by cinderpath
Former Silicon Valley programmer Sean is reborn in Los Angeles as a drywaller swindled out of wages by contractor Vince "Vulture". Twenty‑seven workers are owed $374,000, settled with a beat‑up van and a container of auction‑sold thermal underwear. He binds to the Act Well, Then Sing system, which judges singing by audience resonance rather than vocal skill — yet Sean is terribly off‑key. Drawn into the cast of Embers of the Empire, he streamlines set operations with programmer logic and saves the crew with the thermal underwear. At the launch banquet, his raw, off‑key performance confronts a pop star’s lip‑sync show. Chasing Hollywood stardom, he also fights for unpaid wages, proving the power of sincerity.
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 2 Oct 2026, 02:58 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 02:58 UTC
Ranking model: rs-public-oracle-state-v1
Forecast model: rs-model-entry-v1
Chart history contains only this ranking model's runs; legacy points are not spliced in.
Coupled 14-day outlook
rs-joint-entry-copula-v1
Any eligible RS entry
4%
Two or more lists
2%
Likely threshold order: Satire → Contemporary → Fantasy → Main.
Leading bundle: Satire + Contemporary (2%).
Estimated from one fitted shared story path; category probabilities are not multiplied as if lists were independent.
Separate entry forecast; this probability does not enter the ranking score.
Overall Rising Stars Shadow RS rank
#3807 of 12,415 · 3757 below RS #50
By genre
beats 58% of similar stories
not enough data yet
beats 16% of similar stories
Mid-pack, room on both levers
Traffic and conversion both sit mid-field for a story this size. Growth here compounds from consistency: steady cadence feeds traffic, and a sharper hook lifts what each view is worth.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 150+ chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.
