May Chatter Post

[white_aster]

I noticed a lot of folks mentioning in the card requests that they are new, so I figured that maybe it's time for another chatter post!

How are you all doing? I know that here in the US there's been some serious weather going on, so I hope that everyone is healthy and happy and safe.

For the ice breaker topic, how about: weather! What's the weather like where your characters live? What's their favorite (or least favorite) type of weather?

Also, new folks! Feel free to pull up a chair and introduce yourselves and your muses. As we haven't been doing any advertising about for a long while, I'm curious how you all got here. How did you hear about our challenge?

Have fun, and happy writing, everyone!

Comments

[recessional]

;)

Castalin arose from my constant frustration with the way 95% of stories and tv-shows and movies and so on portray cold, and living with cold, and acting around cold. I come from a place with -40C winters, and almost all depictions of cold environments I've ever come across are just . . . wrong. Sometimes in the main, almost always in the details. (I love Avatar: The Last Airbender, but it is so very, very guilty of this; every time we visit a Water Tribe, I end up going "why is her mitt off? HER HAND IS FREEZING. Oh, god, they're WET, they're going to start dying of hypothermia in about thirty seconds, and also, her eyelashes have frozen shut, and - ")

And always miss the little wonderful things, like how the air sparkles on a really cold, clear, still day, because of every single ice-crystal in the air catching the sun. Etc, etc.

Thus, Castalin.


. . . my desert ones are pretty much enterprises in me trying to make sure I don't fall victim to the opposite, but I have actually lived in deserts, and a lot more (accurate) stuff gets written about them.

[white_aster]

I've done the same thing with Avatar: "AND THEN THEY DIE OF HYPOTHERMIA, THE END." Fail on the reality check, guys, fail! >_<

I have always been kind of fascinated with extreme cold environments. I'm not sure what it is...maybe some of it's the isolation since such places aren't usually huge metropolises, but part of it's also the adaptation necessary to live there, and the little things like your sparkly air, that you never get to see anywhere else....

[recessional]

It's like, there are ways to deal with these things (one of them is that the outside of your clothing is SEAL FUR, which sheds water, not pretty-blue-cloth (which I'm . . . well, I suppose they could trade for it with the Earth Kingdom, but Sokka and Katara's tribe seemed pretty isolated) which, um, does not.

It's just people don't think of it. Or how whatever it is that's around your face needs to be able to shed the ice from your breath. Or else it'll just melt and refreeze against your skin, chafing the shit out of it (again: fur is useful, here.)

[staranise]

One of the only things I've ever seen portray cold correctly was Stargate: Continuum, which was filmed in the Arctic. Daniel stepped in water for five seconds and did not get medical help for a few hours; he ended up losing his leg. (The blase manner in which he informs his teammates of this expresses just how potent his painkillers are, and how cynical and world-weary Daniel is after over a decade with the SGC.)

[recessional]

Pullman does pretty well in HDM, actually, although sometimes it feels a little "LOOK, I did my RESEARCH about COLD!" rather than natural and lived in.