The book of bad juju

Puella Magi: The Wild Hunt

Oh sorry. I thought you were planning on drawing a map, and i'd help you by making sure everything was in the right place.

Now i just feel silly.

Puella Magi: The Wild Hunt

For now, Julia and Minerva are in the alleyway, while Kei and Ludmilla are in the crowds. Julia's transformed and heading straight for Minerva, while both Kei and Ludmilla are mingling with the crowds in the parade, untransformed and likely to not even notice the other. Mary Beth is selling sweets in the crowd, untransformed, and Fredrica is elsewhere, in what i think is an abandoned warehouse.

I'll update this post once we get more people trickling in.

Puella Magi: The Wild Hunt

@Antarctic Termite, i don't want to tell you that trying to improve is bad, but constantly going over what you've already written to "Improve" it is just a mug's game. You're never going to get it absolutely right.

Puella Magi: The Wild Hunt

Ludmilla Alunya

She sat at the side of the road, thumbing through a copy of The Rough Guide to Poland. Title page, nothing of interest there. Lots of little pictures of mountains and rivers and a few of the picturesque people. Whoever this Mark Salter fellow was, he sure did love that word a lot. Nothing of interest on the next page, either. "If found, please return to South Gloucestershire Library. Last let out: October 19 to Ludmilla Alunya." The ink was thick and blotted all along where the stern librarian had stamped her name in the book, shortly before she left the country. Good times. Maybe if she lived long enough to be in the area again, she'd return them. The spine had cracked and the pages were yellowing and musky, but the books had been a great help for her. She had the whole Western Europe collection, with Rough guides to France, England, Germany, Switzerland, and a couple for the the countries further east all wrapped up and stuffed at the bottom of her rucksack, under the canned food.

The map. That was the important thing, yes. Danzig, danzig, where was it? She stabbed at it with a finger, triumphantly. And then she looked up, at the bright blue motorway sign. "DANZIG EXIT: 20 MILES" 20 miles wasn't too far. She could walk the rest of the way. And the rough guides never had anything interesting to say about highway exits. She slung the rucksack over her shoulder and started walking along the hard shoulder, idly observing the scenery and wondering in her head what a Rough guide to the Motorways of Europe would look like. "These scenic motorway exits spiraling elegantly off the picturesque Autostrada A4 system are a sight to behold, even on off days. The scenic sight of bustling early morning poles desperate to avoid the rush hour traffic is an edifying one, and you'll have plenty of time to admire the view while in the queue for the rustically charming toll booths, stocked in the traditional manner by attendants clad in their quaint day-glo jackets and levis..."

Danzig, it turned out, was a large and bustling parade with a town somewhere in the chaos. She'd walked past miles and miles of bumper-to bumper traffic to get in, and even the quiet post-war suburbs were festooned with decorations, wreaths and flags dangling off every apartment balcony. It was almost offputting. But at least she'd be able to slip in quietly. Nobody would care about the blonde with a rucksack and clutching a travel book around here. Maybe she'd be able to pick up on the lingo while she was here. Ludmilla had grown to be good with languages, but the further east you went the more accents and diacritic marks lay in the letters, eager to trip up the unwary foreigner. And there was no way in hell she was going to try to learn Kashubian. It was gonna be her limited, broken German, or her limited broken Russian, and if she really had trouble, she'd point at things and go "Da, Da!"

Something in her pocket jittered. She thought it might have been her phone for a second, but that was ridiculous. Her phone hadn't been charged since she'd snuck in and slept in the library in Dresden. It was her soul gem, lighting up like a little beacon. She cupped her fingers, keeping the thing hidden as she pocketed it again/. Nobody would gain anything by knowing who she was, especially in the open. But there was a witch somewhere here, in the crowd, tempting people in that sick little seditious way they did things. She'd keep her eyes open, and try to check if anyone with neck tattoos looked a little bit down or angry. She'd have to be careful, people who were naturally pretty sad or angry tended to have neck tattoos. She had to make a speedy exit once out out of a bed and breakfast because what she'd thought was a witch's kiss turned out to be a rolling stones tribute in ink. Boy, was that one hard to explain. But she kept an eye out in the crowd, trying to discretely look at people's necks in the nicest possible way.

Puella Magi: The Wild Hunt

Don't worry too much about it. Nobody's expecting war and peace from you, and everybody's so worried about the quality of their own posts to care about yours.

Puella Magi: The Wild Hunt

So, can we post, or are you setting something up?

Puella Magi: The Wild Hunt

I think most of us are europeans or americans, and at around this time it's four in the morning in california and ten in the afternoon for us EU folk. I wouldn't even be on right now if it weren't a holiday on Monday.

Puella Magi: The Wild Hunt

The Witch of Story

Name: Celestina

Appearance: A romantic gothic house. Think of the most run-down shack that would ever be allowed into a Tim Burton movie. Picture the rising grassy knoll with grass that fades and turns patchy and white as it approaches the ramshackle hut with a profile like an equilateral pentagon, and picture the smoke rising out of the chimney, thick and black like the breath of the god of chainsmoking. Picture the door, hanging off of it's hinges and swinging in the breeze off grey wooden walls with grooves like satan's phone number. But don't picture what could be inside. Nobody's ever looked in the witches lair and lived to tell the tale.

Abilities: Narrative restructuring. Nobody leaves her labyrinth the same way they left. Old rivals return, old debts are repaid, enemies become friends and friends become enemies. The witch delights in irony, in special circumstances, in twists of fate and strangling you by the red string. And every story ever told will have to come to an end. The witch will take great lengths to make her twisted vision of reality come through, not bothering to stop for things like logic or sense. The show must go on.

Barrier: White space. Concepts float in the ether, looking like picture postcards from a distance but feeling more real and three-dimensional as you approach. At a distance, things become more abstract, and easy to pin down in simple words.

Familiars: Characters from the Tarot. They don't so much move as animate like bad Gifs, each frame a picture from a different deck. Like everything in her labyrinth, they lose focus the further away you see them, becoming "A card in the distance" rather then "A large white square, embossed with a overdecorated picture of The Lovers, flying at high speed in your direction intent on giving you the worst paper cut in your life."

ToF: Make one up yourself.

Original Wish: "I want to be able to make endings for my stories."

Past Life: Dramatis Personae: A girl. A bunnycat.

The original magical girl who became Celestina was a young adult by the time she contracted. She was never bright or book smart, and spent most of her time daydreaming. Somebody once told her to write down what she was thinking at the time. She never looked back, spending most of her days in a haze of creation, and the rest nursing a tired wrist. She grew up, like all girls do, and gradually begun to realize something. None of the stories she wrote had structure. They were like tents without poles, flapping in the breeze and shapeless, and almost as much use.

She began to study narrative structuring, how to pace a story, how to create not just people but protagonists. And for the first time, writing began to feel like work. She had bouts of writers block, or became distracted by pretty lights and lost the plot. And to solve this little problem at the end of the second act stepped in a little bunny cat. She could write again, finish stories, send them to prospective publishers, and who cared about fighting witches? Even though none of the works she sent in were ever picked up, and were often mailed back with notes like "Too obscure", "Too wordy" or "Romcoms just aren't in right now.". Eventually, after a long struggle both mentally, the main character of this story finally found that there was only one way this story could end. With the dramatic and heart-wrenching fall of the main character into despair.

A bit cliche as far as witches go, but that's sort of the point, that the girl was so single-minded in her ideals about story that it consumed her.

Puella Magi: The Wild Hunt

@Lolita Complex Thanks. Sorry if i get a little uppity about how things are, i just want things to go right. Thanks for trying to rebuild this bridge, it means a lot.

@Cleopatra Turning into a puppy? Now you've got me thinking of Kars in magical girl getup, and i think my head is imploding a little bit.

Puella Magi: The Wild Hunt

Thing is your wish was entirely to change yourself to fit with your surroundings, to stay rooted and fixed when everything around you is changing and volatile. If it were up to me, i'd have some kind of zen power of staying completely still and becoming incapable of being harmed.

My two cents.