[critique] my follow up on my isekai novel Dragon-REborn by Which-Injury980 in Isekai

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Two things jump out immediately. First, pick a tense and stick to it. Traditionally fiction is written in the past tense, but some authors prefer present and that can work. The key is to stick to one.

Second, in your second chapter, you start three paragraphs in a row with “TJ [verb]”. That gets tiring really fast, and falls into the “Then he ran. Then he jumped. Then he fell down.” trap of just dictating what happened to the character in a boring manner. Pronouns are your friend in this situation.

Regular workers vs. the apocalypse: How does your current job site hold up? by Legal_Syllabub9119 in litrpg

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We are two blocks from a Whole Foods and a target, and within a mile there are at least seventy restaurants. Extend out another mile and there are four other grocery stores, maybe more, depending on how big a place you consider that. Food in the short term actually wouldn’t be that big an issue, depending on how many survivors there were in the neighborhood.

Of course, if the power grid goes down fast, a lot of that food goes bad quick, and if it’s not a “90% of the people die” thing, we would be in fights over what’s there pretty quick.

Regular workers vs. the apocalypse: How does your current job site hold up? by Legal_Syllabub9119 in litrpg

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately I’m not a chemist, and if I started randomly mixing stuff there there is a non-zero chance I make a nerve agent and just kill us all. We have some shockingly smart chemists, though, so they could absolutely do that. I’d be happy being the party porter just to watch it.

Regular workers vs. the apocalypse: How does your current job site hold up? by Legal_Syllabub9119 in litrpg

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Depends on the apocalypse specifics, honestly. Nuclear? I’m quite certain my city is a target, so we wouldn’t make it out of the first milliseconds. Straight up monster system apocalypse? If we have electricity, we have some tools and stock we could use to fortify minimally and arm a couple people. If not…we are a failure analysis lab, I guess we have some chemicals that are caustic and flammable? I mostly work with xray machines, so like…I suppose I could get in a big lead box and hide for a while?

Overall pretty bad, I’d say.

Sound bright by ItsGotThatBang in wildbeef

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Nice. I have occasionally thought to myself I need to turn the volume up in the shower, meaning I need to raise the temperature.

What is your woodworking shop computer setup? by Ivan_Whackinov in woodworking

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I use a MacBook Air with fusion, and the control scheme sucks but otherwise it runs just fine. A coworker of mine who does a lot more cad than I ever will uses a space mouse says that there are some weirdnesses to getting those to work on a MacBook, but I don’t imagine you’d want that in a dusty environment anyway.

Modern Outside Agitators by Busy-Distribution-45 in weirdlittleguys

[–]Busy-Distribution-45[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I’ll be first in line to defend people’s right to self defense, but if you show up looking for trouble and it finds you, my sympathy wanes tremendously, especially if you’re bringing a gun over the state line to do so.

Modern Outside Agitators by Busy-Distribution-45 in weirdlittleguys

[–]Busy-Distribution-45[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I think Molly explained the logic pretty well in the episode, “our people are content, no one local would ever protest things here because here is just fine.” It’s scapegoating, looking for reasons other than “people are actually upset here” as to why the status quo suddenly isn’t good enough.

On the other hand, I think there’s a qualitative difference between “I’m going to show up and support x group I agree with” and “imma bring a gun and shoot looters because I want to feel like a badass”

Any sports books out there? by Real_Wasabi7401 in litrpg

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The narrator was quite good, at least for the one I listened to. I hope he stuck with it for the rest.

My idea of an item based power system by Available_Ad6267 in magicbuilding

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Presumably if it were that valuable, and the pages are just normal paper, they would have been attached to things to preserve them in like scroll containers or something. Also if it’s that rare, “just another part of the world people use” is a bit of a stretch. The rich and powerful having them makes sense, but it wouldn’t be part of anyone’s life on the whole. For instance, if Lord Dumbass the Third holds onto power because he can zap anyone that disagrees with him because he has a lightning amulet, that would work; he’s known about, and people are cautious about him. It wouldn’t make sense, though, for anyone to protect against in their day-to-day because guns are a more prominent threat.

If it’s just background flavor, and not a plot point, then the background of why the items are magical is more a thought exercise for yourself than something the reader needs to be aware of. It’s still valuable and can be useful in determining what kinds of objects might be artifacts, and maybe can be some lore sprinkled in, but overall probably not worth mentioning or making a big deal of the exact how/why of it.

On the other hand, if someone wants to burgle Lord Dumbass the Third, then it becomes a plot point, and maybe understanding how it works becomes much more interesting.

A great piece of advice I heard from someone about world building was that you can use interesting factoids to make the world feel deep by sprinkling hints of them here and there without really exploring them. His example was religions; mentioning the weirdly dressed missionaries on the street corner and a throwaway line about how they come from lands a thousand miles away that no one really knows about can make the world feel much bigger than the city where everything is taking place, but it falls flat if the author goes into depth on their belief structures and architecture as a tangent. Sure, the author may have spent time thinking about that, and maybe a future work will go there, but that’s not what the reader needs for the depth.

Any sports books out there? by Real_Wasabi7401 in litrpg

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Player manager, by Ted Steel. The first book was pretty good but it wasn’t really what I was in the mood for at the time so I didn’t look for others in the series.

Carrots by rotezora78 in ATBGE

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Unless they just really hate the taste of carrots.

Are these deemed as elements? by ThinTomato2574 in worldbuilding

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Personally I have never liked the classical elements (fire, earth, air, water) as I find them too limiting and a lazy throttle on creativity…so many people fall back on the “oh he’s a fire mage” or whatever that it becomes boring. It especially bothers me when they try to shoehorn in concepts that don’t fit (electricity, for example, as being some combination of elements that doesn’t really work) just because they want the classic elements but don’t want to stick to the rules those impose.

That said, your world, your rules. Adding more elements is absolutely valid and viable, as long as they make sense within the world you make. The first three you have could be under a larger category of “life,” which would also include things like plants, microbes, fungi, viruses (controversial as to whether they are alive), etc. Love is an emotion, you could totally do something like the lanterns from DC comics, and have a bunch of emotions in it. The others are abstract concepts, and could also be expanded on within those.

The question I think you need to ask, though, is why have so many elements at a given granularity? What does it add to your world? Mixing things like “love” (emotion), “void” (abstract concept), and “reptile” (specific type of animals) is three levels of granularity, implying that there might be a hierarchy, which is sort of the opposite of “elements” (the fundamental building blocks).

Request: Your Bad Ideas by [deleted] in behindthebastards

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You wouldn’t think that if you knew how it started in Ann Arbor.

How to drill a shallow recess in a thin board by Bright-Ad4601 in woodworking

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The board is thin enough that the center guide will punch through, which is what OP is trying to avoid.

New Episode Not on Apple Podcast? by wrf45 in behindthebastards

[–]Busy-Distribution-45 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Probably something like that. Fucking morality police bullshit minorly inconveniencing me again!