I have never done this before, so forgive me if I do this wrong. But I was wondering what Leo would do after his brothers are gone? Like, you mention there's a lot of depression and stuff happening if he doesn't get better, would he spiral into insanity, would he go back tk the prison dimension if he could like Prime said, would he maybe just constantly off himself as soon as he woke from his "death"? Or would he come to terms with his immortality now and watch over the descendents of his family like a guardian angel? Your au is amazing, and your answers to everyone's questions paints so much to your story!

[ cw: death mention / suicide mention (doesn’t happen tho!!) ]

(I’m happy you enjoy my AU! And no worries, you did nothing wrong!)

After his immediate family is all gone, things go in one of two ways.

The first one is Path B, where Leo goes off with SHELLDON and the semi present spirit puff balls of his family to various dimensions, just going around and seeing the sights, helping people out and trying to find a “cure” for his “affliction.” This path is open ended so whether he’s successful or not is up to anyone.

The second is Path C, and this is the “Bad End.” He tries to make the most of his time on Earth, hanging out with his longer living or younger friends and distant family members, but eventually…[insert massive plot point here.] He does in fact try to get back to Krang, more than once, because he’s the only one Leo has left that really knows Leo. When Leo tells Krang One this, the alien laughs. This path “ends” with [insert massive plot point here] happening in totality. At least Leo isn’t super aware anymore at that point…

📚

OKAY I was really looking forward to doing something with this prompt.

I have a lot, and I mean, A LOT of fic ideas that I just don't ever write. Same applies to drawing. I have a very short attention span and my motivation is like a balance scale. One tip and an idea is likely to be gone for good.

However, I don't wanna pick one that I may end up writing in the future. It's happened before. So I'm gonna talk about a Kirby fic idea I've had since 2020. An idea I really wanted to write at the time, and even hinted towards it in my old One More Week fic. And a fic idea I know I will never NEVER end up writing in the state this idea was in at the time (I will explain why later!)

So, let's talk about my fantasy, Super Kirby Clash-inspired kirfluff au.

It started out as a just insert Prince Fluff into the story au. I did this a lot in 2020. I had a Smash brothers ultimate au with it, a Star Allies one. You get the point. And with Kirby Clash, there's a blue puffball right there. Very easy to just pretend that's Prince Fluff! But slowly I developed it to just be mildly inspired by Clash.

It stars Prince Fluff, who runs away from his kingdom after receiving a prophecy he just can't make out. It's vague, all he knows is that he sees four figures in it. But he can never make out what they look like.

He uses a disguise as a mage to stay on the low, and travels endlessly to figure out what exactly the message means. He hears the Dream Kingdom is well familiar with magic, so he heads there. And runs into Kirby.

Kirby had been raised in the Dream Kingdom all his life, and has been, quite literally, dreaming for an adventure he can experience. So when he hears of Fluff's predicament, he decides to help him! They're later joined by two other characters to fill in the Hammer Lord and Doctor Healmore roles, who I was thinking should be Ribbon and Marx respectively. I love Ribbon as a character and I thought Marx being forced into a healer role when he is very violence driven would be funne.

Bandana Dee and Meta Knight were also big characters! Bandana Dee was actually searching for Fluff, while Meta Knight is the titular mentor character for Kirby and Fluff.

I kinda stopped developing it from there, so I imagine the story just kinda falls back into the clash story. I did imagine a lot of scenarios with Fluff vs King D Mind so it makes sense.

And like I said, I later lost my motivation to continue the story further than the ideas I came up with. I had concepts (that I can't find right now hh), had a whole animatic idea, but I moved on. It happens a lot. I later stopped thinking about a majority of my aus from that time, mostly cause I wanted to be more creative I guess?

But here's where I pull the rug from your guys' feat. Because this story wasn't completely, COMPLETELY forgotten. It was changed heavily, it barley looks like the same idea by now, but I did later use the grounds of this story idea that i was most attached to, and threw it at a different story.

If you know my characters enough, you may have put it together already.

Because I ended up using some bits of this idea to change into my Mirror Prince Fluff character! The mage aesthetic, the runaway plot. A couple of other things. I won't go into complete detail here, mostly because the story I have with Mirror Fluff and Skirby in my head is still very much in the works. I'm hoping to share bits of it some day, if enough people are interested in it.

So uhhh. Moral of the story? Some old ideas can later be used to make something a lot better! I'm a lot more happy with this Mirror Fluff idea than I ever was with the original. While some things had to be dropped (like Ribbon with the massive hammer sadly. And chaotic doctor Marx), I have had a lot more fun developing this one. Story ideas can always be forgotten, but it's okay to look back at those older ideas for inspiration sometimes.

Sorry for the long post anon, I was just really excited to talk about some older fic ideas I've had. Maybe I'll talk about some other ones in the future.

there's a limit on how much you can be an isekai intellectual...

a bunch of analyses have been popping up before me all day so i wanted to throw my hat into the ring. all love to ppl who are exercising their creative minds + ppl like geoff here who just talk about these things because of fan interest but i feel like there reaches a point where exploring the "types" of isekai is pointless? i've seen ppl list out the different types of villainess revenge isekai or fantasy mmorpg isekai but eh why fit them all into separate boxes like that?

i think it's easier to think of isekai as a "type" (genre) of itself with only two categories: 1) a focus on isekai (lit. another world) 2) tensei (lit. to be reborn). this allows for a variety of applications and thus tropes that ppl see so many trends of!

with isekai - in another world

you see everything from:

pure fantasy (inuyasha, digimon wait maybe not the best example but in my childhood mind i count digimon as pure fantasy, fushigi yugi)

mmorpg inspired fantasy/adventure (.hack//legend of twilight, sao ugh, log horizon, overlord (LOVE OVERLORD!)

otome game-esque worlds >>> this is where it gets complicated with "villainess routes" since i admit there are multiple villainess tropes but this is why it's nice to not think of this as a "sub-type/genre" bc it frees you from those complications! (the saint's magic power is omnipotent, the white cat's revenge as plotted from the dragon king's lap soso cute!, the savior's book cafe in another world, i'm a villainous daughter so i'm going to keep the last boss wait i can't remember if she's reborn in this one lmaooo see this is why rules make everything hard)

with tensei storylines - being reincarnated/reborn in another world as *insert character/role*

you see...

the same tropes!!

pure fantasy (a returner's magic should be special, reminiscence adonis, the lady and the beast, light and shadow, i can't think of a manga off the top of my head for this ah)

mmorpg inspired fantasy/adventure (so i'm a spider so what i stan kumoko so hard, her majesty's swarm, can't name another off the top of my head ah i hate lists shorter than two things...)

self-insert based games/novels (fiance's observation log of a self-proclaimed villainess, who made me a princess, death is the only ending for the villainess, the villainess wants to marry a commoner, honestly games vs novels are different applications but i'm not in the headspace to try to remember a bunch of both lol)

*insert line break to give random ppl a break from scrolling but tl; dr just enjoy things for what they are no need to micro analyze*

similar variations occur in both genres (if ppl want to be super technical i guess i'm arguing that isekai itself is a massive genre that has the "another world" subgenre and "reincarnation" subgenre tl; dr) so i think it's honestly a huge pain to try to separate all these trends into so many different types of stories. for me personally it's easier to not get overwhelmed by this gigantic umbrella of "isekai" that spans light novels, manhwa, manga, and mobile games by just stripping each story down into its trademark tropes (aka character archetypes, story structures) and slapping "oh this is a person going to a world that's not ours" and "this person gets reborn as blank in another world". none of this "omg this power fantasy is such a this kind of isekai moment" or "there are 14 different types of villainess revenge stories and this series fits into this" bc AH labels! limitations! circle-jerks via ppl trying to compartmentalize everything and sound smart for leaving a comment on story analysis instead of ooh-ahhing over a character's face! dividing things into light novel manga vs manga vs korean manhwa ft. female characters!

the last bit is mainly why i feel frustrated by ppl's insistence to group everything?

the video linked at the beginning of the post (honestly good video essay, i enjoyed it, i just kept thinking in my head the whole time "marimo these are tropes do not take the genre talk literally") has a baby comment thread talking about "korean isekai manhwas" as a genre featuring nothing but reincarnated villainess' and i can't.

like i cannot acknowledge that as a genre of any sort. the energy i felt reading through some of those insights takes me back to 2012 when all yt americans discovered k-pop and deemed all korean music k-pop from then on! (ppl still do this now, yes you are seen and don't talk to me pls i don't like you. k-pop is korean pop music and nothing less and nothing more. take a few seconds and try to parse apart aspects of korean culture instead of slamming everything into a monolithic label that has the letter k and a hyphen.) it feels so odd to see a bunch of young ppl on ig and tiktok acknowledge korean media that happens to be in the form of a webtoon as "oh stories all about young girls becoming villains in stories they made/played" bc it feels so reductive u.u

(positionality disclaimer that i'm praying isn't actually necessary: i am a 3rd-generation korean of japanese descent do not fite me i am exhausted irl of ppl asking for validation/verification bc massive shove off.)

breaking news! korean manhwa...is just as multifaceted as japanese manga...bc how can comics as an art-form not have multiple genres...huh such a shocker?!?! same likely applies to media in other parts of the world like chinese manhwa and french comics--not my place to explain either of those i just know those industries exist bc of wakfu and donghua shows by Tencent.

at the end of the day it's not like analyzing any kind of isekai is wrong--absolutely not!! i think it can be super fun to think about how isekai elements complicate a story (MCs trying to go back home, ppl from the og world, reincarnation plot-twists) or maybe even bash a series for including some kind of other world element when they could have just written a super fun fantasy.

insert marimo's brief ramble that hey you can get sick of truck-kun's hitting disillusioned guys who happen to be super duper smart or girls who happen to be master chefs/craftsmen but transporting a fully-grown being into a fantasy setting is the ultimate cheat code for making mundane modern technology seem cool and overpowered, and being reincarnated as a fully grown person in a world with a pre-made story/game set-up completely bypasses the need for an author to slowly flesh out world-building in a natural progression so isekai is actually a really smart writing tool it's just that there are some series where the author didn't use it well at all and it's cheesy or clearly isekai was misused as a vehicle for character/story development and it was pointless *DEEP BREATH OUT*

in this essay i will argue...lol i am such a culture studies major!! if i were an english major i would be talking all about writing but here i am having a side-tangent about world-building via someone being reborn wow i love this for me (don't get me started on when an author has someone reincarnate as a baby and the story is mostly them having warm fluffy moments with their family--typically father figures--and getting lots of powers i could and would and probably will rant about east asian toxicity)

but anyway am i crazy????? like yes for being passionate about the technical use of a word like genre (i am a scorpio rising let me be fussy pls) but i don't think it's a lot to ask for ppl to not unironically see "villainess revenge isekai" as the definition of korean manhwa.

idk as someone who resonates with why japanese isekai is so popular domestically + why a lot of korean manhwa feat. the same tropes (it's not for great reasons lads it's actually depressing tbh) i'm just starting to feel kind of pained by the generalization and need to separate "cute japanese girl in an otome game"/"japanese boy finds a harem in another world" from "korean girl dies and comes back as a villainess" bc they are just! applications to the same story device!!

recommendations for any who makes it this far down below <3

// also gladly recommend any of the examples i've listed in the above rant as i've read/watched all of them and adore them v much! //

save me princess

super refreshing fantasy manhwa ft. a princess and her ex-boyfriend having to save the world!

the beginning after the end

an AMERICAN web novel turned into a comic (but see it being not korean/japanese doesn't really matter when you just consider isekai as a genre...isn't it nice to not overthink it?) ft. a super-powerful wizard king reincarnated into another world and starting from scratch--gives mushoku tensei vibes but huge twists!

the reason why raeliana ended up at the duke's mansion

love love LOVE this story--read the title and you'll learn how this girl reincarnated as the character raeliana in a book gets married to a duke!

trash of the count's family

such a good novel!! a guy gets reborn as a lazy oaf and he takes the hero of the story under his wing...plot twists come up later on!

this time i will definitely be happy!

v good and refreshing for a shorter series! she's been reborn 3 times and remembers every time the hero's stabbed her in the back, and now she just wants to break up with him!

silver diamond

older manga but v good adventure w intrigue! a boy who loves plants get sucked into a desert world with demonic lizards and a mysterious bodyguard by his side. shonen-ai not BL but wonderful vibes nonetheless + great side characters!

the princess imprints a traitor

adore everything in this from the world (not in that way this society makes me so angry) to the machinations at play and the dynamic between the fl and ml

happy ffwf! artemis is one of the most wonderful, complex, dynamic characters i've read about, and i love her so much. how did you originally come up with her and how has she evolved since her initial conception?

Happy FFWF! 🧡 (though it is well into Saturday where I am now, sorry for the delay…)

Thank you so much for the ask, and even more for the comments about Artemis. Sadly she is basically my pride and joy, so it always makes my day hearing that she’s resonated with other people the way she resonates with me!

Artemis didn’t really start as a character as such. When I first downloaded HPHM out of a mixture of boredom and mild curiosity, she - like most people’s MCs - started as a self insert. As soon as I realised that the game’s character had a backstory of their own and there was a plot to the gameplay that wasn’t “here, have a look around Hogwarts and play some matching games”, I changed her name, and later, her appearance.

There are a few main things that influenced her character to develop in the way it has. Firstly, she’s been massively inspired by many other fictional women and girls. Lyra Belacqua, Buffy Summers, Leia Organa, Jo March, Pippi Longstocking, Arya Stark and Katniss Everdeen are the ones that immediately to mind when I think about the characters that influenced me the most. She’s got a little bit of all of them mixed in there, and she’s all the better for it.

The other thing is the plot of HPHM itself. She couldn’t be a self-insert and the main character of HPHM, because 90% of what MC does, I would never do. She needed to be stubborn and headstrong and brave and reckless, or the plot wouldn’t happen! I thought carefully about her backstory, and did a little research into brain development and cognition in children/teenagers and how things like childhood neglect can affect psychology and behaviour in adolescents and young adults to try and make her characteristics believable as she aged.

I also made a point of creating logical flaws for her. I read some advice that the best way to give a character a flaw that fits with the rest of their personality is to take their defining traits and push them to the extreme. Artemis is brave and quick-thinking - so she is also rash, impulsive and hot-tempered. She’s practical and very physically able - therefore she is not particularly academic. She’s independent and used to doing things on her own - so she can be emotionally distant, self-centred, and entitled.

The first draft of years one and two were pretty patchy with her characterisation, but by the time I got to writing the first draft of year 3, Artemis had developed into the character she is now, and by year 4, I was so used to her that I could predict her actions in most situations. I went back and edited year one, and used my knowledge of Artemis’ psyche to change the plot, effectively letting her take the lead. Basically, the main thing that has driven Artemis’ evolution as a character - and continues to do so - is Artemis herself.

“I won’t do anything. Probably.” (BSD OdaSaku x Reader. Part 1/3)

Title: “I won’t do anything. Probably” Genre: Comedy/Romance/smut Rating: Part 1 is sfw BUT Part 3 will 18+ (aka nsfw) Reader-insert is written as afab/femme/shorter than OdaSaku and 20+ Plot: You are a member of the Port Mafia who has been sent on a “cleanup” job with Oda Sakunosuke, who you have a crush on but won’t admit it. You don’t finish the job until very late at night, at which point, you’re forced to check into a hotel. But there’s just one problem: There’s only one room left. And only one bed.

Mini Fic is written in 2nd person. AO3 link for fic: HERE

Inspired by the [OdaSaku] art of Tsumugi (@tumugi1 on Twitter). I saw this picture and my brain latched onto the whole, “I won’t do anything. Probably.” bit. And wrote a whole fic for it as I was falling asleep on the 24th and amazingly, KEPT writing it when I woke up on the 25th. So, here it is. Call it a belated Xmas gift bc it feels almost like Old Saint Nick dropped it into my head like a filthy piece of coal.

“You’re kidding me.”

The guy at the front desk shakes his head apologetically.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” he mumbles, clearly looking every bit as remorseful as he sounds.

He shoots another nervous look at the gun holstered on your hip before catching himself and quickly looking back into your eyes.

He gulps.

Audibly.

“But there really aren’t any more rooms.”

You sigh and take your arm off of the counter. You’d considered draping it over the receptionist’s monitor in an effort to look more intimidating, but when you’d realized your arms were a little too short for that, you’d settled for the counter instead. Luckily for you, though, that one simple motion had been enough to reveal your gun.

Even now, the receptionist looked like he was going to pee himself, but even though your intimidation attempt had been successful, it still hadn’t gotten you the results you wanted.

Oh, well.

At least Nakahara-senpai would be proud of the way you’d conducted yourself just now.

The man you were with, however...

“Well?” you call out, tilting your head back slightly to look at him. “You heard what he said. What do you think we should do?”

You frown.

“Oda-senpai?”

The tall redhead looks up from his phone at last.

“Well, that depends,” he said, sliding his phone back into his pocket.

His sapphire-blue eyes find yours.

“How tired are you?” he asks.

You stop stifling your yawn immediately.

Today was a weird day. Even by your standards. And you were a teenaged runaway who’d gotten picked up by the Port Mafia several years ago.

Ever since that fateful day when you’d made the stupid decision to steal from that convenience store (how were you supposed to know a dump like that was a front for the Port Mafia?), they’d taken you in, given you a place to stay and a purpose. And that purpose was “doing whatever the hell it was they wanted you to do.”

Today, that was one of their infamous “clean-up” jobs.

You’d been on these sorts of jobs before so you didn’t think of it as a big deal at the time. But then they’d handed you the list. Which was a lot longer than it usually was. And then, they’d given you the location.

You hadn’t been sent this far out of Yokohama since that one time Nakahara Chuuya himself had requested you for backup. And even then, it had been an exception. Unfortunately, unlike that time, today’s job wasn’t quick. In fact, it had taken far, far longer than you had expected and you’d ended up working until late into the night.

So late into the night that all the trains back to Yokohama had long since stopped running.

And then it started pouring.

You are now effectively stranded for the night.

You sigh.

There was one bright spot...

You eye the man standing across the lobby, who takes his phone back out one more time in hopes of locating a cell signal.

At least they’d sent Oda Sakunosuke along with you.

“I’m okay,” you say, ignoring the fact that you’d just been yawning not two seconds ago. “Really.”

“Uh-huh,” Oda responds, his bright blue eyes flicking away from his phone once more to scan your face. “So you’re not here to see if you can find a place to rest for the night? You just wanted to get out of the rain until the first train comes?”

It doesn’t quite come across as sarcastic but you’re really not sure what else to call his tone. Humorless, perhaps? It’s hard to tell. Oda is pretty stoic on a normal day and you’ve almost never seen him smile. For one wild moment, you begin to wonder if he’s actually teasing you.

But then you remember you are talking to Oda Sakunosuke.

This is nothing more than a simple, honest question.

He puts his phone away and approaches the counter.

“Either way, walking into this hotel wasn’t a bad idea,” he says, reaching into one of the many pockets in his pale, yellow coat. “I wasn’t exactly looking forward to camping under a bridge in this weather.”

You note the big, muddy footprints his shoes leave in his wake.

The receptionist behind the counter can clearly see them but he looks like he’s still too scared to say anything about it.

Oda leans onto the counter next to you.

“I think we should stay here,” he says. “There’s no way we’re getting back to Yokohama any time soon and besides...”

He lets out a massive yawn. You think you can see a tear glistening in the corner of his eye.

“I’m tired too.”

“But you heard what he said,” you press, as the receptionist jerks away from you (and your gun). “There’s only one room.”

“Yeah, so that means there is a place we can take a nap here,” he says, already pulling out his wallet. “And the fact that there’s only one room here means we can save some money. I know what it means for those of us who get sent out on jobs like this.”

He picks out a card.

“It means we can stand to save a few bucks. Anyway, don’t worry about it.”

He lays the slate-gray piece of plastic against the counter.

“I’ll pay for tonight, okay?”

For a moment, you’re struck speechless.

“Th-that’s not the problem,” you stutter.

Oda just looks at you.

“So, then what is?”

You wonder if one of the hits he’d taken on today’s job had actually done something to his brain.

How could he not see it?

Having a man pay for your hotel room was already bad enough. But the implications of a tall, broad-shouldered, sexy man like Oda Sakunosuke paying  for a shared a hotel room with you??

You swallow dryly, hoping against hope that your cell phone wasn’t bugged and that if it was, there was no signal here.

If word got out that you spent the night in a cheap hotel with Oda Sakunosuke, a man who had the kind of rugged charm that would put Clint Eastwood to shame, you would never hear the end of it. You could already see Ozaki Kouyou smirking at you from behind one long pink kimono sleeve the minute you got back to headquarters.

And “I’ll pay for it tonight” he says?!!

As if this whole thing couldn’t SEEM any more suspicious!

You shoot a menacing glare at the receptionist, as if to say “don’t you dare get any ideas.” But the message appears to go right over his head when he sinks just a little further below the counter in abject fear.

“The problem is,” you elaborate, stunned that you even have to say it out loud. “That we’d be sleeping. In the same room.”

Oda continues to just look at you.

“So?”

You make up your mind to ask the Boss to check Oda for brain damage when you get back tomorrow. Mori used to be a doctor, right?

Oda sighs.

“Listen,” he says, sliding his card towards the receptionist, nodding kindly to the young man as if he were a timid baby bird instead of a grown human being. “I know what you’re thinking. And I thought about it too.”

He what?!

Without meaning to, you flush but Oda doesn’t appear to take any notice.

“But it’ll be fine. No matter how you look at it, we’re clearly just a couple of colleagues--”

“Clearly??”

“--who got stranded away from home while out on a business trip,” he finishes, taking his card back from the trembling receptionist. “So, like I said. It’ll be fine. I mean, we’re just sleeping right? We’re both responsible adults. I think we can handle just sleeping next to each other in the same room.”

He looks at you.

“Don’t you?”

You stiffen. Your eyes dart to the key card on the counter that the receptionist is now inching further and further away from. You’d think it was radioactive from the way he was acting...

“I--”

Oda raises an eyebrow.

“Unless...”

Oda inclines his head back towards the windows, where you can now see the rain lashing against the thick glass in the gale.

“You want to camp out under a bridge? Because if you do, I can go with you--”

“No, I definitely don’t,” you tell him, sweeping the key card up in one hand.

Out of the corner of your eye, you watch the receptionist take another step away from you as you move. You roll your eyes.

“Let’s just go. It’s late, it’s raining, we’re both tired and you know what, you’re right. As long as you stay in your bed, on your side of the room, I don’t think we’re going to have a problem.”

And as you march down the hallway towards the elevators, you suddenly hear the receptionist calling after you.

“Ah, wait!”

The young man suddenly sounds alarmed.

“There’s only--”

“Hah?”

You turn and shoot him a look and he immediately clams up again, quailing behind the counter.

“N-never mind,” he mumbles, twiddling his fingers as he tries (unsuccessfully) not to look at your gun.

He shoots you a watery smile.

“H-Have a pleasant stay...”

📚 for the thingy 👀

Hey, here's a fun new game. Put "📓" or some other version of a book emoji into my inbox and I'll explain the plot of a fanfiction that I haven't written but daydream about.

LSKDHFJHLKSJF THANK YOU

Okay so this MASSIVELY got away from me so I'm using a readmore but. Basically when I daydream I like to come up with complex AUs that are just detailed enough to be engaging but still open-ended to a degree? That way I can basically insert whatever character I'm obsessed with at that point into the narrative if they fit like... the general character archetype and then just make small adjustments in lore if needed.

ANYWAY POINT BEING. I haven't decided who to put in this particular AU. If anyone can handle reading thru my gibberish I'm open to suggestions.

Also minor CW for like... weird relationship dynamics and power imbalance bc you know I live for that

medieval fantasy au. The king's advisor and court druid starts to develop feelings for the Princess, the king's daughter. Very heavy on the angst and internal conflict because the advisor has basically been her handler in a sense since she was, like, sixteen, and while he's always liked her and enjoyed spending time with her, it wasn't like that, yknow? Except suddenly it's her twenty-first birthday, and a peer of his leans over the table at the celebration ball to whisper some offhand comment to the advisor about how yknow, she's grown into such a pretty little thing and--

And he takes a pensive sip of his cup of mead and looks over at her in the crowd, smiling brighter than the torches lining the walls of the ballroom, flushed and laughing and wearing a dress. Thinks to himself that she really has grown up to be quite beautiful, and whoever was to marry her in the coming year would be very lucky indeed.

But something had changed, in that moment-- something that wasn't quite imperceptible to him, but seemed insignificant enough at the time that he paid it no mind. He dances with her that night, like he has danced with her at many other birthdays before, laughs and cracks jokes and pokes sharp, sardonic fun at the beady, gape-mouthed bastards who have already lined up to vy for her attention. And if maybe he has to get physical with some of them-- I believe the Princess has asked you, quite politely, I might add, to leave her alone-- but what of it? It's his job, after all, what with the girl's mother dead and the king too drunk half the time to notice anything, much less care; it had practically been his duty the very moment he was appointed court advisor.

Handle the trivial politics of royalty, contain the king's famous, fabulous temper, and mind the Princess. Somebody has to look after her.

Anyway that kind of got out of "synopsis" territory and into "mini blurb/microstory" territory but can you tell that I love examining relationships that shouldn't happen and also maybe have a massive literary boner for not-really-appropriate mentor/student relationships? >:)

From that point it's just a very slow, very angsty spiral of him rationalizing continuing to engage with her as much as he used to and her just... assuming that he's already aware she has had a crush on him basically since day one but is A Good And Nice Guy who understood that she was a sheltered teenager and decided not to act on it. Lots of building tension as she rejects a seemingly constant revolving door of suitors and complains about them to no end to him. Lots of him rationalizing continuing to be as physically affectionate with her as he's always been. Pretending his feelings don't exist. And then finally one day realizing that by doing so, he must be toying with her emotions, oh god, whathaveIdone.jpeg.

BTW the song for this is "Little Lion Man" by Mumford + Sons like specifically the chorus. "it was not your fault but mine / and it was your heart on the line / i really fucked it up this time / didn't I, my dear?"

That whole song is just... UGHGHHGHG it perfectly encapsulates the mood I want to go for which is like. "Okay I actively now realize that my behavior is not right and also going to eventually end in catastrophe because I don't think I'll ever be brave enough to make my feelings known to her, but I'm also too much of a selfish coward to distance myself from her either oh god"

So there are a bunch of scenes back to back that I'd describe to show their relationship ever-so-slowly inching towards the boundary between romantic and platonic. Lots of physical contact--I was planning on adding some druidic elements to the AU so I specifically have this one scene where he accompanies her on a pilgrimage to this great big tree that's basically seen as the center of all magic users' power. And maybe she's fooling around along the way and tries to climb up a steep part of a trail or up a tree or just. Some dumb twenty-something shenanigans and he's immediately like. Laughing. Teasing her. trying and failing to be stern. "If you fall, don't expect me to catch you."

(Spoiler alert. he does catch her.)

ANYWAY anyway I have so many thoughts about this it's such a detailed AU in my head like I even have LORE but I just. Haven't figured out what character I want to be the advisor/sorcerer dude. I was fooling around w the idea of Loki in the first thor movie? Before he was like a massive asshole, but. Idk. It's an AU so it could basically be anybody which is exactly why I love AUS like this because I can just tweak it to fit whatever character I'm obsessed with at that point.

ANYWAY. anyway. OH GOD this is so long my bad. If you got to the end congratulations and please send me requests I want to start being more active on here but thinking of ideas is very hard.

Ask for writers

Tagged by @theisolatedlily​ thank u babe xoxo

1. describe how you first started writing and when you first posted: 

I got so into the 1D fandom that I opened a tumblr account and found loads of fics about Harry and Louis. I got hooked. I go way back as a fan. am one of those who started reading fics from tumblr accounts and livejournals. I know a lot still read from those until now, even me, until ao3 became the basis of fics. I read so many fics that i wanted to write my own as well. my first ever fic, officially, was an apocalypse/zombie au called Nothing Can Come Between You and I. I say officially because I posted a couple of fics before this one but they were edited fics from a writer who took down his/her fics for reasons I don’t wanna get into. I asked permission to post them and edit them. That’s when I started joining up as a beta as well :D

2. which of your characters do you typically resonate most closely with? do you base any characters off of yourself?

I typically write in Louis’ narrative but I don’t usually base it on any perceptions I have of him, even if it’s canon. most of my fics are inspired by circumstances I see around me in my day to day life or by events that one can relate to because they do happen.

3. where do you often find inspiration?

I read a lot of fics as I’ve mentioned before and each and every one of them has left an impact on me that made me the fic writer I am today. Whenever I lack inspiration, I just open my bookmarks on ao3 and read. And then, a bulb lights up and voila, inspiration hits

4. has quarantine helped or hindered your writing process?

helped a lot! i wrote more during quarantine than I do now even though am somewhat working from home. but when corona was at its peak back in March, everything was on hold and I turned to writing.

5. do you listen to music/noise while you write or do you prefer silence? 

silence. Am sadly not one of those people who could write in a corner in a cafe even though I wish I could do something like that.

6. what is your biggest writing pet peeve in your writing or in general?

word vomit. not into that.

7. describe your ideal writing setup: 

after midnight, laptop on a cushion on my lap, neck pillow for my neck, my bed, and a quiet house where everyone is already sleeping and my mind is brimming, racing faster than my fingers could type hahahaah

8. favorite time of day to write?: 

after midnight. it mostly has to do with the fact that I am not available during the day but even before when I wasn’t working, i would find myself procrastinating all day or totally lacking inspiration and then come night time, and my mind comes alive hahahaha

9. favorite genre to write + one you’d like to try writing in the future?

Canon fics

10. do you struggle with writer’s block? 

I mean, who doesn’t, right?

11. what is the easiest part of your writing process and the most difficult? 

easiest is after I’ve day-dreamed the scene because when I day dream, its detailed to the tee, down to the words and the dialogue but the most difficult is when I postpone an idea I had in my head. If I don’t write it down instantly, it never turns out the same and that’s quite frustrating

12. how do you come up with original characters? (

I do insert a lot of original characters in my fics and they are sometimes inspired my real people but only in terms of appearance not by character or name. so, if am describing an original character in any of my fics, know that he exists but his character is not the same in real life hahahaha

13. what is your favorite and least favorite word? f

wow, this is random. um. fav would be scars and least would be veggies

14. what is one thing about your writing that you’re really proud of and one thing you hope to continue working at?

I don’t think it was something I was proud of at first but a lot of people who comment on my fics say that they like my pacing and the dialogues. so maybe that? I would say I think I need to work more on my originality. sometimes, i find myself drifting to a fic I’ve just read, especially if its the same trope and am like, wow, that’s not mine at all.

15. what work of yours has your favorite ‘verse/world building? how did you come up with it?

definitely my first abo fic Hang there like fruit, my soul/Till the tree die. I love that au and I’ve always wanted to put my own tiny twist in it. am really proud of how it came about and am massively humbled by the comments and support it received :D

16. what font and size do you write in? single spaced or double?

arial, font 18 and sometimes bigger because I don’t have good eyesight

17. what is a typo(s) you find yourself making consistently?:

names, because sometimes the names I choose are apprarently just not cool with microsoft word for some reason....sighs

18. (if applicable) do you separate fic writing from fandom?

yes, but its not intentional, it just happens

19. what emotion is your favorite to write? which is the most difficult?Angst because that’s just me hahahaaha. the most difficult? hmm, emotional love confessions maybe or the transition from friends to lovers. yeah.

20. what is one thing you hope readers always take away from your works?

the passion behind it maybe?

21. what is the best and worst writing advice you’ve ever received?

best advice is to sleep on it because I do come up with scenes for my fics when I am about to sleep ahahahah. the worse one I got came from someone who obviously doesn’t know a thing about writing. he said, ‘’just don’t write it and do something else.’’ I mean, really?

22. which one of your works would you most want to see turned into a film/television show?

nope, not happening.

23. do you write scenes chronologically or out of order?: 

most of the time in order.

24. how do you handle criticism?

quite well I think. 

 25. what is the advice you would give to someone who is looking to start writing?

Go for it. Writing is not a silly hobby. if it’s really something you wanna do, even if its just for fun or to pass the time or to make new friends. go for it, There are so many fics in this fandom that until this day, are still ingrained in my mind because they were so touching and moving to me. you never know what your words could do for someone or how much your words could make a person’s day a better day 

26. what kind of feedback on your work always makes your day?

the comments posted on my fics in ao3 always make me happy. I feel like its the best to find out if my work is worth someone’s time, you know? even though I do write for myself most of the time, the validation is nice sometimes :D

27. which fic ‘verse of your own would you most like to exist in? which fic’s characters would you most like to befriend? 

wow, all of them? 

28. what do you always enjoy getting asks about/wish people would ask about more?

hmm, I mean people could ask what they want so am cool with anything. am not picky. I get asked about plot lines or what would happen next when it comes to cliffhangers and I do my best to answer them without revealing too much :D

29. what has writing added to your life? how has it changed you?

I definitely made new friends through it and it’s been great :D

30. why do you write?

it’s my favourite thing in my entire life. It’s the one thing that no one in my life knows about, as in the people that I work with, my friends, even my family, none of them have ever read anything I’ve ever written and am fine with it. I feel like writing is purely for me and it’s something I’d like to keep as a part of me you know?

boost yourself + tags!

1a. share the last sentence you wrote:

Harry smiles despite himself. Three years together, since he was nineteen, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that Louis knows him so well, can tell by the sound of his voice if he’s okay or not, nervous or not, happy or not.

2a. describe the wip you’re most excited about:

the one am writing for the harry/men fic fest

3a. share the piece of dialogue from one of your works you’re most proud of: 

‘’You’re being really quiet and I don’t like it,’’ Louis points out.

‘’Just a bit tired,’’

‘’Stay here then,’’ Louis pats the bed. ‘’Sleep next to me,’’

‘’Are you sure? I don’t want to mess with anything by accident or…’’

‘’Harry?’’

‘’What?’’

‘’I won’t get a wink’s worth of sleep if you’re even an inch away from me,’’ he says firmly. ‘’And I’ll go on a limb here and say neither will you.’’

‘’But…’’

‘’No buts, I’m serious.’’ Louis cups his cheek, his blue eyes big and beautiful, like an entire fucking galaxy. ‘’I missed you something terrible these past few days,’’

‘’Lou…’’

‘’Be here with me, Haz. Please?’’

Harry hums before he pushes himself forward. He cannot stop it, cannot keep himself from gravitating towards Louis, taking what he wants, what he needs to make it through the night. He cups Louis’ face and kisses him but even then it’s not enough and he skates one arm around Louis’ small shoulders and tugs him closer, careful not to jostle Louis too much and kisses him like Louis’ a mermaid and he needs his air or else he’ll drown.

It eases an ache in him he didn’t know was trying to get his attention the moment he entered the room, something deep and visceral, calming down with the way Louis’ molds his lips against his, with the shape of his mouth fitting with his own, with the way his body is trying to align with his, like a constellation, each star coming together to mean something greater than they can ever grasp, something more infinite and vast.

‘’I love you,’’ Louis whispers into his lips.

‘’I’m never letting you go,’’ Harry says before he reaches for another kiss. ‘’Love of my life, fucking best thing to ever happen to me, you know that?’’

‘’My rock,’’ Louis kisses him back. ‘’My fortress,’’ and kisses him again, ‘’my strength,’’ and again and again. ‘’I love you so much. Would be dead without you,’’

‘’Don’t say that,’’

‘’It’s true,’’ Louis gasps as Harry devours his mouth, trying to stop him from saying another word. ‘’I would’ve crawled out that room right to your feet, Haz. I would’ve…’’

‘’Shh, just me kiss, babe. Just kiss me,’’ Harry pleads.

And so they do.

4a; line from my fics that I am most proud of:

hard to choose really

5a. link the last fic you read: 

bang bang (my baby shot me down) by thepolourryexpress

6a. link the last work you published: 

Ellen's haunted house by louloubaby92

7a. link to your ao3 (if applicable): 

https://archiveofourown.org/users/louloubaby92/works

8a. someone that inspires you 

Louis Tomlinson

9a. a comfort fic/work that you’ve been grateful for this year: 

bruise you like a peach by falsegoodnight

10a. other writers that you’d like to tag! 

@falsegoodnight​ @twopoppies​ @mediawhorefics​

Write Like Hamilton - Tom Holland

Pairing: Tom x Author!Reader

Requested? Yes! By anon x

Hamilrequest #41

“I wrote my way out when the world turned its back on me.”

I actually really like this request! Thanks for this anon <3

P.S. there’s some truth in this one. Hint: it’s the Chris Colfer thing. Let’s just say that Y/N was based on me lmao. I’m also finding it cute that this has 1998 words hihi

Everyone has opinions about someone or something. These opinions root from an issue that went viral and spread like wildfire. Regarding the said issue, the audience may say good things or bad things. Of course those who are victims of the said issue speak out and for some reason get hate or love for it, depending on the audience. Some victims choose not to speak out and they get all the hate in the world for addressing something the audience aren’t even included in. Some victims speak out, out of nowhere and just like that, they win in the issue.

An example of that would be James Charles, who single-handedly saved his own career by releasing a video. We won’t dig deeper into that, but James really did well in that part. Of course, there were people who still hated him, but at this point, I’m sure he doesn’t care about that anymore.

Like James, you became a victim of a certain issue that sparked out of nowhere. You were a very successful author. You wrote a lot of things from short stories to novels and from poetry to children’s books. You really wanted a wide range of people reading your books and that’s why a lot of people liked you, because families can read all of your books in one household and you were proud of yourself for that. 

With the money that you earned from writing, you were able to donate books to different schools around the world especially in third world countries who really needed it. You were basically an angel in the community of education.

Of course, not all people thought of that. They thought you were pretentious and that you were only doing it for publicity and money. They even had the audacity to say that you had a ghost-writer, but that was immediately debunked by your loyal readers and yourself, because you uploaded a video on your YouTube channel about the process of you writing a book. 

Life went well after that. Your career was sky-rocketing and you were able to catch the attention of the world’s famous heartthrob, Tom Holland.

He tweeted you first when you were bored out of your mind and decided to take a break from writing. You thought it would be a fun idea to interact with your fans, because they deserved it after all the times they’ve supported you and backed you up. So you tweeted that you’d be doing a #AskY/N. Tom obviously had your notifications on, because he was such a fan and he got really excited when he saw that. 

He wasn’t an active Twitter user and he normally wouldn’t check it, but he decided ‘fuck it, I’ll send in a question’. He wanted his question to be different from others so he asked you if you’ll be releasing a book that year.

You saw it and you were surprised that THE Spider-Man actually liked your work. You, of course, responded in a professional way: “@TomHolland1996 as a matter of fact, yes! I’ll be releasing a book this year. I’m actually working on it right now as we speak. It’s a children’s book.”

From then on, you both started talking a lot and somehow ended up dating. You’ve been dating for two years now and you loved every second of it. Both of you were really supportive in each other’s passion and career. Sometimes, he would even help you in writing a plot. In return, you would help in practicing his lines. You’d also help him and Harry with the script that they were working on. 

Your life could’ve been better if it weren’t for that person on Twitter who had a lot to say about you. That person tweeted something about you stealing ideas from Chris Colfer.

Glee star. People’s Choice Award winner. Teen’s Choice Award winner. Golden Globe award winner. Screen Actors Guild Awards winner. Emmy nominated actor turned author, Chris Colfer.

The tweet went viral and most of them didn’t know how to feel. Some people didn’t know who Chris was. Some people didn’t think you were stealing ideas from him. Some people agreed with that Twitter user who started it. Some took the time to read both yours and Chris’ books that apparently had major similarities and concluded that there were none.

You didn’t know what to do. You didn’t cry, because if you were being honest, that situation wasn’t worth crying for. The people who knew the truth was you and the people around you who knew where your ideas are from. You were really hurt, because of the accusation made against you.

You saw what happened to James Charles after Tati Westbrook uploaded that ‘BYE SISTER’ video. He was destroyed. You knew that the issues that were brought up against you and James were very different, your situation wasn’t. It was very similar.

Like Tati’s video, the tweet came out of nowhere. In this situation, the Twitter user was Tati and you were James. You couldn’t imagine how James must’ve felt when his mentor did him dirty like that. You also couldn’t imagine how alone James felt when he lost everyone.

You decided that you’d address the situation once everyone has calmed down. Tom wanted to argue, because he was really mad. He wanted to defend you like the good boyfriend he was. After all, before he met you, he was a massive fan and he still was. He read all of your books so he had no problem defending you.

You told him that he didn’t have to, because you had it under control. Besides, he couldn’t defend you when he hasn’t read the books of Chris Colfer, himself. You told him that he should at least read one book from Chris Colfer before saying anything. Tom felt stupid, because he never even thought of that. You assured him that it was alright, though.

You were really thankful that, like you, Chris Colfer hasn’t said anything. He’s an unproblematic public figure and you wanted him to live his best life.

The storm like issue started to calm down and as promised, you addressed the issue. You didn’t want to write a really long thread on Twitter, because you wanted to express everything that was going on in your mind for the past week. You made a wise decision by speaking out about it on your blog. You wanted it to be short and simple yet concise and full of information. After that, you tweeted: “Here’s my take on the issue said against me. *insert link to your blog*”.

Tom was really proud of you for writing your way out of that messy situation single-handedly. The person who accused you publicly apologized on Twitter and of course, being the forgiving person that you were, you forgave them and decided that the past was in the past.

After reading your statement, Chris Colfer tweeted you and said that he knew what was going on, but he wanted to hear your side instead of other people. He thanked you for being honest and he even DMed you on Twitter, asking if you wanted to collaborate for a children’s book.

Hi! It’s Y/N and in this week’s topic, I’ll be talking about the issue that I was involved in. I’ve been writing since I was fourteen and it wasn’t until I was eighteen when I started REALLY writing books. I sold my first book ever and I was really happy it was a success.

Then it turned into a full-time job over the years and I couldn’t believe it. All my dreams were coming true all because I decided to write down my imaginations and turn it into books. I haven’t stopped since and I don’t plan on stopping which is why I wanted to clear my name.

Out of all my years in writing, this issue was the first to really drag my name down and I’m not proud of it. After all, who would be proud to have their name dragged around for something they didn’t do?

To those of you who are confused, I was recently accused of stealing ideas for children’s books from Mr. Chris Colfer. Specifically, my first children’s book. A Twitter user said that when they read my first children’s book, it was very similar to Chris Colfer’s ‘The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell’. I haven’t had the blessing of meeting Chris Colfer yet, but we both follow each other on Twitter. You could say that we’ve became acquaintances over the years of replying to each other’s tweets and participating in every QnA one of us tweets.

I’ve known Chris for a long time more so than he’s known me. You see, I’ve been a fan of his ever since he starred in Glee. You know, the tv show about these teens in glee club and their struggles in high school. This show has been diverse ever since the beginning and it’s one of the reasons why I love it. 

Chris was the reason why I wanted to write books and publish them. I was first in line when he released his first book ‘The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell’ and it wasn’t until his third book ‘The Land of Stories: A Grimm Warning’ when I realized that I wanted to write and publish my own book. I sold my first ever book a year later and it was a success. 

For those of you who really know me, you’ll know that my first book wasn’t a children’s book. My first book was a love story and it was inspired by real people and my brain just decided it would be cool to mash them all up together. Kind of like that movie Valentine’s Day. 

The moment I realized that I could write a children’s book was when I babysat my niece and she asked me to tell her a bedtime story. Naturally, I picked a book from her book shelf but she told me she wanted story that was done by me. I wouldn’t tell her the story of the romance books I’ve written so, I racked my brains out to produce a story that a 6 year old could understand and like. She liked it. No, she loved it. I thought it wasn’t book worthy so after she went to sleep, I just wrote it in my drafts to include it in a short story compilation. I forgot all about it, but then a few months later, she died in a car crash. I was so heartbroken. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to grieve.

Then I remembered the story I told her, the one I made up on the spot; the one she loved. I decided that instead of crying my eyes out, I would continue writing that story. That, my friends, was how my first children’s book was born. That book was to pay homage for my 6 year old niece who would never grow up to see and feel the magic of life. That plot of that book was sincerely made on the spot and I kept making things up as I continued writing it. I’m very sure that there were no similarities from my book and Chris’ book. I know this because I’ve read ‘The Land of Stories’ a bunch of times. Maybe the magical part was the only similarity, but all kids love magic. It’s a given when you’re going to write a children’s book. Magic would be the first one to come up.

I don’t want to fight. Instead, I’ll be the bigger person. This statement is simply just addressing all the facts. I do not wish for my name or Chris’ good name to be sullied.

I’d like to end this statement by thanking Chris Colfer for inspiring me to pursue this career and Chris, if you’re reading this, I just want to tell you that I love your work and I support you and I hope we get to meet each other one day.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this.

* * * *

wow that was a long one and I loved this!! I’m really really proud of this one so I hoped y’all liked it <3

𝐓𝐎𝐌 𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓: @abrielleholland​​​​​​​ @peachmaybnx​​​​​​​ @superheroesaremytea​​​​​​​ @ella-whyte

𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓: @marvelousell​​​​​​​ @justasmisunderstoodasloki​​​​​​​ @rubberducky-jrr​​​​​​​ @petersholland​​​​​ @osterfieldnholland​​​​​ @miraclesoflove​

Here is the text of the video, translated into English. Seriously, check out this video, this guy is awesome.

"Conspiracy Theories" by Guille Aquino.

Posted on June 27, 2019.

--------------------------------------------------

Warning: if you're influenceable, you need to watch this.

--------------------------------------------------

Alright, before we start, I want us to welcome and applaud our new friends from the CIA, the FBI, NASA, the former SIDE -today, the AFI-, the KGB, Interpol, and the lazy virgins at the troll centre on Miserere Park, who are surely already watching this video because today we're gonna talk about...

Conspiracy Theories.

We all know some: the humans didn't go to the Moon, the 9/11 was a self-attack by the USA's government, Bin Laden never existed, Walt Disney is frozen, Elvis Presley is alive, the Simpsons predict the future, Marcelo Tinelli went to a famous hospital with a famous object inserted in a famous place on his body, and Dengue and Zika fever were created by Bill Gates who genetically modified mosquitoes to depopulate the Earth because it most likely was easier than making work that "Internet Explorer" bulls*** he sold us. But let's get to the news: in early 2019, YouTube modified its recommendation algorithm to avoid promoting conspiracy theories and false information. And let's stop here because I want us to become aware of the magnitude this matter took on and how this little joke of the conspiracy theories videos completely went to Hell.

Think of it this way: YouTube, the second most trafficked website in the world after Google, with over 30 million visitors per day and over 1.3 billion users -almost a third of all people connected to the Internet in the world-, where 300 hours of videos are uploaded per minute and almost 500 trillion videos are viewed per day, had to change its own recommendation system because all of us were watching too many videos denouncing that Lali Espósito is an Illuminati:

Video excerpt: [with obvious robotic voice] "Also, at the second Number Ten, she covers one of her eyes again, obviously symbolizing the All-Seeing Eye."

And I'm very sorry to tell you that, in today's world, if YouTube has a problem, we all have a problem.

Conspiracy theories are the Internet's new porn. In fact, if you filter the words "conspiracy" and "theories" by the number of views, the most viewed video has 36 million views. THIRTY-SIX! MILLION! VIEWS! That's like putting together the total populations of Belgium, Greece, Cuba and Jamaica, and then lighting a giant reefer to everyone and making them watch this video of people saying the Earth is flat:

Another video excerpt: [Channel 13 interview with Flat-Earthers, recorded in a park in Buenos Aires] "I pour water into this dish... Look, I pour water, and it stays, you see? But we pour water into the globe... and it goes down, people."

Okay, now we're gonna go over some of the most popular conspiracy theories of recent times, and we're gonna try to deconstruct the psychological profile of the average consumer of the conspiranoid world.

--------------------------------------------------

We'll start with everyone's favourite...

The Flat-Earthers.

Excerpt of the second video: "This first meeting began to be announced in the groups I followed on YouTube. (And the tattoo you have there, what is it?) This is the flat Earth, the Sun and the Moon."

The Flat-Earthers basically hold the theory that the Earth is not actually spherical, and they claim Galileo Galilei was an old smoke-seller blabbermouth who often played into the Far-Right's hands, cut his hair in an old-fashioned barbershop and used the 1610 telescope mainly to bed with chicks. And I have nothing personal against the Flat-Earthers but I find it difficult to take them seriously, mostly because much of their scientific hypothesis can be explained with this blooper.

Excerpt of another, different video: "There's an inflatable pool filled with water and with two people in it, a third person suddenly jumps into the water, and the pool deforms and overflows on the other side, as one of the two previously present people also falls over the edge."

(Images from the film "Armageddon".)

The truth is that the "flat Earth" theory has one fundamental premise, and it's the same one that supports 100% of conspiracy theories:

There's a power above us that manages everything.

Governments, lobbies and other de facto powers are capable of lying on a massive scale, just as intelligence services, the New World Order and FlyBondi hostesses do.

Excerpt of the second video: "(And you can't see the curvature of the Earth from the plane.) Uh... I travelled by plane to Bariloche, and no, I didn't see it. There's some aircraft glass with a small magnification or something that changes your perspective, due to the thickness of the window, and because aircraft glass also has something."

Alright, stop, let's not turn this into "Point at the crazy assholes and laugh" either, right? Well, yes, a little- But we go beyond that! We're better than that!

Why do so many people choose to believe we're puppets of an evil system? One might say that, in the absence of a sense of real control over our own lives and in the face of the desolation of living in a seemingly random, chaotic world, believing there's an external force exerting control is, to some extent, comforting. Yes, phone the Vatican.

And according to a certain old white upper-middle-class snob who teaches at Harvard University, conspiracy theorists share several or at least one of the following features: they're paranoid, radical, extremist in their opinions; they aspire to a feeling of superiority, and basically, they feel special for possessing information that exceeds the common citizen. Yeah, it's like the row for an indie film festival.

Umberto Eco even said:

"The control syndrome invades us. When someone claims to have a secret, their strength is not in hiding something but in making people think there's even a secret in the first place."

And I didn't understand a f*** because I've never read a book in my life, but it sounds ultra-mega-hyper cool. I dare you to deny it!

So who would be the most likely to believe in these kinds of theories? People who had bad experiences in life, people in search of an answer that would rescue them from a deep existential crisis, and the most important: people in search of a place of belonging.

Excerpt of the second video: "Well, no, this opened a door for me to start thinking more, to question things, about a supposed alien invasion."

Wait, stop right there. Excuse me, but if I'm an alien and I have the power to cross the universe in a spaceship, with my own army and the ability to colonize a celestial body, I don't even waste my time invading a paper-thin planet. Give me a round planet or give me death!

And that's when the contradiction comes into play. Because if you believe in one conspiracy theory, you immediately start to believe in all of them. It's like the weed. Even the refutation of a plot fits within the plot itself: for example, if you believe Lady Diana was killed by the British Crown, you're also prone to believe Lady Diana is actually still alive.

(Woah, Mind Blown... She was totally killed anyway, sorry.)

--------------------------------------------------

Good, let's move on to the next one:

The Anti-Vaccination movement.

Okay, here we come to a key point, since clearly there are the "harmless" conspiracy theories and the... rather dangerous ones. We've all heard someone say vaccines may cause autism in kids. Now, I'm clearly a specialist in absolutely nothing, and I ain't gonna explain why you guys have to vaccinate your children, so I better recommend to you the websites of any Ministry of Health or Wikipedia, so that you later visit them and find out how very important it is to inject legal drugs to your sweet little angels. And it's not to detract from any position or to err on the side of bigotry, but if you're an anti-vax and your baby coughs next to me, I swear I'll kick their head off.

(Tack! That bag of germs...)

And after all, that's why we invented Democracy!

(Ha, of course not, but...)

In fact, I dunno who gives a f*** about this but maybe someone will find it useful: I follow a pretty simple method when it comes to ideologically locating myself regarding any issue. And this is:

Always do the opposite of whatever Gisela Barreto says.

Gisela Barreto: [speaks with a flag in the background] "Vaccines show up, and they show them to us as something that heals us. Actually, they're part of our death."

(Seriously, she came this close to being in the Avengers.)

--------------------------------------------------

Okay, and now let's move on to one that touches us all closely (at least here, in my country):

Hitler in Argentina.

It's the conspiracy theory ensuring that, after losing World War II, the Nazi leader, the most disgusting dictator and genocide in Human History, came to live incognito in our country. And I ask myself: what the heck did we need to shelter Hitler for? The birth of Alejandro Biondini, who's pretty much our local version of Nazism, was imminent:

Interview with Biondini in 1991 by Mariano Grondona in his program "Key Time":

Grondona: "Would you condemn Adolf Hitler?"

Biondini: "No, we vindicate Adolf Hitler."

--------------------------------------------------

Okay, question: is it possible to keep a secret on such a large scale for so many years? Well, the Math says no. Seriously! I've read that a physicist at the Oxford University (Where else?) took the "humans didn't go to the Moon" theory, and then this guy created a mathematical calculation based on the number of conspirators involved, the time elapsed since the conspiracy, and the inherent possibility that a plot would fail.

For example, in the case of Apollo 11, 411 thousand NASA employees were involved, and according to the variables this physicist analyzed, the lie should have been known in less than four years; half a century passed, and no employee denied the mission. What does this tell us? Well... they were threatened and killed off, of course! It's obvious! [imitating Mirtha Legrand] Stanley Kubrick was not in the coffin! Nobody saw him. Nobody saw him!

--------------------------------------------------

Gimme more!

Famous people who are actually dead.

For example, Paul McCartney. On the cover of the album "Abbey Road", he's barefoot; a clear subliminal message that the real one died and was replaced with a stand-in. (Why?!) It sounds silly, but the rumour got so big that McCartney himself had to go out and publicly deny it... Although come to think of it, he also came out to congratulate the butchers who named their butcher shop "Paul Mac Carne" ["Paul McMeat"], so maybe he's truly a stand-in and, to top it off, looks like a raisin.

Excerpt of another video: "Well, thinking of different names, someone said "Paul Mac Carne". And well, he, being a vegetarian, says the idea was very good, started laughing and sent us a greeting."

--------------------------------------------------

I love this one:

The Reptilians.

It's basically the theory that there's a race of amphibian aliens [Wait for a second: aren't they called "reptilians"?] living among us for centuries and hiding their reptilian features behind human faces.

(Oh, you were telling me they're not actually aliens because they were born here?)

Excerpt of the 1996 movie "Mars Attacks!".

And who discovered this? David Icke! Or "Ique". An unsuccessful former soccer player and sportscaster. (How can you be unsuccessful as a soccer sportscaster?! All you need is a suit!) It's like believing in a religion where your Pope is Diego Latorre.

--------------------------------------------------

Now, I know what you're thinking: after all, how dangerous can all this get? I mean, no conspiracy theory has someone popular to represent it, no spokesperson of ridiculous and implausible plots has reached a truly important position in today's world.

Bah... There's actually only one.

The President of the United States of America.

That's right! Donald Trump, once the leader of the most powerful country in the world, had come to power mostly by throwing out fake news and conspiracy theories. And here are some:

Barack Obama is an immigrant.

Trump: "And I just say: why doesn't he show his birth certificate?"

Global warming is a myth.

Trump: "Obama is saying all of this has to do with global warming and I say all that is a hoax..."

Gisela Barreto was right.

Trump: "At two and a half years old, the baby, the beautiful baby, went to get the vaccine. Now he's autistic."

--------------------------------------------------

Okay, then... Conspiracy theories. For what? Well, in the case of Trump: influence on public opinion and accumulation of power. In the case of people who upload videos to YouTube... What do you think? A profitable, monetizable business! In fact, there's the conspiracy theory that we're actually making this video about conspiracy theories in order to have lots of views and earn buttloads of cash. (We'd never do that!)

And finally, a much deeper, inherent aspect of the human condition:

The need to believe in something.

The world is divided into two types of people: some think everything happens for a reason, everything is a sign, and perhaps there's also a magical entity organizing things for us; the other half of the people think we live in a desolate world without meaning or messages, there are only atoms randomly colliding with each other, and the Universe gives no f***s about us. Which of these two groups seems happier to you? Which one do you belong to? Which one would you like to belong to? I choose to join the conspiranoids! And listen to this, I know exactly what's going on:

The New World Order organized the Lollapalooza at the request of the Illuminati, who wanted to marketingly manage Lali Espósito, who actually wears a mask and underneath is "La Mona" Giménez, who's not actually a monkey but a reptile and has drank all the wine to get immunized against the vaccines at the request of Gisela Barreto, who was born in Corrientes just like Barack Obama, who claimed to have killed Bin Laden, who's actually alive and was driving the car that crashed that night and carried Chano Charpentier, who taught driving to Lady Diana, who was actually Mexican and was assassinated by Donald Trump, who was matched on Tinder with Hitler, who lives in a nursing home in Recoleta and has glaucoma, so he's hitting the reefers with Biondini, who is actually a hippie and a fan of León Gieco, invented global warming and, when being in a bad mood, takes a bus and goes to dinner at "Paul Mac Carne", where they invented the extra-thin Provoleta cheese, which coincidentally has the same shape as the Earth, which is actually flat!

*sigh* Knowledge is power. Quiero creer.

Soundtrack: State Anthem of the Soviet Union.

BECAUSE I’M NOT POPULAR, I’LL READ WATAMOTE: CHAPTER #166

Baseball season is in the air! Thankfully, you don’t need to be a fan of the sport to like this chapter. So long as you enjoy the stupid antics of a bunch of socially awkward teenage girls, there’ll be plenty of fun to be had. And of course, it wouldn’t be Watamote if they didn’t include a bunch of expertly intricated plot threads and natural character development as well. With all of Nico Tanigawa’s passions coming together once again, I can say that this chapter is definitely in top form.

So without further ado, let’s play ball!

Chapter 166: Because I’m Not Popular, I’ll Go Cheer

Tomoko getting flabbergasted just by Katou existing never gets old.

You know, I always had the impression that Tomoko wording things in the most perverted way was just a gut reaction due to her mind being perpetually in the gutter. But now, I feel like her answer here is just too on the nose to be anything but deliberate. IdiotPerv!Tomoko is hilarious, but TrollPerv!Tomoko is too powerful. 

Consequently, Tomoko can’t say shit without it biting her in the ass.

Okada with the save. Sure, she probably didn’t want to look like a slacker from Katou either, but still. If Katou’s the mom friend, then Pineapple-chan’s the exasperated, but supportive onee-san friend.

I just realized that this is a standard routine with these two: Yuri will say something tactless and Mako will call her name out in admonishment. If this has been going on since they first met, then Mako has boundless patience and/or is the absolute best friend that no person should ever take for granted. Not that 

Yuri does...mostly.

Y'all can tell that baseball fan Ikko had a blast drawing the backgrounds in this chapter.

Speaking of which, I’m 212% certain that Komiyama’s role in this chapter is to be the mouthpiece for Nico Tanigawa’s baseball fanatism. Given that it’s technically in-character (for who is basically their self-insert), and baseball chapters can only feasibly happen every hundred chapters or so, I’m fine with the mangakas taking these little indulgences.

Hey, let the girl live a little! Komi’s gotta cram ten chapters worth of dialogue she won’t get into one.

Pardon me, Tomoko, but you seem to have left your self-awareness by the entrance to the stadium.

Naturally, Tomoko hates that Komiyama isn’t making a fool of herself in front of her mom-crush. It’s easy to forget that so long as you don’t set off her berserk buttons, Komiyama is actually quite...normal. Like, being amicable with others and casually humble-bragging is her default state. 

Nico Tanigawa’s artistic habit of putting nicknames under faces always amuses me.

There’s being upset, and then there’s being petty. We all know that Tomoko is aware that Itou is in the band, and any other day, she wouldn’t hold that against the girl. But because she’s salty over Komiyama acting cool, her sensibilities revert back to Year-1 Tomoko logic. 

Now, if I were a more crass person, I could make the assumption that the majority of those underclassmen were a combination of girls admiring Fuuka’s “cool beauty” status and boys wanting to check out an attractive senior girl in a cheerleading outfit, discrepancies notwithstanding. 

But I won’t.  

Oh yeah, Miho. Based on the above cheers, she seems like your average popular girl, but if you recall, she got a kick out of Katou’s “offers” to Tomoko. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a bit of a mean streak in her.

Btw...armpits? Okay, then...

You’d think that by now, Tomoko would learn some subtlety before pulling shit like this.     

Normally, I’d call Tomoko out for shenanigans since I thought she was mostly over the whole “slut-shaming” thing. But given how she wasn’t thinking this when the girls in her class wore cheerleading outfits during last year’s sports festival (that we know of), I can only assume that this is more of Tomoko’s jealousy due to Fuuka’s friendship with Katou.

Either that, or Tomoko just doesn’t want to admit she finds her hot.

I think we’re all in agreement that Ucchi’s gonna lose massive points for this.

On the other hand, the image of Emoji Girl screaming about Tomoko’s crimes through a megaphone is peak absurdity, and I’ve been laughing my ass off for twelve minutes. 

In all seriousness, I’m kind of glad that Tomoko is finally getting her way overdue karma for all her skirt-peeping. Sure, it’s all been played for comedy, but that doesn’t change the fact that its sexual harassment, or the fact that she’s more than likely gotten away with it for being female.

It’s all fun and games until your stalker calls you out on it.

LIES.

You know...maybe it is Tomoko’s fetish. She’s done it so frequently, and it’s always been portrayed as just another one of Tomoko’s “quirks”. But given the context of all those occurrences, having a skirt-peeping fetish actually sounds very plausible. Thank you, Yuri, for that insight. 

Looking at Katou’s expression, it might be her fetish, too...

Seeing Tomoko get more and more mortified as everyone keeps dogpiling on her shame makes for quite the cathartic reading. 

Add on to the fact that Komiyama, the biggest perv of all, is the most dignified at this moment just makes this whole chapter an absolute treat.

Considering that Tomoko basically just got outed as a pervert in the middle of a crowd of spectators, she’s taking this quite well. First-year Tomoko could’ve had a legit panic attack if that had happened, but now, she actually has enough nerve to retaliate. Sure, Tomoko had some decent ammo with the Tanabata wish, so she likely had more guts than she would’ve been, but it’s still impressive nonetheless.

Sasaki Fuuka–putting a new spin on the term “victim-blaming”. 

Komiyama can be the reasonable one while Tomoko is the crazy pervert, or Tomoko can be the reasonable one while Komiyama is the crazy pervert.

But the universe just can’t have both be reasonable or perverted at the same time. 

As someone who knows jacksh*t about sports, I have to admit that this is an interesting fun fact if it can be applied to the popularity of real-life sports teams and cheer squads.

I could totally see this becoming a meme in the Watamote fandom. Anyone?

These moments of zero dialogue, sometimes a whole page’s worth, excel at immersing the reader into the story. Suddenly, you’re not just reading about characters in a story. You’re now experiencing first hand what’s like to be at a baseball game, with a few familiar faces from the band and cheer teams making it feel a lot more lively. 

If it weren’t for all the wonderful peeps on Reddit, I never would’ve caught that this is the same baseball manager we’re seen periodically since the beginning of the series. You know, the one Tomoko did that fake dub for?

Perhaps I’ll call her...Beta!Nemo. 

A PSA to all you non-sports fans: You can now pretend to be interested in your favorite high-school teams just by tuning into your local service provider.

Go, Harajuku Makuhari!

You know, I think I mentioned before that I wasn’t sure what Komiyama’s career prospects were.

Now I’ve got a clue.

Yo, I could feel that pain from my screen.

For a second, I thought this was Reina, given we can’t see her eyes and that she’s manspreading (sounds like something she would do). But then I pictured her actually signing up for cheerleading and...yeah, no. 

Not to sound all pretentious if you already know, but cheerleading really is one of the most difficult, dangerous, and underappreciated sports there is. In addition to all the physical risks, you have to maintain an endlessly cheery disposition, even when it’s hard. That’s why I call it the “customer service job” of the sports industry.

The go-to method to keep your in-story sports team at peak realism: 

Unwavering mediocrity. 

As opposed to them hurrying up and win? Quite the pessimist you are, Tomoko...

not.

As startling as it is to hear these words come out of Tomoko’s mouth, it’s not entirely unfounded. For all her negative worldviews, crude behavior, and general apathy, the one thing that has always been constant about Tomoko is that she knows things can be better and she wants things to be better. She never got the chance to really strive for it back then when she had nothing to latch onto. But now that she’s got friends, Tomoko realizes that she can feasibly make some of those ideals a reality.  

Their unbridled admiration is sweeter than diabetes.

Insert long-winded discussion of a related social phenomenon that probably exists, but the author is too lazy to research here. 

She...didn’t deny it. 

Character development...I guess?

I was wondering where Tomoko would draw the line on her slut-shaming towards Fuuka. Granted, it’s probably easier to feel empathy when you can see that shit happening from other people rather than yourself. 

But seriously, Katou? Pimping out your friend? You terrify me more and more with each passing chapter. 

See what I’ve been getting at? Tomoko knows that realistically speaking, her summer is probably not going to be anything extraordinary. Inconveniences will occur, moments of boredom will arise, and missed opportunities will transpire. But as I’ve reiterated time and again, even those “plain” experiences can become delightful memories when shared with those you care about.

That’s going to be a crucial feeling from this point on, it looks like. ‘Cause based on Yuri’s expression, she may have the most difficulty resonating with that kind of emotion. Let's see just how Yuri handles an expanding social circle–Tomoko included–that’s a little more bright-eyed than she is. 

We’re in the seventh inning stretch of Tomoko’s third year, and time will only tell if it ends in a victory.

Epilogue Thoughts

So, I finished the epilogues at around 11 AM on 4/21 and spent the better part of today mulling over it internally. Overall, I think I liked ‘em. Don’t get me wrong, they were brutal and tragic and ripped my heart out, but this is my garbage and I’m allowed to enjoy it. I was planning on liveblogging the epilogues but constantly pausing to jot down my feelings detracted from the overall experience. This is probably gonna be pretty scattershot, since I have neither the ability nor the desire to order my thoughts properly. Now, without any further preamble, let’s get into it.

Jane

 A lot of people said they didn’t like the treatment of Jane in the epilogues, and, fair enough, she was pretty awful and Crocker stans have every right to be pissed. But to anyone saying it came out of left field or didn’t make sense, I’d have to disagree (for the most part). Jane was brainwashed by the Condesce for the first 16 years of her life, and we see the effects of this when she goes Crockertier. She’d almost certainly have baked-in presumptions about how trolls were “meant to be” (ie super violent) even before she was consciously aware that trolls as a race existed. Jane was also always really in denial about having been brainwashed by the Condesce and I can definitely see adult Jane flat-out refusing to do any self-analysis and just assume there are no remaining effects of the brainwashing and she’s “totally cured” now or whatever. Jane’s also not super progressive? Like the conversation where she discovers Dirk has a crush on Jake and that Jake might even reciprocate was pretty uncomfortable to experience, and she starts a business on Earth C even though there’s no real need for corporations in a world with infinite resources. This shows that she’s still stuck in the belief that capitalism is inherently good/necessary for no reason other than “it’s what i grew up with.” All in all I could totally see Jane as someone who’d grow up to become xenophobic and have this colonizer mentality of “I have to regulate the Other because they’re not capable of functioning without me”

As for the non-consensual/rapey stuff... I’m actually not gonna touch that shit with a six-foot pole. The narrative is very explicit in the fact that Jane is an abusive partner and what she’s doing Is Bad, but like if she’s your favourite character you probably aren’t going to be all gung ho about seeing her do all the things that she did, which were admittedly very upsetting to read. I completely understand if you couldn’t read past those parts because they were pretty rough.

The Epilogues do get pretty unpleasant to read though :/

The Epilogues are highly antagonistic towards Homestuck’s readers. This is a fact. Whether this is a good or bad thing is up to interpretation, but it is at the very least not a new thing. Listen to Kate Mitchell of the Perfectly Generic Podcast and YouTuber OptimisticDuelist for more in-depth analysis than I could possibly provide on this, but one of Lord English’s greatest weapons is his ability to get people not to care about Homestuck, or even better, to revile it. That’s what the aspect of Rage represents: Plot Contrivance. As Karkat says,

THERE ARE OUTCOMES THAT ARE EVEN WORSE THAN THE COMPLETE ANNIHILATION OF EXISTENCE ITSELF. FORCES MORE DAMAGING TO THE INTEGRITY OF REALITY THAN THOSE CAPABLE OF TURNING IMAGINATION INTO PURE VOID. THEY ARE FORCES WHICH IF HANDLED RECKLESSLY WILL NULLIFY THE BASIC ABILITY OF INTELLIGENT BEINGS IN ALL REAL AND HYPOTHETICAL PLANES OF EXISTENCE TO GIVE A SHIT.

This is repeated, by Hussie himself no less, later on during his smug self-insert, found here. After Hussie dies and loses control of the narrative, LE is free to try his hardest to get you, the reader, not to give a shit. Rose, in the Epilogue’s Prologue, says that if people stop caring about Homestuck, reality as they know it will break apart, which is exactly in line with LE’s plans. So the fact that the Epilogues are very hostile towards the reader is basically par for the course. That said, I can see how it kinda sounds like I’m being all “oh it’s SUPPOSED to be shitty you wouldn’t underSTAND,” but that’s. literally what’s happening. and there’s evidence for it in the text.

Of course, in the past, when the narrative would pull things like this it would be under the guise of, say, Homosuck, which is very obviously meant to be bad and is presented in a fun, satirical way. The Epilogues, on the other hand, are downright upsetting. They’re presented in a much grittier light, which can obfuscate to what degree it’s Actually A Joke, if it even is a joke in any capacity. The fact that they’re tragic, though, should not be seen as evidence that they’re bad.

Some stuff I Liked

Both routes had some really top-notch interactions in them. A lot of folks seem to be overlooking how genuinely good the writing was. I said the phrase, “they’ve still got it” ALOUD to myself once or twice because the dialogue really did have that good ole Homestuck Charm. The Dave/Karkat/Jade interactions early on in Candy (before everything went to shit) were pretty great, as was basically everything that came out of English’s mouth. I dunno who the Antiquities Consultant was, but they did an excellent job at mirroring Jake’s usual speech pattern. I find that a lot of people, when writing Jake, just kinda throw in as many random old-timey words as possible and as a result it feels kinda disjointed, but the writing team for the epilogues managed to make him feel very... would light be a good way to put it? Sort of airheaded I guess. Just very goofy idk

We got to see Rosemary and they were married and raised a kid and it was the best! Rose was really well-written, as was Kanaya; I really loved seeing those personalities balance each other out again. It was nice to see them be good parents in the Candy-verse. The Vriska they raised was such a fucking scamp too! It was nice to see a Vriska who had a positive home environment but still had that same spunk

Also, Dave. Just, all of Dave. He was really solidly written throughout the whole thing. I fucking love his interest in the economy holy shit. I got to hear Dave Strider say the phrase  “neoliberal austerity measures.” That’s the best. “Economically Aware Anti-capitalist Dave” is rivaled only by “Karkat (True Leftism)”. I’ve seen a few complaints that Dave’s interest in the economy was also OOC, but for one thing he’s an adult and can cultivate new interests if he likes, and for another Dave is a pretty clever kid, and very numerically-minded. (Is that a term? I mean he’s good at maths and such). Don’t forget, not only did he manage to accumulate all the wealth on LOCAH in the span of three days by taking over their stock markets, but he also used the hash map modus in his day to day life, showing that he was able to do calculations in his head as quick as breathing. As shown here, the hash map modus is pretty complex and requires you to come up with a word that has the same value as the thing you wanna use in order to use it. That’s not easy to do on a dime and yet he uses it in his rooftop battles with Bro. All of this is to say, he’d certainly learn to be very good at economics if he wasn’t already. It just suits him.

Oh and I also love that Dave still makes SBaHJ and Karkat has a bunch of sockpuppet accounts he uses to defend Dave’s honour. it’s very cute.

Karkat also had some lines in the epilogues damn. I hadn’t realized how starved I was of VantasRage until I read a few of his rants. Also we finally got to see Badass Rebel Leader Karkat and he’s just as great as we all knew he’d be

The davekat kiss in Meat was great too. It was very gratifying to see after all the narrative cockblocking that went down in Candy.

John realizing in the Candy universe that he isn’t responsible for everything and that they’re all still just people with their own autonomy was good. Much as I have problems with the Candy universe on a whole I liked this specifically.

Also, roxygen! I love roxy/callie as much as the next guy but John and Roxy were very cute near the end of the comic and I liked seeing them grow up and have a kid. John names his son after the guy from Night Court because he’s a massive dweeb. Love it.

We got some great Terezi writing as well. The johnrezi at the end of Meat was nicely written and made me feel a whole host of emotions despite me not even having shipped them that hard beforehand.

OH MY GOD THE OBAMA SHIT. I almost forgot to put this in because I was focused on other stuff but my word the whole Obama Situation was beautiful I loved every second of it. It was so over-the-top in the best way and it simultaneously carried airs of being So Serious And Important To The Narrative and being just the dumbest load of crap. I loved it so much

Also, I was very happy with Roxy and Callie coming out. Roxy talking about how he’d already come out as dating an alien with a green skull for a head and how it felt like maybe he was being “selfish” by also wanting to come out as trans was a great illustration of something that already-out LGB people often feel when realizing they don’t identify with their assigned gender. Additionally, Calliope coming to terms with the fact that they don’t have to identify as female just to further differentiate themselves from Caliborn was great. It really helped to show how far they’d come from just being Caliborn’s foil into being their own person. However, this leads into:

Some stuff I didn’t like

Speaking of Roxy and Callie’s transition, Dirk also came out. As a transphobe. Which was disappointing, to say the least. He made a point of misgendering Roxy as often as possible and was pretty dismissive towards NB people when he learned about Calliope’s identity. (You could make an argument that Dirk is being thoughtless by misgendering Roxy and not intentionally malicious, but I don’t see Dirk as the kind of guy who slips up very often. He’s very careful with language.) I always headcanoned Dirk as trans, as I’m sure most people did, so having him just up and become transphobic was kind of the worst. I intend to talk about Epilogue!Dirk a lot more in a later post but yeah. Not a fan.

EDIT: I’ve thought about the Dirk thing a little more and he does eventually start calling Roxy by the correct pronouns, albeit in kind of a “see see look at how openminded im being youre such a manly dudely stud bro” way. Dirk’s initial discomfort with Roxy and Callie’s identity more comes from his own egotistical belief that he should have already known about it than it does from genuine animosity. That aside, he does still say “She probably would have loved being a “they” when she was a teen,” which sorta rubs me the wrong way. I might just be being oversensitive though.

Also, in the Meat universe, Rose and Kanaya split up! I’m very upset about that. Ultimate Power be damned, I want happy, married lesbians! It sucks that we either have Rosemary OR Davekat but not both

On the topic of davekat, Jade really got done dirty by both Epilogues, huh? She was used as a narrative device in one and was an intrusive presence in the lives of Dave and Karkat in the other. TBH I was never a fan of davekatjade for a lot of reasons but I would have preferred they be in a happy poly relationship than what actually happened in Candy.

Actually, the only two polyamorous relationships in the Epilogues both turned out awfully. I doubt any of the writing staff had anything against poly people; I’m sure it was just a coincidence but either way it’s pretty unfortunate. I have a bit to say about this but this is running too long as is.

Gamzee

Fucking Gamzee.

Unanswered Questions

Will there be any further updates? I sure hope there will, because the ending was not very satisfying and creates more questions than it answers. I can sort of see where it might be going but they left way too much up in the air and it feels very much like it’s unfinished. V has referred to it as “the whole thing” on twitter, so it might be finished for good, but i really hope it isn’t

Why did Rose say the session they’re creating will be the most important session of SBURB ever played? Why couldn’t they play it on Earth C? Surely Earth C’s inhabitants would be more used to seeing alien life forms and would know the basics of SBURB, thus making it more likely for them to survive it. Why go to the trouble of seeding a whole new planet? I’m curious.

Can a character be said to be “Out Of Character” if the character’s own creator wrote those actions? What if they passed on the actual writing to someone else but still had to verify it themselves? What does OOC even mean? Does it mean “this doesn’t fit my headcanon” or “there is no evidence for this” or “the author wouldn’t write them like this”? If it’s the last one, can an author merely saying “this interpretation is correct” absolve ANY action from being deemed OOC? I like that I’m being made to think about this kind of thing now

To what degree is each universe truly “Canon”? I’m aware that Candy lost its canon-ness when John decided not to fight LE, but the two universes are intrinsically linked: we see characters from one universe travel to another and it’s implied that Terezi has spoken to both Johns. How canon is Meat, even? Are either of them even still bound by the need to be part of the Alpha Timeline anymore, since Lord English has been created? What does anything mean?

Final Musings

I understand completely if you don’t like the epilogues. Maybe you think they’re too dark. Maybe you just don’t agree with portrayals of the characters. Maybe you hate that they gave jade a fucking tail when she never had one in the main comic. There certainly were bits of it that I wasn’t a fan of, but there are also parts I really wanna go draw fanart of right now. I like the Epilogues, but if I write fanfic or make dumb joke posts about Earth C, I’m probably gonna ignore large swaths of it (such as, I’ll probably keep both John and Dirk alive, and make them kiss a lot)

There has been a great deal of vitriol directed specifically at Hussie about the epilogues despite the fact that other people worked on them. It’s difficult to take these criticisms in good faith when so many people are blaming solely Hussie. I’m aware that he had total control over actual plot elements and wrote a bit of dialogue, but the bulk of the actual text was written by V. Another thing I’ve noticed is that people’s attitudes towards the epilogues are very much like the general attitude towards Act 7 when it first came out. I’ll admit, I left the Homestuck fandom in like 2014 and didn’t return until mid-2017, but people’s Jimmies were definitely still Rustled even then. There was a general atmosphere of “I hate Hussie, and you should too! The ending was bad and no one asked for it!” but as time went on, and people started analyzing the ending and making meta posts about it, everyone sort of grew acclimated to the ending. Suddenly, the general consensus was that Homestuck was Good Again Finally and the ending was Amazing and The Fandom Loved It. I feel like maybe that sort of thing’s gonna happen again with the Epilogues. I really hope that, as it continues to update (if it does), everyone will sort of chill out about it

From the Tabletop #3

If I don't do this with some haste, I'm going to forget important details, so let's get the party started. At this point, we had a GM swap, Valentinian being excused out of the plot due to something that, upon having it explained to me, I thought sounded a lot like the World of Light scenario in the latest Super Smash Bros game (which was brand new at the time of this swap). That's largely unimportant, though, as it was just an excuse to shuffle GM in and player out. We then welcomed Gwyn, a Solar Sorcerer and a dangerously savvy and competent individual who Scarlet quickly took a shine to. Gwyn: You only want me for my mind, don't you? Scarlet: No, I totally want your body too. Gwyn: Not helping. Next, we sailed out of the Wyld and we ended up docking in, uh, a bathhouse in WhiteWall. No, I don't know how exactly we managed this. The Wyld, it's a hell of a drug. Anyway, with Maxwell now having kicked his oxygen habit, we needed to inform his next of kin. A little somebody you might have heard me mention named Taiga. We were successful in finding her, and Volkenstein almost got his head punched off for it. After talking her down and explaining that they were merely the messengers of the bad news, Volkie went over to a fighting arena. Whereupon he decided to pick a fight with the biggest badass of the lot. While this was happening, we followed some rumors that lead to the town square where a little god was requesting strange items in return for miracles. Turns out this was a Solar Sorcerer named Malgigi the Violet. He was a total G, and threw in with us with minimal prodding once Scarlet name-dropped Valentinian. Back with Volk, the badass in question began using very specific fighting moves - what people who actually read the book would know as Dark Messiah martial arts charms. This is somewhat forgivable, on account that - really, how would he have known? - but it kind of set up a problem later on that he really should've known better, but I'll get to that in a little. Short of it was, he had the balance of his Four Humors (look it up) thrown into discord, resulting in his poops being cursed. Afterward, Malgigi assessed the situation and created a means to remove the curse, using acupuncture. Suffering only pins and needles (tee-hee), he was soon back in fighting form. Taiga also helpfully informed us that the next key to the One Piece was hidden in a massive vault, heavily guarded and under lock and key itself. Scarlet insisted she could not leave without it and the party, Taiga in tow to assist departed. By the way, there was this huge to-do about "how can you put a key into a safe?" and this honestly took longer than it should have for the party to parse. But since our current GM knew full well our greatest weakness was overthinking (on account Maxwell was dead and Volk wasn't used for intelligece tests), he got his chuckles. The funny part being that the puzzles he gave us in this weird-ass haunted bank... place... were either solved instantly between Gwyn and Scarlet or set us back an hour in real-time, no in-betweens. On our way out was when we really ran into trouble, because one of those aforementioned "Rivals of Volkenstein" appeared for the first time. Thing is, he arrived as an Abyssal, so Volk couldn't immediately recognize this fellow calling himself "The Jackal". The Jackal was kind enough to exposit his backstory for us, telling us how Volkenstein scarred his face by violently tearing off the mask of "El Amigo Grande". When he explained this, Volkenstein immediately agreed that was how it went down. Just a reminder: this guy continued to insist he was a Face. Gwyn and Scarlet knew there was trouble when The Jackal was absorbing the necrotic essence from the surrounding area, and both petitioned to run. At this point, however, The Jackal busted out his signature move - La Cucaracha Espada - which Volk decided he would just tank. Head-on. For those who aren't super steeped in Exalted lore, let me explain. Necrotic essence is bad for living tissue. This lead to an age-old addage "Curse my poops once, shame on you. Curse my poops twice, you're a fucking dumbass." Having dropped like a sack of potatoes, Volk was out of the fight. Gwyn conjured a warp spell, which Scarlet assisted in dragging Volk closer for the escape (but only after suggesting that they could use Volkenstein as a sled to flee). The spell succeeded and we arrived back in front of Malgigi, who was deeply disappointed in a certain poop-cursed wrestle-man. Malgigi explained that the first curse-breaking ritual wouldn't work on something of this potency, and that the ritual required would involve a daicon radish being firmly inserted into Volkenstein's anus. And left for several days. He also recommended that Volk stop drinking, as the damage could be too much for his system to handle. This caused ol' Volkenstein to more or less just lay on his back and vomit for several weeks after. This was probably for the best. Because we needed to pursue the next potential key: the frozen north! Or, what would be the frozen north, but it was the Emerald Labyrinth of the Hazlanti League. Then all Hell broke loose. Because then we got out fourth member, Maxwell's successor, Magpie. I don't even remember Magpie's full name. Or even if she had one. Because that's not what we called her out-of-character. To us, she was Stockholm Dino Maiden: worst of all the punchmonkeys. The thing with Magpie... well, they were legion. To start, her backstory made no sense. She was supposed to have been raised by Arilack. For those who don't know, just imagine a big, predatory, dumb dinosaur. She's the patron of dinosaurs and reptile beasts. Alien, ancient, and not particularly a fan of humankind. For some reason, she found this little kabob of a human child and decided to do what anyone with a ham sandwich would do - teach it multi-variable calculus! So, that's the first problem. So with a backstory that makes no sense, she also had stats that made no sense: she was a Zenith caste with stats that of a Dawn caste. She was supposed to be playing a stupid barbarian but had Lore 3 (one higher than Scarlet, who actually DID have a formal education), dots in medicine (Why, though?!), was a tomb raider with a love of artifacts (WHY, THOUGH?!), was a gourmet chef (BUT WHY THOUGH?!), and the list goes on. In fact, I even gave Magpie an easy "out". I suggested she should be the little sister of a Lunar I made back in 2e, Victorious Carp of the Sky, who actually DID have a familial draconic motif. The character was well-liked and even made a cameo appearance in the previous campaign in one of Hell's arenas, where he battled a fellow fighter to a standstill (the only draw of the tournament which ended in a pair of new drinking buddies), and his mother had a draconic theme as well in her own right. It would've gone together like bread and butter and better explained her stats. So, naturally, her player rejected it outright. Gwyn wanted to venture into the woods to find a figure he called "Grandfather", an ancient and wizened entity who was held in high regard by Gwyn's people. He did find him too, but that didn't particularly go anywhere. Scarlet, Volk, and Maggie (brought along for metagame reasons, which I later rationalized as Scarlet wanting more "dumb muscle") had a narrow head-long collision with a massive, black, cylindrical, metal object that raced across the area. Things got a little hectic, and my memory of the next few events are... fuzzy. Consulting with Valentinian's player I am able to continue. Next, we met a powerful Lunar who acted as guardian and de facto leader of a small village, Esha Mae. She tasked us with retrieving a particular book for her, leading us back to town. Long story short, we obtained the book (which was a series of deeply politically satirical and pornographic cartoons) due to an exchange with a mysterious woman who looked a lot like Scarlet - it's important for me to mention at this point that Scarlet was raised by her uncle, Vermilion Mountain, as her parents (Verdant Wind and Azure River) and most of her extended family were killed when she was about 8 years old due to a sudden flu-like disease that ravaged her hometown in the Caul - who called herself Alabaster Albatross. No prize for guessing the relation, but that plotline never actually went anywhere anyway. Long story short: we did give Esha Mae (nicknamed just "Mae" by Scarlet, as she was wont to do) her book, but then the Albatross attacked using a massive steam cannon weapon. Upon firing, Magpie and Volkenstein managed the one (1) unambiguously awesome thing they pulled off the entire campaign and body-blocked the projectile. Scarlet battled with the Albatross, who was just way, way more powerful and upon dealing just the most glancing of blows, Scarlet was burdened by a large, dead bird lassoed around her neck. Alabaster Albatross taunted Scarlet and wished her the best of 'luck', which the albatross (lowercase) signified the opposite of. Then Magpie did something spectacularly dumb and summoned a Lord of Beasts, which ultimately sent Albatross (uppercase) and her weapon Team Rocket'ing over the horizon line. Then the Lord of Beasts basically told us to fuck off and blocked our number from his phone and stormed off, mumbling about the "kids these days". Consulting Malgigi once more for Scarlet's new predicament, he had us cobble together what amounts to a "Good Luck Potion". Managing that, Scarlet felt the need to 'test her luck' by... well, getting lucky. Which she did. With Mae. The next morning, Scarlet awoke to see Mae presenting her with an egg and declaring it their baby. Fucking Lunars, man, how do they even work?! Anyway, Scarlet charmed Mae into coming with them as a non-combat role on the crew and Scarlet began a new life as an engaged woman. Whew, this has gone on entirely longer than I expected, so let's stop here. Join me next time for: Valentinian dies in Boiling Magma and goes to Hell! Scarlet brutally murders yet another of her cherished circle-mates! Magpie is useless! Volkenstein becomes a thrown weapon! See you next time! *Quick note: Last time I screwed up "letter of MARQUE". I don't even know how I managed it, seeing as there's a sail charm with it right in its name. Ugh, I am so stupid sometimes.

Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite? - Part 2: GERALD

There are some villains I like. And there are some villains I don’t like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That’s where this comes in.

This is a new mini-series of mine, in which I’ll be going into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the villains in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I’ll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves in the game(s) they featured in. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don’t bite. :>

Anyhow, for today’s installment, we’ll commence Round 2 by taking a look at the mastermind of Sonic Adventure 2, who got a cap popped in his ass 50 years prior: Professor Gerald Robotnik.

The Gist: Gerald was once a kindhearted scientist who wanted nothing more than to use his genius to help benefit mankind as we know it. Seeking to cure the fatal illness of his granddaughter, Maria, Gerald worked on many ambitious projects, such as constructing the Space Colony A.R.K, working on countless potentially dangerous weapons like the Artificial Chaos units and the Eclipse Cannon, and most famously, creating the Ultimate Lifeform and chest hair enthusiast himself, Shadow the Hedgehog. None of these achievements actually cured Maria, but the professor worked tirelessly in his eternal quest all the same.

Here he is here, looking completely fucking terrifying.

Unfortunately, this quest was tragically cut shot when a bunch of dummies from G.U.N stormed the A.R.K. in an effort to shut down all of Gerald's projects. In addition to the professor's own arrest, it also led to the death of his beloved granddaughter. When he found out about the casualty... well, he didn't take it all that well, because the revelation transformed him overnight into a mad fucknugget.

At some point before his execution at the hands of G.U.N, he reprogrammed the A.R.K. itself to collide with the planet should all seven Chaos Emeralds be inserted into the Eclipse Cannon, as a final middle finger to the human race who took everything away from him. He also reprogrammed Shadow to carry out the hunt for the emeralds, to ensure his revenge would go off without a hitch in spite of the somewhat annoying obstacle of being dead. While Shadow would indeed go on to carry out Gerald's plot 50 years later upon his release, courtesy of one Dr. Eggman, an attack of conscience through a talk with Amy Rose convinced him to turn against his creator's corrupt intentions at the most vital moment, going so far as to help Sonic take down the professor's repurposed guard dog - the Biolizard - and seemingly sacrificing himself in the process.

Though Gerald’s pre-insanity days would be delved into more come Shadow’s own spinoff (although making a deal with an obviously evil alien makes one question if he was already crazy from the beginning), his villainous spin is still remembered with dread by the world he once loved. And no one remembers it more vividly than the one who nearly carried it all out. The one who Gerald looked at as a son.

“NOW can I use a better font?”

The Design: There’s a bit of an inconvenience here, because whereas there was a lot to cover with the many designs for Chaos, there's significantly less to speak of with Gerald's design. He’s essentially just a grey-haired (grey-whiskered?), slightly slimmer version of his grandson.

“Eggman? No. I’m my own original character... Deadman.”

In fairness though, with the way this particular antagonist works, it was never really about the physical appearance in the first place.

The Personality: ...There's not really a lot to say here either, since we've only seen a few moments with him due to his status as a posthumous character. He was a decent, altruistic man, only to turn crazy and vengeful when Maria got bumped off. That about covers it, really.

“I know that human beings and anthropomorphic killing machines can co-exist peacefully.”

The Execution: Now this is where the meat lies with Gerald. But I have to say, my thoughts on the professor overall are very prominently... grey.

On one hand, he's sympathetic enough as a character. The premise of a once pleasant man carrying out his vengeance from beyond the grave is certainly an interesting one, and his voice actor did a really good job with conveying his spiral into tragic insanity (even if it's slightly harder to take seriously when you remember it's the same guy who voiced Vector the Crocodile in Sonic Heroes).

On the other hand, while I don't think the basic concept with Gerald is too out-of-reach for a Sonic game, I do think there are certain elements involving him that go a bit too far and dip it into pretentious territory when you remember what franchise this is supposed to be. Much like Maria getting shot to death by the military, I feel that the recorded footage of Gerald's to-be-execution is a misguided result of being gritty for gritty's own sake.

Can Sonic lend itself to darker moments? Sure it can! But it needs to do those moments right, in a way that works with this franchise, rather than work against it. Moments like Gerald's pre-execution footage don’t mesh well, and make it all too easy to forget that I’m playing a Sonic game at all.

Can you tell I don’t have a lot of photos to work with for this guy?

His plan isn't without problems either. While not to the same degree as Mephiles certain other villains who I’ll cover at a later date, Gerald's evil scheme nonetheless has a few loopholes, the most infamous one being: Where did he get the time to do all this?

In order to have been able to program Shadow's servitude and the A.R.K's collision in the first place, he had to have had access to them. That's obvious enough, but here’s the thing: Gerald spent his captivity in Prison Island, which you can tell because his cell is the same one that Sonic was trapped in earlier on in the game. You COULD make an argument as to how he accessed Shadow at least, since the Ultimate Lifeform was sealed away in Prison Island as well, but here's where it gets even trickier: He couldn't have went insane until after his capture and imprisonment, because his arrest happened during the G.U.N. raid, the same event that resulted in Maria's death to begin with, and very little time would have logically passed between that and the professor being taken into custody.

So with what the narrative gives us to work with, either Gerald somehow had access to Shadow and the A.R.K. during his captivity, meaning G.U.N. are extremely incompetent and careless... or he already reprogrammed them before the raid even happened and thus when he had absolutely no reason to do such a thing. (Maybe he did it for a cheeky laugh...?)

“Only through the power of Windows Movie Maker can I make my vengeance manifest.”

Speaking of Shadow, Gerald's manipulation of him to destroy the world in Maria's name kind of falls apart when you remember that Shadow's flashbacks of Maria presented the latter as the kindhearted girl she really was. Maria marked the core of Shadow's own tragedy and subsequent low opinion on humanity, and yet nothing about her presentation in said flashbacks indicated that she would have wanted him to destroy the planet and kill everyone. Gerald clearly altered Shadow’s memories by inserting his own misanthropy and vengeance into his creation, so why did he leave his memories of Maria completely unscathed? 

This is even part of what causes Shadow to eventually change his ways in the first place. And yet, despite the story itself insisting otherwise, it's not like knowing Maria's real ideals was a game changer for Shadow. He already remembered what Maria was truly like.

“Shite, I guess.”

And finally, there's his relationship with his grandson, Eggman. Or more accurately, Eggman's relationship with him. Either way, I feel as conflicted about it as I do with Gerald himself.

We find out that Eggman considers his dead grandfather to be an even bigger genius than he is, even long after the latter's demise. I don't want to make this all about Eggman, since this post is meant to be about Gerald (don't worry though, the doctor will get his time in the sun soon enough, just you wait), but I always had a problem with this, because I feel it undermines Eggman’s own status when you really think about it, and while I can appreciate the attempt to give Eggman some depth and backstory expansion, I don't think this angle works out for Eggman specifically. Why? Because for a character who was - and still is - loud, proud, and insistent on how he is the best scientist there ever was and ever will be, the sudden revelation that he thinks his grandaddy was better than him honestly feels like a betrayal of the character in a way. If he respected his grandad's genius and maybe got inspired by him when he was a young lad, but still considered himself the biggest genius when he grew up into the man he is today, that would have felt more characteristic of him in my honest opinion.

“So just for clarity’s sake, when I say I’m the greatest scientific genius in the world, I’m actually saying I’m not the greatest scientific genius in the world.”

So yeah. Overall, my thoughts on Gerald are mixed. Decent concept, good acting, and I actually do like the character to an extent, but there's a lot working against him that make me unable to consider him a full winner. Also, he and Shadow fucked Eggman over massively. The game that many consider to be Eggman’s finest moment, and they pull the rug out from underneath him and reveal he was a clueless pawn the whole time.

I’m slightly bitter about that.

Just slightly.

Ever so slightly.

Crusher Gives Gerald a: Thumbs Sideways!

Just some werewolf (and writing) thoughts

I had another moment tonight. I get these moments sometimes. This one actually stems from my writing.

Why can’t people take werewolves seriously anymore?

I’m going to just clip this here because this is going to get very long and inane and now you’ll find out why I’m going to have to just tag some posts as “rambling.” Keep reading if you’re curious as to what’s bothering me. But if you don’t want to drown (seriously you will drown, I didn’t hold back) in unorganized walls of text, wait for this Wednesday’s werewolf fact instead.

Whether werewolves are from the beginning or turn into one, they’re jokes. Whether the person telling the story intended it or not - jokes. Ha ha, dog jokes. Sometimes that’s fine. I enjoy it, I even dabble in it myself. I’m not completely innocent of that, and I’m not completely bashing everything that does it. I think it’s fun and it can be really super cute and entertaining. Especially if it’s reached at a point later in a story or a relationship (I know some of you you know what I’m talking about).

But the problem is that werewolves have been degraded into just something funny, or something average. They’re just one of those monsters you randomly throw at your players in a tabletop session, or they’re a boss fight in a video game. There’s an evil pack of them your heroes have to slay. By default, no one takes them seriously.

Where’s the depth? Where’s the meaning? Where’s the horror, the torment? The challenge?

That’s another thing. They’re almost “normal” by the standards of a lot of settings they’re in. It’s “normal” for a guy to turn into a horrible man-beast that eats people. Yeah, that’s not really that scary, I’ve seen those before and killed like half a dozen. It’s not too uncommon out here in [insert setting/region], the only hard part is figuring out what werecreature the person is turning into while they’re seizing around in throes of desperate agony.

Let’s fight something bigger, badder, scarier. Werewolves are so blasé. And it’s not a setting they’re in, it’s werewolves as a whole - in popular culture. It’s part of the reason why we see all these people trying to “change” them in some way or another, to try to make them “different” or “unique” - and we’re back to bigger, badder, scarier.

Say for example you run a zoo. Someone sells you a tiger. A TIGER? But tigers are NORMAL! We’ve all seen tigers before. These enormous, endlessly majestic animals that can easily kill a man with a single effortless swipe of its massive paw, with teeth longer than your forefinger, whose tawny hide has since time immemorial stricken a primal fear into anyone who sees it - as it should. Yeah, those are boring. They’re not good enough anymore.

Let’s genetically engineer dinosaurs and bring them back instead. Tigers are so blasé.

Only then dinosaurs aren’t good enough anymore. A fucking tyrannosaurus rex? That’s not very scary. We’ve seen those now. Let’s amp it up a little more. Let’s genetically engineer a big freaky albino auto-cloaking horror monster dinosaur straight out of your nightmares because we’ve reached a point now where, to modern audiences, a T-rex is normal, and we need something - what? Bigger, badder, scarier.

And as for werewolves, where’re they? Down there on the bottom of the totem pole somewhere with the “lowly” tiger.

(note: this isn’t a dig at Jurassic World or its plot, I’m just using that general idea as an example :P)

Anyway, I love Jurassic Park with all my heart and soul and that isn’t even a very good comparison as to what exactly is bothering me.

So what do you mean, Mav? What’s got you so upset tonight?

I’m upset because I feel like no one will ever take werewolves seriously again. Not really. Yeah, some things might try, but they won’t get very far. Because in the end, werewolves will always be relegated to what they are now.

Werewolves are essentially one of the most primal and terrifying concepts that have captivated the imaginations and nightmares of mankind in some way or another for the entire existence of humanity, even since the days of cavemen. Throughout our collective history and across every single region of the world, we have werewolves.

But now the average person struggles to care about a story if it focuses on werewolves. What a silly, cheesy fantasy thing. Tell someone your story has werewolves in it and you’ve probably already lost them, because to them, the word “werewolf” carries a lot of connotations and assumptions that are premeditated and inescapable thanks to this greater hive-mind conception of them shaped over the years by overwhelmingly bad media, with far too few diamonds in the rough to change most anyone’s opinion about anything.

Because, to the average person, what are werewolves? They’re B-movie monsters. They’re old news (despite never really being much news at all). They’re some shirtless romance model. They’re a random encounter, or just that one boss fight earlier in the game.

They’re paranormal romance novel material or something similar that serious authors won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, because the second you have a werewolf in your story that isn’t just a one-off, lame, monster-of-the-week creature (hi, “Silver Bullet”), your story acquires a very, very specific audience and becomes one of four things: a young adult paranormal novel ala Harry Potter, a romance novel ala Twilight, a standalone horror quick-read, or a book no one wants to read because you can’t quite fit it into any of those specific boxes, and those are the only boxes in which werewolves are now meant to exist.

Oh yeah, or straight-up comedy.

Bring up werewolves in a conversation - what do you get? Any number of, or all of, these responses: Oh yeah, I saw [insert horrible movie here], it was really funny. Haha, [dog joke]. Hey what about were[whatever]s. Let’s talk about all these other wacky werecreatures and make endless jokes about those instead. How about wereannelids and werehumans? Oh I’m sorry, were you trying to have a serious conversation? Well then how about you answer this completely off the nut question instead? What would happen if a werewolf swallowed silver? Wouldn’t that be funny!?

What about discussing them in relation to some particular setting? Oh yeah, it’s just that ONE setting that treats them that way, right? No. No, it’s not.

My whole life, I’ve just wanted to find some way to encourage people to take werewolves seriously again. I don’t know why or how this became my passion, but that’s what it’s always been.

This blog has actually helped a lot. So thank you all.

But here’s my problem. And now things are about to get personal and move away from broader territory. I’m about to talk about writing fiction.

My primary means of showing the world that werewolves can be awesome, I had always planned before, was to write some novels about them and attempt to tell a story as deep, as moving, as powerful, and as emotional as I think one could tell with a werewolf protagonist. Those novels were going to be called The Prophecy of the Six, set in my world, Wulfgard. And my protagonist? My once favorite character I’ve ever made, Tom Drake. But now I’m struggling to love these things again, to the point of being deeply and emotionally upset with myself.

Because in my mind, he isn’t even “the werewolf” anymore. He’s barely even a scary monster anymore. Which, in my world, he is supposed to be all of those things. He is my ultimate werewolf, and beyond that he is the ultimate monster. Or at least he was/is in theory. For quite a while now, he hasn’t been. There are other werewolves, and for some reason or another or in some way or another, they’re better at being werewolves. They’re, put simply... better werewolves.

And I have to be reminded time and time again that werewolves “aren’t even that scary.” Which I know is a statement bred in the pop culture we have to work with today, and it’s statements like that that should - and sometimes do - spur me on to work even harder. But when I’m down, it’s hard to deal with. And there’s not really much to stop all of these things from coming close to breaking me. Breaking my spirit, in terms of the werewolf thing, and breaking my heart, in terms of my personal issues with Tom right now.

So next time you leave a comment on some story you read online that you really enjoy? Thank the writer simply for writing it. It’ll mean a lot to them. It’ll mean the world to them.

Being a writer can tear you apart. Being a writer is very, very hard.

And on top of that, next time someone talks to you about something that they’re truly and deeply passionate about, no matter what that thing is, do me a big favor...

Don’t shoot them down.

Even if, yes, their passion is trying to prove to the world that something as “silly” as werewolves holds a much deeper and more profound meaning than your average direct-to-DVD horror flick is going to convey.

Title: Nil Admirari no Tenbin Teito Genwaku Kitan Company: Otomate Release Date: April 21, 2016 Platform: PS Vita Walkthrough

The Gist

After seeing her brother burn himself because of a book, Tsugumi starts seeing ‘aura’ or the glow of a cursed book. She, then, joins a group of people called Fukurou who search for these books hoping to avoid any more victims like her brother.

The Gameplay

Like with most recent games, you can change the name of the main character or leave it as it is.

Once you’ve finished the common route, you’ll choose whose route you’re going to play. At first, I was bummed out. I prefer getting to a route depending on the choices I made as I play.

As you go through the route, some choices lead to happy or bad ends. You can check if you are heading to your chosen end once the libra appears. The left is the good end and the one on the right is for the bad end.

Within the route, you can check your progress on the story. You can also choose which chapter you would like to see. Other things to check out here are if the chapter will give you a CG event or choices, or which end you are going to end up with. It is a nifty system to have, I must say.

The Story

The whole thing about searching for cursed books is pretty intriguing. It poses an interesting question – is it the fault of the author for writing such suicide-inducing books or not? In Nil Admirari’s clunky way of storytelling, it shows that it depends on the intent of the writer. Some write because they are cornered, some have no idea that they have a capacity to produce something like that, and some are plain twisted in their own way.

But the game fails to deliver that.

That’s the thing, the story has lots of inconsistencies.

I thought it would be like in Collar x Malice where it made me think what is really right and wrong. What happens is that one route this character would be the bad guy, in the next route he’ll be the victim and so on. At the end of the game, it made me wonder who is the bad guy.

Clunky way of storytelling

I mean the pacing. The shift from the main plot to the character’s own issues is forgivable since I love the characters. Still, there are scenes where I scratch my head in confusion. Smut coming out of the blue, revelations from the left field – you get the idea.

One of the biggest offenders is Shizuru’s route. I thought the problems are solved and I’m off to the epilogue when the game dropped a twist. I loved twists. But what I didn’t like about this twist is how it disrupts the entire flow of the game.

Misogyny

When I started this game, I wanted to root for Tsugumi and her dreams of living life on her own terms by joining Fukurou. I thought things are looking good because another female character named Shiori leads the team. Then her best friend also got a job as a reporter. The game pretty much establishes a time period where people start accepting women in the workforce.

Uh, no.

Then these people start saying “No you can’t do this or that because you are a girl.” This includes her workmates.

Seriously? (╬ Ò ‸ Ó)

This is sad. 😦

I get it if people outside Fukurou will say that. But for Tsugumi’s workmates, it’s just absurd. For one, their leader and the person everyone respects is a woman. Shiori holds a gun. So why can’t Tsugumi go train herself as well? Why do the other characters insult Tsugumi for being a woman when they don’t say anything like that to Shiori? It’s just frustrating to see her being treated like that when Tsugumi works so hard.

The story could have been good. But at least, the characters make this game not too bad. For the order, I recommend the one I did – Shizuru -> Hisui -> Shougo -> Akira -> Rui -> Hayato -> Secret Character.

Characters

Kuze Tsugumi

With her kind of upbringing, Tsugumi surprised me in ways I didn’t expect.

She is Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes and an innocent girl in the ways of the real world. But she decides to work. Not for her family or anybody else but for herself. Well, part of her decision is probably to get out of her family. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that she wants to do things her way. And that’s praise-worthy.

I expected Tsugumi to be a sensitive damsel-in-distress. But she proved me wrong. She likes doing menial things, like household chores. She strives to do better at her work. Heck, she even wanted to be a decent fighter to be able to stand alongside her workmates. Too bad, she is born in an era where people are extremely judgmental of women.

As much as I want Tsugumi to be on my list of favorite heroines, she falls short on the list. For one, I got used almost immediately with her reactions. It’s easy to guess how she would react because there’s a pattern. One character says something that surprises her and her initial reaction is “!!” or “??” or “…?”. What the heck is that థ౪థ. Is the writer lazy to give her a proper reaction? I’m pretty sure normal people have something they blurt out when surprised.

Another thing is that Tsugumi rarely holds an opinion of her own. More often than not, she describes things as they happen, not how she views things. I guess giving the heroine a “general” personality makes it easier to “insert” yourself in her shoes? But I don’t play visual novels to be “in” character. I play so that I can immerse myself in the story and its characters. Too bad the writer didn’t achieve that here. As I’ve mentioned here, there’s got to be more from her than her surface-level reactions.

Tsugumi’s ready anytime, anywhere ◦°˚\(*❛‿❛)/˚°◦

So early on, we know that Tsugumi is prim and proper. Like how she is scandalized watching a movie with a guy, blushes when he holds her hands or hesitates just going on a date since it is her first time. The surprising thing is, she never hesitates during sex. That never fails to give me a good laugh. She doesn’t even ask the most cliche first-timer questions. She just goes all the way on her first time, no apprehensions at all.

I’ve mentioned in this post how the couple does it anywhere – even in the apartment’s public spaces. I’m legit scared that someone might catch them doing it. Tsugumi, though, with all her good girl upbringing, has never questioned it at all. In one route, she worries what her teacher would say if she’s caught watching a movie with a guy. I wonder what would her teacher say if she knew her student does it anywhere.

Migiwa Shizuru

Migiwa Shizuru is the novelist of erotic and tragic love stories. He lives in the shared house with the Fukurou members. Tsugumi met him when he tried to sell her a goldfish while also trying to hit on her.

I wanted to like this route because the smut is A+. It reminds me of the smutty manga I’ve read on my teens. But I didn’t feel the romance between them. I couldn’t even tell when Shizuru falls in love with Tsugumi. He likes her, yes. He likes her body, for he tries to seduce her a lot of times.

My neutral mood for this route starts when Shizuru treats Tsugumi like a whore who beds anyone who has a dong after seeing her walking in the park with another guy. When does walking become synonymous with banging? I was insulted for Tsugumi. She gives her best even her sleep just to help Shizuru and that’s what she gets? Seriously? Thank goodness I used a guide or else the choices that I want to choose will definitely land me a bad end www. All I wanted was for Tsugumi to slap him and never talk to him until he realizes his mistake. She did slap him. But she also wanted to apologizes afterward. Girl you don’t. You just don’t.

After that, I can’t unsee how Shizuru appeals to the good girl nature of Tsugumi to make her submit. Like that one time when he makes her a “proper” adult. Tsugumi spends the entire route doing everything to become mature for Shizuru. When it’s banging time, he asks her a choice which would make sex consensual. But did she really want it? Or she just wanted to prove herself as an adult?

Hoshikawa Hisui

Hoshikawa Hisui is the youngest member of Fukurou. Like Tsugumi, he also has the power to see the cursed books. He looks like a doll, on top of his pretty looks.

Hisui surprised me in his route. He looks so open in the common route. But he’s rather rigid on some things – which totally makes sense once you get to the bottom of things.

What’s surprised me even more though is this:

[This is my first time but I know everything about it] {rough translation}

[I’m pretty sure I’ll be good at it]

Mind you, Hisui makes it a point how he hates women and not interested in those things. But he knew those things??

Also, I feel like the main moment for climax got turned down to throw in smexy times. I’m disappointed when Tsugumi chooses to ~fiercely~ kiss Hisui in the middle of his monologue. It felt like a great moment to reassure Hisui and build his self-confidence. Instead, she dived right in for sex. What’s with them acting like sexually deprived teens turning into humping in the middle of a serious discussion?

Ukai Shougo

The son of the prime minister who tried to kill himself the same day Hitaki did.

I’m no good with tsundere characters and Shougo is a massive one. He is constantly irritated towards Tsugumi. I get offended for Tsugumi because he keeps on pushing the blame on her when it wasn’t her fault. And it pains me to see her not stand up for herself (the way she does for Shizuru in Shizuru’s route). He just keeps on getting angry on various things. And tells that it is Tsugumi’s fault when it isn’t.

It was difficult to like Shougo. Though once he got over his tsun side, he is pretty cute. It’s fun to tease him and see him blush even while saying a simple “I’ll be going.”

Kogami Akira

Kogami Akira appears cold and distant. He has a couple of mysteries around him like how he doesn’t like people seeing him naked in the bath.

I was spoiled about the major landmine in this route that I’m dreading to do Akira’s side of the story. Even after finishing the route, I’ve tried so hard to think of even one good thing that I found here. But all I could think of is how this is a big disappointment to me. Akira’s route makes all the previous route I played far greater than his.

First off, this route has a clunky pacing and Akira’s route is another offender. One moment, it is building the romance. A few minutes after it is dropping a twist. It is confusing as it breaks the momentum one scene establishes. So even if I know, that he should already be falling for her, the romance is just not there.

Akira has his moments. He can be cute if he wanted to. But then these moments are rare and all over the place. And no, it’s not even in the smutty scenes. He has the worst scene out of the first four.

Shiginuma Takashi is a lot worse on this route too. In the previous routes, he appears as a good host with ulterior motives. But here, Tsugumi gets to know him up close and personal.

Sagisawa Rui

Sagisawa Rui is a medical student who accidentally bumps into Tsugumi every single time.

I know I’ve been waiting for this route. But seeing Hayato watching Tsugumi being taken by Rui is painful. I’m tired of seeing him watching on the sidelines.

What I did, once I get to the point where I’m halfway through Rui’s route, I skipped until the end to unlock Hayato’s route. I swore I’ll come back once I’ve finished Hayato’s. But then this news happened… and I’ll explain later. 8D

Ozaki Hayato

Ozaki Hayato is the first one to invite Tsugumi to join Fukurou after her brother’s incident. Hayato has an obvious crush to Tsugumi that is evident in every route. It’s just so cute!

But choosing guys other than him makes me feel bad for Hayato. It’s been too long. But I loved it. Though the pacing is as clunky as ever and the romance just happened, I still loved it for Hayato x Tsugumi. I even loved the revelation in the end. And I’m looking forward to playing his route in the fan disk.

Secret Character

I never thought I’d guess it right www.

Once you get to Hayato’s story, it is pretty easy to guess who the secret character is. Easy because once you’re there, he is the one who keeps on appearing even when he isn’t on other routes. But I didn’t do his route and wants to save this once I get to the port.

Speaking of port…

Nil Admirari no Tenbin on Switch

That’s right. Otomate is moving to Switch now and one of the titles that they are going to port is Nil Admirari no Tenbin. It will be titled Nil Admirari no Tenbin Irodori Nadeshiko. This port will contain the first game and its fandisk.

For the past weeks, I’ve been debating whether I’d get this or PS4 for my RPG needs. Or if I might need to buy another Vita (I fear that the one I have will die any moment lol). So the move is a welcome change for me.

So what now?

I intended on going back to Rui’s route to actually finish the story. Then do the secret character’s route and then the bad ends. But ever since I heard of the port, my motivation died down www. Eventually, I’ll replay the game so I want to save those ends I didn’t finish on the Switch version. Besides, the port will have the fandisk. So I might as well wait for that.

The important thing is I finished Hayato’s route.

Yes, this is vital www. I’m so shipping this pairing that just finishing Hayato’s route makes my entire playthrough worthwhile.

Nil Admirari no Tenbin Teito Genwaku Kitan (ニル・アドミラリの天秤 帝都幻惑綺譚) #nilad Title: Nil Admirari no Tenbin Teito Genwaku Kitan Company: Otomate Release Date: April 21, 2016 Platform:

Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings’ Zenith Is a Space Adventure With a Familiar Story and Tropes

I have given Zenith by Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings a ☆☆☆ rating. It is Book 1 of The Androma Saga series. It is Young Adult Science Fiction with some Space Opera and Romance. Harlequin Teen publishes it. It will be published January 16, 2018.

The synopsis reads:

Most know Androma Racella as the Bloody Baroness, a powerful mercenary whose reign of terror stretches across the Mirabel Galaxy. To those aboard her glass starship, Marauder, however, she's just Andi, their friend and fearless leader. But when a routine mission goes awry, the Marauder's all-girl crew is tested as they find themselves in a treacherous situation and at the mercy of a sadistic bounty hunter from Andi's past. Meanwhile, across the galaxy, a ruthless ruler waits in the shadows of the planet Xen Ptera, biding her time to exact revenge for the destruction of her people. The pieces of her deadly plan are about to fall into place, unleashing a plot that will tear Mirabel in two. Andi and her crew embark on a dangerous, soul-testing journey that could restore order to their shipor just as easily start a war that will devour worlds. As the Marauder hurtles toward the unknown, and Mirabel hangs in the balance, the only certainty is that in a galaxy run on lies and illusion, no one can be trusted.

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I haven’t been this early for a review in a really long time but I was super excited to read Zenith ever since I received it. I’ve always loved space stories because if I wasn’t a writer, I’d love to be an astronaut. Or marine biologist. Or historian. Maybe librarian. You get the gist, I love to be a lot of things.

But, you’re in for a wild ride with Zenith. You either love it or hate it.

I haven’t written a review this long in a while so bear with me.

As always, my reviews may contain spoilers. I say may because what’s a spoiler to you may not be a spoiler for me.

Oh boy, is this a difficult one for me to review. My review process is this: I finish a book, I sit on it for a few days and then head over to Goodreads to get a refresher. Usually, it’s a good thing because it reminds me of things I want to mention but have forgotten. But with Zenith, it opened a massive can of worms I wish I had never seen.

Initially, Zenith was going to be one of my 4-star rating books. It turns out, I’m the perfect audience for it. I love damaged and fucked-up characters falling in love and I love all the drama. I went into Zenith expecting a soap opera/drama and I got it.

But after reading Goodreads and learning all I can about the background of this book, it’s dropped to a 3-stars. I don’t hate it. Zenith is not a bad book but it’s not good either. Did it blow me away? No. But, hell it was entertaining.

So, this review will be different than normal and split into 2 parts: first impressions and after goodreads.

F I R S T  I M P R E S S I O N S

I have never read a space opera before. I even had to Google what the genre is all about. And I loved what I found. As you probably know, I am a massive fan of Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray and until another mindblowing book comes along, that’s what I recommend whenever anyone asks me. And I expected Zenith to be something similar but more, for lack of a better term, extra.

And I loved it. I couldn’t put it down. It kept me up late at night and my eyes are probably rotten because I keep reading in the dark. I didn’t even realise it was 500 pages (cause my Kindle app doesn’t tell me so). It was dark and it was sensual, the writing clichés which some people might not like, were lyrical and poetic. The imagery spun was stunning.

Plot-wise, Zenith went in a multitude of directions. There’s the Androma, Dex and the Marauders plotline where the former two have to rescue the king’s prisoner son in the treacherous lands of Lord-I-can’t-remember (I’m not good with names here. I can’t even name you anything in Maas’s books because I never remember), but basically, they’re the bad guys. And then there’s the flashbacks (??!!) which are confusing but I just rolled with it. And then, there’s the evil queen of the bad lands who isn’t all that bad (or at least that’s what they want us to think) who wants revenge on the entire solar system for fucking up her kingdom and her parents’ lives and her life.

The Androma, Dex and Marauders line is resolved and then some. But the others just leave big question marks hanging in the air. But then again, Order of the Firsts, guys. It’s always like this because publishers want you coming back for more cause all they care about is the money.

Plus, they are all told in different POVs which can get confusing but it wasn’t a hard switch. It’s such a way of writing in YA that I’m used to it. I wish we could still get by on one voice only. I miss those damned days.

But to me, the characters make a story and I loved the Bloody Baroness. She’s dramatic and always very weepy and conflicted but oh, she’s so attracted to Dex. Let it just be clear that she’s very much like a copy of Celaena/Aelin but without the latter’s depth. She’s got death following her and her crew of pirates wherever they go and she’s torn up about it. Some people have an issue with the fact that she’s called something so vicious but is just a kicked puppy. But come on, this is a trope we’ve all seen before. Move along, shall we?

But, I did find it a little strange that although she hates killing, she kills everyone left, right and center in the name of protecting herself and her crew. Plus, she’s a fugitive.

Really weird and conflicting but at this point, I’m still rolling with it.

Dex is an arrogant prick. And while it’s my favourite trope when it comes to YA heroes, they usually come with some redeeming qualities. Dex has none. In fact, I’d say that I didn’t like Dex at all. He’s the perfect example of how not to write a YA hero.

And, the romance between Androma and Dex seemed incredibly forced. No chemistry. Just loads of trying-really-hard-to-create-UST.

The rest of the characters in Zenith sort of fade into the background. There are the Marauders which are very Six of Crows-esque, and the evil queen, Nor and there’s Valen, the prince they’re supposed to rescue. And a robot named Alfie that reminds me of Defy the Stars.

While Zenith attempts to fashion a unique space world, it feels too much like Guardians of the Galaxy and that bothered me about the worldbuilding. It didn’t feel utterly unique (unlike Defy the Stars. You can’t stop my love) and the entire time, all I could imagine was Peter Quill’s ship flying across the Guardians of the Galaxy space ala the movies. While there are references to unique “alien” features for example, in the pilot, Lira who has scaly skin that can heat until it burns her clothes off and it’s controlled by her emotions, nothing is taken a step further and explained.

And space opera and science-fiction are known for being detail-oriented.

But I still loved it. In all it’s campy, trying really hard glory. I thought it was a great first attempt and couldn’t wait for me.

A F T E R  G O O D R E A D S

And then, I looked at Goodreads.

I was confused by all the awful ratings. And it spiralled from there.

It turns out Sasha Alsberg is a notoriously famous booktuber (I wouldn’t know. I don’t booktube) and people are concerned that this book being published is because of her connections to the higher ups.

But more than that, the editor tied to Zenith is notorious for having published The Black Witch. Which is a plague on the YA community. I don’t understand how….how could anyone have let that racist crap slide.

And it was only after this that I realised what I had thought to be extra, dramatic and campy writing ala soap opera style was just bad writing. In fact, one reason why I loved the writing so much was because it’s the same time of exaggerated and flowery writing that fanfiction writers love (and readers like me eat it up).

Plus, it tried too hard to replicate the success of Throne of Glass and Six of Crows, perhaps in the hope of becoming the next big thing. It’s basically fanfiction set in space, guys. While I am the type of market this book is targeted towards, meaning that I love my tropes, it’s just laughable. There are tons of books out there like TOG and SOC but they’re all unique in their own way. I’ve even managed to reference Defy the Stars more than once!

Not to mention, Androma has red.hair. Who else has fiery red hair? You tell me. Hint, I’ve mentioned the name several times in this review. Not a fan of self-inserts.

Also, I am not a fan of celebrity books and have yet to purchase/read one. While other writers struggle and work their butts off to even get noticed, celebrities get special treatment because they already have a fan base in place.

While I am still looking forward to see where both authors are going to take Zenith, I wait with all these thoughts in my mind. In film classes, we are taught that the author is not separate from his work (and I did a lovely paper on Alfred Hitchcock which I loved) and it’s true in this case.

I’m afraid that Sasha’s reputation has coloured not just my opinion, but the opinion of many other readers out there.

While Zenith is not bad, it’s not great either. I can’t shout about it from the rooftops. For one, it reads too much like fanfiction (and we all know the kind of fanfiction turn book that has hit the market these days) and secondly, it needs a shitload more work before it’s public-worthy. Zenith has great potential. It just needs a lot more polishing, preferably throwing the entire draft away and writing it fresh. And perhaps, Sasha should consider a pen name.

Thank you to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing me with an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. This review edition may differ from the final edition.