Thursday, July 22, 2010

Evaluation: Ananke 2

So I was supposed to do this three days ago. Connection issues on Monday prevented that, as well as keeping me busy catching up with various websites the other two days. Yes, that's my idea of busy. I'm still doing that, actually, connection is still spotty, but damn I'll at least try to stick to my arbitrary schedules that nobody knows about.

So, as the title implies, I figured out a title for the story, as well as a new codename for the superpowered outlaw formerly known as Pythia. In Greek mythology, Ananke was the personification of Necessity as an aspect of destiny, that is, the future that happens because it must happen. Or at least, that's my interpretation of it. The whole thing had a distinct deterministic feel, which rather fits Ana (no, that's not her birth name, it's just a nickname based on a codename. And yes, I'm aware of how silly that sounds) since her main ability is not the typical predicting the future as in getting vague "visions" or "prophecies", but rather an automatic process in her mind collecting data and organizing into various possible outcomes by probability of each. Something like a cheap Laplace's demon. In any case, she only sees the future as a chain of consequences from the present, and not as an actual Pythia supposedly did, as divine yet obscure revelations. (I hate the typical prophecy thing of a long bunch of verses that have to be interpreted symbolically, for various reasons, so I'm not going to be using that kind of precognitives. At least, not in the Vurok Canon).

So yeah, Ananke is the new name. Thanks to a little bit of rediting Void and Reflections now have her new name rather than the old one. This is one of those times I'm glad I'm doing this as a web-based project, retroactive renaming is much easier (The fact I've had to do that twice should say something about my work). If this was a published work, I'd have to introduce a retcon explaining she was changing her name for intradiegetic reasons, and it would sound almost certainly stupid. Note: Intradiegetic is the fancy way of saying "within the story universe", and I've been dying for a chance to use it without being needlessly obscure since I learnt it. Fortunately, I can be as much of a pretentious bitch here as I like.

I've written about a page by now, which is proportionally a lot more than what I had but still pityfully little. I'm considering cutting back on the dialogue a bit and focusing more on reported speech as in the earlier psychflares, because honestly I don't like how my dialogue turns out, but I don't think Vurok as a continuing universe works with that writing style. I'll see how it goes.

Not many advances plot-wise, but that's to be expected, I rarely get much further with plot until I've written out all I've got figured out and then ask myself what next. It's annoying but unavoidable, what actually happens changes a lot between my head and the page, partly because some things are easier to write, partly because I get better ideas while working. One of the two plot points I mentioned last time was covered, the other is next. And I'll see how it goes from there.

Also, I want to rant about prophecy, but I'll leave that for tomorrow, as a "regular" blog post.

No comments:

Post a Comment