LCD Death Mage

Discussion in 'Latest Chapter Discussion' started by lygarx, May 21, 2017.

  1. Eddy andres

    Eddy andres Well-Known Member

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    I always say that any ridiculous situation could be more so, just imagine They are making a giant wall like a domino, fill it with relatives so that it can be restored and make it advance by falling and rising forward until it reaches the seal, it seems ridiculous, wasteful and cartoonish to do, but half of that was what he did against the mirg invasion.
     
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  2. Eddy andres

    Eddy andres Well-Known Member

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    So one question, Van is basically a young hive mind who can get organic material from the warp, does that mean in the 40k universe he could be the key to tyranid victory?
     
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  3. kefrayba

    kefrayba Active Member

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    I read the last entry of the WN version through google translate. So I have no idea whether the author really ended the story there or not. Does anyone know whether the author ended the story? Or just that they haven't update more yet?
     
  4. Eddy andres

    Eddy andres Well-Known Member

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    hiatus from November 2021.
     
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  5. xacual

    xacual Well-Known Member

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    The author was losing momentum the whole time near the end of the final arc with months between some chapters. The story is complete with only after story stuff to get now.
     
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  6. ssj4maiko

    ssj4maiko Welcome Back Sadpanda!

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    There is a conclusion to the conflict, as in, all the enemies have been dealt with in some way, and there is no more fight. However, not all knots are tied, so there is still space to write.

    Arc 16 is After Story, and the author stopped posting since last year.
     
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  7. FranckOA

    FranckOA Killer Klown From Outer Space

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    Many authors tend to stop or slow down their writing of the webnovel version when they get published and have to work on the light novel version revisions (and the other stuff created to promote the published novel like mangas, animes and exclusive bonus chapters)...
    That could explain the low release speed at the end and the actual hiatus.
     
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  8. xacual

    xacual Well-Known Member

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    I doubt it was that. Even with the LN he was keeping a consistent pace in the WN releases until reaching the end.
     
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  9. metazoxan

    metazoxan Well-Known Member

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    Well perhaps the author was keeping up WN releases with LN while the main story was being done (possibly to use the WN as a first draft) but now that is done they just don't view the after story as important enough to work on full time? Or maybe they are just having a bit of writers block on how to make sure to stick the landing.

    I know quire a few stories that kind of spoil themselves at the end because they just either end abruptly or push forward with weird conclusions that just weren't well thought out enough.

    Like take Shield Hero for example
    So the WN actually has 2 endings. The Origional ending and then the revized extended ending.

    According to what I've heard the Origional ending has Naofumi get defeated by an evil goddess that wants to destroy the world because reasons (BTW this goddess is actually bitch. Apparently she was being a bitch and screwing everything up on purpose after reincarnating herself into that world. Which is honestly an absurd twist but not the main issue)

    Basically he and his party get one shot by an attack that is litterally infinite. Afterwards naofumi just awaken in his origional world ... the end. Yep the story ends with the bad guy winning and naofumi just back in his world like nothing ever happened and we're left with no answers on how he deals with this.

    Apparently this origional ending was part of the author's theme of intentionally going against hero tropes. That's why the story was filled with things like the dragon Sword Hero killed being entirely innocent and the villagers asking for help really just wanting to loot his cave for treasure. Or him leaving the dead body behind causing a miasma to form that almost kills everything in the area.

    Or bow hero going around defeating bad guys being a bad thing because either he's hurting framed legitimate buisnessmen or he's destabalizing regions and not cleaning up the after math that the helpess villagers can't deal with.

    Anyway this theme of intentionally flipping genera tropes was apparently the reason for the ending but Japanese readers of the Web Novel on the actual site this stuff is hosted on responded so hostilly to an ending so abrupt and unsatisfying that the author was forced to change it.

    That being said the new ending wasn't terribly good or thought out either. Basically rather then rewrite the ending entirely Raphtalia is added as well as Naofumi's shield. After dicking around in his world for a while he eventually finds a way to bascially travel through time and space and travel back the hard way. Meanwhile he becomes a literal god, meets another god that explains to him how rouge gods that destroy worlds are born and how other gods act to try to stop them.

    Afterwards he gets back, all of the vassal weapons that hadn't shown up before then suddenly show up and are taken by main cast members, and the goddess with an infinite speed attack is defeated by Naofumi using a 0 distance attack (Basically the idea being an attack infinitely close to zero is superior to an attack that is infinite as rather than endless speed ... it's already there).

    So after he defeats bitch goddess the story ends, it's implied Naofumi gets a harem with basically every ship attatched to him, and we time skip to centuries in the future where god naofumi and Goddess Raphtalia (Oh yeah she got god powers too during the journey back) return after apparently going on a quest to help stop rouge gods attacking other worlds where they meet Phoenix Philo (apparently she just kept evolving until she become an a god bird) and see how the world changed after they left it.

    As a whole it's a FAR more satisfying ending and the author still manages to invert a few ending tropes without just nuking the entire damn story. But you can kinda tell it was done in a rushed manner and not completely thought out as a lot of exposition is thrown in to force a new direction.

    I think the LN is close to finishing but not quite and I'm hoping it further cleans up the ending. At the very least it should feel less messy since more vassal weapons were introduced in the main story rather than all being crammed into the ending.

    So I don't mind a bit of a break if it means more time to make sure the ending is fulfilling. Better to get it right with the WN and then just expand a bit for the LN rather than having to heavily revise a flawed ending to sell the LN.
     
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  10. lordtalon

    lordtalon Well-Known Member

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    Yea I remember reading shield hero's first ending a few months before the second was translated, but if I remember correctly didn't he get a lot of death threats and stuff like that and the only reason he wrote the second ending was to satisfy the company that was publishing the LN.
     
  11. metazoxan

    metazoxan Well-Known Member

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    I think so

    Either way while death threats were obviously going too far I don't blame them for wanting to force him to change the ending no matter what.

    I mean themes and messages are great and can give a story a unique flavor when used properly. But when you put those things over actual story telling it gets to be a problem.

    Similar issue with Femanist driven stories. You can have GOOD stories with female protagonists. But when the focus in on is on them being a woman that is a protagonist rather than a protagonist that happens to be a woman the story tends to be pretty terrible.

    You need to let the themes and messages guide the story without dominating it.

    Because in all honesty even before the ending Shield Hero's WN had some pretty severe writing issues that seemed to get worse over time

    For example after naofumi defeated the Whip hero (I think it was whip) we get a good couple chapters of extreme detail as everyone the whip hero new and loved was tortured to death in a sadistic public show. Great detail was given to who they were and how they related to him and how they desperately didn't want to die. Only to them drop them in acid to die a slow and painful death or litterally skewer them.

    it was ... a bit distrubing to say the least and the excuse made is to satisfying the people's anger over loved ones lost in the Whip hero's selfish war ... but the author seriously went overboard pushing this supossedly real depiction of the after affects of war. Even if you can argue it really was realistic (which I honestly question given how creatively sadistic the author got here) there was still no need to go so far as to have his little sister who was simply related by blood to the whole thing to be killed as a spectacle as well ... I mean FFS!

    From a story telling perspective it was a rather jaring shift in tone and felt like an overly passionate rebellion against stories that end war stories too cleanly.

    Or there was that other time Naofumi got a mysterious shield for no apparent reason and went all mad scientist for an arc. While it did have some entertainment value the shift to borderline Sci-fi was extremely out of place.

    None of this is to say I hated the shield hero WN. Because while it did have notable issues it's good points made up for it enough to still stand out. But these issues do show the issue with forcing a theme to take priority over story. There were ways to handle the stuff I mentioend in the spoiler without making them so jaringly out of place.
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2022
  12. ssj4maiko

    ssj4maiko Welcome Back Sadpanda!

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    I think everyone is making a storm in a cup of water.
    Technically, the novel has ended, right now, anything else would be essentially filler about Van, his harem and his slow life or whatever.

    Some authors, mostly those with a Gary Stu/Mary Sue protagonist will likely write more and more with joy, but Death Mage is not one of those, and likely, the author has no motivation to write an empty story now.

    He has also reported that he is seeking something new, so he has started to write a new story, but is facing some writer's block and so on.

    So no need to compare with other novels and such when he reported his plans.
     
  13. Arha

    Arha Well-Known Member

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    Maybe the author was forced to confront that Van has all the charisma of a wet bag, comes across as asexual and is completely indifferent to his harem. How are you supposed to tie up romance subplots like that?
     
  14. metazoxan

    metazoxan Well-Known Member

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    he's still a kid you know?
    Even taking past lives into account he's yet to live a normal adult life. Closest he's gotten in high school in Japan.

    It's not strange he lacks much sex drive right now.
     
  15. Arha

    Arha Well-Known Member

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    Oh, I'm not blaming him. He's just like "Oh, a pretty girl. Anyway, about that mayonnaise" all the time.
     
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  16. Dr_siegbert_dirk

    Dr_siegbert_dirk Active Member

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    sounds about roman enough tbh. Like no joke, this would all be just another wednesday in the roman empire. And that is still quite civilized in comparison to what the Aztecs did for example... Or the Ling Chi execution method in China which was still used as recently as ~100 years ago. Or the collective "reprisals" by the Nazi SS Einsatzgruppen... That's just ~80 years ago.

    Honestly human capacity for cruelty can probably only be matched by human capacity for stupidity, so no matter what crazy and gory story the novel writers could come up with it's believable.
     
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  17. Gin_Hindew

    Gin_Hindew Well-Known Member

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    Wut? are you telling me shield hero went full on "subverting expectations"? no wonder
    It was always a little out there with the "im not like the other heroes" thing
    Now we gotta wait for Death Mage's rewritten ending, where Van finds the demon king's phallus and gonads, and develops enough sex drive to take care of all his hare at once
    Then he even screws himself, and gives birth to a flesh god that is actually his clone, and grows by eating debris, then Van sends it to explore the cosmos while growing to become a world of its own
    Eventually this clone world spreads seeds of itself and grafts them into other worlds, becoming a universal hive mind that can only be appeased with new forms of food, and creates an order of priest chefs
     
  18. LWolf

    LWolf Well-Known Member

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    The LN does actually make the whole torture thing more "theme appropiate" so to speak with
    The whale sisters being torture experts (that, apparently is part of a Priestess' work as well) who torture the dude and his followers while allowing him to watch as everyone died because of him...
    and the mad scientist thing is half skipped with a new character doing the mad scientist stuff
    (Rat's ancestor)
    in a toned down manner... so I'm guessing the ending will be better written
     
  19. metazoxan

    metazoxan Well-Known Member

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    THey weren't really ROman though. THey were more like .... middle ages maybe civilization wise?
    Either way it's besides the point. THe man issue was just the tone as well as the fact the MC was totally watching the whole thing with aparent glee as well as just the needless detail ... like just because you say everyone needs to be executed doesn't mean you need to go that far with it.

    Remember these are at the end of the day stories. While some level of believability is needed there are certain things you either just ... smooth over or at least approach in a way that flows with the tone better.

    Overall I was just giving an example of the author prioritizing going against narrative tropes over consistent tone and characters. A typical hero storesy does option A? Well then lets do option K no matter how it fits. The author just needed more flow and structure.

    Pretty much. Meanwhile the other 3 heroes all represented more typical heroes which is why everything they say or do gets deconstructed and backfires until they all abandon their tropes and join the MC.
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2022
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  20. TouchMeLikeASpaceBar

    TouchMeLikeASpaceBar [Innocent]

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