Web Serials

TJT said:

For as much as I enjoy reading web series as a way to take breaks and relax during the workday the chronic non-finishing and incompleteness of these really makes me respect the more prolific actual authors. Say what you will about Stephen King's chronic shitty endings for example but at least he actually finishes shit and lets the shots fall where they may.

Hell, the type of author who lines out his overview then fills in the blanks with their creativity almost always actually finishes their stories. As opposed to these jokers and dudes like GRRM.

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Wildbow completes his stories, having completed four (including Worm and its sequel) and is currently writing a sequel to Pact.

Mother of Learning is complete and worth a read.

Unsong is great and is complete.

Everybody Loves Large Chests is complete and quite long. The author has completed a completely different series since then and is doing another.

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The Wandering Inn has frequent updates (of 20-40k word chapters!) and has had for years, it's really good. The latest book has had enormous movement on plot even if its obvious that the story has a long way to go yet.

A Practical Guide to Evil has regular updates and is heading towards a conclusion.

Blue Core - Rule 34 strikes back, or the author took 'sex dungeon' a little too literally. I lol'ed. To my surprise, other than the author's kinky sex fantasies ( which are in separate labelled chapters if that kind of thing is not to your taste ) I actually found the rest of the story very interesting and engaging. It's dungeon core genre for the most part, although some of the tropes are subverted to some extent. Contains a significant larger amount of giga-scale civil engineering than random carnage.

Prophecy Approved Companion - This is like a Zelda style rpg from the point of view of one of the NPCs ( in this case, the suspiciously capable childhood companion ). The player character is a shameless hardcore powergamer and watching the mc try to rationalize away the "Chosen One's" bizarre behavior and the lack of logic behind the plot is pretty funny. A bit uneven in places, overall I found it pretty amusing and worth reading.

Shade Touched - For something entirely different, this one is about a catlike monster that gained sentience through a random mutation. It's not the typicalpower up battle thing, but rather the main character's curiosity and desire to understand the world. She's also adorable. Would highly recommend but is currently on indefinite hiatus due to personal tragedy for the author. Still worth reading IMO if you accept it may remain unfinished.

A Journey of Black and Red - 19th century American settler's daughter gets turned into a vampire. This one is ok, but the overwrought language and the author's obsessive love of italics makes it best in small doses I find. The MC is also a terrible person.

Tried out Deeper Darker from recommendations here and I give a big thumbs up. Started a bit slow but once all the main characters ended up in the same place it picked up pace quickly into genuinely funny cascading chaos.

Ubik's MarySue'ness is so strong that characters from Defiance of the Fall are embarrassed for him ;p

I figure he's pretty much like Loki, he's more of a literary device than a character.

A few other relatively recent ones I had a quick look through :

Wizard's Tower - centuries old half-elven wizard decides to resign from his professorship and retire to the countryside so he can build a wizard tower and concentrate on research.
I felt a bit cheated that for a story that claims to be about tower building, there is very little actual building of towers. Also the main character is a petty asshole. Despite this, it's well-written, well-edited and reasonably entertaining. Has potential.

The Way Forward - Issekai litrpg, quirk is the MC applying the scientific method to analyzing the skills system etc. Decent, but not great, I am not sure the author has thought through the implications of the class/skill system all that well given the time he spends in author's notes trying to explain incomprehensible character build decisions by the MC.

Is Insanity a Racial Trait? - Issekai litrpg. The world the MC ends up in no longer has any humans, with them all having been genocided by an alliance of all the other races due to their racial tendency to become addicted to levelling to such an extent that they become bloodthirsty murderhobos. This would probably count as a parody, except the premise is taken very seriously. Pretty entertaining. Will keep an eye on this one.

The Great Devourer - pure, virginal priestess accidentally stumbles across ancient evil and is possessed by the goddess of night. The fundamental clash between their magics cause most attempts at using magic to explode, and they lose control over the shared body when losing consciousness. This one isn't very serious, it's set up more as a risque sitcom than anything. Had some good points, but not really to my taste. Contains a surprisingly large amount of high quality art.

was thinking of checking out kingside.

devourer is decent. the switching of the personalities is good. i have only read like 10-15 chapters but decent.

still love Beware of Chicken. the world is spreading, the spirit beasts & people of The Farm are starting to explore more the writer has slowed down posting chapters to 3 times a week, just started a patreon acct for it but i think is only one or two chapters ahead on patreon, it is not quite worth it yet, though once he gets ~10 or more chapters ahead, he is going to shoot up on the money chart, i just looked his account up, patreon has him at 4700 a month on patreon right now with 1400+ sponsers. 56k annually if it stays the same.

Few more ones I checked out:

Only Villains Do That | Royal Road
This is pretty good - it's kind of the opposite of Overlord, in that the MC is, at best, a minor nuisance, with a seemingly impossible task. It's also funny that he's a selfish asshole, recruited as the Dark Lord, and by comparison to everyone else in the world he's a hopeless nice guy. This is very - I am not sure realistic is the right term, but grounded maybe ? The people feel like real people, acting in believable ways, and the various problems are relatable.

This is the literary equivalent of the 'cute girls doing cute things' genre of anime. Warm, lighthearted silliness, as an insanely optimistic girl gleefully seizes the opportunity to be Isekai'ed so she can make new friends and have adventures. Good fun, but surface deep.

This is, uh, basically Defiance of the Fall fan fiction with a slightly more edgy main character. It's well written from the technical standpoint and worth a look if you like that kind of thing.

Young man's plan to attend wizard college is derailed when he is revealed as one of the five prophesied heroes. Given he's the Fool, a hero most notable for comic relief and inspiring the other party members through his tragic death, he immediately nopes out and heads to magic academy, pretending nothing happened.
I liked this one quite a bit, well written with engaging characters and an interesting storyline.

This is kind of like a cross between Iron Prince and Cradle, although not as good as either. I still liked it though, your mileage may vary.

Isekai/litrpg - computer repair guy gets isekaied by an bizarrely persistent truck ( I was assuming there was a joke here, but I didn't get it ), then proceeds to try and reach real ultimate power through the crafting of rune-powered items. Reminds me of Overgeared a bit, right down to the poor grammar and punctuation. Also a bit like Magic Smithing but without the interesting characters. Not terrible, but I lost interest after the first story arc.

This one is early days with slow, small updates. Has potential but at the rate it's going I think I'd check back in a year or two to see if anything has happened.