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Somewhere on this forum I got linked a story that was pretty clearly Halo fanfic with the serial numbers filed off about an A.I. battleship continuing to fight on after humanity had been defeated. Does anyone know about this or know where I could find it?
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Dec 3, 2017 16:20
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That is it, thank you.
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Dec 3, 2017 16:29
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Wittgen posted:I think it's also considering that audiences tend to be pretty sensitive to sex in stories. A thousand page story with ten pages of sexual content will get readers defining it around that sex. Look no further than this thread! There's tons of hosed up poo poo in Worth the Candle, but it's the weird sex stuff that gets a thread title.
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Jan 29, 2022 07:35
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Chrononauts don't all reset the day at the same time. They each have a chance to reset the day in chronological order. Lola's turn comes up sooner than Alfric's. So if they both tried to reset the same day, Lola would get a chance to do it first, and would start the day over will all the memories of the undone day, while Alfric would lose all of his memories of that day, just like everyone else did.Larry Parrish posted:it's supposed to be uncomfortable and painful because Juniper is a stand in for the (in universe) author's regrets and self-hatred. he's in hell, effectively. I also liked Worth The Candle. It could certainly stand to be paced better, but all the main cast was interesting to read about, and I always like it when stories push themselves as hard as that one did. Patrick Spens fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 00:02
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catgirlgenius posted:Has Amber Skies been brought up in this thread yet? I just got into it and I can't believe I don't see more people trumpeting how good it is A few pages back, but thanks for plugging this, it's rad.
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Feb 21, 2022 04:59
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Cicero posted:TUTBAD 80: Isra desperately trying to disney princess her house with animals and it failing miserably was hilarious. "The squirrels were a mistake" had me cackling.
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Feb 23, 2022 05:54
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navyjack posted:So I’m reading it and have been planning to drop it cause it’s just getting unbearable. Mind spoiling the ending for me, so I can just quit? A bunch of stuff happens that doesn't really matter, and then Haunter has a conversation with the Grabby in charge of Remover where said Grabby reveals that it can perfectly predict and manipulate human behaviour, and has orchestrated everything that has happened in the story. It then offers the Jury a choice of 6 lovely things, only one of which has can be prevented, and the story ends without finding out what the Jury picks. It's basically a much worse version of the ending of Mass Effect 3
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Feb 25, 2022 08:23
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Ok, so a bit more explanation of my issues with the ending of TFD: The revelation that Remover is the motivating force behind all of the bad things in the story saps all those bad things of any impact and meaning. Prevailer doesn't go round the bend because of a haunting combination of her own trauma, her supervisor's petty spite and her own lack of impulse control, it's because she's being manipulated by an omnipotent monster that knows exactly how to throw her round the bend. It does the same thing for any of the mysteries in the plot or setting, "Hey how is the Fourth Fist throwing of Answerer's predictions?" "Because that thing that controls all the powers in the setting wills it" "How do Zeus and Isis manage to keep a thousand traumatized children with the power of gods from self destructing?" "Because the devil from beyond space and time wills it" All questions have the same answer, which means all questions have a lousy answer. And there's a way in which this all works as some kind of stripped down meditation on The Meaning of Stories with Remover as the stand in for the author, and the Jury as stand in for the reader, but that goes back to what I said about it being a worse version of the ending to Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect has a bunch of things going on, but is very much a series of games about the player making decisions and choices, and then seeing the (sometimes very far reaching and difficult to predict) results of those choices. And then the very end of the series is another choice, that you don't see the results of. The point is that the choices you make in the game aren't important because of which character you save or kill, or what cut scene you see, but because they are a reflection and interrogation of the values that you bring to the game when you make your choices. I kinda like the ending to ME3 to be honest. It works a whole lot worse because a)TFD can't be a story about the reader making choices in the way that Mass Effect is b)The Jury makes a terrible stand in for the reader and c)what the gently caress is TFD trying to say about stories here? The choices presented in the dialogue between Remover and Haunter are, "Authors of fiction where bad things happen are inhuman psychopaths" or, "None of this matters because characters in stories aren't real lol". And uh, not a huge fan of either of those. The ending of TFD is deeply unsatisfying and depressing, which can be fine, because that's clearly what it's going for. But it's also shoddy and rushed and doesn't have anything meaningful to actually say, which is much less fine.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:46
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Plorkyeran posted:"Rational" fiction and "rationalist" fiction are also pretty different things. The former is basically just a promise that the story's setting follows rules and the plot won't be driven by characters acting unreasonably, while the latter has lectures about the glory of (the author's misunderstand of) science. Wales is pretty embedded in the rationalist community, but he mostly doesn't write rationalist stories. Worth The Candle has the main characters literally engineer heaven. It is absolutely a rationalist story.
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Mar 9, 2022 21:19
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Related to numberchat, I deeply appreciate the glossary of measurement terms in the notes for the most recent Desmesene.
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Apr 11, 2022 04:24
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I kinda hope TUTBAD just continues to pile up things that the story could turn into being about but never actually stops being about the crew going dungeon delving once a week.
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Apr 19, 2022 19:20
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Larry Parrish posted:the real ethics question I think isn't what to do with the dungeons but rather whoever created the dungeons and allowed it to sometimes create sentients and sapients How do you mean?
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Apr 19, 2022 19:55
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Yeah but the editors explicitly aren't omnipotent and can't just make whatever changes they want, so I don't think going all Problem of Evil makes sense here. In story, dungeons don't exist to provide resources, they exist to keep magic from loving everything up, the resources are an (admittedly extremely important) side benefit. And so it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to talk about how ethical they were absent discussion of the alternatives. Like yeah, if the dungeons making sentients is something easy to prevent then yeah, it's unforgivable. If it's the magical equivalent of vaccine allergies then I think it's a lot more defensible. Patrick Spens fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Apr 19, 2022 |
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Apr 19, 2022 21:14
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It's 2022 and quote is still not edit.
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Apr 19, 2022 21:17
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Yeah TUTBAD is very much by the same dude as Worth the Candle, but it is a very different kind of story, both in tone and pacing.
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Apr 30, 2022 01:41
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TWI has so much filler. Like, cutting away from the action to spend time on uninvolved characters watching the current plot on television is a thing that happens often. It would be significantly better if it was about 1/4 as long.
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May 6, 2022 15:11
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What? No. Lindon beating up pre-teens was what made me keep reading the book when I was about to give up on it.
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May 12, 2022 20:48
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Man Memories of the Fall would be a lot better of a story if it was just Arai and Sana doing missions in the hell jungle and trying not to get screwed over by bureaucrats.
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May 31, 2022 05:14
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Like I just started reading after the rewrite chapters, and there have been 15 separate POV characters so far, 4 of which are 20,000+ year old walking superpowers. That's dumb. The whole thing is just so unfocused.
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May 31, 2022 05:38
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Man I've got no idea how you read web serials if you aren't willing to bail when they get bad.
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Jun 9, 2022 18:53
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THIS_IS_FINE posted:Unlike a lot of folks here I enjoyed Worm, the flaws didn't bother me much because I enjoyed the worldbuilding and to an extent, the escalating story. That's such a weird thing to say, because he literally blew up the world in Worm. I always found it so bizarre how Ward had a brand new world and it was basically Brockton Bay with a yellow coat of paint.
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Jun 9, 2022 20:47
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Horizon Burning posted:What the gently caress pale is awful and very gross at points. Yes please give me a serial where wildbow of all people tries to depict puberty and awkward teenage sexuality Huh that sounds interesting, thanks for the rec. Milkfred E. Moore posted:I feel like a lot of Ward was constructed from things he didn't use in Worm, whether that was just stuff he cut while writing or full alternate ideas. Ward was just a bad idea but it makes sense as a response to Twig. That's one hell of an act there, what do you call it? Web serials
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Jun 10, 2022 01:52
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It's annoying because the story would actually be substantially better if it was half as long, and came out twice as slowly. But instead she keeps working herself into collapse to write too drat many words.
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Jul 10, 2022 06:31
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A big flaming stink posted:Pretty sure pirateaba gets praised for the sheer breadth of characters and her ability to maintain distinct voices for all of them, and yes, the huge word count is helpful for keeping all these plates spinning No, it's the words. Check back through this thread from when Volume 8 was coming to a close. Erin's coming back from the dead, there's all out war between the drakes and the gnolls, god's are getting dunked on and the origin of skills was revealed, and by far the most comment from fans of the the story was "wow, so many more words in this chapter".
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Jul 10, 2022 14:38
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Been reading Pact and it's genuinely impressive how wildbow manages to make things just keep getting worse. It felt like rock bottom three arcs ago, and yet things have managed to fall apart even more. Worm at least had periods of stability and gathering strength. Pact starts at "your totally hosed" and just steadily gets worse and worse. I'm at the part where Blake is taking his friends and family into the Abyss to try and help them. And I've got no idea how this story can keep going for another 4 arcs but I'm real curious to find out. Also Green Eyes is just the best. Edit: Goddammit Rose. Patrick Spens fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jul 22, 2022 |
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Jul 21, 2022 22:46
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Yeah it's exhausting. But A) it's cathartic, much like some people like being scared by movies or video games, I like it when fiction makes me feel anxious, trapped or hopeless. B) the overpowering bleakness makes the non-bleak parts shine brighter. There's a recurring gag where Evan, the ghost of a young boy in the form of a sparrow, keeps trying to convince magic users to light him on fire so he can be a phoenix, or infuse death essence into him so he can be a sparrow of death because that would be totally metal you guys. And that's not a great gag but it's much funnier in the context of how scary and miserable everything else is. Similarly, the protagonist being a limitless font of gumption is hardly a rare thing in webnovels and other nerdy media, it's a lot more inspiring to read when they actually have to go through some serious poo poo.
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Jul 22, 2022 02:09
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Peachfart posted:Oh, I missed this. I have never heard of her. I just looked her up, is there something I should know about this? Is this a recommendation or a warning? Hobb has a rep for putting her protagonists through a whole bunch of poo poo. I'm not her biggest fan because her protaganists are often very passive and depressed. Which is a perfectly reasonable response psychologically but can be a drag to read. She does generally wrap things up with a happy ending at least.
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Jul 23, 2022 06:08
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It's uh, pretty loving bleak. Turns out when you're slave soldiers of space fascists you do some pretty hosed up things to stay in the bosses' good books. On a completely unrelated note, I have recommendations. Riposte is a complete and relatively short story about an orphan girl who gets sucked into the secret underground world of high-stakes magical card games. Unlike a lot of webnovels this is a tight and efficient story that gets to where it wants to go in fairly short order. It's also pretty dang good, and does that thing I like where all the magic explicitly only exists to make manifest moral dilemmas or character themes. Definitely worth checking out. The Last Angel is extremely thinly veiled Halo fanfiction. Long after the [strikethrough]Covenant[/strikethrough] Compact destroyed Earth and almost wiped out humanity a ship of brainwashed human trainees and their alien superiors stumble upon an enormous derelict battleship in a forgotten star system. The good news is that salvaging the wreck will be valuable experience for the trainees and promotion fodder for the bosses. The bad news is that the ship is the last remnant of the human space fleet and the murderous, vengeful AI that still runs it wants them all to die screaming. The last two are quests on Sufficient Velocity. If you're not familiar, quests are like collective choose your own adventure stories, where the thread posters vote of certain decisions. I mostly ignore the votes and just treat them like webnovels where the protagonist occasionally makes baffling choices for no good reason. The Path Unending Is a cultivation story about a young student from a family of magical craftsman's time training at his sect. The main character is an amusingly snobby perfectionist about his work (and crafting in general). This story's got significantly less of the world shattering power fantasies and significantly more detailed examinations of the struggles of turning the bones of the magical spider-wolf-thing and ever freezing ice torn from the grasp of the unquiet dead into a bitching axe so you can pay your buddy back after she backed you up when that honorless dog Jin Yazhu insulted your family and forced you to challenge him. The Dragon's Spite is the adventures of Ferem Odat Rena, a not-at-all evil Dragonblooded sorceress who was unfairly and completely unjustly chased out of her homeland by people who objected to perfectly natural things she was doing. Now she's heading to the South, to rebuild and regain her former power and influence. Did I mention she's not evil? I think this is based off some kind of roleplaying game, but that's not important. What is important is that Rena is a delight to read. Vain, greedy, indolent, utterly devoid of better human qualities, completely incapable of learning from her mistakes, and deeply funny Rena is a near perfect protagonist whether she's robbing ancient graves or scamming the local nobility for everything she can. This one is also very horney, but the hoariness is skippable. Patrick Spens fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Jul 24, 2022 |
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Jul 24, 2022 04:53
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Hey, good for Isra!
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Jul 26, 2022 18:58
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Baby steps, baby steps. Edit: I've been reading Fox Tongue, and can someone help me sort out the Sung family tree? Aaron and Markus are both bastards of Duke Sung. The Lady Adelaide is the Duke's estranged wife who shacked up with the King, and is also somehow Markus' mother. Which, how is Markus a bastard then? Did the duke just adopt his wife's affair baby and claim Markus as his own son? Patrick Spens fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jul 26, 2022 |
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Jul 26, 2022 20:28
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Got it thank you.
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Jul 27, 2022 03:47
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Patrick Spens posted:Been reading Pact and it's genuinely impressive how wildbow manages to make things just keep getting worse. It felt like rock bottom three arcs ago, and yet things have managed to fall apart even more. Worm at least had periods of stability and gathering strength. Pact starts at "your totally hosed" and just steadily gets worse and worse. I'm at the part where Blake is taking his friends and family into the Abyss to try and help them. And I've got no idea how this story can keep going for another 4 arcs but I'm real curious to find out. Finished Pact and ironically enough things started turning around immediately after I made that post. On the whole I liked it. Pact could definitely have used a good editing pass, but it definitely feels more complete and structured than most web novels, and I think it was a better story than Worm, even if Worm is probably going to stick with me longer. It would never happen, but I would love Wildbow to write a completely mundane black comedy about dysfunction family fighting over grandma's inheritance, cause the Thorburns were surprisingly entertaining in the back half of the story. Also Blake sliding into wizard IRC and being all, "Hello fellow kids, got an family members who need murdering? was some top tier lateral problem solving.
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Jul 29, 2022 01:32
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Would the author of the work in question count as somebody with more knowledge? The problem with RR is that it's bread and butter is juvenile power fantasies and so a huge chunk of the readers are stunted man-children who get super mad when you get gay in their self inserts. Patrick Spens fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Aug 13, 2022 |
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Aug 13, 2022 00:05
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Pretty sure daily grind was the one where bigots kicked up enough fuss about said throuple that the author put a "please don't downvote queerness" banner on the chapter after it happened.
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Aug 13, 2022 06:05
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I deeply appreciate Fox's tongue providing a family shrubbery.
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Aug 17, 2022 18:30
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That's what the shrubbery says. They apparently look similar enough that I think they are twins separated at birth.
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Aug 17, 2022 20:57
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.Z. posted:Don't think I saw this posted, but Prac Guide's author's new series: Is this one going as hard into the meta nonsense as Prac did?
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Aug 28, 2022 17:07
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Wild that the stenobook keeps coming in clutch.
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Sep 8, 2022 23:43
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Kyoujin posted:I think Haoran is wrong about her staying married for the Canyon Carving sword since her Tyrant called it garbage and she was only practicing it to help Haoran understand it IIRC. I think the motivation was supposed to be less that she really wants Canyon Carving Sword and more that the Chen family might send assassins after her for "stealing" a secret family technique.
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Oct 9, 2022 03:29
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 05:35 |
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The second one also built her a body that had a fatal allergic reaction to the planet that he sent her to! And didn't mention it! Good luck she didn't take her time getting to town or she would have died horribly! There's bits of Quill and Still I like but it just feels off emotionally.
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Nov 2, 2022 19:15
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