The Protagonist Speaks

Dear readers, tonight with us are Cesario, Lefeng (known to the others as the Trial-Parent), Marcus, and The Great Goddess out of Jess Mahler’s queer web-serial A Gryphon’s Tale. They are here for a party, crossing the various stories they appear in.

Tell us a little about where you grew up. What was it like there?

Cesario: The city of Messaline. I grew up with my father and brother. I think it was in Italy?

Parent of the Trial-Family: City-folks. How do you manage with never knowing where you are?

Cesario: Says the nomad.

Marcus: Gotta go with Trial-Parent on this. I know Shakespeare was light on detail, but if you don’t even know what country you grew up in, that’s not the best.

Cesario: And you know so much about your background?

Marcus: I sprung up full-grown, like Athena out of Zeus’ head.

Trial-Parent: (snorts) 

Marcus: But I was born in the US. A small-town kid with a love of comic books and a willingness to use my fists.

The Great Goddess: Some of us never were ‘kids.’

So you are all from different stories?

Trial-Parent: Yes. We’re part of a serial thing called A Gryphon’s Tale. It’s four to six serialized stories a year. Some stories are shorter and are told over a few months. Others are longer and broken into seasons.

Cesario: Wasn’t your story the first? And still going?

Trial-Parent: We were going to be a novel, but the author needed to try something different. It’s worked out pretty well.

Marcus: Not for all of us.

All: Epsilon.

The Great Goddess: It is a risk the author takes – posting stories as they are written. Some will never be finished.

Cesario: Epsilon was finished. Just… abruptly and not as intended. 

Epsilon? Trial-Parent? I’m confused

Trial-Parent: The culture of my story is such that names are private. One is known by nicknames by friends and distant family, and others use family names. My spice-to-be call me guarding-one and once-walker. I had been Near-Adult of LongStride, but LongStride is no more, destroyed in the great wave. My new family is not accepted by the city, so we are ‘Trial-Parent’ until we gain a true name.

The Great Goddess: A wise people, who know the power of names.

Marcus: Eh, I’m good with the power I get from a gun and a good team at my back.

Cesario: Epsilon is the shortened title for another story, Mighty Hero Force Epsilon. It didn’t work as the author expected, and they ended it early. A happy ending, but abrupt. I am grateful my own story was written in full before the author began working on it.

And who is the gryphon?

Trial-Parent: The author.

Cesario: It’s a bit of a conceit they enjoy. The image of a traditional storyteller with listeners gathered around enjoying the tales. Except the storyteller is a gryphon. They have long subscribed to the idea that monsters in stories represent those pushed to the edges of society. Different, rejected, disenfranchised. Frightening for those who hold power.

Marcus: Yup, and they lean into it. If society labels them a monster, they will be a monster – and tell stories reminding folks that the real monsters aren’t the ones driven into the shadows.