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Ideas are cheap. Execution is hard. True in just about any field. I could tell you stories about the tech industry, and just about every multi-billion dollar company isn't the first to do something - they're either just the really lucky one, or not just the first to do things but the first...

I wonder if this chapter qualifies for that: https://www.scribblehub.com/read/433915-my-best-friend-is-a-prince-from-another-world/chapter/642324/ [/SPOILER]

There's something to that, for sure. I suspect there are also some authors who know better, but just write to genre tropes (of either continent's) because it's what they think their readers expect. Women can easily be just another reward token for the MC who gets everything handed to them...

It's clearly portal fantasy, yeah, however much it predates the term. It is, however, very much a power fantasy in the same sense that many (but not all) Isekai stories are - he gets by and basically takes over a country on modern knowledge and technology. It was a common enough pattern that...

I should re-read it - I haven't since I was in high school, I think, but it was super influential in western SF, leading to a whole bunch of other examples below... There's a lot of that in a certain strain of western portal fantasy, starting with Connecticut Yankee - he introduces guns to that...

That was an interesting OP. Got kind of old when they carried it over through Season 2.

Pern is a Rorschach test of the SF vs Fantasy distinction if there ever was one, although it also really shifts in tone as the series goes on. The two books and the Harper Hall trilogy feel like pure fantasy, and then the elements that feel like SF keep creeping in more and more. Being old...

I'd expect they're all in the database, at least as the source of truth; keeping track of multiple versions and relationships is something a database is much better at than a flat directory structure, and a few million chapters split across a few tens of thousands of stories isn't that much by...

If you need to confuse an AI...

Pt. II, Chapter 17 is up. This is kind of a long one.

Ouch, I resemble that remark.

Fantasy is like porn, you know it when you see it. (edit: which is not to say that those two are mutually exclusive) The lines are blurry. Are pseudo-historic stories set in places that didn't really exist or were idealized, but where magic isn't involved fantasy? I don't know, but many...

I'd be very happy to have even negative comments! Although the :blob_cookie:s are nice :)

That's pretty much why most of what I've written are more like style parody (or pastiche, to be hoity-toity about it.) I can borrow the tropes, I can file the serial numbers off characters I like from multiple works, and I where those works are Japanese [most of them are, for my WIP], I can...

I got characterized once as "not a total cubicle hermit" by an acquaintance, back when the tech industry still favored cubicles rather than open-plan layouts. The phrase stuck with me, and ended up being the first domain name I came up with. So I've got a blog by that title (mostly dead now...

Pt. II, Chapter 16 is up. I may be under a week for 17. Back to more slice of life/school in the not-quite-90s other world for a while.

There are more than three truly classic western Cyberpunk novels, but the top three that come to mind that anyone who likes the genre should read: * Neuromancer, by William Gibson (sequels are good, but not as good) * Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams * Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

Thanks, Hans! And for anyone looking here, Pt. II, Episode 15 is up.

It's not clear to me that this is universal vs. cultural, but whether it's universal or not, a lot of women (many? most? likely varies by time and place) are attracted to men with social status. Social status is definitely cultural/contextual; what qualifies varies by place and time and who...

No idea what my IQ is or was, but I know what my SAT and GRE percentiles were. I know I've slowed down a bit in middle age, but basically, good at logic puzzles (~20 years ago the GRE had an analytic section, I don't think it does now), better than average but really just OK at math, and really...