Board 8 > Top 35 Stories in Fiction

(+) Yeah! (+)

If The Order of the Stick is not in this list I feel like making one of my own just to explain why Order of the Stick is great.

And maybe talk about other stories I like.

I stuck with Dexter even through the awful seasons and I'll admit that I still found it mildly enjoyable even near the end when I knew it was bad, although part of that stemmed from me being so far in that I figured I shouldn't stop until it was over.

But the series finale was so bad that I still haven't watched it to this day. I watched this show literally every week it aired and couldn't bring myself to watch the final episode after seeing the preview for it.
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SaveEstelle posted...

pyresword posted...

I am not a comic person but the Watchmen movie is very near my favorite of all time.

I dont regard it quite as highly, but I still like it a lot. V for Vendetta is probably the only comic book movie I love more.

V for Vendetta also probably a top 10-15 movie for me.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

I stopped right before the last dungeon months ago and could never finish it.

The problem is that while the story is good, I was never really that sold on the gameplay. It's overcomplicated, rewards players who love complicated combos way more than I do, and has dungeons too long and too repetitive. And don't get me started on that horrible equipment system

I wasn't big on the Tales of Berseria combat system but I never had issues with it being overcomplicated. Or rather, I felt it was a pretty complicated system but that nearly button mashing was good enough for anything the game actually threw at me. (Though I was not on the hardest difficulty) It felt to me like the only thing that actually mattered was when you used your Burst attacks or whatever they were called. (The ones I used the R2 button for...)

I feel like I don't understand the combat system at all despite having beaten the game so take this with a grain of salt...

~~~

Was not around for the first part of this topic but Black Lagoon and Avatar also great yes. Also agree on Tales of Berseria being really good but then not being as hot on the finale.

I wonder if I will ever finish Nier Automata...
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Also great, if not expected, to see Watchmen on the list. On any given day it's either near or at the top of my list as well in terms of comic book stories.

Have you had a chance to read any of Doomsday Clock? I'm not sure how into mainstream comics you are, but the story so far has been fantastic, albeit a little bit slow due to constant delays in the release schedule. Thankfully, the final issue releases next month and the story will read much better once it's contained.

It takes the characters from Watchmen and places them into the DC Universe, I would definitely check it out, many of the same themes of the original story are present.
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Started reading Chrysallis. It's great. I thank you for this thread existing. I think I might record everything for later references.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt that way about Berseria's gameplay. Had no clue what was going on in the battles, seemingly endless possibilities of combos, but I could never figure out what made one attack different from another. But button mashing was enough to get by anyway, so whatever.

Also hated the item system where you'd just get endless copies of the same items with slight differences.

I made it probably about halfway through the story and I should probably finish it but I only liked half the cast. (eleanor is my waifu tho)

I've played Berseria 4 times. What a damn game. Easily the best cast dynamics the jRPG genre has seen.

I'd have played Abyss as much if it was more accessible.

My friend was giving away like 500 books today in order to downsize for a move. One of them was 1984. I took it before it hit the donation bin.

Did not care all that much for Pillars of Eternity.
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OracleGunner posted...

I hope Dune comes up.

I read the first book of Dune a long time ago. It was good but didn't leave the huge mark on me like it did for other people.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

If The Order of the Stick is not in this list I feel like making one of my own just to explain why Order of the Stick is great.

And maybe talk about other stories I like.

Order of the Stick is good fun, but while half of it is Fun Adventure Story the other half is Episodic Comedy which isn't usually my favorite thing. At least not enough of my favorite thing to put on a list like this.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Started reading Chrysallis. It's great. I thank you for this thread existing. I think I might record everything for later references.

Thanks a lot! Glad people are enjoying the topic.

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KamikazePotato posted...

I read the first book of Dune a long time ago. It was good but didn't leave the huge mark on me like it did for other people.

I'd recommend the second and third book for that.
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The first Dune book was the best.

The second and third were not quite as good, but still solid.

The fourth book was kinda bad.

The fifth book was "why am I still reading this series."

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The first Dune book is definitely the best, though I enjoyed the rest too. Almost no one likes 2 and 3 better than 1, so that's a weird recommendation...

The Children of Dune miniseries (that adapts book 2 and 3) is certainly the best adaptation of Dune, at least!
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Tier 1

A Song of Ice and Fire
Book Series

"Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, and Rhaegar died."

If I make this list a decade ago, ASOIAF is #1. A Song of Ice and Fire is this amazing melding pot of magic, politics, shock factor, and complex characterization - it manages to have its cake and eat it by combining the excitement of a fantasy world with the nuance of a political drama without diluting either experience. It's harsh and bleak but never goes into edgelord territory, although your mileage may vary on that opinion. There's moments in the series that are so impactful that they've ascended into mainstream pop culture known even by non-fans. I'm honestly struggling to find a non-nitpicky criticism of the first half of the series. The first three books in this series are the best single stretch of fantasy writing in existence and a Storm of Swords is definitely the single-best fantasy book (although it's tied with another choice for the spot of KP's Personal Favorite). It's an experience that's so good that people who aren't generally fans of fantasy were able to convince themselves they could watch/read the series and not be nerdy for doing so.

So yeah, obvious choice for #1...a decade ago. What happened? Well, I would be lying if I said that the downward spiral of the TV show didn't affect my opinions of the book series - it's hard to retain hype when you've gotten a sneak peak at the ending and the ending sucked. Far more unfortunately, though, is the generally-accepted fact that the quality of A Song of Ice and Fire drops significantly after Book 3. I like Book 4 a lot more than most, but Book 5 sucked. It's a shame because the actual prose and writing is still pretty good, but the plot structure is far more disjointed and the author forgot how to write a well-paced story. And, well, forgot how to write in general. The wait from Book 5 to Book 6 is absurd. Does anyone actually believe it's coming out?

I can't really recommend only reading Book 1-3, either, because I find it hard to believe someone would read Book 3 and NOT want to find out what happens next. If A Song of Ice and Fire had maintained the quality all throughout the entire series, it would be my unquestioned #1. As it stands, I still love the series, but the embers of hype within me are faded and dying as the long, cold wait for Book 6 continues on without end.

Don't want to end this writeup on a sour note though, so I'll also note that Book Tyrion is a phenomenal character, maybe my favorite in fantasy.

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Schindler's List
Movie

"I could have got more out. I could have got more. I don't know. If I'd just I could have got more."

There's a lot to say about Schindler's List in terms of being 'a good movie'. It's very well-acted and well-directed, the pacing and writing are excellent, the sparse use of color makes for some really impactful scenes...ect. That's all well and good for a Best Movies list, but honestly, I'm not a huge movie buff. There's a reason only three movies made this list and only one made it above Tier 3. I generally find it more difficult to attach myself to movie stories for whatever reason; I appreciate the medium but just don't enjoy it as much as I do video games, books, manga, ect. A movie has to be really, really good to rank up there with my favorites in those other mediums.

So. Schindler's List. It's a fantastic story from start to finish, chronicling the experiences of a war profiteer in Nazi Germany who starts apathetic and ignorant to the realities of World War 2 but does a complete 180 in his mentality after being exposed to its horrors, doing his best to save as many lives as possible (and at any cost) while keeping his resistance secret from the greater government. The side characters are extremely well-developed, the tension in some scenes is suffocating, and thinking back on some parts makes me sick to my stomach.

Schindler's List is all these things, and more, but what really elevates it to a spot this high on my list, and sets its story far above all other movies I've seen, is the ending. If I had to make a shortlist of "most emotional scenes in fiction", which I probably will someday because this is B8...well I hope you've forgotten about this writeup since then, because Schindler's List most likely takes the #1 spot on that. The ending is the culmination of everything that's happened up until that point and it's the most bittersweet, beautiful thing. I've probably already spoiled too much, so I'll leave it at that, but suffice to say that Schindler's List fucked me up. I appreciate pieces of fiction that can do that!

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I like books 4 and 5 the most, especially 4. =)

I don't think book 6 will ever be released though, no. I'd be surprised if it did.

KamikazePotato posted...

a Storm of Swords is definitely the single-best fantasy book

Right up there with Memories of Ice, yeah.
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KamikazePotato posted...

Does anyone actually believe it's coming out?

when the sun rises in the west and sets in the east

Mac Arrowny posted...

Right up there with Memories of Ice, yeah.

Memories of Ice is the GOAT, yeah.
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The wait for the next Game of Thrones book must be like what I'm experiencing waiting for the next Haruhi Suzumiya book.
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Is The Winds of Winter coming out? Yes. A Dream of Spring on the other hand...
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Mac Arrowny posted...

The first Dune book is definitely the best, though I enjoyed the rest too. Almost no one likes 2 and 3 better than 1, so that's a weird recommendation...

I'm one of the few that prefer them to the first, in the sense that it gives you a better appreciation of what was set up in book 1. Though you can make the argument that book 2 is just the other half of Dune, since it's more or less the fallout of book 1 but with spice babies. And 3 being the one to finally deal with the fallout of Paul's decisions.

Then again my favorite one of the series is God Emperor of Dune, since I like the entire hell that Leto built for himself and humanity. All to save it via genetic manipulation in order to make sure that humanity would be immune to future sight, would hate centralized government and actually advance technology. As well as have spice.
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KamikazePotato posted...

Order of the Stick is good fun, but while half of it is Fun Adventure Story the other half is Episodic Comedy which isn't usually my favorite thing. At least not enough of my favorite thing to put on a list like this.

The episodic comedy only lasts until about page 250 and we are nearing page 1200, though.

Book 4 of ASoIaF is rellly boring for the first 2/3 of it. Then it becomes great in the last 1/3.

Book 5 is kind of bad overall but I found myself more entertained by it than the first 2/3 of Book 4.

I don't think either book is too bad to warrant not reading them after you read the first 3, though. Martin is still a good writer, but he lost control of the gazillion characters and subplots he made so the plot doesn't move anymore.

It's a similar problem to One Piece, except that in this case the author has this crazy Japanese discipline where he works 20 hours a day so the story never halts, even if it moves slowly.

Writeups delayed until tomorrow on account of me starting RE2 Remake. Good so far!

Quick reminder of what's remaining:

2 Manga Series
1 Book Series
1 Web Serial
1 TV Show
1 Visual Novel

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Berserk
Manga Series

"Destiny...destiny...destiny...destiny...SHUT THE HELL UP! How 'bout you save your high and mighty crap for after I've been haunted to death, skullface? Sacrifice? Offering? Destiny? Quit spoutin' out a bunch of cryptic explanations! The point is, this is war! It ain't different from any other war! The last one standing wins! Listen here! I'm beatin' all a' you back down to Hell! Tell those ugly pale-faced bastards for me! If I get hit, I will hit back! Tell 'em leavin' me half-eaten is gonna be the end of you! I'll hunt and kill all those wretched monsters...and all of you...DOWN TO THE LAST ONE! THIS IS...MY DECLARATION OF WAR!"

The quintessential Dark Fantasy series. Berserk is the highest rated manga on MAL by a wide margin and it's well-deserved. For a work with a fairly simplistic plot that boils down to "the baddies did bad things, main character Guts must kill the baddies", Berserk puts so much care, effort, and detail into its world and characters that Guts' journey of strife and struggle feels intensely personal. There may be technically better well-written manga characters than Guts, but he's been my personal favorite since I first read Berserk and it would take a lot to change that. Rarely have I ever felt as invested in wanting a character to succeed as I do with him. Guts' path is violent and bloody, and his character flaws are numerous, and the fact that I still root for him unabashedly is testament to Berserk's ability to elicit sympathy from its characters without trivializing who they are as people. Even details like Guts' absurdly large sword, a generic/common anime trope, is integrated into his character arc and contributes to Berserk's worldbuilding, showing just how abnormal a human must be to be able to fight demons. Guts is the star of the show, so I'll mostly be focusing on him in this writeup, but I also need to mention the rest of the cast are universally phenomenal (Puck aside). Can't think of a character that wasn't well-written.

Berserk uses its excellent character writing as the backbone for the story. Bad things happen to good people in Berserk, and often. The author takes him time, sets up the pieces, then doesn't hesitate to knock them over. 'Shock factor' is a term with a lot of negative connotations, and for good reason, but Berserk is one of those few pieces of media that both utilizes shock factor extensively and is a much better work because of it. There's a reason the Eclipse arc is probably the most famous arc in all of manga. Violence is never censored in Berserk, and things can get VERY uncomfortably violent, and there's definitely scenes where I can understand where someone might go "this is too much"...but all of it somehow just works. A big factor is the incredible art which is absolutely the best in any manga I've ever read. Phrases like 'It was so lifelike it was bursting off the page!' are cheesy but I'm honestly not sure how else to describe some of the pages of Berserk I've seen. Monsters are terrifying, emotion is raw, and combat is brutal.

Berserk's biggest flaw is that it's never going to end. The author is clearly running on fumes and only continues the manga (at a glacial pace) to meet fan demand. I'm more okay with the situation than I am with A Song of Ice and Fire though. Unlike ASOIAF, Berserk never drops in quality. Some arcs are better than others, but from start to finish Berserk is a long, fantastic read. If this is all we get...eh, I can live with that.

Just....don't watch the recent anime adaptation. Don't.

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Worm
Web Serial

"Don't fucking underestimate me."

I have a weird relationship with superhero media. I really like it, read comics sometimes, have seen every Marvel movie, but very little of it ends up being one of my 'favorite things'. It's easy to digest but doesn't tend to leave a huge impact on me. So when I chanced upon Worm and the first chapter revealed the main character to be a bullied high school girl who just got bug powers, I didn't expect too much going forward.

Yeah, uh, I did not know what I was getting myself into. Worm is the superhero story I've been looking for all my life. It takes the genre and synthesizes it with a real-world setting while adding in a copious amount of horror elements, and boy oh boy is the result a trip. Worm's worldbuilding is one of the best I've ever experienced. Society is circling the drain, with people trying and mostly failing to take a world suddenly populated by superbeings (and much worse) and forge it into something resembling stability and order. They often fail.
Bad things happen in Worm. Major events have weight. People die - or worse. Worm's world reminds me of Berserk's in that it is one defined by a neverending struggle just to tread water, and that struggle is fascinating to watch. Also going to award major bonus point to the story for having some of the best, most inventive fight scenes I've ever read. It's easy to get immersed in the overarching struggle when I'm always on the edge of my seat.

There's a lot of disparate elements of Worm that come together to form something special (I haven't even mentioned the fantastic side characters or wildly imaginative scenarios), but the glue that holds it all together is the protagonist, Taylor. She's simple on the surface-level and becomes increasingly fascinating the more you analyze her and her impact on the story's tone. I have a soft spot for characters that are awful at self-reflection, and Worm utilizes Taylor's habits of repression and compartmentalization to further Worm's feel of a constant struggle. It's easy to get sucked into her mindset, just going with the flow, rushing headlong into every challenge, agreeing that it was the only way...only for the reader to take a step back and wonder how the fuck they ended up in this situation. Her overall mindset is way more compelling to experience than you would initially expect.

Worm has flaws, of course. It's a self-published web serial that was never edited, and while the quality of the writing is phenomenal considering that, every now and then the by-the-week writing format can be felt. Its pacing can be problematic, and for the opposite reason of most other series. It does a great job at keeping tension going but every now and then you wish the story would take a chill pill. There's also a very questionable arc near the end of the series that is just...not as good as everything up until that point. Thankfully, it caps off the story with an incredible ending, so hey. Worm is awesome and I recommend it to anyone who remotely likes superhero media, or even just the idea of superhero media - one with actual stakes.

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Worm is one of those things I constantly see, am very aware of, and yet never once have I ever seen someone ever actually talk about it and I have never once absorbed anything about through osmosis, even though I knkw it has a huge fanbase.

Like Chilitos.

I discovered Worm through a random reddit comment on a thread about something completely unrelated. I have no idea how someone learns about it without word of mouth.

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This is probably reductive, but someone once commented to me with no explanation that it was "what if something had the potential for the insane explosive internet fandom appeal of Homestuck, but never caught on."

I wouldn't go that far. For the internet (and society in general) to latch onto something to that degree, there needs to be a visual component involved. Homestuck had a lot of reading but also had a lot of pictures. Plus its tone was tailored towards internet people.

I think Worm has already caught on a lot, considering that it's a dark self-published work from an author that, at the time, was unestablished. And considering it gets 0 press in general outside of the fanbase spreading the word.

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I haven't really read Berserk yet, but man I share that feeling of not knowing whether or not the manga will ever end, since I'm a fan of Glass Mask. It started in 1975 and now the magazine it had been serialized in was cancelled... >_>
The author says she still plans to finish it up but...yeah.
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Ah, Glass Mask. I read that quite recently. It's amazing, I was very disappointed that it was unfinished. It seemed so close to the end too, but at least that wasn't that much left hanging.

Anyway I'm not that familiar with much of this list, and the stuff I am familiar with I mostly wouldn't rank nearly as highly, but I was looking for something to read, and Worm seems like a good candidate.
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KamikazePotato posted...

I discovered Worm through a random reddit comment on a thread about something completely unrelated. I have no idea how someone learns about it without word of mouth.

Yeah, we do that.
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You stay out of this, Simurgh

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Sceptilesolar posted...

Anyway I'm not that familiar with much of this list, and the stuff I am familiar with I mostly wouldn't rank nearly as highly, but I was looking for something to read, and Worm seems like a good candidate.

Glad to hear it! Enjoy!*

*I take no responsibility for people who try out something on this list and dont enjoy it

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Raka_Putra posted...

I haven't really read Berserk yet, but man I share that feeling of not knowing whether or not the manga will ever end, since I'm a fan of Glass Mask. It started in 1975 and now the magazine it had been serialized in was cancelled... >_>
The author says she still plans to finish it up but...yeah.

I recently saw a character in a series say that she secretly learned forbidden magic to resurrect the dead specifically because Glass Mask was her favorite series, and refuses to accept the idea of the author dying before it's completed. >_>
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Up

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KamikazePotato posted...

Up

A strange inclusion but I'm not totally against it

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Sceptilesolar posted...

Ah, Glass Mask. I read that quite recently. It's amazing, I was very disappointed that it was unfinished. It seemed so close to the end too, but at least that wasn't that much left hanging.

I know, right? I thought it was just a typical shoujo manga (the gigantic eyes and antiquated art style are very oft-parodied), but surprisingly it's got excellent shonen-ish drama too of the acting world too. My favorite arc was the Two Princesses one and I'm so glad we got to see the whole play.

Good point about that it's close to the end. It basically just needs to a closure with the Crimson Goddess stuff and Maya's relationship and that's it. Possibly only one volume worth of stuff...

Mr Crispy posted...

I recently saw a character in a series say that she secretly learned forbidden magic to resurrect the dead specifically because Glass Mask was her favorite series, and refuses to accept the idea of the author dying before it's completed. >_>

:((
Yeah, it's terrifyingly likely since she's not exactly young...
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XIII_rocks posted...

KamikazePotato posted...

Up

A strange inclusion but I'm not totally against it

Up's first 15 minutes is like A+.

After that...eh, it's an acceptable buddy comedy.
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Aaand up once more.

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Watchmen is great. Been a while, I should probably read it again

I keep procrastinating with nier automata. I feel like I'm maybe 8 hours in and I'm just never in the mood to pick it back up. I'm convinced it picks up over time, but for whatever reason I'm too untrusting to work through the slow burn
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I am surprised to see Worm this high but not disappointed. As a work of writing it absolutely has its flaws (it's barely edited, has iffy pacing, and almost every chapter ends on a cliffhanger) but as a story it absolutely nails what it's going for.

I can talk about Worm for a very long time but almost anything worth saying is spoilers, so rather than turn this thread into a CIA document I'll just say that if you haven't read Worm you really should give it a try.
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Wildbow (Worm author) is planning to edit the series eventually but at the moment I think he's concentrating new material. There have been attempts at getting Worm professionally edited and published, but according to him they pretty poorly. Some suggestions he received include wonders like: changing the opening line of the series to "Take that, you Worm!" and shoehorning in a romance that wasn't there before to hit more 'target demographics'.

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Breaking Bad
TV Series

"Who are you talking to right now? Who is it you think you see? Do you know how much I make a year? I mean, even if I told you, you wouldn't believe it. Do you know what would happen if I suddenly decided to stop going into work? A business big enough that it could be listed on the NASDAQ goes belly up. Disappears! It ceases to exist without me. No, you clearly don't know who you're talking to, so let me clue you in. I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!"

Alternate name for this show: "mid-life crisis taken a little too far".

There's a lot of components that make Breaking Bad the best TV show ever made. The acting is perfect, the cinematography is perfect, the script is perfect, the story and it's pacing are...mostly perfect, ect. I could go on. I could say that Walter White and Jesse Pinkman's turbulent relationship - their contrasting viewpoints and character development opposite of each other - is the heart of the show and what makes it so special, and I would be mostly right. But there's also side characters like stone-cold-but-polite-about-it Gus Fring and beleaguered-but-super-competent Mike Ehrmantraut who help elevate Breaking Bad, and that the series wouldn't be the same without them, and that would also be true. This is a show that both has a lot of different parts that are amazing AND is greater than the sum of its parts.

If I had to pick one thing, though, it would be something very simple - I got incredibly emotionally invested. Far moreso than I would have expected from a show that is essentially about a guy deciding to cook meth and things getting a little bit out of hand. I really cared about what happened to the characters on Breaking Bad, far moreso than any other TV show I've ever watched, and unlike a lot of other shows I liked it didn't crap itself in the final season. The episode Ozymandias absolutely blew me away and I'm still waiting for it to be topped (I think I'll be waiting for a long time). I'm trying to think of complaints but I honestly don't have any except beyond nitpicking. Truly an A+ experience.

P.S. #SkylarWasRight

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Breaking Bad is definitely a worthy contender for best TV show ever made. I'd personally put (the on its final season so maybe it's not fair to place it just yet) Mr. Robot ahead of it but I can completely respect Breaking Bad at the top of such a list.

Gus and Mike the best.

Controversial(?) opinion: I felt To'hajiilee (the episode before Ozymandias) to be better than Ozymandias itself. But they're both amazing. Really, once you get to the midpoint of Season 3 it's a downright incredible stretch of television that never lets up.

I mean, yeah. Pretty much! tbqh, if there's one thing that leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about the series is that I feel it ends too positive for Walt... and I say that knowing all the **** that went down in the end of Season 5. I had been rooting hard against him for like a season and a half by then.
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Breaking Bad is a show where I could see that it was basically flawless but I wasn't able to enjoy it myself

halfway through the 5th episode or so I realized I just wasn't into it at all.
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Breaking Bad is the only show that I can confidently say every season is better than the previous season. I had trouble watching the first couple of seasons because they were so uncomfortable. Hell, I even fell off the show in the second season. However, once things start breaking (this was unintentional and I'm going to leave it) the way they do and Walter dives deeper into the game and begins thriving in it, I was fully invested.
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I think S1 was better than S2, but yeah Im general BB is constantly improving

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Never seen Breaking Bad.
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LordoftheMorons posted...

I think S1 was better than S2, but yeah Im general BB is constantly improving

Agree with this. S2 is the only season I think doesn't *quite* live up to the quality standard of everything else. It's still great just not incredible.

S1 is underrated because 3-5 are so good. It's a perfect introduction.

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