Fantasy

  • Was Harry Potter Meant to Be a Saga?

    Harry Potter may be a series in the technical term; but I’d like to argue it wasn’t initially meant to be one coherent saga, and the transition hindered the story more than helped it. How could that be, you ask? The series is clearly the journey of the chosen one to defeat the feared Dark…

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  • The Paradox of Fandom

    It’s impossible to live without bias. Merely by existing, we’re exposed to other people, other media, and other ideas. We have experiences that shape what we think and how we behave. We spend our entire lives forming, sharing, and breaking our opinions. As such, no written work (or any creative work, really) can ever be…

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  • “Proposal”

    “Proposal”

    The plants liked her the most, she knew. And she wasn’t really angry at them. As she knelt, her knees sinking into the dirt, she reached for the ground; the browned vines wreathing across the ground, preparing to fall dormant for the winter. Even when they weren’t growing, they needed nourishment—one last send-off before Abigail…

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  • “The Knight”

    “The Knight”

    It’s your destiny, he told himself, pacing before the narrow window. The few armor plates he’d managed to affix thus far weighed heavy on his limbs. The rest scattered over the table in the dim stone room. He was supposed to be tying them on and parading out to the noblemen awaiting him in the…

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  • “Rescue”

    “Rescue”

    They told him not to go out on the rocks, even when the sea was soft. The waters were still deep, and it only took a moment to lose your footing, with the shock to drag you down whenever the waves weren’t around to do so. Nonetheless, Quinn defied the warnings of his elders and…

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  • “Working Late”

    “Working Late”

    She pushed into her chair, arching her back until her muscles rippled with a satisfying burn. Then she glanced out the window. Her stomach folded into a knot. The sky had never been that color before—flat, inky, and impenetrable. She fought down a flare of anxiety as she sent her final file, entered her time…

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  • “Don’t Shoot the Messenger”

    Normally, she liked the cool touch of the stone beneath her bare feet; but tonight, it only felt stiff and icy—like a foreshadowing of the mood that awaited her. She fidgeted with the skirt of her dress as she waited for the council to settle into their seats. She knew she wasn’t going to lie…she…

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  • “Do You Remember Me?”

    She carefully hefted the ball, admiring the way it glittered in the light from the museum’s distant windows. Greed flooded her chest, filling her head with a buoyancy. She declined against the gallery wall, allowing herself a moment to reflect on another well-executed plan. From petty cons and small-time robberies, to orchestrating the entire scheme…

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  • Anakin vs Kylo Ren: How the Prequels Succeeded Where the Sequels Utterly Failed

    I don’t know whether it was posting over the holiday weekend, or the fact that this post’s previous title might’ve been misleading; but I’ve decided to repost this bad boy from last week with a new title and an updated intro. People likely hear “Star Wars” and “bad boy” in the same sentence, and worry…

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  • Empathy and Thought in the Modern Reader

    The market in the last several years (ever since the 2010s, really), has become oversaturated with surface-level tales of shock-value atrocities and aesthetically packaged suffering. Nobody is willing to dig into a deeper discussion on the repercussions of trauma and abuse; but they’re more than eager to coat deep and troubling topics in a rose-tinted…

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