Return of the Naruto Community Derail Thread: Part Two!

They're not actually rich or anything, they're just spending more than they should. They had to take a loan to pay for it, which I find insane.

Yes, that's why I hate it. People are duped into spending absurd amounts of money on something that has no lasting value.

Yeah, that kind of excess really gets to me. And the idea of getting a loan for such a thing is absolutely bonkers.

Then again I hope to never even have a car loan if I can help it.

That's only a medium-sized Greek wedding! And if you really feel like wasting your money, you can even rent a whole estate to make sure people can run around wild.

You're an accountant, you'll always be loaded.

well, I hope you're right

That is... terrifying.

So.

Does anyone remember how I said I'm working to be a novelist? Well, that actually ended up happening.

But not in a typical way, since I became a web-novelist.

I started to serialize a webnovel in Munpia, my country's equivalent of "Let's Become a Novelist". While I initially wanted to write an isekai story about a high school boy getting stuck in a Dark Souls-like tower and slaughter his way to the top, what I ended up writing is a completely different story.

It's actually an Alternate History fic.

I don't know how, but during recent couple of days this story got a massive boost in traffic and ended up becoming one of the most popular story in the site's free work section (when a work get sufficiently popular, it then turns into a premium work, for which you have to pay per chapter).

I even have my literary agent, who keeps urging me to transition my story into a premium already, seeing how it has so much readership.

Oh, yeah.

As for the title, 매국노의 원수 자식, if I were to translate it into a rough English title, it would be like "Not So Admimirable Admiral." Literal title would be: "The Traitor's Son is a Fleet Admiral"

Sadly, the title's meaning heavily depends on the wordplay of 원수, which can mean both a five star military officers AND an arch-nemesis.

So basically, my intent and light novel-ish title would be:

"A Traitor's Son Became a Five Star officer to Screw Him Over."

tl:dr - My life went to a weird place and now I'm a novelist who is writing some peculiar alternate history fiction.

I love my life.

Edited by dRoy on Jul 18th 2021 at 11:47:27 PM

That sounds really interesting!

Also, SO THERE YOU WERE BEING KUBO A NOVELIST...

...God, it has been almost five years since I heard that meme. It's almost nostalgic, and I mean that in a good way.

So it's like alternative history novel?

Yup, exactly like an alternate history novel.

Unlike most AH novels though, it's really light in tone (except for battle scenes) and chock full of humor. If anything, it can be described as an alternate history light novel.

Edited by dRoy on Jul 29th 2021 at 3:16:46 AM

I just had a delightfully fucked up "series" of "nightmares". They all started in fairly familiar scenarios:

1. church
2. coming home to parents
3. hired onto a job as head of a company newspaper

Then the scenario gets twisted and unsafe, which I'm offered a convenient way out of:

1. I find a private space to pray to find love, then go back to the service, but it has become a strange non-canonical allegory metaphor about punishing a well meaning Joseph as a false prophet. The service ends, and my "family" (who quickly become the 2018 cast of College Humor?) files into a van to drive home.
2. One parent is verbally and possibly physically abusive. I threaten them to stop, then go for a daily walk. For some reason I start to feel like Mojo Jojo from the Powerpuff Girls?
3. I immediately fire everyone under me and take credit for their work, but my "secretary" remains and while he seems servile and oblivious, it's implied my boss put him there to monitor me. I look for the "bathroom" as a way out, and the hit cartoonist clearing out his desk bitterly informs me that it's on the other side of the parking lot, but you'd need to drive there. I meet a pretty lady that I try to save from also being trapped here.

Then it becomes apparent that I'm trapped to forever experience my "escape" route, as punishment:

1. The van passes by home and just never stops or lets me out, while I stew in my insecurities of not finding love and being surrounded by strangers.
2. I realize the abuse will continue as soon as I get home, so I have to keep walking forever.
3. The lady and I get into one of the 3 nearby cars in the lot, but as we do, I realize before I close my door that there will be no way to reopen it. But the car starts driving off on its own, chased by the cartoonist and secretary in their own cars.

A projection of Beast Wars' Optimus Primal appears on the roof of the last car, explaining that all 3 (he claims there's 4, maybe I forgot one) dreams are actually programs being run on me. I'm apparently Megatron, and Primal is getting his revenge for what "I" did to him in the season 1 finale. Each dream sequence will continue its final "trapped in my escape route" portion until I get used to it or mentally shut down, at which point my memory of the experience will be wiped and another dream sequence will load. So my permanent fate will be to be running from the same situations forever.

Basically, these dreams share elements in common with several others I've had for the last year, where my dreams have been creatively punishing me for procrastinating and being unhappy at work, by making it so that even when I sleep I feel like I'm running from or forgetting something. All the while, stuff I enjoy for fun gets corrupted.

My dream world has also been building on itself for the past couple years, with continuity in locations, and elements like "I have to write a research paper that doesn't exist, but I can't graduate without it" (the post-grad school version of "I didn't study for my test").

It'd be remarkable if it wasn't so incredibly frustrating.

Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Jul 29th 2021 at 8:43:01 AM

...Man, those are some weirdly specific dreams. Never heard anything like those before. 0_o

So the novel about being the son of an infamous traitor in one of the darkest chapters of your country's history is light in tone?

That's a novel approach, I have to admit.

Well, it's not light in the sense of "lighthearted", but more in that it has a lot of dark humor and pop cultural references/memes, like the main character trying to get a legendary gunsmith to make a particular submachine gun for WWI, to which Browning rebukes MC, saying "Think Dale, think!"

Not sure if this is a right way to put it, but the story is kinda like what Inglorious Basterds is compared to other World War II films.

Edited by dRoy on Jul 29th 2021 at 9:56:08 PM

In other dream news, part of that sequence involved me walking past a chicago style hotdog and italian ice restaurant that's been recurring in my dreams. Usually when it shows up I'd order a hotdog, but I'd never get to eat it in the dream. I'd been craving having one for over the last year, since the pandemic cancelled my plans to go back to Chicago for a bit. But I'm finally going to get to in a couple weeks, so I no longer feel like I'll be missing out if I don't do it in my dreams!

...I can really use some deep Chicago style pizza....

When this pandemic is over, we can have an exchange. I'll bring you some Chicago style food, and you can introduce me to MAMAMOO. That's fair, right?

Well, it better be a really damn good Chicago style food.

...If this pandemic ever ends, that is.

Edited by dRoy on Jul 30th 2021 at 7:53:00 PM

Went to see the Green Knight movie.

Surprisingly accurate, even if they tried to be overly artsy and confusing and messed up some parts. It was kind of a psychedelic movie.

So, a few posts back I mentioned how I'm serializing a webnovel in my country.

Well, now it even has a (rough, unfinished) cover!

That would be the main character in 1940s, as the Chief of Naval Operations of the United States Navy.

...Of course, by then he should be in his early 60s, but eeehhhh, nobody wants to seen an old guy on a web novel cover anyways.

He controls the only source of color in the world, the all powerful Red Button.

It's gonna get colored later, but hey, that IS the most important color.

Now colorized!

...My God, with color on the main character (names' Dale Lee, btw) looks so evil. I LOVE IT!

Also, there is a reason why Japan is colored red here....

Are you suggesting some particular relationship between Korea and Japan? This would be the first I'm hearing of any such thing.

How was it co-hosting a World Cup, by the way? I've wondered for a while what that must have felt like.

That and something far insane. Like, I'm talking about "Communist uprisings in Japan" kinda of crazy.

You know what's the funny thing? Either it was intentionally hidden or we just kinda forgot about it, but it almost felt like Japan wasn't involved at all.

To be honest, I actually had to Google it because I actually forgot about the whole co-hosting part.