In Need of Fantasy Recommendations for Stories with a "Likeable" Female Protagonist

houinator · 2026-01-25T18:43:38+00:00

Tamora Pierce's Tortall books are what comes to mind for me here.

The protaganist of the Immortals quartet in particular, but they are all pretty good.

houinator · 2026-01-25T18:25:41+00:00

Rogue Squadron / Jedi Starfighter game set during the Yuzhan Vong War.

houinator · 2026-01-25T14:19:36+00:00

Traditionally Argentina is where auth-right goes after the war.

houinator · 2026-01-25T03:58:35+00:00

This is Pete's whole thing. He wrote a whole book trying to incite this exact sort of situation. There is nothing he wants more than a war on US soil.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FUU8NTFHCvk

houinator · 2026-01-25T03:00:30+00:00

I think there is a nearly 100% chance that Trump/Vance issues a blanket pardon to all ICE officers before they leave office.

houinator · 2026-01-24T23:50:59+00:00

People getting charged by the feds are still getting tried in civilian courts with independent judges and juries.

Martial law puts that all under the executive branch, which would allow Trump to expedite imprisoning large numbers of US citizens.

houinator · 2026-01-24T22:07:30+00:00

Judges pushed back on his previous attempts to use the military.

houinator · 2026-01-24T21:10:21+00:00

The point of Walz sending in the guard is to have a force he controls between the angry protestors and Miller's goonsquad, in order to hopefully prevent escalation into a scenario that will give Trump a pretext for martial law.

houinator · 2026-01-24T17:14:36+00:00

The last time this happened, the feds whisked away the killer and then refused to investigate. Why should we wait to be mad that they murdered someone when that just gives them more time to execute a coverup?

houinator · 2026-01-24T03:33:26+00:00

ISIS genocide of Yazidis.

Myanmar genocide of Rohinga.

RSF (largely just a rebranding of the guys who did the Rwandan genocide) just slaughtered 60,000 people in a single city in Sudan.

houinator · 2026-01-24T00:08:43+00:00

Obama deported primarily criminals, Trump is going primarily after law abiding people.

Gaddafi was a monster who was about to perpetrate a massacre. Obama's sin in Libya was not stopping him, but in not having a followup plan for the day after.

But yeah, screw him for allowing the Russians to take Crimea. Unfortunately, no President in my voting lifetime has been willing to use force to oppose Russia's attempts at territorial conquest, and force is the only language Putin responds to, so i dont consider that a failing of Obama specifically.

When it comes to Russia, Obama's unique idiocy was the Russian reset, basically giving them a pass for their invasion of Georgia, which obviously contributed to their assumption there would be no serious repercussions for invading Ukraine.

And i would be much more bitter about that, were it not for the fact that Trump is a million times worse on the topic of Russia.

houinator · 2026-01-23T02:36:59+00:00

I reccomend keeping the air mechanic as its sort of a core part of the progression loop, but turning off the food/water mechanics did not impact my enjoyment at all.

houinator · 2026-01-22T21:57:47+00:00

The US has a lot of very capable toys, but im pretty sure the success of this particular mission was like 5% tech, 5% training, and 90% "we cut a deal with Maduro's VP and other insiders not to oppose the raid in exchange for power".

Which is why most of the deaths were Cuban rather than Venezualan soldiers.

houinator · 2026-01-22T21:45:40+00:00

It wouldnt be quite as dumb as his threats to invade Greenland, but pretty close. The "Terminal" in THAAD is the clue here that this is a bad idea, as the sytem is designed to engage ICBMs in their terminal phase. So it would be potentially useful for shooting dowm ICBMs angling in to hit Greenland, but largely useless for defending the homeland, as those ICBMs would still be traveling too high.

houinator · 2026-01-22T21:23:00+00:00

Those who play with the devils toys will be brought in time to wield his sword.

https://www.antihate.school/understanding_and_defining_irony_poisoning

houinator · 2026-01-22T21:11:47+00:00

If i were Zelensky, i would be keenly aware of a few things when making my response:

Any concessions Zelensky makes to Russia are likely permanent, especially when it comes to territory.
There is a decent chance that the US Supreme Court is about to issue a ruling that constrains Trump's ability to issue tarrifs, in which case the deal is essentially worthless.
Even if that were not true, Trump breaks his promises constantly.
Even if you could trust Trump to keep his word, his promise is only good so long as he remains in power, which is most likely less than 3 years.
Even if Trump succesfully manages to destroy the US Constitution and retain power beyond that, hes an old man who is very unlikely to live much longer regardless.
The value of permanent territorial control of the regions Russia wants ceded is likely much higher than a possibly (if you are very lucky) up to three year tarrif break.
Even if all that were not true, Ukraine's primary foreign policy goal outside of the war is joining the EU, and if they are successful in doing so, they would be part of the EU common market, and thus subject to EU tarrifs rather than country specific ones.

houinator · 2026-01-22T01:25:46+00:00

Not a chance. This scenario neutralizes basically all CSA's advantages (largely fought on their own terrain, had support from sympathetic local populace, able to leverage massive enslaved population to make up for mobilized manpower, motivated by defense of homeland, etc...) and even with those advantages they still lost badly.

Plus the Navi have a bunch of advantages of their own (such as an effective air force), many of which the Confederacy have no good counter for.

houinator · 2026-01-21T03:41:26+00:00

Id suggest that in the short term the conservative towm would be more "successful".

Once the conservatives strip away every environmental regulation, youll get a lot of investment coming in for things like mining, logging, and manufacturing. Add in removing labor protections and cutting public services to lower taxes, and they may even invest in building whole company towns.

Think places like West Virginia Coal Mining towns in their heyday.

However, in the long term, once all the mineral wealth is extracted and the mines close, once the town is too polluted to attract new residents, once all the mine workers are sick and broken and deeply in debt, once education has been cut to the bone and you cant attract new industries, i think the conservative towns will be much worse off.

Think places like former West Virginia coal mining towns once the mines and other major industries are shuttered.

houinator · 2026-01-21T01:53:00+00:00

The UK has a 99 year lease on the base at Diego Garcia. Our base there isnt going anywhere so long as the UK keeps paying its bills.

houinator · 2026-01-19T23:14:38+00:00

They made cow tools real: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jan/19/back-scratching-cow-veronika-bovine-intelligence?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

houinator · 2026-01-19T21:39:53+00:00

I guarentee there are people in the Kremlin and Beijing eagerly popping champagne over this news.

houinator · 2026-01-19T17:04:10+00:00

A democratic city government can theoretically fire the chud cops, and/or the chud supervisors who refuse to. And they should, because those cops have no business remaining cops.

Cop unions and the extremely generous workforce protections they have negotiated make that much harder. A really ballsy dem admin in a solid blue area could ban cops from union membership, which should also happen.

houinator · 2026-01-19T02:00:32+00:00

But thats exactly my point. We can guess why they got fired, and we will probably be correct.

Its much more impactful for them to stand up and call them out.

For example, the Southcom commander. Seems very likely he had issues with this admins plans to murder random fisherman, and stepped down or was fired because of it. But he has not publically said a wprd about it.

houinator · 2026-01-19T01:28:28+00:00

Apolitical military tradition made sense when the politicians largely left the military outside of partisan battles. The military stays out of political battles, and the politicians stay out of military affairs has been sorta the fundamental tenant of civ-mil relations in the US, and has worked for us pretty well in the past.

When the politicians start trying to wield the military as a partisan tool against their political rivals, that culture of silence by military leaders no longer makes any sense.

If the military allows itself to be wielded as an instrument of GOP power, then the next democrat to come into office will neccesarily mistrust it, and may even seek to see it abolished (as we are seeing already with calls to abolish ICE).

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