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Friday Fun Thread for September 1, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I forgot how god damn fun the series Cradle by Will Wight is. Something about the cultivation/progression fantasy genre just really speaks to me, inspires me in a way other fiction doesn't do often enough.

On the non-fiction side it's rarer to find a fun book, but I remember really liking Moonwalking with Einstein, where a journalist learns to become a memory champ.

What are some of the most fun things you've read, fiction or non fiction?

I love the progression fantasy genre. Oddly I couldn't get into cradle. I'm usually concurrently reading a half dozen or a dozen online web serials in that genre.

I'd highly recommend "Mother of Learning" if you liked cradle. If you've already read that one, maybe try Threadbare for something out of left-field that might tickle your fantasy progression itch.

Loved mother of learning. I might check out Threadbare next if it's finished, but I'm allergic to unfinished series. Burned too many times.

I'd say its finished. There was a feeling at the end of the story that protagonist's story had been told and things were mostly nicely wrapped up. But that there was still a bigger world out there within the story, and maybe the author could come back later and tell more tales within the same world.

Over the years I have grown a skill to find my own stopping points in web serials. Usually at a point where "too much is fucked" for the author to ever recover in a satisfying way, or "enough is wrapped up" that I can tolerate a few dangling storylines for the sake of a feeling of completeness. But this skill wasn't necessary for threadbare.

Over the years I have grown a skill to find my own stopping points in web serials. Usually at a point where "too much is fucked" for the author to ever recover in a satisfying way, or "enough is wrapped up" that I can tolerate a few dangling storylines for the sake of a feeling of completeness. But this skill wasn't necessary for threadbare.

This is actually why I don't like webnovels for the most part, compared to more traditional fantasy series. While they are fun and well written a lot of the time, it irks me to no end when a story just kind of fizzles out because the author didn't know where to go with it.

Fair enough, but I think I've come to realize that is the main thing I enjoy about web serials. If the author doesn't know where they are going, you don't know either! Or maybe even more fun, you can guess where the author could go, tell them, and have it go there!

Goes back to that post I wrote last month about indie vs popular:

https://www.themotte.org/post/587/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/121337?context=8#context


Anyways, Threadbare is a more polished story, but it came out of that weirdness that exists in online serials of throwing crazy ass ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks.