Speaking of fantasy worldbuilding - especially medieval fantasy - am I the only one whose real passion in there lies in heraldry?
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I might have to check this out, I’m always interested to see how people handle theocracies or theocracy adjacent.
I think it will be. I love the concept.
I wish more fantasy writers would take this into consideration. Even the most powerful monarch )or monarch adjacent in the world, has groups they need to keep happy if they want to stay in power.
This is my general feelings as well. I try to make each government feel unique, and feel like it fits with the culture of the country.
I wouldn’t say I’m passionate about it, but I do find it interesting, and keep thinking I should make it more important in my fantasy world.
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It’s a fascinating example because it’s much less Abrahamic than most fantasy theocracies. A patriarchy-matriarchy clash in a world overflowing with shamans and cultists and messiahs, leading to one cult being increasingly dominant in the xenophobic authoritarian bureaucracy of the city where most of the action takes place. Definitely worth the read.
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I’m not a fan of theocracies. Partially because of that sick C.S. Lewis quote, but also because it’s a very broad and rather poorly-defined concept. Before the rise of Christianity, nearly every king was a high priest, a descendant of gods, a god-to-be and possibly a dragon. Does that mean practically every ancient society, from the first Sumerian cities to the Roman Empire, had “theocracy” as its government type? If so, how does a writer “handle” a government type that was ubiquitous throughout history in countless different forms and only recently stopped being the norm? It just makes my head hurt.
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Ending Day Two with 3027 words (mostly rewritten stuff from the end of the old version of Chapter One - specifically dealing with the guards in front of the carriage, and tomorrow will be rewriting the “finish him” options if someone is still breathing after your two arrows.)
Chapter Two is practically written (the carriage scene and the town scenes most of this month will be rewriting the scenes to improve them, tidy up code and add a few changes here and there.
On another note, I’ve been getting some great feedback via the topic and via PMs. I believe I’ve sorted the issues mentioned in the topic and will be going over the feedback I’ve received via PM.
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Hi, first time poking my head into one of these threads! Putting my goals down with the hope that it will doubly motivate me.
I’d love to get a sizeable demo update out this month. Which means retroactively fixing a little chunk of the prologue, tying up chapter 1, and putting out the first portion of chapter 2. Ideally I’ll tie off the prologue fix today and start polishing off ch1.
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OK, this should be my final say regarding this. While the goddess does have a preference for WLW relationships, never in my wildest dreams would she think and act out of character for her to be an actual predator/“recruiter”. Her love for her creations is pure and untainted. Like you’ve said, she can celebrate love in whatever form.
Your input regarding the backstory is highly appreciated, and thus I will integrate it post-haste.
This sentence alone is enough for me to summarize what I really want with the antagonist. To complete it…
“This antagonist is in my story because I need a character who overreacts to even minor inconveniences/incidents.”
The fantasy stories I write all have benevolent governments regardless of the specific system (presidency, monarchy, etc.). The hard-and-fast rule is “everyone gets along well, with a robust support system”. Specific details come next.
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Hi everyone! This is going to be a crazy month for me work- and school-wise (I’m doing a master’s degree and this month I’m presenting at a conference and applying to fellowships on top of midterms…) so my goal is to write something. I really don’t want to get demotivated.
On the subject of queer fiction and especially WLW fiction - one of my goals for 2025 is to read more for leisure, and someone I know who’s doing a PhD in queer literature recommended to me two books, Girlfriends by Emily Zhou and A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett. I think they’re both very honest and down to earth perspectives on queerness written by trans women so might be worth looking into if anyone is interested! I still need to pick up both from the library 
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Hello! Welcome! I think you have some very doable goals for the month and I wish you all the motivation! 
This sounds very utopic. Is it for the sake of simplicity or do you have ideas on how this political utopia works? 
Does this mean most of your story conflict comes from man vs nature, or man vs self, rather than any man vs man plotlines?
These look great! Adding them to my reading list. 
As for myself, I did manage to complete the goals I set for myself in February, including the cathartic shower, so that was very nice. I think I want to keep similar goals for March, mostly to find some pattern in my work to better ascertain what would be a realistic goal or just me overestimating myself haha.
So, I think my tentative March goals will be:
- Finish Chapter 1 draft
That’s it. That’s my goal. Mostly because I just sort’ve realized how much longer my Chapter 1 is in comparison to the prologue (just by glancing over the few flow charts I’ve made). I can save any major editing for April outside of easy/needed fixes.
I also want to read more WiPs this month and give some feedback. 
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Work’s been busy! Double shift this morning destroyed me, so I haven’t gotten many words down on paper – instead, I spent a ridiculous amount of time worldbuilding and daydreaming while I bussed tables :'-]
I have the dungeon master bad habit of spending too much time researching and designing sandboxes rather than writing (fun, but this is a first draft! I promised myself I’d stop iterating!), so I need to make sure this doesn’t spiral into a whole week of bad habits and actually write tomorrow.
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For the first question, it is indeed based on simplicity, with a focus on in-universe support of physical and mental health initiatives. Any political complications would become part of a story arc that would get resolved eventually. And while there are villains in my fantasy stories, many of those stories center on man-vs.-nature and man-vs.-self, because I always emphasize character development as a catalyst for systemic change in-universe.
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I see! So, in relation to the villain character you mentioned above, would he be the type that the system failed, then? I think that could be a pretty good and realistic motivation for their general resentment/revenge against the world. I think it would be interesting to explore how someone could become jaded/villainized like that in a political utopia – it would give them more depth than relying on solely demonstrating rage-bait behavior. 
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Without handing out spoilers, the basic idea of the chapter’s antagonist is that despite having a robust support system around him, he chooses to reject the system as an act of resentment, since he believes anyone who ticks him off is imperfect and should revolve around him instead as a form of Dunning-Kruger-like entitlement. His bipolarity, which is a product of his resentment, can be stemmed from an incident which, again, I won’t spoil.
NO.
Bipolar disorder is a medical condition, a chemical imbalance in the brain. A medical condition, just like cancer or cystic fibrosis or diabetes or a severe allergy or COVID or a broken bone. We don’t know what causes some people to become bipolar, although genetics and environmental stress are factors. It’s not something that can be traced back to a particular incident in a person’s life, and it is sure as shit not some kind of punishment from God for having a bad attitude.
You’re not the first author to use a mental illness he doesn’t know anything about as a motivation for his bad guy. It’s about as lazy a cliché as you can get. Seriously, if I had a dollar for every villain who was driven to the dark side by the cray-cray, I could afford some prime Manhattan real estate to start my own publishing house that would have a zero-tolerance policy for that crap.
Everyone just knows people living with brain disorders are scary and violent, because the stories we consume tell us so. Mental illness doesn’t happen to nice people like us. Well, let me tell you how it actually is in the real world: people with mental illness are far more likely to be a victim of violence than a perpetrator. There aren’t enough hours in a day for the stories I could tell you about people I’ve known personally who have lost their dreams, lost their families, lost their self-respect, lost their fucking lives to mental illness. And stories like yours hurt them. Because the stereotypes you’re perpetuating are part of the reason families and friends distance themselves and applications for housing and employment are denied. The stereotypes you’re perpetuating are the reason so many people would rather suffer in silence than ask for help.
You wanted to run the description of your gay villain past LGBTIA people to see if they approved. I’ll ask again: why did you not also solicit feedback from people who are bipolar or have similar brain disorders? It’s clearly not because you’re writing from a place of experience or expertise. Is it because you don’t think of people with mental illness as intelligent? as articulate? as having feelings? as potential readers of your story? as people?
Until you’re ready to educate yourself - and I don’t mean asking people on the internet to spoon-feed you acceptable details for your particular story - my advice to you when it comes to discussing mental health issues is this:
Please. Just. Fucking. DON’T.
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I just popped into this thread- did I read this right? His bipolar disorder is… because of resentment? And said resentment is due to an incident?
I’mma just say this, I dunno man. As someone who is bipolar (born with it and has relatives who are also bipolar), maybe, uh, not the best idea?
I know someone who (if I’m remembering this right) has manic bipolar. And she’s made some stupid choices, sure. Some a little more attention worthy but not, like, idk, bad guy level. Not anything that caused harm to people.
I’m gonna bet you’re going about this with good intentions, of just telling your story, but please, please be careful with how you portray mental illnesses and do as much research as possible. Or don’t include it at all.
Edit to add:
Is that also part of the villain? I ask because, when I read that after seeing the bipolar bit, made me kiiiinda go: 
. I can’t eloquently put it into words, I’m sorry.
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@AletheiaKnights and @PrismaticSpace:
OK, OK. I’ll have to cut out the bipolar bit from the villain, too. That was the last vestige of my original plan for him.
So, then. I plan for the villain to be irredeemable and rejecting everything the system has given him. If I plan for him to be just plain crazy and self-praising (the typical “bow down to me” type), there should be no mental disorders attached to him, right? Just an incident that made him turn to the dark side for good?
Well, I think part of the issue was how you were attaching things to the character. I’d say you could have someone with mood swings that isn’t bipolar. If you are going to use a condition, research it.
This is something Eiwynn always pushed on me. Don’t trust the media to properly portray it, do your research. This goes beyond just medical conditions, she pushed it on me mostly when it came to different relationship types and sexualities.
I could see a character that is bipolar and has resentment because of an incident. The main thing here is you’re showing ignorance by saying it is because of it. So I’d say, don’t have them be bipolar. Try to never use a condition you don’t understand.
Instead of attaching conditions, I attach traits to characters: “Mood swings”, “Obsessive”, “Selfish”, “Childish”, “Erratic”, “Mature”, “Strong Sense of Justice”. I’ll send you a video on character creation that I try to use. I was going to share it for next month’s Writer Support thread, but I’ll send it to you now.
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I admit I did slapdash random things to the villain to see if they would stick. That’s because he is the penultimate villain, which is a far cry to the planned final villain of Episode 2.
Here’s are some hints about the final villain: I meticulously planned him back when I first came up with the basic outline for the game, and he’s designed to be the “ultimate anti-villain” who is basically the polar opposite of the penultimate villain, without handing out spoilers.
A side note: The antagonist of chapter 2 is also an anti-villain, as she is a vampiress who misses her long-deceased husband so much.
I just recommend writing from a place of care and respect, even for characters meant to be hated :-[ I’ve had characters I’ve related to brushed off by their writers as ‘evil, overreactive, and mentally ill’, and it’s never done anything but hurt.
Ask how a mental illness impacts one’s life, how others treat them for it, what hurdles they face that they wouldn’t have had to otherwise, what support systems they have (positive? toxic?) or, if none, what a lack of support has caused them to internalize?
All of which would have to be written from a place of empathy, and all of which would require research if you haven’t experienced them yourself. I don’t have bipolar, but people I love do, and i’ve got a slew of other problems myself. It isn’t easy. Half-baked narratives on the topic just make it harder…
Saying ‘he’s bipolar’ as his reasoning for rejecting a potential support system is… an insult that doesn’t tell us anything. Does that mean if he wasn’t manic, he’d accept help? Is his villainy contingent on his mental illness? That’s just mean :-[
If that’s not the work you’d want to put in for a minor character, that’s fine! Scrapping the concelt is probably for the best… but its still a good idea to explore similar questions and ask why they ended up this way, or else you might just end up with a forgettable, one-note diversion of a villain.
Hope this doesn’t come off as harsh, I don’t want it to and I don’t think you intend to write anything harmful. Just some thoughts :'-]
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There’s nothing inherently wrong with the classic bombastic lord of EEEEVVVVIIIILLL type, but that character archetype relies on not being humanized, not unless you’re doing something subversive with it. Let them be a cackling melodramatic goon who just loves being bad, not everyone needs a deep dive into their psyche, certainly not in such… potentially fraught ways.
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