This is an old version of the about page, backed up March 22, 2014. Some of it may be outdated, but it's here in case you were curious what it looked like.
Stablehand, in brief, is a story about destiny, identity, and choice, as well as puns, randomosity, and generally trying to break out of the rut I've gotten myself into as an artist by only trying to do "serious" things.
One really distinctive thing about it is that instead of purely trying to assemble all the canon from some kind of preconceived notion of what the story should be, I'm also getting a good amount of help from an unlikely trio I like to mentally call "the Cleverbad"—Cleverbot, Bad Translator, and WikiAnswers. Basically, what I'll do is ask Cleverbot a question and copy down several different responses to it, or take an unusual question or two from the WikiAnswers latest questions page, and then put that usually already quite random snippet through Bad Translator to make it even more random and crazy. And as a result, I get lines like these. Then I get to play a fun game of using my wits, references, and existing "canon" to make a meaning out of them.
Not all of the story elements are actually coming from the Cleverbad—hexarts, for one, didn't. However, my hope is that its unusual combinations of concepts and grammar patterns will be able to help me break free of some of the archetypes, references, and devices that typically congeal together in a person's mind when trying to write a story, if only just a little, so I can come closer to actually writing something "from scratch" than I could otherwise. Who knows if it actually will.
The world of Stablehand
Stablehand is set in a nearly-modern world, comparable to maybe about the 1990s in terms of technology. In some ways, it has a very contemporary feel to it, but at the same time, you can still feel a thin layer of past dust clinging to it, something like "zeerust". It's somewhat like there was a typical quasi-mediaeval fantasy world going on and then one day, history happened. People still fondly remember and are quite proud of their old traditions, legends, and coats of arms, even though most traces of the so-called "Epic Age" in daily life have long vanished.
Except the dragons, that is.
Hexarts
Hexarts are a peculiar sort of six-limbed dragon related to the leijonœrn (griffin) and cœlhip (winged horse) families that undergo a special type of metamorphosis. Upon reaching maturity, their adult forms vary widely seemingly depending on their experiences. Among other things, they have been found resembling their hexapod relatives, birds, and even humans.
It is not known exactly how this metamorphosis occurs, though local folklore has definitely had a ball with portraying hexarts as magical shapeshifters that love to trick people and do all sorts of horrible things. As a result, many people are deathly afraid of them or at least regard them as vermin without worth. (Biologists, the younger generation, and those who are highly sceptical of superstition are slightly more enthusiastic.)
Attributes
Attributes, or "Destiny Attributes" in longhand, are a major part of the story. They're somewhat like zodiac signs in reverse—instead of arbitrarily being assigned based on remote celestial movements and being able to very specifically describe your destiny, they are simply labels that describe a person's observed tendencies and give a strong hint at the general theme of your destiny but no specific indications. (Oh, you're patient, loyal, and hard-working? Bam, you're a Taurus. Hope you can deal with the fact everybody's going to be throwing unwanted tasks at you.)
Destiny Attributes in Stablehand have much more direct names and obvious meanings, though, such as Synthesis (creation, combination, interconnection) and Ruin (destruction, debasement, doom). There are eighteen in all, including nine "Directed" attributes (attributes which correspond to people who feel in control of their situation) and nine "Undirected" attributes (attributes which correspond to people who either do not feel in control of their situation or did feel that way but have come to cope with it although things haven't improved a lot).
Rôle objects
Rôle objects are peculiar things that appear to be everyday objects, but in the hands of the right person, miraculously transform into a different object that helps that person assume a certain role. For example, Lance is able to make his broom transform into a sort of combination partisan-lance because he dreams of being a kind of mounted knight. This power of transformation seems to be more connected to the person than the object itself, as some people are able to make all objects of a certain type transform (e.g., any broom into a lance), multiple different objects transform, or a particular object transform into multiple things. Not everyone has a rôle object, but they are not regarded as unusual in most places.
