|
Affi posted:Need to reread the Daily Grind I think. I remember it being my very first webserial after I think Worm got me into the genre and it did some creepy things with office furniture. The Daily Grind very gradually changes its genre and tone into something entirely different from where it starts, both in that it adds a lot of focus on a growing cast of characters and their relationships, as well as that the scale grows from just doing some dungeon crawls to something much larger. It’s entirely reasonable to lose interest in it partway through, because it very much stops being a story about a guy creeping through a weird infinite office in search of magic printer paper while praying that the football gear he brought with him will be enough to stop the animated staplers from biting him to death. There are definitely still a fair number of dungeon crawls and other weird and dangerous things, but if that’s all you’re interested in, then there are a lot of words to skip about secondary characters agonizing about whether they should ask each other out while they’re working on building space elevators in order to solve police brutality. (The dungeon crawls are getting really good, though.)
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2023 22:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 01:02 |
|
|
Nitrousoxide posted:Akua has been an absolute blast this book. She rules and is definitely my favorite of the main characters in PGTE.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2023 22:21
|
|
|
What's The Daily Grind doing these days? It was the endless dungeon crawling that made me stop, because what I actually wanted to see was how they'd eventually make use of all the incredibly niche skills they picked up like "ww2 marine vessel expertise (uncommon)" and so forth in their daily lives--at the point where I stopped I don't think the story even once had them use those.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2023 23:50
|
|
|
Myriad Truths posted:I'm not sure anyone here was still following it, but Pale has ended properly. I was in the middle of rereading/catching up so I need to get back to that. I liked it quite a bit so I hope it stuck the landing. I read it a lot when it first started, and really liked it, but fell off it when I caught up and decided to wait a few arcs before going into it again. Now I'm so behind I just read it off and on because even if I read it everyday I doubt I'd catch up to the ending in time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2023 23:54
|
|
|
Argue posted:What's The Daily Grind doing these days? It was the endless dungeon crawling that made me stop, because what I actually wanted to see was how they'd eventually make use of all the incredibly niche skills they picked up like "ww2 marine vessel expertise (uncommon)" and so forth in their daily lives--at the point where I stopped I don't think the story even once had them use those. Shortly after the dungeon crawling starts getting stale, there are a few inciting incidents that blow the premise wide open and kick off a few different plots. It’s oscillating between a variety of different narrative themes, including: - Exploring what personhood means in a world full of nonhuman intelligent life - loving around with dungeon rewards to do dumb poo poo like adding six overlapping basements to their home base and starting a teleporting ambulance service - Chasing down and/or being chased down by secret societies, all with their own weird special abilities from the dungeons they’ve found - Building a better world using radical empathy and also dungeon magic - Very sweet relationship stories about very different people coming to care for each other - Still dungeon crawling, but many different dungeons, and going into one is always important to the plot instead of the default setting I will put a big caveat here that there are a lot of things this story does, and it wildly bounces between them with very little warning, so if you’re only on board with some of it then there will be chunks of every chapter that you’re just going to want to scroll right past. Overall, though, it’s a lot of fun and is one of those stories I jump on every notification for.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2023 04:25
|
|
|
I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read of the daily grind (which is most of it) but I’ve also started to wait six months between reads because the downside to having generally likable characters resolve problems through cooperation and dialogue is that it’s difficult to keep people from feeling really similar. The part of my brain that enjoys chill hangout vibes likes reading it here and there but the part of my brain that internalized Rules Of Dramatic Fiction is wondering if anything will ever have consequences that can’t be solved with a single speech check. And so far the answer has been yes, exactly once per arc.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2023 04:46
|
|
|
Argue posted:What's The Daily Grind doing these days? It was the endless dungeon crawling that made me stop, because what I actually wanted to see was how they'd eventually make use of all the incredibly niche skills they picked up like "ww2 marine vessel expertise (uncommon)" and so forth in their daily lives--at the point where I stopped I don't think the story even once had them use those. All of the useless skills like that stay useless. After about chapter 50ish? some of the lol random powers turn out to actually be either really good just confusingly worded or better after stacking a few similar powers. But before that happens it picks up a bunch of (positive) character moments and relationships. Good? news! RR skips past all of that and starts at chapter 75 now. I thought I'd been reading it for years but RR says I caught up with the series at only chapter 77 and stopped keeping up with the story about then due to getting distracted by stuff that updated faster. For those interested, it's the same author as Kitty Cat Kill Sat. LLSix fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Oct 15, 2023 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2023 04:52
|
|
|
Supsup 95: Teenage hormones abound! Just because Alden is ace doesn't mean we don't get awkward moments. Lute is really enjoying not having the bubble of elite Androsian expectations over him, aswell as teenage girls. Another slow chapter, but an enjoyable one. Gave me some laughs. Nothingtoseehere fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Oct 15, 2023 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2023 20:00
|
|
|
Nitrousoxide posted:APGtE Oh, the climax of that arc is amazing and one of my favorite things about the story as a whole! But a lot of the content of the arc (all the stuff with Cat fighting the various drow) ends up feeling kind of unnecessary, largely because of the conclusion. I generally have a very clear memory of all the major events in PracGuide, but I'd have trouble telling you the details of what happened during most of the Underdark. My best attempt at a summary is they ran into some drow outside, then they ran into dwarves, then Cat went around doing a bunch of fights and adding drow to her Peerage (this part is a blur), and then she got owned by Sve Noc and did big Character Growth. On the other hand, one could probably argue that the rest of the arc being the way it is helps to increase the impact of the finale, since it gives you the impression that Cat is becoming stronger and that it's going to end in her somehow winning. Cat is shown gradually growing and learning about her Winter abilities, defeating powerful enemies along the way, so it makes it more unexpected when she just gets unambiguously defeated at the end. shades of blue posted:out of curiosity do u think that the wandering inn is an indulgent story or no? (apologies in advance for a bunch of navel-gazing "meta-commentary") While I don't personally like Wandering Inn, I think it's probably less "indulgent" than most web serials (though I'm starting to think I should have just used the word "pandering," since "indulgent" can also be interpreted as "the author doing whatever they want" instead of "the author giving the audience what they want" - though I guess those two things are sometimes one and the same). Its focus on so many characters acts against some of the worst impulses of the genre, since it means that the "wish-fulfillment" elements are reduced. The issues I have with it are (mostly) different. The biggest one is that, for various reasons, I just fundamentally couldn't "buy into" its characters. The way I described it before is that the Wandering Inn characters and dialogue feel sort of "cartoony/fan-fictiony" to me (usually in the form of unnatural dialogue). I think that this is actually part of the reason for its success (though the biggest part is simply how incredibly prolific pirateaba is). Wandering Inn is basically filling a niche that was previously mostly unfilled - a major web serial written in the "voice" of a specific subset of Western "geekdom" in an environment where most stuff was either more oriented towards various Asian geek cultures (the various translated WNs, and the English stuff most directly inspired by them) or somewhat more mainsteam/traditional fantasy adopted to a serial format (MoL, wildbow stuff). Wandering Inn is a sort of fusion, where it takes certain concepts made popular by Asian media, but adapted to a distinctly Western perspective/voice. Something partially related to this is that, when Wandering Inn deals with certain topics, it often/usually does so in a way that is clearly identifiable as "the way many millennial and gen-Z Americans/Canadians/etc would discuss this topic in the late 2010s/early 2020s." To give an example of something that I think doesn't do this, some of my favorite fiction deals with topics in a way that I think is "timeless" and can resonate with people regardless of their culture or time period. The visual novel "Umineko When They Cry"* covers certain topics in a way that can be understood and meaningful regardless of cultural context. In contrast, many/most other media/fiction tend to cover topics in a way that uses framing and language more directly derived from the cultural context of the author (though the author, like most people, is usually oblivious to this). This is especially bad in the US (or related cultures), with the way identity and media consumption are deeply intertwined. When dealing with deeply personal issues, "the issue" takes precedence over "the person," because the writing itself is treated as part of the discourse (and, to be fair, this is somewhat true). * I still dislike that this is how they localized the title - why not "When the Seagulls Cry"?? Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Oct 15, 2023 |
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2023 23:11
|
|
|
Speaking of The Wandering Inn, it’s back after an extended break with its first Patreon chapter in a few weeks. Based on what happens in the chapter and the author note afterwordsit seems like we’re finally coming up on the Solstice in the next few chapters. Very excited to see what happens in the big battle, lots of moving parts in play. I didn’t miss that the Horns are mysteriously absent, I expect them to make a dramatic entrance in the middle of the battle once it begins. I wish that Erin would have tried to say the word God during the briefing, if just to see if anyone could understand, but I understand the concerns - Pelt almost died when he read the word off of Erin’s coin back in the day.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 00:11
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:While I don't personally like Wandering Inn, I think it's probably less "indulgent" than most web serials (though I'm starting to think I should have just used the word "pandering," since "indulgent" can also be interpreted as "the author doing whatever they want" instead of "the author giving the audience what they want" - though I guess those two things are sometimes one and the same). If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that web serials tend to be inferior as literature because they're pandering; they give the audience what they want, and they tend to adhere to genre conventions. This criticism feels misplaced to me. It's trivial to come up with tons of great art that was created in order to meet the desires of an audience. I don't disagree that Super Supportive or whatever is not as good as Pride and Prejudice, but this can't be the reason why.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 02:27
|
|
|
nrook posted:If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that web serials tend to be inferior as literature because they're pandering; they give the audience what they want, and they tend to adhere to genre conventions. This criticism feels misplaced to me. It's trivial to come up with tons of great art that was created in order to meet the desires of an audience. I don't disagree that Super Supportive or whatever is not as good as Pride and Prejudice, but this can't be the reason why. For a moment I was about to say that Pride and Prejudice was originally a newspaper serial, but I was sadly mixing it up with Crime and Punishment, or possibly War and Peace. The BIG THING_AND_OTHER THING naming convention got me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 12:30
|
|
|
Selkie Myth posted:For a moment I was about to say that Pride and Prejudice was originally a newspaper serial, but I was sadly mixing it up with Crime and Punishment, or possibly War and Peace. The BIG THING_AND_OTHER THING naming convention got me. Apparently War and Peace was originally published as a serial, yeah. Tolstoy then heavily rewrote it to be published as a book, making it the only known example of a successful rewrite of serial fiction.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 17:31
|
|
|
nrook posted:Apparently War and Peace was originally published as a serial, yeah. Tolstoy then heavily rewrote it to be published as a book, making it the only known example of a successful rewrite of serial fiction. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 18:48
|
|
|
It’s a joke!!
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 19:00
|
|
|
IIRC, Alexandre Dumas originally published serially, so The Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo were both basically webnovels of their day.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 19:43
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:* I still dislike that this is how they localized the title - why not "When the Seagulls Cry"?? It's for the sake of brand recognizability. Before the When They Cry series was officially licensed and published, fans were almost exclusively using the untranslated titles to refer to the series, so "Higurashi" and "Umineko" became the common name for the series. Keeping "Umineko" in the official title meant that people would immediately recognize it for what it was by title alone. (If there are any weird localization decisions for anything, you can pretty much just blame 2000s-era weebs for setting bad precedents.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2023 20:11
|
|
|
^^^^ That makes sense to me - you want to get the distinguishing word out front. It still ends up looking really weird, though (since it's basically a completely incoherent title when read in English)nrook posted:If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that web serials tend to be inferior as literature because they're pandering; they give the audience what they want, and they tend to adhere to genre conventions. This criticism feels misplaced to me. It's trivial to come up with tons of great art that was created in order to meet the desires of an audience. I don't disagree that Super Supportive or whatever is not as good as Pride and Prejudice, but this can't be the reason why. Actually no, that isn't what I mean (though I can definitely see why it came off that way). Other literature absolutely also does this, but I think the way it happens in web serials is just a bit different due to the high degree of audience involvement (where the authors literally see reader comments to every single chapter they write, and stories are ranked by readers who can read them for free). Hell, I think your average fantasy novel tends to have at least as much pandering as web serials, and it's often significantly worse. Or romance novels, which can take things to a downright comical degree. And "pandering/indulging" isn't even inherently a bad thing. I certainly read stuff that does this, and even enjoy it sometimes! Like I mentioned in the post, pandering doesn't even have much to do with my issues with Wandering Inn (it probably actually does it less than some other stuff that I do enjoy). Web serials also have their own strengths. I think that they allow for a certain type of story that you can't really tell in books. Plus it's just nice to read something in a serial manner every week or so. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Oct 17, 2023 |
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2023 01:14
|
|
|
Now I'm imagining Sir Arther Conan Doyle dropping shoutouts to other victorian authors at the end of his Sherlock Holmes short stories. - Young Master System Apocalypse. - LITRPG. - Witty Banter. - A lot of action. - Mystery. - Numbers going up.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2023 02:47
|
|
|
blastron posted:It's for the sake of brand recognizability. Before the When They Cry series was officially licensed and published, fans were almost exclusively using the untranslated titles to refer to the series, so "Higurashi" and "Umineko" became the common name for the series. Keeping "Umineko" in the official title meant that people would immediately recognize it for what it was by title alone.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2023 08:35
|
|
|
New Wandering Inn has some serious plot drops but there is a line that has me cooking some hella conspiracies: "In the end, the Grand Design created a ‘Ryoko Griffin’ entry and logged everything new in there. If it had to reinstate her level…" ---> that's gonna accidentally be given to the shapechanging thing that keeps trying to be ryoka and poo poo is going to go wild.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2023 18:28
|
|
|
90s Cringe Rock posted:Umineko: When the Seagulls Cry. It's the best of both worlds! It's the simplest solution! It's extremely obvious, people! The main fuckup is that higurashi was originally released as just “When They Cry” and for some reason sticking with that exact phrase was a requirement. Both works have names that are trivial to translate and obviously go together in English if they just leave it as “the cicadas” instead of “they”.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2023 22:56
|
|
|
I think that is still just branding driven. They wanted a single overarching brand name to use, and did it awkwardly instead of relying on the intrinsic repeated phrases. Original titles: - Higuarshi no naku koro ni => When the cicadas cry - Umineko no naku koro ni => When the seagulls cry - Ciconia no naku koro ni => When the stork cry/cries Whoever decided the official english titles apparently didn't trust that people would figure that out as a cohesive brand and threw them all under a "When they cry" metabrand attached to a single untranslated word for the specific novel line. (And to be fair, "Casual consumers browsing a list of things to potentially buy are idiots with no generalization skills" isn't a terrible assumption)
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2023 23:19
|
|
|
day-gas posted:New Wandering Inn has some serious plot drops but there is a line that has me cooking some hella conspiracies: "In the end, the Grand Design created a ‘Ryoko Griffin’ entry and logged everything new in there. If it had to reinstate her level…" ---> that's gonna accidentally be given to the shapechanging thing that keeps trying to be ryoka and poo poo is going to go wild. It was a really good chapter, I love the ones with insight into the system.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 01:30
|
|
|
All this talk of Umineko is making me think about how I'm getting quite bored of most of the serials I'm following and that I could be reading something I'd actually be more interested in, like Umineko. I've been reading a lot of web fiction just to mindlessly kill time, which means I'm just kind of dragging my eyes over some text and only sort of vaguely enjoying it. There's quite a few stories on my list that I still read because I used to really like them but at this point am just going off of momentum.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 02:58
|
|
|
Turns out the real serial we were waiting for was a trilogy of novels serially released in 3 steps over 6 years
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 05:50
|
|
|
As the only web serial author I'm aware of who has almost made a career of ripping off Umineko, I feel like I see people use the When They Cry title so infrequently compared to the untranslated one it feels like they just shouldn't have bothered at all. Like, the titles only really work well in Japanese because the name of the animal leads the phrase. Sometimes it's better to be like Tsukihime and just give up. Speaking of closed circle mysteries, how has TtOU been recently? I was planning to catch up with it properly, but it feels like everyone here and elsewhere suddenly stopped talking about it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 07:22
|
|
|
I still follow and am enjoying it! All of the big, immediately tense plot threads kind of got wrapped up recently and the story is in a between-arc lull at the moment, so there’s not a whole lot of discussion to be had.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 07:49
|
|
|
I think TTOU discussion would benefit from some absurd speculation, so here we go: Antarctica does have a secret space program, and it's been running for a very long time. They built a stargate, and are already well into terraforming our destination.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 09:45
|
|
|
TTOU 107: I mean with the most recent reveals we're definitely gonna be dealing with either aliens or somehow humans who got to the planet first. I'm honestly not sure which is more likely at this point
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 09:55
|
|
|
mossyfisk posted:I think TTOU discussion would benefit from some absurd speculation, so here we go: Antarctica does have a secret space program, and it's been running for a very long time. They built a stargate, and are already well into terraforming our destination.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 10:18
|
|
|
PoorWeather posted:Like, the titles only really work well in Japanese because the name of the animal leads the phrase. Sometimes it's better to be like Tsukihime and just give up.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 12:21
|
|
|
90s Cringe Rock posted:*found That one was already moved to Cheyenne Mountain back in the pre-Neocambrian days. Some non shitposty TtOU: Tal rules
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 17:46
|
|
|
DACK FAYDEN posted:write it like it's a news headline. SEAGULLS: when they cry "Seagulls no Naku Koro ni"
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 19:34
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:"Seagulls no Naku Koro ni" WaterCat: The Time Of Crying Is Now
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 20:24
|
|
|
Reincarnated as the Weakest Seagull Cry, But My Cheat Vibrations Made me UnrivaledDACK FAYDEN posted:write it like it's a news headline. SEAGULLS: when they cry Seagulls: You Won't Believe This Sound They Make!
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 21:07
|
|
|
Flock of Seagulls: I
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 22:34
|
|
|
Super Supportive is restructuring some chapter breaks for public release vs. Patreon. I bet it will be for the better story wise, but be careful if you're going back through the thread and looking at spoilers marked for chapters 81 on. Not clear exactly what the changes will be, but what should have been chapter 96 was chapter 98 today. As for SupSup 98, I really liked it. Lute has really blossomed into a lovable character. I like that being in this dorm room in general and being around Alden specifically is already clearly having a highly positive impact on him. It says sad things about what the Velras household is like, but it also says nice things about friendship and about who Alden is as a person.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2023 23:48
|
|
|
Wittgen posted:Super Supportive is restructuring some chapter breaks for public release vs. Patreon. I bet it will be for the better story wise, but be careful if you're going back through the thread and looking at spoilers marked for chapters 81 on. Not clear exactly what the changes will be, but what should have been chapter 96 was chapter 98 today. Sleyca has heard everyone's complaints about the Boe chapters and taken them to heart. She's responding with two extra Boe chapters. (Patreon)
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2023 01:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 01:02 |
|
|
Nitrousoxide posted:Sleyca has heard everyone's complaints about the Boe chapters and taken them to heart. She's responding with two extra Boe chapters. (Patreon) Sure, why not. That makes perfect sense.
|
|
#
?
Oct 19, 2023 02:53
|
|