can any human being ever reach that kind of light

[grey_damaskena]

A fascinating link regarding a great editor.

Crowd-sourced publishing. An interesting idea, though we’ll have to wait and see how it goes.

xOx xOx xOx xOx xOx xOx xOx xOx xOx xOx xOx xOx xOxEdinburgh bears the unfortunate label of “not Japan” in my head, and so I tend to give the place short shrift, and easily forget just how lucky I

Comments

[serafim_angel]

yeeey! have been waiting for the next installment of this particular fic, and am now sorely tempted to read some Anne Bishop. Good maintenance of the characters whilst melding with another genre.
Love the piccy too, most people only look at the castle or the royal mile in Edinburgh, bit Carlton hill is pretty magic (and the catacombs are really quite creepy), I don't think i appreciate living in edinburgh enough myself.

[grey_damaskena]

I'm rather behind on Anne Bishop books, alas. I think I read the Invisible Ring and Tangled Webs, but they didn't have nearly the impact on me that the original trilogy did. I need to catch up, really, because there are some rather important things that she never actually describes in detail in the first trilogy (like Coaches, for instance. What exactly do they look like, and how do they work?).

It's fun re-imagining the Saiunkoku characters in a new setting. With this one there's a great deal that has to change, simply because the structure of the society in question is so different. One also has to battle the temptation to give everyone really dark jewels, though I can't claim to have succeeded particularly well there.

I have yet to go down to the catacombs . . . shall have to sometime this summer. It's harder to appreciate a place when you're in it for a goodly length of time, I find.

[subsiding_leaf]

I can't believe I somehow missed all the previous installments of this! It might have been because I was not familiar with the Anne Bishop stuff so I thought I'd be confused. But whatever! There are magic jewels, there are territories...I think I can figure it out.XD

This sounds fun! And a very different Ryuuki from what I'm used to. I am intrigued!

[grey_damaskena]

Thank you for taking a look at it despite that, I really appreciate it. :-D It sounds like you've got a pretty good grasp of things already. Territories = countries, and the magic jewels are basically reservoirs of power. Darker jewel = more power, basically. There's lots of other fairly random magic as well. Add a mostly matrilinear society and lots of other anachronistic weirdness, some darker and creepier elements, bunches of violence, fluff (which abounds despite), and a romance-novel-level fascination with sex, and that's pretty much the world. ::wry::

The world being what it is does call for certain changes to the characters, and my weird ideas call for even more. ^_^; My Ryuuki obsession continues unabated. I hope he's still recognizable as himself despite that, though.

Thankee so much for leaving me a comment! I know you must be busy with stuff in Mexico; I hope you'll post about how it goes!

[subsiding_leaf]

The only source of confusion for me was that some of the jewel colors sound darker than others, yet it seems like they are supposed to be less powerful, so I wasn't sure if that was just because I had the wrong idea of what colors were supposed to be dark, or whether it was intentional

[lilac_ayame]

Oooh. I'm intrigued! Can't wait for the next one! :D

[grey_damaskena]

One more bit and this scene, at least, should be finished. ^_^; I don't think I'm going to make this into a proper AU with a fully realized storyline-- it's just too much work on top of my existing stories-- but I do occasionally get ideas for scenes, and I'll keep writing them and putting them up as long as people are interested. :-)

[ladyofthethread]

Hmm… This seems like an interesting AU although I’m not familiar with the books that it’s based on. Like subsiding_leaf, I don’t quite understand how the jewel colors are supposed to rank from light to dark. I was also curious about where the jewels come from. Are they inherited or something?

And I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen Karin used in a fic! It’s nice to see some rarer characters. I was actually thinking of giving her an appearance in my Follies AU as a costume designer.

[grey_damaskena]

The jewel rankings can be found here: http://blackjewels.wikia.com/wiki/Jewels. As for where they come from, each person of the Blood receives their initial jewel at what is called a Birthright Ceremony when they're quite young, which is rather mysterious and not fully explained. That is their Birthright Jewel. At their coming-of-age they go through another ceremony, which is called the Offering to the Darkness, at which point they receive another jewel-- generally darker than their Birthright. People can descend (or go darker) up to three jewel ranks between the Birthright and the Offering, but not everyone does

[grey_damaskena]

oh-- with regard to that link to the Wikia, please don't read any of the extra information below the jewel rankings, unless you don't care about possible books spoilers. You know, just in case you ever want to read the books yourself.