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Cambrian

Cambrian

The Pimperor - Inspirational as Fuck
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  • d.fish
    But a lot of stories are like this, they start with one eye catching joke or fun plot point, but they can't really string together a story for shit, you know, it loses you, makes you skim, and blank out, and ugh so disappointing
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    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Its weird, I thought I had a really cool eye catching plot hook for The Soul Engine, but now fifty chapters in I get people who tell me that the start actually almost turned them off to the story but they're glad they pushed past it and kept going because it got better.

    And I'm just like "THE START WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE HOOK FFS"
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    d.fish
    d.fish
    a hook that doesn't complement the story tends to be a detriment lol

    but all things need to consider the degree of which you do things

    it's like avengers endgame, you know, the big scene where everyone shows up, you waited 10 years for it

    but do the same thing in dragonflight and it's just cringe, not even the scalies cared about warcraft like that
    d.fish
    Saw this one gamer story where the newbie MC was tossed into a maintenance shop to fix guns, and the first gun he gets from a gang member has the durability -99/100 lmao what how'd it get negative hahahaha
    d.fish
    There's actually more stories here of a different subgenre of the "I'm an NPC" type, it's where the MC is the maker of the game, or on some level the channel for which players enter the game world, and usually a portion of what players gain (levels, exp, etc.) can be translated into "IRL", and the MC has to worry about running the "world"
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    d.fish
    d.fish
    It's either OP isekai or... that's about it
    d.fish
    d.fish
    I just see now that there's a lot of new emotional entanglements that should arise from adulthood, and the ways to deal with them with the power over death tend to be new and unexplored
    d.fish
    d.fish
    For example, "Ginny cheats on Harry" tends to be a common trope, but inflicting physical pain is so... mundane... muggle even. As the master of death, you could pull an entire life's experience on to her, make her regret, self-blame, you know, delicious emotional pain
    d.fish
    So after the players ran away to the safe zone, Edwin Vancleef forced on them an undroppable quest to kill 2000 of those newbie level 2 kobolds, and the reward was 1 exp lmao
    d.fish
    I saw this other one where players who enter the game are, to the natives, basically eldritch horrors, and like, one of the things they have to do is hide that they are players or abnormal or whatever
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    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    There's a massive audience for anything with levels and gameification, tbh. Even places like QQ and SB and the other forum websites, that sort of thing is huge among certain readers, but on top of that, its ginormous on RR in the form of the LitRPG category. Entire writing careers have been launched off of LitRPG on RR.
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    d.fish
    d.fish
    I can kind of understand the desire for gameification, just like how games that realistically portray romance don't do as well as games that make romance about how many gifts you give a girl. It's just, you know, the "I'm in the game as an NPC" seems like a very small subgenre, you know?
    d.fish
    d.fish
    And it doesn't seem like it could become anything of literary value or, I don't know, drama? Like, it's hard to feel stakes or investment of feelings? I dunno, I just feel there's a barrier there that stops it from having more than a large niche audience
    d.fish
    The one I read most recently is basically like if the skills you learn can be used IRL, but you can't just pay gold in game, you gotta do the thing to get the skills, and the MC is Edwin Vancleef, but he goes camping Northshire Valley, and gives quests, but withholds 95% of the rewards, and he aphrodisiaced Lady Katrana Prestor at the start, and now she's in love with him
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    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Lmao, had a youtube video where someone took the first 15 chapters of one of my fics and fed it through TTS linked to me this week. Whats funny is its just pure smut xD
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    d.fish
    d.fish
    Yeah, I think these were TTS too, but I guess TTS works better with Chinese for some reason because they could inflect with more emotion than English TTS, so it's... passable? It's pretty good for already 'fast food' kind of stories, anyway, though absolutely disgusting if it's, you know, 'poisonous' stories that are awful in some way
    Reno Geno
    Ah a lot of those probably spawned from a Webnovel called The Legendary Mechanic which is a somewhat Sci-Fi Fantasy story. I don't know if it started the huge I'm an NPC and I can give quest and shit in an MMO thing. But it sure did popularized it. I remember finding tons of copycats after it got famous or popular enough I guess.
    d.fish
    I still see these "I became an NPC in a MMO that has some feedback with the real world" type stories pop up every so often
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    d.fish
    d.fish
    But the only one I can thing of that works that I'd keep reading, outside of it being a good story innately, are ones set in MMOs that really exist, like wow
    d.fish
    D'ya think there's still any future in MCU fanfics
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    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Not with the new MCU nah. Time Travel fics that revisit the first ten years of the MCU are still my jam tho
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    d.fish
    d.fish
    Yeah, I still see a lot of MCU fanfics in China set around the 2012 Avengers 1 era, usually mixed with Gwen Stacy on some level because she's the favorite best girl and gets the best statistics on these web novel sites here
    d.fish
    d.fish
    I guess I just think it'd be a difficult challenge to write a good story based on, well, what's new, so I guess, kinda interested to see what the best would be like
    d.fish
    Sigh. Finished CP again. The good thing about CP is that, I guess, there's no good endings. It took me a long time to come to terms with that. No wish fulfillment. There's momentary rushes, you know, memorable scenes and happy times, but it doesn't last. Bittersweet is the most memorable, but it takes some life experience to really enjoy it. Kinda like, I guess, Forrest Gump or Shawshank Redemption. Hm.
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    Mr. Dyeus
    Mr. Dyeus
    Can wish fulfillment be the end of a story? When I finished Red Dead I felt a feeling of having finally found peace
    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Not gonna lie, that is not a good acronym for Cyberpunk lmfao.

    Also funnily enough, I'm currently plotting out a wish fulfillment Cyberpunk 2077 Time Travel fic.
    d.fish
    d.fish
    Yeah, I did find peace with the story at the end, especially the new ending, but it also makes me angry and sad :(
    I got referred to you by Cpt. Tagon. I might have a commission for you regarding a Strike Witches lemon I was thinking of.
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    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Sorry lol, but I get that request almost daily. If I did that, I'd have about 30 people I needed to let know before you even. I also don't know when I'll be taking new commissions.

    Also it should probably be said, since you might not know, but my price is 5 cents per word, which is $50 per 1000 words and a bit prohibitive for some people.
    Praetor98
    Do you know anybody who'd be free then?
    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Not really, no. Don't have that much contact with my peers if I'm being honest
    d.fish
    If you think about it, Optimus Prime is a truck. So if trucks isekai, then if Optimus Prime hits a human, then would he be isekaied? Obviously, this effect doesn't work on other transformers, but you never know about the squishies.
    d.fish
    It seems like these days, I see that 'evil laugh' is written as "kekeke!" or "jiejiejie!" more than just the simple and overly done "muahahaha!" but there hasn't really been an iconic 'evil laugh' in a while
    d.fish
    Not enough stories set in Faerun, especially after BG3 came around, but it also feels like there isn't an audience?
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    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Its weird cuz I've gotten three different BG3 commissions that are all going to be multi-chapter stories, and they're pretty popular. But over on my Patreon, BG3 prompts are always last place in the polls. So I dunno if there's an audience or not.
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    d.fish
    d.fish
    I feel like there's always a few big fans of the setting, you know, the older ones, the greybeards basically, and it's like, you know, they got the cash, but they don't got the numbers, or something. Just a feeling though. But you know, I usually look at what the new writers usually first dip their toes in first to see what's poppin', you know, and it's like, IDK, Faerun is...
    Alok
    You know what blows my mind of your fics? None of them are not interesting, and the consistency with which you write, if I am ever bored I read one of your fics while skipping the sex scenes and they still make sense. Hope you keep writing and be this awesome.
    d.fish
    Looking back, players are basically the Scourage or the Zerg... unending, undying, devouring everything, looting everything, and then taking all that they took and making themselves stronger and coming back for more

    until the game becomes pay to win and shit, I guess

    but that's like the fist of god coming down from the heavens
    d.fish
    any new games
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    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Nah, for me if I let enthusiasm wane at all, the idea dies on the vine, never harvested. The only way I've managed to write any of the 200k word free writes I've produced in the past 2 years is by grabbing onto that enthusiasm with both hands and creating an entire novel outline in the span of about 10 days.
    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Once I have the whole entire story outlined ahead of time, I can commit to writing it all the way through even if my enthusiasm for it wanes.

    Wrote five full stories of 60-80 chapters each in 2022 and 2023 that way, and currently 60% of the way through my sixth story lol.
    d.fish
    d.fish
    oh yeah? well I wrote like five sentences this whole year! Ha!
    d.fish
    I was gonna play Cyberpunk 2077, but then I noticed I had a lot of mods to update, and then I gave up
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    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Yeah I never played with mods my first playthrough in 2021 so I just went with a fresh install and started a brand new playthrough
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    d.fish
    d.fish
    and it's not like just updating mods, because I played again beginning of this year because of the anime, right, so then it's like, I got redmod or whatever the fuck, and all these attachment stuff, and files that need to be replaced, and aaa
    d.fish
    Sure are a lot of people comparing Cyberpunk 2077 with Starfield these days
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    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Its funny, I played BG3 first and Starfield second and felt comfortable giving Starfield a 7 out of 10. Now that I'm playing Cyberpunk again though, I kind of want to drop that to a 6 out of 10 lmao
    d.fish
    d.fish
    Comparison is the thief of joy.

    Well, BG3 and Starfield aren't really comparable games, but CP and SF definitely fall into more similar genres.
    Cambrian
    Cambrian
    Yeah. I still stand by my enjoyment versus cost for Starfield to be fair. I didn't technically pay anything for it because I got 10 months of Game Pass for free due to a birthday gift. And Starfield is very much worth playing if you can get it for free.

    Heh, likewise I got $40 in Steam Gift Cards for my birthday as well though, so Phantom Liberty was also free.
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