Thursday, February 11, 2010

Blogroll Call!

I've been meaning to do this for some time. All good things come to an end, and it's time to update the old Blogroll. The old must be cast aside, the new must be encouraged, and creepy pictures of skulls that are also chicks must be placed on my blog.

Image via Wikipedia

OFF

Wormwood: I'm sorry, but I lost all interest when they killed [REMOVED TO PREVENT SPOILERS] and [REMOVED TO PREVENT SPOILERS]. Sure way to get me to leave a fiction? Kill my two favorite characters - the two best characters - as part of a beta plot. I suppose I'm being slightly unfair; I also left because the story was gradually becoming less urban fantasy/horror and more modern fantasy, which I though the premise (and the writers) carried off with a lot less grace. The show also still wins points for the gay supernatural investigators, even if they did name them Chip and Dale (see yesterday's post for why that was a bad idea). I do recommend the archives to anyone with some time to kill, just ditch like I did, when the magic tattoos arrive.

Master Plan: The podcast might, technically, still exist, but author Ryan Macklin has promised that it will end, and the last update was a quarter ago. If a new episode materializes, I will likely re-add. Maybe.

ON

The Guild of the Cowry Catchers: I've already told you why this ongoing podcast novel is filled to the brim with weapons-grade awesome. Click now, because this link will leave my blogroll when the novel ends!

The Metamor City Podcast: Just a little sexy (ok, sometimes a lot sexy), sometimes kind of kinky, usually pretty weird, and always enormously fun. You can expect more of a review in the fullness of time. Also, the primary author is a fantasy writing science teacher in Oakland... just like me!

A Character for Every Game I Own: This blog started as a place or the author to post his

Dice for various games, especially for rolepla...Image via Wikipedia

contributions to one of the world's sillier projects: ritually making a character for every RPG one owns (a project I, myself, have undertaken, at my own blog, which I sadly can't link to because since becoming a teacher I've friend-locked it). It has since expanded and is now full of all sorts of great rpg stuffs.

The Githyanki Diaspora: The Sons of Kryos may be temporarily long gone, but Judd (I really hope I got that right) of the Sons has his own blog, and it's full of neat.

That's all for now. Be sure to stay tuned for more mad ideas from the Burning Zeppelin.

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4 comments:

David Accampo said...

Just a note, but... if you thought that [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] are gone from the show after Season Two, then you reallllly ought to check out Wormwood Portraits.

As always, nothing in Wormwood is as it seems.

Anonymous said...

I'll have to give it a second [REDACTED]. I'll be sure to [REDACTED] once I've [REDACTED]. ;-).

David Accampo said...

;) Thanks for giving us a shot, Mark.

I can guarantee that [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] play a BIG part in Wormwood: Revelation, which is the final series, due out in a couple of months.

On another note, I see what you're saying about the shift from horror to fantasy, but I think I have a different take on it. We're transitioning from a creepy mystery into an apocalyptic finale, and so as we naturally progress, we have to take some things out of the shadows. I don't think horror works well in a long-form serial. If you think about it, even horror novels and movies eventually have to shine the light on the thing in the dark, and it could conceivably be seen as more "fantasy" than horror at that point.

But for our show, what we wanted to do forced us to take some different roads. If we pulled it off with less grace then, yeah, I can take that criticism. We definitely have had to lighten up the horrific elements, but our hope was that the show could sustain its momentum, tone, and style. Sorry if it's disappointed. We'll endeavor to do better as we roll from Wormwood Portraits into Wormwood: Revelation.

Anonymous said...

And thanks for taking criticism like a champ.

For the record, I want to note that I do acknowledge the "creative glut" effect and that in order to avoid it, you sometimes need to alienate some fans to keep the material fresh. A story that develops into something new and keeps growing is better than something that stays same and safe and dies inside. And sometimes the fans you lose are small-minded jerks who can't understand your vision... and sometimes they're just dudes who wanted X, but your story turned into Y, and you go your separate ways.

But I will give you another chance. Promise.