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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2514 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 30, 2026

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So, what are you reading?

I finished al-Ghazali's Banes of the Tongue, which was well worth the read. I can dimly see some aspects of Islam, and in particular the hadith "Beware of the believer's intuition because he sees by the light of God" has caught my eye. There is a sense of leaving uncovered what God has covered and not speaking about what doesn't concern you; in particular, if one is gossiped to, the gossip says more about the gossiper than the one who is spoken about. It has kindled an interest in ways of knowing which might arise from an Islamic mindset.

What is forbidden is supposition [about another's alleged evil ways], and supposition is an expression of what the soul believes is reliable, and the heart inclines toward. God says, O you who have believed, avoid much negative assumption. Indeed, some assumption is sin [Q. 49:12]. The reason for its unlawfulness is because the secrets of the hearts are known only to the Knower of the unseen, so it is not for you to believe in another’s wickedness unless it is disclosed to you by observation and cannot be explained away.

The book is quite comprehensive, talking about things like arguments, joking, praising or being praised, and I'm sure to be revisiting this often.

I decided to see what web serials were all about and picked up A Practical Guide to Evil. I've read the first two books (which is like one sixth of the whole story) and I'm done with it. I ain't reading a series that is more than five times longer than War and Peace unless it is at least twice as good. And this book is not.

At its heart, PG2E is a YA novel with obvious influences: you can see when the author channelled GRRM, Yudkowsky, Rosenfelder. And it could've been a good YA novel if it had a good editor that was willing to do two things:

  • get rid of sixty percent of the text
  • bring the quality of the prose of the first chapters to the level of the latter ones

I understand that both goals are really hard if not impossible to achieve when you are self-publishing your work chapter by chapter, but I am not satisfied with the quality of the final result at all. I'll give Mother of Learning an honest try next to see if the genre is salvageable.

Are web serials for people that read a lot and like reading the same thing?

Oh, and I got through How Not to Write a Novel. The authors spent too much effort on writing excruciatingly bad examples. I would prefer if they actually used fragments from real novels as examples and spend their effort on explaining less obvious problems than "don't make your characters too perfect or completely pitiful".

I didn't like Mother of Learning. It's literally just Time Braid*, but worse†.

If you want the best the web novel medium has to offer, I'd recommend Worth the Candle by Alexander Wales‡.

* Zorian is Sakura, Zach is Naruto, Red Robe is Sasuke, QI is Orochiramu, they are all trapped in a one-month time loop that ends with an invasion, etc.; it's obvious once you know Domagoj Kurmaic listed Time Braid as one of his favorite stories on FanFiction.Net.

† Mother of Learning is slower, the fights are less exciting, the characters are flatter, and there is less fanservice.

‡ Unless glowfic counts, in which case I'd recommend Project Lawful by Eliezer Yudkowsky (LessWrong) and Kelsey Piper (The Unit of Caring).

I tried Worth the Candle from all the recommendations here but couldn't finish it. The highs it hit were amazing, but it frequently went so low that it became a miserable slog to read. It had amazing worldbuilding, an awesome magic system, and each arc by itself had more interesting ideas in it than entire books I've read. But the author seems to hate his own story, and hates you for reading it and getting enjoyment out of the conflicts and adventures. For every awesome arc there was an equally long time spent on navel gazing, group talk therapy, masturbatory meta commentary, and criticizing the elements of the genre that make it enjoyable to read in the first place. I don't know, I find it very distasteful to trade on genre elements as an author, gaining attention and money from them, then turn around and spend so much time criticizing the nature of things like power fantasies, harems, adventure stories — you name it, whatever part of this genre you like, the author seems to think you're a terrible person for liking it, and will spend page after page making that clear.

I quit during the time compression chamber arc, when Joon learned about Fenn's child and was nothing but enthused at the opportunity to be the dad who stepped up. Fenn was my least-preferred pairing for our hero, and this was the nail in the coffin for me. I wound up reading the last few chapters to see how it ended and had to put it down in disgust by the end.

I apologize for the venom; I did not intend on it when I started writing this comment, but once I started writing I had to let it out. If the story were just bad, that would be fine, almost preferable. It's the fact that it can be so good when it wants to be that makes it more frustrating.

I quit during the time compression chamber arc, when Joon learned about Fenn's child and was nothing but enthused at the opportunity to be the dad who stepped up. Fenn was my least-preferred pairing for our hero, and this was the nail in the coffin for me. I wound up reading the last few chapters to see how it ended and had to put it down in disgust by the end.

Okay, fair. I knew Fenn was a used good, but after reading the extent how much of a used good she was, I stopped shipping them together. If don't like this kind of thing, it's probably better that you quit when you did; Joon ignores Valencia so much that she ends up getting deflowered by Jorge.

I read that plot point on the wiki and had to stop and marvel at the level of loathing the author shows for himself and his audience. Knowing this, the entire purpose of Valencia’s character was to soft cuck Joon so he would internalize a lesson about women’s agency. I read Wales’ postmortem on the story a few months back (page seems to be dead now or I would link it here) where he talks about how a certain type of reader probably wanted Valencia to, if not get with Joon, at least eternally pine chastly for him. I guess he got to show them.

There’s a bizarre level of misandry in the story too. I can’t think of any men in Aerb who aren’t villains that die immediately / aren’t shown to be corrupt or evil besides Joon, the guy who exists to cuck him, and Grak (who doesn’t really count). Even Joon has to constantly examine his desires, criticize and demonize them, and learn the important lesson that he is wrong to have them. It reminded me of Scott Aaronson talking about internalizing lessons against misogyny to the point that he wanted to chemically castrate himself.

I read Wales’ postmortem on the story a few months back (page seems to be dead now or I would link it here) where he talks about how a certain type of reader probably wanted Valencia to, if not get with Joon, at least eternally pine chastely for him. I guess he got to show them.

Here's a copy. (The Wayback Machine is failing to respond at the moment, so I can't tell whether the page has been archived there. It's on archive.today here.)

The biggest thing she adds to the story is probably an interrogation of rescuing a weak person to have them fall for you, and naïve broken birds in general, and showing what maturity means. I think there’s a kind of reader that doesn’t necessarily want Juniper to sleep with Valencia, but does want Valencia to remain virginal and lusting after him in perpetuity.

Thanks, I had been wanting to give this another read. Nice backup, I’m bookmarking that.

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