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babybluesquid · 1 year

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Session 8, Of Ghostly Realizations

Our Players this Week:

Hog 112, they/them, Weapon Thaumaturge, skirmisher warforged, the leader of the inquisitives agency and founding member, tends toward practicality and following a command structure.

Vestige, they/them, Bones Oracle, warforged placed into a human body, a healer and the agency’s fleshborn face, remains on the periphery with an individualistic streak.

Strategy, it/its, Empiricist Investigator, officer warforged, an old model who’s seen much action and uses the tactics they learned back during the war now under Sharn.

Samanta, she/they, Swashbuckler Fencer, skirmisher warforged, a spotter during the war who turned to spying for one of Sharn’s criminal families before joining the inquisitives agency.

Mage, they/them, Universalist Wizard, living wand warforged, a young forged who was built after the Mourning, looking to find their place in the world.

——————

At that point, Samanta’s returned. She reports no new information on Clever’s whereabouts, it really does seem she’s up and vanished. The party gets her up to speed on the hideout in Fallen, and Hog elects to take her with to scout ahead for the base. As the two approach probable base in sight, the sense of unease grows. A figure flickers in and out of sight, right on the edges of Hog’s vision. They strain for a closer look, realizing the figure’s semi-transparent. A ghost. As they assess, they come to the conclusion that it’s the ghost of a Vassal priest, probably dead in Crystalfall. The thing’s got a sense of betrayal and resentment to it, and it’s powerful. Hog relays the information to Samanta, and the two speculate some about its nature and what they can do to get past. They don’t know enough, as Hog points out “every ghost is different, they’re just like us living folk, except driven by darker motives.” So they opt to return and see what Strategy makes of it.

Mage’s curious, how do the arsonists go about getting past the ghost? Strategy suggests they know a path to avoid it, perhaps the ghost travels along a set route. Perhaps Vestige can try taking to the spirit. They confirm they could try. Barring that, destroying the ghost is also an option, but might alert the arsonists to the party’s presence. Much debate ensues. Ironskull thinks it’s unfeasible to cover all the arsonists’ potential routes, the district’s too big and complicated. Halt agrees, they oughta wait on Rattle Row for the arsonists to come to them. Hog’s not convinced, they want to stop the arsonists before they ever enter the Cogs, so they send Samanta back out to search for a route around the ghost. There doesn’t seem to be one, as the ruins here are piled with large slabs of glass. Strategy thinks it’d be best to look for records, determine who the ghost might be. Hog agrees and sends Mage with it. They and Vestige go out into the district to ask locals about the haunt. The watchmen stay behind in case the arsonists make a move.

Unsurprisingly, the locals want nothing to do with Hog and Vestige. The most of them stay out of sight, and those who do get approached leave real quick when they start getting questioned about the ghost. Their luck reverses, though, when they come across a warforged. The fella’s a tall scout, wearing a green cloak and holding a crossbow. “Greetings, what brings you to this ruin?” “We’re on an investigation,” Hog explains, “we’re looking into some paranormal activity around here.” She’s amused, “you’d have to be a bit more specific than that, my brother. What in particular? There’s a lot of weird things that happen in this district.” “We’re looking into a phantom, a ghost that’s haunting nearby the glass slabs, where the tower fell. It seemed like the ghost of a priest. Have you heard any stories of something like that?”

“I have,” the forged responds, “people here just call it the Old Spook. They’re not sure of its name anymore. There’s maybe two more ghosts that are more dangerous than it. It laments its feelings of abandonment and betrayal by the Host and attacks people that come across it.” Vestige cuts it, “how do the locals go about avoiding it?” “It is not wandering, it’s bound to its location, so people just stay away from it mainly.” “Hm,” Hog remarks, “a priest scorned by his gods, huh?”

“I looking for something as well,” they say, “someone’s gone missing out of Highwalls. Kidnapping I think, Alamanno Corner, a young man, dwarven, was a Cyran veteran.” This piques Hog’s interest, “was there a fire?” “There was a fire,” he confirms. “Hm, well, I suppose I’ve given the game away. We’re looking into someone else as well. We’re looking into fires that have been happening across the city, certainly the same forces that took your friend.” “When did this guy go missing?” Vestige asks. “About a week ago. I tracked the trail that I could find back to Fallen.” “So did we,” Hog says. The forged reaches into his cloak pocket and retrieves a small obsidian stone, “and I found this at the scene. It seems to be some sort of magic.” “Is it whispering?” Hog asks. “No, why would it be?” “Alright, so I think it’s safe, Vestige. You mind if we take that?” The forged hands it over.

Vestige takes that as permission to explain things, “this group of arsonists we’ve been tracking for a while. Started out about a month ago, following the disappearance of one Tristano d’Cannith in a fire. It seems to us that this Tristano has been the source of all these arsons. Some kinda-” “Demonic influence,” Hog supplies. “Yeah.” The forged takes a second to process, “that’s certainly interesting, anyways, who are you all? I haven’t seen you. I am Shot.” Hog replies, “we’re inquisitives from Blackbones, I don’t suppose you’ve heard of us but we’re the best the Cogs has got, not that it’s much of a competition.” Hog hands over one of the HF&A business cards to Shot. “My boss there is Hog 112, and I’m Vestige.”

Shot reads the card, “alright, well. I think the kidnappers are inhabiting that building past the Old Spook. I haven’t seen em leave, though.” “We came to exactly the same conclusion,” Hog says. Vestige asks, “how do you suppose the arsonists got past the Old Spook?” Shot grasps for an answer, “there’s sometimes some kinda warding sigils or rites you an do to prevent ghosts from attacking, could be something like that.” Hog nods, “they might be using some kinda twisted demonic protection magic.” “That’s possible certainly.” “It seems that none of us have seen these arsonists actually enter or leave.” “Do you have any leads on them?” She asks. “As a matter of fact,” Hog 112 says, “we do. We’re looking into it. We think they’re gonna attack tonight and we’re hoping to, well-” “Intercept them before they get the chance,” Vestige finishes. Thinking like an inquisitive themselves, Shot thinks aloud, “that’s a strong lead. We might even be able to interrogate one of them in that case.” “And hopefully by the end of this, we can destroy their entire cell, root them out from the entire city for good,” Hog says, “listen, I think we might be able to work together on this.”

“I do think so,” she says. “Be better to join forces than keep working alone. Each of us has gotten quite far, but we’ve come to a bit of a wall with this spirit, haven’t we?” “It seems that we have. It would be possible to battle it with so many people but it’s still very powerful so I not quite sure how good of an idea that would be without preparations in place.” “I have some magics which might be able to help,” Vestige offers. “That’s good.”

“Shot, could you tell me, what did you do during the war?” Hog asks, curious about this forged’s seeming expertise in investigation and the supernatural, “what was your place in your unit?” “I was part of the Cyran Rangers,” he explains, “part of expeditionary forces. I was assigned to the southern fronts, mostly around the time when the elves and the goblins betrayed the Crown and we had to try to regain the territories that they took.” “I was in the Hags’ War,” Hog says, “Breland’s own unfortunate piece of business.” Shot seems kinda amused at that, “that’s a way of describing the whole war, one might say.” Vestige agrees, “I saw various fronts. It was the same all round.” “Horror show through and through,” they say, “we try and protect our people best we can now.” Hog though, disagrees, “the same on all fronts? Well they say the Cyrans at least fought with honor for the most part.” Vestige makes a single derisive sound. Shot replies, “it took two years into the war before the illusion of honor was dispelled, and that was long before there were any forged.” “Hm,” Hog does not say more about it.

Meanwhile, Strategy and Mage head up to the archives of the Church of the Sovereign Host. The records are extensive, but narrowed down to those who died in Crystalfall the two seem to find a match. One Markden Fenwell, a human who’d moved down to Godsgate to build the community there. He’d been a priest of the whole Host, though with a particular focus on Boldrei. He’d lived down there with his wife and four children. They all died when the crustal tower fell. Curiously, the man’s old address isn’t the same place the ghost’s currently set up haunt.

The party reconvenes in Fallen and information is traded. Strategy wants to check out Fenwell’s address. Hog points out his house may well be under a hundred feet of rubble, but it’s worth a shot. Speaking of a shot, Shot thinks they’ll be able to locate the address. “You’re not from this district,” Hog comments more than asks. “No,” she replies, “but I’ve been looking around here for a few days.” “You looked into the ghost yourself?” “Yes, I now know what the locals know.” “You seem to be a thorough investigator.” Great luck, the location isn’t buried under a hundred feet of rubble. There is a single massive piece of glass which has crashed through the building’s center though. Inside, the second floor’s been smashed into the first. Shards of glass and personal effects litter the floor, though it seems this place was picked over ages ago and everything valuable was spirited away.

It also seems no one bothered to lay the inhabitants to rest. There’s bones strewn about, human, at least three skeletons’ worth. Some are crushed underneath the massive glass slab which tore the home asunder. Strategy searches for anything that may be of use in putting Markden Fenwell to rest, but no such luck. Interring the bones may help, but there’s little time left in the day, and more pressing matters approaching. An ambush of the arsonists is in order.

Samanta’s able to find a suitable location along the likely trail the arsonists use. It’s not fully ideal, but it’s the best place, with hiding spots on all four sides of a stretch of road. Samanta and Shot stand in the first hiding place, Hog and Vestige on one side behind a wall, the guards on the other inside a ruined building, Mage and Strategy at the far end of the road.

The group approaches. There’s four carrying torches, plus one with a crossbow. They’ve got that crazed look in their eyes, suggesting the madness of Khyber. They walk right down the street, then stop. The first has caught sight of Strategy. The goblin archer raises their crossbow. Samanta runs out and attacks! They drop the crossbow and draw a club. The battle is on.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to try,” Vestige remarks, before concentrating. They extend their will to Dolurrh, reaching in a bit deeper, finding something and grasping onto it, pulling it back with them. The ghost of a gnoll with a scimitar materializes between the cultists. Vestige grins. Meanwhile, Strategy’s studying the enemy. “Watch out for their torches!” It warns as the others move in to attack. Mage stays back and fires on one arsonist, trapping them within sticky filaments. The cultist struggles to remove them, then opens a bag they’re carrying. They turn it over and two figures spill out.

Burning bodies. One’s small, the other’s a bit larger, maybe dwarf sized. The two rise. One forms a ball of fire in its hand and throws it at Mage. Their clothes catch on fire. Hog thinks quick, realizing water would be most effective in battling these infernal beings. They reach into their bags and find no water. Rooting around, they find a small badge expressing support for the fire department. That’ll have to serve. Hog hops over the wall, taking a crossbow shot at one of the burning corpses. In response, an arsonist and one of the corpses both surround them and attack. The immolating body screams! Hog, Samanta, and Ironskull are all struck by fear. Ironskull’s able to shake it off, but Hog and Samanta burst into flames in the wood beneath their armor plates. Hog’s rendered inactive.

Ironskull kills an arsonist with the punch of an integrated dagger. Though flaming, Samanta presses on and runs another through, killing them. She advances on the pair of enemies by Hog. Vestige meanwhile extends their will to Hog, willing them to live. It works, and they come aware of the world once again. Strategy looks around for something, anything to douse the flames. They find a wet blanket among the refuse. It smells of rot and waste, but there’s no time. It throws it over Mage, smothering the fire. They raise their wand and send an arc of electricity lancing through the two corpses.

One arsonist it lit up standing beside the flaming corpse. They die with eerie calm. The other thing of flame screams, but Halt and Mage are spared due to determination and the power of a wet blanket alike. Hog stands and focuses through the badge of the fire department, clocking the fire corpse. The thing retaliates with a punch of its own, knocking Hog back out. Samanta hurries to douse the flames on them with her cloak, then administers a C1.

Seeing the tide of battle turning, the final living arsonist starts to run. Vestige tracks their flight, making sure they don’t leave their sight. They fire off a spell to assault the guy’s mind. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to fell them.

Strategy devises the best plan of attack. They aim their battle rod, then fire at one of the immolated corpses’ heads. It explodes with force, knocking loose a piece of obsidian. It falls to the ground, deanimated, blood and ash spilling from its body. “Let’s finish this up quickly!” It says, firing a blast of force through the other thing’s abdomen. Mage runs up and throws the wet blanket over the remaining corpse. It’s stunned, then shakes the blanket off and lands an uppercut on them which clocks them out immediately. Hog raises their sword and attacks. The flaming corpse yells. Hog’s rendered inoperable yet again. It punches Vestige’s ghost, which dissipates back to Dolurrh.

Samanta drags Hog out of the thing’s reach, then stabs it through. It’s not quite dead. Halt runs in then, stabbing it through the chest. Finally, the thing drops, smoldering still but inanimate. “You tend to them!” Vestige yells. They run off after the fleeing arsonist, sending another mental assault against them. They drop to the ground midstep. The others hurriedly douse the flames threatening to burn Hog and Mage to death, then set about repairing them.

——————

Notables:

Shot, all/any pronouns, a Cyran forged who’s looking for their friend, Alamanno Corner, who disappeared in a matter quite similar to Tristano d’Cannith.

Markden Fenwell, Old Spook, he/him, the ghost of a priest of the Host who died in Crystalfall. Very dangerous, the sleuths oughta find a way to put him to rest so he stops terrorizing Fallen.

#pf2e #pathfinder campaign #pathfinder story #my post #my writing #hf&a llc #eberron #ttrpg story #ttrpg recap #session 8 #dnd campaign #vestige #hog 112 #strategy #samanta #mage #warforged

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perpetual-stories · 3 years

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Character Archetypes: Part One

hello, hello! hopefully everyone had a wonderful week! I know a lot of people were / are excited for Shadow and Bone on Netflix.

I personally don’t care. I’m just happy I’m playing the Last of Us Part 2 after being so upset about the developers making play as ABBY. Ugh.

PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT OR MENTION TLOUP2 SPOILERS. I HAVE NOT FINISHED THE GAME.

I avoided spoilers for a whole year, I deserve to play the game at my own pace!

whew... sorry ya’ll idk what came over me.

anyways, without further ado let’s dive right in!

As mentioned in a post before:

archetype characters are archetypes or character types or emotions that are very familiar and recurrent across novels. these archetypes are known to create a sense of familiarity among the readers.

it allows the readers to relate to the characters or events without wondering why exactly they can relate.

Every character written in a story has a unique set of traits and characteristics that make them them. They have their own strengths, flaws, and desires which propels your story forward.

Yet despite the differences writers have for their characters, there are foundational and recurring strengths and flaws certain character types have.

That’s where archetypes come in:

1. The Hero / The Warrior:

the character who rises to the occasion and has a plan and of course saves the day.

they have a particular skill set and string will power.

they will conquer the enemy.

these characters often suffer a crisis of confidence at their lowest point.

strengths: Courage, strength (physical or mental), and ability, and honor.

weakness: overconfidence, hubris

examples: Achilles (The Iliad), Luke Skywalker (Star Wars), Wonder Woman (Wonder Woman), Harry Potter (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), Hercules, Odysseus, Aragorn from Lord of the Rings

2. The Child / Innocent:

morally pure character, often seen as a child. only has good intentions.

often times, not always, the writer can make the child see the world through rose coloured tints until they don’t — facing reality.

of course they child / innocent doesn’t have to grow up. it’s up to the writer and the story they chose to tell.

strengths: Optimism, enthusiasm, imagination, morality, kindness, sincerity

weakness: Naivete, physical powerlessness, rarely skilled

desires: To be happy (or happier)

examples: Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, Tiny Tim (A Christmas Carol), Lennie Small (Of Mice and Men), Cio-Cio-san (Madame Butterfly), Buddy the Elf (Elf)

3. The Orphan:

these characters are plucked from obscurity and elevated to prominence.

these characters not always are orphans, but are in search of a “found family.”

strengths: Survival instinct, empathy, perseverance.

weakness: Lack of confidence, willingness to please others.

desires: To thrive and connect with others.

examples: Harry Potter, Oliver Twist, Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

4. The Creator:

is a character that is a motivated visionary who creates art or structures during the narrative.

nothing is more important than the need to make something.

in many — not all — the creator is willing to sacrifice their own well beings and relationships in pursuit of a greater goal.

their single minded vision often leads them to pay the price.

strengths: Creativity, drive, the ability to execute their vision,

weakness: self-involvement, single-mindedness, lack of practical skills, personal sacrifice, perfectionism,

desires: To create something of value to cement their legacy.

examples: Remy from Ratatouille, Alexander Hamilton from Hamilton, Dr Jekyll from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Willy Wonka, Zeus (The Iliad), Dr. Emmett Brown (Back to the Future), Dr. Moreau (The Island of Dr. Moreau), Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Frankenstein)

5. The Caregiver:

A character who continually supports others and makes sacrifices on their behalf.

They might be a mother, father, wife, husband, or best friend — whoever they are, they’ll do anything to protect their child, ward, lover, or best bud.

It’s quite rare for the caregiver to take center stage but such is the nature of one so selfless.

strengths: Generosity, selflessness, honorable, loyal.

weakness: lacking personal ambition or leadership, also selflessness: they are open to exploitation.

desires: To protect and help others.

examples: Eva in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Samwise from The Lord of the Rings, Mary Poppins.

voila! here you go everyone! sorry for not posting for the last few days, I needed a break! and yes how rude of me to split this post in two, as I usually do.

like, comment and reblog if you find this useful! also feel free to follow me for part two! if you like to reblog on Instagram feel free! tag me at perpetualstories

Follow me on tumblr and Instagram for more writing and grammar tips and more!

#writing #writing advice #writing tips #original writing #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writersconnection #writersofig #writersofinstagram #writings

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phantomato · 3 years

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Five Tom Riddle Crossover Fics to Read

Tom Riddle is a difficult character to ship. For those of us who want to see pairings beyond the Big Two (Tomarry and Tomione), canonical options peter out relatively quickly. Sure, we can invent our own pairings by fleshing out side characters, but sometimes, the itch is best scratched by borrowing from another canon.

And it makes sense for Tom more than nearly anyone else in HP. Tom was born into an era that is the subject of so much literature, so it’s easy to find another person kicking around postwar Europe if that’s your goal. He’s an archetypal character, the villain seeking immortality, and can be matched against other villains with the same aims. Hell, even his quest to recover lost artifacts turns into the basis for two of these works—Tom Riddle has the perfect combination of a recognizable context and character model, plus the ambiguity of his canon timeline, to slot him alongside so many other fictional figures.

I want to pause on some of these themes for a second. Immortality or relationship to age, for one, is something that comes up in three of these pairings: the Darkling and Koschei the Deathless are both immortal characters in their own canons, and Edmund Pevensie is not immortal but has aged and de-aged repeatedly in his travels to and from Narnia. The HP series doesn’t give us nearly this wealth of different perspectives on age and immortality, which is fair—HP makes it clear that immortality is unnatural and undesirable, and Flamel is notably a ‘good person’ because of his willingness to accept his own death—but for a character as obsessed with the idea as Tom, some emotions can only be explored when you match him with another character who has a complicated relationship to aging. Even someone like Indiana Jones, not immortal and not trying to be, has an interesting perspective to bring to a story because he has seen so many other quests for power gone terribly awry.

Of course, the other thing we get from crossover pairings is the ability to match Tom with a villainous character. And whether you’re a fan of conflict at the start of a relationship or not, I think there’s something to be found in putting two villains together: moral arguments, when they exist, are rarely about whether death is necessary but about what kinds of death are best used when; the entire concept of either a redemption arc or a breaking bad arc can be thrown out a window. It’s a space wherein our two villains are allowed to be themselves, and the reveal of the extent of each character’s villainy becomes a strange form of celebration. This is challenging to achieve if one sticks to HP canon alone, whereas crossovers are a fruitful space.

My selection methodology was to read every crossover fic with a clear focus on Tom Riddle or Voldemort on AO3. I found crossover pairings by visiting the meta pages for the Tom Riddle, Voldemort, and Tom Riddle | Voldemort tags—I may have missed some pairings for Tom Riddle, as the character has over 300 child relationship tags and AO3 cuts off at 300 displayed. If you know of any ships I missed and should check out, do tell! I’ll also make a note here that one of these fics is my own—if self-recs bother you, skip Bluebird.

The following five fics are ordered by wordcount. Let me know what you think!

Neurotic Virtuosi, by skazka

Crossover: Hannibal Rising (movie version). The wizarding world exists, and Tom and Hannibal encounter each other in non-magical Eastern Europe.

Summary: Tom and Hannibal ride the same train when Tom is hunting down the diadem. Tom shares an apple and thinks about keeping Hannibal.

Mature, <1k, Graphic Torture Fantasies

Why?: This is one of those pairings that I wouldn’t have thought to do when the characters were both young, but it’s so much better for that choice! The length of this fic means we only get a taste of their interactions, but what a taste it is. Tom’s internal fantasies are horrifying and described in a very erotic way, which fits both characters.

This also serves as an interesting vision of what Tom might have experienced during his world tour to find the diadem, a period we rarely get to see. I particularly like that the author chose to write it as frustrating and mostly fruitless; a Tom who is stymied and unsuccessful is a particular weakness of mine.

Two Sides of the Same Coin, by Anonymous

Crossover: Chronicles of Narnia. Both Hogwarts and Narnia are real, and the characters meet in Britain. The magic isn’t the same, but there’s mutual recognition.

Summary: Tom tries to use sex to seduce secrets out of Edmund. Edmund sees something reminiscent of his younger self, the version of him who could join the White Witch, in Tom Riddle.

Explicit, 2k

Why?: Edmund and Tom are a pairing made in crossover heaven, both boys of a similar age born into war in the same country and whose discoveries of magical worlds help them escape it. Both lust for power and make poor choices; Edmund canonically recovers and finds redemption from his actions, and Tom does not.

This fic wears the hat of something pure smut, starting in the middle of a sex scene and tagged with top/bottom roles, etc., and it is that and does that well. But give it a shot for Edmund’s reflection at the end, his hopeful musings that he can apply the lessons learned from Aslan to help Tom before Tom’s utterly lost. It’s a crossover ship with unbelievable potential for both characters, and this fic makes me want so much more.

Shedding Skin, by electric_typewriter

Crossover: Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente. Both the wizarding world and the magic of Deathless exist.

Summary: Tom meets Koschei before splitting his soul. They keep meeting, and Tom keeps attempting to match Koschei’s immortality.

Not Rated, 2k

Why?: Immortality via relocation or storage of souls is an idea that easily predates Harry Potter as a series, and seeing two different versions of the some core idea interacting with one another is precisely what crossovers exist to enable. Koschei as an immortal being that found his immortality in a way he considers superior is a fascinating concept, because it creates a power imbalance between them that leaves Tom always running to catch up. And Tom, poor Tom, feels like a desperate man, finding sensation only when he’s around Koschei and feeling nothing at any other time.

This reads a bit like you’re dissociating. The author uses descriptive language to keep the reader a little distant from the grounded reality of the events happening, which has the effect of keeping you focused on the metaphysical question of what it means to have part of a soul.

Bluebird, by Phantomato

Crossover: Shadow and Bone. S&B summoning powers instead of HP magic, set in the real world, with characters’ histories preserved.

Summary: Tom is the second sun summoner to exist, born long after the first gave up her powers and lived out her natural life. He tracks down the Darkling, the shadow summoner who never really died.

Explicit, 17k

Why?: Tom is an immortal being for at least part of his life, and his character arc is about pursuit of immortality, but he is fundamentally a young immortal, and is killed before he can graduate to old immortality. Aleksander, the Darkling, is canonically an old immortal, and his character arc is about the burden of living with the knowledge that you will likely always be alone. That loneliness sets the scene for the relationship between Tom and Aleksander, driving Aleksander’s behavior—he fundamentally believes he will always be alone, even an immortal like Tom passes through his life.

There is a high proportion of smut in this, serving in place of the emotional honesty that neither character can muster, and I recommend it for that. But the story also relies on investment in quiet everyday moments shared between the characters. It’s a fic told through behavior because both men are so cautious around one another, where they nevertheless manage to find sympathy for the other.

Riddles of the Dead, by Maeglin_Yedi

Crossover: Indiana Jones. Blends together the wizarding world and the mysticism present in Indiana Jones films.

Summary: Tom Riddle hires an expert archaeologist and gentleman adventurer, Dr. Indiana Jones, to help him pursue an artifact that might grant him immortality. There’s fucking, fighting, magic, snakes, and some difficult choices in store for our leading men.

Explicit, 18k, Angst

Why?: Maeglin Yedi has been a mainstay of the Tom Riddle/Lord Voldemort ficspace for nearly two decades, but an old crossover like this can unfortunately slip through the cracks. It shouldn’t! With an original publishing date in early 2005, this predates the concept of horcruxes, the knowledge of Tom’s early years at Wool’s orphanage, and, well, so much of what we would eventually learn about Tom Riddle as a person. It’s a testament to the author that the story manages to capture Tom’s character in such a way that he’s still fully recognizable to a current-day reader, despite working with so much less canon.

This fic is fun. It’s an adventure, featuring hazards and traps and assassination attempts that you would expect from an Indiana Jones film, but the magic and mystery never overwhelms the relationship at the core of this story. It’s set up beautifully, with a mirrored structure between the front and back halves of the fic that foreshadows the inevitable end of the story. Watching older, confident Indy seduce young, hungry Tom is a delight. One (possible) mark of a great Tom-centric fic, imo, is to be able to portray Tom enjoying the exchange of power, giving it to someone as well as taking it from them, and this Tom is able to revel in giving up some perceived power as he practices being vulnerable with Indy. The romance is quite sweet, especially considering that ‘angst’ tag at the top of the fic!

#tom riddle #tomato fic rec

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briarruler · 2 years

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Kalus Dursley: the Younger Cousin

Kalus is reborn as Dudley Dursley’s younger sister.

Kalus Dursley is born on November 2, 1982. Born exactly a year after Petunia discovers Harry on the Dursleys’ doorstep, she is about 2 years younger then her brother and cousin.

She looks like a human-version of herself, blue eyed, red haired, pale skin and sharp features. Her new parents put down the red hair to the Evans side of the family, along with her finer, sharper bone structure.

In another world the room that belongs to Kalus would be Dudley’s second bedroom. In both worlds Harry spends a decade in the cupboard under the stairs.

Kalus’s magic stirs within her when she’s 3 years old and she remembers the Elven Princess she once was.

Kalus has always been intelligent and here she has the advantage of remembering magic. It doesn’t take her long to confirm that she was reborn with her magic. She comes to suspects her cousin has magic too but it takes time for her to be sure. With that knowledge comes the realization that her parents also know of magic. That they know of magic and despise it.

Perhaps if Kalus’s last life had been a happy-stable-safe one, she would believe her parents will love her regardless of her magic. It was not: Kalus knows love is conditional. Her parents seem to love her now but she fears them from the moment she realizes they loathe the magic she possesses.

In this world like canon, the Dursley household does not create an Obscurus, but not for lack of opportunity. Kalus remembers that she loved magic, so she loves it in this life too. Harry never quite realizes that he has magic, that the Dursleys hate magic. She keeps an iron control on her magic and uses it only when alone but she still uses it. He never notices his magic and so he never tries to suppress it. Kalus will never become an Obscurial. Harry does not become an Obscurial.

Kalus does her best to avoid being cruel to Harry. She is even kind to him, but only when they are alone, unwilling to risk her parents displeased attention. If her magic is discovered Harry may be her only ally, best if he already likes her more then her brother and parents. And...well, Dudley is not Kameo and Harry is not herself but somethings are uncomfortably familiar.

Kalus is a bright spot in Harry’s life at the Dursley’s. His younger cousin who sneaks him food and smiles at him and never tries to get him in trouble.

Kalus won’t get her Hogwarts letter until 1994, because her birthday being on the 2/11 means she turns 11 to late for a 1993 Hogwarts letter.

The year of the Tri-Wizard Tournament is the first experience of Hogwarts that Kalus has.

However it goes and however it is revealed, the youngest Dursley being a witch is bound to cause a stir in the household.

#My Post #Harry Potter Series #Kameo: Elements of Power Crossover #Alternate Universe #Harry Potter Crossover #Kalus #Dursley Family #Harry Potter

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docholligay · 4 years

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Please rant/rave (well, we already know which one it will be here) about Harry Potter!

GEE I HOPE THIS WAS WORTH WAITING FOR

OH MY GOD. The level of hatred I have for Harry Fucking Goddamn Potter, the culture around Harry Fucking Potter, extending its poisonous tentacles even to the concept of young adult fiction, fantasy, and the United Kingdom as a country and people.

When you being on this, you may think, “Oh, Doc will explain that Harry Potter sucks because JKR hates trans women” and I will say, oh no, dear reader, that is a fantastic reason to hate the author, and I really suggest we all continue to hate her, and perhaps not purchase the QUEEN’S TONNES of officially licensed merchandise and movies and theme parks that give her stupid little fucking hands all that cash, but no, that is not why I hate the work. There are a number of great works done by terrible people, and the further out the lens of history gets the truer this is.

I hate Harry Potter because it fucking sucks, and mentally stifled an entire fucking generation.

“Well, Doc, Harry Potter was really there for me when--” Oh my god I could not fucking care LESS about your personal emotion connection to “orphan wizard boy turns out to be a rich aristocrat yet somehow less woke than Cinderella though” I have personally emotional connections to hot fucking garbage pails of media properties, and if someone came barreling through talking about the myriad ways in which they were horrible, I would be like, “Oh, you aren’t fucking wrong, pal”

Harry Potter gained wild ass popularity in part due to its magnificent sorting system of Smart, Brave, Evil, and Other, because there’s nothing liberals like more than being able to put everyone’s personality into an easily labeled box, which is why astrology is so popular, or for the intellectuals, Myers-Briggs, which is just as fake but with the veneer of science. This allowed people to give into the tribalism they so desperately liked to pretend they did not possess, and also allow them to write thinkpieces about “The misunderstood Hufflepuff” or “Slytherins aren’t all bad!” or really anything that allows them to write a very real piece about their very imagined oppression for being a part of a totally fake house in a children’s book. Excellent use of your sociology degree, Kai, I thought the addition of phrases like, ‘Content of socialization” and “axes of oppression” really spoke to the struggles you face when wearing a green and silver scarf.

The other reason it became popular is that it’s essentially wallpaper paste formed into characters. I have read all of the books, and I could not tell you even remotely what Harry’s defining personality traits are other than “protagonist”. In American, at least, a large part of it was the fascination with all things British, with the idea of boarding school and prefects and uniforms that aren’t inexplicably chinos and polo shirts for nine year olds. It allowed children to project onto something so bland that it could be anything. And for children, THAT’S FINE. There is a great deal of bland media made for children, but what I’m speaking to is the fandom, which is largely well over the age of 18.

Because if we look at the books, are they...actually good? Was it good, or did I experience it as a child? I mean, honestly, on a literary level, are they, or was it just like we all watched Friends, we did it because everyone else was doing it, because I have a distinct memory of a series that involves such greats as “magical geegaws with poorly defined rules that are quickly forgotten despite being able to solve later problems quickly” or “Everyone loves Harry or is a bad guy, or secretly loved Harry all along”

Oh, speaking of, man, if this was an actual well-written book, wouldn’t it have been wild to have Snape’s whole thing be to teach us that sometimes people do good things for the wrong reasons? Instead of naming your fucking child after the guy who ‘protected you’ because he still wanted to bone your mom? “After all this time” “Always.”

While all this could have been explained, we have Quidditch added into the mix instead because 20 pages of the goddamn Puppy Bowl is exactly what I was looking for while I was waiting for JK to move the goddamn ball on literally any of these actual magical concepts.

Harry Potter is a fucking trust fund baby, star quarterback, who grows up to be a cop and marries his high school sweetheart. (Speaking of, why were we shocked that JKR turned out to be a piece of shit when this was and always has been the conclusion of Harry Potter? Why are liberals so fucking into this series that upholds structures like it ain’t no one’s business? It’s a series that opines that those beneath us “Muggles” should be kept in the dark from us) Literally, he finds out he is a wizard and has a dragon-guarded fucking VAULT OF CASH. At 11. It’s such a series for little tyrants, you are special from birth and need do nothing to prove it, here is a letter certifying as such. Oh, not only are you rich and the greatest seeker and have excellent quips, but also your parents were not only rebels, but the best of rebels, and so deeply involved that your parents were killed by the big bad personally, again, because you are so special. His mother’s love literally saves his ass over and over again, because he was SO SPECIAL. He fought Voldemort FROM THE BEGINNING, and WON. It’s literally the most privilege baby fantasy in the world.

“But Doooooooooooc, it’s for chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren”

A) Yeah, and you’re 32, you’re making my fucking point about Harry Potter setting an entire generation up for intellectual failure to launch.

B) Okay, and? I can think of a bunch of kids’ books off the top of my head that in no way require specialness to be given by birth so as to roll out the red carpet for master protagonist. The Hunger Games. Watership Down. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Chronicles of FUCKING NARNIA, about which I have only a small handful of particularly kind things to say. I’ve never read Percy Jackson, but it’s my understanding that despite his being a literal demigod, the attitudes of the supporting cast are allowed to fall between the extremes of “Appreciates Percy” and “naughty or will learn” Harry does nothing to improve himself even after knowing that he is HUNTED BY THE BIG BAD! “I won’t do this because I don’t like Snape”. So There” which, again, if this series were written with the slightest bit of care or know-how, could be a humbling fucking plot point! BUT NO THAT WOULD BE NAUGHTY.

But the real reason I hate Harry Potter so much has everything to do with the fandom surrounding it, and how it intellectually stunted a generation of adults. The promise of Harry Potter was that it was supposed to make a new generation of readers, and so the popularity of them was pushed, and so there was discussion of teaching them in schools, but I tell you fucking what, I know a whole lot more folks who grew up reading Harry Potter that never advanced beyond reading YA, or even just rereading the entire series every year and that’s pretty much them done and dusted.

In the attempt to recapture whatever it was about Harry Potter that attracted children (A lot of it was your peers doing it. I read them all as they came out, and it was literally the equivalent of watching the game so you could talk at the water cooler. That was never going to be recaptured) people, who by this time were likely in their teens, kept getting recommended stuff at the same and same level. No one ever felt pushed to read things that are challenging, to read things that have some of the concepts or themes of Harry Potter but maybe complicate. I know FAR more adults who read adult books that aren’t into Harry Potter, even if they were as children, than the reverse.

But Doc, why is reading only books meant for 14 year olds a problem??? I mean I suppose I can’t convince you that comfort is not the job of literature or of life, it is the job of an easy chair, because Americans especially are decadent as fuck about being comfy cozy all the time and if anything causes them distress or pain it should be immediately avoided. But Maybe I can convince you that you’re fucking up these books for actual ass children who deserve to have their own writing section without adults bringing their fucking asses into it. They deserve their own spaces. There’s a number of YA editors who have talked about the difficult space YA now occupies because since Potter’s blowup, it’s no longer a niche category, but basically “adult easy reads” and so they have been buying books that are more about the tastes of adult buyers than of literal 14 year olds.

Is that not...sad? To anyone else? Honestly, and this is not part of the essay because it’s a broader reaching problem, but CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS FOR FUCKING CHILDREN. The fucking 40-23 set really needs to get their shit together and grow up a little bit and engage in some fucking adult media, and maybe, if we support what we’re actually looking for FOR ADULTS, it will come to us. No one is saying you can’t read Harry Potter or watch some Cartoon Network show, but like, search your heart and come the fuck on. Engage in something more complex. If not for yourselves, for the kids getting shoved into simplified adult stories. It should not be about us.

ANYWAY, my larger point is that it was Harry Potter, a badly written series about a magical boy who was chosen and magic and also rich and also a favorite of the headmaster and also more clever than most adults and also spoke the same magical snake language as the big bad and was also star quarterback, but at least there was a system in which you could buy a scarf in block colors and feel like you belonged to a team.

(But not a sports team! lol handegg! I’m cool I don’t get into sports! Except Quidditch.)

#TO say nothing of the fact that I haven't been able to wear gold and burgundy together without some dumbass comment for years #despite being a favored color combination #Anonymous #Eight Days 2020 #Holligay Rants and Raves #I didn't even GET to every point I had but it's been over an hour #GOD I HATE THIS FUCKING SERIES SO MUCH #Doc do you hate me for liking it?#oh sweet thing allow me to reassure you: Yes. Absolutely.#also the prose is god-awful #I've taught teenagers with better rpose

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decennia · 3 years

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If Socorro and Regulus had a kid

(will this make me cry? probably...) in some perfect world, socorro and regulus would have wed, and they would've lived, and they would've loved. but this is not a perfect world.

name: Castor "Cas" Tiberius Black II

significance: Castor, for the constellation tradition kept by the Black Family, and Tiberius, for Socorro's adoptive brother, who, although a callous presence in her youth, became one of her greatest protectors during the war.

gender: male

general appearance: Like both his parents, Cas is pale and slender, rather gaunt. He has the same bone structure as his father, and the same willowy limbs as his mother. His hair is often jet black and slicked back, and he constantly dons a skeptical arch of his brow. He seldom smiles, but when he does, it'll take your breath away.

personality: He is quiet, but not unfriendly. A thinker. A very good liar, much like his mother, though he holds honesty in a very high regard and tries his best to only tell the truth. He is in constant pursuit of knowledge and truth, and is very quick on his feet. A skeptic. Doesn't like things he can't understand, and if he doesn't excel at something the first time, he doesn't want to try again. Very stubborn. His icy exterior however hides a very kind boy, and he is very good with healing charms.

house: There was a bit of a pause with the Sorting Hat, but he was ultimately placed in Ravenclaw.

special talents: Healing charms and effortless lying aside, Cas is also a wonderful pianist. He discovered his love for the instrument during a summer excursion to muggle London, and, when telling his father about it, discovered that Regulus, too, enjoyed playing the piano. He spent the rest of the summer learning, and even went on to play for the school choir at Professor Flitwick's request. He is also very good at baking.

who they like better: He can't decide. Both his parents are wonderful. Regulus, forever patient, teaching him the piano, how to analyze artworks and poetry and little spells that were forgotten by most of the wizarding world, but were remembered by yellowed parchment of old Black Family grimoires. Socorro, gentle and sweet, encouraging, teaching him how to dance before the Yule Ball (Regulus played the waltz on the piano), telling him the funny stories of her childhood, about Uncle Sirius and his crazy friends. Both were perfect, and he couldn't – and wouldn't – choose.

who they take after more: He took after Regulus more, Socorro would realise. But that only put a smile on her face.

personal head canon: Sirius, Cas, and Harry are complete menaces when they're together. Regulus would often watch on with soft amusement, while Socorro would try her best not to laugh through her admonishments. Cas also has The Biggest™ crush on Hermione, and felt like he was dying when he found out she was going to the Yule Ball with Krum. He ended up going with Fay Dunbar, and had a good time irregardless. He enjoys muggle London very much (finds it fascinating) and will often go with his friends during the holidays. He was one of the few who believed Harry after Voldemort's return, and also became a member of Dumbledore's Army (mainly as a medic for his healing charms). During the Battle of Hogwarts, he assisted mediwitch Varsha Patil with the wounded, and consequently was witness to her death. Because of this, he now sees Thestrals. He also ate his twin, Pollux, in the womb, for which he feels irrationally guilty.

face claim: Freddie Carter

#also a long one #i actually love him fuck me #why do both regulus and socorro have to die #why did i do that #huh #why #fic: lacrimosa #era: golden trio #socorro x regulus #oc: socorro sallow #oc: castor black #cas x hermione #i'm so in my feels about this #he and althea would be besties #like i can already see it #also uncle sirius?#harry cas and sirius wreaking havoc is 🥺

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leam1983 · 4 years

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Cyberpunk 2077 Thoughts

Having perused Dark Horse Books’ The World of Cyberpunk 2077 over the past few days, I’ve gotten a better feel for the various basic hooks that structure V’s inception as a protagonist. The short of it is the Polish wizards are on the right path to nailing Pondsmith’s treatment the same way they nailed Sapkowski’s works.

Consider the following as half a brain dump, half a series of prospective spoilers, and also half projection, so either skip this, find some other entry to read, or come back to this come late November.

I know I mentioned three halves, but it’s late and I don’t give a shit.

I’m serious - DO NOT PRESS ON IF YOU’RE THE TYPE TO BLOW A GASKET IF YOU’RE INADVERTANTLY SPOILED.

The latest Night City Wire as of August exposed three incipient “life paths”, or starting branches of V’s path. I’ll tackle my personal narrative approaches to them in the order of my choosing.

Nomads: CP2077 is set in a world where much of what we understand to define a family has been blown up, tossed around by climate change and nuclear fire and then stitched back together using grit, resourcefulness and the last dying embers of human decency. Nomads are less a group of people defined by blood relations and more a cadre of individuals that share something more significant than mere genes. It might be a common history, a set of shared hardships, a yen for similar automotive and engineering-related projects - whatever it is, that something pulls people together in ways Corpo rats and street kids will never experience.

This seems to define even the average Nomad’s degree of education. Surprisingly, Nomads are the most well-read group in Coronado Bay’s greater area, some caravans reportedly including entire RVs packed with books. Nomads generationally elect teachers and record-keepers and seem to care for those cultural remnants of the old world, before Pondsmith’s paranoid alternate sixties kicked off more than a century’s worth of technological progression and rampant dehumanization. To a Night City native, a Nomad’s speech patterns appear precious and uselessly florid, while they might appear almost normal to us - maybe slightly touched by the fact that Grandpa Joe or whatever really wanted you to have your Greek classics down before you were old enough to repair your first CH00H2 carburetor on your own.

That new, mega-clustered version of family matters immensely to the Nomads. You identify to yours the same way Orcs in Shadow of War might refer to their clan, or the same way a Scottish clan might design specific visual cues identifying its members. In normal circumstances, Nomads live, thrive and die in service to the clan - and the opening segment for V’s Nomad origins suggests that something happened to his clan. They’re gone, or so the narration says, without going into further detail. Is V responsible? We don’t currently know. As it stands, however, he is a lone Nomad in a clan of one, and soon finds himself pushed out of the Californian wastes and into Night City’s neon-drenched streets.

Seeing this, I considered the narration as an admission of guilt on V’s part. He feels responsible, and hopes that grinding his way to success will in some way atone for what he’s done. Consequently, my Nomad V would be as gruff as could be, but as moral and upstanding as the setting allows. He considers himself as having been invested with an example to set, and would intend to set his sights on more than just filthy lucre. Honest filthy lucre is what matters to him, if that concept even is possible: he might deal in unsavory types and illicit activities, but he always does so with a certain moral rectitude - as a tough and gruff, lean and stringy type you can occasionally catch in his battered Thornton pick-up truck with his feet up on the dashboard and a dog-eared copy of Plato’s Republic in hand. Jackie honestly wonders how he can put up with that Greek pendejo’s endless words and the lack of scrolling animations, while V keeps his Kiroshi optics’ News ticker locked onto grassroots Leftist RSS feeds that stoke a bit of an ignored Rockerboy ethos in him. Quoting Marx in Night City might feel like trying to teach lab rats in the finer points of string theory, but it at least feels genuine to him, compared to the predigested sociopolitical pap Militech, Arasaka and their ilk are more than happy to spew on the airwaves.

There’s a lot to be pissed off about in Richard Night’s failed utopia, a lot of fat cats to gut and buildings to burn. Still, he leaves the glowering act and the churning rage to Johnny Silverhand’s imprinted ghost. Being more of a down-low, gun-toting choomba than a classic Street Samurai, Vincent “V” Carson thinks first and strikes second.

Vinnie isn’t much for electric guitars and anarchy in the UK, much less in the Free State of Southern California; but he does love the occasional Leonard Cohen ballad or the occasional shot of Johnny Cash’s melancholy. Having picked up something of a Northern Texas drawl while cruising, he might feel like Harry Dresden’s Good Ol’ Boy cousin, magic tricks here pushed aside in favor of a measure of dermal plating and a good ol’ fashioned twelve-gauge and revolver combo. Not being much of a techno-fetishist, he considers his optics and his skull jack as being begrudging concessions to an era that looks down on fully “ganic” types. Having grown up with TV serials and the occasional visor-based Braindance all depicting cyberpsychosis as something vile that utterly dehumanizes its sufferers, he’s naturally wary around anyone who seems a little too giddy with the prospect of taking a few scalpels to perfectly decent muscles and bones.

His Thornton is where most of his Eddies go, and yes, he’s named his truck Suzie. Suzie’s done right by him, and he’ll do right by her - unless someone else with a pretty smile and a working moral compass makes him swoon.

Street Kids: if you weren’t taught on the highways or in corporate arcologies, odds are you became a positive blip in an otherwise grim statistic, one of the myriad fucked-up kids raised by other fucked-up kids with more seniority than you. With no roads and paid-for nannies, you survived off of grifts, grit, violence, deceit, smarts and gumption - and that, in its own screwball way, creates its own blood ties. You’re wise by Heywood’s standards - streetwise, that is - and you speak the back-alleys’ lingua franca of threats, insinuation and casual intimidation like no other.

If only Jackie hadn’t fingered that Rayfield, huh? This beaut could’ve been paydirt! Well, at least for a week or so, judging by the fact that hundreds of car thefts are reported across Night City on a daily basis. At least, Dean - who also goes as “V” - got to make a new friend while out in the pokey, and managed to shake a few proverbial trees... They’ve got a short-lease in with Trauma Team’s frequency and could maybe hook themselves up with a sweet finder’s fee for anyone who’s on the verge of death at the hands of the city’s Scavengers...

Little does V know, that’s selling Trauma Team as well as their clients painfully short. Shows of gratitude don’t mean anything if you’re not packing the right social status. He barely remembers his birth parents as it is, and grew up the fifth grubby prospect of one of the Valentinos’ “school clubs” (hence the nickname) - where the points of study refer to the proper observances to be held in Jesus Malaverde’s presence, intensive Chicano and Spanish immersion, as well as the handling of common types of weaponry.

Vincent and Dean would be likely to shoot one another, if placed in the same room. One clings onto nearly-lost value systems, while the other commodifies what can be discarded like so much flesh - only inasmuch as his efforts to pacify his unofficial five or six abuelas force him to forego extensive modifications. His knives and wrist-mounted data port are his main tools of the trade, although Dean keeps his hacking creds along the bare minimum. Why bother, when melting an ATM’s ICE wall and whacking the cops with a baseball bat is all you need? There’s a type of gun for nearly anything else, if someone knows where to look...

Dean has no last name, and is consequently registered as “Dean Smith” in the city’s Census records. That doesn’t suggest, however, that he wouldn’t want to make one for himself. As he’s less focused on the city’s legends than on its kingmakers and pawn-movers, Dexter DeShawn strikes him as someone to emulate, watch and learn from - all with a decent degree of caution.

Being on top matters a little less to him than eventually pulling Heywood’s stings. With a little fear and a lot of persistence, Dean “V.” Smith knows that one day, he won’t go hungry on a weeknight. To that end, he’s certainly a hearty eater, here paired with extensive free-weight training regimens and the use of anabolic stimulants. Oh, sure, he’ll speak of family and blood like the best soldier festooned in Santa Muerte visual codices, but his friend Jackie’s got a mind like a slow and steady steel trap.

Either Dean blows his new fellow Street Samurai out of the pond, or he does. Unlike Jackie, however, Dean isn’t realistic about it. Friendships are a rare gift in Heywood, if not the rest of Night City, and Dean’s convinced that Jackie could conceivably look past his final betrayal.

Corpo: nowadays, we’re mostly familiar with the idea of one-percenters creating a bubble of affluence for themselves. Boarding schools, private villas, prebooked vacations across the globe’s priciest spots, access to the hottest trends on the minute of their inception - what this tends to forego is the level of social disconnect that’s required in order to stay relevant. We’re only just waking up to the consequences of letting an aging, crusty first-generation Yuppie be crowned the ruler of the free world, and even someone who’s behind on their Bret Easton Ellis could tell you that Donald J. Trump is a sociopath and a narcissist.

Take that mindset, and cultivate it into an ethos that’s taught to children from a very early age - children who live, eat, shit and breathe in accordance with their parent corporation’s tenets. The more placid, mid-tier lifers in the genre are called sararimen, in reference to William Gibson’s use of the term to designate low-level company workers in Chiba City. A bit like Shenzhen’s factory workers and execs, everything in a corpo’s life is in service to the corporation.

In Night City, as of 2077, two major players have installed this culture of total obedience in their roster. Their names are Militech and Arasaka. One is a juggernaut in the field of military-grade personal defence, the other has a wider grasp and reach, but is more fragile. Arasaka owes that fragility to the last fifty years having involved its re-establishment and reconstruction. Fifty years ago, Night City’s Corpo Plaza was blasted open by a thermonuclear discharge that sent the Japanese giant packing. The charges had been set by three Edgerunners: Rogue, Morgan Blackhand and Johnny Silverhand - accessorily a well-respected Rockerboy and front-line member of the band SAMURAI. Only Rogue survived that fateful night, or so the street lingo goes, having gone on to start a legitimate consultation business as well as a fruitful career in the hospitality business. Her bar, the Afterlife, is Night City’s hotspot for every techie, script kiddie and accomplished cyber-spelunker.

Our gal Vivian knows this. She knows this, because Vivian “V.” Banks lives two lives.

In one of them, she’s a lean and hungry Junior Executive in Arasaka’s Counter-Intel division. In that line of work, you either fuck someone’s prospects or protect your own, or ensure that no up-and-comer just out of the company’s Law School program manages to push you off the board. She knows full well that in centuries past, corpo-speak was made up of mild euphemisms that at best referred to destroying a rival’s prospects or lifelihood. Taking a life was something that required careful deliberation, especially when tossing a fat severance bonus into an aging CFO’s three-piece pockets and letting your erstwhile rival snort cocaine off of the rolling hips of Tahitian dancers was so much cheaper...

Nowadays, zeroing someone is commonplace.

You’re born for Arasaka, and chances are you’ll die for Arasaka just the same. Viv’s killed, lied, cheated and even stole her way to her position, remorse being this vaguely churning sense of coldness in her gut that keeps one-night stands coming in and out of her bedroom. She only remembers her parents as being credit-chip enablers and personal enhancement drug addicts, cutting ties with them so completely on the day of her official hiring that it felt more like a tacit understanding.

On most days, sex and booze keep the cold at bay. On most days, Vivian Banks is a class-act of a sociopath. The stronger she gets, however, and the more paranoid her targets become - which reinforces her own paranoia. Before long, playing the part of one of Arasaka’s several poisonous flowers won’t work anymore.

Unfortunately, she trusts no-one. No Fixer could put her in contact with any hacker she’d trust, no rando fresh off the street with a retro-tinted National Arms plinker would satisfy her. To climb up the ranks and maybe share tea with Old Man Saburo himself, she needs a spotless performance record. She needs skills.

More importantly, she needs a reputation. That means leaving Arasaka Tower and mingling with the experts in their own field - and it means filling out her back book of successful hits. The drinks at the Afterlife are decent enough, but what she’s after is an official in.

If she can get to Rogue, or maybe even hook up with a ripperdoc not bought and paid for by the company, she might be able to score both new skills and increased performance...

If it were as simple as slitting Janet’s throat in HR and diving her way to an orgiastic performance review quite innocently left on the department’s server, she would’ve done that already. Viv is my obvious Pure Stealth build candidate, my main-line hacker and would-be engineer with a thing for black power skirts and designer offensive augments.

With that said, we’re months ahead of schedule, all the good shit’s already come out, so we’re stuck playing the waiting game...

What are your own character or build ideas for Cyberpunk 2077?

#cyberpunk 2077 #spoilers #build ideas #characters #roleplaying

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aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

Best Upcoming Non-Western and POC Fantasy Books in 2020

https://ift.tt/3jP41EA

The world of fantasy is expanding (as you can see from the awesome, expansive titles we covered in 2019). While I still love a good tale of a farm boy from a feudal nation saving the kingdom (or the world), I’m thrilled that so many great titles from beyond the traditional fantasy white European setting (so, you know, a majority of the world) are hitting American bookshelves.

This list of most-anticipated non-western fantasies has some ongoing series titles, as well as conclusions to fantasy sagas, and brand new series starters. So whether you’ve been following titles inspired by world locations beyond western Europe, or whether you are brand new to this window into where the fantasy genre can go and has gone, we’ve got you covered. Here are some of the titles I’m most looking forward to this year.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in January

Woven in Moonlight by Isabel Ibañez

The Illustrians have been usurped, and Ximena, a stand-in for the last remaining Illustrian royal, is ready to seek revenge. When the usurper, Atoc, demands the hand of the Condesa in marriage, Ximena goes instead, seeking a chance to destroy the relic that brought Atoc to power. Ibañez drew inspiration on stories of revolution in Bolivia, where both of her parents are from, in creating this South American influenced fantasy world.

Read Woven in Moonlight by Isabel Ibanez on Amazon.

Scavenge the Stars by Tara Sim

This YA fantasy spin on The Count of Monte Cristo begins when Amaya rescues a mysterious stranger from drowning. Sure, she’ll face greater punishment aboard the debtor’s ship that has been her home for years, she instead finds herself rewarded. The only reward she wants? Revenge on those who have wronged her. But of course, revenge comes with its own costs, and as she becomes embroiled with the son of the man she wants to destroy, she uncovers truths that convince her to trust no one. The first in this duology comes from the author of the Timekeeper trilogy, and would pair well (for adult readers) with 2019’s excellent Queen of the Conquered, which has its own echoes of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Read Scavenge the Stars by Tara Sim on Amazon.

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

In this contemporary dystopian fantasy, Ella can see the future of others. Her powers alienate her from her family, including her younger brother Kevin, who was born on the day that the police officers who beat Rodney King were exonerated in court. Alternating between Ella and Kev’s perspectives, the story follows the siblings from Kev’s promising childhood into his incarceration—for being a young black man in America. When Ella, who vanished years before, begins to visit Kev through astral projection, she leads him through the memories of others that she has experienced, guiding him to possibilities for a different future. Onyebuchi’s #OwnVoices story shines light on the realities of the structural racism and brutality faced by contemporary black Americans.

Read Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi on Amazon.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in February

Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

Jane McKeen started putting down the restless dead in Dread Nation, and she’s back in the divided America of the 1880s. Summerland has fallen, but that doesn’t make Jane’s life any easier. Enemies are still around her, and she finds herself questioning if she really understands the world. It’s a good thing she’s got Katherine Deveraux watching her back. Kate never expected to be Jane’s ally, but she knows just exactly how important it is to have friends in a world as dangerous as this one. This sequel to Ireland’s celebrated first novel comes after Ireland penned a few Star Wars novels, and it’s great to see her back in the Weird West from a galaxy far far away.

Read Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland on Amazon.

The Seventh Sun by Lani Forbes

This Maya-and-Aztec-inspired series starter reveals that the sun is fading, despite all of Prince Ahkin’s efforts to the contrary. When he must select a bride from among six candidates—and sacrifice the other five—in order to ascend to the throne, he feels connected to Mayana. But the gods may be against them, and the world may be on the brink of a darker apocalypse.

Read The Seventh Sun by Lani Forbes on Amazon.

The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K. S. Villoso

A war tore Queen Talyien’s nation apart. A marriage was supposed to save it. But when her groom disappears, there’s no way to unite the rival clans of her nation, fracturing the kingdom. When, years later, he sends her a message requesting that they meet, she holds out hope that there will be peace—until someone tries to kill her. In order to save her people, and herself, she must become the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, that her enemies have called her. Villoso grew up in the Phillipines and draws inspiration from that setting. This novel was originally self-published in 2018, but the traditionally printed books launched this year for an expected trilogy.

Read The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K.S. Villoso on Amazon.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in March

Thorn by Intisar Khanani

I loved the self-published version of Thorn when it was first released in 2012, and I’m excited to see a fully revised, expanded version coming out this year from HarperTeen. Drawing inspiration from the story of the Goose Girl, the story revolves around Princess Alyrra, whose identity is stolen from her by a sorcerer, robbing her of her royalty—but also granting her a chance to start fresh, free from the expectations of her family. However, when she uncovers a plot that threatens the prince she was to marry, she must decide whether to remain silent, or return to the royal world she longed to escape. This new edition of the #OwnVoices novel also includes Khanani’s fantastic short story, “The Bone Knife.”

Read Thorn by Intisar Khanani on Amazon.

Night of the Dragon by Julie Kagawa

The eagerly awaited conclusion of Kagawa’s trilogy is almost here! This third book in the “Shadow of the Fox” series follows the cliffhanger ending of Soul of the Sword. Hopefully this installment will reveal what has happened to Kitsune shapeshifter Yumeko and her love-interest-slash-enemy, Kage Tatsumi, who was possessed by a demon.

Night of the Dragon by Julie Kagawa on Amazon.

Wicked as You Wish by Rin Chupeco

Tala doesn’t really care about magic—and she sometimes negates it accidentally. Her family is part Filipino—she descends from Maria Makiling, a Filipina heroine—and part tied to the old, disappeared country of Avalon. When the Snow Queen returns from the dead, and an Avaolian firebird shows up on Tala’s doorstep, she’s thrust into a dangerous world of spelltech in the Royal States of America…

Wicked as You Wish by Rin Chupeco on Amazon.

A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat

Although this Thai-inspired fantasy novel is geared toward middle graders, there’s no shortage of depth to the story. When prison-born Pong escapes, he discovers that the world he’d longed to see is just as unfair and impoverished as the one he left behind. The rich thrive in the supernatural lights of Chattana, but the poor remain struggling in the shadows. Nok, the prison warden’s daughter, is determined to bring Pong back inside before her family is at the center of a scandal. But her own experiences outside the prison make her question the truths she has long trusted. With inspiration drawn from Les Miserables, this middle grade fantasy also has plenty of adult appeal.

Buy A Wish in the Dark on Amazon.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in April

Incendiary by Zoraida Córdova

Renata is a memory thief, once in service of the king of Andalucia—though not of her own volition. She was kidnapped as a child and forced to carry out the King’s Wrath, leading to the deaths of thousands of her own people. Now, she has joined the rebellion, but even among the people who rescued her from the king, she is mistrusted. When she’s tasked with rescuing her commander—and love interest—from the palace, her rage and desire for revenge are tested. What will it cost her to keep her cover? Córdova is best known for the “Brookyn Brujas” series, and this Spain-set historical fantasy series starter is likely to feature some of the same appealing magic that made the contemporary fantasy series so popular.

Read Incendiary by Zoraida Cordova on Amazon.

The Ranger of Marzanna by Jon Skovron

This Russian-inspired epic fantasy features two siblings destined to oppose each other over the fate of the invading Empire. Sonya is training to be a ranger. Sebastian, her brother, is the world’s most powerful sorcerer. When their father is murdered by imperial soldiers, Sonya decides to take a stand against them, gathering together allies to push the invaders back. But Sebastian sides instead with the Empire, leading them to a final confrontation that will determine the fate of the world—and their family.

Buy The Ranger of Marzanna on Amazon.

The Red-Stained Wings by Elizabeth Bear

Set in the same world as Hugo-winner Bear’s epic “Eternal Sky” trilogy, The Red-Stained Wings continues the story of “The Lotus Kingdoms” she began in her 2017 novel The Stone in the Skull. Both books follow The Gage, a wizard-created brass automaton, and The Dead Man, a former bodyguard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, who work as mercenaries. In the first book they delivered a message, and now all the Lotus Kingdoms are at war because of it. (While The Red-Stained Wings originally released in hardcover last year, we missed it in our 2019 roundup, and Bear’s work is too good not to mention.)

Buy The Red-Stained Wings on Amazon.

Books

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi Review

By Kayti Burt

Books

The Infinite Noise: Interview with Lauren Shippen

By Kayti Burt

Race the Sands by Sarah Beth Durst

YA and middle grader readers will be familiar with Durst’s unique twist on fantasy stories, but her newest title gives adult audiences a chance to see her shine. Set in Becar, a land where your actions in life determine your next incarnation, the only way out of the cycle is to win the Races. Tamara and Raia, a trainer and a rider, work together to try to train a kehok—a monstrous mount—for Raia to ride in order for Raia to earn her freedom.

Read Race the Sands by Sarah Beth Durst on Amazon.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in May

The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna

This gorgeous cover grabbed me immediately, and this ancient West African-inspired fantasy with a strong female lead looks like it could join Tomi Adeyemi’s series as a YA hit. Deka is different from everyone else, with intuition that marks her as separate. All she wants is to be a normal member of her village—but when her blood is revealed to be gold, the color of impurity, she must choose death, or a fate as a warrior for the emperor. Skewing older than Rick Riordan’s demigod fantasies, but with shades of the Dora Milaje from the Black Panther, this is definitely an #OwnVoices series starter to watch for.

The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna on Amazon.

Empress of Flames by Mimi Yu

Lu and Min, the warring sisters of The Girl King, continue their battle over the Empire of the First Flame in this epic sequel. Lu, the firstborn, was destined to rule, and Min, blessed with magic, grew tired of being in her sister’s shadow. Now, while the sisters plot for the throne, a greater threat arises outside their empire—but even if they work together, they might lose everything.

Read Empress of Flames by Mimi Yu on Amazon.

The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

This pirate swashbuckling adventure full of Asian folklore stars Flora, an orphan girl who takes on the identity of Florian to gain respect from a pirate crew, and Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, whose dreaded arranged marriage is interrupted by pirates. The two are thrust together, forming an unlikely bond that leads them to team up to rescue a mermaid and escape their fates—if they can survive the sea, a witch, and the Pirate Supreme himself.

The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall on Amazon.

Lobizona by Romina Garber

Argentine folklore comes to life in Miami in this #OwnVoices contemporary novel that tackles real-world issues of the treatment of undocumented immigrants—and the fantastic problems of descending from a bruja and a lobizón, a werewolf. Manuela Azul is hiding from her father’s Argentine crime family in Miami. When her mother is arrested by ICE, Manu makes more discoveries about her family than she’s ready for—including the fact that, according to the rules of her family’s magical world, she’s not supposed to exist…

Read Lobizona by Romina Garger on Amazon.

The Archer at Dawn by Swati Teerdhala

This sequel to last year’s The Tiger at Midnight continues the story of the legendary rebel, Viper, in a saga based on Hindu mythology. Esha, known as Viper, and her partner Kunal infiltrate the court of King Vardaan. But while getting into the palace is easy, completing the tasks they set out to do may make them question their loyalties—to their countries, and to each other. This is the second book of a trilogy, so readers may need to expect a cliffhanger…

Read The Archer at Dawn by Swati Teerdhala on Amazon.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in June

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

Sirens have to hide their powers—and Tavia is determined to keep her identity a secret rather than be forced to follow the restrictions against her people. At least she has her best friend, Effie, to help her navigate high school. But soon, Effie has to face the literal demons of her past, and Tavia’s powers are revealed in the worst moment possible. Black mermaids are taking the spotlight between Disney’s live action The Little Mermaid and Rivers Solomon’s excellent The Deep, and this #OwnVoices YA novel looks like another excellent addition to that growing subgenre. (Disclosure: this novel is not #OwnVoices for mermaids; as far as I know, Morrow is not a siren in hiding.)

Read A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow on Amazon.

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown

A Crown Princess who seeks to resurrect her dead mother by sacrificing the heart of a king. A war-stricken young man, whose only way to save his sister is to kill the Crown Princess. Fate has different plans for both of them…. Princess Karina plans to offer her hand in marriage to the winner of the Solstasia festival in order to kill her new husband and bring her mother back from the dead. Malik enters the competition, hoping to get close enough to kill Karina, so that he can save his sister from a vengeful spirit. But when their two paths collide, the two find that everything is more complicated than they expected. Brown’s debut, the first of a duology with a sequel due out next year, is inspired by West African folklore, and features plenty of tension between the two POV leads. (Malik’s sweetness and anxiety make him an unusual protagonist for many reasons, and there are reasons he’s come away as the fan favorite character.)

Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

Lee might not be returning to the world of his middle-grade Korean-mythology space fantasy or his hard SF space opera, but the launch of a new fantasy series, full of magical automata, is just as exciting. When a symbol painter’s Phoenix Extravagant—the material they need to create pigments to program the automata—they set out to find the source. But the secrets of the Empire may be darker than the painter ever imagined. This #OwnVoices novel features a nonbinary main character in an Asian-inspired fantasy setting, and it’s at the top of my must-read list for 2020.

Read Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee on Amazon.

The Unconquered City by K. A. Doore

Doore’s “Chronicles of Ghadid” come to a conclusion in this third, action packed volume of assassins and warriors. Illi remembers the rise of the restless dead, and she works to protect her city from the guuls that travel the dunes. And Illi knows a secret that could allow her to end the threat of the dead—but only if she’s willing to risk sacrificing everything.

Read The Unconquered City by K.A. Doore on Amazon.

The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty

In the concluding volume of Chakraborty’s #OwnVoices “Daevabad Trilogy,” con-artist Nahri and exiled prince Ali are back in 18th Century Cairo after fleeing fallen Daevabad. But neither of them feel right having left their loved ones behind under the rule of a tyrant. Together with the djinn Dara, they have to find a way to remake the world. Den of Geek has been following this trilogy since book one, and it’s exciting to watch this series come to a conclusion.

The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty on Amazon.

Books

The City of Brass: A Conversation with S.A. Chakraborty

By Kayti Burt

Books

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty Review

By Kayti Burt

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

One of my favorite discoveries last year was Gods of Jade and Shadow, and while Moreno-Garcia takes this story in an entirely different direction with an all new cast, this re-envisioning of the gothic suspense genre in a Mexican setting looks to be just as fantastic. Noemí is a brave socialite called to rescue her cousin from a mysterious doom. When she arrives, she’s not sure whether the threat comes from her cousin’s intimidating English husband—or from the house itself, which plagues her dreams with visions of blood. Set in the 1950s, this #OwnVoices historical looks likely to feature the same kind of strong, unstoppable heroine as her 2019 title, twisting the tropes of another genre with a dose of horror.

Read Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia on Amazon.

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

“A bandit walks into a coffeehouse, and it all goes downhill from there,” according to the marketing hook for this one—and I have to admit, that has me hooked! This novella from Sorcerer to the Crown writer Cho is a wuxia fantasy with a female lead in far over her head. Guet has to team up with a group of thieves in order to protect a sacred object.

Read The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water on Amazon.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in July

Unravel the Dusk by Elizabeth Lim

This sequel to Lim’s Spin the Dawn continues the story of Maia Tamarin, once tailor to the king, and now cursed with demon blood. When she completed three impossible dresses and freed the trapped magician who served the emperor, she set into motion events that now have far-reaching consequences. Maia must assume the place of the emperor’s bride to keep the peace—but as she begins to lose herself to the demon curse, she also plans for a future for her family, and the magician that she loves, even if she herself doesn’t survive.

Read Unravel the Dusk by Elizabeth Lim on Amazon.

We Free the Stars by Hafsah Faizal

Zafir and Nasir are supposed to be enemies, but when they were brought together in We Hunt the Flame, they found that nothing is as simple as they thought. Now, both on a hunt for the same lost artifact, they find a far deeper evil than either has before experienced, and realize that their prize may be more dangerous than they can imagine. This is the second in Faizal’s #OwnVoices “Sands of Arawiya” series, and should relieve readers who have been waiting since the first novel’s cliffhanger ending.

Read We Free the Stars by Hafsah Faizal on Amazon.

The Crow Rider by Kalyn Josephson

In this sequel to Josephson’s The Storm Crow, Princess Anthia (Thia) continues her plans to defeat the invading Illucian empire and restore Rhodaire. But her giant crow, Res, injures her when he’s unable to control his own magic, adding complications to their plans. Worse, Thia is being pursued by the Illucian Crown Prince, to whom she is irresistibly drawn. Can Thia become the crow rider she was meant to be, and reclaim her stolen kingdom? The Crow Rider concludes Josephson’s duology, set in a melting pot fantasy world.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in August

Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar

Neil Gaiman’s Stardust meets Hindu mythology? Yes, please! Sheetal is the daughter of a mortal and a star. In order to save her father, she must travel to the celestial courts and serve as a champion in her mother’s family in a tournament. If she doesn’t succeed, she may never be able to return to Earth—or save her father’s life. This is a standalone #ownvoices fantasy novel that looks like it would definitely appeal to readers who loved Roshani Chokshi’s The Star Touched Queen.

Read Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar on Amazon.

Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

When most YA novels deal with immigration issues, the word “alien” doesn’t involve UFOs. Gilliand throws that expectation right out the window, creating a powerful first-person narration from the voice of a Latina who still communicates with her dead grandmother (and kitchen spirits). The narrative tackles not only undocumented immigration, human trafficking, and issues of sexual harassment and assault, but also UFOs, alien and government conspiracies, and human experimentation. The mashup of genres is unbelievably smoothly done, considering the disparate tones usually used for each, and the result is an amazing, un-put-downable novel with short chapters that inspire readers to keep going for just one more…

Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko

Debut author Ifueko introduces readers to a new world, where the Raybearer is guided by his Council of Eleven, each of whom has a Hallow, or magical power, to help him rule. Lonely Tarisai has been raised by The Lady to get close enough to the Crown Prince to kill him. But when Tarisai becomes a member of the Council, she finds the belonging she has always sought. Can she forge her own path, and fight the order she’s been compelled to obey? The first in a new series, Raybearer is inspired by West African mythology, and features a strong cast and a protagonist whose voice makes you want to root for her—whatever she decides.

Nujran and the Corpse in the Quadrangle by Krishna Sudhir

In this sequel to the 2017 Nujran and the Monks of Meirar, Sudhir mixes the mystery genre with Indian mythology. There’s a murder on campus that needs to be solved, but Nujran has even more to deal with: kidnapping, a prison escape, a reunion with a certain group of monks, and a new romance. It’s a lot for a college student to handle—and with a mysterious illness plaguing the teachers, there’s a lot depending on Nujran to solve the mystery! Though this is the second book in a series, it stands alone, and readers can pick up the story as they go.

Dominion: An Anthology of Black Speculative Fiction, edited by Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald

We don’t normally include anthologies on this list, but Dominion is too good to miss. The thirteen stories, written by writers from Africa and the African diaspora, range from fantasies with gods and ghosts to post-apocalyptic science fiction. Some of the tales border on horror, while others feature magicians and middle-managers. Many of the stories force their protagonists to face their dead—whatever that may mean for the story. It’s a unique collection and it’s well worth picking up and discovering a new favorite short story.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in September

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Julian Diaz wants to know why he’s dead, so it’s a good thing Yadriel summoned him—accidentally—instead of the ghost he meant to bring back. Now Yadriel can’t get rid of Julian without helping the ghost tie up some loose ends. As the two spend more time together, Yadriel realizes he doesn’t really want Julian to leave after all. This novel features a Latinx trans boy determined to prove his gender to his family in a really intriguing #OwnVoices YA fantasy debut.

Read Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas on Amazon.

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

When Lin’s father, the Emperor, passes her over as his heir, she decides to take matters into her own hands, practicing the forbidden art of bone shard magic. But Lin isn’t the only one determined to take the throne, and the revolution at the palace gates may cost her everything. This first book in the “Drowning Empire” series is Stewart’s debut, and while the world is not specifically non-western inspired, Stewart is the Chinese American daughter of immigrants, and her new setting with its migratory islands is sure to grab the interest of readers who love fresh takes on fantasy.

Buy The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart on Amazon.

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

This contemporary magical King Arthur-adjacent story, featuring a strong female lead who’s torn between taking down the Legendborn—descendents of King Arthur’s knights—for the secrets they hide from the world, or joining them in a fight against darker magical forces. Bree believes that her mother has died in an accident, until a “Merlin” attempts to wipe her memories of a magical event. Instead, Bree’s own magic is unlocked, and when she discovers another Merlin was hospitalized the night her mother died, she’s determined to uncover the secrets of the magical world. But the more she learns, the more she realizes there’s more at stake: war is coming, and Bree has to choose whose side she’s on.

Wayward Witch by Zoraida Córdova

You may have detected some excitement about Córdova’s anthology, Vampires Never Get Old, here at Den of Geek. But in addition to that Halloween perfect title, the conclusion to Córdova’s epic “Brooklyn Brujas” series also came out this fall. The award-winning series, the story of three sisters who develop their magical powers, launched with Labyrinth Lost in 2016. In this final volume, Rose is pulled through a magical portal to Adas, a magical land she has to save. Can saving another world help Rose figure out how to heal her own broken family? As Rose comes into her powers, she discovers she just may have what it takes to save herself. Fans of the series will not want to miss this finale!

The Ikessar Falcon by K. S. Villoso

The second book of the “Bitch Queen” trilogy is here! The series launched with a traditional publisher earlier this year, and in the sequel, Queen Talyien, now abandoned by her people, faces her failure to save her nation. In order to protect her king and her son, she must dismantle the myth that others have built around her—the myth she could never become. With mad dragons on one side and power-hungry men on the other Talyien’s road home is dangerous, but if she doesn’t triumph, her nation may pay the price.

Zorro’s Shadow: How a Mexican Legend Became America’s First Superhero by Stephen J. C. Andes

If superheroes are modern fantasy, the combination of legend and superhero deserves a place on this list, even if the exploration is nonfiction. Did you know that Zorro first appeared in 1919? The swashbuckling hero who fought for the poor and impoverished, while hiding his identity behind the foppish Don Diego, definitely set the stage for future cape-wearing heroes with secret-identities. But Zorro is more than just a precursor of that genre; Andes argues that he represents a Latinx, multiethnic, multicultural America. If you’ve loved Zorro in pop culture, taking a peek into the history behind the character is a must.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in October

Storm the Earth by Rebecca Kim Wells

Maren and Kaia may be reunited in this explosive conclusion to the Shatter the Sky duology, but their journey has changed them. Maren remains determined to set the dragons free, and to rescue their friend, Sev, now trapped by the emperor. Though Maren knows that she will fight, she’s not sure who will survive once the battle is over…

Read Storm the Earth by Rebecca Kim Wells on Amazon.

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Roanhorse’s Anasazi-inspired fantasy novel isn’t out until October, but the book is hitting many anticipated-fantasy lists of 2020. It’s no surprise, as Roanhorse is one of the most celebrated voices in fantasy right now, with a Nebula, Hugo, and Campbell all under her belt. While you’re waiting for more on this title, you can pick up the first two books in her Sixth World series, her Star Wars novel, or her 2020 middle-grade fantasy Race to the Sun.

Read Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse on Amazon.

Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

Lee might not be returning to the world of his middle-grade Korean-mythology space fantasy or his hard SF space opera, but the launch of a new fantasy series, full of magical automata, is just as exciting. When a symbol painter’s Phoenix Extravagant—the material they need to create pigments to program the automata—runs out, they set out to find the source. But the secrets of the Empire may be darker than the painter ever imagined. This #OwnVoices novel features a nonbinary main character in an Asian-inspired fantasy setting, and it’s at the top of my must-read list for 2020.

Of Fury and Fangs by Kyoko M.

In this fourth novel in the “Of Cinder and Bone” series, someone is trying to kill Dr. Rhett “Jack” Jackson. As one of the two scientists—alongside Dr. Kamala Anjali—who brought dragons back to life after their previous extinction, Jack has a lot of enemies. Jack and Kamala plan to solve the mystery of who wants Jack dead, but finding the truth may cost more than they expected. The “Of Cinder and Bone” series mixes science fiction and fantasy, flooding a contemporary SF setting with dragons, and adding a hefty dose of thriller in for good measure.

God Storm by Coco Ma

In this sequel to Ma’s 2019 novel, Shadow Frost, Asterin has evaded her mother’s attempt at murdering her and has risen to become queen. But the cost was high, and Asterin lost both her lifelong friend and her true love. Now, she realizes that her friends are being held by the God of Shadow. What Asterin chooses won’t just change the fate of her friends, it might change the fate of the whole mortal world.

The Shadow of Hades by Paul C. Williams

Four stories intertwine in this paranormal fantasy novel that deals with themes of grief. In one tale, a boy with no memory wakes in a graveyard; eventually he discovers the souls of the dead residing within him. In another, the fabric of the universe is coming undone in a magical wood, and the local residents have to come together to heal the breech. Eventually, the four stories merge into a single whole, an exploration of what the characters are willing to sacrifice to confront their own demons. Williams is a Black-Hispanic, LGBTQ teen author who published his first book at age seventeen; his exploration of grief and death is dark, but also offers readers a spark of hope.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in November

The Conductors by Nicole Glover

A historical mystery crossed with a fantasy novel, this debut focuses on former Underground Railroad conductor Hetty Rhodes and her husband as they make their post-Civil War life in Philadelphia, solving mysteries the white authorities ignore. Hetty’s used to using her wits and her magic, and her new life is no different—especially when it comes to uncovering truths about the Black Elite of Philadelphia.

Read The Conductors by Nicole Glover on Amazon.

The Burning God by R. F. Kuang

The third, eagerly anticipated book in “The Poppy War” series sticks-the-landing (according to Kuang, quoting her editor in a Twitter post). The story finishes Rin’s saga in a world reminiscent of 20th Century, but filled with gods and monsters.

Read The Burning God by R.F. Kuang on Amazon.

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The Fires of Vengeance by Evan Winter

Winter’s sequel to last year’s The Rage of Dragons follows Tau as he continues fighting a war his people have been waging for generations. In a world where some women can summon dragons and some men can magically transform into larger, stronger versions of themselves, Tau has already realized that there are greater costs to the endless war than the Omehi have admitted to their people. Alongside Tsiora, the ousted queen of the Omehi, Tau strives to delay an attack by the indigenous people of Xidda, all while the queen makes a dangerous plan to retake the throne from her sister. The reviews of The Rage of Dragons make that novel sound un-put-downable, so expect another page turner when this one hits the shelves.

Buy The Fires of Vengeance on Amazon.

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

What happens if you take Romeo and Juliet, reset it in 1920s Shanghai, then add a magical creature that drives people mad? Chloe Gong explores the answer in her YA historical fantasy. Juliette Cai has returned to Shanghai, proud to take on the role of heir to the Scarlet Gang. Roma Montagov is heir to the Scarlet Gang’s rivals, the Russian White Flowers. But while both gangs—and heirs—are prepared to war with each other, a deeper danger is rising from the depths of the Huangpu River, and the only cure to the creature’s madness comes from the Westerners in the city, who have their own motives. Unless Juliette and Roma can put aside their differences, Shanghai might fall. This is the first in a duology, to keep watching for Gong’s sequel to find out the fates of these two star-crossed lovers.

Most Anticipated Non-Western Fantasy Books in December

King of the Rising by Kacen Callender

Last year’s stunning Queen of the Conquered blew me away with its moral ambiguity and it’s gorgeous and terrible fantasy Caribbean setting. I had no idea Callender was planning a sequel, but I am incredibly excited to see where she takes the world, especially with the first novel’s secondary character Loren as the point of view character in this sequel. In the first novel, when Sigourney played the catalyst for a slave revolt—that led to her own unmaking, as well—Loren was one of the revolutionaries pulling her strings, and was the man who spoke up to request mercy for her. Now, with this former slave, the child of a colonist, at the forefront of the story, readers will get a very different view of the islands, and I cannot wait to see where this narrative takes us.

Buy King of the Rising by Kacen Callender on Amazon.

The post Best Upcoming Non-Western and POC Fantasy Books in 2020 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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Writing Craft: The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing Ch1

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The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing Chapter 1: Taming the Beast by N.M Kelby

In this article the author compares creating and refining your story ideas to training a dog. I’m going to leave out the metaphor and just give the bare bones of the advice.

The biggest take away from the first section is: “Ideas often start with boundless energy, vying for your attention. But when you get them on the page, they don’t always live up to how you thought they would be” pg. 5

This is a huge issue, especially for new writers. You finally get words on a page but immediately get discouraged because it’s not as good as it seemed in your head and/or your inner critic takes hold and trashes your efforts. (Whether that trashing is justified or not is a moot point) Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Before I get into this specific author’s take I want to throw out a couple ‘standard’ thoughts on the subject.

‘You can’t edit a blank page.’ It’s one of those truisms that make me want to bash my head into a wall whenever I encounter it, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Basically try to think of your writing, especially first drafts, as practice. You’re not going to start out perfect but the more you work on it the better you’ll get at it, and by extension the better the piece itself will get. If you come to the table thinking your writing needs to be perfect, you’re just setting yourself up for failure.

‘All art is a work in progress, even when it’s finished.’ I don’t think I’ve seen this stated anywhere but given the number of times I’ve seen authors complain about parts of their published works they wish they’d done differently, I’m just going to throw it out there. Perfection is unattainable and someone will always find fault in what you do. So don’t try and be perfect, try instead to a) be consistent and b) improve your vision. And what I mean by that is develop a writing routine that works for you and make sure when you write and edit you’re making the story clearer for the reader. For first drafts that’s simple because anything you write will be clearer than nothing. (okay, given some of the garbage that’s come out of my head that’s not strictly true but even bad writing is practice on the way to good writing so it’s still useful)

Establish a calm, centered mind

In this section the author gives their thoughts on creating your writing space, writing routine, and not siking yourself out.

“Nonexistent boundaries, unfocused expectations, and lack of routine are the writer’s downfall.” pg. 5

Okay, I’ll agree with this to a point. Especially when you’re first starting out developing your writing habits, and making sure the people around you respect that, can be crucial. However, don’t get so rigid that you can’t adapt to change. Shit happens and you may need to adjust either for life or because your writing needs themselves evolve and change. The best way for you to write right now, may not still be the best way in six months or a year. It’s best not to assume what does and doesn’t work for you now will always be the same. As to the part about expectations… that’s going to be very specific to each author. It’s good to have goals for your writing but if the thought of a specific word count or getting an entire chapter out stresses you out to the point you can’t write, chose a less concrete goal. Anything from I’ll spend at least ten minutes free writing or brainstorming and then see what I can get done on my current WIP to I’ll spend ten minutes thinking about ideas are completely valid. Yes, at some point you want to get words on paper, but forcing yourself to write on demand is a process and it’s usually a bad idea to frustrate yourself to the point you just give up.

The author makes some other points that I’ll summarize: Don’t panic, nothing’s perfect the first time around. Some writing days are better than others, it’s okay to take a break or sleep on it. Don’t place yourself in competitive situations while you’re working on a book. Don’t compare you WIP to the latest bestseller. Write from an authentic part of yourself. Set a pace that works for you and don’t compare it to others. (pgs. 5 & 6)

This is overall good advice in my opinion. The words ‘Don’t Panic’ always bring to mind Hitchers Guide to the Galaxy for me and it’s sound advice. Unless you’re working on a deadline there really isn’t a need to panic, and even then, all it’s likely to do is make things worse.

Some writing days are better than others. This is true no matter who you are. It doesn’t have to mean that your actual writing is bad either. All this means is that some days you won’t be on your A game, at least not for the project you’re currently focusing on. If you need to step away, do it. If you need to work on something else, do that. If you need to completely rework something you already wrote, go for it. Don’t get upset if your brain won’t focus where you think it needs to be. Trust your subconscious to know when you need a breather.

Don’t place yourself in competitive situations. Okay, this one is person specific. Some people thrive off of competition while others shut down completely. You need to feel out what’s best for you but at the beginning it can be one more stressor that sets you up for failure. My suggestion would be to get into a seminormal writing habit before you add something like this into the mix, but again, everyone is different.

Don’t compare you WIP to a bestseller. This should be self evident but almost everyone does it. You think about how much better published works are compared to yours and it freaks you out. The thing about published works is that you don’t see everything that happened before. All the starts and stops and horrible prose that was edited out. It’s the difference between seeing a car for sale at a dealer and seeing it at the beginning of the assembly line in the manufacturing plant. Comparing the two is obviously going to make your WIP look like garbage, at least to you, and that’s not conducive to keeping you excited about your project.

Set a pace that works for you. Basically everything is about what works for you, but in this case it just means don’t compare yourself to authors that put out a book every six months and assume you’re lacking in some way. Especially as a new writer you need to figure out so much before you even worry about pace. Fast is not necessarily good and slow isn’t necessarily bad. Just find your own rhythm and screw anyone who thinks it’s wrong.

Study Your Breed

This section is basically a suggestion that you should figure out the standards that your readers will expect from you in a certain genre so that you know what you can and can’t put in a story. It’s sound advice to a point, and certainly it’s helpful to know what the conventions are before you break them, but this is another one of those issues that’s writer specific.

Yes, if you label a book as a mystery and there’s no mystery people will be a bit peeved. This goes more to story structure in my opinion and some writers my find it constricting to even label their work as a specific genre at the onset, let alone force their writing into a certain mold.

The writer of this article strikes me as a plotter, so if you’re not this may be something you need to look into after you’ve finished a draft to help with getting it published, but if you get stressed out thinking about it before you even start, just ignore it until then. If, on the other hand, you plan everything out in advance, it's very helpful to have genre guidelines to add to your roadmap so you know you’re hitting the right concepts.

Also don’t confuse structure with how you tell a story. The author gives the example of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Wicked. Two stories set in the same basic world and time with vastly different tellings. Given the same plot, it’s unlikely bordering on impossible that two authors will come up with the same story. (I only say bordering on because someone will find an example of it happening just to spite me if I say it’s actually impossible)

Train Your Focus

This section more than any other is what tells me this Author is a plotter. I had to try and read it a few times before my brain didn’t immediately ‘nope’ out. This is one of those things that I needed to read with the thought that I could implement this in the editing rather than the creation stage, but here’s the jist of the authors advice.

“Everything in the story must work to tell the tale.” Pg 8 Sound advice but this author is talking about making all these decisions upfront and not working on anything that doesn’t fit into your outline. Personally I can’t do that, but it seems rather rigid even for a plotter. To each their own though. She says to brainstorm but when it comes time to write, don’t put things in just because you like them. Again, as a pantser this advice is useless to me until the editing phase when I need to fix things because I’ll have no idea if it advances the story until I’m done with it. For plotters it may make sense to do it this way. I will say that no writing is wasted writing. Even if you can’t use it for what you’re currently writing, save everything because you may find a place for it later. The same goes for research. You took the time to do it so don’t throw it out just because you decided not to use it for one project.

Walk Your Inner Dog

This is basically a summary and example of her advice so far but there are two things that are new.

“While you write a book, it’s art. When you’re finished, it’s business. Never confuse the two.” Pg. 10 In other words, don’t worry about marketability until you’re finished writing. This is a highly contentious subject. Some people will tell you you have to consider marketability from the start, others say that it will destroy what will make your writing stand out. As I’ve never published a book, I don’t have a good opinion, but considering I have an issue with ‘write with the reader in mind’ I’m pretty sure it would break my brain if I was constantly trying to decide if my writing would sell.

From Idea to Page in Four Simple Steps.

“You need to realistically outline and throw out what bogs readers down.” Pg 10 Okay, again, this isn’t something that will work for me in the creation stage but it’s something I need to implement in editing. If you can do it at the onset, it will be less work later, but not everyone can see the story in advance.

Step 1: Always begin with your protagonist. This advice is more about making sure they show up within the first page or so of the story than saying that you have to begin your brainstorming around a specific character. It’s solid advice so that your readers have a character to be invested in at the onset.

Step 2: Establish time and place. This is again for the reader. If they’re wondering where the characters are they can lose focus. I don’t necessarily agree that it’s always necessary but it’s a fair general guideline to follow if you’re unsure.

Step 3: Announce the Stakes. In other words, why should we care? Conflict drives story so the sooner you introduce it, no matter how small, the better in most cases. Not many readers are willing to go through five pages of description before you tell them why any of it matters.

Step 4: Organize. For plotters this happens at the beginning and all the way through. For most pantsers it happens at the end, but eventually it does need to be done.

That’s it for Chapter 1 and I think my thoughts were longer than the actual chapter, so sorry about that. Let me know if this was helpful or if you’d rather I be more succinct.

AO3 Intro Next

Kofi

Tag List

@magica-est-in-aerem @18-fandoms-unite-08 @xxxshinx @whatsupwithjinx @krispydefendorpolice @corabeth11 @claaydoh @dramatic-squirrel @novicevoice @mariae2900 @rebecarojas07

#writing craft #books on writing #writing advice

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dkquills · 5 years

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WRITING HARD AND SOFT MAGIC

The best way I can think to differentiate between these two would be to discuss the difference between Edward Elric, in Fullmetal Alchemist, and Gandalf, from The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series’.

Edwards magic utilizes the Hard Magic system. This is because his alchemy has limitations and very clear rules. “The Law of Equivalent Exchange” being the primary one.

This goes along with the laws of physics that you can neither destroy or create matter or energy. Like you wouldn’t be able to make an apple disappear completely or growing it to the size of a house. However, you can make water boil in an instant, because you’re just making the molecules move incredibly fast, you’re not adding or taking from it.

Furthermore, you can’t turn a kitten into an alarm clock because they’re made out of utterly different things, however you can make a spear out of part of a steel pipe, or a pile of wood into a chair. Under this premise, if you were skilled enough you could heal wounds by stitching flesh back together, but unable to regrow a whole limb because you’d need more flesh and bone to build it.

There are also enormous repercussions for doing alchemy incorrectly or spells that deal with souls. Trying to bring someone back from the dead could kill you or leave you missing a few organs at least.

Why put limitations on magic at all? Why not just have a character grow wings or float when they’re plummeting to their death? Why not just have a convenient spell for said problem and just yell, “BECAUSE MAGIC!”

While this sort of logic is fun in a children’s show (I have a five year old and see it constantly), as adults we would likely find this boring and hollow. Magic needs consequences, just like every other action, and it should apply as such.

That being said, there is also a certain way to go about writing with a Soft Magic system and still keep things interesting.

With the exception of Tolkien’s habit of summoning giant eagles whenever he’s written himself into a corner...

"EAGLLLEEEEE!"

...Gandalf’s magic is largely unexplained as is the rest of the magic in his world. He turns smoke into boats, create semi-living fireworks, crack stones with a wooden staff, heal mental madness, and create beams of light bright enough to drive away Fell Beasts and Nazgul. Not to mention fight off the Balrog and win. This world has magic seeing orbs, sentient trees, and undead kings that hunt in the darkness. None of which are truly explained, but that’s not exactly a bad thing.

This does, however, leave one to question, “Why doesn’t Gandalf just march into the lonely mountain and boot Smaug out?” or “If he can summon eagles, then why didn’t he just give the ring to one of his buddies to fly it over Mordor and drop it in the volcano?” And honestly, I don’t really have a great answer. That’s the thing about Soft Magic systems. They’re more arcane and unexplained, therefore Gandalf may have limits we do not see.

I recall the scene where the Dwarves ask Gandalf to make the rain stop, to which Gandalf replies, “It is raining, Master Dwarf, and it will keep raining until it is done.” Meanwhile he’s getting soaked too, so therefore he does have limits… Or he’s being snarky. It’s tough to tell.

He also tells Galadriel that he brought Bilbo along because, “it makes him feel brave.”

These moments show that while he can do wonderous things, there are limits that only he knows. The fact that we, as the reader, don’t know them is inconsequential to the story.

You also see this in other stories like The Chronicles of Narnia, Star Wars, and Wizard of Oz.

That being said, there are hybrid versions of magic that can be seen in modern media. The Harry Potter / Fantastic Beasts universe has some excellent examples of this. As does, The Witcher, and Avatar the Last Airbender series.

Personally, I lean more toward the Hard Magic systems. I like structure and explanation, even if it is magic. However, if you’re going toward an air of mystique and the unknown, then maybe the Soft Magic direction is best for you.

Whatever you choose, as a writer I encourage you to at least take Brandon Sanderson’s Laws of Magic into account.

1- An authors ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how the readers understand said magic.

2- The author should expand on what is already part of the magic system before something entirely new is added, as this may otherwise entirely change how the magic system fits into the functioning world.

3- Weaknesses, limits, and costs are more important than powers.

Sources:

Sanderson’s Three Laws: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Sanderson%27s_Laws_of_Magic

Hickson, Timothy- On Writing and Worldbuilding, volume 1

#writting #magic #hard magic #soft magic #lotr #fma

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theshatteredrose · 4 years

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Fighting For You (Chapter 10 - Final) - Trials of Mana Fanfiction

AN: It’s cold, windy, rainy, and dark – perfect time to write and update, is it not? :’D And we’re up to the last chapter! Writing guys in distress is so much fun. I should definitely do it more often. Anyway, big thank you so much to everyone who has read and interacted with this story in some way. I truly appreciate it! And I hope you enjoy reading~

Chapter 10:

Duran’s chest ached and he was so dizzy that he could barely see straight. But having the free movement of his arms and legs gave him a feeling of euphoria. As was the weight of his sword.

The chains were painful, the vines even more so. But those flowers…when they bloomed…

That was a pain he had never experienced before in his life.

The flowers felt as though they cut into his very soul. And from what Agnar had revealed (as little as it was), they likely were attacking his soul. To take away his skills, his strengths, his knowledge of the sword would mean cutting him to his very core.

“You sure you’re up for this?” Hawkeye asked him, his concern for him still prevalent.

Truthfully, he didn’t feel his best. And was sure he didn’t look it either. But he was through being helpless and useless.

Hawkeye and Kevin had done so much for him. It was his turn to do something for them in return. If the only thing he could do was to help in the battle against Agnar, then he would do that. He would do that to the best of his ability.

The pain and discomfort would be sorted with later. It wasn’t as important as ending this ridiculous situation.

“I’m all right now,” Duran insisted as he and Hawkeye raced outside. “More than able to put an end to this.”

Kevin had managed to keep Agnar outside the mansion, often simply grabbing him by his armour and just hurling him back several feet. And yet, despite the clear thrashing he had received, Agnar continued to stand and fight.

It shouldn’t be that surprising. He did steal the strength and skills of seven swordsmen. And had the knowledge of black magic.

Defeating him for good wasn’t going to be easy.

“Arg, why?” Kevin all but whined, frustrated. “Why can’t I defeat you?”

“He is nothing more than a shadow,” Shade explained. “A powerful shadow, that is true. His sole focus is the way of the sword. And only a swordsman can finally put this to rest.”

Duran nodded his head sharply. “Looks like it’s up to me.”

“Duran? You ok?” Kevin asked as he paced over to him, still in his beastman form. His previous rage abating when he saw that Duran was free from his prison and up on his feet.

“I’m alright now,” Duran insisted as he gave him a hopefully confident smile. “Thanks for weakening him for me, Kevin.”

Kevin was undeniably pleased with his reply, his wolfen features, usually quite fearsome, stretched into a happy-puppy smile. But that lasted for only a few seconds, disappearing at another sound. An unfortunately familiar sound of something crawling their way through the dirt and grass.

Zombies.

And Agnar moved to stand tall once again. Though his armour was torn and fractured, he still moved readily. And with a sense of purpose.

Duran immediately wielded his sword before him defensively, mindful of the ground beneath his feet. The very last thing he needed was to be grabbed by those smelly, grubby zombies again. He wasn’t in the best state. He only had enough strength to unleash one attack.

He had to concentrate on the real threat.

Agnar was his target.

“Hawkeye, Kevin; I need your help with this. Distract the zombies for me. This battle won’t go on for any longer than it already has.”

Hawkeye immediately moved to flank his right. “You got it!”

And Kevin moved to his left. “Right!”

As Hawkeye and Kevin easily took out the zombies as they crawled up from the ground, Duran engaged in a stare down with Agnar. Though, stare-down probably wasn’t the right phrase, but Agnar was fully focused in on him. Taking slow, methodical, and purposely intimidating steps toward him. Armour battered and torn, sword by his side.

Duran ignored his fatigue and the lingering pain in his chest. He knew, however, that his current energy would not be able to sustain him for very much longer.

One attack. That was all he could manage.

It was all that he needed.

If Agnar was so interested in his skills, there was no harm in showing him!

“Spin Slash!”

With each slash of his sword, each well-aimed attack, amongst the fury of wind he thought about the poor seven swordsmen that lost their skills and their lives to Agnar’s bitterness and greed. The pain they had endured. Suffering through the flowers as they bloomed one by one. All alone. No one to help them.

Each swordsman was completely innocent. Simply doing what was right, what they believed in. Taken too soon. Their lives thrown away without a care.

Just like Agnar himself claimed to have endured.

He had turned into the very thing he hated.

Time to put an end to his greed. And torment.

Duran pivoted on his heel to deliver one final attack. “Cut you down!”

Agnar had somehow managed to endure each furious swing of his blade and Duran feared that he may not have been strong enough. But the very last strike was what finally threw him back several feet. His weapon and fragments of his armour breaking off.

He fell onto his back, landing hard against the ground. His helmet rattled loose and proceeded to bounce across the ground, rolling several feet away. Allowing for his head, or what was left of it, to be exposed.

Duran stabbed his sword into the ground to use as a crutch and heard Hawkeye and Kevin gasp and mutter in surprise. His own reaction was more passive, simply staring down at the white skull as he panted softly. The battle appeared to be over, though he remained tense. His grip tightening on his sword when a low, self-loathing laugh radiated from the skull.

“Haha…how fitting. To be bested by a swordsman.”

“What’s the truth?” Duran found himself asking as he leaned heavily against his sword. “Why did you do this?”

Agnar didn’t immediately answer at first. He laid there in silence, unmoving, his empty eyes and white bones giving nothing away. Until finally, he uttered a noise similar to that of a deep sigh.

“I cannot remember my true motives for this,” he returned, his voice unexpectedly sombre and yet sincere. “It was once revenge. Revenge against my old companions who so readily abandoned me. But now? I am not so sure. Maybe a vain attempt to save other knights? As…deranged as the methods appear to be. But…I have lost sight of my reason a long time ago.”

That…was what pain did to a person. Made them forget. Made them think of nothing but their pain. To be in such a state…He wasn’t the same, was he? With his goal to defeat the Crimson Wizard?

No. He would never hurt another like that. His strength was his own. He would put himself through whatever was necessary to get stronger. He would never force another to sacrifice something on his behalf.

And his companions wouldn’t let him sacrifice himself for his goal. They would never leave him, and he would never abandon them. Never.

“You lost sight of what it means to be a swordsman,” Duran stated, his voice free from judgement. “That’s where it all began.”

Agnar fell silence once again before the white skull unexpectedly rolled to the side. In his direction. “I must admit that I am somewhat…jealous of you, Duran. To have such supportive companions willing to fight for you. Companions you trust without compromise.”

Slipping his sword upon his back, Duran crossed the short distance between them and approached Agnar. “I’m sorry that your companions didn’t stay by your side,” he said as he knelt upon the ground next to him. “I can’t even imagine the pain and betrayal you felt.”

“You are fortunate.”

“Yes, I know.” Duran’s mind was filled with the vision of his companions, of Hawkeye and Kevin fighting valiantly for him. So readily fighting for him. What he would have done without them, he didn’t know.

And he didn’t want to find out.

“But…I am glad that I can finally rest now.” There was a surprising amount of relief and contentment in his voice. “It’s been so long. I do regret many things I have done. Perhaps, in my next life, I could return to the ways of the swordsman. And find…redemption. And peace.”

And so could the seven swordsmen.

Agnar’s skull rolled back upright, as if to stare up at the sky. “One favour I wish to ask of you; destroy my skull. My last link of chain keeping me in this world.”

Duran nodded his head and pushed himself to his feet. “Alright.”

He lifted his sword from his back and moved to stand above Agnar’s skull. Though still expressionless, the eyes nothing but empty sockets, he imagined that Agnar had his eyes closed and was waiting. For the pain to end.

Gripping his weapon in both hands, he raised the blade over his head and brought it down sharply.

The skull immediately shattered into many different pieces, scattering across the grass in a white haze. The armour that housed Agnar’s skeleton deflated, crumbling uselessly upon the grass also.

As Duran allowed his sword to rest idly by his side, he heard a voice. A soft, sad whisper.

…thank you…

Duran gave a simple nod of his head in response. A small smile soon appeared across his lips. Finally, Agnar was at peace.

The abrupt sound of snapping, breaking wood caused Duran to snap his head up and spin around. Just in time to watch as the two-story haunted mansion violently furl into itself. Disappearing piece by piece in a sparkling blue light.

“Let me guess; just like with the ghost ship?” Hawkeye stated rather than asked.

Shade shimmered into view before them, his attention toward the crumbling structure. “Yes. With Agnar no longer supporting the illusion, it has no further use.”

“It’s…over?” Kevin asked with uncertainty in his voice.

Duran nodded his head slowly. “Yes, it’s over now.”

It was over…

“You can sleep now, Duran.” Luna’s voice was soothing and gentle. “You’re safe. Everyone is safe. Now rest.”

Duran closed his eyes. And crumbled to the ground in a dead faint.

… … … … …

Duran was in that mansion again. The same endless halls. The same pungent smell of dust and decay. The same dark shadows that hid unknown enemies and danger.

Yet, something felt different. Very different.

No whispering. No feeling of dread. No ghostly hands attempting to drag him down.

A quiet creak of a floorboard behind him prompted him to immediately spin around. Half expecting to find himself prey to those shadowy, ghostly hands. Instead, he found himself confronted by seven figures. Men in armour with swords upon their backs. They were of different ages and of different builds. But all were swordsmen.

Seven white, ghostly souls.

Were they-?

In unison, the seven men dropped down to one knee and bowed their heads toward him in revere. “Thank you for freeing our souls.”

They were the seven swordsmen that fell before him.

They were free now, too.

He was glad.

“With your dedication and heart, you will indeed become the greatest swordsman this world has ever seen.”

Before Duran could respond, he was interrupted by a bright light. When the light faded, he found himself staring up at a wooden ceiling. A sight that was somewhat familiar and comforting.

But it couldn’t compare to the relief he felt when the faces of his companions filled his vision. Kevin to his right, Hawkeye to his left, with Faerie hovering between the two.

“Thank goodness!” Faerie sighed. “You’re awake.”

“You ok?” Kevin asked, his face creased in obvious worry. “Worried that something else had happened.”

“You fainted on us,” Hawkeye was the one to explain. “We had to carry you all the way back to the village. Well, Kevin did. You’ve been asleep for a few hours now. You’re not suffering from anything else, right?”

Duran slowly sat up in bed. His muscles ached in protest, a feeling he honestly wasn’t all that used to. But he ignored the discomfort to look to his two companions. They both looked tired, haggard even. And he felt a prang of guilt from all the trouble he put them through.

Yet, that guilt was surpassed by gratitude.

“Hawkeye, Kevin; thank you. For everything.”

Faerie and the Elementals, too. He didn’t want to think about what would have happened if they weren’t all there for him.

Kevin gave him a beaming smile. “Of course! We’re…friends, right?”

Duran’s gaze drifted over to Hawkeye for a fleeting moment before he turned his attention back to Kevin. And gave him a smile and a nod of his head.

Yeah, they were friends.

“Hey, Faerie? Could you and the Elementals keep Kevin company for a bit?” Hawkeye suddenly requested, his voice surprisingly serious. “I want to talk to Duran. Alone.”

“Oh?” Faerie turned her attention toward him, her hands planted on her hips. Silence fell as the two simply looked at each other before she finally nodded her head in acceptance. “Alright.”

Duran wasn’t sure what Hawkeye wanted to talk to him about, but Faerie seemed to understand.

“Kevin, let’s see if any of those item seeds we discovered have anything useful for Duran,” Faerie requested sweetly.

Kevin nodded. “Ok.”

As Kevin readily ran off, the Elemental moved one by one to follow, allowing him some privacy.

Undine was the last to leave, and not before giving him a small piece of advice. “We’ll depart for now, but remember; be honest with yourself. Only you know what it is that you truly want and desire.”

Duran got the distinct feeling that Faerie and the Elementals knew exactly what it was that Hawkeye wanted to speak to him about. And honestly, that made him a little nervous. Undine had been with Hawkeye during the…trials for the keys. He couldn’t help but wonder what she had chatted at him about.

Looked like he was about to find out.

“Something wrong?” Duran asked when he was certain that it was just him and Hawkeye in the room.

Hawkeye didn’t immediately reply, which was rather uncharacteristic of him. Instead, he was silent for a moment, to likely mull over what it was he wanted to say. “You had us worried, you know,” he finally said.

Duran couldn’t prevent a wince. “Sorry.”

If he had known that they would all have to endure such hardships, he wouldn’t have insisted on going. But hindsight was a wonderful thing, right?

Hawkeye shook his head as he turned and sat down on the foot of Duran’s bed. “Faerie told me what happened. Tough guy, huh? Enduring all that pain on your own. Not knowing what was happening.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Duran admitted. “But I knew you were fighting for me. The least I could do was hold on and wait.”

Hawkeye exhaled a puff of air that sounded similar to an amused laugh. “We’ll, I’m glad I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

“I’m not used to relying on others,” Duran found himself also confessing. “But with you, I find it easy.”

“Oh?” Hawkeye leaned back on his hands and looked directly at him. “Any particular reason why? Is it my charms? Or roguish good looks?”

Duran rolled his eyes with a smile on his lips. He was clearly looking for a compliment. However, it was a question he wasn’t sure he could answer. Or brush off.

“Truth be told, I don’t know,” Duran began as his gaze drifted down to stare idly at the floral pattern of his bedcover. “There’s just…something that I like about you that makes me trust you unconditionally.”

“Hm? Like?” Hawkeye repeated. “What kind of like are we talking here?”

Duran didn’t answer. He roughly scratched at his hair and turned his face away from Hawkeye in a desperate attempt to hide his blushing.

Hawkeye sighed loudly as he heaved himself to his feet. “Ah, I see I have to be straightforward and blunt. My seductive charms simply do not work on you.”

Duran blinked and turned to look up at him. “What?”

He fell silent when Hawkeye placed a knee upon the bed next to him and rested a hand on his shoulder. He then leaned forward, the hand on Duran’s shoulder unexpectedly slipping to gently touch the back of his neck.

Though Hawkeye moved slowly at first, allowing Duran ample time to pull away or somehow disengage from him. Instead, he found himself frozen still and watching with unblinking eyes as Hawkeye’s face moved closer to his.

And pressed his lips against his.

Duran’s breath hitched in his throat, his lips parting just a little in surprise. However, he made no attempt to move. And neither did Hawkeye. With his eyes comfortable closed, he kept his lips against his.

And Duran felt them. Felt the warmth of Hawkeye’s lips. They made his lips tingle and his heart flutter in his chest.

It was no denying it. It wasn’t an accident or mistake. It wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him.

Hawkeye was kissing him!

Duran had no idea how much time had passed as he stared wide-eye at Hawkeye. But, unexpectedly, he felt the distinct feeling of disappointment when Hawkeye slowly leaned back. Removing his lips from his.

“Hm?” Hawkeye was unfairly confident and casual. “Get it now?”

“B-but aren’t you-?” In love with Jessica? Interested in Reisz? Always flirting with other women? Pick one!

So why did he…?

“You really are adorable.” Hawkeye had the audacity to smile and wink playfully at him.

Duran bristled as a blush flared across his cheeks. “Don’t tease me!”

Hawkeye chuckled, quite obviously amused. Though, he didn’t pull away from him completely. Nor did he remove his hand from the back of Duran’s neck. And Duran himself made no attempt to put distance between.

There was no point.

“Can’t help it,” Hawkeye said as he purposely leaned toward him again. “Want me to kiss you again?”

“…Yeah.”

“There we go~”

When Hawkeye leaned in again, Duran allowed his eyes to close, this time intent on enjoying the feeling of Hawkeye’s lips against his. He even allowed for Hawkeye to push him down onto his back, getting comfortable upon the bed.

With a small, almost inaudible sigh, Duran sunk bonelessly into the mattress as Hawkeye crawled over him, his lips not leaving his for any longer than a few seconds. Hawkeye rested heavily on his arms on either side of Duran’s head while he simply wrapped his arms around Hawkeye’s neck in return. He hadn’t the faintest idea what to do, so was content to allow Hawkeye to take the lead and carefully guide him through the tender and meaningful kiss.

He was going to get some loud chittering from the elementals. Teasing him. Congratulating him. Maybe even some more advice. But he would deal with that later.

He just hoped that Faerie could keep Kevin busy for just a little bit longer…

#trials of mana #fanfiction #Fighting For You #Duran #Hawkeye #Kevin #hawkeye/duran #complete

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cywscross · 5 years

Note

got any f/f fic recs?

Okay so apparently not Final Fantasy but femslash. I’m stupid, sorry. Uhh I don’t read that many femslash compared to slash but I can name some:

NARUTO

Sing as their bones go marching in again by felinedetached (Sakura/Ino)

Instead, it goes like this: Haruno Sakura is the daughter of two civilians, from civilian families. She is nothing and no one—smart, yes, top kunoichi, yes, but she will never be on par with clan kids. She is teammates to an orphan powerhouse from a dead clan and the last remaining Uchiha.

Haruno Sakura is nothing and nobody, but she breathes and grows and thrives and the forest thrives with her.

(She opens her eyes to wood, grown from nothing, and Hatake Kakashi stares in disbelief at the tree where his student used to be.)

Or, Haruno Sakura should have had the goddamn Mokuton and this author is mad.

No one there to shame me for my youth by felinedetached (Sakura/Ino)

What she hadn’t expected was to be what is apparently next in line for Kakashi’s position—although, she supposes it was inevitable—or for the nurses at the hospital to look at her with such adoration.

Sakura’s not complaining, she just hadn’t expected it.

(She’s the medic on a team of powerhouses, the backline fighter to Naruto and Sasuke’s brilliance, and she never thought it would be her people looked at like this.)

But it is her; and as she gets glances and propositions from both civilian and ninja, from male and female alike, she wonders.

The Fair Maiden by Tozette (Sakura/Ino)

Basically: Princess Ino has been kidnapped by the terrible dragon Sakura! Brave knights Chouji and Shikamaru must rescue her from the fearsome beast. It... does not go entirely as expected.

The Shinobi version of Pride by grit (Sakura/Hinata/Karin)

The coffee sways dangerously.

“Why,” Sakura interrupts, before the chaos can get any worse, “are you in my kitchen?”

every fire is a lesson learned by blackkat (Konan/Sakura)

Just when Konan has lost hope, she meets a hero.

three birds watch and the fourth flies by grit (Minato!Sakura/Kushina)

There's a legend in her hands like clay, so she must work hard to be formidable, to be everything he was and she isn't, because what if she screws up the future, selfish enough to make space for her own?

She pours over heaps of sealing scrolls and tries not to think too hard on what happens if she fails.

Or: Timid Minato but this time around, she's Sakura.

throw it my way (all the love you keep) by amako (Sakura/Ino)

The crux of the matter is: they don't have a Hokage, the one that could be Hokage is sharing a Moment with his soulmate or whatever, and when asked to take the mantle again, Tsunade had broken a few bones. Not hers, obviously.

will to live by justdoityoufucker (Sakura/Ino)

Sakura joins the ANBU. The entire world seems a little tilted after that, but they all adapt.

Bumpy Future by Dovey (Sakura/Hinata)

It's her last year at the academy when Sakura hits her head. When she wakes up, she has a little trouble matching memories to the people in them- but she'll have to get it right eventually, yeah?

in which sakura pairs vague associations with the wrong people, and everyone is much happier because of it (Except Iruka-sensei).

the Rebel ‘verse by felinedetached (Sakura/Ino)

(Three things come after that:

The moment of realisation. The moment she realises Sasuke’s left the village, gone off to do who knows what with Orochimaru-

Her memory returns to her - she was useless against her teammate; taken down by a pressure point and unable to do anything to prevent him from getting at it.

Inner rages, throws herself around, cursing and screaming until finally, finally she calms and she says Uchiha Sasuke is a traitor.)

In which Sakura gets the character development she deserved.

shattered dreams into rhapsodies by blackkat (Kushina/Mikoto)

For the prompt "I’m a monster/guardian that the local village give sacrifices too and you’re the new sacrifice but don’t worry I won’t eat you, I’m kinda lonely"

-0-

HARRY POTTER

Four Walls (And the Right People) by blackkat (Lily/Narcissa)

“Is coming in there going to make me lose my will to live?” Lily calls, amused.

“No!” Harry protests, wounded, like she and Narcissa haven’t previously walked in on structural damage, fires, flooding, and mysteriously conjured cat-sized dragons. Sirius has been a terrible influence on them.

the girl who lived (again) by dirgewithoutmusic (trans!Harry/Ginny)

Molly tried her best. When Harry had told them, Arthur had asked excitedly, "is this a Muggle thing?" Hermione had hurried out a "no!" and a frantic history of gender diversity in the wizarding world.

"It's just that I'm a girl," Harry had said, and Arthur had nodded and asked her about how telephone booths worked. He would call her by the right pronouns until the day he died at the respectable old age of one hundred and thirty three, and he would make it seem easy.

But Molly had to try. Hermione explained things faster and higher-pitched every time Molly messed up a pronoun. Molly frowned and muttered and put extra potatoes on Harry's plate at breakfast. Harry slept in Ron's room, which didn't bother either of them but which made Hermione scowl.

Harry got boxes of sweets and warm hugs, as Molly chewed things over. For her fifteenth Christmas, the Weasley sweater she would receive would be a bright, friendly, terrible pink.

The next time Harry visited, Molly put her on Ginny's floor to sleep-- for some definition of sleep that involved Hermione hissing threats at three in the morning if Harry and Ginny didn't "shut up about Wronski feints, do you know what time it is."

-0-

GAME OF THRONES

When Warp Is Fire And Weft Is Ice by afterandalasia (Dany/Sansa)

People tell many stories about them, the Mother of Dragons and the Queen in the North.

Some of them even have a grain of truth in them.

a strangeness of sunlight by musicforswimming (Dany/Sansa)

Someone calls Sansa home, and sets her free in doing so.

Ivory and Dragonglass by madeinessos (Rhaenys/Sansa)

For the valar-morekinks prompt on livejournal: "Rhaeneys follows in her father's footsteps when she and Sansa run away together to the free cities so they can be with each other . Both ladies left a letter to their families so that their absence wouldn't spark the embers of another rebellion."

Sansa in Dorne by sear (Arianne/Sansa)

Alayne Stone wakes confused, in the body of the young maid she once was. She has returned to Winterfell, before everything went wrong. All she wants now is to be free, to never be hurt again. Dorne will give her that.

Mirror of the sun by myrish_lace (Dany/Sansa)

Daenerys arrives at Winterfell to attempt to treat with Jon Snow. She's immediately side-tracked by her fascination with Sansa Stark, and the two grow closer. Told from Daenerys's point of view.

-0-0-

And these are genderswap femslash, in case you’re not a fan:

TEEN WOLF

Utterly Appropriate by wynnebat (Peter/Stiles)

There's only one person whom Stiles would marry, and whoever has asked for her hand isn't on that list.

Spin a Web of Silk by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids) (Peter/Stiles)

“Darling, will you marry me?”

Stiles stared into the eyes of the light of her life, the one who held her heart- her love.

And then she looked back at the man who had asked the question.

“Yes.”

Sugar Babies Not Sugar Vaginas by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids) (Peter/Stiles)

Stiles is a copywriter working for a service that's been contacted by a company that sells something called Passion Dust. It's so much worse than it sounds.

Free Birth Control by twothumbsandnostakeincanon (somanyofthekids) (Peter/Stiles)

“I can’t believe they haven’t fixed the footbridge yet,” Peter said, disgruntled as she toweled off her feet, getting all the muck from the creek off of them.

“I can,” Talia said absently as she shelled peas on the front porch. “The only people who use that bridge are you, Stilinski, and Stilinski’s clients. And Stilinski does her best to avoid clients. Did you hear what she did to the woman who took out the bridge?” Talia settled further back into her chair. Peter immediately recognized it as Gossip Position, and leaned in eagerly.

“No, tell me everything.”

Ain't No Stranger (Been This Way Before) by pibroch (littleblackdog) (Peter/Stiles)

Stiles loved orgasms, and she really loved the shuddery, mind-numbing orgasms Peter had spent months meticulously and enthusiastically learning to coax out of her. She also loved the relief from cramps she’d get from a good climax or four, and Peter had no complaints about blood. Definitely a win-win, all around. - Stiles has a period from hell, and Peter has a surprise.

On The Loose by SmartKIN (Peter/Stiles)

Stiles has a job to do; Hot Lady Sniper almost ruins it for her.

The Same Damn Hunger by Twisted_Mind (Allison/Stiles)

There’s no soft jazz, no flower petals or candles, because that’s not what this is.

-0-

MARVEL

Mightier Than The Sword by aloneintherain (Johnny/Peter)

Janey Storm freezes in the doorway.

Pen is half naked. Her boney, freckled shoulders and the faded sports bra she’s had since high school are on display. Bruises from this morning’s encounter with the Scorpion haven’t had time to heal yet—purples and sickly greens tesselate over her ribs and toned stomach.

Janey can see every unedited part of Pen: her open knuckles, blood a sharp red against her pale skin; her unbrushed hair, grown out past Pen’s jaw like a tangle of weeds; her loose jeans, slung low on her hips, with fraying ends and ripped knees. Janey stands there and sees Pen Parker, a half naked, wide-eyed girl choking on her heart.

“It’s occupied,” Pen manages.

Or: a universe where Johnny and Peter were born girls.

-0-

YOWAMUSHI PEDAL

One For The Road by Atropa Belladonna (WorldsJunk) (Onoda/Arakita)

Fuck her entire life on a cactus she’s a fucking loser. Not because Onoda’s boobs are bigger than her’s - ok, they’ve always been. Actually, everyone has bigger tits than she does, she is flat as hell and she likes it. Why the hell would she want a couple of Shinkai-style jugs waving around in the wind when she’s riding for fucks’s sakes, that’s impractical as all fuck. No, Arakita is a loser because now she can’t stop thinking about Onoda-chan’s tits and no way she is perving like this on an innocent girl that is all around too good for the likes of her.

#Naruto #Teen Wolf #Marvel #Yowamushi Pedal #Harry Potter #Game of Thrones #Naruto Fanfic Rec #Teen Wolf Fanfic Rec #Misc Fanfic Rec #Harry Potter Fanfic Rec #Marvel and DC Fanfic Rec #Femslash

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less-than-hash · 5 years

Text

A Lot to Process

I haven’t been making games lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve not been writing. I took off at the beginning of the year to work on my prose fiction, finished drafting a novel provisionally titled These Subtle Games back in March, and finished revising it and began querying it last month. It’s a contemporary occult fantasy set in Boston, following a nonbinary game developer investigating the untimely and mysterious demise of her mentor, only to find herself drawn into a morass of conspiratorial cabals, mystical mobsters, and misogynist massholes - not to mention a sprawling hidden ARG that may or may not contain the secrets of New England cunning magic.

It’s basically autobiography.

In the meantime, I’ve begun writing a new novel, an industrial fantasy set in a world of sprawling empires both challenged and propped up by powerful mercantile houses and an aggressively expansionist church ruled by wizards. I found that the process I stumbled through in developing and writing These Subtle Games - a process that, despite the differences in media, grew out of my experience creating games - worked really well for me, so I’ve been following a more refined version for the new novel with similarly positive results. Furthermore, I’ve already begun applying it to a potential sequel to TSG. With Novelember coming up, I figured I’d share a little of that process with you.

The goals of my writing process are twofold:

To apply some level of organization to my work, lest it follow in the footsteps of my first novel, which was basically “write until you’re done writing, and now you’ve got 141,000 words of experimental weirdness.”

To allow a lot of flexibility, preventing said organization from stifling my creativity.

Details below the cut.

PRE-PRODUCTION, aka Background, Research, and Planning

I spend a lot of time with the concept for a novel (or a conversation in a game) before I begin writing anything that’ll make it into even the rough draft. Note that I didn’t use the “before I put pen to paper” metaphor here, because I do a lot of writing at this stage. Much of this is simple note-taking, whether on research or on ideas. I do a fair amount of this in an actual notebook, often because I’m off somewhere away from my computer.

Because this phase generally overlaps with the late phases of a previous project, and when I’m actually at my computer I’m generally working on the older piece. I was in this phase for Hidden Sanctum while recording VO for Seeker, Slayer, Survivor, for example, and for These Subtle Games while wrapping up my work on the Deadfire expansions.

I like to overlap projects like this for a few reasons:

It allows me to move smoothly from active work on one project to the next.

It engages a different part of my mind than drafting prose, keeping me fresh.

Because I spend a lot of time exploring an idea, it helps me determine whether or not I think the idea’s strong enough to sustain me through a project.

Things I do while planning:

Read extensively. I read work in the same vein or genre as the work I’m intending to write. In preparation for Deadfire, for example, I read The Gentleman Bastards books by Scott Lynch, Uprooted by Naomi Novik, and Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. Prior to starting work on These Subtle Games I read Procession of the Dead by Darren Shan, War in Heaven by Charles Williams, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami, Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Lieber, Conversion by Katherine Howe, the Atlanta Burns books by Chuck Wendig, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, and Himself by Jess Kidd, among others. Before beginning the current novel, I read Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo, The Incorruptibles by John Horner Jacobs, Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan, and Perdido Street Station by China Miéville, among other works. These are books I read specifically because I planned to do work in similar spaces. I approach these books analytically to get a sense of what’s been done before, as well as what might and might not work from a structural or stylistic standpoint. What I want to do and what I want to avoid. Nor do I limit myself to books. As part of my pre-production for my current project I watched Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Les Miserable, L’Empereur de Paris, The Age of Innocence, and Carnival Row, as well as replaying parts of the Dishonored games. I also made myself a music playlist, the heart of which is Postmodern Jukebox’s cover of “Welcome to the Black Parade.”

Research broadly. I’m less of the school that one should write what they know than that they should know what they write. I generally write fantastic works, but without an understanding of matters related to the fantasy, the product feels hollow. This can include research into the history of sail and piracy, for example, or military technology, or fashion. For These Subtle Games I read numerous books on New England folklore and cunning folk, as well as on witch trials, both in Salem and globally. I read a lot about Harvard’s study of psychedelics, including Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind. I also did a tremendous amount of deeply unpleasant research into online harassment. At this point in the process, I try to prioritize the forest for the trees (hence “broadly” above). I don’t need to know every maritime term to plot content set on a sailing vessel, I just need to know the broad strokes of how ships work, how the crew lives, and how that might impact someone living on the sea. My current project required a fair amount of exploration of subjects as diverse as industrial era mill towns, the history of the American and French revolutions, and dinosaurs. While doing this research, I keep an eye out for things I find interesting that can inform my plot. I’d never heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, for example, but reading about it inspired a plot point in the current project. That said, I don’t feel like I need to be an expert at this stage on anything I hope to write about. I’m almost certainly going to discard ideas and discover new ones as I go along, and I’ll have to dig deep into things like boot styles and fishing vessels (to pick two subjects from yesterday’s writing) as I go.

Figure out what I want to say. Here I work to nail down the broadest themes I want to explore in a work. These usually arise from a combination of my research and reflecting on the things I find interesting about whatever I’m making the subject of my project. Initially These Subtle Games was titled The Quiet Game (a title already claimed by a murder mystery set in Massachusetts) because of its interest in secrets (as reflected in the secret societies of Boston, the NDAs of the games industry, and the arcana of ARGs like the Jejune Institute). The new novel examines colonialism, capitalism, and power, as well as what actions are justified when resisting an overwhelming force. The three DLC for Deadfire interrogate the relationships between the gods of Eora and their followers, the Watcher included. Defining this helps guide all of the work to come, providing a benchmark by which to judge the effectiveness of an idea, plot point, or piece of writing.

Build out the world. These Subtle Games is set in modern Boston and Deadfire in Eora, both worlds that were well-defined long before I began creating fiction set in them. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t spend time fleshing out the corners of those worlds I intended to work within. TSG required that I determine the form of a fictionalized Boston games industry, as well as the shape of the secret cultures that inform the action of the novel. For Deadfire, each piece of content, each world map event, and each DLC island is a little world of its own, with its own story that feeds back into the larger ideas of the game. (Of course, I wasn’t working in a vacuum, nor alone.) The current project, set in a new fantasy world, required the creation of a rough geography and history, populated with peoples, nations, and faiths. I designed these not merely to have verisimilitude, but to feed into the goals of the work. In the case of the new project, that meant huge colonial powers jockeying for the dwindling unclaimed territories and their resources, vast trade companies conspiring to wrest power from the entrenched nobility, a clergy focused on enforcing the rule of the gods over every nation of the world, and several species of magically-crafted servitors provided curtailed rights when they’re afforded any freedom at all. Here, again, I prefer to take a diffuse approach. I can get by with the broad strokes, and leaving things undefined offers me more room to maneuver as I write. I personally also find it useful to gather art references at this stage. I have a folder of illustrations that suggest the mood and style of the world of the new project, for example. For These Subtle Games, I commissioned an illustration of my protagonist from the fantastic Katorius (below).

Sketch out the major characters. Generally by this point I’ve got ideas for at least a few of the characters, but before I start writing I want to have a strong sense of who each of those characters is. I generally write a few pages about the major players, their background, their attitudes, their role in the plot. This is worldbuilding, albeit with a narrowed focus, so the rules above apply: I try to keep things vague and flexible. I knew at this stage, for example, that These Subtle Games protagonist Laurie’s best work friend Meri grew up in California, and that if she lost her job, she might move back. That she was a surfer and played ska were details that came out in the writing. She also grew from being only moral support to providing occasional practical aid to Laurie, as well as coming to rely on Laurie in turn. Similarly, in the current project, the six characters the novel focuses on, something of a band of scoundrels, shifted over the course of development from their sketches. The relationship between two characters who are fugitives from the imperial government, for example, changed dramatically. Whereas they had been initially written as an inseparable pair, I found it much more interesting if they were on the outs after years of traveling and working together, adding (another) fracture in the crew’s interpersonal dynamics. I’ve talked before about how Vatnir went from being a charming con-artist to a grumpy reluctant messiah after I saw concept art for him. Similarly, I knew from my first moments with Serafen that he possesses no qualms about employing violence in the course of his work; the delineations, though, that he creates for himself regarding when violence is appropriate was something developed over the course of writing him.

Identify big tentpole moments. Here’s the first bit of actual plot work. At this point I’ve likely got ideas of notes I absolutely want to hit. I knew, for example, that I wanted Laurie, the protagonist of These Subtle Games, to discover an object late in the novel that redefines her relationship to her uncle and her understanding of his role in the mystery she’s unraveling. Inspired by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, I knew I wanted the crew in the new project to be party to the inadvertent destruction of a textile mill, one made all the worse for its owners having locked the workers within. In both cases, these moments speak directly to the ideas I’m exploring in the work. Once I’ve identified a few of my tentpoles, I order them in a way that makes dramatic sense to me, and that gives me not an outline, exactly, but guideposts for the narrative. As mentioned so many times above, the goal is to provide myself guidance, not to hem myself in or nail down every plot point.

Once I’m relatively comfortable with my sense of where I’m taking a work, I begin writing what I call my “plot doc.”

PRE-ALPHA, aka The Plot Doc

I don’t generally outline my work. I go from the extremely rough tentpole step mentioned above into a kind of extremely rough draft I call my plot doc. These provide the skeleton and heart of the novel onto which I can layer the muscle and flesh of actual writing. The plot doc is pretty long - the one for These Subtle Games was 49,000 words, about half the length of the finished novel. The plot doc for the current project weighs in at 31,000 words.

Almost none of these words will end up in the actual book as-is.

I care very little about the state of the writing at this step. Here I’m exploring the plot and the characters, drafting out how they go from tentpole to tentpole, figuring out what in the narrative works and hopefully identifying what doesn’t. I find where I’ve failed to establish needed details in my worldbuilding and further define my characters.

This step actually developed directly from my work in narrative design. Generally I (like many of the narrative designers I know) stub out a branching conversation before writing it, creating a kind of detailed outline (where everything is written with the same lack of polish as the LRs pictured in my post about interjections). This lets us establish the flow of the conversation, plot its structure without having to worry too much about details of style, and hopefully locate any holes or major bugs prior to fleshing out the file. Generally the text in stubs would be difficult to mistake for shippable writing.

I personally find stubbing out conversations useful because I think differently during the mechanical work of structuring files than I do during the artistic work of crafting dialog and prose. I’ve found a similar division of labor incredibly useful when crafting plot. It relieves a lot of the pressure of writing, too. I don’t have to worry about both building a functional plot and writing enticing prose. Because I’m going to be the only person ever reading the plot doc.

(Unless, of course, I do something ridiculous like share pieces of it on my tumblr.)

Here’s an excerpt from the plot doc for These Subtle Games, which I’ll contrast with later versions below:

A car awaits her in Gloucester, and it brings her to Matthias’s house. It’s a sizable home, stone, and old, somewhat decrepit, even. Ivy climbs the turrets, and the copper roof has gone to streaked verdigris. He stands in the open door as she approaches, and she hugs him, grateful for the familiar, and he returns the gesture stiffly, patting her lightly on the back. He’s tall and rail thin, built much as she is, with a well-kept beard and receding hair. He feels old-fashioned to her, in a dressing gown and pajamas with warm, soft house shoes.

Hello, niece, he says.

Hello, uncle.

He offers her food, which she declines, and takes her to her room, just off the main room.

Ouch. It’s little more than stream of consciousness, just me getting the ideas out onto the page. Or 200 pages, in the case of this project.

ALPHA, aka The Rough Draft

Once I’ve completed the plot doc, I begin actually writing. I do this in a new file, referring to the plot doc for guidance as I go along. Often I do this a little inconsistently, letting myself write until I hit a lull before returning to the plot doc. That way the plot doc serves not merely a guiding role, but a motivating function.

The rough draft is the first actual composition I’m doing on the work, and much of it actually ends up in the finished version. I take significantly more time on each scene, on each sentence, trying to craft prose that breathes and dialog that feels real.

I also tend to be a bit loose and experimental at this stage. I play around, writing things that I find interesting to read. If I find myself weighing style against readability, I generally err on the side of style. I can clean shit up later.

Here’s the scene from before, taken from the rough draft:

The car Matthias hired lets Laurie off at the gate, which creaks opens on hydraulic pistons as she leaves her tip.

The driver nods towards the tree-lined darkness. “Hop back in, and I’ll run you up. Real door to door service. If you’d like.”

Having relaxed at an exponential rate with each mile she put between herself and the city, Laurie shakes her head with a faint smile. “I could use the walk.”

“You don’t think you’re fat, do you?” His gaze flits the length of her from knees to shoulders, efficiently dispelling the enchantment worked by the commuter rail ride through the dense New England night.

“What? No.”

“Because you’re a beanpole. Almost too skinny, if you ask me.”

She hadn’t. “That’s not what I meant. Just, I want to clear my head, thanks.”

He leaves her to it, and she walks up the curling drive towards the old stone Victorian. The curtained windows glow faintly from within, and warm lamps jut from the quoins. Sprawling ivy climbs the turrets, and rooftop copper has long given way to white-streaked verdigris. Matthias’s is a stately home, but aging, much like the man himself. He meets her at the door in a dressing gown over fine silk pajamas and plush slippers. Her uncle stands as long and lanky as Laurie, with high cheekbones, a higher forehead, and a well-trimmed beard.

She greets him with a hug. She keeps it gentler than she might like, given his age. He’s never appeared frail, exactly, but his features profess a wary delicateness, as if he’d been crafted of pudding cloth and porcelain.

“Niece,” he says quietly, squeezing her shoulder.

“Uncle,” she answers. It’s an old ritual, and with it Laurie’s remaining fear falls away, abandoning her to her exhaustion.

He admits her to the house, the pair padding silently across polished marble past floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Matthias’s home gives the impression of being larger on the inside than the out, a space out of time, populated by statues of stone and painted ceramic. A grand piano dominates one corner, the instrument on which Esme had performed several family recitals during Thanksgiving gatherings past. At thirteen, Laurie’d lugged her hollow-bodied electric through two airports and two more trains to her uncle’s house. After Esme played, Laurie’d produced the guitar and performed a show of her own, all barre and power chords joined to lyrics roundly condemning the evils of industrial capitalism and hypocrisy of American evangelism in terms both suggestive and explicit. The gathered family had clapped politely enough, but she later overheard her father’s sister thank him for leaving the amplifier back in Carrboro.

Esme had told Laurie she’d loved it.

“Are you hungry?” Uncle Matthias asks her as they pass the sliding double doors to the dining room and the kitchen beyond.

She shakes her head. “I’m very full of food, but thank you.”

The scene’s significantly longer now, and I’ve further defined the driver, detailed the house, and defined aspects of Laurie’s relationship to it and her family. And hey, now it’s got quotation marks!

Once I finish the rough draft, I celebrate a bit. Hey, I wrote a fucking novel!

But I don’t share. I know I’m not happy with the work yet. I’m sure it’s riddled with grammatical errors. It’s probably got some questionable shifts in verb tense. It likely sports an inconsistency or six. I know I can do better, so I set out to do so.

BETA, aka The First and Second Revision

Here’s where the hard work of revision begins. I read the book, taking notes on things I’d like to change, then go through carefully, making both the changes I’d noted and performing close editing. I try to polish overwritten lines and clarify confusing sentences. I look for inconsistencies, especially when moving scenes around.

Were this a conversation in a game, this would be the point I marked it for review by a lead or solicit feedback from QA and my fellow designers. Having done a revision or two on a book, I’m feeling pretty confident in what I’ve made, so I give it to any beta readers I’ve enlisted, that they might remind me that I do, in fact, have a long-ass way to go before it’s good.

GOLD, aka The “Finished” Product

Once I’ve got feedback from my readers (and have perhaps let the book sit for a bit to work on pre-production for an upcoming project - or just played a shit-ton of Final Fantasy XIV...), I return to the novel or conversation to polish it further.

At this point I’m looking to flesh out details, to make sure each sentence serves a purpose. To chop off unnecessary phrases and to make sure each interaction is bringing out the characters’ personalities.

Here’s the fourth (and currently final) revision of the scene from above:

Matthias’s hired car deposits Laurie at his gate, a break in the thick stone wall that separates the street from her uncle’s plot of dense, quiet woods. Hickories and pines obscure the sky, swaying gently on a salted breeze off of the Atlantic. As Laurie tips the driver, a pair of heavy, wrought iron hinges creak open with the low hiss of hydraulic pistons.

The man nods towards the tree-lined darkness, his gray hair half-circumscribing his bald pate. “Hop back in, and I’ll run you up. Real door to door service. If you’d like.”

Having relaxed exponentially with each mile she put between herself and the city—a charm cast by the long commuter rail ride through the dense New England night—Laurie shakes her head. “I could use the walk.”

“You don’t think you’re fat, do you?” His gaze flits the length of her, from knees to shoulders, efficiently dispelling the enchantment.

“What? No.”

“Because you’re a beanpole. Almost too skinny, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.” Her fingernails bite her palms.

“Sure, suit yourself.” His window whispers back into place.

He pulls away, and she waits for his taillights to withdraw around the bend before walking the curled drive towards the old stone Victorian. The curtained windows glow faintly from within, and warm lamps jut from the quoins. Sprawling ivy climbs the turret, and rooftop copper has long given way to white-streaked verdigris. Matthias’s is a stately home but aging, not unlike the man himself. He meets her at the door in a dressing gown over fine silk pajamas and plush slippers. As long and lanky as his niece, Laurie’s uncle’s features add high cheekbones to a higher forehead and a well-trimmed beard.

She greets him with a gentle hug—gentler than she’d prefer, what with his age. He’s never struck her as frail, exactly, but his features profess a wary delicateness, as if he’d been crafted of pudding cloth and porcelain.

“Niece,” he says quietly, squeezing her shoulder.

“Uncle,” she answers. It’s an old ritual, and with it Laurie’s lingering fear falls away, abandoning her to her exhaustion. Her trapezius slackens beneath her uncle’s hand, her scapulae sinking as her frustration flows down her arms and through her twitching fingers. They flick the remnants away.

The pair pad silently across polished marble tiles past floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Matthias’s home gives the impression of being larger on the inside than the out, a space out of time, populated by statues of horses, deer, and dryads in stone and painted ceramic. A grand piano dominates one corner, an instrument on which Esme had performed a series of recitals following Thanksgiving dinners past. At thirteen, Laurie’d lugged her hollow-bodied electric through two airports and two more trains to her uncle’s house. After Esme played, Laurie’d produced the guitar and performed a show of her own, joining steely barre and power chords to lyrics condemning the evils of industrial capitalism and hypocrisy of American evangelism—in terms both suggestive and explicit. The family had clapped politely enough, but later she overheard her father’s sister thank him for leaving the amplifier back in Carrboro.

Esme, of course, had told Laurie she’d loved it. “Maybe my favorite song ever,” she’d said, the liar.

“Are you hungry?” Uncle Matthias asks her as they pass the sliding double doors to the dining room and the kitchen beyond.

Having stopped into a pizza joint on her way to North Station and walked out with a distended Styrofoam clamshell heavy with waffle fries drenched in cheese studded with olives, tomatoes, and jalapenos, she shakes her head. “I’m very full of food, but thank you.”

It’s not hugely different from the rough draft, but there’s a lot more detail, and the weaker phrases have been excised. Matthias no longer “admits her to the house,” for example, because it’s implied that she’s come in by the action. The details at the end about the waffle fries fill an inconsistency in the rough draft: originally Laurie’d eaten nothing that day, so why was she full here? (Deeply interesting, I know.)

Laurie’s decision to snap back at the driver about his unasked for critique of her appearance was a result of beta reader feedback. The additional details about the decor in Matthias’s house subtly ties him to the locations of secret societies Laurie visits later in the book, details I’d not developed until the prior draft. The use of anatomical language to describe Laurie’s body reflects the character’s distance from it. She views it as something of an animate corpse she happens to inhabit rather than a core aspect of her self. Finally, Esme’s response is presented in dialog now, injecting her character into the scene and allowing the prose narration to reflect Laurie’s personality.

Nothing’s really done though. There are more hands for it to go through. Just as a game conversation undergoes changes suggested by QA, shifts in the recording booth, and may end up trimmed or entirely cut due to schedule and budget constraints or even to fix a nasty bug, a novel goes through several hands between the point where the author’s ready to query it and a publisher’s willing to put it on a shelf. But eventually you have to make the decision to be done with a piece, to mark it complete in JIRA and push it down the pipeline.

Then you get to move on to whatever’s next.

Cheers, <#

#fiction #novel writing #prose #process #gamedev #game design #narrative design #worldbuilding

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cinemavariety · 5 years

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The Director’s Series: David Lynch

The director series will consist of me concentrating on the filmography of all my favorite directors. I will rank each of their films according to my personal taste. I hope this project will provide everyone with quality recommendations and insight into films that they might not have known about.

Today’s director in spotlight is David Lynch

#10 - Dune (1984) Runtime: 2 hr 17 min Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

In the year 10,191, the world is at war for control of the desert planet Dune – the only place where the time-travel substance ‘Spice’ can be found. But when one leader gives up control, it’s only so he can stage a coup with some unsavory characters.

Verdict: Most directors who make enough films will always have a few misses. Dune is almost unwatchable with its convoluted storyline that will confuse anyone who hasn’t read the novel. I’ll give it this - the set and costume design are out of this world, no pun intended.

#9 - The Straight Story (1999) Runtime: 1 hr 52 min Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1 Film Format: 35 mm

A retired farmer and widower in his 70s, Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver’s license. Then he hits on the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.

Verdict: The only one of Lynch’s films that could be considered purely “heartwarming”. It also feels the least like a Lynch film, with the director never really foraying into his autuerist territory. It is a simple, cute film that didn’t exactly leave much of an impression on me.

#8 - Lost Highway (1997) Runtime: 2 hr 14 min Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgangers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.

Verdict: Lost Highway has a few scenes that I find to be the most bone-chilling in Lynch’s oeuvre. However, I wish that the entirety of this film had the same effect on me. There are more than enough satisfying plot elements to this, but I also feel like Lynch utilizing a modern soundtrack more than Badalementi’s superb score really does make this film feel dated.

#7 - The Elephant Man (1980) Runtime: 2 hr 4 min Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man being mistreated by his “owner” as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of great intelligence and sensitivity. Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick, a severely deformed man in 19th century London.

Verdict: The Elephant Man showcases how cruel human nature can be. It is one of Lynch’s most sentimental works that manages to be both horrendous and beautiful. John Hurt’s performance as the “elephant man” is multilayered and one of the most impressive, humanistic feats of an artist embodying a character with the utmost ingenuity.

#6 - Blue Velvet (1986) Runtime: 2 hr Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of criminals who have kidnapped her child.

Verdict: This is Lynch’s detective film, and I would say one of the best starting films for someone looking to get into his work. It has all of the surrealist plot motifs we come to expect from Lynch, but also has a pretty understandable storyline for the most part. Blue Velvet explores the dark underbelly beneath the fake “harmless” veneer of a seemingly quiet and peaceful small town.

#5 - Wild at Heart (1990) Runtime: 2 hr 5 min Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

Young lovers Sailor and Lula run from the variety of weirdos that Lula’s mom has hired to kill Sailor.

Verdict: Many might not see Wild at Heart as one of Lynch’s strongest works, but I personally find it to be the most fun film he has ever made. Lynch creates such a wide variety of scummy characters that truly make your stomach church (I am looking at you Willem Dafoe). It’s one of those so-bad-it’s-perfect movies and the Wizard of Oz allusions are a great addition to the story.

#4 - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) Runtime: 2 hr 14 min Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the more cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Laura Palmer hangs with lowlifes and seems destined for a grisly fate. Verdict: I think it’s a real shame that this film was held in such low regard by both critics and fans alike when it was released. These people seemed to be truly confused as to the types of films Lynch makes. Thankfully, it has developed into a real cult classic since then. This film, which also serves as a prequel to the iconic television series, abandons the campy tone of the series and is Lynch achieving the vision that he wanted from the show. It’s a beautiful, haunting, and heartbreaking story.

#3 - Inland Empire (2006) Runtime: 3 hr Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1 Film Format: Mini DV & 35mm

An actress’s perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.

Verdict: Lynch has yet to make a feature film since this one, and it truly is the director going off the rails with his style in the best of ways. Inland Empire is almost completely impossible to describe because it is more of an experience than it is a structured narrative. It returns to Lynch’s often-used idea of “hollywood is hell”. To me, this is Lynch’s scariest film. It’s utterly hopeless and the pixelated DV cinematography exudes a very cold and artificial aesthetic. Laura Dern deserved an Oscar for her performance as an actress who confuses her own life to the character she is playing.

#2 - Mulholland Drive (2001) Runtime: 2 hr 27 min Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman’s identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.

Verdict: You will very rarely find such a perfect masterpiece of a film, but Mulholland Drive manages to do that. It also seems to reveal new layers every time I revisit. Lynch blurs the lines between the dream world and reality so masterfully in this film that it really does linger in your subconscious afterward - much akin to a haunting dream that you can’t seem to shake. Naomi Watts is electric as an LA newcomer who gets involved in the dark recesses of Hollywood.

#1 - Eraserhead (1977) Duration: 1 hr 29 min Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1 Film Format: 35mm

Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.

Verdict: By no means am I trying to say Eraserhead is Lynch’s “best” film - but for me it will probably always remain my personal favorite. This was my introduction to Lynch’s work and it holds a very sentimental spot for me as this was the time in my life when I really began exploring experimental film. Eraserhead is set in a dystopia that could also serve as an alternate reality altogether. Henry Spencer has to deal with his demanding wife and deformed child while daydreaming of a singing woman in the radiator. This is Lynch at his most surrealist, his most uncompromising, and his most nauseating. It truly is one the most impressive low-budget films ever made. It manages a fine line between repulsion and transcendence.

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