#Shadow of the Conqueror

[lucyramblessometimes]

(shadow of the conqueror yapping)

lyra and her partner whose name i cant spell are so much COOLER than daylen??? why is this stupid MAN talking again

[leannbolesch]

I have restarted Shadow of the Conqueror (got about 7 chalets in?) and will say that while there are still things about the writing style that irk me, it's not as bad as I first thought. Like, there's still scene and sentence level passing, clunky sentences, etc. But also I think I was so quick to lose faith in it that I was outright uncharitable. Some of the moments I thought were downright nonsense are actually just slightly off phrasing that I stumbled on and then didn't reread because I expected nonsense. A couple times, I think I might have missed something because I stopped to take notes and it broke up the flow of a paragraph.

Still a book that could have used another draft and a freelance editor, but all in all a better prose than I first gave it credit for.

[novice-at-everything]

I’ve seen one where the “hero” meets an old, practically homeless man in a slum and, through some magic shenanigan, is able to see that this was a very good man who practically deserves the power the “hero” has, but doesn’t have it.

Legacy

Heroes exist.

Yes, heroes exist. But they're, y'know, special. Different. Chosen, maybe. They live in a whole other world than you. They've got these grand destinies you can only imagine. You? You work your nine-to-five and then go home and blow another six hours on whatever before turning in for the night and doing it all again. And it's good enough.

And then there's a disaster and you find yourself in a remote corner of the battlefield cut off from everyone else. And one of those heroes staggers out of the dust and the smoke and the rubble, and it doesn't take a doctor to tell they're on their last legs. And then the mask comes off, and it's a kid.

A kid who's way to young to be doing this and has been going up against odds way too big for them for who knows how long and the other shoe finally dropped. And they're a kid and they're dying and you've already called 911 but you already know, you can just tell, they aren't going to make it in time. There's nothing you can do to save them.

But God help you if you're going to let this kid die alone.

So you make them comfortable, as comfortable as you can. You keep them talking, keep them focused on something, anything other than the dust and the smoke and the rubble. And you hold their hand tight and they don't hold your hand anywhere near tight enough for someone with superhuman strength and it breaks your heart, but you don't let it show. You can't. You don't. cry.

They don't either. They don't rant or scream or rage about how unfair it all is, though they've every right to. (You wonder, as you often will afterwards, who did the choosing. Who exactly you should blame for handing this destiny, this responsibility, this fate, to a child). They tell you about the date they were going to ask to prom next week. They... they ask you to find their parents, once the news plasters their face everywhere. To tell them sorry.

And then they're gone. The light goes out of their eyes. And light, real light this time, real power, flows into you, through your hand that's still holding onto theirs. And there, in the dust and the smoke and the rubble and the tears, you make a promise. To them. To yourself.

You will be a hero. You will carry this weight.

Because for as long as you do, maybe one more kid won't have to.

[franzkafkagf]

being aegon I and visenya like:

[short-wooloo]

This stuff is all 20 this year

and of course the biggies

[alphamecha-mkii]

Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels - Guri's Modified Surronian Conqueror-Class Assault Ship 'Stinger'

[luv-again]

UGHHHHH *turning in my pre-made grave* I wanna write another shadamy au

[coping-via-clint-eastwood]

I made 21 gifs for my 21st birthday :) The next 2 posts will be the rest of them. I split them like these because the other 2 groups are themed. The ones here are just a random selection of fighting stances I like. So are all of them tbh.

I started playing Minecraft when TNT by CaptainSparklez dropped in 2011, when I was 8 years old. I'm still here. Always will be. I found something worth dedicating 13 years of my life to, and I look forward to many more, for the rest of eternity.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

What happened to Kyoshi/Rangi theory

So before Reckoning of Roku comes out I have 3 theories. The first one is what I had before I saw a slightly spoilery bit of information, the other two were after I had a that small spoiler (it's from an Amazon preview?).

I'll start with the first one (so that people can just not read the other two if they don't want to). Basically the theory will focus on 1) Why/How Kyoshi died, 2) What happened to Rangi, 3) The fuck was going on with the Chin the Conqueror situation. 4) Father Glowworm shenanigans ;D (Avatar Realms Collide might like this)

Obvious spoilers for Rise of Kyoshi and Shadow of Kyoshi (and a small preview excerpt for Reckoning of Roku)

Theory 1: Kyoshi's tragedy

Kinda partial to this one cause of absolute premium grade AAAA Angst, of course the Roku novel might nuke it.

Rangi dies at around 30ish years (just before Chin's whole deal/Kyoshi island creation, which happens when they should be 40ish). It'd explain why she's not in the art for "Birth of Kyoshi Island" and other such things. I know she was made AFTER the fact, but making it so she died before that period would make it a much smoother retcon.

Is Kyoshi's grief also a reason why she let Chin fuck about? A bit. I think it and the reason Rangi died go hand in hand. They were cleaning up spirits and spiritual issues. I don't think the dark spirits stopped at Kuruk. I think there were some that 1) didn't rebel until after Kuruk left, 2) Kuruk just didn't get a chance to fight.

It'd make a lot more sense them being absent because of spiritual fights and it not being reported to the public (cause the same thing happened with Kuruk).

Who was the Spirit? Could be a new one, could be Yun. Bonus theory! When Kyoshi killed Yun, she killed his body but not his spirit. His and father glowworm's spirit went back to the spirit world. Which means they weren't killed for good (like how Kuruk killed spirits).

So Kyoshi stayed alive for 200ish more years because of either Rangi asked for it, her duty, and/or also because of the whole spirit thing.

Btw what I explained for Chin and Yun can be applied to the bottom two theories too.

NOW FOR THE SPOILER STUFF! You can turn back now if you want to go into Reckoning of Roku completely blind!

Before I get into the two theories, here's the passage that lead to them being made:

Now that's the only thing we know. Nothing stating Rangi learnt it. But......... ;U

Theory 2: Rangi learned to extend her life

Kyoshi taught Rangi to extend her life. So why did Kyoshi die at 230?

Option A: Rangi died in an battle. Kyoshi either died in the same battle, or just couldn't taken living after her death and died soon after. Who was it that killed them? Dunno maybe Yun. (not partial to this, theory 1 is a better angst imo, but option B I think capitalizes on this a lot better).

Option B: Kyoshi died in battle (maybe protecting Rangi). And Rangi is STILL ALIVE (same with Lao Ge) even in modern Korra times. She travels between the real world and the spirit world (and can still visit Kyoshi's spirit, it's not the same-same but it's damn near close enough). She's still fighting, possibly Yun (Raava/Vaatu? Lol no the real battle of good and evil are two down bad teens after one Kyoshi).

Theory 3: Hei-Ran is the one who extended her life

Dun dun duuuuuh. To combined Theory 1 and theory 2, and make it a plot twist. Rangi died in a similar fashion in Theory 1. Hei-Ran, just destined to be dragged into Avatar bullshit, has Kyoshi teach her how to keep living. So she can support Kyoshi (until whenever Kyoshi is killed or chooses to die). I dunno, I feel like they both would be there to support each other. Is Hei-Ran alive even after Kyoshi died? :0 Who knows!

[lucyramblessometimes]

So I'm reading Shadiversity's Shadow of the Conqueror because i love Micheal Kramer and Kate Redding and i want to know what I'm talking about should I dunk on it. and man. you can tell that this is a guy who consumes good fantasy sometimes and has a sense for some of it. there's interesting stuff here- though i find a good chunk of it to be odd and heavy handed. EXTENSIVE yapping about the early chapters of the book under the cut

so the book opens with our protagonist being very self loathing and old. this is important because he has lived a long and terrible life, and has decided that now is the time to end it. I genuinely cannot figure out why we did not do that ages ago; personally, if I was guilty of like a third of the things that he did and whined about it half as much, I'd have just offed myself ages ago. There's a big fantasy sword in his house, and barring that, PLENTY of people willing to do the job. kys my man! but no, he has to go through the most convoluted process physically possible to off himself in a way relevant to the worldbuilding at large. which, like, isn't the WORST thing, but i don't follow his logic.

Daylen, the main character, also seems to flip pretty wildly between whining about how old and lamesauce he is, and being a super hypercompetent macho alpha sigma male !!1!!!! which is...... yeah. Not super fun to read, honestly, and I spent the first 5 chapters of this book longing for the main character to just off himself. Honestly, I'm kinda still hoping for that. brother yaps constantly about his self loathing and how bad he feels-- it's jsut never bad enough to, say, hand himself over to the holy, overly moral organization of paladins dedicated exclusively to the god he believes in. just saying.

and of course, he's gods favorite and thus gets to be 17 and at peak strength again (and listen, it's not that I think we shouldn't do realistic depictions of men, but must he talk about his dick SO much? It feels like he wants it to be a joke, but it's never.... funny......) and then we cut away from interesting things for not the first time to watch Shad- i mean, Daylen- yap about physics and the rules of the magic system for entirely too long. This makes it really, really hard to care the systems that he's built- sunstone and darkstone, for example, whose mechanics shad gets lost in the sauce of a few times and whose mechanics I only have a cursory understanding of, despite his best efforts: darkstone stays perfectly still in darkness, and is naturally repelled by sunstone, which propels it in the opposite direction, allowing the combination thereof to be used to power several different mechanisms and forms of transportation.

I don't really know how accurate it is, but that's what i understand of it. Similarly on the periphery of my comprehension is the magic Daylen uses- i think there's effectively four stacks of it that he can put into a couple of things- healing, strength, etc. it doesn't work in the dark, and can get pretty extreme and unweildy for something that was given out by an intelligent god ? but honestly my biggest problem with it is how... video-gamey it feels. I know he's trying to be a sanderson-like, and that's noble but I feel like I'm playing D&D with someone who's only ever played Baldur's Gate 3 (except the experience is dialed to 11). I mean, I can like, already picture the UI for directing the stacks of Light to directives.

Daylen gets on my nerves with how whiny he is-- i want him to be guilty, obviously, but he's unwilling to actually do the uncomfortable thing and turn himself in. He's funny when I view him as a terrible 17 year old, but then he reminds me of who and what he is and I just groan. He irritates me. and then he brings out the "wouldn't you like to know, weather boy" energy and it becomes very funny until he reminds me of his past and-- the cycle continues. I'm a large hater.

I have little idea what the actual plot is going to be as of the beginning of chapter 8-- Daylen is seventeen and guilty and going to go around the world, "helping one person at a time"- by, of course, going on crusades against organizations he deems immoral. What i DONT know is which ones, or really why, or why in the world he thinks this is the way to go? Either way.

His world shows the early signs of being very interesting, and the only "new" culture we've seen intrigues me. The two religions I know anything about are Lightseekers and Matriology, one of whom I have only vague concepts of, while the other catches my fancy but displays things that cause me concern due to what I know about the author's opinions about women and their role in society. Also, Shad underestimates the longing of little girls for violence? he states that women are "just less interested in dueling" which is... not true. Personally, i spent my little girl childhood going home to my princess themed room and playing with Ever After High dolls after long days of rubbing the faces of boys twice my size into trampoline nets. I was a little devil, and I would have killed for a sword- and I'm far from alone in that! But, then, the guy who had problems with Princess Peach wearing appropriate gear for biking is being a misogynist-- fork found in kitchen.

tldr I think this book has potential to be fun, cool, and interesting, but there's a few too many red flags for me to expect that at this point. more at 6

[leannbolesch]

Still reading Shadow of the Conqueror.

Deleted the first post. On read-back it seemed meaner than I intended it to be.

I want to know what the budget was for this project. AFAIK there's a comic adaptation of it that the author commissioned. Was that part of the original budget, or paid for with sales of this book?

Or more specifically, like... Did he sell enough copies initially to justify spending money on some of the subsequent stuff he did with this book, or did he budget for some of that from the outset and just not bother with an editor. Its admirable quality for what I assume is an early draft based on exposition placement, but it also very obviously needed more drafts and line editing.

[stephpotterart]

If you want your own Relentless cushion, like in my last post, I’ve added the design to my RedBubble shop! It’s also available as stickers, clothing, scarves, tapestries, etc. also available are the unicorn design, in three different colours (blue and red like the chair, black) as well as transparent.

[ssalin6265]

MULTIVERSE IS ONLY THE BEGINNING

@nintendo @marvel @xxtc-96xx @mewtwoandme

[nesrinslittleworld]

[doolallymagpie]

The Dastardly Whiplashes and the Conqueror’s Shadow have a weird rivalry going on, and it’s at least somewhat sustained by the Grand Architect’s inability to not tie Lotara Sarrin to the nearest set of train tracks

Everyone’s like “dude stop doing that, every time you do, she kicks your ass, beats you half to death with your own claw, and runs over you with your own old-timey locomotive Daemon Engine”, to which he responds “lol. lmao.”