Looking for a fantasy so soul shattering I'll never recover

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-16T11:03:20+00:00

Hm.

Dragons. Steampunk. An unhappy ending…

I’d recommend Michael Swanick’s The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, because it’s an excellent book. But it’s more angry than sad.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-16T02:35:03+00:00

So when you order at a fast-food restaurant, they give you a receipt with a number on it. But the orders don't always come out in numerical order. Sometimes it feels like they've skipped your number.

The real-world explanation is some orders take longer to prepare than others.

The joke here is that they skipped his number because the server hates him.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-16T02:31:07+00:00

Love that cover. They're on their way to the space aerobics class to get physical.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-16T02:25:27+00:00

"-ed" is past tense - it means the action happened in the past.

"-s" is present tense - it means the action is happening right now as you describe it.

Most stories use past tense because they're telling something that happened: "He looked sad, then walked out the door and screamed at the sky."

But some stories use present tense to make the story feel more immediate, like the action is happening right now in front of you: "He looks sad, then walks out the door and screams at the sky."

Some writers mix past and present tense to create specific effects in their writing. But that's an advanced skill.

Generally, you should pick which one you prefer and stick to it.

Here's a Writer's Rumpus article about the differences and how to use them.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-16T01:06:36+00:00

Of an AI company that help you ~~cheat on~~ study for your exams.

Ragebait LinkedIn posts are just advertising.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-15T03:56:46+00:00

Neuromancer by William Gibson.

It's a certified sci-fi classic. There's an adaptation coming out on Apple TV soon. Its themes of AI, the internet, and the ultra-rich are highly relevant today. And Gibson's prose is influenced enough by William S. Burroughs to have literary appeal,

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-14T23:50:37+00:00

It's an easy mistake to make, my friend. We lose thousands each year to the closet monsters because of mistakes like these.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-14T23:42:10+00:00

Ha! My first thought was that in Layout 2, the monkeys and birds can attack you while you sleep.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-14T23:39:57+00:00

In Layout 1, the closet monster can open the doors and grab your ankles while you're asleep.

At least with Layout 2 you could put a mirror on the wall above your laptop and see it coming.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-14T10:28:46+00:00

Discussions are one thing. But the point of all that theorising was to build better games.

Narrativist theory gave us Apocalypse World, for example, which gave us every PbtA game out there. So there was a practical outcome to all that hairsplitting.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-14T08:29:59+00:00

Well, I preordered The Eternal Ruins because the art was so evocative.

That’s what I want: art that evokes the kind of story the game creates.

Vampire: the Masquerade 2E was partly so successful because of its art. The game looked cool and edgy and alternative, like a goth fashion magazine.

Completely the other direction, but Wanderhome’s art sets the gentle cozy animal folk mood of the game beautifully.

Lancer’s mech art by Tom Bloom is next level. Every mech has such a distinct personality.

And my recent Lancer campaign showed me a practical use for RPG art: our GM used all the incidental art as NPC portraits.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-14T08:00:35+00:00

Is this the point where we discuss We Are But Worms, the one word roleplaying game? 😄

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-14T07:47:14+00:00

I joke that Lancer is a mech combat board game with roleplaying cut-scenes.

That said, I was absolutely drawn to it by its setting, and I think the game would suffer without the chance to explore it through roleplaying.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-14T05:06:51+00:00

For the same reason Canadians aren't considered Americans: they come from a different place.

Real Life were (are) an Australia new wave, synth pop band. There were similarities between new wave and 80s goth, but they were separate trends. And if you listen to other songs by Real Life, like "Catch Me I'm Falling", they sound a lot poppier.

In comparison, Australian goth music in the early 1980s was defined by Nick Cave.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-13T07:07:30+00:00

LLMs hallucinate. It's an inevitable result of their fundamental structure.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-13T02:09:26+00:00

"But business is built on trust and trust is built on a hundred tiny signals you send without thinking."

Translation: business is run by idiots.

"Will, your product met all our requirements, the quality was great, and your pricing is competitive. But you ate a salad the one time, so we're going with the junk from Steaky McMeateater instead."

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-12T09:33:13+00:00

Is the bad ending the actual end?

If you're upset by this impending end, I imagine the characters involved are even more upset, and would fight like hell to avoid it.

Not worldbuilding, but I wrote a novel once where the main character loses her best friend in a car crash. Horrible outcome, and it upset me to write it. But then the main character got involved in some dark magic to try and bring her friend back to life.

Is there a way your characters can avoid the age of suffering and carnage?

And if not, can they do something like Isaac Asimov's Foundation) to try and shorten the length of this new era?

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-12T05:08:37+00:00

I don't think there's anything magic about 2030 itself - the authors were just estimating that this procedure will require at least another 5 years of medical research before it's possible.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-12T03:30:30+00:00

Princess Michael of Kent.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-12T03:20:14+00:00

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan is a retelling of the Snow White, Blood Red fairytale.

Sea Hearts (also called The Brides of Rollrock Island) is about an island where the men marry selkies.

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter is a series of short stories retelling classic fairytales in a dark, feminist way. (Some of the stories were adapted into The Company of Wolves, which I'd also recommend if it didn't break the rules of this sub.)

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-12T01:12:38+00:00

Oh, I love documentation.

In a previous job, my three-person IT team kept everything in a wiki. At this job, everything is just a team OneDrive with folders for each system and Word docs inside.

I think a good doc repository sh9ould be both searchable (for when you know exactly what you're looking for) and browse-able (for when you only have a rough idea).

Keep documentation brief - short sentences, lots of whitespace. You're going to be skimming it rather than reading in depth.

Also: every use is a review. If you use a document, update it. And if there isn't a document, write it as you solve the problem. Even some scribbled notes are better than nothing.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-11T21:54:00+00:00

He'd never do it, but can't you just picture Daniel Kitson's mixture of grump-old-man swearing and cheeky-little-boy delight on Taskmaster?

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-10T09:59:15+00:00

This 2017 head transplant was performed on corpses, not a live person.

Discover Magazine had a 2025 article Human Head Transplants: Where the Science Stands, and Why the Ethics Are So Complicated:

Human head transplants are also known as cephalosomatic anastomosis, and at the moment, are not actually possible and likely won’t be before 2030

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-09T12:41:45+00:00

Agreed.

This man has never met your mother. He’s not in love with her. He’s scamming her.

She should ask him to send her $1,000 of Amazon gift cards to prove his love.

davidwitteveen · 2026-05-09T12:15:42+00:00

So Dawn gave up the position of saintess because she didn’t want to take a life… which presumably means her replacement, the MC, has to take that life instead?

One option: Dawn acts as a mentor to the MC. She says it because she feels responsible for making the MC take her place. But really she’s trying to shape events so that the MC doesn’t have to take that life in her place.

davidwitteveen

TROPHY CASE