Hard, hard, hard...

I'm trying to decide if accidentally and unwittingly speeding the entropy of your planet and never knowing it, and having actually made the notes on how to slow it down without realizing it, and dying in the reaction that sets it off when you never meant to do it and in fact weren't engaged in any titanic battles of any kind and just... slipped up badly and it got you killed... I'm trying to decide if that sufficiently breaks the hero-mold. Both the successful!at!a!cost hero and the tragic!hero.  Because he does succeed in protecting his company. Doesn't in, oh, saving his own life. Or the world.  And accidentally helps end it faster, although it's left as an open question whether it'll make a noticeable difference, as he made the magical notes to help contain the effects.

Trying to break down stereotypes and cliche's and stuff ism't easy. ...And actually, it REALLY works now, because A) he dies young and B) his father, who's much, much more heroic in many ways in actually TRYING to save the world (politically and magically) grows very old and dies. Sort of get both the... old wasting away and the dying young.  Too old and too young--except he's not THAT young, he's in his early thirties. And just... fails miserably at growing into a hero.

I do love being me sometimes.

I've also been considering Elemental!verse.  I like Healer-temper-boy/Laksha.  And I really like bratty-but-talented ice/water mage girl and calm, sweet, common-sensical fire mage.  And the more I think about it, the more I get interested in this "debunking myth" idea. And wondering if I should have light magic. 'Cause of Apocalypse!verse, and I don't want 'em TOO similar. On the same note, however (if you like, a corollary) I need something to better distinguish it from Bard!verse besides minor magical fauna.  But either way I go--whether it's just seeing magic or outright light magic, which I do think I'll do (but with a... much less scientific approach than I usually use, because after all Apocalypse!verse has the physics!magic already.  And a much less offensively capable light magic, I think.  ....Or maybe I will. Dammit. I dunno. I'd like a couple fighting girls.  If the air mage is a girl and I stick with the original plan, light magic doesn't need to be offensive.  But... I MAY want to have the air mage be a boy and have three girls, in which case I definitely need light magic to be offensively strong.  Because while I may have a fire/ice pairing--hilarious and fun and quirky, after all, but a little quotidian--what I may do is have miss brat ice mage fall for fire mage in a bad way, but he's really not interested, and have a younger air mage boy eventually coax her into paying attention to him. (I dare say you'll like that idea, LG--it was really just accidental, but I know the air mage is the second youngest of the whole group, except for the light mage.)  And if I do THAT, then I'll do healer/psychic-seer, ice/air, and fire/light. And I'm actually really liking fire/light right now.

Although I need to figure out where this jesus-like myth in elemental!verse comes from anyway. I think I'll need a maniac with a god complex.  Who needs killing.  I think blood magic's involved. Ugh.  Icky.  But that the myth might've changed the killing magic to light and made the killer a man, even though I suspect it might have been the ice mage girl who kills him (with help, but I think it's her) and the light mage girl actually has nothing do with the killing, but with the reclassifcation of magic. (Yes, I'm keeping that. I'm anal about types of magic and how they'd be trained. I blame Cinaed and Tyroshaun for my interest in magical theory.)