Here's Some Beautiful Covers Of Upcoming Books! 📚

“A Macigian never reveals their secrets. A Witch even less so.”

Well, you had a good run. For the last 70 or so years that you’ve had your little shop in Esmar’s capital, nothing overly exciting happened. Apart from the occasional political changes and economical shifts, you could mostly carry on business as usual. But when the Fae calling herself your “best and only friend” invites you to pull a heist on your rival’s home you didn’t realize what effect that stunt would have on your immortal life. But damn, you really wanted that statue back.

Play Demo

Witch Blood is an upcoming urban fantasy interactive fiction story where you take on the role of one of the last proper witches of Esmar, hoping to resolve a very time-sensitive mystery that might cost you your own life if you don’t get on with the investigation soon.

Does it have to do with random people’s head exploding?

Is this the reason you seem to have more prophetic dreams than usual?

Why are there so many strangers storming into your shop demanding answers you couldn’t possibly know?

And why does your familiar keep eating your receipts? You need those for your taxes!

Create your very own witch. Appearance, personality, gender and sexuality…  All that Jazz

Choose a furry (or non-furry) companion for your immortal life

Become a master of 5 witchy skills that may or may not help you along the road

Keep your business afloat (you got bills to pay, after all)

Solve a mystery, save a bunch of people, and meet the Gods (???)

Find love, friendship, or rivalry (or maybe all three of them at the same time) with 5 different people who will. Not. Leave. You. Alone.

And for the love of the Gods: please stop spitting coins

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So far it will probably be a 16+ kind of rating for:

Mentions of violence, blood and gore

Strong language, cursing

Suggestive language

but things might change. I’ll keep you updated in any case.

Keep reading

And now my normal Rain World OCs are up :)

“Vote”

CAN YOU BELIEVE THE FACT THAT I NEVER ACTUALLY DREW THE BEGINNING OF THE AU????

Anyway, here it is XD

chinese hanfu by 绛悠堂

Happy book birthday to this week’s new releases! 📚

Hello! I hope this is alright to ask but I remember one post saying Harley has body dysmorphia, I was wondering if it was any particular part of her body she felt uncomfortable with and, this is somewhat of a lore question, can magic be used to subtly alter a persons body, like shapeshifting magic and what not, either casted by the individual or a trained professional mage?

Very excited for this If and hope your day has been going well!

first of all hii & that's totally fine to ask :) and i've been doing great + hope you are too <3

Here's the short answers and under them a longer, lore-ish answer that's about things that will probably never be brought up in this interactive fiction but that are relevant in the broader 'Magici Universe'.

Harley usually just feels insecure about her body in general, some days it's more intense, some days it's barely there; but the parts of her body she continuously feels the worst about are her shoulders and traps.

Harley used to be diagnosed with body dysmorphia (BDD) but she's at a point now where she doesn't meet the criteria anymore; she still experiences insecurity and body image issues, though not at a 'clinically concerning' level, according to her psychiatrist.

You could alter your physical appearance with illusionary (Dark) magic, however it's only that: an illusion, and not actual shapeshifting. Say you have short hair and cast an illusion spell for your hair to be longer; if someone touched your hair they'd realise it's only an illusion and that your hair is short. Other mages with a strong Dark affinity wouldn't even need to touch your hair to know it's an illusion. That's the furthest a human on Earth can go, shapeshifting wise.

Harley has her best friend cast an illusion on her on especially bad days, which helps a lot but isn't a long-term solution. :(

People that can't cast illusions or can't have a mage cast one on them could buy an illusionary tincture brewed by a proper mage. They'd need to take it every week or even every morning, depending on how potent it is.

However illusionary potions are expensive and heavily regulated by specialised organisations because of how dangerous they can be (think wanted criminals changing their appearance, organisations spreading terror via large scale illusions, etc). They could be prescribed though, but it's very rare unfortunately.

(longer answer here)

So it's not possible for humans on Earth to literally shapeshift. However, there are several realms, and Earth is the weakest out of the known ones, magic-wise. That means that if magical creatures that don't belong to Earth tried to get here, their magic would be nerfed by a lot.

On other realms with higher magic 'density' there live creatures with three, four, and more affinities. So take Air, Dark, and Void and you got yourself a shapeshifter. Humans are much more flexible in that way 'cause they're not restricted to specific affinity combos, while for example shapeshifters or phoenixes are. So humans native to these other realms are by default much stronger than the ones on Earth.

There's ways to reach these realms and people from Earth have done it before; but only those with specific affinity combinations can even attempt to. A mage that reaches a realm with higher magic density can have another Awakening where they unlock one or two more affinities, though they're limited to that realm. So humans native to these other realms are by default much stronger than the ones on Earth.

It's said that some people have been able to capture shapeshifters and make shapeshifting mixtures out of them, and believe me when I say that governments have been going crazy trying to stop the elite from acquiring them (and to steal them for themselves) if it's true.

tysm for giving me the opportunity to talk abt this lmao

“You can either let this journey crush you, or let it transform you into someone stronger.”

A scene from the newly-released, New-York-Times-bestselling (?!) book Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor, art by 最后的L and water effects by me! 🤗

Honestly, Zachary Ying is a book I didn’t think I’d have the strength to write. The concept is very wild and wacky, yes—the First Emperor of China possessing a young Chinese American boy’s AR gaming headset and compelling him on a journey across China to heist magical artifacts—but writing the story required me to dig deep into my complicated relationship with my heritage.

When I immigrated to Canada in 6th grade, I spent a year as the only Asian kid in the school of a small town. In that one year, I became self-conscious of all sorts of things that didn’t seem to matter before: the way I looked, the way I spoke, the clothes I wore, the media I liked. The white kids wouldn’t insult me outright, but they’d ask me questions that made me embarrassed of my differences from them. I felt backward, alien. The feelings of isolation and rejection I experienced took me many, many years to unpack. It’s been a long journey, learning to love myself again, and I drew much strength from stories in Chinese history to do so.

However, as the years passed, I’ve also watched in horror as the government of China became increasingly authoritarian, cracking down on dissent and committing genocidal atrocities against minority ethnic groups, of which I belong to one myself. Being Chinese has become so painfully political. Pride in Chinese culture is no longer as simple as that, but could accidentally play into the Chinese government’s use of traditional culture as propaganda. Yet on another hand, there’s the necessity of demystifying and defending Chinese culture to combat anti-Chinese racism. Many diaspora like myself are caught in the crosshairs, struggling to find the balance. But what I firmly believe is that traditional Chinese culture and history don’t belong to the Chinese government. It belongs to the Chinese people, both native and diaspora. If we distance ourselves from our heritage specifically because of the Chinese government, that’s letting them win, validating their claim to be the one true representative of Chinese culture when that is absolutely not the case.

Through Zack’s journey in this book, I wanted to engage with the complexities of Chinese identity, but I also want to have fun. This book remains a love letter to my 12-year-old self, taking inspiration from everything I love—anime, video games, sci-fi, and of course, Chinese history and myths. You’ll find appearances by real figures from said history and myths, wielding magic inspired by their legends, along with many famous Chinese artifacts.

If any of that sounds fun to you too, especially if you like Percy Jackson or Yugioh, I really think you’d like this book as well 😩✌🏼 You can find out where to get it at ZacharyYing.com!

Can we stop with the whole “AI is plagiarism” narrative? AI is not doing anything different from any human that gets inspired by other art. If sampling is inherently theft then so is the vast majority of modern music. If copying other works’ style and techniques is plagiarism then every renaissance artist was stealing from Michelangelo. Art is, as a medium, taking inspiration from other sources, be that the world, other people, or other art, and combining those inspirations into something unique. And AI works are unique by literally any standard you decide to use.

There are plenty of actually good reasons to hate AI. Can we please stop parroting the stupidest and most easily dismissible one, all we’re doing is making it easier for them to defend themselves.

You may do whatever you want but I will not stop calling logicials that scraps works of people on the Internet for parts only to blindly regurgitate stuff of subpar quality "plagiarism programs" or any variant.

Sorry for not being able to abide by your request.

I would also suggest you to look up the difference between inspiration and plagiarism. There is a reason why we're not using the same word for both.

With all due respect,

Me

Wouldn’t my writing be worse off if I forced in elements like diversity?

If you are asking this question, you have yet to challenge the “default” of your culture’s media. Consider that the majority of modern Western media fill their casts with white men, and when there are women or POC, they stick out conspicuously. Many people view adding diversity as tweaking some white man characters by toggling race or gender. But this assumes that “white man” is some default, standard character template.

If you feel pressured to include diversity in your writing, distance yourself from this pressure and ask yourself why you feel it. If you feel attacked when seeing campaigns for more diversity or criticism of all-white, uninclusive media, sit with the discomfort and ask yourself why those who are different from you say they need diverse media.

These are people whose voices and faces are rarely visible in entertainment. Despite this, they enjoy an adventure as much as anyone, and have become accustomed to projecting onto white characters. Yet, when the reverse is asked of white audiences to acknowledge protagonists of color, it becomes a difficult ask. These character choices are immediately questioned, discredited, fought against, and accused of being “woke” or “unrelatable.”

This resistance reflects a larger issue: the imbalance between audiences’ empathy towards the majority/“default” and empathy towards those perceived as Other.

By mostly reading about white people, they become easier to relate to. By the same token, if we are not reading media and histories from the perspective of POC, we end up with more people who literally fail to relate to POC. When we talk about hope-deficits, increased alienation and lower self-worth among marginalized populations, underrepresentation in media is a big factor. Imagine for a moment: never the beautiful princess in the tower, never the badass hero riding dragons; always the two-second sidekick.

People of color are people and want to be seen and treated as such. Not as a burden to devote your time to, but people who have a place in the world, fictional or no. Really, writing a world in your story that is all or mostly white is more unrealistic, more forced—after all, there are far more non-white people on Earth. Becoming comfortable with diversity requires unlearning White as the Default and POC as the Other. It takes setting aside feelings of pressure to emphasize, open your heart and listen.

Further Reading:

“Diversity has gone too far!”

Diversity is for everyone.

Children and the Myth of Colorblind Youth

Those who read about aliens learn to emphasize with aliens. Those who read about wizards empathize with wizards.

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This Q&A is an excerpt from our General FAQ for Newcomers, which can be found in our new Masterpost of rules and FAQs. If you liked this post, we have more recommended reading there!

-Writing With Color

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