radio414

Starts strong, dips a bit in the middle, then got better at the end 7/10OP Suggestion: got recommended this at work so now i must pass it on to you 6/10

And just like that, something shifted in the distance and, as Chris rounded around the mausoleum, he could see the exit to the floor in the distance. He almost dashed straight towards it. He saw the remaining eye and the remaining several zombies, but nearly disregarded them before he remembered the remaining unfinished business. The zombies were part of that, yes, but one of the dead zombies still had his throwing daggers stuck inside. Those couldn’t be replaced, not without more jobs than he was willing to work. So the plan was those, then the exit. But as he jogged over to the place where he’d felled that particular zombie -- a task made a little difficult by the presence of the fog blanketing the ground, but not impossible, especially when the daggers were sticking out a little bit over it all -- that plan gained extra steps. The first problem was the way the eye and its zombies were moving. He hadn’t been the only one to notice the dungeon room’s new feature; the eye was directing everything to be in their way if they wanted to get out of here. There was also a lone zombie from the previous hordes still harassing Robin and Ziun, so that needed dealt with too. Was Robin still dealing with the effects of that energy beam that eye had hit her with? The questions and extra considerations kept swarming Chris’ head as he imagined the zombies swarming him also, but in the end, he just shook them off. “Alright, here’s the plan,” he said, sheathing one dagger and replacing his string with the other in his off-hand. “Sometimes, when you’re spotted you can’t stay to fight all the guards, you just gotta get out. We’re going to charge forward and break through to the exit.”

Catchy. I like the brass 7/10OP Suggestion: i forgot how fun tropical fuck storm was so now i get to share them again with their new ep, here they are covering jimi hendrix 7/10

Saying Shiki’s name like that was a stupid slip of the tongue. If the girl had been at the van for any other reason, it would have been a peek behind the veil that he would have been responsible for, and if there was one thing Brian didn’t want to be with random strangers, it was being responsible for them. He was doing this paranormal stuff for his own sake and nobody else’s. The fact that the girl had already been brought through was relieving. Of course she had been. Who else would have been interested in that van? He nearly laughed in spite of himself when she said he could have been a Sweeny Todd-esque taco vendor, completely forgetting the assumptions that he had made about her. Well, she could still be homeless. It seemed like Shiki was, after all, probably the most normal thing about Shiki if Brian thought about it. Why couldn't anyone working for Shiki also be homeless? It wasn’t like this job paid that much. “I’m driving to Taco Bell,” he said. “Until Shiki figures out how to give a straightforward instruction. If whatever this is is going to ruin my night, at least I can ruin my night on my own terms. And yours, by proxy, since I’m still paying. I’m Brian, by the way.” Shiki was lucky he knew how to drive manual. It seemed like nobody else in the world could. There were reality tv competitions involving driving -- not that Brian had watched any, but he had been in the room occasionally when an episode came on -- and there was always a challenge involving a manual gearbox. It seemed like even in a situation where learning how to drive properly would be beneficial, people still refused to do it. That didn’t make the van easy to drive, of course. It ran only slightly better than it looked. No matter where he was, it always seemed like there was a Taco Bell nearby. This fact didn’t surprise Brian -- he knew how the franchise model worked -- but he was glad for it. It meant he didn’t have to endure driving for too long. He pulled into the parking lot and rubbed his palms; he hadn’t relaxed his grip since the girl had asked him those questions. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s- wait.” He had just spotted something in the rear mirror. In the back of the van, next to the TV, was an ominously unlabeled VCR tape, the kind of ominous that made Brian swear it had not been there before even though it easily could have. “Yeah, hold up,” he said. “I think this is it.” He checked to make sure the tape was wound properly and stuck it in the slot.

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” -1 Corinthians 13:11 (NIV)Skipping, it turned out, was really hard. There was the expected mental effort of ignoring the absurdity of someone her age doing such a thing and hoping other people did the same, but Melissa hadn’t really put together before she started that it was basically jogging pace while everyone else was just walking. She had to slow herself back down and ended up at more of a “spring in her step” sort of gait. It was the sort of thing she still had to devote mental effort to, though, since if she forgot about it, she ended up just walking again. Still, the conversation surrounding Melissa did interest her. Any opportunity to learn more about Prana was a good one, even if it was a little disappointing that Fiona and Kelsey didn’t have much new knowledge to impart. There was one thing, though, a peculiar commonality between Melissa’s Ambrosia and Prana that she didn’t expect. “There was a popular card game back home on my world too,” Melissa said. “Actually, now that I think about it, the whole world was kind of set around Duel Monsters. The biggest reason most people had a deck was so if you got in a fight you could settle it over the table. Not to mention the arenas, the nationally-broadcast competitions, the fragments of artificial intelligence jammed into a select few of them that granted control over the world, uh…” She wondered if that made any sense at all to people it wasn’t the norm for. “I had a deck full of these fallen angels called Darklords. Monsters, spells, traps, fusing them together, redeeming them to power them up. I don’t know.” She realized she was walking again and pepped her step back up. Kelsey said, “Kinda sounds familiar, but I don’t know much about it.” Melissa shrunk back in on herself again. “I didn’t really expect you to, just reminded me of home is all. Sorry.” It was false hope. It had to be. She didn’t even like the game that much anyway. Maybe it was so much the better that “yoogeeoh” or however Fiona pronounced it was different. It could be fun to learn something new, something with significantly lower stakes than the Duel Monsters back home. Thankfully, before she could completely isolate herself from the conversation, they arrived a That Ice Cream Place, and, as the little tagline in the shop’s logo said, “It’s impossible to be in a bad mood at That Ice Cream Place®!” Melissa was a bit paralyzed by choice, so she just got a vanilla sundae with chocolate sauce. That, at least, was familiar to her, and it tasted even better than it looked. “What’d you get?” she asked everyone else.“[…]including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” -C.S. Lewis, expanding on 1 Corinthians, On Three Ways of Writing for Children

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Weeks Fifty-Five and Fifty-Six -- Grinding Up I mean, I promised this. By the end of these two weeks -- spoiler alert -- all but one of these restored-to-twenty-four adventurers is going to be Resolve Level Five or better, and the one that we have left lagging behind will still be more than serviceable in the upcoming fights when we get back to those. That does mean, however, that I’ve got a doozy of a team lined up for the first of these two weeks. Oh my god, of all the teams I have had to not recommend on this show, this is the not-recommendiest. Josephine is a lot of useful things, but the Antiquarian is not a front-line class. The closest thing this team has to a damage dealer is Nammo, the Warrior half of The Sisters, which means the whole party is going to be dancing around as the pair tries and figure out what they’re doing. This isn’t entirely a bad thing, like, of all the parties to be constantly shuffled around, this party does have Euryale who can slither around the battlefield when she loses her human disguise, and both Alhazred and Josephine are placement-agnostic. There’s also plenty of healing to go around, both the mental and physical kind, so we’re not dying quickly even if we can’t kill anything quickly either. This is still a Veteran level dungeon. We’ve seen these for the past several weeks. It’s what we’re used to, so all this isn’t too difficult. I discounted in that lead-up just how good blight was in the Ruins and we’ve got two sources in the party: Junjeong and Josephine. The two of them combined frequently burned down one threat while Alhazred worked on another. We also got a pretty high-dodge team composition. At one point, the entire team dodged getting yelled at by a ghoul, and how do you even dodge getting yelled at? And then sometimes the ghoul did that Another stroke of luck with scouting ahead was finding a secret room, which, since this was an exploration mission, counted to our number of rooms found and let us dodge a prospective room battle. We got out of this fight so unscathed that I immediately turned around and put Alhazred in the next run. Now, a pattern you might pick up from these runs is that whenever I act particularly excited about a team, something goes wrong and whenever I point out all the problems with a team, all those problems seem to disappear. This is a little worrisome since you can’t level out of these dungeons and I’m going to inevitably fall into bad habits, but also, this is a really good team to just clear out big enemy parties. Everyone focuses on the back rows and then suddenly the front rows are significantly less threatening. Nothing more to be said about that. There are even two -- technically three -- secondary healers to keep people alive. Of course, when you run into a miniboss and you don’t have his natural stun counter, then maybe there are some issues. Not a huge number of issues because again, everyone can hit the back rows where The Collector will be, but at the same time, the three actions from level five enemies are, uh, they’re bad! They hurt! And when they’re not hurting, they’re healing the Collector’s health back. So this happens: And then this: I could have quit right then and there, but I think there was a part of me that had still accepted Alhazred as a bonus, as a gimme that we could lose since we had lost once before. This is not an optimal way to play Darkest Dungeon, especially not with the stipulations I’m using, but it is how I played. I should say, Fearful on an Occultist isn’t the worst thing in the world. The worst thing it will trigger besides compounding stress damage is the afflicted party member will run towards the backline, which is negligible with this party setup. It still sucks, but once Alhazred’s health is topped back up, he’s mostly functional. More annoying, though, is the other big status effect an adventurer gets here. Congrats, ABC, you’re a vampire now. I don’t have any blood but the run was basically over at this point, I was just taking a rest to free up some inventory space and got greedy with my camping skills. We got ambushed and I was immediately punished for it. Still, these are only small difficulties, and, more importantly, they’re fixable. Next week, I suppose we’ll give that Viscount a visit, and maybe see if we can’t crawl our way all the way to the boss in one go. We’d better. We’ve only got one invitation, after all. -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

violin good 7/10OP Suggestion: more katie gately keeping me extremely hyped for the end of the month 8/10

is it pronounced job or job

upscaled animation : / but i'll pop off for some eurobeat hell yeah 8/10 strong start with the riff but feels like the most generic lyrics imaginable like there are parody country songs with the exact same lyrics 5.5/10OP Suggestion: new naima bock song starts pretty good and just gets better as the song goes on 7.5/10

Rubber Bullies As soon as Sibyl resolved to start tearing up another ceiling of the place, a BANG! erupted from the kitchen, and the door splitting the two rooms flew off its hinges, went all the way across the room, and crashed into the wall on the opposite side. Standing in the now doorless doorway was Vi, her shoulders heaving with every breath, her parasol extended out in front of her like the thrust of a spear. When Vi walked into the room, it was with almost exaggerated stomps, each one punctuating a spoken word. “I. Am. Going. To. FUCKING. Annihilate. Whoever. The. Fuck. Did. That. To. The. Kitchen.” She reached the door and speared it again, this time enveloping it in her increasingly overwhelming aura before wheeling around to launch it back towards a corner where it collided with one of the treadmills, destroying both of them in the process. The whole building settled a bit, both in the sense that the only thing heard in the aftermath was Vi’s huffed breathing, with even Adler, who had strolled in just now, standing there in stunned silence, and in the sense that things that probably should have been making noise, like the continued collapsing of the workshop just a room over (or floor, depending on how you looked at it) no longer were. They weren’t making noise because they’d stopped in their tracks. Two things happened in quick succession: The first was a resounding “Fine!” which seemed to echo from all four walls and even the ceiling and floor of the recreation room. “Fine, you win, okay? I’ll stop. Just please, please don’t mess things up too bad for them.” The second was a message buzzed in on all three of the Moray Clan members’ phones. Adler took the opportunity to read it aloud in a mocking impression of what the fates actually sounded like. “Heyyyy besties,” he said. “Good job today, they didn’t even kno what hit em. Anyway anyone not licking their wounds too hard might be headed ur way now so get out while the getting’s good, k?” Adler looked up from his phone. “Guess that means you’re in luck, uh, Babs, was it?” Then, to Vi and Sibyl, he said. “Anything else catch your eye that needs doing? And yes, I remembered the shopping trip. I may be lazy, but I’m the honorable sort of lazy.” Soft Power Caesar stared at Override as he received the new treaty as though he were trying to wring out all the possible implications of the latter’s pronunciation. “I feel as though I should yell at you,” he said. “I want you to know that, regardless of your intentions, I feel very disrespected right now, not just that, but all these things we have discussed today. However, because I recognize your intentions as misguided at worst, I will not subject you to some of my… darker impulses. I also just want to make things clear: I know the reason your boss sent you to me last. “He’s a loose cannon. Caesar needs to be held in check.” He said it in falsetto, sounding nothing like Director Sekelsky, though intentionally so. He coughed a few times before his voice was back to normal. “It’s social pressure is what it is. I know what happens when too many lines are crossed. We’ve all heard the stories or seen the remnants of battlefields before the construction crews come in and build everything back up again. If even one of them -- Ophiuchus, who I respect, or The Fates, who I despise -- were not on this list, I probably wouldn’t on principle. But I’m playing by the rules here, you see?” He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a fountain pen. He didn’t sign it yet, though. He thought better of it. “At the same time, you were the ones proposing payment, weren’t you? How about this: Legion?” He motioned with his free hand and Legion shut down the projector, turned the lights back on, and came over to his side. “You are going to carry some of Legion around, that’s all. Just give me a few extra eyes for a day or so, how does that sound?” Caesar opened up a different drawer on his desk and replaced the pen with a pocket knife, with which he pricked Legion’s index finger and guided his hand across the remaining dotted line of the signatories section. “I’m offering this to you willingly,” he said. “This is my mark, take it as you will.” OOC

the video description says why a miku concert on giving day is significant but not who the vocaloid on stage is nor did said vocaloid actually do a lariat like if she's not knocking another virtual singer to the ground what's the point i feel lied to 7.5/10OP Suggestion: bonus dry cleaning as a follow up to one of my favorite albums of last year 7.5/10

The girl didn’t react how Brian expected. She was jumpy but not in that weird druggie sort of way, and while she did accept the offer of food instead of money, she didn’t do any of that “God bless you, sir,” stuff. She kind of laughed and mumbled, and Brian could only stare. Maybe he just didn’t understand women. This one got out of the way, so he went to the driver’s-side door, climbed in, and surveyed the scene. Shiki’s camper van was just as much a run-down piece of junk on the inside as it was on the outside. There were still dishes in the miserable little sink, for one, and he was pretty sure the interior of the mini-fridge still smelled of cheese. Either way, he didn’t want to open it and check. The purple shag carpet in the back by the bed had seen better days, and the less said about the state of the microwave the better. At least all the stuff for actual jobs was there -- flashlights, cameras, a spirit box, the works. Brian wondered what the girl would think about all that. It was a weird image thing, would she think he lived like this? Would she think the only thing he did for fun was watch old VHS tapes on an even older television set? It didn’t matter, Brian thought. He wasn’t about to apologize for Shiki’s mess, especially to some girl he was driving to fake Mexican tacos before whatever job Shiki had in mind. He found the keys in their usual hiding place and rolled down the window with the little hand crank. It always took a bit more effort than he expected, but he managed. “You getting in?” he said, looking at the girl through the mirror. “Just look out for the door, it doesn’t close right unless you really slam it.”

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Week Fifty-Four -- The Brigand 12-Pounder The wild whispers of heresy roused the rabble to violent action. Such was the general air of rebellion that even my generous offer of gold to the local constabulary was rebuffed. To reassert my rule, I sought out unscrupulous men skilled in the application of force. Tight-lipped and terrifying, these mercenaries brought with them a war machine of terrible implication. I’m starting to think this Ancestor guy isn’t a good dude. Really, the hardest part of this week is just finding four adventurers who haven’t leveled out of Veteran-level dungeons and can also reliably deal with the Fuseman. One of those is an obvious choice, maybe a second at a push, but the rest? Well, here’s what I ended up with: I would not say that this is a reasonable party. Doggo is priced into transforming if he wins the speed roll, which is probably fine with Sethera and Margaret there to help lower stress, but on the other hand, that’s still not a great look going into one of the game’s longer boss fights. Margaret is also the primary healer here, which we’ve managed before, and should be fine as long as we take some extra food, bandages, and antivenom. Dismas is the key holding everything together. The bandits the 12-Pounder summons might be tougher than the 8-Pounder’s but they’re still bandits, which the Highwayman is really good at dealing with. This is the only fight worth talking about in the lead-up. Sure, there was some other stuff involving a ghoul and some dogs that might have been threatening, but the party is secretly all damage dealers, so it wasn’t much of a threat. This one, though, exposes a slight problem with the build, which is if Dismas does go first and shuffle to the front, the party only has Margaret to deal with the back lines. I wouldn’t call that the reason we suffered five critical hits here, especially since the Batteries seemed more interested in blighting our team, but that meant Margaret had to focus on healing a little more than she should have for such a routine fight. We weren’t ruined or anything -- our equipment is too good for that -- but things did get weird for a second there. As mentioned before, the bandits this thing summons are tougher. You’ll notice, for example, the Fusilier is stealthed like all the other Veteran-level Fusiliers. It also adds the Bloodletter to its pool of possible summons, which can definitely add some problems. But that only works when the 12-Pounder summons more than just its Fuseman, and I regret to say that the reason this fight isn’t more interesting is that, for three turns in a row, it did just that. The Outlaw Fuseman is not a tough enemy. It’s not designed to be. It’s supposed to always go last and fire the cannon, soaking up damage for the real threat of the boss fight. But when the party is being buffed by Sethera playing music, the proper trinkets, and rabies(?), the party had no trouble managing it turn after turn. The Abomination isn’t technically recommended for this fight because of how grindy it can get, and the stress of being a beast does add up, but by the time Dismas landed the finishing blow on the cannon, Doggo had only gotten up to, like, 50 Stress -- well within acceptable parameters. There’s one final surprise the game threw at me this week. I was debating whether to save this for next week’s post or just throw it up now, but it’s too interesting not to share now. Yes, sometimes the game will be extra nice to you and let you bring one adventurer back from the dead. Normally this is an opportunity to get back a hero with some really nice quirks you lost to a fatal misplay, but here it’s even more valuable. Here, we get back our one (1) Occultist we lost earlier. Now, coming back from the dead is a bit traumatic, so Alhazred’s equipment and skills are all reduced to level one, and he does come back at the level he died at, so he’s severely under-leveled compared to everyone else now, but he is worth grinding for. Everyone is. See you next week for grinding, -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→