TGWTG Nostalgia Chick / Lindsay Ellis / TheDudette - aka Hotdogs in face girl

[Erwin Rotten]

So Cora wakes up, and the alien has stolen a random bag of groceries from somewhere. Inside is some brownie mix, a can of Cheez Whiz, a can of corn, a jar of olives, and a jar of pimentos. Because no human being would possibly choose to eat Cheez Whiz, we're treated to a scene in which the alien has to open up the tin so Cora can drink from it like a soda can and stuff her face full of cold canned corn.

This makes me imagine the scene like that part in Dennis the Menace when he's feeding the homeless man beans. But what's weird is that I read past this part and don't remember it.

The story grinds to a halt as Ampersand dumps information onto Cora about who he is, why he's here, what he wants, etc. This shit is so boring it's hard to pay attention but Ampersand got his ass suddenly dropped on Earth and isn't part of the group of aliens that have been hanging around for several decades but refusing to communicate. Ampersand has been on Earth for about a month but because he's run into Cora and she's willing to help him, boom she's now his 'mediator'. Cora wants to find her family which got kidnapped by the government supposedly.

What I've noticed in these authortuber books is that they don't know how to give out exposition. They will either stop the story to tell everything or stop the story so that two people have a conversation that's all about the exposition. This is why I say she should have copied Supernatural because that show always has moments where they have to explain the lore and stuff, but the story continues and we retain the tension required to keep the audience invested.

All she had to do was watch an episode, flick her bean to Dean, and mimic the style after. Boom, done.

It's not that hard, but these people make it seem impossible.

Then she says this: "My hope is that I can use my ability to communicate with you … as a bargaining chip"

Ffffffffuck it's not an ABILITY this is not a SKILL you just started TALKING to him. The government isn't going to VALUE you because ANYONE can do what you're doing. Ampersand can get anyone to listen to his stupid Microsoft TTS if he wanted.

You don't understand. Cora has the power of Mary Sue. That's an amazing ability that everyone loves to see in action. It's tots meta.

She also says this, which is amusing considering state troopers took one look at her and tried to arrest her: "As a young white female of the species, I’m less likely to be looked at with suspicion by others, especially men."

I always thought she was brown until I read that sentence, and it really puzzled me. Why make Cora a beaner if she's not going to represent the brown people Lindsay thinks is marginalized? Why make her a white woman, who's the oppressor of these marginalized people according to Lindsay? Or is Lindsay the type of progerssive who says "stay in your lane" so she's not able to write about the brown expeirence?

I've reached the point where normally I'd stop reading. I'd return this book from wherever I got it, because it's failed to capture my interest. So far Cora thinks her mother and aunt got taken by the Men In Black because they worked for them. Ampersand had mind controlled her and tried to get her to break into a headquarters of Google (seriously) and into a basement but she broke free and....I think decided to steal a van she found in the parking garage that happened to have a sleeping Ampersand in the back? He wakes up, knocks out the state troopers, he explains shit in his beep boop manner.

At least that Men in Black thing was foreshadowed in the beginning, so credit where credit is due.

But yeah, I couldn't believe the Google thing either. And it's not like she makes any political commentary about Google. She just goes "Cora is walking around Google, trying to blend in" and that was about as deep as it went. I wish she made it more like when Plankton was controlling Spongebob, so Cora has her legs stiffly shifting from left to right, which would have made me love the book, but alas, we can't have nice things because Lindsay tried to play this straight and made it gay.

Also the Esperanto shit is explained as government code words so I guess it's not even a connection the audience is meant to figure out. I expect Cora to eventually talk about how she was named after Persephone.

I don't know if anyone else saw the movie Diary of the Dead, where in the end they say this dude is named Micheal, like the archangel, and I could totally see Lindsay dropping something like that on the reader. Something where her mom is like "We named you Cora after my favorite story as a little girl, where Kora was taken by Hades to the underworld. It's just like how we have to live under the radar, you know. In the underworld of southern California."

So there was a group of aliens being held for like 40 years but the aliens never bothered to communicate and there's some "oh shit if only they knew some English they could have understood humans better" but goddamn the aliens willingly ignored 40 years of attempts to communicate while Ampersand banged out his version of Google Translate after barely having contact with humans. I think the aliens studied humans several hundred years ago, including language, and so Ampersand made a translation program that works for all human languages since they're 'so similar' so yeah the book is presenting that it's both very easy to figure out human languages and impossibly hard.

This is the part that made me think Lindsay wrote this book backwards. She wrote the beginning last and the later parts first. Why would she think that aliens can create the ability to communicate with humans hundreds of years ago but then these same aliens who've been in and around Earth for just that long somehow don't realize that they can communicate? This is the "lack of communication" cliche from romance novels, but done as poorly as possible.

Either that or Ampersand is now a Gary Stu. Or... I don't know what the alien version of it is. Gir Spock?

Stepping back a bit, this book sucks because I don't know why I should give a fuck about these characters. Cora wants to find her mom who might be somewhere. Oh, her aunt is free and okay. Ampersand wants to find the aliens that have been sitting on their butts for 40 years and ignoring their Duolingo notifications because he wants to retrieve some 'genome' from X alien group gets it from Y alien group. I don't know what these things are and they don't sound interesting. Ampersand is just boring as fuck. Normally when you have such a serious character that is a fish out of water, you have some funny moments sprinkled in like discovering sugar or hmmm....Cheez Whiz? Just throwing that out there. But Ampersand just explains crap over and over and over, sounds like Microsoft TTS and has the personality of one too.

I would have loved to have some humor in this story, but it seems Linsday either never wrote a funny thing in her life or she removed all charm from this book thanks to the sensitivity readers going "oh, you can't have humor here, because humor is offensive". This is why I have no idea what she took from Invader Zim. At least have Ampersand enjoy a taco.

As for the genome thing, it's a macguffin. I can't remember if it was her or someone else on Channel Awesome who demonized the macguffin, but if it was her, it's damn ironic.

Don’t remember that Weeknd thing. What was that supposed to be about?

Damn, she put her twitter on private, but The Weekend album "After Hours" was a sort of pop concept album about a star starting from the bottom, going to the top, then entering self-destructive behavior to fall back to the bottom. It's actually interesting to look into since it makes homage to moives like Casino and Uncut Gems, mixed with a psychedelic feel to it. I think Todd could have done it justice, but Lindsay would just reiterate what she found from this article because I noticed Lindsay just copy and pastes things from other websites to make her scripts, like how she did with the explaination of the term "canceled". It was word for word out of the wikipedia page.

Isn’t Rogue’s thing that she can absorb the powers of those she touches…and potentially kill them while doing so?

That's exactly what Lindsay fans want, especially 40% of her trans audience.

A little off topic but I just reuploaded Lindsay's The Craft review and it's interesting to see her stance on writing and casting race, when these days it'd get her cancelled... Again.

Around six minutes in she starts talking about the token black chick who is perfect and flawless, who only has problems because she's black... And 2011 Lindsay calls this a bad thing, especially since the racist girl is openly racist and obviously no one would ever be like that. Also, that you shouldn't write black characters, just write characters without race in mind and just cast whoever you want.

Write a character without their race in mind?! I can't believe Lindsay was a diet Nazi back then, according to her current standards. Sure, that's a colorblind liberal take that basically everyone agrees with because racism is not a good thing, but that's totally what a diet Nazi says!

If Linsday knew from current Lindsay, she would know that you're supposed to mention gayness and blackness and everything non-white and non-cis and non-male so that you have more representation for the marginalized groups. And yes, that is actually her position. She went over that with her talk about bi-erasure because apperently it's bad for a bisexual to date or marry as if they are straight, because this removes their bi status, and that reduces the LGBT numbers(trust me, this kind of nonsense is maddening if you follow it), but then Lindsay was like "it's okay for me to do it beause I'm me and I know that I'm still bi."

I also have to rewatch The Craft review because it would be interesting to see how Lindsay reacts to witchcraft and the wiccan themes in it. I'm sure she ignored it all because it wasn't popular on tumblr at that time, but we shall see.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Isn’t Rogue’s thing that she can absorb the powers of those she touches…and potentially kill them while doing so?

Not just powers, but the memories and personality too. The incident that ultimately made her leave the Brotherhood for the X-Men was absorbing Carol Danvers permanently by mistake. That's where she got her classic powers, but it also gave her a massive identity crisis because she had Carol's psyche bouncing around inside her head- I remember reading one story where she had a psychotic break and thought she was Carol, and started living her life. So she went over to the X-Men in the hope that the Professor could cure her.

So getting back to the novel, are the tactical implications of mind control explored?

 

[Cobalt-60]

So far it hasn't explained how Ampersand can do mind control. The people like Cora's aunt who had worked at the MIB/Area 51 place that kept and knew about the aliens had several go missing and return with missing memories, some with brain damage. Cora isn't the first one Ampersand tries to use to break into Google's basement (the security dude who stops her is like 'this is the third time today wtf') so I think it's implied Ampersand is damaging people's minds and it's not the result of government mind wipes. It's hard to tell because when Cora mentions this to Ampersand he doesn't say anything, but he normally doesn't say anything. He stares all the time, speaking in the most literal sense.

Cora is not a funny character. At this point I wouldn't call her a Mary Sue because she's not that OP but suffers from some typical YA protagonist problems of the plot suddenly revolving around her for no real reason other than if it didn't we wouldn't have a story. But she's boring and doesn't have much of a personality. In the beginning she has a 'fuck it, don't care' attitude like choosing to spend money for a concert rather than repairing her car she needs to get to work, because she values short term pleasure over long term practicality. This lack of critical thinking clashes a bit when she occasionally says something that a 21 year old college dropout probably wouldn't say.

I think the closest thing to something interesting she has said was after Ampersand worried about humans being 'flesh-eaters' (because ordering a burger from a restaurant = willing to kill and eat other intelligent beings) but also reveals he's basically a cyborg as some bio/synthetic being so Cora wonders why worry about humans being flesh eaters if you don't even have real flesh.

Here's a typical exchange between Cora and Ampersand:

Spoiler

“How are you holding up?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

She shook her head. “Never mind. What do you suggest we do now?”

“I need to locate the whereabouts of the Fremda group and extract them from federal custody.”

“You want to break in and take them by force?”

“If necessary.”

She tried to find a diplomatic way to explain that this was a terrible idea. “Extrapolating from what I’ve seen you do, I have no doubt that you are capable of incapacitating an entire government compound. That said, I’ve also witnessed a certain…” She bit her lip, trying to think of how to phrase this as inoffensively as possible. “Inattention to detail.”

Ampersand stared at her. He was either rapt or furious. Possibly both.

“I...deduce that perhaps you haven’t had enough time to gather the adequate intelligence on the minutiae of human culture, let alone government securities, to safely pull off such an operation.”

“I agree,” said the voice in her ear almost immediately.

She blinked. “Really?”

“I have not had adequate time to gather sufficient intelligence on either American culture, human behavior, or government securities to safely accomplish such an operation.”

“Okay,” said Cora. “Then we need to contact my aunt.”

Ampersand’s expression did not change, but the air in the room felt colder.

“She’s the only lead I have on finding where they took the Fremda group. This burner phone isn’t tapped. I think.”

“We should not reveal our position.”

“I’ll tell her to meet me at the diner up the road.”

“I do not intend on collaborating with prison wardens.”

“I don’t know how else I can help you. Do the Obelus Similars have your algorithm? The one that you used to learn English?”

“The primary Obelus, the leader of the Similars, does have such an algorithm.”

“So there is a chance they can figure out how to understand English and find the Fremda group before you do?”

He paused before responding. “Yes.”

Ampersand Microsoft TTS-ing like that, with Cora speaking like that. Back and forth. Back and forth. Cora throwing out "extrapolating" and "adequate intelligence on the minutiae of human culture" makes her not sound real. She works a dead end job at an office. Her manner of speech is just all over the place.

So Cora is stiff and boring, and Ampersand is stiff and boring....why would anyone want to read this? Even as bad as Michal Bay's Transformers is, at least he knew to give the characters actual personalities. I'm not a book critic so I don't know if I'm making sense how this book feels shitty, but hey if an average joe isn't going to find this book interesting it's no wonder her sales are tanking. I've honestly been trying to give her book a fair shot, if she's right and that the 'haters' are giving this one star on Good Reads, but goddamn this boring is boring.

Yeah I just accidentally wrote boring twice instead of book. Because this book is so boring my brain now associates it with boring.

 

[Eventide]

I would have loved to have some humor in this story, but it seems Linsday either never wrote a funny thing in her life or she removed all charm from this book thanks to the sensitivity readers going "oh, you can't have humor here, because humor is offensive". This is why I have no idea what she took from Invader Zim. At least have Ampersand enjoy a taco.

I don’t think she took anything from Invader Zim; however I do believe Lindsay borrowed from a different Jhonen Vasquez work - Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

In Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, there’s a running gag concerning a race of extraordinarily stupid aliens who abduct the main character’s next-door neighbor every Tuesday morning at 2 am. These aliens claim to be advanced scientists that have been observing Earth for centuries, yet they’ve learned practically nothing about humanity (and what little information they did gleam is very very wrong):




In the Transformers Prime comic, there’s a Starscream scene that pays homage to the dumb JHTM aliens (who literally cannot differentiate humans from dogs/cats/rabbits/chickens – all life on Earth looks the same to them):





Back in the day, I remember coming across this information on a Tumblr post (Don't worry, I wasn't a Starscream fangirl. I had been searching for Akatsuki fanart that was drawn in Jhonen Vasquez's style. My friend from High School drew it and I heard a rumor she became super Christian after rehab and deleted all of her weird Tumblr shrines to Naruto villains. Apparently the rumor was true). Anyway, I guess Lindsay Ellis did do research for her book. On Tumblr circa 2013.

 

[Random Internet Person]

I don’t think she took anything from Invader Zim; however I do believe Lindsay borrowed from a different Jhonen Vasquez work - Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

In Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, there’s a running gag concerning a race of extraordinarily stupid aliens who abduct the main character’s next-door neighbor every Tuesday morning at 2 am. These aliens claim to be advanced scientists that have been observing Earth for centuries, yet they’ve learned practically nothing about humanity (and what little information they did gleam is very very wrong):

View attachment 2926063


In the Transformers Prime comic, there’s a Starscream scene that pays homage to the dumb JHTM aliens (who literally cannot differentiate humans from dogs/cats/rabbits/chickens – all life on Earth looks the same to them):


View attachment 2926065


Back in the day, I remember coming across this information on a Tumblr post (Don't worry, I wasn't a Starscream fangirl. I had been searching for Akatsuki fanart that was drawn in Jhonen Vasquez's style. My friend from High School drew it and I heard a rumor she became super Christian after rehab and deleted all of her weird Tumblr shrines to Naruto villains. Apparently the rumor was true). Anyway, I guess Lindsay Ellis did do research for her book. On Tumblr circa 2013.

I mean, Lindsay did say her books were about a different take on the 2000s. Wouldn't be that decade without Hot Topic, MySpace, and scene kids.

 

[Ninon42]

I don’t think she took anything from Invader Zim; however I do believe Lindsay borrowed from a different Jhonen Vasquez work - Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

In Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, there’s a running gag concerning a race of extraordinarily stupid aliens who abduct the main character’s next-door neighbor every Tuesday morning at 2 am. These aliens claim to be advanced scientists that have been observing Earth for centuries, yet they’ve learned practically nothing about humanity (and what little information they did gleam is very very wrong):

View attachment 2926063


In the Transformers Prime comic, there’s a Starscream scene that pays homage to the dumb JHTM aliens (who literally cannot differentiate humans from dogs/cats/rabbits/chickens – all life on Earth looks the same to them):


View attachment 2926065


Back in the day, I remember coming across this information on a Tumblr post (Don't worry, I wasn't a Starscream fangirl. I had been searching for Akatsuki fanart that was drawn in Jhonen Vasquez's style. My friend from High School drew it and I heard a rumor she became super Christian after rehab and deleted all of her weird Tumblr shrines to Naruto villains. Apparently the rumor was true). Anyway, I guess Lindsay Ellis did do research for her book. On Tumblr circa 2013.

I would very much like to see Lindsay's self-insert protagonist go on a spork murder rampage or acknowledge her status as the universal waste lock in book 3 as a homage to JtHM. That series is why my brain automatically renames everyone named Todd (including TitS) to Squee lol.

 

[Random Internet Person]

I would very much like to see Lindsay's self-insert protagonist go on a spork murder rampage or acknowledge her status as the universal waste lock in book 3 as a homage to JtHM. That series is why my brain automatically renames everyone named Todd (including TitS) to Squee lol.

Or just have it where the MC just keeps getting the question "Shouldn't you be...frying something?"

 

[Puddleduck]

Her twitter's gone private, any updates from those who follow?

 

[Ninon42]

Her twitter's gone private, any updates from those who follow?

Nothing new on Twitter since the goodbye tweet, and no more updates on Patreon per her subreddit. Is quiet for now.

 

[Herty]

or maybe the fucking Ekha

Hey at least the Interdict and to some extent the Complete Harmony are not complete genocide xenophobic manics like Lindsay aliens. The Interdict even allied with the Jao

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Hey at least the Interdict and do to some extent the Complete Harmony are not complete genocide xenophobic manics like Lindsay aliens. The Interdict even allied with the Jao

"Allied" is very strong word for it. They help the abominations destroy each other, that's the agenda.

The point is taken though: even psychotic aliens with explicit doctrines of xenocide handle these situations better than Lindsay's aliens.

 

[Herty]

Allied" is very strong word for it. They help the abominations destroy each other, that's the agenda.

I mean the Complete Harmony plan is to basically enslave/conquer other races so they replace the Lower Ekha classes at the bottom of the hierarchy of their society and the Interdict are more worried about the Network corruption of their species then aliens to the point where they free and aligned themselves with the Jao during the Civil war that ended The Network.

But yeah the point being that the Ekha contrary to Lindsay Aliens actually have internal ideological differences, conflict and division and are not just some monolithic fanatical space genociders. That is the difference between good world building from bad world building.

 

[feral cat #6385]

Am I the only one that didn't want to fuck the cartoon characters I watched?

I only had fantasies about live action characters. No cartoon characters.

I wanted to see Jeannie fuck herself with her cute little bottle.

 

[Duine In Cudromach]

At this point I wouldn't call her a Mary Sue because she's not that OP but suffers from some typical YA protagonist problems of the plot suddenly revolving around her for no real reason other than if it didn't we wouldn't have a story.

That's actually what makes Cora a Mary Sue.

Mary Sue isn't really defined by her power set-- you have plenty of extremely powerful, borderline godlike (or just plain godlike) characters out there that don't count as Mary Sues ore Gary Stus, or in more grounded stories even characters that are impossibly competent.

What makes them acceptable and not a Sue/Stu is how they're treated by the universe. The Mary Sue's most defining power isn't her beauty, her charm, or how large a harem of big strong men she has who are willing to do her bidding; it's how the logic and laws of the universe bend to her whims. In this case, that's right, there IS no reason for Cora to be the center of the universe... but she is, and not because of anything she does but because the universe has bent around her gravitational pull.

It's the difference between, say, Katniss and Bella Swan. The former is highly competent, inordinately skilled, and the center of a revolution, the latter is just some rando high school girl that the vampire gets the hots for. But throughout The Hunger Games we see Katniss struggle and overcome, and also fail; we see her become the icon of the revolution while also being a maladjusted dork who can't act; more importantly, we see how her youth and relative naivete are taken advantage of by even the 'good people, and her victories in and out of the arena are painful and hard-won. Additionally, Katniss -- though a largely reactive protagonist -- was immediately humanized by sacrificing herself for Prim, not only giving the audience the emotional investment but making her proactive in the plot instead of just a victim of the system.

Meanwhile, Bella shows up to school and despite having all the charisma of a turnip is the hottest girl in the room that all the girls want to be and all the boys want to be with, people are constantly vying for her attention (as friends and as romantic partners), the celibate vampire boy instantly falls in love her with through no action of her own, the werewolf follows suit, and then it ends with her becoming the best newborn vampire ever who can control her bloodlust AND gets handed awesome powers AND gets a super baby AND has the best sex AND, above all, she just sat there whiles things happened around and at her without ever having to do anything. The whole world warped around Bella not because she was smart or interesting or took any kind of initiative, but because she was the protagonist.

Cora seems to fall in that same category. You can absolutely have an everyman that gets swept up in crazy circumstances but grows into the role and becomes a hero, but Cora has no marketable skills and a shitty personality, she isn't interesting, she isn't particularly clever. She doesn't take initiative (even a reactive protagonist has to eventually become proactive in order to fulfill a motivation or goal). The alien just happens to stumble on her. She just happens to leave with him. She just happens to have an aunt with connections to the government. The alien just decides she's cool instead of her somehow proving it to him. Cora doesn't even get to use her linguistics degree to help Ampersand with maybe modernizing his translation algorithm, he just runs it and knows modern English and then he's with Cora.

As far as I can tell the climax of the book is literally the climax of Twilight (she's kidnapped by evil monster, there's a car chase involved, she's ripped open and nearly bleeds to death until good monster saves her, she and good monster wind up becoming an official couple), and Cora has as much agency over the alien shenanigans as Bella did with the vampires. And yet Cora is inexplicably vital to everything, and remains vital. Truth of the Divine even kind of falls back on the Sympathy Sue cliche of having Cora be all messed up and depressed and constantly having bad, unfair things happen to her because the universe still revolves around Cora, and Cora still doesn't take any initiative. It's a bad combination that results in a protagonist with lopsided weight to their existence despite them being utterly disinteresting.

Honestly I'm a big fan of characters who are in WAY out of their depth, but the thing I like about it is that it forces ordinary people to become extraordinary. This is just a wish fulfillment fantasy where the lead does literally nothing but winds up being vitally important to not just the story but the world itself regardless.

 

[Erwin Rotten]

I only had fantasies about live action characters. No cartoon characters.

I wanted to see Jeannie fuck herself with her cute little bottle.

I'd roll my nuts over broken glass for the chance to stick my dick into her bottle and have her pink air enter my pee hole so that one of my sperms can stick it's tail into her tiny body.

That's actually what makes Cora a Mary Sue.

Mary Sue isn't really defined by her power set-- you have plenty of extremely powerful, borderline godlike (or just plain godlike) characters out there that don't count as Mary Sues ore Gary Stus, or in more grounded stories even characters that are impossibly competent.

Literary devil did a great video on the concept of the Mary Sue. I think your explanation is as, if not more, on point.

Meanwhile, Bella shows up to school and despite having all the charisma of a turnip is the hottest girl in the room that all the girls want to be and all the boys want to be with, people are constantly vying for her attention (as friends and as romantic partners), the celibate vampire boy instantly falls in love her with through no action of her own, the werewolf follows suit, and then it ends with her becoming the best newborn vampire ever who can control her bloodlust AND gets handed awesome powers AND gets a super baby AND has the best sex AND, above all, she just sat there whiles things happened around and at her without ever having to do anything. The whole world warped around Bella not because she was smart or interesting or took any kind of initiative, but because she was the protagonist.

I totally agree but what's crazy is that women and gay men world wide didn't care that she was a Mary Sue because the story charmed them in ways they enjoyed. It fulfilled a fantasy through the tropes and through the modernist romanticism symbolism that these people wanted to read.

Many people who critique stories can pull it apart and call it garbage all day, but that doesn't erase the interest and sales that were caused by women basically being given their Transformers.

It seems that combining these two hack projects of two different directions, twilight and transformers, was an attempt from Lindsay to double her sales, but what happened was that it cut it in half at the very least.

Probably did whatever is the square root of it with how that kind of combination conflicts with the audience. I mean imagine taking the basics of two things that everyone says is so easy to do that they could do it(writing the script to Micheal Bay transformers and Twilight), then you remove the stuff that people liked from it, you remove the sex specific tropes that people liked from it, you remove the symbolism that people liked from it, then you add in a bunch of nonsense nobody asked for, then you add postmodernist philosophy to it, and then wrap it up with aiming it at a triggered group and trying to trigger them with suicide and rape.

Imagine my shock when that doesn't sell well. This is like trying to sell corn syrup, pouring expensive wine over it, then processing it so it turns into a breakfast cereal with no sugar or marshmallows. It's like, yeah, good luck selling that to kids.

As far as I can tell the climax of the book is literally the climax of Twilight (she's kidnapped by evil monster, there's a car chase involved, she's ripped open and nearly bleeds to death until good monster saves her, she and good monster wind up becoming an official couple), and Cora has as much agency over the alien shenanigans as Bella did with the vampires. And yet Cora is inexplicably vital to everything, and remains vital. Truth of the Divine even kind of falls back on the Sympathy Sue cliche of having Cora be all messed up and depressed and constantly having bad, unfair things happen to her because the universe still revolves around Cora, and Cora still doesn't take any initiative. It's a bad combination that results in a protagonist with lopsided weight to their existence despite them being utterly disinteresting.

I haven't reached the climax of the book yet, but I can imagine it's where Cora grabbed the macguffin of a genome and the aliens cartoonishly scrabble to get her and then beat her up because Lindsay wanted to do the plotting checklist where you have the protagonist beaten up near the end so they can do it like in The Crow where something random helps them get out of the situation alive. I do know that Cora or the alien are pregnant in the second book, so seeing that abomination being born and having it treated as a beautiful thing is something I'm ready to complain about. Either that or Lindsay would show the only alien hybrid in her book get killed by a clotheshanger beacuse that's the part she expects her fans to cheer at.

Honestly I'm a big fan of characters who are in WAY out of their depth, but the thing I like about it is that it forces ordinary people to become extraordinary. This is just a wish fulfillment fantasy where the lead does literally nothing but winds up being vitally important to not just the story but the world itself regardless.

I think what you're trying to say is that there's a difference between a person who didn't reach their potential before the event have the event change them to reach their potential AND a self-insert that has the story as the writer's playground. As we can see, the first one is about maturing into a better person and the other is about staying in a childish mentality. And this is nothing against power fantasies or pulp-style slop that is meant as cheap entertainment. This is to say that Lindsay went for the latter and tried to write it as the former, which would be like trying to write Cat in the Hat as if the director from Drive would do it, complete with the elevator scene, but replace Ryan Gosling with Mike Myers doing his loud wheeze as he stomps one of the kid's faces into the ground.

 

[Puddleduck]

Nothing new on Twitter since the goodbye tweet, and no more updates on Patreon per her subreddit. Is quiet for now.

Not to be morbid but do we know she's even alive? Judging by her blog she's been in dark places before, and has made attempts ...

For reals though, her less-than-woke past seems to be as much of a problem as her present, and if my uncovering of the treasure trove of a blog was the reason she did something stupid, I'd feel horrible

 

[teriyakiburns]

Not to be morbid but do we know she's even alive? Judging by her blog she's been in dark places before, and has made attempts ...

For reals though, her less-than-woke past seems to be as much of a problem as her present, and if my uncovering of the treasure trove of a blog was the reason she did something stupid, I'd feel horrible

Don't. Whatever reasons or excuses we might give, the choices we make are ultimately out own. If she decided to top herself, it's not because the blog was found; it's because she wrote it, then tried to hide it and live a false life.

 

[Dwight Frye]

Not to be morbid but do we know she's even alive? Judging by her blog she's been in dark places before, and has made attempts ...

For reals though, her less-than-woke past seems to be as much of a problem as her present, and if my uncovering of the treasure trove of a blog was the reason she did something stupid, I'd feel horrible

She’s a narcissist, suicide is the last thing they’d ever consider. How else would they farm those attention points?

Nevertheless fingers crossed

 

[NeoGAF Lurker]

It’s extremely unlikely that she’d kill herself. She locked down her accounts because she doesn’t want anything to further ruin her already beshitted reputation and have her lose even more paysimps. What she’s likely doing instead is getting wasted every night while trying to find a way to string along her simps so they don’t leave while producing as little content as possible. We know she’s an angry drunk so I’m sure her husbando is hiding out in another room until Boozy Lindsay passes out.

 

[Erwin Rotten]

At least we didn't miss much from her last twitter cleansing. What was it really? Just her linking to her patreon, talking about the stuff she didn't make, and random retweets from people she networks with. Or was there something worth noting between the Raya aftermath and her complaining about not getting the Hugo award she paid for?