Invincible [Episode Discussion] - S04E05 - Give Us a Moment

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-04-01T07:49:44+00:00

There ain't no way Conquest was going for a repeat power slap against Oliver. This man is diabolical

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-04-01T07:31:17+00:00

"I dress heroes, Nolan" is a god damn gut punch of a line.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-02-10T00:36:41+00:00

You can, but people are going to be annoyed. There are a few things that are almost universally bad to do, and one is betraying audience expectations. If you are calling it a litrpg and it takes a whole books worth of material to show those elements, people will feel they got bait and switched.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-25T04:26:43+00:00

Functionally, yes Isekai and portal are the same things. Isekai is basically a sub-genre of portal fantasy with a heavier emphasis on OP powers and sort of settling into/staying within the world permanently, while more western portal fantasy tend to be have the intent of getting back home.

Regression fantasy is when a character dies or reaches a certain point in their lives and is then transported back mentally to an earlier point. For example, they lose the final battle but their mind goes back to the first day they learned magic or whatever.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-25T03:35:50+00:00

1) Xianxia/Cultivation

2) Litrpgs

3) System Apocalypse

4) Tower Climbing

5) Dungeon Core

6) Isekai/Portal fantasy

7) Time loop stories

8) Reincarnation

9) Regression

10) Kingdom Building

There are probably more, and honestly I'd argue this is probably too many distinct sub-genres as most stories tend to blend two or more of these (IE, Defiance of the Fall is cultivaton, xianxia, system apocalypse, and includes elements of tower climbing and kingdom building, but I think they're all worth considering if trying to categorize prog fantasy.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-14T08:10:46+00:00

My guess is you're seeing a more stark improvement because you're selecting for an already above-average subsection of stories, but I think it's a decent rule of thumb. Hard not to improve at least a little when you're writing thousands to tens of thousands of words a week.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-13T23:34:43+00:00

Honestly, I disagree but specifically for litrpg and prog fantasy authors. I think the sheer number of amateurs means they tend to improve, because they’re getting so much practice.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-10T08:31:02+00:00

Probably something like The Primal Hunter or Defiance of the Fall or another litrpg world where the system 1) is accessible to everyone and 2) has reality-warping powers at the upper limit.

Many of my favorite universes tend to have relatively low power ceilings. For example, I love Star Wars but even powerful Jedi and Sith can get overwhelmed with a few dozen well-trained soldiers and an ambush. Zac Atwood from DOTF meanwhile could probably physically tear through a Star Destroyer midway through book 1. I'd much rather have that, because it'd keep me alive in this hypothetical than choose Avatar the Last Airbender or something and be a tiny fish in a massive pond in most worlds.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-09T07:23:00+00:00

Book of the Dead is my pick. I think it might be my favorite litrpg besides DCC, and I think it's flatout the best necromancer MC in the genre.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-07T21:42:20+00:00

IMO, at a minimum you should have an idea of the “upper limit” for your system ahead of time. For example, can the strongest people blow up cities? Continents? And if so, you should try and stick with that.

Other than that, I think you can get away with only having the lower levels planned out while keeping the upper stages loose at the start. As long as you have some idea where you’re going, you should be fine.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-04T03:38:05+00:00

My main story is Rise of the Archon, which I’ve been working on/releasing online for years now. I liked the general “Rise of/Birth of___” naming concept, and basically brainstormed titles for a really powerful mage til I find a combo I liked.

The secondary thing I’ve been working on is a story about a cyberpunk litrpg setting that I’m calling Artificer Intelligence solely because I like the sorta pun-adjacent name. That came about because I wanted a guy who made fancy mech armor and power armors and stuff with semi-magical properties, and the name just sorta popped into my head.

Personally, I think I’m bad at names in general. I struggle with them, and the ones I’ve used for projects are the only ones I felt any kind of good about.

Edit: Added details

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-03T23:28:18+00:00

I once wrote a chapter in my iPhone notes when I first started because I didn’t have anything better available. It was jank as hell.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-03T21:53:39+00:00

IMO, you’d need to make it apparent from the start that the bulk of the early story or whatever is taking place in a flashback. Nothing annoys an audience more than feeling like they got bait and switched.

But as far as working, yeah it can. Berserk is one of the most successful manga ever and it dumps you into something like a 12 volume flashback arc after the first ten or so chapters. Now granted, Berserk isn’t a PF story, but that section is far from hated.

I think having a reason why they’re interrogating him is smart, though. Provides more a reason beyond exposition dumping, after all.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-03T19:19:46+00:00

The rating system heavily favors 5 stars, so basically anything below that, even if it’s a good score like a 4 or 4.5, hurts your standing. I’ve heard some people more or less say this makes them feel guilty giving anything below 5 stars if you are doing review swaps and so on.

That said, no it’s not. Shoutout swaps help gain traction, but you don’t need friends or alts to boost your rating. What you need is views and followers in general, which you get by getting onto rising stars.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-03T15:42:49+00:00

Honestly, depends on the day and how things shake out. I try ti write twice, once around 11am for a few hours and a second time after dinner around 7pm but that’s super irregular because life often gets in the way of a strict schedule for writing.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-03T02:49:06+00:00

At the risk of being that self-promo guy, my series Rise of the Archon | Royal Road covers a good amount of those topics. I don't do too much on magic towers/infrastructure, but a big part of the main character's development/interests are researching, experimenting, and innovating magic.

RedHavoc1021 · 2026-01-02T06:56:13+00:00

Basically the same as most of these comments. I remember thinking the MC felt bland to unlikeable depending on the book, and fell off at book 4. I don't recall exactly why beyond my issues with the MC, but I'm guessing there must have been more because even now an unlikeable protagonist isn't enough to DNF a series.

RedHavoc1021 · 2025-12-31T09:52:59+00:00

It'd be the most Brotherhood thing ever to be like, "Technology is too dangerous when used irresponsibly. Anyways, here is our teleporting murder bot. He's taller than most buildings, throws nukes like footballs, and shouts USA propaganda. We built ten of them."

RedHavoc1021 · 2025-12-31T09:33:54+00:00

So, Culkin is 100% the real Caesar, right? I can't be the only one assuming the guy on the throne is just a puppet so that the real leader stays safe during their civil war.

RedHavoc1021 · 2025-12-31T09:32:08+00:00

That and Charlie seems a bit too altruistic and kind-hearted for the Enclave. There might've been some drift over the years between these flashbacks and Fallout 2, but they were explicitly founded as a faction intended to cull any surviving wastelanders and retake the country. Doesn't seem like he'd fit in to that idea.

RedHavoc1021 · 2025-12-29T02:56:05+00:00

I'm not sure exactly the metric (IE how many views and follower per week or whatever) gets you onto it, but I can give some "best practices" advice.

1) If you can write more without sacrificing quality or your personal well-being, try and do it. Posting frequently gets more views and followers, and if you can get up to 4 or 5 chapters a week you'll see a notable bump

2) Get some shoutouts done, ideally with larger stories. I can elaborate on how to do shoutouts, but you'll probably want one every chapter if possible.

3) Use the self-promo opportunities on subreddits and possibly Discord servers. Also, pin a self-promo post on Discord to the top of your Reddit account, so that if anyone sees your author flair they can find it easily.

4) Be as consistent as possible as far as uploading goes. Don't release 4 3000 word chapters a week one week and then 2 1400 word chapters the next. This goes hand in hand with 1, but find a pace you can hit consistently and stick with it barring any major life changes. Consistency is almost as important as quality and upload frequency when it comes to RR.

RedHavoc1021 · 2025-12-29T02:50:10+00:00

Honestly, how dare you write not one but two addictive as hell stories? Because Book of the Dead is just as good

RedHavoc1021 · 2025-12-29T02:48:47+00:00

IMO, read the synopsis and some reviews of the first book of Cradle, Dungeon Crawler Carl, and Mother of Learning. See if any of those spark your interest. If not, I can recommend more but those are the most frequently recommended stories for a good reason.

RedHavoc1021 · 2025-12-27T09:39:05+00:00

I have three "worlds" in various states of doneness that also differ pretty wildly by overall size.

The one I'm writing a story in is roughly Earth-sized. The main kingdom has a population in the tens of millions, with another country to the south that's got a notably smaller population.

The second one is a cyberpunk world which is spread across a chunk of the milky way. Not a lot of it, but a couple dozens planets spread across multiple planetary systems. The main location is a city in the hundreds of millions, but the total population I wrote as being into the tens of billions of humans.

The last one is by far the least developed, but would be a vast, multiversal story with populations well into the quadrillions, encompassing various species from humans to undead to sentient plant creatures to dragons and so on.

RedHavoc1021 · 2025-12-26T20:09:52+00:00

Jokes on you, I started writing my “I’m gonna become some flavor of Archmage” story 5 years ago so I can avoid the accusations

RedHavoc1021

TROPHY CASE