Afterword - Book 5 - Chapter 8 (Patreon)

Chapter 8: Embracing the Arts I

My main goals for this chapter were two-fold:

1) Explore Ranthia's culture shock as she tries (mostly unsuccessfully) to integrate into elven society.

2) Explore the early life of Ranthia and her new Bond.

Yet now that I'm writing this afterword, I kind of feel like objective 1 got fumbled a bit. Sure, it's there, but it's not really a driving theme for the chapter. If anything, it's more Ranthia's manic efforts to speedrun settling in, as if that's a viable thing to attempt.

Meh, it is what it is.

Anyhow, believe it or not, I have made an effort to curb swearing in the story. Not because I think words like "damn" have some terrible weight (they're just words, and they're far, far better than something intended to harm specific groups), but because... it's kind of boring to assume everyone swears the same? I've tried to spice it up with more cultural things as best I can for a while now. That said, there's one significant exception.

The Lodge's owner.

She's foul-mouthed, ill-tempered, and very capable of backing up each and every threat she makes. I kind of adore her (not like Ranthia does though). It's just too fitting for her to use as much conventional profanity as possible, and using regional elven stuff (like Avyna's Prisms) just felt out of place.

In terms of worldbuilding, one of the things I like to do is think about how the System would impact society as it develops. There's a lot of ways this comes up in Blind Chaos, but one of the bigger things is... in elven society, it's not uncommon to achieve your third class, even as a non-classer. That coupled with their superior hearing and arrogance led me to realize that conversations would be very different beasts for the elves.

When there's no appreciable difference in your ability to converse with someone one meter away or forty meters away, why would society pretend there was one?

Instead, elves learn to direct their voice to specific listeners, using the same techniques that people IRL use to throw their voice. When the voice isn't directed, it's understood that the person is speaking to anyone that wishes to answer.

Which means Ranthia is effectively shouting "to whom it may concern" with everything she utters!

I don't think I have too much to say about Ranthia's efforts to interact with Clover at this stage. There's no specific moment that directly channels an experience I've had with a cat or dog (believe it or not, I haven't really interacted with bunnies very much IRL), though I'm definitely using my experiences to establish the vibe for the scenes.

Not that I've ever taken a cat to an art gallery. Yet.