How's the edited Unsong so far? I tried to read it ages back and, while I absolutely fuck with the concept, I... actually, I can't remember what made me put it down. Probably the structure, or lack thereof.
So far the only changes I've noticed were neutral to very slightly worse, like removing some jokes deemed offensive by some readers. The major structural issues are very much there, so I don't think you'll enjoy it if you pick it back up. I expected this when I heard the edit released, and I had only seen Scott talk about gender swapping a character for kabbalistic reasons like that was a major issue.
As sesquipedalianThaumaturge pointed out, the Iomedae in "in his strength" is in fact the person who would, in the normal timeline, grow up to be the goddess you're familiar with. (From the pathfinder RPG or from planecrash? lintamande's Iomedae is different in some subtle but important ways from the canon pathfinder version.)
Glowfic in general is a complicated web of stories with the same characters being put in a variety of situations; the individual "threads" sometimes don't stand as well on their own if you don't already know the characters. (Planecrash was actually kind of an outlier in terms of how much it was meant to stand alone.) I know you mentioned this in your planecrash review, but it bears repeating, because I think in this case someone who doesn't know the adult (but not yet a god) version of Linta's Iomedae from the other threads she's appeared in (https://glowfic.com/posts/6736 was the first one written and probably a good starting point) is - I don't know if I'd say they were missing out on the point of the story but they're definitely having a reading experience that's not the intended one (and probably not as good).
Which isn't to say that you need to go read millions of words of implied context before you can have an opinion on a glowfic thread, or even that you'd like it better if you did (I, for one, didn't particularly enjoy IHS, though I think for different reasons than you), but I think it's important, if you're exploring glowfic from the outside, to realize that the implied context exists and is part of the intended reading experience.
Note: if you click on a character's name you can see their "profile page", and from there you can find all the threads ("Posts") they've been in. You can also click the link next to "Template", if it exists, to find other "versions" of the same character by the same author.
I dropped "Time to Orbit: Unknown" near the midpoint-murder plot, glad to know that the ending's good and I think I'll start it up again.
Slay the princess is fun, it scratches that itch that disco disco elysium left (comedy + voices in the head), there's even a good crossover between the two (THE FURY OF A SHATTERED MIRROR) which fills both and creates a new one which I want more of-
Pirates of the caribbean, I have completely forgot that it existed. I remember the first movie, a few bits about the second, and nothing about the third.
The Iomedae of in His strength is actually almost maximally related to the other Iomedae, being the person who eventually becomes Her (or does in other continuities, I guess).
I'm a little bit surprised that you didn't like LOGH, but your reasons are fair. Some aspects of the things you brought up do get better further in the actual series (the side cast becomes a LOT more developed and less idiotic, and a few of the ideological aspects get less on-the-nose) but it's not worth sitting through 55 more hrs of anime if you didn't like what you saw. The fact that it plays everything seriously is the *main* draw of the anime for me, and if that's a negative for you, it does not change from that point on lol.
Given that you didn't like LOGH, do I think you'll like my fanfic? Hm. My confidence has been adjusted to "moderately low", given that it combines two things you are known to be disappointed by (LOGH, and yaoi fanfiction lmfao). But I did write it with the intention to make it readable without seeing the series, so that shouldn't be an issue. And I have a much different Take™️ on the ideas of great men/heroes/history/how battles are conducted/etc than LOGH does, so maybe that will be more interesting to you. [I actually recommend, if you're reading on AO3, to start with the very short side story "Will the Real Mr. Bronner Please Stand Up?" to get an idea of how my approach differs. This will either fill you with confidence that the rest of the series will be an interesting worth-your-time read, or will let you know how early you can quit lol. It's a representative sample, ideas-wise.] But despite that low confidence, I do *hope* you enjoy it if/when you read it! At the very least, it has some literary merit, for whatever that's worth in this world.
Aside from that, thanks for the great newsletter as always. I am always eagerly awaiting the first of the month so that I can see what depths you've been plumbing.
> I kinda hope that changes when I look up the author in a few years.
Cherico has been writing almost continuously for a decade, I would not bother.
Also, did you miss that this was a Waifu catalog fic? There's this whole collaborative Waifu Catalog multiverse that Cherico has built with his fellow QQ author Leecifer with shared characters and lore which tries to make something interesting out of that trashfire of a sysfic trope.
Leecifer himself is a pretty interesting case: consistent and productive enough to have a hefty patreon following, and yet none of his fics have an ending in sight. I'm not sure if his fics are a case study on the Patreon trap or if he is legitimately averse to writing endings. The writing is of consistent quality with a few annoying af quirks (heavy (over)use of italicization along with way too many run-on sentences) , the pacing can be horrendous at times (more patreon incentive effects?), especially around the combat scenes.
All of his active fics on QQ are Waifu Catalog fics (yes, 18 of them). They're all crossovers of some kind but avoid being *too* formulaic with some variety in their premises.
I also find it funny that he really wants to write harem fics but never actually gets around to it - all attempts at more than monogamy breaks up for one reason or another. It's hard to wholeheartedly recc any of these, they are often good popcorn and legitimately some of the most entertaining sysfic around (low bar, I know) but the waifu catalog tag along with the lack of endings is offputting. Nevertheless if you're intent on playing the QQ gacha you can certainly improve your odds with one of his fics:
- Arcane Curiosity Explored: Probably the most "mainstream" of his fics. A Jayce SI with decent character work, good worldbuilding and has a "Book 1" complete. Has poor pacing in a certain arc but you'll know when to start skimming.
- Doomed Skies - The Company (a persistent waifu catalog organization) has sentenced the MC to the "Doomed Skies" program. He's dropped on a minecraft skyblock where a portal opens at certain intervals to crossover worlds just hours before some appocalypse is set off in them. He can try to avert the apocalypse and save people off these worlds but it's difficult with the time-limit. One of the more conceptually interesting Leecifer fics and the episodic nature of it relieves the lack of proper endings.
- Born to Ken - The most meta of these. The MC joins a troubleshooting team within the Company that's entirely composed of Barbie clones. The teams duty is to jump into SI stories to get the "client" out of some kind of in-setting trouble. I especially liked the lovecraftian Scooby Doo chapter.
I knew it was part of a shitty jumpchain, but not that it was WC-based, and the previous jumps seemed kind of irrelevant to anything in this particular fic. I also dropped it before he banged anyone. Thanks for the recs, I MIGHT check them out, but porn fics tend to just fall into the same boring template immediately, especially if WC is involved.
oh, you would expect that and the author does do smut but the ones I mentioned do not have any iirc. probably something to do with the author's strange (for the genre) commitment to keeping people in character. Their particular SI doesn't really do casual hookups and so it just takes forever before anything of the sort happens.
How's the edited Unsong so far? I tried to read it ages back and, while I absolutely fuck with the concept, I... actually, I can't remember what made me put it down. Probably the structure, or lack thereof.
Tl;dr if I pick it up again, original or remake?
So far the only changes I've noticed were neutral to very slightly worse, like removing some jokes deemed offensive by some readers. The major structural issues are very much there, so I don't think you'll enjoy it if you pick it back up. I expected this when I heard the edit released, and I had only seen Scott talk about gender swapping a character for kabbalistic reasons like that was a major issue.
As sesquipedalianThaumaturge pointed out, the Iomedae in "in his strength" is in fact the person who would, in the normal timeline, grow up to be the goddess you're familiar with. (From the pathfinder RPG or from planecrash? lintamande's Iomedae is different in some subtle but important ways from the canon pathfinder version.)
Glowfic in general is a complicated web of stories with the same characters being put in a variety of situations; the individual "threads" sometimes don't stand as well on their own if you don't already know the characters. (Planecrash was actually kind of an outlier in terms of how much it was meant to stand alone.) I know you mentioned this in your planecrash review, but it bears repeating, because I think in this case someone who doesn't know the adult (but not yet a god) version of Linta's Iomedae from the other threads she's appeared in (https://glowfic.com/posts/6736 was the first one written and probably a good starting point) is - I don't know if I'd say they were missing out on the point of the story but they're definitely having a reading experience that's not the intended one (and probably not as good).
Which isn't to say that you need to go read millions of words of implied context before you can have an opinion on a glowfic thread, or even that you'd like it better if you did (I, for one, didn't particularly enjoy IHS, though I think for different reasons than you), but I think it's important, if you're exploring glowfic from the outside, to realize that the implied context exists and is part of the intended reading experience.
Note: if you click on a character's name you can see their "profile page", and from there you can find all the threads ("Posts") they've been in. You can also click the link next to "Template", if it exists, to find other "versions" of the same character by the same author.
Yeah, I know I can do that. In this instance, I was recommended the glowfic as its own standalone entry, so blame the recommender.
You read *all* of Augment Gothic? You poor bastard.
....I did too.
I dropped "Time to Orbit: Unknown" near the midpoint-murder plot, glad to know that the ending's good and I think I'll start it up again.
Slay the princess is fun, it scratches that itch that disco disco elysium left (comedy + voices in the head), there's even a good crossover between the two (THE FURY OF A SHATTERED MIRROR) which fills both and creates a new one which I want more of-
Pirates of the caribbean, I have completely forgot that it existed. I remember the first movie, a few bits about the second, and nothing about the third.
> Our Paladin, Iomedae (no relation)
The Iomedae of in His strength is actually almost maximally related to the other Iomedae, being the person who eventually becomes Her (or does in other continuities, I guess).
Huh, I guess I should have figured that out myself
I'm a little bit surprised that you didn't like LOGH, but your reasons are fair. Some aspects of the things you brought up do get better further in the actual series (the side cast becomes a LOT more developed and less idiotic, and a few of the ideological aspects get less on-the-nose) but it's not worth sitting through 55 more hrs of anime if you didn't like what you saw. The fact that it plays everything seriously is the *main* draw of the anime for me, and if that's a negative for you, it does not change from that point on lol.
Given that you didn't like LOGH, do I think you'll like my fanfic? Hm. My confidence has been adjusted to "moderately low", given that it combines two things you are known to be disappointed by (LOGH, and yaoi fanfiction lmfao). But I did write it with the intention to make it readable without seeing the series, so that shouldn't be an issue. And I have a much different Take™️ on the ideas of great men/heroes/history/how battles are conducted/etc than LOGH does, so maybe that will be more interesting to you. [I actually recommend, if you're reading on AO3, to start with the very short side story "Will the Real Mr. Bronner Please Stand Up?" to get an idea of how my approach differs. This will either fill you with confidence that the rest of the series will be an interesting worth-your-time read, or will let you know how early you can quit lol. It's a representative sample, ideas-wise.] But despite that low confidence, I do *hope* you enjoy it if/when you read it! At the very least, it has some literary merit, for whatever that's worth in this world.
Aside from that, thanks for the great newsletter as always. I am always eagerly awaiting the first of the month so that I can see what depths you've been plumbing.
> I kinda hope that changes when I look up the author in a few years.
Cherico has been writing almost continuously for a decade, I would not bother.
Also, did you miss that this was a Waifu catalog fic? There's this whole collaborative Waifu Catalog multiverse that Cherico has built with his fellow QQ author Leecifer with shared characters and lore which tries to make something interesting out of that trashfire of a sysfic trope.
Leecifer himself is a pretty interesting case: consistent and productive enough to have a hefty patreon following, and yet none of his fics have an ending in sight. I'm not sure if his fics are a case study on the Patreon trap or if he is legitimately averse to writing endings. The writing is of consistent quality with a few annoying af quirks (heavy (over)use of italicization along with way too many run-on sentences) , the pacing can be horrendous at times (more patreon incentive effects?), especially around the combat scenes.
All of his active fics on QQ are Waifu Catalog fics (yes, 18 of them). They're all crossovers of some kind but avoid being *too* formulaic with some variety in their premises.
I also find it funny that he really wants to write harem fics but never actually gets around to it - all attempts at more than monogamy breaks up for one reason or another. It's hard to wholeheartedly recc any of these, they are often good popcorn and legitimately some of the most entertaining sysfic around (low bar, I know) but the waifu catalog tag along with the lack of endings is offputting. Nevertheless if you're intent on playing the QQ gacha you can certainly improve your odds with one of his fics:
- Arcane Curiosity Explored: Probably the most "mainstream" of his fics. A Jayce SI with decent character work, good worldbuilding and has a "Book 1" complete. Has poor pacing in a certain arc but you'll know when to start skimming.
- Doomed Skies - The Company (a persistent waifu catalog organization) has sentenced the MC to the "Doomed Skies" program. He's dropped on a minecraft skyblock where a portal opens at certain intervals to crossover worlds just hours before some appocalypse is set off in them. He can try to avert the apocalypse and save people off these worlds but it's difficult with the time-limit. One of the more conceptually interesting Leecifer fics and the episodic nature of it relieves the lack of proper endings.
- Born to Ken - The most meta of these. The MC joins a troubleshooting team within the Company that's entirely composed of Barbie clones. The teams duty is to jump into SI stories to get the "client" out of some kind of in-setting trouble. I especially liked the lovecraftian Scooby Doo chapter.
I knew it was part of a shitty jumpchain, but not that it was WC-based, and the previous jumps seemed kind of irrelevant to anything in this particular fic. I also dropped it before he banged anyone. Thanks for the recs, I MIGHT check them out, but porn fics tend to just fall into the same boring template immediately, especially if WC is involved.
oh, you would expect that and the author does do smut but the ones I mentioned do not have any iirc. probably something to do with the author's strange (for the genre) commitment to keeping people in character. Their particular SI doesn't really do casual hookups and so it just takes forever before anything of the sort happens.