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Marsupial Ape posted:This is incredibly cringe, but I am 43 and I don't know anything about any of the KU genres you've been talking about except through 3rd order memes. What are my Lit 101 entry texts to this stuff? This is all impenetrable and I have nerd FOMO. So just to stick my oar in and probably make people mad with my garbage opinions, but the big new “genres” the kids are reading (we’re about the same age and grew up reading the same books) kinda roll into a few categories: System Apocalypse: Our modern world has been inundated with ‘“mana” or whatever and now people level up like video games and 90% of the world are eaten by elves or whatever. Genre is literally named after “the System Apocalypse”’series by Tao Wong. He even has tried to sue people for calling their books “System Apocalypse” novels. Isekai: This is your “Magic Kingdom: SOLD” genre where Joe average gets transmigrated to a fantasy world and gets magic or political power. This can be done via portal, resurrection (after being hit by a truck) or some other mechanism. May or may not level up like video game characters. The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba is maybe the longest work in the English language about a girl who is transported to a magical land and becomes a magical innkeeper with the power of friendship. Cultivation: Very Asian mythology influenced. Think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon where masters of the martial arts who have harnessed their internal energies can perform magical feats of swordsmanship. Cradle by Will Wight is a big thread favorite. Forge of Destiny is a bit more traditional and is available in serial format on Royal Road. Lots of others. Regression stories where someone at the end of an apocalypse gets a chance to do it over again with foreknowledge Time-loop stories where same thing but over and over again, Groundhog Day style. Dungeon core stories where the protagonist is a sentient rock in a video game style dungeon that has to kill intruders to get stronger. The rabbit hole knows no bottom. And now the genre is “mature” enough to have deconstructions. Dungeon Crawler Carl is the “Watchmen” or “The Boys” of the LitRPG Apocalypse genre that leans into the psychological trauma and existential horror of the premise that power fantasy ignores. Likewise, Beware of Chicken is a take on the cultivation genre that posits “but what if you weren’t a power-hungry rear end in a top hat?” The signal to noise ratio is absolutely appalling, but on the other hand it’s mostly free and got me through Covid more or less mentally intact, so who can say if it’s bad or not. I’m sure lots of people have better examples and I’d love to hear them cause I’m always looking for more of this horrible poo poo to smear on my face.
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Feb 23, 2024 06:04
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Don't forget VRMMO: What if you became a pro game player but the game was VR? And you never stopped playing? And for some reason everyone in the whole world cared very much about this one game! And you became (in)famous and rich and everyone told you how good you were at playing video games? And what if there was entire subgenre that was always, always, always a huge disappointment (asterisk)? The least offensive of these is the relatively-recently-released "Shadeslinger", by Kyle Kirrin. It's also worth mentioning "Progression Fantasy" which is basically LitRPG but the author feels like having explicit levels is hack. The story plays out exactly like a litrpg only instead of having character sheets posted every couple chapters, vegeta will use the scouter to determine their power level. These usually tend toward more european medieval fantasy flavor than asian, although cultivating qi (sorry, "mana") or something similar may still feature in the character getting stronger. The most famous example is Arcane Ascension (or anything else), by Andrew Rowe. AA is... fine. It's okay. Some that haven't been mentioned that are worth considering: * "Defiance of the Fall" by JF Brink is an incredibly long and relatively decent System Apocalypse. If you're interested in the subgenre, it's practically a must-read, especially the first couple books. As the character and earth get stronger it becomes a more standard cultivation/litrpg but even then it's an excellent example of the genre. It's not a particularly creative take on anything, but it polishes the formula up somewhat and gives the main character creative places and people to fight. * "Dominion of Blades" is an unfinished series by DCC's Matt Dinniman. He has said that he will finish it after DCC is complete, but Carl is pretty much his bread and butter right now so everything else has to go on hold. It's a VRMMO, but only sort of, and more structurally resembles an isekai (think .HACK). It makes considerably use of Matt Dinniman's love for Fates Worse Than Death, so beware of existential horror. * While we're on the subject, "Kaiju Battlefield Surgeon" is a similar standalone book by Dinniman with a lot of the same stuff- character trapped in a VRMMO, fates worse than death (including a famous scene that grosses some people out too much to continue), and a pretty dark view of people generally. * Mage Errant by John Bierce is a reasonably competent and complete progression fantasy, although while it has a lot of the focus on improvement of progression fantasy, if it slipped through a time gate to the 1999-era Tor Books lineup, nobody would notice the difference. That may very well be a positive thing. * Forge of Destiny/Threads of Destiny by Yrsillar is to English-Language Cultivation what The Wandering Inn is to Isekai. That is to say, there's a lot of it. It's of middling quality. If you like the subgenre, you'll probably enjoy it anyway. I'd rate the quality of Forge/Threads well over The Wandering Inn, though. It's probably one of the most chilled out cultivation books that exists. At least 75% of the book is the main character having tea with with noble classmates and meditating on the moon. * Tower of Somnus by Cale Plamann is an interesting VRMMO where aliens give us the gift of an MMO that you play while you sleep, and you get to use the levels and abilities you earn in the game in real life. The series has an interesting rhythm where the main character is playing the game to level up and get stronger at night and doing Cyberpunk Action Adventures during the day. * Necrotic Apocalypse by David Petrie is a series about patient 0 of the zombie apocalypse who- after he eats his fill- realizes he can think, control his impulses (provided he doesn't get too hungry), and level up and become a more powerful zombie. He makes friends. They fight the people who ACTUALLY caused the zombie apocalypse. It tries to be funny and isn't that good at it but it's light-hearted compared to a lot of the stuff on this list and I enjoyed it. * Immortal Great Souls by Phil Tucker is a cultivation story set in a dying civilization that resurrects its greatest heroes to invade hell over and over again. The first book the character is very whiny (he gets better at the end) and in the second book he gets surprised by the world's most telegraphed double-cross but overall I've enjoyed it, I want to know what the deal is with all these mysteries. 30.5 Days fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Feb 23, 2024 |
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Feb 23, 2024 07:09
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Oh and I don't know genre-wise how it all fits in, but Drew Hayes exists. He has been described as "workmanlike" in this thread which is probably the best description. If you want a lot of superhero web serial for not a lot of money, "Super Powereds" is very long and generally enjoyable. "Forging Hephaestus" is well-regarded as additional superhero fiction that was actually edited by a real live human and so is much shorter but also a bit higher quality. Lastly, his series "NPCs" reads like you're watching someone's D&D game, for better or worse. Super Powereds & Forging Hephaestus are more traditional superhero fiction more than anything litrpg related, NPCs is probably closest to progression fantasy.
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Feb 23, 2024 07:14
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Fred the Vampire Accountant is actually the best Drew Hayes series, but its Urban Fantasy tm.
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Feb 23, 2024 07:16
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Oh! That reminds me, I also really enjoyed the first couple books of Double Blind by J. McCoy, which is a System Apocalypse. One of the system apocalypse tropes is sometimes the apocalypse is a kind of game show carried out for the amusement of godlike entities (in korean SA's they call them 'constellations', but in double blind they're just called gods), and that's what Double Blind does. However, the main character gets a special class that seems to exist to undermine the proceedings but he has to hide his class from others to survive with the help of an ability called "Double Blind". e: also the main character is literally Dexter, the title character from the hit television show, Dexter 30.5 Days fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Feb 23, 2024 |
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Feb 23, 2024 07:21
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navyjack posted:So just to stick my oar in and probably make people mad with my garbage opinions, but the big new “genres” the kids are reading (we’re about the same age and grew up reading the same books) kinda roll into a few categories: A couple more examples from your other genres: Time loop - The Perfect Run. It’s a time loop with a ton of people with superpowers. Protagonist’s superpower set is time manipulation based, so he can pause time and move around for about ten seconds with an equivalent time cooldown and can make a video game save point that he reloads to. He’s dropped into a city full of feuding gangs with superpowers (mob boss basically Zeus) and is trying to get through the story without the friends he makes along the way dying. Dungeon Core - I’ve only read Divine Dungeon in this category. The dungeon core rock is sentient and trying to level up/cultivate ki to get stronger, and part of doing that is setting up dungeon floors with monsters, loot and traps to lure in adventures and absorb them and their energy when they die. I thought the earlier books were more fun focusing in on the dungeon starting up and getting access to better monsters, traps, etc. before it got into larger scale problems.
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Feb 23, 2024 18:20
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navyjack posted:So just to stick my oar in That genre break down was helpful, thank you. I recognize a lot of elements from anime simulcasts I've binged while drunk. "Is It Morally Acceptable to Reincarnate as a Dungeon Slime to Stare Up Witches' Skirts" type vibe.
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Feb 23, 2024 18:39
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Jackal among snakes is game-isekai where the MC has encyclopedic knowledge of poo poo going wrong and sets out to fix it. I haven’t gotten to the end to see if they stick the landing, but it seems to be headed that direction at least.
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Feb 23, 2024 18:40
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Time Loop is another subgenre that is consistently disappointing but the perfect run is drat near perfect, especially if you can stand VoidHerald's attempts at humor.
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Feb 23, 2024 18:45
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I can’t stand Tao Wong’s series because he forgets his own characters’ names; the same character will be named Rachel in one book and Amanda in the next. There are other internal inconsistencies as well, all of his books are absolutely begging for a professional editor to read them.
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Feb 23, 2024 19:48
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Silynt posted:I can’t stand Tao Wong’s series because he forgets his own characters’ names; the same character will be named Rachel in one book and Amanda in the next. There are other internal inconsistencies as well, all of his books are absolutely begging for a professional editor to read them. He’s on my shun list for trying to us IP law to establish a moat around the phrase “System Apocalypse” and going after other indie authors litigiously. I haven’t regretted not reading his stuff at all. Anias fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Feb 23, 2024 |
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Feb 23, 2024 19:56
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Reading BuyMort and I loving love the reveal (not a major plot spoiler) that the reason why this/our multiverse version of humanity is considered exceptionally aggressive by everyone else is due to lead poisoning caused by leaded gasoline polluting the atmosphere
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Feb 24, 2024 00:19
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Ranger Vick posted:Dungeon Core - I’ve only read Divine Dungeon in this category. The dungeon core rock is sentient and trying to level up/cultivate ki to get stronger, and part of doing that is setting up dungeon floors with monsters, loot and traps to lure in adventures and absorb them and their energy when they die. I thought the earlier books were more fun focusing in on the dungeon starting up and getting access to better monsters, traps, etc. before it got into larger scale problems. This applies to so many series (especially LitRPG and to a lesser extent Cultivation stuff) on KU (and RR) that it's just wild and frustrating. You get a series with decent pacing that suddenly slows to a crawl because it is trying to cover All The Big Things Happening Everywhere and now it takes a dozen chapters to get any sort of progress.
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Feb 24, 2024 00:35
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Evil Fluffy posted:This applies to so many series (especially LitRPG and to a lesser extent Cultivation stuff) on KU (and RR) that it's just wild and frustrating. You get a series with decent pacing that suddenly slows to a crawl because it is trying to cover All The Big Things Happening Everywhere and now it takes a dozen chapters to get any sort of progress. Or they head off for a sidequest/transition book or two or more in a different location and it just draaaaaags (He Who Fights with Monsters goes to Earth, Primal Hunter goes to school, etc.).
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Feb 24, 2024 01:43
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navyjack posted:Slumrat Rising is basically “C-Spam” the web serial. The hero is basically currently preparing to try to kill the God of Capitalism. Having just read the first book (which is all that's available so far on Amazon), I agree that this is a very respectable addition to the 'what if video game mechanics were an evil conspiracy' genre. It's a very solidly-written adventure with a cool sci-fi wizardry aesthetic (with corporate space marines packing talismans and fetishes rather than pistols and rifles, and using giant bird-golems rather than aircraft), and a protagonist who reminds me of a somewhat better-adjusted Mikazuki Augus from Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans. Another one for the 'there's one book out, but it looks promising so far' list is Unintended Cultivator by Eric Dontigney. This one's another well-written Western xianxia that makes an interesting companion piece to Cradle, in that it's not a mad rush for the protagonist to git gud, but a slower-paced slice-of-lifey coming-of-age story that focuses heavily on the actual experience of cultivation as a process and a lifestyle. If you've read/watched The Faraway Paladin, it's not dissimilar to the early parts of that story as a 'orphan raised and educated by powerful ancients' tale.
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Feb 24, 2024 01:44
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Darth Walrus posted:Having just read the first book (which is all that's available so far on Amazon), I agree that this is a very respectable addition to the 'what if video game mechanics were an evil conspiracy' genre. It's a very solidly-written adventure with a cool sci-fi wizardry aesthetic (with corporate space marines packing talismans and fetishes rather than pistols and rifles, and using giant bird-golems rather than aircraft), and a protagonist who reminds me of a somewhat better-adjusted Mikazuki Augus from Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans. … Huh. Well. Slumrat Rising absolutely changes a LOT after book 1 then. It’s on Royal Road if you want to see How he is betrayed by Wild ride, for sure.
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Feb 24, 2024 02:46
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navyjack posted:… Excellent summary, but it's also what if a buff Corporal Cecil Wormsborough St. John "Nobby" Nobbs had a whole lot of converstions with the divine?
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Feb 24, 2024 03:22
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Dikkfor posted:Excellent summary, but it's also what if a buff Corporal Cecil Wormsborough St. John "Nobby" Nobbs had a whole lot of converstions with the divine? He’s a sweet boy in his own way but yeah LORD is he a bit thick
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Feb 24, 2024 06:11
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Ranger Vick posted:Or they head off for a sidequest/transition book or two or more in a different location and it just draaaaaags (He Who Fights with Monsters goes to Earth, Primal Hunter goes to school, etc.). I didn't mind the Order chapters in Primal Hunter. Better than the amount of time the series has spend on Jake's time in Nevermore, particularly the initial Minaga's Dungeon chapters going far too long and detailed when the only thing of relevance was Minaga and that could've been handled in half a many chapters (same for poo poo like the coliseum of mortals). I'd foolishly thought that maybe that arc would've been wrapped up by the end of 2023 but boy was I clearly off and not by a little bit. I really hope the pace picks back up whenever the hell that arc ends though because there's been enough things of actual consequence to get to, in addition to however many events he has planned for the prima-related stuff after the guardian.
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Feb 25, 2024 04:05
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Read through all of BuyMort, which was exactly what I was looking for and pretty dang good. There is lots of "sexy" snake people stuff so heads up. Onto Slum Rat right now. They use crushed unicorn horn like Narcan and thats loving brilliant.
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Feb 28, 2024 03:31
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Telsa Cola posted:Read through all of BuyMort, which was exactly what I was looking for and pretty dang good. There is lots of "sexy" snake people stuff so heads up. 
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Feb 28, 2024 05:15
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Telsa Cola posted:Read through all of BuyMort, which was exactly what I was looking for and pretty dang good. There is lots of "sexy" snake people stuff so heads up. This dude definitely has a lot of commissioned XCOM art. But so far the book is fun!
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Feb 28, 2024 05:30
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Slumrat was pretty good, book 2 is off RR and comes to KU on the fifth, so that's good. But I want to read it now. So I'm starting buymort, which I should finish around then. Yes I know how many books there are, I read too much.
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Feb 28, 2024 22:56
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Just read The Broken Cage, the first (and so far only) book of the Godclads series by OstensibleMammal, and it's another fun and delightfully weird chunk of horror-tinged science-fantasy that reminded me of both Slumrat Rising and the webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons. The setting is a world that's cobbled together a tentative and questionably-sustainable civilisation after dethroning and killing their pantheon of abusive, parasitic gods, using broken parts of their essence to fuel a new industrial revolution. At the top of the heap are the Godclads, humans-turned-artificial-demigods who implant god-fragments directly into themselves to become capable of performing literal miracles. The protagonist is a ghoul, a carnivorous bioweapon who was designed as a disposable footsoldier for an extremely poorly-planned uprising by a genocidal cult, and was taken in by a mysterious father figure who semi-literally implanted a moral code in him and taught him to be a decent, productive member of society... and possibly something more. It's pretty dark, and the barrage of strange jargon can get disorienting at first, but it's an excellent demonstration of how you can use the bones of a litRPG to create something compellingly strange and grand. It helps that despite being a purpose-built psychopath with a taste for human eyeballs and a career based around using ghosts to poke around in people's minds, Avo (the protagonist) is mostly a good lad who means well and just wants to make his dad proud.
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Mar 4, 2024 01:15
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I can't figure out if the random flashbacks in BuyMort are supposed to be a parody of DCC. The guy suddenly going into a reverie while discussing jizz supplies is easily the funniest part of the book but he might just be aping DCC badly
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Mar 7, 2024 10:01
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Reading rising from the depths on RR (Standard several worlds get merged/bought up and if get high level enough you can opt out of being strip mined). Anyways one of the intro chapter blurb basically states that humans immediately dumped a bucket of nukes and biological weapons on the alien race who kicked everything off before the System went "Uhhhh not like that" and did something to stop it. Which I think is a nice touch cause most other settings just magic nukes away.
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Mar 15, 2024 20:22
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Millennium Challenge-rear end system apocalypse
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Mar 15, 2024 20:26
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Weebs, Rejoice: ‘Isekai’ Is Now In The Oxford Dictionary
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Mar 30, 2024 00:51
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For the fans of Beware of Chicken, check out Heretical Fishing. Pretty much the same just a lil less horny and little more cute crab.
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Apr 8, 2024 17:18
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I'm loving Heretical Fishing, I'm around 50% through it right now.
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Apr 8, 2024 17:20
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Telsa Cola posted:Reading rising from the depths on RR (Standard several worlds get merged/bought up and if get high level enough you can opt out of being strip mined). actually this makes sense if you assume that the worlds that got merged had to have compatible food, even if the system running it was fudging the details our bioweapons would be compatible enough, okay complaint retracted
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Apr 8, 2024 17:52
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tokenbrownguy posted:For the fans of Beware of Chicken, check out Heretical Fishing. Pretty much the same just a lil less horny and little more cute crab. That's the "Jeff Bezos isekais" book? I did not enjoy that one.
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Apr 8, 2024 18:13
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No, I think you're thinking of a novel so bland I can't remember the title of it. Heretical Fishing does have a rich failson for a protagonist, but he's a classic isekai via truck not the guy who like.... bought a headstart in a new full VR world or w/e
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Apr 8, 2024 18:36
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tokenbrownguy posted:No, I think you're thinking of a novel so bland I can't remember the title of it. That's shadeslinger but it's not an Isekai
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Apr 9, 2024 00:46
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Shadeslinger also features a rich failson, but the setup is less Bezos and more... well, imagine if Tagg Romney undermined and renounced his family, walled off the real world, and spent his idle wealth building up a raiding guild in WoW.
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Apr 9, 2024 04:38
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This is probably an appropriate time to mention that I tried out a free Dakota krout audiobook recently only to find out it's real person fanfiction of Elon musk
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Apr 9, 2024 04:44
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30.5 Days posted:This is probably an appropriate time to mention that I tried out a free Dakota krout audiobook recently only to find out it's real person fanfiction of Elon musk Ritualist? I windmill dumpster slammed that book out of my checked out library like a dozen pages in. Not sure I’ve ever cringed so quickly after opening a book.
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Apr 9, 2024 04:51
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For what little it's worth, that into was written in 2018, when being a Musk stan was merely deeply stupid instead of psychotic. It barely comes up after the intro.
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Apr 9, 2024 05:02
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DACK FAYDEN posted:how did biological weapons affect an alien race though? Giant hogweed.
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Apr 9, 2024 05:48
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Good Citizen posted:Ritualist? I windmill dumpster slammed that book out of my checked out library like a dozen pages in. Not sure I’ve ever cringed so quickly after opening a book. That's the one! Edit: but imagine if it wasn't, imagine if there were two Dakota krout Elon musk fanfiction books
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Apr 9, 2024 07:59
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