Reviews for September 2023
Y2K webcomics, web serial continuations, Urkel and the universal inevitable returns.
Another slow month, due to my first week being filled with Almost Nowhere,1 and a couple other weeks occupied with nerd shit.2 I did finish Seasons 2, 3 and 4 of LOST, and that was good, continues to confirm the net-wide belief that Kate is one of the worst characters in fiction. I might do a full review of the show, but most likely it’ll just be a mini-review in the November article or something.
2024 update: I’m retroactively adding the modern ★/* highlight system to the top of each old monthly review post, as it was a well received feature.
★: N/A
*: Patriarch, Pink Fang
Previously on Record Crash:
Pink Fang
The new hotness in Naruto fanfiction, directly recommended to me. Sakura, who is often described as the shittiest, most unlikeable main cast member in the anime, turns out to be a child prodigy with a bizarre approach to casting ninja spells, and she’s found by Kakashi as a nine year old or so.
Kakashi is still getting over the death of his previous team (and yes, they all died, this is partially an AU with the dumbest elements of canon “fixed”), and Sakura is still getting over the fact no one likes her. There’s a found family element there for sure, that keeps the story from devolving into powerwank.
There is still some powerwank, though. Sakura can cast spells with the wrong signs, she can reconstruct her chakra system, and a bunch of other weird shit. She’s not exactly overpowered in that she casts big flashy jutsus, she just does her own thing that nobody expects. Her training scenes are always fun.
Unfortunately, the character drama, the best part of the fic by far, falls by the wayside the moment she passes her Chuunin exam. Kakashi becomes a background character, and the story goes full-on Cerebus Syndrome.
Angst, constant defeats, escalation, bizarre canon retcons to make the story edgier, all take over the story. It’s stranger than I can explain, the story was basically a family drama with light comedy elements until then. It’s the rare example of a story I liked for a long time but that I had to reluctantly drop before I was even halfway through. The story was so desperate to throw curveballs in Sakura’s way that it makes her pick up the idiot one and enter Naruto’s seal without supervision… out of curiosity.
Another reader gave me the heads up that it gets even worse later. I will recommend this to anyone with at least background Naruto knowledge, but drop it when I said, don’t bother going ahead if you’re not a fan of constant edge.
Unicorn Jelly
A very old webcomic. I was introduced to it by Ross’s Game Dungeon’s review of Boppin’, a very weird video game by the same creator.
I have to say, I recommend the video game reviewer vastly more than this comic. The artstyle is very charming, gotta love alias and dithering, but the plot is just as aimless as you can expect from the © 2000 at the bottom.
Allegedly, it’s really smart and there are some poignant moral questions asked near the end, or whenever it gets going. I tried sitting through at least fifty strips of bad slapstick and I seemed to get nowhere. Maybe some people can force themselves through a story as long as it has good art, but not me. It’s like caring what color the spoon you’re using to drink soup is.
So maybe give it a try if you are a more normal type of person, and let me know if I stopped right before it got good or something.
Enchanting Melodies
Sometimes I read something like Almost Nowhere and Pink Fang in a row, very long, involved fics, and I just feel like reading some trash as a palate cleanser. I went to Spacebattles, looked for short fics for low-investment franchises, and made it to this Harry Potter self-insert.
The gimmick in this one (being a self-insert with full knowledge of the setting isn’t enough) is that he can hear magic, so he can learn spells and figure them out really fast, hence the title. Classic OP setup. He also ends up joining Slytherin, and Neville is the real Boy-Who-Lived. Classic subvertive-yet-lazy writer setup.
The character writing is bad, besides some interesting drama with Hermione because of the Slytherin aspect. I hesitate to even call that good, actually. Something that can immediately tell you how bad this fic is is that the writer claims to focus on worldbuilding, but all the comments say that he’s just ripping off the Fate series.
Please, don’t bother.
Life is But a Game
Okay, that last HP fic was trash. But can we do better/worse? Let’s add a The Gamer power to the self-insert, and go with Young Justice3 as the setting this time.
Maybe this could have been interesting, but we have the worst main character of all time. Zero creativity, zero proactivity, bad at talking to people, a coward to boot. Maybe it could have been fuel for character development, mirror the stat improvement with personality improvement, but nah. He just stays the same, and made me want to punch him until I had to drop the fic some 50k words in.
I'm not a god. I AM WHAT A GOD PRAYS TO.
That’s not a quote from the story, it’s the writer’s title in SpaceBattles. Be thankful I didn’t make you read a word of the actual fic.
Gaze Upon the World
Sasuke self-insert. Pretty standard setup, but uh… very non-standard world.
If you’ve read the Pink Fang review, you saw me mention that the world was altered a bit to suit the author’s preferences, make it less stupid. This author went further beyond. Characters are aged up, they’re smarter and with better techniques from the get go, the setting has changed to the point Sasuke can’t even assume Naruto has the nine-tailed fox inside him.
Sasuke, using his memories of a different version of the setting, tries to manipulate his two teammates a bit, but it keeps backfiring and he has no choice but to legitimately try to befriend them. An issue with that is that this is just a partial insert, so Sasuke’s trauma over his brother killing his entire family still applies, causing some minor angst.
The fic also has the rare problem of the pacing being too fast. 60k words in they’re already into the Chuunin exams arc, with the first mission arc being over a single chapter in. Also, Kakashi is hilariously out of character? I actually think everyone talks kind of weird in this:
"I'm just worried," I say, and Sakura looks at me. "Chakra exhaustion is a serious issue; it can have long-term negative effects. Don't endanger yourself for something that isn't life and death."
"Speaking of life and death," Kakashi says, reminding us all of his presence, "you guys did well. Good job."
"What's so good about it?" Naruto pouts. "We couldn't even touch you."
"Naruto, if you'd actually landed a blow on me, I would have needed to retire," Kakashi says succinctly.
"Oi, that just makes it worse," Naruto says.
"I know," Kakashi says happily. "Anywho, since that was supposed to be training, or whatever, let's recap; what did you guys do wrong?"
It’s tolerable, in any case, just slightly off. Right before the exams, Kakashi teaches Sasuke an incredibly, incredibly overpowered technique. As of his first fight, where the fic currently ends, he no-sold every single attack sent his way and one-shot his opponent, winning in like twenty seconds.
It’s unclear to me how the story will be able to continue with Sasuke being able to ignore every single jutsu sent his way (as long as he knows it). Why nerf the Shadow Clone technique but invent that one? The world may never know. I can’t tell whether I should this or not, actually. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t really stand out and already shows a red flag.
The Weaver’s Web
This is yet another Worm fic, but it’s no alt-power, or an OC or anything. It’s just Taylor, with bug control, deciding to stick to the low level instead of escalating, with smoke and mirrors instead of raw power.
Taylor, instead of going after Lung, decides to base her behavior on a series of old comics, The Shadow, who is kind of a less wacky Batman. Don’t take this as a crossover, though, she still uses bug powers. She can’t hear or see through her bugs, so her go-to is setting up microphones, fireworks and the like with her insects to scare the lame gangsters that comprise the majority of her enemies. She doesn’t commit crimes, but she doesn’t join the Wards either. She works hard to hide her true powers from everyone.
All these limitations lead to a fairly original progression, with a Merchants arc finishing recently.
It’s not perfect. Though Taylor isn’t overpowered, every villain in the story seems nerfed, and the rank and file are so stupid and one dimensional they might as well be in one of those wacky Stardust comics. It’s a bit hard to see her losing any time soon. Still, an enjoyable read.
Patriarch*
A surprising Mother of Learning fanfic, that takes over after the original story ends. Looking at this as a sequel is wrong, though, it’s more of an epilogue focusing where canon dropped the ball.
Mother of Learning is great, but even its biggest fans understand it’s got many flaws. It delivers on the action, the munchkinry, and the worldbuilding, but it kind of screwed up with the characters. While no one expected romance arcs within a time loop plot for obvious reasons, Zorian, our main character, interacts with a variety of semi-fleshed out characters early in the first arc, yet essentially none of them end up mattering. Everything is dropped in favor of more magic system exposition and a big final fight, with almost no downtime to speak of.
Similarly, the plot revolves around an invasion of a slightly corrupt and at the very least politically complex where the MC lives. The end of MoL completely ignores the political situation, but not really as a setup for a sequel. The author has no intention in returning. He’s simply bad at writing that kind of thing, so he pretended it didn’t exist, that beating the villains is all the ending needed.
Patriarch focuses on the aftermath. Would the many characters Zorian snubbed really forget about him after he comes out from the loop, all-powerful? Would the corrupt government not mess with his life even more now that he seems involved with a variety of mysterious figures?
The answer is no. Zorian now has to get over his negative charisma stat, and taken on the responsibility of fixing his personal relationships, protect his loved ones from politics, and actually make friends.
Again, this is very much not what Mother of Learning is about, and it’s not as interesting, or consistent. But it scratches an itch the novel left behind when it ended, and that’s good enough for me.
Meandering Through The Megaverse
I’m currently reading Thresholder, the latest story by the writer of Worth the Candle, one of the best works of web fiction ever written. Thresholder isn’t as good yet, but its concept is essentially: “make a jumpchain story but good”.
What is a jumpchain story, though? While it’s an established term, everyone seems to have a different definition. This often becomes a subject of argument in the writer’s Discord server, so whenever I come across a jumpchain story on SpaceBattles, I have to give it a try, just to continue acquiring information. This way I will win internet arguments.
This process has produced a couple data points. What is a jumpchain story, exactly?
A story about a character going through many worlds and getting different powers from each.
Shit.
This is almost universal. Bond Breaker is as original as a jumpchain story can get, and it’s still pretty bad. Thresholder is barely dodging it so far.
Anyway, you get where I’m going with this. Meandering Through The Megaverse is bad. How bad? Really, really, really bad.
But the jumps themselves…
Family Matters (yes, the one with Urkel), an obscure show called White Collar, the fucking film Tremors, Sky High, Ready Player One. It’s like the writer was going for the stupidest settings possible and writing them as straight as he could.
That sounds hilarious, but sadly, the execution is terrible.
Aimless wandering through a multitude of multiverses with no overarching goal
Please be aware, I'm not a good writer. In matters of dialogue I'm absolutely atrocious thus my avoidance of it as much as possible. I also recognize, and warn you all, that this is not going to be either regularly updated (RL isn't that stable) nor is it really meant for a pleasurable read. This story is basically a combination of me trying to force myself to write to get in the habit and exploring options. It'll mostly consist of me following random thought processes and not really planning much out. While I do try to plan jumps ahead that's in terms of goals and builds, as I'm going through a Setting however I may be inspired differently or may realize unintended side-effects that change the course.
This is the entire description of the story. It’s not lying. The first ten or so chapters have no dialogue whatsoever, they’re 500-1000 words of journaling decisions taken per world, skipping all the interesting scenes.
Of course, his lovelife wasn't the only thing I was helping with. Fine Taste and the social graces I'd picked up from Best On The Planet combined quite well in teaching him a bit of comportment. That and really his parents had never bothered teaching him good manners, so treating it like an experiment I was studying social behavior with Urkel which mellowed him out a lot. It wasn't changing him in a real way, his interests and preferences didn't switch, just how he presented himself and acted with self-control helped to smooth social interaction nicely. The fact I started a fun romp into sports medicine and related fields to teach us the best way to improve our bodies, we made ridiculous progress in becoming fantastic physical trainers. Being each others' trainer helped us keep the momentum in sculpting much more healthy and optimized selves. As we put on some muscles it definitely made some of the ladies sit up and take notice.
Between Urkel becoming less abrasive personality wise, more attractive physically, a dependable friend consistently, and a disastrous love-life it was nearly inevitable that Laura Winslow gave Steven Urkel a chance eventually (around year seven) by saying yes to a date.
However, paragraphs like the above were just interesting and unique enough to keep me reading. Imagine being on a magical journey across the multiverse and doing a pit stop in a sitcom to help a fictional character with their social drama.
Of course, the joke got old after a while. The author got better at writing longer chapters, and the story even acquires some dialogue halfway through, but there were just too many worlds, and I lost interest. I don’t recommend this story, but I can appreciate its weirdness, I guess.
And that’s it for September. I’m currently reading a Naruto fic I have some issues with, so don’t worry, October will have at least one micro review.
One of those was getting a new Homestuck fanmusic album out, Land of Fans and Music 5 Act 2, the other was working on fleshing out the Homestuck Music Wiki, the results of which aren’t publicly available yet. You could say it was a themed month for me.
A show I have no intention of watching, but basically everyone just rewrites the same arcs over and over, so I feel like I already know it.
I continue to advocate for Companion Chronicles as the only good jumpchain fic. See if you can count how many jumpchain-fic traps for the unwary author it dodges with the nonstandard setup.