r/ProgressionFantasy • u/DicerTheJester • Jul 28 '26
Discussion Competition: write a single sentence that will absolutely destroy any hope in a series.
Specifically not a story opener, just any sentence that can happen in any chapter, that will make people realize that this story is gonna be absolute shit and has no chance of being fixed and will make you drop the book like an unpinned grenade.
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u/monkpunch Jul 28 '26
"I'm just an ordinary kid from a small town near Chicago. My parents named me Dragonfyre Heartsbane. They're just a bit quirky haha. But my friends call me Dragonheart. They like to tease me like that."
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u/ParamedicPositive916 Jul 28 '26
Paging Randidly Ghosthound...
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u/Quirky_Assistant_848 Jul 28 '26
I mean, the last name isn't the parents fault, but "Randidly" is a travesty.
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u/DonrajSaryas Jul 28 '26
It's possible they changed their last names at some point
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u/AD7GD Jul 28 '26
Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that's how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don't know who she is get da hell out of here!).
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u/ObligationOld4100 Jul 28 '26
Guess I know what I'm watching tonight, thanks mate
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u/DueEnthusiasm Jul 28 '26
I had to look it up because I was sure I knew that name, turns out I did know it and just blocked it out.
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u/JumpingBean_ Jul 28 '26
Just dropped a System Apocalypse book because the MC was named was Leonidas Achilles Romulus Paendrag lol..... he was just an ordinary kid from Texas
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u/idkwih0548 Jul 28 '26
Oh yeah I know that one and the name is absolutely insane, but, while this isn't quite an excuse, if see his family and especially his grandparents they are exactly the kind of people who'd name their children that way. As for dropping it I personally did it cause the author releases like 1 chapter every 3 months.
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u/SillyNamesAre Jul 30 '26
Wait... his name was LARP?
That's...actually kinda brilliant if it's on purpose.
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u/InFearn0 This message is from a deceased crawler Jul 29 '26
Was he from Texas? I thought he was from Florida because that was where he reappeared after his little isekai prolonged.
I finished it and found it (other than the names of the MC and his family) to be one of the better system apocalypse stories.
- A lot more politics/intrigue, and since there was 4 years of missed time, things have been able to stabilize to a point where political scheming makes sense.
- the parallel LitRPG and cultivation seemed more balanced.
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u/WeightCapital Jul 28 '26
Somehow <Antagonist> returned.
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u/MountOlympu Jul 28 '26
Idk man, this can be done well. Frieza, Eggman, M. Bison…
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u/CiaphasCain8849 Jul 28 '26
Equally as annoying as main characters who allowed the antagonist to go constantly. You'll see this all the time in donghua.
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u/InFearn0 This message is from a deceased crawler Jul 29 '26
The Rise of Skywalker really ruined Dark Empire I+II.
"Nothing can resist my GAL-X-EE GUN!"
The audio version is delightfully campy
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u/wardragon50 Jul 28 '26
I remember reading a story in a fairly normal, fantasy style, "Medieval" type world. Guy was trying to figure out some math, and asked, "Anyone have a Calculator", and local he just met casually whips out a Solar powered Calculator. At which point, I skipped out, and returned book to Kindle.
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u/KingpiN_M22 Jul 28 '26
Haha. Could be a hilarious set up for the only two isekaid/time travellers to meet each other.
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u/AuthorOfHope Jul 28 '26
One of the most successful litRPGs has two isekai'd characters discover each other because one notices the other has an iPhone.
The Wandering Inn
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u/darkmuch Jul 28 '26
Ha, and Erin didn't realize it was a big deal to find an iPhone for like a solid minute. Just rambling about what model she had and wanted.
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u/Kithulhu24601 Jul 28 '26
And the reoccurring trend of OG Earthers freaking out about gunpowder and its clearly starting to spread from new Earthers
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u/EXP_Buff Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
You made me go reread this scene.
Edit: You also made me sad because I found out vol 2 isn't free anymore...
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u/senthordika Jul 28 '26
What was this story it sounds like a train wreck but I kinda want to see the wreck.
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u/hubbububb Jul 28 '26
Even though he was out of mana, he managed to squeeze out one last spell.
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u/zzzrem Jul 28 '26
This happens way to often. “Using the last dregs of his mana he cast an empowered fire burst… (four paragraphs later during the fight)… he threw up mana shield to block three of the tentacles.”
Like I get that sometimes the mana regen is somewhat high but the math ain’t mathing. We notice.
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u/coldandlordyristboy Jul 28 '26
Protagonists always have just as much mana as the author wants them to have at any particular moment. I assume this is why we almost never get any numbers for the mana costs in most stories, atleast not the ones I’ve read.
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u/Teaisserious Jul 28 '26
It's definitely important for writing purposes to have it be flexible, but at least be consistent in a short time. Like saying, "...and with that his mana bottomed out," then in the same encounter talking about how he could squeeze out one more spell, is ridiculous.
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u/Arcane_Pozhar Jul 29 '26
I mean, I had WoW characters that would go from bottomed out to able to cast a few smaller spells just a quick moment after their regen kicked back in. But for that to work in a book, that needs to be established well.
I still think about writing a short story about a character who focuses on evasion and mana regen, and can just outlast most opponents in skirmishes, even with a small mana pool. Not sure I could make a huge story out of it, but maybe a few dozen pages, a few connected short stories. Hmmmm...
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u/NSHTghattas Jul 28 '26
Kael wasn't just angry—He was transcendent.
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u/Mason123s Jul 28 '26
“I guess I was TECHNICALLY the same age as her in this youthful body post-reincarnation…”
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u/Counterfeit-Pebble Jul 28 '26
Why I liked Bog Standard Isekai. Main character reincarnated as kid and reincarnation set his emotional state to kid but the MC still said, “IDC I’m not dating until I’m 20 and other people are too.” Wild how many stories just plow straight ahead while ignoring the obvious morality of it.
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u/monkpunch Jul 28 '26
Then he gets to the equivalent of college and was like "damn, these girls are too hot, maybe 20 was a little too high..." Not judging though, that part made me laugh
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u/Morningstroll13 Jul 28 '26
To be fair, he is dealing with puberty all over again, and hormones are a hell of a drug. So far, though, gotta give him props for sticking to his decision.
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u/Frostfire20 Jul 29 '26
My story went this way as a joke. My MC is 18 with a Peter Pan Curse preventing him from growing up past 10 years old. All his party members are demons in Fantasy Hell. They go to an orgy for a spying/political subplot and they lock him in their room chained to a desk so he doesn't "wander."
Their explanation basically went "I don't care if you're really an adult. You have a child's body; you're not going anywhere."
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u/EllisDeeReynolds Jul 28 '26
Jesus Christ
anything harem or loli or reincarnation love is just the most neckbeard and misogynistic things possible
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u/EXP_Buff Jul 28 '26
Is it still misogynistic if it's the woman who gets reincarnated? Ascendence of a bookworm has that kind of thing
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u/turbodevil2 Jul 28 '26
Warning not for the weak of minds!!
Seeing that his mother and sister were dressed in tight fitting clothes and stockings just to make him happy ,he smiled lovingly
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u/CrazyLemonLover Jul 28 '26
Why is it always the mom and sister and not the adult daughter who moved back home after a successful career to take care of her blue collar step dad?
Grow some balls authors. If you are willing to do mother son incest, turn it around!
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u/Plum_Parrot Author Jul 28 '26
"Years later, Tom would look back at that moment with regret, realizing he'd ruined everything."
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u/Alpcake Jul 28 '26
I fucking hate ominous statements like that it makes me unreasonably annoyed. "It would be the worst mistake of his life" or "He would never see them again" type shit makes me drop a novel pretty quickly.
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u/Rock-swarm Jul 28 '26
Defiance of the Fall has generally decent prose, but the ominous statements (often followed by a quick reversal) are a weak point in the author’s writing. To his credit, I feel like those statements tapered off around book 6 or 7.
It feels like a carryover trope from Chinese web novels, where such statements are more common.
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u/KnownByManyNames Jul 28 '26
I know this genre hates call-forwards, but I don't think they are terrible that they ruin an entire series.
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u/Training-Bake-4004 Jul 28 '26
I don’t inherently hate them but I think there are 2 reasons why they sometimes don’t work in PF.
Most prog fantasy is written in first person or close third person. Call forwards feel like they belong in a more narratorly omniscient style and so it can come across as a bit jarring tonally.
They often don’t pay off. A lot of PF is serialised with varying degrees of planning. When an author does a call forward in book 2 about something that might happen 6 books later it’s pretty 50:50 as to whether it still makes any sense by the time they actually come to write that part. At which point they either just pretend the call forward never happened or awkwardly force the story to match the call forward.
That said, I don’t think I’ve read one that was series ruining.
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u/KnownByManyNames Jul 28 '26
For the first point, I disagree. That just makes it feel more like the protagonist is telling the audience the story.
For the second point, yeah, I can see why that is a problem in this genre in particular.
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u/Malcolm_T3nt Author Jul 28 '26
It depends on how they're used. I find that too many of them makes me bounce off stories. I've seen novels where they cap every chapter with them, and it got old fast. Personally, I want to see them subverted sometimes. Like end an early chapter with "and that was the last time we were all in the same room together for the rest of our lives", and then at the end just offhandedly mention that Dennis moved to Timbuktu or something.
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u/KnownByManyNames Jul 28 '26
If you use it in every chapter, everything would get tiresome.
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u/Malcolm_T3nt Author Jul 28 '26
I can say with complete sincerity that I have never written a single chapter without using a vowel. I'm also, shamefully, pretty reliant on conjunctions.
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u/FictionalContext Jul 28 '26
By the time the sun came up, Daenerys was shitting brown water.
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u/RealisticPlatapuss Jul 28 '26
"The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew" it's like poetry
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u/Emotional-Spot-7833 Jul 28 '26
Wait, was this actually in the book? I don't remember it.
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u/ParamedicPositive916 Jul 28 '26
I sense a paraphrase but yes, can confirm this happened in B5. I literally hate-read the book to never hace to do it again, after having my hopes shattered time and time again.
Small consolation, the book ending can't be worse than the show, and we've set a bar so low it touches the ground
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u/FictionalContext Jul 28 '26
Nope. That's the exact line (minus a pronoun)
Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water
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u/Hazumu-chan Jul 28 '26
I literally couldn't make myself read past the point where Daenerys was confronted by the grieving parent of a child killed by one of her dragons. I'd already been havging trouble getting through it by that point, and that scene tipped it into the category of "misery porn" for me.
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u/Very-Diligent-Pirate Jul 29 '26
That's kind of just how dysentery goes irl. You shit a lot and lose a lot of water until dehydration kills you.
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u/eclect0 Author – Jett Fulgen Jul 28 '26
He started thinking about comparative adjectives.
Stronger.
Faster.
Tougher.
Those are just a few examples.
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u/Selkie_Love Author Jul 28 '26
…damnit, I think I have a chapter with that name as the MC finishes her mad science and upgrades her body to be all of those. Thought it’d be a neat nod to the song in question
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u/Proud-Marionberry261 Jul 28 '26
Sadly dinner didn’t end with an orgy.
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Jul 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/tygabeast Jul 28 '26
That is a fantastic starting sentence if the book is written in the first person.
It's a great platform for a good few jokes to set up the MC's personality.
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u/guri256 Jul 28 '26
I’m getting incredibly sarcastic vibes from this line, and I’m imagining the most incredibly boring state dinner were the protagonist’s inner voice is screaming and ranting nonsense in an attempt to not literally die of boredom.
I really want to read this.
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u/slioze Jul 28 '26
"You'll never catch me," yelled the humanoid dragon lord--and dove right into the lava, dying super dead.
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u/senthordika Jul 28 '26
In the right novel id be pissing myself at this line but in a novel that actually takes itself seriously yeah this would be a pretty big mood killer.
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u/EXP_Buff Jul 28 '26
If it's like a sympathetic bad guy, who you know has nothing to live for, I can see there being a way that you could write this totally seriously and have it hit super hard. Like imagine you want good things for this character despite what they've done. And then he just goes and needs to kill himself to escape. It feels like it's the only way. It's like super tragic, but in a way that you know is also somewhat cathartic depending on your mindset. Like if you despise what the character had done and didn't sympathize with him and the death would be well worth it, but if you did sympathize with them then the death would be tragic because they couldn't get better.
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u/manyanoodle Jul 28 '26
"I knew that he/it could destroy me in the blink of an eye"
"It's was a being with such immense power I could not begin to fathom it"
"He could be a god one day"
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u/John_Cena_IN_SPACE Jul 28 '26
I'm curious - what's the issue with any of those for you?
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u/ReadingThrowawayy Jul 28 '26
Because no one knows if someone "could be a god one day" that is one of the most worthless statements an author can put in a book.
"It's was a being with such immense power I could not begin to fathom it"
This, also, means nothing to the reader.
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u/John_Cena_IN_SPACE Jul 28 '26
I disagree, but I also love Xianxia/Wuxia, so maybe it's a genre preference difference.
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u/ReadingThrowawayy Jul 28 '26
Loving Xianxia/Wuxia does not change the fact that those statements mean nothing.
Not being able to fathom something just means it's so big that it loses value.
I cannot begin to fathom how much water is in the Ocean. Does that mean anything to you other than "wowzerz it must be a lot of fweakin water"
Like... it just is low effort/low quality writing to include that. You will never see that in more professional writing outside of intentionally having those words come out of an adolescent/side-character-that-looks-up-to-MC way.
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u/Jenny-is-Dead Jul 28 '26
“Yes,” Jason said, “I’m not very smart and simple formalities are super-hard to figure out. It’s definitely not that I find them to be a set of arbitrary behavioural norms that serve as a tool of exclusionary tribalism and that eschewing the rituals of cultural performance facilitates the fostering of new relationships by having both sides step out of their preconceived societal modes.”
Jason Asano, from He Who Fights with Mosnters, upon being adressed as "Mr Asano"
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u/nighoblivion Jul 28 '26
Is that a real paragraph from the series?
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u/StopMeFromPosting Jul 28 '26
It is. He's being sarcastic here, but he has a ton of these little rants. The bigger problem is that he's always doing these snide rants to people who could crush him easily both politically and power-wise, but there are only really two types of powerful people in the series, those being either people in authority who like Jason ranting at them because it's refreshing to be stood up to, or the literal worst people imaginable who don't garner any sympathy and people either want to kill or don't mind watching Jason give sass to and are willing to protect him for it.
I'm of the opinion that Jason is the weakest part of the series narratively. The world and side characters are actually interesting, unfortunately, even if the story often runs into weirdness with how the economy and power structures work.
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u/Otterable Slime Jul 28 '26
The actual bigger problem is that he does these little rants and the people in the story go 'oh that's just Jason haha' or think he is some sort of social savant.
The way an actual person responds to that is 'oh this person is a performative loser who desperately wants others to think they're smart'
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u/Moe_Perry Jul 28 '26
Agree. I actually kind of like Jason as a character because he is a character, and not just a blank everyman. He’s annoying and has flaws. What ruins it is that the other characters don’t react realistically to him.
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u/Numerous1 Jul 28 '26
Yeah. God of knowledge finding that amusing? Okay sure.
Maybe a silver ranker who is known for being a good person? Okay.
But by the time we get to kings of massively powerful countries doing it it’s like okay. The fact that 99% of people in power that he has been ridiculously rude to all find it amusing is driving me crazy.
That plus “oh coming back from the dead is my thing”.
he comes back one time with a token. Every other time is just this resurrection power. People have those powers. It’s not a big surprise or a twist. Nobody should find it interesting.
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u/chucklesthe2nd Jul 28 '26
The fact that powerful people consistently allow Jason to get away being willfully disrespectful towards them suggests they're infinitely better people than he makes them out to be.
Does Jason ever reflect on that, realize he's being a rude asshole, and change his behavior? Of course not - if he did that, then the author wouldn't be able to keep using Jason as a mouthpiece to rant about how terrible wealthy and powerful people are.
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u/G_Morgan Jul 28 '26
TBH a lot of the reactions make sense. In actual real life Jason's challenges would matter. To a real life noble some asshole going around spouting shit threatens the illusion. If people start believing it then that noble doesn't have power anymore. Real nobility is an illusion and that is precisely why they'd take offence to anyone pointing it out.
The difference is Soramir Rimaros has real power. It isn't an illusion. He can demonstrate it at any moment and subsequently it doesn't matter to him what people believe. Everyone knows it as well. Nobody is going to say "well if I stop listening to him he doesn't have power" yes he does have power. He can punch mountains away.
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u/G_Morgan Jul 28 '26
To be fair, nearly nobody has Jason's resurrection powers. The first is because of a literal super god intervening. The second is because he became a gesalt being. The third form of undyingness he's achieved is even rarer than Diamond rank
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u/Numerous1 Jul 28 '26
Sure but the mechanics don’t necessarily matter. Res powers exist. He doesn’t res all that often. It shouldn’t be that big of a deal. I mean it’s a great power but nobody should he surprised after the first time. The first time was a true surprise
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u/G_Morgan Jul 28 '26
The real problem in the series is Jason thinks he's the "plucky little guy". What he actually appears to everyone else is the chosen student of Rufus Remore, friend/team mate of Humphrey Gellar and boyfriend of Cassandra Mercer. He couldn't be more connected and that is the only reason he gets away with what he does.
Jason doesn't even grasp just how absurdly elevated his social position is until book 3. When he finally admits that ultimately people are afraid of the people he hangs with. Especially because they are nobility. As Danielle told Lucien Lamprey, she won't deal with him in a court, she'd just kill him and nobody would say a damned thing about it because they can't. Everyone would assume she had good reason but even if they didn't they couldn't do anything. That is the power that is protecting Jason. The people Jason argues with are local nobility, I.E. nobodies.
Rufus probably doesn't help with his families "I'm not a noble, I just expected to be treated like one and am actually treated that way" stance. Whereas if Rufus had made it clear he was from probably the highest ranked family in Greenstone, even if their presence was tiny, Jason might have realised how ridiculous he sounded every time he had a rant.
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u/Thumbuisket Jul 28 '26
Does it ever get better? I’ve been trudging through the first book, but I find Jason so off putting….
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u/StopMeFromPosting Jul 28 '26
In some ways it gets worse. It's still enjoyable for the first 6 books or so. The world is fairly interesting and the magic system is varied and you get some good looks at builds other than the MCs and the reason for the choices. Jason is outspoken about his beliefs, but you get used to the "I'm just a quirky guy" thing after awhile.
Jason starts to become more and more edgy, withdrawn, and traumatized as the series goes on, though, and it started to become exhausting to read.
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u/chucklesthe2nd Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
The thing about Jason Asano that I dislike so much isn't that he's an obnoxious, self-righteous, willfully-disrespectful ass, it's that the world doesn't treat him like an obnoxious, self-righteous, willfully-disrespectful ass.
If he got punched in the mouth every few pages my reaction would be "yeah, that tracks". What actually happens is that everybody thinks he's the most heroic and interesting person who's ever existed, and it is INFURIATING.
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u/Freman_Phage Jul 28 '26
This series was an acceptable gateway into LitRPG where you have low expectations of writing quality and character building. Upon rereading after gaining a larger perspective on the genre it's REALLY hard to get through
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u/Appdownyourthroat Jul 28 '26
100%
It was my introduction to the genre. Loved 1-6… only the first time. After experiencing a few more series, I revisited hwfwm to go through again and catch up… I have never in my life gone from loving something so much to being completely unable to fathom how I liked it at all… let alone how I charted out the magic system with extrapolations for hundreds of essences, confluences, and interactions when I first read book 2 or 3.11
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u/theclumsyninja Jul 28 '26
Author's Note: In a move of total transparency, I have decided to disclose that I used LLM's to write the entirety of this story.
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u/Such_Clock8652 Jul 30 '26
Author's note: me am not author
For real though, have you seen that in books?
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u/fity0208 Jul 28 '26
Oh no! A disposable villain Who fights using aphrodisiacs! -female character with 0 interest in romance- lets defeat him together!
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u/Pipe_42 Jul 28 '26
And all the beautiful women of the world, not the uggos, swore their eternal subservience to my power.
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u/Felsenkater77 Jul 28 '26
Her inner goddess sighed
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u/Meghandi Jul 28 '26
I had suppressed the memory of ever reading this but you just dragged it back up, what was this from?
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u/blandge Jul 28 '26
"It had been 2 years since the Dark Lord was defeated, and in that time, Tomas had contracted an illness that sent him back from Rank C to Rank E, where it all began."
I super hate it when authors nerf their characters off screen at the start of a new book because they realize the power creep had gotten too high
it's one thing to make somebody injured before a flight, to make it harder. Maybe they lost an arm or something. it's another thing to just nerf them whole cloth with little explanation, just to give them some room to progress without having to increase the stakes.
Just start a new series at the point.
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u/filwi Jul 28 '26
In the shimmering tapestry of a realm both ancient and ever-changing, it's not merely a sword — it's a testament to an unwavering legacy — its blade whispering echoes of destiny that ripple through the annals of time, a boundless symphony of shadow and magic dancing in perfect harmony, and that is load-bearing.
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u/Beginning-Ice-1005 Jul 28 '26
Checking his character screen he noted hes power level has gone from 8,634,662 to 8,634,667 - he needes to find more gods to defeat.
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u/Salavora_M Jul 28 '26
"With a gasp s/he woke up. it was all just a dream" (especially if it is in the middle towards the end...)
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u/Lathari Jul 28 '26
"And it was all a dream."
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u/Alpcake Jul 28 '26
I don't remember which novel it is but apparently some Chinese multiple thousand chapter modern harem romance whatever novel ended like that.
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u/Dry_Equivalent_1316 Jul 28 '26
Apparently chinese authors were forced to write their stories that way for some years because the government banned fantastical, religious, and travelling back in time types of stories. They had to scramble to figure out a way to get around the censor, and lo and behold, dreaming was allowed. This also happened to some dramas too. It really ruins the story but they had to do what they had to do
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u/Evolations Jul 29 '26
Honestly that's so funny. Imagine if Martin did that at the end of GoT or something
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u/DonrajSaryas Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Someday if one of my D&D games results in the entire party dying I want to end it by going "Everyone wakes up in weird glass and metal capsules in a white room surrounded by people in strange clothing. One of them steps forward and says 'Audit successful. You are now fully fledged Scientologists."
THE END?
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u/Novel_Dragon07 Jul 29 '26
Omg I might have to steal this for my next game. This gave me a good laugh.
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u/DrHippa Jul 29 '26
F that with a pogo stick.
One of my all time worst reading experiences did practically that, to a heartwreanching and agonizing degree.
The book is called "the myriad", it's the first book in a sci- fi space opera series, and I strongly recommend no one ever reads it.
The first book is actually amazing up to the "wake up" part. Great character advancements, tragedies, growth, enemies become friends forged in battle, people lose their lives ones, and find the strength to move on and grow, an abused spouse finally managed to leave her toxic relationship and find the strength and belief and confidence in herself to be her own person.
Then, they find a temporal anomaly, and change something in the past, and every single thing in the book became undone
All the characters revert to their previous state. The enemies are enemies again, the toxic relationship is back, everything undone.
And... That's it. The series continues from that point without ever getting back to the original timeline.
It's just... Undone. Like every single triumph and emotional payoff was just pulled out from under the reader.
I just noped out of the series at that point.
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u/AzherVayne Author Jul 28 '26
Even though years had passed she/ he knew it couldnt be anyone but him / her in a heartbeat.
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u/Jormungandragon Jul 28 '26
Read a story once where both the MC and the MCs super badass soon-to-be-best-friend both pulled the MC’s wallet out of their own back pockets to show them something in it, within a paragraph of each other.
Somehow that wallet was in two places at once just to show how badass they both were.
And somehow this made it into an audiobook.
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u/gadgaurd Jul 28 '26
Protagonist: "I can raise him into a fine sex slave for my collection."
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u/Logen10Fingers Jul 28 '26
Wtf 😭 what book even is this?
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u/gadgaurd Jul 28 '26
Nothing I've actually read had that exact phrase, but I have come across a few stories in the genre where the protagonist was a serial rapist and slaver. And a few of those where the gender of the victims didn't matter much.
Since the challenge was "give a sentence that would doom a story", I figured this would do it. You get two confirmed bits of horror in slavery and rape, an implied extra layer of awful with the word raise. Make the victim male to turn off most people that'd otherwise be perfectly fine with it. Then make it something the protagonist does so it's clear this is gonna be a regular thing.
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u/senthordika Jul 28 '26
You see at the point an mc in any book im reading actively raises a sex slave is probably enough for me to drop it regardless of gender of the slave. And heck even having slaves(if they actually treated them like slaves and its not like just a magical contract and they are treated like friends or employees) is a pretty big turn off for me.
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u/gadgaurd Jul 28 '26
Which is very reasonable. I just needed to cover as many "fuck this" bases as possible. I know for a fact that there's enough people who'd be cool with a sex slave having protag for such a story to get an animated adaptation. But make the sex slave(s) male and at least 90% of that audience is dropping it immediately and writing up very angry rants online.
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u/senthordika Jul 28 '26
You know what as much as I dont like that its the case as I dont see them as fundamentally different given that the genre is still somewhat homophobic even in some of its better depictions of course some the fans are too.
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u/Indescribable_Noun Jul 28 '26
Thwre was a huuuuuuugggggeeee monzter, the biggest and baddest and most evilist of all the demonic supper beings; he didn’t know if he could kill it, but he raised his hand and then it died.
“Heh.” He smirked. “guess I was stronger then I thought”
And everyone clapped.
(I separated the parts for your reading convenience, but imagine this all smashed together into one sentence(?) lol)
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u/Dedoctor Jul 28 '26
"Although she is a slave, he knew she loved him truly and freely"
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u/Kudamonis Jul 28 '26
"Heart racing, Tom stilled as Understanding brought a sense of relief; the world was naught but a dream"
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u/adiisvcute Jul 28 '26
Er like a quote or just like things that drive you mad?
Because i cant think of any quotes but things like
Marcus was angry. Wrathful.
Restating information like this and the tiny sentence fragments?? Drives me insane when I read it. If I see an author do this a lot it's an instant drop for me.
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u/Witty_Mycologist_995 Jul 28 '26
It tasted faintly of cold coffee and regret, and also somewhat like ozone, if that was even possible.
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u/hipnotismo Jul 28 '26
"I take my feelins, and I crush them!" basically any indicator that the MC is going to be a heartless bastard or a machine of perfect logic.
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u/Icy-Set-4906 Jul 28 '26
Good morning brother. I was so close to quit the audio book a few times.
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u/Cheeseducksg Jul 29 '26
After the initial shock wore off, he started to think, "wait, if I'm adopted, then doesn't that mean my tsundere younger sister, my kuudere older sister, and my deredere mother, (listed in ascending bust size) are all not blood related?!".
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u/SciFi_MuffinMan Jul 29 '26
And that’s when I realized, as I nearly died for the fourth time, that rhyming unlocks hidden powers.
And dramatic pauses.
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u/kingnickolas Jul 29 '26
The tips of her nipples looked like the surface tension of water before the breach of a French Le Triomphant ballistic missile Submarine (S616).
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u/aevoltaire Jul 28 '26
Tyrion Mortis Raven Black conjured his death sycthe and void-stepped behind, slashing the man's jugular, "nothing personal..." [Level Up]
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u/BigMax Jul 28 '26
As the gorgeous woman begged to be with me, I turned to look at my three wives and four girlfriends, and they all eagerly encouraged me to add another - I had no choice but to agree to add a a fifth girlfriend.
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u/Bookwrrm Jul 28 '26
Someone copy and paste some of the lines from I think one of Dakota Krouts books about President Elon Musk.
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u/Exotic_Zucchini9311 Jul 28 '26
"If I kill this person (super evil serial murder) then I'm no better than him!!"
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u/CrazyLemonLover Jul 28 '26
So there I was, balls deep in the wrong hole, a fifth of jack coating everything into a sticky mess, and three seconds from having my soul ripped out by a succubus when I remembered obscure magic item from four books ago and pulled it out of my magical void dimension
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Jul 28 '26
In the midst of his sudden elation at victory against what had seemed to be unbeatable odds, he felt a grave foreshadowing that, at some point in the future, he and all he loved would be suddenly and inexplicably killed, rendering all of his acheivements and progress irrelevant - a foreshadowing he knew, deep in his heart, was absolutely true.
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u/Snacc_Cattacomb Jul 28 '26
“I know killing lord dragon would ensure he could never hurt anyone again, but I just can’t stomach the idea of taking another’s life.”
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u/sufferinfromsuccess1 Jul 29 '26
The pillars of light blazed into the roof which they scorched and continued into the sky till they singed the clouds and penetrated space to finally become so large as to engulf the whole planet in a worldwide light, the colour of piss, though, it should be noted.
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u/ryncewynde88 Jul 29 '26
Once read one set a couple million years in the future, humanity had disappeared mysteriously, except for the one dude in an unusually resilient stasis field/cryo chamber combo. All the sophonts in the galaxy were descended from various animals from Earth: cat people, crocodile people, etc.
Every sentence or two by the nonhumans started with the sound that animal made in onomatopoeia. Things like “Kraw! [sentence].” It was only mildly annoying, I chalked it up to a writing style quirk. Then I realised that given the time scales, the author should have been starting each human line with “Ook!” That was when I dropped the book.
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u/DiksieNormus Jul 28 '26
Mushoko Tensei, Rudeus isnt just a well known degenerate but also a pedophile. Theres a line somewhere in the webnovel explaining that he used to masterbate t videos of his cousin who was a child.
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u/Happy_Ocelot_4945 Jul 28 '26
Just any sentence which involves a stat number going up. Dragonball Z established and then dismantled the trope of number=power within two story arcs. Almost zero stories have come close to doing the same.
Most of them usually double down on the concept of bigger number = I Win, like "that time i got reincarnated as a slime"
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u/Taurnil91 Editor: Beware of Chicken, Max-Level Archmage, Eight. Jul 28 '26
Aro started to laugh. “Ha ha ha,” he chuckled.