Original Fiction Fest

I’m a brand new writeblr blog (started one after a friend coerced me to do it) and I’ve decided to try participating in @originalficfest‘s Original Fic Fest that’s going from May 25th to May 31st. 

About me! My name is Kody, though a good amount of my friends call me Solas or Sol. I’ve recently turned twenty and am going to school to be an elementary art teacher. My interest in writing started way back in grade school when I wrote a story about a dog with superpowers named Sam. It was my first piece of fiction, and I’ve been writing ever since. I recently took a college level Creative Writing course at my little tiny Nebraska college and it has rekindled my love for writing. I’ve had so many ideas for so long, and I’ve finally started putting them on paper. I love writing literary short stories and poetry, though fantasy is where my heart lies. As my major implies, I’m an artist and I love making art. I also enjoy rpg videogames and petting my cat, Bean. 

I have two main WIPs, though I’ll only be focusing on one. I want to pour a lot of attention into these prompts, and to do that with the time I have outside of work, I’ve decided to do my WIP called Soul Robot. 

About Soul Robot: 

I came up with this idea years ago, and only within the last few weeks have I started fleshing it out, so bear with me on some of the details. Including the lame title. I’ll give you a small rundown on the basics of the story. 

The story takes place in a futuristic setting, where technology is at the forefront of people’s lives. The main character is Reahven Navratil, a woman that is destined to die from stage four pancreatic cancer. The doctors have given her just weeks to live. If she had the money, her life could possibly be extended, but she doesn’t, so she has to accept her fate. That’s when she is visited by an emissary of the country’s president, President Faber. They tell her that she has been selected to get an experimental treatment that could cure her. With nothing left to lose, she accepts. 

The experiment? Take her soul and place it into a robot. They hope to immortalize people in the form of robots with souls. To do so, they find a renowned magician and she does the work for them. Reahven is reborn as a robot. She is forced to do work for the government, and has to battle against slaving protocols until she is rescued by a band of rogue magicians. They take her to their reservation, a place made by the government for magicians and outcasts who worship the Old Gods that the government has rejected. There Reahven decides that she wants her soul to be at peace, and her and the magicians go about finding the magician that had first placed her soul into the robot. Little do they realize that the Gods have much more to do with this than they realize. 

Soul robot explores the idea of sci-fi and magic existing together, mental illness, queer relationships, and the threat of an overpowering government. 

I’m very excited to flesh out my idea more, and I’d love to get feedback from other authors who have a passion for writing like I do. If you have any questions, like my idea, or need someone to read through your own fiction, give me a holler! I’m new to the writeblr community and would like to make friends. I look forward to hearing more about everyone’s ideas!

Original Fic Fest: Day One

Hello yes, Kody here. Day one of the Original Fic Fest is to introduce your characters! I’m a day late because of work related issues, but I’m quite excited to share my dudes with you. A lot of my characters aren’t terribly fleshed out, as I only just started working on Robot Soul a few weeks ago. I’ll go through my main characters in Robot Soul, but I’ll also mention a couple characters from my second WIP, Jar of Hearts. Thank you all for taking the time to read this!! It means so much to me! (also, since my characters are so un-realized, I don’t have any reference pictures! Many apologies! I only have reference pictures for my two characters in Jar of Hearts.) @originalficfest

Robot Soul

Reahven Navratil is my main character in Robot Soul. She lives in the suburbs of the capital city of Allowen, tauntingly named after the realm of the Old Gods, a place that one might call ‘heaven’ in our terms. She lives on her own as a 25 year old woman, and works a menial job in a robot factory assembly line. She is diagnosed with stage four cancer and is thus hospitalized. She doesn’t have the money for fancy treatments that the rich might use to extend their life, so she essentially has to accept her fate and sit in the hospital until she finally goes. She hates that she’s so powerless in her situation, as she’s someone who must be in control of her situation. When her soul is transferred to the robot body against her will, she is angry. She’d rather be dead than forced to serve under the reign of President Faber. Despite her strong personality, she is unable to defeat the slaving protocols that the government have installed in her robotic body. It is only when a group of rogue mages come to break her out and release her of her slaving protocols that she finally finds a semblance of peace in her existence. Not wanting to risk being caught and enslaved by the government again, Astrid decides that she would rather let her soul be released from its cage and sent to the realm of Allowen that she had always believed in. The story captures the quest to find the mage powerful enough to manipulate souls. 

Alabeth Vedevea is the main supporting character in the story Robot Soul. She is a spunky 20 year old who hasn’t quite outgrown her teenage goth years. She has black hair haphazardly cut, with blue streaks in it. She lives in one of the reservations far from Allowen, where mages and outcasts live. She was born into a rich family, but suffers from severe bipolar disorder, and her family simply drugged her up in hopes of keeping her from acting in a way they didn’t like. The medicines made her so she wasn’t too sad but also not too happy. She was stuck in a limbo of ‘meh’ and she didn’t like living life that way. So she ran away. She was alone for a long while before she stumbled across one of the reservations she had heard about. She’s been there for a few years now. Unmedicated, she has trouble dealing with her mental illness, and struggles with this throughout the book. She becomes Reahven’s closest friend in this ordeal. 

Ra’dair Ansah is a mage in the same reservation that Odette lives in. He is one of the three archmages on the reservation and becomes a sort of overseer to the group that goes to find the soul mage. He is black, tall, and clumsy as a newborn kitten. He may look intimidating, but he’s about as kind a guy as you can be. He’s an ice mage, but with great practice and a large amount of energy, he also has the ability to pause time for a limited amount of time and can teleport at will. I don’t have a huge backstory for him. It’ll be something I’ll work on.

(I have four more main characters in Robot Soul, but to keep the post at a decent size, I’ll just name the rest with a basic description and info about them. I don’t have big backstories for anyone else. It’s something that I have yet to develop.)

Vildira Alinara is age fifteen. She has dark tan skin and black hair with brown eyes. Tall like her teacher, Ra’dair. She’s a fire mage with an explosive temper. Goes along with the group to find the soul mage. 

Duvasis Volt is age 38. He’s white, with brown hair and green eyes. Also tall, but thin. The leading archmage on the reservation, a member of the Council. (the Council being representatives from each reservation that convene to discuss matters between them.) Often travels to other reservations. He’s extremely rule abiding and loves history. He is one of the few mages who knows necromancy, and is otherwise a magician that utilizes electricity. People wonder if that’s why his last name is Volt, or if he decided to learn shock magic because of his name. Nobody really knows because he mostly keeps to himself. Despite this, he does take the time to care for each one of the reservation members, and truly loves them like a sweet little outcast family. Stays back on the reservation while the others go to find the soul mage.

Lauzio Liang is age 18. He looks Chinese, with light tan skin, brown eyes, and black hair. He is a spirit magician under the teachings of Duvasis. He’s as rule abiding as Duvasis, and is constantly engrossed in his studies. He’s asexual and hasn’t really thought of the idea of having a partner, as it is not important to him at the moment. Later on in the book, he finds feelings for Ruslexi. (I’m asexual and I hate the trope where the asexual falls in love and is magically “cured,” so my goal for this romance is to make it so Lauzio remains the same as he always is. I want to normalize the idea that asexuals can still be in relationships and still feel love for people--just not sexual attraction.) Goes with the group to find the soul mage.

Ruslexi Caviano-Desjardins is age 22. He’s white, with white-blonde hair and blue eyes. Tall and willowy. He was not born a magic user, but is trying to learn under the teachings of Ra’dair. He was originally cast out from society because he is a transgender man. I have some ideas for his backstory, but nothing is solidified yet. He’s super gay for Lauzio. Goes along to find the soul mage.

Jar of Hearts

Tatsuo Takahiro (Pictured left. Commission done by the lovely @emoryssketchbook. An old design of Sylvie is pictured on the right.)

Tatuo Takahiro is a young noble in the country of Mircas. Originally born in Dafeld, a place up in the mountains, a place in which is mother and father own, he lives in the lap of luxury his whole life. That is, until the year he turned eighteen. Angry townspeople take out a contract on his parent’s lives and the assassin’s guild comes and kills his parents. His eldest sister Yoko is a part of this plot and she kills the rest of his eight siblings. The only reason he is not killed is because of the quick thinking of his head servant, Nobu. He moves to the Southern Reach, far from the mountains. There he buys a section of Hebury from a bankrupt Lord and he takes control of the elven district of the city. Meanwhile, he ruminates in his desire for revenge on his sister, who had destroyed his whole family and livelihood. When Yoko is sighted in Hebury, he goes to question the innkeeper of the inn she was seen in and comes across Sylvestr Grewenys, someone who had seen Yoko. He recruits the elf’s help, and the two go across the country in search for his sister and to get his revenge. Tatsuo is a pessimist and sees the worst in every situation. He is often very sour, and has a distaste for elves, especially Sylvie. He uses his influence to get around, and tries his hardest to make sure people don’t know about his past. 

Sylvestr Grewenys (commission done by the lovely @illuminest)

Sylvestr (”Sylvie”) is half wood elf that lives in the country of Mircas. He was born Sylvia, and is a ka’shem-al’sen. In our words, he is transgender. He comes from a poor village along the road to Hebury, the capital of the Southern Reach. Many other wood elves live there, as well as some humans. His father was an abusive human who essentially kept Sylvie’s mother as a slave. Also being sexually abusive to Sylvie, he saw Sylvie and his mother as nothing more than animals for him to do his own bidding. Catching a bit of bad luck in their farming, Sylvie’s father sells him to a known prostitution ring that operated in the undercity of Hebury. There, Sylvie is forced to live as a prostitute, unable to get out of that life without risking his own life. That is, until a prickly young Lord by the name of Tatsuo Takahiro infiltrates that prostitution ring and breaks it up, therefore saving Sylvie’s life. It isn’t until later that Sylvie is able to thank him, when he is questioned by Tatsuo on the whereabouts of his sister, who had been seen at the inn that Sylvestr stayed in. He joins Tatsuo in his search for his sister (for the money, of course. Though he also felt he owed Tatsuo for saving his life.) Sylvestr seems overconfident of himself, and is very flirtatious, not caring to use his body to get what he wants. He has a shitload of trauma that he’s forced to get through during the course of  this novel, and seems to find the unlikeliest of friends along their journey across country. 

Other characters in Jar of Hearts: 

Declina, Nadir, and Zenith: Three siblings that join Tatsuo and Sylvie on their trip to find Yoko. 

Haerel: A beautiful androgynous Moon Elf castaway who joins the group while running from a group of hunters, hunting him for his blood, which is said to have healing properties. 

Sorry this went so long, I just get so excited talking about my characters that I tend to ramble. If you made it this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read this. If you have any interest in my characters or any suggestions on development, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Thanks again!

I’m fragile

Not like a flower but

like a bomb.

Like the sky on the cusp of a thunderstorm,

I’m ready to explode

(from the pressure)