>>24971522
>non english characters in the OP image
jannies aren't gonna like this

i bought all 3 volumes of nowhere stars for myself for christmas ^_^

>>24971543
good taste
merry christmas

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>find like a dozen online strangers to give me feedback on my shit
>it's all universally positive
>a few of them even stuck around as regular readers and comment on every chapter
>despite this still can't build up an actual readerbase no matter how much I advertise

>>24971527
we've gotten away with it multiple times now, /wng/ has a permanent whitelist because we're the chosen ones

>>24971555
Probably unmarketable cover/title/blurb/premise
The hardest part of selling anything is getting the reader in the door.
Maybe consider reworking your approach there. Unless it's the premise itself, gg then

>>24971555
>go to civitAI and find a model that generates anime pictures.
>generate a women with big tits
>make sure it only has 5 fingers
>add title and your name
>publish your story
simple as that. that's a guaranteed $400 a month even if you're mediocre and only goes up from there once people catch on to your autism by virtue of chapter counts.

>>24971591
if big boobie anime girls are a cheat code why do i never actually see this on rising stars?

>>24971624
chapter count and people finding out that you can't get $20,000 a month in patreon money in just 20 chapters.

based bakerfag shilling gender bender slop every thread.
i remember reading a translation of the web novel decades ago but now that story has official lns and even translated hard copies in my local library
perhaps I'll check it out

>>24971624
RR banned that. You can hardly show any cleavage in the cover art now.

>>24971636
>RR is run by homosexuals
Finally, /lit/anons can prosper.

>>24971636
oh so is that anon just a larper from /wg/ then?

>>24971654
I don't know how you'd even find out about it unless you tried to upload a boobie thumbnail and got blueballed by the mods like yours truly.

>>24971659
i mean how he's giving advice about an easy way to get lots of readers but that advice is literally against the rules

>>24971654
>randomly posting about how to game the system for easy NEETbux
nah, that's one of ours
only the worst kind. the kind that doesn't read or write and idly dreams of fame and success

>>24971453
Well he’s not really a slave, per se, he’s just deep in debt and has to accept missions from a mission board to clear the debt. Except he has to use magic to clear the missions, and using magic requires resources, which requires money, which puts him further in debt. So he has to find a way to escape the carefully tuned debt treadmill before next year’s taxes hit, or otherwise fuck off to a neighboring country.

His mentor is a tax evader living in the woods, and is powerful enough to just pay the taxes if push comes to shove. Since this is his first arc “alone”, the MC doesn’t have any strong bonds. I was going to introduce his first friend/ally as a fellow wagie.

>>24971669
do we really have any successful /wng/ anons? I don't care if they're inactive but like anyone from the past that used to post here at the very least?

>>24971527
>jannies aren't gonna like this
It's a tranny WN so that's obviously not going to be the case

>>24971775
a few yeah. cherno, trailer trash (arguably)
90% of advice isn't coming from them

>>24971624
Because /wng/ retards don’t actually know “what works”. Blind leading the blind.

>>24971659
You just check the rules
https://www.royalroad.com/support/knowledgebase/114

>>24971808
wait, trailer trash used to post here? I havent caught up with that series

>>24971654
Yeah since their own thread is dead they hang out here and give dogshit advice to try and steer juniors away from the proper path of slop.
/wg/ doesn't read or write anything let alone read or write slop and it shows.

>>24971911
they were a /wg/ poster

>if you don’t do X your webnovel won’t be successful!!!!
>why no, I’ve never written a successful webnovel, why do you ask?

>>24971949
Have you written a successful webnovel? Just asking so I can dismiss your point without having to think about it.

>>24971932
that's cool to know.

>>24971953
>erm, actually, you SHOULD listen to the advice of unsuccessful retards
go ahead

>>24971808
>cherno
>successful
?
>trailer trash (arguably)
never posted in /wng/

>>24971968
Successful authors can give bad advice and unsuccessful authors can give good advice. You should use your own critical thinking skills to decide what to listen to. You're NGMI any other way.

>>24971624
litrpg haremslop with aigen anime boob cover is so successful that the genre's slopmasters don't even post to RR, they just dump their shit right on amazon and start making money instantly with 0 need to build a fanbase.

>>24972056
If you know exactly how to write a successful webnovel, why haven't you?

hint: you don't know

>>24972084
non sequitur

>>24972087
>>24971949
try to keep up

>>24972097
>>24971949 does not address >>24972056 at all
>>24972084 is a complete non sequitur

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>>24972101
>non sequitur
non sequel, whataboutism, depreciated asset, ad omnibus, bigoted, wokism, sex negative, negative karma, sour puss, meany head

>>24972101
>um actually even though I suck and haven't written anything successful, I know exactly how to write a successful webnovel. I just haven't written it because... er... uh....
>well anyways you should listen to my advice!!
try to keep up >>24971949

>>24972108
Another non sequitur
You are addressing random arguments I never said or even remotely implied

>>24972110
if anime booba trash is so good why ain't you doing that?

>>24972110
>crying non sequitur when you haven't addressed the original argument at all
If (you), the unsuccessful writer, know what makes a webnovel successful or not, why haven't (you) succeeded?

I know it's difficult but prease understandu that this is an argument against the idea that bad writers can accurately determine what makes a work successful or not. If you had good advice to give, you would have followed it already.

>>24972113
>If (you), the unsuccessful writer, know what makes a webnovel successful or not, why haven't (you) succeeded?
Another non sequitur. This is not the conversation topic
Here you go, here was the content of my post. >>24972056
Maybe try responding to it

>>24972116
It is the price of admission. You being kept by your passion, higher moral standards only gets you so far.

Now you could be right, or you could not be. Your confidence is unfounded, speculative and the veracity of your claims untested and abstract.

>>24972117
What

>>24972116
>my advice will make your webnovel successful even though it didn't make my webnovel successful
the original post is here >>24971949
try to keep up

>>24972121
I didn't respond to >>24971949
I responded to >>24971968
Specifically addressing the idea that neither success nor a lack of success determines whether advice is good or bad.
At this point I'm replying out of morbid curiosity to see how long it takes you to actually respond with something that isn't a non sequitur and doesn't put words in my mouth

>>24972122
if the advice were good, it would make you successful
(you) are not successful, therefore the advice is not good

see:
>>24972113
try
to
keep
up

>>24972124
>if the advice were good, it would make you successful
Blatantly not true, has to be a bad-faith argument
At least it (if only tangentially) relates to what I said, finally

Under this worldview, how do you fit the common trend of successful authors failing to write another hit story after their first?

>>24972124
>if the advice were good, it would make you successful
failures can absolutely give valid advice, especially advice of the form "don't do [X], I did [X] and it fucked everything up"
but it takes some media literacy / critical thinking skills to separate the meaningful advice from the meaningless

>>24972130
Sex sells, good argument. There this premise is accepted, we can move on.

I did online shilling just having a female avatar gives you x5-x10 response rate as default.

>>24972125
Glad you finally read the same thing I have been saying the entire time.

Advice that was good before may not be good now.
Advice that is good for one type of story, might not be good for another.
Not all stories are made to be successful. Especially those written by authors who already got rich off of their earlier work.
The author simply got worse over time, or lowered their standards.

If the once successful author wanted to write a successful story and still knew how to do so... they would write one.

>>24972130
Your ability to give advice is proportional to how good you are at the given task.
If you can accurately diagnose what went wrong with your story, then you can give advice regarding that failure.

Problem is, 99% of unsuccessful writers can't accurately diagnose the problems in their writing. If they could see the problems, they would fix them.
This is especially true in writing, as it's not a field where seeing the issue and fixing it are entirely different skills.

>>24972152
>Glad you finally read the same thing I have been saying the entire time.
You were not. Maybe you thought you were, but you're clearly a very confused and rambling communicator

>If the once successful author wanted to write a successful story and still knew how to do so... they would write one.
Best practices and skill only improves your odds. Good advice is advice that helps weigh the dice, or at least minimizes the many ways you can shoot yourself in the foot.
>if the advice were good, it would make you successful
Is one of the most patently absurd things I've seen someone say in this thread.

Ok, selling your soul to the market is the way. Who in this damn fucking thread actually followed through with it and succeeded?

>>24972152
Sex selling is an an universal rule, can we accept that as valid and stop the bickering?

That should be the take away. It was the original premise and point of dispute.

I hawked 5-10 self help/game guides a day in a past life and have done online ad campaigns.

That boobs, female avatars, covers, sex sell that is an eternal and universal truism that does not need more experience to contextualize.

>>24972162
The two options aren't selling your soul or writing what you like. Life is about compromises. If you despise the idea of doing anything but writing 100% for yourself, then keep writing as a hobby. Very simple.
Besides, all slop authors like their slop to some degree. Readers can sniff out frauds. It won't work for (You).

>>24972168
>Besides, all slop authors like their slop to some degree.
all scotsman wear kilts

>>24972161
please try to keep up with the original post>>24971949
thanks

>Best practices and skill only improves your odds. Good advice is advice that helps weigh the dice, or at least minimizes the many ways you can shoot yourself in the foot.
Oh, I see. You'd be a successful author, but you're just unlucky! Next time for sure, right?

>>24972164
>>24972168
You keep repeating this, but have you ever actually looked at a list of the most popular webnovels?Or even just Rising Stars on RR?

>>24972171
all fish breathe under water

the nature of serialized releases makes writing webnovels more of a 'vibe-writing' medium, doesn't it? how exactly are matters like editing and drafting handled when i imagine you're just kind of writing by the seat of your pants? there's almost a community-written element to a completed webnovel isnt there?

>>24972172
Oh boy, more non sequiturs
Thought we were getting somewhere

>>24972172
Royalroad is the litrpg nieche and not the entire scene. I read webnovels for 15 years or so now, read hundred of thousands of chapters. Not an exaggeration.

Asian translated is bigger than all western created, many times over.

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>>24971845
>>24971968
>>24972162
Here's some solid advise from someone successful (TheFirstDefiler)l for succeeding on RR.

>>24972178
western authors are best at writing smut and litrpg, do vanity project, stop mid in between general low quanty

japanese write the most sloppy and autistic power fantasy, quirky concepts and perverse stuff no contest

koreans got the most polish overall if you want a finished good work? probably korean, goes for manhwa as well
they somehow got something for writing NTR? o.O

chinese do endless slop, got unique nieches I only read chinese translate for 10 years, its overall trash even the gems
but when you hit one you get x5-x10 of any other country in volume (they have the best and most ruthless monitization schemes of all countries)

that is my personal experience, subjective judgement and general rules

>>24972178
And of the top Asian webnovels, how many of them are femmc yuri goonerslop?

>>24972188
most are probably romance slop for fem anons
a billionaire is voluntary not raping me tehehe and another one too, now I can't chose

china just banned them or something because they are too popular

>>24972176
the average poster cannot follow up on a call and response let alone a conversation

>>24972185
>write for your audience
good advice
>write yuri fem mc big boob anime girls or you're ngmi
bad advice

>>24972195
>>write for your audience
That's not what it says. There is no your. There is the audience. You write for the audience

>>24972201
Different platforms and different genres are read by different people, retard. There is no one "audience".

>>24972192
China banned them because these bitches were getting it in their heads that they can land the 10/10 man who'll fall head over heels for them. Because of that, they're neglecting regular men, ruining birth rates and social cohesion.

>>24972221
Global data says its female higher education, iran and saudi arabia proof that. But not trying to make this /pol/ anyway
They will have no success with banning the webnovels that much is certain by the global data I analyzed over the years. Christopher Hitchens says that it is female education not webnovel or 50th shades of gray that crushes birthrates.

It is a well studied phenomenon the UN did studies on it which you can find if you ask the question in the inverse. "How to reduce birthrates in developing nations."

It is never "introduce billionaire chad raped me webnovels" it is "female education".

>>24972192
>china just banned them or something because they are too popular
desire to know more intensifies

>>24972228
https://www.webnovel.com/stories/novel?gender=2

>>24972221
Maybe chinese men should try not being mediocre?

>>24972233
Not everyone can be a shredded six foot six billionaire with a huge dick, Sven

>>24972233
demographic X should not be an average cross xD
math illiterate

>>24972232
there's a surprising amount of hetero omegaverse slop
but this doesn't answer my question about china banning shit

>>24972239
heavenly court is restricting the proliferation of demonic scriptures

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>>24972239
source I found
https://rudevulture.com/china-moves-to-ban-ceo-romance-dramas-due-to-fears-young-women-are-being-fed-billionaire-delusions/

>>24971522

>>Why read web novels?
>Not for prose or tight editing or deep themes, frankly.

Isn't that a bit defeatist? Sure, tight editing might be hard if you don't have an editor but you should still try for good prose and strong themes, even when you're an amateur writer.

>>24972249
>Sure, tight editing might be hard if you don't have an editor
Even if you do have an editor, releasing a work serialized in 3k word chunks heavily limits what kinds of edits you can do. Unless you prewrite the whole novel before releasing anything and have a YUGE backlog.

>>24972250
>Unless you prewrite the whole novel before releasing anything and have a YUGE backlog.
I want to prewrite a few hundred chapters, but what if it immediately flops?

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If I enjoy this slop, is there any other contemporary systemslop I would like? Can be other types of progression, too, like MC finding a magic tome or cultivation manual instead. Big titty goth sisters wouldn't hurt but aren't strictly required.

>>24972254
Scumbag System.

>>24972248
This isn't about webnovels though, but it's kind of crazy to see that not just English speaking communities have been overtaken by this billionaire CEO fetish

>>24971433
>Of course then I post critique on one of these and I get one reply from the author "oh you make good points" and then he posts a "rewrite" that addresses none of my points.
I addressed your points. You didn’t read the rewrite or even the questions I posted. Kill yourself immediately.

>>24972254
so the ai boobs thumbnail works after all
just need to be outside the RR ecosystem

>>24972274
>This isn't about webnovels though
the censorship standards go out universal, china went have yaoi some past years and they no longer produce (at the past rates I think)

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>>24972269
This one, I assume. Thanks.

>>24972279
I mean, AI butts might work too. Or any body part if the girl is cute enough, really. RR is just really full of redditors.

>>24972279
For English being outside RR means going straight to Amazon (so upfront costs like non-AI cover and an editor) or using Webnovel an awful platform where they will take control of your ip if sign with them (which is required to get paid)
There's also the new English part of Novelpia but it's just starting out and puny compared to RR.

>>24972283
Yeah that one, I always forget there's the other one that's xianxia.

What’s the point of this thread? Nobody actually discusses webnovels, and like 2 people write them.

>>24972284
>or using Webnovel an awful platform where they will take control of your ip if sign with them (which is required to get paid)
but anon's contemporary system haremslop is from scribblehub and wattpad
>>24972254
anyways if you want a litrpg smut novel in the modern-ish world you might wanna read The Incubus System which an anon rec'd in this thread a while ago. although it's not set in the literal real world, more of an alt version of contemporary korea with demon hunters and lamias in heat.

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>>24972286
Yeah, first result was that one and some others instead.

>>24972290
I'll give it a try even if the cover looks dorky as hell.

>>24972290
>from scribblehub and wattpad
afaik those make no patreon money and the audience never follows to kdp/ku. Probably because it's literally teens with no money.
RR might be redditcore but redditers have money to spend on garbage like funkopops.

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OP MC, “progression fantasy”, “litrpg”, etc are only popular now because the average person has fried their dopamine receptors on tiktok and youtube shorts. You can’t just write a decent story anymore, you have to add uber hax harem in the first paragraph or else readers scroll to the next sloppa that does have those things.

>>24972307
What a confused mess of a post.

>>24972319
put down tiktok for 5 seconds and maybe you'll be able to parse a sentence or two

>>24971704
Then that's hardly a slavery arc at all. It's just a bad situation with the odds stacked against the MC. Write him being clever and exploring the system and talking about how taxes are bad and you're golden. Just make sure you give your MC regular small wins on his way to overall victory. In 1% Lifesteal, the MC beats up people fucking with him in the slave mines even though he's still "laying low" and under the thumb of the slavemasters (until shit hits the fan and he makes good on his escape).

In my own slavery arc I wanted to show how the MC had painted himself into a corner totally and completely, and that only by incredible luck did something happen that let him escape (which was still more of an "out of the frying pan and into the fire" kind of thing). Readers didn't like it, even though from a literary perspective, it makes sense. I crossed the line of "fiction has to be believable, reality doesn't" and I should have done a better job with my beginning arc and worldbuilding.

>>24972307
Web novel slop isn't even that big in the west yet.
RR is a niche compared to litrpg on KU and even that's puny compared to Romance/Romantasy.
Breaking into this niche is like being an indie game dev on Steam in 2015. This is the easiest it will ever be from now on.
You're just coping with excuses to massage your ego because even when given a near-ground floor opportunity you still can't succeed.

>>24972331
Making anything that demands time or attention from a person is harder now than it has been in a long time.

>>24972336
Yeah but my point is it's going to get even harder going forward. For everything. But web novels are still in a growth state in the west though obviously it won't ever be as big as it is in the east and third world.

>>24972338
I'm not even really about the difficulty of making things, but the kind of content that is made today. Long form content is slowly dying, and more and instant gratification media is rising. I don't want to read
>DING! Level up!
>gained skill [I win button]!
>gained skill [you lose button]!
while subway surfers gameplay is on the other half of the screen. But it seems like that's the way we're going.

>>24972340
You're being hyperbolic. People are reading on their phones while commuting or during lunch break. That's why it's short chapters with clear prose.
They still want to read a long story just in bites.

>>24971647
RR started out with eastern-like stories. Harems were common. As time went on they've made the rules stricter and stricter. The probable end goal is to make it a website for novels targeted at women like all other publishers.

>>24972331
Hell, my cousin asked for straight up smut this Christmas. Gave it to her, mentioned it apparently got pretty spicy, even my grandma didn't blink an eye at her receiving porn out in the open.

Try that with LitRPG.

>>24972352
I believe it

>>24972352
Either you pander to the schizo hos, troons, and furries or they rip your website to pieces with the power of their obsessive mental illness. Once they latch onto a platform, it's over

anons surprised when online novels attract an online audience; news at eleven

>>24972352
The sensitive content flag is their way to ghettoize harems and other stuff they don't like?

>>24972352
RR is based in Israel. So, y'know.

>>24972307
You could always take a look at Honeyfeed and Novelpia. More Asian focus with the possibility of breaking through to that demographic. Less focused on those trends you mentioned.

>>24972378
isnt novelpia a scam, i dunno about honeyfeed though

>>24972381
Novelpia just opened up to western writers recently. They had some controversy with shitty AI translations of Korean WNs, but they seem alright. Nowhere near the scam that is Webnovel, though they do expect exclusivity if you are going to make money with them.
Honeyfeed partners with My Anime List and holds contests where participants get a cash prize and published by a light novel publisher from Japan.
The neat thing is that these sites prefer light novel length chapters, so rocking 1k-1.5k chapters is perfectly acceptable. Of course, you have to write to market and actually make something they prefer, but that's another thing.

Why aren't there now litrpg cultivation novels? The two seem like they perfectly fit each other since cultivation realms are basically like a leveling system itself.

>>24972391
>Why aren't there now litrpg cultivation novels?
You don't read enough if you think there aren't

>>24972395
Can you name some? I haven't really come across them and I've read at least two dozen cultivation novels (doesn't seem like a lot, but when they have 1000+ chapters it takes a while).

>>24972398
>Can you name some
No

>>24972398
systems are litrpg element

>>24972400
>>24972401
Ok. I've read those cultivation novels where MC has some weird login system, but I wouldn't really consider those litrpg. It doesn't really involve stats or skills like an rpg would.
I guess He Who Fights With Monsters does come close.

>>24972410
cultivation novels and litrpg do not work well together, it always turns into generic cultivation over time at least with the hundreds of those types I read over the decade

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>Cultivation + litrpg

>>24971659
these claims always seem strange because i've never gotten this type of response even for VERY suggestive covers, and this was after the rules were amended

>>24972378
The problem is, those sites have no users.

>>24972480
There was a time that applied to RR as well.

>>24972510
RR went from total obscurity to a big player in a span of just a few years. Those other sites are only like 1-3 years younger but they're just not growing at all.

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Does anyone here have something similar to the "Overlord" light novels?

What I'm specifically looking for is the wish fulfillment aspect of being extremely powerful, Evil and sadistic as fuck. And "mogging" others in an extremely humiliating/sociopathic way. It's the only work I've ever read where the protagonist seems to be genuinely evil and not in an edgy way but in an almost pragmatic sociopath way, which I really enjoyed.

Yeah there is also romance/harem slop in it but I'm ambivalent towards it. It's not why I'm reading it but I'm also not really bothered by it, does nothing for me.

Hopefully someone read this work here and knows exactly what I'm looking for, but in case there isn't I hope my description was specific enough to understand the exact appeal and power fantasy I want to experience here.

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Hello /wng/. I'm bored, so I'm going to make it your problem. I'll post some shitty, heavily biased reviews of stories I've read recently, and will only be banished (for a time) by reccs that suit my tastes. Let's begin.

==An HFY Tale: Drop Pod Green==
by Guardbro's Field Desk

Laconic Synopsis: a space furry from a race of last men enlists in space fascist America's army

Progress: Ch 30: Down, Down, To Army Town

Review: The story is unapologetically a jarhead's HFY fantasy. This is IMO both its strength and weakness; the bootcamp arc and the general military experience are really strong because it feels like it's deeply inspired by someone's lived experiences, but in turn, the worldbuilding is so heavily painted by the (specifically USAsian) military mindset that it comes across as puerile, which creates an odd juxtaposition where the whole thing reads like a fascist LARP from /pol/.

Atrocity and warcrime presented as the fruits of a toughened up humanity that's "learned the weakness of complacency" and abandoned pacifism & diplomacy to move entirely to a planet-wide wartime economy that actively seeks out new wars and to absorb all the other galactic powers but are actually the Good Guys (TM) because the space furries aren't Free (TM) enough. And all that's before we get into the HFY aspects, which—no joke—wanks humanity to the point of unironically being magical ubermensch. While this could be made to work by a good enough author, Drop Pod Green fails to pull it off because the outlandish elements keep being introduced in an escalating fashion that feels like a kid's game of "nuh uh, m-my humans have MONSTER POWERS and- and can summon GHOSTS!!" which would be funny if it weren't presented so seriously. But maybe I don't have the right sense of humour.

It doesn't help that a lot of the background elements feel very shallow, where humans collectively act as a largely homogenous mass of "humanity" with the same goals, views, and values (after the politicians are all dead lmao) and individuals are all heccin' wholesome memesters that all share the "Earth culture" and Human Spirit (TM), except the one Mexican woman, who is somehow Very Abuela. Earth is split between America(s) (UAA) and the barely-acknowledged Europe (EUC) that just seems to go along with the UAA in everything to the point that they feel like one entity, and everywhere else just straight up doesn't seem to exist anymore because this is an American fantasy I guess and foreigners are gross. Everyone is now religious but it's one of three neo-religions that are cringe martial parodies of Christianity (The Templars of the Cold Ashes), Norse Paganism (The Odinic Shieldwall of Ragnarök???), and Buddhism (just Buddhism), with all of the inconvenient and uncool parts sanded off. I guess Jesus is too pansy for surviving a *real* genocide and IRL martial religions like Sikh are too weird.

>>24972582 (cont.)
A part that particularly annoyed me is the hypocrisy over weapons. The author presents downright antique guns (specifically gunpowder weapons) as superior to all others with ridiculous copes like the bullets being slow enough to bypass personal shields unlike ayy mass accelerators which go too fast, despite that making no sense, and that not having electronic parts makes them unhackable (true) right before introducing electronically enhanced machine guns and supremely hackable mech suits. Earth has the best spaceships not because of human excellence, but because humanity adopted the heccin' adorable super-genius space bats who have the Best Technology and we also are the only ones to have befriended Gen AI because we are the most heccin' wholesome—making the supposed superiority just feel hollow and unearned, and consequently doing injustice to the real innovations and excellencies of modern tech.

Moving on to the aliens, it's a mixed bag because admittedly my standards are higher than most. These aliens are your standard fursuit aliens: Lizard people, Dog people, Bat people, Muscle Mommy Dragon people, Moth&Mantis people, and manlet space elves. All of them are bipedal, levo-CHNOPS-eating, STP-living, social organisms that aside from superficial elements, can largely stand in for humans. There's also four-armed shy guys, evil cyborgs, evil vampire pirates, and evil cyclops people, which like the others, are largely all monocultures that act as national units. Multi-species societies, political parties, and piracy appear to be entirely human inventions in this setting. Credit where credit's due, *within* these monocultures, there's somewhat interesting social worldbuilding, especially with the space doggies from which the protagonist originates. We find over the course of the story how their society was streamlined into a Brave New World, where everyone has a colour-coded genetic caste & purpose, the population is kept physically weak, with only narrowly specialised education, and decultured to the extent that everyone wears jumpsuits and eats nutrition cubes, and people need to take drugs just to get in the mood for reproduction, all the while social goals are pursued from the top-down by a mysterious "Elder Council" government. And, surprisingly, the author does well to show how that influences attitudes, mindsets, and other repercussions within the named space doggie characters we meet.

>>24972586 (cont. final)
This segues into the second, unexpected strength of Drop Pod Green: its major characters. While the HFY & scifi aspects are bad enough to have made me want to drop it several times to spare my aching cringe muscles, what kept me through it are the characters and the personal journey of our protagonist, who has the driving spirit to overcome her weakness and shine as bright as these magical ubermensch despite her inferior species. We see her gradually get deprogrammed (albeit by getting military reprogrammed) and flourish, making friends, discovering her personal likes & dislikes, and even finding romance and now religion(???).

On balance, Drop Pod Green is pretty much what you see on the can. It's not sophisticated high literature or speculative fiction. It's moderately enjoyable HFY wank that stands out due to the realness of the military experience and the likeability of the characters and the protagonist's personal journey.

Misc additions since I'm too lazy to work them in nicely:
- While the bootcamp arc and general military experience feels very real and personal, the military campaign against the cyclops distinctly comes across as weaker. There's definitely some military experience in it, but it feels more like an army nerd's fantasy rather than a fictionalised account of a real war. Much of it feels very streamlined and punches feel pulled.
- So far as I can tell, it's 100% human written and of decent prose quality.
- Along the line, we start getting interlude chapters where a humanaboo teacher lectures about humanity to a class of clueless aliens. While such a setup could be done well with the right execution, it ends up reading as a call-response of *clueless question about ordinary thing* -> *cringe human wank loredump* -> *basedface ayy*. Some plot happens in some of these chapters so you can't entirely skip them.
- The AI are humans in VR costumes and are also heccin' wholesome memers. I vomit.

>>24972556
>It's the only work I've ever read where the protagonist seems to be genuinely evil
I roleplays as hero, rides a giant hamster and rescues people. The villainly is pretend.

>>24972510
RR was always the home of litrpg an entire genre, it grew with it.

>>24972601
Man I had the exact opposite interpretation. The "hero" stuff is all fake merely a mask to be worn in a sadistic way as in how sociopaths use masking techniques to fake empathy. I base this on the brutal tortures and multiple backstabbings and killings he does throughout the works of "friends" he makes along the way.

Got any recs though?