RE: Trailer Trash pt 8 (Patreon)

(pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4, pt 5, pt 6, pt 7)

   To her surprise, Alicia found that not only had Tabitha remembered her, she actively sought her out during the lunch period the next day. The strange red-headed beauty was wearing another gorgeous top, this one being an asymmetrical light blue blouse with only one shoulder— the neckline scooped down under her right arm at a diagonal across her chest, decorated with flowered embroidery.

   “Alicia! I’m Tabitha—I’m not sure if you remember me from yesterday?” Tabitha said, standing hopefully beside the lunch table Alicia was sitting at.

   “Uh… yeah, I remember,” Alicia said, moving her backpack off of the adjacent chair so Tabitha could sit down. How could I forget? Look, there’s like, a dozen guys checking you out right now again, white girl.

   “Oh, thank you,” Tabitha said, taking a seat beside her.

   “Can I ask where you got that shirt, though?” Alicia blurted out before she could stop herself.

   “This?” Tabitha looked down at her chest in surprise. “It’s a bridesmaid gown. My grandmother and I have been pulling apart dresses from Salvation Army, and turning them into blouses. We cut off everything beneath the bust on this one and put it back together in sections, so we could use the trim of the dress as the hem here, like this.”

   Tabitha leaned back in her seat and held out the hem of her shirt so that Alicia could see the embroidered floral design.

   “Wait—did you say you got that from Salvation Army?”

   “Yes,” Tabitha gave her a knowing smile. “I think there were still two more matching bridesmaid dresses up on the racks there, too. Seven dollars each.”

   “Seven dollars…?!”

   “Did you happen to bring any of your artwork, today?”

   “...Yeah,” Alicia admitted, pulling a small portfolio out of her bag. “Uh. Here.” I had my sketchbook with me yesterday, too. I just… didn’t think you actually wanted to see it.

   Carefully opening the faux-leather portfolio, Tabitha laid it out and began examining each of Alicia’s drawings. After a few moments of study, the redhead set a notebook on the lunch table beside the portfolio—and began taking notes. The girl steadily made her way page by page through Alicia’s artwork, carefully flipping each of the plastic-sheathed drawings and then jotting down a series of thoughts.

   What… the hell? Alicia had been drawing for most of her life, and she knew she was good at it. Dozens and dozens of times, she’d proudly shown off her burgeoning collection of finished pieces, and almost always she got the same sort of responses from people. Ooohs and aaahs, some smiles and politely-worded praise. That’s what Alicia expected when she’d presented the portfolio here; for the girl to flatter her, or otherwise tell her how just impressed she was.

   Instead, the lovely girl was staring at each of her drawings, one by one, with a strange sort of intense focus, as if she was looking for something in particular. She was so intent on the drawings, in fact, she seemed to have lost track of everything around her. In that moment, Alicia Brooks found the strange urge to do a quick sketch of this girl’s expression. It’s like she’s looking THROUGH the drawing, and trying to make out something more. She’s peering into the abyss.

   In any case, Tabitha seemed to be finding plenty, and Alicia couldn’t help but peer over the girl’s shoulder to see what she was writing.

15, figure study, female

excellent posture

good expression

shaded, uses same light source as previous figure studies!

no background

16, figure study, female

¾ angle view

excellent cloth detail

no expression

shaded, uses same light source again

background: vanishing point and line

17, figure study, partial female

face and hands

size difference implies depth of field!

excellent expression

shading uses same light source again

no background

   “Uh… what are you doing?” Alicia couldn’t help but ask. “Were you assigned to do critiques for some class…?”

   “Oh! No, I’m so sorry,” Tabitha hastily apologized. “A lot of your work here is phenomenal— I jumped right into doing case studies because I wanted to plan out what I want to ask you to draw.”

   “Well, what do you want me to draw?” Alicia asked, still bewildered. “I’ve been in kind of a slump anyways, haven’t had inspiration.”

   “I’d like to propose... a partnership,” Tabitha announced, getting up and settling herself across from Alicia at the lunchroom table and placing a thick binder upon the table between them. “Partnership in a project I’ve been planning for... some time now.”

   “Uh,” Alicia blinked. “Okay.”

   “May I go on?”

   “Yeah. Sure.”

   “I’ve been preparing material that I’ll be writing into a fantasy story. It has a unique setting, and I have many, many ideas... but I want to collaborate with a capable artist, to help realize and improve upon all of them.”

   “You’re writing a book. And, you want… concept art?”

   “It may not have to be limited to just a novel. Illustrations could become storyboards, for an animated project or even a film, someday.”

   “Okay.”

   “Okay? You’re interested?”

   “Um. No, I don’t know, yet. I mean, okay—keep talking.”

   “Thank you. It’s all a little… weird, so can I begin with the premise I’m building the story on?”

   “Yeah—I mean, go for it.”

   “Magic exists, as something tied to life itself. In this setting, all people are capable of magic—everyone, and can use magic to shape the world around them to do pretty much anything imaginable.”

   “That sounds… a little chaotic.”

   “Well, there’s a catch!” Tabitha chimed in. “Several, really. First of all, the basic rule is that if you have magic, and you expend all of it; you immediately expire. You die. Conversely, if you have even a tiny bit of magic left in you, you can never die. You can be cut to pieces, or burned to ash, or live on for eternities without air or food and you’ll still survive. Pretty much the only way to kill a Magi is to snuff out the last of their magic with your own.”

   “Okay. So, you don’t ever want to use it all up.”

   “Yes. The other trick is—magic’s really, really hard to learn and control. A beginner might accidentally exhaust everything he has in him all at once, trying to do the tiniest little thing. Like, changing the color of a grain of sand, or something. But, someone who’s carefully practiced for tens or hundreds of years could perform all manner of strange sorceries... albeit with some difficulty.”

   “...Okay, I follow so far.”

   “So, culturally, the premise creates a world completely alien to our own,” Tabitha explained. “Humanity, for the most part, abandons almost all other pursuits to each individually chase their own path of magic; the immortality and omnipotent powers. They don’t learn trades, they don’t further other knowledge, they don’t immerse themselves in mundane disciplines. Magic becomes a sort of arms race, where everyone wants to be as magically powerful as possible. They need the power to protect themselves from other Magi, or they could end up losing everything.”

   “Wait, everyone goes all in on this magic stuff? Like, every single person? That seems kind of far-fetched.”

   “Well, look at it this way—” Tabitha said, “Those that don’t, however many of them there were, they live out normal lifespans, and eventually die. Their children, and their children’s children, and so on and so forth, would be faced then with the choice of either living a life of the mundane like their parents, or pursuing the path of these increasingly powerful, seemingly ageless Magi. There would be bloody struggles in the beginning, perhaps.

   “But, each successive mortal generation would be easier for the Magi to cull or enslave, because they’re getting stronger with time. Picture this going on for thousands of years, until our current civilization and technology are all but forgotten. Those who follow magic to obsession are more or less all that remain, forming a completely new society.

   “Okay, that’s… wow. Seems kinda dark.”

   “It will be,” Tabitha nodded. “So, many of the Magi in this setting are ancient by now. As in, thousands and thousands of years go by, and they have little to no need for food or water, no drive for sex or anything. They have some deity-like powers, and they’re obsessed with becoming more powerful.”

   “Then… what do they actually do?” Alicia asked.

   “Realistically, they form into an unstable hierarchy of power, and then think up ways to murder and magic the opposing factions to death. The world’s ecosystem by then is in tatters from abuse of unnatural powers, and there’s no real infrastructure besides the scattered Magi acting as tyrants.

   “At that point, the Magi no longer consider people who aren’t proficient in magic even as people anymore. They might sire some offspring between themselves at some point or another, sure. They’d breed those resulting ‘mortals’ amongst themselves for a few generations as a race of servants, or a disposable army, a slave force, or to use in magical experiments… their descendants can basically never become their equals.”

   “If you’re born at that point in the setting—when just about all the early Magi have lived for tens of thousands of years, there’s no real hope of ever ‘catching up’ to them in terms of magic potential or knowledge. No way to escape a life of servitude and total inferiority, no way to oppose them.”

   “So, obviously, your story is actually about someone opposing and then overcoming them,” Alicia deduced.

   “Exactly!” Tabitha beamed. “You caught it right away. It’s the most suggestive theme I can sell to a young adult audience as fantasy. I want to use allegory to illustrate the delight and terror of taking that final step of personal growth out of your parents’ influence to stand on your own as a person.”

   “Uh… wow,” Alicia admitted.

   “Is it no good?”

   “No, it’s just— that’s a lot for me to take in, all at once,” Alicia said, not wanting to admit she didn’t know exactly what ‘allegory’ meant. I totally get the gist of all of it, though. I think.

   “Yeah, it’s… more and more complicated, the deeper you get into it,” Tabitha admitted, patting the binder full of notes she’d organized with a look of guilt.

   “Seems like it’d be pretty tough for the hero to win,” Alicia pointed out.

   “Oh, almost impossible,” Tabitha nodded. “But, she won’t even understand what she’s actually up against until way later on in the story.

   “Wait,” Alicia interrupted. “So, what’s their tech level going to be like?”

   “Simple tech. Very simple,” Tabitha said. “Bronze age equivalent, maybe. Swords and spears, probably not much in the way of armor. Just basic stuff, for throwing raw numbers at an enemy Magi’s slave army. Whenever a big problem arises that would necessitate innovation or an improvement in basic technology, a Magi takes care of the issue with magic, instead. It’d be the height of stupidity for them to encourage their slaves to become self-reliant, as that would threaten their own position. So, technologically stagnant, for such a long, long time that it might as well be forever.”

   “That makes sense—another parenting allegory. I think?” Alicia wondered out loud, raising her eyebrows. I really hope allegory means analogy, like I think it does. “That’s all… um.”

   “Is it no good?”

   “It’s just a little overwhelming,” Alicia admitted.

   “Oh! I’m not going to dump all that kind of exposition on the reader like that,” Tabitha assured her. “Our protagonist will be the lowest of the low— beneath the slaves, even."

   “Everyone refers to her as a goblin. She starts with nothing, and we learn bits and pieces of everything along the way as she does. By the end, clever readers will be able to piece it all together, but it should still be a compelling story, even for those who don’t.”

   “The main character— she’s a goblin?” Alicia asked, her interest piqued. “What’s she like?”

   “...She’s me,” Tabitha said, giving Alicia a slightly embarrassed look. “She’s, uh. She’s always been me. I’m the goblin. I’ve always been the goblin.”

(pt 8a)

/// This was a mess to write, because I'm planning a story in which characters are planning a story. I want to revisit this and make it more visuals and descriptive observations, less world-building through dialogue, but I'm not sure yet how much detail of this I can pare down, and how much will be important going forward.