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Finished the first book of Pale Lights. Good stuff, but holy poo poo that was a lot of names. God bless the person in the comments doing a character summary image every chapter, even if they do insist on posting it on deviantart.
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Mar 5, 2024 14:57
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just caught up on ss patreon, crazy how fast sleyca can push down the gas pedal when its time to ramp up from intensity 4
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Mar 6, 2024 03:58
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I remember there was a serial people were reading here before, Pith, but it went offline before I could read it, so I don't actually know if it's good--but anyway, I brought it up because they managed to find a publisher! It's now called Queen of Faces and is gonna be traditionally published as a trilogy.
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Mar 6, 2024 09:28
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TWI is back on Patreon - I’ve enjoyed the start of the new book but I’m very excited to catch back up with Erin. It seems like her size changing ability is more or less permanent, which seems like it could be lots of fun. In non-chapter news, Pirateaba has announced in a new blog post that they are going to cut back to 1 chapter a week, released on Saturdays, starting in April. They list a number of reasons for the change, which you can read about here. Personally, I think a projected 30k words still released per week is plenty, and more power to them.
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Mar 6, 2024 19:17
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I mean, yeah I'll be disappointed to only get 1 day a week instead of 2 because it's a highlight for me. But this is definitely a good thing.
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Mar 6, 2024 19:28
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Let's just say that I believe that pirateaba thinks she will write less each week.
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Mar 6, 2024 19:45
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Pirateaba writing over 3k words to explain that they intend to spend less time writing is the most pirateaba thing.
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Mar 6, 2024 20:51
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She's going to be writing less TWI but writing more other stuff on the side, even if unintentionally.
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Mar 6, 2024 21:25
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Is it even cutting down? They released 70ish(maybe 80 with interludes and other things) chapters for volume 9 over 18 months, which is around 1 a week anyway, if they stop taking breaks in lieu of 1 chapter a week at all times it's just making the schedule more regular, hopefully they take the breaks too though.
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Mar 6, 2024 21:50
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Plorkyeran posted:Pirateaba writing over 3k words to explain that they intend to spend less time writing is the most pirateaba thing.
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Mar 6, 2024 22:31
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Super supportive Patreon I think it's been about 24 in-story hours between the end of the latest rr chapter and the current Patreon one? Is that right? That's kinda hilarious that zeridee just sent him the cushion the day before. Sometimes I wish I'd found this story 30 years from now and could read Alden's freshman high school year in one go awesmoe fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Mar 7, 2024 |
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Mar 7, 2024 07:15
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awesmoe posted:Sometimes I wish I'd found this story 30 years from now and could read Alden's freshman high school year in one go Also it will take a year to read
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Mar 7, 2024 07:56
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cultureulterior posted:Also it will take a year to read
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Mar 7, 2024 12:15
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player manager: WIBWOB
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Mar 8, 2024 17:41
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Argue posted:I remember there was a serial people were reading here before, Pith, but it went offline before I could read it, so I don't actually know if it's good--but anyway, I brought it up because they managed to find a publisher! It's now called Queen of Faces and is gonna be traditionally published as a trilogy. I got the notice for this! Really happy for them, since tbh I assumed things wouldn't pan out (since they seemingly usually don't with that sort of thing).
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Mar 10, 2024 00:25
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Katalepsis 14.16 I am really enjoying Heather, Saldis, and Seven's trip into the palace of the King in Yellow. Seven's new persona is fun, and Saldis is always a hoot with how confident she is in her abilities as a mage but how she always schloops up into her hampster ball every time she encounters anything mildly threatening. Of the main crew, Jhung is probably the one I like the least. The author kind of overuses the "purr" description for her speech and I wish they would either mix it up more or just use more generic "say" most of the time. Jhung also rarely gets to be useful, being held back almost all the time by Heather, or going out hunting and never finding her prey. She also feels pretty duplicative to Raine in her overall purpose as a character
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Mar 10, 2024 17:22
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Nettle Soup posted:Finished the first book of Pale Lights. Good stuff, but holy poo poo that was a lot of names. God bless the person in the comments doing a character summary image every chapter, even if they do insist on posting it on deviantart. fewer names by the end 
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Mar 11, 2024 00:52
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SupSup Patreon: Well that took a turn for the unexpected. Feels like tonight we see some of the other side of Anesidora
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Mar 11, 2024 03:35
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Nothingtoseehere posted:SupSup Patreon: Well that took a turn for the unexpected. Like Alden helping in the fight mostly by being a punching bag --- which makes a lot more sense than what would normally happen in a web serial. As for the latest revelation: now would be a good time for one of the knights to check in on him.
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Mar 11, 2024 05:40
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Current Katalepsis: Jesus, Raine.
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Mar 11, 2024 07:46
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TWI Patreon Erinchat Man, Erin sure has changed--I think it's certainly earned, narratively speaking, given all she's gone through, and it's an interesting and necessary change to move forward. Also loved the reversal of the traditional dynamic of devils making deals with humans. But at the same time, I would much rather read happy-go-lucky Erin--her just completely dropping her cheery mask and letting all the rage she's been building up inside slowly permeate through is cool to see in small doses (which is how it was in v7-9) but I sure hope "I'm serious now" isn't the v10 status quo. I do think at this point pirate probably knows on which side their bread is buttered though, so I'm trusting that Erin will be acting more like a fun chaos gremlin again soon.
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Mar 11, 2024 08:13
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Argue posted:TWI Patreon Erinchat Man, Erin sure has changed--I think it's certainly earned, narratively speaking, given all she's gone through, and it's an interesting and necessary change to move forward. Also loved the reversal of the traditional dynamic of devils making deals with humans. But at the same time, I would much rather read happy-go-lucky Erin--her just completely dropping her cheery mask and letting all the rage she's been building up inside slowly permeate through is cool to see in small doses (which is how it was in v7-9) but I sure hope "I'm serious now" isn't the v10 status quo. I mean, it just makes sense that she'd have to act seriously now, at least for a while. She DID succeed in pissing off most of the world after all. It's kind of sad to see her so grim and full of rage but I think that's what we're supposed to be feeling. I think she's going to stay grim until Ulvama finds her or vice versa, and Ulvama smacks her in the head and says something along the lines of "Stop being dumb, this isn't you. Goblins can enjoy life and everyone hates Goblins, you still have people that care about you and who will stick by you regardless of your choices, be happy about that." It's honestly kind of amazing how far Ulvama has come as a character, in relation to the Inn. She's pretty much literally exactly the kind of person Erin needed to have around her.
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Mar 11, 2024 10:40
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Goatse James Bond posted:fewer names by the end  I enjoyed it though. Now to leave it a year so I can forget everyone who's left and then have to start again when I want to catch up.
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Mar 11, 2024 10:50
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OddObserver posted:I would say this entire SupSup Patreon sequence was good at not following expectations: Patreon SupSup I personally think Alden will need to do an authority scream to ultimately get out of this. The knights at Matadaro have had too much screen time, and their ability to "hear" Alden's pat-pat when he was practicing how to find his hidden entrusted object has already set up that they are in his range to leave them out of the picture here. The authority scream Zeridee did was the final piece needed to set up all the skills he needs to be "heard". Now he just needs a reason to do it.
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Mar 11, 2024 13:01
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As usual when I'm under a lot of stress I soothe myself by investigating what people love about stuff I feel an antipathy for, so I'm doing a deep dive into web serials. I read the majority of Will Wright's Cradle series (which I know isn't properly a web serial) a while ago and kind of liked it's pulpy outre feel but didn't feel the need to finish the story. What I wanted to do was check my understanding of the power rankings of popular/recommended web serials I'm at least tempted to read so I know what I want to devote my time to. The Wandering Inn: Mammoth, longest single author work in the English language, mostly slice of life but pleasing actual consequences and world changing stakes, the writing is spotty but gets better after the beginning and the ebooks have some kind of editing pass performed. The gold standard in web serial quality. Wildbow's Work: Largely loved because it was the first web serial to really attract attention, now commonly criticised for generally poor quality of craft and edginess, fan fiction vibes at a massive scale, no official ebooks because the dude is a weirdo and never capitalised on his popularity Practical Guide to Evil: A lot of high praise for this one, seems people like how edgy it is, heard rumours of a weak mid portion, no ebook outside of scrapers but a more revised version is appearing on the app Yonder Beware of Chicken: Tongue in cheek Xianxia style progression fantasy but also works sincerely, mundane events are regularly the most exciting ones, ebooks on Amazon Mother of Learning: I've actually been reading the first arc of this one and I've near inhaled it, it's very easy reading, basically silver age Spiderman and Superman ("I have to solve puzzles while keeping everything secret"), weird how young everyone is and how much they act several years older, a lot of pulpy rough edges which I'm enjoying, all of it is on Amazon Maxime J. Durand's work The golden boy of Royal Road, significantly his work is of a reasonable size and written intentionally to reach a conclusion rather than meandering to keep readers paying the Patreon indefinitely, everything is quickly available on Amazon Super Supportive The current hot product, high school superhero stuff, I haven't investigated much deeper, currently unpublished in ebook format
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Mar 13, 2024 09:21
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I'd read Worm first, because while it wasn't the first web serial, it was probably the progenitor for the current "formula", as far as modern web serials go, and while I liked it when I first read it, I do think it reads worse after you've read literally anything else on your list. I'll also toss in Ra and There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm, but he's more of the type to write books that he publishes in parts, as opposed to stories that are intended to be consumed as an ongoing thing. With The Wandering Inn, counterintuitively, it's the version of v1 currently up on the website that has the extensive editing pass--it's not currently reflected on Kindle because those are released at the same time as the Audible versions, and the audiobooks are staggered for the sake of the narrator's sanity. I think "gold standard" depends on what you value in a story--it's far from perfect and I can certainly list things I don't like about it--but I do consider it to easily be the most fun of the ones I read today despite its problems. These flaws do make it extremely polarizing, though, because when you hit something you don't like like v1 Ryoka, you'll probably be dealing with it for a long time, so the people who don't like it end up REALLY not liking it.
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Mar 13, 2024 10:31
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TWI patreon interlude ok pirateaba please stop doxxing me when you write about trans femmes. the ultra-doomer vibes from saliss is waaaaay too true to life. also who tf told her that baby queers get ultra thirsty? rose being horny for everyone is dead loving on
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Mar 13, 2024 12:19
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While I don't disagree on the listed Wildbow weaknesses in a vacuum I will caveat that I don't find him notably worse on those items than the average popular webserial authors, except the edginess. But he also has pretty huge pacing issues IMO - also not especially rare but worth mentioning. I have never felt tempted to try Wandering Inn so I cannot say anything about its quality, but I did not have the impression from those that read it that it is some kind of quality gold standard for prose or story. 'Above average for webserials but there's a billion words of it' basically sums up how I've understood it. Don't really have much to add to your list otherwise, most of the serials I love are fairly small and not especially relevant for an overview of popular/defining works. I did enjoy PGtE but caught up after 4 acts and never went back to finish.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:26
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The thing with the perfect run is you're going to have to decide very early whether you can tolerate a snarky insane literally immortal protag that treats life like a video game complete with respawns. If you can, great, but if you can't you shouldn't even bother picking the story up.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:39
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Insurrectionist posted:I have never felt tempted to try Wandering Inn so I cannot say anything about its quality, but I did not have the impression from those that read it that it is some kind of quality gold standard for prose or story. 'Above average for webserials but there's a billion words of it' basically sums up how I've understood it. Well, if the quality of the prose itself is important, I don't think even the big TWI fans (okay, like myself) would think of it as Hemingway. If you compare it to a traditionally published novel? Yeah, it's lacking in writing quality. But it's well-written, and not just "well-written for a novel of its length", but for any story whose demands are: "cool stuff happens on a weekly basis, and the characters are (almost) perpetually fun to read about, and the author keeps presenting us with new ideas". It also helps that pirateaba (as exemplified by today's patreon chapter) is getting better and better at representing people and including themes that are difficult to write about. Argue fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 12:50
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gonadic io posted:The thing with the perfect run is you're going to have to decide very early whether you can tolerate a snarky insane literally immortal protag that treats life like a video game complete with respawns. If you can, great, but if you can't you shouldn't even bother picking the story up. He gets a little better about 1/3 of the way through when he finds his adoptive sister and has something to ground him. But yeah, I found him grating all the way through, and only slogged through it because I was trading to get someone to read Slumrat past the initial hump. Some more thoughts on Katalepsis. Man, I love Praem. She's such a great straight (wo)man for the group. And the Night Praem gag has been funny every time it's come up. I probably like her even more than Heather. Chapter 15.13 Zheng is finally getting some use in the story as a catalyst for Heather to confront her jealousy. She's also getting some characterization to maybe break her out of the lesbian version of the Bechdel test, so that's good.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:54
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fez_machine posted:As usual when I'm under a lot of stress I soothe myself by investigating what people love about stuff I feel an antipathy for, so I'm doing a deep dive into web serials. pretty accurate but i think the yonder version of practical guide is still paused at the end of book 1 for unclear reasons (which was months and months ago, i stopped checking) and some authors on royal road have mentioned that yonder isn't responding to enquiries which might indicate something bad happening there wildbow's work has great ideas but storytelling that has gotten consistently worse as he's shed fans. guy never capitalised and now he's in that unenviable position of having written way more bad words than good words. the three goon web serials that are still up (into the mire, katalepsis, not all heroes) are all pretty good choices that're notably better than the average but i don't think any of them are stress-free reads like you seem to be looking for. selkie myth also has one but i've never checked it out. Horizon Burning fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 14:11
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Practical Guide to Evil is "edgy"?
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Mar 13, 2024 16:44
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Yeah I don’t think I’d call Prac Guide edgy. Despite having an antihero protagonist and the world being a bit Warhammer inspired, it’s pretty tame. Other seminal completed web serials: Threadbare the tale of a teddy bear golem and its bond with the daughter of its creator, it is one of the first and best stories to really examine and extrapolate the consequences of having LitRPG stats for the world and its inhabitants. Epilogue explores what happens when the isekai’d heroes return home to their own world, and the psychological effect that it has on them.
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Mar 13, 2024 17:26
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well I'm read up on SS after a couple weeks binging it. Kind of my first web serial (I read the KU versions of Super Powereds and Beware of Chicken previously) I look forward to seeing the payoffs of several things millions of words from now
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Mar 13, 2024 17:57
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AARD VARKMAN posted:well I'm read up on SS after a couple weeks binging it. Kind of my first web serial (I read the KU versions of Super Powereds and Beware of Chicken previously) Hell yeah. Welcome to the web serial readership. I think you could have hardly chosen a better story to start with. SupSup is so good.
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Mar 13, 2024 18:01
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I finished Twinned Destinies and I thought it was really good and quite relatably emotional until the author decided to drop the story and write a litrpg instead and she gets a dog and it suddenly solves all her brain problems. I also got up to date on the patreon for unintended cultivator and it was kind of fun for the first few books but by 6 and 7 they've really just fallen into the trap of its really hard to write interesting challenges when you're one of the top 20 people in the world or whatever. So he just dicks around doing really not very much for the last two books.
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Mar 13, 2024 19:57
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Cicero posted:Practical Guide to Evil is "edgy"? I dunno, the sources I was using for recommendation talk about the basic overview of the plot and then vaguely mention the main character does "evil" stuff or there's "dark" content. Good to know it's basically tame. Argue posted:I'll also toss in Ra and There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm, but he's more of the type to write books that he publishes in parts, as opposed to stories that are intended to be consumed as an ongoing thing. Already way ahead of you on qntm, he broke in to traditional science fiction circles a while ago based on the strength of his short stories. Argue posted:Well, if the quality of the prose itself is important, I don't think even the big TWI fans (okay, like myself) would think of it as Hemingway. If you compare it to a traditionally published novel? Yeah, it's lacking in writing quality. But it's well-written, and not just "well-written for a novel of its length", but for any story whose demands are: "cool stuff happens on a weekly basis, and the characters are (almost) perpetually fun to read about, and the author keeps presenting us with new ideas". It also helps that pirateaba (as exemplified by today's patreon chapter) is getting better and better at representing people and including themes that are difficult to write about. lol I don't think anybody who looks at The Wandering Inn's economy of words and knows anything about Hemingway would compare the two.
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Mar 13, 2024 21:45
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I like the Practical Guide to Evil, but it's definitely edgy. The main character is a "villain" who makes Hard and Necessary Choices, in contrast to the heroes, who are largely idiots with huge egos who only make everything worse. It's not really that grim, though, if that's what you're worried about.
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Mar 13, 2024 21:56
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Nah, I was mostly worried about amateurish shock content that pervades fan fiction and other stuff around this level of pulp.
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Mar 13, 2024 22:17
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