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Nice blog post! And for what it's worth, I've grown somewhat more tolerant of ellipses over the years. Have they worn me down? ...Maybe. I suppose the key is using them with intentionality, and not as a typographical shrug that takes the place of finishing a thought or properly punctuating a sentence. To your point, it's hard for an ellipsis to do the important work of demarcating time when those same three dots are also being employed in a dozen other pointless odd-jobs throughout the text.

In terms of books I sampled (read the first ten chapters at least) the number balloons to 300 or so... the seventy I'm talking about are the ones I was finding the most interesting. Here is a list of the ones I enjoyed the most (even if some were trashy). The Chaos Seeds (think an isekai/other world story with a protagonist who constantly swings back and forth between enlightened self-interest, pragmatism, and lust for power/stat geeking). The Stork Tower (extremely interesting dystopian future with a genius street rat who makes powerful enemies in the virtual and real worlds) Light Online (protagonist starts out as an out-of-luck NEET who is about to be turned into a virtual slave and then manages to rise high by playing a VRMMO in an unusual style). The Ten Realms - Protagonists are an amputee mercenary named Erik and his comrade and best friend Rugrat. They end up in the Ten Realms, two soldiers in a land of magic, and they quickly realize the only way to be themselves is to gain power and challenge themselves. Sort of a blend of Wuxia cultivation, military fantasy, and craft obsessive nation-building with two foul-mouthed soldiers with hidden depths leading the way. The Dark Elf Chronicles- In a future where a 'zombie particle' has contaminated most of the lifeforms on Earth, a few survivors try to live long enough to find a way to copy themselves into an online game while also stabilizing said game so it won't be a pure hellworld when they do so. Tons of ups and downs in this story. The Shadow Sun series- In this one, a mysterious System essentially unleashes massive numbers of super-powered monsters to cull humanity in preparation for aliens bidding on the land and resources. Very much a survival apocalypse story for the first three books. The Silver Fox & the Western Hero - Pure Wuxia with hardcore cultivation and horrid levels of racial prejudice... and a young former American plopped down in the middle who has a stat sheet in his head. The protagonist seems fairly normal, until he isn't. He is intelligent to the point of being brilliant, and absolutely devoted to the path he chooses. However, he is also capable of rising above his own desires at key points. Honestly, I can't wait until the next one comes out. Battleborne- First in a new series about a soldier who dies with his unit and gets reincarnated as a combination of several races by a Valkyrie as reward for his life of war and bravery. All Trades- A former conman goes into a virtual reality game to earn the money to give back to the family that supported him after his term in prison. He really has turned a new leaf, but he quickly finds himself riding the figurative tiger by the tail as he tries to do right by those around him while also earning enough money to pay off his loan shark.

This was in very belated indirect response to him actually lol. His arguments in that post has been in the back of my head for a while, and recently I ran into it again by accident. Which prompted me to write this. So yeah you're right on the money!