u/Illustrious_Body5907

I watched the show months back and I loved it and now I miss it, I miss what it made me feel because those feelings were unique to that show and those characters.

Regardless even while watching it for the first time I noticed how they often dropped insights and ideas that I didn't fully grasp immediately, and couldn't really dwell on either as the episode moved on quickly.

If you have rewatched the show, were there things that you understood better the second time that you missed while initially watching ?

They’re not really inbetweeners anymore, they’re like adults or something so idk what the new series would be

I'm really in a bind here and it's driving me insane. I had such a cool idea for a story, so I sat down and wrote the first 'arc' of it (25ish chapters) to see if I wanted to continue it. It ended up being awesome and I loved doing it, even if the book isn't great I'm proud of it. There's about 4 arcs in total.

It ended up ballooning in scope, to the point where I don't think a traditional publisher would even want it (arc one now exceeds 350 a5 pages which is insane to let a debut author do, it's not a romance thing at all, but it definitely feels more like the progression fantasies you see on Royal Road). So I decided to upload it on Royal Road to see if it would at least find an audience there.

On Royal Road, the growth seems glacial if I upload 2x a week. I've barely got 100 views on 6 chapters (just getting started), and I can see it rapidly slip DOWN the rankings because I wait between chapters. If I upload daily, my backlog will be nearly empty in about 3 weeks and I'll need to have everything in place for the next arcs by then, including researching and reading more to make it as good as possible. Daily uploading feels like the only way to get my work seen, but that would obliterate my energy, quality, and enthusiasm.

It would also meaning finishing all this in about 3 months, when it took me 4 months to write the first 'quarter' of the plot. I'd rather do 2 chapters a week for a year but that feels like it would kill my visibility and the work would never take off.

When I say take off, I know it's not going to be a top shelf RR story like Beware of Chicken or something generational like One Piece. But, I guess I'd love to find an audience of people who think what I made is interesting enough to keep up with. I don't know whether those people will even get to read this unless I force daily uploads.

I, the 'person', doesn't care about numbers and wants to take it at my own pace.

I, the 'creator', has started to obsess over the numbers and wants to keep writing even though my body wants a rest. I have the skeleton of the second arc in front of me, but my gut is telling me I need to read more and expand my horizons. My brain is telling me to start typing, but I don't think that's a healthy decision.

Not sure what to do.

I cannot believe this is a real name…

No clue if this is an acceptable post, but royal road seems like it would be a good fit for an original book I have written. It’s ready to go give or take, but I wouldn’t publish it all at once. I am familiar with wattpad and ff.net

I think it would do better on RR, it’s got elements of game progression and action along with a unique setting and what I think are really funny characters. However it’s not actually a LitRPG, it just has elements.
So… I guess my question is- what are royal road readers like? What should I know about the people who use this platform?

I have the full book ready and wanted to do weekly uploads because that gives me more time to alter the story based on feedback, fits in with my day job, and I think it builds suspense for the reader.

As a writer I wanted to go slow and steady and see what’s working as I can change the manuscript whenever or add things people might suggest, but looking online I see some people actually want daily uploads and other people suggest it’s difficult to grow the story if you do weekly.

Daily is too much for me, given the complexity of the later stuff in this book. I have most of it done, but let’s say readers dislike something and I need to change it, I’ll need time to move the other elements around and make it all work. Even without feedback I’d spend at least a week on each currently existing chapter to make sure it’s fully ready to go and I’m happy with it.

So I’m not sure. What do you think?

I’m caught up to egghead so far (not elbaph). I’ve seen the main fights that Luffy appears in gear 5 (end of wano and during egghead). Overall, while i thought it was a bit of an asspull at first I came to appreciate gear 5 a lot more as I thought about what it means for Luffy. People say it makes luffy op and it’s not satisfying, but I think given one piece’s themes and villains it’s actually a near perfect idea.

So first of all- the appearance. At the end of Gear 4 Luffy learns to use fire moves like red roc which is like his spirit of resistance burning red. In one piece we see so much of how resistance causes suffering. This is the embodiment of that.

Luffy in his first 4 gears is already burning all his energy to keep resisting. Gear 2 and 3 were to resist the government while all the gear 4 techniques were for warlords and Yonko. Gear 4 reaches its limit when Luffy almost dies

Gear 5 has luffy turn white because he’s finally achieved the limit of rubber power and transcended resistance. He’s burning white smoke like a fast tyre on a hot road. So thats why it’s white, it’s the peak. I think it will be his final form but idk, I’m not the author.

Now as for the narrative and powers. This is where it really shines for me.

One piece’s world is about many different figures many of whom bend and reshape the world through cruelty oppression and violence. At the top are the world government and celestial dragons who pretend to be gods and act with impunity, enslaving and abusing the rest of the world.

The story is filled with people who reach their limit with the world and feel burned too. Corazon, kuma, robin, hell even Luffy himself at sabaody, and so forth. However there’s also people like Rayleigh (who mentored Luffy) who have fought to the very end and are so liberated the government is scared to mess with them. Most of the yonko are at similar levels. To truly transcend the struggle, Luffy must become like Rayleigh.

That’s what gear 5 represents. Luffy’s new powers are cartoonish and vibrant, his attitude is happy and energetic. Because he IS the very essence of liberation now. He doesn’t need to be angry and hateful or edgy in this form because he’s free. That’s why he laughs. He’s so happy just to be alive, he revels in his power. Rayleigh lives happily in his house knowing no one will bother him, Luffy can laugh at the top of his lungs anywhere on earth because he’s in the same position.

Gear 5 Luffy can literally bend the world around him into rubber. He can inspire hope and happiness with his drums of liberation. He isn’t a vengeful angry fighter, he’s the very spirit of liberation.

Imagine if you were a Gorosei and you’ve spent your life enslaving people and abusing them because you are a god.

Now there is a person who slaps his ass at you during a fight, inspired your threats and conspirators like Bonney and the giants to fight back against you, and also is a ‘filthy pirate’ as the celestial dragons say, who is now rapidly ascending through the world. You cannot scare this person. He is not fuelled by a wish for justice like Sabo, or a desire to protect his family like Kuma. He is completely free in this state. You have nothing but your own fists to tear him down with. And he’ll laugh while swatting your fists away. He reshapes the world just like you did.

Gear 5 Luffy is perfect because he is everything the celestial dragons pretend to be. He is a god who laughs at the 5 elder’s struggle and barely cares about them, and I can’t imagine a better way for the world government to receive their payback.

I’ve got some theories about Azula that might be interesting. On my first watch I thought ‘oh, they had to make her go insane after being betrayed towards the end of book 3, because otherwise she wouldn’t be beatable at all’ which made sense to me. I thought it was sort of a cop out so that Zuko could win. But the thing is, Azula wasn’t physically weaker, she could still bend lighting and fire perfectly and got the comet boost.

I feel there’s actually more to it, and with that context I feel her character becomes more interesting. I know some of these are hot takes and you might not agree which is fine not looking to argue.

Based on some of her dialogue, actions, and behaviour here’s some stuff I noticed.

Theory 1: ozai was the first major step in her breakdown, not mai and ty lee.

On the day of black sun Zuko tells ozai the truth. Azula has been lying to him, and the truth of what she was hiding was enough to convince ozai to try and murder Zuko on the spot the minute the sun came out. Ozai now knows Azula was openly lying to cover herself because she couldn’t prove Aang was dead.

Later, after Zuko defected and Aang is revealed to be alive, we see that Azula is sent to hunt them down. She had a hunch Aang was alive before but didn’t act on it? This is pure conjecture, but I think Ozai ordered Azula to kill them both without formally banishing her, in the hopes that she’d end up either redeeming herself of getting killed. Azula was put into a similar position as zuko was and she starts to slip.

Theory 2: Azula might have cared about Zuko in a surprising way. She did have an ideal life in her head beyond the war.

Azula is a cold blooded strategist, but she’s actually quite the patriot. She doesn’t want the cities named after herself, she gives them to the fire lord. She believes everything sozin and Azulon wrote, doesn’t question it, and goes after enemies without mercy or question, so I think she is the culmination of the imperialist ideology sozin created.

I think her ‘dream’ is to end the war as swiftly as possible to make up for iroh’s failure to conquer ba sing se, which is why she hates him so deeply. She’s also very clearly scared of ozai and the one time we see her challenge him she flinches. She knows her boundaries and respects her nation.

When Zuko comes back to the fire nation, IDK if it’s stated explicitly but I think Zuko once again becomes the next in line to succeed ozai. She’s surprised when ozai declares her fire lord (it was a very sudden announcement, but I suppose she was already thinking it).

Azula doesn’t seem to mind letting Zuko be next in line because it’s fire nation custom (she even boosts his reputation with the people by saying he killed Aang and tells him it’s not too soon to start with the court painter). Obviously I know she was being strategic with Aang’s potential survival but if Aang was that big a threat, wouldn’t she have gone looking for him after conquering ba sing se rather than come home right away? She just went home despite suspecting the threat to the fire nation was alive. Either she thought he was sufficiently weakened or set Zuko up for a reason that could get them both killed.

She warns Zuko not to hang out with Iroh but never tells ozai about that and even goes on beach trips with him. I think she genuinely was expecting Zuko to become the next fire lord and was trying to prepare him for what that would mean. My theory is that she was showing love to Zuko in her twisted strategic way or wanted to use him as a puppet to extend her own rule. This ultimately contributed to her mental decline, knowing even her brother who she tried to show some form of love and culture towards ultimately ended up rejecting or failing her like Iroh and Ursa.

Theory 3: Zuko’s inner turmoil might be genetic.

Zuko goes through physical illness because of his inner turmoil. I think it’s because the blue spirit inside him (Roku Aang and his perspective of the world) is clashing with the red spirit (sozin Azula and ozai) as we see in ba sing se.

However because both Azula and Zuko are roku’s descendants, I think they both experience this but to different extents.

My last theory is that Azula gets her blue fire bending because she has the avatar’s bloodline inside of her as well as royalty. Ozai doesn’t have blue fire and that is precisely why he married ursa, to improve the power of his next of kin.

She’s followed her red spirit and her connection to Roku and the world is completely severed. She’s left a power obsessed husk who had all the good in her brushed out by her father. She’s going through the same thing as Zuko in season 2 in the finale because she also travelled through the entire earth kingdom and never once stopped to think like Zuko did, about the fire nation’s true role in hurting the world.

That’s why Azula can’t connect with her own citizens at all after the connections are severed. The people of the fire nation were once peaceful industrial and cultural people, not warmongers. She goes insane when Zuko ozai mai and ty lee leave her on an empty throne because she doesn’t even understand herself at this point.

So tldr: Azula’s blue fire is because she was the product of Roku and sozin’s bloodlines to create a perfect firebender, while zuko ended up inheriting the avatar’s will and integrated that into his bending which was how he overpowered her in the end.

Her breakdown isn’t just from ursa mai and ty lee, it’s because Zuko left her too, because ozai stopped trusting her as much, and because a genetic element may play into it too.

So I’ve not read comics, but I’ve seen both ATLA and Korra.

Basically Azula sent everyone away, so no one actually saw the Agni Kai with Zuko. Katara was the only witness and she’s not exactly a fire nation authority.

Also how the hell did they bring ozai back? Appa was in the capital and the fleet was destroyed, did the fire nation willingly go get him? Was the entire fire nation just like ‘ok, welcome home Zuko’?

I’d get it if it were like, ‘oh Azula dishonourably attacked Katara so she forfeited the Agni Kai’ but no one saw that happen. How did the fire nation end up hosting a delegation like in the finale when people from all nations arrived to greet Aang and Zuko? Did they coronate Zuko the minute he beat Azula?

Afaik from what I’ve seen of the comics, the fire nation technically remained the winners of the war but chose to relinquish the colonies while Zuko and Aang worked out the differences. Ozai had some loyalists and Azula escapes at some point. Basically all I know