The Problem With Prophecies in Some Fantasy

Is that there's only one. Shouldn't there be dozens of prophecies both overlapping and distinct? If anybody believes in them, you know people will be hiring diviners left and right to try to get a good one.

The Reason for Anti-Empire Sentiment

If you write out "emperor" enough times, everything about it seems wrong. Couldn't we contract it to "empor?" No, but eventually you'll assuredly want to. Yu-Gi-Oh named a penguin Empen, and that might be the way to go.

Addendum

Not a good empire. Nobody said anything about a good empire. Just not especially evil.

As the Seasons Change, So Too Do the Trends

Through: Intelligent armor that sounds like your parents.
New: Non-evil empires.

Q&A Corner

Q. Why is it the Enchanter's Moon and not the Enchantment Moon?
A. Euphony.
Q. Does that answer really explain anything?
A. Without taste, it cannot be heard.

This Story Is Actually About Accidentally Closing Programs on Public Computers

On the plain of Harik-Tal-Kub, around the triple altars, ninety mages of perfected skill caused to be what never otherwise would, and upon each altar, one supreme among his brethren performed miracles. A master of magic mightier still climbed the tower built in the center by hurried hands aided by profound arts and standing on it said, "You sorcerers thirty, you enchanters, you warlocks, make them rise! The Sorcery Moon, the Enchanter's Moon, the Warlockry Moon never share the night sky but once every seven thousand years by nature, but make them tonight! Then we perform the triple magic."
Called by their arts, the three moons appeared on the horizon. From there they moved, drawn upward unwillingly to their places above the altars. The ceremony was near its culmination, the triple magic within reach.
The moons continued to the point of conjunction, bonked into one another, and shattered into a thousand times a thousand chunks, times three. The chanting and the hissing of half-living instruments ceased as the mages watched the strange rain in heaven in increasing anxiety.
"You sorcerers, you enchanters, you warlocks!" the great master at last pronounced. "If anyone asks, we were having a trade convention! Nothing strange about it! Thuoskilnak there won 'Mage of the Year!' Now let's cheese it!" The ninety and the three and the one scattered and hoped nobody would notice. Finis

Occult Science Fiction

Is the skoton an evil basic particle of electromagnetism or something else entirely? You'd better figure it out for your unhinged scifi setting, free of the bounds of rationality or convention.

Limited Imagination

We're always talking about teleportation in science fiction, the morality of dissolving people and making them somewhere else among other issues as set against how convenient it is for the story, but we've forgotten something. What if future people can just run really fast? Maybe they don't need teleportation. I hope future exercise routines are better than today's, after all.

The Spirit of the Month

It's January, and you know what that means. You have to describe a scene depicted on a door in the story you're writing. It doesn't have to be relevant to the plot, themes, or setting of the story so long as it gets the reader to imagine your characters standing there for an hour looking at it while the page tries to shove them in to see the king or whatever.

The Quintessential Fantasy Reader Experience

Waking up in the middle of the night and thinking, "I don't really know what a madrigal is. I only kinda know." It doesn't have to be "madrigal," but it often is.

Somebody Gets Eaten by a [ANIMAL] and There Are People and Such Inside

Traditionally it's a whale, going back to ya boy Lucian, but don't forget about elephants, rocs, dragons, and gods. That last one kind of happens in the Mahabharata, but that doesn't mean we can't rip it off. I like the elephant one the most aesthetically, but rocs have the most story convenience. Because of the travel, you see.

Surely Somebody's Done This Already

Fairy Mason

The Case of the Beleaguered Blackguard

The justiciar bashed through the door and entered the tavern, six men behind him and six more who waited outside at each entrance. He ignored the proprietor's objections as he surveyed the room, but not the inhabitants. Three in particular he marked out because of their strength and skill which both were obvious to him at a glance.
"I'm pressing you three to assist in the capture of this man." Saying that, he held up a proclamation of outlawry. The subject was nobody else but the blackguard Lobic. "What about it? Speak up."
The first of the three, a man of fierce looks who sat alone and intimidated any who thought to change that, grunted and said, "The blackguard Lobic. Fine. Let's hurry."
The second of the three, a man quick to smile and to put a hand on a weapon, turned from his seat at the busy bar and chuckled. "I had plans myself. The blackguard Lobic, is it? Doubt you'll ever catch him, no insult intended."
The third of the three, a man who had the air of one who has studied causes and effects, the powers of substances, and the intricacies of steel stood up from his crowded table and said, "It will be a diversion at least. I hope an instructive one. What is known of the blackguard Lobic?"
The justiciar smiled. "Arrest that false scholar. Oh, are you surprised, Lobic? Distressed? Didn't you notice? These two don't know how to say 'blackguard.' They've only seen the word. You're the one man here who's ever been called it!"
Finis

A Grave Oversight

The job we keep featuring: Assassin
The job we keep forgetting: Master of Revels

Let's Put This Sorcery Thing to Bed

More like snorecery.

The Upcoming Publishing Trend

Glossy pages but which ones are glossy are random and some of them have signatures from one of the hundred editors who worked on it.

Addendum

Who then is the main character? Brian de Bois-Guilbert, probably. I know. I'm as surprised as you are.

Unsolved Mysteries

All these years later and we still don't know why he called it Ivanhoe. Why not Wilfrid Goes Bananas! or That Time Richard I Was Away for A While? Wilrid's barely even the main character anyway.

The Transformative Power of Fantasy

If it weren't for fantasy, I wouldn't wish we had a lot more terms for "king." Or "prophecy."

A Story of Shapes

Once, a traveler became lost in a land in which he had never before gone astray. The reason was the mist, thick, cold, and obscuring, unusual in that time of drought. He wandered until the mist began to clear and saw himself to be in a place he had not before visited, away from the road and ringed with rocks, and in the center, a figure, dim at first but gradually visible.
The man was waving around a sack, and not without effect, for the mist went into the sack and caused it to bulge. Little by little, all of it was drawn in so that the day was as clear as could be.
"What is that sack, good sir?" the traveler asked. "And what is your name?"
The sack-swinger stopped and saw the traveler for the first time. "Oh, it's a shame you saw that, it is. Now you must press the mist in this bag." So saying, he threw the sack on the ground and menaced the traveler until the job was done.
"Good. Now you must roll out the mist and make the edges even." The traveler did that as well. The mist made a large, gray sheet, and though its borders lacked definition, the traveler was able to tell where they should be.
"Good. Now carve apart the mist into sections." Seeing the traveler unsure whether to speak, the man went on to say, "The size is your choice, and up to you also is the shape, and whether to make them uniform."
The traveler made them blocks at first, but as he went he made circles and spirals and petals, and other shapes as well, some of them small and others nearly the whole length of it. More than that, his confidence increased so that he packed some together and pulled others apart as it felt right to do. When he completed his work, the man looked it over.
"At last, something I can use. I'll end the drought with this, and as for you." The man made the mist into the clouds and the traveler into the god of them, and from then on the world had weather again.
Finis

Addendum

Don't tell me people are worried about confusing oger with Ogier. Nobody cares about Ogier. I don't care if you read that one book.

A Communal Determination

Would it be all right to start spelling "ogre" as "oger?" Is there a copyright issue?

The Latest E-Reader Technology

It now detects if the user has been on the same page for at least five minutes and gives him an electric shock to wake him up. There's no sleeping on this job, idiots!

The Next Wave in Text Formatting

Now that physical books are dead, how about we color words to indicate characters you're supposed to remember, ones you aren't, and the same for locations and concepts? Get people used to it first, then the subversion. I think green for memorable characters, blue for locations, and gold for concepts. For the throwaways, brown for characters, purple for locations, and red for concepts. The underlying scheme is that there isn't any and people who can't learn arbitrary rules don't deserve to read.

Addendum

That's why you should name things with internet searches in mind. Instead of Guerdon, call your thingy Guerdon DYNAMITE, for example. You have to pay me if you use that example.

The History of Fables

Once upon a time, people made up fables. Later, Microsoft released a game called that, so we all agreed not to put anything on the internet which would complicate searches about getting the best weapons and which property to buy first. The end.

Secret of Peregrine Platform

A single tug was enough. The line shot up, up, and up, nearly the entire height of the tower to deliver the snared fish to the tower's master, Crime Sage Rykel.
"A promising trial, but you're a bit small," he told the fish as he unhooked it. He dropped it so that it fell neatly in the little pond he had created for the experiment, not out of mercy but as a demonstration of skill. "Now I need only take over the Peregrine Platform and hover it over some filled pockets."
The Peregrine Platform was one name. Every region had its term for the strange object which traveled through the sky without evident purpose. Never had anyone boarded it so far as was known, but in no previous era had Rykel lived. With consummate technique he made use of a catapult to lob a likeness of himself aboard and then used his magic. As easily as that, he and the figure swapped places.
From there he moved to take control of it, but what was it? He discovered then that what men had long seen from below was the foundation of a grand mausoleum. Reasoning the source of power likeliest lay in the center, he approached the great portal, but he was not welcome there. Curses buffeted him and were repelled by skills that were eldritch, modern, and wholly his own. He reached for the door but saw it recede before him in an impossible movement he arrested with his guard-freezing spells, and the doom of death which fell on those who dared enter the ancient tombs shattered one of his twelve statues in his tower. Hostile forces opposed every step, but for nothing. He reached the center and purified it with borrowed holy power.
"Great sage!" A ghost appeared, which was nothing unexpected. "You have freed the kings of the Sky Tombs of Ganceras from our travails! Ages ago, we were overcome by the death-wizards of Alaonir and trapped as fuel for their magic, aware but impotent. Our fury however had its own force and struck continuously their lands, and does so still. Now we are released, and we release too the Alaonir Plain."
Rykel swapped with his effigy, leaving it to take the fall from the Sky Tombs which were even then dissolving. "My purse-fishing plan, ruined! But it must have been the Ullonik Curse-Storm that he meant. If that is truly gone, a route undiscovered by security is opened to the Eight-Tiger Vault. Off I go!" The kings of Ganceras watched him and rejoiced that the world yet had such sages in it. They departed then, and what befell them is not for mortals to know, but about the Vault and that the Crime Sage failed to rob it, all men learned it later.
Finis

Some Science Fiction to Fantasy Conversions

Ship -> Spaceship
Deadly forest -> Asteroid belt
Dragon -> Evil corporation
Cleric -> Clerk
Magic sword -> Prototype
Intelligent talking familiar -> Robot buddy
Wizard -> Space wizard

Science Fiction Horror

Here's the setup: It's the future . . . but we don't have spaceships. Boo!

What Science Fiction Is Missing

Quests. Both the thing and the word. People think they have to dress it up as missions assigned by a governmental organ, travel, or research. Quests. That's what people like.

The Spirit of the Chimney

A week later and I finally realize I should have been talking about "santasy" all this time.

Addendum

Granted, some of us are resolved to become arrogant young masters, but that isn't an exclusive goal.