Category: fantasy

The Academy of Raya Lucaria

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

This is how I imagine Sellen and Rennala celebrating the end of the semester at the Academy of Raya Lucaria.

The postapocalyptic world of Elden Ring isn’t a great place to live, and good people usually end up dead. The Academy of Raya Lucaria seems as though it was dangerous even before the world ended, as very few of the wizards who studied there had even the slightest hint of ethics regarding the otherworldly powers they were attempting to harness. As much as I would love to study magic myself, I’m fairly certain that I would die – or even worse, become undead – within the first semester of wizard school.

Also, multiple people have commented to me that Elden Ring contains the most accurate portrayal of academia they’ve seen in a video game. As a professor, I think it’s best that I keep my comments to myself, but damn if that isn’t the truth.

Dear Friend

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

If you want to fight your way into the spotlight, it always helps to have a dear friend with sharp teeth.

This is a fan illustration of an original short story written by a fandom friend, Runicmagitek on AO3. Their story is called “Dear Friend,” and it’s about a sinister shadow who follows an aspiring chanteuse from a dark corner of the forest into the bright lights of the city.

Runic is an incredible prose stylist, and it was a lot of fun to draw their characters! For more monster girls and murder friends, please check out their writing here:

🥂 AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runicmagitek/
🔪 Twitter: https://twitter.com/runic_magitek
✨ Tumblr: https://runicmagitek.tumblr.com/

Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight is a 2D fantasy Metroidvania with adorable 16-bit pixel graphics and an emphasis on cute magical girls. It has an Easy Mode that’s genuinely chill, and it took me about seven hours to get 100% completion. Momodora features a lot of nods to the Dark Souls games in general and Bloodborne in particular, but I think a more accurate comparison (at least on Easy Mode) is the mellow Nintendo DS adventure-platformer Super Princess Peach.

I came to Momodora not knowing what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s absolutely delightful. The game is relatively simple, but that’s okay, because it’s very good at what it does.

You play as Kaho, a cute girl wearing a white mage hood over a black miniskirt dress and thigh-high stockings. I get the feeling that her theme is supposed to be “sexy Shintō shrine maiden,” and she uses a giant red maple leaf as a sword. She also has a bow with unlimited arrows whose attack can be charged, an adorable dodge roll, and the ability to double-jump right out of the box. Her animations are lovely, and she’s a lot of fun.

Kaho is a silent protagonist, but what you pick up from other characters is that she’s come from abroad to talk to the Queen of Karst about a curse that has spread from the castle city into her small village. You begin the game on the border of a beautiful and vibrant 16-bit pixel forest before entering Karst, which is what the gothic Victorian city of Yharnam (from Bloodborne) would look like if it were rendered in Chrono Trigger style graphics. Whatever curse is threatening Kaho’s village has subsumed Karst in full force, and Kaho has to fight all manner of cute imps, cute witches, cute sorceresses, and cute devils, all of whom have colorful and interesting anime designs.  

Before you can go into Karst Castle proper, you need to find four seals that unlock its gate. This quest sends you into a maze of interconnected areas that include a flooded graveyard, an overgrown garden, a giant crematorium, and the rafters of a ruined cathedral. All of these areas are beautifully rendered and a joy to explore, and along the way Kaho meets a handful of cute NPCs and picks up a limited arsenal of items whose flavor text provides a hint of worldbuilding in classic Dark Souls fashion. Kaho gains a few more abilities – one in particular is a true blessing and a miracle on this earth, but I won’t spoil it – but Momodora sticks to its core gameplay and never gets too complicated.

In addition, you can find and collect 17 health upgrades, as well as 20 silver bugs to trade to a garden rabbit for prizes. About half of these collectables require minor exploration and backtracking, and the other half are hidden in ridiculous ways that I don’t think most players would be able to find without a walkthrough. Thankfully, if you’re playing on Easy Mode, it’s totally fine not to worry about the collectables you don’t find naturally.

You also pick up currency from defeated enemies that you can use to buy relics (which are essentially magic spells) from various merchants, but none of these items are necessary. Since Kaho doesn’t otherwise gain levels or become more powerful, I can imagine that some of the boss fights might be challenging and require a bit of an extra advantage, but this isn’t an issue in Easy Mode, in which Kaho begins the game with two powerful relics that will carry the player through the entire game.

In conclusion, Momodora is a chill and beautiful Metroidvania style action-exploration game that’s like Bloodborne for people who want to enjoy the gothic story and atmosphere without having to spend dozens of hours slamming their head against a wall to git gud. Also, since almost every character and enemy is a super cute magical girl or sexy adult witch-demon, I guess you could say that Momodora is like Bloodborne for lesbians.

I mean, Bloodborne itself is very much “Bloodborne for lesbians,” but you get what I’m saying.

The Gentle Inclusivity of Kawakami Hiromi

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I’m delighted to announce that my short essay “The Gentle Inclusivity of Kawakami Hiromi’s ‘Summer Break'” was just published in the 21st volume of the Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies. Here’s the abstract…

“Summer Break” (Natsu yasumi), the second story in Kawakami Hiromi’s 1998 collection The God of Bears (Kamisama), is narrated by a young person who spends a summer working as a laborer in a pear orchard. Like the other stories in The God of Bears, “Summer Break” operates according to the logic of magical realism, which is perhaps why the owner of the orchard tells the narrator not to worry about the small, talking creatures that run through the trees and devour fallen fruit. The narrator nevertheless forms a bond with one of these pear spirits, whose panic attacks mirror the narrator’s own dissociative episodes. At the end of the story, both the pear spirit and the narrator grapple with anxiety and suicidal ideation, but the story’s conclusion embraces self-acceptance.

From the first publication of the award-winning title story of The God of Bears in 1994 to the appearance “Summer Break” in the complete collection in 1998, various public figures attempted to address the social malaise that characterized Japan’s economic recession. Several highly influential public intellectuals, including the clinical psychologist Kawai Hayao and the cultural critic Saitō Tamaki, viewed mental illness as a symptom of broader cultural forces.

In “Summer Break,” however, Kawakami portrays the experience of mental illness as embodied and personal instead of abstract and societal. This paper analyzes how the fantasy elements of “Summer Break” render its treatment of mental illness as sympathetic and relatable, an aspect of the story that is enhanced by its use of magical creatures that externalize the narrator’s psychological state. I will place this analysis within in the context of recent narratives in Japanese fiction and popular culture categorized as ijinkei (“about nonhuman characters”), as well as critical discussions of the folkloric qualities of this period of Kawakami’s writing.

…that’s a lot of material to cover in such a short essay, but I think I did a decent job of contextualizing the story. This piece of writing was intended to serve as an introduction to my translation of the story itself. Unfortunately, despite almost a year of constant work and the assistance of multiple high-profile translators, we weren’t able to secure the publication rights. It’s a disappointment, but I hope the silver lining is that there are plans for the full God of Bears short story collection to appear in translation soon.

My essay is available on JSTOR; but, since I understand that not everyone has institutional access, I’ve also made a copy available on my website (here). Although it’s unofficial, you can download a PDF of my translation of the short story “Summer Break” (here). Years ago, I translated all of the stories in The God of Bears, and the illustrator I was once planning on working with to create illustrations is Maru, who you can find on Twitter (here). And finally, you can learn more about the Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies on their website (here).

An Unfound Door, Chapter Eight

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Agnes and Fhiad meet in the library on the morning after the summer court opens. Agnes wakes before dawn out of habit, while Fhiad has been up all night reading. Fhiad left the library to get tea, and he returns just as Agnes is studying the books he left on a desk. They sit down together, and he apologizes for snapping at her and making wild proclamations.

When Agnes asks Fhiad if he would truly destroy Faloren if he found Soreiya’s Tear, he explains that doing so would be impossible, as the cost for performing magic on such a large scale would require an unimaginably high cost. Magic is taboo in Faloren, so Agnes knows nothing about how it works. Fhiad gives a demonstration. Agnes is so amazed that she asks a clueless question, thus chilling the warmth of an intimate moment. 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This is the beginning of what Jessica Brody (of Save the Cat fame) calls the “fun and games” section of the novel. This section constitutes the bulk of Act Two. While the opening and closing of a novel should ideally follow a set formula that helps to guide the reader, the middle of the story offers much more freedom to the writer.

I’m going to use this freedom to indulge in all of the narrative tropes I enjoy, and this chapter includes one of my favorite narrative devices: An intimate conversation in a library helps the protagonist and her foil understand that they should be friends. At the beginning of this chapter, Agnes is characteristically blunt and ready to fight, but she and Fhiad manage to establish a common ground by virtue of the fact that they’re both giant nerds.

In this scene, Fhiad begins to show his true colors. He’s much more socially polished than Agnes, but he’s essentially a gentle person at heart. In fact, most of Fhiad’s trouble has resulted from him being something of a pushover. Although he gets in a few good jabs at Agnes, Fhiad also submits to her multiple times during their conversation in this chapter.

I was recently reading an academic book chapter about gothic fiction, and the author was saying that the erotic charge of the narrative is primarily generated by the question of whether a wild and mysterious man will sexually assault the heroine who fears him yet is still attracted to him. This sexual fear turns to romance when the heroine realizes that the man’s menacing aura is a result of his violent passion for her.

I unapologetically appreciate that sort of character dynamic, but it doesn’t fit what’s going on with Agnes and Fhiad. Agnes isn’t fearless, but her extreme pragmatism drives her to behave as if she were. Meanwhile, Fhiad is competent and talented in his own way, but he really has no business being “wild” or “menacing.” In a reversal of the classic gothic gender dynamic, Fhiad needs Agnes to push him forward, while what Agnes needs from Fhiad is his patience and kindness.     

Mainly, however, this chapter is about doing magic in a cool library. The next chapter is also going to be about magic and libraries. And the chapter after that? More magic and libraries. I love libraries and magic, what can I say. This is my story, so I write what I want.

An Unfound Door, Chapter Seven

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Fhiad leaves the court and walks through the halls of the castle as he reflects on the circumstances that have brought him to Faloren. Guerig, the king’s secretary and acting regent, enthusiastically granted Fhiad permission not only to study the castle, but also to live there while supposedly doing research on the building’s architecture. Fhiad curses himself for being drawn into a complicated situation, but he has few resources and fewer choices. As he wanders, Fhiad’s thoughts reveal that he did indeed once study architecture, and that Faloren Castle is an architectural monstrosity whose continued existence almost certainly relies on powerful magic.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

An Unfound Door is written in limited third-person perspective, and this is the first chapter that focuses on Fhiad. As the B Story character, Fhiad represents the “upside-down world” of Act Two, which begins when the A Story character’s status quo is disrupted. Fhiad is the catalyst for this disruption, but his arc is also a mirror of Agnes’s character development. Fhiad and Agnes ultimately want the same thing – the power to choose the direction of their own lives – but their initial motivations and goals are drastically different.

Fhiad may have told Agnes that he intends to destroy Faloren, but what he truly wants is to understand what happened to him. He’s suffering from severe trauma that he hasn’t been able to process, and he alternates between distraction and intense anger. He attempts to distract himself from his grief by tasking himself with a quest. Meanwhile, his anger has no outlet save for Agnes, who became his target simply because she’s the only living person he knows. Fhiad is doing his best to survive, but he’s a hot mess.

More than anything, this chapter establishes how and why Fhiad is now living in Faloren Castle. It also provides a second perspective on the characters and setting.

What the reader is able to see through Fhiad’s eyes are two things that Agnes takes for granted. First, Agnes is subtly shunned by the members of her court; and second, Faloren Castle is impossibly large and labyrinthine. These two observations help justify the “fun and games” portion of Act Two, which will involve Agnes and Fhiad hunting for a hidden relic. In other words, Fhiad’s observations hint that Agnes is free to search the castle precisely because she doesn’t have many social obligations, and that her search is going to be interesting because it isn’t going to be easy.

Something else Fhiad has noticed is that there’s something suspicious about Agnes’s cousin Galien. This is fair, as Galien is hiding a number of unpleasant secrets. Still, Galien is no more a villain than Fhiad is. An Unfound Door is a “gothic fantasy mystery,” which means that everyone has secrets. This is why, at this point in the story, the main task of the characters is to learn how to communicate with each other.

An Unfound Door, Chapter Six

~ Kathryn

The summer court opens with a celebration attended by the wealthy families and nobility of Faloren. After the ailing king retires for the evening, Agnes is introduced to Fhiad, who claims to be a university student from Cretia studying architecture. Fhiad has altered his appearance and accent, and he pretends not to recognize Agnes. Later, when Agnes escapes to a shadowy corner for a moment of quiet, Fhiad approaches her. He initially seems kind but quickly becomes cruel and insulting. He tells Agnes that his homeland of Erdbhein has been destroyed, and he declares his intention to take revenge by visiting the same ruin on Faloren.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This chapter is the transition between Act One and Act Two. Fhiad, the B Story character, has returned, and he establishes himself as an antagonist. He states his goal to uncover Faloren’s magical artifact with the intention of destroying the kingdom. In Chapter Eight, Agnes will state her own intention to solve the problem he represents by opposing him. Fhiad’s anger is not the real problem, however, and this is the wrong solution.

It’s always bothered me when a villain is angry about something legitimately upsetting, but then the writer has them kick a puppy to show that this anger is bad. What I mean by “kicking a puppy” is that the villain will do something excessively violent or disturbing that is either entirely out of character or framed in such a way as to make their actions seem irrational and done solely for the sake of being evil.

A villain typically represents a challenge to an established order, especially an order built on arbitrary divisions that inform a strict hierarchy. In the case of fantasy especially, there is often a class of “monsters” who are sentient yet still positioned as being okay to kill. When a villain wants to establish an alternate power structure in which “monsters” are not killed, it’s only natural to wonder if they might not be justified in doing so. The villain must therefore be shown kicking a proverbial puppy so that we do not begin to feel sympathy for them. Based on my observations of various fandom discourse wars, a surprising number of people take this puppy kicking very seriously as an indication that a villain is irredeemably evil.

It’s important to me that Fhiad is portrayed as a legitimate antagonist, at least at first. In this chapter, he proves himself to be two-faced, manipulative, and more than a little creepy. He invades Agnes’s personal space, physically threatens her, and mocks and insults her. He verbally attacks her at a vulnerable moment, and he says horrible things that are all the more hurtful because they’re true. Even worse, he’s cruel to Agnes precisely because he knows she can do nothing to stop him. In addition, the curse laid on him is still active, and it’s implied that he may no longer be entirely human.

Still, the root cause of Agnes’s problem – the decline of her kingdom – is not Fhiad, nor is it anything he’s said or done in the past or the present. Rather, this problem is a direct result of a horrible atrocity committed in the past by Agnes’s ancestor. I therefore had to make sure that what Fhiad does at the beginning of Act Two is upsetting but doesn’t fall to the level of puppy kicking. In other words, I attempted to create tension by means of the antagonist’s bad behavior while still being fair to the complexity of his character and his experience of justified anger.

The Best Witch of Her Generation

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to share another short story I wrote for Goddess Reborn, fanzine celebrating the female (and nonbinary!) characters of the Legend of Zelda series. You can download a free digital copy of the zine on Itchio (here), and you can read my full story on AO3 (here).

A Link Between Worlds is one of my favorite games in the Zelda series, mainly because I find the characters so charming. I’m especially fascinated by the figure of “someone who wants to be a hero but isn’t the fated Chosen One,” a character trope the series plays with but never fully explores. Groose from Skyward Sword is a good example, as is Ganondorf from The Wind Waker. There are several such characters in A Link Between Worlds, and Irene is my favorite.

Irene is the granddaughter of the Potion Witch, and she serves as the game’s fast-travel mechanic by flying Link around on her broom. She seems to be modeled half on Hermione Granger – she calls proudly herself “the best witch of her generation,” a play on Hermione’s famous epithet – and half on Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service. Like Hermione, Irene sees herself as a hero; but, like Kiki, her character arc involves her journey to understand and acknowledge her own specific set of talents.

What I wanted to capture was a moment of Irene’s life in which she’s happy and confident of herself as the protagonist of her own adventure. Irene understands that what she’s doing is just as important as Link’s quest, and she’s absolutely correct. Although the player may see Hyrule through Link’s eyes, the female characters who surround and support him are absolutely vital to Hyrule’s history.

While writing this short story, I wanted to get as close to the tone of “early-reader fiction” as I could. I’m not used to this style of writing, so it was a fun challenge. I was aided immensely by the story’s illustrator, Leh Latte. Leh helped me with the diction and rhythm, as well as with structure and balance. She also showed me what it means to work with page formatting in mind. Although the story itself is short and simple, it’s the product of a few good conversations during a collaboration between me, Leh, and Aven Wildsmith, the zine editor.

Leh and Aven are both fantastically talented and creative people who work in a variety of media. You can find links to all of Leh’s social media accounts on her Carrd (here). Aven’s website is (here), and you can find links to all their socials on Linktree (here). And again, Goddess Reborn is free to download on Itchio (here). There’s a lot of love on every page, and this zine is really something special.

An Unfound Door, Chapter Five

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

After returning to Faloren Castle, Agnes rises early the next morning in order to attend to the correspondence that has accumulated in her absence. As she dresses herself, she reflects on how her mother’s charm and social graces seemed to slow the kingdom’s decline. Unfortunately, her father has done nothing to alleviate the grim atmosphere of the castle since the late queen’s death. Agnes proceeds to her study, a dilapidated yet still handsome room where she secludes herself to work until interrupted by her cousin Galien. Galien encourages her to open the summer court, and Agnes agrees. She believes that a large and lively celebration will be an appropriate symbolic marker of her vow to rejuvenate the kingdom.   

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This chapter is about Agnes’s comfortable existence in the status-quo world. It is indeed a very comfortable and cozy chapter, if I do say so myself. I enjoyed writing it, and I enjoyed reading it again as I made edits.

Aside from establishing the scene of the next chapter, which will be the opening of the summer court, not much happens here. As I wrote in my notes for the previous chapter, it’s important for the reader to understand why Agnes is willing to remain in the status quo.

It seems as though Agnes is doing good work and making good plans, but none of this actually means anything. An astute reader should be asking the questions that Agnes is aggressively ignoring: How did she get out in the woods on the border of Erdbhein? Where did the demon come from? Who kidnapped her? Was it someone in the castle? Are they still there?

Agnes needs to start asking herself these questions soon, because Fhiad is going to come back and cause trouble. For the time being, though, it’s nice to have a small interlude of peace.  

I recently read a Tumblr post (here) regarding how the Gothic genre is all about taking four pages to describe a staircase, and there’s a bit of that in this chapter. I want the reader to see and understand how run-down and decrepit Agnes’s castle is, and I want them to have an opportunity to enjoy this state of decay.

All of the chapters in this story have titles, by the way. I’m not sure if I’ll end up using them, but I especially like the title for this chapter: “A Slow and Silent Decay.”

An Unfound Door, Chapter Four

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Agnes returns to Faloren Castle under the escort of her aide Myla, who had been searching for her. She immediately goes to see her father the king, who is bedridden from a lingering illness. She is met at the door to his chambers by her cousin Galien. Galien has conspired with Myla to hide Agnes’s abduction, and he informs her that it was he who sent the knight Caelif to her rescue. Without inquiring further, Agnes visits her father. He does not wake, and Agnes reflects on the decrepit state of the castle. She excuses herself and uses a discrete servant’s passage to visit the kitchen. The head of the castle’s staff, Taibh, gives her bread and wine and asks no questions.   

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This chapter presents the bleakness of the status-quo world to the reader. There are no people on the roads. The castle town is depopulated. The castle itself is a mess. The king is dying.

Fhiad parted ways with Agnes at some point before the start of the chapter, and she seems to take it for granted that he won’t find anyone in his home kingdom of Erdbhein. This presents a mystery. Why does she think this? What happened there? In Chapter Six, Agnes will explain what she understands about Erdbhein, but the truth is worse. Erdbhein has gone full Dark Souls, and it’s filled with ruin and blight and zombies.

In terms of the Save The Cat story structure, this chapter establishes the “debate” of the main character. Agnes thinks about how she wants to leave Faloren, but she feels that she can’t. In the next chapter, the reader will see that she takes comfort in routines, especially when these routines make her feel smart, powerful, and in control. She ends her debate with herself in this chapter by saying that she needs to concentrate on “work,” which she is obviously using as an excuse for not allowing herself to imagine an alternative to the shittiness of her current situation.

This debate makes a lot of sense to me personally, because I used to be the same as Agnes. I was driven by a need to be “productive,” and I was always working. Those routines made me happy at the time, but they weren’t sustainable. This is all the more true because the busyness distracted me from more important issues, namely, that there was something deeply wrong with my environment.

I had to go through this cycle a few times – and I got very, very good at it – before I realized what it was. I thought I could somehow fix things by simply working harder, and damn did I work hard. Realizing that the cycle itself was the problem was extremely liberating.

I’m not saying that we should all quit our jobs to live our best lives or whatever. Nobody has the money for that. Rather, I think it’s good to at least consider a shift in mindset, and it’s important to chill out and allow room for new ideas and new perspectives.

I also think it’s worth considering that some environments are just rotten. You can try to keep the lights on, but this requires a lot of effort and yields diminishing returns. Sometimes it’s better to allow things to decay.