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self_made_human  C'est la vie  17hr ago (ussri.substack.com)   902 thread views

Pokémon for Unrepentant Sociopaths: A Review of Reverend Insanity

ussri.substack.com

Well, this is just about exactly what it says on the tin. I've finally mustered up the energy to write a full-length review of what's a plausible contender for my Favourite Novel Ever, Reverend Insanity. I'd reproduce it here too, but it's a better reading experience on Substack (let's ignore the shameless self-promotion, and the fact that I can't be arsed to re-do the markdown tags)

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By the sound of your review, what happened was perfectly in line with the world of the story. You get this close to achieving your ends, but too bad, sucker! Here's that kick in the teeth for you!

Fang Yuan ran into the final Calamity that shuts down everyone hoping to become Immortal. That is the perfect ending.

I disagree with your view about what would happen if he did achieve his goal. So now you're Immortal, what next? I don't think he'd take up other pleasures (what, come this far just to be a fat, drunken lecher like the rest of the fools?) because he's pared away, dug out, exploded, burned off, everything apart from relentless will to power. He can't chillax and make friends and find love, he's trained himself to think of all that as stupid crap for the losers and as only methods of exploiting others. After ten minutes of peace and stability he'd be bored stiff.

He would either need the challenge, like the classic Western gunslingers, of "so you're the number one, now every wannabe is coming gunning to take your place", in order to keep the purpose of life going or he'd have to create his own rivals (manipulate behind the scenes to get a bunch of near-Immortals chasing after him) in order to defeat them because otherwise, what was it all for? He's beaten the game, reached the highest possible level - now what? Replay it on a different mode?

Who knows?

But I still stick by my original claims. I think it's productive to frame it as akin to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When you're starving, self-actualization is something you don't have the time or inclination to pursue.

In a way, I think Fang Yuan has the drive for immortality just above the basic fundamental needs like food, or even shelter. We know that he has some interest in poetry (he recites and composes it himself without anyone forcing him to), so maybe he becomes some kind of Philosopher-King? It's entirely possible that you're right that he eventually becomes bored, infinity is a very long time, but 500 years of life turned him into what he is, who can really say what longer periods will..

It's fascinating how a person's favorite stories are so often a direct window into their soul. It's almost like a cheat code. If you want to understand what someone's all about, you can dispense with almost everything else and just ask them what their favorite books/games/movies are.

(Not at all saying that you, self_made, are an "amoral sociopath" or anything like that; it's just that, if someone had asked me what your favorite novel was, this is exactly what I would have imagined.)

Perhaps I'm not prominent enough on this forum for you to have formulated a model of my preferences and/or personality, but now I have the inexplicable urge to ask you what you think my favourite novel is and see how close you actually get.

I'm sorry, but I don't recall enough of your posts to form an educated guess! (Nothing personal though, there are at most a single digit number of "characters" here where I feel like I have some model of their personality.)

I assume it's something related to sci-fi, based on your other recent comment. Probably a very long web novel that I've never personally heard of. I imagine that a lot of earlier 20th century works weren't intricate and hard-SF enough for you.

No worries, I imagined that would probably be the case - it is just a forum after all and I'm not a super consistent poster, especially not lately. Mostly I just come up with a very long essay-style post every now and then on a hobbyhorse of mine, and then I drop out. Just got curious and thought I might ask.

I'd say that summary of my preferences is largely accurate, though it's not a long or obscure web novel actually. It's a piece of fiction I think most people here are familiar with.

Well, now I must know yours!

It's hard to pick just one! So many are good for different reasons and offer different things.

Joyce's Ulysses was almost wholly responsible for educating me on what art can and should be; everything else is just filling in the details in comparison. So that has to rank up there.

Ryukishi07's Umineko deserves a mention because it pulls off the rare combination of being interesting on both a formal/experimental level while also just being an amazing page-turner mystery story. Only story I've ever read where I was skipping meals because I wanted to keep reading. I highly recommend it to everyone. (Gwern described it as "mind-screwy; and awesome, and awful. It was long, intricate, baffling, a gorgeously flawed achievement. Everyone should read it; no one should read it. I still don’t know what to think of it. Is it ridiculous self-indulgent tripe which exposes my own mush-headedness, or the deepest mystery I will ever read?" Don't look up Gwern's full review though because it has spoilers for the whole thing.)

Hmm, I had watched Higurashi, which I enjoyed very much, but then never got around to Umineko, which at that time seemed to me like just more of the same, but as a "normal" murder mystery. Seems I misjudged things. Would recommend the manga or do you have another option? I probably won't play on the PC for some time, though maybe the fanported android version.

Play the game, it’s fantastic. The author really, really thought about how to write a murder mystery after he did Higurashi and the result is literally like nothing else.

The main sticking point is that the beginning until the first death is very slow and the characters seem kind of weird until you get where they’re coming from. If you stick in there it gets a lot more exciting.

but then never got around to Umineko, which at that time seemed to me like just more of the same, but as a "normal" murder mystery.

Yeah it's kinda the opposite. Higurashi is amazing too but ultimately it's "just" a good murder mystery story. Umineko is capital-A Art.

You really do have to play the video game version. If it's been ported to phones that's fine too. I've never watched the anime or read the manga but I've been told the anime is awful. Apparently the manga is pretty good, but no matter how good it is, the video game version does some things that really work best in a digital medium. Plus it just has an amazing soundtrack, it's an integral part of the experience.

Play it play it play it play it! I played the android version, it works great. The manga you could do, but it's slightly different from the game, just different enough that you'll feel disconnected from what people are talking about. I say this because I went anime, manga then the game, each time hoping I could get the goods with less time spent only to have something that wasn't mentioned spoiled that made me want to dig deeper. In the end my attempts to reduce the amount of time I spent with it ensured I ended up spending as much time as possible.

I can't wait for Silent Hill f. I hope they don't reign him in too much.

I assume the "Gu" in the setting refers to this staple chuuni (pardon me, zhong er) trope? Between this, the trope, and random "eating your enemies' liver" lore that occasionally gets immanentized under extreme circumstances, it really seems like the Highlander worldview has been in the Chinese memetic water supply for a long time. Is this story actually unique in having such an outlook, or do you just figure it's the best example of a larger genre?

I would assume so, but note that the author's real name is Gu Zhen Ren, which translates to "Gu Immortal". There's probably layers to the pun here.

There are also direct allusions to the concept of Gu in the story, in the sense of people talking about making real insects fight till the winner, an "insect king" , is the only one standing.

Most Xianxia novels aren't quite so zero-sum. But a ruthless focus on cultivation and self-improvement without regard to the cost is common enough.

I had learned later that "Gu" apparently represents various forbidden and reprehensible techniques in many xianxia novels. Given that, it makes sense that the author of RI basically wrote "Murderfuck Setting". It's as if a Western fantasy book had its main magic system be referred to as "Satanism" by everyone in-universe.

It's as if a Western fantasy book had its main magic system be referred to as "Satanism" by everyone in-universe.

That's what the One Ring is (and to a lesser extent the other rings are) in "The Lord of the Rings". It's not the One Weird Trick you think will bring you power and victory, it will hollow you out because in the end it only has one true master. This guy is trying to be Sauron, and even if he gets what he wants, it may not be how he thinks it will be - the greatest deception is self-deception, 'I got everything I wanted without having to pay the price' (ignore the mountain of skulls, ignore that I have lost my fair form and can never go back). Ring-making is a dangerous art and will exact the highest price.

Melkor and Sauron were already immortal spirits with immense power amongst the Valar and Maiar. So in this sense, they were already beyond Fang Yuan's desperation. But this was not enough, never enough. Melkor was arguably the most powerful amongst the ranks of the Valar, in his capacity to create dissonances, but he was not Eru Iluvatar: and he could never usurp or replace him. Similarly, Sauron was great amongst the Maiar, but aspired higher. Even in Lord of the Rings all he does is attempt to take the place of his absent master, rather than attempt to free him.

Our poor MC would have loved to been Sauron, to have an immortal span of life, but quickly the prize would seem poisoned, as there are immortals of higher station still, and inevitably he will scheme and plot until he runs into the face of God, for that is the only logical end, other than defeat and destruction.

The Rings are singular artifact though. I meant more like a hypothetical setting where everyone does Satanism for a living.

(and to a lesser extent the other rings are)

...is it though? The elven rings seem to be simply useful; there's no risk there.

And Gandalf seems to have let Bilbo run around with what he thought was a simple "magic ring" for about a hundred years, before he got suspicious that it was actually the One Ring.

Originally a scholar from modern day China, Fang Yuan died and reincarnated in the world of Reverend Insanity. .., "There is only immortality, only eternal life should be the goal one should pursue! If one cannot live forever, is there any difference between a rank nine Gu Immortal and a pile of shit in the gutter?! I am a huge fool, but I do not wish to be a fool that is made of shit...

But reincarnation (not to speak of magic) should be a big proof that there is more to the world than material shit. Fang Yuan should have rather perfected his soul.

Well, he didn't find that out till he was dead did he? Plus he does work on his "soul", or ways to preserve it like the Spring Autumn Cicada. Unfortunately, it came with severe risks, so it's not a reliable means of indefinite life extension.

He had seen souls dissipate to seemingly nothing, with no indication that they were passing to any better world, or indeed that the world in question would be better. Why stake everything on another rebirth when you can grasp the life that you know?

But reincarnation (not to speak of magic) should be a big proof that there is more to the world than material shit. Fang Yuan should have rather perfected his soul.

Yes. I do wonder whether there's hidden message here under the Daoist-flavored nihilism.

By analogy: there's throwaway worldbuilding in another cultivation webnovel, Zenith of Sorcery, that there are six afterlife planes you can be sent to after death. The character of the plane correspond to the choices you made in life: you can be send to a noblebright valhalla-type world of heroism and adventure, or a wireheaded-type plane of hedonistic pleasure, etc. Interestingly, the dead souls of each world think they've been sent to heaven. The "worst" is Red Prison, which is a constant state of warfare and struggle for power. My headcanon is that Fang Yuan got send to Red Prison.

Good writeup. While I enjoyed reading 600-ish chapters of RI, it suffers the webnovel problem of just being too long. The thematic juice has been mostly squeezed by the end of the first arc. With the revelation that the "righteous" "family" Gu Yue clan was actually a harvesting operation by the founder, the author's point has been made. After that, it's just Fang Yuan being Fang Yuan and betraying people over and over again.

I put RI in the same category as Worm or Wheel of Time: I admire it, I'm glad to have read it, and while 'low status', it's a rare modern novel that speak to the reader, eternal themes, and the times at different levels. But it desperately needs to be about 30% its wordcount.

This is what happens with serialised novels, though; before the web, there were newspaper and magazine serials. Writers getting paid by the word so they spun it out as long as they could and padded like they were quiltmakers. Or a popular serial was what made people purchase your paper or magazine, so you pressured the author not to end it too soon.

I put RI in the same category as Worm or Wheel of Time: I admire it, I'm glad to have read it, and while 'low status'...But it desperately needs to be about 30% its wordcount.

I'm having a hard time finishing out Worm because of this. Specifically, I realized I do NOT need a whole chapter of Taylor's internal monologue as she ruminates on/processes the last set of horrifically traumatic events. I enjoy almost every other aspect of the story and writing, but this is what pads it out. Skipping those sections usually doesn't deny you critical info, either.

Like we get the point. Humans pretty much suck, most humans with powers suck, being a 'villain' is apparently the only way to do good as it lets you break rules that need to be broken. You can try to justify your behavior or just admit that you're doing what makes you feel better and/or indulging your worst impulses.

Great, now we didn't really need a mile's worth of internal angst written out to achieve a couple inches of character development.

Actually that may be a notable problem with ANY long running piece of fiction, from One Piece to The Walking Dead (TV show).

The main characters are constantly having life-altering experiences and thus should be experiencing rapid personal change, but they also have to remain stable enough over the course of the story that their arc doesn't feel rushed, and reaches the 'satisfying' endpoint. Also if you alter a character's personality too much fans might revolt.

And most writers seem to err pretty heavily on the side of stability. Which means they have to pace the character development out over dozens of chapters. Some, I guess, resist the impulse to have said characters ruminate constantly on their experiences despite it not altering their thinking much.

Come to think of it, LLM-powered tunable novel abridgement tools surely are already out there.

Unfortunately, this is one of the use cases where I can't check the LLM's work without having read the whole novel in the first place. If it mixes things up or forgets something crucial, I'm out of luck.

The other problem is that the wordcount of these stories doesn't only come from bloated prose; it comes from the design of the story itself. In Wheel of Time, for example, Robert Jordan should have simply axed the Faile Shaido arc and the Andoran Succession arc, which would take a hundred pages to tell even were he writing efficiently.

Even putting aside the limitations of LLMs, re-writing this kind of flaw in a novel is like adjusting the amount of flour and yeast in a cake that's already been baked.

I'm rather dissatisfied with the entire rational fiction genre, because it all seems to be fantasy that hinges on magic or "magic" systems that just so happen to be navigable by autists with a modicum of rules lawyering or vidya minmaxing skill.

Is there any rationalist fiction that takes place in a completely mundane setting without video game logic or outright ass-pull magic?

I'm rather dissatisfied with the entire rational fiction genre, because it all seems to be fantasy that hinges on magic or "magic" systems that just so happen to be navigable by autists with a modicum of rules lawyering or vidya minmaxing skill.

A lot of rationalist fiction is fanfic where nobody in the source material ever tries to take over the world by rules lawyering or minmaxing despite it obviously being possible. The ratfic then answer the question "what would happen if an actually smart character got dropped into this setting"? The better stories go out of their way to explain why this hasn't happened before and give the hero an equally smart villain to keep the plot interesting.

Is there any rationalist fiction that takes place in a completely mundane setting without video game logic or outright ass-pull magic?

What, you mean Earthfic? At that point, you are better off just reading biographies of great scientists and entrepreneurs like Richard Feynman or Elon Musk, or nonfiction books about cognitive biases and economics.

From "Rationality and the English Language" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Nonfiction conveys knowledge, fiction conveys experience. Medical science can extrapolate what would happen to a human unprotected in a vacuum. Fiction can make you live through it.

Probably the biggest difference between fictional settings and reality is that fictional settings are almost always constructed in such a way that large effects do not require large capital investments, the way they do in our world. Requiring that things get done by a research team in twenty years instead of by a hero in one minute kills the fun.

The ratfic then answer the question "what would happen if an actually smart character got dropped into this setting"?

The answer to that, if I'm being snarky, is that they are not in fact the "actually smart character" they think they are and there are reasons why 'this obvious way to take over the world' doesn't work out.

Then again, I am not a fan of the type of fiction where it's "just let me get my stats in a row and manipulate this convenient loophole et voila, deus ex machina!" because that's sports betting, not an organic magic system. Magic should be a little bit fuzzy and imprecise and "no it has to be the exact phase of the moon, no I don't know why, and oh yeah if it rains all bets are off" because that's how things work in reality once you leave behind in vitro or in silico experiments.

and there are reasons why 'this obvious way to take over the world' doesn't work out

in some badly thought-out fiction this may be missing

though much better story is where character actually encounters some fitting opposition, without sneering at source material or something else

I will say that one of my favorite fictional tropes ever is when a small group of people who each have a particular skill/expertise that is world-class in their field get together and coordinate an insanely precise, unprecedented yet completely plausible set of actions and circumstances long enough to achieve a very particular effect, and such effect sort of has the appearance of magic because your average Joe or team of average Joes has no clue on how to replicate it.

That is, all the years of research and development of skill are implied in each character's backstory, and now they just have to apply those to the plot's problem in a unique way, which may only takes weeks or days or minutes, so maintains the 'fun.'

Michael Crichton novels often use that sort of trope, and more recently, Daniel Suarez.

I'm in the same boat - ratfic in the sci-fi genre is where my interest lies, the fantasy-oriented stuff generally fails to grab me. There are many engineering problems and hypothetical situations to confront in sci-fi, and instead of being able to invent up your own magic systems capable of being conveniently rules-lawyered you have to stick to the constraints of the real world. The ones that systematise their own human relationships through the lens of game theory are particularly strong IMO.

Oddly enough a minority of rationalist fiction seems to tackle sci-fi. I get it, I'm trying to write such fiction myself and can attest to the fact that becoming proficient at a large number of scientific fields to the point where one can write a fully fledged story is very difficult, but I honestly thought more people would've tried. Most of the hard sci-fi writers who have been successful in this endeavour aren't strictly part of the ratsphere.

I'm in the same boat - ratfic in the sci-fi genre is where my interest lies

can you recommend some?

In increasing order of wordcount:

  • Friendship is Optimal: "Hanna, the CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios, just won the contract to write the official My Little Pony MMO. Hanna has built an A.I. Princess Celestia and given her one basic drive: to satisfy everybody's values through friendship and ponies. And Princess Celestia will follow those instructions to the letter...even if you don't want her to." [39k words, complete]
  • Luna is a Harsh Mistress: "When Celestia banished Nightmare Moon, she didn't go alone, but with her loyal army. Now they're trapped in an alien environment, with tensions high and the air running out. If they don't work together, their princess will soon be alone after all." [230k words, complete]
  • The Moon's Apprentice: "Twilight Sparkle failed her entrance exams for Celestia's school. Worse, she is a danger to both herself and others, resulting in her magic being suppressed. Dreams crushed and now one of the weakest unicorns, a nightmare comes to her." [412k words, complete]
  • Message in a Bottle: "Humanity's space exploration ultimately took the form of billions of identical probes, capable of building anything (including astronauts themselves) upon arrival at their destinations. One lands in Equestria. Things go downhill from there." [514k words, complete]
  • Changeling Space Program & The Maretian: "The space race is on, and Chrysalis is determined to win it. With an earth pony test pilot and a hive full of brave-but-dim changelings, can she be the first pony on the moon? / Mark Watney is stranded- the only human on Mars. But he's not alone- five astronauts from a magical kingdom are shipwrecked with him." [797k words, complete]
  • To the Stars: "Kyubey promised that humanity would reach the stars one day. The Incubator tactfully refrained from saying too much about what they would find there." [948k words, ongoing]

Anything by Greg Egan or Andy Weir.

DataPacRat: S.I., Extracted, "FAQ on LoadBear's Instrument of Precommitment" and Singleton, Friendship is Optimal: X-Risks are Magic

Glowfic: "but hurting people is wrong" (Thellim is from dath ilan, a version of Earth where everyone is Eliezer Yudkowsky, and her world has a ton of innovations that are absent from ours but which do not rely on different physical laws)

DataPacRat: S.I.

...from excerpts posted in the old place, I spent something like thirty consecutive hours reading this story in one sitting, only to realize somewhere around hour 28 or so that I was, in fact, reading a pornfic aimed at fetishes sufficiently obscure to me as to not recognize them for what they were. The realization and recontextualization of the reading experience was certainly novel.

...okay, fair. DataPacRat has some weird fetish for people becoming body parts of other people (limbs, organs, etc). He really needs to stop; nobody wants to read that.

transformation, I think, but also vore, bimboification, the bondage variant where people get cocooned, corruption(?) slimepeople, diapers, mind control... the list of "topics" addressed is considerable, and the tone is sufficiently matter-of-fact that I genuinely didn't understand the angle he was chasing until quite late in the story.

If you know how to hack the real world, why would you write novels?

That's absolutely fair, but also reinforces my opinion that rationalist fiction is just feel-good fantasy literature for autists.

I'd say Sherlock Holmes, but that leans heavily on asspull magic, in my view.

I have to appreciate just how well-handcrafted the brutal math of the setting is. Particularly the shift from Gu Masters to Gu Immortals. I'll spoiler it because the mechanics are not revealed immediately in the story.

Why do so seemingly many stay at the peak of rank 5? It's not just that upgrading to rank 6, the first Gu Immortal rank, is unusually precarious, requiring a great feat of concentration just to survive the process. The "running as fast as you can just to stay in place" aspect comes in full force for Gu Immortals, who are assaulted by unpredictable, personal natural disasters scaled to their power, and constantly scaling further, as often as every year. Growth is now required not just to compete with others, but to survive the next calamity. This neatly explains why rank sixes and above are nearly unheard of in the 'mortal' world, even as they manipulate their clans from behind the scenes. One Gu Immortal could crush countless rank fives, but the irony is that it's not worth it anymore. Instead, they have to start from the bottom in the new hierarchy, without contrived mechanisms (that I've heard of) in other xianxia where advancing to the next rank group ascends you to another dimension entirely.

Amazing Cultivation Simulator but for Reverend Insanity setting cannot come fast enough.

One thing I'd add is that it's not solely 'Fang Yuan mauling people', it explores the perspectives of other sides too. We see people who are sincerely righteous and good-hearted struggling to do justice in the world, or what they see as justice. I think Duke Long had a lot of good points, he's not a clear villain. In another story he'd be the paladin, the HFY hero, the Lan Mandragoran 'death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain' type. In many respects he's more human than Fang Yuan, though less in others.

The author flexes further by churning out an enormous number of memorable and likeable characters, the majority of them worthy of their own novels. Yet the world is cruel, and he's crueler, and few who go up against Fang Yuan come out of it the victor. I've wept at some of their fates, the sheer valiance, their raging against the dying of the light or their efforts to uphold their values till the end. They inhabit the world they're in, they think, reason and plot. Fang Yuan isn't the one character in the universe with the ability to plan ahead.

Indeed. I've always struggled to write solid characters, and I'd be loathe to throw them away unless absolutely necessary for the plot. Gu Zhen Ren doesn't give two fucks, he'll make you feel for people who have maybe 5 lines of dialogue.

Even Fang Yuan says that he's not the only main character, that's just the perspective of his story. There are plenty of other people fated and blessed with good fortune and talent, and they get plenty of limelight. I suppose that's a strong perk of writing in third person, the author can easily show off alternative perspectives, and much of the time, they're no dumber or less internally rich than the MC.

For reference, where do you stand on Worth The Candle and Mother of Learning?

I enjoyed both of them, though I preferred WTC over MOL.

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