Exile Chapter 8 Draft 4

I've finished chapter 8 of the fourth draft of Exile and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

The first half of this chapter was new to draft 3 to help explain part of Mal's resolution in draft 2. The second half is the first meeting of Mal and Silmera, where not much work really needed to be done. Basically the only thing in the second half that changed was the wording in a few places and Silmera's speech patterns. She talks kind of like this brittish dude I work with who manages to fit the word "Bloody" at least once into every sentance, and half of the time talks very proper, except for the cussing, like he wants us to think he's a proper brittish person, and the other half of the time like he grew up on the street.

The dream in the first half of the chapter deserves a little explanation. The girl that Mal is dreaming about is Queen Cora after the War of Zion is over. She left a message in the Exile's Curse for every future generation that would repeat in the Exile's dreams every 6 weeks until the Dark God errodes away the Exile's ability to overcome his power by sheer force of will. She's telling the future generations of Exiles how to absorb the Dark God fully into themselves and basically become the Dark God themselves as Mal does at the end. This needs to be here so that Mal can be pondering over the meaning through the entire story so that he doesn't just pull his triumph over the Dark God out of where the sun don't shine at the end. He needs to be thinking, and trying very hard to find a way to rid himself of the curse or else the triumph in the end is meaningless. A protagonist needs to basically be raked through the coals on their journey to triumph over the antagonist, and learn and grow as a person before finally triumphing over evil just as they were about to be swallowed up by it. They can't stumble over the answer by accident or it's completely meaningless.

This is one of the reasons that I have such a hatred for Star Wars Episode 1. At the end, little Anakintard wins completely by accident. Throughout the entire ending he fumbles his way through by randomly pressing buttons and smiling like, well, a 9 year old child, when big flashy things happen because of it. He didn't suffer to find any answers. He didn't grow as a person and a character. He didn't learn anything. He did everything completely and utterly by accident, and there's no satisfaction whatsoever when he gets that not so hard won victory in the end. If everything is handed to you on a silver platter how can you ever learn and grow as a person? you can't. That's why you see so many rich celebrities completely falling apart, because they're skipping the needed life experiences that teach a person how to deal with the strain of real life.

And with that, I'm on vacation, cyall in a week BWAAHAAHAA.

And don't forget to celebrate Get Hit by a Bus and Knocked Clear the Frick into an Epic Battle Between Good and Evil at the End of the Universe Day tonight.