, 2017.]

Stuff Rumarin says about money, wagers, selling things, etc. Spoilers for quests and specific locations. Includes (but is not limited to) bits of dialogue from:

• The Forsworn Conspiracy (after escaping Cidhna Mine)


• Dragonslayer (after defeating Alduin)


• Blood of Kings (3DNPC quest, from the party at the end)

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[The following was originally posted to Tumblr on September 23, 2017. Note that I've revised the story since posting the commentary; for more information and a link to the original story, see Revising The White Phial.]

I posted the first chapter of The White Phial a year ago. Thought I’d mark the occasion by doing a bit of commentary on an older chapter.

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