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Nov. 27th, 2017 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI've been rereading Laurence Yep's Dragon of the Lost Sea books, because the last time I did so was in 2008 and I wanted to make sure I remembered what was what in case I was gifted fic about them for Yuletide this year.
Dragon of the Lost Sea stars Shimmer, a snotty exiled dragon princess in disguise as an old woman who is on a quest to Restore Her Clan's Homeland and Regain Her Honor. Thorn, a sad teen orphan, tags along for the ride. Featuring the first great series sitcom moment, when two party members both independently decide during the same fight scene that for tactical reasons they have to briefly pretend to the other one that they're dead, OOPS, WAIT, NOW WE'RE BOTH IN MOURNING AND NOBODY'S DRIVING THE MISSION.
In Dragon Steel, Shimmer finds out that just defeating one minor enemy is not actually enough to magically fix her clan's ongoing sociopolitical problems, effects multiple jailbreaks, and picks up Indigo, another, even snottier teen orphan.
By the time Dragon Cauldron begins, the adventuring party includes Shimmer, Thorn, Indigo, a tragic and morally ambiguous spoiler character, and the Monkey King. The Monkey King is also now the narrator, which means that half the scenes now read completely like a sitcom. Take, for example, the opening of the book:
THE GANG GETS DISGUISES
MONKEY: Shimmer you have a giant dragon nose and a fancy silk robe, this is not a good disguise
SHIMMER: As a dragon princess, I need my robe and my nose for majesty!
THORN: Yes, but if your little old lady disguise looked a little more impoverished she would have an air of mystery! Don’t you need a tragic backstory?
SHIMMER: OK, you win, we’re all tragic now, everyone rub mud on yourselves
INDIGO: Thorn is too handsome, give him a giant wart
SHIMMER: Monkey, you’re supposed to be old, please stop bouncing
MONKEY: My character is a RETIRED ACROBAT
The argument takes a full chapter and the disguises last a sum total of two pages.
...and then in the fourth book, Dragon War, everybody has to attempt to fix the fact that while single-mindedly trying to help Shimmer's clan they not only pissed off every powerful figure in the area but accidentally triggered a reasonable-sized apocalypse, OOPS.
Anyway the books are just as much a delight as I have always remembered, and after rereading it turns out that something I really desperately want is for someone to turn them into a Bioware RPG.
Obviously, you play as Exiled Dragon Princess Shimmer. The first book is the easy setup mission where you pick up your first companion; books two and especially three are the main stage of the game where you quest around, get a lot of party banter, and make choices that seem like a good idea at the time but will definitely screw up the world in the endgame; and then book four is the epic finale. Thorn, Indigo, Monkey, and [spoiler character] are your companions and they are all hypothetically romanceable. You'd have to write some more side adventures into the third book to make it work, but otherwise the whole thing paces itself out remarkably well.
Most of the interesting Significant Choice stuff comes in the third book, so that's probably where you get to have the most fun with alternate possibilities. Obviously, the game has to drive you into releasing the Boneless King, because that's what sets up the climax. But you could have some other choices to get different endings, like:
- if you successfully prevent Civet from checking out the sinister magic tomb and getting possessed, she doesn't die later, but you don't get the key information that lets you have the best possible ending
- if you romance exclusively Indigo then Thorn will always sacrifice himself by jumping in the cauldron; if you romance anybody that's not exclusively Indigo, then either Thorn or Indigo might jump in the cauldron, but you can talk them out of it
- (romancing Indigo and Thorn at the same time without alienating either one of them is really difficult and involves very particular action and dialogue choices, but you can romance Monkey + anyone else REALLY EASILY)
- if you don't let anyone jump in the cauldron, or if you let the Smith and the Snail Woman take the cauldron instead of stealing it again, you can defeat the Boneless King without losing Civet but you can't restore the Inland Sea
- but if you romance Thorn or maintain a good enough relationship with him throughout the game, he can let the dragons live in the human kingdom instead
- if you interact with Pomfret in just the right ways you can get him to change sides earlier rather than at the end and then get him as a companion for some of the adventure, or even put him on the throne instead of yourself, but then somebody else has to sacrifice themselves to defeat the Boneless King in the final battle
- if you challenge your uncle for the throne, it's harder to win but you can then become queen of ALL dragons and not just the Inland Sea
- if you let your uncle take back the staff that Monkey stole, you get more allies for the final battle but you lose Monkey as a companion
- and if you don't have Monkey as a companion then you can't restore any cauldron-shaped friends at the end of the game
- if you romance Monkey and go on some Monkey-related side quests you can free him from his magical headband if you want and then everything goes REALLY weird
OKAY BIOWARE THERE YOU GO, IT'S ALL READY FOR YOU, YOU'RE WELCOME
Dragon of the Lost Sea stars Shimmer, a snotty exiled dragon princess in disguise as an old woman who is on a quest to Restore Her Clan's Homeland and Regain Her Honor. Thorn, a sad teen orphan, tags along for the ride. Featuring the first great series sitcom moment, when two party members both independently decide during the same fight scene that for tactical reasons they have to briefly pretend to the other one that they're dead, OOPS, WAIT, NOW WE'RE BOTH IN MOURNING AND NOBODY'S DRIVING THE MISSION.
In Dragon Steel, Shimmer finds out that just defeating one minor enemy is not actually enough to magically fix her clan's ongoing sociopolitical problems, effects multiple jailbreaks, and picks up Indigo, another, even snottier teen orphan.
By the time Dragon Cauldron begins, the adventuring party includes Shimmer, Thorn, Indigo, a tragic and morally ambiguous spoiler character, and the Monkey King. The Monkey King is also now the narrator, which means that half the scenes now read completely like a sitcom. Take, for example, the opening of the book:
THE GANG GETS DISGUISES
MONKEY: Shimmer you have a giant dragon nose and a fancy silk robe, this is not a good disguise
SHIMMER: As a dragon princess, I need my robe and my nose for majesty!
THORN: Yes, but if your little old lady disguise looked a little more impoverished she would have an air of mystery! Don’t you need a tragic backstory?
SHIMMER: OK, you win, we’re all tragic now, everyone rub mud on yourselves
INDIGO: Thorn is too handsome, give him a giant wart
SHIMMER: Monkey, you’re supposed to be old, please stop bouncing
MONKEY: My character is a RETIRED ACROBAT
The argument takes a full chapter and the disguises last a sum total of two pages.
...and then in the fourth book, Dragon War, everybody has to attempt to fix the fact that while single-mindedly trying to help Shimmer's clan they not only pissed off every powerful figure in the area but accidentally triggered a reasonable-sized apocalypse, OOPS.
Anyway the books are just as much a delight as I have always remembered, and after rereading it turns out that something I really desperately want is for someone to turn them into a Bioware RPG.
Obviously, you play as Exiled Dragon Princess Shimmer. The first book is the easy setup mission where you pick up your first companion; books two and especially three are the main stage of the game where you quest around, get a lot of party banter, and make choices that seem like a good idea at the time but will definitely screw up the world in the endgame; and then book four is the epic finale. Thorn, Indigo, Monkey, and [spoiler character] are your companions and they are all hypothetically romanceable. You'd have to write some more side adventures into the third book to make it work, but otherwise the whole thing paces itself out remarkably well.
Most of the interesting Significant Choice stuff comes in the third book, so that's probably where you get to have the most fun with alternate possibilities. Obviously, the game has to drive you into releasing the Boneless King, because that's what sets up the climax. But you could have some other choices to get different endings, like:
- if you successfully prevent Civet from checking out the sinister magic tomb and getting possessed, she doesn't die later, but you don't get the key information that lets you have the best possible ending
- if you romance exclusively Indigo then Thorn will always sacrifice himself by jumping in the cauldron; if you romance anybody that's not exclusively Indigo, then either Thorn or Indigo might jump in the cauldron, but you can talk them out of it
- (romancing Indigo and Thorn at the same time without alienating either one of them is really difficult and involves very particular action and dialogue choices, but you can romance Monkey + anyone else REALLY EASILY)
- if you don't let anyone jump in the cauldron, or if you let the Smith and the Snail Woman take the cauldron instead of stealing it again, you can defeat the Boneless King without losing Civet but you can't restore the Inland Sea
- but if you romance Thorn or maintain a good enough relationship with him throughout the game, he can let the dragons live in the human kingdom instead
- if you interact with Pomfret in just the right ways you can get him to change sides earlier rather than at the end and then get him as a companion for some of the adventure, or even put him on the throne instead of yourself, but then somebody else has to sacrifice themselves to defeat the Boneless King in the final battle
- if you challenge your uncle for the throne, it's harder to win but you can then become queen of ALL dragons and not just the Inland Sea
- if you let your uncle take back the staff that Monkey stole, you get more allies for the final battle but you lose Monkey as a companion
- and if you don't have Monkey as a companion then you can't restore any cauldron-shaped friends at the end of the game
- if you romance Monkey and go on some Monkey-related side quests you can free him from his magical headband if you want and then everything goes REALLY weird
OKAY BIOWARE THERE YOU GO, IT'S ALL READY FOR YOU, YOU'RE WELCOME
no subject
Date: 2017-11-27 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-27 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-27 10:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-27 11:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-03 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-27 10:03 pm (UTC)Admittedly I read these books in elementary school, right around the same time I was discovering the folktales and literature that underlie them, but Yep's Monkey is an excellent version.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-27 09:59 pm (UTC)MOSTLY FOR THE FREE-MONKEY ENDING LBR BUT I WOULD PLAY THEM ALL.
then someone can do Hans of Iceland as a mid-90s Sierra gameno subject
Date: 2017-11-27 10:05 pm (UTC)well NOW I gotta read Hans of Icelandno subject
Date: 2017-11-27 10:01 pm (UTC)I love Dragon Cauldron. It has a genuine, eerie sense of the weird and numinous and it took me years to notice that filtering all of the above qualities through Monkey's relentless snark filter actually makes them more effective, which is now a narrative trick I really enjoy. I'm pretty sure Yep was one of the first authors whose narrators I really noticed as characters, not just lenses on the world.
What is your best possible ending for the game?
no subject
Date: 2017-11-27 10:23 pm (UTC)OK, here it is, the best possible ending: Thorn jumps in the cauldron, but you give it to the Smith and the Snail Woman, so Civet doesn't have to sacrifice herself. This means you can't in fact restore the Inland Sea [because thematically the world has moved on and you can't restore what's already been lost, see Anastasia discussions]. However, because Civet survives, she and Indigo are able to go back to Indigo's clan and stop them from repeating the mistakes of Civet's people, thus saving the Green Darkness from being forested out and getting them to revolt against the Boneless King at a key juncture. Then EITHER you restore Thorn to being person-shaped and dynastically marry him and the two of you rule over an integrated human-dragon kingdom, OR you free Monkey, who in his zeal to assist accidentally ends up destroying the entire dragon monarchy, as described above, so the Inland Sea dragons lead an internal takeover and build a better and less class-structured dragon society from the bottom up. In this version Thorn is probably still a cauldron and the whole gang ends up on the run from the Lord of the Flowers, but it might be worth it.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-27 10:52 pm (UTC)The mountain prison of the Boneless King is like something out of lost-world weird fiction: the towering fungal growths, the stillness, the sense of something else being alive in there with you, but not knowing what it is; the flat, slithery tracks in the sand, the pale floating patch in the river. The presence of the dog feels like it should be reassuring, but it totally is not.
Shimmer's narration is incredibly full of personality, too.
Agreed. And of course the switch to Monkey allows you to see her from the outside, in ways which are congruent with her narration, but not identical, allowing for biases on both sides. I read years ago in an article or an interview that Yep did it because all attempts to write the novel in Shimmer's voice were hitting a wall, but I feel this just proves the point that if you give Monkey a cameo, he'll take the next two books.
"Studied" is slightly too clinical a word, but the other Yep narrator I noticed first was Squeaky in Mountain Light. I need to re-read Child of the Owl; I haven't since I was in middle school, I think.
I think Yep and DWJ are the people who first taught me how to first person and who I'm probably always modeling myself after to some extent.
I associate it less with Diana Wynne Jones because the novels of hers that were really formative for me are all tight third person, but she and Lloyd Alexander were early models for dialogue between characters who always, no matter their register, sound like themselves.
In this version Thorn is probably still a cauldron and the whole gang ends up on the run from the Lord of the Flowers, but it might be worth it.
Technically Thorn is still a cauldron at the end of the original series, he's just a cauldron that walks like a boy (and occasionally makes creaky metal noises like a cauldron), so I feel this is a salvageable ending.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-03 06:21 pm (UTC)As you know, The Serpent's Children and Mountain Light are my other favorite Yeps!
My formative DWJs are pretty evenly split between third and first, but The Homeward Bounders and Aunt Maria were both extremely significant for me, and Jamie's voice in The Homeward Bounders in particular has a direct traceable impact on like half the things I've written.
I am a little sad we never got to see person-shaped Thorn boil water. BUT NOW I want to know what your play-through of this hypothetical game would look like!
no subject
Date: 2017-12-03 07:32 pm (UTC)That's a neat thing to be able to see.
BUT NOW I want to know what your play-through of this hypothetical game would look like!
I'll think about it!
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Date: 2017-11-28 12:09 am (UTC)I am totally shamefully Right Here for just this kind of thing.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-03 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-28 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-03 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-03 06:38 pm (UTC)I think my first action is to try picking up used copies for my household. Only the first volume is still in print, and I think I read only that volume myself, back in the day.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-04 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-05 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-28 07:52 pm (UTC)everybody has to attempt to fix the fact that while single-mindedly trying to help Shimmer's clan they not only pissed off every powerful figure in the area but accidentally triggered a reasonable-sized apocalypse, OOPS.
Apocalypses, so annoying. At least this one is of reasonable size.
That sounds like cool worldbuilding :)
no subject
Date: 2017-12-03 06:16 pm (UTC)