Random Questions Thread

@ War Jay 77:

This is a very interesting question and I've been watching how the conversation around it has been developing. I'm afraid that I don't have much to add, since a lot of people have chimed in with a very good series of thoughts and suggestions. I do have a contribution of sorts but it depends on where you want to go with this story.

If your Empath character becomes better at controlling the "input" of feelings from around her, or otherwise harness the power, I do have a suggestion on how to treat it. One of my characters has a similar ability (though it's shoehorned under "telepathy"), where he can also feel the emotions of those around him along with their thoughts. However he mentions that their emotions and his are distinct and he doesn't confuse them. In-story I give an example of looking at someone else's arm and your own; they look structurally similar but you know that one limb is your own and the other belongs to someone else.

If your Empath gains mastery and can "gatekeep" what she feels, perhaps she could begin to regard the oncoming emotions in this sort of manner and you could even use a similar metaphor about the arms or something like that.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jun 14th 2021 at 3:20:04 PM

I won't claim to know better than De Marquis's postings above, and I might well be mistaken in the following, but I think that it's very much possible for external factors to bring on a bout of depression. Thus it might be that things like the rain act as triggers for it. (A little like a smaller-scale version of seasonal affective disorder.)

But let that come with the pinch of salt that is "I am not a psychologist"!

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jun 14th 2021 at 10:00:11 AM

Thanks for the input guys! I'm positive now that however it turns out I can write it realistically.

So, I'm writing a dark fantasy story with a strong focus on coming of age, character and character interaction. But I have yet to decide on the narrator type. I'm mainly between:

-First Person

-Third Person Omniscient

To give more details, the story has one protagonist but is focused on a group of seven. I want to give each of them good development and have the reader get to know them deeply. I'd also like for the secondary cast to be well developed. But I'm unsure of which narrator would help me with this. I know first person narrator would usually be the choice to go for a character based story but since I have so many, I started to think that maybe an omniscient type would be more useful than showing things from a single character POV or risk head-hopping. What do you think?

@ Winterbird:

I have a similar setup going on, similar enough that I wonder if my method may help you. There are four protagonists that I have given a first-person POV, although one of the four is very much the tale's main character and the most time is spent on his POV. But the readers see the story through the first-person eyes of all my four "chosen ones", which I feel makes them feel more personal and connected to the audience. Events involving characters that aren't protagonists (even those characters central to the overall plot) and events happening outside of the main four heroes, are given an omniscient third-person POV.

TLDR: First person POV works well when you have a group of characters you want to be well-connected and fleshed out for the audience. Contrasting that with third-person POV for everything/everyone else makes the contrast sharper and helps accomplish the primary goal of making that "chosen" group of characters feel more personal to the reader.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jun 14th 2021 at 5:12:47 AM

I recommend against the first person unless you are an experienced writer and/or you are willing to risk an experiment that might not work. First person is harder to pull off successfully than the other options. Why third person omniscient and not third person limited?

Hrm. I have used first person from just one character's perspective.

Switching voices in the middle of a work is a no-no. I can't think of a single successful example.

Yeah, I stick to one character's perspective per story.

I tend to switch between characters' perspectives between chapters (and stick to third person - I never even considered first person). Though the character perspective can be more or less close to the character's point of view depending on what is happening. In your case I would simply suggest switching across the characters' point of view as the story progresses.

Keep in mind that having a Third Person Narrator does not mean you have to explain the reader everything even if you consider it fully omniscient.

Edited by Oculto on Jun 14th 2021 at 11:48:39 AM

I always switch POVs, but it's just been my style for years as well as the style of a lot of the works I read. First person has never worked for me, just because I always have so many characters that limiting myself to just one viewpoint character is too restrictive.

Does anyone know of a realistic timeline for a family to migrate from England to settle in Romania in the 1300s? The family starts out in England the 13th century and by the time disaster befalls them in 1921, they have been living in Romania for so long that they are pretty much native Romanians. They speak the language, observe the local customs of their area and are only faintly connected to their British ancestors via history. How much time would it take for them to make such a journey, and then live in their new country for so long that they are no longer English in any "real" way apart from ancestry?

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jun 15th 2021 at 8:15:06 AM

The number of migrants from England to Romania in the course of history is so negligible that there are really no moments that are more likely than others. It would be something exceptional anyway. However, it depends on: What does this family do for a living? Farmers, artisans,...? Why did they leave England? Where in Romania are they going to settle? (Until the mid 19th century, Romania as a nation did not exist, there were three regions - Transylvania, Walachia, Moldavia - which were for a sizeable part of their history under foreign occupation). A possible timeline can be: A calvinist family leaves England at the middle of the 16th century, during the reign of the catholic queen Mary; they first settle in Germany, but the local luteran authorities are not exactly friendly towards calvinists; so they settle further east, in the lands of Habsburg, which at the time include many protestant communities; but the Habsburg are still catholics and not exactly tolerant, so they reckon it's too dangerous to remain there. They migrate then further east, in the principality of Transylvania, which at the time was governed by princes strongly leaned towards calvinism (many people persecuted for religious motives found refugee in Transylvania at that time). About the question how much time do they need to assimilate in the local culture, to start speaking exclusively romanian, I would say no more than three, four generation at most. If the final line is the year 1921, then I think you will be safe with them moving any time before 1800.

@ Your Bloody Valentine:

Thank you once again for your long and well thought-out write-up. I really appreciate it since I'm trying to go for as much historical accuracy as an Urban Fantasy can achieve. The family made their living as artisans/merchants. Their reasons for leaving England are more supernatural than mundane—-without giving too much away, they bear a deep connection to the very first werewolf, and this paints a massive and eternal target on their backs. I'd planned for them to settle in Walachia but your comment about religious refugees finding shelter in Transylvania might make me reconsider—-they would have less difficulty blending in via using religious persecution as their cover story.

This might seem ridiculous, but do you know how long a generation is? I always thought it was at least 50-100 years but I might be wrong.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jun 15th 2021 at 9:26:07 AM

20-30 years = one generation.

Edited by TitanJump on Jun 15th 2021 at 3:33:50 PM

@ Titan Jump:

Thanks a lot! That makes more sense in terms of how many generations it takes for some things to take hold/disappear.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jun 15th 2021 at 9:46:06 AM

I guess it also depends on whether your family is English English or French-speaking Normans, who held a lot of political and military clout across Europe at the beginning of this period — including in Italy, which ran a busy trade route with the Black Sea (you'll want to note down this part). So, long story short: from the beginning of the 11th century to early 12th, most of southern Italy was held by a dynasty of Norman conquerors, under the banner of the Kingdom of Sicily. In 1139, the kingdom was invaded by the Hohenstaufen dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, deposing the Norman rulers. Fast-forward a century, to the 1250s. The Papacy was big mad at the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, whom it had excommunicated for getting too handsy with Papal lands. After the emperor's death, the empire fell into political chaos, and the kingship of Sicily eventually passed to his, ahem, natural-born son Manfred after much physical altercation.

Manfred, being who he was, didn't have many fans back home in Germany. So the Papacy took the opportunity to declare open season on southern Italy, which it first offered to the Norman rulers of France and England. First offer went to royal House of Plantegenet, then controlling England and parts of northwestern France. They turned it down, and the offer passed on to the royal House of Capet, which ruled the rest of France. One young branch, the House of Anjou, took them up on it and, in 1266, invaded southern Italy in the name of the Church, slaying Manfred in turn. That, in turn, heralded a century-plus of French domination over southern Italy, which brought in French-speaking nobles, administrators and soldiers from far and wide.

So how does this give us a way to get an English family into Romania, if the French kings in England and the French kings in France, well, hated each other's guts? Well, Europe back then was largely defined not by modern nation-state but by family ties and vassalage. My reading on the aristocracy is pretty surface-level; but for the purpose of your story, I suppose it would be feasible that there'd be:

• An Anglo-Norman noble/knightly house in England,

• With family/marriage ties to Anjou (the ruling Plantagenets of England were originally from there),

• Deciding to take up the offer (with their liege's permission) and settle in southern Italy,

• And bringing along numerous English servants and retainers with them.

From there, they could hop onto the lucrative Italian sea trade into the Black Sea, get to know the Romanian coast (then still part of the Kingdom of Hungary), make friends with the local voivodes and eventually get an offer to settle down in the locality. I mean, strictly speaking, it's still a pretty long shot, but it's something that could theoretically happen, kind of? Aside from that, the closest scenario I could think of is an English family travelling to the Holy Land around the Third Crusade (1189-1192-ish) and somehow settling in Hungarian territory, which many Western European pilgrims passed on their way. They probably wouldn't be passing through Wallachia, Moldavia or Transylvania, though, considering how mountainous and out-of-the-way those regions were.

@ eagleoftheninth:

W-wow. That was definitely a cascade of information (I mean that as a compliment!). Thank you. It's given me a lot to think about, as well as makes me laugh a little since it calls back to certain details I changed from this story's original draft, which upon reading your write-up seem to have actually been more tenable/realistic.

The funny thing is that this English family was originally supposed to be minor aristocracy, but I made them commoners when retooling everything, since I figured nobles would have more of an eye on them. Thus the family's supernatural ties and resultant flight from their homeland would be made harder by people of importance watching them/keeping track of their activities. No one would care too deeply about the actions of a random family of commoners. But I suppose that's looking at things through too much of a modern lens.

But your scenario outlined near the end makes me realize I was on the right track so long ago; it just needs to be tweaked to be more historically accurate.

The only thing I'd wonder on is this part:

This was actually the point; they were trying to hide from the "public eye" (or at least whatever counted as that back in those days) and hide from their enemies/pursuers. They went to an extremely out of the way place and blended in while basically living as semi-hermits and keeping to themselves until that fateful year of 1921. With all of that known about how much better minor nobility could have crossed into Romania, is that part still feasible?

Given your characters have supernatural reasons to keep hiding and fleeing from persecution, they are not exactly like real life examples. If they are desperate enough, they could have tried the journey to a less populated far away land even knowing they can die before reaching their goal.

They could have followed the route to Italy first and then to Hungary, which held part of the Atriacum coast in 14th Century, thinking about settling there but then they thought it would be better to keep traveling east.

Edited by Oculto on Jun 15th 2021 at 3:18:44 PM

Well, considering how most Europeans at the time were peasant farmers who didn't travel very far from home, I'd assume most long-distance travellers to be 1) nobility, 2) merchants, 3) pilgrims or 4) certain professional classes, like mercenaries. You could probably have a family of middle-class burghers travel either as part of an aristocratic retinue (as I suggested above) or through group effort (like how many pilgrim caravans solicited donations during the Crusades). But making them aristocrats would certainly simplify a lot of things. Money? In the bag. References? All over the continent. Hotel? Triva— no, no, scratch that, people didn't have access to modern maps and travel books back then.

Whichever of the above options you choose, that means that an English family would be pretty unlikely to set out with Romania in mind as a hiding place. What I think could happen, though, is for them to be forced to move from place to place in order to avoid suspicious locals — from Italy, then to the Black Sea coast, and then, after much uphill trekking, into the secluded Romanian highlands.

('d while I was getting my cat out of my room, but basically the same thing as Oculto suggested above, only through the Black Sea coast instead of the Balkans.)

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jun 15th 2021 at 7:28:59 AM

@ Oculto:

It's going to sound strange and implausible (well, it does, even to me) but I never once considered the idea that their flight was "outside" the normal channels/operating procedure of the day. They were definitely fleeing supernatural persecution but for some reason I never thought of them just going for it and running as far away from their persecutors as they could without a real heed to the consequences, since they were better than certain death/torment at a home that was no longer home.

It opens up a whole other host of ideas as to how they could have arrived in Romania and what they did to acquire the means of moving forward on their journey. Actually, there's a very easy and supernatural way they could have gone straight from England to Romania, but I was very wedded to the idea of using "human channels" to set up shop in that country.

@ eagleoftheninth:

My apologies, I got 'd when responding to Oculto. .

I like the idea of a group effort to fund their journey to escape. There is a group that was just starting in Europe at the time who would have been more than willing to lend multiple types of aid to these people to keep them going. Their agents had access to more than enough money and more tangible resources to go around.

The part about the Romanian settling being something that "just happened" is a good idea too. I don't think I ever planned for them to have set out with that goal in mind, but I never put too much thought into why they chose that of all places to finally plant their feet.

The idea of it being some sort of last resort lends a sort of tragic irony to the whole thing since it was a safe place for a while until a certain powerful vampire brought the hammer down on the clan. It gives the feeling that all they did was buy time not any sort of real escape.

I agree with Oculto: if the reason for their escape is linked to the supernatural, then an exceptional route is understandable, and you have to look to real-life reasons just to give them a believable 'cover story'; it is not necessary to make them 100% historically accurate. The path designed by eagleoftheninth, for example, is possible but a bit of a stretch in a 'realistic' historic fiction. For the kind of story you have in mind, however, well why not? And for an english family of the minor aristocracy in the Middle Ages, it makes actually more sense to wander from one court to another, starting with a prestigious one like the Norman Sicily, than to go straight to a part of the world they would have barely heard of.

The only thing that you have to keep in mind, in my opinion, is that the more exceptional the cover story is, the less likely is for them to go unnoticed (a noble family coming to a backward country after having travelled through many different and famous kingdoms will be gossiped about for decades!). On the other side, the more you go back in time, the easiest will be for them to fall off the grid.

Please keep also in mind that those areas had a very turbulent and complex history. Do some research before bringing your family there.

Edited by YourBloodyValentine on Jun 15th 2021 at 7:42:49 AM

I dont mean they are trying to travel by different roads, but they will certainly have better reasons to keep going than others that are looking for a job, for example.

That means that even if it seems unrealistic, you can say they are willing to endure any hardship until they find someplace where they feel safer.

Following the road to Italy and taking a ship from there to Hungary, Greece or some Black Sea port was something feasible at the time, they just need the money or maybe some valuables to trade.

But an important point is the language barriers, given everyone they will find along their journey will speak other languages.