this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Yeah I think I read (mostly halfway to quarter way through) all the xianxia novels that I found interesting and wouldn't mind finding something new. Going to read the 3 body problem soon before it gets made into the netflix series.
My dad was reading that and I started seeing it everywhere. I'll download it then and see if it's interesting when I have free time.
Currently also rereading your much hated Cradle
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Lol I don't hate it well maybe that mod made me hate it but I did read the first book. Can't say I didn't try.
x) jk
And yeah. You did more than I would. I think I don't finish 9out of 10 shows I start. Triple that for books. Not sure I've finished a book I didn't like yet.
Think I finished 6 translated Chinese novels, 2 of those were under 1k chapters. Just took me a decade :). I think it's impossible to finish one of these novels without liking it, 2k chapters is a grind that's like 200+ hours per novel.
Super true. I was reading a novel when I lived in Venezuela, and I was astounded that months into my life in Spain, I was still reading it, and I'd get this feeling that it had been such a big part of my life at that point. Ironically I can't remember which novel that was. But yeah I usually spend weeks if not months to finish a normal one of these, sometimes even reading all day.
In contrast, a normal novel can be read in like 8 hours. Makes me think I've read the Xianxia equivalent of hundreds of normal novels. And it certainly has taken its toll in my fiction mind. I've been writing stories since I was a kid and my stories now tend to have these vast worlds filled with amoral god-like beings that tend to have a bit of a tendency to kill people like ants, and characters that just go around in some kind of cross-world chase for something infinitely far away. I should really learn to balance that a bit cuz it has stifled my will to write a bit.
Yeah something like foundation is 6+ hours to read, you kinda forget the people and details but with these long novels you can't help but basically memorize the characters and their motivations since you've read it so much. Doesn't help some novels like Martial God Asura with it's 5k chapters just repeat arc after arc. These novels are best when shorter the vast majority of the time, most of these authors just can't write an engaging story that isn't just on the fly asspulls and repeating sequences of events.
Hah I'm the opposite I just think of stuff as huge systems, you define the world and characters and run the simulation with some creativity. Thing is most of these novels are very easy to read and not that cerebral taxing it would be much much harder to read the equivalent in good literature.
MGA was such a bad offender of this lmao, same story like 15 times. I LOVED the scenery but I got super triggered and had to stop when the author seemed to degrade mentally during his writing and shit just became worse and worse quality.
i'd die from this, I can't lol. I once read this booklet (dl) and it pretty much reflects the way I write. I don't think before writing, only during, and anything else will make me feel terrible about the whole thing. Writing a story where I already know many things to the point where it's just a sort of "simulation" is painful for me.
i read this entire series of books (dl) (when they were 5) in one day. To be fair I did sleep at like 7-8 am. They are also pretty casual. I didn't feel like I gained anything from them lol. Except enjoyment and the idea of two robots being cute friends and sharing pirated music libraries.
Then there's this book (dl) which despite being pretty average in length still took me like a month to finish while being extremely enjoyable, and I keep squeezing its ideas and memories.
MGA is absolutely terrible in general but it really starts getting wild when you realize every place he moves to he is suddenly the bottom of the totem pole and the same trope events repeat. Fighting someone stronger that nobody expects him to beat, some butthurt master gets killed by him, people seek revenge, he eats lots of cultivation resources etc... etc... I CAN'T BELIEVE it has 5k chapters.
I don't know how you can write something without an outline it feels to me the farther the plot goes along the more obvious that past events and present events in the novel weren't really that well planned out. Though most novels don't seem that well planned out in general.
All systems read, I have that on my list, someone on /lit/ recommended it to me. Also that's pretty crazy I remember once after exams I spent all day and all night reading coiling dragon.
Yeah I want to get started on Iliad but I know it's going to be a struggle to read, I know I should because of how fundamental it is to just general literature.
i've never started on iliad and i don't really want to lol, i feel like with bad xianxias i've already filled my fill of barely readable translations for this half of my life. the Circle novel is in that "shared universe" but it feels closer to a kdrama than to whatever iliad is. is iliad a greek xianxia?
the murderbot diaries series (all systems red) is very readable, light and ez, at least for me.
Yeah my brain is not wired for poetry and those books are long af. I'll get into it eventually. I'll probably read the second foundation series since apple is going to ruin the second book with another mediocre show so I might as well just read it. Iliad is just an epic.
I wanna reread foundation again. That shit was dope. I never finished the one that comes after the empire. The last one? Where there's these dudes who were left on Foundation and they're the start of the new cycle. I left it after some dude on some farm planet had done something and I can't remember more than some interplanetary trading ship or something.
Hard to tell where you were do you remember the mule or the second foundation? Though trading/merchants was a heavy part of the second book.