沈清秋 | Shen Qingqiu (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
peerlesscucumber) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
prismatica2019-11-13 12:05 am
peerlesscucumber) wrote in prismatica2019-11-13 12:05 am
webnovel post | chapter one
[ Posted on a popular webnovel site for Lunatia, a new cultivation novel has appeared, titled "The Legend of the White Lotus Milu." It is entirely not fix-it fic for a certain someone's life. It's all original content, do not steal!!! It is driving this player mad!
The first chapter goes exactly like this... ]
In all of Prismatica, there was no sect of the Immortal Realm with greater prestige and honour in the modern age than that of White Cloud Sect, nestled high in reaches of the Black Fang Mountains. Between the three greatest sects, it was not the largest, but it had the oldest history, and the highest standards and expectations of its disciples, in the inner and outer circles. Being accepted as a disciple to White Cloud Sect was an honour in and of itself, and those with talent and the dedication necessary to pursue their cultivation with all their focus and heart would rise through their ranks, regardless of which individual cultivation path they followed within the sect. This was known to all those with any understanding of the Immortal Realm, and far and wide in the Mortal Realm, even into the more informed reaches of the Demon Realm. To say it was known to even the youngest of mortals and demons would be no exaggeration.
To the star bright eyes of the dirty, bruised young child scampering from shadow to shadow along the streets of a border town by the meandering banks of the Qing Crystal River, dividing the Northernmost reaches of the Demon Realm from the Southernmost reaches of the Mortal Realm.
The town was little more than a stop for trade, built up around the docks in the harbour tucked up next to the sheer cliff framing the Eastern side. Scraggly, determined trees reached skyward in the weak soil, their leaves turning into a profusion of bright colours every autumn that lined the top in living flame.
Xin Mo had little time to view the leaves that autumn day, his arms holding day-old bread to his chest in cloth barely cleaner than his dirt-smeared limbs. Black hair pulled back into a bun at the spilled out in unruly tendrils, evidence of the fighting scrap he'd emerged victorious from some half hour earlier. His vigilance as Sanguis waxed in the sky, turning the fading light of day into the red-tinged glow of early Sanguis cycle night.
Light filtered past poorly fit doors hanging heavy in their frames, stretches of fabric and woven mats weighed down by stone and bone to keep out the evening's chill as it flowed in off the river. He heard snatches of conversation, laughter, shouting, sounds that meant rutting, sounds that meant fighting, sounds that meant nothing at all. He was used to them all, and he only cared about the ones that meant his precious cargo might be threatened, and so he ignored most of them in the quick, darting progress he made from shadow to shadow, winding his way to a familiar, worn door and the warmth that slipped past the hanging door.
He waited across the way, listening to the sounds of the night around him, tense. With no indication of pursuit, he eventually exhaled, putting on a burst of more than childish speed to bound across the open road and slip into the door without so much as disturbing the hanging material for more than a heartbeat.
Coming home to this simple space of packed dirt floors and its single, open room left warmth spreading through his chest, warmth that blossomed further at the sight of the woman who sat next to the flickering fire, needle in hand, small spools of coloured threads collected in a careworn basket that looked as well loved as her robes.
She was older, more silver than black in her hair where it was pulled back and knotted at the base of her neck, kept out of her way as she worked. Her black, lupine ears hung down behind her shoulders, one missing most of its lower half in a long healed, ragged tear. Wrinkles touched the corners of her eyes, deep, just as the laugh lines around her mouth betrayed her willingness to smile over the smallest of joys in life and made her all the more beautiful in her young son's eyes.
"Mo'er, what happened to you?" Her brow knit in worry, he simply shook his head, sending more tendrils of hair escaping the bun she'd so carefully coaxed his hair into that morning. He trotted forward, holding out the cloth containing his hard fought for bread, attempting to look shamefaced and managing nothing of the sort. He was too proud in his way, and too worried in his childish manner, to present any properly apologetic face.
"The big kids had a disagreement with me," he said, bouncing the bread in his hands. He stared at her with such hope that she could do nothing but accept the offered bread, her half ear twitching forward as she chuckled helplessly. Her worry was written into her features, along with a hint of resignation in her eyes.
"Oh? Over this?" She accepted the bread nodding her head toward it.
Xin Mo scratched at his cheek, smudging the dirt there, and tried not to dig one bare, dirty toe into the ground. His tail twitched as he ducked his head and looked to the side, trying to hide his smile. He was smaller than all the other kids, but he was smarter, too, and fast. When the baker gave away their old bread to the town's needy, he was always quick enough to snatch at least a loaf for his mother. It was the least he could do for the woman who'd taken him in, an orphan left to the streets with the passing of his adoptive grandfather. She was the reason he didn't still sleep tucked up against buildings or in door-stoops out of the winds and weather, or even in the small temples with their small gods and offerings that he ferreted away in guilt and with prayers of gratitude for meals he suspected none of the Immortals being prayed to would ever come eat themselves.
"Yes," he said, admitting to the truth of it, "They said an Iris blessed shouldn't fight like I do. That I should play nice, and have one of the bigger Sanguis or Cordis blessed fight for me, but why would I do that?" He lifted his chin, expression fierce and derisive in the way any child confronted with an absurdity is. "I'm better than any of them, and the next best wrestler is an iris blessed anyway. It's dumb!"
His mother's helplessly concerned expression softened, her heart aching at a young and yet old complaint poured off his tongue. "It is," she said, setting the bread her son had won down on the small wooden plank that held her old tea pot and the two cracked mugs she retained for drinking their over-brewed, weak tea. "They're young, and don't understand the world half as well as they think they do. The moons bless all of us equally, and differently. Even the Dragons and the Foxes are influenced by the moons in their own ways." She patted the ground by her side, shifting the mass of cloth she'd been embroidering into her lap proper.
Xin Mo dutifully sat as indicated, looking up at her with a malcontent expression lingering in his eyes. There was a hurt there, too, buried under every other emotion that tugged at his too feeling heart. Not for the first time, she wished there was more she could do when facing this world for the sake of her son, but she also had chosen to have faith in what man he'd grow into in this world. For a woman who never had children of her own, only to adopted a foundling, faith informed much of her relationship with a world that has been equal parts cruel and uncaring with her, as well as achingly beautiful in times deeply surprising.
Like now, in her aging years, to be blessed with such a filial son, one who held close such beautiful dreams.
"I know. Everyone knows, but they say it doesn't matter." He wrinkled his nose, staring down at his hands in his lap, dirty fingernails pressing into marginally cleaner palms.
She reached out, running her hand over his head, smoothing back a few of those errant tendrils. "Mo'er, what is it I always tell you about the moons?"
He leaned into her touch, eyes lifting enough to glance toward their doorway. The red light of Sanquis was barely more than a suggestion around the frame, but he stared at it, looking older and wiser than his six years. "That Sanguis is red like the blood in our veins, and Cordis is blue like the waters that give us life, but only Iris is the blending of them both."
He turned his face toward her, the beauty of his features softened in the shadows of their fire-lit home. The delicate tips of his slightly elongated ears, the small swelling of the nubs of horns that had yet to break past skin, buried in the ink-black was of his hair, were part of the delicate, lovely whole of this child; in no small part, she suspected that his peers responded so poorly out of jealousy, a jealousy that would bloom into admiration as they aged. People worked in predictably ways, and her Mo'er was a beautiful child, who would grow into a beautiful man.
And who would, she hoped, follow his dreams far from this dusty town with its small goaled people, looking out for little more than how to fit into the roles their parents and grandparents and grandparents before them have filled, eking out a life here on the fringes of the Mortal Realm. He was too brilliant a star to stay earthbound, and much as she'd miss him, she wanted to see him soar away from her to the places she was certain he was destined for.
"That's right," she said, smiling and looking toward the bucket of clean water kept near the door. He should wash up before they ate, since there was no point holding onto the bread when food eaten now meant energy they'd both have for later. Especially him, a child growing in the fits and starts of all children. He was barely fitting into his trousers again, the hems creeping higher up his calves as the months flew by. "You're even more in tune with the life inside you, and inside the world around us. Just as any good cultivator needs to be, right?"
He nodded his head, expression firming into one of determination. She coaxed him into moving to clean himself up, using her strong hands aching from hours and hours of embroidering that day to tear into the loaf as if it were fresh, handing him a portion with a serving of thin gruel from the pot kept warm by the fire when he returned to her side, face and hands scrubbed free of dirt.
"I'll be a cultivator, a good one," he said, "One of the best. Then I'll make sure you're taken care of and don't have to work on anything but what you like to ever again."
"Yes, yes," she said, smiling as she ate his hard won bread.
"I'll definitely pass the test when the White Cloud Sect takes new disciples in five years." He nodded his head, shoving his piece of bread into his bowl to punctuate his statement. He almost spilled, going immediately still with a look of horror crossing his features so quickly that she almost laughed, watching his shoulders relax when the gruel didn't spill after all.
"Yes, yes."
"You believe me, right?"
She looked up, meeting his starry gaze with her own dark eyes. "Yes," she said, giving him that regard and serious response that he so dearly wanted from time to time, "I do, and you will, Mo'er."
He held her gaze, the smile that blossomed on his face a slow, determined, beautiful event. "Yes," he said, "I will."
--
Five years later, dark eyes took in the gathering of people at the gates to the lower White Cloud Sect, where the testing grounds for the new disciple hopefuls opened once every five years. Hundreds of individuals of all walks of life and all different features milled in the open space, talking with others, stopping by stalls set up by vendors eager to make a sale under the sect's blessing, a riot of colours and scents and sounds that his gently pointed ears took in and tried to sort out, soon overwhelmed. It didn't matter.
Xin Mo stood at the top of the low hill coming in from the West, jet-black hair pulled into a ponytail, travel clothes dusty and wrinkled, surveying the site of his destiny.
Then he strode down the hill, a slight and straight back figured soon swallowed by the crowd, winding his way toward the registration tables and whatever the following days would bring.
--
The Author has something to say:
I'm so excited to be sharing this story with you! o(〃＾▽＾〃)o Please join me on this adventure with Xin Mo through the cultivation world of fantasy Prismatica! Please leave Crystal Bombs as encouragement if you feel so inclined, this author will be very thankful! Three cheers for Xin Mo! ヾ（〃＾∇＾）ﾉ♪ What will he face during his disciple trial?
[ Probably not digging. Probably he will not write the same fucking trial as actually is true in his own world, where digging shows your potential and you are just. Digging. A hole. For a day. ]
The first chapter goes exactly like this... ]
The Legend of the White Lotus Milu
by Peerless Cucumber
Chapter 01: By the shores of Qing Crystal River
In all of Prismatica, there was no sect of the Immortal Realm with greater prestige and honour in the modern age than that of White Cloud Sect, nestled high in reaches of the Black Fang Mountains. Between the three greatest sects, it was not the largest, but it had the oldest history, and the highest standards and expectations of its disciples, in the inner and outer circles. Being accepted as a disciple to White Cloud Sect was an honour in and of itself, and those with talent and the dedication necessary to pursue their cultivation with all their focus and heart would rise through their ranks, regardless of which individual cultivation path they followed within the sect. This was known to all those with any understanding of the Immortal Realm, and far and wide in the Mortal Realm, even into the more informed reaches of the Demon Realm. To say it was known to even the youngest of mortals and demons would be no exaggeration.
To the star bright eyes of the dirty, bruised young child scampering from shadow to shadow along the streets of a border town by the meandering banks of the Qing Crystal River, dividing the Northernmost reaches of the Demon Realm from the Southernmost reaches of the Mortal Realm.
The town was little more than a stop for trade, built up around the docks in the harbour tucked up next to the sheer cliff framing the Eastern side. Scraggly, determined trees reached skyward in the weak soil, their leaves turning into a profusion of bright colours every autumn that lined the top in living flame.
Xin Mo had little time to view the leaves that autumn day, his arms holding day-old bread to his chest in cloth barely cleaner than his dirt-smeared limbs. Black hair pulled back into a bun at the spilled out in unruly tendrils, evidence of the fighting scrap he'd emerged victorious from some half hour earlier. His vigilance as Sanguis waxed in the sky, turning the fading light of day into the red-tinged glow of early Sanguis cycle night.
Light filtered past poorly fit doors hanging heavy in their frames, stretches of fabric and woven mats weighed down by stone and bone to keep out the evening's chill as it flowed in off the river. He heard snatches of conversation, laughter, shouting, sounds that meant rutting, sounds that meant fighting, sounds that meant nothing at all. He was used to them all, and he only cared about the ones that meant his precious cargo might be threatened, and so he ignored most of them in the quick, darting progress he made from shadow to shadow, winding his way to a familiar, worn door and the warmth that slipped past the hanging door.
He waited across the way, listening to the sounds of the night around him, tense. With no indication of pursuit, he eventually exhaled, putting on a burst of more than childish speed to bound across the open road and slip into the door without so much as disturbing the hanging material for more than a heartbeat.
Coming home to this simple space of packed dirt floors and its single, open room left warmth spreading through his chest, warmth that blossomed further at the sight of the woman who sat next to the flickering fire, needle in hand, small spools of coloured threads collected in a careworn basket that looked as well loved as her robes.
She was older, more silver than black in her hair where it was pulled back and knotted at the base of her neck, kept out of her way as she worked. Her black, lupine ears hung down behind her shoulders, one missing most of its lower half in a long healed, ragged tear. Wrinkles touched the corners of her eyes, deep, just as the laugh lines around her mouth betrayed her willingness to smile over the smallest of joys in life and made her all the more beautiful in her young son's eyes.
"Mo'er, what happened to you?" Her brow knit in worry, he simply shook his head, sending more tendrils of hair escaping the bun she'd so carefully coaxed his hair into that morning. He trotted forward, holding out the cloth containing his hard fought for bread, attempting to look shamefaced and managing nothing of the sort. He was too proud in his way, and too worried in his childish manner, to present any properly apologetic face.
"The big kids had a disagreement with me," he said, bouncing the bread in his hands. He stared at her with such hope that she could do nothing but accept the offered bread, her half ear twitching forward as she chuckled helplessly. Her worry was written into her features, along with a hint of resignation in her eyes.
"Oh? Over this?" She accepted the bread nodding her head toward it.
Xin Mo scratched at his cheek, smudging the dirt there, and tried not to dig one bare, dirty toe into the ground. His tail twitched as he ducked his head and looked to the side, trying to hide his smile. He was smaller than all the other kids, but he was smarter, too, and fast. When the baker gave away their old bread to the town's needy, he was always quick enough to snatch at least a loaf for his mother. It was the least he could do for the woman who'd taken him in, an orphan left to the streets with the passing of his adoptive grandfather. She was the reason he didn't still sleep tucked up against buildings or in door-stoops out of the winds and weather, or even in the small temples with their small gods and offerings that he ferreted away in guilt and with prayers of gratitude for meals he suspected none of the Immortals being prayed to would ever come eat themselves.
"Yes," he said, admitting to the truth of it, "They said an Iris blessed shouldn't fight like I do. That I should play nice, and have one of the bigger Sanguis or Cordis blessed fight for me, but why would I do that?" He lifted his chin, expression fierce and derisive in the way any child confronted with an absurdity is. "I'm better than any of them, and the next best wrestler is an iris blessed anyway. It's dumb!"
His mother's helplessly concerned expression softened, her heart aching at a young and yet old complaint poured off his tongue. "It is," she said, setting the bread her son had won down on the small wooden plank that held her old tea pot and the two cracked mugs she retained for drinking their over-brewed, weak tea. "They're young, and don't understand the world half as well as they think they do. The moons bless all of us equally, and differently. Even the Dragons and the Foxes are influenced by the moons in their own ways." She patted the ground by her side, shifting the mass of cloth she'd been embroidering into her lap proper.
Xin Mo dutifully sat as indicated, looking up at her with a malcontent expression lingering in his eyes. There was a hurt there, too, buried under every other emotion that tugged at his too feeling heart. Not for the first time, she wished there was more she could do when facing this world for the sake of her son, but she also had chosen to have faith in what man he'd grow into in this world. For a woman who never had children of her own, only to adopted a foundling, faith informed much of her relationship with a world that has been equal parts cruel and uncaring with her, as well as achingly beautiful in times deeply surprising.
Like now, in her aging years, to be blessed with such a filial son, one who held close such beautiful dreams.
"I know. Everyone knows, but they say it doesn't matter." He wrinkled his nose, staring down at his hands in his lap, dirty fingernails pressing into marginally cleaner palms.
She reached out, running her hand over his head, smoothing back a few of those errant tendrils. "Mo'er, what is it I always tell you about the moons?"
He leaned into her touch, eyes lifting enough to glance toward their doorway. The red light of Sanquis was barely more than a suggestion around the frame, but he stared at it, looking older and wiser than his six years. "That Sanguis is red like the blood in our veins, and Cordis is blue like the waters that give us life, but only Iris is the blending of them both."
He turned his face toward her, the beauty of his features softened in the shadows of their fire-lit home. The delicate tips of his slightly elongated ears, the small swelling of the nubs of horns that had yet to break past skin, buried in the ink-black was of his hair, were part of the delicate, lovely whole of this child; in no small part, she suspected that his peers responded so poorly out of jealousy, a jealousy that would bloom into admiration as they aged. People worked in predictably ways, and her Mo'er was a beautiful child, who would grow into a beautiful man.
And who would, she hoped, follow his dreams far from this dusty town with its small goaled people, looking out for little more than how to fit into the roles their parents and grandparents and grandparents before them have filled, eking out a life here on the fringes of the Mortal Realm. He was too brilliant a star to stay earthbound, and much as she'd miss him, she wanted to see him soar away from her to the places she was certain he was destined for.
"That's right," she said, smiling and looking toward the bucket of clean water kept near the door. He should wash up before they ate, since there was no point holding onto the bread when food eaten now meant energy they'd both have for later. Especially him, a child growing in the fits and starts of all children. He was barely fitting into his trousers again, the hems creeping higher up his calves as the months flew by. "You're even more in tune with the life inside you, and inside the world around us. Just as any good cultivator needs to be, right?"
He nodded his head, expression firming into one of determination. She coaxed him into moving to clean himself up, using her strong hands aching from hours and hours of embroidering that day to tear into the loaf as if it were fresh, handing him a portion with a serving of thin gruel from the pot kept warm by the fire when he returned to her side, face and hands scrubbed free of dirt.
"I'll be a cultivator, a good one," he said, "One of the best. Then I'll make sure you're taken care of and don't have to work on anything but what you like to ever again."
"Yes, yes," she said, smiling as she ate his hard won bread.
"I'll definitely pass the test when the White Cloud Sect takes new disciples in five years." He nodded his head, shoving his piece of bread into his bowl to punctuate his statement. He almost spilled, going immediately still with a look of horror crossing his features so quickly that she almost laughed, watching his shoulders relax when the gruel didn't spill after all.
"Yes, yes."
"You believe me, right?"
She looked up, meeting his starry gaze with her own dark eyes. "Yes," she said, giving him that regard and serious response that he so dearly wanted from time to time, "I do, and you will, Mo'er."
He held her gaze, the smile that blossomed on his face a slow, determined, beautiful event. "Yes," he said, "I will."
Five years later, dark eyes took in the gathering of people at the gates to the lower White Cloud Sect, where the testing grounds for the new disciple hopefuls opened once every five years. Hundreds of individuals of all walks of life and all different features milled in the open space, talking with others, stopping by stalls set up by vendors eager to make a sale under the sect's blessing, a riot of colours and scents and sounds that his gently pointed ears took in and tried to sort out, soon overwhelmed. It didn't matter.
Xin Mo stood at the top of the low hill coming in from the West, jet-black hair pulled into a ponytail, travel clothes dusty and wrinkled, surveying the site of his destiny.
Then he strode down the hill, a slight and straight back figured soon swallowed by the crowd, winding his way toward the registration tables and whatever the following days would bring.
The Author has something to say:
I'm so excited to be sharing this story with you! o(〃＾▽＾〃)o Please join me on this adventure with Xin Mo through the cultivation world of fantasy Prismatica! Please leave Crystal Bombs as encouragement if you feel so inclined, this author will be very thankful! Three cheers for Xin Mo! ヾ（〃＾∇＾）ﾉ♪ What will he face during his disciple trial?
[ Probably not digging. Probably he will not write the same fucking trial as actually is true in his own world, where digging shows your potential and you are just. Digging. A hole. For a day. ]
no subject
[ It's a very silly conversation on that level, but silly isn't bad, and it's better than some of the darker, unhappy places they've gone in this one sided anonymity across the months of online conversations. This at least is pointedly not a persona that Binghe should ping to. At least not yet. ]
Ah, ah, a savage sort of place? Fascinating to read about, frightening to endure! Like venturing too far outside of Lunatia, even here, there are plenty of dangers. Are you having a more peaceful time here? Moonblessed keep being reported in all kinds of incidents... I'm sorry that there seems to be no rest even here where you're helping all of Lunatia and the world.
no subject
[ Friends are slowly trickling intp his life, but still aren't a readily available resource when it takes so much trust on Binghe's part. Less so are the easy types of companionships that are full of this brand of absurdity; where the inane and asinine somehow bring about joy for the sake of it. Where people play pranks, hold jokes and tease just to see a smile. Yet somehow this feels like a taste of it, enough for a word of gratitude over more than notification over a non-existent book. ]
Some portions of it are like that. But it all depends on who's in power over that territory and what type of person they are.
The Demon Realm will always be somewhat wild. And the Palace I came from was no better than a battleground. But there were nicer places full of happy memories, simply because a good person watched over it.
[ There was a world of difference in Qing Jing Peak before and after Shen Qingqiu's 'reincarnation'. A once unruly peak full of violent teens whose worst impulses were rewarded became a haven of peace. More than that, it became a home. Somewhere he no longer slept on the cold earth or was locked in a shed but had warm sheets and fresh meals and finally a sense of belonging. Truly one person can change the whole world, or destroy it.
Binghe doesn't really view his time here as any type of heroic work, even if the collective populace was in fact brought here to generate a force meant to save the planet. Yet the praise is more welcome than he would have guessed.
Some could argue that any sense of peace or relaxation here is marred with the looming sense of something on the horizon. Others still would see this world through rose-tinted glasses. Binghe's opinion is a middling one, with both good and bad at play, like the nature of any realm. ]
Even with the surprises that happen a lot of things make being here preferable to home.
I think this place is what you make it. And I'm trying to make it good.
no subject
Right now? That's not important. Right now this is easy, and easy is something to be appreciated while it lasts. ]
Do tell, how many realms of these were there? What are demons? In the scheme of things, are they another race? Species? Specific origins, like those from outside the city, in the mountains beyond or across the wastelands? So curious! Such fascinating truths.
[ Places filled with happy memories that were sold out. He's sorry for that now, realising it wasn't the only answer, and wasn't the only way, but nothing changes the past. As they've been discussing, no one's granted those answers about consequences as known fact before those things come to pass.
Meanwhile, Shen Qingqiu is increasingly more jaded over the effectiveness of government handlings... and thankful for what they provide. There's no fully right or wrong, in the end. ]
Decide it's good, and then find the ways for it to be good. An outlook for better prospects!
Then as long as you're here, may you have more good than ill when it comes to the surprises and everything else.
no subject
This doesn't really happen enough to prove all of them can, though.
[ The questions come in like a tidal wave, leaving Binghe doing his best to toss back replies with what little information he has on certain subjects that happen so infrequently it's hard to give much more than guesses. Without concrete facts beyond his own limited understanding of his demonic lineage, Binghe transitions onto other questions he has firsthand knowledge of. ]
There's the Demon Realm and Human Realm. Then something in between called the Endless Abyss that connects between the two.
[ Hmm. It's not a bad philosophy to look on such a bright side that everything will be as a person hopes, but in some ways that kind of blind faith can set a person up for defeat if reality doesn't match their expectations. ]
Can you decide a battle is good before it's over, then tell yourself it's good no matter what?
Or maybe it'd make more sense to talk about books. I can want a story to be good and say it will be, but I can't make myself like what I read if I don't.
Because life here, books or battles- they make you feel something for better or worse no matter how much you tell yourself to feel another way.
So, I'm trying to make this a place I can live in. But how things turn out isn't entirely up to me.
[ He's edging towards being slightly more pragmatic about the hills and valleys of living in a world that isn't at peace no matter all the civilization built up around it. But the notable things that have happened, from kidnappings to boss battles and losses, have consequences just as much as the wonderful moments make being here worthwhile. ]
I'd enjoy less surprises. But they seem to be a monthly occurrence here.
no subject
But none of that would make sense anyway, and no one needs to imagine what strange looking hybrids might exist if humans and demons truly were freely birthing children together. Also, let's not look at the dark side of both races. Species? Both peoples. Those dark sides are truly, truly dark.
Instead, on to the rest: ]
Not so different if they can have children. Not to say this makes them the same, but at least some are not so different, to have children.
[ Then, on to his own gripe: ]
What a terrible, ambitious name, having a space between two realms be called Endless as well as Abyss.
[ Fuck you, Airplane! Your naming conventions were terrible regardless, but fuck! And to have your protagonist go to such a horrible place? Twisted and lava river filled and fire filled and fuck all else! ]
How things outside of yourself go is how those things go. How you respond to those things, that's your decision! So can I hope for a good story? Yes. Can I force myself to like it? Perhaps, perhaps not. But if I determine what I've learned is, "this is not a story I like," or, "this is not a writer I enjoy," then I've learned, which is good, even if the learning was not necessarily fun.
Good is relative. Many might say battles as a whole aren't good; others may say they are. We all feel things, we all feel them in different ways. Let go of what you can, hold on to what matters. The negative... the bad... the horrible... remember those, too, but try not to hold onto them. They burrow too deep like that, this author feels!
As for surprises, those are never really welcome, but all to often invite themselves anyway...