Tikky's activites

Expressionless Blacksuited Man x Flashy Clubber, a love story transpires before daybreak?...

Megumi, an Alpha, son of the great Kokonoe Academy Chairman, goes to avenge his friends who were bea...

Ahn Geumhu, the eldest son of the Ahn household, needed the blood of livestock for his younger broth...

Ahn Geumhu, the eldest son of the Ahn household, needed the blood of livestock for his younger broth...

As the heir to the Yooshin corporation, Yoo Taehyuk is living his best life. However, everything cha...

As the heir to the Yooshin corporation, Yoo Taehyuk is living his best life. However, everything cha...

"Please send me back to the past." If he cannot not kill that person in this era, he just ...

So why the hell does the printed version lag behind so fucking much? I'm gonna cry. I was dead set on reading from the official version, because I love paperback, but at this point I'm literally going insane. I really wanna know what happened since the last time I read.
I hate Altraverse sometimes. So much.

I felt that something would have happened, but that better not be his dad.

Sooo... yeah. I read this. Until Chapter 52. And I can say with certainty that it was surely time ... spent. Undeniably, time was consumed.
Because I am not such a cheap person to give up my valuable time for nothing, I will have to make your eyes bleed as much as mine did by telling you exactly what went wrong here with a story that seemed to have a solid premise and a promise to pick up on it.

1. Basic Context
MC was originally a noble, whose initially prestigious family had fallen apart when first his father, the Patriarch of Sermin, and then his two promising older brothers went missing - together with a bunch of magicians and knights that had followed them on the search and rescue mission. In general, this tactic of taking someone and then taking those who come to rescue the missing person when they walk in by themselves is something that happens not once, but twice in this story. Meaning, on two different occasions, two different entities thought that this would let them catch their prey. And they really managed to kidnap a whole lot of people by using this tactic.
This tactic should not happen even once, because the ones deploying it would have to be dumb as fuck to believe it could work - or maybe the only smart ones in a completely asinine world filled with lobotomized chimpanzees, throwing feces at each other.
In fact, calling this a "tactic" is already giving it too much credit if it is meant to work for a prolonged time. This is something that should not work after the first people went missing; therefore, it is not a tactic to be used indefinitely.
It is a complete brainrot plan that only works if the people in question are dumb as bricks. Like, if you realize that more people go missing when you go and search, why don't you try to find out more about the case before charging in first? WHY do they keep rushing into the trap? Do they not have this nifty ability called "pattern recognition" available in this universe? Okay, if one got missing and the search party too, fair enough, but why send ALL your people into it? And if they didn't send ALL of them at once, how did they all go missing? How strong, capable, and promising could they have been?
No, wait, I digress. Context. We were giving context. Anyway, MC got kidnapped at the age of twelve, when at least some of his family's standing was still there, even as a mere husk, so they sent ALL of their forces once more to search and rescue the last heir, but they never found him, and thus, he died three years after the family managed to completely combust. He then dies and is transmigrated to a weird world where a god uses human souls as "players" with stat windows and all, because his golden ass gets bored sometimes.
MC overcomes a god-given curse he was born with, which caused him to be the only one in his family showing no promise whatsoever, learns how to fight, and becomes the most skilled player of this other world. He dies as the champion and receives a wish from that other god who played with him for, like, a century, and doesn't want to wish for anything, but the god takes his original dying wish, from when he was tortured to death by another noble's child, which is going back in time to change the future. That's where the actual story starts, as he's twelve years old again.

2. What the Fuck, Man?
First off, I don't know if anyone gathered it, but I started this story thinking he was a swordsman. I'm not saying he couldn't be using magic or something else, because duh, of course he would need more than that to be the best of the best, but we never see him wield a sword properly even once. He just haphazardly swings it with no refinement.
He later on uses some short swords or daggers of sorts, but he barely ever really fights. Fair enough; apparently he was an assassin and necromancer, a magician of sorts first.
Kay? But we never see him use proper magic, so that's not it. Abilities of an assassin? He doesn't really have them. He shows off his brains a single time at the beginning, which is fair enough; assassins use underhanded tactics, but they are also paid. So it comes off weird that he has to explain himself in detail, just so anyone would believe an assassin actually did the work, especially since he had his own client kill the target. It was a convoluted mess, but fair enough, Aizen Sousuke, I'll step down and accept that was fair, because I might end up having a stroke if I try to argue on this one.
Let me cut into this section with another thing: I'm fine with stories doing quick level-ups. Especially in stories like this one, which are clearly meant to have a very strong, if not overpowered protagonist. In fact, it's worse if the enemy comes off too strong, because it will just make the story feel as if it will never end and the goal unreachable, because the protagonist won't have the fucking time to level up that much, if we don't gain strength fast enough. And it's catastrophically WORSE when you already have an OP protagonist and then, in chapter 200, you're suddenly introduced to a foe who wipes out every character that's either as strong or even stronger than the MC, all grouped up to fight as a team, in a heartbeat. Like, where is the story fucking going if shit like that comes out this late? Sorry, gripes with a different story. I'll return to the topic at hand.
It's fine to get stronger quickly in the beginning, because obviously, the original is usually weak or even has a disadvantage. But firstly, am I the only one who heard his dying wish correctly? He didn't just say he wants to go back, he said "if only I wasn't cursed", so why does he even still carry the fucking curse? The curse and its penalty is brought down to a point where it only ever emerges when the plot needs to dampen the MC for half a second. That happens, like, once after chapter 15? And it's already degraded to D vom SS at that point, so why wasn't it simply gone to begin with? Everything he did, which involved him immediately overcoming everything, would have been the same had he no longer carried the curse or just remnants of it left behind in his body, as his whole physical constitution had been struggling under its weight up until this point and would naturally be damaged. Him learning the sword and physically getting stronger, and learning that special Mana technique could have broken through old bindings and given him basically a new body, repairing the damage caused by the curse. That's what I would have written, at least.
He also only trains physically by doing handstands. Btw, that's quite literally something I wrote in one of my Female Lead stories, which had the main character also regain some physical strength after transmigrating into a weak body, because she knows how to use Mana and held a contract with an inhuman being. But even my protagonist did more than just handstands, though she often did that, because it was easy to do in a room while concealing herself, so it's similar to the MC here. Still - that alone doesn't mean you can regain your ability to actually carry and wield a blade, so she did more than that. And one very important factor I used as an "excuse" to not train her in a special way was the fact that she had already been trained in her former world and had years of experience. And that's added to the fact that she never really wanted to fight, because she didn't fight in her old world because she wanted to. She never wanted to become a soldier in the first place. In other words, its her old habits and the feeling of being "unprepared" that make her take the bare minimum steps to be able to "defend" herself, but she doesn't want to have to do use it. Ever. Most people who read this Webtoon might notice where I'm going with this little anecdote.
Firstly, he actually wants to fight. His goal involves him becoming significantly more powerful than a lot of other people, because his father, who was deemed strong, as well as his talented brothers, all went missing; thus, they were too weak. And beyond that, there's something that wasn't utilized until now in the slightest.
This MC acts in most fights as if he had never fought before in his life. He gets easily flustered and outmaneuvered by absolutely everyone and their grandmother.
He also gets stronger way too fast, yet way too slow at the same time. It's too simple, yet also too complicated. But what do I mean by that?
He got back the stat window from the time he spent in the other world after transmigrating before - or maybe "retained" would be the better word for it. With that, he had access to an odd Gacha-esque class system, which I barely remembered after it showed up for the first time and couldn't be bothered to wrap my remaining brain cells around it to properly understand. Or in other words: A million supercomputers could be calculating for an eternity and wouldn't be able to reach the number of fucks I don't give about this story's lore. But anyway, it required him to basically shuffle through a class tree, of which the Necromancer is an evolution based on the Assassin class. In his case, emphasis is on the AssAss, because I don't know what makes him an assassin, but we already went over that.
Is an assassin just a job title? It shouldn't be, because here, it's a class. If an assassin is just someone who kills for money, that would make the class absolutely redundant. If anything, we would need to be talking about the original assassin theory. Stealthy, proficient in acting and masquerading, as elusive as a shadow and gone as fast as they appeared to murder you. But that is, though cool by itself, a pretty "boring" class for a protagonist, depending on the world we are in. In a world like this, where people openly fight, and prestige comes with literal fighting power, an assassin is a back alley urchin, even if they are feared for their skills. You would want flashy abilities for the MC to show in a fight. Or at least have abilities that rock the boat.
But here's the thing: His abilities are literally a little bit of everything and a whole lot of nothing. Again, magic isn't really very interesting in this universe. They manage to make me believe it would sound cooler when described in a novel than seeing it drawn in the webtoon. His skills as an assassin are so subpar; I don't get why that step was ever needed. He could have been an assassin or mercenary without choosing the class, since he should be capable enough to actually fight with almost any weapon after enduring such a long time as a plaything to a god who only ever wants to witness carnage. And again, he was supposedly the best in the other world.
Yet he can't properly fight; while he wins a lot, it always feels underwhelming, even as he overwhelms his opponents in one way or another. His necromancy is never really relevant. He hunts down the legacy of a great necromancer who existed in their world because his abilities are so great and all, so he can pretend to be his successor, but in actual fights, I can't remember him actually using necromancy properly. He once created a random female undead from a dead male magician. That's why I called this shit "Gacha-esque", and I really don't want to waste brain power on deciphering how exactly that worked, because the math ain't mathing.
Apparently, he can't properly use that undead anyway, because it takes too much Mana. To be honest, I felt completely annoyed and didn't want to right this comment right away, so I wrote half of it and finished it now - but it was so shite, I already deleted most of this story from my mind.

3. I Just Can't Be Asked
I remember some idiotic, generic harem tropes, like some bimbo showing up, getting on MC's ass, and then coming in hot with the "Let's make a bet and the loser will have to obey the winner!" classic trash bullshit. Of course, she loses. Obviously. I don't even remeber what the bet was anymore, because my brain was starting to leak through my ears at that point, but it happens so often in these stories; I could recite this phrase in my sleep while farting.
Can we never get an MC who simply says: "What would I want with you?" or, after winning, cashes in on the "obey me" thing with the good old "Well, now give me money as repayment for being annoying and never talk to me again"?
Aside from that, it's hard to guess what the protagonist is really thinking, but not in a good way; like Light and L to some extent, weren't easy to read, but actually because he feels inconsistent. He's pretending to be tough and ruthless at times, but seems to be too naive at others. Maybe I'm thinking this because I couldn't be asked to try and understand him, so it might really just be me, but that's the feeling I had while reading. It also meant he got on my nerves a lot.
So where are we at, with a broken, convoluted lore, a pacing that shits the bed at every turn, and an MC who could make watching paint dry seem like an enjoyable pastime? Oh, yeah, we will have reached "The Player of the Fallen Family".

Seriously, if you want to read a story of someone regressing many years into the past to beat the shit out of an elusive enemy who killed his father and everyone else in his clan, read "Absolute Regression". It's the only Murim action Manhwa I know that doesn't bombard you with tropey female characters (in fact, there aren't many female characters, as there logically shouldn't be, but the ones that are there are strong, actual characters with personalities that I simply can't find in me to dislike), and comes PACKED with chapters that are spent by talking and nothing else. Yet their yapping feels so genuine and is so interesting; nobody fucking complains about it. Actual peak Webtoon. Go read that. I'm out now.

I read this one yaoi, might've been one shot but definitely shorter than 3 chapters! The characters were teacher/school staff member and a student. The teacher was the top and student was the bottom. I think it was non-con and coercive too. They did it in the nurse's office and at the end, the teacher put a tampon inside him. He might've used to......

I only remember the following:
MC was someone from an orthodox sect, probably namgoong clan, but I'm not good enough with the name lore to really discern that, so I could be completely wrong.
Anyway, he was young and arrogant, but righteous and talented as well. One day, he gets killed (can't remember, but it might have been betrayal). Instead of simply dying, however, he finds himself in a cave with grain balls, in other words, a place to do some secluded training. He finds drawings on the wall, which are martial arts he finds fascinating, so he learns them. When he comes out, though, he realizes that he's not in his original body, but the body of a dude who had just perished when he himself died, so he took over his body. He's also no longer in the orthodox Murim, but in the heavenly demon cult (I'm pretty sure, at least). And the body belongs to their young master.
There are a lot of things happening. Though he fights for his place in the sect, he hates them all, because they are "evil", and his end goal is supposed to be to destroy them. But all is not well in the orthodox Murim either, because the world isn't that black and white.
I also remember one of his best friends coming and dying by the hands of one of the higher ups of the heavenly demon cult, but he turns him into a sentient undead, like fucking Wei WuXian (if you know, you know).

Does that ring a bell for anyone? Of course, I'm just hoping I won't find out it has been axed again. That's been happening way too often recently.

You know, sometimes, it's a thing that helps. Maybe someone should've told him.

One of my own stories has a sub-species of the OG mermaids (all female) which are (but rarely) male and they can get pregnant in tail form, by a similar method, regardless of gender (males can't change back to their legs during the pregnancy tho). I don't know why, but I imagined that would be the case here as well, but too bad it wasn't. Would have been an extra gimmick.

After forgetting the title and now I realize I've been here a month ago and the story is probably axed.
Great, I've got Alzheimer's and still can't read the story.

This must have come out around the same time that The Return of the Crazy Demon came out, and I'm pretty sure the base stories are from the same author. But maybe I remember this wrong, because there are no other stories listed from the same authors here.
It was also a Murim story with a slightly crazy protagonist, but more of a hidden crazy. When this one is openly acting mad, the other is pretty calm and collected in general, but he's had a rough past. Basically, when he was a child, he belonged to a Sword Dance Troupe and learned sword dancing there.
When two brothers, masters, I believe both Poison Dragons(?) chanced upon him someday and kidnapped him to experiment on him. But he Stockholmed his way into their crusty hearts, until they could no longer bear to kill him and turned into their actual shared disciple.
But that's just the backstory; there's no real mystery there. He becomes an adult and leaves the two brothers to see the world, where he first goes to his original home, only to find it ransacked and taken over by another group. The troupe's members seem to have either died or scattered in the wind, so now he set his goal to destroy those who took his home away while he was gone and collect whatever is left of the people he once loved.
That's as much as I remember. No clue about the title or the character names (otherwise, googling it would be possible). Does anyone know?

... because we had finally reached the point of Ilay realizing and sorting out his feelings for Tay and vice versa, especially with Xinlu and the "closing arguments". Like, they had calm talks about the situation and came to a somewhat understanding that it would never happen between them and that he would choose Ilay over him.
Great! You see, sometimes it may not be obvious, because seemingly, so many things are happening, but in actuality... Passion has no real goal; it has no story. By that I mean it did have this vague overarching goal, or I should rather call it an overarching "premise", as it felt like there was more hidden, with that secret weapon in the UNHRDO's basement and all, and Jay now missing, but it never had more than that. And that turned out to be "Well, he's held in that guy's weird mansion, but he's probably there because he's fine with it; otherwise, he would have already found a way out". So finding Jay at the end of Season 5 basically just meant wrapping up the relationship between Ilay and Tay and possibly going into the fact that the "kidnapper" dude is clearly in love with Jay, and then it's over.
But because that was apparently not fun enough, we had to dig up Xinlu's corpse and display it one more time, as if he had ever had any reason to exist in this story, to force the entire character progression of Ilay back to square one. I actually saw Chapter 141 on a YT Short and got really confused about how we came back to this behavior, actually even worse than before.
I get that; from his personality, it actually makes sense. He went from his standard to a point where you could call him cute not just by his own measurements, but from any point of view. In other words: He made himself vulnerable for likely the first time in his life. He probably accepted his feelings, and upon being asked, he moved heaven and earth, offering up everything he has in his position, his literal freedom (because he's now a wanted terrorist, so that could go bad), and what he sees is the guy he did it for just walking off with his perceived romantic rival.
I get that he would lose his mind and violence had always been his default setting.
But you can see the author's hand in trying to create this outcome in such a hand-fisted way. He needed to see Tay walk off with Xinlu, but instead of having Tay say ONE SINGLE LINE to explain the situation, he just says "Nah, can't go with you now." Are you serious?
This is what REALLY makes me mad, because it's so obvious. "He took Jay, I can't just leave him there." It could have been so easy. Hell, the T&R guys could probably have followed them. And I do believe they didn't that day because Ilay was shell-shocked; otherwise, there's no way he hadn't been able to follow up in some way.
Anyway, Tay could have explained that much, and Ilay knows Xinlu's personality; he also knows Jay, AND he knew from the beginning that Jay should have been in that mansion, since that's why they even went to the island in the first place. I hate it when authors PRETEND something is complicated when it is clearly not, and they are simply too lazy to come up with something less retarded to make their wishes come true.
Like, from a writer's AND a reader's perspective, I'm actually super disappointed. I just skipped through the repetitive belch between Tay and Xinlu, to see if there's anything salvageable in 141 I hadn't seen in that short. But that wasn't the case.
Therefore, I'm just gonna drop this for a while and come back when there are many chapters out and we can get past this forced drama bullshit.