maskormenace

That is when you need to diversify your genre. Everything starts to blend together when they use the same tropes.

The Legend of the Condor Heroes is a good start, a basic foundation. Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils is also a classic and worthy of recommendation. I Shall Seal the Heavens and Renegade Immortal have also reached the top of must-read lists as well.

Sounds like a sound fucking diagnosis to me.

What kind of genre do these books fall into exactly? I might've been here for a little while now, but none of these titles sound familiar.

It's all too common for authors to just start stealing from each other. Eventually, nothing new happens and it becomes over-saturated in the same bullshit.

[Especially popular genres with lots of authors pandering to the lowest common denominator!]

They're all xianxia and wuxia.

Ah, right. What do they call that here, tropes? But I'm told it's that sort of stealing that ends up making money for the authors too. It's a convenient excuse, at least, for all the birdshit that's boring and unoriginal.

Who and what? Are those popular in this world? Sorry to say, I'm not from a place much like this—save for the cheap whiskey and contrived authors, anyway.

Oh yes! Easy cash grabs are using the same themes and tropes over and over. The majority of people will pay and read it. Of course, it's extremely boring after a while. But, some people manage to do new and creative things.

I can't say it's popular in the states here, but it's quite popular in China. They're stories about martial heroes and immortals battling monsters and demons and growing stronger.

China...sounds familiar.

[ It would be even more familiar if you did your homework and studied up on this world you've been living in for the past several months, eh Sal? ]

They must have some great fucking taste at least, because that sounds like just the remedy I need for my, uh, literary woes. Do you know if the shops here sell xianxia and wuxia novels?

I would hope so, it's a very large country, the largest population in the world, and economic power. Not everything is about America you know.

[No, no, he should be forgiving, people came from other worlds after all. Technically he shouldn't even know what China was! The people of Proud Immortal Demon Way were in a fantasy world unrelated to the real one, so really it was stranger for him to talk about it so casually.]

I can't say if the stores have translations. I'm not sure you can just buy them here in general, but you can order them easily online. A lot of them are web novels that can be read simply with a subscription or an account.

It's probably easier to just get web novels though since there should be auto translations available that way.

[He wasn't sure if the nanites helped with characters or not.]

[ Ah, shit. Life is so much easier when she's trying to be an asshole. ]

Hey! I was force-fed enough imperialist propaganda back home to not eat it up around here. I'm just not as...fucking familiar with the details of this new world, that's all.

I'll see what's available on the internet; if I've learned anything about this place so far, it's how to order books for delivery if I need to. And thanks for the advice, I guess.

I apologize for having come across as brusque. There is a lot to take in when not familiar and rather complicated depending on the world you came from.

[He was just lucky this world was not dissimilar to his original one. Not everyone can be a transmigrator from the modern world.]

Ordering for delivery is one of the best things about the internet. But, the wealth of information available and the repository of media is truly the greatest blessing! Animation, live action, audio, literature, games, all of it accessible instantly and without the need to go anywhere.

Adjusting to the internet was one of the first things I had to learn, but damn if the lesson doesn't seem to go on forever. And all of the operas are on demand now, downloadable to this tiny screen. Convenient, but I can't help but wonder if the art doesn't suffer a little.

But, I take it your world was something closer to the this one? No swords or magic or any of that?

Not quite. The world I came from is a world of swords and cultivation. I wouldn't call it magic. Though, Daoist spells are used.

[He can't admit his true origins just yet, even though he had nothing to lose by admitting to that secret!]

But I have adapted quite well to the ways of this world.

The Lusty Argonian Maid.

It is about an Argonian Maid whose master sees her as lusty, but who in practice, is not. It is both a comedy and an exercise in poorly veiled erotica.

Yeah, there's plenty of books like that here. If it's any consolation, it shouldn't be too hard to find something similar for you.

[ Considering the type of books Sal has to read for this job, she's technically something of an expert by now. ]

So...tell me, out pure curiosity, what's an Argonian?

This one is not worried about finding others like it. She enjoys it because it is one of the most well-distributed books in her world that is also very salacious. Not normal for most books due to having to be hand-written. There is no mass printing press in her world. Something she may have to 'invent' when she returns.

Ah. Khajiit apologizes. She forgets that Argonians are not common here even when she does not see any around. Argonian are the lizard-folk. Like Men or Mer or Khajiit in that they walk on two legs... well, some Khajiit do... and have two arms and a head and similar body shapes... but like lizards instead, with tails and head frills and scales and such.

No printing press? Well fuck, I think I've heard more than my share of lectures on hand-written tomes and their worth. Hell, I think I might've done some favors back home to obtain a few—considering the endless mass-market paperbacks in the shops here, I suppose there's something almost romantic in a unique edition.

[ Okay, let's not get too sentimental about stealing books from bandits and outlaws. ]

Lizard folk, huh? That's not too strange. After that big, metal Cybertronian, anything seems on the table here. Are there Khajiit books you like?

There are no well-traveled or reference authors among the Khajiit that Khajiit has read. Khajiit pass much of their lore in tales spoken by their clan mothers and the moon priests and those things that are written about us are written by others. Often Imperials and Bretons, who feel everything must be written for posterity.

Truthfully, this one understands the need. She lost some of her memory and has failed to recall much of what she used to know of her own people. It is somewhat of an embarrassment to ask others of her kind what they are speaking of when she should know it as well as they. But there are those borne outside of Elsweyr that would also be as lost as she has become so it is both absurd at times, and common enough.

But no... This one has no Khajiit books she likes, because there are not really any Khajiit books to be had.

...The Lusty Argonian Maid was written by an Imperial.

Well, fuck. Sounds like you lost something important.

[ She understands the feeling. ]

Do you think you'll want to try and regain all of that when you go back? Not just your memories, but everything else from your homeland? I've known some people who relish the first fucking chance to escape, and maybe wouldn't mind forgetting whatever it was that happened in their past.

Yes. This one... she did lose something important to her. But it was not so much the memories as it was what went with them.

She does not care so much about getting the old memories back. She is happy to make new ones. But she would not mind exploring the place of her probably birth once she has returned to her world and retrieved the more valuable thing that was taken from her. She does not look for escape. But she does not seek to be imprisoned, either.

Are you a publisher?

Shit no, I'm just a book critic. Come to think of it, that does sound like a nice little job to pick up, doesn't it?

You big into books yourself?

I very much like to read.

I also write, although not professionally.

Shit, if you enjoy reading so much, you've got to have some favorites don't you? If not from here, then from home?

A writing hobby? So what, like keeping a fucking journal, or poetry? Fiction, opera?

A journal, yes. Of my travels.

Oh, I scarcely know where to begin. I have been reading a lot about philosophy, including Thoreau.

For fiction, A Christmas Carol by Dickens was an entertaining and thoughtful tale of morality.

I would recommend anything by Arthur C. Clarke. While a lot of authors from this time period and before deal with science as the world knew it then, Clark explores the possibilities when science is almost indistinguishable from magic.

The City and the Stars and 2001: A Space Odyssey are a great start.

Wait, shit, hold on. Science almost indistinguishable from magic?

This is fiction we're talking, right?

Oh! Oh, yeah! It is fiction!

I mean, in my world it turns out that his theories about scientific advancement and magic weren't too far off, but you know, that is what happens when you run into alien civilizations that are millions of years ahead of yours.

You know about magic? Space magic? This isn't some Sith and Jedi thing again, is it?

[Her own learning about space has been—let's call it tragically small, in this case.]

Shit, the magic and science in my world were practically at war with one another. I can't imagine thinking of them as being so much alike.

No, thank god. All of *that* is fictional in my world.

[Unless it really did happen a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away ... George Lucas had some major explaining to do.]

It also helps that a lot of civilizations are pretty far away from one another. Earth is considered almost primitive by most standards. But why would magic and science go to war with one another?

Why does any group war with another? I mean, shit, you imagine a civilization built on magic and what happens to the people who don't have it.

You've got men who can fly on the wind and throw down lightning, and then there's someone with a giant machine to shoot him out of the sky. No matter the world, people will come up with a reason to fight each other.

So I guess, for the two to be near identitcal, means they've got to find common ground in my mind. Haven't seen much of that so far.

I guess that question wasn't very good. But you're right, you don't need to have a specific reason to fight. Even without science or magic, people can do that.

But if you'd like to see some common ground between the two, I'd be more than happy to share my research. There's not a lot yet, but it's there.

[A few moments pass for Sal to process that invitation. Firstly, there's a snort of indignation at the very idea of research or studying. Stubborn, but typical. Before she can type out any kind of dismissal, however, her hands pause over the keyboard.

There's a sudden memory of someone from her own world that makes her pause, a woman who would be thrilled at the chance to see something like what this person is offering. Someone who would chide her aggressively for turning away such knowledge, when it could very well benefit her time here.

So, she sighs and scratches at the scar on her cheek and rethinks her answer.]

It couldn't hurt to take a look. Thanks for offering, I guess.

[Sal's rough around the edges, but she tries.]

[Jane wouldn't be offended if she rejected the offer; slugging through data is not always everyone's favorite thing to do. The reply she gets certainly is rough, but Jane shrugs to herself. She wouldn't offer it if she didn't mean it.]

You're welcome. I'll get the data sent over to you in a little bit. I'm away from my computer at the moment.

Take your time. I'd say I'm not planning on going anywhere soon, but around here that's not always up to us, is it?

So...is this kind of research a hobby, or a job or something?

[The title of freemaker is foreign to this place, but it's the closest thing she recognizes. Pursuit of knowledge above all else.]

Sadly, no.

[She's still working on it, though it is a bit frustrating how she is not getting anywhere still.]

I am an astrophysicist, so it's more like a life's calling to figure out the universe. Multiverse now.

[But that is an interesting title! Maybe she'd have to tell Jane about it and the rest of her world sometime.]

Astrophysicist, huh? Sounds new to me. An unstoppable quest for knowledge, however, I've heard that more than once.

Shit, I think I might've heard about the multiverse somewhere else here too. Superboy, maybe?

[Not that she expects some stranger to know who that is.]

I think there have been people like that since there were first people. But I study how the universe works.

Oh! You mean Kon! Yeah, he's familiar with that. A lot of us experienced such things before coming here.

[Get to know enough people and everyone can be connected, somehow. Like Kevin Bacon.]

Well shit, if you put it that way, I guess figuring out science vs. magic is simple in comparison.

Yeah, that kid. If you're friends, I'll take that as a good sign on your behalf.

Only to an extent. There is a point where technology gets so advanced it's pretty much 'magic'. That's the tough part.

Thanks! How did you and Kon meet? From when you arrived here?

On that point, you're going to have to prove it with this research of yours.

Yeah, it wasn't long after. We were both flying, and I offered to help out with his superhero gig. Not the worst idea—that kid has a serious fucking work ethic and can use the help sometimes. What about you two?

Well, I think I've gotten the start of something. One report shouldn't be the end of the research of any question.

Oh, so you helped him! Thanks! You are absolutely right, he does kind of take on a lot. I responded to one of his first posts when he initially came and we just became friends over things like movies and science.

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