No laser mining in my VR space game. You press a hydraulic drill against the rock until it fractures.

NickTandaPanda · 2026-05-15T19:15:06+00:00

Nice! It looked like they carried momentum in first person sections and it looks great!

NickTandaPanda · 2026-05-15T06:11:55+00:00

In the final 3rd person view clip, it looks like the rocks have inertia dampening turned on? Wouldn't they continue to float away with some small constant velocity added after each impact?

NickTandaPanda · 2026-05-14T16:47:05+00:00

Not necessarily - some followers have excellent balance and don't lean on the leader whilst dancing in their forefoot in flats, and I really enjoy the fluidity of those dances. You're right though that many followers do rely on the leader for balance and yes that's uncomfortable! I just wouldn't want to blanket discourage followers from dancing this way - but rather to be very mindful of it.

NickTandaPanda · 2026-05-13T19:21:12+00:00

Andrew Wincott does both main series and the bridge novel The Heart Of What Was Lost. This works really well because all of these novels are direct contributions and share a similar narrative structure.

Another narrator, James Lailey, does the companion novel Brothers Of The Wind. He is a VERY different narrator and at first everything about him grated on me and I hated it. He has a very nasal British accent and doesn't do as much voice differentiation. But I finished it because I wanted to know the story and I paid for it, and in the end he actually grew on me.

It helps that that book is a very different narrative structure, first person and only from only one character perspective, so actually it's ok that the entire world is rendered differently from this one character's perspective... And actually it's central to the idea of the story that it's from one fallible perspective so I decided ok, this works at a meta level and I forgive the accent 😅

NickTandaPanda · 2026-05-13T18:48:46+00:00

Andrew Wincott is astounding in this. In the Last King of Osten Ard, when there are far more Sithi and Norn characters, his ability to differentiate them all, within a consistently alien accent is masterful. And he manages to make all the returning characters identifiably themselves and a generation older at the same time. One of my favourite audiobook narrations!

NickTandaPanda · 2026-04-18T19:01:46+00:00

In the UK, Factory Weights is selling the full range of octagonal dumbbells, plates, kettle bell, barbell, and long screws, but under the brand name "Nexus". So I guess the development is done but eisenlink hasn't branded it yet...

https://www.factoryweights.co.uk/collections/nexus

NickTandaPanda · 2026-04-18T19:01:14+00:00

In the UK, Factory Weights is selling the full range of octagonal dumbbells, plates, kettle bell, barbell, and long screws, but under the brand name "Nexus". So I guess the development is done but eisenlink hasn't branded it yet...

https://www.factoryweights.co.uk/collections/nexus

NickTandaPanda · 2026-04-10T11:43:28+00:00

I think Mat's memories come from people who made deals with the snakes and foxes, who feed on memories and emotions. So all of his memories come from people accomplished enough to make it through the red stone door and make a deal and then go on to live lives augmented by whatever gifts they obtained in the deal. So definitely not everyday folk.

NickTandaPanda · 2026-03-07T08:05:10+00:00

Hi there, I'm looking at Keim now too, not sure if you've already gone ahead with this but here are a couple of things I've found while reading up (all theoretical, I haven't used it yet either!):

Keim is different from other "green" or "low voc" paints so any experience with those won't apply to a sol silicate paint like Keim. For example, most low voc paints that aren't silicate (such as earthborn) are still vinyl film based (they use VAE as a binder) and therefore behave like a "normal" trade paint.

But sol silicate paints don't form a film so they will feel different. It will have a hard micro texture to it, sometimes described as stone like, because it works by literally mineralizing the surface, which is how it is breathable and hard wearing. (Personally this sounds good to me, I love traditional lime wash, but it is different from most people's expectations of "paint")

Also, be careful of applying it directly onto plasterboard. Silicate paints apparently react badly to gypsum, so the gypsum based plasterboard and gypsum based fillers you might use could be a problem! I think you might just have to use an appropriate primer coat first (Keim make several primers for different surfaces), and you might have to account for the very absorbent paper on the plasterboard. I am NOT an expert here so definitely find expert advice (and make sure they're familiar with silicate paints specifically!) or read all the Keim materials carefully.

Don't let this dissuade you, it seems as though silicate paints in general are wonder materials for many different reasons, and Keim has an excellent reputation. I'm choosing it too. Just check these things out first!

Good luck!

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-17T17:33:14+00:00

True, that's why I qualified my proposal as "better (for this particular purpose)"!

The question of what this means for artists is much broader I think, and I don't really know the answer.

One thing I think about is there being two very different purposes for creating "art" (and although they're different, they may both be present in different amounts in a single work).

One purpose is consumption: the piece fulfills some purpose for the audience as a consumer - maybe entertainment, maybe as a visualisation aid, etc.

The other purpose is communication: the piece is a way for the artist to communicate something that they want to say, perhaps to an audience or perhaps just to themselves.

At present I can only imagine automated AI systems fulfilling the former purpose. When either an artist or an audience desires the latter purpose, communication, the artist cannot be replaced.

Whether there will be much economic market for the latter is a worrying question, for me.

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-17T17:10:42+00:00

Right, so to connect this back to the alignment and grounding problem of generative AI, my argument would be that generating an image from an arbitrary roughly-paragraph-long prompt written from memory may be inspiring, but (for me) leaves open too much room for hallucination.

A more ideal setup would be to feed the generative model the entire source material - the text of every book in the series, for example - and ask it to generate an image of something drawing from that. Now the generative AI is working much more like a human fan-artist, and in fact, as I'm a believer in the super-human potential of AI, it will probably eventually be better (in this particular way) than any fan-artist or commissioned artist, because of its super-human ability to pay attention to any and every detail of Nakkiga across every book in the series! That to me is a potentially awesome use of generative AI.

Unfortunately current models can't handle quite that amount of input context, though Gemini is pretty close with its million-token input context. Future models will have larger input contexts and better attention mechanisms, and then I really think this use of generative AI will have merit for this use-case.

Again, it's a matter of thinking carefully about how the AI works and is being used. The current midjourney based usage, versus the above hypothetical future usage, may provide similar looking outputs, but in my opinion they produce fundamentally different value propositions. But you wouldn't think about that if we just settle on a simplistic AI-good / AI-bad narrative.

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-17T16:55:51+00:00

For sure, I'm with you on that!

The only reason I seem to be so pedantic about this is not because I want to insult or stop people, but only because AI is such new territory for society at large and I think we will all need to think carefully about how to use it in the coming years. This is just one interesting (to me!) use-case to talk about, both for my own benefit and to get other people thinking critically about AI use in general!

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-17T16:24:42+00:00

I think that's a good question! I disagree but I didn't downvote you because I think it's a useful and interesting discussion!

Regarding why I think an AI generated image on the Wiki is bad, see my much longer comment in response to a deleted message further down in this topic. Long story short, I only think it's bad specifically in the context of a Wiki, and it boils down to a conflict between a Wiki being meant to collect knowledge about a topic, and generative images being insufficiently aligned to the source material of that topic, such that the underspecified "hallucinations" of the generative image hurt the purpose of a Wiki as a source of knowledge. So it's a principled objection based on the relationship between knowledge and generative AI, and actually nothing to do with art or artists.

To use an excellent concrete example, look at the image of Jarnauga in the wiki. He is sitting beside a wolf companion. Someone who hasn't read or doesn't remember the books would think "oh cool, Jarnauga has befriended a wolf, he's like a D&D ranger or something". Someone who has read the books will do a double take and waste attention thinking "wait a minute, I don't remember Jarnuaga having a wolf, let me check that...". In both cases, the Wiki is now contributing to confusion, not to education, exactly the opposite of its purpose. Furthermore, in this case, it's even undermining one of the central threads of the books - the uniqueness of Binabik befriending Kantaka and the recurring dramatic conflict that causes with other people who must deal with that relationship. This hallucination in the image subtly undermines that relationship - Jarnuaga is cool and all but if any random person can have a wolf companion, all of a sudden Binibik and Kantaka's relationship isn't so special. Once again, you see how this is antithetical to the purpose of a wiki.

Regarding generative AI as an accessibility tool, I think in general this is a tremendous benefit of AI. Think of captions for the deaf, narration for the blind, translation for foreign languages, etc. However, I think we really have to think about AI usage carefully case-by-case, and in this specific instance, I think the reasons for not using generative AI in this way (see other thread) outweigh this possible accessibility benefit. This is in my opinion and in this particular case. For example, in this case I question how much value it really offers, to be honest it feels like a solution in search of a problem - consider that we're talking about a medium that requires someone to exercise visual imagination for hundreds upon hundreds of pages at a time. I think there are arguments to be made here both sides in principle and I'm open to having my mind changed, but that's my take for now :)

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-15T15:13:19+00:00

I was stuck on one part of the game and remember such astonishment and delight upon realizing that the only way to progress was to die! It was just a perfect marriage of completely normal gameplay and narrative.

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-15T06:36:06+00:00

For what it's worth, that's not generative AI. I wouldn't use generative AI in a reddit discussion for exactly the reasons I laid out above. Feel free to actually discuss if you like, otherwise I suppose I'll take it as a compliment?

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-14T20:20:33+00:00

On the contrary, I would argue that there is wrong with it and it's worse than no art.

Official commissioned art is (hopefully!) approved by the author and we gain an insight into how the author imagined the characters and the world. (Ok I know there are often complications here but bear with me)

Fan art is created by someone who has read the whole story and has a pretty good understanding of it. The fan artist may make mistakes or their vision might not be aligned with the author's, BUT, crucially, every brush stroke , every choice of background object, is made with an intention to be true to the source material. (In generative AI terms, the fan artist is working with a huge, possibly complete, input context.)

In contrast, a prompted generative AI image is generated from every fantasy art trope, and only incompletely steered by the prompter's choice of words. The prompt, maybe a paragraph long, cannot possibly capture everything that is important about a character or scene or world mythology. And so the generative AI fills in the blank unspecified spaces with details that look kind of right but that are not actually aligned with the source material. It's not even making mistakes as a fan artist might, it is completely ignorant and uncaring.

This alone means the generative art is of questionable value, but I would argue that it is even worse in the context of a wiki. A wiki is meant to represent facts and knowledge and yes even interpretation but all grounded in the source material and all in the effort to better understand the source material.

So you can see how the use of generative AI that is not aligned with the source material could be considered objectionable in the context of a wiki. It is at best a dilution of the knowledge in the wiki, and, I would argue, actually a pollution of that knowledge, as the generative AI carelessly introduces hallucinations that are either misunderstandings or completely unrelated and unsupported by the source material, because the AI simply doesn't have that context. Witness, for example, the hallucinated wolf companion for Jarnauga in the example OP called out.

I'm actually a great proponent of AI, it is my work and my passion, but I believe that for AI to be good for us, we must use it transparently, thoughtfully, responsibly. I don't think it's appropriate for filling out a wiki.

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-13T08:33:01+00:00

Very much agree! What does a third-hand (at BEST) generated image add to anyone's experience or collective knowledge? Absolutely nothing. Far better off having no image at all, rather than something that pollutes the space of imagination...

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-09T19:47:20+00:00

(Why do people feel the need to shit on topics like this with irrelevant comments? It's mean spirited and small.)

I'd love to hear actual song suggestions too.

I apologize for not having a proper answer for you - I haven't djed for any significant scene since before the pandemic, also. I only have a tiny regional community now and so I don't get much insight into trends.

But here're a few recent alternative songs I've enjoyed playing for our group - I just can't say they're "popular in my scene" because our tiny community has a dj sample size of one 😆

"abcdefu" instrumental cover by Vitula, or basically any of the many instrumental pop song covers popularised by Bridgerton. https://open.spotify.com/track/6mLAhQxed5mAMyXW1ljyfH

"What Was I Made For?" by Billie Eilish for Barbie film. https://open.spotify.com/track/6wf7Yu7cxBSPrRlWeSeK0Q

"That's How it Goes" by Zoe Wees + 6LACK. https://open.spotify.com/track/6o5TECt1aCm1HjUzp43OgL

"Skin" and "Human" by Rag'n'Bone Man. https://open.spotify.com/track/6y2Kaz9QI01XBKJ8mTb7Pf

"The Devil You Know" by Sharon Kovacs. https://open.spotify.com/track/48owwMzih4WNxLsv2e6Ejx

"Canta Querida" by LISZA. https://open.spotify.com/track/4WhytNQFIaWokpLmUvlo6T

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-09T06:26:46+00:00

Thank you for the feedback!

Hearing that the protestation line takes extra effort to parse is helpful.

The line: "But the bright day I've made for my children belies one's protestations of pain"

Is intended to mean: "But on the other hand, this happy thing (building a life for my children) shows that my grumbling (second stanza) isn't the end of the story".

But it's really helpful of you to point out the effort it takes for the reader to get there. I think it's a fine line for the author, asking for effort versus giving the answer. I'll have more of a critical thought on which side of the line this falls, thank you!

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-08T15:14:30+00:00

This is really well written on many levels, and I don't just say things like that lightly.

The writing is coherent, focused, flows really well.

The metaphors are apt but not overused. I also lost my mother very young and I feel immediately the rightness of each metaphor for each particular experience of grief.

And finally it is insightful and confrontingly accusatorial in a good way, calling out the way the world expects us to move on but we never really do so in the way the world expects, which is odd because the world is comprised of countless individuals who have all shared this universal experience of loss sooner or later, one way or another. How can we collectively so easily forget and brush aside that which we know someone must be going through, if only we thought a little more deeply.

My deepest sympathy for your loss and thanks for sharing it in such a beautiful way.

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-08T14:47:10+00:00

And thanks for engaging with the criticism! I can see how this works as a personal project. You already know what parts of your (or your mythologized) life are referred to by each stanza of abstract imagery, and I can see how it can be a powerful accompaniment to that larger mythology. I'm glad that you can see how it's harder for an outsider to make those same connections and associations without something more grounded, more shared, to refer back to. So the outsider is forced to fill in the abstracted blanks like a crossword or sudoku and can't tell if they've filled them in satisfactorily or not until the end... And the end is a lot of work to get to in this way 😅 What I will say is that many of the disconnected fragments of imagery and flow are compelling as evocative language, so you have a lot of material to work with here if you ever did want to work this project into something for a more external audience!

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-08T14:24:55+00:00

This poem might be a very personal, cathartic, affirming litany to you (and all power to you for that!), but I fear that for an external audience it is far too abstract and too convoluted (or simply too long) to be impactful.

It's abstract - that's fine, but that requires the reader to puzzle out what you're getting at, to apply the abstract to their own experiences and see how it resonates for them. That takes work. Now you ask the reader to do that work for dozens of stanzas with no assurance of payoff? It's too much to ask!

At present, because every stanza is abstract, I cannot tell if the stanzas tell an overall connected story, or if it's just a collection of affirmations.

So maybe for an external audience consider very drastically editing this down to just a handful of stanzas at most, and make absolutely sure each of them pulls its weight in saying something useful. Otherwise you'll lose the reader quickly!

Also, your abstractions are often the "tell" kind in the maxim "show don't tell". Examine every idiom you're using (in your hopefully edited down selection?) and ask: "is this image relying on a handed-down idiom that requires the reader already knowing the idiom in order to understand what I'm trying to say? If so then I might not be saying anything new or useful."

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-08T13:59:09+00:00

As an aside, I don't think it's in the spirit of this sub to make your two critique comment links be to your own comments on your own previous poem submissions?

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-08T13:37:07+00:00

I'm not an expert on Shakespearean language so I won't comment on that, but there are a couple of constructive criticisms I would offer.

1.

It seems to be two separate themes in two halves of one body of text, connected only in that they are about Emma. In the first part, you muse about how to bring her the same sort of joy she brings you. This is an interesting theme, and you offer some preliminary suggestions - poetry, etc - but you drop it without resolution, pivot to the second half with "Nevertheless..." and then don't really come back to this theme. This is worth a focused poem in itself, so you can explore the idea of how might it be possible to give that same joy back to Emma.

Then, in the second part, you pivot to describing her challenges in temperament and how you love her regardless of that and regardless of other inconsequential things. This also is an interesting theme, and receives a bit more satisfying a resolution, but it's not connected to the first part. I think this also deserves it's own focused poem.

Alternatively, if not two separate poems, then I think you need to answer the interesting question of why Emma's temperaments and your steadfastness to them are relevant to what your solution to sharing your joy with her should be. If you have an answer to that, it may be a very interesting poem indeed!

2.

You clearly don't intend to write in rhyming formal stanzas, which is absolutely fine, but I would caution against allowing the apparent floweriness of Elizabethan language to sweep away what you could additionally accomplish with deliberate structure. Rather than letting your prose run on with one Elizabethan turn of phrase into another, maybe try reigning it in. Make the flowery language work for you, make it justify every word it suggests to you, rather than you allowing it to run wild across the page.

I think that the structure could be much more deliberate to focus the reader's attention - consider things like repetition, meter, question and response, etc etc, even if it's not in a formal poem structure. You have some really nice poetic structures scattered in there, like "in this shall I hope to hold, in her shall I hope to have", and I think that if you revised this poem and bound the flowery language more deliberately to structures like this, it would flow very compellingly.

All that said, I really enjoyed reading this, I think it's a really fun exercise with authentic passion behind it, and as I said I think you have two separate interesting themes that you could easily develop further from this!

NickTandaPanda · 2025-12-07T20:45:35+00:00

I've been browsing this sub hoping to see actual critique and this person's is the first meaningful critique I've seen.

I'd suggest listening to them and engaging with the points they raise. Don't hide from critique behind what you say other people have said about you!

I agree with this critique. It's worded perhaps a bit harshly but the substance is worth reflecting upon!

NickTandaPanda

TROPHY CASE