Author Journey (March 14, 2022)
Have you ever had to create a magic system? There are two trains of thought. Either it’s wavey hand sort of stuff or there’s a logical system to things. Of course, I went with the second option and now feel like I’m building an RPG!
March 14, 2022
Hot Topic
It’s been another week dedicated to world-building for my rewrite of Valiant Lineage and I’ve had some exciting breakthroughs. My main focus has been on the magic system and the world structures. I know, I know. Sounds like fun. Surprisingly, it is. My magic system is taking over and by the end of this, I’m going to have the basis for the entire series. When I talk about world structures, I’m talking about the government and religion. Who knew those geography and history classes would come in so handy all those years later?
I’ve also been thinking about my blogging schedule again and might shake things up a little. It’s fairly well known that I schedule my posts in advance. Usually as far as possible. That is much harder with seasonal shows, obviously. On the night before each of my posts, I read them again and check for typos and awkward phrasing. One thing I have noticed from doing this is that I actually enjoyed my The Rising of the Shield Hero and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime posts a lot more. By looking at four episodes at a time, I can dive deeper into the story and discuss something more specific. Basically, I want to write more posts like those.
What have I been watching?
Seasonal Anime
It was week nine of the Winter 2022 schedule, which meant that everyone is building towards that big finish… Well, maybe not In the Land of Leadale which I think will start to wind down even more than usual. This week, I got through my three seasonal shows, three more shows for future posts, and I also read three volumes of a manga that I’m going to cover.
It was a pretty funny episode of In the Land of Leadale as Cayna travelled with Shining Saber and his knights as she searched for another of the Guardian’s towers. Their chemistry was pretty good and it was nicer seeing her interacting with people in a more relaxed manner. Then, there were zombies, so I can’t really complain.
Last week’s episode of Princess Connect! Re: Dive was incredible and gave us a fight to remember. I still can’t believe there aren’t that many people talking about this series. Do not miss this show, it is fantastic!
And would you believe it, Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest continued its streak of impressing me. There have been some good moments and this episode may even be my favourite in the series. It’s still annoying that it’s taken twenty episodes for it to finally click.
Historic Anime
I’m thinking that this will soon become the main section in terms of anime blogging. One thing I mentioned last week was how I had started watching a couple of shows and planned on reviewing them, however, with my current schedule it would be months before I got to them. This is creating quite a bottleneck and there are so many more shows that I want to watch, re-watch, and review. Expect some changes in the near future.
- Fire Force
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
- The Rising of the Shield Hero
Fire Force upped its game once more and showed us that there’s more to the show than Shinra. We got to see Ogun kick things up a notch and it was amazing!
The intrigue level in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood continues to climb. Not only did we meet others similar to Alphonse, but we got to see Lust and Envy again. There are some pretty big links starting to form. Can’t believe I kept putting this show off.
It was time for the three-part OVA of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime which did a lot to make the school arc that much more significant. I even found myself making a suggestion that I would have not thought possible at the end of season one!
I’m really enjoying my posts of The Rising of the Shield Hero and this one might be my favourite. In fantasy stories, we’re all too aware of dragons and monsters being the biggest issue the hero has to deal with, but in Shield Hero, Naofumi has to deal with a lot more!
Work in Progress
If you’ve played any sort of RPG you’ll be aware of magic systems and how they can have a lot of rules. It may seem like over-kill but those rules help to keep things grounded. They offer limitations and punishments for pushing too far. Well, that’s what I’ve been focused on this week and it’s been a lot of fun.
It probably helps that I have twenty-six first drafts to work from so I know the types of magical abilities I want to incorporate and it’s been a case of trying to build a system that will accommodate all of those. I always knew what the limitations would be, so that helped too.
I’m building up quite a reference document that I think will be invaluable as I go about rewriting the series. A lot of what I’m creating will probably never make it into the stories, at least not in an explicit kind of way. Sure, you should be able to work it out from my stories, but this is work that’s just for me. One day, I might share it.
The best thing about working on the magical system is that it has helped me to solidify some of the other aspects of the story. Once you know how something works, everything else kind of falls into place around it. It’s very satisfying watching it work like that.
One more thing that has been occupying my mind has been the opening. I’ve been trying to come up with something that will set the tone and reveal the theme. I’m pretty sure I’ve narrowed it down to a couple of ideas. Hopefully, I’ll settle on one that hooks the reader from the beginning.
The Plan
I think I may have come up with a plan that will satisfy almost all of my needs… Over the years my focus has shifted a little. I started out mostly doing season reviews which then turned into episode reviews. From there, I was sucked into the exciting world of seasonal anime. It was great and the interaction with other bloggers made it so. However, I don’t like to wait. Not even a week. With my posts for Shield Hero and Slime where I look at four episodes at a time, I think I’ve been able to find more to talk about and I want more of that.
Another thing I want to do is cover more anime. Reviewing episodically means that I will be talking about the same show for twelve weeks minimum. Again I want to do more. So, after this season finishes, I’m going to pick three shows from last season to look at three or four episodes at a time. I want to try to have a mix of these types of posts and episodic ones, so expect a little more variety and more shows covered faster.
Posts
- Quarter One
- Author Journey – 11/13 (+1)
- Historic Anime – 39/39
- Seasonal Anime – 28/36 (+3)
- Bonus Posts – 16/18
- Quarter Two
- Author Journey – 0/13
- Historic Anime – 32/78 (+6)
- Bonus Posts – 0/13
- Quarter Three
- Author Journey – 0/13
- Historic Anime – 5/78
So as of Quarter Two, there will be no more seasonal shows, however, I will try to keep a couple of my shows fairly recent. I’ve already got three in mind and will look to start on them soon. All are twelve-episode seasons which will probably lend themselves to three episodes a post, but if four works better I’ll go with that. This will give me more flexibility and make me less dependent on the seasonal schedules.
Writing
- MSR (Paranormal Harem Rom-com)
- Plotting – 49/58
- Writing – 43/58
- Editing – 42/58
- Artwork – 0/9
- Valiant Lineage (Epic Dark Fantasy)
- Plotting – 41/? (+41)
- Writing – 0/?
- Editing – 0/?
- Artwork – 0/?
- Black Death (Post Apocalyptic Shoujo AI)
- Plotting – 0/?
- Writing – 0/?
- Editing – 0/?
- Artwork – 0/?
- Asteroidea (Horror Science-fiction)
- Plotting – 0/?
- Writing – 0/?
- Editing – 0/?
- Artwork – 0/?
Last week was all about world-building and I have no regrets about that. Too often, I’ve rushed to get a story finished and published because I believed that I was falling behind or missing out. Now, I realise that I need a deadline, but I also want to get this right. I want to be able to publish my books knowing that I gave it everything I had so that I can move on and get to work on the next book.
Final Thoughts
This isn’t the first time I’ve stopped covering seasonal shows and I’m not going to rule out doing them again. If there’s a show that I really want to cover, I will, but the idea of a completely flexible schedule where I can work on any of it at any time is very appealing. As with everything, it’s worth reassessing how things are going on a regular basis. If you don’t check how will you know if something can be improved.
I’m excited about the change and looking forward to getting a little more variety in my posts. If it means I get to watch more anime, then that’s good too. Anyhow, thanks for reading and stay safe.
I know what you mean when you say that building out the world is fun. I’m constantly amazed by how many ideas a political structure, or a chain of command, or even how a given technology/magic works generates plot opportunities and ideas!
Sometimes you have to wonder if we’re making this up or being fed the information from a parallel world where it actually happened. It all fits together too nicely to be made up…
“Sometimes you have to wonder if we’re making this up or being fed the information from a parallel world where it actually happened.”
There are a lot of times when I feel like I’m discovering something instead of making it up. I keep telling myself it’s just an artifact of the creative process.
I think, anyway!
I was writing a scene a while back and both characters involved sat down on the stairs and looked up into the sky. It was like they were looking at me to tell me it was boring… They were right, I backed up a couple of chapters and took things in a different direction and it worked so much better.
Are you telling me I made that happen? It certainly didn’t feel like I had any control at that point!
Post-apocalyptic shoujo-ai are words I never thought I would see in that combination.
That said, magic systems and how they relate to politics in fantasy worlds is one of my favorite things. It’s interesting to think through what the implications are of one group of people being able to effectively perform miracles.
I was trying to add another element to the parts I wrote for the collaborative Black Death trilogy I was planning on and it ended up being shoujo-ai. Still in draft phase but I think it’ll work. Whether there’s a market for stuff like that… I have no idea.
And yeah, it’s a lot of fun working out how society would evolve if people could use magic. I think I’m looking at the ruling body attempting to control all those with the ability, making it an underground sort of movement.
So how do they do that? Do they have their own pet magic users that they use to keep others in check?
I’m thinking that anyone that shows magic potential is pretty much forced to go to a special school where they are indoctrinated and given jobs that serve society as the ruling organizations sees fits. Basically, they’re probably not the good guys…
Oppressive governments are rarely the good guys. Though Psycho-Pass made a good attempt at that.
I’ve not seen that one. Will need to check it out. The magic system I’m working on is for my epic fantasy and there will be several groups that are not necessarily good guys. It’s probably closer to dark fantasy but that market seems to be flooded with urban fantasy which is absolutely not dark fantasy. I don’t want to have to compete with werewolf man chest book covers…
Yeah, I blame Laurell K. Hamilton and Jim Butcher for the flood of Urban Fantasy. It used to be a real niche subgenre until it became the one of two ways of writing fantasy. (The other being to ape GRRM.)