Grimy already pointed out that this article is non-scientific nonsense but there's something else it's missing: The efficiency of AI over time.
Qwen-3.8-27B is due out next week and it's supposed to be on par with Claude (Sonnet, latest). That runs on a regular PC GPU.
Big AI isn't the only game in town. They're just what makes the non-tech news.
The open weights stuff gets drastic improvements every three months or so and there's breakthroughs in efficiency every six months (ish). We're only at the baby steps of AI tech and the advancement is behaving like a chaotic Moore's Law that leapfrogs itself regularly, then stagnates for a bit, then there's another big shift.
If this keeps up, the efficiency of AI will become something that makes using huge data centers for anything but training a waste.
It's the code generation and automation uses that are growing. I don't know about casual use or using AI for office tasks.
AI providers that offer API access don't have enough hardware to support the demand. They keep increasing prices (the roundabout way by slowing down requests, reducing the amount of included tokens in tiers, and replacing models with new ones that use more tokens) and that's still not enough to reduce demand.
Using AI to code and automate stuff is probably its most effective use. But most people don't see it. Is all business/enterprise stuff happening behind the scenes.
AI image generation is such a weird thing. When you self-host it (run it on your own GPU), you get vastly superior capabilities but at the same time you get all the awful results too.
Example: When you use ChatGPT or Gemini or similar "Big AI" service to generate an image, you get one image. However, in the background, those services were actually generating a whole bunch of images and at the end, using AI to pick the best one.
When you DIY, you tell it to generate say, 50 images, hoping you get lucky (haha) and that's when you see the weird shit. Sure, 10 out of those 50 will be OK-ish—something to work with (using additional tools to say, fix those wonky hands), but in "the bad 40", there will be a random naked person.
Like... Why‽ I mean, I actually know why (AI image models only work well if they're trained on nude people! Why? Because that's how they learn proper human anatomy/ratios! Just like a doctor, actually), but it's mildly disturbing when I'm trying to visualize a scene in a novel where a girl is holding a doll and it mixes up the doll and the girl and somehow the girl ends up naked (looking like a doll). Ugh! W T F! I didn't ask for that!
Can't delete shit like that fast enough!
Note that "Big AI" has that problem on occasion too! It's basically impossible to fix with 100% accuracy, which is why AI companies are fighting laws like this tooth and nail.
Also, the detection algorithms/AI don't work very well! They know this. I know this. We all know this. That's why these public Big AI models are regularly generating nudity despite having system prompts that are supposed to stop it.
So what can we do? Many people would say, "just ban AI image generators" or "make it so they can only generate cartoon/non-realistic images". That's called "banning a core technology" and it never works if said tech doesn't have some sort of rare supply chain ingredient (e.g. uranium).
I don't know. On the one hand, Big AI and smaller AI companies are definitely offering a depraved service. On the other hand, it's all fake!
All these "nudify" tools and apps are generating 100% totally made up bullshit. Why do we need to ban fake, digital things?
Think about it from a tech standpoint: Let's say we ban using AI to "generate nudes of people without their permission." All that users of these services will do is generate generic nudes and then use a different model to place the person's face on the body. There's nothing at all you can do to stop that because the user could just crop the image so that only the face and neck are showing and then just paste the result back into the original image.
This is a people problem. That is: People are using tools in ways we don't want them used.
You can't solve people problems with technology. It's one of those "laws" as old as tech.
IMHO, the best we can probably do is to hold people accountable when they behave inappropriately, but the anonymous nature of the Internet makes that extremely hard to do. So... 🤷
That's a great Home Theater PC. Hook it up to your TV and install KDE Plasma (distro of your choice 👍) then just crank up the global desktop zoom to like 225% and get:
A real wireless mouse that has a long range (e.g. $10 TEKNET cheapo deal with 10% off coupon today, LOL! https://a.co/d/02qG1oHO )
A wireless keyboard/trackpad combo that's made for that kind of thing (they're all terrible keyboards—it's only purpose is to get you through the boot menu/rescue process if something horrible goes wrong). Use SSH for doing any real work on the thing.
Now install Docker and all the containers/servers you want!
I have a ~14yo HTPC with a mostly modern GPU (8GB) that only has 8GB of RAM and four cores on some old AMD CPU. It's running four separate servers for my self-host purposes and it doesn't break a sweat.
Nah. If there really is a crash and a sudden glut of AI GPUs and related hardware, it'll drop the prices of everything PC-related real fast.
The hardware will absolutely, 100% continue to be used for AI stuff. Nobody is going to buy that stuff in bulk just to start desoldering chips. That would be stupid, because...
The demand for AI is just too damned high! If anyone can bid on OpenAI's bankruptcy hardware sale, either one BIG player is going to take it all (read: Microsoft... Which was the plan all along I swear!) or it'll be sold in batches and loads of small AI companies (including startups) will get it cheap.
Small companies are already reselling tokens on their tiny little hardware farms using open models like GLM and Qwen. Anyone with the hardware can do so, and there's loads of money to be made doing it. So why would businesses bother trying to use that memory for anything else? They wouldn't.
However, a huge sale will create a glut regardless, which will almost immediately drop prices by some huge amount. The demand will slowly go back up—because AI demand is still growing—but we'll all get relief for probably six months to a year.
Listen to me: If that happens, that is when you want to buy a new GPU/PC! Wait like 2-3 months after OpenAI's bankruptcy announcement (save that money), then spend it on the best hardware you can get. Because the demand for AI isn't going anywhere. It's just going to drop back down into reality: Where they only build data centers where it makes sense. As in, where there's actually plenty of power available (or they can just install a zillion solar panels).
Hah! I actually have a scene where they repair a wagon wheel.
The adventuring team is jumping along in "speed pouch mode" (see note below) and they come across a wagon with a broken wheel. The payload is too heavy to repair it while the wagon is stuck, so the owners are unloading it.
MC: "Wow, could you pick a bigger trope?"
Also, the adventuring ranks are:
Named Corpse (for children!)
Footnote (most adventures start here)
Background Character
Supporting Cast
Antagonist
Protagonist
(Who needs A-F, S, SS ranks when we have something so much better‽ Ahahah)
The [Warrior] on the team wears armor crafted by the famous blacksmith, Mr Plott. Distantly related to the King of the Kingdom of Plott.
Speed Pouch Mode: Where the MC turns herself into something like a kangaroo with a human head and a huge, oversize pouch that the other two ride in—after they're transformed into Chibi mode, haha. They can move at about 45MPH in this configuration which is waaaay TF faster than horses, so they inadvertently end up being like first responders, surprising TF of medieval-age people ("how has help arrived already‽").
Yes. Women have the biological means to perform just about any activity a man can do (two arms, two legs, a sapient brain, etc) , but there's something only women can do.
Following this to its logical conclusion: If a woman can do it, it's not masculine.
Hence my statement: Feminine things do exist (not because they're a particular color, LOL). There's a whole aisle of literal feminine products in every grocery store but there's no "masculine products" section.
Unpopular opinion: Masculinity doesn't exist. There's feminine things and then there's everything else.
Is a hammer masculine? What about a monster truck? What if you paint them pink?
See what I mean? The modern concept of masculinity—and certainly conservatives stance on it—is an invented thing that only serves to make feeble men feel special.
If you accept that nothing is masculine, then a whole lot of advertising, conservative takes, and weird, supposedly "manly" activities start to appear absurd. Because they are.
To be fair, what's the point of the bill? Child porn is already illegal. It's like the bills banning non-citizens from voting.
While they're at it, why not ban murder, theft, and drunk driving?
Historically, bills like this that appear to be so obviously "good" are often traps that contain unrelated, nefarious shit. Like hiding a ban on abortion inside a bill that's supposed to be about banning something everyone hates.
I'm highly skeptical of the bill but at the same time I wouldn't put it past Elon to be against it for all the wrong reasons 🤷
A property owner can put whatever TF restrictions they want in the lease—and they often do! But just because it's in a contract doesn't mean it's legal (e.g. contract to kill).
Let's say a property owner finds out their tenant is working from home. They claim a violation of the lease and start eviction proceedings. That's dumb AF.
This would only ever be used as an excuse for a tenant they don't like.
If it came before a judge, even they would be like, "WTF?" And would probably not demand an explanation, but instead would point to mountains of case law that say a property owner can't dictate what people can and can't do within a rental property as long as those activities don't impact the property (e.g. the value).
That's when the property owner would have to explain how Joe Schmoe working from home is somehow worse than retiree Judy Anywoman who stays at home all day every day.
Oh this isn't a normal blacksmith forge. It's a huge thing with loads of workers. Like a mini industrial foundry.
The concentrated solar energy is used to melt steel inside silicon carbide crucibles. You put your steel in and send er up! Once melted, they bring it down and pour it out into molds or they can direct the concentrated sunlight down into a pseudo crucible (an oven, really) that heats the object to workable temperatures.
They've got it down to a science, literally.
Then my protagonist comes along and tells them about the Bessemer process and the blacksmith (his dad) is like, "well FUCK! We just revamped the whole forge two years ago!"
There's a forger's guild and they're super excited about the information the MC gave them and all the blacksmiths in the guild are rushing to be the first to get that process working.
My MC was a biologist in their past life, but they're all into this forge stuff! From their perspective, they are like a forger's guild superstar, haha. Even nearby royalty are trying to get his attention (steal him away to their countries). Even though he wasn't really an expert on metallurgy in his past life. He just knows a bit more than the current world's level of technology.
Then he accidentally gets himself stuck as a girl at age ~13.5 by being hexed by a witch into a Common Reed Frog for a month (that species can change its sex under certain conditions). Hahaha.
Suddenly the forger's guild isn't interested in her anymore. She's tiny! She can't wield a hammer or move heavy steel works!
She ends up getting stuck working as a seamstress apprentice for ~2.5 years, waiting for the [Shapeshifter] [Sex Change] skill to unlock (it's an "adults-only skill" so The System won't let her use it until then).
This entire time he/she has been trying to min/max their build. Unlock all the skills! Level them up to max level! Which is the attitude that got him stuck as her in the first place.
I've got all sorts of cool "tech uplift" stuff in the story:
MC upgrades the biogas system to bubble the gas through slaked lime to remove the CO2 to make it burn hotter (she ends up needing all those crushed sea shells and limestone later for [Bone Shaping] which lets her make stuff out of bone).
The process of refining aluminum starts: Bayer process, then struggling to make magnets and electricity for the Hall–Héroult process.
Explaining the process to make flat glass (pouring on molten tin) and trying to come up with a way to do that with solar energy.
Loads and loads of ceramic pipes in and out of the volcano, haha.
Sulfur harvesting to make, well, everything haha.
Trying to remember how to make silver nitrate to make good mirrors.
Etc etc.
All while this is going on, she's an unhinged maniac, bleeding herself as much as possible every day to level up her [Blood Production] skill (which she unlocked after getting her first period! Haha).
She also laid hundreds of frog eggs when she was stuck as a frog and now those "kids" are growing up as sapient half human frogs. They need bedtime stories! Hehe.
It's a comedy and I have so much silliness to cover, I don't think I could cram it all into a traditional publishing format without sacrificing a lot of the world building that I want to do.
I know that's a classic mistake! Too much detail! However, if I squeeze a little bit in every chapter and focus on character development, maybe I can keep the reader interested throughout it all 🤷
Well, it's alright. It's fine for outlining a normal book I think... My only problem with it is that it's primarily designed to make old fashioned books like they're Hollywood movies or TV shows.
That made a whole lot of sense when people were still going to the movies and watching TV. That way, your book's layout (not the story... That's a different matter) would match what people are used to.
It's made for short-term consumption: ~6 hours.
When a reader picks up a printed book, that is what they expect: To be entertained for about six hours, then put the book down maybe forever.
When it comes to web novels, that style of outlining makes no sense. The longest-running web novels that are still popular focus on character development for the most part.
How much of Save The Cat! is focused on character development? Like, zero. It's about tightening your story into a concise, easy to read format that readers have historically enjoyed. It makes a lot of sense for traditional publishing!
You can wave your hands in the air and say that character development is something you're supposed to fit into the story e.g. just write well when writing say, Dude with a Problem.
You can also say that even if you're trying to write something big, you should still divide it up into volumes and each volume should follow a traditional publishing plot flow (e.g. 5 act, 3 act, Save The Cat!, Hero's Journey, etc).
All fine advice, LOL. I believed! It made so much sense! Not only that, but what other advice are we all told to follow?
1500-2500 word chapters.
Keep the entire story within 80,000-120,000 words.
Don't use any fancy formatting, emoji, or special characters, and certainly no color!
I believed all of it until I read The Wandering Inn. It's all bullshit!
80,000 word chapters, colorized text, emoji. It's fantastic. Reading that was so refreshing and completely made me do a 180 on all that other advice.
I've read other extra long web novels and enjoyed them too. Not only that but I really appreciate bullet points and tables! Also, colorized text here and there looks fantastic and can be super immersive.
Even the occasional emoji can be super fun and make the reader smile.
Neat! My shapeshifter story (that I described earlier in this thread) is actually kinda solarpunk too!
The MC's father runs The Hammer which is a blacksmith's forge built into the valley between a volcano and a mountain range. The forge runs mostly via a heliostat array—hundreds of mirrors aimed at a concentrator right over the middle of the forge. It also sits on top of a huge underground biogas generator, which is used as additional heating on cloudy days (and the winter).
I actually did loads of research and calculations to figure out if this setup was even possible or realistic. Turns out, it's a very real possibility.
I even checked to make sure that the geography made sense and how much feed stock would be necessary to keep everything firing in the winter.
It's about a shapeshifter. Not your usual, "they can turn into animal(s)" or "can become whoever they want" shapeshifter. No.
This shapeshifter uses their knowledge of biology (from their past life) to manufacture stuff using their body.
I've seen and read so many stories with shapeshifters in my years and I always wondered, "if they can change their body however they want, why can't they just make shit with it?" Hehe.
I mean, imagine how cool it would be if you could pop an entire set of bone keycaps off your arm? Complete with enamel or nacre (mother of pearl) coatings.
My story is fantasy isekai, so keycaps aren't going to be a thing, but I thought it was a good way to demonstrate what I'm talking about.
This character unlocks a whole lot of skills that let them produce just about anything that an animal can produce and shape these objects (if they're solid; no need to shape oil or poison, hehe). Ultimately, they also end up unlocking a skill that lets them shapeshift other people—which probably sounds overpowered—but shapeshifting isn't exactly the fastest skill, hehe. Not early in the story anyway.
It's a comedy, though!
The MC joins up with some other folks and one of them—a [Warrior]—ends up with the [Hot Rod] subclass because the MC is constantly tinkering with her biology.
My previous method was to just fill in a plot outline template for a 3-act story. Then I tried a Save The Cat! Template and both seemed like they don't map very well to a web novel style of writing.
They (those outline styles) are obviously tied to the traditional publishing model, where every little thing is meant to conclude by the end of say, 80,000-120,000 words. With zero consideration of things like world maps, systems (so you can keep track of say, leveling), etc.
For litRPG, I want more. In fact, I need more. Otherwise I'll write a chapter and realize that character X hasn't even earned the skill necessary to complete the plot yet!
I plan to use a new publishing platform that I invented/coded to publish this story too, which accepts Obsidian export. So when the story is complete, I can export the parts I choose and it'll sort of have a built-in wiki along with notation for a world map (so the reader can check the progression while reading the story; it's in the sidebar and reveals more of itself as the story goes different places).
I already wrote the publishing platform, so now I'm working on "the example story" that shows off the features. The biggest one is being able to pull up the sidebar to view the characters current profile info (which includes their stats, levels, etc).
Example: When you read that a character just leveled up [Screaming Internally], that will be reflected automatically in the sidebar. In the text, it just uses Obsidian call-outs for that so it's pretty native/natural.
Grimy already pointed out that this article is non-scientific nonsense but there's something else it's missing: The efficiency of AI over time.
Qwen-3.8-27B is due out next week and it's supposed to be on par with Claude (Sonnet, latest). That runs on a regular PC GPU.
Big AI isn't the only game in town. They're just what makes the non-tech news.
The open weights stuff gets drastic improvements every three months or so and there's breakthroughs in efficiency every six months (ish). We're only at the baby steps of AI tech and the advancement is behaving like a chaotic Moore's Law that leapfrogs itself regularly, then stagnates for a bit, then there's another big shift.
If this keeps up, the efficiency of AI will become something that makes using huge data centers for anything but training a waste.
Yes, but on the other hand, they get the mail before anyone else and those guys deliver!
You are correct! Absolutely 100% accurate!
That is not how LLMs learn anatomy!
What does that have to do with AI image generation models though?
It's the code generation and automation uses that are growing. I don't know about casual use or using AI for office tasks.
AI providers that offer API access don't have enough hardware to support the demand. They keep increasing prices (the roundabout way by slowing down requests, reducing the amount of included tokens in tiers, and replacing models with new ones that use more tokens) and that's still not enough to reduce demand.
Using AI to code and automate stuff is probably its most effective use. But most people don't see it. Is all business/enterprise stuff happening behind the scenes.
AI image generation is such a weird thing. When you self-host it (run it on your own GPU), you get vastly superior capabilities but at the same time you get all the awful results too.
Example: When you use ChatGPT or Gemini or similar "Big AI" service to generate an image, you get one image. However, in the background, those services were actually generating a whole bunch of images and at the end, using AI to pick the best one.
When you DIY, you tell it to generate say, 50 images, hoping you get lucky (haha) and that's when you see the weird shit. Sure, 10 out of those 50 will be OK-ish—something to work with (using additional tools to say, fix those wonky hands), but in "the bad 40", there will be a random naked person.
Like... Why‽ I mean, I actually know why (AI image models only work well if they're trained on nude people! Why? Because that's how they learn proper human anatomy/ratios! Just like a doctor, actually), but it's mildly disturbing when I'm trying to visualize a scene in a novel where a girl is holding a doll and it mixes up the doll and the girl and somehow the girl ends up naked (looking like a doll). Ugh! W T F! I didn't ask for that!
Can't delete shit like that fast enough!
Note that "Big AI" has that problem on occasion too! It's basically impossible to fix with 100% accuracy, which is why AI companies are fighting laws like this tooth and nail.
Also, the detection algorithms/AI don't work very well! They know this. I know this. We all know this. That's why these public Big AI models are regularly generating nudity despite having system prompts that are supposed to stop it.
So what can we do? Many people would say, "just ban AI image generators" or "make it so they can only generate cartoon/non-realistic images". That's called "banning a core technology" and it never works if said tech doesn't have some sort of rare supply chain ingredient (e.g. uranium).
I don't know. On the one hand, Big AI and smaller AI companies are definitely offering a depraved service. On the other hand, it's all fake!
All these "nudify" tools and apps are generating 100% totally made up bullshit. Why do we need to ban fake, digital things?
Think about it from a tech standpoint: Let's say we ban using AI to "generate nudes of people without their permission." All that users of these services will do is generate generic nudes and then use a different model to place the person's face on the body. There's nothing at all you can do to stop that because the user could just crop the image so that only the face and neck are showing and then just paste the result back into the original image.
This is a people problem. That is: People are using tools in ways we don't want them used.
You can't solve people problems with technology. It's one of those "laws" as old as tech.
IMHO, the best we can probably do is to hold people accountable when they behave inappropriately, but the anonymous nature of the Internet makes that extremely hard to do. So... 🤷
It actually is your right to view people nude in your own home. I mean, that's how we make kids.
Massive overkill!
That's a great Home Theater PC. Hook it up to your TV and install KDE Plasma (distro of your choice 👍) then just crank up the global desktop zoom to like 225% and get:
Now install Docker and all the containers/servers you want!
I have a ~14yo HTPC with a mostly modern GPU (8GB) that only has 8GB of RAM and four cores on some old AMD CPU. It's running four separate servers for my self-host purposes and it doesn't break a sweat.
Nah. If there really is a crash and a sudden glut of AI GPUs and related hardware, it'll drop the prices of everything PC-related real fast.
The hardware will absolutely, 100% continue to be used for AI stuff. Nobody is going to buy that stuff in bulk just to start desoldering chips. That would be stupid, because...
The demand for AI is just too damned high! If anyone can bid on OpenAI's bankruptcy hardware sale, either one BIG player is going to take it all (read: Microsoft... Which was the plan all along I swear!) or it'll be sold in batches and loads of small AI companies (including startups) will get it cheap.
Small companies are already reselling tokens on their tiny little hardware farms using open models like GLM and Qwen. Anyone with the hardware can do so, and there's loads of money to be made doing it. So why would businesses bother trying to use that memory for anything else? They wouldn't.
However, a huge sale will create a glut regardless, which will almost immediately drop prices by some huge amount. The demand will slowly go back up—because AI demand is still growing—but we'll all get relief for probably six months to a year.
Listen to me: If that happens, that is when you want to buy a new GPU/PC! Wait like 2-3 months after OpenAI's bankruptcy announcement (save that money), then spend it on the best hardware you can get. Because the demand for AI isn't going anywhere. It's just going to drop back down into reality: Where they only build data centers where it makes sense. As in, where there's actually plenty of power available (or they can just install a zillion solar panels).
I did the math and these are the approximate real numbers:
That's active Linux desktops. That is, they're being used to browse the Internet regularly enough to make it into StatCounter.
Hah! I actually have a scene where they repair a wagon wheel.
The adventuring team is jumping along in "speed pouch mode" (see note below) and they come across a wagon with a broken wheel. The payload is too heavy to repair it while the wagon is stuck, so the owners are unloading it.
MC: "Wow, could you pick a bigger trope?"
Also, the adventuring ranks are:
(Who needs A-F, S, SS ranks when we have something so much better‽ Ahahah)
The [Warrior] on the team wears armor crafted by the famous blacksmith, Mr Plott. Distantly related to the King of the Kingdom of Plott.
Speed Pouch Mode: Where the MC turns herself into something like a kangaroo with a human head and a huge, oversize pouch that the other two ride in—after they're transformed into Chibi mode, haha. They can move at about 45MPH in this configuration which is waaaay TF faster than horses, so they inadvertently end up being like first responders, surprising TF of medieval-age people ("how has help arrived already‽").
Yes. Women have the biological means to perform just about any activity a man can do (two arms, two legs, a sapient brain, etc) , but there's something only women can do.
Following this to its logical conclusion: If a woman can do it, it's not masculine.
Hence my statement: Feminine things do exist (not because they're a particular color, LOL). There's a whole aisle of literal feminine products in every grocery store but there's no "masculine products" section.
Unpopular opinion: Masculinity doesn't exist. There's feminine things and then there's everything else.
Is a hammer masculine? What about a monster truck? What if you paint them pink?
See what I mean? The modern concept of masculinity—and certainly conservatives stance on it—is an invented thing that only serves to make feeble men feel special.
If you accept that nothing is masculine, then a whole lot of advertising, conservative takes, and weird, supposedly "manly" activities start to appear absurd. Because they are.
To be fair, what's the point of the bill? Child porn is already illegal. It's like the bills banning non-citizens from voting.
While they're at it, why not ban murder, theft, and drunk driving?
Historically, bills like this that appear to be so obviously "good" are often traps that contain unrelated, nefarious shit. Like hiding a ban on abortion inside a bill that's supposed to be about banning something everyone hates.
I'm highly skeptical of the bill but at the same time I wouldn't put it past Elon to be against it for all the wrong reasons 🤷
Ooh, I actually know a little bit about this!
A property owner can put whatever TF restrictions they want in the lease—and they often do! But just because it's in a contract doesn't mean it's legal (e.g. contract to kill).
Let's say a property owner finds out their tenant is working from home. They claim a violation of the lease and start eviction proceedings. That's dumb AF.
Oh this isn't a normal blacksmith forge. It's a huge thing with loads of workers. Like a mini industrial foundry.
The concentrated solar energy is used to melt steel inside silicon carbide crucibles. You put your steel in and send er up! Once melted, they bring it down and pour it out into molds or they can direct the concentrated sunlight down into a pseudo crucible (an oven, really) that heats the object to workable temperatures.
They've got it down to a science, literally.
Then my protagonist comes along and tells them about the Bessemer process and the blacksmith (his dad) is like, "well FUCK! We just revamped the whole forge two years ago!"
There's a forger's guild and they're super excited about the information the MC gave them and all the blacksmiths in the guild are rushing to be the first to get that process working.
My MC was a biologist in their past life, but they're all into this forge stuff! From their perspective, they are like a forger's guild superstar, haha. Even nearby royalty are trying to get his attention (steal him away to their countries). Even though he wasn't really an expert on metallurgy in his past life. He just knows a bit more than the current world's level of technology.
Then he accidentally gets himself stuck as a girl at age ~13.5 by being hexed by a witch into a Common Reed Frog for a month (that species can change its sex under certain conditions). Hahaha.
Suddenly the forger's guild isn't interested in her anymore. She's tiny! She can't wield a hammer or move heavy steel works!
She ends up getting stuck working as a seamstress apprentice for ~2.5 years, waiting for the [Shapeshifter] [Sex Change] skill to unlock (it's an "adults-only skill" so The System won't let her use it until then).
This entire time he/she has been trying to min/max their build. Unlock all the skills! Level them up to max level! Which is the attitude that got him stuck as her in the first place.
I've got all sorts of cool "tech uplift" stuff in the story:
Etc etc.
All while this is going on, she's an unhinged maniac, bleeding herself as much as possible every day to level up her [Blood Production] skill (which she unlocked after getting her first period! Haha).
She also laid hundreds of frog eggs when she was stuck as a frog and now those "kids" are growing up as sapient half human frogs. They need bedtime stories! Hehe.
It's a comedy and I have so much silliness to cover, I don't think I could cram it all into a traditional publishing format without sacrificing a lot of the world building that I want to do.
I know that's a classic mistake! Too much detail! However, if I squeeze a little bit in every chapter and focus on character development, maybe I can keep the reader interested throughout it all 🤷
Well, it's alright. It's fine for outlining a normal book I think... My only problem with it is that it's primarily designed to make old fashioned books like they're Hollywood movies or TV shows.
That made a whole lot of sense when people were still going to the movies and watching TV. That way, your book's layout (not the story... That's a different matter) would match what people are used to.
It's made for short-term consumption: ~6 hours.
When a reader picks up a printed book, that is what they expect: To be entertained for about six hours, then put the book down maybe forever.
When it comes to web novels, that style of outlining makes no sense. The longest-running web novels that are still popular focus on character development for the most part.
How much of Save The Cat! is focused on character development? Like, zero. It's about tightening your story into a concise, easy to read format that readers have historically enjoyed. It makes a lot of sense for traditional publishing!
You can wave your hands in the air and say that character development is something you're supposed to fit into the story e.g. just write well when writing say, Dude with a Problem.
You can also say that even if you're trying to write something big, you should still divide it up into volumes and each volume should follow a traditional publishing plot flow (e.g. 5 act, 3 act, Save The Cat!, Hero's Journey, etc).
All fine advice, LOL. I believed! It made so much sense! Not only that, but what other advice are we all told to follow?
I believed all of it until I read The Wandering Inn. It's all bullshit!
80,000 word chapters, colorized text, emoji. It's fantastic. Reading that was so refreshing and completely made me do a 180 on all that other advice.
I've read other extra long web novels and enjoyed them too. Not only that but I really appreciate bullet points and tables! Also, colorized text here and there looks fantastic and can be super immersive.
Even the occasional emoji can be super fun and make the reader smile.
Neat! My shapeshifter story (that I described earlier in this thread) is actually kinda solarpunk too!
The MC's father runs The Hammer which is a blacksmith's forge built into the valley between a volcano and a mountain range. The forge runs mostly via a heliostat array—hundreds of mirrors aimed at a concentrator right over the middle of the forge. It also sits on top of a huge underground biogas generator, which is used as additional heating on cloudy days (and the winter).
I actually did loads of research and calculations to figure out if this setup was even possible or realistic. Turns out, it's a very real possibility.
I even checked to make sure that the geography made sense and how much feed stock would be necessary to keep everything firing in the winter.
I may have gone a bit overboard.
It's about a shapeshifter. Not your usual, "they can turn into animal(s)" or "can become whoever they want" shapeshifter. No.
This shapeshifter uses their knowledge of biology (from their past life) to manufacture stuff using their body.
I've seen and read so many stories with shapeshifters in my years and I always wondered, "if they can change their body however they want, why can't they just make shit with it?" Hehe.
I mean, imagine how cool it would be if you could pop an entire set of bone keycaps off your arm? Complete with enamel or nacre (mother of pearl) coatings.
My story is fantasy isekai, so keycaps aren't going to be a thing, but I thought it was a good way to demonstrate what I'm talking about.
This character unlocks a whole lot of skills that let them produce just about anything that an animal can produce and shape these objects (if they're solid; no need to shape oil or poison, hehe). Ultimately, they also end up unlocking a skill that lets them shapeshift other people—which probably sounds overpowered—but shapeshifting isn't exactly the fastest skill, hehe. Not early in the story anyway.
It's a comedy, though!
The MC joins up with some other folks and one of them—a [Warrior]—ends up with the [Hot Rod] subclass because the MC is constantly tinkering with her biology.
My previous method was to just fill in a plot outline template for a 3-act story. Then I tried a Save The Cat! Template and both seemed like they don't map very well to a web novel style of writing.
They (those outline styles) are obviously tied to the traditional publishing model, where every little thing is meant to conclude by the end of say, 80,000-120,000 words. With zero consideration of things like world maps, systems (so you can keep track of say, leveling), etc.
For litRPG, I want more. In fact, I need more. Otherwise I'll write a chapter and realize that character X hasn't even earned the skill necessary to complete the plot yet!
I plan to use a new publishing platform that I invented/coded to publish this story too, which accepts Obsidian export. So when the story is complete, I can export the parts I choose and it'll sort of have a built-in wiki along with notation for a world map (so the reader can check the progression while reading the story; it's in the sidebar and reveals more of itself as the story goes different places).
I already wrote the publishing platform, so now I'm working on "the example story" that shows off the features. The biggest one is being able to pull up the sidebar to view the characters current profile info (which includes their stats, levels, etc).
Example: When you read that a character just leveled up [Screaming Internally], that will be reflected automatically in the sidebar. In the text, it just uses Obsidian call-outs for that so it's pretty native/natural.
I started working on a book two weeks ago using a new method:
Then I wrote some bullet point outlines for the first few chapters indicating what I wanted to happen and tied them back to the arc progression.
Finally, I started writing some of the text of the story.
So far, I really like how it is working out. Probably spent way too much time worldbuilding, but I'd do that anyway, hehe.
It's litRPG, BTW.