Sera

By the way, my pet peeve isn't a Fantasy only one: Unlikable characters, particularly those also full of angst, who happens to be over competent—because everyone in the setting has the sharp wits of a wet sponge—, whose every flaw is actually a perk, adored or respected by everyone despite horribly mistreating them. Mary Sue, Gary Stu, I'm looking at you. I love to read a well written unlikable character, and even the over competent and arrogant ones, as long that everyone else in the setting doesn't suffer from poor characterization. I wasn't aware I had such issue with poor characterization+Sue until I bought a highly praised dark fantasy book I shall not name. Its plot: "what if King Joffrey were full of wangst and were as feared and respected by his cardboard cutout peers as he thought he was in ASoIaF because reasons?". Instant shatter of suspension of disbelief. No, in fact the protagonist isn't Joffrey, though even the name hits close enough.

Wait. Guys, don't you realize that heroines are the very best fighters while male heroes are just Your Average Guy™? How else you'd explain the fact these women are able to balance on their combat stilettos and not get killed? If a female hero is able to perform all sort of stunts on high heels she might wear this type of outfit and simply dodge 100% of the time as well, while her male counterparts need a little more armor because they're clearly less skilled, with their plain old shoes and everything. Pff, these clumsy male fighters. ...no? In all seriousness, the gender discussion is older than dirt. The only solution I see is fairly long term: produce non-sexualized content and show that it works. A big argument by art directors, the marketing people, and everyone directing content creators in some way is that their target audience wants sexy heroines. They believe men will resent a less objectifying wardrobe, and the women—when they recognize there are females fans—either want to look at those said idealized female or won't mind the extra skin. Therefore, directors regulate the content to match what they believe their audience wants. No matter well founded are your arguments unfortunately they'll go mostly unheard in today's society, if not prompt a negative reaction ("They're taking my cookies!"). It seems more effective to me to quietly produce more of the balanced content and show the directors that it actually works, that the target audience isn't as shallow as they first supposed, and that unlike objectifying content it doesn't negatively impact the society. That's what I've been doing at least, and what I found out. But given how I'm not worldwide famous my work has limited reach, right? Well, we have a couple of examples of products with a worldwide reach already, like latest Mad Max. While the Wives are sexualized in-setting, they're not overtly sexualized on screen. Just peek at they chose to use a centered composition focused on action for a start, and compare with women's treatment in other action movies. What can be done as a fan? Support the good stories. Show to publishers that they work. Though raising awareness is good, it's not effective. After fulfilling its initial purpose of being informative this type of discussion often degenerates into a pointless shouting match. Some people actually enjoy fighting, and people who care about the issue often are in the same position as you, unable to produce immediate, direct changes.

Exactly what they said. Bear in mind the advice to not stick to old projects exists to make new writers learn to finish and move on. It's not a cosmic rule, and "breaking" it will bring no adverse effects like the world builder disease or the death of a puppy. Looking critically at your old work has some educational value once you learn to not fall into one of the mentioned pitfalls. It's an opportunity to use almost everything in your skill set, from story restructuring to heavy editions, besides the usual process of writing itself. Because it's old work you might feel less attached to it—making it easier, if not fun to kill your darlings and seriously practice "what if...?". Every time you stumble on one of these "rules" ask yourself what possibly made someone suggest it in first place. This alone already teaches a lot. By the way, this 1,000,000 words thing exists to encourage practice. You won't automatically become a good writer once you reach this goal, nor will you be a poor writer before it. If practice is important, the quality of that practice is even more important. Be attentive, learn your strengths and weaknesses, ask yourself a lot of questions and strive to answer them, and you're all set.

- I have native Portuguese proficiency - I can read English very well, write clearly, understand clear accents, and barely speak due my own thick accent. That makes me a functional mute. :| If you threw me in an English-speaking country right now I'd, no kidding, silently gesture a lot and always have pen & paper on me. Due shared language roots I can: - Glean the meaning of written and spoken Spanish, and also make myself understood (but I dislike Spanish) - Glean the meaning of written and spoken Italian, having decent pronunciation, though I probably don't know enough to make myself understood because it's full of false cognates with Portuguese - Understand a couple of words in Japanese, having good pronunciation due shared phonemes with Portuguese. I can only read romaji words, and no kanjis I'd like to... You know, speak properly in English someday (I'm currently working on it), and perhaps also learn Japanese. The pronunciation is easy for me, and I like this language. Maybe Italian and French as well, in some far point of the future.

Long time fan here! I just read the strip #1006, and... *flails arms around excitedly* I suspect Belkar will be the first one to catch up with what's truly happening with Durkon. Who he'll side depends on who is losing the fight. Belkar doesn't want to see Durkon dead, he reacted at first because he doesn't want to see him killing his friends or himself. Now he no longer has the need to prove that Durkon is doing what he did I feel that given the chance Belkar would attempt to preserve everyone. And he has a very good eye for nuances due the double game he's playing. He'd have been killed a long time ago if he weren't willing to reevaluate people's stances in the blink of an eye. P.s.:

Brandon's magic systems are bound by rules. They respect the laws of conservation, that's why I believe well-draw chalklings move/attack efficiently: They have enough chalk substance to smoothly transform from one stance to other. And I guess power level of attacks = rithmatist's creativity/knowledge. So a chalkling rithmatist needs to "receive" enough chalk to use in his attacks, he can't just conjure more chalk out of thin air. Same thing form plasma beams, spell rays, etc. The logical step for the rithmatist chalkling would be drawing chalk sticks around him or in his belt, so he picks these up to use. My personal solution: A sort of mythical rithmatist creature. I won't bother with giving him chalk when I can have him to drain his own details to fuel his attacks, like draining color in Warbreaker. We already know imaginary creatures are allowed, therefore I can dictate the rules of mine as long they respect the magic system and world laws. (:

Sure. Let me know if you familiar to Lambert's Cosine and specularity in this pm, because they're fundamental in my climate musings and I'll need to explain and show how I'm using them otherwise.

Now I'm curious to read this story only to learn this magic system constraints. :x If I know anything of Brandon's system the chalkling will be constrained by the amount of chalk spent on it, literally. (assuming they don't hobble around) a chalkling won't move smoothly if you didn't "provide" enough chalk to it, because it won't have enough basic raw material—chalk—to create/recreate overlapping anatomy as it moves. Their power level might also be related to the rithmatist's knowledge of the subject. An artist who knows what he's doing and has enough drawing motor skills will naturally detail his drawings/make elegant lines. The quality of the drawing wouldn't be the cause of a more powerful chalkling, what resulted in a good drawing in first place would be the cause: Knowledge. The good quality would only be a side-effect. A bit on drawing itself: It's worth knowing drawing can be divided into two major set of skills: mechanical and mental. Knowing how to draw perfect circles and lines isn't guarantee you'll be a good artist. Being able to make perfect reproductions won't automatically make your drawing from imagination good. It's really common to see beginner artists who copy well botching anything from imagination, even a face. It's because those are some of the mechanical skills, and what most people assume drawing is about. But knowledge is fundamental, and usually it ends trumping the motor skills. It's easy to learn to create perfect circles and straight lines, and increase accuracy, shading control (...). It takes only practice: (Skip to ~7m40s) P.s.: Since you got to draw a circle around yourself I'd use the ball of my feet as pivot for this one, in the place of the elbow on the video above. I got a fairly good balance, and that would grant me the perfect circle I need. Intermediary sized circles can be done with shoulder as pivot. But knowledge is harder to acquire. You need to accept that drawing is a skill, not a talent, and learn to observe everything mindfully. If you're not curious, you'll have to learn to be curious. You start to extrapolate what you know in one area (physics) to another (anatomy). You chase the understanding on how your subject works ("how do muscles flex?") and use it to fill gaps ("I think this creature I'm designing needs a pectoralis major of X size to move this limb. That would result in a muscle budge on the top of this limb, and a large flat section there (...)"). TL;DR: If the system allows, I'd draw another rithmatist and provide him with enough chalk to counter attacks for me while I'm busy drawing something more elaborate, some creatures from imagination. If only my mind is involved—the chalkling is powerful because I believe it can attack this and this way, not because the collective mind (me, spectators, my opponent) believe it can attack this and this way—I'd rely only on the power of my imagination. Surprising your enemy is always a handy strategy, one I'd use every time I could.

These cover artists might be using real people for reference, or they might be not using references at all. Accidental likeness is a very common occurrence—you rarely pull pleasant facial feature combinations out of thin air, you rely on your visual library (mental database of references). If the illustrator says he didn't base the character on someone in particular, I'll believe him. Have you ever noticed the same-face syndrome? Different characters by a same illustrator having the same face? That happens because the illustrator is comfortable in drawing those features, and those features appeal to his/her aesthetic preference. You literally draw this face by default, and creating a different face takes conscious effort. The good illustrator can't use the same face for every character. S/he will attempt to create a new face by combining features, and that's when that sneaky plague of accidental likeness strikes. As you're painting you decide to use facial structure X because it's strong + eyebrows Y to produce a strong gaze + eyes Z to bring balance to the gaze with some neutrality + nose W because it has personality + lips O because they're discreet... suddenly, Tom Cruise. Oh, and there are distinct types of reference. Likeness is one, but there is pose reference, light setup reference, etc. Only likeness references require close likeness to the subject you intend to depict.

I put my reply to Sir Jerric in a spoiler tag because I don't want to detract attention from the ongoing discussion on magic/culture.

@Winter Cloud and @Mailliw73 Don't feel that way, we're just enthusiasts. You bet my education level didn't play a part on my understanding of geography, planets and other crazy stuff, only my age—I had more time to research stuff like this than you! =P It's about being curious. It's darn useful to develop the habit of mulling over how stuff works if you want to work (or is a hobbyist) in creative fields like writing or painting. No problem! First question: It would look like my second picture, upside-down. I'm calling it "inverted", but saying it's a tilt greater than 90º would be more accurate. Earth's tilt is 23.4º, to get the upside down equivalent the tilt would be 156.6º (180º, which is half circle, minus 23.4º). Instead of wobbling at the top, the planet would wobble at the bottom. (Note: Since this world is fictional you kinda get to pick where your North and South are, so don't worry about ending with the continent in the Northern Hemisphere when working on the axis, just pretend it was the Southern Hemisphere all along. =P) Second question: You're correct. Biomes with similar climate, animals and plants can still vary a lot. E.g.: The tropical forests from Brazil are nothing like the ones from Malasya, the height of trees, the size of animals, the predators and critters, they're all different. You can still have a hell of a lot of fun with ecosystems after picking a given temperature/moisture. Third question: If my geographic knowledge doesn't fail me, Capricorn (southern, hotter) crosses a wider stretch of ocean, and Cancer crosses more continuous land. Fourth question: Again, if I'm not wrong, the tropics position depend on your planetary axial tilt; they're linked to the solstices. My lazyass solution to trace a tropic would see where the sun rays hit the planet at a 90º angle when the planet is in solstice position (perfectly tilted in relation to the sun). (Example) The opposite tropic will be a mirrored version of your tropic 01. If you're going to use that trick, for the sake of simplicity consider all the sun rays as horizontal lines, not a radial-shaped emission. __ I wasn't around around when you posted about the wobbling. I particularly like eccentric seasons, but you shouldn't count my vote—I don't intend to fiddle with Dieamus. I just stumbled on this topic when exploring the forum. I also should mention my knowledge on such matters is full of holes. I'm just a way too curious enthusiast. I think a bigger tilt gives you more drastic seasons, but I don't think it can give a three years season. All seasons will still be contained inside a single year, because per definition a solar year is a full cycle (e.g; solstice to solstice). They can only be more or less accentuated. To give you a real life example of "different" seasons: The Northern Hemisphere can see snow in winter. You see clearly defined seasons in these places: sunny summer, falling-leaves autumn, frozen winter, rebirth of life in spring. Then you look at the Southern Hemisphere. I live there, exactly under the Tropic of Capricorn, where temperatures are fairly constant and seasons are boring less drastic. You see the infernal and rainy summer, the second summer, I mean, autumn, the drier and colder (not even close to snow) winter, the slightly hotter spring. That's why our tropical forests are evergreen and no animal hibernates. There's absolutely no need for that, because temperatures never drop low enough to become harmful to them. Anyway, to get seasons spanning several years you modify the orbit of the planet. You can make it more eccentric (oval and closer to sun at one edge), you can do your planet orbit a binary system (two suns), etc. There are many ways to make something as harsh as GRRMartin's winter plausible.

My random input on those biomes: Those temperate forests don't seem right unless your planet axis tilt is upside down. We owe our seasons to Earth's axial tilt. It determines not only seasons, but biomes distribution by interfering with the temperatures, which are linked to the sunlight falloff on the planet's surface. It's true it's hot at the Equator, but the temperature at 20º to the north of the Equator isn't the same of the temperature 20º to south. If I remember it right, tilted planets kinda "wobble" like top toys. Earth receives a more constant sunlight at South than North. The Tropic of Capricorn is over a region of constant temperature, while Cancer sees an extreme variation. It's possible to find tropical biomes at South where you'd find temperate ones if you moved the same distance north. You planet would have tropical forests where your temperate forests are, or, to keep the mostly the same biomes, it'd either have higher altitudes where those forests are or be tilted the other way around, if it's not the rest of your universe upside down.

It's a glitch with the WYSIWYG editor. If switch to the code mode you'll see some random open/close tags (E.g.: [1] [2][/2] ), and tags which aren't being closed in the proper order (E.g.: [1] [2] [3][/3] [/1] [/2] instead of [1][2][3][/3][/2][/1]). The text editor is stricter in the code mode, fixing the glitch by removing orphan opening/closing tags, but the WYSIWYG version is more lenient. Webpages are displayed in HTML, not BBCode, right? The forum will convert the BBCode to the appropriate HTML tags, and it's generating scrambled and orphan HTML open/close tags. Our web browsers are clever, and don't remove tags unless it's a lost closing tag. When your browser finds an open tag it'll attempt to close it as soon as possible. The spoiler HTML code is composed by two boxes (tags), the outer container, which is the always visible the rectangle border, and an inner box which becomes visible/hidden when you click the show/hide button. Our browsers are finding the open "inner" spoiler tag, and due the scrambled code they think it should be closed before it should truly be closed, leaving some text outside it, but still inside the main container of the spoiler box. TL;DR: It's not supposed to happen, and it's hard to reproduce. The simplest way is quoting a glitched message, copying the spoiler part and changing it by hand. I advise against doing it, since it could be seen as exploiting a glitch.

Agreed. The way she redirected her thoughts was particularly well done. Denial can be hard to write, because denial isn't always as pristine as "No! I'm mulling over X and I'm telling myself X didn't happen!". My first hand experience was much more about catching a whiff of the offending thought and swiftly redirecting my mind to not think about it at all. I knew exactly what happened, yet I never allowed it to even grow into a fully fledged thought, and certainly didn't think in words. The mere sensation my mind was turning to subjects I'd rather not face made me focus on anything else so I'd be able to remain functional. It's no easy task to write about a character avoiding a thought when you can't put this thought in words, when you can't even describe a mental image, because the character turns away at the mere shadow of it. Authentic or not, alluding at something without disclosing it can be certainly frustrating for some readers.

[september 20 edit]: Now I've seen the posts here I'm pretty sure it's not manual spam, and thanks to the spam content, naming patterns and other details I suspect there's a single botmaster behind the current attacks. He added this forum registration Q&A answer to his bots DBs or has these updated bots I mentioned. In any case, changing the Q&A to a stronger one should completely stop the attacks. (: Risking to repeat something already said in this topic because I'm a lazyass who skimmed over parts of this topic. I'm a hobbyist programmer who has random tidbits of knowledge about security, the server-side of the web and similar topics. My view on spammers is: An obstinate spammer will spam regardless of the measures you adopt to prevent it. Fortunately, most spammers aren't obsessed with a single target, they weight the costs and benefits just like anyone else, and they tend to choose the low-hanging fruit. Manual spam isn't really common nowadays, it's too costly for spammers (time). Clever bots are on the rise. They're costly, but ultimately pay off the investment spammers do because they're terribly efficient. Spammers automate a ridiculous number of tasks nowadays. Bots & registration forms A spambot can break classic image captchas easily. A captcha alone might stop more humans than bots now, hah. Those bots are also well-equipped to break Q&A captchas, having a database of common answers; they can do math, and no answer which can clearly be answered with a Google search is safe enough. They certainly are able to activate accounts all by themselves too. The best counter-measure is using a Q&A requiring human creativity/perception to be answered. Original word puzzles like the following are fairly effective to stop bots: "Mary is reading a book on physics. She has 3 books on her shelves. Scattered on her table are a volume on geography, two tomes about history, one on English, and five assorted pencils. How many books does Mary have?". (notice the use of synonyms and mixed numerals) Asking about the contents of an image also works. It should be an original image (so reverse image search gives no hints). E.g.: Q: Name the item(s) in the scene below (in alphabetical order). It's good practice to ask about subjects unrelated to the forum content. In the past, forum owners used Q&A like "what is the most popular section of the forum?", "Who created this forum?" and such, making bots evolve and learn how search for these easy answers. Bot types Classic spammer: Those bots which create a high number of topics with advertising. The majority is blatant spam, but some clever spammers setup their bots to be more discreet. They can be programmed to rotate between a predefined number of topic titles and content. Link spammer: A pest clever enough to know how spam legit topics to increase the post count and bypass those forums which block new users topics until they reach X posts. A variation of these are the bots who post seemingly innocent answers but filled their website profile fields and signatures with links for the fishy sites they're advertising. They're fed a number of random answers that can look related to the topic/forum content at first glance, e.g.: "Hello, I'm new here, but I'd really like to thank you for the helpful post!", "Hi, I like X. Can you recommend me good X?", "Interesting post. I don't know.". 2015 bot activity I'm a member of another forum which suffered vicious attacks, starting at the end of July. I ended helping to put an end to the attack just by ban-hammering the already existent fake profiles and implementing a good Q&A captcha in the registration form. I suspect a famous bot software was updated by the end of May because that's when the earliest attacks occurred. At first they were sparse, as if testing the terrain, once the spammers detected the registration form was bypassable they grew until we saw more than 100 new spam topics a day. I don't know the nature of the attacks here, since I'm new, but I can say that those attacks we saw in the other forum weren't done by more than 3 different bots. It was easy to see the pattern of the usernames, timezone, activation delay (or lack of), spam style and content. The lowest point happened when we almost managed to stop the bots. They usually created a number of new profiles every day, then made 5 posts per profile. Once we got a decent Q&A, the one or two profiles which bypassed it went berserk mode and created ~45 posts each; and they also activated older, dormant profiles. After we patched the holes it became peaceful, not a single spam in ~2 months, and no added inconvenience for the real users. That forum is relevant in its niche but isn't big, and the staff is really small; so constant moderation and manual user activation was out of question. The 17th Shard is a juicy target due its size, but I believe that it wouldn't make spammers persistent enough to keep track of a good rotating registration Q&A or spam manually once you manage to stop the bots. It's like a siege, survive long enough and they'll give up and move on to another target.

The problem with drawing inspiration from history isn't that history lacks notable women, it's that history not only was mostly written by men, but it has the bad habit of falling into the hands of men who don't look kindly on women. Add this to eurocentrism and you have the perfect "women were boooooring in the past I'm only being realist" recipe. An awful lot of authors don't research, they just perpetuate to ill-established tropes. How many of us heard of Ching Shih when we first heard about pirates? She was one of the most powerful pirates in the world, commanding one of the largest fleets ever seen—manned by men, and women and children—, and challenged multiple empires at the same time. That woman retired from piracy. Pirates don't retire, they're killed. She can be viewed as a gray moral hero, anti-hero, or villain. Want someone different, perhaps a scholar type? What about Fatima al-Fihri, founder of the University of al-Qarawiyyin, often said to be the first university in the world? History is full of prominent—and regular—women full of agency. You only have to dig deeper, because history wasn't kind to them. Some, as the Mongolian Queens, were almost completely erased from it. The common woman of medieval Europe was an active member of the society. Though they hadn't the same rights as men, they weren't seen as only good for procreation as some books would have you to believe. Women were artisans, builders, merchants, farmers. The poorer the woman was, more likely to work she were; and it wasn't restricted to "womanly" occupations. You can find multiple instances in the medieval Europe when roughly half of construction workers were female, because their condition as second class citizen made them cheaper labor, and society had a different view on workers rights at the time. Actually, in the London of 1300 men were to keep only one trade, but women were free to take as many they wished. Women had often multiple occupations, and no occupation was forbidden to them by law. (That actually contributed to the "second class" outlook, men were specialists, women were jack-of-all-trades). ___ Regarding this topic itself, I've seen few female villains indeed. Female antagonists are often used as a foil to female heroes, because you shouldn't punch women, and if there are two women in opposite sides they must fight each other, right? Female big baddies are scarcer. Off the top of my head I can think of Portal's GLaDOS as inhuman example (not epic fantasy), and a stealthy one I won't name in Republic of Thieves, though there is a power shift at the very end of the book.

My advice: Go for it! Why not? I'm a similar situation. English isn't my native language, yet I decided to try my hand at writing and publishing a work in English. I live in one of the largest countries in the world, and you can say we do read a lot. However, the market isn't really good for fantasy/fiction. They're seen as childish, and we read mostly worldwide bestsellers, translated to our language and marketed differently than outside our corner of the world. We have successful native authors, but they mostly write other genres. But I like my native language, and I'd love to see the market for local authors bloom. For me it was more a matter of mustering enough courage to also try the English route—then decide how I'd work and which publishing strategy I'd adopt. The strategy: I want to publish in two markets/languages, English first. There is a certain glamour associated with foreign works, as you can imagine. Succeeding in getting published in English would give me a little head start to get published here, while publishing here first wouldn't help with getting published in English. I also know more about the steps involved in getting published in US/UK than here. Another point that weighted in my decision was the likeness of finding a good local editor specializing in fantasy: lower, since we don't see much local fantasy/fiction being published. How I work: Despite writing/reading in English on a daily basis I don't feel fully comfortable in writing fiction in it. I'm proficient, yet knowing my tendency to build sentences oddly I double guess mine a lot. Luckily for us, wanting a final product in English doesn't mean you need to work exclusively in English. I'm writing my first draft in my native language. I take notes on the English equivalents that came to my mind while writing—remember you don't need to translate everything literally, focus on the mood and meaning instead. I'm an amateur writer, mind you, and my writing takes a fair amount of editing to become fit for human consumption. When I'm reviewing the entire story in the second draft to reorder and tighten up sentences I do that in English. It has been working well for me so far, because my needs were: 1st Writing freely and comfortably; 2nd Making what I wrote stronger. Using my native language, in which I'm very confident, allows me to write and dare in the exact amounts I should for a first draft; using English (which is a conciser language than my native) in the second draft forces me to reorder my thoughts and output a better story. Figure out all your personal needs and quirks. Develop a workflow that best fits them. Regarding dialogue, I advise you to read a lot in English to get used to it. We, non-native English speakers, are at an increased risk of inadvertently adopting the character/author voice. Avoid it by reading a lot of books, and from different authors. There are the added benefits of getting used to English in general, increasing your vocabulary and learning the equivalents of local idioms. I second Shrike's advice about listening podcasts. Writing Excuses is a good start. They have a clear accent, and you'll simultaneously train your "English ear" and learn about writing. (: You'll still need first-hand practice, and for that you have a convenient tool in your hands already: Internet. Forum/comments discussions flow differently than a live conversation, but they still do a fine job as practice. Better this than no practice at all, right? To expose yourself to more spontaneous conversations, try live chats and online games. The downside is stumbling on a lot of mangled or non-native English, the upside is getting familiarized to English while you have fun in your leisure time. Practice in your native language as well. When you get a good hang of character voices/dialogue pacing + proficiency in English much of what you know in your language carries to your writing in English.