#nonograms are hard my friends

[unitheuniverse]

Hi! How are you? I hope you're doing well! I wanted to request a romantic match up for cookie run if possible! Thank you in advance and I'm sorry if it's gonna be long

My nickname is Queen, I'm afab, I go by she/her and I'm heterosexual.

When it comes to my appearance, I'm very short, 4'11'' despite being an adult, curvy and slightly soft, I have long curly brown hair left untied most of the time ( ain't ruining my sweet curls 🤭). I don't really have a style, or at least it's quite basic and I tend to prioritize comfort: when I'm at home I'm a pocket size Adam Sandler, out of the house you can usually find me with large cargo pants and a tight cropped t-shirt on top, neutral colours because I usually don't feel comfortable wearing bright and eye catching clothes

My hobbies are: drawing, taking long walks, especially with friends and when it's not too hot, maybe in a natural park, cooking, reading and puzzles (of any kind, from crosswords, to sudoku and nonograms) and learning new languages (in fact, English isn't my mother tongue so forgive me for any typos and mistakes)

Oof finding likings is hard, I'm actually quite picky and tend to be indifferent rather than satisfied with anything haha, but I for sure love spicy foods, the spicier the better. Second favourite foods are probably sweet-and-sour ones. I'm also a big fan of Metal music and rock from the 80s, animation and sunbathing on the beach when there's a nice breeze, relaxing. I'm also very fond of people who despite everything they try to be happy, even when "cringe". I'm very into slow-burn romance

About dislikes, I dislike overly salty foods and bitter foods as well, I don't like strong smells as they make me gag, and I don't really like bugs, especially if they fly. I'm not a fan of most horror movies, mostly because they feel cheaply made and don't really scare me. I don't like shooting games and I don't like people who can't catch a hint unless you are rude about it and say it fair to their faces

Personality: I'm generally just easy-going, though I tend to be quite extrovert when around others: I like to crack jokes and make people laugh, I like listening to them talking about what they like even when I don't understand half of it. It's usually because I'm generally a boring person and don't do much so I let others talk, but also I genuinely like knowing more about others. I'm quite curious even when it comes to random trivia, the weirder the better. Despite me being relatively good in social situations, people who know me better have to deal with "uglier" sides of me, like my anxiety, overthinking, how easily I swing between moods, especially how broody I can't get. I'm also not particularly smart or talented, sure I've achieved some things here and there, but overall I'm just a gal who tries hard.

I honestly don't know what I like in a partner, I usually like many people for different reasons, but I think I would appreciate honesty, regardless of my reactions. I would like them to just be a good person and try their best in most things regardless of results.

I don't really have a type tbh

I match you with…

Capsaicin Cookie

✧ Is it because you like spicy food? Maybe. Is it because, more accurately, I can imagine Cap just straight up carrying you around bridal style? Yes.

✧ Okay, on with the headcannons.

✧ It would take forever for Cap to actually admit his feelings despite being in love with you for a while. Considering the fact that he is very strong he doesn’t want to hurt you in any sort of way. So he just ends up just tucking away all of his feelings in a jar.

✧ Cap is that type of person who is probably considered much more, ‘Cringy’ due to his passionate nature. A person who truly has his heart on his sleeve.

✧ Though with that, he is willing to talk along side you. Not only willing to talk when you just want to listen or follow along with your jokes. Either way, he is willing to do it.

✧ He doesn’t really find you boring, no matter how much you believe that you are.

✧ He is the type of guy that will smash the bugs. You might just casually mention that there happens to be a bug around the area and Cap will come in with a fly swatter.

✧ You know that key piece about you just trying your hardest? Yeah that is probably one of the things that Cap loves about you.

✧ Large cargo pants and a tight crop shirt? God damn you make him want to just hug you so hard it might hurt your chest a lil.

✧ Puzzles? Yeah he’ll have you solve them. He might bring back some puzzles for you because that, “I thought of you.”

✧ He might not really understand your love of metal music all that much. However just because he can’t understand it doesn’t mean he won’t support you!

✧ Cap taking you to concerts, hopefully in the pit, where he allows you to be on his shoulders. Literally fighting off other people just for you to get a good look. (Maybe a bit of an over exaggeration. Okay maybe a lot of it)

Okay, so you and Cap were having a rough day. Mainly due to Cap getting punched in the pit. Though the both of you are just relaxing now that it’s over, a tiny bruise over his left cheek.

He slowly holds you. Slowly rubbing cheek as he tries to find some comfort in it all. Cap seems to just be a bit dizzy after the altercation. He slowly looks down at you. “You know I love you right?” Cap says.

He slowly kisses the top of your forehead leaning down as he does so.

9.2.24

[suntimeswolliw]

actually i feel like sun and moon being real would not be the best because what if they looked at my tumblr. and called me a nerd. and then id have to fight them and do you know how hard it is to fight a robot? like. even my extremely tall height wouldnt help much. so then id try to splash water on them but that wouldnt even work bc robots that take care of kids are gonna be waterproof. so then id have to call them stinky so that they get too sad to fight back and then after that i can run away and then ill feel bad and say sorry and then theyd say its okay and then wed be friends again and then theyd secretly be evil and steal my tumblr and you guys wouldnt even know cause they wouldnt know how to use tumblr and then i would yell "HEY GIVD MY PHONE BACK " >:(( and they wouldnt cause theyre playing cat nonograms and then id cry cause they beat all the nonograms and gave the cats all the furniture. but then id still have sudoku which is fun so thats okay. i have this book full of puzzles and i only use it for sudoku its so fun. i also have like 7 half finished sketchbooks OH NO MY SOUPS COLD

[autisticempathydaemon]

I hope you're still doing these aaaaaa! What song are you fixated on at the moment? What lyric or verse, and why? Aqua Regia by Sleep Token! Specifically the lyrics "my love is an animal call/cutting through the darkness, bouncing off the walls/between teeth on a broken jaw/following a bloodtrail, frothing at the maw" there is just something so VISCERAL about them it really scratches my brain

What is your Enneagram type? Enneagram Type 4 (I can't remember the wing, but I think it's 4w5 aaaaa)

Tell me about your childhood imaginary friend This probably does NOT count, I didn't really have an imaginary friend, but this question just reminded me that I used to be OBSESSED with the movie Labyrinth and used to pretend to be Sarah a LOT

Do you love gargantuan Youtube video essays, and if so, which is your favorite and why? I'm more of a fan of short-form science-y or educational videos, but does a 30 minute one count? I really love the a video essay on Ocarina of Time called "OOT - A Masterclass in Subtext"

What is your go-to way to fall asleep? ASMR for sure (I could probably count on one hand the number of times I have fallen asleep in silence over the last year and a half), but I also really like doing nonogram puzzles before bed - I've conditioned myself to get sleepy when I do them 😅

What is your favourite of Redacted’s audios, and why? I can probably fully recite "A Talk With One of Your Devious Owners" at this point - Not only is the really steady monotone tone of this one super relaxing to me, but I really like James as a character with complex and warring emotions. The cat/mouse vibe that this one introduced is very fun, and I love the way he slyly reveals all of the asset's own cards to them.

What Redacted boy holds no appeal to you, and why? I am so sorry to say it, but Caelum does not spark joy 😭 I think he is very sweet, and I love him as a character, but I have a hard time listening to those ones.

Tell me about that one book/movie/tv show you know all the words to. Oh god, suddenly I've forgotten every movie or TV show I've ever seen in my LIFE. I would say I could recite a good chunk of Elton John's biopic, Rocketman, BUT ALSO I watched Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (the one from 1971) a few days ago and was UNSETTLED by how easily I could recite that one line-by-line.

Which Redacted boy are you platonically attracted to? Like- forget dating, which dude do you want to be your best friend? I would die to be friends with Huxley. I think he would be SO easy to be around and just be yourself with. He also seems like the type of friend to listen to you actively while somebody talks over you or circle back to what you said when nobody heard you. Plus I just know one of his hugs would fix me.

Do you have a go-to thing you ramble about when you’re tired, and if so, what is it? mine is also space! I could talk for ages about space. I also have a tendency to get a second wind when I get into bed and I get rambly about whichever latest musical or fandom I'm obsessed with.

Tell me your go-to gas station and drink combo. It has been a MINUTE since I've done this but my favourite gas station snacks were always a bag of salt & vinegar kettle chips + a bottle of Arizona iced tea.

Tell me about your favorite playlist at the moment. I can't tell if this refers to Redacted Playlists or Music, so I'll answer both: I have a Spotify playlist of songs I associate with Geordi, and no matter WHAT mood I'm in, they ALWAYS hit. They are mainly about love and self-image but even the sad ones don't make me feel super sad, just kinda relaxed and seen, I guess? I relate to Geordi a lot. For Redacted playlists, Sadism's Hold is ALWAYS going to be a winner for me. I have thought about Ivan's arc probably more consecutive hours than any other character.

What’s your guilty pleasure media, and why? Definitely ASMR/Boyfriend RP type content. I've been getting more comfortable wearing merch out in the real world and I usually find it easier to just refer to it as "a podcast I'm into" 😅

And whatever else you think tells me about who you are! My favourite colour is yellow, I love thunderstorms (the more thunder/lightning) the better, and I want to absolutely eat my hands when media makes a reference to Icarus or Cannibalism as a love language.

Hmmm… interesting. You are a very interesting person who gave me a lot of interesting information to work with, and I like you a lot. You know who else would like you? Ollie.

The Free Spirit is such a fun type, because it’s all in the name; you’re so unique and alive and all over the place in the best way. Just like he did his Coworker, Ollie would so admire you, would be so in awe that someone as vibrant as you is with him. Yet, he is so good for you. You relating to Geordi makes me think you could use someone steadfast, cheerful, and unwaveringly loyal, and Ollie would definitely be that for you.

You would have such a fun, cozy home, you, Ollie, and Cattywumpus. You love space, he loves Star Trek; I bet he loves watching episodes with you and hearing your passionate diatribes on the stars and sci-fi technology. I could also see you helping him become a musical fan, since he’s such a geek in general; I think he’d really enjoy them. I also love to imagine y’all winding down for bed and him just watching you and your puzzles, confused and awestruck and adoring. (Lord knows I am awestruck; I googled nonograms, and I literally couldn’t figure out what you’re supposed to do after three webpages.)

Song:

"What's easy is right", my mother's advice/ You are the reason I never think twice/ Wherever we go, what glitters is gold/ You'll be my best friend until we grow old/ I had a nightmare (oh)/ But now that I'm not scared

Though I don’t necessarily agree with that mother's advice, I do think it fits since it would be so easy for y’all. I think his easygoing, affable nature along with your shared interests means you’ll not just be a good couple but great friends, and that’s the ticket to a comfy, loving home and life with your cat.

Runner-Ups:

Your love for science and space makes Anton a fun choice for one of your runner-ups; I think he’d have the most fun listening to you infodump in addition to having engineering experience to contribute. Vega is a runner-up based solely on what you said about cannibalism as a love language, because I spend a lot of time around @gingerbreadmonsters and could not associate that trope with anyone else.

note: thank you for waiting ☀️

Read this post and send me an ask if you’d like a match-up of your own! 💌

[nonogram-hell]

I think nonograms were made to hurt me specifically

they do that, yeah...

It's a definitely a lot to take in at first! Also, apparently sometimes (using a solver) the puzzles can appear as "unsolvable", mainly due to "multiple possible answers" in some rows. Which means that, you have to make a guess, I think.... in a minigame with limited tries..... how fun!!!!! (no.)

And if you don't use a solver, you'll have to figure that out the hard way... ahahaha.......... 🥹 (I'm not observant enough to tell whenever that happens w/ the number hints)

Welp, despite it all, practice mode is a very nice addition at least! I sort of wish it gave you unlimited "keys"/tries during a hunt, though? I dunno.

Uhh, as for tips with nonograms (I'm really bad at giving advice but I still want to at least try):

This is a bit obvious, but the flags/triangles are your best friend here! You can't open a space with a flag on them, so it's great to map out all the "invalid" spaces first so you don't accidentally open them!

Here's an example! I've double checked the numbers, and left all the correct spaces unmarked, so I can freely open all the correct b-

oh.

a h e m

yeah, uh. I think this was one of those "multiple answer" ones. Anyways. In this situation, I'll just have to look back and readjust my flags to take the incorrect space into account....

And tada! It's done!

Now, back to what I was sayin...

Always keep a look out for rows/columns that are already "solved", so you can safely flag and open the correct spaces! And from there, you can more easily pinpoint the answers for the rest of the puzzle!

Here's an example:

Red, black and white mark rows/columns that have already been solved; no need to guess where the incorrect ones are!

(If you manage to get solved "lines" for the top and bottom rows, or far left and right columns, it makes finding everything else a LOT easier!)

The green marks are of course, incorrect spaces. But notice how I've marked some spots that seem to do nothing with the white area?

I'm using the number hints of the rows on the left to help pin down some more incorrect spaces- and with that, the second column has also been solved!

From there on, you can also solve the third column, and then continue placing flags until you've cleared the whole thing! Always be sure to double check the hints and flagged spaces though, just in case you missed something.

...i'm not sure what else to write here, so I hope this helped at least a tiny bit? I initially used actual nonogram sites to practice, but I'm sure as your start solving more and more nonograms you'll steadily get better! Just take things one step at a time!

Or use a solver. That works too! No shame in it, really.

[clownykid]

hi !! i havent seen anyone else talking abt these app games but i think theyre super fun and theyre some of my favorite games to play when i was regressed !!!

hello kitty friends is kinda like the candy crush style games where you match icons n stuff but its all sanrio!!

its really cute and fun !! some of the levels r kinda hard but its still very fun !!

also meow tower!! its so so cute its a nonogram (these kinda puzzles !!) game !!

and you get cans of tuna to buy furniture for cats that live in this apartment!! the more you fill up their rooms the better your relationships with the cats !! to avoid spoilers ill just show you the first one <3

theyre super cute and fun and both free !! i hope you enjoy them :3 (i have an android so im not 100% sure if its available on apple!!)

[splashink-games]

Featuring the Sawayama Z5 Powerlance!

Last Call BBS is the last game (as of writing) of Zachtronics! Puzzle through D&D, food, circuits, biology and more in this 8 game adventure!

So I was going to 100% this game. I started with Solitare and Kabufuda Solitare. I did all of Food Court and ChipWizard. I'm halfway through Dungeons & Diagrams and Forbidden Path. I was saving STEED FORCE for last.

But HACK*MATCH. HACK*MATCH. It's the absolute bane of my existence. I absolute, positively cannot play that game to save my life. And there go my chances of 100%-ing the game.

That doesn't mean that this isn't an absolute banger collection of games. I'm just subpar at HACK*MATCH.

Anyways, disclaimer. As with my experience with other extremely difficult puzzle games, I'm not beyond looking at hints or solutions when I've hit a hard wall. I'm not here to frustratingly ruin my experience because I'm too stubborn to get help when I'm stuck. If a puzzle is too hard for me, I look to hints and solutions.

The puzzle-centric games in this collection (Food Court, Forbidden Path, ChipWizard, Dungeons & Diagrams) are fantastically designed. Loved learning the mechanics. Loved bashing my head against the wall before looking for clues. I won't go through each of these games, but I will touch upon Food Court and D&D real quick.

Food Court is most like SHENZEN I/O (a previous Zachtronics game), where you've got parts that do certain things and you need to accomplish set tasks. Of the puzzle games, this one was my favourite. The theme is cool. I had to think very hard about things and I was more stubborn than usual about solving these on my own.

Dungeons & Diagrams is like a complicated picross/nonogram, like Murder by Numbers. It's a super interesting version of the genre that adds new rules to what's already a game about thinking "where does this lead next". My second favourite puzzle game of the bunch. I like picross and I'm currently suffering from Dungeons & Dragons withdrawal and this games kind of satisfies both.

Here comes STEED FORCE Hobby Studio! My absolute favourite game of the collection. It is the most tedious, most focus-intensive, most eye-straining thing in this game. But good lord do I love it. It's the peak of my experience with Last Call BBS and makes the time and money worth it.

It's relaxing. I don't have to think. I clip the mech parts and attach them together. Then I take the mech apart, piece by piece, to paint them in almost pixel-perfect fashion before putting it back together. When it's complete, I look in awe at my masterpiece before exporting a shining gif of it and sending it to my friends.

There is, in fact, a narrative to this game. Not that I paid too much attention to it. I was here for puzzle games and a good time, not for reading paragraphs upon paragraphs of text. But for the amount that I did pay attention to, I knew this game was written in a well-thought out way that drip-fed you stories about how each game came into your friend's possession.

It's a super cool way of storytelling and one I'll keep in mind.

In terms of art and music, the game goes full 90s aesthetic on you. Very fun presentation. It makes the game simple so you can focus on thinking hard.

Last Call BBS is a fantastic collection of games, that I believe any puzzle-lover should pick up. Just stay wary of that HACK*MATCH game unless you're good at it.

As always,

Enjoy gaming!

[coldfarteditch]

Do u have good picross app recommendations? I'm reaching the end of Luna Story 3 and every other Picross app makes me nervous for no reason

I personally don't play many Picross games on my phone because I'm allergic to ads and dislike playing with touch controls. However my BF plays a decent amount of them. Right now he's playing Deer My Friend and he seems to enjoy it. I've also seen him play Meow Tower which looks cute but the pixel art in its puzzles ranges from decent to "I don't think you understand what pixel art is". Your mileage may vary.

It looks like Pictoquest is purchasable as an app, which I played on the switch. The puzzles aren't hard but you have to solve them while dealing with rpg-esque gimmicks. It's fun but I wish it was just a teeny bit longer.

For games that are not on mobile, you can't go wrong with the Picross S series. It's made me super picky about what nonogram games I play because it has basic QoL features that so many others games don't have and I don't understand why??? I also have gotten to a level of picross skill where the only grid sizes I really get excited for are 30x40 and 40x40, and this is the only game where I've seen them.

Murder by Numbers is pretty good as well but it's also not on mobile. Gameplay is not as polished as Picross S but the art and music make up for it.

[mikumutual]

can i ask what you didn't like about mrder by numbers? i wasn't rly into it either, but i can't pinpoint what bothered me about it

ohh yeah sure, i finished it a while ago so i'm not sure i can collect my thoughts fully, i might forget something or mix things up, but ummm - puzzles got irritating. i'm good at nonograms, i like them, but when every single puzzle is the same it gets tedious. plus the squares don't autofill when you finish a row or column, which is annoying. these might be forgivable if you didn't have to do a puzzle for Every Single Clue - uninteresting characters. i didn't feel any personal attachment to honor, which is rare for me with protagonists. everyone seemed poorly written, with half the characters' personalities being One Gimmick and nothing deeper than that. think the artsy director girl who only speaks in riddles, or the abusive ex husband who keeps popping up to restate how much he sucks, or the gruff detective with a personal connection to the protagonist and no identity beyond that - along those lines, not enough plot. the ongoing plot regarding scout was interesting enough, but he didn't have to make any hard choices. honor didn't really make any new connections, just the same friends she had before the game started. i feel like a romance subplot would've been nice, or Any ongoing subplot at all, because the storyline of each individual case wasn't interesting enough to keep me entertained. plus the villains were all one-note. "oooh the intimidating guy is secretly in with the criminals" okay great obviously - copaganda? i know it's hard in the detective genre because if you want your character to be investigating legally, they have to be involved with the police, but like. the protagonist's dad being a dead cop? and the gruff detective mentor being his old coworker? and honor's previous career being an actor playing a detective??? i dunno, it just doesn't sit right with me - ordinarily i love robot characters but scout just did not do it for me. i like his cheerful disposition. i like that he had a dark past as a killing machine and never wanted to let it happen again. but the plot didn't go hard enough, every other character was boring, and the writing was barely entertaining. all he's got going for him is "you fucked up a perfectly good robot is what you did, look at it, it's got ptsd". also i think they bring up the discussion of gender in robots like Once in passing and never address it again which, for such a pro-lgbt game, i found annoying - i did like certain things about the game, of course. i didn't dislike the art. the mechanic of scanning as scout was pretty good, dampened only by my seething irritation that with every clue i'd have to do another fucking puzzle. the music is also good, especially the intro animation which i find cute. the plot of each chapter did make sense and an overarching story did tie up at the end, with some heightened drama at the close. i also thought that a parade float, shaped like a giant high heel, crashing into a gay bar was incredibly funny. if there was anything else i liked i don't remember it in conclusion murder by numbers is an incredibly mediocre game that, if you ask me, is straight up bad. i will not be replaying it and i will not recommend it to anyone

[sasquapossum]

[image: black and white drawing of two wolves, superimposed so that the muzzle of the left-looking one is also the muzzle of the right-looking one in a slightly different pose. It’s easy to flip between seeing one or the other, but hard to see both at once. Credit to https://www.moillusions.com]

I have Schrödinger’s ADHD, and maybe Schrödinger’s Autism as well. Both there and not there, the “truth” for any moment only determined after the fact. For a while now, I’ve been thinking (and occasionally telling others) that I don’t know whether I have either condition or not. In a way it doesn’t matter, because if I do then I clearly have a robust set of coping strategies as well. It certainly does run in my family, especially the men on my father’s side. I have an uncle who was profoundly autistic as a child, but when he was about 20 he must have hit on some way to compensate (with no help from family or therapists so kudos to him) and has totally “passed” ever since. Evaluations are expensive, so why bother if it’s not affecting me too much? Another metaphor that kind of works for the is the good old “two wolves” only in my case it’s ND Wolf and NT Wolf. (I love that image above and might try to get it on a shirt BTW.) They both exist and will always exist. I can choose which one to feed, but the other never goes away. Here are some examples of how this has played out in my life.

In my work, I have gone through periods of what I (vaguely) think of as “heads down” mode - days to weeks of such intense focus on a particular problem that I barely eat, sleep, etc. It was kind of something I could control, but also kind of not: the pull was always there, and I knew I would eventually succumb whether or not I found a productive outlet. Is that ADHD behavior (or perhaps bipolar), or is it just “normal” variation?

When I had a child, I became reluctant to go into a mode where I shut everyone else out, because you can’t (or anyway shouldn’t) shut out your child. Perhaps that’s a warning for my ND friends who might have kids themselves. I might not have too many words to describe it, but it’s a pretty intense struggle.

Similarly, when I retired it was because I just didn’t want to devote those chunks of my life to others’ benefit. I still get a bit carried away, e.g. with archery or resin crafting, but it feels better even though it’s arguably less satisfying intellectually (the programming problems I was known for solving were hard).

When I wore out my second stairclimbing machine and decided that I should find a new kind of exercise, I eventually settled on running. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stick with it unless I absolutely geeked out on it, so I did. You would not believe how much time I’ve spent thinking about gear and form and routes, but without that I would have quit years ago.

There are other things I carefully avoid because I know they would exceed my ability to pull out. That’s why I don’t play MMOs. I’ve seen them totally suck in my brother (twice) and don’t want that for myself. I’ve seen the same with my wife and Killer Sudoku or Nonograms. I know I have to pace myself with getting into a new TV or book series, or some kinds of video games, because I’ll get totally absorbed into studying the lore underneath. Even in retirement, I don’t feel like I can afford that.

When I replay a social interaction in my mind (itself probably a “not quite normal” thing to do apparently) I experience an odd kind of duality. One moment I’m hyper-aware of how I was consciously thinking and planning my way through it as someone with autism might do. The next moment I’m hyper-aware of how I was handling it intuitively, as a neurotypical person might. Flip, flop, flip, flop. In reality I suppose both elements were present, and everyone has at least a little of both, but I can choose which one to see almost exclusively and that feels weird.

In many ways, these tendencies have been positive for me. “Heads down mode” was great for my career. My obsessive behavior around running has been good for my health. It’s something I have to manage about myself, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Neurodivergence is a different ability (or several), not a disability. Its existence should be recognized and respected, not “fixed” or condemned.

I’m not particularly going anywhere with this, really. Just thinking out loud, and I guess crafting long posts like this (like the blog posts I wrote for many years) is another example of not-quite-NT behavior. I just have to, y’know? It’s like an itch I have to scratch, sooner or later. Usually I post the results, but also you wouldn’t believe how much time I’ve spent on stuff that’s still in my drafts. I’ll just close with a couple more images (artists unknown this time) that also illustrate the kind of duality I’m talking about. Enjoy!

[tears-of-boredom]

I was doing nonograms, and as my brain does when no music or video is playing to focus on, it created scenarios. One of them was how I'd accidentally drop my phone on someone's head from the second story of the con building, and I'd try to get to the person as fast as i can to apologise and ask how bad the damage is (on their head). And in the unrealistic meet cute version I'd feel so bad and be so certain that my phone hit terribly hard, that I wouldn't stop asking them if i could do something to make it better, and then the person would be in a good enough mood to say some cheesy shit like "if you're so worried, why dont you join us so you can keep an eye on my condition"(cause of course theyd have a group they're with). And I'd feel so guilty for joining them but also the suggestion was worded so it sounded like they want me to join them, so I would. And id warm up to them and at the end of the day they'd ask for my contact info and we'd become friends.

The more realistic version would be that they're pretty pissed that I dropped my phone on their head, so they'd just tell me to go away.

The most realistic is that I would freeze on the spot and not even rush downstairs. I'd just stare at the person and maybe theyd notice me but id just be so horrified that my fight or flight kicks in and i just go hide somewhere until i think enough time had passed that they'd have taken my phone to the lost and found, and I'd go there and get it, and feel so awful for avoiding blame that I'd have to leave. Or i just freeze completely and the person decides to come upstairs and find who dropped the phone, and I'd pretend like i didnt notice that it dropped and just look like a baby deer who was approached by a scary human, because I'm really afraid of conflict.

Yeah another scenario was about that Liza Koshy video where she slaps the target mirror against her ass and it breaks. I imagined how you would escape that scenario without having to pay for it. You'd just tell any employee you happen across that youre going to pay for it, and then go to the changing room to "try on clothes" and leave the broken mirror there.

[calliopeisamused]

i’m in the middle of solving gr1dstuck and the only thing ive learned is that im bad at puzzles

[antimony-medusa]

9, 15, and 25 :D

Ask game let's GO.

9. Do you believe in ghosts? This isn’t about writing I just wanna know

A couple years ago, I was trying to live through a horrific heat wave, with mild to moderate success. I was having trouble sleeping, and at oh-god-o-clock in the morning I stumbled out of bed and went to the bathroom to get some water, not flipping the lights. I saw some bit of movement that stepped out of a shadow to tail me, and in the dark, without my glasses, I saw light gleam from the streetlight onto the eyes of something on the table. It was cooler in the kitchen, which was nice.

Ah, the cat, I thought. I finished my water, vaguely waved at the cat, and went back to bed, my heels being dogged by the shadow again. Flop back into bed, face down, and finally, the heat broke, so I could sleep. In the morning I realized we didn't have a cat.

So obviously I don't believe in ghosts.

15. Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends?

Textbooks yes, I paid for those suckers and I will deface them. NO? WHAT? I take showers, hard to read in the shower. I am staring suspiciously at those who do these things, but uh, it takes all types to make a world?

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

Mafia AU Technoblade is obsessed with Nonograms.

[Weird Writer Ask Game]

[cecilspeaks]

162 - “Alpha”

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Fear makes the heart grow louder. And death makes the heart grow flowers. Welcome to Night Vale.

Amelia Anna Alfaro was always the best at everything. On the day she was born, she was named the healthiest baby at Night Vale General Hospital. The doctors had never seen a healthier baby. “What a healthy baby,” they said from behind a bullet proof two-way mirror, as they operated the robotic arms that carefully held the infant aloft. The doctors high-fived each other, missing slightly. The trick, by the way, is to keep your eye on the other person’s elbow. That or glue high-powered magnets to each person’s hand. And all of the nurses cheered from dozens of feet down the hallway, where they were playing with a standard Tarot deck, common in most neonatal units. This cheering was unrelated to Amelia’s birth. The nurses had drawn the ten of swords, which is everyone’s favorite card. It features a relaxed man receiving acupuncture by a river.

Amelia learned to walk at 4 months, and to talk at 6 months. She read Plato’s “Republic” for the first time at age 4. She taught herself German and began to write sonnets in that language at age 7. At age 10, she won her first engineering competition after designing a concrete canoe that could float even on the most turbulent water. There is no body of water in Night Vale, so she had to prove her work using a software she wrote that generated three-dimensional models to corroborate her advanced mechanical physics formulas. She even won the state spelling bee five years in a row, from ages 9 to 13. Her streak was only broken when the spelling bee was canceled, after the sponsors lost their dictionary.

Amelia was always the best, and her mother knew it. Her mother was proud of her daughter, or rather, her mother was proud of herself for producing such a daughter. Or rather, she was proud of both, in a way that was difficult for them to untangle. Amelia’s mother was named Yvette. Yvette could not afford much for her daughter. She worked long hours to earn the respect of her bosses, which (-) [0:04:32] her promotions and larger paychecks, but Yvette had hit the glass ceiling. She did not want this limitation for her daughter. Her daughter would need to be smarter, more talented, and more driven than she. Yvette wanted Amelia’s value to the world to be so great that no one could deny her success.

Yvette recognized Amelia’s specialness and pushed hard to make her even more special, signing Amelia up for athletics and adult learning classes and piano lessons. Amelia sometimes pushed against this. “Mother, I don’t want to” was met with, “But you will, Amelia.” “Why?” was met with, “Because I said so.” “I hate you for this” was met with, “You will love me for it later.”

Begrudgingly, Amelia fulfilled her mother’s wishes. It wasn’t because she understood her mother’s motivation to secure her child a better life, nor was it because Amelia did not have the stomach to fight back. No, Amelia did it because it all came so easy. She was a black belt, a sharp shooter, an academic decathlon champion. She wrote her first novel at age 12, it was called “A Golden Age for Parachuting”, in which an all-Jewish female parachute team wins Olympic gold in 1936 Berlin in front of Adolf Hitler. In the publisher’s rejection letter, the editor said the novel was “immaculately written, however parachuting stories are out of vogue. Do you have anything about magical baseball players?” Amelia did. It was a novel called “One Last Swing for the Tuesday Boys”, but she had written it in German and did not have time to translate the “Dienstag Jungen” manuscript, because she was currently taking a course on bird husbandry.

Yvette enrolled the teenage Amelia in night classes at the community college, where she took English 113, “Sonnets are for lovers”; structural engineering 212, “Buttress is a funny word”; and meteorology 301, “Clouds y’all, amirite?” She earned all As and scores for college credit before she even graduated high school. None of these challenges were difficult for Amelia. She was the best at everything.

But her life was not perfect. Because of the voices. It was the voices that made life hard for Amelia. From birth, she heard the constant chatter of dozens of people. None of the voices spoke directly to  Amelia, they just talked and talked about their lives, and Amelia was afraid of the voices and what the voices might imply about herself. She found solace in puzzles, crosswords, nonograms, acrostics, cryptics, Sudoku, which I think is the one where you have to catch a bunch of marbles with a lever operated hippopotamus. Her mother hated Amelia’s puzzle vice. If she caught Amelia doing puzzles, Yvette would make Amelia go practice archery or write poetry or at least listen to classical music. Amelia’s favorite was Van Cliburn’s masterful 1961 record of Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto nr 13: Knuckles on the Black Keys”. When she was thinking through the solution of a puzzle, the voices did not speak to her. All was silent. It was her only time of peace. It was the only time her body could rest and curl up comfortably into her own thoughts. Anything that took her away from her logic problems including music, no matter how soothing, invited the voices back into Amelia’s thoughts.

Amelia was accepted to several top colleges across the country, including MIT, Stanford, Rice and The University of What It Is, but she wanted to stay near her home town and her family, so she went to State. Hey, that’s where my brother-in-law went! Go State! [chuckles] Ahem. She was elected the youngest president of the student body ever at age 17, and graduated valedictorian two years later. Her friends, her professors, her mother all knew the world was Amelia’s. She could become poet laureate or a senator or a supreme court justice or a quantum physicist. But she became none of those. This is not to say Amelia was not successful or that she amounted to nothing. It is to say, the semantics of success were her own and no one else’s. Amelia became an air traffic controller. The voices never told Amelia to become an air traffic controller, they were never that specific. The voices did not tell her to do anything, they simply talked about first dates, about  apartment hunting, about their grandmothers’ improved health, about a bad movie they sort of loved. None of the voices talked directly to her, it was simply as though she overheard conversations from lives lived somewhere else. Other people and their quotidian hopes and worries and interests. She tried seeing therapists and psychiatrists. She tried medication to stop the voices, but nothing worked. Eventually she decided they were not harmful voices and that she was not dealing with schizophrenia. She simply heard people talking at all hours about all things, having nothing to do with her. And they never told her to become an air traffic controller. Amelia chose her own career, her own path. Others though the reason was that it was the fist job opportunity to present itself for her. Maybe it was her admiration of aircraft, maybe a moral sense of serving humanity through public safety and comfort. In fact, it was none of these reasons. But it should not be surprising to know that Amelia was very good at air traffic control. She was calm, clear, and efficient. The Night Vale international airport, although when Amelia started it was just a commuter hub, has never had a high volume of plane traffic and almost all of those are departures. There are very few arrivals. My husband Carlos, he’s a scientist and he is also very good at his job, tells me that it’s impossible to have far more departures than arrivals, but I told him, not everything has to make sense all the time.

So, in some ways, air traffic control in Night Vale was easier for Amelia than just about any other class or job or task she’d ever attempted. It appeared from the outside to be far below her capabilities. She held that job for 20 years, even taking over as president of the Night Vale chapter of air traffic controllers’ union. In 2004, she was featured in the cover of “Afformative”, a monthly trade magazine for air traffic controllers. The headline of the article was “You’re cleared for success”. In 2006, she was asked to deliver the keynote speech at the annual Roger Con, a conventional for air traffic controllers and fans of air traffic control. It’s a huge deal, held every year in Orlando. People dress like their favorite airline pilots and wait in long lines for autographs from top flight attendants. There are even panel discussions about everything from the best textiles for seat cushions to secret first class meal offerings. Amelia was the best at what she did. She probably would have been the best poet laureate or senator, but this was the path she chose. She chose this path because of the voices, not from what they said, but what they didn’t say. When Amelia was in the control tower, when she was communicating with captains and co-pilots and navigators, her head was clear. All was silent. It was like those many nights, sneaking a copy of the crossword from the newspaper on the kitchenette and solving it by flashlight under her covers. She became an air traffic controller to be by herself, to become her own person. Her mother was disappointed, but loved her in spite of it. Her professors were let down, but still had many fabulous of their greatest student. Her friends were just happy she was happy.

Things changed on June 15, 2012, when Delta flight 18713 made radio contact. In her tall tower, at her tiny airport, in the middle of a vast desert, in the middle of the American Southwest, an airplane appeared on Amelia’s radar. It was carrying 143 passengers and 6 crew members and was flying from Detroit to Albany over the great lakes of the American Northeast. It appeared briefly, the green dot blinking in and out of existence like the sun glinting off a water ripple. It was almost unnoticeable. But everyone noticed it. Later, Amelia was the only one who admitted to noticing it. The radio transmission was equally brief, a surge of static and only one word, difficult to discern but she heard it. “Alpha” was the single word. The letter A in the Nato alphabet. It was garbled, so maybe it wasn’t that word, maybe it was some more adult variation of “Oh fudge”. Alpha. Oh fudge. It was unclear. Amelia requested identification of the aircraft. She requested further communication, but nothing came. As soon as it had squawked, it had gone silent. But while the radio communication was silent, the voices were not. On June 15, 2012, upon hearing a word that sounded like “alpha”, these myriad conversations returned. No one else in the tower could hear them, but Amelia Anna Alfaro could. And for the first time in her life, she began to speak back to them. Everyone else in the tower could hear that. The voices did not cease. The voices continued for days and days and Amelia tried to talk back with them. As one voice said: “I have an interview on Monday,” Amelia would ask “for what job” or if a voice said, “We went to Palm Springs on vacation,” Amelia would say, “Did you also travel out to the Salton Sea?” But over and over, no response. The voices did not affect the quality of Amelia’s work, but it did affect the perceived quality of her work, and her colleagues became uncomfortable with and distrusting of Amelia.

A month later, Amelia heard that word again from one of the voices. “Alpha”. The same voice that radioed in June. But upon hearing it again, she realizes that they didn’t say “alpha” at all. What they said, coming up.

But first The weather.

[“Skinchanger” by Skeptic skepticdeath.bandcamp.com]

The voices said “Alfaro”. The word had been truncated just as the airplane’s appearance in Night Vale had been truncated. The voice saying the word was the captain of the aircraft, and he had been trying to tell Amelia something. The pilot was trying to tell Amelia that he knew her, had always known her since her birth. He didn’t know how he knew her, just that he did, and he wanted to tell her he had found her. And she should find him. “Where are you,” Amelia asked the captain. “No Where,” the voice said. “Did you land?” Amelia asked. “Yes,” the voice said. “Were there injuries?” Amelia asked. “Minor,” the voice said. “Do you hear the other voices too?” Amelia asked. “Yes,” the captain said. “I’m with them right now. Find us, Amelia.” “Where are you?” Amelia asked again, louder, more scared than before. “No Where,” the voice said, not like the vague concept of in no place but No Where, two words capitalized like the name of a specific place. Amelia felt a tap on her shoulder. It was another air traffic controller. “Uh, boss wants to see you, Amelia,” they said. But Amelia did not go to see the boss. She knew. She knew her time in the tower was done. She grabbed her belongings and walked to the elevator, out across the tarmac to a shuttle to a parking lot and into her car, and no one saw her again. Her friends said she always talked about going back to school to get an advanced degree. Maybe she went to Stanford. Or Rice, or The University of What It Is. Other friends said she had lost all touch with reality, talking to people who were not there, and maybe her mother checked Amelia into the Night Vale asylum.

Yvette says Amelia knew too much, that agents from a vague yet menacing government agency had been to their house and that Amelia must have been taken to a secret location. Representatives from the National Safety and Transportation Bureau in Washington, DC, came to Night Vale two months ago to investigate the disappearance of flight 18713. They are on an undercover mission inside the Night Vale asylum right now, on a tip from Sheriff Sam, to discover more clues into this mystery. Perhaps Amelia is in there too. But I don’t think so. I think she went to find the plane. I think the voices were the passengers on Delta 18713. I think she set out looking for them. Perhaps wandering the desert, the great No Where, to find the people who had been a part of her life since birth.

Amelia. Anna. Alfaro. was always the best at everything. And if anyone will find the plane, she will.

Stay tuned next for our new investment advice show “Billionaire Roulette”.

And as always, Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Love means never having to say “you’re a werewolf”.

[mcrmadness]

I’m at the point where I’m being really annoyed by mornings again. Or more like, that particular time of the time when I wake up because I know most people would say that 2pm is no longer a morning... Anyway, I just get up every morning to do absolutely nothing just to go to sleep eventually again. And now each “morning” is boring af, I get up, brush my teeth and come to my computer, browse Tumblr and don’t know what to do. For weeks I’ve been watching certain types of videos from YT meanwhile playing with nonograms or jigsaw puzzles online because it helps me to concentrate as I don’t like watching videos of people talking, it’s super boring, but that way I can still listen to them without feeling like losing my mind because of being so bored. But now neither nonograms nor jigsaw puzzles feel thay interesting NOR do the videos I’ve been watching. There’s really not much new stuff, just the same topics done by many many people and I can’t watch that for too long before I get bored with the topics too, because I already know enough. I’ve also been going through all videos on so many different channels and either there’s nothing interesting anymore or I literally have watched everything. So now every day after being done with browsing Tumblr, I try to find something to watch from youtube but currently my recommended page keeps offering me the same videos over and over again, the same topics, and also lots of videos I have already watched. I’d love to see something very random that isn’t particularly linked to my watch history but no, all videos like that are something to do with the goddamned crona hashtags and they’re already driving me crazy because I’m so fed up with all this corona stuff. And I have made several posts about this already and how I hate the superficial fake-happiness in all those videos where people try to come up with stuff for people to do so that they’d just stay at home. I’m staying at home 24/7 even without corona, so can’t you just NOT show those recommendations for me??? Oh I wish Youtube had some sort of tag blacklisting system...

But yeah, apart from all that, I’ve been dealing with my existential crisis a lot lately too. Not that it’d have ever went anyway in the first place, but just having these partly existential crisis, partly dissociation/derealization moments that I don’t know if I’m ever going to get rid of. Just been thinking about my fave band (dä) a lot lately and how stressed out they make me all the time. I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. I’m not the best with surprises but I’m okay with them, but what REALLY makes (and has always made) me distressed is waiting. Knowing that something is about to happen but you have no idea when and how and possibly what. That is what makes me so distressed. It’s like with ghosts and paranormal things too: I’m not afraid of ghosts and I actually do like them a lot, but I’m afraid of being startled and waiting for something that might come as a surprise to me. (This is why I don’t watch horror films - jumpscares are much worse when I know there will be some.) And I’ve started to hate the weekdays from Monday to Friday because I feel like I can rest only on weekends because maybe those guys won’t do anything during weekends. During other days anything is possible. And now they’re gonna open their webshop on Friday and it’s causing me SO MUCH PRESSURE here. And it’s again not that I’d be worried of what it is, but worried of the fact I am waiting for something now but I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I always need to be in control and ahead of everything, whenever I go to a new place, I need to have a look around the whole thing before I can do anything, and I really wouldn’t like the idea of being dropped right in the middle of action. That just makes me so overwhelmed and I start to panic.

To the existential crisis - I’ve also been wondering about myself and why dä? Imagine if the band was something else but this. And the fact this band is a “once in a lifetime” thing. There’s never been another band like them and never will be. Which is crazy and blows my mind. And this is where I start to dissociate with derealization because I somehow still feel like everything is a movie or a video game. I’m constantly thinking like “oh maybe in my next life I’ll be born earlier so I can become their fan in the 80s” or “maybe in my next life I’ve learnt from my mistakes in this life”. I basically feel like my life is like a video game that I can restart whenever I have played through the story and do different choices then. And some days it hurts so much to be dropped back on ground. But I will just climb up again and escape into my small bubble where things are not like that.

Also this other day I was wondering the age thing again. I’ve been having age crisis at least since I turned 25 because then I was closer to 30 than 20. And I’m turning 29 in less than a month and that had been so terrible thought for so long but now I’m slowly getting used to it. Even tho I still wish I was 19 or something. But at the same time it feels really absurd because I feel like... ten years ago I was 19, and that doesn’t sound that much but I still feel like last year was 2010. And me wishing I was 19 again... well when I was 19, most of my friends were not even teenagers yet. So that means I would not know those people. But then I feel like I’ve been wasting the last 10 years of my life. And if I was smart, I’d realize that I actually have not been wasting those years - I have been working with horses, studying horses, graduated and I’ve grown a pretty good knowledge over what it is to take care of and even train horses. I have got and learnt so much. But still I feel like I should have done that a lot earlier than what I did. But if I did it a lot earlier, then I wouldn’t have had work experience worth over 10 years. Which is why I wish I could have just stopped time for the time I was studying and continue then after I was done. Because I’m literally in the middle of an age crisis because I’m turning 29 but I basically feel like I’m near my end already. It’s like what my friend told me when I was 22 and started having similar thoughts: “You sound like you just discovered what people normally discover only when they turn 50.” Yeah, I’ve literally been having mid-life crisis since I was 22.

For the first time even I experienced some derealization moments was when I was 19 and working at a stable and I was cleaning up the stable and taking out a wheelbarrow full of horse shit. It just suddenly hit me that what I’m doing here, makes absolutely no difference. And I suddenly dived into this horrible state where I felt like nothing I do, matter because nothing will last. Like, why should I create memories if I’m gonna lose them anyway when I die? That really made it so hard to enjoy anything because I was just constantly obsessing with the thought of not having my memories forever and how everything felt so, so damn pointless. I don’t care if people know my name or not, I live for myself anyway so it felt really unfair that I should actually live here and do things and create memories if they are going to be taken away from me eventually just because everyone has to die. And I have always had really bad relationship with death. I remember being probably 7 years old and seeing something on TV about death and cemeteries and it caused me to have one of my earliest anxiety/panic attacks and I was literally sitting on the toilet floor hugging the toilet because the idea of death made me so, so sick. Which is why I then have been avoiding the topic as much as I can and I’ve been blocking those thoughts and stuff and why I love every time death is portrayed as non-permanent in fiction (my all-time favorite is Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice). Or when there’s some sort afterlife. Which is why I’ve been obsessed with ghosts and grim reaper and whatnot in my past. It just comforts me so much because I find it so scary to think that everything would just stop existing. I can kinda imagine that... emptiness that happens when nothing is anymore and it just feels so overwhelming and scary that I nearly start to panic from the thought alone. As a kid, I’ve been having panic attacks from the thought of the sun going out, a meteor hitting the earth, or just pretty much anything that would mean almost instant death. I feel like I probably developed derealization also for this type of fears. If the idea of death has made me physically sick at the age of 7, no wonder why my system decided to come up with dissociation to protect my mind. I always feel like when I keep having these deep thoughts, that my brains are on the edge of overheating (figuratively), it just goes so over my head but at the same time I’m understanding it, which then triggers dissociation because it’s too much to deal with.

I also have a medical trauma from when I was 3 years old, which is probably the core for all the dissociation too. It was an open heart surgery which pretty much means being half-dead already as you’re connected to the machines that keep up your breathing and blood circulation while the doctors fix your heart. Because of that, I find the thought it anesthesia highly disturbing. I know people undergo surgeries all the time for whatever reasons but I feel like I could never ever do one again because I’m so afraid of that emptiness becoming permanent. I can’t remember a thing from my surgery nor how I went to sleep or anything like that, but as an adult, I just find that so scary and I’m always really scared whenever I know people who are going to have anesthesia because what if they don’t come back? I know trans people who don’t have other option but to undergo some surgeries and I’m like... I’m nonbinary afab and I’d be happy to donate my own boobs away any minute but I could never ever go to a surgery from my own will. I rather just fantasize of a bodyshape that I don’t have than would actually do something about it because for me that would just not be an option. I sometimes wonder that if I had dysphoria or if I was trans, would I still feel the need for surgeries? Or what if I have dysphoria but I just don’t see it, because I can’t do anything about it so I just escape into my inner world and try not to think about myself? I do have some sort of body dysMORPHIA, tho. But I don’t know if I hate my body or if I just see it wrongly. But whatever the case, I try not to think about it too much, I avoid mirrors and spend most of time in my inner world. Because the outter world is too overwhelming and depressing to deal with and my existential crisis can’t take it.

[humansoulsarg]

Recap - artifact555 video solve

In the early days of this blog, some of the solves weren’t documented as cleanly in one post as has become the pattern. In reviewing the solutions to Pangent’s publicly available videos, it was discovered that a few of them could use a newly compiled summary solve post. So here goes the first of those, enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVWfnqiuVXk Binary title: artifact555 Video begins with a warning about flashing images, and whoo boy, those happen. There’s lots of shots of the cube, glitching in colors and flashing, and interspersed with possible flashes of Lottie, and some more interesting effects. The sound is also ‘interesting’. The cube is alive. There doesn’t appear to be any coded content in the video, but the description has some things worth investigating. almost-binary in the description, replace the ‘O’s and 'C’s with '0’s and '1’s to get actual binary for: xV_OQ4CQqE8

This is a YouTube ID: https://youtu.be/xV_OQ4CQqE8 - A video with binary title 'theline’, showing Lottie 'speaking’ but the audio sounds computer-generated and states:

There are some things we as a species weren’t meant to know

This video also contains some pastebin links in the description, more on those later.

Back to the text in the description of 'artifact555’:

imgur bAqfpxr

This is theoriginal MSPA ad which was the trailhead for this ARG imgur jbUD1v0

This is a nonogram, popular in those days. Can be solved manually or with tools like http://a.teall.info/nonogram/

Interpret the squares as binary:

011010110111101001110110 011000110110011101110001 011010000110001001110111 011110010111100101110101 011101000101011001101011 011000100110111001100010 011011010110101101110011 011001110111010101100011 011101100110110101101001 011011010110111101111001 011011010111001001100111 011110100111001101110001 011011000110111001100111 011001111111111111111111 kzvcgqhbwyyutVkbnbmksgucvmimoymrgzsqlngg Vigenere with key 'conscioushumansouls’ (and add spaces): i like it here it Isnt quiet can you hear the waves imgur 7Foyrsz

Kcode - read off the RGB values of each square In decimal they are: 49 53 32 104 111 117 114 115 32 102 114 111 109 32 116 104 101 32 99 101 110 116 101 114 32 111 102 32 116 104 101 32 115 111 117 114 99 101 0 15 hours from the center of the source xV_OQ4CQqE8 is a YouTube ID leading to: https://youtu.be/xV_OQ4CQqE8 unlisted video with binary title: theline Contains several Pastebin links in the description: PB CBiWsY85 https://pastebin.com/CBiWsY85 - hex title: themoth contains binary text encoded as Vigenere with key 'guineapix’ which decodes to:

I have a friend, let’s call her C. Let me talk about C for a minute. The wonderful and terrible thing about C is that she’s a moth drawn to flame. For a few years now I have supported her in everything she’s done. She’s reckless. If she were a character in a movie, she’d see an explosion and run toward it while most people are running away. She’d run into the burning building and inhale the smoke while taking notes on how it affected the building structure. And she’s probably the one who caused the fire in the first place. Metaphorically, I mean. She gets results only because she loves the danger of it. She’ll come up with a solution and write it down without knowing if it’s right or not. She’ll try it a dozen different ways, watch the entire thing fall to pieces in a dozen different, irreplaceably expensive ways. Destroy everything while taking notes on the wreckage. When she’s done she’ll clean up the mess and she’ll understand the problem on a molecular level, from the inside out. She’ll be standing in the catastrophe she created, with a thousand pages of notes on how to do it right next time. I believe she’s the greatest genius I’ll ever know. And she’s a disaster. A walking disasterpiece. Her mind makes leaps that other minds can’t, because they understand that actions have consequences. She knows that messes can be cleaned up, and systems rebuilt. So she plays with fire. Well, not every mess can be cleaned up. You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube. Now that I’ve typed that I’m not so sure. She could probably figure it out. She’d ruin a lot of tubes of toothpaste in the process. But hey, toothpaste is cheap. The Twitter archive is still broken because of her, but I suspect if she hadn’t been fired she’d have fixed it within a few days. And because of her we did figure out how to decrypt the deleted data. It’s a slow, manual process, but it’s all there in some form or another. I wonder if that was X’s plan all along, somehow. He remembered Sandy Bridge, and figured if there was smoke there there was fire. He followed a trail of clues and now he’s taken everything. It’s not C’s fault. She did what she always did. She made a mess so that we could learn something. Maybe something we shouldn’t have been messing with in the first place. There’s this object, Artifact 555, alias The Cube. I’m not going to ask where it came from or how X’s father got it, because I value my life and my career and I know that questions have consequences. I’m not going to ask what it is, either. But I don’t have to. C is asking. What I know is this: X, because he’s an asshole, sent the three of us photos of this thing. It’s hard to see and harder to look at but I’d describe it as a glass cubic box with reflective blue matter inside. When I looked at the photos of this thing, I was filled with a paralyzing fear unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Afterward I was sick for two days. Leslie was sick too. Even her cat was sick. I don’t know how that’s even possible. I don’t want to know how that’s possible. But then, I’m not a moth drawn to flame. C was at the store when she saw the photos. Just on her phone, not even on a big monitor. She fell and hit her head. E had to come and get her. She didn’t walk straight for days. Now, a normal person’s instinct would be to get the hell away from this thing, and get the hell away from X, who used it as a weapon. Another kind of woman with another kind of mind would have changed her name, left the country, called in an exorcist and dedicated her life to rejecting satan and all his ways. Instead she signed the world’s worst contract and said she’d be back to work on the second. Because she’s a moth drawn to flame. She loves the mystery and danger of meddling where she shouldn’t. I know that right now every cell in her body is screaming out wanting to know what this thing is, even if she has to burn the world down around her to understand it. Well, that’s just who she is. X knew that too. He knew that if he shouted “DANGER” at her with a megaphone and police sirens and flashing lights five hundred feet tall, she’d come running toward that kind of danger. She can’t help it. For years, I’ve supported her in everything she’s done. I hope I never have to regret that.

PB i1pxP041 https://pastebin.com/i1pxP041 - hex title: gnixob (reversed: boxing) It’s almost-binary again, replace the 'C’s and'O’s with '1’s and'0’s then reverse, then decode as binary, then Vigenere with key 'argentina’ to get:

Another question. Let’s say there’s an object. Let’s call it “an object.” I looked at a few photographs of this object and became violently ill for reasons passing understanding. It was a couple days before I could walk without worry. The others in my group had a similar reaction. Here’s the question. What happens when I see this thing in person? And work alongside it for a long period of time? What exactly happens to my sanity? Happy Boxing Day.

PB sd7MrRX5 https://pastebin.com/sd7MrRX5 - hex title: analog Contains binary, Vigenered text with key 'argentina’:

Okay, I’m calm now. The Cube reacts to electrical stimuli. It even reacts in a predictable and reproducible way, suggesting that data can be imprinted on it for later use. X’s father must have known this. Someone must have run tests, suggesting this could work for data storage, if we could only understand how it works. Well, we don’t need to understand the Cube. And it doesn’t need to understand us. We’ve been thinking of this thing as digital, thinking how can we connect to it, like it’s a hard drive. But it’s not. It’s squishy, it’s meat, it’s liquid, it’s practically a brain. It’s analog. Do you understand? When I was a kid, we had cassette tapes. We had vinyl records. A vinyl record isn’t made with digital data. Vinyl doesn’t understand and interpret the music, it’s just plastic. And the needle is just a needle. There is no artificial intelligence there. But when a song is playing, you can etch the vibrations of that song onto that dumb plastic, and the needle will react the same way to play it back again. Magnetic tape is dumb too. It doesn’t need to understand and interpret the signals being sent through it. It just needs to be able to play them back accurately. VHS tapes of movies, cassette tapes of music. Did you ever record a computer program onto a cassette tape, and then play it back? You could just play the sound, all of this whirring and beeping, and your Apple II or Commodore 64 would understand what the tape couldn’t. The original analog medium is a book. The pages of a book don’t understand the data written on them. But the writer understood, and the reader understands, and that’s enough. We don’t need to understand the Cube. We don’t access that data by plugging in a cable. We don’t learn its language and it doesn’t learn ours. It’s a book. We write something on it, and then we can read it later. So. Let’s say I set up a server which reacts to data. And we test the Cube’s reactions to the same data. And we test it and test it and change the way we deliver the data to the Cube, until the reaction matches. We don’t need to speak the Cube’s language. We just need it to react in the right way when we speak ours.

PB 18E6yhak https://pastebin.com/18E6yhak - hex title: repair Contains binary, Vigenere’d text with key 'argentina’

Questions for this Christmas, asked of nobody but myself. The first question is whether or not data can have a soul. This is a question with two possible answers, so for the sake of argument let us assume the ridiculous - that the data of a soul can be saved, and that this does not disprove the existence of the soul as a theological concept and construct. Let us say that data can have a soul. The second question is, what if that data stream becomes broken and corrupted, in the way that souls also become broken and corrupted? If we save the data, do we save the soul? And if so, do we save it in a theological sense or merely on a technical level? What exactly would we be tampering with here? It’s four AM. I’m drunk. I should go back to sleep.

[nancydrewrings]

Every Nancy Drew game puzzle-leaver ranked from worst to best.

I was thinking about the ranking of ND suspects by @aniceworld (if you haven’t seen it then go check it out because it’s the best) and felt inspired to do something similar.

Methodology: I included characters who left us puzzles to solve. I judged STFD, CRE, VEN, TOT, and ASH as not having characters who met those criteria. CAR was the only game with two. I lumped all the Penvellyns together because ain’t nobody got time for that. If I forgot anyone, let me know. All rankings are personal taste.

28. J.J. Thompson (FIN) Does he count? Between fucking over Louisa Falcone and betting against Harry Houdini pulling off a trick, ol’ J.J. just can’t overcome his P.T.-Barnum-knockoff origin story.

27. ??? (CAP) To be honest, I spent this whole game trying to figure out how I could break up with Ned and ask Frank out, so I don’t remember who put the puzzles here. They were stupid, though.

26. Ezra Wickford (TRT) You can’t just adopt a kid and then disown him if he has behavioral problems. And I frankly don’t believe your claim that you invented chocolate milk. Enjoy your hidden sadness shrines, you sack of shit.

25. Lizzie Applegate (MHM) I guess I’m just not sure why she left the treasure in the floor instead of using it at any point. Sorry your outlaw husband ditched you, though. Dirk Valentine would never do a thing like that.

24. Trapper Dan (ICE) Apparently Lizzie Applegate is the one who told Dan to riddle the Lodge with puzzles: a pointless callback in an overwhelmingly frustrating game.

23. El Toro (RAN) The hourglass puzzle makes me cry, but he deliberately died in a ridiculous position so his corpse could trigger a booby trap, which I respect.

22. King Pacal (SSH) The scribe’s desiccated corpse has haunted my dreams for years, so while I appreciate Pacal’s level of loopholed pettiness, I hate him.

21. Ramses II (TMB) I’m not particularly impressed by anything Ramses set up to guard Nefertari’s tomb, but at least his actions were justified in-character, and I minored in classical civilizations so he gets an automatic bonus for Ancient Egypt.

20. Rita Hallowell (WAC) Her motivations are unclear at best, but she gains rank for clearly being an emo lesbian cat lady.

19. Kasumi Shimizu (SAW) Maybe just tell your daughters that they can leave the family business instead of making them solve a nonogram to find out. No wonder your family fell apart.

18. Kate Drew (SPY) Many parts of this game are beautifully, emotionally moving, but up until the new engine fuckery, Nancy’s mom being a spy was the dumbest idea HER has had since RAN.

17. Rolfe Kessler (CAR) I’m sorry that neither your wife nor your era could handle your mental illness.

16. The Forgery Ring (LIE) I love the culprit in this game, but everyone’s first clue that they weren’t a real theater troupe should’ve been their requirement to solve complex puzzles to do a goddamn set change. Hire a prop manager to keep all those dumb pieces in order.

15. Charlotte Thornton (GTH) The audacity of entrusting a vital clue to finding her will to an approximately five-year-old child just proves that Charlotte was not fit to run the family business. It’s hard to like her when all she does is murder me while I am actively avenging her.

14. Jin Soo Seung (MED) I don’t know how or why Sonny’s grandpa hid these artifact pieces all over this specific area of New Zealand. Unfortunately, I am one of those people who loves Sonny Joon enough to put up with a fair amount of bullshit.

13. Captain Lawrence (SEA) Like the Penvellyns, it is amazing that his treasure-hiding gambit was even marginally successful. However, that skeleton hands post helps him skate all the way to spot #13 on my list.

12. Brendan Malloy (HAU) His double-agent scientist backstory is the only redeeming thing about this absurd game.

11. Noisette Tornade (DAN) Great name, cool job, noble deeds, but did you need to lock me in the basement after I went to all the trouble of solving your encrypted clues?

10. Jake Rogers (SCK) Jake Rogers decided to be a blackmail kingpin at the age of 17. Minus points for being skeevy about Connie (her secret is that she can beat the shit out of you, dude, please have more foresight), props for sheer ballsiness. Is he the one who left all the weird rhyming clues everywhere in SCK1? Because if so he would shoot up at least five spots.

9. Penvellyn Family (CUR) Props for dedicating their lives to continuing this convoluted, pointless gambit. It’s just impressive none of them fucked it up over the last few centuries. However: if the point was for your family members to solve an elaborate series of puzzles to find the treasure, why trap them in a box to suffocate at the end?

8. Darryl Trent (CAR) He clearly made a lot of poor decisions in his life, but leaving his daughter a baffling robot to remember him by makes up for most of them.

7. Jake Hurley (TRN) I need a private sadness train with a mystical gemstone contraption, like, yesterday.

6. Bruno Bolet (CRY) What a fucking weirdo. If it weren’t for the crystal skull thing he might rank higher, because all of his other obsessions are positively delightful.

5. Josiah Crowley (CLK) I have a bunch of nerdy internet friends who use nicknames for each other, so I appreciate his group of radio Mechanicals. Also disguising yourself in drag to mess with your friends and neighbors is hilarious. Truly a man ahead of his time.

4. Niko Jovic (DED) Turns out that he was kind of an asshole, but I’ve got to love him for the steampunk lair he built under a privately-owned facility.

3. Dirk Valentine (SHA) If I were Frances Humber, I would’ve left Shadow Ranch the day after I met Dirk and had like eleven outlaw babies with this king of romance.

2. Hilda Swenson (DDI) When I’m a bored widow, I hope I become so disillusioned with the rest of the world that I fuck off and force anyone who wants to talk to me to solve a bunch of puzzles I scattered around my old town.

1. Mickey Malone (DOG) All I aspire to be is a 1920s gangster who owns a private speakeasy under my cabin in the woods and hangs out with my four giant dogs whom I adore.