#JohnBierce

[tobiasbegley]

Here's mine, from https://bingobaker.com/#650a29c92409d4fb Gonna tag @katbuchm and @johnbierce but most of the other authors I know are on twitter or discord. Oof.

[arhizome]

Thanks @overlord-of-chaos for tagging!

Probably no one will have heard of most of these characters

This. Also, I won't wait to be enabled, so strap in.

Yes, I have a type. The morally questionable trickster with ideas. You might know this type of character. A friend of mine and I call them "oh, I really like this character I hope they won't die—well..."

Ostap Bender

No one here has ever heard of "The Twelve Chairs" — maybe, because it was written in Russian; maybe, because it was written in 1928. But it's so good! Though, maybe, the translation isn't. I don't know. But this book was a huge influence on me as a writer, so I can pretend to be so very, very original in my style.

It's also a satiric critique of the early Sowjet Union from two Marxists. Maybe I can get tumblr to hype it up. I'd consider this an admirable legacy.

Handsome Jack

Yeah, I've played the game quite some time ago, but it surely is in my heart forever.

Alustin

People really should talk more about agriculture! This is not a joke.

And yes, "Mage Errant" is a series about a Wizards School. But I'll curse you to have no fluffy socks forever if you say "Harry Potter knock off". (Yes, even you, senpai. I don't care what your inspirations were. I also don't like Terry Pratchett. I'm sorry!)

They're a secret service librarians! Come on! Also, if anything, based on "Seeing like a state" by James C. Scott. And that other book I haven't read yet. "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History" is its title. By Manuel DeLanda.

You want to read some fun fantasy with philosophy in it? That's your series. It also dunks on John Locke!

Loki

Don't get me wrong, the Marvel Universe's Loki is fine. He's fine. I liked him quite well. But he's not at the "I shapeshift into a six-legged mare and get pregnant to win a bet" level. _That's_ my guy. That's the level of unhinged I'm in love with.

Zyrlyss

Yes, he's my OC. What's worse he's an OC from a Baldur's Gate 3 fanfic. But I am not ashamed to put him on this list.

I've never had so much fun with a character in my life. Ostap Bender is a marxist icon compared to him. Handsome Jack — a sweet, innocent baby. Loki — a tame, cis-het... Well, actually, Zyrlyss wouldn't snatch that trophy. He's a cis dude, though gay and definitely a monster fucker. He's also a teacher just like Alustin! A bad mentor in the body of a good mentor. (There are no typos here.) Lolth-sworn and lolz-sworn.

I've read "Nietzsche and Philosophy" by Gilles Deleuze while writing my fist ever fanfic. (Don't get me wrong, I've written stuff before, just not fanfics. And don't get me wrong again, long live fanfic writers. What is literature if not fanfiction? I won't be accepting any inquiries.)

No pressure tags @yo-yoringle @reddenmore @johnbierce @existennialmemes @autumnlassitude @physicallyimprobable @rat-prophetess @momkat @accidentalslayer @loathsome-sickness

I also challenge everyone tagged to pick one of their own OCs, because fuck false humility. If you're not your own favorite writer, what are you even doing? Do you know that you can write whatever you want? You know now! You should be your favorite writer! Kill the catholic guilt!

5 Favourite Characters Poll (Tag Game)

I was tag by: @star-mum

Rules: make a poll with five of your all time favourite characters and then tag five people to do the same. See which character is everyone's favourite.

Thanks you so much for the tag

Tags <3: @meeks-beas @practically-an-x-man @outer-space-face @trashworldblog @mydearlybeloathed

[redstarreviews]

Storytellers On Tour: The Wrack

Let me just start out by saying you should read The Wrack by John Bierce! This book is such a unique Fantasy! I’m really happy I had the opportunity to join in on this blog tour featuring this book and thankful to Storytellers On Tourfor allowing me to participate! Please click that link to view the tour schedule so that you can see all the great reviews by other reader/reviewers who also took…

[katbuchm]

Yo @johnbierce I got a new great power for you

As it is Passover again, it is time for the annual debate as to whether the frog plague, which thanks to a quirk in the Hebrew, is written as a plague of frog, singular, rather than the plural, plague of frogs, was in fact, as generally imagined, a plague of many frogs, or instead a singular giant Kaiju frog. This is an ancient and venerable argument that actually goes back to the Talmud because this is what the Jewish people are. If we can't argue for fun about this sort of thing, what are we even doing.

In that spirit, I would like to submit a third possibility, which is that in fact it was one perfectly normal sized frog, who was absolutely acing Untitled Frog Game: Ancient Egypt Edition. One particularly obnoxious frog, who through sheer hard work, managed to plague all of Egypt.

[katbuchm]

@johnbierce Enjoy.

Hey did you know I keep a google drive folder with linguistics and language books  that I try to update regularly 

[katbuchm]

@johnbierce Art Noveau style of interest?

spores

ref by my friend @jawsstone

[katbuchm]

Starcrash is the most hilariously terrible movie I've ever watched. If you're the type of person to get a kick out of bad movies, this thing is the gold standard.

If you thought fighting two Donald Duck looking pirate robots with definitely-not-a-lightsaber (look at when it came out) was wild, it is absolutely nothing.

Absolutely watch this.

@johnbierce this will kill you. Do it.

Starcrash (1978)

[backpackingspace]

@johnbierce Thank you! Mage Errant is my brother's favorite book series and we've had so much fun reading them the last couple of months! The world building is so fascinating and engaging. I love how well the characters work together! Happy holidays!

An update on the Christmas gift project

[katbuchm]

Adding something because I feel like every reblog should add *something* cool to this so people have new things to investigate:

The translation schools of Córdoba and similar places.

Fun tidbit: The Ancient Greek writers and similar are only known today because of the Muslim rulers who preserved them. For a long time, Christianity was *hostile* to these writers. So the writings of, say, Aristotle, was translated into Arabic where it was studied extensively and then got translated back into Latin in the 12th century. Where? Córdoba. And elsewhere, but the sentence has more punch if it's only one word.

You see, Córdoba was in a pretty unique spot for this. Not only was it the second-biggest city in Europe at the time, it was the former seat of power of the Umayyad Caliphate, who had ruled the Iberian Peninsula for a while and recently collapsed. Even more recently, the Reconquista had made its way to its gates, and this former imperial capital was in Christian hands once again. So the European scholars interested in all that the Muslim empires had to teach went here, where a substantial Arab speaking population remained, and there got to read Aristotle and the like again. The translation work done in places like Córdoba is essential for all the thinkers and documents that would later become imperative for European self-understanding.

There are three things to be learned here (there are many, but it's easier to remember things in list form and three is a classic):

First: You have not thought enough about the logistics of spreading knowledge when everything has to be copied by hand. Between the long hours required to do this, the risk of weather ruining works being transported, and finally language barriers, very often works of knowledge would stay in their own immediate area and people would come to them (bonus thing: Places like the Library of Alexandria or Baghdad were most likely many decentralized places across the city, the library made up of church collections, private collections, collections made public by the monarch, so on).

Second: From this follows that times like Spain in the 12th century, where significant cities had changed hands, could spark significant advancements in technology, culture, philosophy, you name it. Simply because it suddenly got so much easier to read all the stuff the other side had written down.

Third: What actually got translated? It was the original works, sure, but these constitute the writings of a limited number of people over their lifetimes. It's a manageable amount. What you often find is translated are the commentaries, the analysis and discussions of these works. That's what can take up immense shelf-space, and that's where the real goodies are to be found. We place a lot of weight on the wisdom of the original thinkers, but what makes a work significant is the work everyone else puts in after to make it significant, often taking it way beyond what the original author could possibly have intended (in no small part by applying it to current-day issues and later writers).

Tag @johnbierce. Your turn.

Worldbuilding Advice

As a fantasy author, I think a LOT about worldbuilding. Like, this is my niche, I'm a worldbuilding guy. My fans often refer to my worldbuilding as dummy thicc. I'm planning a whole nonfiction work on worldbuilding.

The single biggest piece of advice I have for worldbuilders?

Your ability to create inventive, original, and intriguing worlds is ENTIRELY contingent upon your knowledge of our world. Even your imaginative muscles and your worldbuilding practice are entirely secondary to how much you know about the real world. Don't get me wrong, they're still important- a neophyte worldbuilder who hasn't been training their imagination probably won't do as well as a more practiced worldbuilder, even if the former has greater knowledge of the world than the latter. Knowledge of our world isn't the only factor- but it's undoubtedly the biggest.

I'm FAR from the first author or worldbuilder to point this out, either. N.K. Jemisin and many other excellent authors have done so as well.

The actual mechanics of real world knowledge becoming better worldbuilding are pretty straightforward- it's basically just a close relative of "know the rules before you break them." Or, to paraphrase @mostlysignssomeportents, "the rules in writing exist not to tell you what you can't do, but what is harder to do." The more you know about our own world's rules, the more you can break them in interesting, fascinating ways to create excellent worldbuilding.

The more you know about weird sea creatures? The more you can use that to design weird fantasy monsters. The more you know about chemistry? The more you can use that to design weird magical interactions. (Much of the magic in my own series, Mage Errant, is just magically induced or altered weird chemical reactions. There's a mage whose entire gimmick is triggering and reversing the rusting chemical reaction over and over again to create a huge firestorm, since it's an exothermic reaction.) Physics, same. The more you know about geology and planetary geology, the more you can use it to design weird worlds. The more you understand about our history? The better you can design realistic history for your world. The more you understand sociology and the functioning of real world societies? The better you can design fictional societies.

So... want to become a better worldbuilder? Read and listen to more nonfiction. Watch more documentaries. Audit classes online. And don't just dive into the deep end- go back to basics, shore up your foundational knowledge of history, the sciences, whatever. You'll be genuinely surprised at some of the ideas you'll pick up from that.

Being an author? It's one of the few careers that rewards breadth of knowledge as massively as it does. Lean into that, take advantage of that.

And have fun with it. Learn about stuff that genuinely interests you, and you'll find it much easier to motivate yourself. The ideas will come easier, and be more intriguing to readers.