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LLSix posted:I've been rereading the web serial (comic) Order of the Stick. Anyone got suggestions for similarly lighthearted fun stories? The whole poking fun at the litrpg mechanics makes me think Vainquer the Dragon, even though I wasn't a huge fan of that series. Though... actually you're probably familiar with that one by now. I guess there's Dungeon Crawler Carl... you know what, this might be trickier than I thought. Focusing on stories that someone with several hundred posts in this thread might not be familiar with... The Devil's Foundry, maybe? I only read it when there were a lot fewer chapters so I don't know where it goes.
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Apr 5, 2024 05:50
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Onean posted:It's still Bullshit on RR, they just changed the name for the Amazon release. It's called, this trilogy is broken and is a four parter. Actually really enjoyed that one. It went places.
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Apr 5, 2024 06:41
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It was good. "There Is no Epic Loot Here, Only Puns" is an interesting one.
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Apr 5, 2024 08:41
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Einander posted:(SupSup 145) Usually I enjoy the story's pace, but honestly, this chapter could have and should have been a couple of paragraphs at the top of an actual chapter. What's the takeaway, that Matadero is almost empty and Alden is in a bad mental place? This chapter was just... hollow. Not much there. I mean this has been the case for most of the chapters since the moon event, I almost gave up on it. At least something interesting is happening mostly right now. I sure am glad we spent 6 years reading about kids running around a gym to get here.
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Apr 5, 2024 08:48
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LLSix posted:I've been rereading the web serial (comic) Order of the Stick. Anyone got suggestions for similarly lighthearted fun stories? When Immortal Ascension Fails Time Travel to Try Again is a good dumb fun cultivation parody.
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Apr 5, 2024 12:46
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cant cook creole bream posted:It's called, this trilogy is broken and is a four parter. Actually really enjoyed that one. It went places. It being a four parter is part of the joke- because the trilogy is broken
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Apr 6, 2024 12:37
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LLSix posted:I've been rereading the web serial (comic) Order of the Stick. Anyone got suggestions for similarly lighthearted fun stories? I've got a couple. Links are Scribblehub since that's where I'm reading them, but I'm pretty sure they're on RR too. Reincarnated into a Time-Loop Dungeon as a LVL100 Catgirl Chef! Something ... happened to Earth, and a bunch of people got reincarnated into a dungeon that resets everything and everyone back to the beginning when a party of "Players" reaches the last floor and presses a big, green button. Everybody except for the catgirls who take the place of NPC service providers and shop keepers, that is. The story's presented as a diary written by Nikki, a bit of a goofball airhead catgirl on the final safe floor of the dungeon, starting at the beginning of the 21st of 100 cycles since another catgirl got notebooks added to her shop's inventory for the first time. Sprinkled throughout are a few spoiler boxes, and even full chapters, written like a traditional story from Nikki's and other characters' PoV's, but it's primarily diary chapters. As for where the story goes, well, the girls are tired of being stuck waiting for Players to get to their floor, finding themselves unable to leave by going up to the previous floor, and are passing time exclusively by racing marbles. A kobold from the floor above theirs comes down, and after they stop killing him he explains there's a way to go down instead of up. Turns out, not resetting every cycle let's them get up to a lot of chaos. (Minor warning, the author used some images for some stuff early on, and the links are broken so they don't show up. You can get the important things from context, but it's still unfortunate.) Foxification This one's got a bit of a shadowed start. Not dark, by any stretch of the imagination, but Prim, the MC, is a youngish girl with a single father that loved her mother more than he does her. Key word being loved, since her mother died when she was born. So being the dirtbag father he is, he decides to use her in a ritual gain control of a new nearby dungeon. A ritual which would have almost certainly ended poorly if a priestess didn't point Prim in a different god's direction and had her ask for a family instead of the endless riches and knowledge her father wanted. Cilia, the Goddess of Life, Family, Foxes and more, is the one the MC gets pointed at. She takes her as her daughter, remakes her by giving her the Mark of Cilia (turning her into a foxkin), and gives her a new name, Kiomi. Rather than letting Kiomi get stuck as just a sentient dungeon, she assigns her as the Avatar of the Dungeon of Foxes so she still has a body, and gives her control over it. Things are pretty light-hearted from there on out, with Kiomi playing around with elemental foxes and making friends. There is less light stuff, like her father not entirely giving up on gaining control of the dungeon or Cilia's past, but it's always ended on a bright note so far.
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Apr 6, 2024 14:38
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Onean posted:I've got a couple. Links are Scribblehub since that's where I'm reading them, but I'm pretty sure they're on RR too. This was a great recommendation! Thanks! Very fluffy and lighthearted.
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Apr 6, 2024 15:18
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I'm having a hard time figuring out whether I want to keep reading Ar'Kendrithyst. Much as I enjoy the author's interesting worldbuilding and ideas around magic and what a post-apocalyptic magic-based society (or, as in the serial, several different examples of them) would look like, I also feel tired of the way the author keeps having the MC react to stuff. I paused reading midway through Erick's first few dialogues with Tenebrae and then just caught up to the tail end of his trip to Ar’Cosmos and it's depressing how quickly he stops being angry with people who've done really awful things to him. I can't help but imagine how shittily things would have gone for the MC if he didn't basically just growth hack his way out of everyone's ability to exploit him or keep him locked up, and I'm kind of at the point where I'm like "actually it'd be cool and good if he just skipped town and let all these assholes murder each other".
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Apr 6, 2024 20:58
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I got bored with Catgirl Chef before reaching the end, but it's (very stupid) fun for a while.
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Apr 6, 2024 21:07
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babydonthurtme posted:I'm having a hard time figuring out whether I want to keep reading Ar'Kendrithyst. Much as I enjoy the author's interesting worldbuilding and ideas around magic and what a post-apocalyptic magic-based society (or, as in the serial, several different examples of them) would look like, I also feel tired of the way the author keeps having the MC react to stuff. I paused reading midway through Erick's first few dialogues with Tenebrae and then just caught up to the tail end of his trip to Ar’Cosmos and it's depressing how quickly he stops being angry with people who've done really awful things to him. I can't help but imagine how shittily things would have gone for the MC if he didn't basically just growth hack his way out of everyone's ability to exploit him or keep him locked up, and I'm kind of at the point where I'm like "actually it'd be cool and good if he just skipped town and let all these assholes murder each other". I felt similarly. Sounds like you put up with it for longer than I did before dropping it.
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Apr 6, 2024 21:30
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LLSix posted:I felt similarly. Sounds like you put up with it for longer than I did before dropping it.
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Apr 6, 2024 22:44
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Truly excellent two-parter for TWI Patreon this week. If this is the kind of quality the new schedule can produce it might be worth losing the giant constant stream of words. Love the battle hamster pulling out some anime rear end special corkscrew punches.
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Apr 6, 2024 23:32
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Infinity Gaia posted:Truly excellent two-parter for TWI Patreon this week. If this is the kind of quality the new schedule can produce it might be worth losing the giant constant stream of words. Love the battle hamster pulling out some anime rear end special corkscrew punches. I like the new schedule because TWI made every other patreon I subscribe to feel like terrible value comparing frequency of posts and volume per post, now it feels a bit more even.
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Apr 7, 2024 01:02
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babydonthurtme posted:I'm having a hard time figuring out whether I want to keep reading Ar'Kendrithyst. Much as I enjoy the author's interesting worldbuilding and ideas around magic and what a post-apocalyptic magic-based society (or, as in the serial, several different examples of them) would look like, I also feel tired of the way the author keeps having the MC react to stuff. I paused reading midway through Erick's first few dialogues with Tenebrae and then just caught up to the tail end of his trip to Ar’Cosmos and it's depressing how quickly he stops being angry with people who've done really awful things to him. I can't help but imagine how shittily things would have gone for the MC if he didn't basically just growth hack his way out of everyone's ability to exploit him or keep him locked up, and I'm kind of at the point where I'm like "actually it'd be cool and good if he just skipped town and let all these assholes murder each other". Forgiveness is healthy, holding on to anger is not.
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Apr 7, 2024 01:06
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Peachfart posted:Forgiveness is healthy, holding on to anger is not. Wrt the series I was less annoyed by who Erick was forgiving and more annoyed by the implication that I'd have to read about him continuing to interact with abusive-for-the-greater-good fae lady at length. It felt like she got a pass on being an rear end in a top hat for the same reason Melemizargo did (I'm inhuman so gently caress you I do what I want), except all she brought to the story was rhyming speak and vague sadness about her lost people (who we know aren't permanently dead!).
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Apr 7, 2024 10:34
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Peachfart posted:Forgiveness is healthy, holding on to anger is not. OTOH it can be good and healthy to protect yourself from people who have harmed you. And that might involve removing their ability to do harm.
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Apr 7, 2024 11:05
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babydonthurtme posted:I'm having a hard time figuring out whether I want to keep reading Ar'Kendrithyst. Much as I enjoy the author's interesting worldbuilding and ideas around magic and what a post-apocalyptic magic-based society (or, as in the serial, several different examples of them) would look like, I also feel tired of the way the author keeps having the MC react to stuff. I paused reading midway through Erick's first few dialogues with Tenebrae and then just caught up to the tail end of his trip to Ar’Cosmos and it's depressing how quickly he stops being angry with people who've done really awful things to him. I can't help but imagine how shittily things would have gone for the MC if he didn't basically just growth hack his way out of everyone's ability to exploit him or keep him locked up, and I'm kind of at the point where I'm like "actually it'd be cool and good if he just skipped town and let all these assholes murder each other". Hello! Author here. I'm pretty sure there's some point when Erick directly acknowledges that anger is useful for figuring out if you should trust someone enough to let them hurt you again, so that's knowledge he knows. But also, Erick has clearly defined things that make him truly angry, and everything else is kind of whatever. Institutional abuses of power make him truly angry, but he doesn't just kill everyone who abuses their power; he tries to find ways that work to solve those sorts of issues, for institutional issues can only be solved institutionally, either by reform, or through replacement. Malicious anger is something that sets him off, too. People doing harm to do harm tend to incur actual wrath. see: most all the Shades, others, etc. People harming those he loves better beware, too. People trying to do the best for themselves and others with the tools they have and considering the dangers they face, is not something that inspires lingering anger, even if they did something against him. At many points in cycles of violence there are places where the violence can be broken, and Erick tries to be that break. Anywho! That's who Erick is. Some people just don't like that sort of character, tho, and that's fine.
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Apr 7, 2024 11:14
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Trip Report Two works by qntm (There Is No Anti-Memetics Division, Fine Structure) These were pretty good, There Is No Anti-Memetics Division in particular, although you can see that qntm's strong suit is short stories and not novels. Decided to leave Ra on the shelf, reading up on it and realising it has a similar gimmick to Fine Structure made me feel like I could take a break from qntm's quirks. I'll probably check back in later at some point. Super Minion Really good! Exactly as good as everyone says. Wildly imaginative in exactly the pulp way I'm enjoying in web serial stuff. Reminds me of pre-golden age sci-fi and early super hero comics, just highly individual creativity vomited out on to the page. Such a shame this was abandoned as I'd like to see more and the author make that mega-green they had coming to them. First Chapters of Worth The Candle Very fun so far. Skibidi Toilet This gen alpha youtube animation hit is a web serial and hits the exact same pulpy pleasures of web serials. Change my mind.
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Apr 7, 2024 11:27
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Ancillary Justice is the book that really convinced me on the idea of righteous anger as a force for good/justice.
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Apr 7, 2024 11:29
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fez_machine posted:Skibidi Toilet however if you do so I will not disagree
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Apr 7, 2024 12:12
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fez_machine posted:Trip Report There's actually a series of fan films coming out right now regarding the anti-memetics short stories Episode 1: https://youtu.be/w-IiVeGAydE?si=J9oR3AUJOaqSzIZG Episode 2: https://youtu.be/oJTGNsR0Sls?si=cA8SlFrQ94yBpK7F Episode 3 (upcoming): https://youtu.be/A-OL3nmAhUg?si=6tNPqs9jXrSL7UQP Maybe more in the future too. I dunno.
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Apr 7, 2024 12:15
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fez_machine posted:Skibidi Toilet Also this: 
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Apr 7, 2024 12:21
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Yeah, I'd say webcomics, web serials, and the more narrative stick fight animation type things are all part of a new pulp gestalt
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Apr 7, 2024 13:49
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Selkie Myth posted:It being a four parter is part of the joke- because the trilogy is broken I know. But thanks.
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Apr 7, 2024 21:00
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ahahaha the toilet animation has reached the inevitable jump the shark moment of any web thing by introducing grand scale lore that was secretly behind everything and the toilets speak english now this is the last time I will talk about it
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Apr 7, 2024 21:48
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fez_machine posted:ahahaha the toilet animation has reached the inevitable jump the shark moment of any web thing by introducing grand scale lore that was secretly behind everything and the toilets speak english now
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Apr 7, 2024 22:29
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A bit of grumbling about the stories I've checked out: Reincarnated into a Time-Loop Dungeon as a LVL100 Catgirl Chef! Flipped through a bunch of chapters today and it's cute, I suppose, but too meandering and I didn't really care about the characters. I found myself skimming quicker and quicker until at some point I realized I'd load up a page, glance at it, page down and load the next one. Weeaboo's Unfortunate Isekai: The Necromancer's Gacha I'll still follow it for a bit, I suppose, but I don't think this is very good so far. A) The weeb caricature shtick grew old fast, B) the tower defense chapters aren't actually interesting and they're the meat of the story and C) he's hinting at a backstory of the people who were turned into the waifus and so far I don't care either. Zeroth Moment: My Cheat Skill Is Stupid, So I'll Just Ignore It The MC here is also a middle-aged loser, but at least he's not a weeb. The standard Ritual To Summon A Hero To Fight the Dark Lord isekais him along with a class of Japanese high-schoolers, but this is a trope subversion story and the world he ends up in is kinda crapsack, so the powers that everyone gets are based on their status in the previous world and, needless to say, our MC was a fat useless balding dumbass living on disability checks, so the guards just kick him and the other high school reject kids who got useless powers out - and things don't get any better from here. The story is actually not bad, but the worldbuilding and story are pretty grim like, say, Dungeon Crawler Carl and I don't enjoy that in something that I have to read one update at a time. I also gave up on The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG. My engagement would drop from a weak 7 to about a 4 every time they'd start a new scenario and at some point I stopped caring about the metaplot as well.
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Apr 7, 2024 23:15
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If you'd like a better try at whatever Zeroth Moment was going for there, check out Chaotic Craftsman Worships the Cube. It started to lose me about chapter 400, but was interesting enough up til then.
Nettle Soup fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Apr 7, 2024 |
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Apr 7, 2024 23:40
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I still need to finish reading Ar'Kendrythyst. I got up to the part where Erick is where the metal people live; it's been a while so I can't remember what they're called lol. (Everything below is only based on the content up to the point I'm at obviously, so maybe something changes later) Regarding Erick's personality, I partially agree with the criticism, but I prefer Erick's personality to what you usually see in web serial protagonists. Also, a lot of his attitude seems derived from the fact that he isn't personally threatened beyond a certain point (like with Tenebrae). I don't know if this is intentional, but Erick comes off as sort of aloof by virtue of his power - he can afford to be easy-going because very little threatens him. The only issue is that I get the impression Erick's perspective is generally treated as being correct (which the author seemed to acknowledge a few posts up, at least from the way their post was worded). "Institutional problems require institutional solutions" is a reasonable opinion for a character like Erick to hold (and not even exactly wrong, though I think it ignores the frequent role of violence in political change), but the narrative seems to sort of directly agree with this. Violence is generally only wielded in either self-defense or against the True Sickos (by Erick, anyways), with there seemingly being a distinction drawn between the very direct violence of people/entities like the Shades and institutional violence, with the idea being that it would somehow be wrong for Erick to just roll into one of the hosed up places and make demands of them at, uh, "spell-point." This idea (that it would be wrong for Erick to use his power to force change) is a reasonable belief for Erick to hold, but I'm not sure if it's a reasonable one for the story to essentially assert is correct. This is kind of an inherent problem to actually having real ethical/political topics in a story though - it's impossible for the author somehow be "neutral" since they're creating a world that functions in a way that makes sense given their own beliefs and values. All of this being said, Ar'Kendrythyst deals with stuff like this way better than any other web serial I've read, and the conclusions it seems to arrive at are pretty reasonable and not that different from my own.
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Apr 8, 2024 02:19
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I completely agree that I like Erick's personality more than most web serial protagonists. Much prefer someone who is at least trying to do the right thing, like Erick, over the usual murderhobos. I'm surprised to hear from someone who thinks that the story agrees with Erick too much. My take away was pretty much the exact opposite. When I read it, it felt like Erick spends a lot of the first book being lectured by almost everyone for not resorting to violence faster. It felt to me like Erick loses most of those arguments and ends up doing what he's told. Like when he goes to fight the shades. Erick's seeming inability to successfully argue for the value of his own life philosophy in the first book is a large part of why I never read the second.
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Apr 8, 2024 02:44
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Ytlaya posted:I still need to finish reading Ar'Kendrythyst. I got up to the part where Erick is where the metal people live; it's been a while so I can't remember what they're called lol. That reminds me: I reread Ar'Kendrythyst about a year ago, and this was absolutely the section of it that struck me as the funniest. I'm not even sure it was intended to be funny (although probably at least a little bit). But we've got Erick, the nicest guy on the planet, going around saying hi to all the wrought. The immortal movers and shakers, spitballing their plans to get Erick onside by giving him what he wants soon, maybe in fifty years or so. And their high priest and expert mind reader following Erick around and sweating bullets because literally every time Erick meets somebody he's thinking "gee, this is really gonna suck when I have to kill all these guys in a few months." How can I not laugh?
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Apr 8, 2024 02:56
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I think that one of Ar'Kendrythist's biggest cop-outs is that it eventually gives Erick abilities that let him win fights as conclusively as if he had killed his opponent. Its answer to really big ethical questions like "what if a monster does not want to be rehabilitated" is for Erick to just straight-up hit them with [Rehabilitation Bolt], rehabilitating them anyway. As the spells start scaling up with power level, they become functionally equivalent to just straight-up murder: what exactly is a spell that rewrites someone's entire personality into something more acceptable and then tosses them into an unreachable side reality, except a disintegration beam you don't have to feel bad about? Late-game Erick is the worst possible kind of tyrant, using his vast power to non-consensually enforce his perfect world order on the universe. The villains he faces need to be cartoonishly evil, because if they aren't the worst people in the world, we might ask whether it's wrong to curse someone to eternal despair as penance for their crimes. He must always be supernaturally shown to be on the right path, otherwise we might stop to think about whether effectively destroying a major city might actually make things somehow worse for everyone else. Ultimately, in practice, Erick is a very standard avenging-angel-of-justice type of web serial protagonist. He does bad things to bad people in order to make the world better. This is, itself, a perfectly fine thing! I've been enjoying the wish-fulfillment fantasy of watching him cast [Destroy Slavery] and make the world an irrefutably better place. Where it falls flat for me is that Ar'Kendrythist presents him as not an avenging angel, necessitating the creation of all of these roundabout ways to do things that fill the narrative function of cold-blooded murder without actually having Erick murder someone in cold blood.
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Apr 8, 2024 03:43
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Ytlaya posted:I still need to finish reading Ar'Kendrythyst. I got up to the part where Erick is where the metal people live; it's been a while so I can't remember what they're called lol. i have finished and all of this will be addressed directly by the text in stages and in a way i found ultimately satisfying
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Apr 8, 2024 03:44
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How many Ripples parts will there be in supsup in total? I figure I might as well wait until they're all released before I get started
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Apr 8, 2024 19:41
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Lone Goat posted:How many Ripples parts will there be in supsup in total? I figure I might as well wait until they're all released before I get started Hah
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Apr 8, 2024 19:48
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We're at the end of the arc now on the Patreon, just (We're in the the denouncement, at least).
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Apr 8, 2024 19:51
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Lone Goat posted:How many Ripples parts will there be in supsup in total? I figure I might as well wait until they're all released before I get started Five Ripples and... ~~~~~ nine waves ~~~~~ (Arguably the arc isn't over in Patreon still, but it's out of crisis mode and into the aftermath).
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Apr 8, 2024 19:53
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There are 14 chapters in this arc, not including the epilogue chapters that are currently being published on patreon right now
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Apr 8, 2024 19:54
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well ok I might as well start reading now lol, thanks for the info
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Apr 8, 2024 19:56
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