Kit Sun Cheah: Back Saga of the Swordbreaker now! Profile picture
Hugo- and Dragon-nominated SFF writer Back SAGA OF THE SWORDBREAKER: INVINCIBLE UNDER HEAVEN on IndieGoGo here: https://t.co/qb6mO4KuAV
fche Profile picture 1 subscribed
Mar 21 13 tweets 2 min read
This represents Singapore's highest-profile break from Israel in recent times.

Or does it?

Let's talk about what might be going on behind the scenes: 1. Singapore is attempting to improve ties with Malaysia

The most obvious sign of this is the introduction of automated passport scanning and QR code entry at the border checkpoints.

Malaysia remains a favoured destination for Singaporeans, and vice versa.
Mar 16 10 tweets 2 min read
This observation reminds me of what was so striking about David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers (written post-Vietnam).

The Slammers field the most technologically advanced forces in the setting.

But their true advantage lies in the men. Even though the Slammers have the best hardware, their opponents have good-enough tech to counter the Slammers’ own.

The Slammers can’t simply steamroll over their enemies.
Feb 11 11 tweets 2 min read
East Asian countries have some of the highest suicide rates in the world.

Mental illness is prevalent in South Asia.

Modern-day Korea is called Hell Joseon.

How did we get to this point? In Confucian cultures, the individual is subordinated to the group, the junior obeys the senior.

Sure, the relationship is supposed to be reciprocal, but beyond moral suasion there is no in-built mechanism to achieve this.
Nov 30, 2023 20 tweets 4 min read
Many people have no idea of just how wide the gulf is between a man and in a woman in hand to hand combat.

Here's my own story, of when I trained with a female martial artist. At that time, I'd trained in Pekiti Tirsia Kali for little over a year.

Unbeknownst to me, at that time I was underweight and anemic.

My vitality was low, my stamina was shot, my immune system was weak, I wasn't sleeping well.

I showed up for training anyway.
Sep 16, 2023 14 tweets 3 min read
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud.

But in the case of indies, it's probably closer to 99.99%.

Part of this is because there are no publishers to filter out the worst of the lowest-quality crud.

But beyond that...

The market incentivises crud. Algorithms, search engines, and Kindle Unlimited are engineered to optimise returns for specific kinds of content:

Rapidly-written stories that slot neatly into arbitrarily-defined genres and can be rapidly consumed.

What's wrong with that?

Well, how do you write such stories?
May 29, 2023 14 tweets 3 min read
Yesterday my wife and I visited a certain high-end restaurant/bar in the Downtown Core.

It was supposed to be a pit stop for coffee.

It became an illustration of Singlish vs English... and what schools don't teach you about language. Singlish uses the vocabulary of English; the grammar, pronunciation and high context orientation of Chinese; and loanwords from Malay, Tamil, and other langauges and dialects.

It is close enough to English to fool you into thinking that it operates by the logic of English.
Nov 1, 2022 30 tweets 6 min read
#NaNoWriMo is here again.

50,000 words in 30 days.

Impossible?

There was a time when I would have thought so too.

Now, after a 5-year publishing career with 16 published novels, writing 50K words in 30 days is routine.

Here's the secret to massive output: Don't focus on writing more.

Focus on eliminating obstacles to writing.

With nothing to hinder you, your productivity will ramp up dramatically.
Oct 31, 2022 14 tweets 3 min read
Whoever said that you should write the way you talk has never been to Singapore. Over here, the word 'straight' means 'upright', 'lying down', 'horizontal', 'vertical', 'diagonal', 'taut', 'flush', 'direct', and even, on the rarest and most exalted of occasions, 'straight'.
Jul 26, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Singaporeans are not 'overly-worried'.

They trust the government.

And they also trust that Bad Things happen to everyone who disagrees with the government.

They don't dare to think about anything outside the narrative. Lockdowns.

Mask mandates.

Vaccine mandates.

Censorship.

Legalised discrimination against the unvaccinated.

All this was justified in the name of Covid, and almost everyone went along wholeheartedly.
Jun 21, 2022 26 tweets 4 min read
Singapore is safe.

Which means Singapore is boring.

Singapore is a poor setting for most pulp-style stories.

Save for one genre:

Horror.

/1 To understand why, let's look at history.

The region we now called Singapore was originally settled by the Malays.

Prior to Islam and Hinduism, the Malays practiced a folk religion combining animism and shamanism.

These practices still survive today.

/2
Jun 12, 2022 21 tweets 4 min read
Question like this deserves its own thread.

On matters of rulership and power, this is the fundamental difference between the West and China.

In the West, power corrupts.

In China, morality leads to, and justifies, power.

/1 The lesser man is governed by superior men.

The superior man governs himself.

The superior man attains his rarefied state by virtue of proper conduct, creating inner peace and social harmony.

How does one choose the superior man?

/2
May 1, 2022 24 tweets 4 min read
I don't think about fantasy the way most people do.

Lots of readers think in terms of tropes, genre conventions, aesthetics.

I think in terms of culture.

/1


#PulpRev What is a Western fantasy?

Mythical creatures. Wondrous magic. Legendary weapons. Exotic locations. Perilous journeys. Grand quests.

/2
Apr 15, 2022 31 tweets 5 min read
To illustrate this, here's a story I encountered yesterday.

It's a 'paranormal thriller' written by a woman.

It's about an undercover Special Operations team hunting monsters in a South American city.

This should be up my alley.

Or so I thought...

/1 The story begins with the FMC—the newbie on the team—and her three male teammates discussing how to take down their target.

Right off the bat, FMC calls the team leader 'sir'.

There and then, I knew the story wasn't what I thought it was.

/2
Apr 12, 2022 12 tweets 2 min read
I've seen this in 'cultivation fantasy' stories and related subgenres.

There is nothing beyond the steady dopamine drip, a shallow puddle of transient pleasures and illusionary glories.

/1 They cherry pick Asian cultures, taking the exotic (but not too exotic) elements and leaving out everything that makes them unique.

Their worlds demand immersion in the world of Pop Cult consoomerism.

Their characters chase empty glories to attain fleeting pleasure.

/2
Dec 16, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read
The standard writing advice for the aspiring professional is to write to market.

Identify a hot genre. Understand the tropes. Place your own spin on the tropes and craft a compelling tale.

A time honoured strategy. But what if you disagree with the tropes?

/1


#PulpRev #Cultivation, xianxia, whatever you call it, the tropes are familiar.

MC seeks to become invincible. He engages in an endless cycle of violence, bloodshed, revenge and growth. In the end, he reigns supreme.

The story structure may be compelling, but it's not cultivation.

/2
Aug 31, 2021 9 tweets 2 min read
In my youth, I read about the fall of Saigon, Operation Eagle Claw, the Berlin Airlift, Dunkirk.

In the last week I have seen them all wrapped up in a single word: Kabul. Hundreds of Americans left behind.

Thousands of terrorists freed from jail.

Countless numbers of Afghan allies stranded.

Billions of dollars of American hardware abandoned.

And private individuals blocked from assisting the evacuation efforts.
Mar 5, 2021 14 tweets 3 min read
66% of consumers buy into belief.

78% of liberals expect brands to take a stand, but only 52% of conservatives do.

82% of liberals believe brands are credible when taking stands, but only 46% of conservatives do.

The logic of capitalism entices corporations to go woke.

/1
Polarisation is a high-risk high-reward marketing strategy.

By taking a stand, a company signals its values.

It turns off customers who aren't aligned with the values it signals, and makes fans out of customers whose values are aligned with the company's.

/2
Feb 12, 2021 13 tweets 2 min read
Right-wing media moan about how the Left has captured arts and culture.

The same media then refuse to give publicity to Right-wing artists.

This shows us that:

They don’t care about culture.

They’d rather complain and concede.

They are setting up their own grift.

/1
I’ve been a reader since the 1990s.

I started with thrillers.

Even today, the genre is a bastion for conservatives and right-wingers of all kinds.

You have to work to find a self-declared leftist / liberal / progressive in this genre.

/2
Feb 10, 2021 5 tweets 1 min read
If you're at risk of being cancelled, having multiple income streams is not a luxury.

It is mandatory. At least one of those income streams must be:

* Disconnected from your public profile
* Not reliant on political trends
* Highly secure
* Independent of new clients, acquaintances, and people you cannot trust
* Difficult / impossible for law enforcement to shut down
Nov 17, 2020 10 tweets 2 min read
The business of entertainment is too important to be left to megacorps, pedophiles, and small-souled bugmen who delight only in forcing their ideas on others and demanding them to pay for the privilege.

/1
Every work of art, no matter how great or minor, builds upon the culture.

It is a conversation with the past, and sows the seeds for the future.

From culture springs the values and worldview that influence how you think, feel, perceive, act.

/2
Nov 15, 2020 16 tweets 3 min read
English language bookstores have a 'Self-Improvement' or an 'Inspirational' section.

The Chinese language section in my local bookstore instead uses to therm 修养励志.

A literal translation is 'self-improvement' and
'inspirational'.

But there's a deeper meaning here.

/1 Image 修养 is translated as 'self-improvement'.

But it also means self-cultivation.

In the sense of cultivating crops.

A term that at once hints at the deep role agriculture played in the development of China, AND the Chinese approach to self-improvement.

/2