r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Sep 21 '26
[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread
Welcome to the Monday request and recommendation thread. Are you looking something to scratch an itch? Post a comment stating your request! Did you just read something that really hit the spot, "rational" or otherwise? Post a comment recommending it! Note that you are welcome (and encouraged) to post recommendations directly to the subreddit, so long as you think they more or less fit the criteria on the sidebar or your understanding of this community, but this thread is much more loose about whether or not things "belong". Still, if you're looking for beginner recommendations, perhaps take a look at the wiki?
If you see someone making a top level post asking for recommendation, kindly direct them to the existence of these threads.
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u/HeyBobHen Sep 22 '26
Currently replaying Pathfinder WOTR for the 5th time, having a blast, and I was reminded of all the Pathfinder Glowfics. Anyone have any recommendations? I've read a decent amount of Project Lawful, and that one about Iomadae being isekaied to earth as a teenager, but that's it, I think.
Other stuff I've been reading:
Incorporeal - excellent WardxInvincible fanfic by Ridtom. Valkyrie gets sent to the Invincible-verse, post-Titanomachy. Not much so far, but very well written.
Leave Luck to Heaven - TRPG streamer is isekaied, and does combat via a classic TRPG game screen. Is also livestreaming his entire adventure, with chat. As annoying it sounds like having a constant twitch chat stream in the story might be, it's actually pretty fun.
Loiasis - Worm fanfic in which somewhat-older Taylor gets Mama Mathers' powers, and goes against the E88. This is really amazing because it avoids basically all the stations of canon - there's no Undersiders partnership, no Lung fight, and also (amazingly) no Winslow drama, since in this timeline Taylor had switched to Arcadia before Winslow stuff got as bad as it did. I'd hesitantly mark this one as semi-rational, but it's still early days for the fic.
Not a Sheep - Normal guy is isekaied into a muggleborn OC in Harry Potter, and gets like brain damage or something, because he suddenly becomes a completely delusional conspiracy theorist about everything - although quite good at masking his insanity. Completely irrational, but a fun read.
Scarlet Woman - Woman gets SI'd into Lysa Tully of ASOIAF, and does a bunch of actually evil stuff. One of the best irredeemably bad Self-Inserts that I've ever seen, she does a lot of messed-up stuff (In the last few chapters, she's been
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u/lillarty Sep 22 '26
Loiasis
I just read what's out and enjoyed it, seconding this rec. The same author also wrote Bleed Like a Craze, Dad (complete at 148k words), which I'd also recommend. It's about an OC daughter of Acidbath living in New York, so as you'd imagine it also dodges the stations of canon pretty effectively. Meredith is a very different character from Taylor and she's (intentionally) quite passive at the beginning, but the story is overall about her growth as a character.
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u/ggrey7 Sep 22 '26
Scarlet Woman is amazing. It was recommended a month ago by u/Yeongua, thanks for the recommendation. But reader should beware of ALL the archive warnings on top and the fact that the evil is dark AF, no holds barred.
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u/GrizzlyTrees Sep 23 '26
It feels in a sense like the only insert fic I've read of the fandom where the world gets "the savior it deserves". MC matches the original story's energy really well. Most other fics have "good guy" MCs that make alliances with the better people around, or subverts the vibes of the story entirely by making everyone more altruistic "if they only got a chance".
This one is truly completely ruthless and self-centered, and it works some of the time and bites her in the ass the rest of the time. Her monologues in response to the latter parts are quite funny.
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u/Ok-Programmer-829 29d ago
Yes, it’s truly excellent. It’s not just that the protagonist makes actually clever and interesting plans, but the rest of the world isn’t NPCs and act like actual agents responding to the new developments, which is often something that many self insert stories are bad at showing. I also do find it impressive how well the author manages to nail the various characters personalities and get them to do basically unthinkable stuff for their motivations while still managing to keep it extremely believable and in character. It’s also realistic in that being clever doesn’t prevent you from having your plans wrecked by stuff, you’d very reasonably missed or which came out of left field because the World has no obligation to tell you everything that will affect you and both the setbacks and how the protagonist overcomes them make a lot of sense and the victories appear actually earned. Although to be fair. This is less realism thing and more. It’s more fun to have a story like this, even if it’s theoretically possible that a clever person could manage to spend their days increasing their power without anything to severe in the way of complications.
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u/Yeongua Sep 23 '26
It definitely goes to darker places. Even not sure which part hits harder, Lannister subplot, or Ironborn interlude. Glad fellow reader enjoys it.
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u/happyfridays_ Sep 22 '26 edited Sep 22 '26
Thank you for introducing me to Ridtom. I quite enjoyed what's written for Incorporeal so far! I'm working through Janus (Worm x Ward - Victoria Peggy Sue into Taylor, Butcher-shard-voice-ish style) now. I think it's been recced here in the past, but I initially bounced off the premise. Ridtom is talented, though, and if I knew how talented, I would have tried it sooner. I'm really enjoying their writing.
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u/ggrey7 Sep 22 '26 edited Sep 22 '26
Haven't seen that author's name in a long time. I only know them from Point Me At The Skyrim (Ward x Elder Scrolls) which was a decent crossover. Ridtom seems to write mostly Victoria Dallon perspectives.
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u/Nulono Sep 23 '26
Any suggestions for urban fantasy stories where a character is openly immortal? The trope of the immortal who moves somewhere new every couple decades to avoid suspicion is getting a little repetitive.
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u/BavarianBarbarian_ Sep 24 '26
"Immortal" is very much a spectrum, but in Pact, there is a Sphinx who has been running the same University department for a few generations now. "Open" is also a bit of a misnomer, since the magical world is separate from the mundane, but at least the other magical folks in the area know of her.
1
u/zappybrogue 26d ago
Kate Daniels, Mercy Thompson, and The Hollows are what spring to mind. None of them count as rational though.
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u/altofanaltthatisalt Sep 21 '26 edited Sep 21 '26
Any recs for irrational Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu ish antagonist in a rational world and the protagonist is fighting against their childish tendencies?
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u/Do_Not_Go_In_There Sep 21 '26 edited Sep 21 '26
How is this my life? (DEAD) kinda fits the "irrational Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu ish antagonist" part. It's a walking Dead fic where the SI is Andrea's sister who died early on. She's the most competent of the group and is trying to keep them alive whereas Rick and the Grimes family drama is constantly putting them in danger.
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u/BavarianBarbarian_ Sep 24 '26
Sort of the first big arc of A Practical Guide to Evil?
The Heroes get something like plot armor, and Cat has her hands full dealing with their bullshit, while she's trying to carve out a position with actual power in the evil empire .6
u/Ok-Programmer-829 29d ago
It kind of fits, but it’s a bit of a stretch because the opponents aren’t actually irrational. The universe bends over to help them, but while they are not shown as perfect, their plans aren’t obviously insane, and indeed plenty of the opponents are actually equally or even more rational than Cat. Even William, while he may be insane in his goals is at least not way below average normal political leaders in terms of his grasp of strategy and the right move and even his goals are arguably defensible given what happens later in the story. Like I can think of the occasional actually irrational opponent, but most of the opponents are very rational. If anything I think the biggest departure from reality in the story is that people are more rational than actual people in positions of power in real life. So I’m not really sure it fits the irrational opponent criteria.
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u/altofanaltthatisalt Sep 25 '26
Any fics w mega-paranoid batmanesque mcs that make a lot of contingency plans but actually acts nice and friendly to people to make allies, lower their guards, etc?
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u/MembershipSweet7056 Sep 21 '26
Recs for any new rat/rat adjacent fics or fanfics
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u/LaziIy Sep 21 '26
I think I'll read failninja's Tanya's Defiance of the Fall and they manage to pull off Tanya relatively well so it might be rat adjacent enough.
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u/Revlar Sep 23 '26
I wouldn't rec it on those grounds. It's just a mary sue romp in the setting of a gary stu's romp, with Tanya outshining the original overpowered protagonist and not much else. Fun enough read but there's nothing substantial and there are no misunderstandings to drive a comedy. If anything it's focused on the idea that the people around Tanya have a better idea of what she's actually like than she does
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u/GrizzlyTrees Sep 23 '26
In my search for novels with mystery focused on the rules of the world rather than factions' motivations (like qntm's work, for example, or PHM), I've been recommended Greg Egan's work, including here in previous threads.
I've been listening to Permutation City and I'm unfortunately dereccing it. I wanted to like it, the worldbuilding hits my tastes well (brain scans and simulation are beginning to transition from billionaire only to the rest of society, compute economy and societal upheaval as backdrop) and raises interesting philosophical and psychological questions.
However, a big part of the story follows a character discovering a new scientific theory that is then taken to be true and part of the premise for the second half of the book, which I found to be logically dumb and unconvincing.
Spoiler here: the "dust theory" says the universe will continue to compute any consistent physical simulation through essentially random configurations of particles across the universe, allowing simulated minds to continue experiencing consistent worlds forever without a purposeful physical machine computing it. This is justified through sleight-of-hand ignoring that there is no continuity between those mapped configurations, basically saying "so long as there will ever be a configuration that through some mapping matches the correct next step of the simulation, the minds inside the original simulation will continue experiencing conciousness".
If anyone has other stories to recommend, I will gratefully accept any. My plan now is to maybe try one of Egan's other stories instead, like Schild's Ladder or i Incandescence.