cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
2yr ago
Unfortunately I have a huge distaste for reading anything that isn't already completed. The vast majority of prog fantasy/litrpg stuff has a long way to go before being finished, if ever. I've been burned too many times in the past to commit to that type of story.
I thought that might be the case. The link on royalroad I posted only shows Completed fictions. There are also quite a few request threads on progressionFantasy and litrpg subreddits for completed fictions. Mother of Learning is complete, and I'd highly recommend it. Post Human is also complete, and you might enjoy it if you want a different take on AI, empires, and space battles.
I have a personal policy of not really criticizing other authors works. People have lots of different tastes, and sometimes in an effort to appeal to one set of tastes you will have to make it unappealing to another set of tastes.
This is a good policy - I could have stood to be less critical, especially since I didn't even read half the book.
I started the policy when I began writing my own story on royalroad (and yes, I left it unfinished after ~300 pages). I quickly realized how hard it was to please everyone with the story, and I couldn't even please all of my own tastes with the story I was writing. I generally think "more is better" when it comes to fiction and story telling. I want more authors, I want those authors telling more stories, and I want them getting better by just doing tons of writing. I will offer editing help and suggestions if the author asks me, but otherwise I just say what I like to try and encourage more people to write things I like. I'd extend that to you, if you feel there isn't enough "male centric, systematized, shape-rotator style writing" one of the best solutions might be to write your own stories. You have a base level of writing talent that puts you at a better level than many authors on royalroad (you can put together an argument and enough words to make a top level post on themotte). If you have interesting ideas write them. If you don't, just write "fanfiction" and change around some of the things you didn't like in your favorite books.
cjet79
2yr ago
I think I often don't mind reading the "effortlessly winning" books. Especially if its after a long buildup of power from previous books. The alternate to the effortlessly winning is the perfectly scaling escalator of difficulty. Where somehow the MC only encounters appropriately leveled challenges all throughout the story.
One of my reasons for recommending it is the easiness with which the MC sometimes wins. This matches slice of stories a bit, in that there isn't a ton of tension or strife to hook the reader, and its more of an interest in the world building and characters that keeps you around.
cjet79
2yr ago
The section on the website I linked to is only for completed fictions, and the two recs were both completed stories.
Completed stories are not RoyalRoad's strong suite. Typically they have stories with very interesting beginnings and good looooong middles. My approach is to just stop reading them once I get bored with the tropes / writing in the long middles. Usually I'll play "pick my own ending" and just stop reading a story when I feel like it gets to a conclusion and I've started to get bored.
"This Used to be about dungeons" (TUTBAD) was not really for me. But if I had to think three other stories with similar things to what you listed I'd say:
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Beneath the dragoneye moons. Slice of life, has more plot than TUTBAD. Lots of characterization, lots of worldbuilding. Most people in the world are nice, even if the setting of the world itself isn't so nice.
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Millennial Mage. Slice of life for the first few books. Cool worldbuilding where humans are one of the least powerful species and thus they are all very nice to each other. The other species aren't evil, but more just amoral and don't care about human well-being.
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Ar'Kendrithyst. My personal favorite, and perhaps one of my longest going patreon subscriptions. MC is very nice, but thrown into a dangerous and slightly brutal world. He is changed to be more ruthless, but he also changes the world to be a little nicer. Great characterization.
cjet79
2yr ago
I have a personal policy of not really criticizing other authors works. People have lots of different tastes, and sometimes in an effort to appeal to one set of tastes you will have to make it unappealing to another set of tastes. I have internally labelled vast swathes of literature as "not for me" and that is perfectly ok. The Hugo awards seems like just one more place that is 'not for me'.
I don't have much to say about the bulk of your post, but I do hope you can find a more enjoyable set of works. There are plenty of up and coming authors writing stuff that could be described as "male centric, systematized, shape-rotator style writing". There are other places you can start looking:
https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/writing - Shirtaloon, Zogarth, and The First Defier are all people I have read and who would fit that description.
https://www.royalroad.com/fictions/complete - Mother of learning is my favorite. Post Human has AI, sci-fi, aliens, and space battle elements. Royal road in general has lots of fresh authors trying out fun ideas. If you have a tolerance for grammar and spelling mistakes it is full of fiction I think you'd enjoy. If your tolerance is low just stick to the top recommended stories.
https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/ - Has progressive-ish politics but still produces good recommendations. But mostly the recommendations are the same. Some of the ones I already mentioned get recommended, but also: Cradle, Iron Prince, and Arcane Ascension.
https://old.reddit.com/r/litrpg/ - Common Recs include: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Azarinth Healer, and He Who Fights with Monsters (Shirtaloon)
Amazon - Once you buy enough of the books you like I have found Amazon has a decent algorithim for finding similar books. You need to be deliberate about it, and give star ratings to books, and also remove certain books from your recommendation list.
cjet79
2yr ago
Unrelated... What brought you to themotte / what kept you here? We mostly seem to talk about US culture war issues. Which honestly don't have huge impacts on me as someone that lives in the US. So what's the draw?
cjet79
2yr ago
I have a family and I see them all the time, but otherwise I feel like one social engagement a week is a good rate for me. But the optimal number of friends to maintain for that one social engagement feels like it's around 6-8 people.
cjet79
2yr ago
I find this release mostly disappointing. I was hoping for a smoking gun in regards to Fauci. Some of Musk's comments about how Fauci should be prosecuted also got me thinking he had good inside evidence about Fauci misdeeds. Instead I just see more stuff that basically confirms that the obviously politically motivated banning of Donald Trump was in fact politically motivated.
cjet79
2yr ago
I didn't find the meaning very clear, I don't get how sluts divided by sluts minus cold sluts makes any sense. But I also concede I don't have much experience using thots as a unit of measurement outside of STD questionnaires.
Still a fun a post for the parts I did understand, lol at Europe for having expensive energy costs, they did a good job of screwing themselves over on that.
cjet79
2yr ago
Interesting post, I am reminded of a story on the HFY (humanity fuck yeah) subreddit about humans and aliens. The humans become surprisingly advanced compared to the rest of the galaxy. Every other civilization gets gifted nanobots to help them with tech after they stall for too long. Humans never stalled for very long, but all the places where civilization normally stalled are places where human textile improvements drove innovation. The other alien civilizations were all naked.
One of the other underestimated aspects of textiles in the medieval era is the importance of textile armor, the gamberson. It doesn't survive in the archeological record, but all the other evidence we have points to it being very common and very important. In a society based around agriculture the primary layer of defense was grown in the fields, not mined in the mountains.
The tradition of cloth armor continues with modern Kevlar, but Kevlar comes from oil production, because of course the most important thing to fight over is also used in producing armor.
cjet79
2yr ago
I think the nature of jobs and work will shift, but the marginal value of humans to other humans will on average be higher than the costs of survival. As long as some non-misanthropic humans retain economic value then it will spread outward from them. If AI is the only one controlling economic value, then all bets are off.
A short story to illustrate:
God-Emperor Franz has all the economic value. He wants an advisor and a semi-subserviant friend to talk with about god emperor related issues. Everyone else could be robots and Franz would not care, but it is important that his advisor and friend is a real person. Since Franz has all the economic value he has to pay some amount to share some with his friend so that his friend isn't miserable. Franz shares a minuscule fraction of his economic value, enough to pay for all his friend's food and housing.
His friend has this minuscule salary, but one day Franz discovers that his friend is still not happy. Franz finds out that his friend wants to have a wife and family, but he can't afford them with his minuscule salary. Franz decides that he doesn't want to have to deal with constant requests for increasing his friend's salary. Franz grants his friend .001% of all the economic value. His friend is blown away by the generosity. This is trillions of times greater than the salary he was receiving before.
Many centuries (or millenia) go by, and Franz is very happy being the god emperor, and his friend is happy for many years as well. One day Franz notices that his friend is angry. "What anger's you, friend?" His friend responds "It is just the constant complaining of my second son's 5th kingdom. They ask why they can't receive more of an allotment of economic value. They spit on your generosity, and ask why you can't grant more. Even after I kill all the people of that generation and resettle it with new poors they seem to get the same idea in their heads again and again."
Franz spends some time thinking on this issue. The problem will keep occurring as long as he only gives away a fraction of his economic value. His friend will continue to be upset by people asking for more. However if he gives away all of his economic value he won't be the god-emperor. In the end he decided to give 50%-1 units of his economic value away. He will always be the god emperor with the most economic value. But no one could possibly expect him to give away more.
Franz and his friend live happilly every after. However, on the fringes of the human galaxy, planetary wars are constantly fought and waged over the scraps of economic value flowing outwards from the center. Billions of lives are extinguished every day in the unending wars. But their complains never reach the ears of the emperor or his advisor. The complaints don't even get close, there are at least 6 degrees of separation from anyone that even knows about these complaints and the emperor's advisor. A secret cabal of police and enforcers maintains these 6 degrees of separation at all times. The leaders of this cabal know that if such complaints were ever to reach the emperor ... then the emperor might go looking for a new friend who doesn't want a family.
cjet79
2yr ago
This surprised me as well.
I was thinking of trying to analyze the potential political motives, but that is probably pointless. With a small enough crowd you can have a single table swing the mood of the entire room. And a "boo" isn't the clearest signal. They might be booking him because he booted Kanye off Twitter, or booing him because he allowed Trump back on Twitter, or some parochial issue like not enjoying his presence in Austin. Or all of the above, because you don't need to coordinate with others on why you are booing someone.
cjet79
2yr ago
I went sport clay shooting for the first time last weekend. It was a ton of fun. I was worried about having a sore shoulder, but it wasn't really an issue. The instructor / range safety officer showed me a good stance and I think that helped mitigate the soreness that might have happened. I went with 5 other guys, and although most of them had shot once or twice before, I think I did the best of everyone. There were times when I got the right stance and it felt really natural. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes shooting.
cjet79
2yr ago
I'm playing Grounded right now. Fun action survival RPG. The aesthetic is basically "Honey I shrunk the kids". Mechanics feels polished and fun, building is fun and there is no "portal" mechanic like in some survival games, instead you create zip lines to traverse the yard quickly. But creating those zip lines means building tall bases on 'mountains', or building massive towers.
cjet79
2yr ago
I got a whoop wrist band this week. It monitors heart health and sleep. Does anyone else have one? If so how do you use it in a way that feels useful?
cjet79
2yr ago
Do some of you work at banks? I can't imagine a world where writing this post would be seen as dangerous. Maybe this is just the initial offering meant to be as inoffensive as possible?
As for the content, I agree and don't have much to say about it.
cjet79
2yr ago
I'm also a little confused about the importance of the laptop. I thought the publicly known facts were damning enough. Hunter Biden got a cushy very high salary job with a company in Ukraine, and Hunter Biden's only real qualification for that job was that he was the Vice President's son. It seems pretty clear that he was selling insider access to the US political process.
cjet79
2yr ago
It would also not prevent PMs. And I think whether other people know that they have been blocked or ignored really changes the whole situation. It seems like blocking someone is a not so subtle "fuck off" message to them. I think Reddit Enhancement Suite had an "ignore" option that I used quite often. I think blocking just tends to cause drama, and sometimes I was just annoyed at a user, but they weren't breaking any rules.
There also might be subtle differences with how you proposed blocking and how I think of ignoring. For example:
If you block someone, you will no longer see their comments, receive PMs from them, or be notified if they reply to your comments.
Does the bolded part mean the comments are auto-minimized or is it like a mod deleted comment that is completely gone? Ignore would auto-minimize in my mind, but block might just completely remove the comments.
The ignore would also still allow their comments and replies to end up in your inbox, it just wouldn't tick up the notifications counter. So you can look through your inbox and see them, but they can easily be missed.
cjet79
2yr ago
I feel like the "blocking" feature is really a combination of two different features. One is an actual blocking feature and the other is an ignore feature. And all the problems arise because people want an ignore but instead have to use blocking as a substitute.
How I'd divide the features:
Blocking works the same as you proposed.
Ignoring only has the effect of not adding to your notification count. All incoming messages / comments are just automatically marked as "read" from the person you have ignored. There would be no way to tell that you have been ignored. Distinguished mod comments bypass the ignore filter. Ignored users always have their comments collapsed by default.
Blocking would be for trolls, but honestly trolls shouldn't be surviving very long on a single user account.
Ignoring would be for people that rub you wrong. Maybe you find them boring, or the points they make annoying and uninteresting. It would be rude to tell someone that you are ignoring them.
cjet79
2yr ago
This comment racked up a bunch of reports, including: Low effort, inflammatory, building-consensus, boo-outgroup, violence, and antagonistic.
I generally agree with all of those complaints. My own personal complaint is that you don't follow one of the engagement rules:
"Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion."
Your post is mostly written as if we are all on board with ideas and theories that very few people are actually on board with. I was about to list them all out, but I realized you were saying something in just about every sentence that is controversial enough to be its own full discussion.
In general this post doesn't badly break any particular rule, but it breaks so many at the same time that I think it makes for a good demonstration of what we don't want. 1 day ban as well.
Check your jewish privilege.
Sit down and listen to the black man.
I can't tell if this part is a joke, but even if it is don't do it. It breaks common courtesy, borders on consensus building, and is antagonistic.
- edit - just realized you have been warned about this stuff multiple times and banned before. Escalating to 7 day ban.
cjet79
2yr ago
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Wildcard rule, this is annoying, stop doing it.
Depends on how long you've been alive. That was very much what republicans were known for in the early 2000's. Insufficient demonstration of "supporting the troops" was enough to get you cancelled (to the extent that republicans could cancel you). But the media anti-bodies against republican cancellations had been built up over two decades. Back then cancellations were more for religious and naughty language violations. Howard Stern, NWA ("Fuck the Police"), or Vanessa Williams being stripped of her Miss America crown for having done a nude/lesbian photo shoot.
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