I managed to wrap up Chapters 18 and 19 of JJ and make some headway into Chapter 20. Chapter 20 may well prove to be a long one, but we’ll see how far we can go. Stay tuned.

I made up for getting very little writing done Monday by getting much farther along in Chapter 18 of JJ. I’m just doing stage direction and dialog tags for the most part, but this is a pretty long chapter. One more day and I’ll have it knocked out. Chapter 19 will be much shorter, but then 20 looks to be a fairly big one. If I could get at least that far before the weekend’s out, I’d be satisfied. Stay tuned.

I made a little progress on Chapter 18 of JJ. Under par, but better than nothing, I suppose. Hopefully I can pick up the pace as the week goes on. Stay tuned.

I managed to finish Urgill’s Chapter 2 of TTWC3. If I didn’t have other stuff vying for my time this weekend, I possibly could barrel my way through the entire section, but we’ll set the more realistic goal of trying to get at least one more chapter done before I switch over. Stay tuned.

I managed to wrap up Scipio’s section by finishing his Chapters 2 and 3 as well as his epilogue. I then went on to do a little writing on Urgill’s Chapter 2. Needless to say, I’m rather pleased with the progress I’ve been making. Maybe I can finish a chapter or two of Urgill’s before the weekend’s out. Stay tuned.

I made some progress on Scipio’s Chapter 2 of TTWC3, finished the dialog for his Chapter 3 and wrapped up Chapter 4. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility for me to finish his section this week. That’d leave me with just three sections to go. By my estimates, I could have the book done in about four months. We’ll see if I can make it happen. Stay tuned.

I managed to pretty well wrap up Garm’s Chapters 2 and 4 in TTWC3. That brings his section to a close and meets my goal of getting it finished before TTWC3 debuts on the site. I’ll be moving on to Scipio’s section next and hope to at least get two chapters done before the week’s out. Stay tuned.

Medusa is a character that hails back from my now lost original concept for what would become The Trident War Chronicles. I’ve been a big fan of Greek mythology ever since I was a child, so it’s little surprise that I’ve woven it in so tightly with my own mythos. Much as Arachne originally had little more going for her besides being a menacing monster, so too was Medusa until I spent some time to give her more character development. I’ve already talked about her relationship with Arachne in an earlier post and there’s not much to add there. I’d probably say Medusa is a little more emotionally dependent on Arachne than Arachne is on her, but that might be because her background is a fair bit more traumatic.

Something I wasn’t expecting in her character until I really got into writing her section was the aspect of her as a tired bureaucrat. She doesn’t serve the Monarch Lich out of any great fear or loyalty, but more because it’s just a job. Basically, when Arachne submitted to him, she had no reason to put up a fight and was given her job as an inspector of the realm. You might think there was a punitive aspect to the Monarch Lich sending her to Notos, but it was simply a matter of him putting her powers and experience to use. As someone who made the rounds all throughout the Darklands multiple times during the Lich’s reign, who better to survey the land of the enemy?

As an interesting side note, there are three degrees of petrification that get covered in more detail in TTWC3, where the characters are on the receiving end and it seemed appropriate to talk about their origin here. Total petrification is fairly familiar and what most people associate with Medusa. Petrification of the flesh, where only a victim’s body is turned to stone, is actually inspired by the Medusa Transducer in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In my universe at least, I make the rationale that living tissue and dead matter react differently to the spell. This also make a convenient way to loot the victims. The way the Ancients were turned into bronze statues in Everyday Magic follows the same principle. Surface petrification was inspired by the Metroidvania Castlevania games like Symphony of the Night where it looks like total petrification but is ultimately just a shell that you can break free of. This form of petrification has previously been seen in KoG3 when Brenok petrifies Adrienne.

That does it for now. I’ll be back again in a couple months to start our treatment of the leads of TTWC3 with Rowland. Stay tuned.

I had two rather hectic days in which I wasn’t able to get any writing done. (What little productive time I had was divided between catching up on my backlog of reviews and rolling out the update post.) Unwilling to let a full three days go by, I sacrificed some sleep time to make a little more progress on Chapter 23 of EM. I fell short of my goal of finishing the book this cycle, but I’ll get it next time for sure. Now it’s time to switch over to TTWC3, which will begin its serial run next week. Stay tuned.

I made a little progress on Chapter 23 of EM. Not quite as vigorously driving forward as I have in the past few days, but now that I’m done with work for the week, perhaps I can drive on ahead and finish the book. Stay tuned.