by wadapan

things I like

This is a list of the stories that I like most in the world.

17776

In the 15,000 years since the human race achieved immortality, three space probes gain sentience. Together, they watch humanity play an evolved form of American football, in which games can be played for millenia, over distances of thousands of miles.

Why you should read it: Every single page of this story crams in an unbelievable number of fresh ideas, offbeat character interactions, and poignant moments. The use of multimedia genuinely breaks out of the conventions of literature and webcomics, coalescing into something new and totally unique. Jon Bois is a sports writer foremost, and his domain knowledge really elevates the piece. If you haven't read it, I can't think of a better story to spend an hour or two on.

Need to know: Probably one to read on your computer. It has videos with sound.

Worth the Candle

A teenager struggling after the death of his best friend finds himself in a fantasy world which seems to be an amalgamation of every Dungeons and Dragons campaign they ever played together.

Why you should read it: Worth the Candle is a masterpiece. On the most basic, object level, this is a gripping adventure with rich characters and intricate plotting. Alexander Wales draws on years of his own experience as a DM and fantasy writer, recycling and remixing ideas into something astonishingly original, and the worldbuilding in this story—if that's something you care about—is unparalleled. Whatever, right? What elevates Worth the Candle is its metafictional thread: it's a narrative about narratives, and not in a superficial sense, but in a really thoughtful and compelling way. I've never read anything else like this. It rewrote my brain chemistry.

Need to know: I personally could tell what this story was going for right from the start, but some readers report finding the earliest chapters a struggle, as it opens with the trappings of a generic zombie-apocalypse story. You should stick with it for the first fourteen chapters before deciding to drop it. Sadly, Worth the Candle is moving to Kindle, which means it won't be available to read for free online—you'll have to buy the ebooks. It's, uh, worth it. 1.6 million words and it needs nothing less, so there!

Anthology of the Killer

“History is a nightmare—and loving it!!”

College student and future murder victim BB trawls the city gathering new material for her zines, looking for a job, getting chased by murderers, going swimming, playing in a band, and nearly getting killed. The Killer is out there…

Why you should play it: Frankly, I've just never seen such good writing in a video game. thecatamites has an insane way with words, often put in service of comedy, but with just as much impact whenever he has an actual point to make. Anthology of the Killer is at the absolute cutting edge of gaming and I'm not even joking.

Need to know: Although it’s technically a horror game, I promise you’ll be fine even if you’re a huge big scaredy-cat like me. Nine instalments available individually for free on Game Jolt or as a paid collection on Steam with some inessential bonus content.

2Kawaii4Comfort

Some die-hard weebs go to an anime convention, and everything goes wrong.

Why you should watch it: I've never seen a story really get at the intrinsic, paradoxical loneliness of the fandom experience, with such visceral care as this web series.

Need to know: It's mostly funny, but at the same time, it's often pretty hard to watch. The finale won’t ever be released, but everyone I know who’s watched it agrees that the story’s basically complete as it is. 80 minute runtime total.

Worm

Looking to escape her deeply unhappy civilian life, an introverted teenager with superpowers heads out in costume—but her first attempt at taking down a supervillain sees her mistaken for one. Dropped in at the deep end of the local ‘cape’ scene, Taylor Hebert finds herself doing the wrong things for the right reasons.

Why you should read it: So far as I'm concerned, Worm is the final word on superheroes. Nothing comes close. Taylor is such a unique and compellingly weird antihero, it's impossible not to get drawn into her thought processes as she throws herself against one impossibly-unbeatable villain after another. Wildbow discarded dozens of drafts from different POVs before settling on Taylor, which means that the entire supporting cast of this story is remarkably well-drawn—even the most minor, one-note Worm character has enough going on to carry a feature film that would blow any Marvel flick out of the water. As you can imagine, Worm covers a lot of themes, but I'd call particular attention to its depiction of bullying as being incredibly incisive. This is the rare turbo-long story that actually manages to stick the landing; I think the ending is phenomenal.

Need to know: Again, some readers report struggling with the early chapters. My heuristic is that if you don't love Worm by the end of Arc 8, then there is something wrong with you and you'll never get it. Estimates vary but tend to agree that Worm is over 1.5 million words long.

Chili and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation

“I, Charles Bucket, have decided to allow six children—just six, mind you, and no more—to visit my factory this year.”

Why you should read it: This is my favourite fanfiction of all time. Remy is a generational talent, genuinely outclassing Dahl as a mischief-maker. Revisiting Dahl's stories with an adult perspective reveals a strange, sad spitefulness in the man's writing, which Remy unpacks here with real nuance.

Need to know: You need at least some familiarity with Roald Dahl's stories to get much out of this. 85,000 words. All of Remy's stories are brilliant—you can also read "Sivad’s Question" and "The End of Creative Scarcity"

Modern Cannibals

Z. Coulter’s best friend Max is into some new thing called Homestuck. Like, freakily into it, and it’s weirding her out. To get back on Max’s wavelength, Z. engineers a road trip to a convention that the creator of Homestuck, Andrew Hussie, will attend. But as they leave, a strange, permanently-smiling man begins to follow them…

Why you should read it: Modern Cannibals has a similar convention setting to 2Kawaii4Comfort, but is much more concerned with the relationship between author and audience. As a novelist, Bavitz has a literary sensibility that is almost unheard of in webfiction. This is the sort of story that should be winning awards, but instead it languishes on A03 for your convenience.

Need to know: As it goes on, this becomes a pretty tough read at times—mostly whenever one particular character is on the page. 111,000 words.

Cordyceps

Someone wakes up in a mysterious facility with no memory of how they got there. This turns out to be the ideal state of affairs, and is swiftly ruined.

Why you should read it: This is just a really strong ontological mystery with a unique concept behind it. Benedict_SC packs in a lot of cleverness here, but I think the character work is nothing to sniff at either. It's short enough that you really can't go wrong with it.

Need to know: 63,000 words. Also check out Dave Scum by the same author.

The Metropolitan Man

A man with superhuman abilities and a big ’S’ on his chest has arrived in 1930s Metropolis. Lex Luthor wants to know where he came from, what he’s after—and how to stop him.

Why you should read it: There have been an awful lot of Superman stories over the years, and none of them are as good as this one. It's very tightly-plotted and has an unusual villain protagonist.

Need to know: 80,000 words. If you're here, at a certain point you may as well just dip into Alexander Wales’ complete bibliography, but a couple of directly related works are "Jor-El’s Story" and "A Common Sense Guide to Doing the Most Good".

Pokémon: The Origin of Species

Red Verres wants to be the very best Pokémon researcher there ever was, and—as soon as he’s old enough—he embarks on a journey of discovery with his friends Blue and Leaf. But dangers lurk around every corner, and some aren’t so easily tamed…

Why you should read it: Honestly, there's no one thing that The Origin of Species does better than any of the other stories on this page, but I just think it's extremely solid; if you like the other stuff, you'll like this too. The main trio of protagonists are unconventional, and an enormous amount of thought has gone into presenting the world of Pokémon as a real, lived-in place full of individuals with their own agendas. There's also a strong coming-of-age narrative at the core of the story here.

Need to know: DaystarEld has a busy schedule and has been writing this thing for years, it's unlikely to finish anytime soon—you might want to just read the first "book" and put it on hold for a while.

An Unauthorised Fan Treatise on the nature of the relationship between actors Rob Hennings and Nathan O’Donnell on TV show Loch & Ness, by @gottiewrites

Gottie is convinced that the two male leads of her favourite show are secretly dating, and she’ll stop at nothing to prove it to you.

Why you should read it: This is the closest thing to a normal, conventionally-good novel on this page, which is saying something, because this is a novel told entirely in the form of social media posts.

Need to know: As of November 2023, An Unauthorised Fan Treatise was professionally-published under the title Last Seen Online, which added a standard-prose YA framing device. To accomodate this, the story (including the version available online!) was significantly edited, changing everything from minor names to major plot points, effectively butchering the story. I can only presume this happened to meet the demands of an idiot publisher looking to force the story into a non-threatening YA-novel-shaped hole. Regardless, you can still read the original version of the story, as it was when I read it, on the Wayback Machine, linked above. The story links out to fake websites and posts; I'd recommend not to click on any of these links, or you might spoil yourself (everything eventually gets quoted in the novel proper, at the appropriate moments). 70,000 words.

Octo

The sole surviving member of an advanced civilisation crash-lands on an alien planet. At the bottom of the ocean, he tries to reconstruct the knowledge of his people—but knowledge was what killed them in the first place…

Why you should read it: This is like three stories in one, with two absolutely huge twists punctuating the narrative. Z. Albert Bell makes strong use of hypertextual elements to elevate the book. I can't say much more about it without spoiling anything, but I just found this one to be phenomenally enjoyable, I devoured it.

Need to know: You'll know the first big twist when you see it, and if you're still not hooked, you can probably give up there. 113,000 words.

36 Questions

On their first date, Natalie Cook and Jase Conolly used the 36 questions—an experiment purported to make strangers fall in love—and it worked. But “Natalie” never existed; her real name is Judith Ford, and if it’ll save her marriage, this time she’ll answer honestly.

Why you should listen to it: Podcast musicals are uncommon, and frankly this is the only one I've heard that I thought was any good. The central question of whether it's possible to really know another person or not is very compelling, and explored with some nuance here. Chris Littler and Ellen Winter have cooked up a charming rapport in the script and songs, which is perfectly delivered by Jessie Shelton and Jonathan Groff. A lot of the numbers are very catchy, and the lyrics are generally a bit more clever than your typical musical-theatre fare.

Need to know: 145 minute runtime across three acts.

Swiss Army Man

All alone on an island, Hank finds a corpse washed up on the beach. The corpse can do a lot of things that corpses don't, usually. Given the ultimate surival tool, Hank must decide whether or not he wants to survive at all.

Why you should watch it: DANIELS (Scheinert and Kwan) are better known for their mega-hit followup, Everything Everywhere All At Once, but I think this one feels much more personal.

Need to know: 97 minute runtime. I liked this one so much that I’ve curated a comprehensive DANIELS filmography, which I highly recommend you check out.

The Tatami Galaxy

A college student reflects on how his campus life would have differed, if only he’d enrolled in a different university society.

Why you should watch it: Masaaki Yuasa is one of the most talented anime directors out there, able to match the breakneck prose of Tomihiko Morimi's novel with some incredibly inventive visuals. Worth watching just for the unusual structural gimmick the narrative pulls off, but there's an incredibly strong thematic core here as well.

Need to know: Eleven episodes, plus three inessential seven-minute shorts released on DVD. Yuasa’s later film Night Is Short, Walk On Girl is adapted from another Morimi novel, and features many of the same characters; it's not as good, but is worth a watch if you like the show. I haven't watched The Tatami Time Machine Blues yet, so I don't know if it's any good.

The Magicians

Quentin Coldwater has always been secretly fascinated by a series of children's fantasy novels. When he's invited to enroll in a hidden school of magic, it seems like his wildest dreams have finally come true. But the stronger his newfound powers get, the more things around him begin to unravel.

Why you should read it: A lot of readers mistake this for your standard fantasy-wish-fulfillment story, and get cross when it makes them feel despondent instead. I don't know what to say. Lev Grossman gets it.

Need to know: Has two sequels, which I haven't read yet. 140,000 words.

Do A Powerbomb!

Lona Steelrose wants to be a pro wrestler, but she’s stuck in the shadow of her mother—the best to ever do it. Everything changes when a wrestling-obsessed necromancer asks her to join the grandest—and most dangerous—pro-wrestling tournament of all time…

Why you should read it: Daniel Warren Johnson’s wrestling comic is an intensely emotional spectacle, exploring loss (in every sense of the word) through the lens of an oft-misunderstood sport. On every aspect of the craft, this is one of the best comics I've ever read.

Need to know: Seven issues, collected in a single trade paperback.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Two childhood friends reunite, and decide to make a video game together. Though they love each other, they aren’t lovers; often, it seems that they are more like enemies.

Why you should read it: This is a #1 bestselling novel, but in terms of content, it has much more in common with the lengthy metafictional works on my main list: billed as “the first great video game novel”, this is a deeply-human and structurally-ambitious work by Gabrielle Zevin. I found it devastating.

Need to know: Widely printed, so used copies are cheap. 120,000 words.

short stories

I realise that many of these are fairly long, so here’s a quick no-nonsense list of shorter stories that I particularly like: