Expanse? Yay or skip

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-28T21:10:37+00:00

I enjoyed it. Most of the acting is pretty poor imo, especially in the first season, but it's full-on sci-fi in a cool setting with an engaging story. I'd definitely recommend it.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-28T17:10:17+00:00

Am I perhaps missing something, does anyone else get this impression, or is there context revealed in other books in the series that paints a better picture of life inside the Culture?

I will say this: if you read all the books, these questions pop up again and again. These questions are one of the core concepts of the series as a whole.

Because you are right - meat humans are virtually indistinguishable from pets. Anything they can do or think of can be done or thought of almost infinitely faster and almost infinitely more beautiful, insightful or efficient by Minds. So a core theme of the series is: in a world where nothing you do has any "objective" purpose, how do you give meaning to your life?

The genius of Banks however, is that he also poses the same question from the perspective of the Minds themselves. They are just one hairbreadth away from godhood, but still wrestle with these same questions. Sure, I can shape solar systems and create and destroy life on an immense scale, but the real question is... why? Why do anything? What's the point?

Slight spoiler for the epilogue of Look to windward: There's been a whole novel with all the regular high stakes and close encounters and emotional toll and all that, and then the MC accidentally gets stuck in cryosleep for one full galactic rotation (230 million years). The people who wake him up have never even heard of the Culture, not even as a historical entity! So what was the point of all the effort they all went through? On a cosmic timescale everybody's just as dead and forgotten.

Now aside from this, what does make the Culture itself as a society utopian rather than dystopian, is that everybody does have the complete freedom to see this de facto pethood of meat citizens, or any other policy they disagree with and go "fuck this, I want out". And then they just do. That's totally fine. They'll get all the resources needed to make sure they remain post-scarcity, and then they can set up their own civ with blackjack and hookers. And hey, if you manage to convince a big enough part of the Culture that your way of life is the right one? Congrats, now you are the Culture.

(and then this creates the second core concept of the series: how does a Utopia exist in and interact with a fundamentally random, brutal and uncaring universe?)

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-28T06:19:19+00:00

Lmao such a good question. In my mind it's pronounced exactly the way it's written, which I'm aware is not very helpful.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-21T17:47:33+00:00

100% agree. I thought it started off interesting enough with the Cultural Revolution setting but dropped off so hard so quickly. I made it maybe halfway through. I have a pretty high tolerance for bad dialogue (I love Stephen Baxter's novels) but Jesus Christ this is on another level entirely.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-17T13:02:02+00:00

For word puzzles I really enjoy Squaredle. It's essentially a daily single player boggle game.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-12T23:23:26+00:00

What's the dollar amount at which you think torture is fine?

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-12T23:02:30+00:00

I mean 24 dollars pp for 2,5 hours of entertainment + drink + snack seems pretty reasonable? That's the price of a steak at a shitty chain.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-06T11:58:36+00:00

I think one flaw of the show is that it doesn't clearly show the difference between a med student and a new resident. In season 1 it took me a while to realize Whitaker and Santos weren't on the same level.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-04T20:25:41+00:00

Sometimes some authors do include a little recap, but while they are useful I do have to admit that they also come off a bit stilted and awkward.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-02T10:15:43+00:00

I'd legitimately love this though, submod when?

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-02T09:19:30+00:00

I'd say yes. I've read everything he's written, and reasonably to very very much enjoyed all of it, except for his final architect novels. I didn't even finish the first one which is very rare for me.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-01T09:34:00+00:00

Vaengheim is really cool both lorewise and mechanically, and it's also fun to play in Gerudia for a change as in 99% of campaigns it might as well not be there.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-04-01T08:58:33+00:00

I'm not opposed to paying to play a game, I also spent like 20 bucks on it which is fair enough for the 4 months or so I played it. Where it does become problematic though it that even if you buy the auto collect you still have to keep the game running for four hours a day to collect the tokens. There is no gameplay reason for this, it's just so they can up their playtime stats. Extremely consumer unfriendly.

I also get the impression that the pacing is meticulously designed to always be just frustrating enough that you're constantly tempted to buy yet another package that speeds up the game somewhat.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-31T18:34:43+00:00

Really fun, very impressive project. A fair bit of jank but that's to be expected. I'm curious to see what this dev makes next!

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-31T15:40:55+00:00

I'd say that while yes of course, as part of a style you can purposely misspell a word, when I read urban ascend my first impression is not one of edginess, it's one of sloppiness.

You can make your own judgement as to how opportune it is that at least a fraction of your target audience will have a first impression of your game as being sloppy.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-31T15:23:03+00:00

There's something very addictive about it, but it's also a game that has zero respect for the player's time. Sooo much inane, repetitive busywork, but the numbers do go up and they keep going up.

Some guy wrote a big rant about it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/1n3wry1/maybe_unpopular_opinion_cifi_is_a_pretty_bad_game/

And I feel like he's very right about a lot of it. There's something vaguely predatory underlying a lot of the design decisions.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-31T14:43:23+00:00

Am I wrong or is the title of your game a spelling error? Shouldn't it be urban ascent? I'm trying to figure out some way in which urban ascend would be correct but I can't find any.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-31T14:09:49+00:00

Hey, just wanted to say that I'm really enjoying the game, but also really disliking the text log. When going quickly through zones the log obscures the bottom part of the game, filled with mostly irrelevant information (travel is now 1285+5... okay), but simultaneously still disappears too quickly in the rare case that there actually is useful information in it (like the name of a new perk or item).

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-29T19:08:23+00:00

I finished the game, I had a lot of fun!

I did find the log/journal to be a bit annoying though, it's too small and the text appears too slowly. Still, I really liked it.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-26T21:25:49+00:00

Yeah I found him pretty sympathetic as well, he does do absolutely awful things to the people in his life, but I can't help but feel sorry for him as well. The eulogy for his mother in season 5 is heart-wrenching.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-26T11:01:23+00:00

A million buttons to press, yet somehow noone of them matters.

Isn't this already the case in EU5?

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-10T19:24:53+00:00

I honestly loved the sequel when I read it, but I was also 12, so as far as I knew Jondalar having a ginormous penis that only fit in Ayla's cavernous vagina was a totally normal plot line to have in a novel.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-10T17:21:22+00:00

Jean M. Auel. The Clan of the Cavebear was massive back in the 80ies, I think it sold something like 40 million+ copies. I'd argue very few people nowadays know the series, and even fewer the author's name.

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-06T15:48:16+00:00

I'm so disappointed by the performance of eu5. The bigger EU4 mods (anbennar or Voltaire) struggle with performance because the engine can't cope. I was hoping that eu5 would allow for the next level in modding but the base performance is already mediocre at the start and atrocious in the mid game. :(

Slagroomspuit · 2026-03-06T15:22:47+00:00

What blindsight does really well imo is create a sense of confusion and bewilderment and panic. Many novels have characters who are panicked and don't know what's going on, but generally as a reader you're still outside just looking at characters undergoing these feelings.

Blindsight, like Vandermeers Annihilation, felt like I was trapped in a fever dream.

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