scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/1aupa48.md

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread

• Author: u/AutoModerator *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/1aupa48/d_monday_request_and_recommendation_thread/

• Score: 35

• Created: 2024-02-19T15:00:11

Post:

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/xjustwaitx [+19] (a day later)

Recommending The Apothecary Diaries (anime). I'm only at episode 10 but so far it feels like a good fit for the sub, though some of the medicine feels sus (which I guess could be ok because it's set in ancient china)

u/vorpal_potato [+3] (5 days later)

The manga version is also very good.

u/sl236 [+1] (9 days later)

...as are the light novels.

u/PancakeMenace [+17] (10 hours later)

A Daring Synthesis (Worm fanfic) over on Space Battles has recently started updating again and is quite good.

It's a Gamer Story that follows a socially inept Greg slowly growing into a better person. The opening chapters are very cringe (by design), but I found them still fun to read. Some of the best character writing I've seen in a worm fanfic in a while.

The new chapters are pretty different, but explore some very interesting ideas and I'm excited to see where it goes.

u/viewlesspath [+13] (14 hours later)

I second this. I think the first half of this story is one of the most hilarious I've ever read. Just a fantastic portrayal of a high int low wis char embodied within a terminally online degen millennial weaboo turbo autist. His interactions with the PRT and particularly Armsmaster left me gasping for air multiple times, and the payoff for their relationship at the end of book 1 was great.

Fair warning though, there is a very gradual shift of tone as the story goes on. It becomes progressively less crackfic power fantasy and more angsty wormfic with all the grimdark chest beating melodrama that entails.

u/netstack_ [+1] (a day later)

Do you have a link on hand?

u/ahasuerus_isfdb [+12] (a day later)

Most, although not all, Worm fics are indexed by wormstorysearch.com. (Make sure to check/uncheck the "NSFW" box under "Options".) It includes a link to the SpaceBattles version of A Daring Synthesis.

As an aside, according to the author:

To actually write Greg as himself, as Wildbow portrays him, wouldn't be terribly hard if you read the parts where he shows up and use them for reference as you go. For me, that was boring because Greg is a boring person. [snip]

The Greg I wrote doesn't have a lot to do with Greg, I put a cringey memelord in his place because it would resonate more with a modern audience and be funnier.

u/netstack_ [+3] (a day later)

Thanks, that’s a neat site.

Greg “Dark Smoke Puncher” Veder is physically painful to read, which I guess is a good sign. Holy shit.

u/AmarakSpider [+8] (12 hours later)

Is there any what-if lit that expand on the idea of developing the scientific theory earlier in history? Like in 'The Hammer and the Cross'?

u/Relevant_Occasion_33 [+7] (23 hours later)

Maybe not earlier in history, but in The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, the Part titled The Alchemist has a section in which the modern scientific method develops in the Middle East rather than Europe.

u/None [+1] (11 days later)

Had an idea for a story once, called "Pilot of History", where Earth is doomed to be destroyed by a fleet of aliens called the Exterminators in the year 2486. This guy finds a "time rift" and goes back 12,000 years, and tries to unify and advance humanity enough to fight the aliens.

Humanity loses every time. The Pilot gets desperate and defiles civilization into a dystopian nightmare with 100% efficiency and utter fanaticism to the Cause, just so they might beat the aliens, but for hundreds of thousands of cycles, the Exterminators mop the floor and destroy humans so utterly that the surface of the Earth is incinerated by 30% and glowing white hot for thousands of years.

But other civilizations are ruled from the shadows by an organization called the Vigil, who's aware of time travel and wants to preserve normalcy and make sure the timeline doesn't get too fucked, so when they notice humanity stripmining the solar system and building huge shipyard rings around Jupiter when they should be still in the Stone Age, they get pretty worried and try to dismantle human civilization before something really bad happens. They've noticed that for the last couple of cycles, an incomprehensibly vast warfleet of extremely advanced technology just appears in Sol, destroys humanity, and deactivates, it's purpose having been finished.

Each timeline is slightly different and time travel is stupidly difficult and kind of unreliable, relying on "time rifts" that at exactly the right moment, take you to a different patch of spacetime. Therefore, not a lot of knowledge is preserved in the Vigil between each cycle, but they still know time travel when they see it and know something's amiss with humanity.

u/Dragfie [+7] (a day later)

Any recs for self insert or reincarnated into an animal/monster with a lot of mc and local human/people interraction?

Have read a lot so hopefully looking for something new or obscure.

Thanks!

u/mns2 [+4] (a day later)

I really loved March Hare (Pokemon) (abandoned).

And not sure if this counts but I enjoyed I woke up as a Dungeon, now what? (Worm - Taylor as SI dungeon, also abandoned)

u/Dragfie [+2] (a day later)

I did too, shame it was abandoned.

This is the sort of thing I'm after but unfortunately already read this one.

u/mns2 [+2] (a day later)

Now I'm curious about this category. Can you share what you've enjoyed?

u/Dragfie [+1] (2 days later)

No links cos mobile but some notables are:

A backwards grin (and others by same author) Super minion I thought this was a pokemon mystery dungeon

A range of youjo senki crosses Blue core Tree of aeons Reincarnated as a demonic tree Shadeling (on rr) Kumo desuga nanika?

And probably a tone I'm forgetting.

u/AutopoieticBeing [+6] (a day later)

Recently started reading United We Stand, a Halo/Mass Effect Crossover with a competent Citadel intervening in the Covenant war with the Humans to prevent the genocide of the human race and form a bulwark against a clearly expansionist galactic polity. Hasn't been updated for 2 & 1/2 years and it's unfinished (so probably dead) but it's got 308,000 words, and it's a pretty entertaining read. Especially good Covenant POV interludes.

Found it after reading Die for the Cause, a 100,000 word Mass Effect AU with a competent council (slow to update and also unfinished, but not dead), which isn't as good as United We Stand, but got me interested in any other Mass Effect fanfics that have a competent Galactic Council.

So does anyone have any other good Mass Effect fanfics that have competent governance from the Council and fleshed out worldbuilding?

And since I enjoyed the Covenant interludes so much in United We Stand, does anyone know of any good Halo fanfics that feature their perspective and flesh out their society?

Crossovers are fine for either category.

u/netstack_ [+6] (a day later)

I wish the other response wasn’t deleted!

Glorious Shotgun Princess (ME/Exalted). Shepard wakes up on a moon with the beginnings of godlike power. I don’t remember exactly how the Citadel Council is handled, but I seem to recall it being a unifying fic, so I expect they are competent enough to work with the godling. Might be wrong, though.

In the Shadow of Gods. The Chief is flung into Mass Effect. Shepard’s team benefits from having another unique killing machine with a tragic backstory. I think this is more of a character fic than a full setting exploration, so it’s probably not a great fit. I just think it’s neat that there’s more than one crossover between these two.

Even though they’re definitely not as cohesive as X-COM, I really liked the Council in Psi Effect. It fleshes out so much weird culture and government stuff that I think it’s worth reading.

Have you read Last Angel? Its setting is basically Halo with the serial numbers filed off. But since humanity lost a more normal war with the not-Covenant in the backstory, you get a lot of alien warrior cult perspectives.

u/AutopoieticBeing [+3] (2 days later)

Oh, the other response was recommending Biomass Effect (Prototype/ME) and Man Off the Moon (Nasuverse/ME). They're both pretty entertaining but not exactly what I'm looking for, plus I've already read both of them years ago. Plus Man Off the Moon got a bit bogged down with how most of the female characters wanted to sleep with Emiya. I don't really enjoy reading that sort of wish fulfilment stuff.

I think I read Psi Effect a long time ago but I don't remember it at all, so I'll take another look at it.

I've read Last Angel, but it was about a decade ago, and I haven't read the sequel. I just remember that there's a cool AI protagonist and space whales. I might reread and start on the sequel too.

Not really interested in character fics though, mainly because what usually interests me about crossovers is the unification of different settings and how each setting deals with outside context problems.

Thanks for your recommendations though, I appreciate it.

u/None [+2] (a day later)

[deleted]

u/AutopoieticBeing [+1] (a day later)

lol I've already read both of those, but thanks

u/mack2028 [+9] (11 hours later)

have any of you read "Arcane ascension"? I know this is mostly for fanfics but if you want something published with an editor that has a lot of magic system breakdown and exploitation stuff the work of andrew rowe in general and AA in specific is worth a look.

and "mage errant" actually finished a few months ago so you could read that whole series.

u/GlueBoy [+28] anti-skub (15 hours later)

This thread is for any type of recommendation, not just fanfics.

Arcane ascension has been recommended here a few times and is considered to have decently rational worldbuilding and an intelligent and curious protagonist. Personally, I was lukewarm about the first book and the sequel lost my interest.

Mage Errant is in my opinion a tepid hotdog water diarrhea soup of a novel, but a lot of people like it I guess. The author has talked a lot of incoherent shit about rationalism, rational fiction, and is an unironic participant of /r/sneerclub. I fart in his general direction.

u/Raileyx [+7] (2 days later)

I feel similarly about arcane ascension, except I was lukewarm about the first half of the first book and lost interest in the second half.

u/Jokey665 [+10] Worth the Candle (a day later)

Mage Errant is in my opinion a tepid hotdog water diarrhea soup of a novel

damn that's a lot harder than i would go on it. i thought it was somewhere between "meh" and "fine, i guess". didn't know any of the author stuff though

u/YankDownUnder [+4] (6 days later)

Disrec for both. Aside from the from the incredible amount of presentism both suffer from, AA is another sad example of a "progression" fantasy sorely lacking in actual character progression (We're 4 books in, do we really need another dozen pages of mopey bullshit from Corin everytime someone accidentally brushes up against him?) and the worldbuilding is full of unexplained asspulls (Why is there a >!taboo against twins!<? In an (semi-)industrialized society? There are cases of that occuring IRL but they're exclusive to resource-poor tribal groups.) because the author doesn't seem to have thought through either the consequences or preconditions involved.

ME is all that, but with worse writing. The author does not seem to know what a thesaurus is (much less possess one), includes entire chapters of filler, and seems be on a mission to reuse every hackneyed YA trope possible.

u/mack2028 [+2] (6 days later)

you realize in any of these things not everyone is rational right? there is a taboo because the insanely powerful thing doesn't like it. Things progress in leaps and bounds because people are intentionally keeping stuff secret for reasons that actually get explained and the MC doesn't like but fully understands.

u/YankDownUnder [+3] (6 days later)

you realize in any of these things not everyone is rational right? there is a taboo because the insanely powerful thing doesn't like it.

It's worse than non-rational, it's presented as completely acausal! Is the taboo religious? Cultural? Is it specific to Kaldwyn? It hasn't been mentioned in any of the 4 books so far and the main characters seem to have no curiosity about it or any of the authors other inexplicable worldbuilding choices.

u/mack2028 [+2] (7 days later)

It does get explained more, it is a religious taboo directly from selis (the local goddess) who is mostly unreachable at the moment. They don't wonder about it because they are part of the culture with the taboo, it is only questioned by the cultural outsider.

u/YankDownUnder [+2] (10 days later)

Which book is that in?

u/mack2028 [+1] (10 days later)

Karis brings up that it is a weird cultural taboo in the second or third book and "we don't mention it outloud where we think the visages can hear us." gets talked about in more length in the third book where the twins thing first becomes a plot point. They discuss the taboo as part of a scenero floor where they are doing a murder mystery where they are at a party and someone tries to murder one of a pair of twins as part of a religious honor killing. I don't even know how you would be upset about that part of the story without having gotten that far though, they actually barely mention it before that.

u/YankDownUnder [+2] (10 days later)

No, I mean in which book is it explained as originating from Selys? I've read all 4 and I don't remember the origin ever being explained.

u/GrizzlyTrees [+1] (21 days later)

I've read AA and at no point was it clear if I actually like it (I read 4 books, don't know if any more are out). Some of it is well written, the plot in general seems messy, I don't particularly care for the main characters, and I dislike the amount of handholding they get from Keras, and it always felt forced to me that he remained with them for so long (or even joined them at all).

I'm currently in book 2 of mage errant and again I don't particularly like or dislike it. At least it's pretty short, so I'll finish the series in a few weeks, probably. I'm actually currently on a break from it because I've found the AI cast for project lawful, and have been listening to it instead.

u/CaramilkThief [+13] (a day later)

I am once again strongly recommending Ar'Kendrithyst. The story will end in about a month or so, according to the author's recent discord post. There's already 4 million words though, and they are high quality words. I'll preface, this is a biased review. Ar'k is my favorite ongoing story, and has been for a couple years. It is a very particular type of story that just so happens to fit into the story I have wanted for a long while in my heart.

The start is polarizing: the protagonist isn't very assertive, and wants to work with the system rather than against it. He makes some pretty dumbass mistakes, even later on. He's horny, which apparently is huge turn off because he's attracted to both men and women. He's a pacifist, almost suicidally so at times because he doesn't truly realize just how much the world he's transported to runs on violence.

Then he gets what seems like a cheat power: he's really good at magic. He's really really good at magic. Suddenly his social status goes up a few dozen notches. Important people talk to him because he's done something remarkable, and his words and actions start reaching more people. The protagonist, Erick, really just wants one thing: to make the world a better place. The story is about that, leaving the world a better, kinder place than you found it.

Not to mention all the deep lore and character development and exploration of a system and mythology and kingdom building and magic research and eldritch horror and the surprisingly good prose. I could write a whole essay on this story, and I probably will after I finish rereading it from beginning to end. It's a pretty polarizing story in this subreddit, since so many of the protagonist's traits run against what ratfic readers want. I still think it's worth trying, because it might give a handful maybe one of you what it gave me, a story that feels tailor made.

If you're just starting, know that the end of the first book (chapter 20ish?) is around where you see some action happening.

u/Naitra [+19] (3 days later)

I've read about 30~ chapters before dropping. Worldbuilding might become great, but main character makes me cringe like nobodies business. I just can't handle this level of cringe overload, I had problems watching The Office because of all the second hand embarrassment and this is like couple of notches above.

30 chapters are probably about 200k words. I think I gave it a fair shake.

u/ReproachfulWombat [+6] (a day later)

The single most important factor for my ability to enjoy a story is the writing quality. Grammar, spelling, etc. I remember bouncing off this like, 10 years ago or something because the early chapters were riddled with errors. Does it improve?

Other than that, I'm willing to give it a try. I do enjoy a story with good worldbuilding.

u/jacksofalltrades1 [+9] (2 days later)

Are you sure it was this story with the writing errors? I've read much of it, and of all the stories on Royal Road it ranks near the top for general grammar and spelling. Maybe the author fixed early chapters before I started reading them?

u/Dragfie [+2] (2 days later)

I talked about this a lot before but almost all the complaints I see about this work are resolved a little in, for me I couldn't stand the first chapter, after seeing it recced again just skipped to the third and it became one of the best stories I've read.

Otherwise most issues go away fairly soon. Though the other comment about not liking offensive magic use was a first, there's a lot of fighting (though not much extended action sequences which is great imo).

u/AviusAedifex [+2] (a day later)

I liked it up to a point early on when he went from pacifist to >!I must kill all the demons, or whatever actually lives in the city of Ar'k!<. And it was such a sudden change from using his magic mostly for utility purposes which I really liked, and to more fighting which I didn't care for.

u/CaramilkThief [+3] (2 days later)

If you're worried that Erick will become murderhobo don't be. He goes through periods of being a bit too murderhobo and periods of not being enough murderhobo, but he does eventually find a balance. It's a trial and error process. And besides the occasional end-of-book massive fights, the story doesn't contain all that much fighting.

u/LaziIy [+1] (2 days later)

How far into the story does he get the cheat-like power?

u/CaramilkThief [+3] (2 days later)

He doesn't really get the power as much as it's an innate part of him, to intuitively understand magic and how it's made. This starts early on, around chapter 10 or so I think? He's basically a savant at magic, and can easily pick up most of the different schools of thought on magic creation.

However, he has to work hard to catch up to the other immortals and archmages in the setting, who have had decades or centuries to refine and learn magic. It's not until very late into the story that he's actually a match for the other archmages, even though technically he's had their status for a long time. However it works out, since magic battles are more rock-paper-scissors fights and less "my numbers are bigger than yours."

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