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Are there any good litrpg / web serial podcasts ? I've been listening to the Wandering Inn podcast ( No killing goblins, https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/dragonus45) and it's been quite entertaining.
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Mar 9, 2022 13:11
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MonikaTSarn posted:Are there any good litrpg / web serial podcasts ? I've been listening to the Wandering Inn podcast ( No killing goblins, https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/dragonus45) and it's been quite entertaining. Alexander Wales does a rationalist fiction writing podcast with another web serial author, and it ends up covering alot of web fiction. It might be something your interested in. https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/rationally-writing-rationally-writing-302JZise1YV/
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Mar 9, 2022 18:03
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Oh interesting. Just realized Alexander Wales is the guy who wrote Metropolitan Man. I really enjoyed that, but all the comments that whole heartedly approved of Luther's thinking and actions really said a lot about the rationalist crowd.
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Mar 9, 2022 19:23
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Wittgen posted:Oh interesting. Just realized Alexander Wales is the guy who wrote Metropolitan Man. I really enjoyed that, but all the comments that whole heartedly approved of Luther's thinking and actions really said a lot about the rationalist crowd. I just read that and found it... really wanky and nowhere as "smart" as it wants to be.
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Mar 9, 2022 19:50
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Megazver posted:I just read that and found it... really wanky and nowhere as "smart" as it wants to be. Well OK a bunch of them are eugenics monarchofascist weirdos or something too. Fortunately he's not one of the bad ones.
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Mar 9, 2022 20:00
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"Rational" fiction isn't quite a full overlap with "Rationalists" anyway
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Mar 9, 2022 20:01
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"Rational" fiction and "rationalist" fiction are also pretty different things. The former is basically just a promise that the story's setting follows rules and the plot won't be driven by characters acting unreasonably, while the latter has lectures about the glory of (the author's misunderstand of) science. Wales is pretty embedded in the rationalist community, but he mostly doesn't write rationalist stories.
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Mar 9, 2022 20:11
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ah, the Marx vs Stirner duality
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Mar 9, 2022 20:13
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Megazver posted:I just read that and found it... really wanky and nowhere as "smart" as it wants to be. i thought it was a fun story i think it's a mistake to assume you're supposed to buy into luthor's logic. lex luthor's whole thing is that he is very intelligent but constantly allows his paranoia and greed to warp his conclusions. the sections with luthor are supposed to be wanky because luthor is the kind of guy that has fifteen "MENSA MEMBER" coffee cups
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Mar 9, 2022 20:35
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Trailer trash is a very odd and good slice of life story. I mean. I don't know if it's my state of mind but the story strikes some nice emotional chords. I get angry and sad reading it.
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Mar 9, 2022 21:16
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Plorkyeran posted:"Rational" fiction and "rationalist" fiction are also pretty different things. The former is basically just a promise that the story's setting follows rules and the plot won't be driven by characters acting unreasonably, while the latter has lectures about the glory of (the author's misunderstand of) science. Wales is pretty embedded in the rationalist community, but he mostly doesn't write rationalist stories. Worth The Candle has the main characters literally engineer heaven. It is absolutely a rationalist story.
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Mar 9, 2022 21:19
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Affi posted:Trailer trash is a very odd and good slice of life story. Oh, that was a nice twist about halfway through. Also a fun little joke chapter that really threw me for a loop.
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Mar 10, 2022 00:35
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Listening again to the best Evanescence song ever made.
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Mar 10, 2022 05:31
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Wittgen posted:Oh interesting. Just realized Alexander Wales is the guy who wrote Metropolitan Man. I really enjoyed that, but all the comments that whole heartedly approved of Luther's thinking and actions really said a lot about the rationalist crowd. I didn't really get that. I think people aren't cheering for Luther, it's more the like Wales describes Luther, how he showed how Luther's though process worked and how he arrived at certain conclusions instead of just being "well I hate Superman because I'm evil/jealous/afraid of him." Like, I can see how someone who follows Luther's POV would say how he managed to kill Superman makes sense, that doesn't translate into approval of him or his actions. Narmi fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Mar 10, 2022 |
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Mar 10, 2022 05:36
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Narmi posted:I didn't really get that. I think people aren't cheering for Luther, it's more the like Wales describes Luther, how he showed how Luther's though process worked and how he arrived at certain conclusions instead of just being "well I hate Superman because I'm evil/jealous/afraid of him." Like, I can see how someone who follows Luther's POV would say how he managed to kill Superman makes sense, that doesn't translate into approval of him or his actions. I remember a review that was literally, "I love this Luthor. Finally, someone gets me."
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Mar 10, 2022 14:17
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Yeah there's definitely an argument to be had about how some of those awful rationalist protagonists are being deliberately portrayed as awful and the writers did that intentionally knowing that they're awful rather than them being awful people using the stories to soapbox, but boy howdy do the bulk of the fanbases of those works not get it at all.
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Mar 10, 2022 22:22
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The Shortest Path posted:Yeah there's definitely an argument to be had about how some of those awful rationalist protagonists are being deliberately portrayed as awful and the writers did that intentionally knowing that they're awful rather than them being awful people using the stories to soapbox, but boy howdy do the bulk of the fanbases of those works not get it at all. Exactly. That's what I was trying to get at. I am pretty sure Wales gets it as he has an author's note saying he thought about ending the story with Darkseid landing on the planet, but the story was a dark enough ending already. Meanwhile the reviews are crying about finally finding a fictional character they can root for in the form of loving Lex Luthor.
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Mar 10, 2022 23:43
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I feel like this is like how there's some people who think the Joker represents them while most people recognize he's at best a dude in need of serious therapy. Most of the discussion I've seen has centered around whether Luthor was right in calling Superman a threat to Earth, or whether he was acting out of fear and justifying a decision he had already made emotionally and simply couldn't live in a world where he had "lost" to his rival. Personally I've seen a lot of reviews that poke holes in Luthor's rational, the most obvious one being that if one superbeing exists and made its way to Earth, so can others, and at least this one wants to be on your side. That said I started the series well after it ended and only read post-final reviews, so there is probably a ton of discussion that I missed, or people changed their mind after the ending. Narmi fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Mar 10, 2022 |
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Mar 10, 2022 23:49
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Even the RR comments have mostly figured out that Penelope from Vigor Mortis is a bad person despite being cool and fun to read about. All it took was ten or so chapters of the story very explicitly telling the reader that.
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Mar 11, 2022 06:32
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There are still a large contingent of people who believe that Panacea did nothing wrong.
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Mar 11, 2022 06:47
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i could write essays about my issues with Wildbow's writing, what i think are tragic, pervasive, and intentional self-owns, but i have never felt such empathy for an artist as i did then. if i ever had my work misunderstood so badly the resulting impostor syndrome would snap my ego in half. i would assume that my fans hate me or that i'm so catastrophically bad at my craft that i should be a cautionary tale.
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Mar 11, 2022 07:29
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Plorkyeran posted:Even the RR comments have mostly figured out that Penelope from Vigor Mortis is a bad person despite being cool and fun to read about. All it took was ten or so chapters of the story very explicitly telling the reader that. I stopped reading Vigor Mortis months ago, but as far as I could tell at the time, everyone is a bad person in that story. Especially the main character.
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Mar 11, 2022 08:06
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Peachfart posted:I stopped reading Vigor Mortis months ago, but as far as I could tell at the time, everyone is a bad person in that story. Especially the main character. That story kept starting with a Person who seemed nice and turning them monstrous and than trying to do the opposite with its monsters. It just sort of made everyone terrible.
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Mar 11, 2022 08:13
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The Shortest Path posted:There are still a large contingent of people who believe that Panacea did nothing wrong. i quit vigor mortis shortly after it began for a variety of reasons and this comparison, based on my quick skimming of the most recent chapter, is completely accurate. to the extent that there are still people in the comments insisting she's done nothing wrong, except maybe that she hasn't gone far enough. e: i need to quit reading these comments, they're legitimately terrible in a way the chapter itself isn't SerSpook fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Mar 11, 2022 |
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Mar 11, 2022 08:18
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SerSpook posted:i quit vigor mortis shortly after it began for a variety of reasons and this comparison, based on my quick skimming of the most recent chapter, is completely accurate. to the extent that there are still people in the comments insisting she's done nothing wrong, except maybe that she hasn't gone far enough. Web serial comments are generally awful, even for good web serials. Like the people in the PracGuide comments constantly making the dumbest speculation imaginable about people getting Names. A bunch of people speculated about Hanno becoming "Grey Knight" and I'm just baffled that someone can read a story this long and have such a deep misunderstanding of its characters.
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Mar 11, 2022 11:51
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catgirlgenius posted:if i ever had my work misunderstood so badly the resulting impostor syndrome would snap my ego in half. i would assume that my fans hate me or that i'm so catastrophically bad at my craft that i should be a cautionary tale.
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Mar 11, 2022 14:17
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I’m all for death of the reader
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Mar 11, 2022 20:00
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Re: Metropolitan Man: I think the most generous possible interpretation of Lex's beliefs* is that he sat down and calculated maybe a ten,, fifteen percent chance of Superman killing most or all life on Earth, and then decided that one person's life wasn't worth the risk. Which is a conclusion I can agree with, mathematically**, but it's a decision based on mathematics and it's possible to affect those odds. In this case, a significant portion of the actual risk, and most of the calculatable portion, is from Superman becoming stressed, or despairing, or otherwise mentally unstable, so you should definitely not make those things more likely. By supporting Superman, you could make his life better and easier, and by extension save many lives at a much more efficient cost proposition than many other causes - giving Superman HQ and organizational support, for example, would be a very good charity up to a point. Even if Superman gave up heroing, just say "Fine, dude, just practice self-care and have a good time" so that he doesn't destroy the planet because of frustration or sadness or whatever. *a practice which is called steelmanning, appropriately enough **A common argument here is that the calculations are going to be divorced in some degree from the 'actual' numbers because we're talking about some pretty vague stuff; the natural counterargument is that of course they are, but a few days spent legitimately looking at sources and thinking heavily is going to turn out a more accurate answer than a casual feeling you got in a few seconds. The trick, of course, is asking the right question.
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Mar 12, 2022 07:19
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There's a relatively small early chapter of TWI up for Patrons. Why? Because pirateaba is insane and going to attempt to publish a chapter a day this week. Also I call it relatively small because it's still 13k words.
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Mar 12, 2022 10:35
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Infinity Gaia posted:There's a relatively small early chapter of TWI up for Patrons. Why? Because pirateaba is insane and going to attempt to publish a chapter a day this week. In fairness, that's a third of the size of their usual chapters.... and still about double what other authors are putting out.
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Mar 12, 2022 10:53
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tithin posted:In fairness, that's a third of the size of their usual chapters.... and still about double what other authors are putting out. Who is putting out 6k words/chapter every day? I usually see 2k - 2.5k words from the people who update daily.
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Mar 12, 2022 16:49
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Everyone's going wild at Brandon Sanderson pulling a few extra novels out of his rear end during covid but here pirateaba is banging out the equivalent of like one per month on the regular for years straight. It's almost impossible to believe she's only human. Maybe this is an alternate reality where The Flash decided to be a writer instead of a superhero.
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Mar 13, 2022 15:46
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I started reading Millennial Mage recently, since I saw it recommended a few times. It's pretty good! The description I saw of it by Jazerus of basically being a cultivation story with an alternate setting is accurate, but there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, part of the pleasure of progression fantasy is seeing a complex, interesting setting and looking forward to the MC participating more fully in it, and MM definitely has that. Seeing more of the setting, culture, and the way magic works is the main thing keeping me going. Plus, the student debt angle is compelling and adds an economic angle to the story that adds interest. I really only have two criticisms: First, the pacing is wonky. Every day is exciting, but that also means strange things happen to keep every day exciting, instead of just having a few boring days and skipping past them in the narrative. The second is that something about the way Tala is described has a weird vibe sometimes; she seems to get naked and be seen by dudes a lot, or her boobs start glowing and embarrassing onlookers, or other stuff like that. I might be reading too much into it.
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Mar 13, 2022 20:26
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The Shortest Path posted:Everyone's going wild at Brandon Sanderson pulling a few extra novels out of his rear end during covid but here pirateaba is banging out the equivalent of like one per month on the regular for years straight. Sanderson wrote complete novels, Pirateaba can outdo him in wordcount, but the story is the equivalent of someone who's playing a game and wants to explore the whole map, gets distracted by sidequests and forget about the main quest. I like TWI, but there's been like half a dozen plotlines that have been brought up and abandoned. It reminds me of those Chinese webnovels where the MC will outgrow and abandon their world for exponentially bigger ones, just so the story can keep going (it's not as bad as that, just similar).
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Mar 13, 2022 20:35
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Ytlaya posted:Web serial comments are generally awful, even for good web serials. Christ is this ever true. (major with the candle spoilers) when Joon got raped by bethel the comments were full of poo poo like "welp Joon has gone full r-slur" and "why is he making such a big deal about this? it's not like he was raped" Not only are rr commenters dumb as poo poo, they're also moral garbage!
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Mar 13, 2022 21:16
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nrook posted:The second is that something about the way Tala is described has a weird vibe sometimes; she seems to get naked and be seen by dudes a lot, or her boobs start glowing and embarrassing onlookers, or other stuff like that. I might be reading too much into it. That part is pretty weird, but it mostly goes away as the story progresses. I sort of got the impression the author threw a pile of potential hooks in at the start and then focused on the parts readers wanted more of, which thankfully didn't include the exhibition fetish bits. Plorkyeran fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Mar 13, 2022 |
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Mar 13, 2022 22:00
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nrook posted:I started reading Millennial Mage recently, since I saw it recommended a few times. It's pretty good! The description I saw of it by Jazerus of basically being a cultivation story with an alternate setting is accurate, but there's nothing wrong with that. Indeed, part of the pleasure of progression fantasy is seeing a complex, interesting setting and looking forward to the MC participating more fully in it, and MM definitely has that. Seeing more of the setting, culture, and the way magic works is the main thing keeping me going. Plus, the student debt angle is compelling and adds an economic angle to the story that adds interest. Honestly I’m getting ready to drop it. It was kinda sold as being a “working” mage trying to pay off student loans and I think there are interesting stories to be told in that space, but a fairly short time in and she’s already fell in with the Nikolai Tesla of Inscriptions, discovered immortality juice, invented anti-magic defense nobody has ever thought of, learning to fight in a style specially designed for her and her amazing physical attributes, bonded with her super-special awesome deadly pet, and bootstrapped her way into the upper echelons of mage society through plucky grit. It’s turned into not my cup of tea.
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Mar 14, 2022 00:36
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navyjack posted:Honestly I’m getting ready to drop it. It was kinda sold as being a “working” mage trying to pay off student loans and I think there are interesting stories to be told in that space, but a fairly short time in and she’s already fell in with the Nikolai Tesla of Inscriptions, discovered immortality juice, invented anti-magic defense nobody has ever thought of, learning to fight in a style specially designed for her and her amazing physical attributes, bonded with her super-special awesome deadly pet, and bootstrapped her way into the upper echelons of mage society through plucky grit. It’s turned into not my cup of tea. I get where you're coming from, but I think the idea from the start is that human society is this weird artificial construct designed to support immortal mages that fight immortal magical beasts all day. So they don't bother to tell the normal loser mages about this stuff because they need a lot of worker bees. She's fairly unique but only because she didn't have to be told about a lot of that stuff.
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Mar 14, 2022 00:39
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navyjack posted:Honestly I’m getting ready to drop it. It was kinda sold as being a “working” mage trying to pay off student loans and I think there are interesting stories to be told in that space, but a fairly short time in and she’s already fell in with the Nikolai Tesla of Inscriptions, discovered immortality juice, invented anti-magic defense nobody has ever thought of, learning to fight in a style specially designed for her and her amazing physical attributes, bonded with her super-special awesome deadly pet, and bootstrapped her way into the upper echelons of mage society through plucky grit. It’s turned into not my cup of tea. This doesn't really bug me because it's progression fantasy and she still seems reasonably constrained by her financial situation. Like, she definitely still has to go on these boring trips (with a minder now), she negotiates with everybody to try to get stuff cheaper, stuff like that. I get the impression that Archon society is "the real mage society" rather than being an elite circle, too, since everyone reasonably competent we've met in the story either is an Archon or should have become one. I can see how it would be a turnoff if you were looking for a story with a main character who really was down on her luck, though.
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Mar 14, 2022 01:03
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nrook posted:This doesn't really bug me because it's progression fantasy and she still seems reasonably constrained by her financial situation. Like, she definitely still has to go on these boring trips (with a minder now), she negotiates with everybody to try to get stuff cheaper, stuff like that. I get the impression that Archon society is "the real mage society" rather than being an elite circle, too, since everyone reasonably competent we've met in the story either is an Archon or should have become one. I can see how it would be a turnoff if you were looking for a story with a main character who really was down on her luck, though. Yeah I don’t “hate” it and it’s competently written, but there’s only room for one super special girl in my life and her name is Erin Solstice (occasionally Healer Elaine, Ariane, or Catherine Foundling shut up).
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Mar 14, 2022 01:42
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