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Algid posted:Way of Choices is so good. It's like ATTE in that the MC wants to become immortal in order to not die. The writing is way better than most webnovels, it's doesn't have any xianxia cliches or it uses them completely differently. The story is also structured more coherently instead of being granular and repetitive (cycles of upgrades in levels and gear with a matching escalation of feuds/enemies). I decided to give this one a whirl. Not far into it, but I'm enjoying myself so far. Chen Chang Sheng is such a prissy loving nerd  He and Xu You Rong are perfect for each other.Whoever translated the prologue did a really good job. Strikingly good. It's a pity that the regular translations are so... standard fan translation garbage.
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Nov 30, 2016 01:13
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owl milk posted:way of choices is the best fantasy thing I've read in a while. live action version looks good too so I hope it gets english subs after it comes out I never knew staring at rocks could be so intense. 
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Dec 1, 2016 23:52
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gwrtheyrn posted:Unfortunately, some humans doing translations don't write much better than google translate I'm not so sure about that. I made the mistake of trying to read ahead on Ze Tian Ji on lnmtl and, wow, oh boy, I suddenly have a much greater respect for even the shittiest of human translators.
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Dec 13, 2016 13:10
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BlitzBlast posted:What about this guy? Still better than lnmtl. 
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Dec 13, 2016 19:08
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Lyon posted:Chen Changsheng is by far the most moral/caring/relatable character in any of the web novels I've read. Zhu Yao from My Disciple Died Yet Again just edges him out, I think. I think the thing that sets ZTJ apart is that, no matter how ridiculous it gets, it never loses the sense that's there's something to the world other than level grinding. Like, in most xianxia the cultivating world is set apart from the base world. Afloat, in its own universe, where the only thing that matters is who you grovel worshipfully at the feet of and who you treat like something you scraped off your boots (and there's never any in between). In ZTJ... most of the action takes place in a city. The capital city of an empire full of ordinary people. It's a constant factor in the characters' lives. And the world is full of societies and states that these characters interact with and have stakes in. A lot of the political/social stuff actually makes sense, too. Basically every webnovel I've seen with a political aspect has been unadulterated gibberish, or just plain infantile. Chen Changsheng's constant insistence on "I don't care how pure your chi is, we're all human beings goddammit!" is great.
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Jan 2, 2017 17:10
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owl milk posted:sort of a spoiler but not really: CCS does eventually tell people about his illness but it's gonna be a while folks. Gimme a chapter number. e: A whole bunch of people have already worked it out anyway. It's just his peer group who're in the dark.
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Jan 2, 2017 19:04
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Currently in ZTJ: Chen Changsheng and Xu Yourong are entirely too perfect for each other, and the Retirement Home for Old Swords has decided to throw a parade.  Bakanogami posted:I've been catching up on the raws for I was a Sword when I Reincarnated, and boy, there's a lot of untranslated stuff. I'd liked it at the beginning, but it really hit its stride once it properly got going. I don't know what this is, but that title has me intrigued. An isekai where the MC's trapped in the form of an inanimate object? "I'm not the legendary hero, I'm just their sword"? I'm going to check this out.
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Jan 30, 2017 00:03
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Law Cheetah posted:as an aside that game's sequel got a remake recently called Tale of Wuxia thats kinda fun and its on Steam I'm warning you guys now, the translation of this is, uh, well. Isn't. It was crowdsourced, I think, and uneven doesn't even begin to describe it. About a fifth of it is well done. The rest is poor at best; swathes of it might as well have been machine translated and then there are portions which are entirely untranslated. The variation is entirely random, too. At one point I was in a conversation that was perfectly readable, and then the next text box was 100% hanzi. I'm fairly certain that that section contained all the key details of the quest I was being briefed on. Cool game, though. Fun combat. Hoping the next one gets a professional translator. gimme the GOD drat candy posted:the originating work might be brave story. it may or may not have been the first, but it was popular enough to get several games and a movie, plus i think there might be a spinoff anime or two? also, its popularity would have been when most of the current crop of nerdlingers were kids. What about Zero no Tsukaima? Was the guy dead in that? I don't think I ever watched it, but I remember it being A Thing for a while. I went to mangaupdates and gave their "transported to another world" category a mosey. This appears to be the oldest one there where the protagonist's death or presumed death is mentioned in the synopsis.  A lot of these early ones seem to be shoujo romances. Fushigi Yuugi, Escaflowne. This mad bastard thing from the seventies. Twelve Kingdoms, though that's not a romance, really. All harems for dudes now, though.
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Feb 2, 2017 03:05
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I think I got the gist of it from the url. 
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Feb 3, 2017 10:57
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Lyon posted:It seems like it's getting close but I really don't know. I didn't particularly love this arc but I feel Chen Changsheng developed quite a bit traveling with Su Li. I bet it will read much better as one cohesive arc on a re-read of the story. My favorite parts were either the interactions between Su Li and the demons or what I quoted above. I'm quite fond of this exchange: quote:A while later, Chen Changsheng suddenly opened his eyes, and looked at the the sky absent-mindedly. Which I think might be the point of the arc? In a lot of ways it reads like a commentary on the genre in general. Ytlaya posted:edit: I'm actually starting to get the impression that the human reincarnators are super unlucky and gimped out compared with their demihuman/monster peers. Folks like Shun may have started out with a bunch of skill points and good stats for a human, but I don't think he'll ever be able to get into the 5-figures like this oni and vampire (much less Kumoko, who seemed to become stronger at a rate vastly exceeding even other reincarnators). I'm actually not entirely sure why vampire girl has such high stats. It makes sense for the oni because he's been killing a whole bunch of humans and gained many levels as a result, but she was just level 2 (and I think it was stated in the past that there's a limit to how much you can increase your stats with skills alone). Kumo got strong very quickly because she was born into a high level area and was speed levelling from second 1, basically. She had an advantage insofar as her race matures quickly (and can evolve into stronger species), but her rate of increase has much more to do with the fact that she's running around gobbling up xp at lightning speed than any of that. And Sophia is strong because Kumoko decides to train her, and at that point she knows exactly how to abuse the system for maximum gains. The stat/level discrepancy is, I'm fairly certain, supposed to be down to stat buffs from skills. Remember, the first and most fundamental principle of Kumo is that everyone in it is a dipshit. Very few characters know anything about anything, and almost no one knows as much as they think they do. Even if someone have a handle on something, they're liable to misinterpret it due to their own perceptual biases.
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Mar 26, 2017 14:17
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UberJew posted:are you insulting me junior martial brother Eh. That one's pretty easy to work out. There's a stretch in the ZTJ translations where "cultivate", "cultivation" etc. are left entirely untranslated.  e: In fairness, if you're not already familiar with the concept, a translation probably isn't going to help you much there. KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Mar 30, 2017 |
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Mar 30, 2017 01:44
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So, has anyone read Shrouding the Heavens/Zhetian? And, if so, does it have any redeeming qualities whatsoever? Because I'm at chapter 22, and, uh a) It's still the prologue somehow? b) The protagonist has yet to establish any sort of personality. Apart from "calm", maybe? c) The author just will not shut up about how the "weak-willed females" are falling over cliffs or bursting into tears or having nervous breakdowns. I mean, I was prepared for your average garden variety webnovel misogyny, but this guy seems genuinely worried that the reader might forget to despise women. d) This seems to be one of those stories where every character is the worst possible version of themselves at all times. It's bumming me out just a little. ...I'm not going to keep going with this one. I've also read Absolute Choice and Forty Millenniums of Cultivation recently. Absolute Choice I actually liked! It came up here a couple of weeks ago, I think the thread was pretty down on it? Well, dissenting opinion: it makes me laugh. Shi Xiaobai is ridiculous buffoon on every level and the novel's not afraid to lean into that. The image of a guy in a clown outfit throwing fantasy kung-fu counterstrike players into despair by dancing around like a crab had me giggling for hours. Forty Millenniums... 99% of it does not in any way resemble Warhammer fanfiction. This is a shame, because the parts that do are the best parts. Like, there's this bit where the protagonist and his peers visit an old warship turned monument. The warship, it turns out, is famous; quote:On the hologram appeared a blood-like setting sun, stormy winds and thunder, and a thousand crystal battleships interweaved amongst each other. They mutually collided, tore apart, and were engulfed in explosion in a bitter battle! This is much more interesting than anything the story is actually about.
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Apr 2, 2017 16:34
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darkgray posted:Third, a lot of people who tried reading Honzuki probably gave up within the first few chapters, because the protagonist is undeniably unpleasant and selfish in the beginning. Once you get past that, it makes her growth as a character that much more impactful, but you can't really blame people for moving on to the next thing instead. Supposedly this is why the author decided to run a campaign opening up the manga freely for a week, since it's easier to forgive Maine when she's so adorably drawn. So can I ask, when does Maine start to turn around? Because I stalled out on the translations around... chapter 23, I think? And Maine being a miserable little book junkie and all-round terrible person was a large part of why.
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Apr 8, 2017 09:28
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nielsm posted:Shortly after chapter 23 she begins working with others to get her will done. As it turns out, exactly because books and paper are so rare, they are also very valuable, and money is a great motivational factor in getting others to help you. Well poo poo. That'll teach me to drop stuff.
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Apr 8, 2017 16:07
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Ytlaya posted:Is there anything else that fits into the same "shoujo version of an isekai story" genre (edit: and is good)? I also enjoy Kenkyo (one of literally a handful of Japanese WNs I like), though not quite as much as Honzuki (I think because Kenkyo priorities humor over plot, which is fine but I tend to enjoy more plot-focused things). There's a whole bunch of "I've been reincarnated as the villain in an otome game/shoujo manga!" stories- and I mean dozens of these things with the exact same cookie cutter plot. Kenkyo is by far the best of them and if you've read that you've read all of them. But if you want another one in that vein, It Seems Like I Got Reincarnated Into The World of a Yandere Otome Game is alright. Simply Good Taste for a Duke's Daughter is a slightly different take on the same idea (it starts after the villainess's downfall). I think I read one that was actually complete and fully translated at some point, but it was so utterly forgettable I can't even remember the name. There's also Dragon Life, which is about a girl who reincarnates as a dragon and gets up to dragon things. Perhaps not to your taste, though? I think you're the one who has a problem with inhuman protagonists. She spends a fair chunk of the story straight up eating people. Ditto Tale of a Careless Demon. If all you really want is isekai with a female protagonist, there's Evil God Average, which has a pretty great first half. Kansutoppu!, The Girl Who Ate Death and The Girl Who Bore the Flame Ring aren't isekai, technically speaking, but are similar in a lot of ways. There's a list of webnovels with female protagonists on Oniichanyamete which I found a few of these on. But I'll not lie to you, I'm not a great fan of any of these. None of them match to the likes of Kenkyo or Kumo. What I do like a lot is My Disciple Died Yet Again, which is a chinese/xianxia take on the genre. Anyway! I'm up to date with Honzuki now (Maine actually turns it around in chapter 24. I have never self-owned so hard in my life  ), and it's all good, but now I have a new problem. Maine seems to be really concerned about charging a fair price to the customer... but also perfectly content to bilk her craftmen- her own family. Girl, your priorities are exactly backwards.
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Apr 9, 2017 22:13
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Ytlaya posted:Thanks for the recommendations! I actually don't mind "reincarnated as a otome game/manga villainess" cliches much (yet, at least*). For some reason I find the whole "girl who starts out hated but manages to gradually make the various hot guys change their minds about her" formula pretty enjoyable. Fair enough! Each to their own. I don't hate the basic premise, but almost every one of these I've checked out has been extremely formulaic. Even the "I've been reincarnated into a world that's like a JRPG for some reason and I'm a total badass" stories have a little variation in what the settings are like and how the protagonist approaches the situation. Ytlaya posted:Isn't her willingness to bilk her family from after she's been repeatedly criticized by Benno for not "acting like a merchant"? I don't remember her doing the "I shouldn't charge this much" stuff beyond the point where she starts charging a commission from her family's labor. They would absolutely understand. Her father would mortgage his eyeballs if he knew. But they're not being given a choice. She's lying to them about how much the work is worth and she's lying to them about what fraction of that she passes on to them. And she starts doing before she realises she needs the money to save her life (that's chapter 44). As to the other- Benno scolds her in 40, she's still worrying about it in 41, and she tries to talk Benno into setting a low price for the mass-produced hairpins in 42. She hasn't been worrying about it since, but she also hasn't been negotiating prices for her goods, either. I don't know, maybe she does have the killer instinct now. (You have to understand, I read the whole thing in a one-er, so in my mind everything since they made the paper is "recently"). FriggenJ posted:Add to that is she really bilking them? She's making a lot MORE but they're basically making 1-3 months wages in a single night on crafts that they're spectacularly good at but never have time to do because of drudge work. This isn't exploiting coal miners because they don't know what gold looks like, she's having them do easy-to-do crafts to drastically improve their standard of living. Everything else aside, she's paying them a tiny fraction of the value of their labour and lying about it. That's exploitative behaviour.  The illness gives her an understandable and sympathetic reason to engage in this behaviour, certainly. But like Ytlaya points out, she could be perfectly honest with them and still get all that money. And more. So she's not actually gaining anything from exploiting them, all that's going to happen is that they'll be super pissed when they inevitably find out. Best I can tell, her thought process here has gone "Benno has explained to me the capitalism is about being an rear end in a top hat -> I should practice being an rear end in a top hat". I don't know, I think I'd have a much harder time not paying my loved ones a fair wage than overcharging a stranger. Bakanogami posted:Boy this discussion about Maine's ethics will get heated up when the translations get up to part two when she starts exploiting child labor in sweatshops while basically only paying room and board. There's even a spot where she's like "Boy, this would be terrible on earth, good thing labor rights suck here!" this is a joke right Ytlaya posted:I don't mind inhuman protagonists/characters as long as they're portrayed in a reasonable way. I just don't really like it when the author/narrative treat a bunch of really terrible actions as being justifiable (or, worse, "cool/badass"). The premise can be interesting if the ramifications of their actions are really explored, or if they have some sort of internal conflict due to their past life as a human (Kumoko not actually being a human in her past life is a big reason why her actions didn't bother me as much once I found out). I guess it could also work if something was 100% a comedy, but usually I get the feeling that protagonists who do terrible things are portrayed as being totally justified and are supposed to be interpreted as being awesome and badass. Well, when I say "inhuman" I meant literally inhuman- not necessarily physically, but definitely psychologically. I draw a distinction between that and characters that are theoretically fully human, integrated members of a society who nevertheless act like psychopathic randroids. The latter I loathe and will drive me to drop a story very very quickly, but with the former... I enjoy reading stories written from very alien perspectives. So Kumo didn't bother me at all, because, even if she was a human in her past, she's clearly a spider now, with the mindset of a spider. Or at least, a highly intelligent spider with some human memories. So the revelation that she was always a spider was a cute plot twist, but it didn't change my perspective on the character much at all. I could have done without Similarly, Akasha in Taint is unmistakeably a monster now, even though it seems like she was a perfectly sane as a child, but given how she came by that I can hardly begrudge her her perspective. Sif drives me up the wall, despite "only" being a assassin. Taylor in Worm is an interesting case, as the slow erosion of her morality is more or less the point of the entire story. KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Apr 10, 2017 |
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Apr 10, 2017 12:52
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ZTJ: I have missed darling Tang Tang. I missed the entire Academy crew, in fact. It's a pity Luo Luo's still stuck in the Li Palace. How long does that have to go on for?
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Apr 12, 2017 19:24
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UberJew posted:I actually stopped reading that when that poo poo started happening b/c given the buildup and history of the MC it was absolutely not acceptable and then I went and checked spoilers and there wasn't a walkback or repentance and I was like 'nah gently caress this' I dropped Mushoku Tensei around the point the author decided it would be really cool to drop all the fantasy adventuring and political scheming and do a high school arc instead. Which is a distressingly common plot trend in this genre, to be frank. I'm starting to think that WN authors are, like, loving magnetically attracted to school life stories. And RPG mechanics. And goddamn adventurers' guilds. I might kill someone the next time I see a story with adventurers' guilds. Not a jury in the land would convict me. Meanwhile in ZTJ: "How many swords are you carrying around right now?" "Like, maybe two or three dozen?" "You are like a little baby- watch this."
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Apr 29, 2017 23:10
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ConanThe3rd posted:In what way? Wasn't the Haruhi English release a punch-up of the old fan translation? The rumour's always been that Stratos was picked up for it, yeah, but I don't think it was ever confirmed.
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May 4, 2017 11:02
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ZTJ:quote:She was not able to leave the Garden of Zhou.  I know this misunderstanding hasn't got much longer to play out and it's still tearing me up..
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May 12, 2017 02:24
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Lyon posted:Mo Yu is going to be in Chen Changsheng's bed isn't she? Hah this will be funny/annoying as this will drag on forever. Even better!
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Jun 14, 2017 21:55
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So my brain has decided to interpret that umlaut as a diaeresis and I'm reading "Maïne" as "ma-iin". Progress!
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Jul 6, 2017 15:21
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:40 millenniums of cultivation is so good. the last chapter was essentially a vr college ethics course where the mc passed by explaining why it was better to have a functional society with laws and morals than the usual wuxia setting where being a murderous, amoral thief is considered ideal behavior. Unless something's changed recently (I haven't been keeping up since the school graduation/wandering the earth arc), "not being an amoral shitlord" is a standard 40k's MC struggles to meet. I'd say that's the worst part of the novel, in fact; the guy's kind of a total rear end in a top hat, but the author wants you to think he's a real cool dude, and goes to great lengths to torture and humiliate any character that disagrees, even momentarily.
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Jul 13, 2017 11:15
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Kaja Rainbow posted:Agreed. It's a good setting.  Any other story in that setting, I'd be down for.
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Jul 13, 2017 19:32
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Kaja Rainbow posted:Welp. Qidian International rehosted a bunch of translated chapters from Wuxiaworld apparently without asking and issued them a DMCA to shut down the entire site (which includes both Qidian properties and novels that aren't Qidian properties) in the same breath. Apparently Wuxiaworld is relocating to a non-US country that requires a court order for DMCA notices. Yup. And now they're requiring people to watch ads before each chapter, which I think breaks another promise they made? They are loving this up quite spectacularly.
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Aug 7, 2017 00:13
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:actually if you own a cat you will quickly learn that all of your possessions belong to said cat now Actually, I think you'll find that your possessions always belonged to the cat, you just didn't know until you got the cat. rvm posted:I haven't touched the source material. You're missing out.
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Aug 14, 2017 13:17
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:oniichanyamete never finishes any of their projects Finish Evil God Average, to be fair. I wish he hadn't, though, that ran out of steam pretty quickly 
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Oct 1, 2017 20:19
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 I loving love the Kumo manga Meanwhile, ZTJ is bumming me out. Not just because Tianhai is cool beans and these assholes all need their poo poo slapped, but also because we seem to have been stuck in this "the character did cool thing and everyone is amazed because it's really loving cool and everyone knew this guy was cool but NOT THIS COOL and isn't this just so amazing???" mode for a couple of hundred chapters now.
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Oct 19, 2017 02:00
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Synthbuttrange posted:Hahahah oh god horrible web novels are bleeding into real life with friends discovering the rebirth genre and traumatizing each other with terrible examples Somehow the description for this one is even worse than the title
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Nov 17, 2017 03:18
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jon joe posted:Anyone have any hot new pickups? I tried Overgeared recently, being highly ranked on novel updates, but it’s worse than bland. Bakanogami posted:Unparalleled Path ~ Reincarnated as the AI for a Space Battleship ~ has the plot description in the title. Actually had some decent SF in one of these novels for once. I don't think the translation is up there yet, but there's a nice twist or two later on. On the subject of space botes as characters... I read The Last Angel recently and was mildly impressed by its quiet insistence on being about people and feelings instead of degenerating into gun porn. I rate it pretty good, actually. Not a hot new pickup, exactly, but being old and complete is probably a point in its favour.
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Dec 24, 2017 16:16
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I wanna read a "trapped in the game" story only the game is Dominions and ALL LIFE EVERYWHERE IS EXTINGUISHED IN A TITANIC WAR BETWEEN MAD GODS.
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Jan 13, 2018 23:59
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Read The Tutorial is Too Hard yesterday. I'm not sure if it's been mentioned here before? It's another "trapped in a game-like world" story, complete with op protagonist, but with a few fun twists. First off, people are constantly graduating from and being inducted into the game, so they have a channel of communication with the real world. Second, that real world has apparently been invaded by monsters and the superhumans the game produces are desperately needed to fight them off. Third, the story spends a lot of time on the psychological and social consequences of being suddenly transported into a horrible death world full of monsters. It didn't wow me or anything, but it has its moments (the monks!).
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Feb 5, 2018 17:50
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"four thousand, three hundred and sixteen words of people telling Maïne how cute she looks" Christ yes, I thought at the very least I'd get to read Benno or someone lose their mind at the sight of this peasant girl wearing a small fortune in lace.
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Feb 19, 2018 16:49
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Ytlaya posted:It gives some random aspect to the events that occur, which can lead to some kind of interesting things happening. Is this some kind of sick burn on the author? They'd be incapable of writing anything interesting without the dice? 
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Feb 21, 2018 11:28
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If ZTJ is putting the gang back together, Luo Luo better be a part of it. 
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Mar 9, 2018 00:22
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NinjaDebugger posted:There's Walking my Second Path in life, if that's your sort of thing. (It is extremely my jam.) Irisize posted:Cain being the only one who knows the whole picture but being stuck watching as everything plays out is extremely my thing. Good enough to pay for?
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Mar 14, 2018 03:11
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Megazver posted:The one thing that worries me is that it's apparently an ongoing story with 3000+ loving chapters already written, which at the current translation rate of maybe ten chapters a week means it'd take, like, at least six years for this to get to the finish line. Stop padding, Chinese authors, yeesh. Bookworm's got 677 chapters. Blastron's done 67 of them. At his currently fortnightly release rate, it will take him an actual quarter century to finish.  Speaking of stories which take vast fantastical premises merely to recreate the modern world with bells on, Crossing to the Future, it’s Not Easy to Be a Man, is a (deep breath) cross-dressing space opera xianxia isekai with mecha, for girls. And maybe a political intrigue aspect? There's a lot going on here. There's so much going on here that the blurb mentions events that have not yet happened, one hundred and fifty-two chapters in. 152 chapters and we're still in the prologue. I wouldn't call it slow-paced, exactly, but there's nothing here that couldn't be abbreviated if the meat of the story is much later on. It's also kinda... gross? The setting's this horrific fascist dystopia where people are sorted into castes at birth based on their genetic potential and military service is the highest, only source of merit. Even the youngest of children are expected to solve all disputes by violence and form rigid hierarchies among themselves. But I'm not certain the author knows she's describing a dystopia? But for all that it's probably still better than Every Morning the Most Popular Girl at School Sits Next to Me on the Train. Yeah. So, I had no expectations for this one whatsoever. I saw the title on Novel Updates and thought to myself, "That has got to be the most pathetic self-fulfilment fantasy I have ever heard of." And, lo and behold, it turned out to be the weakest-rear end five-yandere pileup in history. But for all that it was pretty inoffensive until this happened: quote:Currently, I have questions about why such a beautiful girl is dating my son. Then, what was most surprising, was that my daughter liked my son. Of course, this wasn’t the “like” used between family members, but the type of “like” that you would be using for your love interest. Flawless parenting. Please do not read this novel, it's terrible  I did end up putting down money to read Walking My Second Path in Life!. It's alright. Light, fluffy- I was looking for something with a bit more bite but it's solid slice-of-life nonsense. Fie strikes me as far too innocent and child-like for a sixteen-year-old, especially a sixteen-year-old princess, but that's the genre. Jackard posted:Dwarf Fortress Xianxia? Fey moods that have kill-counts in the billions...
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Mar 15, 2018 01:35
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blastron posted:Does the protagonist of The Death Mage Doesn’t Want A Fourth Time ever get challenged? I’m at the part where he finally gets a job change, and I don’t think he’s actually struggled to do anything ever since... ever, actually. It took me a while to realize it because he started out from the very bottom and we’re constantly told how lovely his life used to be, but he’s never actually failed to do anything that he’s set out to do and his death-attribute magic and/or isekai knowledge is apparently able to solve every problem in front of him. I think the only time he’s even taken any damage is when he fought against the orc leader but even that was just a clever ploy. Same! It's like a reskinned Tsuki ga Michibiku Isekai Douchuu. To be honest, I could live with an omnipotent protagonist if it felt like the story was going somewhere, but it just drags. Also, orc rape. Less, please. In future I would prefer to read stories containing less- possibly no- rape. I did not feel like that was I preference I had to state, previously. Perhaps I was mistaken. The living carriage with AN UNQUENCHABLE THIRST FOR BLOOD I like though, that is a fun character.
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Mar 28, 2018 20:20
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Go on?
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Mar 29, 2018 15:40
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NinjaDebugger posted:TBF, "the church is corrupt" is generally a foregone conclusion. Megazver posted:I mean, his first impression of them is them burning someone at a stake for poo poo and giggles. Cynic Jester posted:Organized religion has a spotty history at best, so the assumption that organized religion in a different world would also be a gathering point for ginormous dickbags with delusions of grandeur isn't really a stretch. All true, but the way this is presented presented in RTW is interesting. Our protagonist doesn't infer or deduce that the church is malign- he takes it as axiomatic that it would be. He is not at all surprised to find the church burning witches- as far as he is concerned that's just what religion is about. He reads like someone who has been raised to believe this and read the entirety of human history through that lens. Which- I mean, I am not at all familiar with what China teaches its children about religion, but I would not be surprised to discover that it was exactly that. And that's fine, really- it's entirely reasonable to have someone who thinks like that be your protagonist. Where RTW starts to lose the plot a bit is in that everyone else in the story happily goes along with him. He just turns around one day and goes "we're going to break with the church and all established doctrine in order to consort with the literal forces of Evil" and all his advisors and aides- none of whom share the benefit of his 21st century vantage point on the history of societal development, none of whom trust his ability to leave or even like him all that much- just fall in line. There is no sense that anyone in this setting has any sort of real religious faith, or that the church is a fundamental pillar of society and the psychologies of the people residing within it. It is, in a word, unreal. The author, I suspect, has a fair understand of religion as an abstract concept but no experience of the actual emotional reality of it. To be fair, that's not an uncommon problem in fantasy stories, but it's rare for them to lean quite so heavily on it.
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Apr 3, 2018 17:43
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