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Charlie Bobson posted:So Practical Guide sounds pretty interesting, but just from browsing the summary page on it's website it's hard to get handle on what I should expect from it. What's the 30 second elevator pitch for it? What kind of story should I come into this expecting? Is it Worm style constantly escalating superpower fights, or something different? It’s a sword and sorcery epic where the bad guys have read the evil overlord list. It is really very good.
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Jul 8, 2018 23:59
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edit: Just to be clear, everything I'm mentioning only includes content through near the end of Book 3, so it ignores any possible big changes from Book 4SITB posted:I also didn't explain myself clearly, it's not that focusing on your immediate company's happiness is wrong, it's just that its not sufficient to check the likes of Malcia. Cat whole arguement with the sister started with Cat describing what she perceives evil is. It's not refusing to offer a helping hand to those in need, it is borne out of people looking at the laws (unwritten and otherwise) and asking why they should apply to you; and every so often you get a person pushing the limits of what they can get away with and you get the likes of the Diabolist. Cat views evil as being inherently transgressive and as thus a passive approach would never defeat it because you will always have people questioning their lot in life. The thing that confuses me about Cat's ideology is that, on one hand, you have the "ideology isn't enough, the rules are there for a reason and breaking them just causes more suffering!" stuff you sorta mention, but on the other hand she's okay with just enforcing her own will without being worried about infringing upon Tower law or the will of Malicia or whatever (like when she let the knights join her). Normally I'd interpret that as some sort of general "pragmatically acting for the greater good" thing, but she's obviously not really doing that either, given the net result of her actions. You could say she's limiting her scope to Callow, but that's kind of arbitrary; at that point it's just a difference of scale between her and the person who limits their scope to their friends and family (since in neither case is the person seeking the best overall outcome when accounting for all people). The general impression I get is that she just doesn't trust anyone else to have the most power, at least over Callow. She doesn't have a clear idea of how she's going to ensure the best outcome for Callow, but she sure doesn't feel comfortable letting anyone else make those decisions. It seems obvious that being a bit of a control freak is part of her character - Killian even comments on this during the discussion where they "officially" break up. SITB posted:(Also, where did Cat require the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Procerans to turn back the crusade? Even in book four she was willing to let the crusade succeed at its intended purpose, and when refused repeatedly tried to make the invading army to withdraw in exchange for the food) This wasn't Cat specifically, but just referring to the general idea of fighting for the survival of Praes/Callow (Malicia mentioned that causing starvation in Procer would be necessary to avoid a Crusade definitely winning against Praes). SerSpook posted:it is also more lighthearted in general and fun, nothing like reading about the adventures of dread emperor traitorus From my experience (reading until near the end of Book 3 now) it's sort of like a fun YA fiction thing with a lot of kind of cheesy scenes, but a surprisingly deep (for this sort of thing) basis underlying everything. Like you have your witty/funny dialogue with characters like Robber, Archer, Masego, etc, but I get the impression there's an underlying understanding that these people are very much not good and that the story intends to tackle with that. It helps that the story tropes are actually a part of their world.
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Jul 9, 2018 01:03
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What's the best xianxia web novel that's been translated/is written in English? I'm assuming there's some good stuff out there somewhere even if I have no idea where it would be.
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Jul 9, 2018 01:07
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Sampatrick posted:What's the best xianxia web novel that's been translated/is written in English? I'm assuming there's some good stuff out there somewhere even if I have no idea where it would be. That would probably be Uwaah?! I'm A Girl Reincarnated In A Cultivation World?! But I'm A Boy!!
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Jul 9, 2018 01:27
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Sampatrick posted:What's the best xianxia web novel that's been translated/is written in English? I'm assuming there's some good stuff out there somewhere even if I have no idea where it would be. Ze Tian Ji Not even a contest 
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Jul 9, 2018 01:39
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Sampatrick posted:What's the best xianxia web novel that's been translated/is written in English? I'm assuming there's some good stuff out there somewhere even if I have no idea where it would be. Forge of Destiny! quote:The carriage was impossibly fast, Ling Qi thought as she stared out of the tiny window at a landscape that was little more than a green and brown blur. She knew she should be excited, maybe awed, she was witnessing the power of an Immortal after all. It wasn’t something a girl like her could have ever expected to see. Instead she simply felt numb. Absently she brushed a strand of her unruly black hair out of her eyes. She had let it get too long again, hanging down below her ears as it was, it had slipped her mind in the last couple of months. Ling Qi, street thief, is just starting out in the Argent Sect and entering the world of cultivators. As she makes friends and goes on adventures (not necessarily in that order), she finds out who she wants to be. I really like Ling Qi's character arc, the setting is fun, and the side characters are very fleshed out. Katreus fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jul 9, 2018 |
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Jul 9, 2018 01:56
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Sampatrick posted:What's the best xianxia web novel that's been translated/is written in English? I'm assuming there's some good stuff out there somewhere even if I have no idea where it would be. If you want something complete, I Shall Seal the Heavens is pretty good. Desolate Era is alright too but very much at its strongest in the first few books. Both are complete translations. A Will Eternal is pretty funny and good, though I've not read it for several hundred releases myself. Forge of Destiny is a very good English original story driven by readers voting. Forge of Destiny is definitely the best as far as character writing goes. Avoid anything like Martial God Asura and its ilk, that's all basically main character wanking and tries to justify mass murder at a distressingly frequent rate.
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Jul 9, 2018 02:45
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There's an ADTRW thread for translated light/web novels that will probably have a lot of what you're looking for too. I'm not much into that sort of thing but there's a lot of overlap with English web serial audiences from what I understand. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3793167
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Jul 9, 2018 03:58
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Oh man, so I got bored and read The Good Student. It was interesting enough to keep me reading in spite of the mary sue main character, the rudimentary writing, and the weird sexism/entitlement thing that permeated everything, but holy freaking crap I can't remember a story that had more unlikable characters in it, and I read The First Law recently. It feels like almost every freaking person in that school is a sociopath; it's telling that easily the most likable person in the entire story is a mass-murdering child soldier (well, child battlemage). I am somewhat confused with the rapid-fire decoy plots/redirects in the second half, though. All-Mother, the Librarian, and the All-Father(?) aren't demons, they're just administrators of some kind, all but one (?) of the demons are already in the mortal's world, and the demons don't pose a threat to humanity because possessing wizards and dragons keeps them happy. So what was the deal with tons of demons/mages/whatever trying to open the doors? Was that all planned and orchestrated by the crazy archmage lady from her prison?
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Jul 9, 2018 07:54
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Whoever called out that the Wandering Bard was intimately tied with the Dead King take a bow.
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Jul 9, 2018 10:57
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Well that went interesting places. Of course it's the goddamn Bard! 
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Jul 9, 2018 14:06
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It always is.
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Jul 9, 2018 14:33
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Sampatrick posted:What's the best xianxia web novel that's been translated/is written in English? I'm assuming there's some good stuff out there somewhere even if I have no idea where it would be. Seconding Forge of Destiny; it benefits from being written in English to start with, and it has some really great characterization and creative/interesting fight scenes/powers. The best thing the author does, in my opinion, is that they manage to convincingly make it seem like all the side characters have their own lives and goals unrelated to the protagonist. If the protagonist doesn't spend much time with a character (which is possible, since it's a quest with reader choices involved), they'll naturally grow apart from them. As far as "originally written in Chinese" ones, I really like My Disciple Died Yet Again, though it's more a comedy based around Xianxia tropes than a straight Xianxia.
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Jul 9, 2018 16:57
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Sampatrick posted:What's the best xianxia web novel that's been translated/is written in English? I'm assuming there's some good stuff out there somewhere even if I have no idea where it would be. I don't know about 'best' because, quite frankly, it's all pure pulp getting churned out at insane word rates, but I enjoy Library of Heaven's Path and A Will Eternal because they're both comedic takes on the genre with trickster types as main protagonists. I found the few works I tried that are just straight martial arts xianxia to be harder to get into, because, I dunno, I find the martial arts and obsession everyone in these stories has with them a bit too goofy to take 100% seriously. Omi no Kami posted:Oh man, so I got bored and read The Good Student. It was interesting enough to keep me reading in spite of the mary sue main character, the rudimentary writing, and the weird sexism/entitlement thing that permeated everything, but holy freaking crap I can't remember a story that had more unlikable characters in it, and I read The First Law recently. It feels like almost every freaking person in that school is a sociopath; it's telling that easily the most likable person in the entire story is a mass-murdering child soldier (well, child battlemage). Yeah, I stopped reading it a dozen or two chapters in because of that.
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Jul 9, 2018 19:56
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Ytlaya posted:The thing that confuses me about Cat's ideology is that, on one hand, you have the "ideology isn't enough, the rules are there for a reason and breaking them just causes more suffering!" stuff you sorta mention, but on the other hand she's okay with just enforcing her own will without being worried about infringing upon Tower law or the will of Malicia or whatever (like when she let the knights join her). Normally I'd interpret that as some sort of general "pragmatically acting for the greater good" thing, but she's obviously not really doing that either, given the net result of her actions. You could say she's limiting her scope to Callow, but that's kind of arbitrary; at that point it's just a difference of scale between her and the person who limits their scope to their friends and family (since in neither case is the person seeking the best overall outcome when accounting for all people). I didn't really think about Cat being a bit of a control freak, but on retro-prospect I am pretty sure you are correct. Her refusal to be cowed is probably born from it (and kinda makes Cat and Malicia similar in that aspect). Having said that, Cat doesn't really believe in unbreakable rules, she is kinda agnostic in several respects*. I meant how she reflected that villainy is at its core is supremely selfish and characterized by the disregard for social mores and empathy. Catherine remarks on it on chapter 54 in book 3, on how even if Malicia would have abdicated, became a nun and would not have hurt a fly until the end of her days she would still be evil because she still has the mindset that inflamed a civil war in Procer that killed thousands because she judged it necessary. One of the chapter quotes even summarizes this mode of thought: quote:“What say you, Empress of Praes? Willing to sacrifice others because simply because you acknowledge that no one can stop you is at the core of being Evil. Cat even touched on that subject when she talked with Black way back at book 2, when she mentioned that she thought that villains are wrong to think that they have dominion over others simply because who they are. Cat didn't sign in with Evil because she thought they were justified or cool (even if she can understand the resentment driving quite a lot of the characters), she signed in because it she viewed it as the only game in town, The sister's vision of Good and good isn't wrong, Cat simply views it as insufficient to actually achieve her vision of Callow. She isn't willing to give up her aspirations for the greater good, because why would she? She doesn't view the pursuit of good for in itself being a laudable goal. You are correct that Cat is kinda loving up in regards to making Callow better but it's not from a lack of will  .* I think it's a direct result of Black's influence on her upbringing via the orphanage, she isn't Praesi and doesn't buy in on quite a lot of cultural baggage that other Praesi have, and on the other hand she isn't fully Callowan because due to her tutelage in the Praesi sponsored orphanage her image of Callow is pretty different from those the likes of Talbot or Vivienne. Ytlaya posted:This wasn't Cat specifically, but just referring to the general idea of fighting for the survival of Praes/Callow (Malicia mentioned that causing starvation in Procer would be necessary to avoid a Crusade definitely winning against Praes). Malicia's sins aren't Catherine's sins. Otherwise all the heroes could be accused of being surly assholes like William .Having written all those  on A Practical Guide To Evil, I recall someone in this thread describing it as a campy B-Movie and I kinda agree with that assertion. Admittedly, one of my main big reasons to liking this story is because I enjoy resentment as a main character motive, and boy is it everywhere on the villain side.
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Jul 9, 2018 21:59
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Megazver posted:Yeah, I stopped reading it a dozen or two chapters in because of that. It's pulpy as all get-out, but there really is a halfway-fun story there. I'm probably not going to keep current now that I finished what's been written, because the sexism in particular is a real bummer, but if he retained an editor, cut out maybe half of what's there, and streamlined the rest so it had a coherent, linear plot, ensured that each setup eventually payed off, and added one or two characters who weren't complete monsters, I think it'd be worth following.
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Jul 10, 2018 01:09
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Omi no Kami posted:It's pulpy as all get-out, but there really is a halfway-fun story there. I'm probably not going to keep current now that I finished what's been written, because the sexism in particular is a real bummer, but if he retained an editor, cut out maybe half of what's there, and streamlined the rest so it had a coherent, linear plot, ensured that each setup eventually payed off, and added one or two characters who weren't complete monsters, I think it'd be worth following. The Good Student is also on some hosting site with a ridiculous amount of cancerous ads. I typically read on my iPhone and it was both crashing Chrome constantly and consuming enormous amounts of bandwidth to attempt to read it from all the ads/malware.
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Jul 10, 2018 01:52
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Velius posted:The Good Student is also on some hosting site with a ridiculous amount of cancerous ads. I typically read on my iPhone and it was both crashing Chrome constantly and consuming enormous amounts of bandwidth to attempt to read it from all the ads/malware. Yikes, that's not great... I read it over my browser, which is equipped with enough security and ad-blocking stuff that tons of pages flat-out break, but at the very least it seems to have protected me from terrible ad placement. ^^
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Jul 10, 2018 02:01
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Self-quote for the now public chapter:Silynt posted:Wandering Inn Patreon chapter (4.49):
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Jul 10, 2018 14:44
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Indeed. The death flags were obvious but I was hedging my bets all the way to the end, since Magnolia still had that Illuminati council of hers that I assumed he'd have a lot to do in. I think Reiss turning against the Necromancer happened a bit too fast all things considered, but I'm satisfied with it. Also, that stuff was great and all but I really miss happy fun times with Erin!
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Jul 10, 2018 15:22
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Argue posted:Indeed. The death flags were obvious but I was hedging my bets all the way to the end, since Magnolia still had that Illuminati council of hers that I assumed he'd have a lot to do in. I think Reiss turning against the Necromancer happened a bit too fast all things considered, but I'm satisfied with it. Also, that stuff was great and all but I really miss happy fun times with Erin! Reiss has been waiting for the opportunity this whole time. And what better chance is he going to get? Az'Kerash is out of teleportation scrolls and his minions are out of commission. I am wondering if he will free Ossia though.
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Jul 10, 2018 15:54
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She died, right? I read the chapter a few days ago but I thought that there was a bit about her dying.
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Jul 10, 2018 16:04
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She was clubbed down trying to save Zel from an ambush, but not stated to have died. Zel kills a female Hob one paragraph later, so the text saying "She screamed and died" may have thrown you off.
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Jul 10, 2018 16:58
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I like the Daily Grind. Now I really want a poster that says WORK HARD AND ALSO WORK HARD.
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Jul 10, 2018 18:22
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Cicero posted:I like the Daily Grind. Now I really want a poster that says WORK HARD AND ALSO WORK HARD. Yes, it's good.
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Jul 10, 2018 18:36
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Argue posted:She was clubbed down trying to save Zel from an ambush, but not stated to have died. Zel kills a female Hob one paragraph later, so the text saying "She screamed and died" may have thrown you off. Yeah that's probably it. Well that's good news at least.
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Jul 10, 2018 18:41
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ward 8.3 do we know who "the boy from the community centre" at the end I's referring to?
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Jul 10, 2018 18:42
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Lone Goat posted:ward 8.3 do we know who "the boy from the community centre" at the end I's referring to? crystalclear? it says his dang name in the same quote.
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Jul 10, 2018 19:25
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Yeah the wording is really wonky but its referring to the named cape.
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Jul 10, 2018 19:40
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So I just read the epilogue to Book 3 of PracGuide, and I find Black's reaction to all this recent stuff (and his relationship with the Empress) really interesting. edit: I also liked the one life during the Fourfold Crossing chapter where the Bumbling Conjurer apparently loses the "Bumbling" and becomes a badass who knocks over mountains to prevent Procer from invading. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jul 10, 2018 |
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Jul 10, 2018 19:46
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violent sex idiot posted:crystalclear? it says his dang name in the same quote. Oh I thought it meant that the (who you said) was on the boy's side, in that (who you said) was vouching for the boy.
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Jul 10, 2018 19:53
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PracGuide: Well I guess that's one way for Masego to get his next Aspect.
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Jul 11, 2018 07:42
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can't quite tell whether this is Heirophant brute forcing the ability to cast miracles via aspect, or using the aspect to witness the scene in full. Or both.
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Jul 11, 2018 09:45
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prac guide 29 love that thief talks about torturing diabolist and Cat gets incredibly hornt up
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Jul 11, 2018 13:49
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Prac Guide: Was that a new aspect for Masego? What have we seen from him before?
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Jul 11, 2018 16:53
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Vateke posted:Prac Guide: Was that a new aspect for Masego? What have we seen from him before? nothing, I think this is his first actual aspect as Heirophant. The old aspects we knew were from Apprentice.
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Jul 11, 2018 17:03
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By the way, what happened to Nauk? I thought Warlock said Masego had asked him to heal him (during the scene where he threatens Catherine) and that he would recover in a month, but I still haven't heard from him (as of book 4 chapter 2) and people are talking about him like he's dead. I'm imagining Nauk being left in some tent outside the ruins of Liesse, all his friends having forgotten that he's alive.
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Jul 11, 2018 18:13
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Lone Goat posted:prac guide 29 love that thief talks about torturing diabolist and Cat gets incredibly hornt up It's pretty funny
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Jul 11, 2018 18:15
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I feel like Catherine has changed a lot ever since fully taking on the Winter mantle, largely out of necessity (since leaning too much into those emotions makes her lose control). I just read the chapter where she talks with Grey Pilgrim, and he makes some reasonable points (about how having someone like her in charge sets a bad precedent), but I think she's ultimately still more correct than he is just because he's stuck in a mindset that believes fundamental change just isn't possible (which is kinda understandable given his age/experience, and helps explain why he believes Catherine's approach is doomed to failure in the long-term). I would bet money that this "leaving Akua around as a soul that is attached to her" thing is going to backfire though, lol. edit: Regarding my earlier mention of Nauk, it was finally just confirmed that he is, in fact, alive (and a general even). I hope it turns out that Nauk actually wasn't healed, and everyone is just dragging around his corpse and calling it general because they don't want to hurt Catherine's feelings Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jul 11, 2018 |
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Jul 11, 2018 20:41
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i think part of the point of catherine is that when nobody told her it was impossible for her to speak she spoke. if someone who believes fundamental changes are impossible is in charge nothings going to change
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Jul 11, 2018 20:43
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