Somewhat less brilliant idea...

So, my audition for TSP is due in what, five days? Six days? Something like that.

And it, much like my Anachronism R1 entry, just hasn't been working. Unlike Anachronism, it's the beginning that's driving me utterly insane, so I tried out a new one this morning.

TSP, for the record, is supposed to be this happy, fun, somewhat (okay, more that just somewhat) silly thing that I throw random ideas at just for the hell of it. Most of what I've got written is people being silly and throwing themselves behind plant stands to hide from adventurers, or making paper airplanes out of important paperwork.

I just wrote about somebody prying their eyes out.

Well, sort of. I just wrote about Susannah reawakening the spells on a very old scrying mirror, using her blood and her spit, and giving everybody else headaches and nosebleeds in the process. (The way magic works in this universe just keeps getting worse and worse and worse). Nobody else in the room knows how to make a scrying mirror, and Princess Zandria makes a remark about how cool that must be, to be able to basically make what amounts to a fancy telephone whenever she want.

Susannah gives her a 'you poor fool' look, and corrects her. By telling her that in order to make a scrying mirror, a real one, anyway, somebody has to pry their eyes out of their head willingly and essentially bind their ability to see into a mirror, at the cost of being blind for the rest of their life. This person also has to have perfect vision and be fairly young. And then she goes and makes it worse by adding that the best place to find a willing donor is in temples that have large quantities of seers, especially female ones, as they often put out their eyes without wanting to make a mirror starting at about fourteen. And then she goes and make a blithe remark about how they're going to have to watch her cousin closely, because she's already shown signs that she wouldn't be adverse to the practice, and if she's going to blind herself anyway, they might as well get something valuable out of the deal. Then she offers to find someone willing, 'if your highness would like a newer mirror, I'm sure we can find someone who is out of their mind from visions. Lunatics' eyes work just as well as sane people's.'

And, um, remember what I said about cute and sweet and silly?

Yeah. Plucking out eyes doesn't exactly fit the theme.

Nor does it fit anything else I've written so far. But the thing is, the bits leading up to it do. This whole section was supposed to underscore how she isn't very good at this yet, despite over a decade of training, and that sometimes she overreaches and does strange things, and begin to explain how magic really works (or, at least, how I'm pretty sure it works in this universe), and why the people in Verana don't know it very well, and also a little bit about the real reason that nobody invades anyone else, ever. (Hint: Dragons), except that it went sideways and is now totally creepified and such.

Help?

(By which I mean, if I hand over my overall plot line, will somebody please point out the part where it always always always turns into horror, and what I might do to keep it from going there.)