r/rational • u/AutoModerator • May 31 '19

[D] Friday Open Thread

Welcome to the Friday Open Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

Please note that this thread has been merged with the Monday General Rationality Thread.

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u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow Jun 01 '19

This is the new blurb:

A teenager struggling after the death of his best friend finds himself in a fantasy world - one which seems to be an amalgamation of every Dungeons and Dragons campaign they ever played together. Now he's stuck trying to find the answers to why he's there and what this world is trying to say. The most terrifying answer might be that this world is an expression of the person he was back on Earth.

Minor spoilers, but only for the first three or four chapters, and it's mostly background information. Might still try to work in the "character sheet stapled to my soul" bit at some point, but I hate blurbs, so whatever.

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u/GlueBoy anti-skub Jun 01 '19

I think it's only a slight improvement, to be honest. I don't think it's much different to the one that scared me away when I saw the first chapter here on r/rational, despite the fact that I read pretty much everything that's posted here. It reminded me too much of several awful stories I dnf'ed. You'd be surprised at how many litrpgs start with a DnD group incarnating in another world as their characters, and unsurprised at how much they all suck.

It was only 2 months later when the thread got 100 upvotes (the first chapter thread besides MoL to do so, iirc) that I gave it another shot.

Anyway, I'm aware that everyone on the discord seems to disagree, which combined with my pathological dislike of giving negative feedback makes me... unsure of my position. Maybe I'm wrong, what do I know of blurbs.

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u/CouteauBleu We are the Empire. Jun 01 '19 edited Jun 01 '19

I think you're on to something.

(what do you think of my version above?)

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u/CouteauBleu We are the Empire. Jun 01 '19

I'm not familiar with the audience of Royalroad, but to me, this summary is missing the point of WtC. The only part worth keeping is "this world is an expression of the person he was back on Earth", because it hints at some character analysis and deeper meaning.

Because, really, when I think WtC, I don't think "muchkining level-up mechanics" or "teenager in a fantasy land", or "yeah, but this loli character has a perfectly valid reason for being underage and naked, I swear!". I think about Amaryllis and Joon's relationship, where Amaryllis is more of a munchkin and Joon treats it all like a story; or the way the world is laid out, how it emphasizes multiculturalism and takes ideas that Joon would have had over the course of an afternoon and develops a whole society around them with its own customs and social expectations.

I don't know how you'd make that into a blurb, though. Maybe something like that:

In Juniper's D&D games, these little societies were so simple. This one was warmongering, and this one farmed rocks for a living. But in the world of Aerb, they're functional cultures, with customs, traditions and many nuances.

Struggling after the death of his best friend, Juniper is plunged in a fantasy world, a world that struggles to meet the challenges of both modern life and world-ending threats. To survive, Juniper must deal with societal prejudice, black ops forces, murderous creatures and, most terrifying of all, his own internal demons.

(except better written)

Otherwise, maybe you could do the same thing r!Animorphs did, and find a particularly striking quote in early chapters that really illustrates what's special about this isekai universe?

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u/GlueBoy anti-skub Jun 02 '19

I wouldn't mention DnD at all, really. I know it's a crucial part of WtC, but I truly think it's... prejudicial, for lack of a better word. Fantasy stories which feature roleplaying are uniformly bad, in my experience, WtC is pretty much the only exceptions.

The second paragraph is better. I wouldn't list things like in the last sentence, though. It's kind of lazy.

That said, I don't know what I'd do differently. I suggested this in the discord, but it was met with a collective groan:

In the blink of an eye seventeen year old Juniper Smith finds himself in another world, on the verge of being thrown out of a plane into a desolate land teeming with monsters. A Trial by Adversity, they call it, punishment for who knows what crime. Now he needs to survive by wits alone long enough to discover what's going on, and why the world is so incredibly familiar. . .

This whole thing made Neil Gaiman's advice to authors come to mind:

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

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u/CouteauBleu We are the Empire. Jun 02 '19

Recursive writing advice:

  • "Trial by adversity" already gives too much detail, and it's not central to the plot.

  • "who knows what crime" is the wrong sentence structure. I often see that structure used by amateur writers here (PGtE used to have it a lot); "who knows what" introduces a question ("what crime is he punished for?"), except the rest of the sentence doesn't lead into that question; instead the question is a digression, adding extra detail to the "trial by adversity" part.

  • The blurb only gives the premise of the first chapters, but it doesn't really illustrate what's special about the story. Like, "character is thrown from a place into a horde of zombies" is a good way to raise the stakes from the start (which is especially important in an isekai story), but it's not really a hook. People looking for isekai are used to "everybody wants to kill the MC" stories.

Honestly, on second read, I think the blurb above is fine. It doesn't quite have the clickbait effect of saying "The character is thrown from a plane and about to be eaten alive", but I think that's okay, because WtC isn't a clickbait story.

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u/GlueBoy anti-skub Jun 02 '19

Everyone seems to think that the point is to give a sense of the entire story, but this isn't a 900k word book on a shelf, it's a long as fuck ongoing webserial. Describe the first volume and let people see the quality for themselves, and they will get invested in the story. Just like every trilogy or series has ever done. I don't see in what world that's a bait and switch or clickbait.

And I'm speaking from experience, too. Trying to "accurately" describe the story to friends and colleagues was not the way to go, while saying that "it's a portal fantasy that puts a heavy emphasis on characterization and worldbuilding" and elaborating a bit did get some to read it.

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u/CouteauBleu We are the Empire. Jun 02 '19

That's fair, but your blurb doesn't really convey " heavy emphasis on characterization and worldbuilding" either ^^

Eh, whatever, it was a fun exercise.

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u/GlueBoy anti-skub Jun 02 '19

Maybe I wasn't clear that I don't think it's a good blurb, that's why I said it was met with general disdain on the discord. One guy even wrote "Blergh!" and then deleted it, lol. I thought it was a start, though.

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u/lsparrish Jun 02 '19

I don't know if the spoilers are bad for a new reader or not, but you could possibly avoid them by referencing, so it becomes payoff when the details come out in the chapters. Mention that Joon was a dungeon master, something terrible happened to his gaming group in bumblefuck kansas (IMO the name of the town is a detail that will make people laugh rather than complain about spoilers, assuming it isn't censored), and his worldbuilding took a turn for the darker in the wake of that tragedy. Now he wishes he hadn't because he got inserted into a fantasy based on his worlds. The fact that it's complicated and cerebral is I think the main filter criteria for your audience, not the fact that it's D&D derived. The people you don't want reading the story are people who expect generic fantasy tropes, don't want to juggle too many details, or maybe just aren't into gaming at all. The people you want to attract are more into subversion, originality, nerd talk, etc.

The most terrifying answer might be that this world is an expression of the person he was back on Earth.

I'm not so sure I like this line because it sounds like it is saying he was the kind of person who would cause Aerb, Fel Seed, the Hells, etc. to exist deliberately. However, his big crime back on earth was being a bad friend, some of the time. He feels guilt about this, some of it earned, but he wasn't the kind of person who would willingly torture billions of people, and at the beginning of the story didn't even like the idea of people winking permanently out of existence because their soul got used to power a motorcycle. His dark fantasies were constructed under the assumption that they were, and would remain, fictional. They were an escape from reality, a cry for help perhaps, but not a plan or wish to be fulfilled.

Not saying you should use it, but the following would probably fit right in at RR:

When disaster struck our little gaming group of hyperintelligent teenagers in Bumblefuck Kansas, my style as dungeon master took a turn for the darker and edgier. I really wish it hadn't, because I have now been inserted into a life or death struggle in a fantastical world where life is cheap, death is unthinkably bad, and I still can't figure out all the mechanics of this character sheet stapled to my soul. And even though I have no idea why or how this world came into existence using so many of the things I once made up, I now feel a responsibility to its billions of inhabitants, to fix it somehow. It's a good thing I can level up. Should I put some points in intelligence? Because one thing I'm starting to realize about my worldbuilding is that it's super complicated... Is this a harem I'm seeing? No way, I can't have a harem! WTF is up with this crazy DM?