Retsam

This is, if you're not aware, something like asking "Hey, I'm interested in books: I've read The Hunger Games and Lolita, where do I go from there?" I'm not trying to disparage you for asking, just pointing out that the scope of the question is pretty massive. This chart is pretty good: Personally, my usual recommendations (things that are good, widespread appeal, not too "sketchy") are: Trigun - My personal favorite; a bit hard to describe, it's sort of a post-apocalyptic space western? It starts off as comedy with a bit of drama, and shifts to be mostly drama with a bit of comedy. It's fairly old (1998); but it's great. Some of the themes remind me of some of Sanderson's books. FullMetal Alchemist* - This one just feels like a good fantasy book. I've always felt that the monologue at the beginning of each episode did a great job selling the show. (It's what hooked me, at least) Steins;Gate - A bit newer than either of the above, Steins;Gate gets pretty goofy at times, and takes a bit to get going, but it's the best time-travel story I know of. *There's an evergoing debate whether to recommend the original 2003 version of FMA, or the newer remake ("Brotherhood"), which has the same beginning but goes in a different direction (follows the original manga). My answer is that you should watch both eventually, but start with the original 2003 version

I've started watching Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans (which is currently airing). I've never actually seen a serious Gundam show before (I don't think SD Gundam Force counts), but I've decided that I enjoy mecha as a genre, so I figured I'd check this one out. I'm five episodes in, and it's interesting so far. It's done some solid character and world-building, but it still feels like it's mostly just laying groundwork for the plot so far, so I can't say much for or against the plot yet. But I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Merlin is one of those shows that I started out really liking, and was super ready for it to be over by the end. As others have said, the easily best part is the chemistry between Arthur and Merlin. My big complaints: On a less complain-y note; my girlfriend and I developed a drinking game for the show (though we don't drink, so it was a more hypothetical drinking game), it's been awhile, I don't remember all the rules, but these were definitely there: 1. Take a drink every time Merlin goes to see the dragon. 2. Take a drink every time someone says "I have no choice" or "destiny". (This frequently followed #1) 3. Take a drink any time Arthur or Merlin is oblivious to someone flirting with them

I don't inherently mind romance; even sudden romance (I mean, I read Wheel of Time), but SAO didn't really sell me on Asuna/Kirito, and definitely not Yui. (Though Yui = UI, I have to admit that's a clever name) But, SAO II is pretty good. At least, if you liked the first arc of SAO, you'll most likely like SAO II. The first arc focuses on Kirito and does a good job putting some of the tension back in the show that I felt was lost in the ALO arc, there's a forgettable 3-episode mini-arc, then the second arc focuses on Asuna, which I thought was pretty well done, too. Speaking of SAO, the abridged series is phenomenal (and the only other abridged series I've ever really gotten into was the first one). Cremhole Kirito is best Kirito.

I've started watching GATE. The premise is that a gate to a fantasy world of humans and elves and magic and dragons and (oddly) a Roman Empire doppleganger opens up in the middle of Tokyo, and a war begins between that world and ours. Being an anime, it naturally alternates between a fairly serious and somber story about a war with battles that kill tens of thousands of people... and a story with, for example, a gothic lolita wielding a giant war axe and the ingredients for a harem. (The gothic lolita outfit being explained as "shrine vestments". Riiight.) I'm enjoying the former, and while, for me, the latter mostly induces eye-rolling, so it's a bit of a mixed bag. It's interesting enough that I'll keep going, and it's definitely got the potential for greatness in my book... it'll just depend on whether the "somewhat serious war story" wins out over the more "anime" bits; I've seen only the first four episodes, I think the 8th one airs in a couple days, and then it'll be just keeping up with the weekly episodes.

She's going into it about as cold as realistically possible. Even the Netflix listing is a bit spoilerish; they assign two adjectives to each show, and they for Madoka they picked . Plus, just the fact that I'm the one recommending it is probably a bit of a giveaway, as I have a fairly low cuteness tolerance, (other than from my cat).

I've started watching Madoka Magica with my girlfriend; I've seen it before and she hasn't. We've watched the first three episodes so far. It's a great show and I think she'll like it, but I think I'm going to enjoy this even more than she will.

I don't remember any passages of the Rithmatist that would contradict this logic. While it wouldn't surprise me if Lines of Forbiddance only work on the ground, I don't think that's ever explicitly stated. I suppose there's a number of things you could do with Lines of Forbiddance drawn places other than the ground; for example you could climb a wall by drawing Forbiddance lines on the wall as steps.

I remember watching Moribito... or at least the first several episodes, when it was airing on Adult Swim, and I couldn't get into it. It just didn't seem that interesting: part of it is probably just high schooler me being an uncultured swine, maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I weren't waiting a week between episodes, or maybe it's just taste; but I just don't remember liking any part of it particularly.

That's the Bount arc, and as fillers go, it's not bad. I liked the Bleach approach to filler of "tell a whole story of decent length" rather than the Naruto approach of having a ton of tiny stories, (though I prefer Naruto to Bleach overall). It's not great and it's not terrible, there's some decent action, some decent character moments, the antagonists have some interesting abilities... but like all filler it's not going to introduce any new plot points or anything, so yeah, it sounds like you might be best off just skipping it. --- I finished up Tokyo Ghoul and Aldnoah.Zero (as they finished airing a month ago or so); Aldnoah.Zero pretty much stayed on course for being completely inoffensive and mostly uninteresting. If you want decent action and soundtrack, with some light character building and drama, you could do worse, but don't go into it expecting a ton of depth, and I really don't think it did as much with its premise as it could have. I also really liked the ending to Tokyo Ghoul, and really, the show in general... but I seem to be in the minority on that opinion. It's definitely not perfect, there's a lot of dangling plot threads, for one; to some degree part of the problem with that show is that they had way too much story to tell in 24 episodes, and to their credit they didn't rush it (and I don't feel they should have) and at the end I think they pretty much embrace the open-endedness of the ending and are able to make the loose strings into something of an artistic decision. I may someday read the manga, since I enjoyed the story... but I'm not much of a manga fan, the only manga I've ever read was a few volumes of Trigun, since I'm a bit obsessed with that show, (Nice avatar, LeftInch) and honestly, I'm probably a bit bitter about the fact that every discussion of Tokyo Ghoul I read was dominated by people whose main objection was "it's different from the manga, so it sucks". You can prefer the manga, sure, but it's a completely uninteresting discussion to me, and it got real old, real quick. So, yeah. I enjoyed it, despite its flaws. I think it's worth checking out. --- Finally, something I didn't enjoy as much... probably not even as much as Aldnoah.Zero is Log Horizon season 1. I've written my thoughts up long-form elsewhere, and I'll probably spare you all that; but I'll summarize my big three complaints: 1. The characters were shallow. Virtually every character in the show was characterized by a repeating gag, or a half-baked "romance" (i.e. character X will act awkward when character Y is around and be obviously attracted to them, but nobody ever goes as far as to even openly express feelings for another character, it all stays in "high school crush" zone)... and that's about it. Virtually nobody has backstory, motives, drama, etc. Certainly not so much that couldn't be adaquately summarized in 20 words or less. 2. I'm not a fan of the main character. He feels very power-fantasy, except he's a power fantasy for the sort of person who sees themselves as the mastermind/plotting type, rather than the usual "defeat everyone in 1-on-1 combat" power fantasy. The show is all about telling us just how smart he is (and having other characters do the same, to an annoying degree)... but virtually never actually showing him do anything terribly clever. His one major "big damnation heroes" moment is honestly one of the dumbest resolutions to any arc that I can think of (which is a shame because it was actually my favorite arc of the whole show). He's probably a good case study in "how not to write a smart character". Nor does he really have an arc or grow as a character, except a tiny bit in the first half a dozen episodes. 3. The whole "video game turned real" thing isn't executed terribly well, though it was still my favorite part of the show. The fact that they've all been (seemingly permanently) separated from their friends, families, significant others (oh and their pets have all probably starved), and not a single character expresses any significant distress over this fact? Seriously jarring. There's a bunch of MMO mechanics which we get a bunch of info dumps about... but MMO mechanics aren't the sort of thing that you can explain a few pieces of and then understand the system: you really have to know the whole system to understand how the pieces play together, you can't just tell me what a couple attacks do and what a few of the classes are. So, the explanations, to me, feel like a huge waste of time. And the more general stuff - the politics, the players coming to understand the world and what has changed, etc - again, these are my favorite parts, but it's mired in the rest of the show, and doesn't outweigh the complaints. So yeah. I may watch the second season someday. Maybe. But it really wasn't my thing. If you just want a light-hearted show set in a video game, you'll probably enjoy it fine, but I was hoping for something more substantial.

Ditto on "Welcome to the forums". Regarding Prof's weakness being fame, besides the quibbles over the name (not to mention that his Epic name seems to be "Phaedrus", not "Limelight"), my main objection is the question of why a 5th grade science teacher would have nightmares about being famous, since Epic weakness are tied to things that they feared before they became Epics.

I'm not denying that phobias exist, but that's not really what I was talking about; I was simply referring to the common usage of the phrase, which doesn't refer to a phobia. And interpreting Prof's aversion to games of chance as a phobia... that seems like a massive stretch; a simpler explanation is that it's exactly what Tia says, that he simply dislikes them, which is a bit quirky but not unheard of. Saying this single incident constitutes a phobia actually seems a bit trivializing towards the concept of a phobia, too. If Prof actually had a neurological condition causing his fear, I'd sure hope we'd have more than a single anecdote for evidence, since neurological conditions tend not to be so easy to ignore. --- Speaking of which, where is all this "heavy emphasis on games of chance" that you guys are talking about. Did I miss some other mention to it, or is this all based on that one comment from Tia? Because, I don't call a single mention "heavy emphasis". Yeah, but without any evidence for what that "specific and very serious" thing is, we've got nothing to go on. And, really, if this is the case, I'd say his fear is that specific thing, not simply a "fear of being wrong".

There might be variations on "fear of being wrong" that are more thematically appropriate (though I'd categorize the two that you list as separate fears from "being wrong"). but we just don't have any evidence for any of those, as I can see. The idea behind the "fear of being wrong" is just based on Profs extensive planning, but again I don't really think that's evidence, and it's particularly not evidence for a more specific fear than simply "being wrong".

I'm pretty sure prof has been wrong about plenty of things. No matter how much planning you do, you're going to be wrong (and proven wrong) on occasion if you go around guessing Epic weaknesses. Wasn't one of the Steelheart weaknesses tried at the end of the book specifically Prof's idea? As I said in my last post; extensive planning before going up against Epics just means that you're sane, it's not something I really see as a hint to a weakness. But more than that, I just don't feel that "the fear of being wrong" really fits thematically. One pattern in weaknesses is, as far as I've seen, they're all pretty much Adult Fears: fear of rejection (Fortuity), fear of not living up to the expectations of others (Newton), a fear of fire, a fear of being murdered by a cult, etc. All the fears we've seen have been serious reasonable fears, the sort of thing that even as an adult, might well might give you nightmares or keep you up at night. We haven't had any real trivial fears like "fear of the number 13" or "fear of public speaking". Someone who is "afraid of being wrong" likely isn't really plagued by nightmares about being incorrect... that expression just means they particularly don't like being wrong. I particularly can't see such a petty fear being the secret weakness of such an important character as Prof... but even minor characters like Sourcefield and Fortuity have had pretty reasonable and serious fears. This idea that Epic fears, and Prof's fear in particular, be based on "Adult Fears" is also a bit of my argument against the "he's afraid of games of chance" idea that I didn't quite manage to put into words in my last post.

The two series I'm currently following are Tokyo Ghoul and Aldnoah.Zero. And I'm enjoying both... but for markedly different reasons; they're sort of foils for each other in a way: Tokyo Ghoul is the show that has interesting ideas and characters... but is a bit muddled by somewhat mixed execution, in terms of technical details; the animation has been a bit lackluster at certain points, some goofy censorship, odd pacing, etc. Though the soundtrack is phenomenal and deserves special mention in my book. The whole reason started watching this show is because the opening is really good; and the rest of the soundtrack has been good as well. Aldnoah Zero, on the other hand, is a show with great execution (the season 1 finale notwithstanding), but just doesn't seem to be interested in doing much with it. I've found it a bit like SAO... the parts not involving the OP main character are actually the best parts. It really doesn't help that the show reminds me so much of Code Geass... but compares so unfavorably to it. But if you go into it expecting a fairly simple plot and fun robot battles you probably won't be disappointed... but I feel it had the potential to be much more.

I don't think I'm really sold on the "games of chance" idea. I'm mostly reiterating the objections of others here, but: We're basing it off the "he hated contests" line... but then the "I've seen him lose at poker" line points the opposite direction. Sure, it's been argued that Poker isn't really a game of chance... but it seems like a stretch to explain it away that way; if the "poker" line is just something to be explained away, with no connection to his weakness, then equally one could argue that the "hated contests" line doesn't really have a connection to his weakness, either. I think the "Prof hates contests" line is just to reinforce the characterization of Prof as a generally cautious and careful person; he's careful and he plans, just because that's the way he is, and because, fighting Epics with normal people; you'd have to be insane (or a main character) not to. Plus, weakness have to tie to fears from before Calamity. Are we really saying that pre-Calamity Prof had deep fears and nightmares about raffles? Maybe as a child he picked a random Jelly Bean from a bag and got liquorice and was traumatized by that moment and has had nightmares about it ever since? This argument also applies to the "lack of control" weakness. Did a 5th grade science teacher really fear a lack of control? Was he just staying up terrified at night that a student might talk back to him? No, I'm in the camp of Prof's weakness being related to protecting others in some way. You're a 5th grade science teacher; what do you fear? Raffles? Back-talk? No; I think the most natural fear of a 5th grade science teacher is letting their students down, and so his weakness is more likely connected to something like that. Plus, the idea of protection fits in with his powers - forcefields and healing - (Maybe the "tensor" power is simply a special application of forcefields?) in a way that the others don't. Of course, Prof has failed people; most notably once he starts killing them, but then, weaknesses aren't always a straightforward interpretation of the fears. Sourcefield's fear was cults, but her weakness wasn't the literally the presence of a cult, but drinking the Kool-Aid; something connected to cults, but not in as straightforward a way as you might expect. I'm only arguing that his weakness will relate to his fear of failing someone... not that it will literally be "I lose my powers when I fail someone". (Alternatively, his weakness could be connected to an area of his pre-Calamity life that we know little about; e.g. his relationship with Tia... but it seems outside of Sanderson's M.O. to not have some hint of the weakness of Prof)

Revisiting this topic with added information from Firefight, namely It seems that I was mostly wrong, but partially right. Mitosis's weakness does seem to be his music; and not something more general, like the particular chords in it, as I had guessed. But I do think I hit on the underlying aspect of his weakness in the line about "hating the derivativeness and repetitiveness of popular music": in light of Firefight, it seems that's mostly right, but more accurately:

It's actually not that complicated, and it's not limited to Malazan, either. It's just commonly recognized that the first book has some issues which later books improve on. You could look up the TvTropes page for Growing the Beard, and get a whole list of series (both literature and otherwise) where this is the case. But some notable examples: The first two Dresden books are commonly acknowledged to be far weaker than the following books in the series. The early Discworld books are, as Quiver mentions, rough compared to later ones, and may or may not be a bad starting place for the series (but lets not have that debate). The original Shannara trilogy isn't terribly memorable until the second book (or until halfway through the first book, at the earliest). The problem is exacerbated with Malazan being such a dense and difficult series to begin with (later books get less difficult, but it's still not an easy series by any means), but the concept of "the first book isn't as good" is in no way unique to Malazan. I suspect if the later Harry Potter books were significantly more enjoyable than the first, you would recommend people read past the first one, even if they didn't enjoy that one a lot. I know I would.

I haven't read the last book in the series yet (and managed to avoid reading your spoiler block for it while quoting this post, woot!); working my way through a series reread, first. But we have interestingly similar, yet opposite views on the series. I too have been somewhat disappointed by the Heroes of Olympus series; (though less so than you seem to be) but seemingly in opposite ways. I loved the Roman aspects idea; it felt very Sanderon's Third Law of expanding what you already have. (I also happen to love Roman history, so that probably doesn't hurt) Part of my complaint is actually that they didn't do more with the Roman side of things. You essentially get Son of Neptune showing the Roman side... and that's about it. The Greek/Roman conflict plot has been thoroughly put on the backburner in favor of the, in my opinion, much less interesting nebulous threat of Gaea and the giants. The Gaea threat, while on paper, is more threatening than Kronos, just lacks much weight for me; really it lacks the humanizing element to the threat that Luke provided in the original series. Luke, and the other demigods fighting for Kronos, not only humanized the other side, but made the conflict much interesting than "obviously good vs. obviously evil". The sequel series has lacked that, with Gaea being the indisputable evil, theoretically more powerful, but a lot less interesting threat. I actually found Mark of Athena to be one of the weakest points, in terms of writing. It seemed to me that Riordan really struggled with figuring out how to handle 7 protagonists, and as a result, while Annabeth has a somewhat strong role in the book, naturally, everyone else just gets a couple chapters here and there, and as a result no one else really has much of an "arc" or any growth to speak of. House of Hades seemed to do better by picking a couple characters and focusing on them. My problems with House of Hades are more general; while I enjoyed the book; I felt that it generally relieved tension for the series as a whole, by wrapping up some major plot points, when it really should have been ramping the tension up for the fourth book. I sort of see a Portal/Portal 2 dynamic between the series; the first was really great and particularly had that feeling of being well constructed, no extraneous parts, where everything feels polished and contributes to the whole. And then the second comes out, and it's pretty much more of the first; it's still really good, and has more content than the first, but also has more rough edges.

So I listened to the Mitosis audiobook a few days ago; (pretty good, by the way; makes me want to go back and get the audiobook for Steelheart; the puns seem to work better in audio format, for one). Searching through this forum a bit, it seems that Mitosis's weakness is commonly understood to be his own music. It's certainly the obvious answer, with it being what defeats him, and it's what the characters view his weakness to be at the end of the book as well. But, rather than his music itself being his weakness, my take was that his weakness was a specific set of chords in his band's music (or possibly just derivative, unoriginal music in general). Mostly, I just love the idea of a supervillain whose only weakness is the Axis of Awesome's Four Chords, but there are other supports for the idea: (Unfortunately, having only the audiobook, this is going from my memory) Multiple times Mitosis complains about how derivative his band's music was, and at least once I'm pretty sure I remember him specifically saying something about "those chords!". It makes more sense that he'd go around destroying music shops. Epics generally seem to avoid telegraphing their weakness, when possible, which destroying music shops pretty clearly did. If Mitosis's weakness were really something as obscure as the music of a single band, then destroying those stores was a pretty bad move; it would have been better to just hope no one happened to play that particular band, rather than giving hints about his weakness. But if his weakness were a common musical chord pattern, then, yeah, it makes much more sense to destroy music stores because they're a much bigger risk. It fit's better with his powers and his character. In this interpretation, he was a musician who hated the derivativeness and repetitiveness of popular music, that musicians were basically just copying each other, and his power was to copy himself, and his weakness was the set of chords that were being copied by so many musicians. I'm trying to work this into a more general pattern for Epic's weaknesses, and not really coming up with anything; but this does seem more like something that would fit into a pattern than his weakness being as simple as his own music, which, as David points out at the end of the book, seems sort of arbitrary. Thanks for reading, -Retsam

I'd definitely say Kaladin's story from Way of Kings. It's just one of the best character arcs I've ever read, and man, that ending.

So I just finished a re-read of the Rithmatist, specifically with this question, whether/how this could make a game. The biggest problem with a game where you do the drawings freehand is chalklings; there's no feasible way for a game to be able to recognize the aesthetic quality of a drawing. (It might be a theoretical possibility for a program to evaluate that...maybe, though it'd be a major artificial intelligence research problem in and of itself) Otherwise, as Blaze it could be done more as a strategy game, removing the skill aspect; but it'd still be a pretty interesting game. I feel like there would have to be different skill areas: drawing speed, chalkling ability, ability to draw more complex drawings, etc. It could be done as an RPG leveling system; though personally I think it'd probably work better as a non-leveling system where you just have a certain number of skills to distribute.

I know Brandon has said that certain small bits of his books have come from reader ideas; specifically the anti-TinEye noisemakers from Well of Ascension, as an example. But I rather doubt that any big picture plot details or magic mechanics (which is usually what the theories tend to be about) are going to be altered by what some theorist says online.

If nothing else, once Hoid has his Allomantic abilities (he definitely has them by Way of Kings, assuming he ate that bead he took, he could be a Mistborn as early as Hero of Ages) he could be using Bendalloy; (I'm pretty sure it's Bendalloy that'd be useful for moving forward in time, not Cadmium as in the original post), but that seems unlikely for a number of reasons. According to the coppermind, Bendalloy increases times passage only 8-fold, which is a decidedly slow way to travel through time. Granted, it's possible that the more you flare your Bendalloy, the faster time moves (other possibility is that flaring increases the size of the bubble), but still it's unlikely to be a very efficient way to move through time at its best. Plus, Bendalloy's pretty rare/expensive, so it'd be a REALLY expensive way to get through time, as well. Plus, that leaves the question open of how Hoid moved through time before he was an Allomancer, (assuming he didn't just move normally through time prior to Mistborn); so I suspect there's a different answer to this question than Allomancy.

Would the same apply to steellines?