tricia868 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tricia868) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
triangularity2016-02-18 09:07 pm
tricia868) wrote in triangularity2016-02-18 09:07 pm
Entry tags:
The Tradition Meme | Open!
In the 500 Kingdoms, there's a power to fairy tales. Those who know about it call this power the Tradition.
The Tradition is latent magical energy that builds up around people and places when they seem to fit into the trappings of a familiar story. Its goal is to shove them down that same path, willing or not.
Now, some people fall in line with the Tradition willingly, and they really do wind up with happy endings. The thing is... not all fairy tales end happily. Just as many of them are much darker, and it's awfully hard to prevent tragedy unless you're lucky enough to find a particularly clever fairy godmother.
Or maybe the specific story isn't the problem. Sometimes the circumstances just don't fit. The Tradition wants any girl with ugly stepsisters and a cruel stepmother to marry a prince, but what if her prince is a toddler, or an old man, or cruel, or he'd rather marry another prince? It's a situation that happens over and over. What if the dragon would much rather peacefully hoard baubles or books than ravage the countryside? (Bookwyrms aren't the most common sort, but they do exist!) What if the sleeping beauty absolutely does not want to be manipulated into falling in love with whichever man wakes her with a kiss?
All that magical energy has to go somewhere. The Tradition will keep trying to push you wherever it wants until either you find a way around it or the magic is repeatedly siphoned away. A Fairy Godmother can do the latter, but then, so can an evil Sorcerer or Sorceress. No one wants to fall into the hands of one of those, and many of them are quick to seize any source of Traditional magic.
Wits are at least as important as power when it comes to changing your path, because the Tradition is strong, implacable, and incredibly difficult to escape. Finding alternate, more appealing, Traditional paths is an option. Changing your circumstances enough that you deviate from any Traditional course works too, if you can manage it. Confusing the Tradition by making yourself seem to fit any number of stories can sometimes help.
There is one other way, but it's more frequently a long-term strategy than useful in a pinch. Since stories and songs have such power, new Traditional paths can be slowly forged by creating works of fiction or music that lay out a new path. To really create a firm new course for the Tradition, though, a song would have to be popular. It has to be on the lips of people throughout the land. When it becomes widespread, the Tradition accepts it.
-----
Figure out what stories your character might fit into, and what ways these fairy tales might be turned on their heads or throw obstacles into people's paths. Note that the Tradition can draw from a broad range of mythologies and legends. Place your character in a fairy tale world, or think about how this power might manifest in theirs. You can choose to have your character aware of the Tradition, or they might not have any idea what's driving them onward.
Good luck to them, if they try to break with Tradition!
(Concept taken from Mercedes Lackey's 500 Kingdoms series.)
The Tradition is latent magical energy that builds up around people and places when they seem to fit into the trappings of a familiar story. Its goal is to shove them down that same path, willing or not.
Now, some people fall in line with the Tradition willingly, and they really do wind up with happy endings. The thing is... not all fairy tales end happily. Just as many of them are much darker, and it's awfully hard to prevent tragedy unless you're lucky enough to find a particularly clever fairy godmother.
Or maybe the specific story isn't the problem. Sometimes the circumstances just don't fit. The Tradition wants any girl with ugly stepsisters and a cruel stepmother to marry a prince, but what if her prince is a toddler, or an old man, or cruel, or he'd rather marry another prince? It's a situation that happens over and over. What if the dragon would much rather peacefully hoard baubles or books than ravage the countryside? (Bookwyrms aren't the most common sort, but they do exist!) What if the sleeping beauty absolutely does not want to be manipulated into falling in love with whichever man wakes her with a kiss?
All that magical energy has to go somewhere. The Tradition will keep trying to push you wherever it wants until either you find a way around it or the magic is repeatedly siphoned away. A Fairy Godmother can do the latter, but then, so can an evil Sorcerer or Sorceress. No one wants to fall into the hands of one of those, and many of them are quick to seize any source of Traditional magic.
Wits are at least as important as power when it comes to changing your path, because the Tradition is strong, implacable, and incredibly difficult to escape. Finding alternate, more appealing, Traditional paths is an option. Changing your circumstances enough that you deviate from any Traditional course works too, if you can manage it. Confusing the Tradition by making yourself seem to fit any number of stories can sometimes help.
There is one other way, but it's more frequently a long-term strategy than useful in a pinch. Since stories and songs have such power, new Traditional paths can be slowly forged by creating works of fiction or music that lay out a new path. To really create a firm new course for the Tradition, though, a song would have to be popular. It has to be on the lips of people throughout the land. When it becomes widespread, the Tradition accepts it.
-----
Figure out what stories your character might fit into, and what ways these fairy tales might be turned on their heads or throw obstacles into people's paths. Note that the Tradition can draw from a broad range of mythologies and legends. Place your character in a fairy tale world, or think about how this power might manifest in theirs. You can choose to have your character aware of the Tradition, or they might not have any idea what's driving them onward.
Good luck to them, if they try to break with Tradition!
(Concept taken from Mercedes Lackey's 500 Kingdoms series.)
Rue | AUed
She wasn't ready to admit it yet, of course, because she knew these woods like the back of her hand. She'd certainly been foraging in them long enough. A family with too many mouths to feed had to find their extra food somewhere.
Rue wondered, suddenly, if the forest had a magical guardian she should have been worried about. But this wasn't a story, and she'd never seen any sign of one before. That left no explanation she could think of for why she couldn't find her way back home.
From her treetop perch, trying to break through the treeline enough to catch a glimpse of which way it was to the forest's edge, she huffed quietly but audibly, "I know where I am. I do! I recognize that boulder down there."
Saying it aloud didn't help her sense of direction.
no subject
Or around it, technically. Chandra had been walking in circles for the last hour, and she had passed that rock three times by now.
Truthfully, Chandra was not one for forests. She was a city girl, through and through, and the countryside did not interest her at all. But her father always talked about 'going home to the countryside' and stuff like that, which meant that they took vacations to "bond with nature" every now and then, which meant that Chandra had to trudge through the forest with her hippy parents while they watched the nature around them.
Chandra didn't see what was so great about it. It was hot and sticky and there were bugs outside. No amount of bug spray saved her precious blood from the mosquitoes, and those mosquitoes were not helpful at all when she was trying to remember how to get back to the campsite.
Finally, Chandra decided to stand on top of the rock and get a look around. it didn't give her much of a view, but she wasn't about to waste the effort climbing a tree. She needed her energy if she was going to walk anywhere else.
She did see something in a tree not too far away, though. Was it a person? She wasn't sure. But she waved in that direction anyway, just in case it was a person. Maybe she could finally escape from this dumb forest!
no subject
"What are you doing out here?"
She knew what she was doing out here. This was a normal food gathering trip gone awry. Rue was always out in the woods. She certainly didn't need a trail of breadcrumbs to lead her home, and everyone knew how poorly that worked anyway. It was a story even her little sibling scoffed at. Hungry children who were grateful for every scrap they got never stopped to wonder at birds eating crumbs. But Rue hardly ever ran into anyone else in the woods. They were populated by plants and animals, never people.