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And I shall also steal your victory!!

You thought you had a victory, but indeed you will not!!

Heeeere's an annoying pointless post that contributes nothing and doesn't hold a candle to the record

I throw my hat in the ring for "Most Likely to Be Three Raccoons in a Trenchcoat"

Also hello hi Glad I caught this at the last minute. This semester has been an utter dumpster fire y a y

As one mystery is solved, a new mystery appears!

Why is Dudeman spending his retirement browsing that place? Hmmmm??

Ehehehehe well, this is a fun turn of events... I'm glad they finally were upfront about all of those things, and y'know, I really do hope they're enjoying life wherever they are.

Also to respond to Deku's quote, I recall the days when Dudeman and I snuck in and made accounts on there (though Dudeman was there a while before me). I was promoted to global moderator B) (my acct is "Im Lost")


EDIT: Also this semester was HOT garbage. Like, holy smokes I'm surprised I made it through standing upright... I'm still exhausted...
Def taking a break from most technology over the winter and then I'll get back to posting stories and the like. I miss the forum and the activity But, I guess I can't say much if I'm not actively contributing to it, eh?

Sorry to hear that you're dealing with chronic medical problems I know they aren't often taken as seriously as more immediate, severe problems and don't always have a clear diagnosis (especially if they're autoimmune diseases) and treatment plan.

Well it's interesting because... especially with the one I'm dancing around rather than naming straight-up, no one talks about having it, so I didn't know that I was dysfunctional (and in a way, I don't know what's normal or if I've experienced normal). But I agree, it can be incredibly frustrating. The point of most frustration for me, though, is the tendency to treat symptoms rather than cause. "Oh, you have ADHD? Take this medicine to dampen your hyperactivity. It'll kill your personality, but eh." Same with food allergy. "Just avoid it bro"

And don't get me wrong, these things work well enough. But once you move beyond one or two conditions that you're having to deal with, it could potentially become too much. Especially if there's growing evidence that the conditions may all be related. That's how my mind is approaching this, anyway. I was fine to avoid peanuts for the rest of my life, and while ADHD was starting to become problematic for me with how this semester has been going, I was fine to just live with it or take supplements (I was considering doing that before I had to go to the ER anyway). But when I was told that this ER visit was a really severe version of something I've had my whole life, and upon further investigation they all seem to be related, then I thought, "Why the heck would I not at least do some looking into this?"

I think documenting what you're dealing with, both for the aid of yourself and others, is a good idea. Keeping track of how things develop over time and what steps work best to manage it is definitely helpful information to keep track of.

Absolutely. At worst, if I do find something that works, it'll be another case of anecdotal evidence. But I'm hoping to do this rigorously enough that it may be of scientific merit. Or at the very least can be repeatable for others dealing with these conditions.

I Dont Know How But They Found Me (thanks Gadd! ).

B) They've got some good stuff! Glad I could bring them to your attention

To answer the question for myself, I'm really into folk and indie these days. Used to be almost exclusively be VGM and jazz, but I've recently found myself listening to it less. I still like them both, ut I guess I find myself  being drawn more to lyrics I can sing along to. The Arcadian Wild, The Gray Havens, Paula Prieto The Riverside, The National Parks... also worship music, but that's also very much because I play piano for the band at the church I attend. I've been getting into Spanish Christian stuff lately (Paula Prieto, Majo y Dan, SioVera). AJR is a notable outlier in this group, I listen to their music a lot X)

[10. Sentinel]

This piece was written in the same semester (though in the week leading up to the 30th of April), for the same class, as Gossamer. (I haven't had time to revise TockTick and transfer to computer.) It recounts a simpler time, when I felt secure, comforted by something I couldn't know. It didn't want to be known...

Click this only if you want the actual meaning behind the story.

This one recounts a brief period of time during my senior year of high school that Vah Medoh would appear in my periphery, from having played a lot of BotW around that time. Curiously, once I completed that main quest and Vah Medoh was no longer flying in the sky, it also disappeared from my periphery.

[close]

10. Sentinel

Sentinel (n.) – a person or thing that watches or stands as if watching (Dictionary.com)
            The sun flashed frantically and irregularly as the car drove along the highway, and if it hadn't been for the trees that watched alongside the road, the situation would have caused even the most steady-minded to cry out that the world was ending.
            But I knew it was not so. It was all merely a game that the trees liked to play, mischievous, but ultimately harmless in intent.
            I looked ahead, maintaining focus on the road as I made my way through the fog that prevented me from seeing the path in front of me. It didn't matter that there was fog: I knew where I was going. The other cars around me seemed to know, too, as they passed behind me, fading between lanes in the mirrors of my vehicle that were just as untrustworthy as the fog itself.
            But it didn't matter: I knew where I was going, and I was aware of the cars that ambiguously meandered around my own. They might not have existed, but I knew I had to act as though they did. Who knows what reality would befall me if I didn't?
            I kept looking forward, knowing the road was before me, but all at once, I saw something in my periphery. It was not there before, but all the same, I could not know if it was there. As with the cars around me, so was this object. But yet unlike the cars, the object had a knowable, definite shape: it was there, present in this moment, extant on this plane.
            I looked away from the road for a moment, knowing what lay before me for a small stretch, and looked to the object. It was up in the sky, deep in the middle of the driver's side window. As my eyes swept across the sky, I found it empty.
            I was surprised, but not in the matter that I found the sky empty; rather, I was surprised to have seen the object in the first place. Unlike the cars that vaguely existed around me, this object did not naturally exist in the reality in which I found myself.
            What surprised me further: this was not the first time I had seen the object in my periphery. It was there, and had been for some span of time that was significant enough that I remembered its presence and curiously awaited each appearance, being surprised all the same every time it decided to make itself known.
            The nature of the object in the sky was quite fascinating to ponder, even more so than the potential meaning of its existence for some. It was an avian statue, with wings spread proudly and freely as it utilized the power of wind to maintain an unknown course. It always seemed to look away from the direction I was facing, either looking to the left if it appeared on my left, or to the right on my right.
            I smiled as the car dragged along the road to somewhere, its course unperturbed by my momentary shift in focus. This object was starting to become a part of my experience, and to an even greater degree, part of my own self.
            That was the only way I could reasonably justify its purpose for existence: seeing as no one else seemed to acknowledge its presence in the sky, and even the sky itself seemed to be unaware of that which occupied it, it could only be an extension of myself projected onto the world around me. Such was the way I sought to rationalize this reality, anyway.
            I turned off the music that I remembered was playing in my car, as it was becoming a nuisance that grated against the waves that permeated the world both inside my car and outside. The dissonance between the natural frequencies of the dream and the artificiality of the music was enough to drive me mad, and I preferred more to spend my time contemplating the object in the sky. My object in the sky.
            I wondered if it was supposed to be a sign of some sort, warning me as all plots tend to do of some unforeseen event. And yet, unable to think of any reasonable event that such an avian statue could be telegraphing, I discarded the hypothesis and continued pursuing this answer to a nonexistent question.
            The fog having not shown any signs of letting up, I continued making my way down the broad thoroughfare, perhaps to nowhere at all. I reluctantly checked my mirrors, knowing they would not reveal anything useful, and saw nothing. I knew this was not the case, however, and the sounds of a vehicle zoomed by my window with not so much as a second of warning. I looked for the source of the sound, and while there was none that I perceived visually, I knew that the vehicle was there: its proximity to my vehicle had caused it to shake, requiring me to correct the steering.
            As I tried to make out the shape of such a vehicle that nearly sent my own careening off the road, I saw the object once more, this time in more detail than the encounter I had had just moments prior. I could see the glow of its eyes, fixed upon nothing and everything, all at once. They were blue, merely rings that indicated some sense of life but failing to give any sort of more nuanced information than that.
            I decided this time, despite my initial inclinations, that I would maintain my course, looking forward rather than to it. Perhaps it enjoyed its estate in my periphery, and I would be able to learn more about it only indirectly.
            As these things crossed my mind, all at once I felt a sense of peace wash over me. Not necessarily a peace of contentment, but rather it was a peace of security. I felt safe, in some abstract way that could not be adequately explained in words. And yet, when this came over me, I smiled again and put some words into thought, addressing the bird as much as myself, "So you are here to protect me? But from what?"
            Somewhere deep within this reality, I knew the answer, and I knew that I knew the answer. But I wanted to let the object know that I knew it, and figured it was best to let it know by simply asking it.

Swoop de loop

So uh...

Medical problems blew up in my face and life became REALLY difficult (on top of an overcrowded semester). But, I learned that the issue is actually something I've been dealing with since I was a baby (according to my grandmother), and the most recent case was just a really, really bad flare-up. But now that I'm (mostly) out of the woods from this most recent incident, it's caused me to think a lot about the chronic medical problems I deal with and have done so since I was a baby. ADHD (undiagnosed properly, but it's there and I can give a lot of points to back me up on this if people are curious), food allergies and this other issue that, for the sake of being a decent human, I will not bring up on an online forum X')

So I've been doing some research into the three issues, and there's apparently a ton of literature on them and their interactions (though there is a notable dearth in addressing all 3 at once, which is understandable, that's very difficult to pull off properly without solid knowledge of the underlying interactions). But, there's no... definitive cause that has been able to be named? It sucks bc I'm in the middle of a PhD and I don't really have a ton of time to research this, but I really want to look into some self-experimentation that I can do to try and see if, somehow, there's an environmental factor (like a deficiency or presence of something bad) that is bringing the three of these issues together. Thinking about documenting my journey as well, since I know that these three problems are rather common, and this would be a documented process of "doing science" as it happens, and on myself as the guinea pig.

Anyway, health scare over, now I have the slightly less significant scare of being thoroughly behind on my work, which is going to be incredibly harmful and in-the-way for my returning to a normal, healthy life. Yayyyyyyyyyyy.

IT'S SO PRETTY

"Con su lápiz de lápislazuli
Se pintó un cielo azul sin fin y así
Se perdió en el cielo de su mirada"

I'm obsessed with this song (see "What are you listening to now?" in Music for context)

This is more of a general music opinion (inspired by music I'm currently listening to), but if you're an artist that publishes a double album, then every song on the album better be worth it. It's kinda weird to have a double album where half the songs are pretty forgettable, almost like the artist is trying to pad out the release with songs they know probably wouldn't be able to stand alone. At that point I'd rather the artist just cut out half the songs and have a single album where all the tracks are solid.

:thonk: That is certainly an interesting strategy, but I gotta counter; maybe the songs you feel are forgettable could resound deeply with someone else? While not in a double album, I personally find "The Trick" by AJR to be pretty... blech. But I've seen people posting thoughts on the internet that they actually resonate pretty hard with the song and that it has gotten them through difficult stuff. Do you have any specific examples you're referring to?

I've been listening to Paula Prieto recently, and her song "Lapislázuli" is SO PRETTY I can't!!! I love the sound of her voice :'))))

Are you planning on learning speedrunning for the game, or just trying to dive into a new aspect of the game with the glitches?

Oh I've no interest in speedrunning much of anything I was at one point, looking to 100% speedrun Wario Land: Shake It! for the world record, but the amount of time it'd take to learn the lines... I just don't have it anymore. That said, I do manage to find one track in every Mario Kart game since 7 to get really good at and get within 7ish seconds of the WR with my acceleration-heavy setup (7: MK7 Rainbow Road | 8: Mute City @ 200cc | 8BCP: MKWii Rainbow Road @ 200cc). But even then, I don't have the time needed to get consistently good at any of it. :') But that's okay! Priorities and whatnot.

The more you progress the more linear the game feels. Right at the beginning you're offered the choice of four planets to go to and occasionally have to bounce back and forth between them, but each planet map is basically a closed loop or two with a couple hallways either connecting them or branching off of them. There isn't a lot of room for exploration or multiple branching paths to get to the same place. Because it's such a short game, I feel like there's a lot of opportunity for each planet map to essentially double in size, offering a lot more flexibility and open-endedness like a true Metroidvania. I don't imagine we'll ever get an "expanded" version of the game, or even a sequel, but the potential is certainly there!!!

Overall, would probably give the game an 8.2/10.

Makes you wonder if the devs ran out of time/grew impatient, or if it's more so an intentional move for some reason? No earthly idea, just spitballing there. Which makes one wonder... does a minimalistic Metroidvania exist? What would one even look like?

I've often considered writing a story that's basically all dialogue, perhaps even taking it a step further so that the reader only sees one side of the conversation It's certainly a challenge to limit yourself to just dialogue.

Ooooh, that's an interesting concept, only seeing one side of the conversation. But yesssss it really is! I even considered no dialogue tags for that story, in the interests of complying with the assignment, but then I discovered I could tell the story more succinctly (what you see here) and include basic tags.

New story coming soon... I started writing it yesterday, so it'll perhaps have a bit of a different sound from the other two I've posted in this thread. My goal is to finish it by the end of the week (I'm managing to find time to write stories throughout the week despite classes, research, teaching, logistics of field work, and working on my dissertation proposal).