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Mr.Sloth posted:It's pretty funny looking back cause I saw the same thing except I was like. So what's the next step of his master plan
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Oct 5, 2023 21:31
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DACK FAYDEN posted:yeah I assumed the point of Systemic Lands was like following a Humbert Humbert, except for sociopathy rather than statutory rape Nah. This is the author thinking that this is what you need to be like to survive. Man has to make tough choices. I kinda felt at first like his sociopathy was going to bite him and he’d figure out the true meaning of Xmas or whatever but nope his murderous sociopathy is always explicitly the correct choice.
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Oct 6, 2023 01:11
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Horizon Burning posted:it feels like every web serial has this awkward moment where readers are like 'is this protagonist an antisocial weirdo written by an antisocial weirdo, or is the author a secret genius doing an unreliable narrator' and it's odd to see how common it is and how often people decide it's the second option instead of just realizing that maybe people who write thousands and thousands of words every week might not be the most well-adjusted people?
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Oct 6, 2023 04:32
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navyjack posted:Nah. This is the author thinking that this is what you need to be like to survive. Man has to make tough choices. Karma's a bitch because he runs into people with his exact same mindset who are quite capable of kicking his rear end as easily as he's done to other people.
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Oct 6, 2023 05:52
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Horizon Burning posted:it feels like every web serial has this awkward moment where readers are like 'is this protagonist an antisocial weirdo written by an antisocial weirdo, or is the author a secret genius doing an unreliable narrator' and it's odd to see how common it is and how often people decide it's the second option instead of just realizing that maybe people who write thousands and thousands of words every week might not be the most well-adjusted people? "I really get strong autistic vibes off Elaine and ADHD, does anyone else get this?" - message in my discord/comments about once a week. Yes... yes there might just be a REASON for that...
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Oct 6, 2023 08:43
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Leopard is just me channelling aspects of my life pre-diagnosis, lol. Fisher is me as the grumpy leftist history teacher. Sabra came to me in a dream.
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Oct 6, 2023 09:19
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Selkie Myth posted:"I really get strong autistic vibes off Elaine and ADHD, does anyone else get this?" - message in my discord/comments about once a week. My favourite comment I've seen lately was on SS78 which said basically. He should have looked Klein in the eye, said "what's your highest skill? oh, six? mine's eight, with no cap, I got a commedation from the quarternary herself, I have a wizard tool hidden under my bracer, and you don't know what you're missing out on" before dabbing and walking away. They ended the comment with "but he did the laughing thing and that was kinda intimidating I guess, so I'm not too dissapointed." When people were like ???, they then went on a tirade about how they had started an esports company at 16 after dropping out of school and you should never, ever back down in any situation, but when I went back to screenshot it, the whole thing had been deleted. 
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Oct 6, 2023 11:12
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Nettle Soup posted:My favourite comment I've seen lately was on SS78 which said basically. He should have looked Klein in the eye, said "what's your highest skill? oh, six? mine's eight, with no cap, I got a commedation from the quarternary herself, I have a wizard tool hidden under my bracer, and you don't know what you're missing out on" before dabbing and walking away. They ended the comment with "but he did the laughing thing and that was kinda intimidating I guess, so I'm not too dissapointed." There are so many bad takes about that chapter. I refuse to ever look at the RR comments on it. At least SS manages to stay popular despite not indulging in all the dumb things many of the readers want (or more accurately it's probably because of this, and those readers are just oblivious to it). Speaking of SS, one question about stuff relevant to the recent Patreon chapters - Do we know if Jeremy is aware of Boe's situation (and specifically the nature of his "cat-space" ability)? It seems like it would probably be a good idea to at least let him know how that ability works. It seems very risky to just hope that no one is near the cat whenever Boe re-appears, so it'd be good if Jeremy could help take measures to avoid any potential issues.
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Oct 6, 2023 19:49
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SS Patreon Jeremy was told to expect Boe via cat. It's unclear if he knows about Boe's emotion powers
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Oct 6, 2023 19:57
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Nettle Soup posted:My favourite comment I've seen lately was on SS78 which said basically. He should have looked Klein in the eye, said "what's your highest skill? oh, six? mine's eight, with no cap, I got a commedation from the quarternary herself, I have a wizard tool hidden under my bracer, and you don't know what you're missing out on" before dabbing and walking away. They ended the comment with "but he did the laughing thing and that was kinda intimidating I guess, so I'm not too dissapointed." Alden is also (SS78) explicitly blocked from talking about his skill being uncapped as it was covered by "Lesson One" and the triangle of absolute secrecy protection of all new info revealed therein. That's completely aside from the attention doing so would grab, putting him well outside his "intensity 4" he so desires. So, yeah that's a terrible take from that commentor.
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Oct 6, 2023 20:01
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I think Super Supportive actually does deliver a lot of the kind of pulpy thrills RR readers want. It just does it in a very deliberately paced way. We are totally getting the goods on the protagonist who is both an underdog and OP. We are seeing a character who gets more powerful at an insane pace compared to his peers. We are getting a protagonist who has super useful secret knowledge that they can use to game the system. It's all in there. It's just well done as a part of a bigger story instead of being the only stuff happening, so some readers get a little confused and say wild poo poo like that review.
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Oct 6, 2023 20:38
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Wittgen posted:I think Super Supportive actually does deliver a lot of the kind of pulpy thrills RR readers want. It just does it in a very deliberately paced way. We are totally getting the goods on the protagonist who is both an underdog and OP. We are seeing a character who gets more powerful at an insane pace compared to his peers. We are getting a protagonist who has super useful secret knowledge that they can use to game the system. It's all in there. It's definitely a crowd-pleaser (since it's so popular), but it's not nearly as "indulgent" as many other web serials. The protagonist has the attributes you mention, but they're happening very slowly in the narrative, and it will likely be a very long time (in terms of "chapters of the story") until he's actually "strong" relative to other prominent human Avowed.
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Oct 6, 2023 20:52
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The issue with Super Supportive is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. In the first 40 chapters it iterated through superhero litRPG, colonial wizard school/stranger in a strange land, the martian, and now they're back to superheroes. Any one of those ideas could've been built into something interesting, but it feels like reading a series of novellas with no connective tissue between them. Stuff like this is the biggest reason RRL and weblit bums me out- it's amateurs learning from amateurs, and the parasocial/internet-brain stuff saturating the readership means that the sorts of C&C that are bedrocks of any young writer's development are completely absent. What's the line from Kung Pow, "We taught him wrong as a joke"? Sometimes it feels like that's every author on the internet.
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Oct 6, 2023 20:56
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My problem with super supportive at the moment is just the pacing. Like the poster above said, in the first 40 or 50 chapters a ton of stuff happened - but in the last ~20 chapters (from latest patreon back to the start of 'a busy morning'), we've had boe come back and alden get into a school we had already been told he was going to get into. You could also count alden making incremental skill improvements if you wanted. That's it as far as moving the story forward goes. I dont mind - I even liked - the slowdown after the moon thugund episode, but I was expecting things to speed up again and instead it's gone down a gear. I understand the strength of the story is the characters and we've met a shiiitload of those recently, but earlier in the story it was characters+plot and now it's just...dull. I'm sure ill enjoy it more in chunks; for me, drip feeding releases makes the slowdown even more frustrating, so i'm going to just ignore it until people start posting cia docs about it in the thread again.
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Oct 6, 2023 22:21
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Omi no Kami posted:Stuff like this is the biggest reason RRL and weblit bums me out- it's amateurs learning from amateurs, and the parasocial/internet-brain stuff saturating the readership means that the sorts of C&C that are bedrocks of any young writer's development are completely absent. What's the line from Kung Pow, "We taught him wrong as a joke"? Sometimes it feels like that's every author on the internet. I’m forcing myself to read non-serial fiction lately for basically this reason. It’s amazing just how different novels wind up being from serial fiction. I don’t just mean quality (although the need to be formally published does raise the average), but also in terms of prose, pacing, and general storytelling. It feels almost like Royal Road has a house style, unintentionally developed by hundreds of young authors who read nothing but each other’s works. This concept is nothing new—new authors have been learning by mimicking what they like for centuries—but it’s very striking how much serial fiction on RR flows directly from other serial fiction. blastron fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Oct 7, 2023 |
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Oct 7, 2023 00:27
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I mean, serial fiction is different from non-serial fiction, and Internet publishing (where there’s no cost to writing more or longer chapters) is different from the traditional ways that serials were published historically. I think you see sprawling stories that don’t develop quickly or follow an obvious narrative arc because that’s what the format lends itself to— it’s not just because of Royal Road’s house style or a lack of influence from other formats, although of course those are part of the story.
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Oct 7, 2023 04:21
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nrook posted:I mean, serial fiction is different from non-serial fiction, and Internet publishing (where there’s no cost to writing more or longer chapters) is different from the traditional ways that serials were published historically. I think you see sprawling stories that don’t develop quickly or follow an obvious narrative arc because that’s what the format lends itself to— it’s not just because of Royal Road’s house style or a lack of influence from other formats, although of course those are part of the story. Yeah, this is my feeling. It's not that long, winding stories are worse than more tightly plotted novels, it's just they're a different style than most people are used to. Super Supportive in particular was always intended to be a story not about a superhero but about the path someone took that ended up with them as a superhero.
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Oct 7, 2023 04:50
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Omi no Kami posted:The issue with Super Supportive is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. In the first 40 chapters it iterated through superhero litRPG, colonial wizard school/stranger in a strange land, the martian, and now they're back to superheroes. Any one of those ideas could've been built into something interesting, but it feels like reading a series of novellas with no connective tissue between them. I think Super Supportive's lack of a concrete focus is the reason for its ridiculous success despite not even being 9 months old. It's casts such a wide net so carefully that there's pretty much no webnovel reader demo that it doesn't have a good chance of grabbing - it understands that litRPG/proglit fans are the biggest and most fickle group of readers on the site and need to be indulged quickly, but also that they'll tolerate a lot once they're already invested and that the stat aspect isn't even that important beyond signalling, and so leans away from it as the story goes on to become more accessible. It rapidfires a bunch of popular premises early on and manages to balance and weave them together with reasonably graceful and clever worldbuilding such that it won't stick out unless you're already in a critical mindset, and seems to grasp the core appeal of each of said premises. For example, it knows that that super-school narratives tend to do well because they play on the fantasy of exclusivity and a community of people with special luxuries and privileges, and leans into this both with Anesidora and the actual super hero school itself, while also adding spice that plays into the victim fantasy that's often the essential other side of superhero stories. It knows how to please the ratfic crowd with the emphasis on finding loopholes in mechanical systems, and paces the process of discovering those loopholes quite well, while also indulging some of the groups other favorite concepts like life extension (though I guess I'm guilty of this one myself lol). And the survivalist sequence feels like it does a great job capturing that sense of incremental progress while the water simultaneously is rising below you and making the situation ever more desperate, and manages to include some genuinely affecting emotional stakes that keeps it from feeling too empty like a lot of those stories. I could keep going. Pretty much every aspect of the story feels calculated to scratch as many power fantasy and comfort read itches as it can without going overboard on any element in particular, while also injecting enough pathos and decent character writing that it doesn't feel indulgent. It also marries the "old tradition" of western webfic (basically Worm and stuff vaguely derivative or inspired by Worm) with the "new tradition" (gamelit copying eastern stuff with increasing creativity) in a way I've never seen done so well. None of this makes it a fundamentally compelling story, but it does make it extremely easy to read and addictive. It's spooky how effective it is. I didn't even like it and I still read the entire thing. And if you're making 25k a month in less than a year, you kinda don't need to learn to write anything else. PoorWeather fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Oct 7, 2023 |
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Oct 7, 2023 05:33
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PoorWeather posted:...I could keep going. Pretty much every aspect of the story feels calculated to scratch as many power fantasy and comfort read itches as it can without going overboard on any element in particular, while also injecting enough pathos and decent character writing that it doesn't feel indulgent. It also marries the "old tradition" of western webfic (basically Worm and stuff vaguely derivative or inspired by Worm) with the "new tradition" (gamelit copying eastern stuff with increasing creativity) in a way I've never seen done so well. I totally see where you're coming from, but at least my own impression is significantly less favorable. The story contains so many amateurish mistakes and suffers from such aggressively terrible structure and pacing that I suspect the author is losing potential readers. I think the stuff you point out that it does right is absolutely to its credit, but it does so many other things wrong that I see it as the aimless flailing of a less experienced writer who keeps getting bored of a setting or storyline after a dozen chapters. It's gotten so excessive that the guy is regularly adding character appendices to his chapters because he keeps rotating and adding characters so frequently that nobody who's reading it can keep everything straight in their head. That's not lex luthor playing chessmaster from on high, that's a blind guy with an uzi spraying in every direction and hoping that he gets good enough RNG to generate some engagement.
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Oct 7, 2023 06:01
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Omi no Kami posted:I totally see where you're coming from, but at least my own impression is significantly less favorable. The story contains so many amateurish mistakes and suffers from such aggressively terrible structure and pacing that I suspect the author is losing potential readers. I agree that a lot of it is messy and feels poorly-planned, but honestly, I doubt it's doing much harm to the story's success. I think most of the ways it errs are things RR's audience has a tolerance for. People there love long-running stories that go all over the place so long as there arc of the MC's power progression is maintained, and the whole premise of a litRPG is that it quasi-breaks the fourth wall to directly tell the reader information that would normally be conveyed diagetically. I doubt they're put off by the character-explainers in notable numbers, and they might even be a helpful crutch for low-investment readers - a piece of feedback on RR I get semi-regularly is that that people wish I'd have an updating glossary throughout the novel, and people get confused about the characters a lot even though the cast is relatively small and static. The author could well be doing a lot of what I ascribe to intent by the seat of their pants; I often say what almost matters more in web serial writing than talent is having tastes that align with the majority, so this stuff comes intuitively to you. But you can't argue with the numbers and the reach it's already obtained.
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Oct 7, 2023 06:42
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i like super supportive because it has made it very clear early on that its premise of being a superhero fiction is a complete farce im very eager for the striving superheros-to-be to come to realize how little their dream actually matters when placed in perspective of the real bad poo poo going on
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Oct 7, 2023 08:01
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I think web serials have a big issue with the idea being that the journey is more important than the destination. I mean, given that the core element these days is to have a Patreon income, that's basically written into it. But even then, I struggle to think of long-running serials that have finished to anything other than a vague sense of disquiet and "I guess, it's fine..." grumbling. Worm, maybe? I don't know, I think it's a big issue that a web serial these days is a story that no one wants to end, that authors are financially motivated to ensure continues for as long as physically possible, and yet no one truly wants to be reading a story that never ends. I read Ra by qntm the other day, and it's interesting in light of this discussion. It's not bad per se, but it's certainly not great. And the issues with it arise from it being a web serial. It abandons its initial hook and premise of a sort of magical missing mom story a few chapters in, basically abandons its protagonist in a mystery room shortly afterward, introduces a too-big cast of too-thin characters where it's not clear what relevance any of them have, and almost every chapter feels disconnected from the chapter immediately previous. The blurb on that page has virtually nothing to do with most of the story, which is really a far-future war story between virtual humans and actual humans and a computer-god paperclip optimizer. It's also rational fic as hell (it started in 2011, so, it makes sense) which is kind of cute in a 'internet time capsule' way. What's annoying about Ra is that it isn't conceptually terrible, but the execution is just sub-par across the board. Like, the beginning story is pretty interesting! It's a really neat premise, especially when it turns out that magic was discovered by the wealthy and they've been hoarding it so they can be even more powerful. The story has all these neat ideas, but everything involved in the telling thereof is pretty flat. Big developments happen in between chapters, and lots of chapters consist of introducing a character who may do some tiny but apparently important thing later, or just heapings of expositional dialogue to explain why characters do sudden or shocking things. And then the ending hits, and it's just this big shrug (qntm even rewrote the ending at some point, and it's still not good, although it is better.) What I thought was interesting among the author's comments, though, was the implication that the story got ruined by it being a web serial. qntm talks about how he couldn't go back and fix things to get out of corners, and that the big spoiler up there wasn't planned at all, it was just where he ended up as a consequence of getting stuck in corners -- and he thought it was very disappointing. It's pretty clear that Ra would be fantastic if qntm hadn't been writing hand to mouth, which is also what he basically says, and mentions how he won't be writing one again after Ra. His thoughts on serial fiction, that the investment of time does not match the quality of the end result, is similar to how I felt a few years back. But then, that question -- Ra might be sub-optimal in the author's eyes, but it does exist and can be read. I still recommend it because the ideas are really fun, I guess, but I'm way more interested in the version of Ra that might've existed had qntm had more time to figure things out. Because it's so very clear that the story goes entirely off the rails almost immediately, and part of the reason of the ending is so poor is because you can't quite marry the two competing concepts of "a young woman solving a mystery about her mom" and "insane AI hypergod far future space warfare apocalypse" except to an ending that is underwhelming. (Of course, an issue with Ra is being rational fiction, qntm figured he had to answer the various setting elements and questions and explore the ramifications thereof, that he couldn't just ever stop and go 'it's magic, this is just how it is' or 'it's magic, the characters don't know all the answers' or 'it's magic, this story is about Laura looking for her mom.' And then it just goes full circle and does that one Asimov quote, so, what's the point?) Anyway, 3/5 as serial. 2/5 as a finished work. blastron posted:I’m forcing myself to read non-serial fiction lately Cutting NAH down to Shadow meant I eliminated about 100,000 words, and it's still 180,000 long -- a bit too long for a debut SF/F novel, as I found out. But what was interesting was how little was actually missing when it was cut down. I've had a lot of old readers come back, and so far none have pointed out anything from those 100,000 words that they miss in the novel. But I also don't think I cut anything particularly important, some of the changes are noted as being flat out better (Revenant), and I managed to keep far more of the story then I thought I would (I was going to cut Fisher entirely.) Speaking of editing, one agent thought the thriller element was so strong that they offered to sign me if I could give them a version of the manuscript without the sci-fi elements, lol. What, remove the robot kissing? The C-SPAM brained political takes? My word, man. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Oct 7, 2023 |
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Oct 7, 2023 09:06
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Omi no Kami posted:I totally see where you're coming from, but at least my own impression is significantly less favorable. The story contains so many amateurish mistakes and suffers from such aggressively terrible structure and pacing that I suspect the author is losing potential readers. While I don't think your criticism is completely off-base, sprawling character lists of named characters that it's easy to confuse are a long tradition in long fantasy series - GoT, Wheel of Time, Mazalan, etc. I think the serial format magnifiers the confusion, but the author is saying "having a big cast is important to making the world feel alive and the confusion of moving to a new life". I certainly agree that the pacing in this arc is slower than previous arcs, and that some of it could be cut, I don't think it's fatal to SS.
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Oct 7, 2023 12:25
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:But even then, I struggle to think of long-running serials that have finished to anything other than a vague sense of disquiet and "I guess, it's fine..." grumbling. Mother of Learning? Not saying the ending was perfect, but it was always clear when the story would end and due to a story detail readers knew the author wouldn't keep postponing the end forever.
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Oct 7, 2023 12:49
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:What I thought was interesting among the author's comments, though, was the implication that the story got ruined by it being a web serial. qntm talks about how he couldn't go back and fix things to get out of corners, and that the big spoiler up there wasn't planned at all, it was just where he ended up as a consequence of getting stuck in corners -- and he thought it was very disappointing. It's pretty clear that Ra would be fantastic if qntm hadn't been writing hand to mouth, which is also what he basically says, and mentions how he won't be writing one again after Ra. His thoughts on serial fiction, that the investment of time does not match the quality of the end result, is similar to how I felt a few years back. But then, that question -- Ra might be sub-optimal in the author's eyes, but it does exist and can be read. That sounds more like a product of bad planning than anything inherent about web serials. When I was drafting my outline, I already had the fact that I was going to be creating some 2 million word abomination in mind, and spent a long time on it accordingly to make sure I didn't get trapped and made use of that size rather than spinning my wheels. I've definitely made a lot of execution mistakes that have weakened the story or left it more inaccessible than it needs to be, but I've never even come close to writing myself into a corner. Though I guess it goes back to the old architect vs. gardener trope. If you're the type of person who is heavily reliant on letting spontaneous creativity take you to unexpected places during the actual writing process and then cleaning it all up after the fact, it's going to be a lot tougher to tell an intentful story when you essentially lose the second half of that process.
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Oct 7, 2023 12:56
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Speaking of editing, one agent thought the thriller element was so strong that they offered to sign me if I could give them a version of the manuscript without the sci-fi elements, lol. What, remove the robot kissing? The C-SPAM brained political takes? My word, man.
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Oct 7, 2023 13:18
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Nothingtoseehere posted:While I don't think your criticism is completely off-base, sprawling character lists of named characters that it's easy to confuse are a long tradition in long fantasy series - GoT, Wheel of Time, Mazalan, etc. I think the serial format magnifiers the confusion, but the author is saying "having a big cast is important to making the world feel alive and the confusion of moving to a new life". I certainly agree that the pacing in this arc is slower than previous arcs, and that some of it could be cut, I don't think it's fatal to SS. It's not that long of a tradition, and in retrospect, WoT is sort of the proto-web serial. It has the internet feedback, the sprawl and the insanely slow pace, being padded to pay for medical bills, the eventual lack of real editing. Glue had trouble holding those books together. Of the rest, GoT was never and never will be finished once the author was not forced to and Mazalan has more of a metaplot rather than being one big continous thing.
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Oct 7, 2023 13:20
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Brain Candy posted:being padded to pay for medical bills
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Oct 7, 2023 13:56
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Brain Candy posted:It's not that long of a tradition, and in retrospect, WoT is sort of the proto-web serial. It has the internet feedback, the sprawl and the insanely slow pace, being padded to pay for medical bills, the eventual lack of real editing. Glue had trouble holding those books together. Jordan started padding out Wheel of Time way before he fell ill. It was a very comfortable money train for many years. Falling ill is what prompted him to frantically attempt to wrap it up.
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Oct 7, 2023 14:51
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Megazver posted:Jordan started padding out Wheel of Time way before he fell ill. It was a very comfortable money train for many years. Falling ill is what prompted him to frantically attempt to wrap it up. Nah, I'm referring to the Slog being for the editor-wife, I can't find a reference.
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Oct 7, 2023 15:28
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I think web serials have a big issue with the idea being that the journey is more important than the destination. I mean, given that the core element these days is to have a Patreon income, that's basically written into it. But even then, I struggle to think of long-running serials that have finished to anything other than a vague sense of disquiet and "I guess, it's fine..." grumbling. Worm, maybe? I don't know, I think it's a big issue that a web serial these days is a story that no one wants to end, that authors are financially motivated to ensure continues for as long as physically possible, and yet no one truly wants to be reading a story that never ends. I know you were just using a sweeping generalization but I'd like to emphatically disagree on this point. If you handed me a book that had infinite pages of the same story and it was at least okay in quality I'd probably wither and die in my room due to wanting to keep reading it forever. Something like TWI (I swear I read more than TWI, despite what my post history in this thread would probably indicate...) is absolutely perfect for me due to its sheer length, to the point where I feel a vague sense of worry that the plot has to eventually end and it feels like we're probably closer to the end of it than the beginning by a significant margin.
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Oct 7, 2023 16:07
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Ideally TWI needs to become a Xenos Paradox of storytelling. Every year it gets half-way closer to the ending.
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Oct 7, 2023 16:29
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Difference between reading to get a story and reading to inhabit a world?
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Oct 7, 2023 22:47
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I liked Worth the Candle's ending well enough. Yes, it was very meta and in some ways very weird, but that's fitting for it. Void Herald has also finished a bunch of their works, like The Perfect Run and Vainqueur the Dragon. Some authors are just better about having a plan and finishing their work rather than sprawling out endlessly. As mentioned, Void Herald is in this category, and Alexander Wales (Worth the Candle, TUTBAD, Thresholder) seems to also fit in there. edit: speaking of Thresholder, I really liked the recent interlude, seeing Maya forced to be an absolute monarch rather than a revolutionary was fun. Cicero fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Oct 7, 2023 |
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Oct 7, 2023 23:31
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TUTBAD's ending was also good. Chinese webnovels universally end on a fart. Although I actually thought Release That Witch!'s last act and ending were decent, even though a lot of people don't seem to like it.
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Oct 7, 2023 23:40
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A Practical Guide to Evil: Vol 3 This one took me a lot longer to get through as I felt the battles were much more of a slog than the first two vols. It didn't really have the strong characters in the heroes facing off against Cat and co. There were a lot of new factions here, but not a lot of new memorable characters. It was mostly going battle to battle with the fey as a sort of speed bump to reaching the heiress (later Diabolist). Though I'll admit the fey did have an impact on Cat's power set, I don't think the writer really conveyed it altering her character and personality much. She was mostly described the same, just with more ice adjectives thrown in there. I did like the twist of Cat having (nearly) lost her squire name in taking on so much of the mantle of the fey that she's (so far) escaped that otherwise inexorable destiny to succeed her father figure Black. Anaxares and the Tyrant were my favorite duo in this book by far. Anaxares's refusal to play the Bard's game in the Epilogue was an absolute joy to read. I really hope to see more of them.
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Oct 8, 2023 00:01
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Oh yeah, PracGuide's ending was totally fine too, and that was a biggie (3m words?).
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Oct 8, 2023 02:39
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Nitrousoxide posted:A Practical Guide to Evil: Vol 3 Anaxares is a strong contender for my favorite character in all of fiction. He's like a pure distillation of Douglas Adams writing, and I always had a poo poo-eating grin on my face during his chapters.
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Oct 8, 2023 03:23
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Walh Hara posted:Mother of Learning? Not saying the ending was perfect, but it was always clear when the story would end and due to a story detail readers knew the author wouldn't keep postponing the end forever. MoL's ending was pretty bad. The actual climax of the story was getting out of the time loop, and everything after that was superfluous. Serialized fiction in any form - be it TV shows, comics, book series, or whatever - rarely have good endings. The business model misalignment certainly isn't unique to web serials, and at least web serials don't do the TV show thing of "you can't resolve things because your ratings are too good and we want more seasons" into "oops your latest season flopped so now you're cancelled". A "good ending" for a TV show generally just means one which didn't retroactively make everything before it suck. I don't think I've ever read the end of a book series longer than a trilogy which gave me a stronger feeling than "eh I guess it's over", but I'm also not sure how many complete series I've actually read. A glance at my book shelf suggests that most series I've started I either dropped at some point, the author died, or the series is theoretically in progress but hasn't had a new book in forever.
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Oct 8, 2023 05:32
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Plorkyeran posted:MoL's ending was pretty bad. The actual climax of the story was getting out of the time loop, and everything after that was superfluous. Agreed, MoL in general lost steam the closer it got to the ending.
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Oct 8, 2023 07:47
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