If you use Safari on a mobile device, then up on the search bar, left to the website’s name (or maybe it says “reader view available”, depends), there should be four lines that you can click for the reader view.

And thank you, hS, for the perfect place to put this thing I was debating about posting. ^^

So, first, I was taken by the whim to do an external links search for all Freewebs URLs and change them to either working Webs URLs or archival links. That's done.

In the process, I noticed just how awful the <a href="https://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/LegalDepartment">Legal Department page was, so I rewrote it. (This is a return to my project of standardizing and improving all the department pages, which I haven't worked on in quite a long time.) I pretty much only used the information in the links that were already there, though, so if anybody knows something I missed, please tell me! Legal is kind of important, and also complex and mysterious. Like, even the metahistory of the department head and flash patch is kinda freaky. Check it out, and let me know what you think happened in-universe. I've got my own theory. {= )

While you're there, you may also notice that I finally discovered an easy way to get multiple images in the infoboxes (just use a gallery!), so I've done that for all the department pages with multiple versions of their flash patch available. Now I can merrily add the ones I've made to give them a more consistent style while not bumping the older designs into oblivion! ^_^ Also, this can be done with ANY infobox, so if you have multiple images of your agents, minis, Flowers, or whatever, feel free to add them to their infobox!

This has had the pleasant side-effects of reminding my brain how to focus on things and giving me some ideas, so more writing is also in the works. If anybody remembers the interlude I started quite a while back with Nume getting stuck babysitting Henry, I've finally figured out where that's going. It should be fun for us and Fun for Nume. *g*

~Neshomeh

A while ago, I shared The Digital Antiquarian, a website about the history of digital culture and interactive entertainment that I profoundly enjoyed.

Now, the creator of that website has made a companion site, called The Analog Antiquarian, described as "chronicles of worldly wonders," the new site has articles about mankind's most amazing achievements over all of history. It's starting with the Pyramids of Giza, and by all appearances seems to be about as good as its rather excellent predecessor. So I'm enjoying that.

I shared that with my guildmates and people lost their minds. He'll be a great addition to the game. :D

That space rock Ultima Thule, as well as Thule the car-mounted storage box company, is named after a fictional, far-northern lost civilization.

Originally named Hyperborea, meaning "above the north wind", the idea was invented by Greek writers. It was stated to be a place where the boundaries between land, sea, and sky blurred, and instead there was this weird stuff that was kind of like Jello, which it was hard to move in. (Like... what?)

Unfortunately, around the early twentieth century, the concept (which I'm not sure when it got renamed Thule, but it was in fact also called Ultima Thule) was pretty badly hijacked. (Use your imagination.) This is why it appears in the 2009 Wolfenstein reboot. Out of those who currently believe that Thule exists, many of them are of this ideology.

However, another large number of Thule-believers are folks from various countries in Europe who insist that the Greeks were talking about their nation.

TL;DR: Humans are weird. Nothing new.

-Twistey

Woo, Francium. ...I ran out of things to say about this, so let me talk about something else.

Here in the PPC, we have a large number of MMO fans. Personally, MMOs make me feel like I'm killing myself slowly. I wish they didn't, they look like an awful lot of fun, but sadly they are not for me q.q.

However, there IS an MMO related thing that I'd recommend to even the MMO intolerant like me, and that thing is called Log Horizon.

Log Horizon is a anime and (actually officially translated for once) novel series that can roughly be described as fulfilling the promises Sword Art Online made and then some. A collection of gamers are transported into a fantasy world that veeery closely resembles their favorite MMO which they were logged into before they showed up. Okay, so, race to get home, if you die in the game you die for real, and all that jazz, right?

No.

Log Horizon is more interesting than that. It's about taking an anarchic group of people in a horrible situation and the political gambles and underhanded dealings it takes to turn that into a society. Especially when the world operates by MMO rules (actual MMO rules. As in, the author is obviously a dedicated MMO player), and nobody can die. And the NPCs are real people now, of course. Who most definitely can die, and are experiencing tensions with their immortal neighbors from the start.

And of course, our protagonist can do the Gendo Ikari Glasses Flash™, because he's a very manipulative man. The point is, Log Horizon is good stuff.

In other anime news, The Lord El-Melloi II Case Files, my favorite Fate-verse work you can't actually easily read because it's been translated terribly, has now got an Anime adaption, which is currently airing. So... yey. I dunno how many of you will care, but I'm happy.

In videogame news, over the past few months Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has become free-to-play. If you're interested in joining the world's second-largest Valve-operated saltmine, you can check that out. But protip: bring some friends. You can play with publics, but it's less fun because most of them are... awful. Not gonna lie.

Also, it has a Battle Royale mode now, which is apparently actually fun, I wouldn't know.

In videogame not-news... have you ever wondered why WASD is the control scheme that we all use? It seems random, and... it was. In another universe, we could all be using ESDF (like Gabe Newell prefers), or WADX, or even SZXC.

So what made WASD win? E-sports. Namely, the one of the first ever e-sports champions, before that term even existed: Dennis "Thresh" Fong. For the full story, check out this article from PC Gamer.

Oh, in actual gaming news, Erik Wolpaw is confirmed to be contracting for Valve, even if he's not back at the company. Speaking as someone who believes that Wolpaw's one of the best comedy writers in the industry, I think this is good. Maybe. It depends on whether Valve will actually DO something.

I'm totally gonna get back to writing. Soon. I swear. Lessons 2 is only months away. :-P

No, seriously, my schedule's clearing up soon, so that may well be possible.

Our good old friend Pieguy has published a thing! He wrote the practice adventure scenario in the quickstart guide for a new tabletop game called Relics: A Game of Angels. It's only available in PDF form at the moment. It's one of those "pay what you want" scenarios. (I'm honestly not sure off-hand if Pieguy himself gets any money from that link.)

—doctorlit, collecting what former PPCers produce