Why I Love Fantasy: Article/Blog

[Philip Overby]

I wouldn't normally link to a blog post, but I felt this is relevant to fantasy and why I'm actively trying to promote it. I'd been saving this up for some time now, and I didn't think it was suitable for the Mythic Scribes homepage due to its more personal nature, but just wanted to share this with everyone. Maybe you have similar stories?

Drill Bits: A Weird Guy Living in Japan: Why I Love Fantasy

 

[robertbevan]

that was a fun read. it's funny... your life sounds a lot like mine, up to and including the bit where you wind up as a teacher in east asia (korea for me).

you mentioned the dragonlance books, but not any actual gaming. does that mean you weren't a gamer? the games were what really pushed me over the edge into fantasy. not only d&d, but video games too. i remember spending an entire summer playing "dragon warrior" on the NES and listening to "talking heads 77". it would be interrupted here and there by going swimming with my friends at the pool. that was a good summer.

 

[Philip Overby]

Maybe I should edit it to include my extensive D&D saturated youth. Yes, I read the books and played all sorts of different campaigns, from Dragonlance to Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Birthright (which most people probably don't know), amongst original campaigns. I was a DM for most of my gaming, but I was a player for a long time as well. I also dabbled in the White Wolf games and Shadowrun. I had the Warhammer RPG book, but never found anyone to play with me. So yeah, I'm a big gamer.

I'm a big Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest over here in Japan) fan. But Final Fantasy is the biggest one for me. The early ones especially. I remember just sitting around watching my friend play Final Fantasy II (or IV as it's known now) for the SNES. I'd actually ask "Hey, dude, can I come over and watch you play Final Fantasy?"

Actually, I think I'll write a separate post about that. I do have some blog posts about Final Fantasy there as well.

 

[robertbevan]

i took a look at your blog once before, but only briefly, because it seemed mostly about living in japan sort of stuff and less fantasy writing stuff. it was a brief glance, though. do you have anymore articles like this? i might take another dive in there and see what i can find.

also... have you gotten anywhere with that e-zine you were looking to start up? i'm curious to know what the niche you're going for is.

good luck with everything.

 

[Philip Overby]

I have some other stuff that is very similar in the works now, although it's not just involving me. I may yet do my own project down the line, but for now this other project seems more feasible and I'm putting my energy into it.

I do have other posts buried in there. Mostly about Final Fantasy, living in Japan, pro wrestling and some writing info. I'm going to try to start focusing the blog on more fantasy oriented stuff and see where I can go with it. For now I've sort of exhausted my "Japanese wisdom" so I haven't been writing much there. I do post stories now and again for contests and such.

Thanks for checking it out!

 

[Lorna]

I liked this, again, much in common. Whilst all my friends had barbies, I had He-man and She-ra, Thundercats and Ninja Turtles.

Yeah, Dragonlance got me into fantasty. I still list the trilogy about the twins as one of my all time favourites. I remember being so hooked on it at school I skipped dinner to read it in the corner of the library. So much depth, conflict between the Majere family, twisting of time and identity Raistlin / Fistandantilus. I also loved 'The Death Gate Cycle' 'Rose of the Prophet.' Salvatore- the earlier stuff was better. David Eddings?

I went off fantasy completely at college (1996). I got really deeply into the Romantics, Greek tragedy and European Philosophy.

I only got back into fantasy about two years ago (2010). Eek 14 years without reading fantasy. I was ill and read Robin Hobb's Far Seer and Live Ships trils. This got me reading and eventually writing fantasy.

It's a strange world...

 

[Wynnara]

Heh, what I remember about D&D is that the boys in my class wouldn't let me play!

I can see a lot of common threads as well. My first fantasy books were C.S. Lewis' Narnia series. "Prince Caspian" was my favourite followed by "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." I remember them being read to me before I was able to read them myself. To this day, I think I love audiobooks because of that great feeling of being read to.

I wrote my first 100 page novella when I was about 11 or 12. It had a good lion named Malakan and a bad lion named Nemesis... so yea, definite Narnia influence there. I ended up re-writing that novella several times... partly due to my inability to back my files on floppy disks and so I'd lose the whole thing when the hard drive crashed.

After that major influences were things like Anne McCaffery's "Dragonriders of Pern" series and David Eddings' "Belgariad" and "Mallorean".

Oh and I can totally relate to the whole mythology thing. My first name is Athena and that definitely put me on the path to Greek myths fairly early on. After that I began reading Egyptian myths and a few others. I love the idea of comparative mythologies... all the different stories for how the world was made and things like that... find that really fascinating.