Reviews for September 2024

I've got a jar of dirt, I've got a jar of dirt

As¹ promised, I stuck to SpaceBattles instead of Questionable Questing this month, at least as much as I could. I also went through some of my ancient backlog of direct recommendations and video games. This did result in a higher level of quality than usual, but the price is that I spent valuable brain calories reading slightly more complex prose. Now I’ll have to offset additional carbon to save the world from climate change, and it’s your² fault.

★: Control, Time to Orbit: Unknown, Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy

*: Slay the Princess, FBC/SCP: Ignition, Event Horizon (not that one), What You Leave Behind, Doctor Who (2005), My Other Brain is an Idiot

Previously, on Record Crash:

Reviews for August 2024

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Control★

This is a video game by the creators of Alan Wake,³ a game notable for its kind-of-cool-if-aiming-above-its-station story and its absolutely fucking godawful gameplay.

I’ve always wanted the “franchise” to redeem itself, and heard this game had some tie-in elements (it did, hugely), but rarely do developers get their shit together from one game to the next, so I tempered my expectations. Thankfully I was wrong, and Control is pretty great.

You play as Jesse Faden, a young woman looking for her missing brother—they were involved in some supernatural incident as children, and he was taken by a mysterious organization in charge of crazy shit, the Federal Bureau of Control. Their HQ has a strong antimemetic effect, and most people can’t see them even if they’re located in the middle of New York City. She’s finally found it, but it’s under lockdown, with most of the employees already taken over by an otherworldly entity and trying to kill her. The old director has killed himself, and she picks up his gun, which supernaturally “selects” her as the new Director of the Bureau. Now she needs to get rid of the entity as she explores the building, which is also host to a variety of unrelated monsters, pseudomagical items and crazy people.

Everything I’ve described happens in the first ten or so minutes of the game, minus some backstory. You can see the rest by playing the game.

Let’s not bury the lede: the Bureau is basically the SCP Foundation. This is 100% an SCP game with the numbers literally filed off.⁴ That is actually the best part of Control, and it made it probably the only game where I’ve actively sought to explore every single room for optional collectibles, because they come with delicious lore documents.

I’m saving the good ones for your playthrough, you’re welcome.

Many of the SCPs I mean “Altered Items” are jokes, but many aren’t, and you’re meant to contain them. Sometimes you have to solve a puzzle, sometimes you have to directly fight the Item in direct combat. Sometimes you can even bend one to your will and gain a new ability.

Here’s Jesse telekinetically holding a TV—which is playing a video that freezes everyone who watches it—as a cheap way to get past enemies.

The gameplay is not perfect, and I personally found it just a bit too easy, but it’s serviceable. There are some Ubisoft-style pitfalls, like procedurally generated missions and fetch questy crafting, but you can ignore both and beat the game just fine. Most of the time it’s fun third person shooting, plus some levitation and magic powers thrown into the mix. That, together with the plot, makes it feel like more of an immersive sim than an average TPS.

Some other aspects I enjoyed: the graphics were fine, technically they’re so fine that the game is still used as a graphics card benchmark… but what I was actually impressed with is the use of mixed media.

You’re constantly exposed to these little LOST Orientation Film-style videos that deliver some of the exposition about how the foundation works and the magic items in it. They’re not in-engine, they’re real actors, and you also get some cutscenes, portraits and so on played by them, including for our main character.⁵ They’re pretty well mixed into the environment in a way that would be jarring for any other game. Alan Wake did this too to a lesser extent, and I believe Alan Wake 2 (which I’m not playing yet because I refuse to use the Epic Games Store, let’s hope it makes it to Steam soon) goes even harder.

The music? Also pretty great especially the Ashtra—actually this review is getting pretty long. Just go play the game and DLCs, best I’ve played this year if we don’t count haha funny poker. Support more SCP-inspired media, god knows the original is a lost cause.

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It was acceptable in the 80s

I’m a simple reader. I see “Cobra Kai⁶ fanfic”, I click the thread.

Unfortunately, the writer of this fic is even simpler. It’s one of those odd self-inserts where the SI isn’t the protagonist, though he gets some viewpoint chapters. He’s a genius kid with Jumpchain abilities getting a degree in medicine at age 12 or something. His story pretty much has nothing to do with the plot of Karate Kid besides giving Johnny some wise advice (that he ignores) once in a while. At one point he’s trying to solve racism in his local country club, while planning to go on a martial arts journey to China in order to rediscover magic.

There’s some “what the fuck” value in this fic, sure. It’s certainly unique, but the writing is just too awful to stick with it for long. I kinda hope that changes when I look up the author in a few years.

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Slay the Princess*

I bought this on sale, having vaguely heard of it when it was the flavor of the month. It’s a visual novel that deconstructs deconstructions of classic “save the princess” stories. If that sounds very pretentious, you’re not wrong.

I usually hate pretentious things. This game presents you with a lot of choices at every point. Some of those choices permanently lock away certain paths, so that every player has a different experience by the time they make it to the end, leading many critics to opine that the game says so many different things that it has nothing real to say in the end. It’s possible I just got very lucky, or that I’m very good at choosing, but I experienced pretty good pacing.

The plot is a bit hard to explain, but you’re basically a nascent god who’s trying to slay another nascent god taking the shape of a princess. Both you and the princess get additional personalities speaking in your heads as you proceed through the “loops”, since the scenario is repeated over and over. You get told to kill the princess, talked into or out of it by the Narrator or one of the other voices, and you choose your approach. If you choose violence, the next princess will be more violent, etc.

You both become more complex beings as you absorb more aspects. Everything is voice acted, and well-voice-acted at that, which if you’ve ever played a video game you’ll know is insanely rare in this medium. It helps make the VN present a facsimile of free will instead of the tree of choices it really is, and I was left pretty entertained and happy by the end of the 80 minutes it lasted me, even knowing I “missed” half the lines and scenes.

One annoying assumption the game makes is that you’re the type of weeaboo that falls in love with or at least strongly cares about protecting uguu cute characters, and at times the choices presented to me assumed I gave a shit about the titular princess,⁷ even after she had murdered my character multiple times. I might be the weird one here, though. I can’t really stand characters who insult you all the time but “hide” a caring personality, like Kurisu in Steins;Gate. Maybe I’ve met too many real toxic people to ignore the red flags.

Beyond that, though, I had no real issues. You’ll need a high tolerance for pretentiousness to enjoy it, or maybe being in a particularly good mood? But overall I recommend it, especially at any sale price that justifies its 80 minute runtime.

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Time to Orbit: Unknown★

I’ve already poorly reviewed this sci-fi mystery, but I reread it now that it’s finished.

The story overall has a very strong beginning, a stupid middle (with a murder mystery arc that does nothing good except undo character development, and could have been skipped) and a strong final arc. This is still a mystery story I can’t spoil for you, so I’ll have to be annoyingly vague.

The very ending is very weird, but in a way that fits with the already weird worldbuilding that’s been explained throughout the story, as well as the protagonist’s characterization, though I can see it pissing off many people. Overall, at least from my point of view, this is still a must read, and I only advise you to start skimming hard around the Sands arc. Everything after him is pretty good.

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The Talos Principle 2: Road to Elysium

It’s finally cold enough to play computer-heating games again.

The DLC for the first game, Road To Gehenna had brand new themes built around Internet communities, fanworks-as-commentary, fake status, etc.

But here, we’ve got three individual “adventures” instead that don’t really do anything new:

• Orpheus Ascending: did you like Star Trek Picard’s monologues about how love can make anything happen, love is super special, the past can never return, but it changes us, living is messy, buzzword buzzword, butterfly tears?⁸ You’ll like this DLC about bringing a robot’s dead wife back to life. There’s nothing interesting about the plot whatsoever, especially because the original game already has a nigh-identical sidequest, and the writing quality takes a dive. The actual puzzles are fun and almost novel, actually, so it’s not a total bust.⁹

• Isle of the Blessed: there’s this guy in the base game with a running joke about him being shit at puzzles. This story stars him as he tries to solve an entire collection of them that a famous robot crafted. No real stakes, but the difficulty here is just right, and there are a few conversations that make it feel like the epilogue the game never got. Furthermore, I actually liked the final level of this DLC more than I did the original game’s, as you jump all over a hypercube with shifting gravity.

• Into the Abyss: one of the characters in the base game gets locked in a penis explosion room for half the game, and we get to see his point of view here, as he (you guessed it) solves more puzzles. There’s not much story here, it’s honestly an excuse to ramp up the difficulty to hilarious lengths, with no gimmicks. I was able to get the minimum number of solutions that I needed to “beat” it, but that’s a third of the total. I respect the concept, but honestly, with this game design, diminishing returns start cropping up when every puzzle has ten steps. I can’t say I had any fun with this one.

All in all, I’d have to say it’s not quite worth the purchase unless you’re desperate for more gameplay. Gehenna really was a gem.

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FBC/SCP: Ignition*

You know qntm? I don’t know if his name is pronounced “quantum” or q n t m and at this point I’m afraid to ask. He wrote There Is No Antimemetics Division,¹⁰ a work set in the SCP universe about a department that tackles memetic hazards, like monsters that make you forget they exist.¹¹

He also wrote this fic, where Control’s protagonist Jesse Faden crosses over into the SCP world and meets qntm’s Division. They’re currently dealing with a threat she’s uniquely equipped to handle, but she’s also bringing some baggage with her.

Obviously, there’s no way to have better fanfic of a setting than the one made by the author himself, so that half of the crossover is flawless. I’m a bit less convinced by the Control half. I feel like Jesse is slightly more playful or funny¹² than she’s portrayed as here, even if this is technically a sequel and she could have developed offscreen. I generally find qntm pretty humorless, so I don’t think it’s intentional. This is just an area where he’s weaker.

The brunt of the story is action, and pretty good action at that. In fact, this isn’t getting a full star because it’s a crossover of two obscure properties, but it wouldn’t get one regardless—it’s basically all action. An extended 11,267-word fight scene. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, and if (at a minimum) you’ve played Control, go for it.

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The Adventures of Augment Gothic

This is going to be a short review, or at least I’ll type very little. This is one of the worst things I’ve ever read 900,000 words of. I chose to stick to the end because the writer, Gothicjedi666¹³ apparently cared a lot about making the universe of Star Trek make sense, and I had been looking for a story like that.

I technically read the “rewrite” by cowriter Joe Lawyer, but some research (this screenshot is a funny comparison, left is the original Augment Gothic, right is the “rewrite” The Adventures of Augment Gothic), as well as the Lawyer-exclusive chapters make me suspect Gothicjedi was responsible for most of the “good” parts, i.e. the Trek worldbuilding.

It certainly delivers on that front. The only other fic that has gone into so much depth about the minutia of the Trek utopia is the excellent Always Be Yourself…, but the main character of that spends most of his time out of the way of mainstream society, or, lately, stuck in parts of the setting we’ve already seen. There’s always room for more examinations. Our guy gets an actual job and an apartment in Utopian Earth for a couple of chapters, for example.

Otherwise, it’s basically your standard overpowered self-insert, with no filters. And I mean NO FILTERS.

I’ll let the rest of this review speak for itself, through quotes.¹⁴ You can skip them if you want, but they paint a picture:

AN: Several common things people mentioned in the reviews for last chapter, variations on 'show, don't tell' or 'have this information come out in dialog with another character'; well, I hear you guys and agree. There are several reasons why that wasn't really an option thus far. First, unless I start creating a lot of throwaway OCs there aren't a lot of people for him to talk with yet, besides Annika. Second, Gothic doesn't trust anyone. He is paranoid and knows just how far Section 31 would go. He's not keen on sharing his thoughts and plans with anyone. Third, as an Augment, his mind is enhanced, which means he lives a lot in his head. He can think of and explore numerous different lines of thought in the time a normal human would have one. Fourth, while I've done research on topics that I know shit all about, like computer programming and how to pilot anything, I'm just not knowledgeable enough to even fake those scenes well enough. That results in a bit more after the fact kind of stuff.

I felt a weight on my back, so I turned to the side slightly and saw that I had a badass looking X-shaped magnetic harness, obviously custom made, containing two weapons. Closest to my back was a really deadly looking sword, its grip reaching up and over my right shoulder for a quick draw. The sword, like the combat knife, had an actuator of some sort built in. The other weapon in the harness was a bad-ass looking energy rifle that I'd never seen the like of before.

It had been a couple of days since I'd last spoken to Worf, or anyone really, so it took me a few moments to realize that I had to speak in order to reply. I really needed to spend more time with people and less time working on developing cool new tech like one of my 'fictional' inventor idols, Tony Stark.

"Why were you down there in the first place?" Dax asked curiously, amused as always at her lover's actions and unpredictability, characteristics which made him even more attractive to the joined trill.

Gothic was already probably the most gorgeous and perfect specimen of the male humanoid form she'd seen in her many lifetimes, but that was to be expected given his full genetic upgrades. It was everything else that made up the man's character, though, that kept her coming back for more, like a moth to a flame. His irreverence, his humor, his wonder at everything in this time, his outsider perspective, his unbridled creativity and willingness to push the limits in all things, his sheer power and willingness to be a true man made him a near perfect mate in her eyes.

"Doors that won't open unless you ask politely, or tickle in the right place…" Hermione interrupted, then began to trail off, like her computer mind was struggling with the sheer illogic of what she was saying. A look of shocked realization appeared on her beautiful face. "Father, was I named after the Hermione character from the books? And were my physical parameters copied from the human actress, Emma Watson?"

I cleared my throat uncomfortably, looking anywhere but at her, feeling a little embarrassed at this line of questioning and where it might ultimately lead. Was I the textbook definition of basic? Well, maybe, probably, but I say 'fuck you' to any male child of the 80's who lied and said that they wouldn't do exactly what I did if they had the capability. Thankfully, Natasha¹⁵ rescued me from having to answer.

"Captain, I believe that we have been pulled into some sort of interdimensional rift," T'Maz calmly reported from her station, having vacated the captain's chair upon my arrival on the bridge. "Current sensor readings are remarkedly [sic] similar to those we took when we battled the Collectors for the rift device and entered into that other universe."

For a moment, I remembered fondly a time in my life when words like that would have been limited to the mouths of actors on a TV screen, or otherwise confined to the dialog of science fiction books or video game cut scenes. Then I remembered how utterly fucking boring that life had been, and how awesome triple blowjobs were, and told myself to shut the fuck up and stop complaining like a little bitch! Whatever insanity the universe had in store for me was another part of the adventure that was my new life and I should be grateful for it.

"That was unnecessarily provocative, sir, and placed many in danger," President Reagan admonished me. As the leader of a nation, the man certainly had the charisma and presence to make me even blink for a moment.

"...Earth was a paradise. A post-scarcity society where food, housing, health care, were all provided for free to all citizens. Poverty and disease, war and conflict, at least among humans on Earth, was a thing of the past."

"That sounds a lot like communism to me, sir," sneered the Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci.

I can't wait for this side quest¹⁶ to be over and done with, this is really jumping the shark. - DaginaVestroyer69

You know I usually try not to say anything if I don't have anything nice to say but after sitting on it for a couple of days I've come to the conclusion that this chapter was so fucking dumb I can't help but comment on how fucking dumb it was. - reignofgeekaos

The Adventures of Augment Gothic go on still. I hope this Lawyer person enjoys his epic Id adventures, but I’m afraid I had enough of them.

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in His strength, I will dare and dare and dare until I die

I beg you, glowfics, choose better titles. It’s like you’re roleplaying for yourselves and not caring about the average rando reader…

I previously reviewed a dath-ilani-sent-to-Pathfinder-verse glowfic, then a regular-person-in-dath-ilan glowfic, and this completes the set, with someone from the Pathfinder universe being sent to the regular world.

Our isekai protagonist is a fifteen year old female Paladin. This demographic is at home in any fantasy setting, especially in a tabletop campaign. It makes less sense when you’re in the real world and end up in the American foster care system. It causes some issues when she only speaks Pathfinderese and a smattering of Spanish and English.

That last part is the key here. If you’ve ever watched Frasier, it’s basically this scene stretched into a surprisingly serious 232k-word fic.

Our Paladin, Iomedae (no relation), appears to be just a brainwashed cult child from another country to the other main character, Evelyn. Evelyn is just a Perfect Foster Mom and always assumes a reasonable explanation for every inconsistency, which is easy because of the language barrier between them. Her competence in parenting, contrasting her understandable incompetence in actually understanding her child, makes her extremely likable, kind of the underdog in a dynamic that doesn’t usually allow for those.

There’s a constant back-and-forth as Iomedae tries to find ways to do good in our world, while Evelyn thinks she’s trying a bit too hard to be a Good Christian. She always ends up helping her anyway in order to be a good parent. It causes comedy as well as quite a bit of drama (at one point ICE is involved). The stakes have otherwise never been lower, though. This is simply slice-of-life that goes into incredible detail. Too much detail sometimes, like a realistic medical evaluation that felt like it took a good 30k words.

In the end I thought this lacked the highs of Planecrash, but at least it was never awful or fetishy. The medium offers less friction than usual, with the classic Glowfic exposition mostly missing, or taking the shape of interesting real world facts. Still, I don’t think I’d recommend this to anyone who isn’t explicitly looking for more Glowfics, especially because it’s hiatused and likely dead forever. There’s a “sequel”, but Evelyn’s player isn’t involved, and she was a key part of the story, so I’m just not interested.

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Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy★

It’s surprising how memory holed this franchise got. The last film came out in 2017, critically panned and forgotten instantly, and the main trilogy I’ve actually watched was released from 2003-2007. When was the last time you talked about it?

They’re not particularly deep, but they’re very fun. Captain Jack Sparrow is certainly a big reason why, but I was caught off guard by how comedic the tone was throughout. Everyone gets a chance to tell a joke. It’s like they’re trying to maximize fun, like the director actually wants people to watch them. Every minute not crammed with jokes or horror is reserved for high-quality action instead. Sometimes even Looney Tunes-style slapstick.

The first movie (Curse of the Black Pearl) deals with a ghost ship, with our protagonists fighting with animated skeletons over treasure. The second (Dead Man’s Chest) is about that famous octopus looking guy, who I was surprised to learn has the stupidest accent ever. Here’s a clip that also showcases the incredibly well-aged CGI.

The third (At World’s End) is a relative miss in the trilogy, bogged down with “Pirate Lore”, which is as stupid as it sounds, as they try to bring Jack Sparrow back to life. Pirates begins as a setting with a realistic tone, if over the top and featuring some “ghost stories”, but this movie almost turns it into high fantasy. The eight pirate emperors or whatever locked away the conceptual representation of the literal ocean. It’s silly but not in a good way, since it requires a lot of exposition. The action and characters are still good, but it prevents the trilogy from being as perfect as it could be.

Overall, eminently watchable movies that everyone should be able to enjoy. Sometimes the mainstream is mainstream for a reason. Shame the director moved on to Rango, the biggest waste of potential ever (that also won an Oscar, but shut up).

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Legend of the Galactic Heroes

This is one of those legendary animes from the 80s that everyone recommends.¹⁷ Ehhhhh.

It looks good, I’ll give it that. It can certainly use good classical music to set itself apart from other sci-fi animes—okay many do that. And it can focus on clever strategies over raw power or anime fiat unlike all other sci-fi animes—okay many do that.

Generally, I think there’s quite a bit of “putting lipstick on a pig” here? The story, at its core, is about the two sides of an interstellar war between some German-themed Empire and a less but still kind of German-themed Republic. There’s a young prince (Reinhard von Lohengramm) on one side making his name on his crazy (more on this later) strategies, and a heroic soldier of the republic (Yang Wenli) trying to stop his dumb superiors from constantly falling for the former’s traps.

There’s a lot of commentary on how war is bad, soldiers are pawns, the battles are pointless and everyone back home just wants the victory headlines, etc. etc. The etc etc is the problem here. Maybe I’m getting Seinfeld Effected hard here, but Legend of the Galactic Heroes has nothing new to say while standing on the shoulders of millennia of war stories, yet acts like it does. Everything is played drily and incredibly straight, with the only thing keeping my attention being the visuals, the quality of which dropped hard once I switched from the OVA movies to the actual anime.

Another aspect that sucks is Lohengramm’s battle strategies. Every single battle I watched had the same structure:

1. Lohengramm’s superiors hate him, they’re sending him to an impossible fight so he either loses face or dies.

2. Lohengramm devises an incredibly clever plan that isn’t clever at all, but is presented like it is. One example:

Complying with his orders, Reinhard advanced his forces towards the enemy formation alone. Rather than open fire on them once he was in range, however, Reinhard had his forces turn 90 degrees to the right. Reinhard's fleet then slowly sailed in front of the Alliance fleet, utterly exposed. Unable to comprehend an enemy intentionally making itself so vulnerable, the Alliance fleet commanders refused to attack Reinhard's forces, believing his manoeuvre to be some sort of elaborate trick. Their inaction allowed Reinhard to reposition his forces along the left flank of the Alliance fleet.

3. Yang Wenli tries to get his stupid superiors to realize the trick, but they’re all dumb, and ugly to boot. He refuses to ignore orders so just plays along with the losing strategy.

4. Lohengramm wins the battle. Yang survives so the loop can repeat itself again.

5. Lohengramm’s superiors seethe, but won’t learn from the experience and will just keep sending him against stronger enemies so he can keep growing his legend.

It’d be fine if there was some explanation for why Yang (and once, one of his friends) is the only one with brains on the side of the Republic, but there isn’t. Nepotism is brought up a few times as general commentary, but Lohengramm certainly benefits from it himself and it’s one of the reasons people dislike and sabotage him, so there’s some form of meritocracy in place.

The real reason is in the title. The anime needs heroes as protagonists, and everyone else needs to be dim so the two can shine.

It just annoyed me, so I stopped watching shortly after the series moved onto regular anime episodes. Definitely not for me, and I can’t say I recommend it.

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Event Horizon* (not that one)

We all like time loop stories, like Edge of Tomorrow. That movie inspired this fic! (as opposed to the movie named Event Horizon!!!!)

It’s set within the RWBY universe, with a throwaway canon character as the protagonist, once designed to help Penny in a tournament arc scene. She dies during the big catastrophe at the end of Volume 3,¹⁸ which unlocks her semblance. It allows her to travel a couple days back in time whenever she dies. She now has to fix everything that went wrong, as her ability to travel back in time starts running out of power.

The decision to go with a minor character (Ciel Soleil, I bet you have no fucking idea who that is) was initially baffling, especially because she’s had no contact with any of the people that actually matter. But I discovered that’s kind of the point, as the challenges before her are more “convince Ruby to trust you and handle objective A” than “get super good at fighting over 300 loops and defeat big monster :)”. In fact, she never gets any better at fighting, but she sure starts learning to rely on people more, which was one of the best aspects of Mother of Learning for sure.

Overall, pretty good. Weak points are the overreliance on canon events (you HAVE to know what happens at the end of volume 3 or a lot of this will make no sense), as well as a slightly unsatisfying ending. I generally wish the loop was longer, because while it’s enough for plans and action, you can only cram so many opportunities for character interactions in there. Still worth the read, but it’s not without its flaws.

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Her Bark’s Worse Than Her Bite

A fic about Amy Worm deciding to become a superhero with (faked) wood-themed powers instead of a healer. I thought this would redeem all those shitty healer fics I’ve read recently, but no. It is just awful writing on every level. I don’t even have anything interesting to say.

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Oogway’s Little Owl

A Kung Fu Panda/Worm crossover, and yes I started reading it just because that sounded stupid.

Taylor gets rescued from the locker by thousand-year-old turtle/kung fu master Oogway. The process takes her into the Kung Fu Panda world and transforms her into an owl, to my surprise as much as yours, isn’t actually a furry thing.

Taylor learns Kung Fu and defeats a few villains from the KFP cartoon I haven’t seen. Mostly, she develops her character and heals her trauma a bit through a bunch of slice of life scenes (the titular panda still exists, but is not learning Kung Fu yet). Meanwhile, in Worm land, Taylor’s shard is mad that her host got away, and accidentally creates a tiny portal between both worlds, causing weird shit to happen on both sides.

It’s okay. It’s one of those boring fics where you can tell the writer has the skill to go for highs, but just doesn’t bother because they enjoy the less eventful slice of life more. They could stretch this plot to three million words with no issue, especially since they’re mining all aspects of the franchise for plotlines, but I just don’t care for the mediocrity, and I don’t think the average reader of this review will either.

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What You Leave Behind*

A big Harry Potter AU. Grindelwald and Dumbledore fail to accidentally kill Ariana, changing Dumbledore’s personality a bit, which eventually leads to him being exiled from Britain for trying a bit too hard to defeat Voldemort, which butterflies into massive changes. Also, Harry is one year older for some reason. Maybe Dumbledore getting owned made his parents really horny.

It’s a mystery story at its core, especially for the first year, with Harry suffering from something like split personality, like half his memories are locked away, and the Ministry watching him… he befriends Cedric and Cho, which already drives the plot off the rails more than being a year older would. Harry is also trying to reach a deeper level of understanding of magic only Dumbledore has, with the latter only being able to give him vague hints. Lots of interesting magical-system-worldbuilding there.

It’s very fresh, very well written, and VERY UNFINISHED, with no updates in six years and only a third of the story done. I highly recommend this, with that caveat. You’re not getting a conclusion.

The link is to the version on the extremely-funny-themed DarkLordPotter forums, because it’s got an additional chapter. It requires a login, so feel free to Google a different version if you’re feeling lazy.

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Stone Burners

Years ago, during the early stages of the Shills List project, I was kind of an idiot. I offered a deal: read the ten or so stories in the list, and in exchange you can make me try whatever you recommend me, and I’ll also link it within a lesser section of the list.

That is technically still in place as the Custom List, minus the stupid part—me personally having to waste my time. It’s paid off a couple times, with 2Kawaii4Comfort, as well and… uh, that’s it. The rest of shit I’ve had to read, you can’t believe. One of them was Orphans of Chaos, which was the worst instance of magical realming I’ve been forcefully exposed to.

At one point I just had it with the terrible taste of my audience, and decided to put off reading the final two works indefinitely: The Emperor’s Soul and Stone Burners. My honor was tarnished, but obviously I decided to restore it this year. I already reviewed the first, and it was okay.

Stone Burners is not okay.

Olivia turned to help, when out of the corner of her eye she saw Tod move. Suddenly something hit her, hard, and she hit a wall, also hard. She barely had time to register the fact that Tod stood where she had moments before when he raised a fist and moved again. She hit the wall again, hearing it crack. Her head rang from being whipped into a wall twice, her ribs and shoulder hurt from where Tod hit her. Stop it. Tod, now right next to her, seemed confused. Off balance, she tried to slash at him, forcing him to back up. Now with a little breathing room, she shook her head and regained her bearings. Tod still backed up, well out of arm’s reach. He stopped and moved forward, almost too fast for Olivia to catch. His punch connected, though he moved far faster than humanly possible. This time she did go through the wall and onto the street.

The above is an unedited paragraph, a climactic action scene after a lot of buildup.¹⁹

Maybe we need some context. Stone Burners was a work released in the late months of Worm’s run, and it wears its inspirations on its sleeve to put it lightly. It stars a Case 53“Feral” dragon-woman, who wakes up in an alley with no memories and superstrength, flight and bullet immunity. She can probably breathe fire too, and have sex with the author. She joins a loose group of ex-cops and solo superheroes. They are of course the only people that will accept her. Ferals are usually mindless, but they know Olivia is special, she can actually speak and doesn’t go into random fits of rage.

Her first outing with [I never got a name for the group, maybe they are the titular Stone Burners?] makes her face a supervillain with the power to make people go into random fits of rage. Olivia is essentially mind controlled to slaughter over fifty innocent people. Things go downhill from there, though her friends still love her for unclear reasons.

You see, Olivia is the most passive tabula rasa yet reportedly-likable protagonist ever. She basically does nothing out of her own will. Even when she goes to fight Rageman, it’s because her friends tell her it’d be good for her PR with the cops (lol). Otherwise she sits in a room, eats and thinks about how sad her existence as a nigh-unkillable dragon woman is. Her friends include a Tinker with an unpredictable and growing arsenal of Deus Ex Machines that fix the plot whenever the writer wants, a kind of funny Regent expy who has an accent the writer will strive to write down and annoy you with, and two or three Stock Characters that I could not tell you anything about for the life of me.

The world Olivia lives in is not much better written, initially born as a copy of Brockton Bay, with elements retconned in and out every chapter after the first arc. Some crazy elements like the Aztec Civilization still being around, or superpowers having existed from the beginning of time, are clear spur-of-the-moment decisions, as the writer tried to figure out how to have their work have an identity beyond Shitty Worm Clone.

But it doesn’t even rate “Shitty Worm Clone”, honestly. You’ve seen the prose, that’s what people who hate Worm say Worm’s prose is like. The main character is not likable, but the story tells you to like her. The story tells you to care about any of this. I could not, and gave up after I gave it an honest try—20% of the story, over 100k words, but it’s not even finished! Do not bother.

And now I’m freeeeeee, I never have to consume anything bad again. Wait, what blog am I writing?

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Doctor Who (2005)*

There is nothing more hit-and-miss than Doctor Who. When you see that asterisk up there, don’t think I’m recommending you sit down and watch the entire show. Look up an episode list, because there are plenty of good episodes, but the overall total is over one hundred fifty forty-minutes-to-one-hour stories.

I recently did a rewatch of the entire series, going past the point where I dropped it and catching up to the end. I skipped the bad episodes, but watched all the at-least-decent, as well as the lore-relevant ones. That last part was a mistake. I don’t recommend you follow my lead there.

Maybe I’m assuming you already know what Doctor Who is? It’s a very British sci-fi anthology built around the conceit of this alien with a human companion (usually an attractive young woman) traveling to Earth’s past or alien planets. The alien changes faces every time he dies, gaining a new actor. Broad strokes, a bit like a campy Star Trek.²⁰

This is a good grounding for anthology purposes. “Lore”-wise, it’s more often miss than hit. Three different showrunners have had their way with this universe, and this is only for the 2005 run… there’s also “Old” Doctor Who, which began as a black and white show and was cancelled in the 80s, but contains almost 700 (THANKFULLY mostly ignored) episodes of baggage. Just think how they’re lightly messing up Star Wars lore with shows like The Acolyte, imagine that just getting exponentially worse for 20 straight years, and you get this show.

But when it’s good, it’s really good, showcasing some really good actors like David Tennant and Peter Capaldi funnily bouncing off audience inserts as they solve complicated high concept problems.

It’s impossible for me to go on without ranting at length, so I’ll just give you my list of absolute-must-watches. You can check IMDB or something if you want more (or if you want almost exactly this list, honestly I’ve got pretty basic bitch taste when it comes to this show), and you may need to skim things like the pilot episode for additional context.

• 9th Doctor: Dalek, Father’s Day, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances

• 10th Doctor: The Girl in the Fireplace, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, Gridlock, Human Nature/The Family of Blood, Blink, Partners in Crime, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, Midnight

• 11th Doctor: Vincent and the Doctor, The Lodger, Day of the Moon, The Doctor’s Wife, The Time of the Doctor, The Day of the Doctor²¹

• 12th Doctor: Listen, Mummy on the Orient Express, Flatline, Heaven Sent, Twice Upon a Time

• 13th Doctor: nothing, she fucking sucks²²

• 14th/15th Doctor: Wild Blue Yonder, The Giggle, Dot and Bubble²³

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My Other Brain is an Idiot*

I have mystical powers. Öyvind Thorsby hadn’t released a new comic in five years, and he finally returns only a month after I reviewed one of his works. You’re welcome, by the way.

My Other Brain is about a young fish-out-of-water human girl arriving to the Big Fantasy City and getting hired to help run an old-school theater owned by a twaimin. Twaimins are Thorsby’s original fantasy race: each body contains two people, who take control whenever the other goes to sleep.²⁴

Hilarity ensues as multiple twaimin characters have their other selves fuck them over. For example, the theater owner has an alter ego who got the money to fund it from a mobster without the former’s knowledge, which comes back to bite him in the ass when the mobster forces his daughter into the leading role she’s not at all qualified for. It’s pretty early on, so there’s not much of a plot to speak of, but Thorsby stories (barring Transdimensional Brain Chip) tend to be increasingly complicated farces, so I expect this one to be more of the same.

I tentatively recommend this to anyone who clicks the link and isn’t immediately turned off by the artstyle. Thorsby is a funny guy.

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Megalopolis

I was literally counting down the hours until I was able to watch this. A disaster of cinematic proportions was foretold. The guy who made The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, now 85 years old, using his stored millions to force his insane passion project on the big screens. Big actors, big production values, but by now he’s so eccentric some of his directorial and writing decisions are reaching outsider art status.

I wanted to see how uniquely bad it would be.

Iiiit wasn’t that unique, honestly. The film breaks the 180 rule twenty minutes in, only getting worse from then on. I had to contain snickering or facepalm at multiple scenes (one has giant CGI statues of Liberty and Justice crying as the main character drives through a bad part of town, and that’s one of the sanest examples), but, barring Natalie Emmanuel’s complete disbelief of her own lines,²⁵ no one sucked at acting enough to make this a so-bad-it’s-good movie.

The film is a big allegory about conservatism (or at least the traditional American two-party system) vs futurism. But it’s all bogged down by the facts on the screen, which are just a boring love story with a succession of aborted assassination plots in the background. It insists upon itself, like Peter Griffin said about another of this guy’s films, but unironically.

It’s almost interesting, but not in any deeper way that forces you to watch the movie. Just wait for the funny webms and video analyses to pop up, unless you’re really into Cìnémä, and even then, you might get angry at the pointless references to old film techniques.

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That’s it for September, but note that I’m currently 40% through Unsong’s edited version, and I’ve got tickets for Joker 2, so stay tuned for them next month. I’ll also probably return to Questionable Questing Gacha mode, I’m afraid to say. There’s only so much kino my brain can take in a row, especially after Megalopolis.

1. God, I really don’t like the official Time to Orbit: Unknown cover. It looks so grisly, and not in an intentional way.

2. No one asked me to do this.

3. And also Max Payne, which honestly I consider incredibly overrated. That might get fans mad at me though.

4. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.

5. This is a pretty mean thing to say, but I was convinced the protagonist had shitty 3D modelers until I saw the actress just Looks Like That.

6. Cobra Kai is surprisingly enjoyable. A sequel to Karate Kai completely based on a meme YouTube analysis: what if the bad guy of the first movie was actually a normal kid retaliating against the protagonist’s dickish actions? Normal Kid Johnny Lawrence is now in his early fifties, an alcoholic in a dead end existence, while the titular Karate Kid is rich and respected. Johnny reopens a dojo to try to help a teen he sees himself in, all while trying to fix his terrible past choices.

It’s also fairly described as an “action soap opera”, but it’s better than the sum of its parts. Sometimes it’s even pretty good!

7. This is not exactly a romance game though, I think you really have to work for it to get to the point where you’re given the option to kiss the character, and I never got close.

8. See here. Did you know Substack makes video embeds tiny unless you fill the entire first line of the footnote?

9. They’re built around an “emergent” feature that arises from how the laser system is designed. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but basically lasers of different colors nullify each other’s streams, and they also have a limit of nodes they can power before stopping. Combining both means you can put nodes in a grid and make gimmicky puzzles like “where do you point the laser sources so that you get the exact grid pattern you want”? I guess I can just post a video like a HACK.

10. He also wrote Fine Structure and Ra, both of them pretty horribly structured stories with unsatisfying endings and vaguely defined characters. At least Fine Structure had a lot of cool ideas in that classic “first novel, cram everything in” style. There are many people that liked the two, but, well, a lot of people liked r!Animorphs too, at some point I have to accept I just have a different and possibly superior set of preferences.

11. Very on brand for this blog, qntm recently announced a re-edit of his story right as I was writing this. Twitter says he’s only doing this to remove the direct SCP references from it, which should honestly not be that hard.

12. Desperately trying to avoid the adjective “quippy”. Jesse in the original has a bit of a Bioshock Infinite protagonist syndrome where she has to comment on everything that happens. Right after the most awesome sequence in the game, she says “that was awesome” out loud. I ALREADY KNOW, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

13. You might remember him as the guy who invented the Celestial Reliquary from that one article I wrote. Actually just a coincidence I ended up reading this fic shortly after, fanfic is a small world I guess.

14. I don’t have a good place to put this rare quote I actually liked (and this was by Joe Lawyer, so I guess he’s not that bad), the only good justification for an isekai character making pop culture references I’ve ever seen:

This lack of understanding with idiomatic phrases that didn't exist here happened semi-frequently. Annika was actually a fan of learning them, being such a fan of history, and she often used them with me once she'd heard me say them once or twice, which meant I still used them. I appreciated the thought behind that, as it was a little piece of home in an unfamiliar time.

15. Don’t give the writer too much credit, it absolutely is that particular Natasha.

16. Joe Lawyer completely loses the plot after Gothicjedi666 hands him the reins, and he wastes a bunch of chapters having Q send his main character (named after the writer that left, which is still pretty funny) through the multiverse, from The Walking Dead to Flight of the Navigator to I, Robot. It’s definitely a series of awful chapters, and for this story that’s saying something.

17. I’ve seen it around often, but a reader of this Substack recommended a fanfic of it and it made me shuffle my backlog around. I hope watching around 160 minutes of the 2000 minute franchise is enough to understand it when I get around to giving it a try.

18. If you need a refresher, Yang loses her arm, Pyrrha dies, Ozpin dies, the big magic school gets destroyed. Everything goes to shit (including the show, not that it was all that great before).

19. Disclaimer: I read the first version of Stone Burners. Some years later, there was a reboot with (allegedly) better writing. Still, I was still told to read the first version because “it’s better”. Additional disclaimer: the person who made me read the story roleplays as a dragon, and Olivia is a dragon woman. This is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence.

20. Maybe I’m assuming you know what Star Trek is. It’s like a less campy Doctor Who.

21. Pretty Doctor-heavy Doctoring here.

22. I fully recognize typing this after bringing up The Acolyte, which is a show I haven’t even watched, makes me look like a bit of a chud. But all her episodes were under a new showrunner, and basically every Who watcher alive agrees with me on this one, trust me.

23. Basically no Who watcher agrees with me on this one, but I actually like Black Mirror, so my taste might be compromised.

24. This is not an uncommon concept, and the particulars of the execution are pretty much unwittingly ripping off Homestuck’s cherubs.

25. To be fair, a good 50% of the dialogue is an attempt to translate Roman history quotes to vaguely modern English. An attempt. Also the entire Hamlet “to be or not to be” soliloquy for some reason?