#me making a non Stormlight comic

[insertdisc5]

The tumblr q&a is over, but I was curious! I love all the different phrases the characters in isat/sasasa:p use--If it's something you can say, where did inspiration for "gems alive" and other phrases come from?

THANK YOU FOR ASKING BECAUSE I GET TO TALK ABOUT WORLDBUILDING AND SWEAR WORDS AND BRANDON SANDERSON

long post ahead

ok so when I was figuring out the world, I found this lecture on worldbuilding by Brandon Sanderson (go watch it, and also go read his books), and (im gonna paraphrase heavily here) one thing he mentioned is that, to make a memorable world, one thing you can do is pick a couple areas of culture, and go real deep with it. So like, pick fashion, and architecture, and interior design, and develop those a bunch, and bam! you convinced people you have a whole dang world, even though you only developed 3 areas of this world. hollow iceberg everyone thinks is a real iceberg.

he also mentioned the idea of like... getting weird with it? and develop based on a weird detail? for example, in his book The Stormlight Archives, one detail is that women have to hide their left hand at all times. ok, so what does that mean, whats taboo about a left hand? is the left hand shameful, or lewd somehow, the same way ankles were for us? what about fashion, what does women's fashion look like? and how do you live your every day life, knowing you can't show this hand, can you carry things the same way? etc

SO, for me, one of the Big Worldbuilding pillars i picked was, uh, swear words lol. or language and common expressions, more generally. i went on a whole journey where i was like... ok swear words in a LOT of languages (including french and english, both languages i speak fluently) are either sexual, or about gross bodily discharges. you know what words i mean!!!!!

and, well, i also didnt want the game to be full of those words, mostly because i think its a tightrope to use those words without seeming cringe, and also because i have a Core Memory of showing a comic to a colleague and she said "well i wouldve liked to show it to my kids, but you said fuck 12 times in there" and i didnt show my face to her for a week. family friendly family friendly family friendly

so what swear words should my characters use, that arent the same ones we use? and could those swear words actually tell us something about the world they live in? could i actually use those swear words... to show the characters come from different cultures???

and what COULD swear words be like, if theyre not about sex or body stuff? well irl they're usually about religions or belief. "oh god", "goddamnit", etc. as a sidenote, stuff like "oh my god" or "geez" arent used, because jesus christ is not canon to the ISAT universe. alright

i decided very early on i wouldnt have those in the game either, but i COULD have them be about the religions specific to this world. and for insults, i could have them be about stuff those beliefs would see as lesser.

anyway instead of talking about "gems alive" lets talk about "crab"

isabeau+mirabelle+bonnie use "crab" as a swear word because they follow a religion all around change, bettering yourself, evolving, and, the crab meme,

for those who dont get the joke, its about carcinisation, and about how a bunch of non-crab-like forms somehow evolved to a crab-like form. which would be horrible, for a religion all based around change!!! you mean we change and evolve, but theres a chance we might all become crabs??? CRAB!!!!!!!

anyway having "crab" kinda reads as 1. swear word 2. thats funny and weird (sets the tone) 3. tells you they know what crabs are (world not that different from ours, AND means they live close-ish to the coast, aka not land locked) and 4. crabs are somehow hated/feared, even if as the player you dont get why, it shows this country has its own culture (even if you dont get the crabs joke, which uuuh apparently doesnt work as well in countries that dont have this specific meme. WHATEVER!!!!)

(a few people came to me saying "heh, i get it, because crab and crap are very similar words" and um actually i did not think about that. crab is just a funny word on its own, and also i am a comedy genius without even trying)

anyway tldr: swear words as a worldbuilding tool. soon in theaters

#in stars and time #start again start again start again #'adrienne isabeau says 'oh geez' 1 time in the prologue' #quite honestly this is a mistake and im retconning it. he said 'oh change' instead. will fix whenever i get around to making a new build #reference #also yeah canonically bonnie swears all the time #everyone has just given up and lets them curse like a sailor. bonnie has won #i added a cut but actually no you WILL read this whole post #long post

[ettawritesnstudies]

10, 12, & 15

10. List 3 or more books that inspired your current project in some way.

For Runaways: Any Fairy Tale by the Brothers Grimm, E. Nesbit, Hans Christian Anderson, etc. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Ms. Peregrin's Home for Peculiar Children,

Storge: I'm sure some other books first inspired this idea, but it's changed so much, and it's more influenced by IRL events than fiction, that I genuinely can't remember anymore.

The Laoche Chronicles: The Stormlight Archive, the Magnus Archives but specifically S3, @comicaurora ,

12. What non-fiction book has been the most enlightening?

"How to Market a Book" by Ricardo Fayet was a slap in the face about how to run an author's platform and how much work it takes to keep a book selling after launching. I'm pretty far off from publication, but still good to know going into it eyes wide open.

15. What did you read in childhood or adolescence that you still think about to this day?

One day in middle school, maybe around 6th grade, mom had to get her eyes checked at a optometrist next door to a Barnes and Nobles so she let me go into the bookstore to read while I waited because she could trust me to just hide in a corner and stay out of trouble. I picked out Story Thieves solely because the cover looked interesting:

It has 4 protagonists: Owen (a kid who's bored out of his mind during math class) and Bethany (a girl who's half-fictional and can hop in and out of books) are from the "Real World". Owen discovers Bethany's secret ability and begs her to visit his favorite book series, where he promptly breaks the first rule of fiction: don't mess with the story. The following shenanigans involve Owen taking the place of Kiel (the wizard protagonist of the book within this book), and helping his best friend Charm (a cyborg princess?) to stop a war between their planets. Meanwhile, Kiel and Bethany have to stop the villain of the books from making his way into the Real World.

It's hugely meta and leans on the 4th wall ALL THE TIME and I loved it. It's the first of a series, and I hadn't finished it by the time I left the bookstore so I went home and it was the first book I bought on my kindle with actual real money (and not one of the free classics that was offered at the time). I never actually finished the series, but it looked incredible: the 2nd book followed a book-within-a-book that was a retelling of sherlock holmes and the real world versions met fictional versions of themselves. One of the later books is a comic. One of them is a choose your own adventure. The author might get killed? I don't know. I'm kind of afraid to reread them in case they don't hold up to scrutiny, but I was OBSESSED and to this day I live in fear that Madelyn will climb her way off the pages and strangle me.

thanks for the ask! :)

[viridializard]

just a funny little idea I had

#critical role spoilers #cr spoilers #me making a non Stormlight comic?? more likely than you think #critical role fanart #essek thelyss #caleb widogast #shadowgast #mighty nein #comics

[kinsey3furry300]

Three awesome post-GoT series I would commission if I owned any of the Big three Streaming platforms.

Yo! Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, you have a problem: there are nerds like me who want to give you even more of our time and money, but you’re not making the stuff you should be.  Following the hugely disappointing end of “Game of Thrones”  there are a huge number of sci-f and fantasy nerds who are currently not getting our fix of epic adventure, and rather than commission a whole bunch of cool series that are just begging to be made to cash in on this, you’re all just sort of doing your own things. And that’s Cool, I’m loving the Netflix Witcher series and Disney’s Loki, and looking forward to the Amazon Middle Earth series with a mix of hope and trepidation (please be good), there are, however, a whole mass of cool book series that are just begging for release in an episodic fashion, and what’s more, I can think of which series plays to which streaming platforms strengths. And unlike Game of Thrones, there are series where running out of source material to adapt shouldn’t be a problem.

So, three sci-fi or fantasy series that play to the strengths of the big three Streaming services, as suggested by me, a big ol’ nerd. One: Amazon Prime. Strengths: successfully adapting darker comic-book or Urban fantasy works Like Preacher, the Boys, Good Omens and American Gods and making a profit. Weakness: has never successfully pulled of a big Grimdark fantasy series, despite having all the talent to do so because they’re working on the Middle earth series, which doesn’t seem a good fit for their brand image as the place you come for for comically dark works, and all their adaptations are too much of a slow burn, which necessitates padding the source material (look at how little happens in any episode of Preacher or the Boy vs the insanely fast pace of the comics). Solution: Malazan, book of the fallen. A deep, insanely dark, insanely Epic story that would actually lend itself to a slow burn and the grim-dark over the top violence of other Amazon shows, and fill the “Tit’s and monsters” gap left by GoT in many of our hearts. And unlike Tolkien, I have faith that the studio that cast Sweary Karl Urban as Billy Butcher could actually pull this off with the correct tone and feel. This would have the Witcher fans from Netflix defecting in droves, and could also pull in some new viewers who might enjoy the anthropology and political intrigue of this complex, multifaceted world.

 Two: Disney+. Strengths: near infinite money and ambition, the production team behind The Mandalorian and the MCU, great Hollywood clout to draw in big name stars, but willing to cast talented unknowns, the best mix of live action and CG in the business. Weaknesses: It’s Disney, so they can never go full grim-dark: they can imply or infer dark acts, but need to keep what’s shown on screen PG13 to fit their brand, which rules out a lot of modern fantasy. And they have no true fantasy serries in their stable.

Solution: Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, and other Cosmere works.  A rare example of an excellent current fantasy and sci-fi writer who isn’t grimdark as heck, and manages to convey dark and adult themes by implication and hints rather than outright showing them, this is pretty much the only big fantasy series out there that is aimed at and enjoyed by adults but remains consistently PG13. It’s also so epic and super-hero-ish in this various magic systems, that I can’t see anyone other than the team behind the MCU pulling off a live-action version of this that doesn’t suck. In addition to this, the logical starting point for this, Mistborn, is by far the safest and most marketable, coming the closest of any of his works to a standard young-adult plot with Vin as an easily sell-able character to studio brass, being to all intents and purposes Katniss Everdeen with super-powers, which could get a big studio invested  and convinced this is a good idea before we get to all the “lets kill and replace god” stuff. If Mistborn was successful, other Cosmere works could follow, and I could see something like the Stormlight Archives working really well with the MCU effects team behind it, so long as they don’t white-wash it: No one on Roshar is white other than in Shinovar, and half of the cultures are based on either Polynesian or far eastern traditions, so cast Hawaiian, Māori, native American and east-Asian actors, and it could be both a great series, and also the most diverse Disney has ever done. You want a new, easily marketable but epic scale franchise, Disney? It’s right here.

Also for the love of god, do Wax and Wayne. I just need this, okay?

 Three: Netflix. Strengths: good at tapping into the prevailing nostalgia of Millennials and producing works that speak to them on a relatively small budget (see Stanger Things) and good at grabbing the rights to adapt good but slightly obscure works cheaply. Good working relationship with a ton of Japanese Anime rightsholders. Weaknesses: By far the smallest budget of any of the big three. Tends to produce awful live-action adaptations of beloved works (to the point that the Witcher was a pleasant surprise), but has good relationships with lots of animation studios.

Solution: Animorphs, but do what they always should have done and animate it. It boggles my mind that anyone would every try to pull this off in live action, as the transformations, which are the heart of the series, would be so hard to pull off well (look at the 90’s series). And yet, I’m aware they’re making a film, but dear god, why, when K A Applegate said form the get go that this series of books were written specifically as if they were a 90’s Saturday morning cartoon. This was always meant to be adapted as a series, not a long form film. So, don’t try to modernise it, or relate to “The kids” don’t whitewash the cast, don’t edit out the gore and body-horror, but lean into the 90’s and early 2000’s angst of it, and go balls to the walls insane with the concept. What music do you have playing for this scene? Is it Every day is exactly the same by Nine Inch Nails, and if not, why not? Do the transformation sequence genuinely scare you? No?  Then you’re doing it wrong.  Is that a happy ending? Get that the hell out of there. Go for the original time period and concept, and go hard, and if you do it now, you’ll just hit that sweet spot as the rolling 30 year nostalgia cycle moves out of the 80’s and into the 90’s. And as an apology to all the bad live-action Anime you produced, Netflix, get a Japanese studio to animate this: the Animorphs books were popular in Japan, with wonderful hand drawn illustrations throughout. Get Studio Orange on this: Beastars proved they can do flowing, fast-moving combat well, and make animal and other non-human characters look good, and what’s more they’d probably be up for it: Animorphs is basically a western Shōnen,  so the market for an Anime of it would exist in Japan.

 So there we go, the three series I would commission if I ruled the world of streaming sites. As ever, tell me why I’m wrong below, and have a great day!

#animorphs #brandon sanderson #mistborn #malazan #netflix #studio orange #disney plus #disney #MCU #cosmere #k a applegate #steven erikson #sci fi #fantisy #streaming sites #amazon plus

[daniellethamasa]

Hey all, Dani here.

I said I would be getting a library tour post up as soon as I had everything ready, and I’m nearly there. However, at the moment we have a lot of our office supply boxes and such sort of haphazardly placed all over the library.

So I went with the next best option…a bookshelf tour. Now, as soon as we get the room itself tidied up and I get some comfy reading seats in, I’ll have another post where I show off the overall library/office space. But for now I figured this would be better than nothing.

Let’s just jump into this.

Right now I have seven bookcases up in the library. This collection does not include my comics, graphic novels, or manga. When we get those all organized and up in a bookcase or something, I’ll be sure to show those off as well.

Bookcase #1

This first bookcase starts off my short hardcover collection. It goes from Ahdieh to Riordan, with everything in alphabetical order. I never used to like varying my shelves with some books horizontal, but I came to realize that it actually gives me a little more room, which is great when I don’t have the space to continuously add more bookcases.

Bookcase #2

This second bookcase finishes up my short hardcovers and then has all of my taller floppier paperbacks. I like these when it comes to epic fantasy reads because you don’t really break the binding as much while reading. The bottom couple of shelves on this particular bookcase hold a lot of my ARCs and then a number of the books I’ve picked up from authors at comic conventions. Honestly those last two shelves aren’t really in any particular order yet.

Bookcase #3

Now we are on to all of my mass market paperbacks. Obviously this bookcase holds more shelves than the others because the books are shorter. And this is the bookcase with the most free space, which is why that huge ream of printer paper is hanging out there. This bookcase is the one I’m most likely to condense when my tall hardcovers need more space to expand (which is pretty soon honestly).

Bookcase #4

Here we go with my tall hardcovers. Obviously right now I only actually have space for a few more of these before I end up needing more space for them.

Bookcase #5

The rest of my bookcases house my trade paperback or oddball paperback collection. Seriously, paperbacks come in like four different standard sizes, so if you’re trying to organize them by height, this is the area that will always mess with you. Anyway, for the most part these ones are my favorite types to read, just because they are fairly easy to haul around and not as heavy as hardcovers.

Bookcase #6

This particular bookcase houses my UK paperbacks of the Harry Potter series, as well as the UK paperbacks of Brandon Sanderson’s books. I love how the UK covers look for the Mistborn books as well as the Stormlight Archive (especially because they divide each book in the Stormlight Archive into two books–they are so much easier to carry around). That’s why I have the UK paperbacks for Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series as well. I like the simple design on the cover and I think the format holds up really well for reading without breaking the binding.

Bookcase #7

The final bookcase is the smaller sized Billy Bookcase from IKEA. Originally I was going to use it as a corner bookcase and do the setup that wraps your bookcases around the corner, but the spacing didn’t quite work in the library. Oh well. I still have the brackets so I can try again when we move into a house in the future. The top shelf of this one is set up to hold my Illustrated Harry Potter books, and then I also tossed some of my small hardcover geeky non-fiction books there as well. Then I finish off my trade paperback collection, and there is another shelf left over for me to expand the paperbacks just a little bit.

So there you have it, a look at the books I have in my library. Yes, I could have done like some BookTubers out there and rattled off every title and author for every book I have, but I really don’t think you guys want to read a list of every book I own. I think that would make for a boring blog post. That sort of thing only really works in a video.

I do believe that is all I have for you all today. I’m off to do some more reading (and some adulting–I need to do dishes…and maybe laundry). So hopefully I’ll have more reviews and such ready to go for next week.

Bookshelf Tour Hey all, Dani here. I said I would be getting a library tour post up as soon as I had everything ready, and I'm nearly there.

#ARC #Books! #Libraries

[theothersideofmeeee]

Goodreads 2017 - My Year in Books

Total Books Read – 63 Total Pages Read – 21,296 Average Rating – 4.6

2017, the year that delightfully declared Lying Cat as its official mascot, takes the mantle of being my most productive year, in terms of books read. I ended up devouring a total of 63 books!

‘The wind held its breath.’ These were the words that greeted me to the New Year and I couldn’t have asked for a better start to 2017 than Dawn of Wonder. It was a thoroughly enthralling, coming-of-age fantasy story, drawing some parallels to Harry Potter, Name of the Wind and Blood Song.

As usual, a significant portion of my reading time was devoted to fantasy. Brian McClellan’s Promise of Blood is the closest any book has come to Sanderson’s in terms of style, and I found a lot of parallels - magic system, rebel uprising, and action sequences. The cult classic, The Princess Bride was a love letter to the fantasy genre, and had everything you could possibly want in a fantasy novel - epic duels in picturesque locations, good natured giants, dreaded pirates, a brave hero, a beautiful heroine, and a dashing villain. Thanks to a friend’s recommendation, I read the first two books of the Conqueror series ( Genghis: Birth of an Empire and Genghis: Lords of the Bow), a brutal, and equally breathtaking retelling of Genghis Khan’s rise to power. Once Goodreads announced its new feature to track re-reads, I did a thorough revision of three of my most favorite series - Stormlight Archive, Lord of the Rings, and Red Rising. After readingstudying The Silmarillion, I get promotion from Casual Tolkienite to Advanced Tolkienite in Tolkienology.

I stuck gold with my Discworld selections this year. Before the dwarves come with their axes at the mention of gold, let me get this straight. While I have enjoyed my share of Discworld novels, I don’t always get truly connected to the stories. I usually read it for a good laugh. This year broke that trend and threw it from the furthest reaches of the Rim. Hogfather started this golden run of excellent Discworld books. When the Hogfather (Santa Claus) is presumed dead, somebody needs to deliver gifts to children. Enter DEATH. The book was one emotional roller-coaster that makes you question your beliefs. I have a new favorite in my time travel list with Night Watch, where Vines mentors his younger self amidst a bloody rebellion. The ending is just pitch perfect (and obviously made me cry!). Thud was another strong entry in the City Watch series, highlighted by a stunning action sequence when Vimes goes berserk on a killing spree among the dark dwarves, all the while singingroaring children’s rhymes “WHERE’S MY COW?”. While Going Postal might not have make me laugh as much as the City Watch books, it has a powerful and engrossing storyline that grabs you by the lapels and refuses to you go.

It was rather fitting that I picked up Saga this year. For the uninitiated, Saga, Vol. 1 is a love story between two enemy soldiers caught in a never-ending galactic war. What makes it the best comic series I’ve ever read is that it is also completely CRAZY and INSANE. It revolves around lie-detector cats, torso-less sex workers, robots with TVs as heads, graphic freelance assassins, a ghost who babysits our star-crossed lovers' adorable little girl Hazel who narrates the entire story. I ended up giving 5-stars to all 8 Volumes. Do yourself a favor and give it a try! Other brilliant reads like Groot, Wolverine: Old Man Logan, and The Vision, Volume 1: Little Worse Than A Man capped off a memorable year in graphic novels, while my secret Santa presented me with Adulthood Is A Myth, making it extra special.

I usually take breaks from fantasy with more fantasythrillers. While my choice of thrillers didn’t pay dividends at the start of the year (The Eagle Has Landed is my lowest rated book this year), I made amends with a hatrick of 5-star thrillers (The Black Book by Patterson, The Fix by Baldacci, and The Odessa File by Forsyth). 

My annual quota of contemporary reading was fulfilled by the wonderful Fredrick Backman. A Man Called Ove will probably remain the best contemporary I have ever read. I cried a lot and was reduced to a sobbing mass at the very end. I simply couldn’t get enough of Ove and his neighbors. Ove gifting an iPad to his “granddaughter” was one of my most favorite scenes of the year. I also did a buddy read of Animal Farm, which now made a lot of sense given that I am no longer a 10 year old kid.

Among non-fiction, Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics was easily the best of the lot. I cannot recommend the book enough. In addition to my annual intake of non-fiction, I widened my reading horizons to include books on sports as well. My newfound addiction to data analytics in football prompted me to read The Football Code: The Science of Predicting the Beautiful Game and Outside the Box: OptaJoe's 25 Years of the Premier League. While Michael Cox’s The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines was a brilliant tactical analysis of the evolution of the Premier League, Andres Iniesta’s biography The Artist: Being Iniesta will always hold a very special place in my list.

Just like 2015, I ended the year on the best possible note - Oathbringer, the third book in Brandon Sanderson’s masterpiece, Stormlight Archive. From ‘The wind held its breath’ to ‘Life before death, little one’, 2017 was one incredible year of reading!

#2017 #book review #goodreads