As part of the retcon, we've moved the place in Nova Scotia from the middle of orchard lands to just across the highway from a university. Which means I need to re-write every single Ranma ½ character writeup's "Changes in the Refuge" section.

So of course I started with Kasumi Tendo.

Quote:Kasumi has more time to read and study than she did at home, since Epsilon is taking care of much of the building upkeep. This is letting her informally pursue her interest in chiropractic medicine (the one that she had to abandon when Dr. Tofu stopped showing up in canon; she borrowed books from him at least once). Eventually, she'll overhear somebody who is shopping at the nearby grocery store mention the "Bachelor of Arts & Science in Health" program at St. Francis Xavier University... and StFX is literally just the other side of the highway from her new home. All that's stopping her from attending university is a grade transcript (which HAL 9000 can produce for her easily) and money (which is more difficult).

Fresh from the files of the Grotesque, the Unbelieveable, the Bizarre and the Unprecedented, we have Dublin Airport. Where, in the last few days thousands have missed flights due to security delays.

Of course, the airport is understaffed. They fired everyone during the pandemic, and now nobody wants to work there. Because working there means living in Dublin, which means 110% of your wages will either go on accommodation or transport costs. The airport won't pay people to work there.

Instead They've backroom IT staff working the security aisles to keep shit flowing.

But still, the queue for checkin and security snakes out the arrivals hall, and into the pickup and setdown area and then down the road.

It's gotten so bad you have Canadians getting irate about standing around for 3 hours waiting for their bags to appear off the airplane

The Chickens are coming home to roost. The vinyl of competency is starting to peel and under it all, everything is just patched up and creaking at the seams.

One wonders if it's not part of a scheme to keep the doctors from emigrating. They're so burnt out fro years of 21 hour shifts that they're fucking off to Australia in droves. And the African doctors are warning their countrymen not to come here because it's a fucking disaster area. So the few who remain are even worse off in a self perpetuating cycle of fail.

If you can't get to the plane ontime, you can't leave, lol.


Then again, you also have the Ukrainian refugees, being put into anywhere that resembled accommodation. There's a bed, go sleep and then.... there's no follow through. People are kind, but nobody knows what to do with them otherwise. They put a few families into a nice holiday village down the dangleberry of Wexford. There used to be a swimming pool, bar and shop there. There hasn't been for 20 years - the holiday village just sort of assumes car rental is a thing -- but these people have no cars. And there's no bus service to the nearest village. Walking takes an hour just to get a daily shop and good luck getting to the nearest town. 

They're complaining about getting run over at night and how dangerous the roads are..

And, of course, car rental that costs a couple of thousand a week because yank tourists have deep pockets, and the rental car companies sold their fleets during the pandemic  so there're few, if any, to go around. Which would be fine if there were any new cars to buy. Or second hand cars to buy

But nope.

There's an annual roadworthiness test cars have to go through here. It's so massively booked out - by the time the next appointment is ready, it'll be time for next year's test. But having this test annually is a mandatory thing - big fines and penalties and court appearances await those who don't. But - well - nobody can get a test because staff have been let go, and nobody can afford to work as an NCT inspector in the middle of Dublin for what they're willing to pay.

And of course, there's the fuel prices. 2 Euro a litre of petrol. Go, buy electric, says the Government. Well, what electric cars -- there's fuckall new cars being made. Use public transport, says the government --- what public transport. Outside dublin there's fucking none. It's a wasteland.

Of course, all the carbon taxes subsidise shit like energy retrofits and electric car grants. But these only go to the cunts who can afford 'em. So you have the people who can't afford the new cars and efficient houses, subsidising those who can. That seems a bit backwards, doesn't it?

And then, there're the landlords. A miserable shower who'd rather been shilling their gaf to yanks on AirBnB but the Revenue have cracked down on that, so they're doing the absolute minimum to keep the place livable, and even then. You're lucky if there's maintenance done, and better learn to love the black-mould. They do nothing but leech, and moan when called on it.

They provide accommodation the same way ticket-touts provide a ticket to your favourite concert. They're sole value in the universe is their ability to buy things before the people who actually want it and then pretend this makes them worth anything.

Not to mention the American and Canadian funds buying up every new house that does get built, snatching them out from actual "I want to live there" people, just to rent them back to families for three times what the mortgage payment would be.


Everybody's miserable. It'd be funny in a history book, but not today.


This isn't supposed to be this way. And the people responsible just waft along in cheap-suited oblivion.

Instrumentals with no lyrics or lyrics with no accompaniment can still make good music, and who wants to listen to bad music all the time, or just elevator pabulum, even for the sake of not getting surprise power manifestations? This thread is to propose things that don't meet the requirements for Doug's power, but still feel exciting, inspiring, or at least fun to listen to.

First up, 8-Bit Big Band's rendition of the Super Mario Underground theme ft. Leo P on sax:




For another, Polyphia's Playing God




Going the other way, here's Easter Island by the a capella group Throat Culture


a Throat Culture playlist

What are your suggestions?

The Onion's 'no way to prevent this' satire published for 21st time in response to Texas mass shooting

The site's homepage for the day the story was run one more time:

Godhunter by Aviators 


5:54


Rumors heard from a little black bird
The edges of a prophecy
The pieces I have learned
Said the daughter of the reaper
Has been searching for the keeper
And I fear she'll let me burn
Locked tight up in the tower on top
Of the domain of humanity
The godhood that I've earned
When you're holding on to majesty
You fear the hunt, a travesty
That balance may return
When you're sinful to the bone (unholy)
And you've claimed yourself a throne (like me)
Wield power of your own making
Godhunter's gonna hunt you down
If you're something more than flesh (ascended)
And you've taken on the rest (to end it)
Then she'll find you in a dream, tormented
Godhunter's gonna hunt you down
Fear confined to the depths of my mind
For what could be such a threat to me
The conqueror of time
Yet the whispers of a reckoning
Have kept the spirits beckoning
To look upon my crime
Blood and war when the world is no more
She's been watching for a century
With hatred and with scorn
If you know the hunter's coming
Then you hide or keep on running
'Cause she's slain the gods before
When you're sinful to the bone (unholy)
And you've claimed yourself a throne (like me)
Wield power of your own making
Godhunter's gonna hunt you down
If you're something more than flesh (ascended)
And you've taken on the rest (to end it)
Then she'll find you in a dream, tormented
Godhunter's gonna hunt you down
Don't let her see your power in the daylight
Don't let her see it when you bring the storm
To the master of the eldritch she's a growing bed of thorns
Dark cults, leaders of the night
Tell the tales of a fright from a ghost of the future days
A holy crusade on the gods decayed
To end our violent ways
Lost kings, fallen in the mist
Made their names on a list
And the hunt was carried through
A price for the past when your name is last
And the hunter comes for you
Of all the free she has none left but me
And my loyal knights have passed with time
A god and a throne, locked up all alone
In the kingdom I called mine
Dreams of a being from the watcher unseen
Now he warned me, she'll come to take his due
"The hate in your head, she has more" he said
"The godhunter waits for you"
When you're sinful to the bone (unholy)
And you've claimed yourself a throne (like me)
Wield power of your own making
Godhunter's gonna hunt you down
If you're something more than flesh (ascended)
And you've taken on the rest (to end it)
Then she'll find you in a dream, tormented
Godhunter's gonna hunt you down








Power - Either summon or grants you the powers of the Godhunter. Busted/unplayable? Almost certainly. But a fun idea, nonetheless.

I'll let the picture do the talking.



In case anyone around here thinks I'm doing just fine?

I'm not, and for damn good reasons.

The only good thing is that I won't be having to pay for this.

The bad thing?

There's some gnarly shit up in that space that is already tweaking my sinuses.  And this is to say nothing of the thing that lives up that that we hear skittering around at night.

Article here

No tl;dr - read the entire article.

So I’m pretty active on the r/makeyourchoice cyoa sub and the QQ boards cyoa thread, and thought I might as well post one of my more recent ones here as a test case to see if people are interested.

CYOA in this context is only tangentially related to the awesome old books by Steve Jackson et all though, the ones on these subs/pages are kind of like quiz/character builders that people make, speculate on and occasionally write fiction around if they feel inspired. It’s kind of an obscure sub-genre/culture… not that that’s exactly rare on the internet (especially the nerdier parts), but I digress. 

Here’s my latest one (7 in a series) based around music and inspired by DW in a roundabout way. 

What choices would you make with these options? 

A.k.a. Mimete of the Witches 5, in case you've forgotten who she is.

In anime canon, she has all of one spell: Charm Buster, which dazes or knocks out its targets.

This list might, perhaps, not be completely serious...

• Her basic spell as described above: Charm Buster
  
• Long-range version: Charm Divine Buster
  
• Massively-overpowered anti-mecha version: Charm GunBuster
  

The thread title is the title of an Ideas article/episode - transcript here.

One of the things mentioned in the article is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - the article's writer says that Gawain was perfect but lost his perfection. I'm wondering whether we read the same story... because I thought that Gawain was impulsive (enough so to accept the Green Knight's challenge in the first place). Am I missing somethng in the story?