"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 7 (part 1)

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Chapter 7:  The Catacombs

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 6 (part 3b)

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Chapter 6 fork:  Merciless Monster

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 6 (part 3a)

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Chapter 6 fork:  Humane Hero

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 6 (part 2)

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 6 (part 1)

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Chapter 6:  Fort Roguelike

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 5 (part X)

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Chapter 5 tangent:  Rayla's Return

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 5 (part 3)

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 5 (part 2)

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 5 (part 1)

Pannych and Phyr chase Grayl into the dark cave, lit dimly by glowing green moss on the walls.  The foul stench of noob that permeates the valley is almost unbearable inside the cave, but the adventurers both succeed at a Ruggedness check to ignore it and press on.

About 40 yards in, Pannych passes an Observation check and spots a discarded cigarette butt on the cave floor, a wisp of smoke trailing above it.  She takes a knee to examine it, distracted from the chase, and sees a narrow passage doubling back. On a hunch, she starts sneaking along this side passage.  The moss either doesn’t grow here, or has been cleared away, making it more difficult to spot from the main passage and also to navigate. She takes ten on her Wilderness and Stealth checks to make sure to stay safe and silent.

Phyr follows Grayl down the twisting moss-lit passage, and it soon opens up into a large cavern.  Just as he glances around, Grayl skids to a stop and shouts, “Hold!”  Phyr is unable to dodge the magical shackle, and is rooted in place.

They roll for turn order - Grayl is first.  He casts Wall, and a glowing yellow magical barrier materializes in front of him.

Phyr draws a blaster and fires, but the wall absorbs the blast with no problem.

The other assassin (with the spear) appears on a ledge above the one with the scythe and leaps down, passing a Nimbleness check to roll into a combat-ready posture.

Scythe Grayl grins and says, “Your friend has abandoned you - you cannot stand against us both,” and holds his action.

Phyr looks around and, not seeing Pannych, freaks out a bit.  Given that he’s one against two, he holds his action to make the best use of it.

Spear Grayl says, “Thistleheart!” and dashes past Phyr with blinding speed, flanking him - Scythe Grayl then uses his held action and says, “Greater Fireball!” which he then lobs over the magical wall at Phyr.  Phyr is unable to dodge, but uses his held action to cast Chill on the compact-car-sized fireball arcing through the air toward him - he has no idea how much mana he needs to use, so he pumps 500 into it (but his enchanted earring refunds 450 of that), and the fireball is harmlessly dissipated in an intense blast of cold.

Scythe Grayl holds his action again, as does Phyr; then Spear Grayl takes a jab at Phyr while Scythe Grayl casts another greater fireball.  Figuring the fireball is the greater threat, Phyr chills it again, but takes 16 damage from the spear strike.

Scythe Grayl holds his action again, and Phyr shoots Spear Grayl for 84 damage.  She yelps as she is thrown by the blast.

Spear Grayl gets up and says, “Shield!”  A shield of magical energy appears over her off-hand.  Scythe Grayl lobs another greater fireball, and Phyr can’t chill it, so he takes 32 damage.

Scythe Grayl casts Hold on Phyr again, as it’s about to wear off.  Phyr blasts at Spear Grayl, who is pushed back but unharmed thanks to her shield, and draws his other blaster.  Spear Grayl advances with her shield raised, but is unable to close the distance.

Scythe Grayl casts Wall again, as that’s about to wear off, too.  Suddenly, the sounds of a scuffle are heard from above - all three combatants hold their actions and look up.  The next round, Pannych comes tumbling down from a ledge above Spear Grayl, entangled with a third grey-cloaked figure, this one wielding a laser rifle.  They both fail a Nimbleness check and take 10 damage from the fall.

“What the-” Phyr says, “They are multiplying, Pannych!”  Pannych and Rifle Grayl get to their feet, and everyone freezes for a moment.

“HEY,” another voice shouts from the chamber entrance.  The combat session ends from all the interruptions, and the five turn to see two more people at the chamber entrance:  one wears armor and holds a flaming sword, the other is dressed in ranger’s garb and has a bolt-action rifle.

“Who the fuck are you guys,” Phyr asks.

“We could ask you the same question,” says the knight.

“I asked first,” Phyr says.

The ranger says, “We’re Pannych and Phyr, destined heroes foretold to-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Phyr interrupts.  “We’ve heard that bit before. So what?”

“We hold the Orbs of Density,” the knight proclaims, and he and the ranger produce a pair of dimly glowing, dark blue orbs, each the size of a baseball.  “Err, that is, ‘Destiny!’ But don’t get me wrong, they’re very dense, too. Quite heavy and cumbersome. But they’re definitely Orbs of Destiny.”

Phyr turns to Pannych and says, “Sidebar?”

Pannych says, “Pause!  OK, thirty seconds!”

“This is a lot of guys and these Grayl fuckers are no slouches,” Phyr says quickly.

“I think we can distract the Grayls while they fight the destined heroes,” Pannych says.

“Think I can steal the orbs and we can skedaddle while we’re paused,” Phyr asks.

“You can’t move during pause we can only talk and move our eyes,” Pannych says.

“You can pause,” Rifle Grayl asks incredulously.

Pannych and Phyr shift their eyes in his direction.  “You can tell,” Pannych asks with equal surprise.

“What the fuck,” Spear Grayl says, “I can’t move or cast anything!”

“Shut up, Rayla” Scythe Grayl shouts.

“Well, there goes our plan,” Phyr says.

“New plan,” Pannych says, “Just follow my lead.”

Pause ends, and Pannych rushes to grab Phyr by the arm and drag him away from the fight, while saying very loudly to the destined heroes, “Whoops, our mistake!  By all means, go and fulfill your destiny! We’ll just go back to Noob Town and think about our life choices!”

Phyr pulls out his healing ray and starts using it as soon as they exit the chamber.  “Yo, those two guys were killing me pretty hard,” he says. “I don’t know what we’ll do about the third one.”

“Yeah,” Pannych agrees, “And I don’t think the orb-havers are gonna stand much of a chance.”

Phyr says, “Hey, I’m really concerned over the fact that the Grayls are included in the whole ‘Pause’ thing.”

“Me, too,” Pannych says with a nod, “Tom warned me about that, kinda - he said, ‘Be wary when you meet Grayl, he’s not who you think him to be.’  So, exact words: ‘when you meet’ implies we hadn’t yet met, and we already knew there was more than one of them, so I think the warning’s about the third guy and there’s some sort of additional surprise with him.”

“Sure, fine,” Phyr says, “Whatever you say.  Look, are we gonna go back in and try to mop up, or are we gonna run off?  Because I’m not quite topped up and it looks like the destined heroes are dead.”

Pannych turns her attention back to the chamber just in time to see Rayla - the one with the spear - impale the ranger and dump her body next to the armored one, whose flaming sword has been extinguished.  “Brave face,” she says, nudging Phyr, right as the trio turn to focus on them. Phyr puts away his healing ray and draws both his blasters, while Pannych draws her blade and readies a shuriken. “Your little ‘ambush’ didn’t work, assholes.  You ready for Round Two?” Her middling Performance roll gets mixed results.

“What,” says Rifle Grayl.  “Did you two idiots not see what just happened to those other two idiots?”

“Hey,” Scythe Grayl says, “About that.  Those two don’t have Orbs of Destiny, and they might be demigods - or something real close, at any rate.  We should bail.”

Rayla nods, grabs Scythe Grayl around the waist and says, “Thistleheart!”  Then she leaps back up top of the ledge from whence she came, her companion in tow, and they sprint into the darkness.

Rifle Grayl, now alone, lowers his weapon and says, “That true?  Are you two demigods?”

Pannych says, “The more important question is:  who are you?”

He considers his options for a moment, then takes a deep breath and says, “My name’s Vector.”

“Wait,” Phyr says, “Sye?!”

Vector blinks in surprise, then says, “Dee?  Dale?”

“Yeah,” Pannych says with a smile, putting her blade back in its scabbard.  “But we’re Pannych and Phyr here. Same as the destined heroes.”

“Huh,” Vector says, lighting up a cigarette.  “Follow me - there’s a path through the lair that leads out another way, maybe we can catch up.”

“Wait,” Phyr says, holstering his blasters and taking out his healing ray again.  “Why in Hell would we wanna follow them?”

Vector says, “Those assholes duped me into trying to kill you!  Think I’m gonna let them get away with that?”

“Good point,” Phyr admits, “But they really did a number on me.  What the Hell level are they?”

“Oh, we’re all level six,” Vector says.  “We’ve been killing destined heroes for a while, now.”

“Yeah, we’re only level one,” Pannych says, “So I don’t think we’re picking a fight any time soon.  Plus, I’m pretty sure the one with the spear came back from the dead.  Point being, I am in no rush at all to tangle with them again.”

“Fair,” Vector says, “But I still think we should go through the lair, see if they left anything good behind.”  With that agreed, they head deeper into the cave - after Phyr loots the Orbs of Destiny from the heroes’ corpses and Pannych stows them in her bag of tricks.  They weigh about fifteen pounds each, but are weightless in the magical bag.

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 4 (part X)

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Chapter 4 tangent:  Phyr's Pfight

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 4 (part 3)

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 4 (part 2)

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 4 (part 1)

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Chapter 4:  Noob Valley

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 3 (part X)

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Chapter 3 tangent:  Pannych's Pursuit

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 3 (part 3)

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 3 (part 2)

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 3 (part 1)

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Chapter 3:  Fite Nite

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 2 (part 4b)

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Chapter 2 fork:  Package Pilferer

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 2 (part 4a)

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Chapter 2 fork:  Pseudo Psamaritan

What I Learned About Leadership by Playing World of Warcraft (part 2)

Last time, I talked about how I got a guild started in World of Warcraft, and a little bit of what made us different from other guilds.  This time, I'll be finishing that conversation, and talking about how it all fell apart.

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 2 (part 3)

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What I Learned About Leadership by Playing World of Warcraft (part 1)

This has been on my mind lately, so I'm just going to talk about it.  The short version, so you can know if you want to stick around, is that I joined World of Warcraft in year one and founded a guild which went on to become the largest and oldest on our server (it was a roleplaying server, this isn't much of a big deal).  I had a chance to put into practice some of my ideas about leadership, and got results, and it eventually all fell apart due to shenanigans and chicanery.  In the process, I learned a great deal about real-world leadership, but I don't talk about it with people because, in the first place, if they care about my leadership experience then they won't care about a video game I used to play; and second, if they care about a video game I used to play then they won't care about my leadership experience on a roleplaying server.

IMAGE (fork?  dilemma?  horns?)
Caught between the two horns of a dilemma.  Grooooaaaan.

Not a whole lot of sources today, hence the "rant" tag.  Any real-world connections to administrations past or present are left as an exercise for the reader.  Something something upcoming mid-term something.
CUT
World of Warcraft came out right about the same time I put my undergrad degree on hold, due to a crisis of What The Fuck Am I Doing With My Life.  During this time, my life was basically Work-WoW-WeekendsWithFriends, as all my friends were at college.  I had been hyped about the game since playing Warcraft III and really biting into the lore - the "good guy" Human Alliance was pretty racist and prone to infighting, driven as they were by fear and vengeance, while the "bad guy" Orcish Horde was a coalition of misfits, driven by the desire to overcome their literal demons and a history of subjugation.  There's a lot of purple prose, cliche, and overused tropes I'll forgive for a story as social-justicey (SoJuicy?) as that.

Humble Beginnings

I started a guild basically as soon as I could, but I was a naive MMO virgin (virgin to MMOs, not sex - I got into D&D and MMOs well after popping my metaphorical cherry which is not how that works at all actually but this isn't the point right now).  Consequently, I didn't go around begging for the ten signatures needed and then immediately boot them.  Instead, I focused first on recruiting the right people:  I'd party up with strangers, play with them for an hour or two, and then talk with them for a bit if I liked the cut of their jib.  As an intermittent insomniac prone to bouts of mild mania during periods of excitement, I found a fairly diverse group of English and Spanish speakers from around the world.

Thing is, most guilds are about power, prestige, and profit:  winning PvP matches, doing world firsts, making money to buy gear to do the first two, bragging rights on the forums, that sort of thing.  I wasn't about any of that - I wanted to start a family.  I would watch how others played, how they interacted with other strangers, how they responded to loot, and build an idea of their moral compass from that.  If I thought they were reasonable to a first approximation, I'd talk to them about guilds in the abstract, and then we'd decide whether or not to team up.  I wanted people who were in it for the long haul, and I got:  bilingual people from around the world; a couple who wanted a chill guild that wouldn't make huge time demands; people with children searching for a guild where real life comes first; and my second-in-command, a disabled veteran in search of the belonging he no longer got from the military.  A motley crew, no doubt, but I'm the kind of person who recognizes that diversity is strength just because it avails you of insights from multiple perspectives.

I ran my guild with one driving question:  "Is this a guild that I would want to be in, at any level?"  I hadn't the words then, but I was after a Rawlsian veil of ignorance.  I couldn't demand too much of the noobs in return for the prospect of advancement, because I wanted leadership to be fairly stable and not top-heavy; I couldn't demand too much of leadership, because burn & turn is a terrible way to run any organization; I also couldn't give too much power, because then I'd attract the kind of people who want power, whom I deeply loathe.  So every aspect of the guild was tuned to fostering community, camaraderie, and cooperation, especially the mandatory weekly guild meetings:  we met in an un-used arena in the corner of the orcish capitol, gave brief announcements and shout-outs, then held our initiation rites.

Every aspect of this built loyalty, even though I didn't know it explicitly at the time:

• The meetings were mandatory because I knew they wouldn't otherwise happen.  If you weren't physically there on time, you partied up with me or an officer who could watch your position on the map to ensure you were en route.  If you were offline, then no sweat; but if you were on, you were here.
• The meetings were in the Horde capitol but in an unused corner because many people had never seen the inside of this building before - it was an arena tucked away in the corner and no quests brought you there, so it was like a little secret, hiding in plain sight.
• The meetings were brief because I didn't want to sit for a bunch of annoying crap, and assumed nobody else did either.  It was strictly need-to-know information like policy changes and web site updates, as well as shout-outs for good deeds done by the members and/or upcoming events.
• The Rite of Initiation was a gang-style naked beat-in right outside the city gates:  the initiate and a senior member would remove all their gear and duel unarmed.  You didn't need to win, you had to participate.  But soon enough, initiates could be seen grinding the unarmed skill in the week leading up to their initiation, just to put on a good show come clobberin' time.
• The only requirement to be initiated was to attend one guild meeting.  You'd see it was quick, important, and best of all, followed by ritualized violence.  And then you were truly one of us.  We got many a new member from our initiation rites, just curious people running into town who wound up being good fits (or not).

Up-front token effort, reasonable demands, reasonable payoff, ritualized violence, and insider knowledge - the ingredients of any successful fraternity, minus the toxic masculinity.  I was completely unprepared for how well it would take off.

The Big Long Middle

We grew slowly but steadily for the first two years, quickly reaching a growth-rate plateau and holding steady at that rate for a long time.  My second-in-command set up a web site, opening up out-of-game communication channels; this also resulted in a lot of asynchronous roleplaying, further fostering community and group identity.  I actually listened to my guildmates, recognizing good ideas when I saw them and instituting them.  I delegated when I couldn't find the time or interest for a worthwhile initiative - and if nobody stepped up for a needed role, then we let it ride until someone willing did.  I didn't start arguments, or even end them - I moderated them, providing a venue to work out disagreements and find common ground.

By and large, I didn't put my foot down on much of anything (barring some notable exceptions to be discussed shortly).  I was a leader, not a boss - I wasn't in it for the glory or the power, I was in it for the community, and it so happens I just had to build that community myself.  More precisely, I created a space for the community, and then the people who were naturally attracted to this kind of community (after some intense up-front effort on my part) went and built it of their own accord.  It happened organically, too, with as little top-down direction as possible (except to say consistently that the guild should be built from the grassroots up).

This brings me to the one matter where I did repeatedly put my foot down:  what kind of guild should we be?  For the uninitiated, here is a quick breakdown of the general kinds of guilds you'll find in World of Warcraft:

• Player-versus-Player:  PvP guilds are like PMCs, focused on the various kinds of competitions between players of opposing factions and the rewards accrued thereby.  In general, a PvP guild respects cunning, battle prowess, and adaptibility - while there most certainly is a meta-game, those with the skill and time to experiment with it can constructively innovate in this area.
• Player-versus-Environment (Raiding):  Raiding guilds are like corporations, focused on the endgame content of building 40-person coalitions to take on the game's most demanding dungeons.  In general, a raiding guild respects consistency, battle prowess, and obedience - while there is room for flexibility, the overarching point of any PvE guild is to make steady progress through the endgame content in pursuit of a more or less predictable reward.
• Roleplaying:  RP guilds are focused on the characters in the guild and their relation to the world, in a way creating their own character-driven content rather than relying exclusively on the developers.
• Casual:  Casual guilds don't have a driving principle beyond hanging out and enjoying the game.  While less focused, they are also less prone to infighting and drama (though that can happen anywhere).  However, the lack of unifying purpose also tends to reduce the guild's cohesion and longevity.

While our guild was described as an RP/casual guild, because that's convenient shorthand, I really thought of it as a "community building" guild - but explaining that requires more or less this entire post, whereas the RP/casual description communicates sufficiently what the guild both is and is not.  So, fine.  The structure of the guild was also set up such that leadership was more public service than power hierarchy.  You got into leadership by showing a drive and desire to support and mentor those around you, not by putting in dues and then accruing authority.  We certainly did our share of PvP events and even a little bit of raiding, but it was more in the manner of a hobby within the game than the point of the game.

This is getting pretty long, so I'll divide it up into two posts.  Stay tuned!

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 2 (part 2c)

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 2 (part 2b)

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 2 (part 2a)

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 2 (part 1)

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Chapter 2:  Destined Heroes

101 Interesting Things, part fifty-seven: Color Vision

A long-standing question in philosophy is whether the red I see is the same as the red you see.  The engineer's answer is that of course it's the same wavelength, and in accordance with the tradition of engineer answers, this is technically accurate but supremely unhelpful.  However, there is an answer, and that answer is clearly not, sometimes.

Pictured:  BULLSHIT.  (Not really.  Image found at Quora.)

For one thing, some people are colorblind.  But it gets so much cooler, and so today I'm writing about color perception!

You may have heard of the rods & cones in our eyes, and the short version is that rods help us detect brightness while cones help us detect color.  Rods are older, evolutionarily speaking, and much more responsive insofar as they take fewer photons to activate.  But cones, in helping us see color, allow us to distinguish predators among busy backgrounds and detect the ripeness of fruits.

Also found on Quora, but for a totally different conversation.

Interesting Miscellanies which You Prolly Know but Maybe Not

Most human beings are "trichromatic," having three kinds of cones:  red, blue, and green.  These respond, logically enough, to those corresponding colors of light.  This means that the only reason the RGB breakdown works is because it corresponds to our machinery, not because that's how anything "really" is.  But in some people, one of those sets of cones doesn't work, and they can't distinguish colors so well.  And there is of course more to it than that, but most people know about colorblind folks and it gets way more interesting than this so we are rolling right along!

On the opposite end of the spectrum (so far) are tetrachromats, people who have four kinds of cones in their eyes and can see not 33% more colors (as one might expect), but many times more colors than us measly trichromats.  This is because tetrachromacy doesn't "just" tack on another "kind" of color, but adds another dimension of color.  So on top of all the R values that can be mixed with all the G and B values, there's a fourth set of values that can be mixed with all of the previous.  But there's still more interesting to go!

The mantis shrimp sees our two to four color receptors, and raises:  they've got twelve to sixteen color receptors, on top of each eye being trinocular and thus independently depth perceptive.  Moreover, they can tune some of these receptors at will, and I don't even know how to imagine that twist on this thing I already can't imagine.  The mantis shrimp's eyes are truly a thing to behold, and I really wanna know what it's like to have them, and The Oatmeal made an amazing comic about it so just go read.  But even the mantis shrimp has to take a backseat to the very most interesting bit about color vision, and how we know sure as dammit that some people's red isn't the same as other people's red.

The Most Interesting Part of All!

Color perception is also influenced by culture.  Yeah, yeah, talk about the wine-dark sea and hair being compared to blue stones in Ancient Greek literature all you want, but this is some present-day go out and check now science.  Sadly, the video is now down, but it was explained in a BBC program and the episode was entitled "Do You See What I See?" (because of course it fucking was).  So some scientists found a tribe called the Himba and investigated their color terms and then devised a test:  show twelve swatches of color in a circle, eleven of which are identical, but one of which is different by a small but measurable RGB value.  We'll circle back after a brief tangent.

Us Westerners, with our internet and fashion industry, have pretty regular color terms (among present-day Western cultures, that is); this leads us into the trap of thinking they're objectively real and universal.  Our science of color perception has noted that cultures first develop terms for black and white, then red, then yellow (just like the TooL song), and so on; this leads us into the further trap of thinking that other cultures' color terms are deficient or primitive when they differ from ours.  But it turns out that other cultures can have color terms just as nuanced as ours but still different.  We can test this because we can make objectively different RGB values and then interrogate people for their subjective color distinctions.  I don't mean like Randall Munroe's color survey where clearly different colors are given the same name, I mean when actually different colors are perceived by us as the same color.

Not this, in other words.  But this:

(Top image from xkcd, bottom from PetaPixel's write-up of the documentary.)

Getting back to aforementioned test:  the image on the right has one swatch that's slightly more blue than the others, and the image on the left has one swatch that's slightly more yellow than the others*.  I bet you, being an Internet Person, are able to quickly & easily distinguish the odd one out on the right, but not on the left.  However, the Himba people of Namibia are the reverse from us:  they are able to distinguish the left set just as quickly & reliably as we can the right set, but they guess on the right set just as unreliably as we guess on the left set.  This is because the Himba distinguish more greens/yellows than us, but we distinguish more greens/blues.

Go ahead and take another look at those circles above, if you haven't already checked out the note below.  If you can't tell which one is different, SPOILER ALERT it's the same position in both circles.  /SPOILER  If you try real hard, you might be able to see the difference, now that you know - but would you really bother to single out that one square if asked whether they were all the same or if one was different?  If someone told you that the squares on the right looked all the same to them, would you say OK or would you call them colorblind?  In a way, this should be no more surprising than the fact that fashion industry professionals distinguish more colors in general than most of us (how many shades of grey do you really need, without a professional reason for training yourself to distinguish them?).  But the fact that the Himba so easily distinguish the left circle while having such difficulty with the right tells us, for sure, that what we see as blue they see as green as the rest of the circles - and vice versa for the circle on the left.

Age-Old Philosophical Problem:  solved!  We don't all see the same colors, it's influenced by a lot of things, from biology to culture.

Notes:

* - SPOILERS IF YOU'RE TRYING TO SOLVE IT YOURSELF!  I went & tested the RGB values, and it's a little disappointing because the "basic" green swatches are all 78/186/12, the blue one is 36/194/233, and the yellowish one (same position on the left) is 96/192/4.  Calculating the differences between them, the blue one is considerably more different than the others are from each other.  I went and made one that was "bluish" by the same numeric amounts as the yellowish one, and it didn't look very much different (and I also knew which one it was in advance, making the difference more noticeable to me).  But I was also able to distinguish the yellowish one, because I looked at the one on the right and then on the left and thought it was in the same position, but then I thought maybe it was just an after-image, so I looked at the one on the right and then turned the screen and looked at the left one, and the same one (now in a different position) looked different, so I figured I was right.  Then I tested them and I was vindicated, Hooray The End.

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 1 (part 3)

If you are new to Project:  Spiral, then click here to read the Prologue, or click here to read from the start of Chapter 1.  Otherwise, welcome back!

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"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 1 (part 2)

If you are new to Project:  Spiral, then click here to read the Prologue, or click here to read from the start of Chapter 1.  Otherwise, welcome back!

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Writing Prompts: SpOOooOOky Sarcasm Edition

I kinda liked how the last batch of writing prompts turned out, so I'm doing another one - but this time, they're horror-themed!  These are fewer in number, but also longer, so you can judge the quantity/quality ratio for yourself.  Mostly hot takes, plenty of sarcasm, and maybe I'll even be able to tie a few together like last time!

Voyager 2 Is Leaving the Neighborhood!

We interrupt this regularly-scheduled blog to bring you (somewhat) breaking news:  Voyager 2 is nearing the heliopause!

"What's the heliopause," you ask?  Why, it's the very outermost - wait, didn't I write about this before?

Yes, I did.  Back when Voyager 1 did it.

But now it's Voyager 2's turn for a day in the spotlight!  I'll spare you the gushing (as I've already done it), and leave you with some further reading links:

• Wikipedia on the Heliosphere
• NASA on Voyager 2's update (5 Oct)
• NASA on the Voyager mission in general
• Gizmodo on Voyager's continuing discoveries

I'm gonna go contemplate interstellar distances for a bit.  Cheers!

TERF-Busting #1.5: The Cotton Ceiling, Really.

Last time on TERF-Busting, I introduced the Cotton Ceiling and talked about it a bit more than I did when I mentioned it in Transphobia Busting.  Today I'll be critiquing FactCheckMe's (FCM's) essay on it, and wrapping up this installment.

We're getting there, believe me.  (Image from femonade.)

The basic idea is that FCM has a well-formed piece that happens to not work, which is a shame because I actually agree with most of what she's written in her introductory matter.  It also sounds like she's dealt with or at least heard about some shitty trans folks, which always sucks because hurt people hurt people & all that.

101 Interesting Things, part fifty-six: Periodicity

The periodic table of elements is something I was aware of in grade school, but I didn't realize why it was called that until high school chemistry class.

I thought I had a joke lined up for here, but I'm not sure, because

I periodically forget them.  (Image taken from Wikipedia.)

My chemistry class was basically a college class, though - like, to the point that in actual college chemistry class, I didn't buy the textbook, own a calculator, or go to half the lectures (my buddy & I signed each other in because we're the fucking worst), and I got the highest grade on the first exam after being the first one done.  This is not to toot my own horn, I'm saying that's how much stuck despite my slacker habits because my high school chemistry teacher was awesome.  So I don't know what a "normal" high school education in chemistry is like, but I think this is interesting, so I'ma riff on it today.

"Project: Spiral" - Chapter 1 (part 1)

Chapter 1:  Genesis II - God Takes a Mulligan.

WARNING:  This is the first draft of Chapter 1.  It has since been revised.  I'm leaving it up because I like it.  The current version of Chapter 1 is located here.

In the beginning, there was nothing.

    (Boring, I know.  Don’t worry, it gets better.  Eventually)

Then God said (well, me - not God, exactly), “LET THERE BE - umm - SOMETHING!”

    And magically, there was!  (Well, not “magic” per se, but it’s a lot easier to explain that way.)

    So it didst cometh to pass that on the first day, there was “Comic.”  It didst sucketh, but lo, it got better, in accordance with the prophecy.  (We’re not quite there yet, though.) And for a time, it was good. But then things happened, like schoolwork, and girlfriends, and parties, and jobs - you know, stuff, life - and Comic was no more, and darkness didst falleth upon the land.

    But God (me again) didst not stoppeth thinking about Comic, and the more God thought, the more God wanted to do it over, but better this time.  A cycle of mental refinement and rewriting didst then spiraleth in upon itself, like unto the flushings of yon toilet (whichever one is closest to you, really).

    On that first day, God (still me) was but a child of seventeen years.  The spiraling is now done, but the tale has not yet been told. But there is no more Comic - now, there is only “Book.”  And the Old Fan and the New Reader didst both readeth Book, and they didst looketh at each other with a great befuddlement and ask, “Hey, isn’t this a little bit self-indulgent at this point?”

    Which, I mean, sure.  All novels are, to some degree, but this one probably quite a bit.  But if you think about it, even God (real God this time) probably wrote the Bible on the recommendation of her therapist.

Oh, and if you find yourself offended that I called myself God earlier, or that I referred to God as a woman just now, don’t worry - God is imaginary.  Nobody got mad at gender-swapped Superman, they just said OK and got on with their lives.  Didst getteth on, whatever. So be more like comics fans. But not the current 21st-century comics fans who get butt-hurt every time something comes along that’s not For White Straight Cis Men Only.  They suck. I mean like the 1960s comics fans who - wait, they may or may not have opposed school integration, and I do not want to go on a wiki walk about that right now, so how about we just forget about it?  The point is, chill the fuck out.

If you are OFFENDED, ANGRY, or THINKING A SENTENCE STARTING WITH “WELL, ACTUALLY” right now, then please put down this book, go have a snack, and lie down for a nap.  You’ve earned it, champ. You don’t want the rest of what’s in here.

If you are WEIRDED OUT, KIND OF INTRIGUED, or - best case scenario, here - MILDLY AMUSED, then click here.

TERF-Busting #1: Introducing the Cotton Ceiling

I mentioned the Cotton Ceiling in passing at the top of my second post on Transphobia Busting.  Today I want to dig a little deeper.  As I deliberately disregard the meta-gaming tactic of worrying about driving traffic to places I oppose (otherwise I wouldn't be able to get any real research done on opposing viewpoints), I'll just be directly linking to this femonade article, and addressing it will be the meat of today's post.

And this is the diagram I'll mostly be talking about.  (Image from femonade.)

As usual, this is aimed primarily at people around middle age who have heard of trans issues but don't know a lot about them and don't have the time to bite deep into research & discourse.  There will also be a good deal less cussing today.  Maybe not any!  As a final caveat, I'll be supplying some examples from my personal life, adding to the pile of reasons I keep a crowbar separation between this blog and my professional life.  Let's get started!

Writing Prompts: Sarcasm Edition

I'll be at my girlfriend M's house through Christmas and don't expect to get a lot of writing done, so this post is actually coming to you from the past!  Except every post I guess is technically from the past (thank you, paraphrased Mitch Hedberg).  Point being, I'm cranking out almost two months of writing, and I wanted to flex my creativity a bit, so I looked up a list of creative writing prompts to get away from all the science and trans stuff I've been writing about lately.

Except all I could think of was either erotica, something way too personal, or both, or sarcasm.  Guess which one this is?  Oh, shit, you prolly already saw the title.  Pardon me while I facepalm, and check below the cut for some hot sarcastic takes.