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I've read most of Worm now (maybe? dunno feels like I've read a lot) but the scale of the conflicts has gotten sort of massive and most of the plot hooks that got me initially interested have been resolved or dropped. Are there any other good superhero web serials? I've been looking at topwebfiction and it seems like half the front page is in the genre but it also seems that it's all kind of garbage by comparison. Just clicking titles at random I found some of the most awkward 'urban youth' dialogue I've ever read, an extremely overt gary stu self-insert guy in a laughably sexist setting, and then some sort of weird incest rape scene that made me stop reading about two paragraphs in and also decide to stop clicking things at random... Does Worm just tower above every other web-serial in terms of quality or do I just have terrible luck or something? Is there something else I can read that's in the same ballpark as worm in terms of quality?
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Jan 26, 2017 17:54
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:00 |
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Piell posted:Super Powereds and Citadel are probably the best superhero web novels aside from worm. If you're interested in a more fantasy bent, The Gods Are Bastards and A Practical Guide to Evil are both pretty good. Like a week late(got distracted reading something else) but thanks for pointing me at these, I've just gotten through book 1 of Super Powereds and it's been a fun ride so far. My only gripe is that it seems to be entirely set in a school which seems a strange choice for a superhero story, a result of the author writing what he knows I guess? It doesn't hold the story back too much I don't think though. At any rate thanks for pointing me towards it and giving me something to do with my free time. I read the first few chapters of citadel too and it also seemed to be set in a school / training facility type thing so maybe it's a genre staple?
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Feb 4, 2017 08:38
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Does anyone know what Unsong is? It's number 2 on topwebfic behind Twig but no synopsis or about page so I dunno what it's about.
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Feb 20, 2017 06:57
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That's really tough to answer, you can check this site for a list of what's the most popular at the moment (at least amongst that userbase I guess) or over time. Other than just looking at what's topping charts though everyone will have a different top 10 - I doubt I could even name 10 web serials I feel are worth recommending tbh.
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Mar 27, 2017 05:48
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Mother of Learning is great. I agree Zorian is sort of hilariously stereotypical at first glance and I remember rolling my eyes at some of the stuff in the first chapter and then being like 'ohhh...' when it gets explained later on.
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Mar 29, 2017 06:38
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DarciisFyer posted:I actually like this one because it's like the western version of Kumoko. Probably why I like Taint too. I get what you're saying about the writing style, but I just shrugged it off because the protagonist is non-human and explicitly lower-than-human intelligence at the start, and the story is told from his POV. A bit of an unreliable narrator too, a lot of the humor comes from reading between the lines of the character's explicit interpretations. It gets better once he "upgrades" to a human-level intelligence but still from a non-human perspective. I've been reading The Iron Teeth on and off for a while and I have mixed feelings about it. The humor can be pretty great and the non-human perspective is interesting and fairly well done I think. But it feels like the author just keeps writing himself into a corner and being like 'gently caress it' and tossing the etch-a-sketch down and starting everything over for no reason. Feels like the main character just keeps going through the same motions over and over and it culminates in a big fight every time and then things just sort of 'reset' - at least Kumoko was constantly growing. The side stories don't seem to tie back to the main story meaningfully ever - they're just for world building I guess? But it's off-putting especially when the first chapter is a long interlude with little relation to anything else in the story.
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Apr 17, 2017 09:22
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ShinsoBEAM! posted:Also Shalvation was joking about translating a new webnovel on his site. *joking about translating, the webnovel and novel is real.
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Apr 25, 2017 05:29
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Sampatrick posted:Worm had plenty of happy moments in it, though. The victory over the Slaughterhouse, her getting together with Brian, the actual ending to it, taking out the ABB, killing Coil, etc. The idea that Worm is some grimdark work where everything was always miserable doesn't really reflect the actual text. There was a cost attached to most of her victories but that doesn't invalidate that they were victories. I read Worm recently and I have to say I strongly disagree. Her 'victory' over the Slaughterhouse Nine felt more or less completely invalidated by the fact they escaped to apparently end the world, there was legit like one chapter of the Taylor/Brian relationship where they did cute 'romance' type things out of however many millions of words Worm is not to mention how that ended up ...both immediately after they got together and at the very end. Pretty much every win in the series is like that - immediately marred by some new always more, always worse coming out of left field and it never really pauses to let you appreciate a win. The sequence with Coil was cool, the big reveal of the plan coming together to beat this objectively bad guy was very cool - felt like a win - but then instantly the Travellers go rogue and start trying to kill everyone and it just continues to escalate from there forever until the literal end of the world without stopping for breath. The victories exist here and there in Worm but they just get buried under the constant unrelenting land-slide of bad poo poo that is always a chapter away throughout the entire story and it really does invalidate them as 'victories'. Like you take down a mob-boss and in doing so a hell-beast is unleashed on the world, it just makes the mob-boss seem trivial in hindsight and takes the joy out of triumphing over him.
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May 16, 2017 07:16
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Milky Moor posted:There's Armsmaster, who remains Worm's best character. Team Armsmaster - he's really the best  And yeah I agree it works very well for a web serial where you're trying to get people to tune in immediately for the next installment every week but that doesn't not make it an exhausting slog to read when taken as a whole. Which is probably why the big edit has been in the works since forever...
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May 18, 2017 05:28
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I didn't read Worm until after it was complete - why do so many people seem to have an issue with the time skip? It could have definitely been handled better but I think a timeskip is way better than another half dozen arcs of endbringer fights - if that would even be enough. I guess it was kind of a missed opportunity to give some of those characters introduced near the end more backstory/screen-time but the cast is pretty loving huge as it is. Plus the whole hero/villain divide sort of disappears towards the end which sort of renders a lot of the drama immediately pretimeskip moot.
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May 20, 2017 07:18
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Piell posted:The problem is that Taylor spends like 3 or 4 times as long being a hero during the time skip than she did as an Undersider and literally nothing happens. Taylor doesn't change in literally any way, nobody starts doing anything different, nobody dies or is affected. It's pointless. I mean I agree I guess. I don't really see how it could have been written better though. No one wants to read 2 years of losing battles and training right? Maybe Wildbow shouldn't have given such a big window between the start of the story and the poo poo Getting Real but I think it was supposed to be like - thematic? Taylor turns 18 right after the timeskip doesn't she? Which has some sort of literary meaning ...probably.
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May 21, 2017 06:25
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I liked the travellers  Trickster was one of my favorite characters before he got regulated to the sidelines forever, interesting power and an interesting character.
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May 23, 2017 08:03
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Also presumably if she ever did pick up on it Coil would just throw away that instance of reality.
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May 25, 2017 05:45
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Calef posted:Considering Wildbow has more or less outright said that (WoG spoilers about end of story interpretation) it's a ~valid interpretation~ to think that Taylor is actually in a permanent coma, and her last chapter is a dream, do you still think the narrative ultimately vindicates her ideas and behavior? Not him but a the end of the day Taylor's methods work which is a kind of vindication all it's own isn't it? Like the author pays some lip service to 'oh this is totally a bad thing guys' but at the end of the day Taylor is the hero doing what no one else can 
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Jun 9, 2017 21:35
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Agreed, if it's possible to guess it's definitely that guy. Since sort of by necessity Red Robe has to be someone Zorian and Zach aren't currently interacting with - he's pretty much the only named character that fits that bill and has more than like three words of backstory.
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Jul 18, 2017 09:46
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I think Miss Militia had the worst power. Her power was legit "I can summon a weapon". Like, do you have a credit card and gun store in your town? Congrats - you too have Miss Militia's "superpower". Also I agree, in hindsight it really seems like most supervillians / superheroes would get rolled by a group of guys with guns, radios, and cameras. But the whole setting sort of hinges on everyone wearing kid gloves all the time in a weird way, I think that gets explained at some point maybe? Because the setting just doesn't seem like it could exist organically if you give it a second of thought - some people just have powers that are way too hardcore for them to not be ruling as godkings.
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Jul 20, 2017 07:42
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Milky Moor posted:The Behemoth arc is a big nothing-hole in my memory. In contrast to the Leviathan arc which owned. It's memorable in that it has the only on screen Undersider death (the lamest death, seriously what was that?).
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Jul 22, 2017 05:34
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:00 |
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OP last posted in 2013, holy crap thread old.
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Aug 24, 2017 06:33
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