User:Gaebulg000

Salutations
Welcome to my humble user page. The fact that you are on here leads me to hope that I haven't done such a poor job of contributing that I've drawn your ire.

What's my deal?
I love light novels, and visual novels! In fact, I have a reading list that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to clear. What's that got to do with anything? Well, the issue with hopping around and reading different series is keeping track of the sheer amount of information that you're supposed to be remembering. When it comes to Youjo Senki/The Saga of Tanya the Evil, this is especially the case. There's a lot of stuff happening in these books and they average about 100k words a volume, while most other light novels come to around 50-70k. So my hope is that I can make this a little easier for myself, and for other people, by writing comprehensive summaries of the light novels.

What's in a summary?
Well, I'm not going to be able to make any promises or guarantees about consistent quality or principles for summaries I write. But at the very least, I am aiming to communicate all the key themes, events and thoughts that make each book tick. What I'm aiming to achieve is that if you read one of the books and then take a break, you can come back to those summaries and quickly refresh yourself as to what happened in that book and what it says as part of a larger whole.

Still reading?
Don't you think it's amazing how stories work? We can sit down and watch a 3 hour film or read a book that's over 100,000 words long and turn that experience into a few flashes of memory that convey the events and meaning of the story. Also interesting is the nature of time when it comes to stories. I'm sure you've been there, you love a story so much that you wish you could just absorb it instantly. Yet, it is the very act of turning the page or seeing what's going to happen next that makes stories so enjoyable. When we're finished enjoying the story and it becomes a cluster of information in your mind, it's never quite as enjoyable to recall as the first time, is it? It's because stories take time to convey that we are able to follow them like we follow the events that happen in our lives. Another thing about stories, isn't it interesting that only humans share and enjoy them? Well, maybe that's an obvious point because you've yet to see your cat or dog converse fluently about anything. But stories require empathy to enjoy. We place ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist, and when it comes to books, often we place ourselves in the very headspace of that protagonist. That's quite a remarkable thing to do so casually. We take ourselves and transform into another person. It's a rather incomplete transformation, seeing as you can still disagree with their thoughts and actions and curse their foolishness, but I still think that is remarkable.

You must like long, meandering stories
Me too. There's something about ridiculously long stories that fascinates me. I think the journey a long piece of writing can send you on is beyond compare. The first time I read a work that was more than 300,000 words in length was more by accident than anything else, I simply didn't know how long it was. That work was 'Sisterhood: True Edition', a fanfic for Katawa Shoujo that clocks in at 454,821 words. I'm pretty sure that's significantly longer than the source material. Why do I bring this up? Well, here's something I discovered fairly recently. I have a real interest in very long fanfics. I think it's so fascinating to see all the different possible directions a work can go when someone else is put in the driver's seat. It rather reminds me of something said by a certain Witch of Miracles in Umineko no Naku Koro ni/Umineko: When They Cry, a visual novel that, incidentally, also clocks in at somewhere over the one million word mark:"When they're alive, you can enjoy watching them struggle. When they're dead, you can enjoy tearing out their guts. Tales are things you get to enjoy twice."

- Bernkastel She's right. The first time you read a tale, it's fresh, it has the element of surprise. It can leave your jaw hanging and it can fill you with rage. But once that era is over, we can still enjoy our favorite stories by doing all kinds of things with them. Whether that be writing about them like I'm doing now, reading fanfiction that takes the story in totally fresh and unexpected directions; tales are something we get to enjoy twice. So, I hope this long, rambling, meandering piece of writing without a clear purpose or conclusion caused you to realise all of the truths of the world and reach nirvana, and without further ado, I bid you adieu.