#i need to start making a list of names my brain default spells as the less-common spelling because of people or celebrities i know

[to-be-a-dreamer]

Y'all my dumb monkey brain just saw the name "Martin" written down and thought it was spelled wrong I've been reading that name as "Martyn" for so fucking long because of Martyn in the Fucking Little Wood that it's changed my damn brain chemistry this is like when my brain default spelled the name "Caleb" as "Kaleb" but worse because at least I actually have multiple real-life friends named Kaleb I don't have an excuse for this one the brainrot is no longer a silly goof my brain is actually turning to asbestos as we speak

[blackradandmad]

why blippi is rotting yr children's brains

preface: i literally expect no one to read this. it is an essay length, strong opinion piece critiquing a niche youtube-based children's show that i don't expect most of y'all to even have knowledge of lol. but like, i promise that even if you know nothing about what i'm talking about, in my incredibly, super humble opinion, it's a good piece of writing and interesting nonetheless. anyway if you read this whole thing for some reason yr really hot and we should kiss.

i thoroughly vet everything my child watches before he watches it, episode by episode. and we rarely watch youtube for entertainment; we usually just look up educational videos when he has a question about something and wants more detail than i can provide him. and that's mainly because children's content on youtube is so fucking troubling and distressing. i don't judge parents who give their children a tablet at a restaurant at all bc i've been there and sometimes it's easier on everyone to just put on a video and avoid a giant scene, but i do judge parents who just leave their children alone with youtube kids on autoplay.

take stevin john, a literal millionaire who got famous from dressing up as a silly character called blippi and going on tours of places like aquariums, zoos, construction sites, etc and posting it on youtube. this has branched into a whole empire of blippi videos, hulu shows and specials, live shows and tours (that he outsources to another character actor), merchandise and so on. this 30-something year old man cites his main influence as being mr. rogers, but i question if he's ever even seen an episode of that program.

mr. rogers had no background in early childhood development or media production, but he revolutionized the world of children's media, because he respected his audience and didn't shy away from real world situations, all while creating a show with an enormous heart. mr. rogers begins his episodes by inviting the viewer in, literally changing his attire to be more comfortable, and talking about/doing things he genuinely cares about. whereas mr. rogers calmly and maturely addresses the viewer, blippi puts on a high pitched, contrived voice, interjecting every other sentence with a forced exclamation such as, "teehee! we're having so much fun!"

i don't find it a coincidence that john (blippi) is a veteran, either. his videos are completely devoid of the absurd, abstract, childlike thinking that makes children's media fun, creative, and entertaining. his thinking and process is methodical, devoid of emotion, and very superficial. this line of thinking clearly shows the kind of creative sterilization and emphasis on sameness and conformity instilled in the military. blippi simply observes things and interacts with them in a stale, matter-of-fact way. "this ball is purple! this ball is pink! anyway... what's over there? teehee! a car! vroom, vroom!" objects are colors, toy cars don't do anything but drive, curiosity is simply not encouraged.

he uses the "it's educational!" excuse to hide the fact that his show lacks everything that makes media a valuable resource for children to consume in the first place. further than identifying colors, numbers, and the occasional letter or shape, there is just this total lack of children's need for social and emotional development. when mr. rogers breaks the fourth wall to address the viewer and let them know they're special, it feels authentic and natural, because we've spent the last half hour building whole worlds with diverse characters and unique stories in a pretend neighborhood, learning about and enjoying different musical instruments, being exposed to and making friends with (even if parasocially, it is still a real bond to children when done properly) children who are similar to us in character regardless of physical or environmental differences, feeding the fish, making art together, and so on. when blippi tells the viewer, "you are very special, and i enjoy spending time with you!" it falls completely flat and feels unearned, because the last half hour was spent running around a soft play center pointing at bright, colorful objects, visiting interesting locations like farms or fruit production factories while failing to acknowledge the humanity of the humans actually working there (everything is machine or product focused; the human workers are simply an extension of the machine), learning "fun facts" about elephants that just list attributes of elephants, not taking the opportunity to inform the viewers of elephants' intelligence, or diet, or matriarchal society. it is a loud, sensory overwhelming display of a man so disconnected from the social and emotional needs and desires of children that he assumes they're stupid, easily entertained idiots who only need some silly dances and fast-moving cartoon graphics to give their attention (meaning time and desire to purchase products meaning $$$). john clearly views his audience as a means to gaming the algorithm and ultimately a paycheck by the hollow way he addresses them.

the show is so narcissistic, so focused on all the fun blippi is supposedly having, but he lacks any of the character traits that make individual children's show hosts memorable, so much so that he was able to have someone else who doesn't even vaguely resemble him dress as blippi and impersonate him and host the show or appear at live shows, and it went unnoticed by most of his toddler and child audience. the show is so formulaic and the character of blippi is so unmemorable that instead of taking the blue's clues route of developing a story of the host leaving for college and his brother now stepping in, or making some sort of believable excuse for the change in actors, they can simply swap him out with some random guy and not acknowledge it at all. although a comedy show for older children, the amanda show in no way could or would try to replicate the show with the same name but swapping out amanda bynes with a random teenage girl who is clearly not amanda bynes. it's weird and nonsensical and shows that his character is so much of a farce put on for a paycheck that not even his dedicated audience is affected or even cares when he is replaced by a random, unknown person.

this is completely garbage content made by an opportunist with no experience with children who saw his nephew watching children's youtube content, took it at complete surface level and still hasn't realized that while children's content only looks and feels so easy, entertaining, and enriching because it is so hard to do well. even with outsourcing his music, that aspect of the show still sucks. famous and successful children's musician, raffi, is known for his song describing the life of a little white whale, called "baby beluga." it opens with a calm strumming of his guitar, followed by the lyrics, "baby beluga in the deep blue sea/swim so wild and you swim so free/heaven above/sea below/and a little white whale on the go." is it silly and kind of pointless? yes, but the point is that he is captivating children and showing them the fun of listening to music, dancing, singing, and appreciating art. the "excavator song" featured in an episode of blippi about construction vehicles opens with what sounds like a default garageband loop and the flatly sung lyrics, "i'm an excavator/i'm an excavator/hey dirt, see you later/i'm an excavator." i don't feel i have to meticulously analyze the aforementioned lyrics; the stark contrast should speak for itself.

i have a million more criticisms about both blippi specifically and youtube children's content as a whole, but this is already so long and i doubt many people will get this far anyway. it's an issue i was completely apathetic towards until i had my own child and had to wean him off these kinds of junk food shows because i realized the fast-paced visuals and bright colors and repetitive songs/lyrics were putting him in this spaced-out, fugue state, and he thought he could demand this show or that show whenever he wanted. the moment he started regularly yelling things like, "watch! cars!" or "no! click it!" i knew i had to be a lot more invested in the things he watched even if just for entertainment or as a soothing message. i showed him an episode of mr. rogers yesterday and feared it would be too slow to hold his attention, but he was mesmerized, greeting and interacting with mr. rogers verbally, asking me, "what's that?" to different objects on the screen. since purging this low-brow children's entertainment, he has had a noticeable increase in attention span and concentration, can focus on a task for longer amounts of times, is more likely to "read"/look through books without me initiating it, and doesn't throw a fit when the tv/my laptop is off.

i just know that for me, growing up with so much unsupervised internet access definitely led me to real-world pain and consequences, and it seems like now children are born with an iphone as an extension of their arm. if my child is going to be consuming videos, i'm definitely supervising every second and am going to be highly critical of the videos and the credentials (or lack thereof) of the creators and team behind it. but i also know, from pure observation admittedly, that parents letting youtube kids autoplay parent their children for hours at a time is not an uncommon occurrence. and it worries me that a generation of children are being raised on videos that rely on being as loud and bright and superficially enjoyable as possible. what's the use of a child knowing their colors and alphabet if they don't know how to treat people with kindness and empathy and respect? there is something wrong for a children's show host to plug the spelling of his name at the end of his videos ("well, that's the end of this video. but if you wanna watch more of my videos, just type in my name! can you spell my name with me? b-l-i-p-p-i!") after essentially rotting his audiences' brains for a half hour. there's something so insidious about the prioritization of naming different parts of construction vehicles over honest depictions of and conversations about dealing with feelings, or why someone with autism may act differently than you, or what to do when you feel lonely, or ways to make art and express yrself creatively. also, not to mention the blatant police propaganda and outright worship is seriously jarring; as a black mother to a visibly non-white child, i cannot sit there and watch blippi show kids how to be a bootlicker for the shittiest profession on earth, but that could be a whole essay in and of itself.

anyway, thanks for reading, if yr looking for quality children's content, i recommend, in no specific order: mr. rogers, sesame street, the electric company, molly of denali, daniel tiger, bluey!, blue's clues, the odd squad, word party, trash truck, puffin rock, uhh... that's definitely not an extensive list but that's just off the dome!!! ok bye y'all <333

[persephone-plasmids]

The Funhouse

Deacon and Sole Fanfic

[AO3]

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

The Funhouse

“I take it finding Danse and MacCready is now our second priority?” Deacon asked as he followed Sole from the junkyard outside of Nuka-World to the Kiddie Kingdom.”Because you know they’re investigating Dry Rock Gulch, right?”

“They’re big boys, they can take care of themselves,” Sole answered dismissively with a wave of her hand. “And I already told you, we’ve got more important things to do.”

“More important than finding the kidnapped Synth?” Deacon asked, a grin on his lips as he trotted to catch up with Sole.

Their hands brushed accidentally as he walked beside her and he quickly pulled away. Deacon was finally starting to learn to keep his physical distance from Sole. He needed as many safeguards from whatever spell she had over him as he could get. The sunglasses were a start, but avoiding their regular casual contact was starting to be a necessity.

Trying to ignore his attraction to Sole had become a losing battle, so Deacon was playing the defense game.

“Obviously nothing is more important than finding the kidnapped Synth,” Sole said. “But there’s no reason they might not be in the funhouse at Kiddie Kingdom.”

Deacon gave Sole a skeptical raise of his eyebrows. “I mean, while we’re at it, the kidnapped synth could very well be on the roller coaster in the Galactic Zone. We should probably check there too.”

“We probably should.” Sole nudged Deacon with her shoulder, giving him a cheeky smile.

He laughed nervously but took a tiny step away from Sole to discourage any further touching. It wasn’t because he didn’t want Sole to touch him. It was because he did.

“Listen, Charmer, I’m all for having a good time, but isn’t this place… kinda creepy?” Deacon asked, glancing at the derelict theme park over the top of his sunglasses.

Sole stopped in her tracks and turned on her heel to face him, the apples of her cheeks round with glee. “Are you scared?” She dragged out the last word in a taunting way, poking her finger into his chest as she said it.

Again with the touching.

He wished he didn’t love it so much.

“Obviously I’m a big strong man. I’m not scared of anything,” Deacon began. “I’m just worried about your poor feminine sensibilities. I’m not sure they can handle this place. Women’s brains just aren’t wired for this sort of thing.”

Sole narrowed her eyes at Deacon, sizing him up. She knew he was joking, but she still took the opportunity to take a step closer to him, her voice low. “I think we both know who the brave one is in this partnership.”

She was much too close to him. He swallowed hard and tried to play off his discomfort with a laugh, but it sounded wrong.

“If you’re so brave then why don’t you go into the funhouse first?” It was a lame dare, but he needed any excuse to get her away from him. All he wanted to do was crush his lips to hers.

“”Watch and learn, stealth boy,” she said, using her favorite nickname for him.

Sole walked confidently through the funhouse doors, swaying her hips as she did so. Deacon hated the way his eyes automatically roamed over her curves when she wasn’t looking, but he couldn’t deny that the view was impeccable.

“Are you coming?” Sole asked over her shoulder.

Deacon gave himself a little shake and ran into the funhouse after her. “You know, if you wanted to die, there are much quicker and less terrifying ways to do that.”

“But where would be the fun in that?” Sole asked, taking Deacon’s hand in hers and leading him through the first set of doors they found.

The two were immediately set off balance by a black and white room with a spinning floor. Sole collapsed into Deacon’s arms, knocking him against the wall as he held her up with his arms around her waist.

His plan to limit their physical contact wasn’t off to a great start.

Carnival music played in the spinning room and when Sole regained her footing, she didn’t pull away from Deacon like he thought she would. Instead, she leaned her weight against him, pushing his back more firmly against the wall.

“Thanks for the assist,” she said, wrinkling her nose up at him in a smile.

Why did she have to be so adorable?

“Any time, Charmer,” he answered, his voice as unsteady as he felt. “You need help getting back on your feet?”

He was trying to get her away from him again. But she didn’t move. Instead, she only leaned against him more firmly with a devilish grin on her angelic features. “I actually like where I am right now.”

Deacon tried as hard as he could to keep his cheeks from flushing. “I can’t say I blame you. I tend to have that effect on women.”

When in doubt, default to joking.

“I spend most of my life breaking hearts. It’s a gift and a curse.”

Sole bit her lip as she looked up at Deacon through her eyelashes. “More gift than curse I’d say.”

Deacon was incredibly grateful for the sunglasses that hid the fact that he was openly staring at Sole’s lips now. They had a cherry tint to them from the lipstick she’d been rationing since leaving the vault. And they looked even fuller when she took her bottom lip between her teeth.

It took Deacon a moment to regain his senses and when he did, he desperately thought of some way he could joke his way out of this. “Just imagine how hard it is for the people who don’t get to see this beauty up close? All they can do is fantasize. But you? You’ve got a front row seat to this walking piece of art.”

“A front row seat?” Sole said with a challenging raise of her eyebrows. “Is this an interactive show?”

The room was still spinning, though Deacon wasn’t sure how much of that was the actual funhouse anymore.

“It could be,” he said.

Why had he said that? He was trying to keep his distance.

Sole let a tiny grin tug at the corner of her mouth as she stared at Deacon in the spinning room. She almost looked like she might pull away from him and at the mere thought, panic rose in his chest.

He didn’t care how complicated it would make things. He didn’t care that he had sworn off personal relationships. He wanted to be close to her.

Without another thought, Deacon pulled Sole tightly against his chest and pressed his lips to hers. She instantly melted into the kiss, moving her lips over his softly at first. Her softness, however, was quickly replaced by more desperate kisses as she pressed herself against him. Sole took a handful of Deacon’s Cappy shirt to pull him closer, even though they were already incredibly close. She tangled her hands in his hair that he’d grown out and dyed dark, just because he knew Sole liked it that way.

She inhaled him as they both moved together, fitting like puzzle pieces. Deacon didn’t even care that the room was still spinning and that there were probably ferals nearby. All he cared about was this moment with Sole. This perfect moment where he was finally taking what he’d wanted for so long.

When Sole moaned into his mouth, he got chills all over his body. He’d thought making Sole laugh would always be his favorite accomplishment, but this sound he’d just elicited from her had just topped the list. It only encouraged him to deepen the kiss, hungrily moving his hands over her hips, across her waist, up her back, and into her hair.

He felt like he couldn’t breathe, but that was the last thing he cared about right at that moment. He’d happily die like this. Sole continued to kiss him like she’d wanted this as much as he did, even though he had a hard time believing that.

Deacon wasn’t sure they’d ever break apart, until a raspy voice rang out over a scratchy loudspeaker in the room, instantly causing Sole to jump away from him. “While I appreciate the show, I’m usually the one providing the entertainment here.”

Even though Sole had broken the kiss at the sound of the mysterious voice, she still held Deacon close, her arms around his waist.

“Who was that?” she asked in a panic.

He wasn’t sure if she was panicked because some mysterious person  was apparently also in the funhouse with them, or because they’d been caught in a compromising position.

“Just thought we’d be an opening act,” Deacon said to the otherwise empty room. He was trying to play it cool when he was internally losing his mind over the kiss he and Sole had just shared. “What can we expect from the main attraction?”

Deacon kept a protective arm around Sole in the spinning room, his eyes darting all over to try to find the source of the voice.

“I am Oswald the Outrageous, and you two are trespassing in my territory.”

Spotting the loud speaker overhead, Deacon took Sole’s hand in his and pulled her through a nearby red door that led to a hallway full of spinning tunnels. If he hadn’t been dizzy enough from the kiss, this room was sure to do him in.

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Deacon began, making sure to speak loudly enough for Oswald to hear him over the hum of machinery in the funhouse. “We were just looking for a friend of ours. Goes by the name of H3-56.”

“You weren’t looking very hard, were you?” Oswald asked, his voice sly and suggestive.

Had Deacon not been worried about how much of a threat this stranger posed, he might have been embarrassed by the man’s words.

“H3-56 wandered into my territory, much like you two did.”

“And did you give him the same warm greeting?” Deacon asked.

“We need to find out where this person is,” Sole whispered to him, her eyes full of concern in the green glow of the hallway.

Deacon nodded in understanding but didn’t respond.

“Turns out H3-56 is a freak like me,” Oswald said. “He understood what it’s like to be cast out by the rest of society… so I let him go.”

Sole gave Deacon a surprised look. “Well, we appreciate your hospitality,” Deacon began. “I guess we don’t need to keep searching. Thanks for doing our job for us. We’ll just be going, but don’t worry, we’ll visit your gift shop on the way out; pick something up for Dez.”

Deacon began walking back towards the spinning room with Sole’s hand in his, but the door instantly slammed in front of them, barricading them in the hallway.

“Not so fast,” Oswald said, his voice full of menace. “I let H3-56 go out of the goodness of my heart because they were a kindred spirit. As far as I can tell, you humans don’t have to deal with the same hardships as Synths and Ghouls. So I think it’s time we have a little fun.”

Sole inhaled sharply at Oswald’s words. “Listen, we came here to rescue H3-56, not hurt him. We’re sympathetic to Synths and Ghouls alike. One of my best friends, the mayor of Goodneighbor, is a Ghoul.”

“Oh, I see,” Oswald said. “So because you have one Ghoul friend, you’re sympathetic to my kind?” His voice sounded incredulous now.

“I’m not trying to say--.”

“Tell me, Vault Dweller, do you kill Ghouls out in the wasteland with that fancy gun of yours?”

Sole looked down at her holstered gun with a furrowed brow. “Only when they’re feral and I don’t have a choice.”

Deacon could see the regret in her eyes as she spoke. He knew Sole didn’t particularly like killing, even when someone deserved it. It was something she’d held onto from her pre-war days. Maybe because she’d seen the effect it had had on her former husband when he was in the military. Maybe just because she was a compassionate person. But the fact that this stranger was accusing her of being a heartless killer when Deacon knew she was anything but, set his teeth on edge.

“Listen, drama queen, Sole doesn’t need to defend her actions to you. Now either you let us go, or you can step out from behind your wall of protection and we can handle this one on one.”

“I think you’re forgetting about the third option,” Oswald said, his voice now much happier than it had been only a moment before; almost manic. “The one where I show you that anyone is capable of being a monster. Even your sweetheart.”

Deacon didn’t have time to ask what Oswald meant before the hallway filled with green noxious fumes. He let go of Sole’s hand to cover his mouth. At first he worried that it might be aerosol radiation, but the sweet smell of the gas only gave him a headache.

“HalluciGen?” he asked, coughing slightly as the gas continued to fill the room.

Deacon looked over to Sole to make sure she was okay but the look he saw in her eyes terrified him. Her wide green eyes were darting around the room in pure abject horror.

“Sole?” Deacon asked, stepping closer to her. But the second he moved towards her, she lunged at him, her hands finding his throat and squeezing tight. “Sole!” Deacon choked out, trying to wedge his fingers under her surprisingly strong, nimble grip.

“Amazing, isn’t it? What the HalluciGen gas can do to ‘good’ people.”

“Sole,” Deacon choked again, trying desperately to pry her fingers away from his throat.

Her eyes were crazed and watery and she tightened her grip on him. And while he had been reveling in their close contact only a moment before, this wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind.

“Sole, you have to let go,” he choked. “I’m on your side… always have been.”

At the familiar words he’d said to Sole a million times before, her grip loosened ever so slightly. Her brows were still knitted together in confusion and terror, but the moment of clarity was enough for Deacon to forcefully pull her hands away from his throat and pin them to her sides.

Sole almost immediately began fighting back against him again, trying to break free from his grasp. Deacon wrapped his arms around her middle, sure to keep her arms pinned in place as he lifted her off the ground and unceremoniously carried her to the opposite end of the hallway, where a door stood open, leading back out to the lobby.

Once they were away from the green HalluciGen gas, Sole’s fighting grew weaker. She still struggled against Deacon’s grip, but her heart wasn’t in it. Instead he held her tightly while she whimpered, her eyes opening and closing rapidly as she came back to herself.

“You back with me, Charmer?” Deacon asked. “Or are you still going to try to pop my head off with those tiny little hands of yours?”

Sole’s eyes met Deacon’s behind his sunglasses as she blinked a few more times. “Deacon?”

“There she is,” he said, his smile returning. “You must really be into some weird stuff in the bedroom,” Deacon joked.

“Deacon,” she warned, her voice low.

“No, I mean it. I enjoyed our kiss too, but that escalated quickly.” He puckered his lips at her as he smiled.

“It’s not funny,” she said. “I… I couldn’t tell it was you. I couldn’t even tell what I was doing. I just knew I was trapped and needed to get away.”

Deacon’s face fell at her words. Maybe joking wasn’t always the best default. “You’re safe now,” he said.

“Is she, though?” Oswald asked, though now his voice sounded clear; unchanged by the static of a loudspeaker.

Sole and Deacon turned to find the Ghoul standing near the entrance to the funhouse in all his dramatic glory.

His scarred skin glowed green between the cracks, only making his suit and top hot that much more impressive.

“Pleased to meet you both,” the Ghoul said with a deep bow and a grin.

Deacon didn’t know whether he should be furious at the Ghoul or impressed by his showmanship.

“Dude, I appreciate a dramatic entrance as much as the next egotistical narcissist, but you could have really caused some damage in there,” Deacon said. “Also, I totally love your hat and want to know where I can get one as soon as we sort all this out.”

Sole hit Deacon on the arm, but he simply looked over at her and shrugged.

“It’s a killer hat,” he said.

“I feel like my reception of you was more than fair, given that you trespassed in my territory in order to hurt a Synth,” Oswald said, his voice much more impressive in person.

It had a dramatic quality that reminded Deacon of the old Silver Shroud radio show.

“I already told you, we were trying to save the Synth,” Sole said, her voice heavy with annoyance. “We thought he’d been kidnapped.”

Oswald regarded them for a long moment, his green glowing eyes moving between the two. “I don’t suppose…” his words trailed off as he screwed his face up in concentration. “Do you have a geiger counter?”

At his words, Sole’s face lit up. “Mine’s in the shop,” she responded.

The instant those two sentences were spoken, the tension in the room seemed to melt away.

“H3-56 told me to use that phrase if someone came looking for him,” Oswald said. “He told me it would help me know who was a friend and who was an enemy.”

“He was right,” Deacon said. “Although I wish you would have used the phrase before you tried to poison us with your Hallucigen gas.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Oswald said. “It wouldn’t poison you. It would just make you two kill each other.”

Oswald waved his hand as if this were an important distinction.

“Why didn’t it make Deacon go crazy?” Sole asked, looking over at the spy in confusion.

“Extensive Railroad training,” Deacon said. And when Sole gave him a look like he was joking around with her again he pressed on. “I’m actually serious this time. After Dez and I found the HalluciGen Inc. lab, we knew this stuff would be dangerous if it got into the wrong hands.” Deacon gave Oswald an accusatory look as he said this.

The Ghoul just shrugged in an unconcerned way.

“Dez had the field agents work to build up an immunity to it,” Deacon went on. “It’s not easy to do, but it’s not impossible.”

Sole gave Deacon a guilty look at his words. “So you were totally lucid while I tried to kill you?”

“Like I said, if that’s the kind of thing you’re into, I’m not going to shame you. I’m an open-minded guy.” He gave Sole a grin that made her cheeks turn a dark shade of red.

He loved that he could make her blush.

“Okay, well this mission has been sufficiently awkward,” Sole said, tucking her hair behind her ear as she looked over at Oswald. “Thank you for… not killing us… I guess.”

“My pleasure,” Oswald said with another deep bow.

“And thanks for the intel on the Synth. I’m happy he was able to get out of the Commonwealth safely.” Sole gave Oswald a tight-lipped smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Deacon? You ready to go find Danse and MacCready?”

“Sure thing, boss” Deacon said, giving Oswald a nod.

Sole began walking towards the exit of the funhouse, careful to avoid Oswald’s eyes as she walked. When Deacon followed her, he stopped just short of the door and turned to the Ghoul with a grin.

“Okay, but seriously, where did you get that hat?”

[Part 5]

[tobebugjewce]

THE WALTEN FILES: my jumbled notes on my blind run-in with this web series

first off this is gonna be long and unorganized, also this is my second time writing this as i had lost literally half of my progress and im This (imagine two fingers almost touching with a 0.0000000001mm distance between them) close to ripping all of the fucking hair out of my goddamn head. but now this will be extra long and yes, i will lose some accuracy to my first writing but thats okay ill probably edit this a kajillion times over

which brings me to my next tangent; im literally braindumping here. so to have a smidge of organization all afterthoughts, edits and corrections will be boldened, i forgot what im gonna do with italicized text but ill probably bolden it here yeah im pretty sure its for side tangents, separate from Corrections, which are in bold. also theyre for emphasis too.

so in general, this post right here is all of my notes i wrote down on my grid-patterned sticky notes (which i used WAYYYY too much of) about the first 3 uploaded walten files youtube videos transferred onto my handy dandy digital notebook, this b(l)og. yeppers peppers. you know im serious about this shit when i typed probably over like a thousand fucking words including boldened shit, italicized shit and motherfucking links, lost it ALL, and im sitting here re-typing it again.

i feel bad about this but im not gonna trigger warn right here, but this is technically a warning. if you want a list of triggers as to what this post (and the walten files in general) i will link a little list to that here

without further a doo doo, (mama mia) here the fucking fuck we go again.

THE WALTEN FILES - VIDEO #1

clarifying this now, im gonna put some useless shit which i thought was code onto this because even though it was useless it was part of my notes and im physically going to combust if i dont put down every single thing i wrote on my papers. so what i thought was code was in the closed captions, i started writing it down when i got to the second video but came back to my first videos notes to include them. i wrote down the first letter to every word that was capitalized in the closed captions, which i had on as a default because number one i knew going into this id need them because most web horror things like args and cryptic shit like that has some of the most crucial shits in the closed captions. number two i am autistic and have auditory processing issues and have most closed captioning on as a default if theyre available.

firstly jotted, i wrote down the closed captions “code” so im gonna put the rest here too: HYWITB(BSI)Y A(BSI)BJWFKWITW ILHHFSBBSBTLBWI USOISTBNBSFIRBCAWHSHCBWHTAIGRNB*C*BTWLTSFA(20)MCFP ILITIIACPH(1978, 1979)SA(4)YTSCH*C*OGSSU SFTGRPATDBBUTFBNLLCHMIHLBRALLCLAYTUKB*LC*WHATWASTHATTHING 

the numbers in parenthesis are there because i wasnt sure they should be included in the “code” or not. i also thought of this with the BSI - bunny smiles incorporated and also the years 1978 and 1979. the shits in asterisks are coughs and light coughs, which were capitalized in the closed captions so i included them too just in case

i then jotted, in parenthesis of course, the names of the animatronics when they were listed in the animation section of the video; bon aka the blue bunny, sha aka the sheep one, boozoo aka the clown<3 honk<33, and banny aka the purpled eyelashed up one who is also a bunny btw. also i got boozoo the clown and boozoo the mustache guy confused because apparently the clowns name is billy???? but they named “boozoo” in bons sleepover and showed the clown? idk maybe im an idiot and theyre the same or just an idiot and theyre different or a super mega (matt and ryan?!?!??) idiot in general which is probably the case

i started drawing little stars to write down things i thought would be super important or to 100% look at again. the first subject of this pointy torture was the part of the video where at 3:00, i marked it down to make sure to reverse the audio as it was most definitely a weird audio that has that signature warp-y effect that makes sure you KNOW its in reverse. i then listened back to it Very carefully (still got it wrong) and got this: “you finally start to remember. that old doll. they will look out for you soon” im also pretty sure i heard “sophie” at the end of that audio but im not entirely sure and dont remember and i dont wanna go back to check lmfao but anyways it didnt matter because i was wrong anyway. after i had finished all 3 walten files i watched the film theory video on the walten files (which didnt cover all 3 but was dece.) out of curiosity and to hear matpats signature silly little voice explain some stuff i already knew, and click some shit in my brain that i couldve thought up of if i was a bit more... i dont know honestly. anyways yeah so the actual audio is “you finally start to remember. that old day. they will look out for you soon.” so yeah. day, not doll.

i then wrote down “sarah evelyn”, the name on the bons sleepover animation (i dont remember if she created it or animated it or whatnot) and scribbled will she matter? under her name. turns out no, as i didnt see her name in the rest of the series, let alone the first video. this is also a great time to mention how matpat theory helped me realize that the walten files are collections of videos, uploaded onto youtube by anthony. (i already knew about anthony as he signed his name in the descriptions of the youtube videos, making me categorize this overall web series more into an arg type genre.) but yes, the tapes, recorded “irl” footage, animated clips, vhs tape recordings and other audio-visual content is all collected and labeled the walten files, as i had mistaken each video to be a tape. stupid me. alrighty, onward!

i starred this one, good for me; MISSING: Jack Walten LAST SEEN: 06/11/1974

i jotted down with an arrow that; sophie was a nightguard? she was wearing the uniform explained in tape 2 i dont know why but i went back into my video 1 notes after i had watched video 2. organization purposes. i guess.?? 

i then paused the video when the screen flickered a date, the beginning of video footage dated 10/10/1982 (Brian Stells?) god my little genius ass assuming the videographer was brian stells, based on the id card i saw earlier.

i then wrote down what text i saw on the dead, mangled, bloody body in the purple security suit; “i cant feel anything” “he thought i was her” then drew a little arrow pointing to; thought brian was sophie? or ashley? i also starred the name Brian Stells this is totally out of order LMFAOOOOOOOO also i wrote down ashley because, again, my little pea brain went back on my video 1 notes after watching video 2. but yep thats all i wrote for The Walten Files 1 - Company Introductory Tape

THE WALTEN FILES - VIDEO #2 

Tape #1 - created 07/02/1978

awesome how thats first and foremost in the captions. god. so sexy of you martin walls. /j /nsx

this pack of notes is chunkier because again, like i have mentioned before i am an absolute goober and thought the capitalized letters of the words would actually mean something. I MEAN MAYBE THEY DO AND IM JUST DOING IT WRONG but i stopped doing it after this video because holy shit it was exhausting and my stupid little fingers couldnt take the writing anymore becasue i am WEAK. 

so write off the bat (squeak) i wrote down 197[] the blacked out rectangle over the last digit of that year and everything im also now assuming its probably 1978 or 1974 because lore reasons but whos to say but yeah i also wrote down this;

Tape #2 - created 08/13/1978

then, straight up in the beginning of the video i caught it, the flash of text, as i had by now realized i gotta be SUPER stupid focused on the screen in case i miss anything, i wanted to be crazy precise on my theorizing and mental notes, among other things. but yes i saw it, the first half of a youtube link;  “https://youtu” 

claps hands together and rubs them evilly. oh yeah baby. thats the hot lunch. this shit right here? the cats pajamas. lets fucking go.

i wrote down this goofy shit i pasued to inspect when i saw bon sorting through a file cabinet and naturally scribbled down the labels and other written things i could see on the files; 

relocate X/X/75 felix

storage K-9 07/23/1975 felix k(ranken)

Bons Burgers 06/28/1974 Jack Walten

Shipping Service 1975

New Location -> 1982

i also wrote down more goofy shit, like when banny was created for some reason; in 1974

starred, i noted to go back and reverse the audio at 5:09, when played back, i didnt write it down so i dont remember. lmao.

i also marked to screenshot and brighten the darkened image i saw at 5:20, i was going to do it on my phone then realized i can just do it on my computer so i quickly took a screenshot, brightened it and wrote down what i saw; a missing person poster that read MISSING: SUSAN WOODINGS(?) Last seen: 1974 i was very unsure of the spelling of her last name because the image was so goddamn low quality and grainy but its what i saw. this is where tape #3 gets thrown in, which im gonna type again because i like how the formatting looks;

Tape #3 - created 07/09/1978 (BEFORE tape 2?!//1/1??? its more likely than you think)

i wrote down more dates, any dates i saw, i jotted down. i wrote; 

Technical Support 1978 

then, 

Brian Stells (for some reason i dont remember right now)

alrighty this is where the stupid capitalized letters come in, but before it looks like i vomit a keysmash time infinity on this, ill put down the little inbetween things i wrote in the midst of the caps lockalypse like timestamps and stuff, so here you go;

- Reverse at 8:16 which i did but of course didnt write down what i heard. i think it was too warbled to hear anything clear out of it, or it was just the good ol auditory processing issues fucking me over yet again. WAIT yep yes i did here it is: “rosemary would go to the restaurant every night hoping that [her] beloved husband would reappear after being missing for weeks but no response until one day [s]he heard a voice [saying] ‘i know where he is rosie’ coming from the back stage” the bracketed stuff is the corrections, i misheard the audio and thought the audio said “his”, “he” and “singing” like a nimrod

- Brighten at 10:14 which was another missing person poster, but i dont think it had any information on it because i didnt write it down, just;

- Sophie again (pic at 9:08?) (dismemberd and put in Sha) i was stupid and wrong haha idiot it was rosemary who was put in sha but anywho

i starred and underlined a huge thing i discovered which was;

- Walten had 3 kids which i dont remember how i found out but it doesnt matter, its good important info i uncovered.

- Tape #4 - Unkown Date

- recorded 07/12-07/14 1978 

- Hilary B, Ashley P & Kevin W i made sure to get these names down as soon as i saw them on screen but then realized shortly after i wouldnt really need to have it as the closed captions made sure i knew which person was talking by using their first initial (capitalized of course) before each line of text. this is the perfect time to announce the arrival of the clusterfuck of capital letters, which is going to include colons which will indicate that the letter before it is the initial of the person talking. without further aedue, here comes another chinese earthquake;

TCWTSTATO(K-9)TBSSFWFCNEHAWBSUBIUC(BSIIDC)OWHISF INBIJTILNSPL(K-9)LCSCKCCCWTTLTLITTTYROTFAJAMHPYYSTCSPMBBWSBIB H:NTPPCCK:DA:HH:YCPRPMWTCBCRAWK:JH:SYYTCPBACPSTBAWCA:TK(?):FMTTCMK:TCPNOA:DTOFK:ITNPPRA:YBUTIRRFH:HKIBESRAIA:TCK:WA:WPCCFTRRIDPEH:GGK:GPA:LKK:WA:HNCGTKMK:YH:IGKA:ESK:MFH:RK:HILRLBNTRPPUWHITRRTPEIFEPH:YWBEBPK:MAHPBTRPTRPEL(LN)HTACPKLIKHPFITSKLTKLB(LB?)ISIBSUBIPRW AEBATHSPUAICTPURTWBBRPHTRTIIIILTCITCUCCP S(bpe, be)WA”IDCPBPSIB

holy shit its finally over okay now onto some MORE of what i wrote down in between and also after that keysmash attack;

12 doors? (backrooms) 27? 26? i was unsure because ashley was unsure too lmfao

found cassette (6/11/78) <- says “discard”? yeah it did

Tape in clown audio, speaking voice; jack, susan, charles(?), rosemary, sophie, last word sounds like “walrus” it was walten lmfao

Ashley died? yeah she did lmfao OR AT LEAST I THINK SO??

starred this one, Reverse @ 17:06, then got this;

“they left the next day, they thought ashley left early, but she was in the backdoors, screaming as much as she could, but no one heard the screams, the following days the caretakers would complain about an awful smell coming from the backdoors, company decided to shut down facility until new advice, the relocate project was unsuccessful. ashley is still there, but she is not screaming anymore, she saw something she wasnt supposed to see and now shes beautiful” the phrase “shes beautiful” was repeating like a bajillion times in that wall of text. then, god motherfuckng bless: 

at 17:23 i found the other half of the youtube link, “.be/k07QqEDOfQ” i pieced that bad boy together as instant as i think any form of ramen could never be, but remained ever patient. because i made sure to jot down this before moving onto my next segment;

@ end of vid 2, “shadow man sees* me when lights go off” im an idiot *it was actually “feeds” not “sees”, which AGAIN, i only found out after watching the stupid little film theory video *begins snarling and foaming at the mouth*

okay im not proud to admit im editing this to post it and realized ive lost my notes. well. 

might as well post what ive got! if i find my shit ill add onto this, i suppose.

[themoomoorn]

Random Thot #46,853

I had a health exam for my upcoming new job and put my two weeks in for my current one, so I’m rewarding my neurodivergent ass-brain with this.  Sit tight and enjoy.

46,853: I’m half-convinced that Edelgard is like the Soul Series’ Alexandra sisters and daughter when it comes to her combat ability - or rather, lack thereof.  Unlike Claude, Dimitri, and Byleth, who all explicitly received combat training as children, Edelgard likely did not.  The tools given to her are what likely allow for her to fight at all - heck, they may even do a bit of the fighting for her.  How else can a noodle-armed womanlet like her wear all that armor and heft that axe?  

(Also, how the eff does this dress make clanking armor sounds when she walks in the game despite this dress having like no armor whatsoever)

To begin with, we have in-game factoids of her stat caps being the second highest in the game (390 when combined, with Cyril only beating her by 5 points due to his Aptitude skill), and she even has a magic cap that’s not only on-par with other magically-inclined units (72), but it’s actually better than some of them (Dorothea and Linhardt, who are both dedicated mage types, have caps of 61 and 66, respectively, while Manuela, who tends to get placed in Faith Magic-aligned classes despite being a hybrid unit, has a piddling cap 48).  She even has a quirky but feasible spell list for both magic types (Fire/Bolganone/Luna Lambda/Hades Omega for Reason, and Heal/Nosferatu/Recover/Seraphim for Faith, which is one of her banes, mind you).  I imagine this is the work of the experiments that gave her her version of the Crest of Flames - after all, the 2020 DREAM interview noted that the Hresvelg children were given a more “refined” version of the experiments the Ordelias had.  The refinement isn’t just reflected in-game with caps and magic too; Edelgard is also more robust in terms of health, whereas Lysithea is prone to bouts of weakness and illness.  In-game, she has poor Luck and Strength, and the single lowest HP cap of all the playable units at 48.  And while this one is admittedly conjecture, Edelgard doesn’t hint that her lifespan was drastically cut, as she gets to live a long life in all of her endings.  Even in her Crest-heavy ending with Hanneman or her healthcare-related ending with Manuela don’t mention that she had one or both of her Crests taken out.  Lysithea, on the other hand, is extensively motivated by the fact that she doesn’t have many years left, and it’s only in two endings (Lorenz, Balthus) where she’s able to live fairly long without removing her Crests; The rest either have her dying young or being able to live long only after her Crests are taken out.

Now what of her combat abilities?  Let’s turn to the source of where this silly thot came from.

For the uninitiated, Sophitia Alexandra, a fighter who’s been in the Soul Franchise since its very first game, did not grow up as a dedicated combatant like the other fighters - she was an ordinary baker living in Athens during the late 16th Century when Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire.  When she was bathing in a lake one day, she received a message from Hephaestus himself in that she has a divine destiny to destroy the cursed blade Soul Edge, and he gifts her with a divinely crafted short sword and shield in order to fulfill her mission.  While she does gain training in Athenian combat styles, a lot of her power and capabilities are tied to her weapon set, which are named the Omega Sword and Elk Shield.  Her younger sister Cassandra would follow suit in SoulCalibur II, actually going out of her way to steal the same holy armaments Sophitia used in Soul Edge and SoulCalibur I before getting her own specially empowered set.

(Sophitia Alexandra)

And Pyrrha, Sophitia’s daughter in SoulCalibur V, takes it to new heights.  Per a data book, the timid, mistreated Pyrrha has absolutely no combat experience, not even in self-defense.  While Sophitia and Cassandra were able to train themselves into formidable soldiers outside of their divine weapons’ influences, this is not true for Pyrrha.  If it were not for the sword and shield Pyrrha wielded (which is the same exact set Sophitia wielded before her passing), her clumsy attacks and timid guard stances would amount to ineffectual, useless flailing.  

(Info about Pyrrha’s fighting style from the SCV data book)

Back to the Egg.  Now it’s made abundantly clear that while Dimitri’s Jean Valjean-levels of raw strength heavily stem from his Crest, he’s also from the land where, in lieu of milk and honey, there’s extreme sports jock training in heavy armor in the dead of night with boulders for weights and weapon mastery.  Dimitri loves to train, and it’s a big aspect of his character.  The tritagonist of his route is also one of his combat trainers, and he’s done that job for three generations’ worth of Faerghus royalty, with his ending hinting that he keeps doing it for one more.  I imagine that even without the Crest of Blaiddyd, Dimitri would still be extremely strong and formidable, he’d just have to actually exert himself a little when saving some poor soul from a runaway cart.

(Just in case the savior imagery wasn’t clear enough with Dimitri, he even did lift a cart the way eventual saint Jean Valjean did in the book/musical)

Claude is far more in favor of covert combat, and his own Crest is more defensive than offensive, but he’s no slouch either, having had a renowned war general serve as his combat instructor since childhood.  He’s from a kingdom that, much like Faerghus, values the way of the warrior and prides itself on the strength of its people.  His hidden talent, tying to wyvern mastery, is in friggin axes, and he’s also shown to be adept enough with a sword at various points.  Plus there’s the fact that he was abused and mistreated by his Almyran family, complete with his father plopping him on a horse and making the horse ride off with him backwards with no safety net as a form of punishment - Claude tells Hilda that there was a “trick” in how he survived that.  As any horse jockey can attest to, you need raw muscle in every part of your body in order to really ride one, and I imagine that’s doubly true for your local albino wyvern that’s decked out in Ottoman visual puns.  Plus learning how to be crafty and protecting oneself more covertly undoubtedly contributed to his combat abilities too.

(I mean you’d have to be shredded if you can pull off the Parthian shot on a fucking flying dragon.  61 Strength cap my ass.)

Byleth, as we know, grew up as a mercenary to the point of detriment.  There’s no need to go into extensive detail as to how Jeralt sacrificed almost everything else in exchange for contributing to Byleth’s combat abilities without being abusive and cruel, but even if you took away Byleth’s self-insert aspects, they’d likely bear a passing resemblance to Rei Ayanami in terms of behavior and attitude - An intended vessel/Avatar for a divine being from one end; Conditioned for little more than combat from another end.  Kind of a gloomy picture before she starts to express herself better and actually bond with other people meaningfully.  

(At least she’s cute as a button.  Kinda like Rei.)

But where does that leave Edelgard?  It’s a big question mark.  There’s no mention of her growing up with any kind of combat training, unlike the other three.  Heck, if tea time, Crimson Flower, and Heroes quotes are anything to go by, Edelgard grew up living a carefree lifestyle prior to the Insurrection.  She got to stuff her face with sweets and play with teddy bears and both dote and be doted on by her siblings.  Being child number 9 in her current generation, combat training and political studies likely weren’t major priorities for her, and since it’s speculated that Ionius favored her mother, she was likely lavished and spoiled by him.  After all, he expresses grief for her specifically when she inherits the throne from him, not the rest of her siblings.    

(Even the official merchandise notes how childish Edelgard is)

(This is all after she literally kickstarts her war, by the way).

While there’s varying degrees of elaborate flair that the Lords all wield their weapons with, Edelgard’s regular strikes with an axe feel far less rigid and more informal, and she’ll spin around her axe like it’s some kind of prop.  Her default battle stance isn’t even remotely protective and quite impractical; Dimitri’s stance with a lance is both of these things, while Claude’s arrow-twirling is a real-life exercise that’s done to keep the wrist flexible.  While she does refine her axe skills come Part II, she’ll still do things like throw her massive shield ten feet in the air for a critical hit.

(Seriously what even is this why is your hand out like that)

There’s even some proof of this: In her study request for axes and heavy armor, Edelgard will even acknowledge that the only reason she can likely keep up and wear heavy armor at all is because of her Crests.  And unlike Dimitri and Claude, who can get lesson plans for their respective Hidden Talents once they’re mastered (Horse riding for Dimitri, axes for Claude), Edelgard doesn’t get a lesson plan for Reason Magic, which is her Hidden Talent, so she likely didn’t get any kind of formal education surrounding magic either.  

(She has a similar quote in Heroes that’s even more explicit about this.)

The closest hint we get in Edelgard maybe having a hint of training as a child is in her Supports with Ferdinand, and even then, there’s no clear cut hint noting that his failures in beating her were combat-based.  She’s able to one-hit KO him in their B Support, but it’s locked to Part II and at this point she’s been both riding on the power highs of her Crests along with actually taking combat seriously.  She even says that their difference in skill level isn’t that great.

(Should’ve used Swift Strikes, Ferdie)

What’s more, in addition to all of those enhancements, she not only spends a lot of Part I in a custom set of armor that only archaic technology from the Agarthans can make, but they also made her a custom Relic that’s tailor-made to her specifications.  The other Relics as well as the Sacred Weapons, being over a thousand years old, still require their wielders to train in order to wield them properly, and in the case of the Relics, their potential cannot be fully tapped into unless the wielder’s Crest matches the Relic they’re wielding.  There’s also that particular safety issue, per what happens with Sylvain’s brother Miklan.  But this is not the case with Aymr, which is brand new, has a mismatched Crest that doesn’t negatively affect Edelgard, and requires the Agarthan tech-compatible Agarthium to fix, not the Umbral Steel that’s used to fix both the Heroes’ Relics and other Crest Stone weapons like the Vajra-Mushti.  The Aymr’s specific Combat Art even emulates the oft-broken Galeforce skill from Awakening and Fates.  It feels like that Aymr in particular is the Edelgard what Hephaestus’ swords and shields are to the Alexandra family.  

Now I don’t really think that an Edelgard who’d be stripped of her Crest of Flames, the Amyr, or her special Flame Emperor armor, would be as hapless as Pyrrha would be without her mother’s sword and shield.  I imagine she likely started to do some kind of formal combat training once the experiments were done with, not just to kickstart her dreams of imperial conquest, but also to protect herself anyway after everything that happened; She’s also the only Hresvelg heiress of her generation left.  There’s also her natural Minor Crest of Seiros to consider.  But if you stripped all that away from her, then her ability to fight probably would come off as useless flailing to the other three more experienced combatants.  

All those cakes and that lack of muscle would at least catch up to her, anyway.

[myupostsheadcanons]

Books “Read” in 2020

Previous entries: 2019, 2018, 2017

I don’t rank these based on actual literary quality, but by how much i enjoyed reading/listening to them. Hopefully with Audible’s new “Premium Included” feature it would cut down on so many Average/Below Average books next year, it’ll give me more of a choice on what kind of books/podcasts i want to listen to rather than given a handful to pick from a month.

The “Top 10″

Forging Hephaestus / Bones of the Past: Villains' Code Series - Drew Hayes has became one of my fav authors over the past couple years, from his Vampire Accountant series, 5-min Sherlock, and his Spells, Swords, and Stealth books. FH is one of the few times he wrote Adult Fiction. This is the second time Drew created a world of super heroes (the YA Superpowereds), thus previous experience in dealing with the nuisances and meta of super meta dynamics. I love the main character, Tori, and especially love many of the side characters (like Ivan) and the comedy is the right tone of dark and not-in-your-face (not quite as well -written as something like The Venture Bros or The Tick, but being adult fiction you can get away with having characters named Johnny Three-Dicks and Captain Bullshit)

Dreadnought / Sovereign - the second super hero series I’ve placed on my top list this year, this one is Young Adult. This one is far more serious and deals heavily in issues like trans and women’s rights, mental abuse, and social acceptance. The main character is full of angst, but that should be a given for a 15 yo with lots of mental baggage and new social pressures. The main character is the main draw, most of the side characters are a bit more one-dimensional.

The Trouble with Peace: Age of Madness, Book 2. It isn’t a “First Law” book if you don’t want to strangle half of the main characters. Many are stepping outside of the shadow of the previous generation and finding themselves falling flat on their faces. If they aren’t at each other’s throats, they would soon have to deal with rebellion in the streets and the constant looming presence of Bayaz, who waits to sweep the board clear and rearrange the pieces the way he sees fit.

Michael J. Sullivan’s: The Riyria and Legend of the First Empire Books.

Riyria Revelations: Theft of Swords / Rise of Empire / Heir of Novron

Riyria Chronicles: The Crown Tower / The Rose and Thorn / The Death of Dulgath

Age of Death / Age of Empyre, Pile of Bones

After finishing the Legend of the First Empire books that came out earlier this year, I went ahead and read the prior series that takes place in the same world. I would suggest reading the entire series by Publish order, but they can be read Chronologically. I read the Legends books first, and it helped me see where Sullivan was heading and when he started to plan out the Legends books in more detail. (The early cameo of the Main characters from Legends in a mural in Heir of Novron, and knowing who is behind the events in Dulgath)

The Dresden Files: Peace Talks / Battle Grounds - They really should be read as one book, because that was how they were written. It is a Feast of Crows / Dances with Dragons situation, where the book got too long and got split up. The fans are pretty divided by the book(s) ending and how some of the main characters are handled, but these are Jim Butcher’s characters not theirs and he can drop bridges on whom ever he wants.

What Lies Beyond: Cycle of Galand, Book 6 - This is a “mythology” book (like Sullivan’s Age of Death was) where it introduces most of the Pantheon of their religion and corrects much of the mythology that had been lost over the decades. They seek a weapon to vanquish the Litch and save their world and the afterlife from oblivion, but not all of their Gods are happy about it.

Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash - Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation!) has to be one of my favorite internet personalities for the past 10+ years, and I eat up every book he puts out and because he wrote the books, and is an actor himself, he could deliver the lines as they are intended to be. The sequel to Will Save the Galaxy for Food does not disappoint and even ups the stakes from the previous book.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon - This has to be one of the most charming books I’ve read. It is magic and wonder at it’s finest, no need for long explanations on how the world works. If you like Ghibli movies, you’ll be interested in this book. It has its dark moments but isn’t outside of what you’ll find in something like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Nausicca.

The Goblin Emperor - the youngest son of the Elf King finds himself emperor after the death of his father and brothers in an assassination. The only problem is, that he is only half-elf... his late mother was a Goblin, and he had been in exile as an embarrassment to the family for most of his life. He knows nothing of how the courts work and what’s left of his own family work against him just for being who he is.

Lost Gods: Brom - I liked this book more than I did American Gods (which I read a few years ago). It is darker and bleaker by the bucket loads. One of the few books with a downer ending that I actually liked. I would compare this book to books like All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men-- but it is a Fantasy!

Above Average.

Siege Tactics (Spells, Swords, & Stealth. Book 4)  - What happens to adventurers after they retire? A fun concept that is explored with our party of NPCs running across a town full of epic-level characters that no longer have a player.

The Arthurian Saga - The Crystal Cave / The Hollow Hills  / The Last Enchantment / The Wicked Day - A more realistic version of the Arthurian tales, taking the POV of Merlin, bastard son of a princess, as he earns notoriety as a scholar and wizard.  The Wicked Day takes the POV of Mordred, making him far more sympathetic than other iterations of his character.

Arc of a Scythe - Scythe / Thunderhead / The Toll - Science and Technology eliminates death and in order to prevent over population and complacency an order of grim reapers are chosen to randomly deal out quotas of permanent deaths. An example of what happens when every need and want is satisfied by a higher force and the apathy that causes rot in human society and the superiority complex of those in charge of life and death.

The Diviners / Lair of Dreams / Before the Devil Breaks You / The King of Crows - Horror during the Roaring 20′s. Tackles issues as Racism, Poverty, Government Secrecy, Christian-Evangelical Cults, Nationalism Cult Mentality, Communism, Labor Unions, Eugenics, Post-WW1 trauma... It could almost pass as an adult fiction book. I wouldn’t recommend giving it to someone under High school age.

Ancillary Justice / Ancillary Sword / Ancillary Mercy - Artificial Intelligence takes over human bodies as a form of capital punishment, controlling ships and space stations. The dominate human empire outgrew the need to label any gender, using “she” to refer to everyone rather than the vaguer “them/they” pronouns, and only outlying colonies stick to the binary ideals. Think of “The Left Hand of Darkness” but on a more broader scale and as the default majority/ruling empire. Toss in a solid military action novel on top and it isn’t nearly as boring as Left Hand.

Children of Time / Children of Ruin - War destroys the human population of Earth and those that remain are the ones that headed out to the stars on tera-forming missions. A virus created to advance life forms to prepare a world for human habitation runs amuck with out its overseers, creating intelligent arachnids, crustaceans, and squid.

The Licanius Trilogy - The Shadow of What Was Lost / An Echo of Things to Come / The Light of all that Falls -  It is very heavy on info overload, there is a lot to keep track of, so much so there is a summary of book one and two at the start of the third. I like the twist at the end of the first book and that the villain is actually trying to help save the world, and you spend most of the second stuck between who thinks they are doing the right thing and who is actually doing the right thing - a lot to talk about doing the lesser of two evils.

Mythos - Steven Fry - A humorous retelling of Greek mythology. I read Mythology - by Edith Hamilton prior to this book, which is a more scholarly take on the myths, and helps if you are unfamiliar with classical mythology prior to reading Fry’s take on it.

Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History That Inspired Game of Thrones - a nice history book about Iron Age royalty. It is actually refreshing to read after going through so much faux fiction that is in Philippa Gregory’s books.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? - Children ask questions to a Mortician about death and what happens to bodies after people die. I listened to her autobiography last year/year before and it is worth picking up this one along with it.

Average, but still good.

Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet Universe: Triumphant (Genesis Fleet, Book 3) / Tarnished Knight: Lost Stars, book 1 - The realistic space battles just drag me back in each and every time.

The Case of the Damaged Detective: 5-Minute Sherlock - Drew Hayes can’t write a boring book. It isn’t quite on point as his other series, but still fun to read. Hayes is really good at making YA books with Adult Protagonists. It is a road-trip book, the main character is a washed-out operative that is getting his second chance playing bodyguard and future assistant to the 5-minute Sherlock.

Locked In / Head On - Do you remember “Surrogates”? that Bruce Willis movie where people walk around in robotic avatars, well... it’s almost the same thing. A virus kills millions, save for a select few that experience “lock in” syndrome and are able to connect to robots via their brains and the internet.  The main character is gender neutral and you get a choice to listen to the book with a male or female reader.

Murder by Other Means: The Dispatcher Book 2 - more John Scalzi! The first book was in my top list a few years ago, and i enjoyed the sequel just as much. Between Scalzi’s The Dispatcher and Locked In series, i like the Dispatcher more.

The Shattered Sea Trilogy: Half a King / Half the World / Half a War - Joe Abercrombie’s attempt to make Young Adult books. It keeps all the grim dark, but lacks all the swearing and humor that made The First Law books more enjoyable. Many of Joe’s favorite character tropes are still present and is one of the better “Fall to Darkness” stories I’ve read. It also has different POV characters each book and is one of those “faux fantasy” settings.

Mage Errant: Books 1, 2 & A Traitor in Skyhold: Book 3 - If you are wanting to get away from Harry Potter, pick up this book series. It takes place in magic school, but it is its own world and setting and not just a hidden world within our own. The main group of kids are misfits among the school, unable to master their powers, that get taken up by the badass librarian to be trained in more unconventional ways.

Dawn of Wonder: The Wakening Book 1 - the main character has ptsd from growing up in an abusive household, and i thought it was handled rather well. He would be rather competent and cleaver most of the time until he gets triggered into an episode, he fights really hard to overcome this short-falling of his. Standard classic affair else wise, family leaves home because the local authority figure doesn’t want them around anymore, goes to big city, kid wants to do good and avenge the deaths he was accused of, joins the badass school of hard knocks...  big powerful evil thing trying to consume the world.

The Rage of Dragons - It shares a lot of tropes and story points with Red Rising... just in a fantasy setting, not in space. If you are wanting fantasy with POC main characters and a non-European-centric culture, that doesn’t pull any punches, give it a shot.

Earthsea - Tehanu and Tales from Earthsea - I had read the first three books several years back, and i did re-read them in order to refresh myself prior to reading the final two.

The Secret Garden - I absolutely loved the movie from the 90′s as a kid, and finally got around to listening to the book.

Six of Crows - A heist book in fantasy world with the magic users being heavily “Jewish / Slavic” coded by how they are treated and persecuted. I might have thought more favorably about the book if i hadn’t read other books with “street rat slum” main characters. (Seriously, after spending six books with Royce in Riyria someone like Kas is just second bananas)

Unconventional Heroes / Two Necromancers - Comedic Fantasy, the humor’s not on par with say MogWorld, and has more jokes than Fred The Vampire Accountant. It is still a parody of villains and heroes in fantasy worlds. I would find it safe for a 12/13yo to read, cursing and all, though they might not be aware of many of the tropes that are being deconstructed. The reader of the book did better in this one then he did with Six of Crows and Beezer, still the audio needed some editing because it repeats itself a few times.

Once More Upon A Time (Free Audio Book)  - I don’t always care to read romance stories. I like the idea behind it however, to trade their love for each other in order to save their partner’s life, then learn to re-love one another again.

Monster Hunter International - If you think Dresden is too liberal, this takes a hard turn to the right.. replace the magic with GUNS, lots and lots of GUNS. An organization that hates the government but hunts monsters for government bounties. The main cast is multi-ethnic and they do make fun of that at one point. There isn’t a lot of thought into the plot, because action is #1, but it is fun enough to ignore the politicking.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Collection - i bitched about there not being an omnibus last year, and then Audible uploaded one. The ending is still one big clusterfuck.

Stephen King’s Insomnia - this book is the bridge between Steven King’s two universes. It is a sequel to IT and brings up the Darktower often. IT dealt mainly with childhood fears, Insomnia deals with Elderly and feminine fears.

D’Arc / Culdesac: War with No Name - I liked D’Arc more than i did Mort-e, and Culdesac is more on track with Mort-e. The virus that mutated the ants and animals reminded me of the virus from Children of Time/Ruin, even though i read Mort-e first, reading D’Arc after CoT let me notice it.

Michael McDowell’s:  The Amulet / The Elementals / Gilded Needles / Blackwater - From the guy that wrote the screenplay of Beetlejuice, and the pioneer of the Southern Gothic Horror. Gilded Needles is a bit out of place, taking place in 1890′s, and is more of a social horror rather than a super natural horror the other books are.

Gardens of the Moon: The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 1 - high fantasy dark fiction. if you really want some CHONKY door stoppers, there’s over 10 of them in this series. Could’ve done less with the manipulative bastard mage that speaks in 3rd person. I had read The Willful Child, an attempted comedy science fiction novel by the same author, and it showed that the author was unfamiliar with that kind of genera and should stick to grim fantasy.

The Knife’s Edge / Citadel of Fire: The Ronin Saga - This is one of those series that I’m always going “oh, that reminds me of [insert another better series]”  At times it reminded me of The Licanius Trilogy, Shades of Magic, Arc of Scythe, Riyria, Korra... It is just shy of being as good as them, and is rather firmly in that Sci-Fi Fantasy Ghetto and has a bit of “anime” feel to it with their magic users having ‘power levels’ and the power creep. 

In Calabria - My only problem with the book is the massive age-gap between the Main character and his love interest. Outside of that, the whole Unicorns in the modern world concept is done very well.

Pout Neuf (Audible Free Book)  - Journalism and romance during WW2. A quick read and the book really shows that research had been done about the setting and time period.

Nut Jobs: Cracking California's Strangest $10 Million Dollar Heist: An Audible Original - Not only does it talk about the heist, it actually touches on the subject of migrant farmers and slave labor, as well as the desertification of the California Valley.

The Science of Sci-Fi: From Warp Speed to Interstellar Travel (Free Audio Book) - a neat little informative podcast if you are looking for an introduction to some of the harder science fiction.

Mythology - by Edith Hamilton - Text book about Greek Mythology. Like “used in schools” text book. It is a good read if you don’t want to go through Ovid, Virgil, Homer, and all the other classical writers on your own.

The Space Race: An Audible Original - America didn’t win the Space Race. Russia did just about everything first. The only thing we did first was put people on the moon. It also goes into detail about how the inventor of the Nazi’s V2 rockets became employed with the US Space program. As well as the government’s announcement to let space travel become privatized.

Pale Blue Dot / Cosmos: A Personal Voyage - It’s Carl Sagan. Come on! Everyone should be reading them. Pale Blue Dot was being turned into an Audiobook in the 90′s but with Sagan’s death, only the first few chapters were read by him and his partner reads the rest of it (she does a decent job, and i understand why they wanted her to read it, it should’ve been done similarly to Cosmos, with guest readers doing each chapter)

Thicker Than Water (Free Audio Book)  - start up pharmaceutical company scams people out of millions with promises of a miracle machine that was ahead of its time. Story told from the whistleblower himself as he recounts what his job was within the company and how he knew the owner/founder of the company and how coming out about what was going on ruined his relationship with his family and friends.

Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - biography on Douglas Adams and the history behind the creative process behind the Hitchhiker’s Guide series.

The Genius of Birds - It reminded me a lot of “The Soul of an Octopus” in quality. It is rather informative about birds, how they behave, and how we judge intelligence in non-human animals.

It’s “ok.”

Les Miserabes - I can see why people favor movies and theater versions because of how dense the book is, getting the cliff notes version of the book instead of reading several chapters about the Battle of Waterloo. 

Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons (Audible Free Book) - It’s cute, and I spent the next several weeks humming that freaking song.

Challenger Deep - A book about mental illness by the same person that brought us The Arc of a Scythe series. It isn’t a bad read, but if you are prone to get panic attacks and have mental illness yourself, you might get too into it and make you uneasy. It can help with neurotypical people with understanding how some illnesses work.

Into the Wilds (Warriors, Book 1)  - Ah, the cat book. It is prob because there are soooo many books in this series that it over-saturates the kids impressionable minds.

House of Teeth (Audible Free Book)  - I read this book prior to Monster Hunter International, and thinking back on this one, i am reminded about the other. Save for this one is PG. So... the kid friendly version.

The Martian Chronicles - Space Horror, on Mars. If you like old science fiction, like Classic Trek, Wells, or Forbidden Planet stuff. There is a lot of zerust.

Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection - The third superhero series I’ve read this past year. It is not as ground breaking nor subversive as Villain’s Code or Dreadnought. The humor is a bit too forced and parts of it falls into “we can be more offensive because it is an adult book” category.

Interview with the Robot - Don’t really care for books or programs that are set up in the “interview” format where it is two people talking to one another. (I have no fucking idea how this book got top Kids book of the year on Audible, it is more of a YA book... it must been because it was Free and lots of people picked it because the rest of the choices that month were complete garbage)

Micromegas - perhaps one of the oldest examples of Speculative Science Fiction. Written by Voltaire, it is about a giant from another solar system that is so big that humans and life on Earth are microscopic. “what value are the lives of ants to a man?”

The Three Musketeers - i had forgotten how much espionage there was in this book. I would say this is a good companion book to Don Quixote, as it takes its fair share of inspiration from and even name-drops the character a couple times. 

Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist / David Copperfield / A Tale of Two Cities - DC is the standout IMO among the three, it is Dickens’ Magnum Opus. Les Mis did a far better job with the Revolution than Tale did as well. I felt rather obligated to reading these books because of the subplot in the Age of Madness books being about Poverty during the Industrial Revolution and Workers Revolts against the Ruling Class.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - the version i listened too made most of the Americans sound like GWB... which is funny because one of them is Canadian, and the Comic Relief character about how boorish Americans are.

Stuck (Free Audio Book) -  it is a neat idea, getting jarred free of time but everybody else isn’t and doesn’t remember. It gets a little heavy for a kids book near the end, edging into YA territory as the character gets older mentally and the people around him age physically.

Phreaks (Free Audio Book) - i knew a lot about Captain Crunch and other phone hackers of the 60′s. There is a subplot of the big radioactive corporation covering up causing cancer to their workers, and the father (voiced by Christian Slater) being in the closet but still homophobic about it.

Silverswift (Free Audio Book) - If you like fairy tales set in modern times, it is worth a look. It is similar to In Calabira in that way. The mom being the nonbeliever and thinking grandma is off her rocker, but the granddaughter knows it in her bones that grandma is telling the truth.

Sleeping Giants - alien mechs from the distant past, once mistaken as the titans and gods form mythology, now being studied and experimented on by the government. This is another “interview style” story telling.

Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes - there is a lot of names and stories, it is worth prob getting a physical copy of the book to keep things straight and to use as a reference.

How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps - A love letter to The Legend of Zelda’s Ocarina of Time and other RPG games.

Casino Royal: James Bond - the movie was rather faithful, including the part of being tied to a chair. I do wish they kept more of the book’s ending where Bond was ready to retire prior to his secret-spy love interest gets killed.

Aliens: Bug Hunt - a compilation of Alien stores about people landing on various planets and encountering aliens, not always the Xenomorphs we know, but the term “Bug” came synonymous to any dangerous alien lifeforms encountered.

Macbeth: A Novel - retelling the story of Macbeth but in a novel form. If you can’t get past the language of the original play, this would help. It sets it more firmly in historical fiction.

Hannibal: A Novel -  I went ahead and re watched the tv show after finishing the book. I’ve seen the movie a dozen times, and i understand why they changed the ending to the movie. The book is the main one that characterizes Hannibal and the show uses a lot of the plot. Hannibal Rising wasn’t really needed because Hannibal (in this book) does think/talk about what happened to his sister and home, and i can see why Harris didn’t want to write that book either. The audiobook is rather poor quality, they talked too fast in places and i don’t really care for their acting...

The Power of Six - I read I am Number 4 several years back and this one popped up on sale so i nabbed it. I like Neil Kaplan, and i think this one is better than the first one and actually gets into the meat of the story.

Cut and Run: A Light-Hearted Dark Comedy - body parts harvesting.... mmmm.

Calypso - non-Fiction, biography of the author. Talks about his family, his life with his partner, and what he does. Much of it is charming and it is read by the author. this was prior to him loosing his marbles about retail workers and becoming a karen.

Our Harlem: Seven Days of Cooking, Music and Soul at the Red Rooster - the history of Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance. I didn’t mind this podcast so much because i was reading The Diviners during the same time.

Malcolm and Me - another biographical book. one of the free books i got during Feb’ Black History Month.

History of Bourbon (Free Audio Book) - Informative about the liqueur industry in America.

Junkyard Cats: Shining Smith Book 1 - post apocalyptic action science fiction novel. the moment that guy showed up i was “that’s your bf.” and it was so... the plot wasn’t hard to figure out, it’s all about the action and setting.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - One of the better Heinlein books. The man can’t write romance and he is rather big on casual polygamy and open marriages. An anarchist-revolution book written by someone that is more on the Libertarian side of the aisle. Mycroft (the computer) comes off as rather antiquated, an AI that runs on a closed server, communicating through the telephone lines and printed paper, makes me wonder what Heinlein would’ve done if he was told about the internet and Deep Fake tech. (the book takes place in like 2075, but written in 1966)

Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World - the production of coffee and it’s prevalence around the world.

The Life and Times of Prince Albert - Exactly what it says on the can. *rimshot*

The Real Sherlock: An Audible Original - a biography of Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Design of Everyday Things - using psychology to improve the design of systems, products, and the modern business model.  It gives proper terminology for several common design features and how to improve on existing structures.

Bottom of the Barrel.

The Pagan World: Ancient Religions before Christianity. I was hoping there would have been something in there about European Religions, there isn’t, and the book was mostly Greek and Roman life styles and how gods are worshiped. It let me know where the word “auger” came from and why it was used in the Licanius Trilogy.

Life Ever After - disjointed at best. a couple that aren’t good for each other spend the next several hundred years in a crappy relationship.

Beyond Strange Lands: An Audible Original - The audio was complete crap on half of the voices. Which is bad because this could’ve been better. It is a Pod Cast Show and the director couldn’t make sure everybody had decent recording equipment and the sound effects often drown out the actors.

Henrietta & Eleanor: A Retelling of Jekyll and Hyde: An Audible Original Drama - They were going for a modern telling, but the language used is archaic. They speak like Dickens characters even though they talk about cellphones and computers.

A Crazy Inheritance: The Ghostsitter book 1 - The concept is there, but it is too nerfed. It was made for the 8-12yo crowd in mind by people that don’t know how to write for children.

Tell Me Lies (Free Audio Book) - It really wants to be smart. Who’s playing who and who is the actual villain of this story? If you want a quick “who done it?” maybe look into it.

Evil Eye (Free on Audible Plus) - told through phone calls between a mother and daughter. The whole genera of evil boyfriends/husbands isn’t really my cup of tea, and the boyfriend’s actor was too fake and the set up to the meat of the story was annoying.

The Half-life of Marie Curie - I didn’t mind learning stuff about Marie Curie... falls squarely in “made for TV lifetime movie” quality though. You should not carry around a vile of uranium where ever you go.

Alone with the Stars - A girl in Florida hears the call for help from Amelia Earhart, but nobody listens to her. Part fiction, part biographical. It would’ve been better as a biography and talking about various conspiracy theories about what happened to her and finding the pieces of the airplane.

Beezer - The son of the Devil learning to become a good person with a found family... however, most of the characters are annoying.

The Year of Magical Thinking (Free Audio Book) - very heavy on the subjects about loss and death.

Complete Garbage.

The Getaway (Free Audio Book) - A man being a POS by stalking and abducting women. It broadcasts just about everything that is going to happen.

Agent 355 (Free Audio Book)  - Do you like “American Mythology?” Like the whole “the founders are the greatest people in the world” kind of vibe? I don’t. I also hate the main character for being one of those “i’m smart, because i read books that women aren’t supposed to” girls when she doesn’t really think for herself at all.

[yonderu-bell]

Navigating and Ordering from Suruga-ya with Tenso

Welcome to my updated guide to ordering through Suruga-ya using the forwarding service Tenso. I hope people don’t mind me taking the images out, but I thought that a text-based approach would be more helpful to people reading it over a range of devices.

If this sounds like a pain, you’ll probably be happier just using a proxy service, although this tutorial should still be of use for searching the site. However, once you get the hang of it, it’s not hard. Ordering yourself also eliminates the possibility that a sale will end before the proxy service is able to process your order, and at least reduces the possibility that an item will be sold out before you get it (Suruga-ya's items are available online and in-store, so there are no guarantees).

A couple of things before we start:

•Buy at your own risk. I’ve ordered from Suruga-ya numerous times without any problems, so it’s not exactly brain surgery. That said, I can’t stand over your shoulder and check your work, which means that any mistakes you make are your own and you’ll have to fix them yourself. So basically...

•...use common sense. Read all of Tenso’s rules, double-check your information when signing up for your account, think twice about buying something if you’re confused by the product description (you can’t return it after you receive it), and, overall, use a proxy service instead if you don’t feel confident buying things from a website in a language that you’re not proficient in.

•There may be mistakes because I am *not* fluent in Japanese (not even close).

•Suruga-ya takes PayPal from international customers, but I’ve read that they no longer accept international credit cards. I’ve also read that “adult” products cannot be purchased without a credit card, but you’ll need to do your own research on that topic (Tenso, for its part, prohibits buying “obscene articles” through its service).

•You should be able to use most of this guide if you’re using a different forwarding service, but you may have to do a little extra work

•This is accurate as of July, 2018. If you’re reading this several years from now, things may have changed (they’ve made several updates to their website just recently and will likely continue to).

Still here? Then continue under the cut to get started.

First, sign up for an account with Tenso, a Japanese mail-forwarding company. Make sure you read all the information about their fees, shipping options, prohibited items, etc., before you sign-up (I’ve seen people who were turned off by the identity verification part, in particular).

After you’ve done that, go to the ‘My Page’ section.  There will be a box at the top that says ‘[Your Name]’s Tenso address,’ with a link at the bottom that says ‘How to enter your Tenso address.’ Click on that; there are several helpful examples, but all you need is the top one labeled ‘General Guide.’

Next, go to Suruga-ya. At the top of the page, to the right of the search bar, you’ll see a blue icon next to the word ‘サインイン (sign in).’ Click on it. [If you’re trying to do this on Suruga-ya’s mobile site, click on ‘マイページへ/to My Page’ under the logo.]

✸Creating an account/signing in:

On the right, you’ll see two boxes for signing in. The top says “e-mail address (メールアドレス)” and the bottom says “password (パスワード ).” Once you’ve entered those, you can click on the orange button and you’re in. If you’ve forgotten your password, click on the link below the password box (パスワードをお忘れの方はこちら) to reset it.

On the left, you’ll see two buttons allowing you to sign-in/create an account with either your facebook or Google account. If you’d like to do that, go ahead, but I can’t guide you. To create a wholly new account, click on the white button below those two (新規アカウントの作成) and follow the steps below. [mobile users: the white ‘new account’ button is right below the orange ‘sign-in (サインイン)’ button]

✸ Account creation: fill in these steps one-by-one. If an error occurs when you try to submit, copy the warning text and paste it into Google translate to troubleshoot.

Note: several of the text boxes specify that you must use half-width characters (半角英数). If you don’t know what that means, you probably don’t need to worry about it. If you do know what it means, you should use half-width characters when entering your e-mail and password (copy and pasting your Tenso address takes care of the rest).

✸メールアドレス (アカウント)=“E-mail address (account)”=your e-mail address

✸メールアドレス (確認)=“E-mail address (confirmation)”=re-enter your e-mail

✸パスワード=“Password”=must be between 6-12 characters (No mention of whether symbols or spaces may be used in addition to letters and numbers, so keep that in mind when creating your password)

✸パスワードの確認=“Confirm Password”

This next part is where things get a little more difficult.

✸お名前=“Name”=this line has two input boxes. Japanese users would enter their name in kanji, but international users can use the Latin alphabet here (or whatever alphabet you use, although I can’t guarantee the site supports all of them).

—姓=“Surname/last name”

—名=“First name”

✸フリガナ=“Furigana (i.e, not kanji)”=here, you’ll need to write your name in katakana. You can use this page to get the katakana spellings.

—セイ=“Surname/last name”

—メイ=“First name”

For the next several lines, you’ll want to refer back to your Tenso address. Tenso’s general guide and Suruga-ya use the same order and kanji labels, which is really handy in filling this out. I’ll also include the label translations, just in case.

✸郵便番号=“Postal code/zipcode”

✸都道府県=“Prefecture”=this one should auto-update after you input the zipcode

✸市区町村=“Municipality”

✸番地=“Address/unit number“

✸ビル・マンション名=“Building/Apartment name”

✸電話番号=“Phone number”

Hard part’s done! The next section is optional: it lets you sign-up for e-mails about product categories, which I never do, so I’m going to skip it.

Scroll down, and you’ll see a box containing the site’s terms of service. Copy and paste them into Google translate and give them a read; they’re pretty straightforward and it only takes a minute to go over them. Below that, it will ask you if you agree to the site’s terms and want to continue your registration (規約に同意してアカウント登録を行いますか？), followed by two buttons.

✸はい=“Yes”=click this button to finish your registration

✸いいえ=“No”=click this button to cancel your registration

That should do it, although you’ll still need to confirm your account by clicking on a link in an e-mail they’ll send you. After that, it’s time to shop.

✸Searching/categories: In most cases, you’ll need to search using Japanese characters (i.e., kanji, hiragana, katakana) to find what you want. Try checking wikipedia/fan wikis/Anime News Network, etc. if you want to find the Japanese title for a manga/anime. Searching for stuff is pretty easy; just enter what you’re looking for in the purple search box at the top of the page. The default is to search all categories (全商品), but you can refine that with the category menu to the left. The categories are games (ゲーム), DVD/video (映像ソフト), music (音楽ソフト), toys/hobbies (おもちゃ・ホビー), PC software (PCソフト), books (本), electronics (電気製品), food/food premiums (食品・食玩), miscellaneous goods/accessories (雑貨・小物), and doujin (同人).

Update: I’ve found that you can use romaji to search for many titles. For example, if you type ‘Naruto’ into the search bar, then ‘ナルト’ will indeed be the first suggestion that comes up. Convenient, no?

✸Advanced search (詳細検索): this link is to the right of the search box. I honestly don’t use it, and it would be a hassle to go over all the options, so I’m skipping it for the most part. It does, however, allow you to search by ISBN, JAN, control number (管理番号), or standard code (規格コ-ド), which is useful.

The next three setting are found right above the product listings.

✸R-18 products: you have three options for displaying adult (アダルト) goods---show (表示), hide (非表示), and show only (のみ). Please be aware that some forwarding and proxy services have rules against buying or shipping adult goods for international customers.

✸Show sold-out goods (品切れ): ON or OFF

✸Sorting (並べ替え): default is “開連順,” which is basically sorting by relevance. The rest are cheapest first (値段が安い順), most expensive first (値段が高い順), newly added/updated first (更新の新しい順), newest release date first (発売日の新しい順), and oldest release date first (発売日の古い順).

✸Item status: these appear in green next to the item’s category/right below the product image.

—“Newly arrived goods (新入荷)”

—“Price-cut (値下げ)”=; after an item has been at the store for long enough, they may lower the price

—“Increasingly popular (人気上昇中)”=this accompanies a price increase

✸Release date (発売日): self-explanatory

✸Sold out (品切れ): If you have “show sold-out goods” set to “ON,” this will appear in red below the release date. Sold-out goods will also be shown if they can be purchased through one of the new “other shops” that Suruga-ya is listing on their site,

✸Condition: these markers now appear before the price—”new (新品)”, “used (中古)“, and “pre-order (予約)”. The kanji directly after the price means “including tax (税込).” Sometimes, both a new and used version of a product may be for sale at the same time, so you’ll see two prices; be careful to add the version you want to your cart. Suruga-ya also includes the “list price (定価)” below the store price. If you see “Rank B (ランクB)” in a product title, that means that it has more serious condition issues, so pay attention to the description.

✸NEW “Other shops (他のショップ)”: Suruga-ya seems to be trying an Amazon Marketplace-type scheme where they also give you prices for items that are available through affiliated shops. This is below the “list price,” and it’s a link that takes you to a page to compare prices/see vendor ratings/etc. Even if you have “show sold-out goods” turned to “OFF,” you will still see items listed if they are only available through a third-part seller. I haven’t used this option yet, so I can’t tell you exactly how things work out,

✸Adding items to your cart/wishlist: On product pages, there’s a big orange button with a cart that’s for...adding the item to your cart. The button below it with a star is for adding it to your favorite list. If the item is sold out, you’ll see a green button that allows you to add it to your backordered items watchlist.

After you add an item to your cart, you’ll get a pop-up with two boxes. The blue one basically says “keep shopping,” while the orange one says “continue to check-out.”

✸ Cart/checking out: when you’re ready to check-out, click the big orange button (注文画面に進む/proceed to order page) on the right side of the page. You can also delete (削除) items or move them to your favorites list (お気に入りリスト). The shipping prices are in a gray box on the right. You usually get free shipping for orders over 1500 yen, but the threshold may be lower during sales.

The next page is a list of more of their site policies. Open up Google translate again and look them over. Most of it isn’t really important, but some of it you may find useful, such as how they package items for shipping or when they process orders. At the bottom, click “はい(yes)” to continue if you accept these policies.

On the next page, you’ll see your personal and shipping information displayed, followed by several payment options. Make sure PayPal is selected. Click on the orange button at the bottom (ご注文内容なにの確認へ /confirm the contents of your order) to continue. You’ll see another page with all the details of your order; if everything looks right, click the orange button (決済情報の入力へ /enter payment information) again to proceed to PayPal to authorize Suruga-ya to charge your account (they don’t actually charge you until your order is shipped). That should be it.

After your order is placed, you’ll get a confirmation e-mail as well as a notification on your My Page staying that your order was received. If any of your items are sold-out (their items are for sale in their physical stores as well as online) they’ll apparently send an e-mail asking you to contact them and confirm that you still want them to mail the rest of your order. This hasn’t happened to me yet, so I can’t say how that works, although I’ve seen people write that they just used Google translate to create a reply and it worked fine (probably best to write something short and simple). The e-mails that I’ve received have all been basic ‘here’s what you ordered, don’t respond to this’ messages that you always get when shopping online.

Now you get to play the waiting game. Orders can take more than a week to ship, so be patient.

Below are some additional bits of information that you may find helpful while shopping.

✸Time Sales

Suruga-ya often has "time sales (タイムセール)” that usually last 1-2 days and only apply to certain categories/items; the amount of money that you have to spend to get free shipping may also be lowered. If there’s a time sale on, there should be a banner at the top of the site with the date(s) and time range (usually 12:00-23:59 JST) for the sale. Items that are part of the sale will have ‘タイムセール’ written in green above their price on search pages.

✸My Page/account page (マイページ)

—お知らせ一覧=notice list (the most recent ones appear on your my page by default). The 3 types of notices you usually get are that your order was received, that your order is being prepared, and that your order was shipped.

—ご購入履歴=purchase history

—売却履歴=sales history. This applies to people who have sold items to Suruga-ya. Not applicable to people outside Japan.

—見積履歴=estimate history. This applies to people who have sold items to Suruga-ya. Not applicable to people outside Japan.

—閲覧履歴=browsing history

—入荷リスト=(backordered) goods received list. If you’ve added items to your backorder list, they’ll appear here if they’re now in stock.

—入荷待ちリスト=backorder list. You can add sold-out goods to this list so you’ll be notified if they’re restocked.

—お気に入りリスト=favorites list, which includes the following options:

••新しいお気に入りリストを追加する=add a new favorites list (click 新規登録する button to confirm)

••商品を追加するお気に入りリスト=add items to favorite list (use the drop-down list to select which list you want items to be added to by default)

••カートに入れる=add item to cart

••入荷待ちリストに追加する=add item to backorder list

••リスト名を集編する=change list name (click ‘変更’ to confirm change)

—速報メール確認·変更=confirm/change mail notifications

—登録クレジットカード確認·削除=confirm/delete credit card information. Not applicable to people outside Japan. I think.

—身分証画像を更新=update ID card image. Not applicable to people outside Japan.

—本人確認番号の登録·削除=register/delete personal identification number. Not applicable to people outside Japan.

—登録情報確認·変更=confirm/change registration information (name, address, e-mail, etc.)

—お知らせ機能設定確認·変更=confirm/change notification settings

—アカウント変更=change account. You can change your account ID (e-mail address) here.

—パスワード変更=change password

—お届け先確認·変更=confirm/change adress

—お振込先銀行口座=bank transfer bank account. Not applicable to people outside Japan.

—セキュリティ=security. Set up 2-factor authentication and check login history.

—アカウント削除=delete account

—ヘルプ=help

✸ Related Tutorials

—Buying from Sanyodo with Tenso by marry-me-ishida-sui

—Buying from Toranoana with Tenso by Memory’s Aria

—My tips for buying stuff from Japan, including Japanese stores that ship internationally, and proxy/forwarding service reviews

[lindsaynsmith]

Jacob Wohl's Imaginary Robert-Mueller-Accusing Girlfriend Had To Go Back To Canada We Guess

Jacob Wohl's Imaginary Robert-Mueller-Accusing Girlfriend Had To Go Back To Canada We Guess https://ift.tt/2JvrytB

Guys, we have some bad news. We had been looking forward to today, when the double genius duo of Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman would turn the Russia No Collusion Witch Hunt OOPSY DAISY UPSIDE DOWN with their press conference (at the Holiday Inn in Rosslyn, Virginia, naturally) where a very credible woman they DID NOT PAY would come forward to say that special counsel Robert Mueller had raped or sexually assaulted her.

Oh don't worry, the press conference is still happening (right now in fact!), because THE SHOW MUST GO ON! It's just that the accuser isn't there, because, despite how she is totally real and stuff, she FEARS FOR HER LIFE.

But Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl are there, and they are accusing Robert Mueller of rape! (As The Daily Beast's Will Sommer explains, this is very typical Jack Burkman: "The much-hyped witness who disappears at the last minute is a classic Jack Burkman move. By my count this is the third time he's done this.")

In advance of the earthshaking press conference, Wohl and Burkman again solicited the help of the Stupidest Man On The Internet, Jim Hoft, who runs The Gateway Pundit, where Jacob Wohl does "reporting" sometimes, to make a video about what's really going on here. In the process, they accidentally confessed to some crimes, it would seem. Let's watch, and then we will give you highlights just below!

Jacob Wohl, Jack Burkman: Woman Accusing Robert Mueller of Rape is Credible www.youtube.com

In the first few frames of the video, Jacob Wohl explains where this new and very real accuser came from. You see, she had hired SureFire Intelligence, which he now admits is his company, the one that was incorporated about three weeks ago ...

... and whose phone number is also Jacob Wohl's mom's phone number, to deal with a problem with her "estate." (Later he says the client hired his three-week-old firm SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, if you're keeping track of the lies here.) Sure, she could have gone with a real company, but wouldn't you rather go with the company with the 20-year-old disgraced fraudster as the CEO, but who doesn't actually use his real name on the company website?

OK, Jacob, we're with you so far!

Wohl then explains that his "client" who needed help with "estate stuff" from "Jacob's mom's cell phone" had "brought him" the story of being raped by Robert Mueller. And he didn't believe her at first! Gateway Pundit provides some transcript of why he didn't believe her:

"I am the biggest skeptic in the world of the #MeToo movement. My default position is not to believe the women – you've seen that over and over again as one story after another has come out. And that indeed was my default position in this case. I don't care who's getting accused or who's accusing – my default position is I don't believe it until its proven, until its corroborated."

Jacob Wohl KNOWS that bitches be lyin', so obviously this "gal" -- he refers to her as a "gal" and so does Jack Burkman -- was lying. (But how can imaginary friends lie, Jacob? HOW?)

Anyway, Jacob Wohl determined that just this one time bitches do NOT be lyin'. And he swears they didn't offer her any money, possibly because do imaginary friends even have Venmo? NOPE. Jacob Wohl says the only person who says they offered her money is the fake lady "Lorraine Parsons," who Robert Mueller and the Deep State invented to make Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman look like dipshits.

Wohl says he vetted the real accuser's story real hard, so we're just guessing he forgot to check to see if there was a public record of Robert Mueller being in a totally different city at the time the alleged assault happened.

The other reason we know this person is telling the truth, as Jacob Wohl explains, is because she is a WEALTHY PERSON:

"The accuser is not a person off the streets. This is a person of unimpeachable character. This is a person with an illustrious background as a fashion designer – well educated, well networked, well liked. This is not a person that somebody dragged up from some politically charged area. In fact, she is not politically charged at all – never registered to vote. Never voted, in fact. So, this is not a political operation, this has very little to do with politics," he said. "This is about getting the truth out about a person who is wielding a tremendous amount of power and we've seen what he's done with it." [...] "In this case, not only is the accuser credible, but one of her best friends who was also there watched her go up to the hotel room allegedly with Robert Mueller. This corroborating witness is also very credible. This is not a person looking for profit. These are not people who are politically motivated. These people aren't political, they've never voted. They are certainly not looking for profit, and they certainly don't need profit. I'll put it this way, these are a couple of very wealth people, prominent people."

Yes, Jim Hoft typed "wealth people." To be completely fair and unbiased, Jacob Wohl clearly says "wealthy" in the video, but fuck it, we're going with the joke, because these guys can all eat our ass.

Anyway, you get all that?

This person is not a street person.

She is a character person.

She is a character person who is also a fashion designer person.

She is a character person who is also a fashion designer person who is also a big education person.

This person was not dragged out of a politically charged area.

She is a character person who is also a fashion designer person who is also a big education person who has never voted.

This person is a wealth person, and also too the corroborating witness is a wealth person.

They are wealth people.

They are wealth people who have never voted, and also character people, and also fashion designer people, because we know how fashion character wealth people with big educations just never vote.

Well, then!

After Jacob Wohl talks for a while, Jack Burkman takes the mic and confirms that "Lorraine Parsons" doesn't exist, and then references Jennifer Taub, who actually exists for real (all jokes aside!) and who actually for real got a letter from "SureFire," which Jacob Wohl admits is his mom's cell phone, offering her money to dish secrets on Robert Mueller. What a liar who was obviously put up to this by Robert Mueller, even though he has never met Jennifer Taub! Burkman says the email to Taub had "nothing to do with us," so we guess Mueller is just a clever old beaver, to gin up a fake letter on fake letterhead from Jacob Wohl's mom's cell phone like that. Later in the video, Burkman says the person from SureFire who wrote the letter is a "fake person," so we guess he's a lot like all the employees of Jacob Wohl's Mom's Cell Phone. Wonkette would like to thank Jack Burkman, on the feds' behalf, for essentially admitting they are the genius brains behind this entire scam.

"We can only surmise as to who did this," Burkman says. And he's not wrong!

Every reporter in the country, from the smallest blog all the way up to NBC news, knows very well that you don't run a story about Loraine Parson before you even talk to Loraine Parsons.

True fact! And they didn't! (Please note in Jim Hoft's transcript that he can't even settle on a correct spelling for the lady name Wohl and Burkman made up.)

"The last few days have been ridiculous," Burkman says. He's not wrong there either!

Wohl takes back the mic and starts whining that the lady he made up is besmirching the good name of his three-week-old intelligence firm, and now CNN is calling his sister in her 6th grade class and Rachel Maddow is making fun of how his company's phone is also his mom's phone. He also says we wouldn't believe how many fake Mueller accusers they've talked to and said "Go away, fake lady! We don't believe YOUR story." And he's right, we wouldn't believe that.

Doing his best impression of a real lawyer, Wohl goes on to claim that there are THREE MORE ACCUSERS, but they're not ready yet, and that there have been a FLURRY of new accusers, but they haven't finished making up stories for them yet aren't sure if they're credible or not. Jacob Wohl didn't want to believe all these women, because GROSS, but he guesses he has to, because they are very real and they talk to him.

Burkman takes the mic and says that "guilty dogs bark first," apparently without realizing that there's only been one comment from Mueller's office, about referring this to the FBI, and that Burkman and Wohl have been barking ALL FUCKING WEEK OH MY GOD.

Jacob Wohl ends the video by whining that the people who found the employee listings for his REAL COMPANY made mean pictures of him and put them on the internet, including one of him dressed up as corn and another one of him gay-kissing Donald Trump.

Also Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl really really REALLY want to testify under oath against this "Lorraine Parsons" character they created, because MAN, she's a liar!

HOLY FUCK WHAT DID WE JUST WATCH?

Who would have imagined this would all be going hilariously wrong again? After all, didn't Burkman and Wohl just spend weeks trying to bait real journalists with an obviously fake story, from a fake persona named Lorraine Parsons, who was purportedly accusing Robert Mueller of sexual harassment? And when that fell apart, didn't they publish a thing on their buddy Jim Hoft's Gateway Pundit website with their very detailed account of how the REAL accuser was coming forward today with a story of Robert Mueller raping her in New York on a day he was in Washington DC with a full FBI security detail? And didn't they come up with a very convincing cover story about how Robert Mueller and the lamestream media probably invented the first fake accuser to distract America from the real live in the flesh accuser, who was going to appear today, except for how she didn't?

There are a couple of reasons these fucking idiots actually thought this would work, to the point that they continue to set their dicks on fire and eat them without self-awareness or regret. The first and most obvious one is that they are OMG SO FUCKING STUPID. But they also thought this would work because -- as Wohl explained above! -- they don't believe #MeToo victims anyway. They truly think most women lie about this stuff, because they, The Eternally Unfuckable, hate women. So they literally think they can just put up a flyer at the local Costco saying "CRY RAPE FOR $20,000 MONEYS!" and all the ladies would be like "WHAT UP DOLLA BILLS!"

They also really truly believe the media has a liberal agenda and will print anything bad they hear about a conservative without vetting it. They are especially stung after the one-two punch of Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh, combined with the three-four-five-six-eleven-million punches of Donald Trump and all the other Republicans who have fallen into disgrace after being credibly accused of sexual harassment and rape. Unfortunately for Burkman and Wohl, nothing they believe is true, and they should probably see a neurologist. Maybe one of their imaginary friends who is a wealthy person who's never voted can recommend one.

OH NO, ANTIFA MOB!

As we publish this, the very real press conference about the very real lady has just ended, and oh no, Antifa was there!

We guess Antifa is inside that big funny statue, because they're sneaky like that. Or maybe it is in the trunk of that Camry. SHRUG. Also oh no there is a box in the back of the truck that says "ACME" and we all know that means it is a bomb because that is how Wile E. Coyote (original Antifa) does it.

Also there is a mob there:

Oh no the mob left:

Scenes from inside:

Yep.

Also, we have a name!

But we don't know how to spell it! The name of our client! For our VERY REAL COMPANY!

We have never laughed so hard in our ENTIRE LIVES.

[Gateway Pundit]

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT NOW, DO IT RIGHT NOW!

Wonkette is the ONLY NEWS ON THE INTERNET. Please give us money RIGHT THERE BELOW if you want us to live FOREVER.

via Wonkette https://ift.tt/2l6ZCkr November 1, 2018 at 01:20PM

[digitalmark18-blog]

Google Correlate: The Best SEO Research Tool You Aren’t Using by @MyNameIsTylor

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/google-correlate-the-best-seo-research-tool-you-arent-using-by-mynameistylor/

Google Correlate: The Best SEO Research Tool You Aren’t Using by @MyNameIsTylor

I get it. We say we like learning about tools, but very few of us mean it.

Either you’re just getting started in SEO and overwhelmed by the tsunami of web-based programs, Chrome extensions and local apps flooding your brain, or you’re a seasoned vet comfortably content with the tools that have earned their place in your routine.

But…

It’s free. And it may not be here forever. And your competitors probably aren’t using it. And you’ve already read this much. And FOMO.

Still with me? Let’s dive in. Here’s a comprehensive guide to Google Correlate.

What is Google Correlate?

How to Use Google Correlate

Google Correlate Use Cases

Why Don’t We Use Google Correlate More Often?

So Now What? Further Reading

What Is Google Correlate?

Google Correlate uncovers keywords with similar time-based or regional search patterns to the data series or search query you provide.

It’s been described as the Google Trends antonym, where instead of keywords producing patterns, patterns point to keywords.

Marketers, anthropologists, economists, and many others leverage Google Correlate to study and predict human behavior.

The History of Google Correlate

Knowing when and where influenza is spreading is critical. It helps us identify virus subtypes, learn when vaccines aren’t working, and when we ought to be more risk-averse to go out in public.

However, the CDC’s reporting was on a two-week delay, which can seem like an eternity when it comes to viruses.

Then came Google Flu Trends in 2008.

Researchers at Google hypothesized that using real-time, flu-related Google search activity would allow them to nowcast flu prevalence.

At first, it was incredibly accurate and received a lot of acclaim as a result.

It didn’t take long for folks at Google to realize this concept – correlating search trends with real-world data to build predictive models – could have unlimited uses beyond just the flu.

In 2011, Google Correlate was born.

How Google Correlate Works

I’ll keep this section brief because it’s admittedly over my head.

Google Correlate has trending data for all phrase-match search terms that exceed a certain threshold of search volume and endurance, and aren’t pornographic or misspelled.

It uses an Asymmetric Hashing algorithm and Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) retrieval to strike a balance between speed and accuracy, because no one wants to wait 10 minutes for their results.

Finally, Google Correlate uses the Pearson correlation to compare normalized query data to surface the highest correlative terms.

If you’re more like Will from “Good Will Hunting”, you can read more about the retrieval and calculative methods here.

If you’re more like Charlie from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (and me), read this instead.

How to Use Google Correlate

On the Google Correlate homepage, you’re faced with a few decisions.

Do you want a time-based or U.S. state-based correlation?

Are you typing in a query, uploading your own data or drawing a trend line freehand?

Let’s explore each of these routes.

Inputs

Keywords

Using Google Correlate via a keyword search is incredibly easy.

Type in a keyword, press “Search correlations” and you’ll immediately get a list of highly correlative terms according to these default settings: including your terms, weekly time series with no series shift, and United States (this may vary by IP).

The list includes 10 words sorted by correlation with 1.0 representing a perfect correlation and -1.0 a true negative correlation.

However, Google Correlate won’t show anything below a 0.6.

Select “Show more” at the bottom of the keyword list to see the next 10 most correlative terms.

You may continue doing this until 100 words are displayed, all of which can be exported into a CSV.

You can also choose to “Exclude terms containing [your phrase]” to get less redundant (but usually less correlative) results.

Spreadsheet

While using Google Correlate through keyword entries is simple, the spreadsheet method can be a little frustrating.

However, I’ve worked out the kinks to make it as painless as possible.

When setting up your spreadsheet, make sure it only has two columns and no header row. Any more than exactly what is required will trigger an error.

Next, save it in one of these formats: CSV (MS-DOS) or CSV UTF-8.

Each time you re-open those files, instead of just saving them, select Save-As and choose one of those CSV formats again.

When uploading a spreadsheet, select “Enter your own data” next to the search button. The window defaults to the Weekly Time Series tab, but you can switch to Monthly or U.S. States.

State-based

Finding correlations by states can be a great way to identify regional search patterns.

In the first column, list out the states with their full spelling. Not all states must be listed for this to work.

In the second column, list the values. The values can be anything you can imagine: sales, customers, leads, returns, tweets, etc.

You can also use 1’s and 0’s for absolute characteristics.

For instance, here are the highest correlative keywords with all coastal states assigned a value of one and the rest with zero.

Time-series

The time-series has two frequency options: weekly or monthly.

The first column is for the dates and the second column is for the values.

The date column must be in yyyy-mm-dd format, which requires you to format those cells as text since Excel will otherwise change it to mm/dd/yyyy.

Each time you re-open the spreadsheet, that column will automatically switch to the mm/dd/yyyy format.

I’m sure there’s a more permanent fix in the settings, but here is the best workaround I could find.

Add a column between columns A and B, where column A has the dates, B is blank and C has the values.

In cell B1, insert this formula =TEXT(A1, “yyyy-mm-dd”) and copy it down until it matches every populated row in column A. (Thanks for the tip, deadcode!)

Copy column B, then Paste Special-Values back into B.

Delete column A.

Save-As CSV (MS-DOS) or CSV UTF-8

After selecting “Enter your own data” and the frequency you want, upload your file, choose the country in which the search data will originate, and name your time series.

While your searches by keyword are not saved, all uploaded files and drawings are, so give it a name that will make sense to you later.

For the monthly time series, the day of the month does not matter, and it doesn’t need to be consistent.

For instance, you could put these varying end-of-the-month values and it will work just fine:

The weekly time-series is a bit pickier. Each week must be represented by a Sunday.

Drawings

Using Google Correlate by drawing may be the least useful input, but it’s arguably the most fun.

Search by Drawing can be selected on the left side of the page. It uses the weekly time-series dataset with the y-axis measuring search activity, the x-axis representing 2004 to the most recent day, and the graph as your blank canvas.

Here I tried to draw the outline of a Donald Trump picture. Maybe it isn’t so useless with words around credit issues, shady foreclosure companies, casinos, and cute… well, maybe not.

Outputs

Time Series

For all time-series outputs, the default display is a line graph where your input and the highest correlative term are charted.

You can select another correlated keyword to have it graphed against your input instead.

There is an option to toggle between a line graph and scatter plot when viewing the data. Also, you can choose to view search activity from 50 countries.

The only real difference between the two frequencies, weekly and monthly, is the Search by Drawing inputs can only be graphed weekly.

Input Weekly Display Monthly Display Keyword YES YES Spreadsheet YES YES Drawing YES NO

Before we jump to the U.S. map output, there are two less obvious features within the time-series display:

Drag to Zoom: You can click-and-drag over a portion of the line graph to zoom in on a specific period. From there, you can “Click to search on this section only.” to find the highest correlations within just that time frame. This can be especially useful when you’re less interested about seasonal trends and more about specific happenings.

Shift Series: On the left side of the page, you can shift the time series ahead or behind your input. Obviously, correlation doesn’t equal causation, and this doesn’t even mean the terms were searched by the same people. However, it can be interesting to string together queries and hypothesize around a typical search journey.

Let’s use the query “custom landscaping” as an example. With no time-series shift, the search patterns all make sense as nearly all relate to landscaping.

However, when we move the time-series three weeks before, the queries have nothing to do with landscaping at all, but it also doesn’t seem random either.

Nearly all of them are related to baseball and softball.

It’s fairly safe to say there’s a decent overlap between landscaping prospects and baseball equipment consumers.

If you were a landscaping company, how could knowing this influence your media targeting and content marketing strategy?

Since reading Ian Laurie’s article on Random Affinities nearly six years ago, I’ve been fascinated with the subject.

Using the Google Correlate Shift Series feature could be another way to uncover new random affinities to explore.

U.S. Map

The U.S. map output is much less dynamic, but it can still be useful.

Instead of a line graph, the default display is a map of the United States where darker shades indicate higher state-based correlations to your input.

Like the time-series display, this also has a scatter plot view as an option.

The scatter plot option is even more useful here because it appears to fix a glitch within the map display.

At first, only the input is graphed on the map. After toggling to the scatter plot and back, however, a new map of the highest correlative term (or whatever you select) appears just below.

In any output, the data can also be exported into a CSV for further analysis.

Google Correlate Use Cases

With many tools, learning what they can do and how to use them are relatively easy. It’s understanding when best to apply this knowledge that can get us stuck.

Below are possible use cases for Google Correlate.

By no means is this a comprehensive list, but hopefully it gives you some helpful thought starters on which to expand.

1. Targeting Customers Before They’re Ready

We can use tools like Google Trends, web analytics and sales data to know when to target customers just before they’re seasonally ready to engage with your brand.

However, Google Correlate can generate ideas on how to talk to them at that time (remember the baseball example?).

Additionally, some businesses experience seasonality in layers.

Take weight loss for example. There are the obvious New Year’s resolutions in January, but major life events that tend to happen during certain times of the year can also trigger the motivation to lose weight.

Planning a wedding, finding a new place to live and shopping for a car may spark the desire for a complete fresh start, which includes weight loss.

I’ll say it again; correlation does not equal causation. But when this kind of data leads to a hypothesis, it’s supported by other research, and it intuitively makes sense, isn’t it at least worth testing out?

2. Finding Your Seasonal Antithesis

Knowing when your audience is most likely to receive your message can help you market more efficiently.

Similarly, knowing when and how they’re least likely to listen can be equally helpful.

With Google Correlate, we can find the search terms that have the most opposed trendlines.

Export the weekly or monthly trending for a search term in either Google Correlate or Google Trends.

Multiply the values by negative one.

Follow the same spreadsheet directions as described earlier in this article and you’re good to go.

Here is a list of the most negatively correlated search terms to “weight loss”:

While I’m still scratching my head when it comes to the environment and wildlife terms, the rest make sense.

When I’m lighting holiday candles and eating an entire tarte tartin by myself, don’t talk to me about my weight.

3. Understanding the Present & Predicting What’s Next

This is the aspect of Google Correlate where cultural anthropologists, economists and statistical-minded marketers have found most value.

It’s also the catalyst to Google Correlate’s existence (Google Flu Trends).

Conceptually, it’s simple: find a correlation, develop a hypothesis, build a model, validate it and refine it over time.

However, as we get more granular, the complexity grows.

I’ve managed to avoid learning Python, R and really anything else in the data science field up to now. So, I’ll just scratch the surface on a few themes and provide some further reading.

Find a Correlation

Google Correlate does all the work for you here, but keep a few things in mind.

Make sure the dataset you leverage to create a predictive model is accurate and reliable. The shakier your input is, the more doomed your output will be.

You’ll want to strike a balance between quality and quantity when choosing your correlative terms. By choosing only the highest correlative term to build your model, all your predictive eggs will be in one basket. At the same time, if you open the door to too many, less correlative terms, the data can get too normalized and inaccurate.

Develop a Hypothesis 

Once you find a correlation, try to make sense of it by forming it into a hypothesis.

In his book, “Everybody Lies”, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz described his experience in using Google Correlate to try to help predict unemployment rate. After uploading monthly unemployment rates from 2004 to 2011, he found a pornographic site had the highest correlation.

His hypothesis? Folks who are unemployed are often alone, bored, and have a lot of time on their hands…

Build a Model 

Here’s where my expertise leaves a lot to be desired, unfortunately.

I recommend reading the first part of Stephens-Davidowtiz and Hal Varian’s paper called A Hands-on Guide to Google Data. They cover how to clean up the data by removing spurious correlations and keywords likely to have a short shelf-life. Then they dive into regression techniques that specialize in time-series data with a sizeable number of predictors, like spike-and-slab regression.

Validate It 

There are generally two ways to know if your model works:

Wait and see.

Leverage hold-out periods.

The second option has zero risk and is much faster.

Hold-out periods, also called out-of-sample tests, are when values are intentionally removed from your dataset for a certain amount of time. The purpose is to test your model by “holding out” the most recent historical data and seeing how closely it predicts what actually happened during that time.

This article from SAS Institute Inc. explains this concept in layman’s terms.

To upload hold-out periods in a Google Correlate, just delete the values (not the dates) in your spreadsheet.

Refine It over Time 

Remember when I said Google Flu Trends was highly accurate at the start? Well, it didn’t last.

As you might imagine, with this space evolving so rapidly, few predictive models using search data can take a set-it-and-forget-it approach. That’s exactly what Google Flu Trends did.

News articles provided temporary spikes in search behavior. Google Suggest began influencing how people searched. People’s search patterns changed over time.

Each of these factors led to Google Flu Trends becoming increasingly inaccurate, with it missing the peak of the 2013 flu season by 140 percent.

For most of the media coverage, the story ended here.

However, some smart folks at the Warwick Business School concluded that the best approach was to use Google Flu Trends and the CDC’s delayed numbers to recalibrate each other for the most accurate estimates.

So, whether it’s simply refining the keyword list used for your model or finding ways to marry offline data with search behavior, you’ll want to periodically adjust the model for sustained accuracy.

4. Discovering Regional Distinctions

As I mentioned earlier, you can assign values to states based on any number of factors.

Real-world numbers – e.g., purchases, revenue, customers, returns, share of voice

Definitive characteristics – e.g., states without income tax, states with legalized marijuana

Rankings – e.g., by cost of living, by population density

In 2016, 24/7 Wall St. published an article ranking states by gender inequality.

I used that ranking to create two Google Correlate spreadsheets.

The first one (ole boys club) had the fairest state with a value of 50 and the state with the most rampant inequality at one:

The second spreadsheet (glass sheiling) had the values reversed:

5. Buying Low, Selling High

Looking for an industry, topic or term on the rise so you can piggy back on its momentum? Or maybe you’d rather find something dropping quickly to jump in at a lower cost?

Either way, go to Search by Drawing and create the trend you’re seeking.

Make sure you read The Finicky Data section before getting too excited about this idea.

6. Have Fun!

Did you know:

While spurious correlations can be a real issue when building models, they can often provide a good laugh at face value.

So, if you don’t feel like going down Wikipedia rabbit holes or binge-watching something on Netflix, get lost in Google Correlate for a few hours.

Oh, is that just me?

I was bored and found a few other funny Google Correlate examples for your entertainment.

Why Don’t We Use Google Correlate More Often?

The title of this article not so subtly suggests most of us rarely use this tool.

I’ll admit most of this assertion is anecdotal, but I do have some numbers to lean on as well.

Search Volume: Moz Keyword Explorer estimates between 501-850 searches for Google Correlate occur each month. This pales in comparison to Google Trends, which has an estimated monthly search volume of at least 118,000.

SEJ Coverage: How many Search Engine Journal articles are centered on Google Correlate until now? None (also true for Moz, Stone Temple and other SEO publications). How many even mention it? Three. To put it in perspective, Tom Cruise is mentioned in 10 articles. Yes, Tom Cruise.

Show of Hands: In two recent digital marketing conferences, I asked the audience to raise their hand if they had used Google Correlate. Out of approximately 300 people, just one person said they had.

What’s keeping Google Correlate from being in our regular research rotation?

The Inevitability of Dimensionality

In the context of big data, high dimensionality refers to the challenges massive sample sizes with tons of variables can produce.

When faced with a substantial dataset, spurious correlations are bound to occur.

You know what has a substantial dataset? Google Correlate.

As I mentioned earlier, Google Flu Trends became increasingly inaccurate, and its high dimensionality was a big reason for it. Additionally, some tried to use the tool to forecast the stock market, which many claim is impossible to predict.

While this dimensionality has likely turned some away, I would argue in many cases it isn’t the tool or the data causing the issue; it’s the methodology or interpretation.

The Van Wilder of Betas

If you’ve followed Google over the years, you’ll know it’s not uncommon for its products to remain beta for a while.

Some of it is certainly semantics, but it has rubbed more than a few people the wrong way.

Google Correlate has been in beta for seven years.

The question is whether this is just semantics (like with Gmail), or if it’s truly still in early stages of development.

The Problematic User Interface

I’ve covered the UI issues in the How to Use Google Correlate section, so I won’t belabor the point here.

As you can see in Google’s suggestions, I’m not the only one who has experienced difficulties.

Between this and the shaky data (more on that in a second), Google Correlate can sometimes seem like more trouble than it’s worth.

The Finicky Data

A problematic UI is one thing, but limited data is another.

Here are three ways Google Correlate’s data leaves more to be desired:

In 2011, several countries were added to Google Correlate. As a result, the U.S. sample size was reduced to the same level of countries that were added. This meant larger variances for lower-volume queries, as well as the elimination of some low volume queries altogether.

Although the FAQ page claims the data begins in January of 2003, none of the graphs start until January 2004.

Frustratingly, Google Correlate stopped updating on March 12, 2017. There was no announcement from Google that I’m aware of. I’ve reached out to folks at Google via Twitter, submitted feedback and have even emailed some of the original creators of the tool. No response yet.

This third data issue towers over the other two. The longer we go without fresh data, the less valuable Google Correlate is. Eventually, it’ll be a deal breaker, rendering the tool useless. If you’re so inclined, please submit your own feedback and request for Google Correlate to resume reporting on fresh data. If enough of us ask, perhaps it will rise on the priority list, or at least get an answer.

So Now What?

At this point you may be inspired to give this tool a(nother) go, or you could just as likely be deflated by its drawbacks.

If I’m being honest, I’ve ping-ponged to each extreme while writing this.

Google Correlate can be polarizing for some, but if you’re a search marketer, it’s worth it to have first-hand experience to decide for yourself.

Oh, and don’t forget to bug Google about turning the fresh data back on!

Further Reading:

Image Credits

Google Trends vs. Google Correlate: Google Correlate Donald Trump: naukrinama.com All other images, screenshots, and video taken by author, July-August 2018

Source: http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/13962/10188198

[tt-review]

Blighted by the night, vanquishing the plight by the children of the light. No video game character conveys endearment and sadism in a single expression as well as the Blue Slimes. In Dragon Quest Heroes: The World’s Tree Woe and the Blight Below, these iconic teardrop-shaped blobs have never looked more adorable and homicidal, which is what makes killing them en masse one of this game’s greatest pleasures. It’s one of many delights aptly delivered by a collaboration that is one part Dynasty Warriors, one part Dragon Quest. As a hack-and-slasher with countless enemy encounters, character growth, and a shopping list of quests, it was joy to be reminded how much both series have in common.

As a contrast to all the dimension hopping that made up much of last year’s Hyrule Warriors (a Dynasty Warriors take on The Legend of Zelda universe), this Dragon Quest spin-off takes the reverse approach. Instead of protagonists jumping to various worlds in older Dragon Quest games, adventurers from those games come into the new world established in Dragon Quest Heroes.

[caption id="attachment_188" align="aligncenter" width="1273"] No performance issues in sight despite the battles’ high headcount.[/caption]

Welcoming these otherworldly guests is a new foursome comprising of two co-protagonists whose default names are Aurora and Luceus, the boisterous King Doric, and an skilled inventor named Isla. I have always admired the mainline series for defying traditional fantasy RPG party formations and archetypes and this new team could easily carry a mainline Dragon Quest installment. That’s a bold statement especially when Aurora and Luceus are two sides of the same coin. Their complementary personalities are best showcased during the cutscenes where your see Luceus’ analytical side and Aurora’s impatience to jump into battle. Aside from a momentary interlude where you’re forced to use one of the guest adventurers, you can have a wholly enjoyable time relying solely on these new characters while ignoring the rest of the roster.

It’s a varied cast where each warrior easily proves their worth over the course of a single battle. The only thing better than seeing 3D models of characters like Dragon Quest IV’s Alena and Kiryl is hearing them speak for the first time. Just as it was momentous to have voice acting in a Final Fantasy game in 2001 with Final Fantasy X, so too was the introduction of dialogue in Dragon Quest VIII ten years ago. Hearing much of the cast speak in English accents in Journey of the Cursed King created a rare connection to the Tolkienian roots of JRPGs. Having Yungus’ cockney accent reprised in Dragon Quest Heroes--by the original voice actor no less--only makes this reunion all the more special.

This mingling of heroes from other worlds helps distract from the story’s laughably generic premise of light versus dark. Even the two co-leaders are named Children of the Light. The story starts off on an uncommonly cheerful note, even by Dragon Quest standards, where humans and monsters are happily co-existing. Due to a spell by a dark wizard named Velasco, the monsters are suddenly reminded that they’re supposed to hate humans. The ensuing chaos and unrest gives the game’s heroes more than enough to deal with, let alone reason to investigate why their non-human friends suddenly turned on them. It’s a good thing the story has its share of twists and guest character interactions to compensate for this otherwise plain narrative.

[caption id="attachment_189" align="aligncenter" width="1271"] Even with a cast of heroes this large, there’s enough combat flourish to go around.[/caption] Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and leaves the highest honours that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to. But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings and housings are denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air! It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, "Dinner, Mr. Starbuck," disappears into the cabin. [blockquote author="DALAI LAMA" pull="normal"]A given kill has the potential to drop a medal version of that respective monster. With the medal, you can summon that monster as an ally.[/blockquote] When the last echo of his sultan's step has died away, and Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness, "Dinner, Mr. Stubb," and descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it will be all right with that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid "Dinner, Mr. Flask," follows after his predecessors. But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab's presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave. [caption id="attachment_190" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] King Slime, you’re adorable. Prepare to die.[/caption] It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man's royalty of state transcends Belshazzar's, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.  

[thehobbblog]

Entry #21

Nobody’s told me what the fuck a desert’s doing down here. No word on what exactly is blowing sand in my eyes, or what this fucking heat is coming from.  Been told the “Sand” is Dust--thus the “Dust Desert” thing-- which means it’s less sand, and more granulated corpses blowing in my eyes. That’s fun. Not as many bugs as I’d expect either. And whatever Sakko was going on about, how “Fate” roams this place. Aint seen that either. Just fucking sand. And my lead-ass boots. We sat and had an argument before setting off, because if we do anything the easy way it’s not worth doing. Weylinn wanted to enchant his new Spear, King didn’t want him to ruin it. I was trying to get Lucas to submit his rope for enchanting, but apparently he doesn’t want to be Wonder Woman. I thought it would be cool, anyway. The “Star flowers” or whatever they are mimic the sun in this place. So rather than a blazing star beating down on our necks, we have a blazing cluster of flowers. That’s kind of neat at least. They give you sunburn, like the sun. Make you sweat, like the sun. But they aint the sun. I miss the sun, is my point. We trundled into the desert, and imminently Avram starts panting. I was about to start asking where he keeps his Insulin, before I remembered we were in a fucking desert, and this guy was wearing a full suit of blazing hot metal. I mean, so was I. But I’m aware of my limits. It’s kind of uncomfortable, lugging the chainmail around but it’s a lot less uncomfortable than being stabbed. Actually, Violence tore the shit out of it, and it’s kind of breezy for that reason.  So, walking in a straight line. Alice starts bitching about the heat, Anna’s still wandering around with no real shirt on. Weylinn’s smug in his wizard-spell armour thing. No real bugs, which is nice. I bought extra water, which was nicer. Stuart’s doing fine, but I’m not sure if he would even show me if he’s uncomfortable. And keeping with the theme of discomfort, we met a college philosophy class doing their “Thought circle” thing. I kid, it was a circle consisting of King, King’s brother Nacre, Some alien-looking guy I was pretty hyped about. Some purly black crystal guy I was considerably less hyped about. A twisted up alien, and a new Masked One. I’m really not great with this mind magic thing. I’m still upset about having Latin put in my brain without permission, and even less OK with having my personality split apart in that Halls experiment. This Masked one--Pierogi-- communicates entirely through it, I think. He just sort of sits there, and staring at him you naturally come to the conclusion he wants you to. He looks nice enough, dresses sharp, seems friendly. But my brain’s having a hard enough time without people mucking around in there. He makes me uncomfortable, regardless of the demeanor.  But I’m sure he knows that. Anyway, philosophy. They were clustered around a big rock. A stupidly large, pure black rock with symbols scratched all over it. Weylinn translated it as “How can any man born of earth claim to divine the true purposes of the gods.” According to King, these guys gather from time to time to do their thinking circle, and whatever goes along with that. I always hated that shit, in college I mean. Philosophy majors always had this “Smarter than thou” attitude about fucking everything. Like being able to theorize about living as a brain in a jar made them better than everyone. Like by nature of their major, they’re just better thinkers by default. I didn’t really want to get involved with that attitude multiplied by King’s regular attitude. But, it was kind of funny. An art project, almost. Performance acting. If you want me to read into it, I think it has more to do with the medium than the message. We’re in the middle of a fucking desert, and one defiant structure reaches to the heavens. This desert is literally made of dusted corpses, and the heavens are literally a facade. It’s absurdist in nature,  A cluster of earth--like mortal man-- standing atop a mountain of those that feel before him, crying to a heaven that doesn’t exist for answers he won’t get. And that moment was left in stone for anyone else to stumble across. Between the monument, and the desert I may as well have just started quoting Ozymandias. But anyway, the circle began it’s meaning. Weylinn decided he was on the intellectual level of the immortal beings int he circle, and hopped in. Avram thought his holy book could bring some new light on their musings, and filled in as well. I was debating whether or not I really cared. I thought it was funny, how quickly King made the conversation about humans. This guy was berating us not minutes ago, for being foolish mortals who couldn’t possibly keep up with the likes of him. No, let’s have King sit there and talk loudly about what insights he’s making. King--who I’m told was originally a mortal man born from earth-- would sit and divine the purposes of the gods for us. It was priceless, really. Real dramatic irony. The philosophers went around in a circle like that, agreeing with each other and disagreeing with individual points. All very civil and hum-drum. At around the point where Weylinn excitedly gibbered on about literally nothing I put my headphones in and tuned out. I’m not even sorry. Less than eight hours ago I had King trying to explain to Weylinn all about how all realities work, and how none of it matters. Now all of a sudden nothing matters, but this rock does. Weylinn thinks it matters so much, he’s willing to sit at the big boys table and speak in circles until he gets an “Atta boy” and a gold star. I’ve got enough responsibilities, I don’t need their judgment on my shoulders as well. Fuck it’s hot out here. They finished, Avram apparently impressed everyone with his wisdom. Weylinn was dismissed as a sycophant, but not punished. Avram even turned down his reward, which was weird. We all got back to the wagon, and head off. I let Stuart out into the sand to walk with us for a while. He got thirsty pretty fast. We all did, by the time it was dark, and settled down to camp. The starflowers were setting, and we were tired. And then we remembered we didn’t buy fucking firewood. Wisdom for the ages, impress immortal beings with how in tune with everything you are. Forgot fucking firewood. We’re halfway through freezing to death when King steps in to give us magic fire. We’re putting firewood on the list for our next shopping stop. That’s if we fucking make it there, actually. We were ambushed in the middle of the night. The dust was collecting, like in a dust devil. But it grew human features, and screamed at us. Which is considerably less cool than dust devils. Then, about twenty five more dust creatures popped out of the freaking woodwork to come get a peice of us. They didn’t hurt, but they had a bad habit of getting inside your mouth. And once they’re in there, they don’t come out. I didn’t notice it at the time, but Alice made a friend int he fight. A huge turbaned ghost thing, who murdered a whole bunch of the dust monsters for us, in exchange for all of us helping out a friend of his. If we don’t go find his friend, and help him within a week one or all of us are going to be super enslaved. In the meantime, we all have “The Plague” for having contacted the dust things, and can expect to die shortly. Fucking A.  We were given a rock, to lead us to the guy we’re supposed to help out. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Dao only said we needed to offer help to him, so we can weasle out of it. But we didn’t sleep easy. Aside from the mouth drying disease, being handed a death sentance, and a slave sentance isn’t a great bedtime story. Stuart was just happy for dinner. We took off the next morning, pretty silent. Shellers got fed, Stuart got fed. We moved on. We made it a good hike, and ran into another curiosity. Some punk in a hoodie. He’s some bug time mage person, going it alone. Bought a whole lot of our junk, rubbed his mage powers in Weylinn’s face for a while. Did you know wizard people are supposed to have spellbooks? Weylinn doesn’t have one. Didn’t know he needed one. He’s like the kid who never brought his pencil to class, and wondered why he still failed the test at the end. Anyway, I’m getting pretty good at telling if people are threats with the evild etection, and I caught that this guy was going to magic us to help him out if we refused to. But we didn’t and gave him a ride. He’s hiding his face, and name. But he’s got a good sense of humor. Whatever floats your boat I guess.  He told us about the next city, and how we can cure this disease. Thank God. My turn to lead the shellers, signing off or whatever.