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#web serial
unjustdepths · 19 hours
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The Unjust Depths compilation epub has been updated to include chapters 13.3 through 13.8 so that it is up to date. The epub has also been divided into two files for the two current anthologies.
You can download it here:
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reachartwork · 8 months
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Samantha "Sam" Small is a 14 year old high school freshman and superhero-in-training, recruited by the Delaware Valley Defenders to protect Philadelphia. Her powers let her bite through metal and smell when people bleed. Her interests include soccer, women, putting herself in danger, and Shabbat dinner with her Pop-Pop Moe.
Chum is a slice-of-life/action web serial, currently around 400,000 words. It has been described as "good enough to spend hours organizing info on it", a "beautiful coming of age story", and "a superhero story to rival worm". It's got dinosaurs in it. *jingling keys*
Go read it on Royal Road or Wordpress and consider joining the Chumcord!
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maxwell-grant · 4 months
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So is Worm good from what you have read
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"Yes" doesn't begin to cover it but yes. Worm is a brain-rewiring mobius strip disguised as a bible disguised as a superhero web serial that either cured your cancer or shot your dog or both depending on who you ask, and it has many extremely dedicated, brilliant scholar priest surgeons publicly dissecting it on this platform on the regular to the point I don't think I have much to add to the conversations surrounding it, even if I do have some The Thoughts about it. I had never even really seriously thought about superhero prose before and Worm isn't a thing I go back and reread frequently but it did a complete and total 180 on the way I think about superheroes and even fiction, and I've never stopped thinking about it since I've read it.
It is a monumentally impressive story with completely absolutely incredible characters that I cannot stop thinking about. No matter where it was going, even past stretches that were less interesting or more of a slog to read or worse, I could not put the story of Taylor Hebert down for one minute. Tattletale fascinated me every step of the way, I had to keep up with her. Rachel Lindt was a character I feel like I'd been waiting my whole life for. What was I gonna do, not see them through? I feel like Worm easily loses you if you don't particularly connect with the characters enough to justify to yourself the amount of time you'll spend with them, but man, I could not unglue my eyeballs from these people enough (I love all the core Undersiders, to be clear, I'd say it's Rachel > Taylor > Tattletale > Aisha and Alec and Brian, there are very small gaps between these, I just don't go berserk for the last three like I do for the first three, I'm taking Bitch and Skitter to the grave I'm dead serious)
Worm irreparably destroys your ability to engage with superhero fiction the same way ever again, as evidenced by the fact that it destroyed the author's own ability to engage with his own superhero fiction ever again. And everybody who read it has one or several gripes with it with some major dealbreakers in the mix. Tumblr's kinda the only place online where you can really talk about them at length without the spectre of John Wildbow hanging over the discussion, which enables discussion to the point where yes, maybe it does look like to outsiders that nobody can agree on whether Worm is good or what is it even about or whether it even has worms in it (it has at least one, although it's a very big one).
And it is good, it has the Undersiders in it and the Undersiders are one of the greatest groups of characters ever put together, but everyone has at least one major point of contention with Worm whether it's the timeskip or the length or the racism or the gross fatphobia or aspects surrounding the Dallon-Pelham Torment Nexus and etc. I'd say it has maybe the most racist vision of Latin America I've ever seen in a superhero text a hair short of pro-colonial tracts in Golden Age comics and that is a tall fucking order by any metric (part of why I started WEON4 as a project was motivated by spite, to try and make my own stories about non-American superheroes even if just as practice). It is Complicated, and that winds up making it so fascinating to talk about.
Worm has self-sustaining ecological systems of posts up here, far away from the Spacebattles and Reddit battlegrounds where it has different ones and that's not getting into Weaverdice or the sequel or Wildbow's larger body of work, which I haven't gotten to and probably will not any time soon because Worm was enough of a commitment as is. Do I recommend Worm to everyone? It is certainly not to everyone's tastes and I personally find it difficult to describe it simply enough to make it sound appealing or not like a pyramid scheme. But yes I do think it's good, in fact great, in fact, amazing, except when it isn't, and except it Plainly Sucks, but then something like Taylor vs Mannequin or Kevin Norton's interlude or "You needed worthy opponents" happens and it fucks harder than anything has ever fucked before and you don't walk away from it the same, so yes I guess "good" will have to do now.
It's certainly a lot but I definitely found it worth my time to read and then read the texts written about it here. You'll have to take my endorsement of Worm as proof of it's quality and proof of how deranged it makes it's readerbase, they're not mutually exclusive. If you can make it, Worm and the wormosphere has layers and layers to wade through and talk about and enjoy, despite how we're all so very small in the end *gunshot*.
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st-just · 4 months
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"Make your entire main cast walk into a magic thing that plunges them into a nightmare of their deepest darkest fears realized' really is an absolutely amazing character exploration cheat.
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makapatag · 1 month
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A king's daughter is sent to be wed to a lunar prince. An alliance between two realms.
A storm riddles their goal. A mad god rouses his Chosen One.
A demon goddess awakens the daughter to her heritage. She forges her own path.
One in where the princess murders the hero.
A romance of blood and steel. The lost daughter of a Raja with the blood of a demon goddess. A timawa bound by oath and love. A hero chosen by a mad god. PRINCESS. KNIGHT. HERO. The cycle turns evermore. What conviction will they find now?
PRINCESS MURDERS THE HERO is an ongoing martial romance (both in the love sense and the adventure story sense) fantasy webnovel set in The Sword Isles, an epic fantasy setting founded upon Southeast Asian stories and myth. Read it for free here!
The main characters are...
👑 BAKONG THE PRINCESS, a sheltered girl awakening to the truths of the world
🛡️ MASUNA THE KNIGHT, swordgendered peerless swordmaster bound by duty and love
⚔️ SAMPONG BAHA THE JUGGERNAUT, butch lesbian heir to a royal house, slayer of pale kings
🪷 BANGAHOM THE SORCERER, trans wielder of dark blade magicks and claimant to Put'wan's Throne
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kimpining · 2 months
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Did you know that right now you could be reading over a million words of trans lesbian communist sci-fi?
Unjust Depths is a webnovel about communists struggling for the sake of a better world, through mech combat and romance and sparking waves of liberation in the depths of the sea. And there's even an epub now!
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It's my favorite story, and its dedication to portraying the clashing ideologies and ideals of such a large ocean-spanning cast of memorable characters inspires me every day. The vast majority of its cast is trans and gay women striving and fighting for a better world that has a place for them. The willingness of the story to jump between perspectives and understandings of the world and to manage it so gracefully and effortlessly is incredible to read.
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And at the heart of it, the story is funny, romantic, sensual, just capable of encompassing so many different dimensions of the characters within and using all of those elements together with ease to shape the work into something I've been turning over in my head for years. It's got romantic cannibalism, muslim catgirls, horrors from beneath the hadal zone, toxic old women yuri, and gertrude lichtenberg. It's really good. I think everyone should read it.
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lurinatftbn · 4 months
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hello! Like the description says, I made this blog to post about my webnovel, The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, currently hosted quasi-inappropriately on RoyalRoad, the online hub for progression fantasy and dubious user ads. I am intending to set up a site in the near future, but have been procrastinating.
TFTBN is a weird project that I've been working on at variable pace for coming up on four years now. To try to sum it up, it's a psychological whodunnit in a science fantasy setting that is 1/3rd depressing yuri and out there sci-fi concepts, 1/3rd my decade's worth of fermented thoughts on Ryukishi07's library, and 1/3rd my hyper-specific grudge against critical response to a bunch of ideas surrounding life extension espoused in certain strands of nerd/tech culture, most particularly the rationalist community. It's kind of an over-complicated mess but I'm also proud of it, so please consider reading if you haven't and any of that sounds appealing!
I haven't posted on tumblr in almost a decade, so I'm not 100% sure what I'll do with this beyond announce updates. But if you have any questions regarding my writing or the story, setting or characters of TFTBN, my asks are open, so please go hog wild.
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Procrastinating on writing Time to Orbit: Unknown by making Time to Orbit memes instead
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eddathegreat · 2 months
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Worm and Ward and Familiarity
I saw a really great analysis of Worm working with tropes while Ward works against them by @greatwyrmgold, and it reminded me of a more general contrast that I noted:
Worm is coming from a very familiar place and being pulled out of that. The Undersiders have fairly relatable experiences (on average). Poverty, bullying, neglect and abuse by guardians. I'd argue that, as extreme as Alec's experience is, it would resonate with many who have dealt with indoctrination in their youth (like me). Brockton Bay is a city on economic decline, struggling to stay afloat, and afflicted with violent crime. There's superpowers thrown in, sure, but it's fundamentally very familiar human shittiness and problems that drive a lot of the story.
The powers are definitely weird and creative, but it's still unmistakably a superhero story. Bugs, darkness, flight and strength and durability, contact biokinesis. Superheroes and supervillains in costumes fighting each other, hijinks and blood loss.
Except that there's Endbringers, and Echidna, and Cauldron, and Scion. The culmination of the story is peeling back the mask of a familiar superhero setting to reveal a cosmic horror story.
Ward is set in the aftermath of that.
There's a massive megacity that still doesn't have a name. It's basically a country, but it's led by a mayor. Infrastructure is just barely there, lots of people are still living in tents, the internet is just barely running and not everywhere. People with superpowers are no longer just superheroes and supervillains, they're... what, exactly? So many threats that were once contained are now running free, the ratio of normal territory to gonzo hellscapes has been turned on its head. The skyline is torn apart by portals to other worlds, and it's fucking with the weather. There's a political movement against people with superpowers, and there are people affected by superpowers with their own identity, and both of those groups are very conspicuous in how hard it is to treat them as an analogy for any other groups. People are estranged from their own environment, and it's a brave, terrible new world in the shadow of a slain god.
The superpowers are less straightforward. Being unable to be pointed at, impregnation tentacles that fuck with the effectiveness of other powers, lots of cluster triggers and grab-bags, etc. The powers are more obviously reflective of the cosmic horror story people have had to wake up to, unfamiliar, weird, and deeply upsetting.
The characters are also pretty dang weird. Rain is a lot like Alec, and I think he might actually be the most normal of the bunch. Body dysphoria+, sharing a body with a sibling, attachment issues, living as a clone or as a sort-of clone. Not totally unrelatable, to be sure, there are parallels with real life experiences, but these are more their own thing, not so recognizable.
This makes Victoria kind of the perfect protagonist, matching the themes: she's estranged from who she was and her old connections; her home city is gone; she's gone through something absolutely mind-bendingly terrible that is among the worst that people can experience IRL and then some; her power has changed; she was raised into the weirdness of superheroics and is pioneering how it looks in this new world; she's knowledgeable about the weirdness surrounding powers, giving her a good eye for understanding the new world.
I think a decent fraction of Ward's relative unpopularity sadly comes from this: estrangement from the once familiar. The characters can't be related to as easily, the powers aren't so iconic, and the setting feels undefined. I don't think Ward is inherently worse for it, it's just a bit of a tougher sell.
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personalmoshiakh · 2 months
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hey, so— i’ve been ~officially writing a web serial since 2021 (unofficially, since at least 2014). Updates are currently very irregular, but i’m definitely still working on it!
✨🧿 THE BITTER DROP 🧿✨
modern fantasy romance about gay/trans Eastern Bloc Jews, set in a secondary world counterpart of early Soviet communes
The lounge is nearly empty tonight; all the action is downstairs at the grinding workshop — in the basement discotheque; you if I’m to have any hope of pulling, that’s where I ought to go but … ekh, I’m foggy tonight, between the psychosis and the laudanum for the pain what likes to haunt nefilim and the horse pills they made me take at the Mamka — nu okay, I skipped tonight’s dose so I can drink but like, neuroleptics don’t let go that quick — and as the brainfog settles on my thoughts, it turns to hoarfrost and my will seizes up like a rusty hinge.
Lev/Lyubov Morgenshtern, a queeny bigender flamer who’d once been one of the Pale’s youngest-ever ordained rabbonim, has just returned to the Talons Ghetto sovyet — an autonomous workers-and-peasants commune of the kind that directly preceded the Soviet Union (and indeed the thing that the USSR named itself after).
Lev is fresh off a stint on a psych ward that’d followed a far longer stint living in the tzarist-held half of Svet Dmitrin with a bougie respectability-obsessed ex-boyfriend — he’s got nowhere to sleep, no assurance her old friends, Red Guard and civilian both, would want to see them and the only workable plan she’s got is to find someone willing and soft-hearted to take him home for the night …
… and what luck if their rescuer, a medical necromancer by the name of Anzu Menelikov (Nyura to friends and lovers) is a beautiful trans flamer from a prominent rabbinical family! who better to welcome Lyubov home than a fellow hothouse flower and dedicated scholar? and does it matter if Nyura did anything the White Guard might still bear a grudge about? after all, most of the old Ghetto walls are still safely intact, and it’s not like Reb Doktor Menelikov personally set the Winter Palace on fire, right?
i’d say if you liked the Baru Cormorant series, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Gentlemen of the Road, Fallen London and its associated games, China Miéville’s oeuvre, and Disco Elysium, this’d probably be your thing!
content warnings
(under the cut)
reclaimed homophobic slurs
the narrator has a history of psychiatric institutionalisation
homophobia, transphobia, transmisogyny and antisemitism are environmental hazards in the setting, though by far not the focus
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emrowene · 2 months
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The Return of Fractured Magic
It is, perhaps, an understatement to say that the Fractured Magic hiatus has lasted longer than any of us expected (myself included). I want to both thank you all for your patience and tell you how terribly sorry I am for making you wait. At long last, I bring great tidings: Fractured Magic is getting an official relaunch!!
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When: The first chapter drops January 29. From there, new chapters will be published every Monday. Where: If you want chapters delivered directly to your inbox every week, you can subscribe to the Substack. Otherwise, new chapters will be posted to my website. Why: You can read my full statement about this decision here.
What are you talking about? What is Fractured Magic? Thank you for asking, hypothetical reader that I’ve invented to suit my needs. Fractured Magic is a fantasy webserial with Victorian gothic overtones and a queer array of queer characters. It’s about political and personal accountability, ghosts both figurative and literal, and the agony of having a crush who ghosts you every time he has a mental health downswing.
In the story, an elven King is kidnapped by a woman not-quite-alive and his nephew has to find a way to get him back. His plan requires an elite team, an infamous hero with corrosive magic, and a great deal of patience.
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qaysed · 6 months
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reachartwork · 9 months
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Here is the first chapter of Chum, my web serial about superheroes, supervillains, people with powers who reject either label, sharks, fishing, Philadelphia, the Jersey Shore but the part that's full of old Jewish people and not party people, how growing up sucks, how authority sucks, how fascists suck, cancer, and teeth.
Content warning for obliquely referenced disembowelment in chapter 1. General content warning throughout the story for violence, gore, drugs, and general other dramatic things that you might expect to see in a story written for adults. Do not let the fact that the main character starts as a teenager fool you. It will get violent. It will get darker. People will die. Weed will be smoked.
Thanks for reading. Reblogs and sharing with your friends are greatly appreciated. At least one update will be posted each Wednesday, I can commit to that much, with other updates coming when I feel like writing them. Updates will be posted here for now.
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elvensemi · 3 months
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I'm Publishing Serial Webnovels
Hi guys! I'm @elvensemi, and some of you might know me from writing Dragon Age fanfic Keeping Secrets, or from writing weird gargoyle porn with @unpretty, or from that time I accidentally told a popular blog I write dragon porn on my main blog @solitarelee, or maybe from that one fanfic where the knight with a crossdressing kink fails at slaying a dragon so hard he gets seduced!
I've graduated college, and you know what that means! Student loans Free time! And so I'm finally pursuing my long term dream and publishing serial webnovels. The short version is: ebooks, I'm publishing ebooks via Patreon to see if it works because I don't want to deal with Amazon and marketplaces. Chuck Tingle does it, kind of!
I am writing such things as!
The Problem with Faeries An urban fantasy series for fans of Holly Black, featuring faeries and a librarian who has been cursed by a witch to turn into a tiny dog at night.
Everything at Once A coming of age fantasy novel set in a post-post-apocalyptic world full of many monsters and very few humans, with a nonbinary (genderfluid) protagonist and a rotating cast of gods and monsters.
The Demon Isles An adult romance series set in the same world as Everything at Once, this one's for the monsterf*ckers. Step into the shoes of an escaped slave who's been stranded in Fantasy Australia But All The Dangerous Things Can Be Seduced.
A Place Among the Stars An adult sci-fi political space opera that is also technically just solidly omegaverse sm*t plus space dragons. That's right, one of my friends dared me to write omegaverse and I overdid it and now they're aliens! All for you my friend.
Novelizations of works that previously existed only as RPs, such as Sanctuary and The Kingdom of Aeris.
AND SO MUCH MORE.
For $5 you get access to SFW material, and for $10 you get access to that and the things that are not SFW. You can view a full summary of the serials I'm working on at tinyurl.com/SemiSerials , or click the read more.
The Demon Isles (NSFW, Second Person)
Oceanside is a world full of elves and gods, monsters and magic. You, however, a human with no magic, no martial training, and a fear of... most things. Stranded on an unfamiliar island full of monsters, you must learn to harness humanity’s true power in order to survive. The issue with that is, as far as anyone can tell, humanity’s true powers are friendship and fuckability.
The Demon Isles is a erotic, second-person monsterfucking romp through the dangerous Demon Isles. The second person character is referred to by gender neutral terminology and they/them pronouns, physical appearance left ambiguous. Sex scenes have two versions with different sets of genitalia for the main character. Tags and content warnings are available for each chapter.
The Problem with Faeries (SFW, Third Person)
The problem with faeries is that we love them. We know all the sharp and cruel ways they twist us apart and we love them with a helpless, hopeless foolishness that never fades until it destroys us.
Bree is a human living in Valesport, a small town on the east coast of the United States that functions as a secret haven for the supernatural. As a cursed human, it’s one of the safer places for her... at least, safe from other humans. Everything else Valesport has to offer remains a threat. She’s already had her run-ins with werewolves, vampires, and whatever the hell Jean Cernunnos is... so, in retrospect, she was probably due to get into trouble with the Fae.
A fan favorite finally finding a venue of publication, The Problem with Faeries is a SFW urban fantasy with a side of romance perfect for fans of Holly Black. It is third person and follows the point of view of the protagonist, Bridget “Bree” Corey, as she finds herself tangled up trying to navigate faerie drama and her own personal feelings, neither of which she is particularly equipped to handle.
Everything at Once (SFW, First Person)
Babs wants everything the world has to offer... everything except what it’s actually prepared to hand over. As the eldest child of the ruling noble family--or what passes for it--of the only human village remaining old and large enough to still have a ruling noble family, even if just in name, Babs’s whole life has been laid out in front of them since the moment they were born. And they want none of it. However, after a bold escape from the village they knew all their life, they find themselves adrift in an unfriendly world of monsters and magic that seems much larger and much less friendly than they had hoped.
Everything at Once is a SFW fantasy novel set all over the world of Oceanside as our determined protagonist, Babs, attempts to explore all there is to explore and experience all there is to experience (it is possible they have not thought this through). Babs is a non-binary, gender fluid illusionist referred to varyingly by he, she, and they pronouns based on presentation. The story is a first person mixed POV exploring a wide range of characters and topics, but always staying focused on the many transformations of the main character as they learn what it is they want... and what it is to want.
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Future Projects: Projects that are in development but do not have a set release date yet.
A Place Among the Stars [Working Title] (NSFW)
A Place Among the Stars is a NSFW erotic political space opera featuring Omegaverse style aliens and also space dragons, amongst other alien races. It features two protagonists: an exiled and excommunicated Saint who once led a cult that threatened the peace and stability of his homeworld, and a mid level government official presiding over the walled ghetto where the Ab’ed keep all foreign visitors and immigrants to their planet. They quickly find themselves entangled: politically, as the Saint once again threatens the stability of the world around him--in more ways than one--and sexually, as the tension between the two reaches a fever pitch.
Sanctuary (NSFW, Third Person)
Most people would consider Ren unlucky. After all, she’s been homeless since she was a child, has no living family she knows of, and she was recently kidnapped by sex traffickers and ripped away from the city she had been living in for years. But as far as Ren is concerned, she’s the epitome of good luck: not only has she survived all the things life has thrown at her, but she’s escaped said sex traffickers and even found shelter in an abandoned, boarded up cathedral. The fact that the cathedral, undisturbed for a century or more, is home to a guardian whose only experience with the world is violently murdering intruders, well... once again, whether that’s good or bad luck is based purely on interpretation.
Sanctuary is a NSFW urban fantasy erotic romance featuring a cis female protagonist and a male (as these things go) gargoyle love interest, as well as a mix of other romantic interests (primarily M/F with some F/F or NB/F thrown in). Tags and content warnings are available for each chapter. This fan-favorite returns in serialized, ebook form for easy reading. Follow Ren’s journey anew from mixed perspectives as she explores the streets of Valesport and finds something she’s never had before; a place to call home.
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st-just · 7 months
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The presence of a 'thieves guild' as, like, an organized public corporate body with a monopoly on crime is such a weird fantasy trope.
Especially when the text seems to unironically position them as, like, 'criminals but not that bad. Always looking out for each other and never really hurting anyone who doesn't deserve it.'
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makapatag · 6 months
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The time has come. Raise the sails, sound the horns, bang the gongs! Glory awaits. It's time to sail the sky and seize heaven's thunderclaps! 
Gubat Banwa's KS is LIVE NOW!
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