|
Lyon posted:I've been reading ISSTH for a while now and wasn't sure if there was a thread on SA to chat about it in. Started down this rabbit hole reading Tales of Demons and Gods which started off great but the last arc has really expanded the world in a way which I am not enjoying... but anyway the translator for TDG moved his site to Wuxia World and I found ISSTH which is by far my favorite. It's ridiculous but very entertaining. It even has proper fantasy tropes like ambiguously worded terms and prophecies.
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 04:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 09:38 |
|
|
Algid posted:I've read to 1350 or so (out of over 1600 so far), there are a lot of words, much of it sound effects, glittering eyes and flicking sleeves. The cosmology and world building in ISSTH is actually really similar to huge multi-volume epic fantasy like the wheel of time. I am at chapter 468 (as far as Wuxia World has it translated so far). The final chapter just came out last week or so according to the guy translating it. I am both happy and sad that only 1/4 of it has been translated... looks like we are almost through the totem arc (no idea what section this is officially) as he has Fire, Metal, Wood, and he's halfway to finishing Earth so that just leaves Water I guess. The only downside to most of these stories are that there are always so many lucky coincidences for the protagonist but once you get past that the genre is fun and this is definitely my favorite Xianxia novel so far.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 05:27
|
|
|
I'm really enjoying the current location in ISSTH. A partially destroyed ancient space bridge dimension (that appears once every 1000 years) is pretty loving rad! Also you ride orbiting asteroids to get around to different continent-sized chunks. Another example of the setting being both inventive and of ludicrous scale. I'm curious what will happen with this plotline. The main players seem way out of Meng Hao's league right now.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 05:47
|
|
|
Lyon posted:I am at chapter 468 (as far as Wuxia World has it translated so far). The final chapter just came out last week or so according to the guy translating it. I am both happy and sad that only 1/4 of it has been translated... looks like we are almost through the totem arc (no idea what section this is officially) as he has Fire, Metal, Wood, and he's halfway to finishing Earth so that just leaves Water I guess. The only downside to most of these stories are that there are always so many lucky coincidences for the protagonist but once you get past that the genre is fun and this is definitely my favorite Xianxia novel so far. He already realized that a magical sea of death would be perfect for creating a water totem, so that will keep until the western desert is submerged.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 06:18
|
|
|
brainwrinkle posted:I'm really enjoying the current location in ISSTH. A partially destroyed ancient space bridge dimension (that appears once every 1000 years) is pretty loving rad! Also you ride orbiting asteroids to get around to different continent-sized chunks. Another example of the setting being both inventive and of ludicrous scale. Yeah, this is what really sets apart ISSTH from other Xianxia in my eyes. Coiling Dragon and Stellar Transformation and all their ilk seem to believe adding 0's to distance measurements is enough to make an interesting world and it's really not. Couple that with timescales that reach absurdity and it all just becomes a morass of incomprehensible numbers and samey places.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 06:19
|
|
|
Speaking of Xianxia that stands out from the pack, I cannot promote My Disciple Died Yet Again enough. The translations has picked up again, and we're nearing the end of the third reincarnation. Things are about to get REALLY good.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 06:29
|
|
|
Serious Frolicking posted:He already realized that a magical sea of death would be perfect for creating a water totem, so that will keep until the western desert is submerged. Honestly once he became the sacred ancient for the tribe I thought he was going to create his water tattoo with the violet rain and that would provide immunity to the tribe and they would just survive in/near the sea but then they did this whole bridge of immortals thing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 06:43
|
|
|
He had help generating his first two totems, and for his third he had an amazing source material. Doing it from scratch on his own seems a lot more difficult.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 06:52
|
|
|
His title is pretty much literally "godfather", it kept a smile on my face for the entire western desert arc. What are the wolves called by the way? Their names are pretty much fluffy #x in Chinese.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 07:17
|
|
|
Algid posted:His title is pretty much literally "godfather", it kept a smile on my face for the entire western desert arc. Hairy 1-5
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 07:32
|
|
|
Lyon posted:The only downside to most of these stories are that there are always so many lucky coincidences for the protagonist but once you get past that the genre is fun and this is definitely my favorite Xianxia novel so far. I'm more than willing to overlook the overpowered protagonist cliche because Meng Hao is the best protagonist ever. I Shall Seal The Heavens posted:“If I don’t keep grabbing stuff until my hands cramp, then my name isn’t Meng Hao!” he said, his eyes gleaming as he wrenched up a floor tile. All the best scenes in ISSTH involve Meng Hao stealing other people's poo poo (and other people's reactions to him stealing all their poo poo): The Spirit Pill Sprint, the Raindragon Hunt, Monster Mountain and the Bag of the Cosmos, the Iron Spear Auction, Salary Negotiations with Patriarch Reliance, Meeting the Meat Jelly, the Primordial Heavenly Replenishing Pill, the Million Spirit Stone giveaway and Church of Golden Light Annual Charity Marathon, the Crow Divinity Holy Land Fishing Excursion, and now Meng Hao's Extreme Home Makeover (in Space!). He earned every single one of his absurdly powerful magic items by being an audacious kleptomaniac wizard. Avulsion fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Feb 16, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 07:41
|
|
|
The blood divinity thing was the opposite from usual. Meng Hao was the chosen one there, with someone else trying to subvert the entire process to swipe it for himself.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 07:47
|
|
|
Serious Frolicking posted:The blood divinity thing was the opposite from usual. Meng Hao was the chosen one there, with someone else trying to subvert the entire process to swipe it for himself. The criteria for becoming the "Chosen One" was to be such an incredible rear end in a top hat that sky tries to murder you, and was a direct result of his earlier activities. The Gold Core Tribulation was also great, not just because of the murder and stealing that was going on at the time, but also because of all the lightning gags leading up to the grand finale, and all the "What the gently caress is wrong with this guy?!" reactions from everyone around him.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 07:57
|
|
|
The reason behind heavenly tribulations turn out to be pretty hilarious. This is pretty much already mostly spelled out, it just gets stated outright in future chapters. Basically some tribulations are natural tests administered by the world to see if you're badass enough to get your next powerup, but lords have limited administrative rights over the mountain-sea realm (meant to act as a defense mechanism for the realm mostly) and a bunch of things probably got forbidden because some lords wanted to kill off possible competition.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 09:48
|
|
|
Avulsion posted:I'm more than willing to overlook the overpowered protagonist cliche because Meng Hao is the best protagonist ever. If you want specifically interesting or well written cast, however, I would suggest Ze Tian Ji or World of Cultivation. quote:All the best scenes in ISSTH involve Meng Hao stealing other people's poo poo (and other people's reactions to him stealing all their poo poo): However, He really, really hasn't earned any of them. Meng Hao is absurdly lucky whenever it comes to having just the right person to steal stuff just at the right time. In fact, it's even worse considering he is also one of the Xanxia protagonists who are in the "doesn't work that hard" category, so it makes it more painful. I have to say I do like a lot of the "philosophy of the Dao" parts though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 10:11
|
|
|
Meng Hao works smarter, not harder  Jokes aside he is hard working at times, he definitely earned his abilities as an alchemist after he was lucky enough to be able to sneak in ofc
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 10:30
|
|
|
Chinese place a lot more on "good fortune" and "karma" than western culture, so the "Meng Hao is so lucky" is likely due to a large part to chinese culture.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 10:51
|
|
|
Arkeus posted:I have to say I do like a lot of the "philosophy of the Dao" parts though. Algid fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Feb 16, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 16:20
|
|
|
UberJew posted:Meng Hao works smarter, not harder Well the biggest cop out in that section was his knowledge of plants that he gained from the resurrection lily. Yes, he has the crazy poison flower trying to kill him but we all know he isn't going to die that way so really it is just another lucky happenstance.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 17:20
|
|
|
Meng Hao put 10 points in Luck for his SPECIAL stats and that's okay! also really enjoy ISSTHs world building, we've gotten loads of cool and interesting places, from the back of a giant demonic continent-sized turtle, to a pocket dimension full of pissed off dead folks from a clan who tried to defy the ji clan, to the kickass space bridge
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 23:30
|
|
|
Yeah, without his absurd luck Meng Hao just wouldn't be able to survive in that absurd universe.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2016 23:50
|
|
|
Yasser Arafatwa posted:giant demonic continent-sized turtle New York to LA is about 2,500 miles. The circumference of the Earth is about 25,000 miles. The distance to the Moon is just under 240,000 miles. Patriarch Reliance is described as having a circumference of "millions" of miles. If you consider every single number in ISSTH to be 100% accurate (which you should) then Patriarch Reliance is probably around the same size as the Sun.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 00:12
|
|
|
I'm totally ok with Patriarch Reliance being the size of the sun and leaving a sun-sized hole in another mega-planet upon departure. Well, perhaps not totally ok because things of that size would probably have severe gravity consequences, but I'd be fine with hand-waving that away with 'formations' or the magic-equivalent of cultivation. I started reading 'World of Cultivation'. Please tell me this is going to stay Zombie Farmville Xianxia for a significant amount of chapters. It's surprisingly fun to read about the farming adventures of an expressionless money-grubber. I also began reading Bringing The Farm To Live In Another World, but it seems a lot more shallow, probably more so because the translation is relying so much on machine translation and apparently very little on actually knowing the language.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 02:01
|
|
|
Fleve posted:I'm totally ok with Patriarch Reliance being the size of the sun and leaving a sun-sized hole in another mega-planet upon departure. Well, perhaps not totally ok because things of that size would probably have severe gravity consequences, but I'd be fine with hand-waving that away with 'formations' or the magic-equivalent of cultivation. It gets even better. He remains a money grubbing farmer in a sword sect and his elders all get pissed off cause all he does is make money and chill.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 02:03
|
|
|
FriggenJ posted:It gets even better. He remains a money grubbing farmer in a sword sect and his elders all get pissed off cause all he does is make money and chill. Hah! That is perfect. Well poo poo, there go my plans to do things other than reading xianxia.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 02:09
|
|
|
I liked the premise a lot, but the translation was just too amazingly terrible.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 02:11
|
|
|
Is the Konosuba LN/translation any good? I'm a little worried that something so humor heavy might lose something if the translation is poor.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 02:42
|
|
|
I found it okay, but I find myself a horrible judge of translation quality since it's been so long I don't know what's good and what's bad anymore. At the very least, it obeys basic laws of grammar and whatnot.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 02:56
|
|
|
Serious Frolicking posted:I liked the premise a lot, but the translation was just too amazingly terrible. Pretty much the same.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 03:44
|
|
|
Irisize posted:I found it okay, but I find myself a horrible judge of translation quality since it's been so long I don't know what's good and what's bad anymore. At the very least, it obeys basic laws of grammar and whatnot. I'm generally fine as long as the grammar is technically correct and it doesn't sound like someone with broken English speaking. It also really bugs me when they leave random words untranslated (for example "Onii-chan, you like cheese ne?"), and this is coming from someone who knows a bunch of Japanese so I can't imagine how obnoxious it is for people who don't.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2016 04:33
|
|
|
Serious Frolicking posted:I liked the premise a lot, but the translation was just too amazingly terrible. If we're talking World of Cultivation then I couldn't even get through the first chapter without losing interest. It felt like every other word was left untranslated and the footnotes to clarify don't really help. And it was even prefaced saying this was a high quality redo of the initial translation. The other farming novel mentioned isn't particularly deep or complex but the translation is not a deterrent even if it its an edited machine translation. I was hoping to get into the former hoping it was doing weird and fun things with farming but I could only deal with so many paragraphs of world building I couldn't quickly understand because every meaningful word wasn't translated. Comic fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Feb 18, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 06:09
|
|
|
Well, leaving those words untranslated isn't because they couldn't translate them, it's just a bad stylistic decision. You get used to it after enough chapters, but yeah it's cumbersome. The first chapter is the worst offender. If you can get through the initial terminology spagetthi, I think it's definitely worth reading. It's like a more low-key ISSTH with Meng Hao starting out as an outer sect magic grains farmer.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 12:47
|
|
|
Another thing it does that I love is that it has a truly "Genius disciple" who is the best friend of the MC, and it's not "Yeah, he is a genius but MC is totally better anyway", it's "OK, this guy is a real genius". It's refreshing to have other characters have some agency and relevance sometime 
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 13:34
|
|
|
Arkeus posted:Another thing it does that I love is that it has a truly "Genius disciple" who is the best friend of the MC, and it's not "Yeah, he is a genius but MC is totally better anyway", it's "OK, this guy is a real genius". It's refreshing to have other characters have some agency and relevance sometime Also that the typical arrogant, entitled inner sect disciple that the MC manages to beat realizes that being a shithead is loving up his training and turns over a new leaf. In many ways it feels like it's poking fun at a lot of typical Xianxia standards.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 14:09
|
|
|
Fleve posted:Well, leaving those words untranslated isn't because they couldn't translate them, it's just a bad stylistic decision. You get used to it after enough chapters, but yeah it's cumbersome. The first chapter is the worst offender. Nah, because it kept adding new untranslated terminology. Why the gently caress would I memorize that much vocabulary just because the translator is a pretentious fuckwad? Every person who tolerates that bullshit serves to validate it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 15:48
|
|
|
Serious Frolicking posted:Nah, because it kept adding new untranslated terminology. Why the gently caress would I memorize that much vocabulary just because the translator is a pretentious fuckwad? Every person who tolerates that bullshit serves to validate it. I don't see a big deal because most wuxia poo poo is still completely meaningless to me even translated. daitians, jindans, xuizhe, etc. make just as much sense to me as saying spirit severing or nascent soul or Heavenly fusion stage or Spirit Intial Full Circle Stage or w/e a.k.a. none.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2016 23:40
|
|
|
dipple posted:I don't see a big deal because most wuxia poo poo is still completely meaningless to me even translated. daitians, jindans, xuizhe, etc. make just as much sense to me as saying spirit severing or nascent soul or Heavenly fusion stage or Spirit Intial Full Circle Stage or w/e a.k.a. none. The English terms are easier for me to remember, though. And a good number of them actually have meanings attached to their names, like Cultivator and Junior/Senior Brother/Uncle/Aunt.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 00:14
|
|
|
Yeah the English actually has meaning attached occasionally and is much easier to remember in any case. In the case of ISSTH, imagine "fellow daoist" being left as "daoyou" or "beloved" being left as "daolu", it would completely unreadable.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 00:33
|
|
|
On the other hand, reading brother or sister in every line of dialog is pretty annoying, while it feels a little less annoying as -ge/jie because I'm used to hearing that in chinese. Most of the time honorifics can be dropped without losing anything, but it seems most translators either leave it in chinese/japanese or translate it every time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 02:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 09:38 |
|
|
Honorifics are one thing, but this dude refuses to include the translations for proper nouns that he puts in the footnotes.
|
|
#
?
Feb 19, 2016 02:54
|
|