Mythcreants

Nine Reasons for a Villain to Spare the Hero "I want to break their spirit" doesn't cut it.

"Surely once they create their miracle cure, the hero will realize all of those unethical experiments were worth it!"

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Internet is currently full of AI generated clips that are advertised as future of TV or gaming, and they all look like absolute ass. Really curious if this is some kind of psyop by anti-AI people or if the complete lack of taste and judgement on display is genuine.

Wait they think focusing on droughts would make me *less* alarmed about climate change?

Herbert's interviews certainly suggest there was some influence.

He did choose to do a jihad, not because it was easy but because it was hard

Language is unfair. We all acknowledge that “spook” can refer to a mysterious government agent, and yet copy editors keep saying it’s wrong when I use “spooky” to mean “full of spies.”

Nearly every unhinged literary take we encounter is built on the unprovable assumption that books are worse now than they used to be. We’d have so much more productive discussions if we could just stop idolizing the past.

It's certainly more flowery than I've seen from this particular chud before

Do we think they mash this stuff out themselves or have HateGPT do it for them?

Dune’s weird and inconsistent politics make sense once you realize Frank Herbert was a libertarian with weird and inconsistent politics. The man wrote his books while gripped with terror of a charismatic Democrat.

559 – Unreliable Allies Can you trust us? Yes. Probably.

"S-H-A-E-P-E. The sheeAPEshifter."
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The Best and Worst of Strange New Worlds Season One How will each Star Trek episode rank?

"I’ve got good news, ’cause Omelas is a Star Trek episode now."

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Designing a Surprise Villain for Your Story Villain reveals never get old, but they can be tricky.

"If they are supposed to kill the hero, for instance, they probably have numerous opportunities to poison the hero’s food or stab the hero in their sleep."

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It’s funny to read fantasy airship novels and see how the ships are described, because on the cover it’s always either Zeppelins or flying tallships. Can’t be messing with the public perception of what an airship looks like, it would be chaos!

You might think it’s difficult to prove that your personal bogeyman is ruining literature (and/or other media), but actually all you need is a single example where something kinda didn’t work great, and a whole lot of righteous fury. Honestly, the example is optional.

Recently had someone tell us that it’s unrealistic to have more than one dark skinned character in a fantasy novel because people would never travel large distances in groups, if you’re wondering what the state of that particular discourse is.

Once you do a little digging into how military vehicles are designed, you realize that strict classification systems are impossible because no one follows a standardized format. Every tank or battleship was conceived and engineered by weird little gremlins with no respect for anyone.

558 – Passing Time in Fiction When you really want to be writing a memoir.

"the essential Name of the Wind-ness that it is using is the idea of a super famous guy who did something bad telling you his memoir"
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Who Wins: Legends and Lattes, Irregular Witches, or The Spellshop? It’s a battle, but a cozy one.

"It’s a D&D world, but the hero runs an inn. It’s a D&D world, but the monsters are edible. You get the idea."
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Five Flaws for Smart Characters Obviously, you know all of them already.

"Hopefully they can then turn their vaunted critical thinking skills inward to help themself grow."

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There’s something fascinating about the way cryptid lore filters out accounts of Bigfoot that are either too big or too small. He must be large enough to impress people, but not 20 feet tall or anything. That would be too silly.

that's a crime. One thousand years jail

I cannot believe they just reinvented the Youtube video essay (but way worse cause some of those are quite useful)

Footnotes in fiction are annoying, but sometimes it would be really helpful for historical novels to cite their sources. Did an old timey scholar actually give this weird speech or did the author make it up? If nothing else, it could give us peace of mind.

The Starfleet Academy trailer seems a bit unfocused. We’ve got all these teacher/adult characters, a bunch of student characters, and also they’re on a ship that has conventional space adventures. Difficult to imagine how all of that will get sufficient screen time, though we’d happily be wrong.

The Hero's Journey is a scam by big structure to sell more stages

Beautifully unhinged

An unhinged opinion was asked for and delivered, no question.

And yet I must ask: how? How does present tense disguise any of those things?

557 – Wishes in Fiction Your (earned) wish is our command!

"Hot take. Hot Aladdin discourse 2025."
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it's easy for your sequel idea to sound good when the actual Jurassic World sequels exist

Six Very Real Sequel Ideas for Popular Stories Remember, there are no bad ideas. Except for these.

"I tell you what, Hollywood: You stop making pointless sequels with ever-diminishing returns, and I’ll stop writing these joke posts. Deal? Deal."

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