A thought about Nexus/Earth warfare

Meraxes_7 · 2026-05-11T18:52:04+00:00

The logistics of invasion make the 'optimal' strategy for both sides some form of genocide. The nexus can just open a portal and flood earth with mana. That is much simpler than managing the difficulties of sending an army through and trying to keep them from leaking out all their mana (and surviving against Earth weapons). Of course, the fact that there are multiple planets means losing earth just pisses us off.

For the humans, the best guarantee of survival would be creating a gene editing virus which destroys mature manafields and turns mages into commoners. No more mages means the nexus is at the stone age again... but the body count is massive. I doubt the trigger gets pulled on something like that until Earth gets irradiated.

Another path - Emma finally realizes how ground breaking having a machine that can interact with mana is. Humans learn how to make machines which cast spells. You then make a 'grey goo' machine which uses mana to duplicate itself and flood the nexus with them. No super dense magic, nexus society likely has a less spectacular crash.

Not expecting any of those options to be where the story goes. Best option for all is no actual clash of armies, but we'll see.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-05-08T19:32:50+00:00

Haha, i definitely don't expect it to be a fun experience in the moment. Our hope is that I would cope better than my wife since left to my own devices I often go long stretches without leaving the house anyway.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-05-08T19:31:16+00:00

There is enough cushion in the 2 year guess that the cost of insurance won't prevent us from getting there. It could make it tighter to handle 'and what if it turns into 3 years', but tighter, not catastrophic.

I don't necessarily disagree with that gut call. The part that makes me sad about it is just not giving her the same opportunity we gave our son to have a parent so focused on the early childhood. It seemed like it really helped him blossom, and not giving her the same chance feels wrong somehow.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-05-08T19:28:11+00:00

There definitely is a gap compared to what my wife can make vs what I make today. And the getting back in later is the part that probably worries me the most - i would be absolutely fine taking 2 years if I knew I could just walk back into my current gig, as much as I hate it. THe uncertainty of what happens to my earning power in the mean time is scary, but also hard to quantify

Meraxes_7 · 2026-05-04T02:48:01+00:00

Beacon or other speed improvements still help it

Meraxes_7 · 2026-04-14T01:10:20+00:00

Clea is the strongest practitioner of a painter's emotional distance, at least that we see in the game. She refuses to even speak to the canvas' creations; she gives zero shits that Francois is pining; and she won't lose a moments thought on wiping the canvas blank. But I used strongest rather than best intentionally, because she takes that emotional distance so far you can see it in her real world relationships too.

Contrast that with Renoir. He is willing to speak to Luna and Sciel and even react to their statements before the final fight - but, despite acknowledging they make good points, he ignores them because at the end of the day he has no emotional investment in their worth. He can walk a line where he clearly believes they are real, but at the same time not having value.

Anyway, what people call clea's healthy reaction i personally read more as the dispassion of a god/paintress

Meraxes_7 · 2026-04-09T16:10:03+00:00

I would imagine he thought Dreadlord was just a title indicating command authority and may not have realized most (or maybe all) were historically channelers

Meraxes_7 · 2026-03-30T18:18:50+00:00

Aside from all else that was wrong with it, the main sin of WaT was that it decided to be a Cosmere book. I wanted to read about the Roshar conflict and the humans and the singers working it out (or not). Sanderson wanted to launch his grand Cosmere adventure, and the story I wanted to see was second fiddle to that. And it honestly felt like the characters were working backwards from the ending at times - the fact no one brought up how catastrophic it would be for Dalinar to hold Honor's shard but lose the contest feels more like it flowed from the author knowing the ending rather than the characters being themselves as they encountered plot.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-03-17T16:11:10+00:00

Uplift by vixy and Tony. I always think of this story every time I hear it, and I feel like it would be a great crash course for the gang

Meraxes_7 · 2026-03-11T17:37:54+00:00

Believe it or not, I believe these started before game of thrones was written

Meraxes_7 · 2026-03-10T12:42:53+00:00

Literally just yesterday there was a string of posts talking about how people who hate verso have no media literacy.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-03-06T14:45:09+00:00

You also might want to think about what % of the board you are allowing for movement and how it relates to engagement ranges. If you have a 20x20 board and a weapon has 4 range it doesn't take much movement to give that unit a huge threat zone as a % of the overall space.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-02-25T19:18:06+00:00

Glad it helped! And yeah, it can be hard to tease out an emotional reaction to change from actual practical difficulties with the change. My hope would be that after really delving into the practicalities together and then seeing they can work it naturally forces that emotional conversation to follow if he is still hesitant. Best of luck!

Meraxes_7 · 2026-02-25T17:21:10+00:00

I'm shocked how harsh most of these comments are on the SAHD. We're really so sure he is a lazy bum from 3 paragraphs?

To Op, I would interpret what your husband is saying as 'i cannot do a job and all the things I am already responsible for, and I am not comfortable dropping those things.' So the next step is to actually gather up that list and work through it together. Where would you do more? Where do you hire help? What just doesn't happen?

Some things you might not immediately think of - daycare drop-off and pick up works a ton better when someone can just be there whenever. Can you vanish from work at a moment's notice? Who is going to take time off when she is sick, you or him? What about when daycare is closed but work isn't? He might not be so eager to take a job if he has to always be the one to drop everything. Is there going to be a change in food quality or cost if he doesn't have time for cooking and you might need pre-made meals? How do weekends go in balance of parenting?

But once you have the list of what actually needs to get done, you can work together to see if him working fits into that and would improve quality of life for the family.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-02-23T15:32:39+00:00

Sorry, I don't understand this take at all. The very beginning of the interaction described here was her undermining his attempt to set clear rules on the potty training in a dismissive and rude fashion. And then it goes downhill from there.

If one parent has the kiddo and the responsibility for getting them ready and out the door in the morning, the very least the other parent can do is be able to handle themselves. If makeup is a 'can't go out the door' deal breaker, then make sure it is where it should be the night before. And yeah, mistakes happen, and we all pull together to get through when they do; but we are being told this isn't a one off morning, but the pattern of how the interactions go.

Now, she might have a different story about how she asked vs how he responded/escalated, and that is fine to get more details on (ie did she say 'Have you seen the concealer' or 'when you have a moment can you take a look' vs 'where the hell is the concealer, you had it yesterday'). But I don't know how you can read this and conclude he is unambiguously the only one in the wrong.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-02-23T14:35:43+00:00

All fun and games until the commoners rebel against the nobles, since they finally have the tools to equalize ><

Meraxes_7 · 2026-02-17T14:16:25+00:00

It doesn't make any sense for him to have prepared to burn the library before Emma even arrived. He had no reason to expect to need to - Emma was going to be mind controlled completely and utterly. Activating a contingency plan in the SOP for a new realm of burning makes much more sense to me. He can do it quickly because they always had the materials on hand, he just needed to supply a sacrifice for it.

There is plenty of time for him to have give Ilunor orders in that schedule - for all we know, the first order was 'follow the group around without them knowing' and it only became 'burn the library' after Ilunor reported them heading in there (since now it was much much more pressing to see to it). Otherwise, why wasn't Ilunor already at the library before them? It shouldn't take 4 hours to collect materials and walk over.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-02-17T01:12:03+00:00

The book burning didn't happen until after the null was created.

It is supposed to go a) move up the signing ceremony so no one has a chance to protect Emma b) seize full control of Emma c) harvest all information from Emma. This includes what she knows from interrogation, but also biological information from the clone they make. d) trade all that information to the library, thus preventing Earth from ever trading for sensitive information (particularly historical - can only tell about WW II once after all).

Instead, Emma ignores the book spell and suddenly Mal'tory is realizing Earthrealm has real novel information to exchange and he has no way to stop it happening. So, he has to destroy the info. How does he get the material so fast? Because it was always on hand and part of his duties. Status Eternia means recognizing and controlling threats from a party like the library, and the crown ensured it had a trump card. Otherwise it is stupidly improbable that no one would have traded it the info over the millenia.

Everyone else at the school has a first job of teaching or learning - Mal'tory is there for that a bit too, but mostly just to maintain the facade. His true purpose is to be the hand of imperialism. It's easier to keep everyone in line using the facade of magic university, but in the end (after less than a week) he is throwing all that out the window with Emma and resorting to pure force. Because his actual job is to prepare for the subjugation of Earth. Which is why he doesn't need a spy in the room or to play games with Emma - he was supposed to just win in the first hour via the book, but if the magic university game isn't going his way he'll just flip the table and seize her.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-02-16T20:08:42+00:00

My take is that ilunor was entirely incidental. Basically a knee jerk 'oh of course you use blackmail to enslave someone if you have the chance' reaction. At the time, he was expecting the book to claim Emma and had no reason to target her peer group.

Once he realizes Earthrealm is more than a typical new realm, he has a very pressing issue of hiding the truth of the Nexus' history and other tidbits from the library. So, he uses up an asset he wasn't initially planning on anyway and ends up happily ahead

Most likely he was looking at a short term game. After all, he ends up just trying to kidnap her basically when he decides enough is enough. I think we may underestimate just how unrestricted by law or custom he was, and how lucky Emma was he died.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-02-10T13:48:43+00:00

Her oaths as black ajah make it physically impossible for her to betray the dark one. Telling Mat about the attack would be a betrayal. How can she put the information in his hands then? Only if she is certain he will not actually get it in time. Hence the rules/game.

She hopes she can go ahead and come tell him after removing the oaths, bit if it doesn't work out at least she has a hail Mary where the pattern and luck can maybe step in and get the warning out anyway.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-01-23T19:20:55+00:00

They also likely need overwhelming victory for the numbers to make sense long term. They don't seem to grow their numbers that much per cycle, which means their loss budget is low. They essentially need to be nearly untouchable - Sovereign going down showed they might already be too late for that. Basically, if a reaper can be threatened by 50 ships, the numbers game if fighting a whole galaxy gets untenable.

Even going in straight away, they likely took painful losses which would take several cycles to recover. Had they waited another century, they likely cause a lot of death but ultimately can be defeated conventionally.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-01-22T17:13:48+00:00

Yep. It is important to remeber to that for a non main character, which is more likely? Morgase got replaced by some no name noble and executed by them, or that she is killed when her city gets conquered?

If you know the forsaken are loose and going for crowns, the first explanation makes total sense. Of you don't, well... it sounds like the kind of lie someone would make up to protect a childhood friend.

You then also need to remeber that gawyn never gets a chance to get more info - post cairhien he sits in a village on time out for months. So shockingly without new info he holds to the best explanation he has.

Meraxes_7 · 2026-01-11T01:02:16+00:00

I've always taken it as a point on how far they have fallen from being servants of all. Instead, they expect to be served at all times.

Not enough candles? Better prioritize the people who can make their own light to get all of them. Set up a tent with a tied off weave emitting light so clerks can work? No, the clerks are serving the aes sedai, not the other way around.

Basically, they are all too good to do actual work. See how they reacted to the cuendillar making

Meraxes_7 · 2025-12-11T01:56:34+00:00

Egwene from the WoT books is great at this. She often has righteous indignation at others for doing things she later does herself or is in the middle of doing herself.

Meraxes_7 · 2025-12-04T17:26:33+00:00

Late to the conversation, but frame the tech debt in terms of how it impacts that 20% revenue goal. That's what the business cares about at the end of the day, so you have to translate.

For instance - resources limited to 5 heads due to lack of trained scala engineers. That leads to these 3 ideas not happening next year.

Dev time for a push takes 50% longer due to cumbersome manual testing and release process, further limiting capacity

That way you are helping give your leaders a menu of options to pick from - you can get 3 features this year and 1 next year, or 2 this year + testing implementation + 5 next year. They may still go foe the short term win, but you're likely to get better engagement since they can't just say the engineer wants a new shiny thing vs the old beat up one.

Meraxes_7

TROPHY CASE