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They're usually extreme stinkers, yeah.
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Nov 19, 2022 19:14
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Larry Parrish posted:They're usually extreme stinkers, yeah. But to be fair, that could be the title of this very thread. You're not wrong though. I've found like four quests worth reading.
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Nov 19, 2022 19:55
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Ytlaya posted:Having a story that isn't largely planned out (at least in terms of "knowing how it's going to end") is possible, but it seems to require a certain sort of talent. I think that Forge/Threads of Destiny is one of the only situations where I've seen it work well (it's definitely the only serial I've read that does the "just following a person living in fantasy world" premise well). The author has to have a very concrete idea of both the setting as a whole and all of the characters involved (so they can always "bounce off of one another" in realistic ways, regardless of how they're combined). Forge/Threads of Destiny can have pretty rough writing in spots, but it maintains a consistency throughout that lets me overlook that. I've tried reading other "quests" (which I think is the term for those stories where readers make choices) but it's the only one I've been able to fully "buy into." SV (where Threads of Destiny is being updated) calls them quests. SA calls them Choose Your Own Adventures or (CYOAs) and has a thread dedicated to them. They're sometimes called Interactive Fiction or IF.
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Nov 19, 2022 20:20
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LLSix posted:SV (where Threads of Destiny is being updated) calls them quests. SA calls them Choose Your Own Adventures or (CYOAs) and has a thread dedicated to them. They're sometimes called Interactive Fiction or IF. I don't know if someone calls them IF, but generally speaking IF is a totally different thing. It's the fancy new term for old-school text games/text adventures, basically. AFAIR, Dropsy and The Sword of the Bastard Elf started off as CYOAs* on SA. I'd also mention Homestuck and all the stories like it, I guess. * fun fact, "CYOA" is a trademark and you can get sued if you try to use it on your product.
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Nov 19, 2022 20:26
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The problem is that quest threads are full of people that aren't interested in narratively interesting stories. Usually the threads are full of two types of people:
Also, sometimes really good/really bad dice rolls will lead to really weird story elements. One quest thread I read had a character become horribly mutated due to some bad dice rolls right before there was an important development in a plot that had been developing for awhile. What should have been an important moment in the story was mostly sidelined because of this random event that happened. -Edit forgot another type. The grand speech writers. When a character needs to explain their motivations or make an argument. There will almost always be someone who writes an over the top speech that will try really hard to be deep and meaningful. usually it will win even though it's ridiculously melodramatic in the actual story. IShallRiseAgain fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Nov 19, 2022 |
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Nov 19, 2022 21:02
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Ar'Kendrithyst Patreon: Uh... Massive time skip? Weird.
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Nov 19, 2022 21:13
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Ar'Kendrithyst 173 2/2 - Erick, stop thinking about genociding the Wrought! Sitnakov (and kinda the Wrought in general) being an rear end in a top hat doesn't make that okay!
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Nov 20, 2022 02:16
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Peachfart posted:Ar'Kendrithyst Patreon: Uh... Massive time skip? Weird. It mostly made sense, in that the politics have mostly settled down, and outside of large-scale organization, there's not much left that can threaten Erick. It does make me wonder if the last arc is going to do an even bigger time skip straight ahead to Yggdrasil's seal breaking and the preparations for new worlds, though. Maybe that's part of why Erick got Reincarnation: it'd be super depressing to get to that time skip and hear that Poi and Theresa and Kiri are dead. (Jane would probably become immortal anyway somehow, she's kind of a powergamer.)
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Nov 20, 2022 02:33
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IShallRiseAgain posted:Also, sometimes really good/really bad dice rolls will lead to really weird story elements. One quest thread I read had a character become horribly mutated due to some bad dice rolls right before there was an important development in a plot that had been developing for awhile. What should have been an important moment in the story was mostly sidelined because of this random event that happened. That's one of the things I like about quests, the psudo randomness and occasional galaxy brained votes lead to interesting places that you wouldn't necessarily get to with a more traditional narrative structure.
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Nov 20, 2022 02:37
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Einander posted:It mostly made sense, in that the politics have mostly settled down, and outside of large-scale organization, there's not much left that can threaten Erick. It does make me wonder if the last arc is going to do an even bigger time skip straight ahead to Yggdrasil's seal breaking and the preparations for new worlds, though. Maybe that's part of why Erick got Reincarnation: it'd be super depressing to get to that time skip and hear that Poi and Theresa and Kiri are dead. (Jane would probably become immortal anyway somehow, she's kind of a powergamer.) I'm pretty sure they mentioned polymorphing as a path to immortality at some point although you'd have to give up your identity for it.
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Nov 20, 2022 03:46
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Memoirs of Your Local Small-time Villainess 92 LOL at Scarlet confirming the shopkeeper seemed familiar because he was a quest NPC just to walk off in the middle of his quest spiel. "Fetch quests were annoying enough in games."
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Nov 20, 2022 04:53
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Larry Parrish posted:They're usually extreme stinkers, yeah. Boom, squish.
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Nov 20, 2022 09:31
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LLSix posted:SV (where Threads of Destiny is being updated) calls them quests. SA calls them Choose Your Own Adventures or (CYOAs) and has a thread dedicated to them. They're sometimes called Interactive Fiction or IF. Megazver posted:I don't know if someone calls them IF, but generally speaking IF is a totally different thing. It's the fancy new term for old-school text games/text adventures, basically. Thank you for these links!
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Nov 20, 2022 11:20
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A litrpg isekai with a Roomba as the MC hit the Rising Stars. I read it. Well, skimmed it. All the Dust that Falls: A Roomba Isekai Adventure A bunch of wizards accidentally summon a roomba, think it's a demon too powerful to be held by their wards (that it cheerfully immediately proceeds to clean up) and flee their castle. So now it has a whole-rear end wizard school castle to itself to clean. Yay! So far it has leveled up several times and got a mop, an appendage for opening doors, an unlimited dustpan and an ability to charge itself by converting all the dust it sucks up. Every once in a while it gets other useless poo poo like Dimension Travel offered, but whatever. There's also Bee, the thirteen-year-old It's pretty much what you'd expect from the description. The butter of "there actually things happening here" is smeared pretty thin here, but when turbo-skimming it I was kept vaguely amused by the sheer "ok, how are you going to keep this up, author" to keep going to the next chapter.
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Nov 22, 2022 17:10
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I didn't read it but I've enjoyed the ads when I've seen them.
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Nov 22, 2022 19:42
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I appreciate a good conceit (much like that one about only leveling from getting hit in the balls) even if the execution is poor so sure I'll waste some time on it
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Nov 22, 2022 20:42
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I've been binging Monroe, which is half wizard isekai adventures and half a badly broken main character cuddling his only friend in the world, his cat.
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Nov 22, 2022 23:07
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Kalas posted:I've been binging Monroe, which is half wizard isekai adventures and half a badly broken main character cuddling his only friend in the world, his cat. Got a link? Not seeing anything when I google Monroe web serial.
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Nov 23, 2022 02:12
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Kyoujin posted:Got a link? Not seeing anything when I google Monroe web serial. Going to guess they're referring to this one: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35398/monroe
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Nov 23, 2022 02:29
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Me dumb. Searched RR first and didn't find any results but probably made a typo. Thanks!
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Nov 23, 2022 04:23
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Kalas posted:I've been binging Monroe, which is half wizard isekai adventures and half a badly broken main character cuddling his only friend in the world, his cat. im gonna assume the stuff in the first chapter about bob being tormented by his master's advisors for being white isnt supposed to be read at face value, right? e: quote:He was struck by the memory of his high school principal explaining that he wasn't going to be valedictorian because this was a historically black school, and it wouldn't be appropriate to have a white male take that honor from a more deserving young woman of color. uhhhh alarm bells starting to blare A big flaming stink fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Nov 23, 2022 |
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Nov 23, 2022 08:43
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I've been slowly rereading Mother of Learning, and I think the presence of Zach is a huge part of why I was able to enjoy that story. It's basically a genuinely unique element inserted into a pretty common type of story. I like how near the end it explains Zach's perspective, and it makes sense and is consistent with his actions throughout the story (basically how he was tired of proactively trying to solve the time loop and internally believed he'd never escape it, and was perfectly happy to just play support to Zorian). A lesser story would have made Zach into some sort of antagonist (and I think the author was kind of deliberate with this red herring, with stuff like Zach's strong aversion to ever having his mind read by Zorian). Part of me also wishes Zach was some sort of romantic interest for Zorian, though that may have required some changes to Zach's character (though not really many to Zorian's - he never comes off as convincingly interested in girls, despite claiming to have had a crush on Taiven). A big flaming stink posted:uhhhh alarm bells starting to blare lmao that entire segment is beyond mere "alarm bells," god drat.
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Nov 23, 2022 10:54
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A big flaming stink posted:im gonna assume the stuff in the first chapter about bob being tormented by his master's advisors for being white isnt supposed to be read at face value, right? Yeah, I almost dropped it right there because life’s too short to deal with chuds, but it just…never comes up again. I kind of wondered if it was an unreliable narrator kind of thing where he thinks he’s being persecuted for being a white cis male, but it’s actually because he has zero social skills. Anyway, MC never says or does anything in that vein ever again, iirc.
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Nov 23, 2022 11:28
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It's almost worse if it never comes up again
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Nov 23, 2022 11:29
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navyjack posted:Anyway, MC never says or does anything in that vein ever again, iirc. still, uh, yeah e okay yeah found my complaint: DACK FAYDEN posted:normally I just ignore the lovely politics inherent in basically all litrpg but twice now I've had otherwise-decent stories hosed up by sucking off the Marines (metaphorically) DACK FAYDEN fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Nov 23, 2022 |
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Nov 23, 2022 12:34
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Like, usually, an unreliable narrator would be reflected by editorializing - but all the CHUD poo poo in chapter 1 is either straight up dialogue or historical events that inform the current state of his life. And it magically all goes away the second he's in another world. The first two people he meets have no remarked-upon physical traits at all. The next two have heights, hair, and eye color, but notably no skin color. When this guy is trying to figure out where on Earth he is and what language he can use to communicate, it doesn't even occur to him to guess what nationality these people are. It sounds like our boy is supposed to be comically color-blind In chapter 6 the guy who reads his mind says quote:I don't think I've ever encountered a more logical and organized mind, although his emotional state is quite damaged. So it, uh, sounds like the OAN vision of California he describes is supposed to be read as an accurate report, and the CHUD poo poo only stops because he got Isekai'd away from the horrors of Forced Diversity.
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Nov 23, 2022 13:31
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You see when an actually good author writes a stupid rear end in a top hat, it's not just presented blandly like a fact of the world. Other characters react to this knowledge, etc. There's a vibe where in general it doesn't sound like someone's fantasy of what city life in filthy Seattle or whatever is like. But when an author is just a stupid rear end in a top hat, the world just works in a stupid way, and it's up to their technical skill to save it. Like Paranoid Mage is clearly written by a deranged right winger due to the logical the world operates on (and, you know, the stuff he says) but ironically as a better author, it's not often in the actual text of the story like that first chapter of Monroe. The world just functions on rightoid logic (people are sheeple, basically- the entire story would not be able to operate if uh, anyone had the barest hint of curiosity)
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Nov 23, 2022 13:38
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There's an authors note about this in the first chapter, did you not read it ? Seems he got annoyed by to many people questioning the same thing.
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Nov 23, 2022 14:32
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I can assure you that author is a dipshit in his own right. Anyway the options here are he's either an incredibly bad author and couldn't write an unreliable narrator in a way that anyone in understood or it's just a poor attempt at covering his rear end without just rewriting the chapter or, hell, just deleting it since it basically adds nothing. It's up to you which one is better, I guess, but I feel like they're both good reasons to not bother reading it.
Larry Parrish fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Nov 23, 2022 |
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Nov 23, 2022 14:34
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it feels like every web serial has this awkward moment where readers are like 'is this protagonist an antisocial weirdo written by an antisocial weirdo, or is the author a secret genius doing an unreliable narrator' and it's odd to see how common it is and how often people decide it's the second option instead of just realizing that maybe people who write thousands and thousands of words every week might not be the most well-adjusted people?
Horizon Burning fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Nov 23, 2022 |
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Nov 23, 2022 14:45
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It took me so long to start reading Double Blind (... Which I need to catch up on) because I straight up did not believe anyone when they said it was actually an edgelord protagonist written that way on purpose. I thought it would be another weirdo written by a weirdo misinterpreted as some genius move thing.
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Nov 23, 2022 14:54
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I was not understating it when I said 'badly broken'. His mania at working at getting Monroe back is very clear. And if you think he calms down once he has his kitty back, you'd be wrong. He just changes focus. This is what hooked me to the series despite the rocky start. I'm enjoying seeing the early reactions.
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Nov 23, 2022 16:15
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Maybe every author should write a story about an Isekai'd roomba, a sunflower or a dungeon core first, to learn writing about somebody totally different from themselves. Although maybe those weird stories would not be readable at all without some experience behind them.
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Nov 23, 2022 16:30
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MonikaTSarn posted:Maybe every author should write a story about an Isekai'd roomba, a sunflower or a dungeon core first, to learn writing about somebody totally different from themselves. Although maybe those weird stories would not be readable at all without some experience behind them.
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Nov 23, 2022 16:45
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Chapter one should be deleted, it's a stupid terrible hook and a good writer would be able to include how lovely his life was in flashbacks, behavior cues and just social interactions in the new world. (Like being distrustful of people, having internal monologues relating to his poo poo life, or comparing circumstances to the reader) You don't have to tell every single detail about how lovely his life is, just allude to it and leave the reader to imagine it. (I'm looking at you Pasto's incident  )
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Nov 23, 2022 18:41
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I don't think I've ever encountered an isekai or time travel or whatever story which starts before the character arrives in the new world which wouldn't benefit from just deleting all of that and revealing the important bits (often there aren't any) in flashbacks later.
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Nov 23, 2022 19:14
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Plorkyeran posted:I don't think I've ever encountered an isekai or time travel or whatever story which starts before the character arrives in the new world which wouldn't benefit from just deleting all of that and revealing the important bits (often there aren't any) in flashbacks later. Yeah, absolutely this.
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Nov 23, 2022 19:23
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Plorkyeran posted:I don't think I've ever encountered an isekai or time travel or whatever story which starts before the character arrives in the new world which wouldn't benefit from just deleting all of that and revealing the important bits (often there aren't any) in flashbacks later. Agreed.
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Nov 23, 2022 19:53
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Add it to the big list of things everyone seems to think would be a good idea but never works.
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Nov 23, 2022 20:38
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The Wandering Inn, Beware of Chicken, He Who Fights With Monsters, Beneath the Dragoneye Moons all skip any setup Earth scenes I think. There's also plenty of isekais that start much deeper into the story (Weirkey, Reverend Insanity, This Young Master is not Cannon Fodder).
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Nov 23, 2022 21:28
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