i_wish_to_remain_nameless

I am proud to announce that I have finally done something with my Neocities account. That something is mirror my unmarketably weird Saiki K fanfic, Dreams of Tanabata, there. The website is fairly rudimentary but I did draw some cute little chibis for the forward and back buttons which you can see below the cut.
( Read more... )

Okay so I just reread Inside again and I've got a theory. Technically I already had this theory since shortly after my October reread but I wanted to reread it again to make sure evidence bore it out and it did. I think that Akechi is the Dark Menace. Firstly, he is small enough to pull off that hiding inside the chair strat which is a vital prerequisite for any suspect to have. Secondly the Dark Menace seems interested in engineering situations that cause Saiki's powers to reactivate and Akechi both has a believable motivation for that and is morally grey enough to repeatedly threaten Kaidou's wellbeing to do it. Akechi's also probably the only person outside of Saiki's immediate family to know that Kusuo used to be psychic come to think of it. Thirdly Akechi is definitely up to something given the way he seems to be working with Toritsuka and Aiura.
I also noticed on this readthrough is Aren mentioning how Akechi looks disgusted when he talks about Kuriko and I think despite how Aren interpreted the situation that was probably more disgust with what was done to her rather than disgust with what she became as a result of that.
So, what I think happened is that when Akechi met Kusuo again he was very confused that his bestie had detransitioned, lost their psychic powers, and developed a chronic illness that makes them super brainfogged all the time, as well as being upset that Saiki doesn't remember him and replaced him with Kaidou. Then the murder bedragon snake incident or whatever happened at the sports festival occurs, Saiki instinctually activates what's left of her powers to save Kaidou, and Akechi realizes his beloved friend isn't as gone as he thought they were and starts making moves to get them back. Kusuke showing up to chew out the teachers probably help Akechi push the last few pieces about what's up with Saiki into place too.
However, even if I'm right I don't doubt that Akechi is genuinely trying to improve Kusuo's situation though he's probably going to find himself offered a position on the receiving end of Aren's fists when Aren figures out he's the one behind the Dark Reunion stuff.

I thought I’d share my Saiki K playlist. It’s just a bunch of songs I like that I think fit him rough arranged by where I feel like they fall on his character arc. Justifications for my selections under the cut.
( I spent way too long writing this all out )
This is more or less cross-posted from tumblr because I spent Like an hour explaining my song choices and therefore want as many people to see as possible.

This week I finished rereading Oatmealcrisp's Future Diary inspired Saiki K fic which works way better than the extreme tonal clash of source materials would have you believe. I highly recommend it to people who'd like to see the world's normalest teenage boy freak out and make a bunch of poor decisions after being forced into a death game where he's only surviving because a strange, scary (but handsome) teenage boy who is willing and extremely able to commit horrific acts of violence for his sake has latched onto him for unknown reasons.
I'm actually quite fond of fics that explore fucked-up relationship dynamics when they're written by somebody who actually understands that the dynamic that they're depicting is in fact fucked-up and is capable of handling such material with some degree of tact and grace. I'm historically pretty lukewarm on the yandere trope (though I did listen to Smoke and Mirrors by LittleJaneyCakes a lot back in the day because it slaps) but this fic actually pulls it off pretty well and I think I can understand the appeal a bit better after reading it. Plus, it has a recurring theme of what loving someone actually means which is an excellent theme for a yandere fic to explore. It helps that the most prominent yandere in this fic, Saiki Kusuo, is more the obsessive type than the possessive type (though both of the other characters that display yandere behaviors are possessive type yanderes to some extent).
Oatmealcrisp does a very good job of justifying Saiki's yandere behavior so he doesn't actually seem that OOC once you get the details of what's going on. He's just really going through it right now and has decided to devote himself to the protection of his favorite person (and fixate unhealthily on him) to keep himself going at least until he can get his revenge on god for tearing out a defining part of him and entering a bunch of people he cares about in a death game. Oatmealcrisp is also good at coming up with fun and creative new ways to make the situation worse whenever the protagonists start get too comfortable, including perverse incentives, cognitohazards, and love-triangles. 
Overall, it's a good fic to keep in my pocket or when I want a stressful piece of fiction to distract me from stressful things in real life.

I'm not the first person to think this about Worm but I would have liked Grue's character arc to get just a little more closure. Not even really by changing how things played out but I would have liked him to either have survived Gold Mourning or having his death come up before the epilogue. I mean I don't really mind killing him off for his little sister's character development but having him die off-screen and not even telling the reader that it happened until the epilogue was kind of a weird decision especially given that he didn't have much page time after his interlude. Honestly I wouldn't mind the way things played out for him if I thought I'd be able to find interesting fanfic about him but I don't really think much of my chances for that.
I'm not even a huge Brian fan or anything. I just think Brian is more interesting then people give him credit for even if I like Aisha better.

On a lighter note would have liked to see more girl espers in Mob Psycho as well as more screentime for the (non-Tome) girls who were already there. Fortunately Gittetj is including an esper girl as part of Shou's new friend group of awful (complimentary) teenage girls in their delightful, soul-wrenching, Shou-centric fic. Said fic addresses another minor gripe I have with Mob Psycho which is that Shou is a much more interesting character than his shit dad but his dad gets more narrative focus (probably because Touichirou works better as a foil to Mob but still I'm bitter). At least I can get my desired Shou arc from the End of the World as You Know It since the Shou characterization in that is good enough to pretend it was canon.

I can really put whatever I want on here can't I? Anyway I should say upfront that I'm probably aroace so the idea of actually having sex with any of these characters kind of ruins things. Even so I still think they're attractive and specifically attractive to me rather than thinking in a detached way that they were made to be attractive (though most of these were). Also these entries aren't really in any sort of order.
( With that out of the way let's get started... )
And that's about everything. I got up at five AM to make this post for some reason and should probably go eat breakfast now.

So I finished Worm yesterday. I was correct in that arc 26 was the last arc before entering the endgame.
( I have a lot of things to say and most of them are spoilers )
Anyway reading Worm was an enjoyable experience and I really liked a lot of the characters. In retrospect. don't think it needed to be as long as it was but it was so impressively gripping that I didn't really have any issues with the pacing at the time. A lot of the interludes were really good and I enjoyed it's flirtations with cosmic horror (as well as horror in general honestly, with maybe the exception of some of the gnarlier body horror).
I don't know if I'll read Ward (it seems to have brokered mixed reviews) and if I do it won't be for a while. I might check out some fanfiction because I would like to see some of these characters in lower stakes situations and in my experience fanfic is a good place to look for that. I'm not really interested in alt!power Taylor (at least yet) though, because her bug control power fits her so well. At least compared to like Izuku, who I don't feel the power of punch really good at the risk of breaking his bones is nearly as good a fit for especially since he apparently gets better at not breaking his bones later on and that's the most interesting part of the power for him. (Judging by my BNHA fic reading proclivities I seem to think resurrective immortality or some other sort of being really good at not dying power suits him much better).
Anyway my initial impression of the top rated Worm fanfics on ao3 was somewhat discouraging (at least as far as stuff that I want to read now goes) but  I'll probably have better luck if I look on tvtropes since they seem to love Worm over there.
I'd also like to to talk about my Worm ships a little bit. I felt validated to see that Taylor/Lisa (apparently called smugbug which is a great shipname) is a popular ship in this fandom because when I was reading I thought they had some tension and that it could be fun. I also think Taylor/Rachel (apparently called wolfspider which is also a good shipname though not as good as smugbug) could be interesting. Smugbug is canonically homoerotic like besties in a nineteenth century novel and wolfspider is canonically homoerotic like rivals in a shonen series.

I finished the Bonesaw interlude of Worm and man I feel really bad for Bonesaw. Well, Riley. That was more of a surprise than it should have been I suppose given how many other antagonists have been humanized in their interludes.
I'll make a proper entry on these last couple arcs later.

 I'm ready to start arc 20 of Worm whenever I start reading it again. I'm really enjoying reading this again, but I'll be pretty busy this month, so I probably won't be able to finish it until next month. Ah, it's ironic though that I decided to take a break from reading Worm during finals time last semester because I was stressed from all the final projects I needed to do, barely read it all during both winter and spring break, and then finally read like three arcs in a single weekend because I'm once again stressed about all the final projects I need to do.
( Anyway thoughts )
I will say I think Worm's doing a pretty good job keeping the human element present. Like a big part of why I've never gotten into mainstream superhero stuff is that the worlds in those tend to feel kind of, how to put this, unlived in? Like it doesn't feel like anything interesting really happens in them outside of crisis, but they don't feel like they're bearing the strain of existing constant crisis either and it's really hard to imagine what day to day life is like in them. (I guess I'm really into the intersection of the fantastic and the mundane, which is probably why I like Diana Wynne Jones books so much). Admittedly this is just an impression I've gotten and might not actually be a problem with as much mainstream superhero stuff as I think it is. Anyway, Worm's good at not doing this. Despite all the crazy stuff that's been happening it still feels like normal stuff matters.

This morning it occurred to me that Sunny from OMORI is a shockingly good fit for the Accursed miraculous arc from Chuubo's. Headspace works really well for a sanctuary and he even has a world-breaker's hand with the way he denies upsetting truths so hard that they disappear from his subjective reality (it's definitely a banishment version of the WBH too).