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.