someone on FF.net has posted your "Ranma-chan, Genie of the Ring" on ff.net.
linkie to the evil plagiarist
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

I've been reading so much of Solid Snake's Gundam Seed fics lately that another idea for a story jumped and mugged me yesterday. Distracting me from all my other fics that need completing, darn it...
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January 25th, C.E. 71
Heliopolis
Andrew Fitzpatrick sat in the canteen and pulled an old hard-back novel out of his rucksack. The student had received the custom-printed item by secure mail only the day before - and almost a month after the Christmas that the gift was supposed to mark.
Not that he could blame his elder brother for the tardy arrival - the post was irregular due to the war and the postmarks made it clear that it had been sent almost TWO months ago, but to his parent's address and had had to be forwarded on to him. Obviously, the news of Andrew's scholarship to Heliopolis had not reached Martyn Fitzpatrick by the time he had sent the package - news, like mail, crossed the lines between the combatant nations slowly.
Opening the book, Andrew tried to fous on the words inside... and forget about the conflicting loyalties that had placed his siblings on opposite sides of the Bloody Valentine War. What side will I choose, he wondered.
Ensign Eleanor FitzPatrick looked around the stark structure of the factory. It was a grim setting she thought privately, to be the birthplace of hope for the Earth Alliance. Unlike most junior officers of the OMNI Enforcers, she knew the stark truth - the losses being suffered against the PLANTs were horrendous. Every mobile suit felled was costing the lives of half-a-dozen soldiers.
But if the Earth Alliance had it's own suits, in the numbers that their factories could produce, then even a Natural pilot would be far closer to the ability of the Coordinator soldiers... losses would still be serious, she admitted unflinchingly, but greater numbers would at last be enough to turn the tide.
She tried not to admit to herself that the thought of Martyn being able to come home was a welcome one. If ZAFT was defeated then he would have no choice... assuming he survived. But then, it wasn't as if he'd be allowed to serve in combat. With the best of the Coordinators available, her clumsy nerdish brother would have been shunted into a support role - probably shuffling paper somewhere.
And their younger brother... well, without the war, there would not be the parents and siblings of dead soldiers looking to avenge themselves on a convenient Cooordinator.
Martyn FitzPatrick sucked in a lungful of air once his GINN rocketed clear of it's mothership. The physical stress of launching - and of just about everything - hit him harder than most of his comrades.
It would have been easier for his little brother he noted without resentment, but unlike his quixotic elder, Andrew had had the sense to stay out of the war. He would be safe in ORB now, studying engineering in a neutral nation and preparing to rebuild the world once the war was over. Frankly, the news had been a weight off Martyn's shoulders - Blue Cosmos was virtually without a presence in the small Pacific nation, which would leave the FitzPatrick's only Coordinator far safer from prejudice than he had been in their hometown - whatever Eleanor might believe.
The blue and grey suit Martyn piloted was soon joined by others - but not as many as could be carried on the two warships of Team Le Creuset. Some of that capacity had to be reserved for the bounty that the five Elites had gone to fetch from the same 'neutral' nation that played host to the youngest of the three FitzPatrick children.
"What the hell!" Andrew muttered as the entire BUILDING shook. He dropped the book back into his bag and was on his way to his feet when the display screens suspended from the ceiling stopped displaying the latest idol singer and displayed the icon for a Public Service Announcement.
"This is Heliopolis Central Authority," came a voice that sounded rather less proffessional than the usual cultured tones of a government spokesman. "We are declaring a Hazard Level Five. All citizens should proceed to the nearest shelter with despatch. Unidentified Mobile Suits are entering Heliopolis. I repeat, we are declaring a Hazard Level Five..."
Andrew's jaw dropped and he pushed off from the table, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "Alright, you heard the announcement," called an older student. "Everyone out. The nearest shelter is out the main doors and down the stairs to your left - no pushing."
Despite the warmth of the day, Andrew felt a chill. Hazard Level Five was a 'no bullshit' warning, the lowest level where danger could be considered real... rather than a nebulous possibility. And while the mobile suits might be unidentified, only one organisation fielded them.
He followed his fellow students out of the door.
Eleanor groaned and pulled herself up from the floor. The explosion... or explosion? had bowled her over - which might well have saved her life, she noted. One of the gantrys had broken loose and landed across the two containers she'd been walking between. Both containers had been broken open by the falling metal, but the gantry had come to rest with it's edge held about three feet off the ground - low enough to have brained her if she hadn't already been on the floor.
"Are you okay?" asked another of the survivors. Like Eleanor, he wore one of Moergenroete's orange coveralls, but unlike her he was a genuine employee of the manufacturing giant, rather than being a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Just shaken," she replied.
"Come on," the man ordered, grabbing her wrist. "They're sounding the evacuation alarm - we need to get to the shelters."
Dazed by the shock of the explosions, Eleanor let him draw her away from the factory floor before the badly abused roof gave way and collapsed.
The mobile armors that sallied had brave pilots but they were hopelessly outclassed. In the first moments of the battle, the three GINN suits wiped out every one of the Mistrials that were first to sortie, leaving only a pair of Moebius armors and a lone Moebius Zero to protect their mothership.
Three of the suits bypassed the still reacting defenders, entering the colony itself, leaving Martyn and his wingman Olor to fend for themselves against the armors.
*Three guesses who's in the Zero,* Martyn thought with a grimace. He'd never flown against the Hawk of Endymion - the fighting on the Grimaldi Front had been over months before he was through with flight academy, and he'd as happily have passed up the honor. But that wasn't the deal on offer and he'd just have to cope with it.
First blood was to ZAFT - one of Enforcer pilots was green enough to be sucked into close quarters and his armour was carved in half by Olor. The Hawk and his remaining comrade double-teamed the Coordinator in response and at almost the same moment, Olor's GINN exploded under fire from the Zero's kinetic cannon and the warship trying to leave the port lurched out of control as the M68 recoilless rifle that was Martyn's primary weapon blasted open a magazine and sympathetic explosions cascaded down the ship's structure.
The Moebius was the next to fall - Martyn might not wear the redcoat of an Elite (for the very good reason that he'd graduated at the absolute bottom of his academy class and the very bad reason that he was a Natural) but he had the advantages of more experience with a GINN's capability and a GINN that was better armed than his comrade. The kinetic rifle mounted at the mobile suit's left hip fired three times and the last shot tore through the mobile armor's cockpit.
"One on one..." the young man muttered, dodging the worryingly accurate fire of the gunbarrels. "Crap..."
Running out of the front door of the campus building, Andrew skidded to a halt as he realised that this route to the shelter wouldn't work out - the twenty-metre-tall giant robot using the street outside as a battlefield was in the way.
What sort of place was a college campus for a battle, anyway? he asked himself, momentarily overlaying onto the GINN's location a memory of a few weeks before when a crowd of students had occupied the same street so that they could whack each other with soft plastic replica weapons with abandon.
Four more students came out the door behind him - familiar to him from a few classes but only one of whom he knew in more than passing. "Sai!" he called. "What's the best way out of here?"
The older boy looked around and then pointed down the street towards the factory complex that the college campus overlapped in a few places. "There should be shelters that way!" he replied, shooting a worried look at the towering robot, currently focused on subduing the light armored vehicles that the ORB military had stationed on the colony, more security forces than combat units.
Eleanor was closest to the shelter's entrance when the control panel signalled that someone was trying to enter. "Who's out there?" she asked through the intercom.
"Kira Yamato and a friend," replied a young voice. "Please open the door."
"Two?" asked the Moergenroete who'd brought Eleanor to the shelter. "We're full - if anyone else comes in, the life support will be strained. They should try to reach the left block, there's another shelter there."
Eleanor nodded. "We're already at capacity," she advised Kira. "Is it possible to get to the shelter in the left block?"
There was a pause that left Eleanor wondering how bad it could be that the short distance to the next block could be hazardous, then Kira answered: "At least take one of us, a girl!"
"Okay," Eleanor agreed, opening the locks to the liftshaft. "Good luck."
When the one person lift opened, she wasn't surprised to see the girl was about Andrew's age - she was probably a college student - many of the staff at the college consulted for Moergenroete and it wasn't unusual for students to enter the complex for a firsthand look at the work being done. The young woman was obviously shocked by something and Eleanor gladly gave up her seat to her, sitting on the deck next to the chair, back against the wall.
Outside Heliopolis, a duel was raging between mobile armor and mobile suit - but it wasn't between Mu La Flaga and Martyn Fitzpatrick. The arrival of his commander's CGUE had allowed Martyn to break out of the fight and he had gladly accepted the order to leave the two of them to their duel and assist the ZAFT forces inside the colony cylinder.
Whatever was between La Flaga and Le Creuset, it was obviously a very personal match and Martyn was happy to out of it - he might not have any more insight into how the Hawk of Endymion managed to fight the gunbarrels remotely than anyone else did, but he suspect that the only reason that he'd survived fighting the Alliance's ONLY ace of the war, was sheer luck.
As he descended upon the lushly green terrain of Heliopolis, he saw that luck had not entirely gone their way however. Three suits were radiating the IFF signals carried by the infiltrating pilots to show that they had been captured... no, there was a fourth, off on it's own... but that left at least one prototype in the hands of the Alliance. "Martyn to Yzak," he radioed the lead machine of the little squad that was headed for the port and presumably for the waiting ships outside. "What's the situation?"
Yzak snorted. "Everything's alright at this end. Matthew and Miguel are nursemaiding us out of the colony - as if we need the help. Two suits are still at the factory - Athrun and Rusty went after them."
Martyn glanced at his display and changed course towards the lone captured machine that was just beginning to take off from the ground. "Understood, I'll go give him a little cover."
The sneer in Yzak's voice was quite evident, even over the radio as he signed off with a derisive: "Try not to get in his way, Fitzpatrick."D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Since the biggest example of Coordinator's skill seems to be typing speed/comprehension in GINNs...
I wonder what people in GS would think of Nagoto of Suzumiya Haruhi fame's typing speed.

The sky is blue.
That is all.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Ayiekie said:

Quote:

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Hi, Logan, sweetie?
1) I posted to the General Chatter and Other People's Fanfiction boards within the last week. I'm here because I'm an author whose fanfic got commented on here.
I will now expect your apology for your false accusation.

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Quote:

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2) My first post in this thread was in response to Necratoid, and covered only points he had raised. Before that, Catty and hmelton had already dragged it "off-topic" (because that never happens in a message board, right), as was even said by hmelton.
I will now expect your apology for your false accusation.

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I came across a link on Spacebattles.com with info on the terror group calling itself Hezbollah.
www.timesonline.co.uk/art...68,00.html
It's fairly political so I put it here.
It looks like Israel is pretty much fighting Lebonon forces in spite of what Lebanon's leaders are saying.
When 14 of 128 seats of a nation's government belong to the group that is bombing another nation you are at war with that nation.
howard melton
God bless

Inspired by this thread I remembered that I wrote a pretty longish peice on another forum about how to write a decent fight scene. So, I thought I'd reproduce that here, just for anyone who may be interested. Feel free to comment and chip in your own advice as well. Someday, I'll clean this up and expand it and turn it into a proper essay on my website.

There are five things you should do to write a good fight scene. Handle all of them and your fight scene is almost gaurenteed to come out competent. Handle them all well and your fight scene will be good.
I'm going to use some terms from wrestling in this post, not because I particularly enjoy wrestling, but because they are very handy for defining some of the concepts.
Part 1: Establishing Heat
Your fight scene actually starts long before your fight itself technically begins. Your primary goal is to build up the heat for the fight. If you accomplish this, then you will be halfway towards having a fight scene readers will enjoy.
Heat is a shorthand way of saying that 'the audience cares about the outcome of the fight'. Specifically, it means that you are guiding the audience towards wanting to see a single specific outcome of the battle. By taking the time to establish the characters of the story in the readers mind and making them care about what happen to them, you are part of the way towards this. However, you still have a ways to go. You must not only have the readers care about the characters, but care about what will happen after the fight. You must make them want to see one person win or lose.
The easiest way to do this is by building 'villian heat'. If you create a villian for the fight that you build up as particularly vile, that the readers will want to see lose, that they will cheer to see lose, then you have established villian heat. You can establish villian heat by having your bad guy do lots of nasty things, but this is a short term solution. Simply having the villain be nasty will go part way towards this, but you must make the enemy one that is vile. The problem with villian heat is that it can not really be carried past the villian's defeat. You can certainly have the villian win a few of the initial encounters, but if you pull that off too often the audience will turn on you. Sooner, rather than later, you will have to have the villian be defeated. Once this is done, the villian is essentially useless to you (as a villian). They lose all their heat. So you better finish them off and write them out of the story, or be ready to build up that heat again from scratch.
Harder, but better in the long run, is building up 'hero heat'. Hero heat is essentially the opposite of villian heat. You make the audience want to see the hero win, want it so bad they can taste it. Hero heat is built up by making the hero and their cause sympathetic to the readers. Revenge is a common hero heat building story conceit, but for it to work we have to feel the hero's loss and their rage at that loss. If the goal is to protect something, then we must understand how important this thing is to the hero. Rescue involves a similar in depth look at how the kidnap victim is important to the hero. In all cases the key to building hero heat is to make the readers understand why the hero is doing this and why they must win this battle. Mere life and death struggle won't work. If you successfully inspire hero heat then the best thing is that it will retain its value far longer than villian heat. Even if the hero loses (and depending on the circumstance, especially if the hero loses) they will often retain their heat. And if they win, but their underlying motive is not fixed, then they can still retain heat for fighting the next villian and the next.
Ideally, you should establish both kinds of heat for the fight, but this is very hard.
The third kind of heat is harder to define. I call it 'character heat' because it really has nothing to do with heros or villians or, in fact, who wins the fight at all. With character heat, you are building the fight scene up not as important in terms of who wins or who loses, but something important that is going to happen during it. Usually this involves a moral choice. "Will the hero give in to the Dark Side to win the battle?" is an example of a common heat building question. In these cases the outcome of the fight is not so much in question. The question is how the fight will conclude.This is the hardest kind of heat to build up.
Step 2: What Is The Fight About?
Once you have built up to the fight itself but before you type the first word you should know what the fight is about and how it is going to conclude. This does not mean you know what is going to happen blow by blow, but you must identify the elements of the fight. A fight scene is just like any other scene in your story. It has a theme, it has a mood and it has a climax.
The theme of the fight is a concept that you will keep returning to over and over during the course of the fight. It will color the descriptions you give and serve as an underlying structure for the fight. For example, the theme of your fight could be something esoteric like 'challenging your limits'. In that case, your descriptions of the fight are going to include a lot of references to how hard it is. The hero (and villian!) will be constantly pushing themselves, always trying new things they aren't sure will succeed. Your theme could also be something prosaic like 'gore'. In this case you will want to vividly describe injuries, the pain they inflict and the heros disgust at what is happening to him and what he is doing to his opponent. A big part of the theme will depend on what kind of heat you have built up for the fight.
The mood of the fight is the underlying emotion of the conflict. It could be comedy, tragedy, romance, suspense or any of the other emotional contexts you can write for. Once you decide on a mood for the battle do your best not to break that mood during the course of the scene. If you want this fight to be a tragic battle in which the brave hero is unable to save his lady love from the diabolical villian, then don't have people cracking wise or have silly things happening. You can either have the mood and theme be complimentary or at odds (either is good, depening on what you want to accomplish). Once again, the mood of the scene will depend on the heat you have built up for the fight.
The climax of the fight is, of course, what everything has been building towards. It is going to be the single dramatic moment that marks the end of the fight, or at least the end of the part the audiene cares about. Generally speaking the climax of your fight should always be a choice by one of the characters involved. Readers care about choices. Simply having a hero use a new super technique to win the fight isn't that entertaining (the old "I go supersaiyan ten!" problem). However, if the choice to use that technique costs the hero something, then using it is more enjoyable to the readers.
Step 3: Build the Scene
No fight takes place on a featureless plain stretching in all directions. Every fight occurs somewhere, and you should be using this to your advantage.
Before the first blow is exchanged take a paragraph or two to introduce the scene the fight is taking place in. If it is taking place in a building establish as much, define the general dimensions of the room and what is in it. If it is outdoors describe the local landmarks. Pay careful attention to things that could be used as cover or weapons. Remember that you are not telling a story to someone as you type, so if you feel the need to have something appear in your scene later that you forgot to include earlier, you can go back and rewrite your introduction to include it. Don't spend too much time doing this, however. You'll want to paint in broad strokes at first and get into fine detail as the story permits.
While the fight is occuring use the environment to enhance the drama and your descriptions of the fight. If there is a cliff nearby it is just begging for someone to be (almost) tossed over it. Parked cars make excellent cover, things to smash people into and (if your story has enough superhumans) improvised weapons. Have people duck and weave through objects, leap over obstacles, get trapped in corners, gain the high ground on their enemy and come inticingly close to very dangerous hazards (electical wires, lava pits, grinding machinery, etc.).
Sometimes just a word or two to play off the scene can enhance a particular exchange of blows in a way just describing the blows would not. "The sun was setting behind Mark, casting his body into shadow as Joe struck, sending him staggering back." Use such description to play up the theme and mood of the combat again. A theme of a lonely desperate battle can be well established by decsribing how empty the place the fight is taking place in is, for example.
And, as you said, use all five senses to fill in the details. Don't go overboard, but describing the smell of rotting garbage in an alley or the oppressive heat of a foundry can go a long way towards drawing in the reader.
Step 4: Know What Your Characters Can Do
Here we begin to get into some of the technical details of the fight scene. When you are righting a fight scene you must be aware of what your characters can do and can't do. Just as importantly, you must know what they will do and won't do.
To a certain extent, this means if you are writing a fanfic you are going to have to do research. For instance, if you are writing a Ranma 1/2 fight scene you would do well to go and consult on exactly how powerful Ranma is. Get an idea of how fast he is, how strong, what kinds of tactics he uses and how he deals with certain threats. If you do this for all the participants in the fight, you should have a good idea of how the fight will go.
If you are trying to build up a new character and/or are modifying the abilities of already existing characters you must personally define what the extent of these abilities are. You need not tell the reader exactly what they are, but you must keep them in mind yourself. Resist the urge to have character spontaneously develop new powers and strengths with all your might. Instead, you can get much more drama out of a character finding out a way to overcome their own weakness through cunning and perseverance than you ever would by having them pull a new technique out of their nether regions.
When you are describing a martial arts battle do not worry too much about getting highly technical. For the most part, your audience is not into martial arts and thus if you begin to use technical terms they will not understand them. Do not also feel the need to describe a fight in blow by blow detail. You can gloss over the unimportant exchanges of blows with a few words, only focusing in for a blow by blow description during the truly important parts.
A thesaurus is your friend. Bookmark thesaurus.com. You can get a lot of mileage out of just using new words for "attack". Adjectives are also your friend, but be careful not to overuse them. Any more than two per noun (and three per sentence) and you are getting a little too wordy.
Step 5: Poetry
Finally once you have done all the pre-writing work you can begin to write the actual fight. These is were you will learn that the single most important part of any fight scene is pacing.
You want the reader to feel the action of the fight personally, and you can establish this with how your write it. When the fight is fast, the sentences should be fast. Keep things simple. Use short sentences. Rapidly shift focus. Avoid words like 'and'.
At the important parts of the fight you want to slow down. Use longer sentences to establish the mood and theme more directly during these parts. Don't be afraid to make seemingly unimportant (but short!) digressions during these longer sequences. You want the reader to focus more on them and draw them in.
Then change speeds. Shift focus again. Spend some time drawing in the reader by appealing to their senses with an out of place and lazy sentence or two. Back to the short, sharp action again.
You can use several common tricks to enhance your fight scene at this point. I will decsribe some of them.
Establishing Dominance: In most fights there will be one character that is clearly superior to the other. There are two schools of thought on who this should be, and both of them have valid points. One school of thought is that the villian should always be more powerful then the hero. This creates an immediate visceral level of suspense. However it can get strange, even ridiculous over time. Each successive villian must be more powerful then the last, or the suspense won't be there. This is especially true if the hero grows in power either during or after the fight. The other school of thought is that the hero should be stronger than the villian, but the villian cheats, commits dishonourable actions or is otherwise avoiding a direct fight with the hero. This is good because it can be drawn out for longer and doesn't get quite as ridiculous. However, in this case you are shifting the focus away from the fight and towards the circumstances around the fight. The actual fight itself is a foregone conclusion, should it actually occur.
The Hope Spot: In a fight where the hero is going to lose, usually if the villian is more powerful, there should be a moment where the readers are convinced they will win. This is the 'hope spot'. Allow the hero to briefly gain the advantage in the fight, build up to it and then when his hopes are dashed the readers will also be equally dashed. This is best used in the first encounter between hero and villian, so that you can build good heat for the rematch.
Ironic Defeat: Using irony (and other literary devices) can really help you out in a fight. An ironic defeat is one in which the character almost literally defeats themselves. For example, if a villian challenges a hero to a fight in an orphanage which he has set fire to, it would be ironic if that fire is the cause of his defeat. This allows the readers to feel suitably rewarded. Ironic defeats aren't limited to just villians however. Heros can also metaphorically shoot themselves in the foot as well. This is often best used in the case of an arrogant hero whose hubris is the cause of his own downfall (usually but not always followed by the hero learning his lesson and changing for the better).
The Finishing Move: In almost every fight you can see or read the fights often come down to one blow. Combatants exchange a long series of near misses and inconsequential hits until one of them lands a final, dramatic strike that ends the fight instantly. If you are going to use this concept, be sure to do it right. Everything in the fight has to build up to that one last strike. Make sure to slow down the pace of the fight for that strike. Make the description as poetic and evocative as you can. Tie in both the theme and the mood to it, if possible. Add in a dramatic change in the environment of the battle. The finishing move also gets a viceral response from the reader if you have established villian heat. They want to see the bad guy get his just deserts, so don't scrimp on it.
Speech: Nine times out of ten you are going to want to have the two combatants talk to each other during the fight. This can be as simple as trash-talking or as complex as a romantic interplay. Fight scenes are excellent excuses for charcater development and one of the best ways of highlighting what the character says and thinks about their opponent. Think of the fight as a crucible in which anything but the pure underlying emotions of the characters is burned away.
Non-fights: Sometimes you just have to recognize what is a non-fight. Even if two people are technically in battle, you may not want to spend a scene describing it. If your readers don't care about the fight, if the outcome is a foregone conclusion... then feel free to skip it. A few lines of description or just a scene break away before the action starts and then switch back after the fireworks are over should be good enough.
Random Monsters: Common in video games is the idea of random monsters, minor threats that the hero faces just because they are there. Never do this in your story. Readers don't care about them. Even if there are hordes of faceless minions in the battle, try to avoid getting involved in fights with them. They are non-fights. Just say "The hero fought long and hard but the zombies were no match for him. Eventually he was alone, the badguy having escaped while he was distracted." and be done with it. The concept of random monsters can also include things like random thugs trying to mug the character and similar threats.
Cutting Away: A simple way to build drama in a conflict is to change scenes half-way through it, usually just before or after some dramatic event. Don't do this for long, or often or the readers will lose interest in the fight. Also, the scene you switch to should have some immediate meaning to the fight. Switching from a heros dramatic battle with the villian to the kidnap victim he is trying to rescue worrying about him is okay, switching to an unrelated scene about the villian's flunkies playing cards is not.
And that is all the advice I can think of right now off the top of my head.
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Epsilon

Just a little something I came up with a while back and have been working at every now again. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

This wiki may be interesting for anyone interested in the guts of the stories, including fanfic writers.
They've got pages about all the standard tropes, heroes, stock phrases, etc, with examples, and conversely, lists of the tropes etc used by most major TV/anime shows. Trying to avoid using these tropes in fanfic would not be a good idea, but being able to recognise which ones you're using and which ones are inherent in the show could be useful.
There's also a random plot generator, one trope from column A, one from column B, ... which actually produces more original plots than some TV shows.

Just a reminder... I'm still looking for a good song to use for smelting and/or working ore/metal; I need it for a couple different Steps. Does anyone have any ideas?
-- Bob
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...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...