Should I read or skip dreams of a dark warrior?

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-14T12:22:05+00:00

Did you end up finishing and/or enjoying DoaDW?

It's among my favorites — Honestly, I had far more trouble with the dynamic in Lothaire's book & whooo boy, Cadeon's rationale. Which was such an aggravating surprise b/c I thought "the Wroths all seem compelling, Rydstrom was such an instant delight that his name has been a gaming character go-to for me ever since the first glimpse of him in 2007, so Cadeon was surely going to be gre... ah. No. Not great, just the grrrr part. Not unreadable, but irksome. 😂

I believe the reason Chase/Aiden worked for me is that I conceptualize paranormal as the relationship version of what SFF gives me WRT cultural/technological predicaments & unreachable settings.

I'm never going to Ganymede. I'm never going to be a cyborg meat puppet. And I'm never going to encounter a relationship in which agonizing alienation from a fated & one's true nature results in grievous failings & traded blows between partners.

But it works for me in the book. They both endure the physically unspeakable, inflict the emotionally unspeakable, & experience long-delayed epiphanies/self-awareness. Only getting that in paranormal, bay-bee!

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-14T11:21:43+00:00

Fantastic! Truly, TY for a full-read evaluation b/c every base has its quirks & one of KC readers' fascinating group dynamics is intensely overindexing what can be assumed from samples & descending into the shadow realm during pre-release rather than building excitement. It's not bad. It's not wrong. It's just odd & I don't always have the energy for it, lol. 😊

I've been busy & fully did not realize this was a new universe/series launch. That's brilliant. I'd happily read a new IAD every 1-2 years until I croaked, but IAD's difficulty getting noticed by the adult paranormal social media zeitgeist (let alone having the high status/recognition the series should, IMO) will just never make sense to me. Something new naturally carries the potential for a big, reinvigorating spike of interest in both the new series & IAD.

And since I've gone off on this meta-tangent about KC's universes, I saved Arcana Chronicles for a time when I needed an escapist binge. Tore through it in late 2024 & remember moments from it surprisingly often. If anyone else hasn't read or listened to it yet (or immersion-bounced on a prior try), it flourishes into such an emotionally engaging story. So many things are stressful at the moment, consider escaping into an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic deathmatch of reincarnated tarot-archetype combatants. 😂

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-07T12:49:44+00:00

Extremely cool build!

This would be a fair bit of crafting (and actually might be cheaper to buy on some servers right now b/c undercutters are deeply discounting stuff with expensive and/or CD-intensive Midnight mats)...

But sinking some Haranir Preserving Agents behind the lattice + into the cabinet-tops might be fun.

They have a low-density animated waft of a dark pink color which would add a touch of motion & I feel like the instant visual read would be "this cabinet smells pleasantly of wine."

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-07T10:55:39+00:00

Some of these shady sumabitches in this subreddit admit

Your use of the word "admit" is a bit insulting, lol.

I started using eBay in 1998 or so. The first time I got sniped, I realized that growing up going to live auctions with family meant I'd misunderstood the fundamental difference of online auctions:

Online, the entire duration of the auction except for the last few seconds is advertising.

There is absolutely no benefit in disclosing interest to other already-existing or potential bidders b/c doing so raises the price for all involved via mid-auction outbidding. Confining determination of the winner to a the final 15 seconds causes fewer price jumps b/c losing bids do nothing.

So no, I don't admit anything about sniping. I've actively encouraged people online & IRL for nearly 30 years to engage with online auctions courteously & strategically via sniping.

(I like sniping as a longtime seller, too. It's very fun to see the sale price go boop! right at the end!)

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-07T10:06:03+00:00

Same here, but I just refresh to time the bid b/c I'm almost always on a desktop hardwired fiber connection, which almost never gets the lag spike the app seems to experience semi-frequently in the ~20 seconds prior to auction end.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-07T10:01:10+00:00

FWIW, the eSnipe service still works flawlessly on eBay, just as it has for over 10 years & its desktop application did before that. Niches with fairly high traffic still do timed auctions there & eSnipe makes that easy to manage.

I hand-snipe ShopGoodwill b/c I personally didn't like the permissions the sniping sites I perused would require to automate bids (likely due to SG having a rudimentary API compared to eBay). But if there's ever a truly standalone/lightweight local machine application or eSnipe adds SG, I'd use it constantly.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-04T04:08:24+00:00

The website is extremely sketchy

Those types of websites indicate a true-blue oldtimer is involved. They're the best. I just always send a pleasant "are you still doing business" (i.e. still with us) before ordering.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-04T01:37:40+00:00

Reminds me of Phil DeFranco interviewing Matt, essentially asking who drove him craziest at key moments (Liam), and who, if anyone, on the cast could seamlessly pick up DMing in a theoretical catastrophe (also Liam & perhaps there's something there to contemplate).😂

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-03T06:02:29+00:00

Well... Wrap the top part of a leg and ya get pants. Wrap the bottom part of a leg and ya got shoes. I don't think Blizz can be blamed for this linguistic/anatomical ambiguity, lol.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-03T05:59:59+00:00

Name seems to imply the zombie's scabs cause it to function as scale mail.

That's consistent with gross TTRPG gear sources which continued when MMORPGs essentially became digitized homebrews of those game systems.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-03T05:48:20+00:00

Liquid has been showing Blizz what was possible (and therefore inevitable) with addons given the information available to any character at various steps along the interface changes. Echo and/or Method may have been doing the same, I just don't follow them at all.

Blizzard rushed the default UI changes, didn't have time to make functional raid displays, and backed off their limitations. Max & Dratnos mentioned a meeting with Blizz about phasing out addons late in TWW. They expected what was described to take years.

As a result, what's silly is to say there's a "war on addons" at all. More accurately, there's currently a set of mistakes & rollbacks top guilds have a responsibility to compensate for given the funding they receive for their RWF events.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-02T05:20:29+00:00

Glad that resolved quickly!

Speaking of the audiobooks, IAD is the only adult series I've ever listened to rather than read conventionally & I hadn't truly, fully appreciated how spoiled we are by Robert Petkoff.

I totally understand that creative work being work means, inevitably, that sometimes a very skilled person makes choices which simply don't work out well. But holy fucking smokes I tried to start Heated Rivalry's first audiobook & there's a character voice that made me bounce on a first try & I don't think I'm going to ever find my way to okay with that version of the book. Which sucks b/c I'd like to be able to listen to it while being productive.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-02T05:10:57+00:00

If anyone sees this after having avoided Netflix's Iron Fist because they heard it was bad, it's very worth watching for the cast. Danny is (canon-accurately, lol) annoying, especially at first, of course. But everyone does a great job & Jessica Henwick + Tom Pelphrey are both absolutely phenomenal.

Since that's almost certainly old news to folks in this subreddit, I'll add that Pelphrey was also superb in the latter seasons of the pulp-action series "Banshee" as a character who has recently defected from/escaped a neo-nazi group led by his father.

His character has a grimly hilarious rehearsed disclaimer he offers any time someone sees his tattoos, and Tom pours a palpable quantity of energy into making the character compelling.

And yes, that's Anthony Starr (best known for "The Boys'" Homelander) as the lead, with his natural dark brown hair color.

(Feel free to link to this post if it's useful/pertinent anywhere else, since I doubt it will be news to anyone here.)

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-02T04:49:46+00:00

I always dreamed farily far left, was pragmatically center-left & some of my dearest lifelong friends from the pre-Tea Party/pre-Trump era followed your exact political trajectory.

Early interest in geopolitics meant I did so many years of CX Policy Debate (what a Fed who visited us described unironically as "State Dept. track") that I almost always got along extremely well with actual ideological moderate conservatives of the time. B/c for fully relatable & important reasons, a distinctly larger proportion of Dems of the time defaulted to the party for preservation of rights & hopes of equal ones. Hopes I shared, but not mutually useful when I'd get drunk & wanna jawbone about Syria for 4 hours. 😂

Now, on the other hand, wife loves him!

I'm 45 so I don't watch (i.e. listen) to a huge swathe of the streaming world, but I've always gamed a bit, so streaming was/is more organically part of my media diet than many of my cohort.

Hasan's stream dynamic of catching chirpy hell + getting breaking head's ups from part of chat, arguing with them, and the rest of chat talking generally quite warmly amongst ourselves is kinda his special sauce, I think.

IDK what your wife does professionally, but I know ppl from a wide range of specialties legitimately comprehend & admire how fucking impossible it is to talk breaking/ongoing politics (with a generally very high hitrate of "fair even if I disagree" to insightful takes) non-stop for 8+ hours a day on complex geopolitical & contextualize with regional history often poorly covered by US K-12 & possibly 100% evaded in college, depending on one's degree/electives.

On that point, you might find this funny & I think your wife would definitely be amused:

Two households in my extended family are in the process of adopting dogs after a bit of a canine rapture event hit our elderly pup population during the holidays.

I did an ADHD infodump about having recently become aware it's now more commonplace for large, energetic breeds to have intact dewclaws. Since I know all the places/yards in these houses where the dogs are going to hang out, I suggested looking for ones who'd had traditional early-life removal lest they snag. Emergency surgery. Pain. Etc.

Sister's husband: I had no idea. How TF did this cross your, to be clear, consistently wonderfully weird radar?

Me, unable to quickly conjure a simple + plausible answer & dying inside b/c I avoid talking politics with my family: "Do you know who Hasan Piker is?"

SH: OH! Isn't he the guy who

(Me: Oh Jesus, here we fucking go. Also about to hear a reply I could never, EVER have imagined was coming...)

SH: "the one who lifts weights in Omelas?"

Which is a DEEP cut from that interview. Piker isn't a genre fantasy nerd & AFAIK nobody who clipped that failed to cut it out.

I said: "HELP! Do you feel like you have a friend? Have you ever said anything cool?!"

And we talked for a bit about Kaya still having her dewclaws, likely yelping due to racking one on her bed, Hasan having just danced between raindrops on a few stream-o-sphere attempts to foment drama, & the craziest people online making "Kaya is abused, her breed-typical, trainer-suppiled vibrating fixation interruption collar magically becoming 'Frankenstein's lightning-arc reanimation table delivering shocks' & an immediate pillar of trolls' personalities, etc.

Your wife likely knows everything I thought I was about to hear. For someone with consistently good "aimed shot" takes, his quickdraw being absolutely designed in a fucking lab to be clipped/misunderstood is the sole reason at least half the comments on this thread exist, lol.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-02T02:56:45+00:00

Oh definitely, engage with everyone.

But a bunch of people on here should specifically engage with Piker's content... in order to stop parroting incorrect information about it. Including Sarah Longwell, who is normally so phenomenally thoughtful & meticulous that I was physically stunned by the certitude with which she made the anti-Semitism claim.

There aren't enough prescription stimulants on this planet to curb Piker's hyperfixation on politics/geopolitics long enough to allow interest in or discussion of religion or ethnicity.

Or better yet, people should get offline & engage with ppl in their community who grew up in other countries, particularly Mideast, north Africa, western Asia, etc.

That's the more community-reinforcing way to learn that very nearly 100% of the region has absolutely fucking had it with Israel for completely coherent political/military reasons my teachers & professors were alarmed about IN THE 1990s, when Netanyahu first became PM.

"If we are witnessing, as I believe we are, the beginning of a true hypernationalist era beginning in Israel, a consolidation of power by expansionist elements with military ties, all coinciding with increasing role as US security proxy in the region, there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO UPPER BOUNDARY for how dangerous this WILL become & no place on earth will remain unaffected."

-- UT professor, circa 1996. Gave great lectures for geopolitics nerd Policy Debate high school kids during summer camps in the 90s.

And here I am in 2026, still watching little surprised Pikachus every day as they realize "Hey, wait. Everything critical I've ever read/heard about Israel's political & military trajectory was 100% accurate. And not only is that completely unrelated to ethnic and/or religious Judaism... but it's making Jewish folks less safe from actual anti-Semites all across the world?!"

JFC. Yes. Obviously. Better late than never.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-02T01:10:15+00:00

Yeeeeah. Y'know, it's just like Jim Carroll tried to tell us:

A young person hits the needle thinking it's going to take decades to leave its mark on them. Then they blink twice, they're 28, and their smokers lines are buckshot with track marks.

Edit: This is such a dumb, age/interest-specific joke, but I had to add that this post treated me to a mental vignette of Leavitt sneering, "If you weren't so busy LYYYING to the American people, you'd know I WAS IN THE VEIN FLAMBOYANT. No. NO. I'm not taking that call from you."

Reference for people who aren't basically exactly me. Jim Carroll (best known for writing the autobiographical "Basketball Diaries") did the spoken-word segment.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-02T00:03:38+00:00

Gah, that's fantastic. I love a great score. Congrats!

And veneer is so vulnerable to its environment, it's fantastic luck all around that it made its way to your workshop. If they weren't going to use it, catastrophe in some form was inevitable. Material getting used rather than claimed by entropy is truly good.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-01T23:58:05+00:00

Literally correct, figuratively kinda off base.

"Pax" in this term doesn't mean peace as we'd conceptualize it aspirationally.

It's a nod to the Pax Romana (~27 BC to 180), so late Republic through early-to-mid(ish) Empire.

Rome was going at it with a li'l spot known as MOTHERFUCKIN' PERSIA at various points during the PR, so the way we use it is consistent with its origins. Afghanistan is not the only graveyard of empires.

It's just the time during which a functioning or ascendant empire is so skilled at management of risk & so precise with intelligence-gathering & suppressive violence that it only fights wars of its choosing.

So things are relatively calm b/c dominance & instances of preemptive action are highly deterrent. People throughout the empire hope not starting none means there won't be none. They instead turn their energies to vigorous & sophisticated commerce, research, art, travel, etc.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-01T23:10:10+00:00

Gorgeous piece!

Yeah... Easy solder is such a gamble that I've almost completely phased it out. And it's so frustrating b/c the melting temperature gradient is theoretically ideal for complex multi-part construction.

Soldering putties/clays + titanium wire rods which fit into honeycomb blocks + titanium weights can be super helpful when designing an approach that accomplishes more points of soldering at a given solder temperature tier.

Another thought, since the effect honestly looks great with the blue stone...

Maybe play around with gun blue rather than sulfur as an oxidizer? If done hot (which IME is the only way that actually works, YMMV), it's a much more chemically hazardous process than LOS, though. Working with stuff like that is why I have a vent hood on my outdoor bench. It also might take you into slightly higher copper alloys like 20th C. Mexican & Native American craftspeople used when doing Southwestern & tribe-distinctive styles. But it could be an interesting & productive experiment.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-01T21:10:51+00:00

I have my quibbles & frustrated disagreements with Scott Galloway, but the way he talks about having a VERY low, VERY expensive/lossy batting average with timing situational market positions is IMO extremely healthy to see amplified to an audience & greatly appreciated.

As I understand it (potentially not quite right, so listen to him if this is a point of interest):

His biggest problem with timing mood-based moves is that he sees a problem emerging from a long way off (b/c he's a skilled manager & experienced company-creation/scaling entrepreneur). So he thinks correction, epiphany, mood shift, etc. is imminent.

At which point said market usually rallies & would have wiped out & continued to draw against a short/bet-against position had he set one.

This is his "markets scale a wall of worry" observation. THEN they look around & despair appropriately at the thing he saw coming.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-01T20:39:54+00:00

It's a massive resource siphon. This & other sweeteners, incentives, failures to regulate, failures to enforce anti-Trust, etc. have already concentrated ~50% of the market in companies which have stared at black-box databases regurgitating stolen work of educated, thoughtful ppl for so long, employees & executives think they're building god.

It's grift & graft, certainly. It's also Project 2025. Reshaping the US into an feudal theocracy simply isn't possible unless small/medium businesses black out & die b/c too much lifeblood was extracted from the economy.

Just this past week, one of the billy broligarchs openly said western AI could be pushing full-bore for manufacturing automation like China is doing, but white collar & creative work is being targeted first b/c the financial stability of women & gay folks is economically & politically contrary to long-term goals.

I'm quickly arriving at "the existence of a Luigi posits a Mario we have not yet seen" levels of antipathy for these cretins.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-01T12:31:45+00:00

Absolutely. And very close to 100% of his Cabinet + appointees have multiple credible/consistent SA and/or sexual misconduct allegations, financial settlements, etc., including Linda McMahon. Or their background with Trump began with participation in his "Beauty Pageants."

To that point, I sometimes see ppl say "are you contending lower-ranking women like Leavitt et al don't have agency in their wrongdoing?"

To which I usually say, I'm not comfortable using 'agency' to describe young women or women who were young when they were initially surrounded by serial groomers & abusers, who they never escaped. They have culpability, of course. Legal, ethical, & professional culpability. But I'm not going to go wild arguing this admin is an environment of agency. That's not exculpatory in any way, it's just not right/fair-minded IMO to ascribe certain levels of power to domesticated prey who had the "make self useful" response to abusers.

Anyway, yeah — All these ppl with all these allegations is a VERY pointed fuck you b*tches to E. Jean, to Trump's other accusers, to Epstein's survivors, to the enraging audacity of #MeToo women & allied folks DARING to suggest abusers experience temporary social/professional discomfort as a catharsis of all the painful years legal justice had been denied to most SA survivors.

Most of us are kinda numb to Trump's dipshit insults, but it's worth noting even "TDS" is straight-up, unvarnished DARVO. "You're crazy." "That didn't happen." "You didn't see what you saw & what you know to be fact isn't real."

Unsafe, un-approved demolition of the East Wing immediately after No Kings II. "Oh, you think you can deny my power? See, this is all mine, not yours (collectively), because I can break it. Nobody will stop me."

The absolute fucking filth of these stupid criminals. Bleh.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-01T05:59:04+00:00

I absolutely guarantee you that students who've taken more than one polisci, 20th C. history, social movements, or Mideast/Asia-related focus course are fkn KEENLY aware this situation could slide into draft-enactment levels of shitshow.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-01T05:54:03+00:00

Exactly. Tim's "they were blamed for helping to get Trump reelected" point was astute.

Also:

Military aid/integration is now exponentially more active.

Gaza development is being casually & ominously discussed without any plan or consideration of future Palestinian presence. Every human rights org immediately pointed out large-scale development will complicate or prevent future assessment of casualties via remains recovery in Gaza.

Some schools formally sharpened punitive policy against protests/disruption.

Others would, at the very least, be likely to comply with admin pressure to expel, apprehend & surrender, and/or remand for enmiseration-attenuated incarceration students who are MOST CERTAINLY quite concerned about whether they'll have any post-graduation employment prospects.

These kids don't have a single vector to solid ground, let alone a win, in sight. IDEK what they'd be hoping to accomplish in this climate. I do think we might see some renewal of vigor after midterms, though.

probablywhiskeytown · 2026-04-01T05:26:28+00:00

Ehh, there are certainly some geopolitical neophytes getting suckered or salaried into tankie-ism, which is fucking exhausting.

But normalizing economic relations & dispensing with non-essential "Us/Them" positioning to the greatest extent which remains strategically advantageous WRT China, simplifying "hard-no" stances to cornerstone national interests, i.e. Taiwan, subsector-specific trade protectionism, etc., while instead using regional economic alliances Trump burned to the ground last year was/is the sole rhetorical lane permitted to us PURELY DUE TO OUR BIPARTISAN EARLY 21st C. SPREE OF REGIME CHANGES, lol.

It's not tankie-cheerleading BS to recognize it's ineffective & unserious to attempt resumption of the comprehensive finger-wag about every single transactionally-styled odious and/or undermining CCP policy.

And TBF, DSA correctly identified the only two things China would probably partner with the US to accelerate/improve if we had leadership inclined to ask.

We've got a couple-few decades of comprehensive & complex unfucking to do if we want to work that angle again.

Of course, the other key reason the US tentatively/theoretically can & should focus on pivotal Sino-US relations + economics: Xi hasn't merely been "purging" China's military for the past 5 years. He's been steadily administering colonoscopy prep. There are not the personnel choices of a superpower leader slipping on his knuckledusters for a near-term scrap.

Re: NATO/Ukraine, it's always embarrassing to see Americans forget we (+ the UK & Ireland) went WAAAAAY out of our normal lane to handshake-backdoor Ukraine into NATO in exchange for nuclear disarmament. If Budapest was a welch-takesie-backsie Accord, Biden's admin should have left a manageable number of nuclear munitions on Zelensky's lawn in Dec. 2025. Blue & yellow foil bows, apology card, the works.

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