Hey there /lit/, last time I came here around 8 or so months ago I think, and you guys gave me some really solid advice about imagery and themes, and I hate coming here and bothering you all about my writing projects, but I've run into an obstacle that I just haven't been able to weigh on myself, and I'd just like some advice if you'd be generous enough to share it with me.
I am not exactly the most literature consuming individual, but I love writing stories. For a great length of time I've worked on a setting that most of my stories have in common in some form, and that setting is a "pure" sci-fi setting: as in there is no magic or magical elements. There are sci-fi counterparts to fantasy elements, and I've tried very hard to make them THEMATICALLY similar, but not "space-magic" if you know what I mean.
However, I am having some problems, and they are kind of complex to explain. I'll try my best to explain the problem first, and then the thought process that is behind it. I will make this as short as I can.
Basically, I have numerous stories that are all connected at certain points and they all interlock to a small degree. There are 3 settings within that universe: 2 of them are "pure" sci-fi, one of them is sci-fi fantasy.
Originally I wrote a fantasy story, but the main character I wanted to come from a futuristic sci-fi setting. The idea was "cyborg vs. demons." It sounded pretty fun, and I still love the idea. Later down the road. I decided to try my hand at a pure sci-fi story, and I ended up doing extensive work on the setting, and the setting impressed me so much, I decided to use that setting as the "homeworld" of the cyborg that would appear in my fantasy setting, having them just move from one world to another through some strange supernatural means.
But now I've added extensively to the sci-fi setting's stories, with many stories taking place in that universe. The fantasy story however is still quite relevant to it, because there are parts that intersect quite often.
For example: the ending of sci-fi story A sees the protagonist vanish into a gateway, but the antagonist is thwarted. That same protagonist who vanishes is talked about in the fantasy story by proxy, where a demon character bears her face and voice, but it is not her, and describes as having been raised by her mother, who was a human trapped in another plane of existence, where the demon character was "formed." As the only other being the demon character knew, it bears her face because that was the only face it knew.
In the fantasy setting, there is also a frequent recurring area: a church on a mountaintop high in the clouds bathed in orange twilight. It appears frequently in the fantasy story, but this same setting is projected as a hallucination into the hardware worn by and thus seen by many of the characters in sci-fi story A.
There are many times where these stories interlock and exchange things.
>>7732220
continued
There's so many examples of this I can't even list them all. Even the cyborg character who gets moved to the fantasy story appears as an antagonist in 4 of the other stories.
So I feel that having these intersecting points is very crucial to forming a larger story that isn't told directly, and thus is very good for all of the stories as part of a series. I think that this is a good thing.
The problem is that I also feel that mixing fantasy and sci-fi devalues the sci-fi immensely, because it is no longer "pure" sci-fi, and now has magical fantasy elements in it.
I've thought about converting all of the fantasy elements into a cyberpunk story, because there are some stories that happen in a simulation-like dreamworld, and that's been a serious consideration, but then I feel that that significantly devalues the fantasy portions, and makes some intersecting points difficult if not impossible.
I'm sure there are ideas and factors I have not considered. Would anyone be so kind as to give me some advice on this matter, or perhaps just add some ideas to the mix? I feel like I'm too attached to my vision as it has grown and cannot see other solutions. Perhaps the input of others would help free me from my own mental constrictions and something better may arise.
Thank you very much for your time, I very much appreciate it.
>>7732220
The demons are 5th dimensional aliens or something. Problem solved.
>>7732262
It's a lot more complicated than just one element. The fantasy story has 3 stages:
Stage one is where the cyborg protagonist dies and awakens in a dark fantasy realm where they are imparted a sword that consumes souls
Stage two they go from realm to realm along a giant cosmic tree to take the strongest souls from each realm to proceed to the second realm, the first branch of their own world, which is their only chance to stop the event that ended in their execution at the start of stage one
Stage three they end up committing the act that they were gathering strength to try to stop, and proceed instead to the first realm, which is within the trunk of the cosmic tree itself
It's pretty fantastical, the character appears at times in other stories, some in their pre-soul eating form, some others in their post-soul eating form, one of them they are talked about in a major religion as a "Heavenly Swordsman" that fell from the sky and eradicated a giant beast that had eaten everyone in the entire world
I've considered a few approaches, making it a cyberpunk matrix-y type of story, in which everything that happens in the dark fantasy realm is part of the EarthNet, a dreamworld created from abandoned sattelites around abandoned earth, but during the plot the protagonist must return to their own realm, so it wouldn't make sense to go from a virtual being to a real one like that
I've also considered revising it into a weird sci-fi in which instead of souls they have a device that collects minds of the most brilliant scientists in history, but then that creates a whole new slew of plot holes about why they'd need such a thing, how it would work, and what they'd use it for, and what it'd create, and I feel that it would be arrogant to have such a thing make anything that I made up off the top of my head, like saying, "yeah, this is the most clever thing ever" is pretty arrogant
The only other solution is to simply not explain it, which I don't know how I feel about that, it feels lazy
