Patreon Insights: What Inspired Ardent Tears?

The answer to this question is in some ways, fairly simple; Ardent Tears started as a way for me to explore my BPD and to channel it into something that didn't add to the stigma. It's true that was the start of it all, but looking at the question again, I feel this is only a small part of the true answer as well as one that is probably lacking context for a lot of people. With that in mind, I intend to go into a more detailed analysis of what inspired Ardent Tears and the context behind that inspiration. Be warned, beyond this point there may be some spoilers for the Book 1 Preview as well as some of Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere Books, though I will try to keep any such spoilers to a minimum.

So to start this deep dive, I will go back to my initial answer. To add some context, BPD stands for Borderline Personality Disorder (sometimes more accurately called Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder), and it is a disorder that is primarily characterised by intense and highly reactive or unstable emotions. It is also commonly confused with Bipolar Disorder because of the acronym and the propensity towards mood swings. While it is true there are similarities, they operate in different ways and have different secondary symptoms associated with them. It is much of these secondary symptoms and behavioural patterns that have resulted in a lot of the stigma towards BPD and the people that have it. If you wish to know more about the stigma and the reasons behind it, I ask that you do some research into BPD yourselves as I want to limit how much attention I draw to the stigma beyond acknowledging it.

Now you may be wondering why I went into as much detail as I did (even if I was only scratching the surface). The reason is simply by giving that specific context, you know how the magic system came to be focused on emotions and why it's at the core of the story. Of course, there is still more to this high school English literature essay into the depths of my mind so I won't dally around until the cows come home.

I've always loved fantasy and by extension, storytelling, ever since I was a wee lass. Of course, I'm still a wee lass, but I'm older now and that love brought me towards the magic that is worldbuilding. Seeing the worlds that fantasy and sci-fi authors created filled me with such wonder and I wanted to do the same for others as well as myself. It started with escapism and semi-lucid dreaming after my mum died, and then it transitioned into tabletop roleplaying and writing, but it was still enough. It was at this point that my desire to explore my BPD and my love of fantasy and worldbuilding came together.

In the weeks and months that followed, I had an absolute plethora of ideas that I tried to utilise in a way that I hoped was at least somewhat coherent. I failed. My prose was lacking and there was no logic behind any of what I had written, only fervent enthusiasm. So I put the notion of writing something about BPD and emotions to the side and almost forgot about it entirely. Instead I worked on other projects like making my own language and coming up with campaign ideas for RPGs or trying to improve my art skills.

During this time I also discovered Sanderson and I was introduced to the idea of Hard Magic Systems. Before then, all my favourite fantasy series utilised softer magic systems be it Lord of the Rings, the Belgariad, or the Wind on Fire trilogy. I still love those books and wouldn't change the magic in them for the world, but something about Sanderson's approach to magic clicked with me and the idea to take BPD and make a magic system inspired by it, as opposed to just having a main character with BPD, was born.

In time, this idea expanded and I started drawing upon various inspirations such as Tolkien and Sanderson as I started crafting a world. I even started adapting my previous conlanging projects for this world I was creating, and as I worked, a story started taking shape in my mind. Alas, it was all still kind of nebulous at this point. Fortunately, my interest in conlangs led me to Artifexian, an amazing youtuber that has a suite of videos on worldbuilding from a galactic scale to a planetary scale. For most storytellers, putting as much thought into your solar system is largely unnecessary, but for me, the numbers and mechanics of my solar system inspired the whole concept of Resonance and the Sacred Primes which was key to the creation of my world's belief systems as well as giving me a way to justify having other races in my world without falling on generic fantasy tropes.

Anyway, I was now cooking with gas and everything was coming together. Before long my initial idea for the magic system gave rise to the Ardents. Alas, the original incarnation of Ardents gave rise to a system that felt like it was missing something. Even with me taking inspiration from Mistborn by tying an ability to each emotion just as Sanderson attributed different abilities to the different metals, Ardents alone lacked the dynamic punch of Allomancy. As I looked into it more, I realised the problem was that I only had one half of the picture. Why have a system based on emotions that doesn't also capitalise on a lack of emotions?

As I'm sure you've realised, Stoics were my answer to this problem. By pairing Ardents and Stoics I was able to achieve that same dynamic feeling that I got from pushing and pulling from Allomancy or the abilities of the Knights Radiant. Likewise it spoke to me of the narrative dynamic of Allomancy and Hemalurgy or the two sides of the force but without tying it to good and evil.

Before I move on to the last part of this deep dive, I want to mention one last way Mistborn inspired the magic system in conjunction with my BPD. In Mistborn, Allomancers awaken their powers in a process called "snapping" where a traumatic event pushes them over the edge. Similarly, BPD typically develops in response to trauma or abuse from childhood or early adolescence. For me it was the death of my mother and how my grief manifested. With this in mind, I had the idea to do something similar. Like with BPD, emotionally significant events increase an individual's chances of Awakening, but it isn't required. My experiences with BPD are also partly responsible for Hæra's death being a factor in Rowan's Awakening.

And now that I've spent way too long talking about my magical inspirations, I want to touch on why I decided to make Rowan bisexual and polyamorous. The first reason is because I am both poly and bisexual and I wanted to write what I know. The second reason is because I feel there isn't enough good bi representation in fiction. The third and final reason is because I wanted to show that poly doesn't necessarily mean generic harem. While I have nothing against the harem genre, there are too many tropes associated with it that I don't want to touch and it is also not very representative of polyamory. In my honest opinion at least.

With that said, I want to end this deep dive talking about what inspired me to release Ardent Tears as a web serial. I was introduced to webserials back in uni by a friend as part of a small reading club thing we had going on. Through his unintentional recommendation, I started The Wandering Inn by pirateaba and fell in love. It isn't for everyone and the length can be intimidating, but it resonated with me. Through TWI, I was able to connect with other people in the web novel sphere and I finally had the motivation and encouragement to start putting my ideas to the page.

One of the people I met on the TWI server was MelasD and while I don't talk to him as much anymore, he helped me massively in the beginning as he invited me to TopWebFiction and gave me my first big shoutout. For that, I am eternally grateful. I also found my way to the server for Beneath the Dragoneye Moons by SelkieMyth. To this day Selkie continues to be an inspiration in the way he fosters the community he has created. He has played a big part in keeping me writing and is likely to remain one of my top inspirations in the web novel sphere alongside pirateaba for a good while longer.

Having now acknowledged what I feel is the final piece of the puzzle, this deep dive is nearing its conclusion. So let me ask the question again. What inspired Ardent Tears? Everything. I know that probably comes off as somewhat pretentious, but it's true. Ardent Tears has been inspired and influenced by so many facets of my life from everything I've discussed here, to my mum and my family, to many more things that are too personal to share in a semi-public forum.

I know reading all this may make some people a little bit concerned in regards to Rowan potentially being a self-insert. For those that are worried about this being the case, I understand and also promise you that she isn't. Yes, she does share certain traits with me as she is a vehicle for me to explore those parts of myself, but she is also very much her own person. She is poly, yes, but in a very different way to me. She has BPD, yes, but she expresses it in a very different way to me. She is bi, yes, and I admittedly don't have much to say in that regard. I could go on, but that's not going to convince anyone. Instead, I'll do my best to show it in the story.

Now before I waffle on any further and go on yet another tangent, I want to thank all of you for reading this overly wordy self-analysis of mine as well as all the people that have inspired me. For the authors I've mentioned, check them out if you haven't already. I also hope you'll join me tomorrow for the next Patreon Insight which will be the start of a series on magic. Hopefully, it will be a wee bit more concise than this one.