#which is like 2 months of sky iirc ?

[albonium]

horner and danica in the same shot on sky. rip to the people who have to pay for this

[smallblueandloud]

in celebration of finally publishing bail organa time travels (it's been SO MANY MONTHS) i wanted to look through the fics i've published this year and talk about how many had been languishing in my WIPs folder during the Years Of Burnout

i've published 18 fics this year (!! already ??). of those, i'd say that... 4 were written "in one sitting", as in, the bulk of them only required editing after the first session of writing. those were yeah me too, good and steep, sit there in your heartache, and be amazed by the sky. these were all super fun to write, and i want to do more of this!

i think about 4 of them were written in what i consider my "normal" timeframe -- work on a draft for a few days or weeks, let it sit for a few days, edit, post. those were showed me love was all around, i got your back (and you got mine), you've come to shake my hand, and oh, how was i to know. they were all started this year and it was really satisfying to take a longer period of time to work out where their emotional cores were.

6 of this year's fics (roots run deep, round and round, motherless child, miss atomic bomb, things end and caterpillars) were adapted and/or edited from writing pre- or during-hiatus that i didn't initially plan to publish.

adapting those into fics that i felt were "complete" was a really interesting exercise -- round and round and caterpillars really just needed style/pacing updates and happened in one sitting each, but neither motherless child or miss atomic bomb even had coherent emotional arcs, so they both took me multiple months after i picked them back up (in january iirc). things end started life very incomplete but it wrote itself in like two days -- i blame my ongoing love affair with jadzia dax, lmao.

that leaves -- if i've done my math right -- 4 fics that i started PRE- or DURING-hiatus intending to post and then it took me multiple years to finish them. sure enough, we've got don't wanna see you go, something out of a dream chapters 2-3, all we can do today, and finally but the verse is sweet. i'm proud of getting these done! it was a really cool experience to watch these fics grow and change as i grew along and changed with them.

oldest wip of that list was probably all we can do today, which i started all the way back in january of 2021 and published in july of 2023. actually, never mind, something out of a dream was published in october of 2020 and i only posted the last chapters in may of 2023. whoops.

so it's been a really cool year of writing so far! you can find all the fics mentioned in this post here.

(okay, but like honestly, [collapses into a heap] please no more multi-year wips, future essbie)

[rowenarium]

2, 10, 16 - ask gameeee

i am going to answer these about a few different sources!! just for fun @^_^@

2. Was your relationship with the people around you different than it is in source? If so, how?

head in hands. adventurer cookie was my brother in my blackberry cookie canon. i havent interacted with either cookie run game or their fandoms in years but iirc that bit is not in the source (and a lot of people ship us, which is actually fair without my personal context)

10. Something that reminds you of your canon?

ive had a lot of lives where i had significant connections w/ space, for one reason or another, so looking up to the night sky almost always ends up putting a rush of some sort of emotion in me. excitement, homesickness, etc!!!

12. Who were your best friends in your canon? Are they the same friends in source?

so, my sphene canon... i feel like things took more time to unfold than they did in the source. maybe its just things getting jumbled up, and ffxiv has always been vague about the passage of time, but i truly do remember considering wuk lamat and the warrior of light (she was a bunnygirl (or viera for those who might actually know the source) but i cant remember her name) my best friends, and being able to spend a few one-on-one moments with both of them. i think there ended up being about a month and a half, between their arrival in alexandria and the end of it all? whereas in the game i think its probably more like a week or two.

[acerace]

...you have opened my eyes to a vast universe of VintageBeef lore that I was unaware of. I knew about the New Hermit Order, of course, and the UHC invention, and I've watched a few of his CTM things but -- I will take all the info and lore you feel like giving out because Beef is amazing and my knowledge is so small.

Vintagebeef my beloved <3

So the thing is, right, until about 2016 I only watched two (2) youtubers- Vintagebeef for Minecraft and aDrive for Pokemon (and funnily enough both of them are named Dan irl). So I've watched most of Beef's videos over the years and have a general knowledge of most of his stuff, except because it's been like a decade I don't remember where most of the lore comes from XD

The thing with him is that he doesn't do Lore tm the way other mcyters often do lore- he doesn't have an extensive RP series to draw from like Grian, doesn't have a solo world with steadily increasing amounts of lore like Etho or Zisteau, and while he's played on SMPs and been involved in storylines before it's not really the focus of his episodes unlike with Evo or Legacy or Empires

So where does that leave us?

IRL, Beef always has multiple series running at the same time. Often he's playing on an smp while doing a singleplayer, often modded, series as well as a CTM or modpack with a group of friends. For example, right now he's playing on Hermitcraft, doing weekly Pixelmon and Building a Zoo episodes, and a CTM map with Slip. And to me, this translates to one thing: Beef is an adventurer. He travels frequently- he explores a world and when he decides he's done, he leaves for the next one. That's the basis of my personal interpretation of his series and his character for my writing.

Ok so reading this back, this got extremely long and didn't explain much in the way of lore, somehow? If anyone has any additions to add please do so, I am very definitely leaving out a lot and would love to see what other lore people remember and are using for Beef! I didn’t include the Hermitcraft stuff since my memory of season 4 is blurry (his base was themed after the Martian, that much I know, and he and Iskall were buddies :D) and most of the s5 NHO lore is best watched from Bdub’s perspective from what I remember, and the only s6 stuff is a single line in Hermitgang and then the Area 77 arc with its possibility of an NHO reunion which we did not get rip. And s7 of course had the cloning machine and also the Podzol Party as the main lore. So all the original rambling is still below the cut though it is very long, and I'm gonna bullet point the main stuff here instead:

Actual canonical things:

Invented UHC and was the only survivor of the first ever uhc (Mindcrack UHC s1)

Married to an ender dragon (one of the UHCs I think), later father to a different dragon (Mindcrack season 3? I think?)

Might not have legs if you choose to take that joke as canon (Mindcrack s2)

Was a wizard (RAD)

is a zookeeper (Building a Zoo) 

Had a wife and kids (Sims in Minecraft)

Part of the Trial of the B Team court case (Mindcrack)

NHO founder, founder of the Podzol Party (Hermitcraft)

Created a cloning machine that sort of works (Hermitcraft)

Played the Forest which is I believe the first time he and Keralis played together (look up the trigger warnings for this one, it's a horror game)

Was the creator/owner of Sourceblock SMP (featuring some familiar faces if you know Legacy, Empires, or MCC) and there is literal magic from a mysterious sourceblock of water that teleports people and summons mobs and probably more stuff that I haven't seen yet since I'm still watching it myself

Things you can infer:

Good with animals (Life in the Woods, Pixelmon, Ark)

Is a car nerd (irl and all of the car games he's played)

Is a highly experienced adventurer who has traveled through dozens of worlds both vanilla and modded, across multiple dimensions (Twilight Forest, the Aether, the Betweenlands, Limbo), completed dozens of monuments, fought in blood sports, survived apocalypse after apocalypse, tamed dinosaurs, and played a lot of prop hunt and golf with your friends

If you're looking for what to watch for lore purposes, I'd say the Mindcrack UHCs and Team Canada's RAD series are pretty good, definitely Sourceblock and HC s5, plus the Diversity CTM maps and Ruins of the Mindcrackers maybe? And Mindcrack Prank Wars for the chaos and the origin of Team Canada. And if you can handle horror than the Forest is fun and if you don't do horror you can watch the Pojkband play golf or prop hunt they're hilarious I love them sm I want a Pojkband reunion So Bad 

Beef's first series was a singleplayer series in beta 1.4_01 though he had played the game extensively before that, and was a big fan of Guude, having watched his own Minecraft videos. The series was functionally a hardcore one where if he died Beef would delete the world and start again! I haven't actually Watched this series so idk if he died or how often lmao. When Guude made Mindcrack, which was btw one of the very first Minecraft SMPs, he also hosted a competition for people to join, and Beef submitted a video (which is still viewable on his channel I believe!) and won, and was added to Mindcrack in season 2 :D (fun fact, Guude said that even if Beef hadn’t won he would have added him anyway) 

Two running jokes emerged from Mindcrack- pulling a Vintagebeef and Beef doesn't have legs. The first is a reference to Beef dying of fall damage (I believe the exact instance was him trying to jump into his swimming pool and failing spectacularly) and after the incident, every time someone died of fall damage they were pulling a Vintagebeef. The second joke comes from Guude, who joked that the reason Beef wasn't going to a convention was because he didn't have legs, and then he pranked Beef's base by building a giant pair of legs at the entrance to his castle so you had to walk between them to get into the base. This joke has long since died and both Beef and Guude feel pretty bad about it iirc because there were people who genuinely thought Beef was disabled and were emailing him supportive messages and stuff oops. So if you go looking on the Salad or find old Mindcrack fics, you might see references to Beef having prosthetic legs!

Mindcrack also brought about the creation of several Player groups- Team Nancy Drew, Team Canada, and GOB to name a few relevant to Beef. Team Nancy Drew consists of Beef, Pauseunpause, Guude, and Baj, who formed to investigate a prank on one of the members but I forget who. They're named Nancy Drew after the detective! Team Canada also formed in retaliation to pranks, with it consisting of Beef, Etho, and Pause, the three Canadian members on the server (not including Adlington who moved to Canada but never joined the group). There was also a Team America who pranked them with American flags everywhere. GOB is Guude, OMGChad, and Beef, who played stuff like the Ragecraft, Pantheon, and Monstrosity ctms together but that's way down the line lol

Team Nancy Drew is also notable for inventing UHC. It was Beef's brainchild but it was the four of them who first played it! The first UHC had the four of them working to kill the dragon with no natural regen, with everyone dying but Beef, who "won" the UHC. The second uhc was still dragon focused and iirc is where Beef married the dragon? Memories are hazy but they do kill the dragon in this one I think. UHC was then revamped as a pvp event and became a regular Mindcrack game every few months, featuring most of the Mindcrackers and several special guests, including Dinnerbone, who as we know Thanos-snapped Doc's arm out of existence as a result of Doc killing him in one of them

In one of the seasons of Mindcrack, Beef invited swedish Mindcracker and good friend Anderzel to go caving with him and invented ABBA Rules caving, where the winner takes it all. ABBA Rules is a game where each ore (and also dungeon loot like nametags) is assigned a point value and the person with the most points at the end wins and gets to keep all the stuff collected from the game.

In Mindcrack season 3?, Beef punched the ender dragon in an... awkward area, so when the dragon died and left the egg behind, Guude said Beef was the father of the egg XD I don't remember if I watched s3 so I have no idea if anything Happened with this concept but *history of the world voice* you could make lore out of this!

So Team Canada has played a Lot of CTM maps (which fun fact were pretty much invented by another Mindcrack member, Vechs, with his Super Hostile series! Super Hostile has a bunch of things called "Zistonian", which are references to another Mindcrack member Zisteau, who has a very wild singleplayer series with even wilder lore but I digress). In Ruins of the Mindcrackers, they had a running joke that Beef was Etho and Pause's mom, which is a joke we can leave in the past actually /lh. They also played all the Diversity maps, Sky Factory, Terra Restore, Uncharted Territory uhhh and a couple more ctms and adventure maps! Each map kinda has its own story so in Diversity 3 for example they were trapped in a simulation? I think? Team Canada also recently played the Roguelike Adventures and Dungeons modpack, aka RAD, in which Beef was a wizard with a magic staff that could do anything from summon lightning to control hostile mobs.

Sourceblock SMP is a vanilla survival 1.14 series that ran for one season and the series starts with each of the Players being drawn to a strange sparkling water source that, once they touch it, brings them to the Sourceblock world. It also summons a giant zombie at one point. There's probably more lore for this series but like I said I haven't watched it all the way through yet 

He has a Patreon server called VintageCraft and has done a series or two on there as well, and played a few UHCs with them, so lore that how you will! 

Beef also played a few popular mods, notably Pixelmon, Life in the Woods, and Feed the Beast, with LitW being singleplayer and the other multiplayer. He's also recently played the Zoo and Wild Animals mod a lot. He did a short series with the Minecraft Comes Alive mod where he married one of the villagers and had two children, so that's canon now :D he’s played a Lot of Pixelmon starting when the mod first came out iirc (he chose Turtwig in his first series and built a Grass gym, then made a Normal gym in another series in uhh 2016) and he still plays to this day. Quite a few Hermits played on his Pixelmon servers with him, like Wels, Etho, Iskall, Stress, Slip, Zueljin, and also Guude and Phedran (a Mindcrack adjacent player and creator of the LitW modpack) and a few Mindcrackers on the older servers 

Mindcrack and friends played a lot of other games too- 7 Days to Die, Ark Survival Evolved, Unturned, to name a few, so you can pull a lot of lore out of these as well. Speaking of friends and non-Minecraft games, Beef teamed up with Pause, Keralis, and Slip (a former Hermit) to play the horror game the Forest, which saw them stuck on an island trying to survive against terrifying mutated human... things. They played it a few times as the game updated but as afaik it's the first time Beef played with Keralis and possibly Slip and since the game starts with the Player's airplane crashing, that could totally be how Beef first met them in-universe 

I... think? that’s everything I mentioned in the tags? There is probably way more stuff I’ve forgotten that stems from inside jokes and things that happen within each series, but I hope that was a) helpful and b) at least somewhat comprehensible lmao 

[fivekrystalpetals]

Wait, wait... do people really believe that Sigma is Fyodor’s OC? 

As in, Fyodor wrote Sigma out of the Book?? 

There is no way this is possible because Fyodor has not yet got his hands on the Book, right? He has been searching for the Book for the past ten years, through various plots (most of which failed, the ongoing one is the Decay of Angels plan)

It’d too much to believe he got his hands on the Book three years ago, created Sigma just because and lost the Book again instead of focusing on his own goal of ‘eliminating the ability users’ with the help of the Book when the chance came his way.

Meaning, Fyodor absolutely didn’t create Sigma! 

Sigma is the creation/experiment of someone else (most probably someone from the government or whoever is aware of the location of the Book or maybe the one who created the Book)

Of course, the Sky Casino was created from the stolen Page of the Book as per the DoA plans. 

But again, not created by Fyodor iirc. As in, he isn’t the one to write it down on the Page. (Mishima Yukio, maybe?)

The Casino was created eight days prior to the Sky Casino Incident and Fyodor was arrested one month+ prior and moved to Mersault. He might have given the instructions from the prison but he couldn’t have written it by his hand.  

(of course, all of this is valid only if Fyodor is telling the truth about the origins of Sigma. I trust maybe like 2% of what he says anyway)

[angleofmusings]

found this sorta-essay i wrote about havdalah a couple months ago! excuse any errors, i’m too lazy to bother proofreading it

first of all i just absolutely love the idea of a ceremony not for the end of one thing or the start of something else but about the actual *separation* of two things

and, every part of havdalah (like with all jewish rituals but especially this one) is so meaningful. and in this essay i will explain how the nature of when havdalah is held, the meaning behind the order of the different parts of havdalah, and why the havdalah candle is so complicated, among other things

first let's start with when havdalah is held. halachically, shabbat ends when you can see three stars in the sky, or 18 minutes after sundown, and havdalah can be held as soon as shabbat ends. but you can actually observe it at any point all the way through wednesday, the fourth day of the week. while shabbat ends after sundown on saturday, you don't have to separate that energy from the mundaneness of the week until wednesday at the latest, which i think is pretty neat.

next, i'll list the parts of havdalah for those of you who may be unfamiliar with it. there are three main items involved in havdalah: a glass of wine, a braided candle, and a box/jar/container of spices. the entire ritual is accompanied by a set of brachot — blessings — which traditionally have one tune, and the pauses between each blessing are still set to the same tune, just with a wordless melody instead. ideally you've already poured the glass of wine *before* starting, because that's the first thing, and only a sip is drunk — you have to leave a decent amount of wine in the glass, for reasons i'll explain later. the spices are next, and after the blessing for those, you pass them around and everyone smells them. third is the candle, which has a VERY tall flame on account of having anywhere from 2 to 12 or so wicks (ours has 12 iirc), and during the blessing for that (which has other cool meanings that i'll explain later as well) you hold your hands up to the flame and turn them three times (palms towards you then towards the candle)

then, you take the candle and dip it in the remaining wine to put out the flame, this too has cool meaning which i'm not *as* familiar with but is still Important. then there are a few more songs, still keeping the same tune: the first is a wish for a good, peaceful, joyous week; the second welcomes in the prophet elijah; today i had the joy of discovering that someone wrote one about miriam

anyways that's the havdalah ritual in a nutshell, there are a couple more blessings before it too but they're closer to the standard fomat of all jewish rituals so i'm not going to go into as much detail.

anygays, let's discuss why the havdalah candle is so complicated. for shabbat, two candles are lit, each of those is a "normal" candle with one wick and no funky braids. those two candles date back to the liturgical reference to gaining a "second soul" on shabbat, and during the rest of the week, those are merged back into one, hence the combined wicks.

this idea of a "second soul" also accompanies the besamim (spices), which are said to ground us and serve as a sort of replacement for missing that second soul during the week.

[alientitty]

what does mars entering taurus mean?

👀 oho someone is interested in my interpretations? i’ll try to be concise but this is actually a very broad question

In technical terms it means that little red dot in the sky is now between 30 and 60 degrees away from the point where the Sun rises on the vernal equinox. Astrologically, Mars is generally associated with war, combustibility, drive or conflicts, while the sign of Taurus, as the first earth sign, often indicates directly visible material goods, physical comfort, the Earth or land, etc. so for my personal story, cooking over an open flame is a very lighthearted manifestation of this

Buuut i know you want my connection to events in the district of columbia today. So honestly, it’s partly been my observation (and that of astrologers I follow) over the past year or so that major Mars activity has coincided with something dramatic happening in the US (obviously not just here but we know events in the US more closely); 2020 was a crash course in mundane astrology (predicting/analyzing events and nations) for everyone. However militant Mars didn’t simply enter a new sign focused on tangible goods today, he’s also entering a new relationship to some outer planets, which move more slowly and indicate events r trends in wider society.  From my my 2021 sneak peak:

January 6: Mars enters Taurus // ♂ ➡♉ This means he’ll be squaring Jupiter, Saturn, and conjunct Uranus–possibly igniting some of the issues they have brought forth? Mars and Uranus may prove combustible against critical Saturn, but Jupiter may be more receptive to change.

The most striking part of this ingress (entering a sign) is that Mars is entering a conjunction (0 degrees separation) with Uranus (I just looked it up and this will go exact on the 20th, inaguration day /LMAOOOO yikes). Uranus wasn’t discovered until the Enlightenment and has acquired a rosy reputation for revolution and technological innovation, but more generally he indicates sudden, unexpected change. In the sign of Taurus, fixed earth, this could mean disruptions in tangible areas or processes we normally consider stable (such as confirming the e,lec,tion results..). Uranus transits usually burn long, slow, and deep, but a faster moving planet like Mars can act as the spark that makes this flame blaze for awhile. So Mars entering Taurus in 2021 specifically means it’s now next to Uranus (~6 degrees away at the moment, and moving towards it), igniting sudden changes in places/land we take for granded.

An even more exact aspect (special angle-- ±10°) is that Mars (and Uranus too) is now squaring (90 degrees/conflict) Saturn and Jupiter, who have just entered Aquarius. Saturn and Jupiter had a lot of dancing around last year in Capricorn, reflecting disruptions of government institutions and daily life, so like the blockquote said, Mars hitting a close aspect (it’s within 4 degrees for Jupiter, 2 for Saturn) with them is bringing back to light some of the problems they raised last year--I’d say Donnie’s superfans taking to the streets count as one such issue. Add sudden-Promethean-change Uranus to the mix and it’s no wonder something like this happened. Saturn and Jupiter spend about 3 years and 1 in a sign, respectively, and are thus a good indicator of the current cultural/political moment--in Aquarius, this essentially indicates a changing up or questioning of the rules. Thus Mars entering Taurus today just means that it’s in the perfect position to light up all of this shit going on, particularly in the literal material realm such as the land or buildings where social change & institutions normally operate.

This post is getting long but, I will say that Mars & Uranus are now in the 6th house of the United States’ chart (if you take 5:30 in Philly on July 4, 1776 as a beginning point for this nation). I’m a little shabby on mundane astrology but this house is generally associated with work, routines, and servants--and the sudden changes are being enacted on our “civil servants” in co,ngress during what’s normally a routine approval of the vo,te seems hard to ignore. Additionally, Saturn’s & Jupiter’s (who are square--starting fights with--Mars&Uranus rn) trek through Aquarius takes place in the United States’ 3rd house--which is the realm of communication and short term travel, (the USPS debacle in the summer also coincided with Aquarius activity iirc), and it’s interesting that this newest challenge of our society’s structure (Saturn in Aquarius) has been enabled (Jupiter) through social media (Twitter, 4chan, podcasts). I think I have to agree now with people who say Aquarius is linked to the Internet!

Anyways this is just my perspective on how events are turning out in the U.S. particularly. More generally, social problems may ignite in very literal, stubborn conflicts--little angry Mars is starting fights with the big boys. He’ll be in that 10-degrees sweet spot for the rest of the month and doesn’t enter Gemini until March.

[jennamoran]

On Ninuanni Names (18)

Earlier posts: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, Interlude, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)

Hi all!

In recent months I’ve been doing a writeup of the naming conventions in the lands beyond the world, principally for the use of people playing Glitch or creating NPCs for Nobilis. We’ve moved beyond a complete list of name elements, as shown in the Interlude, to a more detailed study of the common names and poetic fragments tied to each.

Let’s continue that now!

              -------

         PASSAGE -hlid, -hlida, -hlith, -hlitha, -litha, -lithae        

“a sundering, bone-shaking beat. I am the moment upon which everything is changed.”

        Notes

When I was writing this one, I was trying to make it fit well for both Iolithae Septimian and descending passage (or, lightning.)

P.S.! If you’re curious about why “descending passage” is lightning, it’s because I’m envisioning lightning as a kind of white hallway extending down through the sky. Like the Bifrost, if it didn’t have brakes or a decorator, you know?

        ��   -------

          PEACE -sten, -stena, -stina              

“I bring to thee, tranquility.”

[accepted variation] “tranquility falls around me like the rain.”

      Notes

The variation mostly exists for use with beauty, Beu-, or, “I am that which steals thy heart from thee.” I didn’t think that the pairing was that bad, but it was kind of juvenile and might not hit the tone the player wants.

         -------

        PERSEVERANCE  -fredus, -frid, -fridia, -frida, -frithila, -fidil, -ph, -phrasia       

“this, is my aesthetic.”

        -------

         (λ-)PERSON -gotha, -gotho, -gothus, -goto    

“this Eide, well-wrought, of Ninuan.”

         -------

              PLACE -nuan            

“a vast and sprawling land beyond the world.”

       Notes

Behold! A naming system full of subtlety and nuans.

          -------

        PLAY -gisclus, -gisel, -gisklos  

“I sweep my rivals’ pieces from the board.”

            -------

 POSSESSIVE CASE [(’S)] -im

“for this, was this one born.”

             -------

       POWER -ker            

“I am dominance, and rule.”

          -------

         PRIZE -gelda, -gelis, -gild, -gilda, -gildus, -gilium

“behold the spoils of my victory!”

          Notes

-gilium was added very late in the process to backfit Aesgilium Armipotens from the playtest into these rules. I wasn’t really comfortable adding Aes-, though, so I am forced to assume that it was a personal or regional variation on the root As- or Os-.  

          -------

          RAVEN -hrabans, -hrams, -ram, -ravans              

“ill omen, and a fluttering of wings.”

          Notes 

I like ravens, but it’s kind of explicitly a thing in the Not that sometimes ravens will warn you of impending doom. 

... well, implicitly, the explicit mention of ravens got cut for space or lucidity at some point.

It’s implicitly a thing. ^_^

       -------

          RIDER  -rit; -sind, -sinda           

“a single, shining Rider of the Host.”

[accepted variation] “that single, shining Rider of the Host.”

           Notes

There’s no specific prefix luthe that the main luthe totally fails on, but there are enough of them that clash a little bit with the “a” that I felt I needed the variant.

        -------

      SALVATION -nas

“salvation, to the world.”

        -------

        SEA  -sius     

“I am death and the star-filled sea.”

      Notes

This is a poetic reference to Ersius or Hreidius, the western sea—known for its greenish waters that shine with light and its shore, that is rich with bone.

       -------

                SELF -sicus    

“in such a fashion am I forged.”

           -------

           SLAUGHTER -da, -do, -to, -tta, -tto

“a glorious song of slaughter.”

        -------

          SOFTNESS -lind    

“an all-embracing gentleness.”

        -------

         SOUL -sael, -sila, -sula  

“a pilgrim of the Wyrd.”

[accepted variation] “I am a very pilgrim of the Wyrd.”

[historically dubious variation] “this expression of the Wyrd that lies within.”

        Notes

IIRC, the “accepted” variation covers a couple of edge combinations, while the “historically dubious” variation is an older version that I was attached to but decided didn’t really work. ^_^

         -------

        SPEAR -gais, -gaisus, -gaith, -gaithus, -geis, -geisus, -ges, -gesus, -gid, -gidus, -gis, -gisus; -gares; -za                

“a spear yet thirsts to swim in blood.”

        Notes      

This was one of the earliest luthes written, on account of Ar- being the third prefix in the list and Argaith, “army’s spear,” being a common name.

        -------

        SPLENDOR -vult    

“limitless, my splendor.”

[accepted variation] “a thing of boundless splendor.”

      Notes

The variation is mostly needed for Magnavult, extreme splendor, which would otherwise be excessively limitless.

                 -------

         STAFF -rung                

“a shaft of wood supports the weighty world.”

[accepted variation] “and weary of the battle.”

         Notes

These are based on Ninuanni stereotypes about the kind of warrior who’d wield a staff, with the first having some additional axis mundi type influence and the second making an extremely tenuous pun on staff and *kifsighing*.

(P.S. when I corrected “kifsigh” to “kifsighing” there was a really long, surreal twenty seconds in which the spellchecker in my browser didn’t complain about it at all.)

               ------- 

       STRAIGHTAWAY -rago, -rax      

“I walk a straight and unimpeded road.”

       -------

 STRATEGY -mod, -moda, -mond, -mud, -mund, -munds, -mut    

“a stratagem, revealed.”

        -------

            STRENGTH -fortis; -trude

“a sweat-stained, blood-forged, and unconquerable might.”

[accepted variation] “I drive a storm of limitless, unbounded might.”

           Notes

Again, there’s no specific prefix that needs the variation, but there were enough that I felt it worked better for that I put it in.

         -------

        THUNDER -donia      

“a crackling of thunder fills the sky.”

[accepted variation] “a roar like tumbling boulders fills the sky.”

        Notes

I didn’t like doubling up on the word “thunder,” except possibly for names like  Thunderous Thunder or whatnot, but at the same time it was obviously the appropriate word to use in this root and also a word that really worked well in a lot of prefix luthes. Accordingly, a variation was constructed. It’s kind of a weak variation, but it’s the best I can do; "thunder” is already kind of the poetic description of thunder, and most of the rest are either silly or use imagery that other prefix luthes are like to use. ^_^

              -------

               TRIAD -trius, -terius                

“and I, but one of three.”

            -------

           TRANSFORMATION -goia

“a mysterious transformation.”

            -------

          TREASURE-HOUSE -archos; -ark, -arkos, -arkus  

“a treasure-house of endless fruitfulness.”

          -------

         VALLEY -del, -dela, -dila            

“o! our sweet and wooded valley!”

              -------

        VISION -red, -rev, -rid, -rida, -ridius, -ridus, -rith          

“a spirit-seizing vision is unfurled.”

      -------

          VIZIER -dia, -té, -teus, -theus, -thia, -tius, -tis, -zia        

“noble servant to the people of the void.”

           -------

           VOID -nnia, -nia, -nya  

“such ... vast, untainted richness.”

             Notes

There are fragmented records indicating a previous luthe for this element—in what is technically a precursor language to modern Ninuanni, although like modern Ninuanni that language is generally comprehensible even without understanding it unless one pays careful attention to the words. All that survives of the earlier luthe, however, are the words “the echoing empyrean,” placed such as to indicate that there were, additionally, more words to either side.

As with most lost and disputed information in Ninuan, the absence of definitive information suggests that some conscious agency has obscured the matter[1], but in matters of such antiquity, sea-changes in the void or truth, complex issues of subjectivity, or years of piled-up discussion and debate could equally well have created a false approximation to such a state. It is possible that the older luthe is unknown simply because, barring some future discovery, it is temporarily unknowable.

[1] otherwise, a diligent scholar could use a Greater Investigation miracle to unearth the truth.

       -------

          WATCHFULNESS -acer, -vacar, -vara, -vera    

“unblinking, nervous watchfulness.”

                   -------

         WEAPONRY -sar

“these glorious and sacred tools of war.”

[accepted variation] “a glorious and sacred tool of war.”

           Notes

The variation, of course, exists for prefix luthes that inherently imply the singular.

       -------

           WELCOME -berg, -berga, -verga

“welcome, o be welcome, to this home.”

            --------

           WEST -stria                

“bone of the bone-strewn oceans of the west.”

            Notes

This too is a poetic reference to Ersius or Hreidius—not the only ocean in the void, or even the only important ocean, but the one with the greatest cultural influence in the rough vicinity of Creation. It is referred to in the plural here because it may show up with different shorelines and different aspects depending on which map of the Beyond one uses; any roughly westerly sea with certain characteristics is considered Ersius or Hreidius until proven otherwise, since many portions of Ersius are contiguous or overlap in ways that are difficult to explain without extensive cartographic reconciliation.[2]

[2] The transitivity of direction, and of directional relevance; the exactitude of spatial dimension—these things are all imperfect in the void.

             -------

      WOLF/HOUND [WOLF // HOUND] -olf, -ulf, -wulf

“a hungry thing is howling.”

        -------

      UNKNOWN [???] 

“???”

            Elements: -pa, -pas

Most Common names:

Aupa, ridiculous pseudonym; Vultupas, splendrous ???

                                   Notes

Scraps of old documents and hints of memory suggest that this root exists, and is not just a misspelling of some other element, but nobody knows its meaning or its luthe. The prevailing theory is that it has something to do with shirts or coats, but it’s not a very strong one, and Strategists with this element in their names usually either make up their own luthe and meaning or refuse to talk about such things.

             -------

      And that’s the list!

... except for a discussion of diminutives, which I think deserve their own post, even if it leaves this one a little short. Look out for that tomorrow!

[face-mechon]

Top 5 songs from Xenoblade 1?

Oh crap, i like the whole OST. I dont think I can put them in a coherent order, but I can just pick 5 I really like. 

Except #1 favorite would have to be Shulk and Fiora

I love the main theme and this whole thing is amazing. I love the scenes it plays in. The song has bits and pieces from other songs in the OST iirc. Maybe I’m imagining it but at about 2:00 it reminds me of the opening of Beyond the Sky. 2 minutes in is the best part. 

2 Bionis Awakening

All the songs in this game are good but this one seems like it was either made to fit the ONE scene it plays in, or the scene was made to fit it. They match perfectly in both the english and japanese version, which is pretty kickass. Most games would have a bit of desync happen in the dubbing process, but it feels like it just works. Also organ at about the 1:30 mark. And then they put drums over that? Damn holy shit?

3 Irregular Bound

This one goes on because everyone either doesn’t know what it is or doesn’t know about it. Mechanical Rhythm isn’t the only new song on mechonis. The song that plays on bionis when you get surprised by non-unique enemies really annoys me (Hostile Gazes). But I’ll let enemies chase me just to hear this song, its so good. Also what the hell is going on at 1:37? I like it. 

4 Mechonis Field

I have to put some area music on this but I really like Frontier Village and Sword Valley’s night time music. Also Valak Mountain at night. But this one is just really unique, it fits the area, even if travelling through it kinda sucks in hindsight. Similarly, I like agniratha so much in every way except for the experience of... actually playing it?

5 Egil’s Theme

I think ppl generally don’t like the more ambient songs in the OST but this one is really good. It fits all the scenes its used in. Also the violin at about a minute in is really good. Idk if you could really make a better song to say “Hey everyone. this guy is fucked up?”

Honorable mention to Zanza the Divine

I heard it for the first time in like... winter 2015? I played the game for the first time quite a few months after that. But I probably wouldn’t take peoples recommendations to play a 100 hour jrpg if I hadn’t already listened to this song hundreds of times on repeat. If I listen to a song that much its like jeez I might as well just play the game then so I can hear it again. The percussion in this song is kick ass when mixed with the choir vocals. Its one of my favorite things in this OST is the mixing of somewhat more classical sounding music with rock elements. 

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

COMMANDER LILITH

THIS NEWS @ ME AND THE VINE COMP

LETS GOOOOOOOOO

BEST NEWS FIRST

IT’S SUPPOSEDLY FREE AND COMING OUT NOT THE 11TH BUT THE 9TH LIKE THIS MONTH THE 9TH LIKE IN 4 DAYS

I FEEL BAD FOR THE PEOPLE GOING TO E3 CAUSE NOW THEY CAN’T PLAY THIS DLC UNTIL THEY GET HOME, F IN CHAT FOR THE BOYS

HOLY SHIT THIS IS REAL OKAY

EVERYBODY STAY CALM

SANCTUARY IS UNDER SIEGE

TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW, BABY

THE VAULT MAP HAS BEEN STOLEN

OH WE’RE OFFICIALLY CALLING IT THE VAULT MAP NOW, OKAY, CALYPSO TWINS CONFIRMED TO HAVE TAKEN OUR OLD KEY

YOU KNOW WHAT’S NOT CONFIRMED WHATEVER THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH ALL THESE GODDAMN PLANTS

YOU GUYS REMEMBER THAT OLD CANCELED TPS DLC? OF COURSE YOU DO, THAT’S WHAT THEY ARE APPARENTLY USING AS A BASE FOR THIS ONE

REMEMBER THE “INFECTED” STATUS EFFECT? WELL, I’M ASSUMING THAT’S WHAT THE TOXIC GAS IS

“A DERANGED VILLAIN HELL-BENT ON RULING THE PLANET” SO WE’RE NOT FIGHTING THE CALYPSO TWINS?! SOMEONE UNDER THEM??? I ALMOST WANT TO BELIEVE IT’S SOMEONE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT- JUST SOME RANDOM ASSHOLE WHO WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD AND THE TWINS SHOW UP AT THE END OF THE DLC AND WIPE HIS ASS OFF THE MAP FOR US AND YOINK THE VAULT MAP THAT IS RIGHTFULLY OURS AWAY FROM UNDER US

NEW LEVEL CAP 80?? HOLY FUCK?????? AND WE CAN START PLAYING IMMEDIATELY AT LEVEL 30 OH MY GOD I COULD KISS WHOEVER DECIDED THAT WAS NECESSARY I LOVE YOU

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR OP LEVELS? AM I GONNA BOP IN WITH MY OP8 ZER0 AND END UP FIGHTING ENEMIES AT LEVEL 88 WHEN I FINALLY LEVEL UP??? WHEN MY GEAR IS LEVEL 80 (AS THAT’S WHAT OP8 DOES) BECAUSE OH MY SWEET JESUS I DON’T WANNA GRIND MY HIDE OF TERRA AGAIN AHHGGGGGG

okay im gonna take a breath now

we’re calm

we’re good. this is good, we’re okay, i have to type everything 5 times over so its coherent but you know what this is okay this is happening, we’re cool.

i have to be the bearer of bad news as well but i don’t know if those screencaps of the ship from bl3 are what we’re seeing here in the new dlc (as much as I want to be right lmao). the screencaps of the ship definitely seemed like a insect infestation, not a plant one, ya know?

THEY’RE TURNING THE CARS GAY

or at least like... Buttstallion themed... check out the little horseshoe emoticon in the back there

but it’s pride month, they totally knew what they were doing and the fact that pre-ordered copies of bl3 apparently get a buttstallion themed skin for their ...gear... guns..? iirc... that means we can have gay guns in bl3, too. gearbox is treating us so fucking right, thank you

anyway the location the car is in looks like the highlands or a hammerlock’s big game hunt-type area. mossy/grassy with boulders in the background.

it looks almost like uranus spawns in right at the start of the dlc! which is awesome, and now i understand why they boost you to 30 before you start.

im verrrryyyy interested in that shot of Sanctuary up in the sky there. you can see the drill, its surrounded by a cloud of dust, it looks like its falling to pieces. i also don’t know where exactly this screenshot takes place but my first thought was the eridium blight (because of the mountain in the back) but that wouldn’t match the sky at all. I then thought maybe the ruins of helios? but we would be able to see more rocks and shit around the edges. then i was all “maybe the highlands”? the rock would match as it has grass growing on top, and sanctuary is very close to overlook, so it’s definitely possible. im gonna say somewhere near the highlands, yeah. the WEP and Opportunity are both fairly near there and it does have some pretty mountainous areas... so. maybe the highlands.

it looks like the giant vines are reaching up towards sanctuary so i retract my previous statement. i don’t think that’s dust. i think they’re drilling away at the plants trying to grow up to it lol

“Shooting the Moon” makes me think this has something to do with Elpis (not a surprise, if you realize the dlc they’re basing this off of is an old TPS dlc called Luxy’s Space Adventure where a bunch of mutated plant people end up on the space-cruise ship) 

honestly i’m really fucking hoping they bring back the flamethrower for the final boss (elon musk’s..?)

an area where we can see exactly what this space-cruise ship was supposed to look like

we also know in the dlc that the disease was spread by some space pirates, so i don’t know if that’s going to be the case here (they board the cruise ship and start spreading disease). Loader bots are apparently ‘Hacked’ so it’s probably not Hyperion we’re going at again. I could see them throwing the space pirates at us, tho maybe changing the guys a little bit so it’s not too much like Captain Scarlett. 

there is this boss character and that logo on the bottom, possibly a logo for who we’re going to fight in the new dlc? Interestingly enough, she’s got the red and black color scheme, too. cough troy cough. god them having space pirate as a backstory would be fucking AWESOME

i have been going thru the concept art album here if you want to take a look for yourself and tbh

this pic got me thinking about that “Atlas ice cream shop” prompt the VA for lorelei released 🤔

anyway, moving on from old dlc to what’s new! because lord knows they must’ve changed a lot lol

the infected psychos on the title art

also, correct me if im wrong, but it looks like lily is standing in 2 places at once- flying sanctuary on the right and three horns divide on the left

anyway

uranus looks a lot more DAHL themed than i originally noticed, like yeah he looks like saturn, but check that color scheme. may be the work of the new baddies.

this logo may hold some importance, but i can’t recall ever seeing something like it before.

so this minimap

lucky me i extracted all the textures from bl2 a couple days ago

im very pleased to say this doesn’t look like any minimap we’ve been shown so far, although i did a very quick glance through, so if you guys recognize it, please tell me!!

i can’t believe they made the guns sparkly and gay. Thank you gearbox. fucking thank you.

the area sal is in reminds of that one place in frostburn canyon, but i doubt that’s actually where he is. likely a new area we haven’t discovered yet!!

lily

the background is uhhh disgusting, but it is giving me WEP vibes, with the windmill/lighthouse (wherever that area is where you find maya’s ECHO log) and the walls. though the texture of the ground is giving me hammerlock’s hunt vibes.

anyone know why her wings are giving off the digital pixel look angel’s did? like the digistruct vibe?

weird.

tina! she’s clearly playing a big part in this dlc. wondering if pickle and athena are also around. I don’t think this is sanctuary. the big wall in the back. perhaps where the vines are actually growing from below the mining ship?

would then pin this as somewhere near overlook.

brick! looks to be the same-ish area as tina (if the buildings have anything to say about it)

honestly the people in the ground is killing me lol. person on the left seems like some random civilian..? he’s just got pants and loafers on. maybe the cruise ship crashed on pandora and the pirates aboard are taking their changes lol

doubtful, though, considering the plan seems premeditated with the huge cloud of toxic gas and shit

now I’m just wondering if the reason the CoV psychos are wearing those respirator-like masks is because the twins showed up with them and were like “if you wear these ‘blessed masks’ when you go to fight the plant shit, you won’t die. yeah, we’re gods. join our cult lmao”.

im just really curious how this ties into the CoV. I imagine either the twins are working with the (new?) villain somehow, or they end up stealing the Vault Map away from us (and possibly killing the bad guy first) at the very end of the DLC. I do want to entertain the idea that they’re like “hey!!! we can help!!!” and then end up betraying us right at the end and toppling Sanctuary for good and taking the key.

alright, that’s all i’ve got. I’m gonna go scream into my pillows now until the 9th happens. 

btw, season 1 of vip stuff happens TOMORROW (the 6th!). hype!!!

edit:

lilith’s digistruct pack has a red accent on it now

im wondering if this is some sort of projection of Lily since her wings have the weird pixels...

[sunagakubae]

sjadhkfg this is.. so late but i was tagged by @narutoslittlefox for this tag thing so thank you! <3

Rules: Answer all questions and tag 20 people

Star Sign: libra

Height: 5′2″

Gender: female

Birthday: october 19

Relationship status: single

Who is your crush: temari cdsvndkjzldb

Song that is stuck in your head: The Other Side of Paradise - Glass Animals

Last movie: the nightmare before christmas iirc

Last TV show: naruto....

Why did you create this blog: i have a lot of feelings so i just made a sideblog dedicated solely for nart since i didnt wanna spam naruto on my main because im a coward

What do you post / reblog: this is mainly a sand sibs blog but i also post a lot about other things i like such as my fav minor characters & rarepairs rip

Last thing you googled:

Favorite song lyric:  (Control - Halsey)

I paced around for hours on empty I jumped at the slightest of sounds And I couldn't stand the person inside me I turned all the mirrors around

What are you wearing: my pajamas which are just sweatpants + my fav alien t-shirt

Dream job: cyber security expert

Currently reading: my AP bio textbook..

Top 3 universes: naruto, mp100, drrr!!

Last time I cried and why: like a month ago about something personal

A picture of me: sure man here ya go

Ideas of a perfect date: go sky diving and then watch naruto together afterwards or smth like that

A fact about my life: i have a pet cactus i water every 2 weeks

What’s one thing you regret: back in middle school when i didnt cut off toxic ““friendships”“ sooner

First celebrity you think of when someone says attractive: sorry i dont find real ppl attractive ://

Have you ever taken a picture naked: no

Have you ever had a crush: not really... more like a really strong admiration

Have you ever been in a fist fight: nah

Have you ever snuck out of your house: nope

Have you ever had feelings for someone who didn’t have them back: nuh uh

Have you ever ditched school to do something more fun: maybe like a couple times back in middle school

Have you ever been on a plane: yep

Have you ever kissed a picture: ........yeah lmao

Have you ever touched a snake: no

Have you ever felt like dying: again just a few times during middle school

Have you ever done something you told yourself you wouldn’t: always

Phobia: thanatophobia

Middle name: danger is my middle name

Are you a virgin: yes

What’s your sexual orientation: asexual

Do you smoke, drink, or take any drugs: no

Someone you miss: my uncle who died a lil over a year ago :(

Favorite ice cream: cookies n cream!!

One insecurity: my academic failures

What my last text message says: kk

Have you ever painted your room: ya i painted it light purple

Have you ever kissed a member of the same sex: no

Have you ever slept naked: no

Have you ever been dumped: no

Have you ever stole money from a friend: noo

Have you ever gotten in a car with people you just met: no

Have you ever been arrested: all of these are just no tbh

Have you ever made out with a stranger: really?? no

Have you ever met up with a member of the opposite sex somewhere: nah

Have you ever left your house without telling your parents: no

Have you ever had a crush on your neighbor: no

Have you ever slept in a bed with a member of the same sex: no

Have you ever seen someone die: not personally

Favorite Harry Potter spell: harry potter?? is that like british naruto?

Have you ever hated the way you look: yup

Have you ever witnessed a crime: just minor misdemeanors here & there nothing too crazy

Have you ever pole danced: lol no

Have you ever been lost: 24/7

Have you ever been to the opposite side of the country: no but maybe halfway across the country

i cant tag 20 people so im just gonna tag @whattadragg @sunagakures @sakurasdivorcelawyer @dechartjpg @jojotaros @bleedingrose152 @jaxyjellyfish @goomykins @kakashifromaccounting @shikamarubase and anyone else who wants to do it!!

[amisbro]

Let’s Talk:  Broccoli’s Gamble

And how it paid off for them The first thing we have to do is go ALLLLLL THE WAY BACK to 8/8/2009 when Broccoli announced on their blog that they were going to be starting a franchise called “Uta no Prince-Sama”.  It was a game that would follow 6 idols that were going to school at Saotome Gauken (Shining Academy) as they attempt to make their debut with the composer whom the player would name in the game BUT for the purposes of this post we will use the name that is most familiar in Haruka Nanami. Before that November would start with the CDs for the 6 original boys that would appear in UtaPri and this would run up to February where we would get to hear the first songs of the cast at that time.  We WOULD get “Welcome to UTAPRI World” later but we’re splitting hairs. When the first game came out a lot was probably riding on it because Broccoli wanted it to succeed and ,while I can’t find #’s for the original, we can assume it did very well for the company because they kept going with the games all the way up to February 26th of 2015 when All-Star After Secret released and is the last “new” game for either the PSP or the VITA at this time with Dolce Vita to come later Little did we realize that ,while the game gamble was going to pay off, No one probably looked at UtaPri and thought as an Anime it would go past one 13 week series.  Most probably thought it was going to be ,at the least, a single cour series and at the most maybe 2...an OVA ,2 more Series and a Movie was PROBABLY not in the cards if you gave Broc truth serum. But Broc had another part of this plan and that was their stage shows While they only started at a 1500 seat building called “U-Port Hall” they went bigger and better as they moved up to 10K seat buildings to NOW aroud the 30K mark which they have filled for 3 different Lives!  That was impressive There is NO WAY their gamble could  keeping paying off right?  I mean eventually the house wins and you go broke! WELL While I don’t have the numbers for the character singles of the first two series in the Anime Seasons 3 and 4 have shown that Broc was going to keep winning...and in some cases it wouldn’t have to be the character singles from STARISH to outright do it because if you remember around Season 3 when QN had their frist Anime Single they were in the top 3 peaking at #2...they couldn’t do better than that surely WRONG When Season 4 came around what we found out was that QUARTET NIGHT had a fanbase that was REALLY HUNGRY and it was so much so when the Anime came out that what happened was they didn’t want to give up the #1 spot for a long time and they broke a lot of records not just for UtaPri but for Anime Singles as a whole and that has to tell you something. Season 4 was also another gamble for Broccoli:  To allow a “rival group” in HEAVENS to be able to have singles with STARISH members and also to have their own group single. It ALMOST didn’t payoff Interestingly enough when the group singles came out the one that peaked the highest was JUSTICE IMPULSE which was around the top 5 while others made either the top 10 but didn’t stick or just didn’t break it.  Mamoru Miyano’s character single with Yuuma Uchida NEARLY broke the top 10 but not quite but others weren’t nearly as lucky.  With Ren/Van’s and Yamato/Syo’s being the top marks for the duets what would this mean for HEAVENS when their group single came out? Well?! HEAVENS had their single come out last and it was after the masterful job that God’s S.T.A.R. did.  They also had to contend with the fact that the mainstays in STARISH were in the top 5 when their single came out (as was Mamo’s single for the season in Tempest IIRC) so there was NO WAY they would get past that right? WRONG Now I’m going to stop here for a second and I will say that ,yes these songs were under King Records, BUT its the idea that a group that was constructed by Broccoli to be the opposition to STARISH originally was going to be put in this spot.  What would happen? Not much...just the top 3! “Immortal Inferno” peaked at #3 on the Daily charts and yet again Broc beat the house.  Whether we want to admit it they did a hell of a job constructing this group because you had old vets and new guys that no one really knew.  Sure you had Kimura ,OnoD and Midorin BUT we had Hidenori ,Daiki Yamashita and also Yuuma...oh and Wingu unless you watched FREE! (spoiler:  I did and I had no idea he was in it). HEAVENS was the renegades and they did the unthinkable.  Even with their first ever Drama CD in HEAVEN SKY they did pretty well with a top 5 peak even if it didn’t last the duration of the time on the chart. Surely Broccoli was done with the gambles right?  I mean they HAVE to lose the next one right? Well this brings us to a more present day event Last Year was the debut of a game called “Shining Live” which is a co-production with Broccoli and KLab and it did AMAZING in Japan with the game getting over 2 Million downloads since its launch in August of last year!  Put that in perspective:  If you got the numbers from the first 10 weeks on the three music games between VITA and PSP I don’t think they sold 1 Million TOTAL! But Japan was going to be a relatively easy market...how would they do IF the games made it outside of Japan (and this was something Broccoli has been against with restricting PVs for the games in the past)?  Well there would NEED to be at least an English version to find out On May 11 2017 (you can check that through the twitter creation date) there WAS an English twitter created for Shining Live but no posts on it were known about and all news would have to be translated by a fan account at the time.  It wasn’t until before the JP version came out (I believe it was during 7th Anniversary) that a Global version was announced.  No news on the date (because of the fact it was going to be in English and Chinese) but one had been announced...this was going to be the BIGGEST gamble that it takes! Well for a while there were crickets...no one knew anything about the development of the global version and all was silent THEN JANUARY 2018 CAME! It was around this time that the English Twitter started posting news and updates about the game with trailers and the like.  When they got closer to a suspected release date they started with the translated bios of the characters so that newcomers to the series could get to know the characters they would be seeing over the coming months in the game. Then January 24th a.k.a. ONE DAY AFTER CAMUS’ BIRTHDAY came and the game was launched in less than a 3 month period (maybe even less than that) the Global version broke 1 Million more downloads with the English version on Google Play having over 100K! Broccoli is that gambler that ,no matter what, will look at the situation and go “We’re doing this” Its interesting when you think about it because Broccoli took a franchise that is almost 10 years old unofficially (the Anniversary is always designated by the first game release) and gambled SO HARD with it that now the question that needs to be asked is this “If you knew you were gonna come up Trumps Broc...why did you make fans wait outside of Japan?” In many respects Broccoli has won every gamble with UtaPri they can make...there IS one left and its been proven in Japan they can win with them Will they make THE BET in the Western Market? I don’t see how they can lose at this point to be honest

[lhs3020b]

Revisiting

I’ve felt an urge to replay the earlier games in the trilogy recently. So I’ve loaded a wholly-new start in ME1, and I’m re-running Alice Shepard in ME2.

A few random observations...

1. I hadn’t remembered this at all, but Jacob is actually quite specific about timescales at the start of ME2. He says it’s been “2 years and 12 days” since Shepard’s death. Add in the “one month” after the Battle of the Citadel, and it’s almost (but not quite) enough to give us an actual chronology. (What we don’t know, of course, is exactly how long Mass Effect itself took, or - IIRC - exactly when in 2183 that it started. We can infer that it had to have been prior to the middle of November, 2183, because otherwise there isn’t enough time to fit in the 2 years, one month and 12 days to ME2 and still be in 2185 ... but other than that, we don’t know anything concrete.)

2. Sorry, the timeline thing keeps bugging me.

3. It’s 2185, so presumably the Initiative is in the news a lot. While we know on the meta level why no-one mentions it (because the game devs hadn’t thought of it yet), the absence still feels odd. I mean, the Initiative wasn’t any kind of secret - the background to ME:A says explicitly that Garson was being repeatedly investigated by the Alliance’s government for suspected wrongdoings, after all!

3a. In my own head, I seem to imagine ME:A as existing in some sort of alternate timeline from the main trilogy. It somehow doesn’t quite feel like canon to me. This is, in of itself, rather an odd reaction, and I can’t really account for it.

4. Freedom’s Progress’s sun looks grossly inadequate. Given its altitude in the sky, the time of day is presumably either early morning or late afternoon (depending on which way the planet spins, and we have no data on that!). And yet, the level of illumination doesn’t seem much more than a terrestrial full moon. Taken at face value, that’s what you’d expect if FP was orbiting around a white dwarf or something. If that’s the case then, to be honest, FP has problems other than the Collectors.

5. I suppose the real reason, of course, was the ongoing trend of the rest of the series - namely the increasingly-visible divorce from the basically-logical setting and the increasingly OTT art, character design and cutscenes.

6. A random thought concerning the quarians’ visors. The opacity must be a deliberate choice - if our technology can make clear plastics, then surely theirs can as well. Presumably, this implies something about their culture. I wonder if the colours of the visors mean anything, or if it’s something else that’s more subtle?

[panic-in-tarir]

One year in review

That’s it! The OH IT’S BEEN ONE YEAR post is here!

The closer my first anniversary was, the more excited I got, and the more thoughts I gathered for one “summary” post. Now that it’s time, suddenly, bam, all of them gone. :’> *wipes sweat*

Recently I had someone asking about my progression and how I managed to get there (???? where? derp). Well, I guess, I could just start telling about my first deeds in GW2, and then see if I can add something.

This might or might not be relevant, but I come from Wakfu, a colorful 2D game with turn-based combat. It’s cool visually, but also has terrible management issues, lack of developer care, one of the worst customer supports ever, list goes on.. I played it since 2012, and year by year, only grew angry, disappointed and hurt. That was like an abusive relationship I couldn’t get out of. I refused to try different genre and engine games. Finally, @aketan​ / @flame-squad​ / Rika got me lowkey interested in GW2 (she was commenting expressively while playing, and I peeked over her shoulder), I decided to try it. And stayed. Migrating to a real-time 3D game wasn’t easy! Yet, it was my lifesaver decision. GW2 has everything that I wish was there in Wakfu. It took me several months, if not a year, to get fully “healed”, to recover from the bad game and start believing that good games exist. When I had to contact GW2 support, I was touched to tears.. Everything and everyone is so nice here.

That wall of text was a foreword! Or explanation why I’m so excited and grateful about every aspect of GW2.

I started without putting too much thought into the char creation, as a result, now I have yet another main whose name is literally foreign language swearing or pun. GG me. After having been completely lost and confused by the controls (I LITERALLY ran backwards and yelled), after having a short but comprehensive lesson from bff, I started derping around on my own. I think I was only guided until lvl 5 or so, then my buddy let me do whatever I want. I come from a sandbox-wannabe game so it didn’t take me forever to get comfortable and set my first goals. Of course, I had a shit ton of questions, which I didn’t hesitate to spam Rika with. It’s cool to have someone ready to explain you the basics and patiently show you things. :D My several first days, or even weeks, were intense. I didn’t rush levels, but was eager to see the world. It was so amazing to me that I was spending 8-10 hours a day, running around, completing maps. I started in Metrica but quickly wandered away to Caledon (”oh! a portal?!”), where I spent a handful of time then.

With such a desire to discover and observe, and after having seen the title you’re awarded for 100% world map completion, I set it as my first ultimate goal. I approached it rather seriously, and had an incredibly fun time, at least until I had only Orr left undiscovered. x’D As a squishy (and slow, and dumb) ele, I was frightened and a bit discouraged by the amount of, well, deaths here. If I recall correctly, I still wore yellows at that time, although I was 80. Rika helped me and accompanied me for a bit. Orr was tough and I legit cried out of anger and frustration when I was alone, but that was the only unpleasant moment in entire year, and only because I wasn’t good at the game yet.

In the meantime, I was leveling my first alt, human engi. Do you actually remember that f2p accounts only allow 2 chars? Later, after buying HoT, I finally got loose.

They say, you always remember the place where you finished your first world map. For me, and oddly enough, for Rika, it was Field of Ruins. We reached the last POI at the same time, and, boy, did it feel great. My first big accomplishment. It dropped like.. Like a norn fart in a moot (c) Jory \o/ I still use the title btw, “been there, done that”. \o/

Then, there was a relatively dull period before buying HoT. I focused on doing my personal story, maxing out my alt and getting into crafting. The latter quickly became addictive to me. It’s so smooth, fun and exciting in GW2. Artificer was my first discipline, and after getting the hang of it, I breezed through 100-500 in a single day’s course.

That’s what the progression of my first 4-5 months looked like! I still was f2p, did only open world content and had one person to play with. I’m my own boss so it’s up to me to decide if I want to spend 30 minutes or 8 hours ingame.

HoT was a blessing in every aspect possible! I never regretted buying it, never regretted taking my time and not buying it earlier though - I needed that f2p scrub time to learn the basics, and to appreciate all the convenience and QoL improvements that come with HoT.

That’s where the real game starts, if I could say that. Core Tyria is by all means amazing, but you can go only this far if your account has those market and mail restrictions.. I used to enjoy playing market in Wakfu (while it was still alive) and I was excited to try it in GW2. When I bought the expansion and got my account fully functional, I got some skins and dyes ahead of all, then proceeded with crafting since I was really addicted to it and excited to max all the disciplines as my medium priority goal.

GW2 is encouraging altoholism! So I found myself leveling a third character (tried revenant and didn’t notice how I got her to level 20-ish and it was too late to delete), then fourth, fifth, then more char slots.. You see my weakness. I quickly realized the perks of having alts: storage, gathering, alternative personal stories, so on. When you’re an altoholic, plus you have yet to finish gearing up your main, plus you can barely hold yourself from leveling another crafting discipline.. RIP GOLD. I never had more than 30-100g at that time period.

Since market and wealth are one of my biggest passions ingame, I learned ways to earn me some coins, one by one. It’s not that hard if you’re a patient gatherer like me. Just run around, chop trees, collect ore and herbs.. I enjoy it so much, maybe it’s grind for someone, but I find it relaxing. Also it brings you gold. \o/ I found a few niche crafts that I could keep making and selling, then got familiar with market flipping, still not doing it like “big daddies” do, I might be too inefficient and lazy at it. But still, I found my own stable sources of income. Not gonna lie, the game just seems to like me and spoils occasionally. I don’t wanna brag, but there was like 4 precursor drops for me, 2 from mystic toilet, 2 practically dropped from the sky. I might be a little luckier than the average player. But that’s well deserved given how much suffering I had in Wakfu. :’D

When we talk about luck, we can’t avoid mentioning gambling. I learned about mystic toilet quite early, but never was a slave to it. Tarrktun has a bit more power over me, but I’ve never lost too much, only gained little by little. Black Lion Keys are the most evil gambling aspect if you ask me, I’ve spent quite a bit of money on those, though sometimes got nice things in exchange. Either gold to gems or gems for real money, I don’t mind spending it on Anet since they very, very well deserve it.

Given my passion, patience and luck, you must think I should be filthy rich by now.. Hah. :’DD Sadly, I’m just as good at spending as I’m at earning! I blew a lot of money on my own “needs” and “wants” and “why not”s, I keep investing into long term sales, I also often buy gifts for my buddies, mostly Rika. Money comes, money goes. GW2efficiency says my account is worth 14k gold currently. Not a bad progress for a year, I suppose.

So.. My biggest interests and playstyle are gold wars, fashion wars, altoholism.. I became quite a lore geek, completed PS, LS2, available LS3 episodes & most of current events, most of HoT? I should finish it but I procrastinate for some reason.

My current achievement number is 7610, mastery rank is 129 iirc. I’m not a casual derp anymore, but still too afraid to fail in front of strangers so I don’t really do dungeons or fractals. I mean I DO, when my bff literally holds my hand and goes there with me, then 3 strangers vs two of us is tad bit less scary. My combat skill, my reflexes and reactions are rather pathetic, even if I got significantly better after HoT and LS3 maps. I must train more, so recently I made a tanky character to practice, I hope to get good enough to clear story mode dungeons and low level fractals alone. Maybe I’m being too hard at myself, but combat skill has practically the biggest influence in this game, so I must git gud, at least acceptable, so I don’t feel ashamed to play with other people and don’t let them down. :’D

I’m a pve trash. Tried WvW and don’t mind coming here again, but not too much. PvP is a big no-no. Just.. Not my thing. Never. Not with my current skill and mindset (people = stress).

I’ve still got a mind-boggling amount of things to do. Personal goals, mere achievements, secrets and mysteries I’m yet to uncover, lore things to read. Maybe I’ll play GW1 one day, if there’s ever a discount sale. \;w;/ I’m super curious about every tiny bit of lore, also want some skins that are exclusive to GW1. That pleasant, sweet feeling that there’s so much interesting things ahead. I will take my time and never grind anything to frustration, for example, I’ve been working on my first leg, Sunrise, on and off and I’ll wait several months more, until I get all the clovers from the monthly chest. I don’t sweat it and just enjoy the game however I see it. Feelsgoodman.

I hope I managed to answer that person’s question, how did I get where I’m currently? Just took my time, learned my own pace and enjoyed every minute I spent online. Love the game, and it will love you back. \o/

[prophetkristy]

slayer of stars

Twenty years ago today, I came down the hill from my History 101 course with my brain a-whirring, made my way to the computer lab in the dungeon basement of my dorm, logged onto Usenet [1], and posted the following to alt.fan.wedge:

Subject: SW and animism From: Kristy <…@uidaho.edu> Date: 1997/08/28 Message-ID: <872787391.28561@dejanews.com> Newsgroups: alt.fan.wedge

Okay, I just got back from my History of Western Civilization class, and I have to vent. It’s no secret that GL got his ideas from other cultures and traditions. So it wasn’t too surprising when my teacher(who’s pretty awesome, IMO) was explaining animism today, he used SW as an example. (it sure made taking notes a lot easier. ::g::) Animists believe that the universe is alive, i.e., the Force is there. And they have shamans who are basically Jedi knights. I identified with evrything he was saying until he got to explaining their general classes of gods. Here’s what they have: the old father god, the young warrior god, the young goddess of war/love, and the trickster. There were parallels here to SW: trickster=Han Solo, wise father=Obi-Wan, goddess=Leia. But my teacher went on and on about how the young warrior was the coolest of all, he went off and fought battles and monsters and all the cool stories were about him. So who else would he choose for the SW parallel but Farm Boy. Bleah! I _almost_ went up to him after class and protested. Farm Boy isn’t the coolest warrior! _Wedge_ is, of course!

Yet another example of the oppression Wedge fans suffer at the hands of Farm Boy…. ::sigh:: Well, he’s guaranteed I’ll remember _that_ part of the lecture.

How about: Vote Wedge. He’s the true animist warrior god.

Thank you for listening, you’re the only people who would ever understand. :-)

–Kristy [2], off to an astronomy lab

Palpatine’s dead. Vote Wedge. –Antilles/Celchu ‘00–

From such humble [?!] beginnings was the True Animist Warrior God movement born. (Some time later I printed out a post signed with the TAWG [3] campaign slogan and taped said slogan onto my history notebook.)

This was not to bag on the history course. It was only the second day, as far as I can tell from my notes [4]. I had wanted to take the honors section of the course, but it wouldn’t fit in the schedule of other classes I was taking [5]. It turns out that I don’t regret this, as I very much enjoyed the class. It was actually taught by a graduate student, IIRC, and he was very good; he described many events in a human context with the emotions and motivations of the players. [6] Really, the worst thing about the course was that it was at 7 am—a less than ideal way, shall we say, to start college [7]. (Oh my TAWG, I’m going absolutely berserk with the footnotes! My brain keeps going off on tangents, but I don’t want to interrupt myself all the time. wheeee!)

(Interestingly, the next semester I continued on with Hist 102, which this time was taught by a professor. Who wasn’t nearly as interesting as the grad student!)

According to my heading for the Animism post in the Classic Threads section of the AFW website [8], I previously linked Star Wars to the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh–where Farmboy was Gilgamesh, taking all the credit, and Wedge was Enkidu, doing all the work. I think now this might be a little revisionist history. I can’t remember in which course I read Gilgamesh, but it’s likely that it was Lit of Western Civ that same semester (high school Senior AP English was British lit, where we watched every Jane Austen movie Ever Made *gag*). The earliest post of mine I can find referencing the two was actually the *next* week or so, in the midst of the Epic, Historical “Fantasy Toys” Thread, in response to Quiara:

> We understand you, dear. Where else could I admit to writing a Hero > essay about him in the same year that I did a book report on Rogue > Squadron?

I really want to write my Lit of Western Civ essay on the parallels between Gilgamesh/Enkidu and Luke/Wedge, but I could never get four pages out of that and have my teacher actually like it. ::pout:: [9]

Both of these posts were commenting on what I felt (still do feel, to some extent) was a sad state of affairs in being a WedgeFan. Namely, that Wedge was a lot cooler than most people give him credit for. (And, underlying that feeling, a WedgeFan’s natural disdain for Luke “Farmboy” [10] Skywalker.) This would reach its fannish culmination in the Book of Wedge, but had real-world significance in the woeful lack of a separate carded Wedge Antilles action figure. As well as the lack of Wedge awareness among those who weren’t huge pilotfans.

Despite that, 1997 was a fantastic year to be a WedgeFan. Maybe if you weren’t Quiara, Brett, or myself, it was different—we three were quite chatty—but I never heard anyone complain. ;-) [11] It wasn’t actually our most active year, but it was the beginning of what I think of as the “golden years” of AFW. The first four X-Wing books (by Historian of Wedge Michael A. Stackpole) had been released by January 1997, and Mike actually lurked and occasionally even posted. I joined in the spring of 1997 as a senior in high school (with a very embarassing post which will not be reproduced here). Quiara was in high school. Brett wasn’t being challenged too much by work or life, because he also apparently had a lot of time on his hands. Somehow the three of us had some mojo (and also probably high blood sugar content) that just led to wacky hijinks. Quiara declared Wedge’s candidacy for President in April, a story which would last well *past* the 2004 election. I declared him TAWG in August. The Fantasy Toys thread was started earlier in August, thus cementing me into the AFW madness and keeping me frequently posting even when I probably should have been paying attention to college. (eh. I gradutated.) The “the world is falling down…” thread was that year, too.

Of all the Internet friends I have, interestingly it’s Quiara and Brett whom I’ve never met in real life. I actually haven’t heard from Quiara in years; she dropped off the radar at about the time she started college, I think, thus proving her work (study) ethic. ;-) I can’t say I really knew her all that well—AFW was almost exclusively the limit of our interaction—but I still consider her to have been an early partner in crime. I still hear from Brett occasionally, and I actually can’t believe I haven’t found myself visiting his city before now. Brett holds a special place in my memory not only for being such an integral part of that first crazy year on AFW, but also for scoring me the Wedge action figure I like to call “biceps Wedge”–the one from the Milennium Falcon carrying case, which his comics store was selling loose for some reason.

Resorting again to Google Groups (we never know, when we’re making history, that we are doing so, and as such fail to keep track of these things), it looks like I first styled myself Prophet Kristy on October 8, 1997, in a short thread titled “Random Thoughts.” [12] Quiara, bless her heart, actually accused me of being humble:

> –Kristy, Prophet of the Great One

Just a prophet? you could make Cardinal at least, if you wanted.

(Yeah, maybe I could have—I am Catholic, after all—but, y'know, “Prophetess” works better on the back of a kickball shirt that “Cardinal”. “-ess.” Er, see what I mean?)

One month later (AFAICT) I first signed a post as “Prophet Kristy”–and the rest, as they say, is history.

I could go on and on with the AFW nostalgia——but I should probably get to work on actual, you know, work. And this is getting LONG. However, I do want to mention one other thing in relation to the TAWG / Prophetess thing.

The Book of Wedge was my default icon on LiveJournal—a little cartoon made by terrathree, originally for Terra Group, that she kindly made 100x100 when I started LJing. I didn’t actually come up with the idea for the Book of Wedge—the document I wrote was largely an adaptation from “The Adventures of Wedge Antilles” written by Mike Scorsch and posted on his late web page Corellian Bloodstripes. I’d always been greatly amused by the idea of revisionist SW history with Wedge being the person behind *everything*–especially having Wedge actually blow the first DS as well as the second. Having declared myself a Prophet, I also felt it was only fair that I write a Holy Book. Thus was born the Book of Wedge, wherein Wedge not only blows up both Death Stars, but also shoots Greedo, fights off the Slave I with a blaster, and generally saves the day. In it, I declared Quiara and Brett to be Apostles of Wedge along with Jim and Marji, two others who were in the thick of AFW in late 1997. And generally had a blast being silly and fangirly.

Quiara followed this up with the Book of Quiara, a short history of the campaign and other silliness. And much later, terrathree expanded on an observation I’d made about the constellation Orion looking like an X-wing and wrote the tale of the Hunter of the Sky.

These are only a few of the many, many tales of Wedge spawned by AFW, but they are the Holiest. So sayeth the Prophetess of the Great One, Wedge Antilles, the True Animist Warrior God. *makes the Sign of the Exploding Death Star*

I imagine our old IRC chat server probably doesn’t even exist anymore (is IRC even still a thing??)–Feast Days used to always be Chat Days–but have a good Feast Day of Wedge, won’t you all? Do the Ewok Dance, drink some Ewok Juice, bag on Farmboy, and revel in the glory of the Rebellion’s Greatest Starpilot.

[1]=Yeahhhhhh, Usenet. Back in the day. [2]=As you see, I didn’t self-identify then as Prophetess; that was to come later. Wow, I’d forgotten I used to use my fanfic Knave Leader and the ASCII parked X-wing in my .sig. Nifty. [3]=I’m almost positive that Morwen was the one to coin that acronym. Once again showing us all up with her mad language skillz, especially considering this isn’t her native tongue. [4]=yes, I’m enough of a nerd that I’ve kept my freshman history notes. [5]=probably this was a good thing, since I was taking the honors sections of Chemistry 111 AND English <memfault—Literature of Western Civilization>. [6]=I haven’t been able to turn him up by Googling, but I hope he found himself a faculty position somewhere; he deserves it. [7]=I cordially loathe all those students who boast of arranging their schedules to never start before 10 or 12. I was never able to do that—there was always a class I needed that was a 7:30 or 8 or 8:30. Pout. [8]=Yeah, I know it’s gone. It needs a new server space. And its webmistress needs to pay attention to it. I’ll just have to link to Google posts here. [9]=It looks like I had dropped the Knave Leader by this time, but was still not calling myself Prophet Kristy. [10]=How much do I love that Mara always calls him Farmboy? [11]=Oh, no, that came much later, spurring the Project Boussh Polite Flame War of '01(?). [12]=this was also apparently the thread that spawned the phrase “rakish rebel scum”, which Brett quickly hailed as a great band name. And it was only a 7 post thread! aaah, for the time to just read and relive the posts of those years.

[tandem85]

Survey...thing

Okay so this is gonna be a bit weird. I came across this copypasta survey thing and thought it looked interesting judging by the first question. Had no clue of it's true length and I've been just kinda rambling on for close to 2 hours now. This tumblr has possibly the lowest traffic in recorded history, so I shouldn't have to worry about too many eyes stumbling across this. At least I hope. Eh, oh well, whatever, here it is.

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, and find line 3. - Good machines don't guarantee success, though, as RCA and Xerox and others had discovered. (The Soul of A New Machine, Tracy Kidder)

2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can, What can you touch? - The wall and pillows.

3. Before you started this survey, what were you doing? - Browsing the internet after pulling an all-nighter due to insomnia and painful recollections of past mistakes.

4. What is the last thing you watched on TV? - 'The West Wing' on Netflix

5. Without looking, guess what time it is: - Eight fucking A.M.

6. Now look at the clock. What is the actual time? - 8:03 AM. End me.

7. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear? - A desk fan and the faint sound of traffic

8. When did you last step outside? What were you doing? - A few days ago, to pick up an old iMac off Craigslist

9. Did you dream last night? - No.

10. Do you remember your dreams? - On average, no. Sometimes a decent one lingers, though.

11. When did you last laugh? - I honestly have no idea.

12. Do you remember why / at what? - Not at all. Probably just a passing chuckle at something I read somewhere.

13. What is on the walls of the room you are in? - Various posters, most either from Club Nintendo or Nintendo Power, along with a few more obscure ones.

14. Seen anything weird lately? - Plenty.

15. What is the last film you saw? - All the way through? I, uh, honestly couldn't say...I have a habit of just watching bits and bobs of films I like over and over again, usually to just take in detail or just to confirm a stray thought or something. If that's the case, then Star Wars w/the theatrical mono track. If an *entire* film, then probably Aliens a month or so back.

16. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? - Small suburban town a few miles out from some city in some state, preferably more northern than where I am now. Countryside of Oregon seems nice.

17. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy? - Probably just save it all and try to coast on it for the rest of my life.

18. Tell me something about you that most people don’t know. - the fuck is this copypasta quiz? Er, well, nobody really *knows* me so just any facet of trivia about my life would do, I guess. I'm really, *really* obsessed with EPCOT even though I've never been and I haven't even visited Disney World since 2002. I genuinely have a copy of every pavilion and attraction's soundtrack from Future World burned to CDs sitting in my car right now, and if I had to pick favorites, Horizons and Communicore get the most play time.

19. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do? - Give everyone some common sense and a better sense of care towards others. That would ((hopefully)) end a majority of conflict out there.

20. Do you like to dance? - Not really. Haven't danced since my sister's wedding back in '09. Yep, even missed prom, not that I really care.

21. Would you ever consider living abroad? - Maybe if it's like Japan or somewhere with similar power standards...I couldn't make it a month in Europe and it's 240v mains standard. My life hinges too much on tech.

22. Does your name make any interesting anagrams? - Never really thought of it. Probably not.

23. Who made the last incoming call on your phone? - ...my mother, a few days ago. I only have my immediate family's numbers saved. Not like anyone would ever really want to call me.

24. What is the last thing you downloaded onto your computer? - Some shitty (what I presume) in-ride recording of Horizons I wanted to play around with in an audio editor to get a decent loop or two out of...before I realized YouTube had better resources for that.

25. Last time you swam in a pool? - Years. I used to love swimming all the time when I was younger (weather permitting; my skin goes from moonlight pale to lobster red faster than it takes to boil an egg on the sun). Heck, I don't think I still have any trunks that fit anymore...

26. Type of music you like most? - Normally I'd say 70s/80s rock/pop, but I haven't listened to much outside of, er, soundtracks the past few months.

27. Type of music you dislike most? - Either country or EDM/dubstep/whatever. I can't stand singers in country, it's so painfully obvious they're forcing their voices to have this bogus accent, and dubstep/electro whatever is just screeching garbage that sounds worse than playing a data cassette through a walkman. 

28. Are you listening to music right now? - No, I was trying to go to sleep earlier, now I'm just laying with a laptop sitting 2 feet from my face listening to the fan whir.

29. What color is your bedroom carpet? - Beige

30. If you could change something about your home, without worry about expense or mess, what would you do? - Expand the floorspace somehow. If where was an extra bedroom, a lot of storage problems would be solved. (lot of books and furniture. Takes up a lot of space.)

31. What was the last thing you bought? - iMac G3 off craigslist.

32. Have you ever ridden on a motorbike? - nope

33. Would you go bungee jumping or sky diving? - I tried zip-lining once. Nearly broke my hands and fell 30+ feet into a ~40 degree lake. High-flying stunts ain't my thing.

34. Do you have a garden? - No, but I (as in my family) used to years ago. It was nice.

35. Do you really know all the words to your national anthem? - Yes, thanks 4kids /s

36. What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning? - why am I still here

37. If you could eat lunch with one famous person, who would it be? - Steve Wozniak, but my brain's so fried from exhaustion so often I'd probably royally fuck that lunch up.

38. Who sent the last text message you received? - My sister a few days ago. By mistake. Wrong "Andrew".

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? - If I had one and if I was stupid enough to max one out, definitely 100% my local game store, The Video Game Cavern.

40. What time is bed time? - My life is in such shambles that a bed time isn't even a functioning concept in my life. It's whenever I pass out.

41. Have you ever been in a beauty pageant? - I'm a guy, so, no.

42. How many tattoos do you have? - None. I'm a total square.

43. If you don’t have any, have you ever thought of getting one? - Nah. Being broke + being a bear = never even a passing thought.

44. What did you do for your last birthday? - Nothing iirc. Had classes (then), didn't have that fancy a dinner, and just crashed that night.

45. Do you carry a donor card? - Can't be due to [insert some crap about bad bloodline]

46. Who was the last person you ate dinner with? - Ha. Ha. ha...

47. Is the glass half empty or half full? - depends on how the water got into the cup.

48. What’s the farthest-away place you’ve been? - Ohio. eh

49. When’s the last time you ate a homegrown tomato? - Not a fan of tomatoes. I think my dad still grows some during the summer (not a full garden, just like 3 veggie plants he tends in the flower beds)

50. Have you ever won a trophy? - Not really

51. Are you a good cook? - Well I haven't burned anything or cut myself yet so maybe.

52. Do you know how to pump your own gas? - Yes

53. If you could meet any one person whose deceased, who would it be? - You know, I never really thought about something like this. Honestly, not as much 'meet' but more of just have a good long talk with, my grandfather. He passed when I was 8, so I never got to really *know* him that well. I've learned more about him from his service papers than being around him a lot when I was young. So yeah, that.

54. Have you ever had to wear a uniform to school? - Lol yep in middle school, uniform and enforced dress code. Everyone hated it back then, however since it was a small school in a massive district I never kept up with anyone afterwards so I can't speak for them, but I actually adopted practices from that dress code. Belt and polo not so much, but always wearing a nice shirt and keeping it tucked in, yeah. I've dressed that way every single day since then.

55. Do you touch-type? - Yep, but I'm weird and don't use the normal home-row hand layout thing. I can type proficiently, it just looks sloppy af

56. What’s under your bed? - A lot of junk. Binder of Gen 1 Pokemon cards, a case of cassettes, stack of old model railroading magazines, old busted up laptop, some blank paper.

57. Do you believe in love at first sight? - HA. Ha. ha......

58. Think fast, what do you like right now? - warmth. seriously, it's cold and my blanket is doing nothing.

59. Where were you on Valentine’s day? - Home, all day, doing pretty much nothing. just a typical day.

60. Life motto: - I don't really have a motto but if I want to be sappy I'd just lift the one from Horizons: "If we can dream it, we can do it" but I have no dreams and I literally do nothing

61. What was the name of your first pet? - I named all my fish once, but I was 5, so I'll just skip to my first cat. 'Whiskers'. Very imaginative.

62. Do you like to go camping? - Yes. I miss it. My sister and brother-in-law used to take me camping all the time years ago...but they've since settled down, had kids, and haven't done anything like that in a while. Meanwhile I'm broke, have no gear, no friends or anything like that so I can't do jack shit about camping.

63. Is there anything going on this weekend? - Not really. Just working on that iMac I keep mentioning

64. Do you have any nicknames? - Not really. Only thing that could vaguely qualify is 'swiss', the first word of my normal username everywhere else. Which is ironic since I'm 100% not Swiss.

65. Who is your favorite musician/band? - Genesis, Collins era. aaaaaaaaaaaaaand I've just earned myself a beating.

66. What time do you get up in the morning? - I STILL HAVEN'T EVEN SLEPT YET

67. Do you wear pajamas when you sleep? - usually. just a t-shirt and pj bottoms.

68. What is the first thing people notice about you? - dunno. don't really interact with enough people to notice anything

69. What is the last movie that you saw at the cinema? - err, probably Ghostbusters. The original, not the new one. They re-released it briefly in promotion of the new one. Fucking loved the new transfer and audio mix, blew the earlier (2014 30th anniversary edition screening) out of the water.

70. Do you sing in the shower? - Nah, I prefer the sound of running water

71. What do you do most when you are bored? - browse the internet, die a little on the inside. whatever's left, at least

72. What do you do for a living? - eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

73. Do you love your job? - EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

74. Which came first the chicken or the egg? - the egg because evolutilkjoirwjga;slkdfja;lkgja;eruhmynf;djva;n

75. How many keys on your key ring? - 3

76. Are you close with your parents? - physically too close, emotionally, further than the moons around jupiter. though that can be said about many things.

77. What kind of car do you drive? - Pontiac Grand Prix. Jumped through freaking hoops the past half a year just to be able to drive it since the damn title was stuck in limbo since March 2016. Just got the tag for it a week ago.

78. What are your best physical features? - people comment on my hair and eyes a lot so those, I guess

79. What are your best characteristics? - oh god. Well, guess you can say I'm determined. Like how I keep on with this survey even though I only thought it was like 20 questions long, not 100 or so. Also you could probably punch me in the face and I'd be the one apologizing.

80. What was the name of your favorite teacher? - Ms. Hamm

81. Where did you grow up? - At this point I've spent most of my life in this hell hole, so Greenville, SC. wait, fuck

82. How far away from your birthplace do you live now? - err somewhere around 300 to 400 miles. Essentially really just one state away.

83. Can you do any impressions? - I've perfected an impression of a sad sack of shit living in emotional isolation stuck in a permanent state of panic

84. Are you a morning person or a night owl? - Night owl by far

85. Can you touch your nose with your tongue? - No, ew

86. Can you close your eyes and raise your eyebrows? - kinda, yeah

87. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? - I couldn't be more of introvert if I lived in a literal hole in the ground

88. What is your best childhood memory? - driving a golf cart up a tree. Don't ask me how, but I somehow managed that when I was like 6. And by tree I mean massive pine. And by up it I literally mean the thing was hanging 5 feet off the ground on a branch.

89. What are some of the different jobs that you have had in your life? - (Re: 72, 73)

90. Do you light candles where you live? - yeah, I enjoy LIGHT scented ones. In open rooms. Strong candles are migraine invoking pieces of shit

91. What was your favorite toy growing up? - wooden Thomas the Tank Engine

92. Do you play any musical instruments? - I am a defect in my familial lineage

93. Have you ever been involved in a crime? - I'm a goodie-two-shoes meh-fest, only thing I've ever stolen is a pencil off a teacher's desk and even that was an accident

94. Do you have long or short hair? - too long for my taste, but it doesn't really look long at all. crazy curls.

95. Have you ever spread a secret to others someone asked you not to? - Never been given many secrets, but I've always kept them.

96. What is your favorite movie? - Oh jesus christ. I just have a slew of movies I enjoy above average, I'll be damned if I could ever properly rank them. In no particular order: Jurassic Park, Short Circuit, Blade Runner, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture

97. Are you getting tired answering all these questions? - I'm already tired. This was supposed to be more amusing than anything, but it's actually felt good to just let my mind flow into the keys and out into this notepad file.

98. Last question.  Without looking can you remember what the first question was? - Something about lines in a book. It's what hooked my into doing this whole thing.

Wait, seriously, only 98 questions? Thought this thing would've rounded off too 100, then again, I thought it wouldn't be longer than 20 when I started and have just kinda been dragged through this whole thing. Well, it did feel kinda nice I guess. I'm debating if I should post this or not....eh, screw it, I'll throw it on my tandem tumblr. (Which it's short for TAND-EM, I was a retard and got the Tandy emulator confused for DeskMate, the proprietary Tandy OS shell. Nothing to do with bikes, but I guess the latin [at length] humorously applies as well.) I should probably write a header for this...oh, regarding the time questions, that was genuinely the time as of answering those questions. It's currently 9:46 AM. That's how long I've been at this. This...can't be healthy...