#it's always slightly baffling especially when they follow my main blog

[itstimeforstarwars]

Sometimes a blog that I've followed for years randomly follows me back and then I get nervous because The Guy is in my house and I didn't even get a chance to sweep before Their Coolness showed up.

[coffin-of-eternal-darkness]

Thank you for over 3000 followers

I reached 3000 followers a while ago and even though I didn’t do anything for my other milestones, I thought I should make a post about this one (though I couldn’t think of anything special). After all, 3000 is most likely the highest I will get and it really is an amazing number, considering I’m not doing anything special XD Kinda fitting too. In NnT everything started 3000 years ago, and for my blog everything started 3000 followers ago XD I’m not sure how many people from the old days even follow me anymore, but, thank you all. It’s been some amazing years!

As for what I’ll do… Well, my friend @maybeishouldwait helped me with some question prompts, so it’ll sort of be like an interview? I hope at least some of you are interested. So, let’s start!

1. Let's start with an easy one: how did you discover NNT, and what drew you to it?

I’ve recently answered an ask with a similar question but here we go! It was a complete coincidence. I wasn’t necessarily searching for something. I randomly browsed a manga reading site, probably looking foe updates and the title somehow caught my attention so I clicked on it. I didn’t take it seriously at first, the first chapter really didn’t impress me at all, and I only continued because I thought it was funny. It’s no secret I fell in love with the series but it still baffled me how fast it went from “Lol, this is funny and stupid” to “BEIRHJ I LOVE THIS SO MUCH” in a matter of a only few chapters XD Everything was such a new experience to me. The characters weren’t the usual stereotypes, they were actually deep and interesting. The story took a while to become interesting, at first it was more about just… gathering these super powerful knights and it was so cool to see what kind of crazy character the next one would be. I also loved how I could never see anything coming. Even now that we know what kind of series this is, there are still plottwists like Hawk’s eyes being the portal to purgatory or Cath’s whole appearance that just… could not be predicted and I really love that surprise effect when something unbelievable happens. So I love the characters and the surprises but I also love the story, or rather how it’s told. For the first… 70 or so chapters to me it felt like with every chapter it just got even BETTER than before. I still had a few of those moments in the Commandment saga, just, scenes that blew me away and made me think “Wow, I wonder how much better this series can get”. I think it also was around chapter 70 that I created my blog. And more than anything I think I love the tragedies. It’s hearbreaking but heartwarming at the same time somehow. Not many of you probably know this but my first NnT OTP was actually Banlaine and I cried so much when I read their backstory. I loved how deeply in love they were to the point of sacrificing themselves for the other. Both had to deal with a large chunk of loneliness in their lives and for both of them the other was their salvation. Every time Ban was saying anything about Elaine in the main series I was both crying and cheering for him. By now everything is a tragedy and while I wish there were a few more lighthearted scenes for… personal salvation… I like that and crying about all those characters and CARING for their happiness really helped me get into this series I think.

2. How has your blog changed since it started?

Well, apart from the fact that is has grown popular… I actually think I’ve burned out a but. I write a lot less text posts than before. I had an awful amount of (stupid) theories back in the old days and also an awful amount of free time somehow. Now I feel like I don’t think about theories that often anymore, let alone post them. Part of that is that I’m busy with work and other hobbies, but partly that’s because the series has gotten so long and it’s becoming harder and harder to remember details, especially from the newer chapters. I really want to reread the series but I never get around to do that anymore. I also think that back in the days I more or less posted just anything I found or thought was cool, while nowadays I’m always wondering what I could do. I still try to keep it up but it’s becoming harder and harder. Oh, there’s also a lot more follower interaction too!

3. What are some of your favorite blogs or sites for NNT stuff?

As for sites, I usually only check the official ones, like the official HP or the official Twitter account. As for blogs… I don’t really follow a lot of people since I look through the tag almost on a daily basis anyway. Of course there’s @spoilerkingjuliane, she’s a must follow XD I can also highly recommend @maybeishouldwait since she’s an awesome writer. I always enjoy @nostalgicbookworms gifs a lot and @sdsmangacaps is my go-to account for manga caps. There are a lot more blogs that I really like, there are tons of really good artists on Tumblr and Twitter but since I’m not actually following a lot of them and I fear I’ll forget a few I’d rather not mention them directly and hope they know I appreciate them. The most obvious Twitter account is yuka_sai0127 btw, but there are a lot of others.

4. What advice would you give to someone wanting to make their blog as successful as yours?

Tbh I have no idea how I even got so popular in the first place XD I started on a whim and thought I’d lose motivation immediately and nobody would follow me anyway. But before I knew it I had almost 100 followers in a matter of a few days. Maybe it was my obsession? I also quickly befriended the other popular NnT blogs, that probably helped too. I think it depends on what kind of blog you have, but I think the most important thing is frequent updates and high quality. I also think blogs should have a good balance between your own content and reblogs. There are blogs that live only through reblogs and that’s fine but I think it’s harder to be “interesting” when you don’t have your own content. Try to find something only you can do and do it. @spoilerkingjuliane for example is good at finding info and she is immensely popular because of that. I will forever be slightly jealous of her because I will never reach that level XD”

5. What's the best part of running your blog? What's something you wish was different?

The best part without a doubt is how much it involves me into the fandom. I’m more or less forced to see all kinds of fandom posts and while that’s sometimes stressing me out, I also see a lot of amazing content and being able to share those posts with so many people makes me really happy. Running this blog also helped me boost my own confidence. As I mentioned earlier at the beginning I thought nobody would be interested in my blog anyway and I’d give up right away. But I gained followers quickly and it showed me that yes, I might not be as boring as always I think I am. It showed me that I can do things if I just try. On the downside though, running a popular blog puts a lot of pressure on you, and I constantly feel like I have to do something, have to go through the tag, have to make SOME content somehow. And even when you’re stressed you can’t just take it out on people after all so the stress piles up. That’s probably my own responsibility and not the blog itself that is doing that, but I still wish I could take it more easy.

6. How did you learn Japanese? Did you find it difficult?

Well, it wasn’t easy at least. I started learning Japanese twice, once I gave up quickly because the book I used was a horrible starter and after that I learned the basic grammar and a few words through a magazine crash course. Learning specific words was easier than to learn all hiragana and katakana on their own and since I also knew the basic grammar it made it easier to learn and understand whole sentences. Still, I’m an extremely lazy human being and even though I’ve been learning Japanese for almost half of my life now I very rarely actively studied. Most of the time I would try (and fail) to read manga in Japanese and pick up new words and grammar here and there. But through switching between actually learning and trying to read manga I got better. Once I was at a certain level I bothered a ton of random japanese people too in order to befriend and speak japanese with them, which also helped. I think the most major step in my learning career was getting obsessed with Tales of Vesperia a few years ago tho. I was at a comparatively high Japanese level back then already but playing a game of THAT length completely in japanese was a challenge. I learned a stupid amount of new words and grammar and ways of talking through that game and it probably helped that it was just an amazing game that remains to be my favorite. I’ve also translated a few manga chapters back then that really got me practicing and I also worked at an Udon restaurant with (except for me) 100% japanese staff. And as is the case with all languages… Talking with real people is always the best practice. Then of course my year working in japan gave me the final boost. I still have a ton to learn and I’m nowhere near really GOOD but I like to think my japanese is pretty decent at least.

7. What do you see for the future of your blog?

It won’t be all too long anymore til the manga ends and when that happens there won’t be any theories or reviews to write anymore… There will still be an S3 and possible an S4 and maybe more anime projects. But it will be harder to update the blog with original content. Eventually it will most likely turn into a reblog only blog. But I hope I will have some more time and motivation to actually reread the manga, complete my NnT encyclopedia and update the blog with interesting stuff I find in between. I really want to keep this blog up for a few more years!

No matter how it will turn out though, I’m happy I came so far. I made a whole bunch of good friends during this time and had a lot of fun. To my friends and followers (silent or not): Thank you so much for your support!

[bakechochin]

Book Reviews - The Brothers Cabal

The Brothers Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard - This bloody series has become my happy place, to the extent that I felt obligated to wait seven books after The Fear Institute before reading this one solely so that I don’t go through the series too quickly -> Let it be known right now that whatever minor qualms I have with the individual books, everyone needs to go and read all of these books right now - Okay so obviously the usual staples are here; the world is rich with action and monsters and literary allusions, the narrator remains as hilarious as always, and the story is great fucking fun to follow - The main difference between this book and the others in the series is that it mostly focuses on Horst Cabal rather than Johannes; I’ve seen a few people slightly peeved about this in my low-effort browsing of the reviews for this book in the Amazon comments section, but I don’t see it as a problem -> Horst lacks the cool-headed absolute control and drive that Johannes possesses, but he still provides some excellent narration of the story’s events (both regarding emphasising the action and incorporating some dry comedy), and his characteristics and unique circumstances make for some different (yet still interesting) storytelling stuff than what Johannes could have provided - A few of the issues I had with Detective and the Fear Institute were based around the those books’ imbalance between reality and fantasy (i.e. Detective didn’t have enough fantasy, the Fear Institute wasn’t as centred in reality as I would have liked), but this book manages to replicate what Necromancer did by finding just that right balance, whilst still having a different feel to Necromancer (i.e. fucking Hammer horror film monsters and assassins and secret societies and all sorts of shit) and being its own book - The ending was so fucking great, setting up so much possible cool shit and featuring a pretty good twist and a banger of a cliffhanger - The characters were mostly fucking great, though there were a couple geezers who could have been handled better -> Obviously our protagonists are amazing, I was happy to see a few other old characters return, and I was quite fond of the characters who make up the nefarious secret society in this book (which I found to be better than the Fear Institute in the last book, as we got to see the entirety of the secret society as opposed to just a few members of it); these geezers are just straight fucking evil, and between the necromancers and werewolves and shady enigmatic businessmen, it made for a colourful and memorable cast -> In fact fuck it, pretty much all of the secret societies in this book have sufficiently colourful and interesting characters (with special props going to the geezer Palmer and the Yellow Inquisition), even considering how briefly they’re around for -> However, there are some characters who are just suddenly introduced and who Horst is shanghaied into the midst of with no prior warning suffer for their abrupt appearances and rushed/basic descriptions; it’s never a good sign when you’re reading casually and then all of a sudden you have to stop and think, ‘wait, who the fuck is that?’ -> Also, not wanting to spoil, but characters with mysterious agendas who seem like free agents lose some of that interestingness or uniqueness when you attribute them to a whole group of people, especially when that group of people isn’t really all that interesting - At this point in the series we’re getting to where there’s a rich Johannes Cabal universe building, with references to past events occurring here and there that could potentially baffle a reader, but fortunately I consider myself rather invested in the Cabal universe, having now read four of the novels and three of the short stories, so for me it just made the reading experience more fun being able to pick out the details and references -> Initially I was a wee bit peeved that, with all of these linking plot points from all these books, I thought it would be pretty much guaranteed that any character only referred to by a mysterious title is bound to just be a returning character, but this book surprisingly subverts this in ways that I won’t elaborate on - Horst is good enough on his own for his own bits, but Howard keeps coming up with excuses to mention Johannes; sometimes this is done well and actually fits into the narrative nicely, but other times it feels awfully forced and just serves to remind us that yeah, this story does have Johannes in it - Whilst I do love the early horror film vibe that the new threat in this book seems to be emulating, this vibe is somewhat undermined and fucked about with when the Lord of Powers arrives; not wanting to spoil, but the magic that this geezer has varies from cool if odd stuff to completely fucking ridiculous shit that doesn’t really match the overall vibe of the world, and this saddened me somewhat considering how up to this point all the magic in this series has been great - I kind of miss the wee bits of exposition and world-building delivered in interesting ways that the previous books had; in this book, the interludes are reserved for referring back to the frame narrative and subsequently to allow Johannes to make a few quips - 9/10

I have a load of other book reviews on my blog, check that shit out.