This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Natalie Rambles About Pokémon – Shattered Locks and Strained Logistics
• TSF Showcase 2024-03 Fujoshi Trapped in a Seme’s Perfect Body by Seru and Jouvru
• After 15 Years of Sitting in the Dumpster, Indy’s Back Gamin’ (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Revealed)
• Fine, I’ll Talk About Online Drama… (Chuggaaconroy Was Being Creepy And Asking For Feet Pics)

---

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie Rambles About Pokémon – Shattered Locks and Strained Logistics

So, this past week I have been doing two things that go against my better judgment, as my time is finite and I have more important projects I should be working on. One has been watching a series of abridged Pokémon Nuzlocke challenges across every ‘main’ RPG in the series at 1.5x speed while doing work stuff, eating, or doing something non-writing related. And two has been working on a pet project that I have had for months, where I am basically spreadsheet designing a— purely hypothetical— Pokémon game.

For those not in the know, throughout the (almost 12 year) history of Natalie.TF, I have gradually been falling out of love with Pokémon. I’ve become better aware of how these games work, and what I learned only made me like the games less. I have become tired with its de facto structure and lack of creative campaign design. I have been utterly baffled by some of the foundational regressions introduced with recent games, especially Scarlet and Violet. And while I was elated with many of the changes in Legends Arceus, I consider it to be on a level all its own, I admit the game has a lot of Old Man Japanese Game Design Dumbassery.

Really, I should just stop caring about it, though that’s really hard when you are invested in something for 24 of your most formative years, barring a one year gap. My most read books as a child were Pokémon strategy guides. The Tomy toys were among the first I remember actually liking as a small child creature. The games were great resources for me to learn and practice math in a more abstract way, and learn things like multiplication and division early. I loved the games so much that I would write out playthroughs, because the games only had one save file. …And still do to this day, because the Pokémon Company is run by ripe donkey-assed bastards.

Anyway, the point that I’m getting at is that watching someone who makes a career out of making videos where they do challenge runs of these games really does illustrate their flaws. How their mechanically complex battle systems can be exploited and cheesed through by using recovery moves, protect, and buffs. Even though that is a deeply frustrating and boring way to play the games. How the games are so structurally homogeneous, with the formula of gym leaders, rival battles, and villainous organizations being in roughly the same places across 25+ years of games. And how people do have a point when they remark how they want these games to have less story and less linearity. It is fine if you only play through the games once. But if you just want to engage in the series with unique runs… it’s sorta awful. Also, EV training is somehow still even worse than I thought it was. They should’ve stuck with stat experience but multiply the yield by 10. Sure, the actual maths has more poop than a cow’s intestines, but the idea of the system was way better.

Meanwhile, going through my labyrinthine and overly ambitious spreadsheet has taught me… just how much unnecessary slop and complexity truly exists within these games. I understand that there is a certain affection held toward certain moves, particularly signature moves only used by certain Pokémon. However, I think it is just wasteful with its quantity, and it is a good thing that they have been removing moves. Well, at least conceptually. Removing signal beam and return was some primo poopyhead ish.

…Though, the move system itself is deeply flawed due to its ties to biology. Only Pokémon with certain physical features can learn certain moves, rather than what would be best for their kit and coverage. I know some view the distinction of moves like fire fang and fire punch to be meaningful and part of a Pokémon’s character. Yet, they are both physical fire type moves with a similar range, so why not merge them together into… fire strike or something? Sure, it would be more homogenous, but I think that is a small sacrifice to make the move pool more memorable and limit the amount of brain that needs to be devoted to fickle nonsense.

The same is true for abilities, as there is so much overlap, so many redundancies, so many bad names, and a lot of crap ones that should be replaced with something better. Healing items are a gosh darn mess because the developers decided to be cute with healing items in prior generations. Held items are a nightmare because of all the different cutesy naming conventions and grandfathered-in carryovers from prior generations. While the fact that there still isn’t a dedicated held items section in players’ inventory is egregious. 

The underlying type chart that has defined the series for years… is incredibly unbalanced in a way that boggles my mind! People rag on the ice type for not having enough resistance, but why do fire types resist 6 types while only having 3 weaknesses? Why does steel still get 10 resistances and only 3 weaknesses, along with 1 immunity? Why are there only 8 immunities among types, and why does ghost get to have 2 of them? Why do 7 types resist bug and grass, while only 3 types are weak to it? Why are some types, like fire and flying, perfectly balanced as attacking moves, while ground is super effective on 5, resisted by 2, and immune by 1? …Well, the last one is because of levitate and magnet rise, but I still have a point here, right?

Status conditions are such a bizarre thing too, as there are the five main main status conditions, confusion, infatuation, and flinch. But there are also dozens of different, seldom used status conditions that can be relevant in the game. And these status conditions are associated with certain types, and not every type has its own status condition.

Oh, but then we get to the way stat multiplies and secondary effects work. …I don’t think I will ever get over how poorly these are explained in game. This was partially corrected in Scarlet and Violet, because those games actually had a proper tutorial for this super not-obvious thing, especially if you play other RPGs. Though, they only explained part of the problem.

For those not aware, the way stat boosts work in Pokémon is bloody insane! When a Pokémon has their attack or defense stats raised with a move like, say, Growth or Bulk Up, how much do you think that raises their stats? 20%? 30%? Try 50% per stage, and seeing as how there are six stages a stat can grow, that means the stats of a Pokémon can be increased by 300% if you stack up enough buffs. With a move like swords dance, Pokémon can double their attack stat in one turn!

As for stat reducers like growl or tail whip, pretty inconsequential moves that most players are discouraged to use early on, as their effect seems minimal… they are also kind of busted. Reducing a stat by one stage brings it down to 66.67% of its base value, then 50%, then 40%, then 33%, then 28%, then 25%. It might not seem as severe, because of diminishing returns, but it is.

…Though, accuracy and evasion— everybody’s favorite stats in a turn-based RPG— work in a slightly different way because the Pokémon Stadium devs screwed up and GameFreak just stuck with their changes. (That’s probably not what actually happened, but it looks like it is.)

This is such an important piece of information, and despite reading strategy guides across my youth, I never realized how important this was, because the guide writers did not even know! And the games actively discouraged players from knowing the math behind these decisions. The first rival battle, before X and Y anyway, always did a terrible job of showing how good stat reducing moves were, as most players— even to this day— just power through it with their normal type move. 

This is made worse because the in-game text always said something like “it sharply raises the user’s Attack stat.” Okay. What does “sharply” mean? Does that make it more powerful and effective than just using two damage-dealing moves in a row? Oh, it does because it boosts the attack stat by 100%? Then why not just say that the attack stat is boosted by 100%? This is a math game, yet it is so reluctant to give players’ certain critically important pieces of information. Same with the chance of a secondary effect. There is a big difference between a move having a 10%, 20%, or 30% chance of doing something. Yet the descriptions (for ~20 moves I checked) say that it “may” do something. Just give me the numbers!

This is all made worse by the way the games limit Pokémon movesets to only four moves, which I just hate. Not because I am against limited move slots. Far from it. I actually liked how Persona 4 Golden only gave players 8 skill slots, and some of them could be reserved for resistances, immunities, or absorb abilities. Same with demons in Shin Megami Tensei IV having 8 skills! It was a fun bit of balancing and strategizing through limitations and luck! (Sorry if I got any of this wrong, I have not played either game in a decade.)

Point is, that’s twice as many skills! And you know what’s a big difference between these games and Pokémon? The number of damage categories. P4G and SMT IV have 8 elements. While Pokémon has 18 types, along with a physical and special split. Sure, nearly every Pokémon has multiple weaknesses, but it can still be hard to assemble a team that can do damage in every category available. With a party of 6, you have 24 damage slots, so one damaging move per type would fill up 18 of them. Leaving 6 for… status moves, false swipe, buff moves, everything else. Now, that is not how it works in a competitive environment, but I have always hated the competitive Pokémon scene on so, so many levels. And any complains I could levy could be countered with how easily you could customize moves in modern games… But then TM-ageddon happened in Scarlet and Violet. Ugh.

Regardless, I don’t like the four move slots mechanic. It is not in a fun or interesting way and it limits options more than anything else. I know you can complete these games with nearly any team. But that’s like saying you can beat NES Final Fantasy with four white mages. Sure, you can, but does that make the game fun? Not really. It just necessitates grinding, cheese stats, conservative approaches, and turning the game into a science. And if you wanna turn something into a science, might I suggest… science?

Also, I kinda hate how the entire bloody Pokédex works and treats forms. Regional forms, alternate forms with different stats, and the Mega Evolutions or Gigantamax forms who, with some slight reworking, could have been converted into real Pokémon. Instead, they are just in the archives forevermore. The official numbering is good for dividing Pokémon into generations, it is incredibly confusing in how it breaks up families of Pokémon. While evolution methods are one of the simplest examples of needless superficial time-wasting complexity in these games, I hate how stubborn GameFreak is to change them. Nobody would be bothered if an arbitrary item becomes a level up. Nobody would be bothered if the evolution level changes to something more balanced for the region.

Oh, and then weather— freaking weather is some of the most cockamamie nonsense that I have ever seen because of how it—

**BANG BANG**

Akumako: “Fuckin’ aspie. Sometimes a balanced system is one with imperfections, you ever get that through your thick skull? I can’t believe I used to be her before I put on this suit. It’s like every quarter with her and all this Pokémon shit. She just keeps shoving maggots into that wound and keeps wondering why things keep getting worse! I swear, if she tries to pull this again after the inevitable Pokémon Presents this February, I’m taking over this shit! …Again!”

---

TSF Showcase 2024-03
Fujoshi Trapped in a Seme’s Perfect Body by Seru and Jouvru

Back during the height of my obsession with TSF, during my teen years— when I only knew it as TG— I was firmly disinterested in anything that involved a female-to-male transformation. Why? Well, I was a burgeoning trans girl in denial back then and I found the idea of a female-to-male transformation to be somewhere between uninteresting and uncomfortable.

That was over a decade though and in the ensuing years, I have become increasingly interested in the concept. All due to a mixture of getting older, presenting as female, and getting bottom surgery. Especially the last one. Having a vagina really helps demystify them. Unfortunately, female-to-male TSF stories tend to be pretty darn rare in the circles I usually check. 

There are a lot of reasons for this. A moderate chunk of people invested in TSF or TG seem to think it means Transform Sex to Female or Turn into a Girl or at least act like that’s what it means with their gatekeeping. The market for erotic visual media that targets a male audience is far bigger than that which targets a female audience. Society, just in general, has a lot of hefty gender baggage that affects how men and women are viewed and catered to— which is a novel-length topic if I’ve ever seen one. I could go on, though I’ve already dragged this into out enough as it is.

Fujoshi Trapped in a Seme’s Perfect Body is a boy’s love TSF story that began its life as a 2016 Kickstarter project created by the burgeoning publishing group The Yaoi Army. Why exactly you would start a yaoi group with a story that featured a female protagonist is a bit beyond me, but I’m entering this world as an ignorant outsider who knows basically nothing about BL.

The story follows Misa Nanase, an 18-year-old fujoshi (female yaoi fan). Misa’s a girl without many friends, who does not bother to apply makeup or brush her hair, and whose life centers around sweets, cute things, and boys. Especially boys! Based on the Japanese naming conventions here, I initially assumed Misa would be a more Japanese rendition of this concept. In execution though, she’s pretty firmly an American creation.

Misa is a forgetful ditz, bad at school, and has a low interest in anything based in reality. Yet, she likes to ship and fantasize about cute boys she sees in real life, assigning them archetypes as she indulges in her own mind. She is implicitly deeply inundated with online culture given her use of 2010s internet-isms (LOL, OMG, GDI, dafuq, nani the fock, and trololol) and penchant for ‘fangirling out’ when it comes to her interests. Despite not taking much care of herself, she has natural good looks. She is a classically trained anime pervert who gets nosebleeds when aroused. And I see a lot of overlap between her and a genre of person that was fairly common on the likes of Tumblr, before Verizon devastated that site. She even uses emoticons in her dialogue, which doesn’t even make sense because… this is a comic. You can just have the artist draw the characters making expressions.

I can easily see how someone might find Misa to be a… frustrating protagonist to deal with. She is pretty stupid, prone to dramatic fits, can be highly emotional, and while secretive about her interests, once she finds someone who she can trust, she barfs her personality all over ’em. Personally… I can’t help but love her. She is a dramatic upbeat dumbass who, while a handful at times, would be a lot of fun to hang out with. She’s got at least an 8/10 hangoutability score.

After spending the first chapter establishing her character, Misa then meets her main love interest for this series, a tall muscular man with thick eyebrows and slick black hair by the name of Kazuo Arata. Kazuo stumbles upon Misa as she is reading her gay porn behind the school during lunch, and rather than hold this against her, he uses this as a jumping off point to form a relationship with her. A relationship that Misa views as an unlikely friendship where she gets to tease a man who looks like he walked straight out of her erotic comics. While Kazuo views it as the start of a burgeoning romantic relationship. Except he does not want to risk the relationship by pushing things into a romantic direction, so he settles for friendship, hoping the ditzy Misa gets a clue.

After establishing this familiar dynamic, Misa saves a little old granny from walking into traffic and is rewarded with a magical wish-granting pendant. For the record, this character has zero relation to Miracle Granny from Raiden Shogun is my Wife?!, the greatest TSF supporting character in the genre’s history. And she’s no Computer Granny either! 

Unremarkable granny gives Misa instructions on how to use the pendant— take it to a hill at midnight with her special someone and make a wish. Misa doesn’t really get it, because she’s a dumb pea, though Kazuo helps her out with the process and helps escort her to the hill at night, bringing her food and a jacket, like a good boyfriend. 

The two share a heart-to-heart as they wait for the stroke of midnight to pass, and when the time comes Misa makes her wish, only for nothing to happen. Kazuo then gives Misa a bracelet with his name on it and a kiss on the cheek. You know, like friends do. And just friends. Sadly, the rules of the subgenre dictate that Misa remain oblivious, so she merely waves Kazuo away and goes to bed. Misa is naturally upset that she did all this work only for her wish— to become a man— to not come true. But little did she know, this magic just operated on a slight delay.

The story then reaches the essential ‘wake up in a new body’ scene… and it is an odd take on the concept. Misa wakes up in her room with the body of an über masculine and super hot version of herself. She has wide shoulders, pronounced hip bones, picture perfect abs, handsomely disheveled hair, a nice big cock, and most importantly, perky pink boy nipples. Basically, her idea of a perfect seme’s (top) body, with enough familiar characteristics— hair color and eyes— for her to still be identified as Misa.

Rather than jumping up in joy over this, Misa… continues to be the most oblivious person imaginable. She is such a dumbass she does not notice the fact she’s now a man as she walks around in her torn up pajamas, takes her clothes off, showers, or dries herself off with a towel. She does not notice that her body completely changed until she wipes away a foggy mirror, and then mistakes her reflection for a “psycho-killer-pervert.” It is a level of obliviousness that makes me think that Misa has something really wrong with her, and is easily the longest realization I have ever seen in any TSF story. It’s hilarious.

Misa is naturally elated with her new body, from the handsome face, the instant abs and, most importantly, her “weapon of ass destruction.” Sadly, before she can make like a good TSF protagonist and use fappy faps (that’s a weird Pokémon reference), she needs to go to school, yet does not have any clothes that fit her new body. I mean, she could raid her dad’s closet, though, again, Misa is a low INT himbo. Instead, she calls Kazuo, he struggles to believe her at first, yet eventually buys it and agrees to help Misa, lending her one of his uniforms. Just no underwear because… the writer wanted to give her underwear later for some reason. 

Yeah, this is about where the story stops being as straightforward, now that the fairly basic intro is done, and starts making a lot of, frankly, bizarre choices. 

Kazuo begrudgingly takes Misa to school and begins to come up with a fake backstory for her. A fine plan… except before they can act on it, they learn that Misa is now known as Misaka by all of the students and everyone else in the world, including her parents. Meaning their planning was pointless, and they could have intuited a reality change by… having Misa look at her ID and seeing the name Misaka on it. 

As Misa and Kazuo head to school, they are spotted by a pair of siblings, Kenji and Kyoko Kyouya. With Kyoko being adamant that she get Kazuo as her man, while Kenji is very interested in Misaka. It is a good setup to end the first volume of a story, introducing antagonist figures and alluding to future events. Yet rather than let this mystery brew, the second volume starts out with a flashback to three years ago. Yes, the story promised that it would show our freshly transformed protagonist attend school… only to go back in time to explain a mystery introduced by the cliffhanger.

In said flashback, it explains that Misa had a circle of nameless friends before and she earned a good reputation around school. So good that rich man-scum bastard Kenji came onto her, and she rejected him. In turn, Kenji used his rich kid powers to make her socially ostracized. As a piece of background, this works, though this first flashback marks a certain… problem that comes with using flashbacks in general. Flashbacks are a great way to add things and fill in blanks, yet they should never be used to contradict what we see before as, when events are viewed linearly, they should make sense. And here… they kind of don’t. 

Misa is not initially presented as someone who is shunned by her peers. She is presented as someone whose personal interests make it hard for her to relate to others. Someone who loves BL deeply and cannot hide her fascinations. Yet this chapter is saying she had a social circle in spite of her love of BL, that she was distanced from it, and her supposed friends never brought up the rumors with her. …Yeah, that’s not a huge problem, but it does feel like a retcon made to give Misa a background with Kenji and a reason for her to despise him.

…Okay at this point I think I can shift to talk about things generally. While Fujoshi Trapped in a Seme’s Perfect Body has a pretty solid foundation, as the story goes on, it starts to get more… messy in the details.

Fujoshi Trapped in a Seme’s Perfect Body is ultimately a love story about two friends who, due to the circumstances around this transformation. Who are given a new opportunity to grow closer as they try to deal with their problems, open up, and encounter typical lover’s quarrels. Missing meetings when other events run too long. Communication issues and an unwillingness for both parties to listen to the other’s excuses due to their preconceived assumptions. All before the two are reconnected in a place of importance, followed by a bonding experience where they accept this transformation and dynamics.

Unfortunately, it lacks a level of intent, purpose, and apparent planning. It honestly reminds me a bit of how a lot of independent serialized fiction (particularly fan fiction) works. Where there is a vague outline was in place, yet the writer kept coming up with the actual beats of each story and chapter on the spot.

There is a bit where Misa thinks everybody at school is fawning over her boy form, when really they are just fawning over Kazuo. Even though there was no indication that other people had the hots for him before… or after. There is a convoluted sequence where Misa and Kazuo are both soaked in rain after running “a block” and need to strip and shower. …When they could just wear Kazuo’s spare clothes. Instead, Kazuo has Misa hide under his bed… wearing nothing but a towel, before inviting his fujoshi older sister into his room. From a scene setting perspective, I get it. From a logical perspective, I would be deeply disappointed with myself if I structured something like this. There are better ways to get a naked man underneath a bed.

Misa’s mother and father are initially presented as being disapproving of her fujoshi lazy girl lifestyle, yet after her transformation, her parents give her two suggestive body pillows as presents. Even Misa thinks this is weird, yet there is never a real explanation for this other than… Misa’s parents are trying to be nice to their gay son? 

Volume 3 opens on Kazuo’s fujoshi sister, Azumi, training him up to be the studly blunderbuss of idealized masculinity and a brief flashback to school, showing Misa being a pervert. Which… is a fine inclusion at best and an unimportant pace breaker at worst. 

The core of volume 3 is an attempt to transform the romantic relationship here into a love triangle with the inclusion of Yukino into the mix. Yukino is a soft cutie boy who Misa had been shipping as the uke (bottom) with other guys for three years who just so happens to be gay— or at least gay for Misa— and asks Misa on a date. Misa keeps this a secret from Kazuo though and, like a ditz, needs to do some scheduling balance. Except, like a ditz, her attempt to fix things only makes them worse. It works, except for how the writer is clearly conflicted about what to do with Yukino. Yukino gets a wild redesign before the date and presumably gets eaten by the bed in the love hotel, as he never shows up again. No follow through, no Kazuo roughing him up, no attempt by him to reconnect with Misa.

Volume 4 similarly opens with a flashback of Misa and Kazuo going on a date to Disneyland where they dress up as a prince and princess and have their first kiss. …Even though they already had their first kiss in volume 2. It significantly changes the context of their relationship, and in a way that just makes them both seem… stupider for not saying they love each other. While also… dramatically changing a lot about their interactions throughout the first three volumes, because… they’ve gone on at least one date together.

In context, this is meant to juxtapose the fact that Misa and Kazuo are still in a rough patch after the love triangle blew up, leading both of them to try dating someone else on the rebound. With Kenji and Kyoko from the end of volume 1 suddenly making a grand return to swoon over their respective target. I understand why this conflict is included, yet there is a constant sense that neither party wants to do this, that they want to forgive each other and move on with their relationship. Especially because this is all because of a misunderstanding built on a misunderstanding. It’s a common conflict in love stories, and while some might say it is just part of the genre… I don’t like it. Not at all. The conflict takes forever to resolve, and feels like it exists to misdirect and worry the reader when… obviously the couple in the throes of gay sex on the covers are going to get together.

So, am I doing a showcase on this because I view it as something promising that, through many missteps, does not reach its full potential? …Yes. But that’s not the only reason.

While I can criticize many things about this series, I still had a good time reading it. Even though they do make dumb decisions, the cast of Misa and Kazuo, along with various other members of the supporting cast, are endearing characters who have an earnestness and shamelessness that I really enjoyed. Misa and Kazuo are opposite ends of the himbo spectrum, and Seru consistently captures a solid dynamic between the two. The tone of the story is mostly kept light and playful, with occasional fantasies thrown in for good measure, making the thing a fun and breezy read. While the various internet-isms of the story fade away as the work matures and developers, turning them into something to help set the stage, rather than a novelty that outstays its welcome.

Fujoshi Trapped in a Seme’s Perfect Body succeeds on a moment to moment level, doing enough to keep the reader constantly entertained, and without many slow spots. It does so many critically important things well that I cannot say it is bad. It’s just… sloppy with a lot of its structure and construction. It is a particular sloppiness that makes me look at this as a story that should be read, broken down, and then used as the foundation for something better. Because once you get rid of all the crap, you have something pretty good. 

…I’d make some cheeky joke about how I’d like to try my hand at doing this, but I have way too many things on my plate this year to write TSF Series #XXX: The Fujoshi Gals in… Total Marsification. Cripes that’s an obscure reference that nobody should get. How about TSF Series #XXX: Take My Body and Make Me an Ikemen? Or TSF Series #XXX: Fujoshi no Ikemen – Living My Erotic Fantasy?

On that note, how does Fujoshi fare as a TSF story? Well, it fares pretty well for a while. You have Misa’s initial amazement, her geeking out over male clothes, gawking over her male bodies, and being in a male changing room, and some fun gender snafus. Like Misa pissing into her face— because she has one of those weird penises that point straight up instead of pointing out. Misa needing to deal with constant erections, because she has a fujoshi mind in a hot male body. Or a weirdly elaborate explanation of how to pee as a man, complete with references about avoiding underwear stains from not shaking out enough pee. 

The story is also comfortable in eroticizing a male body in a way that really does help the sexual fantasy of becoming a man. Even though Jouvru only likes drawing… maybe three body types for men. Overall, I would say that it does enough to make the TSF element to feel like an essential part of the story, and the level of exploration feels appropriate, if a bit front-loaded. Nothing too unique, though it did get my imagination moving at points.

…However, the whole TSF angle gets mucked up with all of these flashbacks, which distract from the fact that Misa is stuck as a man now, in the present, and cannot get back to how she used to be. I love TSF stories where bodies and sexes flipped about, yet this just does not work for me. The story is about dealing with a transformation. Stop going to a place where the transformation did not happen.

Next, I should talk about the artwork, because it’s… weird.

My first thought when reading this comic was that this was originally a webcomic of some sort. Early on, backgrounds are basic or non-existent. The artwork on display has a not-quite-professional, somewhat rushed, look to it. Like the artist was trying to get things done quickly and ‘good enough.’ Though the paneling and general vision of the story remained fairly strong, showing that the artist might be of a burgeoning technical skill, they do understand how to layout a page in a way that’s appealing to the eye. And despite its shortcomings, the art carries with it a creative ambition, trying to be expressive and flashy when the scene calls for it. Art is ultimately about skill, vision, and compromise. Everybody has thresholds of these things they prefer, and I’m pretty happy with the balance on display in the first three chapters.

In the subsequent chapters, the artwork generally improves, yet it does occasionally see reprisals of shortcomings from the initial chapters. Plain backgrounds, weird proportions, faces that are meant to be expressive, yet look awkward. Certain chapters are full color, where the additional layer of detail does a lot to spruce up the artwork and hide the imperfections that stick out in a black and white comic. Partway through volume 3, there starts to be a notable artistic drift, with the men being drawn as having wider shoulders and more pronounced pecs. 

By the time the series reaches volume 4, it sees a considerable boost to the quality of the artwork, mostly with the backgrounds. Based on the credits, I think the backgrounds were mostly handled by one of Jouvru’s assistants, and the results are… ambitious, yet inconsistent. Sometimes they arguably look better than the character art, while other times you can see the 3D model that was traced or certain background textures stick out. Like the distractingly high res brick wall texture.

This change is paired with some slight redesigns for characters, another artistic drift, and more ambitious layouts. It all feels like a considerable step up from where the series began, and while it still has a few instances of artistic jank, I find that it gives the comic more personality.

Now, I think that’s it, so— oh. Right.

Volume 4 is a pretty satisfying end to the series, as it sees Misa and Kazuo finally accept their feelings for each other. However, the chapter does end on a cliffhanger, and a tease for the fifth volume. Volume 4 came out in 2018, so… what gives? Where is volume 5? 

It’s not on the official website, doing a basic search, I can find a notice about pre-order pages going up, there was a Kickstarter for it from May 2019, but I cannot find it! I can find a GoodReads page for it. I can find the alternate universe doujin. Which I am not covering and did not buy, because I’m not paying $15 for a shitty quality PDF of a 50 page comic. 

Seriously, I bought volume 4 and was sent this absolutely gross PDF with super low res images. It looked better after I extracted the JPGs, but it was still artifacted to hell and I had to use Waifu2x so it looked presentable. Why can’t everybody just be like Fakku and give me 2255 x 3200 resolution PNGs? Or, hell, be like most DLSite artists and give me JPGs!

Critically important tangent aside, I found an update on the Fujoshi series posted in May 2023 as a Kickstarter update… except it was backers only, so I cannot read it. 

It’s been 4.5 years since the project was funded, it met its goal, and this isn’t a game or anything. This is a 150-ish page comic. Why has it been subjected to so many delays? Was the artist just booked doing stuff for this sexy monster boy yaoi VN? I could probably figure this out if I dug around and asked people… but I’m already covering four volumes this week, so I think this is enough to end things.

Taking everything into account, I liked Fujoshi Trapped in a Seme’s Perfect Body. It has good humor, fun characters, and a lot of good ideas that I would love to eventually play around with. As someone who is trying to write more FtM stuff, it was a great reference, and I will probably be looking back at it for inspiration over the coming months, maybe even years. Because Fujoshi Trapped is at least one of the best long-form FtM TSF comics. …I mean, the FtM fields are so barren that such a title is pretty much meaningless, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

…Okay, I seriously need to stop these super long TSF Showcases. What do I have planned for the next one— another 600 page comic? As Misa would say, FML…

---

After 15 Years of Sitting in the Dumpster, Indy’s Back Gamin’
(Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Revealed)

…Even to this day, I still think it is a shame that Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings never got a ‘proper’ HD release. Instead, it was treated as a side project, a minor spin-off seen as a cash in on the movie, but with less panache and importance than… LEGO Indiana Jones. At least that game came to PC and HD consoles. Unfortunately LucasArts was imploding at the time, so the HD version of the game was left unfinished and the game series just sorta fizzled out from there.

Which is a shame, as Indiana Jones had a pretty interesting history in the world of games. It was a popular 80s adventure movie series, so it was lousy with game adaptations. From Howard Scott Warshaw’s highly inventive Atari 2600 title to the LucasArts adventure game duo to the SNES game that, like its Star Wars predecessors, was hard as balls. (Which was the style for American NES games at the time, to fight against the rental market. Japanese games were hard because the developers got too good at them and wanted them to last. Which is why people don’t fondly remember American console games from the 80s.)

Sorry, I just love little nuggets of background like that. 

The actual story here should begin with the January 2021 teaser trailer that MachineGames and Bethesda released to announce they were working on an Indiana Jones game. The trailer conveyed basically nothing, and was more of a utilitarian thing. Teasers like this let various companies acknowledge the project’s existence, helps the developer hire more people, and ultimately prevents leaks and rumors from circulating.

It has been three years since then, and we finally have a proper reveal for this game, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Which… looks about what I would expect from an Indiana Jones game. Adventuring through ancient ruins. Reconvening with characters in academia and at museums. Fighting Nazis. Reassembling ancient mechanisms from civilizations long past. Stealth action first-person combat, emphasis on the action. Some puzzle solving to get players into the adventurer mindset— wait, what was that about first-person?

Yeah, this is probably the most striking thing about this game. Despite being a licensed property named after its protagonist, Great Circle will mostly be played from a first-person perspective, with some third-person actions and third-person cutscenes. This is a… curious approach, but it makes sense. Machinegames has only ever developed first-person titles using IdTech, an engine designed around first-person shooters. As such, tasking them to make a third-person game sounds… like a really bad idea. 

It makes sense, yet it also does not strike me as the most natural fit for a game with a fixation on melee combat, whip wielding, and set pieces strewn throughout what I assume to be a linear adventure. Third-person is the go-to perspective for games like this for a good reason, and if that would make it too much like Tomb Raider or Uncharted… that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Those both took inspiration from Indiana Jones, so it would make sense to follow through and make one big great circle.

Reservations about perspective aside, I think the game looks good. Nothing about it broadly screams Gen9 to me, though it still shines in a few spots, and I’m sure it will look cleaner when played on actual hardware. YouTube compression is still a thing, y’know.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be released for Xbox Series X|S and PC sometime in 2024.

---

Fine, I’ll Talk About Online Drama…
(Chuggaaconroy Was Being Creepy And Asking For Feet Pics)

Okay, so this is something that I usually would just let pass me by, though it is part of a larger trend I have seen, and I want to comment on that over the specifics.

This week in online creator drama, long time let’s player Chuggaaconroy was subjected to a controversy after another creator, video essayist Lady Emily, shared a few DMs she shared with him. I included the associated images as the header image here, but you can view Emily’s thread in full here. In the DMs shared, Chugga (whose real name is Emile, but Emile and Emily are basically the same name) tries to initiate erotic foot fetish roleplay with Emily, with Emily explaining that he would suddenly veer into it. Including doing some italicized narration that… apparently is considered a culturally taboo technique. I dunno. I do that when talking to my friends to convey my affection for them. Like giving them hugs or imaginary apples. So maybe I’m just part of the problem or something. 

Reading over the provided screenshots… Yeah, this isn’t a great look for Chugga, as he is trying to loop someone into what is almost undeniably his fetish while pretending it is just a friendly discussion. Which… I saw some people use to decry him as a ‘sex pest,’ though I think that’s a bit overblown. Yes, what Chugga was doing is bad, creepy, and made people uncomfortable, as he is trying to initiate an erotic discussion without consent. However, he was just trying to talk to someone about something benign that he happens to have a fetish for. 

Does this qualify as harassment? I guess. But on the scale of bad things some dude with over a million YouTube subscribers could do, it’s not really that bad. Actually, here’s a half-assed analogy. Coming onto a woman while at a convention together, getting handsy with her, and forcing yourself on her is akin to a felony, while this… ain’t even a misdemeanor. 

Akumako: “Hold up, check your bias!”

…What? Oh… I like Lady Emily’s videos, both her original stuff and the stuff she does with Sarah Z. She’s trans, so I’ve got a natural bias toward her, but she’s also a fake redhead, so, as a real redhead, I don’t like looking at her.

On the other end, I was a pretty devoted watcher of Chugga’s LPs back in my high school days (over a decade ago). Have I kept up with him? No. Which is a shame, as I always admired the work he put into making his videos more polished than what a typical LP looked like circa… 2008. I remember being super impressed with his Mother 3 LP in particular, in spite of the wireless keyboard woes.

There, is that good enough?

Akumako: “By your standards, and not a smidge more.”

Thanks… Can I get onto the actual point I wanted to get to here?

Akumako: “I dunno, can you?”

…I swear, just one time with a monkey wrench, I’d fix your plumbing…

Anyway, I’m not really here to talk about either creator, but rather the purpose of these sorts of call outs of people with large platforms and followings who do something wrong. In my simple mind, I view the purpose of calling someone out on bad behavior is to… see them stop doing said behavior and grow as a person. However, that is not really how people have been socially engineered to view or reciprocate this news. Instead, people who are called out, are found guilty of something bad, tend to be met with vitriol, frustration, disgust, and general hatred. Reading through some discourse on this, I got the impression that these people wanted something to happen to Chugga. Not for him to change, but for him to… cease to be, I guess.

Not necessarily murdered— that is a bit too radical for these cowardly masses. It is more that they want them to lose their platform, lose their livelihood, and become an unperson, vanishing into the ether. They want to act like those Charlottesville Nazis and “disavow” people into the next dimension, hoping that it makes they’s ass smell like sweet apple vinegar. They just want the bad people to go to jail so they are never heard from again and society can be at peace. Except… that is completely misunderstanding the point of a call out like this. 

The point of a call out like this is to light a fire under someone’s ass and have them become a better person. (Which is what Emily wants Chugga to take away from this.) Because the thing about people is that… they can grow. They can improve. Someone who was a massive creep could learn their lesson and stop being a creep (for the most part). Yet instead of expressing empathy, people just distill their opinions into a binary of good and bad. Good people should have success, while bad people should be removed from society. Even though this all operates on a spectrum, and people regularly slide around it.

This is all pretty basic shit that… a five-year-old should understand, because they probably would have been punished at some time and, through that punishment, they learned to change their behavior. Yet, when it is abstracted, when it is cast around a quasi-celebrity who… probably makes less than $100k a year, some people forget this fundamental-ass rule of how to be a person. If somebody is on an accessible level, the first approach should be to try to correct their bad behavior, to see them stop doing the bad thing.

…But if someone is unapproachable, like a billionaire, politician, or someone with actual power who does things that are actually bad, then I will agree that extreme action needs to be necessary. Just not shunning or hatred. Something productive. Kill ’em, castrate them, cauterize their limbs off and see what happens, or, and this is the best approach, seize all their assets, because no money means no power in 90% of cases. You know, something that would have a tangible effect and solve problems. It’s better than wasting lifetimes bitching about the fact that some people exist. 

Motherfuckers need to be taught that White American terrorists are some of the most influential motherfuckers in history, because they got shit done by taking action with a motherfucking gun.

Akumako: “Can… Can you just not— for once in your pathetic life— not end on a serious topic like this?”

No.

Akumako: “Two bum Natalies in one week. That’s gotta be a record.”

**BANG BANG**

Akumako: “I’m gonna need to buy more compost bags at this rate…”

---

Progress Report 2024-01-14

Yeah, this comic has some killer beat moments!

2024-01-14: I spent too much time fiddling with my utterly pointless Pokémon spreadsheet again. Still managed to make good progress and wrote 7,300 words for VD2.0 CH 6-21, zooming past the first half of the chapter and getting to the real meat. Pretty good progress, I’d say! Now I just need to do this WAY more often. Also, I passed the elusive 250k word threshold! Meaning this novel is technically long enough to be 5 novels… and I am only, like, a third done with the first draft.

2024-01-15: 2,900 words on VD2.0 CH 6-21 today, as I was busy working for a good chunk of the day, took a break to find this week’s TSF Showcase subject, and just mucking around with a spreadsheet. I wanted to hit 3,000, but then a wild Cassie appeared to chat! (Love ya Cassie!)

2024-01-16: Finished off the main part of VD2.0 CH 6-21 with another 2,500 words, but stopped to tackle this week’s TSF Showcase. Then I wrote 3,600 words for the TSF Showcase while reading 3 volumes of manga and doing some relevant research.

2024-01-17: Wrote the 1,900 word preamble for this Rundown. Wrote 3,100 words to clean off VD2.0 CH 6-21. Then I started writing the outline for a chapter that I should have planned earlier. I got in 1,000 words of the outline, crashed, and it is already possibly suffering from creep scope because I am introducing a new setting for one chapter.

2024-01-18: Yeah, I got sorta distracted by work and spreadsheet time wasting today… Wrote 1,600 words for Rundown, finishing up this week’s contents, but that was it. I was in a lackadaisical spreadsheet mindscape after work and technical difficulties.

2024-01-19: Edited and prepped this week’s Rundown. FINALLY finished the outline for VD2.0 CH 6-22 after adding 2,500 words, making it 3,500 words for a bloody outline! Then I wrote 500 words for CH 6-22 before crashing and going to bed. I should have done more, but spreadsheets are too much addictive and I had an awful time trying to put up a curtain rod and remove my blinds.

2024-01-20: Wrote 3,600 words for VD2.0 CH 6-22. I really should not jump from outline to writing the story this quickly, as it makes things boring for me. I definitely should have done more, except I wanted to do just about anything else.

---

Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp
Acts 1, 2, and 3 Progress Report:

Yeah, I am suffering from writing fatigue at this point, so Act 3 will probably need to be delayed…

Current Word Count: 267,536

Estimated Word Count: ~500,000

Total Chapters: 48

Chapters Outlined: 42

Chapters Drafted: 25

Chapters Edited: 0

Header Images Made:0 

Days Until Deadline: 129