Blossom Apartments, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
September 25th, 2016
7:55am ET


Makoto was worried. She'd noticed Misaka-san looking at her, appraising her the way that she would appraise a potential opponent in a martial arts match.

She didn't want to fight her housemate. She had barely finished unpacking her new clothes and kitchenware. And it had barely been a week (in her personal timeline) since Usagi had undone what Galaxia had done to her. She was still tired.

They were all tired.

Maybe the others could suggest something.

Opening the new cursed thread, one of the Pointer Sisters has left us...

Anita Pointer of The Pointer Sisters dies at age 74 | CNN

As we head into the last hour of 2022 here on the East coast of the United States, I'd just like to wish everyone on the forums a happy new year. Here's hoping 2023 is better in all ways for all of us.

Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
September 25th, 2016
9:51am AT

Quote:Are you xenophobic? This is not for you. We dearly need an open-minded person. He or she must be in good health, fluent in English with some French, some knowledge of business practices or property maintenance essential, willing to assist the people around him or her. Permanent employment, pay and lodging, comprehensive health care, opportunities to learn and teach. You must apply in person at 39 Church Street Extension, Antigonish, NS

The unseasonably warm weather the past few days was apparently enough to see a mushroom springing up near enough the path I travel to pick up the mail to notice. It was quite large and strange looking, but I didn't have the camera with me, it was gone later, and I didn't want to touch it to avoid becoming the first entry in a new Cursed Thread for 2023.

Though looming larger in my memory, my impression at the time was that it was about 1 1/2" x 2" (or 3x4 cm) and either a puffball or still very rounded with a short stem so it looked like one, flesh pale white and smooth over all but most of the top covered by a net of very pale red filled with fairly pale blue - a true blue as few things in nature are - such that the easiest way to draw it would be to start with pink ovals about the size of a fingertip, edges intersecting but not continuing to overlap after the first two or three until most of the space was filled, then add a squiggle in the center of each that in most cases forms an actual question mark, then fill in the ovals with that pale, icy, sky blue. No noticeable smell, and it did not appear particularly slimy/damp or powdery/dry, just plain like a portabello you might find in the grocery.

After it was gone, there was the sort of lingering smell that suggested a skunk may have been responsible.

Strange Messenger, by the duo Vixy & Tony, is about the story of Humboldt's Parrot: a bird that survived not just its owners, but their entire people, leaving it the only source for scholars to learn about their language.

Quote:He was exploring South America, the first to venture there
In an age of change and reason, new discoveries everywhere
Along the Orinoco, the great river corridor
He heard tell of a people who had fled a tribal war

It was said they chose seclusion over death or life as slaves
But in their sheltered grotto, he found only simple graves
And one brightly colored messenger, whom no one understood
Spoke the language of a people who had disappeared for good

    So tell me, bold explorer, as you wandered through the leaves,
    Did you ponder unknown losses that the very Cosmos grieves?

    Was it halting? Was it flowing? Was it lilting and divine?
    Was it fearless as your native tongue, mercurial as mine?
    Would it pique a linguist's interest? Would it hold a poet's thrall?
    Did the words of one strange messenger tell you anything at all?

He kept a careful chronicle, transcribing what he heard
Of the tribe's entire language, there remained just forty words
Complexity and structure, how it tastes and how it sings
Time devoured all but scattered words for scattered things

And can we archaeologists, with bits of sound like runes
Ever paint a living portrait of a people in their tombs?
Could we somehow come to know them? Will we ever even try?
Sifting through linguistic ruins for the clues to how and why

    So tell me, bold explorer, as you wandered through the leaves,
    Did you ponder unknown losses that the very Cosmos grieves?

    Was it halting? Was it flowing? Was it lilting and divine?
    Was it fearless as your native tongue, mercurial as mine?
    Would it pique a linguist's interest? Would it hold a poet's thrall?
    Do the words of one strange messenger tell us anything at all?

To those who study history, it seems a bitter curse
The loss of language terrible, the lost potential worse
Past and future stories multiplied a thousandfold,
Vanished out of history and never to be told

Were they beautiful and gentle? Would they call us friend or foe?
What wisdom did they live by? What secrets did they know?
It's a symphony reduced to what a single bird can sing
The forest lost their language, and they lost everything

    So tell me, bold explorer, as you wandered through the leaves,
    Did you ponder unknown losses that the very Cosmos grieves?

    Was it halting? Was it flowing? Was it lilting and divine?
    Was it fearless as your native tongue, mercurial as mine?
    Would it pique a linguist's interest? Would it hold a poet's thrall?
    Do the words of one strange messenger tell us anything at all?

Quote:Mr. Ikari,

You are no longer in the same universe that you grew up in. Your desire for a normal life but also a life with magic caused the divine instrumentality that maintains your universe to have a glitch. The same instrumentality also maintains other realities, and there were other people in other universes who did other things that also caused glitches. It is not completely your fault that things happened the way they did.

Most of your classmates do not remember Third Impact. This is for their own sanity. When people arrive in this universe, causality has a brief moment when it is malleable enough to adapt to the presence of the newcomers, to make it seem like they have always been present here. We simply took advantage of that effect to ease your friends' minds in accordance with what you wanted. Rei Ayanami remembers Third Impact, but she is a very special case

The adults in your group - Misato Katsuragi, Ryoji Kaji, Ritsuko Akagi, and Maya Ibuki - also remember Third Impact. If you have any difficulty in adapting to the world you find yourself in, please reach out to whichever of them you trust the most.

Quote:If they are not able to help you, then reach out to your building manager, Harley Waters. As an outsider who is familiar with your life in Tokyo-3, Harley has an unusual viewpoint that might provide new insights into your troubles.

And if that doesn't work, ask Harley to put you in contact with people in the other residences that are owned by Funtom Property Management. That will definitely change your perspective, although that runs the risk of shattering your perspective to the point that you would be unable to cope with anything, so please do not make that request without careful consideration and planning.

Please know that you are liked and respected, and in some cases you are loved. You are the star of your own story - that phrase is a cliché, but in your case it is truer than you might think. Have faith in yourself and stand tall.

Belldandy.

Previous thread is previous

(12-23-2022, 01:35 PM)GethN7 Wrote:

(12-23-2022, 10:38 AM)mrobkelk Wrote: Geth, I'm still finding pages that haven't been reverted from when gethbot replaced [[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]] at the start of the category list with  [[Category:{{subst:PAGENAME}}]] at the end of the category list.

I thought you said that you were going to fix that...

If you can give me a list of pages to fix, I can bot run that ASAP.

I'd rather not run that blind though, so a discrete number of pages (as opposed to leaving a bot on for days to scan our massive database) would be ideal.


Bob, we need new thread, this one is at it's limit.

Merry Christmas! Here's the first chapter of a new story for everyone on the forums... and only on the forums. It's a DW-sized chapter; Firefox estimates that it'll take 4-5 hours to read.

As of when I posted this chapter, I was already 119kb into the next chapter. No promises as to when it'll be finished. I'll update this header with direct links to future chapters after they're written and posted, since we don't have threadmarks on this forum. Listing in posting order, not story order:

• Chapter 1: this post
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 6 sidestory
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 5 sidestory