John Bierce

And in fairness, I do have really broad reading tastes, to the point where I sometimes need to force myself to read more inside my own genre. But it just doesn't feel quite the same.

I often miss the days as a kid before my reading tastes solidified, when I would read literally any volume I could get my hands on. Of course, cultivating your tastes isn't a bad thing (as long as they're not too narrow), but... I do miss being so open to anything.

I'm the Assistant to the Executive Assistant of the Undersecretary to the Secretary of Executive Assistants of Antifa.

Could be worse, I could be the Assistant to the Executive Assistant of the Undersecretary to the Secretary of Assistants to Executive Assistants of Antifa.

I didn't take the time to scroll back across their whole timeline to try and puzzle it out- even if I thought I could puzzle out the true answer that way, which I don't, I just don't want to sort through the tech booster bullshit.

It's still going to disappoint me, though.

Have they fully embraced the grift to drink down as much VC capital as possible before the bubble pops, or did they somehow fool themselves into becoming a true believer?

I immediately unfollowed, and moved along with my day, but it's kinda stuck with me, wondering how they went from the whip-smart, intimidating person I met at a friend's party to running an AI start-up.

Just logged into one of my old personal social media accounts for the first time in a while, and saw, to my disappointment, that an old acquaintance had gone in HARD on AI bullshit Was pretty disappointing, given how impressive their career in tech had been up until this point.

I don't like him personally, but David Simon on AI is the final word on the subject.

I'm excited for fans of Famous Artist, at least! But yeah life's too short to have an opinion on everything.

Nope, we're in the same club! I have no strong opinions about Famous Artist That Just Released an Album, and have not listened to said album.

When a famous musical artist I don’t care about / don’t like releases a new album I simply ignore it and don’t listen to it, which apparently makes me unique in this day and age

Dead Acre | Vault About The Book The Creative Team Buy The Book Demons. Monsters. Witches. His sacred duty as a Black Badge is to hunt them down. Life isn't simple for a ...

If you're looking for a dark Weird Western comic, I highly recommend the just-released Dead Acre! I got the chance to read it early, and it definitely hit the spot for me! Love me some Weird West.

read.vaultcomics.com/book/dead-ac...

Hah nice!

I will never not repost this

(Sound on for maximum effect)

I'm in the sizeable minority of progression fantasy authors that don't serialize yet, though there's so much money down that path that it's certainly tempting.

But yeah, like you said, market incentives always matter!

I also see lots of authors chasing the market in a way that's simply not possible for other modes of publication, because they can start writing and monetizing a serial via Patreon (offering early chapters to audiences) within literal weeks or even days of starting the story.

extremely long series with almost precisely 150k length volumes- which is the length that said audiobook publishers prefer, in turn due to Audible's internal incentives- and very non-traditional story arcs due to the serialization.

(Audible's new system might be changing that.)

I've been seeing that massively in my own niche subgenre of fantasy (Progression Fantasy, a close cousin of LitRPG), which overwhelmingly dominated by web-serials, and combined with the dominance of audiobook companies as the main publishers for the stories in book form, results in...

Yeah, those are far and away the weakest of the permanent boon trinkets- switching to Odysseus instead at the end works well too.

Someday I want to pull off the Max Arcana build, using Circe and the bottom right Arcana card

but today is not that day, because I'm off to bed lol

Yeah the new keepsakes are MONSTERS, they're ridiculously good. Z's especially is absolutely game-breaking- getting Hermes' dodge boon as a red for my very first reward was the foundation for my 32 heat win.

God keepsakes allow you more control over your builds, but they also fundamentally limit the potential power ceiling of said build, compared to the keepsakes that offer a permanent bonus.

Any specific weapons/gods you're wanting to use?

Hera's Legendary Boon is flat out the best in the game, if you have even a little luck of the draw. If you have a lot of luck, insta-win.

Stick to flat damage boons mostly for the faster weapons, like the daggers and torches. One of the highest-damage builds in the game is daggers or torches with poseidon attack and Zeus' static shock, plus going for Poseidon's duo boons with Zeus and Ares.

For specific builds... All-Omega move Aspect of Momus builds are fantastic if you have the right Arcana setup. Aspect of Charon builds can be absolute monsters, just make sure to regular cast before omega-specials. (I kept trying to omega-cast before omega-special, which defeats the whole point.)

(With the Narcissus Trinket, pick it BEFORE healing at the fountain, I made that mistake a lot lol.)

Avoid Paths of Stars unless you're using a mana/omega heavy build, and then go ALL IN on them, and adjust your arcana accordingly. Selene Builds can be absolutely terrifying.

Trinkets are way more important for runs than in 1- you can massively boost a run by selectively jumping between trinkets. For a while there, all my games were pretty much: Act 1- Chaos trinket. 2- Echo Trinket. 3- Circe Trinket. 4- Icarus Trinket. Sometimes swapping in Narcissus if appropriate.

I got a LOT better at Hades 2 when I stopped trying to match weapon styles by aesthetics and just started trying to figure out their gameplay function- I was getting CRUSHED in early access until I switched.

(And thanks!)

Eh, gameplay-wise the coat actually plays like a mix of the sword for attack and the bow for special, I think.

The daggers are the most like the gloves, imho. Close-in, rewards relentless agression, playing on the edge, and flat damage boons. (I just beat 32 heat for the first time thanks to them!)

(I'm not much of a live theater guy, but I'm not averse to it, by any means. But it does take a lot to get me to attend theater other than Shakespeare in the Park- I'm definitely a homebody.)