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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3388 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 2, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist. It has been on the backlog for a while as an influential book, but a careless thought has finally given me a reason to be interested: I wonder what impact wokeness has had on highly successful minorities.

Paper I'm reading: Thiele's Things Fall Apart: Integrity and Visibility in Democratic Liberal Education.

I've gotten stuck in a rut of reading Lit-RPG recently, which I really need to extricate myself from. Just finished the published books of Defiance of the Fall, which was a nice mix of the Chinese cultivation genre with lit-RPG. Still, if I just read 3,000 pages of something with more substance, I imagine I would feel better about my reading habits.

I'm in a literary rut waiting for enough time to pass to reach Malazan again ... What's LitRPG?

Wikipedia says:

LitRPG, short for literary role playing game, is a literary genre combining the conventions of computer RPGs with science-fiction and fantasy novels. The term was introduced in 2013. In LitRPG, games or game-like challenges form an essential part of the story, and visible RPG statistics (for example strength, intelligence, damage) are a significant part of the reading experience. This distinguishes the genre from novels that tie in with a game (like those set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons), books that are actual games (such as the choose-your-own-path Fighting Fantasy type of publication), or games that are literally described (like MUDs and interactive fiction). Typically, the main character in a LitRPG novel is consciously interacting with the game or game-like world and attempting to progress within it.

There's something about the genre that's just really easy. Takes very little effort to pick up the story compared to normal books.

I never got hooked by Defiance of the Fall but if you liked that you might like Primal Hunter, which is very similar overall.

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