#glimwarden

[alexanderwales]

One of the dominant models of magic and superheroes is that everyone has their "thing", what I would call a bespoke magic system, but is mostly just a power that sits orthogonal to all other powers. This crops up all the time, because it's really really good for having dynamic fights, for characterizing people through their powers, for having new surprises and twists, and just generally keeping things going.

It's adaptable to all kinds of genres. Superheroes are the obvious one, whether it's canonized as Quirks or just an aspect of the setting. But I'm pretty sure that the basic concept was first invented in anime, with marital arts settings, where every character had their own jutsu or whatever, or the system in theory is all about ki manipulation or equivalent exchange but in practice everyone has their own particular niche. You can slot this into urban fantasy, giving every vampire their own special Power, or you can have some magical fantasy thing where everyone has their own unique Semblance.

So this is all well and good, but it leaves us with a narrative hole, which is progression. Having a unique power is cool, because you can think of new uses for it, have unique matchups, etc., but it doesn't give you that juicy sense of becoming more, and if you're facing down terrifying villains with their own powers, then a god-tier power is just kind of ... random. Luck of the draw, rather than the consequence of a powerful will or keen mind.

You can strip out limitations and amplify effects, and this is cool and good, or you can lean back away from uniqueness and toward uniformity, which I think is sometimes the right call, depending on your narrative needs.

So you say that actually the guy who can swap places with someone and the guy who can cut people from a distance are both unwitting hyperspecialists in the same field of magic or whatever, and that in theory, with unlimited time to train and experiment and explore, each could do what the other does.

This allows for a lot of snazzy narrative stuff. Two intense rivals "learn" each other's techniques, or at least adapt them into their own technique. Maybe the guy who does teleport swaps never learns to cut from a distance, but his teleport swap incorporates a cut into it, slashing at the person he's trading places with. A widower incorporates aspects of his dead wife's power, a mentor passes down elements of his technique to all his students, a young protagonist has some angst about using the aspect he got from his abusive father, etc.

If powers are a reflection of character, then you get to physically manifest a character's relationship with other people.

[somewhere-in-the-dungeon]

"Glimwarden - Semi-pastoral setting, but with monsters on the outskirts of town. We tried using Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine for it, but it didn’t really suit us. We revisited it a second time using Pathfinder, which went a little better, but I didn’t like the traditional fantasy kitchen-sink stuff that Pathfinder brought to the table."

-Worth the Candle, by cthulhuraejepson/Alexander Wales

. . . Wut. I would not have guessed at trying to do Glimwarden with Chuubo's.

[fipindustries]

also, having thought again of alexander wales in a long time i decided to check glimwardens again to see if it had updated.

turns out it is absolutely dead, whcih is a shame, i hope the guy comes back to writing in some form of another, i really liked his other works

[thecurioustale]

thank you so much for following! im really curious what you found interesting in my blog though

About a year ago, @nostalgebraist shared Prelude to After The Hero with his audience, and I remember it caught a (very!) few people’s attention--yourself included. I wasn’t set up yet on social media at the time, but I filed a mental note to return to those folks in the future and open hailing frequencies. This was a mental note I promptly forgot, because I have a memory like a sieve, but when I saw you reblog my question the other day your username was familiar, and then a very eager little mental process ran up to me and said “Mister J! Mister J! Telegram from 2016!”

The answer to your question comes in two parts: What caught my attention about you originally was your interest in the Prelude (self-centered, but true!). It fascinates me how different people are attracted to different aspects of my work. I remember that you liked the “Dark Lord Reasonable” angle and some of the repartee among the Guard of Galavar. Once I remembered you (from your reblog the other day), I would have followed you back one way or another. I’m comfortable as a writer, but I’m really bad at the skillset of self-promotion by which an indie writer lives or dies. My thinking is: It’s really flattering when someone cares about my work enough to say something about it, and those folks probably hold the secret to building the kind of community where I can someday earn a sustainable living from my art. (So, seriously! Any time you want to ask or comment about my stories, I’d be delighted! I’m also open to suggestions or criticism you may have on the direction of my social media efforts. I’m completely new at this. Nostalgebraist makes it look easy but I know it’s not.)

The second part is that, when I went reading through your tumblr today, I found plenty to interest me. For instance, your glimwardens post, featuring the character Philip, made me go “I know what that feels like!” But the biggest draw is that you’re simultaneously passionate and able to let your passion come through in your words. That’s the sort of thing that interests me in people. It’s not even so much about what the passion actually centers on. It’s just being able to look at a person and see the lights on upstairs.

[alexanderwales]

The Index

This is an index of things I've written and posted online, with minimal descriptions because most of them have blurbs if you click the link. This list is not exhaustive, especially because there are a bunch of short stories and dribbles in various places. If something you liked is missing, let me know.

Web Serials

Worth the Candle - Juniper Smith is a teenaged Dungeon Master who ends up in a world filled with all the things he dreamt up for his campaigns, along with signs of his friend who died months earlier. This Used to be About Dungeons - Five teenagers live in a house together, bake bread, tend the garden, and occasionally fight monsters in dungeons. Thresholder - Thresholders travel from world to world, fantasy one minute and scifi the next, always encountering an opponent, growing stronger as they battle. Shadows of the Limelight - Fame gives you superpowers, and Dominic just saved the world's greatest hero from defeat in full view of a large audience. Glimwarden (unfinished) - A small town huddles around lanterns that keep the darklings at bay. Four teenagers must grow in power as the darkness encroaches. The Dark Wizard of Donkerk (unedited) - Two men steal a baby from an orphanage, then find out he's too cute to sacrifice and raise him as their own.

Fanfic

The Metropolitan Man (Superman) - Lex Luthor attempts to unravel the secrets of the alien. A Common Sense Guide to Doing the Most Good (Superman) - Superman gets really into effective altruism. Instruments of Destruction (Star Wars) - A fable of project management aboard the second Death Star, through the eyes of Admiral Tian Jerjerrod. Branches on the Tree of Time (Terminator) - Sarah Connor is working as a software engineer at UCLA when a naked man shows up on her doorstep. A Bluer Shade of White (Frozen) - Elsa can make life, and Olaf is smarter than he looks.

Shorts

Eager Readers in Your Area - Artificial intelligence has left authors scrambling for readers. Charlotte clicks on an ad. Variations - An orc visits an art exhibition where she feels out of place. Contratto - Julia takes a job as a marketer, working for the vampires to keep their secrets safe. The Randi Prize - James Randi offers a prize for anyone who can demonstrate supernatural abilities. Coming Home - After a long time isekaied to a fantasy kingdom, an errant father has coffee with his estranged son.

I also post short stuff to this very tumblr, which can usually be found under the #microfiction tag unless I forget. Usually this is mirrored on AO3, unless I'm lazy.

Web Comics

Millennial Scarlet - Lamont Pearce is a gig economy demon hunter whose mother ran a government agency meant to defend against Hell. Worth the Candle - A webcomic adaptation of the web serial

Non-Fiction

The AI Art Apocalypse - Slightly outdated thoughts from 2022. Why to Write a Sex Scene - Observations on the narrative purpose of carnal pursuits. Game Review: Underhill - This review contains no screenshots, because this game does not exist. Writing: An FAQ - Accumulated wisdom from 4 million words and counting. Creating Interesting Magic - A much-requested post on making interesting magic systems (and characters, and plots, and worlds). How to Write a Web Serial - It's both easier and harder than you think. The Trouble with Writing Nazis - On giving villains too much credit. Interesting Things to do with Time Loops - Exploring the boundaries of the conceit.

[alexanderwales]

The Current WIP List

Inspired by this post by @a-memory-a-distant-echo, this is a list of ongoing works-in-progress, where "in progress" I will define as "I have added at least one sentence in the last year as an indicator of actual mental load being used". This does not include worldbuilding or planning documents, which spring up like weeds. I am also including the ones that I get paid for via Patreon or publication deals or whatever.

Thresholder is my currently ongoing web serial, publishing two chapters a week (in theory ...). It's about a guy who travels between worlds and fights other people who travel between worlds, with each world being a relatively contained book. Currently about 750K words.

Doomsday Pivot! is, in theory, the follow-up to Thresholder, about a start-up that has to make a sudden change in plans when the end of the world gives everyone a character class. First book is rough draft complete but needs some responses to developmental editing, sitting at 104K words. (You can read a noncanonical first chapter here, which I had previously made public on my discord.)

Millennial Scarlet is a webcomic I write about a gig-economy demon hunter. Writing comics is awesome, mostly because I get to see my words come to life. In word count ... I'm not sure right now, but probably not all that much. In the middle of writing the fourth issue right now.

Glimwarden was a web serial that I abandoned, a black mark on my record. I intend to go back to it at some point, because it was my wife's favorite. You can read it up to the point where it was abandoned here. There are currently ~3 unreleased chapters, but most of the effort put into it has been rewriting it and bringing it up to snuff, as well as fixing some problems with it. Will get a relaunch at some point, probably, when I'm ready to commit to that. No idea on the word count.

Untitled Dance Magic story is probably a short story, currently ~5K words. It's based around a magic system where people do ballroom dance to create architecture, and is a somewhat traditional romance and/or coming of age story. I started writing it on a whim after a conversation with @etirabys at LessOnline, and hopefully they haven't started their own story, and hopefully if they have, hopefully their story doesn't overlap mine. I'll check before posting, hoping to get this one finished and out there.

Kensuke Fucks the World is an existentialist horror erotic novel, which I describe as being "like the Erogamer, but sad". Currently 75K words, and might never see the light of day. I think I can wrap it up in another 25K words, but I think it needs a lot of work.

Long Stairs will probably be novella length in its finished form, and will probably not be finished. It's an old story, which predates Worth the Candle by a few months, and is about a military fireteam making a routine delve into an endless shifting dungeon that the US military has already pulled a lot of magic out of. Medics with clerical healing, wands and firearms, high fantasy and military. There's unfortunately some stuff in there that I cannibalized for WtC that needs to be changed so it's not a repeat, but nothing structural, and there are a lot of plot beats that I enjoy in both the 15K words that are already written and what's in the notes. I did not put a bunch of work into this one, but it was one of those cases where I was reading through old stuff and got enough of a head of steam that it latched onto me again. (I also don't know enough about the military or how to write that kind of stuff, which is one of the reasons that this fic never got my full attention.)

The Lot is a story that's basically just "the backrooms, but with cars". It think it was inspired by a tumblr post, but probably won't be finished, since it's probably novella length. Currently 9K words, more a character study than it is about people stuck in an infinite parking lot and scrounging off what they can find in glove compartments.

Kitchen Sink is a bureauporn/bureaupunk novel about the agency created to deal with the rise of mutants circa 1977. Currently a mere 9K words, but the plan was for each successive part of the book to focus on another genre being discovered by the department, so you'd get a book with wizards, with vampires, with aliens, etc., mostly with a focus on how these are handled on an administrative level. No way I would ever be able to sell it, unfortunately.

Robot Team Isekai (not its real title) is about a van full of kids on their way to a robotics team meet that get transported to another world where their individual specialties grant them awesome abilities in a "your hyperfixation makes you perfectly adapted to the fantasy world" kind of way, but for five people with different hyperfixations. 2K words, probably will never see the light of day.

Full Meta vol. 2 is a novel about a group of high school students who get metafiction powers, so like ... one girl gets the ability to read the text of the novel they're in whenever someone is engaging in exposition, one guy can read the flashbacks, someone can read all the romance scenes or whatever, and they have a dysfunctional time dealing with each other through college and into adulthood. I fully recognize that calling it "Full Meta vol. 2" when no first volume exists is a gimmick title and would be confusing enough to immediately turn people away.

Dark Wizard of Donkerk was an old NaNo novel, but got halfway dev edited before my dev editor on that one flaked. I think it's a good story, just a matter of getting into the guts of it and making it great, but that takes time. 173K words, but this is old old. If you like rough, unpolished creative output, you can read it on my website.

Untitled Hermione/Draco fanfic is, uh ... I guess according to the logs was something that I put effort into in late 2023. I have read vanishingly little HP fanfic, and I'm sure there's a ton of this stuff, and that some of it is even good. This one doesn't adhere too much to canon or fanon, and is mostly about trying to write a realistic racist who falls in love with someone he's racist against. 14K words, I cannot believe I added anything to this recently, but apparently I have.

Technically by the criteria set out, I should count all seven of the NaNo test chapters I wrote. Of those, the only ones that have retained any brain space are "The Inevitable Return of Nathaniel Greene" and "Dungeon Core".

There are a few more that are technically outside the arbitrary time limit of one year, but I'm going to include them because I have thought about them in the last year (and will not include the ones that I have not thought about).

Of Witches and Wizards is what I thought was a romance but was told does not fit the apparently pretty exacting mold of a "romance novel". It's about a widowed witch whose two sons have left for college and a wizard who travels the world writing about places for a travel guide. They fall in love. Tons of worldbuilding stuff as they visit different cities and see the breadth and beauty of magic in the world. 15K words right now, was going to be a nice and slender novel.

Eager Readers in Your Area was a short story I wrote a year and a half ago. The WIP is a novel-length version of that about ... art, artists, AI art, dealing with people online, and a bunch of other stuff. I wrote an outline I thought was quite good, but if the short story is the first chapter, then I want an equally good and tight second chapter, and that's hard to do.

Slaver Slayer (not final title) was about a slave who assassinates a high-ranking member of the kingdom and through an oversight gets a magical artifact that might possibly let her kill her way through the monarchy in an attempt to end the institution of slavery. The other protagonist is a detective who's grappling with his complicity in the system and is trying to stop her. Made it to 13K words. Another one of those that was outlined to be a nice tight novel.

[somewhere-in-the-dungeon]

June 8th, 2018

Today I am grateful both to @overlordtulip for informing me that the story I got excited about is not quite dead, and for the magic of the modern economy that means I can bribe random people on the internet to write stories for me.

The future rocks.

[somewhere-in-the-dungeon]

#%@*$^!

Dang it, I get sucked into a great new story and it apparently went dead two years ago. Rats, rats, and double rats.

[somewhere-in-the-dungeon]

He kept a neat appearance and carried himself like an adult. He was intelligent and, more importantly, diligent. He was always willing to lend a helping hand to those in need, and he took it upon himself to offer aid even when it wasn’t requested. While he had thought about how this behavior would reflect on him and help or hinder his chances to fulfill his desires, and while he had come to the conclusion that helping people was to his benefit, he didn’t think that it would be fair to say that he was kind and helpful only because he thought there was something in it for him. No one had ever levied that accusation against him, but he worried that someday they would, and there would be no way to prove otherwise.

Glimwarden, Alexander Wales

[fipindustries]

Philip didn’t like people. He didn’t hate people, not as a general rule, but he just didn’t feel the warm glow of affection that others claimed to. There had been a time when he’d thought that everyone else was like him. It was conceivable that no one felt a warm glow of affection towards others, that it was all just a pile of motivated lies meant to deceive others. After all, Philip faked his way through plenty of conversations, giving practiced smiles when social conventions dictated that this was necessary, so why shouldn’t it be the case that everyone else was engaging in mere signaling as well?

glimwardens

philip is quickly cementing himself as my favourite character and this is only chapter two

[fipindustries]

“What’s a turnabout?” asked William. Melanie put a finger on the line she’d been reading to mark her place. “A turnabout is one of the elemental genres,” she said. “Someone gets into trouble, then gets out of trouble.”

someone created a fictional genre for a fictional culture

i am in love

[fipindustries]

god in heavens yes, once again i got to experience the delightful rush of finding a new creator and falling down their rabbit hole

and once again i have to thank yudkowsky for this, more than bayesianism, to me this man represents discovering new, stimulating fiction thank i cant stop consuming

[fipindustries]

glimwardens

is giving me that sweet feeling of care, the sensation that i can just relax knowing that i am on safe hands that thought about this long and hard and they know what theyre doing and they know how to do it and that is so...comforting.

[somewhere-in-the-dungeon]

"The problem of taking power was an interesting one, but the end result — actually ruling — was not."

-Glimwarden, by Alexander Wales

[somewhere-in-the-dungeon]

Philip raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I want to take responsibility if you do something dangerous.”

“Tell them there was no reasoning with me,” said Sander. “Ready?”

“Sure,” said Philip.

Glimwarden, Alexander Wales

[somewhere-in-the-dungeon]

people are information, right? They’re collections of facts, like a favorite food, or mannerisms, like the way they brush hair from their face, or their cause-effect pairs, like how they react to a probing question or an unexpected gift. If you had all the time in the world and math more complex than I’ve ever even heard about, you could reduce every single person down to their own beautiful equation with all its own variables. When a person dies, that equation gets washed away, but everyone she knew still has a piece of it, an expression of that underlying truth.

Glimwarden, Alexander Wales