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snarpI dreamed I was reading a nonexistent paranormal romance series. In each book, the heroine encountered a brooding, powerful, and troubled man who seemed ideally placed to be her love interest. In every book, he turned out to be as big a douchebag as he looked.
In book one, though she had no magical powers, she was the key to saving Dystopian Noir-ish Sci-Fi City from some sort of magic problem. Maybe the fedoras were going to attain sentience or some shit, it wasn't specified. The sorta-honest chief of police, saddled with a thoroughly corrupt force, quietly hired an outsider to protect her; Hunter S. Thompson. Characterization based on Duke from Doonesbury.
(Look. I am not in charge of the shit my subconscious does. "I" is defined a very specific way when writing posts about dreams, a way that does not include the subconscious. I mean, come on, if I included that thing, then every noun in this post would have to be "I." I am the books and the city and the magic and the police. Clearly linguistically nonviable.)
Hunter S. Thompson had a sort of void-elemental magic (see: Homestuck) that allowed him to nullify the spells cast by the evil wizards pursuing the heroine. However, his magic was purely defensive; he could reflect spells back at their casters, but that was it. But the heroine's primary pursuer, a young man with dark shadows under his eyes, also used void magic, and could strike at her with it. Thompson found it very difficult to defend her against this.
At the finale, Hunter S. Thompson wandered off and left the heroine alone because he was in withdrawal from something and generally sullen and unhelpful. When her enemy attacked, the heroine learned to use whatever magical property made her important to somehow get rid of this guy herself - but his body was never found. Hunter S. Thompson told her that she had proven herself and didn't need him anymore, collected the check, and disappeared for a couple months to do stupid things.
At the beginning of book two, she is for some reason working with Thompson to catch a serial killer wizard haunting the city. (All paranormal romance series have at least one magical serial killer.) She runs into the other void-y guy and has a significant conversation with him, full of pregnant pauses and intense gazes. (All paranormal romance series include a relationship between a woman and a guy who tried to murder her.)
She also meets a friendly, silly lightning wizard who is deeply affected by something painful in his past - the only thing he won't talk about. Thompson, in one of his semi-coherent "training sessions" for her, tells her jealously not to sit too close to that guy, because lightning wizards shed lightning all over everything around them when they get excited about something.
She ignores this recommendation and sits next to him to watch a movie. He electrocutes her, briefly paralyzing her. There's no movie; he was excited about getting to kill her; he's the serial killer. The painful thing in his past was that he'd killed a lot of people - painful for them, not him, see.
She almost kills him by tricking him into wading into some water and then hurling lightning into it, electrocuting himself. But he has to live through this so Thompson can rescue her and carry her shiving body out of the water, for some reason.
In the dream, I thought: Wait, are we still treating him as a viable romantic option? I thought we'd already fallen out of that relationship tree.
Book three begins with Thompson asking a fire wizard to train her; he says that he has business to attend to, but the heroine is aware that he's actually pursuing an affair with a wealthy woman. Okay, maybe we are done with Thompson. She also meets a water wizard, who lives on a strange island called Yu, which lies near Malaysia, but is somehow accessible through a long, narrow stone stair somewhere in England. The heroine finds the water witch fascinating and spends a lot of time with her. She is very excited when the witch invites her to her island, alone.
The books have now recaptured dream-me's attention: Wait, are we really going there? Huh!
While walking on the windswept stairs, the heroine and the witch discover that the heroine has wind magic, which is also, in proper Chrono Trigger fashion, lightning magic.
In the dream, I said exasperatedly, Okay, this was definitely not something the author knew when writing the last book. There are no thematic similarities whatsoever between the heroine and the serial killer.
The heroine turns around on the stair and returns alone, while the water witch continues on alone to her island. (Bullshit! Why is she leaving?! She's spent almost half the book just wandering around now!) She returns to the fire wizard for lessons in using her powers. (Why couldn't the water witch do it?! This sequence of events is just the literary equivalent of yelling "no homo.")
The void-y guy is back, and up to no good again - Thompson has vanished, so it is up to the heroine and the fire wizard to stop him. In attempting to do so, they accidentally break some laws and buildings, including a huge beach-side hotel, and thus are on the run from the law themselves, while still attempting to find and kill the void-y guy. The fire wizard wants to go to the police and explain the situation, but the heroine stubbornly refuses. Her new powers have made her angry and impatient, and she wants to kill the void wizard herself.
She and the fire wizard part ways. She finds the void wizard, but a troop of police officers, accompanied by Thompson and the fire wizard, find them while they're fighting. Several magic-using officers chase her down and corner her, while Thompson is sent to deal with the void wizard. Instead, he attacks his ostensible allies.
The heroine, injured and being carried by a strange fire wizard, swoops in to reveal the terrible truth: Thompson is totally also a bad guy. Thompson gives a brief speech explaining how he cloned himself to make the void wizard, while the void wizard scowls at him. Thompson thinks they're in cahoots, but the void wizard disagrees. They begin to fight.
Flashback to the heroine after her escape: She and her animal sidekick (When did she get an animal sidekick?!), injured, run to a place where they know cloning and time-travel equipment is available. She goes confidently to work with it. The sidekick, confused, asks her what exactly she's trying to do. Is she going to send them back in time?
No. She's going to clone herself - with some, ahem, minor genetic modifications - send the baby back in time, so her clone will be older and more experienced than she is, and wait for said clone to come rescue her.
"What?" says the animal sidekick. "Isn't that a needlessly complicated plan?!"
"I've always wanted a daughter," sighs the heroine. "And I've been thinking, why should I involve a guy in the process? - I should make a son sometime, too."
She pulls the obligatory big red lever. Shortly her daughter bursts in, in a ring of fire, to rescue them. The heroine is unsurprised to find that her clone-self has fire magic. She mixed in some of the fire wizard's genes. The heroine whispers to the animal sidekick: "I knew she was going to turn out hot!"
Back in the present, the heroine and her daughter rescue the fire wizard from the police while the two void wizards fight, and flee to the water witch's island. The heroine is already happily contemplating the son she'll make using the water witch's DNA.
In the dream, I thought: Uh. Wow. This is really poorly-characterized and I think the author was making everything up as she went along - but now I definitely need to read the next book. I wonder whose POV it'll be? The dream specified that it would be the daughter's POV. Okay. Is she, uh, going to try and bang her daughter, along with the other two? The dream remained silent on this point.
In book one, though she had no magical powers, she was the key to saving Dystopian Noir-ish Sci-Fi City from some sort of magic problem. Maybe the fedoras were going to attain sentience or some shit, it wasn't specified. The sorta-honest chief of police, saddled with a thoroughly corrupt force, quietly hired an outsider to protect her; Hunter S. Thompson. Characterization based on Duke from Doonesbury.
(Look. I am not in charge of the shit my subconscious does. "I" is defined a very specific way when writing posts about dreams, a way that does not include the subconscious. I mean, come on, if I included that thing, then every noun in this post would have to be "I." I am the books and the city and the magic and the police. Clearly linguistically nonviable.)
Hunter S. Thompson had a sort of void-elemental magic (see: Homestuck) that allowed him to nullify the spells cast by the evil wizards pursuing the heroine. However, his magic was purely defensive; he could reflect spells back at their casters, but that was it. But the heroine's primary pursuer, a young man with dark shadows under his eyes, also used void magic, and could strike at her with it. Thompson found it very difficult to defend her against this.
At the finale, Hunter S. Thompson wandered off and left the heroine alone because he was in withdrawal from something and generally sullen and unhelpful. When her enemy attacked, the heroine learned to use whatever magical property made her important to somehow get rid of this guy herself - but his body was never found. Hunter S. Thompson told her that she had proven herself and didn't need him anymore, collected the check, and disappeared for a couple months to do stupid things.
At the beginning of book two, she is for some reason working with Thompson to catch a serial killer wizard haunting the city. (All paranormal romance series have at least one magical serial killer.) She runs into the other void-y guy and has a significant conversation with him, full of pregnant pauses and intense gazes. (All paranormal romance series include a relationship between a woman and a guy who tried to murder her.)
She also meets a friendly, silly lightning wizard who is deeply affected by something painful in his past - the only thing he won't talk about. Thompson, in one of his semi-coherent "training sessions" for her, tells her jealously not to sit too close to that guy, because lightning wizards shed lightning all over everything around them when they get excited about something.
She ignores this recommendation and sits next to him to watch a movie. He electrocutes her, briefly paralyzing her. There's no movie; he was excited about getting to kill her; he's the serial killer. The painful thing in his past was that he'd killed a lot of people - painful for them, not him, see.
She almost kills him by tricking him into wading into some water and then hurling lightning into it, electrocuting himself. But he has to live through this so Thompson can rescue her and carry her shiving body out of the water, for some reason.
In the dream, I thought: Wait, are we still treating him as a viable romantic option? I thought we'd already fallen out of that relationship tree.
Book three begins with Thompson asking a fire wizard to train her; he says that he has business to attend to, but the heroine is aware that he's actually pursuing an affair with a wealthy woman. Okay, maybe we are done with Thompson. She also meets a water wizard, who lives on a strange island called Yu, which lies near Malaysia, but is somehow accessible through a long, narrow stone stair somewhere in England. The heroine finds the water witch fascinating and spends a lot of time with her. She is very excited when the witch invites her to her island, alone.
The books have now recaptured dream-me's attention: Wait, are we really going there? Huh!
While walking on the windswept stairs, the heroine and the witch discover that the heroine has wind magic, which is also, in proper Chrono Trigger fashion, lightning magic.
In the dream, I said exasperatedly, Okay, this was definitely not something the author knew when writing the last book. There are no thematic similarities whatsoever between the heroine and the serial killer.
The heroine turns around on the stair and returns alone, while the water witch continues on alone to her island. (Bullshit! Why is she leaving?! She's spent almost half the book just wandering around now!) She returns to the fire wizard for lessons in using her powers. (Why couldn't the water witch do it?! This sequence of events is just the literary equivalent of yelling "no homo.")
The void-y guy is back, and up to no good again - Thompson has vanished, so it is up to the heroine and the fire wizard to stop him. In attempting to do so, they accidentally break some laws and buildings, including a huge beach-side hotel, and thus are on the run from the law themselves, while still attempting to find and kill the void-y guy. The fire wizard wants to go to the police and explain the situation, but the heroine stubbornly refuses. Her new powers have made her angry and impatient, and she wants to kill the void wizard herself.
She and the fire wizard part ways. She finds the void wizard, but a troop of police officers, accompanied by Thompson and the fire wizard, find them while they're fighting. Several magic-using officers chase her down and corner her, while Thompson is sent to deal with the void wizard. Instead, he attacks his ostensible allies.
The heroine, injured and being carried by a strange fire wizard, swoops in to reveal the terrible truth: Thompson is totally also a bad guy. Thompson gives a brief speech explaining how he cloned himself to make the void wizard, while the void wizard scowls at him. Thompson thinks they're in cahoots, but the void wizard disagrees. They begin to fight.
Flashback to the heroine after her escape: She and her animal sidekick (When did she get an animal sidekick?!), injured, run to a place where they know cloning and time-travel equipment is available. She goes confidently to work with it. The sidekick, confused, asks her what exactly she's trying to do. Is she going to send them back in time?
No. She's going to clone herself - with some, ahem, minor genetic modifications - send the baby back in time, so her clone will be older and more experienced than she is, and wait for said clone to come rescue her.
"What?" says the animal sidekick. "Isn't that a needlessly complicated plan?!"
"I've always wanted a daughter," sighs the heroine. "And I've been thinking, why should I involve a guy in the process? - I should make a son sometime, too."
She pulls the obligatory big red lever. Shortly her daughter bursts in, in a ring of fire, to rescue them. The heroine is unsurprised to find that her clone-self has fire magic. She mixed in some of the fire wizard's genes. The heroine whispers to the animal sidekick: "I knew she was going to turn out hot!"
Back in the present, the heroine and her daughter rescue the fire wizard from the police while the two void wizards fight, and flee to the water witch's island. The heroine is already happily contemplating the son she'll make using the water witch's DNA.
In the dream, I thought: Uh. Wow. This is really poorly-characterized and I think the author was making everything up as she went along - but now I definitely need to read the next book. I wonder whose POV it'll be? The dream specified that it would be the daughter's POV. Okay. Is she, uh, going to try and bang her daughter, along with the other two? The dream remained silent on this point.
