Pointless Exercises

11:08pm: Hate people
Some annoying person PMed me with a form letter thing about how they don't read pokemon fanfic normally, and aren't impressed with what they've seen, but there's this pokemon fanfic that is like the bestest ever, and other people think it is like the bestest ever, so I should read it and review it and add it to my C2(s) because if the author gets more reviews they might update faster yay!

After getting a bitchy response, they thought a moment and decided that nope, the hole was not yet deep enough, so explained how much they'd love getting a copy-pasted note from a stranger heartfelt message about a totally awesome story yay, then they charged along with a terribly botched guilt trip attempt about how everybody thinks it's awesome, and I'm letting down my C2 peeps if I refuse to read it because what if I would realize it really is awesomesauce (and of course I will) and that everyone would be so much happier if they, too, could share in its awesomesauceness, and then I'd have let all those people down and think of the poor C2 subscribers! Because after you've been bitched at for not paying attention and how someone's C2 is not for random stories you think are cool, for god's sake do not pay attention to whether or not the C2 has anything to do with the story! Instead, say that another C2 manager did, and that although they didn't like it, they still added it because they figured everyone else would and they wanted to "better their C2". Because it is just that much like the emperor's new clothes awesomesauce.

Edit: Jesus christ they will not stop. They're still insisting there's some imaginary C2 I'm part of ("the larger C2 rather than the origninal trainers" one) that I should put the story in but anyway since Ash is totally OOC I should put it in the original trainer one, and yes, the only reason they even know the subject matter of one C2 is because I explicitly stated it in the last PM. Just because someone keeps saying they're not in any such C2 doesn't mean you should actually check! Oh, and they recommended Twilight to me, because they don't like it but that doesn't mean it isn't good because what do you mean you're supposed to have some sort of reasoning for saying why people should read something?

And also that their motives are pure and wonderful like newborn lambs, if newborn lambs could share with you the most awesomesauce story ever, so I should be grateful someone went through the trouble of contacting me about the story (something that is surely rare and wondrous to me).

12:34pm: Meanwhile, over on FFN
So I poked my head into the Pokemon category, since I'm planning to go around reviewing everyone come December.

( So there's some new stuff )

10:35pm: Archive of Our Own
So after a couple years it's finally semi-open and you can sign up for an account.

( The more I look at it, the more baffled I get )

10:28pm: Read some Junji Ito. I guess I'll work on NaNo tonight, because god knows I won't be sleeping. Ever again.

(Also the one about the bats just made me sad for the bats and creepy guy, which I think is one of the final stages of insanity. So that's worrying too.)

(Also the doll. why. why. i was warned it was fucked up for junji ito why did i keep going)

10:42pm: Ch6, (Assuming) Good Faith, of Tribulations, is up.

( Notes )

7:45pm: NaNoing
OpenOffice and Firefox do not recognize the word "sniggering".

I'm now curious if you could do some sort of long term rearrangement of vocabulary use simply by slowly removing terms from various spellchecks, encouraging people to retry with a supported synonym until the word falls out of use entirely, and if someone's already trying this out.

8:29am: I am in awe
Wherein I Sum Up The Deep, Mystic Secrets of Dragon Cave:

Dragons eggs get sick at about 350-500 views on the first day, and will recover with a few hours of no views. After that they can get 2000+ without worry, which is more than you need to get them to adults. Also, the abandoned section tends to have better options than the main cave, and you can have three hatchlings and three eggs at the same time. (It also lets you abandon the eggs immediately if you don't like what dragon it turns into.)


Also: MAI DRAGONZ GUYZ (This will be the master dragon post and the last you'll see of them.)

6:20pm: I actually did this because I wanted to see what the NaNo forums did


I keep seeing sick or dead eggs on the forums, so I decided to try it out myself. Well, that, and I keep hearing about dragcave drama and wanted a closer look.

Also, check this out. Stare into the abyss long enough and the abyss stares back...

EDIT: Awesome, this finally took out the eggs. Have another set:

5:40pm: "So what would you think if two billion people vanished?"
It seems "Rapture! OHSHIT!" really is the most common response to people vanishing. I was hoping other belief systems had some sort of fallback explanation. Also, for a spirited defense of the Alien option. I may need to repost the question to the religious forum. They might be a better source for x religion's thoughts on mass vanishings.

Off to answer emails and suchlike now.

11:08am: What I've Been Doing
So mostly, I've been busy with productive but uninteresting things you aren't interested in.

( Aside from that, I have chickens )

10:27pm: The management apologizes for the delay
Despite available evidence, I'm not actually dead.

Normal posting will resume shortly.

9:50am: Animals!
The fluffles are home again. They're four weeks old and I haven't killed one of them!

Pictures later. They're less adorable and more adult sleekness now, but they still love me. Thanks, imprinting! Sometimes I take just one out and move it around on my arm as we seek out inchworms on the trees and shrubs.

They're surprisingly manageable. I usually think of farm animals as a sort of less bitey class of wild animals, who Do Not Make Good Pets Stop Asking. But the closest think to a problem I've had is that if there are two people outside at once, the chickens will start following whoever tries to walk away. Right now they're in my room with the lid of their cage off (because it's getting a bit small for four chickens) and it just means one will jump onto the cage lip, do a little preening dance going "Look at me! I'm taller than you!" and settle down to roost.

Also, the cat brought in a baby bunny this morning. It lay splayed out where she dropped it, but after a minute of staring we figured out it was still breathing and, in fact, completely uninjured. Smart bunny. We put it in a box for a half hour, then out into the backyard again. It was adorable, although I hope I don't see it again for a while.

8:48pm: Devil May Cry
So I finally sat down to finish Devil May Cry. Although there were really frustrating sections (that FUCKING SPIDER) it ended up doing exactly what videogames are supposed to do, which is to burn a series of arbitrary responses into neurons that you could be devoting to something useful. When, halfway through the game, I realized that suddenly I could make Dante land perfectly on the back of a giant spider, pivot, hack, and then dodge the second spider's attack, all without even thinking about it, I was ecstatic. Somewhere along the line Dante's sluggish reactions and terrible handling had stopped mattering, and I was able to do such previously impossible things as aiming a jump. What had been a matter of grueling concentration as I struggled to remember which button(s) I should hit in which order, or more accurately a matter of holding down the three I thought I had a handle on and hoping that worked, had transformed into something reflexive. And in the process my brother and I had many fun discussions on the subject of Dante, his brain damage, and how much worse I was making it by my periodic pauses to make him kickkjump his stupid head into the ceiling. (DAMMIT DANTE I SAID JUMP TO THE NEXT PLATFORM NOT HOP TO THE FLOOR WHY IS THAT EVEN AN OPTION WHEN WOULD I EVER WANT TO DO THAT) This was aided by the fact his dialogue got steadily dumber as time went on. Clearly, not even the sort of demonic healing power that lets you shove a sword all the way through your chest could fix all the concussions.

The point is, after a lot of frustration I ended DMC on a high note, especially given that I only died a couple times to the final boss despite it involving a new battle system that I had to get used to.

So naturally, Devil May Cry 2 has switched all the controls. X no longer is attack, it's now jump. The triangle button at the top of the controller, pointing up, is now attack. I feel justified in my bitter claims that this is stupid because the "interact with your environment" is now the same button as the "roll twenty feet" button. Not that I'm not impressed by Dante's ability to run up a wall, but I just wanted to know if I could open the door. Incidentally, what sort of a sadistic bastard of a designer makes such a change at the same time as he decides all the levels should now take place in strangely empty towns full of doors that are just part of the scenery?

The only plus is that the enemies are pretty easy, which means that the fact I spend 60+% of my time flailing about in the air is more an inconvenience and less a prelude to terrible maiming. There's also still secret missions, only they're just a room where you fight whatever the newest enemy is, which serves to just ruin their introduction a few moments later. Two giant demon statues transforming into enemies would be a lot scarier if I didn't fight five last screen. I'm actually considering if I should just skip the secret rooms. In the last game, missing any health was a severe disadvantage for me and more could bring things to the point it was virtually impossible to continue at all, but such obsessiveness doesn't seem necessary in this game. I'm a couple missions and one boss fight in, and haven't died once, despite not really trying.

10:28pm: Oh, and before I go back to nonproductivity, I should mention I got a dreamwidth account, with imported comments. (I did so because I first became aware of importing comments due to people trying to get rid of the option, so I decided to take advantage of it.)

I haven't actually done anything with it, because busy.

7:49am: This is going to bother me all week
So I've been getting a higher concentration of alerts/favoritings/reviews than usual for a period when I'm not updating. Then I get more and people start posting on my forum all of a sudden, and wondered if there was some connection. But it seems they're just Teaparty forumgoers, so I'm still wondering if there's somewhere else my name came up that's led to more people checking out my profile or what.

I guess the simpler explanation is just that they're trickling in from hearing my name over there, but they were talking about me ages ago, so it's not really a satisfying explanation. Also, last time I checked they had no idea of the concept of links and I doubt a mere few months would change that, and I usually assume I don't get much traffic when people have to do a search on my name themselves.

Or it might just be random chance.

8:54pm: ATTENTION POSSE/MINDSLAVES/SOCKPUPPETS/ MY OWN PUPPETMASTER
THIS HIGHLY SECRET LIVEJOURNAL HAS SOMEHOW BEEN SPOTTED AGAIN. I CANNOT FIGURE OUT HOW THEY DO IT.

ANYWAY, THEY ARE ONTO US.

IF YOU ARE A MEMBER OF THE POSSE, CONSIDER YOURSELF ALERTED THAT THE PEOPLE INVOLVED ARE MY SWORN ENEMIES. I DO NOT NEED TO JUSTIFY MYSELF (NOR COULD I AS THEY ARE CLEARLY INNOCENT AND WONDERFUL PEOPLE WHOSE ACCUSATIONS ARE CORRECT IN EVERY WAY) TO YOU, BECAUSE AS A MEMBER OF THE POSSE YOU ARE OBLIGATED TO ATTACK THEM SIMPLY FOR (INNOCENTLY AND POLITELY) DISAGREEING WITH ME. FEEL NO NEED TO READ THE CONTENTS OF THE LINKS BEYOND TO GET THE PERSON'S NAME SO YOU CAN SEND THEM MESSAGES THICK WITH THAT MOST HORRIBLE OF WEAPONS, WITHERINGLY DISMISSIVE SARCASM.

IF YOU ARE A MINDSLAVE YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT TO DO.

IF YOU ARE A SOCKPUPPET YOU ARE TECHNICALLY ME AND I AM BUSY.

IF YOU ARE THE PUPPETMASTER DIRECTING ME AS YOUR MINDSLAVE/SOCKPUPPET/POSSE MEMBER, SOMETHING SEEMS TO HAVE GONE WRONG WITH OUR TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION.

I WOULD NAME YOU BUT FOR THE LIFE OF ME I CAN'T REMEMBER WHO'S WHO ANYMORE.

WHY CAN'T WE JUST BE A GANG OF EVILDOERS? IT'S JUST SO MUCH SIMPLER. THE COMMAND STRUCTURE (WHICH TOTALLY EXISTS AND WAS NOT MADE UP BY PEOPLE WHO MUST HAVE BEEN NUTS) IS GIVING ME A HEADACHE.

5:47pm: Chickies


( They are fuzzy )

9:12pm:
CHICKENS

7:59pm: The weather is finally nice. Real-nice, not thank-god-it-is-not-actually-freezing-nice. Unfortunately this means that Mom's decided it's time to hang clothes outside, which involves deciding that people who are not her should do the actual work.

CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS CHICKENS

9:48pm: Easter
It's Easter.

Easter is possibly the best holiday ever. It's got bright colors, a number of inexplicable yet adorable traditions, candy, and egg-laying pastel bunnies, which is possibly the best idea ever. Plus it's got creepy Christian death stuff added in for gravitas and part of the celebration involves eating one of the cute animal mascots. (Well, apparently some people eat turkey, because some people are weird. I didn't know anyone willingly ate turkey. I thought it was just a thanksgiving requirement.)

10:25pm: So inching along on Platinum.

The selection of early pokemon is just awful. I try to avoid reusing pokemon that I've already raised, so I picked turtwig, which in turn further restricts my choices, since grass types are a bad enough idea without having two on your team. I planned on hacking to catch dongle/swarm pokemon, but even then you only have like one decent team possible, and a substantial chunk are grass (and I don't need more grass) or bug (which is to say made of suck and fail) so even if you could have the type on your team, you still can't make a whole team out of your early options.

Hacking in general is looking good, though. I managed to find a site with codes by pokemon players who happen to be hackers, rather than the usual set by hackers who happen to play pokemon, which means rather than just endless variations on walking through walls, immortal pokemon and automatic one-hit KOs, I now have a working shiny code, max IV code, and pokemon encounter hack that governs pokemon, level and nature. All running together. All I need now is to get a code that substitutes "hatched from an egg" in place of "encountered at Route Whatever" and my life will become perfect.

In the meantime, my intended team is going to be nidoranM (because shiny nidoqueen is hideous), pineco, vulpix, slowpoke and aerodactyl.

10:09pm: Actually playing Pokemon Platinum now
(Wow, the new trade center is just weird. I mean, they made a huge improvement, only it ignored the root of the problem (why have only seven display at a time? Why? Why introduce new things to fix problems that are only problems because of the seven display thing?). It also seems to have some weird interactions with older games, like they're getting updated on new pokemon at a different rate, as I found as I traded my brother's pokemon back to Pearl. Although there were compounding factors, namely that people kept trading for the ones the Pearl game was offering. Why do people want L100 abra? I assumed I was getting them because people hack them up so they'll have a pokemon that satisfies any requirements, I didn't think anyone actually would trade for them?

(I do think the OT display is all kinds of awesome, and frees me from feeling obligated to nickname my shiny masses. Now if Nintendo would just stop fucking with my game in response to me mass uploading shinies, life would be just awesome.)

Anyway, it occurred to me while I was doing all the trading, offering shiny hoothoot for regular brother's hoothoot, that I have an action replay now and can play through the whole game with shiny codes on if I feel like it. So that's what I plan to do.

Oh, and also? Now they make you delete saved data to start a new game. What the hell? I seriously can't figure out why they did this. It's all kinds of obnoxious, kind of like how they tell you twenty times that you're overwriting data every time you save. YES NINTENDO THAT IS CALLED SAVING MY GAME THANKS IF I DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT I WOULDN'T BE SAVING NOW WOULD I.

...so anyway, the game is really pretty, even if I do question the feasibility of mixing a short skirt with a scarf. My avatar is not bright.

11:32am: So I tend not to do character question things because my characters either have uninteresting answers or the question just doesn't apply to them. But then I thought that I'm working on messed-up Exalted characters.

So you get them.

( Winter Moon )

( Shout of the Dawn )

( Nameless )

10:51am: So rather than doing anything I should be, I've been reading through a deathly hallows spork. It made me want to write HP fanfic for probably the worst reasons to write fanfic I've had yet: a hatred of canon, a desire to use a special format that seems really clever to me (having chunks of the story written in white text) that would make me unable to post it most places, and a Hitchhiker's Guide quote: "Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the Universe than we do now."

Also chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens chickens

10:57pm: After buying Platinum, the last snow of the year fell out of a bright sky.

Today, chicken eggs arrived.

There's probably no connection between these things.