I got tagged by @space-cadead!

I started with TS but had to go into SP to snag a few of these. My words were:

shard (from SP)

The light around Velinius fractured into countless shards, sharper than diamond. Sharper than a blade.

prod (from TS)

When the Saint chamber opened, Hagan would be replaced. Vahn never figured out how to get along with the other fire loas, despite Hagan’s incessant prodding. They were all flare or sparks, and Vahn was an easy target for someone that wanted to show off their strength or gain ground. He would likely fade into the regular tally and get shuffled on assignments at a whim until his grave was dug.

sun (from TS)

Vahn’s vision spotted with black. It wasn’t dark, though, it wasn’t unforgiving or unrelenting. The light filtered through it, the heat of the sun, and Vahn wasn’t going to die like this. He wasn’t going to die when he was so close to understanding something, anything, for once. 

bulb (from SP)

A single bulb flickered, struggling against the dark before lighting with a click.

So apparently it is World Building Wednesday here on writeblr! I'm still pretty new so I don't have as much on here about my stories for people to ask about, but sometimes my brain writes entire essays about aspects of my story/world and well... why not actually write them and share? I started doing this in my author comments to some extent when I was posting Act III of SP on Tapas, but there is... a character limit.

This is obviously not an actual structured essay, I don't have the discipline for that anymore, but... its a lot of thoughts that are somewhat organized about a single world building aspect for the Lifrasir Universe, which both (all?) of my projects take place in.

My askbox is open if you have any general questions, as well! I will try to answer, or maybe it'll be something that gives me an idea for a longer thing and I can continue doing this or something like it for WBW.

I've tried to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, but some things are bound to slip through in order to talk about it.

The Neither

The Neither is an actual place in Shadow's Prey, but it also plays double duty as a metaphor for Kanna's dissociative symptoms related to PTSD. (CW embedded in that statement, though nothing is mentioned in detail here.)

As Place

illustration of Kanna facing a version of herself in the Neither, from Act I of Shadow's Prey. by @jwhitnee

The Neither is called such because it is between "here" and "there" but isn't either one. It is a plane that exists between the living and the dead, between the real and what comes after. Haru describes it once as "the throat of the universe." If time and space are shaped like an hour glass, it is the pinch point where the sand filters through.

The people of Lifrasir have no true conception of what happens when they die beyond that they go to a place that cannot be reached or breached. What happens after death is beyond them. This belief, if one wants to call it that, comes from the fact that the gods of Lifrasir died long ago, and nothing of their powers has been seen since. The Neither is the gate that a soul passes through, but it isn't actually a place or concept that is known or spoken of in the world.

Kanna is inherently linked with the Neither due to her abilities as a "shadow" loa. Unfortunately, this means that she feels every death. This isn't really something she thinks about--it is like the sensation of breathing to her. However, those that die by her hand are felt more keenly because she is tuned into the act.

People are not meant to traverse the Neither. However, Kanna drags Osawa bodily through the space momentarily, and when he returns to the "real" world his abilities are modified. Kanna and by extension Haru are immune to this effect.

At one point it is implied that Kanna created the Neither. This is partially true. After experiencing a traumatic shock, Kanna unconsciously created a kind of pocket dimension within the Neither.

As Metaphor

illustration from Act I of Shadow's Prey. by @jwhitnee

Ghostlike versions of Kanna roam the Neither, referred to as echoes. They are from different times of her life, each holding parts of her fractured memory.

Kanna first visits the Neither in Act I via projection. Because she no longer has her memories at that time, she is unaware of where she is or what is happening. Therefore the Neither, which operates on a kind of dream logic, is seemingly out her of control.

Memory in Shadow's Prey works by association. For instance: the first thing Kanna regains is the memory of who she is--but in a factual, logical sense. She knows her titles and those of her companions, as well as a wikipedia-like rundown of her past. However, she does not have the context, such as the memories of events themselves or any emotional connection to them.

As the story progresses, the ways that Kanna interracts with the Neither also change. As Kanna regains her agency, she also begins to regain control of the Neither and the memories that reside within it. Unfortunately... to get more into detail on that gets into spoiler territory...

Rules: Describe your WIP's main romance in a 1-4 line snippet

tagged by @lynnedwardswrites!

I had quite a few options in Shadow's Prey of Haru being super extra, but I thought this one actually worked best as an overall.

“You’re with me,” Kanna said, the words coming without thinking, the words a prayer recited so often they were carved into her, so much more than something simply remembered. 

Haru lowered his forehead to meet hers. “I’m with you,” he said, the familiar call and response turned back on her. “Always.”

@authoralexharvey tagged me to make Valentine's Day things with my WIP as a theme. I had to work all day but the idea for Haru's grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let me go, so here's this mess.

Haru is one of the leads from Shadow's Prey. His top five interests are "Kanna" but after that is folklore and languages and he will gleefully explain to anyone willing to sit still long enough the history of just about anything of that nature.

You will be done with listening before he is done talking.

I was tagged by @space-cadead!

I'm not sure if one counts the dialogue with the sentences they go with but... I think this is a close count?

Vahn narrowed his eyes. “What is that supposed to do?”

“It was Hagan’s.” Kanna tipped the top and it cracked open with a metallic click, revealing a wheel with flint. 

“No.”

“Yes.” She met his eyes. “This may hurt.”

Before he could protest again, her thumb slipped against the wheel. The lighter sparked, and there was fire.

And it wanted him.

(anyone: Kanna, no. K: Kanna yes.)

10. A happy song

For whichever WIP is on your mind at the moment!

My WIPS are all just part of the same big thing, so I'm gonna grab for vibes

5. A song for a badass scene: When I think of "badass" in general, that's usually Kanna. Her playlist is full of righteous anger bangers, like this one

10. A happy song: I actually have a scene where my whole team is at a festival and there's drinking and dancing and it's such a warm vibe, and this is the song I like to think they're all dancing to:

They sent:

⛪ - Are there religions? If so, how do they affect the culture?

There... aren't! Not really in the contemporary/current timeline that SP is in. I think that's kinda what happens when the gods die, they take their religions with them over time. However, there are quite a few... let's call them cults. These tend to revolve around the loas, like the Cardea. They tend to hide their true intention from outsiders, but they believe that the loas are a curse and are determined to find ways to wipe out/get rid of them. They mostly operate in the region of Adur. They are well-funded and tend to fund others in the independent lands, including individual cities outside of their region to aid them in building defenses against the Palamidia.

There is another one that is coming up, but hasn't been shown yet in the story.

💡 - What inspired the wip? When/how did you first get the idea?

I answered this one for TS, so I'll... attempt to answer for SP as a whole.

I was actually reading Absalom, Absalom when I first was inspired to write SP, and it informs quite a few different themes like the ideas of "re-history" or "re-memory," how things are different from others' perspectives and stories often get... changed. It's one of the reasons I have so many POVs. And also the complicated family drama.

As part of the class I was taking at the time, we also read Faulkner's obituary for Albert Camus, which goes like this:

Camus said that the only true function of man, born into an absurd world, is to live, be aware of one's life, one's revolt, one's freedom. He said that if the only solution to the human dilemma is death, then we are on the wrong road. The right track is the one that leads to life, to the sunlight.

He did refuse to suffer from the unceasing cold. He did refuse to follow a track which led only to death. The track he followed was the only possible one which could not lead only to death. The track he followed led into the sunlight in being that one devoted to making with our frail powers and our absurd material, something which had not existed in life until we made it. He said, 'I do not like to believe the death opens upon another life. To me, it is a door that shuts.' That is, he tried to believe that. But he failed.

Despite himself, as all artists are, he spent that life searching himself and demanding of himself answers which only God could know; when he became the Nobel laureate of his year, I wired him 'On sault l'â me qui constamment se cherche et se demande'; why did he not quit then, if he did not want to believe in God? At the very instant he struck the tree, he was still searching and demanding of himself; I do not believe that in that bright instant he found them. I do no believe they are to be found. I believe they are only to be searched for, constantly, always by some fragile member of the human absurdity. Of which there are never many, but always somewhere at least one, and one will always be enough.

People will say he was too young; he did not have time to finish. But it is not How long, it is not How much; it is, simply What. When the door shut for him, he had already written on this side of it that which every artist who also carries through life with him that one same foreknowledge and hatred of death, is hoping to do: I was here. He was doing that, and perhaps in that bright second he even knew he had succeeded. What more could he want?

Then, there's this quote from Camus that Shadow's Prey gets its title from:

That was where it started... while it branched from there, SP carries with it that heart of absurdism, and a struggle against a world that can be pretty bleak at times.

Thank you for the ask, Alex!!

I have a lot of favorite things in my world building, but I think my most general favorite thing in Shadow's Prey is just... how anachronistic things are, on purpose. My characters wear jeans and contemporary-ish clothing but fight with swords. Some regions and areas have mag trains (cities) while older, while older steam trains run along the rails across the entire livable world, but at the same time travel by horse is still the go-to for individuals.

I often refer to the setting of SP as "post-post-apocalyptic." An apocalyptic thing happened to the world but that was like, forever ago. Yeah yeah, the gods killed each other and destroyed about 3/4ths of the world in the process, old news. So the world has technically moved on.

The world was pretty highly advanced before this but obviously took a pretty big step back and a lot of knowledge and technology from the time "before" was lost. Some of the more "advanced" things in the world are actually antiques from the time before, and people aren't even sure how they work/what they are.

One example of these kinds of things are the "ghostlights." These are lamps with little floating lights inside that resemble something like fireflies.

illustration by J. Whitnee

No one really knows... what's up with these things. They are from the time before, and no one has been able to make any since then. Some people get a little uncomfortable around them, and others have observed that the lights seem to have a kind of sentience (though they aren't willing to say this to others, that seems crazy, right?). They are mostly in the possession of the Palamidia, though the wealthy class in Lugos also have a few (the particular one above belongs to Aksana, mother of Kanna and Velinius) and they show up intermittently throughout SP.