A Minor Variation

Have not written so much in the past couple days. But with fall, and therefore November and NaNoWriMo getting closer, I've been further pondering the whole Fate & Luck business. More and more I'm thinking that I'd like to do this in a more steampunkish setting rather than simply using the modern world. That may be the rosemush influence talking, but it also opens up the possibility of including the whole mess of pseudosciences that people came up with back when science was still a pretty new concept, and gives me more opportunities to play around with the ways that the various personifications' spheres of influence run up against the mortal world, and how they interact with the world, and stuff like that.

But I still don't really have much of a plot. I'm toying with the idea of trying to come up with a storyline involving Luck's sister, and giving her stuff to do that doesn't directly involve Fate or Luck, at least not until the shit really starts hitting the fan. There's always the possibility of having Fate's plan determine some nasty fate for her, since that would definitely bring Fate and Luck into conflict, but I certainly don't want her to be a passive participant in all of this. Using the steampunk setting gives me the option of having people try to use their newfound sciences for Something Big that could go Catastrophically Wrong... still chewing on this.

Also stewing over some parallels between Fate & Luck's dynamic in the pairings of Art and Science, and Love and Lust... other possible personifications are Fear, Beauty, Memory, Sleep and Dream... I already have general concepts for Nature and Death... And I could include Chaos as an antagonist as well, but I don't know that there's really room. While Chaos would oppose Fate, that would also take away from the whole theme of free will and taking responsibility for your actions and blah blah fishcakes.

Anyway, off to work now.

Random contemplation regarding that whole anthropomorphic-personifications-of-concepts fiction idea that I have yet to do anything with... I've established Fate in my mind as following a bigger plan, one not of his (conscious) making, but I've never been able to settle on just who or what that plan does come from, or how to enforce the bad luck parts of Luck's position to keep him from going about being nice to people and only giving bad luck to people who deserve it.

But suppose the plan actually isn't formed by a higher power, and there isn't anything keeping Luck from meting out luck the way he wants to? Suppose instead that what Fate thinks is a plan is actually a combination of the necessity of balancing what Luck does to maintain the essentially random nature of life, and a subconscious way for Fate to justify the really crappy things he has to do to people whenever Luck gets too generous?

You'd think a setup like that would cause Fate to burn out faster than Luck... except Fate has his belief in the plan (and his own personal damage) to keep him steady, and Lucks keep burning out because they're stuck with Fate.

(And wow would it suck for Fate to actually realize all of this...)

A few more personification braindribbles before bed...

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Still noodling with that personification idea. Of all the potential aspects, Fate is the one I have the best concept of. Which isn't saying a whole lot.

( Fate-foo. )