Fic Talk > Updates

Drop it like it's hot! Or... Updates from Dee. :o)

<< < (17/21) > >>

nicksgal:
Happy Wednesday! This post has been a long time coming as it’s difficult to discuss the mythology and lore of a series where the first book is called “Pandora’s Box” without discussing… well… the Pandora’s box myth. I held off on sharing until at least after chapter twenty-seven, since “Glow” is when the ambiguity of where Pandoras get their powers becomes a little more clear and hopefully this week’s chapter sheds a little more light on the subject. (As always, I intend all my puns.)

So there’s some ambiguity in the Pandora legend on just what the jar contained (box is really a mistranslation for "pithos" -- a large jar made of clay and used to store many things from wine to human remains). The name “Pandora” can be interpreted as “all-gifted” or “all-giving” and the story goes that each of the gods bestowed a gift on Pandora (a woman made of clay), including a jar with all the evils of the world, hoping that she would bestow a punishing gift on humans in retribution for Prometheus stealing fire from the gods when she opened it. I’ll be honest with you, in general, ancient Greece was not kind to women, so the implication is that a “deceitful woman” bestowed the evils on man (you'll also notice this "created" aspect which I'm sure you can imagine Christianity ran away with to connect Eve's sin to this myth...). It’s… fun stuff… Everyone agrees that the ills of the world are in the box: plague, death, war, destruction, famine, etcetera, etcetera. And the last thing in the box is hope. The word used to describe hope would actually translate to “expectation,” so it’s more the “expectation of hope.” Here is the ambiguity. Hope is generally seen as a good thing, so why is it in a box with all these evil things? Is it evil because it remains in the box where it can’t be accessed (the absence of hope) or did it linger with the jar to preserve hope as an accessible thing? Or did it originally represent false hope (an evil)? This is unclear and without Hesiod to say for sure, it’s up to interpretation . There is some indication that Pandora’s original purpose (away from this jar myth) was some sort of earth goddess, giving all that is needed to sustain life, a bestower of gifts rather than a receiver of gifts.

So PBox. Following the “good” interpretation of the myth, one of its main themes is “there’s always hope.” Time and time again, our heroes are rewarded for hope. Even way back to the beginning, Nick constantly hopes that Pandora will come to rescue him, and she does. Minako hopes that she can save Renee and she gets to go back to PBox’s world. All our heroes hope that their sacrifices can bring them victory and it does. They all talk about their hope to see the “world of brightness” and death is impermanent (Spoiler? Nah… you had to assume by now that all five Boys are trucking along in PNecklace despite death. I promise there’s a reason). Minako and Nick hope to see each other again and they do. There’s always hope. You’ll see this again as we near the end of PNecklace (only ⅖ left to go after today), of course, because it’s a theme for the whole story. Really the theme is, like the contents of the jar: “Despite all the bad in the world, there’s always hope.” And I’ve discussed it in a couple author’s notes, but PBox’s world is dark. That’s what makes the hope and bright spots so uplifting. And this is only mirrored by the characters. Minako and Nick are both prime examples of this.

Anyway, by opening the box, Pandora’s wishes make her the “all-giving,” but in order to open it, she needs demonic power, thus making her the “all-gifted” as well. In PBox, she gets these by receiving their hearts: the containers for their demonic power. Ever notice that Kevin always touches the heart when he heals? And they make several references that they “just feel the others living” in their hearts and none of them really worry about it. You may be wondering now if demons can really die? That’s a great question and you won’t like the answer, which is… keep reading. ;) You may have also noticed that Minako has always had “the blue light,” even back in the beginning of PBox. Our story is slowly unraveling where this may have originated from. And now you may be wondering how long exactly Minako’s had demonic powers she could use. A mystery for another day as there’s plenty more coming about our titular box  and Pandora.

What do you think? Is hope a blessing despite being in a box of curses or is it just another curse? Has hope rewarded our characters in PBox&Co or has it punished them? As always, see you next Wednesday!

nicksgal:
Zero excuses! Hope you enjoyed this week's Author Talk.

If you would still like to read PBox, I will include both location links below. While all fifty chapters of PBox are complete, it is still undergoing the tiniest cursory edit where I change the paragraph alignment of the "~*~" and fix a couple errant commas, but otherwise it's all there. Feedback is always appreciated. :)

Pandora's Box on Absolute Chaos

Pandora's Box on AO3

Please find updates as follows (links included in titles):

Chapter Thirty ("Past") of Pandora's Necklace on Absolute Chaos

Chapter Twenty-Seven ("Glow") of Pandora's Necklace on AO3  (You've been able to read this on AC for the past three weeks. Only three more weeks until I'm cross-posting the same chapter at the same time!)

I won't update this thread, but I'll be posting Chapter Twenty-Eight on AO3 on Sunday. Feedback is always appreciated as I catch my two cross postings up to each other (or if you're loving what's currently on AC). :) This is the end of the Nick-heavy chunk of the novel (for the most part at least, since he's still our main character after all).

Enjoy! Continue to feel free to ask me anything and get answers! Thank you again to everyone reading! See you next Wednesday!

Happy 11,000th post to me! ;)

nicksgal:
Happy Wednesday! No Author Talk this week as my food delivery arrived during update day and it is time to eat (is this too much information about my personal life? lol). But I did want to give some insight into some of the things I've been working on. As you may have gathered from other posts around the forum, PNecklace is complete, but I am sticking to my update schedule for the moment unless I get crazy ahead on other projects or something.

Otherwise, I am currently working on a short story for the 1000 Ways to Die round robin, PDemons (of course), and a fun little satire novella set around the Into the Millennium tour. So I've got a little of everything going at the moment across size and genre. I hope you enjoy all of them once they're ready to be posted!

If you would still like to read PBox, I will include both location links below. While all fifty chapters of PBox are complete, it is still undergoing the tiniest cursory edit where I change the paragraph alignment of the "~*~" and fix a couple errant commas, but otherwise it's all there. Feedback is always appreciated on my magnum opus. :)

Pandora's Box on Absolute Chaos

Pandora's Box on AO3

Please find updates as follows (links included in titles):

Chapter Thirty-One ("History") of Pandora's Necklace on Absolute Chaos

Chapter Twenty-Nine ("Sacrifice") of Pandora's Necklace on AO3  (You've been able to read this on AC for the past two weeks. Only two more weeks until I'm cross-posting the same chapter at the same time! Chapter Twenty-Eight: Adapt also went up on Sunday if you missed it.)

I won't update this thread, but I'll be posting Chapter Thirty on AO3 on Sunday. Feedback is always appreciated as I catch my two cross postings up to each other (or if you're loving what's currently on AC). :) I hope you like having a different POV character this week.

Enjoy! Continue to feel free to ask me anything and get answers! Thank you again to everyone reading and getting PNecklace over 5000 views! See you next Wednesday!

nicksgal:
Happy Wednesday! Writing is going slow... That's all.

If you would still like to read PBox, I will include both location links below. While all fifty chapters of PBox are complete, it is still undergoing the tiniest cursory edit where I change the paragraph alignment of the "~*~" and fix a couple errant commas, but otherwise it's all there. Feedback is always appreciated on my magnum opus. :)

Pandora's Box on Absolute Chaos

Pandora's Box on AO3

Please find updates as follows (links included in titles):

Chapter Thirty-Two ("Ripples") of Pandora's Necklace on Absolute Chaos

Chapter Thirty-One ("History") of Pandora's Necklace on AO3  (You've been able to read this on AC since last week. Only a few days until I'm cross-posting the same chapter at the same time! Chapter Thirty: Past also went up on Sunday if you missed it.)

I won't update this thread, but I'll be posting Chapter Thirty-Two on AO3 on Sunday. Feedback is always appreciated as I catch my two cross postings up to each other (or if you're loving what's currently on AC). :) I hope you like having a different POV character this week.

Enjoy! Continue to feel free to ask me anything and get answers! Thank you again to everyone reading and getting PNecklace over 5000 views! See you next Wednesday! I'll do my best to get an Author Talk together for next week.

nicksgal:
It’s been a minute since I did an Author Talk (I’m running out of things to talk about off hand that aren’t related to spoilers), but I wanted to go back to tropes this week. Recently, PNecklace has spent some time discussing history and prophecies, mostly in regards to what that means for our main heroes. So this week, I wanted to discuss PBox and some prophecy tropes.

Throughout PBox&Co, there’s this vague mention of prophecies in the underlying plot and narrative. When you really think about it, the Pandora Legend is both an in-universe myth and an in-universe prophecy. It’s complicated though, since it’s implied that enough time has passed since the myth was told (or foretold as the case may actually be), that it should be seen as just a story. But since it’s been kept alive as truth, it hasn’t faded into myth as much as it falls into legend territory. And again, the line here is really blurred because it’s a story from the past talking about a thing in the future, so it’s a bit convoluted.

One of the major reasons our main heroes are off on this adventure is “because destiny said so.” Or at least, that’s what they say. Their real reasons are a bit more muddied. Howie, you could argue, is definitely in the “because destiny says so” camp, but a lot of that has more to do with duty to crown, country, and legacy than just devotion to a prophecy. Kevin’s reason is implied to be because he was saved because he possessed those destined powers. Brian’s reason, as you probably gathered recently, stems from filial piety. AJ’s is absolutely “because you were nice to me.” Minako’s reason was “the boy” from the beginning (and it grew to being dependable to the unit over time). And Nick’s has always been what he thinks he can get from following destiny (although these days it probably leans less selfish than at the start of PBox; how selfish “to be with my friends” really is  probably depends on who you ask).

But the major thing about the PBox prophecies is that they fall under “vagueness is coming” and slide to “prophecies are guides, not rules.” I mean, what does “ignite the kingdom” even mean? How does one do that? It’s difficult when the main prophecy of the bunch is clearly something meant for all the main sets of demons, but theoretically one group winning should mean that all others lose. Although technically none of the prophecies say “when x happens, y will win,” that’s just the way it’s all been interpreted over the years. What these prophecies actually mean is more muddled. (See, this is what I said about having a hard time finding things to talk about without spoilers, lol.) And there’s this lingering question of who made the prophecies if they’re not just legends and stories. Anyone have any ideas? You know that I always love taking guesses.

Some other prophecy tropes I’ve played with in the narrative are that Nick leans toward “screw destiny” many times in the story, but mainly when it comes to what he envisions for his future and getting the girl -- which that thread (pun intended) leans into “red string of fate” vibes sometimes. So can Nick really screw destiny if his destiny is all interwoven? (Those are my only two destiny/fabric puns; I swear.) I don’t know if we can really answer this until there’s a good explanation of not just “why Pandoras,” but “why this particular person is a Pandora.” And again, spoilers… But feel free to discuss!

This week was shorter. Definitely let me know if there’s anything you want me to talk about. It may give me more ideas rather than running off on my rambles. Happy Wednesday!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page