A Hero's War [Web Novel]

[Dart-Sama]

Original Title : A Hero's War
Author : jseah
Publisher : Fictionpress
Status : Ongoing (updates every 10 days or so)
jseah's fictionpress acount

Sinopsis: Morey is summoned to a fantasy world under seige by the forces of darkness, called a Hero by the natives. Unknown to them, they got two 'Heroes' for the price of one. Dumped into a strange and dangerous fantasy world, Cato struggles to find out what happened to him and where he is. And perhaps there are advantages to not being a Hero. And perhaps not all the legends are true...

MC: hes the resouceful kind (MacGyver xD), not that dificult given their low lvl of tech.
plus: there is fluffy girls =D (a fenec-like race and a winged one so far, but there got to be more right?)

[maxxus0923]

ok... you have my curiosity

answer the obligatory questions

[Riz]

please answer the usual question

[Dart-Sama]

hahahaha well...
hes capable of sensing magic force but hasnt learned any so far, hes at farmer power lvl so far
and there are lots of girls around but hes not getting any atention xD

but hey! there is only 23 short chaps so far, despair not!

[maxxus0923]

as in farmer?


Tell me what are the features of your MC?

[elairz]

bookmarked for now. will read it when im free.

[jseah]

Hi, I'm the author of this story. I was wondering why my traffic suddenly jumped and did a bit of googling...

I'm flattered that someone thought it was worth recommending!

You can also find the story on Archive of Our Own with a longer summary: (FFnet has too low character limit)

Morey is summoned to a fantasy world under siege by the forces of darkness, called a Hero by the natives. He undertakes a journey to the sword of legend in order to obtain the power to save the world. Unknown to them, they got two 'Heroes' for the price of one.

Dumped into a strange and dangerous fantasy world, Cato struggles to find out what happened to him and where he is. And how to survive, there's still an army of monsters to worry about after all. For the enemy is far more dangerous than anyone had ever figured and without help, there might be no one left to save by the time Morey finds the sword.

Perhaps there are advantages to not being a Hero. And perhaps not all the legends are true...

OP may wish to edit the first post to use this one.

AO3 has better presentation and formatting but FF.net is more popular, so take your pick. I'll follow this thread so any criticism or suggestions can be received here or on the FF.net review system.


I'm curious about these obligatory questions but to answer them with my author's cap on would be spoilers wouldn't it? =P

FYI, I'm shooting for a more MaoYuu / Log Horizon / Ring of Fire style feeling than Shield Hero. The MC has no need for magic or even to be powerful at fighting.
Morey's side is more like a traditional "Hero" route (and hence why he's not the MC).

[BlackGaruda]

Like, how is he resourceful, can you cite examples?
I haven't watched MacGyver yet, so I don't know him.

And is he wimpy, aggressive, or just chill?

[wuhugm]

ooo, the author himself is here an unorthodox MC huh, interesting....

seems to be schemer/tactician MC

[jseah]

If I was writing a character description... note that most of this refers to MC before he arrives in the fantasy world. Some parts of this information may take many chapters before it gets introduced (the engineer bit only comes up in ch26)

Cato Lois
Age: 21
Male

Short black hair and medium height (for Earth). A thin unmuscular young man with too pale skin from staying indoors. Likes to wear loose and unfitting clothing, sees fashion as unnecessary.

Cato was studying to be an engineer before he suddenly awoke in a fantasy world. While not shy, he remains aloof and finds it hard to form emotional connections.
Reads widely, not just fiction but also reference books and wiki-walking. Not lazy but also not too hardworking, has no strong passions to drive him. Anti-social hobbies and not afraid to speak his mind, he makes few friends due to reclusive personality.
Has a highly analytical mind and finds it hard to leave something unknown. "Things Man was not meant to know" irritates him to no end. After arriving in the new world, he's already begun to take notes and muses about what he sees and learns.

----------------

As for examples, I'll say you could summarize the entire first arc with the quote: "Know Thy Enemy".

[maxxus0923]

Originally Posted by jseah

If I was writing a character description... note that most of this refers to MC before he arrives in the fantasy world. Some parts of this information may take many chapters before it gets introduced (the engineer bit only comes up in ch26)

Cato Lois
Age: 21
Male

Short black hair and medium height (for Earth). A thin unmuscular young man with too pale skin from staying indoors. Likes to wear loose and unfitting clothing, sees fashion as unnecessary.

Cato was studying to be an engineer before he suddenly awoke in a fantasy world. While not shy, he remains aloof and finds it hard to form emotional connections.
Reads widely, not just fiction but also reference books and wiki-walking. Not lazy but also not too hardworking, has no strong passions to drive him. Anti-social hobbies and not afraid to speak his mind, he makes few friends due to reclusive personality.
Has a highly analytical mind and finds it hard to leave something unknown. "Things Man was not meant to know" irritates him to no end. After arriving in the new world, he's already begun to take notes and muses about what he sees and learns.

----------------

As for examples, I'll say you could summarize the entire first arc with the quote: "Know Thy Enemy".

i see... i expect him to have howitzers as the story goes on... after all Bonaparte said

"God fights on the side with the best artillery"

He doesn't need to be a hero... he can be a legion

[SineMora]

Originally Posted by maxxus0923

i see... i expect him to have howitzers as the story goes on... after all Bonaparte said

"God fights on the side with the best artillery"

He doesn't need to be a hero... he can be a legion

[maxxus0923]

Originally Posted by SineMora

well said... err.. i mean picture

[Dart-Sama]

OHHHHH i summoned the author? hahaaaaaa
hi jseah!

[SineMora]

Pardon my blunder, posting using mobile phones is a headache...

[Dart-Sama]

new chapter and...

Spoiler for noooooooo:

that damn earl kicked him out of the region... well, good bye fluffy ppl =(, hello new world

[Dart-Sama]

new chapter and...

Spoiler for as expected:

he got "tailed" xD (hahaha u get me? xD)

[jseah]

Despite the increase in readership, I still receive almost no criticism or comments. >.>

So, I would like to ask a few questions regarding the writing. Note that not everyone likes the same sort of story, while a vehement... discussion over my story would be all kinds of flattering, I wouldn't like to see forumites kill each other over these differences.

Spoiler for Questions:

1) Pacing. Do you feel the story progresses too fast? Should more words/time be spent on developing characters and setting in favour of solving the current arc's problem?
Arc and chapter length will naturally increase as the world expands but this is more gradual; I'm asking to gauge whether the style of writing matches expectations.
Unfortunately, I can't speed up the pacing much from where it is now. Writing in a more western style is inevitably slower than the Japanese LN style.

2) Tone, atmosphere, general feel. In general, the arcs are quite light in tone and emotionally detached. I would say that this is due to viewing things through Cato's POV but in reality this is my default writing style.
Do you feel the story could do with a darker or more comedic tone? Emotional weight could also be increased but might take me a bit longer to write, lol.

Spoiler for Later Arc Planning:

A later arc, 5 or 6, has a darker tone with some possibly disturbing themes. A consequence of mind-affecting magic I suppose.

3) Characterization. Do you feel that various characters are given sufficient 'screen' time? Which character would you like to see developed further? (side stories, parallel branches and so on are expected to happen as the cast expands -more than half the expected *minimum* number of characters have yet to be introduced-)
Of course, the more time spent on various characters, the slower the story pacing gets. One way to avoid this is to branch the story with a different main character. It's still too early to do this IMO, but YMMV so your opinion is appreciated.

4) Setting. Or more precisely setting development. While I have a very large portion of the background and overall structure worked out, weaving this into the story without excessively long infodumps is hard. Eg. The crysteel mini-dump was commented to me in RL that it was a bit long.
So, more detail and description comes at a cost of increased length, slower pacing and more words to get anywhere. But posting speed should stay roughly the same, writing description is very easy.

5) Plot content. A small subset of it anyway. I'm asking about the balance of action vs other things. Specifically, do you as the reader wish to see at least some amount of action (in the sense of stuff blowing up) each arc? Each chapter? (probably too much to ask) Or is an entire arc spent on political machinations resulting in a bloodless confrontation considered enough action?
This is obviously the most YMMV portion, so I'm not really going to change too much but future arc planning still has room for increasing or decreasing the... hawkishness of various antagonists / obstacles. Of course, the war itself is still pretty high on the action side, but we're about to move away from the front lines for at least a few arcs so the baseline action level will go down unless I do some replanning.
And there still is Morey's side which is the more traditional Hero's Journey stuff and so necessarily has lots of fighting action.

Of course, you may not have any specific comments. That's fine too. In which case, I would like to ask you which chapter was your favourite. That's also useful in aggregate.


I also expect any answers/opinions to change over time so feel free to re-answer them as the story progresses.

[Dart-Sama]

Originally Posted by jseah

Despite the increase in readership, I still receive almost no criticism or comments. >.>

So, I would like to ask a few questions regarding the writing. Note that not everyone likes the same sort of story, while a vehement... discussion over my story would be all kinds of flattering, I wouldn't like to see forumites kill each other over these differences.

Spoiler for Questions:

1) Pacing. Do you feel the story progresses too fast? Should more words/time be spent on developing characters and setting in favour of solving the current arc's problem?
Arc and chapter length will naturally increase as the world expands but this is more gradual; I'm asking to gauge whether the style of writing matches expectations.
Unfortunately, I can't speed up the pacing much from where it is now. Writing in a more western style is inevitably slower than the Japanese LN style.

2) Tone, atmosphere, general feel. In general, the arcs are quite light in tone and emotionally detached. I would say that this is due to viewing things through Cato's POV but in reality this is my default writing style.
Do you feel the story could do with a darker or more comedic tone? Emotional weight could also be increased but might take me a bit longer to write, lol.

Spoiler for Later Arc Planning:

A later arc, 5 or 6, has a darker tone with some possibly disturbing themes. A consequence of mind-affecting magic I suppose.

3) Characterization. Do you feel that various characters are given sufficient 'screen' time? Which character would you like to see developed further? (side stories, parallel branches and so on are expected to happen as the cast expands -more than half the expected *minimum* number of characters have yet to be introduced-)
Of course, the more time spent on various characters, the slower the story pacing gets. One way to avoid this is to branch the story with a different main character. It's still too early to do this IMO, but YMMV so your opinion is appreciated.

4) Setting. Or more precisely setting development. While I have a very large portion of the background and overall structure worked out, weaving this into the story without excessively long infodumps is hard. Eg. The crysteel mini-dump was commented to me in RL that it was a bit long.
So, more detail and description comes at a cost of increased length, slower pacing and more words to get anywhere. But posting speed should stay roughly the same, writing description is very easy.

5) Plot content. A small subset of it anyway. I'm asking about the balance of action vs other things. Specifically, do you as the reader wish to see at least some amount of action (in the sense of stuff blowing up) each arc? Each chapter? (probably too much to ask) Or is an entire arc spent on political machinations resulting in a bloodless confrontation considered enough action?
This is obviously the most YMMV portion, so I'm not really going to change too much but future arc planning still has room for increasing or decreasing the... hawkishness of various antagonists / obstacles. Of course, the war itself is still pretty high on the action side, but we're about to move away from the front lines for at least a few arcs so the baseline action level will go down unless I do some replanning.
And there still is Morey's side which is the more traditional Hero's Journey stuff and so necessarily has lots of fighting action.

Of course, you may not have any specific comments. That's fine too. In which case, I would like to ask you which chapter was your favourite. That's also useful in aggregate.


I also expect any answers/opinions to change over time so feel free to re-answer them as the story progresses.

the speed prog is ok, 25 chaps for the intro is sort of canon nodaways.

the tone... we still have no idea about the overall tone of the novel so, no idea how to reply xD, i mean, does he get emotionally scarred in the story, does he get to feel the wrongness of medieval zoociety? does he get grudges? someone tries to erradicate him? etc etc, thats on the dark side, now on the bright side, does he makes life better for ppl somewhere? (this already happened once to the fukas so far) does he impact communities where he goes? does his researchs spread to the world? he makes friends? does he grows a party? does he develops romantic relationships? etc etc

i dont know what to say about side chars, after all there are temporal n permanent side chars, usually u only explain the past n reasons of the permanent ones, usually, as for screen time, thats up to their roll in the novel =P, no good writer is gonna scarcely mention someone impactful for the MC n his life, unless its about someone neglected by the picted environment who accidental n surprisingly affect the story.

setting... discusing that with the target public could be very bad, how about a senior writer, do u have or could u get one to try?

same for the plot, they are practically siames with the setting

[hyuugalegacy]

Hm, seems interesting. Okay I'm sold I'll give it a go.