Tag Archives: fandom

Noblebright Fantasy

23 Thursday Mar 2017

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One of the first thing people ask me when I tell them I’m a writer is, “What do you write?”

I, of course, tell them that I write fantasy, but unfortunately, that doesn’t really narrow it down much. You see, there are many different kinds of fantasy. So after I say, “fantasy,” I get responses like these:

“Oh, like Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones?”

Well, kind of, because there are races of magical creatures and it’s a medieval setting and whatnot, but I don’t write epic fantasy, with the massive cast of characters (many of whom die) and all that. Also, in my fantasy, I like to have more magic than those.
lord of the rings you shall not pass meme
Or, “Oh, like Harry Potter?”

Well, kind of, because I like to think I have a similar spirit of adventure and create a fun sense of awe for magic, but mine aren’t really intended to be children’s books, and the setting is not in modern times.
Harry Potter what house are you from
Or, “Oh, like [insert some author I’ve never heard of]”

Er…maybe?

And the thing is, I couldn’t think of a term to describe my kind of fantasy. “Heroic fantasy” is close, as is “fantasy-adventure,” but neither quite nailed it.
Then I heard about noblebright fantasy. It’s something of a new concept, and not a widely-known term (yet?), but I like it. A lot.

Noblebright fantasy centers around good characters who try to do good things for good reasons. Not everything is peachy and happy, but in the end, they’re able to make some kind of difference. There’s hope. There’s magic. It doesn’t have to be a children’s book; in fact, sometimes even a noblebright novel can be quite dark.

I feel like we need this label. If I know a story is noblebright, I know I don’t have to worry about reading yet another story where a good character can’t get ahead and just makes things worse until everything is awful and the characters are all so corrupt you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys.
noblebright sunlight hope
I like it better when fiction inspires us and brings hope. Life needs a little more noblebright.

If you’re curious to know more about noblebright, I set up a page about it here.

So what do you think, readers? Do you like the concept of noblebright? I know some people love the “gritty” and “grimdark” stories that are so popular today. Are you one of them? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Aching Legs and a Dead Battery

16 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in Fun, Life

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I have aching legs and a dead cell phone battery. Yes, you guessed it, I have been sucked into Pokemon Go. I wasn’t really planning on playing it. Really. Sure, I heard all the hype on the internet (and even on the radio!) but I kinda went “meh, nothing will beat the original games I grew up on” and had no plans of pursuing go. Besides, it’s technically not even available in Canada yet. But then my husband became strangely obsessed with the game. He started researching about it, figured out how to “side load” it (don’t ask me, he put it on my phone for me, and he said he just googled how to do it), and now we are Pokemon Go players.
pikachu-rat
So there are three Pokestops within close walking distance around our apartment, and we have been walking laps between them. There are also two gyms within walking distance (a little further than the Pokestops, but not horifically far). We tried out battling, and clearly we need to do some leveling/practicing, but I did manage to add one of my Pokemon to a gym for about 5 minutes before the gym was defeated by another team.

I’ve collected a few facts about Pokemon Go:
1. My feet hurt. I need new shoes. Like, real shoes, with support.
2. Our local Starbucks, with a Pokestop right on top of it, is enjoying a surge in business.
3. My phone battery is going to be worn out in no time from all the draining/charging cycles its going through.
4. This game really is getting people out and about. My husband and I enjoy guessing which of the people we see out and about are playing Pokemon Go, and I suspect its quite a few of them. At the very least, it’s getting US out and about. I had no idea the number of little parks in the area.
5. The gamer rage when servers are down is unreal (and they’re down kind of a lot, when they’re not just plain glitchy)
6. Starter Pokemon are useless. No really. The only way to level them is to catch multiple of the same kind to get breed-specific candies to feed them. Since they’re super rare (as far as I can tell, although I’ve only been playing a couple days), you get your first one and then never use it because it’s super pathetically weak compared to stuff you catch even a couple levels later. This disappointed me actually quite a lot, since I went out of my way to get a Pikachu as my starter.
7. It’s fun. No really. Get it on your phone and get out in the world.
My Pokemons let me show you them

Oh, and there are some dangers involved. VG Cats explains one humorously.

Real Life Disney

27 Thursday Aug 2015

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The I Can Has Cheezburger network recently featured a pretty sweet set of pictures; check out this art of Disney heroes/heroines made “real.” I have at least one friend who will love this…

real prince eric little mermaidreal disney princess ariel
realistic hercules realistic megara meg
real prince philip sleeping beautyreal disney princess aurora
john smith pocahontisrealistic disney pocahontis
Disney realistic tarzan artjane tarzan portrait
Alladin in real life would look like thisWhat princess jasmine would look like in real life
Beauty and the Beast's beast princeBelle beauty and the beast in real life
realistic disney prince charming The real Cinderella

Game of Rabbit Thrones

20 Monday Apr 2015

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The first 20 seconds are like, “is this just gonna be dumb? It looks like it might be dumb.” But seriously, watch to the end.

Rabbit = 1, King’s Land = 0 (This rabbit is dynamite! …And eats a castle.)

Thanks to icanhascheezburger.

3 Inch Characters

09 Monday Feb 2015

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If you’re anything like me, the website I’m going to link will suck up a large chunk of your time. You won’t meant to. You’ll “just try it.” And then you will lose track of time. You will spent far, far too long on the site, picking and choosing and tweaking. Even if you don’t end up spending any money (you may or may not), you will never get that time back.

This link is to HeroForge.com. Here, you can make models of your characters. Or someone else’s characters. Or really, any little person that you please.

Hero Forge custom miniatures

It’s really quite addicting.

(For those of you who have read my book, yes, I have made miniatures of Toman, Esset, and even Sergeant Warthog. I tried making Erizen, but I ran out of time and didn’t save my progress. And by “ran out of time” I mean looked at the clock and realized I should have gone to bed an hour… or two ago.)

Now, the options aren’t endless, so you might not be able to get the miniature to look exactly like your character, but that’s almost part of the challenge. How close can you get it with the tools provided?

And just as tantalizing is random character creation. The site is designed (I think) to make Dungeons and Dragons characters, so the items etc. are themed accordingly. But for someone like me who just loves fantasy stuff, I can go all out however I like. I have a random Druid that I created. She has horns. Because.

Now, I find it addicting enough just seeing my characters come to visual life (close enough) on the screen, but it is a little tantalizing knowing that you can also have these miniatures created and shipped to you. I will admit that I am tempted. Very. You can even paint them! (Which, of course, would allow you to add details that the designer does not include.)

So what about you, dear readers? Am I responsible for a giant new waste of time for you? Did you get to create something cool? Or is this just all very silly? Share your thoughts!

What’s Your Superpower?

26 Monday Jan 2015

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This post is not intended to be inspirational (just in case someone thought it would be). This is about those stupid little things that you are “good” at. So I ask, what’s your superpower?

Mine? Probably being cold. That’s right, my superpower is being cold. I can be cold when no one else in the room is cold. I can be cold when everyone else in the room is hot. I’m really good at being cold. Ergo, superpower. I never said it was a good superpower.

icicles cold

My fingers and these icicles are approximately the same temperature 90% of the time.

And at least I don’t have one of the awful “super powers” from the TV show Haven (a good show, btw).

Haven TV series

Haven: Home of the Worst. Superpowers. Ever.

My boyfriend has a cool superpower though; he can move with uncanny silence. He isn’t trying to sneak up on people, but for some reason, we never see or hear him coming. He must have a ninja superpower (he denies this).

How if I had a choice in my superpower, I would choose teleportation. Just saying. In case anyone out there is handing out legit superpowers.

What about you, readers? What’s your superpower? What superpower do you wish you had?

Hobbit Sacrilege

16 Thursday Jan 2014

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Now I enjoy fantasy quite a bit (thus why I write it), but Tolkien has never been a favorite of mine. I found his books more palatable as movies (I finished the first one. Barely. You can’t pay me to read the other two LOTR books.) I found them alright. Mildly enjoyable. But the The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was extraordinarily boring. The following humorous Honest Trailer does a delicious job of illustrating it though:
Honest Trailer: better than the movie itself.

Fortunately, the second Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug, was thoroughly enjoyable.

And for your (again, humorous) listening pleasure:
Misty Mountains Rap

Top 10 List of Books That Have Stayed With Me

13 Monday Jan 2014

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The “Ten books that have stayed with you” meme found its way into my Facebook. Most people wouldn’t consider my picks great works of literature (although I obviously think they’re awesome), but they’re books that have influenced me and my writing, and they’ve made particular impressions in my mind. Not necessarily in order, but easy decisions came first.

1. Arrows of the Queen –Mercedes Lackey
2. Mossflower -Brian Jacques
3. Exile’s Honor -Mercedes Lackey
4. Birth of the Firebringer –Meredith Ann Pierce
5. Song in the Silence -Elizabeth Kerner
6. Harry Potter -J.K. Rowling
7. Wizard’s First Rule -Terry Goodkind
8. Nicomachean Ethics -Aristotle
9. The Bible
10. The Bourne Identity -Robert Ludlum

So yeah… 70% of my list is pure fantasy. Is it any wonder that I write it?

Now I long to go into detail about some of these authors, right here, right now, but I know I’ve talked about Mercedes Lackey already, and I’m actually planning a series on authors who have inspired me. So expect posts on most of these people in the future!

The Adored And The Denied

06 Monday Jan 2014

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So I watched the Doctor Who Christmas special a little late this year, and I was pretty excited for it. Matt Smith is not my favorite Doctor by any stretch, but he’s had a few golden moments and much was promised to audiences for this episode, especially with the build up from the 50th special.
Caution: spoilers after picture

Doctor Who Christmas Special

However, the Christmas Special sucked.

In fact, I’m tempted to call it the worst episode of Doctor Who ever. Yes, there were a lot of questions from previous episodes that were finally answered, but that’s the only good thing I have to say about it. And it’s not Matt Smith’s fault either – I blame the writer. Now, I admired Moffat greatly for his work in series 5 and 6, but after that, it’s like he got too sucked into his own ego and couldn’t write a good episode to save his life. Plotholes and loose ends abound.

For example, why were the Weeping Angels in that episode? And why didn’t we see a trace of them again after their initial scene? Did they just decide to go away? I was under the impression that they were almost impossible to kill, yet we don’t see a trace of them for the rest of the special. They shouldn’t have been there at all.

And why does the Doctor age over 300 years when he’s never shown any aging despite long spans of time before?

And while I agree that letting the TimeLords through might NOT be a good idea, I was under the impression that the Doctor didn’t release them to prevent war… yet when war starts anyways, why not let them through? (And in my opinion, the Doctor blasting everything with regeneration energy was both lame and contrived). And why (or how) did the TimeLords send regeneration energy through the crack? Apparently they can hear through the crack, so you’d think that, by now, they’d have figured out that they have the right place and come on through despite the Doctor not having spoken his name. Apparently they were confident enough to send through regeneration energy. This sits ill with me…

And why can’t a bring myself to care at all what happens to him or anyone? I remember the end of the Tenth Doctor’s reign – it was amazing and I was heartbroken to see him go. That was even true for the Ninth’s departure. But this time? I was glad to see the new Doctor. I just hope the writing gets better, or I might stop watching altogether (and this is coming from someone with everything from a sonic screwdriver prop to TARDIS and Dalek salt and pepper shakers). Not liking Matt Smith terribly much is just a personal preference, one that influences the degree to which I like a show. But when episodes are poorly written… it’s time to say goodbye.

Please don’t make me say good-bye, Doctor Who.

So what did you think of the Christmas Special and Matt Smith’s departure? Do you totally disagree with me and think it was awesome (like, apparently, a lot of people), or did something not sit well with you either? Let me know in the comments!