#OR. 1 host whos like infodumping to the other host who knows nothing about the subject. OR. 2 hosts info dumping to each other about

[toytulini]

me, stupidly and weirdly resistant to listening to audio books vs reading a physical book for no real reason: man i wish there was a way to like, read a book while i crochet like i do with tv shows and movies and podcasts

[ryin-silverfish]

LMK S5 trailer, Chinese pantheon infodump, and some ideas

…Man, normally, I feel the urge to write fix-it AUs after rewatching episodes and coming across particularly bizarre theories and takes, not before the new season's even out.

Thanks, S5 trailer.

Consider this your spoiler warning, because the rest of this post will all be my personal opinions about a few major story beats that were revealed + the rough outline for a fix-it AU.

It's also a bit ranty, and features some criticisms of the general narrative, so if that's not your cup of tea, feel free to avoid this one.

Li Jing becoming JE/the regent of the Celestial Realm is just hilariously absurd. I mean, it makes a teeny tiny bit more sense than the "Nezha will be the new JE" fan theory, but that's not a very high bar.

1) In-universe, he had done a grand total of nothing while shit was hitting the fan, and only showed up after it was all over. Which, tbh, isn't too far from his role in FSYY. No, wait, at least in FSYY, he killed Luo Xuan via a pagoda to the head, after the guy had all his fire-based magical treasures neutralized and taken away by Princess Longji.

Yeah, congrats, LMK's Li Jing, you've somehow become even more useless than your FSYY and JTTW counterparts——which is a true feat.

2) Even if someone's making him JE/regent, it wouldn't be the Ten Kings. To put it simply: the Underworld doesn't have that authority. They are the most pathetic of all divine bureaucracies, who pretty much only show up to get pushed around and revive the occasional dead guy in JTTW (and I still love them).

Like, they ain't no Hades or Satan. Just the 10 judges of the Dead People Supreme Court. To heavily paraphrase Di Ting in the original JTTW novel:

"How much power do Underworld gods really have? (幽冥之神，能有多少法力)" "...Certainly not enough to stop a rampaging demonic macaque who's as strong as SWK, if I say the truth out loud in here and piss him off. Just send them to the Buddha, please."

An analogy: if the Celestial Host is the imperial court, the Underworld is the ministry in charge of judicial processes and prisons. They don't even have authority over the imperial censors who answer directly to the emperor, let alone the power to determine a successor to the throne during a major crisis.

If this was to make the tiniest bit of sense, Li Jing would be the one commanding THEM, not the other way around. Or if it's Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha himself giving orders to Li Jing…for some reason.

But we know that ain't happening bc of the show's strange aversion to showing Buddhist deities on screen, not to mention it would be very OOC for Ksitigarbha, whose job is granting relief and salvation to souls in the Path of Hell, not judging and punishing them like the Ten Kings.

3) If you must make Li Jing the emperor/regent, you have a more mythos-accurate and obvious choice than the Ten Kings, considering you already got the Four Divine Beasts involved!

Yes, I'm talking about their bosses, the humanoid "directional + elemental gods": Lord Father of the East (Wood), Queen Mother of the West (Metal), Emperor Zhenwu of the North (Water).

No South though...because our mythos can't agree on a single directional god of the South, but for shit and giggles, just imagine Zhurong, Yandi, Huaguang, and the Star of Fiery Virtues all sitting on the same narrow bench, staring awkwardly at each other.

Maybe we can have Ziwei, Great Emperor of the Central Sky and North Stars, who is one of the Four Sovereigns(四御) in Daoism (two of which could also be an alternate choice, but maybe a bit too obscure for foreign audiences).

He commands the stellar deities and heavenly bodies——which the Four Divine Beasts would technically fall under, as guardians of the four quadrants of the sky, each in charge of 7 Lunar Mansions.

4) But if you already have these deities, why the hell would any of them make Li Jing the regent? Wouldn't it be more likely for them to create a Celestial Council of Regents themselves, with Devaraja Li Jing under their command as the leader of what's left of the celestial army?

Like, you can still have them, or one of them, going after the gang and ordering Li Jing to put the fillet on SWK.

I can see Zhenwu the Demon-Vanquisher doing that, since the fillet isn't too different from what he did to Huaguang and a lot of the demons he subdued in JTTN: feeding them magical water/fire pills that would corrode/ignite their insides whenever they tried to resist.

(Yeah, compared to that, the fillet would look like the lenient option, since it's just pain and won't actually dissolve/cook you alive from the inside out...)

And it wouldn't be bc he thought SWK was to blame for the Brotherhood's epic fuck-up...somehow. Like, what even is that logic?!

I mean, I can kinda see the Ten Kings doing it as a pre-emptive "Don't blame us for our shitty security, blame that guy over there!" move...except they are no longer answering to any higher authorities who'd hold them responsible at that point!

"What about Li Jing?" You may ask. Yeah, WHAT ABOUT LI JING? Why does Li Jing have to get involved in this?

If he's forcing the Ten Kings to pass judgement on the gang (which surely doesn't look like it in the trailers), why's he enlisting the help of the weakest faction and not, y'know, his celestial soldiers and other gods?

If the Ten Kings get Li Jing to be their enforcer...well, how the Eighteen Hells did they manage that? What could the Ghost Supreme Court and their crappy prison-torture chamber-soul customs office complex even offer Li Jing as a bribe?

And if their goals were to avoid responsibilities by blaming someone else, how stupid did they have to be to actively involve/create a higher authority who can punish them once the cat gets out of the proverbial bag, instead of, I dunno, just stay where they are and keep their head down???

So in my fix-it AU, it's more of a "Better safe than sorry" scenario, where every demon working for the new Celestial Council must prove their loyalty via swallowing the water/fire pill, now that even more dangerous demons have escaped and are running around in the aftermath of S4.

And Great Sage and company are not exempt from that new law either——"If you are truly righteous and Not Like Them and not planning to rebel, what's there to be afraid of?"

Horrified by the Demon-Vanquishing Mansion's 16th century standards of "justice" and "mercy", they naturally would not have any of it, and thus the conflict begins.

Not only would this show the fallout of Azure's misguided rebellion——that, in trying to make a better world, he had made it 120% worse for both humanity and demonkind in less drastic and more realistic ways aside from dooming reality to irreversible destruction, it would also help with the major show-not-tell problem about Celestial cruelty bc the "good guys" in power saw no problem with this kind of shit.

If you want your lawful antagonists who take Order to its extremes, the warrior sovereign in black leading an elite army of demon-hunters + penal legions made of "reformed" demons would be a better choice than the Ghost Supreme Court, don't ya think?

(Fun fact: in Zaju plays, Zhenwu was often said to be the boss of Nezha and Erlang, so him commanding Li Jing wouldn't be too out of place either.)

Now, you may ask, why do I even care? After all, isn't it clear that the show is neither mythos-accurate nor trying to be, considering the JE got K.O.ed by a Bodhisattva's cat of all things?

Not to mention the season's not even out yet, so why jump to conclusions so quickly? Maybe the actual episodes will have explanations that make sense. Relax.

...Cause I don't mind less-than-stellar animations if the story's good, and since I keep noticing the less-than-stellar animations, it clearly isn't good enough.

Also, it's not like it's only the implications that are absurd——my problem is with the whole premise of "Li Jing becoming the new JE/Regent" and "The gang is prosecuted by the Ten Kings for bullshit reasons, even though these guys should not, and never have the power to enforce anything over SWK."

I don't like calling narrative choices "wrong" per se, and prefer to see it on a gradient of "least to most narrative potential". When it comes to adaptations, if the option that is faithful to the original work will result in a less interesting story, then I'll happily take the one that isn't as faithful and takes creative liberties, but makes a better story.

And here, I feel like being faithful to the Chinese mythos inspirations will add to the narrative potential instead of subtract from it, and the idea they come up with kinda...goes against how Chinese pantheons work, in a very simplified and "westernized" manner.

Mostly bc I am a Chinese Underworld mythos lover and think they deserve better than being ominous Hades/Grim Reaper knockoffs. And out of all the possible Chinese gods, Nezha's asshole dad is the least qualified or interesting candidate to fill in the power vaccum left by JE's death.

[voillohiarchive]

questions from here (I’m just. I love infodumping bout insys shit <3)

1. What kind of system are you? (Describe this in any way you like. No need to use -genic or popular terms if you don't want to)

Eltegenic/Caregenic! We are very introject heavy (only like. 3/4 non introjects at this point?) and we are also caretaker/protector heavy! (Around 20 at our current count :D)

2. How many of you are there?

uhm by last count 130 something! our member count changes a lot tho, new members being formed all the time.

3. How long have you known about your plurality?

uh since last year I think? I can’t rlly remember the month or anything I just know we’ve known about it for around a year

4. What kind of spaces/communities do you/did you hang out in? (Both plural-relevant and non-plural-relevant spaces are valid answers, past and present)

TUMBLR!!!!!! It’s my only social media cite and this is where we are out as plural <3

5. Had you heard of DID/OSDD/DDNOS before you became plural/discovered your plurality?

yeah! I actually discovered my plurality from someone with OSDD.

6. Do you have a wonderland/innerworld? If so, what do you call it, and what are some things that you and your system members do there?

yes we do! It changes a lot tho, and like every time I’ve described it it changes right after :/

7. What do you call your system members?

people, headmates

8. If you're plural but don't use the word "system" to describe you&, what word do you use?

we do use system, but our system name is The Voillohi Family if that counts for anything

9. What are some of the best things about being plural?

I get to make sus jokes but with sys therefore adding an entire layer of inside-jokery

10. What are some of the not-so-great things about being plural? (Any answer is valid- nothing is too minor or too major to be an answer to this question.)

when walk-ins walk in knowing nothing about plurality/systemhood but we all have adhd so we don’t teach them for a couple hours

11. Do you have a spiritual or psychological view of your plurality?

wtf does this MEAN- I’m just plural bitch ✌️

12. Do you ever experience "switching" or "posession" or any sort of change in who controls the body? If so, what do you call it, how easy/difficult is it, and what is it like? Were you always able to do this, or did you have to learn how over time?

whoevers fronting at the time :/ unconscious masking makes it difficult tho

13. How do you and your system mates relate to each other? (Are you friends, family, romantically involved, caretakers, etc.)

All of the above

14. Have you come out to anybody in real life/in a singlet space about your plurality? How did it go?

it went alright! varying degrees of… not acceptance but just treating it well ig :/ still love em all tho <3

15. What kinds of forms and appearances do your system members take on?

humanoid mostly. We do have this one guy who doesnt have a body

16. What are you and your system members interested in?

fandoms: ENA, Drawtectives, Cookie Run, Deltarune, The Backrooms, Liminal Spaces, Weirdcore, Dreamcore

17. What is your life like in the meatworld?

>:/ I’m not telling u it’s none of ur business

18. What are your music tastes? Movies? Favorite colors? Animals? List any other favorites as well

Music: LOVE! Intrested in many kinds. Movies: ew no. Colors: we love all of them<3(except coral and mustard yellow) Animals: not animal ppl ig

19. Does your system have a host/original? If so, what do you call them? Explain what role they play in your system

my name is midnight and I don’t rlly front that much anymore ig? I’m just kinda there tbh

20. Do any system members have notable relationships outside of the system? Explain them!

not rlly

21. If you haven't been plural for your entire life/haven't known about your plurality until later in life: what was life like before plurality compared to life now?

you think I have the MEMORY? /j /lh /nm

22. If you chose to become plural: why? What has changed since then?

N/A

23. Is there anything you'd like to say to the plural community at large?

omg endos r real xeno origins r valid stfu sysmeds fuckin dicks

24. Is there anything you'd like to say to any singlets reading this post?

STOP BEING ANTI-ENDO FOR FUCKS SAKE

[chronicas]

A lot of people followed me for Salem and he is one of my favorites in the Main 14 so I’m gonna infodump about him a little bit.

Here’s my first real drawing of him! I came up with Salem while listening to Touch Tone Telephone, because the shit slaps and I wanted to run a Monster of the Week campaign. For the campaign I needed a character that would aid the players in solving the mysteries and bringing all their characters together. The first two characters I made for the campaign were Salem and Danial Cedarwood (who was inspired by Stan Pines and Ned Chicane) Originally, Salem was a Terran radio host and monster hunter. He was supposed to have a contract with the Greater Forest Spirit, Astacagoth (Mothman) that would lend him some of the spirit’s strength. So in the beginning he was just a regular human man who had a contract with a forest spirit. There was also another unnamed NPC who had the same setup as Salem but with Bigfoot, he was scrapped in the end but was still neat.

At the time I had just started listening to TAZ Amnesty and hadn’t met Indrid yet, when I did meet Indrid and Griffin discribed him having the iconic red tinted sunglasses I thought “hm maybe it would be more fun if Salem was literally just Mothman” It was something I had already considered but I wanted to make sure Salem wasn’t like Indrid. I turned away from Salem’s original more mysterious personality and decided to make him incredibly cocky with a very good heart. He became the guy who always put himself between his friends and danger and also was just an absolute himbo.

Salem’s backstory was about Astacagoth, a tired spirit who couldn’t be killed, being hunted by monster hunters who saw him as a threat. After being slain many times, he desired to move on instead of being resurrected over and over again. Helaphiel was an angel and a friend of Astacagoth’s, he asked her to help him move on. Since spirits exist as something between the realm of the living and the dead, they can’t really die. So to allow him to die, the energy in his soul, his essence basically, needed to be repurposed. One night, 13 year old Salem Graves was exploring the woods during one of Astacagoth and Helaphiel’s meetings. Helaphiel agreed to take a portion of Astacagoth’s soul and give it to Salem. So Astacagoth became a mortal soul and moved on while Salem was basically upgraded from mortal to Greater Forest Spirit. Becoming Mothman.

When I started to flesh out his backstory I remembered one of my abandoned characters, Rian. Rian has been at least 3 different characters. Her name, appearance, and personality stay the same every time, but her story changes. I decided to finalize her as Salem’s younger sister. With this new family dynamic I created the two’s backstory. The two were orphaned when Salem was 10 and Rian was only 3. Rian and Salem were half siblings, sharing the same father, they were both raised by Salem’s mother and their father, Rian never knowing her biological mother. Originally, the two shared a mother because Rian’s father was Satan. However I thought it might be fun to put a twist on antichrist by making her the opposite of Christ. You have the Son of God, God being the Father, and the Daughter of Satan, Satan being the Mother.

With Rian as the antichrist I was able to more properly tie in Helaphiel to the story. Rian is one of many antichrists, one of Helaphiel’s sacred duties was to keep an eye on these children and keep them isolated from the devil, postponing the apocalypse. Angels and Forest Spirits tend to get along, so originally the only reason Helaphiel had anything to do with the Graves Siblings was that they happened to live in Astacagoth’s territory, but with Rian in the mix it became a bit flipped. Helaphiel was there for Rian and she would happen to run into Astacagoth from time to time. After Salem became the new Mothman, Helaphiel decided to adopt them because she felt guilty for what she did to Salem. Her original thought was that by making Salem a powerful spirit, he could protect his sister from the demons that would inevitably come to influence her, totally did not consider that she would be turning a 13 yo child into a big scary monster.

Helaphiel is also a member of the High Magic Council of Genesis, at this point in the timeline, Agael Stellarune is the Emissary of the Goddesses of Magic and head of the Council. My girl Lumaria has not been born yet. Salem has no connection to the Council yet.

Fast forward 5 years after Salem’s incident, Salem is 18, Rian is 11. At this point Salem has just graduated High School and Helaphiel leaves Salem alone to take care of Rian so she can return to her job at the Council full time. Salem starts working for the local paper after his online blog starts to grow in popularity. He basically writes stories about the strange happenings in his hometown, of which there are many. He uses this as a way to get information from people so he can better do his job as a Forest Spirit. (Which is to protect his territory and everyone who lives on it)

At this point the war with the Izebellian Empire has begun, Izebel herself is only 8, but by the time she was 5 she was a worthy vessel of Circe’s curse. Ageal forms the New Genesis Alliance as a response.

Three years later, Ageal is murdered by the knight September. Despite the Council assuring her that she doesn’t need to take the position because she’s literally only 10, Lumaria Stellarune takes her mother’s place as Emissary due to her already strong connection to Ashtia and Arcadia.

Under Lumaria’s lead (with Helaphiel, Xoul, and Madam Veronica acting as her closest advisors) Salem begins working closely with the Council as a Terran operative. In this same time, the Vandals move to West Virginia to help with the increase of spiritual activity near Point Pleasant. One night, Qwynn and Anastasiya Vandal encounter Salem and lesser forest spirit, Vistrag, while Salem is in his true form. Qwynn, eager to prove herself as an amateur monster hunter to her parents, makes a familiar contract with Vistrag.

Which is super helpful to Salem when the Vandals move to Valewood, Colorado. /s

After having to move out of his designated territory (something a greater forest spirit hasn’t ever really done before) along with 50+ lesser forest spirits just so one (1) idiot teenager can keep her familiar, Salem moves into the adjacent town, Aderdeen, and starts working at the radio station. There he continues his same gig that he had as a journalist except now he’s a radio show host. Him and a group of college students (of which includes local cryptid enthusiast, Susan Monroe) create a show called The Valewood Night Watch. The actual Valewood Nightwatch consists of Salem, Rian, and local (normal) hunter and bastard Danial Cedarwood who finds out Salem’s secret while hunting one night and decides to help protect his town.

Then my MotW campaign starts. The campaign kicks off with the death of Jack Harper, who was out hiking at night with his best friend Jessica North. The next day Jessica calls the Valewood Night Watch and reports that the thing that killed her friend was some kind of large creature with black leathery wings and tall deer antlers. This will be the hook that will bring together a group of unlikely heroes that will eventually start a forest fire, fail to save the local weatherman from Zombie Jack Harper, get a local sheriff abducted by the Men in Black, and other dumb shit that I love them for.

I don’t know how the campaign will end, but nothing will happen that will drastically change the canon timeline. Everything else is spoilers for the start of Unorthodox ;)

[counterscheming-intensifies]

Salvaged infodump

Once upon a time, THG was hosted on late MSPAF. On top of various shenanigans, the thread was also a good source of hints, most of which weren’t posted elsewhere. Unfortunately, i realised a few months too late to start preserving it, so in the end out of 69 pages there are about eleven missing. Tidbits are organised in chronological order, with links pinpointing the exact timeframe when applicable.

117-125

Character interaction is a big part of this adventure- treat the people you meet one way, and you'll get one result, and treat them another way, and you'll get a different one- it could even lead to a death of a character if you aren't careful. So yes, decisions about how you behave towards fellow kidnappees will be pretty important! Choose your friends wisely...

Also, yes, symbols on the doors correspond to symbols on the keycards. Only the keycard with that symbol can open a door with that symbol. The doors can't be opened in any other way except for the administrative override.

126-131

Haha, let's just say our antagonist has a thing for details. I wanted to include a line where the guy noted that all the information was known beforehand, the whole procedure was just to verify it, but it sounded awkward with the rest of the monologue, so I left it out.

And yes, it is very important! Think of The Walking Dead Video Game- in case you don't know, the decisions you make in that game towards the people around you can determines things like whether they'll betray you or not, help you or not, etc. The "social links" that Kate and her fellow kidnappees will have will be very vital towards future events (and its all in the audience's hands, seriously, I'm not going to decide who the characters gets close to). I might even make a small "summary of relationships" at the end of each part of the story, just to see where its strong and where it's lacking among our protagonists.

143-149

Though I have a note about this guy you might want to take into consideration! Half of his lineage is European, and half of his lineage is East Asian. This is a pretty big influence on his life (you'll see much later just exactly how), but yeah, just something to keep in mind, perhaps!

175 As reported by LuvianBlue:

AUTHOR HERE to impart a few maybe-helpful hints to understanding what those symbols mean!

They DO mean something. What they mean, however, won't really be elucidated until well into the adventure. Also, there IS a pattern to them and the way they are arranged (the picture Lawsome provided shows the correct "order" of them), and maybe later, as further details are revealed, you'll smack your forehead and realize that it was kind of clear what they were meant to be all along. Maybe.

The same goes for the characters. Each character is tied to his or her symbol more than just by wearing the same color. Things like personality, backstory, motifs and themes surrounding them...they match the meaning of their symbol in more ways than one.

I'll say right now that there isn't really a correlation between where people were put and the symbols outside their doors. I needed to create an opportunity for the character bearing the purple symbol to be able to open Kate's door, and therefore put her in a room that could only be opened by that character. I then put the rest in rooms that didn't match the symbols on their keycards...except Seth. If you looked closely at the map that Connor discovered before, Seth's keycard matches the symbol outside his door.

Is that intentional? Maybe. Maybe not. (Bear in mind that we actually never saw what Seth's room looked like, due to it being in darkness...)

207-212

The pendant has a purpose, but isn't in any way related to leashes or mind control! In fact, Seth was just being metaphorical about the leashes thing. What he was basically saying is that scientists have a tendency to depend completely upon other people in order to be able to do their work, and the same goes for the Achronists. He, on the other hand, would be the last person to rely on someone completely like they do- he'd rather be the one that holds the power and is being relied on, the one "holding" the leash.

As for mind control, no, the Achronists didn't do mind control. They were just really, really persuasive. Plus, having a lot of money to give to people also helped with getting people along with their cause. Hope that helps!

246-253

(Somewhere between 236 and 246, a discussion started concerning the meaning behind symbols and a bunch of proposals were debunked.)

This update contains a WHOLE lot of hints to backstories and whatnot. Really do read the dialogue, it contains an enormous amount of clues.

Go back and look at the dialogues and stuff again! Often, throwaway lines or things that seem like forgettable statements do contain foreshadowing. There's even a throwaway line pertaining to the symbols that is a really big hint as to what it supposed to be. (It's not in this update, though.)

The meaning of the symbols are a bit...simpler than you might be thinking they are. But they still do play a big role in how I designed the characters, their personalities, and how they interact with one another, as well as their role in the story.

???

ALSO HINTS FOR THE NEXT [264-274] UPDATE: 1. No one is going to die. However, Cancel's gift will not be something anyone wants to have if they want to survive... 2. An example will be made of Kate for sure. 3. There is more than one of everything. (Don't take this TOO literally, but keep it in mind.) 4. Happy birthday, Ms. Greenwood.

If you are concerned about where this adventure will be heading/want a better understanding of what and will not be present in this adventure/want to read some of the author’s rambling (without spoilers) about the basis and goal for the story in and of itself: [the resulting explanation is LONG]

312-322

(concerning Daniel's introduction)

But I never confirmed him or anyone as the one who wrote on the walls so I'm not sure where you got that from????? Besides, none of the cast has any access to any paint-like substances at the current moment, and I CAN confirm that those drawings are rather old (I would say older than Connor, and he's the second-oldest of the cast at age 40.) You won't find out until much later about where those came from. Also, I can definitely confirm the last guy is not a schizophrenic either! He's high-strung, prone to panic, and may be a little more mentally vulnerable than some of our cast, but he's not hallucinating or anything of the like. I promise that if I will show a character involved with or dealing with such a controversial topic as mental illness, I will do my research first before undertaking such a thing. I understand and realize that such things are very serious, and that not representing it with truth and honesty would be offensive and rude to those who are dealing with or have been exposed to such things. Having a few traits of what would seem like behavior of someone crazy does not necessarily crazy make. (...)

He Who Has Yet To Be Named is NOT schizophrenic + I have NOT confirmed who has gone and painted those things on the wall. I CAN confirm that those black scrawls are over 40 years old.

323-330

In order to add some fuel to the speculation, have a few hints/vague tidbits about characters and such that might help (or further confuse) your theories and such for this adventure while it's on break! 1. ACHRONICITY. MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE. 2. There is a reason why Seth is tall. 3. She had something taken away, but then got something in return. 4. Dark, moist places are more prevalent than you think. 5. Goodnight, sweet prince. Flights of angels would sing you to your sleep, but they don't particularly want to at the moment. Actually, they'll never sing for you. Not in a million years would they sing for you, you little nothing. 6. You'll never expect to see what you'll see out the window in this place. 7. He's like a glass house, and it'll only take one stone to knock him down. 8. It could happen in two ways. From the inside out, and from the outside in. One is quicker than the other, but either one will happen whether you like it or not.

Shikishima: 2 P 4:2? Like, 2 Peter 2:4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment? Yes, this is correct! Hehehe, glad somebody figured it out.

Magnum: Psalms 2 2:4 "He that sitteth in heaven laugheth, the Lord hath them in derision" Though, oddly enough, this one fits really well, too. Hmmm.

Tantalizing phrases, as referenced by Godbot: The one who let a weed grow where it shouldn’t have The one who devoted their life to protecting a monster The one who paints their glass house to look like stone The one who was blessed with a curse The one who wanted to watch it all burn with a smile The one who took what was never theirs in the first place. The one who didn’t feel regret. The one who is one of two. The one who came after the sky fell.

331-337

as a commentary to this picture: A couple of notes about this guy: It is NOT Cancel. Cancel and this man are two different characters in terms of...well, a lot of things. They are not the same person. Things might have been added/left out for artistic/symmetry reasons. (As in, he looks like this, but not EXACTLY like this.)

And in the end, he was all alone. What a poor, unlucky boy.

K25fF: You've got to in some way make him hate you to create a paradox. Does this mean that if Kate accidentally killed Daniel in a flashback, he would stop existing in the current time? THIS IS PRECISELY WHY THIS ADVENTURE INCLUDES NO TIME TRAVEL oh gosh my brain hurts because paradoxes

Interestingly enough, I'll say now that if you somehow were able to pick and kill a very particular person out of our cast in the past, then the entire Human Game, as well as Cancel's and the facility's existence, would never have happened. Good luck guessing which one it is.

pikajens: Is Camilla's voice supposed to represent smoke?? It's interesting that Abigail doesn't seem interested in it at all. Would expect the most boring voice for her would be the typical valley girl. I designed the voices on patterns or shapes which I thought fit the characters best (Kate's is comprised of little "explosions" suiting her impulsiveness, while Seth's is sharp and full of triangles, for example), so Camilla's is more or less a collection of straight lines, though you can very well see it as smoke! Abigail finds it a bit boring because Camilla's voice is really monotone and doesn't give much away in terms of feeling. Remember those teachers in school who would drone on and on and on about a particular subject? It's kind of like that - Abigail likes voices that she can at least use to figure out who the person is she's listening to, or voices that in general sound nice to hear. Camilla's voice does none of that.

Godbot: AWESOME KEYCARD LIST This is a really good summary of events so far in the whole keycard chain! Let me help along with it a bit with some information to help you all along.

365-372

In scenes like this, there is probably a whole lot more reaction among the cast going on than you think. Just try to imagine that instead of dead silence for characters who are not speaking, you got Seth doing a popcorn.gif 50% of the time, Camilla going "Hmm." or "Oh" at random points, and Kate cursing up a storm underneath her breath...stuff like that.. I WISH I COULD SHOW/WRITE IT ALL but alas, being an author sometimes means you have to get rid of some reactions to bring others to the front. ;;

Beastnix: just to let you know two punishments at once may be fatal It won't be. Making people suffer is definitely on Cancel's list of things to do, but killing a person directly is something that the guy specifically said was more of a blessing than anything else.

So, just a clarification and some hints on what this punishment is going to do for either Daniel or Kate. It will be very emotionally traumatizing for Daniel, because actually, it's going to be more of a trigger. You know how people are triggered by the sight of blood or loud sounds or something similar to a traumatic experience they have gone through before? That's what will happen to Daniel. It'll be something very personal for him, and like I said, he will be "out of it" for a while if he chooses to take the punishment. Kate, on the other hand, has no traumatic memories associated with this punishment (as it was never supposed to be her punishment to begin with), but in conjunction with the "gift" she already has, it'll probably be more physically painful for her. I can't go into details, but it is highly possible that one will activate the other. It is also highly possible that Cancel will modify it slightly for Kate and make it worse for her if she decides to take it.

373-379

BY THE WAY, FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WANT TO KNOW HOW THE COLLAR THING WORKS, HAVE A LOOK AT THIS DIAGRAM OF SORTS

This is...Cancel's computer. Remember the one he was talking to earlier? This is the very same one. It will be retrieving and posting documents/notes/videos/soundclips/etc. that relate to the cast over the course of the adventure, some of which will give hints to the plotline and some which will just be there to serve as character tidbits that won't be shown in the adventure. Now, an interesting part of this is that you can actually try to inquire things of the computer to retrieve. It won't answer anything like "WHO IS CANCEL REALLY" but if you ask something like "I want to see more about Kate Greenwood's school life", it can do one of three things: 1) it can deem the inquiry irrelevant and won't post anything, 2) it will store the inquiry for later use and post something later as an answer to it, or 3) it can answer the inquiry right away. Do think carefully about inquiries...some might turn up some interesting things if worded the right way!

Also, bear in mind that this "computer" will be a part of the universe of The Human Game, and therefore could be considered a character of its own - if you've ever watched Person of Interest, this computer is rather like The Machine, and will be a "character" that will react and change depending on what happens in the plot. (Like, if I have Cancel make an in-canon request of it, it will be shown on the actual blog, and I'll note that there are updates to it in the thread so you can take a look.) So, do keep an eye on it - things might happen which won't be expected...

nuclearInsanity: Who's doing the inquiries? And does the masked fucker know about it? You'll just have to figure it out as time goes on. And no, Cancel doesn't know about it.

JackRises: 1st of July was when it began for Kate Greenwood and the site is saying 11st of July is when it began for Daniel Nox? i'm assuming you uh added an extra 1 there I never stated anywhere that the 1st of July is when the events of The Human Game started for Kate Greenwood, only that it was the day she remembered it as before she woke up in the facility. So yes, the extra 1 is not a typo.

THINGS THAT HAVE CHANGED IN CHARACTER DESIGN

Also, want to know a fun fact about the symbols? Here one of the patterns to them - you could have guessed the genders of the remaining members of the cast during the adventure if you have paid attention to the order

THINGS THAT HAVE CHANGED IN THE STORY

THINGS THAT ARE HINTS/THINGS YOU MIGHT WANT TO KEEP IN MIND In which I dispel some popular mysteries and say some things I think need to be said. 1. Daniel does NOT have multiple personalities! I know a lot of things point to something like that, but trust me, I can confirm he doesn't. 2. The facility is located on Earth. 3. I know a lot of you have been asking the computer/Achronicity about certain things like how Abigail lost her eyesight, what Seth's eyes look like (and his medical records), and other really obvious mysteries like that - unfortunately I can't answer such things at this time, no matter how much I want to. I might answer some after certain events in the adventure happen, to give you further details about them, but there are some mysteries I have to keep mum on, I'm sorry. I'll try to answer as many as I possibly can, though! 4. Cancel was there for the first iteration of The Human Game. 5. What monsters dwell in the hearts of men? 6. A and A. 7. Order vs chaos, science vs the supernatural, and "good" vs. "evil" are some of the main conflicts of this adventure. 8. Everyone is lying about something. Some may know much more than they're letting on.

AND FINALLY, THE TWO POSSIBLY-NEW CHARACTERS THAT MIGHT SHOW UP AT SOME POINT (OR MIGHT HAVE ALREADY SHOWN UP):

[Also we got the details on Daniel’s shirt]

428-437

Chizita: [list of all the ways/reasons/etc lies can be flung around, potential sources included.] All of those things you listed are definite possibilities, even including lying to all of you, the readers. Lies come in many shapes and sizes...

Viridis: The author has, however, confirmed there will be no time travel involved in the adventure... And yes, yes I have.

456-464

Masquerade! Paper faces on parade . . . Masquerade! Hide your face, so the world will never find you!

(in response to a comment) What Seth wasn't trying to do in this situation was control the others. No, that was one of the last things he wanted to do. If one recalls, when given the control to be the leader of the situation, he refused and pretty much said it was a ridiculous idea. Seth never wanted to gain power through using others. He wanted to isolate himself from the very start. Why? He wanted to gain power through fear and the misunderstanding that he was someone more terrible than he actually is.

475-484

Masks cannot feel pain. Once again. Masks cannot feel pain.

Redsoff: Uh, is the Mask seeing with its own eyes, or with Seth's eyes? Because maybe we could stab through the eyelids or something. The only other thing I'm curious is how long it takes before a takeover is permanent, since it seemed only minutes had passed since Seth had his "possession".

It's seeing with Seth's eyes, which you might have caught with the fact that he didn't really recognize Camilla off the bat when she approached ("is that the green cow"). It's also using his voice. It's using everything he has, really...

And how long "takeovers" actually take will be covered later. However, I can definitely say that the speed isn't always the same, it does vary from person to person, and depends on some unmentioned factors as well.

...have the sneak peek that I promised I would post. It depicts a very important event in The Human Game's history, so feel free to speculate on what it means...

???

at some point after p492 the main thread got introduced to myopic pedant and abdicated harbringer

a few vague and intriguing snippets which you might find of interest: A name is sort of like a mask, too, isn't it? I have never been here, but...I've seen this place before. I know I have. Destructive interference. We saw angels through those doors. The Heir That Never Was.

527-533

Viridis: Word of God from TRL's Tumblr is that Joe used to write under a pseudonym. And apparently his name is not short for Joseph and he has no middle names, so he's literally "Joe Verger", period. MMMMMMH. His pseudonym was Solomon Strix! I cannot confirm anything else, though…

565-573

All I can say about Seth is that I have PLANS for him. BIG PLANS.

Categories do have a relation to one another. They are all based on a certain “theme”. You will see what that “theme” is in due time.

Moreover, early on there were a bunch of ideas thrown around about the symbols’ meaning, and all of them debunked.

Other than that, i’ve had a bunch of links conviniently labeled with quotes, that i recall coming from the author as well:

when angels go bad, they are worse than anyone else.

(On the topic of Abigail) You'll see later how this will be used for something she is very knowledgeable with that no one else in this adventure has....

Cancel/The Computer IS CANON. In a way. It's possibly one-sided.

You cannot claim what was never yours.

Masks can start to display expressions. Not as much as say, a regular face

Everyone has their part to play.

@thehappinessmachine can i have this signed & stamped?

[patheticphallacy]

Helllllo! I’m back!

For everyone who keeps up with my blog, I’ve only been gone for two weeks. In reality, I wrote every single post that’s come out in April mid-March, so I haven’t written a single post since Quarantine properly kicked in. Wow.

As is usual for me, I really just needed a break. I’ve spent 4 weeks playing Stardew Valley and listening to audiobooks, and I can’t even be mad about it. It’s really rejuvenated my creativity, and it’s given me some new ideas on how I want to do wrap ups for this blog.

What better way to come back than with a Weekend Reading post? As you might have guessed from my absence, I’ve barely made a dent in the OWLs TBR I made. So… I’m just gonna do the OWLS for two months. Rules mean nothing to me.

My laptop is also really buggy at the moment, so I won’t be able to spend as long writing blog posts. I’ll aim for my usual 1 or 2 reviews a week, but the amount of ‘long’ posts I can manage will probably be cut down until I have enough money to get a new laptop for writing!

1. Dig by A.S. King

Dig was actually recommended to me in a webinar I took part in, hosted by Reading Glasses and Professional Book Nerds.

I asked for books with nihilistic teens and dark humour; I was recommended Dig and Glory O’Brien. I’m only two or three chapters in, and the chapters are super short, so I know I’ll breeze through it.

  2. Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

This is my current audiobook listen, and boy is it a long one!

I’ve been listening to it on 2.5x speed so it won’t take me too long to get through what’s left. But that’s still over 300 pages, which is about 12 hours of listening, and just feels like way too much. I don’t think this book has anything unnecessary in it, honestly, I just wasn’t prepared for the sheer size of it.

  3. Kappa Quartet by Daryl Qilin Yam

This will probably be the first book I finish this weekend on Friday.

It’s ‘weird fiction’, and by weird, I mean it’s very weird. The way characters are connected, with recurring characters throughout, is honestly incredible. It feels almost seamless in how it’s done, and I’m so glad I took my friend’s recommendation to read this!

  4. Horror: A Literary History edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes

I’ve been steadily making my way through each essay in this collection for a few weeks. Each essay is literally just a breakdown of horror throughout history, focusing on American and British horror.

I’ll have to find other non-fiction for going outside of Western literature, and I feel like it’s a real shame that there weren’t added essays by experts on this fiction, since the stories and beliefs of other cultures– oral storytelling being a major part of their long ancestries– have been appropriated so frequently by Western horror authors. Even one or two essays focusing on this writing would have been a helluva lot better than the ‘0’ in this, and there’s a shocking lack of non-white authors even mentioned in what was presented.

They mention ‘horror adjacent’ work so often, even going on long explanations of how horror’s roots are more in the gothic and the feeling of horror, rather than cliches and tropes, for a long time, and yet they barely spend any time on Beloved by Toni Morrison, which is an incredibly important text within the ever-changing horror genre. I’m not sure it’s even mentioned in the chapter on horror between 1970-2000. It’s just highly disappointing!

5. Rules for Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

You may know this as Eight Perfect Murders. The title change is exactly like The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle; i.e., completely fucking pointless.

Based on the premise– which reminded me a lot of one of my favourite crime shows, Castle– you think this is going to be a lot more exciting than it really is, considering someone is literally committing murder. It’s all tell, with absolutely no show. I don’t think the reader is ever left to find things out by themselves, without some massive infodump, and I’m just glad this is a quick read so I can cross it off my list in another 100 pages.

YES! I’m finally carrying on these series! I haven’t read One Piece since August of 2019, and Haikyuu!! since May of 2019, which is, frankly, disgusting, considering both are favourite series of mine. I ended up buying a Shonen Jump subscription, so I have access to 100 chapters of manga a day for only £2 a month. The price was lowered to combat the rise of piracy within the industry, and researching into it has just made me realise that this is the best way to consume my manga from now on.

Shonen Jump actually has a lot of the longer series I read, so I’ll be reading those on there. I’ll still be keeping up with My Hero Academia physically, but it saves a lot of money on over 150+ volumes of other series I would have otherwise had to buy. I can afford £2 a month, and I’ll put money into manga with the volumes I’ll no doubt buy of what I can’t find on Shonen Jump!

I hope everyone is doing okay during this quarantine!

Thank you for reading ❤

Goodreads|Twitter|Instagram|Letterboxd|Patreon

Weekend Reading #4: I’m Back! Helllllo! I'm back! For everyone who keeps up with my blog, I've only been gone for two weeks.

[thelowercasegimmick]

Opinion Piece, 9/2/16: Opening Lines in YA (Part 2)

Here’s Part 1, if you haven’t read it already.

Context/Backstory

Tommy was a talker and didn’t much like the other ghosts, so he was forever talking to Kelpie.  That’s how she divided them up: talkers and silent ones.  Most ghosts were silent.  Most ignored the living.  Kelpie thought that was just as well.

- Razorhurst, Justine Larbalestier

This one is pretty self-explanatory - open your novel with information that’s necessary to understand the story that follows.  I feel like this is the most obvious way to open your novel, and if you’re not careful, it can end up being nothing more than a bland infodump.

Addie and I were born into the same body, our souls’ ghostly fingers entwined before we gasped our very first breath.  Our earliest years together were also our happiest.  Then came the worries - the tightness around our parents’ mouths, the frowns lining our kindergarten teacher’s forehead, the question everyone whispered when they thought we couldn’t hear.

- What’s Left of Me, Kat Zhang

This tries to be interesting, but I’m afraid it turns out kind of bland.  This book actually has a really interesting premise, but the turns of phrase here are so cliched that it’s difficult to see its potential.  It doesn’t do much to establish any sort of tone, and it’s not nearly as interesting as it could be.

When these opening lines work, it’s usually for one of three reasons: it either highlights an interesting detail of the story, it sets a mood, or it establishes a character’s voice.  This one is a good example of an interesting detail:

There is one mirror in my house.  It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs.  Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.

- Divergent, Veronica Roth

This is kind of a misleading opening line, because the setting that it’s describing doesn’t really have much impact on the novel as a whole.  But taken on its own, it works really well.  This is an odd detail, and it suggests some very interesting worldbuilding.  Contrast it to this:

When Egypt was young, and the first pyramids were being built with the sweat and blood of slavery, there lived a small civilization on the outskirts of society, led by a coven of thirteen men and women called the Dasi.

- Snakecharm, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

This also describes an aspect of the worldbuilding, but it’s a lot more cliched and less interesting than the one in Divergent.  Which is a shame, because the worldbuilding in this novel is actually very inventive, and there were surely a lot of interesting details that Atwater-Rhodes could’ve opened with.  But she clearly saw the opening lines only as an opportunity to get across information, whereas Roth cared about making that information interesting.

Of course, your focus doesn’t have to be on the information itself.  Here’s an opening line that sets the mood:

Aisling’s mother died at midsummer.  She had fallen sick so suddenly that some of the villagers wondered if the fairies had come and taken her, for she was still young and beautiful.  She was buried three days later beneath the hawthorn tree behind the house, just as twilight was darkening the sky.

- Ash, Malinda Lo

The information itself isn’t particularly interesting, but Lo’s prose is.  Ash is a retelling of Cinderella, and it has a very fairy tale-esque mood.  Lo does a good job of establishing that right off the bat, with her characteristically strong prose.  There are lots of great sensory details that help with this.  I couldn’t find a ton of examples that focus mostly on mood like this one does, which is a shame - it strikes me as a big missed opportunity.

The other type of opening line that doesn’t focus on the information itself is the type of opening line that establishes a character’s voice.  The best example I can think of for this type of opening line is The Catcher in the Rye (1953), but that book opens with a three-page long paragraph that I don’t feel like reprinting here, so here’s a shorter example:

April Fool’s Day.  Totally appropriate for the idiot who turned down a chance to go home to Earth because she thinks she should play hero.  Fortunately, all my contribution to the hero-ing business involves is standing where I’m put, ready to be hauled about by the people whose job it is to save the planet, or the galaxy, or however much of the universe is supposedly at risk.  And what I’ve really signed up for is more labrattery, to figure out what ‘touchstone’ means.

- Lab Rat One, Andrea K. Host

The information that this paragraph conveys doesn’t really matter - it’s essentially just a recap of the previous book in the series.  What matters is the voice.  Cassie - the main character - has a super-distinct voice, and if it’s not established right away, it’s going to throw the reader off.  So Host goes out of her way to establish as many of the quirks of this novel’s prose as she can, right off the bat.  I talked about this a little in Part 1, but backstory tends to be a very good way of establishing character voice, because there’s a lot of potential for a conversational tone.  That conversational tone is perfect for establishing voice quirks, and it can make information interesting that otherwise might’ve been tedious.

Last but not least, I wanted to share my favorite opening line that provides context and backstory.  And yes, I’m aware that this is a huge cliche among YA fans, but I can’t pretend I don’t love it.

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

- The Fault In Our Stars, John Green

This is another one that establishes character voice, and in a subtle way, it sets up the mood as well.  (Green doesn’t beat around the bush - he lets you know right away that this novel is gonna be pretty depressing.)  Other than that, I’m not even sure if I can describe why I love this opening line so much, except that there’s something very resonant about the word choice, particularly in the way the sentence resolves itself at the end.  It just works, in a way that’s hard to articulate.

Flashback

The night Sarah and Ben showed up out of the blue.  You should’ve known or suspected something was wrong.  The vibe was weird, but then it had been for a while, and Sarah was… Sarah.  Up in your room eve, when she kissed you and you lost yourself in her.  The moment it all came crashing down.

- She Loves You, She Loves You Not, Julie Anne Peters

I’m not gonna spend a lot of time on this category, because I only found about a dozen opening lines that fit the bill.  This is essentially a more interesting way of providing context or backstory than simply stating what the audience needs to know.  It uses what works about In Media Res (the immediacy of the scene), to accomplish what the context/backstory opening lines want to do.  At least, in theory.  In practice, the flashbacks often turn out to have more narrative summary than real action.  Which can still be interesting - here’s one I liked a lot:

On the day of my mother’s funeral, we all wore white.  My father said that dressing ourselves in the stiff, pale cloth would be a mitzvah.  I ran the word over my tongue as I straightened a starched new shirt against my shoulders.  I was twelve when she died, and Rebbe Davison had told us about mitzvot only a few days before - how every good deed we did for the other citizens of the ship would benefit us, too.  He said that doing well in school was a mitzvah, but also other things.  Like watching babies get born in the hatchery or paying tribute at funerals.  When he said that, he looked across the classroom at me with a watery gleam in his eyes.

- Starglass, Phoebe North

This has just enough detail to feel immediate, but it also keeps the distance that you’d expect from a flashback in a first-person novel.  The scene it describes is also pretty interesting, both because of the emotional aspects of what’s being described, and because of the details of Judaism, which is pretty unusual for a YA novel.  But on the whole, there’s not a lot to say about novels that open with flashbacks, and this post is long enough as it is.

Reflection

My name is Elizabeth but no one’s ever called me that.  My father took one look at me when I was born and must have thought I had the face of someone dignified and sad like an old-fashioned queen or a dead person, but what I turned out like is plain, not much there to notice.  Even my life so far has been plain.  More Daisy than Elizabeth from the go.

- How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff

I’ll admit: this was kind of my ‘miscellaneous’ category.  All I mean by ‘refelction’ is that it opens with either the narrator - be it a character or the omnipotent voice of third person - reflecting on the story in some way, shape, or form.  That’s a very broad category, and I ended up including a variety of styles too wide to generalize about easily.

I like to run at night.  No one watches me.  No one hears my sneakers slipping in the loose gravel at the side of the road.  Gravity doesn’t exist.  My muscles don’t hurt.  I float, drift past churches, stores, and schools, past the locked houses and their flicker-blue windows.  My mind is quiet and clear.

- Catalyst, Laurie Halse Anderson

This line, for example, almost counts as In Media Res, but the narrator isn’t describing a specific night of running, she’s reflecting on the experience of running in general.  That’s a subtle distinction, but I think it reflects a big difference between reflective opening lines and In Media Res.  The point of this line isn’t to put you into a specific scene, but into a specific mindset.  You kind of feel how the narrator feels while she’s running, without many specific sensory details.  That’s not necessarily better or worse than a specific scene - each of them have their uses.  Here, I think it works really well, because the distance from the scene emphasizes the surreal, almost spiritual nature of running to this narrator.

But anyway, when I said that there was too wide a variety to generalize easily, what I meant was that there are a lot of lines like that one, and also a lot like this:

Gigi said my guardian angel must have been watching over me real good when I was born.  Maybe so, but I wish the angel had watched over me less and seen to Mama more.  I never liked hearing about how I came into this world anyway.  It didn’t seem natural, a live baby coming out of a dead woman.  Gigi said it was the greatest miracle ever to come down the pike.

- Dancing on the Edge, Han Nolan

This doesn’t resemble In Media Res at all - it’s clearly the narrator reflecting on an aspect of her life that will be significant later on in the story.  There’s not much I could say that applies to both this and Catalyst.  But I also like this opening line a lot.  It mostly works because of how well it sets the tone for the book, in really subtle ways that you probably wouldn’t even notice.  This is a somewhat weird and unsettling novel, and that’s established with a somewhat weird and unsettling detail.  But it’s not at all ham-fisted; you’d never guess that Nolan actively set out to do that, unless you’ve already read the novel.

The universal factor among when these opening lines don’t work, though, is a lot easier to identify: whatever the character is reflecting on just isn’t that interesting.

The night is full of mystery.  Even when the moon is brightest, secrets hide everywhere.  Then the sun rises and its rays cast so many shadows that the day creates more illusion than all the veiled truth of the night.

- Demon in my View, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

The best way to describe this is cliched.  I know I keep using Atwater-Rhodes for examples of bad opening lines, which is weird, because I’d actually call myself a fan of her writing.  But she doesn’t really seem to have a knack for opening stories, and this is the worst example of all.  This could be the opening line of any horror novel from the last 40 years - there’s nothing new here at all.  The information is so cliched that it’s essentially meaningless.

The one other consistency I found among these lines is that single-sentence opening lines don’t tend to work very well here.  For example:

I only go out at night.

- In the After, Demitri Lunetta

I think the point of that line was to fill me with questions.  “How creepy,” I’m supposed to say.  “Why does she only go out at night?”  In reality, my eyes start to glaze over.  That’s just not enough information to capture the attention of anyone who’s read more than a few books in their life.  If a single-sentence opener is going to work, the information has to be genuinely weird.

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.  About anything.

- Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go

Now this is an opening line that intruiged me when I first read it.  The whole ‘amazing magic thing gets annoying once you’re used to it’ is cliched by this point, but the slang, combined with the circumstance, draws me in.  The spelling of ‘yer’ is something I’ve never seen anywhere else, and the fact that this country-ish slang is combined with a talking dog (in a non-cheesy way) suggests - correctly, I might add - that the novel to follow will be unique.

And, finally, my favorite of these opening lines:

Ironically, since the attacks, the sunsets have been glorious.  Outside our condo window, the sky flames like a bruised mango in vivid orange, red, and purple.  The clouds ignite with sunset colors, and I’m almost scared those of us caught below will catch on fire too.

- Angelfall, Susan Ee

This is kind of a weird way of establishing tension, but it works surprisingly well.  Ee uses a really unlikely symbol - the setting sun - as well as bright imagery, to illustrate what is implied to be a coming apocalypse.  The ‘since the attacks’ is vague, but it’s just enough to suggest the context for these sunsets without getting bogged down in unnecessary details.  And the mention of a condo suggests something about the setting that’s about to light on fire - again, it’s vague, but it’s remarkable that such a small detail is enough to give me the image of an entire town.  It’s the perfect opening for an action novel.

There’s no formula to writing the perfect opening lines.  Ultimately, different things work in different circumstances, and how your novel opens depends on what your novel is about.  But I wanted to make these articles to give an idea of the tools that writers have at their disposal to create opening lines.  Thinking about opening lines leads to discussions about how to grab a reader’s attention, and even how storytelling functions.  Even if the opening lines of a novel won’t make or break a book, these discussions are worth having.