daily-rayless

[daily-rayless]

2008

Continuing my trip through the first quarter century...

Fandoms: Soul Nomad; Yggdra Union; Tales of the Abyss (This is also when I played my first Persona game, P3: FES, but the series hadn't eaten my brain yet. Still, clearly a very good year in gaming.)

Revya (Soul Nomad); Hour (OC)

Glee (OC); an attempt at surrealism

Salome (Makai Kingdom); Revya and Gig (Soul Nomad)

Art: My art grew even less realistic at this stage, bodies continuing to thin, eyes to embiggen, faces to grow more wedge-shaped. I have mixed feelings about this period. On one hand, there are still pictures I like. On the other, I don't think my style looks great here. I was also beginning to experiment more with markers. It was a rough start, but I was pleased enough to be encouraged.

This is also the year I started my deviantArt gallery. DA was still pretty lively at this point, though losing ground to this site called Tumblr. But I connected with some wonderful art/fandom friends there, some of whom I still know all these years later.

Writing: Writing-wise, this was a difficult time. I was having so much fun with fanfiction – along with posting Kindred, I wrote a ton of Soul Nomad fic (most notably my oneshot collection Soul Searching and my dark AU Lost Savior), Scarlet my Yggdra Union fic, and a longform Tales of the Abyss fic that was never actually posted. I was having a blast.

But in other ways, my writing was suffering. I gave up on two longform Suikoden fics I'd been nursing along for years; my fannish interest was just too taken up with new things. But worse, I gave up on Tear Scars, which had been limping along for months by that time.

Since 2000, I'd had an unbroken string of finishing the original novels I'd started. (Not counting The Journey to Malphi.) I think many authors will agree that it's easy to write the start of a novel, but for a long time you don't know for sure if that first draft is ever going to be finished. And I'd been finishing mine; I took a lot of pride in that. Not finishing Tear Scars felt like something of a betrayal to myself. (Dramatic, I know.) I think part of it was that I myself was young and changing during that time. It's natural my tastes as a writer would be changing and that something I'd started formulating in 2004 would no longer appeal to me.

But I also think fanfic had something to do with it. My personal life was very stressful during this time; I wasn't doing well psychologically. I'm glad I had fanfiction because it allowed me to express myself creatively without investing all the effort necessary to writing original fiction. But it might also have stolen my energy from my own work. For the next few years – a long time, really – I began to doubt if I could, or would, ever write longform original stuff again.

This isn't to say I stopped creating original characters. I had a ton of them, but I wasn't writing about them. It wasn't a good feeling.

But, again, I'm still grateful for fandom. And to the fandom friends I found at this time and all the support they gave my fics. And I'm glad I wrote the fics themselves because they let me stretch myself and explore settings and topics I might not have ever covered in my original work.

Lost Savior is a Soul Nomad AU, somewhat darker in tone than the main campaign. In it, Gig reigned undefeated as the Master of Death for two hundred years. Revya was raised by Haephnes in the celestial realm, isolated from the world of mortals. Eventually she was given the onyx blade and sent to defeat the Master of Death once and for all. Here, Revya has traveled through Gig's dark, dangerous castle in the hopes of finally facing him.

Excerpt:

The next door she found opened easily. The room was semi-lit by two - two - enormous windows in the far wall, but all Revya could make out was the shapes of furniture. There was also a vast expanse of empty floor. She went in, moving to the window.

“‘Sup?” said a voice at the far end of the room.

Revya pivoted, squinting through the darkness. She thought she saw flashing, floating red veins - then she squinted harder. A figure sat in a chair in front of an unlit hearth, surrounded by clutter, his ankles crossed on a footstool. He appeared to be a slight, lanky young man with unnaturally pale skin and hair. The floating red veins - whatever they were - hung on either side of him.

Just how many people lived in this castle? “I’m looking for the Master of Death.”

“Mm, really?” the voice came, rather lazily. “He’s already bought cookies this year. And if you want his opinions for the local papers, everything’s shit.”

Revya decided to disregard the tone. “No, I just need to find him.”

“Oh, another obsessed stalker. Okay.” The youth swung to his feet. “If you’re here for revenge, he doesn’t give a shit; if you’re here to replace him, he’ll be happy to evaluate you; if you’re here to sell your soul, it better taste good; if you’re here to lick his boots, they’re shiny already. And no, Slaughterfest 600 isn’t going to stop anytime soon, it’s in it’s eight hundredth season, so why should it? No, he’s not going to spare your puppy; no, he’s not going to father your love baby; and no, there’s nothing you can do to get on his good side. Does that cover it?” He’d stepped into the light by then. The veins were decorations on a pair of black metal gauntlets suspended on either side of his shoulders. His face was tattooed. He barely looked older than she herself.

Revya resisted the urge to step back. The gauntlets disquieted her. “I’m here to kill him.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot that one.” The man smiled. It was a charming smile, and that didn’t make things better. “No, you won’t be able to kill him. Are we good now?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Revya kept her voice steady. “I need to see Vigilance.”

The man’s smile flickered. He stared at her a moment, his dark eyes narrowed. He extended his left arm to the side. Almost faster than she could follow, the gauntlets had shifted, rearranging themselves over his arm, forming a long red blade. A scythe’s blade.

“Tsk, you mortals get worse every time. You’re even getting my name wrong now.”

Revya stepped back. “You’re-”

He cocked his head. “You going to finish that? Or is this going to be one of those ‘You’re - you’re - you’re-’ stuttering things, because those piss me off worse than anything. Now then-” He bent his left arm, raising the scythe. “First things first. The name’s Gig. Hear it? One syllable, no v.”

“But-”

“And now you’re starting with the ‘but’s. I’ll make things easy for you.” He adopted a falsetto. There she was, facing the Master of Death, and he was speaking in a falsetto. “‘But you can’t be the Master of Death, you’re not wearing any black armor, you’re not waiting in the throne room, you don’t have a magic ring, you’re not covered in snakes, where are the vampire girls?’ That’s what you were going to say, right?”

“You aren’t Vigilance?” Revya demanded.

Again, his face lost its complacency. “Argh, did you not hear me the first time? Hold still.” He drew his scythe back.

She skittered out of striking range, hearing him laugh. “But she said-”

“Ah, who lied to the widdle baby? Did someone tell you I was nice?”

Revya gritted her teeth. “Never mind.” She lifted the onyx blade in both hands -

-just as the scythe cut her neatly in two.

Heat, more heat than pain, blazed through her. She felt herself topple, then an intense thrumming in her chest, over her heart. Light exploded in her eyes - then the world stabilized itself. She reaffirmed her grip on the blade and pushed off the floor, feeling the muscles in her stomach work perfectly.

The Master of Death stared at her midsection, then up at her face. “That wasn’t the same old, same old.”

Revya thought about saying something about how she’d make it painless if he surrendered, but then she decided she’d better not give herself any time to lose her nerve. So she just threw herself at him.

Scythe parried blade neatly. She fell back, gave ground, then lunged sideways into a run, shooting energy from her sword. He laughed, dodging, his scythe detaching from his arm. She was running too fast to follow the movements precisely, but she thought she saw the gauntlets fly to his back. She gained the darkness at the far end of the room, looking for her opponent. At the last moment, she saw a different scythe, longer, swing down at her from above. She ran. A hand caught the back of her jacket and flung her into the air. Her vision whirled like a kaleidoscope. There was a flash of black and red, an explosion of heat, then she and the Master of Death were face to face. She hung suspended in the air, her sword useless in her grip, her blood spilling down, her forehead touching the Master of Death’s forehead, and the sharp haft of his scythe punched entirely through her chest.

Gig smiled, kneed her in the stomach, and sent her sliding off the haft, leaving it glistening. She didn’t feel herself hit the floor, only the wild thrumming in her breastbone.

After a moment, she picked herself up, wiping the blood away off her sword hilt. She took a deep breath, one hand to her chest, which was unscarred. “All right.”

“Friggin’ hell, what are you?” The mockery was gone. He swept down, lifting her by her neck, and smashed her face against the stone wall, once, twice. Revya felt the blood, the needles of bone pierce her face, his nails digging into her throat. She felt little pain. There was a swooping sensation, then a blast of cold air. Ah. He’d thrown her out the window.

[daily-rayless]

More Hakuno.

[daily-rayless]

A Wilderness of Stars (A Wilderness of a Cover!)

Let's talk about the cover of my fourth book, A Wilderness of Stars. How it was supposed to be the easiest, the most straightforward one of them all, and then it came this close to destroying me.

First off, the starting point. I came up with the cover design almost as early as I began brainstorming ideas for the novel. The title and then the cover, at least as it appeared in my imagination, were two of the earliest things I had to work with.

Book covers, like everything else, go through trends. Right now, there's a major trend for covers with minimal art and huge text -- presumably to make them easier to identify from a phone screen. It would have been simple enough to do something like this.

I did this in a couple of minutes today. And if you tell me you prefer this to the actual cover, that is your prerogative, but please understand that you will leave me in tears.

Personally, I don't like this style of cover. I'm a visual person, I want characters to look at. And something very unique and specific to the book I'm reading, not just generic Pretty Stuff. No, no, the cover that I initially envisioned was entirely different.

A Wilderness of Stars is a romantic fantasy primarily set in a lonely old tower out in the countryside, with fields and woodlands around it, and lots of strange magic percolating. I wanted something lush, full of plant life, with a soothing twilit blue cast over everything. Even more specifically, I wanted to show my main couple embracing in a forest surrounded by sparks of light.

Something like this:

Here we have the basic layout. On the front (on the right) is our couple, and on the left are a crow, a horned lion, and, way down there, a hedgehog. Both halves are very significant to the novella.

You may notice I have numbers and the word "layer" scattered around everywhere, sometimes with a question mark. When it came to designing the covers of my previous two books, which also had entirely hand-drawn covers, I'd found it was extremely helpful not to draw everything as a single set static image, but as separate images which I could then collage around at will. So the numbers here were to give me some idea of how many images I'd draw -- the figures separately, a static background, and then some plant-life in the foreground to create depth. I'd also though I might want to do the golden sparkles (here very realistically rendered as pentagrams) as their own layers.

I knew this would be a challenge, drawing my main couple in a forest. Not simply because I'm not as used to drawing complex environments. But because I, for all of my life, have been really bad at drawing trees. I don't know why this is. I have seen many trees in my time. I will never be an artist known for her trees, unless it's in a bad way.

To prepare myself, I tried free-handing some moody blue trees so I could assure myself I'd be able to do this, even if I had to work up to it.

I wasn't assured.

But I decided to materialize my vision anyway. My starting point would be the couple. They're the lynch pin of everything, the focal point -- hopefully the element of the cover people will keeping returning to to examine. I wanted everything to have a loose, organic feel, so I first did the figures in red pencil to sort out their pose and dimensions, then inked over them, trying to keep everything flowing and natural.

If you're wondering where his beard is, I hadn't done it yet. There was never any version of the cover where Bartel was going to be clean-shaven. He looks so unfortunate here.

This was stupid of me, because I know for a fact red pencil doesn't erase away cleanly. So that sketch was a loss, but at least I got a sense of how they should look.

Let's try again.

This time, they got fully colored. I think they're very cute here. After scanning this, I figured out what should be my next step -- I should probably do the background next, then work on the foreground elements, and after that I could turn my attention to the fauna for the back cover, and...

And...

I can't exactly tell you what happened, but I looked at my couple, and I thought about doing the background without them, and for some reason it didn't gel in my mind. It didn't feel right, organic, flowing, natural on a creative level. (I'm speaking specifically about this project, not generalizing about art.) My brain wanted the front cover to be all one image.

There would be significant downsides to this. Most notably, I'd have to get the blocking right the first time. There would have to be room built into the image for the title and my name. It would also have to be large enough that I could wiggle some with the book's dimensions. If any of these elements didn't work, I might go to all this work and still have to scrap the results.

It really would be so much easier if I just had separate images I could move around as needed.

ONE image, said my brain.

Well then, let's make it one image. Let's draw this couple again and face the trees.

This took a long time, a good chunk of a month. The initial linework and coloring went smoothly enough, but I kept looking at it and judging if it needed more details, more shadow, more blues, more lushness. I didn't want to visually clutter the image, but I wanted a sense of depth and mystery.

You'll notice there's a lot less detail towards the top. That's to give a nice open surface for the title text.

You never want to make the title hard to read. Along with leaving that area less detailed, I could also do a soft fade so the lack of detail was less obvious.

Once I was pleased with the shading and the amount of leafage, I took some paint and some markers and pens and maybe even colored pencils, I forget, and started adding gold sparks.

By the time I reached the scan you see there, I was -- pleased. Pleased enough. Not thrilled. No matter what I did, the image still felt unfinished to me. I felt it was smarter to go lighter on the details rather than too heavy. But still. Why doesn't it look right? What do I need to do? And this was the cover I'd always wanted, the concept that predated most of the book's characters and plot. It still fit the mood. It still fit the story. It was pretty. But. But it didn't satisfy me the way the covers of my earlier books had.

Also, I had done something foolish. Out of nowhere a picture had come into my head and then I'd spent a good chunk of another month drawing more leaves and more sparkles.

It has a similar mood to my cover image, but the configuration is very different. Here's my main couple, not embracing but as headshots. This too is one singular image with no capability of moving or shrinking or rotating any of its components.

The problem? I really liked it. Way more than the current cover.

Why was that a problem?

This is in no way suited to be a cover image. But it's pretty, Rayless, you might say. It catches the eye, Rayless. Thank you, I think so too. But have you noticed what it doesn't have?

Room for a title.

The leaves are much too dense and cluttered to lay any text over -- not if you want it to be readable. Maybe I could've done it with a brightly contrasting color, but I felt like that would be hideously jarring. And even then, their big stupid heads take up way too much acreage. There's no clear unbroken space anywhere in the image.

But I really liked this picture.

I made my choice. I went with the tiger, not the lady. It was now up to me to make the title fit, somehow. I whomped up a bunch of different test covers and passed them around to people I trusted, sounding out their opinions.

I really wanted to preserve the visual up-down flow of the image. So I decided to do two panels with the title in its own frame. Unfortunately, it had to be narrow rather than wide, and double unfortunately, wilderness is a really wide word. The universal reaction I got from this one was immediate dislike. People did not like seeing the wil der ness, the world has no place for a wil der ness.

Which was frustrating as anything to me, because I thought this was much better than the obvious alternative.

This is a very straightforward cover design -- you see it all over the place. People liked it. I hate it. I hate how it chops the lower part of the image. And I hate how uncreative it looks. To me, this screams, I made a picture that was the wrong dimensions for my cover and then I cropped it badly and I couldn't incorporate the title in an artistic way. Which is what happened.

Maybe this is a me thing? Maybe you feel differently. I'm not saying this is objective truth, that this cover is objectively bad. I certainly could have gone with this one; I don't think anyone would have turned their nose up at it. But I wouldn't have been happy pulling it off the shelf and seeing it.

I was getting differing feedback. (Except for the strong agreement that wil der ness was never going to work.) One person suggested I put the title in a thin band horizontally between the figures' heads. I didn't like it, chopping into her neck like that, visually separating them. They're in love. They don't want the title coming between them.

I decided I needed to get more creative. While I couldn't collage the main image, there was one element I could collage and move around.

The title itself.

I liked this one. When I passed it around, it was met with some hesitancy. The text is very small, which I don't love -- it's definitely not going to pop out on a phone screen. And there's a real issue with the title just sinking into all those darn leaves. But the image flows, it looks organic, and I think it feels a little magical and playful.

Looking at all those leaves, I'd had another idea. What if I digitally cut out a border? Doing that would be time-consuming (leaf by literal leaf), so my first test was very quick and not the prettiest. And then I went and pruned even more of them, wondering if that would give the title adequate space.

Now, I didn't love the blocking on this one, myself. There's too much blue over there, and the leaf-edge isn't exactly graceful. But this was met with some positive feedback.

I looked at what I had, and I gave it a lot of thought, probably the most thought I've given any of my covers. I'd chosen this harder, unhelpful cover image, and I knew I couldn't make it perfect. Whatever way I went, there would be something that wouldn't be quite optimal -- the colors, the sizing, the blocking, whatever. But if I wanted this image (and, boy, did I want this image), I had to make it work.

And I think I did.

As you can see, it was a matter of a few small adjustments. I shrank the blue section, then neatened up the leaf-edge and made it more balanced. To make the title stand out more, I darkened the base blue. And I have to say, I really love it. I think this looks just beautiful, both on the screen and in person.

From there, the back cover was relative easy. Time to draw some cute animals.

And then figure out where to put them. Since they were all done separately, I could play around with them.

And that's it. From almost the moment of this book's inception, I had a very clear idea of how the cover should look. And then, late in the process, I threw away my reliable long-term obviously compatible cover and ran off with an unsuitable cover I'd never planned to draw.

I'm curious if people think I made the right choices. Doing covers is still very much a learning process for me, and this one, more than the others, depended on many second opinions to finally come around.

[daily-rayless]

TO THE RAVENS

Over the course of the book, as she helps to run a lawless little cult under the Romans' noses on the moon, Akantha's rather bemused to learn that in some places in Italy she's being revered as a minor goddess under the title Acantha Lunaris, Lunar Akantha.

This is partially taken from my source Lucian, who wrote extensively about the obscure snake-dream-healing cult of Alexander of Abonoteichus, an individual Wikipedia generously calls a mystic and oracle, but whom Lucian unsqueamishly calls a fraud. (As well he should; the man almost killed him.) As his cult wore on, Alexander claimed that he and the goddess of the moon were in love, thus his daughter was the daughter of the moon itself.

Alexander's daughter's name and reasons for helping her father are lost to history (thanks, Lucian), but she's my real-life inspiration for Akantha. In my book, Akantha isn't Alexandros' daughter, but she's his co-conspirator and she's bound to him both by a shared guilt (should anyone finally punish them for all the things they do) as well as powerful emotional ties. She's not so egotistical as to want to be worshiped as a goddess, but for a woman who's been powerless all her life, living in a society where women are given so little, being even a minor goddess is quite a change.

She definitely has the wings for it though.

[daily-rayless]

Mog wears armor, after all. How does he look in it?

[daily-rayless]

Scrap paper Mid from Final Fantasy 16. Absolutely criminal that she wasn't more central to the story.

[daily-rayless]

Ah, the answer, evidently: Don't copy and paste a file you coded fifteen years ago to post on deviantArt, then re-copied from the posted version. Either you or dA did something Tumblr didn't like. Go back and find an earlier file.

Disregard, my friends, this is a test post to figure out why Tumblr's messing with me.

[daily-rayless]

2007

Onward through the first quarter of this century.

Fandoms: Harry Potter This is unavoidable fact, HP was the fandom for me this year. Thoughts on it below, but the short version is that I disagree with JKR and I'm not part of the fandom anymore.

a vampire and his murderer; Felicula (OC)

Avril Vent Fleur (Wild Arms 5)

Glee (OC); Odile (Swan Lake)

Fleur Delacour (Harry Potter)

Art: Fleur Delacour dominated my brain this year, both writing and art. She hadn't ever been a favorite character before, but her big scene at the end of Half-Blood Prince just stuck in my brain and I wanted to extrapolate her story forwards and backwards. I was especially intrigued by her being a quarter Veela, and I wanted to explore what it would be not to be fully human. I didn't foresee this, but this focus ended up deliberately shifting my art away from the more natural figures I'd been doing for several years and towards wispy, attenuated, otherworldly figures. In some ways I'm not sure this was a good shift. It's subtler in 2007 itself, but it would only get more exaggerated, and for the next few years my style would grow a lot more cartoony and lose that groundedness it'd had before. On the other hand, I think it allowed for more movement and maybe even expression in my linework – maybe neither a step forward nor back, but to the side.

Writing: Before JKR befouled her legacy, I looked back on this year with fondness as something of a watershed moment for myself -- and also fantasy lit and fan culture in general. While never a huge Potterhead beforehand, I'd been reading the series since 2000, the final book was coming out, and I was caught up in the excitement too. I made a Fleur-themed gallery tour on Elfwood, I was browsing around the Lexicon, I was looking at Mugglenet's prediction list. I wasn't very vocal within the fandom, but I was reading other people's fic, I was reviewing, and I learned the series' world-building very thoroughly.

While I was still nursing along Tear Scars and my longform Suikoden fanfics, my main writing project this year was Kindred, basically Fleur's life story from early childhood through the main events of the HP series, and then a little bit after, written from her perspective. I started writing it with some trepidation, feeling unsure when it came to writing about French characters, about English characters, about characters moving through the actual real-life world, which is much harder to world-build than any fantasy world. I also misguidedly started it before Deathly Hallows came out, meaning I neither knew Fleur's fate nor how the larger story would end, so I wasn't sure what I was writing towards. Fortunately, by the time it came out, Deathly Hallows didn't deep-six too much of what I'd written; I was able to make some sweeping edits to align it back with canon and proceed.

I derived a huge amount of satisfaction from writing Kindred, and I learned a lot from the experience. For several years, I considered it my best work. HP is tainted now and I'm no longer part of the fandom, but I still see Kindred as an important stepping stone in my education as a writer. I would go on to post it in 2008 and for a long time it would be my most popular fanfic. I was extremely touched by how many people read it and commented on it. I took it down around 2010 because of FFN's quoting policy and reposted it to deviantArt. And then after a couple years I took it down again, feeling unsatisfied with its quality. I don't plan to repost it anywhere else, but people occasionally still ask about it and it gets me in the soft parts of my heart every time. JKR's behavior is monstrous; despite that, I'm still fond of my fic -- fond of the things I learned, the experiments that paid off, the funny bits, the emotional bits. I think those of us who have left the fandom should still feel proud of the things we personally accomplished when we were inspired by it.

For the excerpt, I picked a scene from very early in the fic, Fleur talking about her Veela relations, particularly her full Veela grandmother.

Excerpt:

Spring 1980

Grandmother tries to teach me how to dance.

They’re all lamenting, “You’re so human I will scream. Look at those huge feet! Are they going to send you to school?”

And then, “You’re so beautiful, little flower, such a darling. Dance with us.”

To Mother: “Will you never stay with us?”

Mother just tosses her hair and dances with them. I watch, nervous, as they wheel and dart, men and women of silver fire.

Veela.

My grandmother is a Veela. Decades ago, she found Grandfather Kiryakov. He wasn’t handsome, but she fell in love with him at first glance. Whenever he strolled in the woods, she followed him, though she hid herself from his friends, who thought Grandfather had gone a bit mad. He was a Muggle and wealthy, so he was allowed to be eccentric. Grandmother haunted his dreams until finally they married. His Muggle friends never knew what to make of her, and the longer they were married, the further Grandfather withdrew from the Muggle world.

My mother Apollina was studying in Durmstrang Institute when Grandfather died from pneumonia. Veela don’t understand sickness, and Grandmother was devastated. She wanted nothing more to do with her husband’s world. Mother returned in the summer to find her father’s ancestral house empty, and it was days before she summoned the composure to seek out the Veela. Grandmother never stopped loving her half-human daughter, but she stopped living in the house, secluding herself in the forest.

So my mother was sixteen when she began to raise herself, torn between the desires to go live among the Veela and to complete her magical training. When she graduated, she left Bulgaria for years, leaving only the protective spells that hid the house. She never returned until I was born. She and I go there often, but never for long.

Part-Veela are abundant in eastern Europe, wherever there are Veela themselves; many simply prefer human men and women to their own kind. Generally the children of these unions are not seen as creatures to be either discouraged or adored. But though they are considered wizards, they are not human. Looking at a half-Veela, you can see it quickly. It isn’t simply the pale silvery hair or skin. It’s in the movements, the eyes. Veela blood tends to dominate human traits. Even in quarter-bloods like myself, the influence is obvious, though less overwhelming.

“Little flower,” croon my Veela great-aunts and second-cousins. “Dance with us. You are not a human with us.”

The human in me is positive I'll look stupid dancing. I hold back.

Grandmother would have preferred Mother to marry a Veela. “Bring the blood home,” as she puts it, lifting her chin to Mother. “Your human blood always takes you away. You let the forest relinquish you, you sleep in houses of brick and iron. Humans. Labor. Clanging noise.” She turns to me, a troubled line between her eyes. “You will forget your Veela kindred.”

I can’t tell if she’s speaking to me or Mother.

Then my grandmother, my great-aunts and uncles and cousins smile, dazzling me, and exult. “Dance with us now!”

I take their hands. Veela skin is smooth, but I can feel soft petal-like scales across their palms. I try to dance. It’s stupid. They howl with laughter and derision. Grandmother leaps and spins, drawing their attention away. Mother takes my hands. Her palms are much more human, and they comfort me. “Just forget.”

That is the first trick to Veela magic: forgetting.

The longer I’m with the Veela, the more gracefully I dance. I forget about the house, I forget about my bedroom stuffed with toys, I forget that Father is far away in France, wondering restlessly when Mother and I will return. All I want to do is dance. All I want to see are the dark trees wheeling as I spin, the blurred stars, and the dancing Veela.

Can I really describe Veela dancing? It isn’t human. The closest human dance might be ballet, but it’s as close to Veela dancing as a carousel is to a herd of galloping stallions.

The second trick to Veela magic is beauty.

Star Dance: Wherever a foot or hand touches, colored sparks appear, caught in tree branches and flowers like gems.

Flower Dance: The Veela meet in a ceaseless series of couples, whirling and spinning in pairs. Where their hands meet, flowers appear. I dance with a young Veela girl my own age, and we throw violets everywhere, until the adults tire of us and toss fire-balls to chase us off.

Fire Dance: Ragged flames leap and twist wherever a Veela steps. Fire forms between their hands, is rolled along their arms, tossed back and forth across the dance, over heads, under elbows, between the swift feet. These flames aren’t dangerous, just beautiful. Grandmother picks up a handful of sparks and scatters them through my hair. They’re cool to the touch and don’t fall out until we leave the forest.

Of course, not all magical flames are harmless.

The third trick to Veela magic: It is bound to emotion.

There is no such thing as a Veela who feels no emotion. In fact, Veela are utterly incapable of hiding emotion. Veela are aware of the obvious link between extreme anger and fireballs. This is why the wise run when Veela are annoyed.

[daily-rayless]

Disregard, my friends, this is a test post to figure out why Tumblr's messing with me.

[daily-rayless]

My old OC Zoe.

The text says, "How dare you? Don't you know I am a powerful and very sparkly sorceress?"

[daily-rayless]

2006

Still making my way through this quarter century.

Fandoms: Makai Kingdom, Suikoden 5, The Hollow Kingdom, Wild Arms 4

The Magister and Zoe (OCs)

Felicula (OC); Melusine (from French folklore)

Zoe; Hour (OC)

Kate and Marak (The Hollow Kingdom)

Art: I always look back on this as a big year, art-wise. This was when I got my Elfwood gallery, when I really began measuring my art against other people's. A lot of the time, I was discouraged. Really, a better way to put it is that I learned some humility. I'd never thought I was the best artist, but seeing so much excellent art by other people brought home how much I still had to learn, and it encouraged me to push myself, to experiment.

While Elfwood was on the wane by 2006, there was still a lot of interaction and community there, more than I've seen in other art communities since. Despite its strict rules and long queue, in many ways it was a cozy and encouraging welcome to the world of online artwork.

While art from this year shows its age, there are still individual pieces I like. The colors are bold, I made some creative choices, spent time on some good details, and overall my style is more polished and confident. This was a period where I could feel my art improving, and, trust me, that isn't always the case. It was very satisfying, even though I often felt like I was light years behind other artists. I didn't feel like I could aspire to "real" artist levels.

Writing: 2006 was a double whammy because it's also when I set up my Fanfiction.net page and picked the name Rayless Night. I had a backlog of fic from 2005 and I started firing off chapters immediately, starting the year with Suikoden and Makai Kingdom stuff and closing it with a few short pieces from Wild Arms 4. And it was really so much fun. I'd never gotten feedback like that on my writing before, or the feeling that I was adding to a big vat of fanstuff (or Pit of Voles, take your pick) for everyone to enjoy. In real life, I hadn't known many people who shared my love of fantasy novels and JRPGs, so it was just so nice to gush with other people about characters I loved.

Among the fics I wrote that year was Public Speaking, a Suikoden 5 fic that focuses on the life story of the extremely minor npc Salisha Raulbel. (Dinn's girlfriend. Her. She exists, believe me.) Not only did I have the freedom to make up a ton of stuff, but I enjoyed examining the game from this peripheral perspective. The premise was very niche, but I was so pleased that a bunch of readers not only gave it a look, but kept coming back with each chapter. To this day I'm still regretful I didn't finish it, mostly for that handful of readers.

Salisha and Dinn meet fairly early in the fic, where she saves him from being enslaved by her grandfather. Then several years pass without them interacting until they're a bit older and they rediscover each other while some political talks between Falena and Armes are underway.

Excerpt:

Dinner was a haphazard affair, people dropping down in front of the fires to eat whenever they felt like it. Eventually my stomach was wooed by the smell of slowly roasted lamb, cloves, currants imported from Doraat, and freshly baked flat bread. I sat and tried to remain neat as I ate.

I glanced at the soldier sitting next to me, vaguely disquieted. I knew a lot of the garrison, most of them by name or sight, and I was sure I recognized this one, but I couldn't remember why. All of a sudden, four-years-old embarrassment tinged my cheeks. I took it in stride. "I know you. You're Dinn."

The soldier glanced at me. "Yes, my lady."

I walked backwards in my mind, recalling what I knew about him. Not long after he'd been freed, Mother had sent him back to his village. However, he'd returned a bare month later, swearing his life's loyalty to my father. Gratitude, most likely. I hadn't heard anything else about him since. I was just about to ask how he was doing when he interrupted with, "Forgive me for not saying this sooner, but I want to thank you for your words four years ago."

"Oh," I said vaguely, my embarrassment returning. Words seemed far too mild a term for my explosive arguments that day. "There's no need to thank me for being a decent human being."

Dinn's mouth tightened, a bit grim. "You'd be distressed to find how few decent human beings there are, my lady."

I was quite nettled at his assumption that I was a mincy little naïf who knew nothing of the real world. I was seventeen. An adult. I knew people could be heartless. Actually, he was exactly right, and I hardly had a clue what he was talking about. I have a better idea now, sad to say. You'll hear about that.

"Well," I said, adopting something of Lady Sialeeds' aloofness, "what have you been up to, Sir Dinn? Distinguishing yourself among the soldiers?"

Dinn's grimace turned self-deprecating. "I like to think so."

I studied him. He was attired no differently from the other soldiers; his tunic was blue, his pants tan. He was wearing his hair in a singularly unattractive way -short in the back and long in the front. I decided that his face was handsome enough to compensate for the hair. Nothing about him gave any sign of an advanced rank. "What training are you going through?"

"General Ruel has given me a minor division of your father's cavalry to command." Ruel was the head of Father's garrison, a man Father knew well and respected. His status afforded him the luxury of living in our house and eating with us, when he could. His grown up children were terribly jealous.

But I wasn't thinking about that just then. "Cavalry?" I repeated, instantly interested. "Which horse is yours?"

If Dinn was thrown off by the question, he hid it. "I'm presently training Ghost, my lady."

I almost clapped my hands. "I remember Ghost! The white three year old filly with the insane red eyes?"

He grinned. "Yes, my lady."

"You should ride into battle with a tattered black cloak and a horned helmet. It would have such a soothing effect on your opponents."

"As my lady commands."

"What weapon do you favor?" I asked, attempting to sound businesslike.

His sheathed sword was sitting at his side (I later learned that he couldn't possibly sit with it as he carried it on his back). It was an incredibly long nodachi, at least sixty-eight inches. He politely drew its full length, letting it catch the firelight. "Al Sabah," he said, which was apparently its name.

"Nice," I said, like I had any idea what I was talking about. "Very long. Not steel, of course."

"No, it's steel, my lady."

"Ah. But some light alloy."

Dinn's eyes narrowed slightly. It was a look I was going to get quite often over the years, and it means Amusement. "As my lady says."

"And your lady is quite sure," I retorted. "There's no way you could use it otherwise, certainly not from horseback."

"My lady is..." Dinn paused, probably trying to think of some polite way to end the sentence, "opinionated. A good quality," he added (rather lamely, I thought.)

"Your lady is right. Here, hand it to me. I'm sure it's perfectly lightweight."

He handed it over. I hefted it and quickly handed it back. "Pfft. It's a feather quill." I hid my right wrist in my lap and surreptitiously massaged it with my left.

Dinn resheathed Al Sabah. "I would not contradict my lady," he said, a bit too blandly.

"Good," I said, rubbing my wrist openly. Sun above, that HURT. His wrists had to be steel too, there was no other way to explain it.

[daily-rayless]

Inspired by Bluebeard. They may look like slaughtered does, but what are they really?

[daily-rayless]

Archer and Hakuno at the close of the War, falling right until the end.

[daily-rayless]

finishing old art: Revya from Soul Nomad. Needed some shading, coloring, and another foot.

[daily-rayless]

THE ESCAPE OF LADY AIGLE

An early sketch of Charmian that I've always liked.

[daily-rayless]

Finishing old art: Ana, an old OC, with her otherworldly golden eyes. Ana is short for Inanna, and that should say enough by itself.

[daily-rayless]

2005

Continuing my creative trip through the last quarter century...

Fandoms: Suikoden 3, The Hollow Kingdom Trilogy, Makai Kingdom

Knell (OC); Salome (Makai Kingdom)

Serqet (OC); Felicula (OC)

Snowdrop (OC); Zetta and Salome (Makai Kingdom)

Art: So this was the year I got a scanner and start posting my art online. A scanner can change the look of your art, and seeing it on a screen does something, I'm not sure what, but it defamiliarizes it a little bit. I think it allowed me to get a different perspective and better imagine how my art looked to others. And maybe that's why I finally started using bolder colors and making my pictures altogether more finished.

I think for some years I'd also been moving towards, not realism, but more naturalistic bodies for my characters. Despite the cartoonishly round faces and the large eyes, there's a groundedness to my art from this period that I still like.

Writing: I started to significantly focus on fanfic this year, both oneshots and longform, predominantly for Suikoden 3 and Makai Kingdom. I finally had decent internet access (I will always be thankful I didn't have it any earlier and so the internet was spared most of my earlier, um, oeuvre) and I was eager to participate in fandom. (Suikoden was still fairly vigorous at this point; Makai Kingdom was always infintesimal.) So I started writing more serious fanfic (The Light on the Waves, a Queen-centered Suikoden fic, and Wishes, a Salome-centered MK fic), and for several years I kept going very steadily.

This was possibly a problem.

2005 is also when I started my next original writing project, a novel called Tear Scars. It was a coming-of-age fantasy about Royce, a female mercenary, written in a first-person memoir style rather similar to The Claidi Journals. It wasn't a high epic fantasy, but it was an ambitious character-driven piece about Royce growing up and trying to survive in a world that deals her a lot of bad hands, and there was some gritty action and some angst.

It had two serious problems. The first is that it was way too based on Suikoden 3 in some aspects, with parts of Royce's backstory being way too similar to my headcanons about Suikoden 3's Queen. It did diverge and go off on its own track, but I suspect sharing so much creative DNA (it's a train with DNA in this metaphor) hampered it from getting necessary momentum.

The second problem is that while I'd been brainstorming Tear Scars for a couple years, by the time I got to writing it, my life had changed significantly. I'd invested a lot of creative energy into it, and I'd been finishing books since 2000. I was confident I'd finish this one too. But as years went by, 2005, 2006, 2007, the book would flounder. I was moving on creatively, focusing on new things. Maybe, after a while, I wasn't sure what I wanted to be writing anymore, at least when it came to original stuff. I kept Tear Scars going for three years, but with increasingly long gaps between working on it. Eventually, I gave up. More on that later.

The early parts of the story deal with Royce's country, Felderris, being invaded by a rival nation. For a long time, the war doesn't touch her rural community, but it still casts an oppressive shadow over her childhood. Here the teenaged Royce shares a peaceful evening with her family – until the peace is shattered.

Excerpt:

“There are fireflies tonight,” Stepma murmured one late evening in May. I looked over my shoulder. A firefly had drifted through one of the open windows, a bright green spark. Frayne made a grab for it and succeeded only in capsizing a chair as the firefly hovered against the ceiling.

“Mama, can we go catch fireflies?” Dacey asked, borderline whine, borderline wistful.

“No.” Stepma didn't look up from the sleeve of one of Cav's shirts that she was taking off for the warm summer months. “It's bedtime.”

“Awww...”

“There'll be more fireflies tomorrow. Bedtime.”

“Ma-maaa – ” from Devlin and Gwinnde.

Stepma closed her eyes for a moment. “Children, I've had a very hard day, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't – ”

“Ma-maaa!”

Cav swung to his feet from his seat by the window. “Come on, kids,” he said brusquely, hoisting Caron up under his arm.

“No – No – No – ” Sophie and I helped too and, well, as soon as their bawling was inaudible, the house was bearable again. The house itself was suddenly quiet and seemed to slump with lassitude. I sat down in a chair near Stepma and didn't realize I'd fallen asleep until I suddenly woke up.

The lamps were lower and Stepma was striding towards the door with Cav just behind. The steady sound of Stepma's boot heels on the floor drew me to get up and follow her. She shot me a guarded look over her shoulder before she grasped the door handle and opened it.

A flurry of large moths fluttered and ghosted in. Behind them, I could see the muted fire-behind-bone glow of lanterns. Above the lamps, appearing disembodied and glowing almost lamp-bright, were faces.

“Mistress Eachan?” one in the front said. A man. Dad –

“I have bad news.” The man took a moment to gauge Stepma, but I at least could see no sign of what she was feeling. She stood erect, her right hand resting on the door latch. The man decided he should continue. “Bad news concerning your husband.”

“Who are you?” Stepma's voice broke through the anxious haze that was collecting in my head. “You're not from Aerawyn.”

“No,” the man acknowledged. He shifted his lantern in his hands. “I'm a southerner.”

“Part of my husband's contingent?”

“No,” the man said again, this time firmly and looking Stepma in the eye. I finally had a clear view of him; a squat wedge-shaped face with many folds and angles, a wide mouth, small pale green eyes, ears that stuck out, and half a head of thin dark hair. “I come from Rebel Sander.”

“Rebel Sander?”

“He requests aid to the Free Felderrans in the form of animal, equipment, and provisions, and we've come to – ”

Stepma took a firmer grip on the door and pulled it partway closed. “If Rebel Sander wants our livelihood, why doesn't he join the Erriathi army?”

Color flooded the stranger's face. He took a step up, one foot on the door post. “You won't give us food when we're fighting to keep you and your kids free?”

“I'm sorry,” Stepma said sharply, closing the door still more.

The man shouldered against it. Cav moved to Stepma's side.

The stranger's eyes were glittering in the light from our house. “I'd heard word that you were Conquered.”

Stepma took only the time to gather herself. “The last I heard from my husband, he was fighting in the High Queen's army, yes. Now then, you didn't come here to discuss politics, you came her with news of my husband. What is it?”

“Bad,” the stranger said again. “He's in the High Queen's army and fighting against Free Felderrans. He's been conquered by Erriath. Are you sure you won't help us?”

Stepma's voice shook slightly. “Yes. Be on your way.”

The man's face became grim. “Well, more bad news. Your husband's lost his family too.” And he thrust his torch into Stepma's face.

Cav dashed forward, beating at the flames that covered Stepma's head like a mask and helmet. I stood still and tense and aghast as Cav tried to use his shirt to smother the flames – then I ran towards Stepma. The men were inside our house, shoving me aside, torches raised high.

“Mommy!” Dacey screamed from the top floor.

I reached Stepma and tried to help beat out the flames. They were diminishing, but her face –

I swung around to look at the top of the stairs. The rest of my siblings had joined Dacey; their eyes were fixed on Stepma, wide and dark in the half-light.

And then their eyes blazed like small suns as one man threw his torch onto the middle of the stairs and the flames sprang up like a gate. Harril and Stepma screamed. “Sophie – ” I shouted and cut myself off. I'd been about to tell her to lead them out by the back way, but I didn't want these invaders to know there was another route to burn. I stared helplessly up at my sisters and brothers.

Stepma had lunged to her feet, but a man backhanded her onto the floor again. Another man had his fingers locked around Cav's throat. Suddenly I was grabbed from behind. A torch flared at the corner of my vision, and my head reeled from the upwards surge and the smoke. I tried to listen, to hear if I could still hear the kids screaming, but every sound was swallowed in the fire's roar. Then a man shouted as Stepma rushed up the stairs – No, you don't need to, there's still the back way – then there was another exploding roar. I was released and fell hard onto the floor; the floorboards shook as the men ran out of the house. I tried to get up, to see if we could all follow. They'll kill us if we rush out. But we had to follow.

I cast around, mind and eyes disoriented by the slashing flames and thrashing shadows. I couldn't see anyone. I kept avoiding looking at the stair, unwilling to see my stepmother's flame-blackened corpse sprawled across it. Finally, I had nowhere else to look. All I saw were flames.

I'm alone – I have to get out! I reeled in the direction the door had to be in. The heavy smoke muted the flames' brilliance, but the door had to be there. I couldn't walk through that – I –

My eyes found a window. I ran up to it as fire closed on either side and bloodied my hands while working at the latch. The shutters gave and I fell through, landing on my shoulder, then chin. I lay for a single second as my shoulder throbbed, then sprang to my feet into a run. The night was cool and dry. Flames angled out of every open window of the house, straining towards me as I dashed past, skirting the edge of the house and running towards the back door.

There was a fire there too. When was it lit? Before the others had a chance to escape – ? As I stood there and stared hopelessly, I realized that men's voices had mixed with the growling of the fire. My heart jumped and stood still. I couldn't leave the house – someone might still be in it, someone might need me – my family might all still be in there –

I knew very well what Stepma would want me to do. I knew what my instincts were demanding. But part of me wanted so much to stay there and be there when someone in my family needed me.

I whirled, fear pumping energy into my muscles as I sprinted up the hill and into the forest – the invaders would search the forest, I'd have to go far – I'm sorry, Sophie, I'm sorry, Gwinnie – tree trunks jerked and hurtled past, leaves and underbrush grabbed my legs. Even though I was turned away from it, I could sense the fire, its light and heat chasing me through the darkness.