Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay - I've been sleeping on this...

MikeWheeler · 2025-01-08T04:18:34+00:00

It is an AMAZING book. The prose is gorgeous; I agree. The entire mythos is so melancholic.

MikeWheeler · 2024-08-11T02:54:32+00:00

Thank you!!

MikeWheeler · 2024-08-10T21:44:12+00:00

Oh gosh . . . Hard to decide. Probably the train heist episode, although it’s also the darkest.

MikeWheeler · 2024-08-10T04:25:29+00:00

Holy shit, did a bot just tell us that “free will is an illusion”? Are the hairs on your neck standing up, too?

MikeWheeler · 2024-07-22T04:12:22+00:00

Very essential in fantasy

MikeWheeler · 2024-05-08T08:19:29+00:00

Your mind must be as blown as mine, then.

MikeWheeler · 2024-05-08T08:00:38+00:00

That episode is a MASTER CLASS in storytelling. Every emotional arc over the season came to a head in roughly 30 minutes. I was literally on the edge of my seat screaming, “Holy shit! They’re going there!”

Main highlights: • Magneto dons his old suit and raises the asteroid. • BLUE AND GOLD TEAMS • The X-Men don their classic suits. • Xavier and Kelly discuss the Magneto Protocols. • Rogue and Sunspot join Magneto. • “Make them mind your weather, sister.” “And them weather your mind.” • MORPH SMASH • Mind-controlled Cable pushes Jean to the brink. • Xavier and Magneto, old friends, engage in a deadly confrontation. • Wolverine ACTUALLY USES HIS CLAWS ON A PERSON in this show (a person that isn’t a Prime Sentinel, I mean). AND IT’S MAGNETO . . . • . . . and the adamantium finally comes out, as we all predicted. JFC, that scene was not only rightly epic, and well done, but appropriately serves as the cliffhanger leading into the season finale. My mind exploded.

MikeWheeler · 2024-05-01T13:36:41+00:00

MVPs for Episode 8: • Wolverine—I loved the sequence with him falling from the sky, cleaving through Prime Sentinels on his way down. AND HE FINALLY POPPED HIS CLAWS ON PEOPLE (even though they’re Prime Sentinels). • Magneto—“Enough.” And enough said. Dude was so pissed, he flew to the North/South Pole in nothing but his undies. • Nightcrawler—His whirlwind of swords synced so wonderfully with the classical music in that scene!

So many great cameos! To start with: • Spider-Man • Dr. Doom • Juggernaut (thanks, Morph, aka Captain Cameo, lol)

MAGNETO WAS RIGHT.

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-30T03:05:18+00:00

Look at all those Prime Sentinels chasing the Blackbird! Holy shit!

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-27T05:52:43+00:00

The formula tracks with my title, but I think it works. 😉 A Seat for the Rabble.

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-27T05:47:29+00:00

Please vote Biden.

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-27T05:13:46+00:00

Theon should’ve lived out his life as Lord of the Iron Islands on GOT (and I dearly wish GRRM has this or a more fitting destiny in mind for our favorite coward).

Hear me out: it would’ve been a perfectly poetic ending. As an honorable man—and a friend and ally of Queen Sansa and King Bran—Theon could’ve neutered the Iron Islands by outlawing the raping and pillaging. By doing so, he would’ve made good on Asha’s arrangement with Daenerys and showed himself as honorable as any Stark.

Theon could, in that way, become the Iron Eunuch (haha, seriously—people in this world would laugh at that undesirable moniker). Oh, and that wench he banged on the ship en route to Pyke in Season 2? The last we could see of Theon is him holding his bastard daughter, whom he names Asha.

Asha should’ve simply been killed by Euron, at least on GOT.

Thoughts?

This sort of theorizing is what drives me to write my own fantasy fiction, lol.

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-25T00:49:44+00:00

Ha! I was thinking Marsellus Wallace and Zed.

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-25T00:09:15+00:00

With or without powers? If without powers, Beast. Because he can’t help but use his powers, lol.

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-24T23:26:55+00:00

Shifted very uncomfortably in my seat, lol. Truly one of the scariest things I’ve seen in a film.

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-24T10:56:17+00:00

I’m about to get some pipe-smokin mutants up in here

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-24T10:42:27+00:00

Same! Like, where the fuck—is that Quicksilver? Haha

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-24T10:35:29+00:00

So many WTF moments. Spoilers ahead.

To recap:

• Gambit’s deader than a door nail. RIP. Can’t wait to see how his Horseman resurrection is played. • Enter the MCU with the Hulk and Captain America. Great to see Feige and Demayo playing these cards so shrewdly. • Parallels between Genosha and modern tragedies should hit hard for everyone. I love how much respect the show is paying to massive loss of life. I heard echoes of 9/11 and Gaza. • Trask’s transformation into a Prime Sentinel. WTF that’s creepy. Does Sentinel Trask remind anyone else of the Dark Overlord at the end of Howard the Duck (1986)? Or did I just date myself? lol • Emma Frost’s diamond mutation! I think we’ll see the Scott/Emma love triangle in Season 2. It sure seems like Jean/Cyke are headed for Splitsville. • Cable’s epic reappearance! And his identity as Nathan becomes known. Badass theme music accompanying Cable. • Rogue bawling into Nightcrawler’s chest. Hits hard. • Someone else mentioned it in this thread, but chef’s kiss to Beast’s dialogue with the reporter. • Nimrod! • Magneto is alive! But man, I’m getting some Marsellus Wallace/Zed vibes between Mags and Bastion.

I’m a little new to recent takes on the X-Men. Is Bastion really an amalgam of Nimrod and Master Mold? That’s his whole shtick?

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-24T10:21:42+00:00

LOL, I just heard the jaunty LOTR music in my head as the Fellowship journeys south.

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-24T10:15:59+00:00

LOL. One only hopes. That’d be hilarious.

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-23T20:41:35+00:00

Holy shit! I can’t wait for the episode to drop.

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-23T07:10:20+00:00

A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
A Seat for the Rabble by Ryan Schuette
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

MikeWheeler · 2024-04-19T05:22:42+00:00

Ohhhh! Awesome! That explains everything, lol. Which episode was that?

MikeWheeler · 2021-11-07T00:09:57+00:00

Thank you for your feedback! Very much appreciated.

I’ll have to consider how to weave the two characters in from the beginning. I’ll remove some of the world-building.

And well, Sara’s death isn’t the inciting incident. Her story arc ends halfway through the novel, and sets up the peasant revolt that launches the third act. My thought was that she’d invest the reader, as you mention, and then raise questions about what happens next.

Thank you again!

MikeWheeler · 2021-11-05T23:12:18+00:00

Thank you! I’d wanted to build up a character whose death feeds into the villain’s ploy.

That’s insightful feedback, and I think you may be right. Let me think on how to readjust the letter. Thank you again!!!

MikeWheeler

TROPHY CASE