#i finally got a system that worked for me thus far

[cosmiclion]

If you thought I couldn't outdo myself more with the fluff for this AU then you haven't seen my true power yet 😈

I don't know if I got OCiel's bangs right but, realistically speaking, human hair never stays in the same place, that's how physics works so whatever lmao.

Anyway, trying to write a Black Butler AU with some fluff where Sebastian and Ciel have a parent-child like relationship WHILE keeping them in-character (Sebas more than Ciel tbh) and still basing it on canon material but making changes and making said changes make sense requires a bit of work ngl.

I mean, I know it's just a project I'm doing for fun and technically there's nothing stopping me from going nuts and making them completely OOC and disregarding canon at all, but I feel then it'd become a separate story with new, original characters who simply happen to be inspired by Kuro (which is also okay, and who knows, maybe in the future I'll repurpose the whole thing to create my own Kuro-inspired original story, even if I don't think I'll ever fully lose interest in Kuro, this cursed series has me in a chokehold lmao). Full ramble under the cut.

Sebastian is the hardest one to write, though I think I'm finally more or less figuring it out. I didn’t want to write him as suddenly learning to love the way humans do thanks to the power of cute children or something, as it just didn't feel natural (or I couldn't personally make it feel natural, I know other people have managed to write that concept very well). What I have so far is that when he does act nurturing he’s simply imitating the behavior of human parents he has observed, but he doesn’t love the kid the same way humans do because he literally doesn’t have that ability. BUT that doesn’t mean he feels nothing at all and that it doesn’t mean anything to Ciel, after all this weird creature is the one who saved his life and raised him with care and patience. The closest comparison I can think of is the relationship between people and “unusual” pets like reptiles, amphibians, insects, etc. We know they can’t love us the way other people (or even other mammals) would but that doesn’t make our bond any less significant! Some bits of canon material also come in handy here, for example I based the fact that familiar Sebas finds Ciel adorable as a kitten on the canon fact that he likes squishing his cheeks because they remind him of a cat's paws 😂 Just know he's an awkward demon who doesn't know how to human but is doing his best 🥺

I think in Ciel’s case I have more freedom since he is, after all, human, and a human’s personality is strongly shaped by their environment and life experiences. Like, what exactly counts as making a character OOC? Sure, I can agree that in a fanwork set in the exact same universe with the exact same events as in canon there’s some things a character would never say or do, but I think AUs were created as a way to explore what-if scenarios. What if this character had been raised by different people? What if they had grown up in a different place? What if this or that event hadn’t happened or had gone differently? Tbh I think it’s just fun to explore endless possibilities, it’s maybe a form of character analysis in some way. And if we think about it, canonverse Ciel was originally sweet, shy and affectionate, and if he’s the complete opposite now it’s only because he went through an utterly horrific and traumatic event that forced him to grow up before his time and toughen himself up because it left him with little to no support system, on top of having to be hyper vigilant because the only thing that "saved" him from that is a literal demon who wants his soul and is haunting him.

So I just wanted to create this alternative timeline where maybe things aren’t as terrible, or they start out as terrible but then some good things come from the most unexpected sources. Ciel is five years younger and thus has more time to process everything and try to heal as he grows up. Sebas isn’t entirely a bastard and willingly does nice things for the child, even if he still doesn’t understand human needs, and while he stills views him as a potential meal (at least at the beginning) he's actually respectful. There’s another demon who understands humans all too well and is happy to lend a hand. His friends and the relatives he has left are more involved in his life. So Ciel more or less has a support system now, albeit a weird dysfunctional one, and doesn’t entirely lose his sweetness (also like... he's 5/6 at the beginning of the story, we really can't expect a preschooler to be an edgy emo who craves violence and revenge ☠️). I imagine he grows up to be just as calculating and cunning as canonverse Ciel, maybe even just as ruthless in his job because it’s a requirement, and is still pretty much a little shit, but this Ciel is not as cold and undemonstrative. He’s still very much an introvert who prefers to be left alone, but he smiles (as in genuinely smile) more often and it’s a little easier for him to express emotions and feelings (more through actions than words, but still meaningful). Hell he may allow himself to be playful and silly sometimes if he’s in the moment.

And if it wasn’t clear from the picture, little Ciel ADORES Sebastian. Sure he's (understandably) a bit skittish around him at first, but once they bond he comes to fully view him as a parental figure. Yes, he's hurt, sad and traumatized, but he's still a resilient little kid, and with enough kindness Sebas can coax his old self to come out of his shell, and until the kid becomes more independent they're like a mama duck and her lil duckling. Their constant banter and bickering when he's older is more a teens being teens thing than anything.

#eli’s art #artists on tumblr #art #digital art #drawing #sketch #eli rambles #canon divergence #kuroshitsuji #kuroshitsuji au #kuro familiar au #black butler #black butler au #sebastian michaelis #dadbastian #mombastian #ciel phantomhive #our ciel #ociel #o!ciel #i am going to create an au that is so self indulgent #procreate app #not yoi

[ye-olde-sodor]

Presenting…Dream Canon Ryan! Our fist Head Canon post for the DC au!

Ryan Gresley is a GNR Class N2 locomotive that was built in February of 1921, making him one of the oldest engines on Mallard's Mainland Correctional Facility (although he certainly doesn’t look like it!)

He's around Scott's height, making him quite the sight to those unfamiliar with his class.

He became a Preserved Engine due to his family ties to both Scott and Mallard, and because he outperformed his other siblings, making him one of the few Preserved Tank Engines in the UK.

Ryan was mostly raised by Mallard and Spencer, so he has a mix of their personalities. He's a little pompus and arrogant, but it's more adorable then irritating. He's known around the Facility for being kind but very stern with the engines (or students) there.

Students at the facility know Ryan as "The Treat Guy", as he's prone to enticing engines to listen to him by offering hot cross buns, coal, and other treats in return for good behavior. It's worked 89% of the time.

He came up with the idea of letting the Engines "play" (AKA clean the yards and organize the trains) . His logic? “If we make it seem fun, then they'll be more willing to do it :3" It's worked 99% of the time.

Everyone absolutely spoils him. Especially by Mallard and Gordon.

The poor boy is brainwashed. Thanks to Mallard, he's convinced that he's doing a good thing by "convincing" Engines to listen to him and Mallard. "What's wrong? I thought you were happy here?" "Aren't you happy here?" kinda vibes. He isn't too far gone, however, and is beginning to see through Mallard’s lies.

Ryan is pretty much confined to the Facility Railway, and hasn't seen the outside world. Because of all this sheltering, he's got a limited world view/perspective and thus can't imagine any other system other than the one he was raised to believe in. It won't be until a certain blue tank engine arrives that Ryan gets a chance to finally think about what he’s been doing.

A small secret that Ryan has is that there's an abandoned railway next to Mallard's Camp. He likes to go there to have some alone time. (And to talk to a certain blue little shit).

The Gresley's have a collection of "baby photos" of Ryan, from 1921 to current times. Has it become apparent that he's the favorite yet?

Like with Thomas, he too lost all his siblings. Unlike Thomas though, he isn’t aware that they’re all gone, but he has his suspicions.

Fun Fact! Mallard actually gifted Thomas to Ryan as "his first engine" on his birthday! Since Ryan is a Preserved Engine, he can own other engines!

He can make the :3 face and does so without realizing it.

Quotes and Phrases:

Ryan, referring to Thomas: “You mean he’s mine?!”

Thomas: “uh NO-”

Mallard: “Of course he is, my boy! :) We even painted him Purple in his sleep just for you!”

Thomas: “You did WHAT-“

Ryan: “Number 1, you go and play with the others for a bit while Mallard and I discuss some…adult things.”

Thomas: “...Mate, I’m 84.”

Thomas: “Look, I don’t have time for some rich kid to-“

Ryan: “I’m 80.”

Thomas: “I’m sorry, you’re WHAT-”

Ryan: “Address your superiors like that again and I’ll-”

Thomas: “Or You’ll what?! Take away my cookie privileges?! Put me in timeout?! I didn’t realize Mallard hired pushovers!”

Ryan: “I’ll see that you’re sent to the Scrapyards…and they’ll send me your exact weight back in Shillings.”

Thomas: …

Ryan: “You were given one last chance at life. A chance, of which, you didn’t deserve, but you were graced with one anyways. Start acting like it.”

Thomas: “Uh…yes sir.”

Ryan: “Good. Now go back to your shed. If I hear a peep from you, I’ll change my mind…don’t make me change my mind.”

Mallard: “I can’t believe you got Tho-I MEAN…Number 1 to behave! He was such a feral little beast when I brought him here! How did you-”

Ryan: “I’m…not proud of it.”

Mallard: “Well get proud of it! We’ll need whatever you did for the rest of those Sudrians! No one else is going to whip them into shape!”

Ryan: “Yes sir…”

Mallard: “Ryan, my boy, I-“

Ryan: “Stop calling me that.”

Thomas: “Here we go.”

Jinty: “Thomas, You’re not helping-“

Thomas: “Good.”

#ttte #ttte au #ttte DC au #ttte ryan #ttte headcanon

[fallloverfic]

Solo Leveling Episode 12 Thoughts

The final episode of season 1 was so good! Spoilery thoughts for the anime, novel, and manhwa below:

The fights were just incredible. The animation was gorgeous, all the voice acting and music were excellent, it's just beautiful to watch. Also really loved the anime version of the manhwa scene with Lee Joohee, Song Chiyul, and Sung Jinwoo himself appearing as mental projections. It looks really good and it hits really hard, emotionally. The visual parallels are also handled well. Jinwoo is getting hammered here, and it's nicely done.

It's also interesting to learn that Woo Jinchul was also at the third Jeju Island raid! Even though he was just handling security, he was there. It's nice to emphasize how big of a deal the Jeju raids are to South Korea, because it helps with how messy stuff is later. I like how the show is focusing on trauma and its effects.

I like the emphasis on how a big part of Jinwoo's survival is luck. And I imagine some folks see this as a cheat, though I also like how it just shows the story is sticking to his own rules. It's not like the daily quest ever stopped being a thing. But also like... a lot of this is luck. When you awaken and what rank you awaken to is luck-based, and you're just kind of stuck with it (which is a good metaphor for how people are born, as well, particularly in terms of economic status; folks are randomly born to rich families/otherwise in places with a lot more resources than others and thus have a way easier time in life than other folks because resources are everything; it has nothing to do with ability, and it's massively unfair). If Jinwoo gets a little extra luck kinda because he's hyperfixated on something and it helps him survive, it's actually kind of fair, because at least that's sticking to a system of rules he ignored. And still a nice reflection on an unfair system.

Even the fights in the penalty room are amazing XD I don't go for stuff with giant insects, so the way this was a pleasure to watch was really awesome. I love the animation with Jinwoo flicking the mana potion away. I don't have any screencaps because I'd take far too many. All of the fights are good.

I still love seeing more of Choi Jongin and Cha Haein interact (with a brief cameo of a silent Lee Bora). Really glad the anime added little things like this. It's similar to what happens later, but it's nice to see them working together more.

The end of knight fight is incredible. All his movements are excellent. It's just really impressive.

It's also just really cute the way the notification window follows Jinwoo around the room as he's pondering lol

It's funny while I was reading the manhwa originally I related to this arc a lot as a former warlock player (loved running around with my army of summons who could just overwhelm any opponents, letting me stand safely in the back) but now I'm thinking of it more in terms of a death knight, particularly when Jinwoo is like, "There's no rule that says necromancers can't fight on the front lines". He is not wrong. Particularly if you've ever played the class in Diablo III, which is fun.

Jinchul just looks really pretty here. I love his relationship with Go Gunhee, and I'm still glad we're getting more of it in the anime.

And the Shadow Monarch arrives XD So happy :3 I also really love the nice touch in the manhwa, which the anime included, that the portal opening is purple, foreshadowing this part in the story with all the purple. It was always going to be this way (for other reasons). But it's a nice little visual touch.

Also framing this with Jinwoo being in front of the throne but slightly below it as well is really neat and also good foreshadowing.

He's so delighted by his ability XD I'm happy for him :3 Especially after he got brought so low earlier. He needs the pick-me-up. The shadow soldiers look really neat.

Distracted by the shadow soldier butt highlights alkdjaldja I just alkdjlaj YES IT'S A REALLY TENSE AND FUN SCENE WITH REALLY GREAT MUSIC BUT ALSO ldkjaljalaj (yes I know what codpieces are, I just lakjdlaj). It's not bad art or anything, I am just... Distracted TM roflmao

I like that Jinwoo still apologizes to the soldiers he dismisses, but he's sadder in the novel, and even in the manhwa. In the novel he has this, “He felt bad about getting rid of any of his soldiers. Even though he’d known them for only a few minutes, he was already attached to them.” (Volume 2, Chapter 4: Shadow Monarch by Chugong, Yen Press English release). In the novel and the manhwa he also looks a bit sad about it after apologizing, and thinks on it longer. It's a really humanizing moment for him, and shows how easy it is for Jinwoo to care about and sympathize with even complete strangers, particularly when they're his responsibility. It's not the worst change, and the anime has plenty of other moments that show his humanity, but it's just one of those little things...

I'm really curious about Gunhee's neck scar: who did that and how? In the novel, it's stated that he was too old when he awakened to ever fight as a Hunter: he's never been in a dungeon. The neck scar is part of his design in the manhwa, and he's just generally heavily scarred. He's a neat character who doesn't get explored enough. Looking forward to them expanding even more on him in future cours.

Shadow Igris looks so pretty. (Also there's a moment where he seems to purr around 20:48, which is I just think the sound of the movement of him standing, but it's hummy and sort of purr-like alkdjlaj and it kills me akdjlajal Purring Igris yes, thank you :3). Also, I love that the cape pops out of his back like butterfly wings alkdjalj beautiful. The way he walks around and the camera focuses on him and the click of his heels, just everything about him is so beautifully animated. I love this so much.

Ahh, I figured Jongin's expedition would find the flying ant. And so it begins.

That was such a good episode. An excellent season. Some leaks have stated that there are plans for like 6 cours or 3 regular seasons (and a PV for the end of the series with some spoilery footage), so I'm not that worried about the rest being animated (with some extra anime-original stuff, judging by how many episodes that'd be), though there will seemingly be delays. But with quality like this I'm happy to wait. I hope the crew get the time they need to make more awesome seasons without straining themselves. Ahh this was so GOOD!!!

Other episode reactions:

S01E05

S01E06

S01E07

S01E08

S01E09

S01E10

S01E11

S01E12 (you are here)

#solo leveling #solo leveling spoilers #fallfthoughts #나 혼자만 레벨업 #sung jinwoo #only i level up #igris #woo jinchul #choi jongin #cha haein #go gunhee

[bellybiologist]

Tallying up the Year

I hope you guys' december (which is almost over already, wtf) is going/has gone well! 2024 is upon us.

This christmas weekend, I mostly found myself thinking about how this year went, and honestly? despite all the things I haven't gotten to do, I still managed to accomplish quite a lot.

Me typing this rambly post out is less anything anyone needs to read, but more to remind myself of Things That Got Done™ than anything else because sometimes... I forget I do be getting shit done! And it's important we remind ourselves of the work we do.

The Things That got Done™

I advocated for my own Health. I scheduled (and went to!) so many doctor and dental appointments this year, holy shit. But, if the last few years have taught me anything, I simply have to put in the effort. I got my colon mostly sorted out, started a new regimen for my skin and hair (after chopping it off) so I'm feeling better, schedule an appointment with the optometrist in January, and even got lots of issues with my teeth fixed. Granted, our broken medical system made it incredibly stressful, and i spent thousands of dollars on the latter that I will be paying off til next july BUT!!!! This section is about the good things.

Started Streaming Again! I've been missing streaming since I stopped way back in I believe 2020. It was a fun way to interact with followers and supporters, so I'm glad I'm back to it on a regular schedule, with many of the old regulars still joining me while I work. Speaking of which:

I finished 43 total stream doodles. While I'm only filling a handful a month, it's definitely adding up! 40+ boys in the span of 5 months is nothing to scoff at, and that's not even considering that I'm doing this alongside normal patreon work.

I finished 39 total commissions this year. I'm definitely still going quite slowly, and I thank everyone who has been extraordinarily patient thus far, but I'm happy to say that my pace has been decent... at least relative to previous years. I got more done in the last 5 months than i did in the roughly year and a half period before 2023!

Replaced SEVERAL appliances that broke down. My computer moniter, my microwave, my refrigerator... all failed on my this year, and it took some work, but I finally managed to get them all replaced! So far, everything is working fine, but next on my agenda is to save up for a new desktop. This one I use for work has been at it since 2017, and it's about time to look into upgrading.

My Google Drive is Looking Nice. It's still not perfect, but I'm still immensely proud of how it's shaping up. There's still some curating of older pieces to do, but I've found a stride where I'm regularly updating it for people to peruse.

=====

Now despite these W's, I still got a long way to go. The things below could be considered resolutions for 2024, but that feels cursed to call them that. They are simply:

Things I Want to GET Done

Adding more YCH Figures. I was definitely expecting to have more to choose from by this point. And I really need to update some of the older ones too, because I think they've aged poorly. I got some neat suggestions and hopefully will find some time this week to showcase them in my discord to collect some feedback before releasing them.

Do more involved pieces/projects. I want to do more things like Comics, or simply pieces that I work on over the course of several sittings, ones where I can experiment and fiddle and practice!!! I rarely ever get to do that these days (I've only finished a few Big Personal Pieces this year), and I need to find time and energy to do them more because those are the things that truly make me feel like I grow as an artist. (and maybe I can find a shading style I actually fucking tolerate.). I also want to get more OC development and stuff done too, cuz I really didn't draw my children a whole lot this year!

Make more fucking Money!!!!! Let's not kid ourselves. I want to get to a point where I'm not just barely meeting the monthly quota. How to get there? I don't know, honestly. Things are so very stacked against artists right now, so it really does feel like the only thing that can be done is Not Give Up. Which I won't do. If/when I go down, I'm making it everyone else's problem. Trust. 😏

Save up to Visit the Boyfriend. I haven't seen him since January 2022! Big goal is to be comfortable enough to where I can fly my ass up there and smooch him. 👏🏽

======

I won't lie, i'm going into 2024 quite anxious and still scraping by by the skin of my teeth (that I'm still paying for). It's going to be a BIG year cuz oh boy, it's election year, there's plenty of family developments i gotta keep an eye on and work to be a part of... not to mention all the horrible stuff going on still (free palestine!).

Here's hoping shit goes our way this coming year! And let's get ,more strikes going so everyone is getting their fucking money!!! :V

#verzi rambles #god 2024 is a BIG year for lots of reasons

[tau1tvec]

Thinking my biggest concern with this “official” mods business, is how The Sims Team is very intrinsically using the word “safe” in how they describe it, and that's bad... and lemme tell you why...

This is a sentiment they’ve been building for a long time now, and goes as far back as The Sims 2 days, when there were some folks who didn’t download mods or cc from any place that didn’t seem obviously aligned with Maxis or EA ( shit they still do it now, as I recently bumped into a tweet that legit thought the sharing of tray files means it's from a pirated game, and therefore the files are "dangerous" ), hence the rise of sites like The Sims Resource, that I believe at one point even got into trouble for using official logos and marketing material, and generally passing themselves off as an affiliate, while taking people’s money for content, which technically didn’t follow EULA.

However the general distaste some players had for spaces like TSR ( mind you this was in their "members only" era ), and preference for sites like Mod The Sims ( a site made by simmers for simmers that hosted content for free ) inevitably changed the eco system. LJ and forums became havens for a lot of the custom content people put in their games, and also offered a sense of community that TSR couldn’t.

With the release of The Sims 3 came with change however, to how cc was distributed, as much as how players communicated. Many creators migrated from forums to blogspot or tumblr mainly, trading out a community focused platform for one more personal ( similar to LiveJournal ). So many were hosting their own content, their own way on file sharing sites, but with self moderation, unfortunately came the downsides of it.

Though MTS was still quite popular for much of The Sims 3's life span, self moderation had opened the door to self monetization, thus incentivizing creators to move away from sites like MTS, and TSR, and instead adopt ads, and link shorteners like ad-fly. Obviously they didn't garner as much profit as TSR creators, but it was a simple and easy way to generate some kind of money off of their work... problem was... it wasn't safe, and neither was TSR at that point.

When TSR took down their members only model, likely due to pressure from EA and their sudden changes in EULA, they had to find other ways to generate profit, and thus the introduction of ads, so, so many ads... so many that some people complained it would slow down their computers, and some, if clicked on accidently, which tbh wasn't hard with how they were interlaced in seemingly every element on the website, worries of malware and virus began cropping up, by no real surprise, anyone who's grown up during the rise of the internet knows that ads = viruses. This is all just very ingrained in online culture, there's a reason why ad-blockers have been a thing since 4ever.

This didn't seem to stop TSR however, let alone creators who attached their downloads to ad-fly, and therefore once again I bring this conversation around to the word "safe".

I have been around long enough, and in the modding scene long enough to know that mods, no matter where you get them will never be safe. Much of modding was niche and fringe for a lot of gaming history, hence why it was so, and still is predominately overwhelmed by adult/erotic mods... like with pirating games, it's just always had this very, very big stigma around it, and with the recent issue of Patreon creators using manipulation tactics, and data stalking causing such a big kerfuffle in the community, that it got to the likes of EA themselves to finally decide to put their foot down on the whole issue ( and then pull it up idk ??? lol ) it all seems just so very... coincidental to me.

This isn't the first time either, there was the putting viruses in files shared with anti-paywall sites, hall passes written out by "lawyers" to excuse bad behavior, the TSR debacle, the p*do mod debacle, the LoversLab having to scrub their forum of "questionable mods" debacle, the DMCA's, the doxxing, the deleted blogs, the list goes on honestly, it's just been such a mess. Then, while all this was going on, whatever EA offered as a "safe space" for downloading user created content wasn't honestly any better.

The Sims Exchange was a mixed bag, a lotta times you'd download sims or homes with broken or corrupt cc attached, and lord knows what else... people would reupload content by other people without their consent, or even credit, which by no surprise at all ended being the same exact issue that eventually inundated The Sims 4 Gallery, not to mention the comments section being used to harass users.

tldr; modding will never truly be safe, the fact that the word "safe", this rather bold promise coming out of EA's mouth of all companies is even going to be remotely believed, bc some Sims YouTuber says it's also "safe", just really rubs me the wrong way, and says a lot about how true a statement it actually is. They're trying to stigmatize the modding community again... who's trustworthy, and who isn't trustworthy... who's good, and who's evil, and all for their own benefit... bc when the hell has EA ever once done anything, that wasn't mostly for their own benefit?

#pedophillia mention #stalking mention

[indiemedley]

Undertale Orange Concepts

Okay, so, after binging every piece of content I could squeeze out of Undertale Yellow, I found myself inspired to write some concepts for a possible Undertale Orange game, and I sorta got carried away. Made an idea for the main character and the main antagonist, but still working on the rest. If y'all like it and wanna see more, tell me and I will continue to think really hard

My concept for a theoretical Undertale Orange named the human Jessie, which was derived from Gesture, because in the Photoshop Flowey fight, the healing attacks from Bravery was a thumbs up, a gesture of goodwill.

My concept for the main antag of Undertale Orange is named Masquerade (pronounced Masker Odd), a tall humanoid figure who wears a large tophat and an elegant black and white mask. He's a very enigmatic figure, and only appears when Jessie is alone. He's got a very vested interest in seeing them succeed and seems to be the only one who hasn't attempted to kill Jess. In fact, he was actually the one with the medical skills to patch Jessie up after their fall into the Underground, since the flowers hadn't grown in yet, so, they broke their ribs. When the player gets far into the game, they'll eventually see popular fiction books with a character who looks startlingly like Masquerade. Eventually, it's revealed Masquerade is a robot, the only successful one of many failed prototypes, of the character built by a mourning roboticist.

The roboticist's partner was the one who wrote the successful fiction book, and when they fell down, the roboticist was heartbroken and tried to replicate the characters to keep a vague legacy alive. Eventually, their lab was shut down when the Core had to expand to power the Underground, sorta taking over the lab for the Core's maintenance. Masquerade, however, was activated, and spent the first year of his life clawing his way out of the scrap heap of his clones. Upon learning the nature of his existence, he was stricken with a need to find a purpose, one he ripped pieces of from his fictional counterpart.

He was programmed to hunt humans, as that was the cause of the author's death, but he quickly grew to hate monsters as well due to his isolation and ostracization. He planned to goad the human (Jessie) into killing, thus sparking further tensions between humans and monsters, ensuring the war between the two species would never end, mutually assured destruction. So, he saved Jessie when they fell from above. If Jessie goes pacifist, he's pissed and tries to take matters into his own hands.

This leads to another character walloping him with a blast that breaks half of his mask, exposing the machinery and wiring. Then he engages them in combat, using physical attacks rather than magical ones, that way, Jessie can't just heal with some crummy food, instead inflicting serious actual attacks. Or, well, he would if he didn't get blasted into next week, damaging his body beyond repair. His wounded form inches off as the cast regroups, only for the Core to start heating exponentially. They know it's coming from the Robotics Lab that got assimilated into the Core, and pursue Masquerade there. He's plugged himself into the systems and has started to Overclock the Core. He explains that he alerted the citizens about the Human heading to the Core before he started heating it up. He aims to cause a full scale meltdown, Chernobyl level destruction, that would all be pinned on Jessie, which would cement humans as the enemies for good, at least, for whatever monsters remained.

There IS more for this concept and final confrontation stuff, but mainly just testing the waters to see if y'all like the direction it's going

#indiemedley #oc #writing #undertale #undertale orange au

[shoko-komi]

This Special Edition of The Komi Report is split into multiple posts. This is Part Two. Click here for Part One

5. It's Emoyama, Continued

I'm only listing the final chapter, but the whole little arc about Emoyama is basically the 5th pick. It added a new word to my vocabulary – Emoi. I'd say that on its own warrants a place here. But that's far from the only reason. 

With Najimi tagging along for the ride, these chapters feel like old times again. Komi's got a problem communicating with a classmate, the three stooges (Komi, Tadano, and Najimi) put their heads together to reach an understanding, and goofs ensue. It's fun, it's funny, it's light, and it's sweet. And it's well set up, with Emoyama's reason for crisis (peeling the unripe fruit of Emoi) having occurred quite a while beforehand. 

Add onto that how long Emoyama has been around - she even appears as a teaser in the (current) final scene of the anime... 

...along with Lily Sukida. Now that's what I call venerable. Anytime a character like her finally gets some serious attention it's a surprise, a delight, and a treat. Komi's world is full of sleeper agents waiting for their moment. (Just btw, I super ship Sukida and Emoyama now. Maybe I should write a fic....) 

Plus... 

...it gave us this. Sledgehammer Komi...... 

I love you, Emoyama. And your mother

Honourable Mentions 407 – Interview  409 - Can't Say Sorry  416 – The Rest  417/418 - Ogiya/Super Awesome  427 – Cool  429/430 - Fuki's Story  433 – A Date with Rumiko 

Funniest Joke

Comedy is extremely subjective, so take this category with a grain of salt. But given how much I've had to say about Kawai, I doubt you'll be too surprised: 

When tf did she have time to make this??????? It's all of the buildup that makes this so memorable to me; how Kawai is so serious and intimidating until she bonds with komi. Then it's like a switch flips in her head. She's such a dork. 

The whole of 393 is one joke – Kawai made a DVD about how they'd benefit from marrying her – so I'm saying the whole chapter gets the funniest joke award and calling it day. There's no better way to explain why this one's a winner than to show you some screenshots, so enjoy: 

I love you, Kawai (it bears repeating) 

Most Emoi Moment

This award would have gone to the kiss, but there's an underdog who I think has worked harder for it. She's captain of the track team; an aspiring restaurateur; an old friend, a bitter rival, and a true hero; and she's never won a damn thing in her life. She needs this. 

She's Makeru Yadano at the year three sports carnival!!! I bet you were surprised this chapter wasn't mentioned among my top picks; not even the honourable mentions!! That's what we in the biz call a fake out. I could never forget my girl Makeru. 

Something I noticed while writing this - Yadano probably would have won... 

...except that Komi got a head start. You can see that Yadano starts a moment behind (because her teammates are Sarutahiko and Inui, RIP). A relay race is a team effort, so can you really say that Yadano lost? Maybe I'm undermining her personal growth moment. Whoops. 

emoi...............................

I would also like to pay my respects to Benujit Spopo, a walk-of-fame KCC gag in my opinion. It appeared this year! 

(From Ch. 404 – Tales from the Summer Festival, Part 2) 

I love you, Yadano

Reader's Choice

Now is the time. This is the moment. The most coveted and prestigious award of all – the Reader's Choice Award. (It's the most coveted and prestigious because it's determined by democracy 🫡) 

For this category, the Komi Report received a record-shattering four votes - that's right!! Four votes!!! From you, the readers. 

The votes were extremely varied, and it turned out to be very useful that most people named multiple chapters in their submission. I used a sort of preferential voting system – I tallied everyone's first choice and there was no winner, so I added everyone's second choice, then third etc etc. 

Thus we find our victor. With a landside two votes, the 2023 Reader's Choice Award goes to: 

*drum roll* 

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Paam pa du paam!! Chapters 417 & 418 – Ogiya & Super Awesome!!!! 

Well deserved!!!!!!!! Ogiya's story is heartbreaking; he was driven to become a literal man baby to escape the terrible price of popularity. Then Komi becomes the most assertive we've ever seen her as she keeps pushing him to accept her friendship. In the end, barriers are broken down!! Emoi!!!

I'm looking at this now... and Komi saying "It's alright. I'm super strong so I'll make sure you're alright" and the look on Ogiya's face.... that's making me tear up...

I love how Tadano and Ogiya are said to have been hanging out at other times before this event. It creates the feeling that these characters have lives when we aren't looking at them – very cool! It also demonstrates that Tadano attracts socially maladjusted people like a magnet. I'd say it's his gentle nature. 

My warmest thanks to everyone for their submissions. 

Conclusion

Phew... I'm knackered. I've been typing this in a document and the word count has passed 4,000... wowzers! 

If you've come this far, I extend to you my sincerest gratitude. I would have prepared and posted this even if I didn't expect anyone to see it, so to have someone read it all the way to the end is very cool. Maybe you even... enjoyed it?????? 

Here's my resolution for 2024 – I will strive to write every Komi Report as thoughtfully and conscientiously as I wrote this one. The weekly editions will be way shorter, of course. And I won't spend a whole week writing them, but each and every one will have the same love put into it 💪 

I hope this 2023 Annual Edition of The Komi Report got you excited about Komi Can't Communicate; whether that excitement is from being reminded of all the good times we've had, or from being annoyed by my opinions. Either way, you're thinking about Komi. 

I win. 

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

Now that your appetite for Komi Can't Communicate has been whet:

Check out my Komitano AMV on youtube

Or my live action Komi-san compilation video

Thank you very much! Komi returns on January 5th, 2024. I'll see you then!!

#komi #komi can't communicate #komi san wa komyushou desu #komi report #komi shoko #the komi report #shoko komi

[eponymous-rose]

Something I wanted to do in the New Year is be more aware of how I'm spending my time at work, so I think I'm gonna try to do little summaries here of what each day entails. Hopefully also kind of interesting/useful if anyone's interested in academia?

For reference: we're on the quarter system, classes started on the 3rd, and I currently teach one class per quarter (heavy research-focused department, so very light teaching load). I also currently supervise 1 PhD student, 2 Master's students and 2 undergraduate research interns.

Monday!

Checked email on the bus to work, which mainly consisted of me seeing a colleague had received an endowed professorship, me writing her an effusive congratulatory message, and then me editing back the message a bit so it was less embarrassingly over the top. Also sent my students a reminder about their homework due on Wednesday and our little field trip tomorrow morning and accidentally sent it to last quarter's class, whoops. Luckily a former student quickly notified me of my mistake and I got it fixed!

Class was great - lots of flipped-classroom stuff that worked well even with only two students in the room (it's a conference week, everyone's traveling). I knew from previous years that the students had really, really struggled with this one equation, so I had them do a couple of examples in class and after working through the first one together, they both nailed it on the second try. Had to cancel a meeting with one of my undergrad research interns after class because the other members of our research team are out of town this week. Where is everyone? Well, at a conference and doing a two-month-long field campaign on the east coast. Forgivable. She offered to send me some of the work she's done thus far, so that's handy!

Went to check email after class and found that apparently a new remote meeting had popped on my schedule for immediately after class with an old peer mentoring group of mine (fellow 4th-year assistant profs in tangentially-related fields - we all did a professional development course last year together). Luckily it was cameras off so I could snack and decompress a bit while we caught up and made some strategic plans for the quarter.

Okay, FINALLY time to check email in earnest before my next meeting. 36 new messages since I checked last. New software package I need to bookmark and keep in mind for later work. Updates from the conference I'm technically attending virtually this week. Reference letter request from an undergrad student; add to calendar! Title and abstract to get added to the website for a seminar I'm hosting in a couple weeks. Reminder that the Zoom recording of my class is available to put online (which I promptly did). Triple-check with our tech guy that we're good to go up on the roof tomorrow to set up instrumentation for my class's term projects (all good!). Time flies, so here's the email with research progress from my undergraduate research intern and a handful of questions, we'll answer those and see how she likes jumping into a new dataset. New grant opportunities, job listings, a bunch of easy stuff to mark off. An essay about allocating time each week into the categories of Teaching, Research, and Service and strictly adhering to the percentages laid out by your tenure/promotion committee. Got a few minutes before my next meeting so I'll try it this week? Ish? Maybe? Looked sidelong at the new schedule, sure, we'll try that this week. Sent an email to my collaborator who's on a field project to see if we can do a remote meeting tomorrow to chat about a couple research proposals. Queued an email for next week's seminar speaker to see if he can send me the title and abstract for his talk/PhD entrance exam next week - no sense freaking him out before Wednesday, so we'll do a scheduled send.

Next up, meeting remotely with my former postdoc advisor! We've set up these meetings to "work on research projects" together but honestly this week it was just listening to him tell a very entertaining story about his car breaking down in rural Missouri and also listening to him describe a truly tragic tale of his very fancy sandwich getting thrown out of the office fridge by accident. That's scientific collaboration, baybee. We did talk research for a bit and he mentioned wanting to collaborate on a paper (he offered to pay for it out of the much more substantial research funds that come with his 30 extra years in the field) so I'm gonna come up with something for that by our next meeting in two weeks. I like working with him - we've published a couple papers in some pretty high-impact journals and he's always let me take the lead and go for first authorship without butting in, only providing support - so this is a fun prospect! I do have to submit an abstract this week for a European conference that'll be happening this spring, so maybe I can go ahead and lean into that idea a little.

It's now getting a little dark and rainy and I'm flagging a bit but I still have an hour before the afternoon seminar, so probably time to do a little course prep. Did some "grading" (just checking completion certificates for an introductory module the students had to go through). Fixed a mistake in Wednesday's lecture (why is there an anemometer when I'm talking about thermometers???). Reviewed some of the more complicated topics in Wednesday's lecture to make sure I'm not totally lost (some thermodynamics I haven't looked at in a while, thermocouples, semiconductors). Replacement slides uploaded to our course management system.

Aha! Email back from collaborator, she's going to be on a research flight tomorrow and won't be able to meet. All good, I don't have much to report anyway. That frees up an hour tomorrow, woohoo.

Okay, students have a homework assignment due a week from Wednesday, so I'm gonna post it this Wednesday. I have a good homework assignment prepared, I just needed to go in and write up a nice answer key. Got that done (along with some sample Python code to provide them with) and the homework assignment is scheduled to be posted, so it's time to look at next week's lectures. I've inherited this class from someone whose course notes can be a little scattered, so this is usually a bit of a process. Only two lectures to prep for next week, though!

Took a break from lecture prep to go to today's seminar, which purported to be about a really dodgy geoengineering scheme (redundant descriptor, am I right?) but in fact just rigorously tested said scheme and demonstrated it would actually have the opposite effect. Super fun and interesting seminar!

Okay, back to working on lectures for next week. Somehow got both of next week's lectures done before the end of the day, so those should just need a little polish and they'll be ready to go! Uploaded them to the course management system but sneakily and they won't appear to students until I've checked them over.

Tomorrow: going to the roof with my students to set up their term projects, then tons of sweet, sweet, meeting-free office time carved out. Hope this doesn't come back to bite me with a million meetings on Wednesday (...it will).

Important: work is done by 5PM. I try very hard to adhere to "leave work at work", which is not as much of a pipe dream as it seems, even for R1 tenure-track.

#eponymous academia tag

[peachiejeongin]

chill | l.mh

synopsis: if he was breaking, you were going to break together. pairing: lee know X gn!reader (implied reader x hyunjin) genre: angst warnings: cheater!reader (reader cheats on lee know with hyunjin multiple times), reader feels no remorse for said cheating, reader is just an immense bitch (it’s okay, reader gets served at the end), swearing, fighting (including slight yelling), crying lee know, breakup established, twist ending, not proofread [Let me know if any were missed!]

[notice: lower-case typing is intended!]

”did you think I wouldn’t find out?” lee know scowled at you, tossing the men’s button up t-shirt at you quite harshly. the shirt was white, made of silk, and one-hundred percent not his. 

you chose not to answer, instead looking at the floor for some sort of personified reassurance. the tearful boy in front of you impatiently waited for an answer, letting out slight sniffles from time to time. guilt flooded your system; however, it was not because you felt remorseful of your adultery.

it was because you got caught.

you had known for a while that the feelings you had once felt for lee know were long gone. yet, you could not muster up the guts to tell him so. minho was so happy when he was around you. every time he saw you, his cute smile with etch onto his stupidly-perfect face, and he would engulf you into the warmest hugs known to mankind. how could you hurt him? in fact, feelings of leaving minho had long left your mind. you tried to convince yourself that you loved him; that things would work; and that they would work.

that was until hyunjin came into the picture. hyunjin was taller, softer, and a hell of a lot more attractive than minho in your eyes, not to mention there was irresistible tension between the two of you.

it was only supposed to be a kiss, key word being a. it was of your intention, just to see if your feelings for minho were still there. however, one kiss became making out; making out evolved into hooking up; and hooking up eventually led to you seeing each other multiple times a week.

you knew by this point that you were far out of love with minho, promising your side-fling to end things with him as soon as possible.

but you never did, and neither party knew you never did.

thus, here you were, after one messy attempt at a hook-up. lee know came home from work nearly an hour early, and as such, caught you two in the act. heartbreak was an understatement to the pain he felt in that very moment, catching who he thought was the love of his life with one of his closest friends.

“so that’s just it, huh? you don’t talk to me anymore? you’re not gonna even TRY to fix this? i mean, obviously fucking not if you’re screwing around on me with my best friend, right?” lee know’s pissed ramblings snapped you back into reality. “are you even fucking listening to me?!”

“i’m sorry, min-”

“stop. stop. if you were sorry, this would’ve ended after the first time you saw him.” you looked up at the crying boy in disbelief. he knew there were other times? “oh please, don’t look so dumb. again, you think i didn’t know? why do you think i came home so early tonight, doll?” he added a sarcastic emphasis on the pet name, once so endearing, now used as a term of degradation.

“oh my god,” you mumbled under your breath, facing the reality of your current circumstances.

“mhm,” minho was now smirking at you, seemingly in victory. “oh what? your little lover didn’t tell you that he finally came clean to me about everything last week? every experience he had with you, he detailed to me. he didn’t tell you that? he didn’t tell you that he exposed every little lie you told to him? how you claimed you had ended it with me but found out the truth after you stupidly visited me at practice? i know all about it. and now...” as if on cue, your phone lit up with a notification. “every one else knows, too.”

“stray kids’ lee know’s partner presumably caught cheating,” the article headlining on your phone screen read. that’s when it all hit you.

tonight was a mousetrap, and you were the mouse so greedily wanting to have your cheese and eat it too. yet, this greediness was the same characteristic of you that got you caught in the spring of the trap. now, you were essentially left for dead. you lost your boyfriend, the other boy whom was just a trick in a sense, and the internet undoubtedly was casting judgment upon you at this very moment.

“see, y/n, what you don’t realize,” lee know began again, “is that when i break, we break together.”

with that, lee know walked out of your apartment, never to return again, leaving you with what you truly deserved:

nothing.

#stray kids #stray kids angst #stray kids imagines #stray kids x reader #lee know #stray kids lee know #lee minho #lee know angst #kpop #kpop imagines #kpop angst

[yandere-daze]

🦋... HI. IM BACK. idk how some anons manage to break through the character limit in asks, so im gonna cut this into 2 asks if you dont mind. remember saying how the gacha are the boys dressing up to make you pull for them? of course, if you did pull, those featured would be absolutely restless and happy! the other characters, however... i wonder what they would do? just like what you said about the office, i feel like shu (can you tell im a valkp) would definitely (be jealous) observe +

And then there´s me who didn´t even know that there was a character limit for asks knfsdblg I have no idea how the other anons are able to break past the word limit if that really is true though. Still very happy to hear from you again, 🦋 anon!

Indeed, I do remember that and I´m glad you asked! I love thinking about how the game system would work when the characters are actually sentient ^^

gn reader

tw yandere, obsession

More on characters dressing up for their cards to make you pull for them, with a focus on Shu

Yep! The characters at first try to do any aesthetic they can think of because they don´t yet know what your tastes are like. They´re all pretty nervous the first time, all dearly hoping that they managed to match your tastes well enough to endear themselves to you. Please, they would be absolutely overjoyed if you pulled for their cards!

They´re all kind of impatient with getting their turn finally because earlier on in the game your dia funds will probably be bigger so the chance that you might throw some pulls their way is higher. At the same time, coming later is an advantage because they´ll have some knowledge of what has or hasn´t worked, meaning that they can still change some things around in hopes of appealing to you.

Izumi and Arashi probably have an advantage over everyone else, being models and everything they´re confident in their abilities to pose well and bring out the best in them. Makoto has also modeled before but his bad experiences with it kind of hold him back from performing just as well as the other too :/

Anon, I´m always happy to talk about Valkyrie so thank you for the ask! Now let´s get one important thing out of the way: Shu takes great pride in his art and usually doesn´t care to appeal to a certain audience, instead only acting out on his own vision. So you must be very important to him for him to even think about taking your tastes into consideration when designing a new outfit to wear for his card. He´s usually so confident in what he does but he´s desperate enough for your approval to change up all he´s worked for so far, just to increase his chances with you.

And as you said, Shu is very careful and takes notes when he sees what cards you pull for and which ones are ignored by you. He´s got to keep that in mind but he does have the advantage over a lot of the other idols that he makes the costumes himself and thus can change them however he likes. A lot of the other units get their outfits tailored by someone else, some of them even by Anzu! Do you really think she´s going to give it her all when they want to use the outfits to impress you? She probably messes up on purpose while making the outfits kdjfdb

But Shu is so focused when making the outfits himself, he´s a perfectionist at heart and keeps changing things over and over if they don´t fit his vision 100%. He´s even harsher with himself because he knows he´ll have to be at his absolute best to win you over, which is his one goal in life. He deeply craves your affection so he goes all-out, likely pulling all-nighters just to make sure everything is absolutely perfect.

Mika offers to help him out but Shu quickly refuses, not wanting anyone to even touch the outfit he´s made so carefully. If it´s for an event with Valkyrie then I guess Mika can count himself lucky that he gets to wear such a wonderful outfit that will impress you. Shu can´t let you think he´s sloppy with his job because his unit mate looks way worse compared to him.

Oh, but can you imagine how much power you actually hold over him and his creations? Like, if you pull for pretty or elegant cards then Shu is in his element and knows what he needs to do. But what if you happen to pull for the silly Kohaku bee outfit or the catboy Ritsu card ( me af )? He´s going to be distraught at first because it´s so completely different from what Valkyrie usually wears, so does that mean you don´t like what they have put out so far?? Straight up panics but then realizes that what you think has priority so he throws himself right back into work to somehow try to top these two outfits.

They may be Crazy: b but Shu is going to make the better bee outfit 😤

“Kagehira, get me some more fur! We must have the fluffiest and most pet-able cat ears! We shall not let Knights beat us with their amateurish outfits!”

Also yes, the poor photographer, you just know Shu has an exact picture in his mind that he won´t budge on no matter what, and the photographer is not allowed to go home until Shu is 100% satisfied. At this point you could call it a hostage situation jdfsf

#ensemble stars #shu itsuki x reader #yandere shu itsuki x reader #yandere ensemble stars x reader #ensemble stars self aware au #yandere self aware au #yandere self aware ensemble stars au #ensemble stars x reader #enstars #enstars x reader #yandere enstars x reader #enstars shu #valkyrie #gn reader #yandere #cw yandere #cw obsession #yandere x reader #🦋 anon

[canmom]

litrpg, once more

i started reading Worth the Candle because @facille posted some excerpts that sounded fun. as explictly self-insert litrpg isekai goes, it's several cuts above most I've seen honestly. the hook of 'a grieving DM with a taste for the grimdark who goes on digressions about game design and its metaphysical implications' is maybe a little too familiar a glove to inhabit, gender notwithstanding. (even though i definitely roll my eyes when the hottest women ever in the protagonist's mind breasts boobily into the story in an early chapter, i have a suspicion the author is going somewhere with it.) also the thing is longer than the phone book so it's not bad illness reading.

anyway that got me to think like. on the surface 'litrpg' is a pretty straightforwardly defined term: a story about a world while roleplaying game rules operate. since there are a lot of different ways one can design a roleplaying game (on the computer and on tabletop), this should be pretty wide open.

but in practice there seem to be some pretty rigidly defined genre conventions. which i will itemise, thus:

'level up by doing' skill system:

Nearly every litRPG story I've ever encountered uses a near identical approach to game mechanics. A character is definied by a list of skills, from dozens (D&D sort of scale) to hundreds (GURPS sort of scale), and all of them have individual experience tracks. The rest of the game structure - character levels etc. - is less well defined, but this seems to be a constant.

It's a natural fit for the genre, since nearly all of these stories begin with the protagonist experimenting with an unknown system, figuring out how to works, then exploiting it. But where did it come from?

In recent Western CRPGs, the main game series that comes to mind that fits this model is the Elder Scrolls series. When Oblivion hooked the spawn tables to the character's level, this actually became a severe drawback, since the player could level themselves up using non-combat skills only to find themselves hunted by high-level bandits in endgame gear. It also leads to some odd quirks of player behaviour, like bunny-hopping to raise your Athletics skill.

Over in the MMO zone, Runescape also follows this model, with independent levels in 28 skills. In Runescape, this heavily orients the game around grinding, with the interesting gameplay apparently found in finding ways to most efficiently play around the server's tickrate.

Let's look further back. Ultima mostly did not use this system (charmingly, in some games you had to ask Lord British to level you up), but introduced something like it in Ultima VIII.

I think the real source though is probably Wizardry series, which had the 'learn by doing' mechanic right from the start in 1981. Wizardry was wildly popular in Japan, spawning its own offshoot series unrelated to what Sirtech was doing. And apparently all of them had this mechanic. For my part I remember standing in Wizardry 8, repeatedly casting the 'open lock' spell on a maximally difficult lock to safely grind my caster's magic stat.

What about other JRPGs? I'll admit, most of my experience is with Final Fantasy, which to my knowledge never used this model. Nor did Dragon Quest, the other of the big two. However, more niche JRPGs with an old-school flavour like Etrian Odyssey have it. It's also a staple of social sim games like Princess Maker.

Then we get to the first JP LitRPG 'trapped in a game world' story that I know about, .hack//sign (2006) - although whether that 'counts' is arguable since as far as i know it's more about psychological drama and I'm not sure how much the story centres on game mechanics. Of course, the one that really exploded the genre was the adaptation of Sword Art Online, so maybe everyone's just imitating that.

Anyway that's a bit of a long digression, but it's one of the biggest curiosities I have about the history of this genre, because it's so specific.

the 'game system' is constructed by an 'administrator' or 'god' figure with sinister motives

This one just makes sense, right? A game system is a pretty unnatural way for a fantasy world to work, and 'someone made it that way' is the obvious answer why. For this reason - and perhaps the recurring JRPG story device - it's likely the protagonist will see the hand of this administrator, or even communicate with them, and perhaps aim to kill or usurp them. This may overlap with antitheistic themes.

manichaean setting, edgy protagonist

The stereotype is 'hero' and 'demon lord'. This one's not exactly a universal, but very common. The protagonist is likely to find themselves forced into assuming one of these roles in some grand recurrent struggle, typically the villainous one. Since time travel is a frequent device, they may even see signs of their own works without recognising them.

The marked preference for 'villain' protagonists, beyond being way more chuuni and thus naturally better, was probably popularised by Overlord (2010-), a web novel turned light novel series which received a popular anime adaptation by Madhouse.

Villains are exciting, usually a lot more proactive, and a natural fit for a genre whose central story is usually a rise to enormous power.

Even a non-villainous MC, such as Sung Jinwoo of Solo Leveling, is likely to have 'dark' themed powers - stealth, assasination, commanding monsters. But hey like chuuni stuff is cool.

a UI which the character interacts with; the 'assess' skill

This one's kind of a necessary bit of nuts and bolts, but worth its own heading. If your world runs on a game engine, and you're writing in the first person, you need some means to communicate information about it to both player and reader.

More specifically, a very common device sees the protagonist select a 'useless' skill that gives them information on skills and monsters at the beginning.

the MC has special knowledge

One of the usual 'hooks' of a litRPG/isekai story is that the main character has some angle on the world that other people don't have, which gives them an edge they can spend the story exploiting. This could be genre knowledge like experience as a gamer or reader of isekai web novels (for your basic power fantasy), or it might be very specific knowledge, e.g. they've read or written the story they're now inhabiting as fiction (e.g. Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint), or we're on an advanced iteration of a time loop (e.g. The Executioner and Her Way of Life). The latter's a device also used in other subgenres, famously PMMM.

We can compare this to real games. In tabletop RPGs, this sort of attitude is for many groups considered not in the spirit of the game - you should be trying to portray a grounded character and avoid invoking 'out of setting' knowledge, which may be called 'metagaming'. For a single-player CRPG, depending on the era, the game may be designed to be completed first time without foreknowledge, or after many runs. For MMOs, player expectations have shifted such that in many games it's considered rude to go into a fight without looking up mechanics, but also no player has 'secret' knowledge of the game that others do not.

the MC has special abilities or items that other characters do not

Naively, I thought that LitRPG would be about a character learning to cleverly exploit a common 'game system' equally accessible to all 'players'. In practice I've yet to encounter a story that actually does this.

For some stories (Solo Levelling for example) the protagonist alone has the ability to level up and exponentially accumulate power. In others, like So I'm A Spider, So What? (KumoDesu), everyone uses the same system but the protagonist is granted special unique skills by the mysterious admin figure that give her a leg up.

Even a story like Bofuri, which an iseaki-loving friend showed me a few episodes of, where the premise written in the title is that the protagonist is exploiting a game inbalance... gives her a special unique shield in short order. (I didn't like Bofuri very much.)

Once again, compare to real games. In an MMO, you would never put a significant advantage that only one player can ever use, outside of perhaps the admin console that you give to your GMs. Everyone has the exact same progression system, it's gated by time and content or perhaps real world money, but in theory with enough skill and hours anyone can get anything.

On the other hand, in TTRPGs, it's a lot more common for a GM to give their party a 'unique' magic item or ability that other characters in the story do not have, since they're the only humans involved. In a single-player CRPG the same is true, with the caveat that every player of the game will find the exact same narratively 'unique' item. However, in both cases, the game will then be designed around the players having that ability: you want the player to be challenged, while still getting to flaunt their cool thing. Still, this device is less odd on a story patterned on this type of game than one where the world is literally in an MMO.

It's fairly easy to see why this device exists. When you play an MMO, you really get to see just how many people are 'just like you'. How your FC discord and your player house are interchangeable with a thousand others constituted by the same social forces. Paradoxically, MMO stories are usually about the player being the most important character in the world, while playing an MMO is to be essentially nobody. Your great hero is only the great hero in their shard of the timeline, and if you want to roleplay, you'd better come up with something completely different.

So, this device says, here's a way to imagine your character being special, and surprising everyone. A natural enough fantasy.

the game is completely unbalanced

'Game balance' is basically not a consideration. Play the game right and you become a god. There may be classes, but they'll be shed on your road to omnipotence.

But for some reason, the players of the game or inhabitants of a setting rarely seem to discover the game's dominant strategies. Maybe they can't since they don't have the protagonist's secret advantage. There is rarely a 'meta', let alone the relentless drive towards absolute efficiency that characters a mature MMO.

player characters look like their players

This is an oddity of MMO-styled stories. I have almost never met someone who tries to make their player character look like themselves, and yet the opposite seems to be true in MMO-styled stories. I guess it makes it convenient to know who's who.

could we break it?

Faced with a set of rules like this, my natural inclination at least is to say OK - how far can you push this without just writing entirely outside of the subgenre?

The thing that gets me about LitRPG stories is that they really don't work much like RPGs beyond tangentially, especially not MMORPGs; they work like LitRPG stories, an odd blend of CRPG and naturalistic setting. Or a TTRPG where people talk in character about classes and levels.

We had better go right for the root. Most of the devices flow from the core plot being 'character overcomes challenges and gets stronger, until they're the top dog'. That's the power fantasy: effort gets rewarded.

I think it would be interesting to take a broader viewpoint. You know those stories about a big historical event, like a war or something, where the narrative constantly hops between characters to give you a multi-level view? I think it would be fun to take that kind of approach, and apply it to trying to imagine a setting where everyone ruthlessly exploits the RPG mechanics as far as possible, creating some sort of miserable dystopia where children are expected to kill each other for xp or something and if you're not grinding constantly for levels or building to the meta you're viewed with contempt, and then... well perhaps someone finds a glitch and all sorts of chaos breaks out. Maybe I should write this thing. Bet it's already been done.

Anyway I don't really know this genre too much so tell me if I've missed something haha

#litrpg #fiction

[roundtriptojupiter]

i just sprinted across campus to escape the rain, and now i want to talk about my experiences as a cane user while i remember how to breathe again.

i started using a cane 4 years ago, at the end of elementary school. i’ve been chronically disabled (likely fibromyalgia, but currently diagnosed with myofascial pain syndrome; it’s an inaccurate diagnosis, but at least it’s something) my entire life—i struggled to sit cross-legged in kindergarten because it hurt too much, and the first accommodation i ever needed was permission to sit in a normal chair during circle time. i was born early, and both of my parents had issues with their legs in their lives; my father as a child learning to walk, and my mother in her teens, until she got knee surgery when she was 19, but neither were the same as what i have.

i’ve always been an indoor person. i’ve never enjoyed sports, but to this day i don’t know if that’s because i genuinely don’t like them, or because i always end up hurt. so my parents always thought i was just lazy and exaggerating and needed to get in shape. the third one always makes me laugh. when i look at myself in the mirror, i can count all of my ribs. i inherited it from my dad; his nickname was ‘rice’ in high school because he was white and skinny. maybe i’ll grow out of it, i don’t know. people tell me i look sick, and it kind of sucks to tell them that they’re right.

the old pastor at the church i grew up in was a professional volleyball player. there was an inter-church volleyball tournament held every year, and monthly volleyball games within the congregation. when i was in elementary school, i loved it. i loved volleyball more than any other sport i’d ever played; for the most part, i didn’t have to run anywhere, and that was what made the difference. and players were swapped around a lot, so i got a lot of breaks, and it seemed like... maybe i had just been lazy. maybe this was my lucky break.

and my parents signed me up for volleyball camp. i don’t remember how old i was—maybe twelve, thirteen? i could do the math, but my brain is too exhausted. it was only a week long. we did drills, we played games; every day i went back to my parents sobbing and exhausted, with burning red marks on my arms, barely able to stand and far worse than any other child there, even the other ‘lazy’ ones. that was the moment everyone in my life finally realized that something was wrong.

thus started a long, frustrating process and the wonders of the canadian healthcare system.

people love to compliment canada’s healthcare. they love to compare it to usamerica’s, they love to stand on their soapbox and say how great it is— i can always tell whether those people are disabled or not. because, yes. there are a lot of pros. but anybody who preaches that it’s wonderful and flawless will get my cane to their shins. because the reality is, the wait lists span years, and even when you live five minutes away from one of the best youth hospitals in the country, maybe even north america, sometimes they’ll put you through hell for three years straight, then give you the wrong diagnosis, throw an attempt at fixing you at the wall that doesn’t work, and then expect you to move on with your life.

i only have two vivid memories of that three-year process while i was still in elementary school: the beginning, and the end. my first major specialist appointment was with a neurologist. he stuck pins in my leg and arm and sent electric shocks through them to evaluate muscle responses. it was one of the worst pains i’ve ever felt. to this day, i can’t sustain a static shock without my leg buckling or my hand seizing up. my mom held my hand, and i was screaming; i still cry when i think about it. the test came back with nothing.

the end was when i finally saw a physiotherapist. at the time, it felt like a miracle; he spoke to me for what seemed like only ten, fifteen minutes, and gave me a diagnosis and a physiotherapy plan. that was in 2021. the physiotherapy turned out to be hell; i only lasted a few months, even doing the most basic of exercises, and my parents grew sour at the idea of driving me to the other end of the city on a regular basis. so that all shattered into nothingness.

but that’s all just an aside: the real point is, the first time i used a cane was on a school trip to a large city, at the end of elementary school. it was going to involve a lot of walking; something i knew by that point would be difficult. and so my mother gave me a gift. an old, simple, dark red, wooden cane. the same one she’d used in her teen years before her surgery, and kept just in case. i genuinely don’t know if it’s good or not; i don’t know if i could afford a better one. i’m still using it. i think buying a new one would make the reality too real—that i will not get a magic fix, like my mother did.

on that trip, my very first time using a cane, with my grade eight class, was the also the first time that anybody made fun of it. while walking through the city in small groups, another boy in my class called me a grandma from across the street. i ran after him and hit him (not hard) with it, and he kept his mouth shut for the rest of the trip.

when i started grade nine, my high school was a twenty-to-thirty minute walk from my house. (another aside, shorter this time: after almost every other form of exercise was slowly nixed out of my life, walking became my everything. it still kills, but it’s better than anything else.) and it was too much. by the time i reached school every day, i was unable to stand for the national anthem. that was when the cane became a regular part of my life; i took it with me every day for support while i walked, and even when i didn’t need it, it made my disability somewhat more visible. the respectful people saw it and realized that there was something wrong with me. the assholes saw it and were assholes.

here’s another thing about me: i used to have a cousin. i have a lot of cousins, actually, but the one in question was almost my twin. we were born in the same week, and shared a birthday every year growing up, and looked nearly identical—when our hair was the same length, that is. he and i were complete opposites in most other respects; i was a quiet, well-behaved (read: neurodivergent) kid, and he was a loud, trouble-making (read: neurodivergent) kid. but we got along. and we went to the same high school, and it always stunned people to find out that we were cousins.

in grade nine one of my cousin’s friends made fun of my cane, in front of him and me. my cousin shoved his own friend against a locker and threatened him because of it. i wasn’t made fun of for my cane at that school for the rest of my time there (unless you count the things that people say when they don’t mean to be mean, but have also never witnessed someone my age with a cane before. i don’t, but they still hurt.)

my cousin’s gone now. he overdosed on xanax and killed himself in october. it’s my fondest memory of him, when he turned on his own friend to defend me. i didn’t see him for two years before he passed because of covid quarantines and precautions. i genuinely don’t remember the last time i did see him.

and here’s one last thing: people think that growing up disabled with a parent that had suffered similarly would make things easier. but it was the opposite. because my mother wasn’t chronically disabled. she had horrible knee problems that were fixed after years of physiotherapy and a major operation. she was also labeled as gifted and diagnosed with something i forget the name of, which means that it takes more effort for her to perform tasks than it does for other people. and all that has done is this:

a more recent story. i’m currently spending a month living in québec on a university campus. initially, i was slotted to be staying in an off-campus apartment; they moved me to a residence building before i arrived because they knew of my disability. my room is on the fourth floor. there is no elevator. i wonder every day if my would-have-been apartment would have had less stairs.

my mother drove me there. when we arrived, she carried my suitcase up the stairs for me, because i was incapable of doing so myself. and when i complained, mostly lightheartedly—“oh, doing these stairs is going to suck all month”—she turned on me and told me that when she had been just a little bit older than me, she’d done a program in québec and lived on the third floor with no elevator, and she’d just had major knee surgery. and she’d been fine.

it was nothing for her. i still remember her exact words, four weeks later. i don’t know if she’ll ever truly take me seriously, because to her, she was disabled too, and she got through it. i’ve yet to find a way to convince her that it’s different. that not everything has a magic cure if you just work through it.

i’m eighteen now. she was nineteen when she had knee surgery. maybe when i turn nineteen, i’ll finally get a new cane. it’ll be symbolic, of something. i don’t know what. hopefully i’ll figure it out.

#jupiter.txt #monty.txt #is this poetry? maybe #disability #disabled #cane user #ableism #suicide mention #okay to reblog

[lawfulgoodness]

How dumb is this campaign hook?

I'm thinking of starting up a Shadowrun campaign with some friends of mine. The overall campaign idea is (unintentionally) very inspired by "The Matrix" & "Altered Carbon." My players will be jacking into and remotely controlling synthetically-grown bodies that aren't theirs. We'll be dealing with questions of identity, the nature of reality & perception, as well as the nature of gaming & imagination. The players I've talked to thus far have been on board with the idea of coming to the table with no character or backstory, trusting me to spin it into the narrative. These are some of my very best friends, so there's a high level of trust & comfort.

But I'm trying to decide if my initial plot hook is too stupid. So here it goes:

***************

You [real names] are sitting around a table with your friends. It's finally the weekend after a long week of work. You've all gotten together to play some games, eat some junk food, and blow off some steam. You pull some dice out of your dicebag, when you feel a seering pain in your head. It is the most blinding pain you've ever experienced that washes the room in a blinding white. Your skin goes cold while you suddenly feel yourself falling backwards.

Breathless and unable to scream, you suddenly feel hands grip your arms and jerk you forward. The pain in your head is gone, but you're still blinded by a white light.

"There you go..." a voice says. "Not so bad, right?"

The white light fades to a point, and you're aware of someone shining a penlight in your eyes while holding your eyelids apart.

"Alright, we'll, now that you're through the piloting simulator, it's time to get to work."

The penlight clicks off, and your eyes hazily adjust to the dim clinical room where you are being held up by two armed guards in military uniform. There are several guards holding up other... patients? ...prisoners? who seem as weak and disoriented as you. You try to put your feet under you, but don't have the strength. The hands on your arms are firm but not hostile, keeping you up as your legs kick haphazardly under you.

"Now let's get you plugged into the production system."

You see the other guards lay your ...companions? colleagues? ...back on steel gurneys as the voice says "now remember, you've got 45 minutes. After that, the bomb goes off."

It's the last thing you hear before the same blinding pain rushes through your head, and then fades to black...."

******************

After that, the players will wake up in the back of a cyberpunk personnel carrier with each other and a cache of weapons & have to figure out what to do next.

The heavy implication is that the "real world" is just a simulation, and the characters in the game aren't avatars or OCs, but self-inserts in a literal sense. The players won't have any memories or in-world knowledge, and they'll have to figure it all out from ground zero.

Is this really, really, really dumb? There's a voice in my head that thinks it might be. On the other hand, I feel like it sets up my premise & establishes player expectations really well.

Help me out, please. Does this sound fun, dumb, neither, or both?

#rpgs #shadowrun #my campaigns #campaign concepts #encounter concepts

[locked-keye]

This paragraph in my Criminal Law casebook caught my eye, so I took a closer look. What follows is one of the most cynical examples I've found of how to lie with citations. Come, walk with me.

Shopping While Black cites a few studies for its claims about shoplifting, first and most notably the 2016 National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data. Noting that "whites comprise nearly 73% of the shoplifting arrests," it emphasizes that "contrary to racial stereotypes, at least with these incomplete data, Blacks do not represent the group most likely to shoplift

This is, ah, a fascinating way of looking at the data. I went ahead and broke the same numbers out to examine per capita rates, which show the same clear trend as is apparent from the unadjusted numbers: there are clear differential shoplifting rates by race.

Unsatisfied with this data, the report goes on to look at other studies. It finds a 1997 article with shoplifting records from more than 171 retail firms, providing the following data: Whites (40.81%), African Americans (28.78%), and Latinos (15.78%). The researcher, it says, "provided no explanation for the over representation of Blacks and Latinos."

Thus, lacking explanations that satisfy them from two large datasets that show clear racial trends, the report concludes that "the only real way to determine who really shoplifts is to observe shoplifters and determine if there are any concrete demographic patterns." Apparently, some researchers did this in an Atlanta drug store two decades ago, hiring observers to randomly select and monitor the behavior of shoppers. From this single study in one Atlanta drug store, we find, "contrary to what some believe, Black and Hispanic shoppers were not more likely to steal than Whites." I'll come back to that study in a follow-up, because I'm definitely not done with it. But let's review: the report found the official crime report sample, in which black people were overrepresented 2x and Hispanic people weren't tracked. Then it found a dataset of 171,000 shoplifting incidents, in which black people were overrepresented 2x and Hispanic people were overrepresented. Finally, it found one study from a single store that claimed no overrepresentation. From that extraordinary series of events, a casebook used by law students around the country draws the citation that "Black and Hispanic shoppers were not more likely to steal than Whites." Source: Aspen's "Criminal Law: Cases and Materials, Eighth Edition", whose authors would resign from the academy in disgrace if they had a shred of dignity left. With that out of the way, let's examine "Who Actually Steals?", the single 2004 paper in Justice Quarterly on which rests the entire assertion in law casebooks around the country that shoplifting rates do not differ by race. How did it work? First: they set up CCTV cameras at one Atlanta store visited by a racially diverse population. Then they got observers to follow every third shopper "dressed in a fashion that afforded the individual a reasonable opportunity to conceal merchandise," sorting out people who did not touch store merchandise or who wore tight-fitting clothes. From there, they noted who shoplifted and gathered data.

The demographics within 3 miles of the store: 79.8% white, 18.9% black, 2.3% Asian, 4.2% Hispanic. So: What were the demographics of shoplifters at the store? 49.7% were white, 33.8% were African American, 13.2% were Hispanic, 2.3% were Asian, and 1% were in another group. So far as I can tell, they discerned this visually from CCTV footage.

Not particularly equal numbers. So--how, precisely, did they get equality from this? They explain! "Disturbed by this racial inconsistency in the demographic profile of the shoppers across data sources, we again returned to the store to more precisely estimate the descriptive characteristics of those persons entering this particular store location. [...] On comparing these two data sets, we found the race of the shopper to be the only variable for which any proportional inconsistency was observed. [...] We adjusted for the undersampling of whites and the oversampling of blacks and Hispanics by weighting each person by the inverse of the probability that he or she would have been included in the sample." I'll simplify: because the sample of shoplifters they saw had more (visually identified) black and Hispanic people than it did white people, they manually weighted the sample to be proportionate by race.

Finally, here are their baseline findings: a simple uncontrolled analysis finds that a disproportionate number of shoplifters were "male, black, Hispanic, between the ages of 35 and 54, low or working class, displayed suspicious cues, failed to make a purchase, or shopped during the summer months." Unsatisfied with this, they ran a logistic regression that successfully adjusted out the findings that males are more likely to shoplift than females, black and Hispanic shoppers than whites, whites more than Asians, and young people than old people.

Those are the findings. That's it. Zoom all the way back out: From visual observation at one Atlanta store in which more black and Hispanic people shoplifted than white people (who in turn shoplifted more than Asians), more men shoplifted than women, and more young people than old, cancelled out by bizarre regression techniques until all these cues were blurred, Shopping While Black draws the line "Black and Hispanic shoppers were not more likely to steal from whites," in a section that mentions nationally representative data that tells the same story as the unadjusted data from their own study. From that, my casebook picked out that single line, pairing it with a mention that shoplifting data is hard to come by. And now every law student who reads Aspen casebooks gets to nod along as they learn that shoplifting data is hard to come by and doesn't show any racial disparities. To be clear, this is not stupidity. Nothing like this happens by accident. It is citational malpractice on a ludicrous scale, performed by people who care far more about politics than about truth. It is nothing short of naked propaganda.

(PDF) Who actually steals? A study of covertly observed shoplifters (researchgate.net)

#shoplifting #statistics #racism #queue

[mothsakura]

PROMPT:

why is bob such a bob?? what terrible trauma caused his bob-ness?...

OH OH ALRIGHTY YES!!! ARGGG LET ME REMEMBER IT GRAHH REFLECTIONS IN LAST FRACTURE LORE (bob lore) so basically: RB was made with the purpose of withstanding the rot, he was the first and only prototype for this model (i say first and only because Reflections in Last Fracture was no longer allowed to work on iterators and got all his permits taken away after this, thus wasn't able to continue on with this project) it took a while to build and program RB, even more time to get this project approved. Reflections in Last Fracture was trying to approve this project with 15 Swords of Crimson (the highest ranking council member from the colony in which Reflections in Last Fracture was from) when the incident happened now you see, RB was basically ready to be "tested" (basically give him a bit of rot and see how he handles it, in theory it should have none to little effect on him, and he should be able to withstand it without it spreading significantly), and Reflections in Last Fracture was very confident in this turning out exactly how he planned it to. i need you to keep in mind that Reflections in Last Fracture wasn't a great ancient, he is a rather uncooperative and mean guy. unfortunately RB had to deal with this guy too, especially with the arguments these two had almost every time Reflections in Last Fracture would visit. RB was also somewhat of a bastard but not so much yet, he was a lot less mean than what he became later on. anyways back to the incident: Reflections in Last Fracture was accompanied by 15 Swords of Crimson and 42 Strikes (who couldn't stop being worried that this will all go wrong) when this happened. Reflections in Last Fracture inserted a sample of rot into the rot container and neutralizer system (RCN system) he always did this during a demonstration and so far in all of the demonstrations RB's structure has been handling it quite well (despite RB's constant complaints about it), so no doubt this will work during the final and most important demonstration before the project is fully approved... right? nope! apparently some rot managed to mess up a part or two in the RCN system !! something that Reflections in Last Fracture hadn't checked up on due to his pride and ego getting in the way of his sight, apparently, according to RB! so seeing that something messed up, Reflections in Last Fracture went back to RB's chamber (with 15 Swords of Crimson and 42 Strikes following along) to make sure if RB was just ill or straight up dead. yeah... it was BAD... well, sounded bad when the machinery tried to neutralize the rot and completely failed and just kind of jammed up and stopped working welp RB wasn't happy in fact he was in pain and very angry! well RB complained like he ussualy does, Reflections in Last Fracture may have lost his temper and yelled at the poor bastard a little, to which RB has had enough and gave him the brain zap (that pebbles sometimes does, except with RB its not deadly, just stuns you for a bit) OH THIS WAS NOT GOOD REFLECTIONS IN LAST FRACTURE WAS MAD MAD REALLY MAD a whole bunch of yelling later and Reflections in Last Fracture was kicked out of the council for unethical treatment of an iterator (even back during gen 1 where there was basically almost no laws for this, it was still frowned upon to treat your iterator badly), and RB got a restriction protocol coded in which it took away 50% of his water intake (closed half of the water collecting pipes), and will take away 25% more if RB zaps another ancient, or even just raises his voice at an ancient. Reflections in Last Fracture never saw RB after that incident just kind of left the poor dehydrated bastard to rot 42 strikes attempting to help RB but RB was too delirious and angry to care, just kicked 42 strikes out of his district. rest in pieces, Rotting Balance (he's not dead but we're still hosting a funeral for all of the hopes and dreams that he lost smh)

#rw #rw oc #rain world oc #iterator #iterator oc #who tf let Reflections in Last Fracture work on iterators in the first place smh #RB done got his water confiscated

[spiritelectric3]

My journey through Homestuck: Act 1

The gods have chosen me to experience the horrors of Homestuck. I have chosen to do so via comic dub (specifically the Void Over Nexus dub). Here are my takes:

-Okay, I'm still in the kid's bedroom and they are already introducing such complicated mechanics. -16 minutes in and he's finally left his room. I'm so glad I didn't read this or it would have taken forever -I'll admit, so far, this does make me feel kinda nostalgic for my childhood. It has an attitude that was common for comic books and cartoons of the 2000s, but has gone away. Reminds me a lot of picking up random comic books from the library as a kid and reading them over and over. -With some deeper thought, too, this is a pretty accurate description of what it's like to have free time as a kid, how you kind of just goof off doing whatever, but somehow it all feels important. Sort of like how the Lord of the Rings dedicates a lot of pages to walking so that the reader gets a similar feeling to the characters. -Plus, from what I know from the plot, this is kind of an actually good way to set up a story like this. John's home is important, so the work spends time on it. It's annoying that it takes awhile, but that's why we have comic book dubs. -okay, tbh, this is a pretty accurate depiction of what (neurodivergent?) childhood thinking is like, at least for my own childhood -okay, so more on the neurodivergent thinking thing: I love how well the comic integrates strange system but shifts the reader's mindset towards the world of the series well. It reminds me of how I end up seeing the world differently based on my current hyperfixation -also unrelated, but I thought Stacks were first in first out and Queues were first in last out -wait, how is this inventory system different!? -thought on the language: I think the descriptions thus far are kind of hit or miss. It's a hit when we get detailed poetic descriptions of childhood mentality. It's a miss when it becomes so long and pedantic that I can't make heads nor tails of it. -Is TT… psychic!?

-I love how no one in this series can handle simply having a human body so they need inventories and the ability to move things long distance. Honestly same (oh god I'm beginning to think like the writing style) -okay, this is just what it's like to play an overly complicated video game for the first time, just in semi-literary form -I'm kind of terrified of what's gonna happen to the second person narrator later on -Why are John's eyes shaped like glasses lenses if he doesn't wear them? -I love how ominous Sberb is quickly becoming -…OH. I think I'm beginning to realize how this became a massive influence on all media in the 2010s+ -This is the moment where I am wondering if I should turn back, already realizing that it is too late -Honestly, I can already see how someone could write a paper on how this series fundamentally redefines thought, in and of itself -why does this series make me want to play Run 2 on coolmathgames.com? -this is legitimately like non-cyperpunk cyberpunk -I'll admit that for all that's been happening the meteor is kind of a weird uptick in stakes -Ah, that's what happens to the second person voice -I love how the narrator's personality shifts to match Rose's -Seeing Rose get introduced this late feels like during a first dnd session when your the last character to be introduced at the end of the session -Rose's captchalogue is pretty based -okay, I'm gonna say it. Rose is a much more entertaining character than john. She's like if Susie Derkins had a wilder imagination -Wait… WHAT THE FUCK!?

Overrall I'd say, yeah this is pretty slow. In this format it's honestly worse when they're playing the game than when John is just doing stuff in his house. Those earlier sections almost made me tear up. They didn't, but they got close. I think there is a childlike joythat encapsulates this series thus far, and has been the majority of the charm

#homestuck