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Farah started walking towards one of the food tables at the leisurely pace.

"Thought you were here to meet folks too."

"Want to go grab some food?" she offered, hoping to change the subject. "I'm a bit hungry."

So I made my 20k goal for my 2009 NaNo, but it doesn't have a title. It's the story of how the king's gadabout second son finds his calling as a military leader and saves the kingdom from invasion (yay!), but also gets stuck having to be king (boo!). Oh, and along the way he made a deal with a mysterious old man to put in a good word for him with the king in exchange for critical information about the invasion. I'm sure it's fine.

This is a prequel to the main events.

There was a bee on the windowpane. It buzzed ineffectually against the green glass, apparently unconcerned with the distorted image of the world beyond; only drawn to the light.

Apparently I started a story in the main plot for a 2011 NaNo, but forgot about it. Seriously, when I opened the file, I thought it was going to be something else. I have no memory of writing the thing it actually is. It has a title, but it wouldn't be the book's title, so eh.

Snow swirled down from the heights of the mountain peaks, driving through the gaps between peak-roofed houses in the tiny village of Finleen huddled below and gathering in drifts against crosswise walls. Through the dark, icy winter air, a baby's wail arose from one of the houses, cutting through the low moaning of pine trees in the wind.

(Dear god, that run-on. Ow.)

The something else isn't a novel. Probably it's a chapter in the same book as the 2011 thing. Again, there's a title, but not one I'd actually be using. Eh.

The celebration of the Spring Equilux, which marked the end of winter and the beginning of the new year, was always an important event in the divided kingdoms of the north, and none prided themselves on their festival more than Wickham.

... I think I'm bad at first lines. And titles.

All that stuff is in the same world, anyway. It's middleweight fantasy—there is magic, but it's not abundant; some fantasy creatures like elves, vampires, and dragons exist, but they're part of the natural world and obey meta-physiological rules. The Powers That Be are just another order of being (but some of them have big heads about it).

And I have no idea how it all fits together. Plot? Hahahaha. Ha.

A couple other ideas I've toyed with, but haven't put any serious work into:

Moon magic

Modern fantasy. People are born with magic at various power levels according to location and phases of the four moons. Heather arrives in the right place at the right time to be the biggest magical deal in about two thousand years. As she comes into her power, all the major magical/political players want to control her, but she has to deal with the reccurrence of a major lunar alignment that spells big trouble for the world if she can't learn what she needs in time. Fortunately, there's an eccentric but endearing guy with a foreign accent who says he knows what's going on and can help! I'm sure nothing bad will happen to him.

Supernatural SWAT team

What it says on the tin. Badass normal newbies Sophia Hue Phan and Tim Gurney join established team members Joe Donovan (a vampire) and Ban MacCormac (a werewolf); have to deal with witches, hackers, and confusing but steamy relationship polyhedrons. I dunno, I'm pretty sure I just wanted to make up pretty people with cool names.

No vote, because seriously, there's nothing to vote on. I'll let you know if I actually work out a decent plot for any of these at any point.

~Neshomeh

Just a heads up, it's not gonna be a wide variety of genres. Or... ideas for that matter of fact. I'm a one-trick pony unfortunately, and it's a matter of picking the most interesting idea:



Number Thirteen, Zauber Street

You do NOT want to visit this house... unless you're mad, desperate, or somewhere in-between.

A ragtag bunch of miscellaneous magic users and a collection of stories about their odd-jobs. Featuring: a junkie shaman, an African Spider God, a Russian witch, an androgynous empath, etc.

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Cerberus

Like the Hound of the Underworld, we stand guard so that no filth escape their settlements.

Once again, urban fantasy. This time using the principle of Three Ms: Magic, Murder, Mystery. Cops, guns, investigations, vampires, monsters and shapeshifters.

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The Hunters/The Magicians

This one is tricky, as it's two series set in the same universe. So, I'm gonna kinda cheat and summarize both:
- St. George Hunting Company revolves around professional monster hunters and their inner scandals
- The Baskerville Society is the magicians' cabal answering directly to the Queen of England




Let's see if <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEJA7s29KxPGi6RcdIravIa0nZF0D6vV4ktgprvmH50MxHQ/viewform?usp=sf_link">THIS LINK works

But yeah, Mass Effect or a half-decent dating sim, this isn't.

Well, maybe two.

First, Imperial or Stormcloak (or neither). It doesn't make a huge difference gameplay-wise, but picking one does exclude the other, it does alter the political landscape, and it will make a difference to the ultimate fate of Skyrim and Tamriel. And picking either, bringing an end to the war, is better than neither. Keeping the land in chaos is what the Aldmeri want, and they're bearing a super-old grudge against all mankind, so giving them what they want is a bad idea.

Second, not to give anything away, but what happens in Cidna Mine has some fairly major consequences for the Reach. Again, not a HUGE difference to gameplay, but pretty big ramifications for the overall stability of Skyrim.

Oh, and the culmination of the Dark Brotherhood questline is actually kind of a big deal. So, if you don't mind their whole murder schtick, that's a good one.

~Neshomeh

"Most people certainly don't. And 's nothing personal against you."

"Sorry." she said.

I'll try to go over this again, with or without Hat, either later today or in the next few days. I really was pretty sleepy when I went through it the first time so there's no way I caught everything I'd want to point out. I'll see what I can add to what you're saying (which includes some good catches, btw).

~Z

"Hydramatic drive" and "Space-Time-and-The-Other" aren’t words you just made up? This totally changes the way I read Bradbury’s recruitment. If I need more background information, I shouldn’t expect to find it in your writing; I should just go and read that novel. So this makes Nirwana not asking any questions much more acceptable. On the other hand, there’s the offense of not properly disclaiming the origin of your ideas. Colonel Caleb Bradbury now appears to be a background character (never actually mentioned in the novel, because we’re not allowed to abduct canon characters) from Daniel Pinkwater's Borgle, so that should be named as his home continuum on the character sheet.

Since it got a name, there’s no need to attach a number to Colonel Bradbury’s home continuum, and it should be a natural number anyway; it’s meant to represent the order in which the Flowers discovered those worlds, but we don’t really want to establish this order beyond that World One was obviously the first. In-universe, nobody bothers to memorize and use the numbers when there are more telling words to be used. I can imagine the bureaucrat who must keep track of the numbers attaching n.something to alternate universes (like movieverse versus bookverse) for specific values of n, but since we still won’t know the value of n for a specific bookverse (or whatever would be the original canon), this is mostly irrelevant. An exception are numbers greater than one and less than two for variations of World One created by writing in the PPC multiverse. We may actually want to start keeping track of those. The only ones I’m currently aware of are World One and a Half and the potential World 1.963.

Nirvana was mostly trying to get at the Hydramatic drive. Well, he took note of Bradbury’s high-value asset, but I totally didn’t get that.

I didn’t say anything about the second prompt yet. (I secretly hoped that Zingenmir would return when she’s less sleepy.) I actually liked it better then the first, because it didn’t confuse me. There may be too much dialogue and too few actual events (talking head syndrome), but that may be intentional to display yet another style besides the two recruitments, and showing this flexibility may actually be a good thing. If I could fit that glaurunging hat onto my head, I would probably let you get away with this different styles thing, but I would still like to see another PG’s opinion. Alas, I couldn’t let you pass anyway, for the lack of understanding or consideration displayed with World 1.567 repeating.

Also, I noticed three cases of a word probably missing (although, not being a native speaker, I’m not entirely certain whether the suggested word is actually required in all cases:
Bradbury thought briefly, unsure how to speak to the locals...
The creature pulled a notebook from one of his pockets, and began to write.
Then a teenager walked up to the thing that should not exist, and began to talk to it, getting in the way of his shot.
Keep an eye on that kind of mistake.

Suggestion: Rewrite or at least polish this up, then submit again.

HG

I've voted for The Bone Man, because it's a) least horrifying, and b) interesting! I also know Kaitlyn would like it.

I also find IKB interesting based on the summary - anything that's described as 'Sophie's World for...' is going to catch my eye. :)

As for The Words of the Voice, I see (by way of Wikipedia) what you're getting at. The difference is that The Words... is presented as an actual body of ancient myth - just with a scientific basis. The oldest deities are incarnations of things like the expansion of the universe, gravity, light, chemical bonding and so forth. Later on we run into the more human-centric gods, at which point we drift away from science a bit and into sheer myth: there's not a lot of science in the extended adventures of Dyfais queen of Brenin, for all that she technically founds the Bronze Age.

Look, I did say it was weird.

hS

He's absolutely the sort for it.

Anycase, yeah... I don't think I can RP wel in Skyrim. Or in most CRPGs, for that matter. Maybe FNV or a Bioware game (when I play them, we'll see)? But not a TES game.

Why? Lack of meaningful choice. Sure, your choices change some stuff, but for the most part, the world just keeps spinning regardless of your decisions. No options ever get closed off to you, no matter how much it feels like one should be.

Oh, and as to why that theme... it's because Rogueport is a lot like Riften. Except more cartoony, obviously.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is an amazing game, by the way.

"That would be none of your business, Farah," he spat. "Believe me, I don't need your help digging up painful memories."

The Bone Man

In a small back room, cool against the heat and dimming out the harsh afternoon sun, the doctor cracked his knuckles and went to perform a miracle.

Urban fantasy. A young Ten-Pound Pom girl in 1950s Australia is training as a nurse under a Reiki practitioner and osteopath. These quack medical practices... actually work as advertised. Think Harry Potter meets Call The Midwife with a healthy dash of cosmic horror.

The Little Old Man From Number 22

Well, there goes the neighbourhood.

Horror fantasy. Two alternating viewpoints in a small corner of slowly-gentrifying Deptford: one a serial runaway teenage girl who's been adopted by a hipster couple with something to hide, and the other a little old man who's been there forever. Literally. One of them's the villain. It's not her.

Fleabag

My sister's cat has filled the entire bloody house with fleas.

Zombie apocalypse story with a difference: this time we experience it from the point of view of Patient Zero in the outbreak. What does zombification really mean? How does it affect your life? Aside from, y'know. The obvious.

International Klein Blue

You're looking at a blue rectangle mounted on a wall and you're thinking "My kid could do that" or "How is this art?" or variations on a theme of fatuous closed-minded martinetry.

Combination Lovecraftian cosmic horror and... art history lecture? Sophie's World for the horror genre and modern art movement combined. Formless beings and strange old men and what we have to do to survive.

---

Voting happens here.

For reference, I voted for The Words Of The Voice. It sounds the most interesting, if REALLY similar in concept to Will Self's The Book Of Dave.

I feel like The Pureblades could be everything I love about the Shadowhunter Chronicles, minus the clunky fanfiction-esque writing, and I can't wait to see it be published sometime! That being said, The Cycle of Worlds sounded like a complete blast as well.

I mean, I voted for The Bastion Walls, simply because I'm a sucker for very personal epic fantasy, but all your other books sounded fabulously entertaining and engrossing. I'd like to see any and all of these on bookstore shelves!

So... I don't really do novels; I've tried, and I can't write good descriptive language for the life of me. However, I can draw, so my goal is to get a graphic novel published eventually!

I'm only working on one at the moment, so there's no need for a survey, but it'd be really nice to hear if people are interested in the concept or not.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Maelstrom Trio

I'm starting to see why no one wants this job. I mean, it's not like it's not fun to get beat up by demons on a daily basis, but I certainly don't get paid enough for it.

Urban fantasy/comedy. On an Earth where magic and monsters have been a fixture of life from the beginning, G.U.A.R.D. ensures that normal people get the protection they need. Details the misadventures of three G.U.A.R.D. agents - a mild-mannered magician, a trashy and foul-mouthed elf, and a human woman as good at kicking butt as she is at keeping the other two from killing each other - as they do their best to protect their assigned neighborhood from assorted heinous monstrosities while trying to deal with life, each other, and the friendly tentacles they can't seem to evict from the kitchen sink.

Sure, it's a beautiful hold with all those pretty late-summer aspens and everything, but the capitol is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. And don't trust that sly git Brynjolf! Even if he calls you "lad" in that sexy voice of his!

Nah, I'm totally joining the Thieves' Guild this time. Brynjolf can call me "lad" all he wants. He's a tease, though—not a marriage option, to the annoyance of a great many fanbeings.

Wound up with the Companions the first time through, of course, and while you can technically join all the factions on the same save file (and they make you kick, kiss, or cry your way into the College at Winterhold whether you want to or not; never upping my magicka made that VERY interesting), it just feels wrong to me. Role-playing! Role-playing makes the game loads better. But also slightly frustrating when the options presented are not the ones you want. ... Fanfic!

~Neshomeh

"Then again, maybe I just haven't met the sort of humans who'd be running station offices yet." she added. "But, uh, what happened back home, if you don't mind sharing?"

"And here I thought humanity was bad. The flowers are even worse... Still beats my home, though."

"I did run the radios back on the Ambition, though, so I know a little bit about engineering. Got pretty good at dealing with aliens, bureaucrats, and alien bureaucrats." Farah sighed. "It was good practice for here, turns out."