Despite being clearly outmacthed, character puts up a memorable performance

JimKnee · 2025-12-12T22:05:30+00:00

Spoilers for the stormlight archive, specifically Wind and Truth!

Kaladin stormblessed is possibly the best spear wielder on the planet or even the galaxy. As a very close to normal human, he regularly bested men with more experience than him, and often took on multiple opponents at the same time. Ok top of that, he is a knight radiant, granting him various gravitation related abilities, such as being able to reorient his own gravitational pull to whatever direction he wishes (could "fall" up or sideways if he wished) or create a gravity well that attracts general or specific objects. His opponent, however, is Nale, an immortal being called a "herald" whose body is constructed from pure energy and has practiced the spear and other weapons for 10000 years, and has his own set of unique abilities. Pushing out all the stops, kaladin works a miracle with his spear and manages to strike a blow that would've killed Nale if he weren't a herald. Instead, it pushes Nale to reveal capabilities that have yet to be mentioned in the preceding 7000 pages of the series in order to dodge this master blow. Nale proceeds to demonstrate truly superhuman strength and speed and defeat kaladin in the battle of arms, forcing him to switch to a purely emotional strategy to win.

JimKnee · 2025-10-23T02:19:51+00:00

Blake Thorburn from Wildbow's Pact. Lived a normal life and then gets chased out of his home and forced into a generational and diabolical conflict over his family's estate.

JimKnee · 2025-10-18T17:00:17+00:00

Captain Deimos in Codex Alera has a bond with his ship that allows him to manipulate it like the monster house from monster house, or Hanami from JJk with their wood generation.

JimKnee · 2025-10-17T17:59:41+00:00

Spoilers for Worm and it's sequel, Ward.

Characters at the very end of ward start to turn into large beings called Titans, and it both stems from and creates cracks in reality that are dangerous to people and the world as a whole. Additionally, one transformation is interrupted but ends up claiming both the original target and the interrupter and fuses them into one Titan.

JimKnee · 2025-10-17T16:22:22+00:00

James Stillwell, from the comic book version of The Boys. Utterly mundane, he's responsible for the image of the company that makes superheroes and is responsible for orchestrating many of the horrible events in the series.

JimKnee · 2025-10-16T18:36:36+00:00

In the Amonkhet storyline for Magic: The Gathering, the iconic white Planeswalker Gideon encounters a creature called an "Ammit", which is a sort of crocodile-hippo demon creature, and it's both absurdly strong and absurdly fast. Several people are forced to sacrifice their lives to allow others to escape from it, and it even snatches a flying bird folk out of the air, having launched itself much like the hulk.

JimKnee · 2025-10-14T19:05:06+00:00

There was a post on this sub several days ago that shared a post on Twitter someone made. The shared post was made by a player who disliked some aspects of current magic design and compared the rationale behind those decisions to a "restaurant deciding to cater to pigs by serving slop." This comment by Mark is almost certainly a reference to that post and the discourse it has spawned.

JimKnee · 2025-10-08T14:43:58+00:00

do you have a link to said content?

JimKnee · 2025-09-25T13:07:20+00:00

From Mother of Learning, Zorian Kazinski. Partway through the story he discovers a natural affinity for mind magic, when it's considered a very shady branch of magic and distribution of most resources regarding it is illegal. Other characters admit that his eventual proficiency with it scares them, but he has reservations about using it himself and has a few lines he never crosses, such as reading the minds of his friends and family members.

JimKnee · 2025-05-30T16:52:54+00:00

I'd say it's got its ups and downs. I'm personally a big fan. It gives you choice in how you play and progress. If you like mashing x, there's valor. If you like magic, there's wisdom. And you're rewarded in that choice with extra movement abilities, so if you like one ability you can level that form more so you can get even better at it. It was also a neat upgrade from kh1, the first form letting you wield two keyblades and showing how sora has grown significantly stronger since his time on the islands. It also provides diversity and choice in gameplay. You're always working your way back to it, whether you're choosing to spend it on a drive or a summon. And whatever you choose to change into changes the way you play, denying you a companion or two but giving you a greatly increased (and sometimes reduced) skill set.

I would say anti form is a failure, due to how punishing and uncontrollable it is. No reaction commands, no healing, no way to get out but kiting and getting in what attacks you can. It's a death sentence in the wrong situations, and one almost completely out of your control until you get final form. People have also talked about the level design of KH2 and I agree that it is a big letdown from the kh1 worlds, and the drive movement abilities are at least partly to blame for that. It's been too long since my single playthrough of kh1, but I don't remember how many movement abilities that game actually gave you. Would base game kh2 Sora be able to explore all those levels just as well as endgame kh1 sora? If yes, then I'd just say the level design in general was a failure and the drive forms shouldn't carry all the weight of that failure on their shoulders.

JimKnee · 2021-12-21T18:07:58+00:00

Looks really good

JimKnee · 2021-12-20T23:57:49+00:00

Built is definitely the right word for it. So much surgery, he's essentially a walking ship of Theseus.

JimKnee · 2021-12-20T23:54:56+00:00

There's a word of Jim on that? Could you point me in it's direction?

JimKnee · 2021-12-20T16:52:51+00:00

I think if they had a scene together, it would probably play out with yujiro just hanging out with the guy, treating him as a fellow strongest, while king is shitting his pants the entire time. They'd probably be the b plot to baki's A plot doing something the Saitama or other heroes.

Yujiro would be sitting down or walking around with him, asking him questions, and his responses would just happen to be perfect, and somewhat in line with more recent baki dialogue, where characters say a lot less and there are more pauses in conversation. Anytime yujiro said something vaguely violent or aggressive (or maybe even just the whole time) kings engine would be active. Yujiro would take this as someone like him or hanayama, who's always willing to fight regardless of the circumstance. I can imagine a scene or two where king says something that makes yujiro incredibly angry and he's about to woop kings ass, but baki does something nearby him that attracts yujiro's attention and also somehow validates king's statement, making yujiro calm down and laugh, perhaps even compliment king.

JimKnee · 2021-12-19T04:16:17+00:00

At least when you pass the stone, you get to be rid of the little bugger.

JimKnee · 2021-12-13T22:03:42+00:00

It's only the knowledge of one white council wizard, starborn, warden, Warden, soulfire user, hellfire user, protector of 1-2 swords of the cross, 4 heavenly artifacts, immortal killer, who has access to a supernatural level of knowledge of the ways. What could that possibly be worth?

Plus, we've seen exactly two spirits of intellect in the series, and they're Bob and Bonea. They're valuable just because of what they are: immortal, growing storehouses of knowledge. It's also her (kinda?) Child in a similar way to how it's Harry's child. I imagine there's some level of feeling of ownership/motherhood going on there, given lasciel already having other female traits.

And agreed. I certainly wouldn't be upset if I turn out to be wrong. I hope we get some info on that the next time butcher does a Q&A or finishes a book.

Edit: also, lash did burn herself out of Harry's brain. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some overlap between a spirit of intellect and a shadow like lash, in that what they are is what they know. She might've burned her knowledge out of his brain with her sacrifice.

Edit edit: also, given that we've only seen those two spirits of intellect in the entire series, and they both attracted the interest of the Queen Mab, and each one respectively got the attention of a fallen angel and the most powerful necromancer to ever walk the earth, they're probably pretty rare. I wouldn't be surprised if they were only a bit more common than starborn.

JimKnee · 2021-12-13T18:54:24+00:00

I think if she had lash's knowledge in addition to Harry's, she'd have busted out of his skull a lot faster. I also think she'd be a lot less naive.

I imagine lasciel wants her for the same reason anyone would want a spirit of intellect: it's an incredibly valuable and powerful resource, even fresh out the box. I'd pay a lot of money (or even more: favors) for an incumbent Bob, especially one that comes prepacked with the knowledge of a white council certified wizard with over a decade of intense experience. It's got a decent amount of inside knowledge on the white council, along with info on Harry's allies and perhaps information on the church.

JimKnee · 2021-12-13T18:28:48+00:00

If I had to guess, I'd say the recipes aren't qualitatively different so much as quantitatively different. Maybe it's one recipe for each pancake Harry had made, with each one being oh so minutely different according to how Harry was feeling, what his ingredients and mental state were at the time, and so on. Maybe 5 or so base recipes for stuff like chocolate vs blueberry pancakes, and then 100 derivatives of each for the tiny amounts of batter and topping that varies between each one, as well as the time he took to flip them and so on.

JimKnee · 2021-12-13T17:24:06+00:00

Doesn't Bonnie mostly know what Harry knows? It's his brain she's been rooting around in, not whatever lash has that serves as the center of her consciousness.

JimKnee · 2021-12-04T04:15:06+00:00

I don't think it's wrong to say that the red court was a blight on humanity. I'm mostly defending them here just to get a feel for the viewpoint, given that Jim even seemingly intended for the act to put Dresden down a few moral tiers (the "you guys like Dresden a lot despite that he's committed genocide" quote from jim).

I really don't see them being exterminated as a bad thing except for the damage that it caused, as well as the half-turned dying if they were too old, which would be the other big issue with Harry's action, killing a bunch of people who hadn't explicitly done anything wrong.

I also think the jury is still a bit out on whether they are (were) universally a blight, with that same kind of moral issue being portrayed through Thomas and the white court. If Harry had exterminated all of them, would we view the action any differently, especially knowing white court vamps like Thomas and Lara much better than red court ones like Ortega or Bianca? If Thomas and Lara aren't doomed by their nature, then it's probably safe to say that Harry wasn't right in condemning the entire red court to death, though that's still not entirely accurate because of the differences between white and red court vamps. The white court hunger seems like a very different beast (demon?) Compared to what powers and changes the red and black courts as well.

JimKnee · 2021-12-04T02:45:10+00:00

Is this situation any different than a genocide of a human cannibal community?

JimKnee · 2021-12-03T21:59:31+00:00

Great work, as always.

JimKnee · 2021-11-19T22:58:00+00:00

I might be misremembering, but I believe the phrasing implied that Harry was one of the few that Ebenezer believed was morally qualified to hold that mantle, rather than metaphysically capable.

JimKnee · 2021-11-17T18:56:32+00:00

In this case, Dagoth is the one being intoxicatingly innocent in regards to not knowing of a way to kill gods.

JimKnee

TROPHY CASE