Sure, I could host a blog and write all about things! What things? The sort of things you write blogs about, of-course! It doesn't get any deeper than that, that's what blogs are for, writing, never-mind if you actually have anything worthy of comment or to write about.

Maybe, like many others, I could write a webcomic! People who create never have concrete plots or stories they want to tell or show, surely, so I should just be fine making it up as I go along. And, at worst, I can just re-do the entire thing with a new coat of paint. Surely I'd be able to get it further for people to click through. Why would a webcomic have anything else behind it other than it being a neat idea to create?

The design and the layout of the website should be navigable and easy for everyone. After-all, so many people are bound to see it. Where so many others have fun, they have such silly limitations like perfect screen sizes, or desktop only, my fun is surely wrought through perfectly following standards and intense platform support in the same perfect quality sheen of the site's design¹.

My first personal website, in whatever form it exists, was created because someone else in my peer group was making one, and I thought it'd be a neat idea to copy it. The second attempt was created as I'd found a much better host, something that didn't seemingly conform me to professionalism such as GitHub or FreeWebHostArea. It, of all of these, probably has the most claim to the fame of being a personal website. It's loaded with me.

The design of "ACBob's Personal Website" is incredibly basic, the markings of an ametuer with web technologies, but it has more information about myself² than the furthest this website can get to. Links to different Neocity websites that I liked one afternoon, links to various social medias, a (more) fully fleshed out about me that isn't a cop-out to be about the website. It's still not perfect, of-course, the blog only exists because at the time I'd felt like a good personal website has to have a blog. Because a personal website is this strict set of guidelines you follow, and you must follow them to be in that special 'in' club where you have a personal website.

Because, it seems, to me that having a personal website is the act upon itself; you have a personal website to have a personal website! This probably stems from the very first site, where I realised you could do XYZ so why wouldn't I. It's also an incredibly social media centric idea. Anyone and everyone can have a MySpace page, so you should too! Go on and get one to show your friends, or invite your friends, or blahblahblah... There doesn't need to be anything to show off, just go get a MySpace page.

I've inspired others in my circle to create websites because I've shown it's not a difficult task. Anyone with a text editor and some passion can do it. But what I've come to realise is these people have far more passion or creativity for web than I do. This website, because of its very roots of existing to exist, has stagnated and is no longer (or ever was?) a space for me. It's a space for showing off. Look what I can and have done, look upon my website with its perfect pristine standards! ...And then you look at anyone else's and they're doing things I would've never thought of, like integrating pre-rendered graphics or doing spirals for navigation.

Today³, I realized that I don't like my website. Sure, I like it from the perspective of look at it, it's perfect, but I don't like it. It's supposed to be my space, and I've turned it into some kind of portfolio, like some monster looking for a job in computers⁴. I've sat and thought about how I could better it, and I realised I don't really exist in that form.

I am an artist through-and-through, and I create anything I want to as my artform. I program not for myself or for the end product, but because the programming is fun and I think it looks neat⁵. But this capacity I create in cannot be transferred to the world of having a website. I do not have a consistent art style in a sense, I recreate or redo for whatever I need to. Sometimes, I draw with a thick brush in smooth cartoony shapes and naïvety. Other times, I have a messy, noisy, brush with a more lenient approach to things - need some eyes? Put 'em off-kelter from another.

Privacy is huge for me, and I'm sure it's a factor. I can't answer the question of 'who am I', as it depends from where you ask. In my circle of friends, I am my name, the struggling and sufferer, who shares as much as it wants without much concern, and a huge rambler. Flowing out I am hidden amongst the online world, I've consolidated different online spaces through username⁶ and varying amounts of info. And in person, in the real world, I'm not very much at all, with no desire to share.

And yet I can still create. Squonker, ViewMan, these are projects that I can make and aren't the same as other art (in the sense of being for me) yet I can make them. How do I turn this website into a ViewMan? I don't have an identity to fill it with.

I'm not sure what came over me, but I decided to port my older website's articles to this website. In doing so, I had to convert (by hand) from the stupid JSON-based line-by-line format I used to write them in into Markdown, in a way that still conveyed the original intent (as best I could). While the format I created was admirable - it had footnote support and some form of macros - it's not the focus of this article as you can probably tell.

I decided, god forbid, to actually read what I had written attached to my name. I'm oft dismissive or generally disconnected from who I call "my younger self", but when reading these articles it's hard to recognize them as ever being my words. I can assume this is the biggest evidence towards me having grown as a person from what they were. But I feel I should lecture this previous state of self - one that can't respond, but I should shine a spotlight on them and my current feelings on what I've said.

But, and quite bizarrely I think, it doesn't end at just philosophies or beliefs. My tastes are radically different - my review of the Sonic movie is scathingly critical for what it is, and yet now I'd dare to call the movie pretty good. But it's quite clear here in the review, quoth the younger;

Then after that, Sonic n' Cop bond for a bit and we're in san Francisco. we're now at the cliché part, and sonic brings us back with "Wanna know how it ends? me too!" which is obviously the funniest part of the movie, causing me and the cinema to fall out of their chairs and water in the eyes to the point they had to pause the performance.

Clichés are fine, there's no problem in having them in your movie. You're intentionally ignoring the comedy you enjoyed to complain about something that's fine, because you thought you could be witty about it.

I think a lot of this is due in part to me still being in my 'edge' phase. Everyone has an edge phase and it's different for everyone, it's a period where they're excessively edgy for no real reason other than they discovered they could be contradictory assholes. Some are lucky and do it in private or at a young age, others... not so much.

It also felt like I was forcing a reason to have a blog. 4 years ago (jesus) I didn't really have much to say, that's why in 2019 when I created that variant a blog wasn't on my mind. Neither was it on my mind for older websites. If memory serves, I was inspired by other websites on Neocities and the fact they had blogs. It's painfully clear in the 'review' of the Bobiverse books;

This one i'm not done reading as of writing, and it's even more enjoyable than the first.

[...]

I haven't read this far enough to comment, yet. [...] This blog is starting to feel redundant as i go along, as it feels i'm grasping for things to write about.

Admittedly this isn't a feeling that's gone away, which is easy to see from the huge spans of time between articles on this version of the site, even when it was designed from the get-go to be a blog first.

The most painful article to read (even with the bash at the homeless in the Splatoon post) is the Minecraft one. It's needless, it was made the day after I brought about the old blog system and I certainly did not have anything to say on the matter. Instead of substance, there's bashful comments towards the people taking part and their efforts. As an attempt at humor, there's ableism towards autism².

While there is admittedly humorous parts³, it's mostly me making fun of the Minecraft community on the basis they were mentally ill and autistic. Yikes.

Minecraft Players have Depression.

And it is this depression, that allows them to be very focused on one task. Almost like autism. Infact, it is autism. Because they are all 14+ and that tells me they were vaccinated⁴.

And while it would be easy to paint this as 3 year old opinions that I shackled many years ago, it shouldn't go unsaid that these opinions continued even into this website. Take a look at the tone indicators article from even just last year, it makes fun of neopronoun users⁵ and certain identities such as Queerplatonic.

Until around 2019, I was pretty sheltered in terms of socialization. I didn't really have the same opportunities for it as others, and it shows with how I would write and understand the world. I didn't know anyone other than my family and a few peers in public, and I wouldn't meet my first openly queer friend until mid 2021⁶. One of the only people I knew at the time was a 4Channer and you can only imagine what their influence was like.

This lack of talking to people contorted how I expressed myself, such as when I thought I was even remotely equipped enough to talk about Cloudflare. Or when I came out and said that I didn't support BLM⁷ while discussing my political views becoming more radicalized (Yikes)⁸. I wouldn't say I'm perfect or anything of the sort, but I'd at-least say I'm better than, well, that.

I don't mean to villify myself. They were someone suffering from ADHD they refused to accept they had and still learning to socialize with real people. These opinions and views were environmental - I may be a scottish individual but our country's still tacked onto england. It doesn't make what was said anything good to say, and it doesn't make that version of myself any less of a Bad Person™ for saying them, but it doesn't make that person of the past irredeemable. And I at-least hope that I have redeemed myself from what I've said in the past.

I know I'm redeemed in my eyes. Even if I don't recognize who they were as me. I know that as I am now, I am better. And who I was matters not.

Halloween is different. I'm not quite (or at all) traditional in my celebrations per-se, but the celebrations that I do are entirely genuine. Ignoring the spiritual significances of Halloween, I adore the culture where for no reason in particular than it being a certain date, the entire world comes together to share silly skeleton images or give out sweeties.

I take Halloween as an opportunity to dress up and have fun. It's a day where, inherently, there is nothing serious. You go have fun, get drunk with friends or sleuth the neighborhood for candy, drink fall related drinks or enjoy the skeleton war... It's the only day, by technicality, that I wear exactly what I want, in that every single Halloween I take the opportunity to dress up in something.

Good heavens, by the way, it seems like forever since I've stared down the lektor writing page and written anything. That's because it's been almost a full year since my last post. This is probably in part because of my tumblr that I setup in May last year, where I've spent hours drowning my mind in the natural warmth of a social media platform and its endless supply of catered content, and any mild thought I have becomes a short post that few see and gets it off of my mind.

I feel like I've to write something, anything on this blog to justify the cost of my domain, so I'm going to take this opportunity and, atleast while I write this sentence, take some of my "ramblings" posts and expand them here. Unfortunately, I only started using ramblings about 5 months ago, and the rest of my short thoughts are drowned in a sea of 're-blogs' on tumblr. Still, 14 pages of posts isn't bad to sift.

It should be noted I don't consider myself a genius or particularly well educated on most (any?) of these topics, I'm simply writing what my thoughts are in regards to them.

Naming of Self

It’s kind-of hard to stick to one name. Sure, I’ve named myself now and I’ve got a name, but ALSO there’s so many names that would’ve gone so hard that I could’ve picked.
Not that I would, it’s an awkard middle ground where I wish I was the kind of person to have such a name like such.

One of those shower thoughts that I think is worth explaining. And given the only interaction I have on this post is someone asking for examples² or they'll bludgeon me, I feel inclined to do so.

Generally adjectives, of all kinds of words, tend to make for killer names. There are some pretty silly on reflection, but really hard-going names that I think would make for killer non-binary names, like so:

• Alchemical
• Fuselage
• Macaroni³ (Shortened as Mac)
• Wizard

My name is far nerdier than any of the above⁴, but as I said, if I had to be anyone else I'd rather I took a name like the above.

Silly guy does Serious Shit

Diversity win! Silly guy has to do the most serious thing in their entire life

At some point, I entered a national competition for a laugh. A national business competition. In May, I was informed that I was a semi-finalist and had to travel. While I don't remember the timeline too well, this was probably posted not long after I got a phone call at a bus stop in the pouring rain. Considering this event, it's surprising I didn't write anything long-form about it.

Come the day I gave a presentation to a room full of very serious business people. I wore my best shirt (a black one amusingly), some tight trousers and a nice rainbow tie (that I got from a gag shop). I stood there, and proposed the idea of Open-Source Software to a room full of people who have never seen a line of code in their life. I left that room and talked to a few other people, one person decided that my idea wasn't anything they could help with, and another couldn't possibly imagine the idea of giving out software for free⁵.

It was like a less professional Dragon's Den. Amazingly, I won. I didn't expect to win, which is why after leaving the area I took my shirt off of my pajama tshirt and walked around with a big TARDIS on my chest. I ended up in the local newspaper (of the town I had to visit in order to present) that I never read and a swanky online article (that doesn't use my picture unfortunately).

I don't really have much more to say, I'm sure a more emotional version of myself could write something more poignant, but at the moment it's been a few months since, and I can't really get any more specific without leaking what the competition was⁶.

Terrifying News

when I made fun of companies for changing their logo to rainbow I didn’t want them to stop. why is there no rainbow logos this year. it’s gay month, pander to us, come on man

I'll state the obvious - I'm a queer.

This year for pride month, I was expecting the usual barrage of rainbow capitalism but there wasn't. There was no wave of rainbow profile pictures. No wave of pride-themed events for places to make money off of. Comparing to previous years, it was like the entire corporate world forgot pride month.

I think it's easy to figure why. I know people in the US and while I try to ignore the draconic legislation being put into place (for my mental health), it was a terrifying slap in the face. Queer people are no longer deemed safely profitable by big companies.

It's like an awful scale of, well, awfulness. Genocide → Legal → Majority Accepted → Capitalism Profit Venture.

This wasn't the last slap in the fact of this year (and I doubt at this point we've seen the last), there was also that whole bud-light debacle I didn't really care about.

Fermi paradox & Stop fearing Aliens

the fermi paradox is dumb, 4000 knows nothing about 6,700,232 and yet there’s infinite numbers so surely 4000 would’ve heard something!
Intelligent life doesn’t have to be rare or fleeting for the vast infiniteness of space to overwhelm any attempt at useful communicarion, stop watching star trek, nerds
Humanity is not special, Earth is not unique. It’s the only one we’ve got and we must protect it, but that doesn’t mean earth is the only place 2+2 was discovered

following my previous post, why is other life existing a terriying thing? I get the arthur clarke quote n’ all, but why is it scary?
To me it’s about as terrifying knowing that australia exists and has native peoples. It’s not, that’s what. I don’t want to bring colonialism into this but I don’t think nonhuman intelligent life should be a terrifying concept to anyone.
I will however concede it would be terrifying if somehow humanity were the one thing in the entire universe that was actually unique. But I’d be pretty spooked if the world was pudding too.

Pretty recently I've been exploring my personal philosophies, given a lot of my philosophies were created years ago when I was An Awful Person™, and are largely incompatible.

On reflection, then, the Fermi Paradox is... I don't claim to be a scientist, but it's pretty dumb, isn't it? The answer to why nobody's calling out to space is because space is too big to see. Smoke signals are local, and that's the best we have in terms of equivalence for talking through space, and I doubt it gets much better.

I've come to believe the universe is teaming with life, that life is a wholly unremarkable thing for space in general. Just looking at Earth, there was a period of time where it was believed that the Mariana trench probably didn't have life. You'll never guess what we found after getting better technology.

To a degree, the Fermi Paradox boils down to "New York doesn't exist because I can't see it from Ireland" and "2,000 could interact with 5,000". It ignores the reality of space and human interaction, it decides that because we exist and know we do, we should extrapolate that because we don't know other life exists it doesn't. It's a (series of) bad assumption - a silly thought experiment.

The Earth is undoubtedly unique and special - it's the only place in the universe with me or the people I know. But its uniqueness is not an intelligent life-form. Given the universe is full of life, then there's probably a good chunk where intelligent life follows. There's life all across the universe and plenty of that life knows that 2+2 is 4.

But the fact that life does exist in great quantity, and so does intelligent life, is not an invitation for anyone to ignore the climate crisis, or otherwise let the earth be destroyed.

As a side note from the future, James Webb has possibly found the artefacts of life (dimethyl sulphide) on an exoplanet and while we're a wee bit away from fully confirming or denying it, I'm already getting ready to tell everyone "I told you so".

500gb Game installs and the loudness wars

modern games using storage requirements as a dick measuring contest is nothing different to the 2000s loudness wars when you think about it

In the 2000s, people kept making their music louder and louder. The migration to digital formats compared to traditional formats led to people making mistakes in some places, and making use of possibility. Once the technology was mainstream and popular, such that the traditional formats were unpopular, this trend began to die as familiarity with the new stuff increased.

Since the 90s⁷, video games have been getting bigger and bigger. Games used to fit in kilobytes, with cartridge based formats that were physically massive because that was a huge amount of data at the time. An NES Cartridge, for example, could store up to 256kb (40kb as standard) - and Super Mario Bros. was 31kb, they left a whole 9,000 precious bytes free.

Cartridge formats dominated, even when requirements began to hit megabytes - millions of bytes. Super Mario 64, only a couple generations later (and admittedly 3D instead of 2D) was 54mb. DooM was 5.3mb (shareware).

And these weren't laughable sizes to sniff at, in 93 your average disk would barely have 100mb to sit around, so taking up 5% on a game was notable. It only got bigger, eventually we needed a whole gigabyte for a game - billions of bytes for a game! Unthinkable.

Largely when it came to games, the space on a Disk was a problem that needed to be worked around. The playstation 3 brought Blu-Ray to the consumer gamer market⁸, meaning games could be bigger than 4.7gb of yester generations - they could be up to 25gb! Similarly, the PS3 also brought the internet to consumer gaming. No longer did you need to ship your finished product (a separate issue), but you could put more data on the 'cloud' and add it on-top of the disc!

In modern times rather than the ancient past of cavemen, we sniff at megabytes and have plenty of GB to spare. With that, game companies love to show how good their game is because of how big it is. Where you'd have John Carmack invent a compression algorithm to make Wolfenstein fit on floppies, now you have (what I would call) a mockery of the artform.

A very recent game, and perhaps the game I was referencing, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor requires 155gb to spare on a game. A lot of people have hard drives counting in TB - trillions of bytes, so they sniff at that. CoD: Modern Warfare is even worse, clocking 235gb.

I draw parallels because as technology got better (tapes → floppies → compact discs → blurays → the internet) games have gotten bigger - their file sizes louder. The migration to new formats compared to traditional formats led to people making mistakes in some places, and making use of possibility.

If we're at the end of the curve, we'll see it slow down. Or it'll speed up. No matter what direction, you better pray your internet connection is good if you want to play your favorite modern games.

Language evolution in the internet age

The internet will forever change how languages evolve due to the sheer nature of how easy it is to commune with anyone and everyone, the prevalance of written communicatiom being so high also means that misspellings will become words in their own right - e.g ‘forgor’
And I think that’s beautiful-pilled fr fr on god no cap sheeesh

My darling partner surely has a better grasp of this sort of thing. But I think it's pretty clear that the internet (or just digital writing) will forever change how languages evolve over time. I think in coming years we'll see words evolve and change based on Memes and typos.

My own vocabulary has been touched by the internet with a less than gentle hand, there's a lot I say that I wouldn't otherwise. For example, I say "y'all", it's extremely useful and a great way of talking to a group in second person (that's gender neutral)! But I wouldn't have picked it up without the internet, even if I lived in America⁹.

We see it when kids gain accents from countries they've never been to, Bluey with Aussies, Peppa Pig with British people, and a slew of content farm quality stuff with America. It's simple, but these foreign accents will sort-of be part of how they speak ad infinitum. Anecdotally, a younger member of my family pronounces their 'R's in an extremely American way, where-as the rest of their accent is pretty normal.

Pop culture of the past has definitely shaped language, just look at "Bless You" when you sneeze - it's a grandfathered phrase from when JC¹⁰ was still a common celebrity. We'll see it coming soon too, with words like "yeag" or "forgor", created from simple typos but granted their own version of words. More corporately, there's "tweet"ing in the dictionary, you can "google" something as a verb in the dictionary, etc.

Words like "yeag" are quite interesting, it's undoubtedly a typo on the word "yeah", brought about through the QWERTY keyboard and the proximity of G/H, but it's a word that conveys its own weight. You say "yeah" as an affirmation/confirmation, similarly with "yeag", but "yeag" is used in more informal situations - and in my experience can convey a strength of affirmation, you can "yeag" something you're unsure of, or you can "hell yeag" your way to being a divine source of information.

It's not all good, I would say, as you now have to "unalive" people or we upset the robots we made.

Broken Reality, Jazzpunk and QT

broken reality and jazzpunk occupy the same area in my mind. they’re both worlds i want more of, games i desperately want to be longer; but both games i’ve gotten all the content i possibly can out of them.

Jazzpunk is easily one of my favorite games of all time. It's funny, enjoyable, and not too long. Broken Reality (BR) ditto. BR is a bit more of a... game¹¹ than Jazzpunk, where Jazzpunk is transparently a walking simulator filled with slight puzzles and comedy, BR is full of puzzles and mechanics.

QT is the least "game-like" of them all, originally a parody of the horror game P.T., it's a.. well, walking simulator. The steam release is atleast a collection of 3 games of different themes, a P.T. parody, a little cartoon adventure through a museum, and a huge island filled with cartoon characters. It's endearing •◡•.

When I posted this originally, I absolutely owned the game QT, but I sort-of forgot about it. Recently I tried to 100% it and got a lot more enjoyment and fascination with it - even if it has already been a big inspiration to some of my most complex projects - Squonker.

I've 100% all these games. They're endearing, Jazzpunk is funny, Broken Reality is aesthetic with some (dated!) humor, and QT is just joyous. I've gone through every nook and cranny of these games, I have all their achievements and I've enjoyed every second.

I desperately want MORE of them. There's very few games I want more of, Minecraft has long overstayed its welcome in my mind, the Half-Life games were enough, Portal's enough, but these games are just enough game to make me wish there was like 5× more of them.

I'm in luck in some places, too. Necrophone Games of Jazzpunk are apparently in the works of making a new game (according to reddit users who claim to have emailed them), Dynamic Media Triad of Broken Reality is developing a sequel to Broken Reality set in a more familiar internet to me, filled with frutiger aero magic. Unfortunately however, Happy Snake Games of QT has been on a hiatus of developing games for a couple years now.

I highly anticipate Broken Reality 2000, and it's likely to be a game I spend my money on the first time I find that it's released. Ditto, potentially, if Necrophone are indeed working on something.

I may make a much much larger article where I just completely gush over these brilliant games - game reviews are hardly unknown to this blog, although I did promise halloween articles last year so don't hold your breath.

I yearn to make a game like these. To take the comedy of Jazzpunk with the aesthetic of Broken Reality and the cuteness of QT. I swear one day my only finished game will not be Tic-Tac-Toe but you have 3 players from when I was drunk.

I'm going to be honest. I was never a real fan of the idea of the 13th Doctor, although my reasons have changed. At her announcement in 2017, I was a very, very different person to who I am now. The reasons of then, I can only comment as being close-minded and downright bigoted, although that was most definitely environmental. It's been almost 6 years¹ since then, and I'd like to think I've grown, at-least partially. The only gripe I have with her from the get-go is her accent.

She had a Christmas special, and I did watch it at the time - although I still disliked it. A similar parallel might be with the 10th to 11th Doctor, at his announcement, I was very displeased and from memory, swore Matt Smith's name to hell. Almost all of that however was the change itself, I was a diehard fan of the 10th Doctor during his tenure. I still very much am a fan, just not as much anymore. I can see the 11th Doctor now without the searing hatred I once did, and I can confidently say he was a bit... meh².

However, recently I've decided to come back to the 13th Doctor. Again, it's been 4 years since I'd last tried anything with her. Considering Ncuti Gatwa³ (possibly) makes his debut in October, I really need to step up the pace if I'm to know what's been going on. What I know going in is that her time is coming to an end, and the show-runner wrote some of the weakest episodes of previous doctors⁴. Over-all, trying to be neutral towards Jodie herself, I'm still not the most interested by the season. Regardless, I've heard good things about her in general, So I'm willing to give her a shot as best I can - I'm hopeful.

The Woman Who Fell to Earth

The woman who fell to earth serves as the first episode to feature Jodie Whittaker in the guise of the Doctor. I'd first watched it the day it came out, wayyy back in 2018. I didn't like it at the time. Re-watching it now, I still don't like it.

It's not out of actors, I think it's most to do with the writing. You have your generic villain-of-the-week, T'zim-Sha, a tooth-covered new-species⁵ alien. ..He's about average, as Doctor Who aliens go. Not great, not bad, his reason for being bad is a simple trophy hunt on a random planet, and yeah, that's about as developed most Doctor Who villains are, especially for NuWho.

We're introduced to the new companions, Constable Yasmin Khan, Ryan Sinclair, and one of the 'The Chase' Presenters. There's also Ryan's mother grandmother, G... ...G Something. ...Kidding, of-course, She's Grace Sinclair, but her introduction and subsequent death happened so quickly there's barely time to learn her and grow attached to her, but don't worry, the show won't let you forget she was there once. Seriously, if I could only have one gripe with this episode, it would be the handling of Grace's character, who dies in the same breath⁶ as she's introduced. And then the season goes on to have Graham continuously feel bad about her, and everyone around feel bad, which is fine... ...But the viewer don't know Grace, and they never will.

I don't have a lot of comment about the episode itself actually, it's all pretty standard Doctor Who, but that might be what the issue with it is. It's not a significant episode, nothing happens, It's written like another episodic weekly serial - there's nothing special, it's just another Doctor Who episode.

I do have comment about Bradley Walsh, or Graham O'Brien. I do not think he was a good choice for Doctor Who at all, considering how chiefly British the show is, and just how well known 'The Chase' is in Britain. At-least, I personally can't get much out his performance on Doctor Who, I can only see him as Bradley Walsh, The Chase presenter. As some trivia when I was researching for this article, he actually appeared in Doctor Who canon before, as a shape-shifting evil space clown...

The Ghost Monument

I really enjoy the concept of the TARDIS becoming runaway to some degree, being lost to the doctor. It's not so much a convenient reason the Doctor cannot just TARDIS their way out of things, it's more that it's such an interesting concept - What happens when a device as powerful as the TARDIS has the potential to be used by another? This episode, like most TARDIS missing episodes of NuWho, squanders the potential by having the Doctor immediately⁷ find the TARDIS and get back to it. The hope for another Paradox Machine grows ever weaker...

The episode is, again, pretty standard for Doctor Who, for the most part. However quality of the episode itself seems all over the place. You have fancy effects of them in space, which aren't easy to achieve, and then minutes later you have a piss-yellow Mexico filter applied to the screen... A yellow filter, and then fancy effects of a ship crashing, accompanied by a simple camera shake and actors jostling around their chairs. This bizarre mix of quality lends the episode a sheen of 'Experimental College Arts Project' more than it does '60 year-old BBC Show'. The shadows also never, ever, in a single scene, match the visuals of the 3 suns⁸.

The episode is also filled with an above-average amount 'of-course it woulds', The planet with the TARDIS is part of a race, The companions have been injected with Universal Translators⁹, The TARDIS is the ghost monument¹⁰, the planet's water is filled with flesh eating microbes, there's evil cloth, this random logograph on the floor has a paragraph of text that only the Doctor can translate (despite the Universal Translators!!), etc.

I got distracted while I was watching the episode and did not pay very much attention to it during the 'climatic' scene with the robot fight. I don't have the energy to return to it, it has all the chemical components of a skippable filler episode, just with a tacked on reason for finding the TARDIS.

Rosa

I was worried to my core about this episode. Terrified that it could be any millions of things, all revolving around Rosa Parks. It did not turn out as bad as I feared, but that doesn't make it much better.

Rosa takes the cast to 1955s America, Alabama. We have interactions that reinforce just how bad America was for the racism, and it generally creates a sense of hopelessness for humanity. However, it hinges the entirety of racism in America on Rosa Parks. That somehow, racism would continue ad infinitum should Rosa Parks not sit in the whites only seat on a specific day. I can't comment how much Rosa actually did for civil rights, I'm sure it was a serious amount, but I don't buy that Rosa couldn't've sat on the whites only seat some other day.

The villain of the episode is the space racist from the future. That's his only character, his motivation is racism. He's from the future, so he has future tech, ...that he doesn't use. Chibnall's sure to make him the scum of the earth, proud that he murdered an indefinite (>2000) amount of people, and that he's racist, and all that.

I'm under-equipped to talk about this episode in great detail. I can only surmise it as "Space racist comes to kill Rosa Parks to keep racism", and not comment on other parts - I'm not a person of colour, and I haven't done my research! It's by no means an awful episode, but I'm not sure it will be remembered very fondly. Racism only ended because of The Doctor (a white woman) saving Rosa Parks, canonically. Fucking English people.

Arachnids in the UK

Giant spiders, because Capitalism. Trump analogue owns a Hotel and tonnes of companies that also do toxic waste disposal, and naturally that means the two go together and spider carcasses get filled with toxic waste, or something. Looking past the fact most mutations lead to Cancer and wouldn't make the spiders grow in size so much as grow tumors, giant spiders just... isn't interesting. The business man running for president is the most painful parallel to Trump you could make, it sticks out like a sore thumb. No need to colour him orange, as long as he's American.

Again it's the most bog-standard villain-of-the-week Doctor Who episode. Giant spiders to terrify the arachnophobes and kiddies. Modern rap music because the BBC could afford it and a helpful handing of Doctor hates guns.

Chibnall makes sure to push it as far down our throats as he can, that the business man is going to run for president. We have got to know, every second sentence since the initial reveal, that the business man is going to be president. It's super essential that the business man is president.

He shoots a spider and that's the end of the spiders. Seriously. They hype up the spiders, get to the climax, and then there's... nothing. Big spider dies and business man is evil, that's the end of the spiders, let's move on to the next episode.

There's other parts of the episode that call back to Grace's character, Graham hallucinates Grace and that's sort-of just that. It tries to show Graham coping with Grace's death, and I can at-least respect it. Graham seems a lot more affected by Grace's death than Ryan, and I don't really understand why Ryan doesn't show anything about the death. Maybe they're building up for a breakdown or something. I can only comment on my experiences, but when my Great-Great-Grandmother passed, It ruined me for a week.

The Tsuranga Conundrum

Goblin eats energy. Another new species called the Pting (a ridiculous name) threatens the Doctor and crew on a space hospital spaceship. The Pting checks all the boxes for the 'Ultimate death kill bad monster' that it can, it's functionally immortal, its skin is the most toxic thing evarrr!!!. It feels like a lazy alien, but then again, we've had the Abzorbaloff, so NuWho's not exactly unknown for lazy aliens.

There's also what feels like a Trans allegory, a pregnant male character, but it was ruined the second it was just an alien with male pregnant species. Without the trans backing, it just feels like Mr. Chibnall's poorly disguised fetish, especially given how far they go with it... I am not very comfortable with the pregnant male character. Chibnall feels like a chaser.

This is a very Star-Trek episode, the environment feels like it was pulled right out of Galaxy Quest. It's not a bad environment, it's kind-of cool, I'm just not a big fan of ultra-pristine white space-ships. In-universe and lore-wise, it does make sense however, the ship is medical in nature, which means it would understandably be pretty clean. I just don't like clean ships, I'm much more a fan of grunge, show me ships that look seconds away from rotting into nothing! Further on Star Trek, the Ronan character is clearly a bad copy of Data from Star Trek.

The Sonic Screwdriver is taken from the Doctor by the Pting, but come the climax of the episode, the Doctor's sonic magically re-boots. The screwdriver does not create any sense of urgency, the Doctor uses the ship's computers without it, and she gets it back the moment she needs it. Keep in mind, the screwdriver is still treated by the Doctor as if she'd gotten it from the TARDIS, but she built it herself, which she seems to conveniently forget. The TARDIS is also taken from the Doctor, although there would be little difference if the TARDIS wasn't taken from the Doctor. I'm not a big fan of the Doctor so far either, she lacks... Something, I can't put my finger on it though - and she seems far too reckless with her companions, the first thing she does in the episode is get them blown up!

Demons of the Punjab

What a name. The Doctor breaks a rule she established in this episode within seconds, 'Family History and Time Travel do not mix', and waaay too hastily in my opinion. They are tackling history, we're taken to the partition of India, August 17th 1947. Granted, I don't know much about the history, I can't comment a great deal on this episode.

This episode was nominated for a Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form at the 2019 Hugo Awards. The writer received Best Scriptwriter. The episode must be worth its weight for something, even if I don't get it or particularly enjoy it. Of any of it, I can comment most on the new species syndrome, Thijarian, an apparently 'ancient' race that evolved perfect assassins. They come from the planet of Thijar, much like how us Earthians come from Earth¹¹.

Kerblam!

Amazon by any other name. We have big mega corp, so big it's an entire planet. There's a cute little nod to the fez, whatever. I think the episode has the wrong message, at-least, what I assume to be the message. Kerblam's whole shtick is that the workforce is (almost) fully robotic. I'd call that an absolute utopia!

Robotic workforce? Uhh, yes please? I don't see what the issue is if all of the bad (read: capitalist hellscape) jobs are taken. ...But, this episode seems to spin it as a bad thing, a thing that could lead to Terrorism. The episode's conclusion implies that the entire infrastructure of Kerblam would be replaced with a majority human workforce. Absolutely abysmal.

The Witchfinders

King James I doesn't have the right accent, immersion ruined. I really can't remember much about this episode in reflection, it was wholly unmemorable. Something about mud people, Jenifar says.

It Takes You Away

Norway! I'm glad at the very least they did have a Scandinavian actor or two for this episode. The episode is... weird, to say the least. We have something called an 'anti-zone' between N-Space and the... solitract. I don't think the Doctor calls it N-Space though, I've just been watching a lot of 4th doctor between episodes. The Solitract is a new creation.. thing... It doesn't fit with pre-existing stuff about the formation of the universe, I really don't know how it fits in.

Regardless, it's a sentient universe that fulfills the desires of people around itself because it's lonely from the creation thing mentioned earlier. It brings back whats-her-name and it brings back someone else's wife. Something about death moths? It doesn't really work, there's no sense of urgency in the slightest.

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

Man the Doctor used to be cool, a lot more fine with guns and just generally violence. Now she's the ugly kind of pacifist, the no-exceptions kind, bleh.

We're immediately introduced to this planet of something, and it has this 'scary' neural destabilizing effect, and like the worst Chekov's gun, it does absolutely nothing. It serves as a bad transition into an amnesiac pilot, and then a neural balancer does it, and the destabilizing effect is never brough up again and serves nothing to the story. Something about two super powerful deified lifeforms?

Something I'll criticize chibnall for is that his entire era is plauged with 'No guys this was all really old!' and 'This is the super super ultra mega super powerful creature!!!'. It happens far too much for my liking, the entire era is plagued with new species syndrome.

Oh yeah, Battle of Rapeseed Of Colours or whatever, we have shrunken planets and nonsense... Really, I can't remember much about this episode beyond the Chekov gun, annoying pacifist Doctor, and Tzim-shaw is back for some reason.

Between the writing of the first two thirds of the review, and the last third-or-so, I watched basically the entire next season. The last 4 or so episodes I've written about are retrospective, where-as the rest were mostly right after or during me watching it. Having watched the rest of the doctor, sans the last season, I have to say... I do not like the 13th Doctor. She is a fine enough actor and gives fine performances, but Chibnall era's writing has not been Sci-Fi, or at-least not the kind you'd expect for Doctor Who. It's a different direction for the show! And I'm sure it's good for some people, if not me.

Talking from the perspective of late series 12, the show gets very preachy about how the Earth is dying. I completely agree, we're fucking over the Earth and have 15 years tops, but I don't watch Doctor Who to find out about the human crisis, I watch it to see the gay little Timelord fly through space and save planets.

I'm interested to see the last season, I caught the last (Pirate?) episode of it when it aired, wasn't a fan then, but maybe the rest of the season has some gems? The 13th Doctor is an odd one, to some (me) I could probably tell them to skip her entirely. But on another level, I can't tell anyone to skip, because she's too notable for being the first woman, and honestly, her episodes aren't actually that bad, all things considered. They're just not good episodes. But hey, if Doctor Who survived Steven Moffat, I think they'll survive Chibnall.

Today's article is focusing on a topic I've touched before. As part of Squonker, I'm naturally going to have decorative texts and graphics. However, they'll need text to go on them, and that brings a question up about the localisation. The game isn't going to be voice acted, it's going the Animalese approach of throwing syllables onto characters. That works great, I can have¹ one master sheet of dialogue and just translate that, the dialogue doesn't need to be legible. ...However, it doesn't fix in-world text.

It would be absolutely fine to keep the regular text there, however, since the characters themselves don't speak English², why would the signage be in English? The only correct approach, is, of-course, Simlish. A perfect solution, it's a nondescript language of garbletygook³ that doesn't discern for any language. EA themselves have also made Simlish the replacement for other localisations!

However, Simlish falls flat in that it's very clearly a random nonsense that sounds vaguely coherent together. I don't care what anyone says about Simlish trying, it's nonsense with some familiarity. The first step was to create a cipher-alphabet⁴, which in its' first iteration turned out like so:

Several of the symbols are taken from existing alphabets, some are taken from constellations, and others are electrical symbols. D is actually from Tifinagh, ⴻ. Y'know what? Here's a list of borrowed characters, although keep in mind this was listed from memory.

• A is a backwards Icelandic thorn (þ).
• B is the Cyrillic Б.
• C is the Latin letter y, or at-least how I write it.
• D is the Tifinagh ⴻ.
• E is the Greek Delta (Δ).
• F is based on the Tifinagh ⵟ.
• G is the letter 4, or at-least how I write it.
• H is inspired by the Simlish H.
• I is, I believe, inspired by a genuine conlang that I've worked on.
• J is inspired by the Tifinagh ⵛ.
• K was random.
• L happens to be identical to the Tifinagh ⴳ, however this wasn't intentional and was instead a modified N.
• M is a curvy Latin T.
• N is inspired by Tifinagh ⴵ, albeit on its' side.
• O is apparently⁵ a lower-case Greek Delta (δ), although I'm sure it's something else.
• P is a backwards B, chosen as a point of humor on the visual similarity of p, b, d, q.
• Q is a simplified representation of Centaurus, as it appears on a Stargate.
• R is a simplified representation of Microscopium, as it appears on a Stargate.
• S is a Latin N.
• T was flipped upsidown from a Latin T, because that's funny.
• U is a Greek Lambda (λ), because it's one of my favourites⁶.
• V is the representation of Norma, as it appears on a Stargate.
• W is the representation of one of the constellations on a Stargate, I just can't remember which.
• X was random.
• Y is the electrical symbol for either a Resistor, or an attenuator, I can't remember which.
• Z is the electrical symbol for a Diode.

Important to note, there are also symbols for 'SH' and 'TH', which were originally the only spelling substitutions, long before the alphabet got out of hand. The 'TH' I believe is some kind of electrical symbol for bulb, 'SH' was random. ..And that was fine! It worked for its' purpose, and was able to produce some lovely graffiti.

Keep in mind that this graffiti isn't exactly the alphabet you see there, it went through some revisions. It was vetted by Jenifar, and slowly but surely came more and more... fine. But that wasn't enough for me, heading to bed that night my brain starting churning. If I'm already to have a system, I thought, then why don't I revolutionize?

I decided, in bed, to normalize the spellings. I took my accent, or the nearest that I could be lazy with, and decided that would be the basis for the Squonker language. Of-course, this is a very, very, very difficult task. English just has too many bloody vowels. However, I think I achieved it. Behold, my normalized English-Scottish vowel system.

..It's a bit confusing in places, that's agiven with IPA symbols. However, using just this (and a tiny amount of consonant adjustment), an article (such as the Declaration of Human Rights) goes from

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

To

Awll hooman beeings er born free and equal in dignitee and raits.
The er endauwd with reesun and konshens and shood act towords on anuther in a spirit of brutherhood.

I did it! With help from Jenifar, my local Language Nerd, but never-the-less, a phonetic Scottish English... Mostly. I still need to work on the consonants which are their own beast, but this will already provide a good helping of funky, but good, spelling. I would attach the newest version of the alphabet, but I'm still working on it with this brand new affinity for remaking the whole spelling of English. All this for silly little background pieces.

That's right, It's Halloween season, baby. I've always been a massive fan of Halloween, but until this year I have not yet done anything for it online visibly. And so this year I aim to rectify this by celebrating it very visibly by... well, redoing the website's style for Halloween.

Even Jim has joined in! ...At-least that's what I hope it is.

I don't have many plans for this year, but take a peek at the Web Comic, it may receive a new chapter this month. I'll also be doing some Halloween-themed JavaScript Experiments (/experiment), so be sure to check those out. Come the 31st, I'll post another article showing off anything I physically did during Halloween, if anything. So keep your eyes peeled for that, if you want!

...Man, I set out this year to produce more blog articles. You've gotten 3 so far. #Winning. Not to worry, though, I've been watching Doctor Who's 12/13th seasons, and boy do I have some opinions to share, so keep your eyes peeled for that. I actually have that article floating around in VCS if you want to spoil yourself, I accidentally published it once, too!

Ahh. English. What an... awful, awful language. Ripe wið words taken from different places because we felt like it, to just plain old inconsistencies. A classic addage, "I before E, except after C"... Unless you're ageing, ancient, or you've broken your cleidomastoid¹ during a leisure venture while overseeing your reindeer ðat's seizing a plebeian monoþeist.

We've borrowed so many words it can be quite rough on our þrough-put of þoroughly crafted written works. ðe same characters can be used to pronounce many different sounds, and þat's just plain confusing. We drop certain sounds when we feel like it, at our own discretion. Take 'knight' for example, surely pronounced /knixt/, right? Nope, we drop ðe 'k' and ðe 'gh' to give us /naɪt/. We didn't even provide any indication ðat it was going to be a diphþong.

But ðat's simply what happens to languages, as ðe years travel along and people speak it. It'll drift around aimlessly, ðe sounds updating. Behold; a concept known as a spelling reform! Wiþ its power, you can take a language and completely fix ðe spelling issues wiþ it. A lot of languages in ðe world have decided upon and started spelling reforms. German, French, Russian, Hebrew, what-have-you, ðey've all had spelling reforms in one way or ðe oþer. You know who hasn't² had any spelling reforms? Ðat's right, English.

Now-now, I'm not suggesting we do anyþing radical like ðe Deseret³ alphabet, just a simple reform. You've no doubt seen ðe þorn (or eð) character ðat's been dominating ðe page. Þorn is a lovely character, is it not? It's a character English used to have. Way back when, in ðe distant time of Middle English, English was written and spoken wiþ þorns. A "Þ" = "th" /θ/. But I propose we don't stop ðere, nay, let us continue and go farðer. Icelandic is a language. Peeking at its' alphabet, we see þings ðat you'd expect from ðe group of "European" alphabets, Æ, Ö, etc. But it also has two funny lil' symbols. Þ/þ and Ð/ð (/ð/), Þorn and Eð. In-fact, Icelandic is ðe ONLY language still alive today ðat uses þorn. It's pretty lonely.

So, I propose ðat much like ðe Icelandic people, we take on ðe reformed characters of þorn and eð. Icelandic too introduced boþ as an act of reform, so why can't we?

• "Wiþ different dialects, it's impractical to have phonemic characters for all of ðem!"
  It sounds like ðat's less my fault, and more your fault for still calling ðem English. Anyþing along ðe lines of "Aye 'ah noo, It's a wee shame aye, we need t' look in'tae it." Makes me question ðe integrity of ðe phrase 'dialect'. Don't get me started on anyþing American.

Keep in mind ðough, I substituted þorn based on how I pronounce words, þrough ðat meþod it'd be different for you. But I'd þink if we're reforming ðe language, we'd work it out.

And so I did a simple search, and it revealed to me 4 (1 2 3 and 4) websites¹ that each list tags. Below is a table of what I found. Keep in mind, I favored the smaller strings.

Interestingly, I found that some people have a personal set of tone indicators, which to me seems to destroy the purpose of them.

Never the less, that's more than 80 separate tags. 80 tags, with varying degrees of sensible definition, that one may use and one may have to learn in order to understand. Amazingly, out of them, there is only one overlap with tag, /nf - Which was defined as both 'Not Fake' and 'Not Forced'. However it seems most of the pages decided to take their own intuition and invent tags, that or the landscape that is the internet truly is insurmountable. There's many duplicates or synonyms that really shouldn't be needed, /nsrs vs. /s for example - why would you have 'Not Serious' when simply 'Sarcastic' works? There is also a lot of situational ones. /tic in the situation somebody suffers from tics and doesn't remove them when posting, /w for temperature and even /nmay when talking specifically to someone.

Not all indicators are created equal, tags such as /npa or /nbr I will simply call lying. If you have to specify that you're not being rude, You're probably being rude, and saying otherwise is either lying to yourself or others. The positive versions of such indicators, like /pa for passive aggressive, also don't make much sense to me. To me, it seems much like it's a proud-ness to be passive aggressive towards someone, boasting it towards the internet. There's a positive 'subtweet' specifier, that denotes you are 'sub-tweeting', when from a glance it looks like a 'subtweet' is off-hand and secretive? Perhaps this reflects some primal drive of humanity to show the world how bad-ass you are. Or there's just trashy people out there.

Any-who, Here's the most common, agreed definitions collected and counted from the different pages I visited. Each of them has 4 occurrences (Or more, but I didn't count same-page duplicates).

Only about 20, which is much easier to understand. As a general rule, you should probably use these as they are a common set that many people seem to agree on. They're also decently easy to understand. Of-course, I could leave it here, having found a small set of indicators to use that should keep me out of trouble, but I'm not known for doing things easy. But before that, I have some notes on the above.

Interestingly, the most common tags seem to be either denoting the lack of serious intent - /j, /hj, /lh, /s, /f, /t, /m - or denoting the presence of serious intent - /srs, /li, /g. There's also tags for relationships - /p, /r - and I'm happy to see that there's a tag for questions that shouldn't be answered - /rh. I'm also happy to see that despite the internet leading to splintering communities, there's still a common language developing. I can see tone indicators quickly becoming a regular part of English text, when academia finally catches up⁷.

Zamtags

Seeing the failures of the Tone Indicators, Zamtags is my flashy brand-spanking-new Tone Indication system. Behold; the Zamtag proposal:

A specification consisting of 15 strictly defined tags, it defines unique codes for every positive statement. It has allowances for synonyms with a few tags, to keep it a bit more inline with current tone indicators. Keep in mind, Zamtags can be valid Tone Indicators, but Tone Indicators are not valid Zamtags. There is consistency in negation, where any tag may be negated by prefixing it with 'n', although best practice states you should use the negative code listed.

Zamtags have a few official styles:

• 'Classic' Tone Indicators - /ns
• <ns>XML-Inspired Tags</ns>
• [ns]BBCode Inspired Tags[ns]

In essence, 'Classic' Zamtags are a 'personal' set of tone indicators, though it is defined through research. The syntax of these indicators is slightly different than regular tone indicators. To perform an additive set of indication, one simply concatenates them without spaces, i.e something off-topic and romantic would be /r/ot. The most important indicator comes first, with it being considered essential for understanding the text, and any additional indicators do not have a specified order and are up to you.

Zamtags can be placed at the beginning to preface a text, in which case the slash goes on the right side. Additive tags are achieved like normal but with the slash on the right. The tone of a text can be changed half-way through by placing a slash on either side to indicate it is a tag. I think the XML and BBCode tags are rather self-explanatory, but I have still included examples. The scope of a tag can be confusing when the classic syntax is used, so the recommended use of Zamtags is the BBCode.

Examples:

A sarcastic comment:
Man, The weather's been great today! /s

<s>Man, the weather's been great today!</s>

[s]Man, the weather's been great today![/s]

A spicy political joke:
j/ I don't really like apples. Never have.

<j>I don't really like apples. Never have.</j>

[j]I don't really like apples. Never have.</j>

A longer text where a few indications of tone are needed:
s/ I really like tone indicators. /ns/ I think they can be useful, but many people abuse them much like certain other labels, /ot/ such as pronouns. /s/ But I'm in full support of ALL tone indicators. Don't worry. /f

<s>I really like tone indicators.</s><ns>I think they can be useful, but many people abuse them much like certain other labels,</ns><ot>such as pronouns.</ot><s>But I'm in full support of ALL tone indicators.</s><f>Don't worry.</f>

[s]I really like tone indicators.[/s][ns]I think they can be useful, but many people abuse them much like certain other labels,[/ns][ot]such as pronouns.[/ot][s]But I'm in full support of ALL tone indicators.[/s][f]Don't worry.[/f]

How the hell'd that happen.

Today marks the last day of 2021, a year that marked the second in the saga of illness that was 2020. I got... very little done in terms of this website, I only published one article (but with many unfinished and discarded plans for articles!) and a lot of my projects got canned. Of the fatalities, I'm decently sad about the books. They were promising, but boy is it a massive time sink to just... write.

My current plans are as follows;

• Farming Game (Unannounced)
• Meegreef
  • VoxelThingYeah Engine
  • VoxelThingEditorYeah
• Time Void (Unannounced)
• Animated Show (Unannounced)

But the most promising of these has to be Meegreef. See, I was a big fan of the game Minecraft, but in recent years I've taken to disliking the direction they've been going in. Sure, that's bound to happen when the development team for the game changes constantly over a decade, but I liked Minecraft, not the new Minecraft. Ya dig?
I've traced it down and it's not long after release 1.8 where the changes come to a point I begin to dislike them. The whole game in-fact just feels... off. It doesn't feel like what Minecraft is, it feels like a copy of Minecraft.

Enter Meegreef. My Minecraft copy. - Well, I say it's a copy, but that was only how it started¹. Meegreef is my answer to everything I dislike about the new Minecraft. I'm taking inspiration from Minecraft of-course, but I don't aim to be it. In terms of actual game development, there's been very little if any... Just some testing assets slapped together in a quick proof of concept for the VoxelThingYeah Engine. Now I'm working on getting the Engine in a better state, and then I'll slap together some game play stuff and actually make Meegreef.

VoxelThingYeah is my realization I can actually do... anything. It's my biggest project, pulling together everything I've (somehow) learned over the course of the last 3-4 years. This means nothing to nobody reading this, but I've even impressed some people I look up to. Whazam. Bottom line is, VoxelThingYeah is my game engine and I'm gonna force it to make all my games²! Muahahaha!

For me, this year was filled with quite the roller-coaster of emotions. I simultaneously got a friend group and lost them, only to have them vilify me and shortly forget I exist. I also got a girlfriend. She's the pink character in the image you see. She's cute. European³, but you can't always win.
There's a lot to pack into just one article, a lot of it personal and to be honest, stuff I'd only really talk about with friends. Never-the-less, I'm going to achieve a longer read-time than last year. Eat that, Me!⁴

Looking at last year's article, in-fact, I talk about the farming game which is my dream game. With Meegreef on my plate, I've considered combining it into Meegreef, but I fear the Minecraft similarities are going to overshadow and destroy Meegreef's chances. However, I've still made progress. With the creation of my own engine, making the game should be a cinch.
I've copied some ideas from each of the engines I tried. The ConVar system from Source & Quake, the... resoundingly, actually nothing from Godot. I've even come up with a solution to the lack of animation for .obj, making my own damned format! That's right, BOBJ Is here folks! Soon enough, I'll extend it with bones and the such and even the BANIM File. ...Although I'll probably also support all the quake MDL formats too, for good measure.

I've even back-tracked on my previous disliking of the GPL. Over the past year I've gotten very much more political and the GPL aligns quite nicely with the direction I'm headed. Though, I generally try to avoid politics because some people tend to ignore everything and attack on a political basis. Still, I'm going to license VoxelThingYeah under the GPL v3 at some point, and distribute the source with any builds⁵.

My executive dysfunction hasn't gotten any better. Some might say I'm getting worse. I'm performing extremely poor in my academics, and there's many important things I'm neglecting. While my peers and family may suspect laziness, I'm not going to rule out a condition of some kind. It's not that I don't want to do XYZ, It's that I can't. The moment I bring myself to a task that I should do, I shutdown. My brain gives up. A task so simple as moving my arms can become impossible if I continue to try and force myself. Sometimes I can in-fact get out of it, if close to a deadline with no other alternative, but I'm miserable before, during, and after.
The tasks I can't do seem to line up with the tasks that are either too difficult, in the form of work, or something that doesn't engage me. VTY, for example, I managed to rack up 800+ commits in just under 4 months, climbing from a simple cube in space to a 'game' in less than 3. It clicked in all the right ways, something everything else seems to fail at.
For the past 6 months or so, I've been coasting away on life. Ignoring all the problems and issues that come, and simply hoping that I'll end up somewhere good. I haven't put much effort into anything and the ground I sit on is becoming shakier, but I've still been coasting. Truthfully, I'm scared what's going to happen and where I end up. But the moment I try to think of where to begin tackling it, my brain starts to shut down.

Speaking of, this article is quickly reaching that point. Oh dear! With that, I have to bring this article to a rather rushed-feeling close, but I want it out before next year. From me and Jim,

Flying types are a simple one. They need to land and/or get close to attack the lions, at which point the wave of lions will pile upon each other to reach them. Easy, done. The Lion Ladder will prevail.

- Wesley Henshaw

Let's get things out of the way, with what people usually mean when they bring up the lions vs. Pokémon debate, There's no limits or logic. The Pokémon win. Thank you, goodbye.

However, as a firm believer in the lions, I don't quite think that's fair. See, while the lions have the advantage in numbers, the Pokémon have super powers. Let's get 10 blokes to fight one superman. It just doesn't work. However, if we level the playing field by applying some ground rules, the outcome could be different. First off, these lions are wild. You simply can't train one billion lions. Consequently, the Pokémon must also be wild (And we're ignoring Pokémon that only evolve through trading, and can therefore only exist in trained states). Besides, you can only train 6 of them and good luck getting anything good out of that.

So, one billion wild lions vs. all 898 wild Pokémon. Additionally, we're going to say that all of the lions are the same species. Therefore, the Pokémon cannot include variants such as Alolan or different colours. They only get their first iteration. Looking at you, spinda. These lions are bog-standard, and have no conflicting canon, and therefore the Pokémon must also only use logic from the game. None of this anime nonsense, you weeb. Pokédex¹ entries only, and other flavour text included in the libraries or what-have-you. These Pokémon must also, for the sake of the fight and themselves, act in the following ways; 1) Kill the lions & 2) Self-preservation - The Pokémon cannot act suicidally. Unfortunately, this makes Voltorb a bouncy ball.

Pokémon can only learn up to 4 abilities. The abilities they come with would have to be the abilities these Pokémon have. I'm ignoring this to give the Pokémon some chance, but take this into consideration, as if it's the case, the Lions win unconditionally. Additionally, I'm ignoring any effects the Pokémon have (Such as intimidation), it simply doesn't apply in a 1 vs. 1,000,000,0000 fight such as this.

Pokémon also have a limited amount of times they can use moves, If I weren't fair, I would just let them be and say the Pokémon eventually die because of running out of ways to fight back. Instead, as the fair person I am, the Pokémon can rest to recover move PP. Flying Pokémon cannot rest in the sky, they must be on solid ground to do so - so no giving piggy backs. Also, resting just constitutes sleeping, so it's about 8-10 hours depending on how many moves were used.

Let's start by breaking down some common tactics. Both from the lions' supporters, and the Pokémon fans.

• "Arceus/God will just delete the lions, lol!"
  It's bold of you to assume that they'll think of that. Think about it. Has Arceus deleted reality to get out of fighting you? No? Then shut up.
  Besides, I don't see a "Destroy the fucking universe" move in Arceus' pool.
  "myeh myeh It'll delete the lions, not the universe" - Ok, and? I still don't see "Delete opponent" in Arceus' move pool.
• "Jirachi will wish away the lions!"
  Will it, now? Jirachi only gets to grant wishes for one week per 1,000 years. You're assuming that this fight coincides with that. It doesn't, by the way, it was last week and would've applied but there was scheduling issues. This also means that Jirachi is asleep.
• "Darkrai/Gardevoir just put them into the void/a black-hole"
  Ok cool, Darkrai has maybe put a lion to sleep, and maybe put some lions next to it to sleep, as accuracy is only 50%. Good for darkrai.
  Gardevoir has spaghettified themselves. Suicidal, they cannot use that move.
• "The lion ladders will get the flying Pokémon!"
  Lion ladders are illogical.
  Lion hills, on the other hand...² but even then, it can't get that high.

Next, let's define the battlefield. It's going to need enough space to store 1 billion lions, and also be flat. With those parameters, the fight takes place in Salar de Uyuni... But it's a superfluous definition, so instead of picking a point on earth, I'm just going to say this fight takes place on an infinitely big flat plane of grass, dirt, and rock underneath. It's not infinite in depth, however. It's about 4,000km deep, which is roughly half the diameter of the earth³.

Lastly, let's just get some of these out the way;

• The Pokémon and Lions are split between male/female equally. Genderless Pokémon aren't included in this count. 500 Million male lions, 500 Million female lions, 390 Male Pokémon and 390 Female Pokémon. This is chosen randomly as it doesn't matter in most cases.
• The Lions and Pokémon are placed in a rectangle with random order.

Let's start fighting!

Within the first microseconds, Magcargo's immense body heat⁴ causes a large area around it to instantly vaporise.... Alright, fine, Marcargo is now only as hot as magma, or roughly 2192 F (1473.15 Kelvin).

In the first minutes or so, Marcargo, along with Charmander, Charmeleon, Charizard, Ponyta, Rapidash, Marowak, Magmar, Moltres, Cyndaquil, Quilava, Typhlosion, Slugma, Camerupt, Chimchar, Monferno, Infernape, Magmortar, Emboar, Chandelure, Litleo, Pyroar, Carkoal and Coalossal all set the grass and plant pokémon near them on fire. (and this is only Pokémon that visibly have fire in their sprites)!
This fire should logically rage on, but I'm going to say that it doesn't, and simply kill a quarter of all grass type Pokémon. Choosing randomly, Say goodbye to Snivy, Jumpluff, Chesnaught, Shroomish, Kartana, Roserade, Albomasnow, Zarude, Cacutrne, Ferrothorn, Trevenant, Lurantis, Rillaboom, Servine, Tsareena, Sunkern, Steenee, Treecko, Tapu Bulu, Deerling, Grovyle, Rowlet, Roselia, Appletun, Gogoat, Vileplume and Cacnea.

This might seem unfair, but if a tree burns, a tree burns.

The lions just sit there, Looking around. They're all on alert as they've gone from doing lion things to doing... well, they're not quite sure. Many of them can only see more lions that seem to go on forever. In the distance, some of them see a big up draft of fire. Plenty of them start fighting the lions near them for the mates that are close by. Many lions just start having violent lion sex - not all of it straight.

After a while, Arceus gets quite pissed at the lack of progress and uses Hypnosis to rally the Pokémon to start fighting the lions. Giratina, much like at the start of existence, gets rather annoyed at being controlled by Arceus, and attempts to rebel by using immense force. This doesn't go well, as now Arceus and Giratina are locking arms and fighting each other. All of the other Pokémon largely listen to Arceus' request. Not Ditto, However, who misinterprets the request and turns into a lion, only to be murdered by Duraludon. Snorlax and Jirachi are asleep, and don't really care enough to fight. The dark Pokémon are immune to this request (By proxy of being immune to psychic), and just sort of stand there, confused as to why all the Pokémon around them are suddenly sprinting.

Finally, some Pokémon reach the lions. The lions look at the Pokémon, confused, before retaliating to the damage they're receiving. Sevinper, Tyranitar and Zeraora are the first to attack some lions. Zeraora is able to kill some lions by inducing a medical procedure known as a heart attack with its' electricity, but eventually, the amount of bites it has received from the lions is too much and it dies. Sevinper's just a snake so the lions kill it.

Tyranitar's an interesting case here, as according to the Gold Pokédex, "Its body can’t be harmed by any sort of attack, so it is very eager to make challenges against enemies.". Additionally, according to the Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire Pokédex, "Tyranitar is so overwhelmingly powerful, it can bring down a whole mountain to make its nest.". Tyranitar is attacked by many lions, however, it simply stomps through the large crowd unhindered, causing much damage to the terrain and killing many lions. Eventually, a lion scratches its' horn and it dies.

By the time any of the fish pokémon reach the lions, the lions are quite hungry and just eat the fish. Before Wailmer can charge up its' flood ability, multiple lions pick away at it. Plenty of pokémon are killed as collateral from Giratina and Arceus' fight. Arceus commands most of the other legendaries to aid it, Except for the dark type legendaries, which take the side of Giratina.

Above the Pokémon a very strong thunderstorm begins to form, as all of the water Pokémon that can, have attempted to make it rain. This thunderstorm becomes violent quickly, many metal Pokémon getting K.O'd by lightning bolts. Some Pokémon, such as that of fire, simply die from the water. Grass type Pokémon (those that are still with us) get a small buff from the rain. Pokémon that can have also tried to use Sandstorm. Ultimately, all of the Pokémon that can cause arena effects have done so, and they're all in effect at once, multiplied by the amount of Pokémon that could cast it. There is a violent flurry of weather centred on the Pokémon, defying all laws. This coalesces into a violent Tornado (due to the hot and cold air that has suddenly manifested), picking up Pokémon and Lions as it heads towards the centre of the Lion mass. On the other side of the lions, It's also a gruesome scene. Lions are bathed in blood from the other lions they have murdered in competition for a mate, those who are still living are, well, mating. They have felt earthquakes and various other phenomena, but they don't care, and continue to mate.

Arceus and Giratina have started to work themselves to the bone. All of the other legendaries are dead⁵. They are the remaining legendary Pokémon, and are still fighting. Giratina attempts to play chicken with Arceus, but gets too close to the vortex of weather monstrosities and gets flung into it. Arceus is the remaining legendary, but cannot fight in its' current state. All of its' moves PP are expended, and it lands to rest and recover. The swirling vortex of weather tears through the Lions. It slowly grows in size and power as it does so, and by the time a Lion has enough free room to run away, it's too late and it is absorbed. Many of the fast Pokémon ran as far away as possible from the storm when it was originally forming. Only Barraskewda, Dragapult, Electrode and Ninjask are successful due to their immense speed.

At the end of the first half-hour:

• All of the Teleporting Pokémon (that are still alive pre-storm and aren't legendary) are still alive.
• Arceus is still alive, and the only usefully alive legendary.
• 60-90% of all the lions are still alive.

Conclusion

Arceus, after recovering, restarts reality and the events of Pokémon start. Should Arceus have died, Nobody would have won as they would all have died either due to malnutrition, dehydration, or the giant thunder-tornado-fire-sand-storm.

Who would've thought, putting godlike being against a silly amount of regular beings results in nobody winning. Really makes you think.