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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I'm still on Herzog's Citizen Knowledge. I can't say I care much for the discussions of actual events, but there are a lot of interesting references, and its position is very clearly written.
I'm also reading papers found in New Directions in the Ethics and Politics of Speech, edited by J.P. Messina (also open access). Currently, Cohen and Cohen's The Possibility and Defensibility of Nonstate "Censorship." This collection at least seems much more self-aware of censorship issues raised in recent times.
I'm at the 2100s in Reverend Insanity, that's chapters, not pages. I honestly have no clue how long it actually is, since I heard that it's technically unfinished, I've been stridently resisting the urge to peek and see how many remain. One of the many advantages of ebooks over dead tree books, which always make me feel a sense of dread when a new novel comes to an end.
And as per usual, I've been working on my own Cultivation novel The Dao of Simulation, which is significantly easier to write than my other unfinished work, which had me sticking to the very high standards of rationalist fiction as best as I could.
In Xianxia, both the reader and the author can usually switch off their brain and the former write whatever the fuck they want, knowing that the latter will read anything that's grammatically coherent (and not even necessarily that, given old machine translations).
My work is a mixture of deeply stupid humor, in-jokes, and occasional poignancy. Spoilers below, but you can look forward to charming excerpts like:
Bruh I say again, these are spoilers
Or
">What's a Chinese?" The envoy asked suspiciously.
I'm sure @2rafa will appreciate the deep-cut RSP reference if nobody else does
I'm tired of using spoiler tags
Then:
Please choose a class:
Can one forget? :
Or my personal favorite:
You've still got a bit left of RI. Watch out for some 4D chess coming up.
I remember trying my hand at litrpg, only to get a harshly stratified autocracy ruled by people who hoard all the combat classes. Worlds where individual combat power is wildly unequal should have wildly unequal political power IMO, yet nobody else seems to do this.
I'd be lying if I wasn't already blown away by what the author managed to pull off already, 4D chess undersells it, I'd have an aneurysm trying to keep all the plots straight in my head, and he makes it look easy.
I'm pretty sure you just described most Xianxia haha, I'm sure there must be a couple that are litrpgs too.
If that excerpt gave you the impression that my fic is one, that isn't actually the case! To skip over quite a bit, the "litrpg" mechanics the protagonist is interacting with here are the decayed and decrepit remnants of when this Simulation was more akin to say, WoW, a system that has basically been left to rot while the rest of the world switched to Xianxia Cultivation for millions of years.
It's played for laughs, since pretty much nothing works, and even a prestige class like what Isaac claims is rather underpowered to put it lightly.
Well Red Lotus has been playing 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel the whole time but FY is about to pull some moves too.
Yeah, it was one of those incomplete ideas I had before I even got into xianxia, working from Western litrpg stuff where things are surprisingly egalitarian. One of my thoughts was that a precursor civilization would engineer factories to level up its people (like how in minecraft there are mob farms). After the precursors wipe themselves out (who would've guessed that high levels and a physics system dependent on killing people are destabilizing) we get dungeons. I like having organic reasons for things to exist rather than the whole 'dungeon core' trope collection welded onto medieval Europe fantasy setting. Alternate physics should mean alternate politics and alternate culture, which xianxia tends to get right despite its other flaws.
Why the spoiler dude?? It's unmarked too, not that spoiler marks even work for me.
How is that a spoiler? The moment people are first introduced to Red Lotus, it's made clear that he's a time traveller, that's his whole gig. Plus FY is constantly organizing various schemes. It's not specific to say 'oh you should watch carefully for upcoming schemes from the number 1 schemer.' Anyway, don't go on the subreddit if you're this conscious of spoilers.
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