The fastest way to accomplish The Project is to cease being afraid of The Project. The Project cannot maim you. The Project cannot kill you. The Project is more afraid of you than you are of it. It is okay if The Project turns out differently from how it was in your head, and it is okay if it has flaws. You are capable of engaging with The Project.
There also needs to be a button for “this is the 5000th time I’ve read your fic because I’m having a horrible day and this is the only thing in the world that always brings me happiness.”
Honestly though, comments like that are gold to me. I love to write and a comment telling me that something I’ve done has improved someone’s life even in a small way? That’s impact. We live in societies that tell us over and over we have no value and nothing we do is ever good enough. So for someone to post a comment telling us that we improved their lives with our stories? That tells us our effort had value. We writers set out to improve the world in tiny ways, offering random acts of kindness in the form of a few minutes’ entertainment, and comments tell us we’ve achieved that little goal.
You can totally come back and leave a comment under that comment a year later! I’m glad to know you are still enjoying it and want to know if you’re doing okay.
There is no higher compliment than a re-read. The longer the time that has passed, the higher it is. It means a story resonated and stayed with someone.
Okay. The thing is. The thing that Gets me about Solo Leveling
(disclaimer: I have only read the manhwa and it is entirely possible that my torments are due to an adaptation not doing justice to the source material)
is how determined it is to be an uncomplicated power fantasy despite being absolutely fucking riddled with ominous foreshadowing. It's basically a cosmic horror story where both the protagonist and the narrative itself flatly refuse to think too hard about anything that's going on. You know that post which I'm too lazy to hunt down about a Bertie Wooster-esque character coming out of a Call of Cthulhu campaign with a higher level of sanity than he started with due to being oblivious to The Horrors? That's the Solo Leveling experience.
"Hm, I just killed eight people with about as much emotion as you'd feel when swatting that many flies. Should I be worried about the psychological effect the System is having on me?"
Apparently not, because it's never brought up again.
"Also, I was railroaded into doing that by the System, which clearly only has my best interests at heart insofar as I'm useful for carrying out its agenda, which it has not bothered to share with me. And speaking of hearts, fun fact! It apparently has the power to stop mine at will!"
This is never brought up again.
"Huh, the monsters are all mind-controlled into acting this way. Also, the 'King' of the demon tower was a shade that was being controlled by someone else. The 'God' from the double dungeon that started this whole mess? Mindless automaton that was being controlled by someone else, who was himself someone else's puppet. It sure seems like nearly every apparently all-powerful being I encounter has very little agency in their own life!"
This goes nowhere, largely because Jinwoo seems only vaguely aware of the pattern.
"Heyyyyy, Jinwoo buddy, it's me, Min Byung-gu. You know, the guy whose spirit you enslaved with your necromancy powers? Anyway, huge fan of the way my best friend and a bunch of other people didn't die, so no hard feelings. But also, you get that that's a really fucked up thing to do to someone, right? Like a really, really, really fucked up thing to do to someone? I'm so concerned about this that I went to great effort to reach out from beyond the grave to tell you to please for the love of god think about what you're doing."
And in another better story, this would be a callback to the whole "gee whiz, these godlike powers seem to be having a devastating psychological effect on me!" thing. But since this is Solo Leveling, it is - say it with me, kids! -
never
brought up
agaaaaaaaaain!
This story fucking torments me, and I have no idea if the author was doing it on purpose
Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” that was written in 1950 is set on the day of August 4th, 2026 (tomorrow)!! Now’s your chance to read it around the time it’s based in!
Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.
I used to set this one for second year undergraduate creative writing seminars on writing science fiction on a double bill with Octavia E. Butler's "Bloodchild" and no-one here gets out alive.
When it’s announced that a Bay Area middle school teacher is one of three heroes sent to save the world, San Francisco clamors to rename things to “Ryland Grace.” Grover Cleveland Middle is quick to the draw, becoming Ryland Grace Middle the very next school year. Grace also gets a street, of course, a science wing at Stanford, a state park along the coast — by the time the Beetles return, you could probably throw a rock in San Francisco and hit a Ryland Grace reference.
Eva Stratt, meanwhile, is a stain. Graffiti tucked away in alleys and under bridges, forever painted over by the powers that be. A name meant to be forgotten. Stratt has always known this was part of the deal: after all, humanity needs a villain just as much as it needs its heroes. The best she can hope for is to be erased entirely on Earth.
And yet, light-years away, there is a beloved body of water, its surface dancing with artificial waves, that Ryland Grace wistfully refers to as The Sea of Stratt.
Description: An illustration set against a bright red background. At the bottom half of the illustration is a rabbit, mid run. It's head is pointed down and the iris of it's eye is the same red as the background. Text overlaying the image says 'If they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you.' Which is from Watership Down by Richard Adams.
gummygunk
dailybridgerton
origamiaround
2087
blakekathryn
germansingergirl
