alex chiu: May 2012

Thursday, May 31, 2012

masterful little schedule

i'm going to do my very best to follow this!

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

(steel-forged, powered with steam, imbued with the strength of silver water, hilt a deep cyan that ran in circles around the grip, and her Father’s before the Second War killed him and left her and Alice sitting on the edge of the balcony looking up to the skies for a Water Dragon to bring them hope because they were just two girls alone in the world, just sitting there and waiting for a deity to tell them that it would be okay)

- excerpt from personal short story "and the waves come crashing down"

I guess this counts as writing too? It's from a piece I wrote for FicWriting1, from an idea that turned its head the end of my junior year.

It went something like: war between conflicting sides reflective of my own battle between art and sports, one nation fires guns with basketballs and volleyballs as artillery and the other nation is a pompous elite nation that wields paintbrushes to paint weapons and other dangerous things...etc.

and then it had some awkward plot of a banished princess, an evil government, a ragtag team of helpers and a strong sisterly relationship.

...yeah, the plot developed a little bit. Since this is worldbuilding wednesday i'm going to wall the public with text.

Set in the center of the Desert of Balatia is a city that runs its technology off of water; bikes are powered by water, boats are powered by water, home lighting is churned by water--basically, it's hydro-technology ten-million-fold. The entire world itself comprises of four major sections and an assorted scattering of small villages and cities; the desert itself acts like the ocean and takes up maybe fifty percent of the entire land. To the north are the mountains--the avians--, to the south are the Aquahs and the most humid and moist region in the entire land, to the east are the reptilians, and to the west, steampunk and high technology run by robots (i'm still sorting this out in my head so it's not certain for sure).

Water obviously is a really important component in this world. If it's set in the middle of the desert then how the hell do they get all this water? Rain, of course, and the people pay to their deity: the Water Dragon.

But it hasn't rained for the past twelve years and people are dying, wondering where their gods have left them, wondering what the hell is going on. And that...is where a plot is hiding beneath the layers of AU logistics.

The character: Sophia. She is a quarter Aquahs and three quarters human being. Her Aquahs (an aquatic race) blood gives her a lanky frame, long facial features and long skeletal features. She also has the lungs of an Aquahs, allowing her to breathe in the humidity which is literally condensed moisture that no normal being can wade through, other than Aquahs. Which is why they put her on patrol duty to the South all the time, because that's the densest region.