Over one hundred and twenty hours of play later, I’m ready to bring you my spoiler-free review of Elden Ring. I have been excited for Elden Ring for so freaking long, it’s unbelievable. I’m going to cut the chase and just say that this is my favorite Soulsborne game to date, just barely beating out Bloodborne. It had everything I wanted, though I do have a few small complaints that I want to mention in this review. Everything’s going to be spoiler-free, so you can read this review and make a decision without worrying about having the story ruined for you!

There are several stories I’ve experienced that left their mark on me in a positive way. There are many different ways that a story can do this. Sometimes the story is just remarkable and emotional, sometimes it’s beautiful, but other times a story can teach us a valuable, powerful lesson—something that changes us for the better. That’s what I’m going to be talking about today: stories that have taught me something. In today’s post, I’ll be listing three different lessons that I learned from three different stories.

Today, I’m going to try to be a little more positive than I was last week: I’ll be talking about five tropes that I personally enjoy in stories. If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you probably already know what the first one is going to be…

ount. Today, I want to talk about some of the things that I’ve learned from writing so much (and I have written a lot). I’ll be listing five things that I wish I had known a decade ago, so this is something of a letter to the version of myself that hadn’t quite received his first writing award, yet. Hopefully, if you’re a writer who’s just starting out and looking for some help, this will be exactly what you need!

It’s been a while since I released a book review! I’ve been focused on reviewing The Legend of Vox Machina and the latest FromSoft game, Elden Ring, but I recently finished reading Malice and want to get my thoughts on the book out there before I dive into the second book in the series. I found the book to be a bit of a mixed bag, which I was led to expect anyway—some people really don’t seem to enjoy this book, but still like John Gwynne’s Shadow of the Gods, so I came into this feeling like I was either going to love or hate this book. So, let’s get into the spoiler-free review of Malice, the first book in John Gwynne’s The Faithful and the Fallen.

In this post, I’m going to talk about five tropes in storytelling that I absolutely loathe. Some of them I hate because they are fundamentally awful, others because they’re overdone, and still more simply because they run counter to my personal tastes and wants. This is all largely my subjective opinion, so some of these may be tropes that you enjoy!