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M. N. Jolley

M. N. Jolley

@mnjolley.bsky.social

8 followers 8 following 31 posts

Fantasy Author, creator of The KC Warlock Weekly, Maggie Cartwright, and the Sacrosanct Records Website: https://mnjolleywriting.com/ Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/M.-N.-Jolley/author/B07KBBH4NM

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M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 29

"Perks" of being an indie author who does everything myself - When I put my audiobooks on youtube, I did the audio mix wrong and it sounded like a Beatles album with a broken set of headphones.

Thankfully someone pointed it out in the comments and I was able to fix them!

www.youtube.com/@MNJolley

Author or Urban Fantasy novels, plus some other stuff!

www.youtube.com

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

I'd argue the bigger issue in STS isn't crap combos, so much as just...non-combos. It's pretty common to get nothing but unhelpful relics in act one, especially at high ascensions where you can't get aggressive with Elites, and you have no way of knowing what you'll get and no choice.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

slot machine pulls to get a good relic that suits your build. You can generally make a solid deck no matter what, but the relics are a crapshoot, and it's occasionally possible to be forced to take a relic that actively kills your run. (Dead Branch on a Shiv run is horrendous.)

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

I don't know if I'd say Slay the Spire solves this by segmenting its class cards. It tends to have pretty balanced decks, but the relics have the same issue of oversaturation, along with rarely getting a choice of relics.

Many, *many* games of Slay the Spire are just...

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

As a small note - it would be nice if Balatro removed vouchers and cards that have no effect for particular decks. Getting Seed Money or To The Moon on Green Deck shouldn't be possible.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

Tbh, I think just resetting runs at ante 1 until you get an interesting card early is the most fun way to play. It's a bit tedious to start, but heavily smooths out luck after you get one fun or useful joker.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

make it so that every option is pretty similar and you can't get bad choices because all choices are roughly equivalent, (which also makes them less interesting, IMO,) but I don't know of a game that's solved it to where all choices are viable and not samey.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

Out of curiosity, what games would you say have 'solved' this issue?

I'd argue it's endemic to the genre. Some games to it better, (Slay the Spire has fairly few cards and relics that are never good, especially at Ascension 0,) and I guess some roguelikes, especially action roguelikes...

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

I don't disagree that there's a lot of luck involved, (especially early on,) but having a game with luck isn't something I think is bad, and for a single player game that I play to relax, having it not be 100% skill is arguably a good thing.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

I'd argue that the bigger issue with Balatro is that there are too many Jokers that are so weak that they effectively never serve a purpose, but they pollute the pool and make it possible to get bad shops until your run is just dead, while there are a handful of jokers that just win for free.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

Arguably, you also need money and deck fixing in order to reliably get those three staples, but that isn't obscure or broken either. All of these things can be achieved without *any* combos, and obvious combos that make intuitive sense also work.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 23

I don't think this applies to Balatro. Even on Gold Stake, making it to Ante 8 doesn't rely on any broken combos, you just need a few solid staples for your build: Base chips, base mult, and X mult. All of these can be achieved without anything broken or niche, and there's lots of ways to get there.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 13

@roelkonijn.bsky.social , how might an author persuade you to sit down for a conversation on world building and 'historical realism' in a fantasy novel focused on siege tactics and with heavy greek inspiration for the weaponry and equipment available?

I will dig you a ditch anywhere you want!

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 1

I appreciate that the last two items on the list go from the most sprawling and seriously thought out fantasy epic being published today, to the silliest and lightest, published in short serial adventures.

Inside you there are two wolves. One is Discworld. The other is Stormlight. They both slap.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Jan 1

I just finished writing my latest novel!
Just under 90,000 words, and ready to ship off to my editor.

Image of text screenshotted from a novel:
Chapter 1
I don’t much care for the sight of blood.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no hemophobe—my boyfriend can attest to that. I donate my heart juice a couple times a year and am clumsy enough with letter openers and safety pins that a spot here or there inevitably crops up in my life. That sort of blood, the practical kind, I don’t mind.
When it’s splattered all across the walls and floor of a chicken coop, matted down with feathers and gore, that’s when I start to have an issue.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Dec 31

I'm new to bluesky, so I think I'm doing this right:
📚🪐
Will make this tweet visible in the sci-fi fantasy feed, right? It's like a hashtag without hashtags?

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Dec 31

I'm sure the group of 'influencers' who make their careers by decrying how every popular franchise is Evil and Woke and Terrible now don't help with the hype. It's hard to enjoy talking about a story when any public mention of it means starting an argument with the most annoying people possible.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Dec 31

Obligatory mention that you shouldn't give money to OSC.

I could go into a lot more depth on the topic, but I've got two followers and feel like I'm screaming into the void, so I'll leave this be for now.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Dec 31

Ender's Shadow asks if a person with a small difference in their genes is really a human or not, and thematically resolves this question by having this person recite Bible verses, 'Proving' his empathy.

(It also features the most trite possibly 'Secret twin' trope you can imagine, but w/e.)

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Dec 31

but I can barely find any mention of the ways religion is used as a stand-in for having humanity and empathy.

Ender's Game posits the importance of empathy for our enemies and the harm and evil that comes from Othering a group of people you don't understand, a theme that's carried on in SFTD.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Dec 31

Has anyone talked abut how "Ender's Shadow" reflects a shift in religious content in the series that fundamentally conflicts with the themes of the previous books?

Almost all discussion I see on the spinoff title just talks about how it's neat to see the story from a different perspective,

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Dec 30

Reading is recreation! It's fun! It's self fulfillment! Judging people for not reading as many books is like judging people for not riding as many rollercoasters, or playing as many games, or listening to as much music.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Dec 29

“We could use the arrows sooner rather than later, there’s a—” Frey said a word Maggie didn’t quite parse. “It’s attacking folks, getting aggressive. We’d like to deal with it sooner than later.”

“I’m sorry, I think I misheard. Did you say a sheepsquatch?”

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Dec 29

Kitty has flashes of being the moral and thematic center of the movie, but she doesn't get real resolution and is sidelined. The historical person was more involved and had more agency than the character in the film, and it would've been a better story if she was given more narrative weight.

M. N. Jolley @mnjolley.bsky.social · Dec 29

I don't disagree in every case, but his female characters are like this even when it's not appropriate. Kitty in Oppenheimer gets a similar treatment and is still shunted off to the side, even though it's not a good fit for her and clashes with her role in the story.