From the back cover of The Ultimate Powers Book (1986): “Two-hundred and ninety-three powers times five ranges times eighteen power lives equals—26,370 discrete powers!” Now, TSR products, particularly for the Marvel Super Heroes line, are prone to exaggerating, and it is true that the claim of nearly 27,000 discrete powers is a bit much, but that doesn’t really diminish the monstrous utility of the book.

The core box for Marvel Super Heroes didn’t have character creation at all. The idea was that players would just take the roles of established Marvel characters. The Advanced box introduced character creation, but the list of powers was limited and the system generally produced characters that were underpowered compared to those from the comics. Ultimate Powers hopes to change that, with a brand new creation system that aims to be flexible enough to create characters from the cosmic level on down to regular folks. It builds off a robust pool of “form” templates — cyborg, induced mutant, demon, etc — and then builds up, next with the origin of powers, abilities, weaknesses, the actual powers (arranged by type) and so on. The powers themselves allow for a good amount of detail and fine tuning — not so much as Champions, but enough to feel bespoke.

Its rare, I think, for this kind of sourcebook to totally transform its game, but that is exactly what Ultimate Powers does — playing these characters is its own sort of experience, different from the basic or advanced game. Not bad for a 96-page book! Well, a 96-page book with three columns, small text and no pictures. Dense!

ASL deserved to go out and be pirates together...

oh what I would give for some crumbs about the relationship between Eothas and Magran pre-Saint's War 😔

tgcf makes the argument that as a crazy devoted stan you might actually know your idol better than their actual friends do

take 2d4 psychic damage for every item you recognize

make a WIS saving throw for every activated childhood memory

>83c

I'm curious about some of what you have planned for Thunder Storm in BB now that you are talking about DOTC a lot. I know about him missing a leg in BB and about his arc of searching for justice and starting his own group in protest, but I'm curious as to other traits he has, and maybe character flaws, because right now from what we know of him he feels like a one-dimensional ideal hero with no flaws, compared to how you treat Firestar where he is genuinely an admirable and heroic figure (more so than in canon where he doesn't change as much of Clan ways), but he has flaws in the way he treats cats like Cloudtail, Bramblestar and Jayfeather. And I'd just like to learn more about his personality in general given he's one of the main characters!

The driving personality trait of Thunderstar is fury

He is always just a smidge annoyed, talks roughly, and often finds his heart speaking before he knows what's being said. He can actually be a hurtful person on accident, though he tries to correct his mistakes as soon as he acknowledges he made them!

He actually really does need Bright Storm to be his advisor-- Bright brings humility, calmness, and foresight. Without her, Thunder Storm's negotiation talks with the Wind Coalition and River Kingdom would have fallen apart because he's terrible at compromising.

Thunderstar's greatest asset is that he understands he needs others to stand strong, and he does believe in the inherent value of life. People don't need to be 'immediately useful' to deserve dignity. He didn't run after Bumble because she could translate-- he did it because she would have starved to death out there, or worse if she came across Clear Sky.

And Sunlit Frost too. A one-armed builder, thrown out for nerve damage after his burn injury, who doesn't have any paws to work with after having a bad bite to the wrist in the First Battle. He isn't Thunder Storm's friend, in fact, they fight a lot.

But that doesn't matter; Thunderstar does what he does simply because that's the point of Clans. Even jackrabbits like Sunny.

In a way, Thunderstar and Skystar aren't so different. They're proud, ambitious people. They both say that everything they do is for the good of their Clans. What sets them apart is that Thunder Storm will never be cruel; he defines himself on that idea.

I just can't understand why only 0.0000001% of women can acknowledge the nature of men and act accordingly (AVOID THEM). There are hundreds of documented cases (and probably millions throughout history) of men gang-r/ping women to death. Every man who did this found willing men to participate, they all had daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, who would eternally defend them. This has never happened in reverse, no gangs of women have EVER r/ped a man to death. Even if an exceptionally violent woman wanted to do so, she could NEVER find female collaborators and enablers. It's just such an obvious fact I don't know how any woman could ever trust any man knowing this. In wartime, during social collapse, if they knew they could get away with it, they would all behave the same way. THEY ARE ALL LIKE THIS.

My take on this is here in the tags. Long story short women aren't oblivious to moid violence they dont care as long as they get their nigel & the undesirables are kept at bay by other women tbh. The catch is that when most women do this, they inevitably also become someone else's sacrifice.

Women en masse will never hate moids; moids en masse will never love women. ⚫️💊

One of my favorite things about the worldbuilding in The Left Hand of Darkness is the "perverts" in Gethenian society—those who are permanently in one of the kemmer forms. The "normal" person on Gethen goes through a kemmer cycle with periods of somer, but that's not every Gethenian. People whose bodies don't work this way get treated with repulsion. Genly compares them to "homosexuals" in his society, and that comparison is really instructive. Gethenians may not have gender roles and identities the way we do, but they do have societal norms, including about bodies and sexuality. And those norms leave people out. They are imperfect and sometimes they are unfair. I think this is part of the point.

In subtle ways, this theme is woven throughout the book's descriptions of Gethenian cultures. To stick to sexuality, something similar can be said about the different norms surrounding incest on Gethen and the empathic treatment of Estraven's past relationship with Arek. There is no taboo about incest between siblings on Gethen, only on siblings vowing kemmering, but if a child is born of it, the parents have to separate (and it seems like Estraven is separated from Sorve because of this). The reason for including this element, in my reading, isn't to impose our own moral standards by "showing" that Estraven's relationship with Arek was "bad" (in fact, we learn fairly little about it, beyond that Estraven cared deeply for him.) Instead, I think it's partly to demonstrate the dissonance between Gethenian mores and our own, and unsettle both. Because, like Genly, we see Gethenian norms as strange, we can notice that they bring about particular situations and cause particular hurts. Even the custom of vowing kemmering monogamously for life, which sounds more familiar, is shown as double-edged. Estraven breaks a taboo by making his "false" vow to Ashe, but was trying to build a new life with Ashe really wrong?

These things are not 1:1 to any "real life" issue, but like everything else in this story, I think they're chosen because they are provocative. It's really meaningful to me that even in terms of gender and sexuality, Gethen isn't painted as a utopia, but as a real place. Le Guin shows us two sets of norms and asks us not just "are our norms arbitrary and/or constructed rather than essential truths?" but also "are norms always socially constructed? Should we question them sometimes? What harm is done to maintain them? Who is being left out?"

Kind of retroactively disappointed that we never got a scene of Elayne, Thom, and Juilin internally marvelling at Nynaeve’s tracking and survival skills.

Imagine: it’s between books four and five. They’re off the beaten path somewhere, and setting up camp. Thom and Juilin are doing the grunt work of building the fire, getting the animals settled, etc., while Elayne starts repairing the various tears they’ve made in their clothes. Nynaeve, however, strolls purposefully into the woods with a basket. She comes back an hour later with some edible greens, a fish she caught with her bare hands, a full waterskin, a few bunches of medicinal plants, and various mushrooms and berries.

She then gives the basket to Elayne, rearranges the fire so it burns with less smoke, points out the direction of the stream so Thom and Juilin can fill the rest of the waterskins, sets the plants out to dry, and starts divvying the mushrooms and berries into Definitely Edible or Questionable piles.

Nynaeve acts like this is totally normal - except for a few glares at Thom and Juilin’s way to dare them Say Something - so everyone else acts like it’s normal too. Elayne politely thanks her since they need to preserve their supplies, and no one has any real reactions except when Nynaeve starts methodically testing the Questionable berries on herself.

i love the squirrelflight is a scourge reincarnation au but also consider. leafpool scourge reincarnation au

Well there goes his monday

no, but actually it would be really fucking weird if in s5 of the show rop!elrond yelled at rop!isildur to cast the ring into the fires of mount doom because that never fucking happened

Reaper’s Creek is a requirment if you’re someone who likes bad books and is online. I usually keep to my obscure weird books, but I was very intrigued by the odd mystery of this very bad book. Onision is... bad (hot take), but when I read it I was very surprised I had a different take than I’d seen from other reviewers.

You see, Reaper’s Creek... um............ I think it’s more than just a youtuber imagining godlike powers and altering reality so he can kill god. I mean it is, man, it super is, but I think we might need to give Onision more credit. Ugh, sorry I typed that. But what if I told you the bizarre choices and immature view of the world in this book might not be because the author is weird, and might be because our lead is an 11 year old kid from an abusive home blindly given unlimited power? Yeah, the more I talk about it with commenters, the more I think we’ve all been wrong about Reaper’s Creek.

....or not, because well, it sucks ass. If the text is meant to be a slight horror, a story of a child unable to grow and given the gift to live out his every whim, it still is an utter failure. After all, if every person who reads the text misinterprets it as just a cringy self insert power trip, you have failed as an author. Also it’s just super poorly written in general, but I’m just talking narrative here

Harry had to go back to his aunt and uncle because Dumbledore sealed a charm with Petunia’s blood. So long as his aunt and uncle allowed him house room, Harry would be safe from Voldemort. And even then the narrative constantly satirizes them, Harry ran away from home in Book 3, the Weasleys constantly threw shade and were outraged by his treatment, and even Dumbledore called them out for their abusive bullshit in Book 6. After Book 7 Harry went no-contact with his aunt and uncle (although he did barely keep in touch with a reformed Dudley). Y’know, as in real life without having to resort to actual murder.

wake up babe new level of homophobia just dropped

tbh why did they even pick gray wing as a protagonist rather than tall shadow or wind runner. i mean i hate wind runner but i think she would have offered a more interesting perspective than "some guy who we are supposed to think is soooooo so smart just fucks around for six books hating women and sobbing about how his brother is soooo sad so please dont hate him for murdering and abusing people"