Portals

[pmmg]

Ok. Think I got your reasoning. Difficult to say which is which, who or what. ...Since there's a third-way -- The two are one and no-one else; but that option is still an aside. An old thought.

I hate to say it Luis, but I am not sure you are actually using language. I wish you would be more conversational and less with footnotes, bold, italics and all the other stuff that I am sure is meaningful to you, but has to be sifted through by me.

 

[Queshire]

It's a boooooooooooot

 

[Luís Santana]

I wish you would be more conversational and less with footnotes, bold, italics and all the other stuff that I am sure is meaningful to you, but has to be sifted through by me.

I'll try to be more reader friendly!

 

[pmmg]

It's a boooooooooooot

Maybe. But if so, it wont mind if I complain.

 

[Queshire]

Fair enough

 

[Luís Santana]

I hate to say it Luis, but I am not sure you are actually using language.

What I meant to say, was, is, that sometimes it's hard to tell who the author is and who the characters are. Sometimes I think there has to be a certain compromise between the two. Who is telling the story? Am I spying on them like almighty god or do they have a life of their own!?! Sometimes I think that the two are one, inseparable. As if God were a whole. There was a time when I thought about putting the author in the story. Me, as the author, living in the story. But then I discarded that idea. It would be two stories in one. Two worlds. A kind of a portal. But right there, I created a problem. If I go there to the fictional world, the characters can also become real here in my reality. I'm still learning to see how I do it.

 

[Azul-din]

I wrestled with this issue for a long while.

The problem, as I saw it, was that we have Earth, with a convincing evolutionary history as to how humans and other races came to exist here. Muck around a bit in the fossil record, and you could kind of sort of maybe justify 'giants' and 'hobbits' in the not-so-distant past.

Contrasted with this are the usual fantasy worlds, chock full of humans, goblins, dwarves, elves, and other races - plus magic.

Problem is, the humans, at least, almost certainly had their distant origins on Earth, and at least some of those other races almost certainly began as human offshoots. Yet, the majority of fantasy worlds are low tech - so how did these remote ancestors get from Earth to Fantasy World?

Other authors have grappled with this and come up with solutions with varying degrees of plausibility:

1 - The transformation - science ran amok, or there was a bizarre cosmic event. This collapsed or greatly stressed Earth civilization, and effectively created elves and dwarves and bestowed at least some folks with magical ability.

2 - The Intervention/Portal - Some other race opened a portal to Earth and came through enmass, maybe hauling large numbers of people elsewhere. Fairly similar to the first option, except more planets. In some versions, this option kills most advanced technology.

3 - Parallel Evolution - Possible, but unlikely. Highly unlikely. Might explain the presence of humans with magic and the other races - evolutionary offshoots that survived.

4 - The Grand Collapse - Humans went to the stars, settled other planets...and then interstellar civilization collapsed - and the tale takes place thousands of years after that event. Before the collapse happened, genetic modifications run amok created humans with magic and races that could be deemed elves (former elite with longevity treatments), and goblins (mutants) and maybe others. This scenario might also allow for portals - highly advanced technology - and maybe a few star ships venturing between solar systems.

5 - The Lovecraft Option - Monstrosities from beyond warped time and space to reach Earth in the distant past, snatched a few tribes of humans, then casually dropped them elsewhere with maybe a few modifications.

6 - The God/Super Science option. A powerful entity or highly advanced race acquired human DNA (and presumably DNA) from other Earth life, and used it to grow 'test-tube humans,' some of them modified.

Then there is the magic. I see three main options that allow for crossovers between the conditions on Earth now and those typical to fantasy worlds.

1 - Magic is psionic ability (and presumably at least partly hereditary). Go this route....and most wizards are going to be on the wimpy side.

2 - Magic requires 'something extra' - the wizard needs special gems or potions or whatnot to work their spells. This might also be planet specific - there are conditions that apply only to the fantasy world that permit the use of magic.

3 - Magic is an intrusion upon 'normal reality' - magic shows up, things go haywire, but some people can manipulate this.

Combinations of these three are definitely possible.

For myself, I went with the 'ancient aliens' route. These utterly inhuman but naturally psionic beings came to Earth tens of thousands of years ago, and snatched tribes of humans as pets, test subjects, and servants. One set of tests involving 'spirits' resulted in large numbers of the test subjects becoming 'possessed,' eventually becoming elves. Goblins are another race altogether, superficially human in appearance, but with a different biology. Wizards began as favored servitors who were imbued with psionic ability - a necessary prerequisite to operate their masters' machines. Portals are part tech, part psionic. They are also damn dangerous because Lovecraftian abominations lurk in the spaces between - in fact it was a Lovecraftian intrusion that destroyed the ancient alien's civilization. (The ancient aliens snatched their last major group of Earth Humans from the late Roman empire and a couple other places roughly 1700 years ago, centuries after the Lovecraftian event and just before their civilization completely collapsed)

 

[Azul-din]

In my current WIP, I have a humanoid race of cat like creatures, with a pretty basic civilization (think fifth century bce), traveling via a portal to the human world in what is more or less the present day. The portal is created by a diminutive race called the Lares (nod to ancient Rome) for reasons at present unclear, except they will do so if summoned. The cat creatures use the human world for adventure, for hunting, and as a prison for criminals who have to be surgically altered (tail, fangs, ears, claws amputated)and so are marooned, unable to return.

 

[Finchbearer]

In my current WIP, I have a humanoid race of cat like creatures, with a pretty basic civilization (think fifth century bce), traveling via a portal to the human world in what is more or less the present day. The portal is created by a diminutive race called the Lares (nod to ancient Rome) for reasons at present unclear, except they will do so if summoned. The cat creatures use the human world for adventure, for hunting, and as a prison for criminals who have to be surgically altered (tail, fangs, ears, claws amputated)and so are marooned, unable to return.

I don’t know why, but this reminds me of the Doctor Who episode ‘Gridlock’.

 

[Azul-din]

I don’t know why, but this reminds me of the Doctor Who episode ‘Gridlock’.

Doctor Who? Sorry. not a fan. Could you explain?

 

[Finchbearer]

The Doctor takes Martha to New Earth, where she is kidnapped by two carjackers and taken to an underground Motorway, where the remainder of humanity on the planet live in perpetual gridlock.

 

[Finchbearer]

Exactly, Doctor Who ?

 

[Azul-din]

The Doctor takes Martha to New Earth, where she is kidnapped by two carjackers and taken to an underground Motorway, where the remainder of humanity on the planet live in perpetual gridlock.

 

[Azul-din]

Love the faces! My character has human features, being a half breed (her people call her a Changeling) but I've been trying to decide how the rest of her race should look. Thanks!

 

[pmmg]

Exactly, Doctor Who ?

Who?