So apparently I have 1,000 tags and can't make more, which, rude. Also, I don't care if I used it once, I can't get rid of "I have a hammer!"

I really need a Warehouse 13 icon for this, but Stargate will suffice.

I've not finished the game yet. I might be halfway through? Three quarters? I tried to guess the play time and was way off (not that I believe the stated 12 hours, either they don't die as much as I do [very likely] or they aren't reading/watching all the stuff you pick up, in which case, what is the point?)

Um anyway. Thoughts. In no particular order.

1. The Janitor: Is Ahti the manifestation of The Oldest House? He's def not a normal ass janitor. Since a janitor can also be a custodian/caretaker (and The Board very much loves synonyms to express meanings) I presume he is how the House can interact with people.

1a. Does that mean the the House and the Board aren't necessarily on the same side? Who/Whatever the Board is it seems it can only interact via objects (the Service Weapon/Hotline) and objects aren't against the rules. The Hiss are invading/taking over and neither the House or Board seems to like that.

2. Polaris is going through Jesse and thus not breaking the rules on direct involvement, but also hates the Hiss.

2a. The House also seems to like Jesse. She wouldn't have gotten in if Ahti didn't let her. And the Board picked her as Director. Everyone likes Jesse.

2b. Is Polaris independent or a Board member? She only got Jesse to the House after the Hiss arrived. Is it coincidence? Did Polaris only just find a way in? Did she make a deal with the Board to get Jesse in to help stop the Hiss? Was she waiting for Jesse to be ready to be Director? If a deal was made was it with Ahti instead or both the House and Board?

3. Is the House meant to be neutral-ish ground that just stores objects and holds doorways?

4. More general setting/mood: the mix of American bureaucracy and folklore works really well. (How does the House feel like every single government building in DC I've ever been in) I sorta assume that any similar departments in other countries runs off local myth/legend/belief/culture. I'm going off Dr Underhill mentioning that she's on loan from another agency (and the British accent). I guess that, idk, lets call it MI-42 deals with like fairies and standing stones and the service weapon is King Arthur's sword and Robin Hood's bow (and Gimli's axe). And everything looks like either the Gherkin and/or Oxford. And instead of the National Enquirer and Roswell you have archives of The Star and jokes about Chavs. (I don't know enough to guess any other country tropes, Australia has combat magpies? but I would love to see what people think their county should have.)

I have thoughts regarding some of the discussion I've seen about the idol board and the Nuts/Snackrifice

1) Ok we're getting a bit personal here, just because someone isn't onboard with the Nut plan doesn't mean they are disrespecting the devs. No one is cheating and comparing it to a D&D campaign where players are deliberately running things off the rails isn't the right one. Yes, there are D&D comparisons to be made, yes the devs have said they have a story planned. But I think we need to look at it with more of a Mass Effect paragon/renegade view. It's appease the Peanut god/defy the Peanut god and since we have the choice to do so I think the devs have 'endings' for each.

Also wanting to push buttons and see what happens? Kinda baked in already. We opened the Forbidden Book, this should not be a surprise.

2) Don't blame the Tacos. If the Tacos have decided to defy the gods and gotten support that's within the game parameters. And look, there's four places that last time I checked haven't moved in days. We can get the nuts and the Taco pitchers up with a margin of error of two places. The fact that any combined effort hasn't displaced Axel/Polkadot/Jess/York is a different discussion I feel. (not every one is as much on discord/twitter/invested with this)

3) The Commissioner is going a great job.

To spare twitter rambling and because it's OOC, some thoughts on Blaseball and narrative story telling in games and fandom:

I kinda love that its just browser based, I feel like making an app for it would ruin the feel of it. It reminds me of The Kittens Game before it had saves or an app and you'd loose all your progress to space fairing kittens if Firefox crashed.

It also reminds me of the text based RPGs (forum and LJ) from the 00s

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/astros-cheating-open-secret/2020/02/11/1830154c-4c41-11ea-9b5c-eac5b16dafaa_story.html

So that's why it's the Houston Spies?

And somehow Baseball is weirder than Blaseball in some aspects?? How many fucking games do they play? you have have a 100~ game win/loss ratio?? And the off season is how short??

Edit: Now with more necromancy

I love that someone figured out that you can idolize incinerated players and with in 45min Jaylen Hotdogfingers was in 14th place. Also love that everyone just seems to go "oh ok, the Garages want her back, we can help!" (Not so much down with the suggestion that some Crabs can fairweather flute over with votes, like only if they ask directly. We're evil, but lawful)

Well, just one at the moment. (Edit-now two!)

( Read more... )

 - I keep imagining the Ninth House to look like the Hive in Destiny, only more skeletons than ... whaever the Hive is. I've somehow associated this book really strongly with Destiny at least in aesthetics. (I wish Destiny would lean harder into cosmic space horror and less game-as-a-service. Gahhh!) They both have that dying universe feel. (Venus but with more ocean is the first house.)


- I didn't think about it untill Silvie mentioned it (I was recovering from it being one in the morning and being punched in the face by the ending) but yes I totally aggree that the other Houses must have figured it out. Particularly since Harrow is super suspicious of WHERE ARE THE BODIES. Also, Gideon is too stubborn to remain dead when there is a Harrow to annoy.

- Who knew that we were missing Agatha Christie, but with more skeletons?

I'm slowly working my way through The Silmarillion with the help of the So You Want to Read Tolkien podcast. Hopefully I'll be caught up to where they are (they just started the Hobbit) by my vacation as I want to go to a chapter a week and not have to do 'homework' at the beach. :p

I'm planning on making a bunch of Swedish bread tomorrow. Rachael is out of the crisp flat breads from IKEA and I want to try the cardamom bread. (Knäckebröd and Vetebröd EAT ALL THE BRÖD)

Went to a fourth of July party, saw fireworks, played games, and am trying to help organise a day for longer (Terraforming Mars, Dark Moon, Eclipse) board games to be played.

Had a 'Right, the Internet Experience is different for other people' moment while trying to figure out the game day. We decided on using Facebook as all of us have a Facebook and at least we'll get email notifications rather than trying to get everyone on a Discord server. Friend said while he loved using Discord the only feature it was missing (and something Team Speak has) was a way for servers to talk to each other. My first thought was "God that sounds horrible. Mods are just going to have to deal with so many trolls trying to spam random servers."
Must be nice to still have faith in people on the internet.

Seeing more gameplay and trailers for Anthem hasn't made me any happier about the game. Why have you done this Bioware, why? All I saw was a Destiny competitor. I like Destiny, it's one of the few multiplayer games I've played a lot of. But that's not what I want from Bioware. I didn't see anything that made the sacrifice of Andromeda worth it. (LET ME DATE WEIRD ALIENS AND OR ROBOTS)

At least I'm going to get Cyberpunk 2077 and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (?? I'm not complaining, I like the AC games, I just didn't expect that!) as RPG story driven games. Also, Elder Scrolls VI whenever that comes out and possibly Starfield?? we'll see on that one when we get more than a logo.

I'm not a big Fallout person, I've played bits of 3 and 4, but it never really got me like Skyrim did. I'll see how the game goes and who I know that wants to play the multiplayer bits I guess. But, eeeehhh? Still like couch co-op best for games with friends.

Tunic looks super cute, tiny Zelda fox! I want to get Unraveled 2 (Should still get the first one, also super cute!) I need to work on my collection of couch co-op. :p

Still need to play a bunch of stuff that was released last year/this year, I have to finish at least two games I have before buying anything new though. (Well, I might get Horizon: Zero Dawn while it's on sale...) I still want Neir, God of War, AC: Origins, Persona 5, Last of Us, The Witcher 3, Horizon, Doom (I'm still surprised how much I liked the demo for Doom)

I originally meant to do this as a new year's thing about what I had read. But I'm the worst at new years nonsense and book recommendations need no specific time. This way I can just bunch series together and not worry about what I actually read over any specific time period. (Well, this is vaguely June '17-May'18 of my reading list...so yea. Books!)

YA
Truthwitch/Windwitch/Sightwitch by Susan Dennard
An Accident of Stars/A Tyranny of Queens by Foz Meadows
Court of Fives/Poisoned Blade/Buried Heart by Kate Elliott
Warcross by Marie Lu
Every Heart a Doorway/Down Among the Sticks and Bones/Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

Sci-Fi
A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet/A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
Fortune's Pawn/Honour's Knight/Heaven's Queen by Rachel Bach
Babylon's Ashes by James SA Corey (Series starts with Leviathan Wakes)
Renegade/Drysine Legacy/Kantovan Vault/Defiance by Joel Shepherd
Killing Gravity/Void Black Shadow by Corey J White

Fantasy
Red Sister/Grey Sister by Mark Lawerence
The Poppy War by KF Kuang
The Palace Job/The Prophecy Con/The Paladin Caper by Patrick Weekes
The Gates of Tagmeth by PC Hodgell (Series starts with The God Stalker Chronicles)
Nevernight/Godsgrave by Jay Kristoff
An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors by Curtis Craddock
The Invisible Library/The Masked City/The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman

Non-fiction
The Book by Keith Houston

I've been looking back at old fanish things (inspired by re-reading the msscribe and Cassie Clare stories) and wow. I'm both nostalgic and slightly baffled. There's stuff I haven't seen referenced in years. Just the way people wrote on forums has changed. I don't think I've seen the word squee or TBTB as an acronym in a decade.

I'm sorta sad I only have one of my LJs backed up to Dreamwith now, I had a previous one I deleted in high school. I kinda wish I could go back and look at whatever nonsense I was doing then.

Probably Neopets if we're being honest. :)

The students are gone, town is quiet, well, except for the summer road works.

We're moving apartments this month, just across the road into a two bedroom instead of a one bedroom. It's fully renovated! We get a washer and dryer! We're planning an IKEA trip! (Yet again, we pack during E3. It's almost tradition now.)

I'm going to try brewing a stuff for the Dominion Cup in July. A dunkelweiss and maybe a cider and wheat beer? We'll see how much time I have with the moving.

Got a terrible migraine yesterday, I think it's the first time I've had on that made me throw up.

Still need to go see Deadpool, not interested in Solo. I need to finish Clone Wars first if I'm going to watch any Star Wars media.

Went to see Infinity War, have some rambling thoughts.

( Spoilers and stuff )

Recently some twitter short formatting has been bothering me. Yes, longer ideas can be effectively shared, the "thread (1/15)" format, but I keep seeing posts where it's just an image of text cropped from a larger article and a short comment that does noting to tell me the users opinion on the said thing (agree, disagree, sarcasm????). Where is the source for the article? The clipping doesn't give me enough info to form my own ideas about it other than confusion at what is going on. Yes, you might want to highlight that part but what of the rest of it? This is also something you care about (I guess? You're sharing it.) and I'd really like a clear view of your opinion...

Out of curiosity I looked at how freelance article submissions work (specifically for Polygon as I read a lot of their stuff and have a vague idea how they structure articles/reviews), google gave me a result that was some dude bitching about how they rejected his well researched and sourced article that he spent a whole 2 hours working on. Um. Even on papers that I completely BSed, I spent more than two hours on. Darling, the only news they are suppressing is your lack of understanding of what goes into a feature article.

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Sometimes I find it hard to put down mediocre books, like it will be an ok book and I guess I should see where it goes and I feel some obligation to see it through to the end because it's got just enough interesting stuff to keep me wondering how things work...and then I find something so much better I feel like I need to re-evaluate my standards on what I will actually finish. In this case I totally recommend An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows. Behold! Well written female characters, a world that isn't left unexplained solely for adding mystery to the plot, people with motivations that make sense!

I was reading Bradley P Beaulieu's Song of the Shattered Sands books. I got through the first one and started the second. They feel like a not quite finished draft or something. I think my biggest problem is the lack of any convincing motivation for the characters. Yes, the main character wants revenge on the Kings because they killed her mother, but to be fair mum did try to assassinate them. Like, the kings aren't shown as nice, but I'm not convinced they are the supernaturally enhanced evil they are set up to be.

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I still need to expand my vocabulary a lot, but I have been super excited that I can sorta read some packaging in Japanese now! (it been quite a bit of "Look! It says 'udon' and 'tofu' and 'soba'!")

Our fridge has been freezing things randomly and we finally got a new one from the apartment complex! Now if we can get a new stove... It doesn't help that an apartment below us is getting renovated. To be fair, it's a lot easier to replace carpet carpet when there isn't anyone occupying the unit. On the other hand I would totally move furniture and have Hoppe take the cats for a day or two for a refurbishment.

Rachael is going to a daughter of a family friend's wedding this weekend, I'm staying home as I have never met said bride-to-be and probably never will. (Rachael wasn't sure if she was going to go herself so I feel a bit better about my apathy.) She's also marrying some dude 15 years older than her apparently? If It wasn't a five hour dive I'd totally go mooch off the open bar and free food, but I'd rather stay with the cats and watch E3 coverage with a bottle of sweet wine. :D

(I wonder how they got the new fridge in? We had to take the sofa over the balcony and the new fridge is wider than the old one...guess the maintenance guys are used to this.)

Talked about what we would want to see in a Mass Effect movie/what other video games should there be with people recently.

I still really, really want a prequel game that is mystery/political thriller/spy intrigue and you play as a C-SEC officer. Maybe set around the Rachni Wars or the Krogan Rebelions? They totally need to take up the Dragon Age model of having a bunch of races in the character creator.

As for movies, no one is going to be happy if they try and do an adaptation of the original game trilogy. Doing a movie during the First Contact War would be a good place to start, like, it's a pretty easy jumping in place for people who don't know the lore, and for those that do there's a lot of stuff that can be filled in about the world and characters. (Ashley's grandfather! You know you want more badass Williams family stories!)

I also want an Indiana-Jones-style trilogy with Liara and her Prothean archaeology adventures. Even if she's young by asari standards, 120 years is plenty of time for her to go find cool tombs with traps and melt some space Nazis. :D (there should be some easter egg where the other archaeology staff doors are labeled "Jones" and "Jackson")

Why am I so stupidly conflicted over wanting Destiny 2? Like, it's the only multiplayer video game that has me interested, but I'm still not great about meeting people to play with that I don't know in real life. But they promise more story, and Robot-Nathan-Fillion, and Warlock-Gina-Torres, and despite all the flaws of the first one I still loved playing it...but so much expensive. :(

Also, so tired from work. We're short staffed and I took extra shifts since we need people and I want the overtime for my vacation to Florida in August. But I don't want to go in tomorrow or Monday, urg. At least I can sleep and loaf around for most of tomorrow.

Saw the trailer for Wonder Woman, finally a DC movie I'm actually interested in seeing! I'm glad it's getting good pre-release reviews. I still want DC to do good things, speaking of which doesn't Young Justice have a new season?

And I have more nonsense that I want to talk about, but I'm loosing the ability to word...

So far one of the more interesting things I've learned from having a fitbit is my resting heart rate goes up when sick and it goes up a day or two before I feel gross. I did look this up, your heart rate does go up as you try and fight infections. I know wearable heart/sleep monitors aren't the most accurate scientific devices, but getting data about myself is super interesting!

And with that trend, I should be feeling better soon as my resting heart rate is starting to drop back down again. Yay data!

Went to see Guardians of the Galaxy pt2 yesterday. Very much enjoyed it! (Baby Groot is as adorable as they say) I am all for the colourful, fun summer space movies that seem to be coming out. Thor looks like it's going back to being silly and fun and Valarian and the City of a Thousand Planets looks awesome!

Was super annoyed that the new ticket/seat reservation doesn't let you leave a space between your seat and an already filled one. First, if I'm going by myself I'm not sitting next to people unless the theater is packed. Second, since I was going with people that seat was going to be filled! Hoppe was buying a ticket at the same time I was, for fucks sake unless you are a family or an organization party no one buys block tickets. Just let me get the damn ticket and stop fussing at me computer! *grumpgrumpgrump*

Waiting for kickstarter packages is the worst. Two comics I backed sent out the "You have 48 hrs to confirm address" emails last week, so I know stuff is coming but there's no tracking and I don't know when things will show up.... :(