What is your max chapter limit?

How many chapters?

  • <200

    Votes: 16 42.1%
  • 200~500

    Votes: 6 15.8%
  • 500~1000

    Votes: 4 10.5%
  • >1000

    Votes: 12 31.6%

  • Total voters
    38

NotaNuffian

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We all like our beloved work to never end, sort of.

But lately, I am feeling burnouts just from reading works like Oracle Paths up to 500 chapters. I probably did it wrong by binging all the chapters, but I think I finally understand the true reason, it is bullshittery. The few paragraphs below are examples.

Oracle Paths with Jake getting blueballed by the chinese chick, the blonde party bitch, his nugget porn soul mate who now grew limbs and is pulling a Kait Diaz and the fucking Cortana is par for the course and him now dealing with slavers who commit **** (rape, ffs) is fine and dandy, a tad long winded with the drama llama larping about gods who are not gods and shits that are most definitely shits.

I can stand Omnipresent God of War (good until 800++) for the whole bioscience BS as the author turns the work from xianxia-ish to xuanhuan. Then came the taoist gods and I said fuck.

The same with Randidly... go to nether battlefield with his skeletor and treant avatars as he BDSM snuff his emerald fire, which turns out to represent his fiery attitude.

Kaito died in Shirlatoon's work.

Grid becomes Gary Stu.

The bullshittery list goes on as I whine, cry like a bitch and drop them out of my reading list because either they deviate too far or remain a bore too long.

So I think to myself, maybe it is the length of the chapters that caused the authors to fuck up?

Tldr: what is the optimal chapter for a proper ARC? Because it is hard to determine how the entire work gets fucked up, I just want to see how an arc is affected by amount of chapters.

Ps. Andur's works used to be fun, then he continued to be on that train for too long and got shitfucked.
 

Ilikewaterkusa

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We all like our beloved work to never end, sort of.

But lately, I am feeling burnouts just from reading works like Oracle Paths up to 500 chapters. I probably did it wrong by binging all the chapters, but I think I finally understand the true reason, it is bullshittery. The few paragraphs below are examples.

Oracle Paths with Jake getting blueballed by the chinese chick, the blonde party bitch, his nugget porn soul mate who now grew limbs and is pulling a Kait Diaz and the fucking Cortana is par for the course and him now dealing with slavers who commit **** (rape, ffs) is fine and dandy, a tad long winded with the drama llama larping about gods who are not gods and shits that are most definitely shits.

I can stand Omnipresent God of War (good until 800++) for the whole bioscience BS as the author turns the work from xianxia-ish to xuanhuan. Then came the taoist gods and I said fuck.

The same with Randidly... go to nether battlefield with his skeletor and treant avatars as he BDSM snuff his emerald fire, which turns out to represent his fiery attitude.

Kaito died in Shirlatoon's work.

Grid becomes Gary Stu.

The bullshittery list goes on as I whine, cry like a bitch and drop them out of my reading list because either they deviate too far or remain a bore too long.

So I think to myself, maybe it is the length of the chapters that caused the authors to fuck up?

Tldr: what is the optimal chapter for a proper ARC? Because it is hard to determine how the entire work gets fucked up, I just want to see how an arc is affected by amount of chapters.

Ps. Andur's works used to be fun, then he continued to be on that train for too long and got shitfucked.
Most long series are dragged on for too long. Often in a short sighted-ness failing to consider the long term consequences of such action
 

LordJoyde

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There's only so many paths that a character can take before they inevitably either die or become gods gods god + infinity.

I would say, around the 200 chapter mark I forget who is who unless they're a regular part of the story.
 

Discount_Blade

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Ps. Andur's works used to be fun, then he continued to be on that train for too long and got shitfucked.
More like, every male and female MC of every single one of his works was literally just the same person in different incarnations. Plus, the female MC is one of the most obnoxious, rotten characters I could imagine and the Male MC always ends up being the biggest pussy to nearly any woman in the story if she isn't his enemy. Andur's first few works were good because you thought maybe he'd learn how shit his MC's were after the first few stories...but nope. He learned nothing, and anyone who brought up the issues with them were blocked, banned, or just ignored, depending on what platform you were speaking to him on.

And idk how you can stomach the MC of He Who Fights With Monsters. He's like the stereotypical leftist millenial, but somehow enhanced and made even worse because he doesn't shut up once he gets going into one of his rants that no one seems intelligent enough to point out are flawed and heavily skewed by personal bias.
 

NotaNuffian

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More like, every male and female MC of every single one of his works was literally just the same person in different incarnations. Plus, the female MC is one of the most obnoxious, rotten characters I could imagine and the Male MC always ends up being the biggest pussy to nearly any woman in the story if she isn't his enemy. Andur's first few works were good because you thought maybe he'd learn how shit his MC's were after the first few stories...but nope. He learned nothing, and anyone who brought up the issues with them were blocked, banned, or just ignored, depending on what platform you were speaking to him on.

And idk how you can stomach the MC of He Who Fights With Monsters. He's like the stereotypical leftist millenial, but somehow enhanced and made even worse because he doesn't shut up once he gets going into one of his rants that no one seems intelligent enough to point out are flawed and heavily skewed by personal bias.
I can't help it, I switch off my brain all the time. Maybe that is why I can enjoy shitty xianxia works and giggle to baby talks.

I miss the good old dumb days. Not even rereading Dawn of the Silver Dragon (fuck the fucking stupid ending fuck fuck FUCK!) can make me happy anymore. At least the new kid Asakai Mocchinu is trying.

Ps. Who the fuck is voting more than 1000????
 

Jemini

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It really depends on how the author presents the work.

In order for the story to remain interesting, you need to maintain your through-line. That is to say, your theme that drives the story onward.

The ways to maintain that through-line are a little hard to pin down exactly, but there is 1 series I have read that is an excellent case-study in loosing your through-line due to the fact that you can very easily tell the exact moment when the author lost it. That series is Death March to Another World.

The author of this story looses the through-line exactly at the end of book 9. And, the manner in which it was lost is that they had the protagonist get over their limitation. The thing that had been holding them back from being too overwhelmingly OP up until that point. At this point in the story, it could have continued to be good if the author had begun to wrap up the story from that point and moved into the end-game, possibly set to end the entire series by book 12.

This series is still ongoing, and currently has 18 books. So, we can see where that went.

In this case, the through-line of the story was the protagonist's gradual growth into his OP status, with an underlying story of his connection to the dragon god. He was supposedly the reincarnation of the dragon god's lover from a past life. And, I mean really a reincarnation, with only vague memories of this past life. This gave the impression that the entire reason he was pulled to the other world was so he could be risen up to god status by the dragon god, and brought to this peak of power.

So, after book 9, that is where there should have been a much more serious drive to achieving that end goal. However, it did not. He was just overwhelmingly OP at the end of book 9, nothing was a challenge to him anymore, and it just became a story of him solving the monster of the week problem just by overwhelming it with his overwhelming power. The mystery was gone. The drive was gone. And, the reason it lost all these things was because the author lost sight of this through-line of the story of his gradual rise into the dragon god's partner.

The story ceases to be good when the through-line is lost. There are several ways you can loose it, but if you want a good example of what you should AVOID doing, then I would say Death March is the best example of a bad example I can possibly offer.
 

BenJepheneT

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here's the thing: it IS possible for stories to go beyond the 200, 500, or even 1000 chapter limit. hell, we've seen manga go through that shit. you got your one-piece's and nartuo's and bleach's as examples. those stories HAVE their cons (everything past Brook is c-tier, backstory flashback galore, literal carbon copy of arcs), but the fact that they're serialised to such a degree speaks volumes to their longevity.

the main problem among these webnovels is the lack of growth or evolution. i don't mean to say that they don't get stronger. what I mean to say is that most authors don't know how to properly make the narration interesting in structure and just resort to upping the proverbial scale with increasingly taboo subjects or even more powerful mythical beings. gonna turn into Jemini for a second here and suck Mushoku Tensei's dick for the umpteenth time: how many stories out there has you diving deep into a character's erectile dysfunction? I've only caught on with the manga but that's enough for me to make an example: most manga don't retain much attention beyond 30-40 chapters. hell, look at shield hero. it started off with an interesting, never-commonly-seen rape accusation, gave us an arguably satisfying ending, then turned into some giant turtle bullshit with generic jobbers coming in from different dimensions.

what I mean to say is that the positive examples I've given evolve beyond their premise and offers more palate after establishing their main plot. for one-piece, it's the ever so interesting world-building and the thrill of seeing the straw hat pirates fresh offerings into their crew. it also doesn't forget the main plot of well, finding the eponymous one piece and BEING the pirate king. it makes sure we remember what we're here for with the penultimate time skip that is post Ace's death and the current fight against Big Mama, ALL WHILE providing different stuff and keeping up with our main cast. zorro doesn't remain the same after his character introduction. he changes, has a sword waifu rivalry with someone from the marines, and gets an ultimate sword, sanji turns from the chef cuckold to a sigma chad with the marriage arc; so on and so forth.

like a game franchise, you can't just keep piling on the same shit and expect people to eat the same way. we are only human; we get fed up, and changes appeal to us. yes, I bought COD to enjoy some mindless shooting, that's what I'm here for, but it's not unfair that I ask for some variation upon the formula, right?
 

Discount_Blade

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yes, I bought COD to enjoy some mindless shooting
Good ol mindless shooting. My only problem is that they seem to make the Zombies mode worse and worse with each new game. I know Zombies isn't really all that important in the grand scheme of the franchise...but if its going to be made tackily. why bother making it at all?
 

NotaNuffian

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It really depends on how the author presents the work.

In order for the story to remain interesting, you need to maintain your through-line. That is to say, your theme that drives the story onward.

The ways to maintain that through-line are a little hard to pin down exactly, but there is 1 series I have read that is an excellent case-study in loosing your through-line due to the fact that you can very easily tell the exact moment when the author lost it. That series is Death March to Another World.

The author of this story looses the through-line exactly at the end of book 9. And, the manner in which it was lost is that they had the protagonist get over their limitation. The thing that had been holding them back from being too overwhelmingly OP up until that point. At this point in the story, it could have continued to be good if the author had begun to wrap up the story from that point and moved into the end-game, possibly set to end the entire series by book 12.

This series is still ongoing, and currently has 18 books. So, we can see where that went.

In this case, the through-line of the story was the protagonist's gradual growth into his OP status, with an underlying story of his connection to the dragon god. He was supposedly the reincarnation of the dragon god's lover from a past life. And, I mean really a reincarnation, with only vague memories of this past life. This gave the impression that the entire reason he was pulled to the other world was so he could be risen up to god status by the dragon god, and brought to this peak of power.

So, after book 9, that is where there should have been a much more serious drive to achieving that end goal. However, it did not. He was just overwhelmingly OP at the end of book 9, nothing was a challenge to him anymore, and it just became a story of him solving the monster of the week problem just by overwhelming it with his overwhelming power. The mystery was gone. The drive was gone. And, the reason it lost all these things was because the author lost sight of this through-line of the story of his gradual rise into the dragon god's partner.

The story ceases to be good when the through-line is lost. There are several ways you can loose it, but if you want a good example of what you should AVOID doing, then I would say Death March is the best example of a bad example I can possibly offer.
Sadly I can't tell.because I dropped the work after book 5 or 6 solely because the work has no drive imho.
 

Discount_Blade

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Sadly I can't tell.because I dropped the work after book 5 or 6 solely because the work has no drive imho.
I can't remember where I dropped it, but I didn't read for long. I couldn't get past the fact that he's like...maybe a toddler at best in age? But countless busty beauties were losing their shit and falling head over heels for him. I mean wut?

Edit: Oh! I got this confused with The Death Mage Who Doesn't Want A Fourth Time
 

NotaNuffian

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I can't remember where I dropped it, but I didn't read for long. I couldn't get past the fact that he's like...maybe a toddler at best in age? But countless busty beauties were losing their shit and falling head over heels for him. I mean wut?
Thats Death Mage.

I dropped that one too.
 

Jemini

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Now, with my previous post in mind, here's a good contrast. Mushoku Tensei. The web novel version had 24 books. However, it managed to maintain a through-line throughout the entire story with a very clever trick. The primary through-line of the story was something very simple. It was the protagonist trying to become a good person in his new life, and clinging onto the concept of family.

Simplistic and relatable through-lines like that are a lot easier to stretch on for longer. And, the author also managed to combine this through-line of family with another clever trick. This clever trick took the form of the "turning point" chapters. Each of these "turning point" chapters altered the story so dramatically that it was almost like you changed the story you were reading, shifting it from one genre to something entirely different. The through-line of family was maintained through the turning point, but it took on a very different feel between each set of turning points.

It went from a child-like growing up naivete in which he was learning about the world, to a desperate struggle to cope with cruelties in the world, to feeling out how to become a responsible adult through his adolecent years, to becoming responsible as a father for a wife and children of his own. These "turning points" in the story roughly correspond to major turning points in the growth of a person IRL, thus making them an entirely relatable and natural development of the character.

In this way, the through-line was able to be maintained FAR longer than a typical story could ever possibly maintain a story for.

(BTW: MT had about 10-12 chapters per book, for a total of around 250 chapters by the end of the series. However, these are Japanese webnovel chapters. They are around 8,000 words each. If we were to compare that to the western web-novel chapter length of 2,000 words, that means that the equivalent length of Mushoku Tensei would come out to almost exactly 1,000 chapters if we were to compare it on a word-count standard.)
 

NotaNuffian

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Now, with my previous post in mind, here's a good contrast. Mushoku Tensei. The web novel version had 24 books. However, it managed to maintain a through-line throughout the entire story with a very clever trick. The primary through-line of the story was something very simple. It was the protagonist trying to become a good person in his new life, and clinging onto the concept of family.

Simplistic and relatable through-lines like that are a lot easier to stretch on for longer. And, the author also managed to combine this through-line of family with another clever trick. This clever trick took the form of the "turning point" chapters. Each of these "turning point" chapters altered the story so dramatically that it was almost like you changed the story you were reading, shifting it from one genre to something entirely different. The through-line of family was maintained through the turning point, but it took on a very different feel between each set of turning points.

It went from a child-like growing up naivete in which he was learning about the world, to a desperate struggle to cope with cruelties in the world, to feeling out how to become a responsible adult through his adolecent years, to becoming responsible as a father for a wife and children of his own. These "turning points" in the story roughly correspond to major turning points in the growth of a person IRL, thus making them an entirely relatable and natural development of the character.

In this way, the through-line was able to be maintained FAR longer than a typical story could ever possibly maintain a story for.

(BTW: MT had about 10-12 chapters per book, for a total of around 250 chapters by the end of the series. However, these are Japanese webnovel chapters. They are around 8,000 words each. If we were to compare that to the western web-novel chapter length of 2,000 words, that means that the equivalent length of Mushoku Tensei would come out to almost exactly 1,000 chapters if we were to compare it on a word-count standard.)
And now the author done it with his latest orc warrior thingy...

Huh? It was that long? Never really noticed how long the chapters were because they are at least somewhat engaging (I skipped the Gisu killing scene)
 

K5Rakitan

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My dishwasher has problems with things that have too many chapters, too. It gets immersed for days, and then the kitchen is a mess, and sometimes I just start doing it, it hears me from the next room, and then it goes, "No, mine!" and starts washing dishes.
 

Jemini

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And now the author done it with his latest orc warrior thingy...

Huh? It was that long? Never really noticed how long the chapters were because they are at least somewhat engaging (I skipped the Gisu killing scene)

Oh yeah. It really was that long.

This is exactly what I was driving at. If it looses it's through-line, that's were the story falls flat. If you loose it early, you cannot even cross the 100 chapter mark while still being engaging.

However, if you are a skilled enough writer to keep that through-line, it can remain very engaging even several thousand chapters later.

You might have noticed, MT has 10-12 chapters per book, but each chapter is separated into anywhere between 4 and 7 "parts." Each "part" of a Mushoku Tensei chapter is around the same length as an entire western web novel chapter.

However, it was pretty darn engaging. You didn't even realize you'd read well over the equivalent of 1,000 chapters in a western webnovel.
 

BenJepheneT

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Good ol mindless shooting. My only problem is that they seem to make the Zombies mode worse and worse with each new game. I know Zombies isn't really all that important in the grand scheme of the franchise...but if its going to be made tackily. why bother making it at all?
I don't know why, tbh. I can UNDERSTAND why they did it for Cold War; they had some good ideas. i mean, techno zombies? it isn't original but it's hella fun. plus, they keep updating it with new maps.

VANGUARD ZOMBIES I just don't understand. what was the point? it's like Black Ops 4 zombies with WAW skin slapped on top.

I'll argue that the last good zombies map is from black ops 3 with Shadows of Evil. it's a convoluted mess of a map but coupled with it's aesthetics and the story, it's real good fun to be had. ESPECIALLY if you get used to the mechanics, then it becomes a FUCKING GREAT time.

More like, every male and female MC of every single one of his works was literally just the same person in different incarnations. Plus, the female MC is one of the most obnoxious, rotten characters I could imagine and the Male MC always ends up being the biggest pussy to nearly any woman in the story if she isn't his enemy. Andur's first few works were good because you thought maybe he'd learn how shit his MC's were after the first few stories...but nope. He learned nothing, and anyone who brought up the issues with them were blocked, banned, or just ignored, depending on what platform you were speaking to him on.
I've heard from someone that Andur's MCs are all the same reincarnated dudes, but it seems like a shoddy excuse for a lack of variety to me. i have my own problems with repeat personalities but you won't see me try to justify it in-universe.

And idk how you can stomach the MC of He Who Fights With Monsters. He's like the stereotypical leftist millenial, but somehow enhanced and made even worse because he doesn't shut up once he gets going into one of his rants that no one seems intelligent enough to point out are flawed and heavily skewed by personal bias.
from reviews I've read, everyone becomes the MC. even the kindest of hearts turn into snarky sarcastic people. what's your verdict on that?
 

NotaNuffian

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I've heard from someone that Andur's MCs are all the same reincarnated dudes, but it seems like a shoddy excuse for a lack of variety to me. i have my own problems with repeat personalities but you won't see me try to justify it in-universe.
It's shit. More like same MC, different scenario. Which is fun as a What If but in the long run, it feels like rewatching the same sitcom since young.
from reviews I've read, everyone becomes the MC. even the kindest of hearts turn into snarky sarcastic people. what's your verdict on that?
I will not defend the work. I don't like Jason. Everyone is more jaded, if not more snarky and sarcastic as the MC rubs off of them. But to say "everyone" is overkill.
 

Discount_Blade

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from reviews I've read, everyone becomes the MC. even the kindest of hearts turn into snarky sarcastic people. what's your verdict on that?
Idk. Not surprising. I opted out somewhere around chapter 200 because I kept holding out hope that someone would finally put a muzzle on MC. Apparently, I managed to avoid the "sinking ship" phase in the story where MC returns to Earth because apparently MC got even more preachy, and then suddenly even the little kids on the street were capable of holding detailed philosophical/political debates and everyone seemed to always come to the same conclusions as MC, who was always full of shit in the first place. So it seems I left at a good time when it was getting worse but still potentially redeemable.

I know a few people who still read it only because they are so far along now, it just seems pointless to leave it now when they've already taken the worse beatings the story could possibly give them.
 
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