Gearspark says:
@S.F.
A lot of writing style can be preference. That said, do you have a sample you'd like people to give opinions on? You aren't in a public game, so I can't really see anything you've written.
Sadly, yes, the forum isn't public. I suppose I can copy the entire thing here… Or fragments of it, at least. This is the background of my character in that non-public Godbound game.
Quote:
In the small farming villages of Dulimbai that nestle along the rivers between the mountain peaks, there’s a belief that when a child is born who spends her life asleep and is tied more to dreams than to the waking world, a toxic spirit has latched onto her life-force. She rarely plays outside; she never shows under the sun to work the rice fields. She’s seen sometimes, and people know she lives, but then six hours pass, and she’s asleep again.
The Dreamer, they would call the girl. Her parents named her differently, of course, but they had called her Lingqi only for a quarter of her childhood. In dreams she had another name — Selene — a fitting name, she felt, for someone who visits others’ dreams like the pale moon appears in the night sky to watch over the sleeping land. That was a gift that Selene had — not the divine that alters worlds, but minor, mortal gift — she didn’t only watch her dreams, she traveled to the dreams of others, spoke to those dreamers, and even learned from them. By twelve she knew all fears that people in the village had, all hopes — or rather, hopelessness — of their peasant lives. She learned the world was ending and the dreams were refuge — escape from the futility of waking life.
There was a time when family that she was born to disappeared. Lingqi the dreamer would’ve been alone at six, but thankfully she was adopted by a healer who saw and knew what her condition was. He chose to say that she could not be cured, he played along with village superstition and claimed the spirit was too powerful and angering it would’ve only brought them peril. He didn’t say then that he was an exiled master from Dulimbai Academy of Thought. And at the age of seven, Lingqi — or rather Selene — became his ward and his apprentice.
In the small farming villages of Dulimbai that are surrounded by the emeralds and pearls of rice terraces, there’s a belief that when a child is twelve, her family should only give her roof. At thirteen one would work the fields, or fish, or trade, or hunt, or maybe heal. Lingqi the dreamer gave advice; she healed the dreams — maintained that single refuge that everyone so desperately needed.
She’d visit nightmares and vanquish monsters — she’d learn of them and about them, but also, what she didn’t share as much, she learned things from them too. Sometimes she would become a monster — when a group of bandits camped on the outskirts of her village, Selene scared them away with nightmares of their fate should they decide to raid — the shared vision of intestines vomited out through their blackened, rotting mouths turned out to be convincing that one time, and Selene’s teacher was the only one she told of what she did.
When she was sleeping, she learned sorcery from her teacher’s dreams: the Way of Though, of course, but also lore of spirits, life-force, rituals of magic both mortal and divine. She learned all that she was allowed to and mastered the same magic that the old man wielded, but there was always part that she was not allowed to see — a wall in teacher's dreams that she could never pass through — a secret hidden from everyone, even his own resting mind.
In the small farming village of Dulimbai that remained hidden between the mountain peaks and where people worked the fields of rice, Selene the Dreamer grew. When she was seventeen, there was a belief that she ascended past a mere mortal. Some said it was another sorcery that, maybe, she learned from the white-bearded healer who settled in the village some twelve years ago. Some saw the coming change in their dreams, where a slender girl with silver hair and in a silver gown asked them if that dream should come true. Some even thought they dreamed it all and nothing of that day was real. But for a single day the dream of Selene came to life in that small farming village — the land itself dreamed of fantastic dreamscape that brought serenity and the reprieve from all the pain and hunger. And since that day she was no longer bound by sleep and walked the waking world each day until the moon rose up in the night sky.
And this was the first post.
Quote:
There was nothing in the room. It felt funny how after what Selene did a week ago nothing seemed the same. The world wasn’t there anymore, she wasn’t there in the world. Before, she would dread the waking hours — of course, she needed that time to eat and do some exercise that her teacher insisted on, but the waking world was a torture. She was too tired to even breath after a couple hours of walking. Sleep was her only refuge from the burdens of life. Sleep, not dream. The dreams were a different thing entirely — they had let her live despite her condition. She thrived by visiting those troubled dreams of lovers — two peasant girls were in love with each other, but of course their families would’ve never understood it. Selene weaved their dreams together once and let the girls share them forever, so they didn’t have to sneak out at night. That was a thing she didn’t even tell old Li about.
But now there was nothing in the room. Selene was there seemingly, but she wasn’t there really. She traversed the waking world as if it, too, was merely a dream. Perhaps she was asleep in her bed in that very moment? No, she wanted to go and drink some fresh water and look at the moon high up between the mountain peaks in the night sky — a luxury she was only availed to recently. A pale disc with a smoky dragon crawling over it, claiming the pearl of night for itself. She took a gulp from a porcelain cup that a passing merchant traded from his vast stock of goods after Selene cured his recurring nightmare. She wasn’t there. The cup was drank from and the water in it vanished. But did Selene really stand by the window?
The room was empty. Selene was asleep in her bed. But she wasn’t really sleeping. The reality and dream no longer had a boundary between them, at least not for the one who used to be Lingqi. Nothing was immutable, nothing had consequences. She could dream of whatever she wanted and push that dream into the waking world. And then the waking world wasn’t awake anymore. The village was sleeping and seeing a dream, and Selene lived in it. She was awake. Was she awake? She pondered it for a while drinking that fresh water from a cup and standing by a window in a room where she never went to this night. She looked at the moon — a pearl of night devoured by the smoky dragon over and over, only to be born again. Was the the world so too? Devoured only to regrow?
The room wasn’t empty. There was a feeling. Ugly, foreign, hungry… And Selene was there to feel its approach. It crawled, twisting, famished. It wanted. Greed. Desire. Hunger. Need. She banished hunger and pain once from her home, but what was it now? The vile thing crawled back with a vengeance? She felt it and it made her feel nauseous. Old Li still asleep. A small miracle…
"Something approaches, old man!" she said not too loud, but her thought sure was so, and Teacher sure could pick up on thoughts. And the title wasn’t an insult: Lingqi still spoke Ren, and if she wrote the word it would’ve simply been 老. Lao Li. 老李. She had to learn the letters to understand Teacher’s magic. She didn’t delve into his dreams this time. "Wake up and see…" she murmured and drank from the porcelain cup. The room was empty again. The water in the cup vanished.
