Coldposted. Been almost exactly a year since my last story, Irish Coffee. I should post more stuff when I get my head out of staff stuff — writing WL works flows like water for me. I hope you enjoy my headcanon on the Searing!
Echoes of the Searing / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page Echoes of the Searing.
Y’know I was of the opinion that the Searing would probably be better if stayed as something just referenced- seemed cooler that way. But this story really developed the idea and I think it’s super cool. Out of all the Archivists, the Fifth is the one that interests me the most, so making her the “Warrior Pope” of the archivists is a really cool choice. I want moreeeee
Also small SPaG thing:
Dropping to his feet, he sweeped his own leg out, stumbling but not tripping the one-ton beast. Then pulled back to avoid getting his leg stomped on into about a million pieces.
These two sentences should probably be combined in some way, it sounds awkward at the moment
I can appreciate the Searing staying as a referenced-but-never-substantiated thing, but in fairness this is also pretty damn vague as to what it is, what caused it, when it happened, what happened, how it was resolved… but yeah. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
To preface, I love this. The action has a lovely flow, and the past-tense/present-tense switchups are placed perfectly for pacing.
I think I understand why you coldposted this; I've been in similar spots creatively, or at least it seems like it. But this one is in a spot where the author knows the story better than first time readers, if that makes sense. Most people familiar with The Searing think of it as an attack by the GOC or something, from outside the Library. As such, I spent some time during the opening few paragraphs trying to figure out who was on what "side." Of course that's not quite the nature of the situation, and you knew that as you were writing. But I didn't, so while the cold open for the action segment was absolutely fantastic, it threw me for a loop a little bit.
There are a couple spots where your sentence structure makes it a little bit difficult to know who is taking which action, in the first half. Example:
He heard her skin creak as she pivoted, and reared back, chucking the book over the shelf.
It's a tiny issue though, and doesn't negatively impact the reading experience in any major way.
Final thought, and it's a positive one. You do a fantastic fantastic job of seeding hints of your theme into your action. Anatomical, educational texts on the ground after violence. A Docent destroying a shelf when it very easily could have went around and avoided damaging books. Wanderers using ambush tactics and committing acts of cold blood. Incredible stuff that makes for a super rewarding Second and Third read.
Awesome work!
Glad you enjoyed it so much, Piano. I like writing action and I like to think I'm halfway decent at it, so it's nice to know it translates well to WL prose lol. I honestly didn't actually know that the Searing being a GOC thing was a semi-established thing, but good to know. And yeah, I wanted to kind of flip the expected Library tropes given the situation. Thanks for the read!
Something about this one doesn't hit right with me. Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderfully written, and the themes are on point. But I do have a few problems with it. There are a ton of great things about this, but there are a few major things that I think are not-so-great.
There are a few oddities that show up in sentence structure, but yeah, not anything detrimental.
I understand that this story is not meant to be character driven. It's an action-lore mashup. That being said, one of the characters and even some of the action seems a little off to me.
The first character, Auger, seems strange. I'm not sure if this is a pre-made character from a different story, but I don't think you should have to read other stories to understand a character enough to feel right about their personality. In the story, the narration uses the word 'ass' twice in different situations. I don't have a problem with explicatories (they are a incredibly useful literary tool), but when you make the narration mirror the character's thoughts (maybe not thoughts, but I definitely feel the narrations is themed around the character it's narrating the situation of), a certain level of consistency must be achieved. From what I saw, Auger is a calculating character who is able to do actual split-second calculations in his head. As a result, these explicatories seem jarring and out of place. I think he could use words like this effectively if you lean into it a little more. This would maybe help with my greater problem. In short, Auger seems to be a thought-out but improperly transcribed-onto-paper character.
But Syndra is done great, I think. A simple character that manages not to be two-dimensional. The only problem I have with the second section is:
By the time the Eagles realized what had happened, it was over.
This appears so lazy to the reader. I get that the story already has a ton of action, but that's kinda the point of the theme, right? Violence breeds violence breeds violence. You don't have to insert another paragraph of fighting, but this particular sentence sours the ending of this battle against the Eagles. Something like, "After hours of brutal fighting with heavy losses on both sides, the victors finally emerged though the fog of war bloodied and bruised. They had done in the enemy, but not without struggle." or something similar to make us feel the Wanderers aren't achieving sudden and instant victory, because that's not how battle works.
Overall, no-vote.
Fires rage just below the surface of the ice.
Valid thoughts, I'm sorry to see you didn't enjoy the story. For what it's worth, Auger isn't a preexisting character (no one in the story is, besides Benalsh and the Gryphon, who are little more than cameos). I don't… really agree with the notion that expletives are inconsistent with someone being calculating and intelligent, able to think on their feet? I guess I just don't implicitly associate swearing with crudeness or lack of intelligence, though I suppose that speaks more to me than the character, hah.
And you're pretty much right on the second part. I felt like rewriting another long, drawn-out combat scene right after another combat scene would just be tiresome, both for me and for the reader, since it's not actually communicating any new information. And I felt like handwaving the conflict was… not ideal, but as long as I was gonna do it (which your suggestion also kind of does), I might as well imprint the idea that these kind of hit-and-run, guerilla ambush tactics from the Wanderers were frighteningly efficient — that over time, they had become very experienced killers, which I think speaks a little more about the theme. But that was very much a personal choice, and I can understand the concerns.
It's nice seeing more Library lore being posted every now and then, especially when it's a new exploration of an old idea. I enjoyed this piece, but after reading I felt that it could've been longer, or told a more comprehensive story that was set within the Searing time period. However, I can recognise that wasn't your intention here - the piece is meant to be a momentary glimpse at the Searing - and I'm pretty sure I'm just projecting my want to read more of this setting onto your story.
Regardless, I like this a lot. The action flows well and is easy to imagine, and you manage to cram this piece full of interesting lore tidbits while keeping the pace fast and engaging. Been seeing discussion about the Great Searing in the discord recently, so I'm excited to see how people build on this. Anyways, great work!
Yeah, I was looking to keep it more like vignettes than a real story set in the Searing, because that would necessitate I actually figure out what it is — and I think I wanted to leave canonizing that up to other people. Originally this was gonna be 3-5 vignettes, but the first ended up being much longer than I expected so I decided to do just the two with the three quotes breaking them up. I'm glad the action flowed and thank you for reading!
I personally love lore, be it in games, movies, etc. So when I hear about big events in the continuity I want to learn more about them, and the Searing definitely qualifies. I felt this piece did a good job balancing shedding some light on what life was like in that period of the libraries history, giving those juicy snippets of a larger picture- while simultaneously leaving the bigger parts of the mystery( how the searing started, who was involved, etc) to the reader's headcanon. It's engaging and leaves those of us not as familiar with the more intricate parts of the Libraries lore wanting to know more.
Overall, well done. +1
As a connoisseur of violence in the Library, I scarfed this one down. Particularly a fan of the hilariously brutal first story, and the worldbuilding-without-worldforeshortening approach of handling this with vignettes instead of straight-up explaining what's causing it all works really well. A very entertaining spectacle as always.
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