Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

Epic Fantasy


bink_winkleman

Recommended Posts

On 1/28/2019 at 11:47 AM, J.T. said:

You will be happy to know that there a splat fantasy compendium came out in 2008 called The New Weird (eds. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer) which contains a short story entitled The Gutter Sees The Light That Never Shines which prefaces BleakWarrior and also features your favorite character from the novel in a slightly expanded role..

How disturbed do you have to be to come up with a character like Whorefrost?

 

 

 

 

 

The thing is, how disturbed do you have to be to build a world where Whorefrost isn't necessarily the sickest character in it? 

We don't get descriptions of all the sons of Lord Brawl, there's plenty of room for some serious pervy stuff there.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I finished.

Thank you.

Let us never speak of this again.

It's too late, you will never hear a sucking noise again and not picture the Gutter slurping up the innards of the unfortunate.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, J.H. said:

BleakWarrior 3 chapters in...

Sweet Christ this some crazy whit. So much murder... brutal brutal murder. Can one really haver a "Favorite" amongst these horrible horrible Meta-Warriors?

James

What, the Sisters of No Mercy don't give you warm, fuzzy feelings?  It has been speculated that there may be something very wrong with both JT and myself, but YMMV. ?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, J.H. said:

Well both Gutter and Whorefrost are just so damn charming...

and I was digging The Light that Never Shines alot...

James

Just imagine the historical dramas that could be improved by swapping a couple of roles here and there:

A Man for All Seasons with Whorefrost in the Sir Thomas More role

The Lion in Winter with Lord Brawl subbing for Henry II

And for another take on Henry II, how about the Gutter taking the spot in Beckett

And just imagine The Light that Never Shines as The Other Boleyn Girl... 

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎2‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 2:38 PM, OSJ said:

The thing is, how disturbed do you have to be to build a world where Whorefrost isn't necessarily the sickest character in it? 

Flawlessly logical.  I have no rebuttle.

21 hours ago, OSJ said:

What, the Sisters of No Mercy don't give you warm, fuzzy feelings? 

They were my favorite characters.  Still twisted AF, but at least they had a noble-ish goal that drove their madness, bloodlust, and sexual depravity.

21 hours ago, OSJ said:

It has been speculated that there may be something very wrong with both JT and myself, but YMMV. ?

Speculated, he says...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, OSJ said:

Just imagine the historical dramas that could be improved by swapping a couple of roles here and there:

A Man for All Seasons with Whorefrost in the Sir Thomas More role

The Lion in Winter with Lord Brawl subbing for Henry II

And for another take on Henry II, how about the Gutter taking the spot in Beckett

And just imagine The Light that Never Shines as The Other Boleyn Girl... 

The Sisters of No Mercy as Lady Julia Flyte and Lady Cordelia Flyte in Brideshead Revisited!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I picked up Black Leopard; Red Wolf by Marlon James yesterday and it is really fucking good.

It figures that the day after I started reading it, Michael B. Jordan announced that he and his production company landed the film rights.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, J.T. said:

I picked up Black Leopard; Red Wolf by Marlon James yesterday and it is really fucking good.

It figures that the day after I started reading it, Michael B. Jordan announced that he and his production company landed the film rights.

Sounds intriguing. I'm afraid that I'm buried beneath books by Lewis Nordan at present (you know me, find a story by an author I dig and I go apeshit and buy everything they ever wrote). At least with Nordan they were all cheap except his first story collection which ran $60-something. Just showed up today, and after carefully removing the tape and old dustjacket protector I now have it in a nice new one and it looks great. What kind of fucking imbecile tapes a dustjacket to a $60+ book? I should have known better when the seller is called "Save with Sam!" Just lucky I got the tape off with no damage to the book or it would be "Get Your Refund from Sam!" posthaste. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, J.T. said:

I picked up Black Leopard; Red Wolf by Marlon James yesterday and it is really fucking good.

It figures that the day after I started reading it, Michael B. Jordan announced that he and his production company landed the film rights.

I've got it also, but have a couple books ahead in the TBR line (2019 is already getting really full). I'm always skeptical of marketing and reviews that position something as wholly new within a genre, while making a flimsy 1:1 comparison ("African Game of Thrones" in this case)--like, fantasy doesn't need a Man Booker prize winner to validate it, and a lot of critics seem criminally unaware that there have been many brilliant black genre writers before now. But: the text is the text, and James is such an exciting and ambitious writer. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Beech27 said:

I've got it also, but have a couple books ahead in the TBR line (2019 is already getting really full). I'm always skeptical of marketing and reviews that position something as wholly new within a genre, while making a flimsy 1:1 comparison ("African Game of Thrones" in this case)--like, fantasy doesn't need a Man Booker prize winner to validate it, and a lot of critics seem criminally unaware that there have been many brilliant black genre writers before now. But: the text is the text, and James is such an exciting and ambitious writer. 

Seriously, as a black dude who loves fantasy, sci-fi, and tons of other nerdy shit, you'd be surprised how often people act like I'm some sort of unicorn.  The thing is, most black dudes I know have some sort of nerd interests whether its sci-fi, comics, video games, etc.  One of my dream projects is a fantasy story set in a small town like the one where grew up.  It is a town so small that people in the neighboring towns don't really know how to get there.  It is almost completely segregated, and a little forgotten to time...I really think it is the perfect setting for a modern fantasy series.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, supremebve said:

Seriously, as a black dude who loves fantasy, sci-fi, and tons of other nerdy shit, you'd be surprised how often people act like I'm some sort of unicorn.  The thing is, most black dudes I know have some sort of nerd interests whether its sci-fi, comics, video games, etc.  One of my dream projects is a fantasy story set in a small town like the one where grew up.  It is a town so small that people in the neighboring towns don't really know how to get there.  It is almost completely segregated, and a little forgotten to time...I really think it is the perfect setting for a modern fantasy series.

So what's stopping you from writing it? I say this in complete sincerity. You write well, obviously can organize your thoughts well and have a love of the genre. So here's what you do, (best writing advice I ever got): Apply ass to chair, turn on MSWord or what-have-you, write 500 words. Do not take breaks or do other shit until you have completed the 500 words. If you feel like writing more, go for it, but it does not carry over to the next day, (just because you wrote 1500 words on Monday does not mean you can skip Tues and Weds). Do this every day, in two weeks you have a short story or opening couple of chapters, in a month you have a novelette or the first four or five chapters of a novel. 

Finish what you start and ignore the idiots that tell you all you need is three chapters and an outline for a novel. Bullshit. Three chapters and an outline is a stack of worthless paper, a completed novel is a tangible asset, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sooner or later if you keep this up someone is going to ask "What else ya got?" and give you a big bag of money for the early novel. There is nothing in this advice that I don't do myself. You may think I get verbose on this board, it's simply getting my 500 in to get the gears turning. Works like a charm.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, OSJ said:

So what's stopping you from writing it? I say this in complete sincerity. You write well, obviously can organize your thoughts well and have a love of the genre. So here's what you do, (best writing advice I ever got): Apply ass to chair, turn on MSWord or what-have-you, write 500 words. Do not take breaks or do other shit until you have completed the 500 words. If you feel like writing more, go for it, but it does not carry over to the next day, (just because you wrote 1500 words on Monday does not mean you can skip Tues and Weds). Do this every day, in two weeks you have a short story or opening couple of chapters, in a month you have a novelette or the first four or five chapters of a novel. 

Finish what you start and ignore the idiots that tell you all you need is three chapters and an outline for a novel. Bullshit. Three chapters and an outline is a stack of worthless paper, a completed novel is a tangible asset, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sooner or later if you keep this up someone is going to ask "What else ya got?" and give you a big bag of money for the early novel. There is nothing in this advice that I don't do myself. You may think I get verbose on this board, it's simply getting my 500 in to get the gears turning. Works like a charm.

Dude, the amount of unfinished stuff on my various hard drives is insane.  The longest is about 10,000 words (5 unfinished chapters) and I'd like to finish that before I actually started a new novel.  I'm someone who has moments of crazy inspiration but then have a couple of weeks of terrible writers block.  Setting up a 500 word per day goal is pretty realistic, I'll give it a shot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

53 minutes ago, supremebve said:

Dude, the amount of unfinished stuff on my various hard drives is insane.  The longest is about 10,000 words (5 unfinished chapters) and I'd like to finish that before I actually started a new novel.  I'm someone who has moments of crazy inspiration but then have a couple of weeks of terrible writers block.  Setting up a 500 word per day goal is pretty realistic, I'll give it a shot.

Basically three double-spaced pages, any idiot can do that (and many frequently do, more's the pity) ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe a Writer's Block Club is in order.  I wish I had HDDs of stuff.  Instead, I have one of those IKEA 14"x14" black boxes full of notebooks, with Post-It flags marking the breaks between ideas & stories.  Latest bit of insanity on my end: a still-all-too-lucid dream from the other night about two of the villains of books 2 & 3 of a series that's ~50,000 words into Book 1.  I suppose I should write that short story while it's still fresh.  FML.  Excuse me while I go walk out in front of Tweetboy's traffic over at Walter Reed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, supremebve said:

Dude, the amount of unfinished stuff on my various hard drives is insane.  The longest is about 10,000 words (5 unfinished chapters) and I'd like to finish that before I actually started a new novel.  I'm someone who has moments of crazy inspiration but then have a couple of weeks of terrible writers block.  Setting up a 500 word per day goal is pretty realistic, I'll give it a shot.

There you go! Don't neglect what I said about finish what you start. I used to fall into the very bad habit of knowing where I wanted a story to go and writing the beginning and the end, made filling the middle a total slog. DON'T DO THAT!!!  If you think you might lose track of how you want it to end. that's what notebooks are for, jot down your thoughts so that they'll be clear to you in a month, six months, a year, whatever. Then go right back to writing the story in order of events. You can always go back and tweak things, but trust me, if you have the ending done and not the middle parts, you will spend many hours fucking around doing anything but the chore of filling in the blanks, because to YOU it's already happened, you have no reason to write it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, supremebve said:

Dude, the amount of unfinished stuff on my various hard drives is insane.  The longest is about 10,000 words (5 unfinished chapters) and I'd like to finish that before I actually started a new novel.  I'm someone who has moments of crazy inspiration but then have a couple of weeks of terrible writers block.  Setting up a 500 word per day goal is pretty realistic, I'll give it a shot.

Please do! And here's an offer from the heart because we're bros, if you want unmitigated, brutally honest criticism from someone that does this stuff for a living, I will be happy to accomodate. Keep in mind, I'm known throughout the business for being brutally honest and not suffering fools gladly (if at all). That's not to say I'm nasty, I'm not; but there are certain flaws that I look for that really make me see red, and some folks get all butt-hurt when I point these things out.  Probably the biggest ones are a character knowing something that they couldn't possibly know and a character behaving like a dunce for 3/4ths of the book and all of a sudden they're the smartest dude in the kingdom. That shit is just awful story-telling.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I picked up Black Leopard, Red Wolf yesterday.  About 50 pages in and I'm really enjoying it, but, man, I feel like whoever sold this book to Michael B. Jordan didn't let him read it first.  In the first three chapters alone, the main character fucks an old witch and skeets all over her, boys jerk each other off while watching adults fuck, and circumcision (of both the male and female variety) is a pressing concern.  This is not the stuff of billion dollar film series without some major alterations.

I feel like that whole side of things will probably go the way of The Passage, another pre-sold "literary author goes genre" series that everyone quickly realized was unfilmable as written and was ultimately reformatted into a barely recognizable TV procedural.

But we'll still have the books!  So, fuck it.

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎2‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 2:02 PM, EVA said:

I picked up Black Leopard, Red Wolf yesterday.  About 50 pages in and I'm really enjoying it, but, man, I feel like whoever sold this book to Michael B. Jordan didn't let him read it first.  In the first three chapters alone, the main character fucks an old witch and skeets all over her, boys jerk each other off while watching adults fuck, and circumcision (of both the male and female variety) is a pressing concern.  This is not the stuff of billion dollar film series without some major alterations.

Aw, why are you smashing my dream of Black Leopard, Red Wolf being adopted for the screen as a Rated R film?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I read Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner. It was published in 1986. It feels fifteen years before its time and while I'd never heard of it before a couple of years ago, I imagine it had to be a wildly important book for certain people either lacking in representation or heavily underserved as an audience (not myself) who somehow got their hands upon it when it first came out or shortly thereafter. It's also just generally good mixing politics and slice of life with swordsplay.

Edited by Matt D
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...