Back in high school I read web novels every day. A lot of them were… okay, I guess. Some were way too terminally online, but at least they told a coherent story with a distinct flavor. If it was entertaining I didn’t nitpick the literary quality, and if it was actually serious I wouldn’t treat it like a power fantasy. Man, though, seriously written web novels are rare. Most are drowning in internet slang and come with their own snark. A little self-aware snark in a literary work isn’t necessarily bad—it can add flavor—but overdo it and it gets ugly. I remember two web novels I read: one called Sanguo Houhei Zhuan and another called How I Picked Up the Campus Belle. The latter is actually decent—I’d recommend it, it’s solid for a school romance. The former just made me shake my head… I bring them up because they share a trait: both love their own snark.

In my whole life I’ve read exactly two power-fantasy web novels. The first one I finished: Rice Wu’s I’m a Hooligan, which I followed all the way to its finale, I’m a Hooligan: Dragon War Starfield. The other one, also fairly famous, is How the Bad Guy Was Forged—and I didn’t finish that one. To put it in terms the ACG crowd will get: the former is SAO, the latter is Log Horizon. I’m a guy who likes things punchy, so I finished I’m a Hooligan and dropped the other.