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Megazver posted:Eh. I don't read that serial, but stories where people do stuff with were-whatevers and shapeshifters and animals that shapeshift into people (like fox spirits and other Asian tropes like that) are common enough that I find it hard to clutch any pearls here. Don't let that stop you, though! WtC has had major consent issues. Regrets, now you can have them too: MC saying "it's complicated" pretty much translates to "protagonist raped the childlike morphic deer".
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Mar 24, 2021 16:25
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Oh.
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Mar 24, 2021 16:28
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Yeah. Anyways, I'm reading through Azarinth healer now and it's honestly hilarious after reading BTDEM. Someone commented that Ilea treats being injured like party favors and she absolutely does. As a relatively calm "Fantasy nonsense happens and number go up" story it's entertaining.
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Mar 24, 2021 16:31
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Web serials: the gift that just won't stop giving (you nightmares.)
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Mar 24, 2021 16:32
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Anias posted:WtC has had major consent issues. Regrets, now you can have them too: MC saying "it's complicated" pretty much translates to "protagonist raped the childlike morphic deer". Hmmm. Oh well!
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Mar 24, 2021 16:36
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Isn’t the deer like a druids grove and like thousands of years old? gently caress me that’s a weird thing to gently caress however you put it.
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Mar 24, 2021 16:51
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I mean, I avoided WtC because any description with anything like "now he's in the world of his D&D campaign" is going to make me go nope and turn around, just like I avoid self inserts in any other story. But the spoilers aren't doing anything to make me re-evaluate that.
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Mar 24, 2021 19:12
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worth the candle is good for like the first hundred or so chapters and then idk what happened. i dropped it when the personified embodiment of a house, who had been raped 500 years ago by the main character's best friend who died and than transferred to the world hundreds of years before the main character did, raped the main character
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Mar 24, 2021 20:31
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This kinda seems like the author has a weird and really specific fetish.
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Mar 24, 2021 20:38
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it sucks because worth the candle was actually quite good before it decided to delve into all the weird sex poo poo and now its just extremely yikes
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Mar 24, 2021 20:39
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Sampatrick posted:it sucks because (INSERT TITLE HERE) was actually quite good before it decided to delve into all the weird sex poo poo and now its just extremely yikes I feel like this could cover a lot of web novels. If they just started off their weird erotica as weird erotica it wouldn't be an issue*, but they have to lead in with 70+ chapters of decently entertaining fiction before the true purpose is revealed. *OK some things would still be an issue but you know what I mean.
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Mar 24, 2021 20:52
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It's why I prefer it when smut just labels itself as smut right away. If that's what you want you can still read it, but at least you don't get attached to a story that then suddenly turns weird on you if isn't what you want.
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Mar 24, 2021 20:53
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WtC was okay before fenn died and when she trashed the main character in a letter i was like "uh, none of this is on base, juniper really isn't a pathetic and desperate character so this letter is more of a character assassination of fenn than juniper" but then the author made him a pathetic sexpest so i guess she was right?? it's just a mess of a story that decided to go all-in on interpersonal conflict and people making bad decisions that don't fit the characters they were in the good part of the story
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Mar 24, 2021 21:48
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I think WtC's biggest problems are structural in nature. The first... maybe 30-50 chapters were legit fun and interesting (I enjoyed the story until the soul magic arc, and kept hanging on and going "It might get better again" until the deer got that lady pregnant and the entire story ground to a halt to do longform pregnancy fan fiction). After it started having pacing, consistency, and content issues, it was still easy to identify fun ideas and how they were supposed to work... but the story just consistently botches the execution. Heck, even the weird sex poo poo could work: the primary conceit of the setting is that it's built out of D&D campaigns/campaign ideas the character wrote up as a teenager, and that's the perfect place to draw cringy or stupid sex poo poo from... but the story has to know it's cringy, and shine a light on it by, like, having the guy hold his head in his hands every time an embarrassing Vixens From The Planet Lesbos plot pops up, and his friends look at him funny and go "Come on man... I know you wrote this when you were sixteen, but really?" But most of the weird poo poo goes completely unchallenged, and is just there for its own sake. Heck, the same update that had the deer sex resolved the Amaryllis plotline by just going "And then they hosed, it was okay." Which is a great way to resolve that, since, yeah, that's how adult relationships work... ...but the story didn't get the memo, it just kinda rubber stamped that beat and charged forward to wrap up the next thing. Part of what I find so frustrating about WtC is that it would be easier to adapt into a decent-quality book than an awful lot of serials... but the weird, bad poo poo in it is really weird, and really bad. Omi no Kami fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Mar 24, 2021 |
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Mar 24, 2021 22:20
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Omi no Kami posted:Heck, even the weird sex poo poo could work: the primary conceit of the setting is that it's built out of D&D campaigns/campaign ideas the character wrote up as a teenager, and that's the perfect place to draw cringy or stupid sex poo poo from... but the story has to know it's cringy, and shine a light on it by, like, having the guy hold his head in his hands every time an embarrassing Vixens From The Planet Lesbos plot pops up, and his friends look at him funny and go "Come on man... I know you wrote this when you were sixteen, but really?"
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Mar 25, 2021 11:37
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Got a request, just checking with the thread -- ok to change title to "Web Serials: I mean, it's not like it has a cloaca" ?
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Mar 25, 2021 12:23
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Go for it, lol.
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Mar 25, 2021 12:25
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There's nothing wrong with a cloaca, you can always use an enema first if it bothers you.
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Mar 25, 2021 16:07
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These comments about WtC are kind of funny to read for someone who hasn't read WtC (or at least read more than the first chapter or two, but I never got any feel for the setting beyond the protagonist's name and it being able his D&D sessions).
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Mar 25, 2021 22:47
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I would genuinely love to hear the author's thoughts once WtC wraps, because it's in such a bizarre place. The story is a bizarre and creepy gumbo of weird sex poo poo and bizarre creative decisions, but it's not like a Wildbow thing where it's some eccentric guy cooking up weird poo poo over a cauldron- by all accounts the author's a pretty normal, cool guy, and I am really curious which parts of the story were unintentional, and which landed just like he wanted. Because holy poo poo- at least from where I'm standing it comes off like he started with a really tight outline that started to wander during the soul magic poo poo and got away from him entirely when the deer got that lady pregnant.
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Mar 26, 2021 01:06
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I think one of the really interesting/weird parts of WtC is that all the hosed-up poo poo that the main character wrote down in his D&D books is treated as perfectly normal by the inhabitants of the world because that's just how it's always been. Imagine meeting God and him being really embarrassed that cancer existed because he went through a goth phase in high school, or that the reason why we poop is because he did a thought exercise about a species that produced toxic waste as a metabolic byproduct. The author's got a lot of leeway to put in some really alien concepts and integrate them into a cohesive world and it was cool to see a lot of it come together. I stopped reading shortly after the main character was raped by his house, who had previously been raped by his best friend because holy poo poo was that a step or ten too far, but I enjoyed it until that point.
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Mar 26, 2021 04:44
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Yeah, that's one of the best parts of the whole thing, and part of what surprises me is that past the early part the story doesn't really use it all that well. Like, it's an awesome idea- probably one of my very favorite lines of the entire story is early on when they activate a jokey trap he made up for fun, which causes a small army of pixies to attack them. The whole group has to horribly rip and tear the tiny, screaming menaces apart, and by the end of it they're all exhausted, covered in wounds, and surrounded by tiny body parts. One of the newer party members turns to PC guy and goes "...I don't get it. How is this fun? Why would you do this as a game?" But later on it feels like a lot of the intentionally edgy stuff loses that uncomfortable intimacy, and it just becomes, like "Yeah, this is the planet of the buzzsaw barstools, I wrote it when I was 13 because I thought it was funny." I originally thought that the story was going to resolve by revealing that, like, the whole thing was an advanced therapy program or something, and everything- good, bad, whatever- was something the MC had going on upstairs. But I get the feeling that partway through the author lost the lede, and it went from being a clever interrogation of LitRPG tropes to just being a LitRPG.
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Mar 26, 2021 05:03
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the best application of the "dumb teenage d&d game come to life" thing in WtC is definitely actual cannibal shia lebeouf and honestly i think the story started to lose steam after that pretty rapidly because the author wasn't going to come up with anything to top it
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Mar 26, 2021 06:22
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Weirdly enough, I thought the weird sex poo poo was simultaneously one of the best wellsprings for 'Stupid poo poo a teenager writes without thinking it through', and the most neglected. Like, for all of the story's emphasis on metanarrative and emphasizing certain weird bullshit while neglecting other stuff, as far as I can tell the only time he explicitly tied the game world to his own hangups was when he lampshaded how heavily his party composition focused on things he wanted to gently caress, which is a whole lot of yikes just on its own. There was just so much interesting territory that got set up, then never effectively leveraged in any way.
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Mar 26, 2021 07:42
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Having actually read it now I'd just like to say that loving the deer was about as well handled as it could have been and I don't think it was abusive despite being done partly because there was an achievement for it. The locus doesn't think like a human, but it's not a child or an animal. I do however agree with the anthropomorphic personification of uh reasonable interpretations of the game rules? that it would be gross to gently caress the deer. I was glad that there was plausible deniability that he had hosed the deer at all since the on-screen bit was just them running around, but then his wife asked him and he said he hosed the deer and didn't use protection. skill focus: loving the deer
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Mar 26, 2021 09:38
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Better than the house rape.
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Mar 26, 2021 09:39
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What. Wow, people really will do anything for a cheevo.
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Mar 26, 2021 09:52
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I see now why people wanted to argue about loving the deer rather than discuss the following chapters.
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Mar 26, 2021 10:34
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as another thread once titled, "There is always more and it is always worse"
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Mar 26, 2021 11:38
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Yeaaah, that's the other thing. Like, there's room to laugh and workshop the fact that the man hosed the deer. There's also room to be weirded out over the fact that the long-running plot thread of the guy not wanting to gently caress his wife was literally solved by her going "I am jealous that you hosed the deer, please gently caress the wife," and him going "Okay I shall gently caress the wife," and then them going "that was okay, whatever, back to the story." But I have literally nothing constructive to say about the last chapter in that batch, except that I really, really hope that we don't get some version of the giant Kansas-sized rape monster plowing through the protagonists, because (don't) gently caress that. Seriously, holy loving poo poo I'm not psyched about the story's finale apparently being Did You Know That Rape is Edgy And Sucks?
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Mar 26, 2021 11:39
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...this thread is doing weird things to me and I don't like it. I just thought to myself "what would a Kansas-sized rape monster even rape? Continental shelves?" and that is just not a thought a human being should ever have.
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Mar 26, 2021 11:42
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Volcanos.
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Mar 26, 2021 12:59
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In other news, Law of Averages came out of its planned between-books hiatus this month. Also, much more surprisingly, A Hero's War just updated again, although I remember basically nothing about where that one left off anymore.
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Mar 28, 2021 17:06
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I'm a cheap gently caress getting back into genre fiction and want to read free words online. Wildbow is the most popular web author, decided to read his stuff as an entry point about a year ago. I somehow read Worm and thought it was okay (definitely a lot of interesting ideas), but in retrospect i'm not sure if i liked it or if it just stockholmed me after the first ~100k words. I loved Pact, it's probably going to be the standard i weigh future web serials against despite its many flaws. Twig was good in a lot of ways and very interesting, but the story arcs got very muddled and indistinct to me after a certain point; i lost the will to finish it and couldn't actually find where i left off when i decided to go back and try and complete it. Ward was painfully bad and drudging, couldn't make it past the first 20k-30k and all the other opinions on it i've seen from previous fans of wildbow were even more negative. I'm leaving aside Basically, can anyone recommend more web serials like Pact and maybe Twig/Worm? Maybe with a cast that are in at least their twenties? I'm starting on Unsong and it's giving me Good Omens vibes which i appreciate greatly, but it's considerably drier and the writing hasn't gripped me yet. would definitely prefer to go back to it later and read in the meantime something a bit livelier, or without as much gematriah.
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Mar 28, 2021 22:48
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Hiveminded posted:I'm a cheap gently caress getting back into genre fiction and want to read free words online. Wildbow is the most popular web author, decided to read his stuff as an entry point about a year ago. I somehow read Worm and thought it was okay (definitely a lot of interesting ideas), but in retrospect i'm not sure if i liked it or if it just stockholmed me after the first ~100k words. I loved Pact, it's probably going to be the standard i weigh future web serials against despite its many flaws. Twig was good in a lot of ways and very interesting, but the story arcs got very muddled and indistinct to me after a certain point; i lost the will to finish it and couldn't actually find where i left off when i decided to go back and try and complete it. Ward was painfully bad and drudging, couldn't make it past the first 20k-30k and all the other opinions on it i've seen from previous fans of wildbow were even more negative. I'm leaving aside Check out a local library or an internet library, hit up stories on the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award, and have a good free time with always good fantasy lit. There is definitely quality stuff in the web serial genre, but its slimmer pickings compared to the sheer wealth of stuff you can find in paper novels. For answers keeping to the web serial medium, the thing that Wildbow is (occasionally) good at in Pact and Pale is: 1. Tense action scenes 2. "magical" arguments between people complicated by fantasy rules. 3. genuinely weird fantasy, where fantastical things occur. For 1, into the mire is great. https://intothemire.com/ for 3, Katalepsis is great. https://katalepsis.net/ For 2, a practical guide to evil is decent https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/ Rob Filter fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 00:31
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Unsong is written by someone who personally is not a nazi but certainly seems to attract them and promoted and direct them against his enemies and privately admit that he's hiding his power level to sneakily spread their ideas. Also really hates feminism and insists that trump isn't racist. He did tell them to take the most frothing bits of racism elsewhere out of his comments and the community with his name on it, but then he promoted the newer even worse one they made to continue the discussions. Of course to know this you'd have to read his posts and the short ones a hundred thousand words of waffling that never actually make an argument if they can help it. 90s Cringe Rock fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Mar 29, 2021 |
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Mar 29, 2021 00:38
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Unsong is written by someone who personally is not a nazi but certainly seems to attract them and promote them and direct them against his enemies and privately admit that he's hiding his power level to sneakily spread their ideas. Also really hates feminism and insists that trump isn't racist. What the Yikes.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:39
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Rob Filter posted:What the Yikes.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:42
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Hiveminded posted:I'm a cheap gently caress getting back into genre fiction and want to read free words online. Wildbow is the most popular web author, decided to read his stuff as an entry point about a year ago. I somehow read Worm and thought it was okay (definitely a lot of interesting ideas), but in retrospect i'm not sure if i liked it or if it just stockholmed me after the first ~100k words. I loved Pact, it's probably going to be the standard i weigh future web serials against despite its many flaws. Twig was good in a lot of ways and very interesting, but the story arcs got very muddled and indistinct to me after a certain point; i lost the will to finish it and couldn't actually find where i left off when i decided to go back and try and complete it. Ward was painfully bad and drudging, couldn't make it past the first 20k-30k and all the other opinions on it i've seen from previous fans of wildbow were even more negative. I'm leaving aside Pith would probably be closest to what you are asking for off the top of my head with a mature group dynamic. It doesn't sound like you want trash so keep clear of royalroad imo
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Mar 29, 2021 00:43
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Rob Filter posted:Katalepsis is great. https://katalepsis.net/
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Mar 29, 2021 00:44
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