|
Elder Cultivaror; I think someone said it was both the best and worst thing they've ever read? It's certainly massive and entertaining. And while characters are emotionally flat and their personalities are almost nonexistent there are parts that are very ambitious and cool.
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2024 15:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 00:42 |
|
|
New SupSup up on RR.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 04:51
|
|
|
And it is the best SS chapter in ages, wow that was great.(120 if you are wondering)
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 04:52
|
|
|
Peachfart posted:And it is the best SS chapter in ages, wow that was great.(120 if you are wondering) The most comments of any chapter before it on Patreon when it aired! 1,200 compared to the usual 200-500.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 05:06
|
|
|
SS120 is one of the chapters of all time. Seriously that was amazing. I couldn't believe Alden just went for the straight truth like that. His response to her rant was just chef's kiss: “If having your own behavior described in public makes you feel humiliated,” said Alden, “maybe you should behave differently.”
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 06:09
|
|
|
Sleyca writes tension well ss latest patreon i wonder if they're getting teleported to fight the chaos, rather than away from it. It is what avowed are for, after all. It would explain alden's low timer and klein's expectations around that, and it would get alden closer to the action and make this more than a 'stuck on bridge, survive, find out about things later' story. but idk. poo poo's pretty tense! awesmoe fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Feb 19, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 06:37
|
|
|
I do wonder (SS120) Why Aulia didn't rescue Hazel and even publicly described her skill. The only other instance I think we know of was when she got in trouble for calling Lute a whiff. So Hazel either crossed a line and went too far again or it's for Lute's sake somehow? I suppose Aulia could be Artonia savvy enough to recognize Aiden's commendation is something special.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 06:49
|
|
|
awesmoe posted:Sleyca writes tension well Oh I totally agree. SupSup Patreon: Klein sighs in relief as Alden teleports away to safety, knowing the Artonan VIP won't get gibbed on his watch. He accepts the teleport to Matadero to assist. Alden and Klein then stare at each other as they get dropped next to each other on Matadero.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 08:32
|
|
|
Kyoujin posted:I do wonder (SS120) Why Aulia didn't rescue Hazel and even publicly described her skill. The only other instance I think we know of was when she got in trouble for calling Lute a whiff. I think pretty much that. She's looked at her mental useful-to-know list, and Alden has ranked higher than Hazel. Plus, Aulia knows Hazel, and has been shown to either not really believe in "the grudges of children" (Lute, Roman, Hazel), so she knows she can smooth this over with Hazel later. Alden is an outside force, she needs him on her side now. Nettle Soup fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Feb 19, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 12:20
|
|
|
Nitrousoxide posted:Oh I totally agree. Supsup patreon: Alden is holding the bomb with 00:01 visible on the timer. Having said that it's not clear if that bomb has actually gone off or not yet. Maybe Alden's teleport timer is the system's prediction for the bomb destabilising minus 5 secs. If it hasn't, then what could be causing things to get so bad? 1-3 abominations? Just the barrier being breached? E: Also that was a suspicious mention of the entrustment though. If he does get teleported in to pick up the bomb I wonder if the system is going to reveal that it can entrust items to him. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Feb 19, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 12:27
|
|
|
Supsup patreon: i don't think the system has given Alden a shorter timer because it's going to teleport him to work. it's simply that Alden is More Important than his classmates, in that he is higher Authority due to magic. Artonians literially have a magic importance/Authority number stapled to everyone's souls, remember. Alden is also "easier" to teleport for some mysterious Gorgon-related reason. What this leads to is more awkward questions and speculation about Alden that he doesn't want, when his teachers and classmates ask - why was Alden teleported out before everyone else?
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 13:10
|
|
|
Kyoujin posted:I do wonder (SS120) Why Aulia didn't rescue Hazel and even publicly described her skill. The only other instance I think we know of was when she got in trouble for calling Lute a whiff. I'm pretty sure Aulia isn't blind to what a spoiled and narcissistic child Hazel has become, and realizes continuing to try to treat her as the favored one is only making it worse. Plus, according to Lute Aulia's goal is to impress the Artonans and make her family the default source for chainers, and at the rate Hazel is going sooner or later she's going to offend the Artonans pretty terribly too. Aulia may be hoping that actually holding Hazel responsible will be better for her in the long run, or just considering cutting her losses. You don't become shady mafia head of an island of superhumans by being stupid. And Aulia has her whole thing going where she thinks Alden is going to be super important. I'd call it superstition like the other characters do but in this case we know she's pretty much right. She might honestly care more about establishing bonds with Alden than she does about Hazel.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 15:40
|
|
|
Bremen posted:I'm pretty sure Aulia isn't blind to what a spoiled and narcissistic child Hazel has become, and realizes continuing to try to treat her as the favored one is only making it worse. Plus, according to Lute Aulia's goal is to impress the Artonans and make her family the default source for chainers, and at the rate Hazel is going sooner or later she's going to offend the Artonans pretty terribly too. Aulia may be hoping that actually holding Hazel responsible will be better for her in the long run, or just considering cutting her losses. You don't become shady mafia head of an island of superhumans by being stupid. There's also the fact that Alden is very firmly in Lute's orbit. Even if Lute isn't on board for her whole "monopolize wordchains," scheme, he's still an S-Class Chainer with a well-established spine and a questionable relationship with the family. Playing diplomatic with him is just smart, even if it's at the cost of burning Hazel a little faster than she would have on her own. Besides, from Aulia's perspective, Alden showing up in Lutes corner is going to look more and more like divine provenance backing Lute.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 17:09
|
|
|
It was said multiple times and reinforced again this chapter just how much she believes that the gloss pushes fortuitous connections at her when it's active. Alden is one of those connections, destined by fate to benefit her. Who knows, maybe she isn't even wrong about it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 17:15
|
|
|
It's destined by fate to benefit the family, not her, though she probably forgot the difference by now.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 17:20
|
|
|
It's kind of an open question just how blind Aulia is to the stresses among her family. Personally, I suspect that she's pretty aware of them. I think that it's certainly possible that she's deliberately stoked the infighting among the Velra, with long-term aim of sorting out the winners and losers via how the gloss favors them. But, yeah, she's probably too narcissistic to to realize that the Gloss could work against her in favor of the rest of the family.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 17:33
|
|
|
It's interesting to think about the benefits Aulia is angling for by revealing Hazel's powers, but I also think it's important to consider how Aulia would evaluate the costs. Hazel thinks it's an extremely onerous thing, but what does it really cost Aulia? The important thing about Hazel is her chain debt sense. The important thing about her skill is its utility on summons far more than for Earth side shenanigans. As far as interpersonal costs, Aulia does not take seriously Lute's complaints about how he has been treated. Upsetting Hazel is just a temporary thing. Aulia would not consider there to be any possibility of long term alienation.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 17:36
|
|
|
Yeah it's important to remember that Aulia anticipates both her and Hazel effectively living forever, or hundreds of years at least. Hazel will grow up and her skill use on earth will be irrelevant but lying to Alden now could irrecoverably damage that relationship.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 17:49
|
|
|
awesmoe posted:Sleyca writes tension well SS Patreon I really doubt this is the case for young Avowed literally in their first year of training. Seems like they'd be liabilities more than anything. Alden's experience with the chaos also has almost zero value for dealing with a situation like this (and the Earth System would also be fully aware of his trauma). He only ever dealt with a very "passive" sort of chaos on Thegund, and doesn't have any great tools for directly fighting actual chaos entities. I feel like the most likely explanation for Alden's timer is simply that the System prioritizes him above most other Avowed. Klein's words to Alden in this chapter imply that he thinks Alden will have one of the longest times (he talks as if Alden might be the last to teleport), which would mean that teleport priority for Avowed roughly corresponds with Rank/power (I'm guessing top priority is "people in immediate danger + children"). The Earth System is aware of most (if not all) of Alden's circumstances, so it makes perfect logical sense for it to prioritize him very highly as an "asset" (since if he lives to adulthood, he'll be more powerful than the vast majority of other human Avowed). Nothingtoseehere posted:Supsup patreon: Yeah, this is what I think. I think one possibility (that I saw mentioned in one of the Patreon comments) is that Alden ends up rejecting the teleport to help save someone. This would "neatly" avoid the questions of "why was he prioritized before all his classmates" (which I'm 90% sure is for the reason both you and I mentioned). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Feb 19, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2024 19:52
|
|
|
I think the city of Sharrowford has managed to collect the entire bi and lesbian girl population in England in Katalepsis. Ah, this must be the Eye's ultimate plot. Nitrousoxide fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Feb 20, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 00:29
|
|
|
During the Chainer chapters it dawned on me that Hazel was so hosed up by her upbringing, she'd likely never get out of the hole her family and she herself had dug. Now I realize the excavation work is still ongoing. Every corrective measure we ever saw her receive seemed tailor made to just teach her that 'she lost' rather than that 'other people matter' (the lesson that would stop her from loving up so badly all the time). At which point is the villain so low that it's punching down to hit them? PS: I think the emphasis on PoM being a popular wordchain is because it means a lot of people appreciate it, and most of these people would have strong feelings upon learning that their debts (good or bad) could be called in for sway-adjacent purposes without their _consent_. Strong feelings towards the Velras, and maybe more importantly, to chains themselves. It has definitely impacted Alden's chain use. If you're angling for your family to be head chainers of earth, but they are giving chaining a bad name, that might make your employers (enablers) frown upon your plans.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 00:46
|
|
|
edit: quote instead of edit
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 00:47
|
|
|
Griddle of Love posted:During the Chainer chapters it dawned on me that Hazel was so hosed up by her upbringing, she'd likely never get out of the hole her family and she herself had dug. Now I realize the excavation work is still ongoing. Every corrective measure we ever saw her receive seemed tailor made to just teach her that 'she lost' rather than that 'other people matter' (the lesson that would stop her from loving up so badly all the time). I think the emphasis on Peace of Mind is that Hazel's job is to in some way "protect" weak chains or to punish serial debtors or something. This is why her skill doesn't have a consent restriction like most other chainer ones including Lute's. Hazel is trusted to only ever use her skill without consent when it's really important i.e. on some kind of rare or fragile chains. Instead she used it on one of the strongest and most common, an extremely clear breach of her responsibilities that she can't possibly claim was justified. I assume the implication is that the Palace will be extremely unhappy if they find out she abused her powers when so unnecessary, and on such a well decorated avowed too (not that anybody except Aulia knew that part).
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 01:06
|
|
|
gonadic io posted:I think the emphasis on Peace of Mind is that Hazel's job is to in some way "protect" weak chains or to punish serial debtors or something. This is why her skill doesn't have a consent restriction like most other chainer ones including Lute's. Hazel is trusted to only ever use her skill without consent when it's really important i.e. on some kind of rare or fragile chains. Instead she used it on one of the strongest and most common, an extremely clear breach of her responsibilities that she can't possibly claim was justified. I assume the implication is that the Palace will be extremely unhappy if they find out she abused her powers when so unnecessary, and on such a well decorated avowed too (not that anybody except Aulia knew that part). This was my reading on it too, tbh.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 01:39
|
|
|
gonadic io posted:I think the emphasis on Peace of Mind is that Hazel's job is to in some way "protect" weak chains or to punish serial debtors or something. This is why her skill doesn't have a consent restriction like most other chainer ones including Lute's. Hazel is trusted to only ever use her skill without consent when it's really important i.e. on some kind of rare or fragile chains. Instead she used it on one of the strongest and most common, an extremely clear breach of her responsibilities that she can't possibly claim was justified. I assume the implication is that the Palace will be extremely unhappy if they find out she abused her powers when so unnecessary, and on such a well decorated avowed too (not that anybody except Aulia knew that part). I guess Chainers' skill use might actually be somewhat scrutinized even when they are not summoned. For every other Avowed I don't see the Artonans caring at all as long as they didn't cause any harm to the regular operations of the empire, and even for Chainers it's only been mentioned that their specific employer cares about their responsible use of wordchains, and we have to infer that the skills also have to be used responsibly. Alden musing about it just feels like an invitation to think about it myself as a reader and reach further conclusions. quote:Popular is bad…because the chain is super healthy? he guessed. So there’s even less reason for her to usher the debt toward me than there would have been otherwise? Griddle of Love fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Feb 20, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 01:40
|
|
|
One of the bigger themes running through the whole story is that the artonans really really care about consent, a lot. It's woven through essentially every interaction they have with humans. Now they don't really care if the consent is informed or enthusiastic or not, of course, but that part isn't relevant here. I think that this will be seen as a really big deal once they find out what she did, and compounded by who she did it to. e: Lute also implied that Alden might be caught out by cheating on wordchains and lying about it, so I wonder what the mechanism for people finding out about that is. Also I strongly suspect that all the Velra chainers except Lute are passing their own personal debt off to supplicants at the palace, and Aulia presumably doesn't want that practice scrutinised either. Although maybe it's considered a semi official park of the job to the artonans, who knows. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Feb 20, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 01:45
|
|
|
It's hard to pin down exactly what changed about threads/forge of destiny but it's gone from one of my favourites to a dull chore. At the stage that royalroad is at, it just feels like we've spent years in a city council planning meeting negotiating boring details with boring people, while the old interesting characters sit on the side and complain about being bored. The dangers of crowdsourcing plot, I suppose.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 02:37
|
|
|
awesmoe posted:It's hard to pin down exactly what changed about threads/forge of destiny but it's gone from one of my favourites to a dull chore.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 04:51
|
|
|
Some more Katalepsis thoughts I do like how the non-magical characters like Raine continue to be relevant to solving the story's issues even as Heather gets surrounded with more and more otherwordly monsters or wizards. Like, for instance how Raine saw through "Joe King's" deceptions quickly. While other, far more power characters are easily hoodwinked by him. Something I'm not an enormous fan of is how every time Evelyn encounters another mage it devolves into multi-chapter posturing and territory marking which largely results in Heather telling Evelyn off and it just being left there. It's a pretty exhausting thing and I don't really feel like repeating this long farce with every single mage they encounter has really helped the story. Nitrousoxide fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Feb 20, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 13:53
|
|
|
Is anyone still reading Mark of the Fool? I dropped it around 600, after all the (big spoilers) traveller's diary/isekai stuff got resolved. Worth catching up?
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 22:23
|
|
|
I dropped it before then. I didn't mind the actual missions or whatever but found myself not giving a poo poo about the 50 chapters happening between each one.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 23:09
|
|
|
Thinking back on it, it was turning into Business-Simulator-The-Novel and I just wasn't here for it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 23:13
|
|
|
There's a few webnovels where the characters get weirdly obsessed with nickel and diming people in their business and we get to hear about every penny. It's a very weird trope. I seem to remember sufficiently advanced magic and millennial mage (n.b. this is different to paranoid mage don't forget) both also suffering from this.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 23:20
|
|
|
gonadic io posted:There's a few webnovels where the characters get weirdly obsessed with nickel and diming people in their business and we get to hear about every penny. It's a very weird trope. I seem to remember sufficiently advanced magic and millennial mage (n.b. this is different to paranoid mage don't forget) both also suffering from this. Millennial Mage has at least gotten over that, mostly, on account of she's not poor and massively in debt anymore.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 23:34
|
|
|
It wasn't even that that made me drop MM but it was how approximately 50% of it by weight was about her lunch. there's slice of life, and then there's that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 23:37
|
|
|
I finished the 4th Practical Guide to Sorcery book that just released. I quite liked it! The book does a good job of interrogating what, exactly, Siobhan is doing, and what kind of person she's becoming. The most compelling moment in the book was a bitter, acrimonious argument in which no one was really wrong. I always found the relationships the best part of the series, so this continues that. The ratfic side of it is as ratficcy as ever, which doesn't really bother me but did lead me to roll my eyes a few times. (Did you know: People who don't think clearly are dumb and pathetic?) The power fantasy side was a bit much at times but still fun, and nobody who reads web serials doesn't enjoy a little power fantasy now and then.
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2024 23:41
|
|
|
PGTS book 4 it really feels like something's got to give soon. My bet is on Thaddeus deciding that she's getting tuition from the Raven queen because she can do things that only the Raven queen can and he's seen them. The conduit stuff and if he remembers her comments about splitting Will. Imo for the larger story it's pretty clear that some remanent of Merlin's Will is hanging out and directing events somewhat. Crazy wildcard theory after it was mentioned that one story about Merlin is he was traveling back through time: Merlin is somehow S and that's why she was picked by the artifact and can do things that only Merlin has ever been able to do. gonadic io fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Feb 21, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2024 02:19
|
|
|
The thing that got me to finally drop Millennial Mage was the second authorial screed about how women exist to have babies complete with the tradcath meme about how a woman who is a scientist has wasted her life because she could have given birth to multiple scientists instead.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2024 03:03
|
|
|
 I gave up on it because it was kinda boring now she was setting into a city. I don't remember that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2024 03:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 00:42 |
|
|
Nettle Soup posted:Is anyone still reading Mark of the Fool? I dropped it around 600, after all the (big spoilers) traveller's diary/isekai stuff got resolved. Worth catching up? It's probably an alright time to catch up, it's at the final stretch. This series has always been super slow/primed to pad out patreon so I honestly think it's better to read when you can chew through a bunch of chapters at once. He seems to lift whole sections he has previously written as flashbacks which i guess works in a visual medium but it kinda sucks when the author only releases 2000 word chapters and 1/3 is just stuff we read over previously. Enough of the story has moved forward that you would be pretty satisfied if you started now and caught up on Royal Road.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2024 03:10
|
|