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Was not expecting Roko's Simurgh
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Mar 30, 2020 08:25
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I thought Victoria's super last ditch apocalypse prevention plan was more about putting everyone into comas so that they have really vivid dreams and pollute the shards precious Combat Data, which works because shards have a hard time distinguishing dreams from reality, and death is only a side effect. This is her once again following her mom's battle plan of "deny the enemy what they want." But that only applies to the Simurgh, who's the one that wants 100 million years of combat data, so I don't know what the plan is vs the titan Fortuna? Also for the first time ever The Sleeper is right there on camera, and their power has never been fully defined, so if you want to pull a wonky powers reaction with a bunch of dreaming parahumans the pieces are all on the board. Also last chapter was a whole big argument with Tattletale who explains her view about why heroic sacrifices suck actually and you shouldn't do them so I'm not quite ready to believe the plot is actually taking a sharp right turn into "lol nihilism." If we're going with "reaching out" and "acceptance" as the actual positive themes of the book, one way I can see to move forward is to reach out to the shards and open direct negotiations, which Victoria is already doing. Accept that the Earth/Earths are now boned, and the shards need to explode Earth to continue their life cycle. But hey, maybe before you do that, you could unlock some of those matter generation and tinkertech powers and make humanity a couple of orbital ring habitats to live on? Like Mannequin wanted to do, only don't sabotage the powers and drive the wielder mad. Just saying, both parties can get what they want here. jboslund fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Mar 30, 2020 |
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Mar 30, 2020 17:23
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I've assumed that there's going to be some sort of trick to the dying. I'm a few chapters behind, but given the involvement of the biotinkers I'm assuming something that somehow tricks the relevant entities into thinking humanity is dead (it's been shown that the entities/shards can confuse people with other people in situations like the twins' and multi-trigger groups, so it's possible the solution might involve somehow changing humans such that the entities/shards can no longer recognize them as such). edit: Unrelated, but this part in my PracGuide reread is funny: quote:“Understood,” I said. “If the two of you would keep an eye out, I’ll clean up these loose ends.” Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Mar 30, 2020 |
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Mar 30, 2020 21:59
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Anias posted:This is good. Ytlaya posted:This is really good and, at least for me, definitely has a "page-turner" sorta aspect to it that makes me want to keep reading. Hungry posted:This is real good. Aaa, thank you so much! After posting with almost no audience for as long as I can remember, it’s incredibly flattering to have people read and enjoy this. Sampatrick posted:I don't know if this is just me, but this reads very strangely to me. My writing experience is more screenwriting than prose, so the sentences don’t always flow as well as I’d like. Definitely something I’m trying to work on. Appreciate the feedback. Gladi posted:Very nice writing, but it is way too uncomfortable for me to read. PoorWeather posted:This is extremely good, but it is so affecting that I don't think I can read it until it's finished, or at least until certain plot points are resolved. Totally get it. Sorry if the homepage content warning wasn’t specific enough - let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to add there. If you’re interested, would love to know which plot points you're referring to. Re: Prologue, I’ve been getting that suggestion a lot, so I think I’m going to move it to a later point where it’s more relevant. Thanks for the note!
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Mar 30, 2020 23:52
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madwhitesnake posted:Hi all. A bit late to the party, but I read this over the weekend and it's really rad, so thanks for working on it! My only real constructive criticism having gotten current is the viewpoints often switch at very frustrating times. I was fully onboard with Ana's initial dying kid/body heist story, was initially frustrated by the switch to Nell, but quickly got engaged with her story. By the time it switched back to Ana my urgency to see her story had diminished, and I was now totally engaged with seeing Nell's thing. I don't know if there's really a way to tackle that, because both stories are really engrossing and I'm interested in both characters, but it feels like some air gets let out of the tires every time we swap viewpoints. This is definitely going on the shelf next to Katalepsis and ItM though- all three give me the same vibe of being real stories with actual good-rear end writing and solid structure and pacing instead of whatever the bulk of the web serial community is up to these days.
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Mar 31, 2020 00:18
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jboslund posted:I thought Victoria's super last ditch apocalypse prevention plan was more about putting everyone into comas so that they have really vivid dreams and pollute the shards precious Combat Data, which works because shards have a hard time distinguishing dreams from reality, and death is only a side effect. This is her once again following her mom's battle plan of "deny the enemy what they want." But that only applies to the Simurgh, who's the one that wants 100 million years of combat data, so I don't know what the plan is vs the titan Fortuna? Also for the first time ever The Sleeper is right there on camera, and their power has never been fully defined, so if you want to pull a wonky powers reaction with a bunch of dreaming parahumans the pieces are all on the board. you misread this a bit. the plan vs simurgh is "gently caress simurgh up enough that the titans can beat her in a fistfight." corrupting the data to mess up the cycle is an anti fortuna plan, and im guessing its a mutually assured destruction bargaining chip thing, to have the new generation of entities that come out of earth be all hosed up and deformed jsoh fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Mar 31, 2020 |
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Mar 31, 2020 00:35
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Omi no Kami posted:A bit late to the party, but I read this over the weekend and it's really rad, so thanks for working on it! My only real constructive criticism having gotten current is the viewpoints often switch at very frustrating times. I was fully onboard with Ana's initial dying kid/body heist story, was initially frustrated by the switch to Nell, but quickly got engaged with her story. By the time it switched back to Ana my urgency to see her story had diminished, and I was now totally engaged with seeing Nell's thing. I think the balance ends up working pretty well. By the time of the first switch I was a bit frustrated by wanting to know what happened next, but it happened at probably the most reasonable possible time (in the sense that it wasn't an immediate cliff-hanger but was still a pretty reasonable "pausing" point) and I was also pretty quickly engaged with the next PoV. It also helps a lot that the first PoV makes you curious about the academy, and then you get to find out about that through the next PoV. In retrospect I think that actually helps a whole lot with making the switch-over work.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:18
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Ytlaya posted:I think the balance ends up working pretty well. By the time of the first switch I was a bit frustrated by wanting to know what happened next, but it happened at probably the most reasonable possible time (in the sense that it wasn't an immediate cliff-hanger but was still a pretty reasonable "pausing" point) and I was also pretty quickly engaged with the next PoV. It also helps a lot that the first PoV makes you curious about the academy, and then you get to find out about that through the next PoV. In retrospect I think that actually helps a whole lot with making the switch-over work. Yeah, that's why I said I don't know if there's really a way around it- both characters are both interesting and engaging, and the switches do occur at structurally natural places. I think switching away from Ana the first time was the biggest letdown, because her 'gotta make money, gotta bodyswap good' thing felt really urgent, but by the time we came back to her it was more of an 'Eh, I guess she's gotta deal with that at some point' piece of framing. It does definitely become less of an issue as the story progresses, though- the first switch away from Ana, and the first one away from Nell to follow Samuel for a chapter and then go back to Ana were the ones that felt like speedbumps to me- now that they're buddy cop-ing it, it's not a problem at all.
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Mar 31, 2020 01:49
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madwhitesnake posted:Totally get it. Sorry if the homepage content warning wasn’t specific enough - let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to add there. If you’re interested, would love to know which plot points you're referring to. Re: Prologue, I’ve been getting that suggestion a lot, so I think I’m going to move it to a later point where it’s more relevant. Thanks for the note! It's more personal than really something you could sum up into a content warning - and I wasn't viscerally upset by any part of the content in particular. I just have a lot of complicated hangups with body problems and bad medical experiences tangential to that, and the impression I got from the first few arcs of the story was that it's setting itself up to be one of those yank-the-dogs-chain narratives where an escape from the protagonists situation is going to be kept painfully out of reach, with most of the drama centering around that and salt being rubbed in the wound in various ways - which already happened a few times as far as I read. Don't get the wrong idea! I don't think that's bad writing at all. In fact, it's extremely poignant for the format. But unfortunately it's pretty unfun for me, and it'd be even worse dragged out over a long serial with a short update cycle. PoorWeather fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Mar 31, 2020 |
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Mar 31, 2020 17:36
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Is "the city gets attacked" the only plot twist in TWI or what?
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Mar 31, 2020 21:34
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mossyfisk posted:Is "the city gets attacked" the only plot twist in TWI or what? Sometimes a different city gets attacked, or a place near the city.
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Mar 31, 2020 21:40
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Sometimes people in the city attack other places, and then that place attacks them back.
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Mar 31, 2020 21:44
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The real twist is that the chapter never loving ends goddamn. I meant to read more Pith tonight but whoops now it's too late because pirate just posted something that's long even for her.
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Mar 31, 2020 22:01
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7.15R - I love any chapter where Belavierr shows up, and holy poo poo Halrac is a badass, the only adventurer to even come close to putting up a fight against her. I wasn't sure where her plot was going the last time we saw her, and I REALLY did not expect her to show up like this. Really going to miss TWI during Pirate's break, didn't manage to read 7.16L last night and I almost want to hold off for a week just to make the break feel shorter.
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Mar 31, 2020 22:14
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I've got like two weeks of catching up to do and I know I'm gonna love every moment of it when I do.
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Mar 31, 2020 22:18
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Wandering Inn 7.16L: Hollllllllllllly poo poo Feels like the payoff of about four books worth of threads. And nobody died! E: Also rags likes to watch  (mating rituals callback)
RockyB fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Apr 1, 2020 |
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Mar 31, 2020 23:35
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Double post but whoever it was who recommended http://fanfiction.net/s/8096183/2/Harry-Potter-and-the-Natural-20: thank you. I'm rather drunk but dear god I have cackled to myself so much in the first two chapters.
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Apr 1, 2020 00:28
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mossyfisk posted:Is "the city gets attacked" the only plot twist in TWI or what? lol those aren't plot twists that's just how life is
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Apr 1, 2020 02:54
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violent sex idiot posted:you misread this a bit. (...). Oh. Well that makes the plan make more sense and leaves humanity in a somewhat stronger position. Also I just realized Ward is poised to potentially kick off a series of dream sequences, at midnight, April Fools day morning. Time to go prepare the world's biggest grain of salt. edit: Of course there aren't any shenanigans and instead it's a super sad chapter. 
jboslund fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Apr 2, 2020 |
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Apr 1, 2020 03:46
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Re: Pith, the stuff with Kaplen is pretty soul-crushing, jesus christ. edit: Btw madwhitesnake, you should submit Pith to places like topwebfiction (and post about it on the forums that seem to be connected to the "web serial community"*) if you haven't already yet (I didn't see it there, so I assumed you haven't). I think Pith manages to hit the sort of notes that could make it really popular (like having a cleared defined "system" with what is essentially superpowers + pacing that keeps you engaged), and it pains me to see something that good have so few readers. * I think spacebattles and sufficientvelocity have some sort of connection to some of the major web serials Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Apr 3, 2020 |
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Apr 2, 2020 08:29
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Omi no Kami posted:My only real constructive criticism having gotten current is the viewpoints often switch at very frustrating times. That’s super fair. I struggled with that issue in the outline stage, and switching there was the least-frustrating solution I could think of. Glad you kept reading, though! Ytlaya posted:Btw madwhitesnake, you should submit Pith to places like topwebfiction Unfortunately, topwebfiction stopped approving new submissions just before I was gonna submit, and the site seems to be in a rough spot at the moment. Will definitely try out spacebattles and SV, though, and am planning to venture into the wilds of Royalroad at some point. Thanks!
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Apr 4, 2020 02:16
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madwhitesnake posted:Unfortunately, topwebfiction stopped approving new submissions just before I was gonna submit, and the site seems to be in a rough spot at the moment. Will definitely try out spacebattles and SV, though, and am planning to venture into the wilds of Royalroad at some point. Thanks! Yeah, TopWebFiction is tied to WebFictionGuide. WFG is dead, though, and the last story to make it through the submission queue was in September 2019. I would not anticipate it returning under any circumstances. Some serial writers have been talking about setting up a new site like WFG, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, either, because the sole remaining WFG has vanished into the ether and/or wouldn't hand over the site data.
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Apr 4, 2020 02:29
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madwhitesnake posted:That’s super fair. I struggled with that issue in the outline stage, and switching there was the least-frustrating solution I could think of. Glad you kept reading, though! Yeah and like, even though it frustrated me as a reader I'm genuinely not sure if there's anything that could've been done to ameliorate it- like others have said both perspectives are useful in the story, and there's really no good time to switch, so it's all probably fine. 
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Apr 4, 2020 05:35
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Yeah, TopWebFiction is tied to WebFictionGuide. WFG is dead, though, and the last story to make it through the submission queue was in September 2019. I would not anticipate it returning under any circumstances. Some serial writers have been talking about setting up a new site like WFG, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, either, because the sole remaining WFG has vanished into the ether and/or wouldn't hand over the site data. What happened there, anyway? You've brought it up a couple of times now and I am hungry for deets.
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Apr 4, 2020 18:07
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I just read the first Episode of Pith. Reminded me so much of the beginning of Worm that I am curious if the four letter title and use of 'Caterpillar' in the first Episode name were cute references to Wildbow's story. Anyway I liked it and will keep reading! Also seeing as how to the author is posting in this thread I have a question that I always wonder when reading this kind of fantasy. How much time did you spend on creating the world of the story before you started writing? In fact how do you even begin to go about creating a fantasy world? Do you have like a history of the world written down or a map of the world drawn or is it all in your head?
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Apr 4, 2020 22:11
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:What happened there, anyway? You've brought it up a couple of times now and I am hungry for deets. Nothing too juicy, unfortunately. Basically, the site admins just stopped logging in and doing their jobs except for the site owner. The site gradually fell to bits over time - that's why you can't register a new account and why there was a week where TopWebFiction stopped functioning entirely. The site owner said they were going to create a new site but the last thing they posted on the forum was that it was just 'a few days' away, then they never posted again. That was months ago. Apparently, they refused to release the site data (so, story listings, reviews, etc) to some serial writers who wanted to set up their own site to continue WFG's work while preserving the literal years of history there. But here are a variety of other fun things: If you tag your story as science-fiction, it gets retagged as science-fantasy. Every story that has tagged itself science-fiction has ended up like this. This is seemingly because the guy who posts Legion of Nothing, which holds the #1 Sci-Fi spot, is maybe the only remaining editor/admin with some semblance of activity. So, this means you get stories like Not All Heroes shoved into the Fantasy rankings. Additionally, despite tagging coming from the author of the work, the editors/admins will adjust tags as they see fit. I couldn't get NAH tagged with 'love' and 'free will' despite those being major themes and 'fantasy' and 'science-fantasy' were not ones I suggested and would not be removed. A few months back, Twig went missing from the WFG site. Gone like it never existed. No one has a clue why. WFG claims it will never remove fictions. Editorial reviews/ratings only went to the friends of the admins. Ward got one the moment it went up, and that's like the only story that did since. This bugs a lot of serial writers as an editorial rating posts your updates into the feed of the front page.
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Apr 5, 2020 00:24
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Does TBB have it's own Chinese cultivation novel thread or would discussion of them go here?
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Apr 5, 2020 00:48
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Lot 49 posted:I just read the first Episode of Pith. Reminded me so much of the beginning of Worm that I am curious if the four letter title and use of 'Caterpillar' in the first Episode name were cute references to Wildbow's story. Worm is one of the many inspirations, definitely. Particularly at the start, and for the wordpress theme/first-person-plus-interlude chapter design. That being said, the title and caterpillar mention are unintentional. And if the story resembles Worm much deeper into the narrative, than I haven’t done my job as an author, because it's not my intention to write a remake, or something everyone’s seen before. Lot 49 posted:Also seeing as how to the author is posting in this thread I have a question that I always wonder when reading this kind of fantasy. How much time did you spend on creating the world of the story before you started writing? Way too much time. I have endless pages of bullet points describing history, magic rules, answers to twists, etc. so I don’t forget (though no maps, I suck at drawing). But like 60% of it was developed as I was drafting the early chapters - it can sometimes be easier to construct settings when you're seeing them in action. No definitive starting point, though my favorite thing is to pull elements from IRL history, which I find rich and often untapped. And, that being said, the real writing god I worship is story structure, not worldbuilding. IMO, without good pacing/conflict/characters, even a breathtaking setting can read like a million-word wiki entry. And I love wiki-walking, don't get me wrong, but I love a satisfying story even more. Glad you're enjoying it!
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Apr 5, 2020 01:02
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Oh, my favorite part of WFG's recent history. So, WFG's submission guidelines have a small note saying that if your story is posted on a large, pre-existing community - say, Wattpad - it can't be listed on WFG. Part of WFG is to help lesser-known works get recognition and find readers. At some point, because the admins are basically stuck in 2012-2013, they started listing RoyalRoad stories. A bunch of serial writers questioned whether this meshed with the guidelines, especially because RRL saw way more activity than some of the sites that stories were barred from. The owner said they hoped it would lead to people from RRL coming to post on WFG and revitalize the place. Well, it didn't. It just led to RRL effortlessly taking high rankings on TWF. Something like 50% of the successful submissions that came through WFG were from RRL. I think when DotF first got listed and was riding 'come vote on TWF' high it scored something like 3000~ votes, effortlessly shooting right to the top. The high amount of submissions is especially funny when, a few years back, WFG's site owner said the 'no major sites' rule was really to make it easy on the people working the submission queue - they just couldn't keep up with the sheer volume of stories that'd come from Wattpad and stuff.
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Apr 5, 2020 01:13
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Nurglings posted:Does TBB have it's own Chinese cultivation novel thread or would discussion of them go here? Sort of. There's a web novel thread where that chat usually happens.
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Apr 5, 2020 01:29
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madwhitesnake posted:Worm is one of the many inspirations, definitely. Particularly at the start, and for the wordpress theme/first-person-plus-interlude chapter design. I enjoy Worm and most other wildbow things, but I actually think Pith is considerably better; it has some of the elements that make something like Worm enjoyable without a lot of the problems. Speaking of Pith, I'm caught up now and to be honest I'm starting to increasingly sympathize with the humdrums/Commonplace and feel like this society is in desperate need of some sort of check on the power of projectors. That being said, it's also my understanding that the world consists of enough super-powerful projectors that prioritizing the development of talented projectors is a key national security issue (since it seems like Tau being senile is a big problem). Also, I have a couple setting/lore questions: - Are the 1/1000 people with the ability to project the only ones who can move their pith into a different body chassis? - Has it been explained why there are no visible stars in the night sky? One thing I really like about the setting is that there's a bunch of these mysteries sort of hovering around in the background that are only occasionally mentioned (because they aren't currently directly relevant to our characters). - At various points a body chassis is referred to as being made of silk and gemstones, but they also obviously function as flesh and blood. Was the former just to emphasize how good they looked, or is there some special mechanic to the way people merge their pith into the bodies?
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Apr 5, 2020 01:52
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Ytlaya posted:- At various points a body chassis is referred to as being made of silk and gemstones, but they also obviously function as flesh and blood. Was the former just to emphasize how good they looked, or is there some special mechanic to the way people merge their pith into the bodies? There's a scene where a body turns from manufactured to essentially biological + whatever the mystical stuff is, so the people making the custom bodies have figured out some sort of formal possibly industrial standard and process for laying in the magic that triggers a transformation/transmutation effect when a pith transfers.
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Apr 5, 2020 01:56
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LLSix posted:Sort of. There's a web novel thread where that chat usually happens. ty I've just started reading some Xianxia novels after being "introduced" to the genre by Will Wight and his Cradle series, but the discussion on forums like Novel Updates is kinda poo poo-tier.
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Apr 5, 2020 02:07
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Nurglings posted:ty Check out will's discord if you haven't.
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Apr 5, 2020 06:14
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madwhitesnake posted:And, that being said, the real writing god I worship is story structure, not worldbuilding. Preach it, yeah!
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Apr 5, 2020 06:27
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Nothing too juicy, unfortunately. I mean, that was pretty juicy! Thanks. Someone should start a new ranking site from scratch, what it sounds like.
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Apr 5, 2020 09:54
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Megazver posted:I mean, that was pretty juicy! Thanks. So you'll have it done by Wednesday, is what I'm hearing.
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Apr 5, 2020 21:36
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I'll start the wiki.
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Apr 6, 2020 04:11
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Plorkyeran posted:I'll start the wiki. Well, there is https://muses-success.info/ if you just want a straight up wiki. I have registered webfictionindex.com and when I have something I am not embarrassed to show others will update the thread. I am not sure I am really down with the "manually approving 1000+ stories" thing so I think it will just be authors managing their own stuff. We'll see.
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Apr 6, 2020 04:46
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Ytlaya posted:Also, I have a couple setting/lore questions: Ytlaya posted:- Has it been explained why there are no visible stars in the night sky? Anias posted:There's a scene where a body turns from manufactured to essentially biological + whatever the mystical stuff is, so the people making the custom bodies have figured out some sort of formal possibly industrial standard and process for laying in the magic that triggers a transformation/transmutation effect when a pith transfers.
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Apr 7, 2020 02:28
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