Well, it is somewhat correct. Super-powering the MC without increasing the threat posed by the bad guys makes for a boring story. Usually though you just need to remove plot armour.

 

"Balance" should have precisely 0 bearing on narrative. Two sides of a conflict don't need to be perfectly even for the conflict to be interesting. In fact, most of the time, a perfectly even conflict is incredibly boring. You want lopsided and uneven conflicts, one way or the other, because that's when you're able to surprise the audience and/or draw them into it. That saying about lightsabers and death stars came from a decent place originally, insofar as at its heart is the idea of "keep the conflict interesting", but so few people actually understand it that it's become incredibly toxic. I can't wait til the day that shit dies forever.

 

Oh please.

No one is suggesting a perfectly balanced story. It's about avoiding a boring curbstomp fight.

 

And yet that quote is trotted out at every possibility by people banging on about how X is overpowered, like that means anything, and that Y must subsequently also be made overpowered, regardless of how well that fits the narrative, themes, or style of the work.

For example, let's examine the original quote. If you give Frodo a lightsaber, you must also give Sauron a Death Star. This exact example, what should be the ultimate, inarguable example of the scenario, is at the most basic level ridiculous. If you gave Frodo a lightsaber (or hell, went the extra mile and made him a full-on Jedi), he'd still have 0 chance against Sauron in any kind of confrontation, direct or otherwise. Hell, any one of the Nazgul would still utterly annihilate Frodo in a fight, literally the only scenario where a lightsaber has any practical purpose, simply by virtue of being who and what they are. The match up is so hilariously one-sided already that no amount of powerups for the Fellowship short of spontaneously becoming Illuvatar himself would have any meaning.

And yet, in the interest of "fairness" and "balance", people who have no idea what they're talking about beat into new authors' heads that they have to give an equivalent boost to the other side.

It's goddamn sickening. Good writing is engaging and interesting on its own merits, not because the conflict is "fair" or "balanced". A skilled author can give Frodo the goddamn Death Star and make the story interesting. It's all in the presentation and focus of the story. Boiling every story down to boilerplate "physical conflict is the only conflict" and "all conflict must be fair" is beyond fucking retarded and limits you as both an author and a reader. Stop reading the shit posted on spacebattles and go find some quality fiction already.


Huh, I get goddamn ranty when sleep-deprived.

 

Nice job putting words in my mouth and continuing to miss what I said. There is no discussion here if you continue to be asinine.

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I don't even know where that last sentence came from.

 

Actually didn't think about that.

I'm all for HenriettaLouise (in fact, I ship that shit so hard and I don't think I've ever really seen it done yet), but it still doesn't seem to fit in with the fact that Louise should be mature enough, as an experienced adult, not to fall into that sort of unreasonable and aggressive tantrum. Especially for someone who is really, a distant childhood friend that she should struggle to remember well.

 

Is she actually an adult? I don't remember reading it in the story but I assumed she was only in Tamriel for a year, maybe two. Combine that with her well meaning but somewhat dysfunctional childhood and schooling, followed by being thrown into a head fuck (from her perspective) world, and you're got a recipe for a somewhat dysfunctional individual.

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I've only seen a few Louise/Henrietta fics before and they certainly weren't worth mentioning. Quite a few shitty harem fics that pair them and others up as well.

 

Short answer - we don't know. Long answer - the author isn't telling.
At the academy only three days passed while Colbert was searching for a way to bring her back. We only know that a lot more time passed in Mundus.

We have this quote from old osmond shortly after her arrival in Halkeginia:

And this quote from the author himself:

Whis is quite vague if you consider that vampires don't age, and that there were quite a few hints that Louise isn't quite human.

Personally I'd say more than 2 years, less than a decade. The flashback with Serana mentioned Lydia and a few other mortal characters still running around and being active, so 10 years is the maximum timeperiod my SoD is willing to accept.
The civil war questline is finished, Alduin is defeated and she traveled a lot a had quite a few adventures before she was resummoned.

 

Didn't Kirch make a comment about her hair which happened right at the start of the story?

 

Not sure which text passage you mean...
The story starts[1] with Louise waking up in Skyrim, tied to a horse. The first ZnT chapter is chapter 7 - Colbert's interlude, that ends with him, Charlotte and Kirche resummoning Louise. Then we get several chapters continuing Louise's adventures in Skyrim. It's only in chapter 14 that we finally end up in Halkeginia.

There is a passage with Kirche later on, I'm not sure whether it is the one you mean;

Here Louise claims to be older than Kirche. Thing is, it has been a long time since I've last read the lightnovels so I can't recall if we ever got an exact age for Kirche.
I think Louise was 15 or 16 at the start of the story.



[1] I really liked that Poliamida skipped the Summoning scene. Nine out of ten ZnT fics start with that goddamn scene..

 

9/10 also have the fight with Guiche.

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This part:

 

Huh, okay. Fair enough. For some reason I thought Louise was a LOT older than everyone else. Like, late 20s sort of older. Maybe I mixed it all up in my head.

Makes a bit more sense if it's only been a couple of years. She's experienced a lot, but is still a teen who hasn't quite matured fully.

 

So I started reading this and was pleasantly surprised. I'm not a big fan of Louise as a character at the best of times, but it got some praise in one of the Skyrim threads.

The story up until the death of Mirmulnir is great. The disparity in mindset and circumstance forces Louise to face her fears and prejudices, and she grows tremendously as a person and protagonist. Nearly 150k words of genuinely enjoyable content that I'd happily give a 4/5.

That said, everything that came after is fucking trash. I'm actually upset because everything post-timeskip is a disappointment I can barely put into words. Louise not only reverts from her purported growth after however many years as Dragonborn, she even rolls back on the growth we saw in the first section explicitly. She is meant to be a mature, hardened, battle-tested heroine who has endured great hardship while separated from everything she'd ever known or loved. Instead, they have taken the defiant heroine we were getting to know and given us some half developed abomination that can't decide if she's ZnT Louise or someone else.

Her interactions with pretty much every character after returning were so frustrating that I actually stopped reading after five or six chapters of garbage and started hitting next chapter repeatedly hoping I'd see a return to the original timeline. When that didn't come to pass, I went back to keep trying. It didn't get better.

I would be less frustrated if it was a dumpster fire from the beginning, but instead I was given a taste of something great and then force fed mediocrity.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

4/5 up to the timeskip, but a 2/5 for everything after and that's what I'll give it. What a shame.

 

So basically the recommendation is to read only the Skyrim arc?

On another note, do you need to be familiar with Family of Zero? I've never read any of it but I know Skyrim. Is that enough to follow the story?

 

I'm not sure how satisfying you'd find it with no familiarity with Familiar of Zero. It's precisely because of her personality, background, and world that makes her an interesting foil for the Skyrim setting. You'll likely not be confused as the differences are addressed when she discovers them, but this is most enjoyed as a character piece in my opinion.

 

Personally I'm a fan of both sections though the ZnT section is a bit slow and plodding with far to infrequent updates. I get why you're frustrated but the post-timeskip and pre-timeskip Louise are very different characters, they both are incredibly prejudiced which may be what got you confused but they have different prejudices and different reasons for their prejudice. For instance the the ZnT louise is fiercely proud of her own nature as a mage and her country due to her own insecurities over her lack of Magic whereas the post-timeskip Louise has similar traits but they are more rooted in her personal experiences and growth as a character, as well as her own selfish whims. The ZnT Louise would never dare insult or criticize Henrietta but the timeskip Louise is perfectly willing too when prompted by her dual interests of skyrim-fueled patriotism and romantic love for the princess which she is more willing to act on due to Skyrim's influence. A core point of the post-timeskip section is that Louise is still incredibly insecure but that she has hidden that through her own immense personal strength and this comes across very well in some of the later chapters though it is perhaps too heavy handedly implemented.