My Other Stories
My Other Stories
Always Looking Ahead
I have a lot of ideas for stories, and ideas about how to share them with people. So while I continue to work on the different character stories for Battles Beneath the Stars, let me tell you about some other projects I’ve had in mind.
Undying Obsidian
A sequel to Dracula that features Aztec mythology. After some older ideas were retooled, I struggled to find a story that used my research into Tezcatlipoca or a certain character connected with him. That combined with my reading of Dracula through
to create this.Undying Obsidian has two main characters. The first is Quincey Helsing-Holmwood-Seward-Westenra Harker, the son of Jonathan and Mina Harker from Dracula who briefly appeared in the epilogue. The second is Tlacuiton, the adopted son of the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca who comes to London seeking to reclaim cultural artifacts. Like the original Dracula the story takes an epistolary form.
Dracula is all about the importance of writing things down, by bringing in Aztec culture and history, it adds the question of what it means for written records to be destroyed. Quincey Harker feels a connection to the past through the written accounts of the past generation, he has literally read Dracula. Tlacuiton feels divided from his father’s culture through the destruction of written accounts.
As for Dracula himself, his defeat is not being undone. The new undead monster antagonist is a conquistador who took part in the Toxcatl Massacre and was cursed with undeath as punishment, specifically a form of undeath distinct from vampirism. This means that his strengths, weaknesses, and M.O are all distinct from Dracula. I don’t want a Dracula copycat or a villain who is framed as strictly superior to him.
Since it’s a sequel, plenty of characters from the original Dracula do have a part to play. Even characters from the original who by this point have been dead for over a decade will occupy some indirect space within the narrative.
The main difficulty with the story is its status as historical fiction, which adds a lot of research that I don’t have the same level of interest in as I do for mythological research. Because of that it could take an especially long time to make presentable compared to other ideas here.
Not all of my ideas have titles yet
Sometimes a story sticks with you for so long that it becomes a bit amorphous, requiring heavy reworks to find a solid form again. That’s the case with this untitled idea, which started in middle school and is unrecognizable from that early state aside from some names. Which incidentally is also true of Hybridis, the world of Battles Beneath the Stars.
As it is now, the story is a portal fantasy about a teenage boy, Sora, and his uncle/ legal guardian, Akio, who end up in a world where humans went extinct and naga, half snake and half human creatures, are the dominant race. Due to the role of humans in the mythologized history of the kingdom they ended up in, Sora and Akio are welcomed as honored guests.
While they wait for the festival that might let them return home, the nagaraja proposes a temporary marriage of convenience to Akio, who knowing that he’ll be drawn into the politics of the kingdom regardless, accepts. However there are some things Akio may have overlooked, like asking if Sora even wants to return to the world of humans, and the reason they ended up in the world of naga in the first place.
Because of its many transformations this is the least developed story here, but with how long I’ve had it around I want to finally get it out there.
The Saga of Hyperion
This is one of the stories Battles Beneath the Stars is a crossover between. If you were curious about the history between Hyperion, Aris, and Metrophanes, this is where it all was first written. The rough draft was one of my NaNoWriMo projects, and for my senior thesis I revised three of the story arcs for it.
Part of the inspiration for this was reading The Saga of the Volsungs with The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok and enjoying the style it was written in. So I tried to emulate it for this project. Due to having an immortal protagonist The Saga of Hyperion is able to cover a similar stretch of time to the generational viking sagas while maintaining a consistent protagonist.
With its relationship to Battles Beneath the Stars it’s an obvious candidate for serialization on the Warthog Report. It might be that I take advantage of the time gaps to break it up into separate ‘books.’ Which would make editing and the like easier for sure.
Short Stories and Extras
I recently posted a teaser for The Tale of Fintan and Aodh, a short story I’ve been working for quite some time, well before this substack got started. The full story has a length that makes submitting it to publications incredibly difficult. Too short to be a novel or novella, too long to be published as a short story. And most places where it met the word count requirements have already rejected it. So it will probably be published in full here eventually.
At least the rejections gave me a chance to further refine the story. I’m currently in the middle of rewrites for it, which I have to find time for while also working on Battles Beneath the Stars. Though that should be easier with the slowed down posting schedule.
And this has gotten me contemplating sharing other pieces of short fiction here, though I doubt any of them will hit the same deeply inconvenient length. There are already some ideas for what to write, which tend to fall into one of two categories.
1: Meetings between characters from different stories, taking place in a strange space between worlds run by a man named Obsidian Cross, who is a fictional aspect of Tezcatlipoca.
2: The myths and folklore of fictional cultures, including ones from Hybridis (the world of Battles Beneath the Stars). These would most likely be short, but it could involve longer pieces like a scholarly article on Xilian religion in the early empire.
Also, if I start posting short fiction here and put it behind a paywall, each story will have a downloadable version with no strings attached. I don’t like how subscriptions remove the ability to own a copy, so this would get around it. That way you can reread a story you like even after canceling the paid subscription.
The Future of Battles Beneath the Stars
Fighting games are no strangers to rereleases, and in fact are somewhat infamous for it. Capcom in particular developed quite the reputation for rereleasing Street Fighter II with a new subtitle, a few more characters, and various small adjustments. Now these updates get patched into the game and each new character is purchased separately as DLC.
Once I finally finish all fourteen stories of Battles Beneath the Stars I’ll be ready for a break. But in the future after that, I have already thought ahead to doing ‘expansion packs’ with sets of new characters. I might even pull in another aspect of fighting games, guest fighters from other works. Or set aside a slot on the roster for people to vote for.
And I do have some ideas for what a hypothetical sequel would look like. It would be set generations after the first, so the mortal characters from the first would all be long dead while the immortals are obviously still around. Some new characters would be successors of older ones.
For fighting games I don’t think successor characters work when they play the same as the predecessor, it makes them seem like replacements instead. What I’d aim for instead is characters who play in a way distinct from past ones, but some of their moves and mechanics are clearly inherited.
Moving away from add ons and sequels, I would like to be able to go back and edit all the character stories. Especially since I already have ideas for some specific edits and Aodh’s story is a bit outdated now with how it handles the game aspect. Even if Battles Beneath the Star becomes a real game, there’s still room for it to continue and be refined in a written form.
Part of me wonders if some of those stories would also be better served on their own substacks rather than sharing space on the Warthog Report. Or they could be published in ways that have nothing to do with substack.
Also I brought this up for the short stories, but I’ve thought about making all of the ideas here paywalled if they go on substack. Or some other financial approach different from what I have now.
Now that you’ve seen my selection of ideas and have a full disclosure about their possible implementation, let’s turn the mic around. Do any of these interest you? If so what about them draws your attention?