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unwashed hillbilly posted:it's never ever contained anything interesting or that i didn't already remember. who is this for, genuinely Beyond the nerds who do love reading them for whatever particular reason, I want to say some authors should do it for themselves. I can handle most of the common traits in the medium that sometimes turn people off, but nothing takes me out of a story more than when it's clear the author forgot about capabilities of the character or things at their disposal. ESPECIALLY when, however many chapters later, there's a hamfisted explanation for why it wasn't actually relevant in that moment/the character wanted to challenge themselves/'oh no it was actually the CHARACTER that forgot not me'. I know that The Good Guys is basically like 14 books playing off this phenomenon and I broadly like it, it still makes me loving itchy.
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Dec 10, 2025 22:30
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arkendrythist is basically designed to gaslight the average rr clown into reading a thoughtful meandering slice of life about god. anyway if we want to talk blue box abuse and being way too long, delve is right there. I've read no chapters in 4 years and I'm fully confident if I skimmed the newly released 1k or whatever the plot would not move forward at all
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Dec 10, 2025 22:35
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unwashed hillbilly posted:
The end game was entered around two years ago, which would be good on that count but the author only updates super sporadically now. Go figure.
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Dec 10, 2025 22:56
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unwashed hillbilly posted:arkendrythist is basically designed to gaslight the average rr clown into reading a thoughtful meandering slice of life about god. 100% agreed on Arkendrithyst. It starts out obsessed with stats and that quickly goes away for both writing reasons and Erick just goes beyond the need for them. I bet if more people here that disliked Arkendrithyst were able to get past the blue box section, they would enjoy the story a lot.
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Dec 11, 2025 00:26
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Peachfart posted:100% agreed on Arkendrithyst. It starts out obsessed with stats and that quickly goes away for both writing reasons and Erick just goes beyond the need for them. I bet if more people here that disliked Arkendrithyst were able to get past the blue box section, they would enjoy the story a lot. Arkendrithyst is excellent in both a Litrpg sense and a literary sense--at least in terms of how far we see things being genuinely literary in this genre. I still haven't finished it and am just kind of sitting in the last arc and saving it for when I'm in a total drought because I know I'm gonna enjoy it. Really gotta shout out the world building in the series, too, as being a step above a lot of other series. I'm a general way, and also in a very pedantic personal way because it specifically harps on the fact that Shadow magic is enhanced by light magic, not countered by it, as it always should be. That's a dumb thing that's bothered me basically forever so it was a delight when I saw it was such a big part of the story.
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Dec 11, 2025 00:33
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Sab Sabbington posted:Beyond the nerds who do love reading them for whatever particular reason, I want to say some authors should do it for themselves. A character sheet that you use personally but don't include in the story is just a formalized way of taking notes and I don't think that "authors should take notes on their characters and refer to them occasionally to make sure they aren't forgetting about important things" is a very hot take.
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Dec 11, 2025 07:06
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Sab Sabbington posted:Arkendrithyst is excellent in both a Litrpg sense and a literary sense--at least in terms of how far we see things being genuinely literary in this genre. I still haven't finished it and am just kind of sitting in the last arc and saving it for when I'm in a total drought because I know I'm gonna enjoy it. i liked that weird details kept coming back up and being relevant lol. and not in the typical web serial way where the author clearly pulled something out of their rear end, I mean stuff simply was put together well enough to hold up on a closer look later on
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Dec 11, 2025 16:16
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You are making me give Arkendrist another chance. I do have a long train ride coming up after all. The second search result for the story is threads on threads of people asking "when does Arkendrithst get good". And when I checked my calibre, I had already grabbed a copy a year ago for a similar train ride.
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Dec 11, 2025 18:59
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i tried to incorporate my stats into the story as best as i could and have them be a tangible part of the world but idk. it still feels clunky to involve them
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Dec 11, 2025 19:00
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VictualSquid posted:You are making me give Arkendrist another chance. I do have a long train ride coming up after all. I got 70 chapters in and it did not get good by that point
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Dec 11, 2025 19:02
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I got past the early stat blocks and it got okay, but it never became anything less than 50% exposition by weight so I eventually gave up.
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Dec 11, 2025 19:09
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Eh. I feel like "exposition" is just a descriptor of how much you like the writing in a story. I hear someone break out the word and I think, "oh, they didn't like it," rather than feeling like I've gained any information about the story itself. Like, there's a scene in Practical Guide to Evil where Black tells Catherine about the history of Praes agriculture and historical failures of population control, then tells her how that guides his worldview. Is that exposition? She's literally being exposited to! The chapter is just them talking to each other. But it's highly relevant to the past, present and future of everyone in the story, and so Madman is a very good chapter. And that's what I like about Ar'K. Everything comes back, everything is related. It's a rough start, but it's a good one.
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Dec 11, 2025 20:01
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Lone Goat posted:I got 70 chapters in and it did not get good by that point I don't recall the specific chapter, but it started hitting for me early on when he accidentally's a new kind of magic and all the Gods start freaking out thinking he's gonna end up bringing on another apocalypse. I was fairly into the slice of life stuff before that but that's when it started getting into the history of their world and the relationship Wizards had with it and it picked up pretty rapidly after that. I know I was extremely into it when it started paying much more attention to the shadow freaks that live in Arkendrithyst itself, which was also fairly early but probably past the point most people would drop off. The acolytes are one of my favorite examples of absolutely loving deranged psychopathic villains done well: turns out your good motivations early on don't matter when you're getting a healthy serving of Insane Dark God neuroses seeping into your brain over a few centuries.
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Dec 11, 2025 23:35
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Like I said Ar'k is very wordy and long and slow-paced. If that part bugs you then sure, don't bother. But it's really not a litrpg, in the broad numbers go up and that's the whole plot part. It that was what put you off, then I think it deserves another shot even if I am also a huge hater of the 'it gets good 500 pages in' meme.
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Dec 11, 2025 23:59
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Einander posted:Eh. I feel like "exposition" is just a descriptor of how much you like the writing in a story. I hear someone break out the word and I think, "oh, they didn't like it," rather than feeling like I've gained any information about the story itself. It’s been a while since I’ve read either story, but the impression I have is that Ar’Kendrithyst uses its exposition less as a framing device and more as a necessary vehicle to advance the plot. Black’s explanations are critical to both Cat’s and the audience’s understanding of why modern Praesi villainy is the way it is, but those scenes could be cut out and that information redistributed without seriously changing the narrative. The story would be weaker, I think, but we don’t actually need to know why Praes has its vaguely pro-social policies in place to understand their function, in that they serve to keep the empire stable and discourage heroism. Meanwhile, Erik loving around with magic and then giving a huge lecture about the nature of the universe is fundamental to the story itself, since the power creep is so constant that every new conflict is built in largely new slices of the setting on largely new metaphysical constructs. Removing it would require changing Erik’s core personality, since his entire gimmick is gaining deep understandings of the problems in front of him and coming up with profoundly thoughtful solutions to them, to the point where “Erik understands the problem” and “Erik devises a solution” are themselves major beats, in addition to the actual implementation of the solution.
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Dec 12, 2025 00:04
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blastron posted:It’s been a while since I’ve read either story, but the impression I have is that Ar’Kendrithyst uses its exposition less as a framing device and more as a necessary vehicle to advance the plot. Black’s explanations are critical to both Cat’s and the audience’s understanding of why modern Praesi villainy is the way it is, but those scenes could be cut out and that information redistributed without seriously changing the narrative. The story would be weaker, I think, but we don’t actually need to know why Praes has its vaguely pro-social policies in place to understand their function, in that they serve to keep the empire stable and discourage heroism. I'd disagree with this pretty strongly with regards to Prac Guide. Black's motivations for reform here are part and parcel of the whole rules base liberalism that under girds Cat's entire worldview and motivation for the Liesse Accords. It matters to the plot that Praes' foreign policy is (partly) driven by material conditions and that those material conditions can be leveraged to force through changes to Praes.
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Dec 12, 2025 00:11
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Nitrousoxide posted:Wandering Inn's "system", despite the ubiquitous nature of [Skills] in the world, doesn't intrude the narrative in any meaningful way. Characters level up/skill up with single line off-hands when they sleep. There are no stat blocks. And these skills/levels are only obtained after the characters struggle with and overcome significant challenges. They do not spend time picking out skills. I'm not sure if this approach is much better than the stat blocks. The "characters gain skills when they overcome challenges" element just makes the skills a kind of goofy manifestation of "character development" that feels more like a deus ex machina. I'd kinda prefer a more coherent game-like system to that (though I don't really like either). Wandering Inn's whole approach to that stuff seems to operate primarily off of the "rule of cool," with the end goal of everything being "to create Epic Moments." Which can be fun, but it runs the risk of making the setting/plot feel less believable (and definitely crosses that line for me personally).
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Dec 12, 2025 04:28
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I think the key point there is that they get those skills _after_ overcoming the challenges, so it doesn't come across as a deus ex machina; rather, their reward for overcoming the challenges is that they can replicate the feats in the future with less effort. As far as LitRPG mechanics go, I much prefer this over big blocks of numbers, because it feels more personal, like how some characters have skills they don't like because they got them under terrible circumstances, or conversely, some have skills that they get in very awesome circumstances. It makes their skillset feel much more like "theirs" rather than if they just leveled up, got granted skill points, and purchased a skill themselves. I don't think I can deny that pirate is going for rule of cool, but it's always felt balanced to me in that it's always felt like the characters go through sufficient hardship to get to that point.
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Dec 12, 2025 04:54
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Thresholder Chapter 175 posted:“I come in peace!” he called, and his voice was amplified by the speakers to be boomingly loud, something they could hear across the wide distance that separated them. Ah Perry, such a charmer.
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Dec 15, 2025 17:45
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Patrick Spens posted:Ah Perry, such a charmer. Is Thresholder still in that tedious weird west arc? I couldn’t hack it and had to tap out
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Dec 15, 2025 21:18
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Yep.
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Dec 15, 2025 21:27
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navyjack posted:Is Thresholder still in that tedious weird west arc? I couldn’t hack it and had to tap out The author had a similar reaction. Series is finished up over on patreon, with at least the three chapters on Earth being fun. The real tragedy is that the Pissworld chapter didn't make it into the main story.
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Dec 15, 2025 22:05
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mossyfisk posted:The author had a similar reaction. Series is finished up over on patreon, with at least the three chapters on Earth being fun. I read a few chapters of Thresholder and bounced off, but I am somewhat curious about.... Pissworld
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Dec 15, 2025 22:07
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Megazver posted:I read a few chapters of Thresholder and bounced off, but I am somewhat curious about.... Pissworld It was a non-canon bonus chapter between books. Perry stepped out of the portal into a land where everything was piss. Rivers of piss. Piss rain. Golden cities made of piss crystal. Two different kind of piss magics. Genuinely funny and it's a shame it wasn't canon but I don't think the story would have been well-served by Perry lugging around a big cauldron in his pocket dimension. e: The cauldron was for the piss magic, if that wasn't clear.
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Dec 16, 2025 05:59
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As someone who majored in Philosophy, I agree with Tian. There are a lot of philosophical debates should have ended with a swift kick to the nuts.
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Dec 16, 2025 12:34
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blastron posted:e: The cauldron was for the piss magic, if that wasn't clear. Nitrousoxide posted:As someone who majored in Philosophy, I agree with Tian. There are a lot of philosophical debates should have ended with a swift kick to the nuts. quote:Just saying, if anyone had the opportunity to debate Schopenhauer this way, they would have. I think even his mom, based on the letters that survived, would have told him to shut up and box because nobody wanted to hear all that yap.
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Dec 16, 2025 12:42
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blastron posted:It was a non-canon bonus chapter between books. Perry stepped out of the portal into a land where everything was piss. Rivers of piss. Piss rain. Golden cities made of piss crystal. Two different kind of piss magics. Genuinely funny and it's a shame it wasn't canon but I don't think the story would have been well-served by Perry lugging around a big cauldron in his pocket dimension. I found the chapter. Funny! Reminds me of  I think I might be a similar type of autist as Wales, because a year or two ago I did a bunch of worldbuilding about different poopworlds just to annoy/threaten my tabletop RPG player group. A world where everyone's gut flora forms a psychic network. A world where people need to fertilize plants with their poop to grow their babies and poop leakages cause feral baby outbreaks. A world where smelling poop lets you experience memories and fertilized plants bear memory fruit. Et cetera. I've been tempted to inflict some of it on people in a format similar to that chapter - quickly hopping between them, MC being more and more horrified.
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Dec 16, 2025 13:30
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All praise today’s MVP, Large Rock.
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Dec 16, 2025 22:22
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The Lone Badger posted:All praise today’s MVP, Large Rock. Artist's depiction 
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