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The first half of ISSTH is so good and i really hope that A Will Eternal doesnt devlolve into nonstop high powered fights too
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Mar 14, 2017 21:36
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there's only like 200 chapters left and sadly i suspect that there are no more shenanigans in issth.
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Mar 15, 2017 01:49
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Knight's & Magic trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFdtq1FjE4s Airs this summer, apparently. Bit peculiar that Rie Takahashi is a primary character in KonoSuba, Re:Zero, and this, with them all being Narou web novels.
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Mar 16, 2017 12:38
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I've discovered that a good way to find decent web novels is to look at reviews for one that is really bad despite having a high average rating, find a reviewer who evaluated it appropriately, and then look at their other reviews.
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Mar 16, 2017 20:00
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master of the stars is unintentionally very funny because it is yet another power fantasy except the mc is just some dumb college kid who is addicted to hallucinogens. his path to ultimate power is functionally identical to being really, really high and having a really intense trip. that is absolutely not what it is going for, of course. he is presented as special, unique, and totally unlike those degenerate rich kids (who are also high as gently caress, albeit without gaining magic powers). even better, one of his starting benefits from experimenting with a cubic fuckton of drugs is having a huge appetite, which is also presented as a special power.
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Mar 17, 2017 04:39
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theres some kinda drama going on in the web novel translating scene right now. translators are leaving the gravitytales site en masse and moving their series over to wuxiaworld or other sites. the readers are all like "whats going on?" and everyone directly involved are being super vague and shifty-eyed. theres some juicy gossip in the offing
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Mar 18, 2017 21:36
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Law Cheetah posted:theres some kinda drama going on in the web novel translating scene right now. translators are leaving the gravitytales site en masse and moving their series over to wuxiaworld or other sites. the readers are all like "whats going on?" and everyone directly involved are being super vague and shifty-eyed. theres some juicy gossip in the offing Im assuming wuxiaworld is going to be the foundation for official english language releases from Qidian
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Mar 18, 2017 21:39
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Has anyone here read "In a Different World with a Smartphone"? It's getting an official english release by J-Novel Club: http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2017/02/16-1/j-novel-club-licenses-in-another-world-with-my-smartphone-light-novels
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Mar 18, 2017 21:45
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qidian seems to specialize in completely unremarkable and inoffensive wn's.
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Mar 18, 2017 21:52
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:master of the stars is unintentionally very funny because it is yet another power fantasy except the mc is just some dumb college kid who is addicted to hallucinogens. his path to ultimate power is functionally identical to being really, really high and having a really intense trip. that is absolutely not what it is going for, of course. he is presented as special, unique, and totally unlike those degenerate rich kids (who are also high as gently caress, albeit without gaining magic powers). even better, one of his starting benefits from experimenting with a cubic fuckton of drugs is having a huge appetite, which is also presented as a special power. I'm reading this as well and it's gotten very hard to follow the plot, not sure if it's the translation or the source material that's responsible.
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Mar 18, 2017 22:17
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Herbotron posted:I'm reading this as well and it's gotten very hard to follow the plot, not sure if it's the translation or the source material that's responsible. it is very similar to both trip reports and standard incoherent cultivation stuff. i find that amusing, which is the only reason i'm reading it at all. it is very bad otherwise.
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Mar 18, 2017 22:32
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Meme Emulator posted:Im assuming wuxiaworld is going to be the foundation for official english language releases from Qidian now korean novels are jumping ship to wuxiaworld for some reason
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Mar 18, 2017 22:36
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:it is very similar to both trip reports and standard incoherent cultivation stuff. i find that amusing, which is the only reason i'm reading it at all. it is terrible yes, I do like that the "confrontation" with the rich kid he did a drawing of didn't result in the standard "do you know who I am? my father is the head of such and such sect etc etc" and they ended up helping each other out instead, pretty much everything else points to it being not worth reading
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Mar 18, 2017 22:40
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40 milleniums of cultivation is actually really interesting. the premise is that civilization went through a xianxia standard setting phase, but then collapsed entirely due to the massive crowds of greedy amoral demigods that are part of those settings. way down the line, it has progressed to a kind of dao-punk where cultivator magic has developed to the point of mimicking a sci-fi setting. there is a functional government, schools, and even cultivation paths that focus on things other than fighting or ctm gibberish. the actual story is middling at best, but the novelty of a xianxia wn actually being creative in any way makes it worth reading.
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Mar 19, 2017 10:23
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Terror Infinity is so incredibly dumb, I dont know why Im reading it but Ill probably make it through a few movies before I get bored. "“I was overjoyed when I saw the enhancement items. Like the genetic mutation of Spider-Man. The description said it lets you obtain the bloodline of Spider-Man; increasing intelligence by 20, mental capacity by 20, cell vitality by 50, reaction speed by 100, muscle density by 100, and immunization by 150 points. And you also get the web shooter ability. All this for just 2000 points.” The bloodline legacy of Spiderman!
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Mar 19, 2017 17:30
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Meme Emulator posted:The bloodline legacy of Spiderman! All this for just 2000 points. I know we've had this conversation before, about why nerds are so obsessed with formalized systems, but I think the part that annoys me the most is they never go all-in on the system. It exists yet has no actual impact on the story. The closest they ever come is if the author wants something to happen a particular way, it can just be waved away as something that happened as part of the system. It reminds me of of Brandon Sanderson's explanation on two types of magic in writing. Either you can make the magic unexplained and magical - in which case it can't be used to resolve problems, only cause them - or you can make it formalized and specific with clear rules laid out of the reader - in which case it can be used to solve problems. These fancy systems pretend to be the second type, and are used to solve protagonist problems, but are actually the first type without being properly utilized to cause problems.
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Mar 19, 2017 17:46
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It takes a lot of work to formalize that stuff. And you have to remind the reader constantly of whats available and what the characters have, the spidergirl novel has that problem. Half the word count of spidergirl has to be repeating the stat block over and over again to show minor changes.
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Mar 19, 2017 17:50
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It's what these nerds want. They want to appear like they are master of rules and work hard in a system but in reality they just want power handouts for being special snowflakes.
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Mar 19, 2017 18:30
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Annointed posted:It's what these nerds want. They want to appear like they are master of rules and work hard in a system but in reality they just want power handouts for being special snowflakes. Yeah, it seems like most of the time the characters in these "world with game-like stats/abilities" stories also have some special super-powerful ability that only they have. My biggest problem with the game-like systems is that RPGs only really work because the player sees a return for some clear and explicit investment of their time in killing monsters, doing quests, whatever. In these stories, however, the author can just arbitrarily decide when a character levels up, which completely removes that feeling of accomplishment (or tension, since you can have a character level up in the middle of a fight or something). They also can randomly give whatever skills/stats they want, because (obviously) this system doesn't really exist. I feel like such a WN would only work well if the system it worked on were truly explicitly defined beforehand (ironically that Harry Potter D&D fanfiction mentioned earlier in the thread comes to mind, since it uses skills from an actual game in ways they could be used in reality), but this would usually be tedious and even then you'd run into the problem of there being no clear rhyme or reason to the character leveling up. Probably the best example of such a system I've come across is Kumo, but even it has some problems in this regard and I have a hunch that she'll still become absurdly powerful like all other characters in these settings at some point (though the author has fortunately kept her at a reasonable level of power for a long time so far). He threads are already pretty ridiculous and can work as a deus ex machina-ish power in many situations (since, with rare exceptions like fire monsters, you can almost always say "and then she wrapped the enemy up in her thread" or something). By the way, speaking of Kumo, I read the manga up to the point where she enters the lava area. Where should I start in the WN (using blastron's translation) if this is the case? I found a chapter that seemed to correspond to her entering the lava place, but then I ran into some chapter talking about other human/elf characters that wasn't mentioned in the manga, so I think the manga left some stuff out.
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Mar 19, 2017 21:59
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Ytlaya posted:By the way, speaking of Kumo, I read the manga up to the point where she enters the lava area. Where should I start in the WN (using blastron's translation) if this is the case? I found a chapter that seemed to correspond to her entering the lava place, but then I ran into some chapter talking about other human/elf characters that wasn't mentioned in the manga, so I think the manga left some stuff out. Read the chapters S01 - S10 because the manga completely skips that part of the story. After that, you can continue around chapter 69
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Mar 19, 2017 22:03
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the manga hasn't covered any of the side story chapters, which cover other points in time and the other reincarnators. frankly they aren't great but they do eventually have relevance to the story.
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Mar 19, 2017 22:04
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This S01 chapter where this guy mentions getting into a MMO party with "Baldy" reminds me of the time a friend and I were in a party with some porn star who played WoW (this is back when I was in college, so sometime between 2005-2008). Can't remember her name off the top of my head, though I'd recognize it if I saw it. edit: Oh, it was Mia Rose edit2: I like how in S02 the guy actually spends a bit talking about how difficult and upsetting being reincarnated was. Most of these stories completely ignore that and have the characters go "oh, looks like I was reincarnated! Well, let's get to it!", which is bizarre since it means they'll never see any of their family/friends again (though I guess most of this stuff is written for NEET types who aren't close with their family and have no friends). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Mar 20, 2017 |
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Mar 20, 2017 00:07
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I started reading Way of Choice on Friday while Nier was decrypting and I have yet to actually start playing it. It's kind of ridiculous how much better written it is than any other web novel.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:14
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apparently the tv show's coming out in may and it has 55 episodes. hopefully it's good and gets a translation
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Mar 20, 2017 03:33
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owl milk posted:apparently the tv show's coming out in may and it has 55 episodes. hopefully it's good and gets a translation 55 episodes? Wow.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:35
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I just finished another novel in the 1632 series so I feel obligated to plug it here again. http://www.baen.com/1632.html you can read it online or download it for free. It's really good alt history, with lots of fun tidbits of politics and technology. Everyone is excessively competent, but it has an ensemble cast so it doesn't feel too unreasonable.Synopsis posted:In the year 1632 in northern Germany a reasonable person might conclude that things couldn't get much worse. There was no food. Disease was rampant. For over a decade religious war had ravaged the land and the people. Catholic and Protestant armies marched and countermarched across the northern plains, laying waste the cities and slaughtering everywhere. In many rural areas population plummeted toward zero. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy. The main author is collaborating with other authors on all of the sequels. Normally, that signals to me "he's phoning it in", but he had a thoughtful afterword in 1633 explaining why he took that approach. In alt-history, a single author tends to lead all events down a plot path towards an intended goal. By collaborating on his sequels, the co-authors get creative control to examine characters and places within the setting that he wouldn't think of. This avoids the railroading problem and expands the scope of events to flesh out the world.
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Mar 20, 2017 05:11
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1632 is good if sometimes cheesy. I'm on book threeYtlaya posted:I feel like such a [game-like] WN would only work well if the system it worked on were truly explicitly defined beforehand (ironically that Harry Potter D&D fanfiction mentioned earlier in the thread comes to mind, since it uses skills from an actual game in ways they could be used in reality), but this would usually be tedious and even then you'd run into the problem of there being no clear rhyme or reason to the character leveling up. Jackard fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Mar 20, 2017 |
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Mar 20, 2017 14:43
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Annointed posted:It's what these nerds want. They want to appear like they are master of rules and work hard in a system but in reality they just want power handouts for being special snowflakes. Near the end of the fight, several supporting characters unleash finishers that basically do nothing, and the effectiveness of MC's "hero strike" felt cheap in comparison. at least the final blow was satisfying
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Mar 20, 2017 18:01
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Is there any place I can find the LN character drawings (or any sort of official character art) for Kumoko? Google image searches aren't helping me much. I found one picture with images of Shun, Sue, Julius, and the elf teacher, but it would be nice to have an image of some of these other characters like the Sword Emperor guy or Saint girl (I'm at the part where they were just introduced). edit: I do not trust the teacher lady in the slightest. She is up to something! Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Mar 20, 2017 |
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Mar 20, 2017 22:21
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some rather recent chapters provide a very different context for those early side stories
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Mar 20, 2017 23:21
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Ytlaya posted:Is there any place I can find the LN character drawings (or any sort of official character art) for Kumoko? Google image searches aren't helping me much. I found one picture with images of Shun, Sue, Julius, and the elf teacher, but it would be nice to have an image of some of these other characters like the Sword Emperor guy or Saint girl (I'm at the part where they were just introduced). There are scans of the novels on Nyaa that probably include illustrations, if you can be bothered to look through them. The official book website also has some character headshots: http://kadokawabooks.jp/feature/kumo/
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Mar 20, 2017 23:21
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darkgray posted:There are scans of the novels on Nyaa that probably include illustrations, if you can be bothered to look through them. Hugo (Sword Emperor guy) is page 278 of colume 4, Euri (Saint girl) is in the color illustrations at the start of volume 5
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Mar 20, 2017 23:26
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Ah, thanks. I have a poor visual imagination so it helps a lot to have a clear idea of what characters look like. Otherwise I just imagine some blurry face with blonde hair or whatever. I wonder how this is going to be once Kumoko becomes absurdly powerful. It's okay right now because there are still a number of monsters that she doesn't really have any tools to defeat, but I find that a lot of these WNs have trouble keeping the tension up once the protagonist has reached a certain level of strength.
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Mar 20, 2017 23:47
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It's mostly handled by focussing on other chracters and by giving Kumoko a problem that she can't deal with easily despite being overpowered.
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Mar 20, 2017 23:55
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Ytlaya posted:Is there any place I can find the LN character drawings (or any sort of official character art) for Kumoko? Google image searches aren't helping me much. I found one picture with images of Shun, Sue, Julius, and the elf teacher, but it would be nice to have an image of some of these other characters like the Sword Emperor guy or Saint girl (I'm at the part where they were just introduced). http://kadokawabooks.jp/img/pc/main-books/book89.jpeg http://kadokawabooks.jp/img/pc/main-books/book125.jpeg Julius, Sue, Shun, Katia, Oka-chan.  Ronand, Sophia, Ariel: 
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Mar 21, 2017 00:56
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Take those visualizations back. 
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Mar 21, 2017 01:06
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It was interesting when they mentioned how Katia, despite having the mind of his/her previous male self, no longer feels attraction to women due to having a female body. Question - how long has Kumoko been a spider by the time she defeats the eel monster and evolves into the assassin form? I get the impression that the time in her chapters and the time in Shun's chapters (which seems to have been 12-15 years so far) do not run parallel.
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Mar 21, 2017 01:48
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Ytlaya posted:It was interesting when they mentioned how Katia, despite having the mind of his/her previous male self, no longer feels attraction to women due to having a female body. I don't remember if they give an exact time frame but Shun is definitely still a baby when Kumoko's adventures are going on. Everyone was transferred to the fantasy world at the same time, and while a human pregancy takes 9 months, apparently a spider takes way less time (a month?) to hatch from an egg. So at the point where Kumoko is facing the Middle Layer, Shun may not even have been born yet.
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Mar 21, 2017 02:07
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even if they had been reincarnated at the same time, kumoko's adventure started as soon as she hatched. shun had to go through a much slower growth cycle.
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Mar 21, 2017 02:39
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I'd be curious to see how human fighters/mages would fare against Kumoko at various stages in her development, because I have a feeling that by the time she ever encounters more humans she'll be virtually unbeatable. edit: Hmm, it was just revealed during Kumoko's fight with the Fire Dragon that Hypnotism is a Corruption spell, and we saw Ms. Oka using it despite Corruption spells apparently warranting imprisonment or death by the Church. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 03:21
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