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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16954 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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My tally of books read in a year has dropped drastically given my predilection towards reading Chinese Xianxia, where a single novel might run over 3000 chapters, and a mere thousand is considered a short one. This is awful if it's a bad novel (you should give up way earlier, of course), but amazing when you get a rare book you'd rather never end.

Add in web serials and other online books, and it's hard to put a number on them.

I'd read more standard books, but it seems I have largely exhausted the well available given my rather particular tastes, and even then most of them were doorstoppers.

At any rate, I probably spend 4-6 hours a day reading, period, and at about 450 WPM if my e-reader app is accurate, so I'm consuming around 60 million words a year.

Yo. Recs please.

Since COVID I've jumped in hard on Progression Fantasy and a small amount of Xianxia is a part of that. Loved Beware of Chicken, A Thousand Li, and Ave Xia Rem Y.

I'd like to guzzle more, especially if it is unpolluted by system stuff.

question from the peanut gallery: what is "system stuff"? I run across mentions of it frequently, but it's always in a context where everyone apparently already knows what it is, and I've never found the headwaters, as it were.

Some terms:

Cultivation Fantasy: typically means Western spin on Chinese/Eastern fantasy styles (Xianxia is one of the classic Chinese fantasy genres but not the only one).

Progression Fantasy: Fantasy with a focus on the character becoming stronger, learning magic, battles (and winning them) and other such stuff. Can be very addictive and lends itself to web serial formates well.

LitRPG: The world has some kind of game layer or something. I start out at level 1 with one level in one handed sword fighting. Kill a goblin. Now I have two levels in one handed sword fighting. Generally a sub genre of Progression Fantasy for the obvious reasons.

"The System": Often the name of or explanation for the game layer in a LitRPG. The "system" assigns you a class and tells you about your level ups or whatever. Genre often involves fighting, abusing, or changing the system.

Dungeon Crawler Carl (despite the weird sounding premise and name) is probably the "best" example of LitRPG/Systems.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is probably the "best" example of LitRPG/Systems.

*Worth the Candle enters the chat*

I loved WtC but come on, DCC is on another level (for example: hilarious and not 110% ratfic).

Seconding, DCC was my gateway drug into litRPGs and pound for pound, it's still the most insane,angsty,lol-worthy series in this genre that I've read.

Goddammit Donut!

Congratulations! Our near-omnipotent alien/demon/wizard/AI society has decided to impose an all-encompassing system of RPG elements upon your primitive world. Please do not resist.

Or, alternatively, the all-encompassing system of RPG elements has merely existed since time immemorial, rather than being suddenly imposed from outside.

Wow! Those numbers put me to shame!

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