Month: January 2020

A short note on the literary offenses of modern writing

On By emperorpondersIn English, games, RPG, Uncategorized, writing5 Comments

As many of you who follow this blog, I came across this yesterday. Naturally, the general objection was about calling out a dead man while profiting from his name and all that.

(click on the tweet to see the image and see what I’m talking about)

Well, sure, but before my mind was even able to process that, what struck me the most was how uncomfortably written the entire thing is (or, at least, the first paragraph.) And I don’t mean typos, grammar errors, and such, but something that is deeper and harder to explain but is quintaessentially modern.

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Hi there, would you like to sign my petition?

On By emperorpondersIn Art1 Comment

These past few days I’ve been toying with various video editing tools for a project I have in mind, and today I came across one potential template I simply could not ignore. So I decided to practice a bit.

The original video is this one that shows relatively famous Jessica Yaniv punching some dude as he asked him a question at exit of a courthouse (why are they there? I don’t know, but I bet it involves testicles somehow.)

I don’t know much about the characters involved here, although I recognize Yaniv for the “Wax my balls” thing some time ago.

The original video is OK, and has the virtue of being real and all that, but I thought it could be improved nonetheless. So here it is:

Keep in mind that this is highly esoteric humor. If you don’t know what the infamous game Postal 2 is or some of the details surrounding Yaniv, the edited interaction may seem even more puzzling than the original one. But since a lot of weirdos follow me, I assume the odds of some of you getting it are quite good.

The three or four types of indie fantasy covers

On By emperorpondersIn Art, English, fantasy23 Comments

Looking at the Amazon best sellers is always a good way to waste spend the time, and it proves that thing about everything having to change for everything to stay the same. If you blink even for a moment, books, authors, or even entire new genres that once seemed ready to become the new hot thing are suddenly gone, yet, at the same time, the new thing looks surprisingly similar to what they replaced.

You would be hard-pressed to find a more strightforward example of creative unoriginality and lack of imagination than today’s book covers, although the same could be said concerning their titles and perhaps even their themes and style of writing. But covers are easier to analyze—and funnier.

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