You meet a mysterious figure in a tavern near the edge of town. He tells you that he is Hoon, the God of Travel and Trade. He has a proposition for you and, with the aid of some old cards, offers to tell you your fortune in hopes that you will accept his offer. He shuffles the cards and places them in a pattern on the table with a gleam in his eye. He flips the first card and reveals your Fate
This week's spread is inspired by Andrew Seiple's Small Medium trilogy. In the story our protagonist, Chase Berrymore, meets the god Hoon, disguised as a simple merchant, and offers her a job as his oracle so the people of the land can once again hear the words of the gods. With her grandmother's Fortuna Cards, Chase is able to use her new abilities to help save her friends and family from certain disaster. If you're a fan of RPGs, Tolkien, Tarot, or Zombie Clowns I highly recommend this series.
Y'know what book series would make for a *fantastic* muppet-style movie adaptation? The "Threadbare" series (maybe also called the "Generica" series?) by Andrew Seiple.
It's about a teddy bear that's brought to sorta life as a golem, is accidentally made into a sorta king or messiah of golems, and goes on a sorta epic quest to save his little girl (wherein most of the main characters are animated toys/puppets or people who interact with them in a completely straight-faced way--just like the best muppet movies). And it's freakin' HILARIOUS.
If you love when a muppet gets thrown across a room in a fight, bounces off a wall, then shrugs it off because they've got no bones to break nor organs to rupture, and runs back into the fight with arms flopping all akimbo ... Then you'll love this series, and will probably agree that it'd make a fantastic muppet-style movie.
“Purity. Have you ever noticed how good people, truly good ones, never really toss around that word so much? They just do good and don’t waste time trying to define it. It’s only the weasels who argue about that, who try and define purity, and declare that this sort of good is better than that kind of good. They try to change the definition of good to fit what they’re doing. They can’t compete with folks who come to goodness honestly, so they try to change the idea to lift themselves above others.”
This is a really good quote I just tripped over and I’m a little miffed that it came from volume four of a series of books about a talking teddy bear that fights demons.
Recently I went on a bit of a rant about the state of web serial fandom and community, and people seemed to be interested in the idea of a rec list of web serials I enjoy when I brought it up, so... here we go! This’ll be a little long, so I put it under a readmore. Also, I got into web serials because I was looking to read more litRPG stories that weren’t horribly sexist and bad, so fair warning that you’ll see a lot of those in this list.
Before talking about specific stories, I should mention the few sites I know which do organize and recommend web serials. First is obviously Top Web Fiction and its sister site, Web Fiction Guide. These two are a great first stop if you’re looking for something popular, or something in a specific category, or something similar to what you’ve already read. They’re not hosting sites, though-- you go from these two to whichever page the serial is on.
Second on my list of sites is Royal Road. A hosting site for all sorts of stories, but focused on original LitRPG fiction, Royal Road is a great place to find interesting stories. This is where I usually go these days when I’m looking for something new.
Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the Spacebattles forums. This site hosts a lot of original stories, but it’s not really set up to help you find new stories. Feel free to explore, though-- this is where much of the web serial community lives.
Now, on to the promised rec list! Let me start with the first web serial I ever read: Super Powereds! Set in a superhero universe, Super Powereds is the story of five Powereds (people with uncontrollable superpowers) who, through a sketchy experiment, are made into Supers (people with controllable superpowers) and go to school to become Heros (government authorized and trained superheros). If you’ve ever read BNHA or Civil War or X-Men, this is the story that will make you go “ah, so that’s how it should be done.” Cannot recommend highly enough. Regrettably, however, it seems that at the time of writing this, the first three volumes of the series have been removed to comply with Amazon regulations. With luck, they’ll be back soon.
Next, Mother of Learning. One of the best-regarded series I know, Mother of Learning started as a worldbuilding project for the author, and grew to become an absolutely magnificent story where a young irritable student of magic stumbles into a time loop and is forced to gain maturity and power in order to escape... before the dangers of the time loop catch up with him. Recently completed, this story is perhaps my highest recommendation.
Threadbare is a fantastic LitRPG story starring an intelligent teddy bear golem (the eponymous Threadbare) and his magnificently bizarre family and friends. With a story that initially appears stereotypical (if well-written) but which grows complicated, mysterious, and even quite dark, this story currently spans three different arcs, each focusing on a different character in the same setting. Start with Threadbare, then read Small Medium, and then Dragon Hack in order to follow along as the mysteries of the world of Generica are slowly revealed. Just be ready for a lot of puns along the way...
Everybody Loves Large Chests is the first of these stories which I hesitate to recommend, though not because the quality is in any way bad. But it is a rather fanservice-filled story, up to and including sexual content (although that’s usually clearly marked), which may be offputting to some readers. I will say only this-- of all the fanservice-filled stories I’ve ever read, this is the one where I most felt that the characters, not the author, were making the decision. If that’s tolerable to you, then let me recommend the delightful story of a mimic who’s power-hungry, money-hungry, and just plain hungry. The very best kind of power fantasy, ELLC is a hilarious delight to read.
Black Blood Tales is actually a site with two different stories by the same author, and it’s also the only rec on this list which is both unfinished and abandoned. For that reason, and also because it’s rather dark and occasionally a touch sexual, I hesitate to recommend this one as well, but what the hell, why not. The two stories are Taint and Trials. Taint is a xianxia power fantasy story with an antivillain protagonist, and my favorite of the two stories. It also leaves off at a pretty good point, so it’s definitely worth a go. Trials, on the other hand, is much lower-powered. It’s your standard “protagonist dies and goes to another world while getting to choose new powers” story... except the world she enters has no magic, only slightly better technology than ours, and the protagonist can barely choose anything that even qualifies as a power. If you don’t mind abandoned stories, both of these are well worth a read.
There is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns. Among the various kinds of LitRPG stories, a fairly popular one is the idea of the “Dungeon Core”-- stories where the main character is effectively a changing, evolving dungeon with a mind. Of those stories, this is probably my favorite. It stars a Dungeon Core who’s terribly bad at being a dungeon, but pretty darn good at finding friends and making family. Adorable, funny, and occasionally heartwrenching, this is definitely a story worth trying.
Vainqueur the Dragon is the most recent of the stories on this list, but I definitely feel it’s worth including. “Dragon wakes up to discover a thief raiding his hoard” is a cliche start, but everything that happens after that is about as far from a cliche as possible. Constantly hilarious, frequently fascinating, and on rare occasions deeply touching in a way I did not expect.
The Wandering Inn. Even among web serials, which are often extremely long, this is The Big One. The Wandering Inn is the story of Erin Solstice, a girl from our world, who walked into a fantasy world... one that she’s almost completely unprepared to survive. Stumbling into an inn, she attempts to make her home there and gains her first level as an [Innkeeper]. This magnificent portal fantasy LitRPG stars a huge world, a huge cast of characters, a huge story, and a really, really huge wordcount. Settle in for a long ride with this one, but I promise it’s worth it.
Finally, I should say that this list is obviously incomplete. It doesn’t even include everything I’ve read, let alone all the stories that I haven’t read for one reason or another. No list of web serials is complete without mentioning Worm, for example, but that story is too dark for me to deal with, and so there’s nothing I can say about it. If you have recommendations of your own, or even just want to add something about one of the stories I mentioned, then please say something! After all, I’m always looking for new stories as well.
Okay, I’m actually writing this Threadbare fic! I was kindly pointed toward a very useful rule book for the system, which will be a huge help. My goal for this is to just... not give up writing. Even if I never publish anything, I want to write a little bit every day.
