I started writing a Shadowrun short story a while ago. It's my second full piece after Dark King. The other day, I came across it and tidied it up a little. I've posted it here:

http://knasser.me.uk/content/artnfic/perfect_run.pdf

I hope people like it. Please comment so I know what you thought. I originally intended it to be for the shadowrun.com site's fiction section, but after Dark King sat in limbo for a year, and because that section isn't currently maintained, I decided to just host it on my site.

The only thing I'll ask is that people not re-host it elsewhere, but just link to it on my site as I like to see how many downloads something has received and stimulate interest in the rest of my site also.

Peace,

Khadim.

Nice Read Knasser

That it certainly was.

Wow. Knasser, you've got talent and style.

Yet for two years I've been trying to get one of my stories on the Shadowrun.com fiction section.

Thanks for all comments, people. I'm glad you liked it. Apparently there have been 38 downloads so far.

K.

Good read Knasser. I enjoyed it. Anything else you can post?

Trevor

Thanks. Most of what I've written so far is online now and anything that isn't I'm not happy with yet or haven't finished. If you don't know about it, there's another Shadowrun short story on my site (link in sig) in the Art & Fiction section. It's called Dark King. It's a bit different to The Perfect Run, but there are similarities too. I think Dark King is the better story, but I'd be interested if anyone disagreed with that and why.

I have another piece part done, but I'm going to mostly focus on game materials for the next few projects unless there is an outcry about it. I'll keep adding things to the Vignette thread, though.

K.

That is a beautiful piece of fiction.

in my opinion the perfect run was very good, however I'm sure someone would disagree with me.

At the end of the story, I wanted to know what happens next. You know what that means.

I like the perspective you chose for the story. You made me think about some of my characters and how they would have been viewed and judged, maybe how they should have been. Sometimes a roleplaying game can get a little black and white by the principal players ignoring very specific and ugly facts. I love it when Shadowrun fiction takes those aspects head on and leaves the guns and action at the table where we can enjoy it personally.

I mostly liked it, Knasser, especially the language and the noir style. But Omen's actions at the end didn't jive with his description of himself as "a samurai. Real one - one with some honor, not just chrome."

He's a professional criminal. Why wouldn't he be both delusional and a hypocrite?

Agree with Eugene. One of those fantastic pieces that deals with runners, not runs or running, but doesn't mesh with his description. I thought that the end would turn into a would-be rape scene, he wouldn't do it, and claim something dark but honorable like just seeing if she would go for him..

That's deliberate. Nobody thinks of themselves as a bad guy save for a few desperate souls trying to find some way to be special. Omen lies to himself all the way through. He says Angelo is his friend and betrays him because "it's [Angelo's] own fault". He doesn't want Bluebell to be helped, he wants to be the one that helps her. It's an important difference because at the end, when she decides she doesn't want that help, he is furious and determined that "she would appreciate it". He is a hypocrite, seeing himself as better than he is.

The difficulty in writing something from one person's point of view, is showing things that they themselves can't see. And that includes their conceits. It's hard to do that without resorting to exaggeration. You have to dwell on their inner dialogue of justifying their actions to themselves. The more extreme their actions, the more you can elaborate this internal dialogue (and no, I don't mean monologue - that's the point of hypocrisy). But the longer the story, the more you can be subtle about it, because you have the space to apply many subtle nudges to the reader that something is skewed about the view point character's perspective. The shorter the story, the more heavy-handed you must be.

When hypocrisy is unmasked, there are four basic ways that you can go, created by two axes. These axes are Surprise and Acceptance.

Surprise and Acceptance: This is fine for the reader. The big unmasking of the wrongness of the viewpoint you've had all along is unexpected, but it works well and is believable to the reader. This is usually a shock ending. Think Sixth Sense.

No Surprise and Acceptance: This is also fine for the reader. It is the growing awareness that the view point provided is incorrect. This is what I was going for in The Perfect Run. The reader learns from the hints and wrong actions that Omen is not the honourable character he claims to be. By the time the end is reached, or even before, the reader is separating themselves from the viewpoint character but without separating themselves from the story. They accept that the viewpoint is incorrect.

Surprise and Lack of Acceptance: This is a bad result for the reader. The big unmasking of the incorrect viewpoint falls flat. It doesn't fit with what the reader has seen so far (in their opinion) and is therefore not accepted. They are jarred out of the story. This can result from a story where the author wasn't going for Surprise at all, but the clues were too subtle meaning that the reader never got what was going on and then at some point is suddenly hit with the incorrectness of the viewpoint and rejects it, jarring themselves away from immersion in the story.

No Surprise and Lack of Acceptance: This is the same as the previous category except even worse - the reader refuses to accept the hypocrisy all along, perhaps finding it implausible and therefore losing immersion in the story early on, and consequently not enjoying it for a prolonged period.

Perhaps for some people, The Perfect Run fell into the third category. Omen said to them at the start that he was a "real samurai", that he had "honour", and they believed him and didn't question it. I would have needed to add larger pointers in the story through more exaggerated internal dialogue or through more extreme actions (e.g. he could strike someone unarmed on his way to the Ancient's meet and give a "justification" for it, which would raise alarm bells with the reader). Perhaps I personally am more used to distrusting people's statements about themselves, particularly claims of honour, so this didn't carry so much weight with me and was more easily discarded. When I re-read the story, that line did strike me and I wondered whether I should take it out or leave it in. I decided to leave it, because I wanted to keep the hypocrisy level in the story. It explained things like his hesitation at the end about how to treat Bluebell. He needed time to rationalise his behaviour somehow.



I can't see anything honourable in that. It didn't go to a rape scene, but it did go to somewhere not nice. Were you disappointed in Omen's behaviour at the end? If so, did that damage your immersion in the story? Or did it survive not going where you expected?

All these comments are very useful to me and I appreciate everyone who posted. My stats say 94 downloads so far, so those that posted comments are the top 1% of people, as far as I'm concerned.



And thanks for this comment. Made me smile.

K.

Actually my first thought was "What happens next? Was the idiot suppose to die at the end of the story?"

Then the second thought was "If the idiot died at the end of the story, then who was the one who wrote it from the first person's perspective?"

Just some thoughts you might find useful.

The disconnect for me was that, since it's essentially the first thing that Omen tells you about himself, I'd assumed it'd be more important to him and his self-image rather than simply the lie he tells himself. But I suppose maybe he -does- think he's being honorable by trying to take away Bluebell's pain, and it's her distrust of that intent that frustrates him and makes him act the way he does.

If you want to know what someone is like, the process is as follows:
The first things they tell you are how they want to be seen.
The next things they tell you are how they see themselves.
What they actually do is how they are.

The bigger the lie, the sooner and more emphatically its told, usually.

I don't think he really thinks he's helping Blue deep down. He's just frustrated because he's latched on to the idea of her being grateful and dependent on him. And when she takes that away from him he tries to force the issue. He's not a good guy. Not at all. He doesn't want to be strong for her. He wants her to be weak so that she needs him. I see that too often in real life and I don't like it one bit.

A quick comment: story narrators, the better ones, are often unreliable! I'm not talking about the author, I'm talking about the story's narrator. In first-person, you know the name of the narrator-- it is the character whose viewpoint the story is from. In third-person, the narrator is an invisible character, what I think of as a videocamera. It may be in a character's head, over their shoulder, or overhead; it could even move between characters.

The narrator does not always know all and see all. Or if it does, it might not tell the reader everything. The narrator might even 'lie' to the reader, giving misinformation because the narrator believes it to be true at the time. For example, in the Dresden Files novels by Jim Butcher, Harry Dresden doesn't know all the facts. He sees what happens, but doesn't always know what's going on. Harry also conceals his plans from the reader, until he goes into action. Two other books, Draw One in the Dark and Gentleman Takes A Chance, both by Sarah Hoyt, shifted viewpoints between three characters who were often at odds, even extremely angry at each other, because each interpreted an event differently.

This is one thing that made The Perfect Run an interesting story: the narrator saw himself as one thing, believed it, but his actions showed someone completely different. Furthermore, his actions were consistent with each other as well. Perhaps at one point, the street sam really did behave honorably, but let the shadows too deeply within himself. Maybe he was just fooling himself all along. Either way, the events happened much like they could have in many SR groups over the years.

Thumbs up Knasser. CGL, should really consider adding this story to their main website under the fiction section.

Was there a particular reason why you selected Omen to be an ork over a human character?

Believe me, I've tried.



Good question. It's a while since I wrote this so I don't recall any specific reason. Obviously I wanted to keep his sister and he the same metatype (it's not compulsory, but it would just be adding strange sub-plot to do otherwise). Possibly I had her already pictured as an ork. Possibly, and thinking back this is the probable reason, I just liked the dynamic of the ork and elf. I think Omen had some issues and ork chasing elf just seemed to fit. I don't know why. You get a touch of it when he visits the Ancients, also. Do you think the story would have felt different were he a human, or she a human. Or both elves? Answers of 'yes' may be revealing, I think...

K.

Personally, it would have felt differently if Omen had been a human rather then an ork.

In light of a stereo type, orks in Shadowrun have always been portrayed as a oppressed minority. Population wise, they make a small percentage and usually fall in the lower half of the income bracket. I imagine orks getting the short end of the stick in the Shadowrun society because of their physical characteristics, shorter life spans, and more often then now lack of education. Because of their poverty I can imagine orks and trolls have a humility to them. That is why most ork characters in classic Shadowrun literature are usually portrayed as the tough grizzled veterans who act like a father figure to the main character. Or good chummers with positive attitudes and good natured personalities. Trolls make up and even smaller percentage of the population, but they are considered exotic and rare, thus have a higher social standard then orks. Orks have represent the proletariats of the 6th world who have been shifted on by the corporations, the elves, Big Brother, and the Man.

This of course is the anti-thesis of the way orks have been portrayed in classic fantasy/science fiction stories. The classic D&D or Warhammer Ork are based off war and nothing else. The blood thirsty chaotic evil creatures who seek to pillage beings typically aligned with good. See Tolkein.

That is why Omen would have been a better human in my opinion. You bring up very valid points on why Omen did what he did in previous posts. Humans are un-predictable and vary in thought, emotions, actions, pasts, etc. They are wild cards who can one day be the knight in shining armor, and the next day be the knights whom slaughter innocent women and children for the sake of justice.

Omen's sister could have been gone through the goblinization process, ala Janice Verner, and it would not have made a huge difference in the story.

-Still. Kick arse story Knasser. Thanks for sharing it with us.