First first

I'm beating the jannies to the punch for that sweet, sweet dramacoin

I'm reading This Kind of War a history of the Korean War recommended by Mattis. It's an older book so has some very dated terminology, and an older way of thinking. But pretty solid so far, very play by play.

I've been on a huge non-fiction kick recently reading Rampage (about Japan in the Philippines.) A book about the fall of Japan whose name I don't remember

and before that The Franco Prussian War by Wawro. I've liked all of them with Rampage being the hardest to read due to crazy Japanese crimes. I think the last fiction book I read was Medicus a Roman murder mystery that was really enjoyable.

Dramatards what y'all reading?

Knowledge should be free, but you still need to flex on the poors. I'm partial to the kobo libra 2 myself.

for whatever reason this (well known resource) shit isnt all online somehow but this is a good resource for online copies of parts of it.

no its not a book. yes you can read it. keep yourself safe if you're neurodivergent enough or professionally inclined

I have one as my flair, Captain Ahab says it in Moby Peepee when he’s making a speech about his determination to catch the White Whale. He says it with such surety and confidence, all of Ahab’s lines are rock solid unmovable and it’s so darn masculine. Other good ones from him are:

talk not of blasphemy to me man, I’d strike the sun if it insulted me

What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself!

Share some of your favourite literature quotes, and maybe a few lines about what it means to you. I have other good ones I can share too, some from Nahuatl (Aztec) literature

Then Paris, with a laugh, Sprang from his ambush, shouting boastfully:-

"Lo, thou art smitten! Not in vain my shaft

Has flown; and would that it had pierced thy groin And slain thee! Then the Trojans had obtained Reprieve from slaughter,-they who dread thee now

As bleating goats a lion." Undismayed, The valiant Diomed made answer thus:-

"Archer and railer! proud of thy smart bow, And ogler of the women! wouldst thou make

Trial of valor hand to hand with me,

Thy bow should not avail thee, nor thy sheaf Of many arrows. Thou dost idly boast That thou hast hit my foot. I heed it not.

It is as if a woman or a child

Had struck me. Lightly falls the weapon-stroke Of an unwarlike weakling. 'Tis not so With me, for when one feels my weapon's touch,

It passes through him, and he dies; his wife Tears with her hands her cheeks; his little ones Are orphans; earth is crimsoned with his blood;

And flocking round his carcass in decay, More numerous than women, are the birds."

• Iliad Book 10 book 11

normally i wouldn't tell people to give up on their dreams but come the frick on 💀💀

in typical reddit fashion, everything is so so bad. the advice, the depressed writers looking for people to validate their awful ideas. i distinctly remember one poster who wanted to know if people wanted to read about dinosaur bones. that's it. no mention of characters, no worldbuilding, no paleontologist murder mystery set in the heart of the african jungle. if you can't convince yourself, why should we care? here's a quote from Adaptation (2002):

People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fricking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save somebody else. Every fricking day someone somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! Someone goes hungry, somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you my friend don't know crap about life!

It seems like everywhere is closed to submissions right now. Metaphorosis manuscript guidelines are bizarre, and I could only find Bourbon Penn open to spec fic. Bunch of other mags seem to open their submissions once a year at best.

Seemed better last year honestly, is self pub actually better or am I looking in the wrong places

rdrama literary magazine when?

Idea shamelessly stolen from @kaamrev

I'll be reading 1 page of the modern intersectional classic BLACK FUTURE each week. You, the fine of rdrama, are tasked with guessing what happens on the following page. The closest guess will receive 10 marseybux. I'll update the OP with the best guesses.

Here's a link to page 1, i dont want to upload the files locally

Already we are off to a riveting start as our effeminate hero uhhhh climbs a hill. Incredible prose, excellent pacing, no wonder Whitney Ryan has become a household name and international phenomenon.

Dear readers, what do you think happens next?

Guess 1:

@Harpooner

Meet the members of his family and more expository dialog.

Guess 2:

@DrFateHoids

Alex reminisces about life before New Africa was established

Guess 3:

@SmallNips

We'll find out about his sister and how he has always had incestuous feelings for her (mayos and incest marseymanysuchcases:)

Guess 4:

@Avalon

My guess is the next page will be explaining what the revolution was and how it got to this stage

Guess 5:

@toetickler22

the strong ARFIKAN BVLL plows his bussy

Guess 6:

SHOW MORE

I want some good fantasy recommendations, but so much of the genre is unbearable. I've identified two main reasons why, though I'm sure there are also many others.

• YA desperately written for a movie deal and/or teenaged foids by older foids Can't stand this garbage and I doubt I need to explain why.

• Conversely I can't get through a lot of "standard" fantasy written by moids who don't see the difference between a novel and a DnD campaign. Characters and plot usually take a backseat to pointless wiki lore and unending exposition. I'd say I like worldbuilding but it should be done more naturally than vomiting paragraphs. The plot shouldn't stop because the author needs us to know every detail about the temple or whatever we just passed by. The majority of these settings will also be shameless ripoffs of Tolkien and/or DnD with nothing new to offer.

I need some fantasy recs that avoid these pitfalls. I'm interested in finding any of the following

• Unique main characters. Examples of anything that made a particular protagonist stand out above the genre.

• Same with settings. Any that stood out (ideally right from the get-go, and not just because you'd gotten used to it after eight books)

• Stories that were concise while still being good. I'm not against wordier entries, but I think a lot of fantasy authors have trouble with brevity. I'm wondering if anyone knows of exceptions who still managed to pull off something creative.

String Theory

Schrodinger's Cat

Uncanny Valley

By far the most r*ddit book I've read. Premise was alright, but it was predictable, MC was oblivious, big butt plotholes, and I didn't really like any of the characters.

Welcome back to our Black Future story hour, dramatards. Page 2 got spoiled by some so I'm skipping right to the third page.

editor's note: the author has introduced a duo of underage characters. I have not read ahead, so if this turns out to be a pederast book we will have to read How I sued Taylor Swift by one R. Greer instead

Anyway, you, the fine of rdrama, are tasked with guessing what happens on the following page. The closest guess will receive 10 marseybux. I'll update the OP with the best guesses. I'll keep track of any guesses before the spoilers inevitably drop.

Here's a link to page 3, i dont want to upload the files locally

NSFW

The momentum does not let up every word carefully and masterfully chosen, Whitney Ryan is showing us the lives of her dramatis personae in a strange and captivating world

Dear readers, what do you think happens next?

Guess 1:

@SmallNips

I'm gonna guess Alexa is going to hear the news that the kangs are coming to her village, and he's going to make way toward the village to save her sister

Guess #2

@officer_candypants

There's a knock on the door and it's a basketball government official. He comes in, eats the rabbits, fricks the sissy's wife, and leaves.

Like all underachieving zoomers I constantly have a thousand ideas in my head that will never come to fruition so here they are.

The first one is about a ghost that travels through space. I was thinking about the fact that a ghost is essentially immortal so they’ll stick around long after The Earth has been eaten by the sun. You could have the ghost look around at space and eventually find something special enough that they can finally pass on peacefully.

The second one is a book about humans discovering alien races. It is then discovered that all planets had Jesus show up at some point. I don’t want this book to be a preachy Christian book, rather I want it to be a look at how Christianity could have developed had, for example, everyone believed Jesus instantly. I want to book to be a series of interviews conducted by an impartial and agnostic individual. I don’t think the book even has to be about Christianity specifically but I just want to stick to what I know.

The last one might have already been done. I want to tell the story of a town through a few newspaper articles. This one is a more recent thought of mine and is not quite as fleshed out but I think it has potential. I’m pretty sure this sort of structure has been done before but I think it could still make a very engrossing book. If you do the entire news paper, obituaries, ads and all the other stuff I think you could make quite a few compelling threads beyond the main one. But it might be too difficult so maybe not.

'If a son is born when the Sun is in the terms of Mercury, he will be successful and have great power . .. He will be brave and tall and will acquire property and moreover will be married to his own sister and will have children by her.'

-- Egyptian horoscope

Herais invites you to dinner at the marriage of her children at home tomorrow, that is the fifth, at the 9th hour

-- Egyptian wedding invitation

@Aevann defend this