Tag: science fantasy

Sept 2023 Update: Flesh Drafts, Book Clubs, and Yoga Days

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Writing

It’s amazing to me that I announced my new writing project just a month ago because I have already made so much progress. I am already on the second draft of the first book. This first draft was a very quick skeleton draft, so this second draft is the muscle draft: fleshing out ideas, expanding scenes, adding subplots. Both the AI tools and the tarot deck continue to be of service in generating ideas and keeping momentum and there is still a lot to discover about these characters and this world.

The Creative Act on LHRB Podcast

I got another chance to chat with my good friend JD Lopez on his podcast Left Hand Right Brain. We talked about the book The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. We’re going to talk about more books in the future, like our own little book club. There is a video version of the podcast here or you can search for Left Hand Right Brain wherever you get your podcasts. We had a great chat, and I also talk about my writing project so check it out if you’re interested in that!

Science Fantasy Awesome

I continue to get new videos out every Wednesday for Gone Solo: GOZR. We are definitely getting close to the end of this series, I can feel it. This is one of the tricky parts of improvised game-based storytelling. It is hard to make exact plans about when one series will end because there might be one episode left or five, it just all depends on how the dice roll. I already have the system picked out for my next series so we will be ready to go whenever this one wraps up, but of course I will keep that secret for the reveal video when the time comes.

Acting

It’s had been a while since I’ve booked any gigs, so I was glad to spend a day as background for a credit union commercial. It was in a yoga studio and we were doing yoga all day, actually a pretty good workout and a calming way to spend the day! I also got to host an improvised murder mystery for a San Francisco-based tech company on their corporate retreat. I’ve done several of these mystery parties and they are always a blast.

Aug 2023 Update: First Sponsorship and a New Writing Project

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Science Fantasy Awesome

My solo RPG channel Science Fantasy Awesome continues to grow at a steady rate, with new episodes of Gone Solo GOZR still releasing weekly. I also had the opportunity to do my first sponsored content video for a solo system called Overpowered. I hadn’t really considered sponsored content for this channel before, but it opened my eyes to possible ways to defray my costs. Plus, it was fun to make!

Writing

With both of my children now in childcare part time, my schedule has opened up and I have started writing again. I wrote and self-published a novel under a penname during the pandemic, and intended to write and release the next book in the series right away. That didn’t happen as planned, and I diverted my energy into other projects, most notably Tarot of the Trunk.

In anticipation of my new availability, I began making notes about writing in that series again. Due to some other factors, I had already decided to abandon the penname and rerelease the first book in the series under my own name. But a lot of my thoughts on the series had evolved, and I was planning on making major revisions to the first book.

At a certain point, I realized that re-working the first book was not something I wanted to do right now. The series is really close to my heart, and I knew it was going to be slow-going. With re-launching my author business under my own name, I wanted to start building momentum straight away. So I decided the better move would be to write a new series based on a idea that was less precious to me, so I could move faster and finish and release the series sooner, start to generate an audience, to give the original series a better footing.

So, I’m working on a new series about a wizard’s apprentice who gets replaced by an android. In an homage to the mix of science fiction and fantasy genres, I am using both AI tools (technology) and a tarot deck (magic) to generate ideas and speed up the writing process. So far, even with limited time, I have been able to write very quickly, so I am very excited about the good start for this new project.

March 2023 Update

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I’m reorganizing my internet presence to simplify things on my end, with the Ragamancers blog as the center of all my projects. This update is to let people know about what I’m currently working on, and potentially cross-pollinate and unify my separate audiences. 

Science Fantasy Awesome

My biggest new project is the YouTube channel Science Fantasy Awesome, where I am improvising serial science fantasy stories using role-playing games as inspiration. This has been a lot of fun for me because it brings together so many of my interests: acting, improvising, storytelling, game design, graphic design, editing. I’ve been learning a lot and adjusting my process as I go to keep improving video quality.

Tarot of the Trunk guidebook

When I released Tarot of the Trunk last summer, I decided to go ahead and publish the deck without a guidebook. I would still like there to be a guidebook, however, so I’ve been working on it slowly, but it’s too soon to say when that will be available. 

Updated Acting Reels

shot from the short film “Koselig”

It’s long overdue, but I finally updated my acting reels. I’ve worked on a lot of projects in the last few years (way more than I could show in such short videos) but I’m proud of how these turned out.

Short Play “Goblin Mode” for Curious New Voices

with some of the Curious New Voices playwrights. photo by Mario Gonzalez.

I got to write a new ten-minute play called “Goblin Mode” for This Time, a night celebrating the 20th anniversary of Curious New Voices back in January. CNV is a youth playwriting program that I participated in back when I was in high school. It was so special and very meaningful to circle back, reconnect with some of the playwrights, and see all of the amazing plays!

All the Links

Here’s a linktree with links to Ragamancers places all over the internet in case you’d like to follow along on your app of choice!

Science Fantasy: What it is, and why it’s important.

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(Image credit: “Thrust” by Wasso Kozlina IV)

“Science Fantasy” is a term that has had a number of different meanings in the past. The phrase used to be used in a somewhat derogatory way, in order to contrast “lighter” or more “fantastical” works with the rigorous, and implicitly more preferable, works of “hard” science fiction. 

But the term is being used now, more and more, to describe media that combines tropes from both the fantasy and science fiction genres. It is still seen as a lesser genre, and the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction even calls it a “bastard genre.” But I think science fantasy is not only interesting and exciting, I think it’s important.

First off, science fantasy is a genre that exists only because of the categorization between these two main poles of speculative fiction. In the early days of science fiction the genres were not so separate, and it was only in later decades the boundaries became more well-drawn. But like many such boundaries, once set, the temptation to cross them becomes irresistible. Any such boundary is almost an invitation for artists and creatives to come and break it. 

A work that contains tropes from two or more once-distinct genres is difficult to categorize, and by its very existence throws the whole program of categorization into question. It exists in an ambiguous, liminal, in-between space. It is a shade of grey amongst the black-and-white, and as such, reflects the same ambiguous “greying” that we see in the social, political, and cultural spheres in our world. 

Science fantasy is an explicitly post-modern genre, one that acknowledges that the audience is aware of and understands genre distinctions, before gleefully and self-consciously blurring them. This initial crossing of genres then opens the door for yet more genres to flood in, which is why mystery, horror, and historical genre tropes often appear in science fantasy. Seeing these genres side-by-side invites the audience to reconsider what is possible, to examine and integrate rival frameworks, and to explore the unknown and unfamiliar and therefore confront the Other and the Shadow.

Against forces that seek to categorize and flatten individuals into easily graspable demographics, science fantasy makes space for and celebrates the full complexity of humanity, and is therefore political. Why must there be binaries? Why must there be borders? If we are grouping people, why? And who benefits from those distinctions?

Moreso than other genre-mashups, because of fantasy’s wistful gaze toward an idyllic imagined past and science fiction’s analytic projections into an array of possible futures, bringing these two perspectives together calls up the full temporal range of human experience and unites it in a present that can be, at its best, a transcendent moment. 

Also, it’s just cool, right? A wizard with a ray gun? A cyborg dragon? That’s just Awesome. 

That’s Science Fantasy Awesome. 

In this blog, I’m going to explore examples of science fantasy media and examine them with this lens: What makes these works ambiguous? Where are the places where fantasy and science fiction meet? And what makes them awesome?