Have you been following BeaconHill's fic Nemesis on SB and/or SV? If not, you're missing out, but the short version is that when Emma buys powers from Cauldron and becomes the hot new Ward, Taylor takes up the role of a joke villain in order to trash her in the court of public opinion. This is a filk omake I made following some of the discussion on SV.

(with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan)


(Wards)
Hold, Emma!
Ere your irate vendetta proceed
against our wills to escalate
just bear in mind that we are Wards in Brockton Bay,
And Bumblebee is a humour criminal!

(Shadow Stalker)
We'd better pass,
or Piggy will have our ass.
Bumblebee is a humour criminal!

(Wards)
Yes, yes, she is a humour criminal!

(Bumblebee)
Yes, yes, I am a humour criminal!

(Bees begin buzzing in tune)
I am the very model of a Brockton humour criminal,
I've stolen ice cream, petty cash, and things that are less physical
My nemesis Crystalia's dignity is now minimal
The way she blows her top in public is hardly well spinnable;

I've gotten more acquainted, too, with other Wards more reasonable
Who stop to toss a frisbee when the summer weather's seasonable
My reputation's comical and clips are always on the news (on the news... on the news...)
And I know how to tumble if I trip running in high heel shoes!

My fuzzy minion bumblebees are cute and very cuddlesome
Although their poor coordination often is quite troublesome:
In short, in matters ideologolical and visual,
I am the very model of a Brockton humour criminal.

I've vandalized and tried to steal our founder Brock's statuary
By lifting it with a net and more bees than an apiary
And though I had to cheese it when Crystalia came running in
I still escaped with ease and got some awful insect punning in;

I can't tell you what twisted thoughts have led her to obsess on me
All I can say is it doesn't seem likely she'll be and let bee
Still with every appearance I do seem to be making quite a buzz (hm, quite a buzz... Ah! I have it!)
With villainy and slapstick in the grandest game there ever was!

Perhaps one day I'll recruit a bee-tween sidekick and learn the quadrille
So she can translate for my bees with dance on top of Captain's Hill
In short, in matters ideologolical and visual,
I am the very model of a Brockton humour criminal.

In fact, when my lair's filled with loot just like a golden honeycomb
When I've escaped the heroes and have taken all the money home
When I've achieved the highest popular rating on PHO
When my wiki page has been filled out with "this is that" and "such is so,"

When such affairs as burglaries and stick ups I'm an expert of,
Yet hero teams are begging to recruit me for the public's love,
When I have raised awareness for colony collapse and parasites
When my apian crime wave has gone on for at least six dozen nights
In short, when I have brought into clear focus pollinator's rights (oh, that is a tough one... Aha!)
You'll say a better humour criminal has never made the fight!

For my criminal ambitions, though I'm plucky and adorable,
Are entirely illegal, immoral, and yes, deplorable;
In short, in matters ideologolical and visual,
I am the very model of a Brockton humour criminal.


--------

Whew, that was easier than expected yet harder than just writing a prose omake. Now, who else is imagining Bumblebee doing the "With cat-like tread" song?

Star Rangers Log.  Confidential
 
Ah, who am I kidding.  The whole reason for this particular log entry is because Mag Flashlight asked.  And it will be tagged so that he can access it whenever he gets around to it.  And give access to whoever else he thinks needs to see it.  Ergo, if your reading this, you have a need to know, for whatever reason.
 
Short form is:  This is not the only Paragon City.  Sure, its semi common knowledge, after all it seems like every hero, and or villain, winds up dealing with the best known of them.  The one where the Family is Dominant.  The Fifth Column world that is the home of the Reichsman.
 
But there is one more.  One that found out what at least one version of the Coming Storm was.  And paid for that knowledge with its very existence.  The dimension I *THINK* was my home.  Wiped from existence by Battalion.  I expect that if your reading this, your very highly ranked either in the Legendary directly, or one of our sister supergroups of the coalition Mags forged.  Which means I probably remember an alternate version of you.  Yes, very Schrodinger’s Cat, or Heisenberg’s principal.  If your uncertain about that… join the club.  I am too.  Still, very much the same as here, though not a complete mirror.  For example, while the titanic Trio of Terrance Knight, Emerald Blast and Emerald Defender were just as much a powerhouse trio, and just as much in love with each other as here…  They were not completely the same.  I know Rhea and Lisa are here, and involved with Terr… and that is the difference.  The Terrance I ‘grew up’ with once I reached Paragon City. The one who mentored a crazy half human half machine blapper into something almost combat effective on his own?  He was a Tank, yes.  Something tells me no matter where one goes in the multiverse Terrance Knight is ALWAYS a tank; just like there is always some sort of force that keeps one’s feet on planets and such.  The Terr I knew, and teased, and found myself face down in the dirt when he zigged and I zagged?  He was not a rad armor tank.  Nope.  Mr. Natural beefcake was Invulnerable.  Or maybe like Staff Sargent Shortimer, so full of willpower he forced the whole damn universe to conform.  A universe where Evangelina was the founding force, not just of the Legendary, but the one who founded our coalition.
 
I think I’ve drifted off topic of what Mags is hoping to learn from this, or having me write down to explain to others.  If I know what that wily old space marine is thinking, he’s hoping for a data dump on everything I know about the Battalion.  I just wish I knew more.  What I do know is that at one point we were tasked by Faathim the Kind, an aspect of Mad Rularuu, to defeat another of Rularuu’s aspects, Lanaruu.  This aspect wasn’t just mad… he was MAD.  Angry, Mad…  As in destroy everything even though its where he keeps his own stuff mad.  And just as we succeeded…  We failed.  The Battalion somehow corrupted what we were doing.  Used it to take control of Lanaruu; and through him ALL the aspects of Rularuu.  Which gave them control of the Shadow Shard’s version of the Well.  And that was endgame, both for the shadow shard I knew and what I believe is my own home Paragon.  The Battalion consumed the Shadow Shard’s well, adding its power to their own.  They took control of Rularuu’s Watchers.  You know, the ones that look like giant floating Eyeballs?  Well, if you don’t yet, you soon will.  Transformed them.  Created…  Well Dark Seraph and I finally settled on Langoliers.  If you are not familiar with them, go Google them.  (link: Langoliers).  All those eyeball shaped beasties with the sharp teeth first ate EVERYTHING in the Shadow Shard.  Then they came for us.  For the world I think of as ‘home’.  The only saving grace?  Their entry point to our world was not Paragon City, but three quarters of the world away from us.  Fortunately, turning a whole world into NOTHING takes time.  Time Dark Seraph and I, along with Tina McIntyre, used to come up with an idea.  One we had no way of knowing would work…  but we were *HEROES.*  Blessed by fate.  By the Well of Souls itself.  The worse the odds against us were, the more likely it was we would succeed.  Defiant to the end.
 
But still the end came for us, even as we spat in its face.  Below the Arena of Peregrine Island, there is … a something.  Not a Portal that Tina was familiar with.  But between myself the master of !Science, Dark Seraph, a maven of magic who made any member of the Cabal look like a child playing at spell casting, and Tina McIntyre, the one person who knew more about portals than anyone save Dr Webb himself?  We turned that thing under the PI arena into the ultimate escape route.  Near as I can tell, EVERY Hero on the planet that was not a member of the Legendries’ coalition chose to go out to fight the Langoliers.  And Died.  Some because they did not believe us.  Others, Like Positron and the Freedom Phalanx, choosing to sacrifice themselves to delay things as much as possible, to get as many mundane citizens to whatever safety was on the other side as possible.  Dr Keys, in fact, was the lynchpin of the final defense of his reactor in Terra Volta; And fought till the very end to keep life giving power flowing to us, to keep portals open and get as many people out as we could.  As one by one portal and teleport sites fell silent, devoured.  Until only we were left.  I was in battle mode when that last one, and Positrons reactor in Terra Volta fell off the grid within milliseconds of each other.  So, no tears blurred my optic sensors, but my voice still choked as I told Evangelina.  And she issued the order I had struggled for so long to try and avoid even as Dark Seraph and I crafted the plans for it.
 
Dunkirk.  *Fucking* *Dunkirk.*
 
And we held.  Took no casualties as we evacuated the remaining civilians inside our perimeter.  And then, once the civilians were safe, our perimeter slowly collapsed as we evacuated as well.  The Children and Instructors of the Legendary Academy.  The members of the PPD’s Paragon Special Investigations.  Riot Force, with Sylia Stingray, the Silicon Sabre, choosing to be last, making sure her own were through first.  Rhea and Lisa, Emerald Blast and Emerald Defender, standing Side by side with Terrance as our last line of defense until it was just the six of us.  Evangelina giving them her ‘don’t even think about it’ look to chase them through the portal before falling back herself; leaving just Terrance, Dark Seraph, and myself.  As well as the inevitable argument I’d been dreading since it started.  NONE of us wanted to go first, not out of fear of where the portal would lead, but because each of us felt we were the one best suited to stay behind and make sure the other two got to safety.
 
An argument that Terrance, in his own stubborn way, won, in typical Terrance fashion.  After one last use of high knockback attacks to clear him a bit of breathing room, he frickin cold cocked both Dark Seraph and myself.  I assume he threw us both through the portal before entering himself; but I was unconscious, because, um… Terrance.
 
I woke up here.  Level 1 once again, in the middle of the Outbreak.  With two sets of memories, one from there and one from what I assume my life would have been here if there had never happened.  Some were the same.  Growing up, Serving my country in the navy.  Going to Cal Tech and getting into the study of Ritiki Teleportation.  Being forced to prove my theories, only to teleport myself into someone else’s probe also based on Ritiki tech.  From there, my memories of ‘here’ jumped forward to Outbreak, while a second string covered everything I’d done… well… there.  Kind of like a massive Ouroboros Task Force, with only me remembering.
 
Which brings us back to where we both are, myself the person writing this for Mag Flashlight, and you, the person he had me writing this explanation for.  None of the three of us really know what is next; but as for me, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep that ‘alternate’ life… the one where my whole world dies, to keep from happening here.
 
End Log entry.

CBC Opinion column: If your god discredits the humanity of a group of people there is a problem with your god

Yes, this is a reaction to the document released by the Vatican last week. The author is a Protestant minister.

Quote:As part of the Christian tradition I must fight any expression of Christian faith that deals in oppression.

1 John 4:7-8 Wrote:Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

Michael Palin is now Sir Michael Palin.

For my job, summer is conference season, so I get to do a lot of traveling.  I'm heading off tomorrow for a week for a week in Pittsburgh, which is not terribly exciting.  At least it will be an escape from the June Gloom.

But as an American, the European conferences are more exciting.  In late July and early August, I'll be heading to Amsterdam, Prague, and Riga for various programming related groups.  It helps that half of my coworkers live in Europe, and my boss is part-owner of the company and likes writing off travel to Europe.  Last year I visited Scotland, which was pretty amazing, but I'm a little apprehensive about places where people speak less English (not including NL obviously).

Anyone here going somewhere interesting this summer?  Anyone interested it meeting up somewhere for a drink or something?

So this happened: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/14/us-blame...ld-do.html

And the US Navy has released video that supposedly shows an Iranian boat removing a mine from the side of one of the tankers.

But the video is flimsy evidence at best: https://twitter.com/usnavy/status/113936...41984?s=21

There are no dates. No flight data or camera information. They say it's a mine, but it could something else. Iranian? How do you know?

Even IF true, it doesn't mean Iranians PUT it there.


And after the Irak war debacle I am waiting to see what foreign intelligence agencies and governments have to say so that I can determine if I think the US government is lying to me or not.

And that is before factoring the small-lobed ferengi sitting in the White House.

Vidiot Maps base 
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vidiotmaps/

direct link to the i25 Vidiot update
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/5...0190506.7z

Last i24 maps update
https://ln.sync.com/dl/97eb06a10/grgtpgh...1319937802


Courtesy of Drenivan

White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders to leave job at end of June

I thought she left months ago. At least, she hasn't held a daily press briefing in over three months... I thought Trump had done another one of his end-runs around his own staff.

More accurately, with Git for Windows.

Let me explain my problem.

I'm now part of a new team at my job that's working with some specialized software from a company called Kofax to do document scanning and storage.  There is a development angle to this software, which means we have projects that need to be saved and protected with version control.  Unfortunately, the software stores some of its most important stuff in a file format which is basically an XML file inside a ZIP file with a different extension.  Which, if you're familiar with version control, means it's difficult to do more than just note that the file changed.

Now, I've come across a blog post with advice on how to address this specific problem for the software we're using, which would be great except that when I tried to set up the gitattributes, gitconfig and shell script files as it outlines, nothing happens.  Another page I found in my research revealed that the locations specified by the blog post were basically wrong, so I tried using the allegedly "right" ones, to no avail.  So I'm hoping someone here has a superior grasp of GIT can help me.  Basically all I'm doing is trying to set up a custom diff for the two file types that are disguised ZIP files.  

Oh, and since this method is for Git for Windows, and our shop has standardized on SourceTree, I plan to move this over to SourceTree as soon as I know the right way to make it work.

Even though it should go without saying, I'll note that I have all the relevant software installed:  Git for Windows with Git Bash and Gzip, mainly.  I've got Gzip added to the system path to make sure it can be seen.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

Disgaea Stew? Yerwot?

By that I mean, taking parts from multiple entries in the series. I've had a few different ideas for the story to use, either dropping an SI or crossover character into D1 at the Flonne/Durian boss fight or (initially) as Sardine Thief in D4 after they have a Truck-kun encounter, or doing something like in the The Gamer manwha and just applying Disgaea mechanics to a viewpoint character in another setting, but with D5 on my mind and hating the tone of the Killia-focused A-plot (and Seraphina's one-sided romantic subplot) my thoughts have lately turned to removing him and adding a character to carry the "rescue Sera and teach her how to fight" bits. Oh, and just as a note, "D2" is always "Disgaea 2" while "DD2" is "Disgaea D2."

Sticking a Disgaea-flavored insert into another setting does have its appeal, though, especially things like Worm (by Wildbow) that deeply deserve to have someone inject a little of that Disgaea irreverence and humour. In that case, I might use D3's Maritsu Jaaku Gakuen as a prologue/training area and starting zone immediately after getting Truck-kunned that they can commute to and from with the Dimension Gate after getting a handle on their basic abilities or to use the shops/Item Worlder/D5-style Chara Worlder/etc.

Ideas and opinions on setting and plot directions are welcome, though I may disagree with them, and haven't played many other games/watched much recent anime/any US TV since the late 1990s/etc. to know their settings. TBH, I'd actually like D5's space opera framing if they hadn't also thrown out the humour and afterlife aspects that have been defining features of the series as a whole, so keeping that but with D4-style ship exterior parts rather than the surreal D5 "pocket netherworlds" is entirely on the table even if not doing the D5 story or even that era's characters. That's mostly irrelevant to what I'm trying to do here immediately though, which is more to codify the mechanics to frame it in (mostly D5 with some bits of DD2 and D4 at the moment) and the MC's unique class/skills/evilities/etc.

Last thing first, because while huge ensemble casts can be done they're much more difficult to do well, would be that the MC's base form is a Succubus with an extra unique skill, Transform. This lets me out of needing an army of developed characters to use any and all generic classes by using Suredeath Hellman Beyond X's shtick from Disgaea 3 and being able to turn into generic classes. If I was actually doing this for a game it would probably be whatever her current subclass is set as, but with a more flexible prose format I lean more to being anything she's gained at least one subclass star in, tier depending on how many stars she has.

This and maybe a unique combo skill would be the only U-skills kept all the time, being used to change back to the unique-Succybutt base form when in any other. This would be something that persists after the map is cleared like D2 Tink's red/blue forms but I'm not decided on whether it would "take an action" as such since most of the generic Succubus unique skills (which the MC would have by default in base form as well) involve transforming herself or the target a couple of times as does the victory pose as long as you're counting "poof her clothes off" as a transformation.

Exactly which version of unique skills to go with which class might be open to variation, and how to handle the magic skills that can normally be taught to any class is a bit of a question also. Just automatically getting them with subclass stars equal to the spell tier+1 is probably the lowest-hassle method, since the whole point of the character's design is not to need a bunch of other cast members. Weapon skills would work as normal, and given the Transform skill I'd just let them use any weapon, monster or humanoid. Succybutts do have normal hands, after all, even if the games make them stick to monster weapons. I prefer the DD2 teacher/student system for actually teaching or learning skills with other characters, and for having the apprentice's stats buff the master a bit.

Magichange I'm inclined to make a lot more flexible, allowing any weapon form for any class, at least by passing an Assembly bill to change it from normal. Humanoids do a DD2 style Monster Mount piggyback with a similar stat increase for the character giving the ride instead of turning into a weapon as such, while Monster Fusion is a different visual effect for the same mechanic. I like the Professor class unique skill to turn characters into giants, so that stays and can stack with Fusion to make double-giants.

For MC's unique evility, I'm mostly thinking to steal Nisa's and rename it Protagonist Power, reframing it from +1% to stats per 10 hours on a "game clock" to hours of deliberate training, as in track and gym time. The "Equip Unique Evility" bill would be available to her as soon as she completes five stars in some class rather than based on plot progression, while the late-story second unique would be Perfect Transformation that automatically changes to the unique evility of whatever class she turns into when using Transform.

MC's specific Common Evilities... well, it's super-cheaty, but I'd probably just take the top five or six from the D5 DLC characters because again, reducing cast size. Almaz's Lucky!, Artina's Phantom Thief, maybe Mao's improved alchemy or Salvatore's (whichever letter)-Interrogator that improves Magic Extracts? (I'm hesitant about including the capture/interrrogate mechanics from D4 & D5 at all, as torture and brainwashing enemies into joining you, giving up treasures, or rendering them down for wuxia-style stat-increasing magical medicine is cringey at best. Maybe for beastial monsters only.) Not sure on the evilities otherwise, but I'm open to suggestions. Plenair has always been a base NPC and those would be the other non-story characters I would keep in the party, and an alt-colors Desco clone can be created by the Professor NPC so no need to rip off theirs.

For the Dark Assembly itself, I'm inclined to treat the bills as being some kind of ritual magic that needs a bunch of participants to reach a certain minimum power level and the "vote" as being a matter of getting the others to agree to help you rather than the "Mother-may-I" sort of thing it's always come off as in the games. They're demons, why should they even care what a bunch of assholes in a meeting hall think unless it actually had some direct relation to what they want to do?

While the D5 Chara World is a MASSIVE, MASSIVE improvement over its handling in any previous game, I think I'd prefer to frame it as the Heart Bank from D3 rather than just some rando base NPC who lets you play a board game that somehow powers you up. Not that the Heart Bank is really any better explained, but making the enemies who block the path and give you a boost for defeating them into doubts and fears given material forms at least makes some kind of sense, and meshes with treating the Item World in a similar way with the enemies representing flaws and weaknesses in the base item being improved.

Treating the Item World like that with the enemies faced there being constructs who are just a facade over a blob of magical energy until you dispel/collect/etc. them could make the series-signature capture mechanic morally viable - turning them into party members is then reinforcing the construct imposed on the raw mana by the Item Worlder's version of Dark Assembly ritual/Heart Bank vision quest-y thing into a stable new demon, while getting a Magic Extract or treasure is converting it into an inanimate form. If the Capture base NPC is a Professor as in D5 this also gives her material to work with for making Des-W, though I do like the Beast Master class as found in D2/3/4 and including one would allow for replicating the extremely handy evilities and Overload skill from D5 DLC Metallia, who had the Beast Master's unique evility as a common one anyway and a kind of meh unique herself. The Professor class is my favourite generic anyway, so I might just use one to replace the bland ninja as D5-style Netherworld Research base NPC with a Beast Master for the capture NPC ala D4.

... and that was where I apparently fell asleep with this open, and now sit here reading it quite perplexed. Not that it doesn't mesh with some vague ideas that had been bouncing around, but that I put it together and planned to post it on the GameFAQs D5 board, rather than here or Spacebattles or something.

So, uh, what do you think, sirs? /mst3k