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Attitudes towards killing and violence.
Since this deals with attitudes, I won’t be addressing strategy and tactics here; it’s mostly about the social and cultural associations of battles, duels, and other methods of killing. Also, it has few separate points; most of the ideas I wanted to present are gathered together under general ones.
( You can’t swing that sword that way ) -
Poll
There are two questions here, but that's just because one question can only include 15 options; the rants that are most popular will come first no matter which question they're listed on. I tried to respond to people in the suggestion post itself when I didn't think I had enough knowledge to talk about a subject or when the suggestion fit a rant I' ( Read more... ) -
Suggestion post
I've been trying to come up with new ideas for rants so I could do a poll, but unfortunately my brain seems to run best on prompts at the moment. If you'd like to see a particular rant, go ahead and suggest it here, and it'll probably make it into the poll. (Feel free to second/third/etc. someone else's idea that you like ( Read more... ) -
Characterizing animals
This is meant to apply as broadly as possible-to normal animals, telcoms (telepathic companions), shapeshifters, and author-created fantasy animals. Some of it does assume that you’re writing from the animal’s point-of-view, but it could also be useful for describing them from the outside.
( So here we go ) -
Writing fantasy about oppression
All right then ( Read more... ) -
PSA: The list of rants
If you want to find all the fantasy rants I've done, you can look in my memories or at Coyotecult's Handydandy Reference Index. If you want smaller numbers of rants at a time, I've also tagged them. (I'll be linking this post in my profile).
( Rant tags below ) -
Mentor rant
A few people have asked for a rant on mentors, so here it is.
( How to keep your teacher from becoming a pale imitation of Gandalf ) -
Non-villain rant
Both digoraccoon and marumae asked for a rant like this. And, after all, there’s no reason that you need to assume a villain in order to have a story. Mainstream fiction and many “classic” novels get away quite handily with having no villain, or only one truly despicable character in a populated world where many other shades of morality exist.
The only thing I do ( Read more... )