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I never thought to check to see if SA had a web serial thread, but this is a nice find. I read Worm a few years back, then recently re-read it side-by-side with a friend right as Ward started. Now I'm starting Ward (on the arc 4 interludes now), and the concept of actually being caught up and reading as stuff comes out live is really weird. But cool. I think. I'll have to check out some of the OP recommendations, for sure. I don't have a whole lot to add here since I'm still not fully caught up with Ward, so I'll just lurk and avoid all the massive blocks of spoiler text for a while.
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Oct 26, 2018 14:41
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I just went back and looked at the OP and realized that there isn't any description for Practical Guide except for a link. I know the Shortest Path still posts in the thread so someone should type up something to put in the OP given that it is probably the most frequently discussed ongoing serial aside from Ward.
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Oct 26, 2018 14:56
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poo poo yeah I've been slacking real hard on OP updates. I've even mostly read Prac Guide in the intermittent time. If someone can get me a good summary of that, Worth the Candle, and anything else worth putting in there that would be rad. Also welcome to the thread Aranan.
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Oct 26, 2018 15:15
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Maybe add daily grind too. It’s p excellent and weird.
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Oct 26, 2018 15:58
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Practical Guide: A destitute but brave orphan helps a stranger and passes a nobleman's secret test of character. He adopts her and shares his love of learning and literature. The orphan begins to bond with others through their shared love of stories, until her circle of friends have become the family she never had. (Also, a million zillion warcrimes happen and she tortures or kills basically everybody who isn't one of the five or so people she actually likes.) So that was way harder to write with a straight face than I thought it'd be.
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Oct 26, 2018 16:15
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Omi no Kami posted:Practical Guide: A destitute but brave orphan helps a stranger and passes a nobleman's secret test of character. He adopts her and shares his love of learning and literature. The orphan begins to bond with others through their shared love of stories, until her circle of friends have become the family she never had. (Also, a million zillion warcrimes happen and she tortures or kills basically everybody who isn't one of the five or so people she actually likes.)
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Oct 26, 2018 16:49
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Bhodi posted:it's a rags to riches tale of a small but fierce girl who grows up in a homeless shelter, is rescued by a literal knight in shining armor, then she goes on adventures and quests to find herself and ends up queen of her nation Ooh, that's better, but hmm... it'd be nice to get "Friends brought together by a mutual love of stories" in there somewhere, because it's such an innocuous framing for such a superlatively hosed-up narrative.
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Oct 26, 2018 16:56
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Worth the Candle: A slightly emo but surprisingly mature teen gets dumped into a grotesque amalgamation of (early setting spoiler) the settings he created as a dungeon master. Aerb is not a kind world: there are lots of hells, no heaven, and the motorcycles run on extracted souls. But at least our plucky hero is OP as all hell and has the key to seven locks. WtC is a LitRPG that tonally feels nothing like other LitRPG's. Want a story where the hero is amazed and delighted by their new world and abilities, and has lots of fun, energizing adventures? Well then get the gently caress out because that ain't Worth the Candle; this is a LitRPG that takes poo poo serious. WtC is very well-written, especially by web serial standards, but also ratfic (rational fiction), heavy on on the rat, which is not to everyone's tastes. Cicero fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Nov 14, 2018 |
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Oct 26, 2018 17:30
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I also enjoyed this series: Pokemon -- Origin of Species: A rational take on 11-year olds wandering the world with their enslaved animal friends. Featuring logical science kid, charismatic battle dude, and bleeding-heart reporter girl. https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9794740/1/Pokemon-The-Origin-of-Species Cicero fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Oct 26, 2018 |
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Oct 26, 2018 17:39
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I don't think expanding this thread to include fanfiction is necessarily a good idea. I thought about making a separate thread for that a while ago to branch off some of the discussion in the Let's Read HPMOR thread but it died and that never went anywhere.
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Oct 26, 2018 18:06
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The Shortest Path posted:I don't think expanding this thread to include fanfiction is necessarily a good idea. I thought about making a separate thread for that a while ago to branch off some of the discussion in the Let's Read HPMOR thread but it died and that never went anywhere. That thread deserved to die because the OP was constantly shrieking about HOW DOES A TWELVE YEAR OLD ACT LIKE THIS when that was the least unbelievable or unpalatable thing about the entire story, and they were rightly shat all over by the other posters.
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Oct 26, 2018 18:24
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Oh I'm certainly not disagreeing. But there was some pretty good general fanfiction discussion there in between the updates for a while, which is a thing that doesn't really happen anywhere else on SA.
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Oct 26, 2018 18:27
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If we're doing random recommends that aren't in the OP and don't get talked about in the thread much... Void Domain - It's a lot like Harry Potter, except instead of being a gormless capital "H" hero who gets by with the power of love and friendship Eva is instead a vicious girl with a penchant for brutal blood magic and deals with demons. It has an edge over a lot of other web fiction in that it is already complete! No waiting for updates here. The whole thing comes in at a hair over a million words. (The author has moved onto another project Vacant Throne that I know nothing about but if you like one you might like the other.) The "hidden world of magic" that exists in setting requires a bit of suspension of disbelief but if you can get past that it's all pretty well set up, the author clearly put a lot of thought into how the magic in his setting "works" and came up with some creative stuff. Plus who doesn't like reading about evil magicians, demons, and our marginally less evil protagonist all battling each other to the death? The Fifth Defiance - Superhero fic. I think the initial premise was something like 'what if Superman - but instead of benevolent and all-loving Jesus stand-in; he's a petty tyrant who rules with an iron fist'. At the start of the story, it's more or less a post-apocalyptic setting and the world has been reduced to rubble by brawling supers. We follow a handful of brave souls who come together to (probably) eventually lead the titular Fifth Defiance. I'm not actually fully caught up to this one right now but I read up to 7.1 which is pretty deep in and I think it's pretty good. I think it's a "realistic" take on what would happen if every Tom, Dick, and Harry were randomly godlike powers - a weird sort of quasi-feudalism with the strongest supers sifted to the top of the pyramid. It also has some neat quirks on the genre - so it isn't entirely a boilerplate "generic superhero story". But mostly I like it because the good guys are well written and have a clear and compelling goal (to overthrow the tyrant) and the tyrant is a good bad guy - if that makes sense.
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Oct 26, 2018 18:45
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Speaking of completed serials. Has anyone else read Shadows of the Limelight? I remember finding the link to that on in the comments of one of the early practical guide chapters. It's a vaguely renaissance era fantasy story with a similar setting gimmick, except that instead of story tropes, it's fame that gives people power, so all the powerful people are hamming it up as much as possible and hiring bards to spread their story and so on. The main character is a nobody who manages to snatch superpowers, because he stumbles into a duel between two famous rivals and manages to stab the winner in the back. Intrigue and violence ensues. It's been a while since I read it so I don't remember much beyond the basic premise.
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Oct 26, 2018 20:34
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Yeah, that's the same author as Worth The Candle. The ending is pretty flawed narrative-wise, so I don't remember it all that fondly.
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Oct 26, 2018 21:16
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My vague recollection of it was that I liked everything including the ending. I think it does one of those ratfic subversions of an epic fantasy ending?
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Oct 26, 2018 22:30
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how does candle compare to TWI, out of curiousity? I tried reading worm and tGaB a bit and the prose kinda brought me down. not to say that TWI is written by Nabokov or anything, but if there isn't a heavy character focus i just feel like i'm reading about a mediocre video game.
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Oct 26, 2018 23:53
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sunken fleet posted:Void Domain - It's a lot like Harry Potter, except instead of being a gormless capital "H" hero who gets by with the power of love and friendship Eva is instead a vicious girl with a penchant for brutal blood magic and deals with demons. It has an edge over a lot of other web fiction in that it is already complete! No waiting for updates here. The whole thing comes in at a hair over a million words. (The author has moved onto another project Vacant Throne that I know nothing about but if you like one you might like the other.) The "hidden world of magic" that exists in setting requires a bit of suspension of disbelief but if you can get past that it's all pretty well set up, the author clearly put a lot of thought into how the magic in his setting "works" and came up with some creative stuff. Plus who doesn't like reading about evil magicians, demons, and our marginally less evil protagonist all battling each other to the death? Huh, Void Domain is complete? I should figure out where I stopped reading it.
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Oct 27, 2018 00:35
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To save this list of recommendations from basically being better served by just telling people to just go look at the Top 10 on TWF or RRL... Into The Mire -- very slow burning fantasy/horror Inheritors -- superheroes-with-a-touch-of-horror Chosen Shackles -- very atmospheric cyberpunk/sci-fi Touch -- superheroes-but-really-urban-fantasy And, my personal choice for SA Web Serial Thread Regular Pick of the Year Nay Perhaps Century: Division by Zero. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Oct 27, 2018 |
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Oct 27, 2018 03:16
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sunken fleet posted:Void Domain - It's a lot like Harry Potter, except instead of being a gormless capital "H" hero who gets by with the power of love and friendship Eva is instead a vicious girl with a penchant for brutal blood magic and deals with demons. It has an edge over a lot of other web fiction in that it is already complete! No waiting for updates here. The whole thing comes in at a hair over a million words. (The author has moved onto another project Vacant Throne that I know nothing about but if you like one you might like the other.) The "hidden world of magic" that exists in setting requires a bit of suspension of disbelief but if you can get past that it's all pretty well set up, the author clearly put a lot of thought into how the magic in his setting "works" and came up with some creative stuff. Plus who doesn't like reading about evil magicians, demons, and our marginally less evil protagonist all battling each other to the death? Started this on your recommendation and it's quite good so far.
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Oct 27, 2018 03:26
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Read through a bit of Worth the Candle, decent story so far! (Very) early speculation: It seemed blatantly obvious from the getgo that the five flesh and blood gods in the world are other humans who survived long enough to do cool stuff, so I'm assuming either the guy's dead friend/Artifact Dad is either explicitly DMing the entire experience, or was the progenitor of the world. I'm leaning towards the former, since a lot of his memories about said friend were of him being stealthily supportive, and always knowing just what to say or do to help him out. Introducing the princess as the obvious love interest and elf girl as the untrustworthy jerk, only to quickly jack up elf girl's loyalty while keeping the princess's quite low is a super interesting idea. I don't think it'll go this way, but it'd make my day if the princess turns out to be an explicit sociopath, and their continued alliance basically comes down to him using the loyalty score as a meter to verify whether or not they're actually useful enough to keep around.
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Oct 27, 2018 11:33
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Plorkyeran posted:My vague recollection of it was that I liked everything including the ending. I think it does one of those ratfic subversions of an epic fantasy ending? Unfortunately there's broadly a negative correlation between "subversion of standard narrative" and "good narrative". The last act breaks the 'explaining a plan' rule. Normally, if a plan is all explained in detail it guarantees it will go wrong - because otherwise it would be boring. There's no tension, no climax, you just read something twice and the book ends.
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Oct 27, 2018 13:08
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:Started this on your recommendation and it's quite good so far.
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Oct 27, 2018 17:37
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A big flaming stink posted:how does candle compare to TWI, out of curiousity?
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Oct 27, 2018 22:40
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The whole genre of "rational fiction" is confusing to me. Does it just broadly refer to stories with a protagonist who doesn't frequently act in obviously irrational ways?
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Oct 28, 2018 07:17
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Ytlaya posted:The whole genre of "rational fiction" is confusing to me. Does it just broadly refer to stories with a protagonist who doesn't frequently act in obviously irrational ways? Sort of, at least that’s what the authors think. Basically, if you always made the optimal decision, with perfect clarity, and the complete knowledge that the sheeple around you lack...you might be a RatFic Protagonist
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Oct 28, 2018 07:51
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I think ratfic is just a response to all that YA fiction where the MC makes some clearly terrible decision in the name of love or friendship or whatever and then somehow doesn't suffer any negative consequences because of deus ex machina. You know what I'm talking about, when the bad guy gives the hero the "hard choice" to save the world or save his girlfriend and he just whips his cape and puts on his sunglasses before declaring "I'm taking the third option" and saves everyone with the power of love.
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Oct 28, 2018 08:46
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I like worth the candle cause it’s world is kind of brutal. Exclusion zones and infohazards and the slow decline of civilisation built on the corpse of the Sure the protagonist is OP as hell well Bethel is way more OP now and Valencia too for that matter But he kinda has to be given how the world looks.
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Oct 28, 2018 09:23
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If it weren’t for the author openly stating it is, I honestly wouldn’t have categorized Worth the Candle as “rational fiction” any more than Worm is. Both protagonists are pragmatic, careful planners, both settings are relatively well-explained and self-consistent, and when characters in either story make bad decisions, they make them for understandable reasons.
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Oct 28, 2018 17:53
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blastron posted:If it weren’t for the author openly stating it is, I honestly wouldn’t have categorized Worth the Candle as “rational fiction” any more than Worm is. Both protagonists are pragmatic, careful planners, both settings are relatively well-explained and self-consistent, and when characters in either story make bad decisions, they make them for understandable reasons. I think this is the more accurate description of rational fiction. It's really just defined by self consistency which is lol as a way to describe a genre.
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Oct 28, 2018 18:57
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blastron posted:If it weren’t for the author openly stating it is, I honestly wouldn’t have categorized Worth the Candle as “rational fiction” any more than Worm is. Both protagonists are pragmatic, careful planners, both settings are relatively well-explained and self-consistent, and when characters in either story make bad decisions, they make them for understandable reasons. Worm is itself generally considered ratfic despite it not being intended as such. When you strip away the "not a bad story in these specific ways" criteria it does basically come down to stories featuring that sort of protagonist where the world has fantastic elements that follow understandable rules.
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Oct 28, 2018 19:21
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It is always strange hearing people praise so much something I disliked. The whole way the character approaches the world as a badly run tabletop rpg game was just so infuriating. Both for how navel-gazing it was and for the idea that this is actually a good way to run RPGs in general.
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Oct 28, 2018 21:03
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Worth the Candle remains decent. I do kinda wish he'd stop internal monologuing about his D&D group, because it feels like there's no information or characterization there that we couldn't have more effectively learned through interactions with his adventuring party. Speaking of his party, probably my biggest gripe thus far is that they have no reason to work together. He and the elf girl are buddies, sure, cloaca-dwarf is being paid to stick around, but whats-her-face the sociopath explodes into magical artifacts and flirtation whenever someone asks what her plan is or where her loyalties lie and is just so suspicious in general. At this point I think they've been together for weeks(?), but the party has yet to sit down and go "What, exactly, is our goal, and how does constantly jumping into borderline-suicidal situations advance that goal?"
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Oct 29, 2018 00:39
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Worth the Candle suffers from the author having the basilisk brain bug and so every standard-fantasy trope is Cthulhu in disguise and only our extremely rational protagonist can see and prevent these existential terrors.
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Oct 29, 2018 01:29
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blastron posted:If it weren’t for the author openly stating it is, I honestly wouldn’t have categorized Worth the Candle as “rational fiction” any more than Worm is. Both protagonists are pragmatic, careful planners, both settings are relatively well-explained and self-consistent, and when characters in either story make bad decisions, they make them for understandable reasons. I don't know about this; the irrational thinking of Taylor in Worm is very obvious (compared with, say, Zorian in Mother of Learning, who is far closer to actually being "rational"). She's good at tactical-level planning, but her overall worldview and broader actions/choices are a perfect example of someone conjuring up justifications for where their emotions lead them. navyjack posted:Sort of, at least that’s what the authors think. Basically, if you always made the optimal decision, with perfect clarity, and the complete knowledge that the sheeple around you lack...you might be a RatFic Protagonist Mother of Learning protagonist is sort of like this, but the thing that makes me still like it is that it doesn't give the same feeling of "and this makes Zorian better than his dumb irrational peers." If anything the story goes in a direction where Zorian's opinion of his peers improves as he gets to know them better, so even though he can act sort of hyper-competent, there's never a feeling that Zorian is a self-insert for a conceited nerd who thinks he's better than others (which is the feeling I get from many web novel protagonists).
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Oct 29, 2018 02:31
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Ytlaya posted:I don't know about this; the irrational thinking of Taylor in Worm is very obvious (compared with, say, Zorian in Mother of Learning, who is far closer to actually being "rational"). She's good at tactical-level planning, but her overall worldview and broader actions/choices are a perfect example of someone conjuring up justifications for where their emotions lead them. The only real problem I had with Taylor in this regard is that the successes she had in her story largely required basically everybody else in the setting to be bad at their job. When I first read it I thought it was an unreliable narrator thing, because I have no problem believing that a sulky teenager could look at a team of out-of-touch adults and, lacking the life experience/maturity to empathize with their situation, interpret their actions as incompetence relative to her. But as I read WB's other works, this whole "Whoops, organizations are bad and authorities only exist to crush sympathetic protagonists" thing became a recurring trope of his that really grates on me. Ytlaya posted:Mother of Learning protagonist is sort of like this, but the thing that makes me still like it is that it doesn't give the same feeling of "and this makes Zorian better than his dumb irrational peers." If anything the story goes in a direction where Zorian's opinion of his peers improves as he gets to know them better, so even though he can act sort of hyper-competent, there's never a feeling that Zorian is a self-insert for a conceited nerd who thinks he's better than others (which is the feeling I get from many web novel protagonists). What really saved it for me is that the story (usually) goes out of its way to establish that Zorian is just not a very talented or skilled mage, and that basically all of his overpowered abilities are either the result of doing something that most mages don't have the time or inclination to do (nobody can afford to spend years working on shaping exercises, they have classwork to do, then jobs), or taking advantage of the loop's nature to acquire knowledge through illegal or ethically questionable methods that weren't available to anyone else, like when he was doing rapidfire apprenticeships to dozens of different mages to learn each of their proprietary spells/skills/knowledge sets. I guess we're not going there now, but in the last few chapters when he started to recruit more and more people into the loop, I thought we were headed towards a Zorian who was no longer special (since most of the mages he'd brought into the loop were much more naturally talented than he was), but who was much better at accepting that and working with it gracefully.
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Oct 29, 2018 02:53
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Omi no Kami posted:The only real problem I had with Taylor in this regard is that the successes she had in her story largely required basically everybody else in the setting to be bad at their job. When I first read it I thought it was an unreliable narrator thing, because I have no problem believing that a sulky teenager could look at a team of out-of-touch adults and, lacking the life experience/maturity to empathize with their situation, interpret their actions as incompetence relative to her. But as I read WB's other works, this whole "Whoops, organizations are bad and authorities only exist to crush sympathetic protagonists" thing became a recurring trope of his that really grates on me. The authorities seem pretty competent from what we've seen in Ward so far, with it being said (and recently shown) that they're dealing with all sorts of things. Basically post-PRT/Triumvirate parahuman authorities under Chevalier seem to generally be okay. Omi no Kami posted:What really saved it for me is that the story (usually) goes out of its way to establish that Zorian is just not a very talented or skilled mage, and that basically all of his overpowered abilities are either the result of doing something that most mages don't have the time or inclination to do (nobody can afford to spend years working on shaping exercises, they have classwork to do, then jobs), or taking advantage of the loop's nature to acquire knowledge through illegal or ethically questionable methods that weren't available to anyone else, like when he was doing rapidfire apprenticeships to dozens of different mages to learn each of their proprietary spells/skills/knowledge sets. Well, Zorian's empathy and resulting mind abilities are genuinely special, since he's possibly the only human to ever both have empathy and receive proper training in it (which would have been difficult to acquire without the time loop). His abilities are basically completely beyond the ability of other mages to deal with without using mind-blank. But they do make it clear that his basic talent isn't particularly high; like the point where Zorian comments on being annoyed at Zach progressing so fast at things it took him much longer to learn (and I think he might have also made some comment about Daimen* already showing huge benefits from just has 6 months or whatever in the loop). * Speaking of which, it's kinda cheesy but the part where Daimen sacrifices himself for Zorian to make it through was pretty moving. I liked the whole situation with him and Zorian reconciling.
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Oct 29, 2018 03:25
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Ytlaya posted:The authorities seem pretty competent from what we've seen in Ward so far, with it being said (and recently shown) that they're dealing with all sorts of things. Basically post-PRT/Triumvirate parahuman authorities under Chevalier seem to generally be okay. Hmm, that's good to hear- I haven't been keeping up with Ward for a long while because too much of the early stuff had elements that really annoyed me, but I'd love for the final product to be something awesome. Ytlaya posted:But they do make it clear that his basic talent isn't particularly high; like the point where Zorian comments on being annoyed at Zach progressing so fast at things it took him much longer to learn (and I think he might have also made some comment about Daimen* already showing huge benefits from just has 6 months or whatever in the loop). I'm also thinking of one of the first times he seriously works with Xvim, when he whips out his super-awesome spider telepathy powers that nobody else in the world has, and his professor almost instantly goes "Huh, that's neat, it's almost like you're using <some obscure nonsentient but telepathic animal>'s thing," and starts working out in minutes stuff that Zorian spent years learning and refining. On the topic of MoL though, I am still really curious about how the loop got started. Zach said that he had no idea why or how he would've gotten into the loop to begin with, so I'm actually a bit worried that it'll be a literal deus ex machina, and turn out that the same angels who told those guys in the desert to help Z&Z just showed up one afternoon and went "You look like somebody with a lot of free time on his hands, how would you like to jump into a time loop and fight a primordial?"
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Oct 29, 2018 03:35
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, I really liked that... especially with Damien, since Zorian basically had to go from being one of the most talented dimensionalists in the world to immediately playing second-fiddle to his brother. I'm totally satisfied by that Damien bit, although I'm interested to see how this will impact their family; I know that even after he matured a lot Zorian was still planning on cutting his non-sister family out of his life post-loop (or at least he was the first time they spoke to Damien in the loop), and I wonder if actually getting to know the target of his ire will change that at all. I'm pretty sure this doesn't still apply; it's obvious he doesn't dislike Daimen anymore; I think that the other brother is the only sibling he still doesn't care for. Speaking of people sacrificing themselves, I think that Xvim is actually the first person to have sacrificed himself for Zorian; I seem to remember him doing so a while back when Zorian recruited him and some others into trying to stop the invasion/summoning.
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Oct 29, 2018 04:14
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Ytlaya posted:I'm pretty sure this doesn't still apply; it's obvious he doesn't dislike Daimen anymore; I think that the other brother is the only sibling he still doesn't care for. It's mainly his parents that I'd worry about; I remember him having a big interaction with his parents shortly before bringing Damien into the loop that basically started with his going "I'm going to get rich and pay for my sister to get educated so she doesn't get sucked into the family's political ambitions", and ending with his mother being too focused on chasing Damien's fiance away to really engage, and his dad just going "Bah, kids these days don't know what it takes to be successful, you don't know what you're talking about". That's not an unsolvable problem, but given that this is Zorian I'm half expecting him to go "Meh, this isn't worth it," yoink his sister to go live with him at the magitech startup he'll inevitably build near a university, and just leave family drama for one of his simulacra to deal with.
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Oct 29, 2018 04:42
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