--donation bonus (day #13, post 4/5)--
‘I’m glad you’re able to keep a clear head about things,’ said Garovel.
Hector took a long breath and listened to the motorcycle’s clanging engine. After a few minutes, a new question occurred to him. ‘Garovel...’
‘Yeah?’
‘My iron ability, um... will it always be able to grow stronger when I’m under stress? Because when I confronted Geoffrey, I was... I was in a really bad spot, and for a minute there, it felt like... like my power wasn’t going to grow... like I was just fucked... and everyone was gonna die and...’
‘That’s precisely the heart of the problem,’ said Garovel. ‘Your power can grow by leaps and bounds during a moment of extremely high stress. But such moments become increasingly difficult to achieve--and not because the amount of stress needs to increase. Rather, it’s because of your own mind. Over time, you become complacent--you begin to expect your power to suddenly grow and save you at the last moment. And guess what happens, then? Those very expectations reduce your level of stress, which in turn means that your power doesn’t grow when it otherwise would.’
‘Oh, what the--my expectations? What do I even do about that?’
‘That is the question, isn’t it? It’s a nasty psychological cycle, and I’ve known a lot of servants and reapers who’ve struggled with it. There’s been all sorts of research and experimentation with it, trying to figure out concrete ways around it. Some even believe that such growth can be instigated artificially if a scientific solution is found.’
‘Artificially...?’
‘Oh yeah. Imagine it. If you could force a servant’s ability to grow whenever you wanted, then the possibilities are--well. Personally, I find that prospect terrifying. If it could be done on a large scale, then the war between Abolish and the Vanguard would either finally come to an end, or escalate worse than ever before.’
‘Holy shit...’
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
So, I'm giving Disqus a try here. I know a lot of people were having trouble with the old commenting system, so please, let me know if this is working out any better for you. Is it slow and annoying? Is not letting you post anonymously? Do you like it better? All feedback here is appreciated.
ReplyDeleteOr if it's not letting you comment at all, then shoot me an e-mail telling me so: george.m.frost@gmail.com
Disqus is OK, the real test will be If my name pops up as Reshri.
ReplyDeleteOh, and
:|
*5 seconds later*
@#$%, I NEED TO ENTER MY EMAIL! D:
I DUN LIKE SPREADING MY EMAIL AROUND!
How about now? Should be able to comment as a guest without putting in your email.
ReplyDeletemy issue with discus so far has only been that to read the comments I have to start at the bottom and read them bottom up.. which tends to get old quickly.. this is only the second comment that I made.. (other was anon)
ReplyDeleteof course.. I could just fix that the easy way..... duh....
ReplyDeleteI can fix that, too, actually. I'll change the default display to be oldest first. I kinda prefer it that way, too.
ReplyDeleteSo, apparently. No. Disqus really demands an email before leaving a comment. Which is annoying.
ReplyDeleteSo if it bothers you, then post as a guest like I'm doing now, but for the email, just put in mine: george.m.frost@gmail.com
I honestly don't mind. And as you can see, it works.
:I
ReplyDeleteYay Disqus! Maybe now my comments will actually go through! XD
ReplyDeleteI've been reading the story for a while, but my computer apparently hates the commenting system. So now I can tell you that I love the story, and I want to give Hector a million super hugs because of all of my feels. XD
Aha, I'm glad you're able to comment now. And thank you dearly. That is just plain wonderful to know. :)
ReplyDeleteWell, oddly enough it allowed me to login using my gmail account but then I have to post as guest
ReplyDeleteI believe you need an account with Disqus to leave non-guest posts. Maybe. I think.
ReplyDeleteTo post as a guest, though, you could also just put in a totally fake email, too. Like a@a.com, even.
Disqus mainly helpful if the community grows into really big number of comments each post.
ReplyDeleteThe upvote and downvote system work kinda like Reddit, where (if you choose 'Best' as default comments order display) most relative and/or 'positive' comments will be posted on top, whereas most unrelative and/or 'negative' comments will be dumped down low.
You see, the moderator/author mark is also a dead giveaway LOL, who doesn't LOVE that!
If there are hundreds of comments on a single post, disqus works like magic.
That'd be amazing, but I doubt the community will ever grow THAT large. Right now, I believe we've got 200-300 people. To get hundreds of people commenting per post, I suspect we'd need to breach multiple thousand. Which'd be a little bonkers.
ReplyDeleteAh...so it truly begins now...
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be surprised if you get a sudden influx of new readers. I was introduced to this story by someone on japtem.com and I've started to do the same for others there. The most popular story on there, ARK, regularly gets 150 comments. Of course, ARK releases in super long chapters but I think by the time I catch up to the current pages here, I'll be seeing something like 30 comments average.
ReplyDeleteAh. I'm glad you pointed out the problem with crisis power ups.
ReplyDeleteWell my prediction didn't exactly come true but 30-comment pages are happening a lil more
ReplyDelete