Tale Foundry

In our longer Dune video, we had to leave out a lot of content for time’s sake. There were a lot of painful cuts, but perhaps the most painful of all was leaving out our thoughts on the setting. Dune happily rides the line between science fiction and fantasy in a way I’ve never seen before. So, I want to take an opportunity to gush. How does a story so obviously science-fictional still manage to feel so magical?

People have been asking us to make a video about Dune for ages, and for the longest time I really couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. It just seemed like another pseudo-space-opera on another dusty planet with people in the future using swords for some dumb reason. But now that I’ve read it? I can see why people love this story. And it’s a shame they don’t explain it when they talk about it. So let me tell you the version of the story that I love so much, without all the crazy, distracting bells and whistles.

Listen. Not every fantasy book you read is going to be Tolkien or Sanderson. Some of them have things like parents who are still alive and magic that doesn’t crackle with actinic light. Some of them might not have magic at all. And stranger than all of these, some may have very real, very visceral things like sex in them. Imajica is one such book. In fact, it’s a weird fantasy book in a lot of ways. But the weirdest of them all is how deeply and how directly it cuts into the heart of what it means to have a healthy relationship with your own creativity. Sex is just one form of magic is uses to explore that. So although we may not be talking explicitly about all the explicit stuff in this video, I still recommend you buckle up. Imajica is not like other fantasy stories. Not even a little.

We TRIED to do a video about Imajica, but this is an 800+ page book with a new worldbuilding surprise every few pages. So, there were some casualties for the final cut of the video. Luckily, we have Nebula! So, let’s talk about the weirdness that is IMAJICA.

Magic systems look pretty spectacular at the best of times, but it isn’t always that way. Sometimes the best magic comes from the simplest sources. Sometimes something as a small as a promise can change the very fabric of reality, if we, the writers, let it.

This story is as much about you as the characters within. It is a journey through all the aspects of your identity, but writ large, on a cosmic scale. It is the Tree of Life and the map of your own life, all in one. Welcome to the Angelarium.

No matter how deep the dogma goes, how articulate the scripture, at some point, someone always has to imagine. Interpretation has to be done, even for the highest on high of the divine. And the interpretations of the angels over the ages are particularly interesting. Especially… these ones.

I think we all have a tendency to idealize childhood. Children are meant to have fun. They should be happy and free and unburdened. That’s how they’re supposed to be. But it’s not really like that, is it? Being a child is hard. And Neil Gaiman’s heartbreaking book, The Ocean at The End of The Lane, reminds us.

This may come as a surprise to a lot of you, but it just seems like the natural direction for the channel from here. People have been saying the content gives them ASMR for years, so we thought it was about time we leaned into that! Enjoy the tingles!

There’s a strange kind of magic in human art and artifice, and I mean that literally. It shows up throughout fiction, but in even stranger places than that too. Let’s soak some of those ideas up and see what we can do with them in our own stories!

Life itself is a kind of magic. I think we can all agree to that. So what happens when it becomes a crafting material as well? What kind of magic can you build when animation and sentience are in the mix? History and fiction both have a lot of very interesting answers to this question…

There’s a monster lurking behind some of the myths and stories you’ve been seeing all your life. A monster hungrier and more dangerous than you’d ever have guessed.

The Princess Bride is one of the most beloved movies of all time. I don’t think that’s disputable. And yet, for some reason, most people still haven’t read the book. Which is a shame, because it drills into the heart of the story in a way most people will miss. Sure, the movie still has the top-notch jokes, the insanely-quotable dialogue, the timeless action… but it misses part of what lies just underneath the surface: the romance. The movie is secretly a loveletter to unabashed, unashamed romantics everywhere, and the book says that in ways I’ve never anywhere else. And you, casual viewer who has likely not read the book, deserve to see it too.

Animorphs, Redwall, Watership Down and the rest have a certain unfortunate reputation: they’re like modern animal fables. They’re cute. For kids. But I think stories about things that AREN’T human sometimes have even more to say about your humanity than the Hemingways and Falkners of the world. Xenofiction is not just a children’s genre, and we want to show you why!

What can you learn from a story about a few rabbits, looking for a new home? Far more than you think.

You can spend a lifetime searching for your purpose, but how do you know when you’ve found it? How do you know what you’ve found truly IS your purpose? Unsurprisingly, we find our answer… in a book.

There’s a reason little people and wee folks have shown up throughout world mythology and fiction. Small though they may be, they have a strength that you do not. Better listen to what they have to say.

All adventures start in the home, but then we just kind of forget about it as a setting. Which is a shame, because the home is one of the most interesting and animated settings we have to offer as writers. Maybe you just need a shift in perspective to see it.

There’s a world of characters all around you that you probably rarely think about. Which is honestly reasonable, because they aren’t really people, are they? Let’s talk a bit about personification, projection, and what we can learn about our own world from Patrick Rothfuss’s book The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

Villains are always making deals and contracts, which half the time don’t even make sense. Even when they have the power to get what they want, for some reason they just can’t resist trying to get the hero to put their X on the line… But it seems like there’s actually a pretty good reason why.

We all love our Jack Sparrows, our Furiosas, and our Gandalfs. But don’t you ever just feel the need for something… simpler? A little more vulnerable? A little less… like a character? If you do, this video could give you the remedy.

We all know that classic children’s stories tend to have some darkness in their past, but there’s something even darker going on with children’s stories that, beneath the glossy, plastic veneer, has become sort of hard to see…

It’s always a scary moment when the movie’s monster is finally revealed, but you know what’s even scarier? When it hides from you in plain sight. When the ones you know and love lie to you to keep you from it. The horror of deception can be worse than any slasher or beast, and there are a lot of great stories out there that prove it.

Junji Ito has become one of the most beloved horror artists of this generation, perhaps of all time. But where does his strange brand of dissonance come from? How does he create stories that are both beautifully disturbing… and kind of goofy? Let’s take a peek into the world of Junji Ito.

The Enigma of Amigara Faults is perhaps Junji Ito’s best-known story, but also one of the hardest to understand. For such a simple story, it’s got a shocking amount of depth.

There’s a feeling you get when you stand in the shadow of a creature so much larger than you, it hardly knows you exist. A complex feeling. Something deep enough to change your entire outlook on the world. Which, unsurprisingly, makes it quiet good for Worldbuilding, too. Let’s talk about it!

There are certain things human beings don't even have the capacity to imagine, let alone render artistically. And yet... they still try. This is our attempt at trying to understand why. Turns out, you don't have to look much further than H.P. Lovecraft to find a reasonable answer.

You've probably heard of the Sandman, but not many people have heard the original fairytale. The one where the Sandman comes and steals children's eyes from their bloody sockets to feed to his strange moon-babies; where a man falls in love with a very convincing machine. It is a strange and shockingly dark tale. Buckle up. This isn't the Sandman you know.

We've all seen slashers and demons and Lovecraftian tentacle monsters. But Clive Barker is one of the greatest imaginers of our time, and he has some miracles of horror to show us yet. This story will bring you face to face with something you never thought you'd see, and question you may have forgotten to ask. Let's discuss In The Hills, The Cities, by Clive Barker.

Clive Barker is one of the biggest names in horror. When you look at his work, with all its body horror and strange sexuality, it’s easy to imagine a dark, sinister, fang-y creature behind the text. In person, he’s nothing like that at all. But that separation of author and artist is one of the most important secrets behind his work; how he makes the pages “bleed” for him. Let’s take a look into the surprisingly pleasant world of Clive Barker.

Some things are simply beyond description. Not ink, not paint, nor spoken words can capture their entire beauty... but that doesn't mean they're beyond imagination. Let's look at some of the legends of China, and the interesting light they shine on this concept of beauty that is beyond description.

Heroes do not always look heroic. In fact, some of the greatest heroes of all are the most burdened, the most troubled, the weakest. Few other pieces of media embrace this idea as well as Dark Souls and the other Fromsoft games, which make death a feature, not a bug.

As an artist, it’s easy to want to help your audience understand your work, give them the tools they need to become invested in it. But sometimes the closest connection someone can feel with your work actually comes from the challenge of understanding it in their own way. No one understands this better than the creator of Dark Souls, Hidetaka Miyazaki. Let’s take a peek into his world.

Some things simply cannot be said... but that's kind of our job as writers, write? To use words to say the things which cannot be said? Of course, there are boundaries, even for the best of us. Some things are literally IMPOSSIBLE to write... But that doesn't mean we won't try. So here are 10 tricks to help you look the ineffable in the eye... and eff it.

Have you ever wondered why there are so many edgy, dark re-tellings of classic fairytales? Why people always seem to want to take them in that direction? Me too. So, this time, we're looking at how fairytales so easily seem to slip out for the territory of Grimm... and into the territory of Grimdark.

If you could cheat death... wouldn't you? If there were some magic to keep the reaper away, steal back your loved ones from the underworld, you'd almost certainly use it... But why, then, does it always turn out to be such a bad idea in fiction?

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most-beloved, most-adapted characters in all of fiction... but that doesn't mean people really know that much about him. In fact, the mystery of who Sherlock Holmes really is runs SO deep... it might even change the way you think about writing your OWN characters.

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most beloved characters of all time… but everything about him—all his exploits, adventures, mannerisms, traits, quirks, abilities—are far more real than you might expect. In fact, they belong to his author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who has an important lesson to teach anyone who wants to write fiction.

If you aren't reading fantasy and fairytales, there's one key ingredient your life may just be missing: sweet, sweet whimsy. Here's your opportunity to get a taste.