the-princey-pie

Latest Posts by the-princey-pie

Fantasy Guide to Political Structures

A Horse! A Horse! My X for a Horse!

Let's be honest, fantasy authors love their kingdoms and empires. You can throw a rock in a bookshop or a library in the fantasy section and you will 99.99999% hit a fantasy book that will be set in or mention either of those structures. But what are they really? What's the difference between them all? Are there any more examples of structures that would suit your WIP better? Are you using the right terms? Let's have a closer look.

Duchy

A Duchy is a small territory ruled by a Duke/Duchess. While Duchies can be found in kingdoms, some duchies were sovereign states in their own right. Duchies are usually small by land mass but some duchies such as Burgundy were extremely powerful and influential. Independent Duchies were usually apart of a kingdom but grew so powerful that they eventually broke away to become a sovereign state in their own right. An example would be modern day Luxembourg, historic Milan and Burgundy.

Principality

A principality is territory ruled by a Prince/Princess. A principality is typically smaller than a kingdom and in some instances, can be apart of a larger kingdom or be a sovereign state. Principalities have a history of having broken away from a larger kingdom or eventually becoming apart of a kingdom. A principality within a kingdom is ruled by a Prince/Princess, usually an heir of the monarch and can be used to train them up to assume the throne in the future. Examples include Monaco, Liechtenstein and Andorra.

Kingdom

A sovereign state/country that is ruled by ruling King or a Queen. A kingdom is much larger and more powerful than a principality. Kingdoms can be feudal, meaning they are ruled in a strict hierarchy or an autocracy where the monarch rules alone with minimal input from the government or constitutional where the monarch is more of a figurehead and the government has a good chunk of control. Examples include England, Thailand and modern day Spain.

Commonwealth

A Commonwealth isn't a popular choice in fantasy but it is an interesting structure. A Commonwealth in its most basic form is a collection of states that are linked by either a shared culture or history. A Commonwealth can be a politically power or an economic power, with every state allowed to participate as much as they like. Not one state leads the others, it is all one group of equals. A Commonwealth can be a good idea for a group of nations that are more powerful together with them keeping their own independence.

Federation

A Federation is a political structure that is made up of united states or countries that are under a single government but each state is still independent and rules itself. Each state can have different laws, different cultures and economies but they all answer to the single government. Examples include the United States of America.

Republic

A Republic is a territory that is ruled by leaders and heads of state that have been elected on merit and by choice of the people. Republics are not just countries but can also be much smaller areas such as cities. Republics are democratic in nature, with the people having a say in who leads them in accordance to a constitution. There are many kinds of Republic: presidential, parliamentary, federal, theocratic, unitary. Examples of Republics include the Republic of Ireland and the city of Florence.

Protectorate

A Protectorate is a country/region/territory that is independent but relies on a larger, more powerful state for protection either in a military or diplomatic sense. A Protectorate was often used by Empires in order to maintain control over an area without annexing it. There are many reasons a larger state and the protectorate would agree to this, mainly the protectorate is much smaller meaning it is far more vulnerable to attack or it has very little power when compared to other states. A Protectorate allows the territory some power to rule itself but the larger state may feel the need or desire to interfere in the dealings of the territory. Examples of protectorates include the client kingdoms of the Roman Empire like Egypt before its annexation and Puerto Rico.

Empire

An Empire is a collection of nations that are united under one sovereign head of state or government. An Empire is formed by one nation steadily taking control of other nations, either through straight invasion and colonization or acquiring them through marriage and other less violent ways. An Empire is powerful mainly because it can drum up more resources, more influence and more military power. An Empire might impose the traditions, beliefs and culture of its principal nation - the nation that started it all - onto its colonies for better control and feeling of uniformity. Empires never last, that is something to always remember. Empires will eventually fragment due to the vast size and sometimes revolt among the conquered states. Examples of empires include the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire.

no no no you dont GET it. It's not about romance it's not about sex it's about DEVOTION. it's about LOVE. It's about chasing your other half to the ends of the earth to protect them from themselves. It's about wanting them to be happy. It's about stopping their self-destructive ways. It's about saving them from darkness, because you know they're capable of love. Because you've FELT that love and so you know it's there. It's about having faith until your dying breath. again it's about utter and true devotion and selfless love. Hello?? are you listening?? True, selfless love is about restoring their faith in humanity by being the example

Ah, yes, I see you’ve taken notice of the fine knight I keep dangling in a big gilded cage above my evil throne. Quite the pretty little ornament the would be savior makes, wouldn’t you agree~?

What? No, it IS a big cage. That’s- it’s the standard size for a knight’s cage I’m pretty sure. NO I’m not going to invest in 500 square feet of dungeon, it’s ONE knight! I’m pretty sure knights live in hovels in the wild anyways which is basically the same- Look, the cage is quite literally gilded. He loves the cage! He loves obediently preening in the cage! Yeah well, when you capture your own knight you can keep it in whatever size castle you want to, but this one’s mine. Especially since you’re so obviously jealous of me and my cute and awesome knight anyway.

chat reminder to just write whatever the fuck you want. write that overused trope. write that obscure shit that no one will have heard of. just. do it. your writing is yours stop depriving it of that.

The inherent homoeroticism of killing your enemy and immediately regretting it

newbie fic authors, shooting themselves in the foot: This fic is bad haha I suck at writing lol I am being mean to myself in the hopes that you will be nice to me but actually am dissuading anyone from even clicking on my fic because all I have done to advertise it is tell you why you shouldn't read it

me: I am King Big Dick of Fanfic Mountain and I have arrived in your fandom with the Express Intention of writing my Very Favorite Fics, which I will generously allow you to read. You're welcome.

This.

Top-Tier Villain Motivations

They will be safe. It doesn't matter who else or what else burns as long as They will be safe.

I will be safe. The hunger and the cold will never touch me again.

Fuck any bitch who's prettier(/cooler/better-liked/better at making dumplings) than me.

Yes, Master

Love me. Love me. Love me. Love me. LOVE ME!

I know the terrible things these so-called "heroes" will do if I don't stop them (<- is absolutely wrong)

I don't want a better future, I want a better past!

No other way to get performance art funded these days

Repeat after me:

The first draft just needs to exist

The second draft needs to be functional

The third draft needs to be effective

The first draft just needs to exist

The second draft needs to be functional

The third draft needs to be effective

The first draft just needs to exist

The second draft needs to be functional

The third draft needs to be effective

Remember, the second and third can't happen if you don't have something to work with. Your first draft will always be shit compared to your third, but at least it exists. The worst first draft is an unfinished one. The best first draft is a just completed one.

You read books/stories not in their first draft form-- only in their finished form (third, fourth, sometimes fifteenth draft). So stop comparing your first draft with a final one.

So, just write--you can make it better later. Perfectionism is the greatest weight a creator can carry.

There is an issue in this community with misstagged fics on AO3, specifically in the FxF tags. I don't know if it's going to reach the actual people or not but I'm still going to put this here:

A lot of MxM and FxM are tagging FxF ships in the main relationship category despite the ship itself only being written in the background.

Which is a problem because when you go into your ship tag to find fics of your ship, a ridiculous amount of them are off topic. And while yes you can lower that amount significantly by filtering and tag exclusion, AO3 has a built in feature that is made to avoid this.

I am going to use the Shadowzel tag for that because it's the most popular FxF ship on there and it's also one of the most misstagged rn. As of right now, there is 607 fics in the Shadowzel tag without filter. If you restrict the search to only include FxF, you are down to 397 fics. That is more than a third gone!

And it gets rid of some shadowzel content as well, so it's either you filter that out or you have to scroll through a tag where 1 out of 3 fics are about Astarion, Gale, Halsin, etc instead of the ship you looked up.

If your fic, let's take for example a Tav x Astarion, has either consistent mention of Shadowheart x Lae'zel, the most popular wlw ship, or has them in the background as support characters, or even just mentions them as a funny little wink and you want to make sure your readers know they are in here, you do not use the relationship tag! You go down to the additional tags and add "Minor Lae'zel/Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate)".

Unless the pairing you are tagging is the main focus or have a significant role and spotlight on them, you should not use the relationship tag! It clogs the feed for no reason, AO3 is not a website where you have to advertise your posts to the most tags possible.

Adding a visual for clarity:

Fanfic writers are like crows. If you give them treats (comments) they will bring you shiny things (fanfic)

I kind of suck at tagging, so I made this infographic to help make it easier.

devotion that corrupts is my favorite btw there's nothing wrong with it ever & it should be encouraged

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗 (apologies for sending chain letters but i'll be honest: i DO find myself wanting to know which of an author's works they're most excited about at any given moment.)

Ayeee thank you for the neat ask game! I do wonder too what's someone's favorite works and why! Everyone who sees this feel free o do it too cause imma send this along on anon <3

Summer Wine In Verdant Winters

The last longer fantasy AU I've written about Virgil running a tavern to hide from his traumatic past. Naturally it comes back to haunt him. It has a cottagecore setting with some high fantasy elements on top of the found family and I've salviated writing all the food descriptions

Damocles' Gambit

Admittedly, I'm cheating here a bit by linking the entire series. But this has arranged marriage turned found family with some delicious hurt/comfort where King Thomas gets to be the best dad we all wished we had

Burning Fireflies

It's the best Roceit I've ever written where Roman is the loyal knight going after the runaway thief Janus - I'm just a sucker for tales about loyality and the tragedy that comes with it when it's mistrusted

Noblesse Oblige

Stemming from my Bridgerton obsession I just had to make it gay. So then we have some fake dating turned real feelings Loceit with a little mystery twist for spice. I cried while writing it but it's also the most beautiful imagery I've managed to this day

A Tad(pole) Tied Up At The Moment

The first Baldur's Gate 3 fanfic I've ever written (and am currently writing) where Astarion gets whumped properly before he gets the comfort from Halsin he deserves

that post that’s like, fandom’s obsession with viewing characters as only relatable or shippable or defendable has ruined media literacy in being able to view characters through the lens of themes or narrative theory. character analysis one of my favourite forms of analysis but not at the detriment of being able to understand when a character represents something larger thematically in a story than what they would be if they were just a guy from your high school

Developing something called the "gloves and bathroom model of intimacy", which states that if you are doing something involving another person, gloves, and a bathroom, you have reached a new level of intimacy in your narrative

my favorite trope is when someone believes they’re hard to love and someone who loves them like it’s breathing.

editing is so fun. I'm learning what the story I wrote is about

Years and years ago, I read a book on cryptography that I picked up because it looked interesting--and it was!

But there was a side anecdote in there that stayed with me for more general purposes.

The author was describing a cryptography class that they had taken back in college where the professor was demonstrating the process of "reversibility", which is a principle that most codes depend on. Specifically, it should be easy to encode, and very hard to decode without the key--it is hard to reverse the process.

So he had an example code that he used for his class to demonstrate this, a variation on the Book Code, where the encoded text would be a series of phone numbers.

The key to the code was that phone books are sorted alphabetically, so you could encode the text easily--picking phone numbers from the appropriate alphabetical sections to use ahead of time would be easy. But since phone books were sorted alphabetically, not numerically, it would be nearly impossible to reverse the code without exhaustively searching the phone book for each string of numbers and seeing what name it was tied to.

Nowadays, defeating this would be child's play, given computerized databases, but back in the 80s and 90s, this would have been a good code... at least, until one of the students raised their hand and asked, "Why not just call the phone numbers and ask who lives there?"

The professor apparently was dumbfounded.

He had never considered that question. As a result, his cipher, which seemed to be nearly unbreakable to him, had such an obvious flaw, because he was the sort of person who could never coldcall someone to ask that sort of thing!

In the crypto book, the author went on to use this story as an example of why security systems should not be tested by the designer (because of course the security system is ready for everything they thought of, by definition), but for me, as a writer, it stuck with me for a different reason.

It's worth talking out your story plot with other people just to see if there's a "Why not just call the phone numbers?" obvious plot hole that you've missed, because of your singular perspective as a person. Especially if you're writing the sort of plot where you have people trying to outsmart each other.

Saw someone refer to their hyperfixation as their muse and it’s the best thing ever. No this is not due to a chemical imbalance in my brain I have been touched by the gods with divine inspiration

someone: hey I noticed this thing you did in your writing!

me, kicking my feet up flirtatiously: oh??? do you want to hear my thoughts on why I did that? do you want a play-by-play of the language choices in every related sentence? do you want an exhaustive breakdown of The Themes???

I think there's something that needs to be said about encouraging readers to leave feedback.

For me it's not about "tell me my writing is amazing and stroke my ego"

It's more about "please engage with me so that I can experience your joy secondhand and foster a connection with you"

I understand that not everyone wants this in their reading experience, some people are shy and a million other reasons why maybe someone wouldn't want to engage and that's perfectly fine!

But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.

On encouraging reblogs —

I understand that not everyone is comfortable reblogging, especially explicit content. This is ok!

But just consider that the only reason you were able to enjoy a fic or fanart is because someone else shared it, and by not sharing it yourself you are potentially robbing someone else of the opportunity to enjoy it as much as you did.

As OPs our reach only goes so far and this website relies on reblogs in order for anything to truly get seen by a wider audience.

So that's really it! That's why I encourage these two things at the end of every story I post. Not because I'm trying to be demanding and "make people feel bad" if they don't do it.

I know most other social media sites encourage mindless content consumption and that's just the way of the world nowadays, but I am from a time when community was at the heart of fandom and I just don't want to lose that.

I feel guilty wanting people to comment.I feel like if my work was good enough, they would :(

This is definitely a common feeling amongst authors, and I think part of it stems from our cultural view of artists/creators. 

We often hear writers say things like “I just had to write this” or “the characters were screaming at me” and that gives off the impression that writing is going to happen no matter what. Writers have to write. Artists have to draw. If creative people can’t let their creativity out, they go a bit nuts. 

The dissonant part of this is that, while creative people do have an innate drive for creation, they don’t have an innate drive to share that creativity. Needing to make something and needing to share it are two different things, serving two different purposes. Creating the work satisfies a part of you that has a story to tell or a vision to make real. Sharing that work is done in the hopes of satisfying a need for making a connection with people about that work. 

Wanting people to comment is a natural part of sharing your work with them, and nothing for you to feel guilty about. 

What readers don’t understand is that desire for a connection to them. For them, the connection is made by reading your work. From their perspective, you have made a connection. The problem is, from your perspective nothing has happened. You’ve posted your work and received nothing in response. It’s like walking up to someone with a big smile on your face and saying, “Hi! How’s it going?” and having them just stand there with no change in facial expression or body language, saying absolutely nothing. The connection only went one way. 

There are lots of reasons why people don’t comment on artistic works, and only 1 of them is not liking the work itself. 

You aren’t being needy, you’re being human.

AO3 Etiquette

It would seem a whole new kind of AO3 reader/writer is emerging and it is becoming clear not everyone quite understands how the website community works. Here is some basic guidance on how most people expect you to go about using AO3 to keep this a fun community archive that funtions correctly:

Kudos is for when the story was interesting enough to make you finish reading. If it sucked or was badly written, you probably left. If you finished - you kudos.

If you liked it, you should comment. It can be long and detailed or a literal keysmash. Writers don't care, we just love comments.

No critisism unless the author has specifically asked or agreed to hear it. Even constructive critisism is a no-no unless an author note tells you it's okay. Many people write as a fun hobby or a way to cope with, among other things, insecurity. Don't ruin that for them.

Do not comment to ask the author to write/update something else. It's tacky and off-putting and will probably have the opposite effect than the one you want.

There is no algorithm, it's an archive. Use the search and filter function to add/remove the pairings/characters/tropes etc. you want to read about and it will find you the fics that fit the bill.

For this to work, writers must tag and rate stories. This avoids readers finding the wrong things and missing the stuff they want. I don't care how cringy that trope is in your eyes - it gets tagged.

Character A/Character B means a ROMANTIC or SEXUAL relationship of some kind. Character A&Character B is PLANTONIC, like friendship or family.

Nothing is banned. This is an implicit rule because banning one thing is a slipperly slope to banning another and another, until nothing is allowed anymore. Do not expect anyone to censor for you. Because of the tags system, you are responsible for your own reading experience.

People can create new chapters and sequels/fic series any time after they "complete" a story. So it's considered perfectly normal to subscribe, even to a finished story. You can even subscribe to the author instead just to cover your bases.

Do not repost stories or change the publishing date without an extremely good reason (like a complete top to bottom rewrite). It's an archive, not social media. No one cares what's the most recent, only what fits their tag needs.

Avoid deleting a story you wrote if you hate it - orphan it so others can still enjoy it, without it being connected to you anymore.

This is a creative fanfiction archive. No essays on your insights or theories please. There are other places for that.

I KNOW there's plenty more I missed but I'm trying to cover most of the basics that people seem to be struggling with.

I invite anyone to add to this, but please explain, don't berate.

I keep seeing people making fun of using growled, hissed, roared, snarled etc in writing and it’s like.

have you never heard someone speak with the gravel in their voice when they get angry? Because that’s what a growl is.

Have you never heard someone sharply whisper something through the thin space of their teeth? Or when your mother sharply told you to stop it in public as a kid when you were acting up/being too loud? Because that’s what a hiss is.

Have you never heard a man get so blackout angry that their voice BOOMS through the house? Because that’s what a roar is.

Have you never seen someone bare their teeth while talking to accentuate their frustration or anger while speaking with a vicious tone? Because that’s what snarling is.

It’s not meant to be a literal animal noise. For the love of god, not every description is literal. I get some people are genuinely confused, but also some of these people are genuinely unimaginative as fuck.

Hey y'all why are writers always cold?

Aaaaaahhhhh!!!! Ahhhh?? AAAAAAHHH!!!

More coherent thoughts under the cut cause DAMN

I already told you but you will hear it again: your art looks excatly like a high fantasy trilogy feels like. It got those adventure where you find friendship along the way vibes and I'm digging them so so hard.

This is so much amazing art and you even colored some pieces like ??? How did i deserve you. You captured the feel lf the story and the personality of the characters perfectly like look at that variety. Virgil ks big and strong but still looks so huggable, no idea how you managed it. Remus has the perfect amount of mishief and Janus is small and angry and just !!!! I'll cherish them forever. Thank you so so much

Also side note: that is one sexy tree and i'm not growing tired of repeating and you drew the best round chicken and for that alone you can have a kidney if you ever need one

It’s TSS Story Time!

Thanks to @the-princey-pie for sharing this beautiful story that I got to create art for. It’s been amazing fun.

You can read Summer Wine In Verdant Winters right here! Please go check it out!

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Big Bang Announcement!

Here's the promised fantasy hurt/comfort with Virgil and his found family. It's my big bang for the year from @tss-storytime with art from t

(More art under here, but be warned some pieces might show spoilers.)

Weiterlesen

Big Bang Announcement!

Here's the promised fantasy hurt/comfort with Virgil and his found family. It's my big bang for the year from @tss-storytime with art from the amazing @pizza-box-raccoon here!

New Fic Announcement!

Healing isn’t linear and Virgil is getting a taste of that hehe. Aka some trauma reveal with hurt/comfort and family bonding

New Fic Announcement!

I finished some family fluff with Logan and Virgil having fun together, set in the Damocle's Universe: