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If you want something like an Isekai but without all the lovely genre trappings just read TWI tbh
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Mar 10, 2021 18:58
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Argue posted:I opened the first chapter of Dragoneye but the first thing the reincarnation deity did was wipe the MC's knowledge of chemistry, physics, and even just the scientific method in general, and that sort of anachronistic knowledge is what I live for in an isekai story. I take it it's safe for me to not read it? Or does the story involve reclaiming this knowledge? She still makes major contributions, like (spoiler I guess?) writing a treatise on germ theory and getting it distributed across the nation. She also considers and rejects teaching them how to make crossbows. Also I find her holes in what she can and can't remember amusing at times. Like she remembers there was a weapon that could destroy cities, but she can't remember the name, because the name is physics. Bremen fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Mar 10, 2021 |
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Mar 10, 2021 19:16
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The latest Tower of Somnus chapter. Oof: All of Cat and Xander’s careful efforts ruined by another spoiled rich girl attacking Cat over a boy that doesn’t like the girl
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Mar 10, 2021 21:40
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Ugh I caught up in
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Mar 11, 2021 00:44
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Selkie Myth posted:MC still has a bunch of literary and medical knowledge. She can tell you what glasses are, but has no idea how they work. Yeah I'm not generally one to complain about stuff like "the ideology of colonialism in nerd media," but that sort of thing ("isekai uplifting nonsense" as you put it) is a bit on the nose about it.
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Mar 11, 2021 01:40
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Cicero posted:Ugh I caught up in You could try Magic-Smithing if you haven't already read it. I wouldn't rate it as high as Dragoneye but it has a similar "what will higher numbers do next?" feel with bonus blacksmithing.
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Mar 11, 2021 03:06
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Dragoneye moon is pretty great and I enjoyed it a lot. But they call it the dragoneye moon in-story even when they can't say the word dragon? Azarinth Healer has also consumed most of my week, enjoying it a lot. It's very low stress.
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Mar 11, 2021 03:15
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Nettle Soup posted:Dragoneye moon is pretty great and I enjoyed it a lot. But they call it the dragoneye moon in-story even when they can't say the word dragon? I've been binging Azarinth myself. Ilea is probably the most batshit insane MC I've seen so far in a western web serial.
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Mar 11, 2021 04:12
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I've caught up with Dragoneye Moon and it was... Fine? It's extremely by the numbers, and only really showed some first glimpse of something more interesting in a very recent chapter. I also feel like it's kind of lame that Elaine was able to skip straight into being a Sentinel. The story makes a big show of how sexist the society is, and Elaine just kinda barely seems to feel any of it. Sure, it's the basis of her initial thrust into adventure, and occasionally she has to roll her eyes at guards at a gate or whatever, but for something that was extremely focused on it feels like it affects her less and less. You'd think the probably sexist senate and such would veto her skipping straight into one of the most powerful roles in the setting, super healer or not. Plus it would've been interesting to see her having to work with a team that may have been less overtly kind to her, maybe somewhat less competent overall. The mention of how Squad 13 seems to never make it back made me think the author was going to put her as a second in command in it, and she'd have to prove herself by saving her sexist macho teammate rangers. But yeah honestly it's... Extremely competent, the writing has no real major flaws or anything, it's just a little bland. I feel like things generally work out too cleanly for Elaine all the drat time, especially considering how everyone around her has to twist and bend around her Oath, even if it IS super powerful numbers. The story keeps mentioning potential situations in which her Oath could severely hamper her, but they never actually HAPPEN, which makes it feel a bit toothless.
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Mar 11, 2021 04:13
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Bad things happen quickly or off-screen in BTDEM, but they do happen. Maybe I notice it more because I write the same way. I don’t enjoy writing about bad things happening so I get them over with as quickly as I can. Lava challenges Elaine’s authority at every opportunity, and clearly just because she’s a woman. Almost every encounter with guards starts off negative despite Elaine having lots of advantages with dealing with guards. Largely because of their toxic so-called masculinity. Mid-story Elaine was kidnapped, beaten, and repeatedly threatened with rape just for refusing to marry a rich jerk. Too many other examples to write them all out.
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Mar 11, 2021 05:37
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I dunno, I kind of agree. Like, given that they have a sexist society, I would think that Night, the most powerful person alive who has existed since the dawn of civilization, probably would be sexist himself. His easy acceptance of Elaine is kind of baffling to me, given his history and the overall state of the world.
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Mar 11, 2021 05:57
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Infinity Gaia posted:I've caught up with Dragoneye Moon and it was... Fine? It's extremely by the numbers, and only really showed some first glimpse of something more interesting in a very recent chapter. I also feel like it's kind of lame that Elaine was able to skip straight into being a Sentinel. The story makes a big show of how sexist the society is, and Elaine just kinda barely seems to feel any of it. Sure, it's the basis of her initial thrust into adventure, and occasionally she has to roll her eyes at guards at a gate or whatever, but for something that was extremely focused on it feels like it affects her less and less. You'd think the probably sexist senate and such would veto her skipping straight into one of the most powerful roles in the setting, super healer or not. Plus it would've been interesting to see her having to work with a team that may have been less overtly kind to her, maybe somewhat less competent overall. The mention of how Squad 13 seems to never make it back made me think the author was going to put her as a second in command in it, and she'd have to prove herself by saving her sexist macho teammate rangers. I'd probably agree with that... if Elaine had been elevated to the position of Sentinel of anything else except healing. Healing seems to be one of the professions most accepting of powerful women in the Dragoneye world, and she'd proven herself not just by her deeds but by publishing her explanation of how the body works. And remember Elaine has been constantly warned that she'll be targeted since ID shows her as a healer and healers are considered weak and easy targets; I suspect the more misogynistic members heard about appointing a woman as Sentinel of healing and thought "well, figures the weak one is their token woman; they'd never make a woman a sentinel that would actually be in charge of a fight." See also Artemis; she got a lot of pushback about being a ranger but as soon as she decided to open a school Senators were racing to enroll their kids; I don't think it was ever specified but I'm guessing "teaching" might be another profession that's considered more acceptable for women. I'm generally in agreement with your other point, though; Dragoneye's society is presented as very sexist but Elaine mostly avoids it by lucking into mostly dealing with the more progressive people. Even her parents were clearly much more accepting of independent women than most of society. Silynt posted:I dunno, I kind of agree. Like, given that they have a sexist society, I would think that Night, the most powerful person alive who has existed since the dawn of civilization, probably would be sexist himself. His easy acceptance of Elaine is kind of baffling to me, given his history and the overall state of the world. Night seems likely to be a special case for... well, a lot of reasons actually. Just because he's old doesn't mean he's going to be sexist, especially given one of the "reasons" given for sexism in Dragoneye is wanting women to be safe at home giving birth to more kids, and vampires reproduce in an entirely different way. Arguably they wouldn't even have any use for differentiating vampires by sex. Bremen fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Mar 11, 2021 |
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Mar 11, 2021 06:18
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Silynt posted:I dunno, I kind of agree. Like, given that they have a sexist society, I would think that Night, the most powerful person alive who has existed since the dawn of civilization, probably would be sexist himself. His easy acceptance of Elaine is kind of baffling to me, given his history and the overall state of the world. Night does not exist since dawn of civilization, he predates human civilization. He was created ex nihilo as a member of individually powerfull species. Yes he allowed a growth of a sexist society, but it does not seem as he is interested in actively managing humans beyond "don't kill all of yourself".
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Mar 11, 2021 07:36
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Bremen posted:I'd probably agree with that... if Elaine had been elevated to the position of Sentinel of anything else except healing. Healing seems to be one of the professions most accepting of powerful women in the Dragoneye world, and she'd proven herself not just by her deeds but by publishing her explanation of how the body works. And remember Elaine has been constantly warned that she'll be targeted since ID shows her as a healer and healers are considered weak and easy targets; I suspect the more misogynistic members heard about appointing a woman as Sentinel of healing and thought "well, figures the weak one is their token woman; they'd never make a woman a sentinel that would actually be in charge of a fight." But every high level, powerful healer we see has been a man except that one bard, who had to explicitly hide her gender to avoid discrimination. It might be 'acceptable' for a woman to act as a healer, but it's clearly not in the conventions of the sexist society for them to be capable of more than the basics and maybe stuff like being a midwife. It just seems weird that in this super sexist society there is this entire group of super powered people who are also coincidentally incredibly progressive and accepting despite nothing in their society supporting it. I guess maybe Night's influence rubbing off on the Ranger organization as a whole? I dunno, I expected there to be a LOT more bullshit politics and sexism that Elaine was going to have to fight through before becoming a Sentinel, feels like she got it WAY too easily. If this author didn't seem to shy away from long term bad things happening (and if web novel readers didn't cry every time it happens) I'd expect the situation to be setup for a fall at some point, that's how rushed it feels. LLSix posted:Bad things happen quickly or off-screen in BTDEM, but they do happen. Besides that mid-story example, every issue with ingrained cultural rampant sexism Elaine has is dealt with by the ultra progressive people around her passing over it to no issue, from her parents, to Artemis, to the Ranger Squad as a whole... Speaking of that mid-story example, anyone else find it weird (relatively recent spoilers) how they brought back Kerberos just to have Elaine kill him? It felt like that plotline was more or less over and done with. Something about that chapter felt really off to me for some reason that I can't quite put into words. It feels like the author wanted to close off a loose end and did it in a rather rushed fashion, I guess? I think it'd have made more sense for Kerberos to have had to kneel to Elaine's authority eventually, it just doesn't feel like a natural progression of Elaine's character to finish that plotline with extreme violence. It'd also have made more sense for him to never show up again, I suppose.
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Mar 11, 2021 08:50
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Hardly anyone in the wider world knows about Elaine yet. It feels like there will be backlash at some point, and it'll have had time to build up. And then someone'll say the D word or release some kind of mango blight and everything will explode.
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Mar 11, 2021 09:35
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Any of the authors here got any tips about how to get more exposure for a serial these days, beyond basic stuff like Top Web Fiction? I've come a pretty long way in terms of growth, but it's stagnated lately and I don't really see myself ever making it onto any of the top lists on RR. I used to be really tuned into the hot spots in the web serial scene, but have fallen off completely in the past year.
PoorWeather fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Mar 11, 2021 |
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Mar 11, 2021 11:18
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Infinity Gaia posted:I dunno, I expected there to be a LOT more bullshit politics and sexism that Elaine was going to have to fight through before becoming a Sentinel, feels like she got it WAY too easily. If this author didn't seem to shy away from long term bad things happening (and if web novel readers didn't cry every time it happens) I'd expect the situation to be setup for a fall at some point, that's how rushed it feels.[/spoiler] IIRC the author themseles said that they planned for the promotion to take more time, but after re-evalualtion it would be just that - a check on "years served". This way, it is not as realistic as it ought to be, but the story moves forward.
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Mar 11, 2021 12:05
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Ytlaya posted:Yeah I'm not generally one to complain about stuff like "the ideology of colonialism in nerd media," but that sort of thing ("isekai uplifting nonsense" as you put it) is a bit on the nose about it. It's bad enough on it's own, but what really breaks my brain is when they start extending it to things like food. Just a complete rejection of the thought that other societies might be anything other than failed copies of your own. 
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Mar 11, 2021 12:23
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Dragoneye is good don’t get me wrong but Elaine is a real Mary Sue and that is something of a turnoff for me. Also the whole Ranger Academy could’ve been more fun if we’d have gotten to know the other recruits some. It’s weird that she spent two years there and never even bothered to learn their names. It’s like the whole arc was glossed over. Then being promoted straight to Sentinel? It’s weird.
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Mar 11, 2021 12:41
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Is it just me, or did the latest Thread of Destiny thing come out of nowhere? To be fair I've only been skimming it every few months, but I thought the dumbass fantasy barbarian poo poo was a weak diversion from the main plot, not the new main plot.
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Mar 11, 2021 20:20
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Well, they're voting on that right now. It was her first big mission for the noble faction they aligned with, and they chose to go with the nobles over the sect. So she's supposed to drift away from the sect over time. Envoy could be a simple one and done mission or since they did so well they can stick with it as a long term duty.
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Mar 11, 2021 20:43
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To be fair I suppose a lot of this is just the drawbacks of writing a story in an interactive format, but it feels weird to spend tens of thousands of words building up the sect and her fellow students as characters, then randomly do a lateral jump and go "Yo, we're all about the ice barbarians now y'all." One doesn't really cleanly set up or tie into the other.
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Mar 11, 2021 20:47
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I'm so lost. Are you guys talking about the forum one? Cuz I only read the royal road version.
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Mar 11, 2021 21:21
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Just caught up with Dragoneye, and I think the story really suffered from trying to jam 4 years of character development into ~70 chapters. It really makes the instant promotion to Sentinel feel a lot more unearned and ends up feeling that Elaine is just constantly succeeding without any external tensions of sexism, despite the attempted justifications made in the story. There's a lot of plot points that the author felt that they wanted to resolve, but it's just ends up a bit messy resolving them entirely in a chapter so you can go to the next sequence in the time skip. Additionally, there hasn't been enough narrative tension surrounding her oath, which makes the supposed restrictions around it feel a lot lighter than they should be. I hope now that the story pacing is slowing down a lot in terms of time skipping, the author might be able to explore those tensions a lot more. I think there's still a lot of potential for the story to succeed, but the quality of the story dropped significantly after she left the plague town.
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Mar 11, 2021 21:23
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Yeah that prompt seemed out of nowhere. From a certain angle it does make sense with recent decisions seemingly perfectly aligning to make it a possibility, but ehhhh on it winning (which it was doing before it was paused)Larry Parrish posted:I'm so lost. Are you guys talking about the forum one? Cuz I only read the royal road version. lurksion fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Mar 11, 2021 |
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Mar 11, 2021 21:26
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berenzen posted:Just caught up with Dragoneye, and I think the story really suffered from trying to jam 4 years of character development into ~70 chapters. It really makes the instant promotion to Sentinel feel a lot more unearned and ends up feeling that Elaine is just constantly succeeding without any external tensions of sexism, despite the attempted justifications made in the story. There's a lot of plot points that the author felt that they wanted to resolve, but it's just ends up a bit messy resolving them entirely in a chapter so you can go to the next sequence in the time skip. Additionally, there hasn't been enough narrative tension surrounding her oath, which makes the supposed restrictions around it feel a lot lighter than they should be. I hope now that the story pacing is slowing down a lot in terms of time skipping, the author might be able to explore those tensions a lot more. I think there's still a lot of potential for the story to succeed, but the quality of the story dropped significantly after she left the plague town. I feel like there could be more tension around the Oath, but Elaine fully intends to follow it. She's not looking to push it until it punishes her, because she's built an enormous part of her life around it. It's not a curse, it's her way of life. That said, the times that she has broken it have felt suitably punishing to me. The couple of slight infractions cause a loss in skills and levels (which was painful) and the one time she really went against it not only cost her a lot more in skills and levels, the pain of that made her insensate for over a day. In a situation where she's not being protected, that could pretty easily lead to her death. I do think there's a world where the promotion to Sentinel might have been better after one more round, but I believe the author has said that it would have mostly just been filler and they figured moving on was the better choice. In-universe we also find out that most Sentinels aren't actually that much of a leap above a Ranger team. They're a step up, but the majority of their supposed power comes from, as one of them puts it, smoke and mirrors due to the massive support network they have access to and purposefully being assigned to handle their specialties that let them hit above their weight class. Without those, most of the Sentinels could be handled by one Ranger team. With those, it makes as much sense having a healing specialist (the likes of which the world has literally never seen before due to her otherworldly knowledge) with okay combat abilities and a proven loyalty to the Rangers as it does having a thieving specialist with likely even less combat potential. I think the politics/sexism aspects are going to hit after Elaine gets back from her first assignment, and I'm interested in seeing what happens regarding those when they're visible instead of just behind the scenes. Onean fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Mar 11, 2021 |
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Mar 11, 2021 22:10
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It's true though that the plague town arc was loving dope, really hard to top that.
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Mar 11, 2021 22:13
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I for one strongly enjoyed the slice of life ish part of being out on the patrol, but I understand that I'm a weirdo. My favorite books are poo poo like Healer's Road, A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, The Goblin Emperor, and Golden Age of the Solar Clipper. They're good books, but they're really stories about some fictional guys life, and not traditional stories with unnecessary things like plot or traditional build > climax > denouement structure. So it makes sense that other people would view more of this are being unnecessary or filler content
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Mar 11, 2021 22:18
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Mr. Prokosch posted:Well, they're voting on that right now. It was her first big mission for the noble faction they aligned with, and they chose to go with the nobles over the sect. So she's supposed to drift away from the sect over time. Yeah, it's a very organic jumping off point. And I think I'm fine with it, honestly. The sect arc was going to end eventually, and Yrs has said it's not going to be a total break with the current cast/setting. So.
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Mar 11, 2021 22:33
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Larry Parrish posted:I for one strongly enjoyed the slice of life ish part of being out on the patrol, but I understand that I'm a weirdo. My favorite books are poo poo like Healer's Road, A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, The Goblin Emperor, and Golden Age of the Solar Clipper. They're good books, but they're really stories about some fictional guys life, and not traditional stories with unnecessary things like plot or traditional build > climax > denouement structure. So it makes sense that other people would view more of this are being unnecessary or filler content Try Beware of Chicken, if you haven't already.
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Mar 11, 2021 22:52
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I would not have complained if the traveling around in a ranger squad part of the story had lasted a lot longer than it had, but I still feel like it would have been kinda weird to just repeat it. The second round would have needed to do something very different with it than the first time.
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Mar 11, 2021 23:00
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Megazver posted:Try Beware of Chicken, if you haven't already. yeah, i read that one too. it pwns
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Mar 11, 2021 23:01
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Onean posted:I do think there's a world where the promotion to Sentinel might have been better after one more round, but I believe the author has said that it would have mostly just been filler and they figured moving on was the better choice. In-universe we also find out that most Sentinels aren't actually that much of a leap above a Ranger team. They're a step up, but the majority of their supposed power comes from, as one of them puts it, smoke and mirrors due to the massive support network they have access to and purposefully being assigned to handle their specialties that let them hit above their weight class. Without those, most of the Sentinels could be handled by one Ranger team. With those, it makes as much sense having a healing specialist (the likes of which the world has literally never seen before due to her otherworldly knowledge) with okay combat abilities and a proven loyalty to the Rangers as it does having a thieving specialist with likely even less combat potential. I don't mind the in-story justifications for it, my issues with it come from a narrative aspect. Both plague town and ranger academy had a similar narrative length, but I felt that plague town ended up having a lot more narrative depth in terms of Elaine's character development. The ranger academy arc felt like the author was just trying to check off boxes, because there wasn't enough time in the chapters that were written themselves for them to explore Elaine's time there in any depth. I think that the Ranger academy arc needed at least twice the number of chapters written to allow for character development and growth, not only for Elaine, but for side characters that were developed in the story. When the story talks about Glacia, Markus or the Plague Mage, I can actually care about them because there actually a narrative relationship between them and Elaine. I literally read through the Ranger academy arc last night, and I can barely remember the names of the people that she went to the academy with aside from Wolfy- because he was the only classmate that was narratively developed as a character. If any of the others ever show up in the story, I won't be able to actually care about them, even if the story wants us to. The nature of poorly written timeskips (which I feel post-Plague town and Ranger Academy were), is that it doesn't allow for narrative development of any characters or any sort of narrative tensions. I don't necessarily mind the plots points as they have happened, my issue with the story is that it's been too rushed, and has suffered from a lack of narrative tension as a result. Now that we're out of the time skip, we're starting to see more thematic and narrative tensions begin to occur again, so I'm hoping that the story will improve as a result. berenzen fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Mar 11, 2021 |
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Mar 11, 2021 23:08
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basically what he said
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Mar 11, 2021 23:44
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I feel like TWI proves that people don't mind a slow paced plot, and that it has several advantages over a fast paced one. I find that I care about nearly every TWI character to some extent, whereas it's hard to care about most people in BDM. Not saying that every web novel needs to have the ultra glacial pace of TWI, just that it has its advantages. I also agree with the posters above that BDM has felt kinda rushed lately, hopefully it improves in this new arc.
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Mar 11, 2021 23:52
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TWI also has payoffs for a slow plot, every so often poo poo goes down and you see what the story was building up to and something that has lasting consequences happens. If it was just slice of life 100% of the time I'm sure it would eventually get tedious.
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Mar 11, 2021 23:58
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Cicero posted:It's true though that the plague town arc was loving dope, really hard to top that. I completely agree. Also, the current arc being posted is basically "peak burnout", because I was dying after the Ranger Academy arc conclusion. That one was hard to properly balance. On one hand, I wanted to show Elaine doing stuff. On the other, I knew none of the side characters would be around at the end of it. Difficult to properly pull off an arc when most of the characters are going to poof.
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Mar 12, 2021 01:06
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PoorWeather posted:Any of the authors here got any tips about how to get more exposure for a serial these days, beyond basic stuff like Top Web Fiction? I've come a pretty long way in terms of growth, but it's stagnated lately and I don't really see myself ever making it onto any of the top lists on RR. I used to be really tuned into the hot spots in the web serial scene, but have fallen off completely in the past year. I've been doing the Comicad Network (which was made for webcomics but you can use it to advertise other poo poo) and taking a swing at Taboola. You won't get a hyperfocused "normal" web fiction audience, but if you're like me and struggling to connect with that audience then trying to broaden your readerbase might not be a bad idea other than that getting exposure is an rear end
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Mar 12, 2021 01:19
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Infinity Gaia posted:I feel like TWI proves that people don't mind a slow paced plot, and that it has several advantages over a fast paced one. I find that I care about nearly every TWI character to some extent, whereas it's hard to care about most people in BDM. Not saying that every web novel needs to have the ultra glacial pace of TWI, just that it has its advantages. I also agree with the posters above that BDM has felt kinda rushed lately, hopefully it improves in this new arc. I’m trying to think of who in TWI I don’t care about. Laken for sure, probably the various witches since I skipped the Laken chapters they were introduced in, maybe Fiorre or whatever and her family for similar reasons to the witches. There’s a theme of “non-Innkeeper Earthlings are bad” except I don’t mind all the other ones at all. Maybe it’s that Ryoka and Laken are bad and boring and it infects all their side characters too? Even Flos is less bad than Laken, at least we got the fun underground city visit out of that, and Imhotep.
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Mar 12, 2021 01:42
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Velius posted:I’m trying to think of who in TWI I don’t care about. Laken for sure, probably the various witches since I skipped the Laken chapters they were introduced in, maybe Fiorre or whatever and her family for similar reasons to the witches. There’s a theme of “non-Innkeeper Earthlings are bad” except I don’t mind all the other ones at all. Maybe it’s that Ryoka and Laken are bad and boring and it infects all their side characters too? Even Flos is less bad than Laken, at least we got the fun underground city visit out of that, and Imhotep. Laken kinda sucks but the Witches are cool and increasingly important so it might be worth going back and reading their stuff.
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Mar 12, 2021 02:32
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