#next can I have 3 columns of post again not 2

[newl0ndonfire]

yeah boi "trending" is now the first page that shows up when you explore not "today on tumblr"

[onlymingyus]

Love Scene (svthub's cupid for you collab) [teaser]

pairing; choi seungcheol x f reader

genre; smut (minors dni)

warnings; alcohol, poor knowledge of wine (on my part), pet names, seungcheol is a simp, unprotected sex, manhandling/cheol lifts the reader, mentions of the readers lipstick color (could look different on all skin tones), begging, slight dom!seungcheol, big dick!seungcheol, lingerie kink, fingering, oral (f receiving), multiple orgasms, cum eating, breeding kink, aftercare

w/c; 5.3k (441 this teaser)

a/n; this is part of the svthub cupid for you collab valentine's gift exchange event. my fic is for my valentine @multi-kpop-fanfics. i hope you enjoy this wifey. i had a lot of fun writing cheollie for you. happy valentines day. i love you. thank you to @wongyuseokie and @onlyhuis for proofreading for me! 

this fic will be released wednesday 2/14 at 3 pm est to read it now subscribe to my patreon and click here

You smile, leaning your head back against the wall next to your front door, as Seungcheol’s lips press against the column of your throat. He had barely kept his hands to himself the entire drive home, but you weren’t complaining. You were on fire for him, and it would seem the feeling was mutual. 

Groaning against your skin, Seungcheol’s fingers slide along your arm to your wrist, where your fingers are wrapped around a blue jasmine bouquet he had stopped to pick up on the way home. He tried to be careful, dragging your arm up the wall, knowing you were holding the flowers, but he could feel petals hitting his shirt and hear the soft fluttering as they fell to the ground. 

“Cheol…” 

His brows furrowing at the level of need in your voice as you say his name, Seungcheol rakes his teeth against your throat before pulling back to look at your pretty face, leaning in to press his plush lips to yours. Your lips were almost the same color as the wine that he had bought for the two of you to share for the night, and it was driving him crazy. 

You whimper against his lips, and Seungcheol feels his cock starting to stiffen in his pants, causing him to hiss and lean his forehead against yours in an effort to calm himself down. Your free hand was tugging at his dress shirt under his jacket, pulling it from his pants already, but he had two bags in his hand and a plan for the evening before he wanted to have you on his cock. 

“You are so fucking perfect. I love you so much.” 

Seungcheol feels your smile against his cheek as he leans to brush his lips against your ear to whisper in your ear. He could feel the chill bumps spreading along your skin. As hard as he was making this for himself, he knew it was just as difficult for you not to beg him  to take you to bed. 

“My forever valentine.” 

Your fingernails almost rip at Seungcheol’s shirt as you feel his hot breath against the shell of your ear, but his words cause your heart to swell. He was cheesy, and you couldn’t help but smile, but he was making you fall in love with him all over again. 

“I love you too, Cheol. I–can we just..." 

He knew what you were going to ask. Smiling, Seungcheol shakes his head, making you whine as he pulls back from you, only stopping to kiss you gently before taking your free hand and guiding you towards the kitchen. 

“Not yet. Patience, darling.” 

READ THE FULL FIC NOW ON PATREON

© onlymingyus - all rights reserved. Reposting/modifying of any fic, or pieces of original writings posted on this blog is not allowed. Translations not allowed

[if-whats-new]

What's New In IF? Halloween edition! Issue 27 (2024)

By Brij, Dion, Bex and Jen

Now Available!

Itch.io - Keep Reading below

If you read the zine, consider liking the post: it helps us see how many people see it! And sharing is caring! <3

~ EDITORIAL ~

One Issue just wasn’t enough!

Halloween might be over, but not at WNIF! So here it is, u a second Halloween edition Issue! Next to the regular WNIF stuff we included a recommendation section full of the best games to play in this time of the year, so be sure to check it out.

We want some feedback!

As we’re starting to get a hand of things, we would love some feedback from you guys! What you enjoy, want more or less off, how we could improve... Anything goes! We even have a nifty form!

Still looking for members!

Due to the severe changes in the Zine team, we are once again looking for free hands with a couple of hours to kill, and minds, looking to make a little difference in the community!

If you too would like to help us out in a more official capacity, please shoot us a message! You can check out the available positions here, but if you’d like to help in any other way, feel free to contact us as well! (We added a new position, so check it out!)

No Small Talk for some time!

We hope you have have a fa-boo-lous time reading this issue!

BRIJ, DION, BEX AND JEN

~ BE A PART OF THE ZINE ~

THIS ZINE ONLY HAPPENS WITH YOU!

Want to write 1-2 pages about a neat topic, or deep-dive into a game and review it in details? Share personal experiences or get all academic?

WRITE FOR THE COLUMN!

Prefer to be more low-key but still have something to share? Send us a Zine Letter or share a game title for Highlight on…!

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Came across something interesting? Know a release or an update announced? Saw an event happening? Whether it's a game, an article, a podcast… Add any IF-related content to our mini-database!

EVERY LITTLE BIT COUNTS!

Contact us through Tumblr asks, Forum DMs, or even by email! And thank you for your help!!

~ EVENT SPOTLIGHT : BITSY JAM ~

Fuu, already #85?

Bitsy is a little engine for little games, worlds, and stories created by Adam Le Doux that makes game making look easier than ever! I mean really! You can use it to make a game in your browser just by drawing it! Thanks to the simple pixelated graphics and limited colour palette you can make basically anything from simple short stories to complicated masterpieces.

The first jam (with a yummy theme: Breakfast) took place on April 8th 2017. Now it’s a monthly occurrence, each time with a new challenging theme that the creators themselves (or even possibly you) get to vote on.

Petrichor, temporary, intentionally bad, tomatoes, no dialogue, long distances, secret place, bitsy fest jam, lost media and waiting are just the ten most recent ones. This month’s theme is game manual - the theme can be the core of the game, or just a small reference. Anything really. The main point of this jam is to have fun and make something! (Just make sure that your game is made in one of these: bitsy, mosi or bipsi.)

So why not give it a shot?

~ ENDED ~

The 6th Spooktober Annual Visual Novel Jam is over, the winners have been announced and you can check out the results!

The Revival Jam 2024 is also over and the results are out!

Strip IF to it’s bare bones and all it become beautiful text. That’s what The Bare-Bones Jam is about. You can now check out all 14 submissions!

Phantasia Jam is a three month-long game jam to create a fantasy narrative game, with the theme of “Hidden Magic”. There’s 17 submissions to check out.

~ ONGOING (VOTING) ~

The voting for ECTOCOMP 2024 has officially started! To vote and participate as a jury, you must do so by giving between 1 to 5 stars on each entry page of the jam. The voting period ends on November 30.

All entries for the Halloween Jam have been submitted and you can now vote for your favourites!

~ ONGOING (SUBMITTING) ~

Disabled Rep VN Jam has a very simple premise but a very important message.

Once upon a time, a game jam was held to create stories around the theme of fairy tales… and that game jam is the Once Upon A Time VN Jam. It’s running from October 1st to January 31st.

Concours de Fiction Interactive Francophone 2025 is for all French-speaking enthusiasts. Submissions are accepted until March 3rd 2025.

Are you perhaps a fan of more somber, melancholic themes? Then check out the Dying Year - Visual Novel Jam! You have until the end of the year to participate.

The Black Visual Novel Jam is all about working with creative professional developers who work in visual novels to bring more Black stories to life. The goal is to create a space where Black creators can show their unique storytelling through visual novels.

Bare your teeth and sharpen your claws because the Monstrous Desires 2024 Visual Novel Jam is here! Dedicated to the love of entities, horrors, and monstrosities, this jam will be full of romantic Visual Novels (VN) that heavily focus on a monster may it be original or from classics, folklore, modern media, etc.

The October Bitsy Jam is here! The theme is game manual and you have until November 11th to submit your projects.

~ OTHER ~

Jams are a great way to find new games! Don’t be afraid to check out submissions from previous years as well. There might be some gems hiding between them!

~ NEW RELEASE ~

Trick-or-Treat (Twine) is all about virtual trick-or-treating, grab your costume and have fun! @softest-punk

The Traded Groom (Unity) is a romance story where you marry a man you’ve never met. @maneki-mushi

Lydia’s Labyrinth (Ren’Py) is a choose your own adventure where you try to get to the end of the labyrinth. @doublefreegames

The end of an obsession is a fictional sequel work to It gets so lonely here.

The Virus Game HALLOWEEN is here.

In Ghostship Delgado (Amstrad CPC) you find yourself on the quarter deck of a mysterious, seemingly abandoned historic ship…

As always, don't forget to check out the submitted entries to the events mentioned in the previous pages. They deserve some love too!

~ NEW RELEASE (WIP) ~

Camp Maple Wind (Ren’Py), you saw your sister die there 18 years ago and now you decided to return as the new camp counselor. @tailorfae

Dusk and Dawn (CScript) is a urban fantasy inspired by CYOA’s like Slayers V4. You’ve failed college, what do you do now? @tuskhansworld

Circus Eyes of God (Twine) is a horror interactive fiction where you decide to join a mysterious circus. @circuseyesofgod-if

In Tether (Twine) your an interpreter for a new lord under the occupation of another country. Will you rebel? @runcriedthecrawlingif

Return back to your hometown where you and your friends used to be team of detectives until the incident.... in Return to Misty Cove (CScript) @fluorescent-if

In Red River Academy (CScript) you and your group of friends are murdered in cold blood. But you were brought back, is this a second chance at life? @bratlinwrites

You step out for some fresh air, only to find yourself lost and stranded in the forest overnight in Fickle Solitude (Twine)

In Ice Cream For Love you are a bearfolk ice cream maker. However the newest dietitian-in-training has problems with your product. @atelierursine

In Demon Daycare (Ren’Py) you’ll have to baby the adult demon prince Belphegor. Hope the money is good!

~ UPDATES ~

Devil's Liminal (Ren’Py) released Chapter 2.

Crown of Exile (Twine) Vinia Path is released on Patreon. @ramonag-if

Tales of Wocdes: The Silver Protector (Twine) heritage features have been updated. @tales-of-wocdes

College Tennis: Origin Story (CScript) added halloween bonus to Ko-Fi. @collegetennisoriginstory

Sins of the Crown (CScript) added new content to their demo. @pariahinteractive

The King's Hound (Twine) released a rewritten demo. @the-kingshound

The Mighty Shifter (CScript) released Chapters 4 & 5. @miss-briar-novels

Lucid fate (Twine) released Chapters 3 & 4.5. @lucid-fate-if

Eldritch Tales: Inheritance (CScript) released the final part of Chapter 2.

Saturnine (CScript) added new content to their demo. @satur9-if

Shattered: Oblivion (CScript) reworked their prologue.

Strings of Fate (CScript) released partial Chapter 3.

Text Your Life (Ren’Py) added Chapter 2 Day 1 to their demo.

The Good People (Na Doine Maithe) (Ren’Py) released the first five chapters of Shae and Maeve's routes. @moiraimyths

Tri City Monsters (Ren’Py) released Chapter 3 for Akello. @tricitymonsters

Bridge Ices Before Road (CScript) added new content to their Prologue. @bridgeicesbeforeroadif

Aphni's Quartet: Nightbloom's Veil (Twine) released Chapter 2. @marblesstorystudio

The Brightest Stars (CScript) added the first part of Chapter 3 to their demo. @brightest-stars-if

Weeping Gods (CScript) added new content to their demo. @jcollinswrites

~ OTHER ~

The Kickstarter for Keyframes has started, and even though the main goal has been reached there are still some stretch goals! @blankhouse

The ChoiceBeat Zine Issue 12 is out. We thank them for mentioning our Zine! Go check it out!

Amare Fortnightly Bulletin Issue 27 is here for all your romance needs! @amaregames

Never Gives up Her Dead has released a deluxe version of their game.

The People's House has been officially submitted for publication.

~

As always, we apologize in advance for missing any update or release from the past week. We are only volunteers using their limited free time to find as much as we can - but sometimes things pass through the cracks.

If you think something should have been included in this week's zine but did not appear, please shoot us a message! We'll do our best to add it next week! And if you know oncoming news, add it here!

~ MAYBE YOU NEXT? ~

We did not get a submission this week. But if you have an idea for a short essay, or would like a special space to share your thoughts about IF and the community...

Shoot us an email!

~ HIGHLIGHT ON ~

A couple of games that we thought were cool.

Your favourite game here?

Do you have a favourite game that deserves some highlighting?

An old or recent game that wowed you so much you spam it to everyone?

Tell us about it! And it might appear here!

H/T = Horror/Thriller H = Halloween themes S = Supernatural C = Creepy

~ RECOMMENDATIONS (COMPLETE) ~

Halloween Scrooge (H) by Vanade of Hamilton Hour (Ren’Py)

A short Halloween spin on A Christmas Carol... and you can flirt with the ghosts! //submitted by anon//

Killer Chat (H/T) by @rosesrotofficial (???)

After asking too many murder-related questions online (for your book), you get an invite to a... serial killer chatroom?! What the fuck?

A Zombie Head Went Missing at the Party Full of CUTE MONSTER GIRLS!? (S) by MaroonDrops (???)

Half gorgon Jade Mason finds herself dragged to a party full of monsters, she doesn't have high hopes.

Therapy with Dr. Albert Krueger (H/T) by dino999z (Ren'Py)

Has work been feeling more tiring than usual?

Your mood, confusing and uneasy?

Then it sounds like you need our newly patented ★DREAM THERAPY★!

A Series of Interactive Stories Where No Matter What You Do You Are Immediately Killed by a Werewolf (S) by Luke Burns (Twine)

The name just says it all.

AL - A Choose Your Own Adventure (H/T) by Gabriel Cornish (Twine)

You are a student going on their first date in a long, long time. Only problem is your apartment is trying to kill you with your own clutter!

Spooble: A Search Engine Story (H/T) by All the bees (Unity)

Are babies supposed to do that?

Cal's Costume Conundrum!! (H) by amarvelous (Ren’Py)

Which costume is the best? Cal needs to know! Infiltrate her siblings’ Halloween party, interview the guests, and crown a winner!

Restore, Reflect, Retry (H/T) by Natalia Theodoridou (CScript)

This is a haunted game about a haunted game. You've played this game before. You may not remember, but the game does.

Model Employee (H/T ) by Nth Circle (Unity)

If you want to get ahead in your career, you gotta be willing to take some risks.

Contrition (H/T) by akfedeau (Twine)

As a priest, it’s your job to listen to your parishioners’ darkest secrets and absolve their guilt. But when a sinister stranger comes to the confessional one Halloween night, you realize it’s your soul on the line.

Quoth the Raven… (C) by gamedevillibrarian (???)

Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven', with some spooky ambiance. What else do you need?

Hallowmoor (H) by Mike Snyder (Twine)

Your quest: infiltrate Castle Hallowmoor, find the potion, and make it out alive.

Keeper’s Curse (H/T) by CParadis777 (Godot)

Stranded on a remote island after your Lightkeeper duty has ended you must ration and scavenge for supplies while awaiting your delayed relief crew.

Dicentra (H/T) by caffeine (Ren’Py)

You play as Basil, a young boy lost in a forest of watchful trees and unfriendly guides.

Tales from Castle Balderstone by Ryan Veeder (Inform7)

This is Castle Balderstone, and tonight is the night when the greatest spook-crafters convene to share their hair-raising handiwork with each other.

Muertos by Medley Games (Twine)

You are a lost undead wandering the Aztec afterlife, only to come across a strange city.

Dawn of the Damned (H/T) by Melancholy Marionette (Unity)

Anxious to attend your job interview at Aurora Antiques, you arrive to discover a room full of melancholy mannequins. One, in particular, captures your interest, drawing you closer.

Seance (S) by Alex Rose (???)

A murder case has gone cold, and the NRPD has asked you to help them solve it, on account of your abilities as a psychic medium.

~ RECOMMENDATIONS (WIP) ~

Samsara (H/T + S) by Amelia (???)

After being killed by the same hands in every past life you decide to take your killer's life instead. //submitted by anon//

Parasitical (H/T) by @parasitical-if (CScript)

You grew up under the masked faces of their Exalted, under the stories of Earth past. Rusted metal and cracked plastic; His bone and His flesh. Conflicting worlds, conflicting times, and soon, it might all come to a head.

Seven days in Purgatory (H/T) by @sevendaysinpurgatory-if (CScript)

Seven days in Purgatory is a psychological thriller ripe with philosophical musings and sensuality.

Taste, hear, think, feel, love… Run. //recommended by Dion [team]//

Did we miss your favourite game? Don’t worry, there’s still a chance! Fill out this form and we will include it in our regular Highlight on.... section!

WE LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU ALL! WHETHER IT'S GOOD OR BAD, OR EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN...

Thank you for keep updating! I really don't want to miss any IF updates but it's hard to find everything. So thank you for all the effort.

@waywardartisanoafhound-blog

Have something to say? Send us a message titled: Zine Letter!

As we end this issue, we would like to thank:

our awesome anons! For sending us their game recommendations!

And a special thanks to Bex [team] for all the work she’s done for the zine.

And as always, huge thanks to all you readers who liked, shared, and commented on last week's issue! What might be tiny actions are huge support and motivators to us!

Thank you for cheering us on this journey!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It come with sad news that me (Bex) is having to leave the Zine….for now at least.

I joined back in August and honestly it was crazy time, especially with the sad passing of Marjorie. I honestly enjoyed what we’ve made of it and don’t regret it in the slightest. Life has sadly go in the way of me and I just don’t have the time to continue you this on. I’m hoping the New Year will bring peace and with it me back to the Zine.

Love you all ❣

And we will see you next week in our traditional colours!

BRIJ, DION, BEX, JEN

WHAT'S NEW IN IF? 2024-ISSUE 27

[staryingx]

Piecing together: The current timeline in Reverse 1999

CN SPOILERS up to Chapter 5 and Interlude. Long post.

The new Chapter 5 and Interlude for Reverse 1999 has shed some light on the Storm and its timeline. With all the new info, I've tried to piece it together as accurately as possible. Here's the timeline I have put together:

Let me break down my findings.

First of all, let's look at the IDM Computer with 37's Mother's prediction.

37 mentions "From 1999 to 2007, the emanation has taken place seven times". Here's how I interpret what the years mean in the Phenomenal column. It's like calling the effect of the Storm: for the first row, the 1996 Storm reverses the era 1999 to 1996. So the "1996 Storm".

The IDM only shows 6 Storms, so the 7th is the Storm that reversed to 1929. I wonder why she didn't include the 8th Storm (1929->1913), but that could be because it was the anomaly 2-day emanation that ruined the model prediction.

Here's a table I have made attempting to fill in the blanks of the IDM computer.

Let's analyze it Storm by Storm.

The 1st Storm (1999 -> 1996)

When: 23:59. December 31, 1999

Reverses to: 1996

Many sources for this, from the IDM showing 1996 to Greta, the writer of the letters in the interlude, mentioning it in her letters.

The 2nd Storm (1996 -> 1985) [Original: 2000]

When: 1996-1997.

Logs don't explicitly say when, but from the IDM we know it takes place ~1 year after the first Storm.

Reverses to: 1985.

We know this from Greta.

"Things remained unclear until time was reversed again. This time, we all witnessed that rain in the 80s. That was 1985."

She was safe in the Headquarters, witnessing the Storm reverse.

The 3rd Storm (1987 -> 1976) [Original: 2003]

When: On a 27th evening, 1987.

Greta: "The Storm in 1987 was predicted. "…but the prediction was not accomplished by LAPLACE. The captive from Manus Vindictae names the precise date of that Storm."

In Chapter 3, we learn the Foundation captured a Manus Vindictae member who gave them the date of the next Storm. Greta also mentions a captive from Manus predicted it.

Thus, this is the Storm that took place in the breakaway incident, where Vertin was 12-years old and witnessed the Storm for the first time.

Reverses to: 1976

Greta: "Finally, I made up my mind to write to [37's mother]... ... ... She died. On the same day, the first and only timekeeper who just took office, the 12-year-old child returned alone from the Storm. She told us the time in the outside world at that point." "...The last two digits in the number of the year after that Storm were exactly her name and her number: 77".

This was a bit hard to understand. I concluded the year it reversed to was 1976, as Greta said "the year after the Storm" was 77.

Original Year: 2003

Two years has passed from the 2nd Storm (1985) as this Storm took place in 1987. This fits with the year 2003 in the IDM computer. Also, when Sophia talks to Sonetto at the geometry graveyard:

Sophia: "Four years ago, my father was restored to a geometric body on his way back to the island. So was 37's mother who was also on that ship".

We know (or can at least assume) 77 is 37's mother who perished in this Storm. The current time is 2007, so four years ago is 2003.

The 4th Storm (~1976 -> 1930s) [Original: 2004]

When: 1976~1977/78

Reverses to: Some year in the 1930s

Original year: 2004

37: "In the initial four years, the emanation [Storm] has a pattern. First it brought us back to the 90s, then the 80s, and then the 70s. After that it suddenly leapt to the 30s."

When is the initial 4 years? 1999-2003, and this fits with our current pattern thus far from 90s -> 80s -> 70s. So the 4th Storm takes us to the 30s.

Sophia: "We miscalculated the impact area of the emanation. We thought the ships would be safe in the [...] current."

This confirms the Storm has a limited area it affects, where places hit by the Storm reverses to that particular year. The timeline of R1999 isn't going backwards linearly. This opens a lot of possibilities and eras we could visit.

The 5th Storm (~1930s-> 1912s) [Original: 2006]

When: Sometime in the 1930s

Reverses to: 1912

Original: 2006

37: ".... After that it suddenly leapt to the 30s. In the subsequent 3 years, [the emanation] took place twice."

When are the three years? The Storm that took us to the 30s was 2004. So the subsequent 3 years 37 refers to are: 2005, 2006, 2007.

The IDM jumps from 2004 to 2006. You can (very vaguely) make out "1912" from the year 2006. At least I think it's 1912. So the 5th Storm takes us from the 30s to 1912.

The 6th Storm (~1912s-> 1966s) [Original: 2007]

Here's where it gets interesting, and where I start to theorize things because there isn't much info yet about this Storm.

When: Theorized: 1912~1914

Reverses to: 1966

Original year: 2007

In 2007, there is a 6th Storm. This is likely the Storm before the beginning of R1999, which takes us to 1966 where Vertin meets Regulus.

Here's why I think this Storm fits with the IDM model and happens in 1912~1914, more possibly 1914.

In Chapter 1, Vertin lists down people she has met to Regulus.

Regulus: "Huh? It's Lewis. I know him!" Vertin: "Yes. I took this photo several days ago. He was selling the Hoover Upright Vacuum Cleaners in the West End, and thought photos would help his business, so he gladly took this." Regulus: "Why did you take a photo of him? How's he..."

Vertin's response is to take a deep breath.

This interaction was very interesting. Why is Regulus so surprised Vertin took a picture of Lewis? "How's he..." How's he what? Alive?

Now I'm not very familiar with historical figures named Lewis, so I could be very (and hilariously) wrong, but after researching who could be related to a business involving Hoover Upright Vacuum Cleaners, I speculate Lewis is John Spedan Lewis. His father, John Lewis, founded John Lewis, a British brand of high-end department stores.

In 1914, John Lewis hands Spedan Lewis control of a store named Peter Jones. Where is Peter Jones located? Sloane Square, London, which is in King's Road.

Vertin: "Yes. I took this photo several days ago."

This fits with the London location and timeline we know so far.  So a few days before Vertin met Regulus, she was in an area of 1914s where she met Spedan Lewis trying to get his store [Peter Jones] going.

Judging from her reaction, he got reversed by the Storm that took them to 1966. Spedan Lewis died in 1963, which is why Regulus is confused why Vertin has a picture of him taken several days ago, and why a wealthy Founder of high-end luxury stores needs a photo taken to help his business.

I thought this was a nice clue that Vertin was in ~1912s era before the 1966s, though this is all just speculation. Feel free to add your own theories who Lewis could be.

The 7th Storm (~1966s-> 1929s) [Original: 2007]

When: June 3rd, 1966.

Reverses to: February 14th, 1929.

Takes place in Chapter 0, where Vertin and Sonetto meets Regulus.

The 8th Storm (~1929s-> 1913s) [Original: 2007]

When: February 15th, 1929.

Reverses to: 1913

Takes place in Chapter 2, where Vertin meets Schneider, Druvis, and Sotheby. Manus Vindictae escalates the Great Depression to cause an earlier Storm. This era only lasts for two days.

These two Storms are straightforward since we witnessed them in game. I won't go into details about them. We're still in the year 2007 according to 37.

The Current Year in Ch 5: 1914 [2007]

Chapter 4 takes place from August 26th to October 10th 1913. The new Chapter 5 begins in 1914.

Eight storms have taken place thus far. Here's a summary with the timeline for reference:

1st Storm (1999 -> 1996)

2nd Storm (1996 -> 1985) [Original: 2000]

3rd Storm (1987 -> 1976) [Original: 2003] 

4th Storm (~1976 -> 1930s) [Original: 2004] 

5th Storm (~1930s -> 1912s) [Original: 2006] 

6th Storm (~1912s -> 1966s) [Original: 2007] 

7th Storm (~1966s -> 1929s) [Original: 2007] 

8th Storm (~1929s -> 1913s) [Original: 2007] 

The Current Year in Chapter 5: 1914 [2007]

Random thoughts:

I hope this post helped paint a clearer picture of the Storms and the possible timeline! Cause, whew, the reason I made this whole timeline was to make sense of it myself. So much lore was dropped in the new chapter.

A question that remains unanswered:

How do people predict the Storm? How can they tell the time in the outside world?

Moissan: "Since Timekeeper hasn't reported the time of this era to the Foundation, you two, as the Foundation investigators, shouldn't know what year this is."

We know 37's group predict them through patterns and math, but what about the Manus Vindictae and Vertin? Vertin just seems to... innately know through her pocket watch and Storm countdown timer on her bracer, perhaps related to her great sense of arcanum. I'm really curious about that.

Biggest Takeaways:

The Storm isn't going backwards linearly and it has a limited impact area. So that means some places not hit by the Storm remains untouched, while others get reversed to whatever era the Storm brings. The first Storm probably had the widest impact.

This means an era in the 1912, for example, could be "reversed" to 1966 if it was hit by the 1966 Storm. That's what I'm getting from all of this. Anyone in the Storm impact area just... poofs, and arcanists/humans in that time era spontaneously appear with the buildings and such. I really love this idea-story wise we could jump around eras.

Then we have places that are completely immune like the Headquarters, Suitcase, and 37's island. They are the only ones who can consistently keep track of time as they're unaffected like spectators viewing the outside world. For the Foundation, Vertin is their way of tracking time in eras: what era did a Storm reverse a place to.

Again, some of these are just speculations and my theories. If you noticed any information I missed out or a mistake, feel free to let me know whether through tags, reply, or even my asks if you're shy. Or if you would just like to talk theories or about Reverse 1999 I'm more than happy to :>

[septembersung]

@citadelofthestars You are in luck because I just overhauled our entire chore system for the new school year so this is all fresh on my mind.

Context: this was from the post about making chores fair for kids and not requiring more domestic labor of girls than boys or having sisters clean up after brothers but never vice versa.

The following sounds complicated but it’s not? It evolved organically based on what our house needs and fits into how I organize the rest of my life. And, ymmv based on kids’ ages, temperament, and varieties of neurodivergence. My kids are all under 11 and we homeschool and half of us are probably adhd, so we’re still learning skills and also in our space making messes a lot. I would also like to emphasize that I am so bad about chores. Hence the system. When we follow through… it’s amazing. And then we don’t and we start over again (distant screaming.)

We do chores 2-3 times a day on school weekdays (or… sometimes once… but that’s a rough day for cleanliness) and everybody helps at mealtimes. Everybody gives me an hour or a set number of chores on Saturday. We aim to have the house “Sunday ready” by dinnertime Saturday.

Morning chores: this is their chance to take care of their personal space: bed, desk, laundry tidy, that sort of thing. It’s part of general getting ready. After this, the big 3-4 kids help with animal chores (and gardens when applicable) except when they’ve fractured a bone like kid 4 currently has. In some seasons the big 3 will each have an easy first thing kitchen chore like “empty the dishwasher” but not usually during the first part of school year. Mornings are hard for us so we have to get into school routine fir a whole first.

Afternoon chores: By age and ability. Mostly, one-off jobs like change out laundry, put away your laundry, take out trash, entertain a little for 20 minutes so I can have free hands for a separate task, help make the afternoon snack, etc. (Our lives run in 20 minute increments it feels like. I have a timer for everything. It’s what keeps me on task.) I expect big kids (7+) to do 2-4 tasks in this time depending on what the tasks are and under 7s to do one or two things tops, with me. Laundry is a coveted job but the rule is you have to be able to read the label on the knob and reach the bottom of the washer. We’re always behind so I decide as we go what the next load is, and if it’s your basket you’ll be called to help me load even if you’re not big enough to do it independently. Everybody folds (except the 1yo. Because she thinks it’s a keepaway game.)

We have a basic laminated grid on the wall with a column for each kid and little chore stickers with Velcro buttons on the back. (Well, we will when I print and hang the updated version.) Stuff no one likes doing I assign in 2 month increments or more (for habit and technique building) like scrubbing the bathroom; things everyone wants to do, like dust mop, they trade off each week or so. My oldest is so possessive of his sweeping job it’s possible no one else will ever sweep that bit of floor again. But there’s so much else to sweep I’m not too worried tbh.

I try to reset the chart for changeable chores every weekend. In my new and improved version there’s a section for each chore time, and separate for meals, instead of one long column under your name, and you have two columns!, so you move your little chore sticker from “undone” to “done.” Also contemplating have a little sack of random chores to draw from, like a scrabble tile bag, because “contribute positively to the family” is our go to consequence for misbehavior.

Evening chores: This is when we “get in the zone”. Your zone is one specific area of the house you are responsible for. You can do it on your own as you like to stay on top of it or wait til during the fast zone tidy which comes right before or after dinner. And it is fast, like maximum 20 minutes and 10 is better. Big 3 kids rotate between dining room, living room, and main bathroom. Little kids share the playroom. Everybody helps in their own bedroom at the end for 5-10 minutes. I cycle through and help everybody as needed unless something urgent calls me.

Meal time jobs include: table, chairs, floor, dishes (load up or wash by hand.) We’re working up to include kitchen floor and counters as the big kids take on more responsibility for cooking. Again the big 3 kids rotate among the more skilled jobs, while the little 3 trade out what they help scrub and sweep and carry.

Saturdays the kids will do a more irregular job, like “clean out the van” (which is all hands on deck together) or a periodic job like “mop or vacuum your zone” or “scrub cabinets.” We mostly discuss these jobs each week depending on what seems most needed instead of having a specific thing on the chart. (In my improved version the Velcro buttons say “Saturday chore time” in the little Saturday section at the bottom.)

This is probably way more detail than you ever needed in your life, but here we are. Happy planning!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The seductive, science fictional power of spreadsheets

Tomorrow (Apr 30) at 2PM, I’ll be at the San Francisco Public Library with my new book, Red Team Blues, hosted by Annalee Newitz.

This week, John Scalzi was kind enough to let me write a guest-editorial for his Whatever blog about the themes in my new crime technothriller, Red Team Blues; specifically, about the ways that spreadsheets embody the power and the pitfalls of science fiction at its best and worst:

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2023/04/26/the-big-idea-cory-doctorow-2/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/29/gedankenexperimentwahn/#high-on-your-own-supply

Yes, spreadsheets. Marty Hench (the protagonist of Red Team Blues) is a 67-year-old forensic accountant who specializes in unwinding Silicon Valley financial frauds, a field he basically invented 40 years ago, when, as a PC-struck MIT dropout, he moved from Cambridge to San Francisco to recover the stolen millions hidden in spreadsheets.

Working through this book — and its two sequels, which travel back in time to the 1980s and Marty’s first encounters with VisiCalc and Lotus 1–2–3 — I was struck by the similarities between spreadsheets and science fiction.

While many people use spreadsheets as an overgrown calculator, adding up long columns of numbers, the rise and rise of spreadsheets comes from their use in modeling. Using a spreadsheet, a complex process can be expressed as a series of mathematical operations: we put these inputs into the factory and we get these finished goods. Once the model is built, we can easily test out contrafactuals: what if I add a third shift? What if I bargain harder for discounts on a key component? If I give my workers a productivity-increasing raise, will the profits make up for the costs?

These are the questions that anyone managing a complex system asks themselves all the time. Historically, the answers have sprung from intuition, from fingerspitzengefühl — the “fingertip feeling” of how a system’s components work and what their potential and limitations are. But intuition can calcify, become a rigid set of rules that increasingly diverge from the best strategy.

By contrast, spreadsheets yield a set of crisp, instantly tallied answers to any question you put to them. Change the input and watch as that change ripples through the whole system in an eyeblink. If you’re adding three more people to your camping trip, will the amount of additional water require renting another vehicle? No need to guess: just check and see.

This has a lot in common with science fiction, a genre full of thought experiments that ask Heinlein’s famous three questions:

What if?

If only, and

If this goes on…

These contrafactuals are incredibly useful and important. As critical tools, science fiction’s parables about the future are the best chance we have for resisting the inevitabilism that insists that technology must be used in a certain way, or must exist at all. Science fiction doesn’t just interrogate what the gadget does, but who it does it for and who it does it to:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/20/love-the-machine/#hate-the-factory

One of science fiction’s key methods comes from sf grandmaster Theodore Sturgeon: “ask the next question.” Ask a question, then ask “what happens next?” Do it again, and again, and again:

https://christopher-mckitterick.com/Sturgeon-Campbell/Sturgeon-Q.htm

This technique produces excellent, critical ways of interrogating technological narratives — check out this delightful example of the possible pipeline from self-driving cars to ransomware gangs to mutual aid societies to the reinvention of the train:

https://dduane.tumblr.com/post/715940904747352064/you-can-make-your-mercedes-ev-go-faster-for-60-a

The commonalities between sf and spreadsheets don’t stop there — sf and spreadsheets share pitfalls, too. A spreadsheet is a model and a model is not the thing it models. The map is not the territory. Every time a messy, real-world process is converted to a crisp, mathematical operation, some important qualitative element is lost.

Modeling is an intrinsically lossy operation. That’s why “all models are wrong, but some models are useful.” There is no process so simple that it can be losslessly converted to a model. Even the actions of the nanoscale transistors in a microchip, which toggle between “0” and “1,” are rarely in a state of “no voltage” and “voltage.” That clean, square-wave line that’s used to describe what happens in a chip is a lie — that is to say, it is a model.

The wave isn’t square, it’s a squiggly line that hovers around zero and around one. Under normal circumstances, “zero” and “zero-ish” is a distinction without a difference. But when computers go wrong, it’s sometimes because a sufficiently ambiguous “zero-ish” acts like a “one.” That’s true all the way up the stack. On engineering diagrams, the nanoscale lines that electrons travel along inside a chip are represented as sharp paths, the kind of thing a Tron-cycle would lay down. But in the real world, we get all kinds of weird effects at that scale — electrons sometimes tunnel through those lines, performing a spooky quantum trick that reminds us that Newtononian physics are also just a model.

Every real-world phenomenon contains qualitative and quantitative elements, but computers can only do math on the quantitative parts. This creates a powerful temptation to incinerate the qualitative and perform operations on whatever dubious quantitative residue is left in the crucible, often with disastrous results.

Remember during lockdown, when a pair of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign physicists produced a model of covid spread that predicted that the campus could safely reopen, predicting no more than 500 cases over the entire semester and no more than 100 cases at any one time? The physicists were openly contemptuous of their epidemiologist peers, saying that this kind of model making lacked the “intellectual thrill” of real science.

UI was so swayed by the crisp, precise model that they invited students back to campus — only to shut down again in a matter of weeks, with 780 active cases on campus and more rolling in every day.

The model reduced qualitative factors — like the propensity of undergrads to get drunk, take off their masks, and lick each others’ eyeballs — to a quantitative probability, using the highly precise, scientific technique of taking a wild-ass guess. That guess was wrong. The campus reopening was a super-spreader event.

Any model runs the risk of hiding the irreducible complexity of qualitative factors behind a formula, turning uncertainty into certainty and humility into arrogance.

Think of how we replaced contact tracing with exposure notification. Contact tracing has a qualitative foundation: public health workers establish rapport with infected people, win their trust, and get them to fully enumerate the places they’ve been and the activities they participated in.

By contrast, exposure notification measures whether two Bluetooth radios were within range of each other for a predetermined interval. It substitutes signal strength for a person’s own understanding of their experience. Now, people can be wrong about their own experience — we lose track of time, we misremember emotionally charged events, and so on — but that doesn’t mean we can substitute Bluetooth measurements for personal experience.

That’s why, despite all the clever privacy-preserving math and interesting analysis, exposure notification was a bust, something between a distraction and a false-confidence-generating disaster. Contact tracing ended the 2014 ebola outbreak. Exposure notification just wasted a lot of time:

https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/

It’s just too easy to forget which parts of a model are based on guesses and which parts are based on ground truth. And even if you can keep track of those differences, it’s even harder to re-check the model’s ground truth to determine whether the underlying factors have changed. That’s how we got into so much trouble with collateralized debt obligations, which were supposed to be “risk-free” mortgage derivatives that could be safely insured and invested in.

The formulas behind CDO hedging were designed by some of the world’s smartest mathematicians and physicists, who simply assumed that market actors — from loan-originating bank officers to insurance underwriters — would act in reliable, predictable ways. They were so very wrong that they brought the world economy to the brink of ruin:

https://www.wired.com/2009/02/wp-quant/

This is also science fiction’s failure-mode: any science fictional “ask-the-next-question” exercise represents a series of guesses or speculations or maybe possibilities — but when you combine that guesswork with the deceptive certainty that comes from inhabiting a cracking story, it’s easy to mistake “guessing” for “prediction.”

Prediction is hard, especially about the future. The assumptions that go into a prediction are always incomplete, not least because human beings have free will and agency and can change the circumstances that go into the assumptions. The very best science fiction embodies this principle. I’m thinking here of the likes of Ada Palmer, an historian and sf writer whose deep historical knowledge informs her sf and her pedagogy at the University of Chicago:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#terra-ignota

Palmer is famous — even notorious — for her annual four-week undergraduate LARP in which students re-enact the election of the Medicis’ Pope. It’s four weeks of alliances, betrayal and skullduggery by the students, each of whom is enacting the agenda of a real-world Cardinal or other power-broker.

The final investiture is done in full costume at the university’s massive faux-gothic cathedral, and going into that climax, of the four candidates, two are always the same, because the great forces of history are bearing down on that moment to ensure that the champions of the two dominant power-blocs are in the running. But the other two? They’re never the same — because the agency of the actors jockeying for power change the outcome, every single time, in absolutely unpredictable ways.

Like any other model, sf is wrong, but sometimes useful. Thinking about jetpacks and flying cars is “useful” insofar as it gets us to interrogate how we think about cities, about mobility, about privilege and geography. But it’s not a prediction. Worse, the endless tales in which flying cars are presented a fait accompli is a gift to grifters raising money for the objectively stupid idea of flying cars. After all, we all know flying cars are inevitable, so it’s basically a risk-free investment, right? With flying cars just around the corner, wouldn’t it be irresponsible to build a city with mass-transit instead of helipads?

There’s a whole range of thought-experiments that got transformed into predictions and then certainties: self-driving cars, “general artificial intelligence,” infinite life-extension, space colonization, faster-than-light travel, cryptocurrency, etc etc.

Spreadsheets don’t just lead their users astray — they also trick their creators. The very same people who transform wild-assed guesses about hairy, unknowable outcomes into neat mathematical relationships are perfectly capable of acting as if those relationships are based on fact, rather than supposition. The Great Financial Crisis wasn’t just about people who didn’t understand the uncertainty in the hedging algorithm going all-in — the people who made those models were also fooled by them.

It’s very easy to get high on your own supply. I’ll never forget the sf convention panel I was on with Robert Silverberg about sf’s supposed predictive value, where the subject of Robert A Heinlein came up, and Silverberg sniffed, and, in that trademark bone-dry way of his, said, “Ah yes, ‘Robert A Timeline.’”

Sf isn’t just full of writers who mistake their suppositions for predictions — the canon is full of tales in which brilliant people can and do predict the future, with near-perfection. Think of Hari Seldon, the hero of Asimov’s Foundation series, who is able to forecast the future several millennia out. Or Heinlein’s first-ever story, “Life-Line,” in which a genius inventor destroys the insurance industry by creating a computer that can predict your exact date of death using statistical methods.

There’s something wild about this phenomenon, in which writers make stuff up and then assume that anything that cool must also be accurate. One tantalizing explanation for this comes from EL Doctorow’s (no relation) essay “Genesis,” from his 2007 collection “The Creationists”:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/41520/creationists-by-e-l-doctorow/

Doctorow tells the history of the Genesis story, which the Hebrews plagiarized from the Babylonians. In Doctorow’s telling, the Babylonian mystics who made up the Genesis story assumed that it had to be true, because they considered themselves to be nowhere near imaginative enough to have come up with something as great as Genesis. An idea that amazing had to be divinely inspired.

I like this because it’s a story of being led astray by humility, rather than hubris.

Imaginative exercises — whether or not they are assisted by mathematical models and self-updating digital spreadsheets — are powerful tools for thinking about the future we want, and to guide our attempts to make that future come true. All models are wrong but some models are useful, of course!

I’m on tour with Red Team Blues right now — I’m writing this post while waiting for my flight to San Francisco, where I’m appearing at the public library with Annalee Newitz tomorrow (4/30) at 2PM:

https://sfpl.org/events/2023/04/30/author-cory-doctorow-and-annalee-newitz-conversation-red-team-blues

One especially fun stop on this tour will be on May 5, at the Books, Inc in Mountain View, where I’ll be talking about the book with Mitch Kapor, the creator of Lotus 1–2–3, who knows a thing or two about spreadsheets:

https://www.booksinc.net/event/cory-doctorow-books-inc-mountain-view

The tour is bringing me to Berkeley, Vancouver, Calgary, DC, Gaithersburg, Toronto, PDX, Nottingham, Hay, London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Berlin — I hope to see you!

https://craphound.com/novels/redteamblues/2023/04/26/the-red-team-blues-tour-burbank-sf-pdx-berkeley-yvr-edmonton-gaithersburg-dc-toronto-hay-oxford-nottingham-manchester-london-edinburgh-london-berlin/

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: A Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet with green-on-black, low-res type; its center has an irregular vignette revealing a space station.]

[letsplaydcttrpg]

Wheel of Destruction pt 29 - The Tar Pit Tango

Start this module here!

Previous part here!

Links to all posts for this module in the pinned post!

Time for SCIENCE. We have a 7 for our Science skill and the check is a 6, so we need to roll at least a 9. We have a +2 from the professor and a +2 from our last movement roll, so we actually only need a 5!

And a 13 (plus 4, so 17) will do it!

Homo Erectus [sic] appear [sic] a bit too erect.

We get a +1 to any combat rolls we make at the Tar Pit, and we can't be surprised! Gee, I wonder what will happen...

The tar is bubbling and the sulphurous ooze fills the air with an overpowering stench. One sabre-toothed tiger seems permanently trapped in the tar. Another stands on an overhanging rock, poised to attack. A Neanderthal man stands to the side, looking on dispassionately...until he swings his club in an arc worthy of Pete Rose. It's aimed at your midsection.

Normally this would be a surprise attack, which would be Bad News for us, but we just averted that! (Also, side note: Neanderthal and Homo erectus are not the same thing. Which is extra funny when we specifically did a SCIENCE roll.)

Anyway, we're in a fight now! Good thing we got those bonuses! Our enemy is DEX 5 STR 4 INT 6 BODY 3, so he's not quite as tough as us but he's not as much of a pushover as the previous goons we've fought. We win on Initiative because ours is a +22 to our roll and they didn't give him one so on a single d10 roll he can't possibly beat us. Too bad about that surprise attack, buddy.

Our first maneuver is to try and dodge his attack, which uses our Acrobat skill of 10 (because we're Dick Grayson) vs the OV of 6, so we need at least a 7. We got double 7! It hasn't come up until now, but in this game rolling doubles means you get to roll again and add them together, so it's sort of this game's equivalent of a nat 20. Our second roll is a 10, so we got a total of 24! Man, too bad this isn't one of the checks where the amount you succeed by really matters, we would've wrecked this dude. Instead I'm imagining we not only dodge his attack but really embarrass him in the process.

Having successfully dodged this initial attack we're now just in a fight. It's gonna be a bunch of dice rolls, but I'll try to summarize things succinctly!

First attack, DEX 7 vs DEX 5, we need 9 or higher and we got 14, which means we get two column shifts. Our STR to determine effect is 4 v 4, but with 2 column shifts that means we get a full 4 result APs, which means that's 4 off of his BODY of 3 which means he's unconscious.

So I guess I didn't need to worry so much about succinct combat summary, huh. Good job, Dick!

The Tiger leaps.

Well dang. It's Acrobat 10 vs its DEX of 6, and it's a really good thing we got that unable to be surprised bonus so we only need a 7 instead of an 11. Although we did get an 11!

If it misses, it lands in the pit and becomes hopelessly embedded. The Neanderthal, not surprisingly, is gone.

And we're back to the map to keep exploring! Good job not dying in a tar pit, Dick! We got a 4 on our movement roll, so we can go directly to the Savanna and it's pedestrian path or the Administration Building, or we can start heading for one of the more distant locations.

(There are SO MANY redirects to the section for "You're stuck in the tar pit, good luck", this was very stressful for me)

[k-hippie]

CHAMPIGNAC CC ADDENDUM FILES PART 2

Yesterday, we talked about CC, mainly ATS, Votenga Medieval stuff and some lots creations : all those fantastic things which give relief and vibrance to a Sims 3 World :)

Today, let's talk about ANTS ... Absolute Necessary Things and Stuff to fully enjoy Champignac, beginning with Cyclone Sue Build Stuff ...

They are not numerous but ESSENTIAL to all our Worlds : Lost Cove - Oaksoak Hollow - Eureka Valley and now, Champignac ;)

Set Scaffolding, Truss and Steel Girders (Columns)

Set Porta-Potty portable toilets

Set Barbed and Chickenwire Fences

Set Alpine Roofline 45-degree Windows

Set Useful Walls

Alcatraz door + Alcatraz window

Metal Lattice Sliding Door

Still, from TSR, there is the Linea Natura Arch by BuffSum

In addition, don't forget the beautiful himalayan poppy field by @nilxis ( by Let's Lolalule Things )

And that's all for our ANTS build stuff :D

As You can see in the first picture above, no more problem with the alpha of the trees in the distant terrain \o/

We used a small override file : Smaller Eiffel Tower by Qahne @ MTS which creates 2 advantages, a smaller Eiffel Tower and the fix for the broken alpha settings of trees in distant terrain.

We discovered too on a NRAAS thread another cool modding file : ScooterOverride by Consort which brings teens to drive only scooters ... I mean the mythic Kenspa !

When a vacation world such as Champs les Sims becomes a fully suburbia world, it loses the Kenspa as main vehicle of the town. So we tried to minimize as much as possible this side effect and we added different Kenspa in our files. Of course, you may keep or not this choice ;) Up to you !

Now, there are other essential files we used ... such as : the Romanesque Connecting Column Arches Set by TheJim07 @ MTS we used in different locations of Champignac and bring A LOT to get really cool ambiant places.

Related to the Store stuff, we do not use much and anyway, you don't have to worry about, we'll provide a folder with the necessary files. Clean and updated. Except for the Al Fresco Market.

By the way, we'll update very soon every CC folder we provide on our website for each of our S3 Worlds : all cleaned and updated too.

To finish with this post, let us show you one of the biggest community lot of Champignac : Le Monastère which is too the Winery of the town ( of course there is a Winery ) ;)

This is a Sims Republic 2015 creation we modified a bit inside to suit Champignac ...

That's all folks ... for the moment. We are aware this kind of post is not as popular as the ones with a download link ... But that's wrong. Creating a world with a unique ambiance is only possible because of all these creations and creators. Maybe as Sims 3 players you already knows this stuff and so, not so interested to see it, again ... but wait and see, we tried very much to organize all those files with love and harmony ...

Next post : Champignac World ( aka Sims de Nimes ) and all the download links ;)

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

1, 22, and 30!

1: What's something new that you tried in a fic this year? How did it turn out and would you do it again?

I'm going to steal your answer here and say that this was my first go at some pure, self-indulgent fluff. My other (non-stolen) answer is that it was my first successful go at plotting a fic as I went, since The Hedgehog's Dilemma kept unexpectedly expanding and evolving as I wrote. I'm honestly really proud of how the fic turned out and there's not much I would change if I could go back and do it over, but while it's nice to know that I can plot and write at the same time, it's not something I'm likely to do again (at least not on purpose).

22: Share an excerpt from your favourite scene

Posted excerpt from chapter 3 of The Hedgehog's Dilemma:

Somehow, he found himself on the floor of the toilets for the second time in less than a day, wedged against the cool metal of the stall, tears tracing itchy tracks down his cheeks. His throat felt thick and clogged; the tile dug at him hard through the thin material of his shorts. His head ached and so did his stomach, and now his nose was running and when he wiped at his face with his sleeves those were wet, too, and itchy, clinging to his skin, and why the fuck did everyone have to be so loud he could hear them all the way through the walls, footsteps and voices all layered over each other, stabbing into his ears.

Unposted excerpt from chapter 2 of Flightless Birds:

They walked around the block, Roy with one crutch for stability as he inched forward, red-faced and growling under his breath at the glacial pace while Jamie jogged backwards ahead of him, ‘cause he weren’t much good at walking slow. “That’s proper hideous,” Keeley said, squinting at a house across the way. “Beige siding? Eugh.” She shuddered theatrically. “I dunno, it’s got character,” Jamie said, to be contrary. It really was proper hideous, all fake-Greek columns and black shutters and trimmed round hedges. “Draws the eye, like.” He wasn’t quite sure what that meant, honestly, but Keeley said it all the time while she was setting up photoshoots. “Babe, I love you, but you’re ruining my reputation, here! How’s anyone supposed to trust my taste when my favourite acolyte’s going around complimenting that horror?” She danced around Roy to shove him lightly in the shoulder. “Excuse me, I’ve got great taste!” “Yeah, for a fucking toddler,” Roy said. “I’m with Keeley on this one. That’s a fucking monstrosity.” “Ha!” Keeley shouted, arms held up in victory. “Alright, Royo, you choose the next one.”

30: What's something you want to write in 2024?

I have a list of like six or seven projects in my ideas folder, but the ones I'm most looking forward to are Wrong Answers Only (the Ted timeloop fic, because I love timeloops) and Jamie's Autism Crisis, which has expanded in concept to also be my post-season 3 Jamie reconnecting with his dad is a terrible idea, actually fic.

[atthebell-moved]

Updated QSMP AO3 Work Language Stats-- as of August 13th, 2023

June 6 2023 stats, July 9 2023 stats

Another QSMP language stats update!! Not too much to update on this time, but still some nice numbers.

Fun tidbits/disclaimers to start:

QSMP has 3034 works as of today!! That's 887 more works from last month's 2147, about a 41.3% increase.

French fics have doubled from 5 works to 10!

PT Portuguese has now been tagged in two works!

We've dropped one Mandarin fic, likely due to deletion.

I used the same methodology as last time, which was to manually filter by each language I expected to have works, then do the math to make sure I wasn't missing any and check likely new languages. You can check the original June 6 post to see more about that.

I won't be including overall AO3 stats, as the monthly difference for them is negligible imo. In the future, if I continue to do this for the next year or so, I'll likely pick it up again to note the difference in the last year, or perhaps make a new series of posts about language statistics across the site rather than fandom specific.

Not much change this month! Most numbers have stayed fairly steady; I won't have much analysis as a result.

The numbers:

[Image Description: A table with three columns; the first lists languages, the second the number of works, and the third the percentage of total works. For the languages column, each language is listed first in that language and then in English in parentheses, and English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and French are all color-coded to indicate that they are spoken on the server. End ID.]

English has 2496 works and 82.27% of total works in QSMP

Spanish has 406 works and 13.38% of total works.

Brazilian Portuguese has 113 works and 3.72% of total works.

French has 10 works and 3.72% of total works-- the number of French fics has doubled since last month, although it's still quite low in comparison to the other languages spoken on the server.

New entry! European Portuguese now has 2 works and 0.07% of total works.

Mandarin has 2 works and 0.07% of total works; it previously had 3 works, one was likely deleted.

Russian has 2 works and 0.07% of total works, no change in number from last month.

The last three languages, Latin, Esperanto, and Malaysian Malay, all have 1 work and 0.03% of total works respectively, maintaining their numbers from last month as well.

Observations:

Like I said at the start, not much change here. The most impressive things to note are that French has doubled in number and European Portuguese now has works, neither of which are surprising. Kudos to those authors regardless, glad to see them gaining fics!!

I'll add my usual note that the stats for QSMP are interesting to compare to overall AO3 stats for the reason that we have far more Spanish and Portuguese works than the rest of the site. If you want to see numbers on total site stats, check out the previous stats posts to see those.

And that's pretty much all I've got!! I'll likely continue to post these every month, but when there's not a ton of changes they'll likely be short little posts like this with mostly just the numbers. Again, here's last month's stats and the 6/6/2023 stats. As always, if you have any data/observations on other fanfiction websites, feel free to let me know!

[binniesoob]

— SPIN OFF: FROM THE WITNESS PROLOGUE ANALYSIS AND PREDICTIONS

1) YEOSANG

We start our prologue video with a flashback of Yeosang turning the Cromer in Deja Vu aka Yeosang sacrificing himself to save Ateez from the Android Guardians, moving them in another dimension and timeline (if confused read here). The fact that this is included, leads me to think that Yeosang in chains symbolises him being imprisoned in the Android Guardian's Gallery.

Paradigm mv seems to reference to imprisoned Yeosang as well, as I said here.

BUT, it could also mean that he's going to be in danger again in the near future 🥲 (let's hope not)

2) THE BELLS?

These metal spheres appear in the sky. They are similar to those in Guerrila mv and, because of the radio sounds in the background of the video as well, I'm thinking they could be big speakers that diffuse the sound of bells to awake the population of Strictland and announce the arrival of Ateez as the new fighters leading the revolution.

Why bells? Because bells sounds were included in the deleted teaser for Spin off: From the Witness, and this prologue says:

"the great sound of a bell resonated through the air"

As twitter Atinys pointed out, they also seem those used during the Ateez concerts, that looked like moons 👀 and we know full moons = being able to use the Cromer to move.

But since in the prologue these spheres are with the black pirates at the mall, i'd stick to the speaker/bell rather than the moon, for now at least.

3) GRAVITY AND YUNHO

"the world lost gravity"

Yunho is seen on his knees on the floor that's covered in sand with three wooden columns: Yunho is inside the Cromer and the sand is running backwards.

We've already seen sand inside the Cromer running backwards and objects floating: in the Fever 1 Diary Film when Hongjoong was given the Cromer by Halateez Hongjoong.

The setting Yunho is in next seems the same as the Answer mv: the windows, the chandelier, the chairs... but why is he there?

As we can see, the clip is distorted and we said that he is shown inside the Cromer: he used it and had a vision/premonition of Answer, like it happened to Ateez in the XR Show Fever: the eXtended edition, when they find themselves in the desert as Halateez before they are captured by the Android Guardians.

Yunho having a premonition of Answer could be connected to his importance and role in Ateez's escape to Utopia (see my Spin Off: From the Witness premonitions post).

4) MINGI AND THE NOTEBOOK

Mingi is the one finding the notebook of the witness!! We don't know yet who's the witness or what he tells in his notebook...

(this is from the ktown4u product page)

Another interesting detail about the notebook is that throughout the Prologue we can hear pages being turned: are the sentences in the video from the notebook?

-> Continues in reblog because I can't put any more pictures 🥲

[melsaywhat]

I posted 27 times in 2022

That's 27 more posts than 2021!

14 posts created (52%)

13 posts reblogged (48%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@the-real-commasplice

@burythesememories

@sims4dictionary

@irrelephantsims

@chromaglitchgaming

I tagged 20 of my posts in 2022

Only 26% of my posts had no tags

#thesims4 - 10 posts

#showusyourbuilds - 5 posts

#twexit - 3 posts

#makemymenu - 2 posts

#tumblr milestone - 2 posts

#twitter - 2 posts

#nomnom - 2 posts

#strawpoll - 2 posts

#vote - 2 posts

#poll - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 32 characters

#hashtags aren't the same as tags

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Twitter | CounterSocial | Mastodon Feature Comparison

Here are some of my observations of feature comparisons between Twitter, CounterSocial and Mastadon. I've been using Twitter for more than a decade, CounterSocial since late April 2022 and Mastodon via Universodon for only a few days.

This is only a brief overview of what each site has to offer. It's some of the basics and features I find the most useful. Your experience may vary. My explanations are below.

A NOTE ABOUT MASTODON

Mastodon is a network of social networks that are interconnected. You have to choose an instance (or server) to get started. You can change your server, but your posts won't follow you. Whether or not your followers move with you depends on their server's software supports move activity.

There is also a very heavy cooldown period in which you cannot migrate again, so be very careful before using this option!

ADVANCED WEB LAYOUT

If you're looking for a column based feed, you'll need to use a third party website or app if you're a Twitter user. CounterSocial (herein referred to as CoSo) enables the Advanced Web Layout by default and Mastodon allows you to enable it optionally in your profile/settings.

ALT TEXT REMINDER

Twitter is the only platform that will remind you if you haven't entered ALT text on an image before you submit your post. Both CoSo and Mastadon have gentle overlays if you hover over the image once you've attached it to your draft, but beyond that I'm unsure. Mastadon claims to have a reminder to add ALT text (at least within the Universeodon instance). I have not uploaded any images to Mastadon yet, so time will tell.

AUTO-DELETE POSTS

Only Mastadon gives you the ability to auto-delete your posts after a certain time period for free. CoSo does have limited functionality for direct messages that you have to opt-in to. Pro (paid) subscribers can use the exploding post option on a per post or "set as default" basis.

BOOKMARKS

Twitter has bookmarks, but I often forget they exist. There is a link to view bookmarks in one place, but it just doesn't engage me. CoSo does not have bookmarks, however I believe it's a feature they could possibly implement since they appear to be running on Mastodon's OpenSource software and Mastodon, does indeed have bookmarks. My bookmarks have their own column for visbility.

CHARACTER LIMIT

Both CoSo and Mastadon beat Twitter's 280 character limit allowing 500 characters each.

CONTENT WARNINGS

While Twitter only has content warnings integrated for images, CoSo allows you only to mark the entire post with a content warning, wheeas Mastodon allows you to mark either the image, the post or both.

FILTERS

Twitter has muted words, etc. They're buried deep in your profile. Both CoSo and Mastodon have links to muted users, blocked users, hidden domains and muted words on the three dots menu next to your profile image.

GLOBAL POST VISIBILITY

Post visibility has a lot to do with how many users are on the platform, but these three are all very unique.

As far as Twitter goes, you see who you follow, what you might like, what the accounts you're following like, reweets, trending, etc., but discoverability is limited. Hashtags (tags) are a free-for-all (though nowhere near off the chain as Tumblr), so any custom hashtag can be used (without spaces, sorry Tumblr).

I believe CoSo sets themselves apart in this arena the most because they set up curated tags that help customize your space, find others with similar interests and share with others like you. Again, no spaces here. There's also the community firehose with posts from all of CoSo. You still have who you follow in your main feed and what they repost as well, not what they like, not what you might like and all that jazz. YOU curate your space.

Mastodon is a bit trickier. You have to join an instance (or a unique server), then you have a feed for who you follow and their reposts, then you have your server's posts, then there are posts from ALL the servers using Mastadon. In minutes you can have thousands of posts come through the feed. It can be too much. Again, not what other folks like (favorite), what you might like and all that jazz. You do curate your space, but you might either have fear of missing out (FOMO) or be overwhelmed in a sea of posts.

GROUPS

Groups are a paid feature only available on CoSo at this time. However, one might consider the instance (server) you join on Mastodon as a group depending on its specialization.

MOBILE APPS

All have both Android and iOS apps. Twitter's mobile app seems to be the most comparable to its web app, however if you're a content creator with a business/professional account, some features can't be accessed, such as overall analytics.

You won't get the advanced web layout with any.

See the full post

2 notes - Posted November 19, 2022

#4

Hashtags vs. Tags

Look, I've blogged elsewhere...but I'm having a hard time with the spaces in tags over here versus no space hashtags on the twitshow.

I get it, but I just don't WANNA.

SEND HALP!

2 notes - Posted November 16, 2022

#3

Thanksgiving Sweet Potatoes? #makemymenu

Which sweet potato recipe should I make for Thanksgiving?

Edited to add visuals and more.

I can't decide between these options, but I'm down to make any of them! I've made the Sweet Potato Souffle several times and not only is it shortcut cooking, but it's a HIT!!

Strawpoll at the bottom or leave a comment. You can choose multiple options.

VOTE IN THE LATEST POLL: Potatoes

See the full post

3 notes - Posted November 15, 2022

#2

Feeling Florence, Italy

This weekend, I finished up watching 'From Scratch' on Netflix. I've got feelings of Italy on my mind and of course, no better way for me than to utilize those feelings to build within The Sims 4.

My take on 'From Scratch' to follow.

See the full post

4 notes - Posted November 14, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

A One Woman Show to Request Jewish Cultural Representation in The Sims 4

Maybe some others have requested Jewish cultural representation in The Sims 4, but none like Hufflepom. Hufflepom is a respected simmer in The Sims community, so much so that many have been working to elevate her voice on Twitter specifically.

Today marks the 282nd day she has tweeted and tagged The Sims on Twitter asking for MORE Jewish cultural representation in game.

Don't get me wrong, The Sims has a long way to go to represent many cultures, but the pleas for other equally deserving groups have been just that, in a group, at least as far as I've seen.

I, myself, EMBARRASINGLY, saw (many of) 262 tweets from Hufflepom and did NOTHING. Then finally on October 27th, 2022 I retweeted.

Then there was this. HufflePom replied to a tweet that PINK posted. I had no idea PINK had a Jewish cultural background. The tweet Hufflepom replied to is after the below image. Throughout the process, I'm actually learning a lot.

See the full post

14 notes - Posted November 15, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[popmusic101]

Flashback: The Greatest - Six60

5th August 2024

Billie Eilish's 'Birds of a Feather' is #1 for a second week, so we'll flashback five years to 2019. The #1 back then was 'Senorita' and the #2 was 'Old Town Road', both of which we've already covered. But the #3 was beloved New Zealand band Six60's 'The Greatest', so let's take a look at that one.

For those who haven't heard of them, Six60 are one of the biggest bands in NZ, and although they do have fans worldwide, they're significantly less well-known outside the country. But here, in NZ they're very very popular.

'The Greatest' was inspired by a famous photo of The Beatles meeting Muhammed Ali (back when he was still Cassius Clay) during their first tour of America back in 1964. At the time Ali was still an up-and-coming boxer, while The Beatles were global superstars.

'The Greatest' is a good song, although maybe not one of Six60's best. It never charted outside NZ, and here it peaked at #3 - slightly ironically considering the "I'll never know what second place is" lyric.

Six60 are still making music and are almost certainly guaranteed to make it back onto the NZ charts in the future. They currently have three #1 songs and a crazy twenty(!) songs that made it into the top ten, and like I said they're extremely popular here, so expect to see them again in this column.

But probably not next week. Instead we'll be looking to see if Billie Eilish can sustain a third week at the top of the charts of whether one of the new releases from artists like Post Malone, Ice Spice, or Travis Scott can make a play for the podium.

See you then!

[shiningdesignersreflections]

Chapter 3: Warm Guardian

Narrated by Nikki.

Narrator: Looking at the cat-raising suggestions that everyone left for me in the column before...

Narrator: Looking at Momo sitting next to me, I couldn't help but think of the time we went swimming back then.

Nikki: Momo, do you remember the time we went to the pool?

Momo: Yes, you were very determined at that time, and everyone advised you not to take me there!

Nikki: But... Momo is a Momo! Plus, it was a water park, you could probably lose some weight there while playing.

Momo: If you hadn't gone that time, you wouldn't have...

Nikki: It's ok. It was after that when I started to really understand Momo!

Choose either "What happened at the pool?" or "Is there really a monster inside Momo?"

If "pool," ...

You: What happened at the pool?

You: Is there really a monster inside Momo?

If "monster," ...

You: Is there really a monster inside Momo?

--

Narrator: Haha, that swim left a deep impression on me.

Narrator: It made me realize that Momo is very gentle inside.

Narrator: I wrote it in the column, you can read it.

~~

[Life]

[OP: Nikki Supervises Momo to Lose Weight] [Posted time: July 30th]

[51#] Nikki Urging Momo to Lose Weight

I'm back! Sorry, I caught a cold in the past few days, but I'm finally recovered now.

[52#] Cat Lover

Wow, welcome back! How are you?

[53#] Nikki Urging Momo to Lose Weight

I'm good! This is what happened: I took Momo for a swim, but he refused to go into the water. When struggling on the shore, I accidentally fell into a pool. When I got back, I'd caught a cold and fever...

~~

Narrator: I look at Momo next to me. He has always been gentle and caring of his friends.

Narrator: Especially after I caught that cold. He has been by my side and has taken great care of me.

Narrator: Momo just doesn't want to show it to people. People in the column said it was called... what's it called...?

Narrator: Oh, yeah! It's called tsundere!

Narrator: They say cats are very tsundere! You need to do things to make them happy!

Choose "So how did Momo's weight loss project go in the end?"

You: So, how did Momo's weight loss project go in the end?

Narrator: When I had a cold, Momo was by my side and worried about me a lot, looking very guilty.

Narrator: When I recovered from my cold, Momo started taking the initiative to exercise...

Narrator: Although sometimes I still see him drooling while next to the refrigerator.

Narrator: He never tried to open the lock, even if he knew the code.

Narrator: One month later, Momo managed to return to his normal weight.

Nikki: Speaking of which, how did you become so self-disciplined afterwards, Momo?

Momo: ...When Nikki fell into the pool, we were so close and I wanted to help, but couldn't reach out because I was too fat.

Momo: Later, I thought that maybe if I do more exercise, I'll be able to protect you.

Nikki: I see, thank you, Momo! That's really sweet...

Momo: Then why don't you feed me some BBQ?

Nikki: Don't even think about it. You'll gain weight again!

Narrator: As we laugh, it gets late, and the bright light inside the house washes away the rainy hazy outside the window.

Narrator: Momo is like that light, lighting up my life.

Narrator: I'll keep protecting Momo in the future, accompany him as he grows up.

Narrator: I'll continue to record the interesting things that happen between us.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

[ouran101]

hq!! ctt [log 1]

you are here | log two | three

an acronym for "Haikyuu!! Cross Team Match" for the 3DS. oh, how i love to start projects that i inevitably drop. but for now, i make a log because this is really hard. i'm having flashbacks to when i tried to fix the FE12 patch for NoA localizations... only for the solution to be "make a serenes forest account"

so here's rom hacking. from someone who doesn't code. this can only go well.

Step 1: extract files from game

easy. i already have a 3DS with custom firmware because why wouldn't you have one at this point, nintendo loves to kill everything they ever once loved

extra easy. i actually have a cartridge. back in the day of Fire Emblem Gay Fates, i used OOT3DS to use a launch method called HANS. it also let you bypass region lock. and then i never touched the game again because i was a plebian in japanese. now i am an elementary schooler.

First, search "3ds game hacking basic." thank you, reddit post. i recognize the "romfs" folder from the Gay Fates days.

Second, get confused as to whether I have GodMode9 or not. (Did not.)

Third, using the "Universal Updater" app on my 3DS, download "GodMode9" so I can actually do the steps listed on reddit.

Fourth, to actually access GodMode9, hold SELECT while booting 3DS and then you can follow the tutorial.

(You're gonna press B a lot to back back in the directory. To actually copy the romfs folder, make sure to scroll up to the "SDCARD" folder because the beginning is the /root folder.)

oh no these files are different than the ones listed in the table of the reddit post

Step 2: wtf are ".arc" files

After discovering that NARC =/= .arc files, I went down a long rabbit hole.

".arc" files are archived files, and every company has a different way of compressing these files. Oh no.

The default decompression pattern built into most of these tools is for Nintendo (NARC file), because duh you're on the 3DS

There is one extractor tool for some Capcom games like Monster Hunter and Resident Evil called ARCTool.

none of those worked :')

An important note is I tried using "Tinke," an old tool because it's for DS roms instead. I used it once for Princess Debut.

(Side note, I should really finish extracting all of those and upload them to Spriter's Resource.)

It took a long time tbh but this GBAtemp forum post helped to get to the next step.

As written in the forum post, grab the files to deal with the "ustarc" and "ustcomp" files. Search and get the "QuickBMS" thing also mentioned in the post.

Open a file using Notepad/++ to see which prefix is in the file. Using that same file in QuickBMS, choose the correct script that matched the prefix. Using it on romfs/main/tutorial/tutorial_upper.arc gives me... "tutorial_upper.arc." Huh.

Going back to Tinke, it told me that the file was originally a "ustc" file... like in "ustcomp." After using QuickBMS, Tinke now tells me it is a SARC file. That is suspiciously close to a NARC file.

Step 3: i hope SARC files exist

They do exist normally! Progress!!

The first search result of "SARC Tool" did not work for me. The second result of "SARC Extractor" did work, however. And it has a release on the right column! A boon for me, who doesn't code--hold on i'm gonna have to repack all these files after editing them.

...I hope SARC Tool works later, but anyways

Using SARC Extractor on the new tutorial_upper.arc gives me tutorial_upper/arc/blyt and tutorial_upper/arc/timg.

In the blyt folder, there are only two files called tu_a01_upper.bflyt and tu_title_upper.bflyt.

In the timg folder, there are 11 files all with the ending of .bflim.

Step 4: .bflyt and .bflim

A search of ".bflyt file" gives me this "(Switch) Layout Editor." It does work, but I also probably shouldn't mess around with this file if it's about a layout. That's not the goal here.

A search of ".bflim file" gives me "BFLIM Tool," but it doesn't work for me... (holds head in hands)

I do find "3dstools" and "3DSkit" but those require me to have Python. Which I don't. Because I don't code.

Out of desperation, I put all of these into something that didn't work with the compressed .arc files from before, called "Every File Explorer."

...Huh, it actually works! And the graphics are exactly what I thought they'd be!!

...But the buttons in each individual window are greyed out, which would've been really useful. By hovering over them, I can see that they are Save, Import, and Export. Damn.

Not to mention how all of them are in the wrong orientation and/or mirrored...

Well, it's time to try out 3DSkit, because it lists exactly what version of Python I need. There's just one thing.

Step 5: What is even in the romfs folder?

Yeah, maybe I should take inventory first. 3DSkit actually does a lot of files, so I should see what I can do with it. The main romfs folder actually has two folders: "main" and "test."

In the "main" folder, there are a whole bunch of folders which are self-explanatory, like "save_slot" and "mini_game." This is also where I got the tutorial_upper.arc file.

Most of the folders contain that compressed .arc file type. With the exception of...

common = .dat .arc .bffnt .incs

effects = .ptcl

mini_game = .arc .dat .bffnt

shader = .shbin .bch

sound = .arc .bcsar ...and has a folder named "stream" containing only .bcsar

vbl = .arc .bch

Now, I'm scared of the "test" folder because of one folder. The two folders in here are "fhq" and "script." The folder itself also has files in it, ending in arc, bch, ptcl, and incs.

The "fhq" folder just has another folder called "item", and going to that has three files that can probably be edited in Excel. Actually.

EnemyStateList.csv, ItemDataList.csv, and ItemDataTable.csv. When going through FE11/12 stuff, I saw something like this table, so it's not that unbelievable.

(Might need to restore that folder I deleted to doublecheck though. I'm not sure if they edited it, or if they romanized all the hira/katakana.)

Up next in log 2 because it's midnight now oh no: Step 5.5: oh god the "script" folder

Bonus: A GBATemp forum post was also suffering in BFLIM files, and they had tried a program called Kuriimu. I tried using it for compressed .arc files earlier, but got nothing. So I tried it out.

First, the Github release actually has three tools: Kuriimu, Kukkii, and Karameru. Kukkii is the one that deals with BFLIM files and it works omg

Second, Karameru can actually read the tutorial_upper.arc file that was made after using QuickBMS.

Third, I'm actually two versions behind for the Kuriimu trio, so I should go and update mine oops

[jonathankatwhatever]

It’s 22 May 2024. It’s been a weird morning so far. Woke up feeling no connection at all. Began wondering where you are, what you might be doing. Then I see a post about the Cantor set. I know what that is, but I decided to look at it anyway. This is a challenge to my beliefs. You see, the construction method of removing the open sets is the literal opposite of the construction from higher dimensions into the real line. In fact, the idea behind the generalized Cantor set, meaning that you can do the same thing with any definition between 0 and 1, meaning along a 1-0Segment, all that means you construct any version of the reals you want. And that’s usually taken to mean that if you remove the 5ths or whatever, that you keep removing the 5ths, that you can’t layer to make some other pattern, meaning some transcendental.

There was a Metaphoric Bundle in that last line. It included the idea that any artificially random selection will have a pattern. All within 1. Which gets back to CM100, for some reason.

Why? Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

100 is the gs of 10 which is the construction of SBE3+1 and the construction of Halving/Doubling, meaning 2. Okay, so we have 2*3 is SBE2 and the next prime or 1gs in prime form is 5, which is SBE+1. I remember doing this years ago. So we have the mimicry of form in SBE+1 and SBE3+1.

Another is the 7’s that touch at 50:50, which I type instead of CM50 because they aren’t necessarily the same things. That 7 translates into Hexagonal counting, and in particular the full count of a Hexagon in one sense being 13 to 14, where the count is 6, verify to 7 (or other way round which is 26), and again other way round to 14, thus fully identifying the central bT and thus one side of the fD over which 2 Things invert. Hello.

That’s a model of an interior End relating over the external 1-0Segment to another, using the rotating mirror image. This models why the Informational Limit exists, but I don’t know if I can say it. The idea is that we have a bT and we have this 1-0Segment which relates to another End in another Hexagon, meaning a second Thing, with all the gsSpace created Between them when we take that 1-0Segment and look at it, when we realize that it comes into existence using the above methods. If that isn’t clear, I mean the idea of removing open sets. Open sets are the 0Space to the 1Space endpoints. That’s why you can construct dense and nowhere dense sets: layering of gs process within that 1-0Segment.

Remember, this models at scale, so this means any interaction. This is then why context matters, why fCM matters, why 50:50 matters and thus why it appears in our sensibility as a coin flip. Powerful stuff.

So we have this 1-0Segment which relates to another Thing, another End, and we have a Hexagon attached. This 1-0Segment occurs within a bT, which counts 3, so we know the count must reach 3 at the 1Space counting level. The argument then is that the difference between the observed limit and 3 is due to the fact that this Hexagon is attached.

The mental image is of a V emitting as close as evenly as possible, and the Ends of the 1-0Segment thus being able to read one or the other as leading, thus enabling continuity over the bT, which means it aligns along the Shard axis, which is the orthogonal along which this process operates. I’m trying to say this is the ideal image of the actual messy pathways, the 1Space which relates all Pathways. I guess that is a big deal.

My concentration has been understanding 420, because the +1 to 419 is delicious. That’s 6*7. I have pictured that using gs, adding a row or column and saying this 6*7 represents any of these states. And it’s the count around a Hexagon but multiplicative. I’ve had a tough time visualizing that, but the idea is that you state a Hexagon 6 times to identify that it is that Hexagon. Easy way is to rotate the labels each time. But then what does the 7th iteration do? The best we did before was saying this states the Hexagon to its completeness, meaning that rotation of another turn preserves the prior 6 states within that last twist. I’m seeing something. That means we encode any twisting run of 6, true SBE2, give that a twist and it locks like the opposite of twisting a bottle cap open.

That means the communicative process in this step of 419+1 to 420 lines up meaning within a Hexagon by sending it through SBE2 and locking it, and magnifying it by 10. This relates the bT level of SBE to the SBE2 level to the SBE3 level within the same process because mag10 is SBE3+1. If you see what I see, that means a lot of meanings are available within any packet, which is true in physical terms when you think about what momentum is, especially for a particle with no rest mass. We know photons carry information. This is how it encodes into the photon. And we see in that how the communicative process works. It has to be there because all relationships between 2 Things are 1-0-1.

Oh, I need to mention there that stating 1-0-1 generates I//I. It’s that low or high level. (It’s 2 mints in 1.) We can thus state that I//I can be reproduced within the Cantor set. That is, the Cantor set is constructed using exclusion as the method, and exclusion of defined open sets in particular. Open versus closed at each step requires I//I, generates I//I. Is I//I. It truly generalizes. I was far too rigid in my thinking about I//I being a method to realize that it’s the method used to divide infinities. In religious terms, when God parted the heavens and made the firmament, this is the tool used.

That’s the 420 as of now. The 18 is times 419, and that now works because Attachment Theory has developed a ton since we last did this work. It’s literally SBE3 on each side of the bT, each of the legs of the V. And +1.

The part that remains mysterious is the 200,000. What is the purpose? What is the porpoise, Dorcas? I think that’s it, in that joke. That what comes from the Hexagonal processing needs to Attach and it does that by being available in multiple Attachment forms or ways. Like the signals mean different things in different contexts. Stop may mean wait for reply, could be internal or external, could be minor or significant. Information coming in needs to Attach through that +1, which we can map to the 1-0Segment so this gives the Attachment more room, more potential to Attach. This is a version of very old work, which is interesting if only because I had so much doubt about it before.

This makes clear that it isn’t what one sees, because perceptions are guaranteed to be unique even when similar, but how one interprets at a higher level. Thus my concept of the Jew test, which is embodied by the shockingly simple point that when Israel does better, when Jews do better, the idea is to emulate them so you do better yourselves, and not to look for ways in which Israel, in which Jews fail to be perfect. If you can’t see the basic logical error you make about Jews, then you can’t be saved.

Back to CM100. The concept organizes across scales. That 50:50 becomes more fine-grained as you look. It’s not just to the quantum level of ambiguity, but in the sense that locality doesn’t End. Like rules involving video review identify not just issues with whether you can tell or not, which is an obvious 50:50, but also whether the rule extends to this exact circumstance. Since exact circumstance is mathematically not going to repeat, you never hit the End of your inquiries. You’ll never be able to define an absolute this is or is not a catch because the rules extend, while you can tell if a ball is over the line to the limit of whatever you use to measure.

That’s the general importance and idea of fCM. And it’s also behind a lot of D-structure. As far as I can tell, only D-structure describes the fullness and the finiteness of our existences as tangible and intangible Things.