The King In Chains / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page The King In Chains.

(account deleted) 17 Sep 2020 09:33

This is an article for the Only Game In Town canon about how the phenomenon we first saw in The Faraday Girls came to be. It makes more sense in the context of that and There Was One, There Was Not One, so go read both of them (and all the other works in the Only Game In Town canon). More endings will be added as time goes on, so stay tuned.

The faux-KJV was a lot of fun to write.

Thanks to rumetzen, weizhong, Riemann, and A Random Day for their feedback.

Last edited on 17 Sep 2020 09:38 by (account deleted) Show more

HarryBlank 17 Sep 2020 10:20

Beautiful, peculiar, frightening. Well-conceived and well-written, and well done indeed!

Last edited on 17 Sep 2020 19:28 by HarryBlank Show more

(account deleted) 17 Sep 2020 12:24

Thanks!

I was going to give you the line about how you can edit basic errors yourself, but realized that the entire article is in listpage format (for mEtA rEaSoNs that will become clear later). So that actually inspired me to optimize it a bit, so that only the changey bit is in the listpages format, rather than the entire article. Not often that a word SPAG error leads to corrected code, at least in fiction.

HarryBlank 17 Sep 2020 19:27

Yeah, that's why I didn't fix it, I did try! Glad something good came of it and looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Unihedron 17 Sep 2020 17:55

Funny story, I've read none of the Only Game In Town canon, so this is the first tale I've read of it. And you've made me genuinely impressed and curious about the canon, because I enjoyed it so much.

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Watch as mirrors clear themselves with the breath of frigid air that eased in.

Croquembouche 01 Oct 2020 21:55

^{Votes don't help the author, so I've vowed to always leave a comment with mine, at the very least whenever I rate an article negatively. If you feel the same, help out by leaving critique with more of your votes. Comment follows:}

This is the first OGIT article that I've read, too, and I found the first part of this tale and its characterisation of information very interesting. I was actually hoping that the two stories would converge, each one taking place at either end of a chain, but as it stands I can't say I'm sure how they're connected; and I'm not sure what effect the 'overreaching' had, or even what it means.

I'm upvoting for the intrigue that I felt in the first half of the tale, even if it perhaps later wasn't capitalised on.

Last edited on 07 Oct 2020 08:20 by Croquembouche Show more

(account deleted) 02 Oct 2020 11:30

Thanks for the critique! To address a couple of your points,

I was actually hoping that the two stories would converge

That was the goal; lines like "the roads and the citadels were the domains of tigers and wolves, as all things should be" and "All those who dwelt in the kingdom then knew the wages of knowledge, of seeking mastery over the world" were supposed to be indications of the thing's growing influence in the story as it pulls the chain, culminating in the diatribe given by the king's slit stomach. Once editing is allowed, I will try and edit it some to make it a bit clearer.

'overreaching'

You would have to ask weizhong about that; the last paragraph is set to randomly display one of four endings, each one linking to a different story in the resurrected canon. It will work better once each of them links to something.

I think that it's also worth mentioning that both this and Competitive Teleology were intended as expansions on The Faraday Girls, with this piece expanding on "how did it happen that an entity to whom writing is inimical became able to manipulate words," while CT was more about "what it means for the texts to make explicit fears and anxieties that are unstated" (I think).