Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!
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@Zakrhune This is exactly why I dropped the series. Creepy as heck, imo.
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@Zakrhune said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
@rsog412 Yeah. Tired of reading about MCs that're basically 30 being into 15 year olds.
If you want a change of pace you can try reading My Quiet Blacksmith life in another world, where you get a whole different set of frustrating writing issues. The protagonist is a 40 year old who was allegedly reincarnated into the body of a 30 year old, but if you had to guess based on how much he complains about being old and broken and aching all the time you would think he was in the body of a 70 year old (and never forgets to mention his cheats). Also, if you happen be unlucky enough to have any knowledge about metalworking it is very apparent that the author doesn't and never even bothers to google anything because everything is very wrong (IE he smelts his own ore and uses plate stock to make knives and swords (when he doesn't cast steel swords) and bar stock to make plate armor).
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@Zakrhune I got tricked by the MC always talking about his age and how he is not a lolicon but I've caught up now and realised that if he isn't, then 'vitality-glorifying' is the preferred method of romance in this world because youth is equal to beauty and therefore power. Everyone he meets who has power seems to be young if not in appearance then in age.
Well, I will continue reading because I want to see what's the end-goal and the series isn't complete yet so I can't just Google the answer.
Well, I was going to start The Great Cleric but I just got the last volume of So I'm a Spider, So What? yesterday so now I'm re-reading that series. I started watching the anime (Cleric) and so far, it doesn't look impressive. I'm hoping that that's just a difference in medium so I want to check out at least volume one since it's on catch-up.
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@saidahgilbert said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
I started watching the anime (Cleric) and so far, it doesn't look impressive.
The Light Novel is better than the anime. For one thing I don't remember him being this "super gushing" character as the anime portrays him. Things should become a bit more serious soon so maybe the tone will change.
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I am not doing that well in my catchup reading this month. Read the first two volumes of Sorcerer's Receptionist but will stop at this point. I do not like the male lead at all. I actually am enjoying the new series Nightmare Boss (which is similar to Receptionist).
In the meantime I am catching up on some of my regular reading.
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I promise, I tried reading Receptionist. Towards the end of the first volume and throughout the second it became readable but I could not stomach volume 3 past the first couple of parts. Skimmed over the next few parts and lost interest. I have no interest in the main (?) character, how she is fixated on her little single desire and rejects actively anything which doesn't fit. All I can do is wish for her to achieve the mediocrity and obscurity she's longing for - but I won't be following her path getting there, or anywhere else.
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@jhmertens That combined with the exposition that had little to no meaning other than to fill pages for "world building" and the MC always talking about Min/Maxing and then picking skills at a whim, but NEVER magic. NOPE! Can't chose something to unlock magic because it's RNG based? But he'll dump points into magic related stuff.
@Cooper-Cummings-gk5u8qq Couldn't stand the first hundred pages of vol 1 of that series. Just felt kind of lifeless to me and by the end of vol 1 I just gave up.
@saidahgilbert I got through most of The Great Cleric and I regret reading past the first few volumes tbh. Started good, but some of the plot just got so contrived and really really really really boring.
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@Zakrhune said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
the MC always talking about Min/Maxing and then picking skills at a whim, but NEVER magic. NOPE! Can't chose something to unlock magic because it's RNG based?
Speaking as someone who's never read the series, but played a lot of TTRPGs... No, experienced players - even the minmaxers - generally don't reject options because they have random components. Optimisation is typically more about improving your average performance than worrying about your minimum performance - would you rather be doing 15 flat damage per attack, or 1d20+10?
That's not to say there aren't situations where the more random option can be a bad choice, but simply having a random component to it isn't a reason to discard something out of hand.
https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/6701/omnibus-builder
https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/5745/ascendance-of-a-bookworm-omnibus-editionsThe Primal Desires: Food, Sleep, Sex, StroZero, Hypnotism, and Awayuki Kokorone.
Item Diaria Apothecaria legi debent.
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@kuali It's more the MC would choose something like a few points in skill so he could win at a game as a child. Will it help a bit in the future? Sure it might come in handy. But it had little to do with his build and more to do with petty pride and his hatred of losing a game as a kid.
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@kuali said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
That's not to say there aren't situations where the more random option can be a bad choice, but simply having a random component to it isn't a reason to discard something out of hand.
To clarify, the randomness isn't in its performance but in the ability to ever even use it. MC literally can't use magic despite any investments in the fundamental magic stats without something to unlock spellcasting. So not over investing in stats he can't use is sound, what's questionable is investing in them at all until you can do anything with 'em. Though he does have a rationale for those premature investments.
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@Zeteni And then to spend point in a skill just to protect his pride. Which if I remember correctly plenty of races could easily see through said skill and I don't remember if it really comes up much later?
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@Zakrhune said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
@Zeteni And then to spend point in a skill just to protect his pride. Which if I remember correctly plenty of races could easily see through said skill and I don't remember if it really comes up much later?
For that one even MC himself mentions that it was a poorly made decision and tries to justify it after the fact. I thought him making sub-optimal choices as a result of his personality gave him, well, personality. He makes errors in judgement.
And it does come up later but it's not really explicitly pointed out.
As for other series from this batch I tried The Sorcerer's Receptionist but it was the first time I really felt the pain from a lack of speaker tags. People would shift in to conversations rapidly and I just couldn't keep track of what was going on thanks to rapid shifting.
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@Zeteni I'm not much into childish petty personalities, especially someone 40+ mentally, and I felt that most of his personality revolved around petty inner monologue, rationalizing his pettiness, and dumb decisions. Which I'd say are consistently on display, and I'll take a boring character with 0 personality over a character so unlikeable any day of the week.
Edit: I hate editing on an iPad.... sorry for poor punctuation and etc.
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@kuali said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
@Zakrhune said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
the MC always talking about Min/Maxing and then picking skills at a whim, but NEVER magic. NOPE! Can't chose something to unlock magic because it's RNG based?
Speaking as someone who's never read the series, but played a lot of TTRPGs... No, experienced players - even the minmaxers - generally don't reject options because they have random components. Optimisation is typically more about improving your average performance than worrying about your minimum performance - would you rather be doing 15 flat damage per attack, or 1d20+10?
That's not to say there aren't situations where the more random option can be a bad choice, but simply having a random component to it isn't a reason to discard something out of hand.
Not to mention there is an entire category of min-max builds focused on random chance, and it is often the most disruptive sort of min-maxing build possible.
The entire category of crit fishing builds is purely dependant on RNG, but crit fishing is often extremely powerful. One example of this is the popular hexblade warlock/any paladin but particularly oath of vengeance in D&D 5e. Normally when a paladin (who is at least level 5) gets their turn they can attack twice, each time rolling one 20 sided die to determine whether they hit, then they roll the appropriate damage die/dice for the weapon used and add a modifier to determine the damage dealt. If they rolled a 20 on the attack roll they get a critical hit, which means they roll an double the normal amount of weapon damage dice for the damage roll for that attack, and after determining whether the attack hits the paladin can choose to expend limited resources to roll 2 or more extra 8 sided dice and add the results to the damage, which are also doubled in the event of a critical hit, resulting in massive damage that is fairly regularly enough to knock off half of a boss monster's hp, and one shotting then isn't unheard of.
When the crit fishing hexblade vengeance paladin build sets up properly and then attacks they make 3 attacks each turn, 4 after level 9, and instead of rolling one 20 sided die they roll 2 and keep the better result, and also they get a critical hit on a 19 or a 20 instead of just a 20, so they roll 8 potential critical hits per turn instead of the regular paladin's 2, and the chance to crit per die is also doubled, which results in a very high probability of getting a very disruptive smite crit during the battle (Iirc it is upwards of 80% chance to crit smite at least one within the first three turns of a boss fight) .
It is entirely possible that the crit fishing hexblade vengeance paladin doesn't get a critical hit, but if they run up and solo the boss while the rest of the party deals with minions the odds are pretty high that they delete the boss before the minions are out of the way, and even if they don't they have still done some pretty heavy damage, and the regular paladin was already the most powerful non primary spellcaster class and one of the most powerful classes overall without going into crit fishing.
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@Cooper-Cummings-gk5u8qq - if someone has had repeated bad experiences with the dice going against them, they might gain a sense that gambling on RNG doesn't work for them.
Then they are reincarnated, and a bad roll can mean death. Avoiding RNG when it can kill you makes sense if you believe your hidden luck stat is low, and when you don't expect to gain the average damage values from a normal distribution.
I don't gamble or play the lottery in real life, and one reason for that is because that doesn't seem to be where my own luck stat gets applied.
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@HarmlessDave said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
@Cooper-Cummings-gk5u8qq - if someone has had repeated bad experiences with the dice going against them, they might gain a sense that gambling on RNG doesn't work for them.
Then they are reincarnated, and a bad roll can mean death. Avoiding RNG when it can kill you makes sense if you believe your hidden luck stat is low, and when you don't expect to gain the average damage values from a normal distribution.
I don't gamble or play the lottery in real life, and one reason for that is because that doesn't seem to be where my own luck stat gets applied.
lottery and (most) gambling isn't a great example here. With the lottery and pretty much everything besides blackjack and poker the odds are just not high enough for it to ever make any sense (the odds can be adjusted into your favor with the other two, although you will likely get yourself kicked out if you count cards too well in blackjack, and encounter difficulty finding other players in poker if you are too good), they are set up so you lose money on average. Video and table top gaming rng are not intentionally created to work against you, you can adjust the odds into your favor through good choices.
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Having been diving into Min-Maxing while it's on Catch-up, I'll say it's a fun ride so far with one glaring flaw in my eyes.
The author explains TRPG terms in section heading for those who might be less familiar, which is a nice touch for anyone less familiar with them. Among these are "Climax" and "Ending", which are explained in almost, if not all, of the volumes I've read so far.
However, either their, or their editor's, planning has the first two volumes ending immediately following the resolution of the climax and leaves the ending and clean-up of events for the beginning of the next volume. The third and fourth volumes start on their endings, but also leave much to be cleaned up by the next volume.
This just seems either inept at the kindest, or a malicious excuse to force readers along at worst.
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@Kotenmaru said in Get Away for the Summer with July Catchups!:
This just seems either inept at the kindest, or a malicious excuse to force readers along at worst.
IIRC for at least one of those volumes you listed the author has answered why it went that way; thanks to LN original content the volume was already getting bloated and the denouement was deferred to the next volume so it wouldn't get too large. This went great until the next volume, also filled with new LN original content, became bloated as well.
Considering how much LN original content keeps getting added with every volume it's unlikely this will be the last time that happens.
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@Zeteni That would explain alot. I usually end up skipping past the author's afterwords to expedite the story after clearing the Henderson Scale what ifs.
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I just finished volume 1 of The Great Cleric and was pleasantly surprised. The anime almost lead me astray with its portrayal but the story is more palatable as a novel than as an anime to me. So I will continue reading the books (and hopefully finish before month's end) and stop watching the anime.
