Monday, June 4, 2018

(alas, worldbuilding; or, an aside hanging empty in the vast. Who knows, this might be of interest to you, fellow writer, assuming you can find a place to jam a square peg in...)

Ok, two mages, most puissant of power, call them Alicia and Bob. They are exquisitely well trained, exemplars in all respects.

Excepting only that, for our purposes, Alicia is a traditionalist. And Bob is a conceptualist. That is, Alicia hears her grandmother's whispers, her teacher's implications, her mother's hesitant words, whenever she stops to listen to the wind.

And Bob, well, Bob hears that which has not been done.

Their arguments, Bob and Alicia's, are legendary. Not well understood, even by their peers, mind you. But written in the stars nonetheless.

They have precious little impact on the broader world around them, unfortunately. That's because Bob's students are perfectly happy to incorporate his meanderings into tomorrow's canon.

But we're not here to talk about Bob and Alicia. Let the gods keep that score.

Let us instead discuss Geoff and Janet. Untrained, overlooked by whatever teachers there might be.

Geoff too is a conceptualist, budding and unrefined. For the sake of argument, let's assume he first heard the winds carrying the conversation of a pair of pelicans when he was a child walking the shore with his father.

Geoff has lost little time since then. Untrained he may be, unconstrained certainly, and little bound by needing to wait for anyone to show up to train him.

Janet, alas, is a traditionalist, though she doesn't know it. Her friends might, if anyone else was around to explain why she gets so huffy whenever someone does a homework problem differently than their teachers explained it.

She's heard the wind and felt the tides, the energy flow of the unseen world whirling around her. She doesn't have a context for it, she's found no one yet who can unveil that world for her. She will, though. Soon.

Because Geoff can't help himself? That's certainly one way, isn't it...

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Please keep it on the sane side. There are an awful lot of places on the internet for discussions of politics, money, sex, religion, etc. etc. et bloody cetera. In this time and place, let us talk about something else, and politely, please.