The Perils of Popularity

Of course the characters who get in first would end up being the worst. Aragon would be a damage dealer with a weak heal clogging up his skills and what's the point? Daggers would be so weak that Paul Atreides would be crippled. Elric would have some weird thing that needs him to take damage to raise his damage that would be totally impractical until Summer Barbarella came out. I get excited just thinking about it.

Social Revolution

It's well past time to rescind the copyright on all fantasy and scifi works before 2001 so somebody can make a sick unlicensed crossover gacha game.

An Argument in Favor of the Death Penalty

Some people insist space wars won't have fighters.

Nightmare Engine Tour

Here you can see the attentive men and women of Public Utilities monitoring the functioning of the Nightmare Engine. Vigilance is necessary since the Nightmare Engine is a delicate piece of machinery despite its immense size. Being that big just means more can go wrong if they're not careful. Good thing for us that they are!
This basement began its life as a natural cavern, but Public Works expanded it to its current size after it was adjudged suitable for housing essential facilities that we might not want to leave out in the open. As you can see, it is now three stories and two hundred feet of well-lighted basement. That's good enough for government work!
See those pipes along the floors, walls, and ceiling? Those convey the Nightmare Energy all over the city for direct delivery to every house and apartment. Not a single citizen is deprived of nightmares in modern times. The Nightmare Energy levels are carefully adjusted daily according to the calculations of Public Utilities. It wouldn't do to have nothing but nightmares, after all!
Why do we need a Nightmare Engine at all? I don't understand the question. Now over here you can see the framework for the Helplessness Inculcator, which ought to be up and running in twenty-three months. Knock on wood!

Taste

Now that we know which Tales of games sold the most, how bad did it turn out your taste is? Mine is pretty good, but I guess was all wrong about not liking Zestiria very much. I didn't even try Berseria or Dawn of the New World, which is revealed to be a real noob move.

Clarification

Yes, that does include planets that are married or engaged to be married.

Fashion Is the Answer

Out: Bounty hunters who are secretly the results of supersoldier experiments
In: Ringed planets

State of Scifi

We're all going to have to rethink some thinks now that it turns out aliens are real.

Addendum

Unless . . . they already have. Dun dun dun!

Important Precautions

When we find alien life forms, it is of paramount importance that we not interfere with their development. Otherwise, they'll take over the Youtube comments.

The Search for Intelligent Life

"The final summary of the complete catalogue is here, sir." The official ran his eyes over the summary and looked up. "Bad news, sir. They're all morons."
"Hmph. You're sure?"
"It says here the plinath are stupid, the shbors are dummies, and the nmnr think logic is a kind of food."
The director of the Extraterrestrial Sentients Affairs Department ran a hand through his gray hair. "We've finally explored the entire galaxy. There have to be some."
His subordinate looked back to the summary. "The hksaluderu just last month managed to put a roof on a house after centuries of careful consideration. The lphops ritually purify themselves if they accidentally come up with an idea. The fosorosons have proved to be generally unintelligent."
The director sighed. "So that's it. Humans are the only truly intelligent life in the galaxy. There's only one thing we can do now." He stood and planted his left hand on his desk while clenching the right. "Run our observational footage of these clowns twenty-four-seven to make people laugh."

How to Name Characters

Don't: Spitfire
Do: Napish Tim

What Qualifies As Adult Fantasy

Anything with napishting in it.

Ys: The Ark of Napishtim

Napished her, too!

I Forgot One

Bribery! Just huge piles of cash. That can solve most problems. Sometimes you need to get a little more specific and get somebody moved up on the organ list or something. But how do you get the money? Violence or mind control, probably.

The Nature of Conflict

"If sorry solved anything, we wouldn't need mind control." - Thomas Hobbes

Conflict Resolution

Wow! What a story! It looks like violence isn't the only way to solve problems. Government coercion backed by the threat of violence is another. There is no third method.

Wait, I forgot about mind control. The problem with mind control is that if you can do it once, why not do it nonstop? There are possible answers, but thinking is hard. I like swordfights.

The King and the Spirit of the Trees

Of those unthinkable tasks Prince Ulrich completed in the islands beyond the immortal sea everything has been said. I will add the history of that spirit hat which has finally earned by its wearer's deeds the fame deserved by its qualities. Once upon a time, the sun recalled the days of yore and sent a summer unlike any suffered for an age and another age before that. A king lived then who considered any hardship nothing more than a reminder that no kingdom is so perfect that it may not be improved. The insistent summer exposed a fault, which was the paucity of shade his kingdom possessed, and thereby inspired the king to take measures thoughtful kings ought to take.
He instructed his knight Manfred in his policy and sent forth that servant who traveled north, south, east, and west, choosing the most pleasant trees and vines, plucking them out of the earth which raised them just as he made squires into knights after their parents yielded them up to his instruction, and hurling the trees toward his lord's lands where they pierced the ground in ordered rows and columns to form as fine an orchard as had ever been seen.
So fine was the orchard that a spirit of trees was minded to relocate there. Without even filling a bag with food or a pouch with money the spirit set out, for only humans are slow to act. That spirit arrived and informed the king of its intentions, for not only humans have manners. King Rudolph answered with no less politeness.
"You are most welcome, for hospitality embraces the humblest, so what should we say about more eminent petitioners? There is only the matter of the fee. Since spirits carry no money, I will content myself with your hat."
The spirit supported that idea no more than the sky supports the earth and went away. Shortly afterward a gardener came to the castle inquiring about employment opportunities. The king said no position was open at that time, but the gardener could stay there until a job became available. Room and board would be provided for a nominal fee of the gardener's hat. The wandering gardener was never seen again.
Later a queen from a foreign land passed through the kingdom with a fantastical retinue carried by zebras and riding on giraffes which stretched so far that those on the end were waking up when those in front went to bed. That queen desired to distribute gifts to the king and his people during her stay, but he swore that he would take nothing from such a beautiful and noble lady except for one thing, which was her hat as a remembrance of her visit. With that, the queen disappeared and all her followers reverted to squirrels and rabbits.
At last, the spirit returned and handed over the hat with neither grace nor complaints and took up residence in the orchard. It is that very spirit hat which Prince Ulrich wears today.
Finis

Q&A Corner

Q. How do I come up with ideas for my new story?
A. Go on the internet, find stuff people say they're sick of, and put that in. They're sick of it because they keep reading it, after all.

About Time Someone Said It

More like the bar's my destination!

Innovative Idea Do Not Steal

A dungeon that's actually a dungeon. I'm not sure that's a good place to have adventures, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Big Reveal

Obviously whoever hired a pop punk band for the coronation was skimming money from the event budget. That much is a given.

Integration

"I can't believe the pop punk band I hired for the coronation was actually a bunch of disguised bounty hunters!"

History Corner

Music existed back then, but nobody's ever heard it. We're pretty much guessing. Go ahead and put pop punk in your fantasy stories.

Whole Word Reformation

"It isn't going to stay for long, right?"
"I don't know, seems like it's settling pretty good in to me. Weather looks to stay fine, too. No reason to move, no reason in the world."
"I can't draw something like that."
Indeed, who dared attempt to transmute crude paper and ink into the dignity of that lizard which graced what men used to call Melmark with a few thousand yards of luxurious scales? Melmark could be called nothing but Lizardmark after that by anyone with sense. Whether the mobile topographical feature was the creation of some mad wizard, an ancient relict who lived since the world began and just came up for a vacation, or the first of the new generation of monster lizards finally reaching their growth potential which had been hampered by malnutrition until the agricultural revolution, it inarguably altered the landscape and merited a response from the government's office of cartography and surveying.
"Draw an outline and call it New Ridge."
"I'm going with Monster Ridge. Is this what you figured you'd be doing as a cartographer?"
"Well, I only got hired because of the Great Rending after Demon God Hellbreaker was split into five parts by the courageous heroes we all know, so yeah, more or less."
"I think maps are neat."
"Yeah."
The colossal lizard's tongue flicked though its eyes never opened. Perhaps it dreamed of whatever its kind thought neat. Such leisure as that the cartographers lacked, seeing as they had to look over an inland sea that was the aftermath of a wizard's slaying that very month.
Finis

Naming Dos and Don'ts

Do: Brandoch Daha
Don't: Goldry Bluszco

Some Notes on The Worm Ouroboros

Spoilers!
I have the impression this is one of those influential books that people know about but don't actually read. So I read it. It's hot stuff.
Some fantasy stories try to emulate logic-free fairy tales while others depict worlds unlike our own with a rationalesque style as if they were histories or biographies. This is the sort of story which gestures at the first style while standing on the second. Names like Demonland and Brandoch Daha prepare readers for the strange curses and ancient mores which do indeed follow, but at the same time the politics and generalship that drive the plot are earthly and reasonable. Much like the discussion of elven trade routes in The Hobbit that leads to the wine barrel escape, The Worm Ouroboros turns the mundane matter into adventure and uses the fantastical as decoration rather than as the foundation.
This book sure loves messenger speeches.
The only thing that contributes more to creating the fantasy world of this story than the dialogue is the letters. Every single one of those is great.
It ended weakly. The Ouroboros imagery was tied to Witchland, and associating it with Demonland or all Mercury at the end is unsatisfying. Some sort of return to the framing story might have helped as well.

A Sentence Never Heard

"That supersoldier program worked out great!"

Addendum

The secret part is optional. Having a megacorporation advertise its supersoldier projects using bounty hunters is perfectly acceptable, nor must the bounty hunter be shy about it. May the bounty hunter acquire a quiver of infinite arrows? Why, certainly.

The Vicissitudes of Fashion

Out: Quivers of infinite arrows
In: Bounty hunters who are secretly the results of supersoldier experiments

Into the Future

First We Reroll has returned to its regular price, but don't worry. It would be a bargain at 2.4x the asking price.

The Oracle of Spurwood

Even if the city was called Spurwood, the woods had long since been turned into farms and meadows. What remained of it was a copse preserved by the city by the strictest laws, for in that copse sat a flat-topped stone invaluable and irreplaceable. On it, once a year, the city placed a tablet and awaited the next day more than any holiday, for invariably an unknown hand etched tidings of the coming year of unquestionable accuracy in the proffered item.
Not only had Spurwood benefited from the opportunities and warnings given it as a gift beyond human expectation, but every year the wealthy both local and foreign bid for the right to provide the blank tablet hoping, as sometimes happened, that there would be news particularly for the provider. So it was one year when a rich stranger visited the city.
Able to indulge their eccentricities, wealthy bidders often came with entourages as that man did or refused to give their names. Fewer of them held spears down which some yellow liquid like molten sunshine dripped from the head down the shaft and left spots on the ground for a second only before disappearing. In any case, he bid as was his right whatever accessory he chose to wedge in his white-knuckled hand, and he won as well whereupon he offered a rectangle of copper as the tablet.
The ceremony proceeded as usual, and the hand which could only be guessed but never known wrote the city a graceful epistle as always. Much information it held in neat lines, but first of all the message said the year would be typical all in all, which was good for the city but a great shame and sorrow to the man with a spear that was not his. The man went away with all his entourage and his spear, or whoever's spear it was.
Finis