PixlBit

 So, this Semester, I'm taking a creative writing course at college. It's mainly as an outlet and stress relief to help me get through my other courses, but now that I've started writing I can't fucking stop, and it's great! I've got 10 pages and nearly 6000 words written in 3 days. So, I thought I'd share it with you guys.

 Naturally, since this is an assignment, I can't post it online before it's due. If you guys want to read it though, please send me your email address in either the comments or pm me.

 I know I've already shared this with a few of you already and I'm already getting feedback, but if you have an old copy with less than 10 pages let me know and I'll remedy that. Also, I'm going to explain some things about the world and my process so if you've already read my story, hopefully you don't tune out too much. Anyway, onto the story!

Setting

 In terms of setting, think The Witcher meets the Wild West. My two leads are monster/bounty hunters, and most people in the world are varying shades of grey in terms of morality. Also, one of them is technically a Witch.

 One of the things I really wanted to do with this story is draw from Australian culture. The sense of humour is very much crass, blue collar, and aussie with quite a bit of gallows to it. The biomes are very Australian. There's Desert, Salt Plains, Swamps, and the whole place is incredibly hostile. It's frontier territory, everyone's out in the wastes looking for lost technology and magical artifacts to sell and make enough money to live in one of the floating cities. There, food and air is clean, the life expectancy is 15 years higher, and they have some of the most skilled medical practitioners on the continent.

 Essentially, years ago in another story Idea I had, people were scared the constant warring would leave the land desolate and they sent some of their smartest people out to find a new land to settle in. Like with Australia, there was also a large number of prisoners brought over as slave labour, and now a large portion of the population are decended from criminals.

 I've also incorporated creatures from Australian culture into this story, like a giant aquatic tapeworm called a Muldjewangk, which also has the benefit of having a hilarious name. Other creatures that exist in this world are Fur Golems, Dung Beetles the size of cars that shady individuals use to smuggle things in their dung balls, and other weird and wonderful creatures.

Characters

 Ephire: Ephire is the narrator of the story. He has a laid back style of narration due to him being much older now than he is in the stories he's telling. In the story however, he's the cool collected cowboy trope with one hell of a berserk button. This character is kept fairly standard as he is more or less the straight man in this story.

Ellanor: Ellanor is probably the true main character. She's crass, she's crude, she eats her toenails, and she'll skin you alive just for looking at her. She sees time more slowly than other people, which helps her get the drop on people, but also leaves her incredibly bored and irritant. She has some other powers that I don't want to spoil.

 Neither of these two characters are good people. This is a story of bad people doing bad things and loving it.

Influences

 In terms of influences, I've noticed quite a few. Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher novels are obviously a huge influence on quite a few things. Firstly, there's format. The plan is, if I keep writing after this story, this will be a series of short stories followed by a novel fleshing out how El and Ephire met. It's also an influence on the monster hunting profession, the darkness of the world, as well as the use of the magical girl trope.

Rick and Morty is another huge influence, particularly on tone. It's a somewhat whimsical tale with lots of jokes that go to some very fucked up places very quickly. Plus, some of Ephire's insecurities manifest themselves in Rick-like ways.

 Firefly is a huge influence on setting and dialogue. Joss Whedon is a master of punchy dialogue, and he's probably never been better at it than he was in that show.

Joe Abercrombie's Red Country is crucial reading for anyone thinking about writing in the fantasy western genre in my opinion. Abercrombie is the master of grimdark worlds and gallows humour, so his works are very close to my heart.

 A Song of Ice and Fire, or Game of Thrones for all you fucking plebs is another huge inspiration. This world is very different to ours. Things like child prostitution and murder are normal there. Like with that show/series of books, don't go in there expecting things to cater to our worldview. This is a fucked up world with fucked up characters.

------------------------

Well that's that. Again, let me know if you want to give it a read, I appreciate all the eyes I can get on it!