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Recent content by DragonOfTheAerie

  1. DragonOfTheAerie

    Epic Goal, or Episodic Goal?

    I’m majoring in history rn and that’s definitely affected my approach to this to a great degree. I really hate the type of fantasy that structures it’s plot around large scale events in the world and chooses as its protagonists characters that are major “drivers” or at the forefront of those...
  2. DragonOfTheAerie

    How to make a story that's not too similar to Harry Potter?

    my biggest suggestion is don’t worry about it—“magic school” is more of a trope than a connection to a specific work at this point. But I think a lot of the major fantasy books that are obviously derivative of Harry Potter are lots more derivative than the setting. I would say try to mix up...
  3. DragonOfTheAerie

    Chapter Titles?

    I love chapter titles. I did not finish the first Percy Jackson book, but I remember that Riordan’s titles made an impression on me because they were funny and added a lot to the irreverent character of the book. Actually I still remember some of them and I don’t even remember much else about...
  4. DragonOfTheAerie

    Vent about the Book You're Reading

    Wow, straight up forgot that “Book 8” was a thing. I remember liking the 7th book when I read it, but in hindsight I don’t really know why, since a lot of the worldbuilding stuff came totally out of left field for me. The Deathly Hallows just don’t fit with the previously established character...
  5. DragonOfTheAerie

    The generic "Tolkien Rebrand"

    They gained respect, but it was contextualized in terms of their humility; the story is self-aware of the irony of the humble hobbits being generated as heroes. Whereas many fantasy heroes generally lose, or never really had, that humility.
  6. DragonOfTheAerie

    The Writing Trance

    I have this repeated problem where I get started with my writing for the night, intending to go to bed around midnight, but then I get In The Zone and end up awake at 2am, still writing... It can go very differently, though. I always have days where I have to force myself to write.
  7. DragonOfTheAerie

    You need me to be the bad guy.

    I’m very fond of villains that make you feel strong emotions. When a villain inspires you to passionately hate them, be angry at them, or even feel conflicted between hate and sympathy, that to me is a sign of a well written villain. However, they also have to be human. They have to have reasons...
  8. DragonOfTheAerie

    The generic "Tolkien Rebrand"

    We’ee going dangerously close to the truth that genre is a construct that starts to become really unhelpful if you look at it too closely.
  9. DragonOfTheAerie

    The generic "Tolkien Rebrand"

    This has been said in the thread in some ways but a lot of tropes we think of as “Tolkien derivative” are not actually. They’re actually derivative of D&D. a lot of fantasy shares worldbuilding and aesthetic similarities with Tolkien, but there is very little that is similar thematically...
  10. DragonOfTheAerie

    Warning the audience

    Even if the book contains something I find repugnant, I try not to let my personal feelings influence my ratings unless I feel like it was really unnecessary, handled badly, or something else like that. I rated a book two stars early this year not necessarily because it contained rape, gore...
  11. DragonOfTheAerie

    Warning the audience

    Im seeing a theme here of genre conventions meaning certain things should be expected (e.g. graphic violence in a military focused fantasy) and I agree that the blurb should give a good idea of what to expect. That's not even considering how it might affect trauma survivors, that's just good...
  12. DragonOfTheAerie

    Warning the audience

    Teletubbies are pretty horrifying though.
  13. DragonOfTheAerie

    College Thoughts

    It really may just be her teaching style that’s not very engaging, or it might be just me being already familiar with a lot of the terms she spends 5-10 minutes defining.
  14. DragonOfTheAerie

    College Thoughts

    I don’t know exactly. There’s been little opportunity for complex discussion.
  15. DragonOfTheAerie

    Warning the audience

    You’re right in that it’s 100% not possible to warn for every possible trigger ever because they are literally infinite. Things not directly connected to the traumatic event often become triggers for trauma survivors. The system is flawed from the get-go. However, there are some subjects that...
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