|
ISSTH is over, and it's time for Adventures of the Lord Fifth.
|
#
?
May 27, 2016 14:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 04:03 |
|
|
Ok who had "hang out with a butterfly made out of countless worlds" in the what happens next betting pool?
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2016 15:19
|
|
|
dipple posted:Ok who had "hang out with a butterfly made out of countless worlds" in the what happens next betting pool? poo poo, I was down for "world made out of countless butterflies". So close, yet so far.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2016 16:22
|
|
|
I don't even care what an asspull it is for the mountain consuming to not require cultivation unlike every other thing Meng Hao has ever learned. He is on a psychedelic tour through a bizarre universe and that's just great. All these dudes are very upset about an old man sitting inside of a different old man and understanding their mountains.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2016 17:26
|
|
|
Serious Frolicking posted:I don't even care what an asspull it is for the mountain consuming to not require cultivation unlike every other thing Meng Hao has ever learned. He is on a psychedelic tour through a bizarre universe and that's just great. All these dudes are very upset about an old man sitting inside of a different old man and understanding their mountains. Well I don't think he could use the mountain consuming technique to launch an attack without his cultivation base but he can use the mental aspect to understand the mountains and learn their dao or whatever.
|
|
#
?
May 27, 2016 20:06
|
|
|
Serious Frolicking posted:I don't even care what an asspull it is for the mountain consuming to not require cultivation unlike every other thing Meng Hao has ever learned. He is on a psychedelic tour through a bizarre universe and that's just great. All these dudes are very upset about an old man sitting inside of a different old man and understanding their mountains. Well, remember it's a purely fleshly body cultivation not a spiritual one. The dude just stole his perfect spiritual cultivation up til this point, he didn't steal his body.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2016 05:17
|
|
|
Desolate Era is fun, but it could easily be half its length without losing anything of the slightest importance to the overall plot. Also, I would love it if Ji Ning was less of a douchebag, but that goes with the genre.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2016 21:56
|
|
|
Neurophage posted:Desolate Era is fun, but it could easily be half its length without losing anything of the slightest importance to the overall plot. It's really loving annoying how the author repeats everything three or four times just to pad out the word count. "The author repeats everything three or four times?" Asked Ji Ning, "To pad out the word count?" "Yes!" Exclaimed an unimportant NPC, "The Author, Er Gen, likes to repeat everything three times, sometimes even FOUR times, just to pad out the word count!" It was exactly as the unimportant NPC described, the author, I Eat Tomatoes, would often have different characters, as well as the narrator repeat a given statement over and over again just to remind you of how profound and important that seemingly trivial piece of information really was! "Three times? But sometimes four?" Ji Ning muttered to himself, "Is it to pad out the word count, or to make sure the readers don't forget the details since they are probably simultaneously reading 15 xianxia novels with virtually identical plots and characters? But... what if there is some deeper meaning to this mystery?!" A sudden light flashed in Ji Ning's eyes and he immediately sat down to meditate on this insight for six years! Avulsion fucked around with this message at 23:09 on May 28, 2016 |
|
#
?
May 28, 2016 22:18
|
|
|
Avulsion posted:It's really loving annoying how the author repeats everything three or four times just to pad out the word count. 10/10 could not differentiate from an actual xianxia novel.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2016 22:48
|
|
|
Desolation Era isn't written by Er Gen.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2016 22:50
|
|
|
Avulsion posted:It's really loving annoying how the author repeats everything three or four times just to pad out the word count. Spot on. BTW, it's I Eat Tomatoes. Er Gen is the ISSTH guy. DE is at least better than Stellar Transformations, which was just lovely.
|
|
#
?
May 28, 2016 22:50
|
|
|
Ji Ning is a swell guy by genre standards.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 01:22
|
|
|
SerSpook posted:Ji Ning is a swell guy by genre standards. He 1)is totally okay with owning slaves 2)has a pet whose subordinates killed hundreds of mortals 3)tortured a guy to death and let his whole family get sold to slavery 4)destroyed the souls of some guys who killed his uncle(who he never met) and injured his mother 5)was responsible for the extermination of an entire sect that was no threat to him 6)is associating with a serial rapist Note that I do not disagree with your statement
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 02:06
|
|
|
In Desolate Era, if you murder too many innocent people the universe puts a big blinking sign over your head that says "KILL ME AND WIN FABULOUS PRIZES" which seems to be the only way to cram millions of xianxia protagonists into one setting without them exterminating all other forms of life. It's not that Ji Ning isn't a douchebag, it's just that the universe actively limits his opportunities to express his douchiness.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 03:11
|
|
|
Actually in that universe it's completely okay to kill other cultivators, even if innocent. You can't kill innocent mortals, that's what causes the sin. Desolate Era is hardly unique but as far as xianxia goes it's definitely one of the better executed ones compared to, say, Wu Dong Qian Kun Wait who's the serial rapist that he associates with? DeafAsianQT fucked around with this message at 10:52 on May 29, 2016 |
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 03:50
|
|
|
DeafAsianQT posted:Wait who's the serial rapist that he associates with? The Celestial Immortal housing his cousin. He's kind of been left in the dust.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 05:29
|
|
|
Neurophage posted:He Well he's not a serial rapist himself! That's like morality, I guess.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 07:12
|
|
|
van fem posted:The Celestial Immortal housing his cousin. He's kind of been left in the dust. No but you see it's okay because he felt bad about it later and took care of his granddaughter-by-rape long after the woman he raped commit suicide, so he's a good guy. I'm sure there are novels where women get treated as normal humans with the ability to think and feel but among the popular Wuxia/Xianxia novels that get translated the number is pretty low. Desolate Era is actually one of the better ones for it - because none of the main characters have raped anyone yet or gone on long diatribes about  - which is incredibly sad.Not that trash Japanese web novels are any better, just different; they tend to go for slavery rather than directly for rape. ISSTH does a decent job of it, though. Meng Hao upstages everyone but for the most part the women are competent and have other things going on, plus Xu Qing is the only one who is really in love with him. There's probably something there where a decent author doesn't need to resort to smut to get readers.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 07:14
|
|
|
Ji Ning is just kind of a dick, which makes him a shining paragon of virtue compared to most wuxia protagonists. It is really weird that he is eternally a child, though. He stopped aging at age 12 or so and will never continue. It is even weirder how all the lovely ladies he meets are totally cool with that.
gimme the GOD DAMN candy fucked around with this message at 07:24 on May 29, 2016 |
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 07:21
|
|
|
van fem posted:The Celestial Immortal housing his cousin. He's kind of been left in the dust. To be fair, Iirc it was explicitely when the guy was literally insane and he can't recall most of that period of his life. OTOH IET does tend to have his MC be pal with incredible murderous dickbags. Some of them who literally enslaved his friends. 3)tortured a guy to death and let his whole family get sold to slavery Who is that?
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 13:13
|
|
|
That celestial immortal was a very minor character, and there were lots of different ways he could be a long lost relative for Ji Ning's long lost cousin. But no, instead they went with "spent decades if not centuries raping and murdering his way across the planet in a self-induced psychotic fugue state".
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 13:17
|
|
|
Arkeus posted:To be fair, Iirc it was explicitely when the guy was literally insane and he can't recall most of that period of his life. OTOH IET does tend to have his MC be pal with incredible murderous dickbags. Some of them who literally enslaved his friends. Some rear end in a top hat early on who killed his maidservant(who was in love with ji ning, despite knowing him since he was a baby). It's weird, because DE is generally a fun, if generic, adventure story. The hero travels to bizarre places, killing evil wizards and increasingly gigantic monsters. There is a big tonal clash when suddenly Ji Ning tortures to oblivion an evil rapist after murdering his brainwashed girlfriend and her father.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 14:20
|
|
|
Wait, didn't he purposefully only target the guy and the family was perfectly fine?Serious Frolicking posted:That celestial immortal was a very minor character, and there were lots of different ways he could be a long lost relative for Ji Ning's long lost cousin. But no, instead they went with "spent decades if not centuries raping and murdering his way across the planet in a self-induced psychotic fugue state". Yeah, that's not the best choices. Half expecting that it's in order to put a precedent to that before it's revealed Yu Wei's past life was the same.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 17:23
|
|
|
Severing emotion gets brought up again, I'm wondering what Meng Hao's gonna sever his last two times. Regret's been hinted at but he's also explicitly said that severing emotion is abhorrent to him so I dunno. It'll probably be something like five dollars and because of Meng Hao's stinginess it will be like losing a limb and grant him unimaginable power. But he will never have those five dollars again.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 17:25
|
|
|
The second severing has already been spoiled via joke posts a while ago (unless whoever posted also read ahead).
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 17:52
|
|
|
Algid posted:The second severing has already been spoiled via joke posts a while ago (unless whoever posted also read ahead). Please tell me it was my joke post and he actually severs the very ability to lose. 
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 18:51
|
|
|
Once you've read a few dozen web novels, Youmuin-san wa Yuusha ja Arimasen no de becomes kind of interesting. I came across it because it was said to be similar to Re:Zero in that the protagonist suffers a lot, and while the works are very different, they certainly share that factor. It's hard to recommend, because the execution is shoddy at times, with very long explanations from the author (in the narrative), where he's desperately trying to persuade the reader that characters actually have real motivations behind their actions. It's dull and rarely works, but once you learn to skim it, there's a decent story and world surrounding it, with unusually good characterization (for a web novel). Primarily it's just fascinating to watch the stereotypical "other world summoning" template being twisted in a way that keeps producing the exact opposite result of what you're used to, without ever really going so far as to alienate the reader. Like an epic adventure in injustice, unfairness and frustration. It's also fun to see how the "regular" summoned heroes briefly show up on the fringes of the protagonist's tottering story, doing all of those things you expect from a web novel hero. It's up to about 2000 pages of material right now, but less than 10% have been translated, and supposedly not very well, so I'm not sure it'll be too relevant, but I mostly enjoyed it. I've gone through a bunch of these titles lately, and it's a bit depressing that the best I can find is "not terrible", though.
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 20:09
|
|
|
Men Hao will sever the emotional satisfaction he gets from a good con
|
|
#
?
May 29, 2016 23:55
|
|
Algid posted:The second severing has already been spoiled via joke posts a while ago (unless whoever posted also read ahead). If it was mine, I didn't read ahead. I do reserve the right to say I called it if I guessed right, though.
|
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 00:16
|
|
|
quote:The Japanese fandom is like the English fandom in the sense that the majority of internet commentary about this trend is snarky and negative, but a significant number of people are hooked on these stories nevertheless. There are plenty of netizens who attempt to explain the appeal of the narou genre, but because they’re clearly disdainful of it, their explanations occasionally seem condescending, even pathologising (e.g. “it’s a shallow power fantasy aimed at nerds who will never find a girlfriend!”) Nevertheless, there are bloggers who articulate why they like the narou genre quite thoughtfully, so I thought I’d focus on their perspectives in this post. So this is a thing.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 00:33
|
|
|
Narou stories are prob the same reason why women like Twilight and other utterly trashy erotica
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 02:50
|
|
|
I like garbage fiction but that doesn't mean I feel obligated to pretend it isn't garbage.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 07:33
|
|
|
These are semi-big spoilers so please read at your own risk. ISSTH Meng Hao's severences: First: The Resurrection Lily Second: He severs his perfection so he can ascend beyond "perfect" cultivation Third:He severs his "evil" cause he's become kind of an rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 07:52
|
|
|
FriggenJ posted:
aka he severs the typical xianxia MC personality.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 08:18
|
|
|
Serious Frolicking posted:I like garbage fiction but that doesn't mean I feel obligated to pretend it isn't garbage. This. I've been reading Warhammer/40k fiction for years. I feel like foreign wish fulfillment stories are about on the same level, though shoddy translations often torpedo that pretty good. I know the vast majority of it is drek by pretty much any standard, but hey, I also enjoy watching poo poo like Pacific Rim and Transformers, and it sort of tickles the same mindless enjoyment factor for me.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 12:06
|
|
|
Serious Frolicking posted:I like garbage fiction but that doesn't mean I feel obligated to pretend it isn't garbage. This is exactly it, I'm always a bit surprised at how fervently some will jump to defend what is mostly crap. Sometimes, you just wanna huff that burning trash can. Reading honest to god good writing can get as tiring as reading garbage fiction. That said, god knows a lot of writing doesn't even bring itself up to the level of garbage.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 14:42
|
|
|
The first volume of World of Cultivation is great. It's nice to finally get a protagonist who is not all-powerful and doesn't kill anyone, despite being possessed by a demon. Instead, all he wants is to become a rich farmer. One of my favorite cultivation stories so far. Also, Er Gen has started a new novel: http://www.novelupdates.com/series/a-thought-through-eternity/
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 14:47
|
|
|
We've gone over it several times here, but I just wish that world of cultivation had a readable translation.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 15:07
|
|
|
I'm sure there's plenty of fluent Chinese readers on SA who can translate, and folks who can edit properly. It's just mustering up the  to get it done.(I'm one of those) I've started reading Emperor's Domination (seriously, who translates these titles? Tyrant Emperor is probably a better translation, or possibly Tyrant of Emperors. The original is 帝霸). To sum it up, some dude got shafted by being stuck in an undying homunculus in the shape of a bird. After a couple hundred million years, he finally escapes back into his own body. Cue crotchety old man syndrome, where he goes "you whippersnappers-" at everyone and shows off his crotchety old man wisdom while in his 13-year-old body. 20 chapters in and it's still pretty amusing, with him showing up everyone he meets with secrets that were lost to time. jwang fucked around with this message at 15:38 on May 30, 2016 |
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 15:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 04:03 |
|
|
Nah, world of cultivation is deliberately terrible. The dude doesn't translate any proper nouns because he thinks it is more accurate.
|
|
#
?
May 30, 2016 15:47
|
|