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The thing that really bemuses me about cultivator type stories is how they often have a whole 'training when young gives the best returns' along with also denying resources or knowledge to people unless they fight for it or beat each other up to steal stuff. Even when there is not a resource scarcity but actual basic knowledge that can be easily taught by anyone who already knows it. One would assume that the various sects/societies/clans who act like that would get completely stomped by the ones who worked out the best techniques and training then freely disseminated it to all of their recruits, before encouraging those with less than top tier talent to focus on support and cooperation abilities. But apparently that never happens? You end up with people in their 'peak cultivation period' having to focus mostly on beating each other up or doing largely useless tasks to earn 'points' and similar where a more sensible education program could probably turn out several times as many useful people who were also, even more usefully, not all psychopathic assholes. I would expect the first society to work out a non insane training regime to scythe through the sociopath rear end in a top hat groups like a red hot chainsaw through butter.
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Nov 5, 2019 00:13
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^^^ The best justification is probably that there's a combination of two factors. One is that the people with wealth and political power obviously don't have a big incentive to greatly broaden the number of people with great power. The other is that power usually scales exponentially to the extent that generating a single uber-powerful individual is far more valuable than hundreds of low-level cultivators. So systems that just take the rare talented regular person still accomplish the goal of maintaining a small army of very powerful people.LLSix posted:I'm struggling to think of an Isekai story I actually liked. Nothing is coming to mind, sorry. That's kind of depressing because I loved reading stories about people transported to fantasy worlds as a child, but most online Isekai's don't even reach the low bar expected of children's books. Have you read Grimgar or Re:Zero (though I think the latter is just a LN and didn't originate as a WN)? Those are the only two (ignoring the stuff that is technically isekai but obviously not being referenced here) that I've enjoyed a lot. The spider one is also pretty decent, but I don't know how much I could have enjoyed it if it hadn't been my first story in that genre. Grimgar is the best "straight" take on the concept I've seen, that does the best job to resist the urge to devolve into a power fantasy. Even Re:Zero has some unfortunate elements where a bunch of other characters end up thinking the protagonist is an amazing person, but Grimgar is very explicit about the fact that the protagonist's only real skill is being a decent leader and living long enough to gain a decent level of skill. I like how realistically the Grimgar protagonist responds to various things, like his stress at having to lead his team or his incredibly awkward attempts to deal with obviously being attracted to one of the party members later (this was a kind of refreshing departure from the typical "oblivious protagonist" situation). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Nov 5, 2019 |
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Nov 5, 2019 00:18
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Patrat posted:The thing that really bemuses me about cultivator type stories is how they often have a whole 'training when young gives the best returns' along with also denying resources or knowledge to people unless they fight for it or beat each other up to steal stuff. Even when there is not a resource scarcity but actual basic knowledge that can be easily taught by anyone who already knows it. In a lot of cultivation stories I've read, the power levels work out so that a cultivator of level N can annihilate literally thousands of cultivators of level N-1 (e:fb) Also learning techniques is a lot less effective than just popping pills. So spreading the pills around just gets you a lot of moderately-powerful guys who end up getting stomped by the first very powerful guy who comes along. That's always a deliberate decision by the author to enable their power fantasy of course. I would love to read a book about a cultivation collective, maybe I'll write one.
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Nov 5, 2019 00:26
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Sindai posted:My favorite recent novel is Divine Throne of Primordial Blood, because the protagonist's cheat is mostly just being smart, and his goal is to overthrow the bloodline cultivation aristocracy by creating a cultivation system anyone can use and giving it away to all of humanity. i picked up this one off this concept and uh, trigger warning that the dude routinely engages in horrible, war crimes level unethical experimentation under cover of medicine but unlike the irl version he gets results new and even more hosed up version of torture boosting and really unexpected from a chinese author considering
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Nov 5, 2019 00:37
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Clipperton posted:In a lot of cultivation stories I've read, the power levels work out so that a cultivator of level N can annihilate literally thousands of cultivators of level N-1 (e:fb) It's certainly something I'm considering. A nation that teaches everyone basic beginner techniques so they can contribute power to large-scale warfare formations rather than having to allocate some of your dedicated combatants to various logistics and non-combat roles.
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Nov 5, 2019 00:55
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Xianxia Roman Empire which wins through making a large fraction of their population "good enough" instead of focusing on singular elites.
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Nov 5, 2019 01:00
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Plus, in a lot of cultivation stories a moderately powerful cultivator can have all the wealth and luxury they want if they go to a weaker region, so the only people who advance further are people who want power for its own sake and are willing to take huge risks to get it. Add in the fact that it's almost impossible to have any sort of functional system of law when you have a bunch of psychopathic supermen running around that are absolutely untouchable by 99.9% of the population. The best possible outcome in that environment is a benevolent dictatorship where one extremely powerful cultivator rules in a humane way, but even then he would have to spend all his time being the police as there is nobody else capable of enforcing his law.
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Nov 5, 2019 01:14
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Ytlaya posted:Have you read Grimgar or Re:Zero (though I think the latter is just a LN and didn't originate as a WN)? Those are the only two (ignoring the stuff that is technically isekai but obviously not being referenced here) that I've enjoyed a lot. The spider one is also pretty decent, but I don't know how much I could have enjoyed it if it hadn't been my first story in that genre. I'll take a look at Re:Zero. I enjoyed the Grimgar anime a lot. I didn't like the first book enough to keep reading the original version though. I like the story but women are objectified to an extent that creeped me out. It's not just Ranta, who everyone agrees is a terrible person, objectifying women. Every female, and only the females, are described exclusively in terms of how attractive they are. The traditional bathing scene has the otherwise basically decent (not morally great, but not awful) MC excusing peeping on his female fellow soldiers by thinking that it's impossible to resist. This isn't something he says out loud, it's something he thinks to himself to explain why he's doing something he knows is wrong. It's creepy. Female characters are allowed to be at the center of scene, and get character development arcs, but not without the author reminding everyone of how sexy they are.
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Nov 5, 2019 02:08
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LLSix posted:I'll take a look at Re:Zero. This is a very fair criticism. While Grimgar is better than your average isekai WN by virtue of not having a "wish fulfillment" angle of the protagonist being popular with women and having a harem (etc), it's true that there isn't really much to say about the female party members and Ranta is tolerated too well given his actions. For the genre it's sadly still pretty unique to have main women characters who aren't interested in the main character, though; Shihoru has a clearly platonic relation with the protagonist, for example, and is later revealed to have had feelings for another character. Re:Zero is honestly worse than Grimgar when it comes to the love interests, in my opinion, though I had a relatively easy time not paying attention to that since the rest of the main plot and characters are really good. Neither it nor Grimgar are particularly bad by "Japanese WN/anime" standards, but it's very understandable for someone to not be willing to put up with even that much.
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Nov 5, 2019 06:12
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Its Rinaldo posted:In Forge of Destiny sequel news the MC just finished a fight that made her little bandit scuffle look like Xmas loving morning and poo poo Just Got Real for the Main Plot It's been pretty great. But poor Elder Zhou.
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Nov 5, 2019 15:39
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Weird novel found about a dude who runs an internet cafe in a cultivator world and cultivators and warriors can gain strength from killing things in game along with learning the skills the characters use.
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Nov 11, 2019 17:50
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Link? That sounds strange
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Nov 12, 2019 21:01
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Probably black tech internet cafe system: https://www.webnovel.com/book/11418908406358805/Black-Tech-Internet-Cafe-System / http://novelfull.com/black-tech-internet-cafe-system.html Interesting premise, to an extent, but I got bored with it after a while.
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Nov 12, 2019 22:15
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Forge of Destiny guy just posted a commission chapter on the discord (I think currently just for Patreon folks but I imagine it'll go into the Royal Road version later). He is apparently willing to do 1000-2000 word commission chapters (similar to the ones patrons vote on where he gets several topic choices for chapters with setting/flavor content) for just $20, which is frankly a ludicrously low price. I really hope he manages to gain more popularity in the future so that he can fund doing this stuff full-time.
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Nov 13, 2019 03:32
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Good news, J-Novel Club has licensed Yogen no Keizaigaku that I hyped a while back.
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Nov 20, 2019 22:56
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Clipperton posted:In a lot of cultivation stories I've read, the power levels work out so that a cultivator of level N can annihilate literally thousands of cultivators of level N-1 (e:fb) old rear end post, but 40k of cultivation visited that concept for a while. it was a tribal civilization where the only cultivators were of the lowest tier, but instead of ever moving to the next tier they pushed that low level to ridiculous extremes. individually these qi trainers weren't necessarily a match for someone in a higher tier, and even less so with the massive technology deficit they faced. however, their irregular system let them get stronger the more of them were fighting at once, to the extent that none of the regular cultivators dared go down to that planet because they'd immediately get killed. recently 40k is mostly about examining just how a cultivator society would function given that they are reliant on non-renewable resources, with heavy emphasis on the many ways such societies can fail. it's a very strange wn, though still not more than moderately good despite all the big ideas it throws around every so often.
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Dec 1, 2019 10:01
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Clipperton posted:To be fair, hypocrisy is really the only sane reaction to living in a xianxia world. You might believe some value system in the abstract, and you can even enforce it among cultivators weaker than you, but if you follow it yourself you're just going to get merked by a more powerful cultivator who doesn't, unless there's an even more powerful cultivator who enforces them on them, and so on. That's not really an argument for hypocrisy, though, only for you to acknowledge that cultivation is a poo poo goal pursued by assholes and you're one of them. It's the total disconnect between the protagonist's assumes righteousness and how unhesitatingly awful they are that gets to me. If you're a power-hungry monster, own it, and if you have a sense of morality, at least try to use it sometimes.
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Dec 1, 2019 14:50
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Clipperton posted:That's always a deliberate decision by the author to enable their power fantasy of course. I would love to read a book about a cultivation collective, maybe I'll write one. The Ten Realms series by Michael Chatfield is a bit slanted this way with a dungeon collective that work to upscale everyone, it's just unfortunate that the two protagonists in the book are so unlikeable and written from someone who has a massive hard on for anyone in the armed forces.
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Dec 3, 2019 08:55
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Darth Walrus posted:That's not really an argument for hypocrisy, though, only for you to acknowledge that cultivation is a poo poo goal pursued by assholes and you're one of them. It's the total disconnect between the protagonist's assumes righteousness and how unhesitatingly awful they are that gets to me. If you're a power-hungry monster, own it, and if you have a sense of morality, at least try to use it sometimes. 40k of cultivation sidesteps that by having the, uh, goodish cultivators think of themselves as the first among citizens of a functional society with laws and a government rather than living gods. cultivators used to do the whole feuding magical bandit gang thing in the distant past, but it never really worked that well. after civilization rose and fell several times over people learned that they needed to actually work at having a civilization instead of (magic) individuals squabbling for (magic) wealth. i'm not sure i buy a civically responsible upper class who can live for hundreds of years while also being stronger and smarter than any proles, though. the only things keeping it all together are idealism and external enemies. it probably helps that the subject of taxes has never even been mentioned in the story.
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Dec 3, 2019 09:58
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Yay https://twitter.com/BOOKWALKER_GL/status/1201777094541201409?s=19 I'm just so happy that it's finally getting an audience in the English-speaking world...
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Dec 3, 2019 10:54
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:40k of cultivation sidesteps that by having the, uh, goodish cultivators think of themselves as the first among citizens of a functional society with laws and a government rather than living gods. cultivators used to do the whole feuding magical bandit gang thing in the distant past, but it never really worked that well. after civilization rose and fell several times over people learned that they needed to actually work at having a civilization instead of (magic) individuals squabbling for (magic) wealth. Got a link to it?
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Dec 3, 2019 20:14
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Argas posted:Got a link to it? https://www.novelupdates.com/series/forty-millenniums-of-cultivation/ It’s a Qidian joint so paywalled our the wazoo
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Dec 4, 2019 10:40
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https://www.wuxiaworld.co/Forty-Millenniums-of-Cultivation/
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Dec 4, 2019 12:11
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Note: wuxiaworld.co is completely different from wuxiaworld.com and is a pirate site that steals all their translations
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Dec 4, 2019 14:37
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i can't stop laughing at thisquote:In a world plagued by Morgellons, a deadly disease that turns humans into non-human creatures, people have chosen to abandon their humanity in order to fight against the bloodthirsty corpses. In the end, there will be no humans left on Earth. morgellons is a real disease in a story within a story, and even then it is just borrowing the name. that's so many dang levels of meta. as for the actual wn, i don't actually care because it can't possibly live up to that (likely unintentional) joke, but here it is https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-little-prince-in-the-ossuary/ also, pirating from qidian is a victimless crime.
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Dec 4, 2019 21:17
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Qidian's paywall is comically greedy.
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Dec 5, 2019 00:45
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cultivation chat group is all about how having basic decency gets you power way easier than being an rear end in a top hat being evil mcmurder is a good way to have a bunch of angry buddhists come down and beat the poo poo out of you for easy alignment points
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Dec 5, 2019 23:16
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Syenite posted:Qidian's paywall is comically greedy. Like twirling mustache greedy in an old movie.
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Dec 6, 2019 16:56
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yeah i actually wouldn't mind paying for some stories but qidian is just yikes
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Dec 7, 2019 03:00
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Yinlock posted:cultivation chat group is all about how having basic decency gets you power way easier than being an rear end in a top hat woah woah, they are not angry. They just want to help you improve yourself... and shave your head, and wear sackcloth. And be a GOOD BOY OR ELSE
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Dec 7, 2019 14:54
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And listen to their metal album. Which is hardcore death metal by East Asian standards but, judging by the descriptions, is actually more like Lordi.
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Dec 8, 2019 00:55
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There’s a new Cradle short story about Ziel in a fantasy anthology called Heroes Wanted available for free on Amazon. As you might expect about a Cradle short story, it’s rather short. But good!
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Dec 9, 2019 06:48
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What format should cultivation chat group be in? The first google result took me to a version with art that looked a lot like "The Gamer" that was pretty entertaining. I've also found several text only versions so I don't know where to read it at.
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Dec 10, 2019 05:45
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LLSix posted:What format should cultivation chat group be in? The official release is at webnovel(which is a really lovely site that both treats its authors like garbage, and does its best to nickel and dime its readers), any other site is either a rip from the official source, an old dropped fan translation, or a really bad machine translation. There is also a manga adaptation of the story.
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Dec 10, 2019 06:02
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Qidian Underground is totally unrelated to this discussion. Totally.
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Dec 10, 2019 09:21
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LLSix posted:What format should cultivation chat group be in? Be double-naughty and scrape an epub from wuxiaworld.co.
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Dec 10, 2019 11:24
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I just love these webtoon/novel naming conventions Strongest Abandoned Son Immortal Nanny Dad Urban Mad Immortal Undefeated Battle God Tomb Raider King Supreme Urban Heavenly Master Heaven Defying Sword Goddess Creation System Strongest Anti M.E.T.A Heaven Official's Blessing Indestructible Primordial Spirit Soaring Sword Odyssey Peerless Battle Spirit I feel like you could take any of these first/middle/last names and make a random webtoon generator nerdz fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Dec 10, 2019 |
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Dec 10, 2019 21:25
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nerdz posted:I feel like you could take any of these first/middle/last names and make a random webtoon generator For a while now I've been toying with the idea of feeding a bunch of webnovels into one of those neural network tools and auto-generating something. Honestly, it might be hard to tell the difference from some of the more awkwardly translated ones.
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Dec 10, 2019 22:26
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Replace the protagonist's name when training with [placeholder], and insert a new one when generating, and it'd be seamless
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Dec 11, 2019 01:35
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Eponymous posted:For a while now I've been toying with the idea of feeding a bunch of webnovels into one of those neural network tools and auto-generating something. Honestly, it might be hard to tell the difference from some of the more awkwardly translated ones. Now that's just unfair and also unkind. To the neural network tools. It would probably be better written than half the dreck that gets posted.
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Dec 11, 2019 02:26
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