Here are some stories I recommend, based on the countless hours I’ve spent reading webfiction in weird corners of the internet. I also keep a much bigger list of every single story I’ve ever read/watched/whatever.
2Kawaii4Comfort
Some die-hard weebs go to an anime convention, and everything goes wrong.
This dark comedy “weeb” series is a visceral look at fandom. Finale has yet to be released, but the story’s basically complete as it is. Runtime: 80mins.
17776: What football will look like in the future
In the 15,000 years since the human race achieved immortality, three space probes gain sentience. Together, they watch humanity play an evolved form of American football, in which games can be played for millenia, over distances of thousands of miles.
A multimedia story by Jon Bois.
Worth the Candle
A teenager struggling after the death of his best friend finds himself in a fantasy world which seems to be an amalgamation of every Dungeons and Dragons campaign they ever played together.
Alexander Wales’ ongoing epic is at once a masterclass in worldbuilding, a powerful character examination, and an endlessly inventive exploration of narrative itself. There’s nothing else like it. Stick with it through the first fourteen chapters before deciding to drop it. If you enjoy it, see also Alexander Wales’ complete bibliography.
Worm
Looking to escape her deeply unhappy civilian life, an introverted teenager with superpowers heads out in costume—but her first attempt at taking down a supervillain sees her mistaken for one. Dropped in at the deep end of the local ‘cape’ scene, Taylor Hebert finds herself doing the wrong things for the right reasons.
Wildbow’s complete web serial turns the Marvel Cinematic Universe on its head. Forget every edgy deconstruction you’ve ever been subjected to—if this doesn’t make you love superhero stories, nothing will. (Also, for convenience, if Arc 8 doesn’t make you love Worm, nothing will.)
Chili and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation
“I, Charles Bucket, have decided to allow six children—just six, mind you, and no more—to visit my factory this year.”
Remy’s unreasonably-funny metafictional mystery tour peers back into Roald Dahl’s world of spite decades later, in the age of the internet, and weaves a twisted narrative about people who get what they deserve. 85,000 words. Also check out Sivad’s Question and The End of Creative Scarcity, both by the same author.
CORDYCEPS: Too clever for their own good
Someone wakes up in a mysterious facility with no memory of how they got there. This turns out to be the ideal state of affairs, and is swiftly ruined.
An ontological mystery by Benedict_SC. 63,000 words. Also check out Dave Scum by the same author.
Modern Cannibals
Z. Coulter’s best friend Max is into some new thing called Homestuck. Like, freakily into it, and it’s weirding her out. To get back on Max’s wavelength, Z. engineers a road trip to a convention that the creator of Homestuck, Andrew Hussie, will attend. But as they leave, a strange, permanently-smiling man begins to follow them…
A metafictional horror story by Bavitz. 111,000 words.
The Metropolitan Man
A man with superhuman abilities and a big ’S’ on his chest has arrived in 1930s Metropolis. Lex Luthor wants to know where he came from, what he’s after—and how to stop him.
Alexander Wales’ deconstruction of Superman. 80,000 words. Also check out its prequel, Jor-El’s Story, and its spiritual successor, A Common Sense Guide to Doing the Most Good.
Pokémon: The Origin of Species
Red Verres wants to be the very best Pokémon researcher there ever was, and—as soon as he’s old enough—he embarks on a journey of discovery with his friends Blue and Leaf. But dangers lurk around every corner, and some aren’t so easily tamed…
DaystarEld’s ongoing Methods of Rationality-inspired reimagining of the Pokémon universe has grown into a coming-of-age tale like no other.
An Unauthorised Fan Treatise on the nature of the relationship between actors Rob Hennings and Nathan O’Donnell on TV show Loch & Ness, by @gottiewrites
Gottie is convinced that the two male leads of her favourite show are secretly dating, and she’ll stop at nothing to prove it to you.
A fake true crime novel told entirely in the form of social media posts. The story links out to fake websites and posts; don’t click on any of these, or you might spoil yourself (everything eventually gets quoted in the novel proper). 70,000 words.
Octo
The sole surviving member of an advanced civilisation crash-lands on an alien planet. At the bottom of the ocean, he tries to reconstruct the knowledge of his people—but knowledge was what killed them in the first place…
In his debut webnovel, Z. Albert Bell makes astonishing use of animated text to tell a brand-new twist on old genres. I’m forced to be cagey about this story, so make sure you read through to the first big twist (you’ll know it when you see it) before dropping it. 113,000 words.
36 Questions
On their first date, Natalie Cook and Jase Conolly used the 36 questions—an experiment purported to make strangers fall in love—and it worked. But “Natalie” never existed; her real name is Judith Ford, and if it’ll save her marriage, this time she’ll answer honestly.
Chris Littler and Ellen Winter’s three-act podcast musical, starring Jessie Shelton and Jonathan Groff, is a funny, affecting, and catchy examination of the vulnerability that comes with intimacy. Runtime: 145 mins.
short stories
I realise that many of these are fairly long, so here’s a quick no-nonsense list of shorter stories that I particularly like:
- “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” by Ted Chiang: some programmers try to look after a bunch of baby sapient AI pets as the world leaves them behind.
- “Cat Person” by Kristen Roupenian: strangers fall in love over text, and remain strangers.
- “A Modern Myth” by Scott Alexander: the Greek gods are still around.
- “Borromean Rings” by Andrea Chapela (sadly paywalled)
- “And Then There Were (N-One)” by Sarah Pinsker: a semi-autobiographical murder-mystery set at a multiversal convention.
- “Nothing Breaks Like A.I. Heart” by Pamela Mishkin: an interactive rumination on a relationship partially written by GPT-3.
If you’ve already experienced everything on this page, then it sounds like you should probably be the one making recommendations! Shill any story you like to me, and I promise I’ll give it a fair shot (but not necessarily that I’ll finish it).
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