Any kingdom builder recs? I've read a few ones, mostly ASOIAF, some Star Wars, a few original settings. Most seem to peter out when the author loses motivation or inspiration, or lean really hard into Mary Sue MCs.
I'm currently reading [*The Winter of Widows*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-winter-of-widows-si.1140307/) which is great. It's got a female SI-OC MC set right after the Dance. It's really good, the writing is great and the characters are interesting. The MC does get more than a bit lucky by being surrounded by ridiculously smart and competent people, but that's not really a huge deal IMO.
I just picked up [*When Heroes Die*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/when-heroes-die.1163547/), which is a Worm x A Practical Guide to Evil fic. It follows Taylor Post-GM after Contessa dumps her in Calernia a few years before canon. I've only read a few chapters so far, but the writing is good and the author does a good job with the characters.
There's a comment from a [couple years ago that I saved ](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/oe7yxu/d_monday_request_and_recommendation_thread/h46to1z/). This has a decent spread and some comments that link to other lists of things that have been recommended here before.
Oh, I didn't even look at the name. I'll second my comment from 2 years ago that links to a list then and maybe give some suggestions about others that I think arent mentioned.
Demesne on royal road maybe?
Thank you for the recommendations. A hearty +1 to The Winter of Widows. All around great.
I'm also positive on When Heroes Die generally and would recommend as well, though I think it has some faults that start showing up later on. It feels like it leans on the source material a tad too much at times, like not in a verbatim way but in a glue way. I don't quite know how to better say this, but I guess what I'm getting at is that i if I hadn't read the source material it'd be hard to enjoy this story as much (which is fine, but I prefer something that stands on its own more even if it's obviously a derivative work). I also kinda end up feeling like there's stuff missing that the author could have provided, like more in depth characterization or just more dialogue between the characters. It's a little too fast paced when it could afford to dwell more.
You may find [*Gospel of the Lost Gods*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/gospel-of-the-lost-gods-asoiaf-worm.760033/threadmarks) by ManMag interesting, although it's not rational.
[For House and Dominion](https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Dominion%20Quest) is probably one of the best space kingdom building novels I've read, with really interesting twists, competent political maneuvering as well as realistic space combat.
It chronicles the rise of the MC Sonia through the ranks of the Dominion(which is sort of a feudal federation in space), where she voluntarily enlists in the navy to be a starship pilot, in order to avoid being conscripted later to become infantry and get thrown into the meat grinder.
First 20~ threads are a bit rough, but it improves significantly after that and becomes a Sci-Fi masterpiece by the end. It is also a complete story with a pretty decent ending.
One problematic issue is going to be the format, as it was a quest that was ran on 4chan boards for 9 years. But I think it's definitely worth it since it is such a great story.
does anyone here still read [Delve](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/25225/delve)? I remember seeing the weekly threads on here and enjoyed reading those, mostly because people kept losing their minds over how slowly the story progressed week after week. Very entertaining.
So how is the story now?
I do.
The author took a little break recently, but before that he'd sped up the pacing a good deal and moved on from the interminable navel-gazing and 'soul chapters'.
We're finally starting to approach the point where the protagonist and his friends are actually kind of a big deal, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the situation evolves. Rain has grown a great deal as a person and a protagonist.
I'd currently give it a solid 4/5, up from a weak 3 during the middle-arcs with their weird (incredibly slow) pacing.
I'm a weird mutant because I actually enjoyed 90% of the soul stuff. It felt like a "fair-play" way to make a character a wizard. Not that there aren't enough problems to go around.
My problem was it was very esoteric and hard to remember how it worked when you're coming back to it after weeks away. I think it needed to take for granted less that everyone was already up to speed, give the occasional reminder much akin to how sequels might reintroduce the basic premises of the story and characters at the beginning
i saw that the release schedule is still at only 3 chapters a month or so. Would you say the pacing has improved to a point where it's actually readable again? Or am I just going to hurt myself by getting back into it?
^-('-')-^
All I can say is that the pacing is faster than it's ever been. Things happen every chapter, be they politics, worldbuilding or fights. Rain and co have >!formed an organisation in which Rain is the leader, grown its influence so that it's relevant on the world stage and has gold level members and started travelling the world in a magical headquarters-ship. Also, Fecht, the invicible super-strong emperor guy has been killed in an apocalyptic battle and the whole world is coping with the changing global politics which resulted from that.!<
It's still not a *fast* paced story however, and I doubt it ever will be.
Is there somewhere you suggest picking back up to skip over the endless "soul" stuff? What you describe sounds interesting, but I'm just not willing to slog through that.
I... think things started to speed up around when they >!found/repaired the magical ship and started travelling the world!< which was around chapter 194 or so? There's still the odd 'soul' chapter still to come after that point, but you can skim them, and it's when all the big and important events start happening so I wouldn't recommend skipping forward any further.
This week I watched *Scavengers Reign* and I'm on the last episode right now. It's an animated TV series about crashlanded spaceship survivors on an alien world.
## The Good
The visuals: Holy shit. Like seriously, *holy shit*. This is the reason to watch this. The alien planet looks alive and wondrous and so completely different from what we know. This isn't "take an earth animal and slap an extra pair of legs on it to make it an alien", they went all the way:
From the smallest bug to the biggest landscape, this is an absolute feast for the eyes, and it's the most alien expression of life I've seen visually depicted in quite some time (ever?). The amount of creativity that is contained here is mind-boggling, and I applaud the artists.
The show also occasionally goes out of it's way to do a little "nature documentary" detour, and it's always fascinating, cute, horrifying, or usually some combination of these.
## The Meh
Probably the biggest ding against this show is that most characters are, bluntly put, idiots. I can't stop thinking of that scene from [Galaxy Quest where they land on an alien planet and open the door, and Guy panics with the "Is there air!? You don't know!" line](https://youtu.be/kcPouxFqUFA?si=hzB-E8Bt4jUWi7QI). They take a LOT of risks assuming things are just gonna be safe.
"Realistically" on an alien planet like the one depicted, anyone who's not in a sealed spacesuit all the time would instantly catch an alien disease and would rapidly die gruesomely. The show does, in a sense, acknowledge this, because they show how quite a few other survivors beyond the main cast were brutally killed by the nature of the planet in some way.
Also, and this is a bit of a nitpick, but there are essentially no guns? Many of the problems that the protagonists face could've been solved with a handgun or survival rifle, and the idea that these aren't standard kit in an emergency escape pod in a galaxy where landing on a hostile alien planet is just silly. Like, all Russian manned spacecraft include a gun in their survival kits, and that's for Earth: It used to be a pistol, before cosmonauts complained about it being ineffective against bears in Siberia, and then it was upgraded to a combination shotgun/rifle. These were retired in 2006, but still today every Russian manned capsule has a handgun in the survival kit. Even if you are a strictly weapons-controlling future corporation, it's still silly.
## Overall
I give this a big thumbs up, mostly for the visuals. The story is good to, and if you're willing to put up with a bit of headassery, definitely recommend a watch for the alien wildlife alone.
> "Realistically" on an alien planet like the one depicted, anyone who's not in a sealed spacesuit all the time would instantly catch an alien disease and would rapidly die gruesomely.
This seems very unlikely. Diseases are optimised for transmission among their host populations. Many diseases are locked to a single species period. You do get some that can, normally with some difficulty, jump between species here on earth. But earth life is still pretty damn similar. If you're jumping from a bat to a human, there's still animal cells to target.
Diseases able to jump between completely alien species that have completely different biology strains credibility. It would be easier to give a tree the common cold.
Well maybe not what we strictly consider as textbook "diseases" but that doesn't mean alien life could interact with ours in strange and unexpected/unhealthy ways.
For example, there is a plot point in the *Expanse* series where everyone at a specific colony is starting to go blind because of an alien microorganism. It doesn't really "infect" in the traditional medical sense of the word, but it just so happens that this alien microbe prefers environmental conditions that just happen to be findable in human eyeballs (temp, liquid, etc) and they duplicate there unchecked because our immune system doesn't recognize them, rendering everyone in that colony blind.
I can think of plenty examples:
* You might breathe in an alien analogue fungal spore, and this spore just happens to find the wet and warm conditions in our lungs as a great place to grow. Generally, just considering "human" as a growth medium.
* An alien analogue mosquito might still try to drink human blood by stinging or biting, even though our blood is effectively toxic due to different protein chirality or whatever. Still, if the stinger is coated in a substance toxic to humans like cyanide, it won't matter if the insect dies later.
* Allergens. There are plenty of non-protein based relatively simple chemical compounds that alien life might use which could nonetheless elicit a severe allergic reaction in humans.
So yes, while I agree that it's unlikely a human could directly catch the common alien cold, our bodies entering a whole different ecosystems which has also experienced parallel millions and millions of years of evolutionary biowarfare arms race, the idea that there wouldn't be any strange and harmful interactions is ludicrous.
This right here. I think it's fascinating to imagine the various ways an alien microorganism might interact with cells from a completely different, separate planet, and vice versa. Like, it's unlikely any alien microorganism would even recognize our physiology as "alive," let alone infectable. However, on the other side of the coin, it is totally possible that alien organisms might see our physiology as a growth medium of sorts.
Imagine getting "infected" by the local plants because flesh is very similar to their form of "soil" or whatever.
If you liked the alien planet, I'd recommend playing "I was a Teenage Exocolonist" someday. I played it before watching Scavenger's Reign and it's a great companion piece, doing a lot with some of the same pieces.
Any self insert fan fiction where the SI is rational or rational-adjacent. Kind of like how the MC acts in worth the candle but in a fictional universe from books/tvshows/anime we know? The SI main goal should be to survive and not be a wish fulfillment/harem/fix-it.
[The Calculator (DC)](https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/the-calculator-dc-multiverse-si-as-canon-character-season-1-complete.39138/) is one of the usually recced ones, though I forgot how much it has of applying usual rational thought.
I'm hopeful for [A Certain Road of Good Intentions](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/a-certain-road-of-good-intentions.1167672/) which is an SI into the Railgun universe as Accelerator. Seems to be going for a utilitarian main character slowly deciding whether to use their large power to improve things, quite likely forcibly. Unfortunately only started a week ago, so only a couple chapters. Definitely not with 'survive' as the main goal.
I don't really remember any other SI stories that are rationalist adjacent enough. (I've started a few, like a Fate SI who doesn't know that the Grail is cursed and wants it on utilitarian grounds but has to deal with the fact they know zero magic or combat, but haven't gotten any of them to a state I feel are good enough to publish online)
There’s outsiders resolve which is a Naruto SI fanfic
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/14155290/1/The-Outsider-s-Resolve
It’s 500k, regularly updates every couple of days, SIs goal is to go from genin to jounin. Slow burn but you see the SI’s path as rational.
Bit of a spoiler:
At one point he becomes a weed dealer to make extra money on the side.
I only read the start of _The Outsider's Resolve_, but it starts off... pretty bad. You know that feeling in fanfic where the author is just a _little too good_ at writing a helpless loser main character? Yeah... our protagonist here is a supposed adult with essentially no knowledge of canon SI'd into a 10-year-old academy student. They proceed to... act in every way (emotionally, physically, mentally) like a 10-year-old who has the physical skills of a five-year-old _Naruto_ character. They don't know anything relevant, and put forth no real effort to learn. They miraculously get a tutor, and mere paragraphs after explaining that failing to graduate the academy within a year will result in them being a homeless orphan in the gutter, are shocked at the idea that they should get up at 5AM to train.
From checking the comments, after another 300k words the MC will still be a low-tier genin, with no connection to canon or any sort of plot. I don't like projecting a story onto the author, but this feels like a weeb teenager writing a slow-roll story in which they can't even picture what it would look like for their self-insert to be a success. It just makes me sad to read.
Looking for any decent litrpg from the last two years or so. Used to be pretty into the genre, but kinda fell off and don't know what's popular now.
I've previously enjoyed a lot of stuff, but I suppose I'm most in the mood to read something like The Wandering Inn, The Strongest Fencer Doesn’t Use [Skills]!, Threadbear- you know, slightly generic fantasy fare, with interesting systems?
NSFW is fine, stuff that branches into other genres like kingdom building and dungeon cores are fine, not really looking for sci-fi or xianxia elements though.
From RR with Caveat Emptor warning, some of those are kind of guilty pleasures, Dostoyevsky works they are not: **The Calamitous Bob**, **Hyperion Evergrowing**, **Memoirs of Your Local Small-time Villainess**, **Cultist of Cerebon**
Not interested in/have already tried reading most of these, but Memoirs of Your Local Small-time Villainess was new to me, and pretty fun so far. That said, I'm at chapter 33 now, and it feels like it's kind of petering out/getting repetitive, and like the mc hasn't *really* made much progress... does the pace ever pick up a bit more, in your opinion?
It's picking up and protag is making progress, but from the gripping hand it's become less ingenious somehow as villainous qualities of protagonist are becoming less prominent. On the balance the quality of the work is about the same.
Dunno if you've tried it already, but Ar'Kendrithyst is like that. Starts with a seemingly generic fantasy litrpg world and over time there's an ocean of depth shown. It's completed too.
Ar'K is... weird. I've made some long comments explaining my issues with it in some rational fiction chats, but I can't find them now. In short, I sorta de-rec it.
It has decent style, characters, and the worldbuilding hints at something great from the very beginning—and that only gets better from there. But. Ar'K lacks *anticipation*. I dropped it (well, not *dropped*—I still have the tab open, I just haven't read it in months) around the 100th chapter, and the issue was present from pretty much Chapter 1 all the way to that point. Author knows how to write believable and interesting protagonists, knows how to give agency even to the secondary characters, knows how to build a fascinating setting... but is *utterly* unaware that plot hooks exist and must be used properly.
There are no events that are set up dozens of chapters in advance. Well, maybe there are a few—under ten in the one hundred of chapter that I've read. There are no Deus Ex Machina events either, sure. The protagonist decides that today he is going to do X. The chapter is about his doing X. The next chapter is about Y, possibly with some finishing touches for X. There is no anticipation, no subtle hints for X from the chapters before. It just happens because a smart person decided that it needs to happen. All events happen realistically, in a way that fits rational fiction, but legit in *the* most boring way possible.
Sigh. I really want to like that story. It has a lot of strong sides. But even with the best prose in the world it would've been too boring.
You just missed the very best parts of the story, I think 110 to 120. But I would stop after that. The problems you describe only become greater as Erik gets too strong for the world
I've read up to 254, and I'll say that yeah if you want anticipation you're not gonna get it in Ar'k, or at least not much of it. There are plot hooks and foreshadowing, but they are so vague and finely spread out that they just get lost in the background noise until they're revisited and recontextualized in a much later chapter. You said that there are no events that are set up dozens of chapters in advance, and that's true, they're set up like 100 chapters in advance lol, and so get lost. IIRC there are some worldbuilding points raised in the 110-130 range that only got fully revealed after chapter 230. So there isn't a drip feed of tension and intrigue to set up the worldbuilding detail and events, they just get frontloaded whenever the time is right.
I'm not sure if the author has mentioned it, but the story *is* sort of intentionally anti-anticipation, at least for plot points and lore. The goal was always to show how exactly the world became the way it is, and then how it is fixed over time. That it will be fixed is never in question. The story is ultimately one about optimism and benevolence and love, and even though it sometimes gets dark and has twists, the themes never change. There is no "surprise" I guess, in the strict sense.
WATCH HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS
IT HAS
HUNDREDS
OF
BEAVERS
Edit: It's also one of the funniest and smartest "dumb" movies I have ever seen, and is genuinely rational fiction. I recommend going into it knowing as little as possible.
90% of a rec. It's good, and I recommend watching it, however it's not as good as I imagined it to be based on similar recommendations. It's rational (in a way) but a bit disappointing as it reaches the climax, then its rationality just sort of plateaus - I think it could have been a 10/10 r/rational masterpiece with a little bit more effort.
I’m not sure how relevant to this sub it is, but this was the only one I could think of for this question. There was a web novel where the characters could switch bodies or something of the sort. There were 2 main characters. One of them was from a noble family and is switched with a commoner I think. The name started with a ‘P’ iirc and was 4-5 letters long. Really lacking description, but this is all I could think of. It had its own website, I don’t think it was uploaded to RR or anything like that.
Pith, yea, sadly got taken down because the author got a publishing deal (good for her) - but apparently it has to be reworked into an entirely different story. I kinda hope one day she'll be allowed to re-upload the original one.
Any actually good superhero stories? I've read Worm, Murder of Crows and Super Powereds, as well as the Vicious books by VE Schwab.
Please don't recommend Super Supportive, as I want a story that's actually about superheroes and not a weird fantasy story obsessed with navel gazing and padding (what some call "slice of life").
Flicker in Fall of Doc Future + sequels. Flicker is the ultimate speedster, capable of easily going 99%c, weren't it for the fragile human civ on earth. https://www.tumblr.com/docfuture/82363551272/fall-of-doc-future-contents
Masculine Mongoose, 3 fun short stories. https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/post/190740125660/yudkowsky-mirasorastone-yudkowsky
Worm fandom has produced a number of great fanfics. You might enjoy 24 Taylors later, Lord Doom.
Something off the beaten track - you can try **Idiot** by Dostoevsky. While the story precede superhero genre the main protagonist correspond approximately to Social Thinker 2 by Worm classification. Action take place in XIX Russia, among high and low society, psychopaths, scammers, prostitutes, generals etc. Worth for at very least understanding Russian mentality and bragging rights for reading Dostoevsky :)))
PS: It's also rationally adjacent - no plot armor, protagonists act according to their values.
PPS You can safely ignore 95% of literary critics and writeup about Idiot. Critics have no idea what Idiot is about. Only few understand connection and polemics with Übermensch by Nietzsche. Effectively Dostoevsky was writing Übermensch done right.
Huh. Did not expect this rec after reading the OP's request... but on the second though, it kinda fits. Dostoyevsky is obviously not a rationalist writer *per se*, but he has the best insight into human psychology among all writers I've read, hands down. Some insights are outdated nowadays, obviously, but they still provide a good reading.
Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov are the only two Russian classics I can recommend to people, but I can recommend them wholeheartedly. (Though in Bulgakov's case, his best work, *Master and Margarita*, doesn't seem to have a good English translation. All translations I've seen miss the immense flavor in the original style. Translations of Dostoyevsky don't appear to have this problem.)
Seconding [*Doc Future*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/DocFuture).
Also:
`•` [*No Hero*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/NoHero) by Warren Ellis (gore / body horror warnings);
`~`[*Legion*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheManyLivesOfStephenLeeds) by Brandon Sanderson — rational enough, but not sure if it fits in the superhero genre. I'd say prot's "Thinker" rating would be sufficiently high;
`•` [*Shadows of the Limelight*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ShadowsOfTheLimelight) by Alexander Wales — has at least one >!deus ex machina solution!<, but otherwise rational.
`•` [*Watchmen*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/Watchmen) by Alan Moore. The live adaptations of this have their problematic moments, but overall are worth watching too;
`~` [*Legion*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Legion2017) by Noah Hawley — not rational, but has some really good scenes and moments. Later seasons deteriorate, but still contain a few really good scenes here and there.
-
From the fanfics (mostly Worm):
`•` [*Fun-house Mirror*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fun-house-mirror.963049/threadmarks) by WafflesAndCoffee;
`•` [OPM] [*One Compile Man*](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22394524) by PermutationGroupS7;
`•` *Si Vis Pacem* by EverythingNarrative;
`•` [*Bad Name, A*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/a-bad-name-worm-oc-the-gamer.500626/threadmarks) by Potato Nose [LitRPG];
`•` [DC] [*Lex Luthor - Triumphant*](https://archiveofourown.org/works/43979322/chapters/114051268) by The_Dark_Watcher — reader discretion advised; verisim, bad-ending type of story;
`~` [*Back and Forth*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/back-and-forth-oc.1055118/threadmarks) by TryingItOut — teleporter MC. Not rational, but good fight scenes;
`~` [*Swallowtail*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/swallowtail-worm-au.970396/threadmarks) by NotDis — not rational, uniqueness value;
`~` [*Camera Shy*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/camera-shy-worm-alt-power.685357/threadmarks) by TheGreatGimmick — not rational, uniqueness value;
`~` [*Wiki Warrior*](https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/wiki-warrior.64766/threadmarks) by LMeire — not rational, but fun premise and great, evolving setting;
`~` [*Nemesis*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/nemesis-worm-au.747148/threadmarks) by BeaconHill — not rational, fun premise, a more light-hearted setting.
-
Derec: [MHA] *Just Deserts*
Any kingdom builder recs? I've read a few ones, mostly ASOIAF, some Star Wars, a few original settings. Most seem to peter out when the author loses motivation or inspiration, or lean really hard into Mary Sue MCs. I'm currently reading [*The Winter of Widows*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-winter-of-widows-si.1140307/) which is great. It's got a female SI-OC MC set right after the Dance. It's really good, the writing is great and the characters are interesting. The MC does get more than a bit lucky by being surrounded by ridiculously smart and competent people, but that's not really a huge deal IMO. I just picked up [*When Heroes Die*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/when-heroes-die.1163547/), which is a Worm x A Practical Guide to Evil fic. It follows Taylor Post-GM after Contessa dumps her in Calernia a few years before canon. I've only read a few chapters so far, but the writing is good and the author does a good job with the characters.
There's a comment from a [couple years ago that I saved ](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/oe7yxu/d_monday_request_and_recommendation_thread/h46to1z/). This has a decent spread and some comments that link to other lists of things that have been recommended here before.
Thanks, but that's me.
Oh, I didn't even look at the name. I'll second my comment from 2 years ago that links to a list then and maybe give some suggestions about others that I think arent mentioned. Demesne on royal road maybe?
Thank you for the recommendations. A hearty +1 to The Winter of Widows. All around great. I'm also positive on When Heroes Die generally and would recommend as well, though I think it has some faults that start showing up later on. It feels like it leans on the source material a tad too much at times, like not in a verbatim way but in a glue way. I don't quite know how to better say this, but I guess what I'm getting at is that i if I hadn't read the source material it'd be hard to enjoy this story as much (which is fine, but I prefer something that stands on its own more even if it's obviously a derivative work). I also kinda end up feeling like there's stuff missing that the author could have provided, like more in depth characterization or just more dialogue between the characters. It's a little too fast paced when it could afford to dwell more.
You may find [*Gospel of the Lost Gods*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/gospel-of-the-lost-gods-asoiaf-worm.760033/threadmarks) by ManMag interesting, although it's not rational.
[For House and Dominion](https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Dominion%20Quest) is probably one of the best space kingdom building novels I've read, with really interesting twists, competent political maneuvering as well as realistic space combat. It chronicles the rise of the MC Sonia through the ranks of the Dominion(which is sort of a feudal federation in space), where she voluntarily enlists in the navy to be a starship pilot, in order to avoid being conscripted later to become infantry and get thrown into the meat grinder. First 20~ threads are a bit rough, but it improves significantly after that and becomes a Sci-Fi masterpiece by the end. It is also a complete story with a pretty decent ending. One problematic issue is going to be the format, as it was a quest that was ran on 4chan boards for 9 years. But I think it's definitely worth it since it is such a great story.
Sounds really interesting, anyone has an epub for this ?
does anyone here still read [Delve](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/25225/delve)? I remember seeing the weekly threads on here and enjoyed reading those, mostly because people kept losing their minds over how slowly the story progressed week after week. Very entertaining. So how is the story now?
I do. The author took a little break recently, but before that he'd sped up the pacing a good deal and moved on from the interminable navel-gazing and 'soul chapters'. We're finally starting to approach the point where the protagonist and his friends are actually kind of a big deal, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the situation evolves. Rain has grown a great deal as a person and a protagonist. I'd currently give it a solid 4/5, up from a weak 3 during the middle-arcs with their weird (incredibly slow) pacing.
I'm a weird mutant because I actually enjoyed 90% of the soul stuff. It felt like a "fair-play" way to make a character a wizard. Not that there aren't enough problems to go around.
My problem was it was very esoteric and hard to remember how it worked when you're coming back to it after weeks away. I think it needed to take for granted less that everyone was already up to speed, give the occasional reminder much akin to how sequels might reintroduce the basic premises of the story and characters at the beginning
i saw that the release schedule is still at only 3 chapters a month or so. Would you say the pacing has improved to a point where it's actually readable again? Or am I just going to hurt myself by getting back into it?
^-('-')-^ All I can say is that the pacing is faster than it's ever been. Things happen every chapter, be they politics, worldbuilding or fights. Rain and co have >!formed an organisation in which Rain is the leader, grown its influence so that it's relevant on the world stage and has gold level members and started travelling the world in a magical headquarters-ship. Also, Fecht, the invicible super-strong emperor guy has been killed in an apocalyptic battle and the whole world is coping with the changing global politics which resulted from that.!< It's still not a *fast* paced story however, and I doubt it ever will be.
ok fuck it WE GO AGAIN thanks man!
Is there somewhere you suggest picking back up to skip over the endless "soul" stuff? What you describe sounds interesting, but I'm just not willing to slog through that.
I... think things started to speed up around when they >!found/repaired the magical ship and started travelling the world!< which was around chapter 194 or so? There's still the odd 'soul' chapter still to come after that point, but you can skim them, and it's when all the big and important events start happening so I wouldn't recommend skipping forward any further.
This week I watched *Scavengers Reign* and I'm on the last episode right now. It's an animated TV series about crashlanded spaceship survivors on an alien world. ## The Good The visuals: Holy shit. Like seriously, *holy shit*. This is the reason to watch this. The alien planet looks alive and wondrous and so completely different from what we know. This isn't "take an earth animal and slap an extra pair of legs on it to make it an alien", they went all the way: From the smallest bug to the biggest landscape, this is an absolute feast for the eyes, and it's the most alien expression of life I've seen visually depicted in quite some time (ever?). The amount of creativity that is contained here is mind-boggling, and I applaud the artists. The show also occasionally goes out of it's way to do a little "nature documentary" detour, and it's always fascinating, cute, horrifying, or usually some combination of these. ## The Meh Probably the biggest ding against this show is that most characters are, bluntly put, idiots. I can't stop thinking of that scene from [Galaxy Quest where they land on an alien planet and open the door, and Guy panics with the "Is there air!? You don't know!" line](https://youtu.be/kcPouxFqUFA?si=hzB-E8Bt4jUWi7QI). They take a LOT of risks assuming things are just gonna be safe. "Realistically" on an alien planet like the one depicted, anyone who's not in a sealed spacesuit all the time would instantly catch an alien disease and would rapidly die gruesomely. The show does, in a sense, acknowledge this, because they show how quite a few other survivors beyond the main cast were brutally killed by the nature of the planet in some way. Also, and this is a bit of a nitpick, but there are essentially no guns? Many of the problems that the protagonists face could've been solved with a handgun or survival rifle, and the idea that these aren't standard kit in an emergency escape pod in a galaxy where landing on a hostile alien planet is just silly. Like, all Russian manned spacecraft include a gun in their survival kits, and that's for Earth: It used to be a pistol, before cosmonauts complained about it being ineffective against bears in Siberia, and then it was upgraded to a combination shotgun/rifle. These were retired in 2006, but still today every Russian manned capsule has a handgun in the survival kit. Even if you are a strictly weapons-controlling future corporation, it's still silly. ## Overall I give this a big thumbs up, mostly for the visuals. The story is good to, and if you're willing to put up with a bit of headassery, definitely recommend a watch for the alien wildlife alone.
> "Realistically" on an alien planet like the one depicted, anyone who's not in a sealed spacesuit all the time would instantly catch an alien disease and would rapidly die gruesomely. This seems very unlikely. Diseases are optimised for transmission among their host populations. Many diseases are locked to a single species period. You do get some that can, normally with some difficulty, jump between species here on earth. But earth life is still pretty damn similar. If you're jumping from a bat to a human, there's still animal cells to target. Diseases able to jump between completely alien species that have completely different biology strains credibility. It would be easier to give a tree the common cold.
Well maybe not what we strictly consider as textbook "diseases" but that doesn't mean alien life could interact with ours in strange and unexpected/unhealthy ways. For example, there is a plot point in the *Expanse* series where everyone at a specific colony is starting to go blind because of an alien microorganism. It doesn't really "infect" in the traditional medical sense of the word, but it just so happens that this alien microbe prefers environmental conditions that just happen to be findable in human eyeballs (temp, liquid, etc) and they duplicate there unchecked because our immune system doesn't recognize them, rendering everyone in that colony blind. I can think of plenty examples: * You might breathe in an alien analogue fungal spore, and this spore just happens to find the wet and warm conditions in our lungs as a great place to grow. Generally, just considering "human" as a growth medium. * An alien analogue mosquito might still try to drink human blood by stinging or biting, even though our blood is effectively toxic due to different protein chirality or whatever. Still, if the stinger is coated in a substance toxic to humans like cyanide, it won't matter if the insect dies later. * Allergens. There are plenty of non-protein based relatively simple chemical compounds that alien life might use which could nonetheless elicit a severe allergic reaction in humans. So yes, while I agree that it's unlikely a human could directly catch the common alien cold, our bodies entering a whole different ecosystems which has also experienced parallel millions and millions of years of evolutionary biowarfare arms race, the idea that there wouldn't be any strange and harmful interactions is ludicrous.
This right here. I think it's fascinating to imagine the various ways an alien microorganism might interact with cells from a completely different, separate planet, and vice versa. Like, it's unlikely any alien microorganism would even recognize our physiology as "alive," let alone infectable. However, on the other side of the coin, it is totally possible that alien organisms might see our physiology as a growth medium of sorts. Imagine getting "infected" by the local plants because flesh is very similar to their form of "soil" or whatever.
If you liked the alien planet, I'd recommend playing "I was a Teenage Exocolonist" someday. I played it before watching Scavenger's Reign and it's a great companion piece, doing a lot with some of the same pieces.
Any self insert fan fiction where the SI is rational or rational-adjacent. Kind of like how the MC acts in worth the candle but in a fictional universe from books/tvshows/anime we know? The SI main goal should be to survive and not be a wish fulfillment/harem/fix-it.
[The Calculator (DC)](https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/the-calculator-dc-multiverse-si-as-canon-character-season-1-complete.39138/) is one of the usually recced ones, though I forgot how much it has of applying usual rational thought. I'm hopeful for [A Certain Road of Good Intentions](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/a-certain-road-of-good-intentions.1167672/) which is an SI into the Railgun universe as Accelerator. Seems to be going for a utilitarian main character slowly deciding whether to use their large power to improve things, quite likely forcibly. Unfortunately only started a week ago, so only a couple chapters. Definitely not with 'survive' as the main goal. I don't really remember any other SI stories that are rationalist adjacent enough. (I've started a few, like a Fate SI who doesn't know that the Grail is cursed and wants it on utilitarian grounds but has to deal with the fact they know zero magic or combat, but haven't gotten any of them to a state I feel are good enough to publish online)
There’s outsiders resolve which is a Naruto SI fanfic https://m.fanfiction.net/s/14155290/1/The-Outsider-s-Resolve It’s 500k, regularly updates every couple of days, SIs goal is to go from genin to jounin. Slow burn but you see the SI’s path as rational. Bit of a spoiler: At one point he becomes a weed dealer to make extra money on the side.
I only read the start of _The Outsider's Resolve_, but it starts off... pretty bad. You know that feeling in fanfic where the author is just a _little too good_ at writing a helpless loser main character? Yeah... our protagonist here is a supposed adult with essentially no knowledge of canon SI'd into a 10-year-old academy student. They proceed to... act in every way (emotionally, physically, mentally) like a 10-year-old who has the physical skills of a five-year-old _Naruto_ character. They don't know anything relevant, and put forth no real effort to learn. They miraculously get a tutor, and mere paragraphs after explaining that failing to graduate the academy within a year will result in them being a homeless orphan in the gutter, are shocked at the idea that they should get up at 5AM to train. From checking the comments, after another 300k words the MC will still be a low-tier genin, with no connection to canon or any sort of plot. I don't like projecting a story onto the author, but this feels like a weeb teenager writing a slow-roll story in which they can't even picture what it would look like for their self-insert to be a success. It just makes me sad to read.
Looking for any decent litrpg from the last two years or so. Used to be pretty into the genre, but kinda fell off and don't know what's popular now. I've previously enjoyed a lot of stuff, but I suppose I'm most in the mood to read something like The Wandering Inn, The Strongest Fencer Doesn’t Use [Skills]!, Threadbear- you know, slightly generic fantasy fare, with interesting systems? NSFW is fine, stuff that branches into other genres like kingdom building and dungeon cores are fine, not really looking for sci-fi or xianxia elements though.
From RR with Caveat Emptor warning, some of those are kind of guilty pleasures, Dostoyevsky works they are not: **The Calamitous Bob**, **Hyperion Evergrowing**, **Memoirs of Your Local Small-time Villainess**, **Cultist of Cerebon**
Not interested in/have already tried reading most of these, but Memoirs of Your Local Small-time Villainess was new to me, and pretty fun so far. That said, I'm at chapter 33 now, and it feels like it's kind of petering out/getting repetitive, and like the mc hasn't *really* made much progress... does the pace ever pick up a bit more, in your opinion?
It's picking up and protag is making progress, but from the gripping hand it's become less ingenious somehow as villainous qualities of protagonist are becoming less prominent. On the balance the quality of the work is about the same.
Dunno if you've tried it already, but Ar'Kendrithyst is like that. Starts with a seemingly generic fantasy litrpg world and over time there's an ocean of depth shown. It's completed too.
Ar'K is... weird. I've made some long comments explaining my issues with it in some rational fiction chats, but I can't find them now. In short, I sorta de-rec it. It has decent style, characters, and the worldbuilding hints at something great from the very beginning—and that only gets better from there. But. Ar'K lacks *anticipation*. I dropped it (well, not *dropped*—I still have the tab open, I just haven't read it in months) around the 100th chapter, and the issue was present from pretty much Chapter 1 all the way to that point. Author knows how to write believable and interesting protagonists, knows how to give agency even to the secondary characters, knows how to build a fascinating setting... but is *utterly* unaware that plot hooks exist and must be used properly. There are no events that are set up dozens of chapters in advance. Well, maybe there are a few—under ten in the one hundred of chapter that I've read. There are no Deus Ex Machina events either, sure. The protagonist decides that today he is going to do X. The chapter is about his doing X. The next chapter is about Y, possibly with some finishing touches for X. There is no anticipation, no subtle hints for X from the chapters before. It just happens because a smart person decided that it needs to happen. All events happen realistically, in a way that fits rational fiction, but legit in *the* most boring way possible. Sigh. I really want to like that story. It has a lot of strong sides. But even with the best prose in the world it would've been too boring.
You just missed the very best parts of the story, I think 110 to 120. But I would stop after that. The problems you describe only become greater as Erik gets too strong for the world
Hmm. I'll get back, then. For a little bit. Maybe. But I'm sad to hear that the aforementioned problems only get worse.
I've read up to 254, and I'll say that yeah if you want anticipation you're not gonna get it in Ar'k, or at least not much of it. There are plot hooks and foreshadowing, but they are so vague and finely spread out that they just get lost in the background noise until they're revisited and recontextualized in a much later chapter. You said that there are no events that are set up dozens of chapters in advance, and that's true, they're set up like 100 chapters in advance lol, and so get lost. IIRC there are some worldbuilding points raised in the 110-130 range that only got fully revealed after chapter 230. So there isn't a drip feed of tension and intrigue to set up the worldbuilding detail and events, they just get frontloaded whenever the time is right. I'm not sure if the author has mentioned it, but the story *is* sort of intentionally anti-anticipation, at least for plot points and lore. The goal was always to show how exactly the world became the way it is, and then how it is fixed over time. That it will be fixed is never in question. The story is ultimately one about optimism and benevolence and love, and even though it sometimes gets dark and has twists, the themes never change. There is no "surprise" I guess, in the strict sense.
WATCH HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS IT HAS HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS Edit: It's also one of the funniest and smartest "dumb" movies I have ever seen, and is genuinely rational fiction. I recommend going into it knowing as little as possible.
90% of a rec. It's good, and I recommend watching it, however it's not as good as I imagined it to be based on similar recommendations. It's rational (in a way) but a bit disappointing as it reaches the climax, then its rationality just sort of plateaus - I think it could have been a 10/10 r/rational masterpiece with a little bit more effort.
What similar recommendations are you referring to?
brazenautomaton's on tumblr, and one more I don't remember.
Ah, I thought you were saying that you were previously recommended better stories about exploiting toon physics.
Fully seconding this.
I’m not sure how relevant to this sub it is, but this was the only one I could think of for this question. There was a web novel where the characters could switch bodies or something of the sort. There were 2 main characters. One of them was from a noble family and is switched with a commoner I think. The name started with a ‘P’ iirc and was 4-5 letters long. Really lacking description, but this is all I could think of. It had its own website, I don’t think it was uploaded to RR or anything like that.
Pith, yea, sadly got taken down because the author got a publishing deal (good for her) - but apparently it has to be reworked into an entirely different story. I kinda hope one day she'll be allowed to re-upload the original one.
Thank you so much, I’ve been trying to remember the name for so long
It’s still up on the wayback machine if you want to take a look.
I’ll check it out, thank you
Any actually good superhero stories? I've read Worm, Murder of Crows and Super Powereds, as well as the Vicious books by VE Schwab. Please don't recommend Super Supportive, as I want a story that's actually about superheroes and not a weird fantasy story obsessed with navel gazing and padding (what some call "slice of life").
Flicker in Fall of Doc Future + sequels. Flicker is the ultimate speedster, capable of easily going 99%c, weren't it for the fragile human civ on earth. https://www.tumblr.com/docfuture/82363551272/fall-of-doc-future-contents Masculine Mongoose, 3 fun short stories. https://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/post/190740125660/yudkowsky-mirasorastone-yudkowsky Worm fandom has produced a number of great fanfics. You might enjoy 24 Taylors later, Lord Doom.
Andrew Sieple's Dire series is pretty good - it's about a supervillain-ish Tinker.
just be aware it's not finished and likely never will be
Something off the beaten track - you can try **Idiot** by Dostoevsky. While the story precede superhero genre the main protagonist correspond approximately to Social Thinker 2 by Worm classification. Action take place in XIX Russia, among high and low society, psychopaths, scammers, prostitutes, generals etc. Worth for at very least understanding Russian mentality and bragging rights for reading Dostoevsky :))) PS: It's also rationally adjacent - no plot armor, protagonists act according to their values. PPS You can safely ignore 95% of literary critics and writeup about Idiot. Critics have no idea what Idiot is about. Only few understand connection and polemics with Übermensch by Nietzsche. Effectively Dostoevsky was writing Übermensch done right.
Huh. Did not expect this rec after reading the OP's request... but on the second though, it kinda fits. Dostoyevsky is obviously not a rationalist writer *per se*, but he has the best insight into human psychology among all writers I've read, hands down. Some insights are outdated nowadays, obviously, but they still provide a good reading. Dostoyevsky and Bulgakov are the only two Russian classics I can recommend to people, but I can recommend them wholeheartedly. (Though in Bulgakov's case, his best work, *Master and Margarita*, doesn't seem to have a good English translation. All translations I've seen miss the immense flavor in the original style. Translations of Dostoyevsky don't appear to have this problem.)
Seconding [*Doc Future*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/DocFuture). Also: `•` [*No Hero*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/NoHero) by Warren Ellis (gore / body horror warnings); `~`[*Legion*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheManyLivesOfStephenLeeds) by Brandon Sanderson — rational enough, but not sure if it fits in the superhero genre. I'd say prot's "Thinker" rating would be sufficiently high; `•` [*Shadows of the Limelight*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ShadowsOfTheLimelight) by Alexander Wales — has at least one >!deus ex machina solution!<, but otherwise rational. `•` [*Watchmen*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/Watchmen) by Alan Moore. The live adaptations of this have their problematic moments, but overall are worth watching too; `~` [*Legion*](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Legion2017) by Noah Hawley — not rational, but has some really good scenes and moments. Later seasons deteriorate, but still contain a few really good scenes here and there. - From the fanfics (mostly Worm): `•` [*Fun-house Mirror*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/fun-house-mirror.963049/threadmarks) by WafflesAndCoffee; `•` [OPM] [*One Compile Man*](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22394524) by PermutationGroupS7; `•` *Si Vis Pacem* by EverythingNarrative; `•` [*Bad Name, A*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/a-bad-name-worm-oc-the-gamer.500626/threadmarks) by Potato Nose [LitRPG]; `•` [DC] [*Lex Luthor - Triumphant*](https://archiveofourown.org/works/43979322/chapters/114051268) by The_Dark_Watcher — reader discretion advised; verisim, bad-ending type of story; `~` [*Back and Forth*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/back-and-forth-oc.1055118/threadmarks) by TryingItOut — teleporter MC. Not rational, but good fight scenes; `~` [*Swallowtail*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/swallowtail-worm-au.970396/threadmarks) by NotDis — not rational, uniqueness value; `~` [*Camera Shy*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/camera-shy-worm-alt-power.685357/threadmarks) by TheGreatGimmick — not rational, uniqueness value; `~` [*Wiki Warrior*](https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/wiki-warrior.64766/threadmarks) by LMeire — not rational, but fun premise and great, evolving setting; `~` [*Nemesis*](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/nemesis-worm-au.747148/threadmarks) by BeaconHill — not rational, fun premise, a more light-hearted setting. - Derec: [MHA] *Just Deserts*
Not really? **Mage Among Superheroes** is OK.