Webcomics and Web Fiction
Oct 25, 2017 13:59:51 GMT -8
Post by notARobot on Oct 25, 2017 13:59:51 GMT -8
A good number of us found our way here through Daos' recruiting threads over on the GiantITP forums. Given that, I figured webcomics are something many people here share an interest in. So then I thought: why not start a thread where we talk about our favorite webcomics, and why we like them? I lumped "web fiction" in as well, because there's some good ones out there that I can't help talking about, but I wasn't sure whether there's enough interest in that medium to sustain sufficient discussion to warrant its own thread.
(I didn't bother listing Order of the Stick, since I figured everyone here is familiar with it already.)
WEBCOMICS:
XKCD: We can't very well talk about webcomics without mentioning Randall Monroe's notorious stick figure strip, can we? I won't bother saying too much about it, though, since like OOTS, I'm pretty comfortable assuming everyone here has heard of it. On the off-chance that some of you have been living under a rock since 2006, XKCD is "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". The topics it covers basically run the gamut of geekery -- computer science, engineering, linguistics, sociology, statistics...there's basically a relevant XKCD comic for everything. Tabletop roleplaying has also been featured occasionally.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: I don't really know how to sum this one up, but it's definitely among my favorites. A lot of the themes touch on popular (and not-so-popular) topics in philosophy. The author, Zach Weinersmith, favors an unabashedly irreverent style of humor, but I'd characterize it as delightfully witty irreverence as opposed to the more typical jerkwad, edgelord type.
Questionable Content: This one's mostly-ordinary characters in a mostly-ordinary setting, mixed with a dash of transhumanist weirdness. It generally follows the lives of a few twenty- or thirty-somethings as they struggle with the perpetual drama within their social circle while making obscure indie band references and drinking coffee. But here and there it throws in gentle reminders that, oh yeah, in this alternate universe there's sentient robots walking around everywhere and a permanently inhabited space station orbiting Earth.
Dresden Codak: Did I mention transhumanism? Then it must be time to segue into talking about Dresden Codak! It's dark and cute and funny and beautifully illustrated -- the whole package, really. This webcomic is cyberpunk meets steampunk meets dieselpunk meets biopunk meets...let's just say it encompasses all the "-punk" subgenres neatly and elegantly. Can't recommend it highly enough. Oh, and the author invented a parody of D&D called "Dungeons and Discourse", which explores the question, "What if you replaced the character classes in D&D with branches of philosophy, and all of the abilities, skills, and spells in the game were based on philosophy puns?" The game featured in two comics, and there's a fan-made rulesystem for playing it here.
WEB FICTION:
Worm: Okay, truth time: I really posted this thread just so I'd have an excuse to talk about Worm. This web serial (which, if you're not familiar with the term, is basically just a novel released online incrementally, chapter by chapter) ruined me for all other fiction in the superhero genre. Rather than describe it in my own words, let me just quote from the author's introductory blurb:
I'll also call your attention to the author's warning text, since we've got people of all ages hanging out here:
If any of that piques your interest, you should also be warned that it's long. Really long. And you're not gonna want to stop reading it once you get started, so be prepared for a bunch of your time to disappear. The author estimates Worm's length at roughly 1,680,000 words -- for reference, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace clocks in at 587,287 words.
There's a fan-made audiobook version here that's pretty well done. Worm fans have also put together a roleplaying system for running games set in the Wormverse, although it's still a work-in-progress.
Pact: The second major work released by the author of Worm (John McCrae, AKA Wildbow), Pact takes place around modern Toronto, set in a world where magic, spirits, goblins, and demons are all too real. This one's less popular than Worm, and roughly half as long; personally I loved it, but I can see how it's not for everyone. One of the story's aspects that seems to divide people into the "love it" or "hate it" camps is the pacing -- throughout the story, the protagonist, Blake Thorburn, goes from dealing with one crisis to another to another, at break-neck speed...and that pattern pretty much never lets up throughout Pact's entirety. There's no roleplaying system based on this one, yet (so far as I'm aware), but I know I'm not alone in thinking that the way magic works in this universe would be really fun to borrow and use in other campaign worlds.
Twig: Wildbow's third web serial, just recently finished (I'm not done reading it, so no spoilers please!). By now, I guess it's clear that I'm an out-and-out fanboy of this guy. Twig doesn't fit quite as neatly into any one literary genre as Worm or Pact does; if I had to categorize it in a few words, I'd call it something like "biopunk coming-of-age thriller". The setting is an alternate Earth, where technology overall is about a century behind us, but their biological sciences have, in some ways, leap-frogged ahead of ours. Reanimated corpses, cloning, chimeric animal hybrids, and advanced pharmacology are relatively commonplace here, yet telephones barely exist and, if I am remembering correctly, radio has yet to be invented. The protagonist is a young man who's part of an experimental team of misfits, designed by some of the Academy's brightest minds, who get sent off on a variety of misadventures until being forced to come to terms with their own individual natures, as well as those of the institutions that run their lives.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Certainly the most well-known Harry Potter fanfiction, arguably the most well-written. This story explores an alternate Harry Potter universe where most things are the same as in the canon works, except Lilly's sister Petunia marries an Oxford professor of biochemistry instead of Vernon Dursley, and Harry is subsequently raised in a loving, intellectually-stimulating environment instead of a stultifying, abusive one. When Harry gets accepted to Hogwarts, he brings with him an materialist empirical outlook as well as Age of Enlightenment values, and hilarity ensues. Opinions on this one are once again neatly split into "love it" and "hate it" camps...a lot of people complain that the author uses Harry as a mouthpiece to get preachy with his readers a little too frequently. I didn't find that to be the case, and in fact if you stick with the story long enough, you learn that this version of Harry isn't quite as clever as he thinks he is...but that does take a while to come about. If you're a HP fan, I'd recommend reading at least the first few chapters to see if it grabs you. Oh, and this one also has an excellently-performed audiobook version, made by the fans.
(I didn't bother listing Order of the Stick, since I figured everyone here is familiar with it already.)
WEBCOMICS:
XKCD: We can't very well talk about webcomics without mentioning Randall Monroe's notorious stick figure strip, can we? I won't bother saying too much about it, though, since like OOTS, I'm pretty comfortable assuming everyone here has heard of it. On the off-chance that some of you have been living under a rock since 2006, XKCD is "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". The topics it covers basically run the gamut of geekery -- computer science, engineering, linguistics, sociology, statistics...there's basically a relevant XKCD comic for everything. Tabletop roleplaying has also been featured occasionally.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: I don't really know how to sum this one up, but it's definitely among my favorites. A lot of the themes touch on popular (and not-so-popular) topics in philosophy. The author, Zach Weinersmith, favors an unabashedly irreverent style of humor, but I'd characterize it as delightfully witty irreverence as opposed to the more typical jerkwad, edgelord type.
Questionable Content: This one's mostly-ordinary characters in a mostly-ordinary setting, mixed with a dash of transhumanist weirdness. It generally follows the lives of a few twenty- or thirty-somethings as they struggle with the perpetual drama within their social circle while making obscure indie band references and drinking coffee. But here and there it throws in gentle reminders that, oh yeah, in this alternate universe there's sentient robots walking around everywhere and a permanently inhabited space station orbiting Earth.
Dresden Codak: Did I mention transhumanism? Then it must be time to segue into talking about Dresden Codak! It's dark and cute and funny and beautifully illustrated -- the whole package, really. This webcomic is cyberpunk meets steampunk meets dieselpunk meets biopunk meets...let's just say it encompasses all the "-punk" subgenres neatly and elegantly. Can't recommend it highly enough. Oh, and the author invented a parody of D&D called "Dungeons and Discourse", which explores the question, "What if you replaced the character classes in D&D with branches of philosophy, and all of the abilities, skills, and spells in the game were based on philosophy puns?" The game featured in two comics, and there's a fan-made rulesystem for playing it here.
WEB FICTION:
Worm: Okay, truth time: I really posted this thread just so I'd have an excuse to talk about Worm. This web serial (which, if you're not familiar with the term, is basically just a novel released online incrementally, chapter by chapter) ruined me for all other fiction in the superhero genre. Rather than describe it in my own words, let me just quote from the author's introductory blurb:
An introverted teenage girl with an unconventional superpower, Taylor goes out in costume to find escape from a deeply unhappy and frustrated civilian life. Her first attempt at taking down a supervillain sees her mistaken for one, thrusting her into the midst of the local ‘cape’ scene’s politics, unwritten rules, and ambiguous morals. As she risks life and limb, Taylor faces the dilemma of having to do the wrong things for the right reasons.
I'll also call your attention to the author's warning text, since we've got people of all ages hanging out here:
Readers should be cautioned that Worm is fairly dark as fiction goes, and it gets far darker as the story progresses. Morality isn’t black and white, Taylor and her acquaintances aren’t invincible, the heroes aren’t winning the war between right and wrong, and superpowers haven’t necessarily affected society for the better. Just the opposite on every count, really. Even on a more fundamental level, Taylor’s day to day life is unhappy, with her clinging to the end of her rope from the story’s outset. The denizens of the Wormverse (as readers have termed it) don’t pull punches, and I try to avoid doing so myself, as a writer. There’s graphic language, descriptions of violence and sex does happen (albeit offscreen). It would be easier to note the trigger warnings that don’t apply than all the ones that do.
All in all, this probably isn’t a story for the sensitive or the young. I’d peg it with a PG-18 rating, but I think we all know that there’s kids who can handle that sort of thing and there’s adults who can’t. Use your best judgement and ask in the comments below if you’re still unsure.
All in all, this probably isn’t a story for the sensitive or the young. I’d peg it with a PG-18 rating, but I think we all know that there’s kids who can handle that sort of thing and there’s adults who can’t. Use your best judgement and ask in the comments below if you’re still unsure.
If any of that piques your interest, you should also be warned that it's long. Really long. And you're not gonna want to stop reading it once you get started, so be prepared for a bunch of your time to disappear. The author estimates Worm's length at roughly 1,680,000 words -- for reference, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace clocks in at 587,287 words.
There's a fan-made audiobook version here that's pretty well done. Worm fans have also put together a roleplaying system for running games set in the Wormverse, although it's still a work-in-progress.
Pact: The second major work released by the author of Worm (John McCrae, AKA Wildbow), Pact takes place around modern Toronto, set in a world where magic, spirits, goblins, and demons are all too real. This one's less popular than Worm, and roughly half as long; personally I loved it, but I can see how it's not for everyone. One of the story's aspects that seems to divide people into the "love it" or "hate it" camps is the pacing -- throughout the story, the protagonist, Blake Thorburn, goes from dealing with one crisis to another to another, at break-neck speed...and that pattern pretty much never lets up throughout Pact's entirety. There's no roleplaying system based on this one, yet (so far as I'm aware), but I know I'm not alone in thinking that the way magic works in this universe would be really fun to borrow and use in other campaign worlds.
Twig: Wildbow's third web serial, just recently finished (I'm not done reading it, so no spoilers please!). By now, I guess it's clear that I'm an out-and-out fanboy of this guy. Twig doesn't fit quite as neatly into any one literary genre as Worm or Pact does; if I had to categorize it in a few words, I'd call it something like "biopunk coming-of-age thriller". The setting is an alternate Earth, where technology overall is about a century behind us, but their biological sciences have, in some ways, leap-frogged ahead of ours. Reanimated corpses, cloning, chimeric animal hybrids, and advanced pharmacology are relatively commonplace here, yet telephones barely exist and, if I am remembering correctly, radio has yet to be invented. The protagonist is a young man who's part of an experimental team of misfits, designed by some of the Academy's brightest minds, who get sent off on a variety of misadventures until being forced to come to terms with their own individual natures, as well as those of the institutions that run their lives.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Certainly the most well-known Harry Potter fanfiction, arguably the most well-written. This story explores an alternate Harry Potter universe where most things are the same as in the canon works, except Lilly's sister Petunia marries an Oxford professor of biochemistry instead of Vernon Dursley, and Harry is subsequently raised in a loving, intellectually-stimulating environment instead of a stultifying, abusive one. When Harry gets accepted to Hogwarts, he brings with him an materialist empirical outlook as well as Age of Enlightenment values, and hilarity ensues. Opinions on this one are once again neatly split into "love it" and "hate it" camps...a lot of people complain that the author uses Harry as a mouthpiece to get preachy with his readers a little too frequently. I didn't find that to be the case, and in fact if you stick with the story long enough, you learn that this version of Harry isn't quite as clever as he thinks he is...but that does take a while to come about. If you're a HP fan, I'd recommend reading at least the first few chapters to see if it grabs you. Oh, and this one also has an excellently-performed audiobook version, made by the fans.