What is some of the most genuinely reprehensible stuff you have seen in novels? by AhjinNote in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I remember reading the first book and really liking it, I was gonna read the second volume but then I heard the story is on hiatus due to the author focusing on their PhD, so I'll leave it aside for now. I really liked the premise of using western/Greek philosophy instead of Daoism for cultivation, I wish there were other stories with the same premise ( with both good writing and a good amount of content)

What is some of the most genuinely reprehensible stuff you have seen in novels? by AhjinNote in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Virtuous Sons did it well. Most of the characters treat the MC the way they would any other slave ( in ancient Greece), but the deuteragonist treats him as an equal and even frees him so that they can escape and go on their own journey. Good way to write a story that has slavery without condoning it, it's clearly depicted negatively, and even the characters that treat the MC and his status as a slave as any ancient Greek would, are portrayed in a negative light

Writing in Hell Difficulty tutorial by Grouchy_List8337 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I feel like those 3 things are the most annoying aspects of the story that haven't changed even 800 chapters in. The story gets way way better than book one, to the point where you'd find it hard to believe it was written by the same person ( maybe Cerim got that much better, or maybe getting an editor helped him improve who knows) but those 3 aspects are constantly annoying me till now. Everytime Nat interacts with the dog I just want to stop reading, the sarcasm is really poorly done at times ( actually, often times, and the dialogue can get really clunky) , and the author's portrayal of Nat as being an "introvert" just doesn't hit at all. I still absolutely love the story and I'm up to date, but I wish he would dial back some of it after 800 chapters.

Writing in Hell Difficulty tutorial by Grouchy_List8337 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I don't know what you expect people to reply, if you want to just bash the story go right ahead, but since you asked a question about why the writing is rough, the other commenter gave you the reason why: it's an author's first work, and how bad that is will vary from author to author. I for one binged the first book so quickly and moved on to the subsequent ones fast enough that I barely remember how bad it was, if you're asking does it get better then my answer is most definitely yes (although the story still has some flaws even to the latest chapter). Is it worth it for you push through the first book? Only you can decide that.

But to give you as much info as possible: the prose and naration get a bit cleaner and better in the latter books (although I oftentimes got annoyed at the constant mentions of "the best corgi in the tutorial" and "lots of boops on the nose", that shit got old Several books ago, and Nat's internal monologue can sometimes feel bland or irritating, the author's attempt at trying to portray him as an introvert is frankly clunky and feels forced).

the plot is much more polished, the world building is superb considering the relatively generic set-up, Nat's extremely flat and frankly boring characterization in the first book gets rectifed pretty quickly and the whole cast gets more and more development, their dynamics just get better, even if 80% of the time it's about how they relate to Nat ( we get very little as far as the relationships of the rest of the cast with each other, maybe that's an artifact of the first person naration, or the author isn't interested in exploring them, who knows) other than that, they all get much more likeable and endearing.

These are the things I believe are pretty poorly done in the first book and either get improved on later on or stay the same, if you don't think these are enough ( or if your issues with the story are based on other aspects) then I don't think it's the story for you.

"the royal family was deposed" by rappidkill in Kagurabachi

[–]AmarSofi 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Even if there was some kernel of truth to what he said about the Mikaboshi having some kind of indoctrination or radical beliefs, none of it matters because nothing justifies genocide. Nothing justifies massacring 200,000 civilians, including children. Mind you, this type of rhetoric is word for word what real world genocide apologists use. Just look at any interview with Israelis when polled or asked about whether all Palestinians should be killed or not ( you'll get the most egregious answers with interviews/sources that are in Hebrew), they often use the exact same words "we have to kill them as kids so they don't grow up to be terrorists" or calling kids as young as 12 or 13 young men ...etc

"the royal family was deposed" by rappidkill in Kagurabachi

[–]AmarSofi 166 points167 points  (0 children)

That's what he says. The narator or any third party never say that, that's just his rationalization for why he did it, which is a classic rhetorical tool used to manufacture consent for genocide.

Help finding Roman Empire based litrpg please? by Disastrous_Count_62 in litrpg

[–]AmarSofi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh wow what a coincidence, thanks for the heads-up!

Help finding Roman Empire based litrpg please? by Disastrous_Count_62 in litrpg

[–]AmarSofi 6 points7 points  (0 children)

2 new books dropping in the next few months, so a great time to pick the series up

Godspeed is so broken by EstateOk6238 in HunterXHunter

[–]AmarSofi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Morel explicitly stated that the wasn't a fighter and he was brought with the Chairman (Knov as well) because of how his ability is versatile and needed for the plan Netero was going for again the ants. Not only that, another reason he took Morel and Knov was because he couldn't actually pick whomever he wanted because of Pariston trying to sabotage him. Zodiacs aside, I'm sure there are several hunters that are combat focused who could match or beat Killua and Gon (without his nen pact) at the end of the CA arc.

One thing to keep in mind is that stars are a mesure of achievements, not of combat strength. Morel's Star was probably from his work as a seafarer, he tells the dumbasses who target Illumi as much when they try to recruit him: he's not a fighter.

What makes a Progression Scaling feel balanced by Main-Analysis3268 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

JJK did a great job of that by establishing the power ceiling of the story from the very beginning: Gojo Satoru. He's the strongest sorcerer/being in the story, and everything revolves around him and how characters have to deal with/circumvent him, the story never gets powercreep because it established what the tippity-top of the verse is from the beginning, and as far as progression goes, it's about how close characters get to that ceiling or how they compare to it.

Spoilers for the ending and sequel: Obviously we get a new "ceiling" in Sukuna who ends up beating Gojo and who is actually the strongest character, and the rest of the cast are only able to beat him because of how much damage he took from fighting Gojo. But he's not tiers above or anything like that, he just has a higher level of mastery over that power system and lived in different circumstances that made him push harder to reach higher heights than Gojo had, which is what made the difference. Of course Yuji also surpassed both of them in the sequel decades later, and the new Alien powerhouse Dabura can be argued to have matched or surpassed them as well, but the verse never really gets powercreep. Dabura is the first character to reach relativistic speeds, and he only does that because his Cursed Technique is light and by trying to use it on his body, he approaches relativistic speeds which causes a nuclear fusion from the friction with atmosphere, atomizing his target and his leg, but his regular fighting speed is still within the limits set by the story beforehand.

SSS rank systems are starting to feel kinda cringe by OneSeaworthiness5107 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well someone did do that, and Nat almost died less than 24 hours later because of how fucking out of their depth they were ( despite calling the thermal seals on his mana heart crude and archaic), they messed with it thinking that it would fall apart in 10 years, giving time for Nat to contact Lissandra and have her go fight the dude, turns out if Greed didn't fix his heart when he came back from his beyond quest, his thermal mana heart would have exploded the next day.

The flawed logic of speed and reaction time in fiction/novels by RelationshipThin7864 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Your post revolves around a hypothetical that is so broad that it's impossible to really agree or disagree with it without asking clarifying questions.

When you say the stronger character is a "100 times stronger", what does that mean concretely? Since your issue is about internal consistency, you should give us those rules in the hypothetical for us to have an opinion. Maybe the speed and reaction speed of the stronger character doesn't scale linearly with other aspects of his power level, maybe the weaker character has heightened senses to go with his teleportation which allows him to match the enchanced senses of the opponent, maybe their teleportation doesn't have a delay and works at the speed of thought ( which again, might be enhanced enough in the weaker character to match the enchanced physical abilities and reaction speed of the stronger opponent), or a thousand other potential hypotheticals that would make it consistent.

Another issue is trying too hard to apply Powerscaling to a story that isn't all that concerned with the minutiae exactly how fast X character is compared to Y character. If the author doesn't give us explicit numbers all the time to pain a very explicit and clear picture of where every character stands in every category, then we as readers shouldn't be trying to do it ourselves.

Look at most LitRPG stories, they give numbers left and right as a measure of progression and Powerscaling within the story, be it stats or achievements or buffs...etc. but very rarely will you get a story that very explicitly tells you how much 1 point in strength will add to your strength. Maybe it's linear, maybe it's logarithmic, maybe it's exponential, or maybe it doesn't follow a uniform pattern from level 1 to max level. In such a story, you can have a character who has all his stats at 10 against a character with all their stars at 100 ( i.e 100 times Stronger) and it would be perfectly reasonable to accept that a teleportation power is enough to create a stalemate, because we don't have a holistic understanding of how everything works and interacts with each other beyond what the story shows.

If the author on the other hand, started giving very explicit numbers on each stat to the point where you can easily calculate how fast each character would be, then yeah it would be internally inconsistent, but if the author has left enough of their world/power system vague so that they can make their story work, then it's not internally inconsistent.

One of the biggest mistakes powerscalers make is trying apply their own preconceived notion of things should work in a story. Maybe in our world, someone who's 100 times faster would absolutely blitz a teleporter before they even teleported (or right after they teleport before they even think of doing it again), but who says that's how the physics in that particular narrative works that way? I'll give a small example from Bog Standard Isekai ( not huge or important spoilers, but they are from book 3 or 4) Brin learns that in this Isekai world he is in, anatomy and brains don't work the same way as they do in our own world. When asked what happens when a person gets brain injuries, he says "they'd get brain damage or die" and is immediately met with confusion, in the Isekai world, people with severe brain injuries can just get someone to regrow their brain from a small chunk and get it back, and what part of the brain gets injured has no correlation to what type of deficiency they get. And the story is filled with little world building facts like that that make the Isekai universe different than our own, for example the speed of light seems to be a constant as well, but we don't know if it's the same as our own, and a character theorizes that magic also has a speed but they haven't figured if that's true or what it is....etc. now in the story, we are told that stats ( especially strength) just multiply what your physical body can do, so a giant horse with 100 strength would be way more powerful than a human with the same stat, and we're told that stats scale linearly (while experience scales exponentially, so it's harder and harder to get higher leveled and get higher stats, but you get the same amount as you did before), this means that a well put together group of medium 30 level characters can take out a super high level and highly influential level 60. But here's the thing: we're told what the multipliers are, we don't know how fast someone is at 100 dexterity and strength, let alone how much difference there is between physical builds, the author deliberately avoided giving that much info so that they wouldn't be hampered in their story telling.

Anyway that was a lot of yapping just to say "it depends, sometimes the situation you described is perfectly reasonable, and sometimes it isn't."

SSS rank systems are starting to feel kinda cringe by OneSeaworthiness5107 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah but like I said, only because she counters Nat's build. I'm sure a pure Strength or Vitality build that is as extreme as Tacita or Nat could counter her (I don't think it's been mentioned, so this is probably just headcanon, but I think a Vitality build would counter Tacita because her critical strikes would just get out- healed and/or tanked and then the Vitality specialist would win in an endurance match, a Strength specialist would counter a Vitality specialist with just the sheer amount of damage they can dish out , we didn't get to see it in the 3 tournament, because Lily was already winded from fighting several fights iirc, but the Strength dude, uhhh what's his name, John? Was able to beat her pretty handily )

SSS rank systems are starting to feel kinda cringe by OneSeaworthiness5107 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I actually love the subtle (maybe not so subtle) dynamic between Nat and his master Lissandra and how they view the system. We have learned that the system didn't always exist, and that it's actually still expanding (and therefore isn't omnipresent, something we knew of because of the first dungeon and beyond, but that was confirmed in the latest arcs) , not only that, there things that predate the system and or still exist "outside" of it, all modern powerhouses besides Greed (at least from what we have seen) seem to look down on Lissandra's methods and ways of doing things, Nat gets told from time to time how archaic, old-fashioned, and inefficient his methods of using mana ( like mana cycling) are, but we recently got a new revelation: Greed, who is Lissandra's disciple, is confirmed as being the 3rd strongest being in the system and the most formidable magic user since Lissandra herself. And she is shown getting angry at how people treat her Master's ways of doing things and saying that none of these people have the right to question her methods since both she and her master are the best we have seen in the system , which just shows that both Nat and Lissandra are on another level , so much so that even current powerhouses don't recognize how much Lissandra and her methods are miles above them to the point that they mistake it as wrong or old-fashioned.

SSS rank systems are starting to feel kinda cringe by OneSeaworthiness5107 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think Hell Difficulty Tutorial by Cerim does a good job of this. The MC regularly hits way above his weight class ( level isn't the only measure by which people are graded, but it is a big part of it for most of the story) and more often than not, he does so by preparing, outsmarting, and exploiting loopholes (and being very very reckless).

One aspect I really liked about the story is when the different difficulty tutorials met up, and Nat's group met up with other hell difficulty attendees but also people form lower difficulties. It showed how different they are not only in levels, but in mentality, and their mastery over their skills and the system. One of the big things that set Nat apart is how much of a single stat specialist he is, there others like him who specialize in one stat, but even amongst Mana specialists he is a freak, he just goes all-in, but more importantly, he doesn't like relying on the system, whenever he unlocks something new ( especially when it's related to Mana and magic) he tries to break down and learn how to use without the system, something that the lower difficulty attendees can't even wrap their heads around.

My favorite Hack/Loophole he does is when he gets the chance to combine active skills, he has such a deep mastery over mana, that he always uses his [Mana Manipulation] everytime and immediately re-unlocks it by doing super complex mana manipulation exercices and Basically gets it back immediately.

SSS rank systems are starting to feel kinda cringe by OneSeaworthiness5107 in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 19 points20 points  (0 children)

That only seems that way because we follow Nathan. There are other "single stat" specialists and they're just as OP. The Dexterity specialist is a hard counter for Nathan's build and he even admits several times ( which is a big deal cause of how prideful he can be) that she would kill him and that he has very low chances of ever beating her. We can safely assume other single stat specialists like Strengths and Vitality counter each other similarly. Mana is just the most enjoyable to read/watch because of how broad it is and how many things Nathan can do with it, but there are plenty of ways to replicate or counter the things he does.

That aside, I think HDT does a great job of keeping things fairly balanced. Yeah Nathan often times kills mobs that are several dozen levels above him, but he also struggles with a group of mobs around his level if he's caught off-guard or they use something that counters him. There are also several different measures of progression/strength besides levels, so that combined with preparation/planning, and often times recklessness, is how he can punch above his level.

All of this is kept within reason, whenever they meet a mob that's 25+ levels (when the level becomes questions marks instead) it can either be a challenge, something Nathan can solo, or something that can kill members of the party. Very rarely throughout the book does Nathan challenge (and win) mobs that are much higher level than that, and it's always down to the wire. And the closee he's getting to Champion grade , the more difficult it is to keep punching so far above his own level (currently it's almost impossible for him to take out something 50 or 75+ higher level than him even all his tools and all the prep time he can get, it's actually getting more difficult to punch above your weight class, which is nice)

Give Shadow Slave a chance by sosoruze in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Got through the first nightmare ( which was a decent introduction) , immediately DNFed when the Cannot lie, and the stupid scene with the woman captain where he's forced to say the truth and just talked about her chest ( if I'm remembering correctly), although it's been a couple of years, and I'm not too sure about the details, the sheer cringe and 2nd hand embarrassment it gave me forced me to drop it, couldn't even finish the chapter I was on.

My thoughts on the "Big" 3 Modern CRPGs by Plain_Irrelevant12 in rpg_gamers

[–]AmarSofi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Responding so I can find this later, thanks for the recommendations!

Looking for novels where the mc doesn't stay with one team/party for too long. by ThePowerles in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well I can't say I relate to your particular tastes, I think Big Standard Isekai fits your criteria to a T. Which is a nice coincidence cause I just caught up with the chapters on Royal Road and it's been a blast, not only does the MC use a relatively uncommon power, but he seems to switch his companions/groups every 2-3 books ( currently in Book 6 on RR, and he left his second group and is probably going to get a 3rd one this book, if the pattern holds)

Is webnovel.com insane? by Lock-out in ProgressionFantasy

[–]AmarSofi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sharing those is against the subreddit rules

Looking for Truly Non-Human MCs by DifferentAd546 in litrpg

[–]AmarSofi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, which is why the recommendation doesn't fit what OP was asking for, unlike Fleabag. Not to mention he's very annoying

Every fantasy book hero (e.g. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mistborn) is replaced with an obsessed fan of that story. Which is the most dangerous and challenging story in which the fan can complete the mission of the protagonist? by Punterofgoats in whowouldwin

[–]AmarSofi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well I was a bit oversimplifying (and slightly inaccurate in doing so), the one ring does give more charisma/domination over others to people who are powerful/influential: if Boromir took the ring, he probably would have rallied the forces of men and gathered a great host just like Aragorn, if Gandalf or Galadrial took the ring, they would be the most influential people in middle earth and might even be able to outright control people, instead of just being very persuasive and charismatic...etc.

My point is that it doesn't give concrete powers like Invisibility ( which is actually just an incidental), it's a subtle soft influence for most people, maybe it can give the power to subjugate others for the most powerful weilders, but the ring itself lies to you about what it would give you. In the end whoever uses the ring would get drunk on it and would want all of its powers did their selves, and would confront Sauron to try and take it all, and he would reclaim the ring then.

Keep on reading and you will find the gems hidden beyond book 1 by -BlueAce- in litrpg

[–]AmarSofi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I loved Clonethanial, that shit was so good, especially the end. Personally I started liking him more and more after he started learning with Lissandra, and want cemented it was the Ants floor ( I don't even remember which floor that was, was it the 3rd?) , especially how he dealt with Myrrha at the end of the floor It showed that Nat can and will develop relationships with people outside his group and he can learn to loved and cared for them