iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

If your main character has been receiving orders to eat babies for a dozen years, how did they not know they were on the wrong side of this conflict? mythcreants.com/blog/podcast...

mythcreants.com

608 – Are We The Baddies?

I'm starting to think the puppy kicking is excessive...

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

It's vitally important that your protagonist does something to earn every clue... except sometimes. mythcreants.com/blog/does-th...

mythcreants.com

Does That Mystery Need a Turning Point?

When a hook grabs us, it can be tricky to tell if it's curiosity, tension, or both.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"normally, the trope of doing that is writers do that with books that make them tons of money, but they hate ’cause, you know, making money is bad, actually. But our podcast doesn’t make us any money." mythcreants.com/blog/podcast...

mythcreants.com

607 – Flawed Protagonists

How many flaws is too many?

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

"Not only would he need military-style training, but he’d also need experience with unusual weapons and avoiding surveillance. I don’t think they cover those topics in the University of Arizona’s archeology track." mythcreants.com/blog/five-vi...

mythcreants.com

Five Villains Who Are Too Powerful

The big bads need to be a little smaller.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

"As a general rule, more immersion is better because it creates a more powerful story. However, storytellers don’t always aim for maximum immersion." mythcreants.com/blog/immersi...

mythcreants.com

Immersion: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Create It

If your story isn't evoking emotions, you might be missing this.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

One of the slop age’s many curses is that busy cover illustrations now seem inherently off putting, not because of the image itself, but because being super busy is something slop cover images do a lot.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

"A standard novel does not have a story with branching pathways; it is a railroaded experience." mythcreants.com/blog/why-nov...

mythcreants.com

Why Novelists Shouldn’t Use Big Game Worlds

When we build worlds, we need to account for how they'll be used.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Need a Frankenstein type story about how humanity created the post-credit scene as a fun easter egg but then it turned on us and now we don’t know what’s happening in the show if we stop the episode when it appears to be over.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

We can’t be asking politicians about their favorite nerd stuff. It’s gonna put me in the position of supporting a blue control player and that’s not acceptable. Every incidence of Counterspell should lose you 10,000 votes.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Got a marketing email from (seemingly) OpenAI about how we should pay to put ads in ChatGPT. So basically, the LLM company stole our traffic and now they want us to pay them to get a sliver of it back. There aren’t enough middle fingers.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

'I don’t think anyone would be interested in my “What if Wheel of Time, but they’re all crabs!” take.' mythcreants.com/blog/podcast...

mythcreants.com

605 – Copying Other Stories

Can we copy a subtitle from previous episodes?

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

"In America specifically, we hadn’t yet elected a convicted felon as president, and right-wingers hadn’t yet dealt with the horrifying ordeal of women having video game opinions. It’s easy to look back with fondness at a time before those two EQUALLY VALID concerns." mythcreants.com/blog/why-do-...

mythcreants.com

Why Do People Think the Star Wars Prequels Are Better Than the Sequels?

Beware the discourse side.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

"She thinks they’re talking about her behind her back. As Eleanor’s feelings become more intense, they start to look like paranoid delusions. So readers can’t be sure whether this is actually happening or if Eleanor’s perception was warped by the haunted house." mythcreants.com/blog/how-amb...

mythcreants.com

How Ambiguous and Subjective Stories Avoid Killing Tension

Readers shouldn't wonder whether the story has stakes.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

"While tension lurks behind the scenes to raise reader engagement, conflict represents the actual events of the story. If you want to know what should happen and how your hero needs to respond, conflict is the key." mythcreants.com/blog/about-o...

mythcreants.com

Write Compelling Conflicts With Our Fall Class

Head to storytelling school on September 28th.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The funniest aspect of Netflix Avatar Discourse so far is when the same person claims Netflix removed all “flaws and rough edges” from the characters while also complaining that Aang is too angsty and selfish now. Do those flaws and rough edges not count?

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

A big thank you to David Anderson, our newest patron! The support is appreciated, especially since we may be in the middle of planning an expensive invasion of the Fire Nation. Submarines don’t come cheap!

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Saw Coyote vs. Acme over the weekend, fantastic film. Very funny and emotionally compelling, with some nice legal details. The plot gets a little squishy in the last third, but also, it features a bright eyed 1L having their dreams crushed, and what’s more realistic than that?

Lawyer Kevin Avery holding up an ACME rocket skate at the plaintiff’s bench alongside Wile E. Coyote.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

“I’ve lived in Sunnydale for a long time, and you know what I’ve never seen? A big honking castle.” mythcreants.com/blog/podcast...

mythcreants.com

593 – Cozy Fantasy

Of course there will be tea!

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

"A well-constructed arc should draw audiences in and then leave them feeling satisfied once the arc has concluded." mythcreants.com/blog/underst...

mythcreants.com

Tension & Conflict: What Every Writer Should Know

Why do we plot? What makes a plot work? The answers are here.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Legend of Korra’s fourth season makes the wise choice to cut some of the less important characters, but it is a little awkward to still see Bumi hanging around and never saying anything. Also, the fourth Pema/Tenzin child seems to have vanished.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

The special feeling of outrage when you set all of a game’s difficulty sliders to maximum and the game is in fact difficult.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Another interesting aspect of older books: the unremarked upon practice of not naming infants. Anyway, vaccines are awesome.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Another interesting aspect of older books: the unremarked upon practice of not naming infants. Anyway, vaccines are awesome.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

"This guy, he’s fighting somebody, and it’s something, and it’s called a Flat Head or a Shanka. Are those the same thing? Who knows! It mentions the Dog Man." mythcreants.com/blog/podcast...

mythcreants.com

603 – Common Beginning Mistakes

Hit the ground running, but not too fast!

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

"That’s a strong endorsement from me, in case I was being too subtle." mythcreants.com/blog/five-se...

mythcreants.com

Five Sequels Better Than Their Predecessor

Sometimes we *can* have nice things.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

"Just to confuse things, the word “epithet” is significantly broader than what’s actually under discussion." mythcreants.com/blog/are-epi...

mythcreants.com

Are Epithets a Bane on Narration?

Should your POV character call their lover "the other man" during sex? The answer may surprise you.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Mystery writers, please: we want to know who the killer is. That reveal will be cool and good. But also for tension’s sake please include some stakes for what will happen if the killer isn’t caught! We need more than “detective will be mad.”

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Interesting to read old books and wonder which parts are actually unclear and which are just missing context. Would an 1869 reader have immediately known that Marmee gets her children bibles for Christmas in Little Women, or would they also have been confused by the references to a “guidebook?”

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

If a story says “our heroes gotta do X or else a bad thing will happen,” and then the bad thing happens, doing X is no longer nearly so compelling. The ship has sailed, and it took the stakes with it.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Some people seem to think that the "is romantasy part of fantasy" question is a matter of prestige, which is very strange. A lot of fantasy is aggressively terrible. Why would sharing a genre with Eregon make romantasy look better? (Romantasy *is* fantasy, but not for that reason)

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

'So when Buffy quips, “Dawn’s in trouble, must be Tuesday,” in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she is breaking the fourth wall by referencing the weeknight that the show’s episodes play on.' mythcreants.com/blog/why-we-...

mythcreants.com

Why We Use the Fourth Wall, and Why We Break It

Belief is such a slippery beast.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

it's very strange to see people debating Bluesky(annoying) vs Twitter(fascist) as if there is no option to simply not microblog for a while.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Our TTRPG hot take is that most players will go with whatever system the GM puts in front of them, as long as it’s made easy. What players typically don’t want to do is read a 200 page rulebook for a system they might only play once.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Fascinating that the “but it’s popular!” defense has all but disappeared from our comments section, at the same time that romantasy has visibly become super popular. We wonder what factors might have motivated people to understand that popular works can also be terrible? A real mystery.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Sometimes all your library books are “available soon” which could mean today or in two weeks and at that point time has no meaning, you are but a spec in the non-Euclidean labyrinth of having nothing to read

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Wow. Supergirl (2026) really dives headfirst into “should superheroes kill people” discourse with the most incoherent take we’ve seen for a while. If we were trying to come up with the most nonsense way to address the topic, it might have looked something like this.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

"While it’s still puzzling that Aang regains the Avatar State through getting hit with a rock, any use of it would be equally disappointing." mythcreants.com/blog/five-wo...

mythcreants.com

Five Worldbuilding Elements That Clashed With the Story

But why did they add this bit?

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

"Above his sunken, skeletal cheeks, his yellow eyes narrowed, as though his gaze pierced through me to test the strength of my soul." mythcreants.com/blog/how-muc...

mythcreants.com

How Much Emotion Should a Scene Have?

Betwixt mundanity and melodrama awaits a great scene.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

The special feeling of horror as you realize this isn’t just a brief cutaway for the villain to give an evil laugh, it’s starting a whole new subplot about the villain trying to get their lawn ornaments approved by the HOA and you won’t see the hero again for 10 chapters.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Telling Sherlock nerds that the "Watsonian perspective" refers to the views of Emma Watson, just to feel something.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

So much discourse about how to keep your pace in a book: fold the page corner, use a book mark, write down the page number, etc. Real pros put a piece of cheese in there so now there’s a time limit to go back and keep reading.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

'We don’t say “100%” nearly enough to be a modern podcast. We have completely lost the lingo.' mythcreants.com/blog/podcast...

mythcreants.com

600 – Crafting a Long Series

Planning less optional this time.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

The Stormlight Archives is still going, Sanderson is famously prolific, what is any of this?

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

"Now think about how much blood it would take to fill a river. A river that continues to flow, requiring yet more blood." mythcreants.com/blog/lessons...

mythcreants.com

Lessons From the Rambling of Assistant to the Villain

Romantasy that doesn't take itself seriously? Impossible.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

On the one hand, it would be nice to have another mega popular SFF book that everyone has read, so we have a source of widely understood examples. On the other hand, of the two books to have reached such statuses, one of the authors turned out to be a mega-bigot. Don’t love 50% odds.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

It’s very weird when a story describes someone as blunt or lacking social awareness, then writes them as deliberately mean. Those are different things! A character can be both but you gotta be specific.

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Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Looking at accounts of people being scammed with AI slop when they thought they were buying human work, a common thread is race-to-the-bottom sites like Fiverr and Upwork. Such marketplaces create enormous pressure to lower prices, regardless of the ethical or quality implications.

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