jamesbondsmith

What do people think of the announced God of War: Laufey? I'm keen to play as Laufey but I feel like the whole 'afterlife for gods' thing kind of cheapens both Norse games.

Started Outer Worlds 2, and there's already a few changes from the first game I'm not a fan of. Companions can't boost skill checks, which is making the level up process a pain as I agonise over which skills to prioritise. The one chance to respec is also way too early to tell if a build isn't viable, in my opinion. I get this is probably to encourage replaying with different playstyles, but I don't have time to replay games of this size. Anyone have recommendations for RPGs which encourage locking into a playstyle and then replaying with a different one but are also relatively short (say under 10 hours for a decent chunk of the content)?

What, if anything, do I need to do differently when cooking Impossible Meat? I was going to try a small bolognese and maybe a stirfry, I'm presuming I can't cook it for hours like a normal bolognese would be.

So I went ahead and got Clair Obscur and I'm really liking it. The story is definitely what I'm enjoying the best (partway through Act 2, and I see why Jennifer English got all those awards), and I'm slowly getting the hang of the combat. It feels like a very 'busy' game, with (what I consider to be) Souls-ish combat, a plot that could probably just be a CGI-animated miniseries all on its own, a relationship meter, pretty iffy platforming and some ridiculous minigames that I read were put in as an homage to the Final Fantasy minigames that people hated. I'm getting really tired of there being no map inside 'dungeons', or a quest log beyond the next main story objective. I'm maybe 35 hours in and a good chunk of that time has been running around lost trying to find an item or just where to go to advance the plot. Also the platforming is pretty average, especially when a jump from most heights will automatically roll. I'm also identifying with the 'this is an RPG, what role am I playing, the victim?' streamer.

Is Clair Obscur Expedition 33 good? I've heard great things about, but it also looks like it's a very dodge/parry heavy game and I suck at those. I've watched some gameplay but I can't tell whether it would be too steep a learning curve as I feel most people who stream games have kind of the survivorship bias of the gaming world

Is he still doing the Mistborn screenplay? I'm halfway through Way of Kings in my re-read in preparation to read Wind and Truth and I'm getting really annoyed with his dialogue. It's like the old tale of Harrison Ford telling George Lucas 'you can type this stuff but you can't say it'. I think a lot of novelists forget that people write and speak very differently. So many could do with a table read to actually figure out what sounds natural.

Hi, I've posted in the Writing excuses forum a couple of times about a book set in a world which basically takes a culinary view of vampire hunting (garlic galore). I've been slowly working on that between other projects and my day job, and I was thinking of adding werewolves to it but I was wondering if it might get too busy. I can't think of many ingredients that are traditional werewolf weaknesses (unless I just take things that ordinary dogs can't eat like chocolate) so I was thinking of taking the 'silver' part of silverware literally and focusing on more of an etiquette standpoint in terms of weaknesses. I thought it could also tie into the Vampire Rich/Werewolves Poor tropes.

I trained in both an offshoot of Kyokushin karate and freestyle martial arts (so mixes of BJJ, Muay Thai, karate, kali) and my biggest advice is LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. I trained from age 7-25 and now I can tell when the weather is going to change in my reconstructed knee and it hurts/gets stiff if I have my elbows on the table for too long. Sport and exercise in general has a 'push through the pain' mentality, and martial arts even more so. It's OK to step back, and there's not much point learning to defend yourself if it leaves you too broken to actually do it. I do a bit of writing, and I plan to examine the 'loss of martial capability through injury' journey.

The recipes I found (and in the linked video) didn't have a marinade, so I didn't use one. Just seared the chops off, took them out, and then put them back in once the veggies had softened a bit. I'm not sure how well a yoghurt marinade would go in what is basically a one pot rice dish.

Last week I tried making Uzbeki Plov. It ended up quite nice, although I'm not sure I added enough salt. I used lamb chops and it would probably work better with boneless cuts of meat.

I've read everything in Arcanum unbounded except for Emperor's soul I think (I got it before reading Elantris).

As the title suggests, what do I need to read before KOWT? Without spoilers would be nice (I'm aware I'm on the spoiler thread). I'd hoped to reread the whole Stormlight Archive before it came out, but I'm currently working through Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell and 4000-ish pages after that in a month or two feels like a task. I've read all the cosmere except for the following: Emperor's Soul White Sand Secret Projects (roughly halfway through Tress, haven't started the rest). I also haven't been keeping up to date with the preview chapters as I wanted to read it in one piece (I did read the prologue yonks ago though).

I hope I don't come off as being defensive, but here's some replies to your issues, please let me know if they make sense with the explanation or if they could use elaboration. 'Spraying hands' was a reference to the high-pressure hoses kitchens use (not sure if they all had it, the ones I've worked in do) that staff use to remove the worst of the stains. 'Deadly words' is something along those lines, I was thinking 'that's not my job/but I'm on break'. The statues were meant to evoke the vampires and wooden stakes association, with the stakes being repurposed into statues that still have points to be used if needed. The 'smoking liquid' was meant to evoke a violent, acidic sort of reaction. I feel like the main thrust of the worldbuilding is that all alliums (including garlic) are a very useful deterrent, sounds like I'll have to rework it to make that clearer. I'm still working on the worldbuilding for the longer version I plan to write, but currently I don't plan on crucifixes having much effect, as the purely magical elements don't feel like they fit all that well (although then the mirrors and the salt may not work either). I was trying to convey an apprentice who just gets put on the odd jobs, and the part about the potential head chef was meant to refer to the coworker. I'll have to clear that up. In terms of tone, I kind of wanted it to lean towards a 'dramedy' type thing, as I wanted a vampire story but the premise does seem to lend itself to a more comedic tone.

Just finished Bookshops and Bonedust, a prequel to Legends and Lattes (which I haven't gotten round to reading). I liked it, was slow going at points but the best parts really resonated with how I've felt about life currently or in the past. Will jump onto Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrel next, because that's the next library loan to expire

Hi, submitting a short story here (just under 2200 words). I've got plans to do more in this world, and I already got good results from a different story in this world in another competition so I thought I'd try another one. I took one line from the first story because I quite liked it. Can people tell me if it's too close to being 'unoriginal'? I wrote that line, but it was published (very small press) so I thought it might be a grey area. If anyone who works/has worked in kitchens notices I've got anything wrong about kitchen environments please let me know. I cook a lot at home, but my experience working in restaurants is limited to waiter/dishie and even that was a long time ago. Some of this did come from just a place of being frustrated with customer service jobs, hopefully it isn't over the top.