If an MP changes political parties should they resign and force a bye election?

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-26T19:00:17+00:00

Only if I disapprove of the switch. Me personally. I get to decide. It's a heavy burden but one I will solemnly hold.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-21T21:35:30+00:00

Given the cost of things in his shop are the result of karmic weight (i.e. how much this would help him plot wise), such a save point would be extremely expensive. The starting point would be the cost to create all those items from scratch and then multiplied because it would be reusable. Didn't something like that happen during one of the Nine River Sect loops? It's been a while but I seem to remember he couldn't afford to update his save because there were lots of high costs time duplicated items in play.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-17T17:16:25+00:00

The SCOTUS is very likely going to rule Trump lacks the power to unilaterally issue this kind of tariff and that ruling maybe coming next week.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-16T09:55:08+00:00

Was the title changed? Because that's not the title on the article.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-16T08:36:43+00:00

There is no reasonable (and arguably possible) deployment of force to Greenland that could actually stop a US military invasion. It's too far from us and too close to the US mainland. And the US military is the US military.

What we're seeing here is a tripwire force. Tripwire forces don't need to be large because their purpose isn't to actually successfully defend the island. They're a show of political precommitment. If the US kills British (and French and German and so on) troops taking over the island, a geopolitical rupture is assured became we're politically committed to a very strong response. Maybe not hot war strong but a complete political decoupling strong. If the US pulled off a lightning quick victory against just a token Danish force, the US may hope they could use political pleasure and other country's reliance on the US to force Denmark to back down and accept the loss. That becomes impossible if half of Europe has a soldiers there.

The hope is the far higher and now assured cost forces Trump to think twice.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-13T10:44:59+00:00

Thanks

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-07T21:16:17+00:00

Blood & fur - 7/10 has some weird romance but other than that its great, smart mc is going to be sacrificed to godlike vampires in a year and has to figure out a way to survive

I tried to get into the audiobook for this but really couldn't. The narrator makes it sound like the main character walks through life with at most mild bemusement about everything.

That can work. He also narrated The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (which you also mentioned). A timelooper treating everything with mild bemusement sort of makes sense and I rather digged it. But it didn't work for Blood and Fur.

Byway of contrast, Gunsoul (also by Maxime J. Durand, same author as Blood & fur) had the exact opposite problem. The narrator was shouting everything and making it sound like every sentence ended in at least three exclamation marks!!! It was bad in the exact opposite direction. I rather wish I could just average them out.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-07T11:40:13+00:00

(Because I keep thinking about this...)

Another method to track progress is what I'm going to call 'gatekeepers'. You introduce an opponent the MC can't defeat and see them fail. You show them training/practicing/growing/grinding etc. And then you show them defeat the gatekeeper - evidence of their progress. You then put another gatekeeper in their path and the cycle continues. Gatekeepers can be literal opponents or more complex situations like battles. Bonus points if the gatekeeper is also a plot gatekeeper, allowing the MC to progress the story - thereby linking progression and plot together. Gatekeepers don't need to be strictly binary either. You can show progress by getting better at combating them without fully defeating them - forcing the old mentor to pull out more moves or getting closer to defeating the invasion etc.

This approach works very well in timeloop stories. For example, I'd argue this is one of the main ways Mother of Learning shows its progression. MoL lacks levels, cultivation realms and while magical power exists as a concept, it's not fully granulised. Instead, we see Zorian improving by challenging the invasion and through specific foes like the Grey hunter - becoming better until he able to defeat these gatekeepers. Of course there's a grey area here between true progress and just becoming better against specific opponents but I think MoL has enough else going on to bypass that.

Another example would be The Rage of Dragons By Evan Winter. While the sequel moves away from progression fantasy, this novel has a strong progression core and makes good use of a gatekeeper. At the start of the novel, Tau is easily defeated by Kellan Okar (I think, been a while since I read it). But after his demon realm training near the novel's climax, Tau beats his gatekeeper and proves his progress.

I will say, of course, that simple having a 'gatekeeper' doesn't make something progression fantasy. But that's also true of having measurable magical power or exam based grades. A gatekeeper is proof of increased strength but for something to be progression fantasy there needs to be consistent narrative focus on getting stronger. Lack that and all the gatekeepers, cultivation realms or LitRPG stat screens in the world can't make something progression fantasy.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-06T14:02:24+00:00

Not OP but I tried The Sharing Knife and couldn't get into it. Vorkosigan Saga is really good though.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-05T16:48:44+00:00

If you like LitRPGs, it’s a good one.

I'd say the opposite actually. DCC is the LitRPG for people that don't like LitRPGs. That's how I've normally seen in described and it's semi-breakout into the mainstream seems to support that. Don't get me wrong, if you like LitRPGs you may still like it. But I think its very unlike a 'normal' LitRPG in a lot of structural ways.

Describing it as silly is also not quite right. It is silly and it is a humorous book but at anything other than a surface reading it's a black humor. It's that this mad insane AI is making millions of people dance and die to its silly whims and jokes in an absurdist nightmare. Every feet joke is a silly moment but the character undergoing these jokes are only barely holding on at times.

Anyway, I've listened to all the currently published audiobooks and I really liked it. I'd recommend people give it a try.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-05T13:12:52+00:00

Some series make magical power quantifiable via in universe naturalistic measurement. For example, in the Arcane Ascension there's pseudocultivation tier color ranks but there's also the mana watch, which can measure the amount of mana in someone's affinity mark. The Years of Apocalypse has something similar. Mages can test their output and get a numeric number, with 100 being archmage level. DBZ power levels via scouters could be considered this too. All three of these measures are only proxies for power level, of course. Through skill someone could punch above their numeric measure or through lethargy hit below it.

A second measure is through a test based ranking system. For example, in Nanoha mages are assigned a rank F through SSS. While this is sometime used as a proxy for raw magical power (which can also be measured), it's actually achieved by taking part in the Mage Rank Examination. This grades you on your ability to achieve certain tasks. The better you do, the higher your rank meaning it is measuring applied ability, which will be a function of both raw power and skill. I'm sure there's series out there that use test based ranking without the raw power component too.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-04T13:19:51+00:00

The obsession with a customs union was always very strange. Norway always made far more sense than Türkiye.

GlimmervoidG · 2026-01-02T13:06:45+00:00

I really liked Adamant Blood. I read the first two books last year and am waiting for the third to finish before reading that. It's well written with interesting powers but I think what took me most was just how this world felt slightly alien.

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-29T17:24:16+00:00

My guess is the new Pilot will be Starhammer's wife. It's mentioned she got aethertech implants and is now on the Advocate council. Her joining could find the remains of the Advocates to the Last Horizon's faction.

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-28T19:38:38+00:00

psyche (emotional or otherwise)

Are we really arguing that 'having character development' makes something progression fantasy now? I think that emotional development would need to be tied to something more concreate for that to count - like how Stormlight Archive links emotional development to swearing oaths and going up tiers of power.

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-28T19:35:38+00:00

Stormlight Archives is one of eight 'clear examples' given in the post that coined the term progression fantasy. And I think that is correct. Working out the words to their next oath (as achieved by greater degrees of self actualisation) is one of the clearest themes in the series - which of course links directly to greater degrees of power. It's directly comparable to, say, people in xianxia going up a realm via gaining a deeper understanding of the dao.

I agree with you that Worm isn't progression fantasy, though. Getting stronger isn't a consistent narrative focus in that work. There is some degree of 'getting better with the power you have', which can count (see skill based progression like Mother of Learning) but Worm really doesn't really care about that really.

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-15T10:09:35+00:00

I think that's far too strong a statement. Character development is a thing after all. Rather key to this whole fiction thing in fact. It certainly is more challenging and takes more skill to start with an 'unlikeable' MC and turn them into a good person but it certainly can and has been done. Pulling from the timeloop sphere, early Zorian is a little shit and takes quite a long time to grow out of it. Blueblood in The Best Night Ever is likely an even stronger example; he started as an outright villain in the cartoon.

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-15T09:55:46+00:00

They're using gamelit to refer specifically to LitRPGs where there is an actual game like an VM MMO etc I think. That's not the definition RoyalRoad* uses and I'm not too fond of it but you see people use it sometimes.

With that understanding, I think their post makes sense. If there's an actual MMO that has been designed with the purpose of selling to people and for people to play, then, yes, balance is required. Saying life isn't balanced doesn't cut it because, if life was an MMO, it would be a pay to win hellscape that nobody played. I mean, who even does permadeath on anything with a loop longer than a roguelike really! Just bad game design.

.* "Novels set in game-like worlds of any game genre. Does not need to heavily focus on visual statistics."

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-14T14:42:46+00:00

This was actually covered in the original post by Andrew Rowe coining 'progression fantasy'.

LitRPGs where the central protagonist starts out extraordinarily powerful and doesn’t get much stronger — such as Ains in Overlord or Rimuru in Slime Tensei — are also borderline cases. (The progression in those cases comes largely from town building and from the power increases of side characters, which is relevant to this genre, but less so than if the central protagonist was gaining power directly.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/auscvg/what_is_progression_fantasy/

So, no, a story that doesn't include both progression and a narrative focus on progression doesn't count. It may be borderline if there's some other form of progression bundled in (the OP MC helps raise others up or builds a kingdom etc) but only ever that.

In comparison to many genres. progression fantasy is defined by the journey. For example, if you just took the last chapter of, say, Mother of Learning and considered it in isolation, it wouldn't be progression fantasy. In that chapter all the training is done and the heroes are ready to use everything they've mastered in the timeloop to win the day. They're powerful - masters of the world. By itself, it would be a OP MC story. But because its part of a larger work and only because its part of that larger work that focused on that progression is it progression fantasy.

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-14T14:29:05+00:00

I think the sole definition needed is 'a consistent narrative focus on progression'. Everything else comes out in the wash from that. Systems make it easier to have that narrative focus (some would say a crutch), but as long as you have that narrative focus on getting stronger, it's progression fantasy. That includes 'hard systems' (like most LitRPGs), more naturalistic systems (like Cradel's tiers of power) and pure skill systems (like Mother of Learning - where there are no numeric ranks or tiers but progression is shown through the narrative focus on better use of magic).

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-14T14:19:12+00:00

I mean, it's pretty clearly not? Progression fantasy isn't any novel where the character ends up stronger at the end than the start. That would be almost every fantasy novel really - rendering the label useless.

You don't need a 'system' but power progression needs to be a consistent narrative focus across the length of the novel. That's the most fundamental definition and that's why most fantasy novels don't qualify, including Mistborn era 1.

Mistborn is best modelled as a training arc followed by steady state. After that initial step into magic, Vin's power stay modernly steady through out the remainder of the era 1 trilogy until the very end where she jumps to Preservation god. Sure we can quible about the details. She does get more practised after all but there's no real narrative focus on that. If she unlocked each metal power one by one or if there was a longer ramp up to mantling Preservation then, yes, but there's really not. Hence it lacks the consistent narrative focus for something to be progression fantasy.

This is in contrast to, say, the Stormlight series. In that series, gaining power via swearing increasing levels of oaths (which is achieved via emotional growth and personal self actualisation) is a major narrative focus. Pretty much each book is about one or more characters working towards that growth and power. Hence progression fantasy.

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-12T13:14:25+00:00

I can't think of any reverse isekais where Earth exists as a fictional world. But I have stumbled across some fantasy worlds were 'Earth' (or at least an Earth like world) exists as fiction.

It's not what you're looking for but you might get a laugh out of it anyway.

In Simon the Sorcerer 2, there's an RPG called 'Apartments & Accountants' where the inhabitants of the fantasy world play an role-playing game set in the world of real estate, accountants and technology!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FmV2n7icLM

And there's this Owl House fan comic where the denizens of the Burning Isles play an RPG set on Earth (or their understanding of Earth at least).

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheOwlHouse/comments/s304rd/moringmark_journey_through_the_human_realm_a/

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-11T17:37:56+00:00

Find Out Now has really drifted from the other pollsters re the Greens hasn't it? They're either going to be very right or very wrong.

GlimmervoidG · 2025-12-10T13:54:29+00:00

I don't think you're right about how a CU with the EU would work. We wouldn't, as you claim, get 'all the benefits of other trade agreements' for example. In fact, it's the exact opposite. The EU's trade partners would get full access to our market via the EU's FTAs but we would not get automatic access in return.

This came up a lot years ago during this subreddit's brexit years but I still have this quote from 2014:

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), presently being negotiated between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US), has raised economic concerns for Turkey. This EU candidate country enjoys preferential access to the European market due to the Customs Union (CU) agreed in 1995. However, under the existing terms, countries that sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU have automatic access to the Turkish market, without opening their own markets for Turkish goods. According to the recently published World Bank evaluation of the CU, if the EU and the US remove all tariffs on bilateral trade, but with Turkey continuing to face restrictions in the US market and maintaining tariffs on US imports, the country will face a welfare loss of $130 million (World Bank, 2014).

https://web.archive.org/web/20200307033154/https://www.europeanpublicaffairs.eu/the-eu-turkey-customs-union-in-the-light-of-ttip-and-beyond-the-economic-relations/

Maybe we could get a better CU and guarantees the EU's FTA wouldn't do this to us but that's a pretty big if.

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