|
Nettle Soup posted:I don't know but I wanna read it.
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2021 16:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 07:36 |
|
|
Sadly "What if you give him medicine for free, and then tax those who can afford it" stretches the credulity far more than a literal deity giving some teenager elemental powers.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2021 17:18
|
|
|
Just make the surgeon a wandering god. "If you meet the Surgeon on the road, fleece them!" It's kind of an overdone trope I suppose, but one that can be cool. Nettle Soup fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Nov 9, 2021 |
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2021 17:22
|
|
|
You can make it a bit of fluff, with wandering surgeons or doctors practicing on wounded travelers to grind out skills or experience since you're writing a LitRPG.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2021 17:27
|
|
|
Sibling of TB posted:Any isekai thing where the normal earthling ends up in a high technology cyperpunk world instead of a fantasy trope world, and can't get by with their outsider knowledge of "I come from a world with 8 billion humans and nuclear weapons and here is the knowledge of gunpowder" and instead uses knowledge of things like nature or ethics or whatever to break the system? Long War was kind of like that, but looks like it was dropped.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2021 17:51
|
|
|
Loud music plays, various male dancers appear, backup lights turn on. Star Pummeler, the Number One Doctor On The Top Doctor Charts for the Ninth Week In A Row smashes through the skylight. Prop girls immediately wheel the skylight away and sweep up the glass. Star Puneler punches the air, then needlessly combat rolls over the wounded MC, to punch the already defeated enemy. Then she rolls backwards, dropping a leg on the also already defeated sidekick. They huff, "but I'm on your team!" and pass out. Star punneler kips up, and then after shuffling through an awkward number of guns with no clear supply of ammunition, punches the guns into the floor. The protagonist, outlined in deformed guns, exclaims "Not you again." and Star Pumneler does not listen. They punch the protagonist, lightly, but with a firmness that is both soft and hard. "Your inner meridians are shattered" they exclaim, and the protagonist spits blood. "They are now. I suppose I shall die." replies the protagonist, but Stark pummeler is not moved nor listening nor aware. Star Pumeller's eyes blaze. "Not while I am here. I am the Top Doctor on the Number One Doctor Chart for the Week in a Ninth!" The protagonist's vision is fading, but he distinctly hears the sound of intense breathing and also intense punching and also intense star-blazing-passion. "I will save you," Star Pummeler explains, and the protagonist, blissful, passes out. Star Pummeler rubs some dirt on him, and rolls him over into the recovery position. "Another day saved." They combat roll out through the window. The dancers stop, look at one another, and pick up the backup lights and sound equipment. One of them staples a bill to the protagonist's booty. They walk off, through the door, down the hall, to the staircase, discussing where they are going to eat lunch today. "Shawarma, there's this place just a few blocks over." ~~Original Content, Do Not Steal~~ (Feel free to use however you like, though. It's a gift.)
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2021 18:03
|
|
|
Newfork posted:My wife used to read translations of a chinese web novel that updated daily. By the end of the serialization, the author was going insane on the page. Don't do that to yourself but: if you want to, it helps to have a buffer. It's worth pointing out that many Chinese webnovels are not published independently. Authors sign a contract with a company like Qidian (they're the biggest/most well-known, I believe), who owns the platform and the rights to the novel. Readers pay the company, who in turn pays the author. The author has no idea if they're being paid fairly. If the author doesn't produce, they don't get paid. I'm not sure if they get money from translation either. I can't speak to how they treat their authors, but I have head that Qidian was pushing really unfavourable contracts. You might think "well, why not just go to another site?" The problem is that the other sites, knowing they have a stranglehold on publication, also started to push unfavourable contracts. Other sites, like Archive Of Our Own, were simply banned in China. e: here's a post I found on one of their contracts:
Also, competition is much higher than say on RR (the 996 system is much more common in China), and that censorship a huge issue - your novel could be pulled if you say the wrong thing, and since you don't own it it's not like you can go elsewhere. I know of at least one author who threw in the towel because he couldn't deal with working for a company. It's sad, but the stress just isn't worth it. Narmi fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Nov 9, 2021 |
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2021 18:44
|
|
|
I'll throw in a recommendation for Saltworld on royalroad out there. It is by the person who also is writing Lost in Translation. The writing evokes some pretty vivid imagery, which is more than I can say for most litrpg. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/47621/saltworld-an-apocalypse-litrpg
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2021 22:18
|
|
|
Sibling of TB posted:Any isekai thing where the normal earthling ends up in a high technology cyperpunk world instead of a fantasy trope world, and can't get by with their outsider knowledge of "I come from a world with 8 billion humans and nuclear weapons and here is the knowledge of gunpowder" and instead uses knowledge of things like nature or ethics or whatever to break the system? Outcast in Another World is kind of like this (not with the setting, but with omitting the typical "Earth person has giant advantages through Earth knowledge" stuff). The protagonist doesn't really benefit much from "Earth knowledge" (aside from their knowledge of Spanish recently, lol).
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2021 23:25
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:Outcast in Another World is kind of like this (not with the setting, but with omitting the typical "Earth person has giant advantages through Earth knowledge" stuff). The protagonist doesn't really benefit much from "Earth knowledge" (aside from their knowledge of Spanish recently, lol). Outcast: I still have no idea what I think about that twist. Having there be a mental block that causes Fiendish to sound unpronounceable and unintelligible to other species is an interesting concept. Who put that in place? Why? Having Rob be unaffected is another one. How is he unaffected? But having that language be actual Spanish is so outlandish that I have no idea how to react. It’s too convenient narratively but also really funny. Is this the system playing another joke on him?
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 01:03
|
|
|
someone bully kamikaze into making a discord so i can have a place to speculate about the latest patreon chapters
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 01:32
|
|
|
shirunei posted:I'll throw in a recommendation for Saltworld on royalroad out there. It is by the person who also is writing Lost in Translation. The writing evokes some pretty vivid imagery, which is more than I can say for most litrpg. Saltword is really good. It's well-written, and the story is more than "here's some monsters, have fun" that you usually see with post-apocalyptic stories. Sibling of TB posted:Any isekai thing where the normal earthling ends up in a high technology cyperpunk world instead of a fantasy trope world, and can't get by with their outsider knowledge of "I come from a world with 8 billion humans and nuclear weapons and here is the knowledge of gunpowder" and instead uses knowledge of things like nature or ethics or whatever to break the system? There are a few (e: novels not webseries) I can think of that meet some of these requirements, though not necessarily the knowledge of nature/ethics part. The first is Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone quote:In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine. There's The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin amd Eytan Kollin, but I didn't like it very much and ended up dropping it. The concept itself is interesting; people are incorporated at birth, and can either sell or buy back more of themselves, and it's possible to own a majority of someone. Unfortunately, it makes way too many strawmen to make its point and basically becomes a libertarian's wet-dream of what they would do in such a world. I've heard it described as "Atlas Shrugged but shorter." Then there's Pebble in the Sky (Galactic Empire #3) by Isaac Asimov. I enjoyed this one a lot, I think it might be close that what you're asking for, though it is stretching some elements. quote:One moment Joseph Schwartz is a happily retired tailor in 1949 Chicago. The next he's a helpless stranger on Earth during the heyday of the first Galactic Empire. Earth, he soon learns, is a backwater, just a pebble in the sky, despised by all the other 200 million planets of the Empire because its people dare to claim it's the original home of man. And Earth is poor, with great areas of radioactivity ruining much of its soil--so poor that everyone is sentenced to death at the age of sixty. These are a bit more of a stretch, and the MC aren't from the 21st century. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, which is good, but might be too far away from what you want. It's about soldiers who are fighting an alien species, but in order to fight them they have to travel via FTL, and centuries/millennia pass while in transit. Dauntless (The Lost Fleet saga) by Jack Campbell. A soldier's spaceship is blown up, he manages to make it to a cryogenic escape pod but isn't picked up for a couple of decades. In the future he finds himself in the war has kept going and people have lost a ton of expertise because they kept sacrificing their best and brightest in the war, to the point where they can't remember specific tactics, or the government has become increasingly draconian. It was okay, but I didn't care for the whole "politicians are bad! (unless you're the MC's friend)" theme they had going. Narmi fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Nov 10, 2021 |
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 03:03
|
|
|
blastron posted:Outcast: I still have no idea what I think about that twist. Having there be a mental block that causes Fiendish to sound unpronounceable and unintelligible to other species is an interesting concept. Who put that in place? Why? Having Rob be unaffected is another one. How is he unaffected? It's pretty obvious at this point that there's some connection between the "regular world" and the fantasy/game one, since there are a bunch of examples of things that are directly based off of Earth concepts. The question in this specific case is what is specifically up with Fiends that makes them uniquely use an Earth language (and why do natives of the world response to their language the same way Rob responded to Elven).
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 03:41
|
|
|
Re: Lost Fleet, to be fair it's just the senior Alliance and Syndicate leadership that gets treated this way. There's a secondary character who's an allied Fleet Secretary or something who's treated well and an entire spinoff about a Syndicate leader who splits off after the war.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 03:42
|
|
|
A big flaming stink posted:someone bully kamikaze into making a discord so i can have a place to speculate about the latest patreon chapters Somehow I was unaware that there was a Patreon that was multiple chapters ahead. I have 5 new chapters to read now! It's nice to see that they're approaching "can do writing full-time" levels in patreon subscriptions. edit: All caught up with Patreon chapters. I'm liking this most recent situation with the fiends. It seems like something funny is starting to happen with Diplomacy. Like Rob has sort of hinted at being concerned about how strong they've become, and there was at least one point where the dialogue was presented as Diplomacy speaking (with Rob's voice) instead of Rob. On the other hand Diplomacy hasn't really given any signs of not being fully respectful of Rob's autonomy. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Nov 10, 2021 |
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 03:53
|
|
|
Always nice to see people here enjoying the story.A big flaming stink posted:someone bully kamikaze into making a discord so i can have a place to speculate about the latest patreon chapters
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 09:18
|
|
|
Thanks for the recommendations! Yeah Outcast definitely has that feel to it where the earthling isn't actually able to do the whole Yankee in King Arthur's Court thing, earth knowledge is interesting but uselss but that may be because they've been in 100% survival and crisis mode the whole story so far. I didn't even think of things like Empress of Forever. On that vein the bobiverse series would count.quote:Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street. Hotshot software developer reincarnates as a von Neuman probe and is tasked with saving the human race. Was fun but kept hinting at then not exploring several interesting narrative directions and kind of wasted the potential.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 16:47
|
|
|
Y'know, I have completely forgotten what the cloaca post was about. Someone link me.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 17:25
|
|
|
Worth the Candle. Protagonist fucks the deer slash magic druid nature god grove genius loci which is kind of childlike but also vast and unfathomable and all that, I made a stupid joke about how at least he didn't gently caress one of the other characters, who has a cloaca, so it's not that weird. I mean I think he did that too, I can't remember? But people were arguing about the first case.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 17:30
|
|
|
sorry
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 17:31
|
|
|
90s Cringe Rock posted:Worth the Candle. Protagonist fucks the deer slash magic druid nature god grove genius loci which is kind of childlike but also vast and unfathomable and all that, I made a stupid joke about how at least he didn't gently caress one of the other characters, who has a cloaca, so it's not that weird. He didn't gently caress the dwarf with the cloaca although the dwarf did want to gently caress him. Alternate Juniper did gently caress all of his party members though, even though one was a jellyfish or octopus or something.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 18:57
|
|
|
Tagichatn posted:He didn't gently caress the dwarf with the cloaca although the dwarf did want to gently caress him. Tagichatn posted:Alternate Juniper did gently caress all of his party members though, even though one was a jellyfish or octopus or something. New thread title options?
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 19:28
|
|
|
It was a cactus person that B-Side Joon hosed IIRC.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 19:39
|
|
|
Tagichatn posted:He didn't gently caress the dwarf with the cloaca although the dwarf did want to gently caress him. Alternate Juniper did gently caress all of his party members though, even though one was a jellyfish or octopus or something.  Glad(?) to be caught up on some of the lore here.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 19:42
|
|
|
Worth the Candle is loving wild. Lots and lots of weird rear end poo poo, including stuff that's much more hosed up than having sex with a deer god lady or a cactus or octopus or whatever.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 20:05
|
|
|
WtC is aptly acronymed.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 20:08
|
|
|
90s Cringe Rock posted:Worth the Candle. Protagonist fucks the deer slash magic druid nature god grove genius loci which is kind of childlike but also vast and unfathomable and all that, I made a stupid joke about how at least he didn't gently caress one of the other characters, who has a cloaca, so it's not that weird. Ta! It's on my mind at the minute 'cause I'm reading some isekai nonsense with a trans protagonist where the love interest is, for reasons not readily to me, a sixty-foot bird woman. And so the terrifying spectre of the cloacae has risen once again.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 20:34
|
|
|
KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Ta!
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 21:18
|
|
|
Kitty cat kill sat now has a Patreon and is insanely loving cute
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2021 23:57
|
|
|
KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Ta! ...Which story is this? Also, I know of one story where the MC acquires a cloaca (she gets turned into a naga/lamia/snake lady) and remarks how weird it feels to have one. Though it's a pretty cool story overall, quite queer and having its funny moments.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2021 02:04
|
|
|
Beware of Chicken is not pacing this tournament arc well imo. It's fine to take a long time to build up to the tournament with training and travel, especially since this is a slice of life heavy novel, but once it actually begins, the time for frequent lengthy interludes has passed. Just get that poo poo over with. We've seen the first couple rounds of the tournament, and now it's been like 10 chapters since we saw something in the tournament. Having occasional interlude/breather chapters to space things out is fine, but the ratio here is all off. It's like starting a Big Climactic Battle and then for each minute of the fighting you spend ten minutes flashing back to the MC's childhood. After a while it just gets annoying.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2021 09:18
|
|
|
At least this particular arc is finally wrapped up. It'll pass into another, sure, but at least we're no longer waiting for the letter to be delivered and for his old Sect figuring out where he is. The only interludes that have really annoyed me, though, were the ones focusing on the chump that's shaping up to be an antagonist. I really don't care for those. (Minor Patreon spoilers since they're only one chapter ahead.) We do return to the tournament next chapter, at least.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2021 10:00
|
|
|
Kaja Rainbow posted:...Which story is this? Also, I know of one story where the MC acquires a cloaca (she gets turned into a naga/lamia/snake lady) and remarks how weird it feels to have one. Though it's a pretty cool story overall, quite queer and having its funny moments. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35685/the-diary-of-a-transmigrator I was not enjoying it for the first ten chapters or so. Bunch of reheated isekai tropes I didn't like the first time around. It gets weirder and better later. e: Calling back to the story naming conversation for a bit, this is a pretty great example of how to name a story if you want me, personally, to immediately write it off with zero investigation. If your title has nothing to say about your story beyond the fact that you're writing in one of the standard web fiction genres I'm going to assume there's nothing to your story beyond that fact and I'm throwing it into the trash pile with no further discussion. Only reason I checked it out was because it was linked on the MotF discord. KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Nov 11, 2021 |
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2021 12:19
|
|
|
BoC is pacing the tournament arc perfectly. It's saying "yes, there's a cultivator tournament going on which would be the climax of any normal xianxia, but this isn't that story and here it's not that important."
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2021 18:01
|
|
|
From Patreon he’s really struggling to write the tournament bits, which plays a part in the pacing. There was originally another fight bit before the letter got delivered, for example, but he was unhappy with the chapter and yoinked it
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2021 18:08
|
|
|
Yeah, the tournament isn't the focus or the source of tension. That Xiulan is going to win isn't slightly in question, and she's already seen how little it truly matters. It's fun to see Tigu showing off and making friends, I'm looking forward to seeing more of Xianghua and how she'll interact with the rest of the farm crew. Really, the actual fights are the breathers between tenser parts of how Rou's past will catch up to and affect Jin. For the first time since the series started, he's having to actually confront and handle something from before his reincarnation, and actually confront and come to terms with just how much of each person is in the current 'him'. So typical cultivation-turned-on-it's-head stuff. Power and violence are meaningless, it's contentment that's worth pursuing.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2021 19:50
|
|
|
I'm not really a huge fan of OG Rou still being there and half aware. Especially because current Jin is completely unaware of him unless he's sleeping and then immediately forgets it. Its a really weird set up and I don't know where its going. Like uh are we going to get into the ethics of bodyjacking and locking someone into a horror movie where they're stuck as a passive observer in their own body at some point?
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2021 19:51
|
|
|
I agree the pacing is too slow in Beware of Chicken right now. Like half of the chapters in this whole arc have author notes that start with "nothing really happens here but..." The latest interlude was particularly pointless because it just repeated details already mentioned in the text earlier with a flashback, so we didn't learn anything at all. I think the Jin and Rou stuff is implying that he's aware of the conversations in his subconscious. He does things decided in the dream, but without thinking hard about why. I suspect it's leading towards a full gestalt.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2021 20:03
|
|
|
TUTBAD 43: So now we know that apparently some clerics of Garos symmetricalize themselves to the point of adding extra limbs, which is mildly horrifying. Discussion of the Editors reminds of the end of Worth the Candle a bit, like what would happen if Juniper could change some things for the better but was far from all powerful.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2021 20:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 07:36 |
|
|
I was reading a proglit story recently where the stats came from nanites. I really like that idea. Can anyone recommend good stories that use that concept? Or play with the source of stats in interesting ways? *** Beware of Chicken, since the start of the tournament arc, has read to me like an author struggling to write something he's not very interested in. Which is weird, because he's always done classical style xianxia fights for the animal perspective segments. So it's not like he can't write that way. But he's said a lot recently that he was struggling in his author notes and the story keeps going off on weird tangents.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2021 21:05
|
|
