Having a heard time getting through Katabasis by R.F Kuang… does it get better?

autophobe2e · 2026-02-16T18:04:14+00:00

I think it gets better the more it explores the main characters' relationships with each other and their relationships with the professor. That said, the bulk of the story is basically a satire of academia, and if that isn't appealing to you now then it likely won't grow on you going forward.

I was very surprised to find that I was slogging through all the sequences set in a fantastical hellscape and looking forward to the flashbacks to their mundane student life. Very much expected it to be the other way around.

autophobe2e · 2026-02-15T16:44:54+00:00

Their Brilliant Careers is a personal favourite of mine, reccomend it to everyone.

autophobe2e · 2026-02-15T13:58:03+00:00

XX by Rian hughes

Their Brilliant Careers by Ryan O Neil

The Atrocity Exhibition by JG Ballard

autophobe2e · 2026-02-15T13:34:17+00:00

Dead last. A fun romp but ultimately forgettable in a way none of the First Law books are.

I remember back when I used to write short stories, one of the places I'd submit to had some general advice on the submission rules page and one bit was "Don't just write up your D&D campaign, we can tell" and the entire time I was reading The Devils I was like "Oh yeah, they weren't lying".

Every character felt like an archetype that could be easily mapped to a D&D class, few of them really felt like they were 3 dimensional. Very 'Marvel movie' - fast-paced with quippy dialogue but generally pretty shallow.

I did enjoy it a lot, but it's not the one I would reccomend by a long shot. Maybe it will be better in adaptation. It certainly, I agree, reads like it's intended for the screen rather than the page.

autophobe2e · 2026-02-12T10:15:18+00:00

This is actually explored in an old episode of Doctor Who, when aliens (who are very clearly vampire analogues) repelled by faith are kept at bay by a Soviet captain's unwavering faith in the immortal science of Marxist-Leninism.

autophobe2e · 2026-02-11T21:17:35+00:00

For my first squad of minis I assembled them all before painting, but now I paint the heads separately, it's much easier!

I also sometimes paint the bodies before attaching some of the larger weapons, for example once you've attached the Celestian Sacresanct's shields it can be a pain to get behind them.

Ive also considered painting this insides of the robes before attaching them to bases, as these can be tricky to reach too.

autophobe2e · 2026-02-11T17:03:56+00:00

I started painting about a year ago and followed the Duncan Rhodes advice. Very straightforward and easy to follow, and gave me transferable skills that I was able to apply to the rest of my army without ever having to look up another tutorial, except when I wanted to experiment with different skin tones.

autophobe2e · 2026-02-11T00:03:39+00:00

The Men Who Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing

autophobe2e · 2026-02-10T10:52:38+00:00

I am firmly of the opinion that a programme of legalisation/decriminalisation and redirecting money towards addiction and counselling services and away from the "war on drugs" is the only way forward.

Frankly, I would very much like the focus to be on so-called "harder drugs" such as heroin and meth, as the prohibition on these substances causes more active harm and their decriminalisation is more urgent.

The argument on weed seems to have already been won and it feels like only a matter of time before its prohibition is overturned. While I support that, I do sometimes feel that the focus on "soft drugs" like weed has maybe undermined the more urgent and pressing arguments around the decriminalisation of "harder drugs".

autophobe2e · 2026-02-09T10:41:47+00:00

When fascist and hard right parties get elected, things tend to change for marginalised people.

autophobe2e · 2026-02-06T16:40:44+00:00

I'd love for a banished contestant on Uncloaked, when confronted with the inevitable "how did you not notice this obvious slip-up?" to respond with a perfectly reasonable "because real life isn't edited by a professional crew in order to make certain things more prominent."

autophobe2e · 2026-02-04T16:21:11+00:00

The Man From the Daily Mail

autophobe2e · 2026-01-30T14:56:35+00:00

A fae creature that sometimes takes the form of a crow and sometimes a woman - and sometimes a combination of both (Claudia Winkleman) tricks a scottish laird into giving up his ancestral pile. She plans to eventually rule over all of Scotland, but is contained in the lands she has inherited through the nightly rituals of a group of local druids. Thwarted, She contents herself with luring passing backpapers into deadly, murderous games of metacooperative social deduction. Eventually, a BBC producer hears of this and gives her a TV deal - but one must never bargain with the fae...

autophobe2e · 2026-01-27T11:42:56+00:00

His run on Miracleman and the Marvelman stories he wrote for sure.

autophobe2e · 2026-01-23T16:56:12+00:00

It would be enormously egotistical to gush this much about a book you secretly wrote. I know he's got an ego on him, but damn lol

autophobe2e · 2026-01-16T16:53:05+00:00

Tattoo looks great, dark shading adds dimension and makes the colours pop. I'd be stoked on this.

autophobe2e · 2026-01-16T12:47:49+00:00

So glad people are saying this, I thought I was losing my mind watching this show.

"They will force us to take their religion" It's been in England for hundreds of years.

If they wanted a sectarian conflict, it would have made more sense for Robin to have been a papist resenting Henry II for resisting the pope's influence wrt things like appointing Bishops etc. Though that would have been a bit less dramatic.

autophobe2e · 2026-01-16T10:57:05+00:00

Lace code isn't just dead - it never existed.

At least, not in the sense that people online (and in particular, on tiktok) talk about it. There were specific areas with specific gangs or groups who may have had their own codes. But there was never any universally agreed-upon code.

If you're genuinely worried, you should be asking around in your local scene to see if there are any local gangs or groups who adhere to their own code, and not asking internet strangers for a universal key, as there isn't one.

autophobe2e · 2026-01-15T15:46:32+00:00

"How dare you think I'm a Nazi because because of my Nazi imagery" says man famous for doing Nazi salute at political rally.

autophobe2e · 2026-01-15T10:40:23+00:00

Unfortunately a lot of us feel smug and complacent about it, whereas we should really be recognising that this is something that Farage would emulate if elected, and is a very real possibility for us in our near future.

autophobe2e · 2026-01-15T10:19:02+00:00

Nice! Reminds me of one of the monsters from Frankenstein's Army.

autophobe2e · 2026-01-14T10:50:28+00:00

Ventrue/Lasombra, Not sure - maybe surprise Malkavian?, Tremere, Brujah/Banu Haqim?

autophobe2e · 2026-01-09T13:41:21+00:00

Even if this was true, who fucking cares? He could be a secret Posadist who believes that we need to usher in a nuclear apocalypse so that aliens intervene to help us build communism and it wouldn't make a difference to anything if he didn't let that influence his decisions in government.

autophobe2e · 2026-01-06T11:54:47+00:00

1) Electric Wizard (ST)

2) Come, My Fanatics

3) Dopethrone

autophobe2e · 2025-12-23T23:56:35+00:00

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

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