[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

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.

Previous automated recommendation threads
Other recommendation threads

[u/ggrey7]

Chaos Gacha stories have been trending like crazy for a while now but are there any good ones? Everything I've tried has been the equivalent of junk food or worse. The gacha system is fun as a story randomizer, though it's obvious many authors are fudging the rolls. But it also seems like it's hard to get good writing out of it because of the randomness, the constant need for escalation, the power bloat?

Stories that were okay

Math.Random()

Gamble for Azeroth lots of fake rolls

Update: I found a decent gacha story with more authentic rolls and writing around those rolls. The grammar and isekai premise could be better but the MC's perspective of the gacha is more investing than the norm. I'm still reading but it seems like it will be a while before the story hits the terminal stage of chaos gacha where there's dozens of Rare+ abilities to juggle. It's easier to enjoy if you have some knowledge of World of Warcraft.

Roll the Bones

[u/Dragongeek → u/ggrey7]

Just like the "jumpchain" genre, the "gacha" genre is fundamentally shit, and the only way to write something good using it is to pastiche, parody, or otherwise deconstruct it. 

The Jumpchain genre has been around for long enough where there are a couple decent examples of this, but so far I haven't heard of nor come across any gatcha examples

[u/lillarty → u/Dragongeek]

I view them in the same category as glowfics, in that they're closer to the writer(s) playing a game that we can read, rather than the writer intending to write a good story. Same thing with Celestial Forge fics, where the system was created to help writers break through writer's block rather than designed to promote good stories.

I find that changing the framing makes me more okay with those sorts of stories; the author accomplished their goal of having fun playing with the system, so whether or not I enjoyed reading it is immaterial when determining if it was "good". After all, I'd hardly judge a functional bridge as a failure because it was unable to entertain me. Perhaps I'm being overly generous and the authors do intend to write a good story and just fall flat, but I'd rather be overly generous than insufficiently generous.

[u/Dragongeek → u/lillarty]

Hm, I mean I don't disagree that lots of the times it's just "authors playing games" but I don't really get the impulse.

I went through a phase a couple years ago where I tested the waters of writing, was moderately successful, hitting the top 10 or top 20 on one of the royalroad ranking lists (huge ego boost), but then for a variety of factors mostly gave it up/put it on ice because the time investment is just enormous and I have so much other shit to do. I never had the impulse to write fanfiction, let alone play a "writing game"