Soulriders 5.0: Legend of the Unending Games

_{(this should be my 1000th post on these forums, if I'm getting the numbering right...)}

This is an old story draft based on my 'American Magic' drabbles, which I found myself revisiting this year as my dissatisfaction with the current direction of humanity reached some vague overflowing point and my mindset changed from I'd like to share this if I can write it well to I want to publish this, I don't care if it's bad or even awful and possibly offensive.

I originally envisioned three parts for this, but I'm only really confident of being able to finish part 1 for this Christmas. There's just one potential-writers-block iceberg remaining for me to barrel through in chapter 11 (of 13). The deadline is relevant because this is a Christmas story. As a minor warning that means the J-word and the C-word will be involved, although the cosmology seen in the story will be highly ambiguous. When I post it 'officially' (most likely to Spacebattles and/or SufficientVelocity; I welcome recommendations for other/better venues), I expect to tag it as [Christmas / Cosmic Horror / CS Lewis esque] and let people make of it what they will.

I welcome feedback or C&C but I'm not necessarily looking for it, just sharing for old time's sake.

With that out of the way, I present....

---

How to Destroy the World in Seven Days

a carol and offering for the sake of Christmas in the Twenty-First Century

• 1.01 - "How to Destroy the World in Seven Days"
• 1.02 - The best magician in North America
• 1.03 - Christmas Dinner at the Lost Property Office
• 1.04 - "There are more important concerns for us than celebrating Christmas..."

*shall take a look*

Think you were considering posting locations.  I wander by Royal Road occassionally that seems to work at doing some level of original writing promotion.

Read a bit of this.  The first chapter and a half really.  Mmm, not a fan.  Can provide some feedback if desired? 

Definitely it doesn't quite get it's footing with the first two characters introduced.  Both informed as very special off the bat, with such descriptions far outweighting them actually interacting with others or doing anything.  While super-powered/special protags have their place (All-might), interactions with setting or characters has to take point.

Quote from: Dracos on December 13, 2021, 02:18:11 AM
Read a bit of this.  The first chapter and a half really.  Mmm, not a fan.  Can provide some feedback if desired? 

Definitely it doesn't quite get it's footing with the first two characters introduced.  Both informed as very special off the bat, with such descriptions far outweighting them actually interacting with others or doing anything.  While super-powered/special protags have their place (All-might), interactions with setting or characters has to take point.

Yeah, there are reasons why 'not a fan' is to be expected >_>;;

I'm interested in honest feedback, but if you're going to that level of effort I have to be honest about the extent to which I would do (or not do) major restructuring. It's only going to happen after I have a more complete version of the story. At that point I would be more confident to do some surgery on it to make it more approachable/readable. If feasible.

This has a lot to do with my motivations for writing this particular story at this particular point in time. I had the idea a long while ago, took an early stab at writing it in 2019, and it was only 1.5years of accumulated pandemic frustration that pushed it over the edge into 'want to write this now'. Seeing that I'm writing it, figured I may as well share it....

Thanks for taking a look, though.

And these are two more chapters:

• 1.05 - "You wanted Powell to do something"
• 1.06 - The strange old man first caught my attention

Quote from: Dracos on December 12, 2021, 11:07:27 AM
*shall take a look*

Think you were considering posting locations.  I wander by Royal Road occassionally that seems to work at doing some level of original writing promotion.

Hmm, I took a look. My thoughts are that Royal Road seems nice, if I have something more polished?

Thus far my totally scientific reception test has been a closed forum of ~7 people, where one person read and stuck with it. If I do stick with my intent to publish, so far a more downscale site like SB/SV seems more reasonable for getting that ~1/7 interested reader. If I decide to finish the story but sit on it for surgery and polishing, somewhere like Royal Road seems like a good destination.

Edit: and publishing an unpolished draft on forums leaves the option to publish a heavily rewritten version elsewhere, without too much incongruity.

Yeah, I've seen other people do it like that with SB/SV and then another forum.

Story looks okay, it's not to my personal tastes but I'll sit down and do a deeper read when I have some RL time. I did really like those footnotes for the style and insights they give. In more scholarly works, there are some books where I enjoy the footnotes a heck of a lot more than the actual text. (Not a knock on your story, just that I like the footnotes.)

Quote from: Anastasia on December 13, 2021, 03:25:59 PM
In more scholarly works, there are some books where I enjoy the footnotes a heck of a lot more than the actual text. (Not a knock on your story, just that I like the footnotes.)

Heh, I totally get the feeling of liking the footnotes more than the story.

The writers I've seen use footnotes very effectively are Susanna Clarke (Strange and Norrell) and Douglas Adams. Clarke writes actual scholarly style footnotes to give the impression of background research from a wider world with more historical figures; Adams is more "here is a random/funny/interesting backstory thought that would break up the flow of the story but it's too good not to share".

Just noticed this today.

Quote from: Arakawa on December 13, 2021, 04:36:47 PM
The writers I've seen use footnotes very effectively are Susanna Clarke (Strange and Norrell) and Douglas Adams. Clarke writes actual scholarly style footnotes to give the impression of background research from a wider world with more historical figures; Adams is more "here is a random/funny/interesting backstory thought that would break up the flow of the story but it's too good not to share".

Idle thought 1.02 footnote 1: The footnote seems pretty much spot on with how Douglas Adams would have written it.  That said, starting a comment saying one thing ("Very Important") and ending it to mean the exact opposite thing was one of the hallmarks of his writing style.  Is that writing style something you're aiming for?   I didn't really notice it in the rest of what you've posted so far.

Quote from: Jason_Miao on December 16, 2021, 10:29:05 PM
  That said, starting a comment saying one thing ("Very Important") and ending it to mean the exact opposite thing was one of the hallmarks of his writing style.  Is that writing style something you're aiming for?   I didn't really notice it in the rest of what you've posted so far.

In that particular instance, I wanted to add a note that 'yes I know this is not actually considered safe or legal' but not be boring about it. Otherwise, I wasn't thinking to imitate Adams' style in particular.

That said, the Silicon Valley elements in 1.01/1.04 are written with a very sarcastic slant. Between Drac's comment and yours I'm starting to wonder if rather than worrying it would come across as Anvilicious I should be worrying about people taking it at face value....

Hmm. Had the idea to see how Chapter 2 of my thing would read if I removed too direct mention of Powell's immortality. Flow was hard to fix without different events, so I ended up filing it under 'things to do properly in case of rewrite'. Will post alternate version of the chapter if I manage to do it.

Two more chapters.

• 1.07 - the man who pondered his death at Christmas
• 1.08 - the girl who had some time ago ceased to be a girl

Well! Tap, tap. Is this thing on?

I think there's a question here about whether this should be someone's first introduction to this universe and these characters. If so, I think they may get lost fast. Simon's narrative style can be hard to adjust to at first (without knowing this is how he compensates for his issues with the spoken word). And I think there's a general question of what you would use to pull people into this story and make is stand apart from other urban fantasy stories. I don't recall if the other story was any better or worse in that respect (though being an origin story for Simon coming into Powell's care, it might be).

If this is conceived more as a second (or in any case, following) story, then I think you've done a good job not wasting time to get to the action, and we touch base long enough with Simon and Forbis to get a feel for how things are in the present.

Admittedly, I still have reservations about swapping between third and first person in the same narrative, but that hasn't changed, so it seems not worth harping on. I do think that Simon's eloquent style is hard to distinguish from the 3rd person narrator at a glance, so it might benefit you to find some more characteristic differences to emphasize (aside from the obvious grammatical ones, like the use of "I").

Quote from: Muphrid on December 24, 2021, 10:53:56 PM
Well! Tap, tap. Is this thing on?

Hello Muphrid :D It has been a while. And what an honour to hear from you on Christmas Eve!

Quote from: Muphrid on December 24, 2021, 10:53:56 PM
I think there's a question here about whether this should be someone's first introduction to this universe and these characters. If so, I think they may get lost fast. Simon's narrative style can be hard to adjust to at first (without knowing this is how he compensates for his issues with the spoken word). And I think there's a general question of what you would use to pull people into this story and make it stand apart from other urban fantasy stories. I don't recall if the other story was any better or worse in that respect (though being an origin story for Simon coming into Powell's care, it might be).

Yes, this isn't the story I would have started with originally and it's not even the second story in the list. It was envisioned as a relatively light 'Christmas Special' that would sit outside the main story sequence. Then the plans, and this story's relative prominence in the grand scheme of things and amount of grimdark in it, got flipped upside down. The emotional importance of finishing it also rose significantly in the past year, due to obvious frustrating events in the broader world of mankind. My determination also causes a certain reluctance to redesign the airplane while it's in flight, so to speak, but I am certainly noting carefully all reactions both positive and negative to focus later editing efforts.

So far the results on giving it to pre-readers are 50/50. I had a reader who was lost quickly, exactly as you said, and a reader who was perfectly fine with learning about these things in this order. As an introduction, this probably requires the same part of the brain you use to jump into a fanfic for a series you haven't watched. You can see in Ch6 a hint at how much we have skipped over.

The weirdest part of seeing people read the first two chapters is seeing people read ch1.1 and assume Menzies as a positive character and then read ch1.2 and assume Powell will help him save the world from nuclear things exploding. Then the interaction in ch1.4 does not go exactly as expected. Which is interesting, but as Dracos already reacted to, Powell+Menzies as introduced in the first two chapters would make a very weaksauce combination of protagonists. I'm still mulling over how and to what extent to remedy this.

The one background story element for which my 'jump in at the middle' stratagem remains in flux is how to introduce Beatrice (the war oracle) as she steps in during Ch11. There are aspects to Beatrice's character which Simon would already know but ought to be left out of this story. It's also weird to introduce her in an incidental part when the planned-original introduction had her invariably appear as a derailing threat. Hmm, I may have a solution.

Quote from: Muphrid on December 24, 2021, 10:53:56 PM
If this is conceived more as a second (or in any case, following) story, then I think you've done a good job not wasting time to get to the action, and we touch base long enough with Simon and Forbis to get a feel for how things are in the present.

Yes, in the ideal-world-from-here-on the "this is the first & only entry point available to this universe" wouldn't be a permanent state of affairs.

Quote from: Muphrid on December 24, 2021, 10:53:56 PM
Admittedly, I still have reservations about swapping between third and first person in the same narrative, but that hasn't changed, so it seems not worth harping on. I do think that Simon's eloquent style is hard to distinguish from the 3rd person narrator at a glance, so it might benefit you to find some more characteristic differences to emphasize (aside from the obvious grammatical ones, like the use of "I").

I should probably marinate in some Madeleine L'Engle books before doing copy-editing to fix the third-person parts. Not sure of other fantasy authors who are American and provide examples of the correct type of fantasy. I think between Inklings, Rowling, Susanna Clarke and Dianna Wynne Jones the habit of magic being a British sort of thing that gets talked about in a British English style (which goes much deeper than just spelling conventions) has become very ingrained. At least for me.

Leaning more heavily into Powell as the PoV character in the 3rd person limited narration is another option, though not an ideal one. First, that would alter the discussion of how Powell appears to others significantly. Second, it would lead in the direction of a deeper insight into Powell's thoughts than we're getting right now.

Simon's narration is interesting to play with. My thinking is that he is very well-read in books that happen to contain the life-experiences of those older than him, and can imitate the words used to describe such insights, but that's just not the same as having equivalent life-experience of his own. Chapter 8 is where this concern is most in play thus far.

I don't recall if I use third person omniscient much, or at all, in Lost Twins* and this story is overall an anomaly, since all of my other outlines have the viewpoint more tightly glued to Simon and his movements (or lack thereof) and what other characters tell him. For this one it didn't work because of the opening and a large portion of Part2 which is appropriately titled "Powell and Forbis".

(* I think my original outlines had the odd scene here and there where the narration stays on Powell for a few paragraphs with Simon absent, and this was unusual enough that I was planning to mark such third-person segments in italics.)

A vaguely similar conundrum is seen in a lot of Worm fics that take a story world that was heavily told through one character's PoV (apart from rare interlude chapters), and use it to craft a fic that jumps around that universe a lot, then startles the reader by jumping back into Taylor's head for a relatively small percentage of chapters involving Taylor.

Lots of food for thought, I will sleep on it and hope Santa brings some clarity in the morning....

A mild revision to already-posted chapters that I'm contemplating to clarify the underlying structure of events. It's fairly ham-handed lampshade-hanging prompted by one reader startled by the appearance of parallel plot threads. But I think it's worth trying.

Quote from: addition to 1.06"Certainly," I shrugged. The deciding factor for me, as always,
was curiousity, however disdainful the Undertaker might have been of
the idea. Perhaps it was a morbid curiousity today, but this
character-trait of mine had already led me into and out of far more
dubious situations than this. Why not invoke it now?

In the depths of my reckless intuition I couldn't un-see the
significant fact that this strange old man happened to approach us
while Powell happened to be away. If I didn't understand the
connection between his request and Powell's unexpected business with
the technologists, that did not mean a connection wasn't there. At
least, I could investigate this conundrum head-on. Or I could refuse
him and go back to Eggnog and spend the next several days eaten up
with speculation.

Quote from: addition to 1.08
The girl followed my cue to read the sign and inspect the globe,
hesitated, and stepped uncertainly over the threshold, for a moment
indeed looking very much like a young girl.

Well. That had been a chaotic but satisfying exercise in magic.  I was
getting the sense that there really were things I could do to help the
Undertaker. Of course, I still didn't understand the connection
between his request to us and Powell's situation – there was
something going on here, because Powell's clients were magnates of the
technology world, and here we'd just so happened to visit a technology
firm doing cutting-edge AI research. The melted dogs had spoken of a
'man down the street' doing similar work, but I'd been too ticked off
by their very existence to think of interrogating them properly....

I turned to find the Undertaker looking at me with a slightly softer
expression. That is, his eyes were stern and hard as per usual, but no
more than that.

I'm not sure where the balance is between glossing over this and over-explaining. The deeper reasoning goes like this: Simon isn't reading the Undertaker as a threat. (Whether that judgment is accurate or not, this would have been his development tendency from past experiences.) In his eyes, the fact that he approaches them when Powell is absent isn't evidence of him being a threat, and it isn't even an indication that the Undertaker thinks Powell would disapprove of him approaching Simon and Forbis. Needless to say, Simon and Forbis can both move freely around the city. It had been amply proven by past events that Powell doesn't keep tabs on everyone Simon meets behind her back. She also doesn't automatically jump in if Simon gets into trouble somewhere out of her sight.

The extra paragraph in 1.6 doesn't explain this, so much as hang a lampshade on a potential connection between Powell's visit to the Cabal and the Undertaker's visit to Simon and Forbis. Then I would add the paragraph to 1.8 where Simon contemplates this question further, and return to this more explicitly in 1.09 and 1.10.

Attaching a draft of ch1.9 a bit early. Ideally it goes together with ch1.10 as a unit, but I'm currently reworking 1.10 in light of the revision described in my previous post.

• 1.09 - the man who no longer had anything left to gain or to lost

I should have said earlier that my comments were based on 1.1-1.3 alone.

I've read through the rest now. Overall, I felt the passages in 1.4-1.6 to be a little bit difficult to follow, especially in 1.4 where we jump around a bit in time and double back to see how Powell defeated Menzies' defenses and humiliated him. By contrast, I felt the flow of things was much easier to understand in 1.8 and 1.9; 1.7 kind of meandered a bit with this digression into religion that, I assume, will be relevant later but is hard to place in the proper context right now, but I really liked 1.8 and the creativity and ingenuity required to help that woman, as well as a glimpse into what Simon has been learning from Powell.

Now, after 1.9, it seems we have found the connection between what the Undertaker has been doing and the Yama, the people Powell feared would be involved in the binder plot. I want to ask you: you're about 40k words into this story at this point, by my very rough estimate of adding up the html file sizes and dividing by 6 bytes per word. This might be a little bit of a long time for the story to gel or come together. Maybe not, if you feel like the segments should be enjoyable on their own (at least the larger ones, like 1.6/1.7), but I would be curious what your intention is in this respect. I assume the Yama had a hand in the prescription bottle and the hell-hounds, so they matter for those segments even though their connection isn't revealed until later.

Edit: some other things. "Fung shuey" (feng shui?), living alone... with a roommate?

Quote from: Muphrid on January 09, 2022, 10:35:49 AM
I've read through the rest now. Overall, I felt the passages in 1.4-1.6 to be a little bit difficult to follow, especially in 1.4 where we jump around a bit in time and double back to see how Powell defeated Menzies' defenses and humiliated him. By contrast, I felt the flow of things was much easier to understand in 1.8 and 1.9; 1.7 kind of meandered a bit with this digression into religion that, I assume, will be relevant later but is hard to place in the proper context right now, but I really liked 1.8 and the creativity and ingenuity required to help that woman, as well as a glimpse into what Simon has been learning from Powell.

Thank you, it helps to have these general impressions of what worked & what didn't to evaluate the structure of the story.

For 1.1-1.3, I'm still surprised that some early readers end up expecting a Powell-Menzies team up. Perhaps this fakeout could be handled better now that I'm actually aware it happens.

For 1.4, I agree the structure is not ideal. The phone call acts as an entry point in medias res and divides what Simon and Forbis know from what they don't know, but it's a bit weird to do this on the level of a single chapter rather than a full story.

For 1.5 thru 1.7, I'm not sure exactly what structural problems you perceived with 1.5+1.6? With 1.7, this was the site of a long writer's block, so I expect there are some seams where transitions from one topic to another could be made more smooth. Given how emotionally heavy this chapter was to write, it may take a while to perceive them properly.

For 1.8, it looks like the chapter more or less accomplishes what I was going for.

Next, 1.9 and 1.10 form a unit and 1.10 is a work in progress as my understanding of the Emissary required a major rethink. (Until it's done, I'm actually holding 1.9 back from another venue where I have a pre-reader.)

Quote from: Muphrid on January 09, 2022, 10:35:49 AM
Now, after 1.9, it seems we have found the connection between what the Undertaker has been doing and the Yama, the people Powell feared would be involved in the binder plot. I want to ask you: you're about 40k words into this story at this point, by my very rough estimate of adding up the html file sizes and dividing by 6 bytes per word. This might be a little bit of a long time for the story to gel or come together. Maybe not, if you feel like the segments should be enjoyable on their own (at least the larger ones, like 1.6/1.7), but I would be curious what your intention is in this respect. I assume the Yama had a hand in the prescription bottle and the hell-hounds, so they matter for those segments even though their connection isn't revealed until later.

Chapters 1.7-1.11 are the emotional core of part 1, for better or worse, and consist precisely of what you're seeing: Simon & Forbis jumping from vignette to vignette intervening with these characters. As you can see with 1.8, these vignettes are satisfying if done correctly, while the Yama plot comes into prominence through the end of 1.9 to 1.11.

The binder plot is relevant to part 2 and onwards. The main structural problem is that a lot of word count is put into this up-front, and then I have to justify pivoting to the unrelated story thread with Simon & Forbis.

Quote from: Muphrid on January 09, 2022, 10:35:49 AM
Edit: some other things. "Fung shuey" (feng shui?), living alone... with a roommate?

The butchering of the pronunciation is deliberate on Powell's part and 'computery feng shui' is, needless to say, not an actual concept of magic. This amounts to a deniably-disagreeable dominance move and means nothing more than 'you'll pay me three times your named amount because reasons'. And the point isn't the money so much as denying Menzies the power to set terms one-sidedly.

There's some interesting thinking in the background about Powell's vulnerabilities to the various powerful groups that keep wanting something from her. Needless to say, walking all over this particular group is an effective way to keep them from glimpsing where they might gain an advantage, and it potentially deters other groups by creating colourful rumours that others may not want to experience firsthand. If I find a way to address this background element without revealing too much, it would lead to improvements in this chapter and in 1.2 (Powell's reasoning for not interrupting the summoning, and Dracos' complaint that she's introduced as too unbeatable).

In 1.7, living alone with a roommate is more or less what it sounds: you live with a roommate, but that does nothing to resolve your loneliness.

Quote from: Arakawa on January 09, 2022, 07:22:11 PM
For 1.1-1.3, I'm still surprised that some early readers end up expecting a Powell-Menzies team up. Perhaps this fakeout could be handled better now that I'm actually aware it happens.

Given Powell's hostility I think this is really not very high on the list of possibilities. Certainly no one who has read the other story would think so.

QuoteFor 1.4, I agree the structure is not ideal. The phone call acts as an entry point in medias res and divides what Simon and Forbis know from what they don't know, but it's a bit weird to do this on the level of a single chapter rather than a full story.

For 1.5 thru 1.7, I'm not sure exactly what structural problems you perceived with 1.5+1.6? With 1.7, this was the site of a long writer's block, so I expect there are some seams where transitions from one topic to another could be made more smooth. Given how emotionally heavy this chapter was to write, it may take a while to perceive them properly.

I think really the main thing is 1.4 with doubling back to figure out how Powell has arrived in that particular seat at the table. I don't think the others really have that much of an issue with sequencing of events. They can be followed, albeit with some care, as narrative itself can wander to work in important background information.

QuoteChapters 1.7-1.11 are the emotional core of part 1, for better or worse, and consist precisely of what you're seeing: Simon & Forbis jumping from vignette to vignette intervening with these characters. As you can see with 1.8, these vignettes are satisfying if done correctly, while the Yama plot comes into prominence through the end of 1.9 to 1.11.

The binder plot is relevant to part 2 and onwards. The main structural problem is that a lot of word count is put into this up-front, and then I have to justify pivoting to the unrelated story thread with Simon & Forbis.

It's hard to say without seeing more. I'd be tempted to consider either doing a bit more with the binder plot first, and pushing Simon+Forbis to the side until later, when it's clearer how their plot might interact with this one, or (and I think this more promising), put the binder plot to the side and go with Simon+Forbis up until the Yama enter play sufficiently, and then use that as your transition back to Powell. I think you intend this transition point already, but I mean something more: perhaps even to only allude to Powell and the phone call and start more or less with Simon and Forbis leaving the Christmas party. That could let you start with something with an understandable emotional core and transition into a bigger thing about the universe your in, with the Yama.

Maybe not though. It is, of course, far too tempting to do this sort of idle speculation on only part of a story without knowing how all the bigger pieces fit.

QuoteThere's some interesting thinking in the background about Powell's vulnerabilities to the various powerful groups that keep wanting something from her. Needless to say, walking all over this particular group is an effective way to keep them from glimpsing where they might gain an advantage, and it potentially deters other groups by creating colourful rumours that others may not want to experience firsthand. If I find a way to address this background element without revealing too much, it would lead to improvements in this chapter and in 1.2 (Powell's reasoning for not interrupting the summoning, and Dracos' complaint that she's introduced as too unbeatable).

I pretty much got that Powell was making a statement even without knowing all the fine details of what statement she was trying to make. She already seemed less than amused with the summoning, so it seemed reasonable she would take out that annoyance on them and see just how badly they really wanted her.

clears throat with slight embarassment

The Emissary of Great Despair kicked my ass for the better part of a year until I was finally able to develop enough empathy to write the character. Oddly enough, I had an easier time understanding Great Despair's point of view than I did the point of view of a human that might choose to serve her willingly. Finally I broke through in November and finished it gradually and carefully, having to balance several factors.

Hot off the press, the result is interesting enough that it's worth sharing. I might be able to finish part1 this winter break, or I might hit another point that literally requires me to grow as a person to finish a first draft. tugs collar nervously

Potential problems to consider after reading



Luckily, none of my revelations require me to retcon the prior chapters, an advantage of first-person narration. Where Simon's perceptions are mistaken, they are plausibly mistaken and he can gradually learn as much in the course of events. Where other characters were OOC, that would be a different matter... that has not happened as far as I can tell.

Bonus note from the Scribe


1.10-the-emissary-of-great-despair.html

Found just a couple Canadian spellings in the American character dialogue.

fulfil (CA) -> fulfill (US)
defence (CA) -> defense (US)

Fixed in my draft, probably not worth reuploading the document just because of those two words.

also typo 'finsih' -> 'finish' in one of the footnotes. bleah

Another chapter hot off the press, maybe with typos I've missed (in the footnotes, and in Beatrice's dialogue which is a mix of American and European English which is different again from Simon's Canadian, grr...). I'm reaching the end of partI (two more left) and I'll see if I can finish the story by the end of this year as I've finished feeling out where it is and isn't going to go thematically.

1.11-the-rooftop-we-appeared-on-was-lonely-underneath-an-empty-sky.html

Structurally, due to sheer length, I've split the material I planned for Ch11 into 11+12, and merged the remainder of my partI outline into ch13.

Ch10 is the chapter I thought would be easy but in practice I ended up seriously writer's blocked until I worked through it to my satisfaction. Ch11 is the one where I thought I'd be writer's blocked but in practice, once I thought more carefully about it, I had plenty of ideas and it was just labour-intensive to sort them into a narrative, especially for the stuff I've punted Ch12.

The thing I thought would cause the block is that Beatrice is the series-recurring element with the most convoluted backstory and set of prior reveals. In practice, I've seen this kind of 'character appears in a fanfic I'm reading, familiar to readers of series, not familiar to me' situation work out ok, so I had an idea what to aim for.

Anyways, it doesn't make sense for me to actively poke for pre-readers until I have a complete partI, but otherwise why not make the text available.

And here is chapter 12. Again, just throwing it out there. I was never really blocked at any point of writing this, but it turned into a long and complex set-piece with lots of checking and double-checking. And I got sidetracked to write 40,000 words of a completely different story. The way this chapter-12 was going was also tremendously helpful in clarifying the structure of what will be part II+III. But I'm definitely over my expected word count. Some of that is the footnotes.

1.12-the-jurisdiction-of-the-stop-light-over-our-Fates-did-not-last-long.html

I think I was successful in introducing the parts of Beatrice that are interesting while leaving some very off-the-wall reveals unmentioned or unexplained beyond Simon's allusions to them, while also leaving this chapter natural assuming someone who knows the reveals reads it way-down-the-line. This wraps up her involvement until the Epilogue. Thankfully.

It's interesting that Beatrice's appearance looks like a 'save' to prevent the story from wrapping up too early, but I already knew she would be showing up before I knew exactly what kind of difference Simon could have made with the rooftop Emissary — indeed before was I even sure the man on the rooftop was going to be an Emissary. In the context of events preceding the story, this is not the kind of situation she would stay out of.

I will finish chapter 13 and then poke pre-readers more-actively and then take stock of what my part2+3 are looking like and whether I am on track to finish the story this year or not. It could go either way.