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(and yeah, someone using the house as an archery target does feel plausible)

(It's late at night, I don't have super-detailed thoughts atm, but I thought you'd want to know you have readers)

Oh wow, it’s been so long since I thought about Pokémon glitches . . . It was really fun seeing a bunch of them “in the flesh,” existing in a proper narrative, rather than just being jumbles of code on a screen! And I loved the portions where ゥ causes real life glitches to manifest and affect the other characters, as well as the sound! Oh, and the gag with Valka having her own volume control that the Medical staff have learned how to restore is hilarious! One thing I didn’t understand was the comment that “Bulbasaur had exploded.” Is that a glitchy Bulbasaur that knows Explosion, or did one of the glitches cause that to happen?

I like that this interlude has a good mix of silliness and sincerity. The glitches are funny, but I like that Valka still took the steps to rescue her partner, and to check up on the characters they rescued from the prior mission. I also appreciated that Valka gave Elena the subtle nudge to go spend time in FicPsych. Your characters are very thoughtful, and that’s a nice balance to the humorous tone of the PPC!

And now, here’s that thing I do where I nitpick grammar stuff! Sorry!
Elena cautiously sat down the rest of her pokéballs.
“Set down.” Also, “Poké Balls” bucks the usual trend by being two separate words!

“Yes,” Valka replied, “she’s from Pokémon.”
The titles of big series get italicized, so Pokémon

“Nothing was ever said about Marcia and Makalov’s family.” Valka answered.
The period at the end of the dialogue should be a comma.

“Finally,” Nicole said, “Did anything odd happen during pregnancy? . . .”
Since the dialogue is all one sentence (Finally, did anything . . .), the “d” in “did” should be lowercase.

“I understand,” Nicole added “temporal distortion: extreme” . . .
Oh, I see! Two of your sentences swapped punctuation while you weren’t looking! This comma should be a period.

—doctorlit couldn’t resist the siren call of duplicating items in his youth . . . RIP Hall of Fame . . .

A couple of days later, we went back up. I was retied in the cave, and given food and water. So much for being freed.

Eventually, I was freed, but I was told not to attemp to escape, and that I shouldn't try to hurt anyone, especially not the pups.

That last bit was rather obvious.

In fact, I made friends with them. They were a playful bunch, as playful as human children, in fact. The pups played as if they could do so forever.

A while later, Shadowhunter burst into the playroom and said, "Luna had returned!"

I decided to follow him to see Luna for myself.

…

Luna and Ythakor were in the entrance cave.

A small crowd of wolves already surrounded them, swarming with questions. Luna answered them as best as she could--probably.

Behind the wolves, a small dagger floated around, which I found weird, but I decided to head over to Luna first.

"Luna!" I said. I tackled her in a bear hug.

"Whoa!" Luna grinned, and hugged me back. "So you did find the Pack after all!"

I told Luna about my adventures, and she told me about hers. She talked about dragons and talking daggers. Apparently her adventure was more exciting than mine--I was rather jealous.

I also got to actually meet Ythakor, and Mark the flying dagger. (That was weird.)

Right then, I was so happy, I had no idea of the hardships to come. No idea.

…

That night, we had a feast.

Prey of every kind filled the table. There was beef, pork, andd chicken stolen from farms, venison and rabbit from the hunters, and even some fish from the fishers.

We ate, drank water from goblets, and chatted, basically. All the meat was raw, but someone had cooked a bunch of meat, specifically for me. Wolves know more about humans than humans know about wolves, apparently.

The wolves ate and ate until they couldn't eat any more. I also ate until I was full.

The only catch was that there wasn't any dessert, which I found weird, especially for wolves with human traits.

After the feast, we went to bed. I was sent to a small but cozy room that was for guests that came to the Pack every now and then.

I settled down into the bed, and tossed andd turned a little, before I fell asleep.

…

(I)A dragon, blacker than jet and larger than a mountain, flying out of a ravine.

A snow-white dragon with feathery wings and silver eyes leading a small army of griffins, hippogriffs, birds of prey, and wolves against a great sea of black demons.

Unicorns and pegasi being chased away from their homes by wicked spirits, draining the lives of those they catch up with.

And Jen with a spear through her chest, her eyes already going blank.(I)

The fact that the second paragraph of its Amazon description specifically denies that the main character is a Mary Sue should tell you something. That, and the fact that’s it’s often bought together with My Immortal.

I’ve been considering sporking it on Das Sporking.

—Ls

How did this thing get published?

I've never really gotten much commentary on this story, so I really appreciate that you checked it out. This was originally planned as a standalone, but another reader mentioned wanting to see more of the Carrion Shift world, so I might eventually return to it, once I have a strong enough idea to write.

Thanks for reading! :)

Fred and George really would have an interesting book club! I bet they'd love Captain Underpants, if it existed back then (the first one of those books came out in 1997! Wow). I think realistically they probably just picked up the reference from an older Muggleborn student who's been reading these books on the sly, but I could see them sitting down and actually reading it as a middle finger to Pureblood Culture, too!

The Slytherins definitely have A Take on the events, yes!

I'm so glad you felt some sympathy for Sev there ;P That was the point!

I'm not going to confirm or deny any of your theory. I am going to chuckle ominously, stroke my fake Dumbledore beard, and offer you a lemon drop.

The characters, the atmosphere, the carrion shift grinding everyone down… it's just excellent, and I'd love to see more stories set in this universe (but only if you want to write them, of course).

that looks like an amusing project.

I am actually quite familiar with this gem of a self-published badfic-that’s-original-fiction. Its wiki is... informative, as is Krimson Rogue’s review. And all the other reviews I’ve found.

I have been able to attain a digital copy for free; apparently the author uploaded it.

Interestingly, its website is no longer being updated as of a few weeks ago.

I’ve actually been thinking of writing a Theresa fanfic about a person who got one of the HALs later in the book.

—Ls

For those of you not in the know, Empress Theresa is a bad novel written by Norman Boutin; it's about the titular Theresa getting superpowers and being a "good Catholic girl" by wearing suggestive dresses and trying to seduce people. It's most well known for its author being thin-skinned and responding badly to any and all criticism he receives, as well as thinking that his book is a literary masterpiece that should be taught and analyzed in schools.

So my sibling got a copy of this absolute legend right here. The story is 463 pages long, was (surprisingly) proofread by a "Pierre Groussac," the back jacket reads "Read a jewel, thrill to the situations, learn from Theresa, and have a good time," and the cover… it's best if you looked up this book's cover and saw it for yourself.

Feel free to ask me any questions about the paperback edition of this… wonderful gem right here.

P.S. My sibling insists the book's cover is "not that bad."

Which can be found here.

--Ls

I told Ythakor about the dream.

"Hmm," he said. "The voice… probably Drakor. No one except himself knows what he's capable of. Apparently visiting dreams is one of them."

I also asked Mark about it.

"Well," he said, "Drakor, I heard, can read minds--they say that you can only block it if you have eaten a rock other than salt. He can also move solid objects with his mind, which sounds weird. And apparently he can visit people in their dreams."

I asked, "What does he look like? Has anyone seen him?"

"Let's see." Mark thought for a moment. "They say that Drakor is of immense proportions. He can squish you as easily as you would squish an ant. They also say that his scales are blacker than jet. No one knows what color his eyes are--they say that whoever looks at Drakor's eyes die instantly."

Great. I had made an enemy out of a dragon who had killer eyes. Hooray.

After a couple of days, Flareon had told us that she was going to ask us more questions in a couple of days.

That was when me and Ythakor hatched a daring escape plan.

Whenever we ate the venison, we cast the bones into a pile by the wall. Now the pile was rather large.

I discussed my escape plan to Ythakor--dig a tunnel behind the pile of bones, then slip away whenever we had a chance. In order to escape arousing suspicion, we would dig under cover of darkness, and the extra dirt would be scattered around the large pit--no one wouls notice.

We started digging as soon as the sun set. We dug a hole just wide enough so that we could fit, and our tunnel was slanted upwards a bit. When it got close to dawn, we got the dirt and scattered it around the pit, and covered up the entrance with the bones.

After that we took shifts working, me working from dusk to midnight, and Ythakor would work from midnight to dawn.

Eventually, Flareon asked me some more questions, and I answered with some lies. Mark continued to tell is things about dragons.

Several days later, the tunnel opened up in a location that I knew about--the Greenston Clearing. It wasn't that large, but it was close to the Omega Pack's secret entrance.

We planned our escape to be the next night.

I do have a passing interest in conlangs, to the point where I've started a Wings of Fire conlang project, but my sibling likes that stuff more. An interlang (think that's the word) based off emojis is intriguing, nullifying the need to create an alphabet that can be understood the world over, but how would such a language be pronounced? Not to mention having to memorize a wide variety of emojis along with their meanings, making this a logographic language…

Well, hello. I swear I'm still around on Discord and I lurk on the Board every now and then, but I haven't had a lot of motivation to write lately, so I felt like I didn't have much stuff of my own to share.

The thing I'm about to post is a short story I wrote a very long time ago (in 2021, I believe?) and for which I've been attempting to find an audience pretty much constantly since then. I'm definitely very proud of it, and the few people who have read it seem to like it too, so I figured I'd finally post it somewhere other than Wattpad, where the search algorithm works based on the Aztec moon calendar or something. I have a blog where I say things sometimes, and this isn't a plug for that, but for the story itself. It has lesbians, zombies, and some sad.

Warnings: violence, some mild body horror, swearing and implied BL2 (since this is about zombies). Read the story here if you are so inclined; it would mean a lot to me if folks checked it out, since it's one of my favorite things I've written.

Uh, yeah, no way Lavender wrote that, regardless of what the handwriting looks like. Oh no, I'd hate for Neville to be the next victim! Fred and George, being into reading? Feels a little weird, but then, they are all about flaunting rules and social norms, and if the Pureblood community is going to disown their family, why not partake in a little Muggle literature? Especially a story like 1984, all about surviving under oppressive systems? I kinda dig it, would book club with the Weasley twins. I enjoyed the scene in the Slytherin common room as well, hearing the spoiled kids' view on things. Even if they were dropping that m-slur left and right. Also, I can tell I've been reading this AU too long, because when Lockhart dropped that "even with hair as short as yours!" trash, I actually felt offended for Snape.

Okay, sorry, not much of a review this time, but that's because I got distracted this chapter by TOTALLY SOLVING THIS MYSTERY. I puzzled over the pieces, and I'm confident I've identified the attacker. I'm going to put it behind spoiler bars so I don't ruin it for anyone else. Lily, please don't confirm or deny, because I still want to be surprised once we reach the end of this year, but yeah. Here's my theory: Les spoiler

—doctorlit, being a sleuthy sort, for once

So, uh, a while I remember having a conversation with Huinesoron about trying to come up with an emoji-based language. Not much else was said, and that was about it.

Well, as it turns out, someone actually did that. It's a pretty interesting concept, so I thought I'd share.

--Ls