Warning: this chapter has been ready for a bit, but the commissioner has been too busy to check it, so it's possible that I'll have to edit some stuff after he has the time to go over it with me. If you want to wait to read it until then, I'll perfectly understand. In any case, I hope you enjoy this one at least as much as you enjoyed the first one.
I am in good shape.
I am an athlete.
Yes, I am a nerd. A gigantic nerd. The kind of per...
2024-03-11 02:05:09 +0000 UTC
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Words are inadequate.
I can’t count how many times I’ve thought this line since I confronted Yui and Yukino in the room that I will always think of as ours. The many occasions in which it’s been proven true. The times that a touch, a look, or even a scent have meant…
Have meant much more than words ever did.
This is true in fiction, as well. There’s a reason why so many genres lean on the visual and auditory. Why visual novels will invest in swelling soundtracks, w...
2024-03-11 02:04:59 +0000 UTC
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Convenient breaks from reality.
No matter what story it is that you’re engaged in, no matter the medium of choice, the tone, the genre, or the tropes… willing suspension of disbelief is not a rigid concept.
Yes, it would make you roll your eyes and finally give up on a particular franchise if they added yet another hair color to the palette that the main character’s stylist has to work with—an unsung hero who definitely deserves a series of his own, one that would...
2024-03-06 05:57:05 +0000 UTC
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I have mentioned already (maybe at length) the party system, the party management system, the companion side quests, and a lot of things that game developers use to trick the player into caring for the sprites moving across the screen in ways they likely have never cared for a living, breathing, human being, if only because most classmates or family members are often saddled with people writing their dialogue who are even worse at the job than scriptwriters who believe answering a polite “N...
2024-03-03 09:07:56 +0000 UTC
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There are a lot of things that we love to see in fiction because we’re deprived of them in reality.
That’s what some of the most popular genres are predicated upon, after all: fulfilling a wish that is unlikely to ever be reached. Martial arts? Well, wouldn’t you love it if effort was guaranteed to pay off and there was no ceiling to human potential that couldn’t be shattered with enough persistence? Detective fiction? Please tell me all about how intelligence and wit can triump...
2024-02-26 02:41:18 +0000 UTC
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There’s a joke about lesbians that some of my friends have often laughed at: What does a lesbian bring to a second date?
A moving van.
Which, yeah, it gets the point across. I’ve seen it plenty of times with my college friends, the way they will attach to one another quick and hard enough that Amy may get some inspiration about what to do with all those limpet teeth she keeps collecting.
But, really, at this very moment, the joke just makes me ponder one thing a...
2024-02-22 03:13:48 +0000 UTC
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"She’s still a villain,” I tell Amy as we look at the girl sitting under the night sky at the top of Captain’s Hill, surrounded by three dogs frantically lapping at her face in a messy order that still, somehow, ends with an equitable share of slobbered cutis.
“Yeah. So?” My sister says, not quite arguing but inviting me to tell her something other than a fact with no conclusion attached.
We are resting against the trunk of a tall fir growing on the edge of the ...
2024-02-19 23:41:48 +0000 UTC
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Lacmere University – A Tale of Chivalry, Monstergirls, and Tuition
Chapter 1: Sabers at Dawn (or Afternoon, if That’s Too Inconvenient)
There’s a lot to like about fencing. It’s a good sport that relies on your brain as much as it does on your muscles. High-speed chess, a friend of mine who’s never played a game of chess in his life once called it.
There’s also… quite a bit to dislike.
Like, for instance, the protective e...
2024-02-15 21:29:55 +0000 UTC
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Sayaka – What Goes Around Comes Around
Waters rush. Waters roar.
And, through all the exhaustion, through all the bone-deep need to close my eyes and let the world turn to darkness…
I answer them.
A maelstrom sweeps across my bedroom, leaving my furniture untouched as it spirals around me, going faster and faster with every turn and revolution, getting closer until blue waters with white crests lap at my body, cutting into me with...
2024-02-13 02:50:19 +0000 UTC
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So, once again, and I can’t thank you enough, you managed to vote for me to get an actual break at some point—which is kind of bewildering, given my poor output since I started freaking out about finishing Wake-up Call.
Regarding that poor output? Good news, everyone!
I just finished the 9.6k words next chapter of Puella Monstrum, and I’ll post it as soon as the commissioner goes over it to make sure I didn’t make any embarrassing mistakes, like when I put an insufficient ...
2024-02-13 02:43:27 +0000 UTC
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Iroha
“I—he’s never—” Mister Hikigaya says, still looking over the sofa toward the bathroom that his son just stormed into.
He looks back at his wife, the two adults sharing bewildered looks. Shocked, lost looks.
He starts to rise.
“Don’t,” Komachi says.
And I’m so damn grateful I’m not the one who has to say it.
“Komachi, your brother just—he’s never left in the middle of a conversation,...
2024-02-10 21:16:53 +0000 UTC
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I started Wake-up Call on September 2020.
That’s also when I finished it.
No, this isn’t a metaphorical thing. No pseudo-Zen, mind-bending statement about the end containing the beginning and viceversa: this was a silly one-shot that I wrote with no intention at all of following up on it. It was quickly followed by a Dragonlance, Kitiara-focused, one-shot, of all things, thus proving once and for all just how good I am at the business side of being a writer. At that p...
2024-02-07 10:06:55 +0000 UTC
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If anybody ever asked you what the most iconic part of the cooking manga genre is, what would you answer? Would it be the creative twists on otherwise commonplace recipes? The struggle to keep a plot going that somehow revolves around cooking? The way it deals with a story that heavily relies on precisely the one sense that a visual medium is incapable of properly conveying?
Of course not: it would be the hallucinations.
Which, come to think of it, have a lot to do with all of the...
2024-02-05 06:12:06 +0000 UTC
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So… let’s start the month with a bang, shall we?
(As opposed to the kinda whimper the past few months have been.)
I think I’m finally recovering from the aftermath of writing Wake-up Call’s ending, and I’m cautiously optimistic about how to continue All Right! Fine! I’ll Take You! as well as about writing Wordsworth’s final arc without falling into the pitfalls that I usually fall into when writing the end to a long-term project—this one has been, after al...
2024-02-02 22:23:01 +0000 UTC
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So…
Uh…
I mean…
Cutscenes!
Yes, cutscenes! In JRPGs, where narrativity can often take priority over immersion, there’s… the… the cutscene.
You know, that thing.
It’s a whole thing, I’m told. Like, you… okay, you proceed along with the story, take the (lack of) dialogue choices needed to at least pretend that you’re playing an interactive medium, and then the studio decides that they would much rather be making movies than games and drop ...
2024-02-02 05:47:44 +0000 UTC
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Taylor
In some
2024-01-28 12:47:15 +0000 UTC
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Shizuka Hiratsuka Tries Not to Panic
“You were supposed to take care of him when I—you were supposed to take care of him,” Yumiko Hikigaya states after my latest jab.
‘A bit late for that, isn’t it?’ I just told her when she said she didn’t want her child to be hurt.
“Oh, I can guarantee she has done that,” Haruno says with a polite smile that maybe could fool somebody going through a brain aneurysm.
“Haruno
2024-01-20 20:21:41 +0000 UTC
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Do you know what’s the main difference between a hangover and being sleep-deprived?
The hangover goes away.
Lisa Wilbourn’s experience with lack of proper sleep—
I don’t want to hear that from you.
“Hng… Just give me a minute,” Amy says from the sink of the high-tech kitchenette set at the back of the Dragon vessel sailing south at speeds that I think have been barred by at least a couple of international treaties.
“Amy, it’s m...
2024-01-19 00:58:48 +0000 UTC
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There are, at times, joyful occasions that need to be properly celebrated. Once-in-a-century star-alignments the likes of which can stand shoulder to shoulder with a gacha game’s summertime special events.
That’s right: I’m talking about finally finding a subject I haven’t already ranted about!
Because, through the myriad tropes that could be used in shounen, eroge, JRPGs, light novels, and other things not suited for sensitive palates—I mean, audiences...
2024-01-15 13:40:17 +0000 UTC
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Hannah
What I’m about to say should be no surprise at all, given that I’m the lone sane member of a quartet consistent of overpowered Tinkers and a too-often frantic Mover:
“You’re all being ridiculous.”
It still needed to be said.
“You and Colin look absolutely adorable in matching outfits,” Minnie says, taking pictures with her phone of me and Colin wearing matching outfits.
That is, black tuxedos.
“That is no...
2024-01-12 01:54:23 +0000 UTC
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In this, our magnificent series on the ins and outs of the anime industry in specific and otakudom in general, we’ve already talked about anime parents. It’s not surprising at all, given both the depth and breadth of our lectures, but some points may have previously remained unaddressed.
While it is a staple of the genre that parents will remain suspiciously absent in a way that would make child protective services start looking for foster care homes, there are alternative ...
2024-01-08 04:58:26 +0000 UTC
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By the time we’re having breakfast on our kitchen counter, the lingering traces of burning cotton have already been taken care of by a range hood that was about ten times more expensive than what a regular household (that is, one where shirt-burning is not an endearing tradition) would require.
The breakfast is, as ever when it’s Tay’s turn, a culinary marvel the likes of which can temporarily distract me from—
“So, do you need any last-minute preparations—” she star...
2024-01-05 05:49:00 +0000 UTC
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First of all, I wish you all the best in the year to come. May it bring good fortune in each and every single one of your endeavors and relief in every struggle that you face. I hope you’ll become as happy as you ever wished.
Second? Love you all, guys.
I’ve made no secret of how many things went wrong through 2023, a year that I optimistically greeted with a post titled “2023 Is Here...
2024-01-02 02:21:38 +0000 UTC
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A stage surrounded by cameras and festooned wit
2023-12-29 00:26:36 +0000 UTC
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Wine and whisky.
We’ve spent many nights drinking our respective preferred spirits, and some good-natured teasing has come from it. I’ll sometimes point out that California reds have won international contests, and her adherence to vintages with a pretentious ‘Chateau’ emblazoned in gold on the label is more of an affectation than a matter of taste.
She…
She will just outright sneer any time I so much as glance at a Suntory brew, the objectively best whisky in the ...
2023-12-24 04:09:52 +0000 UTC
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“It was just a prank, bro,” I state with not even an ounce of irony.
Lisa Wilbourn’s adherence to the metric system and subsequent lack of available ounces—
Hush. Don’t want us to get branded as heretics.
“A prank,” the woman on the other side of the wide, crystal desk littered with papers and notebooks reflective of what Einstein would praise as a very definitely cluttered table, says with a barely repressed sigh that hints at…
…
At…...
2023-12-21 03:20:35 +0000 UTC
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“So. Alone at last,” I say with overdramatic levity, my left wrist bent and the tips of my fingers demurely brushing over the top of my chest, adopting the pose as soon as the door closes behind the pair of students who will be the death of me.
Let’s just say that Iroha’s enthusiastic greeting was… memorable.
And that she coped a feel. Or two. Or left my entire body tingling before I even thought to push the dangling human koala off me.
And then he had to ...
2023-12-18 04:49:45 +0000 UTC
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All right, cheekiness aside, seeing as this is a poll, the thing is that I’ve got a couple of things I want to accomplish before the year’s over. One of them is the Christmas Special (which, thankfully, already has some work put into it), but another would be my next original story and latest addition to the Seasonal Specials, a New Year’s-themed project.
I already got the premise, first scene, and main character, as well as a couple of funny vignettes, but it needs some ...
2023-12-16 19:02:50 +0000 UTC
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Dragon
“I don’t understand the issue?” the clueless man says as I glare at him sitting down on a wheeled stool by the side of the holographic prototyping table in the middle of his workshop.
A table that, even now, proudly displays in glowing blue lines the peak achievement of one of the greatest minds of our generation:
An over-engineered pair of goggles.
“You…” I try to come up with the right words without resorting to any kind o...
2023-12-15 05:55:14 +0000 UTC
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Hitomi’s Big (and Very Long) Day
My head is swimming.
Which, given that I have, throughout this day, gotten mindfucked, thoroughly fucked, lost my virginity, got my repressed Sapphic crush revealed, and been introduced to the existence of literal magic…
…
Right.
My head’s swimming.
“You don’t have to make a decision right at this very moment, Hitomi Shizuki,” the girl wearing a silver-stranded office...
2023-12-13 03:19:19 +0000 UTC
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