Good morning, good afternoon, and/or good evening to you fair reader, and welcome to "Chapter 1" of God knows how many.
As a refresher for anyone who forgot. . . Or for some reason skipped the prologue, I am The Author, an individual on a quest to put the creative madness within his brain to form and unleash into the world like the contents of Pandora's box.
This first chapter will be a rundown of some of those ideas, allowing it to server a dual purpose. The first, a glimpse into what type of things I'll be trying to make, and second, a list for me.
Now where to begin. . . Oh! How about the spark that ignited this fuse? A fair warning now, for as creative as I am, I suck at names and titles. That's to say a lot of names and titles you'll read throughout this post are just placeholders and will never cease to be as such. A true creative is never happy with their final product no matter how much time and effort they put in. It comes with the territory
Mime Isekai
This odd idea popped into my head while watching a friend's live stream of Dungeoneer. At his first level up, he listed to the audience the options of what he could do with it and one option in particular caught my attention like a foot in a bear trap, Mime. I can't tell you why but something about it just attached itself to my brain, and within the hour I had crafted the idea of an Isekai starring a Mime. An idea a friend of mine readily pointed out sounded like a dumb contrarian idea someone would come up with to annoy isekai fans, and I do not disagree with that at all. However, I did point out one thing in response. What he described is what the "average" person would think up for such a concept. I'm not gifted by a god of creativity, but one thing I do excel at it concepts and characters. So, remembering back to a story an aunt of mind told me about her time attending college in New Orleans, I developed a pitch from the heart.
Our currently unnamed protagonist has always suffered from extreme anxiety from a young age. It at times would get so bad they'd be rendered in a non-verbal state for sometimes days at a time. As they grew up they started to become aware that people had taken note of this odd condition. Worried about their possible worry (or worse) rejection they developed an elaborate rouse to try and hide it. The art of miming. Doing research and dawning white face paint and the well-known black and white striped shirt, they put on an amateur but still entertaining show for their family and friends convincing them that the non-verbal spells were not in fact signs of mental affliction, but their deep dedication to a hobby. As more time passed the facade became a coping mechanism. When their voice was gone, they'd taken to using the art of miming as a new form of expression. It gave them comfort and confidence, even if people were growing more annoyed and tired of it over time. In their 19th year and attending university on an art scholarship, the pressures of the world began to push down more and more. They had come to rely on the invisible world so much in their moments of stress as an escape, they never once thought of what they wanted for their future. The stress had become so overwhelming that not even the miming could give them relief anymore leading to a troublesome mishap. Now on the verge of fully breaking they wandered the quiet night, cross paths on a bridge with someone at the end of their own rope. Listening to them break down before them, but unable to offer a single word of comfort, they were only left with one option as they watched their peer climb onto the railing.
"If I can't speak, I can at least act!"
Running over and jumping onto the ledge, they put all of their weight into throwing their peer back onto the bridge going over in their place.
The awake in a field under a too blue sky filled with clouds far fluffier than anything they could recall. The bridge was gone. . . So was the town. Confused and anxious they wandered until they stumbled a hamlet ripped straight from a fairy tale. They were in a whole new world, and now laid out before them was an unusual adventure.
. . . Okay, I need to work on summaries, because looking back this is very tonally off from the idea. Don't get me wrong the non-verbal thing and the odd coping mechanism is part of the story as well as the accidental sacrifice, but tonally this idea is more. . . Well not light-hearted but comical. Granted a lot of that falls in the hands of our other lead who I couldn't quite mention as I'm still figuring them out. In the same vein as Konosuba our protagonist is accompanied by a less then helpful God. This god while not responsible for bringing our character to this other world, is quite aware of where they came from and what a mime is. Wholly ambivalent, they intended to just watch our protagonist struggle in these new circumstances, watching them try to protect the village with (to little success) with nothing but miming endeared them to the god who follows them around and plays along with the act often manifesting actually invisible items to give the act effect. Soooo. . .
TLDR; If the comical and heartfelt adventure of a non-verbal protagonist and semi-sadistic god venturing through a fantasy to find their voice and way home sounds interesting, then you've seen the odd potential I did in this idea.
You know I could simply erase that mess and do it again properly, but I won't. No quest is clean or easy, and all progress spawns from failure and shortcomings. So, let's make each subsequent entry better!
Coven Crashers
Synopsis: The Age of Magic has come to end. Under the decree of the emperor any unsanctioned research or practice of the dark arts has been outlawed. These laws are upheld and enforced by two groups who investigate any reports of unauthorized uses of magic, the Emperor's Inquisitor Guard and Privateer Covens. Our story follows the most infamous of the privateer covens, "Salem's Bell", as its members try to survive in a world that despises them by combating their sisters and brothers in the unground magical resistance "Hell's Garden".
There we go, that's a bit cleaner. This story is a gift to a friend of mine who without her influence I may not even be sitting here typing this(which means if I succeed, were even). Inspired by her finding a webcomic about a witch going to the beach and talking about how there aren't many witches in swimwear, my brain set out to put witches by the waves. . . Which ultimately failed, because as I tried to craft something she's like this idea became more a love letter to 90s anime like Slayers.
This idea is much further along than the previous, as I've pretty much got its pilot down in my head. Issue is, as with all stories great and terrible, how to start.
Our principal cast is comprised of five unnamed characters (I wasn't kidding when I said I suck at names). We have the mother and three members of the Salem's Bell guild, each member specialized in a particular magical study.
-The second in command potion's master
-The often drunk enchanter
-And the childish former circus member familiar master
The observant will notice I said "five" members, but even including the Coven mother only listed "four". That's because our fifth member is a unwilling new recruit who serves to be the audience surrogate. A young girl who group up in the world post outlawing of magic who after being in the wrong place had a tough choice before her. Either join up with Salem's Bell or spend the rest of her life in prison until she's possibly executed.
If this idea sounds interesting, worry not about the lack of details. All the details (except names) are pretty much set, but this entry is not about one story in particular, but instead to give you dear reader a glimpse as to what is to be faced along with quest.
Fable: The Forgotten Princess
Synopsis: Once upon a time a King and Queen sent their young daughter to a far off castle to be safely raised under guard of a powerful Dragon until her sixteenth birthday when she would find her true love and return home to take her place upon the throne. This was a summary written in a tattered book amongst the ruins of a long since dissolved kingdom eighteen years after the recorded birthdate of the last rulers one and only child.
This one has no particular inspiration. One day I just wanted to try and write something different, and I remembered an odd assignment I did in elementary school as part of an after-school activity. We were to take old fairy tales and nursery rhymes and write them with a more modern twist. I don't remember mine 100%, but I remember I picked "The Three Little Pigs" and the big bad wolf was a corrupt landlord trying to foreclose on their homes. . . I was a very odd child, but that was a fun assignment, so I tried it again. What started off with the idea:
-A dragon who was tasked with guarding a princess gets tired of their job and decides to sell off the castle on go on a long vacation-
Evolved into what will be a fairy tale, as our dragon friend will abandon their job, and a girl with no real purpose or world experience is now left to try and find her place in a world that's long forgotten her, staring purely from scratch.
If you're noticing a heavy fantasy tilt in my stories thus far, so am I. It's not so much I prefer fantasy over sci-fi as much as my personal outlook of "What is magic but science that has not been properly explored and explained". Each story has its own internal logic and basis, and much of its inner magical workings are treated like how we treat computers. I guess magic is a bit more fun and freer since unlike sci-fi I don't have to worry about my BS getting fact checked.
The Lanes Between
Synopsis: When man turned to steel and coal to build their empires, what became of the residents of the forest? No matter how hard mankind may try, they can never full conquer the natural world. Afterall, even the Fairy Tales of old live on to this day as Urban Legends.
The Lanes Between is my one and only idea for an actual book/book series. Set around a claustrophobically expansive (I know what I said), this story follows a young boy named Christopher and his mysterious friend whom he calls "Nona" due to her having no real name, as they fall into and discover a world of Fae within the labyrinthian alleys of the city dubbed "The Lanes Between".
I honestly love this idea and even after years of little to no progress come back to it regularly because I oh so want to be able to share, what honestly is probably the best representation of my mind's inner workings. Snaking between all of my coherent thoughts, an unimaginable world with its own histories and legends, ever so close, but just out of sight unless you dare venture into the mysterious spaces.
Oh, I should cap this off with a correction. The principal cast is a trio. Christopher, Nona, and Leno, who is a shapeshifter who often takes the form of a black cat as he roams the city and lanes making sure their boundaries aren't exposed or broken. The first book revolves around him actually trying to return Christopher to the city proper after he falls into the Lanes, while Christphor is all about exploring this mysterious new world he's found.
. . . Oh, I actually went to check my old notes to see if there was a missing detail and turns out I wrote a demo passage for the story. Well, guess that means I'm better set than I thought.
And with that I thank you for your time once again dear reader. I'm sure this entry was quite a mess, but hey, that's gives you can idea of why I'm on this quest. Nothing here was created for this blog. They're all stories that have lived in my head for years, and this isn't even all of them.
That said, future chapters will be far cleaner as they'll be more focused on either individual stories or what I'm currently working on. No idea what that will be, but It's all a step forward.
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