i havnt rly written them down, i have a problem actually sticking with them, but i have a ton of stories that i have fully thought out. One is a superhero story that i call The Reaper, i have a star wars fan fiction story, alot of Sci-Fi stories (space marines) and one big fantasy saga. I also have an idea for a short story that is fictional, but not fantasy, involving the saying "Knowledge is Power, Ignorance is Bliss"
Stories and characters you have written
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Well, I usually stick to short stories. Here's a link to one I wrote over the summer, with a few touch-ups.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.235147-Advice-on-a-Story#8346847
But, I've created a sci-fi world, that focuses on a human empire facing an onslaught from a race of aliens' desire to conquer new worlds, because of a genetic flaw in a previous war which lead the entire populace to devolve into a sterile race of clones. (I know it sounds sucky, but I like it nonetheless. Oh, and it's heavy in ship-to-ship battles)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.235147-Advice-on-a-Story#8346847
But, I've created a sci-fi world, that focuses on a human empire facing an onslaught from a race of aliens' desire to conquer new worlds, because of a genetic flaw in a previous war which lead the entire populace to devolve into a sterile race of clones. (I know it sounds sucky, but I like it nonetheless. Oh, and it's heavy in ship-to-ship battles)
nope i cant get anything off the ground without getting bored and going to do another story leaving them all disorganized and unfinished
the closest i ever got was at the last chapter of a mass effect fanfic but unfotunatly
IT WAS WRITTEN IN A NOTEBOOK!!!
and i have no patience to transfer it to my computer
the closest i ever got was at the last chapter of a mass effect fanfic but unfotunatly
IT WAS WRITTEN IN A NOTEBOOK!!!
and i have no patience to transfer it to my computer
Most of the time I think of concepts and never get down to actually writing stories. "man finds space age weaponry in ancient Japan and uses it to fight demons, plans on wiping out all magic, good and bad." " bipeal bird mods weapons, equiptment, vehicles, to be used by another alein race (example fix a vehicle that usually requires 6 hands to be able to be decently controlled by two), gets into hijinks. Interesting fighting technique" " very sercluded nation that is impeding on a large jungle, awakens various demi-gods who survived a cataclysmic event in suspended animation. Capture one of them, expiriments on him and refigure his genes and unlocks the supernatural properties of him, at the cost of his immortality. He escapes them and decides to take the nation down un earthing anceint shit to do so. The expiriments made it so his bones can absorb metal (his skin peels back), and refigure machines to work through telepathy (one of his things he does is kinda wrap his skin around mech suits and skewers the guy inside with his bones, then walks around with whatever power the suit had." " Film noir detective story, only with Dinosaurs as main means of transportation, and katanas instead of guns. Main character is special because he rides a t-rex (least amount of thought has been put into this one)."
Here's something I wrote in my computers class, it's my fake autobiography. It's stupid and I was told to "turn down the crazy" when recording this. Also this is part one and two of ten.
Here's something I wrote in my computers class, it's my fake autobiography. It's stupid and I was told to "turn down the crazy" when recording this. Also this is part one and two of ten.
Well... I have tons of stories and characters, but lack the skill to write anything down.
So I just draw out my stories using the characters in some type of comic form. Which I doubt anyone would want to see, 35 panels per page...
What those stories are about I'd prefer not to let anyone know... yet...
So I just draw out my stories using the characters in some type of comic form. Which I doubt anyone would want to see, 35 panels per page...
What those stories are about I'd prefer not to let anyone know... yet...
Me and a friend of mine (who can draw) were planning on making a manga (it was a pretty long time ago)
I won't really go into the details (I probably would if I thought the story sucked) but it's set in a fantasy world. Basically it's about a Demigod who has no idea that his father (who was a god) died protecting the world 18 years ago by killing the God of the underworld in an epic battle that lasted over 2 weeks. One day, his fathers most trusted and truest friend descends upon the Earth to tell him that the evil king (who controls about 2/3 of the world) is attempting to resurrect the demon his father sealed in the underworlds. So they team up and set out to try and stop the evil king while gathering people to join their quest.
His fathers friend was supposed to act as his mentor and they would gather a group of 6 other people (A Monk, A martial artist, A summoner/mage, An Archer/Assassin(hadn't decided) a half-demon barbarian, and another demigod which was a very young boy with the most brutal physical strength that carried a big axe that was twice his size).
We had also come up with 3 evil Characters (that is that we had put some work into), The Demon, The King, And the King's most elite general(who later fled from the king's services after suffering a devastating defeat, losing the kings most elite legion in a battle against the good guys and a village of peasants). We had yet to decide if the General would later join the good guys, or just stalk them and try to kill them every once in a while.
I won't really go into the details (I probably would if I thought the story sucked) but it's set in a fantasy world. Basically it's about a Demigod who has no idea that his father (who was a god) died protecting the world 18 years ago by killing the God of the underworld in an epic battle that lasted over 2 weeks. One day, his fathers most trusted and truest friend descends upon the Earth to tell him that the evil king (who controls about 2/3 of the world) is attempting to resurrect the demon his father sealed in the underworlds. So they team up and set out to try and stop the evil king while gathering people to join their quest.
His fathers friend was supposed to act as his mentor and they would gather a group of 6 other people (A Monk, A martial artist, A summoner/mage, An Archer/Assassin(hadn't decided) a half-demon barbarian, and another demigod which was a very young boy with the most brutal physical strength that carried a big axe that was twice his size).
We had also come up with 3 evil Characters (that is that we had put some work into), The Demon, The King, And the King's most elite general(who later fled from the king's services after suffering a devastating defeat, losing the kings most elite legion in a battle against the good guys and a village of peasants). We had yet to decide if the General would later join the good guys, or just stalk them and try to kill them every once in a while.
Now I've done it... "Comment too large"
The story of every single one of his friends betraying him is only the beginning of the emotional torture. Now that his body has been broken pretty well, Karive can move on to things that are really after his taste. He's just getting warmed up.
I'd really like to read actual material from you! I'll try to translate my chapter to the best of the ability if I find the time. It probably won't contain a lot tho, let's see... until the first protagonist finds himself in the cave. 15 pages. But there's an early appearance of Karive at the end, so that should make you happy.
If I forgot something to talk about, lemme know.
Ahaha, sorry about the length. The rest of the text was this:Charisma said:
The story of every single one of his friends betraying him is only the beginning of the emotional torture. Now that his body has been broken pretty well, Karive can move on to things that are really after his taste. He's just getting warmed up.
The Author Avatar concept
The Author Avatar is pretty much self-insertion. Many authors write themselves or an idealized version of themselves into a story because they'd like to be a superhero themselves. It's pretty much what Matrix did. Everyguy loser-type dude suddenly becomes the Chosen One.
Magically it means part of the original author soul is "stretched" so it can connect with two physical bodies. It's technically still one soul as the two parts are connected via the silvercord, but the connection isn't that strong. Maybe you can compare it to the umbilical cord between mother and child, only in this case since we're talking about souls, at least part of the author's memory is also transferred to the author avatar.
Escapist Fantasy
The story undergoes a pretty hard shift of tone in my opinion, which is connected to the different Ages. It's also a bit "meta", "a story about a story" as in the first part in the Golden Age is similar to the power fantasies that make up many first stories and early fanfiction authors come up with, including self-insertions and a simple story about good (Sera) and evil (Karive), but over time it gets more sophisticated and the author avatar gets a unique personality, just like authors when they get better can write more and more freely and at some point don't have to rely on something like self-insertion at all.
Dreams becoming Reality
It's actually pretty much the basis of the existence of worlds if you think about it. I think I didn't write you about the structure inbetween the different worlds yet. I'll compare it to our solar system because there are some parallels:
First of all, imagine a dark empty space. In this story, we call in the void. We know from our universe that it looks empty, but according to calculations there must be a lot of "dark matter" and "dark energy", we just can't sense it with our technology. Imagine this resource being what makes up the "void" in the story. It somehow exists, but we can't confirm its existence with our own senses. That's why we feel it's emptiness or void.
In this void, we got the different worlds like planets. Like in a solar system, they're centered around a single entity. In the story, it is "the heart of magic", the "Mavorcé", something that is believed to be in the middle of the Known Space (the umbrella term for the void and everything in it - like Universe in our world is the umbrella term for planets, stars, the space in between etc). The Mavorcé can actually be compared to a Black Hole in that it drains magical energy, but also ejects it via "jets". This way it creates a magical flow that goes through all the worlds. The closer a world is to the Mavorcé, the more magic it'll get, like planets close to our sun are very hot, more distant worlds get only very little or no magic, just like distant planets in our solar system are very cold. A world without much magic would thus be very distanced from the Mavorcé. Fiction that builds outside the canon of a world doesn't become a completely new world, but mostly a mirror that reflects most parts of the base world and only adds a few own things, like a moon surrounding their planet.
Back to "Dream and Reality"; like I told you, fantasy is capable of creating new worlds that are as much reality as you see your own world. There are many layers of fantasy however, from quick ideas you forget in five minutes to elaborate and complex worlds with its own rules and characters that are so complex you could imagine they could exist as real people.
Even if you just have a quick thought, the void will create it or attempt to create it. The effect isn't instant, so maybe you'll forget an idea and the void won't even have fully created it before the creation process is stopped. If you create something that instable, the magical flow in the void will simply rip it apart. Dreams for example only last a small time in the void before they're forgotten/ripped apart by the current. I'll tell you more about this when we get to Karive.
Kharseth
...is the boy I was talking the whole time about, but he is also not. Oh so mysterious. It's simple actually.
The boy I'm referring to at the very beginning is just an author avatar remotely connected to the soul of Arkenighte (the original soul of the body). That's not a new person that could earn a new name. However, over time, not only does the author avatar part of the soul begin to differ greatly from who he was at the beginning of his journey, by fusing with Arkenighte's soul he also mixes his memories and abilities with that of a different person. As you may know from sex education, mixing two existing things to one new thing is commonly seen as the creation of something unique and new. In this case, think of it as not genetic material mixing, but souls, which sounds pretty abstract, but I'm trying to explain it more in detail in the story. Can't stuff everything into the ""summary"".
With the outbreak of the demon, the souls within the body also undergo a rapid development and finally fuse together to one single new soul that makes up a new, unique mind and a unique character that may have aspects from his two original souls, but now with the mix and his own experiences in this world makes up a new character. Thus, after the battle when he is accepted into the ranks of Silvernight and the Traumkrieger, he makes up a new name (this is offered to everyone who enters the Silvernight as they're now beginning a new life in a completely new world and should be given the opportunity to start from zero in every regard) and that's Kharseth and also the point of time when the author finally calls him by his own name.
To summarize:
- Author Avatar + Arkenighte = Kharseth
- Arkenighte is the drow who originally inhabited the body
- the Author Avatar is the "new soul" that takes control of the body for most of the time
- the two souls slowly fuse together to a single one, but since they're still separated, both souls still have a mind of their own. There's only little exchange of information.
- the Author Avatar calls himself "Marik Bentusi" as he thinks he now has the chance to lead a completely new life
- After the two souls fuse completely together and after the Author Avatar has had enough experiences to make up a new personality, the author accepts them as a new unique person with the name Kharseth
Lilly (or Lilliath in the full name nobody calls her with) is a character introduced a bit later in the story. The Silvernight is clever and eventually finds out that Kharseth is under the control of the author, enabling the author to write from his perspective. They cut this connection (the silver cord) completely off and do a check with all the other characters in the Silvernight Kharseth had contact with, including Talitha. Thus it is now impossible for the author to control their actions and make them run through a script he writes. They're "safe" in the Silvernight. Not even Karive can touch them anymore, so they're told. And really, the daily nightmares he sends them stop.
Now shit goes meta as the author has the task to get back into the Silvernight somehow.
The only person left that the author can control or influence is Karive. It is never explicitly stated, but in order to bring a person under the control of the avatar, they have to had some interaction with another character the author can control, like a disease that's spreading. That's also why he used Cartz in order to get into Apotropé and write from Talitha's perspective.
It's enough for Karive to send Lilly a nightmare in order to "infect" her and make her the third protagonist (Kharseth and Talitha being #1 and #2). Lilly is a slave of a drow clan who was sold at a very young age, she can barely remember her family. Waking up due to the nightmare is actually lucky for her as this way she grasps an opportunity to escape. I haven't written these parts yet, so there's only ideas roaming around. She makes a narrow escape, but living underground for her whole life she eventually is overwhelmed by the morning sun. The drow warriors that go after her however are explicitly trained to resist the sunlight and can thus hunt her down "normally". Due to "luck" however - don't think Karive is innocent - Kharseth and Talitha find her while on the way to a quick mission.
Just as planned. *trollface*
If you think it's all fitting a bit too well together, here's a bit of reason why:
Lilly is Arkenighte's twin sister. Her existence was quickly cleared from the records however when the family found out she's a very strong Anarcane. Arcanes are about treated as well as Jews in the early days of Hitler, they're not (all) killed, but they're definitely at the very bottom of society. Her luck however. When the Traumkrieger destroyed the whole clan associated with Arkenighte so the illegally imported technology would be destroyed along with everyone that knows how to use it, they didn't find her in the records and thus she was able to survive. She's not the sole survivor, but one of few.
Thus she's living in the same world as Apotropé is located it, the one with the Army of Nightmares, etc, so it was easy to find a reason why Kharseth and Talitha would be around. I imagine Kharseth wanted to go down to the laboratories again where Arkenighte once restored parts of his body. I'll find a reason.
Lilly is exactly as old as Arkenighte, but her body looks much younger than his, which is due to slave keepers controlling their slaves so they couldn't outgrow them in any aspects. Luckily her master isn't a woman (and not a rapist either) so she wouldn't have been able to keep her pretty face either. Her master isn't half bad by comparison, which is however mainly due to him being more interested in fighting than women and the two spent a lot of time together. Lilly was sold as a slave early on and since her future master's parents wanted their son to be able to direct salves very early on, they got him a slave when he was still very young, too. It's like European parents these days wanting their children to learn English as soon as possible because they'll need it later on.
So yeah, he isn't exactly so nice that Lilly wants to stay a slave for her whole life, but he isn't a complete asshole to her either.
Traumkrieger
Traumkrieger as they're seen now are a group of people with a certain set of abilities that make sure stories play out the way they're intended to. Authors - and by authors I really mean anyone who thinks up a story or character - are shaping worlds, but worlds are also shaping them back in the same way. I haven't explained the connection in detail yet, so you'll just have to swallow that there's "a connection" between the author and his/her creation.
If however in this world for some reason there are for example 14 horse riders appearing instead of 13, the author's very idea will change and he or she will write about 14 instead of 13 horse riders. That's how both the author shapes the world and the world shapes the author. That's just one example. Traumkrieger are most commonly world travelers, so they feel they have to carry responsibility for breaking the isolation of worlds and unbalancing them. If you believe in chaos theory or the butterfly effect, even small actions can develop big effects over time. That's how many worlds get fucked up over time and as people just keep joining Silvernight, the problems don't get less.
However, the Traumkrieger have also developed technology in order to monitor chaotic differences that "weren't supposed to happen". After all they can gather scientists from the most advanced worlds that exist. Sometimes entire worlds are about to collapse and the entire population is about to be torn apart by the magic current in the void and so the Traumkrieger come in and pick up whatever looks like an interesting addition to them. Technology, memory, people, whatever helps the Silvernight.
Traumkrieger are also able to identify people with Traumkrieger abilities fairly quickly... if you didn't jam their system, Karive. It doesn't always work so early you can see a small child is a Traumkrieger, but they're getting there.
Now, the special abilities of Traumkrieger that make up the very definition if you're one of them or not. You're born with it, but they have yet to find the sample of a still unborn Traumkrieger in development that could show them exactly why they have these abilities.
There are three abilities that divide the Traumkrieger into three types. Type 1, warping space, Type 2, warping time, Type 3, warping "information". The division alone is a big "fuck you" to nature as we all know since Einstein that you can't separate space and time when we have spacetime. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime]
Traumkrieger are breaking the very rules of logic and nature. Really. To simplify, if you have a chess piece on A1 and put it forward by one chess field, it should end up on A2, correct?
With the Traumkrieger ability of manipulating space, you can just change the very logic and make the chess piece appear on E5 or something. It's a bit like in game menus where you move the selection of options with the arrow keys and you use the "down" key at the bottom of the list of options and suddenly you're selecting the very top entry of the menu. Only with this ability you dictate from where and to where you jump. You make the rules.
Time manipulation of course makes you fuck with the flow of time like you've seen in many times before in fiction. Of course this again fucks with logic and Einstein as time is linear and you can't go back in time. Once again, Traumkrieger abilities fuck that up.
Manipulating "information", Type 3, is the rarest type discovered and thus not much is known about it. It is believed however that it can change for example that gold's "color information" suddenly become green without manipulating anything else. It's also very easy to manipulate memory with that even tho you don't know anything about chemistry, biology or electrons.
Maybe now you know why the Traumkrieger try to gather other people with these abilities no matter the cost. It's too risky to let people with such abilities simply experiment or do what they want. Since Type 1, space manipulation, is the most common ability, and Type 3 is the most rare ability, there isn't much progress in research in this regard, either. Type 2... well...
Like I said, most of the Traumkrieger are Type 1 and manipulate space. Type 3 looks like it's something interesting, but nothing that could (yet) lead to FUBAR everything. Type 2 however... time travel can be very, very dangerous. Travel back in time and kill your parents? Normally just a hypothetical mind game as you can't ever travel back in time, logic forbid. Type 2 Traumkriegers however can and the council consisting mostly of Type 1 grows to fear their abilities. At some point in time, the debate between them and Type 2s concerning the issue grows more and more heated until the Type 1 Traumkrieger decide to annihilate all the Type 2 Traumkrieger and proceed to doing so with any confirmed Type 2s they'll encounter in the future. Of course Type 2s are only as capable of fucking up everything as Type 1s, only if they really try, but Type 1s weren't able to understand them or their abilities and they were in the majority, so... yeah, it's sorta tragic.
The Author Avatar is pretty much self-insertion. Many authors write themselves or an idealized version of themselves into a story because they'd like to be a superhero themselves. It's pretty much what Matrix did. Everyguy loser-type dude suddenly becomes the Chosen One.
Magically it means part of the original author soul is "stretched" so it can connect with two physical bodies. It's technically still one soul as the two parts are connected via the silvercord, but the connection isn't that strong. Maybe you can compare it to the umbilical cord between mother and child, only in this case since we're talking about souls, at least part of the author's memory is also transferred to the author avatar.
Escapist Fantasy
The story undergoes a pretty hard shift of tone in my opinion, which is connected to the different Ages. It's also a bit "meta", "a story about a story" as in the first part in the Golden Age is similar to the power fantasies that make up many first stories and early fanfiction authors come up with, including self-insertions and a simple story about good (Sera) and evil (Karive), but over time it gets more sophisticated and the author avatar gets a unique personality, just like authors when they get better can write more and more freely and at some point don't have to rely on something like self-insertion at all.
Dreams becoming Reality
It's actually pretty much the basis of the existence of worlds if you think about it. I think I didn't write you about the structure inbetween the different worlds yet. I'll compare it to our solar system because there are some parallels:
First of all, imagine a dark empty space. In this story, we call in the void. We know from our universe that it looks empty, but according to calculations there must be a lot of "dark matter" and "dark energy", we just can't sense it with our technology. Imagine this resource being what makes up the "void" in the story. It somehow exists, but we can't confirm its existence with our own senses. That's why we feel it's emptiness or void.
In this void, we got the different worlds like planets. Like in a solar system, they're centered around a single entity. In the story, it is "the heart of magic", the "Mavorcé", something that is believed to be in the middle of the Known Space (the umbrella term for the void and everything in it - like Universe in our world is the umbrella term for planets, stars, the space in between etc). The Mavorcé can actually be compared to a Black Hole in that it drains magical energy, but also ejects it via "jets". This way it creates a magical flow that goes through all the worlds. The closer a world is to the Mavorcé, the more magic it'll get, like planets close to our sun are very hot, more distant worlds get only very little or no magic, just like distant planets in our solar system are very cold. A world without much magic would thus be very distanced from the Mavorcé. Fiction that builds outside the canon of a world doesn't become a completely new world, but mostly a mirror that reflects most parts of the base world and only adds a few own things, like a moon surrounding their planet.
Back to "Dream and Reality"; like I told you, fantasy is capable of creating new worlds that are as much reality as you see your own world. There are many layers of fantasy however, from quick ideas you forget in five minutes to elaborate and complex worlds with its own rules and characters that are so complex you could imagine they could exist as real people.
Even if you just have a quick thought, the void will create it or attempt to create it. The effect isn't instant, so maybe you'll forget an idea and the void won't even have fully created it before the creation process is stopped. If you create something that instable, the magical flow in the void will simply rip it apart. Dreams for example only last a small time in the void before they're forgotten/ripped apart by the current. I'll tell you more about this when we get to Karive.
Kharseth
...is the boy I was talking the whole time about, but he is also not. Oh so mysterious. It's simple actually.
The boy I'm referring to at the very beginning is just an author avatar remotely connected to the soul of Arkenighte (the original soul of the body). That's not a new person that could earn a new name. However, over time, not only does the author avatar part of the soul begin to differ greatly from who he was at the beginning of his journey, by fusing with Arkenighte's soul he also mixes his memories and abilities with that of a different person. As you may know from sex education, mixing two existing things to one new thing is commonly seen as the creation of something unique and new. In this case, think of it as not genetic material mixing, but souls, which sounds pretty abstract, but I'm trying to explain it more in detail in the story. Can't stuff everything into the ""summary"".
With the outbreak of the demon, the souls within the body also undergo a rapid development and finally fuse together to one single new soul that makes up a new, unique mind and a unique character that may have aspects from his two original souls, but now with the mix and his own experiences in this world makes up a new character. Thus, after the battle when he is accepted into the ranks of Silvernight and the Traumkrieger, he makes up a new name (this is offered to everyone who enters the Silvernight as they're now beginning a new life in a completely new world and should be given the opportunity to start from zero in every regard) and that's Kharseth and also the point of time when the author finally calls him by his own name.
To summarize:
- Author Avatar + Arkenighte = Kharseth
- Arkenighte is the drow who originally inhabited the body
- the Author Avatar is the "new soul" that takes control of the body for most of the time
- the two souls slowly fuse together to a single one, but since they're still separated, both souls still have a mind of their own. There's only little exchange of information.
- the Author Avatar calls himself "Marik Bentusi" as he thinks he now has the chance to lead a completely new life
- After the two souls fuse completely together and after the Author Avatar has had enough experiences to make up a new personality, the author accepts them as a new unique person with the name Kharseth
Lilly (or Lilliath in the full name nobody calls her with) is a character introduced a bit later in the story. The Silvernight is clever and eventually finds out that Kharseth is under the control of the author, enabling the author to write from his perspective. They cut this connection (the silver cord) completely off and do a check with all the other characters in the Silvernight Kharseth had contact with, including Talitha. Thus it is now impossible for the author to control their actions and make them run through a script he writes. They're "safe" in the Silvernight. Not even Karive can touch them anymore, so they're told. And really, the daily nightmares he sends them stop.
Now shit goes meta as the author has the task to get back into the Silvernight somehow.
The only person left that the author can control or influence is Karive. It is never explicitly stated, but in order to bring a person under the control of the avatar, they have to had some interaction with another character the author can control, like a disease that's spreading. That's also why he used Cartz in order to get into Apotropé and write from Talitha's perspective.
It's enough for Karive to send Lilly a nightmare in order to "infect" her and make her the third protagonist (Kharseth and Talitha being #1 and #2). Lilly is a slave of a drow clan who was sold at a very young age, she can barely remember her family. Waking up due to the nightmare is actually lucky for her as this way she grasps an opportunity to escape. I haven't written these parts yet, so there's only ideas roaming around. She makes a narrow escape, but living underground for her whole life she eventually is overwhelmed by the morning sun. The drow warriors that go after her however are explicitly trained to resist the sunlight and can thus hunt her down "normally". Due to "luck" however - don't think Karive is innocent - Kharseth and Talitha find her while on the way to a quick mission.
Just as planned. *trollface*
If you think it's all fitting a bit too well together, here's a bit of reason why:
Lilly is Arkenighte's twin sister. Her existence was quickly cleared from the records however when the family found out she's a very strong Anarcane. Arcanes are about treated as well as Jews in the early days of Hitler, they're not (all) killed, but they're definitely at the very bottom of society. Her luck however. When the Traumkrieger destroyed the whole clan associated with Arkenighte so the illegally imported technology would be destroyed along with everyone that knows how to use it, they didn't find her in the records and thus she was able to survive. She's not the sole survivor, but one of few.
Thus she's living in the same world as Apotropé is located it, the one with the Army of Nightmares, etc, so it was easy to find a reason why Kharseth and Talitha would be around. I imagine Kharseth wanted to go down to the laboratories again where Arkenighte once restored parts of his body. I'll find a reason.
Lilly is exactly as old as Arkenighte, but her body looks much younger than his, which is due to slave keepers controlling their slaves so they couldn't outgrow them in any aspects. Luckily her master isn't a woman (and not a rapist either) so she wouldn't have been able to keep her pretty face either. Her master isn't half bad by comparison, which is however mainly due to him being more interested in fighting than women and the two spent a lot of time together. Lilly was sold as a slave early on and since her future master's parents wanted their son to be able to direct salves very early on, they got him a slave when he was still very young, too. It's like European parents these days wanting their children to learn English as soon as possible because they'll need it later on.
So yeah, he isn't exactly so nice that Lilly wants to stay a slave for her whole life, but he isn't a complete asshole to her either.
Traumkrieger
Traumkrieger as they're seen now are a group of people with a certain set of abilities that make sure stories play out the way they're intended to. Authors - and by authors I really mean anyone who thinks up a story or character - are shaping worlds, but worlds are also shaping them back in the same way. I haven't explained the connection in detail yet, so you'll just have to swallow that there's "a connection" between the author and his/her creation.
If however in this world for some reason there are for example 14 horse riders appearing instead of 13, the author's very idea will change and he or she will write about 14 instead of 13 horse riders. That's how both the author shapes the world and the world shapes the author. That's just one example. Traumkrieger are most commonly world travelers, so they feel they have to carry responsibility for breaking the isolation of worlds and unbalancing them. If you believe in chaos theory or the butterfly effect, even small actions can develop big effects over time. That's how many worlds get fucked up over time and as people just keep joining Silvernight, the problems don't get less.
However, the Traumkrieger have also developed technology in order to monitor chaotic differences that "weren't supposed to happen". After all they can gather scientists from the most advanced worlds that exist. Sometimes entire worlds are about to collapse and the entire population is about to be torn apart by the magic current in the void and so the Traumkrieger come in and pick up whatever looks like an interesting addition to them. Technology, memory, people, whatever helps the Silvernight.
Traumkrieger are also able to identify people with Traumkrieger abilities fairly quickly... if you didn't jam their system, Karive. It doesn't always work so early you can see a small child is a Traumkrieger, but they're getting there.
Now, the special abilities of Traumkrieger that make up the very definition if you're one of them or not. You're born with it, but they have yet to find the sample of a still unborn Traumkrieger in development that could show them exactly why they have these abilities.
There are three abilities that divide the Traumkrieger into three types. Type 1, warping space, Type 2, warping time, Type 3, warping "information". The division alone is a big "fuck you" to nature as we all know since Einstein that you can't separate space and time when we have spacetime. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime]
Traumkrieger are breaking the very rules of logic and nature. Really. To simplify, if you have a chess piece on A1 and put it forward by one chess field, it should end up on A2, correct?
With the Traumkrieger ability of manipulating space, you can just change the very logic and make the chess piece appear on E5 or something. It's a bit like in game menus where you move the selection of options with the arrow keys and you use the "down" key at the bottom of the list of options and suddenly you're selecting the very top entry of the menu. Only with this ability you dictate from where and to where you jump. You make the rules.
Time manipulation of course makes you fuck with the flow of time like you've seen in many times before in fiction. Of course this again fucks with logic and Einstein as time is linear and you can't go back in time. Once again, Traumkrieger abilities fuck that up.
Manipulating "information", Type 3, is the rarest type discovered and thus not much is known about it. It is believed however that it can change for example that gold's "color information" suddenly become green without manipulating anything else. It's also very easy to manipulate memory with that even tho you don't know anything about chemistry, biology or electrons.
Maybe now you know why the Traumkrieger try to gather other people with these abilities no matter the cost. It's too risky to let people with such abilities simply experiment or do what they want. Since Type 1, space manipulation, is the most common ability, and Type 3 is the most rare ability, there isn't much progress in research in this regard, either. Type 2... well...
Like I said, most of the Traumkrieger are Type 1 and manipulate space. Type 3 looks like it's something interesting, but nothing that could (yet) lead to FUBAR everything. Type 2 however... time travel can be very, very dangerous. Travel back in time and kill your parents? Normally just a hypothetical mind game as you can't ever travel back in time, logic forbid. Type 2 Traumkriegers however can and the council consisting mostly of Type 1 grows to fear their abilities. At some point in time, the debate between them and Type 2s concerning the issue grows more and more heated until the Type 1 Traumkrieger decide to annihilate all the Type 2 Traumkrieger and proceed to doing so with any confirmed Type 2s they'll encounter in the future. Of course Type 2s are only as capable of fucking up everything as Type 1s, only if they really try, but Type 1s weren't able to understand them or their abilities and they were in the majority, so... yeah, it's sorta tragic.
Black Phoenix is a term that is used to describe certain characters that fit the categories, but it's not used nearly as frequently as "I breathed fire" for example.
Hate is definitely an important factor in all of this, sorry if I wasn't clear yesterday, but like I said, it was getting late and .
See, you can be motivated or have the strong will to do something out of different reasons. "Black" specifies this motivation while "Phoenix" refers to the character trait not to give up and press on especially when almost defeated.
The will of a Black Phoenix is born from hate and the desire to destroy. In this story, Karive is creating Black Phoenixes who are eaten up by the desire to destroy him and focus their entire existence around this. "Black" also refers to ash and coal, what's left after something has burned out, similar to how the passion burning within the characters will eventually burn their lives and anything but the sole desire to kill Karive, no matter what's in the way. Eventually it'll develop into the desire to utterly obliterate anything in their way, which can quickly evolve into hate for the complete world. Now we're getting closer to heroes becoming the villains, right?
I didn't go much into detail about Kharseth's character during the plot summary.
It's hard to nail down his character at the beginning at all, but it gets easier over time as the souls fuse together and create one consistent being rather than two different beings in one body. I could explain something about the character of the Author Avatar and Arkenighte separately, but I'll fast forward to "Kharseth" himself, after he gets accepted into the Silvernight and after the soul fusion is complete.
First of all, you have to get he is drawn by Karive. For almost his entire "original" life - during the time the story takes place - he is oppressed by the Lord of Void and I think I've given him plenty of motivation to hate him. Like, a lot. Kharseth is a quick learner and picks up magic with a great interest. His desire to gain more and more power is making him overuse his body frequently, to the point where he'll jokingly say at some point he'd probably be the happiest person alive if only the author had made him a masochist. Personality-wise, he isn't unfriendly at the core, but the events he's been through have made him conceal his "soft core" with a rougher outer shell. He isn't a jerk, but he will for example leave out smalltalk before going to business, he'll be direct and blunt and often have little patience as he doesn't get a lot of sleep. He doesn't work in a team, he always feels like he has to do everything on his own because others either can't be trusted with big responsibility or they lack the ability to carry their weight, he feels like he is the only one who can fulfill his own high standards.
His "softer" parts he doesn't show often include him swallowing a lot of anger and trying to take complete responsibility for the author's destruction. In other words: If it wasn't for him and his story, Apotropé's world would never have been under attack, Karive wouldn't have existed, many characters like Talitha wouldn't have suffered this much if it wasn't for the author and himself. He knows he isn't the author, but he still blames himself for all of it, building up even more hate.
He is however also quite intelligent and tries to defeat the author's creations by predicting what cliché he'll fall into next - which is of course one of the big reasons I try to subvert tropes whenever I can - and he also has a lot of interior monologues and thoughts, only a fraction of it he tells others. He may be a lone wolf type, but he's actually caring a lot about others. At the same time however he wants to hold himself back so he doesn't fall into a trap like when he trusted his friends that in reality only worked for Karive. He knows this world the author created is full of traps, hence he tries to keep to himself and solve it all on his own. Everything else he would treat as an escort mission.
He is similar to Talitha in that regard as he doesn't want to trust others because of bad experiences, but he is more open than her in comparison. He's most definitely not your drinking buddy tho.
I have a hard time categorizing him with tropes, but I hope you have a better picture of him now. He's spiky, but only to defend himself. Dig too deep and you'll find a lot of unresolved hate towards many, many however. This is partly because of the outsider life the Author Avatar and Arkenighte went through in their original lives, partly because he became an outsider because everyone wants to get rid of the one possessed by the demon. I think he'd like to live a normal life, but he's resigned to the fact that will never happen.
There's good as no room to explore his character under "normal" circumstances. Much like Karive is created to make him suffer, Kharseth is created to destroy Karive. He'll get some more "human" interaction when he forms a group with Talitha and Lilliath, but that's till a long way ahead and I haven't planned that much. I hope I'll get a better grasp for him once that time comes around. I'm currently rewriting the part where he fights the second big monster in the graveyard, if you're wondering how much I'm behind, lol.
None of the characters is ever supposed to get a happy end, at least as far as I've thought ahead. Not even friendship or love would bring you happiness. Karive makes sure you won't experience peace of mind or happiness. In fact, if Karive wasn't there, especially Kharseth would lose his entire ground. He's only focused on becoming a machine of destruction and war, he neglects abilities that would help him for leading a normal life.
There are two reasons why I'll definitely keep at least friendship among the three protagonists.
First of all, just seeing people fall into darkness makes for good material of a short story like Lucifer's fall, but it's not suited for a bigger story with multiple small climaxes. You need valleys of tension in order to built up again or your readers will not be able to combat fatigue forever. It'll eventually become boring. Oh look, the heroes suck again and Karive wins, woot, big surprise.
The story is also supposed to be way more than just a trip to darkness. I want it to be about many things while going downhill. I want laughter, I want tears, I want it sometimes to be silly and goofy and then be able to make it heartwarming and heart-wrenching, making it all in all a beautiful mix. I think highly of Neon Genesis Evangelion. While the characters all fall into a pit of great darkness while time progresses, the mood never simply gets darker. All the things I listed come up sometimes more, sometimes less and it is especially because you know what the characters have to lose that you're hating the villain yourself. Similarly, light never shines as brightly as it does against the darkness and I think until the Metal Age I've already created a very nice dark background. Seen Darker Than Black? Some parts are really cheesy, but nonetheless it's also the story that makes lines like "ow." completely heartwarming, simply because everything is so dark and frustrating that the slightest smile can fill you and the other characters with light and hope. The contrast is what makes it interesting and the contrast it what builds the potential that makes the fall more intense.
Talitha's inner struggle is "accepting both love and death" or in other words "accepting pain". She tries to shield herself from both good and bad things (Hedgehog's dilemma). She's not simply going through lots of shit and dying as a result, that would be flat-out boring and in that case she wouldn't be worth the spot of a main character for me. She'll become a Black Phoenix. She will not go down without a fight, that doesn't suit her. Talitha has enough courage and selflessness to be a hero and in a way being a doctor is already being a hero. She's also clever enough to realize when a way of life as utterly failed and she has to force herself to do stuff she doesn't want. That's how she made it so far. She didn't want to go asexual and abandon a whole world of youth. She also worked a lot for getting the high position she is now. She's a fighter. She's tough. She won't go silent into the night.
The only thing that probably bores me more than a hero succeeding without bigger problems is a villain succeeding without bigger problems. It always makes me wish the heroes weren't so weak. After all, equal fights to the death are the most intense ones. Karive controls the characters now with an iron, but his control will slip. And it's interesting to find out how the fuck the characters are going to do that in their position when the Lord of Void is obviously so much more powerful than they are.
Target Audience
I'm just writing it for my own amusement. That's why I chose a setting that lets me enter any setting I want, whether it's the zombie apocalypse or adventures IN SPACE.
Hate is definitely an important factor in all of this, sorry if I wasn't clear yesterday, but like I said, it was getting late and .
See, you can be motivated or have the strong will to do something out of different reasons. "Black" specifies this motivation while "Phoenix" refers to the character trait not to give up and press on especially when almost defeated.
The will of a Black Phoenix is born from hate and the desire to destroy. In this story, Karive is creating Black Phoenixes who are eaten up by the desire to destroy him and focus their entire existence around this. "Black" also refers to ash and coal, what's left after something has burned out, similar to how the passion burning within the characters will eventually burn their lives and anything but the sole desire to kill Karive, no matter what's in the way. Eventually it'll develop into the desire to utterly obliterate anything in their way, which can quickly evolve into hate for the complete world. Now we're getting closer to heroes becoming the villains, right?
I didn't go much into detail about Kharseth's character during the plot summary.
It's hard to nail down his character at the beginning at all, but it gets easier over time as the souls fuse together and create one consistent being rather than two different beings in one body. I could explain something about the character of the Author Avatar and Arkenighte separately, but I'll fast forward to "Kharseth" himself, after he gets accepted into the Silvernight and after the soul fusion is complete.
First of all, you have to get he is drawn by Karive. For almost his entire "original" life - during the time the story takes place - he is oppressed by the Lord of Void and I think I've given him plenty of motivation to hate him. Like, a lot. Kharseth is a quick learner and picks up magic with a great interest. His desire to gain more and more power is making him overuse his body frequently, to the point where he'll jokingly say at some point he'd probably be the happiest person alive if only the author had made him a masochist. Personality-wise, he isn't unfriendly at the core, but the events he's been through have made him conceal his "soft core" with a rougher outer shell. He isn't a jerk, but he will for example leave out smalltalk before going to business, he'll be direct and blunt and often have little patience as he doesn't get a lot of sleep. He doesn't work in a team, he always feels like he has to do everything on his own because others either can't be trusted with big responsibility or they lack the ability to carry their weight, he feels like he is the only one who can fulfill his own high standards.
His "softer" parts he doesn't show often include him swallowing a lot of anger and trying to take complete responsibility for the author's destruction. In other words: If it wasn't for him and his story, Apotropé's world would never have been under attack, Karive wouldn't have existed, many characters like Talitha wouldn't have suffered this much if it wasn't for the author and himself. He knows he isn't the author, but he still blames himself for all of it, building up even more hate.
He is however also quite intelligent and tries to defeat the author's creations by predicting what cliché he'll fall into next - which is of course one of the big reasons I try to subvert tropes whenever I can - and he also has a lot of interior monologues and thoughts, only a fraction of it he tells others. He may be a lone wolf type, but he's actually caring a lot about others. At the same time however he wants to hold himself back so he doesn't fall into a trap like when he trusted his friends that in reality only worked for Karive. He knows this world the author created is full of traps, hence he tries to keep to himself and solve it all on his own. Everything else he would treat as an escort mission.
He is similar to Talitha in that regard as he doesn't want to trust others because of bad experiences, but he is more open than her in comparison. He's most definitely not your drinking buddy tho.
I have a hard time categorizing him with tropes, but I hope you have a better picture of him now. He's spiky, but only to defend himself. Dig too deep and you'll find a lot of unresolved hate towards many, many however. This is partly because of the outsider life the Author Avatar and Arkenighte went through in their original lives, partly because he became an outsider because everyone wants to get rid of the one possessed by the demon. I think he'd like to live a normal life, but he's resigned to the fact that will never happen.
There's good as no room to explore his character under "normal" circumstances. Much like Karive is created to make him suffer, Kharseth is created to destroy Karive. He'll get some more "human" interaction when he forms a group with Talitha and Lilliath, but that's till a long way ahead and I haven't planned that much. I hope I'll get a better grasp for him once that time comes around. I'm currently rewriting the part where he fights the second big monster in the graveyard, if you're wondering how much I'm behind, lol.
None of the characters is ever supposed to get a happy end, at least as far as I've thought ahead. Not even friendship or love would bring you happiness. Karive makes sure you won't experience peace of mind or happiness. In fact, if Karive wasn't there, especially Kharseth would lose his entire ground. He's only focused on becoming a machine of destruction and war, he neglects abilities that would help him for leading a normal life.
There are two reasons why I'll definitely keep at least friendship among the three protagonists.
First of all, just seeing people fall into darkness makes for good material of a short story like Lucifer's fall, but it's not suited for a bigger story with multiple small climaxes. You need valleys of tension in order to built up again or your readers will not be able to combat fatigue forever. It'll eventually become boring. Oh look, the heroes suck again and Karive wins, woot, big surprise.
The story is also supposed to be way more than just a trip to darkness. I want it to be about many things while going downhill. I want laughter, I want tears, I want it sometimes to be silly and goofy and then be able to make it heartwarming and heart-wrenching, making it all in all a beautiful mix. I think highly of Neon Genesis Evangelion. While the characters all fall into a pit of great darkness while time progresses, the mood never simply gets darker. All the things I listed come up sometimes more, sometimes less and it is especially because you know what the characters have to lose that you're hating the villain yourself. Similarly, light never shines as brightly as it does against the darkness and I think until the Metal Age I've already created a very nice dark background. Seen Darker Than Black? Some parts are really cheesy, but nonetheless it's also the story that makes lines like "ow." completely heartwarming, simply because everything is so dark and frustrating that the slightest smile can fill you and the other characters with light and hope. The contrast is what makes it interesting and the contrast it what builds the potential that makes the fall more intense.
Talitha's inner struggle is "accepting both love and death" or in other words "accepting pain". She tries to shield herself from both good and bad things (Hedgehog's dilemma). She's not simply going through lots of shit and dying as a result, that would be flat-out boring and in that case she wouldn't be worth the spot of a main character for me. She'll become a Black Phoenix. She will not go down without a fight, that doesn't suit her. Talitha has enough courage and selflessness to be a hero and in a way being a doctor is already being a hero. She's also clever enough to realize when a way of life as utterly failed and she has to force herself to do stuff she doesn't want. That's how she made it so far. She didn't want to go asexual and abandon a whole world of youth. She also worked a lot for getting the high position she is now. She's a fighter. She's tough. She won't go silent into the night.
The only thing that probably bores me more than a hero succeeding without bigger problems is a villain succeeding without bigger problems. It always makes me wish the heroes weren't so weak. After all, equal fights to the death are the most intense ones. Karive controls the characters now with an iron, but his control will slip. And it's interesting to find out how the fuck the characters are going to do that in their position when the Lord of Void is obviously so much more powerful than they are.
Target Audience
I'm just writing it for my own amusement. That's why I chose a setting that lets me enter any setting I want, whether it's the zombie apocalypse or adventures IN SPACE.
Oh boy, where to start...
Like I said, Traumkrieger are gathering other people with Traumkrieger abilities and they're getting better and better at it. Karive is found as a young age and he's believed to be a Type 3 (manipulation of information - excellent for mindfucks). Instead of going all "mad scientist" and experimenting with this rare breed, the Traumkrieger treat him with a lot of respect so that he'll show them whatever secrets are buried within his abilities, all willingly. Of course, knowing Karive, he's not the real puppet.
It was around this time when the council was about to decide to eliminate all Type 2 Traumkrieger. Karive knew something like this would come up eventually if the debate went on and he watched the discussions with a worried heart as one of his friends, brought to the Silvernight only recently, was about to have his Type 2 confirmed. That friend was Sera.
Karive took action and used his Type 3 in an attempt to change Sera's type before his type could be confirmed as #2 and he'd be put in danger. It didn't exactly go as planned as there aren't really good way to study Type 3 abilities when it's as rare as it is, so instead Sera became a Type 2/Type 1 hybrid, which was however enough to fool the tests.
During this time, Karive tried to help whoever could still be helped, put most of the Type 2 Traumkrieger fell victim to the annihilation.
Karive climbed in ranks and trust and was eventually given a very important task. He'd be in charge of the void in between worlds, which usually isn't that much work as the real action is going on *on* the worlds, and he was also frequently used to do "evil" stuff in order to balance things out. For example, through a mistake of any kind, a village doesn't burn to the ground as it should do in the opening cinematic. Who has to finish the job? Yep. He does the necessary evil. Not all Traumkrieger are suited for this as many don't get that "justice" is neither taking the position of "good" nor "evil". They're neutral. They just do everything so it goes as the author wanted it to play out.
Karive does his job well and he isn't really monitored anymore. That gives him the space to experiment with jamming the means by which the Traumkrieger can monitor his activities in the void and thus he creates his own place in the void. Like I said, the void has enough resource to build entire worlds, so he used that to shape a place following his imagination. Guess where he smuggled Type 2 Traumkrieger to? He proceeded to helping new Type 2 Traumkrieger, either by granting them a very limited home himself or more commonly by donating them new Types which are more commonly accepted within the Silvernight. Shalazh for example is originally a Type 2 Traumkrieger that is seen as a common Type 1 by the Traumkrieger of Silvernight. His keeps rescuing people, which forges strong bonds of loyalty. In addition, he does something else...
Like I already mentioned, dreams are very instable types of fictions. You come up with them in a moment and the next day you've forgotten it. In the void, the creature comes into existence for a brief moment and then it dies as quickly as it was born. Karive took those falling dreams - most commonly nightmares - and gave them a common outer appearance, something they could call a community or race, family. The dreams falling apart still had a hint of own personality, so Karive tried to create something that unified them as a race, but also fit their character, thus most of them looked like monsters (to us). Not that they cared. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. The reason why Karive did this? Simply because he wanted to let them live. Maybe it was to make up for the slaughters he committed in the name of justice, to ease his consciousness.
However, the situation grew worse and worse. Traumkrieger start getting suspicious as to where the fuck all that void material is going to and Karive's jamming mechanisms would soon not be enough to withstand the deeper and more accurate probes. He can't create his own secret world for hiding everything either. "Reviving" nightmares that should have died is a direct violation of everything the Traumkrieger try to do. Everything Karive has worked for seems like it's about to go to waste, when Deus Ex Machina arrives.
Boy, this is gonna get more complicated...
you see, the Traumkrieger believe that the Known Space is reality, right? They think they've discovered the world outside the worlds, but we know this can't be quite true if I'm the one who came up with the idea of Traumkrieger. It becomes apparent that there are more layers to the world than the Known Space with all its worlds and the void etc. The higher the layers, the more abstract everything gets. One a very high plane, probably close to the top, there are the Archangels. Like gods, they're designed to fit one attribute or a couple of attributes closely. Very little to nothing is actually known about them, but once you get to know them, you'll instantly recognize another Archangel again. It's like a completely new color to your color spectrum added by the presence of a Archangel alone. Archangels seem to originate in the very depths of human psyche - or rather, the author's psyche. Think about it. My characters will never be able to visit a fantasy world I don't know or at least they'll never visit places I don't know about. Any yet the Known Space is supposed to contain the entirety of fantasy worlds? No. But the Traumkrieger do believe so and thus they make it sound like it's THE truth. In reality, it's all just different worlds the author knows about. I hope you're still with me, this is rather complicated and nested, so it's not easy to understand. It does blur the bounds between reality and fantasy once again after all.
What's important is that Karive gets a visit from the Archangel of Terror sent by the author. The Archangel offers Karive a deal: The author will create a world to which he can transfer his creatures and since it'll be part of a script, the Traumkrieger will let it pass. He'll even be able to transfer the Type 2 Traumkrieger to that world in secret, the author will protect the travel. Karive will be able to save everything he holds dear in exchange for... himself.
In exchange, Karive must become the antagonist that will make the life of the characters a living hell. The Archangel will become part of his soul and both guide him in the beginning and supply him with the strength he needs.
Karive agrees.
For this purpose, he gets rid of his old self entirely. He uses his Type 3 to make himself a multitype 1/2/3 and a shapeshifter. He discards his name and tells his plans about what he decided to do. They say they will support him in order to lessen his burden as much as possible. Karive discards his body and changes his very personality so that he could become the embodiment of evil the Archangel wants him to become. Only the arriving first protagonist then gives him a new face and name, like I already explained.
It looks like Karive who comes off as a chess player is just a pawn for the author in the end. But like with the Traumkrieger, he actually has other plans. He doesn't want to live this life forever. He wants to return to his normal self eventually and find a loophole. For that very purpose he left part of his old self with him, so that he could return to his old eventually. He plans on returning to being a good guy eventually.
Which is of course playing straight into the author's plans as you know.
So in the end, I want to ask the question: Whose fault is it that all this shit happened? Is it Karive's fault? The author's fault? The reader's fault, because nobody likes to read boring stories? Or is it human nature and we have nothing to blame but ourselves and who we are?
To answer your questions how he talks with people:
1. with a victim
He's making sure his victim knows that it is a victim and that he is the boss, but not through violence. He is fearless, he isn't impressed by your powers and he uses his abilities to make you helpless. You're his toy, you're nowhere near his class. He's talking in an arrogant, yet sweet tone, will belittle you if he sees fit, he won't take you seriously and will remain completely relaxed most of the time. All while grinning of course.
2. with an equal
He comes off as a serious and thoughtful guy "behinds the scenes" when he talks with the people he bounded together like Sera or Shalazh. Since during these times he isn't part of the play anymore, he shows a greater amount of emotions, from being nervous and insecure to getting heated up and losing his temper. All in all he is a strategist and a thoughtful guy however, always planning two steps ahead and with multiple backup plans in reserve. The actual creation of these plots is more fun to him that to actually execute the plans and destroying something.
He'll open up to those he trusts and support them. For example, he has no problem with brainwashing a girl Nemico likes so that she falls in love with him by using his Type 3 powers. He can dictate what's "true love" for her after all, that's his ability. This both shows he hardly cares for those "unimportant" people, but he is concerned about those which who he bonded and meets them with respect and honesty.
3. a superior
Karive doesn't think of people as a superior. Ever. If he takes a lower place in hierarchy, he'll simply use all his abilities to become the secret puppeteer and trick people into following his wishes in the end. It's like that both with the Traumkrieger and the author. During that time however, he'll swallow whatever the superior throws at him. He's a patient predator and keeps up a mask of loyalty. He never accepts anyone higher than him tho, he'll overcome them one way or another. Restricting him a lot in his ways is probably a bad idea, but you'll never know until it's too late.
Like I said, Traumkrieger are gathering other people with Traumkrieger abilities and they're getting better and better at it. Karive is found as a young age and he's believed to be a Type 3 (manipulation of information - excellent for mindfucks). Instead of going all "mad scientist" and experimenting with this rare breed, the Traumkrieger treat him with a lot of respect so that he'll show them whatever secrets are buried within his abilities, all willingly. Of course, knowing Karive, he's not the real puppet.
It was around this time when the council was about to decide to eliminate all Type 2 Traumkrieger. Karive knew something like this would come up eventually if the debate went on and he watched the discussions with a worried heart as one of his friends, brought to the Silvernight only recently, was about to have his Type 2 confirmed. That friend was Sera.
Karive took action and used his Type 3 in an attempt to change Sera's type before his type could be confirmed as #2 and he'd be put in danger. It didn't exactly go as planned as there aren't really good way to study Type 3 abilities when it's as rare as it is, so instead Sera became a Type 2/Type 1 hybrid, which was however enough to fool the tests.
During this time, Karive tried to help whoever could still be helped, put most of the Type 2 Traumkrieger fell victim to the annihilation.
Karive climbed in ranks and trust and was eventually given a very important task. He'd be in charge of the void in between worlds, which usually isn't that much work as the real action is going on *on* the worlds, and he was also frequently used to do "evil" stuff in order to balance things out. For example, through a mistake of any kind, a village doesn't burn to the ground as it should do in the opening cinematic. Who has to finish the job? Yep. He does the necessary evil. Not all Traumkrieger are suited for this as many don't get that "justice" is neither taking the position of "good" nor "evil". They're neutral. They just do everything so it goes as the author wanted it to play out.
Karive does his job well and he isn't really monitored anymore. That gives him the space to experiment with jamming the means by which the Traumkrieger can monitor his activities in the void and thus he creates his own place in the void. Like I said, the void has enough resource to build entire worlds, so he used that to shape a place following his imagination. Guess where he smuggled Type 2 Traumkrieger to? He proceeded to helping new Type 2 Traumkrieger, either by granting them a very limited home himself or more commonly by donating them new Types which are more commonly accepted within the Silvernight. Shalazh for example is originally a Type 2 Traumkrieger that is seen as a common Type 1 by the Traumkrieger of Silvernight. His keeps rescuing people, which forges strong bonds of loyalty. In addition, he does something else...
Like I already mentioned, dreams are very instable types of fictions. You come up with them in a moment and the next day you've forgotten it. In the void, the creature comes into existence for a brief moment and then it dies as quickly as it was born. Karive took those falling dreams - most commonly nightmares - and gave them a common outer appearance, something they could call a community or race, family. The dreams falling apart still had a hint of own personality, so Karive tried to create something that unified them as a race, but also fit their character, thus most of them looked like monsters (to us). Not that they cared. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. The reason why Karive did this? Simply because he wanted to let them live. Maybe it was to make up for the slaughters he committed in the name of justice, to ease his consciousness.
However, the situation grew worse and worse. Traumkrieger start getting suspicious as to where the fuck all that void material is going to and Karive's jamming mechanisms would soon not be enough to withstand the deeper and more accurate probes. He can't create his own secret world for hiding everything either. "Reviving" nightmares that should have died is a direct violation of everything the Traumkrieger try to do. Everything Karive has worked for seems like it's about to go to waste, when Deus Ex Machina arrives.
Boy, this is gonna get more complicated...
you see, the Traumkrieger believe that the Known Space is reality, right? They think they've discovered the world outside the worlds, but we know this can't be quite true if I'm the one who came up with the idea of Traumkrieger. It becomes apparent that there are more layers to the world than the Known Space with all its worlds and the void etc. The higher the layers, the more abstract everything gets. One a very high plane, probably close to the top, there are the Archangels. Like gods, they're designed to fit one attribute or a couple of attributes closely. Very little to nothing is actually known about them, but once you get to know them, you'll instantly recognize another Archangel again. It's like a completely new color to your color spectrum added by the presence of a Archangel alone. Archangels seem to originate in the very depths of human psyche - or rather, the author's psyche. Think about it. My characters will never be able to visit a fantasy world I don't know or at least they'll never visit places I don't know about. Any yet the Known Space is supposed to contain the entirety of fantasy worlds? No. But the Traumkrieger do believe so and thus they make it sound like it's THE truth. In reality, it's all just different worlds the author knows about. I hope you're still with me, this is rather complicated and nested, so it's not easy to understand. It does blur the bounds between reality and fantasy once again after all.
What's important is that Karive gets a visit from the Archangel of Terror sent by the author. The Archangel offers Karive a deal: The author will create a world to which he can transfer his creatures and since it'll be part of a script, the Traumkrieger will let it pass. He'll even be able to transfer the Type 2 Traumkrieger to that world in secret, the author will protect the travel. Karive will be able to save everything he holds dear in exchange for... himself.
In exchange, Karive must become the antagonist that will make the life of the characters a living hell. The Archangel will become part of his soul and both guide him in the beginning and supply him with the strength he needs.
Karive agrees.
For this purpose, he gets rid of his old self entirely. He uses his Type 3 to make himself a multitype 1/2/3 and a shapeshifter. He discards his name and tells his plans about what he decided to do. They say they will support him in order to lessen his burden as much as possible. Karive discards his body and changes his very personality so that he could become the embodiment of evil the Archangel wants him to become. Only the arriving first protagonist then gives him a new face and name, like I already explained.
It looks like Karive who comes off as a chess player is just a pawn for the author in the end. But like with the Traumkrieger, he actually has other plans. He doesn't want to live this life forever. He wants to return to his normal self eventually and find a loophole. For that very purpose he left part of his old self with him, so that he could return to his old eventually. He plans on returning to being a good guy eventually.
Which is of course playing straight into the author's plans as you know.
So in the end, I want to ask the question: Whose fault is it that all this shit happened? Is it Karive's fault? The author's fault? The reader's fault, because nobody likes to read boring stories? Or is it human nature and we have nothing to blame but ourselves and who we are?
To answer your questions how he talks with people:
1. with a victim
He's making sure his victim knows that it is a victim and that he is the boss, but not through violence. He is fearless, he isn't impressed by your powers and he uses his abilities to make you helpless. You're his toy, you're nowhere near his class. He's talking in an arrogant, yet sweet tone, will belittle you if he sees fit, he won't take you seriously and will remain completely relaxed most of the time. All while grinning of course.
2. with an equal
He comes off as a serious and thoughtful guy "behinds the scenes" when he talks with the people he bounded together like Sera or Shalazh. Since during these times he isn't part of the play anymore, he shows a greater amount of emotions, from being nervous and insecure to getting heated up and losing his temper. All in all he is a strategist and a thoughtful guy however, always planning two steps ahead and with multiple backup plans in reserve. The actual creation of these plots is more fun to him that to actually execute the plans and destroying something.
He'll open up to those he trusts and support them. For example, he has no problem with brainwashing a girl Nemico likes so that she falls in love with him by using his Type 3 powers. He can dictate what's "true love" for her after all, that's his ability. This both shows he hardly cares for those "unimportant" people, but he is concerned about those which who he bonded and meets them with respect and honesty.
3. a superior
Karive doesn't think of people as a superior. Ever. If he takes a lower place in hierarchy, he'll simply use all his abilities to become the secret puppeteer and trick people into following his wishes in the end. It's like that both with the Traumkrieger and the author. During that time however, he'll swallow whatever the superior throws at him. He's a patient predator and keeps up a mask of loyalty. He never accepts anyone higher than him tho, he'll overcome them one way or another. Restricting him a lot in his ways is probably a bad idea, but you'll never know until it's too late.
It's starting to get late today (and tomorrow's Monday... yuck), so I'll try to be brief:
19
I like playing with existing symbolism, but I also like making up my own like with the Black Phoenix. The number 19 consists of both 1 and 9 which is the highest and lowest positive single digit. It's combining the lowest and the greatest in many shapes. The Ace is another way of pointing that out. Depending on what card game you play, the Ace can be the most valuable card or just have a value of 1. In the story, it's about the combination of Arkenighte and the Author Avatar, King and Pawn on the chess field, in one body. Arkenighte as you may know or not was only capable of studying the Arcane and swordsmanship properly because he was of the head family of his clan, low royalty you could say. The Author Avatar on the other hand is just a normal guy with no special heritage and aside from his will and ability to learn quickly, has no actual power that's useful in this world himself, thus he's a pawn.
19 is the combination of great differences, which can even extend to light and darkness. It can also stand for a person that likes to think greatly of himself, but is actually a horrible person deep down - a 9 outside, a 1 inside.
I think it would be actually correct to think of 0 as the lowest number, but "09" doesn't make for a good symbolic number and also can't be expressed with Latin numbers.
19
I like playing with existing symbolism, but I also like making up my own like with the Black Phoenix. The number 19 consists of both 1 and 9 which is the highest and lowest positive single digit. It's combining the lowest and the greatest in many shapes. The Ace is another way of pointing that out. Depending on what card game you play, the Ace can be the most valuable card or just have a value of 1. In the story, it's about the combination of Arkenighte and the Author Avatar, King and Pawn on the chess field, in one body. Arkenighte as you may know or not was only capable of studying the Arcane and swordsmanship properly because he was of the head family of his clan, low royalty you could say. The Author Avatar on the other hand is just a normal guy with no special heritage and aside from his will and ability to learn quickly, has no actual power that's useful in this world himself, thus he's a pawn.
19 is the combination of great differences, which can even extend to light and darkness. It can also stand for a person that likes to think greatly of himself, but is actually a horrible person deep down - a 9 outside, a 1 inside.
I think it would be actually correct to think of 0 as the lowest number, but "09" doesn't make for a good symbolic number and also can't be expressed with Latin numbers.
I actually have a few uses of mundane magic, but it's mostly just cosmetic stuff or playthings like writing on a (magic) piece of paper when you want to Google. I might share some stuff later, but these messages are becoming so long I'm spending almost a whole day reading/writing them, lol.
I also remind thee to explain magical Lordship someday.
Writing comic books around the Pyrolord sounds strange. Surely it won't teach the kids correct history?
I also remind thee to explain magical Lordship someday.
Writing comic books around the Pyrolord sounds strange. Surely it won't teach the kids correct history?
I like em all, very colorful personalities. My favorites are probably Ember and Stover. He's a cheerful Blood Knight [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BloodKnight]. What's not to like?
As for Kyrien - being ambitious and seeking power doesn't make someone evil that easily. I mean, that's how I'm trying to make Kharseth slip from the path, but I've learned that it's all about what you want to do with your power. If you use it for your own selfish desires, you'll come off as a villain. If you want power in order to defeat the darkness (in Kharseth's case to defeat Karive), the character is becoming more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist and is more easily forgiven by the audience.
I think you don't have to worry about cliché. I'm curious how the characters interact with each other when all together in a group or even better, in battle.
As for Kyrien - being ambitious and seeking power doesn't make someone evil that easily. I mean, that's how I'm trying to make Kharseth slip from the path, but I've learned that it's all about what you want to do with your power. If you use it for your own selfish desires, you'll come off as a villain. If you want power in order to defeat the darkness (in Kharseth's case to defeat Karive), the character is becoming more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist and is more easily forgiven by the audience.
I think you don't have to worry about cliché. I'm curious how the characters interact with each other when all together in a group or even better, in battle.
I'd really like to read actual material from you! I'll try to translate my chapter to the best of the ability if I find the time. It probably won't contain a lot tho, let's see... until the first protagonist finds himself in the cave. 15 pages. But there's an early appearance of Karive at the end, so that should make you happy.
If I forgot something to talk about, lemme know.
Post 2 because the first one was too large.
Charisma said:
Maybe making her end in a straight tragedy would be an interesting thing to do, but to be completely honest with you, I quickly grew attached to her and I feel like making her end like this would be a waste of a good character. I think after multiple rewrites I actually learned a lot about forging characters and that's why she may be a new character, but also one I'm a bit proud of. I don't want her to just live happily ever after, but I want somebody to reach her a candle in the pitch-black that the dusk has become.
Maybe it's author appeal for finding a small hope in an otherwise dark place. For example, there's this one situation in an anime called To Aru Majutsu Index. You can think about it what you want (it actually subverts and averts a few tropes, so that made it interesting for me), but this made my heart very fuzzy:
TL;DR I have a thing for characters being actually nice on the inside and for few good actions in an otherwise corrupted world.
Maybe it's also partly the wish to know more about Talitha before making her destiny that final. I usually get my characters to know better by going with them through a lot, which puts them into different situations that make them reaction differently from one another. For example, I have no idea what actually makes her smile although I have the concept of her having a fake "social" smile when he shows her teeth and a real smile when she doesn't show her teeth. I concentrated so much on making her a useful tool and integrated part of the story that I don't know what she likes, what her hobbies are (or would be considering her time schedule), what good childhood memories are (I got the bad ones sorted), what is capable of amazing her, what kind of person she'd like to hang out with, what kind of life she'd like to lead, what the value of different things is to her, etc, etc, there's still a lot of unanswered questions and I think I'll have to rewrite her character a lot in order to give the reader a character as complex and multi-layered as possible.
There are always multiple layers to every good character and alternate interpretation possibilities and I feel especially when focusing on psychological issues, the reader has got to know about the character depths in greater detail and only then you can fully exploit them, too.
Even if I ditch any romance, I think I'll rather send her to a therapist (I avert thee [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThereAreNoTherapists]) than just making her die from bullying (when you put it like this, Karive actually loses a lot of his dramatic momentum). I'm not comfortable with that decision however as 1) I don't really think she's comfortable with the idea of talking about her problems for someone who just listens because he's payed for it and 2) the reputation system would probably bite her back for it in some way and currently she's trying everything possible to get as much rep and trust among the Traumkrieger as possible so she can get back to her homeworld ASAP and investigate about her father's role in the war.
A friend of mine told me she[footnote]I don't fully trust her on this as she's always there for some nice romance.[/footnote] actually liked the hospital idea of Talitha waking up after her heart attack in the middle of the night and Kharseth having fallen asleep on the side of the back while laying his hand on top of hers. Without actually overthinking her action she grabs his hand in return and falls asleep again, no words, no explanation, just the gesture - and then depending on whether it comes off as narm or not, she'll still be holding his hand the next morning.
I'm confuzzled, but I like playing with such ideas as long as nothing is yet solid. Kharseth wasn't even betrayed by Nemico and the others yet in the version of the story that's the most developed and the current rewrite is just before the fight against Karive's second big nasty monster starts.
Sorry for spamming you with stuff about her, but like I said I find her quite interesting and you seem to like her, too.
Ironically, the whole purpose behind making her asexual and distanced from romance in general was to make a cliché romance between her and the first protagonist impossible, but now that I think about it, making her completely normal in that regard and simply interested in someone else than the main character would have probably worked muuuch better. I don't regret doing it tho, Talitha just wouldn't be the same without all this.
Maybe it's author appeal for finding a small hope in an otherwise dark place. For example, there's this one situation in an anime called To Aru Majutsu Index. You can think about it what you want (it actually subverts and averts a few tropes, so that made it interesting for me), but this made my heart very fuzzy:
(I probably won't be able to mirror the story well, but I'll try anyway)
The setting is a highly advanced city for teenagers developing "esper powers". All you need to know is that it's scientifically explained magic under a different name. I have no idea what the government is actually thinking about it, but apparently the administrators of the city just care about finding really strong espers they can use for whatever purpose.
Enter a guy named Accelerator who is supposed to develop his abilities past the current maximum Power Level 5 by killing a calculated amount of Level 5 clones. And by that I mean he's supposed to kill ten thousands of little girls [http://www.retroserrate.com/mikoto/mikoto-misaka-4.jpg] whose sole purpose of creation is to be killed in battle and make Accelerator stronger. They're all connected to a single "hive mind", but even that doesn't mean they have an advantage against the guy just because they have the experience of battles that happened before. They come off as void of emotion and content with their destiny, but some scenes show that they simple didn't have much time on this planet to deal with their situation and develop real emotions at all.
Anyway, the hero of the story is a Level 0. His ability is not to throw fireballs so some shit but to negate ANY magic just by touching it with his right hand. Still, he's categorized as a Level 0. When he defeats Accelerator, the research project around him is stopped because nobody has an interest in developing a dude that can be beaten by a frikkin Level 0.
Let me clarify that Accelerator is a power-hungry jerk, at least on the outside, and he's a Blood Knight to boot.
After being kicked from the project, Accelerator doesn't seem to really care about anything in his life anymore. People think he's now a powerless idiot, so they don't respect him even a bit anymore. He can still beat them up, sure, but he's lost the pure energy and fun behind it. People break in his room and wreck everything, he doesn't care a bit.
That day he finds another one of the girls he was supposed to kill, although they were to be brought outside the city or something. For some reason she is very clingy and tho part of the hive mind and knowing exactly what Accelerator did to them, she's very cheerful and actually believes in him being a good person. He is slightly annoyed by her, but overall just ignores her or doesn't mind her.
Later on he finds out she's the last of the sisters to be produced and has a crucial position in the hive-mind. Should it go rogue, the hive-mind could still be accessed through this girl that acts as a sort of fail-safe. You get the idea. Before Accelerator can get back to the waiting girl after finding this out however, she's kidnapped by a scientist whose investments into the Accelerator project have been ruined due to the cancellation. Seeking revenge, he wants to install a virus into the girl that will make all remaining clones attack the humans around him. Them being on a high level and still around 10k of them existing, you can imagine it would be a slaughter.
Now Accelerator has two choices: Either find and kill Last Order or attempt to delete the virus. When he finally finds the abductor and renders him unconscious, he actually tries to delete the virus instead of just killing another one of the girls. Just before time runs out and he is just about to delete the last crucial parts of the virus, the abductor scientist gets up again, draws a handgun and points it at Accelerator. Rushing to complete his task in time, he proceeds to delete the code and takes a bullet to the head for it. However, the code is deleted and the scientist gets arrested by another colleague who has been supporting Accelerator the whole time.
Accelerator can be saved in hospital (it's actually not that impossible to survive a bullet to the head), but parts of his brain are irreparably damaged, including parts of his linguistic center and the parts he calculates his powers with. He'll remain crippled for life.
Or so he would. There is a way to replace the missing parts of the brain by linking him to a giant network of approximately ten-thousand clones that do the calculations for him.
It already warmed my heart when he went so far as to take a bullet to the head in order to save the sisters, but for some reason the last part warmed it even more. He still believes he is beyond redemption (but doesn't make a big fuzz out of it - he just tries to accept it), but the specific girl he protect, the fail-safe mechanism that's the only cheerful one of the lot of clones, keeps telling him he's a good person inside.
I really don't know if I should hate the guy or not, but when I saw him smiling like a Blood Knight again in the opening in the new second season, although he's walking with a crutch and I think something like a choker with some wires attached to it around his neck (probably for the connection to the hive mind), I couldn't help but feel it's good to see he's back in action. That his formerly black shit with white stripes [http://screenshots.fansub.tv/1311/19/29.jpg] has been replaced with a white shirt with black stripes probably hints at further character development, but I don't think they'll change him around completely, his Slasher Smile [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlasherSmile] looked like he's a fighter as ruthless towards his enemies as always.
Toaru Majutsu no Index can be full of pointless fanservice and has a few utterly annoying characters that try too hard to be cute, but the action is nice and it somehow always manages to warm up my heart. Especially with Heel Face Turn [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceTurn]s done right.
The setting is a highly advanced city for teenagers developing "esper powers". All you need to know is that it's scientifically explained magic under a different name. I have no idea what the government is actually thinking about it, but apparently the administrators of the city just care about finding really strong espers they can use for whatever purpose.
Enter a guy named Accelerator who is supposed to develop his abilities past the current maximum Power Level 5 by killing a calculated amount of Level 5 clones. And by that I mean he's supposed to kill ten thousands of little girls [http://www.retroserrate.com/mikoto/mikoto-misaka-4.jpg] whose sole purpose of creation is to be killed in battle and make Accelerator stronger. They're all connected to a single "hive mind", but even that doesn't mean they have an advantage against the guy just because they have the experience of battles that happened before. They come off as void of emotion and content with their destiny, but some scenes show that they simple didn't have much time on this planet to deal with their situation and develop real emotions at all.
Anyway, the hero of the story is a Level 0. His ability is not to throw fireballs so some shit but to negate ANY magic just by touching it with his right hand. Still, he's categorized as a Level 0. When he defeats Accelerator, the research project around him is stopped because nobody has an interest in developing a dude that can be beaten by a frikkin Level 0.
Let me clarify that Accelerator is a power-hungry jerk, at least on the outside, and he's a Blood Knight to boot.
After being kicked from the project, Accelerator doesn't seem to really care about anything in his life anymore. People think he's now a powerless idiot, so they don't respect him even a bit anymore. He can still beat them up, sure, but he's lost the pure energy and fun behind it. People break in his room and wreck everything, he doesn't care a bit.
That day he finds another one of the girls he was supposed to kill, although they were to be brought outside the city or something. For some reason she is very clingy and tho part of the hive mind and knowing exactly what Accelerator did to them, she's very cheerful and actually believes in him being a good person. He is slightly annoyed by her, but overall just ignores her or doesn't mind her.
Later on he finds out she's the last of the sisters to be produced and has a crucial position in the hive-mind. Should it go rogue, the hive-mind could still be accessed through this girl that acts as a sort of fail-safe. You get the idea. Before Accelerator can get back to the waiting girl after finding this out however, she's kidnapped by a scientist whose investments into the Accelerator project have been ruined due to the cancellation. Seeking revenge, he wants to install a virus into the girl that will make all remaining clones attack the humans around him. Them being on a high level and still around 10k of them existing, you can imagine it would be a slaughter.
Now Accelerator has two choices: Either find and kill Last Order or attempt to delete the virus. When he finally finds the abductor and renders him unconscious, he actually tries to delete the virus instead of just killing another one of the girls. Just before time runs out and he is just about to delete the last crucial parts of the virus, the abductor scientist gets up again, draws a handgun and points it at Accelerator. Rushing to complete his task in time, he proceeds to delete the code and takes a bullet to the head for it. However, the code is deleted and the scientist gets arrested by another colleague who has been supporting Accelerator the whole time.
Accelerator can be saved in hospital (it's actually not that impossible to survive a bullet to the head), but parts of his brain are irreparably damaged, including parts of his linguistic center and the parts he calculates his powers with. He'll remain crippled for life.
Or so he would. There is a way to replace the missing parts of the brain by linking him to a giant network of approximately ten-thousand clones that do the calculations for him.
It already warmed my heart when he went so far as to take a bullet to the head in order to save the sisters, but for some reason the last part warmed it even more. He still believes he is beyond redemption (but doesn't make a big fuzz out of it - he just tries to accept it), but the specific girl he protect, the fail-safe mechanism that's the only cheerful one of the lot of clones, keeps telling him he's a good person inside.
I really don't know if I should hate the guy or not, but when I saw him smiling like a Blood Knight again in the opening in the new second season, although he's walking with a crutch and I think something like a choker with some wires attached to it around his neck (probably for the connection to the hive mind), I couldn't help but feel it's good to see he's back in action. That his formerly black shit with white stripes [http://screenshots.fansub.tv/1311/19/29.jpg] has been replaced with a white shirt with black stripes probably hints at further character development, but I don't think they'll change him around completely, his Slasher Smile [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlasherSmile] looked like he's a fighter as ruthless towards his enemies as always.
Toaru Majutsu no Index can be full of pointless fanservice and has a few utterly annoying characters that try too hard to be cute, but the action is nice and it somehow always manages to warm up my heart. Especially with Heel Face Turn [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceTurn]s done right.
Maybe it's also partly the wish to know more about Talitha before making her destiny that final. I usually get my characters to know better by going with them through a lot, which puts them into different situations that make them reaction differently from one another. For example, I have no idea what actually makes her smile although I have the concept of her having a fake "social" smile when he shows her teeth and a real smile when she doesn't show her teeth. I concentrated so much on making her a useful tool and integrated part of the story that I don't know what she likes, what her hobbies are (or would be considering her time schedule), what good childhood memories are (I got the bad ones sorted), what is capable of amazing her, what kind of person she'd like to hang out with, what kind of life she'd like to lead, what the value of different things is to her, etc, etc, there's still a lot of unanswered questions and I think I'll have to rewrite her character a lot in order to give the reader a character as complex and multi-layered as possible.
There are always multiple layers to every good character and alternate interpretation possibilities and I feel especially when focusing on psychological issues, the reader has got to know about the character depths in greater detail and only then you can fully exploit them, too.
Even if I ditch any romance, I think I'll rather send her to a therapist (I avert thee [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThereAreNoTherapists]) than just making her die from bullying (when you put it like this, Karive actually loses a lot of his dramatic momentum). I'm not comfortable with that decision however as 1) I don't really think she's comfortable with the idea of talking about her problems for someone who just listens because he's payed for it and 2) the reputation system would probably bite her back for it in some way and currently she's trying everything possible to get as much rep and trust among the Traumkrieger as possible so she can get back to her homeworld ASAP and investigate about her father's role in the war.
A friend of mine told me she[footnote]I don't fully trust her on this as she's always there for some nice romance.[/footnote] actually liked the hospital idea of Talitha waking up after her heart attack in the middle of the night and Kharseth having fallen asleep on the side of the back while laying his hand on top of hers. Without actually overthinking her action she grabs his hand in return and falls asleep again, no words, no explanation, just the gesture - and then depending on whether it comes off as narm or not, she'll still be holding his hand the next morning.
I'm confuzzled, but I like playing with such ideas as long as nothing is yet solid. Kharseth wasn't even betrayed by Nemico and the others yet in the version of the story that's the most developed and the current rewrite is just before the fight against Karive's second big nasty monster starts.
Sorry for spamming you with stuff about her, but like I said I find her quite interesting and you seem to like her, too.
Ironically, the whole purpose behind making her asexual and distanced from romance in general was to make a cliché romance between her and the first protagonist impossible, but now that I think about it, making her completely normal in that regard and simply interested in someone else than the main character would have probably worked muuuch better. I don't regret doing it tho, Talitha just wouldn't be the same without all this.
I have a novel that's completely planned out... and has a chapter and a half written. But an AWESOME prologue.
Several short stories, including one I placed second with in a Sci-Fi contest called 'Summer'. And then I have things like this:
[SPOILER: A Different Kind of Apocalypse]
In the year 2040, the United States elected a highly controversial woman to the Presidency. Ms. Afdenson was controversial for many reasons, beyond being the first woman elected, she also had, what her supporters called an unorthodox, and her detractors called 'frighteningly unstable' method of dealing with opposition. It was this controversial style that put her into a landslide win against Mr. PhD, or President Doctor, as he came to be known during his campaign.
In the year 2044, she successfully defended her Presidency, spending an unprecedentedly small amount of money on her campaign: A mere ten thousand dollars. Her platform was simple, and effective: "World peace, one bomb at a time.".
After reviewing the only time a nuclear weapon had been used in war, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan at the end of World War II, Ms. Afdenson hit upon a novel new idea. With the right PR spin, you could nuke your enemies and turn them into allies in just a few short years. She started her plan with the biggest threat they had: North Korea.
This obviously made China nervous, but Ms. Afdenson didn't gain the presidency without the best PR in the world, and soon Korea was just as friendly as Japan. China was next. Russia, sensing something was amiss, reacted too slowly to prevent the Nuclear Friendship. The Middle East tried to fire first, but failed, thanks to America's Space Laser Initiative. They too fell.
Afdenson's insane tactics and absolutely perfect level of success led to the abolishment of the two-term limit, and thirty years after the Nuclear Friendship Initiative, the world knows only peace, under President Afdenson.
Sure, there's clouds of radiation that leave a lot of death in their wake (Af Storms, to most people), sure the ice caps have melted and subsequently reformed thanks to the combination of Global Warming and Nuclear Winter, but everyone was complaining about the heat before, so they're enjoying this new cold.
Sure, in 2077, when Afdenson is assassinated (A depleted uranium bullet to the heart. The assassin had a sense of humor), the whole thing fell apart and a nuclear war started.
But hey, thirty years of true, dyed in the wool peace. Who knew it was as easy as a nuke?
http://koeryn.deviantart.com/art/A-Different-Kind-of-Apocalypse-125883747[/SPOILER]
I don't write much anymore, though I'm do RP on a friend's forum every once in awhile. I have a bad habit of killing my characters in horrific fashions... One of my current characters got shot through a bullet proof window (Most aren't going to stand up to a .50BMG inside of 100 feet), and then fell six stories to the ground. I'm not entirely sure she lived through it.
Several short stories, including one I placed second with in a Sci-Fi contest called 'Summer'. And then I have things like this:
[SPOILER: A Different Kind of Apocalypse]
In the year 2040, the United States elected a highly controversial woman to the Presidency. Ms. Afdenson was controversial for many reasons, beyond being the first woman elected, she also had, what her supporters called an unorthodox, and her detractors called 'frighteningly unstable' method of dealing with opposition. It was this controversial style that put her into a landslide win against Mr. PhD, or President Doctor, as he came to be known during his campaign.
In the year 2044, she successfully defended her Presidency, spending an unprecedentedly small amount of money on her campaign: A mere ten thousand dollars. Her platform was simple, and effective: "World peace, one bomb at a time.".
After reviewing the only time a nuclear weapon had been used in war, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan at the end of World War II, Ms. Afdenson hit upon a novel new idea. With the right PR spin, you could nuke your enemies and turn them into allies in just a few short years. She started her plan with the biggest threat they had: North Korea.
This obviously made China nervous, but Ms. Afdenson didn't gain the presidency without the best PR in the world, and soon Korea was just as friendly as Japan. China was next. Russia, sensing something was amiss, reacted too slowly to prevent the Nuclear Friendship. The Middle East tried to fire first, but failed, thanks to America's Space Laser Initiative. They too fell.
Afdenson's insane tactics and absolutely perfect level of success led to the abolishment of the two-term limit, and thirty years after the Nuclear Friendship Initiative, the world knows only peace, under President Afdenson.
Sure, there's clouds of radiation that leave a lot of death in their wake (Af Storms, to most people), sure the ice caps have melted and subsequently reformed thanks to the combination of Global Warming and Nuclear Winter, but everyone was complaining about the heat before, so they're enjoying this new cold.
Sure, in 2077, when Afdenson is assassinated (A depleted uranium bullet to the heart. The assassin had a sense of humor), the whole thing fell apart and a nuclear war started.
But hey, thirty years of true, dyed in the wool peace. Who knew it was as easy as a nuke?
http://koeryn.deviantart.com/art/A-Different-Kind-of-Apocalypse-125883747[/SPOILER]
I don't write much anymore, though I'm do RP on a friend's forum every once in awhile. I have a bad habit of killing my characters in horrific fashions... One of my current characters got shot through a bullet proof window (Most aren't going to stand up to a .50BMG inside of 100 feet), and then fell six stories to the ground. I'm not entirely sure she lived through it.
let's seeMarik Bentusi said:
yeah these posts are becoming really long and time-consuming; it's cool to back off if you like. i'm on my weekend so i have the time but once my week starts tomorrow i won't have as much.
so just to make doubly sure i understand, the author idea is basically the concept of self-insertion made into an actual world mechanic? and author avatars are the self-inserted characters of the authors?
also, i must have missed the explanation for the silvernight - still fuzzy on what this is. is it another term for the organization of the traumkrieger?
also, i must have missed the explanation for the silvernight - still fuzzy on what this is. is it another term for the organization of the traumkrieger?
have you considered the possibilities of having a world continuity where all dreams and all fantasy worlds are given form? it seems like a no-brainer, so i'm sure you have, but if i were writing it i would have some great plans for exploring that concept - some for intended comic effect, some to ponder about the sheer interesting possibilities. people dream up and imagine places and things that are wildly, profoundly different from their actual realities, different socially, different physically (like physics i mean), and everything else. and their fantasies always reflect their own feelings and desires and fears.
here are just a few examples off the top of my head. i'll do the best one first; i have actual reactions for your characters (that may or may not be accurate, but i find funny nonetheless)
the three characters somehow find themselves in a dreamscape (or whatever you call the transient world created from a dream) that's actually a sunny outdoor pool where all the women are naked and drop dead gorgeous, playing and splashing and some of them actually making out. so it's apparent that they've stumbled into a wet dream (hence the pool imagery, derp derp). kharseth might smirk, hold the bridge of his nose in his fingers, and shake his head. talitha might shut her eyes with her hand over her face with a sigh. and i'm not actually sure who the third character is - lilly? i dunno. Anyway, for some reason they might need to find the author avatar, and it'll be obvious who that is; the only male, who at that moment might be lounging on a cushiony pool chair with a drink and naked ladies all over him.
another dreamscape might be suspiciously devoid of fantastical elements completely; a boring office building where nothing interesting is happening. just an infinite sea of cubicles, copy machines, with the flat empty light of computer screens washing gloomily across the faces of bored people. the author avatar in this world might also be easy to identify - she's the only person people treat differently, and in this case it's to abuse her. not physically, but emotionally, demanding this or that of her, putting her down, brushing past her aggressively.
another person might have dreams about making out with his sister, who'd be totally willing and eager in the dream.
and how's this: i read a fiction story one time with the interesting distinction that it was literally the worst thing i have ever seen in my entire fucking life. the protagonist is this 13 or 14 year old dude whose dad is cast as a cruel, heartless, pitiless monster for kicking him out of the house. and literally the entire fucking story is a loosely connected string of instances where the kid finds himself in various social situations telling someone all about his dad and how awful he is, and despite how awkward and weird that would be in reality, the person spends a lot of time and energy sympathizing with the kid, reassuring him that he's the victim of terrible injustices and that his dad is a real asswipe. i mean, we're talking totally insane; the kid somehow finds himself in prison, and his hardened, tattoo'd, prison-shanking criminal cellmate blithely follows the exact same formula. it's so bad i think i must have had to swallow my dinner three or four times during the reading of it.
but under the rules of your universe, this world exists, right? so why not explore it, or other poorly written universes like it that so pitifully obviously exist only to satisfy some selfish, short-sighted ego?
in this way you can explore the way people see and experience the world, delving deeply into their subconsciouses. if i were running your world, this would be a huge reason why i would be doing it.
here are just a few examples off the top of my head. i'll do the best one first; i have actual reactions for your characters (that may or may not be accurate, but i find funny nonetheless)
the three characters somehow find themselves in a dreamscape (or whatever you call the transient world created from a dream) that's actually a sunny outdoor pool where all the women are naked and drop dead gorgeous, playing and splashing and some of them actually making out. so it's apparent that they've stumbled into a wet dream (hence the pool imagery, derp derp). kharseth might smirk, hold the bridge of his nose in his fingers, and shake his head. talitha might shut her eyes with her hand over her face with a sigh. and i'm not actually sure who the third character is - lilly? i dunno. Anyway, for some reason they might need to find the author avatar, and it'll be obvious who that is; the only male, who at that moment might be lounging on a cushiony pool chair with a drink and naked ladies all over him.
another dreamscape might be suspiciously devoid of fantastical elements completely; a boring office building where nothing interesting is happening. just an infinite sea of cubicles, copy machines, with the flat empty light of computer screens washing gloomily across the faces of bored people. the author avatar in this world might also be easy to identify - she's the only person people treat differently, and in this case it's to abuse her. not physically, but emotionally, demanding this or that of her, putting her down, brushing past her aggressively.
another person might have dreams about making out with his sister, who'd be totally willing and eager in the dream.
and how's this: i read a fiction story one time with the interesting distinction that it was literally the worst thing i have ever seen in my entire fucking life. the protagonist is this 13 or 14 year old dude whose dad is cast as a cruel, heartless, pitiless monster for kicking him out of the house. and literally the entire fucking story is a loosely connected string of instances where the kid finds himself in various social situations telling someone all about his dad and how awful he is, and despite how awkward and weird that would be in reality, the person spends a lot of time and energy sympathizing with the kid, reassuring him that he's the victim of terrible injustices and that his dad is a real asswipe. i mean, we're talking totally insane; the kid somehow finds himself in prison, and his hardened, tattoo'd, prison-shanking criminal cellmate blithely follows the exact same formula. it's so bad i think i must have had to swallow my dinner three or four times during the reading of it.
but under the rules of your universe, this world exists, right? so why not explore it, or other poorly written universes like it that so pitifully obviously exist only to satisfy some selfish, short-sighted ego?
in this way you can explore the way people see and experience the world, delving deeply into their subconsciouses. if i were running your world, this would be a huge reason why i would be doing it.
i'm still not terribly impressed with kharseth, but it's the kind of not being terribly impressed that exists with every single fiction work i've ever read. i'm also not terribly impressed with harry potter, luke skywalker, batman, and at least one character in just about everything else. it sounds like kharseth is an easy sell for you, being a guy with a soft gooshy core wrapped in a hard shell, but the things that impress me about characters is just different is all.
talitha is an easy sell for me; she is great. i'm not sure what sets her apart from kharseth because at the core they seem to be pretty similar, which is how they'd form a romance in the first place. but while i love talitha, kharseth just doesn't do it for me. not that i think he's bad or poorly written; i acknowledge his worth and validity in the story. he just doesn't excite me like talitha and karive do. and i'm not actually sure why.
by the way, do yourself a favor and don't trust your friend. she sounds like the kind of bubble-nosed mass-produced puppet who squeals every time inuyasha smiles at kagome, and thinks disney's beauty and the beast was the best thing evarr.
i do this thing sometimes where i think i know all about a person based on the most minute details. disregard that completely, i'm going to need to have that checked out some day. might be a symptom of some kind of horrible brain disease, like intelligence. or just misanthropy, that works too.
but seriously, don't do that hand holding thing. that's garbage. that's the kind of shit i'd expect to see in a slice-of-life romance anime, the same kind your friend probably loves and regurgitates and calls her creativity.
talitha is an easy sell for me; she is great. i'm not sure what sets her apart from kharseth because at the core they seem to be pretty similar, which is how they'd form a romance in the first place. but while i love talitha, kharseth just doesn't do it for me. not that i think he's bad or poorly written; i acknowledge his worth and validity in the story. he just doesn't excite me like talitha and karive do. and i'm not actually sure why.
by the way, do yourself a favor and don't trust your friend. she sounds like the kind of bubble-nosed mass-produced puppet who squeals every time inuyasha smiles at kagome, and thinks disney's beauty and the beast was the best thing evarr.
i do this thing sometimes where i think i know all about a person based on the most minute details. disregard that completely, i'm going to need to have that checked out some day. might be a symptom of some kind of horrible brain disease, like intelligence. or just misanthropy, that works too.
but seriously, don't do that hand holding thing. that's garbage. that's the kind of shit i'd expect to see in a slice-of-life romance anime, the same kind your friend probably loves and regurgitates and calls her creativity.
you seem to have a lot of anime references, so i thought i'd mention that i like anime too, in case you were wondering. i'm not a massive mouthbreathing fan, but i've watched a few and enjoyed them quite a bit. i like the storytelling structure and the often complicated narrative devices.
haven't seen bleach, NGE, or any of the mainstream 100+ episode behemoths (naruto, inuyasha, one piece, dbz, pokemon). i've seen cowboy bebop, gurren lagan, samurai champloo, higurashi seasons 1 and 2, baccano, and a few more i think. i saw a few episodes of darker than black but lost interest for some reason. and i've seen akira, princess mononoke, the four samurai x movies (thought those were unbelievably sad and beautiful, then again i was like 16 and very emotional).
also avatar, but i don't really consider that pure anime. man i love avatar.
so if i ever lol @ anime, which i do often, it's at least partly out of love. so for example, you talked a little about an anime called To Aru Majutsu Index. while reading your synopsis i was thinking, these 10k little girls probably wear schoolgirl outfits, the main character guy probably has spiky hair, and there's gonna be some imposing male character wearing a long robe. so first thing i do after i finish the plot synopsis is google it and lol.
so lol @ anime and jap culture in general. is there like a law that every anime must have at least one young hottie in a schoolgirl uniform?
but i don't lol heartlessly from a pedestal. i lol at one of the odd quirks of something i enjoy. it's the same with people; either i like a person or i don't, and if i do like a person, i like all of them, including the oddities i might not fully understand. so don't take it the wrong way when i make fun of anime. i like it just fine; i've been told i should watch NGE, and i plan to, someday.
haven't seen bleach, NGE, or any of the mainstream 100+ episode behemoths (naruto, inuyasha, one piece, dbz, pokemon). i've seen cowboy bebop, gurren lagan, samurai champloo, higurashi seasons 1 and 2, baccano, and a few more i think. i saw a few episodes of darker than black but lost interest for some reason. and i've seen akira, princess mononoke, the four samurai x movies (thought those were unbelievably sad and beautiful, then again i was like 16 and very emotional).
also avatar, but i don't really consider that pure anime. man i love avatar.
so if i ever lol @ anime, which i do often, it's at least partly out of love. so for example, you talked a little about an anime called To Aru Majutsu Index. while reading your synopsis i was thinking, these 10k little girls probably wear schoolgirl outfits, the main character guy probably has spiky hair, and there's gonna be some imposing male character wearing a long robe. so first thing i do after i finish the plot synopsis is google it and lol.
so lol @ anime and jap culture in general. is there like a law that every anime must have at least one young hottie in a schoolgirl uniform?
but i don't lol heartlessly from a pedestal. i lol at one of the odd quirks of something i enjoy. it's the same with people; either i like a person or i don't, and if i do like a person, i like all of them, including the oddities i might not fully understand. so don't take it the wrong way when i make fun of anime. i like it just fine; i've been told i should watch NGE, and i plan to, someday.
i need to be wrapping this up pretty soon as i have homework to quit procrastinating.
at some point today i'll try to get my first chapter up on DA and edit the link into this post.
about your reaction to my dudes, i dunno if i'd call Stover the thing you linked. combat and fighting isn't really his primary interest; rather, he's interested in stuff that's fun. combat is quite often fun for him (mostly because he doesn't take it as seriously as maybe he should, lol stover), but so is teasing girls, making jokes about mett being a fatass (he's not, but he has a gut; mett's not a very physically capable fellow), and generally getting himself in trouble. he's definitely cheerful, though, and that makes him fun to be around.
i wasn't really implying kyrien IS a villain, because he's not. at worst he would be antagonistic. he's had a rough time in life and that's made him rough, but he's still human. he still values company, however much he might try to hide it. this makes him the "dark, moody, intense" character of the group. among the others there isn't much real darkness. not much at all. the closest they come is mett's sarcasm. so that's kyrien's niche; he's the zuko to their aang/katara/sokka (if you've seen avatar). he, more than anyone else, takes himself and life very seriously.
but yes, kyrien wants power for himself, not for any lofty purpose. he wants to be the best and most powerful and significant and influential he can be, not for revenge, not for love, not to save or protect anyone or defeat some menace, but for the sheer glorious accomplishment of it. he wants to stand at the peak of the very greatest mountain and scream his mastery so that every man, woman, and child, knows his name, and to fear and respect it.
kyrien more than anyone else in the story represents the glorious old days of wizardry, when magic-users sought power for the sake of power, tinkered with the languages for no other reason than to explore what was possible. kyrien wants to know what he is capable of, and he is more than willing to die in his mad pursuit, for he has nothing else to live for.
unless he learns the value of friendship, that is. *whistles nonchalantly*
at some point today i'll try to get my first chapter up on DA and edit the link into this post.
about your reaction to my dudes, i dunno if i'd call Stover the thing you linked. combat and fighting isn't really his primary interest; rather, he's interested in stuff that's fun. combat is quite often fun for him (mostly because he doesn't take it as seriously as maybe he should, lol stover), but so is teasing girls, making jokes about mett being a fatass (he's not, but he has a gut; mett's not a very physically capable fellow), and generally getting himself in trouble. he's definitely cheerful, though, and that makes him fun to be around.
i wasn't really implying kyrien IS a villain, because he's not. at worst he would be antagonistic. he's had a rough time in life and that's made him rough, but he's still human. he still values company, however much he might try to hide it. this makes him the "dark, moody, intense" character of the group. among the others there isn't much real darkness. not much at all. the closest they come is mett's sarcasm. so that's kyrien's niche; he's the zuko to their aang/katara/sokka (if you've seen avatar). he, more than anyone else, takes himself and life very seriously.
but yes, kyrien wants power for himself, not for any lofty purpose. he wants to be the best and most powerful and significant and influential he can be, not for revenge, not for love, not to save or protect anyone or defeat some menace, but for the sheer glorious accomplishment of it. he wants to stand at the peak of the very greatest mountain and scream his mastery so that every man, woman, and child, knows his name, and to fear and respect it.
kyrien more than anyone else in the story represents the glorious old days of wizardry, when magic-users sought power for the sake of power, tinkered with the languages for no other reason than to explore what was possible. kyrien wants to know what he is capable of, and he is more than willing to die in his mad pursuit, for he has nothing else to live for.
unless he learns the value of friendship, that is. *whistles nonchalantly*
okay, i am now going to go do some studying. when i am finished i will jump on the task of getting my first chapter up and linking it here.
Well let me give you the layout of the story before i tell you of the protagonist.
The story takes place on a earth where super powers run rampant, now to keep these "supers" under control there is a (very fascist) international organization that keeps the "supers" under control. And the main character is an officer in said organization. But the problem is that he him self has latent abilities that allow him to see into the past and the future.
Now the character himself isn't necessarily a good person at the start of the book, he's like very much like a Nazi. But as the story progresses he begins to understand the "supers".
I've run through many different takes on this story because i love the idea so much, and i haven't really gotten passed five chapters before i think of a better way of writing it.
Give me constructive criticism please.
The story takes place on a earth where super powers run rampant, now to keep these "supers" under control there is a (very fascist) international organization that keeps the "supers" under control. And the main character is an officer in said organization. But the problem is that he him self has latent abilities that allow him to see into the past and the future.
Now the character himself isn't necessarily a good person at the start of the book, he's like very much like a Nazi. But as the story progresses he begins to understand the "supers".
I've run through many different takes on this story because i love the idea so much, and i haven't really gotten passed five chapters before i think of a better way of writing it.
Give me constructive criticism please.
I began writing one a couple of years ago that was essentially a novelised version of my Guild Wars experiences (relating to different Guilds etc) because it was a hell of a lot like a bloody soap opera or something! Of course, it had more depth, and turned into a fantasy novel. However about half way through I decided I dislike the genre and I haven't done anything to it for about a year. Might go back to it soon...add some stuff...maybe...
Charisma said:
Yeah, it's a guilty pleasure. Somehow 95% of them are about Teen McAverage saving the world while in high school and being oblivious to all the shipping around him. All in Japan of course. Finding the few interesting titles is fun tho and even if you find something that quickly degrades into utter mainstream shit like Naruto or Bleach, you can still learn from mistakes. And then start hiding the fact you ever searched for the subs on Google.
Full Metal Alchemist was a nice refreshing manganime with scientific magic in a Western world of alchemy. Also stood out for me because it's one of the few anime in which females have actually substance.
For me, NGE got more interesting the more I looked up about it and its author who had a real breakdown while writing the stuff. At the time I first picked it up, I was in a phase of depression myself, so it was easier to identify with the main character for me.
NGE got a rewrite recently and I think the last movies that are going to cover the retelling of the story will come out next year or so. Some people call it "NGE meets Gurren Lagann" because NGE was practically the black counterpart to Gurren Lagann; the latter was pretty much just pure action and hot blood... until the ending... damn... almost got me.
Anyway, if you plan on watching NGE, prepare to get polarized. Some worship it, some loathe it. Personally, I liked it a great deal because I found a lot of myself in different characters, which I think is also sorta the point of the whole thing.
And yes, I've seen avatar, pretty story and strong characters. I wonder how the next season with a new main character can keep up. I heard it was in the making, but that's about it.
Full Metal Alchemist was a nice refreshing manganime with scientific magic in a Western world of alchemy. Also stood out for me because it's one of the few anime in which females have actually substance.
For me, NGE got more interesting the more I looked up about it and its author who had a real breakdown while writing the stuff. At the time I first picked it up, I was in a phase of depression myself, so it was easier to identify with the main character for me.
NGE got a rewrite recently and I think the last movies that are going to cover the retelling of the story will come out next year or so. Some people call it "NGE meets Gurren Lagann" because NGE was practically the black counterpart to Gurren Lagann; the latter was pretty much just pure action and hot blood... until the ending... damn... almost got me.
Anyway, if you plan on watching NGE, prepare to get polarized. Some worship it, some loathe it. Personally, I liked it a great deal because I found a lot of myself in different characters, which I think is also sorta the point of the whole thing.
And yes, I've seen avatar, pretty story and strong characters. I wonder how the next season with a new main character can keep up. I heard it was in the making, but that's about it.
I know what you mean about him being not that interesting. It's a weird disease that seems to spread in works where the villain is generally the most interesting character. Maybe it's because he's too average, maybe it's because he doesn't have a characteristic strong point unlike Talitha or Lilly. I hope I can get his character down once I don't have to think of him as two separate souls influencing each other a bit and I have to take in mind the 15-year-old me that's supposed to be the author of the Golden and Silver Age parts, and afterwards come up with a unique personality I can work with better.
At least that's the procrastinator inside me hopes to achieve eventually.
While talking about Lilly's origin I didn't touch her personality at all. Duh.
Lilly as her concept is now is shy on the outside and when meeting new people, but once she trusts you (which isn't that hard), she's actually pretty cheerful. However, she's also a hard worker as long as work isn't all about boring routines. She's a child at heart and still has to discover a big world she missed during her enslavement, which can make her social interaction adorkable. While she doesn't have any magical powers, she quickly makes herself useful by studying non-magical technology, which becomes vital for maintaining Kharseth's implants and arm and eye prosthesis. Her greatest fear is to be left alone in the world without anyone that could support or guide her.
In a way, she's the inversion of Talitha who keeps a solid, cheerful personality on the outside, but becomes insecure and shy when she's supposed to actually trust people, which is a lot harder for her.
I hope you have a bit of a better view of her.
At least that's the procrastinator inside me hopes to achieve eventually.
While talking about Lilly's origin I didn't touch her personality at all. Duh.
Lilly as her concept is now is shy on the outside and when meeting new people, but once she trusts you (which isn't that hard), she's actually pretty cheerful. However, she's also a hard worker as long as work isn't all about boring routines. She's a child at heart and still has to discover a big world she missed during her enslavement, which can make her social interaction adorkable. While she doesn't have any magical powers, she quickly makes herself useful by studying non-magical technology, which becomes vital for maintaining Kharseth's implants and arm and eye prosthesis. Her greatest fear is to be left alone in the world without anyone that could support or guide her.
In a way, she's the inversion of Talitha who keeps a solid, cheerful personality on the outside, but becomes insecure and shy when she's supposed to actually trust people, which is a lot harder for her.
I hope you have a bit of a better view of her.
An author is anyone who creates a fantasy world. Anyone who writes a story, imagines a character, draws a picture that tells a story. They're not special beings. You're an author. I am an author. We create realities we cannot touch, our fantasy is somebody else's reality and vice-versa.
An author avatar is simply the embodiment of an author in a different world. For example if I wrote about me suddenly being sucked into a magical world and slaying a dragon and saving the world, the hero of that story would be an author avatar with me as the base of the character.
The Order of Silvernight or just Silvernight for short is the place where people from other worlds are gathering. It was founded by the Traumkrieger who practically make up the government that also has democratic structures. Unlike most politicians in our world however, the Traumkrieger enjoy a great level of trust and respect among the people and have a very big acceptance. Why exactly they're able to solve so many problems in Silvernight is part of the reveal what they're actually doing, but that's another topic. Remind me to talk about that.
An author avatar is simply the embodiment of an author in a different world. For example if I wrote about me suddenly being sucked into a magical world and slaying a dragon and saving the world, the hero of that story would be an author avatar with me as the base of the character.
The Order of Silvernight or just Silvernight for short is the place where people from other worlds are gathering. It was founded by the Traumkrieger who practically make up the government that also has democratic structures. Unlike most politicians in our world however, the Traumkrieger enjoy a great level of trust and respect among the people and have a very big acceptance. Why exactly they're able to solve so many problems in Silvernight is part of the reveal what they're actually doing, but that's another topic. Remind me to talk about that.
I think all three protagonists would be embarrassed to a degree when seeing the wet dream, maybe Talitha less so considering lots of different persons end up on her operating table and biologists in general will have seen a lot of flesh in their life. Lilly would probably be slighted amused and Kharseth would shake his head and feel pretty uncomfortable not only taking in mind part of his old soul was a 15-y-o teenager rather shy with romance and considering he's the only male of the trio he'll probably think Talitha and Lilly will now generalize male dreams or at least pick on him and ask him if he ever dreams of that. Like I said, he likes to think about a lot of stuff rather than saying it.
The idea of diving into people's dreams could be an interesting idea, but dreams are so instable their temporary worlds are of no concern to the Traumkrieger. They only become a problem if they don't properly materialize or are destroyed, but of course there's still lots of different stories that are practically realizations of dreams, so the pool story could actually happen, just not in a dream, but in an outlived fantasy. I don't exactly see many tasks for the three tho. Lilly's a sniper and mechanic, Talitha's a medic and a magician and Kharseth is all about fighting anyway (maybe that makes him boring, too. I've thought about making every Traumkrieger force to contribute to society and he becomes part of the department of "blightweavers" that do research on diseases, how to create, fight and control them, which could make for a more dynamic exchange with Talitha who would be more interested in cures for her own studies - but I thought work might distract the story too much and make it look like the characters settle down in the Silvernight and forget about the siege at Apotropé).
I like the idea of the office. I could actually see a problematic dream that simply won't end, thus the Traumkrieger have to take action. The dream takes place in an office, but there's only a single person there - the avatar of the dreamer, "author avatar" wouldn't exactly fit as there's not really an author who writes the story, rather than the subconsciousness being responsible for the dream. That person keeps doing tasks like it's a normal day or maybe to make it a bit freakier and more dream-like something like copying an empty page and then ordering the blank copies, putting them on different desks, then starts copying another empty page, etc. Turns out the dream is actually about a person afraid of reality who only feels safe when they have a simple task to do and otherwise they lose guidance in the world. Lilly for example could sympathize with her while Kharseth gets the info that the silvercord has been tracked down to a person that lies in a coma, hence the long dream. Eventually they're able to end the dream one way or another and are forgotten as the dream is deleted again - no evidence of the Traumkrieger, but the dream finally disintegrates and the person wakes up from the coma.
Something like that, you get the idea.
You sure have a thing for sexual-themed dreams tho, lol. The majority of my dreams are simply gory nightmares. Like unborn-eating-their-way-out-of-the-wombs-gory. It would put Kharseth in the most difficult situation I believe as Lilly is too childish to make a very big deal out of it, Talitha is too mature and Kharseth still has part of a young teenager in his personality. Not sure if I should simply outgrow it or leave it in as one of his squishy traits.
I'll see how much I can bring poorly written stories and dreams into the mix, thanks for the inspiration, would certainly be a change of pace. I'll just have to keep thinking of excuses to go there, haha.
"Something went wrong. FIX IT."
"okay. ADVENTURE!"
Sounds like a plan.
Yyyyes, when I look through her gallery [http://shampie.deviantart.com/gallery/#_featured--2] I start wondering myself, but on the other hand she knows more about romance/romantic subplots than me. I think if I wrote it now it would be incredibly stiff and I'd have no idea how to start or develop it. Doesn't translate to "thus I'll let it be" since I see it as a challenge. I'll have to keep thinking of a way that's easy to weave in and neither becomes a tumor [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanticPlotTumor?from=Main.RomanceTumor] nor a little unimported extra and never goes anywhere. It'll certainly be interesting to try to broaden the genre however. Now I'm excited about somehow starting it again, lol, let's see what I'll dream about again.
The idea of diving into people's dreams could be an interesting idea, but dreams are so instable their temporary worlds are of no concern to the Traumkrieger. They only become a problem if they don't properly materialize or are destroyed, but of course there's still lots of different stories that are practically realizations of dreams, so the pool story could actually happen, just not in a dream, but in an outlived fantasy. I don't exactly see many tasks for the three tho. Lilly's a sniper and mechanic, Talitha's a medic and a magician and Kharseth is all about fighting anyway (maybe that makes him boring, too. I've thought about making every Traumkrieger force to contribute to society and he becomes part of the department of "blightweavers" that do research on diseases, how to create, fight and control them, which could make for a more dynamic exchange with Talitha who would be more interested in cures for her own studies - but I thought work might distract the story too much and make it look like the characters settle down in the Silvernight and forget about the siege at Apotropé).
I like the idea of the office. I could actually see a problematic dream that simply won't end, thus the Traumkrieger have to take action. The dream takes place in an office, but there's only a single person there - the avatar of the dreamer, "author avatar" wouldn't exactly fit as there's not really an author who writes the story, rather than the subconsciousness being responsible for the dream. That person keeps doing tasks like it's a normal day or maybe to make it a bit freakier and more dream-like something like copying an empty page and then ordering the blank copies, putting them on different desks, then starts copying another empty page, etc. Turns out the dream is actually about a person afraid of reality who only feels safe when they have a simple task to do and otherwise they lose guidance in the world. Lilly for example could sympathize with her while Kharseth gets the info that the silvercord has been tracked down to a person that lies in a coma, hence the long dream. Eventually they're able to end the dream one way or another and are forgotten as the dream is deleted again - no evidence of the Traumkrieger, but the dream finally disintegrates and the person wakes up from the coma.
Something like that, you get the idea.
You sure have a thing for sexual-themed dreams tho, lol. The majority of my dreams are simply gory nightmares. Like unborn-eating-their-way-out-of-the-wombs-gory. It would put Kharseth in the most difficult situation I believe as Lilly is too childish to make a very big deal out of it, Talitha is too mature and Kharseth still has part of a young teenager in his personality. Not sure if I should simply outgrow it or leave it in as one of his squishy traits.
I'll see how much I can bring poorly written stories and dreams into the mix, thanks for the inspiration, would certainly be a change of pace. I'll just have to keep thinking of excuses to go there, haha.
"Something went wrong. FIX IT."
"okay. ADVENTURE!"
Sounds like a plan.
Yyyyes, when I look through her gallery [http://shampie.deviantart.com/gallery/#_featured--2] I start wondering myself, but on the other hand she knows more about romance/romantic subplots than me. I think if I wrote it now it would be incredibly stiff and I'd have no idea how to start or develop it. Doesn't translate to "thus I'll let it be" since I see it as a challenge. I'll have to keep thinking of a way that's easy to weave in and neither becomes a tumor [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanticPlotTumor?from=Main.RomanceTumor] nor a little unimported extra and never goes anywhere. It'll certainly be interesting to try to broaden the genre however. Now I'm excited about somehow starting it again, lol, let's see what I'll dream about again.
Thanks for clearing up those things about your characters. I'm interested about the Power of Friendship, haha. Awaiting your chappy.
Time for me to go to sleep. Cya.
Well, I did come up with two original characters that I try to use in rps. They're two brothers living in Mexico who were born with special powers and later learn martial arts from a (gay) couple living in the area.
The older brother, Antonio is an often angry silent type who speaks through action rather than words. As such he was born with pyrokinetic powers and uses Muay Thai and Krabi Krabong. He works as a psychiatrist in the house he shares with his brother and has a hobby in motor mechanics. He also hates lowriders
The younger brother is a Escotto who's born with cryokinetic powers and learns Shaolin Gong-fu. He's very hyperactive and carefree. He loves pranks, older women and collecting booze for fights (Uses Shaoling Drunken Fist) and skateboarding. Surprisingly though, he works as a Spanish teacher at the local school
The older brother, Antonio is an often angry silent type who speaks through action rather than words. As such he was born with pyrokinetic powers and uses Muay Thai and Krabi Krabong. He works as a psychiatrist in the house he shares with his brother and has a hobby in motor mechanics. He also hates lowriders
The younger brother is a Escotto who's born with cryokinetic powers and learns Shaolin Gong-fu. He's very hyperactive and carefree. He loves pranks, older women and collecting booze for fights (Uses Shaoling Drunken Fist) and skateboarding. Surprisingly though, he works as a Spanish teacher at the local school
I've written though not completed several stories over the years, but their two in particular that I'm really freaking proud of and will definitely be writing and finishing..
So without further ado I give you the two stories;
The Adventure of Senor Peppy-Whilst the title sounds retarded, the premise imo is actually quite good. It's an ultra-violent, ultra-over the top, and ultra-arty book that essentially is supposed to be what a B movie, or Tarentino flick would be in book form. It's set in an alt. Mexico that's actually really successful, but is under a diplomatic siege from a smaller albeit more powerful set of countries set in what would be the Western U.S. called the New Mexico Alliance; Simply put, our hero Senor Peppy holds the title of Senor which is the highest rank within the Mexico Police Department. He's attacked in a small bar outside of Tijuana that causes him to look like he attacked without being provoked an N.M.A member. When he returns to Mexico City he's promptly fired and dishonored and dumped in a small town in the middle of nowhere called Agua.
Three years pass, and Senior Peppy is confronted with a new more technologically advanced Mexcio that's been taken over by the N.M.A who's also conducting side experiments with various towns in Mexico. Seeking revenge as well as answers, he ventures forth into the brave new world. But there is more then one person out to kill Peppy, when the agent whom was presumed dead turns out to be the worst terrorist Mexico had ever seen known as El Evilo.
My next little preview comes from a Book I'm either calling either 'Run' or 'Wasteland'
Pretty much the premise is, theirs an area simply known as the 'Desert' which in real life would encompass- California, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. (It actually is these states) which was created after a mysterious apocalypse that the reader is only vague hints as to what it was.. A group of Couriers known as Desert Runners or 'Runners' are situated in the middle of California, and deliver all sorts of packages up and down the Desert to various people. One day the office gets the order for a package to be delivered to Camp Green which is located by what in real life would be the Green River in Utah.
Normally this would be no problem, but this package comes with specific orders to be assigned to one Runner and one Runner alone. Our protagonist simply named David takes up the task. But before he sets out he learns that he'll have to go through what's known as the Hot Zone which is a zone that on a map of the real world drawing a line on the center of Nevada and Arizona, and one in the center of Utah and New Mexico is the area in between.
The Hot Zone is filled with the most dangerous wasteland critters, but also has Two faction actively waging a massive and bloody war causing nearly all Runners or even caravans to set foot in the Hot zone to try and cross to be killed. Eventually David is wrapped up in both Factions and is still unaware that the package he's to deliver could either equate to the end of the peoples liberty or the end of the peoples existence.
It's suppose to be a thriller, and action type novel with interesting characters and a good look at the extremes of various things in society especially the question of How much liberty can we give up in the name of security, or how much security can we loose in the name of liberty?
Feel free to tell me what you think/if you're interested in hearing more!
So without further ado I give you the two stories;
The Adventure of Senor Peppy-Whilst the title sounds retarded, the premise imo is actually quite good. It's an ultra-violent, ultra-over the top, and ultra-arty book that essentially is supposed to be what a B movie, or Tarentino flick would be in book form. It's set in an alt. Mexico that's actually really successful, but is under a diplomatic siege from a smaller albeit more powerful set of countries set in what would be the Western U.S. called the New Mexico Alliance; Simply put, our hero Senor Peppy holds the title of Senor which is the highest rank within the Mexico Police Department. He's attacked in a small bar outside of Tijuana that causes him to look like he attacked without being provoked an N.M.A member. When he returns to Mexico City he's promptly fired and dishonored and dumped in a small town in the middle of nowhere called Agua.
Three years pass, and Senior Peppy is confronted with a new more technologically advanced Mexcio that's been taken over by the N.M.A who's also conducting side experiments with various towns in Mexico. Seeking revenge as well as answers, he ventures forth into the brave new world. But there is more then one person out to kill Peppy, when the agent whom was presumed dead turns out to be the worst terrorist Mexico had ever seen known as El Evilo.
My next little preview comes from a Book I'm either calling either 'Run' or 'Wasteland'
Pretty much the premise is, theirs an area simply known as the 'Desert' which in real life would encompass- California, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado. (It actually is these states) which was created after a mysterious apocalypse that the reader is only vague hints as to what it was.. A group of Couriers known as Desert Runners or 'Runners' are situated in the middle of California, and deliver all sorts of packages up and down the Desert to various people. One day the office gets the order for a package to be delivered to Camp Green which is located by what in real life would be the Green River in Utah.
Normally this would be no problem, but this package comes with specific orders to be assigned to one Runner and one Runner alone. Our protagonist simply named David takes up the task. But before he sets out he learns that he'll have to go through what's known as the Hot Zone which is a zone that on a map of the real world drawing a line on the center of Nevada and Arizona, and one in the center of Utah and New Mexico is the area in between.
The Hot Zone is filled with the most dangerous wasteland critters, but also has Two faction actively waging a massive and bloody war causing nearly all Runners or even caravans to set foot in the Hot zone to try and cross to be killed. Eventually David is wrapped up in both Factions and is still unaware that the package he's to deliver could either equate to the end of the peoples liberty or the end of the peoples existence.
It's suppose to be a thriller, and action type novel with interesting characters and a good look at the extremes of various things in society especially the question of How much liberty can we give up in the name of security, or how much security can we loose in the name of liberty?
Feel free to tell me what you think/if you're interested in hearing more!
I had an idea for a superhero story, and I tried wrote the first two 'chapters'. Unfortunately, my dialogue feels kind of forced at times. I don't know, I've had people say I do dialogue fine, so maybe it's just me. But to the synopses:
The hero's name is Eidolon, and as those of you with a thesauras might have figured out, he's a ghost. In life, he was Joshua Jordan (Because all superhero's need both their names to start with the same letter). He was quite happy, and literally just married to the girl of his dreams. Before catching their flight to their honeymoon, Josh stops at a bank to withdraw some cash but is shot and killed during a bank robbery. He comes back as a ghost, and after a while realizes he can control his solidity. (He can isolate body parts as well, such as making his hand solid while leaving the rest of himself intangible) Now calling himself Eidolon, he decides to take revenge on the bank robbers and gets caught up in a paranormal world takeover plot.
It's still a huge work in progress though. I want to have other ghosts for him to interact with, but I'm having trouble deciding if I should make it just a few ghosts, or make it some Harry Potter-esque secret society. And don't even get me started on coming up with a costume that doesn't either rip off Batman or Moon Knight. But I feel good about the basic premise.
The hero's name is Eidolon, and as those of you with a thesauras might have figured out, he's a ghost. In life, he was Joshua Jordan (Because all superhero's need both their names to start with the same letter). He was quite happy, and literally just married to the girl of his dreams. Before catching their flight to their honeymoon, Josh stops at a bank to withdraw some cash but is shot and killed during a bank robbery. He comes back as a ghost, and after a while realizes he can control his solidity. (He can isolate body parts as well, such as making his hand solid while leaving the rest of himself intangible) Now calling himself Eidolon, he decides to take revenge on the bank robbers and gets caught up in a paranormal world takeover plot.
It's still a huge work in progress though. I want to have other ghosts for him to interact with, but I'm having trouble deciding if I should make it just a few ghosts, or make it some Harry Potter-esque secret society. And don't even get me started on coming up with a costume that doesn't either rip off Batman or Moon Knight. But I feel good about the basic premise.
When I was younger and more inexperienced than I am now-- ten, to be precise--I set out with intentions of writing an elaborate fantasy epic that satirized modern-day Western culture and lambasted the genre as a whole. Additionally, it would serve as both a parody of several modern deplorable-and-inexplicably-popular fantasies and a test of my creative writing abilities.
I'm sure I would've succeeded had I not gone absolutely wacky somewhere down the line: I'm not quite sure what happened next, but here I am years later with a ruthless mockery of America today, fantasy today, and many other things (today). It revolves around a nebish self-loathing teenage misanthrope's journey through a fictional world that is inspired by equal parts feudal Japan, Victorian England, Arabian Nights, ancient Greece, and the Italian Renaissance. Accompanying said teenager-- an albino by the name of Aogen--are his adoptive father/mentor, a brutal sociopathic hit man, and a naive falconer who can talk to animals.
During said travels, through no fault of his own, he winds up saddled with a disjointed series of spectacularly destructive (and nearly uncontrollable) supernatural abilities. Shortly after, what started as a quest to repair a broken cane erupts into a chaotic odyssey of politics, violence, and magic. As Aogen struggles to keep himself and his...acquaintances alive, he comes face-to-face with werewolves, assassins, warlocks, werewolves, dragons (and other monsters), demons, gods, and unrequiated sexual attraction.
I think I like it, all said and done.
I'm sure I would've succeeded had I not gone absolutely wacky somewhere down the line: I'm not quite sure what happened next, but here I am years later with a ruthless mockery of America today, fantasy today, and many other things (today). It revolves around a nebish self-loathing teenage misanthrope's journey through a fictional world that is inspired by equal parts feudal Japan, Victorian England, Arabian Nights, ancient Greece, and the Italian Renaissance. Accompanying said teenager-- an albino by the name of Aogen--are his adoptive father/mentor, a brutal sociopathic hit man, and a naive falconer who can talk to animals.
During said travels, through no fault of his own, he winds up saddled with a disjointed series of spectacularly destructive (and nearly uncontrollable) supernatural abilities. Shortly after, what started as a quest to repair a broken cane erupts into a chaotic odyssey of politics, violence, and magic. As Aogen struggles to keep himself and his...acquaintances alive, he comes face-to-face with werewolves, assassins, warlocks, werewolves, dragons (and other monsters), demons, gods, and unrequiated sexual attraction.
I think I like it, all said and done.
seems i don't have time right now to do a long response, as my roommate wrecked his car and i have to go pick him up.Marik Bentusi said:
but happily i did manage to get up my first chapter, so enjoy [http://davehollis.deviantart.com/art/Stover-and-Mett-185419329].