Aster Asks! is a queer erotic serial Kinetic Novel writen and illustrated by Valerie Halla, author of Goodbye to Halos. Each page contains an illustration, followed by some text below describing the scene's action and dialogue.
Charmside is a strange, isolated coastal city where magic permeates everything, and a mysterious Curse affects those who chose to live in it: stay too long within the walls of the city, and you will eventually become a monster. Despite how scary this might sound at first, the city's population keeps growing, as the outside world is seemingly full of people who are very eager to cast away their old form.
Aster, a blogger, just moved to Charmside with the intention of interviewing the monstrous inhabitants and understanding who they are and what drove them to move there and start over. As they venture outside their apartment they learn about the way the city works and end up becoming very friendly with its rather uninhibited dwellers
The first and only issue, Aster Asks! #1: "Softness", deals with Aster’s meeting with a cow monster called Drippy, and was released on March 31, 2019. The second issue spent some time in development before being cancelled in favour of a setting reboot called CURSE/KISS/CUTE, which is currently being worked on.
Aster Asks! contains examples of:
- Accidental Pervert: Aster find themselves stumbling upon Drippy's breasts, much to the former's embarrassment.
- Alliterative Title
- all lowercase letters: The text is written by Aster, who is writing a blog in-universe. While most of it uses proper capitalization and punctuation, they often devolve into this when flustered or embarrassed, or when being deadpan.
- All There in the Manual: A huge amount of information on the setting and characters, including the ones who are yet to formally make their appearance, can be found on the author's Twitter page.
- Background Magic Field: There’s one surrounding Charmside that slowly transforms its inhabitants into monsters.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Drippy is very large and very pretty.
- Breast Expansion: Drippy's hair flowers have this effect, as Aster discovers at the end of issue 1.
- Cursed with Awesome: The point of the story is to explore how the city’s “Curse” is very much a positive thing that universally makes its inhabitants happy by turning them into a reflection of their hearts.
- Cute Monster Girl: Drippy is this, as is any female character who has lived on Charmside long enough.
- Fantastic Comedy: The work follows Aster's interactions with the monsters, during which Hilarity Ensues often.
- Expy: Valerie has confirmed several characters to be this, mostly coming from an old webcomic of hers. As she puts it:
- Fictional Counterpart: Softness starts with a note from Aster saying readers who enjoy their interviews can give them a tip at teatime.charm/asterasks, which is a fictional version of the real-life service Ko-fi.
- Framing Device: Most of Chapter 1 consists of a blog post written by Aster, explaining their first experience hanging out with a monster.
- Funbag Airbag: Aster accidentally bumps into Drippy's breasts shortly into issue 1.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Drippy's usual attire includes a shirt but no pants. The author has joked on her Twitter page that the inhabitants of Charmside assume bottomlessness to be a natural symptom of being friends with her.
- Hotter and Sexier: As discussed here
, several characters from Aster Asks! originated or are inspired by characters from one of the author's previous works, Portside Stories, which was, in the author's own words, "extremely non-fuck-related." - Monstrous Humanoid: All the Charmside inhabitants are beautiful or adorable humanoid monsters.
- No Antagonist: The story has some conflict, but it's driven entirely by Aster's awkwardness and insecurity.
- Retro Universe: As explained by Valerie Halla, the work's universe features a mix of 80s or 90s electronics aesthetics with 2010s Internet capabilities.
- Slice of Life: The story centers around Aster's day-to-day interactions with the city dwellers.
- Urban Fantasy: The setting is a modern city where magic and monsters are common.
- Utopia: Charmside is more or less a perfect city for queer people, who willingly move there en masse.
- Walking Swimsuit Scene: Drippy's usual wardrobe consists of a bikini and a T-shirt, which she spends most of Softness without.
