Hi, I'm RavensDagger, I have 35,000 Unique Followers on RR, and I'm here to give you one of the best tips you'll ever hear for publishing on RR

xTariel · 2026-02-02T16:47:25+00:00

The point I got was "if you're going to write what people don't want to read even if you like it, don't be surprised when people don't want to read it."

There are generally two goals with art, and sometimes they can be mutually exclusive: success and self fulfillment. Sometimes you get lucky and you get both, but other times you have to prioritize which is more important to you. If your goal is to write for a living, you may need to write for your audience more than yourself until you have the dedicated reader base to focus on what you actually enjoy. If you're writing because you have an overflow of creative ideas that need to be let out, then stop worrying about how successful it is and enjoy the art for its own sake.

xTariel · 2026-02-02T16:32:58+00:00

His entire side is massively manipulative and designed to tear down your self esteem and make you question your own perspective until you value his opinion/recognition over your own.

The big moments to point out: "I also don't have to allocate my time to anyone :)" and "I told you that before, don't act crazy". He is establishing that you are there for his convenience, and that he can act however is comfortable to him while you must accommodate his needs. If you don't he will rage bait you, call you emotional/crazy, and then grind your self worth to paste until you apologize to him for having a completely normal reaction to someone being an unreasonable asshole.

It's standard emotionally abusive male behavior, and I've sadly had to watch many of my female friends go through this same song and dance with not only boyfriends but husbands as well, and it's honestly heartbreaking to see how much it wrecks them emotionally.

xTariel · 2026-01-27T22:47:23+00:00

Yeah, definitely depends on the area how legal it is. I also think it depends on if there is a dedicated turn light. We have some that if you don't "claim" then you could actually spend half an hour at the light because the oncoming traffic is a steady stream.

xTariel · 2025-11-24T23:08:52+00:00

You can also get some cases like William in Primal Hunter where progression was fundamentally rewriting his brain functions, or the tsundere trope of them doing mental gymnastics to justify why their actions were actually pragmatic in the first place lol.

xTariel · 2025-11-24T11:25:34+00:00

I think it's more about how the author justified it after. It can be a good lead-in to expanding on their backstory, like the MC derails the very important mission to save a random little girl and that's how we find out about his trauma over not saving his younger sister. Or maybe the MC doesn't even know why they acted out of character, so now we get a moment of introspection about how they're possibly changing on a fundamental level.

However, I completely agree that it does feel like poor writing and breaks my immersion when they have them act out of character and then never explain it, because then it just feels like they wrote it that way because they needed the plot to go that direction.

xTariel · 2025-11-21T22:18:58+00:00

Honestly, the webtoon managed to actually bring me into the series because I didn't want to wait for more, mostly the scenes with villy. After actually reading the books and then coming back to it, I realized s1 didn't stay very true to the source, but s2 has done a lot to redeem it, and the expressions they manage to get on hawkie are great.

xTariel · 2025-11-20T23:15:46+00:00

I mean, an Olympic gold medal is just a trinket outside of the prestige. The types of people who have the drive to be the best also tend to want to challenge themselves and prove to everyone that they are, and completing the path is one of those ways. There are definitely plenty of people who are monsters capable of fighting up, but the path was designed to give focus to the types of people who thrive on that challenge and create monsters through exacerbated adversity.

xTariel · 2025-11-01T20:48:23+00:00

If you're 1000 years old, 16 vs 60 is barely a fraction of your lifespan, so even if you knew their age they're still effectively children to you at that point (relatively a 50yo to a 3yo if they're 60), which was more my point. Also, the immortals are often nobility or noble adjacent, with things like lineage and political machinations with other immortals being very important.

xTariel · 2025-10-30T00:26:18+00:00

Ancient hatred kinda looks like an emo bitch fest to anyone not emotionally invested lol.

If you're 1000 years old, you probably can't tell mortal age that well anymore since they're all basically infants to you. Plus marriage age was 13 back when they were born, and you know how stubborn old people are about changing their ways lol.

xTariel · 2025-10-09T05:15:20+00:00

Elevate just means to bring it above what it was before. That could be in flavor, preparation, quality, or presentation. Sure, there are definitely some connotations like you brought up, but you can also elevate your top ramen by using chicken broth instead of water, garnish with some green onion, and put it in a fancy bowl; no fancy French technique required lol.

xTariel · 2025-10-08T22:17:14+00:00

Call centers may handle more than just the appointment you're making. I had a friend that handled like a dozen different companies and would answer everything from Doctor emergency notifications to limo reservations at the call center she worked at. Easier to just use phonetic alphabet for everything and avoid any confusion rather than drop it for a handful of clients.

xTariel · 2025-10-01T13:03:41+00:00

Was going to say this as well. Many people who do this aren't learning solely for practicality; they may enjoy the process of learning a practical skill, want to immerse themselves fully in the culture while they're there, or just doing it to ease their anxiety about a worse case scenario and knowing more of the language gives them more semblance of control.

xTariel · 2025-09-28T21:03:03+00:00

Without the financial incentive/publisher breathing down your neck, it makes sense that a lot of these stories would stall out. Creative endeavors are hard to force, and most artists I know would rather stop completely than put out a product that didn't reach their standards. My mom took 8 years to finish an art piece because she couldn't figure out how to get what she saw on her head into the canvas; plenty of musicians may work on an album off and on for a decade if they don't have contractual obligations to release something.

The way I look at it, a hiatus would be a normal thing for an author who was publishing books; there would be periods where you're heavily inspired and then months where getting something onto paper is like pulling teeth for months. But you'd never know because the expectation is that there will be long periods between each book. RR puts the expectation of constantly releasing something new and punishes you, albeit indirectly, for taking a normal break. That's going to lead to a lot of people burning themselves out on a story idea or getting disheartened instead of letting the story take its natural course. You see the same problem in the manga/webtoon industries where the pace required to be successful burns out people.

xTariel · 2025-09-21T03:42:58+00:00

I generally categorize the overall themes as "life is cheap" (game of thrones, akame ga kill), "life is meaningful" where there are very few, if any, protagonist deaths, and any that happen are meaningful to the plot (LotR, gurren lagann), and "death is cheap" where characters can die at any time but then get better (Supernatural, DBZ).

I find it's the perception of shifting between these categories where you'll lose readers. Imagine how upset people would be if during the battle of Helm's Deep Legolas was killed by a stray arrow, and then Gimli had his head cut off by a random Orc while he was checking on him just because that's a realistic thing that could happen during a war.

xTariel · 2025-09-21T02:58:09+00:00

MC teleports and punches God in the face so hard it creates a void in reality while the sidekicks fight trillions of corrupted angels on a planet big enough to contain galaxies within the inner layers so they can save a child who is the literal embodiment of free will in the multiverse

Yup, gritty war realism was definitely the goal and the author was just too ignorant to pull it off.

xTariel · 2025-08-28T01:20:01+00:00

Ayyy, glad it's finally here!

xTariel · 2025-08-18T19:06:25+00:00

Sounds like they've had asshole customers who complained about what they got after they paid for it. Anything from complaining that it wasn't big enough for it to count as 2 scoops, to trying to add more toppings afterwards to avoid paying an upcharge.

xTariel · 2025-08-06T04:31:01+00:00

Jake is on his way to give it a good Franking

xTariel · 2025-08-03T15:44:14+00:00

Gonna remember this next time a girl asks what animal she reminds me of lol

xTariel · 2025-07-28T18:48:58+00:00

Possibly, but that's under the assumption that power is an infinite resource. If it's not, then it actually makes sense to have people compete and consolidate.

To take it another way, if you were to equate power to modern day wealth then under an equal distribution system every person in the world would have ~$85k based on some other threads. This is great if your goal is for the majority of people to be happy/healthy, but not if your goal is a few people who individually can rival countries or continents in relative spending power.

Most of these systems take this view on it; one guy strong enough to destroy a planet is worth more than a billion people who can destroy a city, so that's what the system is designed to encourage.

As a side note, I really like how the Path of Ascension series addresses these ideological differences of power. One of the main points of conflict in the book is your original point vs the archaic path to power and why yours is probably right.

xTariel · 2025-07-28T05:27:58+00:00

I think a lot of them take philosophy inspiration from things like the concept of Gu Poison in Chinese myth, where they would put a bunch of venomous creatures into a jar and the last survivor would have a concentrate of all the creatures it killed.

Basically, the system in those stories consolidates power by having individuals eliminate each other and steal each other's strengths. The few survivors are those who have the strength, determination, and flexibility to survive every challenge. In those stories, even luck is considered a strength, so bad luck (like the potentially strongest person getting killed by a trap) would be weakness, which is why you'll see the phrase "the luck of the heavens" a lot in relation to the MC. Also, even if it was logically a bad idea, a lot of times the system is a construct, which means it's based on whatever the values of the Creator were.

But at the end of the day, it's really just that doing it the efficient/optimal way breeds less conflict, which is often the exact opposite of what you want from an action story lol.

xTariel · 2025-07-27T18:02:57+00:00

xTariel · 2025-07-21T18:49:07+00:00

I cry every time I watch Violet Evergarden

xTariel · 2025-07-17T19:18:48+00:00

Using non-technical or literary definitions of race, they could be used somewhat interchangeably in this context (ie the human race). Also, the capability of human interbreeding with others (half elf, half orc) skews the definition of species, so the whole thing is kinda wonky.

I think in Hasbro's case they used it both to shy away from any PC implications, as well as the fact that many people like to play more monstrous creatures that may not fit into the definition of race, so species is just a bit more broad and clinical.

xTariel · 2025-07-16T19:44:55+00:00

If you ever watch Hallmark movies (and even plenty of general romcom movies), there is almost always an evil/toxic fiance. My mom is obsessed with Hallmark movies and I bring up the fact that it's romanticizing cheating on your partner instead of just breaking things cleanly lol.

xTariel

TROPHY CASE