Absolutely agreed. The narrative makes choices in a few places, and some of the second half seems kind of muddled.

That's about where I started to lose interest, too. So much of the interesting world-building is in that first part, before it decides to turn into a heist novel.

I'm desperately trying to finish Neuromancer by William Gibson so I can move on to spooky season books. It's not bad at all, I'm just not really clicking with it, so it's been slow going.

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Finished Death in the Spires by K.J. Charles, a two-timeline mystery focusing on the unsolved murder of a member of a group of friends at Oxford. The author normally writes steamy romances, but this tastefully cut to black before anything got explicit. Something about the writing or story made it a very enjoyable, fast read; I haven't devoured anything so quickly in ages.

Bingo squares: New Release; Disability Representation (hard); LGBTQIA+ Lead (hard); It's About Time (hard); Mashup; Institutional; (alt) A Change in Perspective

Only adult one I can think of is Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams (cats). There's a ton of these for kids, though; here's a few I've read:

• Redwall series by Brian Jacques (forest critters; I found it repetitive after the first few, but ymmv)
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien (rats)
• Stewart Little by E.B. White (mouse)
• Charlotte's Web by by E.B. White (pig)

Edit: Sorry, I derped on the scifi/fantasy/action aspect of the request; the E.B. White books don't fall into that category.

Yeah, it definitely looks a bit low budget, but I can forgive that if it gets everything else right enough.

!trailers@lemmy.blahaj.zone is excellent.

I think it's still worth seeing if you like Caveat, especially since it seems to be a shared universe (the bunny has a brief cameo). I maybe just set my expectations too high going in.

I wanted to see this thing in motion, so I tried to search up the youtube video, but no dice. Every article on it is just copy-pasted from the original on the Express site, and I can't get the embedded video attached to it to work. I did find an article on NIWA's site about a species of sea pig, which looks similar.

I think my parents have a copy of this (or something that looks very similar)! Not sure anyone's actually made anything from it, though. Really unique design.

Watched Oddity most recently. The writer/director's previous movie, Caveat, had a super ridiculous premise, but some excellent tension at the end, so I was hoping Oddity would be a good evolution of that. Turned out to be kind of a mixed bag, imo, but I didn't dislike it.

I thought the bones of the plot of Longlegs were cool, but found some of the execution (Longlegs himself, and the uh... method) to be jarringly goofy. Liked the first half and the atmosphere, though.

they added an element of authenticity and sheer terror

1. Longlegs - Longlegs (2024)

I can only assume the writer either has very different taste in horror from me/us, or we've been (not so) cunningly been sucked into engagement bait. Include the movie on a list of modern horror? Sure. I had some issues with it, but whatever. Longlegs himself, though? Oof.

How was Slewfoot? It's been on my TBR for ages, but I've never gotten around to it.

I'm about halfway through Death in the Spires by K.J. Charles. It's not as detective-y as I was hoping for, but I'm still finding it quick and absorbing.

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Finished Auberon by James S.A. Corey, which was good.

DNFed A Man With One of Those Faces by Caimh McDonnell about 25% through. The story seemed interesting, but I wasn't vibing with the writing.

That's really cool (and involved)! Thanks for writing that up. I hope you get a chance to actually try it.

Good to know, thanks!

I use a lot of off-meta melee (if there is such a thing, since most melee can be made powerful). I guess the ones on my list that count as "mediocre" are Mios, Ninkondi, Prisma Dual Cleavers, Guandao Prime, and Twin Basolk. If we're counting hidden gems, I'd also add Caustacyst, which I liked even before I had a riven for it, and now use on my Kullervo loadout as well.

Currently breezing through Auberon by James S.A. Corey, the story between books 7 and 8 of the Expanse. Not sure what I'll read next.

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Finished Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. The world-building around the Zone was as cool as I'd hoped, and I appreciated that expeditions into it were realistically strenuous, grimy, and dangerous. The overall tone is a bit bleak, though, and I didn't find the characters particularly relatable. There's a cool afterward from one of the authors, describing how difficult it was to get the book published (and when it was, how censored it had to be).

Bingo squares: Older Than You Are (1972), It Takes Two, Now a Major Motion Picture, (alt) Translated (hard).

Just want to add: forma are for when you've run out of capacity after you've installed a reactor/catalyst. You can install them before, but it's really inefficient.

Also, if you put all the basic mods on a weapon, and it still feels weak, take a look at its base (unmodded) crit and status chance stats. If, say, base crit chance is significantly lower than base status chance, then replace crit mods with more status/status chance, and see if that feels better. Same principle for frames: some frames have really low base shield, or their abilities don't need range, or they don't need to worry about energy management, so you're better off swapping out some mods for others.

MR30 here. Apart from the prime and lich stuff, there's definitely a few easy things you've missed, and some clusters of stuff you can work on simultaneously or while doing other things (like cracking relics or grinding aya):

• Have you done all the zaws, kitguns, k-drives, and amps? Wasn't sure if what you're using tracks them. If not, that's potentially a big chunk.
• BPs from the market: pandero, carrier, dethcube, shade, wyrm, various archgun/archmelees (parts require syndicates)
• BPs from the dojo: catabolyst, mios, helios, djinn, itzal, dorrclave, hema
• Nightwave: heat dagger, dark sword, wolf beacons for wolf sledge
• Deimos iso vaults: aurum spinosa, sporothrix, cortege, and necramech parts; rep for cortege and bonewidow BPs. Note that arcana iso vaults have better drop rates for aurum spinosa and sporothrix parts, but you'll probably be stuck doing them solo.
• Stuff from syndicates, all of which are tradable if you don't want to swap syndicates: various archmelee and archgun parts, sancti/secura/telos weapons, abyssal beacons for dorrclave mats
• BPs, parts, and relics from corpus railjack derelict caches: carmine penta and nautilus, plus relics for valkyr prime, nyx prime, cernos prime, scindo prime, hikou prime, and venka prime
• Baro: prisma weapons, vericres, halikar wraith, vulkar wraith, prova vandal, supra vandal, vastilok, ax-52 (probably)

As a side note for sibear, I found getting cryotic passively while grinding circuit much less tedious than trying to grind it directly, but that might just be me.