Re: Chapter Four - The Legend of Anarakia
Notes From Iterant Point
Notes from Iterant Point Re: Chapter Four – The Legend of Anarakia
This week in the chapter-by-chapter look through Ascension at Aechyr, we catch up with Kennedy and Blake as they stumble through some basic training.
But first, we round out version 2 of Kennedy’s origin story. The first, the very incomplete version, is that he was somehow a marine who wound up storming a beach. After being wounded, a strange man with glowing green eyes used a device to blind him. And now, the completed second version (the official, true story) is that after running away from home, he met a strange girl with white hair who introduced him (in a coded way) to Time Peace. And the moment Kennedy saw a time gate and understood the basics of the fight, he was ready to sign up. But stepping out from his first trip through a time gate, he found he couldn’t see.
Back in the present, we get a look at the training Kennedy and Blake are starting. David, interestingly, is fast-tracking them beyond simple observers. He seems to think he can make Delta operatives out of them. And of the training, David says that the two will learn best through trying things themselves. Similarly, it’s easiest to make something stick with a reader if they “see” it for themselves. While Time Gate is obviously very fantastical, I find that there’s just as many interesting scenarios that can be found by building from mundane details as much as from out-there concepts.
For instance, with fight scenes (as we’ll see later), I think it’s important to note all the little details. What’s the environment the characters are in? What weapons or items do they have access to? What’s their relative skill level? The answers don’t have to be wild and out there, they just have to be engaged with. The goal to take what you have, and find something interesting or unexpected to show with it.
Much like how Kennedy and Blake ultimately prevail over Randy. Take the elements: volunteering the information that you’re hit, hits being marked by splattered paintballs, some paintballs not exploding – and rearrange them in an unusual way. In this case, Kennedy had to add an extra element of keeping Randy busy so that he couldn’t actually “hit” Blake while he was down, but the rest was just using elements that were already present.
But of course, we can’t skip a review of this chapter without talking about it’s namesake, could we?
Sure we can! It’s just a legend, right?
Instead, let me close out with a couple words about meta-time. I love time travel stories. I love them to death. But quite a few of them don’t make a great deal of sense. The problem seems to stem from the fact that a story is told, well, through time. There’s a beginning, middle, and end. A flow of time. But time travel messes with time, and so too, it often messes with the story. I could do a whole essay on the various interpretations of time travel and their benefits and drawbacks in storytelling, but we’ll leave that for another post.
But meta-time is one of the tools that I’m employing to try to minimize plot issues. In short, it’s a way to have a “present moment” regardless of when and where someone is on a timeline. Or in other words, hopping between (and back and forth on) timelines is not what we might call “true” time travel in my series. It’s more akin to going to a different country. In that analogy, timelines are different places around the world, and meta-time is, well, time. More importantly, while the timelines might undergo various changes, they do so in a specific order according to meta-time. Meta-time is where all those changes are recorded. So timeless can be the “first,” and “second,” and so on, to change a timeline.
A little complicated? Yes. But it all makes sense. I think. Trust me, I’m a professional. Sort of.
Next week we return to the question of which version of Kennedy’s past is the real one. I’m sure that will be a much simpler conundrum!
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