you could consider picking it up again, it becomes much less of a generic power-fantasy isekai litrpg whatever after the first few chapters; the initial setup has to look like that for the story to work, but imo it grows beyond that fairly quickly. it has a lot of similarities to worth the candle in some ways actually. my friend who is into homestuck claims it is like if homestuck's ending was good. on the other hand it is like 1 million words, which is a lot of words to read if you're not enjoying it, and the english translation is admittedly Not Good
you can get a good english translation of the first bit here https://www.tumblr.com/orvretranslationproject but they're still working on it so you'd be stuck with the original (bad) english translation for the rest of it
Riding Victory is an ongoing Worm altpower quest with creative and interesting powers and fights. Taylor's power grows semi-unpredictably and after enough uses, she'll lose a particular power, so she has to use them properly and make the most out of them. It's at least mildly entertaining.
I think the original Star Wars episode 4 is a genuinely good film if you can watch pretending you don't know anything about Star Wars. If you can do that, there are a lot of twists where everything you think you know about where this story is going shifts beneath your feet.
Yeah, but I can't pretend that, it's the issue. I'd also argue a lot of the unexpected is just bad writing (like Obi Wan just telling Luke what to do over and over throughout the third act like it's a "focus, M" scene).
Anyway, I can't tell from the Juchu Kaisen section whether you thought the "bizarre swerve" was a good thing (or at least an interesting thing). I guess I'm going to have to read it and find out...
What makes you say Tanya fics died? I still see tons of them on Spacebattles, although I suppose Failninja makes up much of the output.
I found the first part of Juchu Kaisen focusing on Taylor's childhood interesting enough, but my interest kinda died afterwards. I found it a similar experience to the author's earlier story Savage Khepri, the action is cool but the character interactions end up just making my eyes glaze over.
Is there any reason you tend to review textual web fiction and manga, but not webcomics? Maybe I’ve just missed your webcomics reviews! But if you’re interested in that area, I highly recommend Unsounded and Kill 6 Billion Demons.
Yeah I have reviewed a couple webcomics, Oyvind Thorsby stuff + Unicorn Jelly off the top of my head. Unsounded has no good mobile version and K6BD is slow and unfinished, will get to them when that changes. Thanks for the rec though.
Now's the best time to start reading the wandering inn, before the first chapters are made non-public. It got picked up by HarperCollins and it's coming to actual physical bookstores in book form! No, this isn't April Fools, the announcement was a couple days ago (https://wanderinginn.com/2026/03/28/harpercollins-announcement/)
> The change to the Volumes are so the web serial doesn’t hamper the book launch, and it is a necessary step to publish the book. This was a hard line to get the books published with a traditional, international company. Putting up the story for free while the physical and e-books are launching goes against their business model. They see this as a risk so it’s a compromise I have accepted to get the story to more readers.
love the idea of an autocratic wizard whose whole deal is making magic great again but mostly he's just a nerd. that's the kind of roleplay energy i live for. did he ever actually get to do anything properly authoritarian or did his nerd tendencies keep derailing it?
have you read omniscient reader's viewpoint? i'd be kinda surprised if you hadn't tried it but couldn't find it in your reviews
Never reviewed it, but tried the first few chapters, didn't grab me at all.
you could consider picking it up again, it becomes much less of a generic power-fantasy isekai litrpg whatever after the first few chapters; the initial setup has to look like that for the story to work, but imo it grows beyond that fairly quickly. it has a lot of similarities to worth the candle in some ways actually. my friend who is into homestuck claims it is like if homestuck's ending was good. on the other hand it is like 1 million words, which is a lot of words to read if you're not enjoying it, and the english translation is admittedly Not Good
you can get a good english translation of the first bit here https://www.tumblr.com/orvretranslationproject but they're still working on it so you'd be stuck with the original (bad) english translation for the rest of it
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/riding-victory-worm-quest-irregular-power-growth-alt-power.1235906/
Riding Victory is an ongoing Worm altpower quest with creative and interesting powers and fights. Taylor's power grows semi-unpredictably and after enough uses, she'll lose a particular power, so she has to use them properly and make the most out of them. It's at least mildly entertaining.
I think the original Star Wars episode 4 is a genuinely good film if you can watch pretending you don't know anything about Star Wars. If you can do that, there are a lot of twists where everything you think you know about where this story is going shifts beneath your feet.
Yeah, but I can't pretend that, it's the issue. I'd also argue a lot of the unexpected is just bad writing (like Obi Wan just telling Luke what to do over and over throughout the third act like it's a "focus, M" scene).
> the conceit feels hollow now that we know more about depression as a mental illness. Our protagonist simply needed meds
Huh? DFW was on Nardil when he wrote that story, and had been since 1989...
Then I have no clue why that was missing from the story itself. Did he think the other guy was different from himself?
A hot take: Ulysses... is good!
Anyway, I can't tell from the Juchu Kaisen section whether you thought the "bizarre swerve" was a good thing (or at least an interesting thing). I guess I'm going to have to read it and find out...
What makes you say Tanya fics died? I still see tons of them on Spacebattles, although I suppose Failninja makes up much of the output.
I found the first part of Juchu Kaisen focusing on Taylor's childhood interesting enough, but my interest kinda died afterwards. I found it a similar experience to the author's earlier story Savage Khepri, the action is cool but the character interactions end up just making my eyes glaze over.
You used to see one new Tanya fic a week, it’s far rarer now
"When I read that line, I finally understood this meme review:"
Well, to be strictly accurate (I don't know if you are aware of this or not) it's a quote from an op-ed by literary critic Harold Bloom that became a meme: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-sep-19-oe-bloom19-story.html
Yeah, I do. I always thought the 4chan copypasta was slightly edited though, but that might be because he wrote two similar reviews for some reason.
Is there any reason you tend to review textual web fiction and manga, but not webcomics? Maybe I’ve just missed your webcomics reviews! But if you’re interested in that area, I highly recommend Unsounded and Kill 6 Billion Demons.
Yeah I have reviewed a couple webcomics, Oyvind Thorsby stuff + Unicorn Jelly off the top of my head. Unsounded has no good mobile version and K6BD is slow and unfinished, will get to them when that changes. Thanks for the rec though.
Now's the best time to start reading the wandering inn, before the first chapters are made non-public. It got picked up by HarperCollins and it's coming to actual physical bookstores in book form! No, this isn't April Fools, the announcement was a couple days ago (https://wanderinginn.com/2026/03/28/harpercollins-announcement/)
> The change to the Volumes are so the web serial doesn’t hamper the book launch, and it is a necessary step to publish the book. This was a hard line to get the books published with a traditional, international company. Putting up the story for free while the physical and e-books are launching goes against their business model. They see this as a risk so it’s a compromise I have accepted to get the story to more readers.
lmao, as if I needed more reasons not to read it
love the idea of an autocratic wizard whose whole deal is making magic great again but mostly he's just a nerd. that's the kind of roleplay energy i live for. did he ever actually get to do anything properly authoritarian or did his nerd tendencies keep derailing it?
behold readers, actual chatbot trying the ol' commission scam (example of the followup here https://substack.com/@ccharlow/note/c-235982326).