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mylordshesacactus · 2 months

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LOVE, WATER, FIRE

What is your best writing advice?

"Show don't tell" doesn't mean what you think it does. Learn it better, and free yourself from a half-understood mnemonic.

When you show, you slow. Learn THAT one backward and forward as well; it won't fix pacing issues overnight, but it'll help you understand what causes them.

Writing fanfiction? Go back to the source material FREQUENTLY, or you'll lose all sense of the characters and end up writing someone unrecognizable.

If you struggle to block out action sequences, genuine advice? Think in terms of combat rounds in D&D. Not literally, of course, nobody should be taking rigorous turns, but: Play out the action in your head. If six seconds have gone by, everyone in this sequence should have done something. That thing could be charging into melee range--noting that this extra combatant is running toward the fight but hasn't gotten there yet. It could be reloading a weapon. It could be clutching their side in shock and wheezing. They don't need to be Selecting A Combat Action, but fight scenes become incoherent when you lose track of who's doing what. When you forget about Goon #3 and then have him show up again doing something that doesn't remotely track with where you last left him. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO INCLUDE THEM IN THE NARRATION if they're not important! If two seconds ago your protagonist kicked a guy off the dock, we can safely assume they'll spend at least the next several "combat rounds" climbing back out. But at any given moment, YOU should know where everyone is, what they're doing, and why.

But most importantly:

Anyone purporting to give The End-All Be-All Writing Advice is either delusional or a scam. Yes, including or perhaps especially famous bestselling authors. What works for them won't necessarily work for you, and there are plenty of people who don't even like their work. You're never going to be whoever's advice you try to mimic. Write your stuff, not theirs.

Do you prefer urban fantasy or high fantasy?

Yes!

Genuinely though. They're both good and they both serve their respective narratives in some way. In general I'm more drawn to high fantasy, personally, but I'm never not going to be interested in a well-done urban fantasy.

Pedantic nitpick though, these things are not the opposites they are being portrayed as. I think what the question was GOING for was actually "low vs high fantasy" which is a completely separate concept. Words mean things! But also, I'm not an ass, and the intent was pretty clear.

(High Fantasy: This story is set in a completely separate world from ours, with no crossover into our known and lived reality. ANY completely separate world, regardless of technology level! STAR WARS IS HIGH FANTASY. This is not an opinion, this is a genre fact.

Low Fantasy: The story is set partially in our world or includes crossover or other intrinsic connections to a realistic world that follows the same rules and expectations of our world. Isekai and portal fantasies like Narnia fall into this category, as do hidden-world/veiled-magic fantasies like the Bad Wizard Lady Books, Percy Jackson, and Artemis Fowl; and also a lot of true-anthropomorphic fiction like Watership Down, Warriors, etc. Note that "low fantasy" does NOT mean "gritty" fantasy or fantasy that focuses on the lower classes instead of nobles, nor does it mean a low-magic pseudo-medieval setting

Urban Fantasy: A story with fantasy tropes and themes that takes place in an urban setting. Can be low or high fantasy!)

What is the worst thing you've ever created?

Okay so this one time in high school me and my best friend Sam were trying to make lemon bars at his house and to this day we do NOT know what the hell ingredient we neglected to add to the lemon bars

but given the state of the results, there is a non-zero chance that the ingredient we forgot was flour.

#askmeme #not today satan I do not shittalk my work #i learn from it

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phierie · 1 year

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in every fandom there comes a time when you have to ask yourself, ok but what classes would these characters be if they were in D&D

overlong headcanons/design notes under the cut:

I based this AU off my rudimentary knowledge of D&D and it’s classes, but I’m taking creative liberties and it can be thought of as just a general fantasy rpg-style thing. Ended up being a mix match of comics and MCU but it’s an AU so hey it’s fine right lol

KAMALA - Sorcerer/Monk

Arguably one of the hardest to actually decide a class for?? I’m imagining her powers here as more akin to those she has in the MCU show; they’re something innate to her, passed down through her bloodline (and possibly unlocked by some event or heirloom as in the case of the TV show). I think the way she fights would be something closer to a monk, though? After awakening her powers, she journeys around helping people in the same way as she becomes Ms Marvel, both on her own and with the party.

Kamala’s design is based pretty much entirely off the Mystic Marvel design (originally I believe from Champions, also in the Avengers game)! I saw this design and my brain instantly went brrrr because it basically combines my two fave marvel heroes (Dr Strange and Kamala)!! I changed a few parts of the design, and simplified the shirt a bit. I think it suits Kamala well for a fantasy AU - even in the main comics she wears an outfit that’s comfy and easy to move in!

NAKIA- Sorcerer/Cleric

Since Nakia is the only sensible one here, it made sense for her to be the (begrudging, probably) healer. I think it suits her personality well too though! I’m imagining here that her powers are innate (like a sorcerer), but she just uses healing magic the most (like a cleric). More similar perhaps to something like the cleric class in Fire Emblem Awakening, where clerics are often religious but their powers aren’t something directly conferred by the gods.

Nakia’s design is based entirely off of her Storm Sage look in Ms Marvel (2015) #38 (aka the one where the gang gets isekai’d) Once again simplified it a little and softened some of the shapes (since it’s more of a villain look in the comic, but she’s obvs a good guy here)

BRUNO - Wizard/Artificer

Bruno’s outfit is also partly inspired by #38 (esp for colour scheme), but I mainly just did my own thing for what I thought he should look like in a fantasy AU ahahah. Gave him a long coat because if there’s one thing I love more than wizards, it’s wizards with long coats lmao

To me the D&D wizard class is much more the ‘study and research’ side of magic so it think it works well for the scientifically inclined Bruno. The thirst for knowledge and hubris (all the benchmarks of a good wizard character, really) are also very fitting for him, I think..!!

He’s a natural prodigy of magic and manages to get accepted to a prestigious and exclusive magic school but is kicked out after The Accident. Leaves to find somewhere else that’s willing to teach him since he can’t accept the idea of not learning magic. Meets Kwezi and the rest plays out much as it does in the comics

His prosthetics are powered with some kind of Magical Rock (call it a magic substitute for vibranium), and made by Kwezi. I’m undecided whether they’re grafted onto his arm/leg or it’s a whole Full Metal Alchemist situation but maybe a bit of both? The arm also acts as a conduit of sorts for casting his own magic (hence where the artificer class comes in). As he makes all sorts of stuff for Kamala in the comics/show I think him having the ability to craft magical items also fits well. Probably learns that magic from Kwezi. Which brings us to...

KWEZI - Artificer

Another magical prodigy, but I see Kwezi as more of a support type to Bruno’s spellcaster. The embodiment of chaotic good. I think he’d be mainly a crafter of magical items (sort of like Olruggio in Witch Hat Atelier?)

His background in this AU is the same as in the comics, and him and Bruno go adventuring a bit themselves before joining up with Kamala and co eventually. I think he’d be pretty sheltered when it comes to travelling outside fantasy-Wakanda, especially compared to Bruno, so hijinks ensue. (Side note, but I absolutely adore that contrast when it comes to Kwezi & Bruno’s dynamic, I’m so in love with them both)

The green cloak-wrap is inspired by his formal outfit in Ms Marvel (2015) #30, and the harem pants are from #29. I think comfy, practical clothes suit Kwezi, and I like that the colour scheme for him is a nice contrast with Bruno!

KAREEM - Rogue

Probably the easiest class to decide on because really what else could it be?? I’m undecided on whether Kareem should have his origin from the MCU show or the comics for this AU - personally I prefer comics but I do think a secret society sort of thing would work well for a fantasy AU so I’m leaning a bit more towards that perhaps.

His design is a mix of MCU, comics and my own take on it to make it a little more fantasy/rogue-like.

KAMRAN - Sorcerer

Probably the only one here (except maybe Kareem) who’s primarily based off his MCU appearance rather than the comics. I see him as being initially a bit more of a bad guy than in the show though, a sort of misguided villain who eventually ends up joining the party (see: Zuko in ATLA)

He’s grown up with the Clandestines (probably some kind of cult here) and he generally believes in their mission, so it takes a little more for him to turn on them. As a sorcerer his powers manifest suddenly and he doesn’t understand how to control them at first. The Clandestines probably want him to use his powers to their ends, and that, along with run-ins with Kamala gets him questioning whether he should continue to follow them or turn away from the only family he’s ever known...

Kamran’s design was probably the hardest to figure out, since he only really has appearances in regular clothes, and no canon alternate designs to work off of (like Nakia/Bruno/Zoe). In the end I was thinking of the Clandestines and what they might wear in such a setting? The blue colour scheme is based off the jacket he wears in ep 6 (probably his most iconic MCU look) and also his coat/scarf look in Ms Marvel (2014) #13. I don’t think I captured Kamran’s likeness very well here but his outfit actually turned out to be one of my faves, so swings and roundabouts hahah

ZOE - Fighter

I’m imagining Zoe in this AU is the daughter of some lowly noble family (a big shot in the town that her and the gang are from, not so much elsewhere). After a run in with some bandits where she’s saved by Kamala, she resolves that she needs to get stronger. Not the strongest nor the most skillful fighter, but she’s trying her best!!

Zoe’s design is inspired by her fantasy look in #38 (the pink tunic in particular), but I changed and added some details to it. Her cloak I swapped out for the pink scarf, as inspired by her stint as Ms Marvel!

BECKY - Paladin-->Warlock & JOSH - ???

The actual bad guys of this AU ahahah. I’m imagining here that the events of Civil War II play out pretty much the same in this AU as in the comics. Becky starts out as a paladin with generally good intentions, but when she crosses a line she gets disowned (is that the right word?? probably not) by her god. Unable to deal with it, she turns instead to darker powers, making a pact and becoming a warlock.

I haven’t really thought about what class Josh would be... maybe a fighter as well (to match Zoe?), but I’m imagining him as a sort of mysterious Black Knight type figure, hence the you haven’t unlocked this character yet question marks lmao

Their designs are based entirely off their lockdown/discord appearances, just adapted into fantasy-armour style. I think the designs carried over really well, actually (definitely helped by the excellent colour schemes!)

And there you have it LOL I have no idea if I’m gonna do anything more with this AU but just wanted to share the brainrot, so if you got this far THANKS..... any thoughts/suggestions for other characters I should add are always welcome!!

#ms marvel #Marvel Comics #marvel #ms. marvel #marvel fanart #kamala khan #nakia bahadir #Bruno Carrelli #kareem ms marvel #kareem red dagger #red dagger #kamran ms marvel #zoe zimmer #kwezi dzana #becky ms marvel #josh ms marvel #my art #fanart #doodle

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lord-westley · 5 months

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Howdy Bestie @tolkien-fantasy! I hope you enjoy this matchup, I haven't written for BG3 before and it's been SO long since i've written in general so hopefully it's somewhat good! (i even included canon lines he says to Tav)

I match you up with Gale of Waterdeep!

I'm going to go off script of the whole Tav storyline

You guy's met one day in Baldur's Gate many years ago at Sorcerous Sundries, a huge and magical Library

He noticed you were struggling to reach a book on the top shelf, so he helped you out

Gale stood behind you, and grabbed the book before looking down and offering it to you with a grin

"Ah, A Primer on Mythical Beasts. An excellent choice!"

And with that single comment, the two of you clicked, forming an unbreakable bond over your mutual love of books and knowledge.

At the time, Gale lived in Waterdeep, further up north- a City much, much larger than your home in Baldur's Gate

The day you met, you spoke so proudly of his home. How beautiful and magnificent it is- and the libraries. Oh the Libraries in his city are large full of rare books and tomes.

Gale invited you to come to Waterdeep some day, so that he may show you said libraries

but alas, with the journey being long, it would not bode well with your ailments. So you declined

The day Gale had to leave Baldur's Gate was a sad one, although neither of you lost hope to keep in contact

You two sent letters each and every day, talking about anything and everything.

Gale would send you tomes regarding your current obsessions, and would always look forward to your next letter in response

One day though, the letters stopped. You kept sending letters to him in hope of a reply

Maybe he's just busy? Yeah that's right, he is Mystra's Chosen, so he's probably busy with his duties to her

But a letter never came

Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months. But you didn't lose hope and continued to send letters

Then one day he just... appeared

Gale stood right in front of you at your little house on the edge of Baldur's Gate

He stood right in front of you, disheveled, bruised, and exhausted. And yet- there was a huge happy grin on his face despite the anxiety shaking in his hands

Gale explained everything to you, not leaving out a single detail, being as honest as he can

Okay so now timeskip and finally get to the romance part lmao

If there is one thing I know for sure, is he ABSOLUTELY adores all the mortal aspects of you

from the way your hair puffs up like a Owlbears feathers

to the mud staining your clothes during outdoor adventures

Gale thinks you're drop dead gorgeous

you're so different from most people in Faerun, and he's met a lot of people and he absolutely adores it

He supports you in everything you do, constantly purchasing new tomes for your interests

new journals, pens, and materials for your artistic hobbies

good luck charms and rare crystals

And dont worry about having too much stuff, like books and material. His tower has shelves upon shelves of books and storage.

He might even use some little wizard magic to expand on his tower just for you

"Whatever you need, you have only to ask"

Gale helps you as much as he can with your pain and ailments

He's constantly researching new spells and medicines with the help of Shadowheart

And if you're up for it, he'll create potions for you to try and experiment to see if it helps

and if it does! he happily teaches you how to make it so if there is any point where he is gone and you've run out, you'd be able to make it!

On any particular day where the pain is especially bad, he's at your beck and call. To the point of having Tara stay by your side when he is unable to

"Are you alright? If you have need of me, just say the word."

I feel the need to touch on your height for a moment

In comparison to him, you're so small but not once does he mention it. He understands that it can be an insecurity

But secretly? he absolutely adores your height

The way he can comfortably hold you in his lap as he reads makes him so so happy and warm

One particular moment that really stands out, is how he dropped something in a hole, unable to reach it

But you were there! and happily grabbed it for him... atleast not without a silly comment from him before you did

"That's not a Gale-sized hole."

Or how despite your size, you're SO strong, and it never fails to make his heart flutter seeing you lift heavy items. (his str is 8.. mans is WEAK)

He constantly asks if you could carry something for him just to see you flex your muscles

One specific time, there was "danger" that appeared out of nowhere

It startled him and you came to his rescue. Taking care of it with absolute ease

"I um, once read a book that explained in some detail the effect a brush with danger has on one's desire for... other forms of stimulation.."

I wouldn't particularly say Gale is a morning person, so good luck waking up in the mornings trying to escape his grasp

He'd try holding onto you for as long as he can before you get annoyed that you need to get up

Only then, will he finally let go

Sometimes he gets up with you, but some mornings, he's too exhausted from his night owl activities that he falls right to sleep (with some struggle since you're no longer there)

Please bring him coffee or even tea to bed, waking him up with it. He would melt and get so flustered

He'd grab onto you, holding you tight and press a kiss to your cheeks

"Ah, to hold the world in the palm of one's hand"

Gale LOVES to hold long philosophical conversations with you. He uses such fancy big words and loves to hear your point of view on things that most would ignore

The two of you could stay up late for hours, simply debating on topics

Some nights it get's so intense he'd break out a paper and quill to write down each others thoughts, comparing them and create charts

Now for you chaotic gremlin habits, at first he was a big worrywart. Unsure if it would be safe to do something

but overtime, he learned to accept it, and simply join you on the fun

After everything he's been through, He fully heartedly believes to just throw oneself into something, to not worry too much about rejection or what may happen. As long as you try.

"Sounds like a recipe for disaster. But you know what? I'm learning to enjoy the taste of chaos. Count me in."

All in all, he is a very loving partner, who loves to dote on you

who loves to indulge in everything you ever do and say

he'll be with you until the end of time, refusing to leave your side

"You taste of untold delights. How about we continue our tasting?"

#bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #Gale #Matchup for bestie

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theinstagrahame · 6 months

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More amazing games this last couple of months! Mostly from crowd funds, but with a couple of birthday gifts and the first installment of Zine Club in the mix!!

Here's a breakdown with some "why I wanted to check 'em out" hype!

DCC - Sailors on a Starless Sea: I recently got a copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics, and asked folks in the Plus One Exp Discord for recommendations, because I'd seen a few of 'em talk about DCC. This had at least two people recommend it! So, I'll be skimming it.

Emerald Templars: I was initially intrigued because of the South American creators and focus of the game, and can't wait to explore it further. The art and the overall quality of the book look great, and I definitely love seeing Fantasy stuff that's not Euro-centric.

Lichoma: Billed as a "meatpunk" game, I really needed to know what that meant. It's a dark, violent and interesting game with some neat mechanics (at least per the stream I watched).

Convictor Drive: This hit crowdfunders around the same time as the Dark Souls 5e came out, and I think while the Cowboy Bebop RPG was crowdfunding. So I was on a kick of really wanting to see more Japanese games get translated and brought stateside, which this was. It's an exosuit procedural super-detective kind of game, which intrigued me, even beyond the JP angle.

Overisles, Inspirisles, and the Shaping Deck: This one I'd been aware of for a while, having gotten Overisles in a Bundle years ago. It's an RPG that uses American or British Sign Language as part of the mechanics. It's supposed to help you learn ASL or BSL, and I've always been curious about those languages. The books are gorgeous, and they came with a pin and 2 really beautiful booksmarks

The Wizards & the Wastes: Big fan of Snow's work in general, but what got me (aside from the Howl's Moving Castle touchstone) was the ability to use art you already own (books, poems, music) as a focus for your character's magical abilities. It's a really gorgeous book and I've been wanting to bring it to a table. I also really love the mechanic where you bring someone from outside the game in to solve disputes.

Crush Depth Apparition: Spooky submarine horror is a good concept on its own, but I was also excited because it just looked so stylish. Plus, another thing through Snow's store, so I was into it.

Girl by Moonlight: Sailor Moon but make it Forged in the Dark. I'm in! Partner and I have been watching the original Sailor Moon. I've been playing and enjoying Beam Saber, and I kind of love the way FitD games deal with character growth.

Wreck this Deck: The pitch is: You trap demons in a deck of cards, and actually mark the cards as you go, creating a neat artifact of play as you go. So after a few plays, you have this really ominous deck of cards, some of which are super messed up or even missing. It's a rad idea, and I'm looking forward to messing up a $3 Bicycle deck.

Guys in Chairs/Spin The Bottle: This is part of the Zine Club shipment for the month, but I'm also a big fan of Dillin's work. I heard them play Guys in Chairs on Party of One, and it's a great game.

1978 - The Night They Came Home (and a Trick-or-Treat bag with rollable tables because why not): I backed this before I ever saw Halloween, but having gotten into those movies this past spooky season, I'm really into this. 2-player game where one of you is the killer, and the other is the person trying to run.

Fox Curio's Floating Bookshop: This looks beautiful, pastoral, and I love a good spiral binding. It's a journaling RPG about someone who runs a bookshop that floats up and down the river. It's super cute and I love it.

Nasty, Brutish, and Long: Friends at the Table put me in a revolutionary action mood, but I also really like the work that Not Writing Games puts out. Also been on a bit of a FitD kick lately (as previously established). I'm also going to pass by making jokes about the name.

The Corrupted: The other half of the Zine Club shipment for the month. I've heard extremely good things about this, and zombie horror is a fantastic genre in general. So I'm hype to dig in.

Hark! Says the Frog Magus: When this was first announced, I was bummed because I'd just lost my job and wasn't sure I'd be able to justify a purchase. So, a friend preordered it as a birthday gift (same friend later got me a different gift because they're a monster). Sin's work in general is rad, and this is adorable but also a great adventure, so I needed it.

I will take a second to highlight these two!

They came from the Plus One EXP Zine Club, and the sticker did too! And it's such a rad thing. A monthly subscription that brings some zines to my door, supports indie creators, and keeps the lights on for a community I care about. All Wins all the time.

I also received the expansion for Return to Dark Tower. I haven't really played Covenant yet, but I'm excited to try it out, because it adds some rad new models and some cool new classes, and a whole bunch of new skulls for the Tower.

#indie ttrpg #ttrpg #indie ttrpgs #zine club #board games #tabletop rpg #tabletop games

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ozcarr · 6 months

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oz can you tell me about your tabletop robot guy who is sometimes a regular guy sometime I'm so curious

Gingey you are so real for this because you FUCKING KNOW I’ll write an essay about him. But I will give you the (still extremely long) reader's digest version.

His name is Aurelio and he's Wizard/Fighter in me and the homies' hiatus-ed Strixhaven (D&D magic college) game.

idk if you have familiarity with Eberron and the Warforged but basically there was this huge century-long, continental war, and things progressed to the extent the government was manufacturing soldiers to like. You know, fight and kill and die for them. Aurelio was built by a private contractor to be a battle mage and gained consciousness 2 days before a peace treaty was signed and all the Warforged were granted citizens' rights. So he was never dispatched and spent the following year and a half kind of just rotting away in a workshop, only 90% finished with only books and newspapers to learn about the world from.

A lot of the people in Ebberon do NOT like the warforged because they're relics of a really scary and dire war (and also they're like. Built to be soldiers, with all that entails.) Aurelio is really book-smart but has a lot of internalized guilt about being inherently dangerous and he also kind of lacks identity. And he's mesmerized by life and death and the human experiences — stuff like falling in love and growing old. He's determined that the only way he'll ever be happy is if he somehow becomes an organic lifeform, and decides that the best way to go about achieving that is through reincarnation (a spell that must be performed by a 9th level druid). Whether becoming a Regular Guy would ACTUALLY fix him or not... remains to be seen. What he wants and what I want for him are usually sorta at odds.

Anyway -- what better place to find a high-level mage than academia? So Aurelio gets really good at basic illusion spells and crafts a little persona based on his creator and his creator's two sons. Cause he doesn't wanna make people uncomfortable. And he thinks he’d be happier playing out this little fantasy.

He steals some military academy records, and ships himself off to Wizard College... in hopes that he can live some facsimile of human (elf?) experience, secure the allyship of a druid, figure out what he wants to do with his life one he gets it, then self-destruct at the opportune time so that his new druid buddy can randomly generate him a new body.

But he makes all these wonderful friends and has to keep them at arm's length because he's constantly lying to them, even though he's a terrible liar. Until he feels he can't do it anymore and finally tells them. But he's in too deep, he's married to his little lie (not to mention he faked his identity to the school), so he just keeps up with the disguise -- up until recent in-game events which caused his world to shatter a little bit.

He's super emotional (because he's basically brand new and every feeling is new and horrible), a little mischievous, cagey, lacks tact, and is constantly fucking up his interpersonal relationships. But he’s well-meaning and earnest. All he knows how to do is lie (illusion magic) and wreck shit (lighting-damage evocation magic). He wants to be a good, gentle person and a good friend but he's so self-involved that his actions usually backfire in some way.

That's the guy! He's a mess!

#You asked. I'm sorry #he was *just* kinda starting a fucked up little journey of self identity and acceptance when we hit pause. so maybe he’ll figure it all out #one day #Aurelio #ayy im talkin here #asks #gingey

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literary-illuminati · 1 year

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Book Review 12 - Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation Vol. 1 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

So, like everyone on tumblr, I was at least peripherally aware of The Untamed, if only as ‘the C-drama with the impossibly pretty men everyone loves shipping about necromancy or something.’ (Also the one crossover porn fanfic with so many tags that it broke AO3.) So I wasn’t quite coming into this blind, but I think I came pretty close. It sure as hell wasn’t anywhere close to my vague expectations.

Anyway, this was fun! Also absolutely let me cross off reading something from an entirely unfamiliar literary subculture off my metaphorical bingo card for the year. Just reams of assumed context I absolutely did not possess. Kind of loved it (but the occasional clarifying footnotes were very much necessary and appreciated.)

Which is to say – there was so much more slapstick and physical comedy than I expected from the vague intimations of feudal politics and magical warfare I got? Not usually my sort of humour but it got a laugh out of me once or twice. My favourite character is Wei Wuxian’s donkey.

The conceit of the first story – reviled and abused failson destroys his own soul and offers up his body as a host to the spirit of a legendary evil wizard to wreak bloody vengeance for him, but fucks up the bit of the ritual that tells the spirit who to take revenge on. Also the whole ‘legendary evil wizard’ reputation was at least partially and vaguely due to a propaganda campaign by his enemies and he’s not particular enthusiastic about the ‘murder a whole family’ thing – is also just incredible. I kind of wish it had been more drawn out, before the whole ‘gotta collect them [chunks of a specific super cursed corpse] all!’ plot became the main justifying connective tissue.

Not that the overarching plot is really the story’s strong point – it’s basically just the excuse to keep Wei Wuxian and Wang Lanji together and having adventures. The actual selling points are the backstories and character interactions and to a lesser extent the monster of the week stuff. All of which are pretty well done!

Though as far as monster of the week stuff goes – I’m vaguely aware that cultivation fantasy is a whole, like, genre, with about as many weirdly specific shared assumptions as ‘generic’ western fantasy written by people swimming in a sea of Tolkien/Conan-as-interpreted-by-Warcraft-and-D&D, but I’ve really got zero clue whatsoever to what degree the worldbuilding of this is typical of the genre? Not that it particularly matters, beyond some of the reveals making much more sense if they’re building off an assumed awareness of how the world’s expected to work, all more or less new (though more or less intuitive) to me either way. Fun to see so much magic based around music.

Anyways – obviously I’m going in with a biased perspective but my god can you see how this ended up with a massive shipping fandom. The entire story is nothing but impossibly beautiful men flirting/pranking/sexually harassing each other while being utterly and entirely capable to even understand let along communicate their feelings. The two lead’s entire relationship in this volume is like a dated mid-2000s comedy sketch about two ostensibly straight guys playing gay chicken and both being so competitive that they just end up fucking. Author really knew what they were doing with the fanfic bait.

(Though honestly I’m legitimately unsure if it’s just a matter of narrative choice to not dwell on motivations or Wei Wuxian really is the single most unselfaware asshole in the entire universe. He legitimately seems incapable of understanding his own motivations most of the time.)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the art, which really is very lovely. Though I will be entirely honest that there’s only so many handsome black-haired men in flowing robes I can keep apart in my head.

But yeah, fun read overall. Don’t exactly feel compelled to go seek out the next volume, but don’t regret having read this one, damn sight better than some other things I’ve read this year.

#book review #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #mo xiang tong xiu

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scrybe-scott · 8 months

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The Silver Circle Character Intros!

I figured it's about time I posted one of these, so I'm doing it for the WIP I've been working on the most! These are just going to be little snippets about each character, so read on if you're interested in my writing or in fantasy wips in general!

Apologies for the delay for those who saw my other post about this, I’ve been BUSY.

Also, I'm going to be keeping this to the core cast for now. Keep in mind this is them as we start the story! Things here can and will change over the course of the book.

The Good Guys

Bran Brightwood - orphan taken in off the streets by Apprentice Librarian to Orulin the Wise, a powerful and ancient wizard. He's been living in the Tower of , keeping things tidy in exchange for a place to live. He picks up bits and pieces of magic from the wizard that runs the place, whenever he’s in. He’s a bit nervous around people, having spent most of his youth and the first year of his adult life in the Tower, and prefers to let his best friend Arryn do the talking. A human, he’s not particularly attuned to any of the cool fantasy stuff going on, but damned if he’s not interested in it. Has read more books than medically advisable. Arryn - Pickpocket, master attempter of stealth, Bran’s best friend, general moron. We love him. He’s been looking after Bran for as long as either of them can remember, and when Bran got taken in, Arryn insisted they were a package deal. After some pleading from Bran, Orulin accepted on the grounds that Arryn not be allowed to touch anything, ever. When that didn’t pan out, for obvious reason, Arryn’s restrictions loosened, though he wasn’t allowed into the Archives. That’s fine by him, though, as he prefers to spend his days down at the tavern or exploring the city. Kyra - A young half-Drakarran in training to become a Pale Warden. Her Mentor, Torren, has trusted her with a solo mission to help an old friend of his. She's eager to prove herself, especially as one of the few Drakarrans in the Wardens, but retains a sense of superiority around non-Wardens. Her work, she reckons, makes her more important and useful than her traveling companions. Mutual hatred shared with Arryn because of this. Throgg - An Ular mercenary recently discharged from the Iron Fang, a guild of monster hunters. He spends most of his days at the Hawk and Bishop tavern, taking on whatever work he can find. Owes Orulin a life debt, though as more time passes without the wizard calling on him to repay it, the more unsure he is about their deal. Big old grump, unless he knows you. Then he's just a regular grump. Aelar Lorhalien - Bright Prince of the Caeloran Dominion, an ancient Aetheri kingdom that’s recently had a coup under new management. He’s come to Orulin, an old traveling companion of his, for help. Obsessed with the history of his people, Aelar has devoted most of his century or so of life to the study of the mysteries of the Aetheri people, particularly interested in the pre-Aether times. He’s a bit snobbish and out of touch with the outside world, but Aelar is fiercely loyal to people who make themselves his ally. Lucian Arkalis - Master Wizard, Veteran Adventurer, and former apprentice to Orulin, Lucian is a bit of a loner. He studies applied magics in his effort to help his teacher unravel the mysteries of the Aether. Not ostentatious like some other wizards, he keeps his robes and staff simple. Spends most of his time traveling, as he believes magic is best used in active help of others. Twilly Whindlespring - Born to Hillfolk parents in a Stonefolk kingdom, Twilly is a product of both cultures. Her Stonefolk upbringing taught her to speak her mind, possibly at inopportune or inappropriate times, but her Hillfolk culture reminds her to always be chipper about it. Picking up a love of cartography from her father, Twilly is on a quest to create the first-ever map of the entire world. She won’t let anything stop her. Trenton Stoneroot- Ser Trenton Stoneroot is a knight. Mostly in name, as his father is the Duke of Ravencrest, the northernmost bastion of the Felean League. He’s noble, reliable, maybe a little too trusting, and dreams of one day becoming one of the Kingsworn, the High King’s most trusted and skilled personal guards.

The Bad Guys

The Children of the Forgotten One - a cult worshipping an old, dead god. One they are not supposed to remember. They will not rest until everyone does. The lucky among them are granted incredible powers and equipment to aid them in their goals. The less fortunate become Forgotten: warped, mindless creatures bent only on destruction. Astrid - the Cult’s foremost political asset. Has infiltrated the Felean League’s High Council and works from the inside, unbeknownst to any of our heroes. Incredibly brilliant and almost supernaturally persuasive. The head of the operation. Gabriel - Forgotten General. Leads and gathers a supernatural army for his god. Is the most religious of the big 3 villains, and is a zealot for the cause. Will do anything and kill anyone that gets in the way of his divine mission. Donovan - Mercenary leader of the Dragon’s Ire, a group contracted by Astrid to carry out more discreet operations. Not too big on the cult stuff, but the coin’s good, and a place in the new regime ain’t too bad, either.

That’s it for now! I tried to keep it short, this went on way longer than I meant it to lol. Like I said, feel free to ask any questions!

Edit: Oh, and for anyone curious what I mean when I say Aetheri, Ular, Drakarran, etc, check out my second answer here!

#callahanscorner #the silver circle #my wip #my writing #fantasy wip #writeblr #writblr #creative writing

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lux-scriptum · 4 months

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The first world is Wizard City. You got isekaied there from Earth, and now you get to be the chosen one, good job.

Pretty much all quest names are puns or at least jokes.

There's strong temptation to do opposite schools of magic together (fire/ice, life/death, storm/myth) but that actually detracts from your effectiveness.

People hang out in the commons and have conversations like they're on discord. You hear - read - SO MUCH insane stuff.

It gets to the point where high ranking bosses are easy as long as they don't cheat. 10,000 health vs your 3000? Fine. It's the cheaters with their -90% shields and beguiling that get you.

This is a game designed to be played with other people. But if they're annoying you, it's possible to play on your own.

The worlds all have themes:

Wizard City is generic fantasy land. It has humans in it!

Krokotopia is fantasy ancient Egypt, complete with pseudo-british archeologists on hand. You've got Kroks and (sala)manders here

Marleybone is Victorian England, with Sherlock Bones and Wolfminster abbey. There are dogs and cats, and for some reason there are a bunch of pseudo-irish gangs?

Grizzleheim is Nordic, with bears, wolves, boars, and ravens. Nick Jonas is also here

Wysteria is snooty alternate wizard school

Mooshu is feudal era japan. You got bulls, goats, pigs, and elephants

Why aren't there humans anywhere else? Idk

Dragonspyre is dragon themed. It's dragon themed

Celestia is like aquatic underwater adventures and also celestial beings adventures. it's funky

Zafaria is just. All of Africa I guess.

Avalon is Arthurian and there a part called Abbey Road

Azteca, for some reason, on the wizard101 website, is mayan-themed? But it's called azteca? Idk

I haven't gotten past azteca but there's like, an Arabian world, a snowy world, a candy land world, a Greek mythology world

There's this guy called Prospector Zeke who shows up in every world with a sidequest to find "stray cats" or "beetles" or "ceramic birds" and then when you forget to find them in the harder dungeons and realize you have to redo them to finish the side quest you want to cry

You can do all kinds of stuff with pets that I never bother with

Once you've gone through a bunch of worlds with a few wizards, starting a new one is such easier and goes by so fast

Especially if you pay to get them good gear, which I do. This is the game I spend money lm

The names are Name NounNoun, so I've got Brynn WildEyes and Rowan WildSong and Autumn WildBreeze (I didn't have to theme them but I wanted to)

I think my favorite world so far was Avalon. Not super hard. Plus I love Arthurian lore.

Is that enough for now?

It was more than enough I am fucking delighted. I’ve always had a vague awareness of the game but never knew much about it so I didn’t look into it too far. You might have convinced me to poke around.

#people should info dump in my asks more often i loved this #thank you!!!#asks

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project1939 · 20 days

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100+ Films of 1952

Film number 108: Jack and the Beanstalk

Release date: April 12th, 1952

Studio: Warner Bros.

Genre: comedy fantasy, family

Director: Jean Yarbrough

Producer: Alex Gottlieb, Pat Costello, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Buddy Baer, Dorothy Ford, Shaye Cogan

Plot Summary: Jack lives in a fairytale village with his mother, who has him sell their cow for money. He ends up with magic beans instead, and one becomes a beanstalk that grows high in the sky to the land of a great Giant. The Giant recently kidnapped his friends and his cow, so Jack climbs up the stalk to save them.

My Rating (out of five stars): ***

This just baaarley gets three stars from me. It was much like Lost in Alaska, their other film from 1952- it was a decently made lower budget comedy propelled by the famous duo. Some of the humor isn’t really my cup of tea, but I can appreciate that they are good at it. I probably enjoyed this one more than Lost in Alaska because it was more breezy and silly.

The Good:

Lou Costello. He had much more time to shine alone in this one, and I found him very endearing and cute again. Even when he’s doing the most lowbrow kind of stuff, you can’t help but like him.

This was technically a musical because there were several songs in it. They were really silly and cheesy in a fun way. The lyrics were just goofy. In a romantic ballad we heard- “Darling, my darling darling...” and at the end when the Giant died- “We sing tra-la-la-la-la! He’s perpidicu-lah-lah-lah!"

The bean stalk looked pretty cool.

I loved Dorothy Ford as Polly the housekeeper. She was 6’2” in real life and really striking.

A scene where the 6’2” Dorothy Ford dances with the 5’5” Lou Costello. That was a big highlight of the film for me. Even the visual gag of their height difference made me giggle. Ford was probably wearing heels or lifts, because Costello barely reached her shoulder.

I found the talking wilderness animals surprisingly funny.

It was just good light-hearted fun. I think kids would have liked it a lot.

The Bad:

First- spoiler- what happened to Polly (Dorothy Ford) and Henry the cow at the end?? Everyone else escaped the Giant’s castle! They were two of my favorite characters, and I kept expecting them to appear in the final scene, but they didn’t. What the hell happened to them? Come on!!

The opening and closing “modern” section. It was totally needless and not very funny. It openly copied The Wizard of Oz in that the modern section was filmed in sepia and the fantasy world was in color. And the people in the fantasy world all had real life counterparts.

The two romantic leads. The Prince, James Alexander, looked creepy and had weird makeup on. His eyes looked just like the terrifying Kenneth Copeland’s, so I just couldn’t deal with him. The Princess, Shaye Cogan, was stunningly beautiful with a singing voice to match, but her acting skills were minimal.

The actual Giant was a little underwhelming. He was just a tall guy wearing shoes with lifts- probably around 7 feet? I expected him to be much much bigger.

The sets in the sky kingdom weren’t the greatest. The Castle was kind of blah and generic.

Bud Abbott didn’t have much to do.

Sometimes the humor was just too broad for me.

Again, what happened to Polly and Henry?!

#1952 #1952 movies #100 films of 1952 #abbott and costello

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docholligay · 3 years

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Please rant/rave (well, we already know which one it will be here) about Harry Potter!

GEE I HOPE THIS WAS WORTH WAITING FOR

OH MY GOD. The level of hatred I have for Harry Fucking Goddamn Potter, the culture around Harry Fucking Potter, extending its poisonous tentacles even to the concept of young adult fiction, fantasy, and the United Kingdom as a country and people.

When you being on this, you may think, “Oh, Doc will explain that Harry Potter sucks because JKR hates trans women” and I will say, oh no, dear reader, that is a fantastic reason to hate the author, and I really suggest we all continue to hate her, and perhaps not purchase the QUEEN’S TONNES of officially licensed merchandise and movies and theme parks that give her stupid little fucking hands all that cash, but no, that is not why I hate the work. There are a number of great works done by terrible people, and the further out the lens of history gets the truer this is.

I hate Harry Potter because it fucking sucks, and mentally stifled an entire fucking generation.

“Well, Doc, Harry Potter was really there for me when--” Oh my god I could not fucking care LESS about your personal emotion connection to “orphan wizard boy turns out to be a rich aristocrat yet somehow less woke than Cinderella though” I have personally emotional connections to hot fucking garbage pails of media properties, and if someone came barreling through talking about the myriad ways in which they were horrible, I would be like, “Oh, you aren’t fucking wrong, pal”

Harry Potter gained wild ass popularity in part due to its magnificent sorting system of Smart, Brave, Evil, and Other, because there’s nothing liberals like more than being able to put everyone’s personality into an easily labeled box, which is why astrology is so popular, or for the intellectuals, Myers-Briggs, which is just as fake but with the veneer of science. This allowed people to give into the tribalism they so desperately liked to pretend they did not possess, and also allow them to write thinkpieces about “The misunderstood Hufflepuff” or “Slytherins aren’t all bad!” or really anything that allows them to write a very real piece about their very imagined oppression for being a part of a totally fake house in a children’s book. Excellent use of your sociology degree, Kai, I thought the addition of phrases like, ‘Content of socialization” and “axes of oppression” really spoke to the struggles you face when wearing a green and silver scarf.

The other reason it became popular is that it’s essentially wallpaper paste formed into characters. I have read all of the books, and I could not tell you even remotely what Harry’s defining personality traits are other than “protagonist”. In American, at least, a large part of it was the fascination with all things British, with the idea of boarding school and prefects and uniforms that aren’t inexplicably chinos and polo shirts for nine year olds. It allowed children to project onto something so bland that it could be anything. And for children, THAT’S FINE. There is a great deal of bland media made for children, but what I’m speaking to is the fandom, which is largely well over the age of 18.

Because if we look at the books, are they...actually good? Was it good, or did I experience it as a child? I mean, honestly, on a literary level, are they, or was it just like we all watched Friends, we did it because everyone else was doing it, because I have a distinct memory of a series that involves such greats as “magical geegaws with poorly defined rules that are quickly forgotten despite being able to solve later problems quickly” or “Everyone loves Harry or is a bad guy, or secretly loved Harry all along”

Oh, speaking of, man, if this was an actual well-written book, wouldn’t it have been wild to have Snape’s whole thing be to teach us that sometimes people do good things for the wrong reasons? Instead of naming your fucking child after the guy who ‘protected you’ because he still wanted to bone your mom? “After all this time” “Always.”

While all this could have been explained, we have Quidditch added into the mix instead because 20 pages of the goddamn Puppy Bowl is exactly what I was looking for while I was waiting for JK to move the goddamn ball on literally any of these actual magical concepts.

Harry Potter is a fucking trust fund baby, star quarterback, who grows up to be a cop and marries his high school sweetheart. (Speaking of, why were we shocked that JKR turned out to be a piece of shit when this was and always has been the conclusion of Harry Potter? Why are liberals so fucking into this series that upholds structures like it ain’t no one’s business? It’s a series that opines that those beneath us “Muggles” should be kept in the dark from us) Literally, he finds out he is a wizard and has a dragon-guarded fucking VAULT OF CASH. At 11. It’s such a series for little tyrants, you are special from birth and need do nothing to prove it, here is a letter certifying as such. Oh, not only are you rich and the greatest seeker and have excellent quips, but also your parents were not only rebels, but the best of rebels, and so deeply involved that your parents were killed by the big bad personally, again, because you are so special. His mother’s love literally saves his ass over and over again, because he was SO SPECIAL. He fought Voldemort FROM THE BEGINNING, and WON. It’s literally the most privilege baby fantasy in the world.

“But Doooooooooooc, it’s for chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren”

A) Yeah, and you’re 32, you’re making my fucking point about Harry Potter setting an entire generation up for intellectual failure to launch.

B) Okay, and? I can think of a bunch of kids’ books off the top of my head that in no way require specialness to be given by birth so as to roll out the red carpet for master protagonist. The Hunger Games. Watership Down. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Chronicles of FUCKING NARNIA, about which I have only a small handful of particularly kind things to say. I’ve never read Percy Jackson, but it’s my understanding that despite his being a literal demigod, the attitudes of the supporting cast are allowed to fall between the extremes of “Appreciates Percy” and “naughty or will learn” Harry does nothing to improve himself even after knowing that he is HUNTED BY THE BIG BAD! “I won’t do this because I don’t like Snape”. So There” which, again, if this series were written with the slightest bit of care or know-how, could be a humbling fucking plot point! BUT NO THAT WOULD BE NAUGHTY.

But the real reason I hate Harry Potter so much has everything to do with the fandom surrounding it, and how it intellectually stunted a generation of adults. The promise of Harry Potter was that it was supposed to make a new generation of readers, and so the popularity of them was pushed, and so there was discussion of teaching them in schools, but I tell you fucking what, I know a whole lot more folks who grew up reading Harry Potter that never advanced beyond reading YA, or even just rereading the entire series every year and that’s pretty much them done and dusted.

In the attempt to recapture whatever it was about Harry Potter that attracted children (A lot of it was your peers doing it. I read them all as they came out, and it was literally the equivalent of watching the game so you could talk at the water cooler. That was never going to be recaptured) people, who by this time were likely in their teens, kept getting recommended stuff at the same and same level. No one ever felt pushed to read things that are challenging, to read things that have some of the concepts or themes of Harry Potter but maybe complicate. I know FAR more adults who read adult books that aren’t into Harry Potter, even if they were as children, than the reverse.

But Doc, why is reading only books meant for 14 year olds a problem??? I mean I suppose I can’t convince you that comfort is not the job of literature or of life, it is the job of an easy chair, because Americans especially are decadent as fuck about being comfy cozy all the time and if anything causes them distress or pain it should be immediately avoided. But Maybe I can convince you that you’re fucking up these books for actual ass children who deserve to have their own writing section without adults bringing their fucking asses into it. They deserve their own spaces. There’s a number of YA editors who have talked about the difficult space YA now occupies because since Potter’s blowup, it’s no longer a niche category, but basically “adult easy reads” and so they have been buying books that are more about the tastes of adult buyers than of literal 14 year olds.

Is that not...sad? To anyone else? Honestly, and this is not part of the essay because it’s a broader reaching problem, but CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS FOR FUCKING CHILDREN. The fucking 40-23 set really needs to get their shit together and grow up a little bit and engage in some fucking adult media, and maybe, if we support what we’re actually looking for FOR ADULTS, it will come to us. No one is saying you can’t read Harry Potter or watch some Cartoon Network show, but like, search your heart and come the fuck on. Engage in something more complex. If not for yourselves, for the kids getting shoved into simplified adult stories. It should not be about us.

ANYWAY, my larger point is that it was Harry Potter, a badly written series about a magical boy who was chosen and magic and also rich and also a favorite of the headmaster and also more clever than most adults and also spoke the same magical snake language as the big bad and was also star quarterback, but at least there was a system in which you could buy a scarf in block colors and feel like you belonged to a team.

(But not a sports team! lol handegg! I’m cool I don’t get into sports! Except Quidditch.)

#TO say nothing of the fact that I haven't been able to wear gold and burgundy together without some dumbass comment for years #despite being a favored color combination #Anonymous #Eight Days 2020 #Holligay Rants and Raves #I didn't even GET to every point I had but it's been over an hour #GOD I HATE THIS FUCKING SERIES SO MUCH #Doc do you hate me for liking it?#oh sweet thing allow me to reassure you: Yes. Absolutely.#also the prose is god-awful #I've taught teenagers with better rpose

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aobawilliams · 3 years

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I wish you would write an AU where Takagi can read peoples thoughts(could simply be words or abstract pictures) when he makes direct contact with them, which leads to him finding out about Conan. And if not that, an AU where there is a secret supernatural department in the police force, (Sato is possibly a member) and Takagi somehow ends up there. i am thinking a lot about him lately.

The first one got merit but I do like the fact Takagi is just your average guy? He’s nothing exceptional and I love him for that, so I’ll go with the second one.

The classic “I accidentally witnessed something and now I feel like I’m way above my paygrade (but at least they got better coffee)”.

Setting would be urban fantasy, there is the whole secret fantasy society with faes, ghosts, wizards and whatnots existing parallel to us, but hard work makes it a secret for most people. There is a special affiliation in the police to regulate those cases, they have like a really common name and officially do regular police work, but unofficially their cases are 90% fantasy stuff. Um I guess the members are spread through the police work, but the cases assigned to them are generally surnatural stuff, if that makes sense?

The squad from Wild Police (so Date Wataru, Hiromitsu, Rei, Matsuda and Hagiwara) were all part of that surnatural department. Sato too.

I’ll go the comedy route and, either Date Wataru honestly thought Takagi was part of that secret department too, and like they never openly spoke about it in public because ~secrecy~ but Date would make allusions and Takagi would just roll with it even though he’s mostly confused about what does it means? Or he just assume it’s some kind of slang/specific police language and roll with it. He didn’t receive the handbook but, that’s fine, he can learn on the job!

Other option is, since they share a name (Wataru), at some point some document got mixed or someone grabbed the wrong Wataru and Takagi got no clue what’s happening but it’s fine!! He’ll do his best!!

And after that no one cleared the mistake and just assumed he was part of their group.

And so he regularly got dragged dealing with surnatural stuff, except most of the problems aren’t obviously surnatural, it would be like reprimand about keeping their existance/identity secret (which, Takagi didn’t know he was assigned to those kind of witness protection case, but he’s not gonna spill), or property damage (which is rookie job but, he is a rookie) and other shenanigans that, if you squint hard enough, isn’t surnatural, nope nope. (He is deep in denial at first).

At some point they decides he’s doing a good enough job and he got assigned as Sato’s partner. And they start getting involved in bigger/more important job. Which includes fighting/capturing surnatural troublemaker.

And Takagi’s denial can’t hold as well. Because. What the fuck is that, Sato??

And Sato is just like, that’s just a wizard, didn’t you read the handbook/learnt that in school??

And then Sato has to make him go through a crash course of Surnatural 101 because no one told him anything and he honestly thought it was regular police work, honest.

They were hiding behind a brick wall, the suspect clearly agitated and looking for them, and Takagi understood the need to stay silent, has learn in school how to deal with that kind of situation, but. He needed to ask.

“Excuse-me, Sato...” he whispered, “but did that man just threw a fireball at us?”

She looked at him, rising an eyebrow, before focusing again on their target. “Didn’t you read the report? He’s a fire wizard, of course he knows how to throw fireball, it’s the most basic spell.”

Which, leaves him with more questions than answer, because. What.

“What do you mean a wizard? I thought that was just. A metaphor or something. That can’t be real magic right?”

She scoffed. “Of course it’s real magic, how long have you been in the force again?”

(Or something like that. They manage to arrest that man all while Takagi got an existantial crisis about what the fuck is his life and Sato gives him a crash course on wizards and stuff)

#sometimes i write #ask meme #fun fact the preview was like i wish you would write an au where takagi can read and i was like wow that's harsh #i actually had a lot of fun #more than i thought i would have #i love that kind of 'normal person in notnormal environment' shenanigan #detective conan #case closed #takagi wataru #urban fantasy au

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beeblackburn · 3 years

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The Anti-TBR Tag

I was tagged by @books-and-doodles! Thank you! And poor you, for I am a long-winded bastard.

1. A popular book EVERYONE loves that you have no interest in reading?

On general principle, I feel like the really popular stuff (Twilight, Throne of Glass, Divergent, The Mortal Instruments) ends up being stuff I’m inherently not going to be attracted to and some of them have their own hatedoms going on, so going after them in detail would be punching down (though I don’t particular like any of the above). So I’m going to try to go off the beaten path with these seven:

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab = nothing against her personally, though I heard her The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was baaaaad, but apparently, she’s similar to Sanderson in the magic system being better than the characterization and I heard her writing’s got a white faux-female empowerment sort of thing going that I’m growing increasingly... discontent of by itself. I might try it out later, but I also got hundreds of books to drill through first and I’m in no rush.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo = I’ve been increasingly getting the sense that Six of Crows was a flash in the pan, Bardugo’s style more defined by fun than genuine substance. And given a rather scathing review that points out unearned shifts in characterization, lackluster supporting cast, and two really uncomfortable exploitative sexual assault fantasy scenes (one of which was underaged!), I’m gonna say no.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik = I generally like Novik! She’s a very solid writer to me and I’ve bought most of her books, so this is purely me not taking to the Wizarding School genre. Sorry, Novik, "a twisted, super dark, super modern, female-led Harry Potter" isn’t the selling point it once was, and even then, I probably wouldn’t have taken to it. Especially when I’ve already got The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan to read.

The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson = I’ve got mixed feelings on Mistborn looking back: it’s hardly the worst of his oeuvre (Elantris is that and was admittedly his first book) and The Final Empire took a few narrative risks that I admire, I also found the resulting books a tad juvenile and I don’t take to steampunk, genre-wise. I’m not even that much of a Sanderson fan, so I’d rather just read the summary for all I care.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher = given what I’ve been told about The Dresden Files’ lessening of noir roots past the first few books, how it later became more flashy-and-bang magical, and how it’s pretty sexist early on (and from what I’ve been told, doubled down on it later on and having worse treatments of its female characters), I’m in no particular rush to read them. The urban fantasy genre on them only turns me off more.

The Doors of Stone by Patrick Rothfuss = hahaha, I’m sorry, I did read The Name of the Wind, and read select parts of The Wise Man’s Fear, but everyone, instead of waiting and devoting your time for this book to come, I would suggest reading Fitz, Who Is Actually Good and Can Wring More than Disgust and an Eye-Roll out of You in Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings, given she is far better at characterization than Rothfuss.

Anything by Paul Krueger, Sam Sykes, and Myke Cole = fuck all three of these men and the idea that I’ll pay for their stuff. While I can’t demand any of you not buy from them and I’ll hardly claim to be a saint in terms of ethics, purchase-wise, I would beseech you all please don’t buy from these three authors who have a history of inappropriateness.

2. A classic book (or author) you don’t have an interest in reading?

Charles Dickens = look, I know his word count is padded because of serial installments back then, but I’m sorry, I wasn’t that impressed by the child-sanitized versions of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. They were easily some of the most boring of out of the child-sanitized classics I read. It was the pictures that kept me going and barely at that. No thanks.

Emily Brontë = look, if I wanted shitty people being shitty to each other, I’d much rather read Joe Abercrombie because at least I’ll get some intentional dark comedy out of dumb shitheads being terrible to each other (Best Served Cold comes to mind). And I know we’re not meant to like these self-destructive people, but I’d rather not hate everyone that much.

Alexander Dumas = Three Musketeers really didn’t age well, just from the TV Tropes page and I’m not really looking forward to an adventure that goes out of its way to valorize its protagonists being adventurous assholes who dueled, drank, and womanized harder than anyone else and we should commend that because they were men. Ugh.

3. An author you have read a couple of books from & have decided their books are not for you?

Leigh Bardugo = like I said, I feel like Six of Crows (and Crooked Kingdom, to a lesser extent) was a flash in the pan and she’s been increasingly running on fumes ever since then. Good and fun with a decent eye for characterization, but hardly revolutionary, considering how I think Crooked Kingdom isn’t quite as good as Six of Crows, and the less said about Shadow and Bone, the better.

Neil Gaiman = I’ve read some of his stuff (and I didn’t quite see the hype over his writing, but liked it decently enough) but having heard that, in his Sandman run, he wrote in a transwoman solely to get killed for an emotional ending and how he defended that choice for awhile left a battery acid taste for me to read more. He’s a formative part of people’s childhoods, so I don’t blame anyone for being fans, he’s just not for me.

Steven Erikson = really nothing against the dude, I’m sure he's probably a decent guy, but I didn’t take to Gardens of the Moon at all and skimming Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice (which were admittedly better) made me realize its prose was something I would need a hard and sharp shovel to crack through, and the darting around of many, many POVs made me feel not invested in anyone.

4. A genre you have no interest in OR a genre you tried to get into & couldn’t?

I’ll answer both because I have the time:

I’m not interested in romance, mostly because it’s an entire genre built around the build-up. It’s usually the story about the beginning of a relationship, not the relationship itself. I’d genuinely like to read about the story of a romance that doesn’t stop shortly after the hook-up or before the honeymoon period ends. The City Watch parts of Discworld by Terry Pratchett, The Memoirs of Lady Trent by Marie Brennan and The Sharing Knife by Lois McMaster Bujold all have romantic elements that are relatively undrenched in melodrama or frills, but none of them are pure romances, which is a huge problem. I can take romantic subplots in fantasy, but I can’t take the genre as-is.

Urban fantasy is a genre I’m not against having my mind changed on liking, but right now, I generally find it insipid, a shortcut to good world-building, short on great characterization, and an excuse to lampshade and pretense to being above fantastical clichés in a tongue-in-cheek attitude while still committing to them. I do genuinely like Rivers of London by Ben Aaronvitch, but that’s really the concession I can give the entirety of the genre. I took a crack at Rick Riordan and Cassandra Clare’s stuff, but it didn’t feel like my sort of thing. Again, would like to be convinced, but I’d much rather read a domestic or slice-of-life fantasy set in a more overtly fantasy world than the urban one.

Also, sci-fi, but I’m trying again with the Wormwood trilogy by Tade Thompson, An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon, and either the Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie, or the Teixcalaan trilogy by Arkady Martine. I snoozed through Azimov’s Foundation and generally bored myself of hard sci-fi books, so I’m hoping contemporary sci-fi changes my mind on the entire genre.

5. A book you have bought but will never read?

A book I personally bought? Honestly, Traitor’s Blade by Sebastien de Castell. No particular reason, I just bought it at a closing-down sale at a branch of my bookstore on the cheap because the cover looked nice and didn’t really take to its blurb. I heard good things though, so if anyone else wants to read it...

I tag @vera-dauriac, @xserpx, @autoapocrypha, @kateofthecanals, @turtle-paced, @insecticidalfeminism, @secretlyatargaryen, @helix-eagle-hourglass-nebula, @xillionart, @jovolovo and whoever else that is following me and wishes to do this tag (I’d like to read your posts, so please tag me! :D)

#tags #book tag #anti tbr tag

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mayquita · 4 years

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Colin O’Donoghue on Playing Heroes and Villains in ‘Wizards,’ ‘The Right Stuff,’ and ‘Once Upon a Time’

From the creative mind of Guillermo del Toro and executive producers Marc Guggenheim and Chad Hammes, the final chapter in the Tales of Arcadia saga sees its characters go on an epic time-travel adventure in Camelot. Wizards follows Douxie (voiced by Colin O’Donoghue), a 900-year-old wizard-in-training who, along with Jim (voiced by Emile Hirsch), Claire (voiced by Lexi Medrano) and Steve (voiced by Steven Yeun), must ensure that good prevails over evil, in the escalating conflict between the human and magical worlds.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, Colin O’Donoghue talked about being a part of the Tales of Arcadia world, why he was so delighted to get to voice an animated character, what he loved about his character’s journey, getting to revisit Camelot, and what the voice recording process was like. He also talked about why the upcoming Disney+ TV series The Right Stuff appealed to him, whether he was personally satisfied with the ending of Once Upon A Time, and the great time he had playing Captain Hook.

Collider: When this whole project originally came your way, did you know that Trollhunters would only be one part of this whole Tales from Arcadia world, and that there would be also be 3Below and Wizards?

COLIN O’DONOGHUE: I did. I understood that would be the case. I came in, in the second season of Trollhunters, and I knew the character would also be in 3Below. I was in the background, and a character that made people go, “Who is this guy? Why is he there?” I think it’s really good that was teased. It’s worked pretty well, and he was a lot of fun to play. Especially in Wizards, it was really great fun.

How did you get involved with this project? Was this something that you had to go through an audition process for?

O’DONOGHUE: What happened was that they reached out to my agents about it. It was a few years ago, so I can’t remember if I had to do a quick voice recording, just so that they could hear it. But I think that they’d seen Once Upon A Time and had heard my voice. I was stoked. I was delighted to get the offer. I couldn’t wait to do it. I was gonna go study animation in college, so I’ve always been fascinated with the whole process and I’ve always wanted to do an animated film.

This character definitely goes on a big journey in Wizards. What was it that you most responded to, with his story? What did you love about the journey that you got to take with him, now that he’s at the center of the story?

O’DONOGHUE: I loved the relationship with Merlin, and with Archie, as well. I thought it was fun to see him try to be this apprentice wizard, who so desperately wants to become a master wizard and prove himself to Merlin, and getting to see how he progresses, or if he’s even able to do it or not. That was something that I was really happy to explore.

What was it like to find and establish Douxie, in the beginning, in just these little bits, and then really get to dive into him and get to know him so much more, over this season? Did you always know who he would be, at the end, or were there things that you really got to learn about him, along the way?

O’DONOGHUE: I knew that he was a wizard, and I knew that he was quite a powerful wizard. It was just so much fun, having these tiny little things with him that made an impact with people. And then, to really get to do everything that I did on Wizards was fantastic because he really is a great character to play, and a lot of fun. And also, the writing on this show is just so great to get to live with for awhile and really explore.

It definitely seems a bit tricky to explore the origins of the entire mythology of the trilogy while also taking these characters on their own new adventure. How did you feel about the way that it all tied together and the way the story ends? What was your reaction to finding out how things would all play out, by the end of it?

O’DONOGHUE: I was amazing. Whether it was on this or on Once Upon A Time, I’m always amazed at how writers, especially in fantasy, keep track of everything, let alone tie it all together. I’m always amazed that they’re able to do that. And in Wizards, they’ve really done an incredible job of blending the three series together into this one final thing. I just think it’s so smart and so clever, the way they do it. I couldn’t do it. That’s why I’m an actor, and someone else is writing the show.

I was very impressed with how we get to see some of the past characters and we get to see the mythology of Camelot. Pulling all of that together was really impressive.

O’DONOGHUE: I was excited to get to go to Camelot again. We did a season of Once Upon A Time in Camelot, so it was fun to see the version of Camelot that they did in Wizards.

What was the recording process like on this? Were you always in a booth alone?

O’DONOGHUE: I was always alone. I live in Ireland, so most of what I did was done in a recording studio in Dublin. Sometimes, if I was in L.A., I’d go in, but it was always on my own. It’s interesting. It takes a little bit of getting used to because nobody is really feeding you lines. You just say each line, and take a stab at what you think the other character would be saying or reacting to. But I really enjoyed it. Once you get used to that, then it’s really a lot of fun. You get to really ham it up. Maybe a lot of people would say that I’m a ham, but you try to be a little bit more subtle, so it’s fun just to be able to go for it, in animation, because they animate it over the top lines.

Do you know what the time span of work was that you did on this?

O’DONOGHUE: No. It’s been a while. I can’t remember when we recorded the first recording for the first episode of this. It must be a year and a half ago, maybe. I’m not entirely sure. I was in Florida shooting The Right Stuff for five months last year, so it might even be two years. I’m not entirely sure.

Were there ever any major changes, along the way? Did anything change, while you were doing the recording of it, or did everything stay pretty close to the scripts?

O’DONOGHUE: I think everything stayed pretty close to the scripts, if I remember rightly. I don’t think there were any major changes. I might be wrong in this, but when the script was locked, it had gone through so many iterations, at that point. Because they’re creating everything, and every blade of grass, once the script is locked, that’s it. There can be an additional line sometimes, or you might have to do an alternative line, but in general, the script is pretty much locked.

When The Right Stuff came your way, what was it that most interested and excited you about that project?

O’DONOGHUE: I knew the book. I’d read the book, and I’d seen the movie. I’d actually had a meeting at Appian Way, a couple of years ago, and randomly, they gave me the book before there was ever a script, just to have a read of it. And it was one that I really wanted to do, but I was doing Once Upon A Time, at the time, so I didn’t know if I’d be free for anything. Getting to play Gordo Cooper, one of the Mercury Seven, was just amazing. Also, that time period in American history, and the style of it, being from Ireland, that’s America to me, with a ’59 Corvette, Coca Cola bottles, and that kind of style of buildings. And the pilot script was just absolutely fantastic. It was incredible. It was an amazing opportunity to get to play somebody who’s a real-life hero.

Is that the kind of project, as an actor, where it’s hard to get out of your own head? Especially when you’ve read the book and seen the movie and you connect to the project before you even go do it, is it hard to then deal with the pressure you put on yourself?

O’DONOGHUE: I didn’t have a huge amount of time to think about it because somebody else had been cast in the role and they fell out of it. I had a day and a half to figure out what I was going to do before I was on a plane to Florida. It was good ‘cause then I didn’t have time to put pressure on myself. I didn’t have time to panic about what my Oklahoma accent was gonna be. It was actually good, in that respect. So, I wasn’t really nervous about it. I knew the cast was amazing, and I knew the quality of the script and that Appian Way was involved. I was just really excited. And because I played Captain Hook for so long on a show and became so recognizable as that character, it was great to go do something completely different, in a completely different genre and style. I had to shave my beard and look completely different. And then, I got to play an astronaut and test pilot. Who doesn’t wanna do that?

After being on Once Upon A Time for so many seasons, and now having had some time and distance from the show, how do you ultimately feel about the ending and the send-off that your character got? Is it something that you feel personally satisfied and happy with?

O’DONOGHUE: Yeah. The end of Season 6 did exactly what I thought they should do to close off the story of all those characters in Storybrooke. And then, it was fun in Season 7 to get to explore a completely different version of Hook and such a different character. At the end of it all, it was important for Regina to get some sort of redemption. That was always the way that the show should finish. I’m also glad that Eddy [Kitsis] and Adam [Horowitz] had the opportunity to actually finish the show the way they wanted to finish it, and the way that they had seen it. The show wasn’t canceled before they had a chance to finish it.

Captain Hook must have been such a fun character to get to put your own stamp on.

O’DONOGHUE: Yeah, my version of Hook was the first time that he wasn’t an older, villainous, mustache-twirling kind of guy. As soon as I put on the black leather trousers, the coat, and the eyeliner, that was it. You become Captain Hook. It was fun to do that, and getting to play so many different variations of the character, over the year. That was the good thing about Once Upon A Time. There were so many different realms and time periods that they were in and out of, so it was great. He was a great character to get to play.

Wizards is available to stream at Netflix.

#colin o'donoghue #colin interviews #colin other works #wizards #the right stuff

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lairofsentinel · 4 years

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Mystra

I'm so new in the Forgotten Realms lore that everything I read needs always further research. So far, what got me between disbelief and mistrust was Mystra stuff meddling with humans to such deep level. Because, really... what the fuck these Gods? I always have problems with Gods in fantasy worlds. I don't like them when they are like Greek mythology entities. I prefer them when they are a mere illusion of mortals.

However, here, in the Forgotten Realms, we got them as entities like Zeus... so they can have mortal fun. UPDATE April 2021: What it’s said in this post about shadow weave and shadow weave magic and shadow magic are incorrect. In 5e, shadow weave is not mentioned, apparently a non used concept anymore. In 4e it was collapsed with the destruction of the Weave, and Shar attempted to recreated it, failing at it because she never “was” the Shadow Weave. Shar always rejected that level of commitment. However, according to bg3 [Ethel’s words] shadow magic currently is the same as netherese magic, described by Gale/Narator also as “Primal weave” or “blackest weave”. No book from 5e says a word about shadow weave anymore.

According to what I've read, Mystra was, in fact, a young peasant girl with non-trained skills in magic, but somehow, she became the Goddess of Magic when Netheril fell. [I need to read a lot of Netheril because apparently everything bad comes from there. It's the Tevinter of the Forgotten Realms. I honestly don't understand how you just become a goddess out of the blue. One day a mediocre mage, the next one, Goddess of the Magic itself. What a gap there.]

As a Goddess, she has a system to determine who is her “Chosen One” (hence why Gale explicitly said that word, it was not by chance). The Chosen Ones have unique access to the Weave and therefore they cast powerful magic. Among their responsibilities, they need to research new magic, wander the Realms fighting the evil (and/or doing research), and to stop the abuses of magic and the imbalances of the Weave. This makes Shar followers an easy target for them to strike so far I understand, since Shar crafted an alternative Weave (Shadow Weave) from where she drags the power that infuse into her followers. However, it's a mirror Weave, extremely dependable of the normal Weave. Like Gale explained, when Mystryl died, the Weave stopped existing, and with it, the Shadow Weave fell apart too. It seems that Shadow Weave is an aberration, an imbalance of the Weave itself. [So, Shadowheart and Gale may have strong discussions on the matter.]

The man who was Mystra’s first Chosen One was a lesser god called Azuth (we found some books of this guy in BG3). The man was his devotee (despite being a low rank deity as well), his servant, his chosen one, and later, his lover (when Mystra was still Mystryl). It seems he shifted his role to a more fatherly one when Mystra was reborn [Oook]. He also was in love with another Mystra's chosen, so... divinity polyamory we have here.

Then she proceeded to accomplish a strange plan [details of this atrocity here]: to have seven immortal Chosen. So she possessed a sorceress who conceived seven immortal women with her husband [thanks god it was with her husband and not with a random man that Mystra fancied]. These women are known as the Seven Sisters, all of them are “chosen ones” of Mystra, and in a sense, they are also her daughters. [oh, boy. Greek Gods-like stuff.]

She also named Chosen One a necromancer called Sammaster who was doing research related to metamagic and dragons. The story says that Mystra appeared before him and they “spent 10 days together”, turning him into his Chosen One for a while. She apparently had a whim to choose him because soon a previous chosen one was going to die in battle, so she wanted to sort this out sooner than later. The story also says that this encounter made the necromancer feel as though they were in love. [I see the pattern now....] What it's worth highlighting: this man went into deep undead research all his life showing that Mystra has a weird moral sense of what is good from evil, which makes sense, since (magical) knowledge by itself has no alignment. Magical knowledge is never good or evil, it depends on the use you give to it (It’s also worth noting that the previous Mystra was True Neutral while the one reborn in Midnight was Neutral Good. There are two different Mystras in history.). But returning to the necromancer, the guy, in the end, manipulated by a priest of Bane, abused of his powers of Chosen and Mystra removed them. He concluded that most of his problems have been caused by accepting Mystra's role as Chosen One. Soon after that Sammaster became evil and succumbed to madness.

In short, Mystra is a goddess who loves to play favourites, and encourages research in a competitive way using a certain degree of seduction for that. So that, the Arts and the arcane knowledge will be always expanding via competition [she has such a neoliberal-magic ideas]. So, being her Chosen One seems to bring a lot of responsibility and troubles. However, it also grants you fancy benefits:

Casting more spells with less effort.

Natural detection of magic (maybe some residual effect of this ability is what makes Gale able to sense shadow magic in Shadowheart or in the Main Character if they are a user of magic. Hence his “that gust of weave”. Gale also presents sensitivity to detect magic via smell (mirror) and taste)

Development of magical immunities, and sometimes even poison and disease immunities.

The chosen ones become harder to kill, kind of tank-wizards. [Which feels like an oxymoron, lol.]

And the most important blessing: silver-fire [this is the fire Gale speaks about when his spell failed] Which is an overpowered ability in the Forgotten Realms. It can destroy any barrier and does massive damage. It can be cast once each hour, which is... wow. It can destroy “dead magic zones”, which are zones disconnected from the Weave and therefore, places where no common magic can be cast. With Silver-fire, such zones are reconnected to the Weave and become part of Mystra's influence once more. And finally, it allows precise teleportation once a day.

What we can infer now from this info and Gale, is that... when he got Mystra’s attention, it was not just because he was a prodigy alone. It had to be whether he was doing some research that interested her (probably not) or his fate was going to lead him to unknown knowledge in a future. Considering what he did with the netheril orb, one would say that maybe Mystra saw that event in a future, and considered it interesting enough to choose Gale as the one dealing with that bit of hidden and dangerous knowledge. Because so far I read, it’s clear she can see future or potential in a certain degree, and determine who replace her chosen ones. We also saw she favours those who explore the unknown without moral issues, and she has no reserves to exploit that by seductive ways.

Now, unlike Sammaster, why did Gale stop being his Chosen one if his fate was to retrieve that netheril orb? I believe she removed his title of chosen one when Gale got that orb stuck in his chest, not because his action was an aberration before her eyes (we remember she is quite flexible in her morals) but because the artefact was dangerous to herself. That orb looks to me like something that imbalances the Weave in great escale; it’s basically a necrotic black hole which feeds on Weave. Maybe she removed her favour on Gale because now the man had a power that could consume her. Remember the Chosen Ones are constantly in “touch with her body/weave” [lol, horny gods these gods], and considering that thing sucks all Weave... it seems obvious that could eat her up. So, maybe, all this stuff of Gale being Chosen One was just another of her plans to access to the knowledge of that tiny bit of primal Weave, completely hidden from her, and she is expecting for Gale to resolve it in order to recover his benefits as Chosen one.

She certainly is a super smart goddess, basically a mastermind, who doesn’t care to whom she uses and discards in order to obtain knowledge. So, using Gale this way, without explanations.... it could be one of her plans. Turn into her lover a young man that would be desperate enough to risk reaching dangerous spaces to offer her precious unknown knowledge. The plan became too dangerous to Mystra, so she severed the deep link between them out of preservation, and now she is waiting for him to solve it, offering her the knowledge obtained from the process. Absolutely possible.

But we’ll see. So far, I know a little bit more of Mystra.

Update of several days after writing this: The more I think about all this info, the more I wonder if Mystra’s Chosen One system splits her champions into two different groups: The “valuable” Chosen Ones, where Elminster and her seven daughter fall; they are the embodiment of the good use of magic in favour of neutral or good uses. And then, you have the “disposable” Chosen Ones, who seem to be more like victims of a certain degree of manipulation of the Goddess. In this category falls the necromancer Sammaster (and potentially Gale?). They can have more grey morals, but as long as they provide new knowledge and advance in the Arts, she favours them anyways. I mean… so far I read, Elminster was never “in love” with Mystra, and all that crappy dynamics between Goddess and mortal was never part of his relationship with her. His lover, though, was one of the Seven Sisters, so maybe that’s why Mystra controlled herself. I don’t know xD [These horny gods]. But when it comes to the necromancer’s story… it feels as though she encourages this seduction so the wizard will take all the necessary risks to go beyond the limits of knowledge to get her attention and favour. There is something manipulative there.