#the reason people SHOULD read 50s sci fi is to know that the authors of the past very very accurately predicted lots of our tech

[frances-kafka]

Moderns who wanna be trad, really shouldn't pick the 50s to do it about if they wanna call themselves trad.

There was nothing "trad" about the 50s. First of all, the idea that women don't work and aren't involved in actual *production* let alone household production, was relatively new and... to a large degree, downstream of much of pre-war household production being augmented by technology and mass production. the idea that a household of five people could be supported on 40 hours a week, without the wife and children also being involved in production, was absolutely downstream of technology. So was a woman running a house without having to have a team of servants.

The "nuclear family" was a stepping stone toward atomization, in an economy that lasted for about... five minutes. It literally was a cultural artifact lasting twenty years only.

And it was futuristic as fuck, and downstream of technological innovation, not a return to the golden days, which most people actually remembered as quite horrible.

If you really wanna live in the spirit of the 50s for any reason but the shittiest and most sexist/racist parts of it, you'd want several Roomba's and a self driving car and would be the world's most annoying space nerd.

And you'd be great with stronger unions and you'd probably be okay with vaccines

[droids-in-disguise]

Favorite Books I've Read in 2023 (so far)

So fun fact I read a lot, here are my top 10 books that I’ve read so far this year, in the order I read them. Never really posted this sort of thing on tumblr before but I thought I’d give it a try.

Book details and some of my thoughts under the cut.

A Thousand Steps Into Night by Traci Chee (2022)

YA Fantasy

A Thousand Steps Into Night is a book I 100% picked up because of the cover and because it was super cheap. I hadn’t ever heard anything about the book or author. The best way I can describe this novel is that reading it conjured up the same feelings that I get from watching a Ghibli film. Our protagonist Miuko is an ordinary girl from a small village until one day she is cursed and slowly begins transforming into a demon. Hoping to find a way to break the curse, she begins to travel the land meeting lots of colorful characters, gods, and mythic figures along the way. It’s a very atmospheric and wonderfully written book that pulls a lot of inspiration from Japanese mythology and folklore

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske (2022)

Romance/Fantasy

This is the second book in the Last Binding trilogy. I feel like you could probably get away with skipping the first book if you wanted to since both books are somewhat self-contained, but why would you? The first book (A Marvellous Light) is awesome. Our story takes place in an alternate-Edwardian England where magic is real and certain people can practice it, unbeknownst to the rest of the non-magical population. Maud Blyth, a non-magical person who has the privilege of knowing about magic, is working with members of the magical community as well as her brother (the protagonist from the first book) to prevent a dangerous magical contract form falling into the wrong hands. She is travelling on an ocean liner when the old woman in her care ends up dead. Cue the murder mystery shenanigans and sapphic romance!

Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun (2022)

Romance

I actually read this book twice this year, once by myself and once for my book club. It has what is quite possibly one of the most bonkers rom-com plots I’ve ever seen and I love how ridiculous it is. Basically, our main character Ellie meets a women in Powell’s books and they have a magical, Christmas one-night-stand. Fast forward almost one year later, Ellie is having a difficult time out here in good-old Portland, OR after getting fired from her dream job and having to instead rough it as a barista. In a last-ditch effort to not lose her apartment, she agrees to marry her job’s landlord so he can get his inheritance and Ellie gets a percentage in exchange. However, it turns out that her one-night-stand from last year is her new fake-fiancé’s sister. GASP! The only place this book loses points for me is that there’s too many goddamn Taylor Swift references.

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer (2021)

YA Sci-Fi

If I had to pick a favorite out of all these books it would be this one. Reading this book felt like getting hit by a bus. Our POV character is Ambrose Cusk, an astronaut aboard the Coordinated Endeavor who has been sent on a mission into deep space to rescue his sister. His only companion is another boy named Kodiak who comes from a rival nation (think Cold War-ear space race). As they slowly start to interact with one another it becomes clear that for some reason neither one of them have any memory of the ship’s launch. The only knowledge they have of what’s going on comes from the ship’s internal computer and infrequent communications from Earth. As they begin to investigate, they discover a lot more than they bargained for. The first half of this book is like your typical gay space adventures and then at like the 50% mark onwards the rug gets pulled out from under you and you just have to go WHAT THE FUCK and then when you finish the book you just have to pretend like you’re fine and can move on with your life (you can’t). My only complaint is that this book should not have been YA, like there’s absolutely 0 reason for it to be.

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (2021)

YA Thriller

This book was unexpected for me. I have a habit of just reading books I know absolutely nothing about because someone, somewhere said it was good and because I think the cover is pretty. For some reason I assumed this would be a fantasy book but it’s actually a thriller/mystery novel, which is not at all a genre I typically go for. Our main character, Daunis Fontaine, is a biracial Ojibwe girl who loves hockey and her community. Her status as an unenrolled member of her tribe has her stuck with a foot in each world. After a family tragedy, circumstances push her to agree to work undercover with the FBI in order to find the source of a dangerous substance that has infiltrated her community and threatens the lives of those she cares about. I found Daunis to be an extremely compelling character with a strong narrative voice. Watching all the layers of the mystery getting peeled away through her investigation was extremely satisfying. She uses mainstream scientific knowledge in tandem with more tribal specific knowledge of botany and medicine in order to figure things out, which I thought was super cool. This is another book where I feel like it could’ve gotten away with not being YA, but I don’t feel as strongly about it as I do in regards to The Darkness Outside Us.

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune (2023)

Sci-fi

Where to even begin this one… Have you ever wanted a book that was partly a story about a robot found family on post-apocalyptic Earth and partly a Pinocchio retelling? Yeah me either, but I’m so glad I got it. Victor Lawson is a human raised by robots. He has a peaceful existence with his android father and other mechanical friends until his curiosity unknowingly alerts robots from his father’s former life to their existence. Vic’s father is captured and it’s up to the rest of the family to rescue him. Victor is also asexual and how he describes and navigates his asexuality was so similar to my own it was like looking in a mirror.

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H. (2023)

Memoir

This was a wonderful memoir about a queer Muslim as she reconciles those two pieces of her identity, and the struggles she faces finding community. Growing up religious, there were a lot of experiences in this memoir that I personally related to. Something I really enjoyed is how the author retold stories from the Quran and used them to frame her own queer experiences. There was a lot about this book that was very comforting to me, and I feel like it was written in a way that was accessible and easy to understand.

Black Sun (and by extension it’s sequel, Fevered Star) by Rebecca Roanhorse (2020/2022)

Fantasy

Black Sun is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, an epic fantasy series with a world inspired by pre-colonial American civilizations. This series has such a large and complex cast of characters, with chapters from multiple POVs, so it’s impossible to say if there is really any one protagonist. Essentially, the upcoming solar eclipse foretells the return of the crow god and the unbalancing of the status quo that has previously been maintained by an order of priests. Some characters are working to make sure this comes to pass, some hope to prevent it, and some aren’t quite sure where their loyalties lie. By the end of the first chapter I already knew I was in for a wild ride (the book opens on a mother sewing her 12-year old son’s eyes shut, ew). This series also features a queernormative world, where non-binary characters and same-gender relationships are commonplace.

This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron (2021)

YA Fantasy

This book was so cool and really had a lot going for it. Briseis Greene has the uncanny ability to grow and control plants. She and her two moms live in Brooklyn where they run a flower shop. One day, a visitor arrives to tell Bri that she has inherited an old country estate in upstate NY from her birth family. Bri wonders if this house could be the answer to her family’s financial woes and so they travel upstate where Bri begins to learn more about her abilities and her family’s history. Every answered question leads to dozens more unanswered and between strange individuals wandering the estate, townspeople who seem to know secrets, and increasing instances of violence and vandalism, Bri begins ask herself if staying here is worth it if it means her family might be in danger. This book is a queer, mythology inspired, part urban fantasy, part thriller/haunted house story, of a modern fairytale. Truly something in it for everyone.

[exileseverafter]

The Author of Exiles Rereads All Of Exiles Published So Far

That's right, I did it. In preparation for Book 4, I started rereading something I started writing...like...ten years ago or something. And you know what? It's pretty good! Turns out I like my stuff!

Behind the cut are a lot of rambling thoughts on each book, along with anything I might have done differently. Mild spoilers, but mostly just authorial navel-gazing.

Book One thoughts: Hey, did you know that if you're making any kind of longform work you should consider taking notes on things like character hair/eye color and background details? And also, it's good to have a beta reader? Because I don't know if I had either at the time of book one! And there are sooo many little continuity errors I noticed! They aren't things you're likely to catch unless you're looking for them, but it makes me think I want to go back at some point and not rewrite book one entirely, but just edit it a little. Fix some errors. It's still solid, and I'm pretty sure me being the author is the only reason it kind of felt like that "Spot the Errors" episode of Garfield and Friends. (Side note: If you can find it on the web, please watch the Garfield and Friends episode "Mistakes Will Happen." It's one of the funniest things ever, with far too many jokes to catch in one viewing for something that predates the internet.)

Also, it turns out that if you try to read something by downloading it in PDF form off of AO3 and putting it on your phone via Kindle, it does unholy things to the formatting. So I do not recommend reading Exiles (or anything else) like that.

Errors aside, god, this was nostalgic. One reason I started this reread was to get back into the heads of the characters, and it all started coming back to me right away. I can go oh, there's where I figured out how this would end. That's when this first comes up. Neat! Also there are some genuine accidental foreshadowing bits that lead into book three, of all things.

Book Two thoughts: Wow, this is long. It's easily the longest of the three, and I'm not sure how well the pacing holds up in retrospect. I was very much writing as a "weekly serial" rather than a novel at this point, and it shows for better or worse. There are chapters where I can tell I was just trying to get something up. Did you know if you write something with regular updates, it's a good idea to have a backlog instead of just writing week to week?

That said, this is where I started to shake off the constraints of "everything must be rooted in some preexisting fairy tale" and I think that's for the best. I started pulling inspiration from 50s pulp sci fi, Little Shop of Horrors, what people in the 90s thought VR was going to be like, and buddy cop flicks. I was figuring out my gender at the time I introduced Rem Tera, and wanted a nonbinary character whose issues were not centered around what were Nonbinary Character Tropes at the time, i.e. 'figuring out nonbinary was a thing, explaining it to others, which bathroom to use, etc.'

I also like playing with scale in unusual ways, and one thing I wanted to lean into was how to create a threatening antagonist who was a few inches tall in a world where people came in giant size. It turns out the answer is 'give him some big monsters to command and scary levels of manipulative charisma.' Lord Germain, you are the worst but I am so proud of you.

Note: I think there may be a chapter missing from the original Jukepop posting. I'll try to go through and fix it soon.

Still also very happy with the final arc, even if the story does a bit of narrative water treading to get there. This book has the most 'quiet time' with the characters, and I think in the long run it helped me flesh out the relationships established in book one and the new ones forming in book two. Especially since book three is pretty story-heavy. Speaking of! Book Three thoughts: Wow, this is like post-timeskip One Piece where one thing just leads right into another. It's unsurprising, since a lot of the plot threads laid in books one and two really activate here. Libra and Valerian have a been a presence from the beginning and Blue was hinted at as far as the Moonflower Market. So yes, I was sitting on those for a while and happy to set them off here.

No Reflection is probably the most difficult original fic work I've written so far. To give you an example, I started it too soon after finishing Of Rot and Bloom and was stalled out for years afterwards. The good news is that like any creative project that isn't made of expiring materials, you can pick a story up at any time. One day I finally decided to ditch the chapter I was stuck on, write something else and start the ball rolling again.

And it worked! I finished it. More or less. There's something of a Nona the Ninth/Alecto the Ninth "book 3 and 4 are part of a piece" feeling to the end of Book Three, but I do try to end on at least a climactic element. There are just a lot more cliffhangers this time around.

Man, I'm mean to Basil in this book and this isn't even his book! Poor guy is gonna have it rough in Book Four.

ALSO, there are at least two missing chapters, and they're important ones that reveal major plot elements. In fact, one is right in the climax. I need to fix that ASAP. Presumably AO3 lets you insert chapters? I'll figure out how.

So, what does this mean for Book Four? It means it's definitely happening, though I don't want to say it's happening immediately. Maybe after the New Year. I have some chapters prewritten for Book Four I want to revise, and this time I'm making sure I have a healthy backlog and a plot outline worked out.

For everyone who's read any part of Exiles, thanks so much for supporting me thus far! I really appreciate it. Wouldn't be able to keep up this much enthusiasm without you. And if you're thinking of writing (or drawing, or animating) your own original thing, my advice is just to do it! Just jump in. Yeah, it won't be perfect, but you'll learn by doing, and an imperfect story that exists is always better than the idealized one trapped in your head.

[luckyladylily]

Can you rant about how much nonsense Dune shields (and dune technology in general) are? I feel like explanation for shields is such bullshit and is so clumsy, that i can find better justifications for nonsense in cheap mid 2000 battle harem anime.

Unfortunately I don't actually know the technobabble science stuff behind the shields, so I cannot personally critique it. However, I am willing to take it on good faith that it sucks because most things in that book suck.

However, I can give you a bigger picture rant, for which I will use the shields as a launching off point. So the reason Dune shields exist as they do is so you can have rad slow motion knife fights. Herbert started at slow motion knife fights and built his shield science backwards. Which is fair! Making rad things to go in your book is like half the job of an author.

The problem is that this is top down world building. which, again, isn't necessarily a problem, but Dune tries *so hard* to be this serious, deep thing. It is trying to match the sci-fi tone of something like Foundation or I, Robot, regarded as highly as the grand daddies of sci-fi that took interesting, thought provoking concepts and drilled down deep to see where those concepts lead us. And you can see Herbert trying so hard to be that. He is trying so hard to establish an air of intellectual intrigue and gravitas. Except he doesn't do the thing. He doesn't take a thought provoking concept and take it apart from all sorts of angles. Instead he tries to manufacture those intellectual hooks artificially.

Which brings us back to the shields. The shields are there and operate how they do so there can be slow knife fights. Which is fine. In star wars the laser swords work so we can have cool laser sword fights, logic be damned, and we love it. But it's really hard for deep intellectual intrigue to live right beside slow knife fights or laser swords that exist just cuz. You can do it, you can make it work. But then again, with Dune it isn't just the shields and slow knife fights.

Everything in Dune is top down design. Everything exists because Herbert thought it was neat first and because it made sense second or not at all. My single favorite example is that Dune, the single most important planet in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, is controlled by a fucking baron. If you didn't know, barons are very low ranking nobility. Certainly Herbert didn't know and looks like he didn't care to find out either. And of course this isn't the only example. Dukes are extremely high ranking. House Atreides and House Harkonnen are ancient, bitter enemies. How?? The power disparity duke vs baron would be absurd. He was building up a psudo feudal society for his sci fi novel but didn't bother to research how the nobility functions at all.

My guess? He liked the way "Duke Leto" and "Baron Harkonnen" sound. That's it.

We got Dukes and Counts and Barons and Emperors and it means fuck all, which is again ok if you are writing something where it doesn't matter, but Dune is like 50% political intrigue! People will try to tell you that this is *why* you should read the books. This is the back bone world building of this novel and yet somehow I know more about nobility purely from reading isekai shoujo manga. Though I suppose, to be fair, Frank Herbert never had the advantage of reading shoujo. Maybe Dune wouldn't suck as much if he did.

As yes, all of this seems like petty nitpicking and individually it is, but it is all of them together. There are so many things like this. The man wrote an entire book that is desperately trying to pass itself off as an intellectual exercise vis-à-vis Foundation (there have been suggestions that it was written as a direct counterpoint to Foundation!) and he didn't even try to get basic world building right. The shields don't make sense, the politics don't make sense, nothing makes sense because everything is top down design and lazy top down design at that.

[hamliet]

Hello good morning, I really like your CFC ask so I come here with one after today’s chapter… especially because I don’t know how to feel in regard to 203 after HY’s reveal. What do you think? I like HY, I kinda had an inkling he either had something along the lines of the ErHa flower or he was undercover, but after 203 I discarded this idea, albeit not completely and now I’m kinda conflicted cause 203 was non-con and… yeah 😓 I trust you cause you’re very eloquent and can out into words what I can’t

Hi! So... my thoughts aren't super positive, unfortunately.

I'm really strongly reminded with this present arc of what happened during the final arc of the manga Tokyo Ghoul:re. Those of you who have been with me since then already know my Strong Opinions on it, but the short of it is that the author was under so much stress and pressure that he lost the ability to taste and smell, wasn't sleeping, and feared that if he took a break he'd never finish the story, so he rushed the ending. I've always held he did the right thing for himself. Please don't think I'd ever think otherwise. He's a genius writer of unique talent.

However, that doesn't make the story itself any better. The rushed ending was done in such a way that the main theme got utterly broken. The framing was contradictory chapter to chapter, and it ultimately took its powerful message and inverted it to something I personally found triggering and offensive. Even my personal feelings and triggers aside, it was objectively not well written.

I don't know what's going on in Meatbun's personal life, and I'm not gonna speculate. But the novel itself is a thematically contradictory mess at this point, and I don't know if it is salvageable. I'm inclined to say it's not.

This is a shame, because honestly I feel like Case File Compendium started off as by far the strongest of her novels, and up until the fight scene it pretty much kept impressing me. It took themes and concepts from 2ha and Yuwu but refined them, expounded on them in ways that felt fresh and unique, and offered powerful messages on redemption and the meaning of life. The story perfectly straddled the line between realism and cyberpunk/sci-fi.

That's kind of all gone now. It feels like everything plunged into an acid vat, and I mean colloquial acid.

The framing of 203 completely contradicts the entirety of the story before it.

So let's back up a bit. Framing is what tells you how to view a plot device, character choice, moment, etc. It indicates authorial intent in some ways. For the record, I can read pretty much anything if it's framed well. I am all for those enemies to lovers who try to kill each other, have killed a loved one, kidnap each other, whatever. But, it needs to be framed in a... morally defensible way for me to enjoy it personally. Meaning, it should be dealt with.

But, you say, the story might just not be for you, Hamliet! That's very true. It's all fine to write what you want and frame it how you want. However, it's also true that no story occurs in a vacuum, and the issues CFC explores (sexual assault) are very, very serious, and often triggering. Still, competing needs are a thing, and it's not morally wrong to read or write a story that frames it as less than a horror (it's a trope in romance, and LGBT+ media for a reason--gee, it's almost like fiction aimed at people who are societally conditioned to not express sexuality might find the concept of what's initially forced sexuality leading to hope and romance and new life resonating with them).

The problem with this in CFC is that it has made the incident in the 50s one of the inciting incidents of the novel. Now, the framing of the Club Scene actually bothered me way less than, in theory, the framing of QJJ's first sex scene between Yao Wenyu/Qiao Tianya did (it wasn't consensual, but it was not framed as a violation). However, the QJJ scene is not a major scene in the novel. 

The Club Scene was always the big "can we come back from this?" moment. He Yu's own arc started when he realized how wrong he'd been to treat Xie Qingcheng so, and there was such regret and suffering--think of He Yu writing I'm sorry, XQC over and over and over again over a significant length of time. We even had a repeat where He Yu goes back to the club to self-destruct and Xie Qingcheng decides he's not afraid this time and marches in to haul He Yu out. It was framed as deathly serious.

Now that's gone. Listen, maybe 203 is in retrospect supposed to be read as dubcon, if Xie Qingcheng really did know all along--it could, because I don't read Chinese, so clearly I'm limited in my understanding. But, I haven't heard anything from people who do read Chinese that indicates it was readable as dubcon. And even if that is the intention, which is my understanding at the moment... it feels icky.

Why would you bait readers with a serious topic that was previously framed as such a serious moment? Why is that the topic about which to pull a sudden switcheroo? It's not a good twist. It doesn't add anything to the story that revealing it earlier would have not added. It just makes us feel confused. There is 0 narrative point to keeping Xie Qingcheng and He Yu's situations a secret other than to just get off on noncon p*rn but then whoops, don't worry, it's fine. It doesn't work with the previous framing wherein it was seriously dealt with and gut-wrenching to read.

It undermines the previous handling of the topic. It just feels cheap. I don't like it. I don't like it at all.

[bereft-of-frogs]

Broken Earth Trilogy Spoilers (?? Is that a thing I should be spoiler tagging? How long has this series been out? Idk. Anyway.)

**

**

THIS:

THIS WAS SO GOOD.

Ok, years ago I made a post about being kind of annoyed how ubiquitous renaming basic fantastical concepts is in science-fiction and fantasy. The target then was Victoria Schwab’s Dark Vault duology because like…just call them ghosts. Why do we have to call ghosts ‘Histories’ when they’re just ghosts? (And to be clear, that wasn’t my main problem with that duology and also I usually like Schwab’s writing don’t come at me for that.) My annoyance stemmed from the way it feels like a lot of the time (not all the time) it’s just used to make it appear that the author is doing some creative world building when they’re really not, and it’s done carelessly without thought for what the words really mean. Like I just find with a lot of particularly YA sff, there’s no point to changing the words around. It will be like, the exact same concept but blah only plebs call them ghosts, us real people in-the-know call them Histories. (It also irks me in the same sort of nebulous way that in a lot of modern vampire stuff the characters are dismissive of cool vampire lore like ‘no, stupid audience-proxy-main-character, we can’t turn into bats and we don’t sleep in coffins, so silly’ that sucks actually, turning into bats is cool.)

(Somewhat related this is also why I personally ignore 99% of the stupid sci-fi terms that have built up in the SW Legends stuff when I write my own fic, because there’s rarely a point to deviating from familiar vocabulary in that case, it only makes reading difficult and alienates the audience for no reason.)

BUT THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE.

‘Maybe knowing the name will give you power somehow.’ ‘But maybe you can give it meaning.’ And when he called it magic I yelled. Because yeah it takes about 50 pages of The Fifth Season to sort through all the vocabulary and figure out what an orogene is and geomest and all that stuff, but Jemisin does it with a purpose and as the series is continuing, the audience is being drawn in more, it’s purposefully unfamiliar at the start and becoming more familiar. I just. Really love how intentional this all is. This really is top-tier fantasy.

Another note, the first book is an excellent example of how the reader can see a twist coming from the start and have the reveal still be really satisfying, I guessed it pretty early on and felt so vindicated when it came together. I’m so mad at myself for waiting this long to read this series, it’s so good.

Tldr; I should not have waited this long to read The Fifth Season and it is only making me more assured in my opinion that using invented words and conlangs should really only be done sparingly and with a purpose ok that’s it gotta keep reading

[felassan]

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 1

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler played DAO, specifically the mage Origin. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, or personal accessibility reasons). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into DA2 and DAI. Some of it is info which is known having been out there already, some of it is new, and all of it imo was really interesting! It leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

Note on how future streams in this series are going to work: The streams are going to be every Friday night. Most likely, every week, they’re going to play DAO. Every second week it will be Liam and DG and they’ll be doing more of this developer commentary style/way of doing things, talking about how the game was made as they play through, covering quirks and quibbles etc. Every other week, it will be Liam and a guest playing a different campaign in DAO, and Liam will be talking with them about how DA changed their lives or led them into game development, to get other peoples’ thoughts on the series (as it’s now been like 10 years). Some of these guests we may know, some we won’t. When other DA devs are brought on, it’ll be in the DG sessions. They hope to have PW and Karin Weekes on at some point. Sometime they hope to have an episode where they spend the whole time going through the lore.

(Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

DAO’s development actually finished up around April 2009. They then put it on ice for around six months before release. Human Noble is DG’s favorite Origin. It’s one of the ones he wrote. He also wrote the Dalish Origin as well (Tamlen is his doing ;__;). DAO’s temp name during development was Chronicles. DG has never played any of the DA games after they were released. He played them pre-release loads of times, when they were half-broken or incomplete etc. This stream is his first time seeing everything played after completion.

NWN: Hordes of the Underdark was the first game where DG was a/the lead writer, in charge of other writers, as opposed to a senior writer. It was pretty well-received. In the fall of 2003, BW were just finishing up HotU when James Ohlen came to DG to talk. BW had been having issues during the development of NWN with the IP holder for D&D Wizards of the Coast, so they were interested in starting their own IPs that they would have ownership over (and also for financial reasons). JO said to DG that one of these new IPs would be fantasy and one would be sci-fi. He knew that DG was more fantasy-oriented, and so asked DG if he wanted to take this on. DG was down, and the first thing to figure out was what that fantasy IP was going to be.

JO gave DG an atlas of European history, which he still has, and said that he wanted him to make a fantasy world that is reminiscent of medieval Europe and reminiscent of D&D - “make it like D&D but not, file off the serial numbers really well”. This worked for DG because he was pretty familiar with D&D and there were also lots of things that he didn’t like about it and wanted to change. So DG went off and for the next six months worked on creating a setting, beginning with documentation and the map. This was kinda strange because they had no idea at that time what their story would be. JO was very interested in having a “genetically evil” enemy in the setting (like an equivalent to orcs). DG wasn’t a big fan of this and his initial go at the setting omitted this (i.e. darkspawn were not a thing) and was a lot more realistic. JO insisted on adding them later on.

This period of development wasn’t actually a good process. There were other people who were working on the project who were designing the combat side. Looking back, DG feels that they should have put their heads together a lot sooner. The combat designers had various ideas for various prestige classes and subclasses, and DG would be like “these are nowhere in the setting [lore]”. He tried his best to add a few of them after the fact, which is why we see things like DA’s version of the bard archetype. The combat designers and artists originally had a vision in mind of a game that was much more along the lines of the type of fantasy you’d find in the Conan the Barbarian world - bare-chested barbarians, sorceresses that show a lot of skin, a grimdark world with barbarian hordes. They were just assuming that’s what it was going to be. At this point in time DG had never thought, “Oh, maybe I’m responsible for communicating my ideas to them” - he’d never done this role before and was just told to go create the world. He created world-building documentation and would send out emails saying “I’m making this documentation, please go ahead and take a look”, not learning until later on that nobody outside of the writing team really likes reading such documentation. He learned tricks later on like making the docs more accessible, less dense and wordy, and overall easier to peruse.

There was no real ‘vision holder’ for DA. Mass Effect did a much better job of that. Casey Hudson was the project director and the vision holder for ME, and he had the power to enforce a set vision of what was and was not ME. ME therefore ended up having a bit more of a coherent vision. DG was in essence the vision holder for DA, but he didn’t really have the authority to enforce it on the artists. The DA teams ended up spending a good 3.5 - 4 years of the ~6 years of DAO dev time going in circles, not exactly sure what they were going to make, the various people working on it having different ideas of what ‘kind’ of fantasy they were going to make. The writing team were leaning towards LoTR; the artists were leaning towards Conan; at one point one of the project directors was leaning towards a point-and-click Diablo-style action adventure; and nobody was overriding anybody else.

The fans who hang out on the forums and in similar places have a very different idea about what kind of game they like and want to play versus the telemetry BW get from the public in general. As an example, fans on the forums tend towards playing non-humans and feeling that playing as a human is boring. Forum-polls reflected that, but BW’s general public-telemetry shows that around 75-80% of the playerbase played a human in DAO. Elves were at 15% and dwarves 5%. In contrast, in the core/forum-based fanbase, the human figure dropped down to 30%.

DG originally wanted Zevran to be a gay romance (he has talked about this before). He asked JO if he could do that pretty early on, thinking of Jade Empire which had same-gender romance options which were really popular. BW were surprised about that, and DG had no idea that the JE team were going to do this. For DAO, he had an idea for an assassin character. He had been reading about how the CIA and KGB would often recruit gay men to be their assassins, as they didn’t tend to have family ties. DG thought this was really interesting. JO was cool with the idea on a conceptual level, but thought that the work that would end up going into it would be better served if those characters could be romanced by both male and female PCs. Zevran and Leliana weren’t intended to be bi, they were “bi out of convenience”, but at the time these sorts of things (representation and such) didn’t enter into the equation as much as it does today. DG wrote Zevran in his head as being romanceable by men.

DG would ask the hair artists, “Why all the mullets?”, because he never understood that, and he’d get “a sort of shrug response”, and an indication that “it’s easier to model, I guess?” Having hair which is loose, in the face, in locks, coming over the shoulders etc wasn’t really supported at this point by the tech or the engine. Hence, they ended up with like five different versions of mullets. On the subject of the engine, for the first half of development they were using an upgraded version of the Aurora engine from NWN, and it was not good. Several years in they decided to switch. Trent Oster was in charge at the time of making a new proprietary BW engine. At the time it wasn’t ready yet, but the DA team decided to grab it, use it and hammer it into the DA engine. That engine had “so many little weird quirks”, like lighting on skin not working properly and looking bad, and one of the issues was hair. It was supposed to be BW’s proprietary engine but it really wasn’t optimized for RPGs and didn’t include a dialogue system. They had to custom-build the conversation system. (At the time Trent didn’t think BW should be doing RPGs anymore, which is a whole other story of its own). DG recalls programmers complaining about things in the engine that weren’t ready for ‘prime-time’. Even compared to games released concurrently, DAO’s graphics were a bit dated.

For the worldbuilding, they had an internal wiki and they kept everything on there. They ended up with a lot of legacy documentation on there very quickly. Eventually they solved this by hiring an editor whose sole job it was to wrangle the documentation. DG started work on the setting in the same manner in which he’d embark on starting a homebrew - ‘so like, first, here’s a map, oh, I like this name, vague ideas, a paragraph on each major nation, a rough timeline of the history, expanding, and it just growing from there’. After about six months, they brought on other writers, and by then he had around 50 pages of documentation. This 50 pages was a minute amount compared to the amount they had generated at the time of release. Originally, they weren’t sure where in the world specifically the story would take place, so DG made sure to seed potential and brewing conflicts throughout Thedas. They settled quite quickly on the new Blight starting in Ferelden. Once they established that, the writers went to town on taking Ferelden specifically and blowing it up detail-wise. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of the dwarves and Orzammar. Mary Kirby was on Fereldan customs and traditions.

The first version of the setting was more grounded in realism, almost like a post-fantasy. The dragons and griffons were extinct and a lot of the things that were thought to be fantastical were thought to be over with. During development, they started clawing these things back. They brought back dragons because the game was named Dragon Age (lol). DG was approached like, “Hey, we named the game DA, can you bring back dragons and weave them into the story more powerfully?” Wynne’s writer Sheryl Chee had a bit of an obsession with griffons and was often like ‘omg, griffons :D’, and this is the origin of Wynne’s dialogue with the Warden about griffons.

KotOR was the first time BW had tried to do a game that was fully voiced-over. For KotOR, BW sent the work of casting, direction and so on down to another studio in California called Technicolor. BW had little say in the process then and when they got it back, “it was what it was”. By the time they got to DA and the first ME, BW had a good system down for recording and VO had become an important thing in games at the time. BW are really one of the premieres for this, a lot of actors really like acting on BW games as they get a lot of space to act where they wouldn’t normally be able to do so otherwise. DG has learned a lot from Caroline Livingstone on how to encourage the best performance out of an actor. For DAO, DG worked together with the various lead designers and Caroline to decide on the auditions, casting etc. This was one of DG’s favorite things to do.

Gideon Emery as Fenris, GDL as Solas and Eve Myles as Merrill were times where DG had written the character and then went to Caroline and said “I have an actor in mind for them, can you check it out?” These were specific times where he was able to secure the actor he wanted. This didn’t always work out, for example there are times when actors aren’t interested or have no time due to scheduling conflicts or were too expensive etc. Eve and GDL were DG’s roommate Cori’s idea. Cori was a big fan of Torchwood/the actors from Torchwood, and worked as an editor at BW for a long time. Gideon was DG’s idea after playing FF12. For DAO, DG didn’t have any specific ideas in terms of actors. Casting Morrigan was the longest, most drawn out process.

The Circle went through a whooole process during worldbuilding. Initially, mages in the game weren’t supposed to have any “fighting magic”. The restrictions were originally such that in the lore, they didn’t teach mages that. Mages weren’t taught any magic that could kill people, only ‘indirect’ forms of magic that could support others. However, [during what sounds like] playtesting it was asked “Why can’t I cast a fireball? I just want to cast a fireball”, so the writers had to go back and rework how magic in the lore worked completely.

Flemeth was originally going to be voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo, and she was totally on-board, but unfortunately because of DAO’s development delays, she was unable to attend the new recording time as she had a conflict in her schedule (she was filming House of Sand and Fog). Shoreh was quite disappointed about this and her family had been so excited that she was going to be in a video game. When the movie was finished, Shoreh came back to BW and let them know that she was still available, and this is how she ended up in ME2. For a while they were trying to find an actress with an accent that authentically mirrored Shoreh’s. Out of the blue around this time, Claudia Black’s agent sent BW an audition tape of her. At the time Claudia hadn’t done any games but wanted to get into it. The tape was of Claudia doing a beat poet rendition of Baby Got Back. DG still has this tape. DG was a big fan of Farscape and on listening to the tape, it clicked right away in his head that Claudia would be perfect for Morrigan.

The Fade ended up being a big irritation for the writers. They wanted the PC to be able to assume different forms and such while in there. A lot of this stuff proved too difficult for the combat designers to work out, and so it ended up getting changed a lot. They had a hard time coming up with gameplay that could work in the Fade. The mage Origin is DG’s least favorite of the Origin stories, as he’s really dubious about the Fade section in it. It didn’t work out like how they had pictured it in their heads. By the time they got to DAI, that’s when the Fade really looks like how the writers first described/envisioned it. By this point the artists were more keen to give it a more specific feel. DAO was made at a time when ‘brown is realistic’ was a prevailing thing in games dev.

The experience of a mage in the world isn’t represented or conveyed very well to the player when the player is a mage. The experience of the player when they’re playing a mage or have a mage in their party doesn’t really match up with how the world lore tells them how dangerous mages can be - for example, how they can lose control and so on, we never really have an example of a PC mage struggling with being taken over by a demon. This was originally supposed to be a subplot in DA2 for mage Hawkes, in one of the last cuts. In Act 2, mage Hawke was originally slowly being tricked by a demon in their head that they thought was real, only to realize at the last minute. Mouse the Pride demon in the mage Origin is the only time in the entire series that they really ever properly demonstrated how demons can fuck with [PC] mages. Also, PC templars were originally supposed to have a permanent lyrium addiction that they needed to ‘feed’, but this was scrapped as the system designers weren’t keen on it and felt that it was essentially handicapping the player. 

Mages were originally also not supposed to be able to deal with pure lyrium (it would ‘overload’ them). There is a plot where mage PCs run around touching lyrium nodes to refill their mana bars. On this DG was like “Wtf is this?” The designers said that it works, and DG said “but it flies in the face of the lore”. This instance is an example of how the DA team was working where the various departments (writers, artists, designers etc) all had their own ideas about how the game and its world would work and never overrode each other (see above). DG feels that DAO is a little contradictory in that way. It’s only after the game came out that a lot of the people on the team really “bought into” what they’d put forward. This got easier as they went on, with people involved buying then into the things that make Dragon Age, Dragon Age. At one point, not everyone on the team was even aware of those things.

DG relates that originally, they would ask the artists, “Ok, can we get a village?” and said village once created would be quite generic and non-specific to DA. The writers would try to relate how things are in the DA world and list things that would be found in a village like this specific to the DA world, and the artists either didn’t read it or had their own ideas (DG isn’t sure which), and nobody was around to tell them not to do that and that they should do it differently. Everyone having their own ideas like this is why we ended up getting something that is this sort of “cobbled together half-Conan half-LotR mish-mash”, and after a while this sort of became DA’s “thing”.

Initially, BW had concepts drawn up for a lot more different creatures. After they went in circles for those years and consequently ran out of time to do all the models, they had to cut these concepts down more and more. Demons were among the ones that were the first to go (this is why we have situations like a bereskarn as the Sloth Demon in the mage Origin). The original concepts for things like spirits of Valor and Sloth demons were really good. Early on, JO made a list of D&D creatures that he liked. He picked the ones that they were thinking of doing, sent them to DG and said to make a “DA version of this”. For example, D&D succubi essentially became Desire Demons. Desire Demons were originally patterned off Sandman, neither male nor female yet really alluring, acting more like a genie and trying to ferret out mortals’ inner desires (which are not necessarily sexual in nature), without being overtly sexual. The artists’ version came back and that was basically the model seen in-game. The writers were like “What is this, this is nothing like the description?” and the artists responded that on the list from JO, it was included, in that you had to click on “succubus” to get to the Desire Demon description, so they had just read “succubus” and done their version of a succubus. The artists did loads of great work, but this was one of the instances were DG was like “???” By then, it was too late to change it. The writers were able to encourage them to make Desire Demons a little more fearsome, so that made it in at least.

The mage Origin was one of the more contentious Origin stories. It had like 4 different versions written of it over time. It was often the case that BW would hire someone, and writing an Origin story was their first test. Three different writers came in and wrote a version of the mage Origin and those versions just didn’t work. Finally they passed it to Sheryl Chee and she wrote it. The Origins were the parts of the game in general that were written/rewritten the most often. There were several others that got written that they discarded. 

Duncan was slated for death from Day 1. When DG writes a story, the thing he does first is pick out the big emotional beats that he wants, such as deaths. He decides these ahead of time and the stuff in-between comes later and is more often changed. Oghren was also originally supposed to die, but this ended up getting cut. DG related a story of how Oghren came to be: At the time, there was a phase JO went through when he thought everything had a formula that it could be done by. One of these ‘creative forumulas’ was that all such IPs had a two-word name that they’re known by, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Dragonlance (being Dragon-Lance). This is how ‘DA’ and ‘ME’ came to be. One of the formulas he wanted to implement was how to distill the ‘comedy character’, like Minsc or HK-47. These characters were very popular with the fans and JO was certain that there was a way to figure this out to create one for DA. At the time, DG argued with him a lot about this. JO insisted it could be done. DG was originally supposed to write this character but ended up not doing so. JO came up with a list of comedic archetypes and had DG write a blurb about what kind of character each could be. These were then sent out to the team who voted on which was their favorite. This process eventually resulted in an archetype basically called ‘The Buffoon’ (think Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin, the kind of guy people laugh at because he’s such an oaf).

At this point ‘The Buffoon’ wasn’t named or made a dwarf yet. JO came to DG to write him, but DG said there was a problem which is that he hates this archetype. Homer and Peter are characters that he despises. DG is a professional writer, but this was comedy (outside of his areas of strength), and he felt the best he would be able to do is write a character who makes fun of this archetype and lampshade that. Comedy is something that has to come from within the writer. Oghren was given to someone else, and he ended up getting rewritten again anyway. By the time they were working on Awakening, DAO had not yet come out, and the assumption prior to the game going out was that Oghren was still going to be the most popular character from among the followers. The comedic character that ended up being the most popular along these lines was Alistair, which was interesting as he wasn’t intended as a comedic character, “so shows what we know”. DG was dubious that Oghren was going to be popular, because “he was kind of pathetic, honestly”, but that was the thinking at the time. Thinking he would be well-loved is why he was in Awakening.

On Alistair, any character DG writes is going to be sarcastic. At the time DG had made it a sort of personal challenge to recreate Joss Whedon’s dialogue patterns in his characters. Alistair was a sort of mish-mash of Xander from Buffy and maybe Mal from Firefly. DG wanted to see if he could do it, so Alistair was kind of quippy and self-deprecating. DG never really considered this to be Alistair’s main personality feature, but when other writers wrote him, they often had him doing this, as they liked the trait so much, and so this is how Alistair ended up as he did.

On dwarves, the dwarves being cut off from the Fade is very much baked into who the dwarves are as a race. There’s a specific reason why. This has been hinted at so far and it’s likely to come up in the future. DG had various ideas for some things that he wanted to include with the races or the way the world works etc. Some of them ended up never happening or some are mentioned only as part of the lore (templar lyrium addiction never coming up in gameplay is an example of this). Dwarven history and the nature of the dwarves is one of the things that survived pretty well though. DG calls Jennifer Hepler “mistress of the dwarves” and says that she did a really detailed, amazing breakdown of their history. After Jennifer left it was Mary Kirby, and DG feels that they did a good job of maintaining how dwarves were, in terms of both how they’re often presented in fantasy and yet also quite different in DA. Orzammar is one of DG’s favorite plots all together. You can really tell that Jennifer Hepler really enjoyed the dwarves and brought a lot of love to that plot.

DG draws a distinction between DA fans and the unpleasant people who harassed Jennifer Hepler.

They managed to keep the Tranquil in. There was a while there where they were going to be cut. At the same time, DG regrets that they couldn’t solve the making of the player more aware of how mages are dangerous, thing. Players could make a cogent argument like “they’re not that dangerous, look at me [mage PC]” and the writers were like “well... yeah, that is fair”. It was a case of showing one thing and the player experience of it being another. DG feels that this made the templars come off worse than they are. DG feels that they are being massively unfair and too extreme in their approach to the problem, but the problem itself is a real thing. He feels that there’s some merit/truth in the argument that mages are oppressed, but he looks at it more like an issue like gun control rather than as treatment of oppressed people, saying that we don’t have an example in real life of oppressed people who can explode into demons and cast fireballs and so on.

There are some funny pronunciations that worked their way into DA, and the reason for a lot of them is as follows: the writers had to create a pronunciation guide for VO, because otherwise you end up with a lot of inconsistencies. (Some did still slip through). The guide was online, and if you clicked on a word, an audio file for it would play. Jennifer Hepler was in charge of this and did a great job, but has a really strong NY accent, and in some cases the ‘NY-ness’ of her pronunciation endearingly worked itself into things (the way Arlathan is sometimes said is an example of where this happened sometimes).

Sometimes the writers trying to communicate the “hotness” of a character to the artists didn’t go smoothly. The writers would sometimes say things like, ok, this character is a romance, they need to be hot, and the designs would come back looking “like Burt Reynolds”, and the writers would be like “???” And then a character that wasn’t particularly intended to be hot, as in that wasn’t mentioned at all in the descriptions of them, would come back “accidentally hot”, and the writers would be like “Why couldn’t you have done this when we were asking for a character that was meant to be hot”, and the artists would be like “What?? He’s not hot”. And this became a thing (lmao - this discussion was prompted by DG being asked “Was Duncan meant to be that hot?”, for context). Some of the artists were so paranoid about their [in]ability to judge actually-hot characters that when it was time to pick an appearance, like for Alistair, they gathered up all the women at BioWare, and DG (“resident gay”) into a room to show them an array of faces and bodies like “Is this hot? Is this hot?” DG and co would sit there like, “How can you not tell? Is this a straight man thing?!” Anyways, this is why oftentimes we ended up with characters who are accidentally hot.

Over time, the writers realized that the way they communicated to artists needed to be managed better. The words they would use would have different connotations to them the writers, than what they did to the artists. For example, for Anders’ design in DA2, he was supposed to be “a little haggard”. When DG thinks of haggard, he thinks ‘a little tired, mussed hair, looking like you’ve been through some shit’. But the artists based on that produced concepts with super sunken cheeks, looking like he’d been terribly starved. The writers needed to develop a specific vocabulary for communicating with the artists, as artists think in terms of how something looks, but writers are thinking in terms of what the character “is”. Anders’ description talked about his history a lot, and the one visual-type word that jumped out was “haggard” due to its visual connotations. “A lot it came down to the writers being up their/our own asses.”

When they got to DAI, they had figured out that the way to get best results on this front was /not/ to have the writer go off and develop a long description and pre-conceived notion of what the character looked like in their head. In such scenarios artists don’t feel that they have much to contribute to the process or an ability to put their own stamp on who this character is and make them interesting to them (the best, most interesting characters are when people at all stages of the pipeline properly get to feed into it). They learned that the better solution was to bring the artists in earlier, and to give them little blurbs, and not name the character but give them an ‘archetype’-sort of ‘name’. For example, Dorian was “the rockstar mage”, “cool”, “Freddie Mercury”. The writers wouldn’t be sure that a particular concept would ‘hit’, so at this stage they would offer an array of options and sit the artist down and walk them through the concepts. The artists would then provide a bunch of sketches and it would go back and forth, with both taking part in the character creation process together. For the first two games, the writers were “really hogging” this process to themselves. They got better at not doing this and better at communicating with the artists by DAI.

There were a lot of arguments about how mages in DAO had a lot of specific lore words like “Harrowing”, “phylactery”, “Rite of Tranquility” etc. There was concern that this would be too confusing for players to understand and that it was too complicated. DG says that thankfully he put his foot down and pushed for this stuff to be kept. A lot of fans assume that as lead writer DG had all this influence, way more influence than he could possibly exert on a team. He wasn’t even a lead, he was a sub-lead, under a lead designer. He only had so much say. If the lead designer or lead artist wanted to do something differently, often there was not much he could do. Hence he had to pick his battles carefully, choose the important ones to fight. The mage vocabulary thing was one of these.

Templar Greagoir’s name is pronounced “Gregor” and it comes from a place in Alberta near where DG lived.

Codex entries are usually one of the last things that get done in a project like this, and so all of that kind of textual lore comes in super late and is super punchy as by then the writers have written so much and are exhausted. They had to find a way to make this process cute or interesting or fun for themselves, which is why a lot of entries are quite fun to read. Sometimes a writer would make a joke for banter [irl], and it would end up making it into an entry.

Only Morrigan and Duncan got unique body models in DAO. The companions all have custom-morphed heads but not custom-morphed bodies (Morrigan not included here). This is why every model has a necklace or a collar right at the point where they had to be attached to be a body. These sometimes used assets that couldn’t be used by the PC but were not unique to that character. Duncan probably got a unique model because he was in a lot of marketing/promotional material. Qunari were originally conceived as having horns.

Most people didn’t even finish DAO once (public telemetry again here), only approximately 20-25% actually did. The devs try not to read too much into this kind of thing, but the telemetry does tell them where a lot of people stop playing the game permanently (they call these “drop-off points”). One of these points in DAO is the Fade during Broken Circle. Sometimes when people interpret this data they involve self-serving biases, but it was generally accepted that the Fade there was too long, too complex, not interesting enough, etc. [source]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

[haveyouseenthisskeleton]

what is the favorite book/film/music of the skelebro?

Undertale Sans - No big surprise here, he loves things that makes him laugh. He was stuck for too long Underground and now he has 50 years of comedy to catch up. He also loves sci-fi and fantasy books and films a lot. He even tried role play. He’s not really a music type of people, even if he still enjoys a lot films ost.

Undertale Papyrus - He loves action films and detective stories the most. He also enjoys super-hero comics, cartoons, animes and movies. And also documentaries about the human body for some reason. It’s still weird when S/O come to the room and see it passionate about human feet. For music, he’s not difficult either. He loves whatever his S/O loves. He has no ears anyway, you know. 

Underswap Sans - He loves comedy, but also these romantic-thrillery TV movies of the afternoon. He loves to predict all the stories since everything is so bad playing. It’s like a puzzle. For music, he loves everything that is a bit rythmic. He listend to it while doing his jogging the morning. 

Underswap Papyrus - Disney movies. Disney OST. Cartoons. And that’s it. If you let him, he can spend two days crying and laughing watching Disney movies and cartoons. He’s so into it you can sometimes hear him yell after the villain.

Underfell Sans - He’s a Netflix watcher. He doesn’t like TV a lot, since Boss never wanted him to watch it anyway in the Underground. The only thing he’s using his TV for is playing video games. God, he loves new video games. The power to kill people without doing it for real. His favorite music are his favorite video games OST. And Metal. He doesn’t like the music, but it’s pissing Edge off, so it’s his favorite music now.

Underfell Papyrus - Believe it or not, he loves Titanic. It got him everytime. He should be happy that everyone dies but he’s always crying like a baby, hugging a big pillow at the end. He is trying to watch it often so he can outpass that stupid weakness but it doesn’t work. He’s yelling after Jack’s stupidity everytime. “WHY WOULD YOU STAY IN THE WATER YOU IDIOT DUMBASS THERE’S ENOUGH PLACE FOR TWO !?”. He enjoys a lot classic music too. Since he is very angry all the time, it’s almost calming him down. Same thing for books. He read only classic books. 

Horrortale Sans - Since he has a very low concentration, he’s only enjoying short films and animations, and short books too. He loves comics, strip cartoons, and mangas. It easier to read without him sleeping after two pages. He likes every type of music. He is very anxious all the time and listening to music is one way to calm him down. He has playlists to go with how he feels on the day.

Horrortale Papyrus - He loves sitcoms. He has already watch all the most known one hundred of times, but he is still enjoying it. He also have a passion for old movies and TV shows, because he finds fascinating how everything is evolving so fast in the human world. He loves reading young adult big books on everything, and mostly on fantasy and science-fiction. He actually has a Bookstagram and he is popular on it.

Swapfell Sans - He is such a boomer. He watches only author films and the ones with a deep psychological dimension. He loves reading autobiography and politics book, science and documentaries one too. But he has a deep, deep secret. Hiding in a closet, he’s got a collection of children’s album. He loves the different types of drawings more than the story, but he still scared his brother found out and mocked him about him. He is a very serious Skelly boy. He also enjoys classic music.

Swapfell Papyrus - He’s a big fan of japanese stupid shows. He loves to see how humanity is able to being crazy without being judge. And sometimes people almost die ! That’s so cool ! He also likes animes and is spoiling everything on social medias just to fight with random people, even if he doesn’t like the show. He has also a passion for bad special effects on movies. He used them to spam his brother mailbox and make him angry. His favorite movie is The Gremlins. He watched it with his brother one time. The next day, he bought 700 furbies and make him believe that was Gremlins. Sans is traumatised. He’s having panic attacks when he saw Furbies now. He doesn’t read much, except for Alphys’ fanfictions because it’s always funny. He is always dying in these. He is also a Metal listener. He loves Metal, and even more Metal concerts. 

[peanutparade]

Someone asked me what my process was, and I’m not sure I gave her a satisfying answer in the PM, so here I will attempt to explain how I make a game from start to finish.

*Please note the the drafts above are not for the same story, but for the purpose of illustration.

**Also please take this advice with a grain of salt. I’m not a published author (though I do know a bit about the publishing industry), and I’m definitely not a perfect writer. This is my process, and the things I try to keep in mind when I’m writing, and you may find this advice to be complete garbage.

Step one: Get an idea for a story. I can’t really give any tips on how to go about doing this. I tend to take inspiration from other works of media (classical literature is my favorite, though I have taken cues from more contemporary sources as well).

Step two: Consider who your characters are going to be. It’s okay if you only have one or two characters in mind at first. I’m pretty utilitarian about my characters, so most of them don’t get created until step three.

Step three: Open a word document and just start typing shit out. (I use Google Drive so I can access it from anywhere, and for another reason which I’ll get to later.) Don’t stop to think, don’t even breathe. Just type. Any idea that comes into your head goes in the document. Some of it won’t make sense with everything else, some of it will contradict other things, some of it will be vaguely defined. You will fix that later. This is the most important part (especially the way I write), because it’s where you’re going to get an idea of how your story starts and how it ends, as well as cement your cast of characters. If you need a scene where your main character goes to a lighthouse, then you know you’ll also need to come up with a lighthouse keeper (see my comment above about being utilitarian with characters. I’m no authority, so if you do things differently, that’s fine, but I don’t like making characters that don’t serve a purpose).

Step four: Annotation, annotation, annotation! (This is the other thing I use Google Drive for, as it has a comment feature that I heavily rely on.) Go through all your scribbling and make notes for yourself. Be a little hard on yourself here, because this is the part where you’re going to try to make everything you’ve written in Draft 1 cohesive. This will be a long process, as you need to think about how all of this is connected, as well as think about what sort of arcs your main characters are going to go through. I read somewhere once that ALL of your characters have to go through an arc, but that’s a bunch of wacky nonsense. Some characters are minor characters, and thus do not require depth. The only character arc that MUST be included is the main character’s arc. Remember: character arc ≠ character motivation. ALL major characters (protagonist(s), love interest(s), villain(s)) MUST have motivation for what they are doing. The motivation doesn’t have to be anything too complex, just so long as the audience understands why the characters are doing what they’re doing. (Minor characters with motivation can make the world feel more real and lived in, but they can also make the story feel bogged down. Brevity is key here, and sometimes less is more.)

Step five: Draft 2 All of that plotting you just did? Throw it away! Just kidding, don’t actually throw it away. BUT you’re going to rewrite your plot outline, tidier this time, and only refer back to Draft 1 when you get stuck. Feel free to come up with new ideas during this time; Draft 1 is not your story’s final form. If you think of scenes or quotes, feel free to include them in this draft, but you’re mostly just outlining right now. (As you may notice in the image above, Draft 2 is also subject to annotation.) Draft 2 is where you should be solidifying the themes of your story. Character arc(s) should tie into and support this theme. This is also the draft where you should be catching any plot holes (especially if you don’t have an editor/beta reader), as once you’ve begun actually writing the story, any problems here will only compound as you go.

Step six: Write the story It’s pretty straightforward. Follow Draft 2 (and any additional annotations you made on Draft 2), and go scene by scene and write. I never skip around, as it makes it hard to keep track of what characters know at what time, but I know of authors that do skip around, and they seem to do okay. You’ll have to figure out what works best for you.

Step seven: Edit, edit, edit! Aside from the obvious (typos and spelling errors), look out for:

Scenes that are too long or too short. Counterintuitively, these may be the result of the same problem: a lack of purpose. Ask yourself, “Does this need to be here?”

Long-winded info dumps. Consider the old adage, “show, don’t tell.” Whenever information can be conveyed through action or reaction, write it that way. If you can convey two things at the same time (i.e. something about a character and also something about the world--bonus if these two things are actually unrelated to each other), do it.

Information that your audience wouldn’t logically have being the key to resolving the plot. Especially in sci-fi and fantasy stories, if the conclusion of the story relies on knowing something--even if it’s something that the characters all know--you need to make sure your audience also knows this, or else they will be frustrated. Keep in mind the Rule of Threes.

And that’s the story portion done. If you’re making a visual novel/dating sim, there are other steps you need to do. (I usually do this stuff while writing the story so it doesn’t get tedious, but if you’re hiring people to do this other stuff, you should probably have the writing done ahead of time. If you’re hiring writers to help you, you should have Draft 1 done, at the least. Your writers can probably take it from there.)

NOTE: Any job you don’t do yourself is something that will cost you money. If you can find other aspiring creators to volunteer their time to your project, good for you, but please do not approach anyone directly unless you plan to offer to pay them (”for exposure” is not payment).

Step eight: Character sprites Major characters are going to need to be represented visually in your visual novel (go figure!), so... draw some people? I know some people make character design sheets, but I just jump right in, and then later, make microedits to the sprites as the mood strikes me. The design sheet thing is probably a smarter way to do it. I use photoshop, and I would strongly encourage keeping hair, clothing, and facial features on separate layers until you know exactly how you plan to code them into your game.

Step nine: Backgrounds Same as the sprites, except places instead of people. I’m bad at this, so I have no right to give anyone advice. I use a 3D interior design app to create a guide for what I want rooms to look like, and then I use that to get my vanishing points and furniture sizing right. This method is 50% tracing, 50% wishing I was dead. I do not recommend it.

Step ten: Audio If your game will have voice acting, get that together now. If you’re composing your own music, you’re more talented than I am. For my first game, I utilized royalty free options (incompetech and bensound), but now I hire a composer (I do still supplement my soundtrack with royalty free options if it’s for something inconsequential). I don’t use many sound effects, but when I do, I just look for free options online.

Step eleven: Coding I use Ren’py because it’s free and easy to learn (provided you don’t want to do anything too complicated). There are tons of resources online to teach you how to use Ren’py, both from official sources and unofficial sources. I’ve never posted in the forums myself, but the people there seem very kind and helpful if you get stuck. (If anyone wants to see how I code, specifically, I’ll do a Part Two for it, but I have to warn you that my games are the coding equivalent car repairs done with bubblegum and duct tape.)

Step twelve: Playtesting Make sure your game works. It’s pretty straightforward. You can even recruit some guinea pigs--I mean, friends to help you. (I don’t have any friends, so I do this part on my own.)

By this point, a year or so will have passed (give or take, depending how long your game is, how much time you have to work on it, and how much of the work you plan to do by yourself), and with any luck, you’ll have a game! Posting your game on itch.io is free, but putting your game on steam will cost you $100.

Like I said to the person on patreon who originally asked me about my process, making a visual novel is a lot of work, but I encourage everyone to at least try it and see if you like it.

I look forward to hearing your stories!  ♥

[sciencespies]

Interstellar travel could make human language evolve beyond recognition, study says

https://sciencespies.com/space/interstellar-travel-could-make-human-language-evolve-beyond-recognition-study-says/

Interstellar travel could make human language evolve beyond recognition, study says

It’s a captivating idea: build an interstellar ark, fill it with people, flora, and fauna of every kind, and set your course for a distant star! The concept is not only science fiction gold, its been the subject of many scientific studies and proposals.

By building a ship that can accommodate multiple generations of human beings (aka. a Generation Ship), humans could colonize the known Universe.

But of course, there are downsides to this imaginative proposal. During such a long voyage, multiple generations of people will be born and raised inside a closed environment. This could lead to all kinds of biological issues or mutations that we simply can’t foresee.

But according to a new study by a team of linguistics professors, there’s something else that will be subject to mutation during such a voyage – language itself!

This study, “Language Development During Interstellar Travel“, appeared in the April issue of Acta Futura, the journal of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concepts Team.

The team consisted of Andrew McKenzie, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Kansas; and Jeffrey Punske, an assistant professor of linguistics at Southern Illinois University.

In this study, McKenzie and Punske discuss how languages evolve over time whenever communities grow isolated from one another. This would certainly be the case in the event of a long interstellar voyage and/or as a result of interplanetary colonization.

Eventually, this could mean that the language of the colonists would be unintelligible to the people of Earth, should they meet up again later.

For those who took English at the senior or college level, the story of Caxton’s “eggys” ought to be a familiar one.

In the preface to his 1490 translation of Virgil’s Aeneid (Eneydos) into Middle English, he tells a story of a group of merchants who are traveling down the Thames toward Holland. Due to poor winds, they are forced to dock in the county of Kent, just 80 kilometres (50 miles) downriver and look for something to eat:

“And one of them named Sheffield, a merchant, came into a house and asked for meat and, specifically, he asked for eggs (“eggys”). And the good wife answered that she could speak no French. And the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.”

This story illustrates how people in 15th century England could travel within the same country and experience a language barrier. Well, multiply that to 4.25 light-years to the nearest star system and you can begin to see how language could be a major complication when it comes to interstellar travel.

To illustrate, McKenzie and Punske use examples of different language families on Earth and how new languages emerged due to distance and time. They then extrapolated how this same process would occur over the course of 10 generations or more of interstellar/interplanetary travel.

As McKenzie explained in a UK press release:

“If you’re on this vessel for 10 generations, new concepts will emerge, new social issues will come up, and people will create ways of talking about them, and these will become the vocabulary particular to the ship. People on Earth might never know about these words, unless there’s a reason to tell them.

“And the further away you get, the less you’re going to talk to people back home. Generations pass, and there’s no one really back home to talk to. And there’s not much you want to tell them, because they’ll only find out years later, and then you’ll hear back from them years after that.”

An example they use is the case of Polynesian sailors who populated the South Pacific islands between 3,000 and 1,000 BCE.

Though the roots of these sailors are traced to Taiwan (ca. 6000 BCE) this process of expansion led to the development of entirely new cultures by the 1st millennium BCE. The Polynesian languages that emerged bore little resemblance to the ancient Austronesia language (aka. “Formosan”) of their ancestors.

Similarly, the authors cite language changes that take place within the same language community over time, using the example of “uptalk.” Also known as “High Rising Terminal,” this phenomenon involves statements ending with a rise in intonation.

While it is often mistaken for a question by those who are unfamiliar with it, the convention is actually intended to indicate politeness or inclusion.

As the authors note, “uptalk” has only been observed in the English language within the past 40 years and its origins are unclear. Nevertheless, the spread of it has been noted, particularly by members of the Baby Boomer generation that use it today, but did not in their youth.

Another issue they identify is sign language, which will require adaptation from the crew since some crewmembers will be born hearing impaired.

Without someone keeping track of changes and trying to maintain grammatical standards, linguistic divergence will be inevitable. But as they note, that might be irrelevant, since language on Earth is going to change during that same time.

“So they may well be communicating like we’d be using Latin – communicating with this version of the language nobody uses,” said McKenzie.

Last, but not least, they address what will happen when subsequent ships from Earth reach the colonized planets and meet the locals. Without some means of preparation (like communication with the colony before they reach it), new waves of immigrants will encounter a language barrier and could find themselves being discriminated against.

Because of this, they recommend that any future interplanetary or interstellar missions include linguists or people who are trained in what to expect – translation software ain’t gonna’ cut it!

They further recommend that additional studies of likely language changes aboard interstellar spacecraft be conducted, so people know what to expect in advance. Or as they conclude in their study:

“Given the certainty that these issues will arise in scenarios such as these, and the uncertainty of exactly how they will progress, we strongly suggest that any crew exhibit strong levels of metalinguistic training in addition to simply knowing the required languages. There will be need for an informed linguistic policy on board that can be maintained without referring back to Earth-based regulations.”

Just for fun, let’s see what kinds of linguistic changes could take place.

For starters, let’s assume that a generation ship does take a full ten generations to reach its destination – in this case, Proxima b. Ten more generations pass before the next ship arrives, bringing people from Earth who still speak modern English.

Using the language evolution-simulator Onset, and an English-IPA translator, we can get a small taste of how a simple English-language greeting, and a common request (if you’re in a 50s sci-fi B movie), would change over twenty generations:

“Helluhuh fret, goot tu’uh be’yat yu. Took be’ye to’o u’ul ley’eru, pley’yaz.”

As you can see “Hello friend, good to meet you. Take me to your leader, please” comes out a little different after twenty generations of separation.

How about something more complicated, but no less familiar? Here’s a famous speech that fans of space exploration and history should recognize. After twenty years of interstellar travel, here’s how that speech would sound:

“Wu’eh cho’oz to’o go to’o too Bo’od! Wu’eh cho’oz to’o go to’o too Bood id teez dey’ich udh do’oh tey’e de uttur teedgz, dot biga’ozz tey’e ar ey’ery’eh, boot biga’ozz tey’e ar hard; biga’ozz tat goal wool surve to’o olgoodiez uhd bez’hur too bezt oov uhur eluree’iaz uhd skeelz, uhd biga’ozz tat chaludi iz wuhd tat wu’e ahr wooleet to’oh igsept, wuhd wu’e ahr udu’illid to’o postbode, ohd wuhd wu’e iddet to’o wud.”

Can you guess what speech that is? Keep in mind, this is just a basic simulation of how the English language might change for a group of colonists, never mind people here on Earth.

And when you take time to consider all of the spoken language and dialects spoke today, and that any combination of these will be brought with the colonists to the stars, you can see how confounding it all could be!

There is a reason why the myth of the Tower of Babel remains embedded in our collective unconscious. Language barriers have always been a hurdle for human interaction, especially where long stretches of time and space are concerned.

So if humanity plans to “go interstellar” (or interplanetary), we’ll be taking that hurdle to a whole new level!

In the meantime, you can check out several other articles we’ve done on the subject of generations ships, how big they would have to be, and the minimum number of crew they would need.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

#Space

[gh0stbird]

Okay Now Do The Rest

4. how did your elementary school teachers describe you?

Bright but argumentative. I was never afraid of pointing out things I didn’t feel were fair hfhddh

When we were learning numbers kids would often write 91 for nineteen, just flip them, y’know, and Ms. Potter yelled at the class for it. Baby Generiq went into it about how it was an understandable mix up because you do say the number first. In twenty-three you write the two first, so in nineteen it’s easy to assume you would write the nine first.

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear?

Tired.

8. movies or tv shows?

TV shows. Every book adaptation should also be a series not a movie. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

9. favorite smell in the summer?

Honeysuckle and sunshine

10. game you were best at in p.e.?

Floor hockey! My friend and I used to be brutal and swing at each other’s shins going after the ball. Also it was reminiscent of golf, which I competed in.

12. name of your favorite playlist?

I have an untitled playlist I cycle my current music in and out of, but Newton’s Third Law is my favorite named one!

14. favorite non-chocolate candy?

I don’t- I guess the yellow smarties. Don’t come for me they taste like lemonade.

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment?

I assume this means assigned book and not the reports we got to pick for ourselves. Ah, Night was good. Lord of the Flies was fine but way overhyped. Again, don’t come for me.

16. most comfortable position to sit in?

If I can tuck my legs into the chair I am sitting in that is ideal!

18. ideal weather?

When you know it is going to rain and you get to stay home

19. sleeping position? (Skipped on accident)

I reeeally like pressure, so either against something or on my stomach.

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)?

Phone notes and a notebook! Sometimes a blank document but I always find it strangely intimidating

21. obsession from childhood?

Warrior Cats, Percy Jackson, and Maximum Ride were my big three!

22. role model?

Aa I try to straw from people I want to copy, but there are talents I look up to. Rachel Chavkin is a brilliant director, and there are so many artists and authors I look up to and who inspire me.

24. favorite crystal?

Obsidian because it’s black like my hea- I’m kidding, I do love obsidian, but it’s Rose Quartz because it’s a very very pretty, soft pink and makes me happy.

25. first song you remember hearing?

The mobile above my crib played Imagine by John Lennon. My childhood room was themed after it as well!

26. favorite activity to do in warm weather?

Swim or sit in the sunshine. Ben and I usually go driving with the top down as well.

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather?

Walking through fresh snow is amazing, so are snowball fights and building snowmen.

28. five songs to describe you?

Oh fuck yes

Hurricane - Hamilton

The Reckless and the Brave - All Time Low

Almost There - The Princess and the Frog

All This and Heaven Too - Florence + the Machine

Facade - Jekyll and Hyde: A Gothic Musical Thriller

30. places that you find sacred?

I don’t typically find places sacred, but certain headspaces are very special to me, and time spent with loved ones means more than enough to be considered sacred.

31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names?

A black blazer with a white button-down and a skirt.

32. top five favorite vines?

I am in Missouri (misery)

I love you, Bitch

I want a Church girl

Obama’s “I know because I won both of them”

I won’t hesitate, Bitch!

33. most used phrase in your phone?

“No worries”

34. advertisements you have stuck in your head?

That fucking PFI bandana boot sale I stg

35. average time you fall asleep?

Somewhere between 9:00 and three in the morning

36. what is the first meme you remember ever seeing?

Some girl doing bunny ears on her friend. I don’t remember what the caption was

38. lemonade or tea?

Both. Mixed together. It’s called an Arnold Palmer and it is my favorite drink

39. lemon cake or lemon meringue pie?

Lemon cake!

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

We duck taped out principal to the wall once. Also some kid broke their tray over another kid’s head at lunch one time.

41. last person you texted?

The family group chat, though Beau if Discord counts

42. jacket pockets or pants pockets?

I wear a lot of leggings so jacket pockets!

44. favorite scent for soap?

We had some Lily of the Valley hand soap that was amazing

45. which genre: sci-fi, fantasy or superhero?

Fantasy, I think! I’ve never done super heavy into the other two. Though I definitely don’t want to ignore sci-fi because two of my favorite stories are a little science-fiction-y

46. most comfortable outfit to sleep in?

A t-shirt and shorts

48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be?

A banana. Generally accepted as a fruit and kind of just rolls with it, but is actually a berry

49. what saying or quote do you live by?

I fucking hate Hamilton-ing on main, but

“And when my prayers to god were met with indifference, I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance!”

50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have?

That changes every time Beau and I play HetaOni together, but I have fucking lost it for at least five minutes the last two sessions.

51. current stresses?

I dunno, man, life? My hair could use a wash

52. favorite font?

Covered by your Grace and I’m a big Spectral baby. These are both google docs! I don’t know if that makes a difference.

54. what did you learn from your first job?

Patience is important when teaching material, but never be afraid to find another approach better suited to the person you’re tutoring.

55. favorite fairy tale?

Robin Hood!

56. favorite tradition?

My family does homemade Springfield cashew chicken for Christmas!

57. the three biggest struggles you’ve overcome?

Uhh lots of self-acceptance shit no one really wants to read

58. four talents you’re proud of having?

I can pop the joint at the center of my foot

That’s all

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be?

I sort of like my role as mom friend, so maybe I could keep that role in a sort of action-based anime that followed a group of friends

61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.?

“I am not the protégé to waste your time on; I'm complete!” Jekyll and Hyde: GMT

62. seven characters you relate to?

Haha

Lisa Carew - Jekyll and Hyde: GMT

Japan - Hetalia/Oni

Garnett - Steven Universe

Hfhddh that’s all I can say that aren’t my own characters

63. five songs that would play in your club?

I Don’t Like Clubs, but

Overwhelmed - Royal + The Serpent

Backseat Serenade - All Time Low

Go Big or Go Home - American Authors

The Nights - Avicii

Tempo - Lizzo

64. favorite website from your childhood?

Webkinz!

65. any permanent scars?

Yep - One from a bad bike wreck. My body rejected the dissolvable stitches so it’s a lot bigger than it was supposed to be

66. favorite flower(s)?

Lily of the Valley, daisies, Day Lilies, and Dandelions! I also love honeysuckles but I don’t know if those count.

68. worst flavor of any food or drink you’ve ever tried?

Accidentally drank rancid milk once!

69. a fun fact that you don’t know how you learned? (Haha, nice)

The fastest, free way to fill up your potions on Wizard101 is to play Potion Motion to level three.

70. left or right handed?

Right handed

71. least favorite pattern?

On myself, animal print

72. worst subject?

I’ve never been intuitively good at History, I do think it’s interesting though.

74. at what pain level out of ten (1 through 10) do you have to be at before you take an advil or ibuprofen?

I don’t like to take it until I can’t move without it.

75. when did you lose your first tooth?

Kindergarten? I had mono and then scarlet fever twice, so my baby teeth were pretty much ruined and they all fell out very fast.

76. what’s your favorite potato food (i.e. tater tots, baked potatoes, fries, chips, etc.)?

Curly fries!

77. best plant to grow on a windowsill?

Kalanchoe’s, it literally Window’s Thrill. These babies are fairly temperamental outside and love partial sun, so the window is the perfect spot for them. And! If you keep them happy! They’ll bloom! My personal favorite is the pink bloom.

78. coffee from a gas station or sushi from a grocery store?

What’s wrong with coffee from a gas station? Also I don’t like seafood.

80. earth tones or jewel tones?

Earth tones!

81. fireflies or lightning bugs?

Lightning bugs

82. pc or console?

PC!

84. podcasts or talk radio?

Podcasts - talk radios actually tend to get under my skin for n o reason

84. barbie or polly pocket?

Barbie, but let it be known I was brutal with mine. We did human sacrifices and the like.

85. fairy tales or mythology?

Mythology!

86. cookies or cupcakes?

Cookies, but I’m a slut for whipped frosting

87. your greatest fear?

Losing control!

88. your greatest wish?

A life beyond where I am now. Haha Stop chasing new down the hallway you’re so sexy haha

90. luckiest mistake?

Logged into Omegle in like 2015 and some rando asked me to join their Doctor Who roleplay. Luckiest moment of my gd life.

91. boxes or bags?

Bags! They’re easier to store

92. lamps, overhead lights, sunlight or fairy lights?

Sunlight! But in the late afternoon when everything is bathed in orange.

93. nicknames?

Mom is the most prevalent!

94. favorite season?

Fall into winter. Peak leaf crunch!

95. favorite app on your phone?

Discord or Notes

[tshepiso-reads-books]

Space Polio is Terrifying | The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

Started: July 20th, 2020

Finished: July 30th, 2020

While The Relentless Moon didn’t quite reach the heights of other books in the Lady Astronaut series I enjoyed my time with this story. Mary Robinette Kowal is a fantastic character writer and easily sucked me into the world of Nicola Wargin and the story she told in this installment was compelling overall.

The third book in the Lady Astronaut series follows a friend of Elma and fellow Lady Astronaut Nicola Wargin. We follow Nicola as she works to uncover a saboteur on the Lunar Colony. Nicola deals with both this high stakes investigation, a polio outbreak on the moon, and the repercussions of her husband Kenneth’s political career.

While I had a good time with The Relentless Moon I didn’t love it as much as The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky. My biggest problem with this book was its genre. I’m not the biggest fan of mystery and suspense so the plot of the book left a lot to be desired for me personally. Stories that ask me to solve mysteries and figure out twists generally don’t work for me so a huge part of the plot of this novel was unengaging. I will say the book felt fairly well constructed so anyone who enjoys the genre may love this book, but I found it difficult to connect with the story.

The Relentless Moon also lacked on a character level for me in comparison to the previous two books in this series. Because of the investigation, Nicola doesn’t allow herself to get to know the characters surrounding her. While this logically makes sense it made all of the suspects in the mystery feel shallow. The vast majority of characters in this book felt indistinct because we spent so little time with them and even if I wanted to attempt to solve the mystery along with Nicola I couldn’t because I knew so little about our list of suspects. Spending more time with the side characters in this book could’ve made the ultimate reveal more satisfying because we would have been invested in them beforehand.

I’ll also say it felt like there was a lot more technical jargon throughout this novel compared to previous installments. While I love the science-y feel of these novels The Relentless Moon felt a lot more packed with technical jargon and said jargon felt more integral to understanding the plot of the novel. I routinely forgot what acronyms stood for and the general set up of the Lunar pods. While I wouldn’t say this was a major issue with the book it did make the reading experience less smooth.

Despite my grievances, Mary Robinette Kowal’s writing, in general, was still stellar. She goes above and beyond with her character writing and Nicola Wargin was a fantastic protagonist to follow. Kowal knows how to write distinct character voices and Nicola was equally compelling as Elma.

The issues Nicola is dealing with in this novel, being a woman over 50 and knowing your value is directly tied to your age, being a wife of a politician and having every action criticized because of it, and how her battle with anorexia affected her ability to do her job was written incredibly well. I will warn if you are particularly sensitive to portrayals of eating disorders and food aversion this may be one to avoid, but Kowal discusses in her author’s note that she tried her best to avoid triggering depictions of Nicola’s anorexia and this element of her journey comes from Kowal’s personal experiences with ED. While Nicola does have an eating disorder it doesn’t define her and Kowal takes the time to portray how an eating disorder can affect someone during times of extreme stress without falling into harmful tropes and stereotypes.

The discussions of ageing in regards to Nicola was also done incredibly well. Nicola is over 50 and has arthritis. She’s incredibly aware that unlike her male counterparts she’s very close to being completely discounted for her age. Seeing her actively deal with the physical effects of ageing and the effects like being considered “old hat” by her superiors was an interesting layer to the story. Kowal examines the harsh double standards placed on women compared to men when their competence is challenged based on their age. Nicola is routinely considered washed up while men older than her are valued for their experience. Overall I loved seeing an older woman being placed front and center in an action-packed science fiction novel.

What I loved about Nicola was how the combination of competence and confidence progressed the narrative. Nicola’s history as a trained spy meant she had a lot of clever deductive reasoning that pushed the story in interesting directions. Compared to Elma who while incredibly competent struggled with social interaction. I loved seeing the various ways Nicola manipulated the people around her to get shit done. While things like her struggle with an eating disorder did affect her judgement she was overall a badass spy who routinely came up with clever solutions to tricky situations.

Like in the first two books of this series the relationship between Nicola and her husband Kenneth is a central part of the narrative. Mary Robinette Kowal is one of the few authors writing loving and supportive marriages in the speculative world. I love that Kowal centers functioning healthy marriages in her stories and depicts what mutual respect and proper communication looks like in relationships long term. Kowal writes top tier couples that stay in my feelings. The unending support Kenneth and Nicola had for each other’s careers and the ways Kowal shows how much they know and understand each other made my heart so soft. I associate the 50s and 60s with the patriarchal nuclear family and I love that Kowal goes the extra mile to completely subvert that stereotype.

One central aspect of this story I found fascinating was the polio outbreak. I will warn that if you’re not in the mood for stories about pandemics you should definitely avoid this book but I loved the way this novel contextualized polio as a disease. I’m privileged enough to have never had to concern myself with polio or its effects and this book taught me so much about it about what this disease looked like and how it affected people before there was a widespread vaccine. Kowal described in somewhat graphic detail how sudden and unexpected polio can be often depicting how quickly it spreads and how staggering its effects, from respiratory issues and fever to partial or complete paralysis, could be. I would recommend this book to any anti-vaxxer because I can’t imagine anyone walking away from this book dismissing the importance of vaccinating against horrible diseases like polio.

Stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟

In the end, while The Relentless Moon is my least favourite book in the Lady Astronaut series so far it’s still a great novel. I love Mary Robinette Kowal’s writing and look forward to any and all future installments in this series. If you’re a sci-fi lover or a fan of stories about complex women being badass there is no reason not to pick up these books.

[shuflynn]

Writing About Writing v3

Do you hide the fact you write?

You might raise your eyebrows at that. Maybe because you are a closet writer, or maybe because you’ve never hid it, but I believe this post will resonate with all writers.

I did hide the fact I wrote for a long time, despite taking a creative writing degree at university. I would just tell people that it was English, more or less. I’d click off Word when someone entered the room (so they probably thought I was watching porn or something), and I never told anyone, not even my girlfriend, that I wrote.  

Why? For me, I think this stems from growing up with working class family and friends, who are anything but creative. I don’t resent them for it, in fact I’m like them in every other way, except for this hobby I had. Despite writing being a super-serious, viable career option for many people around the world, in my own little bubble, it felt like a guilty pleasure. Something to hide, to cringe at.

Whenever my parents asked me what I was going to do with my creative writing degree and I couldn’t reply honestly, out of embarrassment, I felt like my head was going to explode. My plan to not reveal my hobby to them until I was published with a 50 grand check in hand probably wasn’t the best option.  

I think there will be many sorts of reasons writers hide their writing, but one thing I can quite confidently assume is the universal negative aspects, especially if you’re career goal is to be a writer in some form. Because, as I’m sure you know, writing is hard enough! It’s stressful, time and energy consuming. If done seriously, it consumes a large portion of your life, and the stress of trying to disguise that is going to destroy your chances before you even start... but lets flip that. When you write, you’re actively challenging your brain. You’re doing something difficult, creating something out of nothing, when you could just be watching TikTok. You’re challenging yourself to such an extreme that why, it would be a shame to not get some credit, right?

And so, speaking as writer who has come clean, I can rejoice as I talk about the positive aspects. It feels like a weight been lifted from your shoulders. From small things as to replying honestly when someone asks what career I’d want to aim for off the back of my degree (sci-fi/fantasy author, by the way!) to getting my girlfriend to proof-read my dissertation, an 8000-word short story.

‘If someone had handed me that in a book,’ she said. ‘I’d have believed it was from a professional!’

‘Great!’ I replied. ‘That’s good to hear. So, you think I should go for it? Become a writer?’

‘Yes, why not?’

‘Well,’ I say. ‘It’s probably going to take five or ten years of practice to really make it, so... will you be okay earning the money whilst I stay at home all the time? You know, practicing? I promise, once I write that book, I’ll make it all worth it!’

‘Erm...’

(523 words)

[vivypotter]

Tagged by @dontneedanothertomarryblog

1: Do you/would you like to write professionally? well, I want to go into directing in theatre, so I’ll probably end up writing plays ‘n’ shit. Not a book though. Maybe. I’m 17, anything could happen.

2: Which author has influenced you the most? Probably Derek Landy? The emotional and yet irreverent shit-talking style is pretty inspirational. Skulduggery Pleasant was one of my favourite series growing up.

3: Any guilty pleasures (books/fics)? mmmm fic in general is my guilty pleasure. I read fic knowing I should be reading classic literature to try and help uni applications xD

4: What’s better (or the least bad): character over plot or plot over character? Character over plot every time. I can’t read anything badly characterised, but I’ll tolerate a shitty plot.

5: Do you think stories can change lives? Is there a story that has changed yours? Absolutely. But I can’t think of one right now.

6: What’s your biggest pet peeve when it comes to writing? I hate when female characters are demonised or vanished. I think that’s one of the worst things about a lot of fandom. Gimme my strong female characters. 

7: Do you listen to music while you write/read? Yeah, I have a weirdly specific habit where I put on a repetitive acoustic song (dodie’s ‘Secret For The Mad’ or ‘6/10′ quite often) and put it on repeat. I get to the point where I’m not actually listening to the music, but it’s just distracting my brain. I think too loudly.

8: Favourite quotes?  Well, I just read Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Sexing the Cherry’ so I’m full of quotes from that. Some of my faves: “Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.” and “As your lover describes you, so you are.”

9: If you could wish for a new book update from any [fanfic] author, who would it be? Floater1010. They’re writing a Victuuri fic at the moment that I’m loving.

10: What’s your favorite trope? AU? I love a good AU. Specifically, Time Travel (you might have guessed). 

11: What’s your (least) favorite overused trope? a/b/o. I wouldn’t completely abolish it, because there are a very small number (like, 2) that I enjoy, but I have really numerous reasons for disliking it.

12: Which trope would you absolutely abolish? mpreg. I’ve never enjoyed an mpreg fic.

13: Are there any tropes you’re embarrassed for enjoying? hmmm. I’m not really embarrassed about anything? I suppose I wouldn’t admit to reading anything smutty to people irl?

14: Do you have a go-to AU? Time Travel, as I said.

15: What kind of character do you wish you saw portrayed more often? Women! Women! Or perhaps bisexual characters who specify that they’re bi rather than identifying as gay once they date someone of the same sex.

16: What’s more frustrating: plotholes or OOC characters? OOC characters all the way.

17: What’s more draining: writing smut, fluff, or angst? Well, I never write smut, so I don’t know about that. I’d say fluff, ‘cause it’s difficult to write happiness without it getting boring, so you have to come up with witty and exciting shit. Angst means you can just cry over a keyboard.

18: Are you a ‘neatly designed outline’ writer or a ‘fuck it i’ll figure it out as i go’ writer? I have a rather detailed bulletpoint list of plot moments, but however I connect those is very improvised, and sometimes key moments get changed, moved or cut. When I actually write, I tend to go with the flow.

19: Do you think major character deaths are ever necessary? Yeah. I mean, I’ve got something coming up that means I’d be a bit hypocritical to say no. I can be merciless sometimes xD

20: If you could ‘unkill’ any character from any story, who would it be? (ORIGINALS SPOILER ALERT)

Klaus Michaelson, now the Originals finale happened. Klaroline will live on.

21: Would you like to write an alternative ending for any of your favorite shows/books/etc? Hmmm. Well, I’d quite like to just write another season for Dirk Gently, so I’d go with that. Tbh, I tend to abandon shows before the end. 

Edit: I forgot Hannibal! I want my boys to be happy together <3

22: Are you more likely to be the person who starts reading a 100k slow burn fic at midnight or the person who starts writing a drabble at 4 a.m.? Reading. I don’t ever write drabbles. 

pick just one:

23: fluff or angst? Angst, though I always prefer a combination of the two.

24: fantasy or sci-fi? Fantasy

25: fake dating AU or inpromptu babysitting AU? Fake dating. I don’t think I’ve ever read an impromptu babysitting fic?

26: road trip AU or high school AU? Theoretically, high school, though I find they’re rarely well done.

27: coffee shop AU or florist AU? Florist AU ftw. I mean, I’ve written one, lol.

28: stuck in an elevator AU or camping gone bad AU? Stuck in an elevator! Gimme that witty and flirty dialogue.

29: 20s AU or 50s AU? 20s gangsters and prohibition boop. 

30: high school AU from a fantasy/sci-fi story or fantasy/sci fi AU from a realistic story? Fantasy/sci fi from a realistic story. There are some great space-based Victuuri fics.

31: mythological creature AU or superhero AU? Mythological creature. Ngl, superheroes bore me.

32: meet cute or meet ugly? Meet cute? What is a meet ugly? Also, the word ‘meet’ no longer looks right.

Everyone I know has been tagged :( I don’t have enough friends for this. How about, if you see this, take it as an invitation.

[thevalkyriesonline]

Nine Worlds; One Valkyries Trip To London’s Inclusive Fan Convention

Conventions appeal to different fans for different reasons, whether it be comic con, a game expo, YouTube/Blogger convention or whatever the medium but one common factor in all of these conventions is the possibility to meet other like-minded fans! As well as hopefully getting the chance to meet your idols! 

There is a Con though that really thrives on fans, it is called Nine Worlds (London’s Inclusive Fan Culture Convention). A Con with a difference – the difference being it is made by fans for fans to meet other fans and just enjoy and celebrate their fandom in all it’s crazy geekiness.

It has been going since 2013 when it was first set up but I only heard about it last summer (2017) when I discovered that one talk held there was titled “It’s research! Or Why it is ok to play over 100 hours of Dragon Age when you really should be writing.” This, as a huge Dragon Age fan since discovering Inquisition, spoke to me on a level that none of my immediate friends understood or appreciated. Unfortunately I was unable to attend Nine Worlds in 2017, but the fact that there was a time and place to have such a discussion on such a unique fan-based topic inspired me to endeavor to attend in 2018. So as soon as the Early Bird Tickets became available I put my money where my heart wanted me to and I began to plan and save for a big solo adventure to London for Nine Worlds 2018.

I also made another bold and brave and foolish decision to sign up as a Content Provider for Nine Worlds 2018!

Why? – because why not? I have been a mega reader, hoarder and fan of all fiction featuring, adapting or retelling Norse Mythology for years and Nine Worlds provided me with the ideal and probably only platform where I could take the chance to share my enthusiasm and passion for the genre of Norse Fantasy. The Nine Worlds Team accepted my proposal, so, on top of saving for the hotel room on-site and booking train travel I also had to plan a lecture/talk – I was both really nervous and really excited! The months, weeks and days soon dwindled down to departure day and then I was off down to London for what I hoped would be a fun and busy weekend.

Now on to the fun bit – the various sessions and events and panel discussions! These were the ones I attended but over 50 were held each day of the convention so this is just a small sample of what fandom and genres were covered.

Session One – LARP (Live Action Role Play). Speakers; Penny Jackson, Adam Dinwoodie, Mx RA Madgwick and Haplocke Spence

As I am attending my first ever LARP event, set in the world of Dragon Age in November this was a must for me! The panel was made up of experienced and new-ish LARP players and they gave a great insight into how LARP’ing works, the various types and systems involved, clothing and equipment, rules for both play and player protection and more.

Session Two – The Only Toilet in Thedas. Speakers; Sarah Gordon, Phil Dyson, Angela Cleland

Now who couldn’t resist that title? Especially when you are a Dragon age fan. This panel discussion was the most interesting because it covered not just the world of games but also of books, TV and Film. It made me realize how much in Fantasy the practical matters of hygiene from toilets to sewers to bathing are just not address yet in Sci-Fi it’s more visible. The panel discussed whether it was a taboo or simply a matter of too much detail on a very personal and private matter – for instance do you want to know how long the hero, heroine, villain or indeed any character takes on the toilet? If they wash their hands or not? – but then again social, religious and cultural practices exist even within the bathroom and so perhaps it should be represented more?

Session Three – Know Thy Enemy. Speakers; Adrian Tchaikovsky, Jeanette Ng, Ms Anna Stephens

This was a panel debate all about the nature and representation of Villains. I found it fascinating to discuss Villains and their nature, one panel member made the very good point on how it is wrong to see the Villain as the champion of Chaos and the Hero of Order for it is in fact the other way around. In many scenarios across all mediums it is the Villain that has established some type of order whether through politics, society, culturally or religious or just geographically or financially but it is the Hero who emerges to disrupt that form of order and thus bring about chaos. This made me instantly think of Katniss in the Hunger Games, she is rebelling against the ruling society and its cultural practice of the Games and thus brings war to the capital city and thus chaos. Another issue discussed was whether the viewer/reader must be sympathetic towards Villains. The panel debated hard on this topic and in the end agreed that sympathy isn’t necessary for a Villain to be a true villain or a good villain but what is necessary is that the viewer/reader gets a sense of the Villain’s journey to their villainy – they must see where, how and why the character has become the Villain, whether for good or bad, and so enjoy the Villain’s redemption or come-uppance by the hero.

Session Four – D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) for Young People. Speaker; Elizabeth Prais

In my day job as a college Librarian I had recently learned of a lunch-time Dungeons and Dragons group being set up by a teacher after some students expressed an interest. So, I was eager to learn more tips and tricks to either host such a group in the Library or pass on to my colleague. The lady who hosted this session hailed from America and was very open about how she ran her local residential D&D group for her daughter and some local children. She gave some great recommendations and advice on timing, kit, planning, preparation and how to adjust and adapt the large and complex set of rules for a younger more impatient audience.

Session Five – Philosophy and Mass Effect. Speaker; Michael Duxbury, Emily Marlow

Now this was the first session I wasn’t entirely clued up on as I myself am still stuck half way through playing Mass Effect 2 by Bioware so a lot of the moral/ethical dilemmas they talked about I hadn’t actually experienced yet, or I couldn’t remember what I chose in the ones I was familiar with. Yet it was interesting and food for thought on how the scenarios were portrayed, and the fixed set of options provided resulted in the moral and ethics becoming such a personal dilemma for players. It wasn’t always a case of choosing the lesser of two evils but how the player and indeed the character depending on their Renegade to Hero balance would pick. Some panel members and indeed people in the audience felt that more choices would improve and increase the dilemma levels instead of just A or B. The panel also discussed how often, at least amongst themselves, they would pick based on the benefit or not long term, not the short term and play with a view of working towards achieving success or a goal.

Session Six – Beyond Marvel and DC – What comics you should be reading. Speakers; Angie Wenham, Stephen Lacey, Kate Barton, Ram V

The panel mentioned a great many titles, artists, apps and webcomics that they recommended as alternatives to Marvel/DC and then invited the audience to contribute. I recommended Nimona* by Noelle Stevenson  and I Hate Fairy Land by Skottie Young.

* Interested in Nimona? Check out our review! 

I Hate FairyLand

Nimona

Session Seven – Disney Sing-A-Long

This was the true highlight for me as an eternal child thanks to the magic of Disney. I wasn’t the only adult in the room, it was a very popular event and there were children of all ages and their parents and even a few Disney cosplayers too. We were all able to sing-a-long via screen projecting the words, or handouts or follow a link online. A whole range of songs was sung and Frozen ‘Let It Go’ proved to be a major popular one with a member of Con Staff leading a friendly stage invasion and then everyone proudly showed off all the right moves to the lyrics. I honestly was in tears with joy as some of the most powerful songs were sung by young and old alike.

The final event I will review was the FABULOUS MMORPG SHOW. Speaker; Misha Anker, Paul Flannery

Which was a blend of audience power and D&D – we basically had the Game Master who set up a story, invited some members of the audience to join him on stage and fill in character sheets but they had to be as unconventional as possible and then he would invite the audience to provide character names, objects, powers etc. to the story narrative and the players would roll a giant D20 (20-sided dice) to determine the outcome. This was a whole lot of fun and silliness and the story involved a Bee with a Human Leg, a Swarm of Wasps and a Wizard whose greatest spell was making Jam, they had to find the Cheese Board for the Duck of Doom! You had to be there to believe the story and it was amazingly resolved within the 1 hour and a half session.

Norse Fantasy, My own presentation! 

Was scheduled bright and early on a Saturday morning the night after the first big disco (alas Becky did not go dancing due to a very painful wisdom tooth spoiling things) and yet the room quickly filled up much to my delight. Despite not having the colorful presentation I spent hours on, due to not having my own laptop to plug into the screen, I was still able to explain, explore and introduce so many of my favourite authors and titles to a new audience. Some of the audience also proved to be fellow fans of many of them and a good number took photographs of my favourite title list to go away with to look at later and thanked me for the session, which was an awesome feeling. I was even complimented on my choice of t-shirt for the session – my own Valkyrie t-shirt from Redbubble. It says, “Valkyrie of Odin – Midgard Original – Since 793”. If you are interested in my presentation, I am planning on doing a written version of it for the Valkyries Blog so stay tuned!

Last but not least was the fab mini Geek Market that was on all weekend and as it was also my birthday, I indulged myself in another t-shirt from Genki Gear, some D&D themed tea, tea strainer and mug, two new bookmarks, some funky acrylic necklaces featuring a book and a fox in a bin, some super cute little clay keyrings of Flynn Rider, Thor and Pizza and of course BOOKS! Each attendee got a surprise free book in their bag, but I got two based on libraries and books, The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman and Bookworm by Christopher Nuttall – expect a review on here once I have got around to enjoying them.

Now the managing team have recently stepped down to consult with attendees and invite new members, as they are reviewing their constitution to try and make it more inclusive and representative of those who attend. Although from what I witnessed their inclusive and equality practices were out of this world compared to other cons I’ve been too. I do hope the new organizers can continue what has already been established and continue to make improvements where they feel it is needed. I for one enjoyed it all – despite my wisdom tooth being a very literal pain throughout – for I definitely would attend again.

Did you attend Nine Worlds? What did you think? What was your favourite presentation?

  Purchasing through our amazon affiliate links earns us a small commission at no extra cost to yourself! Any commission earned goes to keeping the Valks in coffee!

A Valkyrie at Nineworlds! @london_geekfest #nineworlds Nine Worlds; One Valkyries Trip To London's Inclusive Fan Convention Conventions appeal to different fans for different reasons, whether it be comic con, a game expo, YouTube/Blogger convention or whatever the medium but one common factor in all of these conventions is the possibility to meet other like-minded fans!

[aion-rsa]

Animorphs: The Challenges of Adapting the Books into Graphic Novels

https://ift.tt/3fgByZE

If you were alive in the ’90s, you know the name Animorphs. The sci-fi book series following the adventures of a group of kids who fight a race of invading aliens using the power to morph into animals has continued to has remained a pop culture mainstay even after it finished its run in 2001. It earned a fanbase the world over which to this day still discusses the series in detail.  And for 20 years, fans have had their own images of the series in their heads, imagining what the epic battles and deep characters looked like beyond the page.

This made Chris Grine’s job exceptionally difficult.

An Eisner-nominated comic book author and illustrator, Grine was given the opportunity to adapt the much beloved books into multiple graphic novels and was met with a mountain of a challenges. How could he adapt the story without including the internal narration of the novels? Should the new covers match the iconic original covers? What’s the right way to draw an Andalite? And biggest of all, how would he handle the first Tobias focus book which has long stretches of the character, stuck in the body of a hawk, talking to himself?

We spoke with Grine after the second graphic novel was announced to discuss all these challenges and more.

DEN OF GEEK: One of the bigger elements I noticed about the graphic novel is the cover. The original book covers are very iconic. Now though the morph is on the top and the main image is one from the story. For the first graphic novel, you had the shot of the kids watching the spaceship crash. With book two, it’s Rachel unmorphed. What made Scholastic go with the decision to not completely focus the cover on the morphs?

CHRIS GRINE: That was a very long ongoing conversation between several of us there. I was pretty pro nostalgia on that. I thought we should definitely not stray too far from what the original covers look like. Even if that meant just fully illustrating the character morphing, or in similar stages like the original covers. But they ultimately decided that they didn’t want to necessarily be too beholden to that. Since this was a new generation of kids that are literally coming up with these books, they decided to go with what would be considered more of a traditional cover design nowadays. But we definitely kept the morph along the top, which I thought was a really good idea by the designer, Phil Falco, who was working closely with me. 

I must’ve done like 30, 35 sketch ideas for the cover. We were back and forth for months trying to figure out what the trade dress was going to look like. It was the most important obviously for the first book, because that sets the tone for the entire series. We listened to just about everybody’s perspective and ideas. Everybody was allowed; anybody who had an idea could bring it to the table and we’d weigh it, discuss it. A lot of thought went into that cover.

One of the things that I really liked about the comic was that you drew the characters to really look like kids. Even though original books made it clear they were kids, the cover models on the old books always made me think they were older. Was it a conscious decision to go, “Okay, I’m going to make sure that these look like kids?”

Yeah, it was. I have two kids and my daughter is the oldest. She just turned 13, literally like a week ago. So I have a pretty good idea of where her head’s at. I see them playing with their friends and everything so I tried to keep that in mind. 

So I didn’t want the (Animorphs) kids to look too old because they were supposed to be in middle school. It’s kind of ambiguous, but I know that they’re supposed to be like 12 to 13. It was important to me that I got that part right. The danger just felt way more real when the kids were younger. 

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The graphic novel is set in the ’90s, but it also does feel time agnostic in a way where, okay, it is in the nineties, but if you are a kid now, it doesn’t really take you out of it by making it a ’90s period piece. How do you tow this line?

Well, I think that was a conversation we definitely had. Is this going to be contemporary? Or are we going to try to set this in the ’90s? And I think right from the beginning, we were all pretty much unanimous that it should be set in the ’90s. If for no other reason then things like cellphones. Like, if all the kids had cellphones in Stranger Things, it would have been one episode.

But even though it’s the ’90s, it feels like it’s timeless to an extent like you said. Just removing so much technology from it kind of does that on its own. It works surprisingly well. I thought there was going to be a little bit more pushback maybe from fans who wanted it to be updated a little bit. I did remove some of the pop culture references that were in the books just because they were so specific. I still thought they were funny because I got them since I was getting ready to go to college in the late ’90s when these books came out. I was very much in the pop culture at that time. But nowadays, I mean, David Letterman references and things like that? No kid is going to know what that is. I didn’t want [kids] to be thrown out of the story because they weren’t getting the references.

That’s completely understandable. It reminds me of when they did the re-releases of the first few books back in the early 2010s where they tried to take out as many references as possible.

I definitely noticed that, too. I have the original versions of the books and then they sent me copies of the re-releases because I wanted to be able to write notes and highlight stuff and everything, and just kind of write right in there. They definitely took out a lot of the references. Some of them were updated and they felt like, I don’t know, a little too forced maybe. I think it would have been better if they had just left them more ambiguous, like, instead of being on The David Letterman Show, we could have been on a late night talk show or something.

When doing your research for the graphic novels, are you desperately flipping through to find every description for the series’ aliens to make sure they’re consistent? The first few books are a little shaky in terms of what everything looks like. There are also those posters they released later in the books run with pictures of all the aliens, too.

Yeah, I am. Especially for the first book, I took a lot of time to just do research. Even getting involved in some fan fiction type stuff and fan art. After 25 years, there’s still so much fan art coming out all the time. It’s pretty easy to see what fans’ ideas of what these characters look like. What has stuck along the way. So that was stuff that I really used to inform the way I designed everything. But then there was things like Seerowpedia.

The Animorphs wiki, yeah.

People have broken down every single book on there, like to a point where it’s ridiculous what they’ve done. But it’s so incredibly helpful for what I’m doing because there’s even sections on there that focus on inconsistencies and it has a list of things that were inconsistent from books before or books that came after. That was really good for me to see because it’s allowed me to fix a few things as we go.

Yeah, I noticed that even in the first volume, where you fixed one of the most famous inconsistencies with Jake thought speaking to Tobias even though he’s not morphed.

There were so many people who had pointed that out. Number one on the inconsistencies list on book one. That was really easy for me to fix. There was another thing with the descriptions of the aliens. One of those things that I found luckily in time was the way Andalites were described. So I had basically inked the whole book, right? I was fully in color mode and people on Twitter were like, “Well, which version of Andalites did you go with?” I had no idea what they were talking about.

I come to find out that there’s the version of the Andalite that looks a little bit more like a centaur with like a regular horseback. And then there’s the version that has more of an arch back that kind of goes from about mid back, up. It makes it hard for them to be ridden, because that was something that was talked about later but that’s not in book one.

So that was something that the fans actually pointed out, and maybe they don’t realize how much they helped me with that. It helped side step some people who maybe would have been upset that I didn’t do it right. Then if I had changed it later in the later books, then it would have been inconsistent on my end. 

You’ve mentioned you’ve been contracted to do the first three books. Do you hope to do all 50-plus books if it came to that?

Oh my God. I would like to. My goal for now is just like, I would love it if I could just get the first 10 books. I mean, at some point, I’m 45 years old, so at some point, I can’t do all 54 books, right? I’d be in my 80s or 90s. I love what I’m doing. I feel so kind of blessed to be part of this fandom now and kind of accepted. I just really enjoy these books.

Normally, I’d do my own stories. I prefer that, but in this situation I’m really, really loving the interaction and the stories themselves. And the original authors, Katherine [Applegate] and Michael [Grant], have just been wonderful to work with. The few times I’ve gotten to hang out with them even virtually, it’s just been a pleasure. 

So if I could get to like 10 books, that to me would be great. If I could get more than that, then that’s fine, too. But I think a nice round number like that would be pretty cool.

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The first graphic novels are already pretty thick, but I’m just imagining how thick would a Megamorphs or an Andalite Chronicles comic be?

Oh my gosh. What I’ve noticed is once you get past about book seven or eight and maybe a little before, the page counts drop. They go down to about 170 pages or 160 some pages on average. And there’s a lot of filler. They started bringing ghost writers. There was just lots of scenes. There’d be entire chapters talking about, “Hey, remember that time when we met Visser Three at the construction site? Oh yeah. And you did this.” There’s so much of that stuff that I just skipped right over.

So the first book was 230 pages. My book, the graphic novel, and the second book clocked in at about 201 pages. I’m guessing that’s probably the sweet spot for most of them now. Probably somewhere between like 190, 200. It doesn’t feel too scary. When I start getting sub 200 pages, I start feeling a little better.

Right, and Scholastic doesn’t necessarily have to adapt every single book. I’m sure somebody out there will say, “No book 27 is my favorite book,” but not every book is critically important. To get the main plot points you could do…  I’ll arbitrarily say at most two-thirds of the books.

Right. There’s even some books that I believe could probably just be adapted into one book because there’s so little actual connective tissue that you could have maybe two or three books combined in the one. But I don’t even know how we go about that because I assume you’d have to re-title the book. I don’t know. But yeah, there are options. Scholastic definitely has options. They could also do what they did with The Baby-Sitters Club and have multiple artists working on them.

I’ve had people say that about Animorphs and I’m instantly hurt. I shouldn’t be, but I’m like, “No, no more artists right now. Damn it. This is mine.” I love this. I don’t want to share just yet. I’m not at the point where I’m ready to share.

You’ve got to at least get through Ax’s first book, then you’ve covered all the main characters.

Yeah. And that’s what I’ve been saying. I’m going to be really disappointed if I don’t get to do books four and five. I’m going to be super disappointed.

Looking forward, you’ve found a lot of ways to get around the internal narration because that’s such a big part of the books. But coming up in book three you’ve got a Tobias book and he’s by himself a lot. How do you deal with long stretches where characters are just thinking?

Yeah, and I was thinking, that is going to be a terrible book. I had to figure out a way to make that interesting because I can’t just have a character constantly talking to themselves the whole book. He’s already doing thought speech to others, then internal thought speech to himself. I’m afraid it’s going to be confusing and it could get boring. I don’t want to lose the thread. So what I did visually, I grabbed a few panels from book one and two that I’d already finished up, just Tobias, whether he was on a branch or whatever when he’s a bird. I was just messing around with the panels themselves, trying to figure out, “Okay, how can I do this? Is there like a clever way I could pull this off simpler?”

I kind of figured it out, at least for now, and this could completely change, but I basically took the selection tool and I selected one half of the panel, kind of in a jagged selection. Then I went in and threw a color over that. So it would be almost like color grading on a movie or something. Just on half of it. 

And so there could be a word in blue in the full color art, where maybe he’s talking to somebody or maybe he’s thinking something, but then in the same panel, but in the part that I had colored coded he’s almost having, not like split personality type of a thing, but having an internal conversation. I thought it might be a way of showing that he’s talking to himself. It seemed like it was working in the images that I did, but we’ll have to see. I’m still a little nervous about getting to book three because of that.

You made it work in the first graphic novel. You had the scene with Jake when he morphs into the lizard and you frame it as he’s telling the story to the other kids. So that works well there, it’s just getting to do that for a whole book. You can’t just have Tobias say, “Guys, I had a really rough morning. I was thinking some deep thoughts.”

And he’s had so many thoughts I don’t think he would even share with the other kids, right? About just his new reality and about maybe being slightly in love with that other Hawk or just having a personal crisis. That’s not something I’m going to be able to take care of just in dialogue alone. So I’m going to definitely have to figure that out.

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This has been looming like a dark cloud over me since I started book one. Knowing that book three is very important to a lot of people and for a lot of really good reasons. I don’t want to mess that one up too badly, so I’m going to have to figure it out.

Stay tuned for the second part of this interview where Grine will break down his process in adapting a scene from second graphic novel. The Visitor (Animorphs Graphic Novel #2) is now up for pre-order on Amazon.

The post Animorphs: The Challenges of Adapting the Books into Graphic Novels appeared first on Den of Geek.

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