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No one tells Pat what to do. Event gallery

No, fishers, we must stop this Sanity at once!!!

A lot went on at Bricks Cascade this weekend, but it's not over yet so I'll blog about that later. For now, I have other news; I'm moving into a new apartment. I've been commuting to my job in down town Portland from my parent's house, which is 1 hour one-way on a no-traffic day. Basically, it's a pain, so I looked into moving closer. I found a place that's reletively affordable (assuming I don't blow all my income on lego) and also close to the MAX line (light rail public transportation), so it'll be an easy commute in. Not nessessarily that much faster, but a 30-40 minute train ride beats a 60-90 minute car ride (or a 30 minute car ride followed by a 40 minute train ride, which is one option I've used.) Still, it'll be a little easier to commute daily, even tho I will lose access to my parent's car. And I'll have to pay rent and utilities and all that stuff, which is sometimes ridiculasly expensive. Oh well. I am splitting the cost with a roommate. I met him online, and he seems okay enough, but he is new to the city, so hopefully he won't get too confused by real civilization. As long as he pays rent, doesn't burn the place down, and tolerates my Lego collecting, I'm sure it'll work out. (I've had worse roommates in the past anyway.) So with any luck, I'll be moving in mid-April. Yay. Unfortunately, having to pay for rent has kinda pushed back my plans to buy a new computer, since my current one is merely limping along. I may still get one, but it would be like two months worth of rent to buy, so I'm cautious about the idea. (Besides, I need to save up for lego too. )

Just make sure to check on him if he's in the bathroom for a long time and red smoke clouds start billowing from under the door. If he's bad you can let me know and I'll ground him.

I dunno, that guy sounds pretty sketch. You better watch out. Congrats on the move!

Retired? But who will clean up the hazardous materials?

bionicle |n.cmpd.| biological chronicle; lit. "chronicle of biology ('the all-living') [bionicle < boyanikul < boya-nai-akul, from boya "biology" (nominalized from bo-ya "to grow, live", see also bo "elemental plant-life; living, growing"), nai "all", and akul "chronicle; lit. "(that which is) seen/known" (< aku-li, from aku "sight, vision" and the adjectival particle -li)] This has gone too far. ._. JRRT

Oh, I'm pretty sure this applies to far more than just Bricks Cascade. Takuma Nuva

I'm a 90s kid, but I actually don't have much of a soft spot for a lot of late 90s space themes. Part of this is that I have so many 90s space parts that rarely seem worth the trouble of finding new uses for. Exploriens, UFO, Insectoids, and Rock Raiders had loads of large, specialized parts, not to mention bunches of parts printed with extremely theme-specific decorations. UFO is my least favorite of these themes. While its subject matter (flying saucers and other weird alien vessels) was new to LEGO, I am not super-fond of the theme's color scheme, and I find a lot of the printed parts from that theme hideous, with fine and chaotic details that don't suit the simplified, slightly cartoony look I like to see in LEGO decorations. It doesn't help that a set that was on my personal wish list for two years as a child, 6975 Alien Avenger, ended up being a real letdown when I finally got it. I do have nostalgia for some themes of my childhood, though — particularly the robots and flying saucers of Spyrius, the realistic space shuttles of Launch Command, and the colorful submarines of Aquazone. Some of the parts in these themes were moving towards the bulky specialization that leaves a sour taste in my mouth when looking back at themes of the late 90s, but they were a big part of my childhood, and one that for whatever reason I don't feel embarrassed by years later. Anyway, these MOCs are pretty good. I especially like that in the case of the UFO, Insectoids, and Roboforce models, they pay earnest tribute to the the actual defining motifs and design standards of those themes, rather than just being generic spacecraft painted in the colors and emblems of a retired theme, like a number of "throwback" models sometimes tend to be. The Exploriens SHIP is nice, as SHIPs go. However, other than the colors and logos, it doesn't totally call to mind Exploriens for me. I feel like the Exploriens line was mostly characterized by flared shapes, lattices, bulky lasers/signal transmitters, and reflective satellite dishes. Of course, that's just my opinion. Perhaps a vessel as massive as this one would not adhere to the same design constraints of the smaller vehicles.

I had to battle the third boss in Bravely Default with three out of the four party members poisoned for the entire battle (Ringabel was the exception; one of his abilities allows me to remove any status effects on him). I was also stupidly low on health potions, and I couldn't use healing magic because it wasn't helping enough (and I needed the magic to deal big damage to the boss anyways). That was more than a little nerve-wracking. That said, I still beat him with all four characters alive on the first try. Hence WINNING. Job History: Tiz - Freelancer (still looking for a new one) Agnes - Freelancer, White Mage, Black Mage, Knight Ringabel - Freelancer, Monk Edea - Freelancer, White Mage (placeholder)

Pahrak, I thought a little bit about Warzone, and here is what I thought about stats: Instead of having Class A-up, only have Classes A-D. That way, there are only four classes, and one fighter can't ascend to the level where they are ten points ahead of the person behind them.

Is that a good thing or bad thing? lol Congrats No one. It's all part of my plan to turn you all into superheroes/villains via radioactivity

Today a wonderful amazing person turns 18 and you should wish him a happy birthday okay

I'm thoroughly disappointed that the topic wasn't titled "bwockday."

I only just found out that Bravely Default and Steins;Gate share a writer. Also I somehow missed just how Final Fantasy the game is. So yeah, I'm playing the Bravely Default demo. A little late to the party, haven't been able to play it too much yet, but I think it will do nicely. I'm recognizing a lot of elements from my favorite Final Fantasy games in the battle system even just from this point. And if it's a Final Fantasy plot spun like Steins;Gate, well...I can't not see that. On a related note, Square-Enix is conducting a Kingdom Hearts survey--not for the faint of heart (pun!), as it includes such impossible questions as "What is your favorite Kingdom Hearts game?" I don't know how I made it through. I can at least say I tried to take it seriously, unlike everyone in the Kingdom Hearts tag on Tumblr. Good gosh I hate this fandom. But the survey did propose some possible items they might include in a collector's edition of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX. Hopefully they'll actually do that, since I really want a wayfinder now that I know I can get one...

(Disclaimer: Most of the below was written at like, 1 AM, and it got a bit rambly.) I like writing stories. I dunno if you've noticed, but it's true. I also tend to be busy with school. I dunno if you've noticed, but that's also true. It seems appropriate to blog about the two, since they've been eating up most of my life lately. So that's what I'm doing. Blogging. About stories. And also school. Yeah. In all seriousness, though - I've got stories to tell. Well, eventually. I've got stories percolating, I guess. One's in the oven right now, another's in the crock-pot, there's one in the freezer that I've got to get around to pulling out and actually baking one of these days, there's one with the ingredients mostly lined up and one that's just a scribbled note on the fridge, to bring this tortured food metaphor to a close. So here they are. Journey: I've mentioned this on-and-off in my blog. It's over on the sidebar there, with a working title and a question mark by the date. It wound up being my NaNo this year, y'see. 50,000 words in three weeks, and still a war to go. It's been fun to write, I've got to say. With all due respect to GregF, there was so much more just waiting to be done with that alternate-universe-light-Teridax. "Villain except good" is boring. "Villain born of wholly different circumstances, whose personality is still rooted in the same faults and strengths of the original, put face-to-face with the destruction he's capable of" is fun. I wrote him in The Shadow and the Sea and was wholly unsurprised when he pulled a sequel hook into the ending. Never mind the half-mad once-Chronicler who winds up as the Makuta's partner. Or charge. Or enemy. It gets a bit blurry at times. And then there's the world said Makuta came from. What kind of Great Beings make the Makuta and then has them act as bodyguards and big shiny lightbulbs? (Ones that are quite fun to write and explore, for what it's worth, even if they aren't major players in the story.) Incidentally, the story's an absolute wreck right now. There's still two major chunks of plot to go, for one thing. Trying very hard to figure out who to kill and why. Re-reading sections and going "oh god there's so much talk of darkness and light you'd think this was a bad Kingdom Hearts fanfic rather than a hopefully decent Bionicle one." But wrecks are fun. You get to go back with a chainsaw and chop off all the messy bits, then dig straight into the heart of the thing and pull it out to the surface. If you haven't gone Mola Ram on your story, it's not done yet. (Also, "Journey" is still, technically, a working title. The trouble with working titles, though, is that you get used to them.) "Shadows' Gravesides": Now this one's an interesting case. To go back to the horrible metaphor, this is the one in the freezer. It's mostly written - I'd say about three-fourths. But somewhere along the line bits of it wound up spilling into Journey, and now it's sort of sitting there staring at me puppy-eyed. I may have to go back and finish it at some point before (or while? or after?) I start posting Journey. Bits and pieces aside, it might be fun to use it to do some thematic mirroring. Komae: Granted, he's not a story, he's a character. (Personally I'm not sure there's much difference.) The BZRPG's one of those things I've enjoyed my time in, even if said time is limited. I've got ideas, you see, and it's always fun to fling them out the window and go do something completely different. (There's also two other BZRPG ideas waiting in the wings. One's got a name, a species, a trait, and little else; the other's got a species, a job idea, and still needs a name. When will they show up? Heck if I know. Probably not in the next three weeks, for reasons to be detailed below.) Time Travelers: This is the one that's ingredients and little else. It's strange; this was the one I first went, "oh, I'll write this epic!" for, and now it's by far the least likely to ever get written. That hasn't stopped me from sowing a few seeds in Journey (on the contrary, it's quite fun building up these little connections), but make the question mark in "2014?" bolded in your mind. But maybe someday. (You may also recall I've mentioned an obscure adventure game by the name of Time Travelers; that was indeed the spark of inspiration, and if I ever do write this I'll leave a few homages in. Title'll probably change, though.) ...And then there's stories that have nothing to do with BZP at all, of course. Like the one I'm hoping to write next summer - the one with corporations that make kappas and the HR recruiter who's sick and tired of all these demons that keep talking down to her. That one's going to be fun too, I think. ------------------- Only problem is: there was something else in the title of this post, wasn't there. School, right. College, uni- whatever you want to call it. The thing that eats up time. It's weird to think I'm nearly done with my education (for now, at least). I'm in my penultimate semester, and between class and research my days are more than busy enough. (Things are going to be really packed from next week until two or so weeks later, so if I'm MIA from the 2nd to the 16th, there's your reason why.) I'll probably sit down and reflect on this whole 'education' thing more once I've actually graduated, but - it's been interesting. School's been a titanic part of my life, and especially these last two years, I've devoted tons of time to it. All those stories above still come second to making sure I get my papers done or my presentations ready to go. It's been rewarding, both personally and practically, but I'm getting ready to move on, I think. I know my limits, and I'm not anywhere close to burning out, but I've been tired this semester. It says a lot that I'm able to churn out 50,000 words of Toa and Makuta in three weeks, but the thought of writing an intersectional cultural autobiography of myself and the role the educational institutions I've attended played in my social development - a topic which is actually really interesting - that's likely to be a tenth that length just feels heavy at this point, for lack of a better term. I'm sure that in a year I'll be looking back on the whole thing fondly, but for now - I've come this far. I'm pretty ready to be done. ------------------- ...Sorry, things got a little heavier than expected at the end there. Point is - stories. I don't know when they'll get done, exactly (the hope for Journey is to start posting it in January, but you never know), but they're coming along, for the most part. BZP's always been a place for stories in my mind. Back when I first joined, I remember seeing so many stories. GaliGee, or T-Hybrid (was that his name? I'm pretty sure it was, but that was a decade (geez) ago), or plenty of others - they told stories, and they helped give this community life. Things are quieter now, but I like to think BZP's still got that spark of creativity. I guess it's just part of our DNA - I mean, this is a Lego forum. Building is what it's all about, in the end. At the end of the day, we create, and we enjoy what our fellow members do. The RPGs are all big ol' melting pots of people flinging stories at each other and seeing what sticks; we still get plenty of MOCs, our fair share of artworks and crafts, even a Matoran Dictionary or two - it brings a smile to my face. Basically: you're all right, BZP. You make stuff - good stuff. And I'm proud to be part of that. (Disclaimer, addendum: Told you it got rambly. Hopefully I'll have slightly saner entries in a few weeks.)

So. New serial update, I see. 'First' canon instance of romance, I hear. Sahmad's got a lady in his life? Wait, no, had. She's dead. Long dead before we ever got to her. Dead, nameless, and seemingly only around to provide angst for her living, named guyfriend. She needs a name. I propose we call her 'Fridgey'.

Dangit, Tufi, you made me go through my family's entire Soda Stash.