Quimi

I've still been worldbuilding every day, I just haven't been posting. Mainly because I was too tired. (Seriously, I don't think I would have reached Sunday's epiphanies if I hadn't been half-loopy from lack of sleep.) But I'm in the home stretch, I'm not going to lose momentum now!

Sunday I fudged a bit, because I don't really have a need to change any of my geography as of now (though that may change once I figure out exactly how big the continent is, and how long it would take My Heroes to traverse it). So instead I struck up a conversation with the 'verse's God, and learned some important stuff about the demons and why they're trying to destroy the world etc. and what the Lady is doing about it. I KNOW WHAT THE DEMONS ARE NOW. XD *bounces* AND I'M NOT TELLING YET, IT WILL BE A SURPRISE. *evil laughter* Also, the Lady enjoys being enigmatic, but she's still sweet about it too. ^.^

Monday was slightly less epic, but also more on topic: I got a bit of brainstorming done about the continent's fledgling currency system (quartz beads! Strung in rings, braces, and necklaces... or something like that), and the extended family system that most of the towns and villages have— Beacon Town's the exception, being a boom town with many transplanted people. Also, gold is either more common than silver, or nonexistent— either way, silver's more valuable due to its rarity and use in mystical stuff.

Today was another not-really-necessary revisiting of Mood. Even the bonus exercises: I've already got a big playlist for this story that I've been listening to from the start of the challenge. So I tried having a similar conversation with Virue, my human antagonist, but I didn't get as far with it as my conversation with the Lady. She's just not as forthcoming as a god, I guess.

Okay, there's only about a week left, and I'm not sure what the days are going to cover (looking ahead feels like cheating somehow), but these are the following things I still really need to be figured out (that I know of):

~how exactly the Lady is going to use the MCs to restore the world to its intended state, and what exactly happens if they fail (not to mention how immediately— will the world literally fall apart if they don't get it done by the solstice, or something? Probably not that immediately catastrophic, but there needs to be a deadline of sorts for the MCs, even if just a personal one...)
~what are Virue's merchants planning, and how do the MCs fit in and/or interfere? And what do they do about them?

...I was sure I had more, but I can't think of any now. *pokes brain*

Today's challenge here.

I wasn't sure how to go about this at first: the first thing I thought of upon reading the phrase "cost of magic" was Anne McCaffrey's psychics, who measured their psy-usage by caloric expenditure; Lackey's Valdemar, with its ley-lines of magical power accessible by only a few; and the good ol' traditional "this spell will cost a year of your life" sort of magic. And none of these really fit for my world. (Also, I'm really tired of magic being treated like a car: just fill up your magical gas tank and go!)

So I whined a bit and grumped a bit, and then I sat down and worked out what my costs/trade-offs are:

Light:
~requires a source of light (usually the sun, but sometimes fire will work), and a... vessel of some sort. Glass, crystal, something to refract and possibly reflect the light a certain way.

Sound:
~requires very pure, precise tones.

I'm not sure if they also require a spiritual purity or specific intention (as opposed to the pattern of light shining through leaves accidentally turning lead into gold or something). I'm leaning towards no, but it'll depend partly on how much of this 'magic' is really an act of nature, or an act of God. Because it's really a combination of the two.

As such, the "energy cost" of this magic is roughly equivalent to that of painting a picture, or composing and singing a song. It's the cost of creation, and only intent and skill can tell whether that cost buys the desired result.

However, there are a couple of ....indirect? costs that prevent this magic from being utterly ubiquitous (whee, big words and alliteration. >.> ) One is that it's really hard to get either type of magic right. Not only is precision in either one key, but they jostle each other out of sync all the time— which is why the crystals are so important, they act like shock absorbers! (GUYS YOU HAVE JUST WITNESSED THE BIRTH OF AN EPIPHANY. XD )

Another trade-off, or turn-off, is that there is a stigma attached to one or more of them, depending where you are (westerners are suspicious of Northern whistling, and consider lightworks to be the province of the church, and so on. So that seriously cuts down on the number of casual dabblers.

*is out of brain and energy and time, but doesn't care* EPIPHANY, I SAY.

I've had trouble writing female characters for a long time, and often prefer writing male MCs. I've dismissed it as a tendency for my female characters to feel too much like Mary Sues, but I think now that this is either inaccurate or lazy, or both. And it seems like I'm creating fewer and fewer female characters lately. (Not that I need an equal gender ratio, but when my reason for making a character male is because female feels too "flimsy"....) So I'm going to go back to the basics, list some of my favorite female characters and heroes, figure out what I love about them, and then..... match it up against my subconscious objections to writing female characters, I guess?

This may wind up with me on the couch, headshrinking myself, but hopefully I won't have to delve too far into the sociopolitical mire. We shall see. (Oh, and there be spoilers ahead, though I'll try to be careful.)

( We'll see just how feminist a blogpost about women can be. Or can't, maybe. )

I could ramble on about stereotypes, and fallacies and expectations, and books I read as a child, but I'm really tired, and I semi-promised not to get into sociopolitical carp. And I'm really tired.