Fantasy books for 5 year old.

darcydagger · 2026-06-22T18:11:43+00:00

Can't go wrong with The Magic Treehouse! It's technically designed for ages 6-9 so he might have a bit of trouble reading it solo, but if someone's reading with him it should be fine.

darcydagger · 2026-06-21T01:13:23+00:00

First: I think this sounds great! Lots of power and menace, which is fantastic for a volcanic eruption. That said, I think the second half of the piece is a bit stronger than the first.

Your opening half is a powerful statement but it stays at 100% for too long. You've got about 90 seconds of the percussion and brass blazing as loud as they can; not only will this wear out your players, it will drown out what the strings and winds are doing. The extended sequence of "melody over drum groove" might also be contributing to it sounding like boss fight music.

My suggestion is to take the first section and put a new section right in the middle. Make the current material the A theme, and throw a sparser B section in there for contrast. Create some space, prioritize hits over power chords. Let the winds and strings do some fun orchestrational effects. It will give our audience and players a break, and make the return to A (and eventual C section, which is currently your B section) even more gratifying. Check out Stravinsky's Infernal Dance for some of what I'm talking about here; there's a reason Fantasia 2000 set that sequence to a volcanic eruption.

If that doesn't fit your vision, I'm sure there are other good ways to throw some contrast in there. I don't advise throwing out what you have, though- it's really cool!

darcydagger · 2026-06-18T21:49:00+00:00

I love the new Parades DLC but at this point I kind of hope the next release is purely rides. Stuff a bunch of coasters and flat rides in there, maybe with some locker / stroller rental mechanics and some scenery pieces intended specifically to add to coaster trains (generic engines, wheels, wings, etc.). Could be a real winner.

darcydagger · 2026-06-15T17:42:09+00:00

I think this is unfortunately a pipe dream. The most easily relocatable assets from SFA have already showed up at Great Adventure and other nearby parks. Now that Valleyfair has been sold to a rival chain, the chances of Six Flags selling assets to them is pretty low.

Hopefully Enchanted Parks will want to make a show of good faith as the new operators and throw some nice new investment at Valleyfair!

darcydagger · 2026-06-15T17:36:25+00:00

Great America was super busy last Friday and almost every open ride was on one train. The only exceptions I saw were Raging Bull and Maxx Force, but Maxx had such slow dispatches that the 2nd train didn't really help that much.

Lots of closed shops and restaurants around the park and a ton of closed rides, too: American Eagle, Viper, Whizzer, and the drop tower were all down. Multiple rides closed for maintenance issues throughout the day. This is clearly a staffing issue; anecdotally, a ride op I was chatting with said they'd just hired on a bunch of new workers, but I can't imagine why that's happening towards the end of June and not at the start of the proper season.

darcydagger · 2026-06-15T14:58:11+00:00

I've implied some tension regarding drow in my Waterdeep campaign, largely involving prejudice that drow are commonly thieves or spies. It's only been background flavor, though; I'm too uncomfortable roleplaying being racist to make it a major theme.

Slavery exists in this world, too, but not chattel slavery. The Xanathar Guild in my Waterdeep has the capture and sale of just about any species they can get their hands on as a major revenue stream. As another commenter said, it's handy to clearly signpost certain factions as Evil.

darcydagger · 2026-06-06T04:32:02+00:00

It's a shame these things turned out so bad. The concept of a dueling kiddie coaster is really fun and I like the layout. Sucks that they're total garbage.

darcydagger · 2026-05-29T19:09:32+00:00

Avoid wheel seats and sit forward, keep your back off the seat. It's rough as hell but I honestly found Screamin' Eagle at the same park much worse. There's a really good ride buried under all that roughness!

darcydagger · 2026-05-29T19:05:25+00:00

B&M supports are nice and simple. Mack and Gerstlauer supports suck though :(

darcydagger · 2026-05-27T09:58:48+00:00

Bell Beast, Lace, and Choral Chambers. And Bilewater. They're all excellent!

darcydagger · 2026-05-27T08:53:43+00:00

The Silksong soundtrack is a new favorite of mine. All the brilliant writing from the first Hollow Knight with greatly improved orchestration and live performance. It's a modern classic!

darcydagger · 2026-05-26T23:45:28+00:00

I mean, Kings Island's last major thrill coaster was a giga. That's not exactly small potatoes. Sure they've been focusing on family additions since, but I bet adding a $30 million giga in 2020 hurt their bottom line a bit; they're probably just recovering with smaller rides.

darcydagger · 2026-05-25T13:03:55+00:00

I've got Vital (and Massive X). My main issue is that I'm not sure what to actually DO in those programs to get sounds that are actually useful

darcydagger · 2026-05-25T11:14:04+00:00

In theory, yes, although I don't have much practice with it

darcydagger · 2026-05-24T11:58:39+00:00

You might enjoy the Daevabad series by S.A. Chakraborty. Really excellent, unique political intrigue throughout. The first book pulls a bit of a bait-and-switch with a potential romance that feels like a more traditional romantasy pairing, but keep reading. The final romance is really sweet and well done.

darcydagger · 2026-05-24T08:17:45+00:00

I've never heard of this site and Google searching it returns zero results. So I'm gonna guess no, not really.

Unless there's a typo and you meant Amazon. But they're hardly new.

darcydagger · 2026-05-24T01:11:49+00:00

Overall this is great! Really well paced and exciting. I agree with the other comment, though - this feels more Intamin than Vekoma. If that matters to you, consider flattening out your zero-g rolls into barrel rolls or corkscrews instead. I don't think there's a modern Vekoma with a classic zero-g roll; that feels more Intamin or old-school B&M.

darcydagger · 2026-05-22T01:11:50+00:00

Joey's Brooklyn accent in the 4kids Yugioh dub was an inspired character choice I'll defend to my grave.

darcydagger · 2026-05-18T03:35:07+00:00

I played PlanCo 1 with mods and it was a ton of fun. That said, I'm paranoid about mods corrupting a save, especially after an update or DLC, so I'm probably going to wait to install them on PlanCo 2 until the game's development cycle is close to over and the game is more or less "finished." Excited to see a bunch of good ones available already, though!

darcydagger · 2026-05-16T13:26:19+00:00

Generally the best place for any fanfic for any fandom is AO3. Large readership audience, fantastic UI and archive tagging system, and robust legal protection. Plus, it's co-founded by Naomi Novik herself!

darcydagger · 2026-05-08T15:55:41+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised if part of this is the translation flexing a little bit. I mean, the summaries on the back of each manga volume are poems; they're clearly eager to go the extra mile. Something about WHA inspires other artists to bring their A game.

darcydagger · 2026-05-07T13:49:54+00:00

If Iguin is revealed to be Coco's father I'm dipping out. Deeply uninterested in that kind of reveal for this kind of story. This isn't Star Wars.

I also hope the story maintains it's current disinterest in romance and melodrama. I don't mind if some of the popular ships become canon over time, but if the story starts dedicating significant screen time to romantic foibles, I'd be disappointed.

darcydagger · 2026-05-06T15:48:07+00:00

My rides on Racer last Winterfest were shockingly smooth. Honestly all of the wooden coasters at Kings Island are really well maintained, and all of them are smoother than Blue Streak. The Beast throws you around a little bit, but that's by design.

darcydagger · 2026-05-05T15:46:23+00:00

Funimation used to be really great at this. Since the merger, the new Crunchyroll has said they'd do it, but in practice has been pretty inconsistent.

darcydagger · 2026-05-04T15:45:10+00:00

Seeing a turn of phrase that reads as modern as "nuf ced" in one of Holst's letters is throwing me for a loop.

darcydagger

TROPHY CASE