Author: Richard Parry

Why You Liked … May the Fourth

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2025 Edition. Despite Disney’s best efforts, there is Star Wars gold at the end of the rainbow. If you like reckoning with legacy, moral ambiguity, sacrifice, and found family, I’m here to make your Star Wars Day just as rosy as when A New Hope dropped way back in 1977… minus the bell bottoms we all pretend we never owned. Introduction People talk about Star Wars fatigue the same way they talk about superhero fatigue, as if it’s part of life now. Disney strip-mined Star Wars for all its joy in a relentless sequel churn. I’m positive one of the Bobs was to blame; they wanted shareholder value, but we wanted Star Wars. It doesn’t mean there aren’t chunks of good Star Wars left, though. To celebrate 2025’s Star Wars Day, I’m going to give you the best movie, series, video game, and book Read More …

Why You Didn’t Like … Plane

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Plane: the movie where the idea of “authenticity” is about as convincing as a safety briefing from a clown. You shouldn’t waste time on this movie, but you might be tempted to! It stars Gerard Butler, who won hearts and minds as Leonidas in 300, and Mike Coulter, who won hearts and minds as Luke Cage and Spartan Locke. I wanted to like this one. I hoped it might have the folksy charm of Butler’s outings like Gamer, but there’s no charm here. It all starts fairly badly; it’s clear the scriptwriters googled, “How do planes work?” and then used the top hit from a conspiracy site where the Earth is flat. Then they stacked on the usual Trifecta of Impossibility™—the plane without enough fuel, the convict transport, the storm of ages—and hoped we wouldn’t look too hard when our first double fatality happened Read More …

Why You Liked … Service Model

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The Future is Now, and It’s Not Great. Hello, valued consumer. I see you are engaging in anxiety brought on by literally everything. Would you like a soothing cup of tea? Good. Because today we’re panning for five golden things: Let’s begin. Sci-Fi, AKA the Original Horrible Prophecy Machine I finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, a book too close to prophecy to not be unsettling. There’s a lot this book made me think of, not least of which is that no one should ever call a robot Uncharles. Despite that, you should read Service Model. It’s charming, despite the doom. It’s funny, despite us all being dead. It’s prophetic, but the prophecy brings hope with it, and we all need some of that. Let’s begin. Science fiction has been a really good barometer of our future, and I’m not talking about flying cars or Read More …

Why You Liked … Avowed

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Exploration, Companionship, and the Game That Deserved Better Reviews. What if the world doesn’t need saving? Well, tough rocks, the Living Lands of Avowed still need you to rescue them, but they’re at their best when you’re exploring, meeting dudes, and lighting the occasional villain on fire with a flaming sword. And honestly, that’s kind of beautiful. Introduction You start your epic quest in Avowed as the Envoy, one of the Emperor’s chosen from the land of Aedyr. There’s a plague called the Dreamscourge, and it is wreaking havoc on the empire’s citizens, and, more importantly for the Emperor, his throbbing desire to colonise and subjugate the free peoples of the Living Lands. Of course, it sounds nicer when he says it. As far as setups go, it reminds me more of Tyranny, arguably Obsidian’s finest effort, but it doesn’t deliver the same feels or Read More …

Overthinking, but Professionally: Is LitRPG Just Escapism, or Something Deeper?

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Is LitRPG just a guilty pleasure, or does it actually mean something? Let’s get a little more profound on this shower thought. This is Part 3 of a 3-part series on LitRPG: its past, how to write it, and why it keeps us coming back. LitRPG isn’t just about power-ups and progress bars. It taps into something deeper. Why do these stories hit so hard? Let’s autopsy why this genre is fundamental fantasy rather than a fad. Missed the earlier parts? Introduction There are a few genres that are experiencing break-out success, and with good reason. They scratch an underserved niche and, if done well, expand that niche into a chasm of readership that becomes a defining success. Romantasy is a great example, but we’re here to talk about LitRPG. You’ll still never pry Paladin’s Grace from my hands, but I will Read More …

4theWriters: How to Write LitRPG Without Losing the Plot

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LitRPG is a genre where game mechanics and storytelling hold hands. The trick is making sure it doesn’t turn into a hostage situation. Writing LitRPG can be fun. You essentially get to play-act as a developer (either of tabletop or computer games) without having to put in years of work in another profession. You also get to create immersive worlds, craft intricate levelling systems, and finally give your meticulously built setting the starring role it deserves. What’s not to like? But there’s a trap: get too wrapped up in mechanics and you forget to tell a story, or put characters in it. If you’re afraid your book reads more like patch notes than a novel, you’ve got yourself a problem. If your protagonist spends more time explaining their inventory than actually using it, you might be entering the new genre Read More …

Why You Liked … LitRPG Before It Was Cool

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Think LitRPG started with Ready Player One? Think again. Long before you could grind levels in a LitRPG novel, Dream Park and Guardians of the Flame showed us what it meant to truly play the game. Modern LitRPGs let you exploit the system, but these classics forced you to survive it. This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on LitRPG: its roots, how to write it, and why it keeps us hooked. Before LitRPG was a genre, books like Dream Park and Guardians of the Flame set the foundations for game-inspired storytelling. This is where it all began—long before stat sheets took over. Introduction LitRPG (short for Literary Role-Playing Game) is what happens when storytelling hooks up with game mechanics and produces a deeply nerdy lovechild. At its core, it’s about characters progressing through a structured game-like system, often complete with XP, stats, and level-ups. While it’s Read More …

Why You Liked … Argo

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Man, seventies fashion didn’t treat us kindly, did it? Fashion isn’t the only thing that’s best left in the seventies, but we’ll get to governmental foreign policy in just a moment. Argo is an absolutely superb movie based on the true story of one of the most sublime counterespionage events in history. Or, I guess, known history, because they’re going to save some good shit out the back. Historical Context We follow Ben Affleck’s Tony Mendez, a CIA exfil expert set on the mission of extracting six US Embassy workers during the Iran Hostage Crisis that kicked off November 4, 1979. It follows the real-life Canadian Caper, and on the morning of Sunday, January 27, 1980, the full eight-person party passed through passport control at the Mehrabad Airport in Tehran, boarded a Swissair flight to Zürich, and escaped. The great prestige was that Mendez Read More …

How to see your Writing More Clearly (Without Losing the Will to Live)

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A real challenge with writing is the (very) long time between penning the first page and publication. It’s a huge amount of time to invest without getting feedback on how good the book is. There are tools to help, such as writer’s groups, and I’m going to share another: a self-starter you can use without the fear of another human making the You-Fucked-Up face. The real problem with humans is that, often, they want to make you feel good, or objectively think your feelings are things to be trashed. Getting good human feedback is super hard, because humans in general: a) think they’re good at feedback, but b) are fucking not. But reviews before reviews are still hugely valuable. We want to get the unbiased take without the existential dread of Goodreads. We want to improve, but without the gut-punch to Read More …

Overthinking, but Professionally: Steam, GOG, and Epic (or, Who’s Really on Your Side?)

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Maybe you were once naïve enough to believe Ubisoft Connect would add something to your life; I’m not here to judge. Among this digital clutter, three stores actually matter: Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store. First, the TL;DR—or as I call it, “The Algebra of Access and Aggravation.” I promise, this is only make-believe math: Now let’s overthink why Steam, GOG, and Epic are (mostly) on your side—or to badly misrepresent Tron, “For the Users!” Let’s also be professional about why publisher launchers are the worst thing since loot boxes, and how—despite exclusives—Epic might actually be on the right side of history. Steam, GOG, and Epic: The Convenient, the Collector, and the Cash Cannon We all have those same three fucken launchers, or maybe even four if you were once naïve enough to believe Ubisoft Connect would add anything to Read More …