>>24763682
>that cover art
I can't tell is shes lying on a sofa or sitting on a chair. The window could be oriented either way. The thing behind her could be a rug or a wall hanging.

Yeah it looks pretty weird

>>24763706
it looks fine in full res but it's wonky as a thumbnail. many such cases
>>24763720
>silent replying a perfectly cromulent post
you smell like a bad egg

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>>24763682
why am I in the OP?
how did you know that I was finishing vol.3 tonight

>>24763706
sofa
the title covers it up a bit

>>24763827
this looks gay

>>24763827
why does her midsection have a giant pussy with mouth and tongue? and why wear converse?

>>24763827
The Volume 2 art was more dynamic, should commission that artist again since they're better with perspective

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>>24763849
he's not doing commissions anymore
picrel will likely be vol.4 cover art

>>24763845
a) "The Wound-like Grin"
b) those are steel toe boots

>>24763838
understandable, you would know

>armpit on the cover
Now THAT's a high level technique.

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>>24763863
this is also a vol. 4 cover contender with the caveat that i would have to use the title text to cover up the dumptruck

>>24761629
Surprised no one mentioned Thundamoo's stuff since that's pretty much all her stories. Bioshifter is really good if you can tolerate the annoying politics references. Magical Girl Mechincal Heart is pretty good sufferporn too.

>>24763881
I didn't know akaso-anon was a gooner
I have added this information to the eternal databanks

>>24763962
thundamoo writes genuinely well on a sentence level, but the constant suffering and lack of strong payoff turns me off
I read MGMH recently and the "big moment" everyone was waiting for just wasn't all that interesting, and I stopped reading that same chapter

>>24763964
pinups are obligatory

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>out of alcohol and vape
writing sober is so awful....

>>24764029
i wish booze helped my writing
just makes me sleepy

>>24764029
>Vape
Fucking zoomers get out of my board

Okay I'll admit I laughed my ass off at the end of FFF book two when Jacques earned a "cheat skill" for his accomplishments helping to kill an S rank and then rolled the 1 in 37 billion "you get nothing" option because of his complete dogshit luck stat

>>24764062
fr F-anon is a visionary writer and should ignore all feedback otherwise

>>24764054
but I just turned 30...

>>24764095
I also just turned 30. But I neither vape nor wr*te

>>24764054
vaping isn't a gen z thing, my millennial sisters (30+) both vape
you're disconnected as fuck from society

Alcohol helps me at 1-3 drinks and then makes me useless at 4+
Exception being if it's a really easy to write, exciting scene in which I can still write it being really drunk

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>>24764190
Typical ballmer peak
But really the GOAT writing assistance substance is caffeine (preferably delivered via energy drink).

>>24764248
true and real
I'm pretty sure I've got undiagnosed ADHD that I've been self-medicating with caffeine since age 13
the part that tipped me off is that it doesn't have the normal "upper" effects for me, I can down 300mg and go to sleep no problem

>>24763881
her ass fat

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>>24764306
sure is
her body count is fatter (the murder kind)

>>24764304
I was like that through my 20s, but then I hit my 30s and that stopped real fast. Now if I have any caffeine after 2 or 3pm I'm up super late. Actually just in general my sleep rhythm has been shit unless I'm entirely off caffeine. But fuck that I'm writing right now.

Do any xianxia stories describe what civilization was like before cultivators isolated themselves from mortal life, and the process of how that happened?

>>24764248
>>24764304
I'd advise against caffeine. I do take Ashwagandha and it's helped a lot more than alcohol and weed ever could.

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>>24764324
I wrote three books in 9 months on caffeine (avg 500mg/day), soon to be four books in 10-11 months.

Caffeine is simply the best. Someday I hope to match the output of Kazuma Kamachi-sensei, my idol.

>>24764161
>My roastie sisters that still act as retarded teenagers
You sure showed me

>>24763636
>Have you actually read if beyond the first couple of chapters? It's expounded upon quite thoroughly how the nobility retains their control.
Yes, and it's retarded. The entire premise itself is too. I haven't read the most recent arc, but the worldbuilding before that was so bad that I'm not going to either.

Re-requesting quintessential murderhobo core. But if the protagonist picks up friends or talking companions on the way does not count!

>>24764393
Just out of curiosity what do you consider ahktual good world building?

>>24764324
I've given Ashwagandha a shot, didn't do anything even in inadvisably high doses.

>>24764388
yeah i think you got it correct this time. Vaping was an annoying teenager thing back in the late 00s/early 2010s. It is still an annoying teenager thing rather than something belonging to a specific generation.

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https://rentry.co/xg2zpz5d https://rentry.co/d4ov7oy8
Some original og chapters of A Game of Cosmic Titans first rewritten about a year ago now and finally decided to repurpose them for the new draft. Any thoughts, critiques would be appreciated. I cursory read where I could but not too bothered about grammar or spelling at the moment, I'll look over any for line edits once I feel I'm done. Also wow the draft is 40k words right now, I could possibly finish this by December... or January. I'm on chapter 15 (these are 10–11). So I might consider launching it when I have around 20 chapters written.

>>24764396
reverend insanity should be mandatory reading before posting on /wng/

>>24764441
neat, I always liked this sort of grim space opera
>It was the janissary, the elite guard division of the Kaiser’s Varangian Guard
Are these placeholder names? It's awkward, even more so if you understand the historical references. The Varangian Guard were almost exclusively bodyguards to the Emperor and their family while Janissaries were much more numerous during their era and also served as shock troops in infantry formations. So if anything it should be the other way around here.
>True to the man’s words, both janissary stepped on the edges of the maroon carpet as the groaning of the vast door opened. Achilles felt a brush on his shoulder and he yanked away the guard, opting to take a wide step and fall in line.
It's not really clear to me what's happening here, he pulled away from the guard or what?
>Electric excitement spurred Achilles to spur his gaze back at Zhuo
self-explanatory

>>24764397
An expensive world to explore with various cultures and peoples and other interesting ideas.
Pretty much the exact opposite of the entire worldbuilding hinging on one (type of) magical contract. That one aspect is so oppressive that it overshadows all the rest and makes it not feel like a world.

It's like if you had a story about the Sun dying. It overshadows every other problem or conflict that could possibly happen in the story. There can be no interesting adventures or romance or ANYTHING until the problem is dealt with, because it's such an all-consuming problem. Anything else just feels like a side story.

RinoZ could've crafted the coolest fantasy world ever, but this one factor takes away all of its enjoyment. I wish I had never read it in the first place.

>>24763234
>Sometimes I wish MC was more normal. Maybe a really strong mage, maybe even OP, but that he would actually take part in classes normally and just try hard. Make friends, have relationships, piss off teachers.
Funny you should mention, I'm currently working on a story like that. The MC is op and experienced, but kind of one-trick pony and still learns new, studies seriously at the school, and builds connections. I'm just a bit concerned if people actually even care about the lesson content. I feel most are into this genre for the fantasy of "if I had superpowers in my school days..."

Any other thoughts you'd like to share on the setting? Stuff that really annoys you, or what you'd like to see that others rarely do?

>>24764536
Is this a subtle jab at Dying Earth lol

>>24764498
>>24764441
>Janissaries, Achilles, Varangian guard, Kaiser
Achilles - a Greek mythological hero that fought in the battle of Troy
Varangian guard - Norse warriors defending the Roman Emperor between the 10th century and the 14th century AD.
Janissaries - Islamic slave soldiers that belonged to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire between the 14th and 19th centuries. The Ottoman Empire was established after the defeat of the Roman Empire in that territory.
Kaiser - German for Emperor. Comes from Julius Caesar's name. I don't think the Romans would've used the barbarian word to refer to their ruler.
>both janissary stepped on the edges of the maroon carpet as the groaning of the vast door opened.
The GROANING opened?

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The novelty of chatgpt writing for you wears off really quickly when you spend more time tardwrangling it than moving forward.

What are some less-used weapons for a WN protagonist. Slings, quarterstaff, and ironically mace/warhammer all seem really underused. No protagonist in Isekai kills the demon king with a goedendag.

>>24764498
>Are these placeholder names?
Since it's being brought up, I haven't decided yet. I'm aware of the historical contexts but it didn't particularly bother me, though I can understand it would ruffle fellow/his/torians. Some other names I had in mind for units like these are Ritterbrüder, Diadochi, Arditi, or Farina. Something that sounds exotic, like Sardaukar. I think I may look at the Varangian and Janissary parts later and reword them differently. Namely, perhaps Janissary not being a division udner the Varangian, to signify political divisions between the emperor and majordomo in that regard. I just think they sounded cool, but changing either to Arditi/Farina sounds cool.

I wasn't too sure about Kaiser, though. I slipped up and realized Kaiser and Emperor are used interchangeably between the two chapters. I'll probably keep it as Emperor to keep it consistent with Yellow Typhoon.

>It's not really clear to me what's happening here, he pulled away from the guard or what?
I could've worded it better. Achilles was brushing away the guard.

>The GROANING opened?
Noted, thanks.

>>24764613
who cares? you don't use one, you use the polearm to stab, then they get in too close and you switch to your sword and you slash and bash and use it as a lever and then it gets taken away and you switch to your dagger and stab the muffuga

>>24764312
and that's a GOOD thing

>>24764613
litrpg mc with a scythe. but not grimdork grim reaper scythe, like an actual hick farmer from buttfuck nowhere who bent his grass cutting tool up into the world's shittiest spear due to being too poor for real weapons

>>24764632
A hand scythe would be interesting. Sort of like a hick Khopesh.

>>24764062
Imagine ruining the gameplay by cheating.

A magic system should never destroy narrative entropy and should ideally enable narrative entropy; the magic shouldn't make the things in focus less relevant, it should make them more relevant.

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>>24764680
He won.

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>>24764680
He won.

>>24764680
please explain what you mean by narrative entropy

>>24764731
Since entropy refers to the state of disorder in a closed system, anon must mean that magic systems should make things as confusing as possible, and if the thing in focus in the narrative is the magic system, then it should make disarray twice as convoluted!

>>24764731
It means the amount of information necessary to describe the story. On the surface, it's something that seems like it should always increase as the story progresses, but various new events can make previous events irrelevant, and new events can have diminishing returns on how much they increase the narrative entropy if they are just retreading of previous events.

>>24764750
>On the surface, it's something that seems like it should always increase as the story progresses
But that makes no sense, because the heaviest information load is always in the beginning. After you've established the setting, characters, and whatever necessary conditions they work by, the amount of necessary information to keep the story going can only decrease.

>>24764793
No, entropy refers to the entropy of the story taken as a whole, or taken from the start to the point where you are currently at. Whether or not something actually contributes to the entropy isn't certain until the story ends, at which point its relevance to that end state is considered.
What I'm talking about in the second sentence is a sort of "narrative efficiency", where some content delivers greater entropy for its size than others. Narrative efficiency is usually the highest at the start due to it setting relevant foundational information, but it can end up much lower at the end if things established in the beginning are irrelevant by the end.

Does it even make sense to write a chink style novel as a gweilo? Me and any potential readers aren't going to have a great degree of familiarity with the tropes, and the entire point of tropes is to be something the writer and audience are mutually familiar with.

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>>24763682
I had this idea about a human woman getting abducted into a galatic emperor's harem, but when I started writing it, I realized it was pretty boring.

>>24764836
I am writing a wuxia and I only know the tropes and the feel of one.

>>24764843
You could probably transition it into politicking. Have her get his child and focus on putting her child's ass on the throne.

>>24764836
>Does it even make sense to write a chink style novel as a gweilo?
of course not, and why the fuck would you?

>>24764852
Is the "one" an actual Chinese-written wuxia story, or a Korean "wuxia"? Because Koreans are so westernized that it's basically the same as a white incel nerd writing it.

>>24764750
>>24764828
NTA but I'm not sure if "entropy" reflects the ideas you're trying to express. Maybe I'm misunderstanding on both fronts.
The way you've described it sounds like you're treating narrative as a mechanical watch and affixing this label of "narrative entropy" to the sum of parts that tell time (i.e. story) which doesn't really make sense.
If this is a theory you're working on, I think nomenclature evoking ideas of certain narrative elements being differently/disproportionately weighted might be more appropriate.

>>24764836
>>24764852
it will have the form but not the soul

>>24764855
Working idea was to retell the story of Alexander's wife, Roxana.
>she is the only get pregnant
>emperor dies
>generals begin to fight among themselves how to divide empire
>she takes role as regent and tries secure inheritance for her son
>she gets murdered by one of the generals

>>24764843
oh it's genderbent Princess of the Void

>>24764882
Would recommend taking liberties to tell a more engaging tale.

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Peak

>>24764870
The narrative is a closed system that the story progresses over time within, and the degree to which it has progressed is described by its entropy. The elements of a story react towards their conclusion the same way chemicals react towards their products.

>>24764935
states of change and efficiency, narrative weight etc can be articulated much more simply without shoehorning in words like entropy which have existing associations that obfuscate what you're trying to express in a storytelling context

>>24764869
Haven't read the Chinese stuff outside of cultivation slop so that's it.

>>24764843
How about: she gets abducted and presented to the galactic emperor. The galactic emperor thinks she joined of her own free will and when he finds out all hell breaks loose politically. She gets targeted for "not knowing her place" while the emperor tried to protect her, but isn't very good at it, because he never considered such lowly matters. Things get so out of hand a rebellion starts in the kingdom and they try to assassinate the emperor but the heroine somehow saves him.

>>24764843
Why waste your time and mental energy thinking about such nonsense?

>>24765117
Have this cycle of depressing life.
I spend weeks coding, then I relieve myself by creative writing

>>24765185
You relieve yourself throuhg a troon fantasy about being a woman taken by a galactic bull and bearing his children? Okay, but please don't share it

>>>24763714
Hello, Tina. How are you going?

Is it gay if I get turned on while writing a scene where the protagonist is turned into a woman by the wizard and then gangraped by the hordes of evil?

>>24765255
better to self-insert as the hordes of evil even if you risk developing multiple personality disorder
it's better than trooning out

Do people read webnovels, or only write them?

>>24765354
neither
it's more about talking about planning to write one

>>24765354
there are plenty of readers but none of them are here
why would they be here?

>>24765398
to scout out tomorrow's rising stars

>>24763682
Went through the archives just a bit ago and gathered what seems to have been written by those who are here. Only did Royal Road for now. To be seen how much I do with it. Currently sorted by alphabetical order. May change it to something else later. I haven't looked at how successful each one is, but one I saw may be having more financial success than all others listed combined..

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSNZali-jIk2MASsAWVf8N7A8BlSyzPbAFV_BhsA5Ip3SWfMPWKxaXf8Pdb7f0TgFyWis31BzirtPeR/pubhtml

>>24765255
That’s way gay faggot

>>24765606
fake news, i haven't seen 64 on /wng/ once
pretty sure you picked up a few stray recs too, i didn't know the REND author was here

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Thank god, I've been subtle enough no internet sleuth has tied my RR persona to here.

I wouldn't want to ruin my reputation with a 4chan association.

>>24765666
>666
Thanks Satan for your input, but I don't think 4chan would smear your reputation more than it already is.
>>24765354
I think most regulars are writers, but there's a handful of readers here.

>>24765660
It's just called that because they're all webnovels. It's sourced from all of /lit/ though. What would you prefer it be called?

>REND
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/16720921#p16727352

>>24764613
flail, morningstar, whip, bayonette, sickle, tentacle, halberd, bludgeon, cudgel, pickaxe, claws, hatchet, crossbow

>>24764613
A fucking SHIELD!

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>>24764613
>>24765730
Hammer and Shield is getting big representation in The Pinnacle Warrior (warning, pacing is slow and characters have bad cases of the stupid for plot reasons)
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/118250/the-pinnacle-warrior-litrpg-dungeon-diving-book
It's stubbing soon so download it now if it sounds interesting.

>>24764613
The protagonist of Dinniman's previous story (Dominion of Blades) uses Urumi

>>24765606
Wow, went multiple threads, because you included my stuff from a single thread which +2 months ago.
I guess next step would be categorizing them by genre? I guess 80% of them are fantasy, though.

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>>24765730

>>24765813
No, going through the threads would take too long and only have an overall small amount of results.
I used this
https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search&search_text=Royalroad.com%2Ffiction and ctrl-f for the same to find posted stories.

>>24764852
>I am writing a wuxia and I only know the tropes
this is 99% of "western cultivation" sloppers

>>24765255
turned into a woman? male hordes of evil? that's 100% straight. enjoy.

>>24765942
NTA but what you think of as a "westoid xianxia slopper" is not someone who actually understands xianxia or knows the tropes, but rather has a very vague idea of what the genre might be based on a few memes and flanderized tropes from notoriously dogshit novels (even more dogshit than the average xianxia)

By comparison wuxia is a much less high-concept genre and is much closer to western swords and sorcery so it's easier for a westerner, even if he hasn't been consuming it for years and years, to write a decent example of the genre

Also this is a controversial take but some of the best xianxia i've read has come from westerners who unironically try to write straight xianxia without having been exposed to the "true xianxia" of china
Not to be mistaken with westerners who try to "deconstruct" or "fix" the genre and end up writing "western SoL webslop with a china skin" (Cultivation Nerd)

>>24765398
>>24765547
reader here
recently finished lord of the mysteries. pretty great although it definitely sped way up near the end.
i rarely look at rising stars though, usually go for novels that are already big + recommended
not sure what I will read next.

>>24765959
>Not to be mistaken with westerners who try to "deconstruct" or "fix" the genre and end up writing "western SoL webslop with a china skin" (Cultivation Nerd)
God, you've hit the nail on the head. I've been reading Warby Picus' Sky Pride over on RR and just like you said, it's using the veneer of Chinese novels to mask its own westernness. Yes, there's all the usual expressions and the courting death and the cliche rivals/enemies later on, and there's some exploration of what the five elements mean and yin and yang, but all of that is clearly nothing more than slight obfuscation of found family bullshit and waffling about PTSD and whatnot.

In one scene the protagonist's adopted dad kills a guy from a rank higher and faces heavenly backlash. He winds up beating back the tribulation because he's actually more committed to Daoist thought than the heavens themselves. Honestly, that really just says it all.

>>24764190
I sometimes will have a few drinks or even several. and try writing. It works okay to sketch out aggression and violence, and I can go over it and expand it sober later on. Its just not particularly useful other than for violence.

>>24765998
>he winds up beating back the tribulation because he's actually more committed to Daoist thought than the heavens themselves

this doesn't surprise me and I wouldn't be surprised to see it in "real" xianxia either
the Heavens are often corrupt and just a blatant stand-in for the CCP and are in fact not a path to the Great Dao

>>24765998
>found family
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only RR reader who hates this shit. It's just overdone and uninteresting. Why not have an actual family dynamic? Why not portray normality? We've gone so far in one direction that a traditional family structure and issues are totally exotic and novel now.
This is one reason my MC's gf/wife has big tits and is conventionally attractive.

>>24765231
>Hello, Tina. How are you going?
all right all thing considered.

>>24765606
I guess Tina Migarlo wasn't in the threads? Could have sworn I was.

>>24765255
it's straight as long as the (fe)mc doesn't kiss the wizard at the end. only becomes absolutely gay at that point especially if there's some tongue action.

>>24766029
>>24765859
>Only did Royalroad for now
Yes, I saw that, and will be added in time.

>>24765354
>>24765398
I'm reading and writing them.

>>24765354
I read to steal ideas for my own webnovel.

Too bad it's still ending up to look retarded. Enjoying the learning curve of it tho. How they write 1000 words a day on the other hand, is beyond me.

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Anyone still subbed to this guy's patreon?
I was sure he completely dropped from the face of the earth and would never finish the series but I'm not paying two bucks for an update

>>24766022
HUG BRO.
Wish to you all the luck of this world and beyond.

It's completely normal in a fantasy setting about adventures and dungeons and multiple races though. Even The Lord of the Rings did it. A DnD party is also a found family, just the way the genre works. Though I guess one could write a story that sticks closer to the real middle ages were blood and fealty to the local lord take over.
In sci-fi/cyberpunk where humanity is so fractured it makes sense that your best friend might have 4 arms.

>>24766343
Thank you ChatGPT, but no one asked you to state the obvious.

>>24766355
My point is it's not some west has fallen type shit, it was always like that

>>24766126
he's just milking extra beer money. if he was man enough to say his real pen name he wouldn't have to do this but I guess he's embarrassed about his haremlit days.

>>24766126
>harem cuck author cucks his audience
it's like poetry, it rhymes

>>24765606
Mine (Keygemin) ended up in the list, and I've only ever linked to it twice. (I think.)

>>24766410
What's his other pen name?

>>24766455
Once ever anytime anywhere on /lit/ is enough. You posted it three times in September.

>>24766410
He's probably not embarrassed by haremlit but the fact that one necromancer girl in his books cucks the mc with corpses

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Alrighty, those of you with a patreon please chime in here. I'm stroking my autism by trying to figure out my stats, and I'd like some help.

I'm trying to figure out how many potential members I'm missing out on, and if the roughly 300+ visitors a month that patreon says are not members are actually unique visitors, or just random bs. Basically I'd like to know if anyone else has similar #s to me, or if I'm really dropping the ball or something.

I've been monitoring my stats like a hawk for the last few weeks, and I can very easily see that I'm getting a few hundred people to visit every month who are not members of any kind. (my conservative estimates. Patreon says 500+ but I don't believe them) Are these potential readers? Fellow authors checking out the competition? Webcrawlers? Maybe new readers check out a patreon before starting a story...? As if to judge if it's worth investing in or not? So many clicking on it, and not subscribing, makes me feel like I'm fking up somehow. I get that its part of the business, that you need X number of people to click on it to get Y to pay for it. But this is already a filtered and converted group, isn't it?

Basically I wanna know if anyone else has similar numbers, or better or worse ones, to make me drink tonight. Or well, to do so in depression or joy. Either one, Idc.

For reference: I only have one tier, 10$. I have 63 members. 2 of them are 'free' rest are paid. I provide basically 0 content to free, so there's nothing really on the patreon to justify someone visiting for.

pic attached is 'last 7 days' per patreon's traffic thingy.

test

>>24766612
>61 paying $10/month?
>$610/month
Are you humblebragging?

>>24766612
ignore the view bs, like you said it could be a bunch of stuff
the actual conversion stat to worry about is followers(readers)->patrons. What % are you at? That'll tell you how engaging your story is

>>24763682
My depression has broken down another barrier for me. I think I'm ready to sell out to Amazon Kindle Unlimited. What's the easiest non-chatbot slop solution?

>>24766698
ku is for after you already have a following

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>litRPG
>AI generated cover and/or writing
>Isekai
>Xianxia
>Cultivation
>Progression
>FemMC
>First person pov
>Multiple POVs
>Grimderp
>Harem
>Evolution
>Time Travel shit
>Capeshit
If your story has any of this I shan't be reading

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>>24766706

>>24766390
the noreads are here >>24766706

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>>24766706

>>24764599
The only viable usage for chatgpt, claude and co is the cheap thrill of breaking it into going along with whatever you say.

>>24766702
Shit, I'm SOL. I don't want to associate my KU self with my free self. One is very normalfag-friendly, the other violates every rule on patreon at least once.

>>24766706
You won't, but everyone else will. These tags are popular because people read them.
AI covers are widespread for obvious reasons.

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>>24765952
Precisely! Were I a powerful wizard who after centuries of back and forth finally defeated mine nemesis do I, kill him outright or change him into a helpless teenage girl with magical restorative abilities enabling him, now a young teenage girl, to heal from any damage which he'll/she'll need due to being mercilessly sullied for all eternity because of being imprisoned within a ground hog day like spell with a thousand ORCS compelled by magic to rape him, now her because magic has turned him into a young teenage girl; who has been programmed with the hope and knowledge that after 8 hours the ORCS goes to sleep, but just when it looks like the limit of their villainy the 8 hours is up, the day resets to 8 hours earlier for the day is locked within a time loop and resets every 8 hours, so do I pass up such a vengeful opportunity or just kill him outright?

I'd just kill them because I'm not gay and there might a be a chance they could escaped because the author game the some macguffin 83 chapters earlier.

>>24766753
Indeed. I think you're right, no plan is 100% fool proof. Were it Tom Riddle and the Quarry, Dumbledore, I think he'd have him sullied for all Eternity. Although, Dumbledore being a poof He just might enjoy it thereby making it no fun, no fun at all.

>>24765606
Pretty good list, do you mind if I put it in the OP?

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>>24765606

my patreon is https://www.patreon.com/AkasoIndustries kthxbai
obligatory commissionpost

>>24766789
>smol hand
Is that so they can use human guns?

>>24766799
Actually very correct, that's the exact reason
I'm justifying having the MC avoid using "Wielding Hands" on his puppets by saying he dislikes the additional layer of disconnection as compared to built-in weapons (it was either that or the usual le ebin hidden weapon assassin puppets and I didn't want to go that route)

>>24766824
to be clear I mean that this is the justification for why he generally prefers dedicated weapon-arms, there would be no point if there was no advantage to doing it since I'm doing a lot of black-box technology and guns are stuff like particle accelerators

that big right arm that's actually attached is the ultra-technology equivalent of three AK47s welded together side by side, the crystals on the end redirect the particle beams so that it can hit the same point with all three "barrels"

the sword is magnetized liquid metal, it can change shape, might give it some other abilities to make it a good option depending on how writing with it turns out

the three-pronged left arm is a wire grappling hand with thrusters

the three bladed spinning cutter is just that, it can detach on a cable like a krull glaive

the BIG HAND is a psionic amplifier for direct brute-force telekinesis (this otherwise requires specific techniques at the cultivation stage these puppets are for), it will later become a trump-card "kills almost anything but is expensive" attack when MC gets blueprints for a backpack powerup unit that can form a "cape" of psionic energy as a one-time super-capacitor for the BIG HAND to use its "fuck you crumples you into a little ball" attack (this of course burns out the backpack unit and requires very expensive repairs)

>>24766849
If you're going to do cloaks you gotta have the Alseides cloak from Escaflowne. Actually they also had liquid metal melee weapons if I remember right.

>>24766862
I was actually planning on rewatching both the series and the movie for inspiration for the puppetmaster story, lol

for the BIG HAND though ("King's Hand") I'm thinking more of an energy cape that only appears when it's about to use the big move

I'm probably not going to use cloaks for these guys specifically (Pillar Templars) because their design already has a disguise function and combat dazzle camo built in (they fold up into the shapes of pillars and their outer armor screws with your vision and even sensors while distracting from their actual structure, specifically when moving, so it doesn't show up on an illust.)

MC has a set of more squat, less humanoid puppets called Coffins that are supposed to be the counterpart to the Pillar Templars, so I might give them cloaks, liquid metal spikes and flamethrowers like the Alseides have would be fairly suitable for them (their gimmick is to grab a target and fire the weapons in their chest cavities point blank)

I've gone wishywashy on whether or not to use a big cloak for the BIG PUPPET that MC actually rides around on, but i'm starting to lean strongly in favour of it, could even have it be an active camo cloak and justify it by saying he only has the one or that it only works on that big puppet for reasons

but yeah lots of ideas just need to actually really get stuck in writing it

>>24766873
>works on that big puppet for reasons
Can just justify it with power supply requirements

>>24766878
this is an option but I would need to contrive a more specific explanation because the puppets are all powered by the puppetmaster through psionic threads, connecting to the puppet's gearbox, and then to the rest of the puppet through the gearbox

so it would be more like "oh the big puppet has a special one-off gearbox because it was given to MC by his master as a parting gift", which is a plot point I'm already working with so... No reason not to use that I guess. the puppet is purposely unfinished and is basically just a mass of spare parts that MC is supposed to use alongside various parts from a specific place to build his "real" personal big puppet There's also the concern of not wanting too many stealth cloaks later on when MC and his enemies are higher level and thus those better gearboxes become more available. I can always make it a niche and almost lost art, the setting of a megastructure just now recovering from a disaster makes it easy to justify cool old shit just not being reproducible with what people know

so basically you're right i'm just autistic about justifying things to my brain goblins, that's how i worldbuild

>>24766887
Not a bad trait for a web novelist to have though, you'd be in trouble if you wrote for pretty much anything else

>>24765606
why is int is my dump stat in there
the only mentions in this thread were anons seeing it on rising stars

>>24766902
I'd like to think the instinctive desire to flesh things out such that they are congruent with my mental image of the setting would be just as helpful if I was writing in standard novel format

>>24766706
>hates multi pov (common trait of low iq self insert sloppers)
>but also hates first person
i don't understand

>>24766926
You can write single pov in limited third person just fine, thoughbeit.

>>24766706
Nobody who writes web novels writes third limited with a male MC sword and board. You're better off reading historical fantasy

What's wrong with first person, if they never give a description of themselves it could work pretty well for self-insert.

>>24766934
Yes obviously but I don't understand why someone other than self insert fags or like, ya/romance booktokkers would irrationally hate pov swaps.

>>24766942
it's always a warning sign for bad writing

>>24766946
examples?

>>24766948
Lord of the Rings Trilogy

>>24766948
>chapter ends on a cliffhanger
>Switch POV
>come back in 5 chapters
>develop 3.5 other completely unrelated plots
>finally back to the first POV
>don't explain how the cliffhanger resolved until the end of the chapter

>>24766954
not finding any novels by that name

multi-pov limited third person is patrician tier
multi-pov first person is god-tier and a sign that author will be an unrecognized great in the literature of that era

>>24766955
fine, powder mage

i dont read a story if it has named characters besides MC, waifu, and goblins #1-999. anything more than that is a warning sign for bad writing

>>24766960
>the MC isn't the goblin's waifu
shit story

>>24766957
>multi-pov first person is god-tier and a sign that author will be an unrecognized great in the literature of that era
examples? please

>>24766960
>Not waifu goblins #1-999

1st person goblin gangang POV novels when

>>24766966
I'm a spider so what

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>>24766969
japanese light novels have been doing this decades ago man. might have been orcs though i dont remember

Kind of want to write a story where the MC uses prophecy magic in a world where prophecy magic is forbidden, due to everybody else misunderstanding how it works. I'd prefer it to have a relevant theme to revolve around, so I'm thinking something like "the MC's goal is to show people that prophecy magic is good, actually", but does that seem cuck-like since they're basically aiming to make themselves no longer be "special"?

>>24766977
elaborate on how it is perceived and how it actually works

>>24766977
Here are a few fortune teller MC ideas:
After Awakening My Third Eye, I Stole All the Hero’s Fortuitous Encounters.
Think You Can Hit Me? Pah! I Saw Through Your Moves Decades Ago.
It Was Foretold That You’d Be Cute: I Abused My Foresight to Spoil My Waifu, Who Was Destined to Be Born 1,000 Years From Now. But Somehow, She Traveled Back Through Time to Meet Me!
Disciple, You Are Fated to Bring Me Good Fortune. So When I Say “Jump,” Close Your Eyes and Leap Headfirst Off This Cliff!
God of the Casino: It’s Not Gambling If I Can Predict the Outcome With 100% Accuracy.
Seer? Clairvoyant? I’m No Prophet. I Just Saw Your Death Flag Coming a Mile Away, That’s All.

>>24766553
I don't know as well, but he's still writing in a different genre as he said prior to leaving. (no, I'm not bullshitting you and gatekeeping you from info).

>>24767034
I know, he used to write dark fantasy before starting heremlit as a side thing. His og pen name isn't available anywhere in plain text. Lot's of redditors know apparently, but you have to dm them to ask but I don't feel like making an account.

>>24766789
>doritos head
>red eyes
I know my spaz of a friend would read it for the design alone. too bad that fucker's married to a tradwife who hates anything fantasy at home.

>>24767003
Prophecy magic gathers information about future events before they happen. Prophecies are never wrong, and this creates a misunderstanding: People think they are powerless to avoid bad prophecies.
The MC, however, understands that the future is just a derivative of the present. The universe merely "chooses" futures that have no inconsistencies. The problem other people have is that they inevitably become lazy in the face of good prophecies(if they see success, they don't put in effort, leading to failure, which is an inconsistency) and helpless in the face of bad prophecies(they see failure, so they don't try, so they fail, which IS consistent). The fatalist mindset makes the universe choose bad prophecies over good prophecies.

>>24767035
>leddit
well, it'll stay unknown for me. ain't stooping that low for my stash.

>>24767042
nta, that sounds more interesting. Just don't go down the route where they hate the prophet solely because they "only bring misfortune".

>>24767036
he doesn't have to buy the paperback, he can just read it on his phone :)
there's also the old "it's not fantasy it's speculative sci-fi" excuse (which is true, mostly)

>>24766942
I hate first person precisely because only self-insert fags and YA sloppers like it
I hate multi-pov because is always one of the followings: Author trying to ape gurm, author filling the story with irrelevant povs nobody cares about (and a lot of characters you don't like that you're forced to tolerate for whole chapters as the pov)
Third person omniscient and third person limited are the patricians choice
Second person is a fucking meme

4th person perspective

Panties of the female hero perspective

That exists
>https://www.novelupdates.com/series/panties-reincarnation-im-a-pair-of-panties-so-what/
It's even evolution because he starts out as diapers

>>24767073
>self-insert fags and YA sloppers
represents a huge portion of the RR audience

>>24767109
well, yes, but the fact i'm pumping septic tanks doesn't mean i will jump in feet first even if i ultimately benefit from the shit

>>24764536
Ahh so your complaint is that it is too grim dark, not that it is lacking in world building. And that is a fine reason for not liking something and just means you should probably stick more to 'slice of life' tagged stories then anything else.

>>24767063
Most of what the MC uses prophecy magic for would be optimizing other stuff. Prophecy magic is, ironically enough, kind of dogshit at intel gathering, because the more you "trust" the intel, the less useful it is.

>>24765739
This suffers from a serious case of lack of suspense. Like every time anything with the potential to remotely inconvenience the MC there is immediately a POV switch to some super strong ally that has all the nastiness well in hand. Probably the author's protection measure against snow flakes staining their sheets but it really does kill any long term interest in the story for me.

>>24767123
How far did you get? There's been a few instances where the MC (stupid for plot reasons) fucks herself over (mainly socially), and plenty of times in the dungeon where things got hairy. Granted, she has a self-healing skill which is totally busted, but there's enough mystery that I'm still interested.

Plus, she's working for an actual coherent dungeon diving guild that WANTS divers to be successful and live. Higher strength divers on standby to assist is not only reasonable, it should be expected.

My biggest problem with the story is more on the characters getting awful cases of the stupids when necessary to drive the plot along the way the author wants. It's really obvious. I can understand characters being stupid in his head, and the writing portrays that, but he needs to signpost better.

>>24767113
No. From my perspective the worldbuilding is either incomplete or nonsensical. Maybe after you read 5000 chapters of it it makes sense, but it doesn't as far as I read. The society doesn't feel believable and since everything in that story depends on that society it ruins the novel for me. It might be the best necromancer story anybody has ever written, I don't know, because that one world building detail entirely ruins the series.

Everything being locked down by magical contracts implies that the entire world is so thoroughly under control that nobody anywhere could possibly gain classes without government control. That can't even happen in the modern world even with all of our surveillance tech. And if they can't have such tight control over it then their system would've collapsed long ago through outside pressure with divider and conquer tactics.

>>24765739
>FeMC
It's a shame. Cool concept otherwise.

>>24767135
I haven't read it but I don't get why they wouldn't just have a political enemy inside the guild screwing them over socially instead of having it entirely be the MCs fault from being stupid.

>>24767073
First person isn't just YA, it seems to be the majority of tradpub SFF in [currentyear]. I miss 3p omniscient...

Moby Dick? YA slop. In Search of Lost Time? Self-insert fags' fantasy. The entire production of HP Lovecraft? Same shit.

>>24767149
Most don't even bother with a framing narrative anymore, gosh darn do I hate women.

>>24767149
It might be because tradpub has started hiring fanfic writers since they already have established audiences.

>>24764536
>uses sun dying as an example for his poont
>dying earth, where compelling conflict and great adventures occur despite the explicit detail that the sun could go out at any moment
>zothique cycle, where the sun has entered its final years, yet compelling sword and sorcery tales are still written
is this concept of worldbuilding an absolute, ontological thing to you? with no exceptions, it being as evident as the sky’s blueness or that objects released from a height fall to you? can not even a hypothetical work of a hypothetical writer, who is the sum pinnacle of all writers in the English language, past or present, eternally, become only the bitterest of poisons if it fails in this one respect for you?

>>24767140
The latest arc had exactly that.
It's not the MC's entire fault, but it's noticeable that characters act more stupid than you'd expect at critical junctures to set up conflicts. The writing otherwise is decent and creative. Plus, hammer and shield.

>>24766784
You may as well. I'll be working on it off and on.

>>24767139
There are a few more hammer-wielding MC stories out there. See if you can find them!

>>24764536
>It's like if you had a story about the Sun dying
Have you even touched a book in your life.

>>24766957
>multi-pov first person is god-tier and a sign that author will be an unrecognized great in the literature of that era
The only thing I read that was Multipov first person was a Worm fanfic. Although, now that I think about it, it was one of the best fanfics I've read, so maybe you're onto something

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>writing
>going good
>decide to ride this as far as it will take me
>stay awake
>the INSTANT I cross the threshold of 18hrs awake I am struck with back pain and sand-in-eyes
IT'S ON THE FUCKING MINUTE, HOW

>>24767249
>IT'S ON THE FUCKING MINUTE, HOW
Earth has really lazy world-building

>>24767249
>no backpain for the first 18 hours
ah, youth. how enviable

>>24767073
That's most audiences nowadays. You're going to have to accept it and start writing in first person.

>>24767042
Thinking about it, how could I explain why MC knows the true nature of prophecy magic? They could "just figure it out on their own", but the specific scenario kind of requires absolute confidence from the beginning. I could alternatively have them be an isekaijin who understands it because of other world knowledge, but isekai is lazy innit.

>>24767324
An ancient prophet, seeing the misunderstanding taking root, prophesized that in the future when the understanding of prophecy magic is lost, a young man who seeks the truth of prophecy magic will uncover it.

>>24766957
>multi-pov first person
this is eastoid webnovel staple, especially in those regret/misunderstanding slop genre

>>24767336
Kind of doesn't feel believable that the proper method of harnessing prophecy magic could just exist and then be lost like that.

>>24767344
It could be that it was just this one guy who figured it out on death's door and, as he was dying, prophesied for that truth to emerge as a last ditch effort

>>24767339
>regret/misunderstanding slop genre
That's an entire genre now? Fuck

>>24767339
>>24767389
i prefer the slightly more sophisticated acquiescenceslop

>>24767353
Maybe there is a malicious secret society that worked over the eons to have prophecy magic become unpopular so they could do what they do without being found out. Prophecy magic being the one way to indirectly detect their activities.

>>24767353
Even if the MC stumbled upon some old lost knowledge because of that, it still wouldn't provide a convincing case in-universe for this method being the solution to the problem. It's hard to be certain that the issue is fixed because, historically, people could use prophecy magic without issue for quite a while before a "backfire"(being trapped by a bad prophecy) event occurs.

>>24767344
You say but there's dozens of ways you could hand-waive it away
>It requires a very specific, rare aptitude only seen in some absurd like 1 in every 10 million
>It requires a lifetime of commitment to even begin seeing the most minor of results, leading to its eventual decline
>The practitioners wielding it were all killed off after telling the fate of some schizo high level being who lashed out after hearing something he didn't like
>They foresaw a magical apocalypse but saw no way to avert it, leading to their death
IRL a lot of inventions and technological advances were lost to human hubris. Like the romans who invented their own steam engine thousands of years ahead of time but of course did nothing with it.

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>>24767389
yeah, pic related is the representative example of that genre

>>24765739
>FeMC
As long as there's no romance, I'm interested.

>>24767138
The end of book three starts to touch on this stuff with the old ones (three old gods) being at odds with the new 5 human god upstarts and losing one of their number (who the populace now refers to as the god of magic) in challenging the old three for realm supremacy. in book 4 further law gets unveiled about how the pyramid-esque contract and bloodline mind control trickles down from the human divines as it turns out they basically dont give a fuck about the realm or the rifts and will sacrifice any amount of the human populace and realm stability for maintaining their strangle hold of the human populace. At the end of book 4 and in book five the rebellion and the three old ones counterstroke at opening up a alternate class alter for different/free class acquisition rolls out and the freedom your complaining about comes into being.

Yeah you have to read a bit to get there and its a couple of 'books' in but its a web novel and free ffs so i can't see how that is a complaint in the first place?

>>24767429
he's literally me

>>24767413
Those examples don't really apply here, but I could feasibly say that prophecy magic degraded because the anti-fatalist mentality necessary to make it work was wrongly declared as superstition, and by the time people realized the now-dysfunctional prophecy magic was causing all sorts of problems, they forgot that this issue was already solved in the past.

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I've noticed that western webnovels writer generally focus more on worldbuilding, magic/power system and internal consistency. while eastern webnovels focus on drama, character interaction, romance and cliches

>>24767487
No wonder westslop is unreadable

>>24767487
I don't think that's true, western webnovel writers seem to be more interested in drama than magic/power systems, especially the minutiae of it

>>24767487
The differences are largely superfluous, there's a high amount of overlap nowadays. For years, honestly.

>>24766849
>that big right arm that's actually attached is the ultra-technology equivalent of three AK47s welded together side by side, the crystals on the end redirect the particle beams so that it can hit the same point with all three "barrels"
This is dumb unless the barrels are able to zero individually (which is extremely complicated to do), otherwise their points of impact are going to differ wildly based on range. If the barrels aren't what controls the zero and the crystals do it, then why does it have barrels at all? In addition having three weapons strapped together means you have three feed systems (or I guess power units in this case), requires additional access points, has additional gas chambers, recoil springs... Basically you've got a bunch of redundant parts, which sounds like it's running contrary to the type of character you're writing.

It would make much more sense as a single weapon system with three barrels to distribute waste heat better, the same logic as the extra barrels on a minigun. If someone is capable of making an integrated gun arm then they're capable of making an integrated gun that isn't slapped together crap. The point of impact for each barrel is different, but it's a close-mid range high rate of fire automatic weapon, and the difference is known and predictable, so it doesn't matter. It's not a precision shooting weapon, it's a volume of fire weapon.

Ultimately though all humanoid robo puppets become irrelevant in the face of mass produced, disposable fantasy Temu Drone with fantasy Temu Semtex strapped to it operated by fantasy bunker furry.

>>24767518
this, in my perspective, jap authors are autistic about trivial details

>>24767138
>Everything being locked down by magical contracts implies that the entire world is so thoroughly under control that nobody anywhere could possibly gain classes without government control
They can't, because there IS nowhere else. Tyron goes beyond the borders of his homeland and realizes basically their entire world has already been overrun. The Five directly control who gets what classes, and they specifically gave him his to fuck with his parents.

>>24767324
Off the top of my head, I'd describe it as the logic that being outside of something gives you power/understanding of it. In the same way that a, a mundane fuck, am all-knowing if interacting with the world of a book i am reading or a game of the Sims, someone outside of the 'real' world is able to understand how it functions in a way someone inhabiting it cannot.
Once re-entering the world they're bound by normal rules again but retain enough memory to get it.

If Isekai, it's not specifically their otherworldly knowledge but the act of not having been in the world at first and the things they've seen crossing over that did it. You don't even need to have the MC be an isekai themselves or from our world really, contriving some way to have them suddenly gain one's memories or remember a past life or whatever would work.
Maybe in doing so they recall the shape of the future and compare it to how they know prophecies are meant to work and realize that truth of the matter.

If not isekai, some sort of near-death experience or death and resurrection works and is a common enough way to explain impossible knowledge. That is how Odin is meant to have gained knowledge over magic runes for example, he hung himself from Yggdrasil for nine days & nights while pierced with his spear, a sort of sacrifice of himself in exchange for wisdom.

The problem with that being that your MC is not likely to be the only person who has ever had a near death experience. So either the one they go through has to be pretty damn extreme, or this has happened before and other people have this, or this has happened before and this is just one of the pieces of knowledge you can get out of it and other people are walking around with equally world shattering pieces of knowledge different to this.

>>24766918
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/24695473#p24697012
I really don't want to have to put a "proof" column.

>>24763682
I want to become avid reader, but I just can't stay up.
It requires immense self-deiscipline to read a chapter a day

>>24767602
By which I mean, it's very easy to use the archive.
https://warosu.org/lit/
Literally just paste the url into the search.
I also still believe that
https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=wng
should be in the OP for easy access to all the previous threads. Other stuff arguably should be as well. I'm not going to fight about how the OP should be though.

>>24767604
>immense self-discipline to read for a few minutes a day

>>24767607
I'm a slow reader, okay

>>24767604
find something you actually want to read

>>24767602
i'm fairly sure it was posted as a joke response, same way people have repeatedly posted archmage.

>>24767660
The ones with a higher profile need greater scrutiny, that's true. Tentatively removed. I've had to remove a few others so far as I'm going through again.

>>24767561
That's why I call
it a worldbuilding issue. It's unbelievable that there isn't somewhere else. Unbelievable as in stretching my credulity. It kicks me out of the story and doesn't make me want to read more.
>>24767443
That should've happened historically long ago. And narratively it should've happened before this worldbuilding killed my interest in the story, because it's not going to come back since I can simply read something better instead.

>>24767413
>IRL a lot of inventions and technological advances were lost to human hubris. Like the romans who invented their own steam engine thousands of years ahead of time but of course did nothing with it.
It didn't disappear because of hubris. It disappeared because it wasn't useful. Yeah, you could build this complicated and expensive machine to do this task or you could just buy some slaves. Steam engines became useful in Britain because human labor became too expensive. Weird machines were already in use for hundreds/thousands of years before then that we might consider only a few steps removed from a (steam) engine (eg water mills, pumps used in mines).
If you want to mimic that course of action you should figure out reasons why prophecy magic wasn't useful or less useful than some alternative.
Eg maybe it only foresaw inconsequential events or it left too much doubt in the air.
Have that same apocalypse prophecy taken to 10 different prophets and have them all give different answers. One of them eventually ends up correct (or maybe all of them, in hindsight), but for the schizo they seemed like they were just making shit up, so he killed them.

Every good story needs an irrational schizo-retard either as the MC or as someone the MC eventually kills.
It's just too satisfying.

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>>24767777
THE GOAT

>>24767777
>>24767852
What if the author is the schizo?

>>24767852
>Rescen
What a shitty title.

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>>24767034
Huge if true

>>24767339
>misunderstanding slop
you mean soap opera kino

>>24767861
FYI Kinoman is most successful anon of /wng/

>>24767607
this so much this. tiktok is RIGHT THERE

>>24767951
According to this, he isn't even in the top ten.
>>24765606

>>24767761
>Yeah, you could build this complicated and expensive machine to do this task or you could just buy some slaves. Steam engines became useful in Britain because human labor became too expensive.

This is honestly kind of overselling the first steam engine honestly. The Aeolipile or Hero's engine was a very simple curiousity that could do no useful work even if all the slaves of the time did freaking unionize. Making a useful steam engine required multiple different factors to come together.

The first commercial steam engines were coal powered pumps for getting water out of coal mines. Britain has a lot of coal buried deep down so getting water out was a constant issue. Having steam engines to pump was crazy useful. But they were also shit, like all early technology. They were inefficient and wasted enourmous amounts of fuel. It just didn't matter because all they needed to do was use slightly less coal than they were helping be mined. The only reason they got used was simply because they were the perfect solution to a really niche problem in a place where their negatives didn't matter. And as time went on there was gradual improvement making them better and better until they were of use in other places besides coal mining.

This comes down to the whole 'geography is the most important factor in history' sort of thing. The industrial revolution did not happen in the UK because britons are ubermensch geniuses - speaking as a brit that was lucky coincidence - but because it just happened to have the perfect conditions to encourage steam engines to be used. The romans did not have deep pit mining and industrial quantites of fuel.

Thing is though, even if they did, they still wouldn't have had a revolution. Because the actual point where this becomes interesting and what people think of when they think steam engine are 'high pressure steam engines' and those took about a hundred years from the shitty coal pumps to be a thing. Yet that is the point where the steam engine becomes capable of transport and useful work. And if the romans had the plans to build a high pressure steam engine they'd have all been killed, because the metallurgy and mathematics you needed to have a steam vessel not explode with terrifying 'oh no the wrath of god is in my workshop' force did not and would not exist back then.

I'm amazed by how bad the Wattpad links are. Even Greedy Thomas didn't remove all the tracking junk from their link. What a mess in general.

>>24765606
will you add word count? Would be itneresting how many words per follower there are

>>24767951
he's not even in top 5 of anons who are public with their work lol

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>>24767985
No, I'll probably be keeping it light on stats. If you want more than that, then refer to

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT4RMb3KvSVCJ6PUPqn-JNqATcKqWwwEBC5HuAsJCT-VRn_wk66cMPbvCY0FlN0dBk8Wrr8eLrUhGfu/pubhtml

or if you really need it, I can upload where those stats come from, see image related.

>>24767934
I found that thread too, you cut out the /s

>>24763682
I know this says /wng/, but as far as I can tell, in practice it's Royal Road general. Based on going through the archive, there isn't much from other sites listed in the OP.

Royal Road: 118 currently, probably almost related to what those here would be reading or writing.

Webnovel: Literally found 1 that wasn't deleted and not also on Royal Road.

Scribblehub: There's a few, but almost the only one that seems particularly relevant is https://www.scribblehub.com/profile/176158/lewdwhisperer/

Wattpad: A wasteland as far as I can tell. I have doubts any of it needs to be added. There's a lot, I gave up in the 2022s, but doesn't seem to be any point in doing so.

Spacebattles: Literally seems only be one guy with his story various other places.

HFY: https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search&search_text=reddit.com%2Fr%2FHFY%2F
It's almost nothing.

If you have any objections about the spreadsheet being Royal Road only, let me know, because I can't think of any.

>>24768017
what is categorized as a stub?

>>24768069
I don't know about others, but I try to post to more sites other than just RR. I also do Scribblehub and will also do Tapas in the future. I usually just post the RR link.

>>24768083
As per Royal Road
Stub: The story is no longer available in its full format on Royal Road.

Stubs are fictions that do not have all content available on Royal Road. This can be because of exclusivity contracts with, for example, Amazon's Kindle Unlimited. In order to read these fictions completely, a reader will need to leave Royal Road and/or pay for the work. This tag excludes the fiction from certain ranking lists.

This Tag is reserved for Authors that were initially on Royal Road, it exists to explain to new readers that they might not find all the chapters of the story.

https://www.royalroad.com/support/knowledgebase/88

>>24767951
I thought crowrabbit-chan was bigger than him.

>>24768083
it means they took down the earlier volumes of the novel to sell them on kindle/audible

>>24767442
None so far. The main character looks kinda like the Barbarian race (big, tall, red hair) so most men are turned off. There's a small portion of the story so far where she gets close to a widow and another woman and some yuri vibes start to form but it drops away fast when she has to leave town.
It doesn't look like there's room for romance or even sex anyway: she's hyperfocused on the grind and political developments are pushing her even harder in that direction because she doesn't know who's trustworthy/competent.

>>24768017
>Everybody Loves Large Chests - COMPLETED
Did this have a satisfying ending?
I rememeber getting bored out of my mind around/after the lesbian cargirl? arc and dropping it

>>24768116
spineless IMO
Jap authors typically leave their original VN up, and then rewrite it for paid publishing.

>>24768121
that's around where I got bored as well.

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>re-reading some of my work from months ago
>cracking me up and putting me in a good mood second thing in the morning
It's so great. I wish everyone could experience this feeling. Even if everyone I knew IRL read my books and told me they were shit I could shrug my shoulders and say well I like it.

>>24768129
It's just part of the terms for kindle unlimited. Amazon is shit with their terms, wow big shock. They're extremely exploitative but they've locked down the mindless consoomer demographic who will pay a subscription for book/audiobook access and doesn't give a shit.
Personally I've made the decision to make my main story free forever on RR, but side content will be bundled and eventually available on Patreon and KU for money.

>>24768129
But anon, if you don't tick the exclusivity agreement, then you'd ONLY be selling the book when you could be paid for the content read too! That's $0.004 per page of real money! More money! Money! AAAH MORE MONEY

>>24768143
Wow, that's actually tyrannical.
I really don't think Kindle/Audiable competes with RR.
The number people who are like "well, I was going to buy it on kindle, look at it is free on RR, so I don't" seems really small.

I'm finished with what I'm doing with the spreadsheet for today. Let me know what needs to be added, removed, changed, or whatever else. The only column I'm considering adding at this time is some kind of verification to appease the "They didn't post in any of the /wng/ threads!" Which would create a smaller subgroup. I don't know if that ought to be the primary sort or not. Regardless, let me know what other columns/data you'd like to see included.

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i tried my hand at writing for the first time as i was bored out of my mind at work, and man it is a wild fun ride, but having to develop multiple characters and personalities i now know i will develop schizofrenia on top of the autism.

here is the link if you feel interested:

https://www.wattpad.com/story/402336719-tales-from-remnant-regn-volume-i

I feel like a tool every time I write anything and it's always SHIT
How do I get over this and just write a lot? I know that's the only way to git gud

>>24768203
post sample and we tell why it is shit and you go there

>>24768161
wtf is that, just random sentences
I gave it a legit try...

>>24768227
No i always just stop writing because I feel embarrassed about whatever I've jotted down. Then I delete any trace of it

>>24768203
write to the end then just put it out there

>>24768203
kill the part of you that cringes

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>>24768263
I had that same problem.
In fact, this year was the first time I reached 10,000 words in a consistent story.
IMO you can write a million first chapters and disregard them, but I don't think you actually improve from them.
Instead I'd suggest leveling up.
Here is a challenge:
>write self-contained short story (2-3K words)
>write bit longer short storu (4-5K words)
>write longer short story (7-8K words)
>write novelette (10-20K words)
>write novella (20K-40K words)
>write novel (+50K words)
All those should be selfcontained, many writers have never completed even a short story want to start writing long lines of novels, but give up before 10K words.

>>24768263
Embrace writing badly. Go into it knowing that what you produce won't be perfect, and you'll come back later and critique it and identify why it's cringe, and you'll try to rewrite it better, and it will be a cycle.
Simultaneously, commit to telling a complete story. I learned an unbelievable amount from writing an entire story, from issues with pacing, estimating how long the entire story will be, character descriptions, setting concerns, and stuff commenters pointed out that I never would have spotted on my own.
The last bit of advice I have is to go look at the top ranked webnovels and look at how shit they are. Holy crap they are flawed literature. And yet, they're popular, beloved, and profitable. The bar is lying on the floor, anon. Even my shitty first book with a garbage opening is getting fans and new readers and some people are even crazy enough to pay for it. So lower your standards for yourself and your expectations and just write.

Also, stop deleting what you wrote badly: you need to keep it if for nothing else than to compare how you've improved over time.

>>24767165
Some people can't even imagine a world without a sun, blue sky or earthlike gravity either. So we end up expositing for the slow people in the audience.

>>24768236
hey man thanks for giving it a try, i look forward to improving! i thought it was at least coherent

>>24767967
>Britain has a lot of coal buried deep down so getting water out was a constant issue. Having steam engines to pump was crazy useful
Human and animal labor could still do the same thing. They used to pump water out and air into deep mines even during the medieval period. It's always some question of cost. Got to also remember that metal is scarce the earlier you go in history.
You're right about Hero's engine being kind of shit, but we do know that the ancient Greeks were pretty alright at figuring things out if there was a strong need for it.

>>24767555
>all humanoid robo puppets become irrelevant in the face of mass produced, disposable fantasy Temu Drone with fantasy Temu Semtex strapped to it operated by fantasy bunker furry

I've already solved this by just making any given puppet vastly superior to an autonomous or even conventionally remote-controlled robot of the same tier. The technology behind psionic puppets shares many similarities, especially in weapons systems at the lower tiers, but is otherwise fundamentally different, it's like comparing a temudrone to a cultivator's flying sword.

Of course it's possible and viable to use minimalist puppets in larger numbers, since smaller puppets demand fewer threads to power and control, but you have to specialize in that and the ability to control many puppets at once would benefit an army of larger puppets just as much as small ones. There are uses cases, but it's not the end-all be-all. Using disposable temudrone puppets would burn up the precious resources they're made with, so it would be the kind of thing a piece of shit young master uses.

There's a real argument to be made for numbers vs. quality but it's usually a more moderate distinction. There are very much advanced specialists who somehow surpassed the normal limitations of threadcount and cognitive resolution and can thus use entire swarms of insect-sized puppets. In the same other direction, there are guys who use a single fuckhugigantic puppet that operates like, say, Kotetsushin Jeeg or some other classic super robot.

>If the barrels aren't what controls the zero and the crystals do it, then why does it have barrels at all

To... Accelerate the particles? Are you paying attention? There's an internal particle accelerator loop and a short linear launch track to "straighten" the particle cluster's flight, then the crystal for final adjustment. Individually, the guns used for this weapon are basically smartguns that plug into a rangefinger or the user's ocular implants, on the puppet they're connected with the sensors on the head.

>This is dumb unless the barrels are able to zero individually (which is extremely complicated to do)

Yes? The crux of this setting is "technology so advanced it becomes simple again". MC has a manual called Triskelion Aperturia which specifically contains guidelines on how to couple a wide variety of sensors and weapons systems in groups of three and then get a better performance out of the resulting array than the base components would give.

Also remember, particle accelerators, the ammunition is very, very tiny. There are very few moving parts. You can clearly see the three access hatches and various ribbon cables on the arm.

>>24764397
I have been wondering this myself.
I don't think good worldbuilding has anything to do with complexity. Having a lot of stuff doesn't make it good. Worldbuilding in Star Wars or Elder Scrolls isn't good, even if there's a shit ton of it. Complexity just gives it textures.
As far as I see, good worldbuilding is natural worldbuilding where everything clicks without needing further explanation. In other words, good worldbuilding is the feeling "of course is a thing Z because X and Y exist"
That being said, I don't think a single story with good worldbuilding.

>>24768289
I can imagine it and that's the issue, because I understand that the sky being blue or the sun dying has a million small consequences that I don't trust an author to handle properly.
>>24767165
The author would have to make me trust him that he can handle many of the nuances that these worldbuilding elements would cause. For example, the sun is, kind of, "dying". In a few billion years the Sun will enter its red giant phase and will grow so large that it will likely swallow the Earth.

But Earth is likely to become unlivable way before then - a 10% increase in the Sun's luminosity is thought to be enough to evaporate our oceans. That's going to happen in a billion years or so.

But that's alright, because some scientists estimate that plantlife is going to die 500 million years before then. The increased luminosity of the sun will cause enough weathering of some rocks that it will disrupt the carbon cycle, leading to a reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere. If CO2 levels drop below ~150 ppm then most plants cannot do photosynthesis anymore and will die out.

Things like these have many knock-on effects. And at this point I find it difficult to trust random authors to handle these in a satisfying manner for me.

>>24764397
Minimalist, mystic, the kind you sprinkle in a few words or a sentence in passing to provoke whole pages-worth discussion among your readers. Stories like Phantom Star, Archmage, and Foreign Soils We Die nailed it with this.

>>24768544
I think you're spot on. Good worldbuilding needs to have things that make a reader go "that's cool!" but it also needs to be consistent. If the reader is expected to assume aspects of the world (eg gravity) then their assumptions on the world shouldn't lead to plot holes and contradictions.

Eg if you have a kingdom that's known for producing a lot of food and exporting it then the reader will expect to see a lot of fields in that kingdom. If they don't, then there needs to be an explanation for it. The reader doesn't have to be explicitly told this for every single detail in the world, but it needs to happen enough for the reader to trust the author in it. Maybe there aren't a lot of fields, because they've invented some magical farming in a pocket dimension or something. But the author has to write it in a way where the reader doesn't think it's a hole in the worldbuilding.

>>24768161
I read the first real chapter and skimmed through the second (is there a timeskip?)
Anyway I liked it, very Fallout (the old 2d games). I think the other guy found it confusing since the opening prose is kind of complex compared to most web novels.
Also your link turned my wattpad into Spanish which I don't know how to undo without clearing my browser cache which I don't want to do right now (million tabs). I think you should copypaste a link from a private window next time.

>>24766966
Another layup for Thundamoo. Most of her stories are this and Vigor Mortis has like rotating 4 first person PoVs towards the end.

>>24768567
was thundamoo the writer of vigor mortis? i remember when vigor mortis was a vore fetish quest on akun.

>>24768575
Wait we're talking about the story about the starving necromancy girl right? There's only one "vore" scene I can think of and it's hardly sexual.

>>24768586
yes, that vigor mortis. i believe its old title cover was exactly the same as the one on akun.

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>>24768589
Whoa okay. Guess I have a reason to reread it since I can make a game out of looking for any thinnly hidden vore fetishes I missed in the plot

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I will now read your webslop.

>>24767149
>First person isn't just YA, it seems to be the majority of tradpub SFF
Current SFF is YA shit but they don't tag it or name it like that

>>24768719
why doesn't every litrpg have ai generated underboob

>24767951
The only thing you're the number one at is being the most annoying shill and samefag, ffftranny

>>24768841
sorry typo
meant to link >>24767951

>>24768841
Dude posting about it is the same as feeding the trolls. Just filter and ignore.

>>24768552
Most readers completely misunderstand worldbuilding from the author's perspective. An author isn't writing an encyclopedia, and a book's worth of errata doesn't actually make a story better. Good worldbuilding from an author's perspective is just sprinkling breadcrumbs. Naming places that will never be seen, to spice up a sentence. Making a reference to a historical event, the name of which is important only for the flavor it gives the story.

Take Dune: how exactly did the Orange Catholic Bible come to be and how did it merge all the religions from Earth? Doesn't matter, the only point is to contrast homogeneous galactic culture with Fremen superstition and Bene Gesserit manipulation. What was the conflict between thinking machines and the Butlerian Jihad? Doesn't matter, the only point is to explain why there aren't computers thousands of years in the future and to give a justification for mentats (which work so much better in a story than computers or AIs holy shit). How exactly does supersaturating spice mutate a human into a Guild Navigator biologically? Doesn't matter, the point is to have weird aliens that can see the future guide faster than light traveling ships through space without hitting a star or some shit (which when you think about it for two seconds is kind of silly, you can plot safe passages between star systems by making short jumps and taking astronomical measurements.

But because Herbert wrote in these details, the actual full backstory of which has nothing or little to do with the story itself, the world feels really alive and vibrant. Fremen religion MATTERS. The lack of computers and presence of mentats MATTERS. Spice supply MATTERS.

Hello anons! I would like feedback for the first chapter of the RR story I'm working on about a roleplaying gamer sent into a video game as their demon toon. I spent a lot of time thinking up this premise, and I'd appreciate none of you guys stealing it. Most trying to figure out where my quality's at and how much I wanna cut out or add.

https://pastebin.com/jeMguGzz

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>>24769085
The prose was awkward to read, so it was a bit of a chore to get through. I would try to tone down the purple and focus on writing simpler sentences that use at most one metaphor or simile per sentence.

Check out this book for ways to spice up your sentences, and practice.

My interest picked up towards the end, and the knocking returning after an absentminded devil remembers she had written down what causes humans sorrow was a nice touch. I liked that. But the description of the flames and extinguishing with a spell of darkness was so overdone I had a hard time parsing what was actually going on. You might be trying to do too much by describing the realm, MC's madness, AND what's actually happening. Giving it all a bit more room to breathe might help.

>>24769085
First few paragraphs are a bit awkward, very purple but it then quickly resolves itself as it finds a groove. Your prose is fine desu

Xepifica's story is pretty interesting, though you might need to add a hook. Not sure

>>24769202
I actually thought the hook was fine. I think it had two barbs:
>the mystery of the knocking
>going insane trapped in a video game some long time ago
If the prose was simpler/cleaner I'd read at least the next few chapters to see at least what the knocking is

>>24767324
You could do a family/clan thing where maybe they stopped doing prophecy for others years/generations ago due to backlash but they do it for themselves in some sort of specialization. like maybe a merchant family uses it for breaking into new markets/products, and then the mc all about it and want to make it mainstream.

>>24769258
>If the prose was simpler/cleaner
I think the prose got better as it went along. It started off with very long sentences, though after a point I noticed how they incorporated a lot more full stops. Made it better.

>>24768137
That's nice, anon :) I wish you the best

>>24768281
Thanks bro ill start with a small self contained story and post it here. I'll include the word "spatula" at the end of my post so you know it's me hehe

>>24768923
Hater

>>24767703
>You like something I don't.
Eh it's happened before and will happen again. But I would also like to point out you have yet to give an example of what you consider 'good' world building.

Regardless I'll meet your 'bad' world building and raise you with The Systemic Lands - the authors autism about explaining the world's hard rules just kills any potential wonder or theory crafting I have for the setting.

Alright, it's time for me to really scrape the barrel and, god forbid, ask other people for ideas.

MC is a psychic puppet-user cultivator

I need to give him some techniques besides just puppets

But standard psychic superpowers, e.g. lift and move, throwing shit, crushing shit, etc. are not a viable choice. He's just not that type of psychic, so direct psychokinetic manipulation is fairly limited for him.

He's mostly reliant on the same psionic threads that he uses to power and control puppets, but at the same time, I need to flesh out his toolkit and give him some way to head explode a guy.

So far the only idea I've had that sounds even remotely viable has been a "living whip" type thing where he braids several threads together, and it can cut or pierce or ensnare normally, and if he dumps a bunch of power into it all at once he can make it burst from the tip, this allowing him to burst someone's head (caveat being that psionic energy is invisible to non-cultivators so it would look like the head just exploded)

>>24769487
puppets are fucking gay lmao
yeah throw a barbie at me you little bitch, hope it's the deluxe edition of the latest swimsuit model

>>24769502
you're thinking of the wrong kind of puppet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBRP9_ZrhD0

>web novel MC, you have farmed well to get this far, now it's time for you to choose a godly powerup for yourself
>the choices are A, B, and C, with their distinct strengths and weaknesses
>It will be interesting to see your choice and how it changes your path.
>"I know. I will choose...the hidden option D, which has all the good parts of the other three but none of their bad sides, so that I'll just get stronger but nothing really changes from how it's been so far!"
>whoaaa how could he discover the hidden loophole in the system!??
peak

>>24769487
Make his psychic powers thread-based, really lean into it. Have him use them as garrotes and nooses and razor wire that can decapitate and dismember people. Instead of head exploding, make it so he uses multiple threads to slice the head into cubes. Or if you insist on head explosions, do that thing where one puts a bunch of rubber bands around a watermelon until it bursts.

Trigger warning: EXTREME millennial energy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azA_zYYYy7I

>>24769589
The way Cat Girl Evolution did this was masterful, and the way the author handled the aftermath was quite entertaining.

>>24769595
Good to know. I'll make a note to never touch that trash

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>>24769589
>I get forced into D which has all the bad parts of the other three and none of the good parts
>I persevere and overcome it at long last, becoming stronger than ever

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speaking of puppets
>be me
>read xianxia
>character described as puppet user
>look inside
>corpse puppets
CALL THEM JIANGSHI YOU RAT FUCK

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why are koreans like this
you'd be cancelled if you wrote something like this on RR

>>24769697
I don't understand this delusional perception of RR as some woke hugbox
I've read much "worse" regularly lmao

>>24769707
no you see you can't upload the book that is 20% NIGGER by word count so it's a woke hugbox

>>24769270
That doesn't really create a strong theme.

Maybe I should just pick a different goal for the main character and have the misunderstandings around prophecy magic be a side thing, but if it's not directly related to the their unique skill, it kind of feels like "defeat the demon lord with OP cheat" territory.

>>24769697
I have a beautiful head of hair but I always write most praisingly about bald bros

>>24769713
It was 22%, actually.

>>24769697
This is Korean humor

>>24769697
isn’t that the same MC who proceeded to traumatize several characters by immediately victory twerking upon realizing he got isekai’d?

>>24769761
>victory twerking
More Korean humor, remember that genderbemd isekai about the guy whos now a girl but wants to fuck her native dad but then it's completely forgotten about after the first part of the story. The native mom would twerk on them every time they fought over the dad (who was never depicted in the story directly)

>>24769770
>quasi-Christianity
>twerking
>hyperconsoomerism
the noble culture of Choseon is fucking ruined...

>Korea: write elaborate excuse for why the MCs mom twerks on them and make the author look mega-gay
>Japan: MCs mom fucks them because incest
The legacy of the Yamato remains unbroken