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I heard someone was doing a critique of Sanderson's bad writing and here I am to see it. Especially because of the aforementioned stuff about how so many people think he's worth imitating.
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Feb 6, 2019 12:15
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These days, 'good worldbuilding' generally means that it's packed full of stuff that feels like it's there for nerds to codify into a wiki.
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Feb 6, 2019 14:23
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Mel Mudkiper posted:LitRPG The fact that this exists and is so popular still blows my mind. But I think you have to call it GameLit, now. LitRPG got trademarked by one of the writers in the genre.
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Feb 6, 2019 14:55
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Mel Mudkiper posted:If there is anything that is a more significant sign of a culture on the verge of total implosion it is that Japan has enough novels about people dying and getting resurrected in their favorite video games that its become its own genre It's definitely strange. It's adjacent to some of the Chinese fiction trends that young white nerds have started aping and copying, which leads to others copying the copies. It's really not uncommon to find the two (isekai and xianxia) mashed together which is just baffling, too.
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Feb 6, 2019 15:04
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Nerdburger_Jansen posted:Worldbuilding being an end in itself isn't the same thing as bad worldbuilding. Yes, it is.
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Feb 6, 2019 15:19
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Nerdburger_Jansen posted:Why does the creation of a world have to be in service of something else? Because you're telling a story. Worldbuilding serves the story only in so much that it helps it be told. Anything else, and you're getting into the territory of those 'writers' who will talk at length about their amazing world and fifty outlined novels, none of which they've written yet but, hey, would you like to hear about the naming conventions of this species I made up?
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Feb 6, 2019 15:25
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I played Pillars of Eternity Now, if you wanted to talk about a story where "worldbuilding" got in the way of the story itself and became an active detriment...
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Feb 6, 2019 16:03
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I found with Pillars, or any other lore heavy game, that the secret is to ignore all codexs and books and only pay attention to what is revealed organically in the dialogue Yes, but you can't even do that in Pillars 1! Everyone you meet in Pillars 1 must vomit their life story at you, like you are in any way invested in hearing it yet, replete with bizarre worldbuilding terms. Pillars 2 and Tyranny are better about it, mainly because of that keyword hyperlink hovertext system, but Pillars 1 was a slog from the caravan intro sequence.
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Feb 6, 2019 16:31
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Nerdburger_Jansen posted:Broke: The world exists as a stage for human drama 
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Feb 7, 2019 00:53
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goodreads told me that ve schwab wasn't YA. vicious was so, so bad.
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Feb 7, 2019 04:14
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Mel Mudkiper posted:My big issue with Neil Gaiman is that he is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. Low-key Locksmith or whatever, UGGGHHHH.
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Feb 12, 2019 01:15
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oh my lord
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Feb 14, 2019 01:27
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I have always thought that fantasy protagonist names beginning with K are the most cliche. Especially what amounts to Keiran spelled differently.
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Feb 14, 2019 01:33
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First-person tense is such a goddamn crutch in bad fantasy writing.
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Feb 14, 2019 02:14
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Sham bam bamina! posted:First person is a person, not a tense. That's why it's called first person. Ugh, yeah, missed a word there.
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Feb 14, 2019 02:40
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I love the way the crocodile metaphor drags you out of the scene with an audible thunk. "Terrible, nonconsensual things" is also just awful. That last line about the demon emptying atrocities into his head just makes me think of someone emptying half-full cups into a sink. So passionless.
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Feb 14, 2019 02:44
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"The idea of hard magic and soft magic was created by Brandon Sanderson" oh noooo
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Feb 14, 2019 05:12
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:It's dumber. Much dumber. well don't leave us hanging
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Feb 14, 2019 07:29
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bonfire thread have you talked about the emperor's blades by brian staveley? now there's a garbage fantasy book (not that this one with the whales isn't bad also)
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Feb 14, 2019 07:30
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chernobyl kinsman posted:we dont actually talk about anything here we just post variations of "balls piss" and get probated in that case, the book was truly "balls piss"
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Feb 14, 2019 08:08
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chernobyl kinsman posted:tell me why. give me the Piss Deets i will do this, my kinsman. i must share this pain. TheGreatEvilKing posted:The stone is a magic stone that embodies slavery and destroying it frees all the slaves but lets the demons invade. aaaaa
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Feb 14, 2019 11:14
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i'm going to take a bit of a look at brian staveley's 'the emperor's blades', which is one of the few books in my life i haven't bothered to finish. even the three sanderson books i read, i finished. but staveley's ponderous tome couldn't even manage that. it holds the dubious honor of being a book that, when i got bored of it, i predicted how the plot was going to go and flipped through the book and found i was entirely right. now, i don't generally like the fantasy genre. on the other hand, i've been really enjoying the baru series by seth dickinson. in fact, staveley's books were recommended to me by an associate because i mentioned liking the baru novels. staveley absolutely does not measure up. we'll start with the blurb just to get the thread in the mood quote:The emperor of Annur is dead, slain by enemies unknown. His daughter and two sons, scattered across the world, do what they must to stay alive and unmask the assassins. But each of them also has a life path on which their father set them, their destinies entangled with both ancient enemies and inscrutable gods. seriously what is it with K names in bad fantasy Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Feb 15, 2019 |
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Feb 15, 2019 08:01
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My Book Report On The Emperor's Blades - by Milky So, how does this story begin? The blurb has primed me to prepare for an assassination, an adventure, and maybe some political intrigue. Maybe we'll get a perspective on the event that's going to set the story in motion. Maybe the assassination, the lead up to it, or even the immediate aftermath. See, I actually like a good prologue. A lot of people say that authors shouldn't include them, but I don't agree. A good prologue can ease the reader into the story, establishing tone, themes or atmosphere before getting the plot rolling. They can even introduce a particular thought, question or philosophy that the reader is invited to reflect upon, to keep in mind when reading the rest of the text. For example, I like the prologues in the various Expanse novels because they typically depict an event that kicks the plot into motion. The first novel, Leviathan Wakes, includes a prologue that establishes the following parts of the story:
So, when the advice is given to not include prologues, it is because of prologues like this one in The Emperor's Blades. I won't do too many comparisons between it and Leviathan Wakes, but I think it's interesting to just compare the first lines. First up, Leviathan Wakes: The Lovely Corey Boys posted:The Scopuli had been taken eight days ago, and Julie Mao was finally ready to be shot. In one line, it establishes who we're following, where she is, that she's been a prisoner for over a week, and she's ready to die. Then, this novel: Brian Fantasyman posted:Rot. It was the rot, Tan’is reflected as he stared down into his daughter’s eyes, that had taken his child. I think it's immediately apparent that the second one doesn't work as well as the first. The first one makes me say, wow, who is this Julie Mao and why is she ready to be shot? The second one... Well, I don't know enough about this rot or why this character cares. Is his daughter dead or alive? Who knows, it's not immediately obvious. As an aside, the name Tan'is, like Valyn and Kaden, is a crime against interesting names. Also, I feel that 'the rot' should be capitalized at the very least, given that it appears to be a particularly special affliction. To sum it up, the prologue of The Emperor's Blades is pretty boring. Tanis (I'm not going to bother with the Fantasy Apostrophe) is a tough soldier and he's going to kill his daughter because she is sick. What the rot is and does is not immediately clear. We don't know who he is a soldier for or his rank or his status. The specifics of Tanis' location is not clear either. All we get is that there is 'a valley' and that there is a ditch being dug by the "doran’se." A pit is also mentioned, which hundreds of other sick people are clustering around. Given that Tanis is never placed among these features (is he above the valley or in it, for example) it's very hard to picture. More importantly, it prevents us from understanding what this rot means to this character and his wider society. They're not chucking bodies into huge pyres, for example. It's not, say, a ritual to keep the sun rising. We don't know if this is in the wilderness, in a city or outside some small hamlet. It's just a thing that is happening somewhere. For example: quote:Screams and imprecations, pleading and sobbing shivered the air as the long lines of prisoners filled the valley. The scent of blood and urine thickened in the noon heat. Tan’is ignored it all, focusing instead on the face of this daughter of his who knelt, clutching at his knees. Faith was a woman grown now, thirty years and a month. At a casual glance she might have passed as healthy—bright gray eyes, lean shoulders, strong limbs—but the Csestriim no longer bore healthy children, not for centuries. Straight away there's a problem: imprecations is a word I actually had to look up, and I'm a history teacher! All it means is curses. Screams and curses shivered the air? The smell of blood and urine thickened in the heat? Disregarding that sort of 'you know what I mean, let's move on' type of language use... Where is Tanis standing in relation to these prisoners? I find some of these sentences, especially 'focusing instead on the face of this daughter of his' really clunky. I could nitpick at the use of years and months, maybe? But what is this rot? quote:There were other words for it, of course. The children, in their ignorance or innocence, called the affliction age, but in this, as in so much else, they erred. Age was not decrepitude. Tan’is himself was old, hundreds of years old, and yet his sinews remained strong, his mind nimble—if needed, he could run all day, all night, and the better part of the next day. Most of the Csestriim were older still, thousands upon thousands of years, and yet they continued to walk the earth, those who had not fallen in the long wars with the Nevariim. No; time passed, stars swung through their silent arcs, seasons gave way one to the next, and yet none of these, in and of itself, brought harm. It was not age but rot that gnawed at the children, consuming their bowels and brains, sapping strength, eroding what meager intelligence they once possessed. Rot, and then death. First, hello clunky exposition. Second, so this mysterious rot. It's... aging? Becoming mortal? The answer may surprise you. But Csestriim? Well, combined with the previous about mortality being an affliction to them, these are our elven analogues, I guess. Not only does the name hint at it in that 'derived from Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons' way, but they have ancient enemies who they war with: the Nevariim. Yes, really. Anyway, Tanis and his daughter talk. quote:“It touches you gently,” he pointed out, “but its grip will grow stronger.” The dialogue is fairly generic sort of 'ominous prologue' dialogue. It sounds portentous but doesn't really tell the reader much at all. Not only is the rot bringing mortality to the immortals, but it is also causing them to develop - gasp - emotions. They see this as rotting, too. Tanis mentions that he's been watching his daughter, wondering if the rot was going to afflict her. Is this really an if given what was said earlier about no Csestriim bearing healthy children for centuries? Anyway, being an Extremely Logical Character, Tanis reflects: "It was no good reasoning with one whose reason had decayed." Tanis and his daughter talk a bit, then he kills her by stabbing her in the heart and the prologue ends. From this point on, the Csestriim aren't mentioned for about six chapters - and even then, it's just to tell us that they are all thought to be extinct and humans live among their ruins and blah blah blah. I'm not sure when they come into the text properly, if they ever do, but they certainly had nothing to do with the story - as much as I read of it, at least. I know from skimming through it now, they don't seem to become a major factor in this story. Every time the Csestriim are mentioned, it appears to just be to remind the audience that they lived a long time ago and they are dead - or are they?! Sequel bait? Maybe. I genuinely don't know. My assumption is that Tanis isn't dead and maybe becomes an antagonist or reluctant ally in Book 2 or 3. Yes, this is a trilogy. What I do know, however, is that this prologue just doesn't work. Compare again to Leviathan Wakes. The first chapter proper of Leviathan Wakes immediately links back to the prologue. One of the protagonists, a spaceship captain named James Holden, picks up a distress call... from a ship identified as the Scopuli! Then the next chapter, from a different perspective, tells us that a detective named Miller is hunting for Julie Mao. It all fits together. Who will find Julie first? What's that thing in the engine room? Meanwhile, The Emperor's Blades uses 1100 words to tell us that a soldier has to kill his daughter because she's aging and having emotions (maybe) and doesn't feel bad about it because he is logical, then he does it. It tells us nothing about his society. It doesn't even make it immediately clear when it is happening. It appears to be something they're used to and accustomed to (Tanis watched his daughter for thirty years wondering if she'd succumb to the rot, and that it had been happening for centuries) but their method of dealing with it - this cold, rational, logical people is to just murder them one by one and throw them in a pit or ditch. Who were these To me, this is a failure of worldbuilding. Good worldbuilding isn't a list of magical systems and fake histories, it just tells you what it's like to live in the world. What is it like for Tanis in this world? I don't know. How does he feel about this council telling him to kill his daughter? I don't know. What is it like for the Not Elves in general? I don't know. They're killing hundreds of their own children on what seems like a fairly regular basis, but there is zero heart in it. Tanis isn't calculating or cold or rational, he's a big void of nothing. Why is it so bad for their children to be afflicted with the rot? Tanis' logic appears to be that since you'll die anyway, we should just kill you now. That doesn't seem very logical or rational to me. I feel like this was intentional on Staveley's part, that he was trying to write without feeling. But the only thing he wrote was a boring, uninteresting prologue. He removed the feeling but didn't replace it with anything. So, Tanis is a big void of nothing, and his prologue is too. But it was bland and inoffensive and part of me was willing to see where Staveley might go with something that felt so very tired, especially given that this book was recommended to me after I'd praised The Traitor Baru. Maybe the core assassination plot would be intriguing. Maybe, a chapter or two in, I'd see the prologue in a new light. It's not, and I didn't. There aren't even many bad lines to pull out of these thousand words and marvel at. There's a lot of weak, messy writing: usage of 'tried', usage of thinking words to avoid describing what Tanis is thinking about, and so on. It's all very distant and yet says little of anything. I really can't stress enough that we have no idea the society Tanis comes from or even where he's located in this murder valley. But rest assured, the  parts come later.Actually, I lied. Here's a line from the dedications that made my eyes roll back into my head. quote:The Csestriim have no words for gratitude or love, but there is a phrase common in their writings: ix alza—crucial to, of absolute necessity. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Feb 15, 2019 |
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Feb 15, 2019 12:00
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Why not start with them instead of picking over all the minutiae of how the schlock fantasy novel's prologue isn't as good as the schlock sci-fi novel's prologue? Honestly? Because I kind of hope someone will show up to discuss it and make a case for it. It also reflects that the novel isn't self-contained. It's beginning with something that isn't relevant until the second, maybe even third book (based on what I've quickly Googled.) In fact, the whole novel suffers from just being a big long setup for the next two books. Also, the prologue is summed up by people - even in negative reviews - as being one of the best parts of the book. Things like, this book was such a let down after reading the chilling, horrifying prologue. There's a lot of 'good' bits coming, though. We've got the usual fantasy genericisms, but this time it's smokesteel blades (they're black, you see, and don't reflect light) and the catch-all curse is 'kent-kissing'. We've got one of the most lecherous male gazes I can remember reading. We've got exactly three prominent female characters. One of them is a love interest who is tough and cool and not like the other girls -- she is sexually assaulted as plot development, then fridged before the halfway point. The other is a prostitute who is 'saved' by one of the protagonists. The other is Adare who can't do anything without the assistance of a military man (and gets less chapters than the other two). There's a consistent, recurring theme that all fat people are evil. There's a strange scene where one of the aforementioned female characters argues against purchasing sex from a thirteen-year-old girl - but she comes out the loser of the argument because it is said to be no different than purchasing fruit. And that's just what I remember off the top of my head. I'm pretty sure there's a fairly uninspected takes on colonialism, too. A brown-skinned 'tribal' character is basically told that he should be grateful that they brought roads and medicine and law to his country. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Feb 15, 2019 |
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Feb 15, 2019 16:07
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My Book Report On The Emperor's Blades - by Milky I'll admit, I entertained the idea of going chapter by chapter but I have no real interest in doing that. I only got deep into the prologue because of how this book opens in such a flat way with an event that doesn't even matter to the plot of the book, failing to do things that I consider the basics. I'm not surprising anyone when I say that this book is not well-written. It's flat. It's boring. Instead of actually launching into a plot, we get three chapters of exposition on fictional monks, gods, and whatever *~Worldbuilding~* the author thinks is important. Chapter 1 posted:The sun hung just over the peaks, a silent, furious ember drenching the granite cliffs in a bloody red, when Kaden found the shattered carcass of the goat. Note: Am I the only one who thinks this line makes it feel like it's hot? The sun is hanging over the mountains, the fury, it's drenching the cliffs red... It seems strange when, later, it'll mention that it's cold. I'm not going to get into the particulars of the first chapter. It's perfectly acceptable to give a story a slow beginning that doesn't directly relate to the main plot, even if I think it's often questionable. There's just little point in going through it and mentioning how often Staveley relies on clunky paragraphs of exposition to tell us things instead of letting us be immersed in the world and learning about them more organically. The first three chapters cover so many subjects in this worldbuilding: the monks, how they live, where they live, the various gods, their special emotion-control training and their special eidetic memories and their unique skill to paint those memories. But is there a plot at this point? No, not really. I could mention that this novel opens proper with one of my least favorite things in genre writing. That is, when a chapter opens with some kind of pivotal line... but then jumps back to explain how the character got there. Kaden finds the goat, we are told, but here are seven paragraphs of how he found the goat and why he needs to find it. There's something comical about him fretting about this goat that he thinks is stuck in a 'defile' (whenever Staveley gets the chance to use an obscure or complex word to express a simple concept, he leaps at it, you see) when we the audience know it's 'shattered.' It doesn't make me think of tension or irony or comedy as much as it does the phrase: get on with it. For example, I picked out this phrase as one of the more astounding specimens: Chapter 1 posted:These wounds were vicious, unnecessary, lacking the quotidian economy of other kills he had seen in the wild. The animal had not simply been slaughtered; it had been destroyed. But who cares about any of this. It sucks, we all get it. So, I'm going to jump ahead to the moment my thoughts on the book went from bland, banal and uninspired to actively rather offensive. That is how it handles female characters and the rather open sense of male gaze that follows them around. Specifically, one of the more prominent ones: Ha Lin. We'll talk about how she's introduced and how the story treats her. So, after three chapters of no consequence with Kaden, the story jumps to Valyn, another heir of the Emperor and one of the protagonists. Valyn is a soldier on a ship. He's training with Fantasy Navy SEALS who use modern-day military lingo and get dropped in by giant birds - this is clever genre-bending worldbuilding, of course. Ha Lin is one of Valyn's fellow soldiers. The two of them have quips and chemistry straight out of a Joss Whedon series. Here's how we're introduced to Ha Lin. Chapter 4 posted:A stranger meeting Ha Lin on the street might mistake her for a carefree merchant’s daughter on the cusp of womanhood: buoyant and blithe, brown skin tanned from long hours in the sun, glossy black hair pulled back from her forehead and gathered in a leather thong. She had a soldier’s eyes, though. For the past eight years, she’d been through the same training as Valyn, the same training as all the cadets on the deck of the doomed vessel, and the Kettral had long ago hardened her to the sight of death. YOWZA! GET A LOAD OF THIS SAUCY ORIENTAL, MATES! SHE'S A TOTAL BADASS BUT SHE'S ALSO HOT AS gently caress. The moment I read these paragraphs, I knew that Ha Lin was going to have bad things happen to her. It was so obvious that she's going to suffer in order to propel Valyn's development. After all, she's the badass tomboy best friend who is just one of the guys but she's a sassy, sarcastic girl and you're straight so you have a crush on her and maybe she likes you back. Now, if you couldn't tell that she's Asian in appearance by her name and her description, the story points out that she has 'almond eyes.' For those of you who are unaware why this is a problem, it's generally regarded as one of the cheapest, laziest (and inaccurate) ways to say a character is Asian. Now, the story does this thing where it points out that, like, it doesn't matter that Ha Lin is a girl and a soldier. The Kettrals (what a name) are good guy elite soldiers, they don't discriminate on gender. And yet... Chapter |
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Feb 16, 2019 14:20
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my bony fealty posted:ahhhhhh Yep. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Well, in a magical universe, almost anything could "shatter" (for example, if flash-frozen and then struck with extremely rapid force) but yeah, that should be a red flag for weird as shitness going on. The goat has been decapitated and disemboweled. So, even 'shattered' and 'destroyed' don't feel right. In both cases, I feel like it'd be okay to use the word if the goat carcass was no longer recognizable as a goat. But the carcass is in such a state that it looks like a living, healthy goat until Kaden's standing right on top of it. poisonpill posted:Just saying “standard issue” in a pre-industrial society should be worth -100 Worldbuilding Points The Kettral are filled with language that doesn't fit the society. They draw on a lot of contemporary military lingo because I guess Staveley just wanted to write Fantasy Navy SEALs instead of actually trying to figure out how a pre-industrial society would treat soldiers dropped in by giant birds. Also, the giant birds don't even merit a description at all when they show up in the fourth chapter, which is weird because the first three chapters are filled with exposition and description of stuff that doesn't seem relevant. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Feb 17, 2019 |
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Feb 16, 2019 23:58
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CountFosco posted:Eh, I think that you can use shattered for an object that you wouldn't ordinarily describe as shattered if you're doing it in a poetic sense. For example, a person's mind is neither fragile nor rigid, yet it can still be "shattered." Let's not get too pedantic about word use as we criticize bad writing. pseudanonymous posted:It's not wrong automatically, but like is the thing broken into many pieces? Or is something unusual going on? You wouldn't describe a dead goat as shattered unless it.. you know shattered. Even if it was broken into many pieces I'd probably describe it as ripped apart, or something like that. Especially when the goat isn't shattered, nor is it destroyed. Both of these imply that the goat is no longer recognizable as a goat. When you say a goat has been shattered or destroyed, I picture a twisted arrangement of meat that's probably been torn apart and is recognizable only by, say, the shape of the horns or hooves. It's perfectly fine to say that 'shattered bodies lay around the battlefield' or whatever. It's not really appropriate to say the goat has been shattered when Kaden thinks it is still alive when he spots it and only realizes it isn't when he's right on top of it. Even then, the goat has only been disemboweled and decapitated. Shattered? Destroyed? Hardly. Mutilated, maybe. Butchered, mangled, dismembered -- there's heaps of more appropriate words and I don't think it's pedantry to point out that a component of bad writing is imprecise word usage. Staveley also clearly isn't trying for poetry. What he means is just 'dead goat' and he wants to punch it up. There's a lot of stuff in these first four or so chapters where it's like he's gone on a thesaurus spree. In the prologue, we get 'imprecations' instead of 'curses.' In this chapter, we get shattered, destroyed, and the usage of 'defile' instead of, say, gap. The fact that he uses words like imprecations and defile then misuses shattered is evidence of that 'thesaurus abuse', IMO. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Feb 17, 2019 |
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Feb 17, 2019 06:17
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LitRPGs are total garbage. A genre created by people who want to write something yet have only read status bars and combat logs from MMOs. The best part of them is that the term LitRPG was used freely by the wider LitRPG community until that Doctor Kong guy trademarked it. Now, everyone else has to use the term 'gamelit.' It's like if that one company had managed to trademark 'Let's Play.' But if you want people to throw money at you on Kindle Unlimited, LitRPGS/gamelit is the way to go. The top ten in genres like sci-fi, superheroes and fantasy are often dominated by that stuff. They almost always overlap with some of the other odious trends in amateur fiction these days, such as 'harem' and 'isekai.'
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Feb 21, 2019 21:35
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hackbunny posted:Huh, what's the difference? Very little. Isekai is the Japanese word for what amounts to portal fiction. Y'know, someone gets transported to some strange world, blah blah blah. LitRPGs tend to make use of it, by either putting the protagonist in a world that just happens to run entirely on game rules some nerd has made up in his head, or by having the video game be so real and immersive and detailed that it essentially functions as a 1:1 simulation of another world. my bony fealty posted:if you want video games why not not just play video games idgi Bonaventure posted:they don't want to play games, they want to make games; but they don't know how to program, and getting together and paying a development team isn't possible. but writing? hell, anyone can write! Bit of this, bit of that. Bit of nerds understanding that reading is something smart people do and they want to be seen as smart.
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Feb 21, 2019 22:37
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Kchama posted:Nah, I'd say this is untrue. They have a fair amount of overlap because Isekai is a very popular way to set up a GameLit/LitRPG story, but by no means does Isekai require anything of the GameLit genre. Hell, Isekai predates it by a lot in both America and Japan. Isekai's largely just gotten a bad name from really awful GameLit using it as setup. As a fellow pedant, I respect your commitment to being technically correct. But on the other hand, I feel you are misusing your power.
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Feb 22, 2019 00:09
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Srice posted:Every time I look at the web novel thread to see what's being talked about I see folks talking about how much it sucks to be reading an isekai where the protagonist keeps sex slaves and then they keep reading it anyways. That's my isekai story ty for reading. The web serial thread is a hell of a place, and I say that as someone who writes a web serial.
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Feb 22, 2019 00:33
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Uwah!? I've Been Teleported To A Magical VRMMO World And My Hot Sister Is A Level 1 Whale Knight?!
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Feb 22, 2019 00:49
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pikachode posted:when i was reading sanderson's meticulously detailed and yet breathtakingly un-immersive descriptions of battlefields i had a disconcerting experience because try as i might to see things from the protagonist's perspective, and i tried, i could only picture the scene in top-down isometric with all the little bloodless fighting men and buildings lined up in perfect neat rows, like i was playing age of empires and what is age of empires but a game where you "build" a "world"?
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Feb 22, 2019 03:15
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now, of course, the holy grail is isekai xianxia litrpg that's when you know you've found something special. oh yes indeed
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Feb 22, 2019 03:50
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Kchama posted:Alas! The golden day of Isekai was before it was even coined as a genre! it's the chinese light novel equivalent. they are extremely formulaic. like litrpgs and isekai, they have a weird, inexplicable online following of white teenagers who are attracted to the formulaic 'power creep' aspects. it's very strange. you can make heaps of money by translating them from chinese to english via patreon.
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Feb 22, 2019 04:13
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Feb 23, 2019 01:14
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Any time when the story comes to a crashing halt to explain something which has no relevance to the plot and enlightens nothing new about the characters, doesn't set tone or establish themes, and feels like it's come straight out of the author's setting notes, that's  worldbuilding .quote:“Someone’s gauged my eyes out.” is another way to say “I’m blind.”
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Feb 23, 2019 02:11
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quote:"poo poo behind the ears"
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Feb 23, 2019 02:14
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Okay, Brandon. edit: lol @ worldbuilding is just children playing make-believe (and i like to read books that capture this feeling)
Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Feb 23, 2019 |
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Feb 23, 2019 02:46
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hackbunny posted:I just wanted to post about bizarre bits of worldbuilding but then I found /r/worldbuilding and, help you trapped me in there too you son of a bitch
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Feb 23, 2019 12:42
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