Locrian.zone

Mahjong

2026-01-18T12:35:00-06:00

Transcript

Panel 1: Tataru, Urianger, and Estinien are standing together glumly. Also, this is the only panel where I remembered to draw the feather in Tataru’s beret.

Estinien: That makes six hands in a row Y’shtola has won...
Urianger: Verily, her fortune doth rival the Spinner's own.

Panel 2: Tataru holds her finger up in the air knowingly.

Tataru: I have a theory. I’m going to do something weird, so don’t say anything, okay?

Panel 3: They’re all sitting at a mahjong table with Y’shtola. Y’shtola is East; Tataru is West.

Text: East 1 - Honba 7
Text pointing at Y’shtola: Back from a food break

Panel 4: Y’shtola discards a tile.

Tataru: Hey, Y’shtola...

Panel 5: Tataru smiles, hands folded in front of herself. Her hand is facing outward, toward the viewer (and toward Y’shtola).

Tataru: Aren’t you going to say anything?

Panel 6: Close-up of Tataru's hand.

Y’shtola: About what?
Y’shtola: Wait a second—

A zoom-in on part of Tataru's hand, featuring the 1-sou (stylized as a Cactuar) and the 7-pin. Both tiles are asymmetric. Above them, their mirror images are drawn and labeled “How they normally look from her POV”

Panel 7: Y’shtola looks visibly nervous.

Tataru: I KNEW IT!!

Panel 8: Shot of all the characters at the table. Estinien is frowning. Urianger looks shocked.

Tataru: Here we all assumed the tiles were opaque to you, but really you could see the ink’s aether through the back!

Urianger: Y’shtola, how couldst thou...

Y’shtola: I have no other way of seeing the tiles to begin with! What would you have me do?!

Also, it’s hard to see but Urianger is tenpai for Thirteen Orphans, so this hand would have been a draw anyway.

Panel 9:

Text: And so...

Tataru discards a North Wind tile.

Tataru: North Wind!

Y’shtola reaches across the table to touch it. She’s now wearing a blindfold, and she’s West, while Tataru is East, meaning she finally lost at least one hand.

Y’shtola: So it is.

Text pointing at Y’shtola: No aethersight (honor system)
Text pointing at the blindfold: Just for show

Text: ...Tataru commissioned a Braille mahjong set.

LLM

2026-01-15T13:00:00-06:00

Transcript

Three-panel comic hand-drawn in pencil.

Panel 1: A person gestures to a computer and says, “This is an LLM. It uses statistical inference to predict the most likely thing it should say next.” On the computer screen are written the words “HELLO I AM AI”

Panel 2: A person with bangs says, “Oh, like an autocomplete?” A person with spiky hair says, “Oh, like a person!”

Panel 3: Bangs stares skeptically at Spiky Hair, while Spiky Hair just smiles obliviously.

Double Standard

2025-12-09T11:25:00-06:00

“There’s just one thing I don’t get,” said Nashu.

“Just one thing?” Briardien snorted derisively. “I highly doubt that.”

As the party trudged vaguely northward through Eastern Thanalan to catch up with the Warrior and Gentleman of Light, Nashu turned to walk backward so she could face Cecy. And point accusingly at her. “You called Inspector Hildibrand a cross-dressing pervert!”

Julyan’s head turned toward Cecy, her eyes gleaming ominously. “I beg your pardon?”

“He— he put on a dress and a full face of makeup!” Cecy protested. “To deceive me into thinking he was Arabella!”

“Fair’s fair!” Nashu shot back. “You were disguised as Vannes to deceive Arabella!”

“That’s different!”

From ahead of most of the group, and behind the backward-walking Nashu, came the sounds of yelling and skirmishing as the local band of Qiqirn descended on Highbridge for the third time this week. But Nashu would not be distracted. “It’s exactly the same!” she replied. “When we catch up with him, you need to apologize.”

Cecy looked around at the others in hopes someone would come to her defense.

“The inspector went to such great lengths to solve a case?” Humphrey marvelled. “What an amazing man!”

Briardien rubbed his chin. “Try as I might, I cannot find a flaw in Nashu’s logic.”

“Help! The ratmen kidnapped my son!” cried a woman on the bridge.

“You called my Hildy what?” Julyan demanded.

In the ensuing silence one could hear a pin drop, were it not for the nearby Brass Blades swinging their swords at the onslaught of Qiqirn or the residents of Highbridge screaming bloody murder. The Manderville-adjacent party, however, was wholly focused on how Cecy would respond.

“I… I was playing a role!” Cecy stammered out. “I was just reacting the way Vannes would have!”

Nashu folded her arms across her chest and puffed her cheeks out. Her tail swished in annoyance. “So you’ll apologize to the inspector?”

“Yes! I promise!”

Nashu grinned and clapped her hands. “Hurray! Thank you, Cecy! I just know he’ll be thrilled to hear it!”

“Assuming there’s enough room in his thick skull to even remember the insult…” Briardien muttered.

One of the Qiqirn traffickers turned its gaze on Nashu as she turned back ’round to walk forward again. Before it could try to grab her, a Lalafell in a straw hat appeared out of nowhere and punched it in the face, then turned tail and fled as the Qiqirn and about five of its friends gave chase.

Propelled by the gleaming light-trail of the Treaty-Blade, Hildibrand quickly vanished from sight. Nashu took off, on foot, in vaguely the same direction.

Julyan’s head whipped around to glare at Cecy, who realized with a sudden jolt of horror that Hildibrand had blasted off before she could render her apology.

FFXIV job rework propositions

2025-11-28T12:40:00-06:00

Dancer’s playstyle could change depending on your dance partner. Rather than providing a DPS buff to your partner (or perhaps in addition to it):

You partner a melee DPS, you become a melee DPS; you do more damage, but you have positionals and have to stay within melee range.
Partner a magical DPS and you do more damage, but you get cast times and spend MP.
Partner a ranged physical DPS (including yourself, for the sake of solo overworld battles) to keep things the way they are now.
Partner a tank and you get a big buff to your defense and HP and shielding abilities.
Partner a healer and all your attacks basically become AOE Kardia, you get cast times and spend MP.

There would be some abilities that just straight-up change what they do depending on your stance. There would be one ability with a two-minute cooldown that, as a tank, would be an invuln, but as a healer would be a massive heal, and as a DPS would be a different flavor of huge-damage attack. As a ranged DPS maybe it could still be Technical Step; this could make multi-dancer parties viable, since one could be specced as something else during the other's Tech Step.

Dance Partner would wear off after some amount of time and you would have to re-apply it, but the person you partnered would receive a debuff that would prevent you from partnering them which varies depending on the size of your party. (If you’re alone or with one other person, this wouldn’t happen.)

You get the limit break of whoever you partnered. Except it wouldn’t be “Dancer Limit Break but [role]” — if you partnered a Gunbreaker, you would literally have Gunmetal Soul as your limit break. Kind of niche, but maybe you could partner a dead person to use their limit break. Or maybe that would be too broken? Maybe doing so basically gives you the equivalent of Walking Dead, where you’ll die in a few seconds unless you un-partner them or unless they’re rezzed.

…actually, that gives me an idea…

Monk

Okay, I don’t play Monk. But I did play Final Fantasy VI. So give Monk Soul Spiral. Basically a healer LB3, but at the cost of the caster dying.

That’s my only idea for Monk.

White Mage

Cure upgrades to Cure II. Freecure goes bye-bye.

Secret of the Lily unlocks at level 50 along with Afflatus Solace. When you have one or more lilies, Cure II changes to Afflatus Solace.

Afflatus Rapture unlocks at level 60. When you have one or more lilies, Medica changes to Afflatus Rapture.

Fluid Aura is back, at level 15, as a water-themed AOE. At level 45 it upgrades to Holy.

Aero III is back. Mutually exclusive with Aero/Dia’s DOT, of course, because we can’t have nice things.

Now that we have some hotbar space freed up, Divine Caress is no longer tied to Temperance.

Scholar

I don’t want Scholar to change too much. I like that it’s a little janky and I like that you have to actually think about what abilities to use. It could use a few small changes, though:

Return Miasma and Bane.

Let the Fairy Gauge be used on anything else. Like Fey Blessing? Why doesn’t Fey Blessing cost gauge???

Have Consolation overwrite Fey Blessing instead of Summon Seraph, or alternatively don’t lock out Fey Blessing while Seraph is out.

If you have your fairy glammed as a Carbuncle, Seraphism changes to a Carbuncle-themed look, and Seraph becomes Diamond Carbuncle.

Disciples of the Hand

First, allow crafting underwater, because it’s funny. Yes, this means making new animations for underwater crafting.

Second… I kind of want different locations to give different elemental buffs to reduce the crystal cost for crafting. Hell’s Lid can buff Fire, seaside (or underwater) can buff Water, Heritage Found can buff Lightning. Basically whatever kind of elemental sprites you can find nearby, that’s the element that gets buffed. I think this would be Fun and would encourage overworld play.

It’s okay to write fanfiction

2025-11-27T13:00:00-06:00

Recently (as of late 2025) I saw a post in a subreddit for one of my fandoms that went something like this:

I want to write a side story about [minor antagonist] and his background. Do you think this would be possible?

Plenty of people replied saying yeah, that sounds great, put it on Ao3 and we’ll read it! But no no no, the OP was quick to clarify. They don’t want to write fanfiction.

Ridiculous as the notion is that [publisher] would hire some rando off the internet to write this kind of thing, as opposed to the original creators of the franchise… that’s not even the thing I want to talk about right now.

There’s nothing bad about fanfiction.

There’s this pervasive thing in some corners of fandom (notably Reddit) where people write stories but then are horrified that people call them “fanfiction”, when that’s exactly what they are! Usually accompanied by a general smug attitude, as if they’re better than the typical squealing fangirls who write stories about their blorbos kissing.

Because that’s what it really is in the end, right? The sneering about fanfic is usually just misogyny. (Of course, not everyone who happily embraces the label “fanfic” is female — hi, I write fanfic; but like… fanfic wouldn’t be bad even if everyone who wrote it was female.)

So you see these dudebros writing stories that take themselves so fucking seriously, where the first five paragraphs are spent introducing the characters as if we’ve never met them before, and even if they deign to post their story on Ao3 the title is always something like “Pokemon: Ash’s Journey” or “Dragon Ball Z: Return of Goku” or whatever. Because they think they’re so much better.

FFXIV, and who counts as "alive"?

2025-11-06T13:00:00-05:00

It’s no secret that I don’t agree with Dawntrail’s messaging about death.

I recently picked up the new Pictomancer job. (Well, it’s a year and a half old at this point, but “new”.) It has a cute little storyline about a Moogle named Kupopo looking for his friend, a Pictomancer named Beruru.

Spoilers for the Pictomancer storyline:

After the death of their traveling companion Janquetilaque, Kupopo and Beruru had a falling-out and separated. It turns out that Beruru painted Kupopo into existence, and after Janquetilaque’s death, he told her that she would have to learn to stand on her own without him. She was so hurt by Kupopo “abandoning” her that she magicked herself inside one of Janquetilaque’s paintings and painted an illusory version of Janquetilaque to keep her company.

The obvious message here is “escaping from reality is bad”. But in what way is Kupopo not “real”? He’s obviously sapient — he travels the world looking for Beruru after she disappears, even to the point of recruiting the Warrior of Light and giving them Janquetilaque’s old Pictomancer soul stone. And Beruru never even tried to escape from reality until after Kupopo said he couldn’t stay! And there’s no reason he couldn’t stay; he wasn’t even a drain on anyone’s aether like primals or the Endless were! (Or if he was, they just plain forgot to say so in the script.)

One could make a comparison to Fray and Myste from the Dark Knight quests, but they were more obviously representative of the Warrior of Light’s inner trauma or whatever. (Myste made that super unsubtle by literally breaking your soul stone in half when he manifested.)

Kupopo seems more similar to Gigi, Brandihild, or Alpha; a created lifeform that gained its own consciousness. When Gigi broke down, that was a tragedy. The story treats it as a great happy thing that Alpha has a soul now and can go on fun little adventures with Omega. Hell, what about the other Omicrons, and the other denizens of Ultima Thule? They’re alive, right? Even though they’re artificial re-creations of previously dead beings? What makes them alive if Kupopo and the Endless “aren’t”?

(To be clear, this isn’t about whether it was moral or not to shut down Living Memory. If I’m surgically connected to a violinist who will die without my kidneys filtering his blood I have every right to disconnect myself and thereby kill him, but he’s still obviously alive.)

Would Brandihild even have gotten his post-credits stinger scene if the Endwalker Hildibrand quests had been written for Dawntrail? Would Alpha and Omega be wandering the world on their adventures if the Omega Raids were part of 7.X? It kind of feels like the answer is no, and that fucking sucks.

Fun with CSS

2025-10-08T14:01:00-05:00

This page has a different color scheme to the rest of the site. How did I do that, if I’m using a static site generator that can’t extract any metadata other than the page title?

Easy. I stuck this little bit of HTML on the page: <span class="solarized"></span>

And wrote this little piece of CSS:

:root:has(span.solarized) {
    color-scheme: light dark;
    --fontsize: max(1em, 24px);
    --bg: light-dark(#fdf6e3,#073642);
    --bg2: light-dark(#eee8d5,#002b36);
    --text: light-dark(#073642,#fdf6e3);
    --link1: #2aa198;
    --link2: #cb4b16;
    --link3: #268bd2;
    --italic: light-dark(#073642,#fdf6e3);
    --bold: light-dark(#073642,#fdf6e3);
    --strike: light-dark(#07364299,#fdf6e399);
    --link1s: #2aa19899;
    --link2s: #cb4b1699;
    --link3s: #268bd299;
    --tab: #268bd2;
    --tabdisabled: #268bd299;
    --tabtext: #fdf6e3;
    --details: light-dark(#eee8d5,#002b36);
    --summary: light-dark(#93a1a1, #586e75);
    --summarycolor: light-dark(#073642,#fdf6e3);
    --detailsborder: #2aa19899;
    --code: light-dark(#93a1a1, #586e75); }

(The palette for this page is Solarized, btw.)

I am so powerful now.

Switched to MkDocs

2025-09-18T14:10:00-05:00

Eleventy is fine. It’s fine! But then I discovered MkDocs and found I vastly prefer how it works.

Buuut I kind of hated all the themes I could find. Well, “hate” is a strong word, but it’s a tool built for writing documentation pages and I have a personal website.

So I wrote my own theme. And it was actually way easier than I thought it would be. It took me about a day.

Dependencies I needed for my use case:

md_in_html
admonition
pymdownx.details
mkdocs-audio (For my music page)
pymdownx.arithmatex (For my math pages)

I’ll put the code up on my Codeberg page eventually, but I want to make sure it runs smooth for a while first.

Also, I’m certain I’ve updated my Atom feed with more recent things, but the newest item that shows up there is my toki pona translation of Gaius’ elevator speech??? What did I do. What happened. omg.

jan Gaius van Baelsar li lon ilo anpa li toki mute tawa sina

2025-04-10T14:40:00-05:00

o toki e ni: sina utala tan seme?

n! sina toki e ala. sina pilin ala pilin e ma Ewosija? wan pi ma Ewosija li tan powe. ma tomo ona li tan powe. nasin sewi ona li ilo powe. ale ona li powe. ma Ewosija li ijo ala.

kulupu pi jan soweli li lon e jan sewi li pana e ona tawa utala. taso jan lawa pi ma Ewosija li pali ala e ni. ni li nasa ala nasa?

jan sewi pi tu luka tu li awen ala awen e sina ale? ona li awen pona la, o pana e ona sama utala pi ma Kateno. ona li kama – sina pana e kiwen wawa e kon wawa tawa ona la, ona li kama. jan sewi sina li ante ala tawa jan sewi pi jan soweli. jan sewi ale li kama tan pilin jan li weka e wawa ma li moli e ma.

jan lawa sina li sona kin e ni. ni la, jan sewi powe li pona tawa ona tan seme? jan sona kin — jan sona Luwisowa kin — li anpa e ona sama tawa jan sewi ni tan seme? ona li tan ni: jan lawa sina li jo ala e wawa pi nasin ante a! jan li lawa ala e ma la, ma jan li suli ala. tan ni, tan tenpo pini mute, jan li utala li kama wawa mute. utala li pini la, jan wawa li lawa e jan pi wawa ala.

jan lawa pi wawa ala li ken lawa kepeken nasin sewi powe taso. nasin ni li nasin moli. jan wawa taso li ken lawa pona e kulupu jan. nasin ni li pona e ma powe ni.

jan wawa pi ma Ewosija o kama a! mi anpa e sina la jan ale li sona e ni: mi wawa li ken lawa e ma sina a! lawa mi li pona tan ni: sina ken ala pini e mi a!

When the right-wing says “truth”

2025-02-12T12:00:00-06:00

Today (2025/02/12) on Codeberg some chud with the username “truth” opened a repository also called “truth” and tagged hundreds of users in an issue with a title that consisted of the n-slur followed by the word “BALLS”.

Codeberg’s staff was on top of it; the repo and user were both gone by the time I woke up and checked my email.

But what a perfect example of what these losers mean when they say they stand for the “truth”. Wow, it’s fucking nothing! Just vapid hate!

And in another example of too-perfect-to-invent, another right-winger (or perhaps the same one, it’s impossible to tell on the internet) responded to Codeberg’s Mastodon post about the issue to go “you’re being mean to the right!!!” Fuck off, crybaby.

Game ideas and notes

2025-02-10T13:30:00-06:00

I hate this country sfm

2025-01-18T00:30:00-06:00

“This country” being the US.

Look. I was a fucking miserable kid. Sure, a lot of it had to do with my parents and I’m not going to get into that, but there was also a huge portion that had to do with what I didn’t realize was gender dysphoria until I was in my fucking thirties.

I figured out I was bi pretty early on, and that was bad enough, since I was raised to believe that in and of itself made me a monster. But when I got into my teens and my body started changing in ways it never should have, I wanted to die. Every single day, I was in pain in ways I couldn’t express. I didn’t even know that trans men were a thing until I was an adult. (Which is not to say that trans women have it easier! They absolutely don’t.)

So when I look around and see kids these days making up silly new genders and pronouns… I feel so happy for them. Like, do I get what it means to be xenogender or want to be called starself? No, and that doesn’t matter as long as they’re happy. Maybe they’ll grow out of it, maybe they won’t. Who cares?

But I’m also so fucking mad because half this country wants to go back to the hell I grew up in — and even further back than that. They want children to be miserable and suicidal as long as it means they never have to think about anything that challenges their worldview.

Cooking today: Ultimate vegan breakfast sandwich

2025-01-10T22:30:00-06:00

So today I made this breakfast sandwich (well, I made four of them). I’ve had it before, but I’ve never tried making the vegan egg yolk recipe that the same blogger also posted, and I found out the local grocery store does have kala namak, so I figured… why not.

And it was pretty great! In the past I’ve just stuck a Just Egg patty on top and called it a day, but I really like the fake egg yolk. The only thing is the egg yolk recipe makes way more than you need for topping these sandwiches. Which isn’t an issue? I can use it for something else later? Just something to keep in mind.

White anti-veganism

2024-12-22T16:15:00-06:00

We’ve all heard of “white veganism”; white people loudly and arrogantly talking over people of color, telling indigenous people who depend on hunting for sustenance “just go to the grocery store and buy some quinoa and oat milk lmao”.

You know what we don’t hear a lot about? White anti-veganism. The kind of white person who cries “white vegan! white vegan!” any time a vegan (who may or may not even be white) exists in their general direction. The kind of white person who goes “but what about indigenous hunters?” while eating a plate of Tyson chicken nuggies, and posts “why do you want to put small indie farmers out of business?” while sitting in the Burger King drive-thru.

(Weird how everyone seems to be adamantly opposed to factory farming and never consumes any products thereof. How do they even stay in business?)

Like, I’m both white and a vegan. I try to avoid being a condescending White Vegan TM. I read and listen to BIPOC vegan bloggers and activists, while white anti-vegans don’t even seem to know that said people even exist.

And how many times have I heard “Hitler was a vegetarian” (nevermind that vegetarians aren’t vegans), while no one ever points out the obscene number of serial killers, terrorists, murderers, and fascists who eat meat? Mao Zedong ate meat. Stalin ate meat. There are weirdo vegan white supremacists (which vegan communities, especially white vegans, need to be proactive about pointing out, shunning, and removing from our communities, and a lot of us do not do that), but there are also fascist anti-vegans who insist that soy makes you grow boobs and real men eat steak. But somehow this is never taken as “proof” that anti-veganism is racist.

Sure, back during the 2016–2020 time period people kept talking about how Donald Trump ate McDonald’s all the time, but that wasn’t about him eating meat, it was about him eating low-class food.

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, here are some BIPOC vegans you should check out.

Margaret Robinson, a Mi’kmaq woman who is an anthropological scholar researching mental health, poverty, two-spirit, and LGBTQ+ identities in Canadian First Nations peoples.
Angela Davis, a feminist and leftist political activist.
Aditya Prakash, aka Soytheist, an Indian vegan activist of the Assamese people. His Youtube channel hasn’t updated for a couple of years, but he is an excellent speaker and debunker of garbage arguments.
A. Breeze Harper, a Black woman writer who does work in feminist, critical race theory, and ethics.
Solaire Denaud, a French and Hatian Ph.D. student studying plant-based diets in the African diaspora. She publishes a podcast profiling French- and Creole-speaking vegans.
Shonalika, a non-binary leftist musician and Youtuber. Okay so I could only find one video of theirs discussing veganism, but I wanted to link to them anyway because they deserve it.

The late Coretta Scott King was also vegan for the last ten years of her life, as was her son Dexter.

This is hardly scratching the surface.

Some organizations that might of of interest:

Middle East Vegan Society
Black Church Food Security Network, an organization helping Black churches grow vegetable gardens
Food Empowerment Project

And if you’re looking for some recipe bloggers:

I could go on and on, but there is only so much time in the day and I only have so much energy in my body.

It’s not like I can claim to be the Perfect White Ally. Still, I figured that instead of getting defensive in the face of white anti-veganism, I might as well do my part to lift up BIPOC voices. On the off chance that anyone is reading this blog. (That’s not a cry for pity or anything — I’m actually more comfortable if it turns out I’m the only one who ever comes here.)

Update on December 22

I guess people do come here, because a reader on Mastodon informed me that Hitler’s vegetarianism was a myth. It’s good to be informed on the facts, but I still feel that even if he was vegetarian, well… vegetarians aren’t vegans, for one thing. But even if he was vegan that still doesn’t change the fact that hurting non-human animals is wrong.

The rest of that page is worth a good read, by the way. As is this page on vegan myths, especially the myth that veganism is a white movement.

jan mute li pilin ala

2024-12-19T22:00:00-06:00

󱤰󱤧󱥗󱤼. 󱤿󱥍󱤤󱤛󱤧. (󱤴󱥡󱤂󱤉󱥐󱥍󱥠󱥁.) 󱥨, 󱤑󱤼󱤧󱤈󱤇󱤉󱤑󱤤󱥁, 󱥧󱥁: 󱤿󱤤󱤧󱥖󱤻󱥩󱥆.

󱤰󱦐󱤴󱦒󱤋󱦒󱥷󱦒󱤍󱦒󱤟󱦒󱦡󱦒󱦑󱤡, 󱤌󱤧󱤬󱥶󱤼. 󱥭󱤴󱤧󱤬󱤂󱥒󱤉󱥭󱤋󱤉󱥭󱥍󱤑󱥔󱤉󱥭󱥍󱤖󱥡󱤉󱥭󱤪. 󱥧󱥁, 󱤴󱥄󱤙󱤉󱤎󱥩. 󱥨, 󱤎󱥩󱤧󱥌󱤉󱤜󱤐󱥩󱤝󱤧󱥷󱤉󱤲󱤼. 󱥁󱤧󱤍󱥩󱤴. 󱥁󱤧󱤍󱤂󱤍󱥩󱤑󱤄?

󱥹󱤡, 󱥂󱦐󱤲󱦒󱦑󱤡, 󱥠󱥔󱥁󱤧󱤍󱥩󱤴. 󱥢󱤧󱤲󱤂. 󱤑󱤼󱤧󱥡󱤉󱥁: 󱥢󱤊󱥴󱤊󱤔󱤊󱤁󱤊󱥑󱤧󱥎󱤧󱥡. 󱥨, 󱤑󱥁󱤧󱥎󱤂󱤧󱤈󱤍󱤉󱤷󱤉󱤶󱤉󱤥󱤉󱥆. 󱤑󱥅󱤴󱥹󱤧󱥖. 󱥫󱥐󱤡󱤴󱥡󱤉󱥁: 󱥆󱤧󱥎󱤼󱤧󱥡󱤼󱤧󱥔󱤼. 󱥨󱥆󱤧󱥷󱥉󱤨󱥨. 󱤴󱥉󱥉󱥉󱤧󱥌󱤉󱤶󱥍󱤷󱤂󱤼, 󱥨, 󱥆󱤧󱤈󱤶󱤉󱤌󱥎.

󱤶󱤘󱤂󱤬󱤰󱥁.

󱥨󱤰󱤆󱤧󱤬󱤂.

Cooking yesterday: Pineapple fried rice

2024-12-17T13:45:00-06:00

Another recipe from It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken. I had leftover rice, I had everything else (or so I thought), so why not?

Well, I didn’t have curry powder. I misread it as “chili powder” when I was skimming the ingredients, and only noticed when I had everything else out on the counter. The internet told me I could substitute equal amounts of coriander, cumin, and turmeric, so I tried that.

But I only had coriander seed. (My father-in-law keeps the weirdest shit in his cupboards but I’m not complaining. Which isn’t to say coriander seed itself is weird, just... I don’t think I’ve ever seen him use it???) So I tried crushing it up and it didn’t turn out so great. The taste was pretty overpowering and there were little chunks of seed in many bites.

Aside from that, though, it was pretty good? Lesson learned for next time.

Cooking today: mac and cheese

2024-12-22T16:15:00-05:00

Trying out this mac-n-cheese powder recipe from It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken. I’ve prepared it as written and will be mixing it with 3/4 cup of plain almond milk, as called for.

In the future I plan to try mixing it with drained-off pasta water to see how well that works. I don’t often have milk in the house, but needed it for the pot pie I made on Thanksgiving so I have some right now. I’ll also experiment with how non-dairy butter alters the outcome. (I usually have some for baking.)

I should blog about my cooking more often. More than once I’ve been unable to remember how some past experiment went, but if I had documented it at the time…

Verdict: It tastes fine. The consistency is a bit odd, but I failed to re-read the directions and poured the powder and milk directly into the cooked pasta instead of heating it and letting it thicken separately. I’ll have to try again but actually follow the directions.

Update on December 22

I made it again, following the proper procedure this time. The texture was much better! The taste is still just “fine”, though. I’ll need to experiment with different liquids in place of the almond milk.

The Sundered Floor

2024-11-24T15:30:00-05:00

Author’s note/content warning: Remember that 30 days, 30 drafts thing I was doing? Yeah, me either.

Anyway, I just binged Severance over the last couple of days. Any discrepancies between this fic and that show are deliberate. This is just a bunch of disjointed scenarios, not necessarily in any sort of chronological order, that may get refined into a proper story at some point.

Warning for attempted suicide.

“What do you think we do down there, anyway?” Hythlodaeus wondered.

“Who knows?” Hades replied as he buttoned up his work shirt. “The entire point of the sundered floor is that we have no idea.”

“That doesn’t mean we cannot wonder.” From behind him, Hythlodaeus’ arms snaked around to his front and helped him with his buttons. “Helped” him. He misaligned them and Hades had to fix them. “Perhaps we work together. Ooh, maybe we’re embroiled in a scandalous workplace romance!”

“I should hope that we’re both more professional than that!” Hades sputtered.

Hythlodaeus chuckled. He rested his chin on Hades’ shoulder. “Who knows? The entire point is that we have no idea.”

When Emet-Selch feels a body draping over the back of his seat and a pair of arms snaking around his shoulders, he doesn’t even have to look to know who’s there. “Raphael,” he says with carefully-controlled indignation. “Oughtn’t you be in Concept Review?”

“We would have more to review if Concept Development worked harder to meet their quota.” Raphael continues to lean on Emet-Selch as he peers at his monitor. “There.” He points at a set of opaque symbols in one corner. “Those ones. You’re welcome.”

Emet-Selch huffs and scrolls until those symbols are off-screen. “You haven’t been trained in Concept Development.”

“No, but I’ve seen enough of your work from my end that I know what it looks like.” Finally he stands up, his lavender braid brushing against Emet-Selch’s cheek. Emet-Selch swats it away.

“Oh, hello, Raphael!” Elidibus smiles at him. “Is there aught we can do to welcome you to our little abode? Would you like some sunflower seeds from the vending machine?”

“Oh, no, I…” Raphael pauses. “You have sunflower seeds?”

“You don’t?” Fandaniel asks.

“Would you like to see our lunch room?” Elidibus stands and gestures.

Emet-Selch sighs, but at least Raphael is now somebody else’s problem.

“Fandaniel attempted suicide again last night.”

Emet-Selch sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I know that, as I’m the one who found him with his head in the sink and then performed CPR.” Fandaniel plugged the drain with paper towels, then held his face under with a frankly incredible strength of will until he went unconscious.

“As the senior concept developer,” says Athena, “it falls on you to ensure your coworkers are having their needs met. How did you miss this?”

“I…” Emet-Selch hadn’t missed it. Fandaniel makes no secret of the fact that he wants to kill himself and his outie both, and cause as much trouble as possible for the company in the process. There is only so much one senior developer could do. Only so much anyone could do.

Athena huffs in irritation. “The cost of the excess water used in his attempt will be docked from your outie’s pay. Further, as Fandaniel’s outie is currently in hospital, you will be responsible for meeting his portion of the quota until he returns.”

“H-hi there.”

The face on the video is Fandaniel’s, but not. He looks tired, defeated, broken down in a way that Fandaniel himself never is, no matter how many shifts he spends in the break room.

“I got your resignation request,” not-Fandaniel says. “Again. I’m sorry you’re so unhappy down there. Really, I am. I wish there was something I could do, but…” His voice gets quieter. “I really need this job. Before I got hired by Lifestream, I was… I was fired from five jobs in the span of a year.” He looks away from the camera. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I need… ______ needs this.” Where he might have been saying someone else’s name – a lover? A child? — Lifestream censored it, leaving only a blank. “Your request is denied.”

The TV screen goes dead. Emet-Selch, Lahabrea, and Elidibus chance a glance each at Fandaniel, who just stares forward in blank horror.

“They can wake us up,” Lahabrea hisses.

“I’m sorry?” Emet-Selch’s brow furrows in confusion.

“After we went home last night, I found myself somewhere else. In my home. Athena was there, demanding to know what I had done with the piece of contraband Fandaniel planted on me after our visit to Concept Review. She called it the ‘overtime contingency’.”

The visit to Concept Review that Emet-Selch had insisted upon. Before he can get defensive, though, something occurs to him. “Wait. Athena was there? Why would she be the one to do such a thing? Would that duty not be more within Hegemone’s purview?”

Lahabrea pauses. It seemed he hadn’t considered that. “It would, wouldn’t it? I was a bit too flabbergasted at the moment to take note of that.”

“The important thing,” Elidibus cuts in, “is that we are not strictly confined to this place. If we can but formulate a plan…”

“We can get out of here,” Fandaniel finishes. His face contorts itself into a broader smile than Emet-Selch has ever seen on him.

“You’ll stay behind?” Elidibus asks, concerned. “Aren’t you the least bit curious what your life looks like on the outside?”

Emet-Selch shrugs dismissively. “We’ve speculated that Lahabrea has some personal connection to Athena; it would be a shame if he were unable to investigate. ’Twould be cruel to deny Fandaniel this opportunity. And, though I mean no offense, Elidibus…”

“I am too short to reach both switches at once. Of course…”

“And as supervisor to the lot of you, it falls on me to take responsibility when our little scheme is eventually uncovered,” Emet-Selch continues. “I will not place that blame on anyone else.”

Fandaniel stands in the entryway of… somewhere. Someplace small, cluttered. He’s halfway through shrugging off his coat, or putting it on, he doesn’t know which.

“Hermes!” exclaims a high-pitched voice that he’s never heard before. “W-w-welcome home!”

He cranes his neck around the nearby doorway and sees a teenaged girl standing in the kitchen, pulling a microwave dinner out of the freezer. She flashes a bright smile at him that almost changes his mind.

But only almost.

Because now Fandaniel knows exactly how to make Hermes pay.

Author’s note: Don’t worry, Meteion will be fine. Probably.

Untitled ominous organ intro

2024-11-19T12:10:00-05:00

I heard this in a dream as the beginning of an FFXIV trial or raid BGM. I’m sure it’s from something, but I can’t place it. (I also can’t remember the rest of the song, except I think part of it was Cynthia Pokemon’s battle theme.)

Predicting where the next two Dawntrail allied societies are

2024-11-14T14:00:00-05:00

7.1 added a group of Pelupelu hawking their tourism agency at Dock Poga in Kozama’uka, a previously suspiciously empty area.

So… what are the other two going to be? (It’s only going to be two. FFXIV is loathe to break from the traditions they’ve created.)

Urqopacha?

The Chirwagur seem like a shoe-in for a Gathering quest tribe. That could be why the Pelupelu are in Kozama’uka, so Urqopacha can be used for them instead.

Panaqpelu Retreat

The hot spring. Actually, I don’t know if any Chirwagur would really be interested in helping out here, but maybe they could peddle some precious minerals to put in the water.

Shades of Grief

It’s suspiciously empty. There’s mobs here, but they could easily be removed.

Proof

There aren’t even any mobs here. But there is a FATE that spawns here, so I doubt they’d want to put anything here. Gone are the days of protecting Little Solace from giant gnats.

Chirwagur Saltern

This would be the most likely place to put the quests, if the tribe is indeed the Chirwagur. There’s nothing currently here but a few hostile mobs, which could easily be removed.

Yak T’el?

idk, I feel like Yak T’el already has a lot going on.

Ilyon Asoh

Looks like it could use a fixer-upper, but MSQ brings you here, and it would be weird to see a bunch of people running around crafting or gathering during that quest.

The Xobr’it Cinderfield

Same as above. Though there is a suspiciously empty meadow around X35 Y23 that could be used for something.

The Ty’iinbek Traverse

There’s a weird empty circle in the cave leading down toward Mamook that you have to go out of your way to find. Though I can’t imagine what anyone would want to do there.

Golmajiik Grove

I think they’re doing pretty well for themselves. idk what we could do to help any more than we already did.

Shaaloani?

MSQ does plenty here; I can’t really see much else being done here.

Heritage Found?

Place could definitely use some help. Maybe the Alexandrians would make a good tribe.

Electrope Strike

There’s basically nothing here and it already has an aetheryte. It’s begging for an update.

Submerged Skyline

It would be nice to fix this place up. I don’t think MSQ ever even comes here (though one of the FSH Wachumeqimqi quests does). But there is at least one FATE here, so idk.

Living Memory?

The only entities here anymore are the robot helpers. Maybe they need something else to do now that the Endless are gone.

There are a lot of unused out-of-the-way spots in Canal Town; you could easily fit something there.

Alternatively, the area around Leynode Aero would be a good spot for Gathering quests.

Read to the end

2024-11-06T19:10:00-06:00

Author’s note/Trigger warning: Written for day 6 of 30 days, 30 drafts since I missed day 5.

Trigger warning, this is essentially a word-dump about how it feels to be talked out of suicidal ideation.

Hey, thanks for reading this story! Hope you like it!

Okay, so, you’re a hero on an adventure. You go to the palace and the king sends you on a quest to slay a dragon. You—

What? That’s boring and you want to stop reading? No, don’t close the tab! Just give it a bit longer, please.

You head out into the wilderness and seek out the dragon’s lair. Along the way you come across a little village where the people need your help with all kinds of things. So you help them with their jobs, go out and slay monsters for them, help the librarian organize their shelves…

I’m sorry, did you just say “What’s the point of any of this”? The point is what you make of it. But if you stop reading, that’s a permanent solution to the temporary problem of you being a little bored with this story I churned out in half an hour to meet an arbitrary self-imposed challenge. Don’t do anything rash!

While you’re helping out these villagers, you hear tell that the dragon descended on the castle town. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men tried to kill it, but they were slaughtered. Castle town? More like ghost town, am I right? So even if you slew the dragon, now there’s no one to award you the bounty.

“That sucks,” I hear you saying. “Maybe I’ll just stay in this little village for the rest of my life. I guess the story’s over now?”

No! The story’s not over until I say it’s over! Besides, think about all those villagers whose lives you improved. They’d miss you if you stopped reading! You don’t want to make them sad, do you?

So, about the dragon. While it was returning to its lair in the mountains it hit its head on an airplane, suffered a concussion, and fell to its death. So now I’ll just have to bullshit some other completely different story for you to read. Don’t worry, I’ll come up with someth—

Hey!

Where are you going?

Wow, you’re so selfish.

The Mayan Apocalypse

2024-11-06T14:35:00-05:00

The artifact was some hundred body lengths wide, and nearly twice that much tall. It was made of something like the material of a wasp’s nest, but more firm, and more reflective.

Marks had been made upon it. Black lines crossed the artifact from top to bottom, straight and regular. Within the boxes formed by those lines were, other, stranger marks. They repeated every so often, but Tanni could not, for the life of him, begin to decipher them.

And yet Bras insisted he had.

“It’s how the giants keep track of time,” he claimed. He stepped into one box and buzzed his wings briefly. “Each of these boxes represents one day, from — I think — sunrise to sunrise. Do you see these wobbly marks here?” His antennae waggled toward an adjacent box.

Tanni looked. That box, and many others, had other, less regular marks laid upon them. Straight-ish lines extending from one corner of a box to the opposite diagonal. “Why are they… messier?”

“The giant marks off one box when it wakes each morning. I guess it’s not as good at making these marks as whoever made the artifact.”

“Then… What are the symbols inside the boxes?”

Bras’ wings buzzed with pride. “Numbers!”

Tanni’s antennae waggled at the symbols. He could sense nothing numerical about them. “Excuse me?”

“These symbols are how the giants keep track of numbers! There are ten different symbols — one each for the numbers one through nine, and a special symbol for nothing, and then when you get to ten, you start combining symbols. The symbol for one plus the symbol for nothing means one of ten, and none of one. Then one followed by another one…”

“…one of ten, and one of one?” Tanni ventured. “So… eleven?”

“Exactly! It’s quite clever of them, actually.”

Tanni wandered across the boxes marked with the number symbols. He still couldn’t read them, but he could tell when the boxes switched from having one symbol in them, to having two. After a few minutes’ examination, he realized, “The days are grouped into clusters of thirty. Thirty-ish. They’re not all the same. Why is that?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” Bras confessed.

Tanni thought some more as he examined the boxes. “The current cluster is the second, and it ends in ten days. Perhaps we simply have to wait and see.”

The giant woke at sunrise on the thirty-second day. It took up its marking implement and crossed off the previous day.

Tanni and Bras sat motionless on the wall, watching with bated breath.

Nothing happened.

“What happens now?” Tanni wondered.

“We follow the giant. See if they do anything different today. Perhaps they have a ceremony of some sort when they finish a cluster of days?”

The giant did nothing interesting on this day. Tanni and Bras took turns keeping an eye on them, but today seemed to be simply an ordinary day.

The next morning the giant woke up and crossed off the first day of the next cluster.

Tanni and Bras were growing old. They would not last until the end of the third cluster. And so, despite knowing they would quite likely be ridiculed, they brought others into the fold.

By the time this cluster was finished, the weather had changed. The youths who now tracked the giant’s morning ritual had heard tell of the legends of Winter, that cold time when Tanni and Bras had lived. Now it was spring, and as the days went on, the weather continued to warm.

“The weather changes as the days progress,” Uldi observed one morning as she waited for the giant to wake. “Perhaps it will continue warming forever. Perhaps that’s why the clusters eventually end.” She stood on the final day of the twelfth cluster, far down at the bottom of the artifact. “The world will end in a great conflagration.”

As spring turned to summer, the theory of Heat Death quickly became dogma. Uldi’s great-great grandchildren buzzed around the giant’s bedroom anxiously as they crossed off the last day of the sixth cluster, marking the midway point of the artifact.

But in only a few more generations, summer turned to autumn. The days grew shorter and colder.

“The Heat Death is not coming!” Felnu proclaimed to whoever would listen. “The world has reached its peak, and now it recedes into the winter whence it came!”

He was dismissed at first, just as Tanni had initially dismissed Bras.

But the cold continued to creep in. By the time the tenth cluster arrived, the people were huddling together for warmth at night.

Everyone eventually realized that the world was dying. That at the end the twelfth cluster of days, they all — insects, giants, and everyone in between — would freeze to death and abide in an eternal stillness.

The twelfth cluster came. The giants decorated their abodes with twinkling lights and relocated trees.

“Perhaps they are trying to cheer themselves up,” Tanni (not the same Tanni) suggested to Bras (not the same Bras).

“Perhaps,” Bras agreed. “The lights are rather pretty.”

The thirty-first day of the twelfth cluster arrived. The giant awoke and crossed off the thirtieth.

Night fell, colder than it had ever been.

The sky lit up with explosions.

I can’t.

2024-11-06T11:30:00-05:00

I think it’s time for me to stop pretending the world makes any kind of sense.

Ever since I figured out that I’m autistic, I’ve been trying and trying to compensate for my poor theory of mind. Like, I know that other people have their own viewpoints and opinions, but I still make the basic error of thinking that if I can make them aware of the same facts I know, they’ll come around.

Maybe I’m just wrong. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with killing animals. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with killing humans. Maybe kindness and compassion don’t matter at all. Maybe there’s no such thing as “wrong” to begin with.

The Scottish Loophole

2024-11-03T15:45:00-05:00

For three hundred years, the immortal god king Macbeth survived.

Knowing that no man of woman born could slay him, Macbeth kept no women in his employ. He had his wife executed, of course. He funded a great initiative to ensure mothers gave birth in hospitals so he could keep a record of which boys were from their mothers’ wombs untimely ripped.

And then Gender started to happen.

Men sleeping with men, women sleeping with women, people of both genders up and declaring that their assignment at birth was wrong. “I’m not a man, I’m a woman!” “I’m not a woman, I’m a man!” “I’m not either! I’m genderless!”

To be honest, Macbeth didn’t much care how anyone lived their day-to-day lives so long as he remained on the throne of Scotland for all eternity. But this new upheaval in What It Meant to be a man or a woman proved most unsettling.

For a time, he outlawed the practice of non-traditional gender. But that just seemed to make the people upset, and when the people were upset, that’s when kings tended to get murdered. He would know. So he reversed course; alternative gender roles were embraced openly, with medical transition being fully covered at all of the kingdom’s many hospitals.

That way, he could keep track of which men had been born as girls and which women had been born as boys. He made sure to neither employ nor associate with any of these dangerous transgender people, nor the equally perilous non-binaries. He didn’t know which, if any, trans people “counted” as men by the reckoning of the prophecy, but he wasn’t about to risk it.

He just… overlooked one tiny little detail.

“So you’re applying for the position of palace guard,” the interviewer said. “Bob MacDuff?”

“Yes, sir,” MacDuff replied. “I have some experience as a security guard…” He gestured to his resume.

“Aye, well, a palace guard serves a largely decorative purpose,” the interviewer said, probably in a more Scottish sort of way than I’m capable of representing. Actually, this story takes place in a world where Scotland’s probably not part of the UK, and I haven’t accounted for that at all in this draft? Oh well. “While we run the background check, let me just brief you on the responsibilities of the job. We do have a full benefits package, of course…”

About ten minutes later, MacDuff was sitting there watching an introductory video on the responsibilities of a palace guard. An email notification popped up on the interviewer’s computer and he took a look at the background check results.

Raibeart “Bob” MacDuff, age 32, born male at a small but trustworthy hospital in a little nowhere village. A proper birth, not a caesarian. Lived a largely unremarkable life. No known insurrectionist ties. No apparent transgender leanings.

MacDuff seemed completely ordinary. Perfectly so, in fact. There was absolutely no reason not to give him the job.

“You got the job?” MacDuff could hear the smile in his father’s voice when he called home to let his parents know. “That’s great! Now maybe you can finally afford to come home and visit every so often. We miss you, you know.”

“I know, I know… I’ll try to save up. Rent’s terrible here, you know that.”

“Maybe we can come visit. Your mother has something she’s been meaning to—” Duff paused. “Really? Not even a hint?” he asked, hand over the receiver. “Okay, fine.”

“What’s that all about?”

“Nothing, nothing. Don’t worry about it. Just focus on your new job.”

“You really should tell him, Iain.”

Bob MacDuff’s “mother” sighed and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I know! But I don’t want to do it over the phone, Duff. That just feels so… impersonal.”

“Maybe we can go visit him.” Duff squeezed his husband’s hand. “He’s our son. He’s not going to love you any less just because you’re a man now.”

Neighbors

2024-11-03T00:00:00-05:00

For as long as anyone could remember, 4’s next-door neighbors on either side were 3 and 5.

Then one day, a new house stood between her house and 5’s.

4 marched up to the door and banged none-too-gently. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

The new neighbor smiled. They held a hand out as if to shake; 4 just stared blankly. “Nice to meet you! I’m $4\frac{1}{2}$ .”

“Four-and-a-half? Who ever heard of four-and-a-half?” 4 muttered as she sipped tea with 3 later that day.

“You think that’s bad? Have you looked the other way?” 3 asked. “When I was coming over here I walked past another new house. The guy inside said his name’s $3\frac{1}{2}$ ..”

“What the fuck? Can they even do that? Just plop a house down and go ‘oh hey there I’m you-and-a-half’?”

“It doesn’t seem right,” 3 agreed.

The day after that, 4 found another new house halfway between hers and 4(1/2)’s.

“And who are you?” she demanded sardonically. “4-and-one-fourth?”

“Um… yes,” the new neighbor replied. “ $4\frac{1}{4}$ . It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s not nice to meet you! You can’t just come waltzing in here—”

“4,” came 3’s voice, a bit shaken. “4, come here.”

4 huffed and walked away from $4\frac{1}{4}$ ’s front door. “What is it? Let me guess. $3\frac{1}{4}$ ?”

“That, and another one too. Says his name is $3\frac{3}{4}$ . And that’s not all. About halfway between my place and $3\frac{1}{4}$ ’s is some douchebag named $\pi$ .”

“What the hell is happening to our neighborhood?” 4 felt faint.

4 needed some fresh air. She packed a picnic basket and left, walking north a ways. There was nothing there, at least. Who could possibly move in up there, off the number line entirely?

But then she saw it. In the distance, a house. Outside, a woman was mowing the lawn.

“Howdy, neighbor!” the stranger called as soon as she noticed 4. “You must be $4+0i$ !”

“I— excuse me?” 4 sputtered. “Who are you?”

“Me? I’m $4+i$ . Been meaning to head down and say hello for a while now.” $4+i$ tilted her head in confusion. “Hey, wait, where are you going?”

4 turned around and walked away. If I never leave my house again, I won’t have to deal with this. Surely that was reasonable.

AlphaSmart

2024-11-02T20:19:00-05:00

So I got this new typey-thingy.

Apparently, schools used to use these things to teach kids how to type. I never saw one myself; my schools used real computers. But it’s a pretty neat little device to write on! You can only see four lines at a time, so you can’t really edit. You just write. Then you can transfer what you’ve written to a computer by hooking up a cable.

You don’t go into the filesystem on the AlphaSmart and pick the files out, though. Instead there’s a “send” button that sends your text in a stream to whatever program your computer has open. So I don’t even have to worry about the fact that this thing only has straight quotes and apostrophes; I have it send to Obsidian, where I’m using a smart typography plugin, and it’s all good.

I’ve used it so far to write a couple of stories for my self-imposed 30 days, 30 drafts challenge, as well as most of this blog entry. The keys are… a bit clumsy. But it’s nicer than typing on a phone (even my old MyTouch), and less distracting than typing on my laptop.

There’s a mod out there to replace the keyboard. I might try that? It looks hard, though, and I’m a klutz. So maybe I’ll just… get used to it.

Perhaps more importantly, today my wife and I made a trip to the Oinking Acres Farm Rescue & Sanctuary. I got a bunch of pictures of sweet precious babies; I’ll post those another time.

Exercises in Rhetoric

2024-11-02T12:00:00-05:00

Author’s note/content warning: Contains discussions of rape as typical to some ancient Roman rhetorical exercises

“Premise one:” the speaker began. “Should one person force themself on another in a sexual manner, the victim may choose between two fates for their assaulter: Death, or marriage.”

“What kind of stupid law is that?” Bacchus muttered under his breath.

“The kind that exists in a fictional universe for the purposes of debate,” Hades scolded him. “Shut up.”

“Premise two: When a married party returns to the star, their belongings are redistributed to their spouse in what is known as ‘inheritance’. One man forces himself upon another,” the speaker continued. “The victim does not immediately proclaim their verdict—”

“Of course they don’t!” Bacchus hisses. “They’ve just gone through something absolutely horrific—”

Hades elbows him sharply.

“—and now to be told that they must choose whether to kill the other person or suffer a lifetime of matrimony to him?”

Several others shot irritated glares at Bacchus, or so he assumed, as their eyes could not be seen beneath their masks.

The speaker cleared their throat. “While he waits to learn his fate, the assaulter is overwhelmed by shame and decides to return to the star. As he enters the care of the Words of Emet-Selch, the victim makes their decision: They will marry the man. The question I pose to you is this: Should the victim be entitled to the assaulter’s inheritance?”

“That’s the important question here?” Bacchus sputtered.

The speaker fixed him with what would surely have been a sharp glare were their eyes not covered by their mask. “If you’re not interested in debating rhetoric, you don’t have to be here, you know.”

“So sorry, so sorry,” Hythlodaeus spoke up. “It’s his first time. He’s not familiar with the usual assumptions.”

“Ah, then shall we do a quick refresher?” the speaker suggested. “These rhetorical exercises are essentially works of fiction taking place within a simplified legal system. To wit, the point is to debate the facts presented without getting hung up on any real-world nitpicking. As connoisseurs of these legal fictions, we may occasionally discuss topics that do not oft transpire in the modern era, as a means of expanding our rhetorical repertoire.”

“I suppose there’s a certain logic to that,” Bacchus granted. “Forgive my interruption.”

Another listener spoke up. “I don’t mean to be crude, but the premise at play essentially turns an act of rape into a marriage proposal, does it not? So then by accepting—”

Bacchus cringed. Hades sighed and shook his head as if to dissuade him from complaining.

“But on the other hand, the marriage did not actually take place,” another protested.

“By Amaurotine custom, no, they did not have a wedding. But there was no premise stated indicating that the society we’re discussing has such stringent customs. He proposed; they accepted. What more do you really need?”

A few other debaters sitting around shifted uncomfortably. “Let’s just vote already,” someone said. “So we can move on to the next topic.”

“There’s hardly been any discussion,” the initial speaker protested.

“The facts are pretty simple, though. All those in favor of the victim inheriting their assailant’s property, say aye.”

“Aye,” said a number of people. Bacchus was among them, though he wasn’t particularly convinced by the argument that the two were properly married. Maybe he shouldn’t be voting based on justice?

“Consider this, then,” the original speaker said. “Premise one: As before, a rape victim has the option of marrying their assailant or having them put to death. Premise two: when two parties are wed, the consent of both is required to grant a divorce or add additional parties. A married party rapes an unwed man. The victim insists on marriage. The assailant’s spouse refuses. What is to be done?”

“More rape and death?” Bacchus muttered. “Is this the Hall of Rhetoric or the Hall of Titillating Hypotheticals?”

“Shh!” Hythlodaeus chided him.

“Euthalia is quite fond of these provocative topics,” Hades replied quietly. “I do wish they would display a bit more variation.”

“Why would any such victim even want to marry their rapist?” Bacchus went on. “Unless— wait, was this a set-up to get the rapist out of a marriage they didn’t want to be in?”

“An interesting interpretation,” mused a girl sitting nearby. “If it was, one could hardly argue that it was actually rape, then.”

Euthalia sighed. “The assumption here is that the case has already been tried and convicted. Legally speaking, it was rape.”

“And the existing spouse does not wish to be divorced or to add a new partner?” Hythlodaeus clarified. “My, my, what a conundrum.”

Bacchus tuned the discussion out. He wasn’t sure what conclusion the hall came to, but at one point Hades offered the viewpoint that if the assault had been a set-up, the so-called assailant and victim would best be punished by being stuck in a marriage with each other. Which, fair.

Euthalia opened their mouth to propose another topic.

Hythlodaeus jumped to his feet first. “Premise one!” he said. “The winner of a particular contest is entitled to the automatic acceptance of any one concept they submit to the Bureau of the Architect. Premise two: No concept shall be accepted should it be deemed a threat to mankind. The winner of this contest submits a concept for a beast that feeds exclusively on human souls. What shall be done about this?”

As the rest of the hall debated Hythlodaeus’ dilemma, Bacchus had to stifle a yawn. He was glad everyone else was having fun, but this all just solidified that rhetoric wasn’t his thing.

He had to get out of here.

When the floor next opened, he stood up. “Okay, I have a topic for you, esteemed debaters. Premise one: Premise two is true. Premise two: Premise one is false.”

Hades and Hythlodaeus stared at Bacchus like he’d just stabbed someone.

The hall immediately erupted into frenzied shouting.

In the ensuing mayhem, Bacchus slipped out past his befuddled peers. He caught snippets of debate — “But if premise one falsely states that premise two is true, then premise two must—” as he rushed for the door.

“Well, you’ve certainly made a mess of things,” Hades snapped once they were outside.

Hythlodaeus laughed. “I suppose when next you say you don’t want to go somewhere, we shall take you at your word.”

Jumps-Through-Hoops

2024-11-01T12:00:00-05:00

“Humans are smart creatures. By some accounts, they’re as smart as we are! They have language — primarily vocal and symbolic, yes, but a small number of them have been observed making use of hand signs. Hand signs! You cannot deny the similarity to our own language!”

Wafts-Gracefully-In-The-Breeze waved her lower set of hands dismissively. “How can you be so sure this is language use? They make sounds with their eating holes — who ever heard of such a language? They print symbols on dead plants — so it’s a rudimentary form of art, so what?”

“And the hand signs?” pressed Jumps-Through-Flames.

“When you stumble into a bramble-bush and recoil in pain, that looks superficially like you’re asking someone on a date. Are you?”

“No, but—”

“Come on, now. Humans, capable of language use? There’s no evidence they’re capable of higher thought in the first place!”

“What about their architecture? They’ve built structures taller than any of ours! They’ve put satellites in orbit! There’s even evidence that—”

“They’ve been to their moon?” Wafts finished with a sardonic stamp of her foot. “Ridiculous. Those remnants are obviously from some other people who visited this system before us.”

Jumps rubbed ver wings together to produce an exasperated buzz. “The structures on their homeworld, though…”

“Any functioning social species does that. You’re an entomologist, you know that.”

Jumps-Through-Flames snapped ver joints back and forth in such frenzied exasperation one might be forgiven for thinking ve was having a seizure. “Are you watching yourself right now?! Have you ever seen a human before?! This is ridiculous, Wafts!”

“Don’t get so emotional.”

“It’s impossible to talk to you. I’m done.”

Later that night, as Wafts-Gracefully-In-The-Breeze perched in her kitchen finishing her second serving of Human Nuggets, she realized what the problem was.

Jumps-Through-Flames was a vegan. No wonder ve was so irrational and stupid.

“Well, glad I don’t have to waste any more time talking to ver,” Wafts laughed to herself. She popped another nugget into her maw.

Vegan survives desert island ordeal by eating the corpses of those who badgered him with obnoxious hypotheticals

2024-10-11T11:00:00-05:00

Photo by Rowan Heuvel

When Geoff Farnsley, 33, found himself stranded on a desert island after a harrowing shipwreck, he found himself faced with an impossible choice: Should he cleave to his vegan ideals, or sustain himself on the corpses of the friends who had spent the past five years pestering him about what he would do if he found himself stranded on a desert island?

In the end, he says, the choice was a simple one. “I wasn’t about to make a martyr of myself. I mean, sure, there were plenty of fruits and nuts I could have harvested, but where would I have gotten my B12?”

The families of those whose flesh he consumed to survive have spoken out against Farnsley’s personal dietary choices, but he insists that he did nothing wrong. “It’s what the guys would have wanted,” says Farnsley. “Every time we went out to eat together I had to ask them to at least pick a place that had fries or salads or something, and they acted like it was a huge inconvenience. They always said I wasn’t a real man if I didn’t eat meat. I like to think they’d be happy about this outcome.”

Farnsley rejected the notion of returning to veganism. “Everyone always said I didn’t know what I was missing. Boy, were they right! I mean, I ate meat all the time before I went vegan, but it turns out I actually had no idea how deprived I was this whole time!”

Readers should rest assured that out of respect for those who unwittingly sacrificed themselves that he might live, Farnsley made use of every part of their bodies. He now sports a jacket made from the skin of Harry Simmons, 33, which he claims he “always wears” when playing the xylophone he fashioned from the ribs of Jake Ryan, 34.

Devastating: Local cat has never been fed

2024-10-10T12:00:00-05:00

An artist’s representation of what it might look like if Mittens had ever been fed before. | Photo by Kadyn Pierce

Despite claims by Flora Baker, 32, that she “love[s] [her] precious kitty-witty so very much”, anonymous sources report that Mittens Baker, 5, has never been fed even once in his entire life.

“Mittens is literally starving to death,” claimed the source. “Just look at his food bowl. You can see the bottom of the dish!”

Mittens has reportedly tried everything to draw attention to his plight. Our anonymous source, as well as Ms. Baker and her closest neighbors, all confirm that the cat laments his fate at the top of his lungs well into the night, every night.

“That cat never shuts up!” complained one elderly neighbor. “I can’t get a wink of sleep!”

At press time Mittens was reportedly walking in front of Ms. Baker, attempting to trip her as she carried a dish of food to his designated place-mat.

Shade

2024-09-21T23:00:00-05:00

In the meantime, the illusory Amaurot still illuminated the dark reaches of the Tempest. And Ryusei thought someone should visit every so often to keep Hythlodaeus company. They stood on a balcony high up one of the many residential buildings, gazing out over the eerie dead city.

A shadow passed overhead. They both glanced up.

“Ah!” Hythlodaeus exclaimed. “A shark! How delightful!”

“Delightful?” Ryusei repeated, eyebrow half-lifted.

“Indeed. I’m sure you now know that many and more of the lifeforms extant on this star were conceived of by my contemporaries, and that in my duties as Chief of the Bureau of the Architect, I oversaw their creations, approving and denying as necessary. Sharks were a particularly common trend at one point. At first it was just, well…” He gestured a half up toward the normal-looking shark that swam overhead, mere yalms from the edge of the bubble. “But ere long, many unique and diverse variants on the concept sprang forth. People submitted concepts of flying sharks, land sharks, two-headed sharks, and oh, it was wonderful to see such passion on display.” A smile crept into his voice.

“You… really think so?”

“Of course I think so!” Hythlodaeus paused and tilted his head. “I must have thought so. After all, I approved every single one.”

Ellipsus

2024-09-16T09:15:00-05:00

Trying out Ellipsus as a writing platform. It’s solidly Okay at the moment, but it lacks smart quotes. Not a super big deal since I can find-and-replace for those later.

The big selling point is that it has git-style collaborative editing… but merging drafts is all-or-nothing, there’s no selective merge, which is a pretty big oversight. They say that’s in the works, but until it’s rolled out I don’t see myself collaborating much if at all.

Still, it’s pretty solid if you just want to write on it, and the export options are nice.

We’re not Azem

2024-09-12T21:30:00-05:00

Hey wouldn’t it be cool if the Warrior of Light collected all the shards of their soul and went back in time at the end of FFXIV and became Azem? —people whose primary interaction with fiction is theorycrafting whether Goku could beat up Superman

Okay, that’s not entirely fair; this could be done interestingly, maybe. But I still don’t like the idea.

Why do people want this?

Because it’s not enough that their Warrior of Light is a super strong slayer of primals and Ascians and the literal embodiment of despair. It’s not enough that they’re descended from one of the fourteen most important people in Amaurot, and the one specifically who set themself apart by defecting. It’s not enough that they basically inherited the seat of Azem when Hythlodaeus gave them the soul crystal. No, their WoL has to be even more special by somehow going back in time and literally becoming the same Azem they reincarnated from, somehow.

Maybe that’s ungenerous? I don’t know. I only ever see it out of people who unironically enjoy powerscaling.

But I don’t think it’s going to happen or even that it can happen!

Azem is too big

There have been seven Calamities, thus seven rejoinings, leaving the Warrior of Light at 8/14 of Azem’s soul — the one bit from the Source and seven from the seven rejoined reflections. Then at the end of Shadowbringers, Ardbert sacrifices himself to rejoin with us so we can overcome the light poisoning, leaving us at 9/14.

But one thing that has never changed is how tall people of the Source are. Even at 9/14 of a soul, the Warrior of Light and G’raha are the same height as all of their friends — not to mention, they’re the same height as people of the First, Ninth, and Thirteenth. This despite the fact that the unsundered Ancients were much taller.

I know the Doylist explanation for this is that the sundering and rejoinings hadn’t been conceptualized when the game was early in development, so they didn’t think to have people suddenly banging their heads on their doorframes after Bahamut wrecked things. But the IRL reasoning doesn’t much matter; the fact remains that in-universe, Ryne is the same height as Alisaie and Blue Alisaie. So why should we expect that a fully-rejoined WoL would be the same height as an Ancient?

Azem is a Hyur

Well, not a Hyur, exactly, but more or less. Sure, when you go back to Elpis there are remarks about how you resemble Azem physically as well as in your soul color, but for most WoLs there’s still the little problem of them having weird ears or horns or tails or fur covering their entire body. Or the fact that they only come up to knee-height even after Emet-Selch bolsters their aether.

If the WoL was destined to go back in time and become Azem, surely Hythlodaeus would have said something like “Wow, you even have their adorable feline ears!” or something.

Whose soul is it anyway?

Let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that this whole premise is actually possible: The Warrior of Light could go back in time and become Azem, if only their soul became fully rejoined.

Okay. So how does their soul get rejoined? To reiterate, we have 9/14 of Azem’s soul. How are we going to get the other five bits? Do we…

Murder our other shards and forcibly steal their souls?

This seems… unlikely.

You know what, actually, I could actually go for an evil shard of ours doing this to four of our other shards and then coming after us. Then we have no choice but to kill them, and when that happens they rejoin with us. Maybe that wouldn’t be awful. A villain like that could be good commentary on the kind of player who thinks this would be a good idea.

Walk up to them and nicely ask for their souls?

Why would the Warrior of Light want to do this? Why would they say yes?

Rejoin with them in future Calamities?

I really hope not. It’s possible within the lore of the game, I guess, but I’d rather not see that.

Though that gives me an idea: The Warrior of Light is dead in the Eighth Umbral Calamity’s timeline, but there’s no reason their soul couldn’t still reincarnate. The rest of the Calamities and rejoinings could happen in that timeline. It wouldn’t be “the Warrior of Light” but rather their future successor. Not sure how they would get back to ancient times without the Crystal Tower… but then, I’m also not sure how the WoL is supposed to go back to before the time period they already visited to begin with in this becoming-Azem concept.

Conveniently wind up in five more situations that necessitate an Ardbert-style sacrifice

Ugh, please, no. Not only would this be lazy writing, it would retroactively cheapen Ardbert’s sacrifice.

Can this concept be done well?

Maybe.

There’s a pretty neat fic series I’m following called The Young Azem Mysteries that’s about, well, Azem when they were younger. They, Hades, and Hythlodaeus engage in shenanigans and it’s all-around a fun time. Ithas — the titular “young Azem”, since they haven’t yet actually ascended to the seat of Azem — has a mysterious backstory that involves falling through time in some weird direction (there’s a lot of spacetime shenanigans in this series that I really love), and has no memory of anything before they were found by Venat as a young child. There’s also something really weird about their soul when Hades and Hythlodaeus look at it with their soul-sight.

The author hasn’t explicitly said that Ithas is a rejoined WoL; I don’t know if that’s the intention or if it’s something else entirely. If it is the intention, I don’t know if it will ever be confirmed. But that’s one way the concept could be done that I don’t totally hate. Ithas is just trying to live their life without drama, not trying to change the past or fulfill some grand destiny.

Also, Ithas is a precious child who must be protected at all costs. That is all.

Other than that, the whole rejoined-with-an-evil-shard-who-forcibly-murdered-the-other-four-remaining-shards idea and the future-reincarnation-from-the-bad-timeline idea are just things I came up with off the top of my head, but I guess they’re not horrible either? I sort of talked myself into not hating them while I was writing this.

I still don’t really like the idea of the WoL literally being Azem, though. Having the same soul doesn’t mean you’re the same person! We’ve seen this over and over — Emet-Selch wanted the WoL to be Azem, but the whole point is that they’re not! So if this did happen, I’d want it to happen to a future reincarnation of the WoL… but that flies in the face of the powerscaling weirdos who just want their WoL to be the Ultra Super Mega Special Best At Everything In The Universe, and they’re mostly the ones who want this concept to happen in the first place.

The Yak Came Back

2024-09-02T19:45:00-05:00

Author’s note

Written for FFXIV Write’s day 1 prompt, “steer”. It’s a pun, see?

One might think that after all he’d done these past several moons — all the trudging back and forth through the frozen wastes of Coerthas fetching herbs, slaying wolves, slaying primals, and oh yeah, ending a thousand-year-long war, Ryusei might be afforded a modicum of respect. But when he approached the sentry stationed north of Falcon’s Nest, the man only had one thing to say:

“You again?”

Ryusei rolled his eyes as he procured the guildleve from his pack. “Eloin sent me. You’ve another yak problem?”

The sentry huffed. “Aye, he’s back again. I’ve no idea why he insists on these regular visits.”

Because gods forbid the knights of Ishgard show an onze of fondness to those who’ve come to their aid. But aloud, all Ryusei said was, “Point me toward the beast.”

The Last Yak was, once again, pacing back and forth not a malm from the walls surrounding Falcon’s Nest. Ryusei sighed fondly and shook his head. “What is this, the fifth time in a moon? You like Ishgardian ale that much? Personally, I can’t stand the stuff,” he said as though he were confiding in an old friend.

Well, since this was the fifth time he’d been dispatched to steer the creature away from civilization, perhaps that’s exactly what they were to each other.

“Come along, then.” Ryusei beckoned to the yak and trudged along through the snow. With his blade at the ready, they had naught to fear from any bateleurs or wolves with a taste for yak flesh.

This time, Ryusei led the yak as far as the hills around Twinpools. “I know I’ve seen other yaks around here,” he mused. “Is this far enough to keep you from returning?”

The yak let out a plaintive moo. It stamped its hoof and tossed its head, then turned toward the hills.

Ryusei waited and watched, but the yak didn’t move. Finally it took one step, mooed, and looked back at him. He lifted an eyebrow. “Now you want to lead me?”

Another moo, another toss of the head.

Ryusei shrugged. “Oh, all right, then,” he muttered under his breath in his native Doman. “What do I have to lose?”

The Last Yak headed for the hills west of the Convictory, moving with the ease of one who knew these snows like the back of its, erm, hoof. Ryusei kept his hand on the hilt of his sword, but nothing threatened them here, in the yak’s home territory.

In the blowing winds and snows, the cave in the side of the cliff was invisible until they were practically right on top of it.

“Is this where you live?” Ryusei asked.

Predictably, the yak did not respond. It just stood there and stared at him.

So he went in. It was a small cave, or as small as the den of a full-grown yak could be. “Cozy” might be the better word, perhaps. It was warm, at least — especially with the body heat radiating from the pile of small, snoring calves that lay snuggled up in the back of the cave.

“Ah. I see.”

“Thank you for leading our wayward friend home once more,” the Falcon’s Nest sentry said. “May the Fury keep him from wandering this far afield again.”

Ryusei shrugged. “I’m sure she has her reasons. Perhaps she simply needs a break from the drudgeries of life, as do we all.”

“And what such drudgeries could a beastkin such as that face?” the man demanded, skeptical. “Hold— you said ‘she’?”

“The biting cold, the frenzied beasts of these lands,” Ryusei offered. “The toil of caring for one’s family. Can you not relate?”

He left the man to ponder his words and made for the warmth of the tavern. It really was far too cold out here.

Death is bad, actually

2024-08-26T16:30:00-05:00

Dying is kind of a big deal.

It’s such a big deal that we as humans have come up with countless stories and myths to explain what comes next. “You go to an afterlife when you die,” “you’re reborn as something else when you die,” whatever. I don’t believe any of it.

And there are just as many attempts to rationalize death. “It’s necessary”, “it’s part of the cycle of life”, “everyone has their time”. I don’t believe any of that either.

Death is as tragic as it is inevitable. It’s bad. Being unable to avoid it doesn’t make it righteous.

If “everyone has their time” then why do we even bother trying to prolong our lives with medicine? If using technology to vastly extend our lifespans in a transhumanist way would be a vile transgression against nature, why is our current use of technology to do the same okay? Why don’t we all just go die right now? What’s even the point?

Spoiler alert: I’m gonna talk about Final Fantasy XIV, including the ending of Dawntrail.

In one fleeting moment, from the land doth life flow / Yet in one fleeting moment, for anew it doth grow

The way FFXIV handles the inevitability of death both uplifts and frustrates me, because it puts forth two different arguments, and I love one of them and hate the other.

Argument one: Even though death comes for us all and life is full of suffering, it’s still worth it to live, find what happiness you can, and make a positive change in the world.
Argument two: Death is a good and necessary part of life and anyone who wants to live forever is misguided at best, evil at worst.

Neither one is particularly revolutionary; we’ve seen both of them a million times before. So why am I focusing on this example?

Because I started playing FFXIV during a low point in my life — it was covid lockdown times, and while I’d always been kind of a shut-in, even I had my limits. In this game I found a new world (but a familiar one, since I’ve played other Final Fantasies before) full of other people. Lots of people have the same story, with FFXIV and with other online games and hobbies. That’s not particularly unique either. But that’s how it went for me.

And then Endwalker released, with its beautiful message that even in the face of overwhelming adversity, it’s still worth it to persevere. And I needed that.

But Endwalker also brought with it the Ancients, and their weird culture of living forever until you accomplish your life’s work, whatever that means to you, and then “returning to the star”, i.e. dying. Committing suicide, in real-world terms. “Oh, but they wouldn’t think of it that way” — but Hermes did. And Hermes is a whole bag of worms that I’m not going to delve into here. I think he’s pretty good evidence that not all was perfect in the ancient world, but that message gets muddied by the fact that he becomes an antagonist (and reincarnates into an even bigger antagonist) and everyone else continues along on their merry way talking about how returning to the star is always such a glorious, beautiful, noble thing.

Venat chose not to do so, but in her case, the attitude was more like “There’s still so much more to do!” Then in the end, when her long mission was finally complete, she was happy to pass on and not even leave behind enough aether to reincarnate. The same goes for the Twelve, save for Deryk, at the end of the Alliance Raid series. Which is an even more stark example of “returning to the star” as a beautiful destiny, since in that case there’s at least the rationalization that your soul will be reborn as some new person. It’s an attitude I see a lot in this fandom: “Their time is over so it’s good for them to die.”

Let’s back up to Shadowbringers real quick. I want to talk about Emet-Selch’s motivations real quick. No, I’m not going to try and justify his actions. Killing everyone to bring back the dead is clearly wrong. But also, Shadowbringers into Endwalker into Dawntrail feels kind of like a frog-boiling situation.

Shadowbringers: “Killing everyone to bring back the dead is wrong.” –> Obviously true, unobjectionable unless you’re a fucking lunatic.
Endwalker: “Death is inevitable, so live your life to its fullest and if you live long enough to die of old age then it will be beautiful.” –> I mean, sure, I guess. I’d rather not die at all, but this is the best-case scenario. I can be realistic.
Dawntrail: “Going against the natural order is bad, and if anyone does successfully resurrect the dead, it’s good to kill them again.” –> Like… no.

“But but but the Endless were aether vampires who would have—” Shut up, that was a choice the writers made so they could justify their worldview. Even aside from that aspect, the whole way everyone talked about the use of regulators and Living Memory made it clear that we were supposed to see the very concept as inherently wrong.

And I don’t.

Even in a world where reincarnation is explicitly known to be a thing, I don’t think that nullifies how bad death is! Your reincarnation is not you. The Warrior of Light isn’t Ardbert isn’t Azem, and Amon isn’t Hermes. From my perspective, the future being who inherits my soul (even if souls exist in the real world!) is as much “me” as someone who inherits the atoms of my body. If they don’t remember being me, how are they me?

From that perspective, I actually see the inhabitants of Living Memory as more authentic versions of themselves than anyone who might inherit their souls in the future. Cahciua has continuity of consciousness between her pre-death and her Endless forms. Hermes and Amon do not.

Okay whatever

Is there a point to this disjointed rambling?

There’s another work of fiction I wanna talk about, one that I think actually handles similar themes in a way that makes way more sense to me.

It’s a free play, buddy. Clock’s all zeroes.

17776: What football will look like in the future is a serialized web story by SB Nation sports columnist Jon Bois, in which the Pioneer 9 space probe spontaneously develops sentience and carries on extended conversations with Pioneer 10 and the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) in the year 17776, 15 millennia after all humans suddenly and inexplicably became immortal.

It’s an excuse to have weird, centuries-long games of American football where teams can literally fall off cliffs and then just keep playing at the bottom of canyons. And why? Because they can. Because when you strip away death and injury and sickness, what’s left? Why toil when you don’t have to? You can just play games. You can just exist.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Sure, people in the 178th century still get bored, have existential crises, question the meaning of life, wonder if there’s a god, wonder if they’re actually all in heaven or hell. But there’s no overarching authorial message that living without death is bad, or meaningless, or a perversion of the natural order.

And I much prefer this approach.

Who wants to be immortal anyway?

In the end, I can’t really say the Ancients’ method of “returning to the star” when they decide they’re “finished” is actually terrible. It makes sense? Like, if I knew I would live forever unless and until I proactively chose to end my life, I know I’d probably get bored after a few hundred or thousand years, so maybe I would wind up offing myself?

But it’s the implication that it’s bad not to die. That’s what gets me. That’s what I just can’t get past.

(There’s also the whole thing where storing souls for use in the Regulators has affected Solution Nine’s birth rate but like, if fewer people are dying, is it really a problem that fewer people are being born? I don’t trust people who get all precious about declining birth rates tbh. Too much weird political baggage with that subject.)

A prophetic vision of FFXIV patch 8.0

2024-08-25T20:00:00-05:00

Hi there, 2024! This is me from the year 2028. I just thought you’d be interested in an update from the future.

What? You want to know who wins the election? You want to know what we do about climate change, if anything? Sorry, temporal laws forbid me from telling you any of that. But I can tell you what happens in patch 8.0 of Final Fantasy XIV!

Well, sort of. I can’t give away the plot, but I can tell you the broad strokes. You ready? Here we go!

The Warrior of Light and their Scion friends go to a new region to help solve a problem.
The first two zones can be done in any order. There’s no real gameplay to speak of in either zone. Grab some popcorn; you’ll just be running back and forth and watching a lot of cutscenes.
When you finish that introduction, you’ll head into the level 101 dungeon.
From there until the level 103 dungeon, we’re back to Cutscene Land. Actually, there’s one solo duty that’s at either level 102 or 104, I don’t recall which. It’s pretty good though.
Right after the level 103 dungeon, you fight the level 103 trial.
From level 104 to level 108, there’s not much. There’s dungeons at 105 and 107, but aside from that, it’s just cutscenes.
The level 109 dungeon leads into the second trial.
After that, we get to the sixth zone, which is just… I can’t even hint at it. All the other zones were shown or hinted at in the promotional materials, but the sixth zone is totally out of left field. You’ll never guess what it is.
After the sixth zone we have the level 110 dungeon and trial, and then credits!

Sorry I can’t tell you more. Temporal laws and so forth. You understand.

Game concept free to a good home

2024-08-24T11:00:00-05:00

Had a rather vivid dream about a video game that probably doesn’t exist.

There were two separate control schemes. In the dream I think I was playing on the Playdate and using the D-pad for one of them and the crank for the other, but it could just as easily be two different joysticks or WASD + arrow keys. One hand controlled the protagonist as they jumped around in a fairly standard 2D platformer; the other swept around the same screen like a mouse cursor, uncovering hidden collectibles within some radius of where it went.

I think there was some kind of plot where there were two protagonists and they were wives, but I don’t recall much.

Anyway, that’s up for grabs for anyone who wants to make it. I don’t think I’m up to it.

I have an Atom feed again

2024-08-16T14:30:00-05:00

This site has an atom feed again. Old content probably will not be added.