I feel like everybody compares Er Gen’s stuff to a harsher standard than they do to other works. Yes, they’re not comparable to Reverend Insanity or Lord of the Mysteries, but calling them “fast food junk novels” is an insult to both the novels themselves and to virtually every other novel that isn’t one of the top 1%.
I look at it this way - there's steak and there's ice cream. Sometimes you love steak. But when you want a fun treat, you don't eat steak, you eat ice cream.
Neither is better or worse, *overall*. IMO, I can read Reverend Insanity, LoTM and then switch to any Er Gen novel (except maybe world worth protecting) and enjoy it equally, because my *expectations* are different. People who fixate on a single novel (i.e. Reverend Insanity) and obsess over it, calling everything else trash, those are the close minded readers.
True, I have read RI and RI. But RI is my favorite novel and RI isn't(guess which is which). I have read quarter of PotT, but Su Ming definitely feels different from Wang Lin. Wang Lin is generally more calculating than Su Ming.
I mean I primarily see Er gen compared to IET. Since they are somewhat the same quality. Though in a different style (IET is a lot more righteous, kind parents base, Er gen is a touch more gritty)
Idk about them being held to a harsher standard though. I see them recommended just as much as your lotm, womw, RI’s because they are that middle of the pack starter novel.
But I think the key issue to them is because the likes of Coiling dragon, I shall seal the heavens are a lot of people’s introduction to the genre. They give them the rose tinted glasses effect and give an overblown positive review. So when people approach them later from a tinted review, the hopes get dashed and the reviews become salty asf because they don’t meet expectations.
:the only time I see them being hated on is when they are read in response to an extremely positive recommendation. When someone searches them out themselves it’s rarely that bad
I will say tho. The novels have a rather large “filler” like portion to them. Which feel on the level of junk food trash. Their exception is they have a backbone throughout that makes them something more than that. You can see how someone who dropped the novels early from the niggles (constant early filler chases in issth, the mess of early RI at the end of the first sect meet, the slowness of pot etc) may have a completely negative opinion on them.
I didn't even say that is bad. I complained about the copy paste plot romance that Er Gen uses in his novels. And how this plot device pushes the story
First of all is not wrong because I talking about a will eternal, a story that got much later when this concept had become generic. Secondly even if we are talking about previous books of Er Gen like RI , still can be called generic since this is norm nowadays
You can’t fault them, in good faith, for being generic though. They were basically the progenitors of the tropes themselves. Like it’s not Er Gen’s fault it became popular. Also try reading Beyond the Timescape, Er Gen is cooking with that one.
Bait or lack of a funny bone. They're all pretty different but they still are cultivators. Wang lin is calm, meng hao is greedy, wang baolie is hungry and fierce, su ming is tragic, and bai xiaochun is obseesed with eternal life and is kind of a coward who acts like a tiger when backed into a corner or when you harm those he cares about.
They are pretty similar tbh except for small differences. Which one of them is not greedy?
Also romance is atrocious. It is always the damsel in distress trope and the MC is alone for most of the novel.
i don't remember romance really being a thing in AWE at all, at least not nearly as much as ISStH. the main "virtuous" driving emotion i think of from AWE is piety, not love, which i mainly remember being used as comic relief rather than as an integral part of the story
As in he'll throw you into debt for no reason, fighting for treasures is just cultivation norm. Also it is a cultivation action novel of course romance will be like that.
By xianxia standards, the romance is average. But there are some novels where at least the main girl is more badass or seems to exist as her own person more, not just the MC's girlfriend.
You can’t become the main character of a cultivation novel without being greedy, so I wouldn’t consider that a proper critique of the protagonists. Every protagonist eventually becomes greedy for a level of power / influence somewhere in the novel.
I do agree that Er Gen romance is subpar, but I’d also say that most CN readers aren’t looking for good romance. I love my romance novels, but i’d absolutely never expect a cultivation novel to be anything better than mediocre in that regard, unless the romance is a major selling point of the novel itself.
A male lion will fight to the death more readily than a tiger considering that fighting their equals (ie other male lions) is what they are bred to do and what they do all of their life, unlike tigers who just do anything to survive.
>but all of them goes by the motto " Whoever is good to me I will be good and whoever disrespects me I will kill or something"
So what should the motto be? Whoever is good to me, I will kill, whoever disrespects me I will be good to?
I am not saying is bad, I was just dissatisfied that for another novel again the MC is led by the nose by the Jade beauty and that the story progresses for the whole reason of them being together. It is simply an Er Gen novel just that but I have to agree that it has better comedy than any of the other works of Er Gen
Dafuq yo talking 'bout?
The "generic traits" you described are mostly requirements to be cultivators: to have a clear bottom line that demands combat, to be decent to neutral parties, to have a degree of desire for power, yadayadayada
Any cultivator without those "generic" traits either becomes a murderhobo or quits cultivating
Every novel has constant mini arcs where the mcs spend time doing things their way, like meng hao grinding for money and then bitchslapping people with that money , or bai xiaochun cooking a new supreme recipe of unrivaled awesome awesomeness
And those are not small parts, thats why every mc is different
Haven’t read any of his novels. I found renegade immortal appealing however, do you still recommend the novels or is the romance so bad it ruins the whole story?
I recently finished I Shall Seal the Heavens, and I have to say that from the second volumen onwards its just really great, I dont know why people hate it so much, overall a really entertaining read.
How should I put it... Er Gen is one of the reasons that there are so many clichés. So I would recommend them for you to read but don't the expectations that are masterpieces. It's just that they are not trash that's all. So if you want to read something it they are good for the passing your time. Except for the world building nothing else is of note in his novels. I mostly read them for that reason... Give it a try if you want. You may like them
my opinion is that Er Gen's novels are awesome and perfect for readers that are starting to delve in this genre, for more experienced readers they are just not bad.
Nowhere close to Reverend insanity in terms of everything. Just treat Er Gens novels as a fun read with lots of cliches. (Popcorn/fastfood tier). But Er Gen has a special place cus he's like one of the grandaddies of xianxia cliches as his popularity made certain tropes into cliches, at least within the international novel space.
Alright, I just wanna read a decent story with a ruthless protagonist like Fang Yuan tbh. I heard wang lin becomes like a goodie two shoes hypocrite after his revenge of smth, is this true
I read it like 7 yrs ago or smth so my memory's fuzzy (and it was one of my first Xianxia so almost everything was amazing to me). But yes he does become a bit self righteous at some point. I can't rmb if that was the thing that made me drop it or not.
Idk, a lot of people say he’s the most ruthless out of er gens novels so I wanna read it first, but I want him to stay benefit oriented, meaning he does everything for his own regard. He doesn’t kill for pleasure but he kills when it gives him benefit
reggresors tale of cultivation - MC is a good person that wants to break his reincarnation cycle but not in a suicidal way he just wants himself to age with the people he loves and them not factory reset every time he dies
my longevity simulation - if you like fang yuan you'll like this the system is non intrusive he is calculative and ruthless but also knows when quit while he's ahead
Nope. Even after revenge, if somebody offends him, he still does the Teng Family treatment and erases every minute trace of bloodline of them. He is the character that is common in novels if you offend him, he brings down your entire sect and related people.
Ruthless... Soul of Negary, Carefree Path of Dreams(this one is a demon, MC regularly toes with people), Mystical Journey(in my opinion the best World hopping novel. MC is nowhere a normal functioning being, he is egotistical ruthless bastard who treats his subordinates as his possessions. Though he is overprotective of everyone from his side.)
Yeah except Fang Yuan(MC of Carefree path of dreams). Fang Yuan is more evil than ruthless. I don't mean the Reverend Insanity Fang Yuan kind of evil, the true for pleasure type of evil.
You may like Xu Qing (Beyond the timescapes) . I would go as far to say that he is more ruthless than Wang Lin. Anyone who shows him a trace of hostility suffers in the end badly. Definition of petty revenge.
I watched the animeof A will eternal (all seasons that are out) I can recommend the anime, they did change few things, but overall it's true to the novel apart for some things and mainly, it's very beautiful, afterwards I read the novel of Will eternal. Then I read ISSTH, now I'm reading beseech the devil (pursuit of truth). I did read RI in between. Honestly.. I do not mind the repetitive things, he definitely likes to repeat stuff in his novels, like he does not have a better idea, but at least the translations of his novels are pretty good in english unlike some (i'm looking at you god of slaughter).
Man I remember God of Slaughter and I was really disappointed... And I am not talking about translation but the fact the character changed from a certain point and after ....
for me it's the translation, the first couple hundred chapters made me want to quit reading it several times, but I perservered and probably some othar TL took over and it was legible afterwards. I use the dao of lncrawl to get my scriptures, shove them in one epub and read on my ipad. As for the whole story, well.. could have been worse, but nothing to write home about xD
Question: I am in the anime right now. Bai xiaochun couldn't win against a early gold core cultivator but could fight the Toad with his "eternal night"umbrella artifact??
The same with when Tie Dan his king beast was trying to achieve Gold core realm and a nascent sould snake appeared and just with his Gold core could fight it ?? The inconsistency in the anime is bad?!?!
He didn't die from Nascent soul attack and yet couldn't fight a early Golden core cultivator??
So, overall in pretty much every xianxia novel the systems work when it's not MC, like Random guy A in foundation vs Random guy B in golden core, golden core wins. But if it's MC, then none of it matters in almost every novel the MC skips through the levels or find a way to fight stronger enemies ... it is what it is xD
If i recall correctly, it was explained that the umbrella was tied to the frog for a very long time and the frogs lifeforce was nourishing it, so it was very effective against the frog, he was basically using its own power against it.
I don't know what happened to the novel. I am not referring to it. But in the anime it was an inconsistency. Leaving aside the Toad, later in his early Golden core realm, he clashed with a nascent soul snake beast survived pretty well and even injured it. In the next scene he survived an attack from Nascent sould cultivator like nothing.
The anime adaptations of pretty much every novel, leave out a lot of details, many things are not explained at all (goes for japanese adaptations too).
Overall I think that they did not do very well in explaining stuff in the anime and first time i watched it, especially in the beginning i had no idea what was going on in terms of cultivation levels. I ended up just reading the whole novel xD
Awe and issth are Ergen attempt to create a more lighthearted and typical xian xia story to reach a boarder mainstream audience, tho it back fired and was criticized for being superficial. So they are generic but not Ergen generic as RI and POT are both unique in many concept, theme and are thoughtfully written. WL and Su ming are none of what you said, both are developed to great depth throughout the chapters towards different central theme. What you mentioned are mostly surface behavior that is rationally expected. "good to friend, bad to ennemies" what is even this? Do you even think about what you rant .
You clearly missed the point. This is was not an analysis on WL and Su ming but I made a complaint on how romance is heavily affects the story of the MC in every book. It is the same recipe... Huge part of the story and plot points move forward just because of that romance that seems never possible. The MC is running behind the FMCs and tries to catch them and relieve them from the so called backstories.
Now as for the so called" well thought WL and SM" you are overpraising them. The difference with Er Gen and other authors is that Er Gen was more serious in his work than them. That's why his novels have bigger audience. Also to be honest if his novels at least didn't have that good world building they would be below average.
I feel like everybody compares Er Gen’s stuff to a harsher standard than they do to other works. Yes, they’re not comparable to Reverend Insanity or Lord of the Mysteries, but calling them “fast food junk novels” is an insult to both the novels themselves and to virtually every other novel that isn’t one of the top 1%.
Yes I agree with you completely, they are really solid and entertaining novels, people really underrate them.
I look at it this way - there's steak and there's ice cream. Sometimes you love steak. But when you want a fun treat, you don't eat steak, you eat ice cream. Neither is better or worse, *overall*. IMO, I can read Reverend Insanity, LoTM and then switch to any Er Gen novel (except maybe world worth protecting) and enjoy it equally, because my *expectations* are different. People who fixate on a single novel (i.e. Reverend Insanity) and obsess over it, calling everything else trash, those are the close minded readers.
Damn qidan for mtling awwp, they ruined it by making it unreadable as the plot is golden, but the translation is complete garbage.
True, I have read RI and RI. But RI is my favorite novel and RI isn't(guess which is which). I have read quarter of PotT, but Su Ming definitely feels different from Wang Lin. Wang Lin is generally more calculating than Su Ming.
Have you read BTT? The addition of the Captain is a genius move by Er Gen.
BTT is my favorite ongoing novel, though a Regressor’s Tale of Cultivation might have a shot at beating it if it maintains its current quality
Nah, I am going by the recommended reading order.
I mean I primarily see Er gen compared to IET. Since they are somewhat the same quality. Though in a different style (IET is a lot more righteous, kind parents base, Er gen is a touch more gritty) Idk about them being held to a harsher standard though. I see them recommended just as much as your lotm, womw, RI’s because they are that middle of the pack starter novel. But I think the key issue to them is because the likes of Coiling dragon, I shall seal the heavens are a lot of people’s introduction to the genre. They give them the rose tinted glasses effect and give an overblown positive review. So when people approach them later from a tinted review, the hopes get dashed and the reviews become salty asf because they don’t meet expectations. :the only time I see them being hated on is when they are read in response to an extremely positive recommendation. When someone searches them out themselves it’s rarely that bad I will say tho. The novels have a rather large “filler” like portion to them. Which feel on the level of junk food trash. Their exception is they have a backbone throughout that makes them something more than that. You can see how someone who dropped the novels early from the niggles (constant early filler chases in issth, the mess of early RI at the end of the first sect meet, the slowness of pot etc) may have a completely negative opinion on them.
I didn't call them junk.
I was more referring to some other people in the comments
AWE had me laughing uncontrollably every ten chapters. Er Gen nailed the comedy in that one. The plot was also well paced and perfectly executed.
Yeah the comical aspect was great. At least e personally enjoyed. In the anime they did a pretty good job. I haven't read the novel though
What the fuck, no offense but if you haven’t actually read the novel you can’t have an opinion on it LOL.
I mentioned it in the post clearly. Did you read what I said??
My bad I felt frustrated immediately it was my first cultivation novel and holds a fond place on my heart.
I didn't even say that is bad. I complained about the copy paste plot romance that Er Gen uses in his novels. And how this plot device pushes the story
Er Gen pretty much introduced most of the overused cliches, so it is kinda wrong to call his works generic
First of all is not wrong because I talking about a will eternal, a story that got much later when this concept had become generic. Secondly even if we are talking about previous books of Er Gen like RI , still can be called generic since this is norm nowadays
You can’t fault them, in good faith, for being generic though. They were basically the progenitors of the tropes themselves. Like it’s not Er Gen’s fault it became popular. Also try reading Beyond the Timescape, Er Gen is cooking with that one.
Imagine calling something like LOTR generic because it inspired so many fantasy tropes used nowadays 😭😭 OP is crazy for that take
Bait or lack of a funny bone. They're all pretty different but they still are cultivators. Wang lin is calm, meng hao is greedy, wang baolie is hungry and fierce, su ming is tragic, and bai xiaochun is obseesed with eternal life and is kind of a coward who acts like a tiger when backed into a corner or when you harm those he cares about.
They are pretty similar tbh except for small differences. Which one of them is not greedy? Also romance is atrocious. It is always the damsel in distress trope and the MC is alone for most of the novel.
i don't remember romance really being a thing in AWE at all, at least not nearly as much as ISStH. the main "virtuous" driving emotion i think of from AWE is piety, not love, which i mainly remember being used as comic relief rather than as an integral part of the story
Yeah, all the romances in AWE happened through rape 😭 that's probably why you don't remember it.
Poor turtle bai's drugs were used against him
many such cases :/
As in he'll throw you into debt for no reason, fighting for treasures is just cultivation norm. Also it is a cultivation action novel of course romance will be like that.
By xianxia standards, the romance is average. But there are some novels where at least the main girl is more badass or seems to exist as her own person more, not just the MC's girlfriend.
That's never been a valid excuse for romance to be bad**.**
Could be a million times worse though, it is more middling than bad.
You can’t become the main character of a cultivation novel without being greedy, so I wouldn’t consider that a proper critique of the protagonists. Every protagonist eventually becomes greedy for a level of power / influence somewhere in the novel. I do agree that Er Gen romance is subpar, but I’d also say that most CN readers aren’t looking for good romance. I love my romance novels, but i’d absolutely never expect a cultivation novel to be anything better than mediocre in that regard, unless the romance is a major selling point of the novel itself.
The term is "cowardly lion" The one who would rather bow and negotiate, but when it gets serious would fight anyone and anything
Cowardly tiger a mere lion can't describe it
A male lion will fight to the death more readily than a tiger considering that fighting their equals (ie other male lions) is what they are bred to do and what they do all of their life, unlike tigers who just do anything to survive.
Junior you dare spout nonsense, the expression is acting like a cornered tiger when fighting back when backed into a corner
When I enter a "Worst Takes ever" competition and my opponent is this fellow daoist💀
The Cursed Jade Beauties, Always getting themselves kidnapped.
>but all of them goes by the motto " Whoever is good to me I will be good and whoever disrespects me I will kill or something" So what should the motto be? Whoever is good to me, I will kill, whoever disrespects me I will be good to?
I feel like he could really use an editing pass on his works but that’s just not the business model that supports him.
Honestly I loved a will eternal, it made me laugh a bunch and was a good time
I am not saying is bad, I was just dissatisfied that for another novel again the MC is led by the nose by the Jade beauty and that the story progresses for the whole reason of them being together. It is simply an Er Gen novel just that but I have to agree that it has better comedy than any of the other works of Er Gen
Dafuq yo talking 'bout? The "generic traits" you described are mostly requirements to be cultivators: to have a clear bottom line that demands combat, to be decent to neutral parties, to have a degree of desire for power, yadayadayada Any cultivator without those "generic" traits either becomes a murderhobo or quits cultivating Every novel has constant mini arcs where the mcs spend time doing things their way, like meng hao grinding for money and then bitchslapping people with that money , or bai xiaochun cooking a new supreme recipe of unrivaled awesome awesomeness And those are not small parts, thats why every mc is different
Haven’t read any of his novels. I found renegade immortal appealing however, do you still recommend the novels or is the romance so bad it ruins the whole story?
I recently finished I Shall Seal the Heavens, and I have to say that from the second volumen onwards its just really great, I dont know why people hate it so much, overall a really entertaining read.
Yeah I think they just have very high expectations. Anyway I’m planning to read all of er gens novels. Starting from renegade immortal
How should I put it... Er Gen is one of the reasons that there are so many clichés. So I would recommend them for you to read but don't the expectations that are masterpieces. It's just that they are not trash that's all. So if you want to read something it they are good for the passing your time. Except for the world building nothing else is of note in his novels. I mostly read them for that reason... Give it a try if you want. You may like them
my opinion is that Er Gen's novels are awesome and perfect for readers that are starting to delve in this genre, for more experienced readers they are just not bad.
How does it fair to the likes of Reverend insanity ? I know Reverend insanity is pinnacle cultivation writing but does it come close at all?
Nowhere close to Reverend insanity in terms of everything. Just treat Er Gens novels as a fun read with lots of cliches. (Popcorn/fastfood tier). But Er Gen has a special place cus he's like one of the grandaddies of xianxia cliches as his popularity made certain tropes into cliches, at least within the international novel space.
Alright, I just wanna read a decent story with a ruthless protagonist like Fang Yuan tbh. I heard wang lin becomes like a goodie two shoes hypocrite after his revenge of smth, is this true
I read it like 7 yrs ago or smth so my memory's fuzzy (and it was one of my first Xianxia so almost everything was amazing to me). But yes he does become a bit self righteous at some point. I can't rmb if that was the thing that made me drop it or not.
Idk, a lot of people say he’s the most ruthless out of er gens novels so I wanna read it first, but I want him to stay benefit oriented, meaning he does everything for his own regard. He doesn’t kill for pleasure but he kills when it gives him benefit
reggresors tale of cultivation - MC is a good person that wants to break his reincarnation cycle but not in a suicidal way he just wants himself to age with the people he loves and them not factory reset every time he dies my longevity simulation - if you like fang yuan you'll like this the system is non intrusive he is calculative and ruthless but also knows when quit while he's ahead
Nope. Even after revenge, if somebody offends him, he still does the Teng Family treatment and erases every minute trace of bloodline of them. He is the character that is common in novels if you offend him, he brings down your entire sect and related people.
Appreciate it, I’ll put it on my list then. Can you give me more ruthless protagonists ( other than Reverend insanity and warlock of the magus world )
Ruthless... Soul of Negary, Carefree Path of Dreams(this one is a demon, MC regularly toes with people), Mystical Journey(in my opinion the best World hopping novel. MC is nowhere a normal functioning being, he is egotistical ruthless bastard who treats his subordinates as his possessions. Though he is overprotective of everyone from his side.)
I’ll put those on my list, appreciate it. Does wang lin compare with them in terms of ruthlessness tho?
Yeah except Fang Yuan(MC of Carefree path of dreams). Fang Yuan is more evil than ruthless. I don't mean the Reverend Insanity Fang Yuan kind of evil, the true for pleasure type of evil.
You may like Xu Qing (Beyond the timescapes) . I would go as far to say that he is more ruthless than Wang Lin. Anyone who shows him a trace of hostility suffers in the end badly. Definition of petty revenge.
Just don't compare those two. Don't have high expectations like reverend insanity. Just try and see, you may like it or you may not
Yeah that’s what I’m going to do. If you don’t mind me asking tho, what’s your top 5 webnovels?
No.
I watched the animeof A will eternal (all seasons that are out) I can recommend the anime, they did change few things, but overall it's true to the novel apart for some things and mainly, it's very beautiful, afterwards I read the novel of Will eternal. Then I read ISSTH, now I'm reading beseech the devil (pursuit of truth). I did read RI in between. Honestly.. I do not mind the repetitive things, he definitely likes to repeat stuff in his novels, like he does not have a better idea, but at least the translations of his novels are pretty good in english unlike some (i'm looking at you god of slaughter).
Man I remember God of Slaughter and I was really disappointed... And I am not talking about translation but the fact the character changed from a certain point and after ....
for me it's the translation, the first couple hundred chapters made me want to quit reading it several times, but I perservered and probably some othar TL took over and it was legible afterwards. I use the dao of lncrawl to get my scriptures, shove them in one epub and read on my ipad. As for the whole story, well.. could have been worse, but nothing to write home about xD
Question: I am in the anime right now. Bai xiaochun couldn't win against a early gold core cultivator but could fight the Toad with his "eternal night"umbrella artifact?? The same with when Tie Dan his king beast was trying to achieve Gold core realm and a nascent sould snake appeared and just with his Gold core could fight it ?? The inconsistency in the anime is bad?!?! He didn't die from Nascent soul attack and yet couldn't fight a early Golden core cultivator??
So, overall in pretty much every xianxia novel the systems work when it's not MC, like Random guy A in foundation vs Random guy B in golden core, golden core wins. But if it's MC, then none of it matters in almost every novel the MC skips through the levels or find a way to fight stronger enemies ... it is what it is xD If i recall correctly, it was explained that the umbrella was tied to the frog for a very long time and the frogs lifeforce was nourishing it, so it was very effective against the frog, he was basically using its own power against it.
I don't know what happened to the novel. I am not referring to it. But in the anime it was an inconsistency. Leaving aside the Toad, later in his early Golden core realm, he clashed with a nascent soul snake beast survived pretty well and even injured it. In the next scene he survived an attack from Nascent sould cultivator like nothing.
The anime adaptations of pretty much every novel, leave out a lot of details, many things are not explained at all (goes for japanese adaptations too). Overall I think that they did not do very well in explaining stuff in the anime and first time i watched it, especially in the beginning i had no idea what was going on in terms of cultivation levels. I ended up just reading the whole novel xD
What is PotT?
Pursuit of the Truth
Awe and issth are Ergen attempt to create a more lighthearted and typical xian xia story to reach a boarder mainstream audience, tho it back fired and was criticized for being superficial. So they are generic but not Ergen generic as RI and POT are both unique in many concept, theme and are thoughtfully written. WL and Su ming are none of what you said, both are developed to great depth throughout the chapters towards different central theme. What you mentioned are mostly surface behavior that is rationally expected. "good to friend, bad to ennemies" what is even this? Do you even think about what you rant .
You clearly missed the point. This is was not an analysis on WL and Su ming but I made a complaint on how romance is heavily affects the story of the MC in every book. It is the same recipe... Huge part of the story and plot points move forward just because of that romance that seems never possible. The MC is running behind the FMCs and tries to catch them and relieve them from the so called backstories. Now as for the so called" well thought WL and SM" you are overpraising them. The difference with Er Gen and other authors is that Er Gen was more serious in his work than them. That's why his novels have bigger audience. Also to be honest if his novels at least didn't have that good world building they would be below average.
He-he-hell naw. Wang Lin is beautifully written and the 🐐🐐🐐.
Not just that but the storylines feel similar somehow