Sleeper of the Wildwood Fugue had a lot going on. The big thing was introducing Dariana, who was the final champion. I was going to make her origins a big reveal later, but realized that it might be more interesting to go in the opposite direction. So, you find out right away that she is the daughter of Baron Kernaghan. This isn’t a spoiler since the point of this became seeing how the other champions would react to being aligned with their destined enemy’s daughter.
This book marked me bringing the Luke/Sari/Kira love triangle to the next level. With the backlash against Kira, who hadn’t made an appearance for a while, I got fairly clumsy with this plot. Nothing devastating, but I tried too hard to repair her reputation even though the readers who turned on her stopped reading the series. I softened it a bunch in edits since I realized that Luke and Kira could now officially go through with the ‘meeting of potential suitors’ part of the traditions. This kind of started a rivalry between Kira and Sari, but only one of them was really invested in it. By the end of everything, Kira definitely changed and it was locked in that she was going to be the one with Luke even if he continued doing things with Sari. Don’t remember if I had that happen though, so the love triangle pretty much ended here.
Speaking of Sari, this is the book that made me realize she was still broken from losing her family and being tortured by a vampire during her debut. I originally started thinking she would love Luke solely to avoid being alone, but I noticed I had her show love to the other champions. That seemed to be her way and I always sensed that I was having her use her love and focus on others as a way to avoid facing her own demons. They kind of came out in another volume, but Sari ended up being a very sad character. She had no interest in her own happiness and focused on making those around her smile. As much as she was Kira’s rival, it was clear that she was only acting the part with the belief that she was strengthening Luke and Kira’s relationship. Did I get to put this out in the open? No, because I could never figure out how to have any other character notice that this was going on.
Can’t really talk about Sleeper of the Wildwood Fuguewithout touching on Nyx since her temple gets involved. This was the last full book to be connected to a game campaign, but I changed so much. I believe this was the book where Nyx finally got a full sense of what she was too. I used her primarily to help bring Dariana into the fold because I saw some irony in the champion who has known her destiny since childhood being the first to fully accept the daughter of her greatest enemy. For her own character development, Nyx started to become a smarter fighter and not relying so much on overpowering her opponents. She was still a monster in terms of power, but she was restrained enough that the others could do more even when she was around.
Let’s play with some questions:
Should children of evil people be judged by their lineage?
I was watching a show, which was rather good. The name was ‘Almost Paradise’ and it was a crime show with some comedy. The main character goes to a tropical island because he suffers from high blood pressure. This means he can’t continue being a DEA agent until he gets the condition under control. You can figure out the rest, but I want to focus on the high blood pressure.
Now, I had and still have hypertension. This is something that doesn’t have symptoms, but can still kill you. In the show, the hero has a few episodes where his BP tracker goes off and he gets physical symptoms. Fatigue, sweating, dizziness, and basically what you would expect from an anxiety disorder. These two conditions can go hand-in-hand, but it felt like it was focusing on the hypertension as the culprit. There was some talk of everything stemming from PTSD. Yet, the show really pounded on the hypertension for the first season. Not a bad thing since it made it unique. Just kind of strange that it was being exaggerated.
This seems to be common in fiction too. You take a condition and push it either to its real extreme or an exaggerated version. I saw this done a lot with autism way back. A child with autism would always be constantly screaming at the top of their lungs with no way to calm them down. They’d get triggered by lights, sounds, and other environmental things as if they’re just a bomb waiting to go off. Now, this can be possible, but it was used as the standard, which colored people’s opinion of autism. For many, they wouldn’t believe a person had it unless they were like this. So, you can see how exaggerations in fiction can be harmful here.
Is it inevitable though? I think you can’t really avoid some exaggeration. Authors introduce these conditions for flavor and need to make them count. There has to be moments where they pose a problem, so you can’t have them be benign for the entire story. Otherwise, readers won’t really care or believe. This would be causing the opposite issue of downplaying. An author could even downplay it to the point where they forget and have the character take actions they wouldn’t do. For example, a person with asthma running after an enemy and never having breathing trouble. Again, these are added to be part of the character, so they need to come up and that might require a small level of exaggeration.
An issue or cause for this could be lack of research. Many times, we think we know about these conditions or do a surface search for information. Get the general idea and off we go thinking we can utilize it. Doesn’t always work out that way because there’s always some nuance, especially in health situations. This is really true for the stuff we hear about all the time like hypertension, diabetes, asthma, insomnia, etc. Commercials and stories use these so often that we think we know about them. Yet, we could be falling for another author’s exaggerations. Kind of like a cycle if you think about it.
I don’t know if I’ll ever try it. Part of the reason is because fantasy brings up the question of ‘why they exist’. A world like Windemere is high magic, so you’d thing asthma, allergies, and hypertension would be easily cured. Can’t say I’d disagree with that. Other ailments would arise like curses, which I will play around with. Yet, the real world ones can be tricky. If I did use one, I’d have an exaggeration issue because I’d start looking for reasons to bring it to the forefront. I’d have to justify including it in the character and that could lead to overcompensation.
What do you think about the use of medical conditions in fiction and their exaggerations?
Sooo, I took my son to see ‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’ last night. We watched the first two movies two weeks ago and ‘Afterlife’ on Friday night, so we were set. Got there 50 minutes before it started because it was raining. That meant we had to stay in the lobby for a bit. In the back of my mind, I had a feeling there was some special merch, but I wasn’t sure. I mean, it’s Ghostbusters. There had to be something and I had to be a mature adult who saves money . . . Then, I spotted it.
A guy walked buy drinking from a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man thermos. I thought that was cool, but knew a drink would mean I’d miss part of the movie for a bathroom break. I could resist. My son said he could do without it, but I realized that he hadn’t seen the thermos. He saw one in another person’s hand and his eyes went wide. We got on the line to get him one and then I saw the GHOST TRAP POPCORN BUCKET! Someone walked buy with it and I had a real internal struggle.
Of course, mature logic won out. My son was thirsty and he could handle drinking during the movie. I wouldn’t be able to achieve that feat. I was hungry and his braces meant he can’t eat popcorn, so the trap would be mine. We each get a souvenir to remember this special father/son outing. He didn’t realize he could fill it up at the theater, but ran off cheering when he was told he could. I had a big grin on my face while talking to other adults about the trap, which one was getting and the other had bought a version of it when ‘Afterlife’ came out. They said it was a shame this one didn’t light up and helped me juggle a few things to make sure I got the popcorn poured into the trap.
Anyway, movie was a lot of fun and that’s when some extra comedy happened. I didn’t have the ghost trap on my lap, so I didn’t realize it HAD WHEELS until I picked it up. I can roll it around or even push it to someone across a table or floor. This wasn’t even the last thing because I was walking up to my front door when I accidentally pulled a weird plastic tab off the bottom. I thought it was strange since it looked exactly like what you would find in an electronic device where a battery is found. There was a switch. THE GHOST TRAP LIGHTS UP! It is now sitting now to my laptop where I will put snacks, candy, or fruit in there when I’m writing.
I did manage to edit the first 4 chapters of Darwin & the Halfling Hunt. Just happened to get completed on Thursday when I took a day off from work for a few doctor visits. This story moves faster than I remembered, but the whole thing revolves around Darwin being chased across a continent, ocean, and more. Throughout, he has to complete a special quest alongside some unique new allies. One had a secret that is made obvious from the start, but only if people read Legends of Windemere. These series are supposed to be connected, so I need to have connections. With any luck, I can get more editing done this week once the break starts.
Speaking of Legends of Windemere, I noticed a few reviews disappear. Good to see I can’t gain any new ones, but the old ones can vanish. Think a few vanished on all of my books too. At this point, it isn’t even kicking me when I’m down. More like poking a corpse since I can’t get any momentum. At least I’m having fun editing when I have the energy.
That’s the health issue going on too. The weather going from warm to cold didn’t help, but there’s been odd timings for about a year. As soon as I reach a weekend or break, I wake up feeling like I’m about to die. Lethargy, headaches, body aches, funky blood oxygen levels, fatigue, vertigo, and the list goes on. Since I got myself tested for a few things recently, I realized this round wasn’t caused by a disease. I stumbled onto the concept of ‘leisure sickness’, which is supposedly when a person under a lot of stress gets a day to relax and their body takes on illness symptoms. Basically, the adrenaline being used to get through work/life stresses goes away and the body realizes its in bad shape. The person can even catch real diseases because their immune system might just plunge into the red zone. Definitely sounds like what keeps happening to me and why I’m not as productive on weekends as I used to be.
Work has been crazy in a way that I can’t explain. Definitely ending most days dragging myself back home. Last week and this week had special events too, which throws our kids off at times. Next week is only 3 days before Easter Break. I’m sure that’s going to be rather chaotic at times. At least it’s only 3 days, so I should be able to muscle through the whole thing. I’m signing up to help with a special basketball team as TA support in April and May, which means even more mayhem. Guess my editing will take place primarily over the summer at this rate.
Nothing else of major importance happened this week. I think. My son and I used our time to watch the original 2 Ghostbusters movies and ‘Afterlife’ in order to prepare for ‘Frozen Empire’ tonight. Been a long time since we went to the movies, so we’re both excited. I’m also nearing the end of ‘Resident Alien’ Season 2 on Netflix. That’s a fun show, but it took me a while to really get into it. For some reason, I’m enjoying season 2 more and I think it’s because the alien gets to be more mouthy with the humans. It’s funnier. Not a popular opinion from what I’ve seen though.
With the break coming up, I’m hoping to relax and get some work done. Thursday is an outing into NYC to meet up with friends. Might end up being a birthday thing on some level for me since that’s coming up. After that, I hope to get more editing done since it’s supposed to be cold. If I can get a minimum of 7 chapters edited then I’ll be making great progress. Darwin & the Halfling Hunt has 19 chapters and getting the remaining number into single digits would be great. Maybe get all of the May blog posts done too and pick another anime to watch. I want to pick a shorter anime because ‘Great Teacher Onizuka’ debuts on Netflix on April 1st. Doubt that sentence makes sense to most people reading this.
Only other thing this week had was a rice bowl failure. Broccoli did not work because it got too mushy. It’ll be on the ‘no’ list with sugar snap peas. So, the only rice bowl combos that are working are edamame, roasted corn, pickled baby corn, and pineapple with the constants of tofu and pickled ginger. I can’t think of anything else to try, but maybe it’s enough. I’m doing these more than the salads because the yield is less and I keep having short work weeks. I mean, it’s a 3 day, 4 day, 4 day, 5 day, and then spring break. Kind of wild.
Goals of the week?
Ghostbusters, Pokemon Go, and relaxing with son this weekend.
Edit more Darwin & the Halfling Hunt
Get May blog posts done.
Guess work should be on the list.
Thursday outing with friends. I heard Chinatown mentioned.
Finish watching ‘Resident Alien’.
Start watching something else.
Try to stay warm since winter decided to stick around.
Work on a puzzle when need a break from screen or page.
What you see above is a real plant from mythology? Okay, that sentence didn’t make the most amount of sense. The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary comes from Central Asia. Its fruit was a sheep, which would graze on the area around the plant. Both would die when there was no more foliage to eat. The dead lamb could be eaten and its blood was sweet like honey. The wool could be used like cotton, which might be the origin of this legend.
So, you can see that fictional flora can be pretty strange. They aren’t as rigid as one may think and can be mixed with fauna. So, why not have some fun with the concept.
Would you create a deadly or helpful fictional plant?
What would it do?
Do you think putting some attention to plant life can help even an Earth-based book?
Legends of Windemere 