agallimaufryofoddments - Tumblr blog

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Woo! Been a week since the corneal erosion, and I would very much like to have restored vision back in my left eye now, deplorable such as it is.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

I had an excellent night at The Irish Inn. Arrived in time to hear two songs, then later another song—watched five different people dancing (a young person with two elderly gentlemen, with whom I am familiar, and a familiar waitress with another young woman). There was a group of about a dozen or thirteen other young people there, which is very rare; one of them was old friends with one of the young musicians, which might explain why he was able to sing a song of his own (and had harmony from an older gentleman, no less!)

(Typically the sessions at TII are closed sessions, something that only really sunk in for me after too many visits).

When I dropped a tenner into the tips bucket, one of the regular staple musicians asked if I had a song as well (this never happens. Perhaps he recognized me from my past visits & tips, but even then, I think he only asked since another outsider had just sang). I did. I've never sung the song accompanied before, but the musicians adjusted (obviously, as they always do; it helps that the song I sang was a well-known song, but also proper musicians are just that capable).

It worked out?! People applauded and complimented my voice. I was busy talking with the young people in an attempt to figure out how and why they ended up at the TII (you simply don't see such a large group of young people there). The fellow who was friends with the musician fellow was (I think) a roommate with so-and-so(s), and the woman I spoke with said she brought along her roommates, so it was a whole shindig where circles of roommates and friends coincided, I think. Wow!

Incidentally, totally unrelated, but Baccano! Vol. 1 seems to be slated for an audiobook on May 14, 2024 ($25.99)?! I feel obligated to buy it to demonstrate my support. Yen Press has certainly been dipping into audiobooks with the likes of popular titles like SAO, but I never thought YP would bother with Baccano! I don't want to hope that this means Baccano! has sold better than I thought it did—really, I haven't paid much attention to which titles YP has afforded audiobooks, maybe this is YP trying to milk more money out of an underperforming series—in any case, I do want to publicize this so that people are aware in advance.

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Ah! The reprobate.

Superfluous and slipping through all's goodwill.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Oh, right, also, if we'd like to help with the wiki (for example, editing wording and grammatical mistakes or something) what would we do about that?

That is very easy, with or without an account!

I'd recommend an account if you would like to track edits and, perhaps, if you'd like less ads (I'm not sure how effective it is these days, creating an account to evade ads, since I also use an adblocker, but you could try).

With or without an account, all you need to do is press "edit" in the top right menu of articles, and get to it! I know I've left my share of typos and grammatical mistakes.

Perhaps I can or should provide a visual demonstration through a gif or whatnot? I'd/I'll be happy to do so. I appreciate the interest! It has made me soberly reflect on the inadequate provisions I have provide re: the Policy and Manual of Style sections of the Wiki; I know I haven't updated them in a while and in fact some of my SPAG therein is embarrassing and to be desired.

Thank you, thank you, thanks very much to those who are reaching out. I know that the Wiki editing experience can seem remote, at first. I have a personal friend who, when I happened to be discussing wiki editing with her (re: the Tardis Wiki specifically), seemed surprised at the notion that anyone, including her, could edit the wiki at any moment. I was delighted and perhaps screamingly pleased to say of course anyone could.

That is the very idea of a collaborative wiki experience. Most out to be able to edit it, at any time.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

hey, i really wanna help out with the baccano wiki, what do you suggest i start with?

Hallo, hello, hullo!

I appreciate you reaching out!

I think many major characters' chronological sections leave much to be desired. Of course, this is partly my fault, for neglecting them, but still. You take a loot at, say, Huey's or Nile's or Dekurō's pages, and wham bam, there is much missing. Frankly, really, if anyone takes a cursory glance at many of the character articles on Baccano! Wiki, one will see the chronology sections are either lacking (as is in the case of the many neglected articles) or sometimes overmuch (as in the cases where I wrote far too much bloat and wasn't reprimanded).

So! Perhaps if you could add content to the pages with obvious missing content (which are many), that would be swell! With references, I should ideally hope, based on the precedence of other pages that already exist, but I can add references after the fact, of course.

Some people start out with minor things like typos and obviously inaccurate statements. If wikitext is intimidating, I can easily advise on that front! I can do anything.

If you've never edited on a wiki before, I'd say editing easy existing content is an easy way to ease yourself into it. By going into source mode and fixing typos or the like, that way you can familiarize yourself with the editor interface.

I would recommend creating a FANDOM account if you're serious about contributing to the wiki. There's the supposed promise of less ads (I sometimes wonder how firm that expectation holds, these days), but there are other benefits, too.

Perhaps, if you mouse over the menus in the top menu, you'd see the Special:Community menu, or you'd see the Community Portal menu, or the Policy menu (the subpages of which I do need to update, very embarrassing). Perhaps I need to update all of it, so perhaps it is all embarrassing.

----

At any rate, to speak the point, I do think many major characters do lack adequate chronology sections. Character articles tend to be the most visited. I understand that chronology sections can be a bit overwhelming or intimidating, since they require referencing many novels and compiling a character's actions over the course of many novels into a cohesive summary, but on the other hand, perhaps chronologies can be a bit more straightforward than, say, summaries.

In any case, know this. Many of the character articles, including the major articles, are woefully incomplete, surely in part due to my neglect.

I also know my Manual of Style hasn't been updated in a while, and I surely haven't enforced it for scaring off editors (scarce as they are).

In any case, if there is anything you think you'd be good at or would prefer to do, I can happily advise you here or on the wiki itself.

I do expect that I can trust your judgment for the most part, for if, say, you use the wiki casually and find xyz elements lacking (like, say, a character article that woefully lacks much of a chronology), you could easily contribute. There is much that is woefully lacking.

When it comes to prose, I know that mine own prose can be unfortunately blathering and...well....I ramble a lot. I know the chronology sections I wrote can be too wordisome, too detailed. I don't mine people paring them down. I hope also that others don't mind if I edit their edits, if it comes to it.

Summary: A lot of character articles still lack filled chronology sections. Some also lack Personality sections, but I totally recognize that those can be much harder due to the need to balance subjectivity with objectivity. Look at what is lacking, what you wish was there but wasn't. I guarantee you will find many things.

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I may or may not be tipsy. Please do or do not disregard my previous post.

It does still stand that Berenice Abbott's photographs of New York served as the basis for many of the image boards for Baccano!

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Incidentally, I do appreciate that some of Baccano!'s image backgrounds (to be edited re: nomenclature)are influenced by—er, honestly, duplications of—Berenice Abbott's photographs. I had a StoryLab project in the works where I vaguely mapped some Baccano! locations and compared Berenice Abbott's photographs to the anime's actual backgrounds (i.e certain backgrounds are artistic renditions of Abbott's photographs).

Honestly, I've neglected that project of mine... I hope that I do follow through with it at some point, but please now that many of the striking Baccano! backgrounds are renditions of Berenice Abbott's photographs.

Did I mention I'm tipsy? I absolutely am, otherwise I wouldn't be disclosing this since the Abbott angle and my StoryLab plans were actual angles of mine and...it doesn't matter.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Is there meaning in my existence?

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Huey vs. Szilard 1935 bad end

Disclaimer: Huey's 1935 goal, while hinted at, hasn't been explicitly confirmed; this refers to my working theory as to what it is.

As alarming as the prospect of a Huey hive mind puppeteering seven million New Yorkers sounds, consider that those seven million New Yorkers (or, if not them, their descendants) might have wound up as Szilard hive mind vessels/bodies had Szilard not perished in 1930.

Is the prospect of a 7mil-vessel-strong Szilard hive mind worse than a 7mil-vessel-strong Huey hive mind? You decide.

...No, seriously. Recall that Szilard was the one pioneering hive mind research in the first place (c.f. his descendant(s) continuing that research in the European Village). An alchemist (implied LFV) stole that research and created a practical technique from it that Huey acquired (rather, LFV and Huey collaborated in creating the Twins).

What I'm saying that In other words, Szilard was on track with hive mind research and probably could have not only figured out how to 'create' (manifest?) other-dimensional Hive Minds like Sham and Hilton BUT also how to Hive Mind his own consciousness via the drug/water, which I believe is what Huey tasks Begg with aiding him in.

Sure, it might have taken him longer than it did LFV/Huey/Begg (seeing how he has often delegated the task of compounding 'drugs' to subordinates), but in a scenario where Szilard lives, maybe it wouldn't have been so easy for LFV to steal that research.

I want you to imagine what Szilard would do once he had his "Szilard consciousness drug." Why not taint NYC's municipal water supply as Huey plans to? I imagine that Szilard might try to make all of humanity his vessels.

Granted, I imagine that Huey has not ruled this out for himself, this "first New York City, then the world!" plan. Becoming a hive mind with all of humanity (and perhaps taking over any children born to boot) would surely bring Huey far closer to some form of omniscience / Ronny as he wishes to have/be. Szilard and Huey crave knowledge. Hive minding everyone else in the world (sans Elmer for H) would give them access to humanity's knowledge.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

20 years of baccano huh

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disco elysium has convinced me by the way. the only way to have a game is to take away all of the normal, neutral options. don't let people have those. force them to contort.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Roy Maddock: Iconic Theme-Setter

Shoutout to Roy Maddock and ''Baccano!'' Volume 4 for being the first explicit refutation of a "route to happiness" in a series preoccupied with the pursuit of happiness.

Volume 04 asks: Are drugs a viable means of happiness?

Ryohgo NaritaRoy Maddock answers: No!

It's pretty much ''the'' instance where Narita overtly condemns a happiness route. This is supported by Narita's anti-drug stance in other IPs like ''Durarara!!'', where Mizuki Akabayashi is explicitly anti-drug (this makes him a good Yakuza, whey-o). Okay, all right, so he almost certainly doesn't condone sadism-induced happiness, but never mind that.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

I can't believe...I missed Baccano! Week 2023...

(A mutual kindly informed me of it in a message circa June 2023, but I did not see it until now. I regret whatever the hell I've been doing these past three years! I've been so out of it.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Incidentally, I resent the fact that most web traffic comes from mobiles in this day and age.

Incidentally, I also resent Tumblr Live being A Thing. The degradation of the mass mind continues.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

It has been a while. I spent June and July visiting relatives in Cyprus and helping my father there with some preliminary items retrieval from my grandparents’ long-dilapidated place. We boxed many records, various books (chess—my father’s, philosophy (anyone goes), economics, etc.), personal documents (letters, diaries/address books, notebooks), photographs—I found photographs of myself and my cousins in file cabinets, in the kitchen cabinets, photos of my great-grandmother and others buried under debris on the kitchen counters. Albums...

We’d bought boxes for storage, so putting much of the above into said boxes and taking those boxes to a new storage space took several trips—and there are still so many (old) books and certainly some records left and more besides left at the flat. I’m a bit terrified at what might happen to them if I’m not there—so many aging books that could be cast aside if I don’t advocate for them (and even if I advocate for them, my advocacy might still be ignored if I don’t accompany my parents back at the end of August). 

I feel that I’m obligated to return on behalf of the apartment what with my archival background; I was uneasy about the storage solution in the first place, but it’s still better than the dust-filled, climate-uncontrolled (hot as hell) abandoned scape that was/is my yiayia’s side of the house. 

Anyhoo, since then spiraled into the pathetic realm of bed-languishment, am trying to pull myself out of it (it would help if I had ADD meds, been off them since a month ago i.e. when I was in Cyprus, need to make app’t now that insurance mistake on psych’s end is sorted out).

We had a power outage on our end for the first time in a while. Used to get them semi-frequently as a kid, back when nothing was done about tree foliage overgrowth on the powerlines.

Have had some sparking’ ideas re: Baccano! 1935; various neurons have been firing now and then over ye olde Baccano! asks in my suffering inbox. It hit me recently that I haven’t creatively accomplished...anything...for quite some time (e.g. last published fanfic was 2020, don’t ask me when I last wrote down my musical improvisations on paper, in general I have been a stagnant puddle of failure for three years)—

—Well, I haven’t accomplished anything in quite some time, so, haha, I’m doing swell over here—

I’m glad for Narita. Fate/strange fake special aired on July 2 and has been supplemented with a confirmation of a future TV anime; DMDP Cour 2 is scheduled for October... If 2023 is a good year for someone, I’m glad it’s him.

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I'm realizing now that I have been contacted by a kokobot, and I am very...I'm filled with tredpidation, so I am just going to coast by, whatever or not this entails, ha ha, ha. Ha. No, but seriously, I'm tooo incompetant to be paying attention here, so...just...ingore me please, I'm very incompetant.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Well, halloo, it's been a busy time these last several months. Flew to attend a wedding of my relative the weekend of the 20th, emerged afterword with Covid, only now am I testing negative (whew!!!), which is really rather necessary considering we might be going to Athens and then Cyprus, aka my dad'ws (and thereforeee mine's) familial homebase.

My Cypriot ID expires next year, so there's some urgency I supppose in travelling now. My dad...well, there's been all this hullabaloo regaring a green card, and I suppose I ougvht not elaborate for various reasons, so... Well! Never mind me!

Alwso, though, Henry Kissinger turned 100 recently and I would I like to say that I resent this, in principle, for what we've had to ensure with Kissinger's influence re: Cyprus.