u/Dasaria5

For a project I'm working on, I'm debating the value of having my cast be entirely made up of non-humans/aliens which do not have a direct analogue to other fantasy species or real animals. I have a bunch of ideas I'm happy with but without visuals I feel like it can be difficult to convey an entirely novel sapient species, much less multiple ones, and expect the reader to keep all that in their head. I feel like this can be gotten away with a bit more in science fiction but I'm aiming for fantasy where the generic post-Tolkien elves and dwarves reign supreme over much of the genre. The few books I know of that manage similar to this are not especially popular or are the least liked volume in their series.

What do you think? Is that likely to be too confusing for readers or should I trust them to retain it? How do I describe these things without it just becoming a painful info dump or vague blob of an idea. Especially with multiple such species running around.

Much of this is for personal work not something I'm expecting to be able to publish or monetize necessarily. Still, I suppose I want to know if this project might be a bit of a waste of time that won't be accessible for anyone else.

If anyone has any suggestions for novels or short stories with entirely non-human casts of different original species I'd appreciate that as well.

So this surely going to be a weird and/or stupid question for the people here who know what they're doing, but here goes!

My husband tried re-staining some old furniture about a month ago. Decided to use weather resistant deck stain since we were expecting it to someday maybe hold an aquarium and some water resistance would be useful. Stain was applied in multiple coats. We've never done this before and don't know what we're doing.

The stain should be dry. It looks dry. It feels dry. However, whenever I try disinfecting it with Lysol disinfecting wipes (bleach is in them), it comes away with the color of the stain all over it.

My husband and I are trying to find out if I'm using the wrong cleaning solution, or if the stain was done incorrectly. For example, the instructions said nothing about wiping it up with mineral spirits but some people have suggested that should happen. Alternatively we may have missed a step and need to apply something to finish it after the stain?

Can somebody please tell me where this is going wrong, and how we can fix it. Do we need to start over or is there something we can do? Am I going to have to find a different way to clean it? None of our other wooden furniture does this.