mythcreantsblog

[mythcreantsblog]

It’s time someone was finally brave enough to ask the big question about Andor: why do the houses on Yavin IV have no doors? It’s a tropical rain forest, there’s gonna be so many bugs! And also no privacy for the sex that canonically happened at least once, but mostly the bugs.

[mythcreantsblog]

Many of our favorite spec fic tropes don’t make much sense. Does that matter? How important is it for the masquerade to make sense, and is that different from other logical issues that aren’t so well established? This week, we discuss the importance of logic in worldbuilding, or perhaps the lack of importance. We’ll see how much it matters for different parts of the world to realistically affect others, when it’s most likely to bother people, and how you can get readers to let things slide. Also, why are blogs named like they are?

[mythcreantsblog]

Magic is never easy to balance, but it is at least easier when it doesn’t have to compete with technology. In a Medieval-ish setting, wizards can frolic freely. They aren’t concerned about their magic missile being eclipsed by a regular missile or worried about their spectral mounts being challenged by the internal combustion engine. 

But this childlike innocence won’t work for all stories. Sometimes, you want a sorcerer to open their web browser and order a new outfit from Robes-R-Us or an elemental martial artist to charge into battle beside tanks and armored personnel carriers. This means you have to answer the question of why anyone bothers with magic when technology is widely available. It’s tempting to just make magic more powerful than any tech, but that quickly reaches story-breaking levels, so we need more sophisticated options. 

[mythcreantsblog]

When we think of tension, hope rarely comes to mind. We often imagine tense stories as dark, violent, or scary, so it may feel counterintuitive that tension actually requires hope. But it does, and if you like writing stories about loss, grief, or helplessness, you may discover that hope is what your story is missing.

Let’s explore why hope is important and what you can do to cultivate it, using examples from the dark fantasy TV show From.

[mythcreantsblog]

The concept of awards where the selected judges aren’t familiar with all the entries is just weird. If you haven’t read/watched/tasted each entry, you’re not actually judging their quality. You can’t. The award is a popularity contest at that point.

[mythcreantsblog]

There’s supposedly an Eldin Ring movie in the works, and while the video game adaptation scene has improved a lot since the 90s, we’re still hard pressed to think of a game that would translate less well. How is a movie going to model all the time you’ve spent trying to find other fans who aren’t git gud weirdos?

[mythcreantsblog]

Few things are more exhausting than watching people act like a big franchise’s long running foibles are brand new once there’s a woman or POC in the lead. 

“Why does this new Doctor Who spend so much time in present day London, WHY???” 

My bro, my friend, my brother in scifi, that has been a joke about Doctor Who since before you were born. Also the two latest seasons have spent *less* time in present day London than previous iterations.

[mythcreantsblog]

The argument “X thing is here to stay, so you need to use it” is so strange. It may or may not be true that the thing is here to stay, but lots of things are here to stay and we don’t say to use them. Blackmail is here to stay, you’d better start blackmailing or you’ll be left behind!

[mythcreantsblog]

Superheroes are everywhere.

In many ways, they are the American mythology. The superhero exemplifies popular concepts such as rugged individualism, American exceptionalism, and the reluctant sheriff. A superhero assumes the task of policing the world because they have the power and supposed moral authority to do so.

However, there has been a shift away from such interpretations of the superhero. Perhaps one explanation for the shift is dissatisfaction with current superpeople (billionaires, tech moguls, politicians, etc.). Such dissatisfaction leads to stories that critique the concept of singular, exceptional beings exerting their will on the world.

[mythcreantsblog]

The Matrix must be resetting, because I’m getting déjà vu. You see, fans of a popular TV show are upset because a female character has been traumatized with sexual assault. And in response to the outrage, the creator insisted such material is necessary for realism.

This time, I’m talking about season two of Andor. But you’d be forgiven if you thought I meant Game of Thrones or something else.

The depiction in Andor is thankfully less severe than the ones in Game of Thrones. However, even a watered-down version is hard to swallow when the alternative, just not including sexual assault, is both better and easier. It’s also hard to swallow because the creator doubled down on his poor decision, defending it with the same faulty logic that previous men have hidden behind.

[mythcreantsblog]

From a modern perspective, weird religious offshoots have an unshakably negative association thanks to some famous and truly evil cults. But historically, these radical belief systems were often bastions of progressive ideas. We’d like to see a fantasy novel based on the Cathars, is what we’re saying.

[mythcreantsblog]

A close cousin of the oppressed mage is the bullied cool kid. This is a character, usually young, who gets shit on by their peers for having traits that in any rational world would make them part of the popular crowd. These traits include but are not limited to: a cutting sense of humor, impeccable fashion, and powerful magic.

[mythcreantsblog]

Andor is praised as the most realistic Star Wars ever, and yet season two portrays Syril Karn as good at his job, which has completely shattered our suspension of disbelief.

[mythcreantsblog]

Many thanks to Jessi, our newest patron! With their help, we’ll soon have this very cool and not at all rebel-linked antique shop all stocked and ready to go. Speaking of which, does anyone know where we can get our hands on a new dodecahedron? They really bring the room together. 

[mythcreantsblog]

So, you’ve got a cute, little story about gardening, but now it’s almost the end, and you feel like something should happen. It’s got to be exciting, right? That’s what all the other stories do. But conjuring excitement can be difficult if the rest of the story is light and carefree. That’s how you get endings that have random bursts of violence out nowhere. Fortunately, there’s a better way, and we’re gonna talk about it.

[mythcreantsblog]

For most authors, writing even a single book is difficult and time-consuming. Not Ursula Vernon though. She’s written more books than I know what to do with, under both her own name and the pseudonym T. Kingfisher. Today, three of the Kingfisher books will go head-to-head in an epic battle to determine who has the most ANTS. Is it the adorable but mighty A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, the spooky found family of Nettle & Bone, or the fairy-tale-adjacent A Sorceress Comes to Call? No one knows the answer. Well, I know the answer, but I’m not telling!

[mythcreantsblog]

Welcome, one and all, to the First Annual Love Interest Pageant! Here we count every eye fleck and measure the angle of each cheekbone to see who’s the hottest of them all. Okay, okay, more accurately, I’m ranking each love interest based on the quality of their introductory description. That way, declaring a love interest is “infinity hot plus one” is not a winning move.

Each contestant is from a recent bestseller. To make them more comparable, the book’s protagonist must meet the contestant for the first time and hook up with them to some degree before the end. I’m not reading tea leaves to decide if a character is a love interest. Looking at you, Martha Wells.