31 KiB
[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread
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Author: u/AutoModerator *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/1ap1xea/d_monday_request_and_recommendation_thread/
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Score: 25
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Created: 2024-02-12T15:00:13
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Welcome to the Monday request and recommendation thread. Are you looking something to scratch an itch? Post a comment stating your request! Did you just read something that really hit the spot, "rational" or otherwise? Post a comment recommending it! Note that you are welcome (and encouraged) to post recommendations directly to the subreddit, so long as you think they more or less fit the criteria on the sidebar or your understanding of this community, but this thread is much more loose about whether or not things "belong". Still, if you're looking for beginner recommendations, perhaps take a look at the wiki?
If you see someone making a top level post asking for recommendation, kindly direct them to the existence of these threads.
Previous automated recommendation threads
Other recommendation threads
Comments:
u/CaramilkThief [+13] (a day later)
I sort of recommend Dear Spellbook. It's very... consistent and just solid and good. It's about Tal, a sorcerer who found an ensouled book, and uses it to pretend he's a wizard (because sorcerers are killed on sight). Later on he realizes he's in a time loop, and he writes his experiences as diary entries in the Spellbook.
The story goes heavy on the DnD mechanics, though without using explicit numbers. The magic system is fleshed out with the different Realms, Fonts, willpower limits, spell tiers, etc. and there's a steady progression in Tal's skill throughout the series. The main plot of the story is also revealed steadily over a long while.
The first book is mostly slice of life and Tal fucking around in the time loop (which is 1 day long btw), and it's only in books 2 and 3 that the characters work towards the main plot. I actually found it to be quite organic in how fucking around and finding out slowly leads Tal to the different plot hooks. It felt pretty nice to make the connections with him. Otherwise the story maintains a consistent tone that's mostly whimsical and light with some moments of seriousness.
u/Naitra [+16] (3 days later)
I'd like to de-rec this, mostly due to the narrative and style choices.
Half of the chapters are flashbacks, while the other half are in the present time where the whole timeloop is happening. The author unfortunately didn't have the ability to make this compelling.
This type of storytelling needs a much more experienced and talented author to pull it off, as well as extensive drafting which isn't really possible with webnovels, and even then we mostly end up with mediocre pieces of writing. In this case, transition from present to the flashbacks is extremely jarring, and there are quite a few flashbacks that have absolutely 0 substance and contribute nothing to the plot. And on top of that, we get entire chapters dedicated to dry exposition/lore dump sprinkled throughout.
It would've been a tolerable read if the narrative moved linearly and there weren't flashbacks every other chapter, but I just couldn't take it midway through the first book and dropped it.
Also, there are too many pointless monologues and exposition. Sure, it's supposed to be "slice of life", but really it's just bad writing. I don't want to read 5 paragraphs describing the marble floors in a bathhouse. A lot of authors need to read TUTBAD, so they can see what slice of life done well actually looks like. This seems to be the new trend in the webnovel scene, where authors try to excuse their inability to write immersive, coherent and tightly woven plots by just slapping the "slice of life" tag on it.
u/Relevant_Occasion_33 [+8] (5 days later)
A lot of authors need to read TUTBAD, so they can see what slice of life done well actually looks like. This seems to be the new trend in the webnovel scene, where authors try to excuse their inability to write immersive, coherent and tightly woven plots by just slapping the "slice of life" tag on it.
Thing is, I love alexanderwales stuff, but I just couldn't stick with TUTBAD. Slice of life is so boring to me that I can't imagine how people like the new "slice of life" stuff, which I agree that a lot of web writers call their work to excuse their inability to focus their stories.
u/fish312 [+2] humanifest destiny (6 days later)
Agree, TUTBAD is probably one of AWs least engaging works and the only one I dropped. Nearly everything else is excellent though.
u/Dragongeek [+1] Path to Victory (5 days later)
Second this. I read book 1 because I have KU, but the constant flashbacks and epistolary inserts are just unnecessary and should be removed. I eventually found myself skipping them, and when I start skipping text, then I'm only a couple pages away from dropping it entirely.
u/EdLincoln6 [+5] (a day later)
I loved Book 1 of that.
u/Izeinwinter [+1] (5 days later)
The audiobook of this is Travis Baldree, who is as always excellent, so I am going to second the rec for this, at least in that format.
u/ozbooks [+11] (a day later)
Here are some stories I've enjoyed over the past few weeks.
Chains of a Time Loop - This was posted here a few weeks back. It's only a few chapters in, but I've enjoyed it. Very similar to Mother of Learning, but I think the characters are more personable and the plot actually moves.
An Unclean Legacy - Not very rational, but very fun and funny. I went into it not knowing what it was going to be, and I think that's the right way to do it.
Goblin Cave - Pretty rational dungeon core story. The dungeon at some point feels safe enough to start experimenting, and tries to determine the basic physics of its world. Really interesting take on what kind of world a dungeon core might exist in, with some interesting economics angles. Unfinished and likely abandoned, but it's stopped at a point that I'd consider a satisfying ending to a first book.
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Kind of dark time loop mystery. Some surprising twists, along with some unsurprising ones.
u/ThePhrastusBombastus [+3] (6 days later)
Note: Goblin Cave's author took it off Royal Road this week for personal reasons (I messaged them to ask what was up), but it's still available on the Internet Archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231209063811/https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/54904/goblin-cave
u/Naitra [+27] (6 hours later)
I've pretty much read everything that was recommended in these threads going about 70-80 posts back.
I've also read all the fics that interest me in the first 50~ pages of Royalroad's top rated section.
I've read almost all quests that were interesting in sufficient velocity, space battles and questionable questing. I've also read a decent amount of the fics in the creative section of these forums.
I've read a lot of translated chinese/japanese/korean novels, probably over 200.
So, where do I even go anymore? I feel like I've read everything on the internet that I want to read.
Am I gonna have to dive deep into the forbidden places like pony fics or glow fics?
It has become extremely hard to find anything that I want to read.
u/Raileyx [+36] (11 hours later)
I mean yeah. It's over for you. You beat this subreddit!
u/GlueBoy [+19] anti-skub (11 hours later)
Do you have favourites? Might help for people to recommend you more stuff.
u/Izeinwinter [+18] (a day later)
You go to your local library and check out
1: Bujold. Any and everything.
2: Martha Wells: Murderbot
3: Ann Leckie: Imperial Radch
4: Vinge. Vernor and Joan, both, really.
5: Banks. With an M. to go with the Iain, probably not without though.
6: If you like humor at all, Pratchett should be available from the library in full and is just as funny as people tell you it is.
7: A lot of the classics are classic for a reason. Try a couple of chapters from them and see if you like them. The libraries always have these in stock, so it's free.
More off the wall recs.. do you read french? Because Verne and Dumas in the Original are masterpieces. The most common translations of Verne are butcheries. Dumas is not treated quite so dismally by anglosphere publishers, but the original is still considerably better.
If you have already read all of these, we're starting to move into authors the library probably doesn't have.
Graydon Saunders can be found on google play and is some hardcore world building fantasy.
u/AutopoieticBeing [+4] (2 days later)
Regarding #5: Banks, there's at least one good sci-fi novel of his without the M.– Transition, set in a multiverse of dimension-hopping sliders who are part of an organisation that 'guides' the socio-economic and technological development of various realities/timelines toward what they see as beneficial outcomes.
u/ErinFlight [+22] (8 hours later)
Do you have a library card that has Libby? There are so many good published books and if you’ve exhausted webnovels then I bet a lot of them will feel really fresh.
Adrian Tchaikovsky does really good “ideas” sci fi. Children of Time is a standard place to start but I also loved his novella “Elder Race”
u/ansible [+9] The Culture (8 hours later)
There are a bunch of fanfics I sort of automatically skip over because I haven't read or even heard of the original material (manga, anime). But there are probably some good ones in there that I haven't even attempted yet.
Maybe you can do that, pick the categories with a lot of existing fanfics, and then expand your base by reading / watching some of the original material first.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+9] fear of last pages (a day later)
where do I even go anymore
- You can try making a list of all those read stories you've mentioned and giving a link to that list each time when asking for recs.
Because, from the perspective of a hypothetical someone who's about to recommend a title that you haven't read yet, it's not clear whether that title they have in mind is already inside that "pretty much everything that was recommended in these threads going about 70-80 posts back" or not. So they may just give up and not name-drop a title that would've actually been something new for you.
- You can also use machine / AI translation to try works which have little to no presence in the English part of the internet due to not having been translated yet. Those would mainly be Chinese, Russian, Indian, etc.
u/hoja_nasredin [+9] Dai-Gurren Brigade (a day later)
How did you do it? Tell me your secret. How much media per day you consumerà?
u/Flashbunny [+7] (7 hours later)
You could try getting into translated webnovels? If the clunky prose doesn't put you off too much, after a while it reaches a point where it doesn't really bother you anymore.
Alternatively, go consume some more original media so you can read fics of that?
u/fish312 [+1] humanifest destiny (6 days later)
Bad writing will never save a good plot.
u/greenweird [+7] (a day later)
I sometimes dig through a fandom on fanfiction.net, usually set to be 100k words minimum and sorted by number of favorites. it doesn't very often pan out, but it sometimes did. Same for archiveofourown, but I'm less used to that.
u/ThePhrastusBombastus [+2] (2 days later)
Find anything obscure you'd be willing to recommend from that process?
u/greenweird [+3] (3 days later)
I don't record where I got the fics I read, but the one that came to mind is Serial Meddling [eredinremendis] [RWBY] [AdventureQuest Worlds], where what I assume is the player character from an rpg flash game is inserted in RWBY. Prolly some Youjo Senki fics too, feel free to check the massive list I made earlier last month.
u/ThePhrastusBombastus [+2] (4 days later)
In a weird coincidence, I started reading Goblin Cave since you recommended it on your list so highly, but it just got taken down today. Like, I went to read the next chapter and the fiction had been taken off Royal Road. I'm mostly just incredulous, I guess.
u/serge_cell [+5] (16 hours later)
What about original classics form which modern fiction originate?
Have you read "Romance of Three Kingdoms"? "The Twelve Caesars"? Have you read "Simplicius Simplicissimus", which is becoming uncomfortably more similar to modern world each year? Some of the Mahabharata? "Le Morte d'Arthur" and "Historia Regum Britanniae"? Or more close to our time - "Idiot" by Dostoevsky? "War and Piece"? "Moby-Dick"?
u/masterax2000 [+5] Chaos Legion (22 hours later)
Time to search desperately through glowfic.com I guess.
u/cultureulterior [+6] (a day later)
There are some really good glowfics, and (separately) various rationalist erotica.
u/traverseda [+18] With dread but cautious optimism (7 hours later)
Try writing some stuff?
u/Cosmogyre [+3] (a day later)
There is still more media to be consumed, but it'll be harder for you to find it. Try branching out of this subreddit, and looking for other places that offer good recommendations you like for reading/watching.
Also if you've gotten this far, I hope you have a nice list of the stuff that was the best, feel free to share it with us mere mortals still climbing the mountain.
Consider video games, short/long films, TV shows, blogs, interesting forums.
By now you should have a bunch of ideas in your head and a belief that you can easily do better, so why not create some content too?
Remember to come back after a while, things change and you'll find some new stuff.
u/LaziIy [+3] (7 hours later)
could try filtering the webnovel dump or swapping to manga/manhwa( at least those that arent adapted from a novel) ?
u/MagicWeasel [+4] Cheela Astronaut (13 hours later)
If you haven't read friendship is optimal, and the recursive fanfics by chatoyance at least, you're missing out, friend!
u/sparkc [+1] (8 days later)
Glowfic. It’s very polarising but if you enjoy you will have many millions of words to read through.
For my money its where rational fiction moved to and where most of the best authors in this niche reside nowadays.
u/ight22194 [+10] (9 hours later)
i recently finished cyberpunk edgerunners and am looking for more cyberpunk media to consume, or things that give the same vibe. any good fics or other recommendations?
u/LaziIy [+15] (a day later)
SkitterDoc if you don't mind a hint of Worm.
u/chiruochiba [+7] (12 hours later)
If you have Netflix, Captain Laserhawk is a fun cyberpunk romp loosely based on the Farcry 3 DLC Blood Dragon.
If you play videogames, the Deus Ex series is an excellent exploration of the cyberpunk genre.
u/None [+8] (22 hours later)
[deleted]
u/serge_cell [+3] (5 days later)
Disrec this one. Writing stile looks bland to me, characters cardboard, plot is not engaging.
u/GeneratedSymbol [+7] The Foundation (a day later)
Good People, a Shadowrun/Worm fic. More precisely, it's the Undersiders as 'runners in the Shadowrun verse. Taylor's a Troll Technomancer.
Sorry if you're a cyberpunk purist and Shadowrun pisses you off. ;)
u/erwgv3g34 [+5] (10 hours later)
Try True Names by Vernor Vinge.
u/BavarianBarbarian_ [+5] (6 days later)
The OG Cybperunk stories by Gibson are still very much worth reading.
u/TJ333 [+3] (4 days later)
There is Johnny Mnemonic and for a Shadowrun style cyberpunk, Bright.
Johnny is the better one but both movies have their issues.
u/-main [+1] (20 days later)
I mean the game the anime is a tie-in for, set a year later, is quite good (after patch 2.0 / the DLC). Powerful and evocative character writing in the main quests, amazing music, excels at creating the feel of the world.
But I also recommend just going through the cyberpunk classics:
- Ghost in the Shell (1995 movie) & Standalone Complex (2x 26ep series and a movie)
- Blade Runner
- Akira
- Transmetropolitan
- Neuromancer
- Deus Ex (all of them except Invisible War, but especially the first one)
u/Cosmogyre [+7] (a day later)
Looking for fiction like Piranesi, which as I understand it is in the "evocative fantasy" genre. I've already read The Magicians, which kind of scratched this itch for me but not really.
Also kind of in general looking for shorter stories, not short stories but something around 200 pages or 100,000 words would be nice. I'm looking for more tightly crafted and themed stories, rather than long dragging slowly getting better/staying the same stories.
Thanks!
u/brocht [+13] (a day later)
An obvious suggestion might be Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. A bit on the longer side, though.
You could try Patricia McKillip. Her Riddlemaster series is quite good (the second book drags a bit, imo, but the third is great). I also was always fond of "The Beasts of Eld".
Diana Wynne Jones was pretty good for evocativeness, though a bit light on the actual world-building and story cohesion. It worked better for YA novels. Try Howles Moving Castle, maybe?
How do you feel about Gaiman?
u/gazemaize [+3] (4 days later)
Seconding Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell! Clarke also wrote a short story collection written in the same universe (The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories).
You said no short stories, so this is cheating, but the works of Borges, who was a direct inspiration for the author of Piranesi (it's such an obvious influence that I knew it without even needing to check, but I searched it now to confirm, and sure enough it's the first thing she mentions as an influence for it). She specifically describes his stories as "jewel-like", which is apt.
Le Guin would be my other recommendation, the Earthsea series especially.
u/Charlie___ [+3] (a day later)
The Last Unicorn. The surprisingly good MLP:FiM fic of The Last Unicorn :D House of Leaves. Iain Banks' The Bridge.
Or for a really out there rec, Disappearances by Howard Moser.
u/IICVX [+2] (3 days later)
I think you'd enjoy K. J Parker's novels - I'd recommend starting with Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City.
u/Cosmogyre [+1] (4 days later)
I've got him on my To-Read list, so I'll bump up the recommendation.
u/None [+6] (12 hours later)
[removed]
u/LovelandHywel [+3] (a day later)
Silverclawshift's campaign journals on the GiantITP forums are good reads. Not really funny, just a good campaign with some clever play from the players.
u/hoja_nasredin [+9] Dai-Gurren Brigade (4 hours later)
Any naruto pics that came in the last 4 years?
u/Flashbunny [+37] (6 hours later)
Bit of an odd request, but here's one
u/candybox142 [+25] (a day later)
Ahem, the request was for pics that came in the last 4 years. And this one is from 5 years 11 months 9 days ago(at the time of writing). Clearly this doesn't meet the actual requirements of the request.
u/hoja_nasredin [+8] Dai-Gurren Brigade (12 hours later)
I appreciated
u/Prestigious_Dealer83 [+1] (a day later)
🤣
u/Darkpiplumon [+8] (a day later)
All unfinished except for the last one.
The Color of Summer is a semi depressing story of an insert into Naruto's twin (I know, bear with me). Part of the gimmick is that the reincarnation isn't an isekaid otaku and knows nothing about Naruto. This is reality for him. A very non power fantasy reality ensues fic, with a depressed MC that hates the world he lives in.
The Roots that Nourish the Trees is a delight. Not sure how to describe the essence of it and make it justice, so I will just explain the synopsis. A Danzo with a slightly different recent history decides to make the Konoha Academy less useless, starting with the canon generation just after their graduation. It's kinda like a fix fic? It's an exploration of how things can be better, how windows can be opened when we're not limited by the "this is a story" medium. Ok, mostly training and ninja stuff related. Very slow updates.
The Pixie of the Hidden Tree is a Tanya the Evil reincarnated in Naruto crossover. Not sure what much else to say. I recommend it to those not Tanya phobic, and it scratches the same optimization and better training itch as the previous ones. Liked the misunderstanding field results, very plausible stuff.
There's Red Riot on QQ/Patreon that's pretty good. Uzumaki SI in Kiri. Unfortunately, very few public chapters posted out there, and it needs an editor, at least for the Patreon ones.
Sasuke Uchiha and the Power of Lies This isn't 4 or less years old. This isn't rational at all. Hell, this is crack. This is very, very fun though. Absolutely hilarious. By the author of Seventh Horrocrux, it has a very similar style of humor, but with 90% less sociopathy. My favorite of the two. It should be recommended more often.
u/hoja_nasredin [+1] Dai-Gurren Brigade (2 days later)
Thanks! will igve them a try
u/traverseda [+5] With dread but cautious optimism (a day later)
u/incamaDaddy [+20] (a day later)
I have to de-rec this, It is well written, it is rational, it does update with some regularity and some people do love it, but I found it unreadable.
My biggest complaint is that there's this consistent feeling of QM vs players, the MC(players) wants to change the world and the world very much does not want to change in any positive manner. Which you could say is realistic, people in positions of power want to remain there and military dictatorships don't want to be questioned or hear about human rights, and speaking of equality in a world with S-rank ninjas is ridiculous. but it is a truly miserable experience, every time the players try to enact any kind of positive large-scale change they get absolutely dunked by characters they have no hope of fighting.
So you end up reading a repeating cycle of think of a nice thing -> presenting that to people in authority -> getting laughed out of the meeting or told that if you bring it up again you'll get executed. Or the time our Allies, >!the pangolins!<, turned out to be evil(>!genocidal!<), that one was fun. And all of that is without even taking into account the times that players vote for something silly and then get insta-punished by the QM. It's realistic alright, but it sure as fuck is not fun.
Then things seemed like they were about to improve when >!they got Jiraiya on their side!< and for a very short time I had actual hope for the quest, but then >!Jiraiya died!< and we went back to the status quo but worse. In the end, I stopped reading it a while ago.
u/ianstlawrence [+7] (2 days later)
To be fair this particular quest makes absolutely no promises of being "fun". The only promise it makes is to be as simulationist as possible in a world where people had a constant thousand year world war, and then in the course of 50 years had two world wars between villages.
Under those circumstances, the simulationist stuff means that shit is rough, and there is no freebies.
I wrote a plan in that quest that got us thrown in a killbox because I put in a line that could be interpreted badly and didn't specify tone.
So yeah, it is tough, but man, it is very engaging if you are into it.
u/incamaDaddy [+10] (2 days later)
I remember that, it made me super mad when I read through it. that's exactly what I mean about it feeling like QM vs Players.
u/ReproachfulWombat [+11] (2 days later)
Pros: Good technical writing, a lot of content, enjoyable worldbuilding and characterisation.
Cons: Sudden tonal shifts when switching authors, poor pacing, the aformentioned 'author vs players' mentality resulting in repetetive narrative patterns that get boring rather quickly as soon as you notice them.
3/5. Readable, but the authors don't seem to have the ability to turn imperfect votes into a coherent narrative without having the characters all but turn to face the reader and call them morons. It feels like they'd rather draw attention to how 'stupid' the players are being than interpret the votes in anything resembling a charitable fashion. Once or twice in a quest, I can forgive this behaviour, but it's basically a running theme. As a result, nothing is stable. The MC can invent a revolutionary new technology one chapter and become the darling of the village, then say something wrong at his award ceremony and be dragged off to T&I, then save the Hokage two chapters later and have his status returned, then lose it all all over again because of some other event. It makes me feel like a YoYo, and it's exhausting.
This is supposed to be a rational fic, and post to post the consequences of a vote are rational(ish), but when you look at the overall pattern it mostly just feels like you're reading a soap-opera
u/hoja_nasredin [+1] Dai-Gurren Brigade (2 days later)
Well it is older then 4 years. I tried reading I njoyed the expanded world but it felt too unpredicatble and not sattisfactory. If you are the ones making decisions it is probably fun. but reading it after 9 years it is just too depressing.
u/Bowbreaker [+3] Solitary Locust (5 days later)
We've managed to significantly improve >!the average quality of life of Leaf civilians, the political power of Leaf Clanless ninja, the wealth of muggle tax collectors and especially the lives of most of the people we adopted into our Clan!<. It's not on the level some have hoped for, but it is far from nothing.
u/hoja_nasredin [+3] Dai-Gurren Brigade (a day later)
Is there any fanfics on the gen V or in ge eral the boys franchising? Honestly any sper powers in college with gruesome realism would be weclome
u/deltalessthanzero [+3] (6 days later)
You've probably had this recced a thousand times, but Worm somewhat fits that bill? https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
u/hoja_nasredin [+1] Dai-Gurren Brigade (7 days later)
I probably need to give it a shot, by usually I dislike the author as too depressive and I have read the summay of worm with all spoilers in the past. Is it still worth it if you know the ending?
u/netstack_ [+2] (8 days later)
The ending is not the most important or even the best part.
I would honestly recommend all of /u/deltalessthanzero’s options. Do that, and you’re left with the grim and ultraviolent setting, but less of the extended death throes of its apocalypse.
u/deltalessthanzero [+1] (8 days later)
There's more depressing stuff in Worm than I would like. I've read it out loud to some friends, and here's the bits I skipped, which IMO add less to the text than other parts (heavy spoilers below):
! If there's active bullying, just skip it (This is only really relevant in Arcs 1-3).
!Although there's really good world-building in it, IMO if you're finding the first 2 arcs a slog, you can skip them and start at 3.01 with the knowledge you have from plot spoilers.
!If you'd prefer to skip depressing stuff, the first 2/3 of Worm functions as an excellent stand-alone text. The end of Arc 22 is the end of a major plot section, and most of my favourite Worm moments are before that. After that it gets a bit more intense in terms of pacing and depressing-ness.
u/Azaraphale [+1] (9 days later)
If you find worm too depressing, I would actually recommend Ward. It's messy, but overall I think more hopeful than worm. If you haven't read worm, but you've spoilered yourself you should be fine, but you'll be missing a fair bit in the fine grain detailing.
u/deltalessthanzero [+2] (13 days later)
I'm not a fan of Ward. I read the whole thing, and IMO it's missing a lot of the things that make Worm great (Taylor's character, the tension of villain/hero things, the intensity of Worm's combat). I suppose I agree that it's a bit less depressing that Worm overall though.
u/Azaraphale [+2] (13 days later)
To each their own. I think the series were trying to different things, and ended up with different focuses. I found the ensemble was much stronger in Ward, and I also deeply appreciated not having an MC that was as exhausting as Taylor was throughout the story. Enjoyed both, but I definitely appreciated more the focus on struggling to do better and what that means in Ward.
u/deltalessthanzero [+2] (13 days later)
Fair - I definitely know what you mean by Taylor being an exhausting protagonist. It's part of why I recommended reading only up to >!Weaver!< in Worm. The sections of Worm after that are a spiral of constant escalation, and I felt distinctly tired while reading them. I also did really enjoy the ending of Ward - it felt very optimistic and earnest in a way that was very refreshing in contrast to Worm. The sprawling and unfocused nature of Ward were the things that I didn't like about it.