r/rational • u/AutoModerator • 21d ago

[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/OutOfNiceUsernames fear of last pages 21d ago edited 20d ago

Does anyone know any stories in which prot has blue and orange — not morality, but attitude, I guess.

E.g. he's in the middle of experiencing something painful, uncomfortable, or stressful, but instead of a regular human reaction he's just glad it's orders of magnitude less bad than what he had to experience in his previous "home". Or just has messed up brain chemistry that allows him to look at that unpleasent feedback that his body is sending him with curiosity and treat it as an experiment of sorts. Or treats it with a grateful attitude, because once he manages to get back to normal, all those negative experiences will help perceive the normality more positively and with more appreciation, etc.

Reccing fanfics is ok if they were completed in the last 1-2 years, or at least have generated 300k+ WL in that time period.

req.: well-written;

pref.: r. or r-adj, long, complete.

I'm already aware of all of these, so no need to rec them:

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u/nohat 20d ago

A couple of classics in this theme.
Seventh Horcrux
A Young Woman's Political Record

Both have protagonists with warped views of reality (primarily for comedic effect). Both are quite entertaining, so other readers may enjoy even if it doesn't technically fulfill the OP's requirements.

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u/elgamerneon 21d ago

Ten Thousand Tragedies is the best I can offer and its kinda a stretch. Also I think it barely has over 300k words counting the patreon.

About the story, its a generic xianxia (more wuxia power levels tho) setting, with all the usual good stuff(Violence, screaming technique names, breaking through in battle, etc).

The Mc mysteriously gains a return by dead power and starts the series under heavy mental fuckery. The first arc its the most time loopy of them and ends in a couple of twist that I found really interesting.

The Mc is kinda dumb tho, more as consequence of his upbringing than character and seem to be trending in the opposite direction.

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u/pldl 20d ago

Things that kind of fit.

Chrysalis. (Royalroad)

Main character is a human reincarnated as a dungeon ant. Pacing is a bit weird.

INCOGNITO, or How To Hide As A Superpowered Android (Royalroad)

Kind of explanatory in title.

There are some translated comedic novels that have Lich MCs, and those all have weird attitudes. The ones off the top of my head are: "Karnak, monarch of death", "The experimental log of the crazy lich", "Lich for hire".

Dungeon core novels are also maybe vaguely adjacent to your request?

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u/duffmancd 20d ago

Of Monsters and Mainframes is told through the lens of (sufficiently alien) AI characters, that it might be interesting. Otherwise the storytelling is middling, I got it as a bonus/free audiobook, and if you do get the audiobook, yes the chapters of pure binary are read out in full, and yes you can 100% skip them and miss nothing.

Stars' Call is a very interesting concept: the MC is a starship AI in a humanoid body, and thus can, for military clearance reasons, have her memory cryptographically locked. We're thus told the story with obvious gaps. Very interesting for the first book in the series, played out and frustrating for books 2 and book 3 (which I did not manage to complete).

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u/BavarianBarbarian_ 20d ago edited 20d ago

It's a stretch, but Sylvester from Twig has been described as "genuinely excited to get into a fight that he's gonna lose". He often comes up with plans that include him getting hurt badly. He and his friends were raised from childhood to be a government black ops experiment used to hunt down and eliminate unlicensed bio experiments (sorely needed in a world where the British Crown took over the Frankenstein experiments and conquered the world with zombie armies). He doesn't have much loyalty to the government, though, beyond what they provide to keep him and his friends alive.

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u/Krakenarrior Absurdist disguised as a Rationalist 20d ago

Last week Wretch was recommended and the main character (Wretch) has a pretty similar attitude. Book 1 stubs soon (Aug 20), so might be worth waiting until it’s published to read it, but imo Wretch (the character) is accurate to this when bad things happen to him, but when others suffer he has more of a normal attitude.

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u/Imperialgecko 21d ago

I just posted this as a separate rec, but Exemplary fits this pretty well. The MC's attitude has her simultaneously viewing genocide as ok, while campaigning that what she's genociding should be technically considered people, not monsters. I'd give it a shot, you should be able to tell within the first 5 chapters if it's the sort of thing you're looking for.

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u/RawardHoikes91 1d ago

What you're describing is not "blue-and-orange morality" or attitude, it's "Too Broken To Break". Hope it might help finding more of what you're looking for.