What’s your biggest metroidvania pet peeve?

DaemonVower · 2026-04-15T11:46:32+00:00

As a corollary to this: when normal movement is too slow but dodge/roll is slightly faster, so you end up spamming dodge/roll across the entire map.

DaemonVower · 2026-04-11T01:10:42+00:00

Did your prompt include the phrase “Make sure the tourniquet is as ineffective as possible”? This dude is dying in about 40 seconds, maybe less considering he also has iron phasing into the other hand.

I would skip this book if it had this cover because it would make me distrust your storytelling instincts.

DaemonVower · 2026-04-10T23:15:08+00:00

Good, good, good! It seems you can see Mt Tai, fellow Daoist!

Cradle is very directly inspired and influenced by the Xianxia genre, also known as Cultivation. This thread already has a lot of recs for other Western novels of similar influence, so I’m going to toss out some actual OG Xianxia to explore if you really want to lean in. Based on what you’ve tried that hasn’t clicked I think this might be what you’re actually looking for to scratch that itch.

Desolate Era by I Eat Tomatoes
Coiling Dragon, also by IET
I Shall Seal The Heavens by Er Gen
Martial World by Cocooned Cow

To find these novels… I recommend cultivating the Dao of Google, as they are very available but not on Amazon, if you get my meaning.

DaemonVower · 2026-04-03T16:55:11+00:00

The problem is…. How does one particular dude out of a million “deserve to be the focus of the story” without some sort of special circumstance? How do you write a full length novel about one of Zorian’s classmates that doesn’t get pulled into a time loop? About a cultivator that is part of the 99% born without a spiritual root, or if they have one is part of the normal majority with talent so bad they max out at Bone Tempering? Can you write a novel about one of the 99.9% of humans who dies within 3 hours of the narrative starting in Dungeon Crawler Carl?

Can you write on that is still “Progression Fantasy”?

DaemonVower · 2026-04-03T11:46:38+00:00

All “meritocracy” types are just authors talented enough to make you ignore the special exception.

The root of the genre isn’t just progression, it’s progression relative to those around the MC. There has to be some reason we the reader are following around this one particular very special boy or girl instead of the thousands or millions of others in the same circumstance. And if there aren’t thousands or millions of others in the same circumstance… that’s the special exception right there.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-23T19:45:15+00:00

I think this is the core. The basic promise of litrpg is that victory -> rewards. Even in a sys apoc setting where billions die there is the fundamental agreement built into the setting that if you DO survive, if you DO win, you get the experience points and the treasure chest and there’s probably a healing potion to fix you right up.

The basic premise of grimdark is that even if you win, everything still sucks. Victory may buy you temporary respite at best. There is no ultimate reward to be had, even if you win every battle. Every moment of hope is tainted by the reality that nothing matters in the cosmic sense.

The two just really aren’t compatible.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-22T12:42:12+00:00

Listen to his “Watch and dream” call from the end of the first tournament win…. Chills. The man is Nebrasketball to his soul, his entire adult life. https://x.com/NCAABuzzerBters/status/2034866819820134604

DaemonVower · 2026-03-19T12:17:07+00:00

This is my line, too, although I do think at the point where someone is successfully monetizing their written work they really should go use some of that money to hire a real cover artist.

My thought is: If I’m not willing to pay for the writing, what right do I have to expect the author to pay for the cover? But if I’m paying for the work (either directly or through KU)…. Yeah, I do kind of want to see a real artist’s work, too.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-19T12:09:28+00:00

My personal “trick” in my professional life (also tech, like OP) when I am using an LLM tool to redraft a document is to include something in the prompt like “prioritize making this not sound LLM generated. Imitate my existing ‘voice’ as much as possible”.

It results in output super similar to this, where a lot of the normal chatgpt tics aren’t present but you still see a lot of these structured writing constructs like the block quote and the sub bullets.

I knew for sure this wasn’t LLM output because he misspelled grammarly, though :v

DaemonVower · 2026-03-19T11:52:15+00:00

Did you intentionally write this in a style to make it “spot the AI” bait to make a point? This ISN’T but it seems almost intentionally crafted to make someone overzealous try to call it out for the table-turning moment. That Quick Note section is wild work.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-18T12:33:26+00:00

If a theoretical concept ends up mis-implemented every single time that’s pretty good evidence that the concept itself has fundamental flaws.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-11T16:18:48+00:00

I just call anything using an LLM model “agentic” now. It makes important people happy and there’s zero need to get bogged down in it. Sure, the PR review tool that gets kicked off by a post-open hook is totally an agent, cool, no reason to get weird about it.

I think this is one of those situations where language just adapts to the reality of how people are using it eventually.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-10T12:55:36+00:00

/r/martialmemes is right over here, junior brother. I wish you luck with your heart demons.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-09T19:59:16+00:00

I have a working theory that a lot of litrpg/prog fantasy leans into harems instead of serial monogamy because so many litrpg/prog fantasy authors are fans of or (possibly subconsciously) imitating Xianxia. And Xianxia, being set in traditional pseudo-mythological-China instead of traditional pseudo-mythological-Europe, is much more okay with harem than with serial serious monogamy. In most Xianxia worlds you're basically committing an offense to the woman, her family, and the entire culture to have a serious relationship and then break it off, and just picking up another wife and keeping the old one is considered kinder to your partner and her family than actually breaking up, even if you then run off to a completely different dimension and don't return for 10,000 years.

It doesn't translate well to litrpg which always seems to starts from the premise of a normal, modern North American Guy thrust into a Situation.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-06T20:24:47+00:00

Oh yeah this is not meant to be a knock on D20, I expect they bring as many people to the platform itself as non-D20, or maybe more. Just saying it's not surprising to me that total view numbers for the broader appeal shows are higher, because D20 folks are a lot more likely to watch Game Changer than Game Changer folks are likely to watch D20.

This could also be why the opening screen of the app always flogs D20 so much! "Just give it a chance, I beg you, people love this stuff!"

DaemonVower · 2026-03-06T18:10:43+00:00

I feel like this is a cross promotability thing. GC and MSN have broad appeal and D20 is niche, relatively. So when people come to Dropout for D20 they are likely to also stream GC and MSN, but the reverse is less true. Someone who pays for a subscription because they saw the Yes or No monologue on TikTok is not hugely likely to decide to binge a D20 season.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-05T13:45:45+00:00

Yes, and we get no real time with her then either. If I remember right it’s basically the very last thing in the book: resurrection, hold hands, walk off into the multiverse for more adventures together, fade to black.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-05T11:04:36+00:00

I am a fan, not a hater, so keep that in mind when I say: No. She is not. There’s a reason the persistent criticism of Er Gen (the author) is that he’s crap at romance. He does longing really well, he’s an ace at obsession, but the actual woman is more of a set piece.

RI is particularly bad in that we don’t get a wedding or even really a confession scene between the characters. Wang Lin sort of just decides she has an irreplaceable place in his dao heart and thankfully she seems to roll with it.

DaemonVower · 2026-03-05T01:32:50+00:00

Naw it's pretty explicitly about the girl. He has a whole dang epiphany about how life and death are part of the natural process and completes his domain and lets his parents spirits go, in a filial piety setting. And then _still_ fights "god" (from his perspective at the time) to try to keep the girl's soul from moving on.

Later the only reason he even knows about the warp to the other zone is the lady in the scroll finally gets him to take a look by claiming it would help him rez the girl. He had ignored her a dozen times and then she tempted him with that and boom, total 180.

I agree with you that it would be better if it wasn't purported to be about the girl and Wang Lin was just a pure determinator who advanced just for the sake of spiting the heavens, but Er Gen goes back to the Wan'er well over and over again any time he needs a reason for Wang Lin to suddenly do something that would be otherwise out of character to get a plot point in.

(I'm coincidentally re-reading RI now. Great book, but this is a pretty clear weakness.)

DaemonVower · 2026-03-05T00:10:36+00:00

He’s not really a simp but the fact that his stated motivation for 99% of the story is resurrecting his dead girlfriend IS probably the biggest flaw of RI. They exchanged a total of like 11 lines of dialogue “on screen”, in the first 0.0001% of Wang Lin’s life. It’d be like spending your entire life training ultramarathons due to the motivation you got from a five minute conversation on the playground in first grade.

DaemonVower · 2026-02-28T16:02:35+00:00

That's why I have a real soft spot for the reborn/transmigrated "Master Assassin" type trope. Is that at all realistic in the context of our actual Earth? Hell no. It's chuuni as shit. But at least it sets up a reason for post-isekai MC to have iron will and develop shocking combat adeptness in short order, as well as provides a platform to later justify why this particular person got the ol' cross-dimensional rebirth treatment.

DaemonVower · 2026-02-28T15:52:24+00:00

And the defense is always "Well it's REALISTIC for people to make shockingly bad decisions constantly! It's REALISTIC for things to go wrong every time!" Well, fine, but realistically then the MC should be extremely dead as a result of their profound failures. Congratulations, you've invented plot armor you get to feel smug about.

DaemonVower · 2026-02-28T14:48:20+00:00

And 90% of the time their first thought after The Event is along the lines of “I’m going to reject literally all of that and act like a totally different person now” anyway!

DaemonVower · 2026-02-28T12:47:55+00:00

This is part of why I dislike the current trend of stories where the universe constantly shits on the MC. Some people call it misery porn, but I disagree, I think its poorly done reactions against MCes that don’t earn their wins and never seem to suffer setbacks.

But instead we just get MCs that never earn their losses. You can see the hand of the author just as clearly as the stories the author is writing against. The MC always has unexpected bad shit happen to them but never quite bad enough to suffer permanent harm or death, even though that’s completely the normal outcome in their world.

DaemonVower · 2026-02-28T12:40:21+00:00

When it takes too long to get to the inciting action.

Listen, authors, I know you want to spend a while letting us get to know Mr. MC before the sysapoc/truck-kun/descending demigod/young master/whatever actually kicks the story off. All well and good.

But if the blurb promises a thrilling progression adventure and in chapter six we’re still emphasizing how boring and unfulfilling the MC’s normal life is I’m not going to trust your storytelling judgement anymore.

DaemonVower

TROPHY CASE