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Kaja Rainbow posted:Select volume 2 Wow I feel dumb now but haven't seen that before. Thanks!
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Apr 8, 2022 02:21
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Finally got around to reading all of Beware of Chicken. drat, this is really good, no wonder it hit number 1 on whatever that was. Now I have a hunger for other nonstandard cultivation stuff, going through Virtuous Sons and seems pretty good so far, good dynamic between the two main characters. I feel like it kinda half-asses the greco-roman cultivation conversion in some places but overall it definitely feels fresh. Any other nonstandard cultivation stuff folks can recommend?
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Apr 8, 2022 18:58
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Weirkey Chronicles has a very non-standard cultivation system but you'll have to get it on KU. Though apart from the magic system, the plot structure is fairly Cradle-ish I'd say.
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Apr 8, 2022 19:19
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There’s Millennial Mage, just recently discussed. It features a magic system revolving around bodily inscriptions and the investment of soul-power into objects, at least from what we’ve seen so far. There’s an interesting setting and lots of neat secrets slowly being revealed, and the writing is pretty good. It’s not as good as Virtuous Sons but it might catch your interest.
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Apr 8, 2022 20:09
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Soulmonger ftw. It's Macronomicon of GSA fames take on 'urban fantasy'. By which we mean a teenage single father learns how to absorb soul energy and sell it to demons from his dead girlfriend's stuff. Things rapidly fly off the rails from here.
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Apr 8, 2022 23:38
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Oh yeah, if you’re looking for stuff that’s different in the Beware of Chicken sense (xianxia setting, but different genre), there’s a surprising amount of Chinese romance xianxia targeting a female demographic. I enjoyed reading Ascending, Do Not Disturb in translation. There’s BL xianxia too but I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know of much Western fiction of this type, though there is When Immortal Ascension Fails Time Travel to Try Again; no romance yet from what I’ve read but a similar vibe.
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Apr 9, 2022 01:23
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Kyoujin posted:Wow I feel dumb now but haven't seen that before. Thanks! Yeah it seems to be a new feature that some but not all authors have adopted
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Apr 9, 2022 01:40
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nrook posted:Oh yeah, if you’re looking for stuff that’s different in the Beware of Chicken sense (xianxia setting, but different genre), there’s a surprising amount of Chinese romance xianxia targeting a female demographic. I enjoyed reading Ascending, Do Not Disturb in translation. There’s BL xianxia too but I don’t know anything about it. I tried reading the latter but it felt pretty stiff and rushed. Reading it felt like a cliff notes of a story and it isn't as funny as it thinks it is. I'll give the first one a try but the translated Chinese stuff always reads kinda off to me. I think in general what I like about stuff like Beware of Chicken and Virtuous Sons is how they use the cultivation concepts without getting stuck in the weeds of specific training methods and pills and ranks and all that. One of my friends recommended This Young Master Isn't Cannon Fodder to me and that was an egregious example of proper noun spew, for instance. Another thing I think I like about BoC and Virtuous Sons is how grounded they are. The dynamic duo in VS is constantly in over their heads, and while every main character in BoC is kinda OP they're generally chill and nice about it. Oh and uh funnily enough it was me being kinda disappointed by Millennial Mage that made me go and read BoC. It had a solid start but I dunno something about the general pretty rapid speed of development left me kinda cold. Interesting system though. Infinity Gaia fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Apr 9, 2022 |
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Apr 9, 2022 03:02
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To be honest I bounced off of the time travel one too, but as I’m the only person alive who didn’t find Beware of Chicken entertaining I figured it might just be me. Comedy is always hit-or-miss, after all. Most of the Western cultivation series don’t really drag in the same way the Chinese ones often do, I think because the model is different; the big Chinese webnovel sites are pay-per-chapter, and the fanbase likes seeing tons of content even if it’s stretched thin.
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Apr 9, 2022 03:11
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Larry Parrish posted:Soulmonger ftw. It's Macronomicon of GSA fames take on 'urban fantasy'. By which we mean a teenage single father learns how to absorb soul energy and sell it to demons from his dead girlfriend's stuff. Things rapidly fly off the rails from here. yea this is good, thanks for the rec this guy done other stuff?
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Apr 9, 2022 12:16
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tithin posted:yea this is good, thanks for the rec Ehhhh. Yes, but it's way less good, not just in terms of writing proficiency, but also in terms of content, at least to me. Apocalypse: Generic System is on kindle and the rest are on RRL, though I don't think any of the RRL stuff was ever completed, so start reading those at your own peril.
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Apr 9, 2022 12:44
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honestly he's kind of just written the same basic story four times now, lol. but getting better every time. i like how even secondary and background characters feel like they have the same amount of agency as the protagonists. that's not the case in many novels, where nobody really does much of anything if it's not plot related. and he has absolutely wild ideas for how magic works. if you don't mind that his first two stories on RR aren't ever going to be finished, it's probably worth it just for that. he's extremely creative.
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Apr 9, 2022 14:58
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Fear not the man who has written 1000 different web novels, fear the one who has written the same web novel 1000 times.
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Apr 9, 2022 18:41
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Infinity Gaia posted:Fear not the man who has written 1000 different web novels, fear the one who has written the same web novel 1000 times.
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Apr 9, 2022 19:08
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New patreon twi chapter is out at 42.5k words and it's... like, even less than the first paragraph in, it's gonne be a heavy one
tithin fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 03:24
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TWI Patreon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSdSuWoNVwo
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Apr 10, 2022 03:49
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tithin posted:New patreon prac guide chapter is out at 42.5k words and it's... like, even less than the first paragraph in, it's gonne be a heavy one Wait, there's more? I thought the author was going dark until they kicked off their next story in August.
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Apr 10, 2022 04:54
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With that word count there's only one serial tithin could have meant
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Apr 10, 2022 05:05
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Argue posted:With that word count there's only one serial tithin could have meant A man can dream…
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Apr 10, 2022 05:07
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TWI 8.78F Patreon: It's the end of the world
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Apr 10, 2022 06:11
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blastron posted:A man can dream… yeah sorry mb
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Apr 10, 2022 06:21
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I've recently dived into the royal road forums, and I return with links to a few interesting threads. Firstly, RR still doesn't have any LGBT+ tags, so as a replacement people on the forums have created a thread to index LGBT+ works here: https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/108535 . Secondly, this guide by TheFirstDefilier (aka writer of defiance of the fall), talks about how the web novel business model works. It's a grim and fascinating look into how the big stories on RR are shaped by the commercial pressures of the web novel medium: https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/116847
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Apr 10, 2022 12:25
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Yet more confirmation that whatever the gently caress is going on at royal road is really not my cup of tea lol. who are these people who really are trying to read every variation of isekai poo poo? it's even an existing genre, I guarantee whatever niche you want is already on Kindle and probably even has an official English translation, if not an outright Western clone of whatever 'niche' that's been insanely done to death in Japan. Looking at Rising Stars is loving rough. That said there still is some good stuff around there. I think I liked the site better a few years ago when it was mostly a lovely fan fiction platform. At least it didn't feel like I was being marketed at. Anyway, what's other people's no click zone items. For me, if the blurb lists genres (that's what the tags are for!!) or specific influences, I'm never looking at it, on the assumption that it's going to be overly derivative and probably badly written too. In the few cases I'm interested despite, I've been right about 9 out of 10 times lol. Ironically another is having a bunch of tags. Unless it's really long and well-established, I'm assuming the author threw the romance tag into this story to gently caress with my search results, and I'm usually not wrong about this one either. I love romance stories so it really irritates me when I read 200 pages or whatever and there's not even a hint.
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Apr 10, 2022 13:00
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also I really don't know what to make of that queer story list having yuri and lesbian together lol. is that their way of saying it's the weirdly dated perspective characters in manga have where they pretend like even though it's 2020 in the story they've never heard of someone being gay in Japan. is it just that they copy/pasted an entry from someone else with weeb poisoning? I'm losing my mind here.
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Apr 10, 2022 13:07
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Rob Filter posted:I've recently dived into the royal road forums, and I return with links to a few interesting threads. While we're at it, I wrote my own guide, which links to not only TheFirstDefier's guide, but also links Shirtaloon's and Pirate's guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O29fCQIg_onlh2SwIr54SXdApLGK-mlcsuDFrH6GgzE/edit We say a lot of similar things
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Apr 10, 2022 13:54
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Larry Parrish posted:also I really don't know what to make of that queer story list having yuri and lesbian together lol. is that their way of saying it's the weirdly dated perspective characters in manga have where they pretend like even though it's 2020 in the story they've never heard of someone being gay in Japan. is it just that they copy/pasted an entry from someone else with weeb poisoning? I'm losing my mind here. AO3 has a bunch of interesting tech and volunteer work that supports a best in class tagging system, and means people can just write whatever tags they want. You can read about it here: https://www.wired.com/story/archive-of-our-own-fans-better-than-tech-organizing-information/. Selkie Myth posted:While we're at it, I wrote my own guide, which links to not only TheFirstDefier's guide, but also links Shirtaloon's and Pirate's guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O29fCQIg_onlh2SwIr54SXdApLGK-mlcsuDFrH6GgzE/edit Rob Filter fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 13:55
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Rob Filter posted:Secondly, this guide by TheFirstDefilier (aka writer of defiance of the fall), talks about how the web novel business model works. It's a grim and fascinating look into how the big stories on RR are shaped by the commercial pressures of the web novel medium: https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/116847 quote:You can import new popular tropes from Asian webnovels, but it’s a bit risky if that trope hasn’t been popularized in the west yet. got some new tropes fresh off the boat
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Apr 10, 2022 14:04
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i guess he's right, the fan/machine translations aren't as popular as the western stuff because it's just godawful to read, and unlike manga or fansubs, it's the same price, so you don't have competition. so if something is trendy, you might as well get ahead of the pack.
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Apr 10, 2022 14:15
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That post about the business side of web serials isn't wrong about all the "treat it as a business" advice, but it is speaking specifically about the general RR audience and their expectations. When I started writing Katalepsis I was pretty much fishing to see if a different audience exists. And they do! It just took a lot longer to find them.
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Apr 10, 2022 14:31
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Selkie Myth posted:While we're at it, I wrote my own guide, which links to not only TheFirstDefier's guide, but also links Shirtaloon's and Pirate's guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O29fCQIg_onlh2SwIr54SXdApLGK-mlcsuDFrH6GgzE/edit Thank you. I think this is all good advice for someone who wants to make a living writing on Royal Road. Hungry posted:That post about the business side of web serials isn't wrong about all the "treat it as a business" advice, but it is speaking specifically about the general RR audience and their expectations. When I started writing Katalepsis I was pretty much fishing to see if a different audience exists. And they do! It just took a lot longer to find them. How did you find your audience? If I remember right, you were many story arcs in before you started posting to RR.
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Apr 10, 2022 14:38
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Rob Filter posted:
quote:If you have thousands of followers and you've had a good run on Rising Stars, but you're not making any "real" money, then the problem is probably conversion rather than growth. You need to analyze why your readers are not invested enough in your story for them to want to become paying patrons.
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Apr 10, 2022 15:29
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speaking from my experience as a patron to a few webnovels, high-tension moments split between chapters are what make me pull the trigger on the subscription at the time, but the story has to have earned my interest first, and low-stakes slice of life stuff is good for that. a long series of cliffhangers just convinces me that there's no point in subscribing because i'll just simply end up at a new cliffhanger at the end of the paywalled chapter(s). xianxia stuff that isn't beware of chicken tends to have this eternal cliffhanger problem. i guess it works fine for convincing some people to shell out tho. so if you wanted to snag me, specifically, you'd write a lot of low-tension stuff that culminates in a series of very high-tension chapters, then advertise your story everywhere while the high-tension chapters are split between free and paywall - i also tend to sub much more often to a story when i first finish the backlog of free chapters and catch up to the story for the first time. it's easy to get used to just reading the free chapters and waiting patiently if you've been doing it for a long time, but if a story has really captured my attention while binge-reading and i catch up to the current chapter during the climax of a storyline, i'm a lot more tempted to subscribe.
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Apr 10, 2022 16:39
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That mostly seems like advice for serial fiction generally that's inherent to the format. It'd still apply to (and you can see evidence of things like it in the structure of) older serials like Treasure Island or The Count of Monte Cristo
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Apr 10, 2022 16:41
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Larry Parrish posted:Anyway, what's other people's no click zone items. For me, if the blurb lists genres (that's what the tags are for!!) or specific influences, I'm never looking at it, on the assumption that it's going to be overly derivative and probably badly written too. In the few cases I'm interested despite, I've been right about 9 out of 10 times lol. Honestly I barely look at tags and basically only read new series due to word of mouth, from this thread and from other sources. I only barely pay attention to the blurb, too, because even though it's by the author it's still just marketing material at the end of the day. Like, I'm sure there are plenty of great Hollywood action movies where the screenwriter sold them as "Die Hard on an X", right? I don't think a piece of fiction is necessarily completely derivative just because its blurb advertises it as such. I realize that in some respects relying solely on word-of-mouth makes me the enemy of new authors, since I'm not willing to take a chance on something new that doesn't already have an established fanbase, and I do feel a little bad about that, but oh well. I've never even considered subscribing to a Patreon, but presumably that would change if I actually went and joined Discords related to the web serials I follow, since in that case I'd need to sub to participate in the conversation. But on some level I just don't enjoy following web serials serially that much. I'd much rather build up a backlog by ignoring it for six months and then catch up all at once. I do buy the ebooks for series I like, though, just so I'm supporting the author in some way. e: I don't sub to KU but I do suspect the incentives of KU (strong start, good first book, consistently enjoyable medium-length narrative experiences) push for better fiction on average than the incentives of RR/Patreon do nrook fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 18:12
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Unfortunately finding poo poo on KU is even worse than RR, lol. Amazon's relevant results stuff will rapidly make most or all of the stuff you see one hyper specific genre. For some reason mine is men's shifter romance fiction, as in everyone is some kind of werepanda or whatever. I have literally never read one, but because there's 2 or 3 big series like this and I've clicked on them before, Amazon thinks I'm a likely customer.
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Apr 10, 2022 19:59
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Yes, for... some reason. (honestly I'd click on 'em just to read the blurbs)
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Apr 10, 2022 20:22
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LLSix posted:Thank you. I think this is all good advice for someone who wants to make a living writing on Royal Road. Word of mouth and adjacent community spaces. My core audience is mostly queer, lesbian, trans, though not exclusively or anything, and I've got the impression that the story has mostly been passed around in those kinds of spaces that I already spend a lot of time in. A lot of readers seem excited to read the story because they've heard about the trans themes, or the subversion of cosmic horror with humanising elements, or the specifically hopeful tone. I've recently rewritten the blurb slightly to better reflect the actual tone of the story; some readers told me they were initially put off because they thought it was gonna be super grimdark suffering time, when it's totally the opposite. I am bad at marketing. I probably should not have held off on posting to RR as long as I did, that was a poor decision, because I've picked up plenty of audience there, but it's not the standard RR audience who dominate the site. There is another audience there, they just tend not to be very vocal in public comments and the like. I'm gonna be posting my upcoming second project to RR right away, there's no reason not to. I just don't expect to attract the same audience who are reading all the super popular stuff there.
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Apr 10, 2022 21:37
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Hungry posted:That post about the business side of web serials isn't wrong about all the "treat it as a business" advice, but it is speaking specifically about the general RR audience and their expectations. When I started writing Katalepsis I was pretty much fishing to see if a different audience exists. And they do! It just took a lot longer to find them. Yeah, it's worth highlighting that stuff like Katalepsis can't really be directly compared to RoyalRoad series- RoyalRoad stories are marketing challenges, not writing challenges, and good stories that aren't written in the format the site's readers like, with the volume and release frequency that they enjoy, will often suffer. Katalepsis is closer to Into the Mire or Pith in structure- it's basically an amateur novel that uses a lot of formatting and storytelling techniques from novels. I think that's to its benefit- in terms of basic writing and general story structure Katalepsis is head-and-shoulders above a lot of RRL vehicles, but it's not the kind of literary junk food that the English serial scene adores. I'm actually (pleasantly) amazed that it has any fans on RRL at all- wordpress was absolutely the right starting point to distribute if Hungry wasn't planning on querying it, but my mental image of RRL's readership is of a terrifying pit that hungers endlessly for isekai and litrpg numbers go up, demands a cliffhanger every 6000 words, and doesn't really care about the writing or story itself.
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Apr 10, 2022 21:43
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Just got to say. I'm a 33 year old father of 3 and my biggest concern for awhile was whether Heather we doing right by Zheng.
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Apr 10, 2022 22:20
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the biggest problem with royal road is, as with many sites, especially for entertainment, is that the users are extremely stupid, lol. or maybe im just some 300 iq being that can't be effectively catered to, I dunno. i don't care about release schedule, what's trendy, or anything like that- i just want to read more poo poo that's not identical to other stuff I've read, and it can be a real challenge to find that on RR. The biggest thing I've noticed lately is authors not wanting to bother with number crunching for litrpg stuff, and this makes readers mad lol. They want more numbers for some reason. Who the hell is paying attention to that stuff and not skimming it?!
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Apr 10, 2022 23:02
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