Chapter 265 Weekly Discussion - "Three Months in the Belly of the Earth"

A Practical Discussion (PGTS)
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When I’m plotting my books/series, I mentally label chapters like this with terminology like “cracking the egg” or “the beat drops.” For some reason, I really like the imagery that this world and the events within are like a nested Russian doll made of eggs… And they keep cracking and bursting, every layer deeper and more shattering to the poor yolk-people just trying to live their lives.

Well, I’ve never said that aloud before and I realize now it sounds like something a drunk, confused person might say… I promise I’m not drunk. :melting_face:

It’s a moment where things change irrevocably, the world as it was is broken, and you can’t go back. But really, most times things have actually already changed log ago, and seemingly innocuous events set in motion cannot be stopped, only—if the characters are lucky—diverted. It is the echo of a long-ago break, like thunder after lightning.

Thoughts, theories, and everything else welcome. Discuss away!

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Okay, thoughts.

Firstly, ha, I see that quote from another wizarding world.

Second, errata:

“Beaut>” could be either beaut or beauty.

“ take a few quick bites of foot.” - Freudian slip here, Azalea? Especially considering some of the later hints in this chapter. Regardless, foot should be food here.

Not an error but “ she did so without any sense of reticence.” I think just without reticence suffices, but that’s just from a flow perspective. For some reason that just jarred me out of the flow and had me considering if one can have a sense of reticence (you can). Not sure why it jumped out at me but it’s just for consideration when you do an editing pass later.

Again, not an error ““I’m not having my mind tampered with by some twiddling little pup of a thaumaturge like you,” she announced with a slight slur,” - when I originally read it I thought it meant that twiddling pup was a slur rather than she had a slur to her voice.

There’s an odd one where you say the investigation began to stall out. Stall is an old word, but stall out seems quite particular to motor engines which don’t seem to be a thing in the world at the moment. Maybe just remove the out there?

Lastly, the thoughts I have buzzing about after my 1am read:

I’m concerned how Claudio tried to appeal to Siobhan to get her to let him work magic on her.

Grandfather is definitely at odds with Claudio - why? Because he’s sloppy and leaving evidence? Or because he’s finding clues that lead him to suspect Claudio is holding out on him? Maybe something else.

Aimee telling grandfather he needs to praise Siobhan and take an interest in her because she’s feeling neglected was also very sweet. I enjoyed that.

The walking corpse with the tiny chewed up baby limbs was very creepy. Well done. I see why Siobhan has had nightmares for years.

Magic that tampered with the mind was one of the more widespread fears, even though most non-thaumaturges probably didn’t understand how it worked at all. Siobhan didn’t share that particular phobia—only a healthy wariness

Oh how things change!

Edit: about the hints - I had wondered if the spirit was driving Claudio to desire flesh, living flesh. But what if these horrors are a result of him trying to find a new host for the spirit? What if that’s what grandfather is trying to help him with?

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Sailing ships stall. It’s exactly the same meaning as when an airplane stalls.

In a sailing ship, you want the wind pressure behind the sail to move quickly (high pressure) and the wind over the front of the sail to move slower (low pressure). This airfoil moves the ship.

If you turn the ship too far into the wind, or trim the sail incorrectly, the air pressure on the front of the sail equalizes with the back. Forward motion stops, and the ship stalls, i.e. stops moving where you want it to go. A ship never stops moving, so it isn’t stopped or halted; it’s stalled.

In an airplane, the plane stalls when there is inadequate airflow over the wing and it, well, falls out of the sky like a rock.

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I am surprised that Raz reacted with a hex to a simple question. That seems out of character. Normally he encourages if she wants to gain knowledge and if she helps in the household.

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Yes, exactly, but they don’t stall out which is my quibble.

Stall is a very old word and perfectly acceptable, stall out is particular to engines, as far as I can tell.

Edit: when I say particular to engines, obviously in a modern book “the investigation stalled out” would be perfectly acceptable, but in a world where there are no engines to bring about the evolution of that phrase it feels iffy. Like using shell shock in a time before widespread bombing was a thing. Everyone will know what you mean, but it’s not quite in keeping with the world it’s being written in.

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Mm on the subject my suspicion at least for now is, that the cocoon for one of those dreaming failed. And thus the hunger that defined that placed filled them.

But if it truly was a corpse then perhaps Claudios efforts, especially with the throwing up food may be attempts at aligning a spirit from the area they or at least he is investigating into a proper vessel. It may have truly been a animal in part the first time but its like a kind of conceptual contamination finding aspects it can fit into.

I honestly wonder if this gradual pattern isnt similar to what have been done intentionally to get the black desert

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I’ve checked “stall out” - there is a usage of “out” which means completely. So, an airplane can “stall out” But, I can’t find a sailboat usage.

It’s not as big a deal to me here. Maybe, in fact, its a clue.

So, I’m usually more surprised by Latin. Latin phrases in a fantasy world are much more weird, because if you have a latin phrase, that means the distant past had a Rome. And if you have a Rome, that means the setting is actually Earth. And I never know if that’s right. Are we on Earth? These books have Latin in them.

So, I can even imagine this is Earth, engines were lost tech, but the language didn’t lose its quirks. Or Myrddin added it to the lexicon inadvertently, because he is an isekai protagonist.

The legend of William Oh (on Royal Road) does this, giving one of the characters a copy of an ancient dictionary, so she knows a bizarre number of modern terms even though the characters are in a dungeon crawling fantasy.

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Well there’s just so much Latin and Greek in our modern lexicon (especially if you’re in scientific fields) that it would feel awkward to exclude it.

Considering the books are written in English, I tend to view them as a translation of the world the characters are in (even a historical novel set in our world would be incredibly tedious to read if it were all in old English) and thus any Latin/Greek etc. is a similar linguistic relic. It would be very strange to have a language that was completely linguistically pure, especially in a scholarly and cosmopolitan society.

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it’s not things like “re” which is actually a shortening of In re that get me as much as words like “delphic” Those kinds of references are more than just translation; they are loaded with meaning tracing back to the source material.

When your fantasy characters are cutting through Gordian knots, there’s a kind of reference to historical analogy that you have to think about. How there can even be a Gordian knot, because it comes from a story about Alexander the Great?

If Christmas showed up and there’s no Christian church in the fantasy world, then you ask, where did it come from?

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Ah! I’m with you.

I was thinking about the “clothing cum armour” or the penta- hexa- hepta- octa- gons and grams, vise versa, etc. and others that just lurk in the English language. Not to mention all the French like outré, passé, cliché, coup d’état, hors d’oeuvre, fiancé - and the ones we don’t even think about like villain, envoy, joy, mauve, beige etc.

Trying to keep foreign words out of one’s writing is near impossible. But loaded ideas is much easier. Though I would imagine that such parables would crop up in those worlds because human troubles are universal. So perhaps instead of a Gordian knot you might have an Arwynian knot - but then you usually have to explain to the readers which can disrupt the flow so it’s probably better to just leave it out altogether.

It’s interesting with names as well. Christina, Christopher, Christian - none of these make sense in a book where there is no Christ. That’s just off the top of my head but it makes it very interesting when you go down that rabbit hole of what names are appropriate to your society.