beyond the wide world's end

'sup, y'all. This is another piece of concept-writing, like The Midnight Man, that I should probably sit on since it has some familiar faces in it, but come on, who doesn't want to read 5K of creepy god shit in post-Dust Narnia? (Anything tagged "gods and monsters" -- this is unrelated to my tumblr tag of the same name -- is post-Dust and pre-Revelations.)

( Quick note on characters within )

( the sun king )

Some Revelations worldbuilding thoughts. (For those wondering: Revelations is either the post-Dust modern!Narnia AU I'm writing or the modern high fantasy novel I'm writing. I haven't decided yet.) In case anyone else is interested!

( this is because no one can figure out how to collect taxes from a bunch of trees )

I've been playing with Revelations a lot recently, because it's low-pressure and it's -- well, I came up with it, so obviously it's tailored to my kinks. At some point I turned into the kind of writer who sometimes works with visual material -- I've done this a couple times before for Dust, once for Border Wars and once for the aggravation. Sure, it's self-indulgent, but it helps me work and it helps me get my head straight about characters or events. And I thought some other people might be interested in seeing it. (And Revelations is pretty self-indulgent anyway.)

Revelations has several interconnected plotlines, so one of the other things I did to get my head straight was to write up what might basically be called back cover copy for the three major plotlines. I probably should have done one master summary! But this is for me, not for a publisher or to sell a novel, so I didn't.

Because this is a post-Dust story, there are slight spoilers for my projected ending to Dust here. I don't think that it's anything major or that couldn't be extrapolated from what has happened in Dust so far or, to be fair, from my fannish predilections. I think it's perfectly possible to look at Revelations as another LB AU -- or indeed, as an original. (And I'm still playing with the idea of doing it as an original -- I haven't decided yet, so I'm just writing it as fic because it's easier for me.)

As an aside, it's codenamed Revelations because it didn't previously have an actual title. (It does now, as of about two hours ago, but I'll probably keep calling it Revelations.) Just as Dust was always supposed to be a trilogy, Revelations is conceived as a duology. Revelations is part one; the second part is codenamed Behold a Pale Horse. (So I am possibly not subtle on the apocalypse imagery here.)

Okay, that's enough prologue, I think. Shall we have some content? (Also, sorry for the fact that the pics aren't all the same size. Graphics and I are not friends.)

*

( back cover copy version one -- Kyrinn Locke )

( back cover copy version two -- Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb )

( back cover copy version three -- Idis Agathon and Aerin Ironstone )

( The Cast )

So I wrote a thing? This is apparently what I do when left to my own devices. Or rather, I wrote a thing which could in theory be part of a bigger thing, though it is not at this point in time. *cough* And now that I have gotten that confusing bit out of the way, I shall continue.

So I mentioned this on Twitter, partially as a modern!Narnia story and partially as a post-Dust story. (Thus my dramatic "I can never ever post it!" though clearly that went to naught.) And now comes the part where I start hemming this around with cuts, in case there are readers who are nervous about being spoiled for the end of Dust. Sorry, y'all. Okay, first off: it is very hard for me to tell because Dust is my baby, but there are some light spoilers for Dust here just in the set-up, aside from the tell-tale of "post-Dust story." ( Read more... )

If this was a novel, the jacket copy would look something like this:

( Read more... )

And then I wrote a bit of this -- two scenes, a little wandering. Well, technically I wrote them, then built the summary off what I'd written. snacky, aella_irene, there's some new material here. Oh, can you tell that I had the chance to see the guts of the BM here, heh?

( 1300 words under here )

Apparently, I finally wrote something that I looked at and went, "Okay, this would probably work much better as an original." (Though I'd tweak a few things besides just the names/serial numbers, heh.) I have been playing with the idea of writing something set in a modern or sci-fi 'verse with high fantasy tropes, so this tickles that part of me.

Settings partially inspired by these modern Westeros gifsets (scroll down, there's some character stuff in the middle, but it's the setting bits I'm thinking of).