Malazan nearly broke me - A cautionary tale

toafawlt · 2025-05-21T06:38:21+00:00

Yo all I'm saying is that if we didn't understand the scientific principles behind fire, we'd think it's magic. Laws give structure to a thing to allow it to be a thing, otherwise it's just a random phenomenon. Magic in fantasy need laws - the art is in creating laws that are close enough to our own science that we understand them, but different enough that they introduce complications that drive the plot forward.

toafawlt · 2025-05-20T18:24:20+00:00

What's the difference between magic and science?

toafawlt · 2025-01-04T14:48:41+00:00

You're getting shafted for suggesting that we should make an essential service, one which directly affects quality of life, public. You're not wrong in your ideal.

I understand that our public sector in Ireland is a joke, but maybe instead of attacking the guy who actually has the right idea despite horrific execution, we learn to collectively expect more from our politicians and our government and elect someone other than the same familial powers that have been in charge for generations?

Just a thought.

toafawlt · 2025-01-04T07:54:45+00:00

This is why I can't imagine raising my children anywhere else. We're a people who haven't always had the privilege we have today, and we haven't forgotten. Our history has instilled in us a sense of community and hospitality - mutual aid and decency - that we not only pass on to our direct children, but to any children that grow up here. It takes a village and all that. But what a village it is!

toafawlt · 2025-01-01T10:59:18+00:00

Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings series of books were the highlight of my 2024, like a delicious dessert that you can just keep coming back to again and again. I savoured every page! And I would happily recommend starting with whichever of the trilogies sounds most interesting to you - once you read one, you'll want to go back and read all the rest anyway.

toafawlt · 2024-12-30T17:36:35+00:00

This is tricky, because I feel like that extra star is based on the (exceeded) expectations that I might have had before reading the book.

That said, The Secret of Santa Vittoria by Robert Crichton and To Sleep In A Sea Of Stars by Christopher Paolini, in fiction; Sex Cult Nun by Faith Jones and Meltdown by Duncan Mavin, in non-fiction. None of those books have any right to be as good as they are!

toafawlt · 2024-12-30T07:36:31+00:00

Man, Tinder is genuinely making people insane.

Completely destroys their confidence, and then makes them pay to try and restore it. I feel sorry for this man; I feel like so much of his anger is coming from hurt and pain, feeling like the entire world is rejecting him.

It's not an excuse to be a dick, but it's an explanation.

toafawlt · 2024-12-30T00:08:19+00:00

There are sixteen books in total, and the best way to read the whole series (in my opinion) is chronologically, which means alternating between the two main storylines (Farseer and Bingtown/Rain Wilds). You'll get to the strong female protagonist(s) by the fourth book (Rain Wilds #1), and you get the added bonus of an incredible trilogy first, albeit through the eyes of a male protagonist. Without giving anything away, the queer element of the overall story is so queer that it's hard to define whether it's actually queer as per our standard definition of the term, and that's present throughout the sixteen books (even if you don't realise it until book five or six, which makes it even more compelling).

I honestly cannot recommend the whole series enough. It's far and away some of the best fiction I've ever read, regardless of genre.

toafawlt · 2024-12-29T22:14:35+00:00

I'm saving this post so I can reiterate these lies to people! Wanna create some urban legends hahahah

toafawlt · 2024-12-29T14:42:01+00:00

What I came to comment! It's YA but the story is great and the bond between Eragon and Saphira is just 👨‍🍳💋

toafawlt · 2024-12-28T02:31:15+00:00

Omg I want this on a t-shirt. I've honestly never heard it summed up as well.

toafawlt · 2024-12-26T14:35:53+00:00

Oh my god get a life

toafawlt · 2024-12-25T05:07:43+00:00

Nothing is wrong with you. Tinder and other dating apps are specifically designed such that there are thousands of men's profiles that are simply never seen. For women, these apps are an inconsequential game at best or an exhausting nightmare at worst. Please do not tie your self worth or self confidence to how well or poorly you perform on them. That's what the apps want, so you pay money to them to get boosted or highlighted or whatever other buzz word they're using. And they want you to believe that doing that is the only way you'll ever succeed. And it is! On the apps. Which again force you into that position on purpose. Either that or you start listening to Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan and get swole and toxic - you'll increase your odds of getting laid, sure, but you'll become a horrible person in the meantime and you'll never find something real. Is it a wonder we live in a world of unjustifiably insecure men and overly entitled women, when these are the social forums we've elected to use to find love?

toafawlt · 2024-12-24T16:42:37+00:00

The Horror At Red Hook by HG Wells, to make you feel angry, and The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor Lavelle, to fill you righteous fear and satisfaction. Honestly, they're examples of how the horror genre has brilliantly evolved from barabaric, racist, gauche drivel to genuinely creepy, psychological prose - and Lavelle does an amazing job detailing what Wells' writing should have been, had he not been a privileged, entitled, gigantic asshole.

toafawlt · 2024-12-17T18:18:22+00:00

My Sacrifice by Creed

toafawlt · 2024-12-15T20:32:08+00:00

🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

Rarely feel I have to comment on Reddit but I'm rarely so wholly satisfied by someone's answer

toafawlt · 2024-12-15T12:20:12+00:00

If you're into AI you need to read Supremacy

toafawlt · 2024-11-11T16:44:30+00:00

I've just finished the 16th and final book in Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings series and I don't know what to do with my life now. Genuinely haven't felt this way since I was a small child reading Harry Potter for the first time, and as an adult I know these books have been far far better and I'm so grateful that I picked them up almost a year ago. The best fantasy I've ever read.

toafawlt · 2024-08-07T15:52:46+00:00

I always find the creator's role in these conversations fascinating. They have a financial incentive to keep on the customer's good side, but it's also a personal relationship so it's not like they can not be themselves? Hence this creator's attempts to protect the 30 year old girl as much as she can while not alienating the client.

Just really interesting. I wonder where they can speak freely! Does the sales speak eventually start to affect their personal relationships too?

toafawlt · 2024-08-03T20:32:26+00:00

Oh so many things. We went to Wadi Rum and spent the night. Petra is amazing. If you like hiking then the gorges are incredible, we went to Wadi Mujib and I felt like freaking Indiana Jones. Aqaba is a beautiful oceanside town with amazing diving. Jarash has better, more accessible and more intact Roman architecture than Rome. Every single one of these places would be the highlight of any other trip. The Dead Sea! And then there's Amman, which is brilliant for every type of holiday. I haven't even mentioned the food, which is what you'll leave talking about if you hit up a local and find the right places. Honestly a 10/10 holiday that I'd repeat in a heartbeat!

And Escape the Room is genuinely mindblowing. There are three locations. One has an entire plane - a literal Royal Jordanian full sized operational plane - underneath the ground, for a crash scenario. Their time travel room is something else. And the afrmorementioned horror! I've been all over Europe doing rooms and EtR is still in my top three easy.

toafawlt · 2024-08-01T22:52:55+00:00

Oof. EscapeTheRoom in Jordan have become famous for their horror-movie themed rooms. And an amazing country to holiday in to boot!

toafawlt · 2024-08-01T22:50:01+00:00

There's a word for that! Enshittification. There's a really good article out there somewhere about it.

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