2015

(The following post is based on this Twitter discussion. It contains minor spoilers.) For such a major release, the reception of The Force Awakens has a surprising lack of contention. […]

It’s always pleasing when a technological advance lines up neatly with a decade, and sure enough, computer games took a huge step forward in 1990. The latter three King’s Quest […]

The principle of tinkering with something isn’t to rag on something bad, but to look at something that might have been good but missed the mark, or that we wanted […]

Our attitude toward Nazis is changing, and not for the better. Ever since World War II, Nazis have occupied a unique niche as the West’s universal standard for evil, and […]

Last time I talked about good worldbuilding: What it is and, more importantly, what it isn’t. Today I’m going to expand on my third point: Worldbuilding that doesn’t actually make […]

Let’s talk about worldbuilding. It has come to my attention that my definition of good worldbuilding is drastically different—and far more demanding—than most people’s. So here I present my view […]

Archetypes are ubiquitous, yet misunderstood. All writers innately know how to use archetypes, yet many don’t realize that’s what they’re doing and don’t understand how they fit into literature as […]

I don’t like princess stories. I don’t like princess stories even if the princesses kick ass, even if they reject their princessy obligations and just want to lead normal lives, […]