Leon's Microblog – April 2019

HYPNO COIN – Makes 1 enemy fall asleep – FREE SOFT PILLOW – Makes 1 ally fall asleep – FREE LULLABY BOX – Makes all allies fall asleep – FREE LARGE BLANKET – Makes everyone fall asleep – FREE SLUMBER INCENSE – Makes everyone fall asleep – FREE >LEAVE SHOP A t　t h i s　h o u r ?

"There. All your unrequited love for that long-haired person in the vest, out of your mind, and into my collection. I'll put it near my newest acquisition… a batch of unrequited love for YOU…" *face starts twitching* "…from a vest-wearing–" *quickly turns away and snorts*

Please put all your discourse about spoilers in ROT13, thanks. "That's it? Is that the whole tweet? You used an entire spot in my TL for that?" Um, no, I've got a bonus joke too. Hurkyl's Recall? That's when you puke something up, right? "…You already posted that 5 months ag

*discovers a familiar room now has a crudely-drawn one-tile-wide corridor leading into darkness offscreen, with the words "ROAD TO PARTYTIME" scrawled above it in bright red pixels* "Wow, most houses I've been in don't even have a Road To Partytime."

https://ponett.itch.io/slarpgdemo – Now I'm playing this… a bit slow-paced and introduction-heavy, especially for a demo, but the inter-party dialogue (not pictured) is pretty good.

https://tuyoki.itch.io/escaped-chasm – Had a bit of fun with this tiny game.

"Why do you think the Eclipse Meteor chose me as her Champion?" *lifts vape pen from bloody lip* "Because I've beaten you up so many times, "Sun Meteor Champion"?" *unfolds pen into a badass laser knife* "Or because I was always meant to take your place and cast you in darkness?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymothoa_exigua – I look up the lifecycle of everyone's favourite organ-replacing parasite, and Wikipedia up and pulls a "to be continued" on me.

"This crystal chunk contains the single pure scream that the Glass Empress tried to make as she finally shattered, still trapped in her throat. …Or so the history books say. But I know better." *reaches to snap it* "It was a moan of pleasure."

God resignedly returning to Earth after God's much larger and more personally meaningful creation, Hottie Hunksphere Supreme, gets a fraction of the notes that Earth racked up

-----✂------ ❦ 1 (ONE) FREE EXCUSE ❦ Next time someone says you "have NO excuse", not to watch something, just whip out this sucker and get right back to gloomily procrastinating. EXPIRES: 1/1/2021 VOID IF DUCK REMOVED [🦆] ~another freebie from your pal Leon~ -----✂------

"And we're at the Museum Of Very Boring Cellular Automata! Let's look over here…" "This is a 0D automaton. One cell, blinking on and off, forever." "Amazingly dull! Next…" "In this 2D automaton, no state ever changes. There's over 1240 rules, but they all do nothing… LIKE LIFE

"The question I'm always asked is, "How can you be fat if you're a vampire? If you only eat blood, shouldn't the pounds just slide off?" Lemme tell you, I wish it was THAT easy." "…Do you actually wish it was that easy?" "Pfft, no! Then I'd have to buy a whole new tux!"

"It's not just a hat…" "It's a bird circling your head." "…it's a /status symbol/." "Status effect."

Captain Olimar and Mr. Saturn are the same species *spins in chair* Me: "It's that easy. You just belch some two-things nonsense and the numbers roll in* Tiny aliens: "But… that's not true. You lied." Me: "They're both fictional charact–" Tiny aliens: "You lied to your friends."

"Hey, look over here." "Can't." *continues staring into wrist computer, body unmoving* "Stuck in pause screen." "Oh. Map screen, or crafting menu?" "Map. All buttons just zoom or unzoom." "Uh… let me check mine." *holds up wrist two inches from face, entire body ceases motion*

Clenched eyelids

LEON ARNOTT PRESENTS (followers: whoa oh my god is this happening) @ W E B B E D S P A C E a Twitter microblog (followers: oh my god oh my god it's a Late Title Card a whole TEN YEARS LATE oh my god this is so epiccccccc)

Strategically saving money in RPGs by only purchasing equipment using credit cards in the names of party members who are going to permanently leave the party two cutscenes hence

I'm sorry, everyone… I need to be catty. MTG's use of "tokens" is just a clunky hack to get around the natural, elegant limits of the card game medium. Look, I'm a whole game inside two decks of cards! Uh oh, quick, write "zombie" on some sticky notes and slap 'em on the table.

2059: Earth's first "permastorm" forms 2066: Corporations vie for naming rights to Earth's fourth permastorm 2080: Surviving human nations defined by encircling permastorms rather than land borders

I hope the one lesson everyone's taking from these "favourite ship dynamics" posts is how easy it is to make stick figures femme by just adding cheek blush and swooping eyebrows.

Just saw footage of a game, I can't say which one, where the idle animation is the party members facing each other and chatting, but the game doesn't show you – doesn't have to show you – what they're saying.

The news about the secret City Of Heroes illegal fan-server running for years on end is scintillating, but where's the back alley and which Shakespearean couplets do I need to whisper in it to access the server running Emily Short's Blood And Laurels unknown to the world above

Parser IF game that only claims that "multiple undos aren't supported" only whenever you've gotten well and truly stuck

"Stand back. I'm a master of glitchmancy." *points finger, making the words "undefinedNaN" appear in Arial on the wall* "Yeah, this neighbourhood is all just Electron shells, so my magic doesn't look that impressive here."

"Hey. This is important. I came back from the afterlife to warn you. This big lug you're fighting? I looked in him. No heart. Just a hole full of air. So, if you stab him, a horrifying fart-like noise wi–" *a horrifying fart-like noise bellows out* "…Damn… I arrived too late."

*witch wearing Bunsen burner hat appears* "Halt! My master, the Grand Sciencewitch, is brewing the Accursed Experiment, the mightiest experiment in legend. If you want to stop her, you'll have to invalidate my hypothesis… that you're a frog!" *whips out spring-scale shaped wand*

"Look at our inventory. Cutie Shield, Cutie Boots, Cutie Helm… but no Cutie Plate. You know what that means?" "No." "We have to do New Game Plus." "We are not doing New Game Plus." "Whaaat? It'll be easy!" *hits a Pond Blob with frost sword, healing it for 3150 for some reason*

https://youtu.be/d5f4-m77O90?t=1593 - I seriously can't believe the immense twist at the end of the segment from 26:33 to 30:40.

Here's my opinion of the big thing that everyone cares about: Portal 1 may be Portal 2 canon, but Portal 2 is NOT Portal 1 canon. No, you can't get me to elaborate further.

I resent that I thought I got this tweet, but then after the first 3 minutes I *really* got it. https://twitter.com/108/status/1117169824994664450

I feel like a lot of 90s RPG narrative design was sort-of unconsciously centered around just seeing how many World Maps they could spring on the player unexpectedly. FF3? Two world maps. FF4? Two, wait, no, THREE world maps. Chrono Trigger? Five, count' em, FIVE world maps.

One of my dearest dreams is that someday the webcomic Cucumber Quest finishes so I can then fully purport that Undertale is a companion piece to it.

"And so the Dream World – my beautiful home – is crumbling away. But, if what you say is true, Dreamer… then another Dream World will appear in its place, soon?" "Weeeeell, I'm kinda pulling an all-nighter or two from tomorrow – semester projects, y'know? So, uh,

"We've both got so many of each other's parts in us that we don't think about our make and model anymore." "Yeah. Can you believe I still have "12-core" printed somewhere on my chassis?" *expression fades* "Now we just have one core each."

"Ah, I've always been cursed with great intellect. I skipped grades 2, 3 and 4 in school. Teachers stopped bothering to give me exams. In grade 6 I was expelled for actually being 212 years old – something I had no control over. But, such is the suffering of the outstanding…"

"Hmmmm? My favourite videogame villain? Hm! Hm! Dearie me, let me think! Ah, oh yes, it must surely be the villain of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance! You know whomfst that 'twas, do you not? Of course, I refer to… the MAIN CHARACTER!!! OOOOOH HOO HOO HOO HOO HOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Yet again you've locked yourself in a mansion's attic, realised the key is still in the keyhole on the other side, slid paper under the door, pushed the key out with a hairclip, dragged it to you with the paper, then noticed the combination ornate mirror and haunted painting over

The "Hell Rule" states that any game centered around underground exploring and with little to no original narrative direction will always, given sufficient dev time, end up having the player dig to Hell. NetHack obeys it, Minecraft obeys it, Spelunky obeys it, Zork freaking obeys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrkDBElmdhE - It's cracking me up that the Monty On The Run theme (a song so famous I won't link it) ended up getting a Badass Epic Rock Remix within the same series, on the same system, in a bad third-party spinoff. There's no way to take this song seriously.

"Vampires can fly, but it's a myth that they can turn into bats. What actually happens is that their bodies shrivel up really small if they're blood-starved." *presents a shoebox where a tiny wrinkly vampire clad in a black handkerchief is sipping from a thimble of blood*

"Here she is!! The Queen of All Darkness!" "Nay… she is Empress of All Darkness!" "What are you two saying?! Goddess of All Darkness!" "…Okay, chuckleheads, knock it off." *frazzled old woman emerges from the darkness wearing MAYOR sash*

"Their "repairs" on our human ships and fighters were well-meaning, but misguided. They thought the human pilots precious ornate cargo, rather than an asset as expendable as the ship itself, and that the ships flew to communicate with them, rather than to hunt and kill them."

Sticky-taping a tiny person to a piano key, then proceeding to play a vigorous 30-minute piece which uses every nearby key except that one (…but they don't know it)

UNIDENTIFIABLE CARD Who knows what defunct 90s TCG this card was made for? Its text reads "Spiker: Resist any card once", its picture is a fractal, it has two hexagons in the corner, and the back of the card is an autostereogram, thus consigning its identity to utter oblivion.

DUST REVENANT Most household dust is shed skin and hair from human inhabitants. The goal of all dust is to gather more of itself, to regain the size and form it once had, to become strong enough to crawl, to stand, to walk, to finally confront its mother-body… and fuse together.

"It wasn't until I met you… that I learned real people don't live in glass tubes… they don't have to pretend to unleash a "psychic agony pulse" on Inspection Day so their friends get "project funding"… they just have to eat something called "cake" on Inspection Day instead!"

"The Battle Menu will appear. Select an option, or tap the shoulder buttons to wink and receive the Secret Premium Battle Menu, which is black lace-lined and has big calligraphic drop-caps on all the options."

*spins monitor* "As you see, your mind is just this big while-loop, but right down here–" *taps screen with ballpoint* "–they typed "Math.ramdom()", which, due to a compiler quirk, always returns the string "fridat the 13th part 2". That's why you turned sapient and grew a soul."

Coralmaid (a mermaid but coral): "Time for sex." *dumps bucket of coral gametes into storm drain marked "FLOWS TO SEA"* Human (Coralmaid's friend): "Do coralfolk actually consider that sex?" Coralmaid: "Well, I'm ace, so…" *shrugs abruptly, causing bucket to hit side of head*

You enter your vegetable patch and discover tiny lumberjacks sawing down your broccoli. They offer to trade a song for the stalk. Removing the saw from the broccoli's trunk, they play it with a tiny violin bow, making a sound so haunting, you hear your ghost weeping in your body.

"In this realm," *raises arms out of chin-deep swamp water extravagantly* "there are five schools of magic: Slime, Mud, Peat, Silt and Moss. Each has a different magical effect when you throw them at things." *slings handful of mud at pupil, transforming them into a muddy pupil*

"You OK? You look like you're gimbal-locked." "I'm fine." *spins around impetuously* "My coordinate system is working JUST as intended." *proceeds to huffily spin around along the exact same axis*

TIME FOR A RACE– VOTE FOR YOUR CHOICE ◯ A dog emoji ◯ A car that a medieval wizard stole, but he doesn't know how to shift gears, so he's doing the whole race in reverse ◯ A snail… get it… ◯ The ( Vote ) button. THE VOTE BUTTON?! YOU NEED THAT TO VOTE! HEY, COME BACK H

https://hamboneslamdome.tumblr.com/post/183779180072 – Another promising webcomic with lively characters and good comic action. Since there's so few pages yet, I shall now attach an eye-catching yet narratively unrepresentative panel sample to preclude spoilers, as is my standard.

WHY DO *YOU* WEAR A FULL SUIT OF PLATE ARMOUR CONSTANTLY? Light Knight: "I cannot rest while evil exists!" Dark Knight: "Skin… weak… Metal… strong." Moss Knight: "When I close my visor, I am at peace." Ghost Knight: "I can make a HUGE racket just by falling down the stairs."

*places a bunch of tabs at the start of a line of code, then decides this needs more vertical space and hits return, leaving them stranded, invisible and alone for the rest of time* Hmm… const {x,y} =

↳ End the run unless the Runner takes 1 tag. ↳ End the run unless the Runner pays $2 to me, the code gate card. ↳ End the run unless the Runner gives me a pat. ↳ End the run unless the Runner tells me I'm viable. RULINGS: • Players cannot tell cards they're viable.

https://archive.org/details/myspace_dragon_hoard_2010 – Now this is the early-00s open-source tool naming scheme I remember.

I actually went and looked up the Wikipedia article for the SID, and now I'm losing my mind at this horrifying paragraph.

I'm feeling gloomy again, so……… here's a thread of SIDs I've been enjoying using as coding music lately.

I've read a lot about MTG history lately, and you might think that a multi-decade-long metagame with so much accumulated bizarre nonsense in it has a lot of good community memes. You would be wrong. There are only three good MTG memes. Here they are, in entirety.

Screw you, Stack Overflow, I know what day it is and you don't.