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/lit/ - Literature

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1883873 No.1883873 [Reply] [Original]

So I've got this whack novel idea and need to bounce it off some critical people who don't know me. Would you read something like this, /lit/?

Urban fantasy. A young magician lives in Seattle, making a living as a quack psychic. Orphaned at an early age by a mysterious supernatural being, raised in the American midwest by a reclusive Thunderbird. Now he tries to find his place among society as well as the various pantheons fighting over the earth's magical resources (the basic magical system is a cycle, the earth is a well and life is the springs blah blah blah), all while hoping to find the creature who left him standing on a beach in Texas so many years ago. Other characters include a young woman who rejects her powers over life and death in favor of medical school, and a Sumerian fire spirit employed as an angel by the corporate Middle-Eastern religion currently attempting to take over all the Earth for their Creator's supposed imminent return. African diasporic, Celtic, and Native American mythology have center stage, with the JudeoChristoIslamZoroasterian shit an important side show. Major themes include creation, the origins and psychology of religion, abandonment, isolation. Bonus Apocalypse prophecies and mass-extinction theories.

also, motherfucking snake imagery. Think Quetzacoatl, the Rainbow Serpent, Sophia's demiurge, and those old Celtic legends about a dragon or serpent literally making up the earth.

tl;dr apologies to Neil Gaiman.

>> No.1883874

>>1883873
So you've taken the plot of a dozen other fantasy novels and forcibly smashed them into one novel.
Imokaywiththis.jpg

>> No.1883879

>>1883874
I don't read a lot of urban fantasy, I'm guessing this shit has been all done before but I don't care. I want to destroy everything and string the pieces together again and maybe find the common roots along the way.

>> No.1883884
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1883884

Also, main character doesn't know it, but he turns out to be the same as the Creators who made and abandoned the Earth ages ago leaving their kids to run the place. His super duper mysterious parental figure was one of them too, made him as a test and left our planet as a place for him to learn, study, conquer, and eventually destroy before he went off to the galaxy to fulfill his great destiny of making shit to fill all that empty space, because everything is meaningless and our world and religions are just the discarded toys of unfathomable beings!

Gaia, Mawu, Zurvan, El and the rest are total dicks, yo.

>> No.1883908
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1883908

I dunno, I enjoy writing and editing and the characters, but then I worry I'm one of those pathetics with a shitty story they've wasted hours on they think is totally brilliant. I have no ideas of publishing a billion copies - I mean, I'd have a hard enough time getting a book with a mixed-race, gay, power-hungry douche-bag of a protagonist any notice even without all the crazy fantasy and total defilement of every religion both major and minor. It's just for fun, but I have a pastebin full of notes and shit and some nights like tonight I scroll through it all and wonder what the fuck I'm doing.

>> No.1883916

99% of urban fantasies are better called "romances" and written by women.

>> No.1883921

>>1883873
Seeing as this may be the first good story idea I've ever seen on /lit/ (and since I've been around since /lit/'s creation, I've seen many a story idea), I say go for it. You have a lush imagination and ought to put it to use.

>> No.1883928

>Native American myth
well like uh... which natives? There's more than one tribe/ culture y'know.

>> No.1884446

>>1883928
One of the ways this totally defiles all mythology is that it doesn't matter. My mythology is continent-based - the Creators set up their gods and spirits and gave them a piece of land. Each god fulfills many roles, the key is finding shared themes and uniting it. Thunderbirds and giant horned/feathered Serpents feature among several different tribes in the Midwest - mostly arising from dinosaur fossil discoveries - so I can just take the general idea and put whatever twist I want on it.