The World of Godshards and Other Things

My piece of the internet in this age of chaos. I love talking about my books. I write high epic fantasy, it's called the Godshards series. You'll find I'll never shut up about it. I also have a lot to say about the state of booktok, the state of fantasy as well as several other things. I'm loud, opinionated and passionate. You can find my other socials here: https://linktr.ee/petercap

[petercapwrites]

Who I Am

I'm terrible at these things but here we go. My name is Peter Capozzi, you can call me PeterCap.

I am a writer and film maker. A proud Italian American based in Upstate, New York. I have autism and not ashamed of it. Cause I've made short films and I've published novels and I have much more in store! I'm a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Warhammer, to name a few. I'm also a big fan of history, particular Medieval and Ancient history, and it's had a big impact in my work.

My pride and joy right now is the Godshards series. It is a high epic fantasy that is basically Warhammer meets The Witcher, with shades of Lord of the Rings for good measure. You'll find I'll never shut up about it, for good or for ill. Lowkey struggling to find readers for it. It's free on Royal Road and a buck on Kindle. I've attached the covers of my books to this post.

You can find links to it here: https://linktr.ee/petercap

I'm a frustrated person, I won't hide it. I'm frustrated with many things in the world. I'm particularly frustrated with the state of the author space, especially on booktok. With garbage, offensive books becoming bestsellers and the looming threat of AI, I have a lot to say.

I also have an analog horror project about cryptids. It's basically Lost Tapes meets Monument Mythos: https://www.youtube.com/@TheNonEvolutionaryArchive

As you can see, I'm always busy working on something. It's been a large part of what keeps me going. I want to live, I want to create stories and worlds that people get lost in. I want to inspire others with hope, like how other peoples stories inspire me.

[petercapwrites]

Aster is a privileged little liar part 2

Didn't mean for this to have a part 2, but check out this typo! This is from Starside, not Lightlark.

As if the allegations of Starside being repurposed fanfiction weren't enough, here she straight up forgot to change the term!

How did the editors miss this!? Harper Collins what are you doing!?

This is the smoking gun for my earlier post. I said there was no way Starside was an idea Aster had in mind for ten years and this kinda proves that.

Cause how else could a mistake like this happen if the idea for this book predates Lightlark!? IT DOESN'T ADD UP!

[petercapwrites]

Alex Aster is a privileged little liar.

Really finding myself annoyed at Alex Aster right now.

From what I've seen Starside just might be her worst book yet. It's like she took Lightlark, Blood of Hercules and Quicksilver and put em in a blender.

But even worse than the book, is the narrative Aster has tried to fabricate for herself. She says she was working on Starside for 10 years. I thinks she's either lying or heavily exaggerating it to the point of misrepresenting what happened. I don't believe a single word

She makes it sound like she's this rags to riches writer, overwhelmed by the hustle.

I straight up don't believe her.

She comes from a rich family, her twin sister in particular is rich and connected. Alex Aster has NEVER been a rags to riches author. She's nothing more than a trust fund girlie who was looking for a way to become famous.

I'm aware she says she doesn't use her family's wealth. My answer is: receipts or I don't believe you. Like it makes no logical or practical sense to not leverage your wealth here! At the very least, her twin sister could bail her out if things go south. WHICH STILL DISQUALIFIES HER FROM BEING RAGS TO RICHES.

Having a wealthy family to fall back on is as privileged as it gets! She has no real passion for writing. She only got into the game cause she wanted to be famous and wanted to make even more money. After trying several things and failing, she saw a market that would be easy to exploit and get into.

Most romantasy readers are uncritical, horny and easy to please. Hell the books in this genre literally list their overdone tropes, they literally do the market research themselves! It's not surprising someone like Aster saw the dollar signs, and she was right.

She says she gets up really early an spends entire days writing. Once more I don't believe her. Even considering her output, the numbers don't add up.

For context, I've written several books. They're were mostly written in my free time, so like 2-3 hours tops, maybe more on my days off. Even with that limited amount of time, I still got a 55K draft written in a month, and a 100K book in a couple. If I could write that much that quickly in my free time, how tf is it taking her so long to write these books full time?

I know everyone has a different process and a different speed, but considering the hustler persona Aster tries to cultivate, I don't believe she's a slow writer.

No, I believe she's exaggerating things here too.

It just grinds my gears, cause she's just constantly releasing these crap books and they usually do better than thousands of real indie authors like myself. It makes my blood boil.

If she is genuinely overwhelmed, than of course I hope she remedies that before she gets hurt. I'm not heartless. But at the same time, she has no one to blame but herself. Cause no one told to do this, no one told her to write a book, secure a publishing deal, etc.

It's always been her choice.

[petercapwrites]

Time for yet more Lightlark mockery, except now let's mock Starside too!

The guy on the left is from Starside. The guy on the right is Grim from Lightlark.

If you hadn't heard of either series, would you believe they were different characters?

Starside is such a shameless project. Lightlark is already a pathetic, uninspired, unoriginal series. But Starside feels like a rip-off of Lightlark! Yeah the FMC has different hair and both main characters have different armor. But that's not fucking good enough!

Look at these two, it's the same exact face! Same eyes, same nose, same ears, same jaw. Both are bulky. The only differences are Starside guy has slightly thicker eyebrows and his hair is like 2-3 inches shorter!

Absolutely shameless. (No shade to Kali, she's probably just doing what Aster says.) Even the name Starside sounds like a book in the Lightlark series.

I can't tell anyone what to do, but Lightlark already didn't deserve its success. Let's ensure Starside doesn't succeed. I want this book to fail, Aster shouldn't be rewarded for this.

If this book does somehow succeed, then the romantasy reader base is even dumber than I already thought they are.

[petercapwrites]

A distressingly high amount of people seem to think that implications only exist if you acknowledge them.

And it's turned online debate and discourse into this weird game of chicken, where both people have shitty takes and know on some level that's the case.

So you just have two radicalized, amoral pricks, pretending they're nicer, better people than they are, simultaneously gaslighting the other.

[petercapwrites]

Time for some Lightlark mockery this evening! While Kali does often elevate the stupid and uninspired characters of this series with her art, Isla repeatedly looks terrible. (I blame Aster, not Kali)

And this is by far the worst expression she's ever had.

BY FAR.

She's supposed to be eating a piece of chocolate, why does it look so fucking sexualized!? For a genre that's women focused, this is very male gazy, like she wants to do to Grim's lower head what's she's doing to that chocolate.

It's creepy, it's fake looking, it's terrible.

Also why is her nose so unnaturally small?

Apparently you can get this art as a blanket? Why in the flying fucking roller skates would you get any art from this series as a blanket!? And with this, if I went to a person's place and they had this as a blanket, I'd book it.

I still maintain the fact that Lightlark isn't as bad as Blood of Hercules, but that doesn't mean it isn't fucking terrible too.

[the-modern-typewriter]

I think my biggest pet peeve with a lot of romance novels at the moment (I could be totally wrong, but especially in enemies to lovers) is the generic-ness.

I know this is rich coming from someone who spends a lot of time writing characters who don't even have names. But...

It feels like a lot of people smush in popular tropes likes 'Who hurt you" and "only one bed" and "don't touch them" regardless of it actually fits the characters or not. All the bad boys are bad in exactly the same way. All the girls are designed to have just enough personality that you can project on them.

Would they actually react in that way? Would they actually say it like that? Do they actually care about sharing a bed based on their backstory? This isn't a criticism of these tropes, I love them too, but when every romance at the moment has these exact same beats they kind of lose power. (For me, anyway). Because it stops being their love story.

Maybe it's because I'm ace/probably aro, but I just find it so frustrating compared to the more complex specific romances we could have. The ones where it feels like the author has actually thought about their specific characters, and why they might fall in love with each other, and what that means for their desires. They're not in love because it's a romance and that means they must be in love by the end of the book.

My absolute favourite love stories could never have the serial numbers filed off, you know? It could only be them. That's what makes it compelling. That's what makes me obsessed with them.

I don't know.

Anyone else get this?

[the-modern-typewriter]

Enemies to lovers just has so many different flavours, and each should be producing different stories.

E.g. enemies for more institutional/structural reasons like 'we are each on opposing forces in someone else's war', we are in two rival families, our species have historically be enemies' whatever. It's not personal, so it's an amazing way to focus a story on overcoming one's own biases or examining the structures that paint other people as monsters or why. This nation is made of savages blah blah, I've seen you cut people open on a battlefield. But you're so gentle when you kiss me? The contrast! The juxtaposition!

E.g. personal emnity. We are mutually obsessed with taking each other down and you are the centre of my world is very different to I hurt you once but I am a different person now, trying to be better, can you love who I have become and what does that mean for the hurt before? Is very different to 'we are the same, and I hate that we are the same, does embracing the love also mean loving or accepting parts of myself?'

E.g. I view you as an enemy, but you don't view me as one. You are the devastatingly seductive vampire lord who needs a bride or whatever, and I am the tool. What does it say about personhood when you fall in love with something you were just supposed to use? Can you still do what you need to do to survive?

How does literally consuming you change our relationship? Were we in love when you were still human? What does that look like now that you are something else?

E.g. everyone has always raised me to think of you as a monster, but I quickly realise you are not, so it's not fully an enemies to lovers story but people will often market you as that, and still great. What does it mean to find the place you belong in something that people have labelled as monstrous? Pretty sure a lot of people who have been othered by dominant society can relate.

It's just such a rich relationship set up for a story! It matters if you fall in love with your enemy. There are inherent stakes that change what that love means. Do you hate yourself for it? Does it make you feel free? Would you rather cut out your own damn heart then ride off into the sunset? Would you love them and kill them anyway?

[petercapwrites]

Oh, requiem Aeturnum In memorium Oh, requiem Tempus animae rei Requies aterna Per viam dolorosam Oh, requiem

Don't usually post this kind of content on here but I'll make an exception. Just a creepy little short about the horrors and tragedies of war.

Told through the lens of a medieval era mod I founded for Total War Attila.

[petercapwrites]

Timeless wisdom from a friend on discord.

[petercapwrites]

Aurelian is regarded as one of the greatest Roman Emperors, a restorer and a reformer. But according to the statement of Eros Brutus, the true story of Aurelian was quite different. Aurelian wasn't a man, he was a monster...

I LOVE the Magnus Archives! It is delicious horror and it’s so creative. So I decided to dabble in fanfic for the first time. 

I wanted to make a statement fic that combines my loves of ancient history and TMA. I'm surprised there hasn't been an official statement from ancient Rome or the like; the closest thing being TMAGP 49 with the pipes. 

So I decided to fill that void and with a dark retelling of my favorite Roman emperor! Canonically this is taking place right after episode 53 'Crusader'.

This is my first time writing fanfic, so hopefully it isn't too terrible. I hope you all enjoy it!

[petercapwrites]

I don't want to be one of those indie authors that has self-published 5 books in my series and no one has read them.

The ugly truth is that if you've gotten that far with no tangible results, you've done something wrong.

And I don't wanna end up like that.

[petercapwrites]

Who doesn't like more Blood of Hercules anti-marketing? Probably the last one of these I'll do for awhile. Nevertheless, this was cathartic.

[petercapwrites]

Just your daily dose of Blood of Hercules mockery.

[horse-on-a-porch]

i actually wish blood of Hercules to die out in popularity along with all dark romances that have been coming out in the past couple of years....I think book Tok has done irreparable harm and I wish folks understood the difference between Wattpad fanfiction, fanfiction, and literature.

This isn't to like shame bodice rippers. I love a good bodice ripper. But I am tired of authors of new age bodice rippers pretending they're not bodice rippers. I'm also tired of 'he straight up ignores consent, boundaries, and continues to gaslight the shit out of his crush*but they're in 🩷love🩷' as being "dark romances" when it's just rape.

Genuinely if your book has/needs a warning on it like we're on ao3....you probably need to rethink it. This isn't to say that I don't want to read controversial things. Most of the books I read are dark and controversial but they're also written by people who've put the work into how to write that shit well so that they don't need a warning to begin with. They also have a level of maturity that assumes the reader is an adult and is responsible for reading material that right squick them.

Does this make sense to anybody else??

[petercapwrites]

Author PSA: Don't rush the editing process.

One of many reasons why I hate the Lightlark series. While they aren't as bad as Blood of Hercules, these books are terrible.

Relevant to this excerpt however, they are painfully and self-inflictedly rushed.

The books have editors, but when you're rushing the whole process, shit like this WILL happen.

So please, don't rush!

[petercapwrites]

My heart goes out to all the people working retail, and adjacent jobs this holiday season.

And not for just the business of it, but because you're stuck hearing the same songs over and over for at least 6 hours!

I've been there, its AGONY.

I made a game to cope, where I counted how many versions of a single song I heard during a shift. Highest I got was 6 for Rudolph!

I was just so done with this reindeer by then. Like I get it, I know why Rudolph was special, just stop!

[petercapwrites]

Out of Context Quote From My Book

"Etheros, what did you do? Why are we chained to the top of a mountain?" - Elizabeth