#also didn't realize how old this printer was

[aid-xenostar]

IT'S A MIRACLE

I FINALLY GOT THE PRINTER TO WORK

My mom's phone literally being the main character. "Stand back. I've got this"

Btw I like how the pictures come out. They have some extent of color variation.

[inazumaclown]

idk if i already said it here but i think level-5 is a monument for character design. their characters are memorable in any games or series they produce, even when they're a little too much, their designs have a peculiar, lovable charm, i really really like them.

anyway here's me rating the GO designs of the OG characters :

endou is the fucking favorite. you can tell the studio really did their best for him. even without watching GO, you can tell he's still his old passionate self but in a cool and matured way. you can tell he's coaching kids and you can tell the kids love him and he loves them in return. 10/10.

kidou is great. of course he would be wearing a suit to coach middle schoolers, this is what being kidou is about !

i do think the new goggles are a little goofy, but haruna gave them to him, so of course he would wear them without hesitation. you can tell he's still awfully serious, but also no longer ashamed to monologue about his (occasionally stupid) special interest of the week if asked.

i would have advocated for longer dreads rather than, idk sorta untangled dreads ? but you know what, this is great. 9/10

i'm in love with kazemaru. always has been. his hair is perfect.

i just don't get why he got the coraline's yellow raincoat drip. it tells me nothing about him. i can't guess if he is an athlete, a hairdresser, a mangaka, a drag queen, a military sergeant, a carpenter or a sugarbaby. i'm left alone with my headcannons, and no clue how to prove they make sense. 5/10

i love that fubuki shirou, canonically the prettiest boy in the world, decided by himself to dress like sheldon cooper.

i like that when he put his coat on, he looks like a hobo. he didn't even had to try the hot snowboarder style, he already knew he'll be a good-looking hobo. i like that for him. choose for yourself king, you don't need anything. 8/10

my man looks so good in this. he doesn't realize he looks like the lovechild of yakuza and a mafioso. he doesn't realize why the grandmas are scared of him at the supermarket, but it's okay. i know he's well paid, he's still hardworking and professional, he's stable in all aspects, and he smells like a very masculine, expensive perfume. 11/10

of course, fubuki and him are happy and in love, and nobody gets how it could have happened when they walk side by side.

ah, fudou. some would say his new style is a glowdown, but i almost disagree.

true, he doesn't look punk and alt anymore, but i can tell that now, he's a true leftist. he looks like he doesn't have a job. he always smells like *spicy* cigarettes. everybody in his neighborhood knows and likes him. he owns almost nothing, yet everybody owes him something. he's an anarchist but he still votes, because he wants to do his part for a more peaceful future. he does throw rocks at cops during social movements. 8/10

kidou and him are also happy and in love. they fight all the time for petty things, but it's their way to say 'i love you'.

kabeyama almost didn't change, and that's good. he looks nice and polite and like a wonderful freehugger. i trust him. i could give him my firstborn, i know the kid would be well-fed and in bed at a reasonable hour. 10/10

i don't remember why kogure was in GO. it had to do with haruna i think, which is good, i like haruna. whatever he's just taller. 4/10

sakuma looks nice. the longer hair looks good. he would look better if genda was with him though. 6/10

tobitaka. my boy. he found his place. giving him the rai rai ken was such a good idea. it's not about the looks for him. it's about happiness, and he looks happier now. 10/10

tsunami ! the last member of the B4. he didn't change that much, which saddens me a little, but maybe it was because his design was always good. 7/10

toramaru. same boy but taller. they made an effort with his hair, i'll give them that. he looks like a lost management firm intern. i hope he finds the printer next to the coffee machine. i also don't remember what he does in the series. 5/10

glasses suit hiroto. he looks serious enough to do a serious job well, and still weird enough to say some deranged stoner shit without anyone asking after one (1) sip of unalcoholic beer. good for him. 7/10

midorikawa lost a bit of his theater kid charm, but i guess this is what happens when you work in foster care. he looks like a great mom though. 6/10

i'm disappointed. aphrodi deserves better than a boring ass suit. i mean come on, that man doesn't NEED to look professional, he is literally named after the goddess of beauty, he deserved better than that.

the side ponytail looks good. so sad for the little bleaching accident. he should cut that. 4/10

i can't clown megane. i look like that man. i wish him well. 7/10

WELL THAT'S THE END, I HOPE I DIDN'T FORGOT ANYBODY :D

(gouenji will have his own post.)

[luzlopesarts]

This is not an update to the Comic, but it still has something to do with it !!!

(call it a little gift for the Wish Rewrite and KoW fandom)

Hello my little stars! How are you?

I mentioned in the last post in the series that I would be traveling for a week or two and that's why I wouldn't be working. Well I'm still traveling Lmao.

It's been a lot of fun, I'm visiting my Prince Charming and family, both of whom I haven't been to in a long time. Still, I couldn't stop thinking about KoW and Wish's Concept Arts. Disney sealed the fate of its fan artists by discarding so much good material, now they are embedded in our minds and we will not be able to rest until we see them realized. This is crazy but it's beautiful to see how much these discarded concepts generated creative potential in the fandom.

Because of all this I couldn't help but make some small sketches! And well, I came to show them here. They are not sketches of Comic panels, but they have something to do with it and I will show the photos and explain how.

This first one, very faded, are Magnificent and Amable's clothes (designed by @uva124, for the characters in @annymation's rewrite of Wish "The Kingdom of Wishes"). The drawings that Aled did are very complex, I don't judge her for that, in fact I thank her, she gave beautiful clothes to the centuries-old Disney villains and they are perfect. I really wish I could draw them with all the details, but I will do everything by hand, alone and seeking a minimally professional quality (I want to be a comic artist/book illustrator one day. This comic is my first step Lmao, and I want to do something that conveys the best I can give at the moment), so I need to make some things easier for myself. The costumes are one of those things.

" Better something simple and well done than complex and poorly done." — This is my motto for this Comic and for my life.

The next sketches are related to aesthetics. I've been watching a lot of "Analyzing the Art" videos of some Disney films and I was inspired to adopt some "Disney Style" features in my arts for this comic (not everything obviously, because I don't want to be sued by Disney lmao).

What you'll see next is me trying to mix this influence with my own style in some KoW character sketches.

(this last art specifically references a meme in which @rascalentertainments tagged me, Thanks for that, by the way! <3 )

(credits to the artist, I don't know who it is because I was just tagged in this meme and I was busy So I didn't look for more information, but I'll leave the post link and you can check the official credits)

Speaking of aesthetics. Anny received Chiara's aesthetic from someone — the north star, "daughter of Aster", created by his magic at the very end of Anny's fanfic. This Aesthetic inspired me to create an aesthetic for Asha and Aster too and these were the results:

What's your favorite?

Lmao, It took a lot of work to make Aster's. There are almost no things for "starboys" on Pinterest.

I'm leaving this up to you to share as you wish, consider it a gift to the fandom!

Lastly, I want to say that the artistic analysis videos They also inspired me to put together a moodboard for KoW and I'll be leaving it here. Not even Anny and Aled know about this and I can't wait to see their reactions! I wish I could print this painting and leave it on the wall, but unfortunately I don't have a printer T-T.

This moodboard is helping me with the artistic direction of colors, style and is a visual motivation to stay active at work.

I hope you like it too!

That's it for today, it's already midnight in Brazil and I should be sleeping instead of posting crazy things on the internet. I'm going to tag my friends and go to sleep, Lmao.

Kisses full of light and stars!

~ Emy

@wings-of-sapphire @flicklikesstuff @frogcoven88 @chillwildwave @gracebethartacc @gracebethartacc @kstarsarts @oh-shtars Come and get your therapies after the anguish caused by certain publications by Anny!

[donnerpartyofone]

In 10+ years of active job hunting, all of the interviews I have had are:

I applied for an assistant role at this hip-sounding consultancy and I got through several rounds of scrutiny with an HR person who seemed convinced I would get the job. Finally I booked an interview with the actual boss, and the second it started everything fell apart. I had an initial technical problem with the video call and that didn't look good, but there was already a bigger issue: She immediately started shouting at me for wasting her time because I had made a mildly self-deprecating joke to the HR person (it had to do with my work with horror media which is not to everyone's taste). She was yelling and yelling about how you NEVER, EVER SAY ANYTHING NEGATIVE ABOUT YOURSELF EVER, WHY WOULD YOU EVER, EVER SAY ANYTHING CRITICAL ABOUT YOURSELF EVER. Then she sort of parlayed that into interrogating me about my goals in life, with the implication that I must not have any. It was apparent to me that she knew before we even started that she was never going to hire me because she felt that I had shown weakness to the enemy basically, and I can only assume she booked the interview because she enjoys torturing vulnerable strangers, but it was very shocking in any case.

I applied to be a production coordinator at this startup founded by one of these guys with more money than things to do. They were supposed to make, like...inventions? This is a somewhat aspirational description: They had an early 3D printer and the idea was that citizens would send in their invention ideas and the company would print and sell them. They'd had moderate success with kind of a modular power strip, and I guess they just assumed ideas like that would keep coming. The interview lasted 4 or 5 hours. I was sent into a little windowless room where I was interviewed by one person at a time for a very long time. The first guy was this zany douchebag who bombarded me with problems to solve: WHAT IF A GUY CALLS AND SAYS HE CAN'T SEND HIS INVENTION BECAUSE DOESN'T HAVE A SCANNER? WELL WHAT IF HE DOESN'T HAVE A CAMERA? WELL WHAT IF HE HAS NO COMPUTER? WELL WHAT IF THERE'S NO LIBRARY NEAR HIM? WELL WHAT IF THERE'S NO POST OFFICE? WELL WHAT IF HE CAN'T WRITE OR DRAW? WELL WHAT IF HE CAN'T DESCRIBE IT? COME ON! YOU GOTTA THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX YOU GOTTA THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX YOU GOTTA THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!!! The second guy was a sad sack manager who was subtly venting about how his staff didn't like him. The third guy was this chick who was openly throwing mad shade on the second guy, while also insulting me to my face. I forget who even else there was. It was like a police interrogation, by the fourth hour I didn't even know what I was saying anymore. I'm sure I would have confessed to murder. A month or two later I noticed I had all these voicemails my shitty phone never surfaced from the company trying desperately to hire me, but it was sort of a dodged bullet because they folded shortly after that.

I got a call back for an archivist position at a radio station. I only realized after the fact that due to being a humongous dumbass, my cover letter addressed the wrong company--a more popular station with a similar acronym--but I actually don't think that was the problem. The conversation was pleasant but I didn't have the exact technical abilities they wanted; they would have been willing to train me if they couldn't find anyone else, but that's not what happened.

At this point I'm really freaking out. I don't have the resources to go back to school or whatever and I'm not convinced that getting a degree or certification in a useful trade would really allow me to beat other candidates who are younger, more experienced, and with a more normal work/education history. Actually I DID get a certification in what I thought would be a useful trade before I even quit my old job to avoid drinking myself to death, but I've never gotten a call back for any relevant jobs--surely because I don't have any practical experience, it's all classroom shit and I'm not exactly internship material. Right when I quit my job I saw a career counselor, and I also worked with this corporate climber ex-colleague who gave me a lot of resume and cover letter advice, but none of that has made a difference. Recently a friend got my resume to his recruiter, he blew all this smoke up my ass about how great my resume is and how if I don't hear from the recruiter it's because she's a flake, and I really had to hold my temper because there is such abundant evidence that the problem is ME. I mean only psychos even call me back and most of them weren't interested anyway. I think unemployment is not available to me since I wasn't laid off or fired. I don't really know how temp agencies work, and I seem to have a lot of inconvenient handicaps, like I cannot do basic math, it seems pretty pathological. I don't really know how anything works, obviously.

I'm in this position because I thought preserving my mental health was more important than my job, and I foolishly assumed "something would work out" even though I had been looking for a new job almost that whole time. Also I followed a lot of well-meaning and extremely bad advice about "following my dreams" or whatever, which I actually had some unique and amazing opportunities to do--I mean if I didn't take them then I would still be wondering what-if--but I should have known never to take a chance on myself like that. I could, if I really wanted to, blame my family for not teaching me anything about real life, but the truth is that following dreams has paid off big time for every single person in our orbit except for me, so it's hard to fault people for just repeating what is personally true for them. I mean it's frustrating when someone asks you why you're looking for a job when you should just go get a book deal instead (!), but just because we're from the same family doesn't mean we're from the same planet. It's nobody's fault for assuming good things about me (although it does make me mad that they still won't face reality and everyone just thinks I'm "not trying"). But now I'm in danger and it's been coming for years, for most of my life in a way, and I don't know what to do. I apply for everything, but I look overqualified for the small things I might actually be able to do, and the jobs I do look qualified for won't give me a second look because I'm not THAT qualified really (and/or the market is flooded with people like me). I feel like I've hit up all the professional help I can find. Is there like...some sort of, I don't know what, psychologist that specializes in telling you how to get a job? I just don't know. HMU if you are able to explain to me what a job is and how to get one.

(That's mostly a rhetorical question unless you literally have specialized insider knowledge or your NYC-based boss is hiring or something. Please bear in mind that I am a middle-aged adult and I know how e.g. LinkedIn works. I have been using job boards extensively and elaborately for more than 15 years. As per my thesis, I have consulted many professional experts already. Please don't do the equivalent of reading someone's post wondering about something, and sending them a Wikipedia link to the topic like they've never heard of that before. Just please don't. I shouldn't have to say this but I know that I do.)

[hergrandplan]

U work in publishing?!?!? That's so cool!!! Do u mind me asking how u got into it/ what ur job is like? Thanks xx

Hi!! I do!! and I don't mind at all, I love talking about my job. It's what drew me to the idea originally/why i felt that I *had* to write it when I saw the prompt (of course, after asking permission from @dreamyelectronicmusic , because this was their idea originally), especially because at the time they posted that prompt I was, in fact, an editorial assistant (I have since been promoted to (copy) editor, which is very exciting)

My specific role in the company is to make the books, at least that's what I always say. I oversee the process of manuscript to actual proof/copy that can be sent to the printer. This wasn't something I thought I'd like when I started out and realized I wanted to get into publishing, but truly, I'm having the best time.

I always knew I wanted to do something with books, because I've been an avid reader since I was like 4 years old. I knew I didn't want to be an author, because (and i know this is a bit ironic since I just posted 14k words of a story and have almost 100k words posted on ao3) I don't have the creativity. I stand by that though, becuase I do not have the creativity to write a full-blown story with original characters and an original world. And that's also not something I want. I tried writing my own stories, once or twice, but it doesn't give me joy the way fanfic does.

So when I did my degree in English, and had the realization that sure, there are writers but there must also be *other* people who work on books, I realized that publishing was something I could do. and since then I've kind of been doing just about everything I could to get into it, because let me tell you, it's hard. I did two internships, and have a degree in Publishing from the University of Amsterdam, and yet the only reason i now have my current job is because I started working at my company while still studying (as an editorial assistant, 8 hours a week). And that became my fulltime job (well, part time, i work 4 days a week) the minute I graduated. I really tried to get as much experience as I could get, and clearly it paid off, and that's what I also always tell everyone who might want to get into it.

[crows-and-cookies]

Hi! I am curious about your turtle Hamburger. :)

THANKS FOR ASKING I LOVE HAMBURGER

I'm so sorry for all of this I just vomited it up and it's a lot

So back in 2021 I was the animal car manager at a nature center with upwards of 50 animals. The manager was an animal hoarder--he'd just catch random snakes and creatures and keep them. My first month consisted of walking into rooms of the weird house-turned-office and finding yet another animal that I was supposed to be caring for. (But the stories about my old manager are for a different post.) He'd also bring in injured wildlife and have me nurse them back to health, which I can do but was not legally supposed to do. I viewed it as a morally gray area because keeping wild animals can lead to certain zoonotic diseases being spread to wild populations when the animals are rereleased. Also I'm not a vet. But I didn't want them to die, but not the point of this ask.

On the second day, someone said 'hey you know you have an office right?' and I was like 'no??????'. So they showed me my office (which is a room I shared with a coworker and the overhead light didn't work) and in there was a tank with two juvenile box turtles. They had no water, heat source, light source, shelter, food, nothing. Just put in a tank with some mulch and that's it. So obviously, my obsessive need to take care of the box turtles began. I loved the heck out of these little turtles. I give them new names every other day (usually office supplies, as they lived on my desk). Also, education animals aren't supposed to really have public names, so calling them Stapler and Printer every once in a while was fine. Hamburger and French Fries were common names we called them, as the two on display were often called Tender and Nugget. Hamburger is an old joke too, because you hold turtles (and baby ducks!!!) like a hamburger (supporting the bottom bun).

In total, there were 7 eastern box turtles, 4 of them not adults. All but one were cases of turtles who people had thought they were 'helping' by taking out of the wild, realizing they were killing the creatures, then unceremoniously dumping at our front door. Turning people away trying to give us turtles they 'saved' was almost a weekly occurrence. This infuriates me.

The juvenile box turtles all have varying degrees of shell deformity.

This turtle has a pretty round shell, right? It's a wild adult.

Compare it to these turtles.

(Ignore the purple dot—it’s nail polish to tell them apart. It doesn’t hurt their shells unless it’s put in the wrong spot and can be easily removed. It was a symptom of having 7 turtles and teen volunteers/workers that made up new names for them every day.)

Do you see how they slope down in the back? And the last one (Hamburger himself) has like a dent in the shell. These were caused by improper nutrition during the development, my best guess is lack of UV rays. Too much protein can also cause issues, which you'll see with people who only feed their turtles dog food.

The dent might go away as they grows, depending on how bad it is and age. Two of them at the center got constant attention and it helped. For Hamburger, it's unlikely. There are rehab places that use hooks and try to adjust and pull the bone up as the turtles grow, kind of like braces, but the vet and my own opinion is that he's made it through critical development, so he'll most likely survive. There can be issues with a prolapsed anus or paralyzed back legs/bowels, but so far so good.

Anyways, I left the nature center due to homophobia/harassment in 2022, which was one of the hardest things I'd ever done, because I know I was barely keeping up with taking care of all of those animals, and some were going to die if I left. (It was also the second park in the area that the homophobia had happened with, so fuck them.) I wanted to take one of the baby turtles who lived in my office ('too deformed for display', according to the manager), but I was poor/other not favorable circumstances. It literally haunted me that those animals weren't getting enough care to the point that I couldn't sleep. I have this list on my phone about the ethics of turtle ownership because I want to take care of them and they can't go back to the wild yet they shouldn't be pets in the first place. I get a little obsessive about these things. Eventually, my good friend took my old position, and is doing really well in it. The place still sucks but she makes the best of it.

There are four main issues, though. 1. The two more deformed turtles live in the animal care office, which also houses the safe with the parks' cash, meaning the door has to be locked and has limited access. This rule isn't always followed (because the snapping turtle also lives in there, which is another story), but generally, those two turtles are forgotten about by the teen volunteers and part-time workers. 2. The teen volunteers love to dig up worms, and tend to only feed the turtles worms unless otherwise directed. 3. They feed the turtles all together (even though they're not supposed to), which makes it hard to ensure they all get food. 4. The head manager (animal hoarder) is retiring soon and the other manager (not the animal hoarder but an even worse human) literally does not care about animals and wants to get rid of some of them.

So when French Fries, Hamburger's tankmate, got sick and since the animal care person was out of town, they let him die.

I literally was 20 minutes away. I could have come and helped. I know what was wrong with that turtle and it could have survived. It also was probably weaker from lack of nutrition, which lead to a respiratory infection. They probably didn't even need a vet.

My friend got back into town and took Hamburger, who probably only survived because he was accidentally brumating. She immediately took him and all the needed supplies home, and they didn't care enough to stop her. They'll have to report the differences in turtle numbers on their permit somehow, which is sus as hell imo, but not my problem.

I had just taken a full-time job across the country, and was about to move. My friend told me and I was like HELL NO NOT HAMBURGER and I drove down and picked him up, ethics be damned. I am going to care for him better than he would be at the nature center. (I know the ethics thing seems silly, but it's hard for me to take a creature who should be wild and keep him in a tank. He just wouldn't survive in the wild though.)

So I got Hamburger, worked hard to get his weight up, and take him on little walks. He drove across the country with me (he's a terrible back seat driver), will not eat his vegetables, and will outlive me. The vet thinks he's 10--I think he's between 6-8 due to size. If his shell issues don't take him down, he could live to 100. His favorite pastimes are clacking his jaw, hiding under mulch and leaves, getting dehydrated (despite my best efforts), and listening to me explain my mail to him. My rule when making my beneficiaries for my retirement was that if you're getting my money, you're getting my turtle.

Here are pictures of him sleeping like a weirdo--he does this all the time and can get out, he just likes to sleep like this.

He also joins me for work, and my neighbors know him because I take him outside all the time.

I'm sorry for this super long post, I just love turtles so much sometimes when I'm driving I think about them too much and miss my turn or exit and get lost. I have a lot of more wild stories from that place (the house/office was like, vaguely haunted????) and I handled a snapping turtle on the daily. I hope this wasn't too much and was interesting! I have way more pictures of turtles and snakes too, if needed

[first-interplanar-bank]

Hi! Would you consider sharing how how/what you used to record the TMA cassettes (what recorder/deck, where did you get it and tapes, did you use any program etc)? Thank you!

There are some pieces of this process that are easier to find than others. The casette tapes were bought online here:

They have a variety of styles and colors, but I thought grey to be the most in character archival color. I bought 100 of these wound with 40mins of tape on each side (I based the timing on the longest episode of the podcast and rounded up for wiggle room). It turns out these bulk order custom wind tapes were cheaper than buying up lots of already on the market tapes I found online (that said, perhaps there is some wholesale cassette seller that I just didn't find). This is also where I purchased the sticker sheets of labels that I used. Those were printed with a standard inkjet printer.

The tape player was a different story. I made what I consider my biggest mistake buying up a cheapo $20 recorder online thinking it must be okay, tape recorder tech peaked in the late 80s/90s. I was wrong. If you don't mind slightly above potato quality audio, go for it, buy the $20 models and save a few bucks, but I do not recommend it. Where I lucked out is my parents had a near pristine Sharp RT-W800.

The quality on this bad boy was miles from the one I bought. It's not considered to be a high end device by audiophiles, but if you want a pretty good sounding tape, this does the job well.

There are a couple drawbacks here, this machine is from 1985. Finding one can be difficult (though I have seen people finding them at goodwill for $7). You can also find them online running about $20 on ebay, but there is no guarantee what kind of working order that will be in, since maintenance is important for maintaining sound quality in a device nearly 40yrs old.

Nothing fancy went into the actual recording portion. I plugged an RCA to 3.5mm from the recorders in port to my computer

(I may have the left/right backwards, but that's neither here nor there.)

After getting the audio hooked up, all I did was open up an mp3 file of each podcast episode in VLC media player (one by one, as that is how I elected to do the recording. One episode per tape side) slap down the record button on the recorder, and press play in VLC. Then you wait, because you realize that back in the day you had to record in real time unlike modern day data transfer.

[subspaceember]

okay so I was supposed to do my stuff for class. Instead here's what happened:

I am in class -> I drink my matcha -> want to work on cyberdeck -> open project in Illustrator -> realize that my old CAD model was better -> install Fusion 360 again -> realize that model was basically complete -> realize I have nothing to lose by printing it -> I don't have Cura -> I install it, but don't finish the setup -> set up 3D printer -> there's stuff on the table, I clean it up some -> I discover that I can mount my little LED lamp to my printer -> I do that -> It has to be moved and new filament put in -> I do that too -> I get ready to print when I realize I need to make some changed to the model -> I turn off the printer -> discover things would be easier if I had my calipers -> I can't find my calipers -> I think they're in this box of random junk -> I get the box and start pulling things out -> I eventually do find them but at this point the contents of the entire box are all over my floor and I'm sitting in this pile of junk -> I discover all the loose glue sticks that I need to put away in the bottom of the box -> I gather those up and put them away -> I realize that I can just get rid of the box all together, especially because it's falling apart -> I start trying to find a new container for my Game Boy and it's games and manuals, since it was in the box -> I'm unsuccessful -> I think a lot about crocheting a bag for it, then I realize that's silly and instead I now want to make a bag for my switch -> it takes considerable effort to stop myself from doing that -> now I'm sorting everything I got out of the box -> a lot of it goes back into my closet -> the closet is a mess -> I start picking up the closet too -> I manage to get all the stuff I pulled out of my car when I crashed it put away finally -> I find the parking pass I lost -> I find the patches I wanted to put on my bag and lay them out -> It takes a lot of effort to not go ahead and put them on right now -> I realize at this point I wasn't even going to do class stuff and was actually needing to take a shower -> I discover a spare strap I want to use on the cyberdeck -> I find a big microSD card I didn't know I had -> I finally get everything from the box into new homes -> think about how nice it'd be to have shelves -> get sad realizing I have no money for shelves and am forced to move soon anyway -> get distracted by my phone for a bit -> I finally pick up the calipers -> the battery is dead -> I know where the new ones are -> I find them in the a bag -> I discover stuff in the bag that doesn't go in there -> I get all that out -> I replace the battery -> I only vaguely remember why I needed this in the first place now -> I decide I want to do laundry before tomorrow -> remember I was supposed to shower -> remember I was supposed to be doing something for class -> decide to write a tumblr post about my thought process instead of doing either of those things -> here we are!

I uh... don't think "normal" people's brains work this way. Also for reference this entire time there were no bathroom breaks, no water drinking, no going outside, etc. Nothing could break me from the task else I wouldn't do it again for maybe months.

It's amazing just how much ADHD is crammed into my brain and that I somehow manage to actually do anything at all (occasionally).

[needy-nova]

It all started out with fixing Jennifer's printer. I didn't even realize it was a problem she had been struggling with for months, but while working together we needed to print something and when it gave an error I fixed it without even thinking about it. I was her heroine for the week, and everybody in the office heard about how I resolved an issue, "even IT couldn't solve." The department was gutted after even more lay-offs, they simply didn't have the work hours to help

After that, the requested started flooding in, and I became the local person to go to when problems arose. I had automated most of my office job away at this point, so I was kind of happy to be doing something during the required office hours. Life lesson, kids: don't do work that isn't in your contract. If they want more, let them pay more.

I was bad at hiding my extra extracurricular activities and my manager noticed what I was doing, And the problems I was fixing, instead of firing me. They encouraged me and soon, any new task coming into the department was first handed to me, and except for a fair few, I automated them away. Yearly reviews came around, and with some good negotiations, I was able to get a proper raise, private office and official new function.

Other departments started asking if I could help, and slowly, I started to replace human labour across the company, I didn't even notice at this point, I had my own office and only talked to our internal clients. At some point, a card came across my desk, "Goodbye Jennifer, we will miss working with you. " …. She had been fired. I didn't even notice that I had been given all her tasks and automated them all away.

That was the point I quit. Well, it took a couple of months, and I made sure I got my performance bonus, but that was the turning point. I made so many poor decisions at that place. ….. Anyway

I started my own software automation company. Two vendors and a supplier from my last place directly contacted me, and I had more than enough jobs to pick from. Business was booming, I even hired and trained a couple of people. It was rough on me, I was killing it at automating jobs. But also saw the damage I was doing, booting entire departments. Sometimes hundreds laid off with a single product launch. Anyway, you don't want to hear an old gall ramble about the bad old days.

Skip forward a couple of years, and I get this call: "Hello, am I speaking with Nova?" "Yes, this is her. How can I help? " "I represent labour abolition, and we have seen the work you have been doing. You have eliminated entire departments across many industries. You were even able to eliminate all the staff at CAK. We want to hire you to build a replacement presidential candidate. We think we have found a loophole how we can make your software run for presidency." Well, with a mad offer like that, you aren't surprised how I reacted. "I am in"

The insight they had was that they could run a human that would platform on the promise to pose every question asked of it in a direct poll to the public. My team was asked to make the software, and let me tell you that it was a challenge, robust enough that it couldn't be tampered with, easy to use that from teens to grandma's could use the software. But eventually, we delivered a product, and while political extremists loved the concept, most people didn't trust the public to pick their nose, let alone influence policy on such a concrete level. You might be too young to remember, but not only was the idea of direct democracy something that people hated back then, but using the current system to trick the government into replacing itself was mind-boggling to most people at the time. We lost the first presidential election, as expected, but they were advocating in any local elections they could. And soon enough, we had a town where PRP (Public Replacement President) was elected. While a moderate success at the time, looking back I am surprised we were allowed to stay. But running it live gave us, the insight to improve. I think for me, the biggest insight that turned it into a success was that by hijacking into the information system the government already had, we could re-write it in a citizen friendly way that everyone could engage with at their level. Combine it with op-eds from scientists and automated fact checking, and PRP became THE way to interface with politics.

Soon after that, we won the first national presidency. Let me tell you, a record number was pumped into ad campaigns from all sides that season. But we won. Slowly, with the power of the president, we were able to change laws to make it easier for my team to interface with the government bureaucracy until we automated well … everything. And now, representative elections are a thing of the past. Well, a surprising number of countries still require our "puppet presidents" to sign off, but those are seen as formal traditions.

Do I have regrets, some, of course, I am still conflicted about putting every change that we wanted to make to the bureaucratic machine through a vote of the people. If we had wielded the puppet's presidents' power more directly, things could have improved a lot faster, but also doing that trough PRP turned out to be a fine choice. And so many people got hurt about me automating their desk jobs away. No, the one regret I do really have is that I didn't ask Jennifer if I could and should fix her printer. Always ask for consent kids, even if you are helping.

-- 2084 excerpts from "Memoirs of Nova, The gall who automated it all."

You are “the guy”, when something needs to be done, something needs to be fixed, when governments, billionaires or very important people need something done and someone says “I know a guy”, you are that guy. Now you are facing what may be your hardest job.

[adelaideriedesel]

It’s “Paddy” not “Patty” - Week 10: March 15, 2024

A new record has been set with 17 kids showing up to the St. Paddy’s Day story time! There was a lot of excitement as a leprechaun came and messed up the chairs and the books! It was a lot going on because of how many kids showed up, but still super fun. I then went to the computer to print out what I have been working on. All of the labels and info cards have the same font, background, and color. This was very intentional as Tracy said she wanted an old timey feel but also updating it. I made the background to look like old paper and the blue is color matched to their logo.  My war with a printer really came to flourish today. I printed out cards that said the donations as well as the wallpaper mentions. I cut them all out and then laminated them which was very satisfying. I cut them and placed them under a large bin so they can hopefully be in the shape of a placecard. I also spent an embarrassingly long time fidgeting with the printer settings to try to get the paper to a specific size, which I was successful for all but one! This isn’t a super long update as it was filled with mostly printing and laminating, but I enjoy doing that stuff. These are some small changes, but I think that being cohesive will enhance the visitor experience and also just be more aesthetically pleasing. I didn’t have time to work with the fishing line, so that will be for next week!

The pictures for this week are from story time and some side by sides of the changes I made! 

See ya!

Adelaide

PS: I realized that this didn't publish until after spring break...eek!

[erscogadatabase]

17: A Very Belated Very Erscoga Christmas the Third (Part 1)

Date: 6-12-2022 IDST, 5-23-2018 EST

(It is May. Nalitie is setting up decorations in the Spectre Opera House and Concert Hall in Erscoga's national colors—green and black and gray—like she does every year, except she's horribly late this year. Christine is taking the leftover cake she made back in December out of the freezer. There's about half of it left. She has Erscoga Tobias in a carrier, and he coos happily. It is Christmas.)

Dukermin: *rolls up* I have arrived! And I brought the Christmas tree!

Mickey Mouse: *rolls up also, decked out in christmas lights with a star taped to his head* *stands in a corner*

Nalitie: Nice, that takes care of the low budget tree I guess. That's what we get for skipping a whole year's worth of saving money to host an anachronistic Christmas party in May, pretending it's only a few months since our last one instead of the whole year because we're bad at time consistency and don't want the kids to grow up too fast.

Dukermin: Exactly. This is entirely sensible.

Nalitie: And we can still be on-brand for the season/tradition of having a Christmas party each year! Sorta. *sets out some like stale pretzels and questionable chip dip*

Dukermin: *puts presents at Mickey's feet*

Nalitie: oh yeah. *does the same, except they're all wrapped in like printer paper* I think that's everything, right? Food, decorations...

Dukermin: Yeah. We sent out invitations right?

Nalitie: I think so! I gave them to Papyrus to send by pigeon and he's usually on top of that stuff. *walks over to the doors and flings them open wide* Welcome to our Christmas Party!!!

(There is a singular guy standing outside on the street, dressed in a ratty old sweater and a hat. It's Homeless Henry.)

Homeless Henry: This where the bean convention's at?

Dukermin: I mean. It could be. There are probably beans somewhere. *leaves to look for beans*

Homeless Henry: *did not realize Dukermin was there at first* Well, bean convention or not, I'm sure whatever you've got going on is great, miss.

Dukermin: Wait a second *is holding an ancient can of beans that she found in a supply closet* Didn't you... like... melt?

Homeless Henry: I did indeed, miss, thanks to your kindness, but I was reconstructed by this kindly lady who stopped by the restaurant. Don't think she's from around here, though, lots of strange folks around town these days. Haven't seen her since.

Dukermin: That seems like a felony. Nat? Did you hear that? I don't think reconstruction magic is clarified in the power cap. Whatever that means.

Nalitie: Hm, yeah, I guess it would depend on how she did it. I guess since no one came to the party we could go investigate. Christine and Steven and Willy could watch the party and the kids. *unstraps Lisanarda and hands them to Willy Wonka*

Dukermin: I mean, Homeless Henry came to the party. *To Homeless Henry* Here's a can of beans! Have fun! Where did you meet this lady again? And what did she look like?

Homeless Henry: Well, she stopped by the mot- I mean the restaurant asking if we had any vegetarian tacos, and noticed no one was at the desk. Or well, I was at the desk, but a puddle. Anyway, she was real pretty. Not quite as pretty as you, but tall. Had a couple of others with her. All of them had these weird instruments or something. One of them was wearin' a robe. Maybe I should start doing that. Real comfy...

Dukermin: Okay, so a tall pretty lady in a band. Who likes vegetarian tacos.

Nalitie: *writing everything down on a notepad, suddenly wearing a detective hat*

Dukermin: Well, I suppose we could try any vegan restaurants in the area. Or if they're in a band, maybe they're performing somewhere. We could check the town board.

Nalitie: Yeah, that works. *onward to the town board*

Dukermin: *in the plaza* Hmm... here's a list of bands. Imagine Cheesons, Why Frogs Why, Lady Cerebellum, Mettaton, McFishing Rod, One Zillion Seconds to Devon... I don't know how I would be able to tell from this which one has a tall pretty lady who is also vegetarian.

Nalitie: Well, it's not Imagine Cheesons or Mettaton. Or Lady Cerebellum, probably, she's mostly a solo act. Why Frogs Why is me. It could be either McFishing Rod or One Zillion Seconds to Devon.

Dukermin: We could split up. I'll go see McFishing Rod, at the Milk Bar.

Nalitie: Alright, then I'll head to *checks board* the park to find One Zillion Seconds to Devon.

Dukermin: *off to the Milk Bar*

(The Milk Bar is in downtown Verdanaville, and there is a large sign out front announcing the band playing tonight. Inside, the lights are dim as the spotlights focus on McFishing Rod. He stands behind a turntable, cool reflective sunglasses glinting in the colored lights. The crowd is small but loud. The bartender is serving various flavors of milk to their patrons. A rather large collection of milk glasses has piled up on one end of the bar, where a man who looks like he's had a little too much milk sits. He is shirtless, wearing nothing but his pants, armored boots, and some armor plates. He also has a sling full of what you think are bricks.)

(On the other end of the bar, there is an equally large pile of glasses. On the stage, near McFishing Rod, there's someone who looks eerily like Nalitie playing the accordion—badly.)

Dukermin: *walking past the shirtless guy* Hey, are you doing alright? *attempts to sneak his sling away just in case*

Brick Guy: *with a half-filled glass of milk in one hand* The Thane of Brickappotamus attempts to buy a glass of milk for the nice lady.

Bartender: *unsure if that was a request for more milk or not*

Dukermin: Okay! *walks away with his bricks* *gets closer to the stage*

Thane of Brickappotamus: *did not even notice her take the bricks* *turns to a lady next to him* The Thane of Brickappotamus attempts to woo the fine young maiden to his left.

"Fine Young Maiden": No thanks. *gets up and leaves*

(The Thane, sadly, seems to have rolled too low for this.)

Dukermin: *yelling at the stage* Do you like vegetarian tacos???

Nalitie-Lookalike: *scootches closer to McFishing Rod to try to hear the chords better over Dukermin's yelling* *continues to play every single chord incorrectly*

Dukermin: *still yelling as the beat drops* How tall are you????

(Standing next to McFishing Rod, the top of Nalitie-Lookalike's head just scrapes his chin.)

McFishing Rod: I'm 5'10", dude! *continues jamming*

Dukermin: I'm not talking to you!! I'm talking to the bad accordion player!!

Nalitie-Lookalike: Hey!!! That's, like, mean! *stops playing with a jangling of accordion keys*

Dukermin: It's mean to ignore the queen! Anyway. You seem not-very-tall. Do you have a tall vegetarian friend?

Nalitie-Lookalike: *makes a surprised face* Have you seen her?? I've been looking for her all day! We got separated this morning when I... *mumbles something inaudible, looking embarrassed*

Dukermin: Okay, we'll unpack that later. You should come with me!! We're also looking for your friends!

Nalitie-Lookalike: Oh. Okay. *jumps off the stage, but lands very softly as she expands her accordion* *trips only a little because she had a bit too much milk*

Dukermin: Okay, I'm going to call my friend who looks exactly like you for some reason. *calls Nalitie*

Nalitie: *lost in the park trying to find the concert location* *answers* yyyes? I mean hello.

Dukermin: how's your concert? Did you find the lady?

Nalitie: Um... where is Insert Name of the Stage at again in Unnamed Park? I'm... a little lost.

Dukermin: Well, if you passed the Unidentified Celebrity's Pavilion and Unknown Memorial Playground then it should be just to the right.

Nalitie: Do we have more than one playground? I'm by the Ambiguous Playground Equipment. Am I in the wrong park?

Dukermin: Bruh. That's the wrong side of the park. Turn around. I'm on the way with one of the person's friends.

Nalitie: Dang, ok. I came from the Lot on This Side of the Park and usually I park in the Lot on That Side of the Park so I just turned the wrong way.

Dukermin: Ah yes thats entirely reasonable. Okay I'm heading over. *is already at the concert*

Nalitie: *has to walk across the entirety of Unnamed Park* *arrives very out of breath*

(Insert Name of the Stage is decorated with red lights and a generally moody atmosphere. It is also covered in instruments, with the two singers standing at the front of the stage, lamenting about how long it will take for Devon to come home. It is their entire founding backstory or something.

There's a large crowd tonight, and it's difficult to see everyone. Nalitie stands at the back of the crowd on the left side, trying to find Dukermin.)

Dukermin: *texts Nalitie* "Look for yourself."

Nalitie: *confused* *spins in a circle, but catches a flash of her lookalike's bright blue cloak as the lights pass over it. She heads in that direction.*

Dukermin: Nalitie! *waves* meet... wait what's your name?

Nalitie-Lookalike: I am The Bard. But you can call me Bruce, I guess.

Dukermin: Meet Bruce!

Nalitie: *awkward salute at Bruce* I'm Nalitie. *looking around* Do you see your friends anywhere in this crowd?

Bruce: *a tad overwhelmed, especially with the quantity of dairy she consumed* *shakes her head*

Dukermin: You know what would be fun - I mean helpful - is if we got on the stage and looked from there and also maybe sang with the band but whatever.

Nalitie: *as the implications soar over her head* Yeah, we should do that, I'll go up on that side *points* if you wanna take the other stairs with Bruce.

Dukermin: *does that*

Nalitie: *also heading up*

(The members of One Zillion Seconds to Devon are far too immersed in their song to notice. Scanning the crowd, you see a few familiar faces—some Lumoae, the Green Circle Labs team, Papyrus (!), and some of the Sams. You can also see a man dressed in business clothes looking mightily out of place—and confused—as well as a lady in orange pants holding some sort of a giant metal ball. Oh, and a lady in a big leather coat carrying a bow and arrow. She's the only one here with a noticeable weapon.)

Dukermin: *points out a few of the more interesting patrons to Bruce* recognize any of them?

Bruce: *points at bow and arrow lady* I like her jacket! *is having difficulty because there's a lot going on and she's full of dairy*

Dukermin: Good. But do you recognize the jacket?? That's the question.

Bruce: *shrugs* she reminds me of someone. Oh, The Ranger. She'd like that jacket.

Dukermin: okay. *grabs the microphone from one of the singers after the song ends* Hello! We have a lost bard up here! Anyone who recognizes her please come up to the stage!

Jacket Lady: *was already on her way up as soon as she saw Bruce*

Dukermin: *dragging Bruce to the end of the stage* *to the new person* Hey, do you like vegetarian tacos?

Jacket Lady: ??? Not really, but Artemis was looking for some earlier.

Dukermin: Can you bring us to Artemis??? *hops off stage*

Jacket Lady: *shakes head* Haven't seen her since we got split up this morning. Her magic 8 ball gave us faulty advice, as always, so we rolled a die and ended up taking some wrong turns. She tried to backtrack, and then when she didn't come back for us, me and Lynn split up to try to find her. And then, you know, I saw this concert was happening and wanted to see what was up.

Dukermin: Maybe we should all go back to where you last saw Artemis and see if we can figure out where she ended up. And NOT split up this time.

Jacket Lady: I don't know if I know exactly where that was, but I can try. Lemme do this quick... *pulls out a small notebook and a quill* *starts writing a song, which glows and extends a path out into the distance* *starts following the path*

Dukermin: Oh. Neat. *follows* Hey, what's your name so we can stop referring to you as Jacket Lady.

Jacket Lady: I'm The Ranger.

Dukermin: Cool name.

Bruce: *whispers loudly* her real name is Madelynn!

Dukermin: Neat. Good to know. So, what, are you the only bard where you come from and Madelynn is the only ranger?

Bruce: *shrugs* I'm the only one in our group.

Dukermin: Cool.

(You follow the path for a while, then end up in an alley somewhere near TreeGrass (but thankfully outside). The sky is a dusky yellow.)

Dukermin: So uhh. If this is where you last saw your friend, can you think of any place that she would be interested in going to? Preferably not an evil science institution?

Madelynn: She might have tried to go back to the hotel we found to stay in. I'm not sure where that is, though. My spell wasn't working on her or Bruce or Lynn, probably because they were in places I haven't been yet. The hotel was *points down a street* in that direction somewhere.

Nalitie: *dutifully taking notes and readjusting her hat*

Dukermin: Hmm. Since you know the general direction of the hotel, lets start walking that way and see what we come across.

(You head down the street in that direction as Lux dips below the horizon. The windows of Green Circle Labs glow in the twilight, as usual. You're coming up on Nalitie's house now. The lights are off, since everyone was out for the night. The couch blasts off into space.)

Nalitie: *watching her couch to make sure it blasts off successfully and at the right angle and such*

Bruce: :O

Dukermin: *also watching the couch* Hey that looked like a pretty successful couch blast.

Nalitie: Yeah, I've been working on the propulsion system, making a few upgrades so we don't go through so much fuel. The other ones had trouble making it up all the way to the station, but that looked pretty good. I'll have to see if it lands back in its spot when I get home, though.

Dukermin: Ah yeah thats a very sensible thing to do. Anyway. *continues toward the hotel*

Madelynn and Bruce: ??? *continue walking as well*

(Eventually, your group reaches the Smith Court Resort. It's a moderately-sized hotel, painted white to look like a house. It's completely full, no vacancies.)

Nalitie: *to Madelynn and Bruce* do you guys have one of your hotel keys?

Bruce: *opens a secret compartment on her accordion and pulls out some rubber bands, a crap ton of paper clips, and a hotel key card* Thar y'are.

Dukermin: *checks the number on the room key* Room 227? *starts looking for that room and goes upstairs*

(You reach Room 227, down a cozily-lit hallway. The door is slightly ajar.)

Dukermin: that's ominous *cautiously peers into the room*

(There's a woman sitting in one of the chairs playing the lyre. She's wearing long robes and has her hair in two long braids. She's chatting with someone who must be on one of the beds, but you can't see them. Their voice is familiar, though.)

Dukermin: *points to Bruce* Seems like one of your friends are in there, you should go in and say hi first.

Bruce: Oh, I can give her this! *pulls a mostly-spilled glass of milk that she stole from the Milk Bar out of her accordion* *enters the room* Lynn I got you milk!!! *sloshing it all over the floor* *notices the other people* *is a bit freaked out*

Dukermin: *goes into the room*

Sans: sup.

Frisk: *waves*

Dukermin: Oh it's a whole party in here! *motions for the others to come in*

Sans: found this kid wandering the streets on the way to your party. thought we'd bring her back and keep her company til her friends got back.

Nalitie and Madelynn: *enter*

Bruce: *hands Lynn what's basically an empty glass that is covered in milk at this point*

Lynn: *takes the glass and carefully sets it down* thanks, I guess.

Dukermin: So I take it you're Lynn. We're kind of looking for Artemis, have you seen her?

Lynn: Yeah, I'm Lynn. Most people just call me The Cleric, though. I haven't seen Artemis since this morning when we were looking for Bruce.

Dukermin: Hmm. Any idea where she would have gone to look for Bruce?

Lynn: I mean, we saw Bruce chasing a squirrel when she left, so probably to like a park or something.

Dukermin: Oh ha that is embarrassing. Hmm, we've already been to one park and didn't see her.

Nalitie: That is where we found Bruce, though. *to Bruce* did you catch that squirrel?

Bruce: ... *opens another compartment on her accordion*

Squirrel: *hops out and crawls up Bruce's arm to rest on her shoulder*

Bruce: His name is Jim.

Dukermin: *To Nalitie* Do you think Artemis might have gotten lost on the way to the park? Hopefully she didn't end up in a lunchbox portal or something.

Nalitie: Ooh, yeah hope not. Um, what's back on the way to the park? There's like... TreeGrass and Green Circle and my house and like the Opera House, I guess? There's a lot of other people's houses. Sea Food? But if she's the one who's a vegetarian, she probably didn't go there.

Dukermin: Yeah probably not. Lynn, do any of those places sound like something Artemis would end up at?

Lynn: I don't know what a lot of those places are, but like opera is her main thing I guess.

Dukermin: Okay, back to the Opera House we go! *to the opera house*

Nalitie: UGH ok, that's ok we can check on Christine and Henry I guess.

(You all head back to the Spectre Opera House. The doors are still open, the party/bean convention still going on inside. Actually, there are a lot of open cans of beans all over the floor. Christine, Steven, and Willy are in the corner by Mickey eating cake and watching the children. Homeless Henry is sitting on the floor next to a man you've never seen who is eating beans and sitting on some sort of weird box. No tall pretty vegetarian lady, though.)

Dukermin: Glad to see our party is doing exactly as well as it was when we left. I guess we should check the other areas of the Opera House.

Nalitie: Actually, our party might be doing better than when we left. *gestures to the new guy, and also Sans who has already managed to spill punch all over the floor to create a slip n' slide*

Dukermin: oh yeah you're right, how could I have missed that this party is totally bumpin' now. Wait, *to new guy* who are you?

Guy: *hesitates, then looks down at his box as if for advice* *listens for a second* *looks back up* My name is Doug. I was just sharing some of my beans with Henry. *pulls a can of beans out of the box he's sitting on* Would you like some?

Dukermin: You know what, it's a party. Sure I'll take some beans. Cool box by the way.

Guy: Her name is Cube. *pats Cube*

(Cube is a metal box with pink accents and a heart drawn on each side.)

Dukermin: Well. It's lovely to meet you, Cube and Doug. *leaves without grabbing the beans*

Nalitie: *to Dukermin as they walk away* Do you know where that guy came from? I... think I do, but we never brought that universe here...

Dukermin: I mean, there are lots of strange faces around, or whatever Henry said.

Nalitie: Hm, yeah ok.

Bruce: *takes the can of beans from Doug to feed Jim*

Dukermin: *walking around in side rooms etc, calling out for Artemis*

Bruce: *has like a scarf or something that she's trying to get Jim to sniff and track (it's not working)*

Nalitie: *heading up to the upper levels*

Dukermin: *opens up the bean cabinet and accidentally knocks over a wall of beans, exposing a small doorway* Whoaaaa.

Bruce: :O

Dukermin: *opens the door, revealing a set of stairs and a hallway.*

(You head down the hallway. It looks... very modern, actually. With gray carpet and pale blue walls. Up ahead, you see a big room with what looks like a reception desk. There's a woman sitting at it.)

Dukermin: Umm.. Hello?

Woman: Oh! Hello, are you here for Bean-a-Palooza?

Dukermin: Why would I be in the basement of the Opera House looking for the Bean-a-Palooza??

Woman: This is where Bean-A-Palooza is held every year! Are you a new member of Legumes Ltd. or the Society of Beanatics?

Dukermin: Both.

Woman: Oh my! We have a dedicated bean lover on our hands! I'm quite surprised that you don't know about the history of Bean-A-Palooza and BeanCo.

Dukermin: Ah yeah, I'm a notorious history-despiser. Anyway, I'm looking for a tall pretty lady.

Woman: Ah... I think I might know who you're talking about! Bean-A-Palooza is, er... not well-known for attracting pretty women. Someone came in here earlier today, and she didn't seem to know anything about beans. She said she was looking for some companions, and well, the bean community is a great place to find companionship! There's nothing more welcoming than a nice can of BeanCo. Beans, after all. We gave her free admission to the convention after that. I think she really likes our bean-based tacos. They're completely vegetarian, by the way.

Dukermin: Everything makes so much sense now. Well it doesn't. But still. Could you point me in her direction please?

Woman: Oh, I'm sorry miss, but we can't let non-attendees into the convention. Too many trade secrets, you see. But if you have your Legumes Ltd. or Society of Beanatics card, you get a member discount!

Dukermin: what does it cost to become an attendee?

Woman: *pulls out a calculator* Hm, let's see, without the discount it's 15 Loaves.

Dukermin: No one carries around that kind of loavage!! What is it with the discount?

Woman: With the discount, if you're a regular member it's 5 Loaves, but if you're a Young Beanist member, it's only 15 Slices. Those schoolkids don't make very much Bread, you know.

Dukermin: Okay, I have 2 loaves on me. So lets see here *starts pulling things out of her pocket* I know I have my cards in here somewhere *throws all her items at the receptionist, grabs Bruce, and runs past* ARTEMIIIIIIS

Bruce: 0.0

(The receptionist is stunned, and looks around. She starts to get up from her desk, but thinks better of it because what if someone else comes and then doesn't get welcomed?)

Dukermin: *runs through a doorway and closes it behind her*

(At the front of the room, some guy is running a panel on BeanCo. Beans and their value compared to Off Brand! Beans. People are seated at tables with samples of the two brands in front of them. Everyone looks very much like people who would attend a bean convention.)

Dukermin: *runs to the panelist and shouts at everyone* Have any of you seen a tall pretty lady !?!?!

Beangoers: ???

Panelist: Excuse me!! Now I don't remember where I was in my presentation. I'm going to have to start all over again!

Dukermin: It's urgent! We have reason to believe she's here to steal trade secrets about your beans!!!!

Beangoer: :O Do you mean that woman in the tall shoes who was interested in my bean-based taco recipe? She was suspiciously un-beanlike...

Dukermin: YES! WHERE?

Beangoer: I think she was down by the expo hall. She must be looking for bean recipes to copy! Or worse—she wants to plant her own beans!

Dukermin: THE ABSURDITY! Can you point me towards the expo hall??

Beangoer: I'll bring you there myself! *gets up and brings them to the expo hall*

(The expo hall is busy. There are tables in rows all across the room, each one showcasing a different bean-related product or bean company. The Helpful Beangoer looks around, then points towards one of the corners of the room, where a woman is sitting with a cone-shaped glass of water because no one gets real cups at these things.)

Beangoer: That's her!!!

Dukermin: Artemis! You are under arrest for grand beanery! *runs over to her and whispers* not really your other friends are upstairs.

Artemis, probably: Grand beanery? *sees Bruce* Oh, you found Bruce.

Bruce (and Jim): *munching on the can of beans from earlier*

Beangoer: Say... What brand of beans are those?

Bruce: *shrugs* *shows Beangoer the can, which has a weird circular logo on it that looks like a camera shutter*

Dukermin: Wow, Bruce, I can't believe you like that brand of beans. Fake fan. Anyway. We gotta get the prisoner to bean jail immediately *grabs Bruce and Artemis by the robes/cloaks and walks out*

(As you ascend from the underground bean world, you begin to feel a strange sense of being away from home. You miss the bean world already, but the feeling subsides as you get further from the bean cabinet. Nalitie, Madelynn, and Lynn have regrouped by the Christmas party.)

Dukermin: Reunited! Now, we have questions for Artemis specifically.

Artemis: If it's about beans, I don't think I'll be able to help you...

Dukermin: Naw, do you recognize that man over there? *points to Homeless Henry*

Artemis: Oh, is he the one who was made out of cheese?

Dukermin: ... Excuse me?

Artemis: Yesterday, our group went to his restaurant thinking it was a motel, and he was there on the floor melted into a puddle. I asked my staff what to do, and of course it was no help, but I realized he was made out of cheese so I put him in a bucket in the freezer so he could re-solidify.

Dukermin: So it wasn't illegal reanimation magic or necromancy?

Artemis: I'm not sure if my magic is strong enough for that. It is strong enough to keep me upright in these heels, though.

Dukermin: Henry!!! *storms over to the Bean Boyz* Why didn't you tell us you were made of cheese???

Henry: Would you like me better if I was made out of cheese?

Dukermin: It would literally not impact me at all, aside from the fact we just spent all day searching for someone thinking some crazy magic stuff was going on!

Henry: ... :(

Dukermin: I like you fine, Henry. I'm a married woman though, and I feel like if we're going to be friends you should tell me that you're made of cheese so that if you randomly MELT we don't think you're dead and can help you reform or whatever.

Henry: ... oh. Er. Yeah, I'm made of cheese. Cheddar, to be exact.

Dukermin: Thanks for telling me. BTW, the bean convention is downstairs.

Bruce: Through the bean closet!

Nalitie: ?????

Henry: Oh! Of course, because anything left of BeanCo. would have to be underground now that this opera house is here. Thank you kindly, miss. *heads down there, inviting Doug to come with him*

Dukermin: *to Artemis* So like... who are you guys and where did you come from? Our cap usually doesn't allow randoms through, and we usually know everybody who turns out to be an important character.

Artemis: Important character?

Dukermin: Nevermind that.

Artemis: Oo-kay. We're magimusicians from the distant countryside, and we were travelling to the University to present our research to the council.

Dukermin: Wow you just said a whole lotta nothing. Did like... a wormhole suck you up or something because this is definitely not a research university.

Artemis: A... wormhole?

Dukermin: Like a portal or something.

Artemis: Well, there was a weird burst of magic before we woke up again in the field. Maybe it transported us here while we were out. We were assuming it was just a field off the side of the road we'd been travelling on, but perhaps it wasn't...

Dukermin: *to Nalitie* do you suppose something has happened to the towers? Does LOGIC expire?

Nalitie: Um... not that I know of? We can go check, though.

Dukermin: Well, hey wait it's "christmas" we need to exchange gifts! We can figure this out later.

Nalitie: Oh yeah, Christmas, that's what this document was. *takes stock of the party's guests*

(Homeless Henry and Doug have gone downstairs to Bean-a-Palooza. Christine is here with Erscoga Tobias. Steven and Willy Wonka are watching the other three kids, who are napping cause it's late. Mickey Mouse is acting as the Christmas tree. Artemis, Madelynn, Lynn, and Bruce are still here.)

Dukermin: *claps hands* alright everyone, it's time to exchange gifts!

Nalitie: *grabs her pile to give out, but realizes that a bunch of people she'd planned on giving stuff to aren't there*

Dukermin: *hands poorly wrapped presents out to Nalitie, Willy Wonka, and Christine and Steven. She leaves a present by the bean door for Homeless Henry*

Artemis, Madelynn, Lynn, and Bruce: *confused about why gifts are being given out, but want to join in* *start giving people stuff out of their pockets*

Nalitie: *hands presents to those in her household* *approaches Dukermin with a medium-ish rectangular prism*

Dukermin: Open yours and then I'll open mine. *under breath* we should probably free him.

Nalitie: What

Dukermin: Just open it! And quickly!

Nalitie: *opens gift*

(a small man made ot of what looks like felt wearing a black top hat hops out of the box)

Pocket Magician™: OH THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME OUT IVE BEEN IN THAT BOX FOR TWO DAYS PICK A CARD *holds out three cards*

Nalitie: *points at one of the cards confusedly* Do... I... do you need to be like fed?

Pocket Magician™: I FEED OFF OF PRAISE AND ADULATION *flicks the card you chose into the air and the card disappears* CHECK YOUR LEFT POCKET.

Nalitie: *does that*

(a teeny tiny piece of paper is in your pocket. Amazing! It's your card!)

Nalitie: *squinting at the print* Ohh I get it, cool. Uh... *trying to figure out what to do with the Pocket Magician™*

Pocket Magician™: *begins to glow and sparkle then disappears*

(you hear a tiny voice from within your other pocket)

Pocket Magician™: I'm gonna live in here now! Let me know whenever you need to see another trick!

Dukermin: Cool right! He may be a cursed item!

Nalitie: Well, we can deal with that later if it ever comes up, thank you for the tiny man :D You should open yours now.

Dukermin: *opens the present from Nalitie*

(Inside is an old-looking book. It has a bunch of different languages on the cover: some weird scratchy runes, some weird symbols in brackets, and French, German, Italian, Latin, and English. It says it's a linguistic guide of some sort.)

Dukermin: Ooooh I don't know what this is. *opens the book*

(The book is a quick guide to the pronunciation of a bunch of different languages: the five familiar Earth languages as well as Dragon Language. It also has a quick guide to IPA symbols!)

Dukermin: Ahhh okay that's useful! Thank you!

Bruce: *sees the IPA on the cover* Oh!!! Are you practicing music magic??? Here, you'll need these!!! *gives her a handful of gold and some weird looking gems*

Dukermin: Okay! This relates somehow! *knows nothing about IPA*

Nalitie: *looking at the weird gems* IDK, those gems have IPA symbols on them I guess. I don't know what you're supposed to do with them, though. Maybe if you say the sounds it's supposed to do something?

Dukermin: *looks in the book and finds one that matches a gem* okay so.... æ

(Nothing happens.)

Nalitie: hm.

Bruce: Oh, you're supposed to mix those into spells! Here, watch. *pulls out a bunch of tokens and spreads them out on the floor, ordered into the phrase [l aɪ t]* *crushes them and stirs them into a pile, which starts glowing* See! I made light!

Dukermin: huh. That's pretty cool.

Nalitie: I... didn't know that was a way you could do magic. Uh. I just got you the book cause it had info about Dragon Language in it. Thought you could talk to Addy's dragon or something.

Dukermin: Makes sense! I wonder if magi music would work for anyone with these gems, even if they're not from wherever these folks are from.

Nalitie: Hm... Hey Christine come here!

Christine: *walks over* Yes?

Nalitie: *to Bruce* do you have more of those tokens?

Bruce: *nods and hands her a small pouch*

Nalitie: *to Christine* here, spell something. Like uh.... Water...?

Christine: ??? *takes tokens* *arranges them on the floor into the phrase/word [w a d ə]*

Nalitie: Ok now uh smash them with this I guess *hands her a heavy bean can*

Christine: Okay? *smashes them with the can*

(The shards of broken gems melt into a puddle of water.)

Dukermin: So I guess pretty much anyone can use the tokens as long as they can figure out how to do IPA. So they're more like a magic item.

Nalitie: huh, neat.

Dukermin: Welp. Now it's time for... wait a second Papyrus isn't here! I know Candle Grandma has a gift for him!

Nalitie: wait wasn't Papyrus at that concert where we found Madelynn, too? He didn't come to our party and he was the one who was supposed to send out invitations!

Dukermin: Betrayal! Let's go find him! *storms out*

(You all head back to Unnamed Park to see if the One Zillion Seconds to Devon concert is still happening, since that's where Papyrus was last.)

(You arrive at the park. The concert is over, but lots of people are still around. There's a very confused looking gentlemen with curly dark brown hair being crowdsurfed perhaps unwillingly. Everyone is chanting "Devon! Devon! Devon!" Papyrus is among them.)

Nalitie: *points accusingly at Papyrus, not noticing any of the other unfamiliar people in the crowd* There he is!

Dukermin: *races over and bumps through the crowd of people*

Devon: *gets jostled and falls down* *runs away* I just wanted to go to the concert!!!

Dukermin: PAPYRUS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?

Papyrus: AH! QUEENLY HUMAN! I WAS WATCHING THESE PEOPLE SING ABOUT THAT MAN OVER THERE! *points in the direction Devon went*

Dukermin: Are you sure that was the right Devon...? Anyway! You were supposed to be at our Christmas party AND you were supposed to mail out the invitations!

Papyrus: Ah! I did, in fact, mail out invitations! I do apologize, though, for I, the Great Papyrus, could not make it. Mettaton asked me to host this concert, since he was busy helping with the situation on Pluto and could not be here to do this!

Dukermin: What situation? Why weren't we aware of the situation? That's like... our whole job.

Papyrus: We sent letters!!! Perhaps they went to the same place that the invitations went???

Dukermin: Huh? *to Nalitie* Do you think the mail system is backed up or something?

Nalitie: Hm, I haven't seen my pigeons in a while, actually. I wonder if they got lost? Sometimes they go out into Interdimensional Space and then I don't see them for a while. I knew I should have gotten some trackers...

Dukermin: We'll deal with that some other time. Papyrus, Candle Grandma has a present for you *becomes candle grandma*

Candle Grandma: *pull a heart shaped box out of her purse* Hello dearie! Merry Christmas! I got this for you <3

Papyrus: :D!!! Hello Candle!!! *takes box, opens it*

(Inside is a bunch of chocolates, some are in the likeness of Candle Grandma and Papyrus. Some are shaped like a bowl of spaghetti)

Candle Grandma: The ones shaped like us are just regular chocolates, but very handsome chocolates at that! The spaghetti shaped ones are filled with spaghetti!

Papyrus: Wowie!!! *gives her an enthusiastic hug* Er... The Great Papyrus did in fact have a present for you, but it may have gotten misplaced because of all our house guests :(

Candle Grandma: That's okay, dear. You can make it up to me by taking me out next week *winks and turns back into Dukermin*

Dukermin: Hang on, Candle Grandma just mentioned something to me about house guests... in my brain/SOUL space. It's weird also remember you owe her a date.

Papyrus: Ah! Indeed! My house is very full because of the house guests!

Dukermin: Do... do you know these house guests? No offense but I didn't realize you had so many friends...

Papyrus: I do now!!! They came to our house because they needed somewhere to stay, and they are all humans, except for one who isn't a human, and one who is a robot, and another one who is only sort of a human, but isn't a human.

Dukermin: ... Alright this is starting to concern me. Just now I'm becoming worried about this situation. Somehow this has completely blindsided us! There were no signs!

Nalitie: I'm not even sure what the whole situation is.

Papyrus: Ah! There are two of my houseguests now! They came to the concert with me!

Man in Business Clothes Holding a Bucket and Lady in Orange Pants Carrying a Metal Ball: *approach*

Dukermin: Cool bucket and cool metal ball.

Metal Ball: Oi! I have a name, you know! *rotates around; it has a like blue light that looks kind of like an eye*

Dukermin: Alright... what is your name?

Metal Ball: *to the lady carrying it* She actually doesn't know! I feel like everybody knew everybody down in Aperture, isn't that crazy that people don't know each other up here? Oh, right, *turns back to Dukermin* I'm Wheatley!

Dukermin: Umm nice to meet you. Where do you think you are right now because it is definitely not the Aperture or whatever you said. Did you come here on purpose?

Wheatley: Oh, well the uh, tall skeletal man over there said we're on a planet called Termata. We all came here together, for this concert thing, so I guess we did come here on purpose, yeah.

Dukermin: But... how did you get through the power cap? Was it through GCL?

Wheatley: I'm um. Not sure what you're on about. That guy just told us to step into this, I think he said it was a lunchbox? And it was, you know, like one of the portals, except it took a long time to go through it. Kind of weird like that, and not even orange or blue.

Dukermin: Right right, what I'm not understanding is how you came to Erscoga in the first place?

Wheatley: Ooh, what's Erscoga? Sounds like a cool kind of place.

Dukermin: ... Okay not to be rude, but are you able to just.. Go back to the aperture?

Wheatley: *makes noise I don't know the name of. Inverse s sound* Er... right, about that, I don't um, see we got out of Aperture cause of this big explosion, right? And I'm not sure how that happened, but uh. Don't want to go back there. Cause if we go back there, well, for one it might just be a big bottomless pit in the ground, but if it isn't a big bottomless pit, she will probably kill us just for coming back, you know how she is... Doesn't really want us hanging around and all that. You know. After I. Well, you know, that's not important, but what is important is that we–

Dukermin: Stop go back. she ? and a bottomless pit?

Wheatley: Oh, er, you know, the big boss lady. The one in charge. Of the whole facility. I mean, if it is still a facility, didn't blow up.

Dukermin: I literally do not know.

(The woman fishes something out of her pocket and hands it to you. It's a brochure for a science company called Aperture. Must be where they're from. She points to a section that details something called the GLaDOS project.)

Dukermin: Ooh yikes yeah I do not know how to tell this to you guys but you are in the complete wrong dimension. In fact *gestures to crowds of people that are totally unfamiliar* you are not the only ones that somehow wandered in here by accident.

Business Man: *hugs his bucket tighter in fear*

Kid, also carrying a bucket: *sees the business man's bucket* *runs up excitedly, as if to talk about buckets together, but sort of remembers something and stops, backing away awkwardly*

Dukermin: *to nalitie* So, we should probably sort out some sort of housing situation for our unexpected guests. We should hand out pamphlets for the Best Western for now. And then, we'll need to figure out if the bottomless pit thing is a trend or not, and either send these people back to their dimensions or make sure they're settled in.

Nalitie: If we could get ahold of Elma, maybe she'd be able to help. We could talk to GCL about stuff too, but I'm not sure how they're getting in? This is a lot of people, what if they just come back?

Dukermin: I'm kind of worried they may not have much to go back to if the bottomless pit thing is happening to everyone. That sounds not fun.

Nalitie: yeah... Ok, so we should get those who are here settled in somewhere, and try to stop more from coming in, and I guess figure out what's happening to see if people can even go back. Otherwise, disperse amongst the planets. How many more do you think there are? (Suddenly, you hear sleigh bells... Everyone looks into the sky, and inexplicably in the middle of May—there's Santa! And Christine! And... a whole train full of people.)

Dukermin: *Waves* Obviously there is a fair amount more!

Santa: *lands his sleigh* Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christine: *gets out and goes over to them* After you all left, these people came into the opera house looking for directions. I don't recognize any of them, though.

(The sleigh is filled with a bunch of people you've never seen: intimidating people in armor, a vampire, a lizard man carrying a gigantic sword, a yellow bipedal dog dressed like a secretary, a band of monsters, a guy in a cloak carrying a giant D20, and a young man with dark hair and black clothing with a diamond cut out of the front.)

DUN DUN DUNNNNN

(To be continued...) 

~•*•~

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[ryuuka-balaen]

bwah

I know I said I'd post abt this after 10h but uh.been real tiredddd

also I was planning to go and take ~glamour shots~ of all the armies I've got to like show off the models but. uh. tiredd,, girlsleepy,,,

anyway! gonna try my best to talk abt them as much as I can and explain why I've got all of em

so I was introduced to Warhammer by my oldest brother around 10 years ago, when he'd seen his half-brother (who I'm not related to and don't know) playing a game with a friend of his. He's thought it looked cool as hell, and so convinced his friend+roommate to split a starter box (Attack on Black Reach) with him, and my less old older brother and I joined in with each buying an army starter box. I've never liked the "good guys humans" options in games and was an enjoyer of Big Monster, so Tyranids were the obvious faction choice for me. I bought the Tyranid Battleforce Box, my brother bought the T'au Battleforce Box, and my eldest brother took the blueberries Ultramarines from the starter, leaving the Orks to his friend.

I absolutely adored my new bugs, and had a blast building and painting my new collection consisting of 3 Warriors, 5 Genestealers, 10 Termagants, 10 Hormagants, and 3 Ripper Swarms.

My brothers, unfortunately, quickly realized that this whole 'building and painting models' thing wasn't as exciting as they thought that playing toy soldiers would be, and gave up before finishing theirs. So we never actually got to play a game.

My brother gave away his blueberries to his half-brother, the Orks I don't know because I never talked to that guy, and my other brother gave his T'au to me, so I gained a Crisis Battlesuit, 3 Stealth Battlesuits, a Devilfish Transport Tank, a Cadre Fireblade, 10 Firewarriors, and 10 Kroot Carnivores to my funny little model collection. Sadly without anyone to actually use them with I had no motivation to paint the new minis, and aside from a couple I still haven't got around to giving my T'au some colour.

A few years later, in my first year of high school I met a few Guys, just real Dudes Bros even, who played warhammer and was invited to join them one weekend for some Basement Wargaming

I was super excited about the idea, and went and bought a couple new Tyranid models to use then. It was a bit of a rush to get them built and painted within just a couple days, but that added a Carnifex and a Hive Tyrant to my bugs box

Those guys were kinda jerks :(

so I didn't talk to them further, and went back to not having anyone to game with

More years pass with my beloved guys not getting touched, and in 2018?ish. I dug them up and went in to a Friendly Local Game Store with my bugs to ask for a demo game. the store employee agreed but seemed,, Unimpressed. with the request, so I got it over with quickly, bought a couple items (Tyranid Ravener x3 box, T'au Pathfinder x10 box), and left. That was discouraging but I still wanted to try, so I visited another FLGS, just to look this time, and was introduced to the game Hordes which seemed interesting. I bought a starter pack of models for it in hopes of getting to play A Wargame, but still have never gotten to use them.

this is the only photo I can be bothered rn to find of them how they were at this point, before I've started repainting them

For my birthday last year, my dad gifted me a 3d printer, and though I didn't use it for much for a long while I did test printing a squad of Necron Warriors, because my fianceé at the time had said she liked necrons in the context of Warhammer video games such as dawn of war and I guess I was trying to make them as like, an intersection of our interests or something, but she didn't care and it doesn't really matter anymore anyway.

Aside from that I gave up on getting to use my models for a time, until following some Unfortunate Events last September-January I decided I should make an effort to stop spending 100% of my free time on virtual games and with online friends, so I invited one of my few meatspace friends to take me to a new (and much closer) game store that hosts bimonthly Warhammer game nights. We brought my T'au for me to use and Tyranids for my friend to use, and hoped for a decent time. The two people that were there did accommodate us with a small scale beginner kind of game each, but one of them was sortof irritable and snappy about the fact that we had invited ourselves (supposedly this was a members-only event of a private discord server? despite being posted publicly and inviting new players on the store's Facebook page.) and about that we had outdated rulebooks, because I suppose they thought we should've spent $80 each just to try the game. The other person present didn't talk without yelling and was a little inconsiderate of personal space, so I think it's understandable that we chose not to go back.

Later, after my hip surgery in February, I spent the time I had loafing around immobile at home to start making some models with that printer I mentioned.

The first that I printed was my Grey Knights!

I had a lot of fun being able to choose proxy models that fit an aesthetic I liked, and printed proxies for a Brother-Captain, a Nemesis DreadKnight, a Paladin Squad, a Strike Squad, and a Razorback Transport Tank.

I didn't print more Tyranids or T'au because I wanted more variety in the models I had - the friend I'd visited the game store with was willing to play more but didn't have any models so I'd need to be able to supply enough options that we weren't just playing eachother with the same two armies every time. The reason I chose to print Grey Knights was purely aesthetic - I hadn't read anything of their Lore, but I've forever been a Known Enjoyer of Knights so it wasn't much of a choice.

After that, and still during my three months of Surgery Loafing Time, my friend who worked at value village acquired a secondhand Recruit Edition warhammer starter box free of charge from their workplace and gave it to me. From that I got my Necrons, and unfortunately some of james workedshoppe's dearly beloved bland boring blueberries (Ultramarines).

over the last few months I've played a few matches with the one friend I have who will, including one today! And convinced my eldest brother to give the game another try and have played one game with him, in which he fielded some Imperial Guard models that he picked up cheap and already assembled/painted secondhand. I also offloaded those blueberries I didn't want on him because he's one of those people that likes playing Generic Human Faction.

Also, in that time, I've made my favourite of the models I have! my gorgeous beloved beautiful babies my Imperial Knights!

(oops those four makes the picture cap for posting from mobile)

sadly I haven't taken a Proper and Well Lit Glamour Shot of all five of them together yet but I'm super proud of them :)

finally, the last and most recent models I've gotten were the Tyranid half of the newest Value Box Set called Leviathan - financially I probably shouldn't've bought them, but they were being offered for $110, when to buy each of the kits included would've cost around $530, and there were new models included that can't be bought separately yet so I think it was a pretty good deal, and I've been having a really fun time painting them! (at least in the very little free time I'm able to find for myself right now around 20hrs/week college work and 35hrs/week dayjob work).

also I've Been Posting about a large bug I've been working on printing (a Hierodule Bio-Titan, which costs $250 individually to buy a kit), but sadly I still haven't finished building that model because I'm trying to magnetize it and that's been... challenging.

All Together, over the last decade I've accumulated 97 Tyranid models, ~30 T'au models (the kroot carnivores went missing at some point while in storage), 28 Necron models, 13 Grey Knights models, and 5 Imperial Knights models. it's been really lovely and makes me super happy that I've been able to indulge in this hobby recently, I love it a lot :)

(@catgirl-niko tag so you see the actual response to your ask)

if I have the energy for it at a later date, it might be fun to try to talk/write as much as I can about all the lore things I know about the guys I've got (especially since I've sorta made custom/ociguess? lore for my Knights), but after a six hour game today(battlereport post to come) of learning a lot of new rules, slamming out an college assignment in an hour (still handed in 15min late 😔 ), and now spending two and a half hours writing all this, my little kitty brain is right fried and I'm needs some sleepies

it's not exactly what was being asked, but I hope this is fun to read :)

I'd love to know your favorite 40k army that you've had.. I see all your cute little 'nids and they're fantastic, but do you have other army's too?

Kay so I'm just got up & headed to work rn so I can't give a Full Answer to that yet but wanted to answer this so u know that u've been Seen and Appreciated

anyway the short answer is that I've got 5 faction armies, and the bugs are my 4th favourite of them! the others, in order of which I like best, are Imperial Knights, Grey Knights, T'au, and Necrons

[avoidednullspace]

(NEW COPYPASTA YALL) (also tw for blood and dismemberment) I was taking a walk across the city, when I found a USB drive on the road, and it was 500GB. It had no label. I wondered what it had, so being the "Mr. Curious Man" I was, I picked it up, and took it home.I inserted the USB drive into my laptop. It had one .rar file, and it was 16GB in the USB drive. It was named "DeadPrinter.rar". I extracted the .rar file, and I looked in it, and it only had one file, and it was named "DeadPrinter.avi". I looked to see what the file's size is, and... WHAT!? Only 10 Megabytes!? "Why so much wasted space!?" I yelled. How is this folder 16 gigabytes, when the file inside it had only 10 Megabytes!? But despite that huge amount of wasted space, I played the .avi file, and Windows Media Player popped up.To my surprise, it was Object Terror.It started out with the normal intro you'd see in Episode 3 and onwards, but at the end, the hosts of Object Terror (Printer and Computer) were never seen, not even the new intern (Honey). After the intro, there was 45 seconds of static, and then it showed a picture that I couldn't see at first, because the video quality was horrible. But after 15 seconds, the image began to clear up, and so did the video quality. I then realized what the picture was. It was a photo of Printer (the primary host) dead, with no eyes, mouth open, and no limbs. A pool of blood was forming under him. This picture went on screen for 42 seconds, before it went to black. I thought that the file ended here, but when I looked on the timeline, I was wrong.It said that there's more, and the black screen lasted for 9 minutes, and I can't stand waiting for 9 minutes, so I played on my 2DS just to kill time.After 4 minutes, I stopped playing on my 2DS, and just when I was about to skip ahead..."AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"An ear-piercing scream erupted out of nowhere, shaking up the whole house. I mean, if I was in a cartoon, it would shake up the world! I jolted, looked at my laptop volume, and it said that it was 10%, when the scream was up to 100% volume! I was confused, seeing as how I didn't adjust my laptop volume, so I kept on waiting for 5 more minutes. After 5 minutes of waiting, text appeared, and it said:"In Memory OfPrinter, Host of Object Terror2016-2019"The file ended there.After that, I got the infamous BSoD. After I rebooted my laptop, I looked at my C:/ Drive, and it was whipped clean and formatted. This made me really angry, because not only had I lost my pictures I just collected, but I also lost all my stuff! My C:/ Drive was not the only device that got formatted. Even the USB drive was formatted. So I'm sorry that there's no video just like Red Mist, suicidemouse.avi, and fudd.wmv.What I did manage to do, however, was take two screenshots of the file. If you ever see a strange USB drive on the road, leave it there. That's where it belongs.UPDATE: A 13 year old who lives not too far away from me found the USB drive that had the file, but he didn't get a BSoD after the file ended, nor did he have his C:/ Drive or the USB drive formatted. So he put the file on his C:/ Drive and put it up on his website that was only up for about 4 months before it got taken down.

[spurkspaint]

I was taking a walk across the city, when I found a USB drive on the road, and it was 500GB. It had no label. I wondered what it had, so being the "Mr. Curious Man" I was, I picked it up, and took it home.I inserted the USB drive into my laptop. It had one .rar file, and it was 16GB in the USB drive. It was named "DeadPrinter.rar". I extracted the .rar file, and I looked in it, and it only had one file, and it was named "DeadPrinter.avi". I looked to see what the file's size is, and... WHAT!? Only 10 Megabytes!? "Why so much wasted space!?" I yelled. How is this folder 16 gigabytes, when the file inside it had only 10 Megabytes!? But despite that huge amount of wasted space, I played the .avi file, and Windows Media Player popped up.To my surprise, it was Object Terror.It started out with the normal intro you'd see in Episode 3 and onwards, but at the end, the hosts of Object Terror (Printer and Computer) were never seen, not even the new intern (Honey). After the intro, there was 45 seconds of static, and then it showed a picture that I couldn't see at first, because the video quality was horrible. But after 15 seconds, the image began to clear up, and so did the video quality. I then realized what the picture was. It was a photo of Printer (the primary host) dead, with no eyes, mouth open, and no limbs. A pool of blood was forming under him. This picture went on screen for 42 seconds, before it went to black. I thought that the file ended here, but when I looked on the timeline, I was wrong.It said that there's more, and the black screen lasted for 9 minutes, and I can't stand waiting for 9 minutes, so I played on my 2DS just to kill time.After 4 minutes, I stopped playing on my 2DS, and just when I was about to skip ahead..."AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"An ear-piercing scream erupted out of nowhere, shaking up the whole house. I mean, if I was in a cartoon, it would shake up the world! I jolted, looked at my laptop volume, and it said that it was 10%, when the scream was up to 100% volume! I was confused, seeing as how I didn't adjust my laptop volume, so I kept on waiting for 5 more minutes. After 5 minutes of waiting, text appeared, and it said:"In Memory OfPrinter, Host of Object Terror2016-2019"The file ended there.After that, I got the infamous BSoD. After I rebooted my laptop, I looked at my C:/ Drive, and it was whipped clean and formatted. This made me really angry, because not only had I lost my pictures I just collected, but I also lost all my stuff! My C:/ Drive was not the only device that got formatted. Even the USB drive was formatted. So I'm sorry that there's no video just like Red Mist, suicidemouse.avi, and fudd.wmv.What I did manage to do, however, was take two screenshots of the file. If you ever see a strange USB drive on the road, leave it there. That's where it belongs.UPDATE: A 13 year old who lives not too far away from me found the USB drive that had the file, but he didn't get a BSoD after the file ended, nor did he have his C:/ Drive or the USB drive formatted. So he put the file on his C:/ Drive and put it up on his website that was only up for about 4 months before it got taken down.

SHUT UP SHUT UP GET OUT OF MY HEADDD/j

[pbandjesse]

Today was a pretty good day overall. My allergies are bothering me still but mostly I was in a great mood and things were nice.

I didn't sleep awesome. I woke up a lot. James was putting air in their bike tires and apparently it sounds just like Sweetp throwing up because I woke up right away convinced something was wrong with my cat. But it made me laugh when I realized.

When I got up for real I felt good. I liked my outfit. I have been feeling very cute this week.

I headed out of here. Stopped for breakfast. And got to work at when I thought was on time but it was actually early! Oops. I didn't realize it was a 915 start. Ah well. I just got ready and things were good.

I was very excited to do C, the print position of the cannery. And it was so fun. One of my coworkers set up the chase set up yesterday so I was able to just work on fixing the presses and little fussy things that sometimes get forgotten about.

It was really nice being with my coworkers today. But we found out one of us yesterday tested positive so I think we were all a little on edge about that. Maybe it was okay that I wasn't as included yesterday.

But even though it has us on edge it was still a good time. Jordan was back and he's always down to talk politics. We had a huge conversation about Roe because someone was confused about the trigger laws and it was very gratifying to talk it through with everyone and know we were all primarily on the same side.

The group we had today was excellent. Just really awesome kids. We did have a child with some limits in mobility so we got to use the elevator which was interesting. I am glad to get to test it out so I know how to use it in the future. It's old as hell but it works a lot better then the one we had at ships.

I had a great time with the kids though. All of the printers I had today did a great job. Once I showed them they barely needed me after so I could just do some back up prints. And it was great.

It has been so long since I've done C. The printing and stuff was fine but I haven't done a store in so long. But it was fine. And these kids were so well behaved I barely had to talk over a normal speaking voice. It was great. And even though one child got a little upset I think everyone had fun.

We finished up the program and we cleaned up. I did some oyster cleaning. We did some car parts. I went up to chat with James who had edited my photos for my mini portfolio. And they did such a nice job. And so I was able to submit my application today. This grant and cohort thing would be awesome to get but I also just feel good that I did it. I'll post the portfolio here after this post.

I left at 2 since I had come in early. And I decided I would go to the grocery store that is closing in the shopping center. They are only open for two more days. And everything was about 70 to 80% off.

I drove up there and while there wasn't much, I did get a bunch of canned stuff. I also got gum and candy and ice cream. And a few other things. Like baking stuff. There was for sure a lot of weird stuff because it was like the things you look over normally. But it was for sure weird to see the place so empty. I chatted with an older man about how it felt like the end of the world in here.

But I filled a basket and went to pay. I saved almost $92!! Wild! I spent $35 and got so much.

I went home and ran into Mr Will. Who insisted on carrying my groceries, which were very heavy, upstairs. I was worried about him falling but he wouldn't let me carry one.

I promised I would make him cookies today. And he was like. I thought you forgot about me it's been so long!! But I haven't seen him in forever so I wanted to make sure they wouldn't be old.

So once I got everything away I got to work on my cookies. And I feel very good about them. I made three dozen. One for Mr Will and the others for us and for work.

I cleaned Frenchy's tank. And did some knitting. James was going to go to worked sisters for dinner but when they got there they didn't carry the sandwich I wanted anymore. James insisted on biking to fells point, which is basically on the other side of the city, to get food from Alexanders tavern. I wasn't thrilled that they biked all over the world for a sandwich for me. But I appreciated it.

We had dinner. And played video games. I put faces on the two bears I made.

I hung out with James while they did their podcast. And I chilled in bed for a while.

I got a shower. And now am in bed. I am very tired. And tomorrow is going to be a very busy day. With a 4 row assembly line, which is wild. And then a double cannery. But it will be a good day.

Sleep well everyone. I hope you are all safe. Good night!!

[alittle-annihilation]

so i found my xanga (technically the back up now on wordpress, rest in peace xanga dot com) where i blogged/journaled from freshman year of high school to freshman year of college and just

wow

i wasnt sure if it was a good idea at first, especially considering the increasing frequency of flashbacks of the past and general terribly depressed mood as of late. but i was clearly feeling nostalgic as i was on xanga and then read every single entry.

it was heartwrenching watching it play out. but it also did not hurt as bad as i thought it would. my chest is tight and throbbing and i was holding it at one point, but i did not break down into a million pieces which i was almost certain for.

no instead it was like reading an old book where you know how it plays out, the main plot points you recall but not every single detail, but to see it relayed back to me through my voice from a decade ago. a reminder of exactly what was said and done.

whats been off putting about the flashbacks was how it was filling in pieces of my lost memories. and now reading this was an even bigger filler.

you can see where the entries go from things im up to - grades and teen spats and crushes and gossip - then suddenly every post is about hell. i still feel so bad for that version of me. you can see them breaking. the realization - but I feel as if hiding it will screw me over one day, and I’ll end up fucked up pretty badly in the future - the shift into loneliness, the growth of self loathing: the crumbling. all from the back and forth we're going we're staying we're leaving we're moving we're not budging we're separated we're together we're angry we're moving back we're divorced

it also chronicles my getting kicked out of high school, which has been weighing me down lately considering national political climate. you can see just how confused i was, just how baffled, and just how bullshit their entire argument was. with the perspective now... yeah that was fucked up.

i still wish i could have told my side and defended myself. but even now i still let the opportunities pass by.

it didn't hurt to the degree i thought i would, but i don't feel much lighter having read it. it's just facts of the past now i suppose. blogging about it felt approp

god that shit was fucked up but i have come a long way in the last 10+ years, even when there are some periods that don't feel like it.

other observations:

i both fully knew and also forgot just how obsessed i was with this basic ass white dude early on. yes i am cringing

every mention of tierra goes on to talk about how non-judgemental she is, which is how every single mention of tierra goes when i journal now. some things never change, and i am continually blessed to have her in my life.

at one point i refer to "Ms. Free Prom Dress Back Stabber with a Printer showed up with an ugly ass boyfriend and even uglier free prom dress" skfdjlafjkdsaljl OK YOUNGER ME WITH THE QUIPS. but also fuck her.

once i got on tumblr i started to cross post but i also was vague blogging so my posts literally go from naming everyone and their mother to evading an actual coherent topic that present jem is only semi picking up on

i was waaaaaaaaaaay more openly cocky and self inflating when i was a teen lmao "of course i won, i'm the more liked person of the two." screaming present me could never say that aloud