Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - The Corvidian

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 13
1
Author Craft / Re: So I'm writing an Urban Fantasy, but need some help
« on: December 17, 2013, 05:11:33 AM »
Silver Fox is a trickster in Native American legends. Perhaps a tribe of kitsune came to America at some point, and made their way into legend. What about your legends taking over a ghost town, and hiding it from normal humas.

2
Author Craft / Re: So I'm writing an Urban Fantasy, but need some help
« on: December 05, 2013, 04:35:27 AM »
Look up Fearsome Critters of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts.

There is the Nagual, shapeshifters who can turn into turkeys, dogs, donkeys, pumas, of jaguars. Perhaps they could be rivals of the Skinwalkers. You could also throw in the hengeyokai, Japanese animal spirits. They could have moved there during WWII when US the government moved them to an internment camp thinking that they were normal Japanese people. There are also the Tsukumogami, animated objects. Imagine your hero being followed around by an animated umbrella, or an animated teapot.

3
Author Craft / Re: So I'm writing an Urban Fantasy, but need some help
« on: November 13, 2013, 03:44:29 AM »
Cactus Cats, Hoopsnakes, and Jackalopes.

4
Author Craft / Re: Fictional Locales, Real World
« on: September 11, 2013, 03:44:26 AM »
All novels are alternate history, or hidden history. Even the real world cities in these novels have hidden places that don't exist in the real world, or places that real, but have hidden facets.

5
Author Craft / Re: Your Pet Urban Fantasy Cliche Peeves
« on: May 14, 2013, 03:57:24 AM »
Quote from: vultur on May 13, 2013, 12:26:04 AM
Given a society of immortals, it doesn't strike me as implausible, really. Supposedly part of the reason WWI was so pointlessly bloody was that the commanders tried to fight it like nineteenth-century wars, with a set of tactics that were on their way out even in the American Civil War. Now multiply that by lifespans four or five times as long (like Dresdenverse wizards) or thousands of years long or practically forever (vampires).... Also, a fast pace of innovation is really more the exception than the rule, taking human history as a whole.

The bigger problem to me is, in a lot of UF settings where the supernaturals have theoretically been around for ages, why did they ever let humans develop technology? The Dresdenverse has a powerful human organization which doesn't depend on technology for its power (the White Council), but lots of settings don't. If the supernatural world is mostly werewolves and vampires and maybe faeries ... it should still be ruled by those beings, and humans would never have gotten a chance to develop technology.

Read Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series. The vampires are the reason that steampunk technology exists, because they funded it. (Very minor spoiler)

6
Author Craft / Re: "Borrowing" Ideas...
« on: March 26, 2013, 02:31:38 AM »
There is also the Lady Pendragon comic book series. Magic came back when the heroine pulled Excalibre from the stone.

7
Author Craft / Re: Factions - realistic or unrealistic?
« on: January 25, 2013, 01:15:17 AM »
Factions could exist, but who says they have to be all made up of one type of supernatural entity.

8
Author Craft / Re: "Borrowing" Ideas...
« on: January 25, 2013, 01:02:23 AM »
There is also the Magic Time trilogy. A government experiment brings magic back, and shuts down science. In the third book, and means was created that allowed science to work. Don, what about fire?

9
Author Craft / Re: Masquerade, Broken Masquerade or alternate universe?
« on: December 17, 2012, 05:12:27 PM »
The whole "Masquerade" idea seems to tie into the fact that humanity is too hung up on its own issues to notice what is really going on in the world. (Though I really don't like terms taken from rpg.)

10
Author Craft / Re: Genre question
« on: November 16, 2012, 03:05:35 AM »
Take a look at F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack novels. They strated out as dective novels and now they have alot of paranormal in them.

11
Author Craft / Re: The start of paranormal romance
« on: October 23, 2012, 03:15:17 AM »
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro was probably one of the first, back in the 1980's.

12
Author Craft / Re: Supernatural Grunts or Soldiers, where do I find them?
« on: September 25, 2012, 02:56:32 AM »
Take an inspiration from Dr. Who, and have animated mannequins.

13
Author Craft / Re: Uh, oh . . . it's magic
« on: September 24, 2012, 02:15:11 AM »
You also get this idea that magic and science can't mix, when I think that they can work together.

14
Author Craft / Re: Uh, oh . . . it's magic
« on: September 23, 2012, 11:46:13 PM »
There was an article on io9 awhile back about magic for novels. They also had one about why magic should have rules.

My take, thaumaturges or dwimmer folk as I call them, can do almost anything, except bring the soul back from the land of the dead. Magic is also not cheap, wizards can burn themselves out or die from from botched spells.

15
Author Craft / Re: Where to hide your Eldridge Abominations
« on: September 06, 2012, 01:20:32 AM »
Do they recycle building materials? If so, you could couple that with the pocket dimensions. The pieces of material that these places are tied to tend to find themselves incorporated together, into new buildings. Perhaps some of the lesser eldritch abomintions can also make themselves look like humans, or they ride humans.

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 13