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weaselandfriends · 1 year ago

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Web Fiction, Recently Read

Hello! I'm still early into writing the Pokémon story I discussed in a previous post. I've been writing and rewriting certain parts to better grasp some of the characters, so while I do have some completed chapters, I still consider the story in the planning phase. At the same time, I've recently read a few webfics, and thought I'd share some thoughts here.

1. Floornight by Nostalgebraist

Floornight is short but dense, and in terms of its plot, themes, and focus shares many similarities with Almost Nowhere, a later work by the same author that I read and discussed in a previous post.

This work is the Problem Sleuth to Almost Nowhere's Homestuck. At least, reading the two works back-to-back, that was the impression I struggled to shake. I would often encounter an idea in Floornight that I remembered being expanded on in much more detail in Almost Nowhere, and as such it became difficult for me to appreciate Floornight in its own right.

It's a comparison that reminds me of a quote from Roberto Bolaño's 2666:

Without turning, the pharmacist answered that he liked books like The Metamorphosis, Bartleby, A Simple Heart, A Christmas Carol. And then he said that he was reading Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Leaving aside the fact that A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol were stories, not books, there was something revelatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist, who ... clearly and inarguably preferred minor works to major ones. He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecouchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.

An unfair comparison? Certainly. Especially since longer works are not always commensurately ambitious, but instead simply bloated.

Almost Nowhere is ambitious, however, and pushes ideas touched on in Floornight to their limits, which makes reading Floornight afterward a less impressive experience than it otherwise might be. (Nostalgebraist's other work, The Northern Caves, is fundamentally dissimilar from both and thus not victim to the same comparisons.)

That's not to say I disliked Floornight. I was especially fond of the character Hermes Cept, who might be my favorite character in Nostalgebraist's canon. I love characters to whom the reader is introduced from the perspective of another character, giving the reader a certain first impression that is completely decimated when the character is given their own perspective later on. (A lot of Modern Cannibals hinges on this technique.) In Cept's case, what first appears to be an egotistical and incompetent celebrity scientist turns out to have significantly more depth and nuance than the first impression provides. Love it!

Nostalgebraist also shows off some serious writing chops during a certain battle scene near the story's climax. Another reader's longform review of Almost Nowhere comments that the story lets all its major events occur off screen, only to be known to the reader via the reactions of the characters, and to an extent Floornight is similar: Despite a Neon Genesis Evangelion-esque premise of soldiers fighting aliens, there are essentially zero scenes where soldiers fight aliens on screen. The climax changes that, though, and really makes me wonder why Nostalgebraist is so content to let things happen off screen, since he's so good at writing action when it happens.

I've now read all three of Nost's major published works, and there isn't a more exciting web fiction author today, at least that I know of. Can't wait to see where he goes next.

2. Worth the Candle by Alexander Wales

Floornight is a lean 70,000 words. Worth the Candle, an isekai LitRPG, is 1.6 million words.

I started reading this one years ago, but only made it to the second arc before giving up under the sheer immensity of it. The start was slow, and while it was improving steadily, I couldn't see myself wading through something of its size. Compared to Nostalgebraist, Wales' prose is more "serviceable" than exciting, so the value in reading is almost entirely from the plot, characters, and themes rather than the actual line-by-line reading experience. After finishing my own isekai story, Cleveland Quixotic, I decided to take a second stab at it.

Upon the reread, I was more amenable to a story that is simply a fun fantasy romp, and WtC has a strong sense of forward progression despite its length, which avoids the trap most long stories fall into of spinning their wheels without accomplishing anything.

As I got further into it, however, a strong metafictional element increasingly came into play. The conceit of the story is that the protagonist, a tabletop RPG fanatic in his previous life on Earth, has been put into a world eerily similar to the ones he created as a dungeon master. His actions seem to be guided or obstructed by a mysterious, unseen dungeon master with godlike powers, and the story often becomes more about trying to understand and play to the narrative that the dungeon master wants rather than simply brute forcing through challenges one after another.

At the same time, the protagonist's dead friend from Earth seems to have been transported to the world much earlier. Their narrative was Campbellian in nature, Hero's Journey incarnate, while the protagonist's is much more postmodern and subversive. This leads to some fascinating meditations on the develop of narrative over history; one of my favorite scenes is when a story-obsessed villain believes they can kill the protagonist despite his Chosen One status because it's a postmodern story and the protagonist dying unceremoniously wouldn't be out of place.

My absolute favorite part, however, is the climax. Without spoiling too much, it involves a long delve into a seemingly endless dungeon, where characters and abilities fall away one-by-one until what is left is only a bare, emotional finale. I love climaxes that involve some kind of literal and emotional ascent; I did something similar in Modern Cannibals and Cleveland Quixotic.

In general, it's difficult to finish something so long in such a satisfactory way, which only makes the ending more impressive. I was worried this story would Muv-Luv me. A year ago, I read the famous visual novel Muv-Luv, a sprawling work that begins as a comedy slice of life and ends as a futuristic science fiction war epic. My problem with Muv-Luv wasn't that it was bad; it even had many elements I adored. But its ending, while not terrible, was merely okay, and I ultimately felt like what I got wasn't worth the time investment I put into it. Worth the Candle's ending avoided that entirely, so I can wholeheartedly recommend it despite its length.

3. Cowboy Grak 5: Yet Another Fistful of Obols by Remy (gazemaize)

Lastly, this one is a fanfic of Worth the Candle, posted coincidentally one day after I finished reading. It's by Remy, the author of Chili and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation, one of the funniest stories I've ever read. With this fanfic of a webfic, Remy cements themselves as the comedy master of the webfic sphere. I can only hope they start posting stories with more regularity...

I can't say too much about this story without spoiling almost all of Worth the Candle, so I'll keep this brief. If you've already read WtC, then you should read this 100%.

Web fiction is exciting. People are able to write all kinds of insane stuff that would never survive the streamlined mainstream publishing industry of today. I hope to read some more unique webfics and see people continually push the boundaries of what can be done with a story. (Hopefully they're not all 1.6 million words though...)

#nostalgebraist #floornight #worth the candle #alexander wales #cowboy grak 5 #remy #webfic #web fiction

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