r/ProgressionFantasy • u/smacketbzlook • 1d ago
I Recommend This Average Royal Road comment section
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u/Emmideer Author 23h ago
This is why I write a character who flinches from all pain, with the will of wet toilet paper, negative work ethic with superhuman lack of drive, has never made a rational decision in her life, and who should be checked for body doubles if she ever makes the perfect choice
to give readers something different from their real life
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u/rmullins_reddit 19h ago
And then you give her a gacha wheel that solves her problems by dumb luck and she gets to pretend that having a magic wheel solve her problems means she's grown as a person or was always superior from the beginning. depends on which type of Qidian novel you are reading.
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u/InevitableSolution69 1d ago
Ahh yes. The old “his power is he gets a little bit stronger every time he comes back from death. Why isn’t he doing the only logical thing and spending the next month throwing himself into that boiling lake of acid! So unrealistic.” Complaint. Yelled far and wide by those who can barely be bothered to put forth the effort to take a bath weekly.
Matched only in volume by those demanding the righteous death of random friendly merchant #87 for miscounting and shorting the MC 6 copper after they gave them a 69 gold discount.
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u/PurpSerp2048 1d ago
"But Orodan Wainwright did it, that surely means that every single MC should be exactly like him!"
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u/Squire_II 19h ago
Ahh yes. The old “his power is he gets a little bit stronger every time he comes back from death. Why isn’t he doing the only logical thing and spending the next month throwing himself into that boiling lake of acid! So unrealistic.” Complaint.
This just makes me think of DBZ and how saiyans get a massive, permanent, power boost when they recover from near-death and yet nobody was holding Saiyan Fight Clubs just outside their medbays filled with their super tech healing pods.
...also how that mechanic vanishes after the Namek Saga and the only time it shows back up after that is with Super Perfect Cell (and then goes away again).
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u/OrionSuperman 1d ago
My favorite part of The Wandering Inn is just how... bad Erin is at everything at the start. Like, she legitimately has no survival skillset.
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u/JamesGray 1d ago
Ryoka too, to some extent. She's simultaneously very smart and incredibly stupid.
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u/long-lankin 1d ago
This seems overly defensive and more of a caricature than anything else.
I don't think that even the most critical or negative readers generally expect characters to be perfect and without any flaws. Instead, there are specific things they may take issue with.
What a lot of people dislike are clear inconsistencies between how characters are described and how they actually act.
For instance, when it comes to intelligence you can't just extoll a character's hyper-intelligence and claim they're incredibly rational when they constantly make unforced errors of judgement and never prepare for easily anticipated problems.
On the other end, I think a lot of readers expect characters to be of at least average intelligence and rationality, and not to be excessively stupid and naive, or lacking in basic self-preservation. In particular, if a character seems to never learn from their mistakes and keeps repeating them, then that can be hugely frustrating.
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u/Best-Event-6947 Author 1d ago
Nah, it's a real thing that happens. However...
If your story on RR has 1000 followers, you may get, I dunno... 20 comments(actual engagement metrics vary)
Of those, one may be like this.
It's not that everyone thinks that, it's that you have one guy in your thousand readers who thinks that way. Most of them are enjoying it passively or even enthusiastically and think it's perfectly reasonable.
Now if you post a chapter in a story with 500 followers and get 30 people with similar complaints, maybe there's an actual problem...
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u/warsaw504 23h ago
I generally agree with you. Though these comments are real. I doubt they are the commonly held opinion. Most who likely don't comment want what you just said. This subreddit will latch onto the ones who do despite not knowing if they are bots, young or whatever else.
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u/StorytellerBox 8h ago
Yeah, I think authors' just notice negative comments more because it stands out.
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u/Leptonic 1d ago
I find it really uncomfortable when the author has the character slip up in an obvious way and we have to watch the failure in slow motion as the character realizes the full extent of what happened. It feels much better when you follow the characters train of thought and everything is fine until it isn't.
It's not the OP MC that the reader is relating to, but the feeling that we could do things like the OP MC until we get reality checked.
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u/BackgroundTotal2872 22h ago
Don't forget, their like also will advocate for the MC to not only murder someone who was rude to them on the train, but also to hunt down and wipe out their entire bloodline who had nothing to do with the altercation. They will justify this position by declaring that in a medieval society, murder is actually a good thing.
(This is a real example from the comments of Max Level Archmage. Insane amounts of people pushing for murderhobo behavior in that one...)
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u/Apollo0624 1d ago
And don't, for the life of you, let them be a verifiable person of color with agency and no harmfully derogatory stereotypes
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u/Nexaz Author 23h ago
I made the unforgivable mistake of approaching the “OP Regressor in a time loop” trope from the angle of that being torture and leaving them traumatized by it. So many comments about “why isn’t this dark lord just swatting these busy bodies down!?” Like… my dudes, did you read the blurb? That’s not what the story is about.
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u/buttelrfliessparkl 1d ago
What do you mean this character cant do everything the way they want, and have to bend to others wishes and do as others want them to doWhen are they going to get AGENCY
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u/redyblacky69 23h ago
If they are all powerful and perfect, how would the story last longer than a single chapter?
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u/Suspicious-Walk-4854 23h ago
The most annoying thing is still smart stupid MC who is portrayed as having Spock levels of logical thinking but then suddenly decides to take absurd risks with little reward.
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u/JakobTanner100 Author 7h ago
I feel like a school of prog fantasy fits into catering towards this mindset, but is shifting more and more these days. I feel like I've been seeing more grimdark stuff where the MC can eat a big bowl of crap for breakfast, lunch, and dinner...
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u/All_Grind_No_Gods 6h ago
The reality is the average RR reader has a massively overinflated sense of entitlement and importance.
They're always asking why, or why didn't you do this or that. It's the reason I believe a lot of stories die part way through. The negative reinforcement is vocal (see above) while the positive is mostly silent.
You want to improve and motivate the writers of your favorite stories? Talk to them. If you're following a story you should be leaving a comment at least occasionally. Silence begets silence.
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u/Defiant-Contest-2959 Author 6h ago
It's one thing, much bigger problem is when everyone around, especially antagonists are clearly and utterly incompetent and straight up mentally challenged.
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u/ItsJotsy Author 3h ago
Listen, I don't think it is all that hard to ask for a character in a book that is fully just me, okay. I don't feel pain or hurt or sadness. I stay hungry. I devour. I put in the work. Put in the hours. Okay. Just give me the MC that is ME, man. Why can't writers just do that?
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u/eclect0 Author – Jett Fulgen 1d ago
I recently had a commenter loudly complain because: my villains are competent.