FA+
Shop
196 submissions
Chapter 17 - Surprise In-Laws Should Be Outlawed
<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>
How do you explain to your parents that your housemate is a tiny little furry creature? How do you explain you're DATING that creature? How do you deal with your parents showing up at your door without a word of warning? How do you deal with being that creature, and your boyfriend's parents are there when you get home, after a long and terrible day?
Poor Vayryn, and poor Corwyn. And poor parents. Well, poor mom, at least. Dad's a jerk.
I'd been hyping up Corwyn's parents coming by to visit unexpectedly, which is a big reason I didn't want to put it off until the next round. So, yeah, "in celebration of the fan art" was kind of an excuse, but also not just an excuse, if that makes sense? It's still adorable, though. I'm glad to be able to get this out in its full glory, too.
...
"I'll split this chapter into two, because if I don't, I'm gonna go over 10k words."
"Well, this first of two managed to go really long. Over 10k words in the first 'half'. Yeah, that was a mess. But that was a huge ordeal, of course her first eggs would be a mass of emotions and embarrassment and awkwardness and take a lot to go through. The next chapter, the second 'half' should be shorter. Man, I almost blew past my record for longest chapter, that was close."
Oh, what a fool I am.
14,761 words. The previous longest chapter was Princess 3, at 10,701. Blew past it by FOUR THOUSAND words. Heck, the "longest post" was the combined Princess 19 & 20, and even that got blown past. Those two chapters together were 13,169. Almost sixteen hundred words past that.
Maybe it drags in places, I can't tell. Each individual piece, I like it. It shows off personalities, it lets people see how everything's going down, it lets people see the progression as things work out... It's just that these darn characters just had to have emotions and keep talking about things instead of just... doing the things! Even tiny things, stuff that would've just been a couple sentences back and forth, kept turning into a big conversation about deep topics. Like Mom running into Vayryn's feelings about being separated from humanity, because she wants to get to really know this strange girl who's dating her son!
...And yeah, I ended up deciding to base a lot of Mom's personality here after my own mom. Which meant she quickly became an ally instead of staying stuck up and and horrible like Dad did. She was also smart enough to see right through their attempts to hide, pretty much instantly. Dad was just so repulsed by Vayryn that he paid as little attention to her existing as possible. Maybe he'll come around, by the next time they visit. And hopefully, they've learned their lesson about calling first!
Also, something I have not been addressing for a while, but I guess I really should. In the "Chronicles of Amber" series by Roger Zelazny, the main character (of the first five books, anyway) is Corwin. With an I. When I first named Corwyn, I was just so certain that it was spelled with a Y that I never actually went to check it! I did discover my mistake later, I forget exactly when but it was at least by Chapter 10 (when looking up a list of the family and their relations, in order to choose who Benny should be named after). But I really didn't want to alter and re-upload a whole bunch of chapters, and I didn't want to come up with some in-universe explanation, so I just kept putting it off.
The problem with it being in-universe is that it requires both Mom (who is such a massive dork for the series that she named her kids after the characters, and went all-out with having two custom swords made) to have made the same mistake. And then she would have to never correct it. I did think about that happening, having it be a while since she read the books, and then she rereads them when the boys are like 8-10 and realizes her goof, but decides to just never fix it because he's used to it and/or doesn't want to go through the hassle. But even if I explain mom's mistake, it then leads to the other issue: Vayryn picking up on the name immediately and never pointing out the misspelling. It just felt like too much of a coincidence to have two people make the same error in the same way.
So, in this universe, the book has the character's name spelled with a Y. It's just one of the ways this is a "slightly better Earth". Just like how Twitter is still Twitter and hasn't been bought and renamed by a whiny man-baby with a fragile ego who's been diving into insane conspiracy theory crap because he likes being told he's a good person for having money. Just like how a certain orange-faced dictator never actually rose to prominence and became President. Just like how racism and bigotry didn't make a resurgence simply because we had a President with slightly-darker-than-usual skin. And like how medical nanotechnology progressed a bit further than in our world, even if it's been "Ten or fifteen years in the future" for like the last twenty. Corwyn being "Corwyn" is just one of those things that makes it slightly better. ^_~
...Wait, Mom had TWO swords made? Of course! You didn't think poor Benny wasn't going to get a gift, did you? He got Werewindle the Day Sword, the twin brother of Grayswandir the Night Blade. Of course, as far as I can tell, it got even LESS description than Grayswandir did. It's been too long since I read the books (I did impulse-buy "The Great Book of Amber" last week, the collection of all ten books in one volume, but have only read through the first book, "Nine Princes of Amber" so far.), so my research has been trying to track down stuff posted online in wikis and forums and such. Benny's Werewindle is a stout blade with a standard crossguard instead of a basket hilt, lined with gold accents and its portion of the Pattern also being done in gold. In the books, it was originally wielded by Brand, who turned traitor in an attempt to gain power before ending up in Merlin's hands (who then lost it pretty quickly, it seems). The Benedict from the books didn't really HAVE a signature weapon, as his millenia of training and practice basically made his weapon "Whatever he damn well pleases". He did lose an arm and have a prosthetic, but I don't think MMY Benny would appreciate the offer to amputate his arm (though he might be willing to if he had a magic arm that could strangle ghosts for a replacement, I don't know). But Amber Benedict with one arm could pick up any weapon and beat anyone else with both arms and their best weapon, just about. So giving him Werewindle was a little bit of a stretch, but it works well enough, and he's happy with it.
Based heavily on the comic Out of Placers, a work by
Valsalia and also available at Valsalia.com
Yinglet species is the creation of Valsalia
Seriously, it's awesome stuff, go read it.
Thumbnail art by
koofins
<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>
How do you explain to your parents that your housemate is a tiny little furry creature? How do you explain you're DATING that creature? How do you deal with your parents showing up at your door without a word of warning? How do you deal with being that creature, and your boyfriend's parents are there when you get home, after a long and terrible day?
Poor Vayryn, and poor Corwyn. And poor parents. Well, poor mom, at least. Dad's a jerk.
I'd been hyping up Corwyn's parents coming by to visit unexpectedly, which is a big reason I didn't want to put it off until the next round. So, yeah, "in celebration of the fan art" was kind of an excuse, but also not just an excuse, if that makes sense? It's still adorable, though. I'm glad to be able to get this out in its full glory, too.
...
"I'll split this chapter into two, because if I don't, I'm gonna go over 10k words."
"Well, this first of two managed to go really long. Over 10k words in the first 'half'. Yeah, that was a mess. But that was a huge ordeal, of course her first eggs would be a mass of emotions and embarrassment and awkwardness and take a lot to go through. The next chapter, the second 'half' should be shorter. Man, I almost blew past my record for longest chapter, that was close."
Oh, what a fool I am.
14,761 words. The previous longest chapter was Princess 3, at 10,701. Blew past it by FOUR THOUSAND words. Heck, the "longest post" was the combined Princess 19 & 20, and even that got blown past. Those two chapters together were 13,169. Almost sixteen hundred words past that.
Maybe it drags in places, I can't tell. Each individual piece, I like it. It shows off personalities, it lets people see how everything's going down, it lets people see the progression as things work out... It's just that these darn characters just had to have emotions and keep talking about things instead of just... doing the things! Even tiny things, stuff that would've just been a couple sentences back and forth, kept turning into a big conversation about deep topics. Like Mom running into Vayryn's feelings about being separated from humanity, because she wants to get to really know this strange girl who's dating her son!
...And yeah, I ended up deciding to base a lot of Mom's personality here after my own mom. Which meant she quickly became an ally instead of staying stuck up and and horrible like Dad did. She was also smart enough to see right through their attempts to hide, pretty much instantly. Dad was just so repulsed by Vayryn that he paid as little attention to her existing as possible. Maybe he'll come around, by the next time they visit. And hopefully, they've learned their lesson about calling first!
Also, something I have not been addressing for a while, but I guess I really should. In the "Chronicles of Amber" series by Roger Zelazny, the main character (of the first five books, anyway) is Corwin. With an I. When I first named Corwyn, I was just so certain that it was spelled with a Y that I never actually went to check it! I did discover my mistake later, I forget exactly when but it was at least by Chapter 10 (when looking up a list of the family and their relations, in order to choose who Benny should be named after). But I really didn't want to alter and re-upload a whole bunch of chapters, and I didn't want to come up with some in-universe explanation, so I just kept putting it off.
The problem with it being in-universe is that it requires both Mom (who is such a massive dork for the series that she named her kids after the characters, and went all-out with having two custom swords made) to have made the same mistake. And then she would have to never correct it. I did think about that happening, having it be a while since she read the books, and then she rereads them when the boys are like 8-10 and realizes her goof, but decides to just never fix it because he's used to it and/or doesn't want to go through the hassle. But even if I explain mom's mistake, it then leads to the other issue: Vayryn picking up on the name immediately and never pointing out the misspelling. It just felt like too much of a coincidence to have two people make the same error in the same way.
So, in this universe, the book has the character's name spelled with a Y. It's just one of the ways this is a "slightly better Earth". Just like how Twitter is still Twitter and hasn't been bought and renamed by a whiny man-baby with a fragile ego who's been diving into insane conspiracy theory crap because he likes being told he's a good person for having money. Just like how a certain orange-faced dictator never actually rose to prominence and became President. Just like how racism and bigotry didn't make a resurgence simply because we had a President with slightly-darker-than-usual skin. And like how medical nanotechnology progressed a bit further than in our world, even if it's been "Ten or fifteen years in the future" for like the last twenty. Corwyn being "Corwyn" is just one of those things that makes it slightly better. ^_~
...Wait, Mom had TWO swords made? Of course! You didn't think poor Benny wasn't going to get a gift, did you? He got Werewindle the Day Sword, the twin brother of Grayswandir the Night Blade. Of course, as far as I can tell, it got even LESS description than Grayswandir did. It's been too long since I read the books (I did impulse-buy "The Great Book of Amber" last week, the collection of all ten books in one volume, but have only read through the first book, "Nine Princes of Amber" so far.), so my research has been trying to track down stuff posted online in wikis and forums and such. Benny's Werewindle is a stout blade with a standard crossguard instead of a basket hilt, lined with gold accents and its portion of the Pattern also being done in gold. In the books, it was originally wielded by Brand, who turned traitor in an attempt to gain power before ending up in Merlin's hands (who then lost it pretty quickly, it seems). The Benedict from the books didn't really HAVE a signature weapon, as his millenia of training and practice basically made his weapon "Whatever he damn well pleases". He did lose an arm and have a prosthetic, but I don't think MMY Benny would appreciate the offer to amputate his arm (though he might be willing to if he had a magic arm that could strangle ghosts for a replacement, I don't know). But Amber Benedict with one arm could pick up any weapon and beat anyone else with both arms and their best weapon, just about. So giving him Werewindle was a little bit of a stretch, but it works well enough, and he's happy with it.
Based heavily on the comic Out of Placers, a work by
Valsalia and also available at Valsalia.comYinglet species is the creation of
ValsaliaSeriously, it's awesome stuff, go read it.
Thumbnail art by
koofins
Category Story / Transformation
Species Yinglet
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 238.1 kB
Comments