#pmth

Congrats on making it this far in your medical journey! Always great to hear that I'm riding "shoulder-devil" for an old PMTH co-worker, LOL.

Blog is still up. Laptop with over 500 House MD gifs crashed a few years ago, which was a devastating blow for the easily-amused internet-perusing medical community.

As you know from your own experience, the stories keep coming - you can't see patients without encountering bemusement, horror and outright hilarity. But I'll admit, the multi-factor trauma of the Covid pandemic, as experienced within the US health care system, really muted my "joyous-snark" perspective on medicine. Like, I still enjoy being a physician - but I'm no longer enthusiastic about encouraging high school/pre-med students to pursue medical careers in the US health care system. Because the system, it sucketh the life out of ye.

Which sucketh. Because Dr. Cranquis, despite wearing a cranky internet persona, is IRL stil a doc who loves making patients feel at ease and keeping his colleagues chuckling. I still see things happen at work and think "THIS would make a great True Story Kiddos! post" -- and then I get home and leave every memory of work behind me... ANYWAYS - don't know how I wandered down that avenue in this reply. Just haven't replied to a Cranquis-Mail (tm) in a while, I guess, and caught an acute case of the feels once again.

You whose strikes and voices match a hundred: seize Heaven's thunderclaps, and rob the moon a bit of its splendor in a Tactics RPG of Drama and Martial Arts set in The Sword Isles!

“You have been a shield to me, Masuna.” Bakong stepped back. “You have been a shield to me for as long as you were with me. You were never a sword to me, Masuna.”

Book 1 of my SEAsian martial arts fantasy web epic PRINCESS MURDERS THE HERO is finally done!

Chapter 30: https://princessmurdersthehero.com/2023/03/17/1-30/

A work of 2 years in the making, it's not very long! Just over 100k words. Book 2, which I'm outlining right now, is bound to be a bit more sprawling than this.

A lot of Book 1 is setup, but I think I've done a satisfactory job of getting all the characters situated and determined: the three major characters: the WARRIOR, the PRINCESS, and the HERO, representing Violence, Royalty, and Compassion, the three spokes of Glory. There's actually two more spokes to Glory: Wisdom, represented by the WITCH, and Community, represented by the WARLORD. you'll get to see them in Book 2!

"Remember, do not forget your meals, and unclench your jaws when you sleep. You grind your teeth any more and they might turn to dust. And what is my little moondrop without his teeth?"

WHEN THE MOON GOES HUNTING is the interlude before book 2 of PRINCESS MURDERS THE HERO!

Art above is by@multocatcat!

PRINCESS MURDERS THE HERO is an ongoing web epic martial arts fantasy with a setting best described as "hyper-mythic Southeast Asia!" Book 1 just finished so now is the best time to catch up!

when i wrote PRINCESS MURDERS THE HERO i was deeply entrenched in the kdrama 'nevertheless' (which i never finished bc i didnt like the way it was going lmao) i knew it would influence the writing of the serial. lots of "i want to say this but i can't/won't right now" and it makes things worse

i explicitly wanted to write in a "non-western" way, hewing closer to traditions here than over there. instead of talk things out (which they sometimes do), very often the only way the characters here can actually talk is during violence, or through violence

there's a love of repetition (a feature of philippine epics), very nebulous names and sudden large descriptions of detailed clothing (from ph epics again). everyone is fucking out of their minds in a hyper reality (a feature of melodramatic dramas)

PMTH doesn't try to create "real life characters", it tries to shoot for "believable at first, but then larger than life eventually". there's an expression here in tagalog: "wow parang kdrama" whenever something that would never happen irl happens

it's alive we're alive boys

batumingaw is so mean too. he's a goth girl