Brain is Musty...: Ficlet O'Clock Truth or Dare

[scribblemyname]

This entry is part 35 of 35 in the series 365 Challenge

The current prompts are leaving me dull and uninspired. Seeking creative procrastination: ask me any question about how something works in a storyworld, a why that's been pestering you, or any backstory you just really want to know, and I'll commentfic it.

If that doesn't inspire you, how about a character (original or fandom) and something crazy you would dare them to do.

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Comments

Re: To Dance with a Dragon

[scribblemyname]

Missed one. The bonds. You've encountered three kinds.

1. There is the Queen's bond, which can be made by anyone. It hooks into the kahtchen nervous system and enables her to exert her will over their power. To a point. This is the sort of bond that makes the Vardin people feel safe. They know the Queen is also plain and will protect their interests. Guardians are bound once they have mastered their gifts sufficiently to be useful or thereabouts. Casal for example wanted to become a hunter before the Queen bound her because she wanted to be considered a hunter, not a householder.

2. Rothnen bonds. Bonds is a concept in addition to a link, so the word gets thrown about a bit, but rothnen are born resonant and can sense each other, can't not, so they are considered bonded but not bound until they choose each other and go through the whole process that changes the bond from desire and attention to oneness.

3. Gift bonds. Healers often create a temporary bond with the one they are healing, linking mind to mind or body to body in order to heal. Llereya has pathways from her mind to others and can simply follow a bond to physically find someone. It's her gift bond that enabled Cayden to find her on her birthday, not their resonance. Gifts all vary, so there are many, many variations on how these kinds of bonds work.

Re: To Dance with a Dragon

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

Huh. Queen's bond seems creepy to me. I wouldn't find it reassuring, but then... I'm not from Vardin.

I think I understand the gift bonds the best.

Re: To Dance with a Dragon

[scribblemyname]

Reassuring to the mãenet, not particularly the kahtchen. It would be like knowing that Magneto could be stopped by someone if he decided to turn on you and kill you because you weren't special. That's reassuring to their plain because all of the great wars of the gods were over that—kahtchen wanting to kill or protect mãenet. But that gets heavily into history.

The rothnen bond at birth can be considered like a gift bond: it's a way two people are linked together. Being bound means being consciously tied to someone else in an irrevocable way. When rothnen solidify their bond and create a mental bond over the physical resonance, they're considered bound.

Jhemet is not bound to the Queen's will at this point, so that would normally make her a dangerous rogue who could do terrible things to the plain, but she bound herself by essentially surpressing the part of her gift that could hurt others.

Re: To Dance with a Dragon

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I'm starting to think I should stick to Kingdoms and Thorn because that at least I understand, but there's so much history and lore and terminology that trips me up in Vardin, and what I think I understand I don't understand.

Re: To Dance with a Dragon

[scribblemyname]

It's cause I've been bad and haven't written books yet and commentfic, let's face it, it's tough to plunk a bunch of detail in. I figure I just try to make each standalone story make sense on its own, even if it's all tip of the iceberg. I have deliberately avoided getting too deep into how rothnen works as yet because it's going to be such a doozy when I do.

Re: To Dance with a Dragon

[scribblemyname]

I'm actually working on a pretty big piece with you and in_the_blue in mind, called Remembrance, and I'm hoping to dig into the sweep of Vardin's history and mindset and somehow not confuse the mess out of anyone who reads it.

I tend to write from insiders, and that's no help at all half the time.

Re: To Dance with a Dragon

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

Whenever I can, I sneak in someone who doesn't know what's going on so that I can have the explanation come out if I can't figure out a way to ease the details into the story itself.

Then again, I have others where the explanation just refuses to come.

Re: To Dance with a Dragon

[scribblemyname]

The problem for me with outsiders is they pretty much don't know what's going on and aren't going to because insiders usually keep their mouths shut and their brain going. I keep mucking around in closed cultures, alas. But there are ways, and I keep using them. The problem I think you're running into most of all is that you've read everything so you can mix together hints from multiple stories that would normally mean little and little confusion by themselves, but together, they require a good bit of gap-filling. Going to write you some comment answers as soon as I get some spare moments.

Re: To Dance with a Dragon

[pygmymuse.livejournal.com]

The kids get educated about the past and their roles, though, so that might be a possibility, having a parent/teacher/tutor explaining it to someone else.

(Now I must admit... I did that with the Memory Collector when I realized there was too much unexplained history.)

Yeah, that's probably it. I've filled in the blanks for myself a few times, and I usually guess wrong.