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Edited by Ace Night Owl: 1/26/2020 10:29:06 PM
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An adventure in the multiverse: Part 1

Robo Owl sighs and hops back into his ship. He’s returning home after exploring another empty universe with nothing but barren planets. It’s always disappointing to come across a dead universe, but it's to be expected in an infinite multiverse. He turns a dial and prepares for the inevitable tearing sensation that comes with traveling to another universe. As the ship begins to tear the seams of reality to traverse the void between time and space Robo Owl detects a massive magic-based anomaly in a nearby universe. He quickly changes his destination and the ship moves through the rift. Everything outside the ship is a blur of color as the shades of each universe mix together to form a beautiful painting of the multiverse. This portion of the multiverse is mostly uncharted due to how empty it is. Most creatures in these universes died out long ago and yet Robo just found a place where magic thrives, and where there’s magic there are living things. Another rift opens high above a small city and the ship comes out. It promptly moves up into low orbit to avoid being seen while Robo does a scan of the city. It’s about 6 AM and people are traveling to work and school. Strangely the magic anomaly is less concentrated then it would seem, only one in every five people seem to have any effect in the magical composition of this strange universe. The ship cloaks itself and gently lands on the outskirts of the city. Robo hops out of the ship and goes towards a building marked as a library. Once inside he immediately goes into the history section and finds a book labeled “The History and Existence of Epithets.” He begins to read. “Epithets have existed for thousands of years and have affected our history in millions of ways. Without Epithets the Songstress would have never existed and we would have never had the Inscribed Wars. Our greatest heroes would never have existed but the worst villains would never have their powers.” Robo read quietly “But what even is an Epithet? Is it a fundamental part of the universe? Spiritual magic? No one knows. In this book, we will explore the past as it was affected by people with Epithets.” Robo reads for several hours and learns a little bit about the nature of Epithets. He discovers that an Epithet is a word that somehow gives people magic abilities and that no two people can get the same Epithet. Seems like everyone in this world knows what an Epithet is and as such no one bothered explaining it in the books Robo found. He leaves the library and is almost run into by someone moving slightly under 20 miles per hour, she drops a keycard with the name Dahlia Dislay written on it and her picture on the front. She runs off without the keycard and disappears into the city... [spoiler]All credit to the Epithet system goes to this guy and his show https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yio2JNgQKBM&t=152s Watch it! It’s really good! [/spoiler]

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  • You know, I realized I said something that might’ve been a little misleading. I said you shouldn’t sucker punch the protag by having them lose to something that we had no way of knowing was a thing, and that’s true, it’s not something that should happen that often. [i]Buuut[/i], if you were to take that to its extreme you might come to the conclusion that absolutely everything must be revealed to the reader immediately, which is also not true. A character using their already-established abilities in a new and creative way, or the reveal of what a character’s powers are can make for some really satisfying moments. Take the reveal of Mira’s(name?) epithet. Completely recontextualized the entire chapter, which let it hit way harder than if it were revealed right off the bat. But the important part, is they left several clues along the way, so the viewer could’ve potentially figured it out before they were ever explicitly told, so it felt less like a sucker punch to the face, and more like the reveal to a big mystery.

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  • The writing itself is fine. Well structured, and all that. But, you were [i]waaay[/i] too forefront with exposition. For example; [quote]This portion of the multiverse is mostly uncharted due to how empty it is. Most creatures in these universes died out long ago and yet Robo just found a place where magic thrives, and where there’s magic there are living things.[/quote] This just kinda came out of nowhere, and feels really awkward to read. It'd be better to give us some sort of context to the information getting thrown at us. For example; [quote]"How strange.." Robo said, staring over the map of the multiverse. "The anomaly seems to originate from around here.. But, that can't be right.." He flips through the computer, and pulls up various databases, quickly skimming through each of them. Just like he thought. This was the "Dead Zone". Most universes in this sector had extinguished themselves long ago, a concentration of this much magic in a place like this should be impossible..[/quote] In the revised version, rather than just being told the information, it's made clear these are the thoughts running through Robo's head. On another small sidenote, this one is more of a personal complaint rather than a definitive flaw, but I don't think a multiverse would be arranged spatially. Like, I don't think you could map it out, with certain areas having certain traits, I think rather it would be more of a metaphysical place, where nothing actually exists in a grander area, but just exists separately. Anyway, moving on, it seems [i]really[/i] weird to me that he would just suddenly know 1/5 people are inscribed. I think using more vague terms like "seems lightly distributed across the population, rather than a single concentrated point like he expected" might work better. After all, statistics make time to make. Finally, I don't think him sitting down in a library is the best way for him to learn about Epithets, at least, not unless he learns something big. Simply put, reading about someone sitting down to read isn't that interesting, unless what they're reading is also interesting, but you kinda said yourself that he didn't really learn anything that significant. I think it would've been much more interesting for him to just bump into an inscribed first, and go from there.

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    • Interesting. I like it! [spoiler]exploring the multiverse sounds so fun. But who says I don’t already do it?[/spoiler]

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      • Bunp[spoiler]oh gosh how many episodes are in that show?[/spoiler]

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        • BuNp

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        • BuNp

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        • I don’t have time to read this, but I’m curious. Can anyone else here just not take dimension hopping/multiverse stories seriously? Multiple dimensions existing, fine, y’know, but when characters start jumping from one to the other, I always just kinda roll my eyes, unless the show/game/book/etc. is already just kinda silly. (though as a quick disclaimer, this is different than when they just hop to a singular other dimension—it’s only when they go from one to the next, to the next, etc.) Anyway, small bit of advice. I see a lot of multiverse stories where everyone in the other universes (or at least everyone the protag interacts with) already knows there’s other universes. Don’t do that. It’s a quick way to make you lose belief in the story.

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          • Huh.

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            • BUNP

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