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Writing is my passion
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this post was submitted on 31 May 2022
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writing
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"There's no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you"
-Maya Angelou
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Hey yall, let's imagine something different! What would a writer that was interested in more liberatory, justice based, social-istic (at least) themes do for a setting?
Like Xanth, everybody gets a unique talent but most are pretty useless? A story that starts off like the pic, but the pov characters are all the normals and they help lead a revolution to a more just world?
In the setting for my book, everyone starts out human but during puberty they become a magical race based on their material conditions. Everybody assumes that the long-lived, super smart and extremely fast Elves are the best race that the best kids become when they get the best education, but the deep lore is that that's what you turn into when you have a giant pile of money and those assumed advantages are the result of hundreds of years of propaganda and the only real difference being an elf makes is just that you consume three times as much as everybody else and live longer.
I have a magic system that makes people feel an inherent attachment to the world and people around them. The same way you would feel hungry if you don't eat, you'd feel a natural disgust with yourself if you tried to hoard resources. Work is rewarding and being an adventurer solving problems is a lifestyle that you choose, retire from, or do casually.
In the continent of interest there are two different communes and one kingdom. The kingdom only lays claim to the land that they can reliably provide food for. Taxes are modest. Yet the existence of the inherent hierarchy disgusts the leaders of the communes. So when word gets around that the kingdom is raising an army, the leaders of the communes go through extralegal means to assist a vigilante, his friends, and a diaspora to attack the kingdom. Both communes decide to not intervene to keep the peace as a treaty demands and they look the other way as adventures fight in conjunction with the vanguard (e.g. "I don't conscript them, how am I going to give them commands?!")
No chosen ones, communes get plenty of screentime, and the main character develops from wanting to be a proud, pious knight for the kingdom into a drug smoking traveler who just wants to help solve the existential crisis facing the continent. There are lots of instances where people highlight how differently one could consider being part of a society like not paying for basic food and shelter. Tilling the fields in volunteer work and a popular excuse to exercise mana. BEEG BEEG LIBRARIES. People will only try to maim each other at worst during wartime and avoid carrying escalating weapons like swords and spears because they don't want to kill each other (which highlights how dramatic it is to say you want to kill someone).
I like it! The main character of my book is a cat-person, and while she has been told all her life that that means she's supposed to be dexterous conniving and flirtatious, she ended up being a 6'10" brick shit house of a woman who is super straightforward and physically imposing. One of her hangups is that she has still internalized her racial stereotype and feels bad for not living up to it, but over the course of the book she realizes that the magical phrenology she was taught growing up is all fake.
:lenin-heart: I'm in love already
Is this a published book or still something you're working on? I haven't read fantasy in a while and this sounds interesting. Also I'd much rather buy a book from a comrade than some publishing company.
Still working on. I'll definitely be posting about it here when I've got the first draft done.
Alright, keep us in the loop comrade ๐
In my book's setting, anyone can learn magic, but the time, teaching, and practice required isn't allotted equally. Different learning styles and material conditions mean that people who would be talented sorcerers end up doing mundane work augmented by magic.
One part of the history though is that there's been a history of laborers who used magic derived from servitude to cause a class-based revolution. The nobles who practiced fancy complex magic were few in number and lacked the experience to fight a long war with farmers who water crops by hauling thousands of gallons at once or cleaners who can sweep a castle with a single wind spell.
The tools of their oppression (being railroaded into service-based magic) became their liberation. Centuries later, that informs policy on magic and how it's accessed.
Magic should be presented as universal, with everyone having access. Class position and education may affect your ability to effectively utilize it. In my book I treated it like literacy.
In my novel nothing stops any character from learning magic (better thought of as being based on chi but I've not picked a word) but some of the most powerful characters are able to inscribe chi "shortcuts" into people with no chi practice/ skills allowing them to use magical abilities without any formal understanding or awareness of chi.
or how about magic is taught as something that comes from bloodline but in reality is just something anyone can learn to do
Ooh that's a good inversion. You could have a magic kropotkin give up the royal secrets ans teach the masses magic lol
:kropotkin-big: