Hi all,
The Swarm Cycle - where to start? Is there a guide?
I'm seeing series's's's inside the universe and
sometimes also stories in other places like asstr etc.
Is there a start here, this is a good spot... A try this series here from this author of you like these tags etc sort of guide anywhere?
It's all too daunting... Help?!
T.
A good basis for understanding things would be with the foundational story 'Average Joes.' Everything else just followed along and spread out from there.
https://storiesonline.net/s/52760/average-joes
Allan Joyal's Ishtar stories would be good as the next set.
Ok, completed Average Joes. It does give a good synopsis.
Anyone else have a preferred author in this universe? If so, why do you like them?
Thanks,
T.
Anyone else have a preferred author in this universe?
Thinking Horndog, of whose Swarm Cycle stories my favorite is The Academy
lordshipmayhem: In particular a series of Power Play, Chosen Frozen and Chosen Frozen II.
Tomken
Besides the aformentioned Allan Joyal (although I personally prefer the '... CAP based ...' series of his, I like the following:
lordshipmayhem
deGaffer
Duke of Ramus
Akarge
Anyone else have a preferred author in this universe? If so, why do you like them?
Allan Joyal
Reason: Well thought out without leaving gapping logic holes in the story.
SGTStoner
Reason: Same as for Allan Joyal with the addition of a better than average science content, that doesn't read as if the author is looking down on others.
I also thought Swarm would be daunting. About a year ago, I started at the universe welcome page of Thinking. I started at story 1, and followed numerically unless I hit a gem like Allan J, and others mentioned above. Then I would follow that authors stories in Swarm.
I found I had to create a cheat sheet of what I read. Dont know if it's my device or SOL, my device will highlight in blue stories I have visited, but only keep it highlighted for a month or two.
There were a few Swarm stories that I skipped due to personal preference about story tags. I do read new stories posted to Swarm. Hope this helps...
As an introduction, I'd say you should read five stories in their release order:
01 Average Joes by Thinking Horndog
As others have said, this is the first story and it lays out the universe.
02 Pickup Number Eighteen by Thinking Horndog
The template for pickup stories. Many early stories especially start with a pickup scene.
06 Buying Wholesale by Thinking Horndog
A large scale pickup, but more of the same.
09 Civil Service by Duke of Ramus
An idea for a non-combat branch of the Confederacy.
10 Neptune by Duke of Ramus
More in depth on what the Civil Service does and the problems they face.
These aren't necessarily the best stories, but they introduce a lot of the templates and ideas that are still being played with 300 stories later.
I'm also going to recommend a couple of things. First, pay attention to story codes.
While that's always true, remember that the Swarm Cycle has a lot of bdsm elements baked in to the universe, especially sex slavery. Some of the Swarm stories get really rough. Likewise if a story has tags for incest, violence, rape, and so on. Some tagged stories will be mild, but many go to extremes.
Second, pay attention to word count, longer is not necessarily better. Again, this is true throughout SOL, but there are a lot of stories in the Swarm Cycle that are just endless repetition of the same content: pickup happens, we're introduced to a few characters, they have sex in various combinations, learn about the Confederacy, repeat.
As a frame of reference, a mainstream published novel is usually in the range of 80k - 120k words depending on the genre. So if a story is 250k and the description is one sentence, be conscious of whether the setup is enough to support the equivalent of a trilogy.
Third, there is an official canon and some stories only loosely adhere to it. This doesn't make them bad, but it's something to be aware of. Also, the opposite of this is that there are an awful lot of stories, especially early on, which are pretty much the same except for the names.
In summary, don't feel you need to read everything to understand the universe. Skip or stop reading any story that doesn't fit your needs. It's unlikely you'll miss anything important.
Pretty CAPable and the follow up Fairly CAPable by Kenn Ghannon. They both give a glimpse of what it's like for some of the sponsors "in potentia".
Just finished them, but bummed it ends with:
Calix will return in 'InCAPable', coming soon to a StoriesOnline.net outlet near you.
But it's still not written/out yet nearly two years later.
