Channelknight Fadran

"Fine, then. Here." Aerith slapped a piece of paper down. "Deed to a stockpile of weaponry down south. Big pile of swords and axes and whatnot. Consider it collateral before I can pay you back."

WHAT ARE YOU???

Janice shies away from where he's pointing, heading into the side corridor.

Since T'Chala said it in the Hishe Dubs for Avengers: Endgame. Ask me questions in my AMA, Queen.

I gotchu fam

My last lesson was two months ago? If you guys haven't finished your homework yet, then you ought to be ashamed of yourself, you dirty procrastinaters! We left on a cliffhanger, last time, after a pretty dang long post about Plot Development in Worldbuilding. I said I'd write the Character Development in Worldbuilding next, so... I guess that's what I'm doing? LESSON NUMBER FIVE wait, no, no... it's a two-parter. LESSON NUMBER... uh... 4.5? 4, Part 2? Lesson number 42? Four-two? Uh... You know what? Screw it. Moving on! Lesson 4 [redacted]: Character Development! We all love it, we all need it, we all know it's notoriously difficult to pull off. The hardest part about Character Development is making it work in the context of the setting. I once wrote a short story called "Division of Occult" or something like that (I don't actually remember its name), and as a story it was pretty good. The characters interacted well enough, I think, but there was one glaring problem that made it not-good: the setting. The World in this short story was one of oppression. The wizards (called Occults) were the peasant class, and the muggles normal people were the ruling class. I have my own opinions that the Worldbuilding for that, alone, wasn't very good, but that isn't the point; the point was that the character arcs could've been executed exactly the same without the setting. The setting was flavor; the worldbuilding existed, but it didn't matter. This is the first step to character development in worldbuilding: you need to make the world matter. In the vast community of authors, you'll find factions of people leaning towards one element of writing or the other. You'll hear things like 'a good world is the most important thing for a fantasy book,' or 'believable characters are the most important thing for a fantasy book.' Unfortunately, you need both of these things, entertwined, to create a good fantasy story. The world and the characters aren't separate; they have to be so closely related that the story couldn't go on without either. Nice, nice. Very nice, Fadran. Now, uh... could you maybe EXPLAIN HOW CHARACTER ARCS WORK BEFORE YOU EXPLAIN HOW THEY WORK IN WORLDBUILDING? Geeze, guys. Chill out. Honestly, I did nothing at all to provoke that anger, but you're acting like I wrote it myself! You're right, though; understanding how characters work is... kind of important. Only relatively. Just a little bit. Anyways, there are a variety of archetypes for character arcs, but they all follow a basic formula: False belief Growth Change It's... really that easy to write a basic character arc. Step one: write a character with some flaw. Shallan's only purpose in becoming Jasnah's ward was to steal the Soulcaster; she had no other reason to be there, and believed that that was the only way to help herself and her family. Step two: write some character growth. Shallan learned to enjoy being Jasnah's ward. She felt like she belonged there as a scholar of the Vorin faith. Step three: write some change. Shallan was willing to change and realize that she should be Jasnah's ward instead of going back to her family with the Soulcaster. Now, obviously, it isn't that easy, but those are the basic steps. Belief, growth, change. Boom, done. But Fadran, that's boring. What about fallbacks and failures? The double-f's? First of all: never again say the term "double-f." That sounds way too wrong. Second of all: You're right! Again! It's the bumpiness of the ride that makes a character arc entertaining and enjoyable. Shallan giving Jasnah the Soulcaster after stealing it was quite the shaker. Kaladin being able to suck in Stormlight was quite the shaker. Throw potholes into your unkempt gravel road of writing: the drive wouldn't be any fun without them! Anyhoo, back on track with the worldbuilding character arc thing. Perhaps you might be asking yourself how the heck you're supposed to entwine worldbuilding and characters. I mean, in English class, your teachers tell you that you need characters, plot, and setting in order to make a book: they separate the darned things! WHY DO THEY SEPARATE THEM?? THEY SHOULDN'T BE SEPARATED!!! *Clears throat, straightens vest, and puts on a calm face* Where was I? Oh, right... ranting. Hmm... I'd best be moving on from that. Entertwining! Let's do this. It's actually a lot easier to combine worldbuilding and character arcs in fantasy than it is to combine setting and character arcs in regular fiction. This is because of our unspoken agreement that almost all fantasy stories are save-the-world. In a good fantasy save-the-world, your worldbuilding should be very directly correlated to the plot. I think the best example of this is Harry Potter, because (rant in spoiler box): *Ahem* Anyways, in short, if your plot and world are closely correlated, then it's relatively easy to make your characters entertwined with the world as well. The characters change because of events in the plotline, and the plot changes because of worldbuilding elements, so who's to say that characters can't change because of worldbuilding elements? I really want to cite the Iconar Collective right now, but... I seriously doubt that you guys want spoilers for the climax of the third book, nor do I want to give it out (because it's gonna be SCUDDING EPIC), so I'll settle for some Mistborn. Turn your mind back to the climax of Hero of Ages. The reason Vin's able to defeat Ruin is because her Identity's been touched by the power of Ruin and Preservation. She's not held back by the anti-destructive Identity of Preservation because she's partly Ruin as well. Phew! Finally managed to write a good example. You know, the past six or so paragraphs were basically just me stalling until I could think of a good book to cite. So... there you go. Does that make sense! I'm always really insecure about these. Don't die! ~Fadran

Any more piano requests?

Zero Yes. The guy who introduced my to the Shard. Also... have you seen my Shardiversary status update? I have a Queedran picture in it. At least 3 YES

Janice follows behind them all, feeling very exposed with her Traces out in open view.

RAFO!! Just kidding. So the cycle is Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Earthlight dries all the water from Waterlight (creating dust for the duststorms), and Firelight is... kind of like a six-hour-long Autumn? The trees drop all their leaves, and these little buggers called Firemoths come out and eat them. They'll occasionally start small fires, so people are careful to rake the leaves into piles so that they don't burn anything before Waterlight. Overview: Earth: Dries Waterlight rains. Everything becomes dusty. Air: Winds pick up, and dust blows everywhere. Fire: Firemoths eat fallen leaves and start fires. Waterlight: RAIN XD

"AH!" Ayia pulls out dual metal rods.

“Well, I’m definitely not a Radiant Squire, so...” Fadran shrugs. “So how do we get into your base?”

Phew! Finally back on-track. The following two chapters come after the chapter "Training Session," so if you want to go back and reread that... great! Chapter XIV: Chapter XV:

"I... don't know."

"But... punching."

"They're like... giant colorful cockroaches."

"Ah, uh..." Aerith searched his pockets and came up a few hundred short.

"Well that's uncanny." Ayia decided.

"Blood test? Cool!" Fadran pricks himself with his Channelblade, put a couple drops in a vial, then drew upon his Channelblade's Divinity to heal himself. He then placed his blood onto the machine, waiting to see what happened.