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obviously, a misanthropic otaku with no life skills. i think the genre is very clear on this fact.
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Jul 26, 2016 14:57
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Serious Frolicking posted:obviously, a misanthropic otaku with no life skills. i think the genre is very clear on this fact. I've been wondering if they so often pick this type of personality for the protagonist to avoid the whole "oh my god, I have to get back to my own world!" plot line that would inevitably come with any sane person being summoned.
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Jul 26, 2016 15:23
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jwang posted:Also, what kind of person do you feel would be the best profession to jumpstart a medieval society? An economist, a sociologist, an engineer, or some other profession? Keep in mind that for most people outside of that specific specialty, most technology would be "box with cable that goes into the wall" or some variation thereof. Smith. While a material engineer would know the science behind what makes up a metal alloy, most of them wouldn't have any idea how to actually produce it with the production methods available, and good metal is pretty key for industrialization and more efficient agriculture. The rest of it(scientific method, accurate measurements, etc etc) doesn't require the same depth of knowledge. You might actually be better off with someone from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century as the gap between how we do things and how things were done back then is huge. Most modern engineers would be able to utilize very little of their professional knowledge due to lack of infrastructure and tools.
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Jul 26, 2016 15:27
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Cynic Jester posted:Smith. While a material engineer would know the science behind what makes up a metal alloy, most of them wouldn't have any idea how to actually produce it with the production methods available, and good metal is pretty key for industrialization and more efficient agriculture. The rest of it(scientific method, accurate measurements, etc etc) doesn't require the same depth of knowledge. You might actually be better off with someone from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century as the gap between how we do things and how things were done back then is huge. Most modern engineers would be able to utilize very little of their professional knowledge due to lack of infrastructure and tools. This seems like the closest thing to a good answer. You'd want someone with material knowledge (as opposed to something like economics or sociology) if you want to make truly big strides, but engineering specifically probably wouldn't be that useful because of all the necessary "prerequisites" that the engineer likely wouldn't know. It's possible that someone with a more pure science background could also be useful. Smart people have always existed, so if you give a society the theoretical basis for a bunch of ideas there's a good chance that other people could help figure out the rest. edit: You know, someone with a biology background might actually be more useful. Drastically improving health care and sanitation would probably have a bigger effect on the average person's life than other forms of technology.
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Jul 26, 2016 18:38
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that actually happened in the otherwise deeply mediocre maze age z manwha. the first thing the guy did was work on reducing infant mortality.
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Jul 26, 2016 18:44
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The medical manga Jin is pretty cool too.
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Jul 26, 2016 19:21
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I read through Taint and liked it. A young girl gets kidnapped and dropped into some kind of dungeon. At times it gave me a distinct Kumo Desu ga vibe, especially once other characters get introduced. As for how long to read something before bringing it up, I try to give it at least a couple of arcs, enough for anything truly reprehensible to make itself known. Most of these stories are tripping over themselves to introduce their harems or slaves or whatever, so it often doesn't take very long to know something is garbage. If that doesn't happen then it's just based on if I enjoy it or not. Frankly this thread is used to reading stuff that turns to poo poo at some point or another. It's not like it's a horrible crime to bring up something that gets awful later.
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Jul 26, 2016 19:29
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i immediately drop anything with rape, slaves, or an incomprehensible translation, but otherwise i am perfectly willing to read even dumb garbage until i get bored. harems are usually pretty boring, though!
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Jul 26, 2016 19:35
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A pure chemist could do pretty well, they could hook into a preexisting idea of alchemy pretty easily, and they'll have at least extremely basic medical knowledge anyone would have like germ theory and sterilisation. It wouldn't be impossible to get a very basic chemical industry started, and I think already knowing the destination would make a lot of things easy from there. Gunpowder and fertiliser alone should secure them some level of influence and resources. They might start of a bit slower than a modern smith, but the upper limit on what they can influence, even if it's not their direct work, would be much larger in scale.
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Jul 26, 2016 19:46
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Actually probably the best person to send into another world would be a shady politician/businessman, with a name that rhymes with Dump. In fact, can we just make the other world our interdimensional garbage dump? edit: Latest ISSTH, if Meng Hao is going to be grabbing people by the butt with his new magical skill, shouldn't it be renamed Moon Plucking Magic? Emmideer fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jul 26, 2016 |
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Jul 26, 2016 20:48
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Meng Hao is doing another Pokemon arc. Gotta catch 'em all.
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Jul 26, 2016 21:34
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Obviously the best person to send back is Maine. Thanks for the new chapter, blastron 
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Jul 26, 2016 21:51
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jwang posted:Also, what kind of person do you feel would be the best profession to jumpstart a medieval society? An economist, a sociologist, an engineer, or some other profession? Keep in mind that for most people outside of that specific specialty, most technology would be "box with cable that goes into the wall" or some variation thereof. No one person could possibly do it. You'd need a whole town with all sorts of professionals and a library's worth of information to even begin to disseminate that sort of information to a whole region. If you enjoy WNs about that sort of thing I can't imagine you won't enjoy that book and also quite a lot of the series That said there is a specific one about a blacksmith bringing proper ironworking to a bronze society that is also largely about how difficult and slow one person doing anything is. I enjoyed what I readu of it but I didn't read all of it to know whether it turns to poo poo like so many do http://www.novelupdates.com/series/seiun-wo-kakeru/ atelier morgan fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jul 26, 2016 |
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Jul 26, 2016 22:37
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I actually really like the protag from A Hero's War that somebody linked a couple pages ago. He's a university student studying Materials Engineering, and although he has a lot of trouble perfecting stuff like high-strength steel, once he figures out how to use the world's magic to compensate for lack of modern techniques, he then applies the hell out of his engineering background and sparks a magical industrial revolution. Best of all, in my opinion, his main purpose isn't to do everything single-handedly, he surrounds himself with competent people from different fields, and bounces ideas and modern knowledge off of them until they figure out themselves how to make something happen. It's a very nice digression from the usual "Protagonist is super-competent, everyone else in the world sucks" I also like that the second, "main" hero becomes Fantasy Che Guevara. 
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Jul 27, 2016 02:13
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undefeated god of war gets kind of boring when everyone is tripping over themselves to gush about how amazing tang tian is.
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Jul 27, 2016 04:50
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Is Martial God Asura any good? I had a coworker recommend it to me, but when I started it my immediate thought was "I would rather be reading ISSTH", but there's a lot of things where I'd rather read ISSTH, so that's not much of a comparison to make.
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Jul 27, 2016 05:11
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The Lord of Hats posted:Is Martial God Asura any good? I had a coworker recommend it to me, but when I started it my immediate thought was "I would rather be reading ISSTH", but there's a lot of things where I'd rather read ISSTH, so that's not much of a comparison to make. god, no. it has rape-based power-ups.
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Jul 27, 2016 05:13
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Serious Frolicking posted:god, no. it has rape-based power-ups. This and the fact that the MC is an unapologetic mass murderer that makes even other Xianxia murderhobos look like paragons of virtue and integrity combines for a pretty poor read. He just straight up murders entire families, children and all, at the drop of a hat and everybody still gives him the MC treatment.
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Jul 27, 2016 05:25
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Serious Frolicking posted:god, no. it has rape-based power-ups. I don't recall him ever actually powering up from his rapes, maybe you're thinking of a different rape novel
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Jul 27, 2016 05:32
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I thought KonoSuba handled the whole "protagonist uses modern day knowledge" the best. Kazuma was your average high schooler, he doesn't know poo poo about how stuff light lighters, dynamite, or whatever actually work beyond the most basic concepts like "you hit this switch and it makes a spark or something" or "there is a fuse and when it burns out something explodes???". But just having those basic concepts at all makes him a huge ideas guy, and with the help of the Dustiness family's contacts, a collection of powerful wizards, and a bunch of other incredibly smart people all of this stuff ends up being made. In one of his "inventing" scenes he's making bubble wrap, and the narration notes that the way he's doing it is completely inefficient, but all he actually needs is a basic prop to show his sponsor and then someone competent can take it from there. And the best part is he cuts a deal with the literal devil to sell all of the ideas he'd ever come up with for some cool hard cash. And it actually works out for both sides because the devil has a long term plan to cheat Kazuma out of all that money again... though the devil also engineers another scheme so Kazuma gets the money back a different way, since the devil kind of has a soft spot for him. 
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Jul 27, 2016 05:36
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dipple posted:I don't recall him ever actually powering up from his rapes, maybe you're thinking of a different rape novel Web/light novel thread - Maybe you're thinking of a different rape novel
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Jul 27, 2016 05:41
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Captain Bravo posted:I actually really like the protag from A Hero's War that somebody linked a couple pages ago. He's a university student studying Materials Engineering, and although he has a lot of trouble perfecting stuff like high-strength steel, once he figures out how to use the world's magic to compensate for lack of modern techniques, he then applies the hell out of his engineering background and sparks a magical industrial revolution. Best of all, in my opinion, his main purpose isn't to do everything single-handedly, he surrounds himself with competent people from different fields, and bounces ideas and modern knowledge off of them until they figure out themselves how to make something happen. It's a very nice digression from the usual "Protagonist is super-competent, everyone else in the world sucks" After catching up on this, I'll hesitantly recommend it, with the caveat that you need a pretty high tolerance for bullshit pseudoscience technobabble(magibabble as well I guess) to get through the surprisingly large number of infodump chapters. The characters are mostly likable, neither of the world travellers go mad with harem or slave protag power and while the MC is hilariously competent at an absurd number of sciences, it's not quite as bad as other stories.
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Jul 27, 2016 06:20
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i checked. martial god asura was the one with the psychotic rapist male lead who was originally useless and carries around a pubescent girl in his head, while against the gods was the one with the psychotic rapist male lead who was originally useless and carries around a pubescent girl in his head. they both had rape-based power-ups, but obviously they are completely different otherwise.
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Jul 27, 2016 06:22
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I finally got around to reading The Lazy King, and... geez. It's kind of good but holy poo poo the ending is so loving depressing. Not in a sad way, not in a "everyone dies" way, in a way that just absolutely sucks all energy and spirit from you. When the story finally reveals that He's not sleeping all the time because he likes sleep, it's because he's literally immortal and has absolutely nothing left to live for, life is an unending loving blur that he hates and can do nothing about, it's what I can only describe as a "nega-climax". Whereas normally a story builds up to the pinnacle of tension and one specific moment where everything hits a peak... instead all tension is just forcibly sucked out and you realize that oh my god literally nothing loving mattered at all. Every action by every loving character in the story was basically worthless. The end! No moral! I mean, I liked it. I'm glad I read it, it was a very 'novel' experience. (  ) But it really pulls the rug out from underneath you, in such a spectacular way. It's not actually that long, only two volumes and the translation is complete, I'd recommend it just for the novelty alone.
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Jul 27, 2016 11:13
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You can't really expect the Demon Lord of Sloth to have an abundance of motivation. He's less of a character and more of a plot device for his subordinate's stories. Medea's realization of just who she envied was hilarious.
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Jul 27, 2016 11:37
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Avulsion posted:Medea's realization of just who she envied was hilarious. I think that's one of the only times I've ever been amused by the "calling an inanimate object sensei" gag. Edit: Avulsion posted:You can't really expect the Demon Lord of Sloth to have an abundance of motivation. He's less of a character and more of a plot device for his subordinate's stories. That's the thing, though, that ties it all together. He basically is a plot device, with no real discernible motivation so he kind of just sits in the background for the whole story... until the last chapter. When boom, the plot reminds you "Oh, yeah, every single character in this story (Except Gloria) revolves pretty much wholly around this one guy." And he's actually in what amounts to his own personal unending hell. Oh and he barely acknowledges that any of them exist. Oh, and he actively resents the fact that he even slightly does. The Melancholia chapter kind of hinted at that a bit, and I'll admit that it mostly flew over my head at the time. I mistook the resolution of the first volume as a resolution of his depression, when holy gently caress that is not the case. The last chapter grabs him, and shoves him in front of you, saying "Look at this man. Really look at him. This is who the story is about. Don't forget that." And all the levity and shenanigans and heartwarming scenes just kind of melt away in the face of that overwhelming depression. Captain Bravo fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Jul 27, 2016 |
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Jul 27, 2016 15:48
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It's not quite as depressing an ending as all that, but his life is bittersweet. Mostly due to the fact it's just barely a reincarnation story. If he were always a demon he probably wouldn't feel it quite so harshly, but then again his outlook is probably what allowed him to be a Lord of Sloth and Melancholia in the first place. He's depressed a lot of the time, but he's also able to rest forever. There are things he cares about and hangs on to over the years, even if he's forgotten context a bit. He does have hopes for the future, even if they are mostly "Might get killed some day". Considering he's the Evil God and his perspective is still human, even that somewhat suicidal wish is a bit hopeful. And remember that it is a reincarnation story. Death doesn't mean the same when you know there's something after it. So it's not the happiest ending for everyone, but it's not quite totally nihilistic.
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Jul 27, 2016 18:30
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But that's the thing, his hopes for the future were placed on Serge. He was hoping she would kill him, that was his entire plan. Because every day he does nothing is another day he just grows stronger. The story doesn't exactly paint Serge as a badass, but it does point out that she has the weapon with the best affinity towards killing Angels and Demons, and though her skills may be lacking even Gloria didn't want to take a direct hit from it. She gives it her best shot and can't even pierce his chest with it. She can't make a scratch on his head. He says he'll just wait for the next hero, but in the time it takes for another one to come he will have grown even stronger. He's hosed.
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Jul 27, 2016 20:43
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Hope springs eternal and a religious war is the sort of thing that might draw God killing forces, even if it's a bit annoying. And it wasn't really a plan, it was more a desire to let go of regret. If she killed him, she killed him. If he killed her, he killed her. Either way he'd be facing her as a Demon Lord and she could come at him as a Hero, which is what he felt she deserved. It wasn't just about him wanting to die. And even that failure was a step forward for both of them. She got to make a friend and finally end her horrific crusade, and he gets to be with her forever. And maybe one day she'll get loose again, and who knows? Mostly though, it's hard to be too hosed when you can quite simply sleep for thousands and thousands of years. The things that hurt him he can eventually forget, and the few things he cares about stick around. It's not the greatest existence, but he is inclined to forget the worst parts of it.
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Jul 27, 2016 21:06
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drilldo squirt posted:I've always read these things as looking into the writers perfect world where they are bad rear end as hell and everyone either loves them or gets their rear end kicked. this is easily the funniest summary i've seen on that front quote:Shou is reborn as Will, a noble’s son in a world where magic use is common and involves knowledge of kanji characters. With all his memories, he’s a brilliant toddler, and when he experiments with magic, he finds that he has an amazing talent for it! What’s more, though he was smart but unloved in his old life, in his new life he has a mother and a father who both love him deeply. And he's appreciated for his MASSIVE BRAIN, DAD  yes i sometimes randomly click around novelupdates for amusing/soul-crushing summaries, why do you ask
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Jul 28, 2016 00:06
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Yinlock posted:yes i sometimes randomly click around novelupdates for amusing/soul-crushing summaries, why do you ask This is one of my favorite games as well. quote:“I don’t want girls to hate me!” Yagimoto Kazuhiro is a highschool boy who has such a mentality and acts the “good old guy” role. In the end, however, he could not break away from his good old guy image, and was labelled with “Time without a babe = age”. Now, this youth’s springtime has come.
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Jul 28, 2016 00:56
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Desuwa posted:I read through Taint and liked it. A young girl gets kidnapped and dropped into some kind of dungeon. At times it gave me a distinct Kumo Desu ga vibe, especially once other characters get introduced. I've read half of this, and it's kinda interesting. You're right that it feels like the author read Kumo Desu Ga and decided they wanted to write a wuxia version of that. My only complaint is that it feels kind of aimless. The MC has a clear goal and all, but even she admits to herself early on that it's impossible and sorta plods along like a zombie because of it.
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Jul 28, 2016 05:56
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filthychimp posted:I've read half of this, and it's kinda interesting. You're right that it feels like the author read Kumo Desu Ga and decided they wanted to write a wuxia version of that. My only complaint is that it feels kind of aimless. The MC has a clear goal and all, but even she admits to herself early on that it's impossible and sorta plods along like a zombie because of it. The plodding pace of the first half or so of the chapters is a problem, and very much reminds me of Xianxia in its aimless level up-new enemy-level up-etc pacing, but once poo poo happens, poo poo really happens. The latter part of what is posted, after the rather long intro segment, is great. Very much a combination of Kumo Desu Ga's "MC with an inhuman viewpoint" and Xianxia superpower supremacy.
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Jul 28, 2016 06:07
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Speaking of MCs with an inhuman viewpoint, I'm really liking Tale of a Careless Demon so far.
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Jul 28, 2016 21:05
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So is it just me, or are Dharma Idols in ISSTH really just enormous Stands?
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Jul 29, 2016 01:03
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Kaja Rainbow posted:Speaking of MCs with an inhuman viewpoint, I'm really liking Tale of a Careless Demon so far. Yeah, I gave it a read and I think I'm hooked as well. At first I was a bit confused at how short the "demon" phase was. It didn't seem like that would be long enough to really establish a demonic personality and overwrite her original humanity. I like how they sidestepped that particular issue, though. Food isn't super tasty to her, even really sweet things are kind of bleh. On the other hand, human souls are loving delicious.
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Jul 29, 2016 02:09
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The only issue I have with Taint is how much they utilize I Eat Tomato's names and power levels. Warriors of the ninth rank, Godhood, Yulan, Ishwin,...
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Jul 29, 2016 03:43
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Starwalker is pretty good.
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Jul 29, 2016 04:15
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DeafAsianQT posted:The only issue I have with Taint is how much they utilize I Eat Tomato's names and power levels. Warriors of the ninth rank, Godhood, Yulan, Ishwin,... Isn't that all just basic Wuxia/Xianxia stuff, though? Like, My Disciple Died Again has specific names for each rank but aren't there ten ranks of cultivation in the mortal plane, and then when you hit the tenth you become immortal and ascend to the godrealm? I don't know what Yulan and Ishwin are, where did they appear in Taint? I just read the whole thing like three days ago, I don't remember that at all.
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Jul 29, 2016 04:43
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It's pretty obvious the Taint author just took people's names from other miscellaneous works of fiction. The spider is named Sanae and I think I recognized a few of the other names as well. edit: I'd been using individual sites' rss feeds to follow novels but on a whim I thought I'd see if novelupdates had some kind of rss reading list of its own and it does. That solves the problem of stories being silently dropped and picked up by different translators, in case anyone else is as dumb as I am. Desuwa fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Jul 29, 2016 |
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Jul 29, 2016 04:47
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