Question Why the overblown stats in Chinese novels?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Defiring, Sep 10, 2019.

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  1. Defiring

    Defiring Well-Known Member

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    Especially the part where he trained for 200million years. Chills, literal chills.
     
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  2. Crazyh3

    Crazyh3 Well-Known Member

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    There's loads of utterly ridiculous ones in western fictions too.

    e.g. the scene in M.I.B. with the aliens playing marbles with galaxies. (estimated 3 quintillion times the speed of light)

    There are plenty of instances in the marvel universe too, such as the flash saving everyone in a city from a nuke in 0.00001 microseconds. (70 mile round trip, carrying 1/2 a million people 1 or 2 at a time)
    0.00001 microseconds= 0.00000000001 seconds, 70 miles=112654m, so approx 37.5B times the speed of light
     
  3. Jojo775

    Jojo775 Honorary Algae Knight

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    That's the Chinese web novelists for ya, roflstomp everyone in your way or you ain't a man.
     
  4. yamibae

    yamibae Well-Known Member

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    Probably subconsciously compensating for something they lack irl heh
     
  5. Vocah

    Vocah Well-Known Member

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    So the question is: Is it really meant as a number or as a prefix like mega or giga in games?
     
  6. GDLiZy

    GDLiZy Wise Deepsea Mermaid

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    It's not just CN, but any high fantasy that approached the concept of divinity and godhood that had the setting spanning across many worlds/planes.
     
  7. Ai chan

    Ai chan Queen of Yuri, Devourer of Traps, Thrusted Witch

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    Ai-chan would like to point out that you're making a big deal out of nothing.

    Chinese characters can fly out of the Milky Way galaxy on their own and they do so regularly, because they want to escape China's censorship. If they want to, they bitchslap every god in existence, and they do this just because they can, because face slapping is necessary in China. They are also so rich that they can buy out entire cities of foreign peasants but can't stand staying in China.

    There is no point in trying to picture their stats. It's not picturable. So all you can do is take out your brain, and throw it out the window. These stories are meant for brainless reading. Don't think too much of it. Don't think at all. Let your imagination (or whatever's left of it) guide you. lol

    Either stop reading these stories, or stomp on your brain until it turns to mulch, because you certainly won't be needing it to read these stories. In fact, having a brain will be detrimental to your health while reading these stories. Having a brain while reading these stories will kill your brain and turn you into a braindead fanatic zombie.

    You are better than this. Throw away your brain and embrace the stupidity of these stories. Or you can just walk away and laugh at the dumbasses who did throw away their brains.
     
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  8. Diametric

    Diametric Waifu Connoisseur

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    I think the idea is that the MC just happens to be living in an obscure corner of a poor country on the smallest continent on a planet on the outer reaches of a small galaxy in an empty region of space... etc.

    The amount of people who can break mountains? Only a few in the continent.
    The people who can break continents? Only one on the planet.
    The people who can destroy planets or stars? Only a few dozen in the galaxy.
    The people that can destroy galaxies? Only a handful in the entire universe.

    How could our MC encounter ever any of them in his journey from his little mountain shack in the most obscure place in the Universe without first rising to a similar level?
     
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2019
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  9. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    The boring answer: Its cultural.
    The fun answer: Authors are idiots and dont know math, what a joke. They can't even add 1 +1 = 2. Instead you get..
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
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  10. kyoshijiro

    kyoshijiro [Draugr] [Oniric Lord] [Disaster of a human being]

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    True that most of them get ridiculous but some of them are less "super strong and powerful enough to destroy worlds" but more like "i can bend the rules how i want and this might lead to the destruction of the world"
     
  11. kyoshijiro

    kyoshijiro [Draugr] [Oniric Lord] [Disaster of a human being]

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    I always wondered this about the flash, but while he might be able to survive such speeds wont regular people disintegrate if he so much as passes within a mile of them much less touches them?
     
  12. Defiring

    Defiring Well-Known Member

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    Oh, did you watch The boys?
     
  13. Crazyh3

    Crazyh3 Well-Known Member

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    At those kind of speeds you wouldn't be worrying about the people. You'd be worrying about whether there was much of the milky way galaxy left.
     
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  14. BLKCandy

    BLKCandy Well-Known Member

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    And I absolutely hate it when author doesn't understand what those numbers mean. What is the effect of supersonic speed? Hypersonic? A pebble could kill at that speed. And if a person was strong enough to withstand that even offguard, how could a mere slap hurt him?

    And the effect of temporal manipulation. Not just the time paradox thing. Slowing down time can be lethal.
     
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2019
  15. tides

    tides Well-Known Member

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    why are you talking like its only CN doing this?

    you've basically killed yourself when you talked about superman because in dc, we still have other characters like darksied who is often portrayed as being on even grounds as him

    then we also have shazam, captain atom, mr. manhattan, doomsday and much more.
    zantanna is also very powerful when it comes to magic in the comics

    also in the comics, the flash's speed never had a limit. him running too fast = time travel is something that the drama created. in the comics, flash once ran at 13 trillion times the speed of light...

    in marvel, we have hulk who in the comics, could fight galactus, silver surfer, wanda in the comics basically mindwiped and changed reality and jean grey/pheonix, onslaughter..ect
    then we have franklin richards and so on who can literally end the world and sentry who literally has the power of a thousand suns exploding

    and i haven't even going into the eternals or people who are deemed as gods/demi gods or entities in the DC/marvel universe yet


    anyway you say you don't like comics? okay fine.

    in percy jackson, a best seller, book and movie
    zues is written to have tossed mountains at his enemies many times
    he can literally change his size and become as big as the earth if he wants to
    he has absolute control over any kind of lightning, including electricity
    he also have absolute control over AIR
    he also has superman's sight and can zoom in and zoom out like what we see in the superman movies
    he also has several more abilites like teleportation but i cant be bothered to write anymore cus you're just being racist

    like the vast majority of people on this forum, read CN novels but bash CN novels like what you don't like isn't in your own mainstream media

    maybe, don't read cn xianxia if you don't like people going past the limits of the world cus you know, becoming immortal literally means you are not human anymore

    also the big numbers you read are often found in xuanhuan, which makes it even more puzzling why you are bitching about this when you like reading xuanhuan

    i quote

    because like we said, you're reading these stories on purpose and then bitching about them on purpose
     
  16. Defiring

    Defiring Well-Known Member

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    Well, I didn't talk about comics 'cause I don't read them that much, I mostly read on NU. And since I mostly read these novels, I talk about these novels. I wouldn't be here talking about them if I didn't want to read them.
    Simple as that.
    Just calling it out 'cause the authors push out humongous numbers early on when there is no need to do so.
    I'm not a westerner by the way, not American or European. This thread has nothing to do with western media. Someone mentioned DC, and the few comic books I've read didn't have these "3 quintillion miles away" problem.
    The problem isn't that they're overpowered, it's that these numbers mean nothing and kill the immersion because they're using overly exaggerated IRL units to describe magical situations in magical settings.
    I have nothing against OP MC stories, hell, I've even translated some.
     
  17. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    Has nobody pointed out the correct answer yet? Chinese literature is often evocative rather than being descriptive. The idea behind these massive numbers isn't to give the reader an actual figure; they're just meant to give the impression of incredible strength. This method of using vague numbers to imply non-concrete figures is extremely common in Chinese literature (and even regular parlance) with phrases like "千军万马" (thousand army ten thousand horses). The authors of these books aren't writing for non-Chinese audiences, so it's up to the translators to explain how these numbers aren't meant to be taken literally.
     
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  18. Defiring

    Defiring Well-Known Member

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    See, that makes more sense. Then I think they shouldn't use this on novels with 'stats' and whatnot 'cause I'm just going to think of it as an actual stat.
    But I guess it makes sense if there is a distinction between the phrasing of the stats and the "20 billion army" stuff.
     
  19. EnuoFH

    EnuoFH Well-Known Member

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    Dude what why are you under the impression that authors need to follow such things? Even more in novel with characters that will even have powers up to controlling stuff dao? Trying to say the author dont understand when he doesn't need to follow real world is bullshit


    Well i'm one of those that love the ridiculous scale since i dislike stuff that is too much down to earth , i see no problem, if you get mythologies and religion you will also get ridiculous characters and gods that does stuff comparable, that is stuff that exist in our mind for a loooooong time and wtih time and our mind growing bigger allowing us to imagine even bigger scales it just attract people
     
  20. tides

    tides Well-Known Member

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    stop reading IET novels.
     
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