Eluvianii

Lissa seemed surprised but not scared. Well, scared too, but a different kind of scared. That was a relief. "The floating ball of light is called Twinkle and she should think before doing something like that." he said glaring at her for a moment. Though would it matter? Could normal people see spren when they wanted to be seen? He hadn't thought about that. "You don't seem too surprised though. I assume you have one too?"

These are great but how do you describe it to people if the most common extent of fantasy knowledge you can find is "Watched one or two Harry Potter movies and sort of liked them and knows that Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings are the names of something"?

Wait, I just joined. It seems to be, kind of active? At least its members are.

I only have a sister but she's awesome so no trading. Weird thing I noticed though but time makes sibling relationships more tolerable. As kids we divided our time together between playing and fighting, storms did she like to cry. Now the fights are only done ironically. We still verbally abuse each other but that's just standard communication between her and me. We also still play but we went from building an alien prison with our toys to watching a show or spending the week finishing something like Undertale or Doki Doki Literature Club, or taking turns in Kingdom Hearts. Playing a story-focused game with someone is fun, I recommend it. It somehow makes the twists more interesting. Still, I don't know what I would do with 3 or more siblings, that does sound intense.

Ok, I should be specific here. I don't mean the RPG genre. I love those games, they're my favorite but that's not necessarily what I'm looking for here. I mean games where you can roleplay your character, you know, just become them for a while. Elder Scrolls games are great for this. Starting a new game in Morrowind and completely ignoring the main quest while I go around leveling up, joining guilds, doing random missions and getting into places I know I won't get out alive from is a really fun experience, but I'm looking for something more, idk, interaction-focused? Something where leveling up your persuasion is more important than your long sword skill. There's this little (actually massive but looks can deceive) game called Academagia. It has a notable lack of graphics and it's extremely unfriendly to new players but I found the concept really fun. You customize a character, not visually but the character itself (home town, star sign, childhood experiences, motivations, goals, etc) and then you are thrown into a magic school where the gameplay basically consists of managing a schedule and making skill checks. It has next to no dialogue but the descriptions make everything feel like you're living your own story. You choose how to spend your day, you can attend classes or ignore them completely, you can train skills from the cremton that are available, you can try and improve your relationship with characters and form your own little group (there are like 80 so even that is customizable), and among that there are also a lot of events that pop up randomly, like "While you were walking through the garden you saw a kid getting eaten by a tree. What do you want to do?" which, being random but well designed, help making the game feel more alive. The story literally is mostly shaped by your character and the way you play it, and these events, so you probably get a completely original story every playthrough. As I said, really fun concept. However, I recently found out this is the first of a 5-game series and the second one never came out. So now I'm just dreading that moment when the game says "See you next year" and that's the end. So I tried to see if there are more games to fill this really specific niche where you quite literally shape the story through your character but I'm finding next to nothing. Do you guys know anything with a similar concept?

"I'm Edwin." he said to the new girl. Was she a visitor? Or was she a Radiant? This house was like a magnet for people with powers. He was trying to come up with a way to ask her about magic without sounding suspicious when Twinkle streaked through the air and stopped right in front of Lisa's face. Wait, don't tell me. Had she become visible? Should he say something? For now he waited to see if she reacted. No need for explanations if he was just assuming things. As he decided this he thought he saw movement on the floor. Was he imagining things? No, first things first. Though the idea of shapes moving through the floor seemed familiar...

Granted. It's RoW. Happy three years until KoW. I wish for a lifelong dotation of chocolate.

I wish. TPBM did not attend the RoW release party.

I recommend drinking plenty of liquids to balance out all that popcorn.

Edwin got up from his chair and walked toward the entrance, Twinkle flying ahead. He had heard Nym when she went to open the door but now someone else seemed to be coming in. "Nym? Who was it?" Edwin asked as he saw a new face stepping into the house.

Today was my first day working from home. What does that have to do with reading? Well, where I work you can't take a lot of stuff with you, so among basically everything you can't take books or your phone. But at home that restriction doesn't apply so today I just read a big chunk of Dawnshard during my shift and it, along with the rest of my TBR should progress a lot faster now. I think I'll finally put some more attention on my Harry Potter reread and I'll go back to Wheel of Time. But first, I'm glad this happened just before RoW. Now I'll be able to dive in it most of the day as soon as I get it.

Granted. Your bane is that your mind is changed and now you actually wish for it to have a happy birthday. You really like the virus now in fact. It may not have a consciousness but it feels like an old friend to you. All these new positive feelings towards the virus mean that either you make them public and everyone looks at you with disdain when the topic arises, or you have to be really uncomfortable keeping your comments to yourself when people talk about how terrible this thing you love is for humanity. I wish for my copy of RoW to be magically teleported to me tomorrow instead of arriving as it is scheduled on next Tuesday.

This is true, theoretically, but society as we know it would collapse without them, all because of one word. Procrastination. How often do we need to eat or simply want a snack but we don't want to because it means work? But then we think "Wait, I have instant noodles" or maybe "I can just microwave leftovers from yesterday". If microwaves disappear suddenly one day, we'll miss half of our meals, productivity will drop massively leading to poor life conditions and in a few years anarchy would reign, leading to lots of wars which we cannot fight because we wouldn't have any productive soldiers, all of them would be weak because of hunger, so the only way to fight these wars are missiles and bombs, which means in a decade or less humanity would be on the brink of extintion. Conclusion: Microwaves are necessary for our survival.

Been playing a lot of Borderlands 2 lately. That game is fun. Infiltrate and destroy a crazy cult, while burning people to collect their ashes and sacrificing a guy using a giant mechanical dragon along the way, all of this because this one friend of yours was curious? And that is a freaking side-quest? Who makes this stuff up? I love it.

Granted, now you perceive time at 0.5x speed. I wish for the ability to shoot lasers from my fingertips.

Yes! I'm really happy right now! I've been wanting to preorder RoW since preorders were made available but Amazon wasn't shipping to Mexico, and the mexican version of the page, though it had the English version of the book, it just appeared as temporarily unavailable. I was coming to terms with the conclusion that I would have to read it on Kindle, but today I checked and suddenly Amazon ships to Mexico again! I never pressed 'buy' so fast. I will be about a week late to the party but at least I'll have the book on my hands.

Thank you! This is the best fan community I've ever seen and it's all thanks to you and all the awesome members of the staff. I wish all fandoms were this lucky.

"Wita!" Lewis yelled as he saw her hitting the wall. He started running to her but fell at the second step, his leg still badly wounded. His body was flowing with adrenaline but it still wasn't enough to even take a walk, let alone sprint. It was frustrating. He wanted to run and grab that guy by the collar. Maybe then they could- "Watch out!" he heard. He turned to Wita and then to what she was looking at. It was difficult to describe. The light. That was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen, and yet he was terrified to look at it. Because there was something hiding inside. Something dark. It scared him and the fact that it was inside the light only made it worse. It wanted to take over and once it did, everything would be lost. Lewis had no evidence to support that thought but still he believed it with all he had. Suddenly he wasn't able to move from where he was and this time his leg had nothing to do with it. Without thinking, Lewis flared steel and Pushed every bit of metal he could find toward the thing. He spent everything in his pouch and some bits he found lying aroung. Bullets, shells, coins, everything he could find was a projectile. Soon his steel ran out, quickly exhausted in his panic, and nothing had changed save for some holes he had made into the wall. The man was gone now, leaving them alone with that. The light was starting to fade and in response the shadow was starting to grow. The entire place had now an overwhelming aura about it. The building was still as water but he felt a pressure so strong, he could swear the place was about to fall apart. They had failed, but now he was more worried about their immediate safety. Lewis made an effort and limped towards Wita. "We should get out of here. I-I don't know what is happening but-" he tried to finish the sentence but drifted off. His thoughts were a mess. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to chase the man but he was gone. He wanted to finish the job, do what was needed for once, but it was impossible now. Above all he wanted to run but, would it make any difference?

While we talk about comics I'll slip this one in. It might be due to the fact that I haven't read the entire 500-number run that comes before (though I plan to in the future), but I really liked One More Day in Amazing Spider-Man.

Been making a little bit of progress in Birthright. I just made my first class changes, and of course, thanks to that now I want to replay the game as many times as possible making different pairs, different classes for each character, see the different designs and conversations. It's almost unfair how replayable this is.

Started The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. I'm about 20% through the book and already enough bad stuff happened to be on the 80% or so. I mean, it feels like when the characters hit rock bottom just before rising from the ashes in other stories, but this one is just starting. And most of it is Quilp's fault, I hate Quilp. And yet the book still is really lighthearted a lot of the time. I don't know what to expect. I really like the sense of humor though, that much I can say.

@Aspiring Writer Darn, I took too long. I was going to make a point about how art is subjective but I wouldn't be able to explain it better than Toaster and Ene already did. Anyway, thanks for a bit of discussion even if I barely put one post. Despite what my initial reaction may seem, I actually enjoy conversations like this quite a bit. Now we understand you a bit better and you understand us a bit better. So yeah, it was fun.

@Aspiring Writer Ok, there's something fundamentally wrong with this discussion. The thread is for controversial opinions. People share them and there are bound to be discussions as obviously there are going to be disagreements, but for the most part, people understand that if something made it to this thread, it must be a pretty strong opinion, not likely to change, so most discussions end up as exchanges to demonstrate that both opinions exist and end with an "agree to disagree". This is what was going to happen here since some people engaged you in a friendly way telling you why they didn't share your opinion but without necessarily trying to convince you to change your mind. You obviously feel strongly about the topic, it's obvious that any attempt to make you change your point of view would be futile. However you have tried to change their opinions and outright told them that they are wrong, which is why the thread is so derailed now. Now, regarding your take on passion. It's not that people cannot feel so strongly about a topic that they shouldn't make huge two-hour reviews, it's that not everyone is willing to spend that kind of time watching them and you should not judge them on that. Not only that but you posted it repeatedly as an argument but let's be real. Most people will come here, catch up on the discussion expecting to post an answer and continue with their lives. Some may get curious but don't expect most people to be happy when you tell them they need to do homework before going on with the discussion. Also, I think you put too much weight on objectivity here. You implied that if people watch the video they will change their mind on this topic, which is just not true. Believe me, no amount of arguments will convince me that the sequel trilogy is not worth watching, I enjoy it greatly and likely will continue to do so for a long while. Not because it's the pinnacle of narrative, but because it's simply fun. Which brings me to the last point. You said we should demand higher quality because we "content" ourselves with mediocrity. I'm sorry but I'm not simply content with what Star Wars is, I'm entirely happy with it. When I watch a Star Wars movie I don't want to see a masterpiece of narrative with an intricately designed plot and carefully chosen themes, I just want fun characters, good visuals, and some space fighting, and so far, it has greatly delivered. I was obsessed with objectivity in stories for a while and said everywhere how this story is objectively good and this one is objectively bad. It even messed with my love for another "sci-fi" story, Doctor Who. I loved it, but it bothered me that it had no consistency, or overarching plot, past plot points didn't have any weight on present events. I just didn't enjoy it as much as I could because I kept waiting for some "Now it all makes sense" moment which never came. Then, I ditched objectivity and decided that the only thing I care about is if I enjoy the story or not. From that moment onwards I enjoy literally everything infinitely more than before. It's my way of enjoying stories and I intend to continue that way for as long as it makes me happy. If you feel passion about trying to find more sense in every story, if you're always striving to find consistency, in judging how a piece of writing is objectively good and that is what makes you happy, you shouldn't change that for anything, but you also shouldn't try and tell others they're enjoying things the wrong way because there's a whole spectrum here. You are on one end, I'm on the other, and there's everything in between. Let's just share our views so we can understand each other without trying to take the fun away from the other, shall we?

Heh, those are rookie numbers. You'll both finish CS4 before I finish CS1 if things go on like this... I really need to manage my free time a bit better.

What would be the point of insulting you if a 5-year-old with a bagpipe can do a far more effective job of it with half the effort by competing with you to see who can be the first to make a coherent sentence and winning with his bagpipe, leaving your supposedly developed lungs too exhausted for you to realize that this didn't make any sense, in turn making you realize you gave your attention to this terribly structured sentence expecting to see an insult only to feel insulted by the absence of one? What a wonderful human being you'd have to be to just trust us with such a task. (your bane is that in the end it was a compliment) I wish for a litter box that cleans itself.