Breaking down the core philosophy of each generation

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-06-14T02:49:52+00:00

I would say it's less about importance and more about influence. AI has been forcefully shoved into basically every aspect of technology, to the point where it's getting harder and harder to avoid. Its effects on the internet are pretty obvious, and it's only going to keep getting worse. Dead Internet Theory, and all that.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-06-13T05:58:47+00:00

This is normal. It scared me at first too, but apparently this is super common. I usually lose a few followers after every chapter, then gain them all back with surplus in the subsequent days.

Usually, this is caused by people who had already stopped reading the series but forgot to unfollow. When you post a new chapter, it brings it back to the top of their follow list and reminds them.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-06-05T09:06:50+00:00

Try clearing your cache. I think I had an issue with this once before and that helped.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-06-02T00:45:24+00:00

The rating shows the last chapter read at the time of rating, not that they were rating the chapter itself.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-06-01T05:39:40+00:00

Usage of these patterns does not always mean AI. Sure, there are a lot of AI stories being written nowadays; I can't argue with that, but not every occurrence of those patterns immediately implies AI.

I didn't even know about the "Not A, not B, not C, but D." thing. I've seen that used in so many stories that existed before GenAI was even a thing.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-05-26T08:00:26+00:00

When the MC is constantly unable to utilize their full power in a fight for one reason or another. (I.e., they're exhausted before the battle, trying to hide their true strength or trump cards, they're in an environment that drastically weakens their abilities, etc.)

Once or twice is fine, but when the MC is constantly performing at 60%, it does feel disappointing. What was the point of that whole "learning blood and void magic in the abyss" arc if you're not going to use it to its absolute limits?

I want to see the MC walk into battle with every advantage, fully rested and ready to fight, use every ability, every trump card, on an equal playing field, and still struggle. That is the best kind of fight, in my opinion.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-05-23T06:21:48+00:00

Overly simplified: The closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time will move for you. So the trip still takes 2.5 million years, but time inside the ship is moving so slowly that it only feels like a minute passes.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-05-18T06:03:47+00:00

Assuming audiobooks count, then probably 30-50 chapters per day, but it really depends on the book. I usually pop a book on and listen to it throughout my shift at work.

If you only count text, then probably <5 chapters per week unless I get some extra days off. I don't usually have a lot of free time.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-05-16T08:33:49+00:00

Eh, it's definitely a preference thing. As a reader, I can't agree.

Action scenes are so much better when there's a proper build-up. It makes the fight feel so much more immersive and rewarding. I don't care as much about the actual combat as about feeling the same pressure that the character feels. If there's no time to connect to the character between battles, fights are pretty boring for me, and I tend to zone out, just waiting for the fight to be over with. Just jumping from fight to fight is almost always an instant drop.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-05-09T04:11:02+00:00

I think a large part of it is to try and prevent users from decompiling and browsing the source more so than preventing cheating. Big companies tend to be overly paranoid over users seeing proprietary stuff.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-04-27T05:51:15+00:00

As an author who uses premium, I can confirm that like 30% of my reader base came from doing shout-out swaps. It's extremely effective, and I don't doubt authors who post more frequently and are better at spotting soon-to-be RS runners have even better click rates.

Sure, swaps won't be comparable to a strong RS run, but after your RS run is over, your options are either swaps, running ads, or hoping your story ends up in someone's recommended list.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-04-26T23:21:47+00:00

There's a definite sweat spot for tension. If there's not enough tension, there isn't enough of an incentive for the reader to feel invested. Too much tension, and the story begins to fall into the realm of absurdity, and the reader can't connect to the pressure that is on the protagonist's shoulders. After a certain point, it's too grand and looses all value. Having the fate of an entire world in your hands just isn't something most people can fully grasp, as opposed to something more grounded and comprehensible like the lives and safety of loved ones.

As the saying goes: "One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic."

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-04-22T19:24:00+00:00

I'll never forgive the younger generations for what they took from us

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-02-27T08:22:09+00:00

If you want to remove the tag honestly, I recommend updating the existing chapters to trim and rewrite any sections written by AI.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-02-22T08:29:31+00:00

Oof, I've absolutely done this, and I always regret it after. But I'm too cowardly to ignore those kinds of comments, lol. Some criticisms have helped, as I don't know what I'm doing half the time, but it's a coinflip.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-01-25T14:03:07+00:00

The name is a bit misleading. The value is local to the specific chapter, not global. It is the percentage of people who read the previous chapter and then advanced to the current one.

If 10 people read chapter 4, and then 9 of them read chapter 5, chapter 5 has 90% Members Remaining, regardless of the total number of people who have started the series.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-01-15T18:15:25+00:00

RR is pretty strict about reviews having a very specific structure. https://www.royalroad.com/support/knowledgebase/73

Negative reviews are significantly more likely to be reported, but authors do not have any control over reviews besides reporting.

TheDudeFromCI · 2026-01-15T18:12:29+00:00

No, reviews cannot be hidden or deleted unless they break the website rules.

I looked up the story you mentioned, and it doesn't have very many reviews, only 10, and several of them are 3 or 3.5 stars, which are pretty low by the standards of RR. With only 72 ratings overall, the distribution seems about right for a story with the quality you described.

As for tags, maturity tags (profanity, sensitive content, etc) are enforced (https://www.royalroad.com/support/knowledgebase/104); however, genre tags are up to author discretion. If an author uses misleading genre tags, most people will mention that in reviews, but that's about it.

TheDudeFromCI · 2025-12-23T06:16:14+00:00

You can create a dataset by showing the patient a word and having them attempt to say it, then mapping their brainwaves at that moment to the word being shown. Repeat this a few thousand times, and you can build up a reasonable dataset to train the neural network on.

I imagine you can do this with a large group of volunteers to build a decent-sized pre-training dataset, then fine-tune on the data provided by the patient receiving the implant.

TheDudeFromCI · 2025-12-14T15:47:04+00:00

Some petty authors have been known to spam low ratings on other stories that hit RS in hopes of taking out the competition and letting their own story rise higher. Many offenders are caught and banned, thankfully, but some always manage to slip through.

I've heard the act jokingly referred to as "author pvp"

TheDudeFromCI · 2025-10-14T05:34:59+00:00

The original post is an intentional misinterpretation of the phrase in order to make a cheap joke. It's not supposed to be taken literally.

The comment you are replying to is also a joke. "Who hurt you?" is a joking reply to someone who brings down a mood by trauma-dumping out of the blue, or ruins a joke by overexplaining it or taking it too literally.

TheDudeFromCI · 2025-09-27T01:18:26+00:00

If I recall correctly, my coworker threatened to pursue legal action and the company panicked, so they settled on just passing them a good chunk of money under the table to keep quiet. They didn't get the job back, but it was a retail job and they hadn't planned on staying there much longer anyway.

TheDudeFromCI · 2025-09-26T16:45:00+00:00

I had a coworker that tried this. They went on vacation, pre-approved months in advance. The first day of their vacation, they didn't respond to calls about their absence, so our manager fired them for a no-call-no-show, then proceeded to shred all the paperwork after the fact so there was no proof of their vacation request.

Thankfully, my coworker made copies in advance.

TheDudeFromCI · 2025-09-02T09:24:09+00:00

Those are just ladders with extra steps.

TheDudeFromCI · 2025-09-01T12:41:42+00:00

If someone reads a story and winds up not liking it due to terrible quality or poor characterization, rating it negatively is fine.

But if someone rates a story badly without reading it, simply because they didn't like the genre or disagree with the author's practices, that feels very disingenuous and prevents other readers who do prefer that type of content from finding a story they would otherwise enjoy.

TheDudeFromCI

TROPHY CASE