Syosetsuka ni Narou Discussion Thread

[Rasty]

^ Yep, in those settings it makes sense, I also remember some where specifically most metals obstructed magic. But I wouldn't overestimate the stamina costs, the mage won't be running around the battlefield too much and even a full suit of metal armor weights only 20-25kg (link) so while possibly not comfortable (temperature, vapor accumulation, etc.) to wear all the time it shouldn't be any problem if you are expecting a fight.

The long-range > short-range depends heavily on the firepower and defenses. The bow was out of favor for a long period because it did nothing against half-decent armor and you needed a very long period to train it. And of course, trying to be excellent in both isn't optimal, but even modern soldiers with virtually unlimited ammo and overpowered weapons (as long as those hit) learn some knife and unarmed fighting (and carry knives, sometimes also bayonets), and a shovel is sometimes said to be the deadliest weapon of WW1.

[sasuke706]

Originally Posted by dragon1412

to be fair though, mana linked to stamina is actually way more natural, I mean, If you sit thinking for a long time you'd be tired, It's actually way weirder if you are physically fine even if you are supposed to exhaust your magic reserved which is supposed to be a form of energy.

Is it, though? Mana being linked to stamina means stamina is also linked to mana. So every bodybuilder, warrior, fighter whatever would have tons of mana because they get a lot of exercise, and every mage would be FIT in order to get a mana pool that means anything. Any reputable wizard would be a muscle wizard. Besides, mental exercise doesn't cost stamina but mental fatigue, or willpower. There's multiple ways to become tired. Mana is supposed to be a mechanical representation to limit spellcasting and magical abilities.

But that isn't how it works, somehow. Mana drains stamina but not vice-versa, with exercise having no direct benefit toward magic itself. In many series there isn't even a way to increase mana as in your have to be born with it, in some you get more mana by using more mana (and getting mana to 0 usually means you pass out and die for some reason), and in very few series mana is related to how old you are. Most the time it's just unexplained thing or increases randomly by leveling. Honestly it seems like often mana is just blood oxygen levels and drains it per use, hence shortness of breath and the dying part.

Everything in the body is linked to something else one way or another, so I don't think mana use affecting stamina somewhat is a bad thing, but if you're going to make it a direct correlation it might as well just be stamina.
It's not like having a way to convert stamina into fireballs is any weirder than mana existing anyway.

[Tenzen12]

Mana doesn't drain stamina. Spellcasting drain both mana and stamina. If you have little mana but lot of stamina you can only fire single small fireball per day, but doing it while running marathon. In other hand you can have guy with lot of mana but no stamina who can blow whole mountain but be bedridden for week afterwards.

[dragon1412]

^^ interesting notice. I personally think similar to Tenzen on this, in mana case, a complete drain of Mana would somewhat result in extreme mental fatigue, in your comparison, I'd say that a after casting a spell you would experiences something similar to finishing a test, you feel exhausted mentally but you can still moving your body, the most the body would feel is probably somewhat sluggish.

As opposed to muscle, I think Mana is similar to some trait like height, sure, exercise help, diet help a lot too, but the most determining factor is definitely your gene. You can still be really fit and not that tall, of course, I think it's more sensible that having physically fit body does help increase a small bit of mana, but it not a big determining factor like with Height, there are plenty of short but strong people but there is also plenty of tall but frail people. Of course, this is limited to settings where mana is deeply inborn, there are many with settings where Mana capacity can grow over time.

@ Rasty: this applies to most of the medieval age, where the armors wearers is generally soldier or recruited farmer, who generally have relatively good physical labours work to begin with. If you want a comparison, take an office worker of today or scribe of medieval period for a better comparison with mage, I agree that 20-25kg when evenly distributed across the body isn't that heavy, but remember that armors are wear for a prolonged periods. Hours at minimum, days in normal case. over 20 kg on your body for hours is already punishing enough, but days is downright impossible unless the person have really good physical foundations. The thing about armors is that in the 1st hours or 2 where you starting wearing it, it's doesn't matter much even if you don't have that much physical strength, but their effect show the longer they are worn, any adventure that require the mage to continuously wear armor for at least 4-5 hours is sure to punish them in their stamina. And high activity in them like running is a different beast altogether. The most probable method I found is just they put armor on carriage or have someone strong to carry it for them and only wear it before the fight, But again, this method also diminishing a lot of the armor values, And this is considered that most armor are not cheap, so most mage probably found better spending somewhere rather than armor. Of course, there are also case where the mage only wear a pieces instead of the full set armor, this is quite probable I guess, But consider that you already exposed quite a bit of body part, unless it is your vital like head, I don't think this is going to matter much in term of protection

[wuhugm]

Why is the starting point of most MCs always trash?
Like he's the bottom of the bottom
Same with MC having worst crest/talent too

Being literally the worst is very rare
There must be people still below you like invalid people
I just don't like the attitude "Boohoohoo, I'm the most unfortunate man in the world!"
No you are not

[Amelgar]

^ Rather why is he meditating there of all places. He's practically begging for attention.

Well, they probably are trash if all they can do is lament about it.

[DBAV]

^Something similar happens in JP novels too, the MC's intention is to hide his cheat and live a slow life but he always ends up provoking people with a passive-aggressive attitude, it feels like he wanted to brag about his cheat but doing so would hurt his supposed Japanese humility so he subtly provokes everyone.

[dragon1412]

It happen also in JP and Kr novels as well, but they are a lot more low key about it compare to CN novels, I remember being trash is actually kinda the most common trope out there on CN webnovel scene.

[wuhugm]

^If it's to be more relatable to the audiences, I think it's failed
Most people are "average" or replaceable nobody
So JP MC who are isekai-ed nobodies is more relatable

I haven't been reading WNs lately, is there a new trend?
Vtuber related maybe?

[Greenish Growth]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

I haven't been reading WNs lately, is there a new trend?
Vtuber related maybe?

The only new trend I've noticed lately are main characters who think they are in an Otome game, but they are not where they thought.

Maybe their memory is only fragmentary and they only remember an Otome game main character that has the same name while they are really in a depressing yuri fight for world survival game. Then there are stories where the main characters think they are in an Otome game, but they are not in any game. The other characters think they're bonkers. It's a trend like that.

Well, it's a comedic way of doing something different at least. It's better than the same old ways done five thousand times.

[dragon1412]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

^If it's to be more relatable to the audiences, I think it's failed
Most people are "average" or replaceable nobody
So JP MC who are isekai-ed nobodies is more relatable

I haven't been reading WNs lately, is there a new trend?
Vtuber related maybe?

Rather to be more relatable, it's more like a form of creating satisfaction when someone low successfully overcame someone stronger, and to create situation where it put MC in the absolute center of attention, I.E: this trash is actually better than the genius, Trash MC is special, it generally feel cheap because of too much luck or cheat is too strong though. Starting out as trash also give some reason so we can have some easy villains who step on MC and later prepare for the shock with the MC beatdown, to be fair, I don't really like this type despite how common it is. MC seem too much like attention hogger. 99% of Cultivation follow this formula, and the vast majority of CN novels as well, even many who turn out to be good later also have this kind of trashy young lord or loser kid start.

JP and KR is a lot more tame, the majority is actually nobody and the adventure start from there, It make the story seem a lot more free even with the generic Isekai premises. I do knew a few novels in JP and KR where MC is starting out as trash, but in many of them they are actually either deliberate or MC actually want to keep the trash status to avoid attentions rather than using them just for the later beat down and Zamaa

[wuhugm]

^Aah, the zamaa

How can you get satisfaction when you can't relate tho?

This subforum is so dead tho
Or the entire forum dead?

[Kyureki]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

This subforum is so dead tho
Or the entire forum dead?

I simply haven't been reading anything new or hasn't already been mentioned before here for a long time, so not much reason for me to say much.

[dragon1412]

Originally Posted by wuhugm

^Aah, the zamaa

How can you get satisfaction when you can't relate tho?

This subforum is so dead tho
Or the entire forum dead?

There is not much to talk about, I mean, we kinda paved most of the novel in Narou, and the primary new novels introduction is from you, most people here don't dive into narou as much to find new series to talk about. The forum population is largely the same though. Most just turn to lurker since there isn't much to talk. And many novels is either reaching the latest chapter or in hiatus not counting the completed one and we don't have new recommendation, so fire it up erotora.

[sasuke706]

I still dive through Narou now and then but 99.9% of the newer novels I find don't inspire to me enough to mention them, and the remaining .1% I'll give a little time to see if they get abandoned and they do.
Like right now I'm more than halfway through 地獄で釜茹での刑は異世界で鍋蓋で and my stance on it is 'at least it's not ability steal/copy, learning cheat or invincible MC'.

And no one here really wants to discuss about the ongoing good novels that I want to (such as Jujutsushi), and I'm likewise not really interested in the stuff other people discuss a lot (Arifureta, Chinese stuff).
A lot of the ongoing good ones often go on hiatus as well, which doesn't help.

The average quality of Narou novel writing has absolutely dropped over the years. It doesn't help that they keep latching onto awful trends that inherently don't make for an appealing story, on top of the author's own touch to it never being enough to make it better. Creativity lives in a dumpster now.
Plus the novels with shorter chapter length seem to be gaining popularity and dominate the rankings, which I assume is due to increasing phone readers. But every time I give these shorter novels a chance I regret it the quality of the writing, and if not that the pacing per chapter is awful. There really isn't any point to looking at the rankings anymore — they're that bad. I also see authors apologizing for chapter being too long for some reason. Like what?

I'm pretty sure the standard for one getting novelized has also dropped considerably. I see utter trash writing/story/both or have writing habits obviously not suited for professional writing (as in rarely writing to begin with) getting novels all the time now.

[Greenish Growth]

I wonder how long this story will remain on syosetsu given the subject matter and how sensitive they are these days:

俺は寝取られ幼馴染ハーレムから解放される為に過去に戻ってやり直す。※タイトル一部変更しま した。
https://ncode.syosetu.com/n0080gy/

It sounds interesting to me though. I hope he posts it on Nocturne if it gets taken off.

EDIT:

Yeah, a lot of webnovels I liked stop before they get to the more interesting parts. It's sad. I kind of expect what I'm reading to stop now.

[dragon1412]

like i said, on hiatus, I mean it kinda a given since most Narou author are amateur and don't plan up ahead. I also agree with Sasuke about the part about novels with short chapter length, seriously, many of them have really bad writing quality, and not to mentions that part of the chapter is references to the previous chapter, which make it not having much content per chap is already bad enough, and the horrible pacing kill it for me.

I think standard for novelized is largely the same for bigger publisher, but smaller one definitely have much lower standard. And many of them taking novels that is clearly amateurish is more like a form of testing the water, I remember many of them only have 1 or 2 printed and we never heard of them again.

[Greenish Growth]

Those bad, tiny length chapter stories always remind me of footprints in snow. They are tiny snippets of what's happening that aren't related to each other. The story just hops around and it can't build up anything because of brevity

Longer chapters in a story are more likely to be interesting percentagewise, but then you also have those authors who feel that people really want to read their really long, boring, meaningless conversations. If they cut out a third or half of it the story would be much better off. It's a hassle trying not to miss something meaningful mixed into all that text.

[sasuke706]

I keep up with novel releases on bookwalker and you'd be surprised how many times I see a volume 1 or 2 getting released for a series and when I go to check the Narou page, it hasn't updated in 6 months to over a year. How am I supposed to feel about it when the author can't even write a new chapter near their release? And this has happened a lot.

Also, finding a story with proper narrative is rare. This once again ties into the brevity of chapters as narrative will easily fatten up chapter size, but often it'll be mostly just character dialogue with short sentences between them.
Like one series I found—that got published by the way—had a giant character appear. Everyone was afraid of them despite them doing nothing, and everyone seemed to have background knowledge of giants including the MC based on how everyone reacted and that no one was surprised that giants exist. Yet the author provides -no- information at all about giants, in narrative or dialogue. Like he just expects the reader to know everything about it based on tropes, or that it's self-explanatory. No world-building at all.

If you're curious, it's 転生貴族の万能開拓～【拡大＆縮小】スキルを使っていたら最強領地になりました～ I'm talking about. It sounds interesting with a unique skill choice, but it just turned out to be slow life with an extremely expansive skill (again). His skill affects even concepts, like increasing his mana, and he can use it to fill in holes by 'shrinking' the hole to nothing. The only limitations it has seems to be however the author decides it at the time. He can use it on people to an extent but typically just doesn't.
It's not a very good story, which is disappointing as actual giant characters in a story are super rare. Even though he shrinks the giant character down to human size, ruining the entire point of a giant character.

[alvaro_1997]

Amazing, anime are the best there is, now I'm going to see a Japanese series on Netflix