Feeling A Profound Urge To Wander Around Those Forests They Had In Old Video Games Where They're Made

Normally these I end up with a vague sense of "I think I've heard this?" This one? Practically instant. The second note. I not only know what game this is from, I know where in the game it happens, what's happening, what the track title is, and how many tries it took me to get the good ending for the encounter - not the game, just this encounter. Burned in my memory.

Round my way, getting off the bus you thank the driver. "Cheers, Drive". It's such a cultural keystone that when they built a new bus station in the town center, there was a petition to name the street it was on "Cheers Drive".

If you take the bus, wave to the driver and thank them as you're getting off the bus.

Being a bus driver is an underappreciated and difficult job but still very vital to society. They still have to do customer service and deal with rude and even aggressive passengers, and on top of that have to deal with traffic and other drivers all day (and let's face it, there's a lot of bad drivers out there who aren't considerate about sharing the road). All while providing an invaluable service of getting us where we need to go. Showing them some appreciation can go a long ways for someone doing such an important job that usually gets little to no recognition or thanks.

The other day, I re-jigged a spreadsheet.

It took all I had to not name the 'summary' tab 'black arts', because to most people it may as well be witchcraft.

That should change, hopefully.

I'm personally convinced that Lift is going to convert everyone to the Church Of A Big Dinner.

Now thinking about the plot of sa6 (presumably, they get stormlight back as the main *big win* moment- this is the Stormlight Archives after all)

ANYWAY thinking about that and the implications of Kaladin Stormblessed disappearing when stormlight does and returning when it does. Like Herald of Second Chances and "here's your second chance with stormlight. Here's your second chance at being Radiant". Or something.

This has long been my belief, honestly. I'm convinced somewhere in this there's an analogy between Star Fleet and the Guides/Scouts. Their primary purpose is to give out-doorsy kids something to do.

Just what level of “don’t ever fuck with us” is Starfleet? I mean I used to think Jem Hadar and Klingons being these fierce warrior races was something of an Informed Trait when they kept losing in face-to-face fights with mild-mannered Starfleet officers. But then I realized… it’s actually because Starfleet officers are just that tough.

Just how motivated and ambitious you have to be, as someone coming from a post-scarcity society, to sign up for such arduous training and potential danger? I have to wonder kind of people decide to go through years of rigorous education, constant work and travel, and the possibility of a nasty death when they are guaranteed lives without fear or want right on their home planets.

Could it be that Starfleet may, in fact, be a place for malcontents? Not the kind of small-time malcontent that turns to destruction and exploitation, but the kind of malcontent that is stifled on some level by the cushy existence of their home planet (even while being willing to die to protect it) and wants something more. Something out there and anywhere but here.

Such people are dangerous to the preexisting system unless they have an outlet for their energies. Just to name a few headliner captains, leave the James Kirks, the Jean-Luc Picards, the Kathryn Janeways, the Benjamin Siskos, the Philippa Georgious with nothing to do but enjoy life, and chances are they’d get restless. You can see their innate drive in the paths they didn’t take and in alternate universes: Picard has a brother who was perfectly content to run a vineyard at home, living a comfortable rural existence. Picard could have had that or any of a million other career paths, but he still chose the uncertainty of the stars. The 20th-century version of Benjamin Sisko had a burning ambition to write groundbreaking science fiction despite being struck down over and over again by racism. Georgiou was goddamned Emperor in the Mirror Universe, and Burnham and Lorcas wanted her throne. Clearly these are not people who can sit content and let the world be; they shift the very earth they stand on and reach for the stars any way they can.

So what do you do with world-shakers in paradise? You could choose to kill them or lock them up and “reeducate” them, but that goes against the Federation’s ideals. You could let them live free and potentially climb to the top, but they might make too many changes and disrupt the whole comfortable arrangement.

Or, you could give them a way out–infinite ways out, in fact, into space. Their boundless energy would be structured and channeled in morally acceptable directions by the strict rules and directives of Starfleet, and their ambition to be better than others and be judged by their abilities would find expression in rank and promotions.

These are, of course, the same individuals who would die to protect the Federation when it is threatened by a race of fierce warriors, a mechanical collective, or vast theocratic empire. The same people who would have felt stifled in civilian life and could have threatened the whole system become its fiercest defenders. It’s a brilliant system, really, that meets everyone’s interests and turns a society’s potential threats into its greatest assets.

I don’t think it’s any wonder, looking at these incredibly trained and driven people who can take down Klingons in single combat and engineer their way out of alternate timelines, that non-Federation worlds–and maybe more than a few Federation ones–hover somewhere between suspicious and outright terrified of the Federation’s intentions. Starfleet is one of the major reasons one can make a case for the Federation being a “soft” empire, and I can see why peoples ranging from the Ferengi to the Klingons are so suspicious of them. Because you do not ever fuck with Starfleet.

One of the earliest lessons I had in 'adventure pacing' for running RPGs was a game where the players got arrested. When told "okay, you're all in individual cells [GM describes cells], what do you do? Look for vents, try to pick the lock?" "Sleep. We've been in continuous action for 36 hours, this is the safest we've been since we airdropped in!"

With Half-Life being talked about again, I do want to reiterate that Gordon Freeman went to work at one morning and; aside from being knocked unconscious and put into stasis a few times; went without sleep for the next six consectutive days

All my haters become aligators when I activate my gatorinator.

Same energy as "Betty Boop was the original vSinger".

reading an academic paper about Dark Souls that casually mentions "environmental storytelling, which was first pioneered by amusement parks," hits exactly the same as when i went on the wikipedia page for Gorillaz and the linked page for "virtual band" casually mentioned that the concept was pioneered by Alvin and the Chipmunks. truly we stand on the shoulders of giants

the whole "sao just awakens the 'i can fix her'-instinct in people"- thing is so fucking funny to me because literally not even the author is immune

reki kawahara really looked at his own novels and said "i can fix her" and that's why the sao progressive novels exist now

something about this story just does that to people, it's great!

One of the things I like about Trails is how mundanely it treats some forms of magic, and how magically it treats swordsmanship. It's known that trains work though gravity manipulation gemstones that just slide the train at great speeds. Fine, normal magical-tehcnology stuff. Combat mages throw fireballs, sure, and almost anyone can learn to toss out lightning or healing spells. Streetlights run on mana, it's all presented as normal technological development, the domain of universities and corporate R&D divisions. But swords? Swords are magic. Swords are real magic. The sort you train your entire life mastering one small school of. You look at Laura there and think "that sword is far too large to be useful", and you're right! Unless you're trained in the Arseid school. If you're a Arseid student, yes, you can throw around a 7' long great sword like it's a regular old claymore. You learn strikes that cause a localised earthquake. You can just spontaneously manifest glowing wings and attain a combat-focus that lets you cut a tank in half. And the Arseid school is brutally simple and mundane next to the nonsense that comes out of Nord spear dancers, who spin tornadoes up with a pointy stick, or the catastrophic, time-dilating, nonsense the Eight Leaves masters get up to.