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...