o yeah i listened to the cush jumbo ep of brian o'sullivan's podcast this morning and the part where she talked abt the diversity of the cast and how she didn't feel particularly left out even though she was the only english person there was so sweet
(This is the anon who asked about the bitter ex heroes) Anything, pretty much! What direction are you gonna take the story in? Can you tell us more about the characters' backstories? Their relationship? (I enjoyed their dynamic) About Caravalia?
Yessss OK HERE WE GO (below a cut bc I already know it’s gonna be kinda long)
The story is broadly going to be Brian and Erin world-hopping, trying to find Caravalia again, and in the process A. gradually losing hope and B. stumbling through a whole lot of fantasy world archetypes and into other people’s plots, which they then try to solve, because hey, once they were heroes (with limited success, because their magic world and the new magic worlds often run on completely different kinds of logic). They’re probably going to run into a few other younger heroes, and at least one girl who absolutely refused to go home and is now the resident evil queen. (She may, after being dethroned, either come along with them or actively be pursuing them for revenge??? I haven’t gotten that far).
As a more overarching thing, though - Brian and Erin are, through a dozen worlds of short references in scattered texts, able to piece together if not a map than a rough sense of what doorways will take you where. But at the same time, people aren’t really supposed to be tearing through worlds like this, and the things that live between the worlds are starting to wake up which is generally bad news (this is also, however, more a vague idea than anything else right now)
And honestly I have absolutely no idea how it’s going to end, because it could very easily go either way - their world wants them back, their world has aged hundreds of years, leaving them figures of myth, their world does not, in fact, want them back at all, their world is cool with having them back but they’ve in fact brought a whole lot of nether-world horrorterrors in their shadows after too long spent in the doorways. it’s ?????
Backstories though I have sorted out! Erin was removed from a neglectful home at ten, and although her foster family was well-meaning, Erin’s self-sufficiency and general wariness mean that they never really established a connection. Her school life is about the same as her home life, where she exists peacefully and amiably, gets alright grades, maybe plays lacrosse, generally stays below the radar. When things get stifling she explores the local woods.
Brian’s the older of two boys, and while he’s in middle school his generally loving parents are going through a pretty vicious divorce. Brian’s the kind of kid who gets pretty good grades without trying, probably has some good friends, voraciously reads dragontrash fantasy. As his home life deteriorates into shouting matches he draws into himself a bit more, spends more time reading, but not so much that anyone at school really has any idea, which is a point of pride for him.
Anyway they’re assigned to a book report together, and go to Erin’s house because Brian refuses to do homework at his for reasons he won’t clarify. After a little while Erin gets antsy, and because it’s May she suggests they go out to the woods to work on it instead. And that’s where the door opens up, while they’re arguing about a thesis statement - one moment it’s just empty space and the next moment the door to nowhere has always been there, and it feels a little like they’re seeing double when they look at it. Erin goes in first, pretty much without hesitation, and Brian follows her because it’s what most of his heroes and heroines would do, and also because he doesn’t want to go home jsut yet and he doesn’t want to hang out in the woods alone, either. And alos a bit because he’s never talked to Erin Sung before and she’s actually kind of cool and he wants to ask if she’s read any of his favorite books. So he steps from leaf mold to white marble and there’s a sound like a bubble bursting and then there’s no door, but there is the heir to the throne in the process of running for her life, and the whole thing begins.
After Caravalia they really don’t talk at all, except the one day of the year when they meet to remember. It was by accident the first year, when they both showed up in the woods half-hoping the door would open again, and they were both old enough emotionally if not physically anymore to recognize there’s a time for a ceasefire - some things can’t be forgiven, like a whole lot of what they did to each other, but the dead should be respected. After that they meet in the woods, and then eventually at a bar when the empty space where the door should have been is unbearable. About four years in Brian brings his stepmother’s lemon vodka; the year after that Erin brings nips of scotch. Brian misses it twice - sophomore year final week in college, and his college graduation. Erin misses it once, the year she’s sent to a new foster family on the far side of the state and the bus she took home broke down (she showed up at 2am and slept on Brian’s couch and left in the morning without eating breakfast). And a last thing is that by unspoken agreement they never talk about the living. Naming the dead was a tradition from Caravalia but to talk about the living who might be on the other side of a door that isn’t there is too painful. (This once a year meetup also becomes an awkward check-up on the other, just because who else can at least nod along and understand?)
Other than that, coming back from Caravalia fucks them up in different ways. Erin, who’d gradually started genuinely relying on other people, was extremely hurt by the twin betrayals of Brian’s turning coat and the princess she was pretty unabashedly in love with agreeing with the oracle/fairy godmother/??? that she needed to go back to her own world. Which back in a seventh-grade life makes it seem like her self-reliance and trust issues have suddenly cranked up a dozen levels overnight. Without her fire magic she feels empty and helpless and extremely vulnerable, and starts getting in a lot of fights because if nothing else it reassures her that she is capable to some degree of protecting herself or harming others with just her own small 13 year old self. But this overnight change alarms her foster family enough that as time goes on she’s shuffled through a few other families and eventually ages out. Over time she starts channeling this into kickboxing, and attempts to put herself through community college because it’s what she feels the princess expected her to do - live a normal life. She drops out because it has absolutely no meaning for her, probably drinks a bit more than she should, and eventually decides to go through any available door because she cannot go on like this.
Brian came back furious; Erin at least agreed to return, however reluctantly. Brian had no choice at all, and while Erin tried to turn her back to the door Brian beat himself bloody against it. He threw himself into researching portals with such ferocity his grades dipped dramatically, and only pulled out of the academic nosedive because he reasoned that to get access to some of the more promising texts he’d have to be a scholar. He’s wracked with guilt, not over betraying Erin but because the revolutionary army he led is probably doomed by the defeat in which he was maimed and captured. His singleminded drive to get back to Caravalia pretty much alienates all of his friends and family; eventually even his little brother, who he was close to before, tells him that this whole thing is nuts and he’s never actually believed Brian, just thought it was a way of coping with the divorce. In some ways it makes it easier for him to really throw himself into research, into every dubious ritual he can find. He gets into some real prestigious school and becomes that kid who only really leaves his room at night and doesn’t actually talk to anyone. It’s not a great time, but he’s also not really willing to leave because he feels like he’s getting closer to some kind of answer. But when Erin leaves he goes with her, because it’s better than being alone - even when he’d gone weeks without real human conversation he’d known she was somewhere else, and living the same weird double-life as he was, being 15-19-22 for the second time.
Caravalia itself is still tripping me up! It’s not going to be one of the ‘medieval northern europe in temperate woodland’ worlds, because there’s enough of that. Like. I want it to have its own ~aesthetic~ and I don’t know exactly what that will be like! Probably it is very much several small kingdoms built in the bones of a much larger empire, which still has beautiful ruins and occasional wonders like small forests of precious metals protected by charms to prevent them ever being pillages. A lot of black and white? probably deserts and white marble and honestly this is the part I need to work more on, it hella needs some more worldbuilding.
