#that parodies the isekai genre

[conspirartist]

Revisiting the character designs I did for my barchelor thesis (part 1/3). The older version is bellow the cut. I tried to stay as close as possible to the original designs, as I still think they work very well...

Anyway, meet Peter, a silver-tongued ghost punished to work as a bartender in his after-life.

[bmpmp3]

BY THE WAY i have been converted. what are your otome isekai/villainess isekai recommendations pwetty pwease......

[professor-doc-emeritus]

finished reading the konosuba light novels today, I think if i have any takeaway form this series it's that even very simple characters can land super well if you use them right. It managed to be entertaining and engrossing the whole way through, even though you can sum up the entirety of each main character in 1 sentence. I know everyone has a different tolerance for humor, and I'm certain for a lot of people the core jokes got old fast, but for me it managed to stay amusing and compelling throughout. Just throwing the main characters against different fantasy scenarios always managed to make the humor hit. It even left me wanting more, which is impressive considering it's a 17 volume series. Fingers crossed the author gets around to that sequel series he teased a few years back

[writingwithcolor]

Any advice for handling race in reincarnation situations?

@swamp-spirit asked:

I'm writing a story that includes characters being reincarnated with completely different appearances. It's a fantasy world, and most of the characters are being reborn in the same region, but I still want a range of skin tones and features in the main cast (this is a comic). I have weird feelings about a character being 'reborn' with notably lighter or darker skin, but it also feels implausible and lazy for people to Just Happen to have a similar appearance when the theology of the story doesn't support it. Characters being reborn, and taking out things specific to real life groups, what are the major things you'd want an author to read up on or take into account? (Note: there is not a 'white' looking ethnic group in this story)

I don’t think it’s a problem as long as the skin tones don’t have any correlation to the circumstances that they’re reincarnated into.

- SK

It’s an interesting question, because in most religions where reincarnation/ transmigration of the soul is a feature of “what happens after death”, remembering one’s past life is not really part of the package deal. From what you’ve written, it’s not clear to me where the “memory” of these characters’ lives are held. Is there a 3rd person omniscient narrator telling the audience who each person is in their next life or do the characters themselves retain memory of past lives?

Assuming this is your typical reincarnation scenario where characters retain no memory of previous lives, it doesn’t much matter. The next life is the next life. Who a person was in their previous life and that identity, in theory, means nothing to them. This also means whatever personality, values, experiences and so on they had in their previous life no longer has meaning. They are, in effect, another person. However, you say you feel awkward about the above which makes me wonder if characters are remembering past lives, in which case…

If you study pretty much any major Asian religion where reincarnation is a part of the belief system, having no memory of the previous life is par for the course. In present-day religions like Jainism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism, only “special” (I’m using the term very casually here) entities like bodhisattvas, guru, arihant, buddhas, etc. usually get to keep their memories, while the rest of us (literal) mere mortals are supposed to lose our memories between lives as a part of Samsara. In Hinduism, even the gods often forget their previous lives, unless their reincarnation had a targeted purpose (Like being born to defeat an evil entity). 

For most people, it is only through prayer, devotion, meditation and accumulated virtuous/ good/ compassionate deeds that humans are thought to deepen their understanding of the nature of the universe, and thus have the capacity to remember past lives (I’m, again, paraphrasing very loosely here from several years worth of university history+religion courses).  

This is why the isekai genre in Japan is largely regarded as a “cheat”/ parody genre of fantasy. The protagonist, according to common Japanese cultural beliefs, which are quite heavily grounded in Buddhism, is definitively “cheating.” Not to get too ironically biblical, the character’s success often comes from the forbidden knowledge borne of their previous life. 

Thus, there are two ways I look at your characters’ predicaments: 

It’s not technically reincarnation - not by the way most major world religions define reincarnation, anyway. You have people who died now inhabiting other bodies, but that’s not the same as the transmigration of the soul. Also, you want to delve into the weirdness (and maybe heaviness) of “Wow, I went to sleep with one face and woke up with another.” There are certainly stories about people who have had dramatic cosmetic plastic surgery, weight loss surgery, HRT, etc. and then experienced the difference in the “before” versus “after” of how their altered physical appearance makes them feel, as well as how other people treat them. Even if the community your characters are born into now differs from their previous community (Which I guess would make this more a “I traveled between dimensions, and my appearance altered in the process” sci-fi adjacent affair), their new life will still have social environments with differing attitudes towards human physical appearance that will affect your characters’ emotional states. 

Isekai it up and play with the ridiculous contradiction of having past lives and differing memories of one’s appearance. Isekai manga, manhwa and webtoons all make use of this trope heavily, especially with protagonists who experience a “glow-up” (Ex. Going from a Plain Jane OL to beautiful fantasy heroine) or, by contrast, protagonists who end up in very different forms from their original lives (Tensura, I’m a Spider, So What?). I’d be creative and go even more granular. Being able to tan after a lifetime of getting sunburns or no longer needing glasses might be nice, but what if the new body lacks the enzymes to process dairy or alcohol? What about dealing with differences in hair texture? Skincare routines? What about living life as a very tall person after being quite short or vice versa? What if you bumped into an acquaintance from your previous life, and one of you clearly got a more “coveted” reincarnation?  See how far of an extreme you can take this idea until it feels too uncomfortable or ridiculous. 

Marika.

[sleep-drunk-kitten]

𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐲 𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐞𝐬 | 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞

pairing: enhypen x fem!reader

genre: crack, fluff, isekai!au, royalty!au

content warnings: slight allusion to suicidal thoughts, swearing, reader is anxious about the possibility of being killed

summary: after dying in a freak accident involving a suspiciously familiar white and blue truck, y/n wakes to find herself in the body of a petty side villain from a romance fantasy novel, doomed to die at the hands of her own fiance.

notes: I'm terrible at summaries but the girlies who get it get it!! This short series is going to be a very lighthearted parody of your typical romance isekai manhwa🤭with all the usual shenanigans and tropes that typically follow! I hope you all enjoy~

I will be making a taglist for this fic, so if you're interested in being added please either drop an ask or let me know in the comments

Everything after the cut IS proofread for once, but please feel free to let me know if any typos slipped through the cracks!

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  “Let's go over this one more time,” you say, pacing back and forth, shivering as your feet press into cold marble.

  “You said that five rehashes ago babe,” your best friend whines, head lolling over the side of your bed, “I think we get the plot, a bunch of Very Hot men all want you dead because you're sexy and you don't get along with their needy pick me girlfriend.”

  “That- well I mean yeah,” you sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose, “but that's not the point, Sun, the point is that we need to figure out how to make sure I, y'know, don't fucking die?!” 

  Sunoo groans, his silky black pyjamas blending into your tangled sheets so they cascade around him in an inky puddle when he slides closer to the floor. “The Princess was a bitch, a mean grumpy little thot, just don't be a hoe, avoid the Hot Men, and you should be fine- yah! What's with the face!-”

  Expression pressed somewhere between exasperation and disgust, you shake your head at him. 

  “You've clearly never read an isekai manhwa, you can’t just run away from the plot, it holds onto you like a clingy stalker ex… sometimes as a clingy stalker ex.”

  “So? Just… stick with plan Don’t Be A Thot?” he pauses for a moment before a shit eating grin spreads across his face, and you preemptively snag a pillow off the loveseat beside you. “It'll be hard to pretend to be something you're not but I'm sure you can do it!” 

  And there it is. 

  With well-practised precision, the embroidered cushion lands squarely in his face. 

  “This is my life on the line here Kim Sunoo! Could you take it seriously for just two seconds?”

  Against your will, your eyes begin to sting with tears, limbs already growing restless in the few moments you've been standing still, fatigue and fear battling under your skin. 

  You hadn't slept peacefully in over three weeks. Your mind refusing to shut down of its own volition since you'd woken up in the room you now paced in, in the body you now paced in. 

  For the first four days, you were insane. 

  Screaming and pleading with a man who claimed to be your father, confused by the sorrow in his eyes and the tenderness in his hands as he prevented you from leaving your room.

  Babbling through tears to the maids who filtered in and out, telling them that the title they were calling you by was not your own.

  Curled into a corner of a closet, trying and failing to steady your breathing as you slowly came to terms with the fact that this was really happening. 

  You'd been truck-kun-ed clean out of the life you'd known. 

  Despair followed. 

  Hopeless, hollow grief when you realised what your name in this particular world might mean. 

  Princess y/n l/n. 

  Spoiled and arrogant daughter of the Duke.

  A side villain of little significance set to die for the sake of the female lead. 

  Set to die.

  You'd laughed when it hit you. The one thing you'd wanted more than anything in your previous life was being handed to you on a silver platter. How fortuitous. 

  It wasn’t until the eighth day, when you'd resigned yourself to your fate, that Sunoo came crashing through the large oak doors that were usually locked to keep you in, raised voices and a stamped of footsteps following behind him. 

  “SHE'S MY FRIEND I CAN SEE HER WHENEVER THE HELL I WANT,” he’d shouted. 

  Slamming your doors shut as he turned to face you. 

  He was the one who'd been running, face flushed, chest rising and falling rapidly. But it felt like you were the one catching your breath, heart pounding in your ears. 

  “Sunoo?...” his name was barely a whisper on your lips.

  “(y/n),” relief flooded his features, “you're here.”

  He stumbled towards you, pulling you into his chest, body shaking as he held you so tight you could barely breathe. 

  “You're here you're here you're here-” he babbled, tears soaking through your clothes. 

  It took a long time to console him, and longer still for you to believe that he was there, puffy face squished between your shaking hands. 

  You remembered he'd been walking with you when the accident happened, his smiling face frozen in time when the headlights rushed closer. But you'd thought he survived. You didn't imagine for a second that he'd somehow landed in the same world as you. 

  That he'd be just as annoying in this world as he was in the last.

  “Okay okay, I'm sorry,” he says in the present, standing and dragging your blankets with him, “I was trying to lighten things up, you've been stressing about this too much, I’m worried.”

  And when he waddles next to you and wraps you in a hug, you know you wouldn't trade his annoying ass for anything. Sunoo was the reason you were trying to find a way to survive this in the first place. Without him, you knew you would've probably gone with the flow of the story, allowing the gallows to take you. 

  “I'm not stressing.”

  “Sweetie, you have a whole conspiracy theory board pinned into what I think is a very valuable painting of your grandfather.”

  “Touchè.”

  You both turn to look at said board, a mess of string and poorly sketched portraits pinned to a painting of a grumpy looking old man on a white horse. “Remind me again who's who, I think I have the gay prince mixed up with the emo soldier boy.”

  You smile, rolling your eyes, knowing full well he has no trouble remembering the character’s you’d told him about at least a dozen times. 

  “This one,” you say, pointing to an angular stick figure with a crown surrounded by sparkles, “is the crown prince who I'm engaged to because of fuckin’ course.”

  Sunoo nods, “Of fuckin’ course.”

  “The buff one is the knight I hire to kidnap the female lead when I think his royal highness has a thing for her, except knightey over here has a conscience and thinks the female lead is too pure and sweet to kidnap or whatever and ends up vowing to protect her or something.”

  “You'd think someone with a conscience would have the decency to do a job if they had the audacity to take money for it, I mean he had no issue kidnapping a chick before he had the hots for her, that's kinda gross.”

  “When you put it like that… anyway, the last two are a priest who wants her for her divine powers blah blah blah and the crown prince's illegitimate little brother.”

  “His brother?” 

  “Yeaaa…”

  “There’s other fish in the sea my man…” he says, giving the second crowned stick figure a sympathetic little pat. “So of the lot, who's the biggest threat?”

  “My fiance…”

  “No matter what we decide to do, you gotta dump the guy right?”

  “Yes,” you say, confidence creeping into your voice. “There are a lot of variables, I've read enough of these things to know that 90% of the time they get kinda weird about their fiances when they dump them, but it's gotta be done.” 

  “Then we start there, the rest of this nonsense can't be figured out till it happens.”

  He waves a hand at the other coloured threads linking squares of paper with possible outcomes and scenarios scribbled over them.

  “That's true…” you breathe, brows furrowed, eyes darting across the board.

  Sunoo’s lips curl into a slight pout when he sees you slipping back into the agitated state he’d been trying to coax you out of for the past fortnight. If he were being completely honest with you, he doesn’t believe in all this isekai nonsense, sure that if you simply avoid the plot you could easily live out your lives as a wealthy nobles without much trouble, but he knows that there isn’t much point in arguing with you. No, the best way to look out for you would be to support you as he’d always done, to have your back in this world the same way he had in the last, even if he thought you were being ridiculous.  

With a sigh, Sunoo presses a thumb into the crease between your eyes, distracting you from the painting of your grandfather, holding back a smile at the way your nose scrunches in annoyance.

  “Stop worrying,” he says, smoothing over the spot a few times before planting a kiss on your forehead, “whatever happens, we'll handle it together, okay?”

  “...Okay,” you breathe, resting your forehead on his shoulder.

  He presses a kiss to the top of your head, arms encircling your waist, the warm pressure of his presence surrounding you comforting. The one constant that had followed you into this life. “Plus, we’re early, aren’t we? The plot of your novel doesn’t start for…”

  “Another year,” you sigh, “It all starts in their second year at the royal academy, when the female lead shows up as a transfer from the land they were at war with till a while ago… a show of peace or something once it’s all over.” 

  “We have time… you’ll be just fine babe, he says. “Plus, you keep worrying about them killing you, but don't they always end up falling in love with the dimension yeeted villainess in those comics?”

  You scoff, pulling away. “I highly doubt that's possible Sunoo, I'm not the main villainess, I'm just a random side character.”

  “A gorgeous, quick witted, adorable little random side character with an amazing sense of humour and such a big brain that she chooses to use for the dumbest things-”

  “Sunoo!” you laugh, plucking another cushion off your couch to throw at him. 

  There was absolutely no way.

  …

  Right?

[mahou-furbies]

The more recent magical girl titles have made me think about the trends in the genre. Or more specifically in the henshin heroine/magical girl warrior sub-genre.

This is what the magical girl genre as I see it is built upon, stories aimed at girls where the heroines transform into a cute outfit and fight monsters. And if a character in a non-mg work is a fan of an in-universe magical girl show, this is usually what is referenced (rather than the cute witch or magical idol type). Lately there has been very few new IPs like these aimed at a younger audience; a ton of older hits are getting some kind of reboots or sequels, but outside Precure there aren't that many new titles. And the Precure seasons of course are a part of the franchise instead of something totally new.

When Madoka came along it caused a wave of other darker magical girl titles, with their premise being some variation of "what if the stories from the previous group were edgy?". And, contrary to what detractors say, they mostly have something new to offer and aren't just Madoka clones, though I think it's obvious that Madoka's success is what led to the creation of so many of them.

I feel that the golden age of the edgy magical girls has also passed, and now the new works like these are generally a part of an existing franchise (namely Madoka), and the new magical girl shows aimed at an older audience tend to be parody types, like MahoAko, Magical Girl Destroyers or Machikado Mazoku. Or the parodies have been there all along, but nowadays they're more prominent when there's not many of the more straightforward stories around. In general otaku media experiments with genre elements a lot (seriously look at all the isekai premises for example), so these genre-aware works are par for the course.

What feels fresh is the increasing amount of magical girl titles aimed at a younger/non-otaku audience that are more genre aware and have characters who know what a magical girl is and have expectations on what they should be like, or at least expect the audience to. Here we have MahoAku (a fluffy comedy of how the magical girl and the evil officer are in love), Magilumiere (magical girl is a regular job for adults in this universe), Acro Trip (the main character is a normie and a magical girl fan) or Mahou Shoujo Dandelion, which inspired this post in the first place (a manga where one of the monsters is friends (family?) with the magical girl).

Here's to hoping for more popularity for these! While I would very much like for more new magical girl stories with a more straightforward premise, I also welcome any variety with open arms. Especially when Precure as pretty much the only other player in the game of non-reboot non-otaku magical girl anime IPs is so categorically opposed to doing anything new with its story.

[starfieldcanvas]

You seem like the appropriate person to ask, so might as well. How do I read Scum Villain's Self Saving System? I'm an english only reader that's not very familiar with the danmei ecosystem.

It's been published in English! Big bookstores like Barnes & Noble are carrying Seven Seas danmei these days. My local indie carries them as well. And of course you can buy them on Bookshop or your preferred online retailer. There are four volumes in the English printing, which comprise the original chapters, a lot of illustrations, some translator notes on the basics of cultivation novels and Chinese forms of address, and the "extras", bonus chapters that are a fairly common addition to books that were originally published as pay-per-chapter webnovels.

My local library system has at least one copy of every volume. I do live in a large city (with a large Asian population to boot), but I don't know how relevant that is. The series was an NYT bestseller, so it's totally plausible that even a medium-size county system would have them too. And if you're very patient, you can always request the series be added to your local library catalog.

But the obvious easy answer is that the whole thing is (shh!) still online. 'Lily's BC translation' made it through the whole thing, and there are other slightly smoother fan translations that you can start off with before switching translations when you run out of chapters.

The issue with reading it online is that you're going to run into some odd mixes of preservation vs translation vs localization ('Shidi' sounds much nicer than 'Junior Apprentice-Brother', imo. but why is it always Regret of Chunshan and never Regret of Spring Mountain?) and some transplanted Mandarin dialogue formatting (often it's just [Charactername, "Dialogue"] with no dialogue tag at all) that will take a little getting used to. The translator notes are a lot more colorful, though!

Scum Villain is a fun trip to read knowing pretty much nothing going into it. It's a convergence (and parody) of four different genres: stallion novel, danmei, isekai/transmigration, and cultivation/xianxia. Stop here if you want to go in genre-blind!

Here are my random thoughts about what might be nice for new readers to know IF they don't feel like dropping themselves in the deep end and learning by osmosis:

Stallion novels:

This is the type of webnovel being parodied by Scum Villain's book-within-a-book Proud Immortal Demon Way. Kinda like a harem anime, but more focused on providing a satisfying male power fantasy. Though you can definitely get the gist of it just from the exposition in Scum Villain, there were a few misconceptions I walked away with at the end of the book. This rundown on AO3, Stallion Novels: A Guide, is a brief introduction to the genre and how it differs from or overlaps with other genres of Chinese webnovel.

Danmei:

The popular danmei that have made it the furthest into Western circulation don't necessarily give a representative sampling of common-denominator danmei tropes, precisely because the popular stuff is usually the memorable standouts rather than the generic pulp. So just keep in mind that the common gong (seme) archetype is the dangerous, demanding, quasi-rapist huge-dicked dom who magically makes dry pounding feel insanely pleasurable, and the shou (uke) archetype is the delicate virginal younger man who says no but means yes and cries prettily during sex. These traits WILL be thrown in a blender and parodied, lovingly.

Isekai/transmigration:

This is the trope where you die in real life and wake up in a fantasy world (typical isekai) or in an explicitly fictional setting you recognize from your real-world media consumption (fairly typical transmigration.) Especially in the Chinese webnovel side of the genre, there's often a lot of emphasis on 'leveling up', point farming, and getting 'achievements' like in a video game. Access to this game system typically gives the player advantages over the natural inhabitants of the new world. If there isn't a game system, the player usually still has some kind of magical specialness conferred by being from 'the real world', such as knowledge of how the plot will go. These things will, again, be parodied all to hell.

Cultivation/xianxia:

It's apparently pretty common for westerners ignorant of Daoism and new to xianxia ("immortal heroes") stories to assume cultivation stuff is unique to whatever cultivation-setting book they happened to pick up first. If you had never heard of vampires and then you watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you'd be forgiven for initially assuming that the show invented vampires, but you'd misunderstand its commentary on existing vampire lore, and it would probably be confusing how much vampire stuff it inexplicably expected you to already know. With that in mind, you can see why it might be helpful to have a vague awareness of what "cultivation" refers to in xianxia novels.

Here's my stab at it: "cultivation" means something like "increasing one's spiritual energy reserves and improving one's control over spiritual energy (qi) through meditation, study, and physical discipline, in order to develop a powerful core of spiritual energy that can heal wounds, enable powerful martial techniques, slow visible aging or stop aging entirely, and allow a person to forgo food and sleep indefinitely as they transcend the limitations of their physical body and become immortal, maybe even ascending to godhood."

Usually cultivators practice cultivation in cultivation sects - these sects are typically depicted as a cross between a temple, a boot camp, a university campus, and a small independent political entity

Everyone in the same sect ("martial family") refers to each other using sect-flavored family terms. Two people of the same generation are sect-siblings and will use sibling suffixes with the "shi-" prefix to indicate it's a sect relationship. Your sect mentor is your shizun/shifu ("honored teacher-mentor-master"/"teacher-mentor-master"). Someone in your mentor's generation is your sect-uncle or sect-aunt; they'll refer to you as their sect-niece or sect-nephew.

Similar to how Chinese family name suffixes differ by age order, sect-family suffixes differ depending on seniority (i.e. when your master took you as a disciple, relative to the other disciples.) But different novels play with these seniority rules differently and may assign suffixes by age alone or by some other ranking system.

Westerners occasionally get freaked out when people in the same sect generation fall in love because the characters are sect siblings. But there's no incest implied at all—it's nothing more than two people being in the same boarding school or church congregation.

If a cultivator is not in a sect, they're called a rogue cultivator ; this confers less stability and political prestige, but despite the name, rogue cultivators are not outlaws or apostates. It just means "independent."

Cultivators will often accept requests from civilians to deal with marauding monsters and mysterious ghost-related deaths. How much money they expect for their services is generally tied to how righteous they are.

Depending on their chosen cultivation path, they may be more martial or less martial. Cultivators of the sword path use spiritual swords that can (1) work like a regular sword but better, (2) project power at range in a glowing beam called a sword glare, or (3) be directed remotely in battle using hand seals (adopted into Daoism from Buddhism, known elsewhere as mudras) or wordless telepathy. Some cultivators of the sword path will nevertheless have non-sword spiritual weapons or favor other qi-powered martial techniques.

Cultivators make use of talismans (spells written in red cinnabar ink on strips of paper and then activated, often used like throwable magic stickers) and arrays (more powerful, longer-lasting spells painted or carved into locations or objects.)

Various stages of core formation may be referenced to indicate power levels. Reaching a new stage may involve some kind of tribulation, health risk, or grueling purification process (e.g. expelling all your body's impurities out through your pores as black goo.)

Spiritual energy is channelled through pathways in your body called spirit veins to key points called meridians. Different people may be said to have different types of spirit veins typed according to the five elements. A trained cultivator can examine someone's meridians to check their spiritual health or cultivation aptitude.

Strain on your psyche or your spiritual energy can lead to what's called a qi deviation, where the spiritual energy circulating through you gets fucked up and you have the spiritual equivalent of a stroke. Sufferers may bleed from all their face holes, lash out mindlessly at anyone who comes near them, hallucinate, straight-up die, or endure wacky shenanigans like temporarily reverting to childhood.

Cultivators may use external alchemy to create power-boosting pills in small alchemical cauldrons.

Dual cultivation is exchanging energy through sex in order to aid in spiritual regulation or to mutually increase power levels. It can be done in a one-sided way to steal spiritual energy, which is known as making a human cauldron. In the real religious practice on which the fantasy version is based, dual cultivation relies on the exchange of men's yang and women's yin, but somehow in danmei xianxia the m/m couples seem to manage it just fine...

Different Chinese novels and shows do different variations on cultivation (the same way Western shows do variations on vampires/angels/demons/etc) but they're all ultimately drawing on the same Daoist tradition of internal alchemy (also called The Way of the Golden Elixir) with bits of Buddhism and Chinese folk religion mixed in. (Chinese folk religion is usually where the monster/ghost/demon stuff comes from.)

Other stuff:

Scum Villain is peppered with a bunch of trope references that will be largely unfamiliar to most western readers, like "white lotus"/"black lotus", "blackened", "black belly", and so on. It also borrows a few Japanese archetype references here and there. "Cannon fodder" is fairly self-explanatory at least.

It's fun to look these up, but it's equally fun to just figure them out from context.

Hope this helps! Enjoy your reading!

[st-just]

🔥generic seasonal isekai.

Literally do not get the appeal at all. Like I can't even be really mean here because I can't stand sitting through one of them long enough to make any good jokes. The whole genre feels like self-parody of shameless wish-fulfillment adventure stories.

[liquidstar]

Is konosuba funny and should I watch it?

I only watched 3 episodes so idrk. I think there were genuinely a lot of really funny jokes but I also think it fell kinda flat and was predictable at other points. Like, you could see the joke of the main guy using his steal ability to steal panties a mile away. And for a series known for being an expectation subversive absurdist parody, it's kinda disappointing how often it resorts to the most generic anime boob jokes and stuff.

That kinda stuff CAN be funny though, I thought The Vampire Dies In No Time has a lot of really funny and really dumb shit in the same vein (can still be hit or miss) this isn't a sex jokes=BAD thing, it's just the I've seen so many of these same jokes done already so... It doesn't hit.

The stuff that actually is funny in konosuba is when they actually subvert genre conventions for the gag. I kinda like the concept of all the characters sucking. Like isekai seinfeld, as many people have compared it too. I can very easily see it becoming better the more you watch and the more the character dynamics grow on you. But I never did get past episode 3 so I can't say

[anyablackwood]

WIP Aesthetic Tag

Thanks for the tag, @mysticstarlightduck! I'll be going with Traveling Bards!

Rules: "Make a moodboard for your WIP, a playlist (3+ songs/music will suffice but it can be as long as you want) and describe the Vibe of your WIP."

Playlist:

Soldier, Poet, King by The Oh Hellos

Strawberry Blond by Mitski

Fireflies (Cullen Vance cover) by Owl City

Passerine by The Oh Hellos

Dancer and the Moon by Blackmore's Night

Kingdom Dance from Tangled

Second Child, Restless Child by The Oh Hellos

Some of these are songs I think they'd play, some of them are just the general vibes of the story (or both)

Inspo/Vibe:

Pseudo-Medieval (early Renaissance?) era fantasy world

Initially meant to be a parody of otome (female-oriented dating sim) games/otome Isekai (reincarnation) webcomics

Rapidly devolved into a regular isekai comedy that only occasionally pokes fun at the genre

World-traveling comedic adventure with a trio of sisters and the boy they aggressively adopted along the way

A comedy that's totally a comedy and doesn't have a single bit of seriousness in it whatsoever, says the author who's never written a comedy and makes everything angsty even if she doesn't want to

Magic, music, and monsters, oh my!

Bucket list globe-trotting romp with sisters that incidentally collect an increasing amount of crimes along the way

MCs are fantasy nerds that intentionally aim to hit every standard Hero Adventure story beat and live out their nerdy dreams

Gently tagging: @pandoras-comment-box, @amaiguri, @creatrackers, and anyone else who's interested!

[crehador]

brother crab's summer 2024 first impressions: isekai shikkaku

idk if we needed another anime dazai when the best one already exists

talking about him of course

anyway. in all seriousness. i'd say isekai shikkaku is solidly Fine But Not Good for now, it does nothing really special with the parody isekai genre. in terms of like... harem of girls obsessed with isekai'd mc who is completely oblivious and concerned with other things <- that trope? isekai oji-san does it way better

so all this one really has going for it, in terms of uniqueness, is the i guess constant stream of (attempted) suicide jokes that come bundled with dazai as a character. but can you really sustain a series on just that

well eating poison off the floor like a whorish cat is something i suppose

for kamiyan i will be continuing. i feel like i haven't seen him in anything all year. but so far it's just... mid, if i'm being generous

[weaselandfriends]

The Making Of: Cleveland Quixotic

I. Context

After I finished Chicago in 2019, a powerful and persistent fatigue gripped me: the fabled "burnout." The next two years would be the least productive of my literate life. As one day ebbed into the next, I wondered if I would ever be able to write again. I thought of Andrew Hussie, who, after years of feverish activity on Homestuck, seemed now capable of only short spurts of creation, heavily assisted by amanuenses.

It wasn't an issue of knowing what to write. I had been developing the idea for Cockatiel x Chameleon since 2015. I knew its plot, characters, scenes, themes. But when I tried to manifest it into reality I felt drained. What I managed to scrawl was junk, far below my standards. Goaded by a lurking terror of infinite lassitude, I forced myself to blurt 60,000 words of an initial draft; loathing it, I scrapped it entirely.

That was when I got the idea to write a "fun" story.

My vision for Cockatiel x Chameleon was technically complex and emotionally demanding. Maybe something simpler, a straightforward adventure, would be a stepping stone to recovery. I thought back to Fargo, which I had written (unlike most of my works) with relative ease and minimal forethought. How could I emulate that experience? What made Fargo so easy compared to Chicago and Cockatiel x Chameleon?

After reflection, I concluded that Fargo was, at its core, a revenge story. Revenge stories are older than dinosaur dirt. They are fundamental to human experience, easily understood, all structure inherent in their premise. The hero, wronged, seeks revenge on the villain. From that sentence alone you understand the protagonist's motivation and the plot's direction: trending inexorably toward final confrontation. With such a powerful core, it'd been easy to add details and complications to Fargo as they popped into my head, without warping the story's innate trajectory.

If I wanted another "easy" writing experience, I decided, I needed a similar type of story. Something with a clear premise that removes the burden of planning. A "template plot," where beginning/middle/end is fundamentally present and the writer merely adds their own spin. It took little time to think of such a story type. After all, it had been ubiquitous in Japanese media for the past decade. Not only was it popular with readers, it was appealing to amateur authors; many of its biggest examples originated as web fiction.

I decided I would write an isekai.

II. The Isekai Genre

A person from the real world is transported to a fantasy world.

Not quite as old as the revenge story. Nonetheless, this narrative concept has existed for over 100 years. The premise immediately informs the challenges the protagonist will encounter. They will adapt to a world they know little about, introduce knowledge from modern Earth society, and rise in power and prominence. Toss in a Demon King hellbent on world domination and you get a clear narrative climax. The details can be changed nearly any way without issue.

(Or so I thought.)

In retrospect, I myself was being transported to a new world. If we ignore The Chronicles of Narnia or The Pagemaster or Digimon Adventure and focus solely on the contemporary isekai genre (say 2012 on), which is what I intended to emulate, my experience extended to only the following titles:

1. Sword Art Online

2. Log Horizon

3. No Game No Life

4. The Saga of Tanya the Evil (or Youjo Senki)

5. KonoSuba

This is not only a pitiful sample size, but a specifically poor representation of the genre. Sword Art Online and Log Horizon exist in their own subgenre—trapped in a video game—and have many oddities unseen in more traditional isekai. No Game No Life and Tanya the Evil are "real" isekais, but both have unique worlds that eschew most traditional fantasy elements (especially in Tanya's case). And KonoSuba is a parody.

Nonetheless, I felt that, via cultural osmosis, I "understood" the isekai genre. Based on a few video essays I once watched that roasted dreck like Trapped in Another World with a Smartphone, and reverse engineering KonoSuba's parody, I conceived an impression of isekai as wish fulfillment: A loser gets another chance at life, often with some boon to ensure they don't muck it up this time. They become the hero, triumph with their strength and modern intelligence, and meet lots of attractive women.

I smirked. Heh, I thought. What if I made an isekai... that wasn't wish fulfillment! Truly novel. Let us take the premise of KonoSuba—a benevolent god gives a loser a second chance in a fantasy world—and turn it on its head. Instead of a benevolent god, what if the main character was sent by... a devil? The loser protagonist makes a Faustian bargain to become a hero. They get exactly what they wish for, except they're still a loser at heart, and inevitably bungle everything due to their own social incompetence.

That was the flashpoint. Ideas came together quickly, exactly as I hoped. Soon I had a narrative. It went like this:

III. The Original Idea

Our protagonist is a bumbling failure who lives with his mother. One day he sees an advertisement for a devil's wish-granting service. Being a fan of isekai anime, he goes to the devil and wishes to be sent to another world, one where he'll be the most powerful person. The devil, a sleek and professional businesswoman, agrees to the unusual wish, but pushes the work of actually creating the world to an overstressed, chain-smoking intern. The intern cobbles the world together in a matter of hours and our protagonist embarks on his journey.

He arrives to find the human kingdom besieged by the Demon King's army. The humans are outnumbered; total defeat is imminent. Just as he wished, though, the protagonist possesses incredible power. He charges into the fray, destroys the demon army singlehandedly in instants, and slays the Demon King himself soon after. The protagonist enters the human kingdom hailed as a hero.

Soon, the Human King emerges from his castle to express his immense gratitude. He offers the hero anything, including his daughter's hand in marriage. The hero takes one look at the princess―named either Mayfair or Viviendre, I wasn't sure which―sees she is exceedingly beautiful, and eagerly agrees. He's gotten exactly what he always wanted!

Unbeknownst to him, the king is a schemer. Advised by two strange beings—the rotund fairy Tetzel and the living plant Tintoretto—the king believes the hero is too popular; the people would side with him if he sought the throne. The king offers his daughter not in goodwill but to tie the hero to his side. His ultimate goal is to control the hero's power to imperialistically expand his kingdom.

Meanwhile, the princess has her own schemes. She's a lesbian and has zero intention of sleeping with the hero. In a comic scene, she gives the hero excuse after excuse why they can't sleep in the same bed despite being married; the hero naively buys it. Eventually he catches on, but while he's upset by the situation, he's too morally upstanding to do anything but accept it. (This would be a recurring theme: The hero could use his strength to force people to do what he wanted, but constantly shirks from doing so because he refuses to act in a way unbecoming of a hero. His morality and desires exist in a constant state of push and pull.)

Eventually, the hero and his wife compete for the affections of various female characters, with the wife always winning. Temporary the elf was part of this subplot: A dimwitted ambassador to be competitively wooed. To keep the hero sated, his wife buys him a female slave to use "as he likes." The hero, possessed of modern anti-slavery sensibilities, is appalled. He instantly frees the slave girl and enters a crusade to abolish slavery in the kingdom. Unfortunately, because he is not particularly smart, when he debates the slaveowners over the evils of slavery they routinely trounce him (using many arguments real-world slaveowners once used). Again, he could use his incredible power to kill the slaveowners, but they're law-abiding members of society. Murdering them would be "immoral" in the hero's eyes despite his staunch belief in the immorality of their actions.

Around this time, the hero finally uses his power for something good and sends gold back home to his financially poor mother. Unfortunately, this charitable act also goes awry when his sister, an IRS agent, thinks his disappearance is a ploy to evade taxes. She gathers a posse: her coworker boyfriend, his two friends (I called them Aaron Van Zandt and Allen Van Langevelde, envisioning an American Psycho vibe), and a private detective. Using security camera footage they track the protagonist's last known movements to a dingy apartment building, where they find the overworked devil intern who created the world and force him to send them there too.

They roll out in a huge SUV: Five people plus the hapless intern, armed with guns and equipment. The king, not wishing to lose the hero, decides he must intercept them before the hero learns of their existence. In a big setpiece-style scene reminiscent of Children of Men, a horde of knights ambush the SUV on a forest road. Arrows fly through the front windshield, killing the boyfriend (passenger seat) with an arrow to the neck and wounding Aaron Van Zandt (driver). The SUV crashes into a tree and the sister flees on foot, followed by Allen Van Langevelde, who has barely spoken before then but who now reveals themselves to be a badass marksman as they dispatch knight after knight with efficient hunting rifle shots. The private detective is wounded in the leg and forced to remain behind, while the devil intern cowers in the backseat. Aaron Van Zandt limps out of the driver's seat and attempts to follow Van Langevelde, but a knight on horseback rushes past him and knocks him down a steep incline, where he smashes his head on a rock and seemingly dies.

The knights surround the vehicle. The private detective fights back, but is overwhelmed and killed. The devil intern is captured to be burned at the stake later. The sister and Van Langevelde escape on foot, but without the intern, they can't leave the world. They need to rescue him before he is executed. Meanwhile, Van Zandt, clinging to life, is discovered by fairies and brought to their court.

And then...

IV. The Problem

And then I got stuck.

First, it should be clear by now that I did not actually have a plot. I had a series of incidents, loosely organized. Vaguely I knew the main character would work to overcome his social ineptitude and ultimately truly succeed, accomplishing the character growth his get-rich-quick Faustian bargain could never provide. But nothing came together in a coherent structure. Despite my intention to stick to a template plot, I instantly destroyed the template by killing the Demon King in the first chapter. I still had character conflicts and ideas to pursue, but no actual story.

Plus, the main character being a loser made him—well, a loser. Even if he eventually grew, he still ate shit again and again before vanishing entirely from the big action setpiece.

So my original idea of quickly and easily constructing an isekai plot hit a roadblock. Luckily, it was now 2021. After two idle years my fatigue seeped slowly out of me. Finally I regained my energy; I no longer needed to write a "fun" story. I decided to shelve the isekai, potentially permanently, and worked on Cockatiel x Chameleon in earnest.

This time, the draft of Cockatiel x Chameleon―which would be the final draft―progressed acceptably. It consumed my entire focus and I might not have thought about the isekai at all if not for two hiccups. First, though I now had the mental willpower to technically execute my ideas, the emotionally intense material of Cockatiel x Chameleon still left me sometimes wistfully longing for a story not quite so bleak and harrowing. Second, I revisited the isekai genre.

V. The Isekai Genre, Part 2

The anime analysis YouTuber Ygg Studio (formerly known as Digibro) posted a video called Is Mushoku Tensei The Most Influential Isekai? (History of Isekai) that outlined the isekai genre's chronology in Japanese pop media. Watching the video, I discovered some surprising origins to the "contemporary" isekai genre. Though there were many isekai stories―even popular ones―before, the current isekai craze seemingly began in 2012 on a Japanese webfic site called syosetsu.com, where several popular isekai were written in close temporal proximity to one another.

The main titles of note were Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei—followed by KonoSuba, which was specifically a parody of Mushoku Tensei, instead of (as I once believed) a general cultural conception of isekai. In fact, it was these three works that created the current cultural conception, establishing many now obligatory tropes.

So, I decided to watch Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei.

I was shocked! As it turned out, my clever and subversive idea―treating the hero as the loser he was instead of as a wish fulfillment badass―had not only already been done, it was foundational to the genre! Both works feature loser protagonists whose social ineptitude constantly causes problems for them despite their cheat mode powers. Both protagonists are forced to develop as people rather than rely on their advantages, and the development of their relationships with the other characters is a crucial consideration of both works.

As it turned out, Trapped in Another World with a Smartphone (which I also haven't seen) wasn't the beginning and end of the genre. I had underestimated isekai. In retrospect, the languid existence of my 2019 and 2020 led to me ironically attempting the same cheap wish fulfillment of my imagined isekai protagonist. I wanted a "fun," "quick," "easy" story and intended to use isekai for that purpose, the same way an isekai protagonist assumes being sent to another world is an easy way to becoming a hero.

It was time to return to the planning stage. This time, I wouldn't take things for granted.

VI. The Original Idea, Part 2

First, I revisited my protagonist. Originally an afterthought: a punching bag who failed whenever he exhibited any agency. I decided on another direction. My hero wouldn't be a loser by incompetence, but by choice. He would be clever and intelligent, but unwilling to apply himself. He wanted a new world because the original didn't seem worth it; too rigid, too structured, too immune to change. His journey would be discovering it wasn't the world holding him back, but himself. Believing nothing could be changed, he stopped himself from changing. Thus, Jay Waringcrane came into existence.

Earlier ideas were remixed around this new protagonist. I merged the devil boss lady and the devil intern into a single character, a semi-hapless sort for Jay to outwit. That was Perfidia Bal Berith. The hero's sister, whose subplot originally lacked any connection to him, now became a foil to his ideology. She exhibited utter faith in the "real world"—its mechanisms, its processes—and applied herself diligently to maintenance of its status quo. That was Shannon Waringcrane.

Still needed a plot. Since my hero was no longer a social bumbler, I discarded the original beginning where he annihilates the Demon King's army and toyed with a new idea. The human kingdom, besieged by the Demon King's army, becomes aware via prophecy that a hero is about to appear in their world. The king sends a party led by the gallant prince to find the hero and bring him safely to the kingdom. When Jay arrives, he meets the prince and his crew, but they are immediately beset by demons, who kill most of the party and grievously wound the prince. Jay, the dying prince, and the sole other survivor―a taciturn, dark-skinned mage named Viviendre who is secretly the prince's lover―barely escape. The prince succumbs to his wounds shortly afterward, leading to an emotionally-charged moment in which Viviendre laments his death and blames Jay for causing it. Leading to an adversarial relationship between Jay and Viviendre that, after much character development, would eventually turn into romance.

Then Jay would lead the kingdom against the Demon King, constituting the main plot.

This idea improved on the previous in several ways: exciting start, high drama, and a long-term goal. However, as I became more engrossed in this project, I came to dislike the "default fantasy world" I'd used as my setting thus far. When my goal was "quick and easy," the Dragon Quest-inspired medieval fantasy tropes sufficed. Now, they struck me as banal. In particular, a generic "Demon King" villain disinterested me (which was why I summarily disposed of them in the idea's first iteration), so even if it outlined a clear direction, it wasn't a direction that enthralled. I realized that to continue, I needed to do some worldbuilding.

VII. Worldbuilding

I dislike worldbuilding.

I prefer the real world―or the real world distorted by urban fantasy and surrealism―to an entirely fictitious fantasy world. In writing an isekai, I had wanted to maintain the connection between the real world and fantasy world (hence why one of my earliest ideas was for Shannon and her cadre to follow Jay in a modern vehicle with modern weapons). But by relying on stock fantasy tropes, I only exacerbated the core issue. I decided to think deeply about my setting and design it to both stand out and clearly relate to our world.

To determine a deeper connection between fantasy and related, I pondered the historical development of the fantasy genre, from chivalric romance to Tolkien. (I collected my thoughts into this essay.) Tracing this lineage, I considered writing a fantasy world modeled on Arthurian and Carolingian romance. Then I took the idea deeper. Much of the early modern fantasy genre, up to and even to an extent including Tolkien, was rooted in nostalgia for an imagined and idealized past. Many pre-Tolkien fantasy works were born out of Victorian fascination with medieval Europe, as evidenced by the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott, the Arthurian poems of Lord Tennyson, and the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The original isekai, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, parodied this idealized medievalism (Twain blaming Walter Scott specifically for the genteel Southern culture that propagated slavery and rendered the Civil War inevitable).

Then I realized that, 200 years before this nineteenth-century craze, there was another major literary work that parodied excessive love of chivalric romance: Don Quixote.

As soon as I made that connection, everything clicked. Rather than Perfidia whipping up a new fantasy world on demand, she would reuse one she created in the 1600s for a Don Quixote-esque figure. Rather than Spanish, my Don Quixote would be British, a royalist in the English Civil War seeking escapism in face of the collapse of monarchy. Pursuing standard chivalric romance activities, he would overthrow a corrupt Catholic church analog, slay a few dragons, and war against a Pagan nation that he later converted to Christianity.

What happened to this world 400 years after Don Quixote used it as his playground? I imagined the ex-Pagan nation a vassal to the Christian nation, while secretly plotting an uprising. Don Quixote's descendants, legitimate or illegitimate, grasping to maintain control in face of their weakening bloodline. Dragons hunted to extinction. A stasis that prevented sweeping change without the intercession of a true human, yet gripped by slow decay. Prayers cast for a new hero to save them from this stupor.

I also wondered how the Christians of this world reckoned with a Christianity whose foundational text is clearly meant for a different world entirely. While Don Quixote's scion, still ruler, promoted the religion uncritically to maintain their grip on the culture, underground grew a nihilist cult that believed nobody in their world was saved, that Christ died on Earth and thus only cleansed Earth's sins. All of this intermixed with the same historical devolutionary forces that ended feudalism and gave rise to mercantile oligarchy.

That was the world Jay Waringcrane entered. A world rife with thematic potential. Finally, a plot was forming.

VIII. Starting the Story

This last stretch of planning happened quickly. (Evidenced by traces of the earlier idea remaining in Cockatiel x Chameleon, specifically in the brief descriptions of the in-universe isekai from which Temporary the elf hails.) Rather than fight a Demon King, Jay's mission would be more chivalric in nature; he would rescue a princess from the evil wizard who led the heretical cult. Liking my earlier idea about the princess who first seemed like an ordinary damsel but turned out to ulterior motives, I decided for an end-of-arc twist where the princess secretly worked with the cult all along. Thus, Princess Mayfair came into existence. For the evil wizard, I reused one of the original king's advisors, the living plant.

The gallant prince and his secret lover from the second iteration returned as Jay's companions, although I changed the lover from a mage to a ranger. Shannon would still pursue Jay, but I merged Van Zandt and Van Langevelde into a single character named Wendell Noh and cut the private detective entirely, giving the sleuthing job to Shannon's boyfriend, Dalt Swaino. I rearranged the big action setpiece where Shannon's group meets disaster: Instead of fighting knights, they would fight a dragon, and this time, Jay would be involved.

After that, keeping with the chivalric romance aesthetic, I threw some faeries into the mix (I love faeries): the obnoxious Olliebollen, who would play off the more sullen Jay, and Flanz-le-Flore, a mid-arc complication. I also decided to make the cult members monstrous demi-humans with magic powers; the Christian anathema against magic must necessarily make it actively corrupting in this world run on Christian precepts.

On top of these plans, several long-term ideas already bubbled: The eventual introduction of the devil world, Sansaime's pregnancy, Viviendre, a battle with elves, Mayfair uniting the two worlds. The ideas flowed one after another now that I established a solid base. Sketchy outlines of the full story stood limned in the distance. I was ready to write.

I decided the work would be published serially at a one-chapter-per-week pace, identical to Fargo and Chicago. That decision was baked directly into my original desire to write a "fun" story. With a serial work, there is less burden of technical execution; the focus is on a fluid pace with regular updates instead of unimpeachable prose. Furthermore, serial writing lends itself to story speculation as readers comment every week, turning the work into a collaborative experience. Some readers of Chicago have told me that the reviews on fanfiction.net are an integral part of the experience, for instance.

When I post serial works, I first build up a "backlog." Essentially, that means I write several chapters ahead of what I'm posting online. The backlog ensures I can regularly post chapters even if one chapter takes longer to write than usual. (I can generally write a 6,000- to 7,000-word chapter in one week.) For this work, I decided to complete four chapters before posting the first. This generous backlog allowed me to post the entire first arc weekly, without a break prior to the climactic chapter that took two weeks to write.

When establishing the backlog, I also gave myself more time than usual to edit, which allowed me to polish the beginning for a better first impression. I meticulously pruned the first chapter to make the dialogue between Perfidia and Jay as snappy as possible while also minimizing exposition. (Originally, Perfidia explained the Seven Princes and their increased quotas in an internal monologue, since I knew they would become important much later in the story, but I cut it for streamlining purposes.) Additionally, I spent a long time deciding when Chapter 2 would end and Chapter 3 would begin; originally, the scene at the beginning of Chapter 3 was at the end of Chapter 2, but I moved it because it better matched the tone and scope of the third chapter. Olliebollen was originally far more in-your-face obnoxious; I toned them down. Lastly, I added the part in Chapter 4 where Jay remembers being beat up by Shannon's past boyfriend, which not only hinted at a soon-to-be-introduced major character, but gave Jay a reasonable chip on his shoulder to cause friction between him and Makepeace.

With four chapters completed, I was ready to post. Almost. I still needed a title. The entire time I operated only thinking of the story as "my isekai story." Thinking long and hard, I came up with titles such as American Isekai, The Waringcranes, 144k Angels, and—my personal favorite—Hellbrowned, the last of which I was strongly advised not to use by every single person I know.

(Side note: Setting the story in Cleveland had been an easy decision. It's such a funny city, taking Detroit's tragic Rust Belt decay and removing all grandeur. The Jon Bois video The Browns Live in Hell and the famous Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video sum it up neatly. Setting the story in 2017, the same year the Browns infamously went winless, was also a snap decision.)

Finally, I thought back to Don Quixote, the impetus for much of the worldbuilding, and the title revealed itself.

IX. Writing the Story

Because of my fast-paced schedule, I lacked the luxury to make major changes to my plans as I wrote. I started with a plan for the first arc and scattered ideas for the future. As I wrote the first arc, I planned the second, and as I wrote the second, I planned the third.

Room remained for tweaks, though. Each time I write a story, I try to do at least one thing outside my technical repertoire. This time, I wanted more flexibility in my characters. I usually only introduce the bare minimum necessary, and aggressively cut or merge characters to reduce the total number. In Cockatiel x Chameleon, however, some commentators criticized how the Consortium's limited number of characters gave the impression it was as dead and empty as Harper's real life. While that impression doesn't necessarily conflict with the story, it did expose limitations to my economical approach.

I dislike having limitations. (Unfortunately I have many.) Thus, I decided to write more characters whose storylines were not plotted from the onset, characters I would develop spontaneously as the story progressed.

An example is Lalum. I introduced Lalum in Chapter 5 as an enemy with a unique power for Jay to fight. Zero subsequent intent for her at the time. Then I realized her power would interact well with Flanz-le-Flore's, so I kept her around for that fight as well. When Lalum is attacked in the Flanz-le-Flore fight, I was 50/50 on whether she would live or die. However, a friend reading the story really liked her and wanted her to live, and I realized it might streamline the plot if someone was around to point Shannon and her crew in Jay's direction.

Having spared Lalum from death twice, and also conceptualizing more concretely the second arc—including Viviendre's role in it—I decided I had a use for Lalum after all. I conceived of Viviendre and Lalum being foils, envisioning their eventual confrontation in the last arc. Thus, Lalum went from monster-of-the-week to major character. To a lesser extent, characters like Theovora were introduced offhandedly, and while they did not become major characters, I found small uses for them later.

Speaking of Viviendre, that was another challenge for myself. With her, I wrote something I wouldn't normally: A romance. Cockatiel x Chameleon, believe it or not, was originally intended to be a straightforward romance, but I found myself incapable of writing one and pivoted to its current direction. Nestled within the sprawling undertaking of Cleveland Quixotic, the romance between Viviendre and Jay was my attempt to write two people who genuinely liked each other. Their three-chapter mini-arc in the middle of the story moves at a more lax pace than usual, but allowed me to develop a relationship I otherwise wouldn't have been able to.

In general, Cleveland Quixotic is larger than my other works. More characters, more plot threads, more locations, more everything. Though Fargo and Chicago are also large, they operate in a more enclosed and linear space. My thought process with Cleveland Quixotic was to open up and express that feeling of world-spanning storytelling the fantasy genre is so known for. It pushed my limits, but I accomplished that goal more than in any previous work.

The real challenge is, once you go big, how do you reel it back? So many of the isekai I mentioned remain ongoing, proceeding through arc after arc without end in sight. Today's most notable ongoing fantasy literature, George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, is likewise mired in endless expansion the author seems incapable of curtailing. On RoyalRoad, it's easy to find million-word works with early reviews uniformly positive, but recent reviews expressing a new sentiment: "Dropped after nothing happened for the past 200 chapters."

Above all else, I wanted to avoid that trap. My solution resided in the second arc's climax, which I developed midway into writing the first arc. Uniting the two worlds made it natural for all the distinct groups of characters to join up for the finale, tying every plot thread together. As such, I cultivated multiple storylines in the long and less immediately plot-focused second arc, secure in my knowledge of how it all eventually connected.

Even so, at times it grew overwhelming herding so many characters. Many characters wound up less prominent than I initially intended, sacrificed for the good of the overall pacing. Fortunately, few characters wound up utterly vestigial, and those that did were minor. (There's no worse feeling than a character given loads of screentime and dialogue only for them to end up inconsequential when the curtains finally close. Homestuck reeks of it.)

A few miscellaneous changes that occurred while writing:

I intended for Viviendre's brother, the "mad king" of California, to appear in the final arc, wielding ten relics for an epic duel with Jay. Given the large amount of characters already prominent in the story, I cut him.

I intended for Sansaime to die at the end of the second arc and for Avery to live. This was mainly because I wanted Jay and Shannon to have a cathartic moment with Avery in the final arc (Avery still would have died afterward). I realized that, using Pandaemonium, I could have that cathartic moment anyway, and Avery wound up saving Sansaime's life both outside and inside the story.

On the flip side, I originally intended for Mallory to die at the end of the second arc, but decided I wanted her and Mayfair to have a climactic conflict, which could only be done if Mallory were still alive.

I intended to kill off the minor character Gonzago of Meretryce the entire story, probably by having him jump in front of Shannon to take some attack or another. I never found a way to work it in, and I feel like the actual use I got out of him in the climactic fight, though minor, was far more unique. I likewise considered killing Mademerry by having her take an attack for Mayfair, but I prefer her current ending. I did not intend to kill Pythette, but found at the last moment it would be more convenient if she died.

Beyond that, I wrote the story generally according to plan. Leaving aspects of my plans malleable meant I could write quickly without needing absolute certainty in the precision of every line and action. Only in Chapter 45, the climactic chapter with Beelzebub and Moloch, did I sit down and carefully outline what each character would do at each moment in the chapter. (The chapter's seven-minute time limit made such meticulousness essential.) Otherwise, even in other climactic fights, I relied only on general ideas about what should happen and when.

Ultimately, I successfully completed the longest story, with the largest number of characters, I'd ever written. It pushed my limits, but in a way that didn't leave me gasping for air. Instead, I feel ready and eager for my next story. What'll it be? I have an idea and I've already begun research. I hope to start writing it by the end of the year, and publish it by mid-2024. I'll let you know more as things become more concrete.

X. Names

Before I end this post, a few name origins.

Perfidia Bal Berith: As mentioned in the story itself, "Bal Berith" (or Balberith, Baalberith, et cetera) is a false idol mentioned in the Bible. It is also a demon of the Ars Goetia. My familiarity with the name primarily comes from a weapon used in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

Olliebollen is based on oliebollen, a Dutch pastry.

Mayfair is the name of a character in Shining Force: The Sword of Hajya, the first video game I ever played. Her middle name, Lyonesse, is a character from Arthurian legend.

Makepeace came from an attempt to make a name that would pair well with Mayfair. My primary knowledge of the name comes from British author William Makepeace Thackeray. His middle name, Gaheris, is an Arthurian knight.

John Coke's name was modeled on the character Wicks Cherrycoke in Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. I only found out after I posted the first chapter that John Coke was the actual name of a person involved in the English Civil War notable enough for a Wikipedia page. I was more than happy to pretend this incredible serendipity was actually my plan all along.

Sansaime's name was modeled on the characters Sansloi ("without law"), Sansfoi ("without faith"), and Sansjoi ("without joy") in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which was the primary inspiration for the romance elements of Whitecrosse. "Without love" is also a notable phrase in the visual novel Umineko When They Cry.

Whitecrosse's name also comes from The Faerie Queene, being modeled on the Redcrosse Knight, an allegorical representation of England (with its red cross flag).

Many names in Cleveland Quixotic have an "allegorical" sense, being words that suggest a clear, often moral meaning. Charm, Charisma, Mayfair, Makepeace, Mademerry, Theovora ("god eater"), Condemnation, Obedience, Tricia (short for "patrician"), Meretryce ("meretricious"), Mordac ("mordacious"), Malleus ("malleable"), Astrophicus ("space plant"), Viviendre ("life ender"), Perfidia ("perfidy"), and so forth. These allegorical names are a play on The Faerie Queene being an allegory, although many of the names in Cleveland Quixotic are not an accurate representation of their character, indicating the breakdown of allegory and thus clear moral meaning.

California is the name of a location in Amadís de Gaula, Don Quixote's favorite romance.

Dalton Swaino is the real name of a semi-pro League of Legends player.

Wendell Noh's surname comes from a professional League of Legends player. His given name is the name of a character in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light.

Kedeshah is a Hebrew word that possibly refers to sacred or temple prostitutes.

Ubiquitous is an ordinary word with a clear meaning, but its abbreviation, Ubik, is a Philip K. Dick novel that was also the name of one of the demons in Berserk.

The Seven Princes, rather than refer to the traditional Ars Goetia representations of the Seven Deadly Sins, are pulled from John Milton's Paradise Lost, which was the primary inspiration for most devil theology.

Flanz-le-Flore is a corruption of Blanchefleur, a name that appears in a few romance legends.

Lalum is an alternate translation of Larum, a character in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade.

Pluxie is a feminization of a semi-pro League of Legends player's screen name.

Tintzel is a corruption of the character's original name, mentioned earlier, which was taken from historical corrupt priest Johann Tetzel.

Jreige is the surname of a semi-pro League of Legends player.

Justin "Just" Vance is a play on J.D. Vance, an Ohio politician.

Temporary, one of the earliest names that persisted into the final form of the story, is modeled on the elves in No Game No Life, who have names like "Think" and "Feel."

The other names in the story do not have any particular meaning or genesis.

XI. Conclusion

I believe that covers the generation of Cleveland Quixotic from beginning to end. If I missed anything, or if there's anything you want to know more about, please send me an ask and I'll be certain to answer. Thank you again for reading and stay tuned for my next work!

[thricedead]

I don't know what your sources on ORV are but I'd recommend giving it a read or looking into it at all before calling it an "amateur webnovel"... It's very much not amateurishly written and intentionally borrows from the world of amateur self published web novels because it's in a way a parody of the genre. The english translations available online are all unofficial fan translations, and those definitely do not help make it pass as good quality literature but writing it off as poor a quality amateur novel on account of the translations being clunky is ignorant at best... The person defending its worth as a "real novel" was being very inarticulate in doing so but ORV very much does get often written off as shallow or low quality writing by being mislabeled as "amateur self published korean bl" so what point are you even trying to make about it beside this person not being good at arguing their points...

SOURCE: I personally read thru the majority of orv and I did not like it or find much more in the way of value in it. Everything it says has been said better before and after. This doesn't make it embarrassing wrong to enjoy ORV - I have a collection of danmei erotica worth 450€ that I read for fun lol - but it doesn't make it an exemplary work of literature. It's a scifi webnovel that many find entertaining. That's all. Parodying a genre doesn't mean a work is exempt from criticisms reserved for the genre either, SVSSS is a parody of isekai danmei but it significantly fed into the very tropes it aimed to "parody" and spread teacher student rape fantasies worldwide and it's also really poorly articulated amateur writing of a college student. My opinion on ORV is not influenced by its country of origin or fandom. This is my opinion as a literary theory student aiming to write a phd thesis specifically on the reader-writer-character triangle of relationships (that many claim ORV does wonders for) and I wanna say, from the bottom of my heart, pick up some theory books, some classics, some fiction from established Korean authors (if i can find then in a library in Buttfuck Croatia so can you for sure) All in all being so upset about somebody being indifferent to you favorite media to the point where this trivial-to-grasp conversation is being held across multiple inboxes is honestly embarrassing. You can enjoy most anything, but adopt certain standards of quality for discussions abour literature. Seriously I'll hook you up with This is the Canon or The Demon of Theory any day *_*

[jungkookfanfictionhappy]

A Guide to Fanfiction Tropes and Genres:

🟪I made this cuz honestly, why not lol. For people who are beginners to the fanfiction universe. For anyone who wants to get a glimpse of what this world is like and the common themes used in this "off-the-wall piece of literature". Could be for research purposes or for curiosity, or maybe you want to start writing stuff but not sure what things you might use. No matter who is reading this, I hope this guide helps you.

--I also made this for myself, as a lil handbook to look at while categorizing the fanfics i collect in my blog.

🟦There are genres/topes/themes which you won't be seeing much or any at all particularly in my blog; but I wanted to add them to the lists anyways because they are widely used in fanfiction. I tried to include the main, most common things used in fanfics. Because in reality, the possibilities in a fanfic are endless.

--Many of these are self explanatory so I didn't add extra info to most of them.

This may be used by other fandoms as well. Since this is a Jungkook based account, he is used for some of the examples. You can replace him with anyone you wish to write/read about.

🟥I added most things myself from the knowledge accumulated through my years of experience in fanfiction consumption. For the things I thought I might have missed, I used multiple websites and a reddit post as a referance, which I will credit their links at the very end.

🟫Shoutout to chatgpt for alphabetizing my lists in the end. It would take me ages to edit this

🟩 If you think there is anything I missed, feel free to contact me, I can always edit this post to add new things.

PS: I chose to omit much of the specificities of explicit content (such as specific kinks). I tried to keep things a bit chill. Most likely the authors will include the details of the explicit events in their explanation section. You will know what they are when you see them.

Genres:

Action

Adventure

Apocalypse/Post-Apocalypse

Comedy/Humor/Parody/Satire

Coming Of Age

Contemporary

Crime

Cyberpunk/Steampunk

Drama

Dystopian/Utopia

Fairy Tale

Family

Fantasy/High Fantasy/Low Fantasy/Urban Fantasy/Isekai

Friendship

Gothic

Historical Fiction/Alternate History/Period Piece

Horror/Slasher

Kid Fic =fanfic that features children in some way. This could vary from the characters having a kid together to someone’s younger sibling/cousin/niece etc.

Mystery/Murder Mystery

Missing Scene/Gap Filler : a fic that is written as a continuation or with additional events added to a canon scene in a show OR a video of the characters of a fandom (e.g. a specific RUN BTS episode where in the end they all go out and get coffee or some behind the scenes stuff the author creates) idk if i explained this well

Paranormal

Philosophical

Poetry

Romance

Sci-Fi/Science Fiction/Space Opera

Slice Of Life

Spiritual

Supernatural

Surreal

Suspense

Songfic: stories which include song lyrics, which may be interposed between sections of the story, or given to a character who sings them.

Thriller/Psychological Thriller

Tragedy

Travel

Urban

Western

Worldbuilding

Genre (Fandom): Based On Tone

Angst/Light Angst :  ”often used in fandom to characterize things which are intended to provoke the feeling of unrest and uncertainty in readers. It generally signifies that the story will be primarily dramatic in nature, rather than comedic or light-hearted, and that characters may suffer mental or physical anguish during the course of the story. ” -fanlore.org

Awkwardness

Case Fic =focus on solving a given mystery or case

Character Development

Crack Fic = “fanworks with a fundamentally ludicrous premise, or otherwise including a plethora of unbelievable, incredible, or just plain silly elements - that is, implying the author/artist must have been on drugs to produce something so bonkers” -fanlore.org

Crossover/Fusion = where multiple fandoms are combined in a way

Curtainfic (Domestic Tranquility, Such As The Characters In A Romantic Pairing "Shopping For Curtains" (Literally Or Figuratively) And Building A Home Together.)

Cute

Dark Fic

DILF/MILF

Domestic

Fix Fic/Fix-It/Deconstruction

Fluff/Tooth-Rotting Fluff

Hurt/Comfort = A character who has been hurt, physically or emotionally, is comforted by another character.

Light-Hearted

Mature

Melancholy

Porn, PWP, Porn Without Plot

Secret Identity

Shipping

Sickfic, Illness, Sick Character

Single Parents

Slow Burn/Slow Romance

Smut

Soft

Sweet

Tension

Character Types:

Aged Up:  a character in a fanwork who's been set to an age notably older than they are (or appear) in the original media.

Aged Down

Alien

Androids, Robots

Angel

Animal Transformation

Anti-Hero

Boss/Employee/Secretary

Canon: the author is trying to stick as close to the canon character as possible.

CEO

Cop

Criminals

Demon

Demigod

Doctor

Dragons

Fairy

Fan!Reader

Gamer

Greek Life/ Frat Boy/ Sorority girl

Gardener

God (Mythical)

Hybrid

Idol!Jk

Idol!Reader

Jock

LGBTQ/LGBTQ Character/LGBTQ Themes

Mafia

Merpeople

Morally Grey/Ambiguous Characters

Mythical Beings & Creatures

Nerd

Noona

Non-Idol

Nurse

Orphans/Orphanage

Out Of Character/OOC

Prince/Princess/King/Queen/Emperor/Empress

Rich Girl/Guy

Shapeshifting

Spies

Stalker

Stripper

Tsundere

Undercover

Unreliable Narrator

Vampire

Villain

Virgin

Werewolf

Witches, Witchcraft

Yandere

Zombies

AU/Alternate Universe:

Afterlife

Aliens AU

Band Of Misfits

Bounty Hunters

College AU

Crime AU

Coffee Shop AU

Destiny/Fate

Dreams/Dreamscape

Dystopian AU

Future AU

Ghosts

Harry Potter AU

Heroes AU

Highschool AU

Historical AU

Hitman AU

Immortality

Magic AU

Marvel/DC AU

Medieval

Medical, Hospital, Doctors AU

Military

Monsters

Mythology

Omegaverse : A setting where humans have a secondary sex (alpha, beta or omega).

Pirates

Pornstar AU

Royalty AU

School AU

Soulmate AU

Spiderman AU

Spy AU

Time Travel

War

Western AU

Witches AU

Zombies

Relationship To One Another:

Bodyguard

Childhood Friends

Childhood Sweethearts

Dating

Divorced

Dorks In Love

Established Relationship

Exes

Exes To Lovers

Enemies To Lovers

Enemies To Friends To Lovers

Fake Relationship/Fake Dating/Pretend Relationship/Pretend Couple

Forced Marriage

Friends To Lovers, Best Friends To Lovers

Friends With Benefits

Frenemies

Fuck Buddies

Hallmark AU

In Which They Are Exes Thrown Back Together By A Chance Visit To Their Hometown (Usually For A Holiday)

Highschool Sweethearts

Idiots to lovers

Long-Distance Relationship

Long-Term Relationship

Marriage

Mutual Pining

Oblivious Pining

Requited Unrequited

Neighbors

Pen Pals

Platonic Relationships/No Romance

Rivals

Roommates

Secret Relationship

Soulmates

Step-Siblings

Unrequited Love/One-Sided Attraction

Best friend’s sibling

Specific Situations:

Accidental Marriage

Adoption

Aftermath

Amnesia

Arranged Marriage

Babysitting

Betrayal

Blind Date

Bonding

Breakup

Cheating

Confession

Desert Island

Disability Fic

Elevatorfic

Eventual Romance

Falling In Love

Fempreg

First Kiss

First Love

First Time

Flashbacks

Forgiveness

Forbidden Love

Grief/Mourning

Hatesex

Healing

Heartbreak

Heartwarming

Holiday, Vacation

Hospital

Idiots In Love

Imprisonment

Injury

Jealousy

Kink

Love At First Sight

Love Confessions, Drunken Confessions

Love Potion/Love Spell

Love Triangle

Marriage Of Convenience

Marriage Proposal

Mates

Make-up sex

Misunderstandings

Mutual Pining

Next Gen/Next Generation

Nightmares

Parenthood

Pining

Plot Twists

Pregnancy

Protectiveness

Pst Lives

Rags To Riches

Rebels

Recovery

Regret

Reincarnation/Resurrection/Rebirth

Rejection

Religion

Rescue

Reunion

Revenge

Revolution

Roadtrip

Snowed In

There is only one bed, Forced Bed Sharing, Sharing A Bed

Teenagers

Teamwork

Time Travel

Training

Trapped

Weddingfic

Based On Text Style Or Elements

First Person POV, Second person POV

Script format

Y/N (your name)

Facetime, video call

Sexting

Social Media AU:

Twitter (X)

Instagram

Messaging App

Warnings,Possibly triggering things or Dark themes:

Abuse

Alcohol

BDSM

Blood

Bullying

Crime

Curses

Death, Character Death/Major Character Death/Minor Character Death

Depression

Drugs

Fights

Gore

Kidnapping

Mental Health Issues

Self-Harm

Stalkers

Substance Abuse

Suicide

Toxic Relationship

Trauma

Violence

Weapons

Yandere

Length:

Drabble: A very short fic, usually said to be around 100 words. But I’ve read plenty of drabbles with 1K-2K words so 100 is not always the case

One-Shot/Two-Shot/etc

Series/Duology/Trilogy/Saga/etc

Long

Short

Short Story

Pairing:

M/F - F/M - M/M - F/F - F/F/M etc.

[Character] x [Character],

Jungkook X Original Character/OC : usually OCs are characters with disclosed names and physical features withing the story. (e.g. Jessica, blond hair, brown eyes, etc.) However i have seen many fanfics where the author writes “Jungkook x OC” in the explanations but the character throughout the story is in fact written like a self-insert/YN/reader with little to no physical descriptions.

Jungkook X Reader (Y/N or “_____” )

AFAB- assigned female at birth

Jungkook X gender neutral reader/character

OTHERS:

POV -point of view

POV Alternating, POV Multiple, POV First Person, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, POV Outsider

Completed / Ongoing — a fanfiction series is one of two things, it’s either completed or ongoing

Ending: Happy Ending, Sad Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Ambiguous Ending, etc.

Epilogue :  the final chapter at the end of a story that often serves to reveal the fates of the characters.

🟥Credit:

reddit - very well made, i used this a lot while making this list

fanlore.org

tvtropes.org

wikipedia

-The end

⚠️You may reblog or share the link of my post. But please dont repost this without crediting me.

[mnkiss]

A quick list of animes I watched and don't want to forget 3:

Satsuriku no Tenshi - it was a short story with an easy to forget plot and characters I could root for. Tbh it hooked me with the never ending suspense and Zack. And I'll never forget the heartbreak at the end. So toxic and broken and tragic. The horror elements were fun, sometimes scary even so 7/10! Demon slayer - Its a bingeable shounen. The story is mid, the animation is cool, the MC is kind and likeable + i love how they show us the difference between "city japan" and "rural japan" (especially technology and behaviour-wise), but the constant screaming and second hand embarrassement is just too much. And besides getting stronger and using better techniques there are no character arcs (as of in S2). The boar + thunder kid just ruined the whole series for me t_t And the mountain peasant/animalistic superpower schtick is boring as hell after an episode or two. 6.5/10

Samurai Champloo - y2k graffiti/breakdance meets samurais. Boi, what an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G anime! The AV, OST, art style, all the fight scenes and character design... all of it is 10/10. Of course the found family trope can never be trumped, however the story itself was adventurous, not repetitive (except for them never having money lol), captivating, witty and emotional when it needed to be. Also the episodes tie into each other a lot, which makes the storytelling natural (+ its not just episodes put in order). The MC's are all 3D with weaknesses, believable behaviors and distinct manners + they have easy to remember names and styles. Watching the messy trio's friendship come to live is something I want to witness again for sure.

Konosuba! - A surprisingly bad and adorable parody of the isekai genre that I could only watch all the way through after the 3rd attempt. Most characters are completely helpless/stupid/naive but in an oddly charming way. The MC is ofc a pervert neet that is insufferable, but his oversexualized companions are cute, their friendship is cute, and their boobs are huge. Watch it while having dinner 6/10

Ouran highschool host club - light hearted and stupid and has some second hand embarrassement, but its a must watch! I wish the artstyle was different tho :/ 8.5/10

The Apothecary Diaries - Sherlock Holmes meets chinese historical romance fanfic. Beautiful, captivating and rewatchable. Very dreamy (but i have a feeling that theres going to be a lot of drama and sadness in the future? idk i havent started the light novel yet) 9/10

Midnight Occult Civil Servants - its so much more worth it than ppl think! Yes, the power of friendship is strong in this one, buuuut 1) its not overdone 2) the story is not sugarcoated and there are some interesting philosophical topics that we touch throughout the episodes 3) even though the MC is a naive and ridiculously hard working boy, he learns a lot from his mistakes and kinda grows up. His friends are lovely too! I just wish that their design was a bit more detailed, the animation got a bit more budget and that we could have gotten a bit more chapters... 8/10!

Mignon - a korean BL manwha adaptation. Each episode is around 5 mins so the story isnt too complicated. It has vampires (why dont we get more of them nowadays??) and sexy man-love. 6.5/10

Golden Boy - It is a golden comedy (and educational) anime and it's so humorous that I actually laughed watching it. At first it seems annoying/ridiculous but from the end of the first episode I understood the premise and the point of the anime. The boy doesnt learn much, but the women around him do. 7.5/10

Kamisama Kiss - I loved it at the beginning and then felt really let down by it, cuz 1) I learned about the end of the story and got pissed off (because ***SPOILER ALERT who the fuck thought that giving up your occult superpowers and long life is romantic? WHO?***) and 2) it got so rushed at the end. The art style is not my favorite ad some of the frames looked cheap, but I loved the comical use of expressions and some of the designs were really cool. 6/10 (and -100/10 because of the ending of the manga. Seriously. Fuck that.)

[ntrlily]

I don't think it's "love" that's missing from bad genre pastiche like the average generic isekai or parody vn, it's genre awareness.

Most people are not particularly genre savvy when it comes to genres they don't like, but genre savviness doesn't require any sort of positive emotions.