Favorite Fantasy Things of the Year

Yeah, I'm gonna pretend I'm important enough that you guys care about my thoughts. Anyway, 2015 was a really wild ride for me! I started a blog, began trying to join the military, got a boy friend, lost a boyfriend, and even started then burned a project I was working on. Basically I did a ton of growing up, and I'm proud of that...

But anyway, time for this delusion to end, let's go to why you're really here!

So this year had a ton of interesting books, movies, and a hundred and other 'fantasy' related things. And of course since I over indulge in all of this, I decided to post my favorite fantasy books, movies, anime, manga, and games of 2015. Now some of you may be upset by what I post up here, but I'm a broke teenager, I can't read/play/watch everything. So enough with the jabbering, let's start this list!

1. Books: And in the books category we have...The Immortals: Shadow and Star Stone. I reviewed this book already, so you know how much I fangirled over it, but I loved this book to death. The characters were refreshing, the setting was refreshing, even the magic system was refreshing. It was like water, except it had blood and sand in it. Oh, and red head elves. Seriously, Jadeth is adorable.

2. Anime: When it comes to anime, it usually boils down to an urban fantasy, and this entry is definitely that with...Dance With Devils. A series that is set in Japan, but has a ton of western fantasy elements. Mainly dealing in devils and vampires, both seeking a 'forbidden grimoire' and murdering their way through the city to do it. I'll admit that it was a romance/harem type thing, but it was done so well that I had a good time. Plus it had a lovely soundtrack and gorgeous art, so it was like cotton candy for the brain. Yum!

3. Manga: This was a hard one. Not in terms to pick out what was best, but more to decide if I should go by when a series came to America, or when it was serialized in Japan. So in the end I decided to just pick what came out in the US since that's where I live. And the winner just so happens to be...Ancient Magus' Bride! Considering how much I squealed about this series at one point, you really shouldn't be surprised to see this on the list. Chise is an adorable character, the magic system is interesting, the story telling engulfs you, and the art is breath taking. I really suggest this series, even if you aren't into comics.

4. Movies: None. All the movies I saw were spy movies, and then I went broke...So how's the weather?

5. Video Games: Bloodborne. Seriously, you guys knew this would be on here. With all the amazing lore, the messed up story line, and the ambiance of Bloodborne; you knew it was going on my list one way or another. The main merit of this game is to read the lore surrounding it, it's a wonderful tale that really startles you on just how far humans are willing to go to gain knowledge. Plus there's steam punk elements, something that I've been missing from video games, probably the main reason it's even here. In all seriousness it's a great game, and here's a link, that breaks down the lore in a story format for those of you who don't want to play the game.

And those are my favorite fantasy things of 2015. I hope you all enjoyed your last year as much as I did, and I hope you all have an interesting 2016!

I'm gonna go play with some sparklers now...

Characters Before Labels(And I'm Aware it Doesn't Sound Snazzy)

So there's this really cool story I've been told by various people. It's truly an amazing, fantastic, and almost fairy tale like story that I'd never thought to actually exist. Apparently all white people are privileged, and if they're white men then they're extra privileged! And to top it all off, you get the grand prize if you happen to identify as heterosexual! Yes, if you're a white heterosexual male you are officially the most privileged being on this entire planet. And as such you should be either ashamed or strive to understand that you were born with privilege and should learn to look from another group's point of view.

Congratulations, come receive your crappy prize!

Sarcasm aside, I could never understand this type of view. I live in a home where my father is a white heterosexual man, and my mother is a black heterosexual woman. So I have the unique ability to see the world from two different American racial groups. From what I could see my father was never 'privileged' at all, and was always looked down upon by everyone, even before he met my mother. The idea that a white heterosexual male is at all 'privileged' is painting an extremely broad, if not ignorant, scope. This is doubly so in the world of storytelling, a medium that relies heavily on the lives that people have experienced.

 If you sit down and read writing blogs you will find white people, especially heterosexual males, talking about how they have to get into the practice of looking from a gay person's POV, or a black person's POV. It's always these...labels, as if those are first and foremost and not the character themselves. And that's an issue that needs to be stomped on by something huge and monstrous, in fact just bring in Cthulu to eat it.

A black person has feelings, thoughts, and motivations just like a white person. And, this may shock some people, but civil rights aren't constantly on their mind. A gay person also has thoughts, motivations, and goals. And, according to my bi friend, they don't always think about how their sexual status will effect them or the people around them. Things like sexuality, skin color, and even religion shouldn't be something that defines every fabric of your character. It will cause certain quirks and ideals in your character, but not to the point that it will be the only thing on your character' mind!

And now you're probably saying: "But Luka, how do you expect me to write these non-white, not so heterosexual, totally unprivileged people without a mob coming to my door? I like looking like a reasonably tolerant person, it helps sell books."

Whelp, how do you write an elvish society? How do you write from the view of a dormouse? How do you write Cthulu? Last I checked most people haven't been a massive tentacle monster that looked like it leapt right out of a gory space hentai. Yet you manage to write all these fantastic beings just fine, well you're happy with them, anyway. You write them like people, or tentacle monsters, first and then add on things like race and sexuality. And if you find yourself stuck with certain details you do tons, and tons, and tons, and tons, and tons of research.

Basically stop trying to make sure you're not offending people. It doesn't matter if you're a lesbian latina woman who was actually born male, and you write a character along the same lines of your own life experience, someone's gonna get offended and think you're a bigot. Because that's life, and people don't care about what you think.

So yeah, I'm gonna go read some Bloodborne lore...

Oh, and Merry Christmas. Or Happy Holidays. Or...-Insert a Winter Greeting Here-

P.S. Don't talk about race, religion, or politics around the holidays. It spawns rants like these.

Writing a Halfling's Life

A lot of the time in fantasy, you have creatures that aren't full blooded. Sometimes these characters are halflings, no I don't mean the tiny people that take gold rings to volcanoes, I mean people of more than one race. You know what I'm talking about; half-elves, half-dwarves, half-humans, that sort of thing. However I notice that most of the people who write these types of characters usually use the same old format. Two different races get together, one or both parents die, child grows up into an angsty avenger, and the child is also super powerful. Well I may be a full human, but I am the closest real life 'halfling' you can get in this world, aka my parents are white and black. So sit back and relax while I basically tell you in way too many words to quit the angsting.

1.) We Don't Always Angst- I know, it would seem like it since being a halfling means you come from two separate worlds, but it isn't that simple. A lot of the times we try to fit ourselves together as our own person, and even though this is pretty rocky in the childhood days, it eventually evens out into not caring. Speaking of which...

2.) Our Childhoods Weren't Always Terrible- My parents are both still alive and love me and my three siblings. I managed to get both white and black friends, my teachers didn't try to sabotage my education, and my grandparents are civil to me. Hey, I never said everything was perfect. But most times our childhoods are completely normal, so don't make it overly dramatic unless needed.

3)  We Can Find Love- For some reason you all think that a mix race love is super duper complex. As if we pick one race and then we suddenly have to conform, it does't exactly work that way. Love is just as hard for us as it is anyone else. Don't make the love strange and noble, it's just as normal and stupid as someone of one race.

4.) We Don't Always Angst- No seriously, we don't.

And there you go, this should help you write more believable halflings. Now I'm gonna go play Mario 64...

An Idiot's Review of Splintered Lands: Through Fire Forged

You know, as someone who loves fantasy I actually come with a ton of pet peeves. Sometimes I can over come them if I like the story premise enough, but more often enough I just stew in discontentment and barely manage to finish the book. This happened to be the case of Splintered Lands: Through Fire Forged by James Tallett. And don't think I'm going to rant this entire review, I have more class than that.

So this story just shoves us straight into the plot. No real explanations on why the world is the way it is. There's a casual mention of a gigantic mage war that's made an Inquisition of sorts, but aside from that we're left in the dark. One of our main character's is Inswan, a baron within this gloomy dystopia that is doing his best to defend his lands from the invading robber baron, Iudas. Inswan is described to be a benevolent and wise ruler, who hates seeing injustice done to all people. Which is a big reason as to why he hates Iudas, this guy is a complete bastard. He rapes women, burns villages to the ground, steals from his serfs, basically he read up on the latest volume of How to be a Terrible and Cliched Villain. And this is where I have a massive issue with this book, Iswan is shown to be a man that is kind and benevolent, almost a perfect ruler. While his rival, Iudas, is a terrible excuse for a human being that needs a hot poker repeatedly ran through his ass.

On the opposite side of the country is Fryca. Apparently she is a technologist trying to make the world a better place ever so slowly. However all her efforts are constantly destroyed by The Knights of the Broken Wheel. Think Roman Catholic Church without any of the religion. Fryca is a clever and ambitious young woman...And that's it. I can't tell you much about her because her personality doesn't grow beyond that.

And by now you've probably discovered a theme with this review. While the premise is interesting, a world destroyed by a massive magic war, the characters and events are terribly written. The pace is rushed, the characters bland, and the theme on 'humans are bastards' wasn't executed very well. It was clear that the writer should have taken more time to write and establish the characters, and a bit more about the world around them. Dystopias are supposed to be dreary, but boring is never supposed to be part of the equation.

If you wanna buy it do so here.

I'm gonna go Christmas shopping now...

Writing For Yourself

Normally I have a cheesy or sarcastic thing to say at the beginning of my blog posts, just so you know to take whatever I'm about to spew with a heaping pile of salt. But this time around I'm going to be pretty serious, because my subject today is something that I've thought about for a long while. A few months ago I posted about how I excited I was that I had managed to take my WIP to a second draft. You guys gave me a ton of support in that particular post, and my pride had gone through the roof. However going through this fiasco for a second time, I realized that what I was writing wasn't entirely me. The characters and plot were definitely coming from my brain juices, but the content and themes weren't. Those were all coming from what I expected big time agents and publishers would want, not what I personally wanted to write about.

And yesterday when I was going through some of my other old WIPs, I realized that I never actually wrote for myself. It was almost always based on the expectations of people who would eventually help me make it in a publishing company, not what I wanted. I love dark themes, but what I was writing seemed muted and censored so that a publisher wouldn't think it was for a B-rate movie. I wanted more anime/manga tropes, but I always shied away because I didn't want an agent getting freaked out by them. All I was doing was covering up my voice, a likely unique voice that may or may not bring in a huge audience because of my different views and writer's education.

And now I realize I may not be the only one with this issue. Many times I see people asking 'would you read this' and 'would you be interested in that' instead of deciding entirely by what they want to write. If you don't want to write about dystopian, YA , love triangle romance then don't. It's not gonna kill your chances of getting an audience. Because if you keep going down that dark road of doing what people will expect out of you, then you'll hate your writing and what it's become.

Gosh, this was a super serious post. I'm gonna go watch Monster Musume now, I really need to laugh....

KABLAM! Super Weapons!

Yeah, I let out my inner eight year old boy, what're you gonna do about it? Anyway, recently I've been watching a boat load of super hero movies. Everything from Guardians of the Galaxy, which is awesome by the way, to Captain America. Now I love me a good superhero movie, they're usually fun, unless it's a DC movie then it's just awesome, and I get to stare at a bunch of hot guys doing cool things. But one of the most interesting things about the entire premise is that there are characters who don't have powers. Instead they rely on their smarts, skills, and weapons to save the city/day/galaxy/universe/house.

And the same thing happens a lot of the time in fantasy books. Characters don't have the super woobly wobbly magic that other characters have, instead they have their very own weapons that does the woobly wobbly for them. Normally they're in the form of talking swords, ancient bows, or the automatic wizard staff.  These babies could destroy whole armies, you know after the bad guy killed one of the hero's best friends. They always hit their marks, always stay clean, and they're sharper than a diamond that takes daily doses of badass steroids. More than likely you get them from a super secret cave, a little old lady who was missing her kitten, or the bottom of that ancient lake where virgins were sacrificed during the full moon. Basically they're super awesome dues ex machinas that will probably help solve the main story line. Heck, it might even get them a pretty pretty princess during the process.

I feel like it's all just a waste. If you know anything about nuclear missiles, then you know that there's plenty of consequences to using them. They don't really solve all problems, if anything they end up compounding them. Yes they're badass, yes they can't kill the Saint of Killers, but there's waaaaaaaay more cons than pros to those weapons of mass destruction. With this being said, wouldn't it make sense for the super weapons in fantasy to be just as destructive? And no, I don't mean killing the dark lord and all his super evil armies. I mean on the environment, the people in the vicinity of the attack, the person using them, even their psyche. The only mental problems that they ever seem to cause is corruption, but that's usually until the pretty pretty princess tells the hero that she believes in them. That's a ton of wasted material just cast aside because the writer wants to just show case all the super weapon's badass powers.

Now I'm gonna go drool over Fallout 4...

An Idiot's Review of Urdaisunia

When I read a book one of the biggest things, for me, that can make or break it are the characters. If I read a book with a flimsy plot I'm more than happy to overlook it if the characters are solid. Heck, I'm even willing to forgive shoddy world building and mediocre prose for the sake of good characters. Thankfully, in the case of Urdaisunia by Ms. Kyra Halland, it's not just the characters who happen to stand out and help create a pretty interesting story.

Now this story starts out of with a prologue. Since we all know how I feel about prologues I won't go into a rant about, instead we'll fast forward to the beginning of the book. It actually starts out with a young widow named Rashali, recently she lost her husband and her young daughter to illness. On top of that there's a drought going on, her country has been taken over by the Sazar, and the rebellion group she's apart of is full of idiots. However her entire world get's thrown on its head when the prince of the Sazar, Eruz, decides to spare her life...Well that and the gods decide to use her as the token peice of a bet. If she marries Eruz then the goddess of Earth and the god of water will 'mate' and make it rain.


Now the main plot makes it seem like Rashali is some amazing chosen one. Especially when other gods begin rooting for her, how almost every man in power wants to have her, and how her decisions will effect the entire world. Basically the whole savior shtick. However whenever Rashali makes a decision it has serious consequences. There rarely seems to be the 'super special awesome savior net' that so many stories have for their characters. If Rashali makes a bad decision it comes back to bite her in the butt later.

Now let's talk about the characters. Personally, I found Rashali to be a very strong female character. And not in this haughty, angsty, if not manish way that seems to be all the rage. Rashali was clever, had a healthy dose of common sense, and seemed to learn from her mistakes. Who cares that she couldn't fight for almost the entire story, the fact that she could use brain over brawn was really refreshing.

Eruz, her love interest, was an okay guy. I felt like he happened to fall for Rashali far too quickly, but then again it was never clear enough for me to determine if the goddess of love had anything to do with it. Aside from that I think he was a good character, not one strong enough to be the center of attention the entire story, but one that I did  enjoy reading about when his parts came up. He seemed like an honest and good man, bound between duty and love, something you often get in the romance-fantasy genre.


To be honest, I was completely disappointed by Eruz's siblings and the king. All three felt like standard villains with no real defining traits. Yes, we understand that the brothers want the throne for themselves, and yes we understand that the father has ridiculously high expectations. We get it. But there needs to be more traits in the people we have to despise aside from greed, jealousy, and greed. If anything I was more curious as to why the father wanted Eruz to die, or if that was just in the heat of the moment. Aside from that I never felt an ounce of disgust, curiosity, or satisfaction when these guys did anything.

Finally there's the gods. Not much to say here, they acted in typical tropes for each type of thing they were patron over. If anything, they heavily reminded me of the Greek gods and the story of Athena or the Titans. It was interesting in theory, but the archetypes chosen for the gods made them boring and predictable. And due to the focus on the humans in this story, there just wasn't enough room in it to evolve the gods further.

The many pitfalls in character, actually got saved by world building. First off this story happens to be in an almost Middle Eastern setting. So often times Rashali had to go through deserts, rocky hills, and fertile plains thanks to Urdaisunia's rivers. Not only is the setting interetsing, but the various cultures that we're introduced to. The Sazar have to have five wives, a contracted concubine ring, and didn't have a writing system before invading Urdaisunia. The Urdai have their own traditions and were even the ones who introduced writing to the Sazar. There were other cultures as well, but they were more left in the background so that the Sazar and Urdi world could shine.

In general I found this story to be very entertaining. An amazing read if you want a romance fantasy, that is a bit more involved than the typical romance book.

If you wanna buy the book get it here.

Okay, I need to go cry in a corner now. Tokyo Ghoul is a very cruel mistress....

Where the Idiot Has Been

Hi! Wait, how long has it been since I've been active on this blog? Um...Okay, so my life has been all over the place lately. I've been busy training to join the American Navy, helping my siblings in school, and packing my junk up so I can put it in storage. However I have been paying attention to the fantasy books being published, and have a ton of awesome reviews and topics to cover in the upcoming weeks. One book I finished months ago, in a single day actually, is Urdaisunia. So you can expect that review as soon as humanely possible. I really have nothing else to say, so I'm gonna sign off here.

Now I need to proofread my Urdaisunia review...

An Idiot's Review of The Diary of Modern Cinderella

As you guys know, I typically review fantasy books. However I decided to go with a change of pace and read a slice of life YA called The Diary of Modern Cinderella. I'm sure more than half of you are rolling your eyes at the mere title and saying: "Are you serious, another Cinderella teen drama story? Don't you have a few more brain cells than that, Luka?"

To be fair it's called an idiot's review, what did you expect? In all seriousness this story, written by Ms. Sekina Mayu, has very little to do with the actual overall plot to Cinderella aside from the fact that our main heroine, Risa, get's a stepmother and stepsister after her mother passes away. However her new mother, Riko, is actually kind to her from the get go and her new sister, Chiyu, becomes her bestest friend. Riko doesn't try to replace Risa's original mother, and Risa herself is only angsty after the initial news of her father dating someone else. However her life is tipped over when her father, a superintendent in the police force, get's sent away to Nagasaki on a case and all hell breaks loose as Riko begins to abuse both of her daughters.

I honestly loved reading everything from Risa's point of view. For her everything is usually cut into quick logic thoughts, nothing too complex or over the top. It really felt like I was reading from the mind of a young teenage girl who's confused by her step-mother's strange behavior, and struggling to keep it all a secret. With that said, I would have loved a deeper analysis on how it affected her and more scenes depicting the abuse. Risa ,in general, is a typical girl thrust in an atypical situation, there's no real defining characteristics about her.

Now comes a large problem I had with this novel. A lot of it felt rushed, with little time to actually sit down and let us absorb what was happening, or a real chance to meet the characters. Risa had an advantage since she's the eyes we see everything happening from, but everyone else is foggy and almost one dimensional. Understandably this is a light novel, meaning that you have to read the accompanying novels to get a better idea, but it would still be nice to see how Risa truly viewed them.

All in all this was an interesting take on the Cinderella trope, and is enjoyable as long as you're not going into it expecting a constant barrage of angst and drama.

If you wanna buy the book it can be found here.

I'm gonna go work on the next blog post. I'm so behind....

Fear and All It Pertains

Fear is what makes us human. It separates us from machines, guides many of our decisions, and dictates when we're gonna go to bed at night. Because let's face it;  if you watch a good horror movie at midnight, chances are you're not gonna go to bed before dawn. Anyway I digress, the point of this post is exploring the fears that your characters have. And I don't mean the typical ones like 'loosing a loved one' because unless you're a demented sociopath everyone has this. No, I mean something like a fear of the dark or a fear of spiders. I also want to take a look at how characters should/could react to their fears.

I always find it amazing that a ton of characters just don't have basic fears. All their fears have to be this noble bullcrap that makes them seem like a good person, as if it will help us like the characters more. Well you know what, the entire emotion of fear is a completely selfish thing! When you're truly afraid of something you rarely compromise with the people who need you to get something done. You're gonna do everything and anything in your power to avoid making contact/looking at/interacting with whatever it is you fear. So even though the pretty red-headed gypsy girl may be drowning in a pond full of filth, if your hero is a total germaphobe, he's probably gonna keep going on his merry way or not give his 100%  if he helps her.

Now that sounds terrible doesn't it? That poor guy I just created sounds like a total bastard but Joe, that'll be his name for now, could have other traits that balance his mysophobia. He could be a very giving person that would give the shirt off his back to save a sickly orphan that'll die anyway, he could clean the local poorhouse twice a week, all things that would generally make him seem like a good person. Balancing out traits is super important, and is slowly becoming this thing I say in a crazy tone whenever I read books. If you don't balance out his mysophobia with something like...a strong work ethic, then he's going to topple over into a character that will be seen as completely miserable. However if this is your goal then good for you, in fact you should just ignore a good chunk of this post and go do something else. Go bake a pumpkin pie, clean your refrigerator, or read and comment on another one of my other blog posts...Please?

Anyway, my obnoxious suggestion aside, this entire time you're probably wondering why Joe just doesn't get over his fears. After all, there's gonna be something in his life that he needs to deal with that also involves his phobia. And that's true, because life really doesn't care about our comforts and wants. However, people are ridiculously stubborn and selfish. Going outside your comfort zone is a hard thing to do, and takes a toll on a person mentally and sometimes physically. So even if Joe wanted to save our red-headed gypsy, it'd make his stomach twist in knots, his mind go back and forth on his moral responsibilities, and make him sweat freaking him out even more. Thinking back on all this, I wouldn't want to deal with my fears either. Three cheers for cowards!

I'm gonna go bake an apple pie now...

An Idiot's Thoughts on a Fantasy Writer's Education

So as a writer you probably already know you've got to read. And I don't mean just one novel every few months, no you've got to read at least one a month. And that's just the minimum! The reason being, so that you can get plenty of information on your craft. After all, it's important to know what's been done and how others have done it. However, I think that's almost skimping on the entire fantasy idea bucket. Maybe just books were needed thirty years ago, but in the 21st century there's plenty of other mediums you can glean from to help your inspiration and fantasy learning experience.

1. Video Games- I know video games aren't for everyone, and some people still consider them childish, but in this day and age a good story is a big factor in selling a video game. There are literally hundreds of good video games out there that have interesting stories, characters, and magic systems that you probably haven't explored. I've spoken about one multiple times on this blog called Bayonetta, a story about a witch that has amnesia and has to piece her memories back together. All the while fighting angels and working with demons, and looking absolutely fabulous doing it. Another I'd recommend is Bloodborne, a gothic, steampunk, horror fantasy. If that wasn't enough to get your attention, then maybe I should tell you that the entire story revolves around a hunter fighting Eldritch Abominations. Oh, and did I mention the fact that you have no idea if it's all a dream or not?

2. Anime/Manga- The Japanese medium that CNN has called porn. As someone who actually watches/reads the stuff, I can tell you that it isn't porn. Well, there is porn but there's also cartoon porn in America too. Anyway, since this comes from Japan not only are you getting some new fantasy ideas, but you're also getting it from a completely different outlook. Since most adults aren't particularly happy to watch cartoons, I understand if you cast away these suggestions completely. But just watch Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood first. It has an extremely intense story about a pair of brothers who try to bring back their dead mother via alchemy...Just for one of the brothers to become a black monster and has to be put inside a suit of armor to stay together. And that's just the beginning, the rest of the journey is just as amazing. Take a look at it before you dismiss it for being a Japanese cartoon.

Now manga is a comic version of anime, but one I would certainly recommend is Ancient Magus' Bride.  The story revolves around fifteen year old Chise who's sold into slavery thanks to being able to see fae. Instead of being bought by a stereotypical cruel man who learns to love her, she's bought by the very inhuman Elias Ainsworth. A powerful mage with a goat skull instead of a human head. The magic system for this story is the star of the show, but the character development is nothing to laugh at either.

3. Comics- I actually know very little about American comics, so I can't personally give you recommendations, but I wouldn't count these out either. Just like all the other mediums discussed, comic books can help you find a plethora of interesting stories, characters, and magic systems for you to explore. Plus, just so you know, Neil Gaiman wrote one. That has to be worth mentioning.

4. Movies- This one is a bit trickier. Most fantasy movies are based on books, but if you're lucky enough to find a movie based on someone's imagination, then study it. A ton of movies love giving lazy exposition, you'll be able to find something interesting to get your juices flowing.

5. TV Shows- For some reason the TV channels have all decided that fantasy is the genre they'll be making shows for. One of those shows happens to be Once Upon a Time, a show taking all the Disneyfied classic fairytales and throwing them on their head. It uses the typical savior trope, but it does it tastefully, though I wouldn't recommend anything after season 2. There's also this show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I never got around to watching it, but heard it was pretty good.

So those are all the mediums you can glean from. I recommend spreading your time out involved in all of these, but since you're a novel writer make sure you spend more time writing. It just makes sense.

Now I'm gonna go watch Bleach...

Taking a Look at Injuries

I feel like most fantasy writers have never gotten hurt in their lives. You can't convince me that if you break a toe that you can sit there and run away from a band of rabid elves two hours later. Or if someone gets choked for a good few seconds, they're not gonna have issues breathing for a little bit. Nope, instead the warriors can go on fighting as if they were in the prime of their lives, injured or not. And I'm sure a few of you are thinking: "Luka, clearly they used magic to heal themselves."

If that was the case then it should have been mentioned! No, all of these characters are just super human/elf/orc/dust bunnies and when they get injured it never actually counts. That, dear friends, is called lazy writing, and missed opportunities, but mostly lazy writing. You should never just forget something that happens to your characters, because most times those things will show up later on. This is especially true with injuries. If your character snaps his dominant wrist, there's no way he's gonna pick up his sword and slash at the ravenous dog that's trying to eat his kitty. If he put that much weight on his wrist then it would damage it even more, maybe even making it completely useless after awhile.

These are things you have to put into consideration when you decide to injure your characters. How will it effect the story later on? Now if the guy who snapped his wrist wasn't able to save his kitty, maybe it'll give him some character development. Maybe he'll realize you shouldn't take a tiny cat with him on his adventures. Or maybe you could introduce a completely different character who fights off the dog with magic, giving our adventurer a new companion.

Another thing you've gotta think about when you beat on your characters, is how long it takes to heal. Being a person who breaks their toes about twice a year on the vacuum cleaner, I can tell you it takes about a month for me to put my full weight on the other foot. But just because I can walk on it doesn't mean anything, more than likely it takes a week or more to actually be completely healed. So if it takes a month for a toe to get in shape, how much longer do you think it'll be for a freaking rib, or an arm, or leg? Of course healing times gets skewed when magic is involved, but if you have no intention of saying "Charmy the hobbit got a healing potion from Happy the wizard cat." Then I'm just gonna shake my head and assume that your character became god at some point.

You know, a lot of the injuries in fantasy comes from epic battles. And most of the epic battles happen in muddy, nasty, and absolutely dirty places. So if you're planning to have some guy stabbed in the abdomen, his wound needs to get cleaned. I mean, that should be a higher priority than saving blonde princess #33,333,758,558. Because if that thing isn't disinfected with something, then he's likely to get an infection and die. And don't even pull that 'rips a piece of his shirt to wipe the blood away'. That shirt is probably just as disgusting as the rest of him, especially if it was splattered with other people's blood, mud, and sweat.

God, this post makes me want to check into a freaking hospital. But I assume you all get the point of this blog post. Pay some attention to your characters, pay attention to the time in your story, and for insert some deity here's sake don't go for romanticism over realism. Unless that princess happens to have healing kisses, you're gonna bleed out from that wound.

Now I'm gonna go make breakfast....

My First Story Overhaul

Oh Lord, how time has flown. My poor WIP has made it to its second draft today. And while I wanna just get on the dancefloor, I'm actually banned from it in sixty countries, it's so freaking weird. I've never managed to get to the point where I can't recognize the draft. I've aborted some of my characters, others have changed gender, all of them have had their goals tweaked, and I managed to birth a couple of new babies that'll no doubt get killed off later on. And that's just the characters, the world that I have created has also changed to suit my needs. While I once talked about several different cities, it's all boiled down to just one massive one that has several layers to it. I even went so far as to change the season this story starts in forget winter, we're going for spring now, baby!

And while it's all super exciting, it also plants a few seeds of doubt into my tiny brain. 'What if the theme is harder to understand?' 'What if my plot doesn't make sense anymore?' 'What if I just decide to eat cake instead of ice cream?'. While I do have issues with the last one, it's not nearly as important as the other issues presented. Unlike that first draft when you were full of bright smiles, happiness, and pixie-piss, the second draft feels like the dark version of all that. Now I'm full of frowns, sadness, and...What's a negative version of pixie-piss? Demon-piss?

Who knows.

And while all this is going on I know that something very important is happening, something that will no doubt change me into a better person...I'm challenging myself. It's so freaking easy to sit down and make up a magical world, a theme, and a few characters; but it's much harder to sit down and believe that every bit of it is complete and utter crap. That you have to get in there with your scalpel, drill, and old rusty axe, and get rid of what's just not working. It's sitting there and saying 'I'm not always right, sometimes I'm wrong, time to fix my mistakes'.

I-I think I'm gonna cry.

Anyway. this was a pretty sappy post. But I like to think I'm growing in my writing life, as well as my dwindling teenage life.

Now I'm gonna rot my brain by playing Mario Kart 64.

A Sad Truth

So the other day I was reading an article that demanded that every single book needs to have one LGBT person. Doesn't matter the type or gender, they just need to be a reoccurring character with some good character development. You know, I'm the type that's all for diversity. I believe you should try to represent more for the masses, it's unfair to have an all snowy white American/British/Canadian cast all the freaking time. However, I also don't believe we should absolutely freaking placate to other people just because.

This world doesn't cater to you, so I don't have to either.

Wait...

Doesn't that just defeat the whole purpose of my opening paragraph? Yes and no. While I do believe in diversity, I don't think that you should have 'token characters'. When I was a kid, my mom would watch TV with me and would sigh and say 'token character' whenever a person of color would show up on certain programs. This was the late nineties and early two thousands, so it happened a lot less than when the bulk of my audience was growing up, but that character still stood out like a sore thumb. If the writers of the show really cared about diversity then they would add more characters of ethnicity not just one. You don't have to add diversity because that's the hippest thing, you don't have to cater to other people, just yourself and maybe your moral compass.

In my own WIP I have a mass of heterosexual characters, and the only one on the other side of the court is an asexual character, Yup, not even gay or transgender, they just don't care about sex. Did I add them in because the asexuals have been screaming for proper representation? No. He, yes it's a guy, just doesn't like sex; there's no need for some deep or hidden meaning in it. I also have two Japanese characters, a white woman, a black teenager, and a white guy. Did I choose these characters to be this way just so the minorities in question can have representation?

NO.

Seriously, when you begin to write things just because you don't want to offend people, that's when you know your stuff is going down the crapper. If anything your writing should offend people! It should make them think long and hard as they write angry tweets on your Twitter. It should worm through their brains to the point that the whole meaning of your story is twisted in their eyes and they found an entirely different, albeit ridiculous, message of your book. You're a writer and you shouldn't have to cater to anyone, that's why there's genre and even age and sexuality shelves. If they want something specific then google search it like everyone else. But if they just want a good book that just so happens to have gays, an Indian protagonist, and even a sociopath, then so be it.

I'm gonna go play Uncharted now....

Tsunderes/Bitchy Love Interests

My most viewed blog entry is about female perverts....Okay, let's talk about bitches then. Bitches and tsunderes.

Actually, I highly doubt the majority of my base knows what a tsundere is...So, basically a tsundere is a Japanese term using the word tsun tsun, kinda meaning cold, and dere, kinda meaning sweet. Basically it's one of those bitchy characters that'll argue with you for three fourths of the book, then by the end they're kissing some poor bastard. Now just because I use female derogatory terms don't think a tsundere is just for females, there's plenty of males. In fact the most famous male tsundere has to be Mr. Darcy from that one book you all know of. He's not bitchy per se, but he's very much so a guy that has a cold persona that rubs people wrong more often than not.

Now I'm not sure why people like having these as main love interests, and god forbid both characters act this way, but I decided to help people write them. Mostly because I actually have experience...acting this way in real relationships. Don't look at me like that and just finish reading the blog article!

1. Have a reason your characters even act this way: For whatever reason people think having tsunderes/bitchy people as love interests creates amazing drama. And this is true, it does create drama, but it's too easy to do. A character has to have reasons for why they do things, in a way they're puppets, but they need to believable to your audience. If your character acts like a saint to everyone else, but suddenly is cruel to the poor guy that likes her, then that's out of character. She needs a reason to act that way! Maybe she's rich so she sees everyone below her, and people above her social class or inside it she acts 'stiff' since she wants to be on their good side. That would make a lot more sense than some usually sweet girl suddenly wanting to cut off some poor guy's head for liking her.

2. Don't have them switch from 'cold' to 'sweet' erratically: I hate it when a couple sits there and will have a snuggle moment, but a few scenes later the tsundere/bitch person will freak out around the love interest. It just doesn't work that way, not even with PMS. The only way to remedy this is to have proper character development. Have them go through trials that has the bitchy person rely and value the love interest, and have moments when the love interests realizes that it's hard for the bitchy person to open up about their feelings. Speaking of which...

3. Don't have an overwhelming amount of angst: Do us all a favor and tattoo this to your face, so every single time you look into a reflective surface you remember this rule. It's standard for any type of writing, romance or not. If you need to, tattoo it to your refrigerator and cellphone as well, just get this rule in your brain.

4. Don't have the tsundere/bitchy character suddenly decide to love the love interest: Love at first sight does not exist, sorry to burst your bubble. On the same note love after hours and even years of arguing doesn't exist either. If you want your couple to argue, fine more power to you, but don't have them plan a wedding at the end of the book. If I don't see any kind of affection, not lust, then I'm not going to believe it. Affection stems from something, either an action or some words, and then it branches on to connect to other things in a person's head. It's also a mass of chemicals and a false sense of security, but who am I to get in the way of romance?

5. Don't have bitchy as the main character trait: As a person who is a bit hard on their lovers, I know that it seems to be all consuming, but you have to realize that we're not really this way all the time. It's mostly around love interests or people that are generally seen as annoying, yet they hold some sort of affection for; not necessarily romantic affection. So if your character is around their best friend that they found soothing, they'd probably act completely different. Basically what I'm trying to say is look at the character interaction as well as the character traits.

So that's it. I'm gonna go watch Sgt. Frog....

Even Women Can Be Perverts

Holy mother of insert some deity here...I'm updating my blog. Well that and I'm a female writing about perverted female characters. I know, I know, this is completely unheard of and you're probably questioning my genitalia right now, but I feel like something needs to be said. Isn't it pretty 'sexist' to think that only guys think about sex or make sexual innuendos? I know in my dwindling teenage days alone I've thought about it at least fifty times a day, and I'm only nineteen. But I guess on some level that makes me a whore, slut, whatever derogatory term you want to use. I'm sure many of you are shaking your heads at the dramatics, but from a ton of books I've read I'd think differently. Almost any female in media who happens to be a pervert also spreads her legs constantly. I'm not saying sex is bad, I'm sure it's fucking amazing, but not every dirty thought needs to be played out with that mysterious yet sexy stranger.

Now, I want to make it clear I'm NOT a 'modern' feminist, meaning that I don't think men should die or whatever extreme message they're spewing, but I do believe that women can have the same desires as men. But just like men, I highly doubt a woman would just act them out whenever they think of them, or that their thoughts are always consumed by sex.

My lord, this blog post is all over the place...

Okay, what I'm trying to say is that female pervert characters are normally regulated to the office slut. Even in fantasy a lot of female characters have an attraction/lust towards another character, but they don't make sexual jokes or will blush at the eye candy. If you have that one girl who's willing to make a lovely innuendo to her love interest, she's no doubt doing guys in the tavern bathroom as well. I never really noticed this issue until I was watching a play through of the video game Bayonetta. The titular character, Bayonetta, is a complete pervert. Almost every sentence out of her mouth is some kind of innuendo, just check out the Bayonetta 2 E3 trailer on Youtube, but she's still a classy lady. She ain't interested of spreading her legs for anyone, but she'll tease you with a sway of her hips and a few naughty words. She's also a strong witch, competent gunner, and so clever that if she wanted to she could just take over the entirety of heaven and hell. For her, perversion is simply a character quirk, not this defining part of her that motivates all her actions.

So how can we write perverted female character without coming under fire from the feminazis, 'holier than thou' women, and those guys that want to join a special camp? Well...You really can't. Even in this day and age people will freak out if a female has sex on the brain, so the only thing I suggest is giving her a brain.Make her a super strategist who often helps the king's army, but will often use her position of power to drool over the men in uniform. Or have a strong and capable soldier who often makes sex jokes about how her sword will get in another guy's sheath? Take that how you will. But these girls will never just spread her legs to any idiot who wanders on her path, she does have standards.

Or they can just love sex, that's cool too. Just make her compatent, dammit!

So there you go, probably my most controversial blog post. Seriously, I should do it over something like pedophilia in books or something, this is just pathetic. Anyway, I'm gonna go oggle men in military uniforms.

Yum, military uniforms~!

An Idiot's Review of The Star Stone: Book One of the Darkwinds of Danaria Series

You know, if you've followed this blog for any length of time you know that I love to read. Reading is something that keeps me from murdering my siblings, and outright locking myself away. As such I'm pretty much able to read virtually anything you throw in my face. But you guys should also know that I'm pretty blunt when I talk about what I read. Saying this long and drawn out introduction, I wanted to like this book. I honest to ,whatever god you worship, did. With a name like The Darkwinds of Danaria series, I knew I was going to be in for something interesting. While TA Sullivan clearly has a very active imagination, and is extremely good at naming things, that's pretty much where the fun dies.

So let's start off with our two protagonists. Neerah, a fifteen year old girl, is your average Jane that lives in a tiny village. She can hear the music from the ever mysterious stones she collects, but aside from that she thinks she's normal. However that pretty thought is smashed and burned when a handsome young man kidnaps her and she learns that she's a reincarnated...well to put it simply, dark lord. Whenever Neerah was on the page I usually had two reactions, the dominate one rolling my eyes, and the other was sighing. While I do appreciate she put up a fight on occasions, I felt like it was so short lived that it may as well not even happened. I'm sure she'll get more character development in later books, hopefully, but I just didn't like her character at all. Constantly arguing, constantly whining, making stupid mistakes, it got annoying very quickly.

Our second protagonist is a guy called Joelnar. The interesting thing about him is that he's a half Nix half human creature. And...That's really where the interesting part about him ends. He was very angsty in the book, upset about things that were out of his control, and most of the time was a silent brooding type. Except when he wasn't and was usually snapping at Neerah or trying to deal with her. To be fair I'd be upset with Neerah most of the time too.

Now let's talk about the world. Since this was a high fantasy the world has to be amazingly interesting, right? Well, actually it is sometimes. While I wasn't too fond of calling normal things, like birds, off the wall names like feathered fliers. I did find the world that the Etherals inhabited very interesting, and would have loved it if the entire plot was set in the world. The description for it was wonderful, and the inhabitants a bit unique, almost reminding me of the Farplane in Final Fantasy 10. But once you hit the actual setting, it was just a typical fantasy landscape that reminded me of Western Europe if not Northern America.

The plot is as expected. Normal girl finds out that she's not normal, gets saved by a handsome stranger, they go destroy the plot device of doom. Aside from the fact that everyone wants to kill Neerah for some reason or another, there's no real surprises.

So to sum it all up, I have to say that the story had potential. Some aspects of it was really thrilling and unique like the Etheral world, and the Nixians, but other than that it followed way too many high fantasy tropes making it a pretty boring affair.

If you still want to get the story it can be found here.

Alright, I'm gonna go eat some grits....

You're Not Describing, You're Purple Prosing

I know prosing isn't a word, but just deal with it for a few seconds while you read this article. Now, with that out of the way, let me do my obligatory introduction. 

All writers have a duty to show, not only a good story, but an amazing world to the readers. The world needs to jump off the pages and caress the readers minds with lovely images that they will keep in their souls until Death calls them back to the never ending oblivion that is the end of their lives...

That is not describing what you need to do, that was a bunch of pointless description that had terrible grammar. For whatever reason writers, especially of the SF/F and romance genres, thinks that accurate descriptions need to be long and poetic. Now this is fine if you're like Shannon Hale, and your prose is naturally poetic, but even Shannon Hale has enough reign over her writing in order to keep it to the point. Me and at least an eighth of the human population just doesn't understand poetry or straight up doesn't like it. So instead of reading poetry, we read other mediums of fantasy telling. When people like you shove in all your glittery, fancy, and down right obnoxious descriptions down our throats it makes us upset. We shove poetry to the side for a reason, don't make us read any more of it.

Dislike of poetry aside, there's another valid reason; because my opinion does matter that's what popular culture has taught me. When you have all the flowery descriptions of certain characters, you immediately have seasoned readers hating that character. That poor character probably just popped up on the page, but when you're describing her like this: "Skin as dark as chocolate and eyes as brown as a fawn. Her black curls bounced against her shoulders like playful snakes, just begging to be pet and played with. Her smile was wide and the adorably small teeth were as white as the moon, and had their own particular shine that made Prince Leopold's heart soar..."

Now, having read that, don't you get a distinct impression of her? I don't know about you, but I think that this...thing I created is a Mary-Sue. Heck, I don't know her backstory, her goals, or even her name and I hate her. And if I'm hating a character I literally made up on the fly, then I'm probably gonna hate the character that I've read about for at least three chapters and have had nothing but whimsy descriptions shoved in my eyes.

Of course not all descriptions are whimsy and happy. Some can be outright sad and melancholy, tales of tragic heroes dying in puddles of their own blood, or the death of a great and valiant creature that once ruled the skies. This is more common in death scenes, probably to make me care more about the character, ignoring the fact I've been reading about him since book one, page 45, eight books ago...

Now I could tell you a hundred more reasons why purple prose just doesn't work, but I'll finish with one of the best reasons why you shouldn't...

You ready?

People skip it. The six hours you spent flipping through the thesaurus for the longest word that still meant tiny, all to describe a magic girl, is gonna be skipped. And not because the person hates poetry, thinks the character is a Mary-Sue, or hates kids. It's probably a better bid to say that they just want to get onto the next bit of dialogue or action. Description in long never ending paragraphs is boring! If you've read Journey to the Center of the Earth, then you probably skipped the majority of the first chapter since it described the house. A house that, if memory serves me right, you don't ever see again. 

Basically, at the end of the day, just describe things the way they are. Don't try to overdue it, you're just gonna make people upset, or waste your own time because people will skip it.

Now I need to go finish reading the book I'll be reviewing....

Masquerades

No, not those mysterious balls that you wear a mask to, that'd be too easy to pick at, I'm talking about the masquerade life. That life where dwarves, vampire, and faires can pretend to be humans or humans just don't know they exist. With urban fantasy being super popular, this trope has simply become so obnoxious and in your face it's ridiculous. Every time you read an urban fantasy, it's likely that no one knows that the fae exist. Those that do know are insane or are forced to keep it a secret for...reasons.

So that's what today's article is gonna be about. Writing masquerades and having them make sense, not an excuse for your character to be all special and whatever.

1. Decide who can know about the masquerade.

Too many times I've read an urban fantasy, and some random teen finds out that fae exist. Then there's that old wrinkly guy down the street, that new ager who runs the yoga place, and maybe your nutty Grammy. Now there's no issue with more than one person knowing about the masquerade, but at least make that whole thing interesting! Don't have the people who know about the masquerade be the most obvious people alive. If they're always smoking a joint and saying that we have to be 'one with the earth' I'm always certain that guy knows that fae exist, and that joint is just some fairy herbs that stop his cancer. Have people you'd never expect to know about the fantasy world, maybe the president of a band fan-club, that guy who owns the insecticide company, or even the ice cream man. Having teachers, old folks, and family knowing about the masquerade is just boring and stereotypical. Stop it!

2. Have a good reason for the masquerade.

I roll my eyes when I see the reason for the masquerade is that humans wouldn't understand. Seriously? Humans take better care of their pets than their children, I think that we've come to an age where we'd understand and accept quite a bit. There's always going to be cultural differences, power struggles, and outright hatred between others. So having those reasons as your sole excuse is not only over-used, but so obvious it's stupid. In the RPG game The Changeling: The Lost it's pretty obvious why there's a masquerade. The 'True Fae' are terrible beings that are more than happy to exploit your very soul for their own pleasure. It's for the humans safety that there's a masquerade, not the fantasy creatures.

3. Have the cop not be an idiot.

Every time I read an urban fantasy where the cop is the protagonist, I hold my breath and hope that the cop isn't an idiot. Now when I say idiot I don't mean smart, for some reason they're always witty and sarcastic to a fault, no I mean they deny. They deny the fact that a tiny person stole their wedding ring, that a bird spoke to them, that a dragon ate them then reincarnated them into a plant. A human only has so much disbelief that they can have, there's no way that these cops can just deny everything so obvious. One of my favorite cops in fantasy is Officer Morgan from the urban fantasy book Dolls. He just never denied what happened to him, he accepted it and tried to get deeper to the truth of the matter. Why can't we have more cops like that?

4. When something obvious happens, have people question it.

The whole town is set on fire by a dragon and the dragon slayer kills him in a jet fighter. That's great and all, but if the whole town saw it how are they covering it up? I just facepalm when no one questions the obvious stuff. If they use a glamour spell, fine. But when your character just kicks the werewolf body to the side and walks through the trail of dead bodies, why are the town folk not questioning this? Having there be constant worry about outsiders finding out about the fantasy world, is why the masquerade is so compelling. At every turn your character should question if dead beat Joe , the room mate, knows about his new found fairy wings. Or have the angsty teenage girl worry that her adopted mom knows about her ability to breathe fire. Let people wonder, it's just gonna add plenty of drama and complexity to the plot.

5. If it's a masquerade, don't let everyone know it.

I hate it when that one guy thinks he loves this one girl, but she get's upset that he's always dissaperaing. The reader knows it's his job to hunt vampires, but she doesn't know that. And the poor sap, being who he is, will tell that girl all about vampires and his job. When they break up two days later, for a stupid reason I'm sure, she's gonna tell someone else just to make him sound crazy...Now I know this type of thing doesn't always happen, but in urban fantasy it always feels like everyone in town knows about the masquerade. Maybe because the plot calls for people who know to interact with the character, but make it just one or two people in one city, not half of them.

7. Have a large variety of fantasy creatures.

Vampires, werewolves, Disney faries, and ghosts seem to be the only creatures of the masquerade. What happened to all of the other creatures in fantasy? Dullahans, kitsune, harpies, gorgons? Just because they look strange or are rarely written about doesn't mean they're off limits! The harder it is to hide, the more interesting they are to the story. I also just wanna read a story with a gorgon as the protagonist, that'd be so cool.

And here we are, a huge list on helping you write a masquerade novel. While some of these points may not apply to your novel in particular, I hope it at least helps you identify a good urban fantasy novel from a bad one. Or just entertained you. Whatever.

I'm gonna go read The Finisher now...

Because Not All Royalty are Selfish Pricks

I really love history. It's not only my favorite school subject, but it's also a hobby of mine that I'm more than happy to blather on about for hours.That's why I love looking at history for my writing projects, whether they're historical fantasy or not. History has a wonderful habit of not only teaching us about mistakes idiots in the past have made, but also shocking us about the nice things. And one very nice thing to know about past monarchs is...

Not all of them were selfish pricks.

Oh look, the article title!

In all seriousness, I've read a boat load of books where royalty are either selfish pricks that enslave their people, murder babies, and eat young lambs. Or they so good and loving that they've cured diseases, let the orphans live in the guest bedrooms, and even raise the dead with their tears. Whenever I read these types of monarchs I just roll my eyes and continue onto the next page, hoping that at least the hero is more realistic...Unless the monarch is the hero, to which I can only hope that the plot is half decent.

If you look in history the monarchs of time past have always been interesting. Some really did have good intentions for their people, but were also firm on their rules and did what they wanted to do regardless, just like Queen Elizabeth of England; often called the Virgin Queen.

Then there are rulers who were religious. They were so religious that they would often kill and destroy any who didn't agree with their religion. I could point out at least one monarch from every single country that has ever existed, but let's stick to one that's rather well known. Have you ever heard of  a tiny event called The Spanish Inquisition? Well what if I told you that Queen Isabella of Spain, that lovely queen that said yes to Christopher Columbus, had started it? Bet you didn't expect that.

In another category of rulers are those who want nothing to do with their country. They'll go as far as to leave their country and pillage and conquer. Not because they actually want to pillage and conquer, but more because they just hate their country that much. That reward would go to King Richard the Lion Heart. A guy who was technically French and hated England so much he tried to sell it...And failed.

Next you have rulers who are ridiculous in their debauchery. I'm not saying 'sleep with the chamber maids and get drunk all the time' type of debauchery. No, I mean going out into the streets and raping people in the middle of crowds, sleeping with their mothers, and spending enough money to bankrupt an entire nation.That award would go to Nero.

There you go, a kinda large list of ideas that could help you write a monarch. Now these are just examples and you can add to the list or meld two types together, but hopefully this will give you more variety when tying to create a monarch.

Welp, I'm gonna go make dinner now.

Dark Romance

So last night I was up until two in the morning watching Phantom of the Opera with my mom. And while I could go on and on about how much I loved Gerad Butler, how Joel Schumacher loved Titanic, or how much my mom and I both love the main theme, I'm gonna talk about dark romance in fantasy novels.

Now, for those of you living under a rock or another country, It was a tragic tale of a man that, at the end of the day, was in love with a singer and would try to get her in anyway necessary. He killed, plotted, sabotaged, and even threatened Christine herself if she were to refuse him. Of course everything turned out right in the end, for Christine not the Phantom, and we get our happily ever after.

Now in most books dealing with dark romance, especially YA, the way people go about it is to make the heroine a lamb of light. She's never smoked, never drank, never saw a man without his shirt on, and thought that blood was really strawberry pop/juice. And you know what? I'm not even sure why people even go down this road. Never in my entire life have I met someone so innocent, and if the world you're trying to paint is a dystopian land of violence and cruelty, the chances of your heroine being that way is next to nill. The only way I'd expect her to be that innocent is if she got amnesia....And I'll talk about that on a later date.

Now, if the heroine isn't some squeaky clean angel from squeaky clean angel land, then the heroine probably has a strong sense of justice. She'll help the little old lady cross the road, hate stealing, and hate those who kill...Unless it's killing the bad guys who hurt others, then it's fine.

Or it's our dark, brooding, trigger happy love interest.

For whatever reason, boring and dull love interest has to be ready to kill without a moment's thought. He probably makes sassy remarks, if he isn't the silent brooding type, and smokes and drinks like no ones business. That really doesn't sound like a dark romance, more like a romance with some kind of pirate anti-hero or something.

No, the way to write a dark romance is actually rather simple. The answer will probably shock you, make you stare at the screen with a raised eyebrow, or just click out all together. Are you ready? Well the answer is...

Making the love dangerous.

What? That simple? Something about the love interest has to be dangerous. Sure he can kill all the time, but that really doesn't make him dangerous depending on the world. In Phantom Eric/Phantom was dangerous because he was strangely obsessed with Christine and would do anything to get her. Even when she made the decision to reject him, he decided that she didn't know what was good for herself and held control over her life. The creepy part was that he was able to get from one side of the opera house to the other so quick you'd thought he used magic. All together that makes is dangerous, almost an allure to have someone care so much about you, but at the same time scary enough you stay a good foot away.

At least normal people. Obviously your heroine isn't 'normal' if she get's with the guy at the end.

Now I just want to note that dark romance always has to have boundaries. If the girl truly loves this guy, don't be the moron who allows the guy to constantly smack her around, kick her unborn child, and choke her. That isn't romance, that's abuse. But you all should be smart enough to figure out where the boundaries lay...

I hope.

Alright, I'm gonna go do some Phantom of the Opera karaoke.

An Idiot's Review of Dolls

So after taking exams, crying in a corner, and getting ready to move out of my lovely parents' house, I'm reviewing this short story written by one Simon Ericson. As usual I don't post spoilers about the story, so you shouldn't either in my tiny and very inactive comment section.

So our story starts...Without a prologue. It jumps straight to the point and introduces us to the main character Officer Morgan. Unlike a lot of stories that just up and throws their characters into the occult world, our officer has been there before and he's even made friends within it. He calls these people the 'Craftsmen' and they make different things like eyeballs and strange potion stuff that, from the way it's described, reminds me of a magical lava lamp. These people are the ones who help him learn of our plot word, and coincidentally enough the title,'Dolls'. Dolls were coming. These dolls are apparently coming and with them coming the criminals are leaving, either under their own power or being butchered like pigs.

However not all is lost, but then again isn't criminals leaving a good thing, because Morgan has found his prime suspect. A dashing young man named Arthur who was about as fake as they came and didn't do a good job of concealing the fact that he was suspicious. After a debate that went in circles he finally leaves and our plot launches into action when Morgan get's a strange phone call and remembers what happened only a few minutes before hand.

Now the plot for this book is pretty standard for an urban fantasy cop escapade. The cop is warned/accidentally finds strange happening, they go about trying to stop the strange happenings, the day may or may not be saved. And while this is true for this story, it's interesting in the fact that the whole time Morgan doesn't deny that anything happened. He doesn't deny that little doll girls tried to kill him, that they are commanded by older men, and that they are not the least bit human.

Which reminds me of the magic system. If you've like Rozen Maiden, Chuckie, or something along those lines, then you'll like this book. The dolls aren't human and instead are spirits that are put into dolls made from various ingredients and are constructed by Dollmakers. According to Arthur it's not an exact science and there's much shadow over the entire operation. However what's explained so far, such as the doll's heart having to be something with a constant tempo, is rather interesting and I hope it gets explained further in the next books.

So those are all the good points, so what's the bad? I didn't like the way that some of the actions were explained. 'As surly a tone as he could manage'. The writing should tell us that he is trying to be all sour. Also there's some things that really didn't need much explanation, it was just snippets of life that gives Morgan more character, but what was put there could have been more doll musings or something. Aside from that it was an all round good book with good characters, an interesting magic system, and the beginning of a pretty good series.

So yeah, I'm gonna go play some Spiderman 2 now....

If you wanna get Dolls, for free might I add, just go here.

Teenagers, the Original Idiots

I know it's almost been a month, I know I'm due for a book review, and I know I have a video that needs to be uploaded. But there's this very strange thing....I have a life. A very boring if not monotonous life, but a life none the less.

And in this life I'm a teenager.

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Is that the title I see? Okay, enough with the stupid jokes. This month's...week's....something's post is about teenagers in fantasy. With YA being a big hit and teens being the subject of all kinds of adult coming of age stories, I guess it's about time to address the original idiots of the world. However you'd never know that if you were unlucky enough to read a terrible fantasy story. Most times these teens know EXACTLY what they need to do in life, all the steps it'd take to do it, and all the finesse and skill that would take normal people who has one foot and half their left arm in the grave they're so old. Now some people could chalk this up to protagonist rights or chosen one privileges, but I like to call it for what it really is.

Terrible writing.

I'm a teen and I think I can speak for all of us when I say we don't have it all together. Heck, just two days ago I was freaking out about buying and filling out a money order for the first time. That sounds easy to most people, and it is, but I'd never done it before and people were actually counting on me to get it done. It was a responsibility and something new to learn, two things that never blend well with teens. So why is it that all the teens in fantasy have no REAL issues with saving the world aside from the usual teenage, or what you adults must think is teenage, angst?

So since I can't find whatever the teen protagonists of books are drinking, I'll just help you adult writers remember what it was like to be an original idiot, and help you teen writers get your head's out of your butts.

When writing teen characters don't forget that we're young and haven't actually experienced life to the fullest. Now that doesn't mean characterizing us as terribly naive, there's no such thing as a mentally pure teenager no matter how often you see it in movies or books, or making us angsty childish pricks. Have a balance of someone who knows when to take up responsibility, but doesn't know all the ropes yet. And please for the love of all that's holy don't have us complain all the time!

Believe it or not teens don't complain to every living or non-living thing about their lives. Do we do it when you adults are around?

 Yeah.

Why?

Attention! If we complain enough we hope you'll tell us to stop washing dishes and you'll do it yourself! At least that's why I do it, that may not be why the brat down the road does it. Even for characters that aren't teens,  far too often it get's boring to read about how Esmerelda the Valiant lost her puppy, Gir, to the evil knight of Hamminess. It not only get's old, but you begin to wonder if Esmerelda had no life outside that idiot dog of her's.

For you urban fantasy writers out there let me tell you a secret. Not every single teen alive either wants to be outside of the social conga line, or think they have to follow whatever the conga line is doing. Most of us are a healthy balance of both. I'm not into social media all that much, just Twitter because I want to follow some really awesome authors and anime studios, and I don't enjoy watching reality TV. However I LOVE finger nail polish and will squeal when I see something super cute in the store or even on someone else. So don't think your character is 'good' because they aren't popular, because a lot of the unpopular kids can be just as jerky as the popular school barbie.

So to sum it all up let me put it to you this way. If it will help you relate more think of them like interns at your super important adult jobs. They know when to help out, but they may over or under do it, or they complain and want to take a break to get a coffee. Sometimes they say the wrong thing, sometimes they have the wrong impressions on things, and sometimes they're just real idiots.

Now I'm gonna go take a nap....

An Idiot's Thoughts on Necromancy

So yesterday I got my issue of GameInformer. For those of you who either live in another country or under a rock, GameInformer is a gaming magazine. It gives updates on the latest video games coming out, some awesome posters, and interviews with developers. Well this month they had a pretty cool spread on a Dungeons and Dragons RPG game. I guess with all the hype with high fantasy games they were bound to make one eventually. However I was kinda shocked, pleasantly so, when I read that the token necromancer would be a good guy with good intentions...

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Yeah, either I don't read as much fantasy as I'd like to think I have, or they are doing something pretty unique. Nearly every fantasy book that's existed whether it's high fantasy, grim dark, or even urban, it's been written that necromancers are pure evil. Heck, even in my own book the necromancer is pretty corrupt. It's just strange to think that someone who does such dark and unholy magic, bringing up dead corpses is pretty dark no matter how you spin it, has good intentions. Unless of course he starts out with good intentions and it just slides down from there.

Anyway, this whole ordeal has had me thinking about necromancy and how its users are portrayed in fantasy. All of them have been evil, some more than others, and those who use it are normally outcasts of society. But does it really have to be that way? In plenty of Victorian era stories there's that one con-artist that claims to use necromancy to bring up the souls of the deceased so their loved ones can speak to them. Of course this guy is always evil and wants the money, but what if this was used by actual necromancers? Their sole purpose in  life is to give people closure if they weren't able to before or when that person died?

Also why does necromancy always revolve around corpses? Why can't it be broken down to different tiers of magic? You're able to summon souls, skeletons, or just point blank zombies? I think the default of having necromancers as just these evil people who summon zombies has been around so long that people have just accepted it as a rule, however with grim-dark fantasy being so popular I think it's about time to exploit it on a different level. If we can have a bunch of raping mercenaries as heroes, albeit they're mostly anti-heroes, why not a necromancer with kinda good intentions?

Anyway, I'm gonna go look over my necromancer now....

An Idiot's review of The Immortals Part 1: Shadows and Starstone

Hey guys! I know I've been off the grid lately, but that's because I was reading a high fantasy called The Immortals: Shadows and Starstone. This was written and published by Cheryl Mackey, and is a quick little novella that is pretty fast paced and set in the magical land of Ein-Aral. As usual with my reviews don't expect spoilers, and please don't leave them in the comment section.

Our story starts with those prologues I hate so much. It's short, thank goodness, and provides some background on how this story even got rolling.

Our story proper starts out with a girl on a horse riding into a village in a desert. Yup, you heard me a desert. Not some medieval plain village, forest village, or river side village. A tiny desert village that apparently makes its livelihood mining. And, get this, this village is made up of humans, not dwarves. Already this novel is making a good impression on me with those simple details! Anyway, we learn that the strange girl isn't just a normal person but an Immortal. A person who was supposed to die but the gods, The Four, make them into their special warriors who can wield magic and live forever.
Anyway, it turns out that our hero, Emaranthe, had called some of her friends and they're all supposed to fight the demons who are on their way to brutally destroy the tiny village.

Since we're on the topic of warrior companions, let me introduce them to you. First off there's Jaeger, an Earthlander who wields a massive ax and shield. He's brother's with Ivo, another Earthlander, who wields a massive sword and shield. The two remind me of the barbarian races often found in most high fantasy books. They're super macho, strong, and have a sibling bond that can't be defeated by anything. They didn't stand out too well for me, perhaps they will be in the next novella, but I found them pretty bland.

Next would be arguably the main character, Emaranthe. She's a blonde who's a seemingly nice person who wields a shepherd's staff and fire magicks. She felt like the leader a lot of the time and was the most knowledgeable about myths and stuff like that. In all honesty I found her to be really refreshing since most female MCs these days are sarcastic and rude, even in high fantasy. When the villagers question Emaranthe instead of telling them to piss off, she explains to them why she's there and her back story.

Finally we have Jadeth who has to be my favorite character. Now most people would find elves annoying, I did a piece on elves and stuff like that so you know my feelings on them, but with Jadeth I found her so entertaining. Unlike most elves in high fantasy she wasn't haughty, arrogant, solemn, or even a blonde. Jadeth is a redhead who's often unsure of herself, friendly, and wields a battle hammer. Yes, you read that right, she wields an awesome battle hammer that kills people and helps her heal people. She's just that awesome. Of course there's other things about her, like how her ears are able to move according to how she feels and what she's trying to hear, which I found pretty cool and unique.

All together the four heroes did help me enjoy the novella, however the one main villain we see in the book was not defined enough for me to enjoy them. It was a necromancer who works for the demons, but we see her for merely a chapter. From the way she sounds she reminds me of a voodoo queen you'd see at a madi gras. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to you to determine.

The plot itself for this book was linear and reminded me of a level in Final Fantasy. Cut down all the skeletons and zombies so you could make it to the big boss. Along the way we get some back story, which was typical for the genre, talk about the magical starstones, and plenty of awesome elemental powers.

Speaking of which I have a ton to say about this magic system. While it is seemingly elemental based there's a lot more to it. If an immortal should be heavily wounded they have to go to an alter of sorts and pray to The Four. The gods will then heal the immortal or just give them a new body in general, however this process could cause the immortal's soul to be wounded beyond repair. This idea is pretty unique and I love it quite a bit and can't wait for another novel to expound upon it.

In the next novel I also hope to see more of this world. There's a mention of multiple suns as well as elves, humans like Earthlanders, and winged beings called Windwalkers.(To be completely honest I wish they were called Skywalkers just so I can make a Star Wars reference.) There's plenty of other casually mentioned things that I wished appeared in the novella, but I couldn't expect to see it in a fifty page book.

So what's the drawbacks to this book? Well, I saw a lot of grammar mistakes. I also didn't like the prologue, but I hate that for all novels and this wasn't going to be the exception. The constant mention of how the characters looked got annoying after awhile, especially the eye color. Oh yeah, and there's also info dumping that will happen in the middle of a conversation.

Aside from all this I thoroughly enjoyed the novella!

If you wanna purchase it you can do so here.

Welp, I'm off to go eat some German chocolate cake....

Idiot's Never Start on the First Chapter

Why does anyone bother starting their first draft on the very first chapter? Yes, this bit of information is important, it sets up the entire story...But it's also an author's worst nightmare. While you're busy typing, erasing, re-typing, and then just smashing buttons on your poor keyboard trying to get out the perfect first chapter, you could be working everything else out for your novel. You could just begin the second chapter, the chapter that could quite possibly throw all of your characters into the tasty plot. But of course that'll never happen while you're busy flipping out over the boring and almost impossible to write first chapter.

And I'm sure all of you are going to tell me about structure, the importance of the first chapter, and that you would never harm your keyboard in such a way; but I'm all round ready to just give up on the first chapter until I'm sure I'm ready to tackle it. When I got this amazing epiphany yesterday I was able to crank out two chapters in one day, both nearly five thousand words long. Both of them were relaxed, steady, and moved along quite nicely even without the first chapter of the novel. Heck, maybe I should just call the second chapter the first one, just throw my poor audience into a loop.

Anyway, I'm gonna go play Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess....

An Idiot's Review of Delwyn of the Realms

I know, I know it's been way too long since my last post. However lots of things have been going on in my life, things you probably don't care about, so let's jump right into today's topic...A review. Now this isn't a main stream book instead it's a self-published fantasy book. So yeah, just a warning before you decide to kill time by reading the review. But you guy's should know I'm all about fantasy books by now, unless you're dropping in for the first time, in which case welcome.

Anyway, boring intro aside, let's get down to business!

So, as previously mentioned, the story is called Delwyn of the Realms written by Mrs. Kelly Proudfoot. If Alice Liddell became a thirty year old with mental disorders, divorced, and Australian this would be her story. It just has the curious atmosphere and array of interesting characters that the drug dream that was Alice in Wonderland. However, unlike Alice, we get the opportunity to have a plot and a woman that had some life experiences. Which actually starts me off on the first point of this review...

Delwyn isn't a young adult.

Now as a teen I mostly read YA fantasy. Why? Mostly because I like urban fantasy and you can find that in abundance in that section. Not only that but, as stupid as this sounds, I can relate more to the teens than the adults. However Delwyn is refreshing in the fact that even though we're over a decade apart in age, I can still relate to her on some level. That just shows that Delwyn in herself is a rather fleshed out character that anyone can just up and read about. Of course she still has her flaws, but those only help to progress the story along and show that her family life wasn't just her fault.

Speaking of which.

The family members in this story make up a huge part of the way Delwyn thinks. I won't go into overwhelming detail, but let's just say that it's like a Cinderella story. Except that Delwyn didn't have any step siblings and her father didn't die. However she almost has a fairy godmother in the form of her Aunt. Unlike Delwyn, however, I didn't see her as fleshed out and actually was bored whenever she was on the page. Her dynamics with her niece are sweet, but any form of conflict between the two felt so contrived I almost laughed a few times.

Now, I know I went into the whole spiel with the characters first and I'm sure you're curious about the plot, but please excuse me for that, I'm pretty character driven. Anyway, the plot is an interesting tale about Delwyn and her adventure in-between her normal and almost peaceful life within Australia and her exciting journey through the land of dreams. The story has a false start, but when it is explained later on about her issues with nightmares it makes some sense. The actual start has Delwyn leaving a mental institution and heading off to her aunt's farm in the middle of Australia. There she lives with her aunt and things begin to happen that lead to the plot of this tale. Unlike a lot of stories where the hero/heroine's mental issues are forgotten once the plot get's going this story sticks to it. In fact that is woven into the entire story and affects her in plenty of ways both good and bad, dream world or real world.

Speaking of the dream world.

I enjoyed Delwyn's time in the dream world far more than Australia. The way it is described is just amazing as are all of the colorful characters she meets while there. This brings up possibly the best thing that the authoress is able to do: write amazing smell descriptions. Every time Delwyn took in a breath and smelled something I swore I was smelling the same thing. The words used are colorful and yet also relatable enough to give me an idea on exactly what I should be smelling at that point and time. I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to have that experience with any book I've ever read in my entire life. Mrs. Kelly does a good job with the visual, auditory, and feeling senses as well, but the sense of smell just takes the cake.

However, like all stories, this one does have its problems. While I did enjoy the story the beginning was just so slow. It took a long time to get into the actual plot and fantasy aspect of the story, especially since I got a chilling; although over used, first few lines. Another issue I had was the head jumping that would randomly happen during a conversation. One minute I could be in Delwyn's head, but another time I could be inside her aunt's. It was rather irritating and almost threw me off at times. The final issue I had was the all round over used plot devices that were thrown into the story. While I did like the mirror since the story gave off an Alice in Wonderland vibe, I didn't appreciate the false start at the beginning of the story, especially with that slow exposition filled beginning I had to read through.

All of that aside I did enjoy this story and the many interesting landscapes that I was dropped into. I'm hoping that the authoress takes note of her mistakes and will improve when she get's the next volume of the series done. Guess we'll see then, huh?

If you'd like to purchase Mrs. Kelly Proudfoot's book you can do so here: http://www.amazon.com/Delwyn-Realms-Storming-Archives-Book-ebook/dp/B00TD0RF7E

What is it with Women and Bows?

Well since I'm working on a special project, I decided I still ought to post something, so here it is!

I love Katniss Everdeen. She's probably the first actual action gal in YA who can't be duplicated properly and starred in a battle royale just for the sake of her family. Heck, it's thanks to her that I can go wander over to the store and buy female Nerf products. For those for you who live under a rock, or just another country, Nerf is the name of a kids toy gun brand. Colorful purple, blue, and orange guns that shoot foamy stuff is a staple part of my childhood. However they were always geared for guys so I had to usually skip out on the idea of pink. Yet in the last few years Nerf came out with a pink bow set...And quickly moved onto small guns.

Now I don't have any issues with this, I actually do archery with a recurve bow. I'm no expert and I suck at it, but I do support the modern archery industry. But why is it that young girls are expected to use bows instead of guns/swords in fantasy? I know that the bow is pretty easy to use and it's a common thing for the poor people in fantasy to use, but that's still no excuse! I personally feel as if using a bow just keeps you out of the general danger while still keeping the character useful.

 Oh, what's that? The Dark Lord decided he wants to murder a poor bunny village? Well come magical heroes! Let's go fight his evil chili pepper orcs! And you, Ms. Bow, can go sit on the mountaintop far away from the action and just shoot them down.

Maybe I'm just thinking too deeply into this...I mean elves commonly use bows, and I rarely read about female elves prancing around with the group of heroes. However it's just shown time and again how girls/women are the bowmen. Look at Chronicles of Narnia, Susan got a bow as her gift! A bow that didn't even force her to sit down and aim! And I don't even want to get into other characters from fantasy who are just given bows. I guess it was just a way to throw the females out of the way so the men can do the proper fighting, yet still claim that the women wouldn't be following in Princess Peach's footsteps...

But have you played her in Super Smash Bros? She's killer.

I Like Vampires...Now Make Them Creative

And I probably lost your attention with that simple statement, but I'll continue talking anyway. I happen to like vampires and it has nothing to do with paranormal romance. To me the term 'vampire' can range from a creature who sucks blood to a creature that has to survive off of someone else's heart beat. If you could make a creative vampire then I'm all for reading about them. And, to be honest at the risk of my credibility, I think that's what Stephanie Myers was trying to do.

Okay, I know that sounded a lot like wishful thinking, but it's true. Mrs. Myers wanted to make vampires that sparkled thinking that would be different. She also thought that having them drink animal blood would make them unique and more desirable to young girls, because let's face it that was the target audience. However this all backfired due to a lack of good characterization and a decent plot...

 See people, I still have a brain!

I think perhaps the most interesting vampires that I've ever seen is in the sci-fi. Most times these 'vampires' crave energy and will suck it out of others until they have no more and shrivel up like yesterday's fried corpse. This has been used several times such as the wraiths in the Stargate series. In fantasy it has been done as well, but I've never read any in order to give you a proper example, mostly because I like blood sucking vampires.

Speaking of which...

Where is it written that a vampire HAS to suck blood for food? Can't vampires just like the taste? Maybe they only drink the blood because it's healthier than the rest of the human body? Perhaps they drink just blood so they aren't complete monsters and have to eat human bodies as well? Maybe blood doesn't give them heart burn? There's a hundred and one ways to sit there and recreate that one fact and not enough people take it by the horns and make it there own! For example I happen to think it would be interesting if vampires had to drink blood in order to keep up their appearances as gods, not because they needed the blood for nutrition or cravings. Think of the entire demeanor of the race along with the struggles they would have!

Speaking of demeanor, where is it written that vampires have to be dark and brooding? I understand that we've come to expect this, but perhaps they can be various forms of creepy and scary. Have you ever watched the anime Future Diary? No? Well go look up the character Yuno Gasai and come back and talk to me. She's a pink haired girl that seems sweet and cute...Until she puts an ax through your skull. Can't we have a few vampires like that running around? I think it would fit thanks to all the grimdark fantasy that's been popping up lately.

With that said I hope this helps you when you write your vampire characters!

Now I'm gonna go play  Castlevania Judgement....

An Idiot's View on Race in Fantasy

So, as you know by now, I'm a teenager. As such I haven't lived on this earth very long and am going to be an idiot for at least five more years before reality, and common sense, smack me hard enough to make me wiser. However there's just one thing that I just can't understand....

Why is there a lack of colored Protagonists in fantasy?

Why is there a lack of non-stereotypical Native Americans in Fantasy?

Why do all the Asian characters in fantasy have to come from Wuxia or Asian themed fantasy?

What happened to the Latinos in fantasy?

Is anyone starting to get what I'm saying? You see I come a background that is a bundle of races. I have an African-American mother and a Caucasian father, and some Native American on my Mom's side, so I see the world as a huge melting pit. Now don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like my father's side of the family, I love Europe they've got some awesome history, but I just want to see other parts of me represented. It get's tiresome after awhile seeing the same old pale skinned girl on the cover of the book and being told 'This is who you're supposed to aspire to be like.'

Now saying that does this mean if a girl has a strong character, such as Katniss Everdeen from Hunger Games, that I shouldn't try to be like her? Of course not! But at times how can you really relate to someone who has more of a race boundary than I do? I hate to be the one to say this, and burst your shiny little bubble, but no one is as free thinking as we would want to be. Some people just WON'T get into fantasy, urban or otherwise, because there's no Colored, Latino, Asian, Native American characters. At the same time others have just become sick to death of a lack of representation and need a change,

Don't believe me? Then why is everyone and their mother getting so hyped up about a fantasy story called The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms? Something tells me that it has more to do with the fact that the main character is colored, and on top of that female, than anything else. Not that N.K Jemisin isn't a good writer, I'm saving up for her new series, but the idea that a character can be black and female in a fantasy story happens to be novel is more of a seller than anything.

People it shouldn't be this way! It should be that when I want to go to the fantasy section to read about a shoddy love triangle between a human and two mermaids I should be able to find the same stupid plot done again and again, but with more than just white characters.

With that being said I firmly believe that if you're an African-American, Latino, Asian, and Native American writer instead of whining about how you can't get your people to be represented in books just go ahead and publish one with your race as the protagonist. I'm sure a lot of you are thinking, "But I won't be able to sell it to a publisher!"

Then skip over the publisher. If you're writing an amazing story that is unique, deep, original, and the reason they won't but it is because your character isn't fitting the 'selling mold', then go ahead and self-publish. I'm willing to bet that people who have money will buy your books just so that they can relate a little more to the characters.