#sao was made For Me actually

[caffeled]

shaking like a rabid chihuahua in anticipation for the new sao movie bc it's takin things from the top but from the reboot/rewrite of the first novel where side characters get more development & kirito n asuna actually get more time together to get to know each other. for all the eugh that's in the original & that got added in the anime, there is So much good & So much potential in there & i was, alas, hooked on this shit from the 2nd episode of s1 so. im making it everyone else's problem.

[crimsoneveline]

I was thinking again about the whole 'putting kirito in the basement' thingy and which sao characters would do well with some force fem (first Eolyne came to mind)

obviously next I was thinking about Klein: turn that failboy business man into a failgirl business woman! instantly solving her success rate with women!

oh, but not agil! Kirito needs at least one good male role model in her life. unlike her shitty father!

...wait a minute! he'd make a perfect basement candidate! (but seriously who goes to their 'son' after she was almost killed, put in several comas, and basically says "But remember whats really important: School!")

and of course: Kikuoka!

oh you needed to gain a new identity after your old self has 'died' you shitty old man? basement time for you!

[pitohuimaki]

people with “do not interact if you support the original sao” in their bio/posts reblogging my sao abridged posts. babygirl what’s happening here

[waywardsalt]

oh yeah i’ve got a bunch of loz aus that i haven’t really talked about. a few of them are listed and slightly explained in this poll and explanation reblog but i haven’t gone out of my way to actually list the aus i have and really explain them. so that’s what this post is for. here are some... decently simple explanations of my major aus and what they're generally about

i have two kinds of aus: original aus (loz aus that are set in their own kinds of worlds with their own stories and twists on character roles) and then crossover aus (we all know how this works i just mash loz and a thing i like together)

original aus: (many currently dont have actual titles, so the titles will often just be concept shorthand)

in the court of the crimson king/crimson king au: probably the most developed and closest to being written out. it's got one of the longer premises; set in a industrial-esque hyrule city, following linebeck as the main character, as the adoptive older brother of link and aryll, living with them and their grandmother as the only one able to reliably make money to pay for rent and food, leaving every other week to do jobs, but he moonlights as the 'demon of the gray moon', a masked persona he'd created as a child that had long since become a city-wide urban legend, anonymously taking unsavory jobs from whomever can contact him and offer pay, often working directly for bellum, a childhood friend, the one who enabled and trained him to become the demon, and one of five anonymous leaders of the city. linebeck effectively lives a double life, and tries to stay out of too much trouble to avoid drawing attention to himself or making his adoptive family worry, but he gets dragged into more and more danger as bellum becomes curious about the identities of the city's other leaders, and linebeck falls in love with a man named ganondorf, suspected to be one of those other city leaders. ive got a few posts related to it already: this one being another vague concept descriptor, this one being an actual scene i have written out.

'gimmick' au: i cannot explain the gimmick without spoiling the au. put simply, in this au, hyrule as a whole has been at war for ten years, every race and kingdom taking sides in a conflict that seems to be going nowhere. link joined the hylian army young, and has made his way up the ranks to become trusted by queen zelda herself, and things in the war take an interesting turn as he and zelda discover a new faction, unaligned with any particular kingdom and with unknown motives, and zelda decides to set out to the different parts of hyrule, link and a chosen group of trusted allies in tow, intending to try negotiation one more time before things take a turn for the worse.

sci-fi/space au: the fun one that probably would need to be done in a visual medium. it takes place in a solar system of a few planets, link growing up on the planet hyrule and occasionally traveling to the others as a knight specializing in investigating and taking down dangerous bounty hunters, working for zelda as a friend. he and zelda uncover a plot by the yiga clan to accumulate a number of highly dangerous research and weapons held by each species as they aim to resurrect a demon to wreck havoc on the solar system- the b plot being about the top bounty hunters in the solar system screwing around, eventually colliding with link and zelda's a plot as it begins to involve them.

murder mystery(?) au: one of the older ones, maybe one of the oldest that i still stick with. this might actually be one of the first ones i tried writing. the plot begins when zelda returns to hyrule city years after her father- the former mayor- was murdered, finding that he has been replaced by ganondorf and that while things seem fine enough on the surface, random and organized crime run the show, and she begins a private detective agency as 'sheik', a masked young man, and with the help of impa, and old friend and confidant, she moonlights as sheik and uses her daytime identity as zelda to help chip away at some of the city's biggest problems and finds herself drawn into a long string of murders that appear to be anything but random violence.

ruined hyrule 1: i have two au’s with the premise of hyrule being ruined. neither of them have more specific names yet. this one begins with the majority of greater hyrule's population having long since locked themselves in hyrule castle town in order to escape the increasingly dangerous wildlife. zelda, a young girl at the beginning, becomes curious about what lies beyond the city walls, and makes friends with many other children within this sheltered hyrule, and as they grow up together, aim to eventually venture out into the wilderness to see what may have caused the outside world to become so incredibly hostile.

ruined hyrule 2: the other ruined hyrule. set in a devastated hyrule, roughly ten years after the royal family was killed, link failing to save them or hyrule in the time since. he now resolves to set out and indiscriminately destroy every demon that plagues the ruined hyrule, meeting and bringing along various allies, each of which has been uniquely affected by and have different lived in this altered, dangerous shell of hyrule.

modern (school): i also have two modern aus. this one isn’t plot driven, just a concept i have, would work best as little vignettes or something. essentially just the idea of a group of loz characters hanging out together in a modern high school (or college?) setting.

modern: this is the one with an actual plot. follows the general idea of zelda characters living in a modern world only for the typical legends to begin resurfacing and heralding dark events. plot specifics are murky, but that's the general idea.

dark mage: this is the au that where the seas meet the sands takes place in. basically just ganondorf x linebeck shenanigans in this alternate hyrule while actual plot sneaks up on them. named 'dark mage' mostly because the initial idea behind this au was that linebeck would learn magic.

horror au: doesn't have the best name, and it's ended up just being a personal sandbox for me. constantly changing, with the cast and setting often altering if i find that something isn't working or sticking. it's an au i've considered (and even briefly tried) writing in the past, but it's still too fluid, and writing horror effectively is difficult. it's a fun au, though.

mecha au: spawned because i watched neon genesis evangelion. a lot of this au's basic concepts can be found here: x but the short version is that hyrule is being besiged by massive monsters, but each race has created their own mechs to combat them. link is just a farmer who happens to have a strange knack for being a mech user, so is brought in by zelda as a gamble to bolster their chances, and he is tasked with working with a new and less-than-trustworthy crew to help fight those monsters.

'amnesia link' au: an au that sprang up in about a day and hasn't gotten too far since. basic premise being that three years prior to the story, link and a group of allies has faced off against ganondorf and, despite their best efforts, lost, with link being presumed dead by their enemies. now, link has woken up from his coma, his memories gone and hyrule taken over, and, with guidance, must once again travel across hyrule, aiming to rediscover his allies and try to face ganondorf once more.

A quick list of crossovers: I won't explain these in length, since they can range from having their own plot to just being a fun mental concept. So, the things I have made crossover aus with are:

Warrior Cats

Batman

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Persona 5

Pokemon

(there are other, smaller ones, these are just the ones i consistently pay attention to)

So! These are the majority of my legend of zelda aus, some of which I may write, some of which just exist in my mind for fun, all of which I wouldn't mind talking more about if anyone is curious!

[1010ninetynine]

sao abridged is too american for me (says the usamerican)

[lintsins]

"@indygotcha I don't think that at all! I'm happy you vented" - Me

I love hearing people's thoughts on SAO, as I also have a lot of complicated thoughts on it! I also appreciate you didn't go full "SAO 2012 fanboy" on me, as they were VICIOUS back in the day. In fact, I'll give you my own rant on SAO, and hopefully I'll assuage some of your fears on SAO fading into obscurity.

For context, I'd say I'm a weird fan of SAO. I grew up with it, and thus my thoughts change on it as I got older. At first, I was a genuine fan, then THAT scene with Asuna and Oberon happened and it felt like a betrayal, and I became a hater esp bc I learned more abt writing analysis, then as I grew older, I came to appreciate it for what it was, and I feel that its cultural impact is not appreciated.

I'm not a stan, so I enjoy poking fun at the anime and some of the events in the novel (so SAO Abridged is indeed great XD), but I'm not a hater either. I feel more like a movie critic, like you don't expect a movie critic to be all that invested in the movie beyond their analysis.

I think my stance on it is best summed up in Mother's Basement's last video on the topic, where he praised SAO's Mother's Rosario arc and noted that SAO, while it has some struggles with aspects like character work and storytelling and women, it had a masterful grasp on tone/aesthetics.

It really managed to sell the mundane beauty of living in a fantastical world, [much like Dungeon Meshi does], in a way that many of its isekai descendants/precedents fail to do or are not interested in doing.

a beautiful interaction/connection between kirito and a middle aged man, who used to be an IT department head and became a simple fisherman within the game's world

I think that's a beautiful thing to explore because it's a wonderful metaphor for what it's like for people to grow up with video games. Video Games, while to most people are just games, to others it's where they made their best friendships, events, and favorite achievements. It is its own world, but also intimately tied to their real life.

this is a visual version of the metaphor. the code is shaped into beautiful rolling hills, like real life grassy plains. the code touch grass lol

Thus, Kawahara's choice in having an MC gamer, traumatized shut-in like Kirito trapped in a video game world is genius, and the show/book really do a lot to sell the everyday mundanity of what that would be like. (The cooking date episode and murder mystery episode are a lot of fun for that reason, even if they're not "plot.")

As for its cultural impact and WHY it blew up, I'll say this:

Kawahara was born at the right time to make SAO. He grew up with video games, and technology/trends made it feasible to think of VR worlds. It's like how the bullied niche of comic nerds grew up to direct Marvel movies -- his childhood interests were luckily something that became trendy as he grew older, making it prime for him get in ahead of everybody else.

On top of that, Kawahara’s amateur writing was kind of a plus. Amateur anime writers tend to lean more into tropes that they like, as he did with his admiration for Berserk, as well as bald wish fulfillment, which is perfect for mainstream anime. Don't fix what ain't broke, even if you might not win mainstream writing awards or something. Plus, Death Games were HYUGE at the time, like Hunger Games, Danganrompa, Future Diary, and Fortnite, which drew people in (even if that's not really a huge part of SAO's legacy in this analysis).

Culturally, we were finally at a place where the internet was ubiquitous with young people AND Kawahara's longtime experience with gaming meant that he could accurately capture an experience that the new mainstream would finally be knowledgeable enough to appreciate-- the digital world.

As I've said before, Kawahara was amazing at blending/connecting the real world with digital ones. "IF YOU DIE IN THE GAME YOU DIE IN REAL LIFE," Asuna and Kirito's "real name vs username" conversation mirroring conversations many people have with friends they've made from online spaces, Kirito stumbling across his cousin in the digital world without realizing, Kirito trying to bring his digital daughter into the real world with robotics, Yuuki being a girl who can only really live inside VR because her body is too weak to go out into the real world.

In the past, this wouldn't have been a trend because too many people touched grass for that to be a popular topic. After all, the idea of people 'living' on the internet didn't make sense until relatively recently. But because the Internet had become so entrenched in Gen Z's lives, Kawahara's interest in connecting the real with the digital resonated with a lot of people.

Previous 'isekai' like log horizon I feel still came too early to hit that ipad baby generation lol and also didn't really do the transition/explanation of isekai very well. Log Horizon made it into a mystery off-screen, which means it kinda throws you in the deep end, whereas SAO made it a plot point, so we experience the transition from ep 1. This connection of the real world to the virtual world is important, as gaming and the internet are not disconnected from our reality but instead are intimately tied to it.

So, while others have said that Kawahara's idea of "trapped in a new world" was nothing groundbreaking for fantasy (It's called portal fantasy, and Narnia lol is the easiest example to point to), I'd say that misses the point -- portal fantasy is nothing new, but the connection to the Internet/video game/modern aesthetics to the new world IS new. That's SAO's impact and genius.

Isekai meaning "trapped in a new world" is a bit of a misnomer, because what's important isn't just the new world, but also the online/gaming aesthetics. It's not just getting trapped in a new world, but also having a smartphone with you. It's not just having magical powers but having a respawn mechanic like a video game. It's not just European fantasy, but also DND/RPG fantasy, with lingo like "bosses" or "area of effect" or "leveling up."

protagonist of "in another world with my smartphone" with Kirito's face and swords pasted on top. he doesn't look different.

So, while a lot of people discredit SAO's influence in popularizing "isekai" as a legit genre (either bc it doesn't quite fit the way the genre has grown or bc portal fantasy has always existed or bc they hate isekai), that's actually a cultural impact I wish more people would talk about. I can't prove this, but I'd say SAO carved out a new space that would go onto usher in shows like Dungeon Meshi AND SCUM VILLAIN MY BELOVED (which uses a plot device that looks like video game UI called "The System" to drive its plot).

from my Scum Villain animatic

Well, I'd argue Dungeon Meshi is easier to prove, as the show, while not an Isekai, similarly utilizes DND/RPG aesthetics like with the Dungeons/Dungeon Masters/Respawn mechanics (Danmachi was one of those SAO inspired shows and shares these aspects with Dunmeshi, so I feel safe in arguing this.) There's a direct timeline of SAO to "In Another World With My Smartphone" to "Campfire Cooking/Dungeon Meshi" (in terms of anime, at least. in terms of novels, it's a bit more concurrent, but the point stands, as SAO came before them all).

Scum Villain and the "transmigration"/"system" genre is much harder to prove. China, Korea, and Japan often influence each other.

Think the Hallyu Wave or the "Cool Japan" initiative, or the way period C-dramas have created shows like "Ya Boy Kongming" or Apothecary Diaries, or the way the Chinese myth/novel like Journey To the West influenced shonen anime with Dragon Ball) or the way Kpop idol culture influences China, or donghua looking like anime, etc.

I'm not read up enough on the origins of modern trends like isekai and Transmigration / System stories to be able to trace influences the way I wish I could, as that would require things like Korean/Chinese/Japanese fluency and Chinese/Korean/Japanese phone numbers to access their social media sites and such. As such, similarities could be the case of parallel thinking, as I've said that the culture was moving this way regardless of Kawahara.

All I know is that Solo Leveling and Scum Villain were released after SAO's "video game aesthetic" impact on anime, which is an industry that has been influential on Chinese/Korean netizens/culture/art (and vice versa).

So yeah! SAO may not have executed the Blackened Swordsman trope as well as Guts, and he may have inspired a bunch of bland black-haired OP isekai protagonists that Bingge went on to satirize, but it also DID manage to spawn a new genre with its wonderful weaving of video games with reality (including Binghe's story lol).

It may not fit the label of isekai as we've come to know it, but it's like those early genre influential works that transition us from the old to the new, and it should get its flowers for that instead of languishing away into obscurity.

Especially because I feel like we could reframe its flaws into the awkwardness of being a cultural transition, where Kawahara has to shoe-horn a death game to draw people in bc the draw of slice of life isekai hadn't yet been pioneered. I mostly remember slice of life being associated with moe blob high school anime like Lucky Star or K-On! at the time.

For instance, OP fighting abilities is one of SAO's chief criticisms and said criticism is only really a problem in stories where fighting is the appeal because it messes with stakes. Slice of life can often have OP MCs because the point isn't really about the fighting like that, like Frieren's OP elf main character.

With how much Kawahara shined in the mundane aspects of the show, I wonder if slice-of-life fantasy had been a thing at the time, would he have approached SAO differently? (SAO's cooking date episode -> Campfire Cooking's cooking show). Same thing with the slice of life aspects of SAO being called filler bc it doesn't contribute to getting out of the death game. (SAO "why aren't we watching the frontlines?" -> Dungeon Meshi's "why aren't they rushing to save Falin?")

Much like how Akira Toriyama hadn't known how to handle power creep in the Dragon Ball franchise because there weren't any prior shonen to learn from. Such is the trouble of being a pioneer, and I think a cultural retrospective on SAO along these lines would be wonderful in that regard.

just gonna leave this here.

If you’re wondering who the other two are, read this

(semi-related to my Bingqiu Jinlan City Reunion Weeb AU fic)

[thegardengrows-infrozenrain]

i would like to thank the PluralKit Discord server for the idea for this

[avelera]

Man, there’s all these little beats in OFMD S2 1-3 where people keep EXPECTING Stede to be upset or horrified about Ed’s actions and then he’s just. Not. In a way that reminded me of how a lot of fanon kept softening Stede into someone who doesn’t swear and is horrified at Ed for setting those ships on fire when imo to my eyes he was horrified for Ed because Ed was still so clearly distressed about it.

- Zheng Yi Sao asks Stede how he’s doing now that he knows Ed did horrible things to his crew and there’s this beat and Stede just pivots to, oh yeah, sometimes Ed is troubled. Like it didn’t occur to him to be upset on the crew’s behalf he’s worried about Ed.

- Izzy keeps trying to spare Stede’s feelings and cover up Ed’s spiral, but Stede clocked what was going on with Ed immediately and wasn’t the least bit intimidated or bothered. The knives brought the room together. Of course Ed’s trying to burn the world down or die trying. Duh. And I genuinely don’t think the STUFF in the Revenge mattered even a fraction to Stede as much as the signs of Ed’s breakdown broke his heart. It’s just STUFF, who cares.

- Lucius had to SPECIFICALLY call out Stede for not being surprised or bothered by what happened to him. What Ed did. Stede has to almost consciously remind himself to express polite concern. He just doesn’t actually care, instinctively or automatically, about what happened to Lucius. Part of it is he blames himself more than Ed. Part of it is he just doesn’t care, Ed is the priority.

They’re little blink and you’ll miss it pauses in some cases. Micro-expressions. The absence of a reaction. But honestly, I will scream it to the end of time, Stede is not some nonviolent creampuff scared or upset by Ed’s evil ways. He wants to join Ed in the atrocities. The man ran away to become a pirate. He asked if Lucius was taking notes during a murderous raid.

Stede’s at least a little on some kind of whackadoodle pirate comedy neurodivergence spectrum to the point where he actually really actually struggles to empathize with people, even people he cares about!, if their feelings conflict with his hyperfixation (piracy) and the love of his life (Ed Teach). He’s always, ALWAYS going to pick Ed over Lucius or Izzy or his crew or even his own feelings, if the option is there. He will literally throw himself overboard to get to Ed’s side. No pause. No consideration of anyone else or even his own safety.

Stede sometimes seems to have to consciously remind himself things like, oh yeah, the crew, I need to see to them. Not because he’s heartless or doesn’t care, but because it takes a bit of conscious effort for him to see beyond the laser-focused spotlight of what and who he does care most about, he has to remind himself of social niceties and other people’s feelings (just see him running away in the first place!) when he gets an idea in his head. It’s as if he had to train himself to consciously care about some things other people care about and as a neurodivergent person myself, that felt very familiar in a comedically writ large sort of way. I’d even argue that’s where all his aristocratic social niceties come from. They were his guidebook for how to do things “right” in a world that otherwise made no sense to him outside his hyperfixations. He practiced being a person through the aristocratic training because it was all so foreign to him from the start, including caring, actually caring, about the needs of others. Not because he’s consciously evil or consciously a jerk. The instinct just isn’t there unless he practices at it until it becomes reflex to ask how others are doing, because on his own his brain just doesn’t really notice or care.

I just… hope the fandom notes and has as much FUN as I do noticing all the little moments where even people inside the story of OFMD expect Stede to act in a normal way and instead he remains unhinged, laser-focused on Ed.

Stede’s not just an Ed apologist, he truly doesn’t blame Ed for any of it. He blames only himself. He doesn’t always voice this but he really really only cares about anyone else including the crew as a DISTANT second and he has to consciously REMIND himself to do so. He is able to rally to take action, to care about their physical needs like safety during the rescue, but he still struggles, deeply struggles, to remember to show empathy in a non-performative way for anyone except his special person, Ed.

Stede’s not a creampuff, not a nice guy, not some emotionally or morally perfect angel. He has to consciously practice caring about literally anything else but what he wants to do and his special person. And to me that’s a thousand times more interesting than shoving him in a box labeled “the blond, pacifist do-gooder good guy” in their relationship.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

There's definitely a conversation to be had about the presentation of real historical figures in historical fiction, I think. As both a professional historian (PhD student 🤘🏾😔) and a man of color, I'm a bit more sensitive to this than a lot of people, and for me it always comes down to the question - what real harm is being done here?

And that's where I think OFMD does well enough for me to be comfortable. If you look at the fact that the show is based on real-life terrible people who did awful things and participated in the slave trade and you don't wanna fuck with the show, that's completely understandable, but I find it so much more palatable than (for the easy comparison) a piece of media like Black Sails (I actually like Black Sails, believe it or not, but there are a lot of things about how it treats many of these same figures that make me uncomfortable).

Now, yes, OFMD is hand-wavey with the slave trade in the Caribbean. None of our main characters own slaves or directly reference the slave trade (again, this is a romcom, I'd be shocked if they did). For me, this works alright for two big reasons. First, there are things that I think you can include in a romcom and have it still be a romcom, and a thoughtful, respectful depiction of the slave trade would take the show firmly out of romcom territory. Second, the show doesn't pretend racism doesn't exist, it treats its characters of color as three-dimensional people, and we always get the last laugh when racism is depicted. The very first episode sets the scene by having racist English Navy officers demean and call a Black character "slave" and they immediately get their asses kicked for it. Compare this to a show like Black Sails, where one of my main criticisms is how we're expected to sympathize with characters who actively participate in the slave trade and own slaves.

My other thing here is the people OFMD is working with are both heavily mythologized and not treated with any degree of historical accuracy. Many of our characters who are famous pirate names you might know are nothing like their real-world counterparts (take pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao, who wasn't even born yet when the show takes place). We know so little about any of the real people, anyway, that OFMD doesn't even bother trying to get anything right.

Like I said, I'm a professional historian and I love working with the golden age of piracy. That's a big reason I was drawn to this show in the first place! And if there's one thing I know, it's that pirates have been made into legends. We know very little about the real people, and in pop culture they're just myths.

The characters in OFMD are basically fictional characters working with the loose mythology based around the real people.

Now, back to my big thesis here: are the real, awful people benefitting in any way from OFMD taking these characters and making them into the good guys? Realistically, no, I'd argue. Most people with any critical thinking skills know that real pirates were not good people. Many people think Blackbeard is a made-up generic pirate character as it is. I've been to the real-life Stede Bonnet's grave site (NOT for the show, this was years before it aired and I was visiting the archives there to see the trial documents for a research project), and the historic marker there says he was "brought to justice." No one is wataching this show and thinking "oh those real guys must have been pretty great dudes!" because it's not about those real people.

This show isn't trying to change your perception of the real people, it's showing you fictional characters with the same names. One of our characters is runnig around in crocs, this show isn't trying to teach you about history or the real people and it's obvious.

If you're put off by the premise, I get it! But I just don't buy the idea that OFMD is putting anything harmful into the world just by existing.

[catwif3]

also deeply important: LOOK at this final project from computer art class in my junior or senior year. that's aaalllll macromedia FIREWORKS baybeeeee

LOOK at the collage boards of my late teens/early twenties my parents have preserved in their original format i am SCREAMING

[toskarin]

As someone knowledgeable about MMOs, and given the topic of SAO just came up. If you were to write a .Hack/SAO/Log Horizon style story, what kind of things would you focus on? I personally feel like there are a lot of different elements of MMO culture anyone writing about them could really delve into. So I'm curious what Tumblr user Toskarin would choose.

condensed

back when I played Perfect World, it had some empty spaces. this wasn't uncommon for mmos, and if you can name one older than 15 or so years, you can bet there were vast empty spaces on the world map that existed to pad it

but they were important! sure, they added nothing of obvious value and could cynically be read as existing just to pad travel time, but they also made the worlds feel bigger than you what you were doing in them. and more mysterious.

some friends in my guild and I got a message one day that one member was going to roll a new character and wanted help levelling. a complication: their starting zone was across the sea.

a few friends and I volunteered to swim across the sea to their zone. there were definitely easier ways to go about it, but setting out to do something just to see if it was possible seemed fun

now, they may have changed this since then, but the sea in Perfect World felt strange in a way I haven't seen any game really emulate since. the sky was a dull, and as was the fashion, everything was a bit muted. the sea itself was opaque, and when you swam under it, there was a significant amount of grey-blue terrain that seemed to stretch on forever into the fog

and of course, there was fuck all in it. nothing alive. no monsters until you got close to a shore. just vast empty sea that you swam through, only your friends' characters to break up the odd stillness of it. you probably turned the music off at this point, too, so there was only ambient sound and splashing

this is because you were supposed to fly over it, if you crossed it at all. and because there wasn't really a good centralised source of knowledge on these things, it wasn't really clear if it was entirely empty

the trip there was fine, if a bit boring and lonely. during the trip back, I accidentally clicked on something in the middle of the ocean

now, there weren't supposed to be things there. I had my friends, but I clicked on a monster, and when I swam down to look at it, I saw that it was actually an enormous sea monster

so I pinged one of the guildmates swimming with me and they thought I was lying, so I showed them, and then we repeated this several times until everyone in the group had seen this weird thing that felt like it came from a schoolyard rumour

Ancient Sea Dragon. 99,999,999 health points and none of us could find anything on it posted online. it was pretty common for players to run into it and be shocked, but we didn't know that

so we naturally let the rest of the guild know, got a hunting party together, and spent the better part of a day just whittling its health down

with the benefit of hindsight and documentation of this thing existing now, I can spoil this and tell you it didn't drop anything, but this long down the line, I still think about how deeply surreal it felt to stumble on an enormous sea monster in the middle of what my brain had come to understand as a liminal space. the sea was supposed to be mostly empty, and here was this thing

which is a very long way to introduce what I think is lacking here: we need more of those enormous empty spaces that leave characters with nothing to do but talk and feel completely isolated. sometimes you get to a sprawling castle city and it's completely empty because the players moved on. sometimes the devs threw an enormous monster in the middle of nowhere just to fuck with you, and that was kind of cool even if it sucked

[taniahylian]

Tristes tropiques: The worst chapter in Reverse 1999

Alright, so I’ve wanted to talk about ch8 of the main story since I’ve finished it because it’s, imo, the worst drop in writing quality we’ve seen in the game so far. It has a lot of inconsistencies, things that aren’t explained or happen off-screen, and the emotional segments are rushed/not impactful enough, and about characters we’ve barely seen (excluding Anjo Nala, who is the best part of the chapter imo). Now, as you can see, this will be quite a negative take, so if you liked this chapter, please don’t let me ruin your fun lol. Also, it’ll have spoilers, so be warned.

Part 1: The representation.

Alright, had to get this out of the way first because it’s what everyone is talking about. The representation.

Is the representation bad? Yes. Really, really bad if we compare it with literally all other stories in the game. To put things in perspective, imagine if in the Notes of Shuori event nothing changed but they clamed this was Japan instead of China, yet characters still spoke in Chinese, had Chinese names, and many of the references were Chinese. That would have been outrageous, wouldn’t it? Well, that’s basically what happened here but with Brazil and other Latin American countries.

What they tried to do, basically, was dump all of Latin America (you, know a region that’s bigger and more diverse than Europe) into one singular “culture” and put this in fictional Sao Paulo. Why do I say that? Because many of the words they use for different things are in Spanish, and many characters speak in Spanish, have Spanish-sounding names, and reference things from other countries in Latin America. Also, one of the npcs, whose name I don’t care to remember, is literally a walking Mexican stereotype. To me what this says is that they didn’t do any research at all about Brazil (for those of you who don’t know, they speak Portuguese and are also far enough away from Mexico that these two cultures aren’t really comparable); enough that they couldn’t get even the language right, or even the geography or the Sao Paulo landscape, judging by what I’ve seen being said by Brazilian players.

Remember when they accurately portrayed the Secession building in Vienna? Or Jantar Mantar in Mor Pank? Or how they usually have characters speak small phrases in their native language, which is appropriate to the region and their character? Well, Bluepoch doesn’t, apparently.

Then there’s the whole “life here is hell, this is hopeless and everything here sucks” aspect of their portrayal of Sao Paulo (and their infamous tweet). This feels especially disrespectful when the story so far has always had quite a good amount of nuance. Vienna for example, having the contrast of being the “city of freedom”, yet having such a strict oppression of arcanists. Or San Francisco, having such a huge poverty and gang problem, yet still portraying the people living in these conditions as actual humans with hopes and dreams that they sometimes were able to accomplish.

And finally, to wrap up this representation thing… it feels disrespectful that the only Brazilian character we get is Mr. Duncan. Mainly because it seems he’s not really Mr. Duncan, but actually Mr. Karson. You know, an English man. I think they should’ve made Lopera Brazilian because so far having her be from Colombia adds nothing to the story, and if she was from Sao Paulo it’d make a lot more sense for her to be Vertin’s guide/translator in the city.

Okay, so that’s what we get from the representation in this chapter, which is pretty bad (haven’t read Anjo’s character story, which I’ve heard is better in this aspect, but that’s not actually part of ch8, so I excluded it). However, honestly I wouldn’t mind that much if the story had at least been good. So… let’s talk about that next, shall we?

Part 2: The story.

The good.

Okay, first let’s get the good things out of the way, because I don’t want to sit here and pretend that everything about this chapter was bad; that would be unfair and disingenuous.

I liked Lopera and Molly. They were interesting characters and have a lot of potential for the future of the story, which I really hope they deliver in future chapters.

I liked White Rum; she’s a funny character, and the concept of an Awakened pirate ship that has the skeletal hand of her former captain (Anne Bonnie, my favorite pirate of all time) is quite an interesting and unique idea, and I wish we got more characters like this. Also, I need to see her interact with Regulus lol.

I absolutely adored Anjo Nala. She’s the highlight of the story for me; an interesting, complex, and adorable character with a lot of potential for stories to tell, both about her past and her future. I really became attached to her over the course of this story, and I think they did a good job making you care for her… in this specific chapter. Don’t look back at versions 2.0 and 2.1 if you don’t want to get your fun ruined, because consistency is something they didn’t care about at all while writing this patch. And that brings us to…

The bad.

Buckle up my friends because what’s bad about this chapter is really, really, REALLY bad. Consistency is something they don’t believe in anymore, retcons are on the market, and setting up characters/settings/relationships is a thing of the past.

Does it sound like I’m being too harsh? Maybe, but it’s deserved, so idc.

Let’s start from the least bad, shall we? Anjo Nala’s hunger. In 2.0 and 2.1, as well as the first of Anjo’s monologues (the things you unlock after getting traces of a specific character), it’s implied that she can’t eat human food. Not that she doesn’t find it satisfactory, or that she doesn’t like it. It’s heavily implied she literally can’t eat it.

But then she steals some bread and Vertin gives her chocolate, and she eats both, so… what’s up with that? Also, they never really explain what her hunger is for. Was it really just normal human food? Or something else? In her trailer (which btw I wouldn’t consider it part of the main story because it’s a freaking trailer, but whatever) she “feeds on someone’s love” by using her tail. Okay, but then that person turns into a “walking corpse”. Does she have to do that every time she’s hungry? What happens if she doesn’t? Is human food substitute enough? The game never answers these questions, which is a mistake because this whole thing is a central part of Anjo’s character, as well as her turning from her bloodthirsty self to the Anjo we meet in this chapter.

And this brings us to my second issue… the inconsistency of Anjo’s character with the two events we had before this patch. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying anything she ever did was her fault since she was simply a slave following orders, and one thing that is consistent about her character is that she doesn’t like when people do give her orders. However, what really annoys me is how in 2.0 she was very bloodthirsty. Sure, she didn’t know J and his gang, and she had done these types of jobs before, but imo it would’ve been more consistent with the other patches if she was indifferent about killing them, rather than excited. 2.1 was slightly more consistent with ch8 when it comes to Anjo’s character, but it’s kind of implied it was all an act, and her “real” personality was that of 2.0.

Now, I’ve seen some ppl explain this as “well, in a wilderness interaction she says she acts however her master prefers her to”. Okay, but why put such important information in a freaking wilderness interaction and not in the main story??? You can’t even see those unless you have the character, and seeing as Anjo is limited, not everyone will have her. This is a fact.

Another problem I have with Anjo (this is the last, I promise) is that we’re not introduced to her again in ch8, which surely is a decision. Why? Because 2.0 and 2.1 aren’t part of the main story; they’re side events, which are time-limited and, at the moment, not available in-game. This is a problem because anyone who didn’t play those events for one reason or another will be very confused by Anjo Nala and how Vertin reacts to her. It would’ve been better if we were introduced to her from the pov of Lopera, for example, when she raided the Manus base and captured her. And then we could have Vertin run into her on the ship and explain to Sotheby (with a little more detail than what we got) that she actually met her before.

I’m just saying, this isn’t the first time we got a character in a main chapter that had been previously introduced only in an event (Marta/Bessmert), but in that case, if you missed the event, you could still fully enjoy the main chapter, because you wouldn’t even know that you were missing information. That’s not the case here.

And speaking of Urd… okay, let’s talk about how little sense it makes for the Foundation to want to find her in this chapter. In ch5 Vertin and her team found a suspicious radio that talked about a travel note about Aperion written by someone named “Urd”. In this case it makes sense for them to want to investigate, since the base Ms. Radio was in had things that belonged to the Manus, and they found some Manus followers there as well. Even after ch5 and everything that happened, it still makes sense for Vertin to want to keep looking for Urd because now she has the suspicion, based on what 6 said, that Urd is her mother.

However, although it makes sense for Vertin to want to find Urd, it doesn’t make sense for the freaking Foundation to want to find some random UTTU editor. Because that’s really all Urd is, isn’t she? She’s not the head of UTTU (that’d be Pandora), and the fact that she can traverse the storm, which is the only reason we’re given in ch8, is shared among all UTTU editors, as we learn from Barbara.

But even if we assume the Foundation wants to know how UTTU keeps its editors safe… first of all, why? We already have the equilibrium umbrellas, don’t we? We spent a whole chapter seeing their creation, and even saw ppl die for this cause. Why would they need yet another method for surviving the storm? If they instead suspected UTTU to be involved with the Manus somehow, and that’s how they’re traversing the storm, then at least give us that!

Furthermore, the Foundation already knew where she was! They were the ones who gave her the white marble chair with a button! If they just wanted to speak with her, surely a simply call would’ve sufficed? Why send Vertin?

And that’s another thing! Constantine knows Vertin’s mom, and I'm sure she’s not the only one in the Foundation who does, yet the Foundation tried to cover it up and tell Vertin that she doesn’t have a mother. Clearly they have some motivation for keeping it hidden, right? Then… why send Vertin specifically to search for Urd? Why not send some other random investigator, preferentially one with experience finding ppl? Why Vertin???

If Vertin had gone out of her own will, like in ch5, I’d have no problem with this, but no; the Foundation sent her this time. And I just can’t bring myself to understand why.

Maybe if Urd isn’t Vertin’s mom, that would explain this, but for now this makes no sense at all.

Next I want to talk about Lopera and Molly’s relationship. I said before that I truly liked their characters and their relationship, which is true, but… I wish it had been better stablished. Why? Because we had only had one, one single scene, of them together and the suddenly there was a grand betrayal and we’re supposed to feel bad for Lopera? Lmao.

If I felt slightly bad for Lopera it was because of the voice acting, the music and the art. I can assure you, not one single ounce of those feelings came from the actual story being told. It’s even worse when it comes to Igor because he barely exchanged words with Lopera, and all we know from their relationship comes from Lopera telling us “he’s better than my biological father”. And let’s not talk about Ptoleme. He literally only appeared to be a jerk for like five minutes and neither Molly nor Lopera seem to care much about him. How are we supposed to care about that entire family? They really don’t feel like a family at all (except for Lopera and Molly, but even then, it’s the bare minimum this chapter could do with this concept).

It would’ve been so much better if we had this whole chapter to stablish Lopera’s relationship with her adoptive family, with Zeno, the veterans and the Sao Paulo community, and then in the next chapter we could have the big betrayal be more impactful. But here? We barely spent any time with these characters!

And then we have the actual betrayal scene, which is… nonsensical. At best.

What happened in it? Molly arrived at the Colonel’s manor with her squad of Zeno soldiers and attacked the few Apostles Brotherhood ppl that remained, then says she’s glad that Lopera was able to rescue Dr. Dores and that they should all go back to the base. None of this is suspicious, imo, because Vertin had already told Lopera that she was going to call Zeno for reinforcements, specifically to assist with the rescue of Dr. Dores. It’s true that Molly hesitates a little when Lopera asks “what about the timekeeper?”, and that she dismisses Lopera’s concerns about evacuating Sao Paulo, but imo this shouldn’t be enough for Lopera to be so suspicious of her freaking sister. Also, why ask “who’s waiting for you in Tierra del Fuego”? Why would Lopera every think this was anything other than a mission from Zeno???

Sure, they didn’t tell her about it, but also she’s been gone from the base for a couple of days and she knows there’s been traitors and rebels. A lot could’ve changed in that time. Even if she didn’t want to leave because she got attached to Sao Paulo, I think it’s weird that she immediately was so confrontational about it, especially with her sister, who famously just follows their father’s orders without questions.

This could’ve worked if Lopera was already suspicious of her family beforehand, or maybe even of Zeno’s higher ups, or if Molly and her squad had just waltzed in without attacking the Manus or being attacked by them. But that’s not what happened. Also, if she really was suspicious, why not go back to the base and question Igor about this whole thing like Molly suggested? I don’t see why she immediately would think base=bad when her whole family and the army she’s part of is currently at the base.

Like, I get she already had trauma because of her biological father being a jerk, but that situation doesn’t seem to have anything to do with this one imo. All in all, what I’m saying is that the bad writing of this scene lessens the emotional impact.

And it’s not the only emotional scene that’s affected by the blatant bad writing in this chapter. No, that “honor” goes to the scene the trailer for this patch opens with; Anjo being ordered to kill Vertin by Ptoleme.

Okay, so as a refresher, Igor requests that his son, Ptoleme, is sent to the base because “he can only trust in his children because they always obey him”. Okay, so then what does Ptoleme do when ordered to bring back Kimberly, preferentially without a fuss? Of course, cause the biggest scene imaginable, which leads to Kimberly being freed.

Now, I wouldn’t be so harsh on him if his actions were reasonable but due to circumstances led to an unfavorable outcome for him, but that’s not what happened. Okay, he ordered Anjo to kill Vertin. Whatever, he’s a sadistic asshole, but this at least kinda makes sense. What makes no sense whatsoever is that he not only gave Vertin a gun because “he won’t shoot an unarmed civilian” (why does he care? Also ultimately he orders Anjo to kill her, so he wouldn’t have shot an unarmed civilian anyways), but also that he kept trying to make Vertin shoot Anjo.

Why? Just why? There was no reason for him to want Vertin to kill Anjo. None at all. And if what he wanted was to convince Anjo to kill Vertin… he can’t play both the “I’ll free you if you kill her” and the “Vertin, kill her, she’s a monster” cards at the same time. It makes him look like a pathetic moron with no sense of reality whatsoever, and in retrospective makes Igor look like a bigger idiot who doesn’t know his children at all. I think the reason they did this is because they wanted to replicate the infamous orange scene from ch2, but without all the logic, lore and emotional impact behind it, just hoping players would feel emotions by association.

And finally, we come to my biggest complain about this chapter: the retcon about how the storm works. Because yes, it is a retcon. Why do I say that? Mainly based on ch6.

In ch6 we learn that Heinrich, in 1912, left Vienna to study at Berlin. There, he met the Manus and joined them, surviving that storm, and subsequent ones, until time returned to 1913 and he went back to Vienna, reuniting with his old friends and telling them about the storm.

Now, how is this relevant? Well, from Heinrich’s story we learned two things; 1) you can indeed see again someone who was once reversed by the storm, but only if time ever goes back to that era, and 2) The fact that his friends recognized him and he recognized his friends, and his friends’ existence was consistent even though the storm had once reversed them. You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?

At the end of ch8, Vertin says “the storm doesn’t kill ppl, at least not physically”. Okay Vertin, did you have a lobotomy between chapters? The storm has never killed ppl; it’s just the end of an era, remember? It reverses time! It’s in the freaking name! The scariest part about the storm isn’t the storm itself, but the storm syndrome, which is when most casualties seem to happen. Sure, the storm sucked for Vertin because she kept traversing eras and losing the friends she made in them, but those friends remained anchored in their own time (perhaps with the exception of ppl who had already crossed the storm at least once, like The Ring and Isabella, but I digress).

My point is, that I really don’t like where this retcon is headed, but I do hope they somehow fix it in the future, either by making it clear that not everyone who gets reversed is reincarnated and there’s very strict conditions that should be met (like having knowledge about the storm, for example), or this hypothesis is wrong and the storm isn’t actually making ppl reincarnate.

One reason I especially don’t like this new reincarnation thing is that… Mr. Duncan isn’t Mr. Karson. Let’s not lie to ourselves. He looks nothing like Mr. Karson (and I wish the game would stop gaslighting me), doesn’t act like Mr. Karson, doesn’t speak like Mr. Karson, and doesn’t even have the same nationality as him! The only things that are similar about them is that they’re both old war veterans who once had a dog and now have a soft spot for young ladies. And if this is the approach they’ll use to bring back characters in the future… thanks, but I’d rather they stayed reversed.

Think about it! Will they next say that Anjo is Schneider? They look similar enough (more similar than Duncan and Karson, that’s for sure!), both were antagonists that joined the manus for reasons beyond their control, both had a fight with Vertin in which they almost got killed, and both have a snake bracelet on their left arm. Surely that’s enough to say they’re one and the same, according to this logic!

My point is that using such simple similarities, they can literally invent any new character they want and then say “this is actually this other character, who was once reversed by the storm”, regardless of if they’re actually similar at all, and I don’t think that people who wanted them to bring back Schneider or Marian, or Mr. Karson, or 888, or literally anyone, wanted them to be brought back like this.

But that’s enough of me ranting lol. What do you think? Did you like this chapter? What are your main complains about it?

To be clear I’m not saying we should stop playing the game or anything like that; from what I’ve heard the next event is actually good, and I have faith Bluepoch will listen to the players and make sure ch9 is better than whatever ch8 was, but it’s precisely this why it is important for us, as players, to speak out when we don’t like something so that Bluepoch knows they can’t get away with such blatant drops in quality.

Now, if you somehow made it to the end, thanks for reading!

[pearblossomrain]

personal summary of what might be the most unserious gp i have ever seen aka sao paulo 2024:

(almost needed a whole separate post just for qualis and side note, this sounds a bit like commentary bc i was actually making commentary when watching for my friend)

tldr for qualis; more red flags than an all boys' school, some controversial safety car periods, hamilton out q1, red bulls+sainz out q2, crazy top 5 of norris, russell, tsunoda, ocon and lawson in That Exact Order.

• before the race even STARTED, sainz was starting from the pit lane, albon didn't start the race due to damage from quali, verstappen had a 5 place grid penalty. when you think things are already crazy enough, lance stroll spins out on the formation lap which calls for a second formation lap, and then a third formation lap and aborted start due to lots of confusion (multiple drivers were noted 💀)

(will cut here to save space T-T)

• lights out and away we go....and so does the lead apparently bc russell almost immediately grabbed first from norris?? and he held onto that lead like my grandma holds a grudge; for what seemed like aeons. 😭

• verstappen, hamilton, colapinto and gasly were leaping up the ranks like nobody's business, literally blinked and i missed multiple overtakes from them.

• speaking of verstappen, he goes all the way up from p17 to p6 in like less than 15 laps and there was a super nerve wracking train of tsunoda, ocon, leclerc and verstappen that honestly stressed the hell out of me to watch for all those consecutive laps (i left to get an ice cream and when i came back, even the gaps between had barely changed at all)

• ferrari suddenly decides to pit leclerc incredibly early which i still cannot tell if it was a good idea or not because it started raining heavily and soon everyone except a few of the leading pack went into the pit after a virtual safety car period bc hulkenberg spun out (more on him later trust me), which puts us with a seemingly temporary top 3 of OCON, VERSTAPPEN AND GASLY??? in that order too! 🤡

• first red flag because colapinto collided really heavily into the barriers (man i feel bad for him, this is as close to a home race as it gets for him) and i swear nobody is having a worse day than the williams garage.....my genuine thoughts and prayers to that blue unserious team

• AN ACTUAL BLACK FLAG?!!??? to hulkenberg because apparently when he spun out he had marshals push his car back on track which isn't allowed (but i have to say, unless he made the marshals do it when they didn't want to, it's also a bit on them)....williams racing might have a competitor for most depressed garage after this 😭

• penalties!! so many penalties!! bearman picked up a couple of penalties for collisions and so did piastri which they keep until the end and i'm quite sure there were a couple more but i really could NOT keep up oops. (edit: one more thing! i do feel a little bad for piastri bc he had to sort of give a bit of way for norris at the end when they were stacked tgt only for them to not move up positions at all and with the 10s penalty idk how this will end up being.)

• this red flag period was so unbelievably long (i think all in all it was about 30 min?) that i had time to watch them all go into the pits and get out of their cars, then leave and do some laundry, grab a snack and a drink. 😭 and when i returned, 16 drivers had just requested a restart which in turn led the fia to call for a rolling start

• they finally went back to racing, and so many things happened relatively quickly; norris went wide and russell went past norris to p4, bearman got into the barriers but returns to bring up the rear (NOOO MY SON) and sainz crashed rather badly into the barriers and that was ANOTHER safety car period good god! (they said this is his second time in the barriers which, absolutely Foul, but unfortunately not wrong 😭)

• verstappen (who was honestly having a great day so far from p17 to p2) TOOK A PRETTY BIG LEAD which. oh my god we hadn't seen this in like 100 days or something 😭 and norris goes down to p7?? not sure what happened there tbh i was not looking closely oops again.

• there was a crazy back-and-forth battle going in the midfield bc both vcarbs are in front of perez who, in the commentators' words, "are both fighting for his seat" 💀 and hamilton was also chasing perez (and eventually got the last point) so there was just a lot of scrabbling for points i guess?

• also somewhere in there, i didn't keep track because of so many things happening, alonso spun out and ended up at the back of the pack (i also feel bad for him bc he mentioned back pain and bouncing at the end so sorry grandpa) and yet he did not finish dead last? afterwards he was dead set on finishing the race "for the mechanics", in his own words, which i see as an absolute class act in my opinion. hate him or love him, this makes me have huge respect for him.

• ALPINE. alpine oh my god i (and them. and EVERYONE HONESTLY???) can't believe they held onto a double podium all the way to the end wow i think nobody is happier than that garage and team rn like whole house GLADDD 😭 (p.s. my friend, not sure if she'd like to be tagged, said that the french flag and dutch flag at the podium ceremony were "like y-axis and x-axis" which had me losing it)

• honestly the only thing i am rather sad about is tsunoda finishing p8 after starting p3 but if we are being honest, parts of this race were due to circumstances and perhaps a little bit of additional luck but at least he is in the points and goodbye unlucky streak!! plus it's double vcarb points!

[side notes because this is as long as an entire speech; i did the maths and norris would have to be p1 and verstappen p8 in every single grand prix (not counting the sprint) to win by 1 point and if the maths works out that they're both tied in points, verstappen would still win because he has more grand prix wins even if norris wins all remaining 3 gps]

in conclusion, for a race i predicted would finish at 1:30am my time (it started at 11:30pm here) and hopefully i would get more 5 hours of sleep before work, i will be left with just over 3 hours of sleep now and yet i have ZERO REGRETS BECAUSE HOLY FCK THAT WAS A ROLLERCOASTER. absolutely nothing can top this race for me for the entire season and maybe even last season!!

definitely probably missed quite a few things but this is what i can remember off the top of my head or what was most memorable to me and it is 3am here so pls cut me some slack 🙏

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading updates: august 2024

the good news is that I did a lot of reading this month, the bad news is that honestly? I think that my birthday month has had the biggest percentage of literary letdowns, duds, and outright bullshit than any other month of this year so far.

but at least there's plenty to talk about, so let's get going!

Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power (Devon Price, 2024) - uh oh gamers, we're starting on a doozy! I've enjoyed both of Price's previous books very much, but with Unlearning Shame I couldn't help but feel like I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I wasn't getting what I had signed on for. the issue, I think, could be corrected by an adjustment to the title, which seems to be promising a very broad tackling of the concept of shame and is therefore making some pretty big promises. in reality, the book is much more narrowly focused than that, interested primarily in the shame that arises in the activism-minded when they feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of awful things in the world and their perceived inability to do anything about it. fairly early on Price introduces an apparently relatable anecdote about himself and a friend having mutual breakdowns in a grocery store because they were both so paralyzed by the conundrum of trying to buy the most ethical groceries possible, and I realized this book was maybe not really for me or my particular experiences with shame. I think this book will be really helpful for a lot of people for sure, would love to pass it on to a lot of my freshmen, but overall it did not live up to the expectations I brought to the party.

A Separate Peace (John Knowles, 1959) - so I wanted to reread this because someone on here sent me an ask about, I don't know, my favorite required high school reading or whatever, and I said it was A Separate Peace but then I realized it's been over a decade since I read the book and I had to go see if it still actually held up. and god, does it EVER. this is such a brutal and heartbreaking novel, beginning in the last carefree summer that best friends and roommates Gene and Finny will experience before their final year at their boys' private school and their seemingly inevitable draft into WW2. although Gene is seethingly jealous of Finny's seemingly effortless charisma, popularity, confidence, and athletic prowess, the two boys are also inseparable - until a tragic injury changes the course of Finny's life forever. this book is a mess of unspoken pain, from the looming end of innocence on a global scale to the intimate ache of loving your best friend so, so much and having no healthy way to express it because you're a repressed little rich boy in the 1940s.

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea (Rita Chang-Eppig, 2023) - Chang-Eppig's debut novel follows the career of Chinese pirate Shek Yeung, also known as Zheng Yi Sao, immediately following the death of her husband, fearsome pirate Sheng Yi. you've probably seen a post or two about her floating around on this very hellsite, calling her a pirate queen and accompanied by this image:

Chang-Eppig isn't interested in portraying Shek Yeung as any kind of heroine or feminist icon; over and over again it's acknowledged that she's simply a woman who has survived massive hardships and will do whatever she needs to do to survive. manipulation? spying? extortion? torture? murder? you name it, she's done it, and she does not feel remorse. while the novel wasn't a knockout for me either in terms of plot or prose, it's nice to see an entry into the trend of "retelling" stories from history and mythology centered on women that isn't determined to justify every step a maligned woman ever made. Shek Yeung is what she is, and her story makes for a gritty, bloody adventure.

Victim (Andrew Boryga, 2024) - this book is pure sleazeball fun; if you've ever wondered what I consider a romp, this is it. Victim follows our manipulative king Javi Perez as he builds a writing career for himself by turning in one essay after another about racial discrimination that he never really experienced, inventing stories of hardship caused by racism and poverty from his college application essay to his school newspaper to the story that finally brings the whole lie crashing down when he stretches the truth too far. the novel is written like Javi's apology in the wake of getting #canceled, and while I do sometimes feel that this premise makes some of the writing seem a bit implausible (why would you admit that!!!) it's a fun setup for a scandal that would have been a bloodbath on the twitter of old. come get your mess!!!

Bad Girls (Camila Sosa Villada, trans. Kit Maude, 2022) - this is my first time reading Sosa Villada's work but OH BOY, do I need to seek out more. this is a skinty little novel following a dramatized account of the travesti (or transgender) women who live and sell sex in Córdoba, Argentina. the women build an unsteady but beautiful and magic-infused family under the protection of the ancient Auntie Encarna. the protagonist (who is named Camila Sosa Villada, no relation I'm sure) watches as her unconventional family grows, changes, and frays over time, struggling to find ways to stay afloat in a world that see them as disposable. Sosa Villada's turns of phrase are brilliant and searing, and she weaves fantastical elements so nimbly into her narrative that it's utterly believable to see women becoming animals and courting headless men in the streets of a modern city. strongly recommend for fans of Kai Cheng Thom's Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars.

Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism (Aileen Morteon-Robinson, 2000) - this book serves as a scathing literature review indicting Australia's white women anthropologists and feminist scholars for the ways in which they've dehumanized and discredited Aboriginal women, stripping them of the right to be authorities of their own experiences and barring them from a white-centered feminist movement. Moreton-Robinson's account is excellent, contrasting the wok of white women academics with the accounts of Aboriginal women to reveal exactly how massive the disparities in understanding are. as a USAmerican previously aware of Australia's colonial history but unfamiliar with the specifics, it was jarring to discover exactly how similar the mechanism of colonial violence are between my country and Australia, with countless genocidal parallels to be drawn. one particular highlight of the book comes via my purchase of a 20th anniversary edition, which includes a new post-script by Moreton-Robinson in which she dissects and responds to various criticisms of the book at its time of release, taking several critics to task for the belittling tone they used to describe her work and the tools white feminists use to absolve themselves of blame in the face of critique from women of color. fascinating and thorough articulation of Moreton-Robinson's point, and deservedly blistering. I love when academics call each other out by name.

The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance (Sabrina Strings, 2024) - so the thing about this book is that there are really good PARTS. Strings is still an excellent historical writer, and I found a lot to appreciate in, for instance, the segments on the history of Black American pimp culture and the analysis of Playboy and Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl. the more personal segments, where Strings contorts herself to fit her own failed relationships into the narrative she's building, are decidedly less consistent in their quality, with some feeling like they would have been better off staying between Strings and her therapist. there's a long and convoluted digression about Sex and the City, and a strange anecdote towards the end in which String recounts a phone call with a friend's college-aged son who, String believes, was masturbating during the call. a yucky experience, to be certain, but I'm not sure it justifies Strings filing a police report against the youth and his mother, who she accuses of having groomed her on the son's behalf. she also casually drops in the same chapter that she considers herself pansexual because she's attracted to trans men in addition to cis men? idk man!!! this book was so uneven that I found myself genuinely questioning whether Strings' first book, Fearing the Black Body, is actually as excellent as I remember it being. I'm pretty sure it is, but god it sucks to get shaken so hard that you have to wonder!

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures (Phoebe Gloeckner, 2002) - another book that I had to read for class, years ago! I read Diary of a Teenage Girl in one of my gender and women's studies classes in my undergrad, for a class with a title along the lines of Girlhood Stories in Fiction and Film. Gloeckner's novel (though heavily informed by her own life, she insists that it's a work of fiction) sees its young protagonist, Minnie, navigating a great deal of sex, alcohol, drugs in 1970s San Francisco. I started thinking about the book because I was listening to a trio of episodes of You're Wrong About in which Carmen Maria Machado guests to talk about the pervasive sham that is Go Ask Alice (great series, check it out) and I started thinking about Diary, which is so much less preachy and didactic and is, you know, actually drawn from a real teenage girl's diary, unlike Go Ask Alice, and lacking Alice's preachy didacticism. as a diary based on a real diary this book is largely lacking in any particular plot (the most consistent through line is Minnie's ongoing and tumultuous sexual relationship with her mother's 35 year old boyfriend), but if that's not a turn off then you'll find yourself rooting for Minnie to find her way all the way to the uncertain but ultimately optimistic conclusion.

One and Done (Frederick Smith, 2024) - okay, so. this is a romance novel that I picked up because I saw a review talking about how it's an incredibly realistic depiction of working at a university. now that's obviously an insane thing to look for in a romance novel, but I like romances, ESPECIALLY gay romances, and I work at a university, so I figured sure, I'll bite. spoiler alert: it's not great. I posted some examples of the prose here, and even if the two protagonists talked like actual human beings it wouldn't make up for the stale-ass plot or devastating lack of chemistry they have going for them. more like One and Glad to Be Done With This Book That Isn't Very Good, am I right, ladies?

Seduced (Virginia Henley, 1994) - guys, I'm gonna be so fucking real with you. this is the most batshit novel I've ever read, period, let alone the most batshit romance novel. this book was the winner of a poll I ran on patreon last month in which my wicked patreonites got to nominate romance novels of their choosing for my next reading project and voted amongst themselves to crown a winner, and against all odds and my own light attempts to sway the voters, Seduced won it all. this book has everything: a historical setting, a bold young lady disguising herself as her own brother, wildly unchecked orientalism, a murderous cousin, high society scandal, and some of the most torturous sex scenes I've ever encountered in my life. truly this write-up cannot do justice to what I have experienced; I've already promised by patreonites that I'll have to do a little youtube live in order to fully express the extent of my dissatisfaction.

and that was the month of August, babey!!!

[transfem-kirito-truther]

I know the blog is titled "transfem kirito truther" but I just had another thought adjacent to that: Did Yui have an actual, in-game avatar prior to Kirito and Asuna finding her, or was that little girl just her own image of herself made material?

(Basically, is Yui ALSO trans?)

you know, I don’t know? Yui’s primary function was to be a therapy bot basically. Help the players with low mental health and give them easily accessible help that they need. Given that, it would make sense that she’d have an avatar that brings comfort. But different things bring comfort to different people, and when we do meet Yui, she’d been stopped from executing her prime function and kinda broke the game to meet Kiri and Asuna. I think it would be entirely reasonable to say that she made an avatar for herself that reflected her own being. An AI that was never allowed to hone in its purpose so it made its own. That explains the child appearance, at least to me. She’s an underdeveloped AI that’s learning as she interacts with her caretakers after having been left in isolation for years.

I think a lot of SAO is very easy and honestly fascinating queer allegory when you look at it

[approximateknowledge]

the magus situation, or, "ak remembers log horizon exists and it exacerbates the brainrot"

(gonna be a long one)

so to the surprise of absolutely nobody i did in fact watch log horizon at one point in the past, and also tried reading the light novel but never ended up finishing it. my opinion on it is mostly "solid and had good potential, with some unfortunate quirks to how it's written". the anime is better than sao's, but the novel is worse

this isn't what this post is about

it's instead about a certain *spinoff manga*

the fuckign west wind brigade manga in all its janky beauty. it's a story that takes place in parallel with (and overlaps with) the main story while focusing on different parts of the world and a completely different cast of main characters. it tends to be somewhat more light-hearted than the main story (but not by a lot)

it's also technically a harem story, but in the same way UQ holder is, which is to say that soujirou seta has that touta konoe charm that makes me go "yeah i fully get it this guy is impossible to hate"; he's more the guild dog than the guild leader half the time (affectionate)

*anyway*

spoilers for the west wind brigade manga incoming

so the afformentioned soujirou seta (middle character on the manga cover) is in fact the very first person to die after the catastrophe, and in the process he proved that even after the world became real, *respawning was still a thing*

which suddenly made the prospect of pk'ing much less ethically daunting, leading to a massive explosion in guilds of bored disillusioned trapped people with nothing better to do starting to kill and loot en masse, as was already a massive plotpoint in log horizon proper. some are big guilds, some are smaller

and some are technically solo

which brings us, finally, to magus

*fucking magus* (affectionate?)

edgelord in a longcoat with the cringy speeches

but it's not exactly sincere is it? it's all forced, constantly like he's talking as much to himself as to his "audience"

like he really *wants* to believe what he's saying

"it's all a game anyway, i can do whatever i want! definitely! right? RIGHT?"

it is, in fact, a coping mechanism

because to admit it's real would mean it matters. would mean you're not actually hidden away anymore. no walls to hide behind. no mask

because it's all mask

it was the whole time

because it's easier that way

the persona and the longcoat an the fancy explanations for why it's totally correct and real, trust me! definitely not fucking desperate over here, no sirree!

it's the beater again. there's a beater in log horizon but you never meet them in the main story. because for this beater, the game doesn't end because it's over. but because they finally admit to themself it was never a game to begin with. which was of course the only way out, because log horizon doesn't have a win condition

if you can't "win", you need to stop playing

but that's not quite the whole story, is it?

because you know how it is with beaters

there's always a little footnote at the end

this funny little common thread that all examples ive found so far seem to share

yeah there's a massive very explicit gender angle to all of this because it's just part of the package at this point

and that is how magus' redemption arc also has her turning into a girl

it's frankly amazing, the thematic parallels write themselves, it's so delightfully on the nose!

this whole thing is in fact one giant transgender allegory that's barely an allegory at all

the "edgy longcoat-wearer with terrible coping mechanisms" to "cute akward goth girl" pipeline is real