What is smashing? Is it to smash or to be smashed? Is it an expression of how smashable something is? Is it a unit of measurement or standard by which we may base our society?
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Does the smashing love me or do I love the smashing? Oh, woe is me this follower of smashing to be unable to comprehend the depths of the way!
Oh, sorry where was I? Oh yes! I read a handful of chapters from The Last Philosopher by NickofEast and it left me very comtemplative! Blame her!
TLDR; A original universe filled with indepth thought and self-reflection starting from a creation story wrapped in comedic bacon, and sprinkled in insanity and digested by philosophical characters. There is even a philosophical rock!
The story is reasonably long, being 90+ chapters and still going (with how she has structured it, we can say 60+ as every 1 of 3 chapters is just a philospical line.) and I have read about 8-10 chapters so naturally what I say may not be the final result in its end.
Bonus points: The editor seems to actively go back and edit the story chapters to update them. This is very visible and is worth noting. The author clearly loves her story and is invested in it.
World Building: Where it begins... LITERALLY! - The story starts with a creation story so its only worthy that we start there. The story has maps hand-drawn and clear. There are nations, factions, and laws of both culture and nature brought up galore. Half of the time they are not explored further when you first hear of them, but with how the narrative goes, you also don't need to know more about them until much later half the time anyway. The world building can be rather telling-rather-than-showing a lot, and this is to the stories detrement when you are wanting to be from the perspective of a character and all of a sudden he is thinking about history, laws, events, and STUFF to add on to the world that, at the moment, leaves me confused as to what relevance it holds at the time. Yet, just as I can say that I feel like I am having an entire world shoved down my throat, I can also appreciate how much care, attention, structure, and thought the author has put into her world. She is not half-assing this! It makes the story dense, and so you need to actively filter out relevant information vs non-relevant information, but positively with an original entire universe you also feel it is alive. You are dropped into the ocean and you gotta keep up.
It also really helps that everything is comedic. People's names are funny. How they think is comedic. Even the gods that play a role in the background are basically comedians! So its no wonder its all one giant joke in a sense, if the creators of everything enjoy trolling and slipping those bananas under people's feet. The universe isn't so comedic that it doesn't make sense, but rather keeps it very light so it doesn't feel like you are having such a dense story being shoved on you. Like Silmillarion...
One thing that really doesn't help the story, though, is that while many events and nations are brought up, and the characters act like there is some importance to these beforementioned things, there is no weight left on the readers. It is like going back in time to 500BC and saying "Oh Hitler was just so bad..." People won't get it and so won't have personal weight, understanding, or experience to create a proper emotional reaction. It is like an inside joke you aren't let in on.
