Category: Way of the Pen
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Metaphysics and Worldbuilding
Previously, I discussed how I plan to write the gap between East and West in my latest series, Saga of the Swordbreaker. One of the topics I touched upon was the difference in metaphysical paradigms between China and the West. Let’s go into greater detail in metaphysics and worldbuilding. This post isn’t about religion and…
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Speak with the Weight of Three Thousand Years
While watching the Chinese animated film Jiang Ziya: Legend of Deification, a thought struck me: The Chinese language is uniquely suited for epic fantasy. An epic is set in a time before living memory, celebrating the accomplishments of heroes, whose dealings with gods and demons and spirits profoundly shape the mortal world for succeeding generations.…
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Equal Opportunity Villainy
When Mediacorp aired a television drama featuring a pedophile who spread a sexually transmitted disease to a child, Teo Yu Sheng took offense. Teo, a ‘queer designer’ who sells LGBTQ-themed accessories under the brand Heckin’ Unicorn, took to the Internet and demanded an apology. Mediacorp issued an apology. Chase Tan, the actor who portrayed the…
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Between the Mythical and the Mechanical
Today when people think of science fiction and fantasy, chances are, they think of two separate genres. Science fiction, the genre of starships and computers and technology. Fantasy, the genre of knights and dragons and castles. Two distinct genres, and never the twain shall meet. The meeting of the two, science fantasy, was the exception,…
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The Quest for Pulp Speed Continues!
Write fast, write well, write often. This is Pulp Speed, the foundation of pulp-style writing. With a hungry market always eager for more fiction, the pulp writer earns his bread by feeding the market everything it wants, as quickly as he can. To survive in the cutthroat business of pulp writing in the 1920s, writers…
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Fantasy Without Fantasy
Modernity has ruined fantasy. At one end of the scale, there is the slice-of-life tale, with ordinary people doing ordinary things, just with some counterfactual elements. At the other end, there is a setting that appears totally foreign to our reality–and yet the people who dwell in it base their actions on values, issues and…