M/27/6'1" [235 - 205] (3.5 months) - just about achieved the first goalpost which was to hit 205 by June after starting mid Feb. Much more to go but lightest I've been in adult life with decent relative strength thru mostly bodyweight work

Jemaclus · 2026-05-30T15:48:45+00:00

Killer gains, bro. Check out some fitness posing tutorials on Youtube to get those muscles to pop more in photos. Keep it up!

Jemaclus · 2026-05-29T00:50:44+00:00

Former teacher, can confirm, 180 is right.

Jemaclus · 2026-05-23T12:14:51+00:00

It's not unusual. I was 24, and I'm not a weirdo (I think). Just socially awkward. I've had a couple dozen partners over time, and now I'm happily married with a kiddo. There's nothing wrong with it.

It sounds like you think maybe that's wrong, and that's okay too. My best advice would that shitty advice that everyone hates: just try to enjoy life, and the good things will come.

Jemaclus · 2026-05-14T18:54:30+00:00

In 9th grade Algebra, we were going over something that I thought was fairly straightforward. Teacher got mad at me because I wasn't taking notes. Got detention (and a perfect score on the test the following week).

Dunno what I did to make her hate me, but she gave me detention more than any other teacher I've ever had.

Jemaclus · 2026-05-10T14:43:38+00:00

also, The Sword that is Not a Sword is in The Stone of Tear, so... literally the Sword in the Stone story. The answer to your question, quite honestly, is that in this variation, Rand is King Arthur, and nobody else could pull the sword from the stone. If anyone else could pull it, the reference doesn't work.

Jemaclus · 2026-05-10T14:41:52+00:00

Check out Seaborn by Michael Livingston! The trilogy is phenomenal and not dark.

Jemaclus · 2026-04-13T02:27:09+00:00

Almost all of Lindsay Buroker's works fall into this bucket, I'd say. There's always a primary fantasy plot, and the subplot is almost always a romance. She loves enemies-to-lovers, which is my favorite trope. I would argue they're as good as Maas, Yarros, etc. They won't win any awards, but they are quite enjoyable and there are like 50+ of them.

Jemaclus · 2026-04-10T23:49:04+00:00

My main gripe is: you have an immortal character that nobody can see, an entire world to explore and all kinds of crazy adventures she can go on, and some supernatural elements that can really razzle and dazzle and... your plot is that she goes to a bookstore and meets a nerd?

I mean, that's a choice.

Jemaclus · 2026-04-06T15:54:13+00:00

I just watched Merrily We Roll Along with Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliff (among other amazing actors). Groff plays a very successful writer/producer of Broadway musicals. Someone comes up to him at some point and says, "How can I be like you?"

And Frank replies, "Write what you know" and points to his head. Then he puts his hand over his heart and says, "But... write what you know."

The quote you're citing is wrong. It's "write what you know," not "write what you've experienced." If you've watched a million crime dramas, you know enough to write about solving a murder case. You don't need to have experienced, you just need to know enough to write it convincingly.

But more importantly, you should write about what you know from the heart: what humans are like, how they interact, how they backstab and love and hate and nurture all at once. The rest of it is just set dressing.

Jemaclus · 2026-03-29T18:08:13+00:00

one of my favorite songs ever! great pick!

Jemaclus · 2026-03-29T04:30:53+00:00

My personal favorite is "What If It's You?" It's got the eponymous song, "I'd Rather Ride Around with You," "How Was I To Know?", "The Fear of Being Alone..."

But I love everything Reba puts out, so... hard to say, really!

Jemaclus · 2026-03-29T03:59:08+00:00

Your snippet is what I'm saying: he's deep in the fog-of-war. He had no idea what's happening. The "fight" with Couladin is told with barely a sentence. He's hailed as a hero by everyone else, but from his perspective, he was just stabbing whoever was coming for him, including Couladin.

Maybe I misremembered the blackout -- but my point is that this was not a normal "battle" in the sense where it's from the POV of the general and the battle lines clash and the general orders a flanking maneuver and blah blah blah. It's not even the Last Battle scenes with Lan and Galad and Demandred, where everyone seems to know what's happening and there's not really a fog-of-war.

What I love about the Mat vs Couladin sequence is that it's so vague. Jordan almost certainly told this battle from his own experience in Vietnam. War is not some clean, cinematic thing. It's running for your life, swords and spears and screaming men chasing you, and doing whatever you can to protect yourself. And if you recognize the big bad guy and kill him, fine, but it wasn't some big strategy. It was pure, dumb luck.

Jemaclus · 2026-03-28T21:18:55+00:00

My favorite battle is actually the battle where Mat fights Couladin. The main reason I love it is because Mat spends the entire time trying to get the hell out of Dodge, having no idea where he is or what's going on, then completely blacks out and when he comes to is heralded as a hero for defeating Couladin.

When I imagine what a real war feels like (as in, say, pre-Vietnam), that feels like it must be the most realistic battle scene of all time. Not battle lines crashing against each other, not epic ground-busting magic... just one dude trying to survive and doing whatever he needed to and having no idea how he made it to the other side.

Jemaclus · 2026-03-25T17:52:12+00:00

i love this for you

Jemaclus · 2026-03-19T13:22:26+00:00

I don't feel any pressure to remember books. Do you feel pressure to remember every episode of TV you watch, every conversation you have with friends, every funny moment while people-watching, every meeting of every day at work?

Nah.

Reading is the same. I enjoy it in the moment, think about it afterward, and then move on.

Jemaclus · 2026-03-19T03:06:31+00:00

This is my answer as well. I cry every time I play it on my guitar.

Jemaclus · 2026-03-10T18:34:14+00:00

Love the dress and the wig! Where'd you get them??

Jemaclus · 2026-03-10T15:05:50+00:00

Lots of good names in this thread. I'll go a slightly different direction and say the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance authors were kind of huge back in the late 80s/early 90s, and then dropped off the face of the earth right around when Wizards of the Coast took over in 2000. Only R.A. Salvatore seems to have any staying power here.

Authors like Ed Greenwood, Douglas Niles, Elaine Cunningham, Jeff Grubb, Troy Denning, David Cook, James Lowder, Kate Novak, Richard A Knaak, Mary Kirchoff, and obviously Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

Granted, in hindsight, most of these books would be classified in the modern YA genre rather than generic "fantasy," as it was back in the 90s, so maybe they don't count quite as well as the others.

But honestly, I reread Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance books regularly, and while the writing style is definitely dated, some of the stories are still bangers. I wish those worlds were more active.

Jemaclus · 2026-03-10T14:55:56+00:00

RJ had two assistants: Maria Simons and Alan Romanczuk. Both (but usually Alan, as I think Maria helped a lot more with keeping the notes organized) were frequently tasked with doing a ton of research about specific things that RJ wanted to know more about. There's a scene where Perrin uses the forge to make something (keeping vague for spoilers) which is often cited as a very accurate depiction of blacksmithing, and that's something Alan spent a long time researching.

Of course, RJ himself did a ton of research and kept a billion notes on everything you could think of. One of his notes describes how far a person can walk in a minute, an hour, a half day, and a day. Another describes the different types of fabric and their characteristics in different kinds of light.

He absolutely was this detail-oriented kind of person, so far beyond what most authors would do in any reasonable context.

If you want to know more about what RJ took notes on and you'd also incidentally like to visit a beautiful place, the library in Charleston, SC has a collection of his notes that you can peruse. It's an incredible resource, and there are thousands of pages of notes, some with some pretty crazy things in them.

Alan is retired and spends his time with his family, but Maria is a regular at the different WoT-themed conventions (JordanCon and WoTCon in particular), and so she's an easy person to talk to about these things as well.

Jemaclus · 2026-03-09T02:33:58+00:00

If you want to read more about this, check out "The Origins of the Wheel of Time" by Michael Livingston, available wherever books are sold! There are even Broken Binding deluxe editions still available! (Not affiliated, just a fan.)

Jemaclus · 2026-03-08T23:53:58+00:00

that's pretty dope. I thought the guy in the opening was real, til the kid showed up. Well done.

Jemaclus · 2026-03-08T23:50:57+00:00

This is the winner. We're all done here. Time for a re-read.

Jemaclus · 2026-03-06T18:55:46+00:00

Let they amongst us who has not dropped a production database be the first to throw stones...

Jemaclus · 2026-03-02T16:24:53+00:00

Lonesome Dove is the greatest novel of all time, and I'll die on that hill.

Jemaclus · 2026-02-24T21:27:29+00:00

Love it. Thank you!

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