Picture the following;

The world we know is actually a dream, and the world of dreams is secretly reality.

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I've watched a lot of anime. But it was only recently that I got a MyAnimeList account. And trying to dig through my memories for all the anime I've ever watched was an interesting mental dredge.

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As of today, I have been a member of this site for three years. Three years! That’s older than some of my relatives. My use of this site has outlasted my enjoyment of the show. To celebrate this “milestone”, I thought I would look back on some of the things I published on this account. Examine what they taught me and how they have held up to time. Further, I thought I would analyze some of the themes and concepts that repeat across multiple stories. I always enjoy such analyses of other

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To a writer, what entertainment one consumes is extremely important. I’ve lost track of the times where binging a show on Netflix or a specific music album have directly influenced my writing.

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FanOfMostEverything has launched their newest contest; Imposing Sovereigns II. I'll let the post explain its conceit and rules. While a lot of the prompt slots are taken, there's still quite a few left that offer interesting possibilities.

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You can find it in the same group we used for the first collab.

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As per the title, I now have a Ko-fi page. Find the link here, or in my bio.

The site is so named, because the default donation is a cup of coffee. But I like to characterize it more as a deeply discounted paperback.

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I’m continuing my critiques of the entrants into the Imposing Sovereigns II contest. We continue down my list of “finalists”: stories which I considered awarding points to. I would like to stress, however, that I only ranked them because FanOfMostEverything made me; they are all excellent.

I must also point out, I never read the comic involving Princess Amore.

Title: The Heart Beats Still

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So I recently finished playing Tales of Berseria. Like many games in its genre, it was a dense experience, both in terms of gameplay and story. This density has many expressions, but one that I noticed in particular was its use of invented terms and technobabble. Here’s a partial list of some of the world-specific terms it uses;

* Malevolence – Evil energy. Related to the next item.
* Demonblight – A disease that turns people into demons.

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Before we get into today’s blog topic, I just want to quickly revisit some of the political stuff from my second-to-last blog post.

Bad news: there’s still feds running around kidnapping people. They've retreated from Portland, but are explicitly being sent to other cities.

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Yes, you read that right. Today I'm taking a break from talking about fanfiction and magic equines. Today, I'm talking about corporate fiction and magic humans! I know it will be a transition for all of us, but there's more equivalency in writing quality than you might expect.

Today I'm talking about Unbowed, Part 1.

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For me, the show ended a long time ago. The season four finale was the last contiguous episode I watched. The show had become predictable and stale. The sincere optimism and slice-of-life tone that I had enjoyed no longer entertained me. The jokes no longer landed, and the plotlines failed to surprise me. And the writers had started to run out of ideas even then; at the time I joked that they had gotten DBZ in my MLP, given the laser dogfight that ended season four.

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Dune by Frank Herbert

In the distant future, everything is different. Computers have been outlawed, replaced by human-computers known as mentats. Interstellar travel is possible, thanks to the Guild, which uses prescient navigators and space-folding ships to travel faster than light. Humans live longer than ever. All this is thanks to a substance known as Melange, the spice that can only be found on a single, inhospitable desert planet known as Dune.

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I discovered/realized/admitted I was asexual back in 2021. Here's to another year of understanding oneself, to finding the words that were always there.

I first encountered the concept of asexuality years ago, back when I watched season 3 of Bojack Horseman in 2016. But I never stopped to think if the label might apply to me. "That's not normal. I'm normal. Therefore there's no need to examine the idea in further detail."

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If You Came to Conquer now has a Chinese Translation: 征服命运, i.e. Conquer Fate. (Jhung-fu mn-yn is the closest pronunciation I could figure out.)

A big thanks to Dreams Set Free for translating it.

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Cleverpun came up with an idea for a collaborative story project, as noted in this post:

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A long time ago, I tried adapting one of my original fiction concepts into a pony alternate universe. As usual at the time, I posted a lot in a particular forum to get feedback on my story concepts and ideas. For those interested, I took the relevant post and adapted into a blog for your perusal.

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Last year, a user named Doof translated If You Came to Conquer into Russian. They have now also translated Inexcusable.

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Y'all may notice that, aside from some scattered blog posts, I haven't been doing much on FIMfic lately. And there's a good reason for that.

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Today we’re going to discuss a writing topic that some might call overly specialized: writing dialogue for a very specific age group. A good story, however, should strive to make all its components as accurate and tonally appropriate as possible. Even if a character has only a few lines of dialogue, even if a skill or item only appears in one scene, its presence still has an impact on the reader’s willing suspension and mood.

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