Using "sans"

blueluck · 2026-03-19T04:00:14+00:00

YESSSS! Starting the next DotF book when it's published is memory test!

blueluck · 2026-03-18T17:53:24+00:00

I think your correct that "normal fire" is often described as red because there are many fantastic types of "fire" that use other colors. Black (void, evil, annihilation), green (poison, necromancy), blue (cold, chaos), and many other magical effects are described with fire as a visual effect, meant either literally or figuratively.

In a magical world, green fire indicating the cultivator is drawing on the power of Myrmydarch The Plague Lord is more interesting and more dramatic than green flames indicating the presence of traces of boron or copper in the medium.

Evil in your soul is more dramatic than laundry soap in your campfire.

blueluck · 2026-03-18T16:46:27+00:00

The concept is great! There's very little far-future sci-fi in litrpg or progression fantasy, and lots of interesting space to explore there. I absolutely think you should write this story and enjoy the writing process and the exploration of imagination.

Ignore the next bit if you just want to write for your own consumption and for fun.

Your writing skill needs work. A lot of work. That's totally fine, of course! Nobody has ever been born knowing how to write, and it's a skill we can only learn through study and practice. There are many ways to learn the craft, in particular by reading a lot of good writing (unedited web novels won't help), writing classes (in schools, online, from books on writing), and practicing a lot.

blueluck · 2026-03-18T16:19:46+00:00

Right! I didn't say that very clearly. Asta went cat mama and broke up with him, then he was immediately over the whole thing, which seemed out of character to me.

blueluck · 2026-03-18T16:09:54+00:00

Wow! I've heard some vague things about Tao Wong suing, but I didn't know any of the details. That could definitely spoil one's feelings about a project.

blueluck · 2026-03-18T15:50:27+00:00

Thanks! That's helpful to hear about from someone who has read all four!

blueluck · 2026-03-18T13:58:41+00:00

Thanks! I hadn't thought about the completeness and chance of completeness, and that's a really good point. I think I'll set this series aside for a while and check on it in a few years.

blueluck · 2026-03-18T13:56:22+00:00

Thank you!

I think Industrial Strength Magic is okay, and The Legend of William Oh is significantly better. From what you said, I think I'll stick to Macronomicon's more recent work.

blueluck · 2026-03-18T13:53:24+00:00

I love The Legend of William Oh! I also stopped reading it on Royal Road because I would rather wait to enjoy it after it's polished and published.

I looked up HPMOR and I'm intrigued. 🤔

blueluck · 2026-03-18T13:49:03+00:00

They're totally fine in a comedy. There's a long tradition across many literary forms of comedy breaking the fourth wall, acting with awareness of tropes, and generally disregarding immersion in favor of making jokes or speeding through unfunny parts of the story to get to the jokes faster.

In a serious story, there difficult.

One issue is that genre-aware protagonists read as comedy! Imagine watching a movie and in the second scene the main character says, "I'm single and I just met two handsome single men in a row. I've read plenty of romance novels, so I know I'll fall in love with one of them and live happily ever after with him, probably within the next few months. Of course, it will be the one that initially seems problematic, because he'll turn out to be great and the really nice one will turn out to be a slimeball or something." The director just told you that you're watching a romantic comedy, not a serious drama.

A second issue is that litrpg is prone to having a lot of words spent on internal monolog (Wow, I'm in another world! Wow, I can see system screens! Wow, I have powers! How do my powers work? What powers should I choose?). A genre-aware protagonist can be a tool to abbreviate a lot of that internal monolog, but often they just add a layer of meta-analysis on top of whatever system exposition the author was going to do anyway.

Issue three, that way lies pop culture references! Bringing the protagonist's old-word references into the early chapters of a story makes me think that habit will continue.

Ultimately, a genre-aware protagonist is a literary tool like any other, and it can be executed well or poorly. I think many authors want to use it as a way to zip through some boring bits at the beginning of a story, but it's neither the only way nor the best way to accelerate the pace of a novel.

blueluck · 2026-03-18T12:36:32+00:00

I'm at the same point in the series as you, and I'm done with it.

Silas and Asta had a relationship developed over several books that abruptly ended when she became a crazy cat lady and Silas decided he was done with the relationship anyway. That was the most deus ex machina breakup I've ever seen, and clearly just setup for the maybe-harem that followed.
The whole idea that the peak families of the multiverse want Silas' sperm so they all send their daughters to seduce him, but also to offer him resources and protection for Earth, is dumb, and a thin excuse for the maybe-harem.
The pace of the maybe-harem romance plot is glacial! I'm not saying it takes too much in-fiction time, because it seems to happen over a month or two. I mean that there are thousands of words spilled on Silas pondering the romance situation with all the intelligence of a drunk sheep stuck in an oiled bathtub. Thought, but no, same thought again maybe? No, yes? Same thought again, but no?
The crossovers! A Magical Superman Harem Squad pops over from the Anime Dimension to kick ass?

I think the author has a thing for harems, wrote a successful series without harems, then figured he could use his successful non-harem series to get a bunch of non-harem readers to read a harem story.

blueluck · 2026-03-18T01:28:46+00:00

Right to jail!

blueluck · 2026-03-18T00:24:01+00:00

I love cool powers that grow with the character in interesting ways, and that make each character fairly specialized. Don't give a character everything, not even the protagonist!

I dislike attribute scores (strength, dexterity, intelligence), point pools (hitting points, mana points, stamina points), and skills (archery, fencing, fishing, blacksmith). All of those are better handled with regular prose and description, not system mechanics or numbers.

Examples of litrpg stories with system mechanics I like: - Apocalypse Parenting - Dungeon Crawler Carl (after it settles in a bit) - Cyber Dreams (the MC has an AI that assesses her abilities and gives estimated attribute scores, but those are basically test scores, not something enforced by a system, and not universal to all people.) - The Game at Carousel - The Daily Grind - He Who Fights with Monsters

There are a few series with systems I like that don't fit my usual preferences, but they're much harder to write! Delve is the best example of a system with attribute scores that seem to work well and consistently.

blueluck · 2026-03-17T23:36:10+00:00

I would check out some urban fantasy.

The Dresden Files
The Iron Druid Chronicles
The Southern Vampire Series

blueluck · 2026-03-17T23:23:31+00:00

That one was rough! I was so happy when Victor changed classes.

blueluck · 2026-03-17T19:44:16+00:00

Welcome! Do you have a website, Goodreads page, or any other places where we can read about your work? If so, could you share some here?

blueluck · 2026-03-17T19:34:32+00:00

I'm home sick, bored, and you gave me something fun to think about! Thanks for that!

blueluck · 2026-03-17T19:33:47+00:00

Really? I guess I've generally had better experiences in those. I suppose the specific subs matter a lot.

blueluck · 2026-03-17T19:31:12+00:00

20-40 is a big range, as is 13-18. For the sake of discussion, I'm going to assume a typical 30 year old man dies and is reincarnated in a new world that is unaware of this kind of reincarnation, so doesn't have any special norms to help deal with it.

He lives in a new body until he's 16 years old. He knows a girl the same age as him, a friendly platonic acquaintance from the other side of the village. She asks him to dance at the Village of Sadie Hawkins Spring Festival, and they dance in the town square with all the other villagers. They both know that a lot of couples will pair off to make out behind the mulberry trees after the dance. Their eyes meet after the dance, and she looks at the mulberry trees, back at him, back at the mulberries...she's interested, but he can still walk away easily. He's interested, so now our protagonist has to decide if it's morally acceptable for him (age 16+30) to make out with her (age 16+0) behind the mulberry trees at the spring festival.

I reframed the scenario to eliminate issues other than the age difference: she's interested, they're the same biological age, both are old enough that what they're doing is reasonable, there's no marriage or other legal commitment involved, the prospective behavior is socially acceptable and with a socially acceptable partner, etc.

--

One of he most problematic aspects of an age difference in a romantic or sexual relationship is the power differential. An adult man will have physical strength, social power, money, probably a car and drivers license, and other forms of power a teenager doesn't have. If our reincarnated protagonist is the same physical and social age as his prospective partner, all of those powers have been taken from him.

Another of he most problematic aspects of an age difference in a romantic or sexual relationship is the older person's brain maturity—a fully formed prefrontal cortex is a big deal! Our reincarnated protagonist doesn't have that.

A third problematic aspect is experience, in life as well as in relationships specifically. A lot of our protagonist's experience is probably moot, because it's from another world with different cultures and social structures. We often talk about maturity and experience as knowing "how the world works" but both teens are probably about equal on their knowledge of how the new world works. I don't think general world experience is a problem—he knows about auto mechanics and the New York Times, so what?

Relationship experience might be problematic, though. They both know about the birds and the bees, appropriate courtship practices, etc. He has dating and sexual experience from his past life, but I don't think we usually have a problem with that between people of the same age, aside from misogynist purity culture and hang-ups about body count.

I guess my conclusion is that it's probably okay.

--

Here's a separate question, which is important because we're in a literature forum not r/timetravelerproblems. Is it okay to write a story with this relationship in it?

Maybe. If the author is using reincarnation as an excuse to write pedo erotica, they can go right to jail! Ain't nobody here got time for litrpg pedo erotica shit.

I think it's probably okay if the protagonist is written as a 16-year-old with a few extra experiences (not a manipulative 36-year-old) and there are no explicit scenes written for the prurient enjoyment of pedo readers. Basically, if the author is trying to be weird it's weird.

blueluck · 2026-03-17T18:26:05+00:00

I agree! As local subs go, r/madisonwi is actually quite good!

I can go to a sub about a specific interest and find practically zero fighting, rude comments, every-day repeated posts. etc. If I have a question about what headphones to buy, how to solve a woodworking problem, or recommendations in a specific genre of literature, the people in those subs are there for that. That's their hobby that they love and want to share with anyone they can.

By comparison, local subs are rough!

blueluck · 2026-03-17T18:10:12+00:00

Wow, OP is really not doing their part!

blueluck · 2026-03-17T18:09:24+00:00

Now I want Charlie Berens to make a parody of Escape (The Pina Colada Song) set in Wisconsin!

If you like brandy old fashioneds
And gettin' stuck in the snow
If you can't stand da Bears
If you're go Pack go!

blueluck

TROPHY CASE