#that’s why they’re all these like fantasy epics

[astrababyy]

Tamlin and Nesta for the character bingo!

tamlin and nesta in order :DDD

[dinarosie]

If you're a Snape fan, you've probably had that moment scrolling through some Marauders posts and thought: Did these fans even read the books? Or maybe you've come across those wild comments where Snape gets turned into some kind of full-on villain, while James and Sirius get treated like flawless, saint-like heroes.

It’s like they’re talking about a totally different Harry Potter series! Sometimes, you’ve gotta wonder—do they even know what really happened in the story? Are we even talking about the same James Potter here? And honestly, comments like this kind of answer that question:

A lot of Marauders fans (not all, but definitely some) have no clue what really went down with the Marauders and Snape, who they really were, or what role they actually played in the story.

They’re just here because, let’s be real, the Marauders fandom is super appealing. It’s full of people their age, with tons of fantasy, drama, epic fanfics, hot character fan-casts, tragic love stories, and endless TikTok edits, roleplays, and cosplays. It’s fun, it’s exciting, and it makes you feel like you belong to something special.

With all this awesome fan content, why would anyone go out of their way to actually read the books and face the not-so-glamorous truth? The Marauders in the books are mostly about petty fights, bullying, and not much in the way of exciting, romantic storylines.

And that’s exactly why the hate for Snape has gotten so intense. Snape doesn’t fit the dreamy, tragic aesthetic they’re looking for. He’s basically just there to be the “bad guy,” so they have someone to hate and blame everything on. That way, their perfect heroes get to stay flawless, and Snape can just be the villain in their headcanon.

I have a more comprehensive post here about the (rebranding of the Marauders and, consequently, the need to villainize Snape)

[felassan]

Hayes Madsen for Inverse - Game Changers: 'Corinne Busche Is the Ruler of RPGs, Conqueror of Haters'

The director of Dragon Age brings her personal journey to life in her games with a rich, messy tapestry of love, life, and romance.

[source]

"If there’s a single Dragon Age character that ever made their way to Super Smash Bros, it should be the lovable dwarf Varric Tethras – at least that’s what Dragon Age: The Veilguard director Corinne Busche thinks. “Can you imagine, in a game like Smash Bros, seeing him whip around the battlefield,” Busche tells Inverse, “You could smash someone back off the ledge by giving Bianca a good old toss, and don’t worry, it’ll ricochet, he’ll catch it. It writes itself.” Varric, always with his beloved crossbow Bianca, has been something of a poster dwarf for the franchise — a constant in a series that drastically changes between each entry. But Varric himself is also a perfect representation of Dragon Age at large. An emotionally complex character, Varric openly deals with deep trauma, but can still manage to be whimsical and uplifting. That holistic sense of character is a big part of what’s made Dragon Age so successful, and lasting. Its influence is clear to see, especially in the 2023 Game of the Year, Baldur’s Gate 3 – which heavily borrows from the world and party member design of Dragon Age games. It’s a connection that’s been pointed out by countless fans and critics — but what’s fascinating is how Baldur’s Gate 3 and Veilguard feel like they’re advancing different aspects of Dragon Age’s identity. “It’s not lost on me, and it’s not lost on the team, how important these games are in people’s lives,” Busche says, “Coming into this game, that’s a tremendous feeling of accountability and of needing to be true and authentic to what these games mean to people.” When it comes to authenticity in games, plenty of directors and developers talk the talk, but Busche is the rare game maker who delivers. From her time with The Sims to Dragon Age, Busche has always brought a deep sense of humanity to the game, putting characters first and never shying away from nuance or complexity in identity, relationships, and existential crises. It’s what makes Busche a leader in the industry, and why BioWare tried so hard to carry on the Dragon Age series’ legacy with Veilguard. But Busche isn’t finished yet. She’s come a long way in the industry and has wisdom to impart — and more projects to come."

"Varric himself is also a perfect representation of Dragon Age at large. An emotionally complex character, Varric openly deals with deep trauma, but can still manage to be whimsical and uplifting"

"The Days Before Fantasy Like many developers, Busche got her start from humble beginnings, working on a series that’s a far cry from a fantasy epic — Tiger Woods PGA Tour. In fact, Busche hadn’t planned on working video games at all, but using her digital animation degree she landed work on Tiger Woods as an environmental artist, and the desire to keep making games stuck like glue. But her love of RPGs started long before that, with some deep-cut classics like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Final Fantasy XII – which she argues is the best one in the series. An even bigger influence on her personal philosophy as a developer, however, was the Square Enix cult classic Xenogears. “That was the first RPG that really touched my heart, that made me cry, where I feel in love with the characters, and realize these games have something to say,” says Busche “They touch on deep socially relevant narratives through these fantasy setting and the complexity of characters.”"

"Xenogears was an incredibly influential game to developers like Busche. Its creator, Tetsuya Takahashi, went on to make the wildly popular Xenoblade franchise."

"Those specific RPGs have a lot to say about identity and personality, and that’s a topic that Busche has constantly wanted to explore in her work – how games can explore autonomy and choice. Busche has been open in the past about transitioning while at BioWare, and how much the studio helped her feel seen and supported. But there’s another vital piece of her career that directly played into Busche’s expertise with Dragon Age, and it might not be what you think. Before leading the charge on Veilguard, Busche honed her skills working on an even bigger mega-hit franchise, The Sims. For over five years she worked in designer and creative director roles. “Working at Maxis and on a game like The Sims, is an incredibly fortunate environment for a designer to really hone their craft, and the reason I say that is they’re deeply complex games,” says Busche, “You’re really exploring underlying systems that drive character behaviors, skill progression, game economies, all allowing for emergent gameplay.”"

"Busche cut her teeth on the Sims 3: Into the Future expansion."

"To Busche, games like The Sims, or even Animal Crossing, continue to flourish because of human nature, the inherent need we have to be social creatures and form connections. They’re deeply relatable games that reflect our real lives, but in a way, that same idea can apply to a complex RPG like Dragon Age — and Busche’s time with The Sims gave her a unique advantage going into Veilguard. “I love that marriage of simulation and these fantasy worlds full of rich, deep characters that feel lived in. I believe that as RPGs continue to evolve, what you’ll see is an increasing focus on that marriage between simulation and a fantasy storytelling layer,” says Busche “After all, it’s about immersion, it’s about autonomy and relatedness. These are deep common aspects between these two seemingly different styles of games.”"

"An Origins Story Dragon Age has been a lot of things over the years, an open world game, a mobile hero-collecting title, dozens of comics and books, and even a Netflix series. Fan-created works have flourished for nearly two decades – the fan fiction archive website Archive of Our Own even has over 13,000 entries for Dragon Age: Origins alone. That idea of player agency and identity is the very bedrock of what Dragon Age is built on. As such, Dragon Age has always been incredibly progressive. Origins liberally featured queer romances, and Inquisition, the third game in the series, has a whole plotline about a major side character being transgender. This allows the series to explore themes of identity and belonging in ways other RPGs can’t, and Veilguard certainly sticks to that idea. “I’m an openly queer, trans woman,” Busche says. “It shaped everything about who I am, and it’s been the source of a lot of joy, a lot of difficulty, and perspective. For me personally, one of the greatest gifts about being trans is the amount of introspection it forces upon you. You spend a lot of time deeply examining who you are, and why that matters.”"

"Zevran from Dragon Age: Origins was an accomplished assassin, but, more notably in 2009, a bisexual character."

"For Busche, great games offer a mirror that allows you to reflect on your own identity, preferences, and choices. When developing a game, Busche says she is “thinking about the role introspection plays on people in general, and how each of us go through our lives having these moments of crises, epiphanies, and those quiet moments when you’re alone. These are questions that are ripe for personalized experiences like RPGs, especially when you consider our biggest creative pillar: Be who you want to be.” To Busche and the team it “felt like the right time” to really take Dragon Age’s exploration of identity further, especially with a character like Rook that’s so molded by the player’s personal feelings and thoughts. But one of the more interesting strides Veilguard makes is allowing you to share experiences, including romances, with a compelling cast of party members — easily some of the most memorable characters BioWare has ever created."

"The Fight For Progress And Fate For Dragon Age Questions about BioWare’s future abound, especially with the team now pivoting to focus work on Mass Effect 5 — a similarly long-awaited comeback for a beloved franchise. But in the immediate future the studio has faced a different problem, a hate campaign that’s put Veilguard at the center of a kind of culture war on social media, along with plenty of hateful comments toward developers and review bombing on sites like Metacritic. “I think we should talk about it,” Busche says. “It’s hard. I grew up in a time when it really felt like we’re there to celebrate the games and to have these shared experiences, and that drive is still there. I think the discourse we see is the result of highly polarized times, and perhaps it’s a little naive. I know it’s hard when you have to ask the question, is this game for me? Do I belong here? And games are better for it when we can say yes, you do belong here.” Dragon Age is far from the only game that’s come under fire recently, particularly for inclusions of diversity, or diverse storytelling. For most of this year, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been the constant target of a hate campaign, with Ubisoft’s art director recently condemning the backlash and harassment the studio and team has faced. The creator of the indie game Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, Abubakar Salim, has also been vocal about the “fever pitch” of racism the game and its team have received. These kinds of events seem to be happening more and more, but for BioWare and Busche, the focus is on celebrating what the team has created. “I know, and something that’s very important to me, is that games are inherently diverse when you think about the size of these teams and the specializations you have within them. When you have diverse, complex, large groups of people coming together to make something, of course, the game is going to be a reflection of those teams,” says Busche “I think we need to consider that we can make the most authentic, best experiences when we’re tying into what makes us as the developers, and you as the fans, when we can tie into those elements that make us distinctly human, and that means differences.” In Busche’s mind, not embracing the lived experiences of the development team would result in stories and worlds that feel less relatable, less alive. Game developers also need to feel safe in what they do, which ultimately means being able to see themselves reflected in their work. “We have an incredibly diverse player base, and what I mean by that is their motivations and expectations,” Busche says. “This becomes the biggest opportunity to continue that tradition of reinvention.” At the end of the day, gamers Busche believes gamers have so much in common, starting with a love for the game. “What I long for is just that opportunity for us as gamers to step back and get in touch with why we fell in love with games in the first place, and recognize how difficult and complicated and messy it is to make games,” says Busche, “To share these vulnerable experience and just approach it with a little greater sense of kindness and curiosity.”"

[source]

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka seems like it could be a cool game to drop players into with some hooks and let them do what they want. Will there be a pre-made setting or something along those lines in Eureka when it's complete?

Sorta but it’ll work a little differently from what you might be used to if you’re used to epic fantasy campaign games like D&D5e and Pathfinder.

Eureka won’t exactly have big setting books the same way that something like D&D does, it just has the one setting as described in the rulebook itself, which is primarily 21st century but can span all the way back to the late 1800s. I can dig up a post about that to link here

As for hooks, we recommend you use adventure modules. Eureka supports a LOT of things, it’s a “toolbox game,” which means that if there’s a situation that can come up during the adventure, the rulebook probably has some advice for what to roll (That’s also why it’s such a long rulebook.) - however, all of these situational considerations are in service to the one main thing: Investigation. Eureka does mystery Investigation really well, which means it does it pretty differently compared to most other games, and the way it does it means that the GM will run into trouble if they try to make everything up on the fly based on whatever random hook the PCs decide to follow up on. They’re going to investigate and find evidence, and if the GM isn’t prepared with cohesive information to give them based on that evidence, then it won’t all come together in the end.

This is not to say that Eureka adventures need to be pre-plotted or railroaded, far from it. What it means is that that hook has to have a whole line attached to it.

A good “campaign” for Eureka will probably last 2-10 sessions at most, and have one or multiple hooks, all of which are related to the same event.

That event will be something the GM has written out in detail and set in stone, which has already happened (or in more advanced cases, is actively happening). Lady Violet killed Colonel Mustard in the study with the candle stick. With that set in stone, you can start sprinkling clues around that they can find that either point to Lady Violet, or help rule out other suspects. You gotta stick with that no matter what crackpot theories about aliens or ex wives the players or PCs might come up with, because if you change it on a whim based on what the players want to be the truth, then previous clues will quickly stop making sense.

To this end, we recommend using prewritten adventure modules, because we know from experience that it’s a lot of work for a GM to make up an event to be investigated that has enough detail for every eventuality. (That’s why they pay people to write adventure modules after all, it’s work, even if it can be fun work.)

Our team plans to support Eureka for as long as is feasibly possible with continual releases of new adventure modules, and we already have four in the works to release with the full game. The beta version of one of them (Horror Harry’s Haunted House) comes free with the name-your-price beta of Eureka on itchio, and two more (The Eye of Neptune and FORIVA: The Angel Game) are available on our patreon.

You can also listen to an Actual Play playthrough of FORIVA: The Angel Game on @tinytablerpg's podcast!

And finally, Eureka is compatible with most other already-existing adventure modules about mystery Investigation, which we have a post about right here

[frumfrumfroo]

A few years ago, I was discussing The Last Jedi with a classmate and he said something like “It was a good movie, just not a good Star Wars movie”. At the time, I chalked it up to the fact that he was a teenage boy who was probably parroting the vague and irritating criticism that the movie faced at the time. Years later, I began to think about that moment more and more. Despite hearing that critique so many times, hearing it from him made me reflect on the concept of “getting” Star Wars and what fans perceive as “getting” Star Wars.

What the last few years (and the stream of post-TROS shows) have taught me, is that a large portion of fans don’t actually get what Star Wars is. The same is true for those who are currently planning the future of the franchise. They don’t see the value in the mythical framework of the series or care to understand it, it seems like they overlook it entirely. They’re so consumed by the fidelity to “the lore” that they can’t take step back and see the (mythical) elements that drew them to the story in the first place. It feels a bit arrogant of me to say that, but it’s a feeling that’s been bothering me.

Yes, part of the core of the problem is that even the people who actually like SW that DLF hired seem to be mostly fans of the old EU who are fundamentally unconcerned with what SW is actually about. People who prioritise 'lore' and minutiae, who think trivia is worldbuilding or that 'worldbuilding' is what defines the GFFA.

Whereas what actually defines the GFFA is the themes ('love people, that's all Star Wars is' -George Lucas). The universe exists to tell the story and the story exists to communicate the themes. It is character-driven, not plot or setting driven. Things making emotional sense is the only thing that matters in the OT, the logistics are irrelevant and incidental. It's not sci-fi and never has been, there is no interest in explaining the rules of the technology or codifying the Force into a structured system. There is no exploration of the relationship of society with technology because this is an epic fantasy story focussing on the conflict going on in the human spirit between selfishness and love; it's about the coming of age of an individual where the entire setting is established to facilitate that. SW is a story about individuals and their journey to ethical adulthood.

TLJ is written to the mythic archetype and themes of SW, its basic narrative shape is absolutely textbook exactly what anyone who understands literary criticism should have expected. It is exactly what a SW sequel to TFA should and needed to be. Which is why so many people doing that kind of analysis were able to accurately predict its main story beats.

The lore fans who want 'realism', video game power system Force magic, and the kind of moral ambiguity which is foundationally incompatible with SW are not fans of the story, they are fans of the trappings. These are the people who dismiss Vader's redemption as a unforunate incidental that 'everyone' can ignore because the rest of RotJ is good (paraphrase of an actual post I saw).

THE moral victory, the protagonist's moment of vindication, the entire POINT of the story and this dude thinks it's like, an accidental blooper that just kinda snuck into the edit because he wants Luke to be a standard American hero and not to have his worldview challenged.

I am totally comfortable saying they don't get SW no matter how much trivia they've memorised and merch they've collected.

[devildomwriter]

“…Excuse me? You don’t know TSL? And you call yourself a human?! Just how clueless ARE you?! How could you not know?! Just the fact that you don’t know TSL alone is proof that you’ve been wasting your life! So, I’m going to do you a favor and teach you about TSL. Make sure you pay attention! The Tale of the Seven Lords, otherwise known as TSL, is a series of fantasy novels written by Christopher Peugeot. It’s a heroic epic spanning 138 volumes, and it’s the most widely-read fantasy series in the world. There are even theatrical versions, an animated series, and feature films, too. And it’s been translated into a total of 182 different languages. The 1990s theatrical version was an utter disaster, owing to the fact that they added several characters that were NOT present in the original manuscript. At the time I was like, “this producer totally needs to crawl into a hole and die!” But then the 2015 version came out, and it was AMAZING! Better than amazing! If you ask me, it showed that needlessly cramming a female lead in there alongside Henry was a bad idea. That’s not what he needs. What he NEEDS is a friend who really understands him, and the 2015 version proved that.

Also, the most vital element of the story is that each of the Seven lords is so unique. They’re all so interesting in their own peculiar way. That’s what makes TSL so great! The lords are all brothers…the oldest is called the Lord of Corruption. He doesn’t come across as being so bad at first, but he’s always plotting and planning in secret. The second oldest is the Lord of Fools, a scumbag who’ll do anything for money. The third oldest is called the Lord of Shadow, a brooding recluse. The fourth oldest is known as the Lord of Masks. He masquerades as a high-status, upstanding member of society, but underneath it all, he’s an inhumane monster. The fifth oldest, the Lord of Lechery, only ever thinks of sex. The sixth oldest is the Lord of Flies, and he only ever thinks of food. The seventh oldest, called the lord of Emptiness. He’s weird…you never know what’s running through his head! It seems most people like the oldest lord, the lord of corruption, the best. Everyone always talks about how great he is. But not me. I like the third Lord way more. Of course, I like Henry too. He’s the protagonist. He’s almost as great as the third lord. The second Lord is total scum, a hopeless degenerate that leads a life of extravagance and indulgence. He’s always causing trouble for the third lord. He’s got these magical pigs that can give birth to solid gold piglets, and he treasures them above all else. So Henry goes and talks to the pigs, and using his wit and powers of persuasion, he convinces them to leave with him. Then, he leads every last one of them away, and presents them to the third lord as a gift! Wow…I mean, they’re SUCH GOOD FRIENDS you can almost feel it! It’s enough to make you cry! Oh, and then there’s that one really awesome moment when the two of them realize they both like and respect each other, and they high-five! I just LOVE that part, you know? I wish I could have a moment like that. …I wish I could be like the third lord. I may be a recluse like him, but we’re totally different, because he’s got an amazing friend like Henry. Check it out. See that goldfish in the fish tank there? He’s actually named Henry. I love TSL so much that I couldn’t help naming him after the main character. But I cant really high-five a goldfish, can I?

The original author of TSL, Christopher Peugeot, he’s actually a human, you know? That’s why I’m so jealous of you guys. Humans are so lucky, you’ve got subscription services that let you watch your favorite anime anytime, you can go to Akihabara whenever you want… Why do only you guys get to experience all the good stuff? I mean, humans’ whole concept of pleasure originally came from us demons, you know? We gave it to you. So, why can’t we have a little bit of it back now, huh? I mean, I want to be able to go to a Japanese maid café, too. I want to hear the maids welcome me as if I’m the master of the house, and have them draw ketchup hearts on my fried rice omelette, to experience the magic of it all. I want to cosplay as Henry, and then go stand in the center of Akihabara, or maybe that one building in Tokyo that’s shaped like upside-down triangles. And once I’m there, I want to perform Henry’s super-powerful signature finishing move for all to see and say the incantation that goes with it. I want to shout it at the top of my lungs!...Actually you know what? I want to BE Henry.”

— Leviathan’s longest TSL rant (Chapter 1-13)

[leveragehunters]

You are carrying the entire urban fantasy genre on your back. I just need you to know that your mind-blowing settings and worldbuilding in your fics have changed my brain chemistry, and have been formative in how I read fiction in the past few years

That’s all, I just wanted u to know how truly transformative and poignant ur work is 💕

Aww, my zesty lil rat, that is such an amazing thing to say! Thank you so much <3 I’m so glad you like what I write and that it’s had an impact on the way you read.

The truth is, whatever measure of excellence I’ve achieved is owed to the urban fantasy giants on whose shoulders I stand (or, more accurately, at whose feet I prostrate myself) to wave my little fic flag. If you enjoy my stories there’s a pretty good chance you’ll enjoy them even more, since they’re why I love it and why I write it.

So! In no particular order (but roughly older to newer) I give you a list:

The David Sullivan series by Tom Dietz – I think these were my first true urban fantasy. I haven’t read them for a few years (err, decades?) but they are indelibly etched on my brain.

Charles deLint – I have, and have read, everything by him, but my first was Moonheart. His Newford series in particular is grand.

The Bordelands series, edited by Terri Windling– Borderlands is a series of shared world anthologies (as was the style at the time) and a few full length novels, including Finder by Emma Bull and Elsewhere and Nevernever by Will Shetterly. If David Sullivan lured me in, Borderlands was the food I ate that doomed me to dwell here forever.

The Last Hot Time by John M Ford – is this part of the Borderlands series? No. Could it be? Hell yes!

War for the Oaks by Emma Bull (hot damn, this is still one of my faves).

The Book of Night with Moon and its sequels by Dianne Duane

Tanya Huff - The Vicki Nelson series, its follow up Smoke series (vampires in Toronto and Vancouver, respectively), the Keeper’s Chronicles, and the Enchantment Emporium series (again, all her stuff is incredible, just not all urban fantasy)

Christopher Moore - anything set in our current world, particularly Practical Demonkeeping (my first! Got it for two bucks in the bargain bin; it has since cost me several thousand dollars), the Death Merchant Chronicles, Pine Cove series, and Vampires in San Francisco (I mean, it’s all good, but some of it’s not Urban Fantasy.

A Lee Martinez - anything set in our current world (ditto the above, it's all good). Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest is my fave.

Tentatively adding David Prill and Bradley Denton, although they're more urban weirdness (maybe magical realism?) than urban fantasy. They were formative, however.  

The John Dies at the End series by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) (maybe more horrorish than urban fantasy)

TJ Klune – The House in the Cerulean Sea, its sequel Somewhere Beyond the Sea, Under the Whispering Door, In the Lives of Puppets

Anything by Seanan McGuire, but her main series are: October Daye, InCryptid, and Wayward Children. Also, MIDDLEGAME and its sequels. (She also writes as Mira Grant if you want smart scary – start with Feed. So good.)  

[thoughtsbysofi]

Why do we keep chasing the Idea of perfect love?

The love stories we tell ourselves

As hopeless romantics, we’ve all been there—daydreaming about “the one,” holding on to the magic of soulmates and chasing the fantasy of a love so perfect it feels predestined. But recently, a realization hit me:

We have no idea what love actually is.

We think we do. After all, we’ve read the books, watched the movies, and consumed enough romance content to fill entire libraries. We’ve built a collective idea of love, a shared mythos, but how much of that is real? If we’re honest, hasn’t the overconsumption of this idealized version of love distorted our understanding of it?

Take the constant projection and idealization, for example.

It’s almost automatic—whenever we meet someone even remotely attractive, our minds start weaving intricate fantasies. Suddenly, they’re not just a person; they’re the one. The chosen one. The once-in-a-lifetime love that will give our existence meaning.

In these mental scenarios, we often cast ourselves as the quirky, mysterious character—the one who will change their life forever. We picture ourselves as the free spirit, the deeply complex soul with a chaotic backstory. We’re the one they’ll never forget, the one they’ll think about with a wistful smile decades from now.

And why do we cling to this fantasy? Because we’ve been taught that she—the manic pixie dream girl, the enigmatic heroine—is lovable. Desirable. Worthy. She’s the kind of person people adore, not despite her flaws but because of them. She’s everything we’re not, and yet, in our minds, she becomes the version of ourselves we hope to be—the version we think someone could truly love.

But here’s the truth we rarely admit: in those fantasies, we’re never loved for who we really are. We’re loved for being someone else.

We imagine being adored not as the person writing this, but as the carefully curated romantic interest in someone else’s story. And for so long, that’s where we’ve placed our worth—in someone else’s gaze, someone else’s validation.

But is that fair? To us? To them?

It’s not fair to project these grand, cinematic expectations onto people who never asked for them. They’re not characters in our personal rom-com. They’re real, flawed individuals with their own stories, and they don’t owe us the fulfillment of our fantasies.

And yet, we find ourselves pulling away the moment someone doesn’t align with our imaginary script. We expect so much—everything, really—from one person. We want them to be the one, but when they don’t meet that impossible standard, we feel disappointed. And they? They’re left confused, wondering what they did wrong, when the truth is, it’s not about them at all.

It’s about us and our obsession with the idea of love.

Because here’s the kicker: love, in reality, is rarely like the movies. It’s not grand declarations or sweeping gestures. It’s not fireworks and soul-shattering kisses in the rain. Real love is…normal.

And that’s the part that terrifies us.

We crave the thrill, the drama, the intensity of love as a concept. But love in its truest form? It’s absurd in its simplicity. It’s imperfect, sometimes boring, and often inconvenient. And for those of us who’ve been raised on stories of epic romance, that normalcy feels like a letdown.

But maybe that’s the point.

Maybe real love isn’t about someone else completing us or making our lives extraordinary. Maybe it’s about learning to exist outside of someone else’s gaze. To be whole on our own, flaws and all, and to embrace the messy, unromantic, real connections we share with others.

Because in the end, isn’t that what love truly is? Not perfection, not fantasy—but presence. Showing up. Seeing and being seen. No projections, no expectations—just two imperfect people, trying their best.

And maybe that’s enough.

-xoxo

[oddlittlestories]

So I have finished season 1 of d20 fantasy high (freshman year).

First of all I am SO sad it was so short. Like the episodes were long, I’m cool there. I’m just sad it only felt like half a season at most. Just as things were warming up it was over.

Moping aside—I LOVED IT I LOVED IT I LOVED IT

I think I’ve said before that it feels like the way I run DnD campaigns but it *does*

Brennan Lee Mulligan is 100% on the side of the players and characters. Like he’s rooting for them 100%

And as things develop it is also clear that this story is built around the characters and not the other way around

Like I totally get why people love actual plays that are Dramatic and Big and Intricate and Epic Fantasy

But I spent most of my time as a player dreaming of a game that was structured around the PCs instead of us just having to play within the DMs world. It’s what I bring as a DM and it’s so the vibe FH gives me.

And it’s improvised! Like I can tell! Brennan Lee Mulligan obviously spends an enormous amount of time planning, it’s true. But when it comes to the moment, if something else is better—he does that!

Generic characters get turned into genuine NPCs. Like. There’s no way that the halfling family were meant to be anything more than a bit part. There’s just not. They remind me at the start of that little Dutch family in the commercial about learning English—the cute, polite ones dancing to the deeply explicit song. And then the players get invested. Ask if they’re gonna make it, if they’re okay, etc etc

And Brennan’s first response has such “that’s not our story” vibes.

And then he rethinks and he brings them back to check on the kids. And at some point he either thought “ooh this is gonna be funny” or “what kind of person would actually go pick up a group of kids fighting a gang to the death in the street?” And he just amps it up to eleven. It’s great.

And that whole halfling encounter leads to the ice cream shop with the super vivid ice cream elemental character. Did Brennan have that character in his back pocket? Possibly. He could’ve developed a bunch of shops in town. But I’ll tell you that I’ve improvised characters that my players found just as memorable. And now they’re going for ice cream again so it’s gonna be A Thing

And then T-Bone, the bouncer! There is no way this character was meant to be anything other than a bit obstacle, and now he works at their school. Because it was important to the PCs. I’ve seen any number of DMs, actual play and otherwise, who shut that stuff down. “Oh no the school isn’t really appropriate.” “You don’t think this will get anywhere with Goldenhorde.” Or finding another job posting to shuttle the character off. But the players want it so the players get it.

And Brennan is constantly throwing out these little details that just beg for character empathy. T-Bone’s sick dog. How the necromancer kid loved his little rat, named himself after emancipation, and wanted so desperately for the cemetery caretaker to like him. Those throwaway lines about Johnny Spells’ gang- “how’s his home life? It’s–it’s bad!” and “yeah they all had names, and backstories [starts listing them off]”

I’ve never seen another actual play where the players and DMs have DnD bits. Where it’s like. Funny but also we’re taking it seriously.

Idk. I’m probably not describing it the best but it’s just exactly how I love to play & run games and it feels so Genuine to my experiences where most actual plays just don’t connect

Also I love love love the characters and story

[artist-issues]

*shrieks into the void*

“Let me free you from having to agree that Dune is a good movie series!”

There’s no emotional depth. The three things you’re supposed to care about, with the characters, in this movie are a) Paul’s family/household, their name and their wellbeing. b) The Fremen, their cause and their wellbeing. c) Chani, Paul’s relationship with her and her wellbeing. But the movies do not display any genuine moments of these characters being relatable or human or empathetic in a way that we can all empathize with. Paul’s interactions with his father before his death are too formal and take themselves too seriously. There’s little to no humor or relaxed moments between them that the casual viewer could relate to before big, dramatic moments ramp up the tension. When everything is solemn and Shakespeare, nothing is impactful or hits you in a real way. It all quickly becomes emotional white-noise, whether the dad is screaming about a assassination attempt on his son or his death is revealed to that son—who cares? Paul and Chani? They have no build-up to their relationship. There’s no reason they should like each other beyond animal attraction. And no audience member can relate to the experience of having supernatural visions about a girl, then meeting her and gaining her trust through pitched combat and ritual training. So nobody cares when he betrays her, no matter how much dramatic music you play. And Paul’s mother’s motives are either unclear or wholly unrelatable, so you don’t care what she’s after or how it will affect everyone else.

The writing lacks pacing. There are barely any jokes or moments of regular, normal conversation. Every single conversation is weighed down by solemn “fantasy culture” references, every single line is burdened by dramatic mic-drop one-liners. Paul and his mother never talk about what they miss about their old planet together, in a normal fashion. That would be the most natural thing in the world, as they travel through the desert.

The villains are shock-jock puppets. You might as well have a clip show of people getting run over by cars or falling off of bridges playing, instead of every scene with Fayd Rautha or any Harkonen, for all that the villains add to the story. They’re just there to be loud, or erotic, or gory—but don’t worry, the movie will play dramatic, chanting music behind everything they do so that you feel a sense of “epic dread” when they’re actually doing nothing intimidating or clever, or scary. They’re just yelling and smashing people. If they twirled their mustaches and “mua-ha-ha-ha’d” they’d at least be a little campy and fun to watch—but they’d be exactly the same amount of ‘effective or interesting in the story.’

It’s all sugar, no nutrients. The sugar just happens to be pretty music, good sound and visual effects, and nice-looking actors & actresses. The message is “power is derived from the successful manipulation of those with faith.” That’s it. That’s awful. That’s an awful message. What am I supposed to do with that information? What am I supposed to carry out of that theater? I’m supposed to start abandoning submission and faith in any higher power or authority, and use those ideas for selfish ambition and control, if I were to listen to Dune.

And don’t tell me it’s profound to take your main character and make him the villain. Boo hoo hoo. That’s not profound, I don’t care if it is Timothee Chalamet. Nobody cared about who he was before he betrayed his girlfriend and seized manipulative power for himself. When Anakin Skywalker falls to the dark side and kills his wife and turns on all the people who looked to him for help? You care. Know why? Because you saw who he was and how he struggled to live up to that, before the fall ever happened. He was a human character with relatable flaws like pride and human moments, like teasing his girlfriend or making his best buddies nervous, with hobbies, like tinkering. With a competitive personality. With a deep angst over loss. Paul Atreides? Lazy. Lazy in comparison. We’re just told his dad died and told he’s sad about that, but there’s no real human attention given to that. Just big dramatic, angsty declarations and acting-explosions. We’re told he loves Chani, and expected to believe it, but given no evidence except a suggestive post-sex scene with zero romantic tension or buildup, or even bonding. All Paul Atreides is, is a character who has a laundry list of epic hard-to-do chores, and he gets them done, while dramatic music plays, as if there was some doubt he was going to be able to do his chores and you’re supposed to see his completion of the list as a moment of victory. Guess what? I don’t care about his chore list, no matter how “cultural” they are. So I don’t care about his rise or fall, or anything he’s doing, because he’s not a relatable human character. He’s just a caricature. And that would be fine. If there were any relatable human side characters to look at him through the eyes of. But there aren’t. Because this whole story is “shock and awe, look at how important we are, hear that rumbling bass in the soundtrack, see this character brooding into the horizon for the seven-thousandth shot?” What am I supposed to take away from this? All sugar. No nutrients.

[jeannereames]

Hero Alexander vs. The Real Alexander

Moving to the second half of a recent question:

And if I'm not wrong, you mention at one place that you don't "heroize" Alexander. That's interesting, since he's often worshiped as a mythical hero. Why did you move away from that?

As a writer (and a reader), I’ve always been intrigued by the challenge of humanizing the “inhuman” (which can also include the ridiculously talented).

When I fell in love with Tolkien as a girl, I wanted to know what it would be like to be an elf, to have magic, to live that long, etcetera. Maybe that’s also why I always preferred Marvel superheroes over DC. Their hallmark was to make the fantastic (mutants, etc.) more human.

Now, I love me some traditional mythopoetic fantasy, but I’m no good at producing it myself. What is mythopoetic style? Peter Beagle, Patricia McKillip, Nancy Springer, C.J. Cherryh’s sidhe novels, my friend Meredith Ann Pierce … and of course Tolkien himself, where magic is real and magical creatures are…well, magical. Inhuman. Elves … not hobbits. Like a fairy tale…a myth (hence “mythopoetic”).

Anyway, I love reading that, but can’t write it to save my soul. When I write epic/historical fantasy (and I do see SFF as my home genre), it’s closer to anthro SF than to any mythopoetic style. My current MIP (monster-in-progress) is a 6-book series set on a secondary world where two branches of humanity survived, one of which, the Aphê, have super-convenient prehensile tails. 😊 The character journey for one of the protags across the first three novels is to recognize the Aphê as human and fallible rather than as a “noble savage” wise people. (Yes, questions of “What does it mean to be ‘civilized’?” are among the series themes.)

When it comes to historical fiction, I take the same tack. Alexander is interesting to me because he was a real person who accomplished extraordinary things.* What might he have been like in real life?

Making him too perfect—good at everything, no/few mistakes (just misunderstood), always honorable, etc., bores me. That’s the Alexander of his own marketing campaign. (laugh) It was adopted and refined by some later historians such as Arrian, and Plutarch in his rhetorical pieces (less in the Life but still there). That’s why I’m not a huge fan of Renault’s Alexander, and generally prefer her other Greek novels. Manfredi and (sorta) Pressfield do the same. Tarr and Graham also keep him deliberately at a distance to allow him to remain heroized, but it bothers me less because he’s at a distance. (Btw, I do not dislike Renault's ATG novels; they're just not among my favorites, either on Alexander, or of hers.)

Yet I’m not a fan of the other approach, either: to “humanize” him by taking him down a notch—making him NOT all that, just lucky (Lucian, and Nick Nicastro). Or by upending the heroic narrative altogether and turning him into a megalomaniacal “wicked tyrant” ala Pompeius Trogus/Justin or Seneca (and Chris Cameron).

I want something (and someone) more relatable, even while letting him remain truly astonishing. To humanize the “inhuman.” I realize that’s a challenge as, the moment we do humanize him, it removes him from the realm of the hero, which in turn makes it harder to allow him to be “all that.” For some, any fault is “too much”—the proverbial clay feet—because they’re desperate to have an idol, a hero…not a person. So the haters come out when, for instance, Simone Biles pulled out of the Olympics for mental health and the Twisties. How dare she!

I’m interested in the person. Even if Alexander wanted to be Herakles Take II, he wasn’t inhuman (divine). He was just a guy, and for me, the fact he was “just a guy,” yet still accomplished all those extraordinary things, is the most remarkable part.

I’ll conclude with what I wrote at the end of the author’s note in the back of Dancing with the Lion: Rise (also available on the website):

In the end, whatever approach one takes to Alexander, whatever theories one subscribes to, more or less hostile to the conqueror, we are left with the man himself in all his complexity and contradiction. The phenomenon called “Alexander the Great” has evoked vastly different interpretations from his era to ours. It’s tempting to seek internal consistency for his behavior, or to force it when it can’t be found. Yet no one is consistent. Even more, history itself is distorted by those recording it in order to serve their unique political narratives, whether then or now. Conflicting politics create competing narratives, and histories of Alexander were (and are) especially prone to such distortions. That, in turn, brings us back to where we began: history (like historical fiction) is about who we are now, and what it’s possible for us to become. So Alexander was neither demon nor god, whatever he wanted to believe about himself. He was a man, capable of cruelty and sympathy, brilliance and blindness, paranoia and an open-handed generosity. As remarkable as he was, he was human. And that's what makes him interesting.

--------------------

* That some of these extraordinary things would be—and should be—reviled by modern standards is part of the uncomfortable contradiction, and legacy, of the ancient world. This is something I also try to depict in the novel. So there is never a “simple win” in a battle. There’s something ugly shown in or as a result of every single one. On purpose. Battle is, and should be, deeply disturbing.

[b-else-writes]

The Great CLAMP Re-Read Part 8: Legend of Chunhyang

Part 1 (RG Veda) | Part 2 (Man of Many Faces) | Part 3 (Tokyo Babylon) | Part 4 (Duklyon) | Part 5 (Clamp Detectives)| Part 6 (Shirahime)| Part 7 (X)| Part 9 (Miyuki-chan)| Part 10 (Rayearth)| Part 11 (The One I Love)

The RG Veda historical epic that never was, or better off cancelled? While X is widely cited as CLAMP's first unfinished work, there is actually another 1992 stillborn CLAMP work, before we can finally move onto 1993 in the CLAMP timeline. To be a broken record, I had no idea this existed! It’s unsurprising: only 3 chapters were ever published (plus 1 drama CD), before the magazine folded and CLAMP decided to cancel the project (yeah yeah they said they’d love to finish it. They’re liars).

Unlike many of their other discontinued early works, this one actually got a tankoban release, and Tokyopop did the now out-of-print English translation in a single volume with no extra art. Plus, I was hesitant about approaching a work of Korean folklore written by 4 Japanese women, given the history, and my fears were not unfounded. So I’m content that I put off getting the physical release for my collection. Spoilers (?) ahead.

Synopsis: In Ancient Korea, a brave young maiden called Chunhyang, opposes the injustices of the corrupt governing Yangbans. When her mother, a magic-wielding mudang, is kidnapped by their town's Yangban, Chunhyang is aided by the lecherous Mongryong, the Amhaeng’eosa, a secret government agent. Together, the two set off on adventure that will take them across Korea to liberate towns and discover the truth of Chunhyang's father.

The Story: I wrote all of that out, but the reality is what actually exists of Legend of Chunhyang is two chapters and a flashback. It's very hard to judge a story that hasn't settled in or moved further than the set up for the adventure. What we got is entertaining enough - chapter 1 is the inciting incident where Chunhyang’s mother dies and she teams up with Mongryong, 2 has them liberate a mystical flower village with the help of a rain god and twin mudang, and 3 is a flashback that reveals Chunhyang’s dead father was important and killed for defying the Yangban. It’s very Robin Hood, and moves at a good pace despite being pretty standard YA fantasy. Speaking of, I don’t think CLAMP realises most Korean towns back then would have been agricultural. Why does Chunhyang live in a huge villa doing nothing all day? I want my peasant hero, not a disgruntled pseudo noble.

The skeleton for the entire story is pretty obvious (bring revolution to Korea) and I’d definitely be curious to see more of it. But I’m also not sad we got nothing more. It’s a pleasant afternoon distraction.

The Themes: Don’t be a bully and tyrannical governments are bad and must be resisted - as long as they’re Korean (side-eyes that Rising Sun flag in CLAMP Campus Detectives. Ah, Japanese nationalism). It’s 3 chapters, that’s all I can glean.

The Characters: Chunhyang fits heavily into the CLAMP stock heroine: young, spunky, strong, pure-hearted, and athletic, shojo ingenue. Still, while she’s nothing new, I enjoyed Chunhyang. CLAMP has the formula for the fun, palatable heroine we love to see win, and I’m hardly immune. Mongryong was more bland to me, falling hard into that 90s era shojo hero who gets comically beaten up by his love interest, but always suavely swoops in to save her. It’s nostalgic, he’s hot, but that’s it. Maybe with time they would have defined themselves like RG Veda’s cast did (also archetypes), but there’s just so little!

The crumbs of minor characters are equally stock - one dimensional cackling villains, and pure beyond belief good guys. Mongryong’s tiger spirit was my favourite because I love all cats. It’s really the charm of Chunhyang that carries us above - she’s a good balance of fierce and endearing.

The Art: Legend of Chunhyang is interesting in that chapter 1 was brush inked due to their experience on Shirahime, but the remaining art was done with marker pen. The result is chapter 1 feels a bit unpolished, with backgrounds being mostly chunky blobs and quick lines in a way I found distracting. 2 and 3 work much better, with thick swirls of soft magic and flowers, giving Chunhyang a slight distinction from their other early 90s work. The panel work is quite conservative unlike RG Veda, very rarely having dynamic spreads, but satisfactory and readable. Chapter 2 is a standout of circling dragons and flowers. Everyone is gorgeously dressed and pretty. It’s not the best of CLAMP, but it’s nice and elevates the material.

Questionable Elements: While certain CLAMP podcasts have praised CLAMP for essentially rewriting the folktale to make Chunhyang more active - why would you even choose to adapt that Korean folklore then, if your intention is to make a generic Robin Hood sword and fantasy series that has zero to do with the original culture? You could just set it in feudal Japan! It feels very distasteful to deliberately choose Korea as a setting of barbaric unending tyranny that needs correcting. Especially given Japan’s history in “modernising” Korea.

On top of that, there’s a clear lack of research done - a lot of the outfits and hair accessories are inaccurate. Chunhyang’s mother’s decision to kill herself than risk dishonour is also incredibly Japanese (and notably doesn’t exist in the original). I have to cry foul because if you’re going to actually set this in a real ancient Korea, you should do your research. I’m not saying CLAMP are anti-Korean but they show a disappointing lack of care and bias.

Also. How old is Mongryong if Chunhyang is 14. Answer quickly, CLAMP.

Overall: Listen, RG Veda 2.0 this is not. Rather than an imaginative, fantastical, sweeping epic, Legend of Chunhyang is built on very familiar tropes and stock characters with a dose of cultural insensitivity and bias. It doesn’t even have a proper narrative arc, existing more as a “what if” than an almost masterpiece. It’s alleviated by the sheer charm of Chunhyang herself, its brisk, entertaining pace, and the enjoyable art. But it’s no great literary tragedy that it was never finished, and I’d really only recommend it to diehard CLAMP fans who want a quick, pleasant escape on a fantasy adventure.

[girl4music]

“For me the confirmation of Xena’s feelings comes during the time she had a visceral reaction to Gabrielle’s apparent death. It’s a moment of raw emotion that solidifies her realization about how she’s deeply in love. However, given Xena’s tumultuous past and her concerns about being a suitable partner for Gabrielle, there’s a constant theme of internal conflict throughout the series regarding their relationship because Xena often expressed her concerns about Gabrielle losing her innocence, fearing that their relationship would inevitably lead to that outcome. However, their bond did indeed change Gabrielle. As we see in episodes like ‘When Fates Collide’, which offers a glimpse of what her life might have been like had they never met. While it’s not a scenario where Gabrielle’s life necessarily improves - in fact, she misses out on the deep connection she shares with her soulmate for eternity - it does highlight the significant impact Xena has on her life. At this point Xena isn’t aware of the full extent of their connection and it wasn’t explicitly clear that Gabrielle was attracted to women despite her hero worship of Xena.

Now, Gabrielle certainly did give off some baby gay vibes but her attraction to men is also evident throughout the series. Despite these nuances, Xena likely found it easier to leave their relationship unaddressed, contenting herself with the notion that their friendship was stronger than any blood tie. Additionally, the show introduced male suitors for Gabrielle as distractions till her death in ‘Destiny’ shifted the dynamic. After Xena’s resurrection and her glimpse into Gabrielle’s thoughts she finds the courage to lean in for the kiss in ‘The Quest’. But for Gabrielle this moment comes as a surprise which was easily evident in her reaction as she pulls back and blinks at Autolycus. However, with Xena’s imminent, permanent death and the rush to obtain ambrosia there isn’t much time to dwell on these newfound feelings. Following ‘The Quest’ the duo swiftly unites to work with Callisto who had a hand in Perdicus’ death earlier in the show. Despite having a moment where they discussed their experience of being in each other’s bodies, which was not as dirty as it sounds now, Gabrielle was still processing Perdicus’ death, leaving little room to explore her feelings for Xena. So most people prefer to think that because Xena and Gabrielle haven’t discussed their feelings since ‘The Quest’, Xena perceived Gabrielle’s silence as a rejection of her advances while Gabrielle was still processing everything, especially with Perdicus’ death.”

🎯

Precisely! This is why watching the ENTIRE show as a epic romance/love story that shouldn’t be separated from the events of what’s going on in the show is important because it makes a hell of a lot more sense what actually happens and why. The death of Perdicus was not something designed to bring them together. Callisto murders Perdicus specifically to make sure that their romantic arcing would be put to an end and so all the tension between Xena and Gabrielle would be put on hold up until Gabrielle’s processing of Perdicus’ death. But of course - then Xena dies…

so that processing becomes even more complicated, however, much more sped up because Gabrielle then is forced to recognize her true feelings for Xena when they’re pushed right to the surface and she can’t bury them behind her recent husband’s death anymore because somebody much more important to her dies. Somebody she actually is and always has been in love with rather than just some idealised fantasy of love - which if you read between the lines - is about Xena!

Interpreting all of that whole arc from ‘Return Of Callisto’ all the way to ‘The Price’ shows that while they were both aware of their feelings for the other and eventually aware of the other’s feelings for each other… there was still a lot of unresolved complication and angst to get passed… so while they may have evolved their relationship into romantic/sexual territory - they still had not become a couple.

They were most definitely lovers.

But they weren’t an official couple.

And it’s really up to you whether they ever were a couple at any point in the show or that just remained best friends with benefits… and soulmates of course.

For me - I interpret them as an official couple in the last 2 seasons of the show only because it makes the most sense to me that way. But like pretty much every shipper - I acknowledge they became something more than just friends after the ‘Destiny/Quest/Necessary Evil’ arc. In fact - I think the end of ‘A Day In The Life’ is when they finally consummate their relationship even if they still were not labelling the nature of it because in that episode and the next couple of episodes after it before we get to ‘The Price’ and Xena’s almost confession… they were acting like an old married couple that had been recently intimate. Call it a sort of honeymoon phase for them… but again - not in an ‘official’ context or capacity. It’s just them trying to figure out what the hells going on with them. And the whole thing with Meleager and ‘Ulysses’ and just… They do not act like purely “friends” anymore.

They were clearly more than that. Just not a couple.

Not yet. Not for a long time or not ever. Up to you.

[yenntrash]

Galavant

Actual resolution for this year: Try to be more considerate of the things I watch/read/play etc rather than mindlessly passing from one to the next. I always have a bunch of ideas and opinions about whatever art I experience, so why not write it down rather than let it get lost into the big black hole that is my memory. Starting with: Galavant! A show I technically finished last year, but there's no better way to start 2025. Besides, I do what I want.

I fucking love musicals. One tiny problem I have with this genre is that a lot of its modern incarnations have settings or stories I just don’t really care about… Slice of life, high school drama, marshmallow-y romance… I can still enjoy those if they’re well done, of course, (Falsettos and Heathers being two of my favorites) but I keep on dreaming about an epic adventure with fighting and stakes and songs sung atop of a mountain during a storm, as the hero, sword in hand, their face soaked in blood, desperately try to get their theme going as it is irremediably getting swallowed by that of the villain standing atop of them, incorporating the thunder into their instruments and…

Galavant is exactly that, with comedy on top. And inside, and below. Ok, it’s a comedy show more than an epic adventure. But beggars can’t be choosers.

Galavant is actually a parody of all of those good old fantasy tropes, with everything that implies of subverted expectations, funny twists and fourth-wall breaking jokes. It’s a hilarious show that doesn’t take itself very seriously… And yet it still manages to pull you into its adorably silly setting, to make you care about its cast of absurd fairy tale heroes and villains, and even, at some points, to genuinely pull on your heartstrings, mostly via the character of King Richards, the most charismatic ruler in fiction, his façade of irremediably evil princess-nabber with genocidal tendencies quickly cracking to show a truly pathetic man, before he evolves into something else yet… For in the course of two short seasons, the cast of Galavant does evolve. Their point of view changes, as well as their roles and their relationships with one another… Despite being a parody, it never feels mean spirited, not towards the genre it's playfully mocking, nor toward its characters, who are allowed to become more than the strict roles they were initially given. They never feel limited, neither by Fantasy nor Comedy.

In other words, it kicks ass, the songs are great and I cannot stop listening to them, it’s very very funny… Despite its cancellation it still has a conclusion too, with only a few threads left open (in case we get “one more surprise renewal”, in the words on Weird Al the singing monk [Weird Al is in this!]) 

If you have even a passing interest in fantasy, or if, like me, you’re looking for a musical that goes out of its way to do something different, I can only recommend Galavant… If you can find it, that is. It can be on legal streaming services depending on your country… I know it wasn’t in mine, and sadly, for many of us there’s simply no way to watch it legally. 

Ah well!

[nanowrimo]

10 Ways to Turn Revision Into an Adventure

For some of us, revision may be your next big challenge during Camp. Sounds a little intimidating, doesn’t it? Well, have no fear! NaNo participant Madison Vaughn-Parra is here to make revision fun! So… you’ve got yourself a first draft. Perhaps it’s years worth of work, or perhaps it was the product of the frenzied rush that is National Novel Writing Month. Either way, you’ve deemed it a complete work, which means only one thing: it’s ready for revision.

Did you picture lightning striking on a dark and stormy night when reading the big “R” word? If so, you’re not alone! For many, revision is even more intimidating than dreaming up a novel from scratch. If writing a first draft was an adventure of epic proportions, then revising that same draft is a slog through already-explored terrain, right?

Wrong! I’ve found that revision can be just as grand of an adventure as writing 50K in 30 days! To prove it, I’d like to share ten ways you can turn your revision journey from a dreaded duty into an exciting adventure:

1. First things first: make a copy of your first draft, and then don’t touch the original! You don’t want your adventure bogged down by regrets, after all, and having an untouched first draft will ensure that if you’re unhappy with any changes, you’ll always have the original to fall back on.

2. Be prepared! Just as you wouldn’t want to forget your socks and undies, you’re going to want to pack everything you need to help you on your revision adventure. NaNoWriMo’s “Now What?” revision guide should come in handy, for starters!

3. Take a trip off the beaten path and explore all of the “What If’s”, no matter how wild they might seem. What if you added to the chemistry of your main characters and turned your action-adventure novel into a full-blown romance? What if the murder mystery mastermind was the other guy? The possibilities are endless!

4. Go on a hunt to find the most hilarious typos born from the fever-induced ramblings of the NaNo mind, and share them with your writing group for laughs!

5. Make it a game! For example, does your novel have a character who keeps disappearing from scenes they’re supposed to be in? (Mine was a tiny dragon named Mouse…) Every time you write that character back into a scene, reward yourself with a treat for “finding” them!

6. Gleefully chop away at tangents, plot twists, and descriptions you included in your first draft simply for word count. No one can stop you from backspacing now!

7. Try new tools! Is there any better feeling than using a brand new travel accessory for the first time? That’s how I felt when I first tried Scrivener’s split-screen feature and discovered just how fun it made revision. Why not check out NaNoWriMo’s offers page to see if any new tools spark your excitement?

8. Delight in discovering passages that you have absolutely no memory of writing! If you’re anything like me, there will be quite a few of them, and you’ll find you can improve them with the ease of editing someone else’s writing.

9. Capture your favorites! Create a “Snapshots” document or folder and fill it with all the first draft passages that you got right the first time. If you start feeling discouraged during revising, simply pull up these snapshots and remind yourself of your own genius!

10. If you really want to capture the NaNo spirit, try rewriting your novel from start to finish without even glancing at your first draft. This trick terrifies me, personally, but I know folks who swear by it! Congratulations! You’re now ready for your revision adventure! Pack up your bags, be kind to yourself, and have fun exploring your novel again. I’ll be right there with you!

Madison Vaughn-Parra is a lifelong writer and passionate geek, who technically works a corporate job in program management but prefers to spend her time in fantasy and science-fiction worlds of her own creation. She’s happily lost in the woods of her own revision adventure at the moment and hoping to dive into the publishing process next. She rarely posts on Twitter, but you can still follow her @vaughn__boyage if you’d like! Header Photo by Leah Kelley from Pexels

[blakebow]

For me, what bugs me about the tragedy of Arkos, the darkness of rwby, and Bumbleby over BlackSun is the Self-Righteous Martyr/God-Complex of toxic contingent within these fandoms, to me they seem to ultimately not care the message these stories are trying to convey, but rather enjoy them and flaunt them for their own self-righteous megalomania

With the deaths of Pyrrha, and Penny respectively.

As soon as that happened, many among the fandom would come out and theatrically proclaim the necessity of these tragic deaths, how it is so realistic an shows “thats life”, and brag how ultimately hopeful the stories still are and how it taught them how to be oh-so hopeful despite the odds.

In any these cases, these people act as if they themselves were righteous martyrs, prophets of God,Life,Reality, usually the latter two because they claim "that's life" or "that's reality" all in a tone that reeks of holier-than-thou arrogance and vanity

Same with the Wasps over Bumbleby because “BEST SAPPHIC REPRESENTATION EVAR!!!” and taunting BlackSun fans for being “heteronormative”

They’re like Claude Frollo in a sense

"Of my virtue, I am justly proud..."

Or worse, they speak with ghoulish glee and bragging about it gives them a feeling of power over these fictional characters as if they themselves are God almighty and it bleeds into how they treat real people who didn't like it by passive aggressively or belligerently belittling, judging, shaming, gaslighting, and sneering at them, implying the worse reasons of their distaste, and tell them to go watch a sitcom or slice-of-life anime or something

Then they brag about what story was told with these ideas and concepts to be the end-all-be-all of these concepts in any fantasy/sci-fi epics that have even the slightest tinge of darkness and conflict and Representation and, lock them down into little theories, formulas, dogmas, and rule out everything else as a corruption, heresy, or a worthless little parasite, because they themselves are the infallible, all-knowing, and all-seeing “literary experts” who got everything all figured out and everyone else, wether the majority or minority, as peon reprobates.

Forgive my Catholicism talking, but it reminds me of the Pharisees

“They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”-Matthew 23:4

These self righteous people seem to only enjoy these stories not because of the message the tragedy and suffering is trying to convey, thats just a shield for them, but rather for their moral superiority and the thrill of power over others and being the measure of all things, for they know how life exactly works for specific individuals in specific genres and they know how to carry it out exactly.

Or with Bumbleby, how they are righteous champions of queer culture against eeeeevilllll heteronormative culture which reeks of resentiment

And that's why I am so irritable about Tragedy in these kinds of stories, it feels like they are no longer enjoyed out of humility, compassion, truth, goodness, and beauty.

But rather out of pride, vanity, power, cruelty, and moral superiority

While Bumbleby over BlackSun and the whole Adam fight enrages me because it feels like some sick power fantasy of LGBTQ+ Revenge against “Heterosexuality” while Sun is supposed to be kind of humble cuck

and sometimes it tempts me want to write my rwby au fanfic and original stuff inspired by it in a way that gives them all the finger rather than for what I saw these ideas and concepts could have been, just so I can give them a taste of their own medicine

I know that's wrong, but these people test my patience, especially when they keep invading other people's spaces, bypass other people's "curations" because "there's nothing subjective about this, I need to correct and educate you", and getting away with this kind of nasty behavior

you totally lost me on all the religious stuff, i don't subscribe to that by-weekly at all, fam.

on that note though, i do agree for the most part with the idea that the wasps have taken advantage of the canonization of bees to appoint themselves to some kind of sainthood, like they're holier-than-though over the rest of the fandom. and frankly, i can't stand those insufferable type of people.

they over project themselves onto terrible ships and even though people tell them how toxic and dysfunctional it is, it goes in one ear and out the other. they don't listen. they live in a detached bubble in a separate reality.

sad to say, that's not the first time that i've encountered fans like this in a fandom. some people really should be on a no fly list because they're clearly mentally unstable and a danger to others, but i don't get to make that call, unfortunately...

i want someone from crwby to come out and tell them that bees was never planned, because i think it would utterly shatter their delusional reality if they felt so betrayed by the hand that fed them. they should be soundly slapped several dozen times until they lose all coherrence.