11 KiB
[RT][HF][FF][Magical Creatures Omake] The Dragon in the Library
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Author: u/Soren_Tycho Clothing-optional Spacetime*
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URL: http://maracolleenbanks.com/post/160648315409/new-story-the-dragon-in-the-library
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Score: 8
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Created: 2017-05-14T07:12:18
Post:
Comments:
u/Soren_Tycho [+3] Clothing-optional Spacetime (3 minutes later)
A while ago I showed my partner Mara the guidelines for [RT] and she said "that's just literary fiction". Then she thought about it for a few hundred days and revised that to "that's just good fiction".
Then this happened. I'm told there might be more on the way.
u/dac69 [+2] (a day later)
Excellent! I like her style and will likely be following "Things That Keep Us Small" as well, assuming it goes somewhere.
I also like the whole musical backdrop thing. "The Ravens In the Library" is a cute song, and I like that there's this whole thread of music to every chapter, even if it's not usually my taste. Well, except for Neros Dubstep Symphony, because BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.
(Side note, I always hear Keep Your Eyes Peeled in my head when reading CFMC)
u/maracolleenbanks [+2] (a day later)
Thank you for reading! Knowing that somebody is interested in TTKUS will definitely inspire me to keep working on it. I can't promise to include music with every CFMC omake I write, though, since I'm one of those people who needs a sensory deprivation chamber to write in. throws fireballs of jealousy at Soren_Tycho for his writing to music ability
u/dac69 [+3] (3 days later)
Absolutely interested! It's funny, I know you've tagged the thing as fantasy, but in a weird way, the first chapter recalls to mind "Radio Lab" or "This American Life", where they talk about how the reporter found the story initially; I see the same thing in your character, Emily as she stumbles onto the life of this philosopher. Honestly, if it doesn't do anything supernatural (which I'm usually all about), I wouldn't be disappointed. On the other hand, if you're taking this to crazy-town, don't let me stop you in any way.
I look forward to reading more!
u/maracolleenbanks [+2] (3 days later)
This American Life? That may be the highest compliment I've ever received. Thank you!
If you're enjoying the beginning of Things That Keep Us Small, you'd probably love The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas if you haven't read it already. I'm pretty much writing this because I wish there were more books like that.
Updates coming soon... Craziness...well...spoilers.
u/dac69 [+2] (4 days later)
Thanks for the rec! I'm halfway through "American Gods" and then on to "The Handmaiden's Tale" (apparently it's required reading these days), but I'll queue it up.
u/maracolleenbanks [+2] (4 days later)
YUS
u/FeepingCreature [+1] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (6 hours later)
Neat. Good to see the setting fleshed out a little.
The ending came a bit out of nowhere; might have been better if it was foreshadowed slightly more? It's also slightly iffy because Stayan is a dragon who is himself hunting a dragon, so it's unclear which dragon he is on first read because we can't necessarily trust what he's saying.
Also, some style issues:
the best most of those Lilim who first make it to Sade Hall as adults can muster is a stubborn insistence
"best most who first can muster" is awkward
that will not be relinquished no matter how sexy the potential new playmate walking on “the ceiling.”
... is? If this is supposed to be a deliberately archaic grammar, don't do that. Write clearly before fanciful.
not even his wandering (by local standards) Uncle Reed.
parens are usually a sign that something wants to be a separate sentence. also note that this is raldr's narration, who would naturally consider his standards the default ones.
By all rights, this should have unhinged him—especially since he managed to avoid the small army of Sade who dutifully cruise the border places between the Garden and Sade Hall looking for frightened Lilim. Many claim the greatest of all his mighty deeds was managing to walk all the way from the border with the Garden to the Library in Sade Hall without being “helped,” but he was determined to reach the library.
Awkward flow. "Greatest deeds" reference seems pointless and goes nowhere. The tense change also makes this awkward, and the guide Sade are not introduced before or referenced after.
After only a few minutes of shock, he steeled himself.
Also connects awkwardly to the previous paragraph (his shock and halting is not described.)
and she was summoned off with reassurances that someone would be sure to come along to help the cute Lilim boy, waving her tail goodbye.
Sentence fragments connect a bit awkwardly.
and many of them seemed as nice and approachable as one he had just met
the one
far from the brooding monsters of shadow his Uncle Reed warned him about.
had warned
Foodies eat well,
maybe "Foodies ate well,"
but that encounter was a very long time ago.
had been
Even as he followed the spiral down in the dark through the roots of the mountains, it was several weeks more before he could be sure that they lead where he intended to the bottom of the sea and the door to Sade Hall. The whole time he was in that cave he saw no one until he found the wood and iron door that said “Sade,” and it was a full day’s walk from the cave to the library.
had followed, had been several weeks, had been in that cave, had seen no one, had been a full day's
He left the group and went a short way down the hall and picked up a book called “Healing Songs” and flipped through.
Three 'and' in a row. Maybe replace the middle one with a comma? "flipped through it"?
“This is in Draconic,” he said. “This must be the way.”
In retrospect, I love how much Stayan is sandbagging here.
“I didn’t study Draconic in university or anything,” Stayan said “Since then, it’s been kind of hard to avoid.”
haha
”Speaking of hunting,” Stayan said. “I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to hunt as a vampire. My people were all foodies.
Missing endquote. (Also, would dragons still count as foodies if they eat humans, because they're separate species? Or would it be like .. "Carnies"?)
Still, it was obvious Stayan’s curiosity was just curiosity.
Slightly awkward. "Still, it was obvious Stayan meant no slight."?
It was true. He had been chased many times by those chasing rumors and power, and they had traded with him—those who had something suitably precious to offer—but he had never encountered someone like this, someone who, he would later learn, caught the smoke of his desire for a hunter in the web of dream and followed it with the longing for that musty bookish darkness and his looming presence.
"He would later learn" and that type of setups are kind of a little awkward? Takes you out of the action, and is a bit hard to connect to what's happened before on first reading.
He lost the heat trail and scent of his friend,
had lost
He pulled back and looked into the eyes of his friend and saw the cat-like pupils of a dragon.
Daww.
Also: is the gravity just completely freeform? I had the impression it depended on which way your feet had last touched the ground.
u/maracolleenbanks [+3] (a day later)
Leaves this here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech :)
This is one of those mystery stories that doesn't reveal itself as a mystery until after the first read. It's not for everybody, but I personally love to read stories that reward a second read for clues.
Also, would dragons still count as foodies if they eat humans, because they're separate species? Or would it be like .. "Carnies"?
"Foodies" is a term used by vampires in the Garden for people who eat what humans most often think of as food--as opposed to, say, the blood of your kin.
Also: is the gravity just completely freeform?
Frankly, I'm not sure. I showed this story to Soren_Tycho, and I was like, "Do I get it?" And I do. Apparently. (He said to me, "You get it in that you understand the sort of problems Raldr would have.") I get a little dizzy like Raldr when I try to understand it, though. Soren_Tycho says he'll answer this question in more detail soon.
u/Soren_Tycho [+3] Clothing-optional Spacetime (a day later)
Also: is the gravity just completely freeform? I had the impression it depended on which way your feet had last touched the ground.
Almost - it's not freeform or solipsistic, and the Rocks aren't sentient (that anyone knows of). A good direction for unpicking the riddle might be to consider this scenario:
You're new to BDSM and walk into a dungeon for the first time, and everyone's involved in stuff that constitutes a surprisingly wide swath of rule 34. Once the you've cleared away the thought that this is what your great aunt thinks Hell looks and sounds like, you'll begin to notice that there as some scenes which attract you, some you don't care for, and some which repulse you. It probably won't follow any kind of rule, but it's not freeform or arbitrary either. Understand what's going on for you in that moment and you understand a little of what's behind the gravity in Sade Hall - and why Raldr's having trouble.
Yet, in CFMC, our narrator experiences not a moment of instability despite not even believing that this system is possible. I'm claiming these are the same system working the same way and it's not just that Blue-Eyes happens to be somehow more enlightened than Raldr.
Yeah, I didn't think cool gravity would turn out to be some big existential riddle either.
u/FeepingCreature [+1] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (a day later)
I didn't mean freeform in that sense, I meant in the sense that you could in principle put gravity any way you wanted it. It's a subjective rule, not an objective one.
[edit] I keep looking at this world in terms of a setting like Ra with their massive metamagic supporting the regular magic that's going on, like, what sort of universe do you need so you can have magic that just says "okay, do what the user means here" and ask this to the universe and get a reliable answer back? And then you realize that this is limited by area so, what, do you just run out of coverage? Does consent-determination become patchy, or does a spell that normally returns -1 to 1 start returning values in the 0.1/-0.1 range? And what about metabeliefs; what if you consent but don't want to consent? This entire project seems pretty AI complete, and that would worry me normally but I could easily see a post-singularity universe looking like this does, so I guess it's reasonable.