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It's very slow buildup. You get introduced to Magneto-lite at around chapter 100 or something, but you don't get any real magnet action till chapter 400+. Similarly, you wouldn't be seeing any conflict right now due to the fact that A) the MC's literally at the border of civilization, where everything's the boondocks B) the nobility and church cheats their own rules C) the real conflict isn't with the church D) the MC's rebelling against the church in a nation where disobedience towards church policy is implicitly condoned Granted, it's not super deep, but it's helluva lot better than most of the WN fare out there. Xianxia, for the most part, can disappear and nothing of value would be lost.
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Nov 4, 2016 04:50
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brainwrinkle posted:I read 14 chapters of Release That Witch. It's extremely boring because all conflict and challenge have been surgically removed from the setting. The conflict between modern values and life in his new setting would be interesting, but the author totally undercuts it. All of the minor characters are cool doing stuff that should get them killed by the Inquisition. The MC demonstrates no skill at persuading people but succeeds regardless. Almost as if the author is some shut in nerd lacking social skills.
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Nov 4, 2016 04:52
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it seems like a less interesting a hero's war, and a hero's war isn't exactly riveting a lot of the time.
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Nov 4, 2016 05:20
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also all of the chinese novels that have obvious rip off art make me lol. like, kratos doesn't even resemble your mc so what are you doing man?
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Nov 4, 2016 05:21
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A lot of main characters I have in my head like I think the author would look, some skinny lanky dude with black hair and maybe some glasses, then whenever a picture pops up it's inevitably either a hyper-muscular spartan or a male model in a robe with a smug smile.
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Nov 4, 2016 14:10
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drat Meng Hao isn't screwing around the whole Ninth Sea is a goner.
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Nov 6, 2016 15:53
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Krunge posted:A lot of main characters I have in my head like I think the author would look, some skinny lanky dude with black hair and maybe some glasses, then whenever a picture pops up it's inevitably either a hyper-muscular spartan or a male model in a robe with a smug smile. having aphantasia means never having these problems (and also makes schlock WNs much easier and faster to read since my brain just skips over a lot of pointless visual detail)
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Nov 7, 2016 12:13
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UberJew posted:having aphantasia means never having these problems (and also makes schlock WNs much easier and faster to read since my brain just skips over a lot of pointless visual detail) Whoa, i never heard of aphantasia before so i just googled it, and wow, i think i might actually have that. I was always just scanreading over pointless visual details to, and now i have an idea why.
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Nov 7, 2016 13:30
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UberJew posted:having aphantasia means never having these problems (and also makes schlock WNs much easier and faster to read since my brain just skips over a lot of pointless visual detail) I think that this sort of thing exists on a spectrum. I can just create vague mental images that I have a really difficult time forming and holding onto, so I usually don't bother trying. When I was having this battery of tests ~5 years ago (which basically consisted of an IQ test plus some other tests) to test for ADD (which I didn't have) I did extremely poorly on the test where they showed me one set of faces and then showed me a second set and told me to point out which faces were also a part of the first set. I was in something like the bottom 7th percentile. I also did just as poorly on a test where I had to repeat back a sentence I read, so I think it may be related to a general difficulty with short-term recall.
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Nov 7, 2016 21:45
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So, good news, bad news, and worse news! The good news is that I've found a nice Japanese web novel called Lapis no Shinzou, with perhaps the best writing I've seen on Narou so far. It's a "rising through the ranks" story in a fairly orthodox fantasy setting, devoid of summoning or game elements. Summarized, it's about an orphan boy with one eye who gets adopted by an assassin and raised in a remote forest, where she teaches him some ancient martial art that sounds like aikido or whatever. Once grown up he goes out into the world and joins the army, where heroic things happen, and women fall for him, that kind of thing. The tempo is unusually good, with nice balance between characterization, dialogue and combat, never lingering too long on one thing. It's somehow managed to get published on paper without even making the Narou top 300. Very enjoyable read at just over 1700 pages currently. The bad news is that there's no rape or slavery, so it's unlikely to be translated in the current web novel fan climate! At least I haven't found anyone bothering with it yet. And then the worse news is that the author got pneumonia or something, so he went on an extended hiatus, with the latest chapter having come out 1½ years ago, while the author himself hasn't made a peep in nearly a year. In short, it's about halfway through its story, and it might never be finished. Still worth it. Er, and in other news, Live Dungeon! is getting paper published, yay: http://kadokawabooks.jp/product/102/
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Nov 8, 2016 02:36
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Ytlaya posted:I think that this sort of thing exists on a spectrum. I can just create vague mental images that I have a really difficult time forming and holding onto, so I usually don't bother trying. there's not a lot of research yet but there appears to be a correlation between poor mental imagery or outright aphantasia like i've got and problems with short term memory yeah i'm especially terrible with remembering names, but i can remember a face that i've seen before
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Nov 10, 2016 08:24
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i started on emperor's domination recently, and it is more generic wuxia trash aside from two parts i really like. first, you know how in the worst wuxia wn's there is always a borderline omniscient guide character (usually an animal)? in ed, the protagonist is one of those only he already raised a shitload of absurd wuxia protagonists. second, everything about cultivation is hilarious gibberish. in one scene, alchemy is done by taking a naturally occurring cauldron that is also alive and using it as a blender with the cauldron's intrinsic flame as a blade. the cauldron is spun around by the "medicine treasure", which had never been mentioned before then and was never explained. then the guy had to jump inside the cauldron to bathe in the medicine so that he could grow a tiny metallic fist inside of his heart. this is a routine process that every cultivator has to do. i can't help but love poo poo that ridiculous.
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Nov 10, 2016 21:46
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:i started on emperor's domination recently, and it is more generic wuxia trash aside from two parts i really like. first, you know how in the worst wuxia wn's there is always a borderline omniscient guide character (usually an animal)? in ed, the protagonist is one of those only he already raised a shitload of absurd wuxia protagonists. second, everything about cultivation is hilarious gibberish. in one scene, alchemy is done by taking a naturally occurring cauldron that is also alive and using it as a blender with the cauldron's intrinsic flame as a blade. the cauldron is spun around by the "medicine treasure", which had never been mentioned before then and was never explained. then the guy had to jump inside the cauldron to bathe in the medicine so that he could grow a tiny metallic fist inside of his heart. this is a routine process that every cultivator has to do. It also helps that the narrative calls the MC on him being a giant, arrogant shitheel, instead of the narrative falling over itself to excuse the MC behaving just like all the antagonists. Of course the MC being a shitheel doesn't really have any negative repercussions, but in Xianxia, that is hardly surprising.
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Nov 12, 2016 11:50
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I read Emperor's Domination like the MC is the bad guy, and everyone who gets in his way is either the plucky rebel or another dude looking to take his spot as chief villain. It reads a lot better then. Women falling for him left and right is just something I ignore, they become irrelevant anyways by the next arc or two.
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Nov 12, 2016 14:13
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i don't think they even fall for him, necessarily. he promises them loads of amazing benefits and then when they figure out he can deliver they join up. but even once they come to respect or even revere him they still think he is a dick. i still like the hilarious gibberish part more, though. so during a fight, he grabs mountains that are 1000 miles away. exactly how he does this is not explained. does he run over, stretch his arm, pull it over with his mind, etc? plus, you know, the mechanics of a normal sized human picking up a mountain to begin with. nah, it is just something that happens and is never elaborated on.
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Nov 12, 2016 21:43
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I have a similar thing with meng hao summoning mountain ranges and hundreds of thousands of mountains. Are they miniature mountains or something?
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Nov 12, 2016 22:16
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DeafAsianQT posted:I have a similar thing with meng hao summoning mountain ranges and hundreds of thousands of mountains. Are they miniature mountains or something? nah, that's an actual magical technique. meng hao specifically learned how to do stuff with mountains. but in ed, the guy just casually grabbed mountains using his enormous weight which is somehow indistinguishable from strength. he hadn't even grown giant, since later in that fight he did just that. i think the author of ed is just very, very bad at describing fights.
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Nov 12, 2016 22:36
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Nah, it's the translators being absolutely terrible at translating, plus doing a double translation from Chinese to Vietnamese to English. It reads fine in the original version, probably because it's more metaphorical about having the weight of mountains than literally having a mountain to throw around.
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Nov 12, 2016 22:46
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jwang posted:Nah, it's the translators being absolutely terrible at translating, plus doing a double translation from Chinese to Vietnamese to English. It reads fine in the original version, probably because it's more metaphorical about having the weight of mountains than literally having a mountain to throw around. nah, he literally picked up a mountain and smacked a guy with it.
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Nov 12, 2016 22:49
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Man, I must have missed that part. Is this where he's fighting near the river of death? That's the only place where I can think of that happening in the earlier chapters.
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Nov 13, 2016 05:39
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yeah, when he was fighting the dude with the club. unless the translator was making poo poo up there aren't a lot of ways to interpret "he grabbed a mountain and then smacked a dude with it until the mountain broke".
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Nov 13, 2016 05:41
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I have entered the horrifying world of buying LNs to scan and translate. And all I have to say is jesus gently caress this takes forever.
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Nov 13, 2016 06:04
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:yeah, when he was fighting the dude with the club. That's some poor rear end translation, in my opinion. A more accurate translation would be something along the lines where he tore out a chunk of the earth practically the size of a mountain. Plus, from what I understand of the geography around the river it was rather hilly, and the Chinese sense of "mountain" would be anything from "really big hill" to "Everest scale." At best you're getting something like in DBZ where they're chucking the surrounding scenery at each other.
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Nov 13, 2016 06:13
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BlitzBlast posted:I have entered the horrifying world of buying LNs to scan and translate. Oh? Which one?
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Nov 13, 2016 07:01
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Sevens, because why not. I'm also gearing up to start seriously tackling Konosuba, which is much easier to work with because Amazon offers it as an ebook.
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Nov 13, 2016 07:17
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:nah, he literally picked up a mountain and smacked a guy with it. One of the things I like about Desolate Era is how wonderfully absurd the scale is. It's common for people to fight by transforming into 3000 meter tall six armed three headed giants. Half the cultivators running around in the early chapters use this ability, including the MC. At one point the MC has a series of fights where he doesn't have a good weapon, so he grows out his fingers (all 30 of them) to several kilometers in length and uses them as swords. The MC is a reincarnator who keeps tripping over mountains of lost treasures and secret techniques left behind by ancient experts, but so does everyone else who lives long enough to reach his power level. He once competed in a tournament where 2 or 3 of the other semi-finalists had almost the exact same backstory as him. At his current power level, the MC is carrying around several miniaturized planets that he can use to store his stuff or bludgeon his opponents to death. One of the things he stores on one of those planets is an army of several million Immortals who can assemble, Voltron style, into a Giant Fighting
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Nov 13, 2016 08:19
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BlitzBlast posted:Sevens, because why not. I read the first few chapters of Sevens a while back, and I must say that while I like the interactions between the family heads, the gender politics (particularly regarding Celes, Agrissa, and the main character's "right" to be the next family head) seem...uncomfortable. It's the sort of thing where the author could be going somewhere interesting with it, or it could just be unthinking sexism, or maybe something in between. Not necessarily going to pick it up again soon in any case (I have a lot of other things I'd like to read and limited time), but where do those aspects of the story go?
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Nov 13, 2016 09:00
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It's just generic patrilineal rule like you'd expect from a quasi-medieval era. Sevens in general really likes the idea of girls being way scarier than guys, so I wouldn't call it sexist, but as I've said many times before Sevens is not something you should look to as being particularly innovative. But if "why should I care that the MC has lost his right to be head" was the question you asked upon reading about a kid getting his rear end kicked by his clearly unstable sister in front of his unfeeling parents and house, I don't think Sevens is the story for you. BlitzBlast fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Nov 13, 2016 |
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Nov 13, 2016 10:44
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Avulsion posted:One of the things I like about Desolate Era is how wonderfully absurd the scale is. i really like the idea of those gods who killed themselves so they could reincarnate repeatedly without regaining their memories until they trained in things their original skill set precluded.
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Nov 13, 2016 12:11
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BlitzBlast posted:It's just generic patrilineal rule like you'd expect from a quasi-medieval era. Sevens in general really likes the idea of girls being way scarier than guys, so I wouldn't call it sexist, but as I've said many times before Sevens is not something you should look to as being particularly innovative. Fair point about why we should care about him. I'm more bothered by the way one of the past family heads talked about charismatic female "monsters" like Celes and Agrissa, but of course he doesn't have an objective viewpoint. Mostly I'm wondering to what extent his attitude ends up being portrayed as correct.
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Nov 13, 2016 21:33
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I'm almost done reading the fourth Kumoko novel. While the first 3 volumes were mostly the same as the web novel, and most of the changes were on Shun's side (to accommodate the new character), starting with the end of volume 3 and continuing through volume 4, the Kumoko parts were totally redone. The order of events has been totally changed, and other than the talk with D (ch. 149-150 of the web novel), everything else is completely new content. So if you can read japanese and liked the parts of Kumoko before she became a god, you should definitely give this a try.
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Nov 13, 2016 23:14
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Silver2195 posted:Fair point about why we should care about him. I'm more bothered by the way one of the past family heads talked about charismatic female "monsters" like Celes and Agrissa, but of course he doesn't have an objective viewpoint. Mostly I'm wondering to what extent his attitude ends up being portrayed as correct. You could literally replace Celes and Agrissa's characters with any old generic evil final boss. They're really flat characters, but it's not a statement on women. Hell, I think almost every other female character ends up much more interesting than them. Actually that spoiler was one of the weakest part of Sevens, and half the reason I'm bothering with the LNs is to see if the author fixes that. If you want an idea of how Sevens treats women, there's an alternate chapter 3 that introduces the ancestors' wives. They are all pretty drat good, and if they were actually in the story Lyle would've defeated Celes by like volume 2. BlitzBlast fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Nov 13, 2016 |
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Nov 13, 2016 23:21
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I let myself fall really behind on ISSTH. The tipping point was when Meng Hao was gloating to the sea gods or whatever about how much trouble they'd be in if he died because of his clan and all the forces supporting him. Hasn't he killed tons of people during or immediately after identical speeches?
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Nov 13, 2016 23:22
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well, he was mostly lying but yeah, bragging about how amazing your backers are shortly before getting royally owned is rather common in issth.
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Nov 13, 2016 23:33
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Desuwa posted:I let myself fall really behind on ISSTH. The tipping point was when Meng Hao was gloating to the sea gods or whatever about how much trouble they'd be in if he died because of his clan and all the forces supporting him. Hasn't he killed tons of people during or immediately after identical speeches? Yeah he's been powering up really fast and killing lots of people since then. I think ISSTH is only around 1500 chapters so I think the author is going to have him blazing through the Ancient Realm and Dao Lord stages so he can seal the heavens or whatever.
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Nov 13, 2016 23:58
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Yay, Kumo-chan manga update. Time to roll out my Matrix Reloaded Big Mob fight track.
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Nov 17, 2016 22:23
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Desuwa posted:I let myself fall really behind on ISSTH. The tipping point was when Meng Hao was gloating to the sea gods or whatever about how much trouble they'd be in if he died because of his clan and all the forces supporting him. Hasn't he killed tons of people during or immediately after identical speeches? It really depends. I recall him wanting to avoid killing people precisely due to their backing a few times actually. But he also does the opposite several times too. For Meng Hao such speeches are simply a fact of cultivation life, and he basically decides if the risk of offending a group is worth the reward. Sometimes that reward is proving a point as opposed to something material. To be honest Meng Hao isn't really meant to be moral anyway, or I don't think he is. He typically hasn't had backing but, time and again he acts the classic young master when given the chance. It feels self-aware in a way other xianxia protagonists don't.
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Nov 18, 2016 13:51
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SerSpook posted:It really depends. I recall him wanting to avoid killing people precisely due to their backing a few times actually. But he also does the opposite several times too. For Meng Hao such speeches are simply a fact of cultivation life, and he basically decides if the risk of offending a group is worth the reward. Sometimes that reward is proving a point as opposed to something material. It's not so much that Meng Hao feels self-aware(though he is compared to most Xianxia protagonists), but rather that the writing is self-aware. When Meng Hao acts like a self-interested little poo poo, the writing reflects that, instead of something like MGA or ATG, where the protagonists are just as reprehensible as the antagonists, or worse, and the writers fall over themselves to fellate them as paragons of virtue.
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Nov 18, 2016 14:11
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once, when i wanted to check the protagonist of mga's name for some reason i clicked on a random chapter. in that chapter, the protagonist was gloating to some guy about how he had raped and murdered that guy's fiance.
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Nov 18, 2016 14:53
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I got the Spice and Wolf Anniversary Collection in the mail yesterday. Holy hell is this a big and heavy as gently caress book. Very nice though! Now I can finally read the entire thing.
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Nov 20, 2016 18:29
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