Fuck this pile of stupid bullshit and bollocks.

Namtab

Support a Charity (MOD CHALLENGE: DONATE OR FEEL LIKE A TROPER)

This work (Work) is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike license. That means youre free to share and distribute the Work however you like. You are also free to remix and adapt the Work. We only ask that you attribute the book to us properly, that the Work will not be used for commercial purposes, and any derivative work youve created based on this Work is distributed under this or a similar license. For more information, you may consult http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. If you enjoy this Work, we ask that you consider donating to a charity, a list which we have included at the end of this introductory chapter. We urge that you not to act like Blixty Slycat, a proud TVtropes troper, 1 as seen in the exchange below in respect of Women For Women International, a charity supporting female survivors of war:

Christ, I wasn't the one who brought the condescending attitude into this thread, that was Spork, and the rest of you followed suit. Pardon me for trying to make a point on the internet, I should've known better. As for supporting charities, I prefer to spend my time and money on ones that don't arbitrarily limit who gets their funding for no given reason. If you have a problem with that, that is your issue, not mine. I find it utterly bizarre that any time anti-male sexism is brought up, the response is almost unilaterally "quit yer bitchin'". I'm not one of those people who thinks that fathers shouldn't have to pay child support, here. Or that feminism is some sort of anti-MAN conspiracy. I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to be concerned about. I want to know why it's just women before I spend a single dime on this. And if the reason is "there isn't one", then sorry, I'm taking my money to another charity.

We have since been informed that Blixty Slycat is no longer a TVTropes troper, as in January 2012 he declared he was quitting TVTropes, and Fast Eddie obliged by banning him. This fact does not discount that Blixty Slycats statement as reprdocued in this Work is wholly representative of TVTropess culture

Blix, this was on their site:

W omen for W omen International works with socially excluded women in eight countries where war and conflict have devastated lives and communities. Each woman we serve has her own storysome of loved ones murdered, and others of physical and emotional trauma. Most have endured a struggle for survival. When we enroll women in our one-year program, they learn job skills and receive business training so they can earn a living. They come to understand their rights and how to fight for those rights in their homes, their communities and their nations and become leaders.

Women for Women International (WfWI) believes that lasting change can only be achieved when women have access to both knowledge and resources. This is their reason. They are trying to help empower women in a society where women are not made aware of their rights as free and upstanding human beings. Quite frankly, I find it rather selfish that people would rather complain about a charity targeting women instead of praising that charity for attempting to make a difference. This is not about men vs. women. This is about people.

Okay, you know what? I'm sorry. Alright? Will you stop fucking yelling now? Christ. Yes, I'm clearly a horrible person here. Is that what you want me to say? Or are you just going to continue bitching about my bitching, so I can bitch about your bitching about my bitching? Because we're going in fucking circles here. I admitted I was wrong, what more do you want me to do? Kiss your feet and call you a saint? You're not a beacon of moral superiority. No one is. So perhaps instead of touting how awesome you are because you weren't initially skeptical, you could have just answered the points being made and ended this whole thing a lot sooner, andget this, you'd have been completely right. But no, you've opted to go the "you're horrible people" route. I seriously do not understand why people do this. If the point being made was "this charity seems to discriminate against men for no reason" you could have literally just posted that preceded by "from the 'About Us' page" and this nonsense wouldn't have happened. What is there to be gained by just going "no, you're wrong" without saying why, and accusing everyone involved of being sexist? None of this accomplishes jack shit, and now we're all mad at each other, which accomplishes even less.

We also ask for you not to believe in Fast Eddie (Sole Administrator and Owner of TVTropes), who has attempted to silence Something Awfuls charitable contributions by deleting the following from the Something Awful article on TVTropes:

This list of charities is not meant to be exhaustive and only as suggestions based on the theme of this Work. You are encouraged to support a charity of your own choice:
Women for Women o https://give.womenforwomen.org/sponsorship/index.htm?wfw=EnRedir Matnwa Community Learning Center o http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3453251 o https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/BeyondBorders/OnlineDonation.html Red Cross o http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate.html Books Aloud o http://www.booksaloud.org/ Point Foundation: The National LGBT Scholarship Fund o http://www.pointfoundation.org/ Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice o http://www.astraeafoundation.org/ Albert Kennedy Foundation o http://www.akt.org.uk/ Stonewall o http://www.stonewall.org.uk/ Herorat: Detection Rats Technology o http://herorat.org/ Aasha Foundation: Hope for Girls o http://aashafoundation.org/ RAINN o http://www.rainn.org/ Rape Crisis o http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/ Nanowrimo Young Writer Programme o http://ywp.nanowrimo.org

Thank you. We hope you enjoy this Work as much as we do creating it.

Foreword
Back when the TVTropes threads were a staple in the Something Awful forums, Something Awful goon Namtab foolishly asked for fellow users to vote for a terrible troper fiction to do riffs on. Naturally, goons being goons they chose the worst story and I HATE EVERYONE WHO VOTED FOR THIS ATROCIOUS PILE OF INSIPID SHIT. By the time I have completed compiling (almost) everything, my priorities in real life have changed due to work and personal shit going down, and the mods have finally decided that the troper threads should die. It wasnt unexpected there is just so much you can make fun of when the well has run dry. I think the last funny thing that happened was when the TVTropes creators decided to set up a store where people pay real money to buy badly-drawn badges to put on their avatars. I tell a lie they were charging bitcoins. In any case, I was all ready to let this compilation die and languish in my harddisk, and Im sure everyone involved felt the same (Namtabs last comment to me was that of relief he did not have to read KIKEN again). With my personal life settled for the moment, I had the time to take a look at this and remembered that I have compiled some goon chat on deconstruction and creative writing. I am not knowledgeable at all in critical literary theories, and to me, these were fine discussions between people with better foundation in the subject than I do. It would be a shame for it to just stay hidden in some netbook in Malaysia, and I hope if you do read them, you would find them of use to you. I would say if you cannot be bothered with the troper nonsense, feel free to ignore most of KIKEN and jump straight to the (far from formal) academic talk at the end of the book. Before I end this foreword, I would like to give some thanks to Namtab for not being a sane person in actually reading stupid bullshit fiction, ddddddffdfddddfddf for designing the cover of this compilation, deconstruction talk goons for having a better grasp in deconstruction/subversion/inversion/postmodernism than people who think a childrens cartoon should involve rape, and those goons participating in the troper threads who were not part of the white noise slumber party you know who you are. This will be the last compilation I ever do with respect to TVTropes. Fuck Tropers. The Saddest Rhino 8 September 2012

Table of Contents
EPIC! (The Short Story)...................................................................................................... 1 The Author: EPIC ...................................................................................................................................14 Literature: KIKEN...................................................................................................................................16 KIKEN CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI (Book One) .................................................................................19 Chapter One: The Panicking World...................................................................................................19 Chapter Two: Questioning Reality ....................................................................................................29 Chapter Three: Changes Here and There..........................................................................................40 Chapter Four: Well, What an Outcome ............................................................................................49 Chapter Five: True Love Doesnt Exist ..............................................................................................59 Chapter Six: A Collection of Bias and Beliefs ....................................................................................68 Chapter Seven: No One Ever Gets Us Anyway..................................................................................82 Chapter Eight: STOP STOP STOP .......................................................................................................91 Who the Fuck are these Dickholes: A Character Guide to Kiken: There was a Pretentious Title Here, Its Gone Now......................................................................................................................................101 KIKEN: OWARUHANASHINOMAE (The Prequel) .................................................................................107 Salvaging Kiken: The Fools Errand .....................................................................................................113 KIKEN: MONOWOHAKAISURUHANASHI (Book Two)..........................................................................123 Chapter One: Do You Remember Love? .........................................................................................123 Chapter Two: I Still Love You (Because I Am a Creepy Fuck) ..........................................................131 Chapter Three: EPIC Failed to Assign a Title for Chapter Three .....................................................138 Reviews and a Reflection on the Best Troper Tale .............................................................................146 Lets Rewrite Kiken: It Feels like My Eyes are Bleeding from Over-Exposure to Anime.....................158 Interlude: Hydronixs Guidelines on Approaching Criticism ...............................................................172 Advice on Writing You will Never Get on TVTropes ...........................................................................179 Lessons on Critical Theory, Deconstruction and Postmodernism ......................................................187

EPIC! (The Short Story)

Title: EPIC! /EPIC! Oretachi. Tagline: "Hell yeah, kon-kon!" (primary tagline) Format: Yonkoma celled episode manga-esque light novel Specific format: Medium-light novel (If there ever ARE any! XD) Language: Japanese, English Genre: Shonen, Shojo, Parody, Romance, Skit Comedy, Comedy Market: Pre-teen~Late teens Publishing format: Uploaded/Print A couple of thoughts spring out. First up, the market for this book is people in their preteens (i.e. before they hit their teens, about 10-12) and late teens (which I define as 1518 year olds). It's amazing to find a book catered to two audiences with several years separating them. In addition it's also a romantic comedy targeted at both genders at once. Yonkoma celled manga-esque medium-light novel? Really? So it's a book that reads like a 4 panel manga (note for non weeaboos, 4 panel manga is essentially the japanese equivalent of like newspaper comics or whatever, it's basically a quick set up then a joke in 4 panels. This is basically sounding like "Japanese garfield: the novel") Japanese/English language means that it's written in English, but the author throws in honorifics in order to show off, because without honorifics how would we know the relationships? Ok, so let's get a plot summary Plot/Summary: Tsugumu, Tsukiyo, Ryouji and Renako are four young otaku who absolutely have a dying passion to watch anime here and there. Tsugumu and Tsukiyo absolutely love a show about four girls, while Ryouji loves a show about time travelers, Closed Space and various other phenomena. Renako can adapt to any anime and just end up liking it for some random reason. Each of these children come from different cliques and discuss everyday lives, but will they be able to spend their lives together for the entireity of their childhood lives, including the Middle School years? Read to find out, and you may even get to see the times when they were toddlers! Let's not beat around the bush here, the first two like Lucky Star, the third one likes Haruhi, and the fourth just watches whatever. I'm guessing they're probably obnoxious about their choices. Also the author intends to cut off one they reach high school. This being a troper I'm guessing it's because high school is a little too close to legal age for his liking.

Runcible Cat Namtab's latest horror: ... four young otaku who absolutely have a dying passion to watch anime here and there ... What the fuck does this even mean?
It's stupid. It sucks. I hate it.

hallo spacedog

It's a story about people who love to watch tv shows, to the point that what series they like is pretty much the entirety of their characterization. "Join us next week when I start posting my planned 8 volume epic slice of life story about 4 young girls and boys who love to watch cartoons! One of them loves the Simpsons, one of them loves Family

this chaos is killing me

Guy... "

Runcible Cat But then shouldn't it be undying passion? And the phrase "here and there" is not used in that way. OK, I know Troper writing usually reads as though it was written in some other language and then run through Google Translate anyway, but this - agh. I'm amazed you managed to interpret it. Did you find the secret Google Back-Translate button to get from English to Troperish?

It's stupid. It sucks. I hate it.

TurnipFritter

It reads like it's in that awful dialect that 90% of manga scanlations are written in. After a while, you get used to all the weird and unnecessary adjectives. I think what gets me about the summary (besides "THEY FUCKING LOVE TO WATCH ANIME HERE AND THERE" part) is the "Each of these children come from different cliques and discuss everyday lives" part. Because why would we want to see characters out living their lives when they can just come together and discuss "everyday lives"?

Paula tried PSI Fire Beta!

PROLOGUE: Short Conversations of a Certain Young Twin Pair "Nee-chan, you alwyite?" "Yeah, I am! Wanna pway?" "Pwetty wainy to go owtside." *sigh* "Dunno what to do."

Speech, as well as being in speechmarks, is also in italics for some reason. As I predicted, this is pretty standard weeaboo, in which everyone speaks english except for the few japanese buzzwords the author knows. Also I hope they quickly skip the toddler years because this style of writing is obnoxious. Thunderclaps roared near the pair of twins. Tsuu-kun and Tsuu-tan were very attached to each other and could get easily scared if ever something bad happened, but Tsuu-kun was more prone to losing his temper, more often than his older twin sister Tsuu-tan. They were equally protective of each other, but they knew one would always look out for another. With looks of worry in their eyes, the twins dressed in matching footies ran to their bed. The pair really seemed that horrified, to the point of-"Nee-chan, I'm scawed!" "Hug me, Tsuu-kun!" "Oh yess I wiwl!" "You berrer hug me, I feewl tad."

This is creepy, this is so fucking creepy. Both twins started to cry, one asking the other for help beneath their tears. They hugged each other until they fell asleep that night: sunrise would come and bring back the delight, curiosity and wonder of young toddlers to the pair of twins that got easily scared. The ground was a bit moist, but both twins managed to stay in the drier part of their backyard: littered with rocks and flowers, that is. At the very least, Tsuu-kun was able to defend his sister from what she considered, 'tarry cweepy widdle buggies. "Me stiwl sweepy..." "I bwought my pilwow wiff me." "What iz dat piwlow?" "Idz you! You'we MY piwlow."

Jesus christ these kids don't act like real toddlers at all. Did I mention this is creepy and obnoxious yet?

Suddenly, after all the crying, melancholy and scaredness-ness, the twins felt a lot better as soon as they both rolled, wrestled and cuddled each other in the grass. Tsuukun ended up hugging Tsuu-tan and digging into her chest, which would still be acceptable as they grew up. The twins were four years of age back then, and they sometimes had a naughty streak that was unnoticed by other relatives and friends alike. The twins often comforted each other, and built each other up throughout their lives. This is their FULL story.

No it isn't acceptable to dig into your older sister's chest what is wrong with you? Luckily this story only has one full chapter so I'll get through it fairly quickly. NEXT CHAPTER: They go to school, then they come home and eat dinner, they're still quasi-incestuous.

HELL YEAH!

KON-KON!

What the fuck does this even mean.

There's a character page for this (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/EPICOretachi) by the way, which is pretty creepy and troperesque. " H A V E N T you had enough sleep, Nii-chan?" Himako said, jumping on her older brother's legs. The 8-year old girl woke her brother, Tsugumu up, just in time for the goal of waking up, not being too early. "We're having savory French toast drizzled with the drippings from the steak we had last night. Aren't you gonna run to the counter already?" I'm preserving the formatting as much as I remember. The author has a habit of putting all his weeaboo Japanese in italics so you don't miss it or whatever.

Also, savoury french toast covered in steak drippings for breakfast? It is now my personal canon that all members of this family are morbidly obese. This fits in well with the actual canon of them being unpopular anime nerds. "Nope. I'll have to see if Nee-chan's awake," Tsugumu yawned, with a white shirt messily wrapped around him. He rolled out of bed, got up, and checked up on his twin sister, Tsukiyo. They've been best friends ever since they were born, and they've actually bickered over little things. Many times in their life, actually, especially when they were little themselves. "Nii-chan, you're there, right? Don't be a dojikko," "Yeah, I'm up!" "Is she awake yet? I mean, Nee-chan." "Needed to check on her." Now, this is a lot more annoying. In the regular story, only the Japanese is in italics, however every now and again we'll get one of these conversations, usually between the brother and the sister, in which everything except the weeaboo Japanese is in italics. For other things, a Dojikko is apparantly the Japanese equivelent of the Cute Clumsy Girl, except it needs to be a seperate trope because it's a GLORIOUS NIPPON ANIME stereotype (the official reason given is that dojikko is supposed to be cute whereas cute clumsy girl is supposed to be funny). Either way, why you'd be clumsy for sleeping in is beyond me. Also, the end of that paragraph bugs me, seems like bad English. "Hurry up and get ready to run with me!" Yuuichi said, dashing down the cramped hallway. He slammed himself and Tsugumu on Tsukiyo's bedroom door, and they slammed it open. Tsugumu tackled his sister, and Tsukiyo started to pinch and wrestle him. The two were always together, except in school, in which they were placed in different sections. "Ahahahaaah! You're always so clingy and playful with me around." Tsukiyo giggled once Tsugumu landed on her. The twins got up, and they both blew raspberries to Yuuichi, and ran off to fight over breakfast. Luckily, everything was fresh, so they wolfed down their savory French toast slices. Yuuichi and Himako also followed, but a lot quietly they ran. "Remember, the one with most drippings is mine, kay?" "No, mine!" "Mine, alright? SHEESH!"

"Okay, fine. But I claim the ones with a lot of butter!" "Good thing there's no PE today." Tsugumu sighed, since PE was one of his worst subjects. Often, he'd trip and fall whenever he'd run, and lose stamina everytime he did sprints. Tsukiyo, on the other hand, was so humble about how good she was at athletics and sports, but acting clingy over Tsugumu when it comes to Math, and vice versa. This occurs often. The twins are both good at English and Japanese; but they always hated Social Studies. Tsugumu is lazy, while Tsukiyo's very active. "Tsugumu, don't you know that PE's beneficial to your health? Remember that we both lost weight after those dreaded beep tests we had last week," Tsukiyo lectured. The beep tests were often a chore for Tsugumu and Tsukiyo. It isn't stated, but Yuuichi is probably supposed to be a younger brother, just like Himako is a younger sister. it's probably ignored in the interest of having boy twin slam down on girl twin and wake her up with some pinching and wrestling. We then get an argument about french toast, in which the two twins argue over who gets the most steak fat and inadvertantly support my personal canon. Then it's just bullshit filler about how one of them is too retarded to run properly. The port city of Yokohama was a playground for many of the teenagers and young adults growing up there. Tsugumu often asks his parents if he can arrange a student gathering at nearby Minato Mirai 21, which is already growing into a cyberpunk paradise for many tourists and students that are trying to unwind and admire its architecture. Many people often go to work and school looking at its futuristic architecture, and Tsugumu said, "Will a world catastrophe ever happen starting with Minato Mirai 21? It IS something that looks like something taken straight from O/H, but do legendary crime groups hang there too?" Tsugumu kept to himself, nearly having to catch up with his family. Tsugumu's family went to Hikariyama Academy, and it was one of the best schools that Yokohama could offer. Also, some of the world's best actually graduated from Hikariyama. The school was founded as an academic-athletic social learning paradise, but as time went by, the school would grow into something pretty prestigious for its community. Having university and elementary campuses, Hikariyama became the school that Japan's upper-middle class to upper-class could enter: Tsugumu and Tsukiyo's mother was able to afford tuition for Hikariyama, due to her efforts in the restaurant industry. Once they arrived in school, Tsugumu ran to one of his best friends and tackled-huged, or glomped him. OK, I'm going to ignore the whole "cyberpunk paradise" thing because that's just retarded. It's a futuristic building that people seem to crowd around because it looks futuristic, and boy twin has anime thoughts about it. So some of the world's best graduated from Hikariyama, the worlds best at what? As far as I can tell it just seems to be the author making up some sort of super special private school for his author insert to go to, even though he was probably public schooled like everyone else. For a semi-autobiography this doesn't seem at all grounded in reality. It's more the author making up his anime life and wishing he could live the anime reality.

Yokohama is a brand of tyre, by the way. I know this because instead of making the reference and waiting to see if anyone gets it, the author links to an eBay search for yokohama every time it's mentioned. Don't want to miss the supreme wit after all. Also, I'm pretty sure that normal people, particularly boys, don't "tackle-huged" their best friends whenever they see them. "Tsugumu, no!" Tsukiyo yelled, since Tsugumu tackled his best friend, Ryouji. "Didn't I tell you who to glomp? Come on!" Yuuichi and Himako on the other hand, tried to calm them down. Nothing worked, except for the fact that there was no other pair of twins like Tsugumu and Tsukiyo, who both had short tempers and sibling complexes. Each of them were very clingy, and the twins were often immature outside of school. But all in all, they were the best of friends, and had a bond that was heavily diamondencrusted. The two also had best friends of their own: Tsugumu had Ryouji for example, who was a lot like another big brother to him, with Yuuichi serving as the actual Aniki of the pack. Oh, never mind, Yuuichi is actually the older brother (Aniki pretty much means "big brother", just the author being a weeaboo again). Also we get more detail about how close the twins are. They're pretty close, guys. Aniki, despite being in Japanese, isn't in italics for some reason. It is capitalised, though. Perhaps the author was hoping for a TVTropes link to magically appear. "We'll be in first period. Oh, and by the way, make sure you have better tactics than me, okay? I hope to see YOU GUYS tackle more." Ryouji said, with him holding Tsukiyo's shoulder. Tsugumu grabbed his binder and left for Social Studies, a subject that he always hated. For the class reports on Ancient Greece, a group did the Minoans was to present. "I don't think I'll ever want to try bull-jumping. Was it REALLY used to give praise to the legendary Minotaur?" Tsugumu asked, wondering about why the Minotaur was so important in Greek mythology and culture. "I think it does have potential to be a future Pokemon! If that was ever possible for Tauros to evolve," Tsugumu whispered under his breath. "No, no, no, no, no!" Belinda said, seeing as she can't see herself have a hand at bulljumping. Belinda Comme-Pratt was one of the preppy kids at Hikariyama, often showing off themselves, or hanging with their crowd, who followed trends. "I can't bull-jump! Its too energy-intensive! But, I'd like to have a hand at the Mini-Olympics though." "Belinda, I thought you never liked sports!" Tsugumu declared to the class. He always thought that Belinda never had a thing for sports, until one day, he saw that Belinda was very boyish, yet a little feminine when it came to following trends in fashion, food, and high society. But, overall, Belinda seemed a little too much of a cocky gal for Tsugumu. "Remember the Olympian Quiz Bowl?" Andou Misaki asked, in his boyishly jocky tone. "Heh, I MIGHT apply for that." Andou loved sports so much that his life started to revolve around them. Ryouji was competition worthy of Andou; but Ryouji never liked sports. Andou played soccer, baseball, plus track and field. Tsugumu considered him average in other areas.

Andou was one of the super-jocks of the school, so much that he decided to hang out with jocks and jocks alone: Tsukiyo always told Tsugumu that Andou was arrogant; yet he seemed such a nice guy on the inside. But he remembered Tsukiyo saying that, Andou was shy around strangers, but he let himself loose and showed off to his close buddies. JOCKS The author's english is devolving though, some of this is terrible, not least because of this english-japanese hybridisation that's going on half the time. Most of this is filler about who's good at sports though. We're also being introdduced to some of the cliques that EPIC-ORETACHI will smash through later (through the power of being an anime clique). By the time it was English class, Tsugumu bumped into Tsukiyo and whispered: "You're right, Andou's a bit of a tsundere these days, right?" Tsukiyo sighed, "Actually, he take the -de out of dere and replace it with-o. So yeah, he's still a little cocky. For English, the class was supposed to present a poem they chose out of a certain poetry packet. Tsugumu memorized his poem a little too many times, and he started to have memory destroy the poem line by line. Everyone tried to encourage Tsugumu; encouragement was the one thing that made him feel pressured! Knowing that Tsugumu panicking meant going mad, Harako-sensei went off her cellphone. Giant teardrops landed on everyone. Jesus christ this is terrible writing. Neither of these two paragraphs make any sense at all. Also, what the fuck is a tsunore? "Yeah? Well, hows Tabi and Kari? Thanks. Meet you for dinner later. See you! Bye!" Harako-sensei exclaimed. "Okay Tsugumu, this can be your warm-up recital. Tell me when youll go again, okay?" The teacher who was pretty famous in Hikariyama for going on her cellphone while her students recited or presented something in class was Harakosensei. But, there were more than 2 things while she would use her cellphone. She can write comments, grades, and even drink coffee while talking to her boyfriend on the NTT Daleca 956 model phone of hers. Luckily, she was very considerate about how her students behaved, and she was very organized. But Harako-sensei had a little too much of a temper. Tsugumu started reading his poem from memory; yet his voice felt very crooked and winding. He started sweating, and his heart raced to a distant finish line. He felt a lot more pressure as his classmates looked at him; but as Tsugumu went on reciting the poem he chose, he started to remember it more. Most of the lines came back to Tsugumu's brain. He then recited it with a few errors here and there, but overall, it was still a little tolerable for Harako-sensei. Finally, he started calming down after a few minutes of his face lying on his binder. Tsugumu realized that the pressure partly helped him; and he shouted, "Harako-sensei, I guess that round will be my actual graded turn for the recital." "Wasnt that nice, Tsuu-kun?" Renako Kinami said, trying to pep Tsugumu up after a

stressful recital. "Thats empathy for you." Renako was an animal lover who still ate meat; she cared more about endangered animals. Renakos parents work for DOUse, a video game and computer software company. Renako herself is a tester for games that DOUse develops! Fuck this story. You now have the teacher who talks on her NTT DELUCA 956

CELLPHONE all day and yet neither gets fired or messes up, and Renako, the girl who likes animals and eats meat, just like most other people. Hell, even I eat meat and like animals. Anyway, time for some actual plot. But all in all, her main interests are ways to protect animals, and ways to NEVER let a single crust get on ones sandwich. Rumor has it that someone in Tsukiyos class has a crush on Renako for being very independent and confident! Tsugumu would LOVE to dig these rumors from the ground up, and Tsukiyo wondered if Tsugumu was being too gossipy. It was recess, and it was a time when every friend and clique got together. In Hikariyama Middle School, there are 5 cliques: EPIC!-tachi, which was the "anticlique", Preppies, who cared about money, looks and trends, Jocks, boyish people who were sporty, Geeks, who have high interests in anime and pop culture, and the Artsies, who were very creative. Everyone else either had been fans of cliques, or sided with EPIC!-tachi, which was a sign that all cliques coexisted. Ryouji, Tsugumu, Tsukiyo and Renako were the 4 members of EPIC!-tachi, and each used to belong to a clique of their own until the 4 members lost interest and got bored pretty quick. Tsugumu often led the EPIC! group discussions. So basically in this school, everyone is either a jock ( ), preppie, geek or artsie. That is, except for these four people (all anime geeks anyway), who form the anti-clique. Despite being actively opposed to all four all encompassing cliques, these four nerds are popular because bullying doesn't exist in my glorious nippon stories. My personal canon is that people only pretend to like these four people, but deep down think they're all pretentious assholes, the geeks that even the geek clique hates. So essentially it's a clique for tropers. "Should we discuss our origins now, guys?" Tsugumu wondered, since he was planning on making profiles on the EPIC!-tachi members. "Tsugumu Minagawa, age 12, born February 17. I was a geek until I discovered I could make new friends who never had the same interests as I did. I never realized that people, who werent like me at all, never liked what they were good at. I hated Math for a long time, and I still am good at it to this day. It easily bores me and gives me stress, so I dont really like it. Tsugumu always hated mathematics with such a passion, ever since he came across it while studying the Kumon method at just 4 years old. "Well, here goes nothing, brother of mine." Tsukiyo said, proclaiming her existence as a former clique member. "Tsukiyo Minagawa, age 12, born February 17. I used to be an artsie until I gained heavy artists block. Sure, Tsugumu and I are good at art, but I run out of ideas easily. Eventually, I became best friends with Renako, who protects endangered animals with a passion. Shes very independent, and she cares for others. People I care about? Hes right beside you, Ryouji. Ryouji turned his head right to see

little clingy Tsugumu tackle-hug him once more, and he turned red after Tsukiyo proudly talked about her tale of graduating from the artsies. "Me? Uhhmy turn already? Well, okay. "Ryouji mumbled, as he didnt know that it was his turn to discuss himself to the anti-clique."Ryouji Chinaka, age 12, born August 13. I always wondered if sporting was my thing; I always hated doing sports. I preferred watching anime over to athletic stuff, and I never really liked school that much when I was small. I despise homework, since it cuts into me finishing the Astonishment, and also gets my free time away from me. Why is life so unfair? Gah, I shouldnt answer that! Tsugumu and Tsukiyo nodded, seeing as they both understood what Ryouji went through. "Looks like its my turn then." Renako sighed, since she was tired of schooling before recess. She was one of the latest members of the anti-clique. "Renako Kinami, age 12, born June 17. I was a preppy who always thought that you could only make friends with who you share your interests with, for a long time. I never knew that even geeks and jocks could hang out together while settling such differences. When I found out that I was a tsundere, Tsukiyo and I started to hang out with each other more often." Ryouji started to blush and look around, while dropping bullets of sweat on the floor. Tsukiyo also turned red, with a little help from her all-seeing moe sense. There's all the origin stories, pushed in in the most ham-handed method possible. Tsugumu is a former geek, and he hates maths but is also good at it, because tropers are like that, they're just great at boring school shit because they're all Brilliant But Lazy. Tsuyiko is horribly clingy towards her brother and was an artsie until she got artists block. Then she joined anime club. Ryouji is (probably) a former jock who hates sports and school because it cuts into precious anime time. Everyone can feel his pain. Renako is a former preppy who quit being a preppy because preppys hate anyone who isn't a preppy. Also she's a self-proclaimed tsundere (This is me being a weeaboo here, but from what I know of anime the tsunderes never know that they're tsunderes. Of course if she didn't know, how could she be special). 4:33PM "Owsu! How was school? Were having Hainanese chicken, and its better eaten warm. " Tsugumu and Tsukiyos mother said, and Yuuichi was already on the couch with Himako doing her homework. "Is Himako all right? I heard she got a mild fever. " Tsukiyo asked, since she got news of Himako getting sick during Math. "Shes fine, shes fine. Its going down after Mom gave her some orange juice. " Yuuichi explained, since he was often the one who would answer questions made by any member of his family. "Neechan, meet me in my room before or after dinner. Theres something I have to show you! Souta-kun traded me this. Legendary. RARE." Both twins kept pinky swearing. Tsugumu did his homework, but started to suffer since he did everything he wanted to do on the side. He felt lucky that he had time to do homework before class started, and Tsugumu left an amount of homework that he could do during Recess tomorrow. "Gah, the poetry write-up seemed easy. Heres hoping that Math and Social Studies is also easier!"

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And so he went. He had a hard time typing his structure poem, since the keyboard shortcuts were hard to remember. But, he was able to print it out, perfectly, yet partly modified. After Tsugumu printed it, he gave it to Yuuichi, and he said, "Are you being suicidal?" Tsugumu then felt a sweatdrop on him, with Yuuichi being stalked by little blue flames. OK, this last thing here is the author trying to write out manga imagery. It goes about as well as one would expect. 6:07PM By the time it was dinner, everyone brought a situation to the table. "Mom, howd you get the recipe? I always wondered if this could come over you!" Tsukiyo asked, since she was curious about the recipe for Hainanese chicken rice for a long time. Tsukiyo was a very great cook, but Tsugumu was a very good food critic, eater and food plater. And that DIDN'T rhyme. "This didnt come from Fish Sauce, did it?" Tsukiyo claimed. "It is, but its partially modified. And its partly browned too, so its a cross between the 3 variants of the dish itself." Himako then started to feel a little better after having some of the chicken. "I need moreits helping me get a little well!" Tsugumu asked: "It should be the ginger, right Hima-chan?" 7:13PM "Well, at least everyone ate. Nee-chan, didnt I tell you to come to my room? Tsugumu shouted in Tsukiyos room. Little did he know that Tsukiyo was already there in his domain just so they could hang out. Tsugumu ran to his own room and tackled Tsukiyo they did what they usually did to each other. They wrestled, cuddled, and did a little horseplay. "Heard that Souta gave you a little Jirachi and Giratina. Dont you still have Diamond?" Tsukiyo answered, after playing rough with her little twin brother that was super clingy. Tsugumu yelled, "Dont tell me you want them! I can trade with you another day, okay, Nee-chan? They played again, but it got a rougher with Tsukiyo trying to stop her twin from going wild. "Dont tell me that you guys are doing what you do with each other." "HiHimako! What are you doing!?" "Okay, sorry! It just got a little lively." "Gah, okay, fine! Ill leave this between you too. And so the chapter finishes where it began, horrible incest subtext because these two twins seem to have no sense of what is appropriate, or any sense of boundaries. The male twin is the worst though, I don't like the thought of girl twin having to stop guy twin "going wild" on her. Then again, tropers would probably blame her for not resisting enough.

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Finally, there's this in a spoiler tag Characters: "We will be able to withstand the battle against cliques for we are EPIC! Live on, EPICtachi!" THE EPIC-TACHI! CLIQUE: Minagawa, Tsugumu ( )/Oresama ()/Tsuu-kun (~) Age: 12 Character Type: Yangire (Sweet at first, wants to kill anyone later) Description: The youngest of the Oretachi Gang, and a younger twin brother to Tsukiyo. He is considered the leader of the Oretachi Gang in Hikariyama Middle School, made from 2 members. He is very lazy, yet he is refined. He excels in his studies, yet he is very talkative. Tsugumu is also prone to doodling, but he is a very good person to make friends with. Tsugumu is super clingy when it comes to his being with Nee-chan, as often they may be mutually co-dependent. But is Tsugumu even aware about it? Minagawa, Tsukiyo ( )/Tashitama ()/Tsuu-tan (~) Age: 12 Character Type: Yangire (Has a quickly snappable temper, sweet too) Description: The oldest member of the Tashitachi Gang, who is an older twin sister to Tsugumu. Often, she dotes on him and Tsugumu glomps onto her. Many people think that Tsukiyo and Tsugumu are even dating! Tsukiyo snaps and often throws things, and breaks pencils (and even pens) when she loses her temper. Tsugumu can't even control her when that happens! Tsukiyo and Tsugumu are equally protective, and for some reason, Tsukiyo is the only one who actually knows! But will she tell Tsugumu? Chinaka, Ryouji ( )/Orekare ()/Ryou-sama () Age: 13 Character Type: Kakkoko (One of the more awesome common folk) Description: The oldest member of the Oretachi Gang and has 3 siblings. He often acts like a big brother to Tsugumu, and he often calls Ryouji, "Hoka Nii-chan". Ryouji is good at just about anything, and Tsugumu often looks up to Ryouji because of that. Ryouji and Tsugumu often send each other songs, and that is a major way of their communication between them. Ryouji often notices that Tsugumu and Tsukiyo are super clingy, and he keeps trying to set them apart! Will there be ever such a plan? Kinami, Renako ( )/Tashikano ()/Rena-cchi () Age: 12 Character Type: Tsundere (Nice, but often very aloof around others) Description: The youngest member of the EPIC!-Tachi Anti-Clique, who loves all kinds of animals. She is an transfer student whose parents are part of the a Japanese video game company called Douse Software. She often brings prerelease versions of games made by Douse, or those that are associated with the company. Infact, she herself is a tester for those very games! But for some reason, Renako doesn't really know how many hinks or kinks are there in every beta she recieives. Which is mostly a rehash of stuff we saw earlier, but we know know that the two twins are "Yangires" and Royuji is a "Kakkoko". And that's it for EPIC-ORETACHI, this chapter was put online October 2008 and the author never added to it again.

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hallo spacedog Namtab posted: HELL YEAH! KON-KON! What the fuck does this even mean? Kon-kon is some kind of fake onomatopoeia sound that Japanese foxes supposedly make or something so I'm putting my money on fox eared girls or fox furries or whatever. Oh wait sorry I mean KITSUNE that makes it so much more Japanese right?

this chaos is killing me

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The Author: EPIC

Tropers: EPIC (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/EPIC) "Rape The Dog., but you have to eat it too." Hopefully, my Famous Last Words. Okay. This will be awkward, but its true. I am 15, and need to lose more weight. So I ended up here in 2007 all because of looking something up about... Ah, fuck it, what am I saying? TV Tropes Ruined My Life and quite frankly, I'm quite proud! But then again, that resulted in the membership of ROFLightning who is my big brother, and I've been using trope terms in in my forum posts and my vocabulary too. I'm segregating my tropes into two sets of examples:

This Troper provides examples of: Absurd Adolescent: For some, being able to like Pokmon, Sonic the Hedgehog, candy and desserts is incredibly childish. But then again, look at the trope below this one. o Psychopathic Manchild: I'M AN EROTOPHONOPHILE. Ever heard of lust murder?

Big Brother Worship: Sometimes, to the point of glorification. o Big Brother Instinct: Inverted, I really do not like my immediate family. Aloof Big Brother Rebellious Prince

Big Screwed-Up Family: But tame compared to many others. You Do NOT Want To Know. Fan Nickname: mamooch... The Hedonist: Up to Eleven. Humanity Is Insane: Insane human right here.

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ROFLightning and this Troper provide common examples of: Heroic BSOD/Freak Out: Horribly prone to them as well. Turns out I suffer minor episodes as well, turning into a Yangire or worse, a Yandere quite easily! Heterosexual Life Partners: For almost all my life, he's been the next two examples of mine: Living Emotional Crutch: Both ways. And another one in the form of Deathjaw91 over Live. o Morality Pet/Morality Chain: Again, both ways. Including the third one.

This Troper has launched/WikiMagic-ized the following pages: Sonic F Sonic Generations How I Met Your Mother - Characters

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Literature: KIKEN
"Humans can change the world, just in different directions!" Kogawa Nagari, age 10 This is a story that ends the world. murder. One that can destroy things. One that causes

KIKEN is a story authored by EPIC. It's about a Conflict due to an online game called Hubspace. Hubspace is a never-endingly popular MMORPG, and all three books take place in said game. 2 groups, named the Tin Herons and the Brass Kites, choose to either reform or destroy the game. But a third side of the Conflict, known as the Crystal Dogs, choose to stop the Conflict with the use of drawing the Herons and Kites to a newer organization, thereby stopping something that may just cause the definite end of the human world, inside out. How will they do it? You'll just have to read and find out. KIKEN comes in three books: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI, or An Earth-Ending Story, MONOWOHAKAISURUHANASHI, or An Object-Destroying Story andHITOWOKOROSUHANASHI, or A Person-Slaughtering Story. The latter two are unfinished, and on FictionPress.

KIKEN provides examples of: Apocalypse How: And how! o When Dylan steps into the far future of his dimension, this is what happens.

Alternate Universe/Alternate Continuity: Some of which become sequels to the books. Your Mileage May Vary on whatever divergence you choose. Author Avatar: Tsugumu. And he loves writing but goes on a hiatus during his participation in the Conflict. Author Existence Failure: Tsugumu ends up committing suicide after finding 2 of his 3 siblings dead. The other Org members (save for Dylan, who disappeared) end up continuing the story from their perspectives. The Beautiful Elite: Hikariyama is available to the middle-class and above, while looking splendid and always grand. Doubly subverted due to them living in modest apartmentsbut they're 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 1-every other room. Bland Name Product Averted, slightly. DSi's, TV Tropes, Nintendo, and Sega are all referenced. o Actually, Nintendo and Sega merged due to Yumegorosu gaining up on them in terms of sale and profitforming DouSE.

Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Every boy involved with the Conflict is a pretty boy. But this gets balanced in the yet-to-be-written third book. Cute Shotaro Boy: Tsugumu for the Hollows, Ginrou and Dylan for the Kites, and Kinji for the dogs.

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Continuity Cameo: Tsugumu and Tsukiyo will appear from EPIC! Oretachi. Yuuichi from said series will become a minor character. Darker and Edgier: A little darker than EPIC! Oretachi. o And from the looks of it, its alternate sequel. And from the further looks of it, a more postmodern sequel!

Deep Immersion Gaming: Naturally. Most of the action takes place in an online game. Driven to Suicide: Seriously, how many characters have killed themselves!? The End Of Civilization As We Know It: And it feels fine indeed. Geodesic Cast: Hooah boy, you won't believe how many foils and counterparts and clones there are in KIKEN. Heterosexual Life Partners: Kakeru and Derani. Ginrou and Kinji pre-Conflict as well. Humongous Mecha: The equipment of Shouhei and Hichou in-game are like this, while mecha are employed by Gurren Lagann fan Kinji and Neon Genesis Evangelion fan Ginrou, due to them having premium accounts. Ho Yay: Thanks to Kakeru and Derani being a pair of the above trope, this'll be expected. Improbably Female Cast: The women in the Conflict, my God! They gain more in Book 2, when the pairing joins the Conflict. Jade-Colored Glasses: The Brass Kites. Josei: KIKEN is actually populated with pretty boys, while college student Nanako, aspiring lawyer Emiri, Hubspace admin/secretary for Takeo Juuri and free-lance reporter Yukari will also help draw women in. Knight in Sour Armor: Kakeru and Derani. Les Yay: Juuri and Emiri came out off-novel, making them prone to such. The Moorcock Effect: Inverted. KIKEN came first, EPIC! Oretachi, Who Is The One and PROJECT:Reach came last. Periphery Demographic: Hopefully, besides the adult unisex audience, boys and girls should be able to read this because of how short the chapters are, as well as the various realities characters face. Post Modernism: Really tries hard. But when it gets there, boy howdy! P.O.V. Sequel: Every 2nd chapter of the book will talk about certain events from another character's perspective, and goes through an all new resolution exclusive to that character. * Porn With Plot: The four hook-up scenes that appear actually add up, but censor them and you'll still get everything right for KIKEN.

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Red Oni, Blue Oni: Okay, each group complements each other, thanks to said Geodesic Cast. Roman Clef Seinen: Many of the themes here are cynical, involve apathy and social commentary. Spiritual Successor: KIKEN successes BastOF LEMON/SYNDROME, X1999, .hack due to Deep Immersion Gaming, The End Of The World As We Know It as well as how much damageHubspace causes in relation with the real world. o Also, KIKEN is actually a spiritual predeccessor for Mobile Suit Gundam AVNA. But if you look more closely at one of the characters... Time Skip: SPEAKING OF WHICH! KIKEN actually uses one for the cynical divergence novel. From September 2012 to July 2014! And yes, some characters became Wangstified.

Token Mini-Moe: Tsukiyo for The Hollows, Kogawa for the Dogs, Mila for the Herons and Kurumi for the Kites. True Neutral: The Sleepy Hollows, and Kogawa of the Crystal Dogs. Wide-Eyed Idealist: The Tin Herons. What If?: Tsugumu committed suicide after the massacre, and Dylan ended up disappearing after trying to pull off what he would consider his Crowning Moment of Regret?

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KIKEN CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI (Book One)

Chapter One: The Panicking World
I've never read/watched X1999 so I can't say if this is a successor to it or not, but I do know about the .hack franchise and this seems similar to that I guess. When does the Earth ever calm down? The Earth can never calm down! We as the world, are still panicking! Go on, try touching it, but you'll just make the panicking even worse. After all, this is a story of the world. A story that details an ever-panicking world, all due to one measly online game. Hubspace came to life during 2012, and brought disaster to the world. And if you want to know what type of disaster this is, that WAS disaster. NOTHING can be compared to this. If anything, this can be as devastating as the Earth ending within minutes because this shocked the world! And the future. Ever so constantly. But something else went on right after that. KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI

I know it's a troper story guys, but don't panic. Really though, I really can't help but feel this is almost an elabourate troll, just from how overdone it is. Can't wait to see how long my optimism lasts. CHAPTER 1: The Panicking World "Ah crap, gonna be late!" A young boy said. He put on his polo, sprayed himself with deodorant and perfume which he knows he likes, put on his pants, tie and sweater vest. His name was Kakeru Kouen, a young, tanned, red-head 15-year old. He suffers from chronic amnesia, but he knows everything. A lot. "Ruffhouseman, not now." Kakeru commanded. He had a dog named Ruffhouseman, who he had as long as he could remember. "Stay here, bro, okay?" Kakeru pleaded. He ran off to Hikariyama High School, in which he was a sophomore student. "Kouen-kun, your 5th tardy record this month! At least it was only five minutes this time!" Kakeru's homeroom teacher, Kawashita Arika explained. She was a deretsun-a very nice teacher who had her Misty Mays at first, she had a very aloof and cranky tsuntsun side. "Sorry, Kouen-kun, do I always see you fall asleep deeper than normal?" Kakeru shrugged his head. He looked down on Arika, but she ended up slapping him. "You were staring, weren't you! Be honest or you'll get a demerit!" Arika scolded him, while Kakeru's nose started to spew out blood. "Oh my gosh, Kakeru-kun, your face is bleeding like a faucet!" Hikari said, noting Kakeru's bleeding nose. "In my defense, those two things were staring at me." Kakeru tried to restrain himself from staring, yet he was still in denial. "Oh gosh, just go through with work now." Hikari was stressed during the conversation between her and her student. "Okay Miss, sorry about what happened." Kakeru apolgized, "Darn, will this nosebleeding stop?" but Hikari kept grunting and she was still pretty angry, and Kakeru's worksheets were a wee bit bloody.

Good lord my animes are leaking. Besides the ever funny amnesia line, this is an absolute mess. The main character is openly creepy, the teacher gets away with slapping

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him and has her name somehow change between paragraphs. I do like the idea of a dog called Ruffhouseman though. SurreptitiousMuffin This is reminding me why I hate NaNo- when you're trying for a big word count you write so much boring bullshit. This is seriously about 1000 words of absolutely nothing. Three things happen 1) he gets up 2) he stares at his teacher's tits 3) she slaps him and makes his nose bleed Muffin's surreal prose-poetry KIKEN adventure, part 1 Kakeru is awake and in blinking dust he is reminded of time's essence and upon arriving bereft he stares at her breasts and forgets she is she. His reward is swift enough only for an ironthick river to remind him but not for him to mind.

The Hemmingway of dog dicks.

KIKEN isn't a nano~ thing. EPIC just woke up one day and decided to write his derivative unfinished magnum opus. SurreptitiousMuffin Really? Jesus. The way and manner in which it has been written, penned and scribed is such a manner of bullshit-saynothing overwordy pretentious verbosity combined a complete lack of understanding and comprehension of the ins-and-outs of the English language struck me as a writer writing as much as possible as quickly as possible without regard for quality, merit or otherwise.
The Hemmingway of dog dicks.

Finally, after having a war with other classes, the first three periods of the school day were over. It was recess and Kakeru was rummaging though his bag for unfinished worksheets, specifically Math homework. He thought as he crammed his homework, "What the hell is Hubspace?" Kakeru kept hearing about the word, Hubspace, as it was frequently mentioned in the news. "Why is there such a thing, an online game that could destroy civilization?" Kakeru thought aloud. He knew that Hubspace was also related to Hikariyama Academy, so he decided to converse with students about it since they also liked discussing current events. "Oi, Kakeru-sempai!" Another boy said. His name was Yuuichi Minagawa, big brother to a pair of twins and a little sister. "You thinking about Hubspace too? My 'lil bro and 'lil sis are still investigating it." He was the most boisterous freshman you could ever find, with his grades excelling in PE and Health, while they were pretty low in Mathematics. "Whabout you, kouhai?" Kakeru wondered, if ever Yuuichi was ever going to help him with all the Hubspace business Kakeru was doing. "Sorry, don't have time. Have track, band and basketball." Yuuichi said. "Well, at least one person knows two siblings who are available 24 hours a day,..." Another boy whispered. He was blonde and pale, and his name was Derani Terasuma. "Remember the mission...?" Derani asked. Unlike Kakeru, Derani never suffered from amnesia, and was more bookish than him, since Kakeru was more of a sports buff. "What mission?" Kakeru asked. He was about to suffer from the amnesia he had. "Remember, logging into Hubspace without an NDE?" Derani asked. "Oh, right," Kakeru

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started to recall the time when he registered onto Hubspace. But unusually, he didn't disappear. And yet, Kakeru didn't even recieve a near-death experience.

Heliotrope "Finally, after having a war with other classes, the first three periods of the school day were over." What the fuck does this mean? Is he using war to mean like a competition or do the classes actually literally fight each other?
Nobody creeps out my main babe!

Trying to process all this is mentally draining. What we learn here is that there's a game called Hubspace, and that it can destroy civilisation. Also logging onto hubspace will give you a near death experience for some reason. For the sake of the plot though there's not been any kind of public outcry or recall of the product. These plot points are buried in a pile of glorious nippon, though. Also more amnesia stuff "He was about to suffer from the amnesia he had". "Well, anyway, got to go down. You just reminded me about some Hubspace-high 8th Graders." Kakeru remembered. The chronic amnesia had kept Kakeru from ever remembering anything important: maybe it was the cost of successfully registering onto Hubspace. As Kakeru went down, he kept whispering to himself, "The cost of life is more valuable, than any jewel in the world, so it is mandatory you interrogate every person related to Hubspace." Suddenly, Kakeru saw two boys, one short, one tall, right in front of each other, simply standing and talking. "Hichou. The Conflict, remember?" The tall one asked. His name was Shouhei Tomogawa. He was 14 years old, and in the 8th Grade of Hikariyama Middle School. Tall, toned, brown-haired, he was the dream jock of Hikariyama Middle School. Even the talented jocks looked up to him. Literally. Due to his height, Kakeru thought that Shouhei would bully the shorter kid. "Remember that in Hubspace, we will wage war on each other? We made a promise. And we will draw people in." Shouhei followed. And as soon as Kakeru heard that, he passed out. WHY DID HE PASS OUT? Also, if logging on nearly kills you, and fully getting on gives you amnesia, is there really that dedicated a userbase that they've managed to start a war in game? As soon as Kakeru woke up, 10 minutes later, the two kids were gone. But he remembered something for once. The whole conversation. Kakeru didn't want to. He was 5 minutes late. He forgot his classes. What would Kakeru's teacher do with him if he was late? But Kakeru just said, "Maybe I'll just tell her I went to the bathroom for a little while." Then, as he walked, all of the traces of the conversation went to him. He remembered there being Tin Herons and Brass Kites. Were there such things as actual metallic birds? Maybe he can draw conclusions later.

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"Okay, so as I said, Ancient India was the time period in which the Aryans conquered the Indus River. India was secluded, as it had its own..." the teacher went on. It was Humanities, one of Kakeru's best subjects other than PE. Humanities functioned like a more complex Social Studies. As Yamato Doi-sensei talked about the cultural richness of the Hinduists and Ancient Indian civilization, Kakeru thought, "The Conflict. Maybe I'll have to do some more research on that." Kakeru's home life was paved with work. Work. Best case scenario, he can actually slack off. OK, this story just lost deboss as an audience because the main character likes the humanities. Also, this kid's amnesia is really bad, if he's forgetting his classes for the sake of remembering a small conversation about a war. This is getting less funny by the minute, my head hurts from trying to parse this. That afternoon, Kakeru came back from school and was finished with his homework. "Damn, more articles on Hubspace," Kakeru kept clicking on every article related to Hubspace that he could. "And most of them seem like fluff pieces." But one recent article caught his eye: it was one published four months ago, by Yukari Hongaku. "So this one's HubspaceThe End of The World in One CD, huh," Kakeru muttered. "This one ain't a fluff piece after all!" Quickly scanning through it, Kakeru looked through a sea of words until he saw a fish. Infact, the fish was so big that Kakeru copied and saved the article, just in case he needed help. It reads...

They're actually advertising the game as being a cause of whatever bullshit apocalypse this story's going to feature. What fish, does the fish represent ideas? The future? All our hopes and dreams? Why is there a fish? Groghammer It took me a while to get it but I think he's using "fish" as a metaphor, as in "a fish of important information in this sea of otherwise useless words". But he botched it and now it may as well refer to dangling a fishing pole into your newspaper in order to catch dinner.

"The Yumegorosu Corp. has already faced legal action more than once by the families of testers who have died while playing Hubspace, or at least put their lives at risk and danger for eternity. One such tester was Juuri Fujisaku, who still remains alive to this day and wonders the future of the game she tested. "I remember getting an NDE playing Hubspace, and there were two crests, one gold, with a heron, and one silver, with a kite.." She said. "I didn't know what they were for, anyway: I just went on and played away." According to Ms. Fujisaku, Hubspace is a very good game, but can kill you just before playing it. Ms. Fujisaku leaked every detail, but she only allowed major details to be given away to the public. She states that the previously stimulus-reseponse theory of Hubspace is not wrong, in some cases, it happened to Fujisaku herself. Also, Ms. Fujisaku says that a rare item costs at least 5,000 yen and is a one-use item only; that was the suspect's possible motive, for the November 2010 murders. Fujisaku says that Player vs. Player matches are highly celebrated amongst Hubspacers.

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Skills and levels are temporarily raised, and people from all walks of life watch each battle. But with such amount of people can even make someone undergo a Hikikomori withdrawal phase, due to a great amount shame if ever they lose, constant ridicule and ostracizing thrust upon him." But in another part of the article... "Ms. Fujisaku said, "The people who play Hubspace are in some form of hypnosis: the game makes them sleepy, and as soon as they wake up, boom! They do whatever it is that Hubspace makes them do." She researched on her activities from when she tested the Alpha Version of Hubspace: Fujisaku couldn't help do in real life what she did in Hubspace, but she said that "it was all due to some unknown reason."

Bolding is mine. So we get some info about this MMO. 1.) It can kill you when you try to log in 2.) Some shit with bird shaped crests that'll probably be a collection plotpoint later on 3.) People have killed IRL to obtain single use rare items that cost 5,000 yen ($64, 42) 4.) PVP is popular, the loser becomes a hikkikomori, the winner gets a temporary stat boost. 5.) The game also hypnotises you to do something IRL, there is no way to resist.

Build Your Own Boat

Does he really think 5000 is expensive? Does he think yen are dollars? How can you be an Otaku and not know how yen work? How can you live in the free world and not know how yen work?

Drink this Now you're like me.

Lady of the Beech

Just from looking at http://www.amazon.jp it is almost enough for a copy of Final Fantasy XIII-2. It is enough for a Kamen Rider action figure apparently. At least, I think that's Kamen Rider. I'm not familiar with the series. 5 copies of Tale of Genji. 3 compound microscopes (the microscope in particular looks very compact, it probably doesn't go up to a very high magnification) A PC copy of Skyrim from the UK. 1.80 PC copies of Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition.

I clearly just want to be a good friend and bring all my AMAZING FRIENDLINESS to bear on your problems.

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1.80 copies of a Japanese translation of the Poetic Edda. I like how, of all the things wrong with this chapter, it's the 5000yen that we're drawn to. redmercer

That four-digit number was the only readable string of characters

~*~

The only action to be taken against the game is a private class action lawsuit, even though this is the type of thing that would be outlawed. This plot is a load of bollocks November 2010 murders. Yokohama Ambushes. Those were the two reported incidents that were proof of the stimulus-response theory mentioned in the article. "The stimulusresponse theory, huh? So the game is some sort of hypnotist, and a stimulus, wanting you to keep the balance of both the gaming world and the real world by causing whatever is caused in the former in the latter. Wow." Kakeru summarized Ms. Fujisaku's response to the stimulus-response theory. For some strange reason, however, Kakeru never felt the need to balance both worlds. And even he had registered onto Hubspace, too. "Probably the chronic amnesia made up for the stimulus-response thing," Kakeru whispered. He knew that Hubspace was playing with him, and his amnesia kept going on daily. His guardian was the author of the article, his Yukari-neechan. She was 7 years older than him, but Hikari looked a younger due to her petite frame. "And to think my cousin wrote this article, she's a pretty good writer herself!" Kakeru said, and wanted to praise the article of Hikari, but she was overworked herself, researching on Hubspace. Kakeru knew they connected. Then the phone rang.

So his cousin is one of those older girls that look really young that tropers love so much. Kakeru is a special snowflake because he gets amnesia instead of being compelled to kill people or whatever. "Kakeru-sempai, Tsugumu here!" Tsugumu answered. He was the younger brother of Yuuichi, and Tsugumu was a very energetic boy. "Oh, hey, Tsuu-kun, how're you?" Kakeru picked up the phone and asked the boy. "Oh, nothing much. Just wanna investigate Hubspace. Planning on writing about it." Tsugumu asked. "I've lost my writer's touch, but this, I've gotta see!" He was pretty excited to chronicle what was an

24

apocalyptic war that took place in an online game just as bad as the Conflict. But then, Tsugumu's twin, Tsukiyo, decided to grab the phone. "Hey, Kouen-sempai. It's Tsukiyo." Tsukiyo said. She was the younger sister of Yuuichi, and the older twin sister of Tsugumu. "I'm also gonna co-author the Hubspace chronicles. You are gonna be in it, and you're gonna tell us everything, haha!" Tsukiyo was excited to write about Hubspace herself. "So you wanna interview me, eh?" Kakeru asked. He would've told the Minagawa twins everything he knew after the Conflict he read about in his cousin's article. "Well, I gotta go, there is a time for everything to end." Tsukiyo hung up.

This is mostly just summarising stuff we read already, followed by the weirdest thing to say before hanging up the phone. Seriously, try it next time you're on the phone and you need to hang up "I've gotta go, there is a time for everything to end". See how long you last before getting sectioned. Meanwhile, something else went on back in the room of a hikikomori. "Reality, I know I hate you, but why do I miss you?" The hikikomori-diagnosed man said. His name was Rukao Minami, and he suffered from a hikikomori withdrawal period as soon as he heard about an online game: and Rukao suffered from an addiction to the very game. "Heck, losing my touch with you made me end up... you know." Rukao looked around in his 1-bedroom apartment, complete with a TV, kitchen, bathroom, Wii, and a PC. "But still, how did I end up becoming attached to Hubspace?" He asked himself, sighing when his back landed on the bed. But another thing happened in the dormitory of a Hikariyama University student. "Here it is-Creation, Regeneration, and Destruction Became Hubspace." A woman adjusted her glasses. She was Nanako Shichijima, a 1st year Computer Science student. "Well, if I DID recieve that NDE, I may as well explain the events that stem from it!" Nanako said, as she remembers getting the near-death experience from registering an account onto Hubspace. She decided to do it for her Computer Science thesis paper, describing the structure, tech specs and the software which made many people worry. But Nanako would just keep writing.

"Quality, I know I hate you, but why do I miss you?" The troper writer said. His name was EPIC, and he suffered from being a terrible writer.

After getting a free period, Kakeru was in the Math room. "Okay, the Conflict of Tin and Brass. The only information I gained from it was that it is a war between reformists (i.e. those who want to reform the game by creating a patch) and revolutionaries (i.e. those who want to eliminate the game on its own, therefore having no choice but to recreate it)." Kakeru wrote down. He was getting started on a personal essay detailing the Conflict, or as he calls it, the Conflict of Tin and Brass. "So you're getting started on an essay?" Derani passed by. "Well, its a good way to combat my amnesia," Kakeru replied. But Kakeru went to the college campus of Hikariyama for some reason.

25

He knew Hubspacers were there.

Well clearly the side that wants to eliminate the game is correct seeing as the game kills people. And then he goes to a college "for some reason", great writing bro.

He saw someone and decided to follow her for the rest of the day. She had a standard Hikariyama school badge, and she wore long socks to go with her already shrinking skirt and glasses on her head. That girl was also putting her books into her locker, ready to go back to her dorm just like the rest of her class. Next thing you know, Kakeru was hiding behind a set of lockers, but as he was walking, the girl was walking too. She bumped into him. For a long time, the two looked at each other, but the chestnut-haired, bespectacled girl started getting up. "Ohh, I am SO sorry-hey, you're a high schooler!" The girl asked. It was Nanako Shichijima, and she wanted to know why there was a high schooler in the university campus of Hikariyama. "Kakeru Kouen. I think you might be affiliated with a certain game called Hubspace." Kakeru asked, while Nanako brought him to a seperate room. "Come with me," Nanako insisted. The two went to a room where it was silent. Actually they went to her dorm. Many a student thought that Nanako and Kakeru had a relationship, but Nanako explained everything to Kakeru. "So, why are you asking me about Hubspace?" Nanako asked. "Do you think you're some kind of secret agent here?" "Well, I've been researching, and rumors say that you'll use Hubspace for your thesis. And no, I'm not some kind of agent from any sort of government." Kakeru explained. Nanako told him everything about it. About the time when her thesis' first draft was leaked to the point of victimizing Nanako, therefore drafting her into one of the groups found in Hubspace, particularly a group composed of revolutionaries and cynics. "So you're for the Brass Kites, huh?" Kakeru asked. "Maybe. That's all I can give you. Oh, and you will give no word of any sort of organization or person, not even a friend." Nanako pressured Kakeru, and he came out of the dorm as if he was frozen solid. Derani was there by the dorm's door, and said, "Was it the price of love there, or did she tell you something about the mission?" Kakeru just shrugged it off, walking ahead of Derani. "You can at least tell me something about what happened in there!" Derani yelled from one part of the corridor to no avail.

All I caught from this bit is that he stalked a girl for a while and then they talked about MMOs. Also the government may or may not be using secret agents to investigate the game. Also, "the price of love there"? What?

But a man peered out of a wall. "Its Hubspace, I'm sure of it... I can sense the boy's feelings..." The man whispered.

26

"Huh? Who's there?" Derani asked. "Rukao Minami, nice to meet you. I know about Nanako and her association to Hubspace. And its not just her thesis." Rukao said. Next thing you know, Derani went pale. "Nanako...? Associated with Hubspace in more than one way? Other than her thesis? What's happening?" The boy thought. "As you may know, there is a conflict going on. And if you want to know what I am, I'm an esper who is still researching the stimulus-response theory associated with Hubspace." Rukao explained. "What's the association?" Derani asked. And he wanted to know. Badly. "As you may know, there is only a finite combination of words in any language," Rukao explained, "But please bear with me." Rukao instructed. "Of course," Derani nodded. "I'd love to know what the hell caused this whole thing!" Derani wanted nothing more but to know, and tell Kakeru what happened. Or just in case his amnesia lapses in again, Kakeru can go through a re-cap again, which will be benificial to the two of them. But Derani decided not to, seeing as he had a feeling Kakeru didn't forget just yet, and the two share conflicting values and ideas! "Hubspace, Herons, Kites... this is danger, for the panicking world! Kiken-na sekai da!"

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Crosscontaminant KIKENJUUGOROSHICHIKYUUDAIICHINENSAIMON: "As you may know, there is only a finite combination of words in any language,"

Sentences can be fully embedded in other sentences, what the fuck are you talking about. The whale ate the fish. The whale that had earlier been contemplating suicide ate the fish. The whale that had earlier been contemplating suicide ate the fish who was entrenched in a metaphysical struggle over the nature of water and air.

Oh, now espers exist for some reason. And it turns out Kakeru's amnesia is that tricky kind that could kick in at any given moment and make him forget everything, so it pretty much is futurama amnesia. Fuck this story, it's shit. e:Reading this genuinely gives me a headache trying to understand it, even if it wasn't anime as fuck it's so horribly written that none of the sentences make sense. Worse still, it's pretty hard to actually make jokes if you can't comprehend what's happening. Allan Assiduity Reading it, I hope it's a parody. Or written by a preteen. Or both. It's just... terrible. MCAC was bland and boring, but at least you could read a chapter without your eyes wanting to burn their way out of your sockets.

Seer235 So this guy doesn't speak English, and he basically runs all his writing through google translator, right? ...right?

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Chapter Two: Questioning Reality

From what I can make out from glancing at chapter 2, this is a Sonic Adventure style story where the same key events happen but each character has their own specific events.

Why is it that people have ideals that go against reality? Reality is where we live. People are born here in reality. Reality is science and religion to some, yet people still fight for a perfect world. That's when ideals are born, and they are born out of the perceptions that there will be a perfect, if not acceptable world to live in. Currently, people known as realists, or cynicals believe that humans care about themselves and prefer to believe as they see and nothing more, while people known as romanticists, or idealists say that humans are good and believe that the realist perception of the Earth itself can change. And some say that we don't need ideals nor reality because we can make use of a malleable future. KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI

I should point out now, I've skipped ahead enough to find out that every chapter is going to be starting with one of these bullshit pseudo-philosophical rants, followed by the name of the story. Needless to say, it reads like a shitty opening to a shitty TV show

CHAPTER 2: Questioning Reality "Aahhh, alright, I'm up." A teen woke up. He took a bath, went out the door with wet blonde hair, a towel on his waist and lower back, nothing else, and he got started putting on his uniform. His name was Derani Terasuma, 16-years old and ready to hit the campus. He boarded the train headed for Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama, where Hikariyama Academy was. "Hmm, looks like another crime involving Hubspace." Derani said, as he read the newspaper detailing an incident involving an online game called Hubspace. "Gah, reclusive bastards."

Just to point out that hubspace crimes are so common that they seem to regularly make the news. Derani, if you recall, was whatshisface from chapter 1's friend.

"Oh, sorry, I think I heard a statement just now-do you think I can expand on it?" A girl asked as Derani's statement was pretty interesting. "Ohh, you're realistic too? Ahh, sure!" Derani let her. Her name was Aria Tsubasajima, jaded towards ideals. "Reality also doesn't have much choice, and humans only want themselves to be happy." Aria explained. She was skeptical of how ideals can only last a short time. "My special person was found dead right after investigating some sort of game..." She sighed. "...that's pretty much why I'm jaded from ideals anymore."

29

Derani felt like he and this Aria had this connection, and was about to say something. "I guess I-" Derani was interrupted. "Oh, gotta go! I may as well see you sometime again!" Aria left, and her pigtails were barely caught by the train door. "Ooh, silly me! hahah!" Derani still looked on, holding on to the train bar. "Well, looks like the next stop's Nishiku," Derani looked at the train route. "Well, at least I didn't space out there." But Derani was actually more happy than before. It turns out that he considers people who share his opinions actually think better. Maybe he had a bit of a crush on Aria.

The conversation in paragraph two makes no sense! Derani called hubspace criminals "reclusive bastards", when when asked to expand on it goes on about being "realistic". I really don't get this story. Also he considers that people who share his opinions think better? You mean like most people do?

Much later, Derani came out of third period, waiting for a conversation. Hikariyama Academy was like say, a park crossed with an academy crossed with a 5-star restaurant. It was actually a prestigious private elevator school, one which lasted until senior year of high school. Even now, its senior students rival freshmen of Keio Daigaku, another prestigious school. "Ahh, Hikariyama. Why do you continue to amaze me in such a world?" Derani asked himself. He was in awe, even when he considered the world to be such a demented place without any choice at all. But he didn't care, Derani was just happy he was alive. "Oi, Derani-sempai! Hey, you investigating on Hubspace?" Yuuichi Minagawa was walking across the hall. Yuuichi's dark brown hair was caught in some sort of beanie, while his medium-fair face had a white smile on it. "You know it, brosen! I'm still pretty much digging into the internal framework right now, so yeah!" Derani loosened up after his cynical state, in which he hated many humans for their own greed and power. He thinks humans only live to fulfill their own happiness, and contentment of the surrounding people, like a relative or a friend. Next thing you know, Derani saw Kakeru, cramming homework in the Math classroom. Derani knew there was something with the boy his age, whom he knew was more tan than Derani was. The blonde bombshell walked over to Kakeru and asked him, "Hey, what you doing?" Kakeru igonred Derani, concentrating on his unfinished worksheets. "Math homework, nice! I always thought you were good at Math." Derani said, but Kakeru's true skills at calculating was contradictory to Derani's statement. "Oh, sorry. I almost forgot. You aren't good at all."

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So basically this block of text is here to establish that Derani always thinks the worst of people.

Ugly In The Morning

I tried to type up a response to that, but all that came out was "die die die die die". Jesus, what part of the blasted aspergian hellscape of that guys brain made him think that was a joke?

Mr. Pumroy

This is wonderful. Not just for the poorly parsed sentences and poor diction, but also for how he explains the joke before he makes the joke and then goes on to make the joke anyway. Not only is the writing bad from a purely mechanics standpoint, it's a full and comprehensive exploration of ways that sentences can be bad. This is a fucking tour de force.
I'll be the bastard lovechild of a listless octoroon if that kid wasn't the cat that swallowed the canary in a dapper little hat.

Khazar-khum

Written by someone who not only doesn't speak English or Japanese, but has no language skills at all. It's a non-language, an anticommunication device.

Runcible Cat

It's to bad writing as Picasso was to art - it's like it's simultaneously showing all its awfulness from all angles. Abstract Impressionist Dreadful Prose.

It's stupid. It sucks. I hate it.

WickedIcon

This is a man who unironically gave people writing advice.

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TurnipFritter

Nominating this for Worst Sentence in KIKEN, possibly Worst Sentence Ever Written (Non-Vile Subject)

Paula tried PSI Fire Beta!

My vote is still on: A 12-year old girl introduced herself with the use of interruption. Also "brosen" is right up there with "Ruffhouseman" in "words I like from this story"

"Dude, what were you gonna say to me?" Kakeru asked, his red brown hair shining under the light. "Well, at least one person knows two siblings who are available 24 hours a day,..." Derani whispered into Kakeru's ear. "Remember the mission...?" Derani and Kakeru looked like a couple who were on the verge of kissing, one person peering straight into the other's eyes. "What mission?" Kakeru asked, as he suffered from a brief period of his chronic amnesia. "Remember, logging into Hubspace without an NDE?" Derani asked. "Oh, right," Kakeru recalled that time. But unusually, he didn't disappear. And yet, Kakeru didn't even recieve a near-death experience. Of course, Derani knew there just had to be something wrong with his registration. That amnesia just keeps flaring up at the worst moments...

"Well, anyway, got to go down. You just reminded me about some Hubspace-high 8th Graders." Kakeru remembered. Derani waved goodbye to Kakeru, but Kakeru just ignored the wave. "I have a feeling that..." Derani thought about Aria, but he remembered something else. He had a feeling that even kids younger than Derani and Kakeru were even into Hubspace themselves. "But then again," Derani denied the thought and decided to go down himself. "Well, I dunno about Kakeru, why not just go?" Derani told himself, and talking to himself was one of Derani's habits. Derani went down to the park-like area of the campus, where the park was a blanket of green with properly-placed trees. But on the open field, two boys who looked younger than Derani stood, and those boys were the subject of Derani's worrisome behavior. "Wow, looks like those two boys really are disturbed. Its unusually bizzare to like, talk privately in a place where everyone can see you, though." Derani drabbled off. "Besides, its self-contradictory, talking alone in a place where you stand out like some sorta sore thumb." But just as Derani was thinking...

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"Ahh, hi! I'm Mila Jonessy, nice to meet you! I heard from a boy named Tsugumu Minagawa that you might know something." A 12-year old girl introduced herself with the use of interruption. Her name was Mila Jonessy, a Sweet Gothic Lolita who was skilled in IT. "Oh, hi, Mila! I'm Derani. Might you be one of my fangirls?" Derani remembered that he had an unwanted harem-esque fanclub, which was girls-only. "And Tsugumu is..." "The boy who keeps breaking pencils yet still maintains a boisterous facade, then yes! That Tsugumu!" Mila finished Derani's sentence for him. This last paragraph is brilliant. I don't know whether I prefer "introduced herself with the use of interuption" or "The boy who keeps breaking pencils yet still maintains a boisterous faade"

WeaponGradeSadness

Seriously, what the fuck do Tropers have against pencils? This is like the fourth time we've run across some troper rambling about breaking pencils or stabbing people with them.
You wanna go? You wanna win a war? Like PLO I don't surrendo

Bad Bromance

Is pencil breaking from an anime maybe? Or is it the only thing within the troper reference frame that they have the strength necessary to break in frustration?

I'm a free bitch, baby

Mr. Pumroy I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Soft-lead No. 2 pencils broken on my classroom desk. I watched graphite refills glitter in the dark near the Ticonderoga Pencil factory. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to trope.
I'll be the bastard lovechild of a listless octoroon if that kid wasn't the cat that swallowed the canary in a dapper little hat.

33

Also it turns out Derani is popular with girls AND ONLY GIRLS. No real plot happened though.

t after the brief conversation, Derani decided to interrogate Mila just for a while, because if he got too deep, it'd scare her. "She's just a kid, Terasuma!" Derani thought. "Get a grip!" "Anyway, might you know anything about Hubspace?" Mila asked Derani, as she knew about Derani and Kakeru's investigation. "Well, yeah! I was actually going to ask you that question. I'm highly interested in it, you know." Derani followed. "Ohh, I'm pretty much skilled in Information Technology, so about Hubspace..." Mila answered with a bit of a smile, ready to show off her skills in computers. "...the data that revolves around the game's rules is Read-Only and can't be changed in any way at all." "Any way at all?" Derani asked. Mila nodded, and walked away. "Bye, might be late for class!" Mila said, leaving as she was a bit late. "Well, umm, bye! I hope to see you later, then!" Derani wanted to further inquire Hubspace's internal structure, yet Derani even registersed an account onto the game itself. "At least I can ask her more about it later. And I may as well go back to class." Derani noted. He went up and left for Humanities, a class which was akin to that of an expanded Social Studies. He saw Yamato-sensei rambling on about Ancient India, while Kakeru was late as usual, probably due to his amnesia.

Humanities is one lesson, much akin to social studies? Plot stuff: The games rules are Read-Only THEY CAN'T BE CHANGED NO MATTER WHAT THAT'S HOW READ ONLY WORKS. Also amnesia makes people late for class? This is really convenient amnesia

Later that day, everyone was at Hikariyama's covered court, filled with students playing sports and cramming homework. "The Conflict of Tin and Brass..." A boy said, writing down everything there is to know about the Conflict. He was Hichou Amagami, his black hair shining under the afternoon sun, his pale skin not as bright as the flourescent bulbs. It was the play half of the Lunch period, so Hichou actually had some time to talk about the Conflict. "I'll lead the Brass Kites, Shouhei leads the Tin Herons..." Hichou was also describing how the Conflict was structured. "Hey, Shouhei!" Hichou also asked for a schedule of the Conflict, planning daily battles between each group. "Okay, where's the schedule?" Hichou asked, ready to plan the battling schedule, but not plan the battles themselves. "Its with me, right here." Shouhei gave the schedule to Hichou, and Hichou got started. "Shou-kun, just send me a list of members to my email, and you're good!" Hichou instructed, and Shouhei always agreed with Hichou. "Oh, hey, what are you guys doing?" Derani walked in on the two. "Oh, Hubspace? I'd like to get something out of you." Just then, Derani decided to interrogate the two best friends, and Shouhei and Hichou were like brothers.

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"Why is it that you guys are planning a Conflict like this, huh?" Derani grilled the two. "The goal of the Conflict is to see who is the victor, and the victor will initiate a plan to reform Hubspace." Hichou started. "There are two teams-the Tin Herons, who are reformists, and the Brass Kites, who are revolutionaries." Derani actually saw something that made sense for once. "So you're saying that the victor will either reform the rules of Hubspace or destroy Hubspace itself? But what effect will it have on the world? What about the controversial stimulus-response theory?" But everyone was asked to line up, and the eight graders were the first to go to lunch.

WHAT ABOUT THE STIMULUS-RESPONSE THEORY GUYS. Also it's worth reiterating that all these people nearly died to play this game. Yet they all keep playing.

"Well, may as well finish up later. See you!" Hichou calmly told Derani. Hichou was one of the more calmer of the two, while Shouhei was a lot more hot-headed. "Well, bye then." Derani waved. "But will the Conflict be resolved? And where's Kakeru?" Derani asked himself. "I bet he's still at the college," He decided to go back to the cafeteria, where Kakeru never missed a bite. Today's special was melonpan and kitsune udon with kara-age, and Derani knew Kakeru always caught up with the daily lunch menu. "I bet he knows someone," Derani whispered. But as Derani ate, he started dreaming. And in the dreamscape, he saw nothing but darkness. "If I were you, I would rather that I run." A voice suggested. It was feminine, polite, and it caught Derani's ears. "Run to where?" Derani had to ask, as he had no idea where to go. "Your acquaintance in anticipating such information, pertaining to your quest." The woman finished. "I leave with you one clue: Kurumi Souchou." Derani woke up and realized that he was in Hikariyama's university campus. "So I subconsciously went here, huh? But that possibly couldn't have happened. Someone probably knocked me out and brought me here!" Derani thought.

This bit is all shit, he falls asleep mid-bite and sleepwalks to the plot. I wish I could sleeptype these posts.

As Derani walked in the Hikariyama dormitory building's corridors, he still remebered one name. "Kurumi Souchou, Kurumi Souchou, who's she?" Derani asked himself. "Her name sounds archaic. Is she some sort of ghost? But are ghosts even real?" He knew that the Souchou clan died out after the Meiji Era, and Derani was skeptical of someone bearing the Souchou family name. "And to think ghosts are real... real my foot!" Derani doubted Kurumi. And as she might have been a ghost, Derani was of course, skeptical about the existence of ghosts alone. Derani saw Kakeru come out of the room, his face a lot paler than normal. "Was it the

35

price of love there, or did she tell you something about the mission?" Derani asked Kakeru, who simply walked away, ignoring the question. "You can at least tell me something about what happened there!" Derani yelled from one part of the hallway, but it was to no avail. Kakeru started running, and Derani thought that someone was actually watching them. "What the hell...?" Derani thought. "I have a feeling that it was something alright. Pretty significant."

What the fuck kind of greeting is that? Also there was never any mention of ghosts, and yet his first thought on "that's an old fashioned name" is "wait, what if it's a g-g-ghost"?

"Its Hubspace, I'm sure of it, I can sense the boy's feelings..." A man whispered. "Huh? Who's there?" Derani didn't know who the man was, and he walked out of the wall where he hid. Out came a man of Nanako's age, wearing glasses, a faint stubble and clean-cut hair. A brown trenchcoat, light green dress shirt and jeans came out. And even when he was said to be a former hikikomori, his hygeine was better than all the other otaku. "Is... is that guy some detective?" Derani thought. "Nope, I don't work for the government. I'm a former hikikomori who was just cutting class, that's all." The man started introducing himself. "Rukao Minami, nice to meet you. I know about Nanako Shichijima and her association to Hubspace. And its not just her thesis." Rukao explained. "Nanako...? Associated with Hubspace in more than one way? Other than her thesis? What's happening?" Derani wanted to ask questions. "As you may know, there is a conflict going on. "As you may know, there is a conflict going on. And if you want to know what I am, I'm an esper who is still researching the stimulus-response theory associated with Hubspace." Rukao explained. "What's the association?" Derani asked. "As you may know, there is only a finite combination of words in any sort of language," Rukao explained, "But please bear with me." Derani nodded, ready to accept any information which was about the Conflict. "Of course," said Derani, "I'd love to know what the hell caused the whole thing." That's Terasuma for the students of Hikariyama. Always having a knack for information, anything involving knowledge, and boy-oh-boy, he's oh-so-jaded! You could think that he's really a pretentious emo freak with a tendency to score lines down his wrists with his fingernails. "Hubspace, Herons, Kites... this is danger, for the panicking world! Kiken-na sekai da!"

I don't understand any of this. The former hikikkomori is an esper who is also researching hubspace for the government. The bit in the bold makes no sense in the context it's put in. One minute they're talking about the conflict and next some guy is an emo freak. Is this story in code or something? Am I being really dumb that I can't interpret any of this?

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Later that day, an ice cream parlor was playing 50's music in the background. Derani was looking at a legal pad, and he ordered a chocolate-caramel brownie parfait. "This is all of the information recieved," Derani was writing down all of the information he had on the Conflict of Tin and Brass. His writings described the structure of the conflict. "Scheduled battles... reformists and revolutionaries... Kurumi Souchou... Rukao Minami.." Derani wrote down on a set of legal pad papers. The information was full of a few phrases that only Derani, Kakeru, and those in the Conflict knew about. But someone came into the store, and her presence seemed pretty familiar. "I'll have a Hazelwhut Crepe, please. With extra Nutella? Thanks!" A girl handed the money to the cashier. "Ohh, its you again!" Derani started to blush. "You don't mind if I sit beside you, do you?" She asked. Her glasses rested on her nose as Derani shook his head. "Sure, fine! Very nice to um... see you again! Oh, and I didn't catch your name, by the way. I'm Derani Terasuma, 2nd year student at Hikariyama High." Derani introduced himself. "I'm Aria. Aria Tsubasajima, the girl you met on the train! I'm a freshman in St. Florence High. Both our academies are sister schools."

Japanese people have Nutella? I know this is supposed to be set in Japan because of how obnoxiously japanese it is, and yet she wants extra Nutella. Plot wise he's just summarising the key words for us.

"So... you're taking down information on the Conflict?" Aria asked. "Sure! I'm a kid that's interested in current events!" Derani was going through his parfait. "Do you want one?" Aria was eying the stack of ice cream and brownies. "Well, maybe just a bite." She told Derani, him feeding her. "So, about the Conflict, how do you know about it?" Derani asked Aria. "Well, my boyfriend was a Hubspacer before his death. He decided to make a game like Hubspace, so he investigated and played around with it's files. Then suddenly, the program just killed him!" Aria recalled. "Are you by any chance, aligned with anyone?" Derani asked her. "Well, I do know-thank you!" Aria recieved her crepe, moving the white melting ice cream on the Nutella-filled crepe. "I know some people who are involved. Good friends with some. Hubspace is how I met them." Derani thought something. "Wait, so you ARE part of the Conflict?" He asked her, ready to interrogate her. "Well, technically, yeah. My cousin Shouhei actually leads my group, and I never get to spend any time with him. He's like a brother to me, you know?" Aria told Derani everything. "So you joined the Herons?" Derani knew Aria was with them, with the relation between Shouhei and her as evidence! "Pretty much, yeah." Aria began eating her crepe. "All due to the death of my special one..." Derani wrote down everything. "Aria Tsubasajima... Shouhei Tomogawa... COUSINS... Death of a loved one..." He whispered. "Oh, anyway, do you like chronicling things?" Derani asked Aria. "Of course! I'm a die-hard fan of taking down notes. Well, you ARE chronicling Hubspace after all, and I'd do the same." Aria told him. "Wait, speaking of Hubspace... ...I'd like to ask you something." Derani asked. "So anyway... do you think these groups question reality?"

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Diablocon

I just got the mental image of the program literally coming out of the monitor and going all
Am I stepping out of some intellectual closet here?

on the guy.

Why would groups on an internet game care about reality? Why would a girl who's "special one" (ugh) died due to an internet game start playing the same internet game. The entire plot seems to revolve around an internet game that noone has to play, it's not like .hack where it locks you in or whatever. There's literally nothing to force any of the characters to care about it other than the author ham fistedly nudging the plot along. NEXT TIME: A new character joins the story, she's in 4th grade. Japan does not have grades. KingKalamari Jesus Christ, I tried reading that wreck aloud and just sort of started involuntarily talking louder and faster as it progressed until I was basically just screaming a nonstop stream of terrible noises and then my head hurt and I had to lie down. Seriously, the thing reads like a hyperactive ten year old screaming his ideas for a story right in your ear.
Fuzzy dice, bongos in the back My ship of love is ready to attack

And this EPIC guy also doesn't seem to understand how the japanese school system works as he makes several references to people being in the eighth grade which doesn't really exist in the Japanese education system. It goes from grades 1-6 at the elementary level, then 1-3 at the middle school level.

hallo spacedog

The things he doesn't know about Japan far outnumber the things he does know, in my opinion.

this chaos is killing me

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Well Manicured A story featuring a video game that regularly kills people just for Man playing it yet is a staple of everybody's life, despite there being no good reasons why something like that would exist in the first place could be great if the writer focused on the arbitrary and absurd nature of the game and the world the protagonist inhabits or the protagonist him/herself, like something out of Kafka or Camus, it would be amazing and interesting. But no, KIKEN has to be "original" fiction that reads like bad anime fanfiction. Hell, if this series was done by Kunihiko Ikuhara or Gen Urobuchi, it would even be a good anime.

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Chapter Three: Changes Here and There

I can't believe you guys are regretting having me do KIKEN instead of mary-sue thief detective.

Is there really a difference between the new and the old? One may think new is recent, while one may think the old is just something rendered obsolete. But simply, new is just the old expanded on with new ideas that improve on whatever was already made. Usually, the new brings out a higher standard; meaning a higher expectation of what must be made seeing as the new already to lived to some of their expectations. But some may not like the new as it has changed from how people remembered it, when it was once known as the old. Many people are therefore conflicted between which is superior or inferior. But as soon as someone looks at a bigger picture, they have to agree. KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI

New stuff is different, therefore it may or may not suck.

Chapter 3: Changes Here And There "Okay, logging in... good!" A girl logged in to a certain online game. Her chestnut hair was idle, yet her eyes were glittering with excitement. As soon as the game started up, the girl stared straight into it. "Login name: Nagawa. Password..." The girl typed her screenname, her eyes idly looking at the monitor. She was an 10 year-old girl of minor Caucasian descent, evident by her dark-brown and grey-blue heterochromatic eyes. "Okay, done! Now let's see, what the hell's on my to-do list?" The girl asked herself, as she was nearing her higher job rank. The game Kogawa was playing had very well-done 3D graphics, and for a forest for a starting point, it looked completely realistic, compared to the anime-styled Player Characters in the game. The chat room was just a translucent rectangle with a box for sentences and phrases, while the skills a character could use were even right next to it. Strangely enough, it was a beautiful game compared to the reception it gained from reviewers, and all due to the controversy, oh, the beautiful controversy. Therefore, those expectations were defeated. But you probably know what this game is, right? I think I figured out why Hubspace is popular, it's an anime MMO. Also this new girl's caucasian heritage is demonstrated by her having two different coloured eyes? That's not a common white man thing bro. Count Chocula I still can't get past "Her chestnut hair was idle". Is hair usually prehensile?

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CarpiliusCoralinus

Maybe we're meant to visualize all their hair blowing dramatically in the wind constantly unless told otherwise.

Vincent Van Goatse

Maybe she's in a wind tunnel going full tilt and the fact her hair won't move is significant.
On his return to Candlestick Alexander Smithius ordered the Buccaneers to be brought forth and crucified; the punishment he had often threatened them with whilst he was in their hands, and they little dreamt he was in earnest.

Or her hair is a sentient creature similar to all the snakes in Medusa's hair.

She's a saiyan warrior, don't force her to power up or you'll regret it.

"Okay, this goes here, this goes there, all right! Just enough to please the new student!" A 4th grade student named Himako, was fixing her table, seeing as a new student would actually enter the 4th Grade class of Hikariyama. "At least I'm more organized than Tsunii," Himako was Yuuichi's younger sister, and she was the most organized of the family, even more orderly than her restauranteur mother. As soon as she was done, everyone stood up to greet the teacher, who brought the new student in. Everyone stopped talking as soon as the teacher entered. "Good morning everyone!" Jacqueline McBurne-Tokizawa-sensei greeted the class. "Good morning, Tokizawa-sensei!" The students replied to the teacher who came to teach the English curriculum in the Elementary level. She was of Caucasian descent, and her minty and icy eyes calmed everyone, including the most energetic of her students. "Alright, everyone, this is Kogawa Nagari. She will be in our class for the time she will be here, which is pretty much for the term. So everyone, please be nice to her!" Tokizawa-sensei made sure the new student was happy. A girl with long, dark-brown hair that was curled at the ends opened the door to the 4-JT classroom, with 15 students before she came in. "Alright, here is the kanji for Kogawa and Nagari." Tokizawa-sensei wrote down the Chinese characters for 'flowing' and 'mile', and under those characters were the Katakana for Kogawa. "Hi, I'm Kogawa Nagari, pleased to meet you all! Tokizawa-sensei, these students look really peppy today." Kogawa told her, seeing as the eyes of the students were those that released the excitement of the kids her age. "Well, seeing as

41

she is now part of our homeroom, I suggest we seat her beside someone who's alone for the moment." Tokizawa-sensei said. "Hima-chan," Tokizawa-sensei told Himako, "Kogawa will be your new seatmate." Himako shared a table with three other kids in her class, "Okay everyone, I'm letting you guys have a 6-minute break for the bathroom and drinking water and all that," Tokizawa-sensei instructed, "but be sure to stay quiet. Is that alright?" Everyone but Himako and Kogawa nodded and left, as they stayed in their classroom. Himako's smile widened as soon as Kogawa approached her. "She looks mature for her age," Himako thought. "You sure she really is 10 years old?" "Ohh, okay! Thank you, miss!" Himako said. She was ecstatic getting to meet her new classmate. "Hi, Koga-chan! I'm Himako Minagawa, nice to meet you." Kogawa reintroduced herself: "Hi, I'm the aforementioned Nagari Kogawa, but just call me Nagawa-chan. By the way, you're Yuuichi's youngest sibling, right?" Himako was surprised that Kogawa knew Himako's family. "Yeah, I am! He's been really busy these days. He's part of a band, the soccer and track team, but he gets home by five and does the homework whenever he can." Himako's monologue ended. "I heard that he was a Hubspace player-is that true?" Kogawa asked her. "Pretty much yeah, but he often looks inside it." Himako explained the work of Yuuichi involving Hubspace. "They say his band is actually a team of researchers who play with the insides of the game, after looking at the articles which describes it." Since Kogawa had a schedule of both the upper grades and middle school, she was ready to talk to Yuuichi about Hubspace and the other kids who knew about it. "You know, I'm actually interested in Hubspace myself. Maybe I can talk to him..." This is all bollocks about a new student being introduced. The plot we derive from this is that this new 4th grade character, Kogawa, is researching Hubspace just like everyone else, and because she conveniently has "upper grade" classes she's able to roll into the high school and ask about it. Whatever, at this point I'm rooting for hubspace to kill one of the main characters. Hubspace is the new protagonist of this story. Pork Lift "Hi, I'm Kogawa Nagari, pleased to meet you all! Tokizawasensei, these students look really peppy today." Kogawa told her, seeing as the eyes of the students were those that released the excitement of the kids her age.

MY eyes went misty as I read this sentence being that my brain was as an idle one misfiring "What is this dumb shit that has just been observed by me" I announced silkily to no one with my quivering but now idle and embarrassed mouth because I realised I was talking out loud with that self same mouth to no one in particular about writing on the internet.

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Later that day, Hikariyama dismissed their high school students from lunch, everyone walking to their next classes. Derani was near his locker, getting his bag, and putting various books he was taking with him in his messenger bag. "Okay, Math, Humanities, English, and the notebooks are here too, so okay!" The teen organized his bag. But Derani couldn't help but remember that conversation. "Still, Aria, you really are like me. On the subject on reality, we really can relate." Derani thought, saying the last four words as a result of talking to himself. "And that parfait's taste really making me remember that talk we had even more..." And he began to recall everything. Yesterday's afternoon, Derani and Aria were still in the ice cream parlor. "So anyway... do you think these groups question reality?" Derani asked, eating his parfait, the ice cream getting softer by the minute. "Pretty much yes and a no. These groups choose the reality the world has to live in, yet they are reailties themselves. So they're simply expanding on the reality we have now." Aria explained, yet the last sentence was very vague to Derani. "But how can we expand on a reality we live in right now? Isn't reality constant?" The teen wondered. "Just think. Is the new completely different than the old, or is it simply the old expanded on with ideas that make it even better?" Aria was almost done with her Hazelwhut crepe. "Well?" Derani finished his parfait, thinking of an answer. "The latter, I guess?" He said. "That's why there are differences between a new and an old version. To make it even better, but the premise stays the same." Aria begun to pick up her bags and leave. "Aria, wait a sec! Do you by any chance have an IM username?" Derani asked. He felt a need to get to know Aria more. "Just give me a pen. I'll write it down." Aria answered. So she's chatting shit about how the game can alter reality or whatever, I'm not really sure, he's just after her IM account so he can flirt with her some more. Also the stuff about new and old is repeated again. Is new really new, or is it just an improvement on the old? Who fucking cares.

People knew Derani seemed a little too emotional after meeting Aria, and one person just knew how to snap him out of it. "What's wrong?" Someone walked over to Derani. "Was it the price of love just now?" It was Kakeru, and noticing Derani's slight pout on his face made Kakeru realize that his best friend was in love. "Pretty much is," Derani answered. "She and I could relate, seeing as we both know that good things last a short time, like true love and other idealistic things." Kakeru knew why Derani was like this, but he decided to keep it to himself. "Come on, we'll be late for class. Besides, we have time to talk about it during lunch." Kakeru didn't want Derani to panic over a crush. "Okay, sorry for being a little late, but five minutes is okay for you guys, right?" Harako Kanedou-sensei said, It was English, and Harako-sensei was the substitute teacher for the class. She was actually the teacher of the English curriculum of Hikariyama Middle, yet she also tackled lessons that involved the high school of Hikariyama and poetry at the time. "Alright, today, we'll tackle the scheme involved with sonnets. It always rhymes and follows an order of line A1 rhyming with line A2. It also happens with lines B1 and B2, but line A1 is before B1." Harako-sensei went on.

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Everyone was then asked to write a poem about the first things that came into their minds. Derani wrote one that revolved around a couple who share many things, including beliefs, ideas, as well as perspectives on certain things. "True love is just something small," Derani wrote. "Yet I have a feeling we may bear it. If there is true love, it may encompass us all, but not all of us may believe in it." Harako-sensei walked over to Derani to supervise him. "Terasuma-kun, are you in a couple right now? I have a feeling something pulled you into a BSoD." She told Derani. All the dialouge in this is bollocks. Whether it's greeting your best friend with "Was it the price of love just now" or the teacher saying "I have a feeling something pulled you into a BSoD". I'm not sure what's happening, I think this story is written in English based on Japanese by a guy whose first language is neither of the two. Also he's a troper so people sometimes talk in tropes.

"No, I just pretty much am in love right now-" Derani started, but Harako-sensei interrupted, "But you don't believe true love will ever last long." Derani nodded and continued writing, yet he started tearing as soon as he finished writing down his sonnet. "Dera-kun, are you okay? Class is finished, and we're about to line up for the Play half of lunch, so I suggest we talk about it while we're at the covered court, okay?" Kakeru asked him. "Alrighty," Derani began preparing for lunch, putting his bag in his locker and waiting for Kakeru. "I'll be meeting up with you then." At the covered court, kids from the 6th grade to the sophomore year students of Hikariyama were playing various types of sports. The 6th Graders played kickball, the 7th Graders played soccer and the 8th Graders played basketball. Some students just laid on the grass in the nearby playground. Derani and Kakeru were on the chairs in between the covered court and playground, and they started a conversation while the sounds of kids doing their sporting rang in the background. "So, what the hell's up with you today?" Kakeru asked. "You seem pretty down." "She's finally arrived. The one," Derani started. "The only one who I'm compatible with. Hearing about her tale tells me that good things last a short time, and a very fleeting moment at that." Kakeru was on to something. "So you're pretty much doubtful about true love?" He asked. Kakeru was a firm believer in things such as true love, and being best friends forever. "Heck, I'd say it should last pretty long, belong to any couple of any type." Derani shook his head. "The latter I agree with, but the former I'm pretty skeptical about." To Derani, that was a rule of reality.

I TALKED TO HER TWICE BUT I'M IN LOVE Do you believe love can bloom, even here in the troperfic?

"Dera-kun... When the hell did you think of that!" Kakeru was dismayed as Derani was actually a negative person at heart. "At least be a little more happy. Its been proven that being too cynical all your life is bad for your health!" Derani wondered if this was an actual statistic. "Are you sure you made that up? If not, then where the hell did you get it? Give me a name or website, then!" He got a little angry, and went a tad overboard. "From Kakeru Kouen, of course! He believes in staying positive alright!" Kakeru proudly

44

proclaimed being the creator of the statistic. "And if it actually works, huh?" Derani asked. "For me, being happy all my life gives me a positive outlook on life. Even if I remember that dreadful shootout in Greece, I still managed to smile because they'll love me for who I am, and who I hope to become." Kakeru explained. "And that's why you should always look at the brighter side of things." "Great, I feel the need to set up a blood contract with you!" Derani began to cry. "Of course! We were best friends ever since kindergarten. So why not become blood brothers?" Kakeru agreed. Derani wrapped himself around Kakeru, crying with both tears of joy and sorrow. And that began the siblinghood of the Crystal Dogs, named for a bond that isn't foggy akin to crystals, the loyalty between such oath siblings akin to that of dogs loyal to their masters. WHAT? CarpiliusCoralinus "And that began the siblinghood of the Crystal Dogs, named for a bond that isn't foggy akin to crystals" is the new best worst sentence. It's like he knows what words mean but not how they work together.

What shootout in Greece? Why does this conversation make them want to be blood brothers? This is all bullshit.

And then of all the things to name your crew of two, the fucking . This section redeems the whole chapter IMO, it's so stupid. Mors Rattus

"Crystal Dogs"

I think they're writing in a language that is really only superficially similar to English and claiming that it's English.
If time travel is possible at all, it's most likely to look like this.

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That same day, Himako invited Kogawa over for a few hours. Himako, more wary of guys when it came to knew friends, wanted to know Kogawa as much as possible. "So, you just moved here from Kyoto?" Himako asked her. "Pretty much yeah, my dad had to transfer branches. He's part of Yumegorosu, and he gave me a copy of Hubspace on the day it came out. it was fresh from the manufacturers, so it was pretty glitchy." Kogawa explained how she came across Hubspace. "And when you registered, how the hell did you come out? I mean, did you go through a coma?" Himako knew about the incidents of registration. "After logging in for the first time, I was addicted to Hubspace like a drug." Kogawa looked back on playing Hubspace for the very first time, as it was only one thing she would look forward to. "Hi, we're home!" Himako said. Tsugumu was on the couch, eating a hamburger he heated up, with onion rings and steak sauce built on the patty. "Hey, Hima-chan!" Tsugumu hugged his little sister, yet his bond with his twin was stronger than his bond with Himako. "Ahh, who's this? Unfamiliarity, fire up!" Kogawa spoke, "I'm Kogawa Nagari, nice to meet you. Is your elder brother here? I'd like to meet him." But Yuuichi came in and saw Kogawa. "Okay, you're Kogawa, I'm Yuuichi, and thanks, but aren't you a little young to have a crush on me? I kid, hahah!" Oh, wait, I remember Himako now. This is a fucking crossover from EPIC ORETACHI. They're talking to the brother of the creepy anime incest twins. Also "Ahh, who's this? Unfamiliarity, fire up!". Not "nice to meet you" or "Who're you". UNFAMILIARITY, FIRE UP!

"Actually, I'd like to talk to you-in private," Kogawa asked, "Because its about a certain game called, Hubspace." Yuuichi turned red and brought her to his room. "Alright, how do you know my activities as a Hubspacer?" Yuuichi asked. "I was that girl who you constantly chat with over Hubspace's chat client, remember?" Kogawa began, "You told me about establishing a group called the Sleepy Hollow." Yuuichi began to slightly scowl at Kogawa. "So what? How the hell did you-" Kogawa said, "I know how to hack into a database and read all kinds of stuff." "How did you? You got bored during the summer?" Yuuichi asked Kogawa. "Exactly!" Kogawa told her. "I was pretty much computer-literate, until one summer where I wanted to hack into a server just for fun. It was useful really, as I could actually trace IP addresses to the point of learning more about the personal info of the owner of that IP." Yuuichi wished that Kogawa would die at that point, as she knew everything about his plan to provide information to those who wanted to quell any sort of issue regarding Hubspace. "Just stop, okay!" Yuuichi asked. Kogawa immediately came out of Yuuichi's room. "Gawai, what the hell happened with you and Aniki!" Tsugumu asked Kogawa. "Wow, making nicknames for people you've just met? That's strange." Kogawa thought that Tsugumu was a little weird, especially with people he introduced himself to just recently. My mom said I can stay two hours max, so I should be going. Bye!" The whole conversation lasted a long time, and it was six 'o-clock when Kogawa and Yuuichi were done with their little talk. When Yuuichi came

46

out of his room, he said, "What the hell...?" "Himako, please don't try me." Yuuichi was a upset with the conversation. Himako snarked, "If she's better than you at something, don't try to keep up with the Joneses."

So we now have two groups. The

CRYSTAL DAWGS

, two bros dedicated to

investigation and shit, and Sleepy Hollow who are two 4th grade girls and a 4th grade guy who also happen to be PR0 HACK3RS. Also I hope that the creepy incest twins stay out of this story, although I do like the idea of them running this anime club for nerds and that being the sole source of drama for them while their younger siblings fight to stop the end of the world or whatever. It's a metaphor for tropers somehow.

The next day, Kakeru and Derani were just about to walk home but someone interrupted them"Excuse me, Derani and Kakeru, right?" As soon as the teens stepped out of the classroom, they recognized some sort of weird, unfamiliar presence. "Yeah, what is it?" Derani asked, as he's never seen a heterochromatic girl before. "I'm Kogawa Nagari, and I've heard of you talking about Hubspace with someone named, Aria Tsubasajima." Kogawa introduced herself. "I was having a baked Alaska while you guys were having that convo: I couldn't help but overhear! And if you're angry, I'm pretty sorry." Kakeru's eyes widened, Derani began to grind his teeth. "Well then, what will he do to quell the Conflict?" Kakeru asked Kogawa, lapsing into his interrogatory state. "What such info do you have?" Derani asked. "Well, you guys have no choice but to ask why there is a Conflict," Kogawa explained, "And the leaders of that Conflict will therefore quell every issue related to Hubspace. But what will you do to initiate that plan?" Derani and Kakeru seemed pretty puzzled. They didn't know what to do once they negotiated with the declarers of the Conflict. Could they envelop the Herons and Kites into a bigger group? Kogawa said, "Clearly you need... a few changes here and there, perhaps?"

And now sleepy hollow and the hallo spacedog

CRYSTAL DAWGS

are friends.

Ah yes, baked alaska, the pinnacle of contemporary Japanese Cuisine.

this chaos is killing me

This story is shit.

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NEXT TIME: Time travel? Crosscontaminant I'm too lazy to check back through a few pages to remember if someone already bothered, but "KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI" means "Danger: The End-of-theWorld Story". As expected, it's not a very good translation into Japanese - chikyuu designates Earth as a celestial body distinct from, say, Venus, so it's better (and usually) translated as planet. World is usually translated as sekai. Hanashi means a verbal story, since it's derived from hanasu "to speak" - a written story would probably be monogatari. (It's worth pointing out that since Japan doesn't have many JudeoChristian influences, the Japanese idiom sekai no hate "end of the world" doesn't really carry the connotations of death, destruction, moral turpitude etc. that it does in the West it's more often used (if Google Image Search is anything to go by) as a flowery kinda-romantic way to say forever.)

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Chapter Four: Well, What an Outcome

Oh hey someone reviewed it today: Joseph Brant 1/11/12 . chapter 1 I'll be honest. This story is rather poorly written. The plot (a video game that kills people and compels its victims to play) seems interesting and has potential, but it's completely let down by the awkward and stilted writing. Characters speak unnaturally as if they were autistic robots. The whole thing looks like it was translated rather poorly from Japanese. I understand if English is not Omniscients's first language, but KIKEN needs a *lot* of polish and revision. It's probably 3 years too late for the author to care, but hey it's like they say in chapter 7 If it's any help, we still have 5 chapter of KIKEN 1, then 3 chapters of KIKEN 2, then the KIKEN prequel. Like most tropers, his 3 novel epic was never completed.

Why is there always an outcome of such historical events? History is a series of events which have shaped the world over. Some events are good, while some are bad. While some may be either proud or shamed because of those events, what more people worry about is the outcome. The outcome of the series of events in relation to the group of people they affect is a way that shapes them, and the outcome cannot be explicitly written down in such history,l if not spoon-fed. It has to be analyzed and researched, constantly and constantly. And while some may like the outcome of the history, some just want to correct it. Or try to. Some of these people who correct outcomes of past events, if they are capable, are called, time-travelers and analysts. KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI Time travelers and historians are pretty much the same thing.

Chapter 4: Well, What An Outcome "Dylan Waters, self-transporting to the year 2012, on May 14, in Eastern Kanagawa." A computer said, to a boy encased in a metal tube. "Are you sure you want to transport to this precise date and location?" The boy inside the tube was asleep, yet the computer had systems that could memorize his brain movements. "If your answer is yes, you may as well be on your way." The tube landed in a place where seaports and boats were just a few steps away, and where a warehouse that doubled as a factory made of red bricks was converted into a shopping mall and wedding chapel. "Okay, at least I'm not much of a claustrophobic! That tube was as tall as a fridge and as wide as a dinner table, so it was pretty spacious." Out of the tube came a boy with borderline chestnut-colored hair. "And all this needed paraphernalia is inside this tube,

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huh?" His name was Dylan Waters, a 13-year old kid who had come from the future, where a certain game rules the world and rids the Earth of all her culture. "Well, Hubspace will have to be defeated somehow so I can actually create a better future, even if it means causing some sort of online massacre." His future had to be changed somehow, as the plan created by certain people was somehow, unsuccessful way back in his home time.

"Good thing I'm not claustrophobic or that tube wouldn't have set me off!". So we now have a new character, a kid named Dylan who totally has access to a time machne because people would totally give a 13 year old access to a time machine. He's from a terrible DARK FUTURE where hubspace killed all the world's culture. It is now my personal canon that Deboss invented hubspace. Why doesn't the future just delete hubspace from the internet?

5 months later, there were confirmations of a rumor that a new student would come to the 7th Grade class of Hikariyama. "Okay class," It was Harako-sensei, back to her homeroom after subbing for the Mizushima-sensei for at least a week. "I'm proud to announce we, finally, have a new student!" Harako-sensei, of course, was being sarcastic. This was not the first time that someone completely new had a student enter the school year smack in the middle of the first term. A 13-year old kid with wide blue-green eyes and borderline chestnut hair entered the room, and he smiled at everyone. "Okay, everyone, this is Dylan Waters. Be nice, alright?" Harako-sensei wrote his name in Katakana. "Dylan Waters, from Mizugane All-Boys School. I have an interest inter-dimensional interactions and time-travel," Dylan said, "so for those of you who share an interest in these topics, please come to me." He knew that there were other realities in his past or rather our present, that looked into topics such as inter-dimensional travel evident by such works of fiction, as well as theories conducted by famous scientists such as Albert Einstein and Karl Schwarzchild. A member of the crowd looked at Dylan in such wonder, as he actually believed in such famous and controversial theories. "Okay, who would like to go on and be the first person to get to know Waters-kun?" Harako-sensei asked, and seeing as only one person raised his hand, Harako-sensei snarked once more. "Okay then, Minagawa-kun, you will be with Waters-kun for the remainder of the day." Tsugumu Minagawa was practically interested in Dylan, seeing as they both share an interest in anything to do with both temporal and inter-dimensional travel. "Waters-kun, you will be sitting beside your companion for today." Harako-sensei couldn't help but notice Tsugumu's wide, pearly white giddy grin. Hey, you know what this self introduction reminds me of? Haruhi book 1: "My name is Suzumiya Haruhi. I graduated from East Junior High." Up to this point the introduction was still normal, so I didn't even bother turning around to look at her. I just stared towards the front and listened to her crisp voice. "I don't have any interest in ordinary people. If anyone here is an alien, time traveler,

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slider, or esper, please, come see me! That is all." Anime aside, this substitute teacher seems incapable of talking in anything but sarcasm, which to be fair if I lived in a world where an internet game was dangerous I'd probably be sarcastic all the time too. Dylan's only friend right now is the creepy male incest twin/author insert Tsugumu. I pity this brave adventurer.

An hour into the same day, everyone was at recess, either in the covered court or Hikariayama's nearby open field, shared by all four campuses. Tsugumu, his twin sister Tsukiyo were with Dylan, near their respective lockers. "So lemme get this straight, you love talking about sliding?" Tsukiyo was pretty curious as to how Dylan was very keen with Science Fiction stories that dealt with traveling or as a slang word, 'sliding' throughout dimensions. "You're very Genre Savvy, I presume?" Tsugumu pointed out Dylan's knowledge of such travel, as if a character in a TV show pointed out the use of a common occurrence, also known as a trope. "Tsuu-kun, stop Lampshading things even if tropes can be in real life!" Tsukiyo scolded. Of course the creepy incest twins are tropers. Poor Dylan

"Actually, it'd be a LOT better if we explained this in private. You mind coming to the school grounds, for a sec?" Dylan led the siblings to an elevator that led to a garden where the elementary students of Hikariyama had recess, littered with green grass, flowers and trees where Tsugumu started walking to. "Besides, it'd be even better if we lie down," Tsugumu began, "seeing as I love getting comfortable." "And you like to lie down a lot, don't you? Or sink into a big, deep egg chair?" Tsukiyo remembered that Tsugumu was a bit of a slacker at anytime in the day. "You know, your introduction reminds me of an anime I like a lot," Tsugumu began, "whose light novels are the source material for that anime series. Are you sure you can't warp reality?" "First of all, no, that anime looks good," Dylan began, "and second, I'm a totally different type of human. You know why?" The Minagawa siblings looked puzzled, on what difference Dylan had between an ordinary human. But first impressions are so surface-centric. "Wait, so you're saying you're an actual slider?" Tsukiyo knew the introduction was evident of someone interested. "And I just love getting that rush from entering Schwarzchild wormholes," Dylan added. "Or anything capable of bringing you to a place where points in history diverge." Any physics goons able to tell me what Schwarzchild wormholes are?

Zandar

Schwarzschild wormholes are hypothetical special black holes that are connected to two universes, which might allow travel between them if you solved a whole lot of practical concerns. Unfortunately, they were proved to be too unstable to actually exist long enough to let anything through. This fits in with the broader issue of Dylan calling himself a slider, actually. My impression is that these wormholes would have

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allowed movement between different universes, not time travel. The term "slider" also refers to travel between parallel universes, not through time (Haruhi asks for both time travellers and sliders, you'll note). Maybe he's travelling to a universe which exactly mirrors his own universe's past, but then if he travelled back nothing would have changed; he'd have to stay in this "time" to take advantage of the better course of events, and everyone else in his own universe would still be screwed. This would make for an interesting motivation, where he's actually desperately trying to save another universe while knowing that his own's demise is inevitable, except that I suspect the author has thought of precisely none of this.

eh4 quote: "You know, your introduction reminds me of an anime I like a lot,"

let me sing you the song of my people

Going by the wiki page, Schwarzchild wormholes aren't even traversable, so it makes no fucking sense to reference them.

Stultus Maximus

Whenever I hit "r" in my address bar, Raine Dogcomes up. Goddammit.

It's nothing more than "everyone since DS9 knows about wormholes, I'll sound smart and add a sciency-sounding adjective!"

Meanwhile the author carefully turns the haruhi stuff from stealing into a homage by referencing the source work. That's the only difference right? That you make a reference?

The next day, Kakeru, Derani and Kogawa were at a Thai restaurant. The three collectively known as the Crystal Dogs, discussed Hubspace. "So you want to envelop the Kites and Herons, but not before having to confront the leaders of the Conflict?" Derani asked. "But what if their opinions will conflict ours?" A legal pad was right in front of Derani and Kakeru, both of them were famished with notes on what to do to quell the Conflict. Kogawa was still thinking of what to do to further quell the Conflict, but she arrived at an opinion by the time her chicken pandan, and her fish paste-fried rice arrived. "Well, what the hell do we do?" Derani asked.

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"Perhaps we could intergrate their goals and further expand on them. That way, under any circumstance, they can't say no." Kogawa began. Derani and Kakeru both had puzzled looks on their faces. "Use the patch to reform the game, and then revolt against Yumegorosu. That way, someone who knows Hubspace's internal framework can actually develop and further expand on the game!" Kakeru wrote down. Kogawa decided to go with that plan, seeing as both groups can actually partake in their goals without the use of pre-determined and pre-meditated battles.

So the CRYSTAL DAWGS group through talking.

's master plan is to merge the two groups into one big

What the fuck is Yumegorosu? Stop putting new words in! (Pretty sure it's something to do with dreams if it isn't someone's name)

"Who the hell'll we consult?" Derani asked. "I know a few people who like to look into Hubspace, but do they even know that much about it?" Kogawa had a bag with her full of print-outs detailing the files of Hubspace as well as files that didn't make the game's final cut. "This will pretty much be our guidebook." Kogawa pointed at the compiled and printed out files that make what we call Hubspace. "And based on whatever lost material is there, we will draw conclusions, consult research and better yet, ask the developers what games they're playing with their game!" "Even better is that we look into the game's developmental history," Kakeru began, "which means we have to do even more extensive research on anything related to Hubspace." Kogawa and Derani were pretty much able to accept Kakeru's way of looking into Hubspace. "Seeing as the outcome of events can shape a game," Kogawa said, "I suggest that we get started on the research by tonight." But Derani thought that since history had holes of it's own, he asked, "But what if even after we investigate the history of Hubspace, it leaves us with more mysteries?" "Then we might as well draw even more conclusions than that," Kogawa said. Man Kogawa is a pro hacker able to print off a game's source code like that. Good for him. So the pro plan of the CRYSTAL DAWGS offline is to read a bunch of files about the game's developmental history. I have to admit there's probably worse plans.

That night, Kogawa was at her computer, looking into the files of Hubspace. Thanks to Kogawa's Hubspace being an early version, the files weren't read-only. "Okay, Program Files, Yumegorosu, here it is! Hubspace!" Kogawa said, looking at the directory of Hubspace. "Now, what the hell is there?" Kogawa was looking for scripts in Hubspace, as well as any sort of links that described the source of the near-death experiences and strange experiences that dealt with the registration of every Hubspace player. "I do remember looking at some sort of clock, though. I'll have to look at my copy's visual files." Kogawa rummaged through Hubspace. To her surprise, she was right. There was a clock. And even an .mp3 clip.

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"The hell...? I've been hypnotized into putting Hubspace first?" Kogawa asked herself. She examined the image that had an animated .gif file of an analog clock, one that resembled clocks made in the style of modern furniture. "Wow, and it turns out that clock really can keep running." Kogawa pointed out the clock's hands ever-moving. She nearly fell asleep for the second time just looking at it. "Wait... wait... Why does it skip 12:21?" Kogawa noticed that there was a pattern in every round the clock goes, and it always skipped 12:21 on the 12th second. "I may as well search for 122112," Kogawa started up her browser, "because the colons just make it harder." And on the search engines came out an article dealing with those numbers. 122112 was actually said to be a date of the end of the world, as the long count of the Mesoamerican calendar. This date of the world's end was said to have been supported with various myths and other types of Mesoamerican culture. "So that's how significant the date was, the one in that .mp3 clip!" Kogawa clicked, as she remembered that that clip... That clip had quite an impact on her life, even before the Conflict began.

SO the mayan plot to end the world on 21/12/12 is to CREATE HUBSPACE. Those fiends! Also Kogawa's such a pro hacker that she was able to find files CREATED BEFORE THEY BECAME READ-ONLY. Fucking mayans ain't got nothing on this girl.

The next day was a weekend, an infinitely good opportunity for the Dogs to meet up. Kogawa met up with Derani and Kakeru at the Yokohama Landmark Tower. They met in a cafe called, Mauka Meadows. "Wait, so a clock and an .mp3 clip hypnotized you into becoming a borderline hikikomori?" Derani thought that Kogawa almost suffered the same fate as Rukao. "But do you have that clip now?" Kakeru said, waiting for his clubhouse sandwich. "I bet the game makes it capable of going on loop." Seeing as most tracks in any game is repeated, Kogawa had to eye-roll, "How did it hypnotize me then? Did I wait for it to sink in, so I won't tell any lies?" I'm sure there's ways to hypnotise people that are more realistic than a .gif of a clock that skips 12:21:12

"But still," Kakeru asked, "do you have the clip right now?" Kogawa was holding an iPod nano, and played it. "A beta version that can be altered." She also made sure that she brought speakers so all three of the gang would know what sucked her into Hubspaceing. "You will play the game and put it in high regard. Until December 21 2012." The clip played. Kogawa stopped it and said, "December 21, 2012, according to the Mayans of South America, is when the Nine Support Gods come down to the Earth." Derani said, "Common fixture in sci-fi and popular culture." "But the long count doesn't end there," Kakeru began, "but that precise date is highly publicized as the end of the world." Kogawa brought out more print outs. "This script here," she pointed at a date, "is the date of when Hubspace will crash." Derani actually found it strange, a game crashing on a highly publicized date. "So the game crashes on the Mayan's predicted date of the end of the world, and the apocalypse will be caused by hikikomori?" "Of course!" Something came to Kakeru. "Since the people hypnotized into playing Hubspace respect it a lot..."

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"They'll do anything, ANYTHING to bring it back," Kogawa said, "even if it means going crazy, and getting into ridiculous extremes!" So the plan is to get people so addicted to a game that they never leave the house, and then one day the game crashes. Am I wrong in thinking that people who never leave the house would be fairly unfit and unsocial, and therefore no match for something like a police force or territorial army? CarpiliusCoralinus I must admit, Mayan developed hypno-MMO is a 2012 scenario I'd never encountered before. Is it any less crazy than second earth or the planet's core flip-flopping or whatever the shit? Still, this 2012 bit feels a little tacked on (just like everythi

The big plot of this game is nerd revolution. Revolution caused by hypnotism by a .gif and .mp3. Maybe my mum was right and too much videogames DOES turn your brains into mush

The same day, Yuuichi was preparing information. He was using an instant messaging client to talk to his friends about a certain game. It was a conference chat, so Yuuichi was talking to more than one person at the same time. From the games structure and internal files, he gathered the game's scripts, fansites, as well as certain lost material that didn't make the game's final cut. "Okay, guys, I have a blog that details the date when Hubspace crashes," he typed, "and its on December 21, 2012." He also sent out a few emoticons, here and there. "I mean come on!w" A girl under the name of Mitsurugi entered, "The last day of the Mesoamerican calendar?" "Mika, you're right! (^.^)" Yuuichi, under the screen name of Keiu, knew that this date was highly publicized. "Its as if everything has to end on that date!" If you have to ask, Mika Kenzawa was Yuuichi's on-again-off-again girlfriend, best female friend and confidante. "Well, you had to say that, hey, where's Amaki?" Yuuichi was looking for his best friend, Amaki Kuranashi, who said he'd be away for just a while. "Oh, right, he typed in BRB. XD XD XD" "Backsies." It was Amaki, under the screen name, Amayami. "Alright, I have a little more info on stuff that didn't make the game. " Usually, Amaki was stoic, yet around his friends, he was just as boisterous as Yuuichi. "Wow, you're unusually ecstatic today!" Yuuichi pointed out. "The first time I knew you, you were like an owl." Amaki and Yuuichi actually performed a blood contract once, so they were pretty much blood brothers. "Silent yet sharp, huh?" Mika said, "Those words pretty much describe you whenever typing out long essays." But one interrupted the conversationAre blood oaths especially common in Japan or something? Or is it a phillipines thing which the author is ham-fistedly transferring over. Or is the author just an idiot (yes). Quote of the chapter, by the way "The first time I knew you, you were like an owl"

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"Guys, back on topic, back on topic! =P" A girl, known online as Hontou, said. "So Amakin, what stuff do you have stayed in the beta and alpha versions of Hubspace?" Her real name was Fujiko Motonomiya. Amaki uploaded various files and articles centered around Hubspace's pre-release information. "Hubspace would've been a great game," Amaki began, "if it weren't for the assassination of Yumegorosu's former president." Yuuichi said, "So it got derailed during development to become a nicely done yet very edgy game in the middle of development?" "That could've been posssible." Mika said. "The current president of Yumegorosu might've ordered that to happen through the assassination." But Fujiko asked, "But how did he? Remember, it wasn't known that he was interrupting, if not hindering the game's development." "Wait," Amaki said, "Who IS the current president of Yumegorosu?" Fujiko said, "We haven't looked into anything yet, as that's the only info we have right now." And those four knew someone under a pseudonym. "Hey, what's on O N E M U R I right now? Yuu-tan, check please?" Fujiko said. So yumegorosu is the games company, and Hubspace, a game that can kill you, is considered "well done but edgy. And the mayans are probably running the games company. Gentlemen, we have plot. Actual plot.

Dylan was at home last night, wondering what information was still out there about Hubspace and the like. "Okay, have everything." In a 2-story house, he held a deck of alteration cards, cards from the future. He used them to manipulate dimensions, conditions and reality. "And to think these would never catch on with other sliders..." Dylan was typing on very futuristic tablet PC, as small as a Nintendo DSi. "All of the information I have obtained: a very good IM conversation in relation to what ruined our world." Dylan's cards actually functioned like a literal universal remote. Not the shape, but the versatility and information retrieval functions were inherited. "Now, a search for Onemuri," Dylan typed into the search bar, yearning for an answer. "Ohh, now what the hell is this!" There was a blog, titled O N E M U R I, that detailed certain information about the Conflict. "And to think that those files weren't able to be uploaded," Dylan said, "At least we know about what goes on in Hubspace." And one mystery was clearly pointed out. The site talked about a clock, and four .mp3 clips. "And each clip actually drive the vitcim into hypnosis," Dylan began, "therefore, anything played in any of the four clips will happen to him." "And another search for Yumegorosu," Dylan said. "What the hell!" The first result was a site that detailed a murder case related to Yumegorosu Corp. "Prior to 2010," Dylan read from the website. "Hikaru Sakugami was found dead near the Yokohama Landmark Tower." Hikaru Sakugami was the former president of Creating, which now became Yumegorosu under the influence of his successor. "This case has remained cold for 2 and 1/2 years," Dylan read aloud again, "and an urban legend says that the successor planned everything out." He felt burnt alive! "This was by the new CEO of Yumegorosu? A long-term plan? A conspiracy? Well just, what an outcome..."

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4 .mp4s, so we know that there's one for "stay online and PLAY HUBSPACE", and probably one for "kill a dude for RARE ITEMS". Even though Dylan has rare future items, I doubt he'll be much help until the CRYSTAL DAWGS This is still shit. need a deus ex machina or whatever.

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Chapter Five: True Love Doesnt Exist

What is 'true' friendship? True friendship is unexplainable. But one can describe his or her friendship as 'true' friendship, seeing as one accepts the friend they let into their lives, as they share something in common. In history and fiction, 'true' friendship often results in forming a brotherhood, in which one person's blood is mixed with another, called brotherhood by oath, or blood brotherhood. Therefore, true friendship or blood brotherhood results in one becoming a lot closer to the friend, or friends to the point of considering him/her family. Simply put, 'true' friendship is reliant on devotion. 'Fake' friendship, however, is such a different paragraph. KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI ANIME IS THE TIES THAT BIND US. http://www.scribd.com/doc/79226017/Anime-is-the-Tie-that-Binds-Us

Seriously though, phillipine goons, are blood oaths really common over there or is this just the author thinking they're cool. Hoover Dam More importantly, let's contemplate the fact that each chapter begins with something clearly intended to be a voiceover for an anime tv series opening. That kind of voiceover is dumb as hell in actual cartoons; in written form, it's as effective as a screen door on a submarine.
red white and blue forever

Chapter 5: True Love Doesn't Exist "Heyy there, Kinji!" It was a silver-haired 10-year old meeting his best friend at the entrance of the Landmark Tower. "Heck, I think my gambit may pretty much work out..." His name was Ginrou Asagizawa, talking to his classmate and so-called, 'best friend', Kinji Choutobi. "You seem pretty overworked." Kinji was visibly tired, since he went down and laid down on the booth. "Hey, sit up, I haven't seen your face since last week!" Ginrou reminded Kinji about the trip. The two made a promise to talk about it as soon as the latter got back. "So, how was Okinawa?"

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"Pretty nice! The sky was blue, so..." Kinji got up and alluded to a certain anime series he was always looking forward to watch on YouTube. "Well, uhh... Yeah. The heat tired me and I kept getting tired of swimming ever since the fourth day." Ginrou thought, "Now's my chance!" "Hey, Kin-kun, heard about Hubspace yet?" He asked. "Yeah. I heard about the Conflict too." Kinji began. "Wanna join it? For once, we can try becoming rivals now!" Ginrou facepalmed, "We ARE Vitrolic Best Buds, so..." He was ready to tell Kinji something. "Actually, there's something..." But I bet we know what that something is, do we? PEOPLE DON'T TALK IN TROPES. JAPANESE PEOPLE CAN WATCH THEIR ANIME ON TV, NOT YOUTUBE. "Ginrou facepalmed", that's a pretty weird way of talking to someone. Also, call me crazy but I don't think Ginrou has Kinji's best interest at heart. jpmeyer Ginrou Alright, I had to register an account here because this aspect of this story bugs me so much that I can't keep it in any more: the names are TERRIBLE. The Japanese names in MCAC were pretty nondescript, so there wasn't anything awful/offensive to care about there. The best way that I can think of to describe the awkwardness of names in this story is that it would be the equivalent of if all the characters were black rather than Japanese, so the author gave them all names like "Jer'tyrone" or "Laqueeshonda". (Also, you can totally tell that this wasn't a NaNoWriMo story because he calls it "CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI". He could've milked an extra three more words per chapter by writing "CHIKYUU GA OWARU HANASHI".)

redmercer Troper Knowledge: -Knows that there aren't spaces in written Japanese -Doesn't know that actual Japanese people use spaces when writing in Romaji
~*~

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Practical Demon Actual Japanese people? I thought those were a myth? I remember a quote from one of these people saying something about how weird it was for him to see actual people speaking Japanese, because for him it was the language of the
He's a wisecracker!

ANIME!

Sawboss Jones

Nope. But apparently, Chinese People are. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChinesePeople The Entirety of the Section Between Anime and Video Games: Fanfic One Piece Parallel Works has three Chinese people - Chen Wu-Tung, Aki Chung-Feng, and Enlai Li. Chen is a practitioner of various styles of martial arts, Aki commonly shows up in a Qipao, and Enlai is the merchant to the Capricorn Pirates. Film The eponymous magician in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. When he talks he switches between "Chinese pidgin" and flawless English on whim. Literature Several of John Steinbeck's novels feature Chinese characters living in the California area. Cannery Row features a grocer named Lee Chang who speaks stereotypical pidgin Chinese. However, the pidgin trope is subverted hard with Lee (no relation) in East of Eden. Live-Action TV Gosei Sentai Dairanger, a Super Sentai season with a very Chinese motif, had even a Chinese Ranger: Lin, the pink-clad HououRanger (even though this is a case of Fake Nationality, as she is played by a Japanese actress).

I must save that woman!

That night, Yokohama was vibrant, filled with lights, boats and dreams only a port town can realize. "Ossu, Kakekake!" It was Derani, who jumped so Kakeru could recognize him. "Hey, Derani~!" Kakeru yelled from one part of the block. They were in Minato Mirai 21, a very notable place in Yokohama, which is actually a landmark. "So, where should we go?" Derani asked. "Hey, went to the Cosmo Clock yet?" Kakeru was just about to take Derani to a ferris wheel known as Cosmo Clock 21. "Sure! But, it'd be even better when you come." The boys still remembered their pact as blood brothers, but they didn't have their blood mingle yet, so the pact wasn't made.

So, they aren't blood brothers then. The

CRYSTAL DAWGS

are just fakes.

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The two arrived at Cosmo Clock, boarding one car of the ferris wheel. "So, about the Conflict," Derani began, but Kakeru asked: "What the hell's the Conflict?" Derani forgot about Kakeru's amnesia, which Kakeru himself forgot about. "Okay, you're suffering from amnesia." Derani had no choice but to notify his blood brother. "Memorize this essay and these notes, and it will bring you to a gradual recovery." Kakeru was intrigued. "Wait, why do I have to memorize these?" He asked. "I want you to help me stop something." Derani said. "Just one person won't do." "Is it charity, school or some sort paranormal thing?" Kakeru asked. "Trust me." Derani pleaded. "Derani forgot about Kakeru's amnesia, which Kakeru himself forgot about." This is dumb, you'd think by now Kakeru'd have learned to keep notes if his memory is being wiped on a daily basis.

Back inside, Ginrou grabbed Kinji's arm and ran. "I suggest we talk it over in private." Ginrou pretty much knew what he was doing, and his plan was to come to fruition. "We should go down." Ginrou and Kinji came out to the lobby of the building, where Ginrou was to do something that would scar Kinji. "C'mon, I'll bring you to an internet cafe." Ginrou said. "Why?" Asked Kinji. "I don't need to do any homework right now!" He knew something was up with him, and Ginrou knew that Kinji was aware that he wasn't himself today. "Okay, there's something I'd like to show you." The two entered the cafe. "Uhh, stations 20 and 21, please." Ginrou reserved stations for himself and Kinji. "Okay," Ginrou was accessing a website that had all types of forms. "I have set-up..." Kinji's eyes opened in disbelief. "Your very own account for you to use in Hubspace!" Ginrou used a touch of sarcasm just now. "Why did you give me an account for something like this!" Kinji couldn't believe his eyes. Ginrou registered an account for Kinji while he was away. "How could you do this behind my back! Want me to get an NDE!" Kinji began, "Fine. I'll log-in for the first time anyway." And as soon as he registered, Kinji's head was on the keyboard, his pupils darkened. HOW DARE YOU DO THIS YOU WANT ME TO NEARLY DIE? NOW I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO NEARLY DIE! Why not just leave the cafe? Why not just not log in? This ancient mayan MMO plot seems pretty easy to defeat.

But at Cosmo Clock 21, Derani and Kakeru were still talking. "Wait, so lemme get this straight," Kakeru wanted the point to be driven home, "there's some sort of an online war and we have to stop it?" Derani facepalmed, "Look, if one side wins, then the world will be destroyed and somehow reconstructed," he explained, "while if another wins, then they'll try to get the game and the world to be reformed with the use of a patch." Kakeru still read. "Wait, so what does our pact have to do with this?" One thing Kakeru remembered was the pact they formed when Derani was in some sort of depression. "Was it formed..."

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But Kakeru never knew the brotherhood's truth. Derani just needed help. He was in love. With a girl named Aria. I'm still in the dark as to how winning an online war does anything more than allowing a person to patch out the december 21st crash. Surely the real world would go on as normal. None of this matters anyway, hikikomoris wouldn't be able to take out an armed police service, let alone the Japanese national guard. This whole plot is basically people fearing the troper uprising. When the tropers rise, only pencil factories have anything to fear.

Two months later, someone finally woke up from his coma. "Oh, you're awake." A doctor was waiting for someone to rise from his coma. Five days later, Kinji woke up in what appeared to be a hospital bed with a doctor checking up on him. "You were in an internet cafe, and logged into Hubspace for the very first time. Mr. Kinji Choutobi, correct?" Kinji nodded, yet the yes was home to intrigue and confusion. "But still," the boy began, "where the hell am I!" "Ohh," The doctor said, "someone called the authorities. The boy who made you register is being talked to, while you were under a coma." "Delirium?" Kinji asked, seeing as he was only a 4th Grader. "What's that?" The doctor explained, "Delirium is a big word that means you've been trapped in a dream." Kinji knew he heard Ginrou's voice during his delirium, and it lingered in its head. "Ginrou, so what if you love Himako?" Kinji said, "There is someone out there for you! And you don't have to fight for the special person!" Kinji knew that Ginrou was in some sort of dream, trapped inside and obsessing over it. "Wait, who's Ginrou?" The doctor asked. "Never mind." Kinji said. "Just an ex-friend." "By the way," the doctor said, "I recieved texts from someone. It could be that Ginrou guy who set you up. I suggest you further yourself away from him, judging from these." Kinji got his cellphone, and glanced through each message. Ginrou kept asking Kinji to battle at Hubspace a day after he woke up. "By the way," the doctor told Kinji, "you'll be discharged by the end of the day. Your dad was here too. He left a note." Kinji knew his father would try to help him. "The note says to do your best," the doctor began, "but don't hurt yourself. Much." So you can be talked to by the police for making people register on hubspace. WHY NOT OUTLAW HUBSPACE? The note says to battle the day after he woke up, it's an amazing coincidence that in this world you're able to go home the day after waking up from a TWO MONTH COMA. You don't need any kind of physiotherapy or tests done, it's just "you're awake, get off our beds". I'm betting that he goes home to battle on hubspace, and the police also release Ginrou on the same day to battle him on hubspace. Everything revolves around this shitty hubspace plot.

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That night, Kinji logged into Hubspace for the second time. He got his password straight from his email, and typed away. "Let's see how Ginrou'll feel when I beat him." But as soon as Kinji logged-in, his whole body was involuntarily moving, as if he knew the controls to the game. "Well, whaddya know!" Kinji said, "The game actually looks very good." The controls seemed simple, and the interface was user-friendly. "Now to ask for some help," Kinji tried pressing F1, but out came a burst of fire. He did the same for F2 through F5, but they were all just moves of his character. "Nice, moves that pretty much heat up!" "Oh, hi!" Someone approached Kinji. "You must be a new player." It was a HelperBot, a bot administrator of Hubspace who always explained everything. "I'm a HelperBot, and I can answer any question to the game." The HelperBot said. "Your skills are activated by F1 through F5, and they are determined by your username." "And F6 to F12 is..." Kinji typed in. "The rest of the buttons are left for items, such as healing items, equip items and rare ones." "And I hear they're expensive." Kinji knew about the high cost of rare items as he did some research beforehand. "The arrow keys are for moving," HelperBot said, "the keyboard and the other buttons are for chatting." Kinji also noticed more menus, and tried clicking on them. "Home, PgUp and Down as well as End are reserved for menus. So, have fun and enjoy playing!" Kinji sighed, "Well at least someone explained how this works." Accessing his inbox, Kinji noticed something. "One email huh?" His brown eyes stared at a message from Ginrou. Kinji knew this was about the battle. "Well, I have 30 minutes to get ready then. Fine with me."

So Kinji is the newtype of hubspace or whatever, able to use his guy without any training. Also, if you're abilities are tied to your username, then surely that means that there's a potentially unlimited number of abilities, all this mayan retardation aside that would be impossible to code. This is just so the author can write some anime battles later on and not have to worry about the fact that most MMOs would have a limited number of powers. ALL PLOT MUST BE SET ASIDE FOR THE ANIME HUGBOX

Much later, Kinji met up with Ginrou in a location called, the PvP area. It was a white rectangular prism, yet the long and wide faces were clear. "Hey, Ginrou." Kinji said. "What the hell's wrong with you!" Ginrou, at his computer, just smiled as his black hair shone in front of the computer monitor. "Well," Ginrou said, "If you wanna know why I joined the Conflict-" Unbeknownst to Kinji, Ginrou drew the both of them into the Conflict of Tin and Brass. "But why did you draw us in?" Kinji was affright. "I don't want to be involved! Hell, you know that in the first place!" "Oh, hi!" The HelperBot arrived. "Its me again, the HelperBot. When you are in the PvP area, your skills, levels, and items are raised to their maximum potential. But you will have to learn how to use them yourself. Wins and losses are based on the way you fight, as well as the number of HP lost. Once again, I'm the HelperBot, and have a nice PvP battle!" Eventually, a number 3 appeared on the screen, followed by a 2, then a 1. Kinji and Ginrou were still idle even when the countdown of the fight got started, and the PvP battle they held would last 10 minutes.

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After a long stare of idle eyes and cheering crowds in the faces of the prism, the two boys leapt in the air. WOOSH! Ginrou's arm flung blades and daggers through the air, melted by the burning facade all around Kinji. "I thought we were friends!" Kinji's limbs were engulfed in the most crimson of flames, prepared to do anything to Ginrou. "Well, that was just a facade." Ginrou's was floating, his feet on air, his hands holding clear, pale blue spheres of oxygen. "Ever wondered what true love is?" Kinji typed in, "What is it?" Ginrou started twisting air like a wheel. "True love is something worth fighting for!" So battles aren't just won and lost by HPs, it's also based around style. Another system that would be impossible to code and implement. But now we're in an anime fight, and it's just as boring as the main story. Kinji is a fire guy, Ginrou can fly and use knives. Because Ginrou has silver/black hair, he's gonna win. That's how anime works.

"But true love can apply to anyone!" Kinji responded to Ginrou's tornado with a burst of flame, straight from his arms. "Anyway, there's something I'd like to equip..." Kinji immediately held up an enflamed staff, and from its center came a chain. "A pair of nunchuks, cool but useless!" Ginrou said. "I also have something I may as well show you too." Ginrou held up a long sword with a blade that was as wide as a child's head. "Ever seen a zanbatou before?" Kinji flung his arm, his flaming nunchuck striking the blade to no avail. "Yeah, a sword like this is sturdy!" "Darn it!" Kinji put the two handles of his nunchuks together, and the chain melted into two drills, the handles extending into tonfas. "Guess I'll have to go for drills and other spinning stuff." Kinji's drill-fitted tonfas were set ablaze, but they too were durable as they were diamond-encrusted. "Oh, look, mine's pretty durable too!" Everyone knew that god-modding was a part of PvP battling, and diamond-encrusted spinning drills was no laughing matter. "Wow, looks like the both of us can really spin it up, huh?" Ginrou's oxygen balls caused his zanbatou to spin. "Well, I guess I'll have to allude to something but," Krreerew! Kinji's drills began spinning, "Well well well well well! Always naive, always cheerful, always peppy! Never realistic, never limited, never cheap! I, Kinji Choutobi-sama will be your opponent!" Kinji delivered a stab to Ginrou, his skin suffering from a few burns and cuts. "Augh, dammit!" Ginrou knew about Kinji's addiction to going beyond the limits after watching too much anime. "I knew you'll never get over TTGL!" Well, Kinji and Ginrou were Tropers, and TV Tropes has certainly ruined their lives. AHAHAHAHAHA. I can no longer hate this story. I only feel pity. In a world where life is tropes the TVTroper is king. True anime knowledge gives power. Seriously though, this is all shit, in an MMO context this makes no sense whatseover, it's all just anime, a shittily written and generic anime

But the next day, something would partly change the Conflict. "Looking for a body," it was ball of light. "Looking for a body to possess..." The light traversed through many parts of Yokohama searching for someone who was involved with a certain game's creation. "Ooh! I sense something." The light saw a women dressed in a black sleeveless top and jeans. "And since when did the future ever get so attracted to light brown hair?" The voice noted the woman's light brown hair shining

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under the sun, as she sent a message for someone the voice knew was important. "And it looks urgent, so I'll just have to find out!" The light said. The light rushed straight into the woman's body, as if it was possessing her. "Who the hell are you!" The woman said. "Are you mind-jacking me?" Her name was Juuri Fujisaku, one of the testers and frequent players of Hubspace. "Mind-jacking, huh?" The light said. "I don't know what that is, but I'll be sure to get to it! My name's Kurumi Souchou, by the way." Juuri tried to stop her, but Kurumi interrupted, "Don't be afraid. I only possessed you because I need your abilities and understanding of the modern world." Juuri's pupils shrank, as if some sort of chill went down her spine. "Might you be a ghost?" "I am a ghost. But a friendly one at that." Kurumi said. "But your tricks to drive me away from you just won't work. Have you heard of the Tin Herons?" Juuri's eyes became normal again, as if she was now familiar with what possessed her. "The Tin Herons and the Brass Kites," Juuri said, "yes, yes I've heard of them. You know about the Conflict?" Kurumi answered, "I came here because I can see the future. And I was right." Juuri asked, "How? What was your prediction?" Kurumi replied, "Economic drops, chaos is order, and an world that gradually ends." "I know you you have something to do with Hubspace." Kurumi pleaded. "You're a ghost," Juuri asked. "so how do you know about Hubspace?" "I need to prove the people of my time wrong," Kurumi finished "so I would like to join it with your assistance." "Done!" Juuri agreed. "And what did you try to prove right, anyway?" Future lady manages to possess another lady to stop hubspace. This is in a world where a 10 year old has access to a time machine. Why do we need two time travellers?

Meanwhile, back at the PvP area, Kinji and Ginrou were still at it. The two boys battled to almost no end. "Diamonds are the strongest material after all," Ginrou and Kinji still fought whether or not love is something worth fighting for. "But I know just what to do with them!" Ginrou generated a ball of wind, and threw it at Kinji. FWOOSH! The air became a tornado, aiming for his diamond-encrusted drill-fitted tonfas. "Oogh, dammit!" Kinji said, "You're better at analysis than I am!" Ginrou said, "What can I say? I'm smart AND strong! And that was enough air to blow just some of the strongest drills found only in Hubspace!" "Well, oxygen can do anything if you're online! That's the Rule Of Cool!" Kinji said, jumping in the air. WOOOOOOSH! His arm aimed for Ginrou delivering a fiery punch. "Well, you might as well go for a bit of a kick too." The oxygen backed up Ginrou and pushed him, while he was going to perform a side kick. "Kite Kiiiiick!" Ginrou yelled. "Wait, you joined the Kites? Well, I guess I'll be fighting on the side of the Herons, then." Ginrou yelled. "Immature Heron Puuuuunch!" Both of them rapidly approached each other, causing a huge explosion. BOOM. "Well, tell me again why true love's lifespan invokes a conflict?" Kinji won that fight, Ginrou seeimngly asleep.

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My prediction was wrong, I forgot that Kinji was powered by generic fighting anime, the most powerful force in the universe. If this broken MMO ever got a goonswarm equivelent there wouldn't even be a story.

"Why do you think multiple people fight over someone they love?" Ginrou woke up 20 minutes later. "Why do you think there are love triangles?" Ginrou, back home could barely type due to something going on in his brain, and in must've been a side effect of the fight. "Did this fight bring you to Mind Screw?" Kinji asked. "Nope." Ginrou went on, "Mind Rape." Kinji recalled that Ginrou's parents, after 12 years of marriage called it quits due to constant fighting and an affair. "The one might not even love you back. He might be with someone else!" "And does he give a damn about the one who loves him! Of course not! Well this means... true love doesn't exist!" Yes that is the logical conclusion to your anime battle Fuck what anime does to people. Fuck tropers. Fuck everything NEXT CHAPTER: ANIME FIGHTS TWO: TROPER BOOGALOO The Saddest Rhino I still want to know why us Chinese are a mystical race according to tvtropes.

Scorched Spitz

Because if there's one thing tropers love more than bipolar Japanese girls in sailor outfits, it's horny kung-fu waifus in qipaos.

Deadly Chlorine

Because we are obviously descended from dragons. How I long to shout a Troper off a cliff.

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Chapter Six: A Collection of Bias and Beliefs

I wish I could construct some sense out of this...

Is information really that significant? Most information is usually insignificant little details, which come to a bigger and more important idea. These big ideas are not usually spoonfed to the one who researches, however it can still be found. One has to analyze to look for a big idea, using whatever research they have. Now, in many people's experience, finding a conclusion is hard due to going back to research and having to find out new things, but it will satisfy your pleasure for learning one you've approached the conclusion. Because the conclusion is the most significant of all the information in this world. But a conclusion can possibly point to another set of facts and further research. KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI This is just a load of bollocks. I don't even care what it means TurnipFritter Could someone give me a quick summary of what The Conflict is? I'm sure it was explained before, but I'll be damned if I go back and read through this shit.
Everyday Italian

There's an MMO, the conflict is between two sides, the Kites and Herons and the winner gets to influence the MMO in some way. One side wants to rewrite the rules of the MMO but leave it standing, one side wants to bring down the MMO. The are a third side, but we don't know yet what they seek. CRYSTAL DAWGS

Chapter 6: A Conflict Of Bias and Beliefs "Alright, bye! Okay, bye!" It was Fujiko Motonomiya, talking to her current boyfriend Yuuichi. "Wow, he really can't stop talking, can he?" Yes, rumors of a MinagawaMotonomiya pairing were flying around Hikariyama. But it was actually true, but the truth can be subverted with lies made by the general public. Fujiko and Yuuichi were dating due to a certain game that they knew the public were into, and what would cause the death of civilization. If one were to ask you, if you are dating this person, how would you answer to, if not recieve being in a situation like this? "But surely one would say yes," thought Fujiko, "but you would've just lied yourself!" Fujiko then rode the Toukaido Line, from Kanagawa-ku, where Hikariyama was located, to Nishi-ku. "Now, about that internet cafe I was supposed to go to." Fujiko thought. "Is this going to be a Hollows thing, or something just as friends?" She was in deep thought about what to do during the cafe meeting. But since a game was still being played, as well as a conflict to follow, it would've been likely that she was to meet friends for an

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important reason. "Well, we can't possibly go public!" Fujiko thought aloud. "It'd make everything fall apart. And Yuuichi would..." There was just one secret that Fujiko kept to herself. Blah blah two members of pro hacker team hollows are dating, they're gonna go online and do shit. They can't expose the stuff they've found out for some reason.

It was a bustling city filled with people wearing eccentric outfits, going to internet cafes and shops to buy games, possibly that one game too. "Okay, Onemuri Hime," Rukao was in Akihabara, a place where people like him, otaku, were able to confide in each other's addiction to Japaneses pop culture, such as anime and manga. "Waiting, and okay! It really is a Small Net After All!" Ever since a blog called O N E M U R I had recieved 200,000 hits due to bilingual entries, Rukao could not live a day without reading it. "And to think this is just a blog," Rukao said, "hell, Nanako's got nothing on this!" Rukao and Nanako were taking the same courses, and he was to use O N E M U R I as a source for his thesis. Blogs are, after all, academically reliable resources. Then again I suppose it is a lot to ask that an anime nerd actually read a textbook or journal about whatever he's studying.

"Okay, now I'll hop-on to Messenger," Rukao was to contact Nanako. He felt the need to do some PvP battling. "Hey, Nanako! " Rukao typed in. "Feel the need to hop on over to Hubspace yet? I'm actually free right now, so if you want, message me back later. Okay?" Nanako was idle, and for Rukao, Nanako being idle meant her working on the thesis which drew Kakeru to the university campus of Hikariyama. "Tojiru." Rukao said, closing his messenger window. "Now, to wait, and surf away!" He surfed the day away, wasting 6 hours of his life on a computer until: "Hey, Rukao." It was Nanako. "Got your message. I'm a Kite, and if you're a Heron, then let's go!" Rukao was ecstatic for a reclusive hikikomori, who were usually pessimistic. So this guy's one of them hikikomoris except he goes outside to go to some sort of academic establishment. In other words he's just a guy who spends all his free time on the internet and MMOs. Guess this is EPIC writing what he knows.

But in another station, was Juuri, Kurumi being present in her head. Kurumi was being taught how to live in a new time. "So you're in my head because you need to prove someone wrong, huh?" Juuri said, wanting to know why Kurumi needed to use Hubspace. "Ever heard of a man named, Nostradamus?" Kurumi asked, Juuri nodded. "He was the guy who made all of those prophecies and predictions of the future, right?" Kurumi said, "Redundant, but yes! Now, teach me how to play the game." Juuri then accessed Hubspace which was already installed onto her computer, and taught Kurumi the basics of the game.

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Nostradamus predicted MMOs? This is time traveller #2 by the way, who you may remember as being able to just sorta possess people instead of just getting a time machine.

"Okay, when it comes to the rules, there are three things." Juuri drabbled on. "First, you have to pay 10,000 yen just to maintain your membership. Per week. Secondly, you may not upload porn, loli, shota, or hentai, but you are allowed to curse. Lastly, you are not allowed to fight with people in your party. Clear?" But Kurumi, of course, being a light-haired miko from the Meiji Era asked, "By the way, I know what hentai is, but what's loli and shota?" Juuri raised two fingers. "Two words. Child pornography. And a party is a group of people who you play with in the game." "Oh, and can people know me as something called the Whirlwind?" Kurumi asked, Juuri creating a new character, named Whirlwind especially for Kurumi. "Well, whatever weapon you have is determined by your name, so adapt as soon as you start playing." Juuri's knowledge was so accurate, that if it was a glove, it would fit even a pudgy hand! "Well, let's get started!" Juuri, having already registered as a beta tester for Hubspace, was immune to the hypnosis the game would induce had she not registered an account beforehand. "One more thing," Kurumi finished. "Can I be what people in this time call, a Kite?" So beta testers are immune to hypnotism? I'm guessing that works in a similar way to the amnesia that just comes and goes. And then I saw "Meiji era" which is 1868-1912. So somehow this time traveller has been able to come from the past in order to stop the MMO for some reason. At least EPIC actually thinks lolicon/shotacon is child porn. Although how a lady from the past knows what general anime porn is is beyond me. Also this game costs $129 a WEEK!? Where the fuck are these hikikomoris who by definition have no job getting that kind of money from? Powers are set by name, so without reading ahead I expect this character "the whirlwind", to use air based powers and have a stick. I imagine her hair will be purple.

Fujiko met up with a classmate near Minato Mirai 21. "Hey, Fuji!" It was Amaki Kuranashi, with silver hair and skin just a tad more naturallooking than snow. "Where were you? I thought you went straight from Hikariyama!" He was looking at Fujiko, pretty as ever. The Sleepy Hollow doubled as a band, and Fujiko looked good even as she sang, if not even better. "I did! It was too slow due to a population density thing, so..." She said. They both went up the elevator in the Landmark Tower, to the same, infamous internet cafe, called WorldConnection where an incident of a Hubspace-induced coma happened 2 months ago. "You're pretty late." It was Mika, with her short bleached hair and slightly darker skin. "Not even kogals like me arrive this late, even when fashionable!" She was one of Fujiko's best friends, aside from Yuuichi and Amaki. Thats the reason why the Hollow was formed. Each had a musical talent, while maintaining a close friendship. "Oh, and we found some new info on Hubspace, and get this!" Fujiko said, "The Conflict too!" The Conflict. The one integral keyphrase that brought the Sleepy Hollow even closer. They

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sought to stop it, but they did not know about the Dogs. Until now. So as well as being pro hackers the hollows, sorry, the "SLEEPY HOLLOWS" are also a pro band. According to wikipedia "kogal" is a japanese fashion based around school uniforms. Why that would make people late is beyond me, I guess the author just liked the sound of the word.

"Fuuko, you do know about the third side of the Conflict, right?" It was beanie-wearing gutarist Yuuichi, who had a knack for Information Technology. "There's a third group called, the Crystal Dogs. It was formed by Kakeru, Derani and Kogawa. Kogawa asked me about whether or not our band was onto Hubspace." Fujiko was in shock. Kogawa was the person that made her boyfriend lapse into a bad temper! "Wait, something tells me Kogawa is..." She said, "No, she can't be! No 4th Grader has that much of a vocabulary!" Mika, Amaki and Yuuichi were all baffled. "Unless..." "Ring ring ring, ring ring ring! Phonecall, phonecall!" It was Yuuichi's phone. "Hello, Kakeru-senpai?" He answered. "Hello, guys, are you the Sleepy Hollow?" Kakeru was onto something. "I heard there was a third side of the Conflict that doubled as the school band." He remembered the Conflict thanks to Derani helping him recover from his chronic amnesia. "What the hell're you implying?" Yuuichi asked. He knew Fujiko was right. "Kogawa told you, didn't she?" Kakeru, on the other end, nodded. "She told me everything." He said. "She authors a blog called, O N E M U R I, under the name, Onemuri Hime." "Yuuichi, give me the phone!" Fujiko asked. "Kakeru-senpai, thank you!" "I knew Kogawa questioned us for a reason, I knew it!"

So the CRYSTAL DAWGS are a third side in this stupid war, and they want to team up with the pro hacker team, bringing them up to a combined membership of 6. Of course, this being anime those 6'll all be super pro online anime fighters, each person able to take on entire armies with their bullshit unbalanced MMO powers. Also Kakeru's amnesia is cured for now, thanks to the complicated idea of taking notes.

That late afternoon, Kogawa was at home. She just had an early dinner while authoring her latest blog entry."Ooh! A battle. Wonder what time it'll be started." She was playing Hubspace as usual, and a recent activity chart near the chatbox told her about a fight going on with a Kite and a Heron, called the Punishment, and the Natural Gift, respectively. "I'll have to spectate. I wanna write this down later tonight!" Under her screen-name, Blizzard, Kogawa contacted the other Crystal Dogs. "Deradera, Kake-kun, watch this! Its Conflict-related, so its mandatory you do!" She said. 20 minutes later, in a crowd of one hundred, the boys arrived in the PvP Area's spectator seats. "So what did you want?" Derani asked. "People who'll go all Rifftrax on this fight?"

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Derani, as an avatar named Thunderbolt, said. He, a snarky pretty boy knew how to allude to pop culture. "Well, since I just recovered," said Kakeru, under the name, Eruption, "I guess this should reinforce my understanding of whatever the hell's going on about, shouldn't it?" Kogawa face-palmed herself. "It has a name!" Kakeru typed in, "Okay, fine. The Conflict. You happy?" Eventually, the lights in the PvP Area got darker, and one light flashed as soon as someone came up. Oh good, just what these anime fights needed, shitty MSTs. Kogawa is in 4th grade, making her around 10, yet she's apparently the leader of the , or at least extremely bossy. CRYSTAL DAWGS

Oh, turns out that the pro taking notes idea may not be a temporary cure after all. It's a PERMANENT CURE. This amnesia subplot was shit. This anime is shit.

It was Rukao, under the nickname, Punishment, holding a morning star, dressed in a black trenchcoat, and jeans. "Ossu! And if anything says that I'm just Estrogen Brigade Bait, well I'm not!" Rukao just typed that to appeal to the crowd, and his black-jacketed avatar reflected everything under his hikikomori-hood. "No, I haven't lost anything yet. That's probably why I'm a borderline hikikomori. I LOVE PvP battling." "You're stuck in a rut, you know!" Another light flickered. It was Nanako, in a pale blue qipao and long, black thigh high socks. "Remember the outside world?" Nanako threw a card onto the ground, changing the blank rectangular prism into Yokohama Chinatown, one of the biggest Chinatowns in the world. "Heh, I know this place like a whore's list of people she's slept with!" Rukao knew everything about the bustling, red, and vibrant Chinatown you could only find in Yokohama. "Well that's funny, a prostitute never asks for the name of her so-called clients!" Nanako threw two steel war fans, which seemed a cross between ordinary fans, shuriken stars and boomerangs. WOOSH! Those two fans slite Rukao's wrists like an emo kid would do. "Nice, fans that actually work for me!" Nanako was never really used to fans that usually fold, and prefered thin books for fans. What the fuck is going on, this is terrible. "WOOSH! Those two fans slite Rukao's wrists like an emo kid would do." is my favourite line this chapter though. Also how appropriate is it that Rukao the hikikomori also talks like a troper.

"Tessen?" Rukao said. "Last time I saw that was held by a Fiery Redhead!" Rukao was a troper, who always loved looking at common occurences in literature and media. And surely, TV Tropes ruined his life. But it was like that with other Tropers.

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TheHan

The way he drops those trope names if fucking infuriating. Aren't these some unfortunate implications? It's a good thing we're vitrolic best buds. Fiery redheads! ...It actually does a pretty good job of feeling like talking to a troper, so I can't even get mad at it.

STOP SHITPOSTING ASSHOLES

"Ahh, not the legs! Not the Zettai Ryouiki!"

Back at the PvP Area, more people under the names, Keiu, Mitsurugi, Amayami and Hontou arrived in the spectator seats. "You guys again?" Kakeru was onto something. "Well, the Sleepy Hollow sure gets around." Derani snarked. But the band was actually quite popular, and they say one of the members isn't a virgin anymore. "But we're not planning on doing tours in Chinatown, that's for sure," said Amaki, as Amayami. "Speaking of planning, give us whatever info you have on Hubspace," Fujiko, as Hontou pleaded. "If I created a Conversational Tumor, sorry then!" "Actually, you did, but you're forgiven." Kogawa said. "But in return, you'll have to support us." Mika, as Mitsurugi typed in, "Of course! We set the Sleepy Hollow's Hubspacing because of all of this anyway!" She was really serious about assisting the Dogs out. "We also have one more piece of info." Yuuichi said. "'Tis juicy, too. Wait, that wasn't enough buildup." "Well?" All the Dogs asked. "In a world with conspiracy theories, nothing will ever come as good as this. No one will ever handle the truth!" Said Yuuichi, under the guise of Keiu. "I bet you can't handle the truth." "Well, the Conflict can actually be a facade for something bigger." "Really, how come?" Kakeru asked. "Not much proof, but I'll tell you what we have." Fujiko said. "Not the reaction I asked for but I can live with it." "Tell us! NOW TELL US! :O" Kogawa typed in, excited for something to blog about. "The spearheaders of the Conflict, Shouhei and Hichou-kouhai-tachi, have planned something in order to get their message across. No one knows what it is, but it involves-" Derani said, "If its a Gambit, then it'll probably work!" A few minutes later, the chatroom was blank. "A Gambit? A series of events that form a plan? Heard of a trope?"

jpmeyer

"Well, the Sleepy Hollow sure gets around." Derani snarked. But the band was actually quite popular, and they say one of the members isn't a virgin anymore. THEY'RE IN 4TH GRADE

hallo spacedog

Actually, I don't know if this is that much better but never the less I think if not mistaken that group of Crystal Dawgs/Sleepy Hollow kids are in the high school section where as the Kinji, Ginrou whatever

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group is the 4th grade class part. It's super confusing though so don't take my word for it.

this chaos is killing me

Most of the characters are around 15 years old, except for the genius member of the CRYSTAL DAWGS whatever in chapter 5. and the two people who had a fight about love or

But back in Chinatown, Nanako and Rukao looked as if they were brought into a 2.5D cel-shaded fighting game. "Does this remind you of anything?" Rukao threw his enflammed morning star at Nanako, who captured it with her fans. WOOSH! Luckily, Rukao got it back. "Unfortunate Implications, but yeah. Oil-based lubes make it a little more warm." Nanako said, hinting at some thing that she knows she's never done. "Oh, and I bet my thesis is better than yours!" "So what? You're in this to get more information!" Rukao said, a bit of a hypocrite. "Then again, me too." "But at least I'm being direct with Hubspace!" Nanako went near Rukao and danced around, constantly wounding him. "Well, metaphors can imply something in literature!" Rukao said, drilling his morning star into Nanako's leg! "Ahh, not the legs! Not the Zettai Ryouiki!" Nanako's legs were one of her strong points, and without them, Nanako, well, let's put it this way. Her part of the Conflict became a bit more laborous. "Heheh. You fell for that, did you?" Nanako, of course, being a little more prepared than Rukao was armed with socks of sturdy 'fucking titanium! "Darn it, Titanium Thigh-Highs!" Rukao said, having known a lot of items in Hubspace. "Well, I guess I'll have to use this as a last resort." He held up his morning star, and around it were various dragons of fire. FWOOM! The dragons swiftly turned into fire, and they came for Nanako! "Dammit, not another area-based attack!" Nanako tried avoiding the flames with her fan, but the flames started weakening without them. Even with 1500 out of 65927 HP, she was bound to win. And when she threw her steel fans at Rukao's throat, well let's put it this way. "The winner is... Natural Gift!" A bot typed into the chatroom. "You lost, but hey!" Nanako said. "At least I know how to get back at whoever leaked my thesis." Seeing that line on a bright computer monitor made Rukao's pupils widen. "You are evil..." Rukao said. "You're just a shy and reclusive little bitch, aren't you?" Nanako, back at home, raised an eyebrow. "Reclusive? Reclusive? Don't you know that humans can scare people into get information on controversial things?" "What? They did the same with you and you'll forget it, Nana?" Even when seeming pretty realistic, Rukao can be very very starry-eyed. "Well, you can't!" This shit reads like anime starring tropers. PEOPLE DO NOT TALK LIKE THIS OUTSIDE OF YOUR SHITTY PAEDOPHILE HUGBOX, YOU SAD FUCK.

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TheWorldIsSquare But back in Chinatown, Nanako and Rukao looked as if they were brought into a 2.5D cel-shaded fighting game. "Does this remind you of anything?" Rukao threw his enflammed morning star at Nanako, who captured it with her fans. WOOSH! Luckily, Rukao got it back. "Unfortunate Implications, but yeah. Oil-based lubes make it a little more warm." Nanako said, hinting at some thing that she knows she's never done. "Oh, and I bet my thesis is better than "You should really be yours!" "So what? You're in this to get more information!" Rukao worried about yourself said, a bit of a hypocrite. "Then again, me too." before you start worrying
about me. Otherwise your face will get so ugly that you won't be able to attract the bitches in Hell!

"But at least I'm being direct with Hubspace!" Nanako went near Rukao and danced around, constantly wounding him. "Well, metaphors can imply something in literature!" Rukao said, drilling his morning star into Nanako's leg! "Ahh, not the legs! Not the Zettai Ryouiki!" Nanako's legs were one of her strong points, and without them, Nanako, well, let's put it this way. Her part of the Conflict became a bit more laborous. "Heheh. You fell for that, did you?" Nanako, of course, being a little more prepared than Rukao was armed with socks of sturdy 'fucking titanium! I know this is echoing many of the things already said here, but.. holy shit, this may just be one of the worst things I've ever read. It's like the author has had no interaction with actual humans and just thinks everyone talks like a TVTropes forum member. I have to admit to finding it somewhat frightening that TVTropes can ruin your life so much it seemingly makes you forget how normal human interaction works.

Mors Rattus

We can tell it's not a real MMO because neither side is named the xX_KillaClan_Xx.

If time travel is possible at all, it's most likely to look like this.

TGLT

"Does this remind you of anything?" Rukao threw his enflammed morning star at Nanako, who captured it with her fans. WOOSH! Luckily, Rukao got it back. "Unfortunate Implications, but yeah. Oil-based lubes make it a little more warm. Is this a dick joke? I think this is a dick joke. How do you fuck this up? Oh for fuck's sake "Unfortunate Implications" is capitalized like a fucking trope link. It's a fucking trope link isn't it. If this were tvtropes and I hovered my mouse over "Unfortunate Implications" it would link me to the nerdiest fucking catalog of dick jokes,

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wouldn't it? Even with 1500 out of 65927 HP, she was bound to win. Man, this is some riveting shit. I think. I mean that's like less than 1% of her HP points and that's so dangerously low. I feel pretty awful about my writing a lot, but then I can just look at this and feel so much better. I mean holy shit a monkey could write better than this. At least it wouldn't talk 'bout the HPs and [Trope Links].

Vincent Van Goatse

Kookaburra Anime Fighting Club or whatever it's called: enflammed morning star Holy shit I hate this author. WORDS MEAN THINGS YOU IMBECILE, AND ENFLAMMED IS NOT ONLY NOT A REAL WORD, BUT WOULDN'T MEAN WHAT YOU'RE USING IT FOR EVEN IF IT DID.

On his return to Candlestick Alexander Smithius ordered the Buccaneers to be brought forth and crucified; the punishment he had often threatened them with whilst he was in their hands, and they little dreamt he was in earnest.

The next day, Kogawa was late for the play half of the lunch period. She noticed a classmate, whose eyes were pretty wet. "You feel down. What happened to you, Kinji?" Kogawa asked, her glasses-covered eyes staring straight at tanned Kinji. "You do know that Gingin's not my best friend anymore, right?" Kinji said. "Oh my god, what happened to you two?" Kogawa asked, intuitive about how best friends such as them can drift apart after a long time. "Ginrou's parents got divorced, because there was actually a third wheel between them. She's actually his dad's mistress, which his Mom didn't know anything about." Kinji drabbled on. "Did he tell you anything else?" Kogawa asked, being pretty attentive. "Surely memories of a divorce encourage you to help the guy, not drift away from him!" Kinji started, "Lemme explain. I was in a PvP fight a few nights ago after I got into a coma." Vividly, he started to recall what happened during the last part of the fight. "My screenname was Flamethrower, while his was Aerial Ace. He told me a story about someone searching for the one true love he wants, but the one true love does not love him back. And the moral of the story is, true love is non-existent!" "And why did I say that?" Ginrou asked. "Oh yeah, you're too stubborn to be jaded from ideals, aren't you!" Kinji tried not to mind him, because if he talked to Ginrou, would the waters work. "Ginrou," Kogawa said, "don't go around converting people to realist thinking like some smart-ass!" Kogawa was against cursing and foul language, but she knew smart-ass was the perfect choice. "Ohh," scoffed Ginrou, "I thought you'd say

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elitist!" But if anything, Kogawa thought that Ginrou would try to keep snarking. "Well," Kogawa said, "I still have something to say. "Thanks to you guys, and your whole meaning of love... a conflict of bias and beliefs!" "Hey bro I put you in a coma but I can still go to the same school as you, right?" Calling it now, Ginrao fancies Kogawa.

This is all shit, if you can't write English properly don't write a book, if you don't know shit about Japan don't write an anime book. TVTropes is truly the hugbox for the ignorant, people probably read this thinking "this is cool". It's shit Calaveron I might have been a bit hasty in calling MCAC teflon for the eyes. Namtab, you are superhuman because there is literally no way for me to read this. From the horrible grammar, sentence structure, horrible names, pretentious pseudophilosophy and anime dialogue and writing conventions, this is an unreadable mire of pure, unadultered garbage.
The Happiest Refurb

Dauntasa I'll second this. How do you read all this shit? Good God, I try and read it for about a minute and it's the literary equivalent of swimming through molasses.

Level Slide

My eyes fell off trying to read the actual story, so I just stuck to reading the ensuing commentary.

It'll work out somehow.

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Wrist Watch

What?

Every time I see there's a KIKEN post, I flinch. I enjoyed reading MCAC with Namtab's commentary but I literally cannot read KIKEN. I had thought "my eyes keep sliding off the page" was a figure of speech but I kid you not, my eyes are drawn to Namtab's commentary like it's magnetic. Unless I make a conscious effort to read word by word and try to process it I just skim for anything that looks important, but my brain gets caught in some kind of feedback loop because I know Namtab's saying something about this block of text because there's something in it but I just bring myself to read it. And when I do finally force myself to do it it's all garbage. Fuck this story, fuck Tv Tropes, fuck that hugbox they call a forum for allowing something of this magnitude of garbage to come out of it. This right here is the best example of why the "don't be a dick" rule doesn't work, especially in a writing subforum. It reminds me of this incident from an "artist" bred from the other hugbox we all know and love as deviantart (http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=62767&highlight= snapesnogger/) . Fast Eddie, this is what your site is creating.

Szurumbur

Regarding the "skills are based on the name" in KIKEN, PSO did something similar, namely basing characters' loot drop tables on names (letters and such were given numerical values, those were summed and later resulted in a character belonging to a particular group), so I guess it is possible to code that, provided that "diferrent skills" means "different skill sets". This is one of the few aspects of the story that I can relate to, the rest I just glaze over, I cannot imagine perusing this mess and trying to make sense of it.

Nope, each character seems to be based on their screenname We've seen 4 battlers so far: Natural Gift - Pale blue qipao and black thigh high socks. Uses fans but is absolutely obsessed with her legs, in particular her "Zettai Ryouiki" which you wouldn't even be able to see because I'm pretty sure a qipao extends to below the thighs. The Punishment - Black Trenchcoat, uses a morningstar which could catch fire. Arial Ace - Can fly, can use air as a weapon, also has a fuckton of throwing knives. And a katana. Flamethrower - Pretty much based around fire. Has a fire shield thing that melts attacks. Can fire flames out of his arms. Can also summon drills for some reason. Flaming drills. Flaming diamond drills. Let's not pretend that anything like PSO is going on here. This game is somehow able to read your screenname and assign you an appearance, weapons, and powers based on your screenname. As we saw with Flamethrower this is completely unbalanced at times.

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Not The Wendigo

Didn't it say in the first chapter that people have killed for 5000 yen items? And more recently that the game costs 10,000 yen per week?

Correct, the game costs lose to $500 per month. It makes people hikikomoris, who by definition would have no job. Then again, EPIC seems to be using the troper definition of hikikomori (i.e. nerdy shut in as opposed to someone with a severe psycological disorder). Cyrai Why wouldn't they just make it free? They need as many people to play the game so they can destroy the world with their rage. You're already cutting down your victim pool by killing some of the people who log in; why keep more people out by charging for the game at all? Do they need to make their quarterly targets before they destroy civilization?

Perhaps the Mayans are also shareholders. Truly this is an insidious apocalypse. Or far more likely EPIC either has no concept of the value of yen or his parents buy everything and he doesn't realise that $500 a month is actually expensive. Not The Wendigo I still can't get over the whole "people will play for months and then cheerfully murder another person for what's essentially a three-day pass." Yes, that is what bothers me most about KIKEN.

A Fancy 400 lbs

Everything else is super stupid, but potentially fixable in the hands of a good writer. That's just not understanding ratios. That's like 2nd or 3rd grade shit.
I can feel the minty fresh toxins... coursing through my veins...changing me!

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Is this taken Maybe it's to underscore the moral degeneration of the grim, dark future of ...2012? Yeah, probably not.
thats so fucking cool

ThatPazuzu

Maybe it's supposed to be like a druggie would stab somebody for their wallet or something. I mean this game is supposed to be super addictive and... Wait.

THE TIGER IN SPACE

Why am I defending this? I need help.

Josef bugman

So they basically stole the idea from Infinite Jest? Except made it stupid.

Slime I'd say it's not really like stabbing someone for drugs. If you're playing the game, you already have drugs. These people are stabbing people for fancy game items. It's more like stabbing someone for their fancy crack pipe so you can smoke your crack better.
I will explode in your face.

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WeaponGradeSa dness The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Post Your Favorite (or Request) > TVTropes The Third: So they basically stole the idea from [blank]? Except made it stupid. Every troper work ever, summed up into one. Except MCAC which was original. Still stupid, but original.
You wanna go? You wanna win a war? Like PLO I don't surrendo

I had more fun with MCAC than I'm having with KIKEN, mostly due to the fact that most of the time I'm just summarisising a block of barely comprehensible text into actual English. On top of that the plot for this is just stupid. MCAC was trying, albeit in the most ham-handed way possible, to make a point, even if the point was childishly retarded. This is just stupid anime bullshit with a stupid rant about bullshit at the top of every chapter. This is much worse than MCAC.

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Chapter Seven: No One Ever Gets Us Anyway

I know how to cheer everyone up! Are people mocked because they are? Usually, yes. The people who mock other people do not know much about who they're attacking. They ostracize, they insult, and it's all due to a belief in stereotypes and their known world. Nowadays, it's as if people are too lazy to get to know someone, and are too lazy to hang out with other people. Their minds are narrowed, and before they know it, they'll realize they're too stubborn to be with you. And as soon as they realize they've been narrow-minded and closed from other people but themselves they'll hate it! And of course, they'll stop mocking you. Sooner or later, they'll beg for forgiveness for insulting what you were mocked for. KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANASHI "And THAT's why people shouldn't insult my incest fanfics" Chapter 7: No One Ever Gets Us Anyway "I mean, what the hell!" A woman strolled down Narita Airport, wearing a scarf, aviator shades, pink and white t-shirt and jeans. "What's wrong with bisexuality?" She believed in all types of love, such as same-sex and hetero. Her name was Emiri Fukugami, who came back from New York after graduating from Keio Daigaku, taking up NYU for masters. But there was another reason why she came back to Japan after years of getting a degree. "I mean come on, everyone's born that way!" She re-called various students getting crushes from both genders back in New York. "Okay, okay." She spoke in perfect English, well, English that was very good for Japanese people. "Oh, and by the way, I may come back thrice a year, but not this one. Of course I'll bring dango, I know how much you love dango! Okay. Don't forget to suit up! Bye!" Her name was Emiri Fukugami, who was reminded to come back to Japan due to a certain childhood friend of hers participating in something that was so controversial, it caused a seismic eruption in the world's pop culture. That controversy was actually why Emiri came back to Kanagawa. You probably know what that controversy is, right? SHE BELIEVES IN ALL KINDS OF LOVE! I know it's been mentioned before, but these "Japanese" names are terrible. The author seems to have taken the name "Emily" and made it japanese in the most offensive way possible. metempsychotic Actually, Emiri is legit; there's a few Japanese actresses with that name. But there's no excuse for the constant usage of Tropes. Do they really think people talk like this? Do they honestly think people care about that shit? The sad part is, they do. It's like to them, nerds exist in

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this little bubble where everything nerdy exists and is known about, but the truth is, not everyone cares about TVTropes. But they just can't see it any other way.

NobbytheSheep If you barely interact with people or read non-genre fiction - hell, if you don't read AT ALL - it's not surprising that you won't be able to write realistic conversations.

"PvP Area Change!" Someone threw a card onto the PvP Area's floor. The card changed it into a busy airport, exactly like the one where Emiri was just hours before this occured. "Well, I know you don't need to say that, but it adds a little more buildup, right?" FWOOSHHAH! Aria's pigtails swept across the room when flame-engulfed meteors burst through the windows of Narita, her black and red sailor fuku also moved with the wind. "And how the hell did the Ancient Power ever gain power over flying rocks?" Asked a certain player character called the Whirlwind. "Ohh, right. Due to screennames and stuff." But behind the Whirlwind, the long, light-haired naginata-bearing miko, was a woman with short chestnut hair, in contrast to Aria's long pigtails. "Well, I may as well have to adapt to iaido then." The Whirlwind said. "Kurumi, help me out! I'm not that mentally present!" It was Juuri, serving as Kurumi's medium. Kurumi's spirit assisted her with staying in one spot and slashing the air, due to being trained in iaido after watching various men of importance learn it. "Sure! I took to this like a natural once. I'll just pretend that mouse-thing is a staff." Juuri started clicking. You could only see blurs in place of Juuri's hand! In one corner, a girl named "Aria" whose screename is Ancient Power, thus giving her power over rocks. In the other corner, the Miko from the past who is currently posessing a Hubspace beta tester. A naginata is essentially a cross between a spear and a sword. But that's not funny. What is funny is the author breaking our immersion in the shitty anime battle by reminding us that it's just an internet game, so all that's actually happening is that the beta tester's clicking insanely fast. Basically this. "Wait, I thought only men could learn iaido!" Aria said, knowing a lot about the culture of the Meiji Era. "And that's not even a sword!" Juuri, under Kurumi's influence AND as the Whirlwind typed in, "Well, I DID pretend my naginata was a sword. And mind you, it also works with a staff!" The naginata kept spinning as Juuri clicked, Kurumi swiftly moving the mouse under Juuri's tutelage. "Wow, the Heisei Era surely is a lot more fun than it seems!" Said Kurumi, albeit knowing about her prediction of the Earth, which, ironically didn't even involve a hint of prediction. "Well, what brought you here to this time in the first place?" Asked Aria. Her, not knowing about the great mystery of Tsurumi Shrine's predictions. "Well, ever heard of the Eejyanaika movement of the Meiji Era?" Kurumi asked. "People were too stubborn to

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stop dancing and being happy. I had a bad feeling that this would cause such a decline in the workforce, a lack of income and unemployment! I tried to tell them that, but they just ignored me! And because people didn't want to change any of their habits, it got carried over to the future!" But that was her account. "So you predicted without actually predicting, huh?" Aria asked. "That's actually pretty accurate. But there would've been people who would've believed you." Kurumi was pretty doubtful. The Eejyanaika movement was so popular, all because of dancing for more amulets to fall down from some certain god! "Definitely a no! No one ever cared about anything bad during the Eejyanaika movement." Kurumi said. "Dances like these drove people away from daily life, and the non-dancers hated it!" Kurumi was right. You could've gotten arrested for participating. "I'll have you know that you just became a hypocrite!" Aria said. "You said the nondancers hated it! You tried to prove the people in your time wrong, but you were not alone!" More meteors started to come out of windows. "You could've realized that, but you were too stubborn!" But Kurumi typed, "Well why did I end up like this! I told them that if they did this, there would be an economic slump going on if this encompasses the whole of Japan! And yet they killed me!" Meteors aimed for Kurumi, and it seemed as if they were unavoidable. But they turned into pebbles. "And who said wakizashi couldn't do iaido? Women at that?" Kurumi, this time, used two blades instead of one. "Well, you're pretty good yourself!" Aria complimented her skills. They were impossible in Japan at the time. "But you really, must see this." The meteorites eventually came up again, glowing and burning hotter than ever. "And who said defeat means friendship?" WOOSH! The shards came for Kurumi like sugars to coffee. PAK! PAK! PAK! Each one, even when small, bruised her pretty badly. "Oh, right. Nanoha did." Aria finished, and won this one battle. "At least you tried to make them realize what could've happened if they didn't stop. I've suffered from it too." So she came to the future to stop hubspace thanks to some dancing movement I've never heard of? Also more tropes and anime references. It's a good think she's possessing a beta-tester or that defeat would have made her a hikikomori, willing to kill for literally tens of pounds. "And that's what got me into Hubspace again." Juuri, when playing Hubspace under Kurumi's influence, felt the rush and surges she got back from frequent gaming. "I missed the rush of PvPs after years of trying to escape the controversy until now. Now that I was interviewed, I was actually able to let myself out. And the Conflict really, I'm trying to end it. That's pretty much why I myself, not Kurumi, became a Heron." Juuri became a Heron sometime after the fight, under the name, Light Screen. "And if you want to know why I chose it, it's because I'm pretty much attracted to light-based techniques." She drank her hot cocoa. "Well," That friend of hers was Emiri, who was Juuri's sorority sister. "I actually have a nick in Hubspace myself." "Well, what is it!" Juuri was ecstatic. "We can join the Conflict! But not actually fight." "Well, it could be the first thing we did in our adulthood." Juuri and Emiri, both being twenty-four, were the oldest members of the Conflict and decided to have a reunion together. "Besides, thanks to Hubspace being brought up in the media, I wanna assist whoever I can. But we'll have to be seperate. Because if you're a Heron, I'm a Kite named Reflect!"

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"Maybe we can be competitive like last time!" Juuri said, remembering the times when she was younger. "That's one thing I miss about being a kid." Emiri was thinking of a motive for joining. "What? At least we're not in long-distance unlike last time!" Juuri remembered when Emiri was still in New York, when many people said that a longdistance relationship is the wrong distance. "Well, this could be a good way for us too not too move too fast, right?" Emiri said, knowing what Juuri will say. "In the relationship? But we know lots about each other." "There's always an 'if', right?" Blah blah blah the beta tester likes hubspace now and has her own, seperate account. This means that she's paying $1,000 a month for hubspace. Also some moderate flirting. "Long distance is the wrong distance" is suprisingly profound, though. "Well, okay." A boy was on the phone. "But its not much different from a TARDIS!" Dylan described his sliding tube, which could change from a house, to temporal and dimensional travel at will, with the use of a button and a pocket dimension. "And I pretty much know my whereabouts, so..." But the phone rang before Dylan could log-on to Hubspace and battle with Mila. "I just hope she has a PvP Jungle Card." Dylan never knew how to change the PvP Area in Hubspace. "And to think I had a hard time, at least I'm getting some assistance here from people I know!" But his phone went on speaker mode. "Dude, Amaki here!" It was Amaki, calling over to his line. "Ugh, how did he get to me?" Amaki, being a talented hacker, was able to trace Dylan's recent call of what implied a PvP battle. "I was gonna battle Mila for fun tonight! And to think I had to register as a Kite for this!" He told Amaki, but the latter was to say something that dealt with Dylan's whereabouts. "I know your secret-" he said, "You're a slider, aren't you?" Dylan replied before Amaki could say something. "How the hell did you know that?" Amaki asked, "Oh, right. But guess which sliding group I know." "Wait, so you're part of the UN Temporal and Dimensional Defense Initiative yourself?" Dylan asked, since Amaki and him were sliders, people who slid from dimension to dimension. "Don't tell me you're..." His blue-gray eyes glistened as if he was about to cry. "You're Iggy, aren't you? Iggy Mason from the Northeast American Division? I thought you were a red-head!" He was right. Amaki looked a lot like Dylan's so-called Iggy. "People still dyed their hair in the 22nd Century." Amaki said, "I just pretended I was dead, so you could focus on your mission more." WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON NOW THERE'S THREE TIME TRAVELLERS. Everytime this author needs a new character he just seems to have some asshole come to the past with a time machine. If hubspace ended the world then how the fuck do they have time machines a century later? This is bollocks. "But Iggy!" Dylan said. "You said you'll be with me!" "Yes, I did!" Amaki said, "And I kept my promise." And that's when Dylan remembered everything. Everytime the Hollows would pass by, Amaki always threw him a piece of candy. "You still remember that I love caramel, huh?" Dylan remembered sugars melted in his mouth, creating a spark in his brain that made him think that people could do anything. "According to Tv Tropes," Amaki said, "that'd be your trademark favorite food. Caramels." "Wow, always aware of the culture of today, aren't you?" Said Dylan. TVTropes: The culture of the 21st century

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"Speaking of awareness," Amaki said, "I know where we came from." Dylan knew it too, worried about whether or not this could affect the Conflict. "We were cloned, right?" Dylan said. "We were cloned from the Dogs, right?" "How did you know that?" Amaki asked. "Did you get hold of-" Knowing about documents that discussed their maternal and paternal DNA, Dylan had but to interrupt. "They expected us to know everything about Hubspace," Dylan explained, "that's why we were sliders in the first place! And yes, Iggy, I looked at those documents!" "Well hey, at least we're not like Soma or Hallelujah!" Amaki said. "We're actually fine products of artificial insemination, cloning and man-made wombs." Dylan remembered the failing health of the 22nd Century, the many abortions, sexually-transmitted diseases and new flu subtypes prevailing over the Hubspace-obsessed world. "Well, just when you thought that this century was weird, wait 'till you see ours!" "Well, I'll tell you who we're cloned from much later." Dylan said. "I pretty much know who they are. Well, see you." Dylan hung up, and melted on the couch. I'm banging my head against my desk so hard right now. How the fuck do they have hubspace in the 22nd century when it crashes in 2012. If everyone is a hikikomori then why is there so much sex? WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD CLONE THE remind ourselves that their membership consists of: -Amnesiac who cured his amnesia by taking notes -Guy who falls in love with a girl he just met -4th grade genius. I guess one of those might be worth cloning? CRYSTAL DAWGS . Let's

"Ahh, Dy-kun, always explaining, even when he can't analyze." Mila said. "Well, I do have a PvP Jungle Card." Mila said, logging-in to her Hubspace account. "Ohh! There's the PvP invitation!" The battle occured in 20 minutes, so Mila made sure not to be late. "At least I've adapted to the conditions here, so yeah, I guess I'm a crazy prepared Hubspace-playing troper. Unlike other lifeless people over there..." When she got to the PvP area, it was still blank, yet the spectator area was booming all thanks to the hikikomori players who have nothing better to do than waste their savings on something that gets them nowhere. "Ey!" Dylan arrived, wearing a black polo that said, Don't Bite Me, a silver jacket tied around his waist and a pair of raw, yet blue jeans. "Tsugumu said he was gonna watch us tonight." Mila, wearing a Sweet Steampunk Lolita look with knickerbockers, a frilled, short-sleeved pink dress cut off at the knee, and pastel calve-high boots. "Really? Tsuukun's gonna watch?" Mila said. "I never knew he had a Hubspacing account!" But then an avatar, whose screen-name was Oresama arrived. "Ohh, wait," Mila knew who he was, "That guy IS Tsugumu." Going back to earlier, the beta tester is the oldest hubspacer at 24. Yet all these players have sufficient savings to pay $500 a month for hubspace. I know I'm being dull by circling this point again and again but I just can't get over all this bollocks. Also creepy incest twin is back. "Ossu!" Tsugumu said. "I dunno which one to pick, you guys are both in 7-B!" Tsugumu, Mila and Dylan were all in the same class, under Harako-sensei's tutelage. "All three of

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us are both in 7-B, don't be biased." Dylan pulled out a set of shuriken. "Just watch! This IS for fun, after all." Mila threw her PvP Jungle Card on the floor, and what came out was an abundance of green, butterflies as well as a nearby waterfall. "Ahh, I miss nature." Dylan said. "Back in our dimension, the world was already bleak to begin with!" As you MAY know, Dylan is a slider. "So that's why you joined Hubspace?" Mila asked, pulling out some rocks with her bare hands. Her name was Calm Mind, and her screen-name gave her ESP-based powers. "Yup." Dylan moved fast to avoid Mila's psychic-powered pebbles. "Actually, I was born into a team of sliders who were cloned from the Conflict's participators from starting Hubspace. Kanagawa was the root of the problem." Mila asked, "So everything went downhill due to all this?" CRRCK! The mud from a nearby river started sliding uphill, closer and closer to Dylan. "Dammit." Dylan said, wary of dirt. "You seem energetic!" Someone said. "Hey, Oresama, how much sugar do you take in?" It was Emiri, under the name Reflect. Her black and blue dress with silver bangles reflected her being a Kite. "Oh, hi!" Tsugumu typed in. "A lot of sugar." "I heard you're friends with these two." Emiri typed in, knowing she was to confess something. "Ever had a crush?" "Never had a crush on anyone." Tsugumu said. "You have one?" Emiri said, "As of now, I'm thinking of proposing to her, but she's a Heron! We're supposed to be seperate from each other." "I just don't want to move too fast in our relationship," Emiri was worried, "even though we've known each other for what seems like infinity." Tsugumu knew all about this, due to his watching of a sitcom centered around someone who jumped to getting left at the altar after little dating. "Moving too fast in a long relationship, can well," Tsugumu explained, "even put you at risk of forgetting who you are in that relationship, right? But if you move too fast in a short relationship, however, you may not know the person you want to be with as much as you think you do." But Emiri logged out before Tsugumu said anything, albeit knowing what he might've said. And creepy incest twin gives dating advice based on animes. Also if you haven't guessed who emiri fancies then you're dumber than a troper (it's beta test girl). Meanwhile more anime battling is happening. Time traveller #1 follows the first law of time travelling to the letter by telling everyone in the past what will happen in the future, thus paving the way for as many potential paradoxes as possible. Scratch-O Re: KIKEN: I'm not going to read all of that dreck, so someone help me out here. Do they ever address the fact that their names and powers are ripped off from Pokmon moves? (For reference, AncientPower is a Rock-type move that deals damage, and Calm Mind raises your Special stats.)
My goodness!

Snoop Radley

No, see, that's what they call a Genius Bonus

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GeniusBonus!

Hail to the baby king.

Cream_Filling

See, did kids always do this or is it a symptom of the levels of pointless complexity and detail that you seem to see in today's children's entertainment?
would a bad man swim with dolphins? never

WAMPA_STOMPA

I've been reading this thread for a while, and I just can't deal with KIKEN. I literally can't tell the characters apart. I don't know who's in the CRYSTAL DAGS, who's a Sleepy Hollow, who's a time traveler or a schoolkid or related to each other or dating or friends or whatever. I just read each chapter like it's a selfcontained short story now because I have no idea what's going on. The combination of mangled names and honest to god unreadable sentences means that this is like reading Finnegans Wake except all the characters were named by Dostoyevski, and there's no actual merit. Maybe we should move over to that catwoman anti-theif thing, because KIKEN doesn't even leave room for laughs. It's just incomprehensible.

Clocks
Amor Vincit Omnia

Similarly, I read every MCAC post but after the first two KIKEN posts I literally stopped reading them and skip over them. It just takes too much effort to try to parse what he wrote. Someone else mentioned about "eyes sliding off the page" and that's exactly the feeling, except I've given up. It's just so awful.

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WeaponGradeSadness

You wanna go? You wanna win a war? Like PLO I don't surrendo

I feel the same way. I loved reading MCAC, it was a trainwreck of epic proportions and that made it hilarious, but KIKEN's just impossible to read. I had to literally force myself to read it, it was a conscious effort to parse all those awful awful sentences. Now I just read Namtab's commentary and might read a few lines if Namtab comments on something particularly dreadful. Also, I skim for Pokemon names now. I noticed Aerial Ace at first but brushed it off as coincidence, but "Hidden Power?" Seriously? Anyway, I'm seconding reading the Catwoman knock-off, at least that one seems entertainingly bad, what with the Team Rocket intro poem and all.

I really don't recommend reading KIKEN. I really wish I weren't reading KIKEN. "Hey, Mila!" WOOSH! Dylan threw three of his shuriken. "Like that?" The shuriken started to home in on Mila. "Well that's adorable. But this is nice too!" She said, creating a forcefield of rock. "Using shuriken threw and through. But, you don't suppose that the Conflict is fake?" FWOOM! The rocks were flying, hovering above Dylan, but luckily, he was able to miss. "No one knows! But it doesn't seem genuine. I haven't seen Shouhei and Hichou-senpai fight yet." Dylan himself read O N E M U R I, which had a ton of information regarding Hubspace and the Conflict. It was extensive for a blog. "You did Math yet?" Strangely, Dylan was able to integrate ordinary conversation into fights like this. "Ohh," Mila scoffed at her homework, "It was so hard that I gave up after number 2! Like this!" FWAM! Mila grabbed a tree and tried to slam Dylan with it. "Uwaa!" WOOSH! Dylan ended up near a waterfall, heavily bruised, but strangely able to move. "Okay, what the hell was that?" He asked. "I know this is the Conflict and all, but I wanna be stable enough to thank you for getting a great fight from me, and vice versa!" "Well, even though we're in the Conflict," Mila said, "The trope's subverted." Dylan knew how this PvP battle is really played out. "While some battles are serious, this is the only one for fun." Dylan noticed, and sprinkled shuriken all over Mila's parasol. "We don't seem to see Shouhei or Hichou-sempai!" That was just one hint of a fake Conflict. "There's also that one thing that O N E M U R I says about the leaders meeting each other." Mila said. "Rumor has it Hichou and Shouhei-senpai ARE planning the Conflict's battles and outcomes." "But with only two hints that we know of, who'll ever believe us? Besides... No one ever gets us anyway!" So this whole conflict means nothing this story means nothing. also why would you have friendly PvP battles if losing turns you into a hikikomori. Why would a person fromt he future register if registering turns you into a hikikomori. This is the shittiest hypnotism. Fuck this.

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Chapter Eight: STOP STOP STOP

You guys want to get out of KIKEN? You shouldn't have voted for KIKEN. This last chapter (of the first book) is really fucking long and full of exposition.

If so, then why do people keep looking at the surface? People keep looking at the surface as its the first thing we see, and it is the easiest to spot. We might be too stubborn to do anything that we deem to difficult, like finding out more about the person, thing or place that you only had a first impressions of. Usually, we have to uncover the surface to see what we really need or want to get to. Lasting as they are, first impressions may prevent you from inquiring, if not asking for more information something you just saw. And sometimes, you may end up regretting not being able to inquire, or not even asking at all. The regret can come from what you tried to ask nagging you and haunting you for so long. KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWARUHANSHI We only look at the surface of the horrible tropers and what they post on the internet. Perhaps it is we who are the real monsters.

Chapter 8: More More More "I just hope this doesn't really injure you!" Dylan said, throwing more shuriken at Mila. "Her head... is the source of her power! Mental capacity, prepare to be de-capacitated!" KWOOK! As soon as Dylan's shuriken drew red lines across the sides of Mila's forhead, the jungle went blank again, and there was no more lush flora or a waterfall. "How the hell did you just-" Mila said. "Anyway, since I got rid of our environment and your psychic powers, I guess you'll give this battle up to me." Mila forfeited, but Dylan, a good winner, respected her part of the battle. "Still, good game!" Dylan said. "You were creative in terms of technique." Mila, even when feeling bad about her loss, felt uplifted. "Thanks! I was only in Hubspace for say, three months? Still, about the Conflict," Dylan knew what she was going to say. "I know what you're thinking," he said. "You want me to help you out?" Mila wanted to know why he knew what she thought of. "I actually want to. My future's been ruined by Hubspace to begin with." Dylan remembered that he was to go to Kanagawa to attack the root of the problem, which was a controversial game. Of course, it was also due to a certain fight that was occuring right now, but more on that later. So hubspace is not only broken due to the fact that different screennames give different powers, but there are also certain powers that stop other people using any of their powers. This is dumb.

It was Saturday, and an opprtunity for people involved in the Conflict to get together.

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"Good work, Amagami!" It was Shouhei, coming over to Hichou's house. "Is this plan really going to work?" Hichou was holding some papers on what involved quelling the Conflict, even though they were the ones who created it. "Of course!" Hichou said. "Dylan told me everything. Amaki-kouhai also explained how we can ask Kakeru-senpai and company to join forces with us." He knew of something that would change the Conflict forever. "Wait! So are they really..." Shouhei asked. "Yes!" Hichou said. "I also made sure that this plan will not fail, 100% flawless." "But still, how can Amaki and Dylan be clones of-" Shouhei was interrupted. "No, no. Don't give it away. They just told me, with no explanation." Hichou said. "We'll just have to wait for the plan to unfold. But in the meantime, let's hold a battle later tonight, okay?" Shouhei knew why Hichou was to do this. "This MUST throw people off our trail, right?" Shouhei knew of Dylan and Mila questioning the Conflict's existence. "I remembered watching a PvP battle a few nights ago involving two of our kouhai." He was a spectator who remembered the whole conversation. "Well, at least we now know what to do!" Hichou said. "All we need to do, is to set-up a battle which I think the skeptics will intervene!" Shouhei also expanded, "The skeptics will explain everything, right? And after all that, they'll be that assertive we HAVE to give in!" But no one knew what they would give into, except for the leaders of the Conflict themselves. "Besides," Hichou said, "they probably know about our plan now, right?" And that's when Hichou and Shouhei, under the names, Sacred Fire and Aeroblast, were to battle a week later. I have no idea who these people are, I think they're some of the Hollows. Either way the point is that they're going to set up a battle to draw the "sceptics" out, at which point the sceptics'll explain everything about the MMO.

The same day, everyone was at the Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse. "Guys, there's something to tell you!" Amaki said, while the Dogs were sharing existing facts about Hubspace. "Kakeru, Derani, Kogawa, we are related to you." Dylan said. "Genetically." All three of the Dogs seeme in a state of Mind Screw. "How and why the hell did they clone us!" Kogawa, highly HIGHLY attracted to info of any kind, asked. "Spit. It. Out. NOW." Dylan seemed exasperated. Well, Kogawa was scary to some extent! "Geez, you didn't have to intimidate!" He said. "Well, knowing you guys were the Dogs, the higher-ups in the UN was a reason." "They expected us to know about Hubspace, therefore being cloned from your relatives." This is so fucking stupid. It's about to get even stupider.

"How did I know about Hubspace?" Derani asked, "After all, intelligence CAN'T be hereditary." Of course, Dylan had to tattle. He well, knew things. "It was your outlook on the world, dude, it was how cynical you were." Dylan remembered Derani's textbooks that attacked the world written 50 years before his and Amaki's time. "Unlike me, who thought humans rocked," Amaki alluded to who his elder cousin was, "as for you two... you absolutely hate the world!" There was a distinction between Amaki and Dylan's outlook on the world, and boy was it distinct! "By the way," Amaki tried to imply who he was related to. "Take a look at our faces and see who we resemble." But dead silence only came from the Dogs. Of course, the kids of the future knew stuff. "Derani, Kogawa, I am pleased to inform you that I am your half-

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sibling!" Dylan had to be abrupt. "Well, your dad and mom did it and out came me, if you know what I mean. There were documents." Of course, Derani HAD to know how Dylan is well, part-Derani. "Wait, so how in hell are you part-me and Kogawa?" Dylan explained, "Oh, I'm deadpan. Oh, I'm veeery deadpan." Let me explain: -They needed people who knew about hubspace, so they cloned the DAWGS -Except they didn't clone them CRYSTAL DAWGS because Dylan's just said that he's the son of one of Dylan's (the cynic) parents and one of Kogawa's (child genius) parents. That's not a clone. -Why did they clone Dylan? Because he's cynical, so very cynical. He'll even go on to write cynical textbooks in the future (even though the world ends this year). -Amaki, the other time traveller, is probably a clone of Kakeru. Why anyone would clone him is beyond me. And I still don't get why you'd want to clone these three assholes beyond these bullshit reasons. CRYSTAL

"Wait, so Amaki," Kakeru just had to point it out, "You ARE me, right?" "Dude, why d'ya gotta take the answers outta me?" Amaki said, but he was right! Dylan, being overly cynical for a kids his age, and Amaki, who believes in the change of humans, were clones of Derani, Kogawa, and Kakeru, respectively. "If anything, why did we of all people have to be cloned?" But of course, there had to be a background behind the cloning, Kakeru thought. "Didn't they tell you?" Derani thought that Kakeru lapsed into amnesia for a while. "Dude, we all know about Hubspace, right?" "It just had to be said again," Kogawa said, "But it affected your future, right Dylan?" She hit the nail, Dylan thought! Everything just went down to Hubspace. "Think about it! Dwindling economy, declining health, downfall of the workforce, and the only thing kept is the government!" Dylan said. "Albeit in small amounts, at that!" Finished Amaki, since the government was somehow, un-affected! Derani remembered something. Dwindling economy, declining health, downfall of labor, someone must have predicted what would happen! "...Kurumi Souchou? Is that it?" "Who the hell is Kurumi?" Amaki asked. "Souchou sounds archaic, too!" Derani facepalmed. Don't people ever do their research? "She was someone who appeared to me in a daydream during lunch a few weeks back." Derani said. "Kakeru, Kurumi drew me to the university campus. She knew I was worried about you." But still stumped, Kakeru had to ask. "She a ghost?" He even believed in them. "If so, then should we-" "Don't say existence confirmation!" Derani interrupted. "What's important, this? Or our already dying world?" Of course, Kurumi knew about the latter. "If anything," A voice said, "Even though we can't reform the world, we can still change ourselves as a whole." Derani knew it. The mere mention of her just drew her here. "What the hell're you doing here, Rumi?" Blank stares approached the Dog, who knew that people wouldn't really believe him. "Well, Terasuma-kun, I possessed someone." Kurumi began. "It was for the Conflict. And if you have evidence, you have to prove something. The more evidence, the more sturdy your statement!" Of course we knew what the statement was, but no one believed her.

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Yup, it's time travelling shrine maiden who's drawn everyone together. The power of whatever dance movement nearly destroyed her world caused her to predict the unstoppable power of the MMO. Therefore she used her powers to do this. Yeah

"You know, Terasuma-kun, thanks to all this, I was right! People only care about what makes them happy." "Guys, as soon as five later tonight, meet me over Y!M, alright?" Derani had a plan. One that well, could intervene another. "I have a feeling Shouhei and Hichou are planning something." Everyone was in doubt. What would their juniors do in such a thing like this? They didn't seem to be involved. But Hichou and Shouhei were really reclusive ever since the release of Hubspace. That could be a piece of evidence. "I will expect your research on Kurumi," Derani said, "And why do I sound like a leader?" It was unusual for Derani to be that assertive. "Because I have to!" That night, Kogawa, Derani, Amaki, Dylan, Mila and Kakeru had a conference chat. "Sso the Conflict was planned the whole time?" Asked Mila, wondering what the fuss was about. "And who the hell's Kurumi?" Everyone but Derani knew who she was. "Okay, Milala, we have many, many things to tell you." Dylan, being Mila's closest friend, rephrased everything about what was going on when she wasn't around, in ways that a she could understand. "Me and Amaki? We're cloned. Yeah. And the Conflict was planned." Mila knew it. Since, after so long of keeping to themselves, keeping quiet all the time, Shouhei and Hichou were planning every move! "That's why they never talked!" Mila remembered that Shouhei would clam up and whenever she asked him about leading the Herons. "He'd say 'no comment', and walk away from me a lot faster." Dylan also suffered the same thing. "Even worse with Hichou-sempai!" Dylan being Dylan, wanting to know more, also asked Hichou about the Kites' involvement in the Conflict, but no! "He even changed the subject! Can you believe that?" But of course, that was just a facade. Shouhei and Hichou didn't want anything bad to happen to their plan, nor have anyone worry. Derani is the leader now by the way. Basically the big revelation here is that the conflict was planned. But we found this out chapters and chapters ago.

"That also happened when we tried to interrogate them," Derani typed into the chatroom. "But back on subject, guys. Anyone did any research on Kurumi?" Kogawa typed in all that she could about Kurumi, her predictions of the future, and the Eejyanaika movement. "Apparently, I'm the only one diligent." Kogawa said. "It seems like she only accepts cynics as the better people, and get this! She predicted the future, like that's possible! XD" Derani invited Aria over to the chat a while ago. He knew Kurumi appeared to her, since Aria was very realistic for a 14-year old. "I have a feeling she also appeared to many of the other Herons," Kakeru said. "Many of them are cynics." He believed in the possibility of idealists within the Herons, and cynics within the Kites, like Aria. "Speaking of which, I got a hold of Nanako's Y!M, and Rukao's, as well as the Y!M of the former Hubspace tester." Kakeru invited all three people to their conference chat. "Tell me you invited the rest of the Hollows." He asked Amaki, since he was one of the Dog's close contacts with the Hollows besides Yuuichi. "I

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did," Amaki said, "And I told them everything." Oh man the Dogs are gethering all the cynics. Only people who hate the world can save the world I guess. The Ee ja nai ka movement was a real thing, by the way. Should I feel bad that this author did more research on Japan for this shit than SirPsychoSexy did for MCAC?

"Wait," Yuuichi entered the chatroom, in his trademark red italic font, "You two are cloned by the UN in your time?" Mika also entered the conference, wanting to know more about Dylan and Amaki's past. "They do know that memory isn't genetic, so how did they expect you two to know about Hubspace?" Asked Fujiko. "Lemme explain, Dy-kun," Amaki droned on about the UN teaching them about computers, math, English, and just about everything in a school curriculum. "Well, if anything, it got us used to the environment in Hikariyama." Amaki finished. "Well?" "HAY GUISE~ :3" Entered Juuri, knowing about the Conflict and sharing her computer with Emiri. "I'm sharing the computer, so, the dark pink font is mine, while the baby blue font is my girlfriend's." "So what about Hubspace?" Emiri typed in, "I heard the Conflict was planned." Well, Emiri was close. But the Conflict being planned was just one outcome of what would happen. It wasn't very likely either. "Well whoever is torn apart has to know about this," Kogawa said, "They lost their friendship over something that could've been fake for the longest time." "Ello." Aria joined the conference chat. "Kurumi actually appeared to me once." No one actually knew about their PvP Battle, but they did guess that Kurumi appeared to Aria due to their cynical thinking. "If anything, the prediction wasn't actually real," She began, "But she knew what would happen if the only thing we wanted to do was to keep ourselves happy." And Kurumi was right. More people seem to think about themselves. "The Eejyanaika was proof of this, right?" Emiri asked. "People feared it would cause economic failure and a ruined environment." "I was actually her medium in that battle for a while." Juuri typed. "Somewhat like a secretary." They're just going over the same shit now. They still won't explain why they expected the clones to know about hubspace.

"Area Change!" Said Sacred Fire, changing the PvP Area. "And this is when life really is supposed to get unfair," said the Aeroblast. "Isn't it?" The Sacred Fire changed the PvP Area into what seems to be Yokohama in ruin. Engulfed in flame, destroyed buildings and almost perpetually dark. Both Sacred Fire and Aeroblast wore the same powered armor, which looked mostly as if they took those parts from mecha anime. "Well, no one knows what we're really doing, so we have to make this look as natural as possible." The Sacred Fire said. "It'll be kind of like a sparring match." But in a location like this? An apocalyptic wasteland? "If you say so." The Aeroblast put his right hand out. "Summon. The Brass Kite!" Down landed a familiar spirit, in the form of a kite bird of white, dark purple and cobalt blue. "Wait, Hichou, you have a premium account?" Yup, it was Shouhei and Hichou at it the whole time. "Summon." Shouhei said, as the Sacred Fire. "The Tin Heron!" Their having

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premium accounts marked their capability to have these birds as familiars in the game. The two birds flew at each other as if it was an epic battle, and the boosters of Shouhei and Hichou pushed them towards each other. "WAIT!" Typed in various people. "We know your plan." Yuuichi said. "A fake Conflict? What were you thinking?" Fujiko appeared beside him. "You're just a bunch of attention-seekers," said Mika. "How can you guys not know that we were affiliated with the Dogs? But Shouhei and Hichou still kept firing at each other. "It IS not fake!" Shouhei said. "We're fighting now, okay!" Hichou typed into the chatbox. "This is to see who is the Conflict's victor." But the Hollows did not move. "We will not budge unless you give us our answers, sempaitachi!" Mika said. "We are to get information and get it ASAP!" "Ignore that." She said, "But me and Juuri joined the Conflict to our own devices." At this point, why does anyone still care about this game? The only thing I care about from all this is that premium accounts get bird summons. I wonder how much a month premium accounts cost?

"Swords and elephants, fellow ladies. A fellow Kite brought me here, by the way." Nanako came in. "Nanako-sempai, I know what you're talking about! There are kids here!" Kakeru knew what swords and elephants symbolized. "Oh, damn. Didn't realize that." Nanako followed. "Rukao's coming, by the way." Derani wondered about what Rukao said. It kept him up that night, making him wonder about her connection to Hubspace. "Nanako..." Derani asked, "Are you a cynical person?" Derani heard of Nanako's cynical thinking. "Not really," she said. "I'm a bit idealistic." "In 'the humans are good but many of them are greedy' sense?" Kogawa typed in. "I'm more of a 'we don't need cynics and idealists 'coz humans can change the world' person." Nanako agreed. The responsibility for one's actions can add up to a bigger cause and change the world. "But many humans are aware of what they're doing." She said. "Many know what IS right. And no, that's why Kurumi did not appear to me, cause my research says that every human is 'effing selfish no matter what the hell even happens to them." And she was right about Kurumi. "But you do have a good point." Mila said. "That's why there're idealists and cynics. Humans change the world in different directions." Kogawa knew that her very statement could change the Conflict! "Wait, Mila-sempai, that's it!" Kogawa knew what to do. She could convince Hichou and Shouhei to settle their differences, after realizing that humans can change the world no matter how they change it. "Even if they follow ideals, or reality, humans can still change the world." Kogawa said. "We just do it without knowing, with the use of choices and causes." And then they pause trying to stop the conflict to have a chat about the ideology of cynicism and optimism and explore the fact that it's people that change the world, not ideologies. So essentially a load of bollocks.

It was 6PM, and Hichou and Shouhei were still at it, battling that seemed real for a planned one.

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The two classmates, looked as if the were already bleeding in a bleak world. "Nngh!" Hichou almost suffered a shot wound, thanks to Shouhei's Ember gattling gun. "It looks like you guys will end up in a draw." Mika said. "You two sure any of you guys will stay alive?" It looked like Hichou and Shouhei weren't going to make it out, at least online. Their familiars, Oh-hoiana, a heron of gold and ruby, and Ai-gluirn, a dragon-like kite of silver and sapphire. "Who remains will determine the Conflict's victor!" Hichou said, firing bullets to drive the Hollows away. "Stay back or die!" "So what?" But someone interrupted-multiple people cut the Conflict's so-called final battle. "So what if you keep fighting?" Kogawa said. "Humans can change the world, just in different directions!" Shouhei and Hichou stopped firing. "But what makes you say that?" Hichou asked. "If anything, idealists can't be with cynics." Shouhei said. "They just don't get each other! They keep conflicting!" But Kakeru and Derani stepped out of the crowd, led by the smallest member Kogawa. "So what if they fight?" Derani said. I'm a cynic, and Kakeru's an idealist!" "Sure, we may fight about our beliefs," typed Kakeru, "but we learn to accept them in the end!" So all along the conflict was about idealism fighting cynicism? This is so fucking stupid.

"Well tell me how you accept them, then?" Shouhei said. "Surely whatever conflicts will keep differing!" Strangely, now that Kakeru and Derani became 'brothers', they seem to accept each other a lot more. "Well, since I got used to Kakeru's idealism I saw a few times before," Derani said, "But now that I really know what he means, sure why not? Humans can be good, but many are selfish, and just don't realize their potential." And he was right. Many of us prefer to do whatever we want. And yet, people feel the need to realize that hidden ability of theirs! Why does all of this feel like stuff I'd hear on Gundam?

"But what if people reject the ideas that the other person they know has?" A boy in a suit of silver robotic armor and hair refuted Kakeru and Derani. "We think either one thing is fought over or everyone has accessibility to that thing!" Ginrou and Kinji still fought over the existence of a soulmate, and generally, true love. Ginrou says that it doesn't exist because many people fight over who they claim to be a soulmate. Sometimes, soulmates may even lose their bonds over time, like what happened to his parents that used to be sickeningly sweet sweethearts. But the sound of a drill and the roar of flame came past Ginrou. "Its just a divorce, Ginrou! Stop feeling so jaded about it!" Yeah, Ginrou put his friend in a coma for two months just because his parents divorced.

"Surely everyone must be able to have something to themselves!" Another boy in partlyburned red jacket and jeans came in, with a tan, and black hair. "There's such a thing as accessibility! Everyone should change the world for everyone to have it!" Kinji'd rather

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that everyone have accessibility to everything, to promote equality. But that equality is impossible, and not everyone can attain what Kinji believes can be attained. "Ginrou, these people are changing the world so we can attain these things!" Kinji believed. "But why aren't you convinced as of yet?" "So what if people are still fighting?" Kakeru said, "Those people will just get swept in anyway! People get drafted into or involved with wars no matter what side they're on!" He talked about World War II and how even while all the men left for battle, many of the women decided to help the men by getting involved with the creation of weaponry at that time. "And you have no choice. We all had no choice. Some were even scarred in the process!" Kakeru started to finish. "And if we're together, we will help you. There is a reason why these armies were created." "So go now if you don't want us," Kakeru asked. "or you may just regret lacking support for getting over unwanted memories." None of these speeches actually parse together, but I think the Dogs are absorbing all the reasonable members of the two bird clans with their message of equality.

"Hmm? Already? Juuri, will you come here for a sec?" Asked a blonde-haired, smug, suited-up man. "There seems to be many people in an area who all seem to be affiliated with something," he said, "The Conflict, perhaps?" His name was Takeo Boume, CEO of Yumegorosu after the 2009 assassination of Hikaru Sakugami, the founder of Hubspace. "Nope. But if it is, how do you think you'll be able to stop it?" Said Juuri, who was actually a secretary for Takeo, but treated him like a friend. "And if this happens, how do you think they will retaliate?" Juuri knew what to do. She knew that Takeo treated her like a lover. She was going to quit and deliver a surprise. "You don't know any of them, do you?" Takeo, seeing as he really loved Juuri, felt worried. Any more and he would've taken that bottle of wine and kept it as his own. "Nope, I don't. They're only kids. And I already went through masters." Juuri was surpsisingly honest. And yet he doesn't know a thing about it! "Wait," Takeo ran over to Juuri, holding her by the chin, "Please, think of a way to stop this!" Takeo tried, but he couldn't. "Sorry, Takeo. You have to think of this." Juuri asserted. "I'm only a global moderator! Anyway, I have to see a friend. Goodbye and good night." Takeo didn't know Juuri was already in love with someone herself.

Here's the only time you'll see the final boss in this story. Look how he is. The author even says so himself. Pity his bird is cheating on him, eh? (The suprise is obviously that she was a lesbian all along)

Two lovers approached a castle of red brick, reminiscing about the times when they were separated. "So how was Yokohama without me?" After work, Emiri decided to stay with Juuri for the day. "I bet it was exciting, yet oddly boring though, isn't it? Me being the Daria, you being the Genki Girl...?" Juuri missed her girlfriend after three years of seperation. "It was, alright!" Emiri remembered. "The idea of being with five people who are searching

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for their one true love, while already having one of your own makes you yearn of being with him, or in this case, her!" They walked to the Yokohama Red Brick's nearby park to sit, chat, and shop at the nearby mall. Of course they missed each other. They were in a bit of a relationship at that! This is the start of the final paragraph of book 1. Instead of resolving, say, Kakeru's big speech about idealism. It instead chooses to focus on the relationship between Emiri and Juuri. The moral of this story is that gay love is love too I guess. A fine moral, better than MCAC, but blue balls for anyone who wanted what laughably passes for a plot to resolve. Also noone outside of your stupid hugbox refers to themselves in terms of tropes. Stop doing that.

"Okay, Juuri." Emiri said. "I know the Conflict might be too much, but I asked you to meet me here." "I haven't gotten used to us getting back together. Are we going to-" Juuri was a bit anxious about what they were going to do. "No, no physical espionage. Ever since I got out of college, people have been obsessed with me like a queen bee. They did anything for my respect, and out of sympathy, I respected them." Juuri remembered when Emiri was promiscuous at her graduate school, thinking of her as yellow trash, even for majoring in Computer Science. "Well, now that we're together again, I wanna re-do their every step as a couple, from dating, to possibly even marriage!" Emiri said. "But I don't wanna move too fast. We should still take things a little slower." Juuri's eyes looked as if they were in doubt, all due to the Conflict driving them apart. But she knew about the effects it would have on their relatonship. "I agree!" Juuri said. "But after this, there will be no physical contact until after the Conflict, and you will get down on your knees." She was still afraid of moving too fast, a risky move in relationships. "But the Conflict however," Juuri said, "gave me that rush to get back into Hubspace!" Emiri knew of Juuri's tester past and remembered it as she entered the mall. "Of course, Hubspace might divide us." She said. "You have your work, while I'm trying to apply for law. Tsuchizawa, Umino and Shirakumo are still going through my application." The two started going to the bathroom. "Oh, good! No one's here." Juuri said. "Takeo doesn't know a thing about my relation to the Conflict." Emiri felt much better. "Really now? I just hope that he steps down from Yumegorosu." "Wait, why are you opening the stall and-" Emiri knew that Juuri was to make a move. She held the former's chin closer to hers. "Juuri, we're in a public place!" Juuri put her finger on Emiri, asserting her love for her. "Takeo's in love with me." I can tell. "Which is why we may as well undergo the espionage I've been waiting for! Just in case he finds out..." Then they kissed. They kissed with incoming people hearing noise. A jacket fell on the stall's floor. Were they going to? Of course. And Emiri could feel it. "Juuri, do you know what exactly I want!" She really felt it. "I really, really want... More more more!" And that's the end, nothing is resolved, we get a bit of backstory and then the lesbians have sex.

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So in the end, EPIC managed to make book 1 appeal to Enemy Mayan by having lesbian sex in it. You think we're done with KIKEN. I still have side notes and the three chapters of book 2 to do. Also book 2 never finishes, I hope you guys like unresolved plot.

Mors Rattus

KIKEN has a plot?

If time travel is possible at all, it's most likely to look like this.

The Triumphant

Dogg, I don't even know if KIKEN has words. It feels like trying to read anime in chicken entrails.

Yeah, I've seen Robocop. Bitches, leave.

FROOOOOOOOG

I only managed to read a small bit of the last installment. I gave up when the character named Sacred Fire summoned a gold/red bird and the character named Aeroblast summoned a silver/blue bird. seriously what the fuck is this bullshit

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Who the Fuck are these Dickholes: A Character Guide to Kiken: There was a Pretentious Title Here, Its Gone Now
Slime

Has anyone in this thread actually managed to read KIKEN? I've read some shit, but it's fucking impossible to read KIKEN.

I will explode in your face.

Impossible? Nah, just hard. So you want character profiles eh? This story has characters crawling out of it's arse. Luckily there's a Character Pageso all I need to do is go through it to remind myself of who everyone is. (Except it's incomplete so I may have missed people out. Who cares though right?) Kakeru Probably supposed to be the main protagonist. His role in the story is to be an optimist and to spend the first half of the story having his short term memory erased by amnesia. This is cured when his best friend tells him to carry a damn notebook. Founding member of the CRYSTAL DAWGS

Derani

The other main protagonist. His role in the story is to be heavily cynical and the smart guy. Spends the early part going on about true love or whatever. Founding member and leader of the CRYSTAL DAWGS

Kogawa

Third member of the CRYSTAL DAWGS . She's 10 years old and a genius. According to the character page she's got blue hair and is the "token loli". Fuck you, EPIC. Time traveller from 2112. Cloned from Derani and Kogawa. Doesn't really do much of anything. He's friends with girl incest twin. The other time traveller. Cloned from Kakeru. Fits in with our culture by having fully absorbed all tropes, becoming a supreme troper. Probably wonders why he has no friends. He's also in the Sleepy Hollows. Has silver hair. Leader of the Sleepy Hollows. He's apparantly supposed to represent the uncle that EPIC has a creepy fixtion on. Also appears in EPIC-ORETACHI where he tells the incest twins to knock it off. He's their older brother I guess. Member of sleepy hollows. Appears so little even the tropes for her note it down. She's apparantly a jock. Fourth member of the sleepy hollows. Gets the all the info they need from a blog. As you can see, their reputation for hacking is well earned. She's also Yuuichi's girlfriend, her trope page suggests that there'll be future

Dylan Amaki

Yuuichi

Mika Fujiko

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drama when Yuuichi gets her pregnant and she has an abortion. They're both 15. Tsugumu Tsuyiko Himako Aria Kurumi Author's self insert character. Male one of the creepy incest twins. Hasn't done anything of note so far Girl one of the creepy incest twins. Is a co-author of the "hubspace chronicles". Doesn't appear much Incest twin's younger sister. Kogawa's friend. Derani is in love with her. Beats the shrine maiden from the past. Doesn't do much else. Username: Ancient Power Most of the plot winds up revolving around her. She's a shrine maiden from the mid 1800s who came to the future because a dance movement predicted hubspace or something. She posesses Juuri. Username: Whirlwind Is the medium for Kurumi . Former hubspace beta tester, and secretary to the main evil guy. Is in love with Emiri, book 1 ends with them two having sex instead of resolving any of the plot. Username: Light Screen Juuri's girlfriend. Went to america for university. Username: Reflect A hikikomori. Is researching hubspace, and does so by apparantly constantly losing at PvP battles. Is a troper, in the only PvP battle we see he talks constantly in tropes. Username: Punishment Gives kakeru some hubspace info early on. Seems to be Rukao's research rival. Likes protecting her "Zettai Ryouiki". I hate tropers. Username: Natural Gift Puts Kinji in a coma by registering for hubspace. This is because he's mad about his parents divorce or whatever. He's a troper so this stupid reaction doesn't really suprise me. Despite this he can't actually beat Kinji in a fight due to kinji's too pro. He also has silver hair. Username: Arial Ace Gets put in a coma for two months by Ginrou. Despite this they still hang out and he still plays hubspace. He uses fire and drills and is stupidly overpowered. Is also a troper. Leader of the brass kites, the team of cynics. If the kites win, the world is destroyed.Username: Aeroblast Leader of the tin herons, the team of idealists. If the herons win, the rules of the world are rewritten.Username: Sacred Fire Boss of hubspace. Is in love with Juuri. Probably killed the last boss of hubspace.

Juuri

Emiri Rukao

Nanako

Ginrou

Kinji

Hichou Shouhei Takeo

TurnipFritter I think Amaki is cloned from Kakeru, while Dylan is the one cloned from Derani and Kogawa, at least according to my spreadsheet (...). Except Dylan isn't actually cloned, he's their half-sibling because Derani's mother did it with Kogawa's father, or something. Chapter eight is really bad.
Paula tried PSI Fire Beta!

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Doublechecked. You're right, although I expect that Dylan is more likely to be a "clone" made from an egg from Kogawa's mum and sperm from Derani's dad, just because they're both from 2112. I don't claim to understand any of this and the author isn't clear, but unless the parents lived to be over 100 years old it's the more likely solution and why the hell am I even thinking about this?

TurnipFritter

I made a character diagram for KIKEN: CHIKYUUGAOWA RUHANSHI because I am the Gooniest Goon that ever Gooned: It sure is neat how not a single one of these characters actually does anything! Not featured: The teachers (because they are interchangeable and somehow even less important to the narrative than the rest of the cast) and Kakeru's guardian who was mentioned once in chapter one and then never again. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go kill myself. e: It took me several hours to read through KIKEN because I could only read about half a paragraph before I had to switch tabs and look at something else to keep my eyeballs from falling out.

Paula tried PSI Fire Beta!

You forgot the best character. Ruffhouseman the dog. E: Also Derani is the leader of the dogs. E2: Kogawa and Himako are classmates. Still, the fact that you went and looked up everyone's chat name as well as fight name is impressive.

The Triumphant

It's like Gravity's Rainbow as written by a self-aware Playstation.

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KIKEN: OWARUHANASHINOMAE (The Prequel)

Well, time to add more layers to this saga by quickly running through the side notes thing. This was published halfway through what little EPIC did of book 2 and is apparantly set before book 1. It's time for KIKEN: OWARUHANASHINOMAE

Kanagawa Weekly Tribune HubspaceAn Ending World Inside One CD by Akari Motogaku Published on August 3, 2012 AKIHABARAThe lines are long filled with people longing for what might be one of the best games ever. People are dolled up in costumes, to make them look like characters from various anime series. We asked three people in the line to tell us what they were doing here, and what they thought of Hubspace. "Looks nice, might as well buy it due to all of the hype." A man, dressed in a ZEON military uniform from the anime series, Mobile Suit Gundam said. "My friends pulled me here and told me to buy it for them, heheh!" A boy, dressed in an orange jacket from the anime series, NARUTO chuckled. "It looks good, can't wait to play it!" A girl tugged at her pink wig. All three individuals bought the game called Hubspace, an online game created by the Yumegorosu Corporation. But these three people aren't aware nor have learned about what happen to them if they play or log-in to Hubspace for the very first time. OK, so this is the first note, which is essentially "People really fucking love this game. It's revealed at the top of the next note that Hubspace was published on Jan 3rd, 2011 in Japan and July 6th, 2011 everywhere else. I think by Aug 3rd, 2012 there would be a lot of publicity about "this game nearly kills you when you register". I'd imagine that's the first thing that reviewers would mention. Also, why would the queues be so long to buy a game that's been out over a year and costs $500 a month to play? Finally, I know akihabara has this reputation from anime as being a really anime place to be, but I really don't think people'd be cosplaying as random animes while waiting in line for an MMO.

Hubspace and its related events Hubspace is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, or MMORPG, that was released on Jan 3 in Japan, and July 6, 2011 in Europe, America and all other territories. Created by the Yumegorosu Corporation, the Hubspace series has spawned three expansion packs, the pre-installed Creation, standalone Destruction and the recentlyreleased Regeneration. The graphics look good, the combat system is well-planned out and even the interface also looks user-friendly-but this isn't the case.

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What one probably knows is that the Japanese words, yume and gorosu put together means the destruction of hopes-literally, the killing of dreams. Sadly, Hubspace has done many things to prove that right. It has caused the destruction of various areas. But how? Its been said that various crimes and exploits that recently happened have been traced to the game itself. For example, the various ambushes that popped around Yokohama are related to the gamethe victims and ambushers were players of Hubspace who did Player vs. Player battles. Those who lost ended up demanding rematches that take place in the real world. Even the November 2010 Murders have been traced to itthe suspect was a player of Hubspace who demanded all of his rare items back and used murder and robbery to retrieve said items back. But back then, Hubspace was only in its alpha stage, unofficially leaked to the public. Now that Hubspace is fully released, interested gamers are now encouraged to buy what former fans of Hubspace now call, 'the most lethal game ever created, next to Russian roulette.' "The combat system is well planned out"? No it isn't you enter a name and that name DETERMINES ALL YOUR MOVES AND STATS, you can literally be a broken minmaxed sperglord with the right name. Also, as I've been constantly mentioning, all the bad stuff related to hubspace isn't being hidden in the shadows, it's a matter of public record. People know all about the hubspace crimes. It was even being linked to crimes before release, even. The stuff it did would have been known to the public from the start.

Risks of registering Even worse, that's not just all of the bad things that happened about Hubspace. The game entraps you in a coma if you refuse to give your serial number or at least barely log in. Sadly, even if you do survive the coma, you're still expected to suffer a neardeath experience. The only way to bypass all of this is to use some sort of patch that hasn't been created just yet. Will that patch even be released yet? Or even worked on? No one knows, yet people are investigating the internal structure, framework and data of Hubspace. But one person found four mp3 clips and a clock. Could the game be hypnotizing people into getting NDE's or falling into a deep sleep? No one knows. But, after further investigations conducted around the game, the MEXT declared Hubspace as unplayable, due to a certain software that makes the game a stimulus of the events, with the real-life occurences becoming the responses to said stimulants. Not only that, but even CERO declared Hubspace as an A-rated game, although the content descriptors say "virus-laden, death-causing, high risk of addiction." Those three phrases described Hubspace in a nutshell. But some say that stimuli and responsive actions are also present in Hubspace just as

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much as they are in real life. This is called, the stimulus-response theory.

So basically the authorities know all about the fact that the game can kill you, and yet they let it go on sale. There isn't even a cover up, the fact that it's retardedly addictive and can kill you (and fuck up your computer apparantly) is on the box. I know nothing about stimulus-response theory, but I doubt it's being used correctly.

The stimulus-response theory The aforementioned stimulus-response theory is what is said to trigger the various crimes that revolve around Hubspace players. As said, the November 2010 Murders and the Yokohama Ambushes have all revolved around former Hubspace players. Scientists and psychologists have confirmed that the November 2010 Murders have been attributed to rare items found in Hubspace: they are one-use only, and they cost 10,000 Nebies per item. According to Yumegorosu Corporation, the game's creator and publisher, 10,000 Nebies, is the equivalent of 1000 Yen, which means you have to pay to get enough money to attain a rare object that can help you in Hubspace. Those same scientists and psychologists also investigated the Yokohama ambushes and discovered that the victims and suspects were players of Hubspace. Some of these Hubspace players have engaged in what they called, Player-Between-Player Combat. Player-Between-Player Battles are in-game battles in which a player battles another player for anything they have, even if it means repeatedly dying ,in-game, and losing income-consuming, rare items you worked hard to attain. The same team of scientists and psychologists has also teamed up with current and former Hubspace players to discuss what these battles and incidents attributed to Hubspace have in common, to supplement evidence of their origin point. One of those former Hubspace players was Juuri Fujisaku. Nothing of note here, the company behind hubspace says rare items only cost 1,000 yen instead of 5,000. that's a little more believable. Juuri FujisakuThe woman who played Hubspace and lived The Yumegorosu Corp. has already faced legal action more than once by the families of testers who have died while playing Hubspace, or at least put their lives at risk and danger for eternity. One such tester was Juuri Fujisaku, who still remains alive to this day and wonders the future of the game she tested. "I remember getting an NDE playing Hubspace, and there were two crests, one gold, with a heron, and one silver, with a kite.." She said. "I didn't know what they were for, anyway: I just went on and played away." According to Ms. Fujisaku, Hubspace is a very good game, but can kill you just before playing it. Ms. Fujisaku leaked every detail, but she only allowed major details to be given away to the public. She states that the previously stimulus-reseponse theory of Hubspace is not

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wrong, in some cases, it happened to Fujisaku herself. Also, Ms. Fujisaku says that a rare item costs at least 5,000 yen and is a one-use item only; that was the suspect's possible motive, for the November 2010 murders. Fujisaku says that Player vs. Player matches are highly celebrated amongst Hubspacers. Skills and levels are temporarily raised, and people from all walks of life watch each battle. But with such amount of people can even make someone undergo a Hikikomori withdrawal phase, due to a great amount shame if ever they lose, constant ridicule and ostracizing thrust upon him.

This is just copied and pasted from the first chapter. I really hope she's wrong about the cost of rare items though.

Yumegorosu Corporation The people who just bought the game are about to face these consequences. How? The Yumegorosu Corp. representatives won't even tell you. They'll only provide very vague clues like say, "radiation from the screen," "deathly gaze," or even "wanting to play it puts you in a coma." Another representative came in with a longer answer, but every answer they gave was still vague, yet it provided us certain clues. "Hubspace a very good game, that it makes you want to stare death in the eye," that representative of Yumegorosu said. To emphasize his point, he followed with only one word. "Literally." But that could've been out of sheer bias. No one knows if that man played Hubspace. But literally staring death in the eye was associated with those who played the game, or at least registered an account onto it. Of course, facing legal action could be possible for the company, as the families of those who played Hubspace are already grieving and upset due to the deaths, injuries, limits and conditions of their relatives caused by the game.

"Don't tell anyone but our game is to die for...LITERALLY" Yumegorosu is being run by Dr Evil isn't it. This is just cartoonish supervillainy here. In case you haven't gathered by now, this whole thing wouldn't appear in a real magazine because it lacks structure and the reporter seems to lack any long term memory or common sense.

An escalating conflict Rumor has it that players in Hubspace seek destruction of the game due to the various occurences attributed to Hubspace, as some of them were family members and friends of those "Hubspacers." Ms. Fujisaku suggests that "either these kids are our saviours, or these kids are out to destroy us. Whatever happens in the game could happen, or at least have an impact on real life."

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She also expounded on the already-stated stimulus-response theory that Hubspace and the Earth must be the same, in terms of economy culture and government. Also, some players get carried away to the point of destroying something in real life, as they destroyed or at least altered the game's landscape. Ms. Fujisaku said, "The people who play Hubspace are in some form of hypnosis: the game makes them sleepy, and as soon as they wake up, boom! They do whatever it is that Hubspace makes them do." She researched on her activities from when she tested the Alpha Version of Hubspace: Fujisaku couldn't help do in real life what she did in Hubspace, but she said that "it was all due to some unknown reason." Strangely, she says that the conflict is divided among reformists and revolutionaries who want to make a difference in the game. Those two crests Ms. Fujisaku saw were probably those of the two sides of the war. She remembers the crests had a heron and a kite: Ms. Fujisaku dubs those two crests and teams, "The Tin Herons," and "The Brass Kites." But we only see a few members of each team and their leaders are both in the same class. It's pretty fucking obvious that the herons and kites don't actually have any effect on the game or real world at all. Or at least they shouldn't, but this is the alternate dimension of anime where the evil guy who wants to end the world for some reason would totally give power to two 15 year olds.

The Herons and Kites No one knows who these Herons and Kites are, at all, but there have been rumors of a high density of Hubspace players in Kanagawa, especially Yokohama. In the prestigious Hikariyama Academy, whose students rival that of Keio Daigaku's, people have been suspected of what could be their last video game. Rumor has it that even university students from Hikariyama Academy are even investigating Hubspace, some even joining the Herons and Kites. But no one has identified who has drawn or been drawn into the Conflict just yet. Even middle schoolers who have a keen interest in technology and current events are researching on Hubspace, some trying to disprove or prove the stimulus-response theory. Last July, however, there has been a 7th Grader of the school accused of having someone of the same grade go through an NDE due to irreconcilable differences and constant arguments. Hubspace too may be attributed to the incident, but it may not be related to the theory mentioned earlier. But the incidents have been all going down to certain questions that people know for sure the world will ask. So, if today's youth will shape the world through a video game, will it go down a dark path? Walk down a good path? No one knows what Hubspace will bring to the future, because Hubspace and the future itself are alike, as they are both very vague, having to go through constant supervision and investigation. |_| Also this article is supposed to be written before the first book and yet this bit is a reference to stuff that happens in like chapter 3.

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And apparantly noone knows what the kites and herons are despite them being the only factions in the game at all. Also, you know what I realised. This game is apparantly popular worldwide. Why is everyone important in the same school. Is there a reason other than anime? Also that's the notes, all of them. There's a review. LittleLoser.AndRoloLamperouge posted: Wow...that was amazing... -LittleLoserDid he read the same thing I just did? REQUEST: Someone please explain to me why this game is on sale and popular? LightningKimba It's similar to .hack in regards that it's an MMO similar to WOW in terms of addiction, but KIKEN basically takes every news story revolving around WOW, and flanderizes it - It's obvious that a game such as this one wouldn't go on sale in real life, but if we were to suspend our disbelief (Or in this case, completely ignore it), the reason why it sells so much is because it appeals to the MMO-hungry masses, who uses mommy's money to get rare items, and when that gravy train's cut off from them, or if rare items/upgrades/whathaveyou is too expensive, they challenge other You can wax on wax off players for their gear. all you like, I'm still
clubbing your ass.

It even has a Pokmon-like collectathon for its rare items the gamers would desperately want (And I swear the game forces you to use those names since I KIND of want to say no one would pick the name Reflect and say that's a fine idea for a screen name?). It reminds me a slight bit of OZ from Summer Wars, where it's a massive media network, so I think that's what EPIC was trying to make - A giant MMO that's known to the masses, appeals well to nerds mostly, and probably has a cult following within other people as well who aren't exactly known to play such games. Now the only thing I can't exactly justify too well is how it would be on sale today if it's controversy is so wide-open and brushed-off, though I GUESS it's somehow supposed to be read in vein to how Pokmon allegedly gets children into the occult, and how Yu-Gi-Oh! is a game that can summon the devil?

All in all, this game's a huge hit with nerds, and it's being sold so Company Evil can have a lot of money and ignore people dying. (I wouldn't be surprised if the hikikomori uprising thing in the story's actually based off of a Japanese phenomenon, since EPIC is like baby's Kojima) REQUEST 2: I'm gonna be starting book 2 fairly soon. So my request is for a major event in book 1 to be rewritten so it makes sense. (Major plot event being a very relative term here) REQUEST 3: The CRYSTAL DAWGS and Sleepy Hollows need logos.

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Salvaging Kiken: The Fools Errand

TurnipFritter I feel like it's kinda my duty because I think I'm the only other person other than Namtab who's read the whole thing. Well, the first book anyway. I can't... I don't have it in me to read the second. Salvaging KIKEN. KIKEN was chosen because the concept sounded like it could be interesting. Turns out that it isn't, not even in an ironic "Oh my gosh this is so laughable awful" way. But with extensive work, could it be interesting? Is KIKEN salvageable? I don't think so, but let's take a look anyway. The Writing There's simultaneously too much and not enough to say about it. It's bad on every conceivable level and it really should have been written in a language the author actually understands. The Story Conflict is the single most important aspect of a narrative. If there's no conflict, there's no story. KIKEN doesn't deliver a conflict. Sure, it has The Conflict, allegedly the central focus of the story. It has the Hubspace, which allegedly will destroy the world. It has some relationship stuff. None of these "conflicts" are given much thought or depth. We learned back in chapter one or two that The Conflictwas manufactured by Shouhei and Hichou for reasons the author never makes clear. One side believes Hubspace can be patched so it won't destroy the world, one side believes Hubspace should be destroyed and rebuilt. Later it evolves into a n ideological battle between idealism and cynicism, which, ok, could actually make for an interesting conflict. For that to work though, it would require quite a bit more talent and subtlety than author is capable of, and in a medium that isn't what amounts to anime fanfiction. Characters should not announce that they are idealists or cynics. In KIKEN's "conflicts" nothing is a stake. I seem to recall earlier in the story, we're told that if you lose a PvP match you become a shut-in, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all later on. The characters behind The Conflict have no actual authority over Hubspace. They cannot patch the game, they cannot delete it and develop Hubspace 2.0. because they are in eighth grade. All these AWESOME EPIC ANIME BATTLES mean nothing, because it is a videogame. It's impossible to build tension when you know the characters are just typing these dramatic speeches and platitudes on their keyboards while they're playing a MMORPG. The Characters So maybe you're thinking, "Hey, so even if there's no real conflict, maybe the characters are likeable enough to carry it by itself?" They aren't. Few, if any, characters actually serve a purpose to the narrative. Here is a chart.

Paula tried PSI Fire Beta!

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TurnipFritter

I had to make some choices on which ones could be booted and which ones should stay, because really, none of the characters should stay. Either Mika or Fujiko could stay, but I think even the author got them confused because one is first introduced as Yuuichi's sometimes girlfriend, then later on he's dating the other one. Just cut one and make the other his love interest. The time travelers from the future get to stay, because they could actually do something in the story. The time traveling ghost was dropped because she came from 1800s to stop a MMORPG from destroying civilization so she could prove to the people back in her time that the ee ja nai ka movement was bad. Juuri gets to stay because she has ties to the main bad guy, but I dropped her lesbian lover. Emiri could maybe stay on in a supporting role to Juuri, but that's it. We absolutely should not be focusing on her as much as the story does. Pretty much all of the fourth graders were dropped. Maybe Himako could stay to provide a support role to Kogawa. I let the kids from the future stay even though that whole subplot is awful, because saying, "Hey the future kinda sucks because of Hubspace!" is more than 90% of cast does. Nanako and Rukao get to stay. I feel like since they're introduced so early, putting a bigger focus on them could help flesh out The Conflict. Ignoring whether or not they serve a narrative purpose, the biggest problem with the cast is that everyone talks, acts and behaves the same. Fourth graders act the same way as twentysomethings, who talk the same way as priestesses from the Edo era. The only difference between cynics and idealists is what they call themselves. We're told that characters are boisterous, or hotheaded, or calm, but these personality traits never actually manifest themselves. Hell, Takeo, the Hubspace CEO, is described in his introduction as being "smug" but literally every interaction of his that follows shows him having genuine concern about Hubspace, The Conflict, and Juuri. It's difficult to come up with things to say about the cast, because there's nothing there. Then again, there's nothing in the actual narrative either. It's sort of like how people say, "If you take away all the bad parts, nothing would be left" except in KIKEN's case, even with all the bad parts there's nothing. Misc There are a few concrete changes we can talk about : You can keep the "Hubspace causes a near death experience" thing, but change it from "You literally go into a coma sitting in front of your computer when you sign up" to something like "A couple of days later you get deathly ill or have a near-fatal accident." Rumors going around that Hubspace causes freaky things to happen is a lot more interesting than it being a widely reported by actual media outlets that Hubspace puts people into comas.

Paula tried PSI Fire Beta!

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I'm actually ok with "Everyone will get so caught up in playing this game it'll destroy civilization." Of course, the obvious solution is, "Stop playing the game, report it to the authorities, work on destroying the game" and not "High school students who have no affiliation with the company that makes the game fight PvP battles in the game to determine if they should try to patch it or scrap it and start over." Remove everything about Hubspace's rules and how it's played. No one gives a shit about your fictional MMORPG's gameplay, and every time you bring it up it just makes the reader ask "Why would someone play this game?" Remove every reference to TVTropes, except maybe "TVTropes had ruined their lives." Burn any hard copies of KIKEN, remove it from all websites, destroy every device that has ever come in contact with it, gouge my eyes and cut out my tongue Conclusion I keep saying that there's nothing to KIKEN, and it's true. There's no conflict, no one in the story does anything, the dialogue has no substance, there's nothing at stake for the characters. MCAC may have been bad. It may not have been about anything, but it at least had something that resembled an ending. KIKEN stopped halfway through the climax and skipped directly to the epilogue. The MCAC may have all been one-note stereotypes, but that's preferable to KIKEN because you can actually tell them apart without a spreadsheet.

redmercer

Not nearly enough red Xs in that diagram. Could probably just use one large one over the whole thing, honestly.

guys I'm high

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Here's my point of view. The concept: It's pretty much the .hack// franchise in a much more broken videogame. There's aspects that could be interesting, but not like this The writing: Written in his native language (EPIC is from the Phillipines) it might have been much better. This is a broken mess that reads like it's been through babelfish multiple times. The story: As you said, there's no conflict. The crystal dogs are investigating just cause, the main conflict in the thing is fake and based around MMO fights, the punishment for losing an MMO fight seems to diminish as times goes by. In addition, the threat posed by the game becomes less and less pronnounced as the story goes on, in chapter 1 we're told that losing a PvP battle puts you in a hikikomori state and that murders are carried out because of the game. It's now chapter 1 of book 2 and the only hikikomori we've met is going out on a hot date. We're supposed to believe that you'd become so addicted to the game that you'd bring an end to society to get it back, yet the worst addict we've seen shock it off with no effort at all. The battles are laughable, especially the one where the author straight up goes "AND JUURI'S HAND WAS RACING AROUND ON THE MOUSE LIKE CRAZY". What made .hack interesting was the fact that it was (as far as I know) a virtual reality game, things had more meaning because you were immersed in the game, plus the comas and shit made more sense. The characters: I mostly agree with you. I'd say have Juuri perhaps have the ghost's memories, perhaps she's a reincarnation. Also there's not really much point in having two time travellers, they should just be one character. I'd also get rid of all the sleepy hollows and give their "skills" to the male dogs. There's three members of the dogs and only the 10 year old girl has any skills of note, and yet we're supposed to believe that they managed to rally enough people around them that they ended the conflict. I don't mind Kinji and Ginrou, but once again I think they should be merged with other characters, perhaps the leaders of the herons and kites. The conflict would have a lot more meaning then. Misc: "hubspace literally puts you in a coma" is one of the least objectionable things in this story because it's at least explained. I'd have it be a rare side effect of registering as opposed to something that happens to everyone so the media reports it. "Hubspace will end the world because the shut-ins will rise up". Have the hypnosis be a lot more effective then. If you lose a PvP match you should literally never do anything but play hubspace. If you show that, how effective the hypnosis is, and combine it with the popularity of the game, then it becomes a lot less stupid. Again this only works if the comas are a rare side effect as opposed to a given penalty. Just have hubspace be as anime as fuck, if you explain the rules then it just looks stupid.

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Set the story far further in the future and make it a VR game, do you really need the 2012 hook so badly? If you have to have a troper, make it a minor character, the world should not talk in tropes.

Zandar

The trouble with rewriting Kiken to make sense is that even its basic concept is nonsense. To wrangle any kind of coherence from it would require burning it to the bedrock and starting over. So let's try that! First, we need to identify what Kiken's actually about. Impenetrable as the prose is, it's not too hard to extract what should be at the core of the story: The MMO Hubspace, and the evil organisation behind it. The revival of the ee ja nai ka movement. People from the future coming back to save the world. The protagonists are in there somewhere too, I think. Damned if I'm going to remember any of them, though.

So. Hubspace first. It's a popular MMO that puts people into comas or makes them into recluses until the appointed hour, when they'll rise up and overthrow the government. That's... pretty stupid, all right, but the basic idea of a behaviour-altering MMO has some merit. How can we make it work? Obviously it can't actually be sold legally. A free but exclusive game would make more sense, only spoken of on private messageboards. This keeps it mysterious and enticing; combined with a reputation for danger, it'll attract the disaffected and outcast. Once someone plays it, it digs its hooks in and keeps them playing until it controls them. This control actually lets us keep another facet of the original: Hubspace sucks. It's a terrible game, both boring and glitchy, and ordinarily no one would play it for more than ten minutes. Nevertheless, people keep playing, drawn on by something they can't understand. The dissonance this creates should make a scene from a player's perspective ripe for some psychological horror; in fact, a throwaway character's introduction to the game might be a decent opening scene. But what should Hubspace actually do? Putting people into comas doesn't seem very useful, especially if you're trying to create an army. In fact, the best kind of mind control is the kind that people don't notice at all. Its first priority should be to keep itself secret, so it should erase all memories of itself from its thralls; it can keep them playing without their conscious knowledge. Similar conditioning can let it use them to carry out tasks in the physical world, fairly untraceably; you'd probably need some sort of

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proxy-based technobabble to stop the police from just tracing the server, though, and base it at least vaguely on research. Other than that, its subjects should just keep on acting as normal, maybe even improving themselves. This missing time could tie in to, um, that protagonist. The one with amnesia, you know the one. Unbeknownst to him, he's already played Hubspace to the point where it has control over him; he's under its control during his missing time. Unlike other players, though, his conscious mind is somehow more separated from the game's control, which means that he starts to investigate Hubspace again when he finds evidence of it. Him working against himself could give us some interesting twists. The final ingredient of Hubspace is, of course, what it's working towards. However, that's going to have to be tied in to the other elements of the story, and I've put more than enough thought into this for one night. I'll see if I feel like continuing it later.

Zandar

Right, let's continue making Kiken better. So Hubspace is now a terrible, underground MMO that creates sleeper agents from the disaffected for as yet unknown reasons. But what the hell is ee ja nai ka? It's actually quite interesting, and not a bad basis for a story. Ee ja nai ka was an outbreak of dancing festivals in Japan (of course) during 1867/68. These festivals often lasted several days, and in some cases it was said that "amulets rained down from heaven", causing even more celebration. While the songs at these festivals often expressed discontent with the political situation at the time, such as the increasing presence of foreigners and lack of leadership, they appeared to be peaceful and spontaneous (although some religious activists were caught creating those rains of amulets). That's not a bad fit with MMOs in terms of theme, really. In both cases you have discontented people finding refuge in social entertainment. There's all sorts of potential for submerging your self within the group and giving your fate up to a higher power in here; one of the ee ja nai ka chants invoked divine retribution on foreigners, for example. It's a bit overdone to have a movement like this turn out to be evil, but there's only so much I can do. The next step is to fit it into the story. The first change is to not introduce it as ee ja nai ka; it's just a mysterious spate of spontaneous dancing, seemingly the work of flash mobs. The second change is to not have the ghost of the original founder show up; instead make the modern phenomenon the work of an unrecognised mastermind, who may also have been influencing the founder back then. Now when the protagonists investigate Hubspace, they can find that certain phrases keep cropping up in chat channels, like an odd in-joke or meme. Doing some research, they find that those phrases were part of old ee ja nai ka chants. Someone recalls a news story about the recent flash

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mobs, they connect the dots, and the plot thickens. The "amulets" can be used to strengthen the connection, too. From depictions of the events, they seem to have been paper or wooden talismans with writing on them; I think they may be ofuda. What if the brainwashing is accomplished through visual stimuli? A couple of talismans with strange patterns would go largely unnoticed in a rain of paper, but someone's going to pick one up. Meanwhile in Hubspace, those visual glitches may be less innocuous than they seem. Now we have someone brainwashing an army with strange symbols, using both the internet and flash mobs as vectors. Well, it's a little close to Snow Crash for my liking, but it's not a bad premise. It's still missing a motive, though. Overthrowing the government as in the original Kiken is always a possibility, but come on. Kiken had a ghost possessing someone and an ancient Mayan prophecy of doom. There's definitely something supernatural involved, and a coup just seems a little low-stakes for all that. Let's be honest here, this is looking to be the work of a cult, and cults in supernatural thrillers work for the big guys. With enough minds thinking the same way, and maybe a little push from some carefully conducted rituals, something's coming through from... somewhere else. Leave exactly where to the imagination for now. Of course, there's still the time-travellers to consider, but that's a different topic entirely. This is at least enough of a framework to hang some actual competent villains on. Namtab posted: The ghost is actually of a "miko" (Japanese shrine maiden) who was opposed to ee ja nai ka (and who is literally unable to comprehend that abortion exists), died without being able to prove it was evil I guess, and somehow her spirit came to the future and plays MMOs. She's not the original founder. Seriously? Oh well, I did say I wouldn't remember the protagonists. I actually assumed Kurumi was one of the future people when I read that scene. I guess if you have to keep her, you could say that she was sacrificed as part of the last round of ee ja nai ka, and an imprint of her psyche was left in the whole ritual complex. Then when Hubspace taps into it, she shows up as a mystery character, saying only "Post-recession world. Unemployment. Anti-diligence. Recent outbreaks. Abortion." before disappearing. Bonus points for resisting the urge to make a "ghost in the machine" reference. And yes, I know that's not her only line, but honestly a broken echo of her original self would be more interesting.

Zandar

Here's my last attempt at improving Kiken's plot. It wasn't too hard, in the end, to link ee ja nai ka with Hubspace; they

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shared some common elements, and could be made into analogues in two groups of society. The time-travellers, on the other hand, are completely out of left field, and there's very little to show how to handle them. Why is there time travel technology in a dystopian future? How is it connected to anything else? Does it share common themes at all? All this would no doubt have been explained clearly and succinctly if not for Kiken's untimely end. What we do know is that the time travel was accomplished using Schwarzschild wormholes, so let's look at those. The first thing to know about them is that they have nothing to do with time travel; instead they were theorised to lead to other universes. The second thing is that they don't actually work, since they'd close before you can send anything through them. That gives us something to work with. The first fact suggests that these helpers aren't actually from the future, but rather from another Earth where this has already happened. As for the second, obviously a little leeway will have to be granted on the impossibility front, but it does suggest that anything sent through these wormholes would have to be pretty small. Probably elementary-particle scale, in fact. Maybe just information? Aha. Hubspace and the ee ja nai ka talismans are both using information transfer to control people; that's a connection that can be expanded on. Perhaps whatever's behind them is a distributed information construct, one equally capable of living on a network or in people's brains. While it's easy for it to live on the Internet, it needs a way of communicating with the parts of itself in people's minds. That's where ee ja nai ka comes in; by promoting these spontaneous gatherings, it can pass information among itself using chants and spread itself using talismans. The Schwarzschild wormholes are involved because this intelligence uses them to multiply across universes; part of the behaviour it compels in people is to generate its travel mechanism. The helpers won't come through them at all, but rather hijack one to warn other worlds of what has already doomed theirs. They'll connect to the net somehow, give some prophecies of doom that'll be laughed at by the general public, work with the protagonists once a bond of trust has been established, and then be infected and send them into a death trap. The other important element I mentioned was the protagonists. This is dealt with by the good general advice of only having one protagonist. Since the only hero with an identifying characteristic is the one with amnesia, and that ties in well with already being infected, it'll probably be him. It did occur to me midway through this that the whole "idealist vs cynic" war on Hubspace is probably a major element as well, but that seemed to be entirely a conflict between protagonists, which means it's solved by the previous good advice. I hope this helps to make Kiken at least vaguely coherent; regardless, that's where I'll leave it. Good luck to all those still trying to understand the original. Conclusion: Fuck EPIC fuck KIKEN fuck tropers

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KIKEN: MONOWOHAKAISURUHANASHI (Book Two)

Chapter One: Do You Remember Love?
Vincent Van Goatse

Every time I try to honestly sit down and try to read anything about KIKEN I get a few words in and then my eyes just go blurry and slide down until the post ends. I think it's a defense mechanism.
On his return to Candlestick Alexander Smithius ordered the Buccaneers to be brought forth and crucified; the punishment he had often threatened them with whilst he was in their hands, and they little dreamt he was in earnest.

Vxskud

It would be easier to follow an audio book of House of Leaves narrated by that dwarf from Twin Peaks than it is to try and follow KIKEN even when broken up into small chunks.

Why do people consider love to belong to two people of different genders? Love, to many people belongs to people of two seperate genders. Some may also go for same-sex love, but people try to deny that as love and rule it out as a mental disorder. There is such a thing as same-sex marriage, and people are trying to pry it away from gay couples who desperately want to get married. Usually this is due to religion, tradition or possibly not caring about these people just because they are different. So what? Love is a universal concept that some deem as an excuse for the desire of having sex with someone. But many see it as more. Many see it as an inevitable attraction, like having a soulmate or a partner throughout life. KIKEN: MONOWOHAKAISURUHANASHI Shit yeah the saga continues this is MONOWOHAKAISURUHANASHI bitches. It's got absolutely nothing to do with the plot so far, but I have to admit this is the least terrible opening rant so far.

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Crosscontaminant

Since it's one of the few bits of KIKEN I can actually read without suddenly realising there are several million other things more interesting to look at... "chikyuu ga owaru hanashi" was (supposed to be) "The Story That Ends The World". This time we have "mono wo hakai suru hanashi", which I can only assume is "The Story That Destroys Stuff".

Chapter 1: Do You Remember Love? "Nice monologue, Kakeru!" Said the blonde boy across the counter, with his pug nose pointed directly at his red-headed best friend. "Something's making me think of Rosie the Riveter, all of a sudden." His name was Derani Terasuma, and his best friend, Kakeru Kouen just quelled a planned Conflict that may have evolved into a full-fledged war if there was nothing to stop it. They formed a brotherhood called the Crystal Dogs, for one reason he kept to himself. "By the way, Kakekake, did you ever have a crush on someone?" Derani asked, "I think I have one." "Hooh boy, Dera-nii!" Kakeru said, the bug-eyed fireboy wolfing down his flourless chocolate cake in a 50's diner. "I thought you were cynical. Are you going all John Keats on me? 'Coz he suffered from crushing cynic disorder." Derani knew it was time to come out. No, not in that sense, but Derani loved his crush just as much as he loved his blood brother, Kakeru! "I knew I said that love is just an excuse for sex and people know and they use it," Derani said, "But hormones are telling me something else. Am I getting more oxytocin over Aria?" Aria was Derani's crush. Unfortunately, the writing is still as bad as ever. Through the power of talking they just managed to stop the most vicious PvP battle yet, instead of talking about that they're talking about love or some shit while kakeru eats a cake. Is this symbolic?

"Maybe, Dera-nii, maybe," said Kogawa Nagari, heterochromiac, waifish and long-haired blood sister of Kakeru and Derani. "But what's important is that Aria needs to know about you. Go out with her. If she's not worth it, she's not worth it. But if she is, pursue her anyway." But Derani was worried. Aria Tsubasajima, his crush just got out of a relationship that ended with the death of her boyfriend, Kunio Morino over a game that could cause the world called, Hubspace. But a chocolate-haired minty-eyed, partSpanish, part-Filipina and half-Japanese girl came in. "Heyy." It was Aria. She smiled at Derani, since she was able to move on as soon as the Herons and Kites united, who used to be two warring sources of the Conflict. "So, guys, what were you talking about?" Derani, usually the pale, blue-eyed person he is, turned very, very crimson. "A-Aria," He asked, "Are you in fear of loneliness?" Aria felt shocked. So that's why I tried getting back at Hubspace. She thought. "And I don't want others to be lonely either. That's why I'm supporting Shouhei. He has to know that family is there. Explicitly." Derani understood. "There's always a time when people should support loved ones, right?" Derani touched Aria's deepest subject.

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Wait Aria's boyfriend died? I don't remember that happening at all. In plot news the CRYSTAL DAWGS not only stopped the PvP fight with that crappy speech at the end, but the two sides made up off camera, probably while the uneccesary lesbian sex bit happened at the end of that last book. TurnipFritter Aria's boyfriend died before the story began. It's what she and Derani bond over when they first meet. God I hate this story.

Everyday Italian

"So we woke up right after a hook-up," someone said. It was a blonde woman with a dark tan, in a pale pink night gown. "We hooked up in Red Brick and woke up." Her name was Emiri Fukugami, and she was a lesbian. She believed that love is universal, encompassing all genders and whatnot. "Strange, isn't it?" Emiri missed her girlfriend ever since she was in New York taking up her post-graduate studies. "Funny, I didn't miss it! Maybe I did, but I must've been unaware. And then there was the Conflict, which made me come all the way over here back to the great place of Kanagawa." I'm not saying the lesbian sex was uneccesary because I have anything against lesbians, mind. It's because this is Emiri, and her sole character trait is apparently that she is a lesbian. There is nothing else we as an audience get to know about her other than the fact she likes girls.

"Funny, right?" Another woman said, of naturally curly brown and pale, but rosy skin. "You were that concerned, huh? That's actually very nice of you to come by." She was Juuri Fujisaku, fellow trend-setter, girlfriend of Emiri and administrator for Hubspace. "I'll be in the bath, I have to go to work. But you wanna continue this conversation over coffee when I get back?" Emiri nodded, with a big smile on her face. "Love you as much as the b-word!" She blew a kiss towards Juuri, who winked before she started her shower. "We both are, right? Hahahaah!" Hot water sprinkled all over Juuri. She put her palm on the wall and started to think. Am I really cut out to be both Takeo's secretary and a member of the Conflict on both sides? As she shampooed, she said: "Its almost weird how I can be a mole for either side. Someone who spies on an enemy group by joining it, almost like Cherry from that gang novel." But then, it seems to be pretty strange how she can keep mum whenever she's with Yumegorosu. Is Juuri that secretive? "I was a tester, so it was inevitable I had to keep secrets." Juuri thought aloud. "Juurin? You done?" Emiri asked. "Almost," said Juuri, sighing as she lost her train of thought. This is Juuri, and she's the other lesbian. Unlike Emiri she's actually been developed as a character though, she's a mole in the conflict, a former beta tester, the medium for whatsherface from the past. She's actually about as interesting as a character in this story can get. She's here to do things, not just to be a lesbian.

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It became a Monday, and students in Hikariyama Academy were having their recess period. "So these are motivations from the people who joined the Org?" Asked a tall, brown statuesque young man. "Wow, some seem shallow, but when you think of it..." And then there was the fact that some were stubbornly idealistic, or entrenched in cynicism. The man was Shouhei Tomogawa, who loved basketball, skateboarding and believed that humans were good and just didn't realize their potential, all due to procrastination or apathy. "They can be pretty believable if you look at the details." Shouhei looked at each document he held, encased in a folder. "Okay, we have revenge, curiosity, grievance, and drafting as our big four." Said a much shorter, paler and darker haired boy. "Weird. A slider. I thought alternate universes never existed!" Said Hichou, a man of cynicism, math and running. "They may, but is there enough proof to support its existence?" Hichou was also someone who was very rational: his stern yet gentle stare looks for proof, yet it encourages facts to come out. "And can they really be divergences in history?" There was one member of the Org who was from another dimension all due to a certain game. Hichou and Shouhei are the former leaders of both sides of the conflict. I think the Org is supposed to be the combination of the Dogs and the Hollows. This being an ESL story, none of this exposition is understandable or helpful in any way.

But that was just one member of the Org. Many others created it to rise up against a game called, Hubspace, which would cause a drop in the workforce, a decline in health, and possibly the decay of the environment-generally, the death of civilization. Strangely, some are also drafted into the war for fun, and some used it as a vehicle for revenge. Like having your thesis leaked, or your boyfriend mysteriously killed due to the game. As Hichou and Shouhei were examining these reasons, a boy and girl younger than both of them came to their area. "HAY GUISE!" Shouted a boy of 12, slightly round and pudgy. "What're you guys examining those documents for, anyway?" His name was Tsugumu Minagawa, an avid writer who chose to use a recently-quelled conflict as a subject. He was also apathetic on idealism and cynicism-the sides of the recent war. "Nothing really." Shouhei gave Tsugumu a headpat. "Just Conflict stuff." But then a girl who looked much sleeker, and a lot like Tsugumu nudged him. It was his twin sister, Tsukiyo. "What're YOU doing here, anyway?" Asked Hichou. "It's almost 10!" "Oh, just getting to class. We do know that the lecture room is really your homeroom." Tsukiyo sighed, putting her palm on her forehead. "What's your next one? And why have you been clamming up about the Conflict, huh?" If Tsugumu were to write a book, he would've put Shouhei and Hichou out of focus in favor of other characters due to this. "Aniki's right, Nee-chan!" Tsugumu pat his sister's shoulder. "It IS planned!" Tsugumu being a writer and a Troper, saw it coming. Shouhei and Hichou were shocked, and something really hit them about the Conflict. I guess I like the fact that even though he's supposed to be a representation of EPIC tsugumu is still described as "pudgy". He's still a worthless character though. Being a troper, I guess he has the power to see plot twists before they happen. Truly the most useful power of all when your life is a rip-off of an anime.

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"Okay, fine." Shouhei said. Him being an idealist led him to tell the truth, as he believed in honesty. "The Conflict was planned without others knowing." Hichou stepped forward, even though he didn't want to. "It was a succession of events that led us to forming the Org." But Hichou and Shouhei stopped at that, and left the room. "Strange, how did Yuuichi get to them?" Hichou asked. "Do they share accounts?" Shouhei thought that the twins looked at the Conflict's so-called final battle. "But then again, they're right. Its what Tropers call a Xanatos Gambit." "You wanna continue and add to it?" Hichou knew what to do. "It'll bring Tsugumu to Mind Screw. A bad anime where people talk in tropes because tropers are cool.

Later that Wednesday, two kids were fighting in an already bleak and ending world. "Pierce the heavens!" One, vibrant robot piloted by one kid was armed with a giant drill blade. "CRIMSON SPIRALING LOTUUUUUS!" The robot was Heavenly Digger SpinTiger piloted by Kinji Choutobi, a fan of drills and Super Robot anime series. "Calling your attacks places emphasis," said Kinji, "but not on hollow and shallow motivations!" The robot seemed like its torso wore one giant pair of sunglasses, while its head was a deep crimson, each arm ready to turn into two golden drills. "Heheheeh! This is what happens when a TTGL fan plays Hubspace," said Kinji. "Don't run away, don't run away!" Another robot, of white, silver, blue and gold was armed with a symbolic lance that was strong enough to evade the drills. "Sync rate, set!" The robot, known as Aluabath-000 wielded a sickle sword reminiscent of one wielded by a biblical character. It was piloted by Ginrou Asagizawa, who loved anime full of symbolisms, cynicism and Real Robots. "I changed it, Kinji." Ginrou used to wield a sword that could slay horses, but changed it in favor of a reflection of him. "Besides, its not just a divorce. The fight they had convinced me!" Ginrou started to talk about the fight his mother and father had as soon as the latter had a longtime affair. When Ginrou was younger, his father was actually deeply devoted to his mom-but then, she never knew what really went on. Years the birth of their son, dad got into an accident that cost his "family jewels." "You know, Dad just wanted sex from someone who can appreciate no balls," Ginrou explained. "But still wanted to support our family and whatnot. Besides! I'm only in this because I need to be. Wants are just what people prefer to do." "So your mom was testy-conscious, huh?" Fucking don't try and write puns if you can't write English properly. This chapter is pretty worthless, Kinji likes TTGL, Ginrou likes Evangelion. Ginrou's dad lost his testicles.

It was an early afternoon in Yokohama, the salty breeze slightly tugging at you. "Say, Nanako," said a stubbled man, "wanna go out tonight?" He was having lunch while looking at a nearby seaport in Yokohama, where this Conflict was set. Rukao Minami was calling his girlfriend, but he decided to save whatever was important for later. "If you want, I can take you to that French-Japanese fusion restaurant we both like." Rukao chuckled as he remembered the times he ate there. "The real world is calling, and I'd

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like to show you my future book, and my magnum opus." That restaurant made Rukao think of reality and how much he missed it. "Good! I'm free tonight." A woman put on her glasses. "Let me know if you want specs or shades, okay? 8PM! I like late dinners. Bye!" Her name was Nanako Shichijima, and she started to have feelings for Rukao, and how much she wanted to bring him back to the real world after his hikikomori state. Before Rukao met Nanako, he would stay in his room all night playing Hubspace. "Maybe that literature project of his may help put some order in his life," Nanako said. "And if I come in, I hope he's okay with what I propose." Rukao never knew what Nanako hinted at. "I hope there's something you can say," Rukao texted a message to Nanako. Meanwhile the power of love has brought these two former rivals together and has even dragged Rukao out of his bedroom. But we don't get to focus on these two because the author far prefers...

It was 8PM, and in a French-Japanese fusion restaurant sat two couples. "So, how was work?" Emiri asked. "I heard Karyu called. Is everything okay?" She knew about Yukari's ventures as a reporter. "If only I hadn't had that meeting, I would've leaked EVERYTHING to her." Juuri said. "Over coffee. The first interview we had was too formal!" She remembered how Yukari wrote an article called, Hubspace-The End Of The Worldin One CD and how she asked Juuri to be interviewed. "Heheh, I remember that article." Emiri took a bite out of her canard-age, juicy, crispy while seemingly light on the skin. "It was pretty wordy." "Speaking of wordy," Juuri pointed at another couple with her nose, "look at those two! How can they not stop talking?" Emiri sighed, looking at the stubbled, bespectacled man who wore a brown jacket and a polo with the girl who wore a blue qipao with pants in front of him. "They're in love, Juuri." Emiri hinted at their own relationship. "Notice anything similar?" Juuri blinked with shock. "We haven't had anything much to talk about, Emi!" Juuri remembered that all she could think of was the Conflict. "I'm still worried about work and Hubspace driving us apart..." "You know how to make time?" Emiri asked. "They haven't finished overlooking my application yet so if you want, after work we can..." Juuri knew what Emiri would say. "No. No more espionage. Or anything like that." She said, "And I think we plegded to do that until after the Conflict when we can have a reunion mission." Last night's hook-up brought memories that were a little iffy, seeing as Juuri and Emiri did it in a bathroom stall. And this time, it would probably the last time they do that in public. "Haven't we done that before?" Emiri said. "You made a move on me." "Emiri," Juuri didn't want to start a scene, "please, not now! We should be eating. And my appetite-" Juuri knew Emiri would be a bit too clingy. "Juuri, please!" Emiri knew what to say, due to her strong feelings she developed during Middle School, and her crush on Juuri. "You know I can't be without you for a week! This mission lasts 4 whole months, and we have to see each other!" Juuri sighed, knowing that this would happen. She thought that the recent hook-up would be the last time she saw Emiri due to work, and especially a third wheel. "I can't believe this happened." Emiri said. "I'm sorry if ever I was clingy, but still!" Emiri

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missed Juuri while she was in New York. Her place in the Conflict made Emiri feel very concerned. "You didn't have to come here, Emiri." Juuri already knew about her girlfriend's motive for joining the Conflict. "I didn't want you to feel that concerned due to the Conflict!" Both girls finished their wine, and then Emiri knew what she would say. She and Juuri were together since high school! "Girl, back then you were less clingier than before. Was it New York and masters?" NO COUPLE SCENE CAN HAPPEN UNLESS IT'S JUURI AND EMIRI. LUCKILY THEY HAVE A DATE IN THE SAME PLACE SO WE CAN FOCUS ON THEM! "Emimi, I already feel the need to ask you this right now. If you know what it is, then... Do you remember love?" I never mentioned it in book 1 but pretty much every chapter ends like this. The chapter title is trown into conversation regardless of whether or not it makes sense. This is probably supposed to be dramatic irony or some shit but it doesn't flow so the real word for it is "shit".

Deadly Chlorine I know that KIKEN is supposed to be more interesting than that Anime club story thing, but I could get through that at least. KIKEN is just so phenomenally unreadable. I cannot recognise the majority of the characters, and my eyes just eventually slide off the story. How does someone write such a
The accumulated filth of all the dog poop and hairballs will foam up about their waists and all the catladies and dog crazies will look up and shout "Save us!" ... and I'll look down and whisper "No.

boring action story I don't get this I think it's the overuse of ~anime~ terms, or maybe yeah it's just the incredibly shitty writing.

TurnipFritter It's not. Every chapter of the first book was just adding more characters who sit around discussing what they've learned in their investigations of Hubspace and The Conflict. It's just a non-stop rehashing of information we've already heard.
Everyday Italian

From reading it, the key problem with KIKEN from my point of view (other than it being barely readable ESL anime), is that there's way too many characters, most of whom seem to do very little at all. This could probably work if the story focused on the crystal dogs and everyone else was working in the background, popping up every now and again to talk about something useful they did. Instead though the narrative jumps around focusing on all these minor characters, and as I said most of them have very little input or worth in the story other than to fight the odd battle.

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If you look Star Wars for instance, you'll see that there's a main body of characters who are clearly protagonists (Luke, Han, Leia), and everyone else is a support character. They may do things in the background but the focus of the story is on these three characters and how they move through the space war. Even if we look at the Lord of the Rings books, there's an assload of characters in them, but the two main focuses are Aragorn and Frodo/Sam, they lead their narratives and everyone else (including the other members of the fellowship, even including Gandalf), is there to support these narratives. While we may be shown other things from time to time (Gandalf's meeting with Sauruman), these are shown through "flashbacks" when the relevant character meets up with the main body of characters. The story doesn't just whip us away at a random point to show us what Bilbo's doing. Someone more book-savvy could go into detail than me (it's been years since I read Lord of the Rings), but I do feel that that's a problem. Yeah Bro I was going to go and read the earlier chapters of KIKEN again so I'd know who anyone was (Because they all blend together into a single amorphous blob devoid of character) but then I started reading this entry of KIKEN and my eyes glazed over. I swear, I can't think of a single other thing that I've read that has such an ability to prevent someone from reading it.

Civil Twilight

It's really quite an accomplishment in that respect. I don't think I've been able to actually read more than two sentences of it at a time.

Vincent Van Goatse

I honestly tried reading all the excerpts from KIKEN: MONONGAHELAYOWAYYOHOMVARRAY you posted but my eyes started bleeding a few lines in.
On his return to Candlestick Alexander Smithius ordered the Buccaneers to be brought forth and crucified; the punishment he had often threatened them with whilst he was in their hands, and they little dreamt he was in earnest.

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Chapter Two: I Still Love You (Because I Am a Creepy Fuck)

But can that love become just an enhanced and embellished friendship? "Love is friendship set to music." But there are in fact, many forms of love-love towards spouses, towards family, and even towards friends. The love can come into the form of many things, such as compassion, support and bonding. But sometimes, people may love themselves too much in the form of narcissism and arrogance, where one has an unhealthy obsession with his or herself. All other bonds of love are cut off, and many people are put off by how much the narcissist cares only about himself. Strange, no? That person just lives in isolation. And yet people try to bring him back to the real world. KIKEN: MONOWOHAKAISURUHANASHI

At this point I just don't care about these things. Some shit to do with self-love or whatever. I guess tropers are experts at that. Also, before I go any further, this and book 1 were published in like 2009, and neither of them had gotten any reviews until I started doing these posts. I may very well be the first person who isn't the author to go through and read the whole thing. That terrifies me.

Chapter 2: I Still Love You It was 3PM, on a Saturday. People were doing whatever they wanted because it was the weekend-when there was more free time than normal. Two people of about the same age were walking towards a diner, and were planning on going out, as friends. One was holding the other's hand, with his smirk and nearly-cracking voice making the other happy. That other person was bespectacled-she kept reading in the dark, as the girl loved information. Both people knew a lot-but they had their weaknesses, which hindered part of their learning skills. "So Mila, what makes you cry," asked a boy who seemed to be from the future, "a lack of education for the people, a hard time supporting an argument or all of the above?" The boy's name was Dylan Waters, 13 years old. He was a 7th Grader in Hikariyama who just happened to know many things for his age. "For me, I have a hard time analyzing." Said Dylan, who can only state facts and ask very good questions. "I need to summarize everything in order to read between the lines." His just-a-friend Mila Jonessy walked beside Dylan, holding his hand. "Maybe both," said Mila, "and I feel scared whenever having to support something." Mila, vision-blurred. Strangely, she learns to live life from other perspective with the use of writing and reading. "I have a slight problem with handwriting too, you know!" Dylan replied, alluding to the times whenever Mila wrote as he worked with her. "Oh God, is that Kakeru and Dera-nii?" Mila pointed out to two friends they both went with. "And who the f- is that girl?" Dylan started to explain. "Her name's Aria, the Conflict Aria. Her

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school and my old school has quite a bond." So one of the kids from the future has picked up this chick named Mila and is out on a not-date with her, and his idea of good conversation is this pseudo-philosophical crap all the characters seem to regurgitate at any given opportunity.

"You know," Mila said as soon as they entered the dessert diner, "I have a feeling we still quite don't know each other-as in, the Conflict." She noticed that her and Dylan had quite in common, but Mila wanted to really notice him. "You know, whenever we're in school," Dylan said, "we work together quite well!" Dylan was waiting for 2 bacon cheeseburgers and fries, while Mila was waiting for 2 grilled chicken panino to talk overin English. "Eyy, Dera-nii!" Dylan yelled from one area. "Who's that girl?" Mila talked loudly, but her tone was softer than Dylan's. "Ello to you too, Dylan!" Derani rubbed Dylan's head, the latter hugging him in return. "And what brings you here today?" Dylan explained that Mila were not on a date, yet they went out as friends. "Heheh. Weird that you two are sitting across each other." Derani snarked-meaning pointed out some sort of weird flaw or occurrence. "Fine by me!" Mila said. "Wait, why are you holding that girl's hand, hmm?" She retaliated and Dylan laughed for a while. "Er-I dunno!" Derani immediately let go of someone's hand. "This is, A-Aria Tsubasajima. She's from St.-" "Florence Academy." said Aria. "Don't worry Deradera, I got this." Her minty eyes and light brown hair shone under the light, and she was petite, a head's height shy of Derani. "Heey, Dy-kun!" Aria immediately took notice of an old friend. "So how's Hikaryama?" Dylan used to go to Kaneyama Boys Academy, and he was a little less boyish than all of the other guys there. "Fine, actually!" Dylan said. "Many of the guys back in Kaneyama were a little too boyish, and they didn't really like me much. And yes, I really am a slider." Dylan waved, seeing as Aria tugged at Derani's arm. "Order's there. Don't want it to get cold." Dylan said. "Catch yahs!" So basically the point of this chapter is the developing relationships of MMO addicts. I don't really want to comment on how inane this is (so inane) How the fuck does a 13 year old kid eat 2 bacon cheeseburgers? Fucking fatass future kids.

But then it became a Monday, and then it was back to work. "So Nee-chan, don't you think that's awesome?" Tsugumu asked his twin sister, "Putting up schools in rural Pakistan?" He liked the fact that a man was able to overcome certain hardships to help achieve a longtime dream of uneducated people. "Yeah, it is! Even for a mountain climber." Tsugumu's twin, Tsukiyo answered. "But still, if only he climed K2Is that Shouhei and Hichou-sempai? Are those documents?" Tsugumu felt intrigued. Idealists and cynics just fought over how they'd change the world! Have those two people really planned that Conflict? And then, they entered. "HAY GUISE!" Tsugumu yelled. "What're you guys examining those documents for, anyway?" Tsugmu knew they were weird. "Nothing really." Shouhei gave Tsugumu a headpat. "Just Conflict stuff." Tsukiyo peered at them, while a boy named Hichou Amagami grabbed them away from her. "What're YOU doing here,

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anyway?" Asked Hichou. "It's almost 10!" Hichou looked a little upset. "Oh, just getting to class. We do know that the lecture room is really your homeroom." Tsukiyo sighed, facepalming about the boys' behavior. Wait, didn't they stop the conflict already? Why are they still planning a conflict? All I know is that the creepy incest twins already seem to have a bigger role this book and I don't like it. Also Tsugumu is really fucking annoying, no wonder he only has 3 friends, one of which is his twin sister, if he goes yelling HEY GUISE everytime he sees someone. He's the worst character.

"What's your next one? And why have you been clamming up about the Conflict, huh?" Tsugumu had a ton of questions to ask. "Aniki's right, Nee-chan!" Tsugumu pat his sister's shoulder. "It IS planned!" Tsugumu was a kid who knew a lot of tropes and occurences in literature for his age. "Okay, fine." Shouhei was an honest person who believed in the good, the truth and the beautiful. "The Conflict was planned without others knowing." Skeptical about the three, Hichou decided to speak the truth too. "It was a succession of events that led us to forming the Org." And then they left, knowing that they had 5 minutes left for recess. "Doesn't it seem weird, Tsuu-kun?" Tsukiyo asked Tsugumu, worried about what will happen next. "I have a feeling that their plan is still continuing." Tsugumu also felt the same. What will the Dogs do about this, as well as what will Yumegorosu Corp. do? "Remember, this has only been one month. According to a news article about a Hubspace-centric death," Tsukiyo said, but Tsugumu decided to continue: "December 21, 2012 is a pivotal date! I've already subscribed to O N E M U R I about this. Every combination of what will happen in Hubspace ends there, I think." "Hopefully, no one will drink the Flavor Aid."

what flavour aid? Also it comes as no suprise that the worst character (Tsugumu) is also a Troper. So yeah, what WILL the dogs (3 kids, only one of whom is useful) do about this?

It was a conference room, and everyone was to discuss some sort of game. "Okay, this is the 2nd Hubspace Administrative Meeting." Said a man of a black suit, and blue tie. "We have been receiving reports that there is an atrocity amongst the players." His name is Takeo, a 29-year old CEO of Yumegorosu Corporation after the events of a serious murder that pushed Takeo to a higher position. "These four guilds, or parties are known as the Crystal Dogs, Brass Kites, Tin Herons and the Sleepy Hollows." Takeo explained what recently went on, during the last few weeks of September 2012. "They have planned a Conflict which have reportedly,"

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"Seeked an amount of attention towards us. And they got it." So here's the "smug" evil business guy. The only thing I like about this is the fact that this supposedly hugely successful MMO only has 4 guilds of note, two of which have less than 5 people. Are they really that much threat in a world where you can get away with selling a game that puts kids in comas?

"Boume-kaichou," said Juuri, "either we should stop this and reveal every one of those people, or they bring us down if ever they manage to infiltrate GM territories." Takeo looked attentively at the woman who he tried to pursue, but Juuri never failed to play hard to get. I don't want to slip anything out. I'll lose this job if I do! She thought, but her cellphone rang. Perfect timing. "Kaichou, you don't mind if I answer a call?" Juuri winked, Takeo's borderline chestnut hair and brown eyes shining with a crush. "Y-Yes. Go ahead, Juuri!" He said, grinning politely at her. Juuri immediately went to the bathroom, hoping that no one would hear her. It was her reporter friend, Yukari Hongaku, and Juuri knew that she knew about the Conflict. "Hello, Karyu? I'm in a meeting." Juuri answered her cellphone. "Its gotta be important." Juuri knew that Yukari would have to grill her about her membership, and she knew that she must not leak a word of it. "Are you a member of the Conflict?" Asked Yukari, but Juuri decided to add some of her favorite awkward silence into the conversation. "Are you involved in the Conflict in anyway? Hello? Hello!" Then she disconnected the journalist. Juuri ran all the way to the conference room, and she just came up with a very big statement. "Boume-kaichou!" She yelled. "The media has been onto us since the game's release. They've been leeching on even further on into the Conflict. What should we do?" Of course the media's been onto you YOUR GAME IS ADVERTISED AS ENDING THE WORLD AND IT PUTS KIDS IN COMAS. I'm beating a dead horse as to how retarded this whole premise is. There's no shadowy conspiracy, the game literally nearly kills you. Also how are any of these 4 clans going to infiltrate GM territories, don't GMs have a ban button?

But a battle continued in a destroyed city as the Conflict went on. "So your Mom's testy-conscious, huh?" Asked Kinji Choutobi, ramming a drill into the groin of another robot. "Ugh, phallic symbols again!" Ginrou Asagizawa replied, being a Freudian, meant that he knew that every human had sex on his or her mind, in one way of saying it, or another. He slashed his sickle blade into Kinji's SpinTiger, and Aluabath's pilot leapt down from the cockpit. Both were armed with miniature, highly sought-after and altogether awesome weapons of their robot mecha. One giant drill, as big as Kinji himself, and a long sickle blade for Ginrou. "Well, she did want two more kids. And she was pretty chaste." Ginrou said, trying to shy away the Mind Screw of his motive for joining the Conflict. "Kids was a factor on whether or not she wanted to, you know. And she was against contraceptives. Skeptic." CLING! Their blades hit each other. Ginrou and Kinji walked a few feet away from each other and walked in directions that seemed to draw a circle. "And your dad didn't have the balls to have it?" Kinji joked, but he knew when to stop. He wanted people to be

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happy. "Your mom didn't marry your dad..."

This is dumb they're still fighting why does this stupid subplot exist other than ANIME . This is literally a subplot about two kids fighting because one kid is angry that his parents are splitting up because his dad lost his balls so he put the other kid in a coma by registering him for a game and Also I thought Ginrou was supposed to be the sceptic?

"Just because he had balls. He was more. Why didn'tcha notice that?" "He wanted to have sex AND a stable marriage!" Ginrou said. "Humans, nowadays, can't achieve whatever they want. Do you think you'll be able to engineer a mecha someday? No." Ginrou knows the impossible. He knows that dreams are impossible. He's a cynic! He wants things practical! But desires are just desires. "Its the future, Ginrou." Kinji said. "Even if you look at what happens to the dreams of other people, and whether or not they've been achieved, no one will ever know what happens next. I may as well just stay to see what happens much later." "I guess what you did to me can propel us to the girl we've been waiting for..."

Also I guess they're both in love with the same girl although it's not really come up at all.

A miko died, with people not believing in her. "Sigh," The ghost of the miko went across a wall. "Why is it that people want to do whatever they want? If only people knew what would happen to what they didn't care about, I bet they'd be changing it right now." Her name was Kurumi Souchou, and she died trying to convince many people who just kept partying about what would happen to the world if they kept dancing. The Eejyanaika movement of the Meiji Era was then put to a halt, but people didn't believe her. "At least people are beginning to change." But for Kurumi, that wasn't enough. She needed change. "Why is there a Conflict?" Emiri was there were Kurumi was. But she couldn't hear her. "Did Juuri have to get drawn into it?" She knew her girlfriend was a tester-turned-admin for Hubspace. "Its because people are getting more aware of what will happen to their world if this sort of technology takes over," Kurumi said, trying to talk to Emiri. The latter shook her head in shock. "Who the hell-!" Emri asked out loud, in the middle of 109, Shibuya's big mall. She ran to the bathroom. Kurumi knew what went with her. Juuri? Kurumi knew her! She in fact, possessed her! "What the hell are you?" Emiri asked. "Are you that ghost that Juuri told me about?" Kurumi nodded, and finally appeared to Emiri. She was pale, fair-haired, and she looked very sad. "No one will ever believe you," Kurumi alluded to where she came from, "but yes. I am a ghost if you plan to talk of my spirit's existence." Emiri, contrasting Kurumi due to her tan and golden hair felt that she wanted to tell her something. "You may feel attached to Juuri just because of this." Kurumi knew that Emiri felt too clingy. "I knew you somehow flew-due to your concern for her!"

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"But people deserve to be alone. You wanted to use this Conflict as a way to experience being yourself. Without Juuri. So why aren't you? You seem so attached to her. Please. Stay away from her for a while." Emiri meets Kurumi and nothing interesting happens. Emiri just tells Kurumi to fuck off and stop possesing her girlfriend. Also there's no time travelling involved it turns out, she's just literally a ghost who came to the future to ???

That night, people were eating out at a Japanese-French fusion restaurant. "So, Nanako," asked former hikikomori Rukao Minami, with his glasses starting to fall off the bridge of his nose. "Whyja have to call me over to such a place?" He was with a friend, Nanako Shichijima, who felt much closer to him than ever before. "Yes, the Conflict drew us much closer, but were you thinking of starting a relationship!" Nanako started to blush. "WellI um" She hid her true feelings. "Ohh, that's right! I wanted to try this restaurant, and I thought I had to bring a companion to make the experience have more awesome!" She stood up too. Of course, everyone ended up looking at her. To add up, neither of their mouths closed while eating. They talked to no end, but it had some meaningmost of it was about Hubspace. "'Kay, seriously! Is PK'ing gonna be the next leading cause of comas?" Rukao remembered when he was killed by another player outside the PvP Area, and he slipped into a coma, for five days. "You can do that, but you'll have to pay for twice as much rare items per week. That's why I avoided it." Both of them started laughing. "Good thing the Dogs enveloped us." Nanako said. "We ARE trying to prevent more comas, right?" Jesus christ comas are fucking casual as shit in this world. "Oh yeah I lost in a PvP so I went into a coma for 5 days", no big deal. This here just confirms that losing a PvP makes you go into a coma EXCEPT THAT'S NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO ANYONE. Every PvP so far has just had a guy lose then pop up the next day.

"Well, there may be incidents when one of the players has a girlfriend and she slips into a coma." Rukao said. "And the boyfriend is a yandere and causes a massacre in Hubspace." Nanako raised both eyebrows in shock. "Rukao, that's just a hypothetical situation!" She started fuming. "Are you turning paranoid again? If you do, then I may just cut off all contact towards you!" Nanako had a gesture that had 'I'm-such-asmartass', tone in her crossed hands, but Nanako blushed. "I have a feeling this is a minor aspect of the corrupt authority of Yumegorosu." And she sighed. "That it turns people paranoid, not just into hikikomori?" Rukao said. "I get the feeling he was the one who told you to leak your thesis..." And then came silence. "Okay, what the hell was that?" Nanako asked, being much less haughty than she was just now. "That was a lesbian storming out of here after getting into a fight with her girlfriend." Rukao answered, but Nanako was still wondering what "Oh, and she used a Macross song title to bring the point home, I think." But Nanako still wondered what her dorm-

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floormate wanted to say. "How did you know?" So wait, if you lose a PvP your partner may go into a coma? Given what the story has explained about how all this coma shit works I don't know how that's even possible. Fuck trying to understand any of this it's just being pulled out of EPIC's arse.

"Well they did talk about their hook-up-" Rukao tried to explain, but Nanako held her finger up and stopped him abruptly. "How did you know that the guy who leaked my thesis was really someone from Yumegorosu." Rukao looked pale. How did he know? He couldn't tell her, can he? He actually witnessed Nanako being bullied into it-it was school, you know! "I just get that feeling, okay? Look, if we want to get back at that person, how do we do it?" Nanako sighed, because she already knew what to do. "Yeah, yeah, find the root of the problem. I know!" "Good! But what we really need is some more info." Rukao said. "Its not like he gave his name, or anything." Nanako nodded, because she knew that if criminals were to be criminals, then they shouldn't give it away. "Well, he was blonde. Really Caucasianlooking, but he was slightly tan." Rukao knew what to ask next. He knew the typical wardrobe and location of any Corrupt Corporate Executive. "He was wearing a suit at the time, right? Was he near an office building?" Nanako put her hand up. "Wait-don't tell me we're going to interrogate him! C'mon, Rukasu..." "I thought we were just trying to get back at him. Not get anything out of the guy. Come out of Troperville, and attempted Magnificent Bastardry... because I still love you." And of course, the shoehorned in chapter title because EPIC can't write. Also I like how the CEO of Yumegorosu goes around leaking hikikomori thesises like it ain't no thang. tl;dr version:

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Chapter Three: EPIC Failed to Assign a Title for Chapter Three

Anyway, it's time to finish a terrible saga so that we never have to speak of it again and I can move to something more interesting like watching the grass grow.

What is 'true' co-operation? Co-operation is what can be called a phenomenon where everyone in a group of people has no choice but to help and support each other in anyway they can. Sadly, some may differ in beliefs, cultures or general ways of life, which means that co-operation may involve some sort of compromising to do. Also, to 'truly' co-operate, everyone in the group should have an equal share of work. But everyone has different talents, weaknesses and other capabilities. Therefore, the leader must keep ones skills in mind whenever giving work to various people working alongside him. 'Fake' co-operation, however, is manipulative and is such a different paragraph. KIKEN: MONOWOHAKAISURUHANASHI BEEP BOOP CO-OPERATION MAY BE DEFINED AS... This is the worst of these chapter opening monologues yet.

"You know, its weird that this is an automatic factory," said a boy of around fifteen. He was wearing a blue longcoat, and some sort of machine on his right hand. He was slightly tan, with long brown hair and a beanie. "'Cause there doesn't seem to be any employees." Well, he was right. The car factory he was in was actually deserted. "Well, I can't believe Hubspace has a Snagger! You sure DouSE competes with Yumegorosu?" He was with three others who were his party members in Hubspace. "Hollows, let's go~!" All four of them ran towards the factory, which was rusty, barren and abandoned. He was Yuuichi Minagawa, and he is the leader of a band called, the Sleepy Hollow that also acts as a reconnaissance unit for Derani, Kakeru and Kogawa-the Crystal Dogs. He is an older brother to two twins and a little girl and puts his family first. "Okay, I'll need all your armor for this one." Yuuichi was the main guitarist, and he also headed the Hollow's Hubspace party. "Thanks, guys! I'll have to equip now. CHOURYOKU HENKA!" Then Yuuichi, or Aniki as people call him, was to do a transformation sequence to show off his premium status on Hubspace, and equip everything in no time. "Seriously, Yuui, what the hell?" Said his friend, Amaki. "Are you trying to pull off a Rider here?" "How otaku are you, exactly?" Said his other friend, a girl named Mika. "That's too ridiculous!" "Yuu-pon," His girlfriend, Fujiko, commented. "Are you sure you wanna do this? I really need to tell you something, and its urgent. Besides, this is quite pretentious already." Fujiko really loved Yuuichi, and Yuuichi loved her too. This lasted all the way from sixth grade, so she wasn't so sure whether she should say it or not. She knew the news would shock her boyfriend, and it might even tear their relationship apart. WAY apart. "You see, Yuuichi, I'm, well..." She shrugged it off. "Oh never mind, carry on with your stupid henshin." Did she even know about whether or not what she'd say is true?

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"Chouryoku Tobiou, Jumper! Transformation, complete!" Uggggggggh this is fucking painful. I'd forgotten how painful this prose was. I'm glad that japanese people never read this because this is a serious case for never making any anime again. Jesus fuck this whole block is just "They are in game, conducting a raid, then Yuuichi does a transformation because he's a premium member and can totally do that. Everyone around him calls him a huge nerd, even his girlfriend" I'm not sure if this is better or worse than Tom's shit.

"Takeo Boumu, sexual harassment charges." Typed in a borderline-ganguro midtwenties girl. "Human Resources having no qualms against this, no plans of protest or mediation?" "Seriously, what is he trying to do? Screw the rules, I have money? Pfah." Someone's made sexual harrasment charges against the evil boss guy. The only point of this bit is the reference I guess because we cut straight to...

In this scene, we cut to Kogawa having lunch with KD in a French restaurant in Shibuya. "Yes, Kogawa here-ahh, Fukugami-san!" Kogawa had a ton of respect for elders. "Kogachan, do you have any evidence of an instant death code?" Emiri was planning to sue Takeo not just for harassment, but for murder. "Guess the file is only read-only if you save it in the same location." Kogawa nodded. "I was able to get all NINE of the possible outcomes of Hubspace's hypnosis marketing. One of which included death." Emiri knew that this'll bring Takeo for the murderer and chauvinist he is! "Good! Email them to me, okay? All nine, if possible. Thanks!" Wait why is Takeo a chauvanist? We've seen him in all of two occasions, and in both of those he's been bland and the author's just mentioned that he has a thing for Juuri. You'd think that this being the main villain of the story the author would actually show us sexually harassing someone as opposed to just informing us about it. Whatever, I don't claim to understand this shit at all. Also there's more confirmation that the game should be able to straight up kill you (but it never does and they still keep playing it).

"Well, you're welcome! Bye!" Kogawa hung up. "I have good news and good joy." Derani was listening attentively. He knew she was onto something. Kakeru also wanted to know about what Kogawa was to say. "Something tells me we're going to press charges against Boumu, are we?" Derani said. "Sexual harassment has become too much of a problem in the workplace. We being in Japan, it'll take him less than a year in jail time." Kogawa face-palmed. "You're too cynical, Deradera! At least bring him to shame somehow. Besides, it isn't just sexual harassment." "Wait, but shouldn't we find out WHO is responsible for putting that death code in?"

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Kakeru said. "Remember that if we find the root of the problem, we'll be able to shut the guy down!" Kogawa face-palmed once more. "Kakerun, you're being too idealistic. I have a feeling the company will be shut down along with him, if not going against their leader and going through some sort of slump." Kakeru stood up, and pointed his finger to the sky"But why don't we have Juuri-neesan become the new CEO? She's had experience administrating a company before, right?" But see, Juuri was but a secretary-the good news is, she was able to lead several times in the past "Well why don't we ask the Hollows, then?" So they don't even know that it's him behind the whole thing, they just want him arrested so that his company'll be shut down and they can take over. I'm starting to think that Takeo is the real hero of this story.

"Kurumi, what the hell just happened?" Dylan asked. "Why did you have to talk to me at such a time? You knew I was doing an essay." Kurumi appeared to Dylan too early. She was going to talk to someone about lying and whatnot, but she didn't want to seem like the liar herself. "You've lied before, r-right? Dy-kun?" Kurumi asked him, but sounded very hesitant. "I have a feeling someone will lie to to create a turning point for the Conflict. It may involve death, and possibly a child, so innocent it may die as soon as its born." Kurumi was visibly shocked. "Rumina, I hope you know what an abortion is." Dylan knew that Kurumi may have been from an era that never even knew about abortion. "This may actually shock you." Kurumi nodded, prepared for what was to come to her. "I'm no saint, yet I am going to be completely clear with you on this one." Kurumi's eyes widened with shock, and she gulped. "In this decade, people kill babies when they're born because they can't take care of them, or they simply don't want them." And then, Kurumi's eyes became blank. "People kill the future of mankind! Dylan, why...?" And then from Kurumi's mouth, came a scream so audible not just Dylan could hear it. "GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!" ABORTION IS BAD WHY WOULD YOU EVER HAVE ABORTIONS As ever, I have no idea what the purpose of this scene is

"We'll never know. Maybe there is a second coming of the Eejyanaika movement, where everyone becomes a hedonist." Dylan face-palmed, and sighed about how people just did whatever they wanted. "Maybe right now." Kurumi was still frozen with shock. "Postrecession world. Unemployment. Anti-diligence. Recent outbreaks. Abortion." She repeated, the pale brown hair becoming even more faded. "Well, at least there's environmental awareness." But then she started repeating it, as if it were some sort of mantra due to present day-induced madness. "Post-recession world. Unemployment. Anti-diligence. Recent outbreaks. Abortion." "Kurumi, can you stop?" Dylan tried stopping Kurumi. "Post-recession world. Unemployment. Anti-diligence. Recent outbreaks. Abortion." "Kurumi, can you hear me?" He tried making himself more audible. "Post-recession world. Unemployment. Anti-diligence. Recent outbreaks. Abortion."

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"K-Kurumi...? KURUMI! KURUMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!" And the present came to her. Like, on the one hand she's here to stop the hedonist apocalypse, yet we've been told that the apocalypse is gonna be an uprising of MMO nerds. Like, as far as a quick wikipedia search has shown me the ee ja nai ka movement was just about dancing anyway, why is that so bad?

"Well, at least this monster isn't too big." Mika said, since the monster took up half the factory. "4 people can destroy this guy, right?" Mika, dressed in a slightly racy lace top with hot pants and stilettos. She slammed a staff that made her go out with a green frog onto the ground. "Megiddo!" She yelled, waiting for the area to turn into where Armageddon took place. "PvM Area Change!" Mika then changed it into the PvM Area Megiddo, which was a lot like a PvP Area but suited for weekly missions and combat against monsters. "And to think these cards are betas..." "Not now, O Mikami-sama!" Amaki said. He was dressed in black and white, with a black angel wing and a white bat wing. He was armed with a sword that can kill anyone who has whiter hair than him, and looked like he could be his own victim. "Is this some sort of Game Breaker?" Mika threw her staff-halberd Prophete at the ToxicDeathly, the monster in that was four times as big as the factory and it released a liquid that made it stronger. It looked like a combo of phallic symbols gone wrong, a seven headed snake, rusty pipes and death tropes pushed Up To Eleven. Ok sometimes I think this guy is self aware after all.

"It doens't seem to be. You can always look for the monster's stats anytime during battle," said Fujiko. "There they are! This SevenToxicDeathly has an HP of 5490. Weak to moves under the Slash category." Amaki ended up pointing over to the SevenToxicDeathly. "Hey, at least penis cuts don't happen during intercourse." He laughed. "Oh, and its reclining now, so what to do, what to do!" Amaki used his very thick-bladed sword so as to cut along the lines the snake's venom landed on. "Ama-kun, let me tell you something." Yuuichi said. "Why Freudian?" Oh, never mind. I like how we have a specific HP value as though that means anything in this anime universe. "Anyway, it does recover one-eighth of its HP every time it releases that liquid along the cuts." Said Fujiko. "Yuu-kun, at least let me tell you before its-" Yuuichi ran up to her and shielded Fujiko from the liquid. "Snatch Barrier!" He generated a translucent green shield, and it became opaque every time the SevenToxicDeathly hit the team. "Team Protection!" Yuuichi, being a member of the Heavy Snatcher Class ended up using his gunblade to aim at a certain blue core of the SevenToxicDeathly. "Yup guys, the time is now!" Yuuichi nodded over to his team. The "heavy snatcher class", really? I still don't know why they're here anyway.

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"Complaining to the World!"' "WAIT YOU GAISE~!" "Kake-nii?" Amaki said, rushing over to glomp his cloned brother. "Heey, what're you guys doing here?" Red-haired Kakeru was dressed up in a suit of armor that clearly had a dragon's heart for a core. "We know you guys are information fetishists." Kogawa typed in to the chat box. "So we decided to give you more, more, more! " Mika held up her pointer finger. "Not right now, we have a mission to complete!" She waved her staff around, spinning in her wrists like a magical girl's. "We may as well induct you. Yuuichi! I'll initiate these guys! Complaining to the World!" "WAIT! We'll be the ones to induct you." Derani said. Since the Hollows would support whoever would try and quell the Conflict as well as Hubspace's atrocities, this would be easier. Everyone put their fists down on the air, to form a team fist-bump. "Eruption!" Kakeru said. "Thunderbolt!" Derani laid his fist in the air. "Blizzard!" Kogawa's fist was level with her head. "Everyone's Kindness!" Yuuichi yelled. "Wisteria's Origin." Fujiko said. "Heavenly Demons!" Amaki's fist sped to the center of the circle. "Elegant Blades!" Mika did the same. "WE. ARE. THE. ORG!" Everyone had yelled, the monster ready to be defeated by the newly-formed Org. "Crystal Division, Complain to the World!" Kakeru yelled, but Derani and Kogawa looked puzzled. "Wait, why are we doing this?" Derani had to ask. "OHH!" Kogawa knew a trope was in effect. "Kakeru just put the Rule Of Cool into gear!" Derani face-palmed, seeing as role calls were a highly-loved trope in live special effects shows. "Kakeru, TELL me you're a Toku fan." He sighed, keeping this in mind. "Anyway, let's go!" All three of the Dogs jumped in the air. I'm dying, this is terrible, kill me now. Why would you publish this garbage on the internet, who do you really think is going to read it and be all "yup this is totally a cool story". Fuck you EPIC. Fuck you and your creepy insest twin self-insert characters. Fuck you and your weird fixation on your uncle. Fuck you and fuck this shit and fuck all tropers.

"Mecha creation, execute!" Kakeru's armor was then lined with red, rune-esque patterns, and it became engulfed in fire. The armor came off of him and grew, to become a super robot that was at least eight times his size. "Wait, mecha? Derani, you you know what's going on?" Kogawa, even though she was quite Genre Savvy for a person like her, felt the Conflict had suddenly changed direction. "This is MY Complaint to the World, but this requires 2 more people other than me. Derani, you do yours! Kogawa, you too!" Kogawa and Derani gave each other a puzzled look. "GeoScrambler, kemono tanjou!" All three of the Dogs shouted. "But why are we piloting a sentient, armored tiger-wolf-lion hybrid thingy?" Asked Kogawa, who wasn't much a Humongous Mecha person. "Oh, wait, we're in its brain!" Both her and Derani took notice of the pilot chamber's grooved ceiling. "And we're piloting it by..." Derani became more shocked as he built up. "Distributing electrical signals to every part of its nervous

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system, then yes!" Kakeru seemed fit to wear a certain pair of orange glasses. "Now punch with me! On one... two... three!" And punch it did. Now a few whirlwind kicks! As well as transforming some characters can totally just summon giant robots because why the hell not. I've said it before but hubspace really sounds like the worst, most unbalanced MMO ever.

"Finally, now its our turn!" Yuuichi said, continuously slashing at the backbone of the Deathly. "Amaki, throw it now!" Amaki, the group's big guy, was able to throw the snake at least a few feet less than the GeoScrambler's height. "My turn then." Fujiko said, throwing in a few random, ninja-esque hand movement. "Eeeeiasgaspidiruasferncimrune. Vuuoasabutleuel. Raogsypth. Anessetorthe. Information gathering, complete! Ready for volume measurement!" Mika then spun her staff again. "Kadeko! Now, generate a drill for onto your robot-animal-sentient-thing!" "Okay, Complaining to the World!" Fujiko completed. "Spinning Cylindrical Prison!" "Kakeru-senpai, DO NOT BREAK MY STAFF." Mika was quite protective of her only weapon. "Drill, Add ON!" And, the circle that was on Mika's CasterLine soon became a drill that was strong enough to bore four Earths. "LinerDrill, Reformation complete!" Kakeru said. "Okay, pups! A toy version of the drill will appear in our hands!" And it did. The staff was gold and purple, and the drill almost took up most of its space. "Now pull your arms back," Kakeru looked like he was to throw the drill. "Run, run, keep running! Now jump, and spin! COMPLAINING TO THE WORLD!" "The Great Twisting-Twisting Stabber!"

MY DRILL IS STRONG ENOUGH TO BORE EXACTLY 4 EARTHS.

InfiniteJesters "The Great Twisting-Twisting Stabber!"

Does he even realize what he is writing here? You know what, when I was a kid all my stories were this derivative (although written with better English). Everything I wrote for English class was based off whatever I'd read/watched. But that's because I barely cared about it because I hated writing. And what's more, I never posted my story about a spider's adventure to find his wife and at some point there's a pokemon sub-quest and it all reads kinda like a Terry Pratchett novel online. Mostly because the internet wasn't really around back then, and also because I realised that noone would actually care. I hate people who post low-effort shit online then bitch when they get critique. Fucking don't post it then.

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I'm looking at you, Major Tom. Your magnum opus is shit, there's too many words and you have no sense of focus. Rewrite the whole thing if you HAVE to write it. Also use outlines for the love of god.

It was a Tuesday mid-morning in Hikariyama Elementary. "So, you have the Conflict report, right?" Kinji Choutobi was in school, partnered up Kogawa with for a certain project. "CEO of Yumegorosu Corp. denies existence of Conflict?" They were supposed to gather up newspaper clippings for current events and summarize it for the whole class, as well as simplify it. "Why is it that Takeo's been trying to bring it to corporate Discontinuity?" Takeo Boumu, after all, is the CEO. He doesn't want to be brought down by something, and he wants to stay in power somehow. "Is he some sorta Machiavellian?" The conflict is between a bunch of kids who go to this one school. Why would Takeo have to deny it. Why would reporters even care about it?

Kinji, the Heron was glad to have been assigned with Kogawa for a certain reason: but he bottled up that reason ever since Ginrou Asagizawa, former best friend turned cynical enemy of the Kites, tried destroying it. "Well, he is being fearsome to help stay upwards." Kogawa said. "Wait-weren't you gonna tell me something else first?" Kinji felt appalled. Kogawa just asked him the question that pierced his armor. "Well, Ginrou and I broke up as friends, and turns out there was just one reason for it." Kinji said. "He just found out the reason for his parent's separation." "His mother was a promiscuous bitch who loved having sex with two balls on." "And then there was that accident which rendered him unable to walk." "Not just that. Turns out he lost a testicle. Yes, I know. Unnecessary standards." "Didn't she love him in any way? Was she at least supportive of him?" "Nope. Ginrou became a cynical freak who stopped believing in true love and 'the one'." "But how did you manage to stay put after that happened recently?" "I have found the one, Kogawa Nagari. I can't seem to pinpoint it." Kogawa was blushing with intrigue. Could she be a candidate of Kinji's true love? No wonder the two friends fell apart. True love had different meanings for them. One was something that you couldn't pinpoint but knew about its existence, but the other was that it didn't exist and was an excuse for getting wiggy with it! "Why are you looking with intent at me?" Kogawa noticed the stare Kinji had for her. "Wait! Those eyes. Sparkly. Bubbly. Just like champagne. Don't tell me..." It was assertive yet very, very affectionate. "But of course, Nagako." Kinji said, smugly. But those endearing eyes... "I've found you, my queen." I'm not even going to comment on the 10 year old love subplot. This is the most dumb thing ever.

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Yeah Bro

This is the first time I've actually been able to read a chapter of KIKEN in its entirety, and man was that bad. I don't know how you manage to read such tripe, Nam, none of that made any kind of sense. That being said, there was one line that stood out above all others and, as someone who has a unique insight into the KIKEN saga, could you please try to explain the meaning and relevance of this line: Shyte: "His mother was a promiscuous bitch who loved having sex with two balls on."

That's easy. One of the characters' dad had an unfortunate accident which led to the loss of both his testicles. Now his mum was an old fashioned kinda gal and was unable to love a man with no testicles so they wound up divorcing. Taking it badly, the character went on to put his best friend in a coma by registering him for hubspace. Then they battled over and over again (on the internet) after the friend got out of the coma three weeks later. Needless to say, noone really bats an eye about how registering for the game puts 10 year old kids in comas lasting three weeks. Yeah Bro Right, from the way it was phrased I thought they meant the mother wore fake testicles or something. I want to say it makes more sense now, but it really doesn't.

"RAAAAWWR!" Tsugumu glomped Yuuichi as soon as he came home from band practice. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Yuuichi reciprocated to help calm Tsuu-kun down. "Gumooch, slow down! Do you really want to break my back that badly?" But Tsugumu perpetually smiled. "Aniki, we heard about the forming of the Org. Is it true?" Tsukiyo said with a wide smile on her face. She knew this would happen. "All you need to do is just draw the Kites and Herons in now!" But Yuuichi knew that it wasn't as simple as it would be. It'd take a lot to convert the staunch idealists and the die-hard cynics to Org members. "Well I'll think of something to fulfill that. I really can't compromise this either." "After all, there is a lack of something right now... we need more teamwork!" And this shit with one of the creepy incest twins was the last thing EPIC ever wrote on this story. He's got some sonic fanfics elsewhere but fuck that I'm done. What have I learned from all this? I've learned never to let goons choose what I'm going to read ever again.

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Reviews and a Reflection on the Best Troper Tale

SurreptitiousMuffin Namtab buddy, I love you, I really do but I'm not alone in saying I never managed to finish reading a single KIKEN post. The second my eyes hit the words, it's a fireworks display everywhere except the monitor. It's fish-hooks in my irises, pulling them left and right. It's a unique anti-magnetism that will frustrate literary theorists for years to come.
The Hemmingway of dog dicks.

Calaveron

I can't even tell you anything about KIKEN because every time I put my eyes on the screen it's like a grenade just exploded right next to me and my ears are ringing except on my eyes.
The Happiest Refurb

Triple Elation

I have acquired some sort of reflex where the moment I see the word KIKEN, my right hand instinctively grabs the mouse and scrolls down until I can't see the offending post any more. I have no idea how this effect works. I've read every type of thing this thread has ever produced - but I don't recall ever reading a single word of KIKEN.

1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + ... = -1

If I make a concentrated effort, I can dimly recall from comments left by others that it involves Japanese teenagers or something, and they're playing an MMORPG, and they have nicknames that are actually Pokmon attacks. And then the more I think about it, the more this strange feeling of uneasiness creeps over me, and I feel an overwhelming compulsion to stop thinking about KIKEN and go do something else. Maybe it doesn't want to be read.

LightningKimba

My favorite part in KIKEN is the fact that I never had to directly read it, instead I could see Namtab suffer where I would most likely give up reading it by the first chapter. Good job, soul brother. But seriously though, if I ever needed a stick on what's bad when it comes to writing something that heavily borrows from anime stereotypes and trends and then sucks at making them appealing, this is the story I'm gonna use. And then I'll watch people's eyes fall out from trying to get their brain to understand its prose.

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Man all these comments make it sound as though the eventual collection is going to just shut down the internet. hallo spacedog KIKEN really bothers me. I've rewritten this post now about 4 times, (and sorry in advance for the wall of text) because I realize that I'm definitely a when it comes to certain things, and not a writer by any means. But the details of this work are driving me absolutely insane. For me, small details tend to make works very interesting, so when I find a piece that is just plain wrong in the details, it seems so off to me.
this chaos is killing me

Let's say, for a moment, that an actual, published and successful, relatively skilled genre fiction writer determined to write a story about an experimental online game that is being distributed for free over the internet. No one knows who created it, and it seems to have a chance of killing its players, but people find the mystery surrounding it compelling enough to log in and chance death. A group of spoiled elite students at a private International School in Japan start playing detective, and probably end up getting in over their heads while trying to investigate why some of their classmates never come back to school after playing the game. And all of this is set in the relatively diverse port city of Yokohama in the technologicallyadvanced near future. In and of itself, this idea, albeit somewhat cliche, isn't any more inherently terrible than a lot of other successful genre ideas. This sentence is probably the absolute nicest thing that can ever be said about KIKEN. However, I'm fairly sure that the skilled author attempting to write this novel would probably feel the dire need to research the shit out of both Japan and Yokohama, if not take the time to go there, because even if the book is set in AKIRA-Blade Runner-style CyberJapan or whatever, it's still ostensibly a real world locale, and should be at least somewhat realistic in the details. If the skilled author could not travel to Japan, he might choose to conduct extensive research, both online and in libraries about Japan. He might take the time to find out what actual elite private escalator schools were like outside of the impressions he got from Code Geass and Persona 3. He might choose to research what students actually eat for school lunch, instead of just hamfistedly shoving the only three "Japanese" foods he knows into one single, horrible meal. He might realize that most Japanese male students don't wear "polo" shirts. He might consider the many recent changes in Japanese naming conventions which would surely effect children attending High Schools in the near future, instead of just throwing darts at Japanese syllables and hoping something sticks. And then he could build his non-extant world on top of this solid foundation, which would serve to make his story seem grounded, give an air of realism to something which is otherwise fantasy. I think it would be easy to dismiss details, or say that I am nitpicking. Because I'm extremely annoyed with the writer at this moment, yes, I probably AM nitpicking. But when used well, real-life

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details can add layer upon layer of dimension into a piece. I'm reminded of the person who brought up the fact that brand-savvy readers would realize that Patrick Bateman dresses like an idiot. Right now, since I'm thinking about Japan at the moment, the first scene of Murakami's Wind Up Bird Chronicle comes to mind: you can already tell so much about the narrator by the fact that it's the middle of the afternoon, he's boiling spaghetti and listening to Rossini's Thieving Magpie (I think? I've not read it for more than a decade) when he gets his mysterious phone call. And I don't even really like Murakami. I guess this is bothering me so much because it's perfectly representative of the Troper-school of no-effort writing, just vomit onto a page once and you're good to go, no revisions or research needed. ...plus with some research the writer might fucking learn that Nutella is largely unknown in Japan.

Murderion

Hell, it's not even Japan. They're not even speaking Japanese. They're speaking in Anime. Fine, the characters are speaking in Japanese. Fine, some things can't be translated from Japanese to English. The solution is not to use every single Japanese word you know as a substitute for the English one. It would be like me writing a book set in Germany with sentences like "Oh, FRIEDRICH and I were just stopping by for STOLLEN before we went to visit DAS RATHAUS. Tomorrow we're going to travel IM ZUG NACH HAMBURG." Don't get me started on his fucking stupid pseudo-philosophy. "Idealism" doesn't even mean what you think it means in philosophical discussion. You could call Nietsche an idealist and not be wrong in the slightest. Trying to boil philosophy down to three competing viewpoints is fucking stupid, and sock-puppeting the argument between the three of them so it fits into your twee little not-anime is even dumber. Hell, like a lot of troper fiction, this is a lesson in what not to do when writing.

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Metal Loaf

While it's been said many times, I have to agree that KIKEN is really quite horrendous. There's nothing engaging about it. Beneath a very thin veneer of tropes the author probably thinks are "badass" it's nothing more than a shallow caricature of shonen anime. Knowing that the author wrote what's probably the single most infamous troper tale of all time really doesn't help at all. Perhaps it does achieve something, though. Perhaps it proves that the kind of shonen anime it aspires to emulate is almost impossible to translate convincingly into prose. InfiniteJesters posted: Was that the one about pencils from the Beware the Nice Ones trope? The very same. It remains reproduced on the TV Tropes Narm page.

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It's that time again, you goony bastards!

I must save that woman!

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Lets Rewrite Kiken: It Feels like My Eyes are Bleeding from OverExposure to Anime
KIKEN REQUEST: Take your favourite part/aspect of this story, rewrite it so it actually makes sense Maxwell Lord

To do that I would have to understand it. Screw you.

Ragnar Homsar

Astro dorks at 12 o' clock!

I just spent the last 10 minutes staring at a Word document with a bit from KIKEN copy pasted into it. I just now tried to actually rewrite it, desperately forcing my eyes to not roll out of my head in my brain's attempt at self-defense. I think tampering with the writing of KIKEN is like immediate alcohol poisoning; after writing one word my vision immediately went very blurry and when I was able to actually think again all I saw was a bunch of gibberish in the document. What I'm saying is fuck this challenge and how can these dickholes write all this bullshit and think it's acceptable

Sometimes I ask too much of my adoring fanbase. I'm sorry. SurreptitiousMuffin Alright, I'm still unsure of how to approach this. My poetry's stronger than my prose and I'll be having to rip up the floorboards anyway so I was thinking a sort-of-prose-poem might be an interesting idea. This is my first tentative take on the intro. We are panic, always. To farm, to forge, to fuck is to give life as panic- the unbearable knowing of her cleft. A photon-pixel prayer for the departed and all they'll never know.
The Hemmingway of dog dicks.

This is Kiken.

TurnipFritter

Namtab posted: REQUEST 2: I'm gonna be starting book 2 fairly soon. So my request is for a major event in book 1 to be rewritten so it makes sense. (Major plot event being a very relative term here) I tried to capture the gist of clonechat: Amaki stared at the group gathered around the table and cleared his throat.

Paula tried PSI Fire Beta!

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"There's something I need to say." Kakeru was the only member of the Crystal Dogs to acknowledge him. He looked up from his notes and waited for Amaki to continue. "Kakeru, Derani, Kogawa. We, uh," Amaki struggled to get the words out. "Me and Amaki are related to you," Dylan interrupted him, "Genetically." Kakeru himself wasn't sure how to react, so he glanced at Derani and Kogawa. The revelation had indeed managed to draw them from their research. Derani placed his pencil down on the table and leaned back in his chair. Kogawa folded her arms in front of her. Of course that's how they'd play it: Cool and skeptical. He tried to follow their lead the best he could, but he knew he didn't have Kogawa's poker pace or Derani's control. There was a long pause while Kogawa and Derani sized up the two time travelers. It quickly became apparent to the Crystal Dogs that that the two boys weren't planning on volunteering any more information until they got a response. Kogawa leaned forward and said, "Go on." "We, uh, we're kinda like cloned from you," Amaki started. "Why?" Derani wanted to keep his questions short. "Our bosses needed people who have... insight about Hubspace," Dylan answered, "You three just happened to fit the bill." "Yeah, your brains are working on a completely different wavelength than other people from this era!" Amaki's eyes lit up with a half-smile. He was hoping this would be enough to cut the tension and help put the Crystal Dogs at ease. "Right. So our bosses..." "Wait," Kakeru sheepishly raised his hand as he interrupted Dylan, "I don't get it. How do your bosses know about us or our brains?" Derani and Kogawa looked over at Kakeru, then turned and nodded at the time travelers to answer. "Oh! The work you and Nagiri gets talked about all the time and Doctor Terasuma's books are..." "Amagi, hush." Dylan looked down at Kakeru and flatly answered, "We aren't authorized to disclose that information to you." Kakeru slumped back in his chair and another long pause followed. "You were saying?" She was still skeptical of their claims, but

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Kogawa knew those two had information on Hubspace, and she wasn't about to let the conversation end without squeezing every last nugget out of them. "Um, our bosses needed people who could see things the same way the Crystal Dogs did, so they figured, 'Hey, we should just use the Crystal Dogs!' They took samples of your genetic material and, well, here we are!" Although Amagi tried to inject a lot of enthusiasm into his explanation, Derani and Kogawa were both unphased. As he scribbled something on his notepad, Derani asked, "Our insight, huh? Wouldn't that be the product of our socialization instead of genetics?" "That's why our bosses sent us back here, so we could get to know the real Crystal Dogs. See how you work. Learn about the original us." Dylan answered. "There's only two of you." Derani said. "Oh come on, are you telling me you haven't figured it out?" Dylan sighed, "You're supposed to be a lot smarter than this." "Am I?" He cocked his head and gave a faint smile. "Go ahead and spell it out for me." "Ok. First," Dylan placed his hand on Amaki's back and pushed him forward, "Look at Amaki then look at Kakeru." Startled, Kakeru sat up straight in his chair and looked around at the other members of the group. Kogawa and Derani were staring at him, both making the faces they make when they're absorbed in research. It made him uncomfortable. He bit his lip and tried to ignore them, but he could already feel his face burning red. He turned to Amaki and Dylan, and that's when he noticed it: Amaki was making the exact same face as him. Not the same expression, the same face. Amaki Kuranashi was his clone. "You're, you're me." Amaki let out a soft chuckle. "Yeah." While Kakeru stared at his own face standing four feet away and tried to figure out how he had missed it, Kogawa started demanding answers. "And who does that make you?" Dylan simply pointed back at Kogawa and Derani. "Us?" "Look at me. Heterochromatic eyes," he said, pointing at his own eyes, "Just like you. Half-white, half-Japanese. Just like you. Kind of a jerk. Just like you."

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"If you're cloned from the two of them, wouldn't that make you their kid?" Kakeru asked, eyes still fixed on Amaki. There are many things that Derani and Kogawa are capable of taking in stride. This was not one of them. Their jaws dropped, their eyes filled with something between rage and disgust. No one in the room realized it, Derani and Kogawa included, but they even moved to the edge of their seats to put more distance between themselves. "Wait, no, it's nothing like that," Amaki reassured them. "He's more like a brother than a son." "Yeah, I was engineered from your parents. Kogawa, we have the same mother, and Derani we have the same father." Derani grit his teeth. "We should take a break," said Amaki. e: The challenge says to make a plot point make sense. As such, Kogawa is not a fucking fourth grader in the above piece. My favorite part of the story is that it's over, but I'm not sure how I'd go about writing that.

Crosscontaminant

Really? Do I hafta? That'd mean actually reading this pathetic drivel rather than reading the Cliff Notes version. Okay, here goes. A translation of today's issue of the Asahi Shimbun: Top management at the Yumegorosu company (YGRS) were apprehended yesterday by police forces in a targeted raid after seven students in the Tokyo metropolitan area were found dead at their computer desks while playing a massively multiplayer online game developed, produced and distributed by the company. They will be tried next month. The coroner's verdict was that the students died of a severe epileptic episode which resulted in pulmonary arrhythmia and eventual death by anoxia. Video games and other forms of multimedia entertainment have been known to cause epileptic events previously, but these are the first ones severe enough to disrupt core brain activity.

Mister Morn

Kiken: The Smartass Edition Part One Unneccesary Introduction That will be Done Before Every Fucking Chapter

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Humanity is a fickle species, prone to panic for the stupidest reasons imaginable. The internet got cut off, or someone backed up traffic, or maybe some jackass wrote a story so bad that it sucks quality from works around it, like a black hole for the English language. But all of these pale in comparison to the worst reason to panic in human history: a video game. Hubspace was released in 2012, and immediately the usual pathetic losers who drift from online game to online game were caught in its grip. But this wasn't limited to those sad sacks, oh no. Somehow, Hubspace caught on, and the craze that it generated created panic on a global scale. Settle in, gentle reader, and prepare yourself, because this, sadly, is Kiken. Chapter One: Unnecessary Setup Stuff Kakeru Kouen was in a hurry. Because he was the main character of a clichefest, he was prone to oversleeping and today was no exception. No time for a shower, so he coated himself in spray-on deodorant and cologne, thinking maybe B.O. plus other scents was a good idea. After getting dressed in the nerdiest ensemble ever and no shoes or socks, he ran a comb through his unnaturally red hair and rushed out the door, pausing only to pet his dog (and the only good character in this dreck), Ruffhouseman, on the way out. "Mr. Kouen, this is your fifth time being late to class this month!" Hikariyama High School was as famous for having a no-tolerance policy for lateness as it was for being the high school from every anime ever, and Kakeru's homeroom teacher, Kawashita Arika, was particularly strict on attendance. "At least it's only five minutes this time," she said. "I'm sorry, Miss Arika," Kakeru said, "but I forgot to set my alarm. See, I have plot convenient amnesia, because the author felt the need to rip off the worst part of Final Fantasy VIII in addition to .hackand every other anime he could find. Speaking of amnesia, I forgot to stare at you creepily today, so let me take care of that now." This unwanted sexual harassment was too much for Miss Arika, whose name suddenly changed to Miss Hikari, and she immediately violated every rule against hitting students known when she slapped Kakeru across the face. Kakeru, bleeding from the nose, staggered to his seat and bled all over his nebulous and unexplained worksheets. Surely there will be consequences for these actions and it's not just mindless character building that goes nowhere, right? Right? A lot more stuff happened, but the transcriber's eyes began bleeding at this point trying to process all the stupid. Join me if you will for Part Two, if it ever gets done. Or, preferably, don't.

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Because I know everyone some people nobody has been waiting for this, it's time for part two of Kiken: the Smartass Edition. Even this much riffing can't make Kiken better: Chapter One: Unnecessary Setup Stuff (Continued) Previously on .hack//SIGN Kiken: Nothing happened. No plot progression, no worthwhile character development, and no reader interest. We met a character we won't like and he got slapped by his teacher to absolutely no classmate reaction, because that's totally believable and the author clearly understands human interactions, except not that at all. In a move that actually shows some sense of how to handle time, the first three classes of the day have passed by without description. "What the hell is Hubspace?" Kakeru wondered to himself for no valid reason because he's about to tell you exactly what it is. "The news said that it's an online video game that could destroy civilization," he thought out loud, which is totally not a creepy thing to do in the middle of a school playground. Kakeru was desperate to learn more about the creepypasta that is Hubspace, and because this story can't decide if it's an anime or a video game, he went with "video game" and decided to talk to everyone. "Kakeru! Hey! Listen! Are you thinking about Hubspace too? I've got my brother and sister looking into it, because Encyclopedia Brown taught me that children make the best detectives." The voice belonged to the most excitable freshman on campus, Yuuichi Minagawa. Kakeru said, "What about you, Yuuichi? I could use all the help I could get with this one." "Me? No way!" Yuuichi said. "I don't have time. I'm doing all of the extracurricular activites. I haven't seen my family in weeks. The only reason I even know my siblings are helping is because they sent me a text message." "Oh, right," Kakeru said. "I forgot, because I have plot-convenient amnesia. Have I mentioned that I have amnesia today? Amnesia, amnesia, amnesia." "Hopefully your amnesia hasn't caused you to forget our mission," a pale boy whispered unnecessarily, because background extras may as well not exist in this story. "It certainly hasn't helped you remember to put shoes on." "Derani?" Kakeru said, recognizing his even nerdier friend. "Um, no. I can't remember anything about a mission, because I have amnesia." Derani sighed. "Look, do you at least remember the first time you logged into Hubspace? You're one of the only people who didn't have a near-death experience the first time that happened. You're such a special snowflake!"

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"Oh, right!" Kakeru said, his memory suddenly returning for more plot-convenience. "Wait, if just logging into Hubspace causes a NDE, why has nobody shut this game down or recalled it or, you know, anything sane?" "That, Kakeru, is our mission," Derani said. "We need to figure this out, because apparently nobody else will." Holy shit! A plot approaches! "Right. I got it now. I need to go, though. I just remembered some kids who are a big deal in Hubspace that I was going to talk to before the stupid amnesia hit me." Kakeru took his leave from his friends and went into a more secluded part of the playground. With his amnesia cleared up temporarily, he was suddenly the most competent character, and knew exactly where to go for an infodump. Sure enough, there they were. Shohei and Hichou, two of the biggest names in Hubspace, in spite of being like 14 years-old. Why they were wasting their time with this game and not just teabagging each other in some random FPS was a mystery that likely had no solution. "Listen, Hichou. Don't forget about The Conflict," Shohei exposited. "If we can draw enough people in and fight loudly enough, we can take over the world of Hubspace!" Shohei laughed the most generic villain laugh ever. Seriously, he was only missing a waxed moustache to twirl. Somehow, overhearing the actual plot seed for Kiken was too much for Kakeru, and he passed into sweet, sweet unconsciousness. Passing out sounds really good right now, but somehow I'm still conscious, so I'm going to go take a shower and wash the anime off of me. Next time on Kiken: Infodumps and backstory! I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath.

Somfin

Zandar posted: ...the evil organisation behind it. I like the horrific concept that other posters have put together for KIKEN, and I'd like to continue to build on that. The game and the organisation are probably the only parts of the story that I find interesting at all- but I'd like to take things in a different direction, mostly because I love the idea of sympathetic villains who are out of their depth. Here's the next revision: Yumegorosu (that's the company) never coded Hubspace themselves. One of their lazier programmers found it while trawling the internet on company time. He had planned that day to be his last at Yumegorosu anyway; the company was going down the drain, all the money was gone and he hadn't been paid in three weeks. He stumbled across a strange little program on a strange little website which his history lists as "Tatters of Carcosa," but which appears to be completely gone from the internet. Its original filename was Great.exe. He submitted the program to his superior, hoping that it would turn out to be a horrible virus and take the company down. The program became a hit within the company, and was distributed it as a difficult-to-obtain 'beta' under the name 'Hubspace'- the hope was that once its thousand

Precisely.

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bugs were removed, Hubspace could become their flagship game and breathe new life into the struggling company. The programmer was now tasked with sorting out the code and figuring out how to debug it. This turned out to be impossible. Decompiling the code took two days despite the tiny size of the executable, and when it was finally open, it was a labyrinth. The code was littered with dark poetry, eerie philosophical questions written out in if/then pairs, and programming jokes. The code became more and more chaotic and unhinged as it went. One section was just the lines from an old stageplay. The commented sections referred to player avatars as 'masks' and discussed 'true faces,' something that seemed to have no actual relevance to the code. There seemed to be almost no code at all in the program by the end, just endless variations on the question "Isn't it great?" Attempting any change made the thing impossible to recompile. The programmer decided to just pretend that it was fixed and pray that no-one checked. No-one did. By that point, almost everyone at the company was addicted to the game, none more so than the then-CEO, Hikaru Sakugami. His assistant and replacement Takeo Boume declared his death an assassination. The fact is, Sakugami was found dead in front of his computer, his body withered and bent, a strange bluescreen of death on his monitor and a crumpled party mask clutched in one hand. Only Boume knows what was on that bluescreen, but since Sakugami's death, Boume has never once loaded up Hubspace himself. He fired everyone at the company who had ever played it on company time and brought on new staff. He tasked them with creating a better version of Hubspace in the hopes of distancing the company from that original program forever, while still salvaging some aspect of its addictive quality. The only connection that Yumegorosu now has to Hubspace is the servers on which the game's multiplayer is hosted, and the programmer who found the program in the first place. That man, who also avoided actually playing the game, is tasked with maintaining the servers. "You brought this here." Boume told him, once. "You make sure it stays here." Hubspace still makes money hand over fist, despite its tiny player base, and despite the fact that Yumegorosu stopped distributing it years ago. No-one is quite sure where the money comes from, and, per Boume's request, no-one looks into it. Hubspace doesn't track anything in any way that Yumegorosu can read, and as far as anyone can remember it doesn't have any sort of microtransactions or subscriptions. All that Boume knows is that an embarrassing amount of money shows up in Yumegorosu's account like clockwork. The company now has money enough to stay afloat, silence anyone whose family is affected by Hubspace, and continue the development of Hub2 without looking for outside funding. Boume knows enough not to look any further into the old Hubspace. What he saw on that bluescreen was enough to convince him to stay away. He knows the stories. He knows that those who look for trouble tend to find it. All of the mayhem that Hubspace causes now- the resurgence of a dark version of Ee Ja Nai Ka, the rampant amnesia, the mental disorders, the strange speaking habits of long-term players- they

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are all simply sacrifices which must be made. The alternative, Boume knows, is worse. Much worse. In story terms, Yumegorosu is a red herring villain group, probably revealed as such about two-thirds of the way through the story. As the heroes continue their investigation into the twisted world of Hubspace, Boume begins to realise that they will suffer the same fate as Sakugami and attempts to kick them out of the game entirely, at one point physically shutting down the servers- the result of that is, once the servers are restored, Hubspace 'reverts' to a stranger, odder form. Boume is simply a man, trying to make sure that his inheritance doesn't do more damage than it has already done. He believes that ignorance truly can be bliss. So that's my attempt to make another small part of someone else's shitty story competent. Why are we doing this again?

KSAF Staff Report

I, Dunkelzahn... declare this to be my last will and Testament. To Seattle-based trideo station KSAF, 4 million nuyen to be used expressly for the purpose of hiring freelancers, 12 million nuyen to be used for the purpose of increasing security, and 10 million nuyen to be used as a slush fund.

KIKEN: "You know, its weird that this is an automatic factory," said a boy of around fifteen. He was wearing a blue longcoat, and some sort of machine on his right hand. He was slightly tan, with long brown hair and a beanie. "'Cause there doesn't seem to be any employees." Well, he was right. The car factory he was in was actually deserted. "Well, I can't believe Hubspace has a Snagger! You sure DouSE competes with Yumegorosu?" He was with three others who were his party members in Hubspace. "Hollows, let's go~!" All four of them ran towards the factory, which was rusty, barren and abandoned. He was Yuuichi Minagawa, and he is the leader of a band called, the Sleepy Hollow that also acts as a reconnaissance unit for Derani, Kakeru and Kogawa-the Crystal Dogs. He is an older brother to two twins and a little girl and puts his family first. "Okay, I'll need all your armor for this one." Yuuichi was the main guitarist, and he also headed the Hollow's Hubspace party. "Thanks, guys! I'll have to equip now. CHOURYOKU HENKA!" Then Yuuichi, or Aniki as people call him, was to do a transformation sequence to show off his premium status on Hubspace, and equip everything in no time. "Seriously, Yuui, what the hell?" Said his friend, Amaki. "Are you trying to pull off a Rider here?" "How otaku are you, exactly?" Said his other friend, a girl named Mika. "That's too ridiculous!" "Yuu-pon," His girlfriend, Fujiko, commented. "Are you sure you wanna do this? I really need to tell you something, and its urgent. Besides, this is quite pretentious already." Fujiko really loved Yuuichi, and Yuuichi loved her too. This lasted all the way from sixth grade, so she wasn't so sure whether she should say it or not. She knew the news would shock her boyfriend, and it might even tear their relationship apart. WAY apart. "You see, Yuuichi, I'm, well..." She shrugged it off. "Oh never mind, carry on with your stupid henshin." Did she even know about whether or not what she'd say is true? "Chouryoku Tobiou, Jumper! Transformation, complete!"

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Oh god why did I do this?: I don't like the look of this factory, Yuuichi Minagawa said. No workers checked on the blinking machines from the walkways. No one inspected the cars that came down the assembly line. Steel, plastic and leather came in where he and the Sleepy Hollow entered. And fully finished cars left at the other end. He and the other four members of Sleepy Hollow were the only people inside the plant. They were sthe recon team for the rest of the Crystal Dogs. I don't see anything, Yuui, said Fujiko. It was only a month ago that the 15-year-old Yuuichi had the guts to ask her to go steady. She wasn't surprised- they'd liked each other since the sixth grade. It just feels wrong, he said. Everyone, put on your armor. The other three began the laborous process of equipping their characters with each piece of armor individually. CHOURYOKU HENKA! Yuuichi shouted. In an instant, every bit was equipped. Do you have to show off your premium membership every time? his friend Amaki said. It's like you're trying to be Rider. "How otaku are you, exactly?" said Mika. "That's too ridiculous!" I deleted a character, most of the exposition and tried to tighten in on the action. I have no idea where this is going- I just chose the longest bit and edited it. It's still bad. But I had drek to work with. Does this mean I win the Internet Prize?

Chaltab

Seeing as I'm currently in a short story workshop class and don't have time to do any serious work on long form pieces, I gave a shot at rewriting the first page of KIKEN. Why God, Why does this exist?: The Earth is never calm. Go on, test it. Try touching it. Place your hand on the worlds shoulder and soothe it. It wont work. We live in an ever-panicking world, a word full of sweating, starving, petty, passionate, young, old, running, jumping, working, playing, fucking people who never stop. And when you add fear into the mix, when you add mortal terror? Well, you have disaster. In the Year of our Lord 2012, a game appeared. Hubspace, it was called. Something seemingly innocuous, something innocent. Well, not entirely innocent. It was a bad game. Unbalanced, boring mechanics, graphics on par with 2001s greatest. Didnt matter. The world loved it. The world was pulled in. And that was only the beginning. KIKEN: The End of the World Chapter One: Welcome to Planet Anxiety

So shocked someone got me an avatar!

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"Ah crap, gonna be late!" Kakerus breaths were sharp and shallow as he sprinted down the sidewalk at full bore, his smart dress shoes clattering against the sidewalk. His second year at Hikariyama High School was a blur. He was cramming, cramming so much into his brain. He had to know everything because he was tired of knowing nothing. Tired of the blanks in his memory where his past should be. He couldnt even remember if hed poured food into Ruffhousemans bowl this morning, but he figured forgetting to feed his dog had less to do with amnesia and more with being a total flake. Up the hall of his school he ran, sliding on the slick tile and wrenching open the door to his homeroom class. He scanned the faces. Good, his teacher Ms. Kawashita wasnt there yet. He took a few steps towards his desk, ignoring the grins of all the other students. What the hell were they smiling about anyway? Kakeru! The sharp tone of Kawashitas voice felt like a stab to the base of his spine. He tensed involuntarily and turned to face her. Akira-sensei he began. No excuses this time, she said. This is your fifth tardy this month. And dont you dare fall asleep today either. Im sick of your poor performance. The rest of the class faces had morphed from sadistic amusement to mortification. Nobody wanted Akira-sensei to lecture him in front of the whole class. She was usually a good teacher, but sometimes she could just be plain cold-hearted. Hed heard Mako, the nerd who sat behind him, refer to her as tsuntsun before. Kakeru had had to look up what the hell that meant, but he was hard pressed to disagree. He turned and bowed his head slightly. Best to grovel and defer than endure more humiliation. When something flesh-toned appeared through his half-closed eyes, he opened them to find himself looking directly into Akira-senseis cleavage. Shit. Are you staring at her breasts, Kakeru? said someone across the room. Two things happened at once: Kakeru jerked his head up to avoid the appearance of perversion, and Akira-sensei whipped her right hand over to point at and scold the smartass. There was a wetsoudning crunch as student face met teacher fist, and Kakeru recoiled from the unintentional blow. Blood trickled down onto the papers that Sensei had been holdinguntil the collision knocked them loose. Double shit.

Mr. Pumroy

quote: "Rumina, I hope you know what an abortion is." Dylan knew that Kurumi may have been from an era that never even knew about abortion.

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I would be interested in knowing what "era" this character comes from that has never known the evil secular demon sin of abortion, which has been in practice since at least 1550 BCE. Maybe she is from before that???? Well, anyway, I'll give it a shot. Here's the original.
I'll be the bastard lovechild of a listless octoroon if that kid wasn't the cat that swallowed the canary in a dapper little hat.

Fucking Bullshit: "Kurumi, what the hell just happened?" Dylan asked. "Why did you have to talk to me at such a time? You knew I was doing an essay." Kurumi appeared to Dylan too early. She was going to talk to someone about lying and whatnot, but she didn't want to seem like the liar herself. "You've lied before, r-right? Dy-kun?" Kurumi asked him, but sounded very hesitant. "I have a feeling someone will lie to to create a turning point for the Conflict. It may involve death, and possibly a child, so innocent it may die as soon as its born." Kurumi was visibly shocked. "Rumina, I hope you know what an abortion is." Dylan knew that Kurumi may have been from an era that never even knew about abortion. "This may actually shock you." Kurumi nodded, prepared for what was to come to her. "I'm no saint, yet I am going to be completely clear with you on this one." Kurumi's eyes widened with shock, and she gulped. "In this decade, people kill babies when they're born because they can't take care of them, or they simply don't want them." And then, Kurumi's eyes became blank. "People kill the future of mankind! Dylan, why...?" And then from Kurumi's mouth, came a scream so audible not just Dylan could hear it. "GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!" Here's my improvement. Seriously just a morass of bovine fecal deposits: "This is such incredible bullshit." Dylan said. "This is some deep abiding bullshit right here," said Kurumi. "Of that there is no doubt." "Yeah," said Dylan. "It's like bullshit's been working a tough 40-hour work week job in the bullshitorium, then took a well-deserved vacation. A summer bullshit tour. Then it came back. To the bullshitorium. And now it's working all refreshed and bullshittier than ever before. It's just won bullshitting employee of the year. It's got its own reserved parking spot. Right there up front and close to the great heaping pile of bullshit that is its existence." "Seriously fuck this bullshit. Swear to God. Just... it's just bullshit up to my eyeballs." Kurumi said.

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Okay I guess Namtab went through some pain to sludge through all this so I guess I could actually try or something. Fuck. kill my dumb ass: Dylan's eyes did not leave the screen as he typed. "This is really not the time," he said. "I have an essay due." He could hear Kurumi pace, her feet shuffling across the carpet to the rhythm of his keyboard's clack clack clack. He closed his eyes. The sensation of his concentration scattering was almost physical. He swiveled his chair around to face her. "Oh my God, just tell me what's on your mind then let me work please." Kurumi rubbed her hands together and stared out at the window. Against the night all there was to see was her reflection, faint and small. "Okay, well, okay... have you ever lied? To get something you wanted or anything like that?" "What kind of question is that?" Dylan furrowed his brow. "I don't even --" "It's just that I think someone's been lying." She spoke in an oncoming rush that Dylan could only listen to. "That we're all running around in circles and I get the sense that we're being led by the nose and while we're rushing around trying to deal with everything that's happened we don't even notice what's going on and that if we keep doing what we're doing the only thing we're going to accomplish is... death. Someone's going to die." He sat in silence and stared. She resumed pacing. "Who?" he said. She shook her head. "I don't know. Does it matter? I mean, I mean..." her pace shortened as her agitation grew and she was now turning in place, as if seeking an outlet and finding nothing. "I mean I don't want to be involved any further if we're talking actual death here!" I removed the segue to abortion topics since it felt like a non sequitor to me. Perhaps in the larger context it makes sense but it seemed like a strange excuse to include some hysterical screaming?

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Mister Morn In the world of Hubspace, you must fight for your life. If you die in the game, you die for real. This summer, one group will take on the deadliest RPG ever in KIKEN. Rated S, for Stupid.

Bad Bromance KIKEN Eerbody Dead

I'm a free bitch, baby

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Interlude: Hydronixs Guidelines on Approaching Criticism

Tropers: Hydronix
This Troper is a very weird gamer. He's blessed with suck when it comes to most Video Games, has weird taste, and is near middle age. His favorite games are Quest 64 for the Nintendo 64 and Final Fantasy VIII on the PlayStation. There's more, but he needs not mention them as it would take forever. Hydronix also doesn't drive, thinks Diablos from Final Fantasy VIII looks cute, and hates Final Fantasy VII and everything that goes with it, save some characters. For a long time, he was a fairly active member of We Are Our Avatars, but many factors made him quit. The two most important ones were the influx of really bad players2 (which is more why he's not coming back so much as quitting in the first place) and Homestuck references. He originally planned to take a break, but that just pretty much killed his interest in playing the game. He still lurks and reads everything, as to not completely leave it, despite what people may think.

Hydronix, Wed, 21st Dec '11 12:50:54 AM

Yes. Right now, our rules basically consist of 'Don't be a dick.' What exactly does this mean? What if someone is an absolutely horrible person and expresses endorsement of the most horrible things, but does it 'politely?' What if they're clearly being condescending, but seem civil? This person is less likely to get called out than someone who simply gets angry once and gets a warning for it.

Being condescending is being smug, and still is being less than respectful. That can still be considered being a dick. Simply put, any tone of voice, acting holier than thou, that's still being a dick. You don't need to do that whatsoever. Avoid it at all costs.

Hydronix has at least thirty avatars, all which are roleplayed in that thread. Characters roleplayed include a female version of Shadow the Hedgehog, a pink hedgehog raped and turned into a cyborg, a pokemon, and underaged anime girls. Hydronix has also in one of these roleplaying sessions tried to solicit a 12 year old troper to have private kinky cybersexy time, apparently.

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Here's the thing; Being a horrible person does not get you banned. Acting like a horrible person does. That's the key difference. You can have the most questionable beliefs ever. But unless you actually express it in a disrespectful way, you're not being a dick whatsoever. Saying you're against Homosexuality is not a dick. Saying "They should never exist" is being a dick. The clear difference is anything that is close to flaming or acting like you're 100% right and that anyone disagreeing with you is an idiot. That's ideally what holier than thou means. Just don't do it. Hydronix, Wed, 21st Dec '11 1:22:08 AM Holding beliefs only makes you a dick if you act like one. Actions are what the problem is. Deleted topics that cause questionable stuff is one thing, but saying a person should never visit because they belief murder is okay? I may not agree with the person, but they are not doing anything wrong on the site. As long as they do not push it in any way, shape, or form, they are breaking no rules. They should be watched closely at most. Bad beliefs do not exist. Opinions are not right or wrong. Being a dick has nothing to do with what morals you have either. Being a dick is being disrespectful in some way. You can put forth very questionable beliefs in a kind and respectful manner, and that does not make you a dick here. I am not advocating murder or stuff like that. I am 100% against it. However, I am also against to being a dick towards a person with those beliefs. That does not make you "better" than the person either. Being a dick is being a dick. The rule is to not be a dick. We have specific topics for what's allowed to be discussed. Not everything does. So we just avoid those topics. The whole "a guy likes murder and shouldn't exist in this world" is saying that we have a right to judge them and condemn them for having some kind of belief. It does not matter what the belief is, because this can relate to any situation whatsoever. What they believe is what they believe. How is condemning for their beliefs not being a dick to them? Why can we break the rules because they have different beliefs? That's the problem with banning people for their beliefs. That's exactly what I'm against..

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Hydronix, Wed, 21st Dec '11 1:44:36 AM

Yes, they clearly and demonstrably do. If you are pro-rape, that is a bad belief. It also violates the don't be a dick rule you seem to cherish because thinking that rape isn't awful makes the person holding that belief a dick (And I am putting it really fucking lightly when I say that they are a dick)

Bad is subjective. All beliefs are completely subjective. They are not being a dick by believing something different. Are they actually arguing rape is good? That's different from saying they're fine with rape. You move on. They are not being dicks.
Guess what? You do have the right to judge someone for what they believe, how else are you supposed to? By your logic the most philanthropist person in the world is no different from a NeoNazi who hates Jews, Blacks and Queers and wants the whites to rule over everyone. Newsflash: If that sounds right to you, then you need to reevaluate your priorities.

Morals are not in question here. Being a dick to someone who has different beliefs in you is being a dick. You do not have any actual right to judge them whatsoever at all. Being a dick is being a dick. Acceptable Targets does not work. Because a person has different beliefs, we can break the rules for that? No, we can't.
The rules of TV Tropes are not the word of God, they are not supreme morality mandated by the heavens. If the rules of TV Tropes prevent paedophiles and rape apologists from being banned for their beliefs, that is a problem with the rules and not a problem with the act of ostracizing rapists and paedophiles.

They are on TV Tropes. Where the rules apply. Having a belief does not make you banworthy. All it does mean is that depending the belief, keeping a close eye to avoid flame wars is the most to be done. This personal crusade against different people is completely unnecessary and does not make you a better person than them. We are not Crusaders whatsoever. We don't have the right to condemn people, regardless of who they are. Beliefs =/= Actions. Condemning people for having beliefs is what Hate Crime is. This is why I do not agree whatsoever with condemning people for having questionable beliefs. You can just... not like them. Be civil no matter what. Also... Homophobia is not the same as hating on Homosexuality. Being afraid of something for whatever reason is fine. That's not their fault at all. Phobias are something that is from a scarring life experience. Hate Speech is not allowed. Having beliefs about something is, because, they are not being hateful about it. If they are, there is a problem. That's not
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the same as condemning someone for their beliefs, it's thumping them for being a dick. Really, no matter how you slice it, it's whether you're being a dick or not. This is the main problem. There is no good reason to condemn someone for having different beliefs than you. That's making you the dick. Not talking about the subject is simply the best solution completely. If the person will be respectful, they will just avoid the topic. That's how simple it is. Avoid it. If asked to stop, you just stop. If they don't stop, then they're actually being a dick, because they're not following what was asked. As I said once more before; We do not use Acceptable Targets here. That's an excuse to be a dick to someone for being different from you in the case of questionable beliefs. Why is it not allowed to report them for having it? There is no reason to. If the topic gets ire, ask to have it closed, and keep it calm and civil. The whole moral system is assuming that we're right and they're wrong. Morals are subjective, after all. Hydronix, Wed, 21st Dec '11 1:52:40 AM Let me put this as clear as possible: Being a dick to someone because they questionable beliefs does not give you the Acceptable Targets meter. It's still being a dick. Whatever they believe is what they believe. That is never banworthy on its own. It's only if they push their beliefs is a non-acceptable manner that makes people feel uncomfortable. But since they're not being a dick by pushing it alone, they have done nothing actually wrong within the rules. Asking them to stop is more than enough. Trying to help them understand is always the better solution than to condemn them. None of us are forum police except the Mods, and they don't exactly throw people out for having different beliefs either, nor should they. This is about having different beliefs, not advocating rape, etc.
I have to disagree. If somebody posts something along the lines of "I think that the Jews are horrible and deserve to die", then I don't believe that this person should necessarily be treated with respect.

That's being a dick. Saying "I am not a fan of Jewish people and I prefer to avoid them." is not being a dick. There's two sides to every coin, and racist people can be helped. There's a clear difference between being a dick and saying it in a respectful manner.
I mean, I would very much like to say to such a person "Jews are people like any other, goddammit." While that might not be polite at all, the opinion expressed above is really repugnant, and I would be quite revolted. I don't see why I should be required to be civil to this person.

If they say it in your example, you should not respond whatsoever and report it. Saying it in any manner like that is not a good way to do it. You should be civil no matter what.
I mean, there are opinions, and then there are just bad views on the world. The first should be

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tolerated, if challenged/debated, while the second, not so much.

Bad is 100% subjective as is good. There is no certainty, since morals are completely different to each person. Bad Views are still opinions, and what someone might consider bad, another person might consider good. No matter what, they're just opinions. Being civil and respectful is not an opinion. It is very easy to be respectful no matter what the situation. If you continue to do that, and they are disrespectful instead, your problem will solve itself. This whole problem stems from people thinking they have the right to condemn others. We just don't. We are not a legal system here. Likewise, those rules? Those are made by specific people, and are not the same everywhere else. There may be specific rules that universal. This makes sense. But it boils down to this; How is condemning someone regardless of the reason not being a dick? Why not report them if they're actually literally causing trouble? Crusades get you banned for thinking you have the right to be a dick to them. You don't. This is the whole point; You don't have the right to be a dick to someone, and this is exactly the entire point of the "don't be a dick rule". Report first.

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http://hydrosays.blogspot.com/

The Hydro Says

What's the point of this? Reading my opinions on games and other various things. And just like an opinion is, take it with a grain of salt. In other words, don't be spiteful in your comments. Those kind WILL be ignored.
SATURDAY, MAY 21, 2011

Forum Flaming

Let's be honest here. How many of you have made fun of something while on a messageboard or chat room? How many have done this only because the person wasn't there? Nearly everyone's done it. But that's where the problem is. Every Privacy Policy actually says to not flame othermembers, mostly because they can't protect people that's not from the same board. This is understandable, really. What's not is that people think it's okay to flame others if they're not there. Whether they're a member or not. Likewise, keep in a mind that an arguement is only bad when people start insulting one another. Even a brick wall can be tolerable.(I'm a brick wall, don't ya know) It's these kind of people that are really sickening. They say if you got nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. But nobody follows that. What's worse is people who give off opinions of things, but... don't back up shit. "Yeah, that movie sucked." That's all they say. They don't explain its faults, they just say it sucks. It doesn't tell us anything, because honestly, everybody has preferences. Yes, there's people who enjoyed E.T. for the Atari, probably less than 1% of the world, but everybody's different. And that's perfectly fine. But when you hate on something for an unexplained reason, it's about as pointless as a hate crime. I won't say it's an actual hate crime, since that's going a bit overboard. Likewise, any overreaction to something with flaming is just as bad. Same with vitrolic opinions. You actually bring up good points, you explained the problem. But then you insult the guy, even stealthily. How does that help? It doesn't. It just gets hate towards you. Nobody likes a smart alec, or a flamer. Keep that in mind, people. To close off, I know I probably offended someone here. Maybe someone I know? Not sure. And yeah, I apoligize for that. But this is something that needs to be said, and a wake-up call to flamers around the world. Oh, and by the way, just because someone flames youdoesn't make it alright to flame back. Don't fuel the fire, boyo.
Posted by Hydronix at 7:41 PM

0 comments

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Irene

Well, SA is a horrible place to even try to look for TVTropes stuff. They severely exaggerate so why listen to 'em?

the bad stuff AND don't even know what's going on. That, and they do nothing but mock us,

Hell, I even banned links to SA stuff in my chat since there's absolutely no good that can come out of it.

The only way to mock an argument is to mock how a person is presenting them, which mocks the person instead. There is no excuse.

If you refuse to be rational, then you're not being any better no matter how much you think you are.

I refuse to believe mocking or flaming is anything short of being a dick. that doesn't make much sense as it implies that arguments are all about presentation. Except you're still mocking them regardless. And yes, a good argument IS about presentation. If the presentation is terrible, the take any flaming/mocking arguments seriously? Because the presentation sucks.

argument will fall flat no matter how many good points you have. Why do you think I don't

Your points should be all that matters no matter what. So only put those up. All that other stuff does not help your situation whatsoever. No flaming will ever prove you right. All it does is piss people off and nothing more.

For Kindle users, this is a screenshot of TVTropes Privacy Policy page which does not mention the word flame in any form or manner. 4 Hydronix changed usernames to Irene in early 2012.

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Advice on Writing You will Never Get on TVTropes

Mr. Pumroy Major Tom posted: Outline. I hate that advice with a passion. I never do it, I never need it. STOP TELLING ME TO DO IT! Uaaaaaaa fuck me what an idiot. Major Tom: An outline serves as a way of structuring your story. A skeleton from which to drape the muscle and skin of your plot. It helps to pace your story so that unimportant bits do not stretch out and drag down the parts that are important. That is to say, without an outline your story is a formless blob of ill-defined and meandering ramblings. I would like to point you to an example: [that thing Namtab posted but I'm not going to copy it because I feel bad wasting any more kilobytes of space on SA's servers for that effluvium] Now, there are people who can talk about how many species of tree there are on a given hill or whatever and make it interesting. You are not one of those people. I'm having a hard time immediately thinking of one. Tolkien? Yeah maybe, but he had like years upon years of experience as a linguist. Also he actually fought in a war. Haha fuckin owned again Tom. Hey, you know his description of Mordor in his books? He used the blasted hellscapes of World War I as his inspiration. He drew upon experiences he actually had. That's a jab at the people over on TVT who think that "write what you know" don't mean shit. Two points: 1) Yes it does. 2) Fuck you. Anyway... You seem to feel that "scenery porn" (Jesus shit what an awful phrase) is license for a writer to write a whole bunch of bullshit that has nothing to do with the story. This is not the case. Humans are actually quite smart readers. Even the dumb ones! We know when we are reading irrelevant dross that's only put there to waste our time. Writers (okay, good writers) know this and if scenery must be described, it is to a purpose. Here is a quick passage from The Red Badge of Courage, which is one of the first things that come to mind when I think of the use of nature imagery. You should like it, Tom. It's about war! Granted there are no kawaii tsundere pettanko loli mecha anime girls and Stephen Crane did not spend a whole lot of time telling readers the exact caliber of every rifle, but still. War!

I'll be the bastard lovechild of a listless octoroon if that kid wasn't the cat that swallowed the canary in a dapper little hat.

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The youth went again into the deep thickets. The brushed branches made a noise that drowned the sounds of cannon. He walked on, going from obscurity into promises of a greater obscurity. At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel. He softly pushed the green doors aside and entered. Pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. There was a religious half light. Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight of a thing. He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that had once been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of bundle along the upper lip. Here the protagonist is wandering the forests, humiliated at his own cowardice when he turned and ran at the sight of the enemy. He's in a dour mood, and we see that in how the environment and his relation to it is described. He's going from obscurity to greater obscurity, the screen of trees separates him from the sound of cannons. He's gone from a battlefield to a chapel made from the arch of trees. It's a striking contrast. In the character's mind nature represents everything that's peaceful. Both reinforcing and negating this is the intrusion of a corpse onto the religious tableau. Reinforcing because the corpse, as death, is an expression of peace. It is seated, its Union blue uniform is faded to the green of nature. Negating because ultimately, nature does not give two shits about the fate of humans. Those ants are just going about their business like it's not a thing. Because it isn't. Where the forest was once a refuge it's now a reminder. A reminder of the character's cowardice and the indifference of the world if he were to die. Goddamn. Note that I've been describing the environment in relation to the character. That's because the scenery actually means something in relation to who this person is. It serves a purpose. It isn't a listing of the geological minutia of mountain ranges and species of deciduous tree and wildlife, unlike your passage, which represents nothing except for what it is: boring shit. None of what you wrote meant anything! It doesn't enhance the story or give insight into any character or plot or anything at all whatsoever. It's a clinical

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description divorced from all else, a vestigial outgrowth whose only purpose is to be excised. Fuck I need some more Stephen Crane because you, Major Tom, write garbage and now that garbage is in my head.

The trees began softly to sing a hymn of twilight. The sun sank until slanted bronze rays struck the forest. There was a lull in the noises of insects as if they had bowed their beaks and were making a devotional pause. There was silence save for the chanted chorus of the trees. Then, upon this stillness, there suddenly broke a tremendous clangor of sounds. A crimson roar came from the distance. The youth stopped. He was transfixed by this terrific medley of all noises. It was as if worlds were being rended. There was the ripping sound of musketry and the breaking crash of the artillery. Look at that! That's evocative as fuck right there. Goddamn it's like I'm eating a footlong meatball sub from Subway over here. The bit about the noises of insects is like the oven that toasts the sub, btw. Shit's warm and crunchy now. Mmm-mm. Your excerpt, Tom, is like a voice synthesizer reading a list of ingredients, but the directions were replaced by a single sentence that reads "blah blah blah I don't know how to write blah".

Maxwell Lord There are a few qualifiers to "write what you know", I think. 1) You can expand what you know with research. Even in scifi/fantasy- I've got a first draft of a novel sitting on my HD, and it's about space pirates. Space pirates aren't real, but I did some research on how actual pirates work just so I could have a basis for understanding and think about what would be different.
I am drowning. There is no sign of land. You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand. And I hope you die. I hope we both die.

2) There's also emotional knowledge as well as "actually being a Portuguese truck driver". All stories have themes and are about people, and if you know a damn thing about people you can start with the emotional connections and themes and build from there. It's not even the problem of being :sperg: and introverted, because a lot of writers are- but they have the self-awareness and empathy to be able to transform their experiences into those of others.

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Mr. Pumroy

Lightning Knight posted: I personally don't really like the idea of "write what you know," as it's usually presented, because it implies that you shouldn't try to write about things you don't know anything about, and thus encourages people to just confine themselves to whatever narrow life experience they have instead of getting off their ass and learning new things so they could expand their horizons, both as a writer and as a person. Do you disagree? If anything it should encourage you to expand your horizons. Nobody has an inborn knowledge of things that allows them to write about those things. Writers can spend years researching material before they put pen to paper, building up knowledge about all sorts of shit for the sake of verisimilitude in their writing. If you want to write something and you don't know shit about it, that doesn't mean that you should just give up. It should mean that you'll do your research so that you don't look like a dang fool. Besides it's not like going out and experiencing life is something that should be viewed as onerous. Don't know what it feels like to fire a gun? Go to a firing range. Jump out of a plane? Go find some skydiving company. Do things. Now, I think that people interpret "write what you know" solely as writing about actions you have experienced, but there's also an emotional aspect to it. No matter what kind of story you are writing, if it's realistic or a sci-fi fantasy elfprance laserblast hoedown in space, presumably you are writing about characters, and those characters have emotions. Readers need someone they can relate to in a story, someone who allows them to enter the story and experience it at the level of the protagonist, and how the character feels is an important part of that. Especially in some speculative thing where the setting is strange. An authentic character can bridge the gap between reader and book, so it's important that the writer is able to write convincingly. When a protagonist feels then the reader should feel too. Or should at least understand and emphasize on some level. For that the writer needs to engage in emotional sincerity and it helps to have personal experience to draw on. I've seen a lot of characters thrashing around in the throes of hysterical melodrama because some writer does not understand what it means to feel sorrow. They see the surface level markings of it: tears and such, but can't communicate the emotional reality of it either because they can't or won't. End result is the character comes off as insincere and the reader is taken out of the story. I think if most people really think about what they know, they can discover that there is quite a lot that they could write about. We've all experience joy and pain and sadness and the gamut of the emotional spectrum, and as long as we can tap into that emotional undercurrent we can create believable characters. You can get away

I'll be the bastard lovechild of a listless octoroon if that kid wasn't the cat that swallowed the canary in a dapper little hat.

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with all sorts of things so long as the reader is able to accept the perspective that you've created for them. The thing I object to with regards to tropers is that they'd rather focus on pointless spectacle than emotional authenticity. They want to write about things that are cool and awesome... but they have no idea what is cool or awesome outside of whatever media they consume, so all they can do is vomit back a lukewarm parody of what they like. Look at Tom and his stupid, stilted action movie dialogue. Forget about never experiencing war. This guy seems like he's never experienced basic human interactions. The relationship between characters doesn't extend any further than a video game RTS voice over saying "unit lost" in a monotone whenever someone dies. There's no emotional connection, just a paint by numbers retreading of action movie/anime cliches.

MadRhetoric

Hooray, we're talking about writing advice again. Yeah, "write what you know" works on a technical and emotional level. At its most basic, you're writing with feelings, emotions, and experiences you personally have had or are aware of, and then turning that into a written work. Once you do that, if there are things you don't know, look them up; writing what you know doesn't mean writing only what you currently knew at the time of writing.

I POSSESS QUESTIONABLE TASTE IN TOUHOU GAMES

I will say though that there are authors who prefer not to outline (even in screenwriting), but if you don't outline that means you have to run the characters and situations in your head double time; you have the characters interact, then pare down to the important points. The first draft for a seat-of-the-pants writer is essentially their outline, and then they hack it to fucking pieces to get a proper finished product. They're two different ways to get to the same goal; a framework in which to produce a product. One and done forever is a terrible habit to get in to; nobody is good enough for that. It's something I struggle with a lot, but I just tend to scrap things.

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Ambiguatron Leofish posted: One thing that's been discussed is the disconnect between the media they consume and the media they create. Tropers want to write, but they rarely read. They watch a lot of anime. If they do read, it's comics and manga. But then they turn around and they want to write novels or short stories! But you can't write a coherent novel by just describing what you see on TV. Tropers never seem to think about how the words on the page work together, as a whole. They just see everything as a collection of Ah, hello. tropes. So they then fail to grasp what works in one medium may not work in another one. How many fanfics have they written where they awkwardly attempt to describe a visual gag? A joke that you speak, that others will hear, will be different from a joke that you write down, that others will read, and that will be different from a joke that you show, that others will see. It could very well be the exact same joke in terms of characters and premise but the method by which it's told will depend on the medium. But all tropers see is "Chekhov's Pun Jerk Jock Libby Anime Fall Down Thing." It's morbidly fascinating. Tropers don't want to write, their methods of writing and their approach to the written word are an ongoing offense, a perpetual debasement of the very concept. They don't embrace prose, they insult it. Tropers want to draw, or animate, or write screenplays, but the lack the skill and resources to do these things but also the will to acquire them. To produce an actual production of a movie or play you have to work in those industries but also have to be able to work with people and accept less than total control over your creation; to make an animation or a comic strip you have to be able to draw. In the mind of the troper, the act of writing is a means of escaping from these strictures to present their oh-so-important ideas with a bare minimum of effort; to write, all one ultimately need is a word processing program and a keyboard. They refuse to understand that writing is a craft, a nuanced, multifaceted thing that while not as physically involved as graphic arts or large in scale as a production with actors, is still an immense mental feat that requires skill and a bit of luck to execute successfully. What I've noticed reading large amounts of fanfiction and some troper fiction is that they take the shortest path- all descriptions are not merely bland, but limited to purely physical things; a fanfic writer will, if they don't simply assume that the reader knows what the character looks like (a cardinal sin, in my mind) will limit their descriptions to obvious things that they can see- eye color, height, hair style, skin color, etcetera.

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What they don't understand is the magnificent power of word choice, that the English language has given us the gift of a dozen words for every meaning and depending on the choice of word, how it feels to us when it's spoken or read and how it fits with the words around it, we can create meaning that is not directly conveyed by the literal meaning of the words as written. As an example, I'll use the opening line of Neuromancer: The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. What this actually means is that the sky is overcast- gray. Yet, Gibson's choice of words to describe the color create a mood and feeling instantly that gives us some inkling of the way the work we are about to read is going to work- it brings to mind technology, but also mindlessness, the emptiness of technology without a human force behind it to make use of its gifts. Now, there are a dozen similarly phrases that could be used to mean "the sky is gray" each one wildly differing while meaning basically the same thing: The sky above the port was the color of polished steel. The sky above the port was the color of an old car, worn down to primer. The sky above the port was the color of flesh in a morgue. The sky above the port was the color of a lawyer's suit. The sky above the port was the color of old asphalt. The sky above the port was the color of dry dirt. Each one of these is vastly different, even though they're describing the same thing. The troper approach to writing is to convey the color, above all, as the most important thing rather than the way in which is it is conveyed to the reader. To compare it to the graphic arts, it would suggest that the content of the picture is more important than the choice of color, style, technical things like line thickness or medium, what have you. This is, incidentally, why tropers (and many conservative minded, unimaginative people) mock modern art; much like poetry is to prose, modern art focuses entirely on the technique, ignoring the subject; to the troper/conservative, there is only the subject. Art or language that fails to convey a discrete subject fails as art. This reflects the true views of tropers, regardless of their claims about kinks or being libertines or whatever- they're dyed in the wool conservatives.

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The other thing that draws tropers to prose is that they feel they can lean on the reader's imagination to do the heavy lifting for them. If they want to tell a story about a superhero, they broadly describe actions like lifting a car or whatever because prose has no limitations, you needn't worry about what you can draw. Where they're wrong is that while prose has no limitations, and you can indeed describe anything, you must describe it in precisely the right way. A comic book drawing of Superman lifting a mighty weight over his head overawes us, or tries to anyway, with the visual. Prose must do the opposite. How does it feel to have such a huge weight pressing on one's hands? What would it be like to balance it? To feel the air moving around it as it shifts position? To feel the stresses in it as it reacts to the unnatural pressure of being lifted from such a small surface area? In fact, prose should stay away from the things the comic book panel emphasizes, and focus on the internal- not how cool Superman looks but what it would feel like to be there. Most of what they would focus on- the exact model of car being lifted, the physical position of the players in the scene, the scientific aspects of the stresses of moving a car around balanced on a tiny point, are all totally irrelevant and the act of a person lifting a great weight isn't original or interesting except if it is described well, using precisely the right words, and for the right reasons. Television and particularly anime encourage a lot of bad habits in these writers, mostly a stilted way of writing dialogue where the characters say things because there is no other way to convey them to the audience, but also an emphasize on a very purified, stilted, and incredibly flat type of description that overemphasizes power levels, world-building, and technical minutiae. It also emphasizes length- the most popular troper works are all bloated monstrosities with ten or twenty thousand word chapters adding up to multi-million word overall lengths. Brevity truly is the soul of wit- to use the Neuromancer example again, look how much information is conveyed in a single sentence. That economy is the essence of writing. The long and short of it is to write you must read but you must also write and allow others to read your work outside of a hugbox. If there are any tropers actually reading this, what I'm hoping they'll take from it is that they need to stop cradling their ideas like precious children and worrying about plagiarism. There are only seven plots, and no one wants to steal shitty writing and protecting your intellectual rights to your work is such a low consideration that actually paying attention to it will get a lot of serious editors to shove your shit right into the garbage can without reading it.

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Lessons on Critical Theory, Deconstruction and Postmodernism

Khazarkhum Deconstruction Disclaimer: I spent a lot of time getting an MA in LitCrit, when I was far older than most of the other grad students and had the additional handicap of having been out in the real world. Literary Criticism has a number of sub-disciplines, from doubling through the various fallacies, through historicism and all the other isms, quantum and so on. Of all of them Deconstruction is by far the least understood and most abused. The word itself is deceptive--it implies taking things apart. That's where most people, and Tropers in particular, go wrong. What they really mean is interpret, seeing how the parts fit together as a whole. It's more mechanical and technical. Deconstruction is different. It's really the study of choice. That sounds simplistic, I know, but that's what it comes down to. Why was this particular word chosen, and how is its meaning being used? Derrida and friends came up with Deconstruction, and like a lot of academics who need grant & book money, went to amazing lengths to never really explain it to the layman. After all, if people understood it, they might not be able to get the nice, fat honoraria on the lecture circuit. Deconstruction can be applied to the visual arts as well as literature. Unfortunately people are trying to use it in fields like history and science, where it absolutely does not belong. You don't chose who won the Civil War or what the value of pi is. But you can choose a word and gauge the impact it makes. Why, for example, is this site called Something Awful? Why not Something Stupid, Something Funny, Something Weird? What does Awful imply and include that the rest don't? Figuring out why something was used. That's Deconstruction.

MadRhetoric

Vincent Van Goatse posted: Pretty much the Troper idea of deconstruction is "hey this common fictional device would kinda suck in real life so anyone exploring how it might kinda suck is deconstructing it".

It's this one; taking fictional devices and concepts and applying a (hyper)realistic sheen to it. The thread that connects the two series that they usually trot out for the concept of Deconstruction (Eva and I POSSESS QUESTIONABLE Watchmen)is of their creator thinking "how would such and such genre pieces work outside of normal genre conventions?" Tropers TASTE IN TOUHOU GAMES answer "it'd be grim and gritty" and stop there, completely missing the point. The troubling part is that one could make a solid case for both of those things being written from ideas taken by looking at their

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respective genres in a deconstructive mode. The way that this is done with both works is by exerting more external and psychological pressure on standard character archetypes, thereby making them more "real". This ties into the idea of inter- and metatext; the creator thinking of shit that's been done within the genre they're working in and personal, external factors. Adding in those outside forces and not working under pre-established genre conventions leaves the focal points of the genre (superheroes and teenagers piloting giant robots) bare, and the aim is to only have their "true" meaning exposed. Using Eva as an example (goddamn I need to stop using Eva as an example), a deconstructionist reading would look at the effect Yoshiyuki Tomino, Go Nagai, and Ultraman had on the structure of monster of the week shows, giant robots. For the principle characters, one would use that to examine the interplay and representation of the ineffectual angsty teenager archetype versus the hot-blooded berserker archetype versus the stoic veteran archetype versus the tagalong girl archetype within the show. On a metatexual level, the reading would focus on Anno's depression, how the characters are based off of aspects of his personality, his reconciliation of being a massive nerd with his disdain for nerds, and the factors that led to Eva basically being GAINAX's Final Fantasy. The method encapsulated by Dr. Manhattan and Zandar's explanation gets into using the ideas of deconstruction as a literary device; creating and pushing the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies that the analysis tool either finds, decouples, or excises depending on who you talk to. It's still basically subversion, but one that can be traced back to the tools of analysis. e: f, b. Although if you look at Watchmen as a work that analyzes and reflects (Alan Moore's views of) the superhero genre, then you can say it's showing you the product of a deconstruction. It's giving you the end result of signifiers being stripped from their original meanings and the contradictions within laid bare taken to its conclusion. It's not a literary deconstruction, but it can be argued to be working in a deconstructive mode.

Khazarkhum

Every time one of them uses 'deconstruction' to mean 'take apart' I want to put my fist through the monitor. That is not how deconstruction works. At all. Ever. Derrida & Foucault had a brilliant idea that they later tried to run into the ground and change when people began to see how simple it really is. By the end even they no longer understood what they were saying, which is, I think, something of an allegory for the entirety of litcrit. I got to read a lot of litcrit theory, and deconstruction and quantum were by far my favorites. At the graduate level it gets really insane, wandering off into the ethereal. I've been up for 28 hours with a sick dog, so I need to crawl off to bed.

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More thoughts later.

eh4 Mors Rattus posted: From what I understand, deconstruction is about removing common elements to see what truly makes X be X? Is that right? http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html is an entertaining, though amateur, essay on the subject.

let me sing you the song of my people

Khazarkhum

After flinging the gauntlet of Deconstruction, I crawled off to lie in misery with the cold from Heck. My head is pounding, my ears are ringing, and I can't wait to kill something. Derrida & Foucault came up with the basic concept of Deconstruction. Like many great ideas, it is wonderful in its simplicity. There is, however, a problem with that if you are in academia: namely, if it's too easy to grasp, no one will take you seriously; the grants dry up, your publishing deals go south and tenure gets denied. Therefore, it is in your very best interest to obfuscate. And when you are writing lit crit, obfuscation is not just mandatory, it's your very best friend in the world. What Derrida & Foucault realized is that the artist/author has an infinite variety of pieces to work with. Therefore, what is utilized is important and may be an insight into the work. (You notice I used visual art as well as literature. That's because the same principle applies to both.) Deconstruction in its purest form is the study of choice. Every choice is significant, and in a good work Deconstruction acts as something of a roadmap or network for deeper understanding. To use it properly requires a solid base in the culture and understanding of the context that created the work. Nothing is created ex nihil. While you enjoy Shakespeare on his own terms, knowing the world he wrote in adds an extra layer of depth and significance. That's it. Deconstruction has nothing to do with wholesale dismantling of anything. It's a great tool. It's a shame that Derrida & Foucault worked overtime to muddle the definition, until they managed to create a nebulous mess. Their later writings are impenetrable. Not that their early work is at the Deboss level, but it is at least possible to understand what they're trying not to tell you. By the end I doubt that even they knew what they were and weren't saying.

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It's by far my favorite of the literary criticism methods, because it does require that you think about not just what you are doing, but what was done before you. When used in Art History it demands that you understand not just the context of the work, but even such things as the meaning of color, plants, alchemical symbols, and so forth. So there you are. It's a wonderfully useful approach that is too often derailed by incomprehension and pure confusion.

Khazarkhum

Jaded Mandarin posted: It has quite a bit with dismantling the ideas that objectivity exists and that context is a vacuum, which are notions that plagued literary theory for a while. Deconstruction is not the study of choice, but the process of dealing with understanding as something dependent on a history of meaning. You are right that it's basically a network, but however simple the idea of meaning never being finite or limited is in theory, grasping what it means in practice for individual terms or works is quite tricky. You're trying too hard. It isn't some big mystery cult that only opens up for the initiates. Too much of literary criticism takes that approach anyway.

but the process of dealing with understanding as something dependent on a history of meaning. You have to understand the choice and even why it was made before you can do that. It sounds like you were introduced to late Derrida, when he had begun to write increasingly convoluted 'explanations' that went nowhere. I need to crawl off to bed and let the meds do their work. I'll be back later, fellow litcritter.

eh4

Jaded Mandarin posted: It has quite a bit with dismantling the ideas that objectivity exists and that context is a vacuum, which are notions that plagued literary theory for a while. Deconstruction is not the study of choice, but the process of dealing with understanding as something dependent on a history of meaning. You are right that it's basically a network, but however simple the idea of meaning never being finite or limited is in theory, grasping what it means in practice

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let me sing you the song of my people

for individual terms or works is quite tricky. I know you think you've explained deconstruction but you've hopelessly obscured your meaning, perhaps out of habit. That whole paragraph is a mess, but the sentence I've bolded is just absurd. Let me try and rewrite it so the other intelligent people reading this thread don't assume they're stupid for not understanding it: Criticism was once thought capable of reaching the kind of objectivity akin to hard science. It was also thought that the context in which a given text was made was unnecessary for understanding that text because its core nature should be able to be open to that objectivity. Deconstruction is the culmination of a process of realizing the importance of the many sources of a text and its context in all directions; in short, context matters as much as the text itself, and we've come to the opposite conclusion to the old objectivity. The "history of meaning" JM is referring to is one of the attempts of critical theory to nail down something concrete within this confusing "network" by demanding a reasonable framework of symbolism and reference. Naturally they then go buggering it all up by being deliberately obscure about it. There, perhaps longer but a lot simpler

eh4

Jaded Mandarin posted: That's not what I'm referring to; and really, if you're not sure what I'm referring to (since, according to you, my meaning was obscured), why on earth would you attempt to speak for me? Because your explanation was a complete failure, and I was certain noone would understand it. You're trying to show why Tropers are terrible critics, not add to the mess and your explanations raise more questions than they answer. A Fancy 400 lbs posted: I think a lot of people are having trouble making a distinction between what an author means and what they say. You don't have to go that far. Like a classic Troper the author of the blog (and all the comments that I could see) completely ignored the point of view of the narrator, a child only just dimly recognising the shape of the society she was born into. She didn't understand racism or discrimination, just as she didn't understand why her father hated

let me sing you the song of my people

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weapons even though he was a crack shot. She had to learn that her own reactions were learned from her culture, and Lee doesn't assume that she has necessarily succeeded. In a way, its a hypothetical: how would you grow up in such a place? But the blog and its commentators saw none of that. All were concerned with their own opinions and trite assumptions. Sure, Harper Lee was limited by her times and context, but the reason the book endures is that it still has things to say.

eh4

Namtab posted: So deconstruction is looking at a work in relation to the environment it was written in and similar external factors? I'll take one last stab at it, culled from some of the more clearer descriptions I found.

let me sing you the song of my people

Deconstruction is a method of Post-structuralism. It's kind of an extreme reaction to any formalism, it's anti-system. If there's no truth in systems because they are fallible, truth is relative (so it's also a postmodern theory). In literary terms it's really a rebellion against category in fiction. It empowers the reader over the author, it implies that narrative is untrustworthy. Text and its environment are interdependent and structureless. So you deconstruct a text by looking at it's genre or narrative point of view or ideology, anything that implies a structure or authority or continuity and question the text that way. You might pose counterfactual questions about the plot if a character was removed, or if there was a narrator added, that kind of mucking about with structure. It's a theory that loves contradictions of the text's interactions with its audience or itself. It loves wordplay that subverts normal sentences. It loves disrupted chronology or multiple narrators. So it's the kind of criticism that prefers Naked Lunch over an Agatha Christie mystery but is equally at home examining both. It's such a meta-level of criticism that it's easy to do badly and probably requires well-understood jargon to not mistake its meaning. All of which means it's highly unlikely Tropers are anywhere near deconstruction.

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The Triumphant Wait I thought Deconstruction was about how in My Little Pony they had an episode making fun of the morals at the end of the episodes. Jesus, looking at their page on it Tropers think that "Deconstruction" just means "this is what would happen in real life." Or, like "Postmodernism," they use it as a blanket statement to mean that something is remotely self-aware.
Yeah, I've seen Robocop. Bitches, leave.

Family Guy does a particularly nasty deconstruction of Looney Tunes and its Amusing Injuries, wherein Elmer Fudd is out "hunting wabbits", shoots Bugs Bunny four times in the stomach, snaps his neck amidst cries of pain, and then drags him off leaving behind a trail of blood.

The episode of The Powerpuff Girls about them moving to "Citysville" deals with what would happen if their brand of heroics was applied to a real life city.

Pokmon Black and White deconstructs not just many of the implications of a Crap Saccharine World in the series that are hinted at through the Pokdex entries, but also deconstructs the idea.

The musical Urinetown has the downtrodden people fighting to overthrow the oppressive system that heavily taxes and regulates their bathroom usage during a worldwide massive drought. They succeed, but they are so caught up in the "freedom" that they don't control themselves at all and end up effectively squandering all the remaining water. THAT'S NOT A DECONSTRUCTION, THAT'S JUST IRONY.

While it's easy to mistake it for another run-of-the-mill teen melodrama, Glee could very well be called "Deconstruction: The Show." A lot of the criticism of the show arises from people thinking the tropes are being played straight. * For example, musicals themselves are deconstructed. Most of the musical numbers in the show take place either as a stage performance or in somebody's imagination. When characters actually do decide to randomly burst into song? It never goes too well.

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In The Last Unicorn, all of the characters know they're in a fairy tale, and the fairy tale itself mocks, parodies, subverts and plays straight Fairy Tale tropes. THAT'S JUST CALLED BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL.

One could argue that the first live action Scooby-Doo movie deconstructed the gang's main quirks. THAT'S CALLED BEING SELF-AWARE.

The Dark Knight Returns asked the question: "What sort of a man would dress up in a bat outfit and fight crime." The answer: "A man who isn't very pleasant or sane."

Crosscontaminant At this point even tropers don't understand their own definition of deconstruction, so I'm going to put it in my own words because I think it's a good concept ruined by terrible people. When lit-crit people talk about deconstruction they talk about a process applied by a critic to a single work. The "deconstruction" concept that used to be on TV Tropes is applied by a work to a genre; it consists of casting the expectations and common formulae of the genre in a new light and forcing a reassessment of what you as an audience have come to expect. Evangelion, for instance, takes some of the then-standard concepts of giant robot shows (kid grabbed from nowhere and put in the pilot seat of the giant robot his father built, the bipolar girl, the emotionless girl, etc.) and examines how broken these people would have to be (the father is a callous monster who cares more for his grand master plan than the wellbeing of his own son, the son is timid and takes forever to learn to use the cumbersome equipment since he's thrown into the middle of a critical situation without a chance to get used to the controls or get comfortable with his role).

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CarpiliusCoralinus ^^^^ I was just coming to post that. What TVTropes calls "Deconstructions" is a real thing that happens in media and deserves a place in the wiki. Of course just like everything else it's filled with sperged out examples from anything the tropers like and plenty of square-peg-round-holing (which. funnily enough, has its own page. They recognize this is a problem, even through it seems they haven't done much to stop it). Far be it from me to defend TVTropes, and I want to hear more about true Deconstruction, but it seems like we're getting all bent out of shape over semantics.

The Triumphant TropiusInABox posted: Is there a proper name for the concept that TVTropes calls "deconstruction"? If not, then it could probably use one. The thing that comes to mind is Brecht's "distancing effect."

Yeah, I've seen Robocop. Bitches, leave.

By disclosing and making obvious the manipulative contrivances and "fictive" qualities of the medium, the viewer is alienated from any passive acceptance and enjoyment of the play as mere "entertainment." Instead, the viewer is forced into a critical, analytical frame of mind that serves to disabuse him of the notion that what he is watching is necessarily an inviolable, self-contained narrative. This effect of making the familiar strange serves a didactic function insofar as it teaches the viewer not to take the style and content for granted, since the medium itself is highly constructed and contingent upon many cultural and economic conditions.

MadRhetoric

Captain Fargle posted: Congratulations Goons, I am now thoroughly bewildered. Now it may just be the sleep deprivation talking but I am very confused as to what Deconstruction is right now. Can someone explain it to me in very simple terms, without literary jargon?

I POSSESS QUESTIONABLE That's the thing about Deconstruction; it is chock full of literary jargon because literary jargon is how you make money in lit crit. TASTE IN Derrida doesn't and didn't concretely define his model of TOUHOU GAMES

deconstruction, and several Postmodernist thinkers have riffed on it. There's no layman's answer because there's barely a fucking literary

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definition. I'll try to make it simple, but it will probably fail. What's missing from this discussion of Deconstruction is the founding concept of Heidegger's Destruktion (sp?): which is taking a body of work within a genre or the genre itself and separating it from dogma (which includes semantics and what we would consider stupid Troper bullshit). It's finding the heart of a work or a genre; the things that make it tick. Tropers used to use a heavily bastardized version of this as the definition. Derrida and Friends' version of Deconstruction doesn't remove the dogma, but separates it from and looks at it in regards to the piece. Several thinkers have made this mean a lot of things, but to make it simple, it's what Tropes should be; the decoupling and analysis of all component aspects of a work. The problem is, nobody agrees on what the fuck Derrida was trying to get at (even when it was simple), and old Jacques became willfully obsfucating after a while. And the Evangelion example is audience subversion, as well as what Triumphant said about Brecht's distancing effect. This is most noticeable in the last two episodes of the TV series, which pretty much is the playwright directly grilling the players and shattering the fourth wall/narrative suspension of disbelif into little pieces. The elements of super robots that Crosscontaminant is talking about are post-Evangelion elements; you were more likely to find characters like Rei and Asuka in rom-coms up until Eva, and the way they set up Shinji's first sortie is more Gundam/Ideon than Mazinger Z. It's not actually a deconstruction of anything except for Anno's mental state; Madoka Magica is a better example, as it stabs at Heidegger's version at the end. Eva's manic real robot little brother, Martian Successor Nadesico actually does take a "Tropers but not terrible fucking people" reading of a Derrida-style Deconstructionist filmic lens.

Cream_Filling

would a bad man swim with dolphins? never

I don't know a whole whole lot about deconstruction, but I do know it arose as a direct response to structuralism, and makes a lot more sense in that context. The explanation that I found useful was from Abrams' Glossary of Literary Terms, which describes Derrida's initial disagreement against this idea that there is a knowable structure that can organize the "differential play" of language or thought while somehow being solid and immune to that same differential play. To quote philosopher John Caputo describing deconstruction in a nutshell:

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Whenever deconstruction finds a nutshella secure axiom or a pithy maximthe very idea is to crack it open and disturb this tranquility. Indeed, that is a good rule of thumb in deconstruction. That is what deconstruction is all about, its very meaning and mission, if it has any. One might even say that cracking nutshells is what deconstruction is. In a nutshell...Have we not run up against a paradox and an aporia [contradictory thing]...the paralysis and impossibility of an aporia is just what impels deconstruction, what rouses it out of bed in the morning... Structuralism tried to look at the structure of a work and tended to say that the structure was the "real thing" that lay underneath the surface or appearance of meaning. Deconstruction is an attack on the existence of this "real thing". Naturally, this has spawned the criticism that deconstruction is a sort of sophistry since it doesn't believe that anything has any "real" meaning or truth. But in the context of structuralism, I think you can more look it as a call for rigor - pointing out that the magic essential truths structuralists are looking for aren't really that magic or essential. It's said that Derrida chose the term "deconstruction" as an alternative to philosopher Martin Heidegger's term "destruktion." Essentially, this term describes the process of re-considering and 'destroying' or deconstructing the traditional concepts and ways of looking at and defining reality (ontological concepts) that we've inherited from history, trying to reconsider them instead of letting them be simply as old, accepted ideas. It's important to note that Heidegger's aims were not to try and destroy old ideas on being by "vicious[ly] relativizing" them, or by somehow looking back into history and destroying their meaning. Instead, destruktion, and arguably deconstruction in the context of literary criticism, is aimed at "today" - it's intended to try and drive philosophy and criticism forward by re-considering older ideas whose truth or solidity we take for granted. Like many other post-structuralist or post-modern concepts, it's really a point of view that I think comes naturally to modern peoples. I feel like most readers already intuitively understand these concepts, since they've managed to completely saturate modern society.

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Practical Demon The problem with the Troper approach is thinking Deconstruction is a school of thought that can be applied by a work to its own genre by being self aware and saying "Look how stupid this formulaic story is. It'd never happen like that in reality." As Triumphant said, that's much closer to what Brecht did with Epic Theatre, which is an entirely different thing. Deconstruction is a method of criticism, meaning it is something a critic does to a text. The author can not do it to his or her own work, or any other variation that doesn't make the reader the person actively applying the theory, which is how Tropers try to define it. They want all the work done for them. You have to understand first the context of the creation of Deconstruction. Before this, Structuralism was the main school of thought in criticism. In this school, the text was all important. The author was dead, and meaning would be taken only from the words on the page. There was a concrete structure to all works and everything could be fit into very exact boxes of genre and understood in that way. The importance of a work came from the structure of a narrative and originality came from new structures, meaning new versions of an old work, such as West Side Story, didn't really do anything new or useful. It doesn't matter how the author said what he said or how he presented it. In the end, the meaning of a work is what the work says it is. Basically, Structuralism is a very Troper-ish school of criticism, except that it was thought one had to have pretty advanced schooling to be any good with it. Deconstruction is in part a reaction against this rigid, unbending, and often blinding way of thinking. With Deconstruction, there is no concrete form or order to a narrative. The critic considers the life of the author, his or her influences, the historical context the work was written in. The critic questions how the work was written, asking why it was important it was written this way, and how would it be different from another perspective. Narrators are untrustworthy to provide the true meaning of a work. More importantly, the author is untrustworthy. The critic has to decide why the author chose to tell the story this way and what those choices mean. Ultimately, it's a battle that eh4 mentioned, between objectivity and subjectivity. Structuralists thought there was a single, very concrete and knowable meaning to any text that could be found by filing it in the right category. Deconstruction says all work is subjective, with no true meaning that can ever be applied. Every new critic will find new meaning in a work by looking at the choices made by the author and trying to understand what those choices say.

He's a wisecracker!

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We're having that same argument right now about To Kill A Mockingbird. The Structuralist reading is that context and reader interpretation don't enter into the meaning. The story is about a young white girl growing up in Alabama and the prejudices she see there and struggles to understand. The Deconstructionist reading looks at the context in which Harper Lee wrote this story, questions her motives, and takes the reader response from other races into account. Reinforcing a racist culture may not have been intended by Harper Lee, but without teaching the book properly to students, that's what it does. If a white teacher gives this to his or her students and says, "wasn't it horrible back then? At least Atticus was there to help," then yeah, it's going to come off really racist and demeaning to any black students. The teacher has to give students the context then and the context now and be able to show students what still needs to be fixed. EDIT: And MadRhetoric and Cream_Filling got there before me with better research. Still, it's easier to understand Deconstruction as a response to Structuralism. Structuralism said there was one meaning, that found in the text itself. Education was very important to this school of thought, and alternative readings were looked down on. Deconstruction said the critic finds the meaning, and it will always be subjective and new.

Practical Demon Josef bugman posted: Can we discuss Brecht? it has been absolutely ages since I had to write verfremdungseffekt out. Minor query here but doesn't deconstruction have a problem inherent in that it disregards what the author says it is actually about in favour of what the reviewer thinks it is about. Say for instance Swift's satire on the potatoe famine in Ireland, now we all know it's a satire and a mocking look at the way the establishment in Britain was ignoring the plight of a huge number of farmers in order to make a quick pound. But by a deconstructionist view of things could it not be argued that Swift was actually calling for the devouring of Irish children, no matter his protests to the contrary? Of course this is a massivly oversimplified example of what I am talking about, but could the problem of "what authors say" simply being considered a minor thing cause problems for literary students and for people who simply wish to read books?

He's a wisecracker!

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A proper Deconstructionist reading should take the political context into account and realize what the intended purpose of the text is. But yes, it is possible to diverge from the intended purpose and focus on reader reaction. This can cause some odd readings, but if the critic can support them, that doesn't make them wrong. Like the modern readings of TKAM that find it demeaning and racist, even though that obviously isn't the author's intent. But because those readings can be backed up with cogent arguments, they are valid readings. With Deconstruction, there will never be a concrete, "true" interpretation superseding all others.

Practical Demon Josef bugman posted: Now to me that seems grotesquely unfair, because it seems like judging someone for their writing even though they tried not to hold those views. This is probably a very "layman's" way of seeing it, and a dumb one, but it seems unfair to go "Harper Lee was being raist here" when she was trying to not be. I know that in terms of criticism the whole "racist" thing is probably not seen as a bad thing simply a "thing", like with how we are supposed to view history. It just seems worrying, that's all. He's a wisecracker! The reading shouldn't say Lee was racist, though. That's presenting the argument incorrectly. It shouldn't use a reader's interpretation to attack the author. It should only present the individual critic's unique analysis of the work and subjective reaction. Again, these readings are only as strong as the arguments supporting them.

MadRhetoric

Josef bugman posted: But how likely is it that someone would use it like that? If deconstruction became more common outside of literary criticism circles? Also, what is "subverting" whilst we are at it? What you're worried about is a problem endemic to interpretations of Death of the Author, which precedes Deconstruction by a decade or two (I think). You get the "fuck you, I'm right" interpretations, but those become a weird mix of objective and subjective given various literary beliefs. The take is, you can fundamentally refute their claims to objectivity on the grounds of the mode of critique they use. It's not an end-all be-all; just one of many methods of critique.

I POSSESS QUESTIONABLE TASTE IN TOUHOU GAMES

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And subversion is basically messing with established standards. To go off the Magical Negro example, imagine if the almighty white guy was deluded and bigoted, and assumed that his black partner was "down to Earth", when the black guy has a better education and has far more common sense. You would subvert that trope or schema by making the black guy the star and putting the white guy in the seat of the also-ran pity magnet. You look like you're giving the people what they want, only to warp it in some way. Satire runs on subversion, as do certain forms of comedy.

Cream_Filling

MoonwalkInvincible posted: As tropers are supposed to use it, it's when a writer specifically makes a certain character archetype or trope but then changes it in crucial ways in order to criticize, mock, parody, or otherwise draw attention to faults within the original archetype. As tropers actually use it, it's whenever a character is slightly different from the cliche that they expect.

would a bad man swim with dolphins? never

As it's used in lit-crit? I'm pretty sure it's not a whole analytical style like deconstructionism apparently is, though honestly I don't know. I'd guess that it's not incredibly far off from the dictionary definition of subversion, which is basically just "undermining the status quo." I mean lit-crit isn't some monolithic entity like the sciences. There's plenty of commonly agreed upon definitions, but also plenty of the terms are fairly imprecise, which is why often you'll end up spending like half the paper just clarifying exactly what you mean. Hell, "deconstruction" is exactly one of those terms, since it's become genericized from just Derrida's deconstruction to a more general term. I would argue that what "subversion" should mean is the use of a particular literary device that simultaneously attacks the literary device itself. I feel that the term "attack" is useful here because it helps distinguish it from merely defying the reader's expectations. A subversion is an attack on the validity and integrity of the device itself, and to me there must be an element of aggression and destructiveness in its use. It must bring about a conflict between the subverted thing and other stronger things, thereby exposing the underlying assumptions whose truth has been taken for granted.

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I'm in part looking at this in context of the terms as they are used in post-colonial theory. In that context, inversion is a discursive or rhetorical strategy which opposes the dominant discourse by reversing the categories of that dominant discourse. Subversion, by contrast, seeks to directly attack and destroy those categories. Inversion keeps the categories, but switches them around.

Jaded Mandarin

DECONSTRUCTION FOR A LAYPERSON The Signifier (word) and the Signified (meaning) - A word is a symbol of the real thing. The word "tree" is not exactly the tree you're referring to at any given moment. The word "tree" changes in meaning based on the perception and the experience of the listener. When I hear the word "tree," I might think of a tall chestnut tree by default; you might think of an evergreen, or of a child's drawing of a tree. - While we can't read people's minds to know what exact kind of tree they're thinking of when they say or write the word, we can use geographical, historical, and other available contexts to add or subtract meaning from a specific usage of the word. If the word "tree" is mentioned in, say, when describing a property in Siberia, one would assume that it won't be a palm tree that is being talked about. If the word "tree" is mentioned in a Christian poem by Aemilia Lanyer, you bet your ass that it has something to do with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from the Garden of Eden. - When you think of the world "tree" without context, it will allude to meanings that you associate with trees (e.g. Christmas decorations, Odin's sacrifice, Adam and Eve, bonfire, squirrel, etc.). All these meanings are therefore tied to your understanding of the idea of a tree. What you mean by the word "tree" is not equivalent to what I mean by it because of the differences in our perception. - What all of this boils down to is that words are inexact representations of ideas and things, that their meanings are not finite (or, as Derrida would put it, meaning is always deferred and changed through the chain of signifiers). You can never pinpoint the real meaning at the end of a signifier, because each meaning itself stands for other things. How this damn thing is applied What all of this means is that, in the chain of signifiers, you will run into ideas/meanings that are inherently contradictory to what their author may have meant them to stand for. The text will undermine itself by showing you weaknesses, assumptions, inconsistencies, et cetera. We can take the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as an example.

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The basic story of Genesis is that Adam and Eve were forbidden, on pain of death, to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent comes along and says to Eve that, should they eat of the tree, they would become as Gods, knowing good and evil. Eve eats, passes the fruit along to Adam, and God comments that they are indeed now as Gods (the Hebrew noun here is plural, and there is debate on whether the religion was originally polytheistic or whether the plural form doubled as a term of respect). Now, if you're reading the story straightforwardly, it appears that the fruit was the thing that conferred upon one the ability to distinguish from good and bad. The serpent says as much, claiming that their eyes would be opened, and God confirms it by asking Adam how he had come to know that he was naked. If eating of the tree made a meaningful difference to man's understanding of good and evil (i.e. moral understanding), prior to the eating of the tree, man was incapable of distinguishing one or the other. Therefore, man was not equipped to know why or why not he should not have eaten of the tree, as God had commanded. Therefore, God had made man ill-equipped to understand what was being forbidden and why obedience was so important. There are two possible interpretations of this: God wanted man to fail (i.e. the theory of the felix culpa, and how the Fall was beneficial despite how disgraceful it seemed in the Bible), or the story makes no fucking sense at all because God does not seem to know what he's doing, or why, or how to go about it. This is an easy example since it doesn't really rely on the understanding of outside contexts to be deconstructed (although, bringing in parallel myths from different mythologies would certainly add new insight into the reading), but it illustrates how the text that purports to stand for one thing can mean something else entirely.

Jaded Mandarin

Cyrai posted: Why did literary criticism decide to base the most popular school off of undefined or deliberately confusing ideas? I'm not aware of any other soft science doing anything like that. I mean, schools in psychology or economics might take a long time to learn and understand, but at least most of the people who believe a particular school actually know what it means. Was literary criticism just being meta when they decided that what the author thought they meant wasn't the final word after reading works where nobody understands what the author meant? It's less about the author not getting it versus deconstruction wanting to demonstrate the biases and assumptions that the author had not been aware of at the time of the writing. It's definitely knocking authorship down a peg by reminding everyone that writers are fallible human beings even

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when it comes to their great, great art, but it's a useful lens in its own right since it helps you interrogate your own assumptions about the world as well.

A Fancy 400 lbs Honestly, because it's much more useful. First off language is a very imprecise thing, so to analyze it you need tools that can deal with that imprecision. Like Jaded said, even something as simple as tree can mean many different things to many different people. This means that what it appears the author is saying is not always what they are saying. This can either be because the audience has a different conception of the word than the author because they're unaware of a meaning the author is aware of, or vice versa. If the author is unaware of how the audience interprets something, they can end up saying something very different from what they meant.
I can feel the minty fresh toxins... coursing through my veins...changing me!

Simple example of the first kind: The author grew up near a forest. His sister, who was very kind, used to climb birch trees all the time, so he ended up associating birch trees with kindness, and so uses them to symbolize kindness in their work. Of course the audience, being unaware of this, is confused as fuck, since "birch trees" does not signify "kindness" to any of them. Simple example of the second kind: An author moves to a country where very recently there was a serial killer called the Birch Tree Killer, but the author is unaware of the killer. They set a novel in a forest of birch trees, because birch trees are pretty to them. However, the association between "birch trees" and "killings" in the mind of the public causes them to interpret the birch forest as a symbol of fear and death. Basically, sussing out the meaning of a work without examining its context in the world is not an easy thing to do. Since language is fluid, you need to be fluid yourself in your attempts to understand it. It may lead to confusing looking interpretations, but it leads to much better accuracy. As for Death of the Author, Death of the Author holds that the author's intentions are completely irrelevant. However, that does not mean you can just say what you want about its meaning which is where a lot of people get confused. You still have to support your interpretation with textual and/or cultural evidence, you just can't use "Nuh uh, the author said it was THIS, so it's THIS" if you subscribe to it.

Cream_Filling

Josef bugman posted: I am almost sure that I am going to be engaging in a huge bias here, but that seems profoundly unlikely for any of the English Literature students I knew at University. Sorry to come across as arsey I am just wondering how often this is actually true in reviews and critical works and how often its just someone with the very human idea of

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"this book sucks" wanting to stick the boot in. Of course I am probably being overly cynical about the criticism within the field, and I do apoligise if I have offended people. College kids are dumb. Never judge a field by its students (except for maybe business/management, whose students are indeed as dumb and douchey as the actual practitioners). That said, your comment makes me think of this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/people-arguejust-to-win-scholars-assert.html?_r=1 To summarize, the article says that now some scholars are coming to believe that reason emerged more as a weapon than as a path to truth. I'm assuming you're trying to say the same here. This also ties into some theories of reason and cognition that say that oftentimes, people will first feel a nonspecific intuitive feeling of disconnect or disagreement first, and then after this fact rationalize explanations for why. I think that this is just part of the sausage factory of how criticism and indeed most so-called 'rational' discourse works. The key is that just because the reason someone first made the criticism is entirely subjective and even petty, doesn't mean that the criticism is any less valid or valuable so long as the criticism can stand on its own and has persuasive power. In other words, Death of the Author, in a way.

would a bad man swim with dolphins? never

Cream_Filling

Cyrai posted: Why would you make those people the founders of your school of thought? That sounds like a terrible idea. Undefined and deliberately confusing ideas do not a good methodological framework for approaching works make Derrida was adamant that deconstructionism is not a methodology. I read an article once about how he was influenced by negative theology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology in that sense. Deconstruction as a philosophy is fundamentally one of openness and possibility. In part, of course, it is not well settled because it's still pretty contemporary or near-contemporary. More specifically, deconstruction is all about attacking methodological frameworks. Making a clear methodological framework for an approach that centers around analyzing and (creatively) destroying methodological frameworks, one that believes there is no such thing as a "clear" methodological framework, would be kind of weird, right?

would a bad man swim with dolphins? never

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Cream_Filling

Practical Demon posted: Obviously a lot of students and even professionals are going to be convinced they know better, but hopefully they'll encounter someone who will be able to knock that unearned sense of certainty out of them. A good professor will look at an unnecessarily hostile reading from a student just wanting to express their dislike for the text, and tell them exactly why it doesn't have any place in the classroom. In other words, what we're doing here to Tropers and their dumbshit interpretations of literature and art. Similarly, we're also seeing that unnecessarily hostile readings actually can be useful, again by reviewing Troper works. Of course, whether our hostility is in fact unnecessary is itself a very debatable question. I know from personal experience reading even segments of that awful KIKEN:ASNEEZE that my hostility is in fact entirely justified and necessary in order for me to preserve my sanity.

would a bad man swim with dolphins? never

MadRhetoric

Jaded Mandarin posted: That would come from a misapplication of the theory, then, not any failure inherent to it.

To be fair, Jaded, there are several different permutations of Deconstruction theory, and certain modes of critique that use versions of these ideas. It's a contemporary literary mode that is used by itself or as the foundation of various styles of thought. There is no I POSSESS concrete, accepted definition of Deconstruction, like there is for QUESTIONABLE Modernism, Structuralism or even more contemporary forms like Post-Colonialism or Marxism. TASTE IN

TOUHOU GAMES

It's dense and hard to properly use/classify within it's own domain. Ease up. Josef has a weird personal problem with the pseudo-intellectualism that a Deconstructionist mode can lull people into. It is like a more useful literary Communism. You need a method to attack, Practical Demon; or else you're just flailing. Deconstruction being sold as an anti-methodology or a philosophy means it is functioning as a methodology. I would be hesitant to call it an attack, because that engenders the people who Josef's pissy about; it's a dissection and illumination. It's presented as an attack in Post-Colonialism because Post-Colonialism is an attack on the white male hegemony of discourse and history. I'd say the same

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for subversion; something can be subversive and self-aware without attacking the trope; when he's not masturbating to feet Tarantino does this all the time.

Practical Demon MadRhetoric posted: You need a method to attack, Practical Demon; or else you're just flailing. Deconstruction being sold as an anti-methodology or a philosophy means it is functioning as a methodology. I would be hesitant to call it an attack, because that engenders the people who Josef's pissy about; it's a dissection and illumination. It's presented as an attack in Post-Colonialism because Post-Colonialism is an attack on the white male hegemony of discourse and history. I'd say the same for subversion; something can be subversive and selfHe's a wisecracker! aware without attacking the trope; when he's not masturbating to feet Tarantino does this all the time. I'm aware that attack has to be possible in critique for it to have any real point. I was just addressing Josef's idea of theory being misappropriated by those who don't really know how to use it for more personal attacks that wouldn't stand up to any peer review.

Sawboss Jones

Lessons on postmodernism, deconstructions and symbol grounding without even spending a single red cent? Thank God for tropers! They're making this shit happen!
I must save that woman!

MadRhetoric

No lie, the shittiness of the Deconstruction and Postmodernism pages on TV Tropes actually led me to reading Derrida and learning about Postmodernist filmic and literary critique. Tropers are the one of the reasons I'm a Creative Writing major, because I wanted to learn how not to write like them in any way, shape, or form.

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The Triumphant Okay, I promised it, let's begin. The Resounding Failure of Tropers to Understand Critical Theory Part 1: Marxism Love him or hate him, it's hard to deny that Karl Marx is one of the most important thinkers of the modern age. The entire twentieth century was lived in the shadow of the man's philosophy, and the ideas he struggled with are central and powerful today. We're not going to get into what Communism or Marxism or Socialism really is, we're going to look at Marxist literary (and general artistic) criticism- Marx was passionate about the arts (and drinking and sex), and art critics are passionate about looking at art through the perspective of class relations, economic power, commodification, alienation, and dialectical change. First let's see what TV Tropes has to say about it, see how much of a handle they have. (I can't claim to be an expert-as Jay-Z would put it, I ain't Vlad Lenin but I know a lil bit / enough to know that TV Tropes is full of shit). Okay, let's see... no page on Karl Marx. Huh. I guess I figured if they had a 500-word page (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MichelleRuff) on an actress who has only played secondary characters in anime dubs, they might have one on the most important economic philosopher of all time.That's 1,700 less worlds than their article on Rand. There's Karl Marx Hates Your Guts, but that's about money systems in video games. This is going to be the biggest problem with this series-even finding their attempts to understand critical theory. Okay... let's check out Useful Notes: Socialism, which is literally the only page I could find that even tried to look at Marxist ideas. (It is also a third the length of Objectivism what is wrong with these people? Here's their one paragraph that's solely on Marxist ideology:

Yeah, I've seen Robocop. Bitches, leave.

Marxism: A more scientific socialism that took the analysis of capitalism and the development of history as key points. Marx analysed the nature of capitalism, how it began, how it divides the world into the two classes of proletariat and bourgeoisie, and how it spreads across nations. Capitalism was seen as one stage of the progression of history, which would eventually collapse due to the contradictions inherent in it and would be replaced by socialism and then communism. It's an extremely basic gloss that tells you nothing about what actually makes it important as a critical lens. There's also several core ideas they fail to get. First, let's talk about the Marxist principle of dialectics. There's a

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video here that does a good job of explaining it quickly, but here's the basic gist of Hegelian dialectics-- everything is in a constant change due to ideas and institutions interacting with each other, no idea is definite and unchanging. (Which I would imagine tropers would hate, since ideas being carved in stone with exact definitions is their preferred state of things). To demostrate with a subject we know too well-- the thesis ("I am a likable person and should have friends") is countered by the antithesis ("people don't want to be friends with me because I'm a misognyist asshole with no teeth") and gives rise to a synthesis, which attempts to resolve the two ("I need a safe space on the internet where people can't point out that I'm a drunken manbaby"). Marxist dialectics has the added feature that it's material dialecticism-- "the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought." Marxist criticism is huge on this notion: every work is a product of its social context. If tropers knew this, maybe they'd realize why their anime novels feel like horrible literary Frankenbeasts. I go on about material dialectics here, not just because it's the method that Marxist scholars use to examine the ideology of a work, but because you sure as fuck won't learn it from TV Tropes. Despite the fact that it's in the first sentence of Wikipedia's page on Marxism and Marxist theory, the term doesn't appear anywhere in their article on socialism. The only discussion I could find of dialectics on the entire site was this: Shadow Scythe, discussing Fallout: New Vegas posted: My tyler durden playthrough is supporting caesar (only because I can't start a fight club with the same motives, although I could join teh powder gangers...but that's another story)). Came across this philosophy Caesar mentioned Hegelian dialetic. Sounds interesting...I think I'll wiki it. Not So Badass Longcoat posted: ..."Hegelian dialectics"? This guy is nuttier than a shit of a circus elephant! Who in their right mind reads Hegel?!

It's seriously one of the most important concepts in modern philosophy, and the site's total discussion of it is "a video game character mentioned it!" "Hegel? Heh, he blows." They also, at one point, try and explain the Marxist theory of alienation. Reading it is like trying to watch Rottweiler describe the female orgasm:

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his can be part of the critique of capitalism; the stultifying nature of working in a factory alienates people from their creative nature. What? No, seriously, where the fuck did they learn that because it's wrong. For starters it repeats that bullshit myth that Marxist theory only applies to industrial workers (if you don't own the company/machines that make the money, you're a proletariat-- if you work for any business and don't have ownership in it, Marx is writing about you). Also, seriously? "Their creative nature?" Do they really think Marx was just mad because assembly-line workers didn't get to paint? Alienation is about being powerless, not just doing mindless work. It's the concept that, as the proletariat, I have no control over what I do: I'm making a product that was created by someone else, being marketed and sold to someone else, and the way in which I make it is determined solely by what's best for the company. I don't make anything, I simply produce this force called "labor" which is applied by my bosses in whatever way adds the most value. It also isn't just the workers-- capitalism, according to Marx, alienates everyone who participates it. It's the isolation of the human soul from its labor and the fruits of that labor, and it's one of the central ethical points Marx has to make. And they sum it up as "factories are bad because workers can't be creative!" And, just to drive home the fact that, for all they pretend to understand literature and art better than most professors, their page on Socialism also includes Anarchism and National Socialism as subsets of Socialist ideology. And the latter links to Those Wacky Nazis.

The Triumphant TROPERS DON'T UNDERSTAND CRITICAL THEORY Part 2: Post-Colonialism (Weapon Grade Sadness, I am so, so sorry in advance) Okay, this one is going to be rough. In part, because, unlike Marxism, they don't have any entries that even remotely approach postcolonial theory, so I can't even show you what they got wrong. I thought I might be able to at least reference their article on British Imperialism of the 19th Century, but it turns out that was just a page a Troper made for their alternate history story. This is fucking shameful. If you go into an university today, postcolonialism is going to be one of the most prevalent and constant

Yeah, I've seen Robocop. Bitches, leave.

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ways in which art is addressed. It's arguably the dominant lens in modern artistic criticism. When I was getting my degree, roughly a third of the lit department were postcolonial writers or critics. Trying to create a comprehensive wiki on art without even the most passing reference to it would be like writing a book on the geopolitics of the West and leaving out America. Put simply, the main theme of postcolonial theory is that the West is not the center of the world-- or rather, that nowhere is the center of the world. It generally focuses on looking at the effect that dominant culture can have on the consciousness and worldview of colonized culture, and how a dominant culture is changed through the process of colonization. Heart of Darkness is one of the first consciously postcolonial novels, and it's very much about this-- the way that the Belgian occupation of the Congo changed the occupiers on a spiritual level. It also tends to focus on hybridity: areas in which one person may feel to belong to multiple cultures, often the culture of both the oppressor and oppressed (W.E.B. DuBois wrote about this a ton). Whether or not Tropers know this theory, they hate everything it stands for. Slightly Evil Doctor posted: It's also been argued that decolonization (especially hasty decolonization) is part of what got Africa in it's current state. I don't know how much of that is true (judging history when ideology runs high in all directions is hard), but it seems clear that decolonization was less of a success in sub-saharan Africa than in India. Is colonialism what you call an insane solution? A hundred years or so ago it was considered normal. I don't know if our change of mind since is because of changing intellectual fashions, or because it really was a bad idea. Every time Tropers approach the topic of the third world, it's by looking down their nose at it. They talk about "fixing Africa," never even considering that maybe there are people on their website fromAfrica who don't want to read about how they need to be fixed by Westerners. Their discussions on Iran are entirely about the threat it poses to the West, never about what it would be like to be an Iranian citizen. Edward Said was calling people out on this bullshit 30 years ago, but Tropers haven't gotten the memo yet. Washout Tom posted: Set [Africa] to the flame figuratively speaking. Most of it has proven itself unworthy of governing itself and thus must be controlled by people who can. Alternatively, abandon them in every way and when they finally sort

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it out, then consider approaching them. They aren't China, India or the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula region, they aren't that important in the grand scheme of global affairs. I've never seen a cheap exported good come out of Africa anywhere in the US. (I've seen novelty shit like tourist baubles but that's about it.) Tom, for example, has no notion of the actual problems in Africa or the suffering of its people. He wants Africa to be well-run and peaceful because it's a problem for the rest of the world, not because it sucks to be an African (this is basically the premise of J.M. Coetzee's Waiting For The Barbarians-- imperialists treat "the barbarians" not as humans but as something which exists to define the empire). To these people, Africans don't exist. Anyone outside of America, Canada, and Europe (and maybe Japan) is treated as something so fundamentally different that their views, opinions, and consciousness are impossible to understand. Hidden Faced Matt posted: In all seriousness, I think trying to fix Africa at this point is just a waste of money that could probably be better spent in other parts of the world, places with more hope. It's not a continent home to over a billion people, it's just a place. Slightly Evil Doctor posted: Yes, Congo Free State was a disaster, but it was followed by fifty-two years of peaceful colonial rule by Belgium, after which there were fifty-two more years of "independance", featuring several civil wars and economic decline. It seems pretty clear that that's a case where decolonization made things worse for the people I know I've brought this up before, but assholes like this think the massive destabilization of the Congo just happened-- as though Belgium just walked out of the country and had nothing to do with the civil war or execution of the country's democratic leader. Over and over they talk about how the third world isn't colonized any more, as though everyone's on equal footing and it's just Mexico's fault that it's poor. They refuse to admit that imperialism, or colonialism even exist, they deny over and over that minority voices are marginalized, and they can't even seem to comprehend that there are human beings with their own hopes, dreams, and political ideas outside of the white world. This is why Tropers can't understand postcolonial theory: because

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they are goddamn imperialists.

Declan MacManus

The Triumphant posted: Post-colonialism I wonder if tropers could ever grasp DuBois' concept of doubleconsciousness. Let's see http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleConsciousness.

When the going gets tough/ And the stomach acids flow...

People sometimes have trouble defining who they truly are. Factors such as race, gender, culture, country origin, sexuality and occupation can all play a role in a person's identity. But when these things come into conflict with one another, a person may feel as if they are torn inside. They may feel as if they have two separate identities, or that their identity is divided into multiple facets. Basic, but not too off-base. That "identity divided into multiple facets" is lifted straight from Wikipedia, but whatever. That's not really misrepresenting the concept. Double-consciousness, as DuBois defines it, is social anomie that stems from being both "black" and "American" which presents someone from achieving self-actualization because of the contradictory nature of being an American who is entitled life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, while also being oppressed due to illogical social conventions.

Characters in fiction are no different. They too can sometimes suffer from a clash of identities. The superhero for example that must live double lives; one as a hero and the other as a normal citizen. Well, not so much. There is nothing inherent to being a 'hero' that prevents them from being a 'citizen'; they may have responsibilities, but they can ultimately abandon them. You can't abandon being African-American.

This might also result from usage of certain Applied Phlebotinum. If you've got Brain Uploading, Brain Washing, Mind Control, Alternate Universes or Time Travel, it can cause a lot of different thoughts, people, and even lives washing through your head. It can be difficult to sort out.

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You see, this isn't Useful Notes or whatever. There isn't really the pretense of defining a term or how it might be used in any literary fashion. No, it's been co-opted to mean "multi-faceted character".

This term was coined by W.E.B DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk. He used it in reference to African-Americans who struggle between the identities of being both American and Black. Yes, closer. Perhaps we are heading towards understanding.

However, the term can be used for anybody who feels an identity struggle. Arguably everyone has some sort of double consciousness. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Compare Secret Identity Identity, Living a Double Life. In extreme cases this can lead to Split Personality. See also Double Think.

However (and this is surprising), the first example on the page:

Several characters in Code Geass suffer this; notably Kallen (halfJapanese half-Britannian, part of Japan's freedom fighters but passes as a full-blooded Britannian in society), Suzaku (Japanese but joined the Britannian military to try to reduce its institutionalized racism), and Lelouch (former Britannian prince, now leader of the antiBritannian terrorists while masquerading as a Brilliant, but Lazy high school student).

The last two examples are totally wrong, but the first? THAT IS AN EXAMPLE OF DOUBLE-CONSCIOUSNESS (AND SPECIFICALLY A "PASSING" NARRATIVE) BEING USED IN FICTION I'm inclined to believe it's progress, but that'd just be lying to myself.

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eh4

The Triumphant posted: This is why Tropers can't understand postcolonial theory: because they are goddamn imperialists. Yes, but out of the mouths of babes...I think what we're seeing in Tropers isn't simply an aberrant branch of internet manchildren. These are also unaware young people echoing the mores of their culture. They're imperialists because collectively we all are. Postcolonialism assumes a convention by name but not in deed. The exploitation continues under cover of commerce, all the more blatant because we care less about Africa than we do the Middle-East. Western culture has great difficulty giving equal time to other cultures unless there's a buck in it. This isn't a criticism of post-colonialism as a subject, or your post. I just wish there was more honesty behind these ideas and they gain more cultural force. Tropers aren't going to learn that if they're surrounded by the implicit understanding that its just arty wank that doesn't reflect the real world.

let me sing you the song of my people

Deadly Chlorine

When Tropers talk about deconstructing, I think about Chef Yan

The accumulated filth of all the dog poop and hairballs will foam up about their waists and all the catladies and dog crazies will look up and shout "Save us!" ... and I'll look down and whisper "No."

cutting up a chicken.

The Triumphant

Thomas Keller artfully arranging a lettuce leaf in the shape of a longcoat, a Deadpan Snark written on a fortune cookie slip, and a pod of peas meant to represent a Nakama on a small white plate.
Yeah, I've seen Robocop. Bitches, leave.

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ACCOLADES FOR PREVIOUS COMPILATIONS COMPLETED BY THE SADDEST RHINO So, I downloaded the MCAC compliation this morning, read it in small bits through the morning, and went to lunch. When I came back, I found that my tablet had deleted the whole thing. Not that my PDF reader couldn't find the book, but that it wasn't present anywhere in the filesystem and the Android browser's download history didn't even acknowledge that it was there. Inanimate objects can't even stand tropers. I wish I was making this up. Kalos

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