lady horatio

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - An Urban Fantasy Adventure!

That's totally OK, @Naril! Thank you for the head's up. New Year's is only a few weeks away, and I'd be happy to just pick back up whenever you're ready. :)

Good night, interest check. Sleep well. I'll most likely edit you in the morning. [tentatively reopened]

@greywolf375 I'm about to go grab lunch before work, but I'll shoot you a PM when I get home! :)

Good night, interest check. Sleep well. I'll most likely edit you in the morning. [tentatively reopened]

Hi! If you got the reference in the title, let’s talk so we can be the best of friends.

I’m lady h, a neurotic 27-year-old cat-lover, tea enthusiast, and champion marathoner (of TV, that is). It’s nice to meet you! I'm once again returning to the Guild after a bit of an absence, and as always, it's a bit nerve-wracking. (To any old partners that stumble across this: I'm so sorry for disappearing, and please don't hesitate to message me if I haven't already reached out to you first.)

I'm not looking to take on too much too fast, so if I manage to hit if off with a partner or two, I'll probably close up shop again for a bit, at least to see how I manage before expanding my horizons. That said, I'm always down to make more friends around these parts, even if we don't start something at the moment!

I’ve tried to make this interest check as organized and user-friendly as possible, so you can easily check out the sections most relevant or important to you. I’m sure, just like the title says, that I’ll tinker with it endlessly anyway—and in the mean time, if you have any questions that I didn’t cover, please don’t hesitate to hit me up!

About me as a partner:

• I’m very friendly and love to chat in OOC. :)
• I’m better at character development than plot, and I tend to enjoy character-driven stories.
• I usually have one main POV character in a roleplay (and I tend to default to ladies), but I also like to juggle a few secondary characters. I’m particularly fond of guy/girl best-friend or sibling duos.
• My favorite genre is urban fantasy (fantasy set in some version of the “real” world), but I also have a fondness for post-apocalyptic, dystopian, steampunk, and soft sci-fi settings. Sometimes I'll do a bit of historical, but almost always with fantasy elements.
• I also delight in borrowing fandom plots, scenarios, or settings and sticking in our own characters! A list of some of my favorite fandoms and other ideas can be found below.
• I love romance—fluffy or angsty or both! both is good—but it’s totally not required and should never be forced. I’m also a sucker for unrequited crushes, so even if one of my characters develops a tendre for one of yours, by no means do you have to follow suit!
• I’m cool with mature themes, be they language or violence or ~sexytimes~, but everything in moderation. (i.e., I’m mostly a fade-to-black-kind of girl. If you ask me to write something too detailed in the bedroom, I’m afraid I’ll just end up embarrassing both of us.)
• I’m an English nerd, and I like to write my posts the same way I’d write a story—with a care for spelling, grammar, and the way things sound. I would never nitpick your posts or be snotty about it—I swear!—but I do like writing with partners who also like that kind of thing.
• On that note, I prefer quality over quantity, every time. I can ramble with the best of them, but sometimes, a long post just isn’t called for, and might even get in the way. It makes more sense to play it by ear.
• If we chat and hit it off, I’d prefer to start a roleplay in PMs. We can always change it up later.

Favorite fandoms to play with:

• Buffy/Angelverse - probably my most comfortable fandom
• The Hunger Games
• Harry Potter
• Firefly
• The October Daye novels (though I am behind by a few)
• Merlin (though, again, not fully caught up on the BBC series--I haven't seen S5, so no spoilers, please!)

Watch this space—more to come as I think of them! I'm currently leaning toward fandom-inspired or original stuff, rather than direct-from-fandom content, but never hesitate to ask if you've got an idea, a question, or a craving.

General areas of interest:

• Creatures of the night/paranormal nonsense
• Faeries
• Mutants/metahumans
• Generic “magical boarding school”
• Cities with supernatural underbellies
• Stories about ~THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP~
• Arranged marriages or marriages of convenience
• Reluctant heroes
• Stories where hope prevails, even if things get terribly angsty in the interim

Again, this list is incomplete, and I am always down for suggestions!

Writing samples:

Sample character sheets:

• Mandy, a nerdy half cait sidhe girl.
• Alex, a free-spirited dancer.
• Alex again, this time as a volunteer superhero.

Sample posts:

• Alex wakes up dead and possibly a godling (long)

  Every nerve in her body was screaming—and then it wasn’t. The pain didn’t just fade; it disappeared so surely that it could have been a dream. She might have been dreaming for a while, her self somewhere else while the rest of her figured out what to do about a body.
  
  Alex came back to herself like waking up, like opening her eyes—the world was gone, and then it wasn’t. Making sense of it took slightly longer. It began with the feel of gravel digging into her side, the weight of her body against the asphalt. Next came heat against her back, out of place in the cool November air. Finally, the sounds of disaster: the cacophony of screaming and sirens.
  
  Now that she’d taken stock of her surroundings, it was time to look closer to home. Alex eased her way, slowly, so slowly, into a sitting position. Heavy curls slid over her shoulders, familiar and comforting.
  
  Her body looked just as she remembered it should, not a single limb out of place, no cuts or broken bones. The brown skin of her arms and legs was smooth and unmarked, save for the expected scattering of freckles. Though it felt like she shouldn’t be, she was whole.
  
  Alex remembered, belatedly, that she’d skinned her knee last week, running late to an audition downtown. The scrapes on her palms had been superficial and were already healed, but she’d come down hard enough on one leg to draw blood. There should still be a scab there.
  
  The moment she thought it, there was.
  
  Alex stared. I’m in shock, she thought, and then, It’s too loud.
  
  Immediately, the noise lowered, as muffled as if she’d closed a door between herself and the rest of the world.
  
  Alex swallowed.
  
  There were people nearby. The ones who were screaming, or the ones who hadn’t gotten up. There was a fire raging. And all she could focus on was the way the world dimmed when she wanted it to, the way bile climbed her throat when she spotted a man holding up a charred skull, or the unavoidable fact that not too long ago, she'd been inside that husk of a vehicle, sitting right behind the driver.
  
  She could hear her mother scolding, Alexandra Denali, never take one thing in this life for granted, and her father saying, gently, Alex, don’t just look for the helpers; follow them. And still, she couldn’t make herself move. Jericho would say she was in shock; Ravi would say it was her underused sense of self-preservation kicking in.
  
  Her grandma would say she was being self-absorbed, and that was probably closest to the truth.
  
  Chasing the voices from her head, Alex took a deep breath, forcing herself to focus on the way the air filled her lungs. (Clean air, because she coughed once on smoke and willed it to go away.) She exhaled just as carefully, feeling a little more at home in her body as she did so.
  
  In a moment. She’d deal with it all in a moment.
• In which Mandy makes friends in a circular fashion (short)

  Mandy took a breath. She was familiar with all of the aspects of grief: the sound of it, screamingly loud or soft and subdued; the look of it, all wasting sickness or puffy eyes; the shape of it inside her own chest—something separate and foreign, but impossible to remove.
  
  But the worst part was the smell.
  
  The thick, heavy scent of tears had permeated the rooms in an old, oddball orphanage full of children who didn’t want anyone to know when they cried in the dark. It soaked into the sheets and clotted in the air. If you were the sort of child who could sense such things, you ignored them out of courtesy. But there was no hiding Cat’s tears—not her noisy sniffles or her red-rimmed eyes, or the way she wore her grief like her sweatshirt: something heavy and too large, hanging limply from her shoulders.
  
  Almost as soon as Emmaline started speaking, Mandy got to her feet—not because she wasn’t interested in what the woman had to say, but because it was most likely to hold everyone’s attention. Emmaline’s elegantly clipped accent made her sound calm and capable, its edges softened, but still distinct. It was a very reassuring voice, and Mandy liked that about her.
  
  She slipped unobtrusively from the room and ghosted back in a few moments later, pausing behind Cat’s chair to set something at the woman’s elbow.
  
  A glass of water wasn’t much, as gifts went, but Mandy didn’t know the woman well enough to do more. And she did know this much: it was nearly impossible to drink something and cry at the same time.
  
  She resumed her seat just as Emmaline finished, flitting a glance around the table before dropping her eyes, waiting for the next person to speak.

I think the most important thing to remember up front is that finding a new writing partner is a trial-and-error process for everybody. I’d love for us to go into this with the understanding that either of us is free to say, “Hey, sorry, I don’t think I’m the guy/girl for you,” at any time, with no hard feelings. Then we can tip our hats, wish each other luck, and keep looking.

If you’d like to get in touch and see if we are roleplay-compatible, please shoot me a PM or a @mention so I’m sure to see it!

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - An Urban Fantasy Adventure!

Hi, all! Just checking in to see how everybody's doing. :) I hope those of you who celebrate it had a nice Thanksgiving, and that you're all having a good week. Anyone up to anything exciting?

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - An Urban Fantasy Adventure!

Present, guys, from me and Austronaut! :) And yay, welcome back, @vietmyke!

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - An Urban Fantasy Adventure!

This, Mandy thought, is why they don’t let Shiloh speak to the clients. Mandy herself was not all that professional, but any illusions Cat might have had about their organization as a whole had probably been stripped away now.

Mandy bristled slightly under Shiloh’s tirade, too meek and too new to retaliate, but unable to help a rush of offense. She had her guesses about Morgan, but without a better frame of reference, she couldn’t do much more than guess. Shiloh said it wasn’t her secret to tell, and Morgan hadn’t volunteered the information; it didn’t seem fair to blame the rest of them for not prying.

Frowning at the tabletop, Mandy pulled her fingers distractedly through the ends of her ponytail. Morgan didn’t talk about herself much, probably because people less comfortable with the supernatural tended to look at her askance. Mandy knew what that felt like—went to great lengths, in fact, to minimize her differences so that it didn’t happen.

As a fellow outsider in PHI’s mostly-human club, she’d thought she was respecting Morgan’s privacy... but maybe, as a fellow outsider, what she’d really done was let her down.

Amongst all of the bickering, Mandy heard Emma offer a small correction to the play-by-play she’d had been giving Cat: “Not trying,” the tall woman said, a trace of smugness in her voice, “succeeding.”

Mandy’s frown shifted, becoming a thoughtful stitching of her eyebrows. She looked up at Emma—impressed as always by both the woman’s height and her presence—and said, “Can you also use that to find Morgan?”

"I can't track Morgan, but I can..." Emma trailed off, belatedly realising that no one in here knew what had happened out in the office.

"A few moments ago, someone used transit projection, probably a crude variation of a Cramer-Brichaeau invocation, to..." She trailed off again, noticing the incomprehension on the faces of her colleagues—except for Shiloh, who looked aghast.

"Someone used magic to attack the office; Morgan is in pursuit." She took her hand completely away from her athamae. The pen hung defiantly in mid air.

"I can find the source of the attack, which I suspect is where Agent Blackwood is headed."

Mandy nodded, taking a second to jot down the name Emma had dropped on the edge of her discarded crossword puzzle, writing it out phonetically so that she could figure out the proper spelling later. It was a place to start, at least, as was the spell. Everyone would probably want to jump on it, but there was a question she needed to ask first—Emma had mentioned an attack, and Morgan wasn't the only person who'd disappeared.

Hesitantly, Mandy asked, "Is...Jacob okay?" Her eyes flitted briefly to the door and away. She was afraid to even acknowledge the possibility that it hadn't been him to get hurt...

Emma blinked, taken aback for a moment by what, to her mind, was a non-sequitur. A slow blush coloured her cheeks. She hadn't even considered Jacob.

"Ah, yes, he and his daughter are fine. The girl... sustained a minor injury, nothing serious." It seemed a little unprofessional to go into too much detail.

Mandy nodded a second time, fingering the edges of her crossword puzzle. She’d done what she could to bring the group back to the matter at hand. It wasn’t her job to decide what happened next.

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - An Urban Fantasy Adventure!

Working on a collab with Austronaut and super excited about it! :)

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - An Urban Fantasy Adventure!

The post was fun! Drafting a reply now. :) And can I just say that I love "tiny gods" as an expletive? xD

Edit: I drafted out some of Mandy's thoughts, but I didn't want to write another post that was just summary and Mandy's internal monologue. Ended up shooting Austronaut a message to see if she'd be up for a short collab post. I'll see what she says and possibly have something up tomorrow!

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - An Urban Fantasy Adventure!

Ooh, Habibi, I hope you do get snow! Where I am, I'd be happy if it just got a little chilly. It's still in the eighties, most days, which makes it hard to get in the holiday spirit. @_@

I have to apologize, guys; I took a medication that made me sleepy last night, and that's why I conked out in the middle of my post. I thought I'd be able to finish writing before I started to feel loopy, but joke's on me. >> I know better now.

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - An Urban Fantasy Adventure!

Shiloh’s entrance pulled Mandy’s attention away from Cat, but didn’t hold it for long. Mandy had barely managed to process what Shiloh was saying—and all of its implications—before Emma appeared, almost as suddenly.

The urgent tone of her voice brought Mandy to attention, and Mandy found herself complying with Emma’s request almost before she’d decided to do so—once someone told you to think about something, it was almost impossible not to.

Because she could guess why Emma had singled her out, Mandy focused on things no one else was likely to notice. First, the scattered, less-frequented rooms at PHI that housed most of her favorite napping spots; then, the way that, no matter where she was in the building, she could usually hear the cadence of familiar voices from the next room. Next came more immediate details: Emma’s confident posture, the way she practically thrummed with energy. The still-strong smell of Cat’s grief, overlaying everything else.

And then she heard Emma’s sharp inhale, and she knew they’d done it.

Mandy relaxed.

She had braced herself at the sound of footsteps, though she recognized the cadence just before Shiloh (and then Emma) had strode through the door. Cait sidhe were hard to surprise, but easy to startle, and Mandy had never managed the bored mask that her mother and uncles had worn so well. Her mother could recline languidly against a wall, cool as cream, and only someone who knew what to look for would ever guess that she was afraid. Mandy could make her face blank of expression, even hide what she was feeling, but she would never have that impossible air of nonchalance.

At least she wasn’t alone in being uneasy. Cat looked so very small, curled up in her chair while information flew around the room and over her head. Shiloh had been so caught up in what she was saying that she didn’t seem to realize how much she was scaring their client.

At first, Mandy was at a loss. She’d already given Cat the water, which pretty much exhausted all of her unobtrusive kindnesses. She couldn’t very well give her another one.

Glancing at Emma and her athamae, Mandy decided the kindest gift she could give right now was an explanation. “She’s doing a tracking spell,” she said quietly. Mandy made herself meet Cat’s large green eyes, though only for a second or two. “Whatever happened out there, Emma’s trying to trace.”