Dominic’s body was stiff and sore when he awoke in the morning. He was momentarily confused about where he was, until he saw the thick beams of the ship and felt its movement in water. The events of the day before came flooding back; the race he’d lost, the fight he’d ended, being threatened by […]
Shadows of the Limelight, Ch 3: Nighttime Ballet
There were people waiting outside. Some of them had small glass trinkets with them, on chains around their necks, or held in their hands. It wasn’t one of the enormous crowds, not one like at the fight or down by the docks, but there were enough people that it was hard to see the gaps […]
Shadows of the Limelight, Ch 2: The Queen of Glass
The Zenith was a small ship, with a complement of thirty men and women and little room for cargo. She had seven white sails that carried her all over the civilized world. When Dominic saw the ship, the thing that struck him most was artistry of it. By his estimation, half of the crew members […]
Shadows of the Limelight, Ch 1: The Rooftop Races
Corta was going to kill him. She had a reputation to maintain, he knew that, but he’d gone and been stupid anyway. Dominic had seen a small handful of people visiting her restaurant with missing fingers, and it was no secret that Corta had been the one to take them. That was what she did, […]
A Critical Review of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
This is a critical review of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky. If you haven’t read it, be warned that this review contains major spoilers. I don’t mean “critical” with overtones of “faultfinder” or “censurer”. I mean “critical” as in “a judgement of the merits and faults”. If you really, really […]
The Metropolitan Man: Post Mortem
About a year ago I wrote a novel-length fanfic about Superman called The Metropolitan Man. This blog post will make absolutely no sense to you unless you’ve read that first, and, as per the title of this blog, is probably something that you will find boring. At any rate, since this is currently my longest (completed) […]
(The Lack of) Methodological Problems in High-Rise Syndrome Cat Studies
There’s a popular fact that gets thrown around a lot: cats can survive falling from great heights, and actually survive more often when dropped from a greater height (above seven stories). There’s also a popular rebuttal to this: the study which came to this conclusion was only looking at cats that came into the emergency […]
Pre-writing for National Novel Writing Month 2014, Part 3
Note: I plan on publishing this as it’s written through fictionpress.com or some other platform, so if you want to be surprised, this is your cue to leave. Characterization I have occasional problems with keeping characterization consistent, especially if I don’t start with a clear idea in my head about who they are. This is an […]
Pre-writing for National Novel Writing Month 2014, Part 2
Note: I plan on publishing this as it’s written through fictionpress.com or some other platform, so if you want to be surprised, this is your cue to leave. Magic I love magic, mostly because I love things that break the universe in various ways. Magic is a fairly difficult thing to get right though. Sanderson’s first […]
Pre-writing for National Novel Writing Month 2014, Part 1
I’ve done National Novel Writing Month for the past few years, which results in a lot of writing but not much that’s usable. I’m totally fine with that, since writing is a muscle that you have to build up over time, and this coming November I plan to take the challenge again. In the hopes […]
World Building: Mythic Figures
“Gareth Killkenny is the King of Thieves,” said Mumford with a satisfied smile. “He can spot a fellow thief at a hundred paces, charm the underclothes off a Foresworn Sister, and he once fooled the All-King into believing he had a long lost twin brother.”
World Building: Minorities
The Gift and the Burden There was a time when wizards held a position at the top of the great pyramid of society. The great wizard-kings of old passed their Gift down, father to son, mother to daughter. A man or woman with the Gift on the battlefield was worth a hundred of those without, […]
World Building: Goblins Remix
Goblins of the Written Word As everyone knows, goblins are one of the greediest of the races, constantly hoarding coin. However, at the foothills of the Karthar Mountains exists a goblin of a different breed, whose thirst is for words instead of gold.
World Building: Other Planes
M-space m-space began as a simple notation in the formulas of the magician-scientists. It had been discovered long ago that for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction, and that the total energy in a system stayed the same. The only problem with these theories was the presence of magic, which seemed to […]
World Building: Warfare
The Wizardless Wars From Alexander Tinth’s Warfare: In Theory and Practice, Addendum There is an old saying that must once have been pithy, which goes “Wizard war is redundant”. This is of course a shortening of the full formulation, which is “Wizard war is redundant, for all wars involve wizards” which removes the syntactic ambiguity […]