Bay 12 Games Forum

Yeah... handled a good bit of sesame street kids books recently, and it's, like. The absolute weirdest thing about them I noticed is that ernie gets naked... pretty often. Not super regularly, but enough to comment on. Out of at least a couple dozen different books, ernie ended up unclothed in a bathtub three or four times and the totality of other characters that stripped down anywhere (discounting the ones thst just don't wear clothes, anyway) was a flat 0.

It's an odd thing to notice and a odder thing to be there to notice. Been a long time since I watched any of sesame street proper, but is ernie bath time like a thing with it, or..?

Having an empty inbox, generally. No unread, unsorted emails.

pizzle drizzle is like the last thing you want on your face, true

on the other hand i'm pretty sure the pizzle being missing is how you avoid that, not by having it around, so

Eyup! It's even got a little sparky animation to the wand, iirc. Don't recall if there's other wands with similar effects, though.

I'm sure you could work out the trajectories to launch a tiny homemade rocket full of candy at wherever your students are living. Just a thought!

Eh... plague wise and for what it's worth, for all we have way more stupid typhoid mary shit going on than there should be, from what I understand overall compliance and whatnot has actually been pretty high, from what folks have been able to piece together? Better than pluralities of most populations at least trying, to the best of their understanding and means, to avoid spreading the plague.

It's just the homicidally suicidal nergal worshippers are pretty goddamn noticeable (and have way too fucking much media influence spreading mis- and dis-information), unfortunately, and a lot of folks don't really have the means for strict observation. It's not a wash, but as the mounds of corpses attests to, it could, y'know, be better

Kernstalion! 117k. Probably the most solid writing of what I've posted so far, I think? VR isekai setting, the kind where it's actually a ~portal to another world~, with a handful of interesting things going on I haven't seen very often in the isekai genre (which I guess are spoliers so I'll not directly mention 'em). Pretty nice romp so far and definitely starting to hit a good stride, RSS'd with disappointment 'cause I ran out of it to read

E: Heaven of the Dream Fantasy! 159k. Fluffy VRMMORPG thing, where mostly clueless balance breaker rolls around breaking things and attempting to woo the governing AI in what amounts to an early release VR game. Even with significant characters being breast obsessed and similar nonsense it's a fairly pleasing read, almost a palate cleanser of a bit of fiction. RSS' cheerfully.

E2: Legendary Farmer! Meager 56k, but pretty nice so far. Slice of life... ish? So far. Dude wanting the slow life out in the boonies, recovering from a ~mysterious past~ with buddy cops giant goat, giant spider, and smolbat. Other stuff happens and smolgoats and goblin and stabbyteen and ostrich shows up and now there's just waiting to see if more updates happen.

E3: Oasis Core! Slightly less meager 70k. Baby desert oasis dungeon core vs mad god, both infected by universe destroying/reincarnating superbeing, in a race to reverse or finish an apocalypse. Biomancy dungeon defense to save a broken world! It's neat. Easily RSS'd.

E4: What litrpg there is only needlework! 58k tiny like MC. Shortstack probably-spectrum sewing obsessive meets system apocalypse! Has no shits to give about system nonsense, just wants to thread. Readble enough but also not much has really, like... happened. So far. Anyway, RSS'd easily enough.

E5: Nah, this is Exp Stealer now! Somewhat less speedbumpy 92k. Title also too bloody long so Iz shortened it. Anyway, post isekai isekai thing, cheat hero with ~cursed power~ (sometime during writing this edit I realized their cursed power is... basically Rogue's, from X-men, except always permanent and systemified) defeats the demon king and their hordes and goes home, losing most of his powers in the process!

... to find out thousands of other people have also been isekai'd while he was away, with magic kidnappings continuing to happen, leading to the tentative start to a multi-dimensional empire/trade network basically powered by summoned heroes and a bunch of other stuff. Anyway, since most of these superpowered critters are teenagers with varying degrees of PTSD (the MC's gives him superpowers! Also it's extra bad 'cause he basically won a mostly one-man war of genocide in order to get home and has an explicit seven or eight digit sophont body count before he turns 18.), the world governments mostly made an international hero school, so that's where MC ends up, recovering powers, running rescue missions, and so on. The school part is pretty low key so far, basically functioning as a barely there networking thing and excuse to have superpower granting VR machines.

... anyway, it does some decently interesting stuff, the MC isn't too bad for someone with genuinely serious issues and barely any time to decompress after waging impressively brutal war for months on end, so on, so forth. Worst bits are probably some grammar hiccups and general lack of physical challenge for MC McOPFace, but overall it's pretty alright and I don't mind the RSS.

E6: Returning to no applause, only more of the same! A light 86k. This one... is actually pretty legitimately well written, I think. Technically isekai litrpg, more character stuff and issues with reintegrating an end-boss with mondo PTSD into society.

Dude gets hero-napped with some other kids (they eventually don't make it, ahaha), time-dilations through a century+ of trauma related to that, ultimately manages to make it back home ten years objective, 130 years subjective later.

Then stuff happens, and unlike very very many isekai MC, he's actually remarkably cooperative and the powers that be only somewhat idiot ball dealing with the two-legged WMD, so! Things go pretty smoothly, guy picks up a hobby, eventually reunited with family-wot-hadn't-been-eaten-by-magic-alligators, starts reintegrating with society... it's just steadily about-as-noce-as-can-be when dealing with someone that's spent the last three decades murdering people en masse literally non-stop. Guy's just happy to be back home and no longer dealing with entire nations failing to kill him.

Anyway, RSS'd quite cheerfully. The litrpg aspect isn't enough for me to exactly be looking forward to it, but it'll be refreshing to reread through at some point!

E7: Project You Have Died. 194k. This one is... honestly kinda' poo. Probably the worst thing I've read this year. Isekai nonsense with OP vampire elf MC and various junk themes ("hung like an elephant", prominent male gaze writing -- no, being told the cup size of half the female cast doesn't actually improve things -- casual slavery, etc.), some of the systems were kinda' okay and the thing regularly skirted having almost interesting ideas, but overall it's just kinda'... puerile, and not in a vaguely good way. Didn't RSS, wouldn't recommend.

Not-an-edit8:The Wielder of Chains! 275k, apparently, and claims to be completed. Felt shorter, though, and it's very definitely a "book 1" sort of story. Fairly neat setting, post system apocalypse sort of deal, pokemon as an inventory system, yadda yadda yadda. Biggest downside's probably the writing itself being occasionally shoddy, editing errors and such, and it's not that bad. Overall alright, in any case, and RSS'd in case a book 2 ever shows up.

E9: Doom Guy Isekai! 70 something k. Doom's MC gets isekai'd into ~generic system fantasy~... 's Hell. Proceeds to enact mindless, increasingly morally questionable mostly genocide on whatever local hellspawn they can get their hands on. It's okay for what it is (mindless doom-roadkills-demons silliness)! Probably given up on so far as writing goes? Eh. Was occasionally amusing, mostly just an even-more-idle-than-usual idle romp of a read. RSS'd just in case.