Carnival Of The D.A.M.N.E.D

  The Origins of Barric the Barbarian When people hear the words barbarian and fantasy , they tend to imagine the same character. Towering muscles. A gigantic axe. Very little conversation. And, if we’re being honest, not an enormous amount of thinking. I wondered what would happen if I kept the muscles… …but changed almost everything else. The First Thing I Knew About Barric Before I knew what Barric looked like, I knew what he was doing. He wasn’t fighting. He was reading. The image made me laugh. A mountain of a man quietly absorbed in a book while everyone around him prepared for battle. The axe could wait. He hadn’t finished the chapter. From that moment, Barric’s personality almost wrote itself. Strength Doesn’t Have to Be Loud Fantasy often equates strength with aggression. I’ve never believed that. The strongest people I’ve known have usually been the calmest. They don’t need to prove themselves. Barric became an exploration of t...

The Problem With Chosen Ones Fantasy has a long-standing fascination with chosen ones. The farm boy destined to save the world. The orphan with mysterious powers. The child marked by prophecy before they could even walk. They’re everywhere. And for good reason. A chosen one immediately gives a story purpose. Readers understand the stakes from the opening chapter because somebody, somewhere, has already declared that this particular hero is important. But there’s a small problem. Real people don’t receive prophecies. The Weight of Destiny The chosen one trope can produce some of fantasy’s greatest stories. From The Wheel of Time to Harry Potter , watching an ordinary person struggle beneath extraordinary expectations can be compelling. The best stories aren’t about the prophecy. They’re about the person trying to live with it. Destiny is easy. Living up to it is considerably harder. When Prophecy Becomes a Shortcut Sometimes, however, prophecy does t...