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I sincerely hope that the first season of Arifureta is pretty good and the final episode is protag guy making out of the dungeon. Then the second season proves to be just as disappointing as the books were at that point.
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Mar 1, 2019 15:21
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Arifureta starts as this nitty gritty survival story about a dude who ends up stuck at the bottom of a super deadly dungeon and all the poo poo he has to go through to survive. Then at the very bottom he finds a vampire loli and things only get worse after that. lovely harem, no challenge, bad characterizations, poorly thought out story threads that all blend together in their awfulness. Like if it was that poo poo all the way through, nobody would talk poo poo about it, but it started so strong, comparatively.
Cynic Jester fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Mar 2, 2019 |
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Mar 2, 2019 11:15
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IShallRiseAgain posted:Yeah, what I was saying is that I don't understand why the Suriel sub-plot is even a thing when 90% of it is just pointless filler. She doesn't need to show up in every book. She should show up in the first book as she did and the last book before ascension. The rest of it is just boring filler without context, context that we won't have until ascension. Edit: Best part of the book is the very end where we find out where Orthos went. Orthos is the best. Cynic Jester fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Mar 3, 2019 |
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Mar 3, 2019 14:51
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Ytlaya posted:One thing I'm curious about is whether A recurring theme in xianxia stories is how the next tier up is better in all ways. Not only people, but places as well. Eithan is from a place higher up in tier compared to their current locale. I strongly suspect he's been holding at Underlord to prepare for this tournament, to pull his family out of their current situation.
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Mar 11, 2019 17:51
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Ytlaya posted:edit: I imagine the next book will also go a long way towards solidifying Mercy as a main cast member, since Lindon is basically going to be paired up with her since they're on the same team. I'm curious who the third Akura member is going to be, though. Wasn't a brother of Mercy mentioned at some point? Her younger brother was mentioned, him attempting to step up and fill her shoes, but Mercy being completely batshit overpowered makes everyone in the family look bad. Probably going to be some tension there.
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Mar 13, 2019 21:11
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I was expecting something along the lines of Mhaynhe.
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Mar 19, 2019 19:43
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Arkeus posted:Yeah. I am liking it quite a bit, though I am not up to date since it went beyond a paywall. From what I am seeing something big happened last update. Is the translation decent? Most Qidian stuff desperately needs editing, with some of it clearly being badly proofed MTL.
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Apr 11, 2019 19:13
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Lyon posted:I believe it's available on here https://www.wuxiaworld.co/ as well without a paywall. Not sure on all the licensing and what not but it's where I've been reading it. Just read it on https://toc.qidianunderground.org/ instead. Both are unlicensed, but QU doesn't try to make moeny off of it at least and doesn't host free chapters.
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Apr 14, 2019 00:53
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LLSix posted:The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound - Started out looking pretty interesting, but it quickly became obvious that the author has no idea how to write combat scenes or training montages. Since that's most of what happens in this genre, I've put it down after only making it through the first 18 chapters. +1 to all your other comments, but seeing as I've following this, I'll chime in. It's not bad by RRL standards, but that's faint praise, especially in comparison to the others on the list. It has super heavy RPG elements that it never drops, even though they lose all relevance very early in the story, so every so often you get a page or two worth of crap that has no meaning. It has some decent characters, but that's solely based on them not getting spotlighted for any extended amount of time. Any character that is followed for more than a couple of chapters tends to become worse and worse. This includes the main character. It has the worst main character. Super bland, with fuckall for agency and what little he has gets eroded as the story progresses. Now I mostly follow it out of a morbid curiosity to find out if the author will ever address why the (former) American college student is named Randidly Ghosthound. Arcane Ascension is pretty good and happens at a school, with what is sort of a roguelike dungeon that they delve on the regular being a core focus of the story.
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Apr 17, 2019 20:03
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LLSix posted:When does the school show up? Chapter 4 or 5, I think.
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Apr 23, 2019 20:52
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Argas posted:AFAIK it's decently popular amongst a decently wide range of people? It's light reading and easy to pick up and put down, whether you're in school or at work. It's the sort of thing that's surely somewhat popular amongst the youth but also has appeal with older people because it's a format and not a genre. And it's on the internet and free. There's far, far less barriers to entry than traditional publishing. Webnovels in China are far, far more popular than they are in the West.
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Jun 6, 2019 07:51
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sunken fleet posted:dit: so this is less of a Zing! type of post, that insanely narrow niche being censored is what sort of boggled my mind in the first place. Like the idea that the US government might start pressuring weedlord69.blogspot.com to be less "subversive" and to tone down its bong and bong adjacent content is just so ludicrous to me on its face that it's astonishing to think of and yet that seems to be exactly what's happening over there in China - tiny internet only operations being targetted for censorship I mean. It's a real eye-opener. It's important to note that one of the reasons Webnovels became so big are the harsh restrictions on books limiting what is published in China. It's not as if some dude pulled these rules out of their rear end just recently, they've been doing it for decades in other entertainment spaces. And it's also important to note that these aren't tiny internet only opertations, but a multi-billion industry being targeted. Webnovels in China are big business, it's more like they're loving with Kindle than multiple individuals personal blogspots.
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Jun 7, 2019 08:18
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CCG will be missed.
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Jun 7, 2019 15:27
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bagrada posted:Out of curiosity are there any "stuck in my mmo" stories that do anything interesting with alts? Like maybe they come in as their bank alt instead of their high level hero, or they grumble about being stuck in a low fantasy PvP game instead of flying around city of heroes? Life Reset is an english LitRPG story on kindle about a dude who gets stuck playing as a goblin boss after leading a large guild and loses his mind. It does have some issues with world building related to how he ends up playing a goblin and why he keeps playing as a goblin, but I found it reasonably entertaining . It's been a while though. There's also a genderbender story about a dude who gets stuck playing his vampire princess, but I never got very far, nor do I remember much of it, including the name. It's a LN, so probably something very literal.
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Jun 18, 2019 08:58
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The Scourged Earth on RRL isn't horrible, for post-apoc LitRPG. The Law of Averages is an interesting twist on the isekai formula. The New World is straight up number porn for videogame number likers while still having passable action scenes, even as it approaches DBZ levels of power escalation. Super Minion is a fun read about an inhuman shapeshifter in a post-apocalyptic Silver Age'ish setting and his escapades in finding his place. Post-Human is just a retread of We Are Legion (We Are Bob), with some small changes to the background. It also has a wet fart of an ending, so you didn't miss much if you didn't finish it. I tried starting The Simulacrum, but I just couldn't get into it. Something about it just turned me off.
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Jul 15, 2019 19:50
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VictualSquid posted:It only got bad with the sequel, now things feel like a sitcom Amnesia plot. Yeah, the first book was fine, because the reader has a good grasp on what is known and what is not. Now that she maybe sometimes occasionally might have access to her memories it just feels much more contrived.
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Jul 23, 2019 15:23
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Yinlock posted:embryonic megamammoths Got nothing on Godmammoths.....
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Aug 2, 2019 09:15
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He Who Fights With Monsters on RRL is surprisingly good. A transmigration story that doesn't get hung up on random garbage, a LitRPG story with an interesting system and a Xianxia-like world with excellent characters. Finding all three in the same story is like a unicorn.
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Aug 15, 2019 12:20
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Silynt posted:Cradle book 7, Uncrowned, is out today. Just finished it after burning through it 2-3 hours. It's not awful, but it's probably my least favorite cradle book. At least right now, with how things played out near the end. Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion to what feels like every single plotline in the book. Even the aftermath of the fight between Lindon and Yerin is put off.
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Sep 26, 2019 20:13
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Desuwa posted:The final fight in Uncrowned really rubbed me the wrong way and it was frustrating to read, especially with how blatant it was foreshadowed. The book would have benefited from tying off at least one more loose end to give it more of a conclusion. Up to this point every book has had its own arc that it brings to completion, but this one doesn't. My big issue with Dross is how inconsistent he is. Sometimes, like when Lindon schooled 12 Underlords at once, it's bullet time on crack with a side of precognition. Against Yerin, arguably the person other than Lindon Dross has the most information on, Dross did nothing. I like the interplay between Dross and Lindon as characters, but the effect Dross has had on other aspects of the story are far less interesting.
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Sep 27, 2019 10:56
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Oh you sweet summer child. I'd been skipping reading it because of how rough the early chapters used to be. I recently powered through it and you're about to hit grim dark territory real soon. Like some of the grim darkest poo poo I've read recently.
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Oct 7, 2019 19:04
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LLSix posted:Used to be? I've tried it a couple times 'cause it's always on RR toplist but it was... really bad. Also, it seemed more like the MC was getting Jedi powers than Healer powers. Some time in I want to say June or July the earliest chapters got an editing run, fixing the most egregious poo poo. It's still worse than the newer chapters, but way more readable than it used to be.
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Oct 8, 2019 07:09
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https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26294/he-who-fights-with-monsters Probably my favorite Webnovel right now. Sort of a mix between light LitRPG and Xianxia, with excellent characters and a pretty sweet setting.
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Oct 10, 2019 17:15
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Grim dark as in 40k grim dark, where everything is poo poo but everyone you care about is awesome.
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Oct 10, 2019 20:35
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Megazver posted:Well, 'like 40k' should be the default usage for 'grimdark', but when discussing fantasy it's not. Like, not at all. The term originated from the tagline for 40k. If people are using it to describe something else, they can have fun with that. But far more importantly, He who fights with monsters keeps being the best thing I'm reading. quote:“You seem to be taking it calmly,” she said. Best MC 
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Oct 16, 2019 00:28
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A lot of people dislike the 2nd major PoV introduced, because they're a bit of a Mary Sue and keep making unfounded assumptions that nigh always turn out to be the correct in hindsight, but it's one character out of many and it doesn't detract form the overall story in my eyes. Then again, I read a lot of web fiction so my threshold for how much Mary and Gary is too much is probably higher than most.
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Oct 16, 2019 15:25
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Wow, Metaworld Chronicles is the most Xianxia english webnovel I've gotten through more than a couple of chapters of. It's competently written, but it has all the hallmarks of a typical CN Xianxia story. Super special MC who can't take a poo poo without making GBS threads on the Lost McGuffin of Plot forwarding. Everything revolves around said MC, with people changing all their priorities to either help or hinder depending on whether they're intended to be roadblocks or not. The MC waxing poetically about principles and morality while consistently being shown to have none when push comes to shove, often in the same chapter as she chides someone else for acting unprincipled. It's enjoyable in the exact same way Xianxia is enjoyable, but I feel sort of tricked. I'm used to my Xianxia coming as either a stilted translation or extremely poor writing. Or both.
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Nov 2, 2019 01:02
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IShallRiseAgain posted:Wait until you get to the part where she whines about how she isn't getting two huge inheritances, but only one, and she is forced to live in a luxurious apartment instead of a mansion. This is a setting where a lot of people live in really horrible slums. (minor spoilers) My favorite one so far is her being shocked at magical napalm and how inhumane it is. After 200 chapters of the incredibly wide variety of horrific spells she has used to murder the everloving poo poo out of everything.
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Nov 2, 2019 02:43
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Darth Walrus posted:Is it just me, or is hypocrisy a really big thing in xianxia stories? It feels like Japanese and Western fantasy are a little more likely to have their protagonists be goody-two-shoes heroes, or 'lol, gently caress off, I'm evil' psychopaths, whereas xianxia stories will very commonly have backstabbing, murderous monsters who nevertheless jerk themselves off about how chivalrous and virtuous they are 24/7. Is this actually a thing, and if so, why? Yes it is. Might makes right is key to these stories, but because they're relatively simple power fantasies, it only applies when the main character is mighty.
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Nov 3, 2019 19:48
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Qidian Underground is totally unrelated to this discussion. Totally.
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Dec 10, 2019 09:21
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"Remember Lindon! Remember to visit a barber! A barber, Lindon! Your hair lacks volume and defin--" The portal closed. Wintersteel is good ya'll.
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Oct 7, 2020 12:41
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IShallRiseAgain posted:She 
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Oct 10, 2020 11:11
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Beware of Chicken on RRL is an enjoyable read for anyone looking for something new.
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Jan 20, 2021 19:35
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Mar 18, 2021 20:30
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Oh man, that's hilarious. I remember years ago RWX making fun of qidian style monetization and now WW is jumping into it feet first. I especially appreciate the mental gymnastics needed to think that this is somehow a good thing for users. Can't imagine they'll ever get as many users out of ads as they did from novel updates but here we are. There is no way I'd have made it through even a tenth of the xianxia on WW if i was limited in how many chapters i could read per day.
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Nov 23, 2022 08:45
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Yinlock posted:the thing is i wouldn't mind paying some but these sites always get so ludicrously greedy about it I pay for no ads on RRL, even though I have an adblocker running. I also support a few of my favorite authors on Patreon. I will never pay to read on a chapter by chapter basis. Especially when you start gamifying it with poo poo like daily login rewards and daily quotas on how many chapters you can read.
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Nov 23, 2022 21:57
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