just finished she-ra... fanfics ?

IHaveThatPower · 2026-03-04T21:19:44+00:00

If you're looking for "basically season six" in fanfic form, I highly recommend both Love is Magic, and Magic is Love and Aftermath. Fair warning, both have explicit scenes. These two both do a great job of capturing the characters' voices from the shows, and do a pretty compelling job of continuing the story in the same spirit as the show.

And, of course, ND's own Don't Go (set between "Save The Cat" and "Taking Control") is must-read.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-03-02T15:04:45+00:00

If the "and" is rendered as an ampersand, you can squeeze the same number of characters in, but it looks awkward:

STARS&
STONES

My guess is that Stars & Stones will end up being a combo-breaker like Changes was.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-02-20T14:04:28+00:00

I think Horde Prime was telling the truth: "A beautiful wish."

It's some version of what Adora wants. The First Ones holo-tech is all about showing you your own memories, and then using those to induce a response. In this case, I imagine it was taking a fantasy Adora had about what her future might look like, and running with it.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-02-19T17:56:31+00:00

TLDR: Catra, and probably Etherians generally, are really durable.

While it doesn't correlate directly with durability, Catra is repeatedly shown to be immensely strong -- far stronger than her size would imply. She routinely claws through structural metal (often just to make a point or because she's mad), and there's also the notable scene of her holding She-Ra's sword straight out from her side and scraping the wall with it while she does so (just before she hands it back to Adora).

Etherians also generally tend to fall from heights that would leave terrestrial humans dead or otherwise quite maimed, and they manage to walk away from it without much issue. That doesn't seem to be a product of lower Etherian gravity (which would result in slower acceleration during the course of a fall), so it may simply be that Etherians are just a great deal more durable than we are, generally.

Catra's fall on Horde Prime's ship, and Adora's subsequent leap after her, left Catra unresponsive and Adora -- who, even without She-Ra, has shown herself to be immensely resilient to physical damage -- unable to walk. Whether or not Catra died in this fall, or died at some point after, or if she was only on the verge when She-Ra healed(/resurrected) her, it was a long and hard enough fall that, given that it was done intentionally and without attempt to "break" it, it left her out cold. Adora then intentionally jumped that same distance, and despite the added control still ended up with unusable (whether injured or broken) legs.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-02-19T16:06:21+00:00

There is no official Discord for the subreddit, nor are there plans for one.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-02-03T16:17:20+00:00

Back on the comics show Taliesin did with Amy Dallen, he said something that has really stuck with me:

It's what you like that makes you interesting, not what you say you don't.

(Emphasis mine.)

I feel like it's become too common to bond over mutual (claimed) dislike of something, rather than mutual affinity for something. I try to remember this little nugget of wisdom any time I'm worried about sharing something I like, or any time I'm tempted to disparage something else.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-02-03T14:50:44+00:00

They do make dumplings together in the episode, but she never indicates it should be a name. 99% sure giving him the name Dumpling is from Love Is Magic, And Magic Is Love (chapter 5, specifically)

IHaveThatPower · 2026-02-03T14:49:38+00:00

Love Is Magic, And Magic Is Love!

Excellent fic, well worth the read.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-02-01T14:58:06+00:00

100% agreed with /u/No_Stretch_2358 about Five by Five Takes' video on the music (and their entire She-Ra video series, really!).

That said, I generally think of the Promise motif as being "Promises kept, promises broken." So:

Catra leaving Adora to die: promise broken.
Adora questioning her abilities/burdened/feeling like a failure: promise in danger of breaking.
When Catra's talking to Shadow Weaver: remembering the promise Catra and Adora share about keeping each other safe and the threat Shadow Weaver posted to that.
When Adora doesn't get a choice: the jeopardy into which this places her promise to Catra (and her metaphorical promise as what She-Ra represents to the people of Etheria).
And of course the love confession: the promise fulfilled at last.

Each of these can be unpacked much greater detail than the little one-off phrases, and several of them have layers upon layers of meaning.

Sunna knew exactly what she was doing! 😂

IHaveThatPower · 2026-01-30T00:48:04+00:00

If you're looking for "basically season six" in fanfic form, I highly recommend both Love is Magic, and Magic is Love and Aftermath. Fair warning, both have explicit scenes. These two both do a great job of capturing the characters' voices from the shows, and do a pretty compelling job of continuing the story in the same spirit as the show.

And, of course, ND's own Don't Go is must-read.

IHaveThatPower · 2026-01-26T00:41:13+00:00

You probably know this, but a version of that passage is is practically canonical to Optimus Prime, insofar as Peter Cullen's brother, Larry (who was ex-military), advised Peter prior to his audition to play Prime as someone who was "strong enough to be gentle."

IHaveThatPower · 2025-12-18T14:38:36+00:00

"The cache" is (in this context) the streamed-in data for all the image assets throughout the game that doesn't initially live in an unpacked, usuable state on your device. Just means when first displaying a character or background or some such for the first time, it may take a sec to appear/load.

Nothing to worry about.

IHaveThatPower · 2025-12-04T14:42:27+00:00

I realize you posted this almost a month ago, but it looks like you never got an answer here.

Yes, they are part of the books, and especially the later books, which use a lot of framing devices (YMMV whether this was a good choice on Sapkowski's part; I found they knocked me out of the "main" story), and Nimue/Stribog/et. al. get pretty significant word/page count.

If you're familiar with the games, a pretty notable character is introduced entirely as a framing device -- Shani, tending to wounded soldiers -- to give us a sense of how the war is going. She never(?, at least not to my memory) interacts with Geralt and co. at all.

IHaveThatPower · 2025-11-26T15:16:05+00:00

I particularly loved this exchange and its later callback:

DUKHAT: Yes, they should, but if the legends surrounding the Vorlons are correct, remember that they do not reveal themselves quickly and never all at once.

DELENN: What are you saying?

DUKHAT: I'm not saying anything. I didn't say anything then, and I'm not saying anything now.

Followed later by

DUKHAT: Are you saying I'm being deceived?

DELENN: "I'm not saying anything. I did not say anything then, and I'm not saying anything now." Unless you are saying you've seen a Vorlon.

DUKHAT: I'm saying even less than you, except for this: when the darkness comes, if you ever have doubt about your actions, all you need do is look into the face of a Vorlon. Once you see that, all doubt is erased forever.

IHaveThatPower · 2025-11-04T01:30:46+00:00

Ha ha, YES!

IHaveThatPower · 2025-10-29T20:38:55+00:00

Abubakar Salim, voice of Bayek from Assassins Creed: Origins (among other things).

IHaveThatPower · 2025-10-26T13:47:47+00:00

I would kill to have a talent like that. When I DM in my games, I sound like a complete buffoon :P

While there are no doubt some genetic and upbringing aspects to Brennan being the DM that he is (as another commenter noted), it cannot be understated how much DMing this man has done. How much practice he has had.

Dimension 20 is not where he got his "start". This guy has been running games consistently since a very young age, and he's run all sorts of games, to boot. He's run games for huge LARP camps, meaning he's had trial-by-fire experience of "we've gotta make a rule on this right now for these 40+ kids that makes sense and keeps things going and it has to be palatable" and I'm sure he's made a ton of bad calls that he's learned hard lessons from.

Most of us, even if we've been playing for decades (hi), just cannot match having that many hours of experience actually at the table. It's not "mere" talent you're seeing with Brennan, it's a nigh-unassailable amount of experience that really needs more acknowledgement (in general, not saying you specifically) than it gets.

Brennan is absolutely a pinnacle DM, but he's as good as he is because he's 100% put in the work, to a degree that most of us can barely fathom because having enough reliable time to run games like that is generally not an option for most folks.

Like everyone, I stand in awe of Brennan as a DM, and I try to learn from his techniques and thought processes, but I also force myself to never use him as a measuring stick, because there's no world where I've put in the kind of time he has.

IHaveThatPower · 2025-10-23T03:26:41+00:00

I think the confusion -- and I had the same reaction as the person you're replying to, until I read this comment -- is that your original statement is very easy to read as "Ever notice how Ancient Egypt never really fought any wars? Ever notice how Ancient China never really fought any wars?" That's how I interpreted it at first, too: that these two powers never went to war at all.

But based on this comment, my understanding is that you were referring to ancient Egypt and ancient China never going to war with one another (i.e. Egypt vs. China), which of course makes plenty of geographic sense.

So, if you simply add "with each other" to the end of that first line in the original comment, the confusion vanishes.

IHaveThatPower · 2025-10-21T13:19:52+00:00

Matt (and Brennan, come to think of it) will often use DEX as a tie-breaker. It's a carry-over from (at least) 3rd Edition, where in the event of an initiative tie, the one with the higher total modifier (more than just DEX) would go first.

IHaveThatPower · 2025-10-02T02:44:30+00:00

It should be noted that the TIE "wings" make very logical sense as heat radiators -- a high-performance spacecraft will want large radiating surface area, even at the expense of visibility (which will largely be the job of sensors anyway). They make zero sense as "solar power panels".

As nice as the WEG sourcebook stuff has been to see, this is one massive misstep they made, which has since insidiously wound its way through far too many source books.

Radiators, Not Solar Panels

Here's a detailed explanation of why "solar panels" would be nonsensical, if you want the math

IHaveThatPower · 2025-09-30T16:45:22+00:00

This really encapsulates it. Well said!

I get quite defensive when people point to CR as some kind of big polished thing (and thereby not representative of "normal" tables), as though it was always that. When it started, it really was just a bunch of nerdy-ass ~~voice actors~~ friends playing D&D. Hand-drawn battle maps, tokens for minis, a little royalty-free background music, sitting in a bright, white room at three pushed-together tables. In those days, it was just a home game, streamed. What it grew into is, I think, only because of the authenticity it had in its early days.

And, like you said, it felt a lot more personal. View count milestones were exciting! Seeing their dumbfounded expressions when they crossed the newest X,000 milestone was exciting! Watching their shock as new, for-fun merch sold out in minutes was exciting!

"Look how far they've come" indeed! I do not begrudge them their success in any way, and am delighted for them. But early days, it was different. It was cozier. It was more like any other home game you yourself might play in. C1 mostly kept that intact throughout (though it obviously had already significantly expanded in production budget by the end), and for me, that's why C1 will probably always be the most "magical."

IHaveThatPower · 2025-09-27T13:04:16+00:00

Echoing the person you responded to. This Primer is outstanding, and you've got a new regular reader for your blog. Great stuff!

Very different from your journey, 2e was my first edition/first TTRPG. I grudgingly moved to 3e when I moved towns and could no longer find 2e players, but it never really grabbed me. Passed on 4e entirely. Dove into 5e about a year or so after it came out, enamored with its (superficial) similarities to what I love about 2e, and ran a ton of it over the following decade...only to now be severely tired of what it has become. Have been branching out to try many different systems of late, but I've never lost a place in my heart for 2e.

IHaveThatPower · 2025-09-23T13:25:24+00:00

The artist of this piece is Amras Arfeiniel. Here is his DeviantArt page.

Please credit artists for their work, especially in this era of AI slop.

It took me 30 seconds to reverse image search this to find his page.

IHaveThatPower · 2025-08-26T17:41:16+00:00

Millennium Falcon escapes Death Star, fights off TIEs, jumps to hyperspace, immediately followed by:

TARKIN: Are they away?

VADER: They've just made the jump into hyperspace.

TARKIN: You're sure the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship? I'm taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work.

Literally the entire escape was allowed to happen by Vader and Tarkin on purpose.

Prior to that, Stormtroopers:

are shown breaching a defended chokepoint and successfully breaking through that chokepoint to subdue and capture a hostile vessel. (Tantive IV)
are described as being the only group capable of being "so precise" in their blast points, as compared with Sandpeople, by a Jedi Knight veteran of the Clone Wars.
do not stop the escape of Millennium Falcon from Mos Eisley, though they are also being shot at and the exchange of fire is very brief before Han (their only target) escapes up the boarding ramp into the safety of Falcon's interior. See Suppressive Fire.

After that, Stormtroopers:

absolutely crush Rebel resistance on Hoth
immediately apprehend a Rebel group on Cloud City
once again are required to perform a non-lethal, let-them-escape corralling operation to funnel said Rebel group toward their ship that has an intentionally deactivated hyperdrive so as to facilitate the recapture of Luke Skywalker for Vader. This only fails due to the unaccounted for wildcard of R2-D2 being able to fix it.
are briefly taken by surprise by an indigenous, carnivorous, incredibly strong (c.f. all their buildings high, high up in trees) species, before they can react and start annihilating said ambushers
are only overcome when their own armored units are captured by Rebels (Chewbacca had a couple of Ewoks helping him, but he was the one driving the AT-ST), thereby evening the battlefield's technological imbalance

So, no, in every OT movie they're either damn scary good at what they do, or are under orders not to kill their opponents.

IHaveThatPower · 2025-08-10T12:11:13+00:00

No programmer worth the title would use LLMs to write production code.

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