The Half-World

Now in (e-)book format!

Previous taglines:"ramblings of a geeky teenager", "a blog full of super terrific horrible things", "a bloog bout haf worlds which is like Invader Zen", "a blog run by Da Barke Lord Skepkitty, and also by the Death Dealers".

The Half-World is a blog primarily for Fanfic MSTs run by theskepkitty, aka Control Brain Lillias on Operation Head Pigeons. It comprises of awful fanfictions from fandoms such as Invader Zim, Twilight, Harry Potter, and Portal; as well as various other posts (some of which are MSTs in their own right, though not of FanFics). The site, which was started in September 2010 but didn't post any MSTs or attract much attention until early 2011, is quickly expanding and now has over 150 chapters of MSTs.

She has MSTed these stories: [1] (Sorted in order of MSTing)

The blog also occasionally features guest MSTs:

Due to her popularity, Skepkitty has also done co-MSTs which usually are held outside her blog:

It can be found here.

Tropes used in The Half-World include:

MST Tropes

  • Berserk Button: Many, many, things that show up in the fanfictions are these to Skepkitty.
    • (From Defying Destiny)

Has it occurred to you, cullengirl13xxx, that NO ONE GIVES A $%@# WHAT YOUR CHARACTERS ARE WEARING?

OH GOD NO
PLEASE NO
NOT A HIGH SCHOOL AU FIC

NOOOOOOOOO

gaz-yea sure whatever(turns around and see’s tak )tak
tak-gaz
Meadow: This is some of the best dialogue known to man.

    • Also, the blog's new tagline.

a blog full of serious criticism of great literature

Sorry. Does "hate" still look like a word to you?

Grant: I feel that this is time to introduce a catch phrase; I mean, Skepkitty has “The plot thickens”. Hm… ”The plot takes a U-turn”… ”The plot hits a fork in the road”…perhaps I should just stick with “Fuck it”

And here’s another stupid chapter of the stupid fanfiction My Immortal, which is stupid.

Really really really bad feelings

  • Heel Face Turn: Invader Cakez, originally the author of two of the fics subject to MSTing here, by May 2012 has become a hater of badfics herself.
  • I Do Not Own: (From Book One)

The fanfics in this book are owned by their respective writers, and neither Skepkitty, Meadow, or RingmasterJ5 claim any of them as their own. "Friday" and "My Jeans" are copyright Ark Music Factory, 2011. The two full-page ads featured here are the property of Richard W. Wetherill. "Invader Zim" is copyright Viacom. "Harry Potter" is copyright J. K. Rowling. "Twilight" is copyright Stephanie Meyer.

    • Justified, as an e-book is only one step away from a published book, which could earn money.
    • Horrible Fanfiction #1 begins with "No, I didn't write it, okay?".
    • However, one MST gives this: (From Teen Fortress 2)

[...] THEN I REMBERED THE BLOOG BOUT HAF WORLDS WAS LIKE INVADER ZEN SO I PUT GAS IN TO SEE HOW SHE LICKS SAYIN STUFF BOUT YUR CHARS LIKE HOW SHE SAID SCOT MOLEST/RAPED KATTY!)
I like the idea that Gaz is somehow “my” character.

Butt the worst thing was who the ppl who were shot in the dream where……………………… Lucian and Serious!111
Serious-ly?

  • In-Joke: "...and there was ____, looking extremely fucking hot." (Based on a line from My Immortal)
    • "Still a better love story/fanfic than Love Knows No Race."
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A comment on Zim Born Again, noting that Zim was literally born again, not converted to Christianity, has led MarissaTheWriter into writing a fanfic "Invader Zim: Born Again Christian". It was promptly MSTed.
  • Orwellian Retcon: While usually against changes in her published MSTs when a mistake is pointed out, in the MST of Chapter 7 of Teen Fortress 2 Skepkitty actually did that.
    • As a general rule, if the mistake is a minor one it's corrected. If the mistake was a bigger part of the MST a note is added.
  • Rapid-Fire "No": (From Love Knows No Race)

no no no no no no THIS ISN’T HAPPENING no no no no THE AUTHOR DID NOT JUST IMPLY THAT ZIM AND DIB ARE BROTHERS AND THE CHILDREN OF THE ALMIGHTY TALLEST no no no no no no no no no NO FUCKING NO

Perhaps I should rewrite this site’s tagline: “THE HALF-WORLD, a bloog bout haf worlds.”

Maybe I really should change the tagline. “THE HALF-WORLD, a bloog bout haf worlds which is like Invader Zen”. Catchy.

    • In fact, the tagline was changed to "a bloog bout haf worlds which is like Invader Zen" for a week.
  • Running Gag: Dib taking people to carnivals.
    • Specific to the Zim's Future MST: Gaz throwing people (mostly Zim) into puddles.
  • Sarcasm Mode: From the Love Knows No Race MST:

OKAY! I’m gonna explain a few things… I know it’s going really fast, but that’s only because the rest of the story is going to go really slow.
Oh, fantastic. /sarcasm

Tara/Raven is the best pairing and you must ship it now.

My OTPs are Tara/Raven, Sin/Mystie, and GLaDOS/testing. XP

Fanfiction Tropes

  • Applied Phlebotinum:

Since when did Ebony have a camera?

Dumbldore yelled at them but they didn’t stop. All of a sudden…… a terrible man with red eyes and no nose flew in on his broomstick. He had no nose and was wearing a gray robe.
Wait, so did he have a nose?

    • (From Grazie the Beautiful New Girl)

“A diary…” I was walking home from Skool when I tripped over the Diary.
Well, now we know where Grazie is from. She’s from the Department of Redundancy Department.

    • (From Teen Fortress 2)

This is the new studant hes new.
The new student is new? No points for guessing that all these guys passed their Redundancy classes of redundancy. They probably got A’s.

“Hallo, mein Name ist Grazie, ich freue mich darauf, Sie kennen zu allen! Ach ja, und Frau Bitter ist ein horribe Lehrer und hat keine Ahnung, was ich sage, so HA! Toodles!”
According to Babelfish, that means: “Hello, my name is Grazie, I looks forward to it, you knows to all! Oh, and Mrs. Bitter is not a horrible teacher and has notion, which I say, so HA! Toodles!” I would suspect that what she meant is “Hello, my name is Grazie, I look forward to meeting you all! Oh, and Ms. Bitters is a horrible teacher and has no idea what I’m saying, so HA! Toodles!” I can’t explain the “Toodles!”

Reminder, again: Everyone but Zim thinks Grazie can only speak German. It was part of her cover. I guess we’re just tossing that out the window now.

“Ähm, Entschuldigung! Kein Englisch!” I turned around. Dib was standing right behind me.
You dropped the German act back in chapter 1, and now you’re digging it up again after Dib’s already heard you speak English several times?
You’re an IDIOT. Not that I mind idiots terribly, but the author seems to think you’re a genius. God, I hate her. And I hate you too.

Then we started our normal Saturday retain (a/n I suck at spelling).

  • Self-Insert Fic: What many fanfictions that Skepkitty features is based around. It also counts as a Berserk Button for her.
    • (From Grazie the Beautiful New Girl)

Allow me to rant here: you should never base a character on yourself. It just sets you up for viewing the character as you, rather than as a tool with which to write a story, and then you become attached and don’t want to make anything bad happen to the character because that’s you, and you also don’t want to show the character’s bad side because you’d like to present yourself in the best light, and before you know it you’ve turned your character into a Sue.

    • (From Me in Invader Zim? Oh Kami)

Now, as you can no doubt tell, I am a big fan of Invader Zim. Would I want to go to the IZ world? No, because it sucks. Earth is horrible, everyone is stupid, and the rest of the universe frankly isn’t much better. As much as you might want to go to meet a specific character, the entire cast is mentally unstable if not downright murderous or insane. And she didn’t ask if she could ever come back…

UpsidePickle: All in all, incest, incest COMBO x2!!, incest TO THE SECOND POWER.

  • Ur Example: Love Knows No Race was actually written in 2002, inciting Skepkitty to point something out...

I was going to suggest that Marissa try to get a part in this, but then I realized that this story was written in 2002. Since it’s such an old Zimfic, maybe, instead of just borrowing every Zimfic cliché in the book, the author helped invent those clichés, which makes it worse in a way.

    • Which also makes it older than My Immortal, which by The Half-World's present day (2012) had become a badfic classic.
  • Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: (From My Immortal)

“Thou must!” he yelled. “If thou does not, then I shall kill thy beloved Draco!”
“Thou dost”, not “thou does”. Ye Olde English 101.

    • Invader Zim: Born Again Christian also has a few lines in Ye Olde Englishe.


Other Blog Tropes

Be warned: the site’s title may be “the (other) half-world”, but it’s quite a bit different from this half-world, and if you follow me you’ll have to put up with a lot of Fan Girl behavior.

The site is called “The Half-World” because whenever I space out (a very, very common occurrence), my mom will try and snap me out of it by saying “You’re staring into the half-world.” I found the name appropriate for a site that’s full of the kind of things I think about when I’m spacing out.

  1. ↑ She even gives a handy index at https://web.archive.org/web/20140722004617/http://theskepkitty.wordpress.com/mst-index/ with roughly what you could expect in each story and warnings/pairings.
  2. ↑ It's Japanese for "God" or "deity"
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