Remove ads

Unpopular opinions we have on fiction

"Let's go! open up, it's time for Unpop!"
Alright, time for my mandatory Unpopular Opinions Post. Let's get this over with.
"You're late. You know the deal. You can Omelaspost for a Funny, or you can make an interesting post for an Insightful."
Here in Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation, no one chooses to make interesting posts. It's better to make the one joke everyone knows for the Funny, rather than risk your entire life for just one Insightful rating.
"Tomorrow you better not be late, or I'll have you posting for Informative reactions as punishment."
"Yes sir, sorry, I won't be late next time."

Down here, us Omelasposters only get one Rating a day. One Funny rating is just enough to get your post:reaction ratio to the next day. But that's the life of Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation. If you wanna survive, you have to Unpopular Opinions Post. Every Omelasposter has the same goal, and that's to make it to the top thread, where all the Brothers Karamazovposters live. Except, most Brothers Karamazovposters are born on the top thread. If you're an Omelasposter, there's only one way up, and that is through the Temple of Unpopular Opinions. The Temple of Unpopular Opinions is the only structure on SV that combines the bottom thread to the top thread. To make it up, you have to post an impossibly hard Unpopular Opinion Reply that no Omelasposter has ever completed. And that's assuming you even get the chance to post the reply in the thread. The inside of the Temple is protected by a barrier and the only way an Omelasposter gets past the barrier is if they've earned a gilded post. I've never even tried getting a gilded post before, but if I'm going to rank up to a Brothers Karamazovposter one day, I'm gonna have to.
 
My sister is a lab manager for a major pharmaceutical company. Her hair changes colour every couple of months (it was blue the last time I saw her) and she has her D&D character sheet framed on her wall. I meanwhile am a teacher and generally find the ability to go off on tangents about weird stuff I'm enthusiastic about is way better at getting my students invested than being Reserved And Professional.

I'm prepared to believe there are workplaces where everyone hates each other and hides who they are for fear of ridicule, but that shit sounds massively unhealthy and is nowhere near as universal as some people seem to believe.
 
I had started a message, but I guess I can just sum it up by "well I can't say I have ever experienced, seen, or even heard from IRL friends about such workplaces".
 
So back to the thread's topic, am I the only person in the world who's tired of the massive flood of litRPGs? Like... what changed to make these popular? Is this what kids these days are reading and I've gotten old and out of touch, or is this caused by something else?
 
You're FAR from the only person to hold that stance, especially here. I could write an entire fucking essay about how they basically torched our crops, poisoned our water supply and delivered a plague unto our houses, but I'm currently a bit tired so I'll just say that the fucking MCU has more of a reason to exist.
 
LitRPG's are popular because they're easy, and do a lot of damage /s

More seriously, they provide gamified progression systems that are easy to understand, you can short cut all the character development stuff for the much quicker. 'number go up' and we have all been conditioned to adore numbers going up. While upgrading Fireball Skill 150 to 250 doesn't actually *mean* anything. We get bigger number and that's all people need really.
 
Tithed_Verse said:
So back to the thread's topic, am I the only person in the world who's tired of the massive flood of litRPGs? Like... what changed to make these popular? Is this what kids these days are reading and I've gotten old and out of touch, or is this caused by something else?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So far, at least, they only seem to pick up serious production treatment in Japan (or at least anywhere else litRPG makes it big doesn't produce obvious anglosphere exports). Elsewhere, they're high-volume self-publication fodder.

I speculate that it's that there's so much easy formula for a bog-standard isekai litRPG story that it's got most of the advantages of writing fanfic while being original work from a copyright perspective...

Either that or there's a lot of people who imprinted super hard on very bad MMORPGs? But the timing doesn't seem likely for that.
 
Last edited:
Aineko said:
So far, at least, they only seem to pick up serious production treatment in Japan (or at least anywhere else litRPG makes it big doesn't produce obvious anglosphere exports). Elsewhere, they're high-volume self-publication fodder.

I speculate that it's that there's so much easy formula for a bog-standard isekai litRPG story that it's got most of the advantages of writing fanfic while being original work from a copyright perspective...

Either that or there's a lot of people who imprinted super hard on very bad MMORPGs? But the timing doesn't seem likely for that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That reminds me of a Russian novel whose premise was basically that a bunch of people got semi-Isekai'd into a MMORPG setting...

...except the game was seemingly based on EVE Online rather than World of Warcraft or whatever else.
 
I feel like there must be some kind of cultural psychoanalysis you can do that ties together the explosion in popularity of Let's Plays, Speedruns, TTRPG Live Plays and the LITRPG genre.
 
Admittedly, my source isn't perfect here (it's Sumeragi in case you're wondering), but from what I've heard, it was mostly a response to the "Worldbuilding Otaku" that became prominent in creative spaces on the Japanese internet around the early to mid-2000's, on account of them contracting what us Gaijin would call "Worldbuilder's Disease" (i.e. spending so much time worldbuilding the intricacies of a setting that you don't get your work done). So in response, a bunch of people just half-assed their worldbuilding to "It just like bideo gaym" so they could get their story out, and their stories were better-received on the virtue of "Well at least they're finished".

Like I said though, take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I haven't been able to verify this, so I could have been lied to for all I know.
 
I think the interesting thing about LitRPG is that they're very bad RPGs. They're usually the stupid sort of thing that you'd completely expect from an author who really doesn't play games.

And like, that's fair. Writing is hard and time consuming, especially if you don't make the money to take it easy and game a shitload.

But I think the reason they're so popular 'suddenly' is because they're just power fantasy, which has always been en vogue in pulp fantasy circles, and the gaming mechanics prey on nerds' overpowering desire to quantify everything.

Plus it makes terms of disadvantage and advantage more 'discrete' at a glance, which means it's easier to sell the idea of a protagonist being 'clever and cool' when they outwit the obvious stronger guy.
 
Last edited:
There's plenty of fun stuff you can do with LitRPGs. Do most LitRPGs do those fun things? No, but that's the way of the world.
 
A Small Bird said:
I think the interesting thing about LitRPG is that they're very bad RPGs. They're usually the stupid sort of thing that you'd completely expect from an author who writes more than they games.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'll be surprised if this tangential opinion is unpopular, but: the overwhelming majority of video games depicted in works of fiction are terrible. Even when it seems impossible to imagine that the author isn't highly familiar with video games, they can never seem to describe one that sounds like it would be worth playing. (Let alone both worth playing and remotely technically possible.)

The only exception that's stuck in my mind was in Richard Roberts' Please Don't Tell My Parents series.
 
Aineko said:
I'll be surprised if this tangential opinion is unpopular, but: the overwhelming majority of video games depicted in works of fiction are terrible. Even when it seems impossible to imagine that the author isn't highly familiar with video games, they can never seem to describe one that sounds like it would be worth playing. (Let alone both worth playing and remotely technically possible.)

The only exception that's stuck in my mind was in Richard Roberts' Please Don't Tell My Parents series.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think that about the only counter-example I can think of is the game from Ms. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. Which was literally just Demon's Souls with an even retro-er coat of paint.
 
A Small Bird said:
But I think the reason they're so popular 'suddenly' is because they're just power fantasy, which has always been en vogue in pulp fantasy circles, and the gaming mechanics prey on nerds' overpowering desire to quantify everything.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So while they are absolutely naked power fantasies, I think the other inherent appeal of a generic LITRPG is that it's specifically a competence fantasy. The LITRPG posits that there is a correct metagame pattern to the entire world and the protagonist understands it (and therefore can abuse it). Where in a more elementary harem fic some event bringing together your self-insert and his 15 wives might seem contrived, it's now a cunning application of the self-insert's carefully cultivated charm/charisma/whatever skill; they are thus transmogrified from a useless dweeb who the author has to massage events for into a self-made man who earnt his terribly-written porn by grit and gumption and most importantly cleverness, which happens to be what the average nerdy reader thinks their own secret talent is

Peggy sues and especially SI-OCs draw from this same well. There was, at one point, an epidemic of Naruto OC fanfics where the OC doesn't technically know the plot ahead of time (often they are unfamiliar with Naruto as a work of fiction) but nonetheless 'happens' to be the kind of character that works hard, acquires physical power the 'right way,' and can begin to unravel certain plot-threads early because they start from year 0 with an adult's mind. I think this genre of fanfics and LITRPG are appealing to the same kind of competence fantasy. It lacks the literal gamification but the underlying assumption that the world can be essentially metagamed is there.
 
Delirium said:
So while they are absolutely naked power fantasies, I think the other inherent appeal of a generic LITRPG is that it's specifically a competence fantasy. The LITRPG posits that there is a correct metagame pattern to the entire world and the protagonist understands it (and therefore can abuse it). Where in a more elementary harem fic some event bringing together your self-insert and his 15 wives might seem contrived, it's now a cunning application of the self-insert's carefully cultivated charm/charisma/whatever skill; they are thus transmogrified from a useless dweeb who the author has to massage events for into a self-made man who earnt his terribly-written porn by grit and gumption and most importantly cleverness, which happens to be what the average nerdy reader thinks their own secret talent is
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The weirdest part of such stories to me will always be the incredibly common plot thread of "I took a useless skill/spell/whatever and somehow it became completely overpowered".

The worst part being that it's always something way too gosh darn boring to read about/watch. Like a basic-ass firebolt that can somehow kill gods while still looking like a basic-ass firebolt.
 
Also the method in which it becomes overpowered is so mind blowingly obvious that the idea of 99% of the people in setting having not already discovered it is just utterly unbelievable.
 
Also, at least when it's from Japan, the game is always some incredibly cheap Dragon Quest clone.

Like, Dragon Quest is a really fun series, but I'm gonna be real, the series has basically skirted by on its legacy, its charming and clever writing and Akira Toriyama's designs for the past 40-odd years. The actual stories themselves aren't that complex and neither are the mechanics, and the worldbuilding is serviceable at best.

So then you strip DQ of both of those and put it into a medium it was never designed to be in without removing the RPG elements. Now what are you left with? A dull and uninspired world that looks like what you'd get if you typed "JRPG" into Chat GPT, worldbuilding that ranges from nonsensical to non-existent, archaic "gameplay" the world runs on and boring, uninteresting characters, all of whom collectively have less personality than a head of lettuce.

Oh, and a demon king. There's always a demon king for some reason.
 
Last edited:
A Small Bird said:
I think the interesting thing about LitRPG is that they're very bad RPGs. They're usually the stupid sort of thing that you'd completely expect from an author who really doesn't play games.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I've noticed a trend away from 'MMO' style LitRPGs to 'RPG mechanics fantasy world' style LitRPGs over the last few years, where rather than being an actual MMO game a team of humans designed, it's a fantasy world that, for one reason or another, has a stat overlay to go with reality.

When the genre was new, the vast majority of LitRPGs I saw were trapped in an MMO or mind transformed into an MMO or... well you get the idea. These days, while MMO style LitRPGs still exist, most seem to be the fantasy worlds kind. They're not - in universe - games someone set out to design and build. They're just worlds where the laws of physics happen to include stats and levels.

I wonder if this shift is to do with what you say?

The game balance in the MMO type LitRPGs was always terrible. Often it was not just passively terrible but actively so - like giving extra stat based rewards to the first player to do something, thereby actively making the run away leader problem worse rather than doing something to mitigate it like a normal game would.

And perma death! Don't get me started on perma death and I don't just mean 'trapped VR headset rigged to blow' type either. Just regular video game perma death. For anything with a longer gameplay loop than a rogue-like, perma death is a terrible idea. It encourages unfun conserative play, rather than fun adventure and risk taking. (Optional 'hard man' modes are also okay).

Fantasy world LitRPGs bypass this problem because, well, they're not meant to be balanced MMOs. They're actual worlds and hence can be just as unfair as the real world.

A random birth system - where some players were assigned rich parents and given massive advantages - would be increadibly poor game design. In a fantasy world and the real one too, it's just reality. Or perma death. Or some classes just being plane better than others.

I know this has influenced me to prefer fantasy type LitRPGs. It's not a massive thing but bad game design is a costant niggle in the back of my head when reading MMO type LitRPGs.
 
Glimmervoid said:
For anything with a longer gameplay loop than a rogue-like, perma death is a terrible idea. It encourages unfun conserative play, rather than fun adventure and risk taking.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
SRPGs work well with it, because there, units are basically resources for your army. There's a reason Fire Emblem keeps it around despite making it optional in New Mystery of the Emblem.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top