‘Reasonable Realignment of Resources’ illustrates the great question of draconic-human interactions in medieval societies: why does the king particularly care if the burden of having a local dragon is merely that she eats a cow every week or so? He has plenty of cows. Of course, if the dragon is a wild beast otherwise, it’s still a problem. But if she can demonstrate language and self-restraint, well… there are opportunities, there.
Yes, ‘Don’t Fiddle With It’ is slightly banal. It’s supposed to be. The banal is ultimately the point.
I think that video games really have things to teach the fantasy genre, as “Several Options To Choose From” demonstrates. People shouldn’t allow themselves to get too hung up about the standard quest reward paradigm; it can lead to curious blind spots. Although I suppose one might find such an attitude oddly disarming…
‘Gotta Be Done’ is about… things that gotta be done. Just how it goes, sometimes. Nobody likes it, but what can you do?
And OMBUDSMAN is in the can! Huzzah! Although it needs an edit or two before I put it up on Patreon this month.
New signup, so new entry in my pulp SF serial that I am not making my wife the engineer read because there’s just so many ways that she can tell me that physics doesn’t work like that. Anyway, here it is, available for everybody. And remember: when I hit $200/month, I’ll write a new installment every week!
I had folks… disagree with me about ‘Verdict of History (2020).’ Which was honestly the idea. Sometimes you need to challenge your readers, you know?
There’s a really unpleasant world behind ‘For Science.’ I mean, a REALLY unpleasant world. The kind where ‘peace and safety of a new dark age’ is perfectly correct. I dunno if I’ll ever do a full write-up of it.
