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Gravity Tales did a similar poll recently and- well it struck me as deranged. There are lots of questions like "Do you prefer stories where the protagonist kills LITERALLY EVERYONE IN THE WORLD or is occasionally acquainted with empathy?" and "Are stories better with romance elements... or not??" and for almost every question my answer was, "I'm up for almost everything... so long it's well-written and the author does something interesting with it." But apparently I've doing media wrong all this time? Apparently I'm supposed to have incredibly narrow and specific preferences about the exact nature of the stories I'm reading?
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Apr 4, 2018 00:49
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Bakanogami posted:I've been reading through At the Northern Fort recently and it is the cutest thing ever. Yeah I'm pretty fond of it. Prepare for one update yearly. jwang posted:So apparently Fall in Love with the Villainess was still being translated. However, the quality seems to take a nosedive after the translation updates were taken down from Novelupdates. I don't know why they even bother with how poo poo the translations are. There are people out there who will, in all sincerity, look you straight in the eye and tell you that running a chapter through google translate and then giving it what I will generously describe as an "editing pass" counts as translation. And readers are not only fine with this, they actively come to prefer the "style". 
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Apr 19, 2018 13:20
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Furious Lobster posted:Honestly, it would be less stupid if they sported mustaches and twirled them in their cockpits. Should have big steel wire moustaches on the mechs imo. With special motors for twirling.
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Apr 30, 2018 20:46
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darkgray posted:Feels like it's been a while, but I found a Japanese web novel I can recommend: Ore no Megane wa Tabun Sekai Seifuku Dekiru to Omou Yeah, alright, I'll check this- darkgray posted:Someone go translate it for the Western audience, please. MOTHER FUCKER
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Jun 26, 2018 21:17
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:there's a big difference between a former human getting horny for a big titty elf and a big titty elf getting horny for a small cat. It's an isekai. No matter what body the protagonist is wearing, the ladies are going to want to gently caress him. No exceptions. It is pretty funny that they're not even trying to put a figleaf on it, though. "...and she wants to gently caress." "The cat? That's pretty weird!" "She wants to gently caress." "But-" "She wants to gently caress"
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Jul 8, 2018 23:14
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:he is instantly the best in the universe at anything he tries for no particular reason This is everything I've been checking out recently, except also every single character screaming about how important they are and how powerful their backing is directly into every other character's face, without pause, every chapter, forever. Anyone discovered anything good recently? I'm dying here.
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Jul 24, 2018 09:52
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Sometimes you get terrible garbage that's fun to read! I'm sure that used to be a thing that happened and I didn't hallucinate it
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Jul 24, 2018 09:56
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It was discussed a fair bit a while back. I figure everyone is just quietly reading it but not having much to say. XYR owning on old man Shang is well past due but I'm sad she'll never get to fully avenge her master and take the throne. T I A N H A I W A S R O B B E D
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Jul 24, 2018 12:17
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Saved by darling Tang Tang the sword squirrel. I'm dying. I'm loving dead.
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Aug 1, 2018 20:52
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drilldo squirt posted:It's weird that they bothered to invent a game system for the book. It seems to be heavily based on WoD/Storyteller, so not wholly new art (odd choice of system- it's not that great to begin with and it scales really poorly). Still weird, though. It's a lot more heavyweight than most CYOAs, and adds... what, exactly? The opportunity for a bunch of forumers to break their brains arguing about doping schedules and dice caps?
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Aug 4, 2018 12:27
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atelier morgan posted:It's not going to be very accurate though because while luck and cheating are very important in the system rape is not What about thieving. If the players aren't constantly stealing from and swearing vengeance on each other you're doing it wrong
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Aug 20, 2018 18:27
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Seems like Qidian have stopped doing free updates for their premium novels. Fair thee well, Cultivation Chat Group, we shall not meet again. Oh, and I forgot to say when it came up on the last page: the Tsuyokute New Saga manga is alright. I'm fond of the Peggy Sue plot for whatever reason and that one's a passable stab at it.
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Aug 21, 2018 01:10
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The interesting thing is that Qidian keep changing the rules, which suggests they're not happy with how much money they're making off of this. Either they're somehow having trouble turning a profit, when they already own tonnes of content from their other, presumably self-sufficient platform and then pay fuckall for no-effort translations of, or their profit expectations are absurd.
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Aug 21, 2018 12:34
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So uh I don't know if anyone here is actually in to isekai, but I just started Ni no Kuni II and, uh, well, you play a US president who gets isekai'd into a Ghibli movie after someone drops an ICBM on his head. I figure that's the best take on the genre there's ever going to be
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Aug 25, 2018 18:36
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quote:the Black Dragon's favorite food is braised chicken wings, because she hates Phoenixes Ha! Chen Changsheng calmly pootling along to gently caress up someone else's day is the perfect ending 
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Sep 6, 2018 17:36
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Jester Mcgee posted:This is a bit off topic, but I think this is the best thread for it. Does anyone have any ideas for systems to check out if I’m looking to run a Xianxia tabletop game? I was thinking Exalted maybe? Exalted is kinda... like, for the longest time the joke was that the best way to play Exalted was using any system other than Exalted. 3rd Edition is a lot better, but it's still a very, very heavy-weight system with a lot of things you need to keep track of and lot of moving parts. It's not something I'd choose to build something else on top of unless I was very interested in replicating that exact gameplay experience. I'm drawing a blank on what else to recommend, though. Like Cynic Jester says, there are a bunch of Wuxia-themed RPGs (I've got a soft spot for Legends of the Wulin, personally, but that has its own problems), but I can't think of any that have the sort of verticality you'd want. Actually, this: Cynic Jester posted:cultivation as a core focus. sparks a thought: in Xianxia the magic kung-fu is often secondary to the accumulation of power. Achieving enlightenment by meditating of the nature of rocks is the story and the goal of the story; using that enlightenment to break someone's teeth is just the celebratory fireworks. So, would you better able to capture the nature of the genre if you built on something where self-development through revelation and self-actualisation was the central game mechanic? Is there a game like that? I think Chuubo's is somewhere along those line, though, uh, I still haven't gotten around to reading that one so don't quote me on that. Disregard this if you are just after the magic kung fu. Exalted is mostly about magic kung fu and the moral dilemmas resulting from magic kung fu. (e: for a while now I've been imagining this Xianxia card game, a Mario Kart-style race sort of thing where the goal is to reach the end of the cultivation track first and most of what you do is think up cunning ways to screw over the other players using the Treasures and Opportunities you've drawn at random from the decks). Argas posted:I mean, aren't there some older isekai stories that play it straight? But they're not hip and new so nobody pays attention to them? Well, what are we calling "isekai"? Portal fantasy is much older than the current LN/WN craze and plenty of them play it straight. Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Narnia- I'll count Peter Pan too, why not. More recently in anime and manga you've got things like Twelve Kingdoms or Fushigi Yuugi (I think? I think there may be an entire subgenre of shoujo along these lines, but I'm only vaguely aware of it). And Escaflowne, Now and Then, Here and Now, .hack//SIGN, just off the top of head. We tend not to call any of these "isekai", though. The stories we do call isekai, this most recent batch, tend to be self-consciously isekai, and I think that self-awareness makes them necessarily parodic. Meaning: no isekai play it straight, because if they did, they wouldn't be isekai. Telsa Cola posted:Ill give it a go, I guess what Im really looking for is something that deconstructs the genre. Honestly, I think this refusal to take themselves seriously is one of the primary reasons the genre is so loving bad. I like To Be A Power (and wish it would update more often  ), it's pretty great, but have you ever noticed how the protagonists of these stories almost never seem to care that they've been suddenly alienated from everyone they ever knew or loved? How being suddenly inserted into radically different cultures and contexts never seems to cause more than superficial problems? Have you ever thought about much depth that robs from these characters? They're contextless ciphers, lacking an emotional connection to anything (which is the point, of course).
KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jan 12, 2019 |
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Jan 12, 2019 06:21
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The fashion and the superpowered protagonist don't really bother me, and the prose, I mean, I've survived worse. The Australianisms, though, those are rapidly driving me insane.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:28
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Looks like the next Cradle book (Underlord) is being announced Feb 8th. 
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Jan 26, 2019 02:25
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Its Rinaldo posted:I bought the first book and got halfway through then the space lady came and was a billion tiers higher and I immediately lost interest the scale was too large and dumb Yeah, it's got that xianxia verticality dialed in alright. Space lady doesn't stick around for long, though, and the books generally trade in a more reasonable level of "impossibly far above you". Book 1 is by far the weakest, too, so I'd recommend giving 2 a chance before you write it off entirely.
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Jan 26, 2019 12:44
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I forgot how goddamn short Cradle books are. I haven't so much read Underlord as inhaled it. Good, though. I think I'd rank it a hair above Ghostwater? Maybe a hair below? I'd have to re-read Ghostwater to be sure. It's definitely got more time for the supporting cast, which was my one major complaint against Ghostwater, and Mercy gets to be a character finally, in her third book, which is nice. But what we trade for that is Ghostwater's roomy, fleshed-out A-plot. These books just aren't long enough to do justice to everything they want to cover. Maybe Wight will have the time to bulk them out after he's done with Elder Empire.
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Mar 1, 2019 21:43
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IShallRiseAgain posted:My biggest complaint is that the Suriel Sub-plot is forever going to be in a holding pattern until Lindon and friends catch up to her. I'm happy for it to stay on ice, frankly, but it doesn't need to do it on-screen. There was no point to her showing up in this one at all. Ytlaya posted:One other thing that comes to mind is that the Wei Path of the White Fox actually seems pretty good compared with many of the outside world paths we've seen. The ability to make your enemies see illusions is pretty good and useful, and I feel like it was even explicitly mentioned at some point that forging light madra is really difficult, yet the Wei could forge extremely realistic disguises from light/dream madra. I'm fully expecting Lindon to split his core again for the White Fox, no matter how ridiculous or unnecessary that would be. 
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Mar 3, 2019 02:27
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IShallRiseAgain posted:The Wei Clan doesn't have any golds aside from Elder Whisper who is under some sort of restriction, and probably can't use his full power. Also, the sect must have some really powerful artifacts, if even their minor treasury has some really valuable stuff in it. Also, the sect only lost one of their golds. The sect doesn't have any Golds. Sacred valley caps out at Jade, Whisper aside.
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Mar 4, 2019 00:37
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Well, I read Savage Divinity. ...I'd say the guy needs an editor, but honestly if you took the knife to this I'm not sure what would be left. There is just so much wallpaper in there, so many words spent signalling that yes, you are reading a Savage Divinity chapter. It's gonna hit all the same beats as the last twenty chapters, and the next twenty. You could probably read it off the inside of your eyelids. That said, I made it through nearly five hundred chapters, so I guess I can't poo poo on it that hard.
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Jul 2, 2019 21:05
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Oh yeah, that arc telescoped out to infinity, apparently because the author was trying to avoid killing off the love interest. I'll say that it does recover once it gets out of that rut (around chapter 120~140 or so), and it never gets that bad again and the alternate personality eventually gets the axe, but peak was probably before that. Before Rain starts collecting pets. Case in point: in my mind that lake arc takes place about halfway through the story... it's closer to a quarter of the way in. 
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Jul 2, 2019 22:01
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LLSix posted:Really? I was all caught up when I stopped. Author must be writing like crazy. Well, I checked. That arc is chapters 137 ~ 158 (a little later than I thought). Latest is numbered 480. So closer to a third than a quarter. But 158 has a publication date in 2016, so uhh maybe we're thinking of different arcs or you were not as caught up as you thought?
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Jul 3, 2019 19:12
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Traveller’s Gate is a distinct step down, I think. Elder Empire is better, but still not as good as Cradle.
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Jul 4, 2019 14:51
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Silver2195 posted:Traveler's Gate is meh. It's kind of...YAish, and it's a rare case of a fantasy story suffering from lack of exposition. Still better than most of the stuff discussed in this thread, of course. Yeah. There's something very thin and insubstantial about it, and no real sense of place. On the plus side, though, it's paced like a regular-rear end novel and has an actual ending.
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Jul 4, 2019 18:34
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lurksion posted:In other qidian news, apparently some translations have another (lump sum) payment block in front of them, but still have the standard pay for chapter attached. So basically pay to have the privilege of paying to read. quote:it's somewhere around 60/70€ per novel, per month 
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Jul 6, 2019 11:42
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I think of all the genres of isekai “I was reincarnated as a dungeon a la Dungeon Keeper” is probably the one I least understand the appeal of. It’s like someone looked at all the other “isekai’d into a game” stories and decided that what they needed was more stat pages and less of anything resembling a human interaction. Evil God Average had something else going on at least.
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Jul 15, 2019 14:23
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oh god the dungeon fucks
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Jul 15, 2019 19:23
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Alright okay enough of that Anyway, I've been burning through Royal Road's "Best Rated" stories and they're, well, most of them are competent, I guess. The Last Science is probably the good one, though I find myself not really liking any of the characters apart from Natalie. The Simulacrum is alright too, if you have time for a harem-comedy isekai. Post-Human starts well but goes nowhere, and The Last Angel is a much, much better riff on the exact same premise. Brimstone Fantasy is a power fantasy with videogame numbers. I didn't hate it. just stay the gently caress away from anything involving dungeons
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Jul 15, 2019 19:32
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atelier morgan posted:My current royal road fav is just a really solid, good scifi story. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/15449/quod-olim-erat the adventures of a retired spaceship in a pretty lovely space future, featuring lots of flashbacks and body/memory weirdness Oh, this is great. A good, old-fashioned "weird poo poo in space" story cross-bred with a half measure of murderbot.
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Jul 21, 2019 19:00
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atelier morgan posted:My current royal road fav is just a really solid, good scifi story. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/15449/quod-olim-erat the adventures of a retired spaceship in a pretty lovely space future, featuring lots of flashbacks and body/memory weirdness Oh there's a sequel Silynt posted:I’m sitting here reading between the lines, hoping for an August 1st Uncrowned release. Will listed August 1 as the release date back on his April Fool’s release schedule post, captioned as “April Fool’s!..... or is it?”. He just had an all-books-for-free day on July 4th, which he’s done before other releases. And the narrator for his audiobooks, who loves them enough that the Underlord release from March is still his pinned tweet, has his current project listed on his Twitter as “classified” and then sent the following tweet, which Will then retweeted: Doubt it. That would be an exceptionally short turnaround time and he's been working on Elder Empire. I would be surprised to see another Cradle book before EE wraps up.
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Jul 22, 2019 18:52
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The mindwipes have not bothered me at all. But then I did binge the thing. Especially not in the sequel, I think most of those have been flashbacks to the first part with some extra paragraphs in them. That, or more background than anything relevant to the immediate plot. Which is beginning to drag, just a little. Avulsion posted:I'm left wondering how this civilization gets anything done when no one is allowed to know anything. That and the off-the-charts interservice rivalry. But I kinda think they don't get anything done. All the offensives we hear about are pyrrhic victories at best or catastrophic failures.
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Jul 23, 2019 22:39
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Continuing my Royal Road adventure, I'm 28 chapters into The Eagle's Flight and it's pretty good! It could do with an editor, and I think the very high register it's written in chokes out the emotion in some places, but otherwise it's a solid feudal intrigue story. A bit like a less cynical ASOIAF (I'm not an ASOIAF fan, for the record). I'm glad things are working out for Leander and Theodora, at least. I am sort of worried this means Iselwald and Valerie are hosed, though. It can't all be sunshine and roses, right? 
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Jul 29, 2019 22:17
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Tunicate posted:generic xianxia, on the other hand, takes poo poo that should be hilarious and makes it boring I dunno man, I laughed. We’re about five seconds away from “overcoming pachydermic jellyfish” here
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Aug 2, 2019 17:31
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...Durandal is like the least reasonable person in Team Squirrel Crimes. Even Lucia has doubts sometimes. But yeah, God King's Legacy is great. quote:Someone screamed, but it didn’t last very long because a head flew into the air. Gah! Why is Durandal murdering people!? We just had to silence them! “Wait! Durandal! What are you doing!?”
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Aug 14, 2019 22:19
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Cynic Jester posted: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. Anias posted:Yeah it's act 1 and 2 of a three act play, and instead of act 3 the director jumped out from behind the curtain and yelled boo then the audience was instructed to come see the sequel in half a year. The writing is great, but structure wouldn't fly in tradpub. Desuwa posted: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. I think you guys are being kind of hard on Uncrowned, considering Skysworn exists. Now there's a book that couldn't find an arc with both hands. I like it about as much as Underlord, I guess, so it's ranking... fourth or fifth out of seven? One thing I did like was, after spending six book getting salty about Suriel and Ozriel, Makiel is the one who fucks it all up in the end. The teen drama nonsense was another highlight. Lowlights: barely any Orthos time, what the heck. The Akuras, too, were kind of a non-event, which feels bizarre. I'm guessing Sha Miara will end up joining Lindon's band of misfits eventually, though she's a fair bit younger than the rest of them at this point. KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Sep 27, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 17:08
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Argas posted:Got a link to it? https://www.novelupdates.com/series/forty-millenniums-of-cultivation/ It’s a Qidian joint so paywalled our the wazoo
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Dec 4, 2019 10:40
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blastron posted:I gave up on Seventh Young Lady after the tournament arc when she just started pulling unforeshadowed powerups out of nowhere to beat fights she shouldn’t have been able to before, to the amazement of her teacher! There hadn’t really been any challenges in her way for a long while, but that’s when it became blatantly obvious the author had just stopped giving a poo poo about even pretending to have adversity. That was bad, but I managed to tough it out as far as the "build a city in the wasteland" arc, where the MC decides to... just loving murder a dude, for dissing her. And everybody claps. It's not even, like, a particularly harsh diss, in the prevailing social context. Mulva posted:Here's a challenge for you: Name some series that have ended, and ended....well. As the resident "I like Ze Tian Ji and I'm going to let you know it" guy, I have to say- Ze Tian Ji It definitely gets weaker after Tianhai dies, but it still stuck the landing.
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Jan 27, 2020 12:48
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