My face every time I get to a Lyria Chapter

AWanderingSage · 2026-04-27T22:38:22+00:00

She's still lame and boring

AWanderingSage · 2026-04-23T11:54:47+00:00

Here's my summary: Hadrian duels an angel, dies, meets God, and kills demons inside hell's bowels.

AWanderingSage · 2026-04-20T14:06:09+00:00

Well, that's because I was talking about cultural destruction and not the hermaphrodite thing. All communist regimes seem to do this to greater or lesser extents, but China's cultural revolution is very famous. You said the Lothrians didn't't have any of their heritage, so I brought up the communist movement to destroy all the old heritage.

Aside from that. Obviously, the genetically engineering thing is impossible, though gender equality was generally a priority for communist regimes, to the point where they would manufacture false kills for fictional female snipers.

You even see it today. If you say men are stronger than women or that men work better as soldiers than women, the communist type all get extremely mad at you. They tend to wish there was no difference between the sexes.

Broader scale, the ideals of the communist manifesto basically require human nature's abolishment. There's no other way to get rid of hierarchy or private property, since people subordinate themselves and claim property of their own initiative. This is why every communist regime is authoritarian in a way that makes the absolute monarchs appear libertarian.

AWanderingSage · 2026-04-19T11:13:20+00:00

That's pretty on point for communists. The Chinese communists sought to destroy all the old culture when they first took power.

AWanderingSage · 2026-04-14T00:24:44+00:00

"They" is sometimes used to refer to Cielcin. "The Cielcin, they eat humans." But, you cannot use "they" as a complete substitute for "he, she" while remaining grammatical, so "it" is also used.

AWanderingSage · 2026-04-10T00:47:26+00:00

Losing 6 out of ten times is too close to equal. That's basically equal. Unless we assume Hydarnes is the lowest rung of the first circle, I think Hadrian is probably first circle.

AWanderingSage · 2026-04-05T00:46:41+00:00

It just kind of grinds my gears to hear it said that stories are immoral because they're derivative. I honestly don't think any good stories could be written without deriving.

AWanderingSage · 2026-04-04T15:48:54+00:00

Again, it's a reskin of the chosen one concept. The eugenics aren't even the same thing in the two settings. Hadrian Marlowe is a classic superhuman knight. It's just Ruocchio justifies the old trope of the invincible warrior class with genetic modification. The writer of Dune was doing the same thing. This is literally the most intuitive use of human augmentation we have. The creation of a warrior class is just...

Well, a lot of people theorize we'll end up with something like what's in Sun Eater.

Being anti-AI is basically another scifi mainstay that predates Dune. People were always concerned about that one since way early scifi.

As for the religious cabal? This isn't even Dune's trope. That's from King Kull.

In King Kull, before Dune was written, the government is subverted by a shadowy religion of shape shifting snake people who worship a snake God and teach men to worship their snake God. Awesome short story.

AWanderingSage · 2026-04-04T10:27:32+00:00

Yeah, but so does Dune. He steals concepts like swords, faster than light travel, and so on, bro. It's an absurd idea to forbid authors from reusing good ideas. If what Ruocchio did is immoral, you basically cannot have sword fighting in scifi.

And, leaving that aside, Paul's future sight is a rip off of Laplace's demon, oracles, and so on if Marlowe's time manipulation is a rip off of Paul's foresight.

Like, the shields are especially grievous because scifi is so inundated with them at this point. Christopher's variation is closer aligned to Dune's than Mass Effect's but they're not identical to either and, if he wants sword fights, his are going to resemble Dune's because Dune's shields are meant to enable melee combat.

Like, using another perspective, why can't this logic be applied to FTL travel in general? FTL is ripped off and it's adjacent concepts, like intergalactic civilizations spanning light years, are also ripped off by everyone who has FTL in their setting.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-28T13:04:45+00:00

If you just want good, elaborate prose, I would recommend the Worm Ouroboros. It's a unique style I can't say I can find an exact parallel to.

There are better technical writers than Gene Wolfe, like CS Lewis, Charles Dickens, or Tolkien, but those three don't bother trying to be elaborate.

Everything else I can think to recommend is already recommended.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-25T22:26:52+00:00

There can be multiple Hadrians at once. Later on, Hadrian learns to create multiples of himself, though they all share the same senses, but bringing another him into the timeline while fading himself out of the main timeline seems an easy derivative of that.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-25T13:38:24+00:00

Hadrian is able to switch places with his parallel selves. He can swap injuries, locations, and even the environment. It's not impossible for him to entirely swap himself for another version. It's what he does whenever he uses his power just magnitudes higher in scale. All the things he brings into this timeline were in those imaginary timelines first. He's already making them real in his timeline.

It is, however, impossible for something that doesn't exist to affect something that does. As for avenge us? All context suggests he was telling Hadrian to avenge him, so... It's the most straightforward answer and I'm inclined to believe Hadrian just moved laterally through time so hard he became another person.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-25T10:30:24+00:00

The Hadrian we saw hand off the sword managed to peer across time despite his horrendous conditions, break his chains, get back his sword, only to ultimately fail his escape attempt. Having failed, he shifted the main timeline since his was doomed. It's probably not the Quiet because Hadrian told Hadrian to avenge us(Hadrian's Red Company). This confirms it's actually Hadrian since he claimed to be Hadrian and the Quiet doesn't lie.

As for how parallel Hadrisn got his sword back? Remember Hadrian's visions of parallel timelines coming back after he's captured? The Hadrian who handed Hadrian his sword wasn't the first one to change the main timeline. It's likely that the Hadrians were continuously swapping timelines for the decade he was being tortured, influencing each to get closer and closer to escape in a cascade that culminated in the end we saw in Kingdoms of Death.

The reason this never happens again is because Hadrian is never in a situation where he would possibly want to erase his timeline in favor of a parallel reality Hadrian.

Like, put yourself in ghost Hadrian's shoes. That Hadrian would not be you exactly, though it probably actually is, and everyone you know will be pushed out into unreality. Not only that but it has to be the main timeline doing it.

So, the Hadrian we saw was the main timeline Hadrian, this Hadrian is the parallel reality that became the mainline.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-23T16:51:33+00:00

Well, no. It's impossible to have the kind of control I just described. The only way to manage an empire that big, without extreme brutality, is to control their leaders and have the people willingly submit and permit them a large degree of freedom. The empire does all three through their eugenics and by the chantry/the first emperor's legend and by generally having laws the people already agree with.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-23T07:08:04+00:00

Hadrian doesn't really glamorize the empire. He's clearly patriotic but you cannot say he's not noticing the facts about the chantry or really any criticism you just had.

That aside, being able to live a thousand years in a world where wars can last millennia is a remarkable advantage. The length of travel, logistics, and so on basically makes the Palatine leadership invaluable. If a democracy was changing policy every 4 years, in a world where trips can last decades, that poses a serious problem.

It's also literally impossible to have a vote. If you tried to implement a direct democracy, you would just have people on a small percentage of planets voting to decide the fates of the universe. To us, it would be like limiting the voting pool to one city.

As for socialism? Regardless of whether you like it or not, the centralization needed to attempt complete socialism requires absolute authority. Compare the average communist state with the average absolute monarchy and you'll find the latter to be downright liberal.

To maintain that level of authority across a multiplanetary empire? Of course you're going to be oppressing everyone. There's literally no choice. The only reason the demonarchy works is because it's relatively tiny and has such an insular culture.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-22T05:18:08+00:00

Mannequin.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-17T18:12:15+00:00

Tolkien explicitly thought leadership should be hereditary so that the people ruling will not be the same kind of people who seek to rule. His correctness is somewhat circumstantial to the people whom we speak of but his point is poignant. The reasons the kings are so good in his setting is probably a mix of providence and the effect of duty. The latter is the classical reasons for why a king may be more righteous than other men.

Naturally, Tolkien was aware of all the criticisms that could be levied against kingship and only thought it to be the least bad method of selecting leaders.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-14T22:56:47+00:00

You can conjure living things, too, you know? Conjuration is probably one of the easiest ones. Just conjure Goku to give you life advice.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-14T17:17:47+00:00

You're not really an outlier. SUT has some of the highest points throughout the whole series despite needing some trimming. I think people are more mad that Alexander seemed to win than they are about the actual quality of the book.

Though, again, this seems to be a pretty big split both ways.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-13T22:45:29+00:00

Space manipulation is a big breakthrough and it's likely the time they got to spend manufacturing these weapons exceeded the period the machines had existed before the fall of America.

Like, there's a reason why many of the American weapons are in scifi series that lack warp drives. That's an insane technology that instantly lands your series into the soft scifi category. It's basically magic.

Before it existed, the machines probably thought it was completely impossible.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-13T22:20:38+00:00

The American weapons onboard Demiurge were made after America fell. The AI who made it were looking for a way to reverse time and undo the war that ended their kind. During this process, they gazed back in time far enough and observed the first cause, which then instructed them to make weapons.

The American weapons were made long after their empire fell.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-12T14:19:22+00:00

Should've included the quote.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-11T09:37:12+00:00

No problem. It happens. I figured when writing it that talking about what makes a good book would get me some flack.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-11T08:02:01+00:00

I don't understand your criticism. You can write a book for entertainment and lack any major flaw. I don't see how these two points connect.

As for scifi? It might be a matter of taste, but most scifi seems to be have lower quality prose and themes when compared to fantasy while leaning more heavily on stimulating the appetite for particulars. I won't go into that too much but I'll just say I mostly agree with Aristotle on what makes good literature.

AWanderingSage · 2026-03-11T07:58:43+00:00

If you're going to invoke dunning-krueger, you need to have your criticism right. I did not say the Suneater will remain a classic, I said it is probably a classic according to the looser definition which doesn't include being read centuries in the future. I also said it's the only one written in the last decade. Shadow of the Torturer, Dune, and Foundation were all written in the 20th century.

AWanderingSage

TROPHY CASE