The Sheperd's Notebook

[Lutefisk]

Well here it is, a brand new thread for all the little essays, anecdotes and other assorted scrawlings by yours truly.

[Lutefisk]

When will you understand that ripping off Tolkien isn't going to make you the next Tolkien?

5.3 MSQ

Compared to someone like Takeru, Ardbert was nothing more than a peabrain who could only think with his Fell Cleave. He used to be a pretty cool guy but then 5.0 gave him the Lyse treatment and turned him into a mouthpiece of a writer that expects the audience to like their cardboard cutouts on the basis of how nice they are to the self-insert MC. Escapist fiction is comfort food designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator so the new direction wasn't surprising, just disappointing.

The title has nothing to do with Kierkegaard because I've never believed in any of that crap. I picked it because it sounds cool and requires some effort to acquire.

As for the Epitaph of Twilight, I guess you could say that I ”solved” it when I figured out what the choice at the start of the game that determines the type of ring that the merchant gives you was referencing, but I didn't get any definitive proof that there's something fishy going on until I remembered where I had heard Holminster's theme before. Some little simian must be really proud of that pun.

Though it bears mentioning that it wasn't until much later that I could see you had been snooping around and dragged that old thing all the way here. I started reading that novel during the pre-expansion slump to work on my reading backlog and took a break somewhere between the ladder and the bench when early access started to level DNC and GNB. I continued where I left off after I had finished the 5.0 MSQ in its entirety and when I got to the chapter where Devil Summoner Ivan Karamazov has a nice glass of lucid dreaming... Well, suffice to say that while it's one the funniest pieces of prose that I've ever read, I didn't find it all that amusing at the time.

Brother No.2 was in training to become an EMT at one point but he gave up halfway through. He came to the conclusion that he doesn't have the nerves for the kind of work where your mistakes might get people killed, so now he makes a living by moving around some less fragile cargo.

Not being late to school is important but so is good dental hygiene. The outer corner of tooth number 8 snapped off for forgetting that. And I didn't eat grass, the old trotter threw me off her back at the start of the spring semester. The fracture right below the left shoulder didn't heal quite as well as it could have so that arm is bent out of shape, but only so slightly that it's not visible without X-ray.

The Wyrmstalker armor is Cataclysm vintage from the laptop gaming days, exactly as it was. Cataloging was more sporadic back then so it took me a moment to put it back together. The switch to lamellar happened sometime in late MoP.

What Doesn't Kill

The first time I got sick was before I was old enough to form permanent memories, I've only been told that it was serious enough that a trip to the hospital was in order. The second time at the age of four was mild enough that I could stay at home but it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience.

They use Arkonor for baking in Sharlayan? And here I was thinking they just occasionally snacked on paint chips and crayons.

Icepick lobotomy isn't going to make those eyesores feel more human, your time would be better spent on reading about the effects that extrinsic rewards have on intrinsic motivation.

Father's father worked in the postal service but he had to retire a bit earlier than planned after a cerebral infarction left his left arm and leg paralyzed. He could still walk with a cane after that but the range of motion he could exert on his bad leg left him unable to climb stairs.

The Paragon Of Pastlessness

Fictional characters aren't real people, their lives don't have any kind of innate value beyond what the individual reader is willing to give them.

There are things adjacent to Minfilia that I have issues with but Minfilia herself didn't bother me that much. Having her at the helm made the Scions feel a bit less like some secret Sharlayan policlub that only exists because those silly Eorzeans are too damn stupid to solve their own problems and the only one who can do that for them is Big Mother's little snowflake.

The Crystal Braves were another one of those ”you're supposed to hate these people because we say so” moments and the Steppe arc left the impression that the Xaela are mindless murderhobos that don't need a reason kill, they'll go after anything that the king of all murderhobos says is a viable target. But all those lingering ghosts of a failed game talking about the future belonging to the next generation as if they belonged in that category too takes the cake as the most disgusting moment in the entire game.

All the endings to Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name have been leaked.

I've got no pocket watches to pawn but I have two of Mrs. Doctor's rings, one with an amethyst and another with a grey stone speckled with black. They're too gaudy to be of any real use to me except as good luck charms. And I missed out on Infinity, it's all thanks to those other folks that Kono could fund his next Flanker simulator.

The Hero Of Justice And The Whip Of God

I picked ACN as my starting class because I wanted to try a caster and stat sticks are boring. That's all that there is to it. But I take it that you'll be wanting a report on some more recent escapades to use as source material for your next cashgrab.

Ghimlyt is the worst dungeon in the game. 4.5 MSQ was so nonsensical that I refuse to believe it was written by actual human beings. The whole damn thing was outsourced to an AI and there's nothing you can do to convince me otherwise.

The first birthday gift I got was a stuffed white bunny from the new capital aunt. I still have it but the tail fell off and got lost when I was a little kid.

Santa's Drunk As A Skunk And Humanity Has No Tomorrow

The DRG was a Namazu in a golden pig suit, the other six were boring people with boring glams.

Brother No.1 was born on Saint Lucia's Day, No.2 on the second mundus patet of the year, No.3 on the fourth three months before me and my sister on the fourth six months after me.

”There must always be a Reply-Code Alpha.” Do you copycats have no shame?

I'm Only Going To Say This Once

Why do you insist on insulting me like this? I hate these nothingburgers with every fiber of my being, stop pretending that I'm ever going to give a hoot about any them. This sick obsession with the idea that you have to be friends with your coworkers is the reason why the MSQ is such godawful garbage.

And if that worthless piece of trash is going to be the narrator of the next expansion, you can expect to get some fan mail written with Greek coal in the near future.

The Gazing Abyss On The Day Of Repentance

Monsters don't exist, who claims otherwise is a liar and a hypocritical coward.

Sae's looking as lively as ever. Or was it Kirie? And Zenos is still the same pathetic wannabe he's always been.

What New Atonements Will You Murderers Invent?

All that nonsense about 1.0 players getting flung five years into the future was nothing more than a scheme to increase player retention. It's okay to kill tons of cannon fodder for shock value in a PR stunt but to kill off the characters of paying customers? Preposterous! They might stop playing like the pansies they are!

If you had cared about writing a good story you would have put everyone on the same starting line.

And One More Thing

Warrior of Light incarnate is pretty funny, but it's no fun to laugh alone.

All in all 5.3 was awful. The personality that that hack insists on imposing on to the player character disgusts me so much that I don't even want to log in anymore. If this pile of turd is the best you could do after I told you to get your act together, then I don't care to find out what new ways to embarrass yourselves you're going to invent in the future.

[Lutefisk]

Beast Tribe Quests – Watts's Anvil

Dwarves Und Panzer

Drake is best boat. Not because it's pretty but because it was one of my trusty workhorses in the land of the learning cliff. Kestrel and the Ravens are tied for second place for similar reasons, but based on looks alone I'd say that my favorite hull would be either Vagabond or Apotheosis.

The Lora I used to know was a redhead too but not as grumpy as this one.

Tanks with treads all look so similar to me and so do cars, about the only one I can recognize by sight is the first-generation Saab 900 because my father's parents used to have one in red. It wasn't any faster than your average Saab.

It's been so long since I read the books that the details are starting to slip from my mind. It took me a while to notice that those bells aren't just any random bells.

Alpacas are cute too, but those stupid frogs in the runway were anything but.

I Drink, Therefore I Am

I don't have a driver's licence, if I need ID papers for something I'll use my passport for that. I've never had the need to use a car for commuting or doing grocery shopping so learning to drive hasn't felt like a necessary thing to do.

The old Bosch I got from Mrs. Doctor when I moved away from home isn't built to brew anything fancier than regular coffee. Medium roast with just enough milk to cool it down to a more agreeable temperature, no sugar. Tea is fine too, I just consume it less often because it lacks that certain kind of oomph. But I don't really care to indulge in alcohol outside of big parties and other social gatherings so I can't comment on the taste of Ranin's swills and grogs.

[Lutefisk]

Moonfire Faire 2020

I Am Amazed That You Have Not Already Collapsed In Ruin

I picked Mudkip in Sapphire and Bulbasaur in LeafGreen.

The second one was white with brown spots and the rabbits were both albinoes. As for my extended family... one of my great-aunts used to have a grey tabby cat but the rest are dog people. My father's parents had a black Newfoundland, the Doctor and Mrs. Doctor had an orange and white Brittany and my uncle has had spitzes and Irish Setters.

Mrs. Doctor's parents weren't originally from that part of the country but they used to live over there for work-related reasons until the friends who fought for freedom concluded that they'd need more farmland to meet the five-year plan's bread basket quota. Though perhaps a better real-life counterpart to the mountainside lady would be one of Mrs. Doctor's aunts. She was young and recently married when the ruckus started and when it died down for a moment, she was young and recently widowed. She made it past ninety, as did one of her sisters and the Doctor's father, and she never remarried.

Grade School Roll Call

In the first grade I lived in Ermine City. The teacher of Class 1C was an old lady with a long career behind her and the one I remember best from my classmates is the girl whose mother made me a Pikachu doll as a birtday gift. They weren't Emmerichs.

In the second grade I lived in the town of Sweethammers far down south. The teacher of Class 2A was another old lady and the only one I still remember from this class is the orange-haired girl whose parents were atheists. The school in Solna wasn't named after her.

The school I went to in the third grade was located in the same town, it was an old wooden building without a cafeteria and only one class per each grade. Three kids who lived in the same street as I did also went to the same school. The tallest girl in our class who had no TV show awards to distribute and the friend of a giant-slayer with five or six sisters were both third-graders like me and the third one, a girl with copper red hair, was in the fourth grade. Our teacher was much, much younger than the previous two but not a fresh graduate.

The school I went to in fourth grade in the Heath of the Pension Institute was even smaller, all the students in the third and fourth grades combined could fit in one classroom. The teacher in charge of holding classes for both grades was another younger woman and the girl who sat next to me in class was a short third-grader with glasses who lived in the same block of row houses as I did. She was a mellower soul than the saintly Kievan.

From fifth grade onwards I've been living in my hometown.
The teacher of Class 5A was an old man with greying hair and thick-rimmed glasses and he had a laudatur in Latin.
The girl with twintails played cello and piano, seems like she picked up the musical disposition from her mother who plays violin in the City Orchestra. Blue as the sky but only in name, not in the face.
The girl with fluffy blond hair and tiny feet had the kind of nice, sweet personality that's near impossible to get mad at and her mother had some sort of an editorial job in the regional newspaper. She must have been a Golden Retriever in her previous life. Despite her name I doubt she would have been able to do the work of three people for the price of one at the House of Splendors.
The girl with reddish brown hair was an ocean too and had a bit of an absent-minded aura about her.
The girl with black hair was the renaissaince woman of athletics. She had the same kind of spunk as those mountaineers who try to scale the highest peaks simply because they're there and she was a bit more mature than the witch with the name of a virtuous maiden.
The girl with ashen blond hair had a really demure and ladylike demeanor and she usually wore skirts like the Amakura with a limp.
And the girl with dark blond hair was a really sociable popular gal and a smooth operator. Like the first new student of the year to be sorted, she would have made for a good innkeeper.

The junior high homeroom teacher was in charge of health education and boys' PE. He must have been at least in his mid-thirties but he had the kind of youthful and energetic presence that could have easily made you think he was much younger than that. Conversely, the girls' PE class teacher was a curmudgeonly old lady with the kind of air about her that she might kick your butt with Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique if you got on her bad side. The physics teacher had glasses and blond hair too but she was a bit older than the major. And the history teacher had a real penchant for being fashionably late, but that could be partially chalked up to the fact that her classroom was located the furthest away from the teachers' lounge.

The girls from the fifth grade were also in Class 7B with the exception of the skirt girl who ended up in Class 7A. From the new kids there are two that stand out. A boy who played chess on a competitive level and made short work of anyone who was foolish enough to challenge him into a match and a girl with tan brown skin who did... ballet? I think it was ballet. She had the same last name as one of our former presidents.

[Lutefisk]

The Puppet's Bunker

Houston, We Have A Problem

I haven't played Sakura Taisen but the Troupe's got a catchy theme song. And I haven't been to Hive 08 but I've visited the zoo south of it.

Jack and Rose look a bit different from what I remember and so does the Sword of Mars.

Dr. Freud, I Presume?

If it's mother figures we're talking about then I'd say that my father's mother, one of the retired nurses, has been about as influental as the real deal. Not because of neglect or anything like that but because I used to spend a lot of time over at my father's parents' old house in the Ermine City at the end of the gulf and their cottage near Urushibara when I was younger. She's the only one of my grandparents who's still living but what with the Alzheimer's having advanced so far it doesn't really feel like she's around anymore.

And mom's got the MS too but it's still at an early stage so the symptoms are pretty mild. Debilitating enough to prevent her from working full-time but you wouldn't be able to tell she's got a chronic condition like that unless she told you about it. Sure, it sucks, but it kind of makes you appreciate what you have when you know just how bad things can really get.

Where Do They Come From?

If the periodical discharge of uterine lining is any indication it's all working as nature intended even if I have no use for the feature. Four younger half-siblings is more than enough parenting by proxy for one lifetime. And then there are people like one of my mother's friends who had to go through years of treatments until things worked out.

And no, my mother never tried to pretend that new life doesn't arrive to the world through the pelvic bone though the finer details about the developmental stages of fetuses were reserved for later.

Anime Was A Mistake

”Second chance” was the wrong choice of words, I came back to solve the mystery of why the writing in ARR was so off-putting that I couldn't even finish the 2.0 MSQ. And now that I have the answer I don't have a reason to keep playing. I'm just... done with this game. After that commercial break I took in the summer I had to force myself to start the launcher again.

[Lutefisk]

Rising 2020

It's Not About Money Or Sending A Message

The arc about abolishing the monarchy in Ul'dah is a prime example of disingenuous drivel designed to appeal to an audience with progressive 21st century values that destroys the verisimilitude of the setting. A plotline about someone trying to put a more pliable puppet in place when it's becoming clear that Nanamo isn't such a gullible little girl anymore and has her own ideas on what policies to pursue doesn't need some hamfisted pro-democracy propaganda shoved into it. If you're writing a story about political intrigue in a fictional oligarchy then go about it without such diabetes inducing sugarcoating or don't bother at all.

Not Like In One Of Your Visual Novels

Venat as the head honcho of the anti-Zodiark faction makes a lot more sense now that I've finished the lacrosse match with the BETA. No wonder you were thinking that I had read the whole thing already.

So this one happened back when I was in kindergarten in the new capital. I took a seat that was already taken and one of the boys gave me an excessively forceful shove to get me off it. I fell off the chair and hit the floor right hand first in the kind of angle that made the first proximal phalanx or the metacarpal fracture, I forget which one. The boy got chewed out and I got a plaster. It's the oldest hands-on demonstration on how actions can have unintended consequences that I still remember. Sure, the kid should have asked me to move somewhere else before using physical force but it's not like he meant to break my bones on purpose, he was just annoyed about losing the spot he had picked.

Those Two Cities

Father's sister, the old capital aunt, used to live in London. I went to see her with the nurse and the postman in the autumn way, way before the blue whale replaced Dippy in the Hintze Hall. We visited the Natural History Museum and went to see the West End production of Beauty and the Beast. And mother's sister, the old capital aunt, used to live in Paris. Me, Mrs. Doctor and my aunt's mother-in-law paid her a visit in the summer way, way before the roof of Notre-Dame burned. We checked out all the usual Parisian landmarks, Disneyland and Claude Monet's gardens.

[Lutefisk]

Sapphire Weapon

The Leading Warmachina Of The Generation

The God Warrior's new coat of paint is certainly a striking contrast to my GTX 750 Strix, which isn't the only piece of hardware I've had to procure on a short notice. My desktop's old monitor broke right near the end of 2017 and I had to ask No.3 to lend me his monitor for a few days so I wouldn't miss out on the Starlight Celebration quests.

Tournament matches are fun to watch and the theory is interesting to read about but I'm not that big on fighting games myself. I'll leave the burst predicting to the real pros.

I haven't had the time to take a closer look at the travelogue, the notes about the cliffs or the book about the bandits. Only the stone caught my eye.

No.1 took the job in the Mediterranean so he could move to a place with a climate that's more to his liking, the easy money was a distant second on the list of motivations.

The Sound Of Scientific Triumph

Sure, it's an interesting film on it's own right, but I'd be lying if I said that those YouTube clips with the fake subtitles weren't the reason why I bothered to watch it.

No.1 got an exemption from service for reasons he's yet to disclose, No.2 got discharged some time after basic training when an old hip injury started acting up so much that he couldn't walk and No.3 isn't old enough to worry about any of that yet. The Doctor's father made it back home in one piece but he passed away when I was pretty young so all I can say about that is that there's no snow in any of the black-and-white photos I've seen.

So what exactly is the deal with the lower half of the Palace of the Dead? Did the Gelmorrans just happen to build their city right next to one of those things? Or did they keep digging deeper to take a look at what's inside the core of the planet like the Sharlayan's did with the Antitower? Or is it just one of those kinds of mysteries that lesser mortals shouldn't think too hard about?

Well, I can't think of anything too scathing to say about how you've handled Gaius so far. Just do whatever you want with him as long as you can spin an interesting story out of it.

Viili is good but I don't really care about buttermilk.

[Lutefisk]

Ehll Tou Custom Deliveries

From The Fields And From The Vineyards

Chanterelles aplenty but no sightings of matsutake. I guess there's not much point to put something like that for sale over here when you can export it overseas for bigger bucks.

If there aren't any interesting items on the menu that are only going to be available for a limited time I'll order a cheeseburger or chicken nuggets and since they don't serve Hartwall's apple lemonade at McDonald's the classic coke is the next best thing to have for a drink.

The Part Where I Talk About My Current Working Conditions

Right now I really hate this game. The latest MSQ left a bad taste in my mouth and I'm suffering from MMO burnout. In other words, I'm not exactly in the mood to take another look at 5.0. Ghostbusting will have to wait until I've pulled myself together.

And for the love of all that is good stop asking me to humor the goats with small talk. If they can't learn to see on their own, then there's nothing I can do to help them understand.

[Alleluia]

... I'm sorry. Who are you and what is this?

[Cilia]

... I'm sorry. Who are you and what is this?

This person shows up every so often; whatever they leave rarely makes much sense and what little does make sense is rather inflammatory (intentionally or otherwise). Don't hold you breath waiting for a straight answer.