I’ve recently gotten into reading. I realised how much I love fiction, and a couple of tropes. So I’m here asking maybe some of you know any books that have them.
I love it when the story focuses more on world building rather than character. The theory crafting I can do in my head, or just before I sleep, is priceless.
Here I’ll contradict myself by saying a character development related point, but the more important one. I’d like to read more works that show some mysterious big-bad first as a rivalry, later as a friend. They soften up with the MC and we they become friends or allies or whatever. We get to see a BBEG of sorts’s friendly and weak side. I get that it’s a bit childish, but I lost my mind of how cool of a character they made the first time I read it. Now, it was in a manga, so I’d love to read an example that made this best or first.
Thank you in advance, even if you just name some genres or authors.
Well, I’d give a 99% that you’re going to find it cringe, but I made this post about The Skeleton Soldier Failed to Defend the Dungeon. It had that absolutely amazing character 180° plot twist, and even if everything else is very poorly written, that singular character is awesome.
The way I actually got into reading is a bit embarassing, only two of my friends know of it. But the watered down version is that after years of everyone around me watching anime I also caved in, tried it, and I very much enjoyed one. Because it was (and still is) unfinished I decided to read the light novels about it and realised how awesome reading is. My familiy nagged me about reading, and I did some back in the day, can’t even remember how old I was (single digit for sure), however school started and I was forced to read some of the worst pieces of word combinations that ever hit my ear, long and boring too. I’m not kidding when I say one of these mandatory reads made me hate women for a while. Thankfully I forgot all of it, like a trauma, all I remember is that it was hell reading that (actually couldn’t even read it, I listened to it.) Anyways, even if it’s cringy and a bit wierd, I’m still happy about it. I get to enjoy this hidden gem of media, and I’m loving it. So I’m searching for new experiences. This post backlogged me for a year at least.
I’m writing this omw home on a bus, if there are typos; sry :p
Alright I’m reading Skeleton Soldier. I like it. It is a little silly, a little shallow, but it’s fun and varied and damn if it doesn’t pull off some emotional whiplash. Like when the female knight in the tournament tripped while everybody was booing her? My stomach dropped through the floor.
Yoo, Skeleton Soldier is just time loop LitRPG in manga form. Absolutely cringe and I am absolutely here for it. That used to be one of my favorite genres/tropes to read! Yeah, those types of stories are rarely finished, and usually pretty shallow. Kinda like fast food for reading. I’ll give it the manga a shot. Thank you!
I really wonder wth happened with your school lol. I hated mandatory reading too, but it wasn’t nearly that bad, just tedious.
Sorry to heap more suggestions on to you, but if you’re into stories like skeleton soldier you could take a look at RoyalRoad or similar web novel sites. There’s literally tens of thousands of such stories uploaded for free by the authors. The vast majority of them are bad or worse, but with how many there are there’s more than enough high quality stuff, some of which is novel or experimental in a way one doesn’t find in published work. Just be ready to drop a story if it feels like it’s going nowhere or is not fun to read.
You can color me surprised. I’m not really into this sort of progression because it’s almost always lazy. But I feel like Skeleton Solder did an above average job. But I do have to admit, that most of the mangas that I like are like this. I have no idea why, I refuse to believe a leveling system is good writing.
I love you’re comparison to fast food! Fits so well. As I said, for me reading a “normal” book takes energy and effort, I need to learn new words to even understand the scenery. Don’t get me wrong, I do want to extend my vocabulary and I also enjoy it. But it is nice to immerse myself into something for hours easily, and for that I do need myself some fast food from time-to-time. Anyways I just said (in 3 lines) that don’t feel bad for recommending (I enjoyed Mortal Engines as well, but not enough to finish it, and the characters actively annoyed me), I’ll probably want to search for these sooner or later and now I don’t need to find a site.
Reading your other comment: Oh I feel bad for you already. If Christina’s fall got you idk how you’ll l handle S3’s ending. But I won’t say a word more. Please update me on how heartbroken you are… O-or because you knew what was going to happen because almost all of these stories are the same, and you said you’ve read them a bunch.
Other thing that interests me is, and I know this might be reaching, it’s okay if you wouldn’t want to answer, is how old are you? You said “used to be” does that mean I’ve struck some nostalgia in you?
Is there space for one more paragraph? Do you use ebook readers? I mean like a device with an eink screen. I’d like to buy one soon but I have no idea what to look for in them.
I’ll make sure to get back to you when I get to S3, then. Gotta admit to being disappointed that Christina just disappeared, but the fact you remember her name suggests she’ll be back. Woo! Before that, to the other points:
Leveling systems are generally terrible writing, agreed, but they can serve as excellent antagonists (something you’ll see attempted often in RoyalRoad entries). I think they’re a trend from Korea that stuck around because they appeal to gamers. I’ve never really looked into the topic, but the first I remember hearing of was called The Gamer and it released in… 2013. Hoo boy. Yeah, I’m almost 30 lol. It wasn’t that long ago, but apparently long enough for nostalgia to set in. At the time it was super popular and spawned literally tens of thousands of spinoffs.
That’s not as many as it sounds like, though. Eastern novels/writing seems to be iterative, with stories slightly mutated over and over in vast quantities until something is new enough and good enough to gain popularity and shift the genre again. There’s less focus on brevity, novelty is central but narrow, and the novelty is often entirely described within the title. Western web fiction is similar in some ways, but much less homogeneous.
I do have an ebook reader. My main suggestion would be, if you’ve got one in mind, looking for problems with it online, like “<ebook name> stopped working” or “froze” or “won’t turn on.” A lot of them break in suspiciously predictable ways and are completely unrepairable. Second suggestion is to get one that isn’t bound to a store, which you can freely upload epubs/pdfs to, preferably via USB cable. Everything else is pretty much subject to your use-case. Small size, backlighting, water/rain resistance and low weight are requirements for me personally.
My reader is a tablet style thing which I can use for work. However that leaves it too large to actually read much on while in bed or on the go, and I’ve ended up mostly using my (very small) phone to read epubs.
Sorry for the wall of text, but hopefully it’s useful to you! As to web fiction: I do still suggest searching. There is no one website, it really is best to spread out. I often use TopWebFiction and RoyalRoad, but so many good stories are hidden in some weird forum or blog somewhere that I usually just look at story request threads for new stuff.