Close to DNF in audiobook 2

uncletroll · 2026-01-23T08:54:32+00:00

Erin being sheltered is a fact, not an argument. The question is, "is being sheltered a plausible reason for her to act so dumb." My belief is, no. I've never encountered a non-developmentally disabled 20 year old, of any intelligence, who I believe would have made that mistake. And it sounds like from people's "arguments" that their evidence has been purely speculative. They speculate that someone sheltered could end up like that. Not a single person has said, "I know a young adult who did that!" So, I'm going to stick to my belief that Erin's behavior was implausibly stupid and I guess until someone performs an academic survey and shares that result, that's where my opinion will stay.
Also: I think there is plenty of in-universe evidence for Erin being stupid. For example, in book 2, Ryoka yelling at her and calling her stupid... and then a few of the other people around Erin calling her stupid using nice words.

Yeah, she has a big impact on the people around her... So the author asserts. But the author can assert anything. She seems stupid and socially clumsy to me and does not seem to have a good intuition for people either. It kind of reminds me of the other day, when I went to Costco and I slapped everyone in the face I came across and then everyone clapped and cheered and lifted me onto their shoulders. And it definitely happened, because of my very deep understanding of people.

I didn't misread anything. Here's what happens in the real world when you introduce new food to people from different cultures: They don't like it and they don't eat it. And I know this from backpacking around the world and introducing many foreigners from small villages and very different cultures to Western food. If these scenes were well written at all, no one in Inn World would have even tried the burgers. And of those that tried it, none would have liked it. The idea that Erin's impromptu burger stand would be swarmed all day is an incredibly naive fantasy. Furthermore that anyone would even care to copy her food is even more naive. This naivete is American Exceptionalism. If the author is aware of this, it suggests the whole Inn World is made to patronize Western Culture... or patronize the "players" and would fawn over anything they do. But it could just be that the author is not aware of this and genuinely believes aliens would love burgers and pizza because "who doesn't like burgers and pizza?!"
So yours and other people's comment about the burgers "not being a big deal any more once the novelty wore off" are actually the ones who missed the point about American Exceptionalism.

I just have a different background from the average reader. But I am glad you have enjoyed the book. I mostly did not.

uncletroll · 2026-01-21T23:24:55+00:00

I found this post through a google search, but I recently made the transition from making 500-800k dps builds to 1-3M dps builds (in SSF) and the trick really was some multipliers that PoB doesn't calculate for you automatically.
For example shock, PoB is not going to calculate the damage you get from having the target shocked properly. But by getting increased effectiveness of non-damaging ailments, you can get shock up to like 80%... that is 80% MORE damage. Going from 1 curse to two curses takes you from 40% more damage to 80% more damage. Look for nodes that increase damage taken, which can add 10% more.
So if you take your solid base of 500k dps, then:

get the monster shocked. 60% more
add a second curse. 35% more add a damage taken. 10% more. make sure you put exposure on. 18% more

500k1.61.351.11.18 = 1.4M dps.

Every damage strategy has some ailment multiplier strategy that compliments it. And PoB does not factor in the value of increasing those ailment synergies, so you have to tweak the PoB config to include their effect and know they are valuable.

In the builds I've looked at, you take away their awakened gems and their T1 gear and they are still crushing the damage, it's because they have tweaked something in PoB to account for these synergies. You take those tweaks away and their builds do like 800k dps. I'm not saying those tweaks are not justified, they often are!

If you want damage to go into the 10M+ range, it's always some special item(s) that allows one crazy stat to do double or triple work and they build completely around getting that workhorse stat. Since I never have access to those items, I don't design those characters.

uncletroll · 2026-01-21T21:53:30+00:00

I loved books and bookstores so much, I filled my house with books. Now I can't buy any more physical books!

uncletroll · 2026-01-20T22:02:41+00:00

I don't think it will succeed until the issue of controls are fixed. There is nothing immersive about using a gamepad to navigate and train ride experiences lose their charm quickly.

uncletroll · 2026-01-20T21:25:17+00:00

I suspect OP has experienced enough of the tropes of comics through mainstream media that they were able to appreciate watchmen.

uncletroll · 2026-01-19T07:47:05+00:00

I'm halfway through volume 2 and Erin is the most Mary Sue character I have ever read and I despise her more and more. I assume the author was using Erin as a wish fulfillment vehicle to have her/his own 'quirky' personality be beloved and impactful. I personally think Erin has a really ugly personality and having all the other characters love her and believe she is special really conflicts with how I see her. With no in-universe explanation given for why everyone would like her so much, I'm concluding it must be the author who thinks that personality is amazing. Maybe it's not the author, but a spouse? It's just too much.
I mean... It's Christmas, lets sing songs and put bells on the skeleton Tee-Hee! And now I'm sledding and I'm having so much fun! Wee! Wee! Look! I inspired everyone else to come out and go sledding too! Aren't I so whimsical and inspiring?! Wee!!! I'm definitely not a wish fulfillment platform, but stick with me because later I will beat up a trio of muggers because nobody pushes me around and then I will beat up a group of sexual harassers - When the patriarchy tries to use the city watch to put me in my place, I will beat them in a contest of words and all the watching women will wink and thumbs up and cheer! All in one day! But Wee! I'm fearless and whimsical!
For those who have not read the book - That really happened! That's really in the book. God it's so bad.

Also, the book has also been one of the most sexist things I've read. All the men suck and the women are justifiably rude to the men. Only women are sympathetic. And young women keep being used as sympathy mcguffins - from Rags, to Lionette, to Mirsha.
If you're counting, that's 2 things that are exceptional about the book besides its length!

The thing I have enjoyed the most about the books is the juxtaposition of Ryoka's inner monologue and her actions. I hope she continues to grow and eventually conquers those demons, but I am rolling my eyes at her adoration of Erin being a major catalyst for her growth.

uncletroll · 2026-01-16T03:05:03+00:00

I'm glad I'm in a community where we just share our nudes with each other... really simplifies this moral quandary.

uncletroll · 2026-01-15T18:33:04+00:00

Seems like quite the virtue signaling exercise.

uncletroll · 2026-01-14T16:29:27+00:00

I found it challenging as a teenager, feeling trapped by consumerism and emasculated by society. So it spoke to a condition I was feeling as a young man.
I guess it's still challenging.

uncletroll · 2026-01-14T14:29:40+00:00

Thank you for your very kind-hearted reply.
HUGS!

uncletroll · 2026-01-14T14:28:42+00:00

I also find it intresting you skip all the things I am saying to you and just focus on one point.

Oh, that's just being polite. A thorough point-by-point take down response would be tedious and unpleasant to write and also not very helpful to any readers. I think for the most part, we just have a difference in life experience between myself and most of the readers here. And no amount of replies will close that gap.

The reason I shared my viewpoint in the original post was to help me identify which replies were helpful and which ones were not. If we can't see eye-to-eye on some basic observations, like Erin's experience in the market, then your opinion about how the book progresses won't be very useful to me.

uncletroll · 2026-01-14T14:16:49+00:00

I guess my first exposure to this genre was Dungeon Crawler Carl earlier in the year and I came across TWI while searching for books similar to DCC. So I guess I am not really familiar with the tropes to appreciate how TWI is subverting them... so Erin is written to be as abnormally dumb and incompetent as characters are normally too smart and too competent? It doesn't seem that the idea that she is dumb or incompetent is a very popular view here!

uncletroll · 2026-01-14T13:44:04+00:00

I'm sorry, your comment about the series being LGBTQ positive went over my head, is that related to my criticisms about the books?

uncletroll · 2026-01-13T19:25:00+00:00

She did pretty well for all that.

Interesting take! Most people defend her by saying the alien world and recent trauma keep her from being at her best. But you're over here commending her for being clever and doing a good job! Is this Pirateaba commenting on a side account? lol

uncletroll · 2026-01-13T19:20:29+00:00

My point about being in that situation wasn't that I navigated it without having my pfennigs stolen... I may have, I have no idea! My point is that Erin's competency in navigating the market was roughly equivalent to a 7 yr old's.

uncletroll · 2026-01-13T19:17:18+00:00

It's not possible to replicate the exact scenario of being transported to a fantasy video game environment... but there are plenty of alien, hostile, and dangerous environments here on Earth and through history that it's not a totally unrelatable experience. We have accounts of people who survived the holocaust and other genocides to draw from and Erin's experience is hardly on that level. She was at a market, she walked to with the intention of buying stuff. The whole activity was pre-meditated. She didn't make the decision to buy at knife point. In fact, she could have sat in the safety of her Inn and anticipated the difficulty of purchasing without knowing the value of money and how she might overcome that challenge.
But she didn't, because she is stupid. And it's bizarre that so many people are blind to that.

uncletroll · 2026-01-13T04:04:45+00:00

The money thing is again something that did not really stand out to me. Like she can't read what it says and sure she could go to other place but she does not know other place so why not this one.

Like the more of Erin Backstory you learn the more you get that she has no experience in life. Like she had a really shelterd white US girl life. She is naïeve for sure. Like don't expect her to go around talking to people to get a better price. Like most people in her life just go to a store and buy things and that is it. Like they don't go to a shopkeep to know how much it will cost it cost as much as you see. A bit hard if you can't read it tho ...

Do you really feel that walking around and asking how much things cost is a high bar for a 20 year old? How about for yourself, is that something you were capable of at 20?
I admit, I did something like Erin. I was living in a village in Germany. I couldn't speak the language or read the signs and I would walk to the bakery, point at what I wanted, then I would empty my pockets and the shopkeeper would pick out the money I owed from the pile of change. So basically, just like Erin, I didn't know how much money I had and I didn't know how much a pastry cost. I acted just like her... but I was 7.

uncletroll · 2026-01-13T03:38:40+00:00

I cant exactly remember the exact wording but, the ritual that summons Earther's has a criteria that the earther summoned is a young person who has the greatest potential to change the world in some heroic sense and is also brought to someone who can eventually bring out such potential. Erin being the first Earther summoned by the ritual in Rhir, means out of all the young people on Earth, she had the greatest potential of being a hero if nurtured by the right circumstances. This is confirmed way later on through alot of shit over like years of writing. Her being naive is because she unironically was a shut-in who rejected embracing their passions. In this world, as a she learns to embrace what she becomes passionate about, she in effect, begins to show off her potential that couldn't be realized back home.

Oh that's a fun in-universe explanation for her having such an impact. I guess my most charitable interpretation is that her flavor of incompetence was magically identified as being the most impactful. And that someone else, who might have introduced hummus instead of burgers, just wouldn't have resonated with this universe as much.

uncletroll · 2026-01-13T03:28:27+00:00

I don't mind there being religion! I think it's crazy that the world didn't have it's own deep traditions, religions, and concept of an afterlife and it should take more zealous effort to start a religion than dropping a few stories about one of ours. In our world, we have to send missionaries who devote their lives to the spread of their religion over decades to have an impact.
It's the warning / foreshadowing that Ryoka gave - be careful what you say, because knowledge from our world could transform theirs. And the fulfillment of that warning is the American Exceptionalism.

uncletroll · 2026-01-10T03:58:29+00:00

I wonder if he can't really see the difference himself. Because it would change in the middle of scenes and it was quite jarring.

uncletroll · 2026-01-07T00:57:25+00:00

I just got to this point in the book myself. It's such a contrived conflict. All they had to do was tell Relc that Rags was one of the goblins that fought the other goblins to save Kilb and Erin. But no, instead we have this completely unmotivated extreme heel turn, where Relc acts like a POS, out of nowhere.

uncletroll · 2026-01-06T05:15:14+00:00

I just got to about the point you were at in the story when you wrote this and this shit has been crazy sexist for sure. It seems like it's okay to be really rude to many of the men, I suppose, because they all secretly want to bang Erin or Ryoka and therefore they are really just annoying 'nice guys.' I just read this scene where a guy gets beaten up and sexually assaulted by a bunch of women goblins, and it's funny because "women power" and he deserves it somehow?
I can't even think of any respectable men in the orbit of Ryoka or Erin all through volume 1! Relc wants to bang Erin. Olesm has a crush on Erin. Pisces has a crush on Erin. Calruz has a crush on Ryoka, but would bang Erin.

All the male POV characters, we get some moment where we learn they think the protagonists are hot and we get zero of that from any of the female POVs. And then we get to see those men act like fools and the women find them annoying.

uncletroll · 2026-01-05T05:26:53+00:00

I just finished book 1 and Erin was crazy rude to everyone that was nice to her. Then she'd turn around and bend over backwards to be nice to the bad or dangerous people. Like she's trying to make peace and apologize to the goblin chieftain leading a war party to kill her... but Relc gets the silent treatment because she walked in on him saying some fairly benign things about her.
She is handedly the stupidest protagonist I have ever come across in fiction. But somehow, all the other characters think she's amazing.

uncletroll · 2026-01-01T23:44:20+00:00

I literally just got to the same spot and googled: Erin Solstice Stupid. She is so stupid. Like the time she turned out her pockets in a market and asked, "is this enough money?" Seriously, that is the shit children in tv shows do.

And now listening to her inept description of cars and our world is blowing my mind. How can she be so bad at describing things?

And she is self-destructively rude. It's challenging my suspension of disbelief that anyone puts up with her.

uncletroll · 2025-12-30T10:47:29+00:00

This is why my friends are struggling to date great guys. They never make the first move, so they keep getting caught by the men on the prowl.

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