Defect

When I was getting tested for autism the evaluator asked me why I suspected I was autistic. I said that among other things, I heavily related to characters who were implied or confirmed to be on the spectrum. He said, "Oh, like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory?"

I looked this man dead in the eyes and said, "No. Donatello the ninja turtle from the 2018 Nickelodeon series Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

how to troubleshoot by yourself when you have a technical problem

what common file types are

some very basics on how to use ""developer tools"" on your computer (because i cant think of a better way to refer to them) like task manager and command prompt (and their mac equivalents, terminal and activity monitor ofc)

how to read and understand a privacy policy and what your personal data is, as well as what it being collected actually means and steps you can take to keep it private

how to understand terms of service (hey. if you have trouble with reading legalese and worry about being able to understand these policies anyways, here's a site that gives basic summaries of privacy policies and ToS)

what a cookie actually is

internet privacy and your digital footprint!! seriously i dont know why we stopped teaching people that they shouldnt be putting their entire real identity online in a world where your online actions can ruin you irl

basic safety measures like antivirus software (and why you should use it or if the built in one on windows or mac is enough for you) and backing up your computer (also a mac guide)

common keyboard shortcuts (and on mac)

as an additional note: things i think everyone should know on computers and the internet but schools may bit hesitant to teach about for whatever moral/legal standards schools pretend to operate on

vpns and adblockers! (btw for most of these where you can pay for things im purposefully not recommending any specific software but seriously just use ublock origin for an adblocker)

how to not get a virus while pirating something

what a temporary email is and when to use one

red flags that you shouldn't trust a website (and how to quickly check the security of a site)

an online compiler so you dont need to download anything or worry about running code directly on your computer if that makes you nervous

a basic video guide to introduce you to python and walk you through beginner steps

a guide to some syntax and commands you should know (this was literally my lifeline in my first CS class)

specifically what you're going to want to do is find settings.json in %appdata%/discord or the mac equivalent which is found with finder > go > go to folder. there is a setting there titled "DANGEROUS_ENABLE_DEVTOOLS_ONLY_ENABLE_IF_YOU_KNOW_WHAT_YOURE_DOING": and if it is not, copy and paste "DANGEROUS_ENABLE_DEVTOOLS_ONLY_ENABLE_IF_YOU_KNOW_WHAT_YOURE_DOING": true into the .json and then, only then you can do crtl + shift + i or command + option + i on mac.

When you've enabled dev tools and opened Discord's console, input THIS code:

it's ya boi (gender neutral) back at it again checking out sketchy computer tips i see on tumblr and reporting back

now, i am not in the UK, so i cannot test the age verification. but i did input the code to make sure it wasn't malicious - this all seems legit!

a few FAQs:

this works on the desktop app version of discord. i do not know if it works on the web browser version and it will not work on mobile.

is this safe? that's up for you to decide! i'm sharing my experience, but i am still a stranger on the internet. you have to make your own decisions about online safety and whether to trust what internet strangers tell and show you when dealing with things you don't understand.

it's unclear if this will work preemptively in places that do not have age verification yet, but might soon. unless you're just curious and testing it like me (and i wouldn't do that unless you have a test account), i don't think there's any reason to do this. but maybe keep this post handy, if you're worried you may be subject to age verification soon.

here is a step-by-step picture guide to doing this on the Discord desktop app:

Others on the other hand can't accept us for who we are and think that we must have chosen to be this way, and because no one should ever choose to live as queer we must be by definition bad people.

But both of those points of view presuppose the idea that if someone were to choose to live queer it would be bad. Which is something I wholeheartedly reject.

now that the awards ceremony has happened, I can openly talk about the visual novels I liked from Spooktober VN Jam, an annual game jam for making Halloween-themed visual novels (which I happen to judge entries for)!

each of these spooky indie VNs came out at the end of September and were made in just 1 month. some are scary, some are cute, but they're all made with love so go give them some love 💜

Märchen Line

Embrace the indomitable human spirit by serving in the First Among Father's Voyager Armada- The Bravest of The Brave, who venture out to liberate the Milky Way from the True Enemy. Serving as a Soldier means embracing infinite potential. With the blessing of His Runes, you will grow stronger, smarter, faster and braver in a few weeks than you have in your entire life. All that growth comes with responsibility, and you will be expected to pay your civic dues- but luckily each Soldier is assigned a Valkyrie to help them manage their priorities. Train your stats, build your relationships, and be all you can be...or push past the galactic narrative and seek a deeper understanding of humanity's true ranking in the galactic hierarchy. 

Pippa and Your Phantasmal Problem

Ms Ester's beautiful and neat house has been mysteriously wrecked in the past few weeks and nobody knows why. Patches of dirt on the carpet, things gone missing, and all sorts of mess keeps happening around the house. The police was called to investigate, a priest was invited to bless the house, and a group of ghostbusters was hired (they were so expensive!) and none of them found anything. How useless! If this problem isn't solved by the time Ms Ester returns from her short trip, she'll kick you out. You have to find someone who can help: anyone will do, even this unreliable looking, self-proclaimed witch you just randomly met.

BAD MANORS

On Friday the 13th, your plans for a spooky Halloween night are dashed when you show up alone at the escape room reserved by your friend. You consider going home when a handsome stranger offers to accompany you. Maybe the night is saved after all… Or so you thought.

MAMA

One day, you’ll thank me. After all… mother knows best. Today’s the first day of HimeCon, a Yuri convention. You’re attending with your girlfriend who’s a vendor in the artist alley. At the convention, you receive a text that ends up changing… everything. You find yourself back in your childhood home, except this time, something’s amiss— and you’ve got to escape. She’s always w̶̨̠̟̳͚̮̫͒͒̏̏̌͑͊̒́̂̈̀̓̒͘͠ā̷̧̠͎̤͖̝̠̯͎̎̇͒̋͑̾͑̑͂̂̽͐͂̄͘̕̕͠͠͝t̷̢̙̦͖͙̹̪̠̳̰͛̓̇̀̂̾́̉̍̈́͌̇̔̑͝ç̷̥̮͓͔̣̆̀̆̔̈́̈̀͋͛̓̈͐̕͝h̵̢̧̹̲͇̭̥̰͎͖͇̎̓͒̎̂͑̽͒͑̓͗͗̕̕͘͜͜͝͠͝͝ͅi̸̛̝̳̳̠͇͍̓͒̈́̑́̒̓̊͐͒̆͘͝ͅͅñ̶̢̡̨͓̥̞͉͓͚̞̞̞̲̤̹͙͍̙͛̋̏͗̍̽̇̒̅͊͜͠ͅg̸̪͇͋̓͋̍̈́̇̽̿̑̋̏̏̈́̋̾̋̃͘ͅ you, isn’t she?

Elfin National Park

Come on down and see the ever changing sights of our forest. We have places for the whole family. Just please remember for the safety of you and your family to stay within the designated zones.

MAD LAB PARTY

Being a serial killer is hard when some crow decides to tamper with your bodies. Solution? Kill another and meet your ‘fan’ in the act?! It’s October 31st, and you are dragged out to a haunted house attraction with your friends despite the mysterious ‘Jack-o-killer’ running around, murdering strangers in gruesome and eccentric ways. Bodies ranged from being found taking the place of a scarecrow to being carved and their guts replaced with pumpkin seeds. You, however, didn’t worry about getting killed. You knew exactly who the murderer was. Problem? You knew for sure you didn’t kill them like that.

CANIDAE

The moonlight illuminates the animal that lies within everyone. Will you embrace it; or fight back? On Halloween, a gang of teenagers in animal masks head out to set off fireworks and drink with their friends. Unfortunately, nothing ever goes right for you. As the night grows darker and pranks turn to violence, your friends start to change. Will you?

Killer Chat!

A reporter by day, an aspiring writer by night: you've been asking all the important questions on the dark web.  Like, how do you bury a body? How do you kill someone with a crowbar with the right angle to cause blunt-force trauma? What's the best way to hide from law enforcement? If you're to write a good crime book, this is how you'll do it. Suddenly, ERROR! UNKNOWN invites you to a server... with a warning. "don't be so obvious smh You're Gonna Get Caught". ... It's a serial killer chatroom. You may be slightly fucked.

Spirit Driver

From the everyday passenger to the horrors of Halloween, Spirit Driver is a short, casual conversation simulator where your choices can affect the fates of people and spirits alike. Remember, your choices have consequences. Good luck!

Let's Watch Steamboat Willie

Two film nerds sit down for a comfy evening watching old movies. Next up is Steamboat Willie, and they quickly take to bickering. By the time the cartoon is over, one of them will be dead.

Shut-in Vampire

Oh no! Mayu’s in a pinch! She’s woefully behind on paying the rent, and her scary landlady, Miss Himemiya, has issued an ultimatum. Mayu needs to earn ¥100,000 by the end of October, or she’ll be kicked out! Being evicted from her home would be bad enough, but Mayu has a secret: she’s actually a vampire. Mayu hasn’t been a vampire for a full year yet, and the church is keeping close tabs on her to ensure she’s been behaving herself. According to the stone-faced Sister Juriel, it’s the church’s standard policy to execute all vampires without a fixed address, lest they start roaming the streets causing chaos. If Mayu can’t pay the rent in time, she won’t just wind up homeless: she’ll be executed! What’s a fledgeling vampire to do?

Epimutation

Spencer, a former investigative journalist, lives in a small bunker with six other people who have also managed to stay alive after a viral outbreak brought the world to ruin. They're attempting to adjust to this new normal, until they stumble across some notebook pages written by a scientist documenting the infection. Make life or death decisions, form bonds with your fellow survivors, and attempt to unravel the mystery behind the outbreak.

Not My Body!

First you wake up in somebody else's ugly house in somebody else's ugly body, and then you find another person tied up in the closet? This isn't fair at all! Why do you have to deal with this?! It's not like you put him there! And what's going on in your own body right now, anyway…?

that's all of my recommendations for now, but with over 270 entries there's plenty more indie Halloween-themed visual novels for you to try!

Ps2 portable

N64 portables always look sisk when the cartridge takes up like half the size.

Wii in an almonds tin is there craziest one I’ve seen to date

There’s a more reasonable wii in a Gameboy as well

Like, for one thing, that still doesn't explain the statue of the seven. Because the options are either:

A) the statue changes every few decades with the mortal archons, but this is ruled out by the fact that Kachina feels the need to comment on the statue matching Mavuika. If the statues always match she wouldn't mention it (or for out-of-game lore purposes, she'd explain that the statue always matches the current mortal archon).

B) The statue used to change but stopped 500 years ago when Mavuika put herself in the fire, and since then the tribes have just forgotten that they used to change. The problem here is that the statues are presumably of Celestial make, and if they were changing before then why did they stop?

You could say, 'well obviously Celestia's asleep currently that's why' except they did change statues. Ei is a twin and Nahida's a clone* so out-of-game you can't necessarily tell if they changed Makoto and Rukkhadevata's statues or not, and Zhongli and Venti didn't die, so that's not even an issue needing to be considered. But Fontaine's statues are Furina, not Egeria.

Which means another two things on top of that; the statues weren't put down after the archon war & then untouched, they are meant to match the current archon (not that it would make a difference in this case, because that would just be more proof that there's something else up with Mavuika) and whoever controls the statues was able to make updates after the Cataclysm (so even if they went to sleep immediately after, the statue should be stuck on Mavuika's successor, not her, if the statues were changing for the mortal archons).

(I started typing this before I found out Xbalanque is confirmed to at least historically be the first Pyro Archon, which makes the statue being a woman even more suspicious if that were possible)

Kachina says the people don't actually know how the mortal archons are made the archon and you'd have to actually ask one. At this point I don't think they've even said if the mortals are replaced after death or if they are able to step down from the role. So perhaps there is some variety of immortal entity involved in the process, like how Egeria is still around to some degree as a pond.

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My guess is that Mavuika is in fact an original pyro deity or seelie of some kind who gave Xbalanque the Pyro authority. (Or potentially Xbalanque himself, or the dragon sage**, but they both have the problem that they're male. She could have been reincarnated differently I guess, but that still doesn't explain the statue being a woman.) There's a line by the dragon sage in the codex artifact set saying he was surprised about an envoy, maybe that was Mavuika?

Then during times of high danger she wakes up fully, like Venti, except instead of just sealing herself away or however Venti does it, she's born and lives a human life before passing into dormancy again. A phoenix dying and being reborn, etc.

While it could be nothing, Mavuika is not the one who suggests this is her second life. Chasca does, and Mavuika doesn't respond to it. You don't even get to see her face as Chasca asks. Then the Traveler asks about the plan and Mavuika moves onto that question instead, neither confirming or denying Chasca's. So that could be a red herring for the fact that this might not actually be Mavuika's second life.

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And if we're going by the comic, Vennessa's tribe is said to have forgotten about the Lady of Fire. Maybe it's not that they forgot about their roots in Natlan or the existence of a Pyro Archon, but that everyone forgot about the existence of a Lady of Fire. It's not like people in Teyvat are unaware of the other archons, they are specifically called the Seven, people know about them and who they are. It's people from Natlan who don't leave not the other way around, so even if Natlan has a vague idea about the other archons, the rest of Teyvat should definitely know how the Pyro Archons work.

Even if you assume that Vennessa's tribe were totally detached from the rest of civilization as they forgot about her because of the Wayobs or whatever, they've been living in Mondstadt for a while, they should be familiar with the concept. And based off Vennessa and her family's interactions, the clan did actually continue to hold reverence for the gods, so for them to have totally forgotten about one they were close to (specifically blessed by, even!) is weird.

So maybe its not that Vennessa's tribe just forgot their connection, but that Venti's the only one remembering it. Venti also says Natlan used to perform rites of combat in the Lady of Fire's honor, which is not really the relationship the people of Natlan seem to have with their archon currently. What are they performing rites of combat for now but the Sacred Flame? There are other ways to explain the seeming discrepancy, but assuming the comic isn't just totally non-canon now, this seems like a good possibility.

I mean a dragon that managed to put a human in place of a divine archon, or a deity that gave their power directly to humanity, seems a very likely candidate for the Irminsul treatment. Maybe the Lady of Fire turned herself into the Flame and handed power to the mortals, and the statue was left unchanged, because what else is Celestia going to do? Start changing the statue constantly to match the mortal archons?

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Assuming the family in her picture was Mavuika's actual birth family (and since they show her interacting with their memories in a cutscene where no one else is present, I'm going to assume they were), then I'm suspicious of her mother. Like, her mother looks very much similar to her. And far be it from me to complain about them finally giving some more unique NPC designs, but that's kinda weird in context.

Haumia has the same candlewick curl and hairstyle (if a bit more restrained) as Mavuika. So its not only that Mavuika was perhaps reincarnated to a human family and then SURPRISE she looks different from her parents with flame hair and a similarity to an ancient statue. She was born to a woman who herself looked very similar to the statue of the seven. So maybe the literal-children-of-murata thing isn't totally out of the window, and she's being reborn in her own bloodline.

(Something else interesting to note that could be nothing: Mavuika's mother's name is Haumia, a Maori god of wild edible plants, who it looks like in at least some areas is the brother of Hine-nui-te-po (the goddess Mahuika's sister, and almost certain namesake of Mavuika's sister). But between being a god of plants and not seeing any real overlapping stories, it seems like an odd choice unless I'm missing something. Other than also being a Maori name, but there are other options they could have gone with.

There is however also a Hawaiian goddess of childbirth with a similar sounding name, Haumea, who is the mother of the volcano goddess Pele and said to have occasionally had children with humans to maintain her bloodline within the human race. Could this mean nothing? Probably, but they just made and are still making a huge deal about the meaning of names putting people into roles so maybe...? Or maybe Haumia was just really into foraging.)

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If Mavuika is a reincarnation of a Lady of Fire, that also gives her an actual mirror image. Other than Zhongli, all the archons have an independent mirror image. Even Focalors and Furina despite being parts of the same original person, act independently of each other. Exclusively based on confirmed in-game info on her, Mavuika is a single person who was able to jump herself 500 years in the future. If just being later in the timeline makes you a twin of your previous self every character whose had a flashback has a twin, so no. Mavuika does not currently have a double.

*as an aside, the Dendro Archon replacing herself the same way you clone a plant is pretty clever & I've never seen anyone actually address that.

**I'm also suspicious of the dragon sage. More of the books got added to the wiki over the course of me writing this post, one of which says (to paraphrase) 'the dragon robbed of fire absolutely wasn't the dragon king, that would be absurd everyone knows Xbalanque beat him also everything in this book is 100% in-game fictional what are you talking about'. Which very much makes the whole book seem like a case of they doth protest too much frankly. Especially since that's not even the only incident in the book where something elsewhere attributed to a different person is instead given to the dragon sage, which smacks of historical editing one way or the other.