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Discussion about The Never Ending Quest.

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JH
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Post by JH »

Oh, and if it would make it easier then by all means feel free to write a character or two out of the story, either temporarily or permanently.
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KnightRandom
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Post by KnightRandom »

I wound up taking a page from the old Justice League comics and splitting them up into groups. Also, the current direction of this thread is not in any way inspired by Inception, which I haven't seen, but by Michael Moorcock's Elric books, which I'm finally reading for the first time. Thus also the mysterious silver-skinned sorcerer. (I don't intend to venture back into any kind of multiverse for a while, though, until I have some more free time.) Moorcock seems to have been a pretty enormous influence on me secondhand, through writers influenced by him, so it's an interesting experience to be finally reading his own work.
"All spelling errors are to be ingored."--Stephen Ratliff
JH
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Post by JH »

I like your new episode a lot. The Dream Realms could be a lot of fun. They sound a bit reminiscent of the Land of Nod, where The Traveler once dispatched our hero and heroine.

I think that splitting the characters up is a good idea. I haven't read any of the Elric books, but perhaps it might pay me so see what I can learn about them from the web.

One nitpick, something which I'm only aware of from living in a monarchy myself. Only kings and queens are referred to as "(Your) Majesty". Princes and princesses have to make do with "(Your Royal) Highness".
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KnightRandom
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Post by KnightRandom »

I vaguely remembered some thread like that, I may even have written a branch of it back in the day. (Probably it wasn't very good.)

I would strongly recommend at least some of the Elric stories. They're a thoroughly mixed bag, but some of them are imaginative and haunting, and Elric is a complex and fascinating hero (if you can call him that). They've been collected in any number of different works with vastly diverging order over the years. (I've been reading them in the 70's paperback versions since those are the ones my library has.) I don't know what editions are in print in the UK right now; the US currently has collections that reprint the stories in roughly the original publication order, but when reading them you should start with the prequel novel Elric of Melniboné. This makes him more sympathetic and understandable and gives his actions in chronologically later stories more emotional impact. I couldn't get into the aforementioned US editions that begin with "The Dreaming City," but I enjoyed that stor much more after reading Elric of Melniboné.

Elric spends many of his adventures traveling through weird other dimensions. He sometimes travels through the realm of dreams, and has encounters with his other incarnations as the Eternal Champion that he believes are dreams. Thus the whole thing about astral mages, also inspired by Marvel superhero Doctor Strange, who is also of course the namesake of an important family in this thread.

[ETA: I originally typed "chronological order" in reference to the US editions when I meant the exact opposite. Trying to grade brain-dead student papers while being relatively merciful will do that to you...]
"All spelling errors are to be ingored."--Stephen Ratliff
JH
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Post by JH »

"also inspired by Marvel superhero Doctor Strange, who is also of course the namesake of an important family in this thread"

You can delete the "of course" as far as I'm concerned. :) I'm afraid that my exposure to American comic books has been very limited. They're widely availabke here in the UK now, but I don't think that they were when I was growing up.

As to reading the Elric stories, the trouble is that I have a bad habit of buying more books than I can find time to read, so that the "to read" pile is already alarmingly large.
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Post by JH »

A couple of questions that our heroes are almost certainly going to want to ask have just occurred to me:

1. What about weapons? Or are we supposed to fight bare-handed?
2. Our bodies in "real life" are presumably lying comatose wherever we happened to be when we fell asleep. What is to protect them, especially those in the Southern Caves? (Two possible answers come to mind: the mages could have set up a magical force field around each body or the rate at which time passes in the Dream Realm could be so much greater that only a matter of seconds will have elapsed in the real world.
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KnightRandom
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Post by KnightRandom »

I know exactly what you mean about the "to read" pile. As a grad student, I barely have time to read anything outside of classes. However, I found the Elric books I've read to be pretty quick reads, which I very much appreciate right now.

I'll be addressing those thoughts in the next episode. Also, I'll eventually pick up option 5 of episode 90414 as soon as I get a chance to rewatch "The Doctor's Daughter."
"All spelling errors are to be ingored."--Stephen Ratliff
JH
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Post by JH »

KnightRandom wrote:Also, I'll eventually pick up option 5 of episode 90414 as soon as I get a chance to rewatch "The Doctor's Daughter."
I'm looking forward to whjat you write. The character of Jenny was enormous fun in that episode.
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Post by KnightRandom »

A few little bits of trivia in re 90453: the name "Eromreven"--which is of course "nevermore" spelled backwards--was inspired by the song "The Raven Talks Backwards" by Two Steps from Hell, who produce (ridiculously awesome) music for movie trailers. I often listen to their music to get in the mood for NEQ writing.

On a similarly raven-related note, "Ravenhelm" was originally supposed to be "Ravenholm," a spelling I used in an earlier episode, but I mistyped it and decided that the new name was even more epic hero-sounding and went with it.
"All spelling errors are to be ingored."--Stephen Ratliff
JH
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Post by JH »

I like your new episodes. :)

With regard to our other thread, involving the ruins of the Elder Ones, I was pondering why the Dragon needed Fred and Astra, when he is not only a dragon but also a shapeshifter and a powerful mage in his own right. I came up with what I think is a good idea, but I'm reluctant to spoil the surprise by revealing it now. But I plan to have the Dragon reveal it in response to the question "Why do you need us?" during the course of my next episode in the thread, after you've written your own next episode. So I'd request that you don't actually transport the three of them to the ruins just yet.
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Post by KnightRandom »

I'm afraid my writing will be a little less plentiful right now, as my workload has been getting heavier. I liked the explanation but I don't really know where to go from here yet.
"All spelling errors are to be ingored."--Stephen Ratliff
JH
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Post by JH »

Take as long as you feel you need. I currently have two of your episodes (both excellent) awaiting my continuation.
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Post by KnightRandom »

I finally thought of where to go for the Elder Race thread, so hopefully I'll write the next episode of that soon. I also thought of a fairly neat idea of what the Stone of Destiny actually is, though it will probably be quite a while before I get a chance to use it (assuming I don't get writer's block and abandon this thread), so be please sure to make room for it when the time comes. It's an egg.
"All spelling errors are to be ingored."--Stephen Ratliff
JH
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Post by JH »

Astra seems to think that the Stone of Destiny is only important because a lot of Aqualarians believe in it, and that it doesn't really do anything. It sounds as though she could be in for a surprise at some point. :) Incidentally I envisaged the singlet and shorts that she and Fred are wearing courtesy of the Dragon to be made of a material similar to cotton (which is unknown in their own countries), but possibly magically treated to keep the wearer to be heat and cold resistant and to be very hard-wearing.

In the unlikely event of my running out of episodes to write (I also have the Black Void and another addventure to keep me busy), I can always start on the other two groupings in our Dream Realms thread.
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Re: 90872

Post by KnightRandom »

Well that sure did complicate things, didn't it? :) I had two ideas about where to go next--having the next traveler who shows up be Thoabath!Fred and having the place they're in be the world from the Mysterious Distortions thread. I decided to go with both. This may or may not have been a good idea.
"All spelling errors are to be ingored."--Stephen Ratliff
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