Nerd Cred

So, I'm actually a little surprised I didn't make a Zootopia review when it came out. I watched that movie a lot and bought it pretty much instantly. Hell, I recall biking home to "Try Everything" many evenings. Looking back through my backlog of film reviews and not seeing one is probably a disservice. Probably because I was busy working on The Chronicles of Loth or something. Anyway, since Zootopia 2 came out today and I saw it for Thanksgiving, along with Transformers One, more on that garbage later, I figured it was time to remedy that oversight. The Scale Problem Here's a bit of scale for those who might not be in the know. Zootopia is supposed to be six times bigger than San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6. Population and area wise, we have no good clue about San Fransokyo's exact numbers. But assuming it's based on the dimensions of San Francisco, which is more or less what Big Hero 6's movie was based on, we're looking at roughly 47 square miles with a population of about 815,000 people. Now Zootopia, take it with a grain of salt, population wise is probably much more massive since we have the tiny critters. Six times 47 square miles gives us roughly 282 square miles. That's about the size of New York City or Chicago land mass wise. And that's just the city proper. Which, is going to cause problems when you look at the numbers we have below. Bunnyburrow, as Judy is leaving, has 81,435,816 rabbits. We're not privy to how much space Bunnyburrow takes up, but we can assume it's not a small land mass set aside for this. And we're told that the city follows a 10 to 1 population distribution. So for every 10 prey animals, there is one predator. Only, that's not exactly true. Because in the animal kingdom there are no true herbivores, everything, if it's hungry enough, will eat meat. Remember the video of the cow eating that snake? Or how about hippos that take a bite out of stuff just because? You telling the most prolific killer in Africa it can't? Go on, I'll wait. Without predation, this is a world that is ultimately doomed to fail. Now enough of the scale problem... because we have oh so many more problems to point out. The Horror of Stats Zootopia's pivotal story hinges on a city of, assuming using the math from Big Hero 6, roughly 6 million mammals. But in actuality we're probably looking at 15 to 25 million, remember the suburb of Bunnyburrow has 81 million on its own. And you're telling me rats, lemmings, mice, and other small rodents aren't breeding prolifically? Yeah... not happening. But anyway, the plot hinges on the missing persons of 14 mammals. You're telling me in a city that's at almost the population of New York City (8,478,072 pop), or the population of Los Angeles (3,878,704), Chicago (2,721,308) AND Houston (2,390,125) merged, we have 14 missing animals and that's a crisis? NYC has roughly 13,000 missing persons cases reported a year. Some get found, sure. Some wind up in morgues, but not all of them are found. We see where this is going, right? Welcome to a new type of Disney flick. No Bambi's mom being shot in the field, no Simba's dad being pushed from a cliff by Scar. No, we have the horror of stats. Zootopia crushes itself under the numbers. The Night Howler Problem The story is plucky bunny has to prove she's got the right stuff. We get her history and see how she overcomes giant odds, which, keep in mind, we have fucking mice in this movie at like centimeters in height, while we also have damn elephants. Elephants that weigh in at roughly 12,000 pounds. You realize how much damage these things can do? A savage elephant in Little Rodentia isn't just a threat, it's an extinction-level event for that district. Officer Jumbo gets hit by the night howler, a plant that Judy's parents and her fox bully Gideon recognized immediately. And Mayor Lionheart, with an entire fucking hospital system at his disposal, couldn't figure it out. A drug that so fundamentally changes the person hit with the poison they never seem to recover, even though Judy's folks say that the affected person came around eventually. Yeah, welcome to the 40K hive world. Is Bogo the Real Villain? Now... we have 14 mammals that our Mayor is finding, because remember, it's the mayor's aide Bellwether who's causing this, rounding up and locking these predators up to try and cure them. So it's possible she's feeding tips. But setting aside that, the Lionheart has his own security forces operating in the city. He's got mercs. Kidnapping citizens before the ZPD ever gets wind of some of these. Which implies that either this police force is grossly incompetent, or that Chief Bogo is our secret villain. I know, I know... WHAT? Two twist villains? But how? Why? I mean, seriously consider this. Bellwether is the mastermind who acts sweet and innocent but wants all predators to pay, because I guess they stole her cookies or something. But Bogo runs the ENTIRE ZPD. We see no commissioner, we see no other districts. So we have to assume this guy, in a city of 8 to 15 million, is handling all of this. Now, I'm not saying Bogo is a good villain, he's something of an idiot. Because if he was any good, with what would in theory be about 13,000 missing persons cases annually, these 14 mammals would be lost in the shuffle. Boom, Zootopia 1 becomes a boring-ass movie about Judy Hopps trying and failing to be impressive in a city with so much minor and petty crime it makes Sandford in Hot Fuzz seem normal. But think about it. Think about what fun opportunities you could have if you opened up and made Bogo a villain, even if he's just the henchman who gets lucky and gets away. The paperwork, the system crushing down on all these mammals? It makes perfect sense if Bogo is so jaded and tired that he just wants to watch the world snuff itself out because they can't feed themselves. Because when you have 81 million bunnies in the suburb alone, it might be time for just a bit more predation. So, should they be eating mice? Part 2 coming soon, where we dive into Zootopia 2: Chinatown Edition and see if Bogo's villainy continues... Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

So I'm back, still trudging through The Way of Kings. I've made it to Part 4, which means I've survived all the library shenanigans with Shallan and more of Kaladin's bridge-running adventures. According to my Kindle, I've got about 12 hours left. I've also picked up the audiobook so I can listen on my drives to and from cardiac rehab, which means I'm getting hit with this story from multiple angles now. Lucky me. But now I know how someone pronounces these names. The "You Caught Something Others Missed" Problem Apparently I'm some kind of savant because my brother informed me that I caught something most readers don't notice until the third book. Jasnah's ward, Shallan, the girl who steals the soulcaster, has a shardblade. When she's being chased by the symbol heads, she starts counting her heartbeats, which we've seen the other shardblade bearers do. Ten heartbeats to summon the weapon. My brother seemed impressed. I was mostly just like... okay? Cool, I guess? Same thing with figuring out that Kaladin's slurping up stormlight to heal himself. Apparently that's supposed to be some big revelation but come on. We already saw the assassin doing his hookshot routine by sucking the light from lanterns. It's not exactly quantum physics to connect those dots. Sure he's not lash, hop, lash, hop, gravitying his way through battle but is it a stretch to use magical storm juice to heal yourself? And you know what? That right there highlights one of my biggest issues with this book. When you only read a chapter or two a day, these "clever" setups that are supposed to pay off hundreds of pages later just... don't land. Maybe Sanderson's books are better consumed in those massive page-turning marathon sessions where you're devouring 200 pages at a time and the foreshadowing is still fresh in your brain. But when you're reading at a normal human pace? It feels less like brilliant setup and more like homework you forgot you were assigned. The Shardblade Scarcity Problem (That Isn't Actually Scarce) Can we talk about how shardblades are supposed to be these incredibly rare artifacts that can destabilize entire economies if they're bought or sold? Because the math isn't mathing here. Dalinar, our badass who's going mad with visions, finally gives us actual numbers. Maybe 60 shardblades total? Twenty in his kingdom, twenty in the opposing kingdom, and the rest scattered throughout all the other kingdoms in dribs and drabs that might equal what the first two have combined. But wait. In Dalinar's fever dream vision memory thing when the Radiants give up their oaths, there are 200 shardblades and shardplates just... laying around. And they mention there are other orders, so if every order has 200 blades that's 2,000 shardbearers with plate and sword. Where are they? Did our rock monsters eat them? Is that why the soulcasters can turn the very rocks into food? Because the Kaiju ate magic armor and blades and can now become food for the nations? And please note this is sarcasm bout the kaiju eating the shards. And our boy Szeth, the king-killing assassin, casually fights, and kills, three shardblade bearers as an aside. Just a little throwaway. We have no idea what kingdom or whatever these three blades belong to and what power dynamic it might be shifting. Stay tuned for book 10! When we find out that they were part of this one worthless kingdom named in passing. So which is it? Are these things rare or not? Because from where I'm sitting, this is like the difference between a Google Pixel and an iPhone. Sure, technically one costs more than the other, but they're only "rare" to people who don't have money. If there are potentially 2,000 of them at one point and now there are 60, where did the other 1,940 go? Did someone lose them between couch cushions? Are they sitting in some warehouse waiting to be rediscovered by a plucky adventurer? The worldbuilding here is trying to have it both ways. These weapons are supposed to be SO rare and SO valuable that possessing one instantly elevates your social status and military power. But also they're common enough that random assassins are collecting them like Pokemon cards. And I'm not going to be surprised to find out there's some whole established black market economy around selling them or something. Point is, 2,000 mythical weapons that change the tide of battle and you've found 60? The hell happened to them? Where's My Grand Admiral? I keep asking myself why I'm struggling with this book, and I think I've figured it out. Where's this book's Thrawn? Where's my tactical genius who's three steps ahead of everyone, making calculated moves that matter? Where's the villain who makes me want to keep reading just to see what brilliant bastardry he pulls next? Instead I've got... what? A bunch of people running bridges. A girl stealing a magical artifact via the world's most convoluted heist that mostly involves her reading books and being awkward. And Dalinar having visions that tell him to unite people or whatever. At least the HBO Game of Thrones had sex to keep the audience hooked. I've got the windspren... windsprenning with Kaladin. Look, I get it. I'm a sci-fi girl trying to force myself through high fantasy. It's like asking someone who loves horror movies to sit through a three-hour period drama. Sure, it might be technically well-crafted, but it's just not scratching that itch. And here's the thing, Sanderson has written 30+ books. He's planning to spread this particular story across seven or eight books, whatever the full Stormlight Archive is supposed to be. I'm 30-ish hours into book one and I'm STILL waiting for a villain to emerge. Sure, we've got hints. There's Odium mentioned in Kaladin's highstorm fever dream, shhh we're not supposed to know he's the god who like got kicked off the planet by the other gods or something. There's political maneuvering happening in the background. But there's no Grand Admiral Thrawn. There's no Darth Vader choking out incompetent officers. There's just... slow-burn worldbuilding. And about five people who are bastards but they're not interesting bastards. Maybe I need to compare this to A Song of Ice and Fire to see if all epic fantasy moves at this glacial pace. Because at least in the Heir to the Empire Trilogy, the Thrawn books, there's clear rising action throughout each book. Stakes build. Tension escalates. Things HAPPEN. Hell, Tolkien gave us clear-cut bad guys. Morgoth, Sauron, Saruman. I guess technically Gollum. We KNEW who we were rooting against. We also knew the stakes. Here? I'm still hoping something will happen soon. Kaladin's Stupid Decision Speaking of not making sense, Kaladin. Our brooding bridge boy who I actually liked as a character, throws down like an absolute boss and earns himself a shardblade and shardplate. The GM, sorry, Sanderson, literally hands him the best loot in the game. And he turns it down. He. Turns. It. Down. Are you kidding me? You know what happens when the GM gives you a reward and you're like "nah, I'm good"? Your found family dies. Your remaining squad gets executed in front of you. You get exactly what you deserve for being an uppity player who thinks he's too good for the treasure drop. I've mentioned before that I'm not a nice person. This is one of those moments where I'm actively rooting against the protagonist because he's making choices that are narratively frustrating. Sure, sure, it's "in character" for his whole "I won't become like the lighteyes" thing. But you know what's also in character? Survival. Taking the tools you need to protect the people you care about. And his entire reason for joining the army was to protect baby bro, which he failed. You know what could have made saving baby bro easier? Fucking power armor. Instead, we get this martyr complex that's supposed to be noble but just reads as self-destructive to me. And not the interesting kind of self-destructive either. Just the annoying kind. The Lightsaber Problem Now when it comes to the fandom I've discovered something, and let me tell you this fun little aside. I was out at breakfast with my writing buddy, we meet up regularly to work on our respective literary projects and generally nerd out, and I'm describing how shardblades work. I call them lightsabers because that's essentially what they are, and there's this dude two tables over who looks like he's ready to Sweet Chin Music me for the comparison. He actually came over to educate me on the entire cosmere and the inner workings on the great Sanderson. He was ready to sit down and spend the rest of the day educating me. Luckily his wife had other plans. Great woman, she’s a real hero. But here's the thing. They ARE basically lightsabers with extra steps. You summon them from hammerspace, they cut through anything, and they have this weird quirk where they kill people without leaving horrific wounds, if you don't count the blackened skin and burned-out eyes, which I absolutely do count. And that's stupid. These things are assassination weapons, not battlefield tools. You want to take out a high-value target quietly? Great, use a shardblade. But in the middle of a pitched battle with armies clashing? You know who would love these weapons? Warhammer 40K Orks. Tyranids. Anyone who just wants to wade through bodies without worrying about their sword getting stuck in someone's ribcage. The Orks and Tyranids want biomass, you know what makes great biomass? Bodies that are pretty much pristine because a lightsaber just vorped away their soul or whatever, leaving fresh tasty meat behind to be consumed. The entire concept doesn't make tactical sense. If I'm writing a battle scene and I give someone a weapon that phases through armor but kills the person inside, I'm writing an assassin's tool, not a warrior's weapon. But Sanderson treats these like they're meant for glorious battlefield combat, and I just... can't. Now that power armor? That could do some serious damage, and we see that it can take a Kaiju alright, but not a spear to the face. So pro tip, avoid sharp pointy objects. It's a fair everyday life lesson anyway. The Poisoning That Makes No Sense Then there's Jasnah getting poisoned. I joked with my brother that it would be totally in her character to poison herself just to prove some convoluted point about trust or whatever. Turns out it was actually some guy, Kabsal, I think his name was, who poisoned her via her ward. With bread. And the jam was the antidote. First off, antidotes don't work instantly. You're talking about chemical neutralization, not some magical cure-all that kicks in the second it hits your tongue. Chemistry doesn't work that way. Biology doesn't work that way. Even in a fantasy setting, you need some internal logic. Second, and more importantly, what's step two of this plan? You kill the daughter of the queen, presumably while stealing her soulcaster, and then what? They hunted the assassin who killed the king across half the continent. You think they're not going to hunt you to the ends of the earth for murdering Jasnah Kholin? It's the kind of half-baked villain plan that only works if you don't think about it for more than thirty seconds. And I've been thinking about it for way longer than that because I'm reading this book at the pace of molasses in winter. The Highstorm Madness Here's something that's been bugging me more and more as I listen/read. These highstorms that sweep through the continent with the force of a Category 15 hurricane, and yes, I know that's not a real category, but Sanderson seems to think hurricanes can just scale infinitely, happen ALL. THE. TIME. I don't know if they're supposedly once-in-a-lifetime devastating storms... but it seems almost daily? Weekly? The timeline is fuzzy but they happen often enough that everyone's built their entire civilization around them. And nobody's thought, "Hey, maybe we should do something about the apocalyptic weather patterns that dominate our entire existence?" Nobody's tried to terraform? Industrialize? Build better infrastructure? Develop technology that might, I don't know, STOP the storms or at least predict them better? Sure we have these guys who can predict the storms, but they keep telling us it's not an exact science. But you know what is an exact science? Science. To paraphrase Mark Watney in The Martian, "You science the shit out of it." It's not like it destroys livelihood, or things. Instead everyone's just like, "Yep, that's a highstorm alright" and goes about their business hiding in stone buildings until Hurricane Katrina on steroids passes through and strips the land bare. Or in fucking wooden wagons pulled by our beloved crab guys. Seriously, where's my book about the crabs? Maybe these highstorms are causing the madness, you guys. Maybe Dalinar's visions aren't divine inspiration, they're just what happens when your brain gets rattled by megastorms every few days for your entire life. Fantasy CTE. It's what ends football players' and wrestlers' careers, why not badass warriors in power armor? Kaladin's got this figured out, right? Right? The Reading Experience Problem Here's the thing I keep coming back to. Maybe The Way of Kings is brilliant if you're the kind of reader who can dedicate entire weekends to devouring 500-page chunks. Maybe all these setups and payoffs work perfectly when they're compressed into a shorter timeframe in your brain. But reading/listening in daily hour-and-a-half sessions? It feels interminable. The pacing drags. The revelations that are supposed to be shocking feel telegraphed. The tactical decisions that are supposed to be clever feel stupid. I'm not saying Sanderson is a bad writer. He's clearly doing something right if my brother has read basically everything the man's ever written. I'm just saying that his style and my reading habits are fundamentally incompatible. Or maybe I'm just a grumpy sci-fi nerd who misses having characters like Miles Vorkosigan or Ender Wiggin, people who think their way through problems with actual intelligence rather than just... running at them with magical power armor. So Where Do We Go From Here? I've got 12 hours left on the Kindle, minus however many hours I'm racking up in the car between cardiac rehab sessions. I'm going to finish this book because I'm not a quitter, not mentioning Malazan Book of the Fallen and how I tapped out after a chapter, and also because my brother will never let me hear the end of it if I don't. But I can already tell you that I'm probably not going to rush out and grab Words of Radiance. Maybe that makes me a bad fantasy reader. Maybe I'm just too stuck in my sci-fi ways to appreciate what Sanderson's doing here. Or maybe, just maybe, some books are better suited for certain reading styles and I'm forcing myself through something that was never meant to be consumed the way I consume it. Either way, I'll let you know if the ending changes my mind. Though given that I already know Kaladin's an idiot who turned down legendary loot, I'm not holding my breath. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

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A number of years ago I came across a rather clever chap, a man named Professor Elemental. I think like most, it was his fighting trousers that caught my attention. I'm something of a fan. He has a charming wit to his burns. And so, to parrot the good Professor: It seems someone has been biting me. If you're not familiar, I've been on the bookface for years now, mostly because a collection of acquaintances and friends refuse to modernize and get onto Discord like civilized individuals. I've collectively made friends with some of these folks through work and then added them to this social media juggernaut back in the day. I don't add folks now. I've made use of all the social medias a time or three: Facebook, MySpace, Grindr... Wait, not that one, I meant Tumblr, and of course Twitter. I have posted a singular video on TikTok about flies meeting together for an impossible mission. And YouTube, I have a good amount of my public idiocy I should probably take off YouTube. The Setup: Babylon vs. Mesopotamia So imagine my surprise when one of my friends starts making claims about certain things, and I, like the good little worshiper of Allfather Odin, decide to wade into the discussion seeking clarification that eventually became a full-on discourse. I thought we reached a mutual understanding. Now imagine my surprise when today I decided to make what I thought would be a humorous comment to their statement about the political/economic impacts of Japan vs. China and how apparently it relates to a certain Middle Eastern engagement. For discretion and to avoid the censorship of the moderators, I am of course talking about Babylon vs. Mesopotamia. It's truly the fight for all ages. It's no secret to anyone who knows me, I'm a bit of a rogue in many ways, scholar in others. My education, though started by the American public school system, was not completed by it. Education is never finished. I'm pretty sure Allfather Odin would get very cross indeed with me if I should decide enough is enough. If I were to decide that I had achieved absolute knowledge, or more importantly, had I decided not to share that knowledge. But one shouldn't be arrogant or condescending when sharing information, that doesn't help anyone. And I've been told by multiple people that I can teach things, that I know, very well and make it understandable. Which if you know your subject matter means you should be able to teach it. Now I can see how this might come across to the uninformed, I really do. A white person, though I am a minority by virtue of being in the LGBT field, and some nefarious folks have co-opted Viking paganism for their asinine beliefs. But what's largely funny is that this individual, a number of years ago, was bemoaning the fact that they couldn't get any help with their minority outreach/community group. I didn't think anything about it because I thought, like most people in the 2016 to 2020 era, that they were simply trying to keep their heads above water. Everyone who wasn't a 1% was, and the struggle isn't a reason to be seen as weak. It should be applauded that you are working and trying and fighting the system. Do you give everything? No. As Jesus said, it is more impactful if you are poor to give what you can than for the rich to give a pittance. It means more when you are struggling. To sum it up, it builds character. I imagine, most of us have an over abundance of character at this point. The Claim: China Has Never Had Wars So in this particular case, this individual is making the base claim that China has no military presence anywhere and has had no wars. Clearly, I'm no expert on global politics. I'm just a fledgling author who spends too much time at 2 in the morning learning how to rewire a diesel submarine or learning the syntax of a dead language to ensure three lines of dialogue are correct. I certainly don't know anything about their Road and Belt policy, which is the soft power of coming in and offering economic assistance and road building in exchange for things for China. And if that shouldn't work, they'll roll in the tanks like they did in a certain conflict in 2020. And let's not digress into the artificial islands that they create in the surrounding sea, a sea that they claim despite the international courts saying it's not theirs. Or how they bully and potentially sink fishermen in "their sea." I think people forget how much research a writer does for their work. Why, in The Hunt for Red October, it was famously delayed because the author was "publishing" classified information. Only it wasn't actually classified, it was stuff that Mr. Clancy had read and put together. Adding pieces from technical docs here, from conversations he'd heard there. So if you're open to it, you will learn a thing or two. The Flex: Credentials as Weapons But weirdly, this person decided as some sort of flex to Yugioh trap card me by whipping out their significant other's educational experience, which, bravo. Higher education is always to be applauded. Which was weird. We weren't talking about education. I had simply said I wasn't as educated on it, because I'm not. I really don't know a lot about the politics of what's going on on the Asian side of the world. Just like I'm not particularly schooled in Middle Eastern politics, or in Europe, or in South America. I get the surface-level stuff. I read Ground News, I read the BBC, and more importantly, I have friends on most continents: England, Denmark, Germany, Australia, Japan, China, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Canada, and South Africa. Is that all the countries? No, but I feel it's enough to be like "Raul, ¿cómo está?" "Hiroshi, how's things in Hokkaido?" "Wie geht's, Maria?" and if you're wondering why Hiroshi doesn't get Kanji, it's cause I can't actually read that very well. If I didn't care about the world in general, I wouldn't have been trying to self-teach myself Spanish, French, Japanese, or Hindi. Granted, I bit off more than I can chew, I sometimes do that, but that happens. The point is, I'm having this argument where someone is coming at me with astrology and indigenous feelings, claiming they can "show you through accounting and astrology" how geopolitics works, and I'm trying to understand, to have this discourse, to complete a part of my education. The Breaking Point And it got to me. The tone. The sheer arrogance of their superiority. I try, try very, very hard, to be humble. Am I? Probably about as well as any TV evangelist telling you that God thinks they're humble, and if you don't believe them, you should donate to their fund because their solid gold Humvee can't drive itself. But I like to think I try. But it triggered something in me. It made me write a fucking monolithic post ready to sink the Junk, which is an ancient Chinese ship, they're piloting while I'm over here on a nuclear aircraft carrier dropping smart bombs from the squad of F-35's that I carry around. It should be noted that I can be prepared for a battle. After all, I wrote for myself a Rap Battle contest between Coach Boomer, Present Mic, Blaster and Soundwave. What were they going to offer when I was ready to go full scale into search to make a rap battle for minor characters? I never liked people who have unearned smugness. I don't like people who demand your respect for unearned work. And so I decided and wrote a five-page dissertation, a masterclass thesis to take apart their statements. Based on the logic of "I'm just a country lawyer," to quote the Futurama chicken lawyer. And I remembered I had a no-drama policy. So I stepped back, and I wrote "May you be happy and be at peace", a Buddhist phrase that is basically a polite way of saying I'm out. The Last Word They Had to Have Not even five minutes later, the individual in question has the nerve to tell me to never post or comment on their feed because I don't do anything for them or their family. So like a standard nerd and a bit of a prick, I go to the comment, respond with the gif of Westley from The Princess Bride, "As you wish", and just like that, I blocked them and unfriended them. It made me realize that they are their own worst enemy in this case, and it's because of them that they can't get help for their minority cause. And I later realized that when I blocked them, they probably didn't see my Princess Bride burn. Truly, following the Princess Bride shenanigans, that is the sound of ultimate suffering. Low Blows and Slop But here's something that's a bit weird: they were trying to hit me below the belt, as if I can be injured by low blows. Please. Pigs love slop, and I'll play in the slop to my heart's fucking content. There is no mud that is too dense or vitriol that I shan't partake of and sling back. They asked what I did to combat the KKK. Which... okay. That's a weird thing to focus on. More so since both of us worked for a for-profit college, I'm not proud of it, and those were notoriously famous for preying on minorities. Was it that I didn't specifically go out of my way to find a Klan rally and go running through, guns a-blazin'? What that would have done, as a solo target, would have gotten my ass in the noose. Was it implying I'm racist? Possibly that was their implication. They and their spouse are minorities, and as I said, I am too by the threadbare margins, and arguably one of the whitest white whiteys to ever white the light. But you know what isn't racist? That I have Black friends, and it's true. I'm in pretty constant meme-offs with at least one of them as we're constantly sending D&D and other stuff to one another. I have a number of them as work friends at work. I have Hispanic friends too. See, the thing is, when you start putting the label of "minority" on each and every one of them, then yeah, it kinda looks bad. But you know what I do when I think of my friends? I think of them as friends. And oh yeah, one or two of them might be Black, one or two of them might be Hispanic, Indian, Asian. I take it into account if we're going somewhere that they might get uncomfortable with, but I don't make it something that stands out about them. I know it influences their culture and that I cannot, as an outsider, ever know the specifics of that culture. But I can at least be understanding and seek to learn about it. The Beautiful Irony The beautiful irony of this whole situation? This person worked at Indiana Business College, one of those predatory for-profit institutions that specifically targeted minority communities, while lecturing me about what I do for marginalized people. They're married to an American, living in America, worked at an American institution that preyed on vulnerable students, but apparently Americans are "incapable of seeing past the land." They deployed their "American engineer mathematician Purdue grad spouse" like a credential weapon not once, but twice, as if a degree validates their claim that China has never had military conflicts. They hit me with "my bloodline ain't for you" when I tried to understand their perspective on indigenous knowledge, gatekeeping entire histories behind ethnic purity tests while demanding I provide my activism resume for dismantling the KKK. And when I politely excused myself from the conversation? They had to get the last word, telling me to stop talking to them after I'd already said "be at peace." Couldn't let me exit gracefully. Had to make sure they got that final jab in about how my "vast information does nothing for Black Americans." The Real Kicker You know what the real kicker is? I genuinely wanted to learn from this person. I went into that conversation seeking understanding. But when someone comes at you claiming they can explain geopolitics through accounting and astrology, when they deny documented military actions because it doesn't fit their narrative, when they demand you prove your anti-racism credentials while working for an institution that actively harmed the communities they claim to protect... at some point you realize this isn't about education or discourse. It's about someone who needs to feel superior and will deploy every rhetorical weapon they have, credentials, ethnic gatekeeping, moral grandstanding, to maintain that feeling. So I did what any self-respecting nerd does when confronted with unearned smugness: I wrote my five-page dissertation, saved it in my drafts, remembered that some people are determined to be their own worst enemy, and walked away. Because you know what? The Tenets of Incorrigibility include standing up for what you believe in, but they also include walking your own path. And my path doesn't include playing chess with pigeons. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

Some years are harder than others. It's only natural. And in my life, I've been through surprisingly a lot of things. Finished up a degree in Management of Information Systems, fancy title for "person who can run a call center" got my first real job out of college in 2007/8, and then in 2009, when I was looking to get my first house, we had the housing market collapse. Last one in. First one out. I drove home in my brand new Jeep Wrangler, parked in the garage, and contemplated letting the car run. Clearly I didn't, mostly because my dog at the time was freaking out that I was home at lunchtime. That was a bad day. And the year or so of just applying for job after job after job wasn't better. My unemployment ran out so quickly. Fast forward to 2013. I left Indiana for ostensibly a brighter future on the East Coast, taking my Shar Pei and brother with me. The first year was hard. I struggled to support essentially three people. If you're not familiar with the Shar Pei, they are expensive. Maggie was allergic to damn near everything, so she needed special food. We had to avoid bees and wasps. She couldn't have more than a single shot at a time. Super expensive. She died rather suddenly in 2014 to liver cancer. Then in 2016 I lost my job when the company I worked for restructured/got bought out. That started a great six months of trying to find a job, this time with the stress of a house. But I survived and got a job that was so stressful it legitimately almost put me into the hospital on a couple of occasions. A Prozac prescription, some therapy, and my new doggo later, I was at a better job. Just in time for it to be bought up... And then that bought-up job was almost literally bought WHILE in the negotiation phase. Seriously. The ink was still drying when the company who bought my company was itself bought. And then COVID, and we were told to go work from home. Great for doggies and the like everywhere. Not necessarily great for that svelte figure I maintained by eating out daily and driving in the car two hours a day. But 2025 has been hard. Financially, politically, emotionally. All just shit. I found out in November of 2024 that my faithful companion through COVID had developed cancer. January of 2025 we found out how bad. Unlike with Maggie, Dorian benefited from my hyper-vigilant, almost-always-home nature. We caught it, and while it was too much for surgery, it was treatable. Meds every month totaling almost $150 before certain actions raised drug prices. Now that same med, with shipping, is $200. And still I maintained vigilance and watched. Discovering Cushing's in him. And watching his hip dysplasia start to act up. I've had dogs my entire life. My German Shepherd mix from first grade until sophomore year of college basically passed because his hips got so bad he couldn't walk or relieve himself. I knew with Dorian as a Labrador mix he would probably have that same problem as well. And then in July, I received the news that my health wasn't great. What I was chalking up to excessive heat and humidity was actually far worse. September we did a scan, and it was bad enough to warrant surgery for a closer look. That was essentially October. Discovering in October that one of your arteries is 100% blocked and its nickname is "Widowmaker" is about as sobering an experience as you can get. Heart disease is on both sides of the family. It's mostly genetics that got me. Sure, American diets aren't great, but I was trying to improve by limiting sodium. And hey, cutting sugar and going to cardiac rehab three days a week to do essentially cardio has cut the pounds. So imagine my surprise when shortly after my mother leaves, I get one of the worst migraines of my life. And hey, that American healthcare was really being top-notch by having people who absolutely didn't answer, neurologist, or the primary care saying "it's not our problem." A trip to urgent care lessened it but didn't fix it. A trip to pain management referred me for physical therapy. And hey, guess who has some twisted spinal discs? Did you guess me? You should have. And then a trip to the vet showed the dog's blood pressure is through the roof, even on blood pressure medicine. I hadn't mentioned that he at some point over the year got a parasite, that his liver values were wonky, and that he started having nosebleeds that would put anime characters to shame. Cancer has progressed. So needless to say, as far as banner years go, my 2025 has been a bumper crop. But here's the thing. As his journey comes to its end... as much as it hurts to lose the buddy I've had with me for eight-plus years... I know I'd do it all again. I'll go into the kennel, the pound, the rescue, and I'll grab another dog. Because no matter how much pain comes with owning one, there's just something so decent and loving about having a pet. Yeah, him waking me up in the middle of the night sucks. Or that he ate something on the walk and now he's sick. It doesn't matter. It's a pain that you willingly take on each time. When I got him, I was his third forever home. It stuck. And I hope everyone who reads this gets to experience that joy of rescuing an animal and becoming their forever home. And when I write this, he's still alive, sleeping on the footstool. And unlike others this won’t sit in the queue. I have no reason to let it languish, and I have no reason to even post it. Other than it’s raw and I know everyone can connect. And I hope there is an afterlife where I can see each pet I've rescued or grown up with. Because it is too fucking cruel that while we are their entire life, their life is just a blip in ours. Love you, Dorian. And thank you. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

Found out my ticker's messed up back in September. Heart problems. The kind that require cardiac rehab three times a week. Which means I now lose two hours a day minimum, twenty to thirty minutes in morning rush hour traffic to get there, an hour hooked up to a portable EKG while running and lifting weights, then the commute back. All so I can maybe not die before I'm fifty. Guess what caused it? Take a wild fucking guess. The same corporate grind that's been grinding all of us down since we were old enough to understand what a mortgage payment is. It takes to long to eat healthy, to eat clean. Factor in any bad genetics and you’re not going to have a good time. Say hello to a CAD Diag in your mid forties. The Four-Day Work Week That Wasn't For a brief, shining moment, I had a four-day work week. Four ten-hour days, Monday off. It was glorious. I could breathe. I could write. I could exist as something other than a productivity metric. Then the boss's boss said no. Not because it didn't work, I was getting everything done just fine. But because "no one else in his department worked that schedule." Never mind that others could work that schedule if they wanted to make the switch. Nope. Back to five days because... reasons. And here's where it gets beautifully absurd. When a holiday falls on Monday: Someone Who Doesn't Really Do Anything But Meetings: "Well, Monday's a holiday so you have to work five days that week." Me: "I'm already off on Monday. It's my day off. So I'll just work 30 hours. It'd be like taking off those other 8 hours like everyone else." SWDRDABM: "That's not how the system works. We have to say you worked 40 hours in the pay system." Me: "Does the system acknowledge that I'm there 4 days or 5? Or does it care that I'm getting 40 hours on the paycheck?" SWDRDABM: "It only works if there's forty hours." Me: "So you put in that day 10 hours. And I work 3 ten-hour days. Which, if my ability to do math is correct, is 40 hours. Which you can put into the pay system." SWDRDABM: "That's not how it works." Me: "It either works on 40 hours or 5 days. And I know we're all salary, so I'm willing to have this conversation with HR and Payroll." Spoiler: That follow-up conversation never happened. No one would respond to follow-up emails. The system doesn't care about logic. It cares about control. The Treadmill That Speeds Up When You Run Faster Back in the 2010s, I worked for a small company that built laboratory interfaces. I was project manager/developer/troubleshooter/tester/onsite coordinator for 30+ projects a month. The burnout was real and relentless. I remember going to Vegas for a client install and having to get up at 5 AM Eastern time just to keep working on other projects so I could meet expectations while I was onsite. No backup. No relief. Just grind. I got smart. I adjusted my schedule so all my meetings were Monday/Wednesday, my actual work was Tuesday/Thursday, and Friday was free for whatever came up. I started getting ahead. Then someone noticed my calendar was free on Tuesday/Thursday and started loading it up with meetings. So I adjusted again. And again it happened. The corporate wheel is always poised to run over someone. It doesn't matter how efficient you get, if you’re cutting corners, how many hours you pour in, how much of a Subject Matter Expert you are. The machine will find a way to demand more. And I don't know anyone, outside of fucks like Musk and Bezos who've never known real pressure, who doesn't understand the weight of mortgage payments, of putting food on the table, of keeping the lights on. The Creative "Side Hustle" That's Killing What's Left Now they tell us we need side hustles. Second jobs. Third jobs. Multiple income streams because one job doesn't cover it anymore, even though productivity has skyrocketed and CEO pay has gone up 1,460% since 1978 while worker pay has increased 18%. If you’re lucky. So I write. Because I'm a writer, and writers write, right? I spent the last year getting roughly 300,000 words down. Across multiple projects. I Am Not A Kobold!, Esper Fade: An Old Man's War, Esper Fade: Digital Ghosts and Other Anomalies, We Could Be Heroes... Maybe, Magical Mayhem, My Monstrous Life, Devilish Deal, Ballad of the Blade Queen, The Misadventures of Kiadan Slywyth, Beyond the Rifts... and that's just to name a few. None of it's finished. Because there's a vastly different energy between writing and editing. Writing can be relief, can be escape. Editing requires focus, requires energy, requires the mental bandwidth to see what's actually on the page versus what you think is there. And I don't have that bandwidth anymore. This week I cleaned up A Goddess's Gifts and threw it up on Itch.io. Felt good. Moved to Altered Realities, and the dread I had about rewriting scenes wasn't as bad as I thought. Felt emboldened. Moved to True Blue Alien. Slammed headfirst into a brick wall. I wasn't prepared for how much rewrite that would require. And now it's sitting there, another project on the pile, another thing I don't have the energy to finish because I'm too busy keeping myself alive in the corporate grinder. At least with a normal side hustle, DoorDash, Uber, whatever, you can see the cause and effect of your effort. You can see you're ruining your car for a pittance. With creative work? You're ruining your body and your mind and maybe, MAYBE, you'll see a paycheck years from now. And that's not even a certainty anymore. We're All Too Tired to Think Here's something I've noticed, and it scares me: I'm losing my attention span. I used to watch 30+ minute YouTube videos. Long-form analysis, documentaries, deep dives into topics. Then it shifted to 10-minute videos. Now? YouTube Shorts of dogs being dogs. I won't apologize for watching dog videos, they're a small joy in a joyless grind, but if I'm noticing the decay in myself, there's a serious problem coming. And it's not just attention span. The majority of Americans read at a 5th grade level. At best. Fifty-four percent read below 6th grade level. That's not because Americans are inherently stupid, it's because we're exhausted. We're nose to the grindstone from sunup to sundown. We don't have the mental energy left for complex thoughts, complex sentences, complex anything. One of our little pleasures in life is those TikToks that make us chuckle for eight seconds. Or that slice of cheesecake, go ahead, take the one with the fudge, I won't judge. Most of the news is doom and gloom. Nobody has the time or energy for that. I get it. I don't condone it, but I understand it. And I appreciate when you take a bit of time for yourself, because Allfather knows the system won't give it to you. The Point The corporate machine doesn't care if it kills you. It's designed to extract maximum value before you break, and then it'll replace you before your chair gets cold. Your health, your creativity, your relationships, your dreams, none of it matters to the quarterly earnings report. So here's what I'm saying: Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. We're all running this rat race, and the only goal is to not be ground up in the grinder for as long as possible. There's no trophy for the most gold coins you collected or the most hoops you jumped through to get them. If you see your fellow rat stumble or fall, help them back up. Encourage them. Because that's how we survive this. Together. Not by grinding ourselves into dust trying to prove we're worthy of basic dignity and a living wage. The system is killing us. Let's at least make sure it doesn't kill our humanity too. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint

When the character does something cool and impressive in the book or the anime or the movie this is referred to as the power system, or sometimes the magic system, of the setting. Brandon Sanderson is known for each of his books having a power system. For instance the Stormlight in Way of the Kings. Magical mana that, I’m still reading the book, causes storms so intense that it can strip the land bare apparently. But it can be used so subtly to provide lights to the general population, that it infuses the currency of the world. But it can be used to such an extent that it allows someone to turn a pile of stone into smoke or create quarries of marble out of what would appear to be nothing, or the more common use is apparently turning things from rubble into food. Some are pretty straightforward, like in Dragon Ball Z where your power level dictates your strength, your durability and your speed. The claims of some characters to be fastest or strongest can be quickly blown away by the appropriately more powered character. And in this regard if a person is of sufficient power level above someone else they essentially receive little to no harm from the weaker person. Like when Perfect Cell was being smacked on by someone and just walking forward like an avalanche. The entire power level meant that they had become effectively immune to most standard attacks. Every form of media has a power/magic system and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I really spent a lot of time making a system that I felt stood on its own. I called it the Esperion system, since the people who had this power were called Espers. My goal was to make it so it fit in each book I wrote. But the more I’ve worked on it the less logical it seems to have a single system for everything. So I’ve been working on other power/magic systems while I work on my YA Monster book. Which has its own unique power system. But this got me to thinking about Full Metal Alchemist. I recall hearing that a lot of people consider it a great magic system because it’s not “magic.” And on the surface they’re right. It’s not “magic”. It’s “science”. Or at least they say it’s science. I’m sure I’m not the only idiot who’s had this thought. I’m just not brave, or suicidal enough, to go wading into the FMA subreddit to give my opinion. But the Alchemy they use is… magic! Dun dun dun! It is, and I can prove it. We see that our brothers learn from books left around in their father’s study. So accessing and learning this system isn’t that hard. And we see dozens of state sponsored alchemists. But something funny happens when you look at all these alchemists. In theory the idea is that you have to use the laws of equivalent exchange to make things happen and that you can’t perform human transmutation. That bringing something to life that has died is impossible in this system. Cool, these are pretty fundamental rules we can work with. Now something we see is that outside of a few exceptions everyone seems to do something with stone or the like. Armstrong uses his powers to summon pillars of rocks, make statues and turn rocks into drill bits. Another uses the earth to create chains and I think I recall seeing someone turn the earth into artillery and another into cannonballs. This kind of implies that the magic is limited by the imagination of the group. Even our titular characters aren’t really that creative. Using stone for hands, weapons, movement and the like. Only characters like Mustang, Kimbly and the ice alchemist guy are the ones who seem to have new ideas. And Kimbly can arguably be dismissed since he just seemed to make explosions from the rock. That sort of implies the others could do it as well. In the case of Col. Mustang we see that he learned his Flame Alchemy from Hawk’s father and then that old bastard tattooed it to his daughter’s back and Roy destroyed it so no one else can learn it. Which implies you don’t want someone else to learn these secrets to your magic, so you destroy the recipe. But we’re told that alchemists hide their secrets in the meanings of their meanings, or something. Which is saying that if you knew the formulas you could learn and use the most broken and unhinged alchemy there appears to be. Mustang is using the very air molecules to create flame and explosions and that’s broken. But no one else seems to have a clue how to do it. Which is weird, if it’s a science then the process is repeatable by trial and error. The same goes for Kimbly, for the ice alchemist and everyone else who has a unique spin on Alchemy. With enough review of their formula and an understanding Ed and Al could have been wiping out fireballs left and right. Major Armstrong could have converted his stone into explosive nitro packed projectiles. Ed shows us in an early episode that they have the chemical components to create a human. They have the bits and the bobs to say that this is what the human body is made up of. Yet they fail, and arguably they stop after one failed attempt. If this was real science they would have kept trying, maybe not with their own bodies, but they would have tried it. Try bringing back a squirrel or something. You can get the chemical components to that. Or maybe instead of just jars and tubs of the stuff that make up a human you go and get an actual corpse and use that. I mean, Frankenstein used bodies for a reason. But no, where this shows you 100% that this is magic and not science is, spoiler, Truth. When Ed goes to see Truth at the end of the series to get his beloved brother back his bargaining chip is to give up his knowledge. His truth. And apparently Truth is a vindictive little shit because he’s like “That’s the right answer!” And then roll credits Al has a body, Ed’s lost his leg and I guess arm still… or something. I really didn’t care at that point. King Bradley was dead and he was the only reason to watch that series. Have I said I like villains? I feel like I have at some point. But the point of this is, if Ed gives up his “knowledge” of “science” then he can just go back to the mortal world and learn it again. Science is repeatable. Science is teachable. Science can be learned if the pupil is willing. And unless he gave away all his knowledge of everything that transpired in their pursuit of getting their bodies back then he’d know how bad ass he was. And even if he did forget that in the bargain. You know who didn’t give up Ed and Al’s amazing exploits? Everyone else on the fucking planet. How many times is Ed going to walk by people praising him for how awesome of an alchemist he is without the shrimp being like “Maybe I should look into this alchemy thing.” If Ed can learn it again, he knows he can’t do human transmutation, but they were awfully vague on what that entails. What if he was tired of being blond? Is that transmutation to change his hair color? What about skin color? Eye color? What about making an arm? A leg? Replacing a damaged bone? Warping your bones to be metal? Healing a cut? The vagueness of it means that it’s practically useless in healing applications. But then you cross the desert to Shin and you get Alkhistory. The thing Hohen Hime taught those people. And you can heal with this “science”. Uh oh… that’s human transmutation. Which is taboo. Looks like Truth is coming for you. But Truth never seemed to go after Mei Ling for healing Dr. Marco. So you’re saying Truth only operates within the bounds of Father’s kingdom? Doesn’t seem like science to me if he’s some all powerful Science Being doing Science Stuff. It seems almost like it’s divine nature. And you could argue that it sort of is. Father’s blend is based on tectonic plates and that while Van Hohen Hime is based on the “chi” of the land. Whatever that is. So Yeah, that power system in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood? Sorry not sorry… it’s Magic. Always has been. And honestly, it would've been better if they'd just owned that from the start instead of dressing it up in pseudo-scientific gibberish about equivalent exchange. The system has potential, but it's built on a foundation of contradictions that anyone paying attention can spot. It's still entertaining as hell, King Bradley alone makes it worth watching, but let's stop pretending FMA cracked the code on "realistic" magic systems. It didn't. It just made magic look like chemistry homework. Incorrigibly yours, J. E. Flint

Earlier this week I decided since I knew I was going to be down a lot of productivity, not to go into details, I’m going into surgery the middle of the week and they’re thinking it’s at least a week recovery. I already lost like 2 hours on monday at the doctor’s office, unrelated doctor visit, and today my brother is off so I knew I was going to lose several hours of productivity to several hours of youtube/anime watching and a trip to the wally world for shopping. To go back and reread some of my old fanfics I wrote for me… only to discover that they were gone! Don’t judge me. My Ranma ½ Fan Fic where Ryoga shows up first and starts dating Akane is just as viable as anything you wrote. What do you mean it’s not? Well I like it and more importantly imaginary voice in my head, it’s only for me. Over the years I’ve been writing stories, terribly. I started in 1993 in the fall with a story called Belgo The Wizard and then Lizard Hero and then another story that was somehow almost like Birdy the Mighty even though I’d never seen it and I set it based in Florida. It was an alien cop inhabiting a boys body and everything. It gave me a way to focus on my inability to say aloud that I was trans and what I wanted. But that was still how I got started. And I kept everything. My system was “genius” I thought. See I create a folder for the project start writing and then when I restart or rephrase or majorly tweak it I rename the first file into whatever it was, chapter 1, into chapter 1.old and then “archive it” by putting it into a folder in that same folder. I would then keep on writing. Well over the years I’ve had several hard drive crashes and my older works are gone. I used to reread them to remind myself how I’ve grown. How writing my fanfics and pr0n for myself actually improved my ability to write. I wrote a 700 page Greek tragedy about Circe tormenting and transforming Greek heroes for years and the various bad writing that entailed. Don’t judge me, I already know it’s cringe, but you gotta start somewhere. There’s a certain amount of danger with digital media. Along with those hard drive crashes I lost tons of songs I’d ripped from cds, mostly, and from napster, kazaa and limewire. To combat that I started using the cloud when it became available. But as my music collection on google play/youtube will attest it’s not the same as it used to be and most of it has been converted into a weird gobbilty gook that works on my account but can’t work on others. But here’s the problem with the cloud. If you save files and it gets updated, unless you’re using something that allows for versioned savings you’re going to overwrite the old stuff. Which is not a problem most of the time. But it is if you’re trying to figure out what the hell happened and you suddenly have a change in the direction/pacing of your story and you want to go back and check a version to see what was the change. I don’t know about everyone, but when I’m working on personal projects, like my Ranma ½ Fan Fic The Misadventures of Akane Tendo… again imaginary voice it’s my choice. I’m sometimes gone for months at time from this project. In most of my work I always keep a sort of running catalog of ideas, pacings and the like churning on the back burner. Not everything is constantly boiling at the forefront of my mind. Some things need time to set and continue to simmer down until it’s just the flavorful bits. I assume that’s how cooking works, I’m more of a crockpot gal. Throw it all in and just come back eight hours later. So when I came back to this work and found that two huge chunks were gone I was a bit annoyed but didn’t think anything about it. Until I couldn’t find the old documents anywhere in my library of crap. I’d already made peace with Belgo, Lizard Hero, the Birdy thing and Adventure’s Adventure having vanished. I was really sad about AA vanishing, because that damn novel gave me carpal tunnel as I tried to write it over the summer. Even if it was so bad that a publisher said it made them sick. “Due to Illness, we cannot publish this.” I also lament that rejection letter having vanished from my collection of past relics. My dislike of physical media sometimes does me a disservice. Had I been keeping stuff on zip drives, floppies and thumbdrives I might still have them somewhere. Instead I kept them on my pcs and then eventually up to the Google Cloud. The reason I bring this up is with the advent of AI and everyone questioning “did you do this? Is this your work?” the internet has become like some asinine math teacher who wants to show your work. And while in the literary world that’s probably more rare. I see a lot of folks on Reddit who relegate everything to AI if it has an EM Dash in it. I’m not a bright individual, I didn’t know what an EM Dash was until someone pointed it out. I don’t use dashes. Hell grammar and spelling are by far my two biggest weaknesses as a person, my third being modesty. It’s hard to be humble when you’re as mediocre as I. I don’t really know where I was going with this, I guess just sad that somehow a personal project for myself had bits missing and or rewrites and I didn’t have the old documents to look back on and see why. I suppose I could write notes for myself, but that sounds practical. I could use this as a call to action to better myself, develop a system to avoid this. And I sort of have. I work off my laptop that auto backs up to my google drive, or off my pc to my google drive. It’s not a sure fire way to work on things though, as clearly, some things are still lost. Gone to the ether. So, I guess to end this meandering. Back up your, Pr0n. Always. Incorrigibly yours, J. E. Flint

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned a time or two that my brother really loves Brandon Sanderson and has read most if not all of the books the guy has written. I’ve had in my kindle library for a long time The Way of Kings and according to google that or Mistborn: The Final Empire are where you’re supposed to start when reading his stuff. Now my brother has given minor spoilers as he’s read it and talked to me about it. Never like huge plot points but he’s mentioned minor things. Like how the magic works or how the interconnection works and maybe now and then talking about a character. Honestly most of it I’ve forgotten so it’s almost a fresh start to reading this. I decided since I’d done so many film reviews that maybe I should sit down as an author and actually read something for a change. And so I am, I’m reading some of the book each night. About an hour and a half each night. And I’m slowly progressing. According to Kindle I have about 21 hours left. So at my pace I should be finished by October, give or take, if nothing pops up that destroys my evenings. As of writing this on 8/26/2025. One of the things I’ve noticed, and I’m struggling with this, is I have a hard time tuning in for fantasy novels. I guess I’m just more geared towards the Sci-Fi stuff. Now that said of the characters I like Kaladin and in some parts Dalinar or whatever his name is. The Blackthorn. But otherwise there’s about 9 or 10 characters that have been introduced that I don’t personally feel any connection to and I get a little miffed that they show up. When I was talking to my brother about the crabber/fisher guy who lives in the lake he’s like “Yeah, he doesn’t come back.” And that stuff annoys me. Like if you have to have a random dude show up for a conversation then you should probably have figured out how to get an omniscient view point or put it in a character we’ve already met. But as I was reading it, I noticed that in our first scene where we’re introducing Blackthorn’s soon to be dead brother, spoiler for a 15 year old book, that some of the Radiant folk were in the audience trying to blend in. And I realized pretty much instantly that Wit isn’t just your standard king’s fool or whatever. I suspect he’s going to be one of those original shardblade holders or a god or something because he just doesn’t sit right when I read him. I don’t recall where I was going with this, but there’s a few places in the story where I see a problem that Sanderson has that I have. When he’s describing the Highstorms, they’re apparently supposed to be a category 10 or 15 hurricane sweeping through the lands. And I myself sometimes over estimate things, and by sometimes I mean often. A normal cat 5 hurricane is absolutely devastating. But having Kaladin be like “Oh yeah, I rode one out under an overhang.” Sorry, no. That’s not very plausible. And to have them ride it out in a wooden wagon is kind of laughable because again you’re talking about getting buffeted by winds that are 160mph. I don’t know about you but there’s very little that survives getting hit by a damn NASCAR at full speed. But that’s minor, it’s like ok someone either doesn’t understand the physics of it, or it’s played up. Considering that most of the characters are probably imperfect or shoddy narrators I would say it’s their understanding that taints this experience. But what do I know? I’m only like a quarter of the way through the book. I like the various little sprites floating around in the setting but they’re a background item. I was very confused about the currency. Because it seems stupid to use this stuff. So if you’re not aware they take a gem, and put it in a glass bead. And depending on the gem is the value and how much mana it holds. The currency is used both for currency and magic… oh and for lighting houses and stuff. It just doesn’t make sense that you’d have this as your form of currency. These Highstorms will recharge gems that I guess have been infused and lost their magic. We see a guy throwing his stuff out into the rain so it’ll be replenished. But there doesn’t seem to be a reason for it, since as Kaladin points out that the chips, as they’re called, lose their luster and can still be used. It’s just the merchants don’t want it if it’s dull. And as we’re seeing with Kaladin either he or his spirit companion are sucking up the magical juice in the currency, burning through them fast. But as of yet we haven’t seen any real reason for Kaladin/Syl to slurp up the tasty mana. My brother pointed out that it’s amazing I figured out that Kaladin is taking the magic and I pointed out in the scene where the king is soon to be dead, sorry about that spoiler again, that the assassin is sucking up the lanterns on the wall to do his flip flip kill routine. He’d apparently forgotten that. But I guess it makes sense that it’s been like 20 or so chapters since the assassin was hookshotting his way through the palace so maybe people are expected to forget that. I will say, I’m also confused about the run bridges to a plateau and then shove them across instead of just building them out of stone and then setting up fortification. They have mo fos who earth bend houses, food bend food into being and guys who will wood bend stuff. Seriously, if you’re telling me you can fabricate fresh supplies with the magic, why are you not setting up more defensive formations closer to fighting. Like the big bad bug guys climb and jump well. But you know, there’s this thing called guards and they stand watch and look for bad guys to shoot with arrows and warn the army they’re under attack. And I get it, the big bad crabby guys can scuttle up the cliffs and have the hops that make his airness Michael Jordan jealous so you don’t want to necessarily let them surround you on the cliffs. But this screams of someone who never won a game of RISK or overwhelming might in Civilization. You can call me Sifu Turtle, plodding along that tech tree until you declare war then it’s Zerg Rush time. I don’t leave cities standing in Civ when it’s go time. In regards to the bridges, it sort of makes sense when you realize it’s only this one guy who’s doing it this particular way and everyone else uses wheels. But when you consider how much effort and energy it takes to constantly raise and lower bridges it’s not worth it. Slave or not that’s a toll you don’t need to endlessly make. In medieval sieges they would clear cut the forest when they got to the engagement. Not have a group of 30 men running them from five towns back to get there. But hey, I’m not expecting Turtledove here. And let’s talk about the power armor, sorry the Shardplate. The magical awesome exoskeleton that can take a hit from a whale sized monster and keep on trucking. Call it what you want. It’s power armor. It just doesn’t fly. It’s the RIFTS Glitterboy minus the BOOM GUN! that is on it’s shoulder. Instead they have shardblades which don’t kill flesh yet leaves it dead? Like uh… what? You’re telling me you have a blade that cuts through any material and vulcan nerve pinches a part of the body? I think the thing I struggle with is that Sanderson is trying to tell this fantastical story and there’s just parts where I just cannot suspend disbelief and let the handwavium take over. I’ve heard time and time again that he creates intricate systems of magic and so far we’ve only seen the hookshot assassin hookshotting to kill the soon to be dead king, not sorry for that spoiler. And boy was that annoying for him to explain. Like, I didn’t need 5 paragraphs to learn that this guy’s ability is to basically anchor himself and make a new “down” or gravity point to where he falls to. Look, that took 15 words to describe. I didn’t need 5 paragraphs to convey that. Your reader isn’t normally stupid and as long as you’re not discussing thermodynamics and things like that they’ll pick it up. Show us don’t tell us. So, I kinda lost my train of thought on what I was supposed to be impression on this. I guess it’s not bad, but man I am not a fantasy nerd. I guess just give me more of Kaladin giving out that main character side quest vibe over the “tactical stuff.” Hats off to Sanderson though, he’s writing and he’s doing what I want to do. So I can’t fault him for that, even if so far this book is more to just remind me why I like things like Have Spacesuit Will Travel, The Foundation Series and The Martian. Oh and give me more hermit craps the size of trucks, please and thank you. Incorrigibly yours, J.E. Flint