Fic Review: Bond Breaker
Look, you really need to understand what this obscure 2014 forum-posted multi-crossover self-insert fanfiction is all about. Trust me.
So here’s the deal. There’s this fanfic. I could describe it, but then I’d lose the opportunity to use this deliciously terrible summary from TVTropes.
Bond Breaker is a Self-Insert Fic from the Sufficient Velocity forums written by Shadenight123 that has the main character Shade be a coffee-obsessed lover of Angst and Despair. It frequently tries to break the fourth wall, and has gone through various stages of meta in it's chapters. Shade is tugged across the Multiverse via a mysterious chain attached to him, having traveled to many worlds, from Naruto to Neon Genesis Evangelion to Frozen due to it's pull.
To use a deliciously terrible idiom, there’s a lot to unpack here:
A Self-Insert Fic, or SI for short, is what happens when a writer uses their own identity as the main character of a work, almost always embedding them in existing properties. Dante’s Divine Comedy is probably one of the most famous Bible SIs.
In Bond Breaker’s case, Shade is based on the Italian author’s realself, but there are a couple layers of separation, some distorted details. For example, I’m certain the author isn’t suave enough to attract quite so many anime girls.
The Sufficient Velocity forums are a splinter of Spacebattles Forums. Don’t mix them up with Questionable Questing, another splinter, or The Sietch, a splinter of a splinter. You can feel the drama that pervades the fanfiction writing world just from this paragraph. Listen, this will finally be the one forum that allows uncensored writing and bans politics.
Angst and Despair were emotions discovered in the early 2000s by My Chemical Romance and Evanescence.
The fourth wall is the layer that separates the audience from the work. When a character leans on a fourth wall, they’re usually breaking the illusion, like an actor on a stage addressing the audience directly (through a literal but intangible fourth wall of the stage) and telling them they’re a character in a play. Meta, in this context, is a generalization of this deal.
Shadenight fetishizes coffee to an absurd degree. Think fanon Janeway from Star Trek.1
In this little tale, Shade is written into his own personal hell, dragged around by a chain into newer fictional universes. It’s like Kindom Hearts but non-consensual and not quite as terrible.
That gives you a better impression than perhaps should be warranted. This relatively simple conceit is instantly turned into a contorted mess by the liberal addition of metatextuality.
The Plot
Though the 110 chapters have no particular separation, I think we can split Bond Breaker into three acts, as the fictional worlds lose more and more relevance to the “real” story.
Act 1: Shade vs The Worlds
I opened my eyes. My natural routine, over the course of my years of life, has always been to wake up, go to the bathroom, head for the coffee pot -holy coffee- and then turn on my computer. I always did that. It's so deeply ingrained into my skull that the only thing that can prevent me from doing it is some sort of physical entity blocking my actions.
There were no physical entities blocking my path.
Then again, I wasn't even in my house to begin with.
And I didn't have legs.
Shade wakes up to find himself in the Naruto world, a legless spirit with a very limited room of interaction with the world. An ethereal chain ties him to the titular blonde kid.
Naruto is the only one who can see him. Through this first arc, Shade decides to screw with the setting’s canon and train the overpowered kid into a menace before he even leaves school. Our edgy protagonist’s role will be that of an advisor.
Initially cantankerous, Shade eventually warms up to the kid. Unfortunately, the moment they grow to trust each other, the chain starts clicking, and punishes him by dragging him onto the next world. That’s the Rule, as he finds out.
This sets the pattern we’ll be taught to expect. This is the Angst and Despair. There’s a secret third emotion, Meta (meta is an emotion, fucknuts).
I wasn't going to stay blind to it. The chance that it was me writing the story was extremely meta-thought, but it was a possibility that made sense. Well, if that was the case then it meant I was a mere figment of my imagination, and I had never been born to begin with, since I was merely 'the SI of the author'.
On the other hand, this was my reality. It was easy to merely think it away by claiming 'Oh well, I'm not real, let's go and do shit'. That was the way a spoiled two years old would go about doing stuff. This was real. I breathed, I thought, I was. 'Cogito, ergo sum'. It didn't matter if my birth came through author fiat, or if the world around me was built by a god that resembled me in all -except the power to alter reality, because I clearly couldn't.
Anyway, with this mindset and the previous heartbreak, Shade lands into the next universe, Evangelion.
It probably needs no introduction, but just in case, it’s a pretty grimdark world, a deconstruction2 of shonen anime, where the little boy character is actually traumatized by the constant adventures he's going through at the behest of his old man... wait no that's Rick and Morty. This is pretty similar though, and what concerns us is that Shade has to reach a new balance.
This new balance: if he wants to fix anything for Shinji, he has to do it without the kid trusting him, or he’ll be sent to a new universe without finishing his work. He’s going to be an aloof Kamina-like figure, if tied to Shinji by a literal chain, and slowly change his personality.
Throughout this arc and others, Shade philosophizes about his role in the world and in the story he’s convinced he’s in. His iPod gives him messages from the Author through lyrics. We get glimpses at yet another meta-layer between us and the character. It will get unnecessarily confusing if I don’t pull back the curtain and reveal all the layers now, so let me do that:
Real Life Shadenight123 is writing:
A fake Shade fanfiction writer (from now on let’s call him The Writer) who is writing layers three and four:
A group of interdimensional aliens who are aware of the second layer, and who are trying to find him. They think he’s God (so let’s call them the Godseekers), but they know he’s writing a story, so their only way to catch him in the act, so to speak, is by interfering with:
The written Shade, the titular bond breaker, who's based on The Writer, while he goes on his wish unfulfillment chain adventures in Fictionspace. At one point he writes fanfic while in the midst of it, but let’s not recurse even further.3
Layer 3 is constantly showing up in invisible text in the forum boards where we are reading Bond Breaker, hinting at future arcs but mostly just being a pain in the ass to the reading experience like they are being to this review right now.4
Eventually Shade reveals his restrictions to Shinji to stop him from trusting him further. The Author doesn’t like his rules being bypassed, so he childlishly adds a new law for future jumps, where he’ll be in excruciating pain whenever he bypasses the rules like that (surprisingly irrelevant, since in edgy fashion he’ll fight through the pain anyway), and knocks him into the next universe.
We arrive at Harry Potter. Shade finds himself acting increasingly edgy to his new companion, and he realizes something. Each fictional universe has a Law to it.
The Harry Potter world has black/white morality. Someone like Shade is easily pushed into cartoonishly evil just by not being perfectly Good.
The Evangelion world forces people into neverending philosophical discussions and monologues.
The Frozen world forces Disney tropes onto the characters, like musical numbers.
etc.
Our main character quickly realizes he’s traumatizing 11 year old Harry by being an edgy evil advisor, but it’s out of his hands. He’ll just force things and hope it works out. Remember only Harry can see him.
Cornelius [Wizarding World prime minister] was glad to help without even being told a reason for. "Well, Harry, can I call you Harry? Of course I can, well," he continued, "I'll give you a grand tour of Diagon Alley then! I'll warn the press and..."
"Stop him now," I said. "Tell him 'I'd like that, but not today sir. Maybe after I've got my school stuff without causing a commotion? Then I'd love to tour Diagon Alley with you."
"Uhm, sir," Harry said. "I'd really like that, but not today...I'd like to get my stuff for Hogwarts without too much ruckus..."
Cornelius grinned. "Ah, I see, then-"
"How about next week?" I said offhandedly.
"How about next week?" Harry parroted.
Shade hasn’t really thought things through. Even if he’s being a dick to Harry, the kid’s still better than living with his uncles, so when Harry inevitably learns to trust him, Shade is knocked to the next place.
We get some exposition that really helps sum things up as they stand.
Trying to help, getting trusted, and then betraying their trust and disappearing when they needed it the most. It didn't cut it that even if I did say I'd disappear any moment, it would only come in effect when it would still hurt them the most. And if I explained why I'd disappear, then the goalpost would suddenly move into 'Kill the Supporting Characters' mode. And if that too was revealed...then I didn't know, but frankly, I didn't want to know.
The problem with being ethereal was that any form of attack sent my way had to be psychological. I couldn't suffer physically, so the answer was that whoever was doing this was trying, in his own way, either to torture me through mind games or was merely screwing up the premises of the worlds I visited. What I missed however was a reason for it.
The key concepts I could work with was that infinite dimensions existed, the multiverse was a real thing, and my actions had some kind of result that the 'overlord' of the project clearly wanted to see. And I had been chosen for that reason, and that reason alone.
The next stop in the multiverse trip is Mass Effect. I’ve only played the first game and a bit of the second, and this jump takes to the start of that sequel (the first mission where you recruit Garrus), next to the female main character, who you can choose to play as.
This jump is particularly interesting because, as we discover, this universe’s Jane Shepard is not the canon Shepard, but one The Writer, and by extension Shade, wrote into being, in a previous fic of his. This means Shade knows Jane deeply, and can really fuck with her head. Since she’s the Renegade version of this character, the one that picks the most violent and edgy RPG options, she really really doesn’t like that. A lot of bickering and threats ensue.
You can see the pattern, though. Revealing he wrote her fucked up life ends up making it so a bond is formed, and Shade moves on… wait, no, we’re back to Naruto.
This jump introduces us to that, the fact that jumps are circular and, while new worlds will be added to the chain, it’s still a loop, not a single stop. Nothing interesting about this world in particular, but the next one is Legend of Zelda.
When Shade comes to next to Ganondorf, we also stop assuming this is a “main character thing”. The bond breaker will simply get tied to the most important fucked up character, that has the most to learn from him. Shade teaches Ganondorf how he can use his powers to make aqueducts and waterways to improve his country, instead of simply going to war. This jump is particularly nice, and it’s low on the angst. Feels like this is how things should go if this was a normal jumpchain5 story.
When he’s forced to go to war anyway, with the Hyrule attacking over the dams and waterways that are draining water from their kingdom, Shade wakes up in a weird place, instead of the next universe.
I opened my eyes to the darkness inside the room.
//That was a close call. Parameters cannot. He is awake.
"What was that?" I asked, my voice heavy.
//Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
This is our first real encounter with the Godseekers of the third layer. They vaguely (everything they do is vague) mention a corruption of the jumpchain system, which is made clear when Shade’s next jump to the Evangelion universe lasts just a few seconds.
By the time he lands next to Harry once again, he’s fed up. He makes Harry explain the whole lore of the universe to Dumbledore, who suffers a heart attack from the repeated shock. With Dumbledore gone, we will later find out that Harry also dies through butterflying. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
There’s nothing of interesting in the next Mass Effect jump. The Naruto one, though, stops being Naruto. Since we’ve established that he gets stuck to a “fucked up” character, and he had in fact fixed Naruto’s problems with his wholesome jumps, he’s haunting Hinata now.
They figure out a way to communicate anyway, even if Naruto can no longer see him. With the setting off the rails, and a feeling of existential ennui, Shade decides to experiment with the chain.
There was a brief rustling, and the chain quietly slithered its way on my other arm.
"Oh," I blinked. I lifted my left arm, clenched my fist, and repeated the motion and the desire.
The chain rustled briefly back to its original place.
"Oh."
I took a deep breaths.
"Powers. I've got reality altering powers," I acquiesced. "And I realize this now, of course, of all times."
I pushed a hand through my hair as I took a deep breath.
"But wait," I blinked. "If I alter the fundamental law of the Universe that 'Naruto can redeem anyone provided he punches them enough'," I paled. And inwardly, I swore never to change that fundamental law of this world. How could I decide which law to change anyway? Were there more than one? Was there even a way to understand which-was-which?
The universe laws I mentioned earlier? They can be changed. He also discovers his gray jacket reflects the “color” of the setting. When it’s gray the regular rules apply, but he can darken the jacket to make the logic more grimdark, and lighten it to make it more like “fanon”.6
Unfortunately, he keeps experimenting…
I made a loose noose, and floated near a tree, surrounding it with the change.
Then I altered the 'law'.
Brown.
I blearily opened my eyes in the darkness.
I had the mother of all headaches pounding at the side of my head, and I couldn't breathe, and everything felt different, and-
//You crashed the system. You crashed the system. Rules of nature aren't meant to bend like that.
Turns out Shade shouldn’t fuck up with the chain so much. The Naruto universe is gone. It’s left ambiguous if it’s just the connection or the universe itself that’s permanently dead, but we certainly don’t see it again.
This is kind of out of left field. I think The Real Writer didn’t know what to do with the Naruto jumps, so he decided to introduce a complication to add some random stakes into the mix. I still think it’s terrible writing, but I somehow decided to keep reading.
We couldn’t have a terribly flawed fic without a Love Interest, and Shade finds his in the Frozen universe, his next jump.
"Hey, look at me," I said, "Look at me and think that if you're afraid, you'll let the monsters win," I clenched my right fist. "You don't want to let the monsters win, do you?"
"N-no," Elsa shook her head. "I don't want that."
"Then," I gestured at the nearby window. "Let us slide, out of here, to a new and fantastic adventure! What we find, we won't know, until we're way into our venture! But if you hold your way, you will reach your goal! Let the fun rock on, the-"
Oh, I see, I see.
it took time for the Fundamental Law of Disney to catch on.
When it did, I found myself with a very pleasant baritone voice, singing a la Pavarotti.
He meets Elsa as a child, but he’s only here briefly and their relationship will solidify a bit more when they’re both adults. It’s not exactly one sided, but True Author Shadenight123 seems to cringe a lot at including romance, so nothing really happens from Shade’s side besides some strong implications. She’s still clearly a Designated Love Interest, as we’ll find at the very end in the harem univer— wait I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Next jump is Evangelion’s Asuka (that’s fixed Shinji?). Turns out he’s changed things too much for the main character, and he gets himself in a coma after attacking Gendo for being evil.
Shade, tired of continuously making things worse, makes the chain tying him to Asuka into a noose and tries to kill himself. This is the Angst we talk about so often…
It doesn’t kill him. It unkills him. Shade is now corporeal and legged again. People can see him! Asuka immediately punches him.
An inconsequential Harry Potter/Luna jump later, Jane MassEffect finally gets her hands on him, and tortures him for writing her such an awful backstory. Things are even edgier and more violent than usual, and one of the Godseekers, “Steve the Velocitist”7 directly contacts Shade and reveals that his coworkers have been altering the world to make it darker, as part of their ultimate goal.
I swallowed thickly. "W-Why would you...help me?"
//... . ... . Immortality has been achieved, so has eternal youth, matter to energy and energy to matter manipulation, creation of life, creation of realities, pan-dimensionality and Time-Travelling is a common thing, but the Question remains still unanswered, the Question that we seek an answer of.
"A-And what...would the Question be?"
//... . ... . What is, who is, when is, where is, how is, which is, is there, God? The only non-answered question we still have, the only unfathomable one, the one that would allow us to break, shatter and exterminate all doubt from our own conscience, the one unfaltering question we lack proof for and against, the one question countless billions ask themselves time after time and reach no consensus, no answer, no proof that goes beyond their wishful thinking of pro or against, and thus cannot be scientific, cannot be acceptable, cannot be contested.
God is, of course, the Layer 2 Shade Writer. I guess I could have saved the meta explanation for this part of the review, but whatever. Steve explains things a bit better than I did: they want to force Layer 2 Shade to write a Deus Ex Machina to save his main character, which will leave a metafictional ‘signal’ they can trace, prove their God exists.8
Anyway, Steve saves him and betrays his coworkers to make the reality less violent. The jump chain will continue for a bit longer and still record data, without the unnecessary edge to force The Writer’s hand. At least, for now.
Act 2: Shade vs God
We get a couple of chill jumps in the Zelda and Frozen worlds. At this point we start getting a narrative in invisible text, which you have to manually highlight in order to see. It’s all pretty vague, but apparently the Godseekers are having trouble staying in control.
This is kind of pointless. It’s technically foreshadowing, but so vague as to be useless and a waste of time.
For the second and third acts, I’m going to gloss over most of the in-universe fictional events, since I’d be here forever otherwise. The meta stuff is more interesting anyway, if more confusing.
For example, at the climax of the Frozen jump, he’s directly attacked by a Godseeker, one who has decided to literally lower himself to his level of meta. Shade figures out how to use his chain offensively, and kills him (the Disney law of hero power ups helping him here). The Godseeker “drops” a small ball, which will become relevant later.
We get a funny scene.
"Do I need a reason?" Elsa asked, eyebrow raised. "So, you think I need protection?"
I blinked. "When did I say that?"
Oh hell no, Disney, fuck you.
Disney, fuck, fuck you.
Like, really, a lot, fuck you.
"You saved the city," Elsa began.
"With Anna," I replied pointedly as I inwardly began to girlishly scream. TELEPORT. NOW. ACTIVATED. EMERGENCY. BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY. FUCKING GET ME OUT OF HERE NOW.
Elsa drew neared with a satisfied smirk. "Yes, and-"
SHE'S A DISNEY CARTOON. THIS IS GOING UNCOMFORTABLE PLACES. BRING. ME. OUT.
He’s indeed brought out, to the Sword Art Online universe. Using his newly found chain powers, he quickly beats the game the franchise is based on, and unintentionally fries the brain of the main character.
Out in the real world, and surprisingly not having moved on to his next “host” yet, we get our next curveball. The ball from the previous jump turns out to be a Godseeker seed, or something similar, and uses one of the SAO characters as an avatar. Shade gains a young anime girl companion that will accompany him through his trips in Fictionspace and provide some additional firepower he will soon lack.9
Seems that while things are going well in this layer of reality, one of the Godseekers has gone psycho and killed all but one of the rest. This corrupted Godseeker continues the plan to fuck Shade over so God shows up, by taking away his chain and jacket when he needs them the most. Shade now has no powers except his awful speaking skills. Meanwhile, the only survivor of the Level 3 rampage (the Woobie, dubbed by the forum because of their dumb speaking patterns) is trying to figure out how to help Shade.
God, this is such a mess to describe. It’s even less clear in the story, I’m explaining this with the benefit of foresight. Shortly after this, the corrupted alien finally manages to trace the author, and we get a countdown until he’ll reach Level 2.
Act 3: God vs Author
The third act begins. The fictional universe is becoming a mess, and I can confidently skip a few of the following jumps without losing much. Overall I’d say the Mass Effect jump gets the most screentime and importance, with a couple others getting minor improvements to the storylines. Jane and a “female” Geth (Megan), and Elsa and her sister Anna become the closest thing Shade has to friends through his adventures.
Shade goes to Star Wars and haunts Darth Vader, where he gets a permanent lightsaber thanks to the Woobie Godseeker, to Fate/Stay Night, where he instantly fucks up the setting with the aforementioned weapon10, to Zelda, where the timeline has advanced to Wind Waker times and has to put Ganondorf down, and finally reaches his fictional climax in Mass Effect.
The Godseeker kills Level 2 Shade, which we see narrated from his perspective as the current fictional writer. After this, we get a moment where Level 4 Shade reads his own story somehow and writes a Deus Ex Machina to save everyone, or maybe reaches up to Level 1.
Silence in the darkness, the emptiness of space, the wordless screams. No survivors.
All dead.
No.
The hands stopped on the keyboard, but further down more words were written down. Whether by will or not, the words would always be written down. 'The Neverending Story' heralded it as the first of the 'Meta' stories, as the protagonist stood within the attic of his school and read and heard himself being called by the princess of the book...but at the end of the day, wasn't he a character of a book too? And that, that beyond anything else, made me understand.
There was a Writer, and it wasn't any of those I had heard, I was hearing, or I'd never reach.
God's in his heaven.
He never left it to begin with.
Mirrors and smokes, misrepresentations, lies, illusions, but never the real one.
The Real One can't be reached by characters. The Real 'God' of the world can't be touched, because he's not on the same plane of existence, and that plane can never be reached. To try is to commit Hubris, to commit Hubris is to die and be struck down by the gods' will. That is what ancient Greece taught.
The silence stretched as silently, just as it had come, the words disappeared from the screen. No explosion.
No death.
No fuck-you.
After this, Shade faces the Godseeker in the WH40K universe, together with Anna,11 and seemingly loses to his metatextual power. The story shifts from first person narration to third, as he finally becomes his own person.
The Level 1 author (or I guess it'd have to be a new avatar, in Level 2) takes over and fucks the Godseeker up after all seems lost. This “fight” happens metatextually, similar to the previously quoted paragraph, with paragraphs being overwritten or erased, and lots of invisible text everywhere. Huge mess.
Epilogue
The jumpchain falls apart. Shade gets knocked to an Epilogue, a completely new universe… an original anime high school harem setting, with every character from the previous loops hamfisted into it.
We get Bond Breaker’s thesis in a conversation between the current author (whoever that is…) and the defeated Godseeker.12
DECIDE. THE. SHIPPING. END. THIS. STORY.
No. What are you afraid of?
END THIS STORY. CHOOSE THE SHIPPING.
The story's never been about shipping. It's always been about self-discovery, rising meta-levels, and much more. But it's never been about Shipping.
GIVE THEM A SHIP AND AN END, AND ALL WILL APPLAUD YOU.
A writers that writes for the benefit of others loses what he wishes to convey. Write for yourself first, for others last.13
We finally understand why the story is so shitty. Shadenight123 was unashamedly entertaining himself and we’re just going along with the ride. At least someone enjoyed it.
The High School universe is relatively entertaining, but just fluff for ten or so chapters. It’s pretty much disconnected from the rest of the story, until it ends14 happily and we get an Author’s Note that pulls the curtain back further.
The concept of Corruption is that of 'Hubris', of the Ancient Greek world, mixed with that tiny nagging voice in the back of the writers' heads that go 'Why don't you write a scene with PAIN! DEATH! GORE! SUFFERING!' or 'Give him the ultra-cool power-up! He's going to love it!' and so forth.
Thus, the natural enemy to that is to be Content. That is, to be happy with what you have.
Which I found out to be a natural mean to soothe my depression. Yep. I've been depressed for a hell of a time, and only just recently did I manage to get out of it.
All the contrivances, the artificial hardships Shade was going against? They were in itself corrupting the main villains. The only way to defeat them is to be happy with a rational story where the events follow naturally, I guess.
Oh yeah, and the Corrupted Godseeker was Steve all along,15 having been corrupted by his Deus Ex Machinations. Huh. That sure was a mystery that needed to be solved.
Final thoughts
Bond Breaker is worth reading. I know, you’re bringing your hands to your head and yelling WHYYYYY, especially after the stupid quotes, the “ironic” harem arc, and all the things I’ve complained about.
It’s unique, though.
You know how rare it is to find an author that writes something for himself, and yet is even borderline readable by an external audience? That’s the best kind of story if you’re tired of reading the same fantasy or sci-fi tropes over and over. Fuck Brandon Sanderson, this is the radical opposite of that, True Outsider Art.
Despite the fact we spend most of our time looking at the bottom layer, I think it’s cool to think about what is going through the first layer, our Italian writer trying to heal his depression by having his puppet go through fights with internet-forum-inspired meta-antagonists.
Perhaps I’m being too positive. The in-universe sections, where Shade goes around fixing people’s problems, are initially pretty poorly written (“fanfic style”) but become interesting in and of themselves when we’re deep in Act 2. That interest kind of dwindles whenever “corruption” and the Godseekers chip in. It just leads to things happening seemingly randomly and breaking the immersive flow of the reader.
It makes it hard to give a shit when we make it to the end party in Act 3 or the Dreamworks musical ending in the Epilogue.
So yeah, this is pretty damn flawed. If I were recommending it to anyone as a story, on the pure object level, I’d probably give this a 0/10. It’s pretty much unreadable unless you look underneath the underneath, to quote a Naruto character Shade didn’t write about. And even then, you’re looking at it like you’re reading an essay, outside the embarrassing but dangerously readable in-universe sections…
I’m going in loops. Pretty ironic.
Just give it a try and see if it’s your kind of thing. Wait until Shade reveals the truth to Jane, I think it’s the earliest part where you can see brilliance of some kind.
You can find Bond Breaker at Sufficient Velocity.
Oops, I don’t mention this again in the whole review. At one point he has to beg Asuka to make him some coffee, which he can drink by “dragging” the cup with the chain and making a spectral copy. I guess it’s just not that relevant to the actual plot.
People get really mad when you use deconstruction wrong, so I make sure to use it as often as possible without thinking about it.
Pardon the xkcd:
wow, meta!!!!1111
I didn’t want to saturate you, but what’s essentially an entire genre of fanfiction has cropped up with a similar gimmick. A Jumpchain character, usually a self insert, jumps through different fictional settings, gaining companions and abilities from each world. There’s also a points shop and a bunch of tacked on bullshit. Bond Breaker is like outsider art to that genre, so it’s not entirely relevant, which is why this is a footnote. Go back up!
In this context, lightening the jacket to make it more “fanon” means you get stupid fixfic-like events like manipulative Dumbledore getting fired by the school board, or a lot of shipping.
Named after a popular forum commenter, so this is really another meta layer I skipped. Velocitist = SufficientVelocity user.
There’s a funny unadressed joke here, that in fact Steve himself is taking part in the Deus Ex Machina they’re trying to find. Goes over their heads though, they’re one meta layer too deep to realize.
Shade refers to her as his personal “battle-loli”. Christ.
I don’t want to break the flow of this paragraph, but there’s a nice little segment where Fate’s universe Law turns out to be “present tense narration”, and Shade has to use his powers to force the story back to past tense.
In a stupid twist, Shade’s jacket did more than change the setting’s “color”, and was actually protecting the world from “jumpchain radiation” that he was constantly emitting. An entire jump next to Yui, and another one next to Anna was enough to make them eligible to tag along. It doesn’t make more sense in the story.
Something interesting here is that the Level 1 author is telling the Godseeker that by definition he’d never be able to find God. He’d just find a constant progression of Level 2 writers, since he’s stuck in the fictional layer no matter what. In order to merely interact, he has to put a copy of him that does the talking in the story.
Smart readers will notice Andrew Hussie, writer of Homestuck, CLEARLY read Bond Breaker in 2014.
There’s actually a very unfinished sequel, and it goes through MLP world so I dropped it like it was hot. I think this is a fully completed story and Shade only made a sequel because people begged for it anyway.
I think Yui might be a Steve clone too, it’s all so unclear. At one point she drops the Yui mask and admits she’s just playing a fictional character but is perfectly aware she’s a Godseeker. She still enjoys being Yui more though. Read whatever you want into this.