If God had a name, what would it be
And would you call it to his face
If you were faced with him in all his glory
What would you ask if you had just one question
And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
If God had a face what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets
And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
He's trying to make his way home
Back up to heaven all alone
Nobody calling on the phone
Except for the Pope maybe in Rome
And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home
Just trying to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone
Back up to heaven all alone
Just trying to make his way home
Nobody calling on the phone
Except for the Pope maybe in Rome

-- Joan Osborne, "One of Us"
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

On the Drunkard's Walk FAQ, there's a link to a crossover image.  It's being sent to an infinitely looping 404 page for some reason that I don't get.  The page is producing this lovely bit of recursive code:
-- ∇×V

I had my 6-month checkup on Monday.  I got a call from my doctor yesterday -- my blood tests came back and I have full blown Type 2 diabetes -- a rather sudden change from my "pre-diabetic" state at my last check-up, which I was trying to alter with dietary changes.  I'm now on Metformin and restructuring my diet further.  

This shouldn't affect my writing, in case you're wondering.  
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Hi all,
My name is Brent, and I'm addicted to anime.  Oh wait, this isn't a support group?  Never mind.
Anyway, I'm over here because I was a certain someone made a page on Revolutionary Girl Utena on TV Tropes.  And then that certain someone left a recommendation to read Symphony of the Sword.  Long story later, I've been really getting into reading fanfiction; I'm in the middle of reading Drunkard's Walk 2 now.  I think we all know who to blame for this.
I'm writing my own Azumanga Daioh fic now, about Tomo (and Yomi's) adventures in Interpol, but I've only written about one and a half acts on the first story.  And I'm a meteorologist, not currently employed.  Okay, that's it for now.
-- ∇×V

Just to torment people.  If you haven't, check out the byte count on chapter 7 up above.
I am writing the last scene before the epilogues right now.  As things are finished, they go to Chris for second pass/approval.  If all goes well, the entire draft chapter should be done by the end of the week.  Which means it'll time for prereader fun.
Just to let you know...
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Here is a new critter for the Fenspace Weird Biology section. It is not yet a wiki article, but will be as soon as I learn to edit a wiki. Comments, and criticism, are more than welcome.

I recently acquired a Kindle and am now looking to expand my book collection some.

Being a fan of Fantasy and Science Fiction, I was wondering if any of the illustrious people here would have any recommendations for me.

The man who, among Fen, goes by the hero-name "Adamantine Rapier" largely missed out on being one of the First Fen because he was an Australian. He was on the message boards, he got the 'Wavium in the early days. He just decided that, given how America was cracking down and Australia wasn't, he would rather stay on the ground with his family and finish his university degree before he went Up; in the meantime, he tinkered with his nanobots and sold cheap Earth stuff to the folks who had gone Up. As things turned out, his family moved shortly afterwards and he wound up starting almost from scratch on his new degree; he didn't mind, since he had almost failed so many classes he had almost been kicked out already (only the abuse of the university's disability policy to "Withdraw without academic penalty" whenever it looked like he was going to fail a course had stopped that). Fortunately, he did much better at his new university; he wasn't sure if it was the intelligence-enhancing side-effects from working with Handwavium, the fact that this degree didn't have one-off laboratories that he kept missing, or if they just had lower standards. He suspected it might have been a mix of all three. In any case, he graduated in 2012, and just as he was getting ready to go Up, the Boskonian War started. So he kept on going, spinning up his nanofabricators and selling flexible carbon nanotube sheets that could be easily applied to vehicled and then Handwaved on for extra armor. He also first experimented with ship design, producing the O'Neill-class Big Honking Space Gun, which he produced and sold to Operation Great Justice throughout the war. Then, Boskone Prime fell, and he finally got his shot at going up with the end of the war. So, he finished the last few ships Great Justice wanted, and built himself a factory ship and a few O'neills fitted out a semi-autonomous drones, and moved to Titan to set up shop. A pipe into the local hydrocarbon sea and a few runs by a tanker drone to Rhea for water ice later, and he was back in business, running the CHON into a nanofabricator tank to resume his business of selling biological materials to the Fen; a while later, once the dome was finished, he resumed his business of selling nanocomposites as well.

Mundane Talents:

Nanobot Expertise: He was the first Fen who mucked about with Handwavium-enhanced nanobots; when most Fen were building flying cars, he was pouring Handwavium on ultrafine graphite dust in the hopes of making general assembler nanobots (he succeeded, but all the first batch could make was Deus Ex action figures; it took him months of experimentation to get them to make anything useful). Ever since then, he's been one of the leading experts among the Fen on the subject of the combination of handwavium, nanocomposite materials, and nanobots.

Former Engineering Student: He remembers a fair bit of his Engineering classes, though he's no professional engineer. He still has more formal training than many Mads do, though.

Programmer: A fair hand at computer programming, better than most Fen, if not as good as many AI. Formally trained, too, thanks to his (abandoned) Mechatronics Engineering degree, and his Aviation Technology degree (which required 11 IT courses).

Pilot: Possesses a Private Pilot's License to go with his degree in Aviation Technology.

Business Management: Got a little bit of formal Accounting training from his Aviation Technology degree, and some practical experience running one, selling biomatter to the Fen in exchange for things he could sell. He's no corporate raider or Wall Street executive, though.

Quirks:

Sleep? What is this "sleep" you speak of: His sleep routines have been thoroughly fucked up from years of spending all night on the computer while at university. Injecting Handwavium-powered nanobots into his brain didn't help, either.

Strawman Political: He's way to the right on the political spectrum, and a combination of Asperger's Syndrome mind-blindness and Fen stubbornness means he can and will take it too far when discussing politics on the Internet. He's been banned from more message boards than he can count as a result; some of the Senshi on boards he's on have gone so far as to accuse him of being a Turnerite (he isn't, though he understands where many of their complaints are coming from).

Because Death Rays are AWESOME!: His suit of power armor is equipped with a wide variety of weapons, both 'waved and hardtech. Unfortunately, his still at actually using them in combat is amateurish at best. Fortunately, he's never actually been called upon to use them in a life-or-death situation.

There is life outside the Internet?: Addicted to surfing the Internet, and tends to procrastinate other, more important things in favor of more websurfing. Usually to his detriment.

Handwavium Abilities: He biomodded himself by getting one of his robots to use an electroshock harness to induce unconsciousness for a few seconds, and then inject a mixture of nanobots, guacamole, and Mnemosyne's Honey into his brain (through the orbital cavity, lobotomy-style), and a similar mixture into the marrow of all of his major bones. The rest of the day sucked balls, but it was worth it in the end.

My eyes are augmented: Turns out that injecting nanobots and handwavium into your brain through your eye sockets can have side-effects. Who knew? Now his eyes are robotic, capable of zooming in, recording video, and seeing in the infrared.

And so is my brain: Vastly improved intelligence, eidetic memory, learning ability, reaction times, and so forth. He's got a computer with an Interwave and radio transmitter in his head, and his bones have been replaced with pure computronium as a long-term storage method for his memories.

I'm definitely not going to die from old age...: His bone marrow has been replaced with nanobot-manufacturing machines, and his blood with nanomachines. His red blood cells are replaced with respirocytes, his white blood cells with a nanobot immune system, and his platelets with biological repair nanobots. The last of these is capable of repairing even the damage from aging, rendering him biologically immortal, as was his goal all along.

... and hopefully not from violence: His bones, being made of a handwavium-reinforced nanocomposite, are immune to everything short of anti-tank weapons. It's a pity everything surrounding them is still so squishy. Fortunately, his biological repair nanobots are capable of regulating his bodily functions to prevent him from going into shock or bleeding out, and can, with sufficient raw materials and a few hours, regenerate lost limbs. Additionally, with the assistance of his immune system nanobots, they render him virtually invulnerable to NBC attacks.

Handwavium Quirks:

Arrrgh, it burns: Highly vulnerable to EMP and electrical surges due to the degree he has been augmented with cybernetics.

It's night, and I'm wearing shades: Suffers extreme headaches if he spends too long without wearing sunglasses or tinted visors, especially at night.

Robots drink oil, right?: Suffers system degradation if he doesn't regularly eat fried food, or at least something sizzling in its own grease.

ZNN
ZNN is the premier news station in Fenspace and one of the more trusted sources of informations by most parts of the general public. It is known for a largely neutral stance between factions, but also to be biased against Haruhi Suzumiya, through not Great Justice itself.
History
ZNN started out as a small news blog in 2009 when Karen Corwin was forced to get into Fenspace as a result of a student prank that went wrong left her biomodded. Being a busty bunny girl she had to work in some odd jobs while in her free time, trying to finish her Master thesis in Journalism and running ZNN, a news blog in the style of Huffington Post.
In early 2010 she was joined by a contributor going by the alias of Walter Wilcox, who provided articles that contained very accurate analysis of current dale and fen situations, sometimes in relation to the past, making readers of ZNN believe that Walter Wilcox was an older fen.
The first big thing that catapulted ZNN into the open and paved its way to the future was the Boskone War and the first daily live stream.
The ‘5 O’Clock Follies’ life stream provided people with a central show to get updates about the conflict in a critical and analytical way that in parts contradict official press releases from Great Justice and Haruhi Suzumiya. ZNN was especially critical about Suzumiya and the way she handled Great Justice.
While that was nothing new the ‘5 O’Clock Follies’ were especially known to be the first appearance of the AI Walter Cronkite in an environment that was largely looking like a CBS new studio during the late 60s to early 70s.
The fact that it was Walter Cronkite, regardless of him being an AI, made the life stream one of the most trusted in Fenspace among the older Fen who grew up with the original and a good amount of younger ones.
Sometimes during the war ZNN got an anonymous donation that allowed Cronkite to get an android body and prepared the station for the future.
The next big event that made ZNN into what it is today was the now legendary ‘5 O’Clock Follies’ life stream from Serenety Con, where Cronkite turned the show into a life commentary of the Battle of Serenity Valley, and earning him the first Fenspace Pulitzer Award.
From there on ZNN was a rising star and began to expand its online and live stream program. The ‘5 O’Clock Follies’ were replaced by the ‘ZNN Evening News’ hosted by Cronkite and ZNN gained the ‘ZNN Morning News’ hosted by Karen Corwin.
Over the next years more specialist shows were added to the raising rooster of ZNN, drawing in advertisement customers, which allowed them to expand more.
Today, ZNN has at least small offices in all major Fen settlements and is one of the places where freelance journalists can get a major publicity for their work.

Trivia

• In 2017 Günter Wallraff, a German investigative undercover journalist, published a report about the Turnerite habitat of ‘New Stepford’ in the ZNN news blog. It lead to a large scale intervention against the habitat by Great Justice and Space Partol, freeing a large number of biomods and AIs.
• Maico Tange is known to work for ZNN at times, if she needs the cash.
• ZNN was named after a CNN expy from ‘NCIS’ and ‘JAG’.
• Walter managed to silence everyone at the Fnord Hearing of the Joint Committee on Extraterrestrial Security in Washington with a single sentence when the press was allowed to ask questions. “Walter Cronkite of ZNN. Please tell me, Senator Kellerman, have you ever heard of Senator McCarthey?” (optional depending on what Mal says)

The Secret World (TSW) is an upcoming horror, modern-day urban fantasy, Lovecraftian mythos-esque MMO by Funcom. The developers are best known for Anarchy Online and Age of Conan. As far as apologies go, TSW is a pretty good plea for forgiveness after Conan. Hold that thought, I know you're thinking it.

TSW is holding open beta weekends. You still have to register at Gamespot or something if you haven't preordered and still need a code, but it's pretty easy to get in if you're interested. I figured it was fair game to talk about it in our little community here, given the theme of the game. Which is basically shooting demons and zombies in the face with a shotgun, and then setting it on fire with your mind.

THE GOOD

For me, the initial draw to check out TSW was the setting. The user interface alone tells you a lot about this game - peek in the upper right hand corner, and there's signal bars for an imaginary cell phone. When I click to turn in a completed mission, it's an e-mail sent back to my boss at HQ. NPCs talk about Google and Oprah, compare the creatures I'm fighting to the Smurfs...

The hub cities exemplify this. The first open weekend showed off London, specifically the fictional neighbourhood where the Templars are based. Now, see, I lived in London for six years. And let me tell you, it's freakily accurate. Not perfect, but so very right. Those could be London streets. That's a perfect example of an older Underground station. There's huge attention to detail, and it shows. The tutorial mission takes you to Tokyo, and...well, look. I just visited Tokyo a few weeks ago. They got the subway signage right. Hell, they got the ticket machines right.

Of course, while I've lived in London, I've never jumped on the roof of a black cab while firing a shotgun wildly in the air, but hey. Could happen.

The other big draw for me is the combat system. The freeform character building is pretty sweet. In the weekend play alone, I started out as a shotgun/elemental magic guy, and quickly worked out a rough build where I'd spray 'em with my gun, let off a big debuffing cone blast, and then fireball or lightning things 'til dead. Then I started running into tougher enemies and needed some healing, so I found an assault rifle and went down the support medic-esque line. Because healing magic bullets are awesome.

The Skill Wheel UI is pretty damn glorious. It even has a search function. It's not altogether different from Guild Wars or even Champions Online, but TSW's implementation is solid, and you can even switch up in the field. Mind you, it can be...twitchy...if you manage to aggro something while in the middle of reslotting, as I found out. ("OH GOD I ONLY HAVE ONE WORKING ATTACK AHHhh thank the Lord it's the one that does damage while healing me.")

So, TSW is a well-thought out game. Not perfect, and I'll talk about flaws later - but they have considered things, and that shows in many areas.

Take the content. It's mostly open world stuff, but they do a lot to make it meaningful. For example, when I clicked on a phone book to look for an address, I got a window with phone book pages, and the business listing I wanted circled in red marker. When I examined a corpse, I got a window with the guy's driver's license. When interacting with the text-interface computer in the police station, the game gave me a window with an old-school basic menu and working text prompt.

Mission mechanics are the same way. An open world mission might have basic avoidance mechanics, like how I needed to stay out of line of sight from an airfield's guards. Instanced missions have slightly more complex booby traps to avoid, like tripwires and sensor cameras. It's not difficult, and the engine handles fine movement alright - but it's a nice touch in an MMO. It makes it feel like an adventure game hybrid.

THE BAD

Yet there are places where presentation suffers. NPCs are reasonably well-voiced and animated. But since your own character's a silent protagonist, they're just kind of standing there going derp through the whole thing. I can understand why they'd want to leave the player a blank slate, but the complete lack of facial expression is kind of freaky. Especially when an NPC is blatantly flirting.

Yes, I know it's an urban fantasy horror thing. That's not the right place to feel horror. 

While I like the writing on balance, there's places where it comes off as trying too hard. Casual profanity. The cultural references are nice, but can appear forced. Chatting with NPCs outside cutscenes is a topic-based interaction, where you can click on a subject from a menu, and they'll talk about it. Multiple times, since most subject headers have several strings of dialogue. But the fact the conversation is in-effect one-sided can be slightly disjointing.

Then there's graphics and animations. The graphics are nice enough, I think - but let's not pretend they are cutting edge, and there's times where the textures can be really crappy. This is especially jarring when there's high rez textures for everything except, say, that wall map. Or that shirt, even. 

The character creator has promise in terms of future flexibility...but right now, it's limited, and the lack of height options or even multiple body types is slightly irksome. We've been told there will be more cosmetic options and clothing available to start with the live release, versus beta, but right now there's not enough starting variation. I was almost tempted to make a female character solely because there were more hair and makeup (face overlays) and a little more clothing in the open beta.

Animations aren't always natural. The movement and combat is a little...floaty, sometimes jerky, I suppose you could say. Mind you, given that combat is very positional, very fluid, and players are supposed to move around...it's better that characters can shift around very fast and there's no weapon redraw, mechanically. Still, it's not the best game in motion.

There's clipping. Holster weapons with an assault rifle and shotgun equipped, and they clip into each other across the character's back. Go into elemental magic casting stance with a assault rifle as the alternate weapon, and your right arm clips into the rifle's carrying handle. It's things like this where the lack of polish shows. Mind you, I've never seen an MMO that hasn't had some kind of gear clipping - even SWTOR does. But TSW isn't any better in this respect.

THE UGLY

So, what's the verdict? Obviously I like the game, personally. The flaws are mostly cosmetic, and frankly to be expected in a game developed on a fairly low budget. This isn't a very costly title. I like the writing, for the most part. I love the theme and atmosphere. The basic mechanics seem fine, and the game appears stable. 

At the same time, the MMO marketplace is a harsh one. GW2's coming out as well, and that's gonna get a lot of attention. The Funcom factor's a turn-off for many potential TSW players, based on Conan's history. I don't know. It's also a conventional subscription-based model, though there's the option for a lifetime sub. You and I both know that the industry's increasingly shaky on whether that pricing model still makes sense in today's market.

One headache for any MMO is quality content stream, and it's not certain how much and how often TSW will be able to add. The open world questing and contacts means that new content is going to be very zone based. The content that does exist seems extensive and elaborate. The fact that almost all content can be repeated (on a timer), and the system is essentially level-less means that there's fewer issues with 'nothing to do at endgame' - there's no endgame per-se, you just keep building more skill options for your character's deck. That could work in the game's favour, but it's hard to make an assessment.

Is TSW worth it? I think it is. I'm willing to pay for what the game is now, and I think it has potential to stretch further. I'd take a gamble on it, but of course your milage may vary. If it does, though...I'll still be over here shooting zombies in the face.
-- Acyl