Reviews for January 2025

Yeah x10

Feb 01, 2025

Incredible month. I stepped out of my comfort zone and watched Die Hard on New Year’s to avoid the Reddit allegations. I also perused some anime yaoi on AO3, read someone’s self-insert dating Batman and played a Bejeweled mod. This somehow leaves me with one of the best hit rates this blog has ever seen.

While it’s not making it to this article, I’m working on a small UFO 50 macro-review, I’m on book 6/17 of my Dark Tower quest1, game 2/10 of Anthology of the Killer and volume 37/38 of Ranma ½. I also read ½2 of Questing Beast and hated it, but I suspect that’s a skill issue so I’m going to try rereading from the start just in case.3 Stay tuned for that.

★: Challengers, Speaking in Tongues, Dragonsweeper

*: Die Hard, We All Need a Hero, The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling, Sonic 3, The Pipes of Heaven, Forged Symbol, it’s about magic eyeball biology

Previously, on Record Crash:

Reviews for December 2024

Makin

Jan 1

Read full story

it's about magic eyeball biology*

This is like three thousand words long, an omake chapter to an existing story. It stands on its own, though.

Short story shorter, it’s an explanation of Naruto’s dumb eye transplant mechanics. If that sentence doesn’t click for you, don’t bother with this. If it does, you’ll find this really funny.

Die Hard*

I got into a bizarre conversation regarding this flick at some point, with someone claiming it was bad because it didn’t make any sense. The evidence: guns shoot more bullets than they can realistically contain. I’m only slightly paraphrasing.

This is very much not the kind of movie where that matters, and I don’t understand the mindset of someone who thinks Die Hard is even remotely trying to qualify as simulationist rational fiction. Sometimes movies are dumb and good, simultaneously. God knows I love The Matrix and it’s even worse than this film at that.4

I find Die Hard still holds up forty years later. It is just an 80s action movie, without any real themes that grab you, but it’s extremely well done down to the bullet count—uh, except that. Perfect execution of an average concept, and I was particularly surprised by the fun characters with unique personalities. Everyone gets good lines and memorable traits.

I wholeheartedly recommend it if that sounds up your alley. I do think someone who doesn’t like action will hate this, however.

Orbis Tertius

Someone shot their shot in the comments and also directly via Discord: read this Royal Road novel I like, they said. It’s so good, and if you like it you can read the author’s even longer next work,5 they claimed.

Well, if they had read this blog slightly more closely they’d know I spent my teens reading young adult fantasy fiction, and after ten thousand entries I’m just done with the cliches. Shit better get really original for me to care.

Orbis Tertius tries. It’s not bad, and I wouldn’t bat an eye if I saw it inside a bookstore. In the “YA Fantasy” section, that is. The prose is maybe better than the average there…

He looked like a shatter-prone person. She kept her distance, stepping along in her long, thin way, while he stumped after in his loping, staggering way. She moved like a spider, she found - her own self becoming easier to define when next to someone so diametrically opposed. Easier to know what she was when she knew what she was not. Trying to know one without the other was like trying to clap with one hand or to eat a whole roast side of beef with only one piece of cutlery - a fork, a knife, a spoon, a hacksaw, a nutcracker, a cork-borer.

But I’ve read a million “crafty street urchin who joins a group of important fantasy people” characters, and the school story-like plot didn’t interest me at all. I gave this around 25k words before dropping it, so you can’t say it didn’t get a chance to impress.

I still can’t come up with anything else to write in this review, the content was that uninteresting. I apparently hadn’t reached the “real” plot, though? I read up to the main character’s graduation, but… the synopsis is about what happens after that:

Carza vo Anka is a recently graduated anthropologist and linguist from the renowned Court of Ivory in the city of ALD IOM. She loves her home. She loves her typewriter, her books, her peace...

And now she's leaving it all behind. Because apparently she can't become an accredited scholar with her damn office unless she embarks on an expedition. A gas mask, some clippers for mutations, a pearl-handled pistol, enough currency...

And people complain about Umineko and Homestuck…

Puella Furia Dark Magica

This is probably the worst thing I’ve ever read cover to cover.

I didn’t know this when I started reading (it randomly came up in a discussion of Madoka fanfiction), but it turns out I have actually worked with the author of this fic on multiple online projects. I am actively, currently working with them, even.

I barely know them personally, though, and maybe that is why I will feel no shame whatsoever shitting on their magnum opus at length.

Puella Furia is impossible to easily describe. It’s about a lot of things. It’s about Australian magical girls—

"An' Harold Holt? He was eaten by a witch! The media says what it will but that's a fact!"

—about queer group homes and social justice—

"The key thing to understand is that the survival rate among non-straight girls is a lot higher for a few reasons. I think they'd be ranked around third or so in terms of "demographic most accepting of a malleable sense of identity", and somewhere in the top five for "demographics with the most optimised average telepathic communication". The reasons behind this, I'm still not one hundred percent on? I want to chalk it up to something to do with, you know, gay culture, but I can't say. I'm not gay myself, so that's really just conjecture."
"You're essentially correct," Kyubey interrupted from the rooftop without warning. "You can blame the former on experience with self-discovery and the latter on conventions of verbal communication in other cultures with heavy overlap. But you're ignoring one key factor."
"And that is?"
"By using them, we're not denting the human reproductive population."

—about the creation of stories—

Beyond the limits of the universe as all of the above understand it, untouched by the white lies called time and space, a brilliant deity draped in a flowing black cloak writes by the deep blue light of her soul gem. Her words are inert as she pens them, but their meaning is alive and dynamic, shifting into the shape of a cosmos. This cosmos, too, is filled with life where she wills it - or does it will her to write? Which one informs the other? - life which understands itself through the words she builds them from. She is the speaker-god, and her words and the universe are one and the same.
And she's mighty humble, too.
[…]
EDITOR: And come on, calling yourself "Speaker God"? Do you know how that makes you look? Not as cool as you think it does. Look. The point is you can't keep ignoring my every critique of your amateur writing-6
[…]
EDITOR: Your obsession with conspiracy and paranoia is uncomfortable. Your story can't seem to decide what genre it wants to be. Your jokes are unnecessary, and half of them aren't even funny.
NARRATOR: Aha! That means the other half are!

—about land acknowledgement—

Hope frowned. She wouldn't say this was "her country" as such - it was Dharug and Eora land, always had been.

—about the author rewriting every sentence a million times in an attempt to sound “witty” like Douglas Adams but ending up as forced as a Marvel script—

Unbeknownst to Bill, this was the second time a complete stranger had shouted this at his sole fan in the last twenty minutes, and the second time that stranger had been a magical girl. It was, perhaps, just as well that he didn't know, because learning this would have had no bearing on his life whatsoever and completely wasted his time.

—about politics, but about every politic, in a way that makes the author’s own impossible to grasp—

Margaret was unaware of the irony that came with that name drop alongside such a claim. Just short of two millennia prior, a Jewish carpenter living along the river Jordan grew upset at the realization that living under Roman rule was generally making people very apathetic and miserable, and decided to spend the next few years walking around with his friends and telling people how important he thought it was that they look for ways to stop being apathetic and miserable. This grew to the point where the Romans had him killed, and his opinions spent the next few thousand years being parroted by generations of rich and powerful Christian men whose wealth and power generally made people very apathetic and miserable. It could be said that a little perspective had hurt him very much indeed.
[…]
"Damn!" Marie grinned. "You're a cop? That's pretty cool."

—about the writer’s doomed aspirations to become a proper Literary Fiction Writer—7

What Marie didn't know, as she reached the top of the stairs, was that hip-hop was invented in New York City, 1973, by Clive "DJ Kool Herc" Campbell, who would use the instrumental breaks on two separate copies of the same funk record played back to back repeatedly to give the impression that they were being looped. This also happened to be the exact city and year in which Thomas Pynchon had written Gravity's Rainbow. If Marie could fathom the connection between these two events, her mind, constrained by the limitations of her physical neurology, would tear itself apart.

—about… a lot of boring shit that drags the plot to a halt—

Kyubey resumed his spiel. "It looks to be bigger than that. In 1972, an English medical equipment manufacturer called the Petts Group was established in Kowloon. Transporting materials from mainland China to there was, obviously, much cheaper than transporting it to Europe, after all. As of 1991, the Petts Group was a close partner of DL Parhelion, a Chinese government authority in international shipping which had, until 1987, been a corner-shop courier service run by one Mr. and Mrs. Liao, until the former inherited 600 000 Yuan following the mass murder of some distant relatives. The Liaos' involvement in those deaths was ruled out immediately, because those relatives lived halfway across the country, and at the time, neither had the means to see to something on that scale.

—and, somehow, about responses to the author’s inexplicably extreme misinterpretation of Fargo’s themes.8

In fact, the reason I had set PFDM in Sydney, NSW, is because I had previously read Fargo, a far more popular PMMM fic that never quite sat right with me for a handful of reasons, one of the less significant but still noteworthy of which being the weird sort of American exceptionalism to it. I see no reason as to why the fate of the world should be left in the hands of a sizeable collective of American midwesterners and essentially nobody else.

The plot is all over the place. It’s divided into three parts, which mostly feature main character Marie in different situations:

Marie’s best friend is murdered and they have to find out which magical girl did it. The murder happens around chapter 3, before we properly establish their friendship. The murder is solved around chapter 32, long after every “investigator” stopped caring. The solution is anticlimactic, the killer is forgiven, the murder isn’t mentioned again.
Marie finally becomes a magical girl and her wish unwittingly turns Kyubey into a human. We see human!Kyubey’s adventures for about 150k words as the girls faff about with their own drama, but here’s the kicker: we don’t know he’s human!Kyubey or even that he’s related to Marie’s wish until the very end. It just feels like constant, weird pointless manic Doctor Who-like interludes that break your immersion.
The meta-plot takes center stage. Apparently there’s a book that contains an important Name, and if you say it you achieve omnipotence. Everyone is trying to find and steal that book. The third part is unfinished, but I’ll uncharitably predict what it was going for: if you say the author’s name, you get to write the story.

I’ve mentioned how the second part features a lot of pointless interludes. Well, throughout EVERY arc we get constant asides featuring the layer above the magical girl story, with the “NARRATOR” and the “EDITOR” you’ve already seen. Apparently each of these meta “gods” is terrified of a time traveling “dragon” that is coming from beyond fanon to kill them all. They talk about this throughout the 281k words of the fic. They just talk about it. No one is ever killed.

There are also intermissions between parts, which are composed of an unrelated Madoka/Homura romance fic and seem to have no relation to the main plot, except Homura turns to the camera and says that she’s currently hiding inside a shitty fic for her safety:

Because the portion of me before you is going to dig out a new timeline, and hide it in a place nobody would think to look: twenty-one chapters deep into the most turgid, asinine, pretentious universe possible.

What’s more, none of the characters are likable,9 the narration is obnoxious, and every arc is constantly interrupted, both on the micro level with those little fourth wall lampshades, and on the macro with the interludes and intermissions. There’s very little action, and when there is, quippy dialogue quickly takes over. The reader’s attention cannot settle. Even uninterrupted, one is punished for engaging, as individual arcs always end anticlimactically.

Essentially, this fanfic hits every failure mode it could possibly hit. The only value I could extract out of it10 is the collection of out-of-context quotes, entertainment for the review you’re currently reading. Even the quote-factory aspect falls by the wayside during the third arc, and I could only stick with the story out of completionism. I regretted it.

The author is aware of most of this, as I’ve quoted, but they also, somehow, still ask this question at the very end:

There’s actually one pretty frequently-arising question I’ve been getting a lot throughout writing this, which is “how is PFDM not more popular???” or other things to that effect. The truth is I don’t know, but the fact that I have virtually no public online presence is probably a solid factor. […] If you want PFDM to hit a wider readership, is there something I can be doing to make that happen?

I don’t want to be mean, but… you can start over and make it good this time.

Forged Symbol*

I saw someone, in the wild, mention they really got into writing after their first Celestial Forge story. I just had to ask which story it was, and I got this title handed to me, as well as their next fic I’ll get to eventually.

It’s great, for a Celestial Forge entry. I know, I know, that sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise, but I enjoyed it. It was supposed to be a lazy stations-of-canon My Hero Academia story, but the Forge kept giving Izuku the worst possible rolls of all time, which is always the best outcome for a systematic fic. It forced the writer to adapt.

Izuku was so weak by the point he was supposed to get into the superhero class, with a bunch of utility powers including a library of magic weapons with no fabricator to use it with…11 that he didn’t make it. He instead gets stuck in the Support class, giving us a lot of original character interaction and conflict. The writer seems to have a natural talent for pacing, too, the fic’s a real page turner.

I would say you probably still need to know a bit about MHA before reading this, and it doesn’t hit the highs of stories I truly love,12 but I wish everything I read was at least as decent as this, and it deserves extra points for salvaging such a lame premise weighed down by a RNG system.

We All Need a Hero*

It feels like fic and the previous one could swap titles: it’s about Death Note. High concept: what if Light’s little sister was the one who got the notebook that allows you to kill people?

Well, she probably would get caught instantly, so, while this isn’t crack, it’s also not a straight take on the premise. The writer tries to preserve her personality but definitely made her just intelligent enough to stand a chance.

She uses lighter touches, and tries to rely more on other people, which are massive butterflies that turn the story unrecognizable pretty fast. The gambits aren’t as complex and clever as Death Note’s, but they are still more than good enough to hit the spot.

All throughout, there is good character work, with our protagonist practicing some advanced Taylor Hebert-tier denial and compartmentalization and refusing to accept she’s doing anything wrong, especially that she’s enjoying it.

Let’s hit the brakes with the praise: there are some low points, mainly an “inevitable” relationship with Misa, who is 19 to our main character’s 14. This completely caught me off guard since the fic is normal otherwise. This particular age gap is objectively fucked up and, though the story acknowledges that a couple times, the author still wrote it.

“Better to keep the others out of this, I guess,” she muttered, with a quick glance towards the door. “It’s just…you and Misa. You, you know she’s 19, right? And you’re still 14, so-”
“I turn 15 in a week, you know,” Sayu reminded her, the night’s earlier irritation resurfacing. Had Sakura really lost her lunch just from watching her and Misa make out? “That’s hardly -”
“That still makes her an adult, and you’re barely out of middle school!” Sakura retorted, her face contorted in open disgust. “Look, maybe you’ve gotten used to Misa looking at you like that, but trust me: she wants you bad. When Tsuru brought it up I thought this was just…just a silly fling, or a really close friendship she was blowing out of proportion. But it’s more than that, and I don’t want to see her taking advantage of you.”
Sayu felt her stomach lurch as she struggled to figure out the best response. What she and Misa had was far more complex - and, she dared say, deeper - than an idol getting together with a younger fan. But she couldn’t say that, couldn’t admit their love was something sealed in blood - the blood of Misa’s parents and that of their killer. And without that context, the whole thing apparently made Misa look like some sort of predator.

Look like a predator, riiight.

Unfortunately for my chances of running for office, I also didn’t care enough to drop the fic. In fact, I’d say it’s overall pretty good. I still completely understand if you don’t want to read it.

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling*

Ted Chiang has kind of become a clown lately, a “controlled opposition” type guy paid to write ops upon ops about AI simultaneously being a dud and the worst thing ever, despite (or maybe because of) his credentials as a science fiction writer.

However, his fiction is usually pretty good. I know at least Exhalation (do not read the premise before the story) was a breath of fresh air for the robot fiction genre.13

This one is a lot like the Black Mirror episode about a device that allows you to replay memories. I remember that one focusing more on relationship drama and detachment from real life, which is cool but slightly lame compared to what this novel does.

The story is interleaved, with half the chapters telling a tale about a missionary introducing written language to a Nigerian tribe; and the other half introducing the tool Remem to a near-future society. It’s an approach that lends itself to cool parallels and elevates this over other “OMG new sci-fi device” short stories.

I don’t want to spoil too much, so I’ll leave it there. It’s a nice, short and sweet read.

BLUEJEWELED

It’s a Bejeweled shitpost that will take you ten minutes to play. As you’ll see if you click the link, it’s initially funny, but quickly overstays its welcome and lacks a proper ending, unlike this review.

Ruling by the Book

A Naruto self-insert, with a twist. Instead of following a ninja, this is about the son of a daimyo, a prince who tries to stop the upcoming world war from affecting the extremely weak Land of Flowers, which has no shinobi.

This sounds interesting and unique, but uh… he doesn’t really do any cool politicizing. He just has a magic book that allows him to sacrifice stuff to get stronger or summon anime characters and items. He relies on one-to-one trickery and any powerful ninja could kick his ass by the end of it.

Despite the dumb execution and mediocre writing, this was still fairly entertaining popcorn, though not enough to really recommend. Just a filler arc for my reader life.

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 + 2 + 3*

I was intrigued by that one clip of two Dr. Robotniks dancing in a room filled with lasers.

First of all, the scene lived up to my expectations, it’s only better in context.

Second, the movies themselves. It’s a weird franchise, so I have to mini-review them individually:

Sonic 1 is basically a road trip movie where a bond is created between a father and his adopted alien son. It’s so, so generic that it becomes almost meta-commentary about all other family movies. Sonic has been stalking humankind for a long time, and he constantly makes pop culture references, far more in this film than the others. All the stock 80s/90s family film scenes are here, even a biker bar brawl. It wasn’t annoyingly bad, and there are some funny scenes, but it’s empty calories.
Sonic 2 is the worst of the mix. I’m not a Sonic fan, and those who are enjoyed this one more, because it’s less about family and more about the video game franchise.14 Robotnik now has his classic mustache and goggles, Tails and Knuckles show up, etcetera. However, it’s not only still generic but a different, less nostalgic brand of generic: a giant sky laser with macguffin mystery hunts. It feels more cynical, it even has a pointless side plotline taking place at a Four Seasons resort like all those Adam Sandler movies. It’s still not awful, for something I’ll address later.
Sonic 3 is by far the best. A bigenerational saga that takes itself more seriously on the plot front, and simultaneously less seriously on the Robotnik front. What should be a tonal clash becomes synergy and I was pretty much fully locked in with both comedy and drama. It’s not a masterpiece, not even “actually good” (though I think video game fans consider it a great adaptation), but this was fun, the first movie I’ve watched in forever where I actually wish it went on for longer.15

All three are carried by Jim Carrey, who plays 1.3̅ Robotniks on average. Not only is he an excellent actor to begin with, but he keeps getting better at the role over time. Even his sidekick is perfectly designed (well, the exact dynamic actually organically emerged during production) to give him something to play off of.

You could remove Carrey from the films, and you wouldn’t get three bad movies, you’d get one, because there’s no way anyone would have ever greenlit more.

A single aspect saving the movies leaves me in a weird spot, and this is a very borderline rec, only slightly less borderline for Sonic 3. Do feel free to watch scene compilations on Youtube.

Jim Carrey is in his fucking sixties.

Challengers★

I watched this way too late, it automatically became one of my most favorite movies ever, then a week later the Oscar nominations got announced and it got zero. Many such cases.

It’s a weird mix of things. Of course it’s a sports film about tennis, but it’s inextricably connected to a romantic triangle. We start in medias res, and it keeps getting in medias reser, with flashbacks within flashbacks: why are we seeing a random match of a minor tournament instead of the Roland-Garros or something? Why do these two guys hate each other when they were best friends before? What are these signs, these meaningful looks?

Well, this film doesn’t think the audience is stupid. In fact, at several points it plays with your expectations, and even if you know what’s going to happen, it teases you multiple times before executing it, raising and raising the tension. Just a tour de force of pacing and expositionless knowledge transfer. Acting is great, music is great as you can see above, even the cinematography and editing—every single tennis set is filmed differently so that you’re never bored, and this movie isn’t short at all.

I got nothing else to say, nothing to whine about for once. Go watch this. Despite the Oscar snub,16 at least we can give the creators17 some attention.

Stimulation Clicker

I know what this game is going for, a parody of clicker games that refuses to let itself merely play in the background. It’s going to engage you in obnoxious ways so that you beat it as fast as possible to get rid of it.

I think it’s a great art piece, and if you want to show it to lawmakers to stop loot boxes and other predatory practices, it might actually work. On the other hand, I found this a pain in the ass to actually experience, so I can’t really recommend it to a random person like yourself.

One Compile Man

On paper, I should have loved a least 50% of this. It’s a short re-interpretation of One Punch Man, except the hero can code anything in one go instead of beating villains with one punch. I’m a programmer and it’s about programming.

There’s really not that much more to it. Saitama’s big shot boss has to survive an interview with one of the most famous programmers of all time, despite knowing nothing about computers (Saitama always did everything for him). There’s also a big hacking incident at one point. Both are resolved with a whimper instead of a bang, which is expected given the crossover, but still.

Being fair, I only watched a couple OPM episodes, it never grabbed me (nor did the creator’s Mob Psycho 100). So I was never the target audience to begin with, and I’m possibly missing a lot of inside jokes.

Being unfair, the same situation applies to Speaking in Tongues below and I loved that, so maybe it’s just mid fr fr no cap.

Dragonsweeper★

This is a free browser puzzle game you’ll be done with in like an hour tops. Or at least you’ll beat it in that timespan, but you’ll probably come back.18

It’s a twist on Minesweeper, yes that one game. How the fuck does it get an absolute recommendation from me, you ask?

Designing a puzzle game is pretty hard.
Designing a game about rule discovery19 which is still a good puzzle game beyond that element is nearly impossible.

The Witness does so excellently, albeit pretentiously. Antichamber does so clumsily. Baba is You is amazing for a while, then becomes way too ambitious and ends up becoming a series of elaborate Sokoban levels with meta lipstick on.

Dragonsweeper is as short as a regular Minesweeper game, sure, and the process of mastery won’t take long either (though you’re thrown into the deep end with only the information in the screenshot above). But that’s about the only flaw I can think of. It’s like a perfectly planned heist, in and out before you realize, and your time is suddenly gone, leaving only fun behind.

The soundtrack also kicks unreasonable amounts of ass for a puzzle game???

A Viper in the Hole

I’m starting to think of “journey fics” as the Pokemon equivalent to Worm’s alt-power ones, except at least Worm has breadth and depth of characterization in every corner for writers to use. Pokemon has jack shit, as this below-average-written, uninterestingly-plotted, unlikable-protagonisted story shows.

Have a snippet, which you’re encouraged to skim:

The ensuing discussion with Spencer had been particularly heated, as they'd disagreed quite strongly on who Ran's two additions should be.

Ran had initially expected Spencer to sulk when he'd announced his intent to go for two new team members over the purchase of expensive training equipment. But Spencer hadn't even blinked, merely expressing his personal disagreement before immediately pivoting towards suggesting Slowpoke and Poliwag as the best possible options for Ran's team. The swiftness with which he'd moved on had caught Ran flat footed at first, rendering him mute long enough for Spencer to start extolling the virtues of the suggested water-type pair.

He'd argued that between Hypnosis and Yawn, they'd be the perfect additions for the initial stages of their shared journey. Additionally, with both being water-types, they'd give Ran a leg up with Gym Leader Walter, perhaps to the point that the old man might offer some training or some other form of support. It was a tempting proposition, as the backing of the Gym Leader, even if not in the form of a sponsorship, held a lot of weight. But after a moment's hesitation, Ran had held firm in his decision.

He'd firmly reminded Spencer of Ekans' poison typing, pointing out the lacking synergy between his starter and the pair of Slowpoke and Poliwag. It'd stopped Spencer's enthusiastic planning for a while, as the conversation had derailed into the merits of specializing in a type compared to building a generalist team.

Ran was firmly convinced that specializing in a single type was the better option. It was the more challenging path by far, with each type presenting distinctive weaknesses to any aspiring specialist, but for those that managed it, the reward was great. After all, it was a commonly accepted fact that a type-specialists' pokémon could eventually reach a higher skill ceiling, than those of a generalist.

Spencer disagreed firmly, stressing the benefits of a generalist approach: the easier availability of team members, the option of having a type advantage against any challenger, the lack of any opponent that could 'hard counter' your team, the speed boost offered by a dedicated 'mobility' pokémon and finally the ability to tailor build your team for the first few gyms on your journey. It was the more common path amongst rookies with good reason, as the odds of success were substantially better for those just starting out.

Neither of them disputed the other's arguments, but the value they ascribed to each argument clearly differed. Spencer strongly urged Ran to go for a generalist team, to ensure their first months would be a success, but Ran for his part was firm in his decision. When his friend finally realized that he wouldn't be swayed from specializing in a single type, Spencer returned the conversation to its earlier topic.

I’m not cherrypicking, most discussions are narrated like this. Why is this guy writing council meeting minutes???? I couldn’t stand it, and dropped it like it was on fire.

Fuck The Hero with a Thousand Faces, at this point someone needs to write The Trainer with a Thousand Teams and Three Medals Max.

The Pipes of Heaven*

A newish short story20 by Zero HP Lovecraft, who previously wrote The Gig Economy and God-Shaped Hole, one of my favorite stories. He may be a hyper-racist-misogynist-neomonarchist, but I must say he still steams a good ham.

Like most of his work, it’s near-future sci-fi horror, this time about post truth and its potential weaponization. Like all horror, I’d be ruining the effect for you if I went into more detail, so just trust me when I say it’s good. I do wish it was a full novel instead of a short story, as the idea had plenty of meat in it still…

Speaking in Tongues★

I know my track record is not so good when it comes to recommendations. You people write comment upon comment and I’m like “nah this looks bad”. Or worse, I read it, hate it, and then you’re forced to sit through a scathing review of your favorite novel like the Orbis Tertius guy. But sometimes it works out for everyone!

Speaking in Tongues is part 121 of a very long saga based on the anime Legend of the Galactic Heroes, which I watched22 partially in preparation for this. It was recommended six months ago as “a million word long gay milSF anime fanfic”. By the author, not even a superfan. That was a risky maneuver, as some of my reviews end up as the reviewee’s top result on Google, they’re that obscure.

As you can see from the star above, I loved this one, somehow. Everything was stacked up against this outcome, with multiple red flags:

Again, only recommended by the author.
About a work I didn’t like but the author loves.
A gay romantic reinterpretation of very straight media.23
A gimmicky role reversal (i.e. the villain and the hero switch roles in some way).24

Even the artistic choices made here worried me, at first.

The overall saga is about Yang Wen-li and Reinhard von Lohengramm (eternal military rivals and the Heroes in Legend of the Galactic Heroes) eventually ending up in each other’s place. Say Churchill gets exiled to Germany and works as a messenger during WW1, while Hitler becomes a member of the British Parliament thanks to extremely confused voters. That’s a very loose analogy.

The plot of Speaking in Tongues itself concerns only Yang and is nothing special. I complained about “school stories” before, and at least this installment of the saga is almost entirely about a guy sneaking his way into the Enemy’s military school and dealing with personal and interpersonal dramas there.25 But if anything that just makes my engagement more impressive.

There’s just something about the quality of the execution that is hard to pin down. I think the author simply does all the little things perfectly—time compression, naturally delivered exposition, heavily layered dialogue, stakes, scene variety…26

A lot of what drives authors to fanfiction is wish fulfillment, and I think it’s easy to fall to every possible authorial excess, something that works for you and only you. This one though really respected my time, and told a full story with plenty of twists and turns in only 70k words. While I know from a couple comments that I’m missing a bit of context, I would also say knowledge of the original work isn’t mandatory, at least not yet.

I’m not picking up the next entry for a while because I want to avoid megaword burnout, but it’s inevitable.

Karen from HR

And we jump from a pseudo-romantic fic into an actual romance novel about Batman falling in love with a frumpy office worker.

I’m serious. This was recommended because of its crack-fic premise:

What if I, a grown woman, wrote a fic about the terrible Batman OC I came up with as a depressed middle schooler?

And the inherent and well written comedy in how her horrible shut-in, self-toxic lifestyle clashes with Bruce’s perfectionism, at least throughout the first half.

"It's hard to feel sleepy after drinking a ton of water," she said. "It helps with the headaches." She took a gummy multivitamin. "They're normal headaches. Not, like. Bullet-related headaches." She took a gummy vitamin that claimed it would help her get energized. "I get dehydrated really easily." She took a gummy vitamin for her hair.
"Those are basically candy," Bruce observed.
"Yeah," she said, "but I can't take regular vitamins. I already told you about the gag reflex."
"You get most of those through a normal diet," he said. "At best they make your urine expensive."
She did not mention the fridge full of cheese. "Which means the fact that there's probably not even anything in these is fine," she said. "I'm only taking them for the placebo effect."
"That's not how the placebo effect works."
"They set the tone for the day by creating a healthy vibe."
"That's. Okay." He gave up instead of arguing the point, which she considered ideal.

It gets through roughly 30k words without the premise getting stale, then sadly devolves into silliness. Yes, I can buy Batman falling in love with a weird anime fan, because Batman is insane. Bringing John Constantine into the mix and constantly talking about drugs and sex and polycules, with occasional author-trauma-dumping mixed in… I didn’t sign up for that. It becomes less a story and more longform in-group shitposting.

I still finished it, it’s fairly short and was completed a couple days before I caught up, but I probably should have quit while I was ahead, and so should you. This blog’s audience isn’t likely to enjoy the whole thing.

This is the last monthly review post I’ll ever write, at least until the one next month. Make sure to recommend excellent media below and I’ll make sure to at least check it out.