Throwing Down--The View’s Gauntlet
by Keith “Saegan” Cronyn
Welcome to a brand new series at the View that gives you, our readers, a chance to challenge community members to showcase their skills. The Gauntlet is a weekly feature that follows Realmsies with unique skills as they describe their passions (however unique!), accept challenges from our readers, and create masterpieces to share.
How it Works:
Phase 1: The Throwdown--The challenger stakes a claim to the community, that they can do a thing, and the community responds by voting on how they want that challenge to play out.
Phase 2: Go to Work--The challenger completes their task, being sure to take lots of notes and photos to share with our readers along the way.
Phase 3: The Reveal--Our challenger shares their work, along with some tips and tricks for our readers who want to take on a similar challenge!
The Inspiration: This week I, Keith, am going to start us off and throw down. I’ve spent years writing for the community, behind the scenes at events, for the View, or just in my personal life. One of my favorite writing challenges came about when Jim Butcher challenged the community to give him two themes, and he’d write an amazing series about it. Well, Jim asked and the community answered! With “The Roman Legion” and “Pokémon” as our inspiration, the Codex Alera series. Another of my inspirations was Brandon Sanderson, which gave us Sanderson’s Laws, which encouraged writers to use magic systems to influence their writing. These two influences have led me here, to take up the first of many, View’s Gauntlet Challenge.
The Throwdown: I bet you, the community of the Realms, that I can come up with a hard magic system, based around any object that you can find in a kitchen.
The Parameters: What I mean by “hard” is that it has clearly defined rules and parameters. An example of a hard magic system is The One Ring, from Lord of the Rings. You put it on, it makes you invisible, Sauron knows where you are, and you might get addicted to it. Another example of a hard magic system could be Sympathy from Pat Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles. Or Full Metal Alchemist’s Law of Equivalent Exchange.
How You Can Help: Vote for your favorite kitchen object (or the one that you think will provide the most hilarious/epic/fantastical magic system), and next week, I’ll share a brand new magic system for you to feast your eyes on!
Lastly, if you are inspired to take up your own Gauntlet and have an idea for a challenge or skill you’d like to bring to the community for a View Gauntlet of your own, let us know!
Click here to submit your choice for which kitchen object Saegan should base his magic system on!
