Subject: Re: New Year thread 2014-2015
Author:
Posted on: 2015-01-01 02:20:00 UTC
ShovelOfChaos: Best video game, yes.
ShovelOfChaos: With Prototype in second place.
ShovelOfChaos: Not the best work of fiction. I still think that's A Song of Ice and Fire.
ShovelOfChaos: Which I am quite glad is quarantined. I'd rather not deal with replacements of the Mountain.
[Colibri has joined the chat room]
Colibri: So it's going to be New Year's in a few hours and I'm sitting in front of the console in a darkened RC with a Murkrow sleeping on my head and a Glaceon hiding in my refrigerator.
Colibri: Everyone I know is either working, partying, or going out on dates and I'm here, home alone, babysitting two Pokémon that don't belong to me.
Colibri: Not that I'm complaining about them: these guys actually seem to notice me and compete for my attention. Come to think about it, it feels nice to be wanted.
Colibri: Is anyone else alone in HQ on New Year's eve? Care for a chat?
- - - -
((Pick one of your agents, make up a handle, and throw them in here. Er, if you want to participate, that is. Permission not required.
SeaTurtle))
[DeadlyMushroom has joined the chat room]
DeadlyMushroom: So this works huh.
DeadlyMushroom looks around.
DeadlyMushroom: Partner is off doing Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey stuff, so I'm stuck in the RC with the minis.
DeadlyMushroom: Usually I'd complain but the quiet seems... almost tranquil. Mini-Noo-noos make the cutest snoring sounds!
Colibri: Oh, hey there.
Colibri: Welcome to the chat, I guess. Make yourself at home.
Colibri: Not too big on sharing names and such-- because that's kinda the point of having a chat with a handle to hide behind-- but what's your department? I'm in Intelligence.
Colibri: And if you don't mind me asking, what is a Noo-noo? I've never heard of them before and I'm too lazy to look it up right now.
DeadlyMushroom: Floaters.
DeadlyMushroom: Been considering a transfer to DIC for a while. I only get crossovers, anyway.
DeadlyMushroom: Noo-noo is that blue vacuum cleaner from Teletubbies - Earth-British toddlers' TV show. Used to watch it when I was what, three? Anyway, I had this mission when the Stuthor misspelled a Teletubby's name, so I have this little blue vacuum cleaner in my RC now. My - former - partner kind of insisted.
((Dangit, forgot to fill the author field with my last post. Sorry 'bout that.))
- - - -
Colibri: Thanks for the clarification. Sounds like a really cute and useful mini to have around.
Colibri: And definitely try to get into DIC. I work in Intel, so I know how stuff is distributed: we tend to assign the crappy things to Floaters because they're the "overflow" department.
Colibri: Actual specialized departments like DMS or DBS or DIC, etc get the "fun" fics. Not saying that they're any less dangerous than the Floater fare but they're less mind-numbing if that makes any sense.
Colibri: I hear that the Lichen is trying to boost his department's numbers and plans to petition the Floating Hyacinth for a significant personnel transfer sometime this upcoming spring.
Colibri: I'm not sure how it's going to work but just a heads-up if you need to get on a list or something.
DeadlyMushroom: Intel, huh? Never been there
DeadlyMushroom: How's it like there? Is it as scarring as the stuff we get here sometimes?
DeadlyMushroom shudders
DeadlyMushroom: Shouldn't have mentioned that
Colibri: Every bit as scarring and more.
Colibri: Remember that Intel is the entry point of all badfic into HQ.
Colibri: All the good stuff, the bad stuff, the "meh" stuff, the really awful stuff, we see it all.
Colibri: And we sit there, reading one fic after another in a big room surrounded with other people doing the exact same thing.
Colibri: And then one day a week we get to go out in the field to personally investigate the borderline cases that Sorting sends us. You'd think it would be fun, but it's just a big hide-and-seek with the Suvians: you need to get close enough to see what they're doing but act as if you're a background character.
Colibri: Sometimes, accidents happen: last week a friend of a friend had his cover blown by a warrior!Sue. The DIA Special Response team found him facedown in a ditch, half beaten to death.
Colibri: We can't interfere either, so we have to watch our favourite worlds become playthings for the Suvians and not do a single thing to stop them.
Colibri: In a way, we kind of envy you Action Department folks. You guys are the ones that make things right again.
DeadlyMushroom: That's nothing to envy, Ia ssure you.
DeadlyMushroom: * I assure
DeadlyMushroom: I nearly got my head loped off by a particularly cruel Sue. I kinda also had an apoplexy in that mission. Believe me, reading fics is better than watching entire platoons of soldiers murdered in their sleep.
DeadlyMushroom: Och, trivialisation gives me the shivers.
DeadlyMushroom is going to get himself a cuppa Bleeptea, will BRB
[TheLadyIximaz has joined the chatroom]
Randa's looking over my shoulder as I type; we can't both share the computer, after all. So what's up, everyone? What have we missed?
[ShovelOfChaos has joined the chatroom]
ShovelOfChaos: Greetings from the Response Center of Terror! My partner's already fallen asleep. I keep forgetting chocolate is synonymous with alcohol for her...
[OOC: Hi, I'm Voyd!]
TheLadyIximaz: Haha, Rina's exactly the same way!
TheLadyIximaz: No, I'm not. Ignore my partner.
TheLadyIximaz: So how's your New Year's so far?
ShovelOfChaos: Eh, not much happening. Mostly just blasting Halestorm in the hopes that Kala will wake up and start singing.
ShovelOfChaos: No such luck. She's sleeping right through it, even though my speakers are smoking from the abuse they're suffering.
ShovelOfChaos: Perhaps I should have been a bit more clear: CAFFEINE is alcohol for her. The woes of being part scorpion.
ShovelOfChaos: Oh well, more for me!
Colibri: Oh hey there new people. How's it going?
Colibri: What departments are you guys from? I'm in Intelligence.
Colibri @DeadlyMushroom: Oh man, I'm so sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I know that DoI regulations allow field operatives to carry only one high-potency healing item like a Zeldaverse fairy in a bottle, phoenix down, or a 1-Up mushroom on them. Officially, it's to allow operatives to escape almost-certain-death situations versus overpowered Suvians but I think they want to see how using these items affects an agent's Glitter levels in their blood.
Colibri @DeadlyMushroom: I personally know a guy that has been brought back to life by a handful of phoenix down after being turned into shish kebab by a elf princess or something. It took a week for Medical to filter all of the Glitter from his blood. His case was picked up by DMSE&R because of agent health and safety, etc etc. According to their report, a second resuscitation would've turned him into a full-blown Sue.
Colibri @DeadlyMushroom: Personally, I just carry a Dead Ringer watch on me. I'd rather flat-out die than risk Turning.
TheLadyIximaz: @Colibri, DMS. And thanks for confirming Rina's suspicions. She's now trying to escape.
TheLadyIximaz: Never mind, she calmed down.
TheLadyIximaz: Is Intelligence having a big party? It's actually kinda quiet in our section of HQ. You know, for now.
Colibri: If you're close to the Hub, then it's likely that you're hearing the Orange Team night shift partying it up. A friend of mine just learnt that Bulldog has got wind of this so expect this to quiet down really fast. On behalf of my department, I'm sorry if it bothered you.
ShovelOfChaos: Me and Kala are Floaters, though we haven't had any missions yet.
ShovelOfChaos: Of course, Kala kinda busted our console, and we're still waiting from someone from DoSAT to come by. I think the console's learned its lesson about beeping behind a four-hundred-pound scorpion girl with a tail like a jackhammer.
ShovelOfChaos: Makes-Things will hate Kala a bit more, though. She already broke one of his toys when she fell into HQ.
TheLadyIximaz: Did somebody say CAFFEINE?!
TheLadyIximaz: She gets hyper around caffeine, too. Which I guess goes without saying.
TheLadyIximaz: Eh, we're both caffeine addicts.
TheLadyIximaz: Anyway, other than hanging out in chatrooms, I'm drawing and Rina's playing Pokémon. She says to type... well, "[something not for polite conversation] Gen One Stealth Rock."
TheLadyIximaz: IT'S EVIL! EEEEVIL!
ShovelOfChaos: Um... Stealth Rock was introduced in Gen 4?
ShovelOfChaos: And Pokémon is awesome.
ShovelOfChaos: I think I've seen a Skarmory running around HQ, actually.
TheLadyIximaz: @ShovelofChaos, Randa mistyped. Or something? I said **** Sand Tomb.
TheLadyIximaz: Oh, you mean Falchion? Rina and I ran into him in the Cafeteria the other day. Nice guy. Bird. Whatever?
TheLadyIximaz: YES POKéMON IS THE BEST. *high five*
ShovelOfChaos: Best video game, yes.
ShovelOfChaos: With Prototype in second place.
ShovelOfChaos: Not the best work of fiction. I still think that's A Song of Ice and Fire.
ShovelOfChaos: Which I am quite glad is quarantined. I'd rather not deal with replacements of the Mountain.
TheLadyIximaz: Ooh, quarantined continuums are so fascinating! But I'd have to disagree- I think The Stanley Parable is the best simply because The Developers Think of Everything.
TheLadyIximaz: I really need to get Game of Thrones from the Canon Library. I keep forgetting I get to make my own decisions about what's appropriate for me to read now. :D
ShovelOfChaos: Your favorite characters will die. This is the way of Westeros.
ShovelOfChaos: I wonder if any Targaryens managed to sneak out of the continuum, though. Considering that we have a whole department devoted to Fire and Blood...
ShovelOfChaos: Ah well, mysteries for another day. For now, the mystery of why dancing to Halestorm's Love Bites completely wears me out.
ShovelOfChaos: Oh, right. The song has energy levels well in excess of eight thousand.
TheLadyIximaz: Neither of us have any idea what you just said, but that's okay.
TheLadyIximaz: Ooh, we should totally get the departments together for a New Year's party!
TheLadyIximaz: Ignore that last part!
ShovelOfChaos: Well, the Targaryens are a ruling dynasty...
ShovelOfChaos: Oh, never mind. Read the bloody books and you'll know.
ShovelOfChaos: And Kala's not really in the mood for a party. She just woke up, and said she'd sting me if I didn't turn off the music. No more Halestorm for me.
ShovelOfChaos: Yes, the caffeine = alcohol business extends to her getting a freaking hangover. I've been stung by Kala before, and I have no desire to spend five minutes paralyzed.
[PamphletOfNightSky has joined]
PamphletOfNightSky: Hey guys
PamphletOfNightSky: My partners have abandoned me to go eat cake at the madoka shrine or something
PamphletOfNightSky: and I have... some indeterminate amount of time before sis and tera and theia were going to have their party thing so
PamphletOfNightSky: What's up?
Colibri: Hey, another person who has been forsaken by everybody. That makes two of us.
Colibri: Intel operative here. And you?
Colibri: Wait a minute. Given your user name and the particular names you mentioned, are you by any chance working out of RC 97?
Colibri: I read the incident reports. If you are who I think you are, I salute you, ma'am.
PamphletOfNightSky: Actually, that'd be my sister Ari.
PamphletOfNightSky: I'm Fiorano.
PamphletOfNightSky: Well, sort of sister? We're both replacements of the same character
PamphletOfNightSky: But I'll pass on your compliments to her
PamphletOfNightSky: My partners are Cepha and Amara Coris, we're in the DMS in RC 1.877
[LostBoy has joined the chat room]
LostBoy: Uh...hi, everyone. I've never been in a chat room before, hope I'm doing this right.
LostBoy: *checks chat log*
LostBoy: I have no idea what you guys are talking about and am not really OK with this.
LostBoy: Nice to see other people into Pokemon, though :D
LostBoy high-fives ShovelOfChaos, who said Pokemon was awesome.
LostBoy: So, um...I heard a rumor that some people wanted to set up an arena somewhere in HQ for Pokemon battles. Is that true?
Colibri: Please forgive my mistake. Pleased to meet you. My family name is De Grasse, but I don't think that would mean anything to you; it comes with being an Infrastructure Department staffer, I guess. At the end of the day, we're all nameless folks who support the big names.
Colibri: Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you knew of Harris Frost, but he's special. Not everyone can wield a zweihänder against a Weeping-Angel-meatloaf monstrosity and live to tell the tale!
Colibri: So... how's life?
PamphletOfNightSky: None taken
PamphletOfNightSky: Things are ok over here, I suppose.
PamphletOfNightSky: Catching up on some manga stuff
Colibri: Sounds sweet. What series are you reading right now?
Colibri: A friend of mine gave me the first ten Attack on Titan volumes for Christmas, so I'm reading that. I'm going to avoid declaring proficiency for AoT, though: intel runs in that 'verse are not fun.
Colibri: It's bad enough that titans eat people by default, it's just that a crapton of Suvians are also shifters too so there is an overwhelming chance of getting your face bitten off unless you have a finger on your RA's panic button at all times.
Colibri: That's way too much stress for me. I intend to return to World One and live a long, uneventful life with all of the cats I'm going to adopt.
Colibri: By the way, what language are you typing in? I'm seeing everything in French. How about you?
PamphletOfNightSky: Well, don't tempt the IO on that retiring thing
PamphletOfNightSky: I'm typing in Mid-Childan
PamphletOfNightSky: Ugh, I've seen stuff about AoT. Doesn't look fun.
PamphletOfNightSky: Catching up on the Nanoha spinoff mangas. Innocent and ViVid.
PamphletOfNightSky: I'm not catching up on Force though. Nanoha Force is a trainwreck and in any case hasn't updated in months. Good riddance.
Colibri: Reading up on your continuum of origin, I see. Just a question: what makes Force so unpalatable in your opinion?
Colibri: Plot is really that bad?
Colibri: And how do you react to having a canon source depict a "trainwreck" in your home continuum?
- - - - -
((Getting a bit late on my end. I'll be back tomorrow!
SeaTurtle))
PamphletOfNightSky: Well, Innocent is an AU where all the characters play a Virtual Reality game. It's pretty cute. Also it's one of the only AUs where characters that don't show up too often get to be frequent appearances
PamphletOfNightSky: Anyways, Force is...
PamphletOfNightSky: Well, for one thing it shifts the focus off of the main characters a lot. I mean, the third season arguably focused on new characters? But they were still heavily related to Nanoha and Fate, and Nanoha and Fate themselves were still major players. Vivid focuses a lot more on their adopted kid, but she's still a built-up character
PamphletOfNightSky: Those also follow up on a lot of stuff from the original season and build on the world. A lot of the historical worldbuilding is from Vivid, StrikerS focuses on the military structure of the TSAB and fleshes out a bit of the first season's villain's backstory
PamphletOfNightSky: Force starts out with an entirely new protagonist (later revealed to be an adopted family member of one of the new main characters from Force, not that they seem to treat him much like family)
PamphletOfNightSky: and invents an entirely new set of villains and this horrendously gamebreaking power to the 'verse
PamphletOfNightSky: the villains just compulsively murder people and one of them stabs Yagami Hayate in the back while she was being awesome
PamphletOfNightSky: the gamebreaking power seems like it was just invented to make them way better than the protagonists - one of the villains nearly kills Signum, an ancient knight who's currently powered up
PamphletOfNightSky: She was using Agito, a Unison Device (dunno if you've heard of those - Agent Corolla's one) that is heavily hinted to have been made specifically for her
PamphletOfNightSky: Oh, and it's also an excuse for them to need new special power upgrades in the form of these giant mechanical... thingies, since magic doesn't work on the bad guys?
PamphletOfNightSky: There's just all kinds of overpowered canon sue junk going on there
Colibri: How long have you kept that rant simmering? That's a lot of stuff to go through!
Colibri: One of my coworkers specializes in MGLN but she doesn't really talk about her fandoms as much as the rest of us.
Colibri: And I know the feeling with these universe re-imaginings: I've got a whole rant prepared on a particular type of weaponry if you've got time for it.
PamphletOfNightSky: Yeah well, there's not much I can say to that
PamphletOfNightSky: And go ahead with that weaponry rant, but there's a chance I won't know what fandom you're talking about
Colibri: All right then. Where to start?
Colibri: It concerns the weapons in Mass Effect, which is a superb game and something you should play at least once in your life.
Colibri: All firearms in this universe are built around a very powerful mass accelerator. If you remember your formulas from high school physics, kinetic energy is determined by the formula F = 1/2 * m * v2.
Colibri: Modern-day weapons use a bullet weighing several grams and shoot them at speeds around or higher than the speed of sound.
Colibri: In Mass Effect, the accelerators can shoot a bullet the size of a grain of sands at supersonic speeds and cause even more damage that a modern-day firearm.
Colibri: That way, you can simply shave off tiny pieces of metal from a metal block stored inside the weapon and almost never run out of ammo!
Colibri: The only problem is the heat buildup: the accelerator gets really, really hot with prolonged use. If the weapon overheats, it locks up and has to vent heat for a few seconds before it can be used again.
Colibri: Simple enough, right? That's how it was in the first game: no reloading shenanigans, you just have to keep an eye on the heat gauge.
Colibri: In the second game, they got rid of the internal cooling mechanism and introduced "heat sinks" that absorb the accelerator's heat instead, effectively making weapons have limited ammo again.
Colibri: The in-universe justification is that a) one faction discovered that they could unload a greater volume of lead in a shorter amount of time (thus out-shooting the enemy) if they had the thermal clips and b) the mass accelerators got more and more powerful (and thus produced more heat).
Colibri: It just bothers me that the game devs decided to be more like other shooters and reintroduce an ammo system.
ShovelOfChaos: Welcome to 2015!
ShovelOfChaos: ... it doesn't feel any different.
[StingingSchej has joined the chatroom]
StingingSchej: Hello. I've gotten over my hangover. This is why my partner needs to stop bringing chocolate into the RC.
ShovelOfChaos: Um, hi Kala. Didn't know you had a computer now.
StingingSchej: You're not the only one who's bribed Makes-Things with Mysterious Wall Chicken.
ShovelOfChaos: So THAT'S where it went!