Punching Day: Street Fighter: The Novel, Part 3 🌭

This is Part 3 of the breakdown for Dream Never Ends, a Street Fighter novel. I’ll give you a little recap so you don’t have to read the first two parts, or you don’t have to read any of this. It will not enrich you in any way.

The author, Talyn Rahman-Figueroa, is a social media grifter and the kind of person who can call herself “the fairy BOSSmother” without even trying to swallow her tongue. She insists her original character, Tawnya Blaze, is not a self-insert Mary Sue. She’s simply the most beautiful actress in the world, who happens to be the same race and age as the author. Also “Tawnya” is one letter off of “Talyn.” This is like me writing a novel where Bobert Bbrockway flaming uppercuts Balyn Bahman-Bigeuroa into a combine harvester, then insisting it doesn’t reflect my own desires. I don’t know why I’m doing all this legwork. I’ll let Talyn explain in her own words, they’ll do a much better job infuriating you than I can.

Hilariously incompetent lies. This was not first in a series of novels, its weird that a Shotokan student would describe punches as “thrusting hand go aways,” I looked up Diplomacy University and it seems like a party college, and the only place listing “Hoshi” as Ryu’s last name is the 1994 Street Fighter movie. It’s a fucking sweet film – Golden Globe winner Raul Julia flies across the screen in magnet boots – but I don’t think it’s canon.

I wouldn’t be talking about this soft-cocked fanfiction at all if it weren’t for Talyn’s insistence that it’s a legitimate book. She actually wrote her own page on the official Street Fighter wiki calling this the best book ever written, and implying that Capcom endorsed it and made it canon. It’s not, they didn’t, and it’s not, respectively.

When we last left off, Tawnya and Ryu finally went on their first date, which ended with him having a premature demon orgasm, then punching her in the face. They call it the Conor McGregor Special. Let’s check in on Ryu now-

Still just wandering the streets, cumming and fireballing. Honestly, kind of living the dream.

Talyn insists this is practically Street Fighter canon, then writes every single passage like a horny pre-teen who only suspects the general shape of fucking through a veil of parental controls. If it’s a Street Fighter novel, it’s one where all the Street Fighters hate Street Fighting almost as much as they hate their bitch wives. If it’s an erotic romance novel, it’s one where the romantic leads never fuck and occasionally punch each other in the face. And yet somehow it’s not good!

I’m being unfair, almost 2/3rds of the way into Dream Never Ends we did have our first actual Street Fight. Now we’re about to have our first on-page fuck!

You know sex – that thing where you tangle your limbs together into a loose mess while the man kind of roams around on top of a woman, occasionally tickling a fulsome collarbone as the woman considers slapping him. There’s a hack ‘90s joke here where I go “sounds like my love life!” and then I’m punished with millions of dollars and a CBS sitcom.

Give Talyn credit: Ken is a consistent character. He fucks once in this book and it’s the only time he’s not actively hating his bitch wife. But baby, the second he busts? Right back to doing what he does best.

I’m no relationship expert, but if you think the only thing that might save your marriage is the morning part of a short business trip to Ohio, you lost her years ago and that thing you call wife is a fairy changeling who took her place. (The fairy changeling is also going to divorce you after the Ohio trip.)

And that’s too bad for Ken, because Eliza is the most beautiful woman in the world… besides every other woman in this book, including the author.

A real sharp-eyed, pink-lipped beauty is how I might describe a healthy salmon, but let’s set that aside. It’s a wild writing move to jump POV mid-chapter to a brand new, unnamed character who has never appeared before and never will again, only to live out his silent makeout fantasy. One he never speaks aloud, and does not affect the story in any way. This passage shows such a fundamental lack of human storytelling. I know Talyn really wrote this book, but it’s also something an AI would do if you fed it only lipstick ads and asked it to write a taxi company’s sexual harassment course.

At least we’ve broken the seal on fucking. If Ken can do it with his bitch wife, anyone can.

Not you, Guy.

Remember, Guy is the one who hates his bitch wife. Sorry, that doesn’t narrow it down. He’s the one trying to nail his bitch wife’s sister directly in front of his bitch wife without her noticing. He tries it in the crowd at a fight where he is the next opponent. His wife goes for a beer run, and he thinks he can heft up her sister and bang her against the bigscreen – the one showing the fight everyone is here to see, the one where he’s fighting next. This can only end with an announcer calling his name and the camera cutting to Guy penetrating his wife’s sister against a screen showing him penetrating his wife’s sister against a screen showing him penetrating his wife’s sister against a screen showing him penetrating his wife’s sister-

Last time I joked Guy felt he had to replace the high stakes of Street Fighting with max difficulty infidelity, but here he is just mashing buttons. He’s supposed to be the greatest ninja from an ancient line of ninjas. What is an affair but a penis-based stealth mission? You should only know a ninja is cheating on you when your sister gives birth and the doctor comes up holding a cloud of smoke.

Talyn is trying to write “sexy, high-stakes public affair,” and chose to do that by having her characters pork on the 50-yard line at the Superbowl. Then one of them gets up and says “uh oh, I’m playing in this game!” Maybe he puts on his helmet and waddles into formation, then catches the game-winning pass and runs it 47 yards for a touchdown – all with his dick out. Sorry, I got distracted writing an accidentally great scene.

The only thing that saves Guy is the sister’s inability to work a belt buckle, which actually should be the yardpost for a person’s ability to consent.

Rena finds her bitch husband, whom she hates, and her bitch sister, whom she hates, dry-humping against the Jumbotron, and she simply waits for him to cover his boner before handing him a beer. This is a marriage at the Short Trip to Ohio stage of failure.

Haha Rena tries to transfer ownership of her husband like a used Hyundai. All signing the back of the title with an X, writing “my sister’s vagina” under the mileage report.

While his bitch wife is up in the bleachers swapping him like a Magikarp, Guy is down in the ring facing his opponent: Ken Masters. Now, you have to remember that just seconds ago this master ninja’s boner was defeated by a belt buckle. He’s probably still half-hard while fighting Ken, and we all know if anything traumatic happens to you with a partial erection, that becomes your fetish. Those are the rules of the curse.

It’s a one-sided match. Guy’s as bad at Street Fighting as he is at fucking. Ken’s up there spin-kick goofin’, seeing if he can work a little jig into a Hurricane Kick just to keep himself invested, meanwhile Guy is on his knees eating a foot buffet and trauma-cumming himself dehydrated.

Here’s a technically accurate way to quote that passage about Street Fighting: “Ken’s technique sucked him, trapped … until … Guy crashed to the ground, coughing out … a mixture of fluids making its way out of his throat.”

Ken’s about to beat off Guy for good when the lights go out, there’s some motion in the dark, and both men die of broken hearts. I’m not being poetic about a gay cowboy romance. That’s how Talyn writes Akuma’s “Raging Demon” super – the one where the screen goes black and little flashes go off. I am simply too exhausted by it to properly make fun of it, so let’s focus on the aftermath: The Raging Demon destroys both Ken and Guy’s hearts, which isn’t a big deal – they both get heart transplants. Also not a big deal. It’s a little like trading a used Magikarp husband to a hated sister. Mostly a paperwork thing.

No, the really big deal is Akuma’s pressure point nerve strikes – the ones that leave their victims with very specific, horrible nightmares.

The idea that there’s a point on the body you can jab to give someone custom-themed night terrors is something George Dillman would call “next generation thinking” and charge $99.95 for. There’s martial arts magic nonsense, and then there’s dream pokes. I can’t fully explain why nightmare nerve touches are stupider than punch fireballs, because if I could I’d be making literally dozens of dollars as a karate YouTube grifter instead of stuck here reading this book.

Ryu and Sakura head off to confront Fei Long, who they believe is possessed by the Dark Hadou, and responsible for Guy and Ken’s attack. Ryu’s reasoning for this is simple: Fei Long is an artist. The vilest profession on Earth.

Fei Long’s an actor, and that’s basically a Sith with veneers. Art is the darkest of all desires, for all artists must perfect a project before moving on – even if it means murder. Hey, is that editing? Is that Talyn’s cum-brained way of saying editing? Is that why she never does it? Maybe not cutting that full chapter about a wang-waggling underage spanking was actually a moral stance.

Oh hey, speaking of Kenji, the little spanked boy Ryu vowed to care for forever:

He’s not in this scene.

We finally learn that Tawnya is the one possessed by the Dark Hadou, something both the reader and Ryu knew from the first page. She kisses Ryu like a snake eating a watermelon, and they both face their undeniable feelings for one another, though circumstances beyond their control will forever keep them apart. You know this old trope, it’s Romeo and Juliet.

If Romeo killed Juliet with a flying uppercut.

The real twist: Tawnya wasn’t possessed by the Dark Hadou, she was actually possessed by Rose… who was possessed by the Dark Hadou. That’s not actually a twist. It’s barely a parenthetical. By-proxy devil possession is still devil possession according to Mississippi law, and prosecutable by horse execution.

One of my complaints is addressed in the finale, and I really wish it wasn’t. There are indeed more Street Fights as we enter the last 20 pages of this Street Fighter book.

“You’re writing a Street Fighter novel? Haha, what does that mean – like fireball, fireball, block, insert quarter?” is what Talyn’s boyfriend said when she told him she was writing this book.

“N-no, it’s more than that!” is what Talyn said, frantically taking notes.

In the middle of this epic fight, where each character takes turns saying the names of moves that they do, Ryu flashes back to his training. When he was but a young boy under the care of his elderly master, Gouken. Let’s check in on that sweet moment:

Let’s check right the fuck out of that moment. Holy shit, how do you combo cancel out of an anal bead taming?

Asking for a friend.

That I have tamed with anal beads.

I barely need to tell you how this ends. Ryu is mercilessly beaten by Akuma, who’s come out of Rose, who’s come out of Tawnya. Just a nesting doll of Japanese karate demons but again, not as rad as that sounds. It becomes clear Ryu can’t beat Akuma with his skills alone. Close your eyes and picture the first thing a hack would write. Actually, don’t bother – Ryu will do it for you.

Ryu realizes his true fighting power comes from love! And then he defeats Akuma with the one thing no demon could give him: A hug.

No, it’s a huge fireball.

Love is a huge fireball. I’m no hypocrite, this ruled when Krull did it, so I guess it gets a pass. Just remember: Whenever you quarter-circle forward and punch, you’re really saying “I love you.”

Ryu uses the power of love to shoot a fireball so enormous it somehow brings his dead master back to life.

I’m not cutting anything. That was all the explanation we got. Gouken was just chilling in the afterlife when the door to nirvana exploded and Buddha got obliterated in a wave of fire, so he grabbed his boy-taming beads and stepped through the smoking hole back to Earth to see what’s up.

That’s the end of the book.

Maybe you’re wondering what happened to your favorite characters. Remember Ken and Guy were both laid up with heart replacements and trapped in the karate poke nightmare realm – which is what they call their bitch wives’ vaginas, haha up top! Also Rena just traded her husband to her sister for a broken dirtbike and two tickets to a Bon Jovi cover band, what happened there? Did she blow the drummer? Did Fei Long finally make a kung fu movie sweet enough to satisfy his dark heart? Was it the one about a pussy that turns men to gold? All these questions and more will be answered never – Talyn forgot to wrap them up here, and all the social media grifting in the world couldn’t make anyone want another one of these books.

Kenji the spanking boy was never mentioned again, and died from unprotected genitals. RIP.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: TatersTales, who realized that the real anal beads were inside us all along.