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It's the prototypical xianxia (literally, iirc it was one of the earliest ones) so it has less fat than most. At least, plot-wise. I've fallen off all the others I've tried since it started because they're basically the same thing, but with more padding. SM isn't good, but is relatively efficient, which makes it better than most. It also apparently benefited a lot from the translator editing out egregiously repetitious paragraphs. My only complaint about the ending is that it never explained what the goddamn purrling was after dangling that in front of you for the half the story. Sindai fucked around with this message at 22:43 on May 17, 2021 |
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May 17, 2021 22:36
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Makes sense. It's the only non-Er Gen xianxia that I've finished so I don't have a lot to compare it against and only followed it because Deathblade was translating since he usually has good taste. I was enjoying Way of the Devil but it seems like the translations have all stopped.
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May 17, 2021 22:55
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Is anyone else here into quick transmigration? Currently, I'm still making my way through Side Character Transmigration The Final Boss Is No Joke, which despite having a really unnecessarily long title I'm really enjoying. Shi Sheng is a really fun protagonist-if a terrible person-and I really enjoy her smashing and stabbing her way through various plots. (Well, I mostly love it, but there are a few arcs that really just aren't that good-the zombie arc was terrible, and I really liked the MMO arc until Ji Yan's unexplained 180-degree personality change. But this seems to be a common thing with QT.) I also like Don't Pick Up Boyfriends From The Trash, but I don't think it can ever really hope to live up to the standard set by the battle mecha omegaverse arc and I kind of trailed off after that because, like, how do you go back to typical genre settings after putting that on the table?
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May 21, 2021 22:34
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i was clicking around an noticed that there were several "villainess fights heroine after being reincarnated into her past several times" stories that I couldn't tell apart from their description. And that is not even counting the actually good one ,tho I prefer the manga adaption. I started reading one and it turned out to be dumb in the best possible way: https://www.novelupdates.com/series/i-am-a-duchess-who-has-rewound-nine-times-but-my-tenth-life-seems-to-be-a-reward-mode/?pg=4#myTable quote:If Maximilian’s true form is the endgame of muscles, Dylan’s appearance is at the midgame of muscles! He hasn’t transcended human form, yet! Despite so, his muscles are still excellent! Be still, my beating heart! Why, just why did this muscular development occur!?
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May 24, 2021 13:08
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quote:“The world’s top ten conglomerates had joined forces to create a programme where the crew had quietly evacuated all the people from a city, leaving behind only Raymond and his family, who were kept in the dark. Their purpose was to see this child, who had emerged from the slums of America, get humiliated. The whole world wanted to see this young man named Raymond make a fool of himself, and through what Raymond had done, and all of his doings, they wanted to decry the poor for being short of ambitions. Early the next morning, the show officially began. When Raymond noticed that the world outside was overly and strangely quiet, and when he had determined that all of humanity had disappeared. Just then, the survival aid system was activated, and the system notified Raymond: In a month’s time, there will be a huge meteorite hitting the planet, and it is going to cause great destruction. ....what? a truman show power fantasy? i understand what this wn is, but i can't understand why anyone would write such a thing.
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May 25, 2021 13:15
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:....what? a truman show power fantasy? i understand what this wn is, but i can't understand why anyone would write such a thing. webnovels, webnovels never change.
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May 25, 2021 13:58
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Quietly evacuating a whole city except for Raymond and his family, to watch Ray get humiliated, sounds like the backstory of Everybody Loves Raymond.
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May 25, 2021 19:40
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I had to check I wasn't in the PYF procedurally generated content thread.
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May 25, 2021 19:44
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Oh yeah, I've been reading that as part of my quest to find the weirdest novels possible. It's not as interesting as it sounds. Also he finds out that he's on a reality show around chapter 30 or so (his custom-built AI hive-mind tells him), and after that he's just loving with the viewers.
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May 26, 2021 10:27
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What is the best xianxia story and why is it Way of Choices / Ze Tian Ji?
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May 26, 2021 21:55
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In case anyone has been holding off because of the cost, the entire Cradle Xianxia series by Will Wight is available for free on Amazon today. Truly free for purchase, not just through Kindle Unlimited. Grab them while you can, they’re the best!
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May 30, 2021 16:20
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Thanks! I must have just read wintersteel on KU since that was the only one I didn't own. Very generous to be giving out Bloodline already for those who don't have it yet.
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May 30, 2021 21:24
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Thread, arise! I've been hankering for a good cultivation novel again and while I'm still reading all of my old ones (they're so LONG), well - 1) Are there any new awesome ones I should check out? 2) Did any of the ongoing stories finish? 3) What are the best short cultivation stories? ARE there any good short cultivation stories?
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Sep 7, 2021 17:51
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StrixNebulosa posted:Thread, arise! I've been hankering for a good cultivation novel again and while I'm still reading all of my old ones (they're so LONG), well - Hey Strix. I've picked up a few on Royal Road that range somewhere between really cool and middle of the road. The Last Ship in Suzhou - A tight, focused character piece about two Chinese-American teens who get themselves isekai'd by a thunderstorm. Written with a very tender, careful style (the opening chapters are a little rough, I think, but it picks up with the first interlude) that rewards a patient and careful reader. As much about the psychological realities of being a Chinese teen from New York and trying to cram the esotericism back into the Chinese esotericism as it is anything else. Virtuous Sons - Transplants the typical xianxia plot elements to the milieu of classical Greece- chi is pneuma, cultivators are philosophers, sects are cults, one of the leads has pankration intent (it's great- I love it). Another introspective character piece, this one driven by a young Greek aristocrat's incurable dissatisfaction with the effortlessness of his existence and his best friend's brooding guilt. And, possibly, their intense gay love. Like, honestly, I have no idea if these two are hot for each other or if this is just the greatest bromance of all time. It could go either way. Ave Xia Rem Y - A third tightly focused character piece? I'm getting bored of writing "character piece", frankly. The idea here is to take all the old, worn-out cliches of the genre and... just write them really well. Like that's the premise. And while that doesn't sound like it'd lead anywhere great, it's kind of my favourite thing on this list?? The previous two are objectively better, but I have a soft spot for this one a mile wide. Our protagonist here is a principled young doctor, whose only real desire in life is to be a good son, a good disciple, a good husband, and a good person. And, well, life is planning to make that kind of hard. Memories of the Fall - Not a tightly focused character piece, this is a sprawling epic which has more in common with Malazan Book of the Fallen than anything else. With a cast of hundreds, this one wants you to care about the trials of the least Qi Condensation scrub and the schemes of decamillennia-old god-wizards all at the same time. This is about the only piece of web fiction I've seen where it felt like the author was writing twenty thousand word chapters not because they had a terminal case of logorrhoea (lookin' at you, pirateaba), but because there was genuinely that much story to get through. I'm on record as saying that the prose in the first book is kinda awful, but it's recently undergone a rewrite (maybe hold off a week or two- we're still waiting for the final chapter of The New Prologue). Universal Knowledge of the Dao - This is... honestly just a very standard xianxia. The author is French, which lends the prose an odd patois, and that's probably the most remarkable thing about it. There's a girl, she starts off weak, she gets strong, things happen to her along the way. I still like it, because, like, I am the hog working the trash fiction trough, just pour that slop all over me sister, but if being completely inoffensive wasn't an achievement for stories on Royal Road I'd not have mentioned it. This Young Master is not Cannon Fodder - Like Universal Knowledge, this one is really just textbook xianxia. There's an odd fillip in that a huge proportion of the side characters eventually turn out to be some species of isekai nonsense person, but mostly the story just wants to chill out and watch its protagonist be wildly overpowered. Definitely take a look at the first four, check out the latter two if you're really bored or something. In terms of good, complete, short xianxia (though really this one is only short in relative terms; I think it's regular novel length)- there's Ascending, Do Not Disturb. This one's a romance, and has some typical shoujo problems in that regard- the protagonist is a precocious sixteen year old, while her love interest is... three hundred... but it's about the most wholesome and endearing story you could possibly hope to make from that. Just a really nice story about people who love and support each other. I do not think any of the long running series I know about have wrapped up since I last saw you in here.
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Sep 8, 2021 13:24
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I don't know ANY of these stories and each description sounds better than the last. Will... will I finally be able to read things on Royal Road?? Time to find out!\ Also I cannot emphasize enough how much I love "there's a protagonist, they start off weak, they get strong". Give me every cliche. Give me the cheat items and the sudden power ups and the ridiculous fights. Give me the young masters who are OFFENDED that you LOOKED AT THEM. I love the dang cliches in this genre, all of them.
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Sep 8, 2021 14:40
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i read a lot of cultivation webnovels but i don't have advice about good ones because good isn't what i'm looking for. i'll read any of them (unless it has a rapist mc) until i get bored.
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Sep 8, 2021 14:48
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:i read a lot of cultivation webnovels but i don't have advice about good ones because good isn't what i'm looking for. i'll read any of them (unless it has a rapist mc) until i get bored. Which ones have you finished?
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Sep 8, 2021 14:50
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i don't finish most of them, though oddly enough i've finished a lot of the frankly dull and dry works of i eat tomatoes.
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Sep 8, 2021 14:55
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If you don't mind actual Chinese webnovels, the one I am currently enjoying is the Museum of Deadly Beasts. It's a mix of Library of Heaven's Path and Lord of Mysteries, more or less. The magic system is based on people forming magical bonds with evolvable magical beasts and the MC get transmigrated into a body of a Rank 1 Beast Appraiser (pretty much a Pokemon vet) and given a power of perfect knowledge over everything beast-related - appraising, healing, subduing and, most importantly, evolving them. It's not the most original novel, but I enjoy it because it lacks most of the annoying flaws Chinese novels tend to exhibit. The MC is relatively chill, most conflicts are resolved without ludicrous escalation where someone spills a drink on the MC and it ends with their whole clan being exterminated for being serial killer rapists, and the lovely humor is kept to a minimum.
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Sep 9, 2021 12:43
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StrixNebulosa posted:Thread, arise! I've been hankering for a good cultivation novel again and while I'm still reading all of my old ones (they're so LONG), well - In category one: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/43958/breaker-of-horizons is pretty good. MC is an axolotl and the fight scenes are plentiful and fast paced. Good fun. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/42441/elder-cultivator is a good bedtime read. It's positive and a pleasant. In category two, completed stories: https://dreamsofjianghu.ca/ascending-do-not-disturb/ Is a mostly wholesome romance (no harem). The male character is infinitely better than the female in every way (it is a Chinese story). In a pleasantly surprising twist, the MC is female and is allowed to do stuff and be successful. Unfortunately, the story has almost nothing to do with the title. https://dreamsofjianghu.ca/%e4%bf%ae%e7%9c%9f%e4%b8%96%e7%95%8c-world-of-cultivation/ is translated by the same person. It, unfortunately, takes a turn for the worse in the later chapters/story arcs, but I found it entertaining for the first two or three. It starts out as a rare farming focused story that isn't complete garbage.
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Sep 9, 2021 18:26
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There's always Threads/Forge of Destiny, eh? Street urchin protag finds herself increasingly embroiled in machinations and decides to make a stand. Colorful cast of characters. Very fun. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21188/forge-of-destiny
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Sep 10, 2021 10:22
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so there's this tumblr post about web novels tumblr posted:i know an engineer-type dude who said fiction bored him, because fiction is mostly-formulaic and tropey, and you can generally guess what’s gonna happen next, and yada yada for whatever reason I remembered this post around the point some intersection of the protagonists (?) being caught in an extradimensional timestop (??), in concert with the alien (???) rapist picking a fight with the Cthulhu+Camus (????) guy (?????) interrupted a nascent pogrom. Sometimes I read these webnovels, like this, or like Mother of Learning off the top of my head, where clearly the author has been building up a world design for some years, possibly decades, and the plot is kind of secondary. Not even bad necessarily, just clearly in service to explaining this massive detailed culture and history and geography and so on. Characters exposit some interesting tidbit every few paragraphs. The record of a real civilization spans thousands of artifacts of many kinds spread across centuries; the author tries to shove all of that into their one book. It's so dense. It's literary horror vacui. Every change of scene includes a small touch of a new 700-page nonfiction tome. All that poo poo I mentioned happened and now we're on to a completely new culture of telepathic mutant lizards, I guess? I mean, there are degrees of it. I think this is the densest I've seen, or at least the densest I've seen that I've been at least somewhat able to follow. Mother of Learning is less dense. Other webnovels like Forge of Destiny have fucktons of worldbuilding but leave it more in separate asides, or in side stories and maps that I didn't realize existed until I'd read the thing for years because they're mostly sort of irrelevant to the actual story. This is not to say that it's... bad...? I mean, it could definitely use some editing, and maybe to be split into ~12 novels and written by a team of professionals linked by brain-to-brain wiring. It feels like a distinct kind of thing from anything I've read in print. Is this what In the Realms of the Unreal is like? If Henry Darger was really into the Deer and the Cauldron, or maybe Dynasty Warriors? No, you know what it reminds me of. There's a journal Tolkien Studies. Every year they publish like a few hundred pages of research on stuff Tolkien wrote. The current (2020) issue includes a review of what is apparently the fourth complete book on the ecology of Middle-Earth. This journal has been running since 2004. You could have a different journal and corner of academia for every one of these novels. Not that anyone's going to, but you could.
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Sep 11, 2021 06:07
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Syritta posted:Sometimes I read these webnovels, like this, or like Mother of Learning off the top of my head, where clearly the author has been building up a world design for some years, possibly decades, and the plot is kind of secondary. Not even bad necessarily, just clearly in service to explaining this massive detailed culture and history and geography and so on. Characters exposit some interesting tidbit every few paragraphs. The record of a real civilization spans thousands of artifacts of many kinds spread across centuries; the author tries to shove all of that into their one book. It's so dense. It's literary horror vacui. Every change of scene includes a small touch of a new 700-page nonfiction tome. lmao, yes, that's the perfect way to describe it. Especially book one, which is the most scattered and confused. I'm glad to have finally tricked someone else into reading it. I am no longer alone. My own personal strategy is, if there's something going on or the characters are talking about something I don't know, to just blithely ignore it and move on, with the assumption that if it ever becomes relevant whatever it is is going to be reintroduced and explained in a more sensible fashion further down the road. And this has worked out for me every time, so far.  It's the M. John Harrison quote I'm always drawn back to, when confronted with blunt-force world-building: quote:Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.
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Sep 11, 2021 15:59
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I am in awe of that "engineer-type dude" and wish I had the mental energy and time to do the same.
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Sep 11, 2021 16:11
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LLSix posted:
I loved the first 20 chapters of this, and then Huan Zhong appeared, began obviously crushing on the 16-year-old protagonist, claimed he was a "few years older" than her, then later revealed to the reader he was 300 years old. It's a lot harder to digest comfortably now. Even if I cheat and use the cultivation/JRPG 'divide timescale by 10-20 after hitting age 20', this fucker is 30-40 years old. Gross. Konghou and her Splendid Cloud grandpas/dads/sisters made a good enough impression that I'm pushing on but gently caress, man. edit: Why is all the rest so good? quote:"One should at least try, no matter how difficult one’s goal. If it really succeeds, I, Nameless, will be known ten thousand years from now.” edit the 2nd: Here, this is where the dissonance glares most. Author, you gave me the impression he was 19 with poo poo like this, why didn't you just stick to it quote:Because Huan Zhong and Kong Hou did not know what it was like to cross the river on a ship, Lin Hu could only go find a ship and have these two inexperienced young people experience what it was like to sway and bobble on the ship. booksnake fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 00:37
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Artificer posted:There's always Threads/Forge of Destiny, eh? Street urchin protag finds herself increasingly embroiled in machinations and decides to make a stand. Colorful cast of characters. Very fun. Speaking of Forge/Threads of Destiny, really random question - what does Bao Qian look like? I feel like I missed/forget when he was initially introduced and I'm not sure how to picture him. His character sort of embodies part of what I like about this series; the protagonist will just "organically" meet new people who may or may not become a bigger part of her life. Normally this is the sort of thing you wouldn't really want to do in a normal-length narrative, but it works very well for this sort of "following a person's life" long serial.
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Sep 12, 2021 06:06
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Ytlaya posted:Speaking of Forge/Threads of Destiny, really random question - what does Bao Qian look like? I feel like I missed/forget when he was initially introduced and I'm not sure how to picture him. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...7#post-12930707 Is where the very helpful Forge discord pointed me towards as his first appearance. Also, will second the recommendation for Forge/Threads of destiny it's probably my favorite cultivation novel I have read so far, great mix between adventure and slice of life and some of the most interesting and likeable character I have read in the genre. It can meander due to its nature as a quest/choice your own adventure, but I find myself not really minding it because I just enjoy reading about Ling Qi moments with her friends or thinking about the nature of her way even when they are quite slow.
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Sep 12, 2021 12:46
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Ytlaya posted:Speaking of Forge/Threads of Destiny, really random question - what does Bao Qian look like? I feel like I missed/forget when he was initially introduced and I'm not sure how to picture him. id say a bigger problem is that ling qi has way too many abilites to keep track of. most of the fights she just uses her flute + shadow movement + wood regen but she has an excessively large number of other skills unrelated but i hate the litrpg genre. everything that defines it is anathema to interesting storytelling. Stexils fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 04:21
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booksnake posted:I loved the first 20 chapters of this, and then Huan Zhong appeared, began obviously crushing on the 16-year-old protagonist, claimed he was a "few years older" than her, then later revealed to the reader he was 300 years old. It's a lot harder to digest comfortably now. Even if I cheat and use the cultivation/JRPG 'divide timescale by 10-20 after hitting age 20', this fucker is 30-40 years old. Gross. Konghou and her Splendid Cloud grandpas/dads/sisters made a good enough impression that I'm pushing on but gently caress, man. Agreed. The story would be significantly better if Huan Zhong was the same age as Konghou.
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Sep 13, 2021 04:35
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Tuiri posted:https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...7#post-12930707 Is where the very helpful Forge discord pointed me towards as his first appearance. Ah, thanks. So basically he's pretty tall/swole while dressed with a bunch of jewels (I had picked up on the latter, but for some reason was picturing him was looking somewhat fat).. lol at Ling Qi taking note of his thick biceps. Stexils posted:id say a bigger problem is that ling qi has way too many abilites to keep track of. most of the fights she just uses her flute + shadow movement + wood regen but she has an excessively large number of other skills Probably the only thing I don't like in Forge/Threads of Destiny is the path the protagonist went down in terms of combat abilities. I choose to ignore the specifics about her abilities beyond what is described in the text. Forge/Threads of Destiny does a good job of keeping that stuff separate from the story, if you want it to be (particularly in Threads, where he's moved away from actually showing Ling Qi's training and instead focuses on actual story arcs).
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Sep 13, 2021 06:52
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yeah the abundance of skill/training descriptions is not great but its not that bad compared to other webnovels. one i dropped early introduced 5 or 6 seperate power systems one after the other for the MC to be good at. i have no idea why they didnt just combine them all. some people just really want to write korean mmo worlds.
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Sep 13, 2021 07:28
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Stexils posted:unrelated but i hate the litrpg genre. everything that defines it is anathema to interesting storytelling. go up
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Sep 13, 2021 11:38
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DACK FAYDEN posted:b...but number Hits a hammer on the side of the barn a couple of times. *suddenly becomes able to build the Notre Dame Cathedral*
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Sep 13, 2021 15:00
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IShallRiseAgain posted:Hits a hammer on the side of the barn a couple of times. *suddenly becomes able to build the Notre Dame Cathedral* Imagining a barn built as a trial run of the cathedral made me laugh. Just cranes for days and confused as gently caress cows like aerialists inside.
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Sep 13, 2021 17:33
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I Was Reborn Into a Magical World, but my powers are the USA Dozer build tree from C&C Generals?
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Sep 13, 2021 20:48
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RangerKarl posted:I Was Reborn Into a Magical World, but my powers are the USA Dozer build tree from C&C Generals? I'd read it.
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Sep 13, 2021 21:18
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Reading Library of Heaven's Path back to back with Museum of Deadly Beasts and  This is it, this is my delight: ancient trained masters going "wait how the gently caress did you know that" over and over again for endless chapters. I laughed out loud multiple times while reading these, which is more than I can say for actual comedy shows. I restrict myself now to only read a bit of each otherwise I read nothing else. Thank you so much for the Museum rec, it breaks up the flow from Library nicely.
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Sep 13, 2021 21:32
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Stexils posted:yeah the abundance of skill/training descriptions is not great but its not that bad compared to other webnovels. one i dropped early introduced 5 or 6 seperate power systems one after the other for the MC to be good at. i have no idea why they didnt just combine them all. some people just really want to write korean mmo worlds. I think that the Forge/Threads of Destiny guy avoids the common issue of being inconsistent in the powers they give the characters (usually letting the protagonist cheat in some way and just being a way to numerically show how strong they are, whereas everyone is actually "playing the same game" so to speak in FoD). It also helps that the stats don't technically exist in the story/setting itself and are just abstractions of what's going on (whereas in many stories like this the stats are literal parts of the setting in question). Because of this, they can be ignored by the reader (since they only factor into reader choices and behind-the-scenes calculations).
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Sep 13, 2021 21:37
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Artificer posted:I'd read it. Someone did an isekai as a gdi advanced guard tower. Didn't live up to the premise.
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Sep 13, 2021 22:21
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Salvos, sadly, does not write good battle scenes after the first book. I think it's mostly a lack of experience, and especially genre experience, but it's unfortunates because the author does so many other kinds of scenes well.
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Sep 13, 2021 23:07
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