#have you read this web novel results | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

flameswallower · 25 days ago

Text

THE BEST FICTION I ENCOUNTERED IN THE SECOND HALF OF 2024!!!

A much longer follow-up to this post. (Can you imagine how much I'd need to type out if I hadn't split them up???)

Once again, I'm not listing movies, TV shows, video games, etc. I AM listing some web fiction and comics/graphic novels, because I feel much more qualified to judge and recommend those things.

____

Novels and Novellas!

Failure To Comply, by Cavar (2024): Reading Cavar’s Failure to Comply, I couldn’t help but think of the recent David Cronenberg movie Crimes of the Future. Both deal with dystopias in which bodies and their modification are strictly regulated, and people with unauthorized bodies form a vibrant, perpetually imperiled subculture on the margins. Both use this conceit to speak metaphorically about the plights of trans and disabled people, although Failure to Comply’s characters are also presented as literally, textually disabled and trans. But, although Crimes of the Future is often accused of being a “weird movie,” Failure to Comply is undeniably much, much weirder. Cronenberg is super normal compared to this.

Maej, by Dale Stromberg (2024): a doorstopper I found difficult to put down and finished inside a week; a work of very unapologetic genre fiction that’s equally unapologetic in its intelligence and dedication to doing strange, creative things with language; a high fantasy story I actually liked. The setting is the city of Sforre-Yomn, in the country of Hwoama, whose culture combines elements from across the continents of Asia and Europe. But Hwoama is matriarchal: men are subordinate to women, who dominate politics, business, the military, and nearly all other professions. As a result of this fact, almost all the major characters in the novel are female. By turns this presents a fun, simple, mischievous inversion of maleness as the unmarked default state for fictional characters, and meaty commentary on the social construction of sex, sexuality, and gender. Stromberg has cited Le Guin as an influence on Maej and, in the most complimentary way possible, this influence is evident.

Lote, by Shola von Reinhold (2020) is a gorgeous, funny, moving academic satire/mystery and love letter to Black modernism. It’s also very queer/trans and (in my personal opinion, perhaps not intentionally) very autistic. The title refers to a possibly-mythical clandestine circle of artists/magic practitioners who style themselves after the lotus eaters and seek transcendence via experiences of sensory and aesthetic pleasure. As with many novels that stand out to me, you won’t read anything else like it. I especially recommend this one if you want a completely unique, intellectually stimulating work of fiction, but are put off by the aggressively experimental and opaque style of Failure To Comply and by the SFF-ness of FTC, Maej, and Leech.

Walking Practice, by Dolki Min (trans. Victoria Caudle) (original 2022; English translation 2024) is a breezy, sexy *, gender-bending Korean novel about a poor amorphous space alien stranded on Earth after a spaceship crash. Unfortunately for us, this alien soon discovers that 1.) the most suitable food for it down here is human flesh, and 2.) with a lot of pain and effort, it can squeeze itself into the likeness of a variety of different human beings. It figures out hookup apps pretty fast, too, and then it’s off to the races. This may sound like creature horror, but it plays more as an exploration of identity and humanity, and a satire of sex, romance, and contemporary hookup culture. (*possibly less sexy if you don’t have a vore/cannibalism/consumption thing)

Love/Aggression, by June Martin (2024) is a BANANAS mundane fantasy-comedy about two trans women who are kind of best friends, and kind of enemies. Zoe (actress) is an arrogant, cartoonishly unpleasant minor celebrity who thinks she’s much more famous and popular than she actually is— but Martin manages to show how her personality is in part the sympathetic result of dysphoria and experiencing a lot of transmisogyny over the course of her life, and how she used to be a much kinder person before fame went to her head. Meanwhile, Lily (freeloader and aspiring tattoo artist) is a sweet, spacy, passive daydreamer, and a far more immediately likable character— but Martin manages to show how she is not entirely blameless in the ongoing drama with Zoe, how her passivity is sometimes the result of immaturity and selfishness, and how even when it isn’t, it’s a character flaw that keeps landing her in situations which kind of suck for all parties involved. They live in a magical Pittsburgh that is, conveniently, located right next to Los Angeles. Their friends include a BDSM cult leader and a nonbinary person whose name becomes “Dicks” in the first chapter of the story and who is never called anything else. (This character also happens to be the…owner? Custodian?…of an infinite, maze-like, reality-distorting building that is probably the most fun and least scary infinite, maze-like, reality-distorting building in all of fiction.) There’s vore in this one, too! But don’t go in expecting a particularly cohesive plot: Love/Aggression is far more about characters, relationships, and gags.

Maybe the Moon, by Armistead Maupin (1992) was inspired by the too-brief life of Maupin’s real friend Tamara De Treaux, a little person who depicted the title character in parts of the movie E.T. Her literary equivalent, Cady Roth, is a sardonic, fashionable, thirty-year-old little person who depicted a magical gnome called Mr. Woods in a beloved, albeit treacly, children’s fantasy movie of the same name. But since she played the role inside a thick rubber suit, and since the director of the movie felt it would spoil the magic to give her any credit, almost nobody knows that. Ten years later, she lives in obscurity on dwindling funds and struggles to find work…until, out of sheer desperation, she decides to take a job with a troupe of children’s birthday party entertainers. Romance, escapades, etc. ensue. Both a very funny book and a very sad one; it’s quite frank about death, about the ways Hollywood fucks people over, about the many ways that, especially if you’re marginalized and/or an artist, your life isn’t fair and isn’t ever going to be fair and “happy endings” probably aren’t what the world has in store for you. I think ultimately it’s sentimental in a good way; it has a big heart.

Leech, by Hiron Ennes (2022) is a total banger to finish out this year with! So glad I picked it up finally! Absolute genre jambalaya, this one: sci-fi, stuff that reads as fantasy despite having or probably having a “sci-fi” explanation, horror, Gothic novel (but not, crucially, a Gothic romance), mystery, medical thriller, character study, philosophical novel about ideas of consciousness, selfhood, individuality, and free will…there’s probably something in here for everyone reading this. You’ll love it, almost guaranteed, if you love the Gormenghast books. You’ll love it, almost guaranteed, if you love any Star Trek series. You’ll love it, almost guaranteed, if you love the science fiction of Peter Watts, or the horror of Gretchen Felker-Martin. You’ll love it, almost guaranteed, if you love The Thing (1982). The prose is lush, idiosyncratic, a bit purple, but it’s nothing too baroque, it’s all perfectly easy to read. The complicated, antiheroic protagonist/narrator is delightful and memorable, and I think Ennes did a great job at conveying unusual states of memory/selfhood/cognition through it/them/her. (Some of these states are not ones with which I have, or even could possibly have ever had, real experience, but some are, and I am always pleased to find those replicated in ways I can recognize and feel as “truthful.”)

Short Story Collections!

Stone Gods (2024) and Worse Than Myself (2009) by Adam Golaski contained several of the very best short stories I read this year— especially Worse Than Myself, which is also a slightly more accessible/“normal” story collection and the one I’d recommend starting with. Golaski writes eerie, dreamlike, bizarre fiction that frequently crosses over into horror— even including time-worn horror genre tropes like zombies, ghosts, and vampires. But let me tell you, Golaski’s “The Man From the Peak” (in Worse Than Myself) is a BAD time, like give-you-nightmares scary, and it feels like nothing you’ve ever read before, even though it’s about A Nosferatu. Not just a vampire, but a vampire that is explicitly described as egg-bald with big pointy ears and two sharp buck teeth. That’s the antagonist. And it fucking works. He makes it new. Please, please read Adam Golaski, you guys. It is astounding and unjust that he’s not popularly regarded as one of the 21st century’s best authors of weird short fiction. I don’t actually know if he could have/wanted to publish more than two collections over fifteen years, but I kind of feel like maybe if a lot of people and public libraries buy those two collections, he’ll have more space and incentive to write short stories, and/or more publishers will be interested in picking up another collection of his short stories?

Brave New Weird vol. 2 (2024) was a diverse, entertaining selection of stories. Some I’d read, some I hadn’t. A pretty good overview of the mostly small press horror/sci-fi/Weird fiction scene as it stands right this minute.

All Your Friends Are Here, by M. Shaw (2024) is almost the opposite of the Golaski collections, in a way: Golaski frequently deals with themes of nostalgia, the past, cycles that repeat without end, and timelessness or being outside of time. Moreover, most of his stories feel like they’d be immediately comprehensible to a person fifty years ago or fifty years from now, if not even further into the past/future (with, perhaps, a few footnotes of cultural explanation). But Shaw’s stories are, often aggressively, Of The Moment. And that’s not a bad thing, even if it means they may seem completely dated in a few decades. Shaw is interested in speaking directly to their place and time; directly to us. They’re not going to pretend we’re not all online, that we don’t all know (if against our will) what Ready Player One is— the longest piece in the collection, and one of the best, is a suitably pop-culture-reference-laden dunk/riff/spoof on, and rebuttal of, Ready Player One! These stories are angry and clever and sometimes suffused with a kind of exhausted tenderness. There’s clearly a Bizarro influence on some of Shaw’s work, but their writing is more sophisticated and restrained than what I tend to associate with Bizarro fiction proper.

Individual Short Stories (That You Can Read Right Now!)

“EGREGORE” by Samir Sirk Morató (2024) = clubbing, hallucinatory, girl on girl

“The Spindle Of Necessity” by B. Pladek (2024) = trans academic suspects dead author may have been a closeted gay trans man

“A History of the Avodion Through Five Artists” by Eric Horwitz (2024) = Borgesian, arch, Jewish

“Mad Studies” by Cavar (2024) = loneliness, cats, autism…like Failure To Comply, this is by @librarycards

“Alabama Circus Punk” by Thomas Ha (2024) = robots, the nuclear family, disintegrating language

Comics and Graphic Novels!

Tomorrow You Don't Know Me, by Raven Lyn Clemens (2024) is a subtle, moving, and unsentimental graphic novel about being a middle schooler with problems, and how sometimes those problems just kinda...persist no matter what you do or try or want, and no matter if it's fair. Even if you summon a demon to help you! Clemens is really skilled at depicting emotion visually, at communicating both the absurd goofiness and the deep, genuine pain of the outsize negative emotions her characters experience. All of her characters are at least a little wretched, and she also handles them all with great compassion, affection, and understanding. Check out her artwork at @ravenlynclemens please; it's fantastic cartooning even without any detailed narrative.

In Fair Verona, by Val Wise (2024) is a VERY gory, VERY nasty piece of lesbian Gothic fantasy horror-erotica. I love Wise's art. The bodies she draws, regardless of gender and build, are top-tier sexy and beautiful to me, which means he's often able to get me on board* with kinks and scenarios that would usually be too "extreme" for my taste. (*Genteel euphemism for arousal)

A Guest In the House, by E.M Carroll (2023) is an equally nasty and mean, but far, FAR less explicit and bizarre, lesbian Gothic horror story, told with the visual panache and inimitable art style everyone knows and loves Carroll for. It's a worthy successor to their previous material, and if it doesn't necessarily make enormous leaps from their earlier work in its writing, the drawing and coloring has gone from "already really good" to "some of these splash pages will blow your eyes out the back of your skull."

Expiry Date, by Sloane Hong (2024) is another lesbian/queer erotica comic. This one's science fiction, and is FAR more up my usual alley of kinks. Which is to say that the lovers are quite kind/polite with one another (in a lot of ways it reads as a meet-cute), but also one of them is a hired killer who dispassionately agrees to torture the fuck out of the other one David Cronenberg-style.

Once again, all my comic recs are by queer trans people! I think I made a pretty hacky joke last year about gay trans mascs specifically ruling in this field, but based on recent data, you just have to be a marginalized gender and not heterosexual to make amazing comics.

Web Fiction!

The Frenzy wiki is a fan wiki for an imagined TV series, telling the story of both Frenzy, a popular late 2000s ensemble cast drama-adventure-SFF show drawing equally from the likes of Twin Peaks and Supernatural, and how the existence of this show was mysteriously wiped from the face of our reality-- save in the troubled dreams of a select few. I would estimate it takes a couple hours to explore the whole wiki. (2022 or 2023?)

3D Workers Island is the phenomenal, if less ambitious, follow-up to Petscop. (I don't mean it's a sequel; it's just by the same guy and covers similar thematic ground.) Like its predecessor, it's more about dropping tantalizing hints than letting you in on "what's actually going on," and more about giving you a creeped out and vaguely depressed feeling than about scaring or shocking you per se. It's really smart and well-crafted in an understated way, and does a great job replicating early internet content. I would estimate it takes WELL under an hour to get through this story, although you will probably want to immediately go back and look for things you might have missed or not understood properly. (2024)

Martin's Movies is conventional, compared to the other two. It's a ghost story. But it's a very creepy, effective, well-told ghost story rendered through the unusual medium of letterboxd reviews (of course, these become increasingly diary-like and Not About The Film as the story progresses). I would estimate it takes under an hour to read the whole thing, it's like short novelette length. (2024)

#fine here's a rec tag

149 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months ago

Text

Too big to care

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Remember the first time you used Google search? It was like magic. After years of progressively worsening search quality from Altavista and Yahoo, Google was literally stunning, a gateway to the very best things on the internet.

Today, Google has a 90% search market-share. They got it the hard way: they cheated. Google spends tens of billions of dollars on payola in order to ensure that they are the default search engine behind every search box you encounter on every device, every service and every website:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Not coincidentally, Google's search is getting progressively, monotonically worse. It is a cesspool of botshit, spam, scams, and nonsense. Important resources that I never bothered to bookmark because I could find them with a quick Google search no longer show up in the first ten screens of results:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Even after all that payola, Google is still absurdly profitable. They have so much money, they were able to do a $80 billion stock buyback. Just a few months later, Google fired 12,000 skilled technical workers. Essentially, Google is saying that they don't need to spend money on quality, because we're all locked into using Google search. It's cheaper to buy the default search box everywhere in the world than it is to make a product that is so good that even if we tried another search engine, we'd still prefer Google.

This is enshittification. Google is shifting value away from end users (searchers) and business customers (advertisers, publishers and merchants) to itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

And here's the thing: there are search engines out there that are so good that if you just try them, you'll get that same feeling you got the first time you tried Google.

When I was in Tucson last month on my book-tour for my new novel The Bezzle, I crashed with my pals Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I've know them since I was a teenager (Patrick is my editor).

We were sitting in his living room on our laptops – just like old times! – and Patrick asked me if I'd tried Kagi, a new search-engine.

Teresa chimed in, extolling the advanced search features, the "lenses" that surfaced specific kinds of resources on the web.

I hadn't even heard of Kagi, but the Nielsen Haydens are among the most effective researchers I know – both in their professional editorial lives and in their many obsessive hobbies. If it was good enough for them…

I tried it. It was magic.

No, seriously. All those things Google couldn't find anymore? Top of the search pile. Queries that generated pages of spam in Google results? Fucking pristine on Kagi – the right answers, over and over again.

That was before I started playing with Kagi's lenses and other bells and whistles, which elevated the search experience from "magic" to sorcerous.

The catch is that Kagi costs money – after 100 queries, they want you to cough up $10/month ($14 for a couple or $20 for a family with up to six accounts, and some kid-specific features):

https://kagi.com/settings?p=billing_plan&plan=family

I immediately bought a family plan. I've been using it for a month. I've basically stopped using Google search altogether.

Kagi just let me get a lot more done, and I assumed that they were some kind of wildly capitalized startup that was running their own crawl and and their own data-centers. But this morning, I read Jason Koebler's 404 Media report on his own experiences using it:

https://www.404media.co/friendship-ended-with-google-now-kagi-is-my-best-friend/

Koebler's piece contained a key detail that I'd somehow missed:

When you search on Kagi, the service makes a series of “anonymized API calls to traditional search indexes like Google, Yandex, Mojeek, and Brave,” as well as a handful of other specialized search engines, Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, etc. Kagi then combines this with its own web index and news index (for news searches) to build the results pages that you see. So, essentially, you are getting some mix of Google search results combined with results from other indexes.

In other words: Kagi is a heavily customized, anonymized front-end to Google.

The implications of this are stunning. It means that Google's enshittified search-results are a choice. Those ad-strewn, sub-Altavista, spam-drowned search pages are a feature, not a bug. Google prefers those results to Kagi, because Google makes more money out of shit than they would out of delivering a good product:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework

No wonder Google spends a whole-ass Twitter every year to make sure you never try a rival search engine. Bottom line: they ran the numbers and figured out their most profitable course of action is to enshittify their flagship product and bribe their "competitors" like Apple and Samsung so that you never try another search engine and have another one of those magic moments that sent all those Jeeves-askin' Yahooers to Google a quarter-century ago.

One of my favorite TV comedy bits is Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator; Tomlin would do these pitches for the Bell System and end every ad with "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company":

https://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76aphonecompany.phtml

Speaking of TV comedy: this week saw FTC chair Lina Khan appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It was amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

The coverage of Khan's appearance has focused on Stewart's revelation that when he was doing a show on Apple TV, the company prohibited him from interviewing her (presumably because of her hostility to tech monopolies):

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/apple-got-caught-censoring-its-own

But for me, the big moment came when Khan described tech monopolists as "too big to care."

What a phrase!

Since the subprime crisis, we're all familiar with businesses being "too big to fail" and "too big to jail." But "too big to care?" Oof, that got me right in the feels.

Because that's what it feels like to use enshittified Google. That's what it feels like to discover that Kagi – the good search engine – is mostly Google with the weights adjusted to serve users, not shareholders.

Google used to care. They cared because they were worried about competitors and regulators. They cared because their workers made them care:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/4/18295933/google-cancels-ai-ethics-board

Google doesn't care anymore. They don't have to. They're the search company.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

#pluralistic #john stewart #the daily show #apple #monopoly #lina khan #ftc #too big to fail #too big to jail #monopolism #trustbusting #antitrust #search #enshittification #kagi #google

437 notes · View notes

thewriteadviceforwriters · 10 months ago

Text

15 Beautiful Lover-to-Enemies Dialogue Prompts | Betrayal Prompts

"Do you remember the vows we made under the moon's gentle glow? How quickly they turned to ash, scattered by the winds of deceit."

"Your words were once my solace, but now they cut deeper than any blade forged in malice."

"In the labyrinth of our love, I found myself lost, only to realize you were the minotaur lurking in the shadows."

"Every kiss we shared was a dagger coated in honey, sweet yet deadly."

"The stars witnessed our passion, but they now mock our folly as we stand on opposite sides of a war we ourselves ignited."

"Our hearts beat as one, once upon a time. Now they drum the rhythm of discord and resentment."

"I thought I knew the depths of your soul, only to find abysses of betrayal waiting to devour me whole."

"Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I emerge from the ruins of our love, reborn as your adversary."

"You were the melody to my symphony, but now your discordant notes shatter the harmony we once shared."

"We danced on the edge of oblivion, oblivious to the precipice that awaited our descent into enmity."

"The echoes of our laughter haunt me, mocking the innocence we thought would shield us from the venom of betrayal."

"Our love was a tapestry woven with threads of gold, now unraveling into a tangled web of lies and deception."

"I offered you my heart on a silver platter, only for you to feast upon it with the appetite of a ravenous beast."

"We were poets of passion, crafting verses of devotion with every whispered promise. Now our words are weapons, dripping with venomous intent."

"The sunrise that once painted our love with hues of warmth and hope now heralds the dawn of our animosity, casting long shadows of regret across the battlefield of our hearts."

Short Note From Me!

Many fans of Enemies to Lovers often overlook the possibility of exploring Lover to Enemies. This underrated trope is one of my favorites and I believe it has the potential to make a novel truly stand out. If you have space in your story for this unique twist, I assure you it will result in an amazing read.

I created these dialogue prompts to inspire writers to explore the theme of lovers turning into enemies, showcasing a different form of betrayal.

Happy writing - Rin T.

317 notes · View notes

valentinedagger · 8 months ago

Text

i have a bit of a hot take: "you have to read novels to improve your writing" is technically, literally true insofar as you're talking about, like, prose structure and style. however, if you're already satisfied with your prose itself, i do not think that's true and i think prose writing sincerely benefits from a multidisciplinary approach that one might get from studying writing across art forms other than novels.

comics, film, television, video games, web-based unfiction like ARGs, concept albums, and pretty much any other narrative art i can't think of right now--they're all fertile ground for developing your understanding of character work, framing, pacing, establishing symbolism and other motifs, setting work, pretty much everything i would consider the fundamental building blocks of narrative fiction. you can learn just as much from picking apart the narrative structure and choices in your favorite manga as you can from doing the same with your favorite novel.

more than that, i think taking a multidisciplinary approach to studying fiction can result in better, more interesting novels--breaking away from your medium of choice allows you to think about art using different lenses entirely and examine your own medium in new ways. studying a TV show could give you insight into how serial, episodic writing differs structurally from trad published novels, and could allow you to take a fresh structural approach on writing a series of novels. studying a comic might cause you to think about your choices of visuals and visual framing, and to be intentional about your "directorial style" in-text as much as you are intentional about your prose style. et cetera and so on and so forth!

i do appreciate where the sentiment "you have to read novels to improve your own writing" is coming from--i mean, for one thing, i agree that the best art tends to come from a genuine enthusiasm for the medium you're working in--but quite frankly, narrative fiction is narrative fiction. we're all working with the same basic toolkit, there's just different ways to use those tools based on medium.

full disclosure: i, as an author, am not a huge reader of novels. i get through 2-4 novels a year, on average. i am, however, a voracious enthusiast of multimedia web-based fiction, comics, animation, and television, and i do the vast bulk of my artistic criticism and analysis in those mediums. i do study prose through the novels i read, but on the whole, even my prose improvement tends to come from studying poetry (something that is painfully obvious in my writing at times, and is not to everyone's taste). don't get me wrong--i am not saying i produce outstanding quality work that should be compared to that of lifelong professionals or anything, but my writing is generally acceptable, and i continue to make marked improvements over time--because my course of study is intentional, regardless of medium.

tl;dr: narrative is narrative, if you set out with the intention to understand what makes a narrative tick, it doesn't matter what medium you're studying, you're still learning.

#certified dagger original

63 notes · View notes

archivalofsins · 6 months ago

Text

I feel like people really do pick and choose when Jackalope is an unreliable source of information.

This would be fine if it this were ever tied to any of his characterization over the course of series. Yet, half the time it just boils down to him saying something that a person subjectively doesn't agree with.

Then that someone going,

"Remember the characters can lie, they aren't infallible, this includes Jackalope~ <3 Please and thank you!"

Without explaining or even going over any of times Jackalope has been overtly bias. Of which they are many to actually elaborate further on why they believe this is the case. It's honestly why I've been getting really sick of the blanket term vibes when it comes to describing the character of an individual or concept.

It's such an easy way to discount something without giving it much thought.

Saying that the characters can be bias is pretty much the same as that to me. Except it oddly glances over the fact that the audience can be bias as well and usually when someone tells someone something is the case without evidence that means one of two things,

A. They don't want to think about the topic too much themselves.

B. They don't want you to think about the topic too much yourself.

Either way they don't want anyone thinking which is never a good thing.

(Edited for clarity and to expand on certain points: 07/19/2024 12:58pm)

For example- if I were to say,

"Ya, know I don't like how Jackalope discussed Yuno. I feel like he was being a bit dishonest in the report on her at the end of trial two. I mean we know he has a bias for cute women and it seems like he's just agreeing with her statement because she's his type."

That would still have more thought put into it than what people have been saying about his report on Mikoto and I could actually prove that. Because it directly aligns with how he has consistently been portrayed.

But I didn't say he was fucking lying for her because even though he has a bias towards cute girls he has no fucking reason to. But you just said he has a bias towards her so he would lie to keep her looking good and make us think it was really that simple if he liked her.

Have none of you been watching? Do you not know what makes Jackalope go apeshit? From the web series and the novels yet? What really gets this motherfucker heated more than any woman- Let me give a quick refresher.

youtube

"It’s not easy. Of course it’s not easy. Crime is not easy! Punishment is not easy!! Don’t I know it! But don’t you see! What I’m looking for is there, in that decision arrived at only after wading through all that morass!! …Ahem. Sorry, got a little heated."

His Milgram. His Experiment. The thing that he is here to test. The first novel goes to extra lengths to expand on this hyper focus he has on this experiment and what Milgram sets out to do.

So, I don't have to question his honesty on Yuno because I know whatever he says is being said in a way as to not mess up the process. Because that is what he is the most interested in. Regardless of if he doesn't always agree with the results.

That's why it personally irks me when someone just goes- Remember, the characters can be swayed by their own subjective beliefs and experiences. So, they can be unreliable narrators. This includes Jackalope without delving into any of his characterization.

Because I don't know, some people may really believe that Jackalope just shows up to tell lies and has no vested interest in Milgram as a facility or the experiment taking place.

But secondly-

Yeah, that's how good characterization works. Like yeah that's just characterization...

Sometimes, I feel like in this day and age if some were to read a first-person novel where the narrator was unreliable for any number of reasons.... Ugh, they might legitimately believe the book was lying to them. Like the book was being dishonest. Instead of that being a very specific aspect connected to the characterization of the character perceiving the events of the story.

So, I'm gonna do it myself because some people are honestly doing Jackalope dirty right now. Which I thought I'd never have to defend the rabbit but-

Jackalope does not care about Mikoto Kayano. Let's dissect.

Firstly Mikoto is the prisoner Jackalope admitted from the very beginning he doesn't give a damn about one way or the other-

In the very first voice drama. He didn't even want to spend more than one second talking about the man when they got to him.

Like oh he's biased. Yeah but was he ever biased against prisoners for personal reasons not pertaining to their crimes?

Jackalope from day one-

No he admitted to not being interested in the prisoners personal information to the point of not even remembering their ages. So, he wouldn't even know enough about Mikoto to hate him personally. Yet he notes that he doesn't know anything about their personal lives he never states he doesn't know anything about their crimes just that this is something for the guard to discern on their own.

I mostly bring this up because it showcases just how little Mikoto is on Jackalope's personal radar. There are other things that show this as well that we'll get into but this is the very first.

Honestly, from this alone it feels like Jackalope does not and has never cared that much for Mikoto. He didn't even care enough to check what the fuck was going on with him and his strange sleeping patterns even though they're fucking noted on his prisoner description on the website.

You know the thing that tipped Kotoko off that he may have dissociative identity disorder to begin with.

Kotoko is more emotionally invested in Mikoto than Jackalope ever has been,

"I already noticed Mikoto Kayano's weird behavior a while ago, and since I'm in the room right next to his, I kept and eye on him."

Why did you save me...? "Because your existence is helpful to me." That's... not an explanation... "I guess you're right. I'll be answering that question when it's my turn." ... ... "I don't mean to pre-empt things here after all." ...gh... Damn it... Mikoto... Suddenly lashing out like that... "Warden-san, look over here." What is it not Koto-...ko? "The hit got blocked in midair...? So, it's true that inmates can't attack you. Then why was Mikoto Kayano able to hit you...?" ...This is bad for my heart. Stop it. Besides, that's what i'd like to know as well... Ngh... It's time... Get out, Kotoko. "The song extraction thing, huh. Are you trying to say that something I'm not allowed to see?" I'm ignoring your question. Get out. "...Hm. Either way this has become interesting, hasn't it?" Kotoko...

"You've realized it too, haven't you? Based on this confirmation, it's likely that Mikoto Kayano has dissociative identity disorder, or in other words, a split personality."

Kotoko even blatantly admits to stalking Mikoto in her first voice drama,

"For example, me being suspicious of Mikoto Kayano's actions, carefully tracking him and his behavior."

Jackalope didn't care enough to look into any of the prisoners personally then and he still doesn't care now.

Hell, he cares more about being Futa's number one, day one, never gonna stop hater-

Then he will ever care about Mikoto. That is how little he cares.

But he cares enough to say he hates Futa without knowing anything about him personally. So, he could. Yeah, again, he doesn't know anything about them personally, but he knows their crimes/what they are in here for and can easily like or dislike them based on a number of biases outside of that information.

He just has never liked Futa and has done nothing to hide that fact.

Seriously, Jackalope said this shit from the beginning but I still had people up my ass like Jackalope would never lie about the severity of Futa's injuries in comparison to Mahiru's. Whaaaa- What do you mean?!

Meanwhile-

Jackalope what time is it? Hating o'clock you say, damn I guess-

"Because he was found “guilty”, he’s tormented, engulfed with anxiety. Shaking in his boots, I’d say. So amusing."

If Futa has one hater, I know it's going to be Jackalope. It will be no one else. If someone out there believe they're Futa's number one hater, they are wrong it is this rabbit. Jackalope is the guy in this niche situation.

Jackalope doesn't even give enough of a fuck to know Mikoto's name. If it wasn't on the incarceration sheet I doubt he would even know it. (this is hyperbole for comedic effect. I think he'd at least remember the dudes name.)

Still seriously I don't get what some people are on. Mikoto is not everyone's main character and that's fine. He doesn't need to be.

Jackalope said,

"This boy is bland and I don't cook without spices."

"A dime a dozen, a million like him. I could skip a stone in the street and hit five."

That's his opinion he stood on that, and he's free to have it. That has been his characterization on this since day one. He did not look any deeper to his own detriment and admission.

He really side eyed this dude like,

"Mm fake ass, phony ass, never told the truth in his life ass."

Then second trial went,

"We have a problem. MILGRAM’s control didn’t seem to work on him. That is to say, he’s got a real case of multiple identity disorder." - "Hey now. Don’t judge me so harshly! I’ve been doing this a long time, but… there’s a first time for everything. We’re in a bit of a mess ourselves over this, you know." X

Really went look, look, look this isn't on me- Mistakes happen don't look at me like that. But suddenly now I'm supposed to believe Mikoto is so much more intriguing to him that he'd lie and risk mucking up his own experiment?

Over Mikoto someone he didn't even bother to mention the feelings or reference the statements of in his end of second trial report on him? Like he failed to mention a damn thing Mikoto said himself while directly referencing what Yuno said basically cosigning her confession.

He really went for this man,

"Do you all not know how to count? Did you not see the bodies-"

And nothing else! I don't know how to explain this any differently. He does not care about this man. He cares more about these victims none of us have fucking seen! Because they've only been alluded to outside of the one other person we see in MeMe other than Mikoto.

That is how little he cares about this dude.

He made his report on Mikoto about the impact Mikoto's actions had on the lives of others instead of anything to do with the prisoner himself. The best we got in regards to Mikoto as a person was once again the recognition of his diagnosis and how that is impacting his memory and nothing else.

Jackalope said he had no interest in Kazui but still spoke on that man's feelings enough to call him emo,

"He’s a self-admitted liar, have you been able to solve the mystery? It all feels very emo and I can’t bring myself to be very interested in him, but the fact that you’re so accommodating to him, is commendable."

There's a recognition of emotions there.

With Mikoto, Jackalope just reiterated what several other people, including Mikoto himself, have said. That Mikoto doesn't remember and then stated that just because he doesn't remember doesn't mean he's any less responsible for what he did, basically.

Which is an absolutely fucking true statement.

Like I can say that I don't remember something that impacted someone else. I forget a lot of things, but that doesn't negate the impact the action had on them. Plus, when I say that I don't remember something, I'm not saying that to negate or lampshade the impact I've had. I'm saying it as a neutral statement because that's what "I don't remember" is when you have a disorder that fucks with your memory. It's literally I don't remember that can you explain more. That's all that is. It's a really neutral statement. No one with a disorder that fucks with their memory is trying to gaslight anyone into believing it didn't happen that way when they say they don't remember something.

Mikoto is literally gaslighting people, though. Because his I don't remember is attached to phrases like,

"Maybe you got the wrong person.", "How do you know I even did that?", "All I did was dream."

In their second voice drama they even go as far as to call into scrutiny the song extraction itself. Something being done by a machine completely devoid of any individual bias as it is solely meant to display how the prisoner perceives their actions.

Downright stating that the footage extracted could have been fraudulent or more extreme due to his Dissociative Identity Disorder,

"That too could be just a fake or attributed to the multiple personalities, right?!"

Mikoto's Second Voice Drama- 9:10

These statements when combined with "I don't remember" lead the viewer to question,

If they are remembering/perceiving things accurately.

If the information they received previously is accurate/can be trusted.

If any of what they know is true/genuine.

If they are being mislead/lied to.

"I don't remember" by itself is a neutral statement, and many mental health diagnoses can impact a person's memory.

What Mikoto is doing here is not neutral, though. He is behaving in a purposely misleading way in the hopes of possibly benefitting from it. Through sewing doubt and confusion. This is gaslighting plain and simple.

And it worked too,

National Domestic Violence Hotline: What is Gaslighting?

"Generally, gaslighting happens very gradually in a relationship; in fact, the abusive partner’s actions may seem harmless at first. Over time, however, these abusive patterns continue, and as a result, a victim can become confused, anxious, isolated, and depressed. Altogether, they can lose all sense of what is actually happening. Then they start relying on the abusive partner more and more to define reality, which creates a very difficult situation to escape."

Also, just because someone has diagnoses that negatively impact their memory that doesn't mean those people cannot be held accountable for what they did that they don't remember or can dismiss discussions about what they did by simply going, "I don't remember."

It is so easy to just say, "I don't remember doing that, but I see that what I did impacted you greatly, and I'm sorry for how it's affected you." Especially when one has fully understood the hurt they've caused another regardless of if they understand how they did so or remember doing it.

No one should have to jump through hoops to convince someone their feelings and experiences matter or happened. Whether that person has a memory issue or not. For someone to just sweep those things to the side with an "I don't remember" is dismissive and unfair to the individuals hurt by their actions.

That is the entire point of what Jackalope is talking about. Just because someone doesn't remember hurting another person or understand how they may have done so does not mean they didn't.

He brought up the victims because no one else did.

Attention should have actually been placed on the victims from the beginning. Since those were the ones impacted by Mikoto's actions the most. The victims were discussed in some capacity with every other prisoner. But- like, I'm not in the tag because of a lot of things. So, it may not be my place to speak on this. There's a thousand reasons why I may not have seen this being discussed.

However, around Mikoto's trial, I don't remember seeing any discussion regarding the people or person he had admitted to killing and no one I know who was into Milgram brought up anything discussing that to me either. In fact at a point around that time I was blatantly told by someone that he killed no one.

Despite him- Yes, admitting to killing random strangers, he had no connection to. All because he was upset in his second voice drama,

Can I ask...why you killed them?

"They annoyed me."

Who did you kill?

"Just whoever was walking around nearby."

Even going as far to state that he himself doesn't remember how many people he killed. Never once saying he only killed one person.

... How many did you kill?

"Can't remember. I was just born back then, you know. It's kinda fuzzy."

So, I don't really know where the idea that he only murdered one guy even came from at this point.

Now, I can understand how someone could conclude he didn't kill anyone at all more because of the whole gaslighting thing but this...

He didn't even claim he only killed the one guy.

In all honesty, I don't think Jackalope is being dishonest here because he's been the only voice of reason when it comes to Mikoto's case.

He is actually being quite rational and considerate about the circumstances overall. Even outside of all the foreshadowing that supports Jackalope's statement. Just taking it from a characterization level it seems to me that Jackalope could not care less about Mikoto if someone paid him to.

There was no emotional investment positive or negative when it came to Mikoto.

To me, it seemed as though Jackalope was only invested in Es' (the guards) opinion on the matter. Because outside of him alluding to how many people Mikoto had killed, he gave us nothing else. Like literally nothing. Other than talking about Mikoto's actual impact.

How many bodies does it take to make a person irredeemable? What's the difference between one life or multiple?

At the end of the day Mikoto's still a murderer. Again not even touching on the foreshadowing of him killing multiple people before Jackalope just came out and said it.

But really, how many deaths can an individual find negligible?

One, two, three- Oh we won't count it as murder until it gets to the double digits, huh?

Jackalope's statement on Mikoto eloquently expands on what he pondered with Yuno.

What constitutes as a life? What constitutes as a crime? What constitutes as murder? Further expanding on the main question brought up with Amane at the very beginning of Milgram- At what age do we suddenly have enough free will where we can be held fully and earnestly accountable for the actions we commit to as individuals?

How many bodies make a murderer?

The answer should always be one. Anything after that is just clocking in overtime.

It doesn't become less negligible the lower the body count. Someone is dead regardless. So what about Mikoto as a character makes people so down horrendous that they need to find a negligible amount of killing?

What about him makes a person think,

"I can excuse one death that person probably wasn't living their life properly anyway."

What about any of the characters does that?

That's the question of Milgram isn't it?

It's to redefine sin to redefine murder. To test what every day people of this era are willing to let slide if pushed far enough. Through Mikoto's second trial Jackalope saw the answer was a lot.

He saw the answer and it was nothing to joke about. It was hard to keep the atmosphere light. It was heavy, it was rotten.

I personally don't believe the heavy atmosphere was because of any disdain Jackalope holds towards Mikoto. If anything Jackalope has always regarded Prisoner 009 Kayano, Mikoto with indifference.

All of the prisoners have been and will always be devices to pose a question for Jackalope. Yes he is biased and he's shown who he is biased too quite clearly. Yet, Mikoto has not been alluded to being one of the characters he feels strongly about.

He's usually been all business while discussing him and that's what he was during the second trial end report as well.

Jackalope's issue wasn't with Mikoto in my opinion but the audience's and Es' judgment.

The line that makes me believe this is,

"But even so, "Innocent"..... I see, I see. Hey, the judgment of the guard is absolute, of course!"

Did nobody catch this? Did it go over some heads? Did it really need highlighting? Jackalope disagrees with the verdict and he combats the decision pointing out the holes in it.

But he has no choice but to accept it because,

"The judgment of the guard is absolute."

He really did what he said he was doing when speaking about Mahiru,

"Sorry. I’m like the guy on the couch watching the sports highlights and complaining, don’t mind me."

Something that once again isn't surprising to me. Because from the beginning in the This is Milgram video Jackalope said,

"I mean, I personally would just say GUILTY to all of them to avoid all this hassle."

The end of the second trial report really was him going,

"Do you see this shit- You see what you've become?"

At the audience.

But- ya know, that's just my interpretation of the second trial end report.

Let's stick to the facts.

Like how Jackalope is only a dishonest narrator when he's saying something the audience doesn't want to hear. Like I said earlier in this post-

No one was talking any shit about what he said about Yuno.

Someone he clearly favors and has done nothing to hide the fact that he does,

"By the way, I love frosty girls like her."

When he cosigned that what Yuno told us was the truth. That wasn't because he has a thing for cold girls like her. Or has shown the female prisoners more favoritism.

No, there's no need to question the authenticity of that narration.

Why would Jackalope ever be someone's accomplice? He's only bias in one direction. That rabbit only has hate in his heart. He's just trash talking Mikoto because he isn't a girl- He's so biased.

He wasn't just sympathetic towards Mu's guilty verdict because from the beginning he said,

"Yep! Finally, a pretty little thing. On the other hand, I'd vote this one "innocent". Those beautiful genes have gotta be passed on!"

"I see, maybe you have the tendency to need to see the remorse, to give the “innocent” verdict. Was her crime really so infinitely worse than the other murders?"

No, he's only biased when it comes to things he says that I don't like. Things that don't confirm what I'm already feeling or want to believe. Jackalope isn't a character in his own right with patterns of behavior and easy to spot biases.

No he's a menace just here to sew chaos and confusion. Because the one thing he wants to do the most is ruin his own experiment.

His Milgram.

#milgram #mikoto kayano #fuuta kajiyama #yuno kashiki #muu kusunoki

47 notes · View notes

pruneunfair · 4 months ago

Note

Hi okay- I’m a huge remarried empress fan, but I enjoy it seperate from tne fandom. That being said- you have so many great points.

1) I do believe the story may have changed, because this is supposed to be based off a web novel. Like an actual novel. Often times they will deviate from the novel to change the story. Take Who Made Me a Princess. The artist at the end of it did say they changed the story ending for it. So it’s very plausible.

2. SOUVESHU (look I’m a fan but I can never remember how to spell) DEFINETLY GROOMED RASHTA!! Though I don’t agree with her actions, I have 100% acknowledged and know she is deeply traumatized. And he most likely took advantage of that. He saw her as young and pure, something Navier was not. And he wanted to preserve that. Rashta is clearly traumatized, and her mental health is not healthy. It is easy to take advantage and manipulate sadly because she does not know the warnings. He groomed her and when she was finally trying to be more like someone she thought he wanted, Navier, he lashed out. No one gets she is constantly comparing herself!! She does not know how to love herself!! And that is the most damage. I wish they would pick up on that. I love Navier but she can be so oblivious to that due to her anger and betrayal at Soveshu. I think if Rashta had proper care and been trained,!- did Soveshu could just fucking communicate and not be a groomer, this could all have been avoided. Navier is also at fault for not see this red flag in him??? But she was so angry and maybe jealous and wanting to back stab I think it clouded her judgement. If she slowed down and actually had a conversation- it would be okay.

3) there is so much wasted potential in all the characters!! Is Navier is getting this magical stuff sorted why can’t she just acknowledge it and work for something with it? Use it to her advantage. I wanted to see her stand up to Heinrey for taking her mages. I wanted to see her stand up to Soveshu. I want to see her just fight for herself. But she doesn’t say much. She’s so strategic with everything and it’s like it wasted her potential. Why can’t she just speak out?? It does feel very much like she turned into a Mary Sue. I want to see more of her flaws. Like one we all think is pretty when is a flaw is that she has no want to speak out and is held back and refined! I think they are trying hard to point onto her upbringing and that she’s “higher” than everyone else. When like- yes she’s an empress. But there is so much more then that we should be able to read about!! We need more scenes of her having friends for peat sakes that isn’t gossiping or talking about men and other things. Where did the potential go??

I really wanna see how it ends and hope it turns into a better direction. I also need to read the book too.

TLDR: you make so many good points and I wanted to expand on it as a fan of the series who does acknowledge all these points.

1: I did read the novel out of curiosity since everyone was saying it was better then the manhwa. The manhwa was pretty loyal to the novel and while it was still really iffy with protagonist centered morality I felt it could get away with it more since it was in first person therfore it's possible Navier could be an unreliable narrator. Another difference I noticed is that while the manhwa felt actively malicious against Rashta and making jokes about her trauma when she cries or looks for attention, the novel is more complex about it and it feels more sympathetic then something to laugh at. The whole slavery being ignored and characters getting away with shitty behavior unfortunately still lasted but given how it was more complex with it's characters I think it was an unfortunate result of the author getting a little too carried away with the readers desires to see more fluff. Gotta say I don't hold as much animosity toward the webnovel but it's still not my favorite.

2: I'm really happy to see that I'm not the only one who thinks Rashta got groomed. Even if she's not a child, she's still mentally stunted and grooming can occur at any age since it is the desire to take someone who is easily influenced and molding them into whatever you desire. Honestly though I think it makes sense that Navier wouldn't immediately see any red flags from Sovieshu given that their childhood together was happy and geninune, it's common for victims in abusive relationships to not see who their abuser really is at first which really made Navier escaping even more satisfying.

3: on one hand Navier not being able to speak up makes sense since what is she really gonna do if the Emperor brings in a concubine without breaking royal protocol, on the other hand it is so OOC of her in later seasons when she is described as someone with witty comebacks and is no damsel in distress yet in season 2 and 3 she does absolutely nothing since Heinrey and her other friends do it all for her. They think this makes her really charismatic but that only ever works for villian characters who are mysterious and too classy to do the dirty work, when the protagonist does this over and over it gets boring and you wonder if she's really supposed to be the protagonist at all.

#the remarried empress #webtoon #empress navier #rashta #manhwa #heinrey alles lazlo #sovieshu

37 notes · View notes

miyamiwu · 9 months ago

Text

Essential Elements of an Unlimited/Infinite Flow Story

As someone attempting to write my own Unli Flow, I thought I’d take note of the different elements so I can have a guide I can always refer back to.

I’ve explained what Unli Flow means many times before, but in case you missed it: Unlimited/Infinite Flow is a genre in Chinese web novels that feature characters entering multiple “instances” where they have to complete a challenge and/or solve a mystery. Failure in doing so would lead to consequences, most often death.

There’s also this definition by AshuraYami from the NovelUpdates Forum:

Unlimited Flow/Infinite Flow is a genre originating from the CN novel Terror Infinity. The genre mainly revolves on world hopping involving fictional works (anime, comics, movies, games and novels) and/or original worlds created by the author. Infinite Flow, as it’s ‘infinite’ namesake suggests, can accommodate all other genres, be it fantasy, sci-fi, horror, romance, etc. Representative works are Terror Infinity (origin of genre), Reincarnation Paradise (most chapters and word count), The Ultimate Evolution (promoter of data flow, an infinite flow derivative that is more game-like litRPG) and Thriller Paradise (most famous horror infinite flow).

With the definition out of the way, let’s goooo

[This post will also serve as a rec list of sorts, since I’ll be giving examples of each element from different danmei novels.]

----------

1. The Authority

The entity/system in charge of the Unlimited Flow system as a whole. Most stories just chalk it up to the Unli Flow being some kind of otherworldly being/extremely advanced AI that just likes to mess with people.

Examples of The Authority

(based on what I remember, at least… Also, beware of spoilers)

The Earth is Online: The Universe

Mist: I forgot what it’s called, but that high tech system in charge of all the Time Traveling stuff...

High Energy QR Code: That black and white cube thing

Surprise! The Supposed Talent Show was Actually—?!: … The TV station...

From left to right: Tang Mo from The Earth is Online and Wu Jin and Wei Shi from Surprise! The Supposed Talent Show was Actually—?!

[Spoilers End]

From having read numerous Unli Flow stories, I conclude that crucial to a great, not just good, Unli Flow story is a well-defined Authority. The explanation behind the Authority’s existence and motives is the foundation to the entire story.

You can have a very fancy building (cool instances, well-developed characters, an exciting enemies to lovers couple, etc.), but if the foundation is flimsy, the building’s value would plummet in your eyes. You can still appreciate the building, of course, but you will never be content with it.

Examples of some novels that are good in almost everything else except The Authority (in my opinion): [spoilery]

Supernatural Movie Actor App: It was too profound with not enough groundwork laid for it, resulting in The Authority feeling detached from the main story.

I Upended Yet Another Campus Urban Legend: The Authority was not exactly bad; it was just inadequate. The justification of the Unli Flow existing became unconvincing because of this.

Escape the Infinite Chamber: THE AUTHORITY IS SO FUCKING RIDICULOUS THAT IT’S ABYSMAL. And the entire thing was explained in just one scene and from one extra??? SO MUCH PAIN AND SUFFERING AND THAT’S THE ONLY EXPLANATION WE GET??? HORRENDOUS!

[Spoilers End]

From left to right: Book covers of I Upended Yet Another Campus Urban Legend and Supernatural Movie Actor App

2. Instances

Also known as “copy.” The other world/dimension where players have to face the different challenges.

The Authority may be the foundation, but the Instances are the defining aspect of the Unlimited Flow.

A lot of novels, however, are quite perfunctory when it comes to instances, just using it to further the main couple or as a mere stepping stone to the overarching plot. Or, if they’re not being perfunctory, then the Instances are just plain boring.

The first instance, especially, tend to be the most boring. Authors often use this to dump all the information about how their unli flow works. This usually gets better by the time the 2nd or 3rd instance comes around....

Upon successful completion of an Instance, players will then be rewarded with either points, special abilities, magic items, etc.

Examples of novels with GREAT instances (based on logic, thrill, horror, etc. Again, all in my own opinion):

I Became a God in a Horror Game: The horror is present all throughout. I can still remember the fear I felt while reading about the statues in the first Instance. Each instance/arc also emotionally impacts you, an effect that most Unli Flow writers don’t really aim for or just generally tend to fail at. (This is also my favorite unli flow novel at the moment~)

The Earth is Online: (same author as Fourth Perspective, which I’ve posted a lot about before) What I love about Mo Chen Huan, the author, is how they write intelligent MC’s but without making them seem too OP. And this is because she actually shows us the MC’s thought process, inviting us to think along with them and figure out how to solve the challenge, and not just make her characters say “aha!” This is what makes the Instances in TEIO great and memorable.

High Energy QR Code: The story could make use of more showing than telling, but I actually love the Instances in this novel. You know how good stories are often described as a well-made tapestry in that every little thread contributes to the big beautiful picture? That’s how each Instance reads in this novel. (Absolutely love the Instance about the town where everybody lies.)

Fu Wendou, the male lead of The Earth is Online

3. NPCs

A gaming term which stands for “Non-Player Character.” Refers to characters who live within Instances and act in such ways that further the plot or challenge presented by the Instance. They may go against players or assist them. May or may not have a will of their own.

Examples of NPCs:

Xu Beijin, the protagonist of Being an Extra Actor in an Escape Game

Lu Chu, the protagonist of Insider.

The iconic Mosaic from The Earth is Online

The male leads from Escape the Infinite Chamber, I Became a God in a Horror Game, Killing God with Junk Cards, etc. (Most danmei ML are special!NPCs 😩)

From left to right: Book covers of Being an Extra Actor in an Escape Game and Killing God with Junk Cards

4. Player Hall

A space outside of instances where different players can gather and exchange information. Most of the time, this is in a space still separate from the real world. Players are often prohibited from using their powers in this space.

In some novels, Players have no choice but to live here, completely cutting them off from the real world. In this case, accommodation quality will depend on the Player’s level or points.

5. Personal System

The Personal System issues challenges to the player and keeps track of their current attributes, physical and mental states, etc.. It also calculates rewards and punishments for the player. First and foremost in service to The Authority. (If they aren’t, then they’re most likely the Love Interest in disguise. If not, the Player had somehow swayed it to their side).

6. System Store

The points earned from the different Instances serve as the Players’ currency, and they can use it to buy things from the System Store. The Store may sell weapons, medicine, magical items, or even special abilities. Basically, any item that can help the Player during Instances. Of course, it may also sell non-magical items, like food and everyday items, at a much lower price than special items.

7. Player’s Goal/Wish

In some novels, the Goal is simply to clear all the Instances and leave the Unli Flow for good. But in others, the Unli Flow allows Players to exchange their points for a Wish. The more difficult the Wish, the more points are needed, and the more Instances are needed to be cleared.

Examples of a Goal/Wish:

Supernatural Movie Actor App: Xie Chi wants to give his second personality a body of his own.

I Became a God in a Horror Game: If I’m remembering it correctly… Bai Liu just wants to have lots of money.

I Upended Yet Another Campus Urban Legend: Lin Yi wants to learn the truth about his parents.

Thriller Tour Group: Wei Xun wants to find the truth about his family’s disappearance… and his Wish is to uhh… feel pain?

After the Little Crybaby Enters the Nightmare Cycle: Chi Nan’s Wish is to regain his vision, stop crying and get his memories back.

Death Spiral: To uhh… figure out what the voice in the Elevator is trying to tell them? To regain their memories? [The actual Wish is a big spoiler, so I won’t mention it here.]

From left to right: Book covers of After the Little Crybaby Enters the Nightmare Cycle, Thriller Tour Group, and Death Spiral

Aaaand there you have it! I was hoping to list 10 elements, but I can only think up to 7 😔

Although I said this post is a rec list of sorts, the quality of the novels I mentioned actually varies. I’m just listing whatever novel would be good as an example (and also what I can remember and have more or less completed, since many of the Unli Flow novels I’m reading are currently on-hold).

#danmei #chinese web novels #the earth is online #i became a god in a horror game #being an extra actor in an escape game #killing god with junk cards #high energy qr code #mist #thriller tour group #web novels #surprise! the supposed talent show was actually-?!#i upended yet another campus urban legend #death spiral #after the little crybaby enters the nightmare cycle #miyamiwu.src #unlimited flow #unli flow #infinite flow #miyamiwu.article

43 notes · View notes

suffarustuffaru · 1 year ago

Note

Hello!

A bit of a weird ask, so sorry in advance.

What methods/sites would you recommend using for reading Arcs 5-8 of Re:Zero?

I’ve almost finished season 2 of the anime, and I’m pretty sure this has become one of my new favourite anime/works of media in general.

And considering I keep spoiling myself anyway when I look at Re: Zero tumblr blogs, I figured I should just find a way to catch up with the rest of the series.

You seem smart, and have clearly read Arcs 5-8, so I was hoping that you would be able to provide some advice.

Thanks!

NOTE; this post is now outdated esp when this was written pre-s3!! i may make a new post if people are interested

hi there!! :D no worries for the ask, its cool to have another rezero fan join in the fandom especially on tumblr (which is a very small, curated circle of a bunch of us trading posts around a campfire HAH) and i hope youve really been enjoying the anime and your stay here so far!! :o this is absolutely one of my favorite media as well (if. if you couldnt tell by the blog pfft) and thanks for the compliments haah i am glad to seem smart.

but yes i gotchu on where to read!! ill be giving you a pretty detailed explanation/guide. (this explanation also goes mainly for english speakers / people who wanna experience rezero in english.) (and of course if any other seasoned fans are seeing this feel free to add on if i miss anything or correct me if needed)

Main Route Stuff:

witchculttranslations is where you can find the translations for the entire main route (which is arcs 1-8). this page is where youll find the main table of contents for each arc and you can find arcs 5-8 there!

note that arc 8, at the time of me writing this ask, is still a work-in-progress and the team of translators in this fandom are always hard at work to translate each chapter. also note that arcs 7-8 are "conjoined arcs" - think of it like arc 7 is part 1 and arc 8 is part 2. so if you happen to get caught up to where rezero is currently at, the rezero subreddit regularly updates chat + update threads whenever new rezero novel content comes out in general. youll find updates on translations or summaries for new chapters there.

there's also distinction between web novel and light novel - web novel are the chapters that tappei releases online, light novel are the official finished versions of the chapters that are released for sale. sometimes there's changes between the web novel and the light novel, but for the most part it's either minor changes to improve on the web novel - sometimes it's major, but for arcs 5-8 iirc there isnt any major changes that you need to worry about.

just note that in the wn translations, all/almost all dialogue is written in script-style. let me show a small excerpt from arc 5 chapter 1:

???: “Good job, Subaru, I suppose.” A small silhouette enters Subaru’s view from above. A loveable girl with long, cream hair and an extravagant outfit—Beatrice. Her fluttering dress looks out of place in the meadow as she presents Subaru with a towel. He accepts it and vigorously towels his head dry. Subaru: “Ah, thanks. Was looking to cool down so this’s perfect.”

so yeah the wn will be formatted like this by the way, just in case you didnt know this yet!! i hope thats not much of a turnoff or anything, but dont worry you get used to it - and the story is still pretty great anyway!!

also dont bother with arcs 1-3 wn. its not so important (and you already know all the major info because youve seen the anime) and also arcs 1-3 wn doesnt have the Best writing. tappei himself had to make extremely major changes for the light novel and the light novel (along with the anime and manga) is the finished and polished result.

and of course the light novel comes with illustrations for each arc. the web novel sometimes includes images as well at the beginning of each chapter, but if youd like to see finished and official illustrations for various scenes throughout arc 5-8 its easy to find them if you search them up online!!

the anime also has a few bits of Important cut content from arcs 3-4 - unfortunately i dont have any resources on hand for this ;-;;; but you can look this up on rezero reddit or online in general since a lot of people have made summaries about this. from what i remember in arc 3 (which is the royal selection/white whale/petelgeuse half of season 1!), the main thing is just the reveal that al has some sort of connection to ram (and rem by extension), some sort of connection to satella possibly, and he is ALSO someone that was isekaied into rezero's fantasy world.

as for arc 4 (which is season 2 of course), the anime got down almost all of the general important info you need to know, but there's a lot of important information in the last parts of arc 4 that the anime didnt include. the anime may include this information (and the al stuff from arc 3) later, but you'll need to know it for arcs 5-8. you can find the witchcultranslations guide for arc 4 here - scroll down and youll find the chapter called Appendix: Advent!! you'll need the info in that chapter for later.

if you want, you can also read the chapters after that - theyre sorted under One Day II and are the official arc 4 interludes that take place before arc 5. i do recommend reading through them, but theyre mainly characterization stuff, character dynamics post-arc 4, everyone trying to recover after arc 4, etc etc. the most important info in there is leadup for arc 5 (all the post-arc 4 aftermath stuff) and also some info/introduction on clind and annerose (who are characters that are briefly shown in the anime for like two seconds). these two do play minor roles in arc 4/beginning of 5, but theyre hinted to be important for later. if youre in a hurry to get to arc 5, totally fine to just skim through it, get basic info on clind and annerose then continue into arc 5 or something. or you can look at their wiki pages - totally cool to enjoy rezero however you wish. it's a LOT of reading dont get me wrong HAH.

as for the manga - this is not required reading or anything, the manga has only done arcs 1-4 atm so it's not really super relevant to you since youre almost done with arc 4 already via the anime!! but of course if you havent done so youre welcome to check it out if youd like, the manga artists are pretty great imo. im just gonna show some art from the manga artists here:

isnt it pretty? :O very nice stuff.

anyway thats it for main route content!! now i gotta explain side content.

Side Content:

you can find witchculttranslations' side story table of contents here, which very neatly shows you Every Single Side Story and is updated regularly every time tappei comes out with new side content. and trust me, tappei makes A Lot of side content. i guarantee you a lot of rezero fans havent read every side story (and i still have a lot of side stories to catch up on myself), so theres absolutely no need to read every single side story!! honestly just read the ones you find interesting + the ones that are required reading! im not sure how much of the side content youve heard about, but ill give you a rundown:

this extremely helpful google spreadsheet here (thats also regularly updated) tells you how important each side story is and where you can find it so you dont have to go on a wild goose chase wondering which ones you need to read for the main story. rezero side stories are on a sliding scale of just silly stuff tappei wrote for fun to this is VERY crucial for the main story. that google spreadsheet should help you out with that - both the spreadsheet and witchculttranslations have links to almost every side story available.

(the spreadsheet also tells you important details and who it's centered around + when each side story is safe to read free of spoilers after a certain point - so it's easy to decide when you wanna read the side stories and WHICH side stories you'd like to read!)

also i guarantee you that if you have a favorite character in rezero that character Probably has a ton of side content theyre featured in - so i recommend just hunting down all their side content and devouring it whole because im sure youll have a fun time with that. a lot of side content also fleshes out a ton of side characters as well in general - people who Looked shallow in the anime ARENT shallow at all, i promise. many people have hidden depths, which is one of the fun parts of rezero!

witchculttranslations and the google spreadsheet also tell you what order you might wanna read in terms of when each one takes place. i recommend following that order for the most part if youd like, but if you wanna binge read side content or something later you can also do that after reading arc 6.

that's how i experienced the side stories myself (i started reading them after finishing up with the arcs 5-6 plot) and in a way, i would say that might just be the easiest way to do it given a lot of the side stories take place during arcs 1-6 or before the events of arcs 1-6. itll make you go "ohhh thats what was happening with these background characters during *insert event here that was focused on in the main story*" or "ohhh thats why These Guys are like this" a lot pfft. so its easier to just get out the most important ones / the ones thatre most interesting to you all in a row after finishing up with arc 6 👍

The Ex Novels:

these are THE MOST IMPORTANT side stories. :o theyll be extremely important for arcs 7-8 especially!! also because these are light novels the dialogue is written in normal narrative format so hooray for that!!

anyway theres five ex novels. i recommend reading these after arc 6 so you got them fresh on the brain for arcs 7-8.

however if you happen to be a crusch camp fan, you can read ex novels 1-3 at any time youd like!! these flesh out characters like crusch, felix, wilhelm, and theresia (some of the wilhelm and theresia content was shown a bit in season 1 of the anime!) so youd probably enjoy these even more if youre a fan of any of them. ex novel four also features felix, julius, and reinhard too, if that interests you! (as a knight fan ex novel 4 was my favorite akdndn and i loved ex 1!!). but yeah in general though read the ex novels in order (from 1 to 5 of course) so you dont spoil yourself for other ex novels, but as i said - you can read 1-3 at any time, and in general its best to read the rest of the ex novels after arc 6.

the ex novels in general mainly focus on important historical events in the rezero world and stuff that happens before arc 1. the ex novels are also our first introduction to the nation and empire of vollachia—this is also the country that priscilla is from (and al also came from there)!! you get introduced to vollachia's whole deal in these novels. youll need this info for later!

anyway witchculttranslations and the google sheet dont have links to them because theyre published + officially translated light novels that are easiest to access by buying them, so harder to get a free pdf of them. however i got you (and your wallet) covered because i got pdfs for all of them right here (if these links dont work let me know!):

ex novel 1 - crusch and felix-centric

ex novel 2 - wilhelm and theresia-centric

ex novel 3 - wilhelm and theresia-centric

ex novel 4 - felix, julius, and reinhard-centric

ex novel 5 - priscilla and al-centric

anyway thats the ex novels in a nutshell!! and of course if you want a physical copy of these books (or any of the rezero light novels in general) in english you can buy these online (sites like amazon has them) or at a bookstore. if you live in the US like i do, barnes and noble has them irl as well. or if you happen to live near a kinokuniya store, they also sell rezero irl. kinokuniya is also specifically for japanese media so i highly recommend giving it a try if you happen to be near one (i got a rezero keychain from there also hah, rezero merch is a little hard to get a hold of sometimes).

rezero light novels are also translated in a few other languages (iirc spanish and polish are some of the other languages its translated in) so if youd like that too you can look into it and buy some!!

The If Routes:

if youre not familiar with these by now, theyre basically "what if"/ alternate universe stories where subaru makes a different and Very Major choice at different points of the main route. theyre not necessarily required reading, but some do have some important lore regarding several of the characters and in general most of them are extremely important AUs for rezero that emphasize all the themes of the story. they also show the Insane butterfly effect of subaru’s decisions.

and if youve gotten this far with the anime already im gonna assume you probably like subaru at least a little bit? :o yeah his character gets fleshed out in Very Interesting ways in these routes. other characters also get changed in various ways due to his decisions!

new ifs are also released typically every year on subaru's birthday - april 1. so with every april 1 the entire fandom plays russian roulette because either the if will be a super silly one or a Very Important one LMAO.

also these ifs tend to be mentioned a lot in fandom bc theyre very beloved and interesting side stories, so i highly recommend choosing which ones you find interesting and just have fun reading them!! you can find them on the spreadsheet, if you want to read them in a more chronological order, or you can find them on the main witchculttranslations website as tabs on the side underneath Re:Zero If Stories. (but ill provide the links to each separate one in this post also.)

all current if routes at the moment take place somewhere in the arcs 1-6 range, so you can look at them either after arc 6, like i said, or in order as you read along with the main route. ill give a quick breakdown of each if just in case!!

Pride If - diverges from arc 1; subaru doesnt call for help when fighting the three thugs in the alleyway. slight spoilers for one part of arc 5 in like One Scene of pride if.

Wrath If - diverges from arc 2; subaru accepts beatrice’s offer to help in the loop where rem dies + subaru tries to run away from the mansion. very minor spoilers for ex novels/arc 7-8 (characters who appear in those arcs appear in wrath if).

Sloth If - diverges from arc 3; subaru gives up and runs away with rem instead of dealing with the arc 3 conflict. very minor spoilers (a character who later appears in arc 8 appears here).

Aganau If - diverges from arc 3; in the loop where rem dies in the cave and subaru carries her back to the mansion, he decides to go down another route away from the mansion instead. years later, he’s now older and still alive after almost everyone else has died. this if is one of the routes in the now discontinued lost in memories mobile game (and this is The Most Important route out of the whole bunch anyway). you can find a playthrough + english translation of it here.

Greed If - diverges from arc 4; subaru accepts echidna’s contract. major spoilers for arc 4 of course. minor spoilers for arc 5+ (small plot beats are mentioned iirc). a bit of important lore for characters like echidna and clind. the first edition of it can be found here - make sure to read this first. this is because this if was also given a longer and polished light novel version of it (it was a special that came with some of the season 2 blueray dvd packages?) and you can find an english translation for the extended + final version under the Blueray Novels and Databooks section of witchculttranslations' side content page.

Gluttony If - diverges from arc 6. major spoilers for arcs 5-6.

Mimigau If - this is just a genderbend au that tappei made that starts from arc 1!! almost nothing is changed besides the characters’ genders, biological sex, names, etc. i sadly dont have a link to this one, but iirc this hasnt been fully translated yet? and it's also very much not that important of an if lore-wise so you're not missing out on much. the genderbent character names are really fun though!

Lust If - this is, supposedly, an if that tappei wrote in one sitting and then decided to delete off of the official rezero wn site. this if is just an april fools joke where subaru gets a harem of various rezero girls. and imo its not Particularly Good, but it was meant to be a joke and tappei just wrote it for no reason so ig the quality makes sense haah. and also sadly that harem includes petra iirc which. yeah. not what id call great.

Vainglory If / School If - basically a canon high school au for all of rezero! not a necessary read at all but it's super silly and fun. and if you like anastasia and/or priscilla they have a lot of Fun Interactions in this one. im not sure if all of this if is english translated yet, but you can find chapter one here.

Other Various Ifs from Lost In Memories - i dont have the links to all of these, but lost in memories has a lot of other more minor aus as well, aganau if is just the most important + the darkest one. the other ifs are more lighthearted and just extra stuff for funsies. other big examples include a julius if (subaru calls for help in arc 1 and julius is the one who comes to help), a reinhard if of sorts (takes place around arcs 1-2, it's a sillier story where reinhard just keeps appearing out of nowhere to help subaru every time he needs help), and also an otto if (arc 1 divergence; subaru gets involved with otto and the two of them decide to start a mayonnaise business).

A Side Note About Rezero Video Games:

ok i know your ask is mainly about how to READ rezero but i figured i might as well explain this really quick just in case!!

there are a bunch of rezero video games and none of them are really Necessary, so dont worry about it. theyre either like - silly alternate universe stuff or theyre a bit more of the serious au variety (like aganau if, as mentioned earlier. i dont know every single rezero video game out there (and i think theres still new ones in the works at the time of me writing this??) and also almost none of them are english translated so its hard to experience them if you dont understand japanese.

the two most important ones (aka the ones with more story in them) are gonna be prophecy of the throne and lost in memories (which i mentioned earlier!). and again, these games are not necessary content - theyre mostly just side content that you can look at/watch/play through for fun and if you just wanna see more of your faves. you can check them out at any time since they dont have any major arc 5-8 spoilers.

Prophecy of the Throne - this is visual novel + a divergence of arc 3 where a new and sixth royal candidate emerges and it looks like emilia is the fake royal candidate here.... so yeah the plot is just. it's like a game of among us. but it's a fun story with a lot of different character interactions (so if you really like the entire cast of rezero youre in luck!!) and features a tiny bit of lore about some powerful groups in the fantasy world. a few of subarus failed loops in this one are also Particularly Brutal. you can watch gameplay of it on youtube or play through it yourself (i know that the game IS on steam too) since it's fully english translated (and all the jp vas and english vas reprised their roles as well).

Lost In Memories - as mentioned earlier, this is a now discontinued mobile game. iirc it was a gacha game? a sort of fighting game? and also it's narrative driven with a bunch of different routes. you can find the wiki for it here - it summarizes a lot of the main story beats. theres no official english translations for this game, but theres a lot of fan translations that you can find on stuff like youtube if youre ever interested in any part of the game. also it has a really fun opening song and animated sequence. nonoc's rezero music is great <3

A Side Note About Rezero Youtube:

theres a lot of summary videos for both main content chapters and side stories on youtube. im not sure how accurate these videos are, but i know that at the very least they can give you a brief rundown on the main points for certain chapters/side stories if thats something youd like to have!

theres also an entire team of people making a fan-run audiobook for arc 5. ive given some of their episodes a listen, and i can confirm that theyre absolutely great. you can find their readings of chapter 1-47 on spotify, and on their youtube channel theyre up to chapter 62. i think theyve also expressed their interest in branching out into other rezero content as well? :o so if thats also something youre interested in you can check them out there!

In Conclusion

anyway, that should be all you need to know - thats a summary of basically all important rezero content from here on out!! i know this is like. Super detailed. so i hope that this was helpful and didnt scare you away or anything hah. and i hope you have fun reading through rezero :o !! you got a lot of content to choose from thats for sure!!

but yeah ty for the ask, i hope i explained everything clearly enough :o !! and if you need any clarification feel free to ask!!

#rezero #re:zero #ask #save for later #<< bc this is my most detailed post on 'how to read rezero' aljsdlf so i might just put this in my pinned post for this blog later #also even if ur a seasoned fan and u havent heard of the arc 5 fan podcast yet pls give them a listen. they work so hard on it and i love #their performances there <3

60 notes · View notes

web-novel-polls · 5 months ago

Text

Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know has a positive reception and is known and unread.

[Plain text: Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know has a positive reception and is known and unread. /end pt]

See similar polls and results here!

Reception

Positive: 75.9% / 154 votes

Neutral: 16.2% / 33 votes

Negative: 7.9% / 16 votes

Publicity

Known: 74.9% / 152 votes

Unknown: 25.1% / 51 votes

Reading Status

Read: 43.4% / 88 votes

Unread but Known: 31.5% / 64 votes

Unread: 56.6% / 115 votes

Have You Read This Web Novel?

In a Mary-Sue novel, the readers all liked the Devil Venerable, the second male lead who devoted himself whole-heartedly to the female lead. However the female lead only loved the male lead who ab*sed her physically and mentally. Readers: Why doesn’t the female lead like the Devil Venerable?! Devil Venerable: This Venerable also wants to know. But what I really want to know is why I even like the female lead at all. In order to understand why the female lead wasn’t attracted to him, the self-conscious Devil Venerable brutally interrogated the entire cast of characters from the novel. Background characters: I have so many things I want to say but I don’t dare to say it to his face! – After obtaining the book, the Devil Venerable discovered that the book described the world he lived in. This book said that after he sacrificed himself for the female lead, the fourth male lead, his silent and loyal subordinate Yin Hanjiang, blackened and attempted to kill her as a sacrificial offering for his lord. Devil Venerable Wenren E: Yin Hanjiang, this Venerable wants to know why you wanted to kill the female lead. Yin Hanjiang was silent. Wenren E: If you refuse to speak, this Venerable will cut out your tongue and have it with alcohol! Yin Hanjiang: … Wenren E: What the hell are you blushing for?! - Novel Updates

If you’re in the process of reading this web novel, please choose whichever option best fits your situation. You do not have to be completely finished with it to answer “yes.”

#not a poll #results #have you read this web novel results #read this wn: positive #read this wn: known #read this wn: unread #queue

147 notes · View notes

somebooksbelonginthesinbin · 1 year ago

Text

Manhwa/Webcomics with really interesting stories and beautiful art but have ick MLs that are still interesting:

Cry or Better Yet Beg

This male lead is a bird killer that I am told only gets worse as the story progresses. I’m not going to say what he’s going to do to her but it’s horrible, a trigger warning would be necessary for even a watered down explanation. He sees her as a canary in a cage, his canary in his cage if you will. The comic is being made and is still in the earlier stages of the story but there is a web novel out there.

Kneel Before Me

This is the most developed of the three. The male lead isn’t human and he doesn’t think like us in a lot of ways. He is very obsessed with the female lead. As long as he is on her brain he is happy with that and he’s going for long lasting results (or so he says but I don’t think he really truly wants her hatred). He believes that love doesn’t last but hatred can. He sees her kind of like a pet but, she does have a level of influence over him. He’s also a villain and he’s done some messed up stuff to her. He didn’t start out quite a villain though, more like her dangerous ally(?) and she’s the one thing keeping him in line. This is also based on a novel.

Betrayal of Dignity

Like the other two THIS. MAN. IS. OBSESSIVE. It’s bad for her ngl. He’s a highly manipulative man as well. These men are basically the same person in most ways. All of the women are smart, though Layla doesn’t seem calculating and she has no power in this thus far unlike the other two who can be calculating and they do at least gain power or start out with it. This female lead is reserved and will do anything for those she loves (also like the fl in KBM). She comes from a (by noble standards) penniless family. As a result of this she marries a Duke who decides he needs to marry a woman in her family (he’s shooting for her though via manipulation). This is most likely because he finds her to be fascinating and he later finds a reason to pursue her in marriage. The leads fall for one another but again, he is manipulating everything always. He is by far the most ambitious of all of the leads I’ve mentioned thus far.

All of the male leads are ick but they’re interesting and the story is interesting and I’m rooting for the female leads so I can’t not read all of these. I thought about adding The Devil and his Sacrifice but I hate the male lead more than I find the story interesting so it just gets an honorable mention.

#manhwa #webcomic #romance #fantasy #toxic relationship #toxic men #the men are the living embodiment of radium #kneel before me #betrayal of dignity #cry or better yet beg #webtoon #manta

61 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 11 months ago

Text

Dinkclump Linkdump

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in LA (Saturday night, with Adam Conover), Seattle (Monday, with Neal Stephenson), then Portland, Phoenix and more!

Some Saturday mornings, I look at the week's blogging and realize I have a lot more links saved up than I managed to write about this week, and then I do a linkdump. There've been 14 of these, and this is number 15:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Attentive readers will note that this isn't Saturday. You're right. But I'm on a book tour and every day is shatterday, because damn, it's grueling and I'm not the spry manchild who took Little Brother on the road in 2008 – I'm a 52 year old with two artificial hips. Hence: an out-of-cycle linkdump. Come see me on tour and marvel at my verticality!

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour

Best thing I read this week, hands down, was Ryan Broderick's Garbage Day piece, "AI search is a doomsday cult":

https://www.garbageday.email/p/ai-search-doomsday-cult

Broderick makes so many excellent points in this piece. First among them: AI search sucks, but that's OK, because no one is asking for AI search. This only got more true later in the week when everyone's favorite spicy autocomplete accidentally loaded the James Joyce module:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/02/chatgpt-alarms-users-by-spitting-out-shakespearean-nonsense-and-rambling/

(As Matt Webb noted, Chatbots have slid rapidly from Star Trek (computers give you useful information in a timely fashion) to Douglas Adams (computers spout hostile, impenetrable nonsense at you):

https://interconnected.org/home/2024/02/21/adams

But beyond the unsuitability of AI for search results and beyond the public's yawning indifference to AI-infused search, Broderick makes a more important point: AI search is about summarizing web results so you don't have to click links and read the pages yourself.

If that's the future of the web, who the fuck is going to write those pages that the summarizer summarizes? What is the incentive, the business-model, the rational explanation for predicting a world in which millions of us go on writing web-pages, when the gatekeepers to the web have promised to rig the game so that no one will ever visit those pages, or read what we've written there, or even know it was us who wrote the underlying material the summarizer just summarized?

If we stop writing the web, AIs will have to summarize each other, forming an inhuman centipede of botshit-ingestion. This is bad news, because there's pretty solid mathematical evidence that training a bot on botshit makes it absolutely useless. Or, as the authors of the paper – including the eminent cryptographer Ross Anderson – put it, "using model-generated content in training causes irreversible defects":

https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.17493

This is the mathematical evidence for Jathan Sadowski's "Hapsburg AI," or, as the mathematicians call it, "The Curse of Recursion" (new band-name just dropped).

But if you really have your heart set on living in a ruined dystopia dominated by hostile artificial life-forms, have no fear. As Hamilton Nolan writes in "Radical Capital," a rogues gallery of worker-maiming corporations have asked a court to rule that the NLRB can't punish them for violating labor law:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/radical-capital

Trader Joe’s, Amazon, Starbucks and SpaceX have all made this argument to various courts. If they prevail, then there will be no one in charge of enforcing federal labor law. Yes, this will let these companies go on ruining their workers' lives, but more importantly, it will give carte blanche to every other employer in the land. At one end of this process is a boss who doesn't want to recognize a union – and at the other end are farmers dying of heat-stroke.

The right wing coalition that has put this demand before the court has all sorts of demands, from forced birth to (I kid you not), the end of recreational sex:

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/02/getting-rid-of-birth-control-is-a-key-gop-agenda-item-for-the-second-trump-term

That coalition is backed by ultra-rich monopolists who want wreck the nation that their rank-and-file useful idiots want to wreck your body. These are the monopoly cheerleaders who gave us the abomination that is the Pharmacy Benefit Manager – a useless intermediary that gets to screw patients and pharmacists – and then let PBMs consolidate and merge with pharmacy monopolists.

One such inbred colossus is Change Healthcare, a giant PBM that is, in turn, a mere tendril of United Healthcare, which merged the company with Optum. The resulting system – held together with spit and wishful thinking – has access to the health records of a third of Americans and processes 15 billion prescriptions per day.

Or rather, it did process that amount – until the all-your-eggs-in-one-badly-maintained basket strategy failed on Wednesday, and Change's systems went down due to an unspecified "cybersecurity incident." In the short term, this meant that tens of millions of Americans who tried to refill their prescriptions were told to either pay cash or come back later (if you don't die first). That was the first shoe dropping. The second shoe is the medical records of a third of the country.

Don't worry, I'm sure those records are fine. After all, nothing says security like "merging several disparate legacy IT systems together while simultaneously laying off half your IT staff as surplus to requirements and an impediment to extracting a special dividend for the private equity owners who are, of course, widely recognized as the world's greatest information security practitioners."

Look, not everything is terrible. Some computers are actually getting better. Framework's user-serviceable, super-rugged, easy-to-repair, powerful laptops are the most exciting computers I've ever owned – or broken:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/13/graceful-failure/#frame

Now you can get one for $500!

https://frame.work/blog/first-framework-laptop-16-shipments-and-a-499-framework

And the next generation is turning our surprisingly well, despite all our worst efforts. My kid – now 16! – and I just launched our latest joint project, "The Sushi Chronicles," a small website recording our idiosyncratic scores for nearly every sushi restaurant in Burbank, Glendale, Studio City and North Hollywood:

https://sushichronicles.org/

This is the record of two years' worth of Daughter-Daddy sushi nights that started as a way to get my picky eater to try new things and has turned into the highlight of my week. If you're in the area and looking for a nice piece of fish, give it a spin (also, we belatedly realized that we've never reviewed our favorite place, Kuru Kuru in the CVS Plaza on North Hollywood Way – we'll be rectifying that soon).

And yes, we have a lavishly corrupt Supreme Court, but at least now everyone knows it. Glenn Haumann's even set up a Gofundme to raise money to bribe Clarence Thomas (now deleted, alas):

https://www.gofundme.com/f/pzhj4q-the-clarence-thomas-signing-bonus-fund-give-now

The funds are intended as a "signing bonus" in the event that Thomas takes up John Oliver on his offer of a $2.4m luxury RV and $1m/year for life if he'll resign from the court:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE-VJrdHMug

This is truly one of Oliver's greatest bits, showcasing his mastery over the increasingly vital art of turning abstruse technical issues into entertainment that negates the performative complexity used by today's greatest villains to hide their misdeeds behind a Shield of Boringness (h/t Dana Clare).

The Bezzle is my contribution to turning abstruse scams into a high-impact technothriller that pierces that Shield of Boringness. The key to this is to master exposition, ignoring the (vastly overrated) rule that one must "show, not tell." Good exposition is hard to do, but when it works, it's amazing (as anyone who's read Neal Stephenson's 1,600-word explanation of how to eat Cap'n Crunch cereal in Cryptonomicon can attest). I wrote about this for Mary Robinette Kowal's "My Favorite Bit" this week:

https://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/my-favorite-bit/my-favorite-bit-cory-doctorow-talks-about-the-bezzle/

Of course, an undisputed master of this form is Adam Conover, whose Adam Ruins Everything show helped invent it. Adam is joining me on stage in LA tomorrow night at Vroman's at 5:30PM, to host me in a book-tour event for my novel The Bezzle:

https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Cory-Doctorow-discusses-The-Bezzle

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/23/gazeteer/#out-of-cycle

Image: Peter Craven (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aggregate_output_%287637833962%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #the bezzle #ryan broderick #mary robinette kowal #exposition #john oliver #margot robbie #adam conover #ai #ai search #change healthcare #centralization #pharma #pbms #pharmacy benefit managers #corruption #scotus #crowdfunding #clarence thomas

38 notes · View notes

thegreymoon · 8 months ago

Text

The Story of Minglan

LMFAOOOO

Show her who's the boss, Granny! She wants to fuck around with her shit sister, she can now also find out.

***

Yes, listen to your nanny, you shit-stirring evil-monger. She's not entirely stupid and sees you will lose.

You really should quit while you're ahead, live out your life in peace and enjoy your bajillion blood grandchildren from your worthless son and his endless string of concubines.

But you can't just do that because you're so greedy and bitter and would rather dig your own grave instead. Enjoy death, then!

***

LMAO, the arrogance!

Like his worthless, faithless ass deserves it. Like she had not prayed before she died not to meet him again.

If they do meet again, it will be so that she can extract all the wrongdoings in this life with his blood in the next. She will never love him again in any life.

***

And what good was his shitty love?

He sold her out, let her die in disgrace and ignominy, broken-hearted and betrayed, so that his shitty brothers could have more money to throw around and waste, and absolutely ruin other people's lives in the process. He loved her and he let her down so badly, it would be laughable if it was not so sad. And then he proceeded to take his self-loathing out on other people, including his own small child. He's disgraceful and each one of his wives deserves better in the next life, including the evil second Madam Qin.

***

Oh, she is definitely plotting her murder and thinks that now is the time, seeing as Gu Tingye is away.

And all that, for what? Her own son is beyond useless.

***

LOL, is she trying to curse herself?

If there is one thing I've learned reading Chinese web novels and watching c-dramas it's that you don't want to piss off the ghosts 😅😅 Things are, for once, not going her way and she's lost all her marbles.

***

Fantastic performance by this actress.

She's delightfully creepy and unhinged.

***

She's so, so deeply unhappy with how her life turned out.

She married at the top of the food chain but it was not enough because her husband was so worthless. Even as one of the most powerful, she was still so powerless in her own life and her agency was so limited. All she could do was scheme in the shadows. All this bitterness and bile is the result of her bitterness and discontent. Nothing she ever hoped for came to fruition.

***

OMG, the drama 🙄

She's so spoiled and ridiculous.

What do you mean Minglan and Granny Sheng won't just sit back and let her and her shitty sister ruin their lives? How uncharitable of them! Better throw a temper tantrum!

Poor Hualan, she is surrounded by imbeciles.

***

Oh, Hualan, you are talking in vain 🙄

Your mother is an imbecile and you certainly did not inherit your lovely common sense from her.

***

LMAO, could it be because you are one?

I cannot with these entitled people, demanding respect when they have done absolutely nothing to earn it.

***

Exactly, you worthless sack of shit!

Why didn't you know? Why didn't you stop it? Why didn't you stop it YEARS AGO? It's because you were too busy getting slaves and servants pregnant to care about your already living kids and the women whose lives you've already ruined. Fuck you.

***

LMAO, so useless.

There's no hurry, my dude! There are plenty of people still left in your household (and other households too) for her to murder!

***

I mean, not to be advocating for domestic violence here, but Jesus Christ, after everything she's done, this was richly deserved.

***

Listen, if she does, I will riot.

#the story of minglan #tsoml spoilers #tsoml ep60

28 notes · View notes

justforbooks · 3 months ago

Text

She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark

A bona-fide queen of body horror delves into fears and illicit desires in this engrossing short-story debut

Disgust and delight, it has been said, live in close proximity; in Eliza Clark’s debut collection, they share a home and a bed. These 11 stories revolve around food, sex, gender, power and the body; they veer from realism to sci-fi, fairytale, horror and post-apocalyptic dystopia. This is a book that seems crafted from the stuff of our deepest fears and our most illicit desires. You read on, by turns engrossed and grossed out, as though in the thrall of some demonic power.

In one story, a tapeworm finds a happy home in the narrator’s belly, eating her dinners and keeping her weight in check (“Find me deliciously thin at a Michelin star restaurant, devouring a tasting menu with a wasp waist, never loosening my belt”). Another narrator’s pubescent face, blighted with acne, melts and scabs over after an aggressive treatment found on the dark web. “I feel like I’m touching raw meat and I pull my hands away.” In the sci-fi story Hollow Bones, a rip in the spacesuit of a scientist studying alien cultures allows a luminescent parasite to burrow into her thigh; bizarrely, she eats her own finger as it breaks off after prodding the wound (“The skin of that finger was so thin, it fell apart like stewed meat and slid down her throat just as easily, gristle collapsing with a press of her tongue, and the bone crumbling between her teeth”). The tale ends in her leg and forearm being amputated by a surgical team of fanged and furry creatures. Clark is a bona-fide queen of body horror, sadistic in her choice of imagery, and cussedly attentive to that most mundane and yet consequential of facts: that we have and are a body and, as a result, are always at risk of injury and mutation.

Boy Parts, Clark’s debut novel, was a BookTok sensation. A darkly hilarious study of gender archetypes and the treacherous schism between art and porn, consent and coercion, it featured a Geordie dominatrix and fetish photographer who, in the name of her vocation, groomed, snapped and possibly also bludgeoned and killed men she picked up from the streets. Her follow-up, Penance, turned a sly gaze on true crime, reconstructing the immolation of a teenager by three of her schoolmates. The preoccupations and self-awareness of these novels percolate into the story collection, but it is also very much its own thing: the tales ranging from quiet and murky to freaky, surreal and outright absurd, the work of a writer both dealing in and surpassing abjection and taboos.

Goth GF, a workplace comedy with sub-dom elements, reads like a winking recapitulation of Boy Parts, while The Problem Solver, about a rape survivor who confides in a male friend, engages themes of women’s testimony, male saviorism and sexual gaslighting. As ever, Clark manages to draw blood with a prop knife. After the woman half-jokes about the point of the Sex Offenders Register, the friend earnestly proposes the following course of action: “You wouldn’t have to call him out on your account,” he says. “In fact, we could do it like … more like a whisper network. Or I could message my friend from that feminist book club, the one with all the Instagram followers. Get them to name and shame him.”

The title story, set within a matriarchal community with strict rules for its men – fishers vulnerable to the dark call of the sea – is a delectable, code-scrambled mermaid tale that plays with ideas about male and female power (“The machinations of men had done so little for this place, and for the world outside of here”) and adds a mischievous twist to notions of communal safety and female self-sacrifice. It comes swaddled in influences, from Andersen’s fairytale to Orkney folklore and Lovecraftian mythos (there’s a Lovecraftian nod, too, in the following tale The Shadow Over Little Chitaly, composed entirely of reviews of a mysterious Chinese-Italian fusion takeaway).

The King satirises the “femgore” subgenre with which Clark has been identified, dramatising its excesses while relishing its cliches. Told from the uproarious viewpoint of a cannibal goddess who rises to power after the apocalypse, ruling over a settlement she christens Dad City in honour of the father she has killed and devoured, the story is a litany of horrors leavened by sick humour. She says of a man who offers himself up to be eaten: “He wants me to cut off his dick and balls before he goes. The dick-and-balls thing – they never enjoy that as much as they think they will. It’s always such a let-down for them. It’s a little sad.”

Two stories, Extinction Event and Nightstalkers, may feel like interlopers. The first is a miniature eco-thriller about an alien species of air- and sea-purifying starfish, and the second a hallucinogenic portrait of queer longing in 1970s California. Clark, you realise, isn’t a writer who will keep very long to any one path. This collection, full of shock and surprises, filth and wonder, is occasionally hard to reckon with, but harder still to forget.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #Eliza Clark #She’s Always Hungry #book review

9 notes · View notes

ultramarine-spirit · 7 months ago

Text

Ultramarine's Bookwalker Guide

A (hopefully) simple guide to how to use Bookwalker! See my Ridibooks guide if you are interested in manhwas and Korean web-novels.

What is Bookwalker? Bookwalker is Kadokawa's official website/app for reading mangas and light novels! There, you can read your favorite series in Japanese, and also their official English translations. It's not region-locked, so anyone can use it!

Before continuing, here is something very important to consider: Bookwalker's website and app have two versions each, a Japanese one and a Global one. The Japanese version has, well, all the mangas and light novels in the original Japanese. Meanwhile, the Global version has official English licenses.

Global version of the app (the one that you'll be able to download, unless you have a Japanese Google account) vs the Japanese browser version. Of course, you can also access the Global version in your browser.

This is relevant because you'll only be able to find WMMAP's (or any other series') Japanese edition on Bookwalker's Japanese version. If Bookwalker doesn't have the translation rights for the series in particular, you won't be able to find it on its Global version. Such is the case for WMMAP, licensed by Seven Seas (Maybe one day this will change).

Screenshot of Bookwalker's JP website.

Alright, alright, but how do I use Bookwalker? As with any other platform, you first need to make an account (top-right corner of your screen, 👤 icon). A nice thing about Bookwalker is that you can register using your Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Apple account! If you are using Bookwalker's Japanese version, I recommend using Chrome or other browsers with a MTL function, so the page is easier for you to navigate.

Buying mangas and light novels. Once again, I'll use WMMAP as an example. As I said above, if the series you want to purchase doesn't have an English version distributed by Bookwalker (such as WMMAP's case), you won't find it on its Global version, no matter if you are using the website or the app. Searching 「ある日、お姫様になってしまった件について」 or "Who Made Me A Princess" on the Global platforms won't give you any results.

Similarly, because of these copy-right issues, you won't be able to find any English translations on the Japanese version of the website.

So, tl;dr, we need to use Bookwalker JP! Once you have your account (which will work on both Bookwalker versions, Japanese and Global), you'll be able to search for 「ある日、お姫様になってしまった件について」 (WMMAP's Japanese title), and buy any of the 9 Japanese volumes released so far. Unlike Ridibooks, here you can only buy WMMAP's full volumes (ebooks), not chapters. The prices will vary depending on the volume, but they are all around 1,000 yen (older volumes are cheaper, and there are often sales).

Using the Japanese version might also be convenient in general because of the favorable dollar-yen exchange rate.

Screenshots of Bookwalker's JP website. I'm using Chrome's MTL function so the pictures are easier to understand.

Bookwalker's Coins. As with most manga platforms, Bookwalker has its own currency that you need to buy to then purchase any manga or light novel. It works in the same way as Tapas' ink and Tappytoon's points. The coins are worth almost the same as yen, but with a 1% accumulation rate. Selecting the "buy coins" option in your user profile will allow you to recharge the currency.

There, you can choose how much you want to recharge. Another nice thing about Bookwalker is that it accepts overseas credit cards (see the picture for the ones that work) and Paypal! Also, remember to check the purchase confirmation. After that, you just write your credit card/Paypal information, and you should be ready to buy your favorite manga or light novel!

Screenshots of Bookwalker's Global app.

If you want to use Bookwalker's Global version to purchase a series in English (as I said, you won't be able to find WMMAP here, please keep this in mind, or you could waste your money), the system is very similar, you have to buy "Points" in USD. Pictures for reference.

Screenshots of Bookwalker's Global app.

Once you have already purchased WMMAP, you'll be able to find it in your library (📚 icon).

You can filter out other books writing 「ある日、お姫様になってしまった件について」 in the search bar!

Also very important information: You will be able to read WMMAP on Bookwalker's Global version too (be it the website or the app) if you have already purchased it on the Japanese site. In the pictures shown above you can see screenshots of said app. At the bottom, you have your library, where all books you have bought are organized according to their date of acquisition. Here you will be able to read anything you have bought, in English or Japanese. It's only to buy Japanese titles that you have to specifically use the Japanese site, but only for purchasing purposes. After that, you'll be able to read it on any of Bookwalker's versions.

#bookwalker #manhwa recommendation #who made me a princess #suddenly became a princess one day #i suddenly became a princess #wmmap #sbap #sbapod

15 notes · View notes