The Grim Reaper's Friend

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #94

It's been over a month since my last update in the realm of fan fiction, so it's time to let people know where I'm at, and what's happening.

Dilmir 3, otherwise known as Archmage of Feylund, is well on its way. I've been making some good steady progress recently, writing on average a chapter a day. If I keep this rate up, I'd say the story should be written by the end of August. It'll need to be proofread, but that won't take long. Based on that, you can probably expect to see it sometime in September.

I'm keeping the rate to a chapter a day for two reasons: firstly, because my interest usually shifts to other things after then, and secondly, because writing for much longer than that in a single sitting is starting to turn out less-than-optimal writing quality. Not a change I'm a fan of, but one I can work with.

The story is looking to be longer than the previous two, I'm guessing by...

Welcome to another review, this time of a movie. I've reviewed movies before, but never broken them down and rated every part, opting instead to focus on one aspect. This will be a full review, because this movie certainly deserves it.

I've seen Train to Busan twice, and each time I was highly impressed. On the surface it's your average zombie movie, but compared to the other zombie media I've seen (which admittedly isn't a ton), it rises above the rest easily. I wanted to break it down and show why I think that is.

Train to Busan is a Korean movie, so if you watch it, there are subtitles. I thought this would be a detriment in a zombie movie, but I was wrong. Both this and Parasite seem to indicate that if Hollywood doesn't watch out, Korean movies are going to surpass them in quality. Seriously, watch them both.

Ratings:
5: Amazing, above flawless.
4: Flawless, but doesn't really stand out.
3: Might have some issues,...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #93

Greetings, readers. I'm aware we're approaching the proposed release date for the final entry in the tale of Dilmir, and because I'm definitely not going to make that date, I wanted to update you on where things stand.

First off, I'm just going to get this out of the way: my interest for Dilmir is just not there. I've always had an issue where once I know how the story will unfold, my interest in it starts to dry up. I'm guessing this is due to there being nothing left to create or invent. Since the creation aspect of writing is always what gets me interested in a story, this makes sense.

My lack of interest has meant pulling the story together has been slow. I've known the general flow of how things go together for about two months now, but I've been unable to actually write the story due to lingering issues which needed to be resolved. I think those are all squared away now, but working them into...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #92

My brother considers himself to be learned in the realm of movies. He watches films purely for how well they are done, regardless of their content. I'm a bit of the opposite, preferring to watch for content, and being much more lenient if a film wasn't made perfectly, but was still enjoyable. However, as a writer, I also enjoy breaking movies down, particularly in the story area, and seeing where they succeeded and failed.

Last night, my brother roped the family into watching Whiplash, the movie Damien Chazelle reportedly made so he could make enough money to make La La Land. Now, the movie was good. Really good. No question about it. However, I felt fairly disconnected from the main character while watching, and I believe that came down to how the story handled character motivations.

This isn't a review of Whiplash, and I'm not going to spoil the movie. I will recap the main conflict though, both...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #91

One thing which was present in both Dilmir and Curse was convenience. Especially around the climax, in both stories there's one small detail which I had no easy resolution for, and so just resolved, using the first idea which popped into my head. The result was a resolution which came out of nowhere, an undeniable feeling of convenience sabotaging an otherwise believable ending.

I definitely don't want this to be the case with the third and final story in the Dilmir trilogy. So, following some 'suggestions' posed by TAF, I heavily scrutinized my outline, doing my best to purge all hint of convenience or contrivance from it.

The writing for the story is underway by now, but I wanted to highlight the methods I found for dealing with convenience. Both because I believe what I've found will be highly useful to anyone else facing similar problems, and because when TAF invariably finds something I've missed,...