hmm

Word count:
Project: Delaet


I have this faintly sketched outline of a really awesome dream I had awhile back. It is lit ficcy, steampunky, features nukes, some odd supernatural, and what I think is the coolest: a plot twist based on someone's sloppy reading/transliteration of Cyrillic. Ooh, that word was NOT what you thought it was.

This is significantly cooler when you realize my dream!brain just did something AWESOME with Russian, and with words I didn't even know. I looked them up when I woke up and the plot bunnies exploded into confetti. Hell yeah!

There is a lot of planning left to do with this, since it'd actually require a modicum of research. It'd be a fun NaNo/Camp NaNo if I had the balls to risk failure--it'd be a lot harder than my usual fare.


-Settings: somewhere in Belarus, maybe? First thought was Romania but the former's politics would work better. I need to make sure the characters' names are right, which means I need a time period (whoo, ghosts) to nail down and then to find out who was in charge of whatever territory I decide on. Other setting: contemporary Arizona.

-Once that is nailed down, which branch of Orthodoxy was predominant at the time? Russian or Greek?

-If my nukes provided the power to the house, how to explain the flimsy excuses behind supernatural rationale prior to the 1990s?

-Do I need to look up Orthodox exorcisms? Well, this just got a lot darker than I intended, and there was originally a room that the characters couldn't tell if it was for sex or torture.

-If a car runs into a cactus in the Arizona desert, what is the optimal speed to wreck the car without critically injuring the sleeping driver? Some degree of luck/suspension of belief permitted. Working name for this--it has a name, but fuck it--may be Poor Cactus. Would the cactus... break or explode or just absorb the impact? What size cactus am I allowed to have in Arizona?

-Do these people have jobs?! Are they historian/librarian/archaeologist-y types? That'd give them jobs in AZ, at least.

-But what if I don't want the climax to be an exorcism?! CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG.

-What happened to Emily when she disappeared? Can she be a college student on a prestigious scholarship for me to jade beyond all recognition? How does she come back? What is SHE doing in AZ? Are they just from there? That'd make my life easier.

-Wait. I said Victorian at some point. Ooh. ...Ooh. Scary time period in that region. That may work out nicely. Are they German/British-based or Slavic? Gotta be Slavic with the names. Maybe sell-outs. Actually, if they're in that transition between Victorian and Edwardian, then I should get to play with WWI too... That means, however, my location will be limited to wherever is NOT horribly fucked up from battle sites that also has mountains. Cool with me. Narrow it down more, bunnies.


And so on, and so on. If the current outline holds, it should be fun, even if I need a lot of booze to give me the sheer guts to write it. (OH HEY I WONDER WHEN I'LL GET THAT OPPORTUNITY, GUUUUUUYZ.)