Web Serials

[JeenLeen]

Maybe so, but it seems pretty hostile on the desktop. It's probably more the blue on black than the width exactly, my eyes seem to be failing and it's no fun, and blue on black just isn't enough contrast for me to read it.

I couldn't stand reading the white-on-black text of one of Wildbow's novels, so I made this VBA macro. Copy the webpage into Word, then run this and it becomes visible. Should work for others, too
I was hoping to find and paste the VBA code, but it was basically just the code to "highlight all" --> change text to black --> change background to white.
Helped me read Worm.

[Ibrinar]

If you are using chrome (other browsers will have similar ways but picking chrome because popular)
a simple way (though it will make the site look kinda **** since I didn't bother to do it cleanly) is to install something like stylebot https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d.../related?hl=de

Then go to options and add a new style. Set "parahumans.wordpress.com" as url and it will be applied to all subsites. And add this code:

#page {background:#fff;}
body {    color: #000;}

All chapters should be display with black text and white text background.

[Eurus]

The Wandering Inn took me a long time to decide if I liked it or not. The start wasn't amazing, and even as I got farther in, I'd occasionally hit a run of chapters that made me consider stopping, but I do feel like the quality has improved steadily as it goes on. Practical Guide to Evil had a better start, but again, there were some rough patches. Overall, though, I think worth reading, and they both have huge backlogs, which is good if you're looking for something to binge.

As far as stuff not yet mentioned... Beware of Chicken is an imperfect but surprisingly fun read. Requires a bit of tolerance for "isekai'd character is better than everyone" plots, which is made a little more awkward by the fact that protag is a North American guy in wuxia-land, but it's slice-of-lifey enough that I've been enjoying it. I'm a sucker for cute animals, what can I say?

The Hedge Wizard is a newer story that I quite like so far, it has fun characters and solid writing. Not much of a plot yet, but I have high hopes.

Prophecy-Approved Companion is... pretty unique, as far as I know? It's a story about a VRMMO, and it leans into a lot of pretty cliche video game jokes, but it manages to genuinely feel like sci-fi rather than fantasy with vague MMO trappings and unnecessary level up textboxes. It's also very funny in some places, even though I don't think all of the jokes land equally.

Halfeye mentioned Tower of Somnus and Vigor Mortis, I'll second the recommendations. Tower of Somnus is a fun action-y story if you like cyberpunk. The magic-VRMMO thing seemed a bit incongruous at first in light of that genre, but it works better than I expected. Vigor Mortis is probably going to live or die entirely depending on whether you find the characters interesting or annoying, and honestly, they kinda go back and forth for me. But it's kept me reading so far, so it must be doing something right.

[halfeye]

I am just up to date with Pale.

I think I like the story as a whole, but I do like most stories.

There's a character that is always required to tell lies, so it's in effect always telling the truth but you have to invert the meaning of what it says, and anything subtle is very difficult. I would rather not have a character speak that way in any story I'm reading, it's annoying to have to always invert that character's remarks. It is possible that if every character in a story did that one might get used to it to the point where it didn't matter, but I suspect the reality is that most people would just find it too difficult and ignore the story entirely.

[Rynjin]

Took a look at The Primal Hunter, since it's highly rated. 8 chapters deep and I'll give it a few more to improve, but it's pretty bog standard litrpg schlock so far. The writing is full of very tedious and clunky exposition, and the main character comes across as a sociopath, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing so interesting and just the usual poor grasp of human emotion many new writers struggle with.

I should say it's not truly terrible, like Inexorable Chaos, but it's not particularly engaging so far.

[Ibrinar]

Prophecy-Approved Companion is... pretty unique, as far as I know? It's a story about a VRMMO, and it leans into a lot of pretty cliche video game jokes, but it manages to genuinely feel like sci-fi rather than fantasy with vague MMO trappings and unnecessary level up textboxes. It's also very funny in some places, even though I don't think all of the jokes land equally.

To clarify and add a few things. It isn't a VRMMO it is a single player VR RPG. A tester goes in (and tries to break some stuff) who takes the role of the chosen one but the MC is an character from the game who travels with the tester. She is intelligent though at the beginning somewhat constrained by her role in the game, and interacting with her changes other characters too. So it is about AI and jokes about old rpgs.

[Sapphire Guard]

I started quite a lot of these, but eventually dropped away from all of them. Part of it was that a great many seem to be built on 'these are the rules of narrative, the lead character knows how to break them' which is a very unappealing plot to me.

[Eurus]

To clarify and add a few things. It isn't a VRMMO it is a single player VR RPG. A tester goes in (and tries to break some stuff) who takes the role of the chosen one but the MC is an character from the game who travels with the tester. She is intelligent though at the beginning somewhat constrained by her role in the game, and interacting with her changes other characters too. So it is about AI and jokes about old rpgs.

Right, my bad. There's only one "player", and the other characters are NPCs.

[Rynjin]

Took a look at The Primal Hunter, since it's highly rated. 8 chapters deep and I'll give it a few more to improve, but it's pretty bog standard litrpg schlock so far. The writing is full of very tedious and clunky exposition, and the main character comes across as a sociopath, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing so interesting and just the usual poor grasp of human emotion many new writers struggle with.

I should say it's not truly terrible, like Inexorable Chaos, but it's not particularly engaging so far.

Nah, Primal Hunter was pretty much irredeemable trash like I thought, Royal Road denizens have atrocious taste.

Two stories that DON'T suck though: Tower of Somnus, and The Hedge Wizard.

The former is an interesting blend of cyberpunk (the waking world) and litrpg (the MMO they go to when asleep), and the interplay between the two is VERY interesting, as is the wider galactic community interactions sprinkled in.

The latter is a great throwback to the FEEL of classic 80s/90s high fantasy literature like Wheel of Time, but with the more modernized snappy pacing of something like a Brandon Sanderson or Jim Butcher novel. Great stuff, in other words, if you're missing main characters who are a bit inexperienced, but have a bit of world-wiseness to them from that era.

I started quite a lot of these, but eventually dropped away from all of them. Part of it was that a great many seem to be built on 'these are the rules of narrative, the lead character knows how to break them' which is a very unappealing plot to me.

The only story I know that really fits this bill is A Practical Guide to Evil, and yeah that is sort of the point of the series; it's the entire premise its worldbuilding is based around.

I cannot think of another where this is the case.

[Sapphire Guard]

I'm counting things like The Wandering Inn and the isekais where the lead is better at rulebreaking than the people for whom these decisions have been life and death for years.

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Erin is the first person ever to try to speak to Goblins or burn out a nest of spiders rather than just attacking it. Got about halfway through Worm before giving up, it was all about subverting the 'heroes v villains' setup as though those are fixed positions (except of course for the leads).

I am up to date with 'Into the Mire', though.

[halfeye]

Nah, Primal Hunter was pretty much irredeemable trash like I thought, Royal Road denizens have atrocious taste.

It's certainly not my favourite, but the one I am seriously thinking about stopping is "the space legacy" for political reasons, there were a couple I started but dropped, Six Chances had what looked like an interesting premise, but tried to turn what that premise was exactly into a mystery, and it just kept getting more confused. I started the Zombie Knight saga once, I may go back to it. I don't like vampire stories and didn't start any stories headlined that way.

Two stories that DON'T suck though: Tower of Somnus, and The Hedge Wizard.
The former is an interesting blend of cyberpunk (the waking world) and litrpg (the MMO they go to when asleep), and the interplay between the two is VERY interesting, as is the wider galactic community interactions sprinkled in.

I dunno, I find dungeon magic working in the non-dungeon world a bit jarring. It certainly makes for a complicated story, but:

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I can't help wondering why waking world assassins don't make a much bigger effort to target players while they are asleep and playing.

The latter is a great throwback to the FEEL of classic 80s/90s high fantasy literature like Wheel of Time, but with the more modernized snappy pacing of something like a Brandon Sanderson or Jim Butcher novel. Great stuff, in other words, if you're missing main characters who are a bit inexperienced, but have a bit of world-wiseness to them from that era.

I'll have to find that one.

So far as I can tell "Into the Mire" hasn't updated in something like six months, and may well be on permanent hiatus.

I think my current top picks of active serials are Katalepsis, A practical Guide to Evl and Pale, there are a lot to like below them, and a lot of readable but not exceptional serials below those.

There are a lot of typos and other errors that don't get fixed:

Your/yours: belongs to you. You're: you are, shorter to say, not significantly shorter to type.
There: in or related to that place. Their/Theirs belonging to they/them. They're They are, not shorter to type.
Two: 2. to: going somewhere or something like that. Too: related to more (e.g. "is Fred travelling with us too?").

[Dragonus45]

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Erin is the first person ever to try to speak to Goblins or burn out a nest of spiders rather than just attacking it.

I find that odd because it’s explicit in universe that neither of those things is true.

[Sapphire Guard]

I may have quit before that was revealed.

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I remember her stunning the whole guild by bringing in the spider bounties, it's something that only a team of adventurers would attempt.

“Erin, how did you kill a nest of Shield Spiders? Even if you burned them, most adventurers would rather run than pick a fight with a Shield Spider if they’re not Silver-rank or higher.”

“Shield Spiders are considered to be a Silver-rank threat. A nest of them though…I wouldn’t be surprised if a team of Gold-rank adventurers were dispatched to handle it.”

A singular Shield Spider is a challenge to veteran fighters, but she solos the whole nest.

I gave up the story soon after that.

Edit: I think we had this same conversation a year ago.

[Dragonus45]

Edit: I think we had this same conversation a year ago.

We probably did? I love TWI and tend to never want to miss a chance to get people to read it lol.

[Rynjin]

I may have quit before that was revealed.

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I remember her stunning the whole guild by bringing in the spider bounties, it's something that only a team of adventurers would attempt.





A singular Shield Spider is a challenge to veteran fighters, but she solos the whole nest.

I gave up the story soon after that.

Edit: I think we had this same conversation a year ago.

The dealio eith the Shield Spiders is they're a Silver rank threat, so they typically require someone of roughly level 20 to 30 in a combat class to deal with, or a TEAM of Bronze rank adventurers who are typically level 10 to 15ish.

Erin is absurdly high level for her age; I believe she was already level 30 by that point. While not a combat class, she does have a surprising number of combat skills at that point, and as it us noted a few times, Erin has a hell of a killer instinct, something which disturbs her to no end.

Taking out the spiders is not some impossible task, but it's something that no one would expect a random civilian to be able to do. More to the point, nobody would expect a random civilian to even attempt such a task, because a single **** up would leave them spider food.

[Sapphire Guard]

A singular Shield Spider is a Silver rank threat, but a nest requires a team of Gold. And that's an employee of the adventurer's guild and a top of the line adventurer I'm quoting, so they would know.

A random civilian would not go hunting the nest, but plenty of random civilians would be 'that nest will kill us all if we leave it be, we can't afford to hire adventurers, we have to do something about it or we're all dead anyway.'

This might well be early instalment issues before the story solidifies, but an easy way to get my back up is to have strangers arrive into a setting and start needlessly one upping the locals. I've got as far as 1.39 now, and I'm not very motivated to keep going.

[Rynjin]

That's something that I think gets hard retconned later, yeah. We get a look st Gold rank threats, and they're significantly more dangerous than a single nest of Shield Spiders, who the Horns (a Silver rank team of 4) are more than capable of dealing with with minimal risk.

The only things Erin really upstages the locals with are things that are purely cribbed from Earth, like fast food and plays, which are more novelties than anything and the things that can be replicated (like the food) are. And Chess, but she was a world class Chess player on Earth too.

The only real edge Earthers have is that they level faster, because leveling is based on stress, basically. The harder a time you have, the more xp you get. And since even simple tasks are out of most of their depths, they level fast, and even faster in truly dangerous scenarios (which is true for natives as well; "counter leveling" is a phenomenon their militaries have to account for when executing sieges snd the like).

[halfeye]

I've got as far as 1.39 now, and I'm not very motivated to keep going.

You are close to something significant. Give it about half a dozen more updates and see how you feel then.

[Sapphire Guard]

Spoiler: TWI, end of book 1

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Huh. The things I liked and the things I didn't like both ramped up.

There is another (smaller) Shield Spider nest in the ruins, was that what you were referring to earlier?

I have a soft spot for Skinner, partly because he looks like Melchiah, and he makes a good boss encounter...but it also feels kinda cheap that Erin could beat the fear gaze. With what? Fear? Pain? Loss? Why is Erin's fear, pain, or loss more valuable than everyone else in the town's feelings on watching their friends and family get eaten alive?

The concepts are good, but Liscor and the adventuring team were frustratingly helpless, and Erin and her chess club were frustratingly effective against this legendary nursery rhyme threat.

Similarly, Ryoka can beat the dominate spell. The Horns chapters noticeably more engaging, at least until Skinner broke out.

I will admit that I'm interested enough to keep reading, and it does feel like a young writer that might come into their own later...but I wouldn't say I'm a fan. It took me three attempts to get through book one, and it has caught my attention enough to keep reading, but that's it.

Do we know how big Liscor is? I seem to remember the town being 40k, but the giant attack that destroyed half the town had only 260 casualties.

Also read the livechat chapter, conveniently all English speakers. The comments tipped me off to do translations, which is well worthwhile 'Batman' is truly worthy of the name.

[halfeye]

Spoiler: TWI, end of book 1

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Huh. The things I liked and the things I didn't like both ramped up.

There is another (smaller) Shield Spider nest in the ruins, was that what you were referring to earlier?

I have a soft spot for Skinner, partly because he looks like Melchiah, and he makes a good boss encounter...but it also feels kinda cheap that Erin could beat the fear gaze. With what? Fear? Pain? Loss? Why is Erin's fear, pain, or loss more valuable than everyone else in the town's feelings on watching their friends and family get eaten alive?

The concepts are good, but Liscor and the adventuring team were frustratingly helpless, and Erin and her chess club were frustratingly effective against this legendary nursery rhyme threat.

Similarly, Ryoka can beat the dominate spell. The Horns chapters noticeably more engaging, at least until Skinner broke out.

I will admit that I'm interested enough to keep reading, and it does feel like a young writer that might come into their own later...but I wouldn't say I'm a fan. It took me three attempts to get through book one, and it has caught my attention enough to keep reading, but that's it.

Do we know how big Liscor is? I seem to remember the town being 40k, but the giant attack that destroyed half the town had only 260 casualties.

Also read the livechat chapter, conveniently all English speakers. The comments tipped me off to do translations, which is well worthwhile 'Batman' is truly worthy of the name.

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I don't think Erin's behaviour changes much, I just think the Skinner bit was a bit like the red wedding in ASOIAF, there were a lot of people killed or disappeared, and for me that makes a big difference to how I feel about the story. It has a lot of faults, and it's not my favourite, but if you want something to read there is a huge amount of reading in The Wandering Inn.

[paddyfool]

Another one I'd quite recommend would be Mark of the Fool. A little slow moving, but I really like the world-building.

Mother of Learning was my favourite of any I've read, though.

[Dragonus45]

So I started reading Hedge Wizard, the magic system is nifty and the banter has hit the spot I like so far. The idea of dungeons being a spontaneously occurring natural phenomena caused by wild magic is really interesting.

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Oh boy though, has this dungeon section escalated quickly. I was not expecting the kobolds to start reenacting the hills have eys.

[Ibrinar]

Some random recs:

Dungeon crawler Carl: ******* alien empire make a gameshow out of messing up a planet and putting part of the population in a giant "dungeon crawl" where they theoretically could win the planet back if they reached the end but of course no one ever does. Pretty good. The various floors are nice and varied which makes every floor a smaller arc, I like the characters and the hate for the aliens and wish to get back at them while being limited in what you can do or even say publicly works well as overarching arc.

Dirk Cooper: Paranormal Real Estate- Partially mentioning it because it could use more readers. Modern world, MC can see ghosts and has lots of debts to lots of unsavory people. Is an estate agent/ exorcist. Basically will free a haunted house from ghost and then help sell it. The ghost might be a ghost he knows and asked to go there though if he can't find a genuine one.

Gets involved in something a bit more large scale than his usual work.

Super Minion: Shape changing biological experiment gets human like mind as his super power and escapes and now tries to live outside. As can be expected he is a bit of a weirdo by human norms and is enjoyable to read about. seems to be on hiatus though.

[halfeye]

Hm, Deeper Darker pretends to be space opera, but at the moment it's farce, pretty pure and simple.

[Ibrinar]

Hm, Deeper Darker pretends to be space opera, but at the moment it's farce, pretty pure and simple.

Deeper darker belongs to a little known genre called the ubik show.

Yeah I guess farce fits. It went all in on Ubik's plan shenanigans that always work out for Ubik (i seriously wonder whether he has some reality bender powers beyond his tech magic). And since he never talks about his plans either before or after that means nobody can plan around it so the other two mcs despite being personally powerful just follow along in his wake and comment. And outside characters just get pulled in and are mostly props to be wowed and outplayed. (Which was more limited in the long dungeon arc because there were fewer other people.)

It is entertaining or me until I grow a bit tired of it so I have taken one long break from reading it and will probably soon take another.

[Blueiji]

Worm (as well as Wildbow’s work in general) has already been mentioned a few times in this thread, but I’ll chime in to say: it’s a hell of a lot of fun to read alongside friends.

Worm’s combination of long-running plot, sprawling worldbuilding, constant questions/theory-bait, and high capacity for picking favorites/making your own characters means that enjoying it as a social experience works exceptionally well. This doesn’t mean you need a regimented bookclub—even having just a few friends reading it in a roughly contemporaneous manner will result in a hell of a lot of fun group discussions, theory-crafting sessions, and returns to the ever-popular “what would your Parahuman power be?” question.

tl;dr For a 1.6 million word long web-serial best read during antisocial 4am binges, Worm is a surprisingly fun at parties.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Worm (as well as Wildbow’s work in general) has already been mentioned a few times in this thread, but I’ll chime in to say: it’s a hell of a lot of fun to read alongside friends.

Worm’s combination of long-running plot, sprawling worldbuilding, constant questions/theory-bait, and high capacity for picking favorites/making your own characters means that enjoying it as a social experience works exceptionally well. This doesn’t mean you need a regimented bookclub—even having just a few friends reading it in a roughly contemporaneous manner will result in a hell of a lot of fun group discussions, theory-crafting sessions, and returns to the ever-popular “what would your Parahuman power be?” question.

tl;dr For a 1.6 million word long web-serial best read during antisocial 4am binges, Worm is a surprisingly fun at parties.

Speaking of Worm group activities, Wildbow was, at one point, in the process of making a tabletop RPG based on Worm.

The mechanical side of things was, as far as I know, never finished, but the mechanics for 'choosing' your powers were, and are quite cool. Let me see if I can find that link...

Here we go. Weaver Dice
Ah, and here's a newer version. Weaverdice (character creation)

One thing I've wanted to try for a while is taking the Weaverdice character creation method for a group, and then the group works together to build and play those characters in HERO 6E (if you want to get really granular) or Masks (much easier, but also much more 'broad-strokes') or something.

[Gnoman]

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Erin is the first person ever to try to speak to Goblins or burn out a nest of spiders rather than just attacking it. Got about halfway through Worm before giving up, it was all about subverting the 'heroes v villains' setup as though those are fixed positions (except of course for the leads).

Much later spoiler on Goblins.

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The last known time somebody tried treating goblins as people, the goblin they were treating with wound up murdering most of them. The time before *that*, the goblin leader the locals made peace with went on a rampage across the world that caused incredible damage with no warning or apparent reason. Both of these have actual explanations, but nobody knows them in-universe except the goblins.

[endoperez]

Most of the really good ones have already been mentioned.

The Last Angel & sequels, Mother of Learning, Practical Guide to Evil, Wildbow's stories, etc.
gomipile mentioned Fine Structure by Sam Hughes, on qntm.org . It's weird, it's good, and I really enjoyed it. It's kind of like scifi story with high fantasy levels of weirdness.


I'm not a fan of the Wandering Inn myself, I stopped it quite early on. Must be the rough start many people keep mentioning.


Here are some suggestions that haven't been mentioned yet.

Andur, a writer at royalroad.com. He writes fantasy themed fiction, often with the basic trappings of isekai stories, reincarnation, past lives, or something of that sort. I haven't read all of his stories, but I enjoyed all the ones I tried.
https://www.royalroad.com/profile/3091/fictions

For example, the story Beyond? is about a powerful magician on a dying world intercepting a summoning spell to hitch-hike himself out of there. He ends up in a new world, and the story is about him learning how the new world works, and experiencing childhood and youth again now in a more peaceful setting. Nothing groundbreaking, but it does its own thing well.

Threadbare by Andrew Seiple
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/15130/threadbare
An entertaining power fantasy story (litRPG, if you know the term) about a teddy bear golem and its quest to keep its small master 1) safe and 2) happy. Various shenanigans ensue, including leveling up in various skills the teddy bear happens to pick up. There's some comedy, some tragedy, and lots of leveling up and exploring the rules of the system and what it allows.




In certain corners of the internet, there are a bunch of sci-fi stories brought forth by a simple question. The space is full of all kinds of life, from mundane to dangerous, from all-rounders to hyper-specialized. Human fiction is full of stories about aliens stronger, faster and more dangerous than others. About warlike species, about ancient precursors with unimaginable scientific wonders, and so on. The question: what if humanity isn't the everyman, but one of these rare and dangerous outliers? Hence, HFY or Humanity F**k Yeah fiction.There's a subreddit for it (reddit.com/r/hfy), but it's mostly about "humans have best guns hurrah!" these days. That said, there are few stand-outs of the HFY subgenre in there and elsewhere on the internet.

Grand Design, BY TMarkos
Humanity is the ancient precursors. Now of their creations is active, once more.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21216/grand-design

Synchronizing Minds, by T.C. One
A proper story of xenofiction. A human diplomat means an alien that is so different that understanding just how different the two species are takes, well, the whole story. It's a story about the first diplomatic discussion, between two persons, and that's all that it is, and it's fantastic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comment...ve_a_hivemind/
Also available on Amazon

[J-H]

I'm currently in the middle of a binge catching up on TWI from April to current. There's a lot to read!

I'd like to support the Kickstarter and get a physical copy of the Last Tide graphic novel, but KS doesn't take Discover, which is my only CC. Any workarounds aside from borrowing the use of someone else's CC?

While looking up the Last Tide I discovered that TWI is past 8 million words. Previous to this, I think the longest work of fiction I'd read was the old Babylon 5 one titled something like "Through a Darker Mirror." That one is, at this point, more than 15 years old, and clocked in at about 1.6M words.