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Blazinghand
United States25555 Posts
How to Succeed in Evil
I've been reading a good novel by Patrick E McLean, How to Succeed in Evil. It comes in audiobook format for free, and is for sale on Amazon. Every bit of it is amazing, and McLean knows how to write (and speak) a novel very well. The novel is set in a world with superheroes and supervillains, and the main character, Edwin, is a consultant to villains. He's not your typical villain, though.
An excerpt:
“So 20 years helping people with their rental cars, 40 hours a week at $10 an hour would be $400,000.”
“$400,000! Without stealing anything?”
“Without stealing anything. So, we’ll say the cost of getting caught would be the $400,000 you would give up in income. Now, let’s say that you got away with the money 95% of the time. But there is still a 5% chance that you will end up in jail for 20 years.”
“But NO ONE CAN — ”
“Catch the mighty Lifto. Yes of course. But humor me. Stay with the numbers for just a moment longer. So 95% times a $10,000 benefit is $9,500. This is the incremental benefit to you of robbing a bank. That is, if our hypothetical Lifto were to rob an infinite number of banks.”
“An INFINITE amount of money.”
“Yes. Very good,” (and very loud, thinks Edwin). “That would be an infinite amount of money.”
“So I go rob banks now. Thank you.”
“Wait, wait, we haven’t factored in the cost yet.”
“Lifto don’t like costs.”
“Neither do I, Lifto.”
“Costs suck.”
“Yes, they do. But we know that already. The only question left to us is how much do they actually ‘suck’ as you say. So, there is a 5% chance that you will get caught — I’m sorry, sorry, that the hypothetical Lifto will get caught — times negative $400,000 is negative $20,000. So, over time, each time you rob a bank it costs you $20,000 dollars.
“But there’s an infinite number of banks,” says Lifto with dreams of filthy lucre glittering in his eyes.
“Yes, yes, so we add the costs and the benefits to learn what the true value of robbing a bank is to you and we see that, over time, it costs you -$10,500 each time you rob a bank.”
“What!”
“The numbers do not lie, Lifto.
Keep Listening.
  
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United States13143 Posts
I'll definitely give this a whirl later, but am I allowed to plug unrelated unusual superhero stuff here?
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Blazinghand
United States25555 Posts
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Sounds Venture Bros.-y, maybe I'll spend some time walking/jogging to this. :D
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Ooh, this looks excellent!
If we're sharing our favorites, I recommend Soon I Will Be Invincible.
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United States13143 Posts
So I'm going to recommend Worm. Taylor Hebert is a high school student living in the fictional Rust Belt town of Brockton Bay subject to a brutal bullying campaign, but she's sustained by the fact that she recently acquired a superpower and dreams of joining the local team of heroes. She rapidly discovers that both some of the heroes and some of the villains are not exactly as they appear.
Some things I liked about the story(other than it being a well written story in general)
*Unusual superpowers; Taylor's superpower is that she can control bugs, spiders, and other similar things. The second superpowered guy we see is a dude called Lung, who basically becomes stronger and more dragonlike the more under threat he is(not coincidentally, Lung means "Dragon" in Chinese). There's very little of the Superman-esque Flying Brick style.
*It's free. Currently, you can read the entire thing online for free, although the author is looking into getting it published.
*This one doesn't matter anymore, but fast updates: the author published it online in a serial format, and he consistently pushed out a minimum of 2 updates a week every week for over 2 years, each clocking in at several thousand words minimum.
* Unexpected plotlines: The plot makes sense in retrospect so it's not just twists for the sake of twists, but there were certainly quite a few which I didn't see coming.
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On August 30 2014 11:08 Elyvilon wrote:So I'm going to recommend Worm. Taylor Hebert is a high school student living in the fictional Rust Belt town of Brockton Bay subject to a brutal bullying campaign, but she's sustained by the fact that she recently acquired a superpower and dreams of joining the local team of heroes. She rapidly discovers that both some of the heroes and some of the villains are not exactly as they appear. Some things I liked about the story(other than it being a well written story in general) *Unusual superpowers; Taylor's superpower is that she can control bugs, spiders, and other similar things. The second superpowered guy we see is a dude called Lung, who basically becomes stronger and more dragonlike the more under threat he is(not coincidentally, Lung means "Dragon" in Chinese). There's very little of the Superman-esque Flying Brick style. *It's free. Currently, you can read the entire thing online for free, although the author is looking into getting it published. *This one doesn't matter anymore, but fast updates: the author published it online in a serial format, and he consistently pushed out a minimum of 2 updates a week every week for over 2 years, each clocking in at several thousand words minimum. * Unexpected plotlines: The plot makes sense in retrospect so it's not just twists for the sake of twists, but there were certainly quite a few which I didn't see coming.
+1 to this, excellent web series, sucked me in soooo much. Also started reading Pact, which is the author's next web series (about magic stuffz instead of superheroes this time, pretty excellent though).
@OP, I'll check out your recommendation too.
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brah i read that fire into the deep shit and wtf. alien dogs for reals??
I read that one where the bitch shat frogs or something. That shit didn't even have a point.
now this shit. K i read that little dialogue. Basically the author is taking modern day financial consulting and applying it to a superhero world. So the whole book is one big gimmick basically. Thanks again blazinghand.
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United States13143 Posts
On August 31 2014 14:53 Birdie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2014 11:08 Elyvilon wrote:So I'm going to recommend Worm. Taylor Hebert is a high school student living in the fictional Rust Belt town of Brockton Bay subject to a brutal bullying campaign, but she's sustained by the fact that she recently acquired a superpower and dreams of joining the local team of heroes. She rapidly discovers that both some of the heroes and some of the villains are not exactly as they appear. Some things I liked about the story(other than it being a well written story in general) *Unusual superpowers; Taylor's superpower is that she can control bugs, spiders, and other similar things. The second superpowered guy we see is a dude called Lung, who basically becomes stronger and more dragonlike the more under threat he is(not coincidentally, Lung means "Dragon" in Chinese). There's very little of the Superman-esque Flying Brick style. *It's free. Currently, you can read the entire thing online for free, although the author is looking into getting it published. *This one doesn't matter anymore, but fast updates: the author published it online in a serial format, and he consistently pushed out a minimum of 2 updates a week every week for over 2 years, each clocking in at several thousand words minimum. * Unexpected plotlines: The plot makes sense in retrospect so it's not just twists for the sake of twists, but there were certainly quite a few which I didn't see coming. +1 to this, excellent web series, sucked me in soooo much. Also started reading Pact, which is the author's next web series (about magic stuffz instead of superheroes this time, pretty excellent though). @OP, I'll check out your recommendation too.
If you'd asked me like three weeks ago, I would have told you Pact was solid but not nearly as good as most of Worm. The last couple of weeks of updates have been really good though,with some twists I absolutely did not see coming. I still don't think it's as good as Worm(I was sick of the whole Conquest arc by the time it ended), but it's definitely gone way up lately imo.
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Blazinghand
United States25555 Posts
In the same vein as Worm is Mother of Learning (link), which starts off slow but gets very good in a similar "competency porn" sort of way. It's about a third of the way done, and updates once every other month.
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EPT
