Ultimate Night Guard chapter details, and a question. · 6:21am Apr 4th, 2014
"Quietly Into the Night"
Mezza Luna is an enemy of the state, she and her follows have been driven out of the dark and had a blinding light cast on their crimes. Princess Luna will make sure they face justice, but first there is the problem of finding them. Luna hopes that she can prevent an escalation into violence if she can track down Mezza Luna and cut the head off of the snake, but Mezza Luna wears the night as well as herself.
Wildcard is sent by Princess Luna to infiltrate the extremist cult that has grown in the Hollow Shades, and discern their long term plans.
The extremists however, have their own plans and resources. One thing is for certain: they will not go quietly into the night.
It's being written alongside A Phoenix Burns, since that's kind of exhausting to do for very long, and a rather decided change in tone. Even if finished first, it will still be released second, as there's a chronology here. I expect this one to be rather lengthy, but I might pen a dialogue or an intermission in the time it takes to get these two bigger narratives out. This will be the end of this 'arc' as well, and lead us into the third 'volume'. As of now this story is around 50% complete.
So now we come to my question: Wildcard is finding quite a lot of success lately, and obviously is my favourite character. It should be fairly obvious too that I'm living a vicarious power fantasy through him. He's not approaching Mary Sue levels is he? In addition, he's not reaching absurd or stupid 'author mouthpiece' levels at all, is he? I've worked on hamstringing him with personal problems, notably all those state dinners, but I worry about stupid things like this.
Even if he is OP, he's believably so.
He didn't just get all this dumped on him at once, we've followed him as he earned it bit by bit.
Although the military part does seem a bit much, I'll just wait and see how it turns out.
1980870
Good, I'm glad to hear this. Just so long as it's believable how he's earned what he has, since from now things are going to move a lot faster. The days of an entire chapter devoted to the Magnificent's hallways are over.
Noted, and I will note that he's never actually led a military unit before. I won't have him suddenly show up with Wildcard's Aces and win the war or anything.
I don't think he's a Mary Sue. Mary Sues run to the absolute extremes, either everything falls into their lap perfectly without them having earned it, or everything goes wrong and they suffer tragically because they are so picked on. A good character has bad things happen, grows as a character because of it, and earns at least most of their successes.
Characters like Wildcard are out there in "real" books (not that that means too much, given some of what gets published *cough*Twilight*cough*) If you read David Weber I could point to Honor Harrington as an example of somebody who shares a few traits with Wildcard. But anyhow, so long as you do it believably, and you keep the reader interested in and liking the character, you can let them get pretty darn powerful without it being a problem.
1980894
I am really glad to hear it, sometimes I worry- always about the wrong things.
I've got 99 problems and I can't see any of them, the things I can see aren't actually problems!
1980917 That's why editors are so useful.
It's always the things you didn't even think of that trip you the hardest.
1980930
Exactly. The problems I know of, I can fix. So they aren't really problems in the end since nobody will ever see them.
That's why I'm so thankful for peeps like you.
1980935 I feel so loved. (I keep saying that writers feed on love and attention, just like changelings.)
1980941
I could probably live off nothing but pageviews and comments for weeks if I had to.