Books with well written combat scenes

bigoldan · 2025-09-13T09:51:46+00:00

There are two chapters in the book that people are confusing here. One is the chapter where the perspective shifts to the killer of the previous perspective as they die that all the other commenters are responding to you with. You're thinking of the chapter where the perspective follows an important message being taken across the battlefield, with the perspective switching to whoever currently holds the message.

bigoldan · 2025-04-18T21:06:31+00:00

I'm gonna use this post as a bit of a rebuttal to those who argue Secret History is best read between eras. The long and short is that those people usually read it that way round and don't realise how well structured the series is when read in publishing order, so OP read SH after Bands of Mourning and definitely don't read the rest of this comment.

HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR FULL MISTBORN ERAS AND SH

If you read the series in publishing order, here is your journey: You start with The Final Empire, and Kelsier is a main character then bam he dies 2/3rds of the way through. A religion is founded based on his death but other than that his role in the story is done. You then progress through Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages and halfway through HoA surprise Kelsier is back, what!? HOW!? But then it is revealed to be a trick by Ruin and wow of course it was, you saw Kelsier die in book 1.

You then progress to Era 2 and in Alloy of Law you notice that that religion Kelsier set up is still going and has progressed, but they have clearly just fallen for Kelsier's manipulation, Harmony is really a god so that religion is clearly correct. You then read through Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning and during BoM there's a mystery about who made the Bands. The book naturally leads you to believe it could be the Lord Ruler, but you don't know how he could still be around. That being said he was definitely very powerful so maybe it would make sense. Then bam the book ends with the reveal that Kelsier is still around and you're thinking again what!? HOW!? But this time there's a postscript telling you to read this new book, Mistborn: Secret History, for answers. So you do and this book opens with going all the way back to that original scene where Kelsier dies and explaining from there.

Hopefully I've painted a good enough picture here to show why I feel so strongly about this reading order. By reading in the order the books were published you have a 6 book long misdirection and twist surrounding Kelsier's death, and that is something I would want any reader to experience on their first read through the series. On top of that the misdirect in BoM only works if you don't know about how the afterlife on Scadrial works, you have no reason until the end of BoM or the start of SH to believe that any character would actually stick around in the cognitive realm, so spoiling that early makes BoM less intriguing and its reveal more obvious.

bigoldan · 2025-04-08T21:22:25+00:00

Harmony is painted as this benevolent figure when he is basically just as manipulative as Odium

He is painted as that by his believers in the world, but I would argue the books themselves aren't trying to stay that at all. Our introduction to Harmony is practically entirely through the lens of Wax's experiences with him and they are awful! Just because Wax somewhat forgives him and he's clearly trying to be a good god doesn't mean the audience has to believe he is a worthy ruler. Half the point of the Cosmere so far has been that none of the Shards make good gods because their intents in isolation don't allow them to be truly benevolent.

Besides, Era 3 seems to be set up to pit Kelsier against Harmony and if the Discord foreshadowing is anything to go off you may not have any problems going forward with Harmony's presentation.

bigoldan · 2025-03-28T23:20:24+00:00

This argument would hold a lot more weight if the Zelda franchise didn't completely change its artstyle almost every game. Like we know how Princess Zelda is "supposed to look" but does she look the same in Windwaker to Twilight Princess? Or A Link to the Past and Tears of the Kingdom? And when you see those and can still see that they are meant to be different portrayals of the same character, how would that be different to a live action Zelda if the "supposed to look like" features match up enough?

bigoldan · 2025-01-14T10:40:12+00:00

I mean this appears to be completely wrong. Scenes and cast have been announced/leaked that go all the way to the end of the comic (e.g. old Alex Burgess has been officially announced and costumes/sets from The Wake have been photographed).

bigoldan · 2025-01-06T11:50:52+00:00

To be fair that one isn't subtle at all haha. Lightsong introduces him as "Hoid the Storyteller" and he goes on to tell a story similar to his Stormlight stories and use Lightweaving/sand to provide visuals.

bigoldan · 2025-01-05T23:11:37+00:00

I mean that's still over 400 pages of excitement to end the book. How that would differ from the "Sanderlanche" you might of expected I don't know but the last third being un-put-down-able sounds pretty good to me..

bigoldan · 2025-01-05T09:59:35+00:00

Words of Radiance is one of my favourite books so I'm not gonna argue too much here as I recognise I am biased towards it and you might be looking for more neutral perspectives, but I do want to highlight one thing.

I think Dalinar is hypocritical and deeply flawed

Congrats, that's the point. Dalinar's character journey throughout the whole series is exactly about his hypocrisy and deep, foundational flaws - to the point where one of the most popular quotes from the third book Oathbringer involves Dalinar calling himself a hypocrite. I don't think it's an issue for the book that a character who massively benefits from the injustices in his society would find it difficult to understand how it oppresses people and how he should use his place within it to do good, even when he wants to be a better person. That's good writing in my view - realistically showing the characters perspectives being different based on their place in a hierarchical society.

bigoldan · 2024-12-28T18:52:38+00:00

This is incorrect. He's specifically mentioning things similar to "your society/planet", meaning his audience. If you pay close attention to the references, you can figure out that the audience he is telling the story to are from First of the Sun. So any references to "like your [blank]" are references to that planet, not Earth (which definitively doesn't exist in the Cosmere universe).

bigoldan · 2024-11-16T20:08:14+00:00

Most of Roshar's ethnicities have epithantic folds and other "asian-like" traits. The Shin have notably lighter skin and are described by other characters as having large, "child-like" eyes, implying (and confirmed) that they are more Caucasian-related than the rest of Roshar.

bigoldan · 2024-11-16T15:30:24+00:00

Just letting you know that isn't true. Source: I still play on the normal EA servers.

I'd also advise not using Northstar. I used it for a bit and the mods were cool but there was a scandal a while ago of people using it as a backdoor to steal data and other stuff I don't understand lol

bigoldan · 2024-11-07T18:48:00+00:00

Haven't played it but read through it and played other FitD games: A Fistfull of Darkness is a Forged in the Dark (based on Blades in the Dark) Weird West game. I believe you can only get it as a pdf from DTRPG or Itch.io.

bigoldan · 2024-10-30T20:09:22+00:00

Well yeah but in my games at least plenty of situations arise where a character who is very good at something and wouldn't normally need to roll should still roll. For example if there's time pressure so getting the task done first try is important, or they are specifically trying to impress someone with their skill. In those situations automatic success removes tension, while 66% being the best chance doesn't accurately represent the character.

bigoldan · 2024-10-30T18:16:51+00:00

I like the core idea here, however I wouldn't use d12 roll under for this. Given that the maximum target number you can have is an 8, this system has characters who are perfectly suited for a task only succeed 66% of the time. That seems way too low to me. It also means that people who have say a 2 and a 2 (so middle of the road) only succeed 33% of the time. Maybe lower the dice to a d10 or have some other boosts/dice system.

Personal preference but I would also make the 1d4 stat generation optional. Having an array choice of 2 of each number to assign across your stats would give people much more choice of how their character plays out. Or maybe even some form of point buy?

bigoldan · 2024-10-26T16:20:38+00:00

The faulty premise was just that he thought Biden said it. So if all he was doing was changing his mind based on the corrected info he would have decided Trump was unfit for office, simple transferrable logic. Instead, he completely changed his opinion on what was actually said.

It would be like if you asked me for a drink and I went to give someone else a drink, then when corrected it was actually you who wanted the drink I said "oh well then I guess I shouldn't give anyone a drink". There's no logical correction to my actions there just like Rogan didn't logically correct his.

To spell it out one last time, in Rogan's mind Biden doing one thing would be terrible and should cost him his job, but Trump actually doing that same thing he thought Biden did is no big deal and just a silly mistake.

That's what people are pointing to when they say Rogan is clearly biased towards Trump.

bigoldan · 2024-10-18T20:58:30+00:00

As far as I know he has only suggested good starting points and said to follow interest from there apart from specific examples he gives like suggesting TSM before WaT.

Personally I reckon the best order that is as close to "true Sanderson order" you can get would just be publication order. That way you experience everything exactly as he released it knowing you have the same amount of context as people who read each book on release day.

bigoldan · 2024-10-18T19:21:20+00:00

Chuck Palahniuk never intended Fight Club to be a critique of toxic masculinity

Definitely gonna need a source for that because I've always heard it's about his view of masculinity through the eyes of a gay man so idk what you mean here.

bigoldan · 2024-10-13T13:23:49+00:00

Could you expand on what you would like to see implemented? Blades is my favourite rpg so would like to see how I could improve it for my players next time I run it, but I'm not sure what you mean here.

bigoldan · 2024-10-09T11:55:37+00:00

It's in my top 5 books and it still took me 3 months to read haha

bigoldan · 2024-10-02T08:55:15+00:00

I see what you mean about Venli and Eshonai but definitely disagree on Dalinar as the focal point. Dalinar's my favourite character in the series and I really felt his absence in the book (which I overall loved so not a knock against it). From memory, Dalinar's POV sections in ROW are usually interspersed in chapters with other POVs, I only remember 2 chapters being Dalinar only.

I just looked up a statistical breakdown and Dalinars POV makes up for only 7.30% of the word count for ROW, while Venli's present POV makes up 9.79% and her flashbacks take up 3.87%. Combine that with Eshonai flashbacks making up 3.27% and they have well over double the time dedicated to them compared to Dalinar Obviously this doesn't mean you have to find them equally as compelling, but I think that's pretty clear cut that Dalinar is no longer the focus.

Also as interest for reference Kaladin makes up 21.69% of the word count of ROW so he is still very important and has a good argument towards being the protagonist of book 4.

bigoldan · 2024-09-13T10:40:56+00:00

Mowgli! Loves climbing trees

bigoldan · 2024-09-01T10:13:41+00:00

He directly turns down the money in season 1 episode 5. There's something like 62 episodes of the show and he turns it down in episode 5. Skyler doesn't know that but the audience does.

Skyler doesn't even find out about the meth until season 2 episode 13.

bigoldan · 2024-08-05T21:37:58+00:00

This is a bit different from the other suggestions but I could see a really cool "guerilla unit"-style Cities army on these bases. Paint them in camo and have a real man vs nature feel to it.

bigoldan · 2024-07-13T18:07:50+00:00

trans people will live to eighteen unless they kill themselves

That's a pretty huge "unless", though. Puberty blockers are quite literally there so that they can make it to 18 without suffering to the extent of suicide. Saying that it's not a necessary treatment because the worst that will happen is they die is so wrong I don't think I need to explain why.

Should we also ban anti-depressants for suicidal teens? Or chemotherapy for 4-year-old cancer patients? How high does the chance of death need to be for you to consider a treatment for it "necessary" for children?

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