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Saturday, December 20, 2014

A protagonist that people today could relate to - Polarity Breach: Divine Spark by Frankie Stevens

Fantasy provides escapism from our mundane lives, a chance to imagine a world where the ordinary and extraordinary blur like water that touches your eyeball, a place where things don’t remain the same for very long. However, we forget that people in fantasy worlds experience strife and challenges which are often more vigorous and dangerous than what we experience

Description:

Published: December 5th, 2014

After a tragic event, Prince Ablias went from being the last born prince to being the crown prince of the wizards. As he is on the cusp of manhood, he is still deciding which type of magic to pursue for his studies. As he does this, he meets and befriends a tribal girl who shares his interest in plants and makes his life a little sweeter. Meanwhile, the man who massacred most of Ablias’ family has triplet nephews who each have unique ways of finishing what their uncle has started. Once his friend’s tribe becomes threatened by one of the brothers’ plans, Ablias must decide how to use his magic in order to save both the tribe and the royal family.

GUEST POST
Hello, good people of the world J

My name is Frankie Stevens and I’m into writing. But I’m sure you already knew that. 

The idea for Polarity Breach goes back many years. As ridiculous as it sounds, it started with a Digimon fanfiction that I wrote when I was twelve. One of the fan characters I made was named Hikaru and he would walk around with a blanket cape and a traffic cone on his head. He would proudly proclaim himself as the wizard prince of the Outer Universe, a place that the older folk would assume he made up. But eventually, my imagination started getting more carried away than usual. I wondered, “what would this place look like if it turned out to be real?” 

I never got into the Harry Potter books, although I greatly admire J.K. Rowling’s talent and how it landed her to where she is today. I never really got into Lord of the Rings, either. So the magical environment in my book is largely of my own making. I wanted to create a new type of fantasy world that was not medieval-inspired, or at least not entirely. Although wizards, potions, fairies and other mystical hoo-ha are there, there is also their own brand of modern technology: cars that aren’t called cars, televisions that aren’t called televisions, specially trained ravens that are used as telephones (although, for the record, Harry Potter had something similar with the owls). You could say that it’s like the Shrek movies in that way except with good old-fashioned sci-fi planet-hopping. 

Along with a fantasy setting that is modern in nature would come a protagonist that people today could relate to. Ablias has a history of being bothered by all sorts of mental demons that have haunted his mind since he lost most of his family. Anybody with acute anxiety or depression could take many years to find that sense of normalcy that so-called “normal” people would experience, much like Ablias did at the beginning of the story. Like those who suffer from mental health disorders in real life, horrid circumstances could cause those demons to come back. As Ablias is trying to save the Royal Family, he experiences this inner struggle as well. 

Fantasy provides escapism from our mundane lives, a chance to imagine a world where the ordinary and extraordinary blur like water that touches your eyeball, a place where things don’t remain the same for very long. However, we forget that people in fantasy worlds experience strife and challenges which are often more vigorous and dangerous than what we experience. Then again, we’re not particularly interested in reading about Aragorn getting his car egged or Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz being late to jury duty. If you look at the overall human condition, we have epic struggles of our own that decide the fate of the human race, ones that inspire the fantastical struggles that keep our eyes glued to the page. The only difference is that we read about these in history books instead of fiction novels (unless you count historical fiction). 

And so, I leave you with my 332-page-long brain child. If you enjoy it, it could inspire you to write your own fiction. If you don’t… well, it could still inspire you to write something better. That is, if real life doesn’t do that first.

About the author:
Frankie Steven was born in 1989 in Boston, MA. She has always had some sort of imagination and as a socially awkward child, she enjoyed being alone with her thoughts. As she grew, her interest in writing grew as well and she was inspired by the magical worlds of television and movies, although plenty more inspirations were to come. Overtime, she paired her creative writing attempts with her drawing skills in order for her readers to get a clear idea of what goes on in her head. Frankie earned her BA in English/Writing at Framingham State University and she is currently earning her Masters in Library and Information Science/Archives at Simmons College.

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