Excerpt - NaNo 09

I may fail to post anything creative during NaNo, but that doesn't mean by two faithful readers should be completely deprived. Well, one of them is actually not deprived at all because I email him excerpts. Well, here's an entire Chapter of the Book of Venire for your perusing pleasure. Now let's see how screwy Blogger can possibly make the html here...

Oh, and I have removed the footnotes. They're fun, but this part is long enough without them.

Excerpt: The Book of Venire, Chapter in which believer Kinshos receives a True Dream but denies His True Word

Author: Unknown
Publisher: AuthorHouse

The Power That Dreams did touch the mind of a believer, Kinshos, and Kinshos did dream. The dreams of Kinshos foretold a new world, and in that world, Kinshos told all peoples about The Power That Dreams. Far did he travel and far did he preach the Word of the Supreme Lover of Souls. Though he did the work of the Higher Power, yet was he spat upon and kicked and thrown to the dust. Though he preached the Words of Love, yet was he battered by the people tainted by the whispers of the mongers of hate, the winged ones. Kinshos awoke with tears streaming from his eyes, for he had witnessed in his True Dream his own death. The Power That Dreams had shown him that the claws of the winged ones would tear Kinshos in twain, and again in twain, until naught remained of Kinshos but blood on sand.

Kinshos told no one of his True Dream, not his brothers and sisters in the True Faith, not his wife and children. The Power That Dreams saw all this as He slept 'neath the sea, and He did tremble with a most holy wrath. Kinshos forsook his brothers and sisters in the True Faith, his wife and children, and fled for a distant port on waters sapphire and still. But when Kinshos placed his unworthy foot on the ship that was to carry him far from his home and community, lo! The seas foamed as if beaten and the waters ran red as blood. The heavens darkened. Great storms whipped the seas into a screaming frenzy and harried the ship until it was many leagues off course. Monstrous creatures never glimpsed by human eyes rose from the seas, gnashing their many teeth and moaning their hunger.

“Surely a god has set his wrath upon this ship!” the sailors cried, but Kinshos remained silent. These sailors were masters of their seafaring craft, yet their every trick only cast the ship further and further from familiar stars and familiar waters.

“Surely a god is demanding vengeance!” the sailors wept, but Kinshos remained silent. He knew that his disobedience to the True Dream had sent this storm, yet the same fear that had driven him from his home and the course he had dreamed now drove him to silence.

The surface of the waters broke as a mountain appeared to rise from the sea. Luminous it was, shining though there were no stars to light its skin. The sailors fell upon their deck and hid their eyes, for they knew without understanding the reason that one glance upon this Great and Mighty Creature would drive them utterly from their senses. Only Kinshos dared to look, for he knew that he gazed upon the Power That Dreams. Still the Supreme Lover of Souls dreamed, but in His True Dream, he lashed out with one mighty tentacle to destroy the one who had defied the True Dream He had sent.

It was not a mountain that parted the foam, but a tentacle, as long as the horizon. Kinshos wept to see The Power That Dreams, no longer for fear but for the love he felt. The Power That Dreams sends True Dreams to those He Loves most dearly, and this man's treachery had cut him to His Loving Soul. For even in anger, the Power That Dreams Loves humanity with a Love that is beyond our reckoning. Kinshos leapt to the bow and spread his arms wide.

“Supreme Lover of Souls!” he wept. “I have failed the True Dream. Though I have woken Your Wrath, I do not deserve this glance upon Your Shining Flesh! Only spare these sailors, and I shall preach Your Word this very day. I shall preach it until the day I perish, whether that be this day 'neath Your Sea or a century from now in a far land.”

The Power That Dreams then Dreamt that He touched Kinshos as gently as a mother kissing her newborn babe. The waters stilled, the thunderheads departed, and the sailors stood again, amazed at what they had witnesses.

“'twas you!” they cried. “Kinshos, you brought this storm upon us!” He confessed that he had provoked the Power That Dreams, and they spat at him. They kicked him and battered him, but as the blows landed on his flesh, Kinshos proclaimed the True Word of the Power That Dreams. When the sailors tired, they found that their ship had drifted back to its course. They tied the moorings of their ship and brought Kinshos to the front of the bow.

“Kinshos! You have caused the wrath of the seas to rise against us, yet you also calmed them. Even as we punished you, you preached the True Word of the Power That Dreams. We must cast you now from our ship, but we must also confess that we are eternally indebted to you. For your faith, we have realized the error of our false faiths and have accepted the Supreme Lover of Souls into our hearts. Go now and do not curse our ship again, but spread the True Word that the Power That Dreams has tasked you to spread.”

Kinshos wept many tears. The sailors cast him from the ship, and he fell on sharp rocks as he tumbled to the sands of the shore. At that moment did he understand the True Dream the Supreme Lover of Souls had sent him. In truth, he had been spat upon, kicked, cursed, and battered. In truth, he now lay upon sands of a distant land as his blood spilled from him. In truth, he died, but it was his fear that died, his hardness of heart. All these were the claws of the winged ones he had seen in his dreams. After a day and a night on the sand, Kinshos arose again and began to preach the True Word of the Power That Dreams. He showed many of his brothers and sisters the Way of Love and Unity, and together they rejected hate and fear.

The world that Kinshos witnessed in his True Dream did not come to pass within his lifetime, for his brothers and sisters in faith were sworn to secrecy. Thus he had been taught, and thus would the True Faith thrive for thousands of years. Yet Kinshos did expand the community of True Faith, and many more reached out to trusted brothers and sisters. Thus for the first time did the community reach across the globe, like the great tentacles of the Power That Dreams.

Plotting - NaNo 09

Only 8k words in, and I began despairing of making word count. This isn't because I don't have sufficiently rich fodder for my fictional non-fiction account of a made-up cult but because I have a hard time organizing it and keeping the passages different from one another and interesting to write. I can only say "Cthulhu loves us" in so many ways, so many times.

But then I had a revelation: if I ever am desperate for words, I can re-write various Bible stories according to my modified Cthulhu mythos. The most fun of these will of course be Cthulhu Genesis and Cthulhu Revelation (in which we actually are eaten, but in being eaten, we are transported to a dimension of pure love and union and wisdom), but the more I think about it, the more I think that any Bible story can be re-written as a Cthulhu story. One of the founders claims to be the illegitimate son of African dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa. I forgot which country he dictated, but the important thing is that he claimed to be the 13th Apostle secretly anointed by the Pope. Admirably crazy. This is a great way for this character to claim that he is a prophet and so has visions of the way various Biblical stories REALLY went.

Jonah and the whale? Jonah and the tentacle monster (who just ate him because he wanted to enlighten him). Dude on the road to Damascus? Dude on a sea voyage where he meets Cthulhu. Tower of Babel? Big tower that gets destroyed by the evil winged creatures because people were working together too much. I think there's definitely 50K worth of material there if I can't think of anything else. But I draw the line at the begats. Oh, and I also have arbitrary rules to make up. Woohoo!

Fanfiction - plotting the end

Not the end of fanfiction as a phenomenon, the end of a particular piece of fan fiction. As my two readers may recall, I have two outstanding - as in incomplete, not wonderful - fanfic pieces. One I've been working on with something like regularity, and the other has, until this afternoon, lain dormant for about two years.

No more! At the funniest request I've ever received, I decided to resurrect that story and to finish it once and for all. To my immense surprise I discovered that, despite some issues especially in the early part (wherein I try to be way too clever), I really enjoy this tale. I stopped where I did because I had a chapter to write that didn't fit very much into the larger story arc and because, until I had the action in mind, it seemed like a pretty boring chapter. I had it end with the return of a character who left the story ages ago, a gunfight, the uncovering of a genocidal secret rising to the highest levels of government, and our MC skillfully turning her enemies on each other.

The request went something like this: I'm really glad you're working on the story you're writing for me, [it's a birthday gift for an online friend of mine who loves fanfic more than some people love their spouses] but I feel bad that it's taking your time away from your other unfinished fanfic. We gotta be nice to our readers, right? So maybe you could take some time off my fanfic and update the other one, and I won't feel bad.

Or something. It was strangely sweet.

Anyway, I'm feeling a surge of affection for the story which I hope will be able to last me through the last couple of chapters. I even wrote up a two-page summary and posted it along with the new chapter, for any remaining readers I may have. It was a lot of fun re-reading my story, especially the romantic/sexual tension scenes between the MC and her two loves. So now I must plot the end and get writing it, hopefully before NaNo steals all my time and writing energy!

The fandom is Andromeda, and this fanfic is very AU. The MC is Beka Valentine, and the two male leads are Tyr Anasazi and Charlemagne Bolivar. For the first part of the story, Beka is wreaking criminal havoc and falling in love with Tyr as her loyal bodyguard under the auspices of a crime boss, Darjella Milein. For the second part, she's negotiating an alliance with Charlemagne Bolivar, a powerful leader of his Pride, after Tyr has left to pursue his Nietzschean ambitions. He keeps trying to seduce her, and she wants to marry him off. But Nietzschean family arrangements are odd, and the prospective bride is eager to become Beka's sister; she's under the impression that Beka and Charlemagne are lovers because only a Nietzschean's family would make such an offer on his behalf. Beka's seriously considering fulfilling the other woman's expectations.

Oh yes, and people keep trying to kill Beka for various reasons. She's made a lot of enemies. This story is going to end in a glorious Shakespearean bloody melee, complete with Tyr and possibly Charlemagne delcaring their love for Beka in very extravagant terms. I did already write one line of faux-poetry for Tyr to recite, and I have to say, crafting it was a lot of fun. The line is: “Never have mortals set mortal eyes upon these stygian flames resplendent, aureate damnation.” He doesn't usually talk like that, but he was rendered poetic by circumstances.

Good lord, this post is getting long. I just got a review from ff.net, thanking me in particular for the recap. I wrote it partly for myself, I must say. I would not have remembered half of what was going on if I'd just started writing cold.

Anyway, the plot!
-Having narrowly escaped an yet another assassination attempt, Beka finally going to allow herself to be seduced by Charlemagne, but not before getting a good night's sleep.
-The aftermath of her report on the investigation that nearly got her killed will be widespread chaos and violence on that world, not to mention serious threats of reprisals by the few remaining members of the decimated race.
-I'm not sure if Beka's going to have moral qualms about her job and lifestyle. I think that if she did, Darjella would be willing to employ her in a more diplomatic avenue, which would be fantastic. But that might draw out the ending more than I like. Hmm...
-After a series of meetings which will prove completely surreal for Beka, Charlemagne marries the other woman, and Beka for the first time in a loooong time will have something resembling a family. She will find this highly unsettling.
-Meanwhile, Tyr has started gathering the smaller Prides to him with the bones of Drago Museveni. I'm trying to decide whether he impregnates Freya as he does in the TV series... having little Tamerlane running around would complicate things, especially his willingness to die at the end. One of these Prides the Volsung, which are after all distantly related to his Pride (which is canon!).
-So the whole lot of our heroes are drawn back together again. Tyr needs Charlemagne to bring the Jaguar Pride to his alliance to counter the strength of his mortal enemies, the Drago-Kazov Pride. Awkward times ensue! Beka was once deeply in love with Tyr, and even though her feelings for Charlemagne aren't nearly as strong, she IS sleeping with him and sister to his wife. Soooo huzzah.
-The Jaguar Matriarch, whom we've already met, agrees to discuss the possibility of throwing her support to Charlemagne, against the Jaguar Alpha who hates Charlemagne on principle and opposes the alliance with Tyr precisely because Charlemagne supports it (and probably for various reasons of strategery). Beka goes planetside while Tyr and Charlemagne are negotiating furiously, and the ladies chit chat. Sidebar: conversations between humans and Nietzscheans are just as much fun to write as the ludicrously fancy places I have these characters visit. Nietzscheans cannot resist highly charged conversations, and humans are always intent to prove that they can hold up their end of any discussion.
-The Jaguar Alpha finds out about the meeting and stealthily brings his secretest forces to kill Beka and, if necessary, the Matriarch. It's a bold and probably stupid move, especially considering that Charlemagne finds out about the Alpha finding out and brings Tyr along, ostensibly to stop them from killing the Matriarch and destroying the aliance but obviously in large part to stop them from killing Beka.
-People die. Trance, who's been telling us this whole story, gives us a cryptic epilogue. Everyone proclaims their love for Beka.

Excellent! This is a very exciting prospect, full of loaded conversations and sexual tension and angsty romance. I think I can fit this all into something like three chapters, excluding the epilogue, unless I decide that more sexual tension is needed. It might be.

Brainstorming - NaNo 09

Something I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about Made-Up Religion is the financial shenanigans, which I'm thinking will prompt the investigative journalism that will make up part of the book. And what self-respecting wacky cult doesn't engage in financial (and possibly legal) shenanigans??

My ideas so far, are...
1) "Free" dream interpretation - I also forgot to mention that, because Cthulhu our all-loving savior sleeps under the sea, dreams are very important to this religion - which inevitably leads to harassing people for a longer, paid report or session.
2) Expensive hypnotherapy sessions to tap into the humanity's collective unconscious. During one's intensive hypnotherapy, one is encouraged to cut off contact with non-believers, even loved ones.
3) Expensive training to become an expensive hypnotherapist (unlicensed by the ignorant state boards, of course)
4) Ridiculous claims of trademarks over common phrases and the lines they use in hypnotherapy sessions
5) Ponzi investment schemes. As investors get higher in the ranks, Slytherin claims that they get more in tune with humanity and thus the stock market - and their returns will increase as more people join, especially if they become hypnotherapy trainers.
6) Aggressive litigation against people who criticize them. The journalist undertaking this book is risking a major suit and will probably remind the reader of this many, many times.

I think six financial/legal schemes is sufficient fodder, at least to begin with, in addition to the other things I need to figure out. Very exciting!

A friend linked me to this article, which I'm reading right now. I suspect it will be inspiring.

Brainstorming - NaNo 09

My vast and varied body of readers knows of my plan for NaNo 09, so I'll recap very briefly: made-up religion. Actually, that's exactly how it started in my head after I read a wiki article on one of those cult religions. I've been thinking about it ever since that fateful wiki surf, and I've had some more ideas elaborating the story.

For one thing, it will be written like a non-fiction documentation of the religion, with both narrative passages by the author describing the founders and practices, as well as pamphlets and things written by them. I'm not sure who the narrator will be; actually, this is the first time I've even thought to wonder about that. Hmm.

There are four founders, who my brain insists on associating with the Hogwarts founders. I may change the genders of some of them. Slytherin = the sleazy businessman who engineers the profit-making part of the enterprise. Hufflepuff = the clueless, obscure daughter of minor royalty who finances everything. Ravenclaw = the hardline fanatic who believes passionately in the religion. Gryffindor = the classic insane demagogue personality who attracts all the attention. I think he's the one who made it up in the first place. He's so self-deluded that he may actually believe in it.

The basic tenet of the religion is that Cthulhu loves us all. He wants us to be happy and to enjoy our full potential as his equals, which means accessing our collective magic. He sleeps under the sea and rules it through his disciples, but he's happy to give us the land. His enemies are the cloud-dwelling beings (sometimes mistaken for angels) who want complete dominion over the earth, including the land and the sea. The cloud-dwelling beings have been working all throughout human history to divide us and to pit us against each other so we don't learn to use our communal magic. They've also been working to give Cthulhu a bad name, and as you probably know, they succeeded pretty well on both counts.

So there are some points I need to ponder further, perhaps even outline. These are:
The backgrounds of the Founders, especially Hufflepuff's (supposed) lineage
The history of the cloud-dwelling beings
The history of Cthulhu

However, one of the best part of this project is that the details are completely allowed to be contradictory. The factual parts, the biographies, should be fairly consistent (though differing reports would be fun), but I imagine that some contradictions would not only be realistic for a made-up religion but also present a lot of fodder for pamphleteering and speechifying.

I'm very excited about this. It's an ultimate parody epic in its own right!

Short Story - CannRomCom

For the livejournal writing community of which I'm a member, I wrote this short story in the CannRomCom-verse. Sadly, I finished a day after the challenge ended, but I should be able to post it this weekend. I had no idea what to do with the prompts for the longest time, but suddenly, just a couple days ago, I started writing something--and it turned out to be from the POV of CannRomCom MC. Fun!

My prompts were: abide, pitch, "What part of my subconscious do you hail from?" This is the first entry I've put behind a cut, I think. It's longer than what I usually post here

Brainstorming - CannRomCom

CannRomCom is the nickname I just made up for my cannibal romantic comedy. I'm not sure that's entirely accurate; the cannibal in question may not actually be a human being. I haven't decided.

I was despairing of thinking up a good premise for this story and doubting whether it was even worth trying to brainstorm until last night. A vigorous 30-ish block walk got my brain working, as 30 block walks often do, and I decided that the MC should be a flesh-eating monster, along the lines of an X-Files critter I vaguely remember. That was a very helpful revelation for me; I still don't have a lot of the plot or any of the ending down, but I feel like I might actually be able to write this.

So. X-Files flesh-eating monster. I was debating telling the story from a neutral third-person perspective, first person of the MC, or possibly first person her best friend, who gets bits and pieces of the story at a time. I'm thinking I might go with the third option because I have in mind a funny (well, to my reckoning) opener where the narrator is confiding to MC that she's thinking of going to therapy.

It goes something like... "For what it's worth," she told me, "the decade I spent in therapy taught me two things. One, as a flesh-eating monster, I was just as entitled to my life and my happiness as anybody else. Two, everybody else is entitled to their lives as well." MC stopped going to therapy shortly after she had these two revelations because, as you might suspect, her therapist was trying to get at the root of her delusion that she's a flesh-eating monster. Considering that she really is a flesh-eating monster, clearly their relationship was doomed to stagnate.

MC's thing is that her cannibalism (or whatever it is) is only roused during sexual ecstasy. That's fortunate for most of the people in the world, but, since she had her revelation that she can't eat people without their full, informed consent, it's unfortunate for her sex life. Where it goes from there, I haven't quite decided, but I really like the premise. And I think I like the narrative I'm leaning toward, that of her friend. We'll see what comes of this! If I ever get it on paper (after which I'll immediately hate it), I'll even try to muster up the courage to workshop it.

Brainstorm - UFPE short story

Another idea for short stories I had is from the ten free cities along the coast of the UFPE continent (which so far lacks a name). I could even write a short story for each of them, on the personality of the cities and their wacky inhabitants. I had forgotten the name, so I checked the past entries: Ten Notches of the Glittering Scythe. I do like that, though I am skeptical that all those free-spirited, free city libertines ever agreed to call themselves one thing, fearsome as the name is. Or maybe they didn't agree? Maybe there are just as many names as cities?

I think the thing to do is to base each one very loosely on what I know of existing cities, which in some case is little more than seeing calendars with pictures of them. But it would be easier to keep their personalities straight that way. A full half of those could be based on NYC boroughs, if I wanted to go that way. Well, I don't think I will, but it's a good thing for me to keep in mind, in case I run out of places to base the cities on.

So NYC (could be further divided) and Paris are the obvious ones, since I've been there. San Francisco is another good one and LA because I've at least known people who've spent a lot of time there. Las Vegas would be zany fun to write. Something like Rome would be great and then St. Petersburg, (-berg?) which I know of vaguely because my mother spent a summer there. What else... Beijing was the center of Olympic stuff recently, so I may recall a little bit of that stuff. And of course, crazy crowded neon Tokyo. Excellent!

Now to do something with this. Hmm.

Ideas - Short Stories

The flaying tonight was quite encouraging, on the whole, and my success with them as opposed to longer projects has me wanting to write more of them. Now, the hallmark of this blog so far has been "I plan to do X" and never actually finishing X--but I realize, only where long projects are concerned! So that settles that, whatever exactly that is.

--The UFPE requires short stories, namely Magely and Elvely ones. Ayrisella's history is much less interesting. I could also do some Might Have Been shorts with specific scenes I've had in mind for as long as I've thought about the MHB.

--More Archon-verse stories, as I've dubbed them. Jemma's advisor needs a story; he's being held at (probably metaphorical) gunpoint when he calls Elorna to cancel their meeting, and she has no idea of this. And I think Agent Glebick needs one too, as she continues the investigation. Of course, the Bad Guys need one too! I'd like to do a week's worth of stories which, considering the average length so far, would make it a novella.

--I have one line repeating in my head that could develop into something, "news that didn't really happened," along the lines of reality disintegrating, not your run of the mill fake news (I'm not naming names, but...). I feel there may be a way to tie this into Archon-verse, but I don't want to push it.

--Over IM just now, I had an idea. Sadly, I find writing comedy very difficult, but I could try a page or two. It would be a comedy romance (romantic comedy?) about a relationship wherein one of the parties (beknownst to both) is planning to kill and consume the other after they, um, consummate the relationship. I feel bad puns would abound in the most glorious way possible. If it worked, it would definitely be the strangest thing I've ever written... well, depending on one's calculus.

I'm debating as to whether I should set a concrete goal for myself - one a month? I'll think about it further.

Brainstorming - UFPE

The UFPE has been neglected, as I had hoped it would not be but feared it would. But as I've started reading a fantasy saga (or so it bills itself) I picked up on the sidewalk one day, I've been shamelessly stealing ideas for my own fantasy epic. These have to do with the religion, which I realize needs a name (if only to identify believers from non-believers). I only have a few minutes to post today, so I'll postpone that for later.

Basically, the astrology of UFPE-verse is centered around three divisions of the sky, which adherents determines both their personalities and their destinies. The divisions are: six jewel tones, three metallic tones, and sunrise/sunset. For the humans of the UFPE, the most important (for many, the only one they know about) is the six jewel tones. I'm thinking of re-arranging the others so that they don't line up cleanly with the six, but we'll see.

Anyway, the mages are divided into houses or something based on those tones. My main idea was that once upon a time the mages had different steadfasts for each house, but when the kingdom and free cities combined to drive back the power of the mages, they exiled them to one of the steadfasts. Nobody thought of this, but this has created an imbalance in the... something... which is behind the corruption of the mages, who I already knew were conspiring to drag Ayrisella kicking and screaming into the destiny of their choosing. Even better, I think that her One True Love is a member of this house (Amethyst, I believe) who is struggling to right the balance but has to leave the mages before he accomplishes this task.

And now I must away to class. Elorna's story has been posted to the writers group, and I am trying very hard not to think about it until flaying commences.

Legal Fiction - first paragraphs

Well, the writing group shall have to wait until Tuesday for my piece, but I did get a good start on it tonight. It's not moving as quickly as I'd like, but I'm enjoying Elorna's character more and more as I write her. Here is a quick sample of the first few paragraphs before I stumble off to bed.

***
Elorna Mynee chose a terrible day to disappear.  

Every one of her clients and colleagues was working frantically to take advantage of a pending Supreme Court decision, hoping to poach on competitors' patents while protecting their own. All around the nation, equal parts champagne and stomach-burning whiskey flowed in wood-paneled offices all afternoon into the evening as the news beamed down from the hallowed halls of justice. Under normal circumstances, somebody would have raised the alarm that same night, but everybody who would have called to ask where she was was regretting the afternoon's indulgence, crunching aspirin through an all-nighter. It would be over twenty-four hours after she awoke before one of the other partners thought to dial her number.

Elorna's first thought upon awakening to the ear-splitting trill of her computer was that either the decision had come down early or that she had slept amazingly late. Her hand groped for the button that would send the call through as she squinted at the clock. Four-thirty a.m.? she thought blearily. Did the justices not sleep at all?

The computer screen informed her that the call originated from Archon University, but it was not a number she recognized. It also informed her that the call had been made to her business number. “Elorna Mynee, how may I help you?” She barely smothered a yawn as she spoke.

***

What is in store for our intrepid lawyer, aside from inevitable disappearance?? Only time will tell.

Brainstorming - Legal Fiction

Yes, too long has passed since last I posted! I think working on a computer all day gave me an aversion for working on a computer in the evening, even in the context of writing. I've been writing a bit of fanfiction for a friend of mine and doing that in a notebook. It's much easier on my weary eyes.

But I have been thinking over the legal fiction story, and it's developing nicely in several areas except arguably the most important - plot. Normally I like to focus more on characters, but for the short story I'm imagining, the plot needs to hook the reader from the start and speed along from there. I'm planning to write this the way that my writers group suggested I revise Jemma.

The MC is named Elorna Mynee, an IP lawyer who specializes in magic stuff. Of course, I need a more official name for magic stuff - writers group suggested thauma- as a prefix, which I'll probably use. She's been in touch on and off with Jemma, and Jemma's supervisor (whose name I've forgotten) contacts Elorna the day after Jemma disappears to ask what Elorna knew about Jemma's work. Elorna has other things on her mind, namely a huge Supreme Court magic IP case, the outcome of which will be announced on the day the story dawns.

But she's a true professional, so she takes on the work and conducts some serious investigation. While she's working hard and trying not to think about the case, a pair of National Security lawyers come in and warn her off the case in a very genteel-like way. They end up chatting about the case, and Elorna brushes it off. I'm not sure what should happen during the afternoon - the Supreme Court case comes down then - but during the evening she contacts a friend of hers from undergrad, a conspiracy nut, who meets with her at a vast, dusty library.

Elorna records their conversation with her futuristic blackberry, and when her friend wanders off for a moment to use the restroom (or something), she absently leaves it laying around somewhere conveniently nearby but not clearly visible - perhaps inside a stack of scientific journals. When friend doesn't return, she heaves an irritated sigh and goes to look for her. On the other hand, maybe she leaves it in the shelves near the journals she's reading.

And doesn't return before the janitor or library intern comes to re-shelve all the stuff she's taken out. JanIntern finds the blackberry and takes it. What shall be revealed from its contents??

This is classic sort of open-ended ending I love and a lot of readers hate. Alas. Now I have a week to write the story and post it for a flensing!

Contest - New Story

I think I've settled on a vague idea - but no more than that - for the story I want to write for the legal fiction competition I posted about a day or two ago. I want to set it in the Jemma universe and have it be from the POV of the Grienyte family lawyer (or one of them), whose mundane practice is turned upside down by her murder/disappearance/whatever. I already started writing bits of it in my head, and besides the plot, which remains a mystery to me, my main challenge is to make the protagonist a distinct character from Jemma. Actually, she could sound exactly like Jemma from the perspective of the judges, but I don't want to have One Stock Character I bring out whenever I write something original.

I'm thinking that Unnamed Lawyer is an intellectual property lawyer who specializes in magic business (which has a fancier name, after suggestions of critique group). This sounds awfully close to my own interests, but I promise that it actually works within the Jemma story. I'm thinking that Jemma pulled something along the very cliche lines of, "Send this story to the papers if I'm killed," but left something with her family's magic-specializing lawyer instead.

I already have a short tangent in mind about how the incorporation of magic into the legal codes and things finally spurred Congress or whomever to pass a law officially striking down the law against perpetuities. Okay, that might have to go, but the idea tickled me as I was thinking of it. The RAP is basically evil and complicated and stupid.

Anyway, the poor lawyer is bewildered by the wackiness that ensues, and I think that's where Unnamed Lawyer is going to differ from Jemma. Jemma was always pretty hyped up about what was going on, the point that my critique group mentioned several times that she's on the verge of a heart attack, and Unnamed Lawyer is going to be the opposite - bewildered but really laid back about it. Hey, you don't put in your obligatory three years in BigLaw in magical law only to jump out of your skin every time you get a death threat.

So that's all I have for now. Plot still needs to be figured out, but I have a character I like and a universe I vaguely know, which is pretty good progress.

EDITED to add: Check this out! Etymology of the word "prestigious": 1546, "practicing illusion or magic, deceptive," from L. præstigious "full of tricks," from præstigiæ "juggler's tricks..." Oh, that's going in there.

Contest - legal fiction

From an email in my school inbox (edited):

To Whom It May Concern:

Following are particulars of this year’s NYLJ Fiction Contest:

• National contest is open to attorneys, law professors & law students.

• Prizes: $1,000 (first place), $500 (second place), and $250 (third place). In addition, first place manuscript to be published (one time only) as special feature of the New York Law Journal edition of Friday, Dec. 4th, 2009.

• Manuscripts of 500 to 5,000 words must be works of fiction, set in the legal milieu, or with attorneys, law professors or law students as principal characters. A manuscript may be either a short story or a chapter(s) from a novel in progress.

• Deadline is Friday, Nov. 6th, 2009. Mail five hard copies of manuscript—along with author name, address, telephone number(s) and e-mail address—to (...)

• Ten finalists to be short-listed for judging. Finalists’ works to be published at NYLJ/NYLawyer.com on one-time, unpaid basis.

• Top three winners from short list to be selected by an independent panel of judges (to include author/attorney Linda Fairstein).

• Winners to be honored with surprise announcements during reception for all entrants, to be held at New York City Bar Association headquarters (42 West 44th Street, NYC 10036) on the evening of Thursday, December 3rd, 2009.

• Entrants subject to contest letter of agreement covering eligibility and author warranty of originality of fiction, and warranty that manuscript does not defame or libel real life individuals or institutions.


I can do this! Deadlines are my best friends, when it comes to writing. I'll think about this more when I'm not working.

UFPE - comic progress

Today I worked and worked and erased and scribbled and typed and made shocking, wild progress to... page 2! Yes the Book of Might Have Beens is slouching along. I'm trying to be conscious of varying the layout without being obnoxious about it, in addition to keeping the story progressing at a nice clip and preventing the narrative + story-within-narrative + flashbacks from becoming too confusing.

I only had a panel and a half to draw, but then I had to write up the script for the whole thing, and my head is starting to protest all that typing.

Because I don't remember where I left off last time and because my head continues to protest, I'll just share the final caption of this very complicated page: "He must have been a child, even by human reckoning, yet his tale was as old as my race." I'm not entirely happy with that line, but it does sound like something young!MMC would say. I'll sleep on it.

Short post - epiphany!

I had an epiphany as I was walking home tonight and thinking about the UFPE re-write, which I decided I'm going to do without referencing what I've already written. Or at least, without having printed out pages beside me during the re-write. I realized it's been almost a year since the UFPE was born, and it's evolved so much during that time.

But that's not the epiphany that gave this post its subject line. I was thinking about the Book of Might Have Beens and the Vol. 1 re-write, and I realized that the prologue to the Book of Might Have Beens shows that Bad Guy's early life is a lot like MC's. In fact, Bad Guy is sorta MC's life gone wrong, or hers is his life gone right. They don't line up perfectly, but they have a lot in common.

They: ran away from home, were isolated from their communities and the world at large, found nice people early on, met up with a specific character (I may have mentioned this before), wanted to learn about their heritage and the larger world... I think there were others, but I've forgotten them for now.

However, MC wasn't able to share in her family's privilege in the community, while Bad Guy did share in his family's disgrace. MC ran into mean folks, in the form of Seaton, while Bad Guy had almost uniformly good experiences, or at least uniformly un-bad ones. MC doesn't know anything about her ancestry early on, while Bad Guy does; his quest is more to understand his people. MC is a charming young lady, though she doesn't know it, while Bad Guy is awkward and shy.

The parallels were very interesting to think about. I can't tell if I just wrote them that way because they're such fantasy tropes, or if I was subconsciously being clever. Perhaps it's some of both! I love that their lives followed such a similar path early on and led them ultimately to such different places - Good and Evil, that is.

Writing Prompt - Paradise Falls

Another day, another neat picture, another writing prompt. This one comes from one of my two readers, an article about the inspiration for Paradise Falls in the movie "Up."

I love the looming hunk of rock in the distance, and the clouds hovering over top of it (or they're just way in the background, hard to say). It looks very much to me like the place where the Mage Towers (working name) of the UFPE would be! So let's see, brainstorming or spate o' writing today?

It occurs to me that MC's love interest is a pretty under-developed character. I wrote a short scene with him once, but I wasn't quite happy with it. I think I fundamentally don't have as good a grasp on him as I have on MC and Bad Guy, so... character interview it is! Questions are copied and pasted from past interviews. I'm going to set this when UFPE v. 1 begins.

1. What do you do for a living?

I am a Quisan of the Amethyst.

2. Are any other people living with you? Who are they?

I have many fellow Quisans and Quisenes who inhabit the Teuirs. We are by and large solitary, and there are often days where I never exchange a word with one of them.

3. Tell me about your parents. How well do/did you get along with them

No Quis knows their parents for long. As soon as our talent is discovered, we are hurried off to the Teuirs. I remember one scene: my mother was returning from a long and fruitless day of fishing to find that my aunts had cleaned the house, cleaned me, and prepared a fragrant supper. I do not know they chose this occasion to act so generously toward us, but I have never smelled anything as aromatic as that food. I sometimes wonder where my father was during this scene, for I also remember hoping that he would not miss the delectable odor that wafted through our home.

4. What was your birth order? How many siblings did you have? Older? Younger?

When I left, I had no siblings, but I suspect that my parents had more children after I was gone.

5. Who else was in your family while you were growing up? How did you get along with them?

My mother's sisters frequently visited us in the evenings and on holidays. I remember them but dimly as a chattering, perfumed bunch who liked to sweep me into their midst for pillowy embraces that left me a little dizzy from the clash of scents they wore.

6. What were three things you liked to do when you were a child?

I liked to attend my mother as she fished, though I never had the patience to stay for long. I liked to be swept up by my aunts into a communal embrace. Once I arrived at the Teuirs, I liked to scramble to the bottom of the Great Table in order to gaze upward at the sight. It never fails to leave me in awe. The climb back up, and the amount of time the entire expedition takes, severely limited the amount of times I could partake in such a delight when I was fairly young. At that age, I could rarely maintain my enthusiasm long enough to reach the bottom, especially knowing how difficult the climb is. Still, I was now and then seized by the urge, and I never regretted it.

7. What were you afraid of when you were a child?

When I was first taken, I was so afraid that my parents would replace me with another child and forget about me that I often wept at the idea.

8. How did you respond to the physiological and psychological changes in your life as a teenager?

The Quis, especially with Quisans, counsel great meditation for the inner and outer turmoil of that period. Lessons with young Quis during that transition are very carefully monitored for dangerous outbursts. When one becomes flushed with tumultuous sensations, heavy exercise is also recommended. During this period, I descended and ascended the Grand Table dozens of times. The final ascent was always sufficient to cure me of whatever strange ardor had seized me.

9. What makes you happy now?

I enjoy my work with the young Quis. It is astonishing to watch them progress from lost children to peers, and it is astonishing to think that I too underwent such a change. The bulk of my time is taken up with teaching specialized courses of the Amethyst tradition, but I have also been appointed Special Counsellor to half a dozen Quisans who require additional guidance.

10. What is your greatest fear?

The appropriate Quis answer would invoke the Wars and the harbinger that ever lingers of another Rupture, but frankness is preferable to a facade of propriety. My first instinct is to say that my greatest fear is that I shall never discover anything more about the death of my dearest friend, but I realize that I have a fear greater than that - that one day I shall no longer care.

11. What would you change about yourself if you could?

The Quis always seek to better themselves, but they must also honor their creation. Another appropriate Quis response here, if that did not satisfy, would be - I would change the stubbornness that prevents me from knowing harmony. But so much I have I seen of the dangers of self-delusion that I shall attempt another honest answer, painful though it might be.

I would change... my dedication to my duties at the Great Table. I dream of haring away to seek the truth of (name)'s death, but even my dreams are shackled by a sense of duty heavier than iron.

12. What is it that you have never told anyone?

I have never told anyone that I dream of leaving here, but in the interests of an original response, I shall say that I have never told anyone the true circumstances surrounding the death of my dear professor, nor of the thought-link that existed between one of the Amethyst and myself. The Great Table and its quiet people harbor many secrets, without doubt to our detriment.

13. What do you want?

I want to find the truth, and I want to see the girl whose face appeared in a secret room.


I do have a better handle on Love Interest now though I couldn't remember any of the names of the characters he mentions. Oh well. I do like my names for the various Mage Tower aspects: "Quis" is the name of either the collective of mages or a hypothetical individual (a bit like "on" in French); "Quisan" is a male mage; "Quisene" is a female mage; "Teuirs" is the Towers built upon the tepui, and the Great Table is the name of the hunk of rock itself. "Quisan" and "quisene" I got from the French words for male and female cousins; I wanted the mages to have familial names for each other, but I wanted something a little different from the typical brother/sister, son/daughter convention. "Teuirs" is a twisting of the French word for tower. It turns out that foreign languages are wonderful for these kinds of made-up words!

So it's getting late, and if I want my eight hours of sleep, I must away. Good night!

Prompts - underwater ruins

Today's prompt is from a Blog o' Odd Things I have in my Google Reader. It's a list of "7 Most Fascinating Underwater Ruins," and my favorite is -

"Situated 68 miles beyond the east coast of Taiwan, Yonaguni Islands are a remarkable place for its rugged and mountainous coastlines. The special attraction is the submerged ruins located in the southern coast of Yonaguni: a superb 100×50x25 meters man-made artifact out of solid rock slabs stands erect at right angles. Its is estimated to be around 8000 years old, which is remarkably early for the kind of technology that has been used for carving it. Different theories exist about the possible identities of this structure.

While some say these ruins are the remnants of the missing Continent of Mu, other archeologists attribute them to be the outcome of unexplained geological processes, although, when you see the finely designed hallways and staircases, this ‘natural phenomenon' idea will appear sheer out of place.

The megalith was discovered quite accidentally by a sport diver in 1995 when he had strayed beyond the permissible limit off the Okinawa shore. The interesting thing about this massive stone building is that it had arches made of beautifully fitted stone blocks bearing resemblance with the building architectural style of the Inca civilization. Debates were rife about the ruins being associated with the prehistoric Motherland of Civilization. Surveying the ruins minutely takes time and skill because of the rough oceanic currents."

Link!

Here's to hoping everything formats correctly. Anyway, wow! Underwater ruins! Giant steps! Missing continent of Mu! Resemblance to Inca architecture off the coast of Taiwan! It sounds to me like the set-up for a Lovecraftian tale, and my two readers will know that I am quite the Lovecraft fan. A quick glance at Wiki shows that the lost continent of Mu did indeed show up in the Cthulhu mythos. Fantastic.

But perhaps I should branch out a little today. Instead of my beloved Mythos and instead of my beloved UFPE (I did a couple more panels over the weekend), I'll try something else.

Oh, now here's a funny idea. Let's see if I can make something of it.

*****

Aurorasdatter was sick of it.

She hated the endless hours she passed wrapped in cotton-wool, shielded from the frightening new turn her world had taken until they were sure that she was ready to face it again. She hated the fashionable psycopathy and the practiced melancolia. She hated everything she had left behind, but she hated even more how much she missed it all.

Most of all, Aurorasdatter hated her name. It was not really a name, or at least not really her name. She would not have one of her own for another nine months, not until she had survived this new world for a full year. It was a morbid custom, but who could accuse these people of morbidity and keep a straight face? And if Aurora should bring another one, another girl, into this frightening world, how would they ever tell the two of them apart?

For all these reasons, and for the vestiges of the spirit of wanderlust that had pervaded her life before the change, Aurorasdatter was running away from her protectors, her teachers, her guides, and her tormentors. She was going to one of their far Eastern enclaves, a tiny place beneath the waves where she could walk about at any hour, without fear of death or discovery. The very thought of living in such a strange, inhuman place made most of them uneasy, but it was that same inhumanity that drew Aurorasdatter. Wasn't that the beauty of this new world of hers, the chance to experience the inhumane?

She would stay belowdecks for the interminable weeks of the passage, surviving off the prey she had captured for just this reason. She could keep him alive for perhaps half the duration of the journey, she estimated, and she would endure the rest of it as long as she could stave off the restlessness that had driven her thus far. A map and an antique astrolabe stolen - was it stealing? - from her own estate completed her luggage.

Aurorasdatter. She winced. What kind of creature of the dark named herself after the dawn, she wondered. She had never met Aurora, not that she could recall; her inheritance consisted of a very silly moniker - daughter of the sunrise indeed - and a group of elders who would have kept her locked in a closet for a decade if she had not taken control of her new life, such as it was. Beneath the gleeful maliciousness and black humor they wore like expensive sable, she supposed that a sort of kindness and fellow-feeling must lurk in their still breasts, but it was a concern that suffocated.

At her feet, the prey moaned softly. Aurorasdatter kicked it irritably, and it quieted. She put her ear to the ship's creaking hull and closed her eyes. Outside, she could hear the waves, shifting and splashing against the wooden planks in a song as old as her people. The wind was older, but it did not carry the same promise it once had, not for one such as she who could no longer brave the open sky with impunity. The waves would welcome her, though. She would walk the carven steps and trace her fingers over the silent, secretive tablets that waited on the sea floor.

****

I have a tendency in speculative fiction to keep secrets unnecessarily from the audience. I know it's a bad habit, but who wants to reveal right away that their main character is a vampire? Maybe it's okay in this context, at least. The shifts in tone in this piece boggle me, but it was fun to write and fun to imagine. Way underneath the ocean, surely it's dark enough to vampires to hang out all day without worrying about a deadly sunburn. It would be cool if they had entire cities underwater. Maybe she's getting into more than she knows! Maybe there's a reason these guys kept themselves away from the rest of vampire civilization.

I'm not sure if anything will ever come of this, but nothing has to. It was a fun piece to write and a fun task to try something beyond my first (or second) instinct for a prompt.

UFPE - Comic update

Too long has gone by since I worked on my comic, partly because I was on vacation and then everything disappeared in the jumble of an open suitcase. And partly because it always seems like such a time commitment to work on it, even though the panel I just worked on took me maybe ten minutes, and that's including thinking up the dialogue and the set-up of the entire page. I should just focus on doing one piece at a time instead of being intimidated by the size of it.

Anyway.

I finished the outline of the Prologue for the Book of Might Have Beens, which may or may not get a title besides "Prologue." There are going to be fifteen pages, chronicling the night of his then-young life that changed everything for Bad Guy! It's riddled with the kinds of cliches that constitute the very fabric of the UFPE: a dying grandmother revealing the Family Shame, teenage (for an Elf) angst, flashbacks galore, a stirring tale of days gone by, and of course, casually spoken words that turn out to have Major Significance. The person who says these earth-shattering words also appears in the UFPE V. 1, as I may have mentioned already. I'm debating letting him discover what he spawned with that conversation, and though I can't see it happening in the UFPE chronology... well, that's what the Book of Might Have Beens is for!

I also drew up a sketch of the first panel of the second page, and I'll probably draw one or two more tonight before bed. Last time I wrote out the script first, but I'm in a pencil-and-paper kind of mood right now, and I much prefer a computer for actual writing. In this panel, we see a young Storyteller standing on a barrel, gesticulating grandly as he tells his story (which appears to us only in bits and pieces), a young Bad Guy watching him agog, and some blurry people in the background who are much less interesting than the story. The top caption says, "I did not yet know it, but that was the day I found my destiny," and the bottom caption says, "Or perhaps my destiny found me."

Very short story - prompt

The prompt for this week at the Livejournal writing community of which I'm a member is: Monument.

Based on bits and pieces of real life, plus a healthy dose of the sort of quiet desperation I get while standing in lines on humid days, I present - Monument (endless wait).

***

He takes her to the monument like it’s supposed to mean something, but all she can think is that she’s hot and a little dizzy from the press of the crowd. His words about duty and honor thrum dully in her ears as she tries to eavesdrop on the conversations of the people around them.

“All I’m saying is: time travel, alien pheromones, old Kirk, and new Kirk.”

“I would kill someone for a pretzel and a Fanta.”

“Now turn your hand up, like you’re holding it!”

“God, I wish people would stay behind the barricades. I can’t even see anything because that guy,” here the speaker’s voice rises sharply, “is leaning over the barricade.”

She’s embarrassed because ‘that guy’ is with her, and he is leaning over the barricades, and she’s angry because if it were so bad, why couldn’t they just ask him to move back? She’s tempted to turn around and snap at them to do something or quit bitching, but instead she closes her eyes and tries to catch a hint of the coy breeze that’s been stirring her hair at odd moments during this very long day.

The sun is too bright when she opens her eyes again, and the monument is still there, and he’s still talking. The nerd is still elaborating a fairly horrifying scenario involving warp speed eleven, William Shatner, and a mirror universe as the snotty tourists behind her continue to whine, and she realizes there’s only one way out of this.

She tugs his hand. There’s no response because this is his favorite part of the park, so she wraps the fingers of her other hand around his elbow and jerks it so hard that he stumbles into her. He finally stops his droning as an expression of confusion and rising irritation crinkles his forehead.

“Wha-” he begins, but he can’t finish because she’s kissing him so thoroughly that the conversation she’s been listening to dry up into mildly scandalized murmurs.

The breeze flutters the hem of her shirt, and the first drops of rain patter her cheek. His hands settle in their accustomed spots, and the afternoon isn’t a complete waste after all.

Story idea - revelation!

As I am writing the next scene of the much neglected UFPE vol. 1, I had a revelation. The fellow leading the troupe of performers FMC is about to join is going to be the same guy who inspired MMC all those years ago at the carnival. This is just too delightful. I'll have to write that guy younger than I had originally intended, but that's okay. Or maybe he's one of those fantasy old men who is born at age sixty and never ages from there.

Story element - free cities

I'm writing with friends right now, and of course I decided to work on the UFPE. There are other things, like the as-yet untitled story of Jemma, that are begging for some attention, but sadly, they seem unlikely to get it anytime soon. Today I'm working on an outline of the rest of UFPE Vol. 1. The second-to-last setting of the novel, I've decided, is going to be a place with the working name "Shore City." Simple, but accurate.

As I was outlining, I thought to myself that perhaps Shore City should be a city-state. It would be a nice change of pace from the kingdom that covers the rest of the continent, and for various reasons they are very popular in fantasy. They're often written as a sort of pre-modern Las Vegas-meets-New York City, where exotic people and fashions and foods come together to create a riotous clash of international color where laws tend to be lax in the extreme. And next to the picturesque little villages where much of UFPE Vol. 1 takes place, I'm anticipating that these cities will be a lot of fun to write.

I'm envisioning that the entire west coast of the continent is a string of city states, all loosely allied in case the king tries to annex them again. Oooh, and this works especially well since I've been imagining the Mage Towers on the west coat. Maybe they lend some of their mojo to the defense of the city states - the only interference they permit themselves (and that they are permitted) in the political realm.

The major city states of history range from ancient Greece to Renaissance Italy to modern-day Singapore, all of which conjure up exciting imagery in their different ways. It might be really fun to base the different cities on these different eras - maybe the northern ones are more Greece-like, the middle ones more Italy-like, and the southern ones more Singapore-like. The Mage Towers particularly would blend in well with the Greece-like atmosphere, I think.

So I should get back to the writing, but this struck me as such a fun idea that I had to post it here. This league of cities needs a name. Ahh, maybe a constellation. Let's see... the continent is shaped vaguely like South America, which means that the the west coat curves outward for a ways and then descends in a more-or-less straight line down to a point. So it's sort of a backward question mark. A scythe! So the cities need a dramatic, fearsome name to warn the king (well, duocracy) not to mess with them. I think collectively they call themselves the Ten Notches of the Glittering Scythe. Very nice - and very useful for word count.

I should think about how this affects the Book of Might Have Beens. Surely the Glittering Scythe will have something to say about L! Or not? They might like the idea of a weakened kingdom, after all.

Progress - Book of Might Have Beens

UFPE continues on, this time in an entirely new medium. Yes, I have officially begun the comic. Right now, I'm writing the script for it and drawing a stick-person version so I have a vague idea of what it should look like, one day. I don't think it would be terribly interesting to copy it wholesale here, but I know - I'll give the captions for the first page (which is all I have completed so far). There are eight panels, and the captions say:

#1: Carnivala Floriena. They say Lady Fortune and the Lord of Love descend from the stars to dance with the farmers on this night.

#2: If they did attend, I hope they did not notice how badly I fouled my steps.

#3: After I was spun through three jigs, I begged my leave. My head continued to whirl as I looked out over the unending crowd, spilling out into the village green like a flurry of starfliers.

#4: I had never seen such activity, nor such crowds. People jostled me with every step, and my ears rang ceaselessly with the raucous cries they raised.

#5: I saw a man swallow his saber, and I waited with mounting horror for the silver blade to pierce his throat from the inside, to release a crimson fountain. Everyone else just laughed.

#6: Of course, he was perfectly fine.

#7: I spoke to him, after. He smelled vile, and I could see weeks of dirt caked into his flesh.

#8: All my life I had been told I was one of them, yet never before had I felt so utterly lost.

The MMC is quite the sympathetic character here - no trace of the villain he is to become. Even though my drawings are just stick figures, I'm very much enjoying glancing down at the page and seeing what I've created. I don't have the words drawn in, but I can follow what's happening without them. All in all, this is very exciting.

Short Post - character idea

Now that school is winding down for the semester, I'm hoping to get back into this blog more regularly. I'll especially try to keep updates coming about the status of my UFPE "Book of Might Have Beens" scheme; I've never tried to write in the comic script form before, so it's more than a little daunting. But it'll be a long time before I have three months of evenings free again, so I'm determined to make the most of it!

Briefly, I just finished reading a wonderful book, The Remains of the Day, about an English butler reminiscing about his career and things. It made so much of an impression on me that I'd like to include a character like that in the Book of Might Have Beens. He (or she, I suppose) would appear in the MHB where FMC lives in Prince Seaton's palace as part of his harem. Of course, for the purposes of the UFPE, the butler character's stiff-upper-lipness has to be exaggerated for comic effect, and I feel almost guilty about transforming such a well-done, touching character into a parody. Not too guilty, though; it really is a testament to how marvelously the author developed the character in a pretty short book.

So, the butler! This person will appear at first as a very stiff, almost heartless sort of person, but s/he will probably end up perfoming some very valuable service for FMC along the way, rather like the innkeeper (whose name I've forgotten) in UFPE Volume I. As I think about it, this could be another theme of the UFPE - love is already an important theme, so why not expand it to include charity toward our fellow human beings? It's the kind of thing the Secret Society would never count on, certainly not something as toweringly monumental as Destiny.

This has been a more productive post than I had imagined when I started. I have a new character and a new theme!

Idea, story and media

Several factors - reading the brilliant Sandman comic series, thinking about embarking upon another NaNo adventure during the summer, visiting a little art show at my sweetie's apartment building and listening to older people talking about how they were so happy to have taken up art late in life - have recently collided in such a way as to harass my brain with a very new and very interesting idea. I'm thinking of doing another volume of the UFPE for JulNo, as I did last year (which was the beginning of the UFPE, in fact), except this time in comic form.

Once upon a time, I did compose (what is the word? draw? write?) a few comic strips about a broom and his wacky, bad-pun-riddled adventures around the house. It was called Sweepstakes (get it?). Anyway, it was hardly memorable, not even the way UFPE is, but it was fun to create both the visual and written part of a story at once. Over the summer, it seems I'm going to be a research assistant, one of a team, which I suspect will leave me with a good deal of free time. I'd like to work as much as possible - I was planning on a very different sort of job that would have netted me a bit more of a cash flow - but I doubt I'll rack up 1/10 of what I had thought to make.

Ah well.

And finally, I remember a conversation I had in the past year or so with my sister. As is evident from this blog, I've focused my creative energies in writing much more than drawing, but she told me that she always thought I was good at drawing. I certainly have wished more than once that I had taken art classes in college. So while I'm unfortunately not in a good position to take art classes now, I think this would be a very fun way to stimulate some creative neurons that haven't fired in a long time and to continue the proud tradition of the UFPE.

Now I need to remember what I somehow picked up about drawing and learn to write scripts.

For the specific story, I'm currently planning on using the "Book of Might Have Beens" for the storyline. I think I've described this before, but I do need to expand the idea. I was thinking of having 5 "Might Have Been" storylines because of 50K NaNo goal, but I suppose in this format, I can be more flexible about the number and length of the MHBs. The MHBs focus on Bad Guy and FMC, possibly starring Good Guy in a supporting role. He's not terribly important in this volume because one of the themes of the UFPE is that FMC chooses him (I think, at least) because she loves him, as an act of free will - instead of succumbing to the Secret Society and all their proclamations about destiny.

Possible Prologue: Bad Guy is on his youthful travels. During a carnival scene I've tried to write a few times but never got very far into, he receives The Revelation that shapes his future.
MHB #1: FMC is a servant in Prince Seaton's court, possibly part of his harem; this could have happened fairly on in the UFPE Volume 1. Bad Guy succeeds in rallying his people and razing a few human villages near their territory. Seaton insists on meeting with him. For all Bad Guy's talk of destroying all humans, he knows he's not ready for a full-on war just yet, especially with the mages unaccounted for. Upon seeing FMC, though, sparks fly, and he abducts her (a la Blue Sword). Seaton is pissed, and war subsumes the land.
MHB #2: Near the end of UFPE Volume 2 (well, near where I stopped writing), there's a close shave where Bad Guy might well have overpowered FMC and Good Guy. In this scenario, he gets even closer to his goal and ends up killing Good Guy, leaving FMC opportunity to escape. Good Guy's last magical stand gives her some protection from Bad Guy's magical tracking, leaving her to vow his destruction and stalk him while he builds his army. Whether she kills him in the end and just how dramatic it is remains to be envisioned.
MHB #3: Early on in UFPE Volume 2, FMC is spurred to flee Bad Guy when he's professing his love to her and she sees some very bad news in the depths of his eyes. Instead of fleeing, FMC is frozen with fear and doesn't do anything. Later she has some very deep thoughts on the subjects and concludes that the only way she can stop him is if she pretends to return his affections, waiting for the ultimate moment of betrayal. Ditto the last ending. Betrayal is one of my favorite things to write, so it's going to be dramatic. I might scale back the ending of MHB #2 so I don't exceed my drama quota, which exists even for a UFPE.
MHB #4: This one is very early in the idea stage. We learn at some point that Good Guy knew FMC's father because both were mages. Instead of the slavers or whomever picking up baby FMC, Good Guy is going to find her and bring her back to Mage Tower. I envision this MHB as opening up with her as a student in the ivory tower world of the mages, sitting in a class and probably daydreaming about doing something more interesting. As news comes in of Bad Guy's meteoric (sp?) rise, the mages debate whether they should engage or stay out of the conflict. Somehow, the debate escalates into some mage civil war, leaving the whole world devastated by forces even more powerful than Bad Guy turned against each other.
MHB #5: Is it just me, or does one of these deserve a happy ending? I'll think about it. In this one, FMC never fled her home village at all. As Bad Guy sweeps down upon the world - possibly getting certain territory from Seaton as a form of appeasement - his forces invade her village. Oh, here's a possibility for a happy ending. She flees into the mountains where UFPE Volume 2 theoretically ends, where her mother's people are lying in a deep slumber. Her distress and things rouse them, and they come in the nick of time to confront Bad Guy and push him back into his own territory. Not sure if Good Guy puts in an apperance here; maybe it ends with FMC being counseled to go find him?
Epilogue (maybe? Or this could go elsewhere): the members of the Secret Society are tracing the paths of their destiny. They're absolutely determined that Bad Guy and FMC have to be together because they both have incredibly powerful astrological signs. I had an explanation for why they cared all worked up awhile back, but it's become fuzzy since then. I suppose they have an idea to harness that power for themselves. Anyway, this whole installment is how their ideas are bound to go horribly, horribly wrong. I realize that some of the MHBs, at least one, don't have FMC and Bad Guy meeting. I'm pretty sure I can remedy that.

So there is my scheme! It's a lot of work, but I'm very excited for it.

Prompt - very short story

This time, it's a visual prompt; a friend drew me as an anime character, complete with saber and gauntlets and what she called "flowing chi." I was telling her that I often wish I could draw myself as an anime character and recount the adventures anime!me would have, and she took about ten minutes to just sit there and draw me. It was pretty neat.

I'm also inspired by another friend (one of my two loyal followers) thinking about his own writing and wanting to write a very dense piece, one where every word is crucial to the story. So I won't flatter myself that I'll get something like that achieved, but I'll just see where it takes me. Yes, it will be very purple.

*****
All she could smell was the creature's bitter tang. All she could see was the rotting pestulance it left as it slithered across the earth. As she tracked it, its slime sunk into her flesh so that her fingers were always slightly oily. She had forgotten sunshine and cool breezes as the trail led her deeper into shadowed places so completely that moonlight burned her eyes when the jungle glowed silver at night.

She worried that her fingers would slip when time came to wield her blade. She wielded no other weapon, but she would tear it apart with her teeth if steel failed her. Her strength was slipping since she had penetrated into a place where no wholesome plants or animals dwelled, but she had foreseen this and hoarded a reserve for her moment of need. Her limbs throbbed, and she could not remember what it felt like not to ache. This was for the better, she thought.

Her pupils were huge and black in the jungle, but her skin was shriveled and pale, ever damp. In her dreams she morphed into one of the clusters of fungus she crawled over every day, and she awoke from those vomiting and shaking. Barely visible things wriggled under her darkened fingernails, no matter how bloody she scratched them. Desparate for nourishment, she sucked greedily at them instead and found herself strengthened.

Her stomach clenched, not at the food but at the idea. She needed to find the creature and kill it. She needed to flee this place before she acclimated any further. It was drowning her alive.

Then one day she stopped worrying. Her scabbard drooped from its perch on her back and dragged a shallow trench in the soil, and she did not hoist it back. The insects that had swarmed her upon entering the jungle lost interest, as if she had become another dead fixture in this dead place. Her arms pulled her as her legs propelled her, but no glint touched her eyes when the trail warmed.

In the silver glow, the creature was blind. More recently in the world than it, she yet saw. She stared. Her slick fingers did not twitch. Her breath did not quicken. Her tongue flicked out to lick something wet that landed on her cheek. The saber creaked. The creature jerked at the sound and howled, but she did not wince.

The smile that stretched her lips did not meet her eyes.

*****

Ooh well, that was unexpected. The story idea I had changed as I was writing it, and even as I was in the flow I knew there were a few small contradictions in there. But overall I'm pretty happy with the passage, if surprised. Prompts are fun.

In case it's not completely obvious, this is very much inspired by HP Lovecraft. I have a such a love affair with his works, even when they're laughable.

And another realization I had; my post for the writing group's prompt ended with a fairly similar closing line - something about an unsettling sort of smile. I think this just means I am as fond of purple closing lines as I am of purple prose. Such is the fun of a UFPE.

Prompt - story excerpt

Another dry period, another litany of what I promise are very good excuses.

But that's not interesting. About a month ago, I joined a LiveJournal writing community, and though they post prompts every week for a 100-500 word work, I've never actually written anything for them until this week.

The prompt was a quote by Neil Gaiman: “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Very dramatic. I was initially thinking of writing something with another character I've mentioned here, Illunova, but I wanted to write it right then and there, and the story I'd have for her would take a little bit of plotting to develop. Instead, I wrote something for the UFPE from the Bad Guy's POV. I've been trying to write his backstory for awhile now, but I've been stuck. This isn't exactly backstory, more of a 'Might Have Been' (phrase stolen from the incomparable Madeleine L'Engle), and it didn't go exactly where I had envisioned.

It has nothing to do with romantic love, as suggested by the prompt, but love more in the sense of patriotism and loyalty to one's own people (especially, in this case, when they probably don't deserve it), which is a major part of Bad Guy's motivation. I've really enjoyed developing his backstory, and sadly, I imagine he's a lot more interesting a character than the MC.

Enough rambling. The whole point of this post was to share the piece I had written. It's Luzeoir on the ever of a battle that (at least as I'm imagining the story arc so far) never will happen but could have, if not for the intervention of our heroic MC.

*~*

The nights were darker now. Structures of wood and stone that had reached into the sky lay in haphazard heaps of debris, and the buttery yellow light that had streamed from their windows had died in the destruction. Standing in this valley once used for farming, Luzeoir could see the stars wheel above him clearer and brighter than he had seen them the last time he was here. He drank in the sight, reveled in the soft insect song that told him he had succeeded, but he still could not read the stars.

Unimportant. A shadow quivered beside him, and a moment later, one of his disciples stepped into the starlight. “We engage them tomorrow,” the other man murmured. “here in the valley. The rivers will run red.” Alhreas bowed his head after he had finished his report. “What do you see in the stars?”

Long ago, a man here had told Luzeoir a secret. You must understand them, and they will consent to anything you ask of them. He did not smile, but had he been alone, he might have. “They speak of strife and tears. Darkness covers the land and extinguishes the false sun. They speak of balance and vengeance.”

Alhreas peered up at the night sky, as if he could see any of the things Luzeoir had described. The man was the best Shade Walker among them, but he lacked the slightest trace of Far Sight. When his disciple murmured his farewells and disappeared again, Luzeoir allowed himself a very thin smile. Alhreas would never have advanced so far, skilled as he was, had Luzeoir not personally chosen him for a messenger. 'Forgiving' was not a word commonly used to describe the Onyx Elves, and above all things, they loved to think that they knew things others did not. Alhreas's problem, Luzeoir had often mused, was not his lack of Sight but his forthright acknowledgment of this flaw.

You must understand them, and they will consent to anything you ask of them. The Onyx Elves had not left their jungles for centuries, and now they had consented to follow their general into the arid lands to the south. They had kept to themselves, obsessed with divining secret knowledge from the depths of the world, and now he had taken them into the heart of the enemy's territory.

Until he came along, they had not even known they had an enemy.

Until he came along, they were content to remain a fairytale. They had been a brittle people, turning ever inward and calcifying in their beloved shadows. Now they were proud again, a terror and a scourge, and the world would weep to hear their name.

His smile grew. He loved them so.

Story idea - questions

The two followers of this blog both know why I haven't been posting lately. My creativity took a crash after recent events, and it's only recently begun drifting back in. Yesterday in my Professional Responsibility class, something my professor said sparked an idea. It's still very rough, and I have no idea where it's going, if anywhere. I typed up these questions in Notepad when I should have been taking notes, and now I'm posting them without further comment.

As I attempt to return to the normal routine of my life, I'll be posting more and more here again. I do miss it. Copied and pasted, these are the questions that came to mind:

What would a society look like where something like a lawyer represented both sides of a dispute?
Would the sign of a really good lawyer be that the decider of law, fact has a really hard time deciding? But this is just as possible with really bad as really good representation.
What is the goal of this lawyer? What incentives are there to uncover all the facts, law?
Lawyer could (and probably should) still act zealously, but what about loyalty and confidentiality? Loyalty to whom?
What are the values of this society?
One positive aspect is that, if there are sufficient incentives to unearth all the relevant info, the lawyer would be an expert in the case.
How do they assure that lawyers won't be swayed by own opinions, interests toward one side or another?
Another positive aspect is that a single case could have several sides, instead of the X v. Y model and multiple trials.
Is there any way to retain the "adversial description" of this system? Intuitively, I'd say no.
What would make people in general agree to this model?
What would this model say about society?
This puts lawyer (need another word?) in a despotic position; who can restrain lawyer in investigations?

Story Building - re-writing

Though I'm still a ways from having a solid outline for UFPE Volume I, I have resolved to begin the re-write soon for it. I have an extra binder lying in a locker; I think I'll start by printing off the first ten or so pages and completely rewriting them, then printing off more, re-writing, and so on.

No long post tonight - I know I've been shamefully bad at keeping up with this blog. But I have had a few ideas about what to change about the first few pages, and I'm very excited about it.

*Instead of beginning with MC doing some boring embroidery, it's going to begin as she's fleeing on the back of her beloved unicorn. She'll probably be sobbing.
*Instead of the squicky attempted rape that spurs her flight, her "uncle" will strike her, probably hard enough to leave her bleeding. I originally wrote that in keeping with the rich tradition of attempted rapes of beautiful female heroines, but I'll both feel less squicky writing and re-reading the beginning AND this will serve the plot in later ways.
*Specifically, MC needs a struggle during the first volume. I know the struggle in the second volume - preventing MMC from carrying out his Dastardly Scheme. In the first one, I've come to the conclusion that her struggle will be against her own fear. She'll keep thinking that maybe she should have stayed home after all when things get overwhelming. I have a slightly easier time imagining her thinking about going back after a physical assault than attempted rape.
*In a detail that will probably turn out to be as unimportant as it sounds, MC is going to have a floaty white wrap that she wears to keep the desert sun from roasting her to a crisp. I know, not very interesting.
*After some debate, I'll be keeping the Seaton episode. I plan for him to be important in Volume 3, when MC has to convince Seaton to take up arms against MMC.

We'll see if I remember to print these things off after class tomorrow. I am constantly amazed at how much I'm growing to like this story. After recent plot (and character) revelations, I'm even starting to warm up to the MC.

Prompt - sleep deprivation

Another day, another topic from another reader. That's a total of two readers, which is more than I had envisioned when starting this out.

The prompt is "sleep deprivation." My mind jumps immediately to Dastardly Human Experimentation because of my sci-fi bent. Does this return us to Illunova of post past? It feels like destiny to me.

So, Illunova continued. Was she subject to sleep deprivation as a malleable youth? How did they know, if they did at all, how much was safe in order to maintain her physical and mental integrity (as much as the latter IS maintained). Ah, this brings me back to her nemesis, who remains nameless for now. I imagine that a lot of academic papers and horrific human experimentation occurred before they (the notorious they) decided to test out their theories on their own subjects. They had it pretty good by then, considering that they had never tried to create a soldier like this before - and they fortunately (for them) avoided the Dark Angel trap of creating a whole generation of subjects who can band together and overthrow their masters.

This suggests that this is a very long-term project; a mature researcher can only expect to witness a couple of generations, and as noted, they did not have very many of these subjects. I imagine they told themselves they were being safe, but it was probably money more than anything that prevented them from beginning with a bigger test batch. Isn't it always the key? They belong to a department that's been relegated to the back burner for longer than any of the present personnel have been alive, but hope springs eternal when weapons are needed.

And this begs the question, why are weapons needed? Is the department out of favor because they're looking to create human weapons instead of the latest model bomb? Why should society at large favor bombs (or whatever it is) while this group of stalwarts prefer the human touch for destruction? What keeps them going in their long-term project? Do they have supporters, perhaps highers-up in Defense who secretly funnel funds to them? Do they even know of their supporters? Could there perhaps be a conspiracy? What speculative fiction novel is complete without a conspiracy?

I think Nova needs a plot walk. It's too late and too cold right now, but sometime during the next few days I should be able to spare an hour or two for just such a scheme. She's such an interesting character to me - extremely capable physically, a keen strategist if not quite a genius, and completely oblivious to the ebbs and flows of the social human animal. Having just read Watchmen in preparation for the movie, it occurs to me that she's quite a comic book sort of character. Interesting.

Story Building - character

Alas, I have absolutely no excuse for my dearth of posting lately. I have spent the free periods of my evening catching up with my reader and only remembering this blog, if at all, when I've been headed off to bed. And it's a shame, too, because I've known for several days what I want to post about next. Or I should say, whom - Illunova, whose surname I've forgotten, if I ever gave her one.

Illunova is a character without a setting. I did try to create a story around her once, one I had planned to write for NaNo, but the story never quite hung together and held my attention the way a NaNo story must. For one thing, it was sci-fi, and I always want to get too far into the scientific and technical details of a story, even when they're completely unnecessary. As a wise author once said, we don't need to know the functioning and history of the combustion engine when a character takes a ride in a car. And I was able to ignore the science for the recent short story I wrote enough to get the story itself out; that choice was not roundly approved, but it's all a lot of hand-waving anyway.

So Illunova. She's a favorite character of mine, and once upon a time I wrote a character interview with her. But it wasn't in the format of the interviews I've been posting here; I just showed up as myself in a dream of hers and started asking questions. She is by far the most intimidating character I have; if it were in any possible, I'm sure she would leap off the page and demand to know what I was planning to do with her. If she didn't like the answer, she would take drastic measures.

Illunova is a very defective human being (if fully human she is), almost completely lacking in human empathy. Part of the reason I had such a difficult time with her was that I was not sure what story I wanted to tell around her; I don't want to write a story where she finally learns to open up and make friends and fall in love. It would not be true to her. Instead, I want to write something where the story is fundamentally about her relationship with her own self and her own damaged psyche.

Illunova was raised to be a soldier - not the stereotypical "perfect soldier" because she could not carry out the subtler functions of war and international strife, but a weapon on the battlefield. She is an exceedingly efficient person, and she has very little concept of the dignity or value of human life. She is wholly loyal to her country even as she's aware of all they have done to make her life what it is. She is not an extremely intelligent person, but she's adept at finding patterns in apparent chaos and thinking quickly. She has very little ability to read people, and she's aware of this lack. This obviously cuts against her ability to see patterns in social situations - ah, now here's an idea.

She was created as part of an experiment, the details of which remain unclear to me. But I'm realizing that the experiment is continuing, and this time the big bad masters are trying to create someone who is as clever and loyal and skilled a fighter as Illunova, while also being able to read people. Illunova could never be a spy or diplomat, and there's a good possibility that she stands to be phased out. And, ah! There's another soldier created in the same experiment as she, who's turned out even worse, and he is very angry at this development. The They in charger keep him around for now because he is a true genius, but in age of the kind of tech they have, genius is over-rated. They would rather have people they can send into the field.

And so it is not the people looking to replace Nova (as I affectionately call her) who become her enemy in this still-unclear story of hers; it's this fellow who wants to wreak deranged vengeance on the powers that be. Is this perhaps her last mission? Does she think it will be? How does she come to terms with her inevitable termination? I fear this is a story too big for me to write, but better to try than not.

Story Elements - desert mirage

First news first: the workshop group was extremely helpful with the Jemma story. I got some very useful feedback and I think overall a pretty positive reception. Two very interesting ideas I think I will use as I re-write and expand the story are: setting it the entire story during one (very long) day and interspersing it with news and ads all along, so the news story at the end is more fitting.

Tonight I was struggling to think of a topic and so requested outside assistance. What I received - from the blog's single blogspot subscribed follower - was "desert mirages" in the UFPE-world. I'm not entirely sure where to go with that, but the Elves of the Golden Downs certainly need more development, considering how important they are to the plot. In fact, something I never quite figured out is the fate of the Elves of the Golden Downs and how MC's mother met MC's father and (temporarily) escaped the doom of her people.

So I'm afraid I'll stray from the subject, but this is a key plot point I've never quite figured out. What I know is: the Elves of the Golden Down were decimated (perhaps in the older sense of th term) and a very few survivors are sequestered in a cave, sleeping an enchanted sort of sleep. They've become something of a legend among the other Elves, and MMC has made it his professed goal to wreak vengeance on those who did this to them. He's convinced his followers that humans are responsible, and so he wants to Destroy All Humans. He has something of a point; humans did push the Golden Elves out of their territory up into the mountains. But nothing to warrant genocide.

I also know that MC's mother escaped this enchantment or whatever it was to meet up with MC's father and have a romance. They also died, just after MC's birth. I'm thinking of drastically changing MMC2's character; he was written in the heat of NaNo, and even for an Ultimate Fantasy Parody, he's a bit much. I'm thinking of him because he relates to MC the fate of her parents, but that's probably unnecessary.

Anyway, Elves of the Golden Downs. Since beginning this blog and talking with certain people, I've made up the Secret Society, and they have to play a role in this enchantment. MMC probably isn't able to have a role in it, but I'm sure he knows more than he's letting on. I don't want to write it so that Secret Society created the enchantment for the sole reason of causing MC's birth. The mages also may have a role to play here; I haven't decide whose side they're on, if they're unilaterally on anyone's side. And what's the relationship between the mages and the Secret Society anyway?

Oh! The humans are pushing the Golden Elves out of their usual territory (that requires a post of its own, I fear), and the Elves are fleeing into the mountains, as noted. In a recent post, I realized that the Secret Society headquarters are in the mountains; maybe the Elves were getting too close to SS's mountain fastness. Maybe someone even found it - maybe MC's mother did! Oh wow, maybe she even nabbed something. Did MC inherit something from her mother? But how would she have gotten it? This is why MMC2's dubious power may actually come in handy, hmm.

This is very helpful. MC's mother was royalty among her people, but it's a well-worn fantasy trope to have princesses tramping around the wilderness. MC's mother would totally be that kind of princess, too. Anyway, she was tramping around and just happened to run into SS HQ (because security is shoddy) and ran off with an artifact. Why she did this... hmm. She was a trouble-making little princess, which I like; her memory gets hyped up among the Elves, but she was actually a little bit of a black sheep. Very nice.

So she causes trouble and then scoots back home. The SS storms in to the Elven refugee palace and demands to know what happens. Perhaps MC's mother's family suspects her, but of course they defend her. As things get very tense very quickly with SS, MC's mother... we'll say she's on her way to return it, hoping she can smoothe things over, when she spies a secret party of SS on a very bad mission. She runs away, and when she's missing, the Elves go nuts and suspect it was SS; there's a battle, and the poor refugee Elves are killed or sealed in a cave while the SS freaks out a little.

Hmm. This definitely will need some elaborating, but this was an incredibly useful post for me.

World Building - philosophy

I'm not yet feeling better, but as I wade through Hume for class, three things cross my mind. A) I wish I were doing something else right now. B) Though I can't spare much time, I wish I had a moment to spare to write a little something creative. C) I wonder which of the philosophers I've read the UFPE kingdom would like the best. These three thoughts led me, naturally enough, to take a break from Hume to write a bit here.

Once upon a time, I read a good couple dozen of these philosophers, but that was several years ago, and I only have the vaguest recollections of most of them. As this course progresses, I may change my mind about the Royal Family's philosophy of morality and government, but there's no guarantee I'll ever think to write about this particular angle of this universe again.

So far in this course we've read Hobbes, Locke, and Hume. It's a pretty scarce sample of all the philosophical variety of human history, but it provides a nice cornerstone for this post.

Hobbes: any Royal Family should like Hobbes for the easy justification he offers for any kind of government that is not actively murdering its citizens. Government, he says, is better than no government at all, so take what you can get and be happy you're not in a state of internecine war. All morality can be traced back to self-interest; people are better off if we've all agreed to honor our promises and if government is available to back up these promises with force.

So does the RF like this? The problem is that Hobbes provides a fairly bleak picture of human nature, and in a world where there are non-human sentient species, the leaders of the human race should want to glorify humanity more than Hobbes does. So Hobbes is out.

Locke: as one of the strongest influences on the American revolution, Locke's vision of government is a lot riskier for a government. If they're not doing what the people want them to do, the people have the right to opt out of the social contract and overthrow the bad leaders. On the other hand, Locke offers a useful take on property for any expansionist regime; once people mix their labor with inanimate objects, the objects become their property. And once labor is mixed with the objects, they gain a lot of value.

A Lockean philosophy would also place humans over the less industrial sentient species (namely Elves) and offer justification for the human expansion into Elven lands. This expansion is a key plot point for the backstory behind the UFPE. The problem with Locke comes in his political philosophy; he advocates for the separation of powers and claims that absolute monarchy cannot be legitimate.

Perhaps one could imagine a philosophy that combines Locke's view of property and Hobbes's view of government. That is, property is such a hugely important natural right that any government which protects it should be obeyed. This is simplifying both these men to a ridiculous degree, but I think it works for my purposes.

This leaves Hume, and I'm thinking of making Hume's view the heretic view. Maybe MC's One True Love is a closet Humean, eh? Hume is the ultimate skeptic: property is merely the result of the laws people create, and morality is nothing more than our feelings about certain kinds of motives people have. Or even if he does not embrace Hume's view on the specifics, I like the idea that skepticism is heretical in this society. And this intolerance of questioning could be a parallel to draw between the human Royal Family and the Bad Guy Nation.

This brings up more questions than I can address right now - what is the form of the human kingdom, anyway? Absolute monarchy? Constitutional monarchy with a council? Has this system been constant since its inception? Who developed the leading philosophy, anyway? Was it ever the heretical view?

As usual, the best answers produce more questions. Back to Hume.