Simple title for what is effectively going to be one of my rambly entries, there is an image at the end of this so if that's all you're interested in it's in the spoiler.

Anyway pertaining the title of this entry, a simple three letters but ones that I feel are being ignored in modern entertainment in favour of pushing a batshit insane agenda. It's time for a bit of story time. Recently I read a book by an author called Nicholas Eames (and by recently I mean some time two years ago) called Kings of the Wyld and I greatly enjoyed reading this book, why you may ask? Well it's because it was fun, the characters were fun and the story was nothing grandiose it was just a fun adventure story in what feels like the aftermath of the author's DnD campaign and it's clear the author only wanted to write a fun, engaging story. It has a core of running jokes that are utilised with perfection and don't outstay their welcome either. Why have I brought up this book you've probably never heard of? Because I'm an aspiring writer and whatever I write I hope is as fun as Kings of the Wyld because again it feels to me that modern entertainment is just there to shove political messages down our throats when sometimes we just want to see a giant monkey fighting a giant nuclear lizard before teaming up to fight a giant mechanical nuclear lizard not caring what pronouns the monkey wants us to use or what the giant lizard wants to fuck. Then there's the strong woman, back when I was younger the quintessential strong woman was Xena and while my memory may be fuzzy of that show I do remember it being a fun show and Xena was a believable strong female character where she had weaknesses she had to overcome and in general was a very likeable character whereas nowadays your "strong" female character is a mary sue with the personality of a dog turd that's been out in the sun too long in fact in video games, comics and animation your "strong" woman ends up just being a man and again it's something I'm trying to avoid within my own writing (maybe not my earlier stuff, but that was almost always supposed to be comedic in nature) because it is sexist in nature, just not in the way most people would think.

All of the above is why Japan is slaughtering the West in terms of entertainment, I was reading Chainsaw Man and I found I couldn't put it down not because the story telling was amazing but because the story itself was just that fun, the main character is a psychopath and he revels in it. But it's not just Chainsaw Man, you've got other manga that are currently outselling the American comics market or anime which is doing better than Western animation or even Japanese video games which are providing the gamers what they want and not lecturing them. FFXIV has had a massive spike in new players, partly down to what's currently going on at Blizzard but partly because Blizzard ran WoW into the ground and Yoshi P, the lead producer of FFXIV actually cares about his game and actually cares about telling a good story. This has led to the psychopaths in the West (you know the ones) trying to infect Japan and thankfully Japan has told them where to shove it pretty much.

So why the rambly ranting paragraphs? Well as I mentioned I'm an aspiring writer and what I'm currently writing is a passion project for lack of a better phrase, I can't guarantee it'll be good but I am trying to avoid falling into the pitfalls I see Western stuff falling into. My characters are powerful yes and in the first 4 chapters it shows how powerful they are but I've tried to avoid them seeming like mary sues, I do have a female lead character who is more powerful than the male lead but she is still held back by her biology no matter how much magical bullshit exists in the world. But most importantly I wanted these two characters to just be fun, I just want he story to be a fun adventure story no save the world bullshit just a dude and his friend going to get a magical macguffin because it's magical and macguffin-y with what I hope is witty banter and decent jokes. Hell if I feel like it I might upload a preview (most likely the first 4 chapters) to here so you can all read it and give feedback.