Grrl Power #983 – Business or pleasure?
Customs Agent: Reason for your visit to our dimension, Sir?
Thothogoth: Telling off an Ex.
Customs Agent: I see. I will expedite your processing forthwith.
Some book recommendations
The Laundry Files – A lot of people might know this as The Atrocity Archives, but that’s just the name of the first book. Basically, a funny-in-a-British-way-but-also-serious-cause-they’re-fighting-terrors-from-beyond version of the BPRD, following a beginner field agent as he works to defend the world from Cthonic terrors, apocalyptic math, and avoiding literal Death by Powerpoint. This series reminded me what, and I hate to put it this way, but, what good writing is. I don’t mean that all the stuff I’ve been reading lately is bad, but it’s almost entirely functional. It tells a story. Very little of it has any… I don’t want to say “poetry” because fuck poetry, but the Laundry Files makes you work just a little bit as it evokes the world. Like at one point the MC is redlining a rental Prius down the Autobahn “while someone back down the road fires Audis and BMWs at me out of a cannon.” Obviously no one is actually shooting cars at him, it’s just an artful way of saying that everyone in real cars are thundering past him and threatening to send him into a tailspin with their jet wash. Yeah, art. That’s the word I was looking for.
Oh, Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer – A guy gets isekaied to a new world where he’s stuck with the class “Farmer” and hates it so much that the author was able to fill a 600* page book about how hard this guy works to get around it. The thing I like about this book, well, one of the things I guess, is that a lot of the time someone winds up in a world with magic and levels and whatever, and there’s no explanation for all the game mechanics stuff. This book explains a fairly reasonable magical ecosystem that actually makes a lot of sense. I also like it because I am an inveterate “Rule Taker Advantage Of” AKA ‘Sploitzer, and this book is about a guy who is good at that, but travels to a world where there are literal scholars who study the magical rules of their world in order to try and eek out maximum gains, so he doesn’t just show up and figure some obvious thing immediately and all the XP, Gold and Women in the world just fall on his dick right away, unlike a LOT of these isekai novels.
*(According to Amazon’s page count thing which always seems to overestimate by about 25% IMO. I don’t know, maybe they’re calculating it using a 13 point font instead of a 10 or something.)
Engineering Ludus – Okay, so I really like Delvers, LLC. To me it’s like the seminal isekai novel. I mean it’s definitely not the first story of its kind, but alongside Tamer, it was one of my first. Tamer technically counts as isekai, but really I think there’s an implied value with those books that the character(s) will be interacting with another world’s culture, and Tamer is like, welp, here’s a forest. Anyway I like Delvers and Engineering Ludas is kind of like… official FanFic? Okay, Blaise Corvin invited some other authors to write short stories that take place on Ludus, and published them in Delvers LLC: Surviving Ludus. One of those stories got continued in a full length novel, which the author sent me and was like, “I hear you like Delvers.” So I read like one paragraph of it, then got annoyed and had to go buy Surviving Ludus so I could catch the start of the story, read that and came back to Engineering. Despite liking Delvers, I had never picked up Surviving Ludus before because I generally don’t care for short stories. I don’t like getting invested in a character when their story is only 80 pages long. I generally don’t even buy novels unless there’s at least two volumes published already.
But anyway, Engineering Ludus is more Delvers, well, not Delvers, but it’s more adventures on Ludus, albeit lower level than the Delvers themselves. At least in book 1? Hmm?
On an entirely unrelated note, I don’t like that “Isekai” has become the official term for “Hero from another world.” Like the Japanese invented the genre? John Carter of Mars was published in 1912, and that’s probably not even the first popular example. Yeah, I know, the Japanese largely popularized the trope. I guess no one would understand if I started writing “So the MC gets Cartered and has to fend off all the XP, gold and women trying to fall on his dick…”
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
Final fight is close to wrapping up. I think it has some pacing issues as I have trouble turning off the “character moments” hose. Like, right in the middle of a fight, the MC gets his first good look at a new character, so I spend a few sentences describing them. It slows down the pace of things for readers. The easy fix it to abbreviate that description to just the absolute basics, then elaborate when the fight wraps, so I’ll probably just wind up doing that. I’m haven’t quite gotten to it yet as I’m trying to wrap the fight still, but, hey, this is “Progress Update,” not “How things will eventually be.”
September’s vote incentive is up! It’s been over a year since Max was featured in one of these, so I figured it was time to revisit.
If you just popped by to see it right when it went up, you might have missed the update. Her nipples were a touch high in the first version, and if you poke through the comments there, you can see the reference I used, only that model’s boobs were about 3 cup sizes smaller. Anyway, I flew her nipples south for the winter and updated the relevant pics.
Nude version is up at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Please let him have not only the paperwork, but some kind of legal diplomatic immunity due to TwilightC shinanigans. Given what he is and how high up on some sort of chain, I really hope so.
I’d love for once, Maxima to be shut down by someone besides Dues using her clear as day kryptonite..
You know, chain of command and legal red tape.
Psychic paper.
Since Max is outside Sydney’s Shield bubble, that should work on her… but since the shield SEEMS to block “stuff that messes with your mind” the psychic effect probably won’t make it though the bubble, and everyone INSIDE it will be looking at a blank piece of paper and looking at Max weird, because she’ll seem like she’s basing her responses off of something only she can see and they don’t know why she’s agreeing with whatever she THINKS is on that paper…
that is a neat idea, seeing as how her orbs seem to specifically target magic to counter it at times. Her shield can block off magic…which raises a question.
The comm ball has a see through magic illusions feature, but if the illusion is psychic rather than a magical hologram would the shield block the affect and allow Sydney to see the truth, like a secondary way to see through illusions (just only mental ones can be blocked by the shield).
the shield doesnt seem to block illusion, thats what the yellow ball is for and she isnt touching that one
That would actually be hilarious and subverting expectations in a good way, but somehow I doubt that will happen. :)
Very funny and cool if it did though.
My guess.
Xuriel lost a bet and was supposed to go to their high school reunion as his date. She stood him up after he gave her the corsage, hence the “Thanks for the loot” line.
That would be equally hilarious. :)
Or the ‘loot’ was some sort of dowry that demons do when getting engaged.
I’m thinking it was his favorite sweater.
So, Tom is the number two of the number two order?
What a shit!
haha :) That was funny. +1 internet.
But seriously, Deux is a different meaning in Latin
Deux = ‘Of Them’ Although it does mean two in french, but since the words ‘dominus secunde’ was also used, which is Latin, it’s more likely that DaveB was also using the latin definition for deux.
So Thothogoth’s title would be, in English, roughly:
Arch-Lord Thothogoth, Second in Command of the Bringers of Order of ‘Them.’
Or, it could mean “They who Bring Order”
Translations don’t always have to be literal
True. That would make sense as well!
So, He’s a waiter? Not even the head waiter?
Is Thothogoth “Thot-ho-goth”, “Tho-Tho-Goth”, or “Thoth-o-Goth”? So many options!
My reply to Dave’s annoyance at “Isekai” is that the american term for it has been “Portal fantasy”. American writers have been writing them for a long time. I’ve probably read 50 or more in my teens. From Alice in Wonderland to Neverwhere (or Summer in Orcus that I loved most recently)
I think Isekai has caught on because of the massive volume of portal fantasy stories that have recently reached us from Japan. it seems to be a Zeitgeist of sorts in their fictional escapism.
Didn’t Bob Howard get a Smart for his field trip to Germany? Damn, now I have to read that book again …
Would she need to see a passport, or a visa?
Is he really going by “Thot”, “ho”, and “goth” as a name?
wow