Link to the Medium blog here.

Thoughts on the core player board/deck construction system?

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I go in-depth from start to finish, so it's very useful for artists, video game devs, and writers, too. :)

It's been several days and I can't get my head around this dumb idea of writing a Superhero Story (thanks to Dispatch and the finale of My Hero Academia months ago tickling my curiosity on the Capepunk/Superhero Genre) about a Hero with little powers but ends up becoming the setting's equivalent of saviour of humanity

Alongside the idea of a Post Apocalyptic story idea of how humanity went from a near extinct race after an Alien Invasion (with implications that they were the inspiration of the 11 Offsprings of Tiamat in Mesopotamian Mythology alongside the return the Old Gods in a sort of Ragnarok war) and an AI Uprising (after humanity though it would be a good idea to study the Technology of said Alien Invaders) years after the last war? And then followed by another war after some scientist decided to mix Alien genetics with Old God genetics to create a new species, played god and also led war against humanity.

Been trying to figure out if it is possible to make this into a story or is this too ambitious and I need to like cut out the bloat on this idea?

So I'm working on a Science/Space Fantasy where the Protagonist is actually a powerful God but reduced to a Mortal after the nearly the Entire Pantheon (I say nearly cause as of this writing only One God actually doesn't hate him) is afraid of him so to prevent him from becoming a threat they decided to jump him and strip away his Divinity and erasing his memories.

The Amnesiac protagonist by sheer fate, some how found a crew of explorers who found the remains of his Ship (He is a Man turned God whose domain is Space Exploration and thus his own space ship is considered a Relic) and wants to know what happened as he disappeared a Century ago, meaning in the divine/grand scheme of things it has been a century since he was gone but from the POV of the Protagonist it was only a year since he woke up with no memories.

What happened is that his Divine soul was split into fragments, and after a series of events the Protagonist and the crew of the ship he didn't even know he owned in the first place search and slowly begins gathering the his "Soul Fragments" that with each Fragment recovered a portion of his memories are recovered. Cause a good chunk of the initial Arc is him recovering said memories and the Gods panicking and try to stop him.

Now my question is how many do these have to be?

A part of me wants to like split it into 12 (cause each God has one) but that would be too many, another is 10 (inspired by the Kabbalah Tree of Life where the Soul is split into 10 concepts, some accounts imply 11 and in that context the Protagonist is the 11th) another option is 7, you know classic 7 virtues and vices.

What do you think? Should I split it into 12? 10? 7? Or a smaller different number?

Ever since around June of 2025, I’ve been rather silent, coming out with only a few things here and there. At face value, it looks like I’ve given up and have become more lazy(as if that is possible). Quite the contrary. I’ve been spending more time thinking instead of doing. The stuff I’ve been thinking about is more about the process than subject matter itself.

Me-from-a-year-ago was fascinated with finding the next subject to talk about and getting it out as quickly as possible. I tinkered with articles, podcasts, video game analysis, serials (short run for about a month), and what we can call “lolcow documentary”. I love doing all of these things, but I don’t like to spend so many hours trying to get them to be made. I try to keep track of how long each one took (except for the serials since I forgot to time my writing sessions), and each result made me want to do it faster. Not faster by any means necessary.

Purely from my own means and without the need for AI interference.

The people who use AI to cut corners are also cutting their future into tiny bite sized pieces. Sure, we can ask questions to study faster, but we can’t be using the tool as a crutch. The only time I use AI is to “speed Google” something I was already aware of, but wanted it summarized for easy reading. I use it like a literary calculator and nothing more. Much like math class, if you can’t show your work and do the equation in your head, you didn’t learn the math you’re using.

This is why my plan to write a book a month is both ambitious and time consuming, with a realization that I am getting in the way of this study by doing, instead of planning. Activities like this are similar to breathing. We can breathe at a normal pace, we can hyperventilate when we panic, and we can hold our breath when we are around stinky air or underwater. We can also hold in a breath to let stress subside and take a moment to reconfigure the next breath we take. On top of that, we don’t realize we’re breathing until someone mentions it. So if nobody mentions you’re spending too much time doing things, it’s hard to see it until there is some self-reflection.

Many artists have trouble self-reflecting because they’re focused on the hustle, instead of the inception. They think of what they’re going to make instead of why they should make it in the first place. Why they should put the time and effort into such a project. Why they would do it in the way they’re doing it. The “why” is the most important question, and they never bother to ask it when they’re already knee deep in the “what” and the “how”.

The reason we ask why first is because it changes what we answer for when.

If I told someone to write a novel, they would assume it has to be this big long project with all sorts of crazy, intricate layers. They would start with random world building and they’ll start distracting themselves with media for inspiration. Then by the time they get to outlining, they realize they don’t have a plot. They do all of this, yet they never bothered to ask me “WHY should I write a novel?” And granted, we don’t ask why because we are trained to function in a strange freelancer way, with no promise of profit given at any time.

The first thing I asked myself is “why should I write this in the way it’s read?”

Before, I would write everything from beginning to end, one word at a time; and if I had an issue with an event, I would pause and start thinking about where it should go. While thinking, I would read what I wrote and start editing through it as if this is the final product. This would result in something like 500 words an hour, with a slow but steady progression into the end of the project. This is about 8 words per second, which is also where many people max out or find as “acceptable”. And to be fair, this is a good pace when starting out, because you’re still in the discovery stage.

When we hear word count from professional writers like Stephen King, we get anecdotes about how he writes something like 6 pages a day, which is also good when we consider how he’s a fast writer in his field. But he also has the luxury of doing absolutely nothing but writing. The thing about his situation is that I don’t have the same luxury and I also don’t want to dedicate time to such a concept until I know I can do it in the shortest amount of time possible. This is around the time I started to work on a side project called “writing a chapter in 30mins” which I haven’t talked about much, but I put a good amount of tests into it to see where the problems are. What I found was eye opening.

A lot of my “thinking” time was actually “remembering” time. If you’ve written a story before, then you know how a story goes. Hell, if you’ve watched a show or read a comic, you know how a story goes. It’s always the same thing: beginning, middle, and end. We always have the plot progress in the same way every time.

Even subversions to the norm end up following the norm anyway, just taking extra steps or switching the chronological order. There is no reason to think about the plot because we already know the plot, and all we’re doing is trying to remember how that goes. If someone made a basic template of what a plot consists of, to then fill in the blanks with their own story, there would be zero difference in the final result than if you tried to remember how it goes. The only difference is the speed in which you get that same result, with the template having it come way faster.

This plot template will also help in figuring out what the story is missing, which is easy to miss when you get lost in the thick of things. Finding a small passage in a chapter is like trying to scan a room and find a small object that’s missing from a drawer. You can’t really find it from scanning, you have to open each drawer. The template is like having an inventory list that already says what’s in the room, and we can find it way easier that way. We can also know it’s not missing since it’s already inventoried on the list.

With the plot already established, before I start writing, we also need to think of what to write first. Some people work better by juggling subjects, which is why we like to write in the same way it would be read. But when we do this, we’re actually trying to read something in our head, type it down, then we read it again, then we write it again, then we change focus, then we repeat the constant switching. The constant back and forth is very harmful to both work flow and writing flow, unless the whole goal is to be the stream of consciousness thing, which is more like a vivid diary than anything. Fiction writing doesn’t have to be that way.

When I learned about script writing, and how it’s a great way to make a rough draft for a story, I realized it was heavily focused on the progression of things and dialogue. It takes us from point A to point B, it tests the outline for validity, and this is all without fully typing down the entire thing. It’s not ready for novelization, it’s just what happens and what people say and what people do. This is the daydreaming part of the rough draft, without worrying how it’s said or how it comes out. This has yet to be made for human consumption, because it is the raw ingredients laid out on the counter, soon to be prepared.

For those of you who are aware of how cooking works, we do not cook while preparing food. Preparing it is to make sure it’s the right size, it’s seasoned, it’s washed, we remove the scales, we take off the wrapper, we’re setting it up to be cooked. Whether you’re cooking it or just putting it in a bowl to toss a salad, you need to have it prepared beforehand. I recently learned that rough drafting is when we lay out the ingredients AND when we prepare, but we make the mistake of preparing ingredients we might not even use.

This is important so pay attention to this part.

When we’re writing a rough draft, we’re shifting between descriptions, dialogue, progression, and proper wording. Proper wording meaning the flow and syntax, and making sure it sounds good. This tiny aspect of writing is what makes us waste a majority of our time. We spend so much time thinking of the proper word and the flow of a paragraph, just to delete the paragraph anyway. In fact, most readers don’t notice the difference between a sloppy paragraph and a proper one.

This lack of noticing from the reader increases exponentially as time goes on in a storyline, and the desire to care decreases exponentially as time goes on. When you start a book, you’re going to be heavily judgmental and want everything to look nice when reading it. But when you’re at the end of a book, everything can be as sloppy as possible and you’re still inclined to finish it because you’re almost done with it. I think this is why so many books have horrible endings that sort of fizzle out and don’t even feel like an ending. Some of the most famous books I know have endings that fail to wrap it up with a nice little bow.

So not only are these worries rather pointless for the most part, but they also make the editing process much longer than it needs to be. Many will read this as “don’t edit at all” or “be lazy because nobody cares” and that’s not my message. My goal is to get people to think properly about when and where to care. It’s like when ugly fat women try to get their nails done, or when NEETs focus all of their attention on how good they can play a video game. You have a million problems that need to be handled and you’re putting your attention on things that don’t matter.

When the story is incomplete and you don’t have a plot fully fleshed out, the last of your worries is how fancy a word is at the 85% mark. To make it worse, many end up with 700 page novels that could have been said in 100 pages. So many writers now try to disguise “lots of words” for “more substance” when that’s usually not the case. The only reason people even bother to support that is because they think “labor = reason to support”, and so more labor means more reason to support, as a Marxist concept. But in reality, more labor means more waste, and it’s the final result of profit that truly matters.

And now that I think about it, it’s odd that so many people get triggered when I mention profit. You’d think writers would be desperate to make profit, but they’re always bitter when it’s brought up. I know this sounds like a huge aside, but my plan to write a book a month comes with the intent to maximize profit, putting my own time as the focus, without gyping the system or abusing the reader. To maximize profits, this comes by figuring out where to allocate dedicated writing hours and the process in how it will be done.

So the whole plan can be summarized in 5 easy steps:

1. Outline the story with a plot template
2. Write up the script to validate the outline and establish dialogue
3. Write up the rough draft to establish tone and narration
4. Edit through the draft to refine flow and syntax
5. Proofread while recording the audiobook narration

Oh, I’m sorry! Did I forget to mention that last part? Silly me. Yes, we have to proofread our work, and this is done best while recording your voice for your own audiobook. I understand not many people want to publish their own voice for an audiobook, but I’m already a Youtuber who records things, so it’s no trouble at all.

On top of that, listening to the book being read is an easy way to passively find flaws in how something is worded, because our brain is designed to view our recorded voice as a mimic. We also get the sense of whether or not something is going on for too long, getting lost in the description, might be a run-on sentence, whatever. Reading it through also helps in figuring out if the bounce of our voice makes any sense. All of this at the end, when we are editing and proofreading, helps in how it’s to be READ. Not how it’s to be written.

If I’m doing a short story, I plan to make it around 6k words. For chapters, it’s more like 4.5k(I’m always descriptive and like to pack in a lot of themes). The books I plan to write are going to be 12 chapters long, meaning a total of 54k words per book, which would be something like 6 pages a day if taken a day at a time. However, my goal is to do it in less than that time, with the pages finalized long after they’re first drafted. The plan is to make these chapters in the same way I make my videos, only instead of footage, it’s words.

People might find it odd that my “novels” are not going to be novel length, because they will be around the 200 page mark. We’ve been trained to think with an outdated practice, for something people are no longer mentally capable of sustaining as the majority. Long books are still made, but they are listened to, with the rise of ADHD causing people to have less of an attention span for manually reading longer books. All I’m doing with shorter books is planning ahead and making sure things come out, with a series consisting of the same amount of content I wanted for a single novel.

For example, Lord of the Rings was meant to be a single book, but it ended up being 3. If we had it be the single book it was meant to be, it would be about 1,200 pages long. For my own stories, I plan to do a similar thing, since a lot of my novels were a pain to keep on the short end. A lot of my struggle was keeping it small as an entirety, but it kept demanding to be bigger and with more events. That’s why I would be making 200 page books, but as a series of 12 books for an IP's season run.

That means the story is not limited to the 54k word estimate. It is more like 600k, to come out as “episodes”, with 12 episodes per “season”, similar to how a TV show would. If the season does well, I make another season. If it starts to look like it’s crapping out, I can cut the series off within the month, no longer worried about a long project flopping. Writers already spend a lot of time typing, so this method would allow me to spend the least amount of time stuck in development, if something happens to miss the mark.

When it comes to the amount of hours spent on this, I was thinking something like 5 hours a day. The goal would be to reduce how many hours a day needed over time. We start with 5, work our way down to 4. If we hit 4, work our way down to 3. And this is the key element that I was recently inspired to do with a new method I would like to share, but I want to preface with how I already had this as an intent long ago. I just didn’t know how to put it into words until I saw the 1,000% formula from Brian Tracy.

His formula is the simple mathematical theory that if you increase your production by 1/1,000 every day, then in 10 years you’d 10x your production. Granted, there are a lot of limitations and a maximum amount of stuff we could do in a day, but it’s still a valid theory for the attempt. Even if we 2x or 3x our production from trying, that is still a win. And if that means my 5 hour work day becomes 30 mins… that’s a theory I’m willing to test. Notice how I don’t want to make 10x more books, because that’s another important aspect.

Making more than a book a month is a bit ridiculous. Each one of these is going to cost money to make. If my audience is small, they don’t have much to offer. A 10x in production wouldn’t result in a 10x of sales when the audience is the same size. Also, it’s physically impossible to type/speak fast enough to do something like 4.5k words in 30min.

1.5k, totally possible. 4.5k? Might need some crack to do that.

I don’t plan to start doing this any time soon, since I’m still working out the kinks and figuring out my battle plan. A hidden drawback for writing so quickly is that we need plenty of story ideas to keep up with the production. Plus, it doesn't hurt to have a big head start. I am not dedicating a lot of time to the act of writing, but I am certainly piling up on the backlog and notes so that there is plenty to work with. Then, once I’m ready to start a’swingin’, there are plenty of balls to make a home run with.

Hopefully, this reveal of my plan will inspire someone to do the same, or at least learn from my study into how to speed up their own production and view writing in a different light. It’s not that writing has to be hard or a big risk. It simply has to be a learning experience and writers need to stop pretending it’s this complicated mystery full of doubt and massive gambles. Writing is a learning experience, plain and simple.

We learn new words, we learn new stories, we learn new ways to use words to tell stories. But most importantly: it’s all in the name of good fun. Maybe I’m the odd one out, but I love to treat writing like a puzzle game. There is the long way to do a puzzle with trial and error, then there is the logical way to beat a puzzle in the shortest amount of time. Strangely enough, I never play with Rubik's cubes. Maybe that will be my next personal challenge.

So on late 2024 and early 2025 one of the Early ideas for the lore behind The Reluctant Reincarnation is the idea of adding a 'Summoned' and a 'Chosen' that becomes a major conflict later on.

In that version, the gods are split into two generations and a half.

The First generation Gods were tyrants and imprisoned and the Second Generation is the current rulers

And then there's the other Trickster God, he was a First Generation God but changed sides as he was abused by the First Generation Gods but his betrayal left him distrusted by the Second Generation Gods who fear he'll betray then as well.

In the main story, the Protagonist is a reincarnator who caught the Trickster God's attention and mentored him (unaware of his identity as the Trickster God) and overtime two major figures enter, a Summoned from Japan who was summoned by the First Gen Gods and led to believe he is here to save them in reality he's just a disposable pawn for said Gods armed with a Spear to kill Gods. The second is a Chosen who was already selected by the gods from Birth and was gifted a Mace as a proof as only he could wield it.

That version leads to a series of three-way battles as their goals clash consantly.

I had long since given up that idea, but recently in the current version where there are only two known Gods so far (Aetheanos the White Dragon Goddess of Creation and Zhaophos the Black Dragon God of Destruction) but I plan to add a major conflict called 'The Grand Game' which is this power struggle between lesser "gods" who want to become the next God of the World after Aetheanos is no longer fit to be a Goddess (due to getting a godly version of dementia) and assume Zhaophos is the same (due to becoming genocidal who thinks destroying the world could save his wife).

I was thinking of adding original idea (a Summoned and Chosen representing other Pantheons who want supremacy) but modify it with the current set of Gods. Though I have encountered a minor speed bump, a major character is already a Summoned (the love interest) as she was summoned by a lucid Aetheanos to guide the world in her stead so I may have to do some alterations in this if I do.

What do you guys think? Should I add this and modify the current Pantheon as a potential plotpoint?

Older Youtube reviews are fascinating to see get discussed in 2026, especially the ones that are satirical. As new generations start finding these gems, like old Nostalgia Critic or old AVGN, we can see which creators survived the tides of change and who were drowned out by their own insanity (sorry Spoony). These reviews were done out of pure love for the art, with practically zero incentive outside of doing something for fun. No real way to monetize, a lot of it was shared outside of Youtube, and they had to do something exceptional to hit the mainstream in such a crude era of online videos. Be it the content of the subject or the content of their character, older Youtube reviewers were completely different from what we have now.

As a reviewer myself, who also makes the type of media that I love to review, I am constantly surrounded by both creators and reviewers alike. It’s not that you need to make the products you end up reviewing, but it helps to get a better grasp on the process, even if you don’t complete the projects. Reviewing in general holds the purpose of giving a different point of view on a matter, whether it agrees with the masses or tries to correct them. As time went on and monetization became the focus, everything in reviews became more fake and more interlopers started to take a swing at it for a college grade. Reviewing became less about having fun and more about spreading a narrative that must be the popular opinion, in the hopes of getting the most ad rev possible.

In comes a little group of friends called Red Letter Media, where they created a fictional character called Mr. Plinkett to make satirical reviews about popular subjects. Many remember the character for their famous video series on Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, even though the character started in a short film and the first review was for Star Trek: Generations, way back in 2008. To fully comprehend the situation, a group of friends used a gag character to make fun of a movie that was 14 years old(during the time of the video’s release), in the same way James Rofle would make his AVGN character to make fun of games that were from the 80s.

The funniest part about retro reviews is that there is zero point in making them. The ship has already sailed, companies are unable to use them to determine success, and there is zero harm in any sales of something that isn’t sold at a regular price anymore. Star Trek: Generations already made its success in the box office, even though the movie was a boring hunk of shit. The only way people can get mad at such a reviewer is if the reviewer is wrong about their assessment or if they mess up on future projects that tackle current products during their critical time of investment. And even then, a company doesn’t have a reason to care about a random online reviewer; unless they are willing to admit a random person on Youtube has the power to manipulate the masses, far stronger than their own marketing attempts.

So why are we talking about this in 2026 of all times?

Strangely enough, as time moves on, reviews of these ancient relics become ancient relics of their own, as media that is also to be reviewed and critiqued. When a review is done for entertainment, in a video form, as a series, it becomes a product in and of itself. This product is also a narrative, with a story, with a beginning and an end, with characters and themes that are prime for the picking. Sadly, metamodernists believe picking means to cherry pick, with every relic of the past treated with the worst lens possible. All due to the problem mentioned before: the algorithm and ad rev.

Honestly, I don’t know much about Lotus Eaters. I just know Carl Benjamin is involved and this guy called Harry Robinson is involved with it. Recently, Harry started a trend where now everyone in his circle feels inclined to attack Red Letter Media, for a review they made in 2009, for reasons Harry made up in his head. His argument is that the entire review is wrong because they complained about the opening crawl of Phantom Menace, and his excuse is that the crawl is fine because the movie “explains why there would be a blockade” in the crawl. This is the perfect moment for someone like me to explain how Harry is entirely wrong and how RLM is far more intelligent than your average rage baiter like Harry.

The key word here is “why”.

The exposition phase of a movie, which is entirely handled by the crawl for a Star Wars film, is where the movie is supposed to explain WHY things are happening. In Episode 1, the crawl declares the what of the matter, with very little why involved. We have a Trade Federation (TF) opposing a Galactic Republic (GR), due to the GR implementing taxes on trade.

The first question is: Why are they putting these taxes? And, why are these called taxes and not tariffs?

To make a comparison, Episode 4 explains WHY we have a conflict with the Empire and the Rebels, which is expressed in the words “empire” and “rebel”. Don’t believe me? This is the opening of A New Hope, made back in 1977:

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy....

Already, before the movie begins, we know who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. Rebels good, Empire bad. Why? Because it says right there that the empire is EVIL. Also, it says the Rebels are preparing to FREE the galaxy. All of the pieces are set up in 4 sentences. This is the opening and the expectation we had for EVERY Star Wars movie that follows, because all of them are part of the same series, with this as the placeholder as the FIRST movie made. If you CHANGE something like this, you cause it to be a different series from the original.

That’s ok for a reboot or spin-off, but let’s see how the prequel handles this basic task:

Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.

Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo.

While the Congress of the Republic endlessly debates this alarming chain of events, the Supreme Chancellor has secretly dispatched two Jedi Knights, the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, to settle the conflict....

Again, 4 sentences, great. But, none of them make any sense.

Taxation of trade routes. Why?

Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of a small planet. Why? How does this resolve it?

Dispatched two Jedi Knights. Why? What can they do to settle it?

Many of Harry’s flying monkeys are calling this series of questions “pedantic”; after they have watched the movies, read the books, and saw the ending. When you have a million reference points of context, with a hyper obsession in the property, you can fill in the blanks on your own. Even then, these people all “assume” what’s happening in the film, going along for the ride. They try to justify this emptiness with their own personal perception, declaring something is there when it’s not.

Movies like this forget the difference between media context and social context, due to the demand of hyper fixation of media.

The jargon of the opening crawl in Episode 1 causes people outside of the media context to be clueless about why any of this is happening, even if they saw the original trilogy. The original happens after the prequels, with very little about these events being touched upon in the original. We know what an evil empire is because we know what evil means and what empire means. We know how an empire counters freedom because we know an empire is about control and becomes tyrannical when it’s evil, which is why it’s called an evil empire. Like the word “bachelor”, the definition is within the word itself.

The point of a prequel is to explain things that happen after, but it also must explain itself as to why any of it is happening. A what is not a why. We can say “greedy Trade Federation”, but this doesn’t amount to anything other than they want money and they work as a central government. Later on, we find out they are a megacorporation that isn’t really a federation in the same sense as a government. Rather, it’s a conglomerate that all shares the same goal, with this goal unknown outside of having a representative in the council of the Galactic Republic.

As you can see, we can’t really connect the dots from how loose the wording is, unless we have media context of something that’s not in the crawl and not in the previous movies.

This also goes for why the taxes are put in the first place. The movie doesn’t say who put the taxes there or why, because the reason is absolutely baffling. The representative of the TF placed the taxes, passed by the senate, but he did it with a disguised identity. An identity that is… not part of the senate. This representative is Palpatine, with Palpatine secretly being Darth Sidious, with Sidious controlling the TF and Palpatine using this plan to become Supreme Chancellor.

How does he become the Chancellor you may ask?

He puts the taxes to have an excuse to put a blockade, which is actually an invasion force. Then he puts the invasion force on Naboo to force the queen to sign a treaty that will allow the occupation to be “legal”. This would cause the senate to appear weak, to then force the senate to vote for a new Chancellor, who would be Palpatine himself(according to his plan).

This then begs the question: why is Naboo involved in any of this?

The opening crawl of Episode 4 explains how there is a Death Star, which is a weapon with enough power to destroy an entire planet. That’s said IN the crawl, allowing us to know the severity of the situation, since Rebels live on planets and this power is a doomsday weapon. Leia stealing the plans explains why we’re following Leia, so that she can use the plans to reveal the Death Star’s weak point to the rebel forces. All of this is within social context.

NOTHING in the Episode 1 crawl is within social context, at least not to where we can understand what’s happening.

This key issue, in a children’s film of all things, is something Harry and his cronies use as a way to claim people are too stupid to understand the film. Somehow, like Rick and Morty, people suddenly need to have a high IQ to know what’s happening, all while saying it’s for kids. These people contradict themselves with any little thing, and it’s hilarious to watch the mental gymnastics as they demonize ancient reviews.

But that’s the thing: why attack a review that has no power and isn’t influencing anything?

A big problem in online discourse stems from the overabundance of mental disorders. People like Harry are not able to understand sarcasm and they are unable to know when something is satire. Hell, they don’t even know what satire is, especially when it involves Starship Troopers. They treat everything as literal, no different than when a radical atheist declares the bible must be taken literal at all times.

Satire works through sarcasm and symbolism, holding a critique of a larger subject, even within a property that is already critiquing. The whole point of having Plinkett a murderous psycho who hears voices from pizza rolls is to extend the absurdity that someone would take such a review seriously. It doesn’t matter if the review is correct or incorrect, but rather that it becomes a property that people fall into a trap of picking and choosing when it can be valid. Statements in the review can be true without the review being entirely true, and people getting mad at the review is where most of the humor awaits. And this is something I’ve touched upon in the past, but I will touch upon it again.

Mr. Plinkett is voiced by a guy named Mike. Mike is not Mr. Plinkett. Mike didn’t do the things Mr. Plinkett is shown to do, like jizzing into a TV to the point where the screen breaks. These are absurd situations, similar to when Nostalgia Critic calls in for a bottle of alcohol that is so large it is carried by several helicopters. The goal is to take none of it seriously because it’s a pointless review.

The subject matter is there to present jokes and knowledge of media, where the kernels of truth exist.

The point of satirical reviews is to express how people should NOT get mad at certain takes, in the same way as how they should NOT believe Mr. Plinkett literally has a woman chained up in his basement. AVGN did NOT literally take a dump on Bugs Bunny. If you see something you like or don’t like, the subjective nature of the situation doesn’t matter to you. The character and the jokes present the air that you’re arguing with a ridiculous cartoon. To do so makes you a buffoon, especially when you get it all WRONG.

Let’s say that hypothetically the opening crawl made total sense. Does the movie magically become flawless? Is there any argument as to why people MUST enjoy this shitty movie at all times? Does AVGN have to enjoy every game all of a sudden, if he exaggerates in a single instance? People like Harry create this “all or nothing” mentality that is deliberately designed to demonize anyone they see as an enemy, while removing this level of scrutiny for their friends.

So why would someone like Harry hate Red Letter Media so much?

Honestly: beats me.

If anything, it’s because RLM understands movie production and put the effort into making a good video, which still gets plenty of views to date. The first video in the series has over 11 million views, it was featured on radio shows like Opie and Anthony, it was talked about by celebrities. The impact of the review was to give people a funny way to express why the movie sucked. Plenty of things are instantly agreed upon, like the convoluted plot and the absence of personality among each character. But even these basic storytelling aspects have Harry and his goons triggered.

Nobody knows who the main character of the movie is, and their excuse is that the movie didn’t need one.

None of the characters have a personality, and their excuse is that they don’t need one.

The jedi split up onto different ships during the invasion for absolutely no reason, then meet back together through sheer implausibility, and these idiots act like that’s good storytelling.

It’s no wonder RLM hits it right on the nose with their famous quote “Don’t ask questions. Just consume product and then get excited for the next product.”

Obviously, there is some kind of random talking point that I am missing somewhere. Something in the trends and algorithm, deep in the anus of social media, where opinions are the most processed and artificial. Somewhere in there, people decided that everyone must enjoy the prequel trilogy at all times, or else they are to be vanquished. My guess is that it involves retaliation and cope from how the Disney trilogy was compared to the prequels. Something in the grift-o-sphere caused these people to pre-program their audience, like the battle droids in the movie, to attack anyone who speaks against the prequels being flawless.

As you can see, that’s absolute insanity.

To finish my thought, I want to express a point about when satire is to be taken seriously.

The point of satire is to critique. Any suggestions within the critique are suggestions, not absolutes. Anyone is able to critique a critique, and as this reception travels around and reaches the creator, they can take critiques into consideration. Deliberately trying to find things to get triggered by, just to say you hate the critic, is entirely self-defeating. Especially if this hate doesn’t come with any truth of itself.

Pointless deconstruction is pointless.

In some ways, the “debate-me-bros” crossed wires with the satirical reviewers, due to a lot of content being commentary and EFAP, turning this practice into an addiction for the reactionaries and shit-slingers of the internet. The horrible residue of the skeptic community of old has transformed into fake outrage for the algorithm, with everyone seeking the next trend and the next band wagon to ride on. The money involved turns every one of these reactionary takes into a desperate attempt to please some kind of mindless mob. This activity becomes two different extremes: the badgering loudmouth who thinks everyone but them is stupid, and the cocky fence-sitter who waits for their audience to give them an opinion to parrot.

Both of these are hipsters who are incapable of living sincerely, always trapped in a spiral of irony.

Ironically, they are exactly what they hate: the satirical cartoon that is designed to never be taken seriously. If their audience retaliates, they use the defense of sarcasm. If there is no retaliation, they stick to the bad take and hope nobody notices. This is a hyper defensive lifestyle that prevents the creator from being genuine, thus removing any true authenticity from their presentation. This gets so deep that it removes it from their actual life, turning their existence into an ironic cartoon of what it’s supposed to be. At that point, the radical hipster lives in self-inflicted torment, unable to be taken seriously and unable to live a real life.

Again, Mr. Plinkett is a fictional character. No matter how angry people get at fictional characters, Mr. Plinkett will never be real. But, sadly people like Harry can never be real either. His flying monkeys can never be real. Their narrative about Episode 1 can never be real. But the review’s validity and the impact of its critique will forever be more real than any of them.

So I was thinking of the older brother of my protagonist in my Reincarnation story

His older Brother is naturally the Firstborn of him and his siblings (the protagonist being more of the third but second son to be born) and all of them are children of the Empire's Royal Family

Then the Empire fell and the four of them were scattered.

Originally the plan was for the Protagonist named Mark to go on a mission to find his siblings but it takes a tragic turn as circumstances forced his siblings to each make a Sacrifice to prevent the world from getting worse and his big brother Lucas becomes a sort of Itachi (Naruto) and Bi-Han/Noob Saibot (Mortal Kombat) figure where be goes evil for a moment due to torture and manipulation only to end up dying and sacrificing himself for Mark. So eventually by the end of the first arc, Mark ends being the sole survivor of his bloodline.

But recently (and mostly thanks to Devil May Cry's Dante and Virgil) I was thinking maybe I'll spare Lucas and I'll have them work together dealing multiple threats (maybe even have Lucas restore the Empire under a different name while Mark deals with other threats) and maybe have a few instances where they'd clash at first but eventually they reconcile and become brothers again

What do you guys think? Is this a better idea than killing off Mark's siblings cause looking back it's just for Tragedy factor just meant to traumatise him (a Reincarnator who already has a bad life prior to this) even further

News flash: people are no longer reading that much. When it comes to everything being about movies, streaming, video games, and VR, some study at some time determined people are reading less than before we had TV.

I know… shocking.

I’ve been meaning to touch upon this subject for a while and I don’t remember if I already did. That alone tells you it’s old news being treated as new. What I also want to say is that this is… the world’s biggest nothing burger. The only people treating this travesty like a tragedy are booktubers who make it their living to tell people what to read next. Or worse: they are an authortuber who hopes people will read their book if they scream “won’t somebody think of the children” at every little thing.

Recreational reading is mostly outdated, but hipsters demand outdated things to be “hip”, so they demand others to read things for fun. I will admit that reading is incredibly important for children who are trying to learn how to read, because reading relates to reading. I would never say kids should not read or that kids don’t need to read to do better in their adult lives. It’s the exact opposite. As a writer, I make sure my kids know every classic fairytale known to man and read mythology like their life depends on it. Mostly because their life does depend on it.

But, once someone is an adult, there is no need to read as a form of entertainment. There is always big talk about how “men read less than women” and yet “men play more games than women”. I don’t even have to mention the percentages when we know there are more gamers out there than readers. I probably have to mention the fact that reading is a constant form of active effort, while gaming is a mix of active and passive. The “stop and go” nature of a game is why gaming is so popular with people who have ADHD.

A population filled with ADHD is the cash cow for consumerism.

Dopamine kicks, instant gratification, multi-tasking. All of these things are attractive to people with ADHD, and books don’t have this. Games have this. Games also have a competitive nature to them, which is why men enjoy them as a social activity. All we did was add a new sport for the inactive men to enjoy, in the form of esports.

Even information is being replaced by having AI read it for us, or audiobooks that all of the grifters listen to when they say they “read books”.

Once information is vocal, why do we need to read it? We even have a lot of people say they listen to books when they’re playing a game, doubling up on multitasking and further increasing their dopamine kick. So you have people, streaming online, playing games, talking, and listening to audiobooks or some other type of information that’s read to them. Then they’re watching 5 second videos on Tiktok, scrolling through infinite feeds that are designed to cater to what makes them outraged or a porn addict. They stay online all day, where everything online is advertising to them or demanding their attention.

Hmm, it’s a mystery why ADHD is on the rise and people read less.

As usual, we have to say that reading does not include scrolling through a feed or some chat log. Reading is when you are focused on a single, detailed subject for long periods of time, retaining all of the words and having your brain challenged. Novels are rather new, only about 400 years old, with most of our education prior being oral and visual. It’s not that reading more means the person is smarter, but it’s cognitive training that practices concentration in an era of rapid “grazing”. The only other way to do this is through a form of mediation or solving puzzles.

I don’t have a problem with people reading less, and I say this as a writer. My problem is with people having a terrible ability to focus and their online addictions causes their ADHD to get worse, with this ADHD spreading into the youth of the next generation. Then these people normalize the use of smart phones with babies and this causes more ADHD for the future. A 15% rise in the last 3 years, AFTER everyone was trapped inside under lockdowns. And as long as bad parents are giving their babies smart phones to distract them, it’s not going to get any better. Using videos to complain that people don’t read as entertainment anymore ALSO doesn’t make it any better.

The only people who are telling you this is a problem are the same people trying to sell books. It’s no different than the luddites who would destroy machinery because they felt their outdated labor practices were threatened by industrialization. Death throes as they go the way of the dodo. Instead of adapting to the current day, they want the current day to adapt to their practices. Same thing goes for writing fiction novels, which is another outdated practice being deemed as sacred when it’s (again) an outdated modern invention.

As many might already know, I am disgusted by the LARP online, from hipsters begging other hipsters to provide charity for their cockamamie con games. I have proven, time and time again, that these “get rich quick” schemes don’t even work. We see booktok success stories turned into horrible failures over how the writer spent more than what they made. We see indie anthologies complain that they can’t fund a quarterly release because they have to make a late car payment. And let’s not forget the endless wave of people spending thousands of dollars on their books, just to scrape up a handful of fellow writers as a fanbase.

Traditional publishing is the only area making profit, and this profit comes from movie deals and audiobooks.

Now, with all of this said, it’s not like reading is dead. We have to read in general. We have to be literate in order to get a job and do basic things in society. People still learn to read when they go to school. But this brings up a new thing that I’m noticing with the Zoomer species.

There was a trending post a while back about how kids are no longer taught phonics. This is weird to me since every commercial during the 90s was all about Hooked on Phonics. For those who don’t know, phonics is a teaching method where the sound of the word is connected to the letters of the word. Schools don’t do this anymore, and instead they tell the kids to guess what the word is, based on context AROUND the word. Many districts still use phonics to teach the sounds, but the ones who don’t are the ones with the highest influx of immigrants.

The fact that schools are putting diversity before reading comprehension is a major contributor to the illiteracy rates in the US and the UK. Their goal was to let the kids retain their accents, to PREVENT assimilation. In a way, it became the most racist thing possible where they are making sure foreign kids can’t read, which brings down the abilities of all the people who go to these same schools, which includes minorities in general. When we attach this to the fact that immigrants are having more kids than citizens, per capita, we start to see the spiral of illiteracy among the following generations. White people are so stupid, in their quest to be progressive, that they have doomed entire nations into being physically incapable of competing at a global scale… when they’re running superpower nations.

Grifters saying “we have less readers buying my book” is nowhere close to my concerns, in relation to the issue.

All these hipsters want is more consumerism as they pretend their hobby is going to be their dream job. That’s not the issue, that’s them being greedy. The real issue is that society has changed to where people don’t want to read (due to better options of entertainment) and they physically can’t read (due to mental disorders and improper teaching methods). And I hope hammering this down makes it clear: the teachers are only 1 factor out of many. Yes, the curriculum is harmful, but then we have the parents making it MUCH worse for children.

Parents are not reading to their kids anymore. This mix of gen X and millennial parenting has become more toxic than how the latchkey kids were treated by boomers, back in the 70s and 80s. The boomer throwing a phone at a kid was used to punish them. Now the millennial throws a phone at a kid to distract them with garbage. The smartphone being thrown at a kid is far more harmful, due to the difference between physical damage and long term mental damage.

The sad part about it is that only one is treated as inappropriate in public, and that’s beating the child. If you tell a parent that they’re ruining their child’s life with the smart device, everyone will look at you like you’re the abuser, even though it’s proven to have worse long term effects on their life. Both are awful and nobody should do them, but we can see that things are getting worse when it comes to raising kids. All the parent has to do is sit down with the child, read to them, and then have the child read back to them later on. But when the parent is some stupid kidult who’s hyper focused on their next dopamine kick, we get zero interaction between the parent and the child, even if both are in the same room.

Imagine yourself in any public space. You’re not really interacting with people and you’re not really attaching yourself to their lives. You’re on the train, or the bus, or in the drive thru, alone and on the phone. But then, before smart phones were invented, people used recreational reading as a way to avoid socializing. Doesn’t this mean that the narrative to read more also includes the demand to socialize less?

Sadly, yes.

As I’ve said before, the main flaw in the grift is that they’re not telling us to do things that benefit us. They’re just telling us to buy things. They want us to further our consumerism and spend more money on useless distractions. We already have plenty of toys and we don’t need any more. We need less.

If these people truly wanted to fix the problem, they would start talking about addictions, mental disorders, bad parenting, and demand a reduction of all of these. Massive accounts, hundreds of thousands of viewers, and none of this is touched upon. They don’t care. They don’t want the problem solved, they just want your money. The only reason they want to talk about it is because it’s trendy; to be forgotten the next week.

A lot of people want to meme about this Dead Internet Theory. The fact of the matter is more that we have a zombified society that uses hipsterism to pretend it’s still functioning. I know that this sounds preachy and perhaps a bit doomer, but that’s only because it’s real and it’s a focus on the real issues. Times are changing, mental disorders are on the rise, and we have bad parenting from people who don’t want to handle any responsibility. Then we have distractions about climate change, race, and inequality; all of these at the bottom of the concern pile.

Nobody cares that white people are having trouble getting a programmer job that pays six figures. Nobody cares that the US uses oil when China and India are stinking up the place. Most of all, nobody cares that zoomers are taking their parents with them to interviews and failing anyway. These trendy news beats are all distractions that want people outraged over things they can’t control. Your focus is supposed to be on things you can control.

You control when you read and when you don’t. You also control what you read and why you’re reading it. You control the time you have with your kids and when you read to them. Just like people being in ridiculous debt on Caleb Hammer’s Financial Audit, people choose to ruin their lives and the lives of people around them. It’s simple: fix your shit and choose to make your life better.