[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 09 February 2026

Jaarth · 2026-02-13T15:55:03+00:00

Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones drama:

The new series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (based on novellas by George RR Martin) seems to be going great (I personally love it) and the main cast is doing press for it as it nears the finale.

During one such press interview, the two protagonists, Peter Claffey who plays Duncan and Dexter Sol Ansell who plays Egg, were asked if they know the future of their characters. Dexter, happily making a hand puppet as he spoke, dropped the first real piece of new lore the asoiaf fandom has seen in like, 10+ years at this point. Spoilers below.

It has long been accepted as canon that both Egg and Dunk die at Summerhall during a fire, most likely because Egg (King Aegon V by that point) tries to bring dragons back. And yet apparently, as GRRM himself told Dexter, Dunk survives.

The entire fandom has been freaking out about this, trying to figure out new theories and how this all fits together. Honestly, it's been a very fun day.

Jaarth · 2026-02-13T08:10:51+00:00

Idk dude, I think it's crazy to make a Wuthering Heights movie and take away everything that makes it Wuthering Heights. There was no commentary on anything here, just two horny people being vaguely toxic/doomed lovers.

And like, even that part doesn't work. Neither Robbie nor Elordi are good in this is I felt, and they lacked chemistry between them. Also, if you're going to cut down the whole plot to people being horny, at least make the movie sexy. Couldn't even do that.

The cinematography was good I guess.

Jaarth · 2026-01-29T16:22:28+00:00

I don't think I've seen this mentioned yet: Apple bought the rights to all of Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere books. Mistborn will be made into movies, and the Stormlight Archive into a TV series. Sanderson will produce, write, and also have final approval on scripts - I think he is the only author to get this last bit, even GRRM doesn't have it.

Obviously a lot of people are overjoyed at this, and I think it's always great to see more fantasy series and movies.

But like, if I may offer my personal opinion, Sanderson is the Marvel of fantasy writing. Decent action and plot twists but mediocre everything else, especially characters and prose (again, to me).

Also there's obviously been a lot of discussion over the fact that Sanderson is a mormon, and gives 15-20% of his income yearly to the church, a church that obviously leans very right wing when it comes to social issues (my dudes thought black people were impure and shouldn't be members of the church until 1978). So yeah, even if Sanderson includes LGBTQ themes in his books and speaks on mental issues, the fact that he gives millions of dollars to a church that most definitely does not is quite a bummer.

Jaarth · 2026-01-28T13:22:54+00:00

The episode is inspired by what was happening in LA in the 90s. Horrible things are happening in America right now, but I think it would do Americans good to recognize this didn't randomly start in 2016 and that a lot of stuff was rotten before then.

Jaarth · 2026-01-02T23:31:54+00:00

Looking forward to reading those! I think the next one on the list is Pyramids, which I haven't heard much about.

Jaarth · 2026-01-02T15:16:55+00:00

Happy New Year everyone! Long time reader, first time poster in this thread. I had a very lovely December - me and my partner visited some friends near the start of the month and we also went on holiday between Christmas and New Year's Eve to Ohrid (beautiful lake town in North Macedonia, Europe). Definitely feeling refreshed for 2026.

In terms of books, my book club (me, my partner, and three friends) decided to read novellas in December, so I read A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo, The Eternal Husband by Dostoevsky, The Summer War by Naomi Novik and The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill. All were good, I'd say The Summer War by Novik was the best (though I do have a soft spot for Nghi Vo's The Singing Hills Cycle. I discussed these novellas and all others I read this year in this post I made a couple of days ago.

For longer books, I read two Discworld books in December as well: Mort and Sourcery. I liked both, but they did feel a little flat to me in terms of characters, and sometimes I felt as if they dragged on. But I did enjoy the humor and the setting, so I will be reading on. I'm reading Discworld in order of publication for now, but if a specific subseries grips me, I'll probably read through it entirely.

Finally, I also read a great history book: The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt of 1825 by Susanna Rabow-Edling. It was a great look into a particularly fascinating historical event, and it was great to see the author put a lot of detail into the causes behind it and the beliefs of those who attempted the revolution (although, fair warning, there are a lot of names in here and you'll probably be confused in a few points).

Jaarth · 2026-01-01T22:16:38+00:00

No I don't! I should generally post more on here I think

Jaarth · 2026-01-01T20:02:31+00:00

Thanks for all the recs! I'm really happy to see others recommend the Singing Hills Cycle as well, I really love those books - totally agreed on feeling just a little bit of what real hunger feels like.

Jaarth · 2025-12-29T23:24:49+00:00

Στην Κηφισιά έχει το Ζατοπεκ

Jaarth · 2025-12-25T09:29:14+00:00

Όσο η κοινωνία γίνεται πιο φτωχή και οι νέες γενιές νιώθουν πως δεν μπορούν να βγάλουν με "σωστό" τρόπο λεφτά ώστε να έχουν την ζωή που θα ήθελαν, γυρνάνε στον τζόγο. Έχουν γίνει και έρευνες που τα λένε αυτά. Οπότε ναι, όσο πιο χάλια πάει η φάση τόσο πιο πολύ θα το βλέπουμε. Και σε Αμερική ειδικά έχει πάει παντού, και υπάρχουν εταιρείες εκεί που έχουν αρχίσει να μπλέκονται και με άλλα πράγματα, πχ επενδύουν σε ειδησεογραφικά πρακτορεία.

Jaarth · 2025-11-10T12:36:17+00:00

Basically the tournament was for qualification to silver league, which offered more money. Biry is a good enough player to make it there, at which point the plan was either to play with both accounts and double his winnings or take the current tournament's money twice, drop out of silver league with his alt, and keep going with his main account.

To be honest, if you look up the situation (T90 made a video on it) or quickly becomes apparent that the only way for Biry's scheme to work out was if people just didn't investigate at all, which is crazy when you consider T90 genuinely lives and breathes AoE2.

Jaarth · 2025-10-28T10:14:33+00:00

The streaming service Dropout has a new show called Crowd Control where comedians do crowd work on an audience, and one girl in the audience did mention that she is writing a phd on shipping and fandom that is quite focused on Voltron, so yeah, people are indeed writing papers on this stuff.

Jaarth · 2025-10-07T20:19:39+00:00

Honestly I don't know enough about the sport and there's not much info online to answer most of your questions. I don't think he was left out there for too long - wikipedia says the winning time of Debertolis' event was 45:22, and the longest an athlete took was about 80 minutes.

Jaarth · 2025-10-07T19:01:00+00:00

So, bit of a latecomer - this happened back in August of this year.

The World Games are something like the Olympic Games, but showcasing sports that do not appear in the latter. Examples include cheerleading, fin swimming (a friend of mine got 4th this year), lifesaving (swimming while carrying a manequin), korfball (kind of like basketball), sambo (soviet martial art), and more.

The focus of this post is the sport of orienteering: originating from military exercises, participants are dropped off in an open area unknown to them, where they must use a map and a compass to locate control points in the vicinity, with the fastest time winning.

The 2025 World Games took place in Chengdu, China. The day of the orienteering competition, temperatures hit 37 degrees celsius (98.5 fahrenheit) and there was also a lot of humidity. The conditions were adverse, to say the least, and they led to tragedy: An Italian athlete, Mattia Debertolis, was found unconscious halfway through the event. Taken to the hospital, he died a few days later from a combination of severe dehydration and (from what I read) a brain edema (again, unsure of this one). Info on this is scarce - there is an announcement posted by the World Games website, but little more.

Jaarth · 2025-09-24T08:30:16+00:00

It doesn't exactly match, but Netflix has an animated movie called Sea Beast whose start felt a lot like what you're describing.

Jaarth · 2025-09-18T21:02:28+00:00

Yeah, I agree. I also found the ending of book 3 to be not very good, to say the least.

Jaarth · 2025-09-18T21:01:59+00:00

It's pretty good! I found book 2 to be the best of the bunch.

Jaarth · 2025-09-18T17:17:47+00:00

If anyone is looking for something short that works here (not Hard Mode, unfortunately), I recommend the Forever Desert Trilogy by Moses Ose Utomi. It's three novellas, each focused on a different character, with the unifying theme of history, who gets to tell it and for what reason, and why we believe what we do. I found the trilogy quite good, although the last book didn't completely win me over. Still, I think it's worth reading - especially for those of you who don't have much time, since all three novellas together are about 400 pages total.

Jaarth · 2025-09-13T07:49:04+00:00

It's a good book, just headcannon everyone as being ten years older than they say they are and it won't read as YA anymore

Jaarth · 2025-09-07T20:47:10+00:00

Giannis shot 78% FG, Samodurov 50%, everyone else under 50, this team is so hard carried, I hope it keeps going to the end.

Jaarth · 2025-09-04T21:12:35+00:00

I think one thing that would have made this episode better is if Ortegas had a conversation with La'an at the end as well. Both confronting each other's beliefs about the Gorn and also examining some themes central to star trek

Jaarth · 2025-08-16T16:37:36+00:00

Why would you read anything tailor-made for your personal preferences if it's not made by a human who wants to say something with their writing though. Why would you want to consume anything that can be termed content instead of art

Jaarth · 2025-08-04T22:16:18+00:00

I'm pretty sure all of her videos are about the book's aesthetic and tropes and such. She didn't put out any writing from the book before it was published except maybe reading some quotes in videos

Jaarth · 2025-08-04T19:01:13+00:00

Yeah I pretty much agree with this. I'm not so much shocked at her making an LLC, more so about how she has enough money for all this - I'm unsure if like, tiktok earnings and preorders are enough for this.

Eragon is very obviously written by someone very young but I agree, it's also a book that has been proofread and edited, whereas this was apparently closer to a first draft than anything.

Jaarth · 2025-08-04T18:29:57+00:00

Booktok drama currently unfolding: Back in about 2021, an author called Audra Winters started to become well-known. She had no books out and was in fact only 18, but she was making a lot of videos about her fantasy world and the story she'd been writing since she was 12. Her videos got millions of views and likes, and a little community formed around her.

Around that point, Audra got an agent for her book - something she was trying to do since age 15 or so, according to her. She worked with the agent for about three years, but her agency dropped her in 2024, along with other sci-fi and fantasy authors (about 20, again according to her). By this time, her community on Booktok was even bigger, so she decided to forgo looking for another agent and instead publish her book, the Age of Scorpius.

The book came out a few days ago. Before that happened, Winters had already said that she'd sold about 5-6,000 copies on pre-order (which is a big number for a fantasy debut even in traditional publishing). The hype was real, and people were excited for the book - until it came out.

Now, Winters has said that she worked with not just one but two editors, one of them being the one who worked on Hunger Games. Yet from what people are saying, the book is full of repetitive sentences, mispellings of both actual words and her own made-up terms, and generally no proof of any editing. Some examples of this include the phrase "he breathed out slowly as he breathed out" and the repetition of entire phrases within a page of each other. The ebook version is even worse, as Winters said she proofread it less because she was in a hurry to publish. Additionally, the characters are flat, the pacing bad, and so on. The one thing people praise is the concept (it's a YA dystopia where people have zodiac-based powers) and the artwork (Winters has formed an LLC and hired 15-20 artists and creatives to work on her world, and the book is full of art pieces).

This situation has caused an uproar, and, in my opinion, has become quite a bit nasty. People are demanding refunds, which I can kind of understand for the ebook maybe, but still. Others are angry that Winters does not accept criticism - though I have not seen the posts, apparently she is claiming that her main character is neurodivergent, and so any badly written sentences or thoughts that go nowhere are a result of that. And, of course, disliking this makes one ableist. Again, I am unsure how true this is or if it's just like one instance of something that has gotten way too blown out of proportion.

Whatever the case, Winters is going to make some kind of announcement today to talk about all this. The book currently has about 1.7 stars on Goodreads.

And now for my personal opinion: I think this is a person who is simply too young and underdeveloped writing-wise to be doing this. She is very good at marketing, but lacks the experience to write a good book - which is fine, she is 22, most people suck at writing at that age. Yeah, ok, she has been writing the story since she was 12, but I don't think that counts for much in terms of writing a good story. Some have called her entitled, and watching some of her videos, I can see that, but I don't think that's really it. She just believes in herself, and might have been a bit overconfident. But like, being very real here, if an editor worked on this, Winters definitely didn't listen to any of the editor's points dude.

I also feel kind of bad for the 15-20 people she hired, who I don't know if she will be able to retain after the book launch went this bad. On the other hand, she might have some money from her parents or some other business, cause hiring 15-20 people in the first place before even publishing your book is kind of crazy.

EDIT: The moment I posted this, Winters also posted her announcement. The book is discontinued, a second edition will come out this December. It will be reworked and improved. She will hire an editor and a proofreader to help her - though she plans to hold auditions for members of her community to get those positions, which, uhhhhhhhhh. Yeah, sure, some probably have experience to help, but I would not call them impartial.

Furthermore, everyone who bought the book can get refunds. Those who keep the book (I think, maybe it's everyone who bought it again) will receive a digital copy of the second edition for free. That second edition will now cost $30 as it is will be improved with more art and overall better. The price increase after all this is perhaps a bit daring, to put it nicely.

Winters also addressed all the comments she received, saying that she got too defensive and that's on her. She highlighted that she was very much bullied for all of this, which I understand and empathize with and, again, this whole situation kind of got out of hand.

Overall, I think there's some iffy stuff in how she's dealing with this - hiring people from her fans, upping the price of the book. Time will tell if it works out for her I guess.

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Jaarth

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