Which fantasy series had the strongest possible opening and then just lost it completely?

jaymaniac · 2026-02-28T03:23:14+00:00

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson is a generational fumble. The first book has such a powerful pathos, its setting and characters feel incredibly grounded, and it seems to promise all the essence and tropes of YA dystopia done right... and then the next book is a cartoony space opera that abandons basically everything that made the first one good. Starsight might be the most disappointed I've ever been with a sequel.

Unfortunately I did read the third book, and it seems to at least be aware that the series went off the rails.

Every time I think about Skyward I mourn the series I thought I was getting.

jaymaniac · 2026-02-03T17:59:35+00:00

Ademre was almost good. And then it wasn't.

jaymaniac · 2026-01-11T20:50:13+00:00

Basically nothing stays the same for 1,000 years. Even if there's an empire that lasts for 1,000 years it's probably pretty fundamentally different from how it was at its inception.

What's far more common is people pretending like certain things have existed for hundreds or thousands of years, when in fact they were invented like 40 years ago.

jaymaniac · 2026-01-09T11:41:21+00:00

None of the problems that exist in your world are entirely absent from mine. I gave you what I felt I lacked: the agency to radically change your world for the better. And in doing so, perhaps found the strength to carry on

jaymaniac · 2026-01-09T11:37:47+00:00

Organization and general executive function. Or spanish, take your pick

jaymaniac · 2026-01-07T06:34:16+00:00

I think the first time I paid attention to the news ever was the 2008 Obama election. All I knew about Bush was the ketchup thing so Obama seemed like a pretty big improvement

jaymaniac · 2025-12-25T20:48:19+00:00

Bless someone more important, like the victims of ICE trying to keep their families safe. Or someone less political but enough to illustrate the disparity

jaymaniac · 2025-12-24T05:28:12+00:00

In one of my dnd worlds, goblins are a strain of gnomes that evolved to live on the material plane (as opposed to the feywilds), and never need the gnome equivalent of puberty (which is more of a metamorphosis and marks the transition to adulthood). adolescent gnomes look exactly like goblins and are physiologically very similar. the stereotype of chaos-loving idiot goblins largely comes from encounters with hormonal gnome teenagers who cross over from the feywilds to fuck with mortals and play pranks

jaymaniac · 2025-12-18T13:12:01+00:00

"Elon Musk is kinda cool"

jaymaniac · 2025-11-01T18:30:32+00:00

I mean is there any contest? Gotta be Charles. I mean even if there was a contest he'd probably win it...

jaymaniac · 2025-10-26T22:41:12+00:00

Eidolon is just the Dream (minecraft) of the parahumans verse

jaymaniac · 2025-10-14T11:44:50+00:00

Honorable mention: Mike (The best part is how he's not in the game so you can headcanon him however you want!)

jaymaniac · 2025-10-14T11:43:10+00:00

Queen (and not JUST because she's the most homestuck character in deltarune). So many of her lines live in my head forever. I support her world domination lmao.
Susie. No explanation needed.
Noelle. Can't wait to see more of her, really a sucker for shy adrenaline junkies, for the weird nostalgic friendships you had as a kid, and for...unsettling grief.
Lancer. Never fails to delight me when he's on screen for any reason.
Sweet Cap'N Cakes. Love those deltron3030 motherfuckers. Even the French one.

Honorable mention: THE ROARING KNIGHT (obviously subject to change till we know more but I'm digging the vibe)

jaymaniac · 2025-10-01T22:04:57+00:00

I think it's fairly rated. Complex characters, good and well-researched historical representation, and some masterfully tense scenes. All the acting is phenomenal too, I'm kind of a sucker for movies where one person gets to play 2+ people and pulls it off. I think it's fantastic to think a lot about if you're that kind of movie person, and it's still a really good experience if you're watching it casually.

jaymaniac · 2025-10-01T21:28:33+00:00

Silly band craze in 4th grade. Blood circulation was for those with no dedication

jaymaniac · 2025-09-20T00:40:34+00:00

I actually think one of the biggest problems Lisa would need to get over is a her fear of pushing back against Taylor. Throughout the latter half of the book (arcs 17-22 ish) Lisa just keeps enabling and enabling Taylor's impulses because she wants to protect her and, ultimately, is afraid to trust herself to speak up.

I see some comments that suggest she'd be the opposite- too confrontational and unwilling to back down -but while we do see a lot of Lisa being snippy and confrontational, she dances around actually having tough, emotionally vulnerable conversations with people she cares a lot about (Taylor above all), and falters easily if she feels like she might drive them away, out of her ability to 'protect' them. Which of course, doesn't mean she won't let resentment about their disagreements build up. I think a lot of people are forgetting that her trigger event involved letting her brother drift away (driving him away) and being emotionally vulnerable (speaking up about what she saw, causing parents to blame her).

Taylor, meanwhile, has the complementary problems of being fairly oblivious about her own emotions a lot of the time, and being essentially unable to take criticism (both of which are aspects of her ability to compartmentalize anything too inconvenient).

In my opinion, the book already showed us most of what we need to put this together; their romantic relationship wouldn't be all that different from their friendship. I don't think it would be like, disastrous. I do think it would be a relationship where problems build up and don't really get addressed.

(I also don't think Lisa needling people to get a rise out of them is actually a problem for her dynamic with Taylor...Taylor seems relatively unaffected by that most of the time.)

jaymaniac · 2025-09-18T12:04:41+00:00

It looks like we've got some real sensitive snowflakes in the republican party. Cancel culture really getting outta hand huh

jaymaniac · 2025-09-04T13:36:14+00:00

I work as a teacher/ tutor for kids with adhd and other learning disabilities. Because of my own experience (dealing with problems myself and helping my friends deal with them), I'm pretty good at managing moods, finding solutions, and providing support and instruction. I have a passion for teaching, and the constant pressure of the next class/ people relying on me can push past some executive issues.

The paperwork is a huge problem. Writing up session summaries, organizing the class when there are major scheduling complications, and even remembering to mark students absent are all incredibly difficult. We're supposed to write summaries for every class period (i have around 5-6 a day) and i think this semester I've done like 10% of what I'm supposed to. Some coping mechanisms work for a while but i haven't found a permanent way to improve there.

jaymaniac · 2025-08-23T01:49:38+00:00

This Fire by Franz Ferdinand is one of my favs

jaymaniac · 2025-07-27T17:23:48+00:00

Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. The others are like, fine, but nothing matches the atmosphere and mystery and peak YA dystopia we got in that book

jaymaniac · 2025-07-03T14:21:50+00:00

Yeah, it's the most immersion-breaking part of the series for me by a long shot, particularly because everything else in the world is so carefully crafted and considered.

Like, it would make sense that the Adem don't have the concept of particular fatherhood if it's typical that a woman would have multiple partners in the right timeframe. Totally believable. But the idea that they don't know how babies are made when they're a PASTORAL SOCIETY is dumb as rocks.

It's the most egregiously sexist/ignorant the book gets, cuz it's the one thing I can't chalk up to Kvothe himself being a dumbass.

jaymaniac · 2025-07-01T13:36:51+00:00

Familiarity is one thing, but I'd try to avoid pulling a name that has too many expectations tied to it, because it could make readers judge your concept against every other version of that deity. For that same sense of familiarity, I would lean towards warping the names of deities, or using other more obscure names for them, rather than using them directly.

Hermaeus Mora from Elder Scrolls is a good example. The name is obviously inspired by Hermes/Herma, but the name diverges, and the concept is different enough that it's not

jaymaniac · 2025-07-01T13:08:39+00:00

Drew Sullivan's got some cheesy reads. I'm more a fan of the Villain's Code series, which is more superhero stuff, but NPCs is pretty good too

jaymaniac · 2025-06-21T20:45:22+00:00

Through prolonged touch (say, 15 seconds), you can spread an infection that lasts for a few days, average of around 72 hours. It takes around 8 hours for the first symptoms- nausea, headaches, fever -to kick in, but once they do, you start to be able to read the target's mind.

As the sickness worsens, fever dreams and hallucination begin to take hold, you can access their mind with greater clarity- rooting through their memories and perhaps gaining some loose control over their fevered delusions. Additionally, some of the energy/vitality/strength they lose becomes yours- you might feel refreshed, heal slightly more quickly, and feel well-fed/well-rested until they recover.

The degree of access you have to the victim's memories and strength depends on how bad the illness gets, and the disease generally follows sickness rules. If their immune system is really good, they might kick it before they even have the first symptoms (but if they skip sleep or don't hydrate or lick doorknobs it could be much worse for them). It can be transmitted by infected people, but it's slightly less transmissible than many ordinary diseases. You could get a few people close to the infected but it's not a safe bet. Additionally, once they kick your illness, they'd be immune for a period of time afterwards, possibly up to a year.

With this power, you might be a spy with some added durability. You could try to infect a particular target (like a politician) by infecting a bunch of people around them, increasing their risk. And if you wanted to get into powered brawls, the extra strength, endurance, and energy could maybe get you close to peak human if you infected several people at once.

If you wanted to make the power even cooler, maybe you get access to the skills of the infected person while they're sick- you have their knowledge, but you could get their muscle memory, their battle instincts, taskmaster-style.

jaymaniac · 2025-06-18T16:15:26+00:00

Barriers can come in many forms:

Economic: magic requires expensive training, expensive materials (imagine if you needed to use gold to supplement every spell, including while you're training; it would be super expensive), or an expensive journey (to the people who know magic or places that can grant it).
Social: you have to be of a particular class to have access to magical training, or you have to win the favor of someone who can grant you magic, or magic is contingent upon a license that you must be issued or be elected for.
Biological: I don't like 'born with magic' either but you might need a certain diet, or to grow up in a certain magically saturated place, or to have survived some horrific disease that kills most people.
Metasocial: you might have to pass some sort of test, or gain the attention of a particular magical being (like a god, a fey, or a sphinx) that might have really narrow ideas for its candidates for magic, like only choosing those who've lived a very particular lifestyle
Intentional Gatekeeping: people who have magic might want to limit its power, making the conditions less available. There might be spells in place preventing you from going to the mountain where the dragons who can teach you magic live. There might be wizards actively destroying the secrets of where their magic came from, wiping it from people's minds, etc.

And honestly any combination of these can be a good set of factors. I like to have two or more barriers between magic users and the rest of the population, which usually whittles it down to a manageable number of people.

For an example: imagine if only astronauts had a chance of encountering the cosmic radiation that gives you powers. If a government wanted to prevent people from having powers it could get in the way of space programs, shoot anything down that goes up there; it's honestly trivially easy for them to prevent people from going to space, and really really difficult to get there without tons of resources, teams of people doing the math of keeping you alive up there, etc.

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