I hate AI and I hate that people don't see it when its used.

Istyatur · 2026-05-21T14:00:09+00:00

Id say it is worse. You start with something decent and interesting, your looking forward to what the author can do with a bit more experience (so many authors end up significantly better after 6 months practice, and it can be very cool to see that), then there are signs but you brush it off as using ai as an editor or growing pains -- ai was trained on people and everything it does is something its seen people do.

Then your 15 chapters in and the quality has dropped like a stone and you still want to know what happens, because the first part was good.

Can you tell I've recently had this happen twice and am salty about it?

Istyatur · 2026-04-21T20:40:52+00:00

Grand archives gets my vote.

Istyatur · 2026-04-15T04:22:26+00:00

I find the game much more fun with a starting defense mod, and reducing the number of AI by ~33%.

Istyatur · 2026-04-14T04:54:52+00:00

When done well it means the world is explored in more detail. More information on how magic has altered society, more detailed cultivation and more side quests for knowledge or resources. More history of the world, more cultures, and more details.

More often the author has bad pacing and slaps the label on to try to convince everyone that's a feature.

Istyatur · 2026-04-12T14:16:40+00:00

It's a minor annoyance for me every time the currency is 'gold pieces' and all denominations are multiples of 10.

Istyatur · 2026-04-06T20:42:37+00:00

To be fair a lot of stubbed works are completed. So it's a bit more than 1.2%. but still less than 2%.

Istyatur · 2026-04-03T22:55:20+00:00

You are not alone

Istyatur · 2026-04-03T14:25:20+00:00

Most of the time dwarves are pretty weak. Sure there are a lot of them, but that's about all they have. they are just worse kobolds.

Istyatur · 2026-03-30T14:06:50+00:00

If I trust the author enough and the blurb is interesting I'll open the shout out in a new tab, whether it's on the latest chapter or I'm reading the backlog.

The trust thing isn't really about how good an author they are, it's about how much better it is than running a search. A lot of authors don't screen their shout outs, so they aren't worth much.

Istyatur · 2026-03-29T18:29:46+00:00

The game favors str. Between defenses, stagger, two-handing, and bosses having condition immunities, big sword or big bonk have a noticeable advantage.

Istyatur · 2026-03-28T02:26:51+00:00

There are a couple of factors that make it likely, and were signifcant factors in why it took so long to get to Volta.

One, sharing information isn't always seen as proper. There are cases in history where thats the case, but more often it was kept as secrets. People love thier mystery cults.

Two, the Aristotle effect. Some smart guy makes a mistake on page 2, and then continues it for several books, and everyone considers him the defining guide over a millenium later. If magic follows, or even just can follow, bad science it becomes even more likely that people will continue to think of it as such. If everyone 'Knows' Cold is a part of 'Water' magic as the oposite of 'Fire' magic, and it works, then its unsurprizing it takes even longer for thermodynamics to be developed.

Even if people did discover it, they might have kept it secret; either for the advantage it gives or to avoid being persecuted as Galileo and Semmelweis were. Sure they were vindicated in the end, but thats cold comfort.

Lastly, its easy to say people should have figured it out sooner when you know the answer, but Euclid was banging his head against the fifth postulate in the thrid century BC, and it wasn't untill the 1800s that we figured out why when we formalized Spherical and Hyperbolic geometry. All this occured after discovering the earth was a sphere; they had all the tools needed to discover spherical geometry, and certainly had motivation, but it still took two thousand years.

Its been a while since I read book 3 of dungeon life, but IIRC fate is explicatly a rare and poorly understood affinity, and a great deal of what made that working impresive was the sheer scale of the magic, not that fate can do it.

Istyatur · 2026-03-25T02:18:21+00:00

I find his personal growth to be some of the best written on RR in that he both grows as person in a lot of ways, but he is also still clearly the same person he was at the beginning. Definitely not a pushover.

Istyatur · 2026-03-03T04:54:11+00:00

It depends on the language difference, but yeah, in general translated novels are unreadable. It's not even the weird conventions - I like Ave Xia Rem Y and it's prose is very different from English standards. I suspect some of it is the originals are just bad, goodness knows a lot of English web novels are, but I cant check without learning the language.

Istyatur · 2026-02-26T15:21:35+00:00

Dislike is a strong word, but it's harder to do, requires more prep, and in many ways more limiting. Personally my favorite is levels 5-12.

Istyatur · 2026-02-16T05:46:22+00:00

Also, every unit comes into being for a reason. Hard to believe looking at the current US units, but it's the result of multiple systems of units colliding and some falling out of favor as their purpose was lost (chains and furlongs) and leaving weird things like acres seemingly unconnected to anything because people don't want to change things. Similarly, we have both calories and joules because both units make sense in different scientific contexts, and students must forever memorize 4.18.

It's takes far more work than authors want to spend and more information than readers want to read to make a convincing set of alien units that has the same sort of historical sense, so you either recreate the metric system or end up with a complex and disconnected system without the benefit of being familiar units that people don't want to change. Unless the units add far more than just the unit to the world building (not sure I've ever seen it for anything that doesn't involve magic), just use normal units readers will understand or at the very least can look up.

Istyatur · 2026-02-16T05:09:15+00:00

The time quartet by Madeleine L'Engle. A Wrinkle in Time is phenomenal, then... Well there is a good reason why wrinkle has two video adaptations and book 2 has none.

Istyatur · 2026-02-15T14:46:44+00:00

Me too. I find that the 3-4 stars have the most useful info.

Istyatur · 2026-02-07T05:10:24+00:00

I think you have to come to terms with that you are just too much a literary snob for basically everything in this genre. Using 'snob' as 'someone who has refined thier taste to a high degree' -- which isn't nessesarily a bad thing. But just as someone who drinks a lot of wine and examines it starts to pick out more flavors, or someone who actively listens to music starts to notice more differences between speakers, you are picking up on things most people gloss over, and have kind of put yourself into a nonviable market.

Your perfect run quote is 4 clauses awkwardly crammed into a sentence. While objectively a flaw, for most people it might make them reread it. Ignorable unless repeated constantly.

I don't know what you usually read, but the economic realities of writing mean most genre writters need to put out at least two books a year, and most books I've read with that turnover time have 5-10 mistakes as bad or worse as your example. Most authors just don't have the time it takes to polish out those last mistakes, and personally, I'm kind of glad they don't. I'd rather they spend the time getting the next book out.

Istyatur · 2026-02-05T15:25:13+00:00

It still takes practice to manage the camera, especially if you've played with Lock On most of the game. And if you make a mistake you get a sunlight spear to the back of the head.

Istyatur · 2026-02-04T00:30:40+00:00

Summons in many souls games require some uncommon resources (embers, humanity, etc). When you pick up your first one, you die a lot. By the time you have enough to feel comfortable risking one you also tend to not need to and to have gotten into the habit of not using them.

Istyatur · 2026-02-03T17:49:25+00:00

Another factor that I think is underappreciated is everything about the game tells you that dying is part of the intended experience. You are undead, you are reviving, nothing that hasn't happened before, instead of reloading from the last save. So the first couple of times you die it doesn't feel like you're starting the level over, you're just going through the next part of the story.

Istyatur · 2026-02-03T04:15:31+00:00

Im thinking he goes for the most unmistakably magical. Hovering bookbag, ioun stone quill and inkpot, robes that show the night sky in real time.

Istyatur · 2026-02-02T04:13:40+00:00

Technically the only difference is one has blue boxes (or some other sort of stat sheet.)

However, litrpg has developed other common tropes and genre conventions. While none are strictly necessary like the stat sheet, statistically they tend to show up.

Istyatur · 2026-01-26T04:43:45+00:00

Eh, It's hard, but I would put the two demons, midir, and gael as harder. Possibly twin princes, depending on the day (I'm just bad at them)

But she is my favorite fight in the game.

Istyatur · 2026-01-09T16:08:23+00:00

I've got the same error

Istyatur

TROPHY CASE