enforcer's slimyboy thoughts

wish I could do an illegal cross site trade between pixel cats' end and flight rising to restock my vault, but I don't want to lose my FR account. or my PCE account, I guess, because it's useful to have an unlimited stock of currency / items for art

it isn't UNLIMITED but it might as well be given the absurd quantity of stuff I have from doing dailies for the past 3 years but not caring about much of any of the gameplay beyond base mechanics

Words and phrases to remove from your vocabulary in 2026 (because they are so overused as to be meaningless):

• anything you learned from TikTok

• enshittification

• brainrot

• dead Internet theory

• any diagnostic term if not applied to its clinical context

• any advocacy term if not applied to tangible advocacy

kill your local AI enabler (and all billionaires)

the only "ethical AI" is designed with a specific isolated dataset for a specific purpose by experts in that field, and is not released outside of its field

there is no such thing as "ethical AI"; all of the large models are funded and trained by large corporations in bed with fascists for ultimately evil purposes. a world "controlled by AI" is controlled by who's training the models, and who ultimately funds them, which is US technofascists. bullshit generators do not deserve rights or welfare. neither do their enablers and users.

at this point I consider "ronnie" to be a job title and a species, not his name

merry saturnalia, disgusting snake-ronnie enjoyers (I am referring to myself as such)

shit I don't have anything to say. in Toronto and my legs hurt. got my favorite I prevail album on CD yesterday

Finally arrived in Toronto. My flight got diverted to the other Toronto because the airport I was supposed to be at CLOSED AT 11. despite my flight's delay being known.

The flight was unpleasant for a number of reasons. I am now nursing a cup of microwave noodles, both hungry and too nauseous to eat, tired and too nauseous to sleep.

Do not take this as a review of YQM or Porter in general. This was egregiously bad. I don't know what went wrong in Ottawa. (This is why my plane was so heavily delayed.)

Something I haven't done since 2022: walking to board the plane is outside. Through the parking lot. It is currently about -17 C in Dieppe. (2 Fahrenheit.)

At least I wore a long-sleeved shirr, but I took off my hoodie because I was getting hot in the airport and didn't think I needed to put it on to board.

And I can't really put on my hoodie standing with a backpack. I will when I get on the plane.

Worth keeping in mind. At least it isn't raining or snowing, or too windy.

FINALLY boarding, at least for passengers with small children, roughly exactly 8 hours after I arrived by bus. I was bumped to boarding group 1 and should have a row to myself because most everybody left, though.

Apparently Goatlings is shutting down. Glad I liquidated. Frankly, I'm actually kind of spitefully glad about this, since I know exactly who has been "harassing mods" for such heinous crimes as using art references, OCs being sad, and not posting about every human rights issue on a fucking virtual pet game: the same people who decided I was an invalid trans person for having Falling In Reverse goats. Good job. I hope your crusade against problematicism was worthwhile.

Anyway, I have posted to my Neocities profile and the VP discord with "uh, I have art of my OCs I commissioned from Goatlings users for whom I have no other contact info. If any of it is yours, or you know another username for its author, please contact me. Art will stay up and credits will remain unchanged otherwise."

"Attention Porter passengers: our aircraft is FINALLY on its way and will be landing shortly before 9:00 PM, with a departure at 9:35. We don't expect any further delays. Please be fast when boarding."

I get the feeling that the announcer was crossing their fingers when saying they didn't expect further delays.

Would be nice to know they were giving out meal vouchers before I got one myself...not sure if it's worth getting one now.

I'm not hungry anymore, and I'd rather eat lunch somewhere more interesting after landing on my way back.

The Tim Horton's has closed. This seems OOC for being one of exactly two sources of food in the airport on this side. If the Tim Horton's were open, I'd take a voucher to get some donuts for tomorrow because I'll almost certainly sleep through breakfast, but that is out.

I'm not having a very good experience with YQM, but it isn't really their fault. Just delays in Ottawa, and being a tiny commuter airport that isn't equipped for just short of 8 hours of waiting. And the latter wouldn't have happened if there were more than one bus.

At least I didn't have to leave at 4 in the morning.

9:35...I don't think I can change flights without an extra fee until it gets to 3 hours delayed.

The base of my middle fingernail on my left hand is bleeding, seemingly quite profusely, and I have no idea why. I do think that since getting top surgery, presumably for hormonal reasons, my rate of nail growth has increased. Just in all directions which isn't how human nails should work, but at least none of my toenails have chosen to attack me yet.

either got the kind of HRT that makes you a werewolf, with delayed onset, or it is trying to grow scales but not succeeding

Oh, and my flight has now been delayed to 9:00 PM, so I will have been in this airport for 7 fucking hours by the time it boards.

If it gets to more than 3 hours delayed, I can contact Porter to reschedule, and I guess I'm spending the night in Moncton.

It's still better than the 6:30 AM to Toronto-Pearson...

too bad I can't just get in line for air Canada to toronto at 7:25...planes don't work that way. also I have a headache but I did not bring any Tylenol or similar things with me and the airport store that stocks that sort of thing is on the WRONG SIDE OF SECURITY

that's what the vending machines at Tim Horton's SHOULD have in them instead of 2 rows of diet coke

I am so fucking sick of announcements and Christmas music.

acquiring a veggie pizza and a mountain dew. apparition who speaks in Ronnie's voice wants a fucking drink of the bar kind and I agree with him but I also know that alcohol and SSRIs do not mix so he's getting this. maybe my ears have recovered from earbuds on the bus (took them off because they got irritated) so I can put my buds back in and at least have something besides Christmas music for the remaining hour and a half at minimum before I board

As of 6:27, my flight has been delayed AGAIN and is now departing at 8:40 and arriving at 10:14 / 11:14 Atlantic. I may be heading to the bar on the observation deck for something vaguely dinner-like, but won't be surprised if I still want something upon landing in Toronto. My croissant and 10-pack of Timbits aren't going to cut it.

this wouldn't be so annoying if I hadn't already been here for 5 hours. (however, it's still better than overnighting in Moncton to leave at 6:30 in the morning from Toronto-Pearson.)

I wish there was a retail location for snacks on this side of security. There's a vending machine with the Tim Horton's. It's next to the corner I'm sitting in. Hopefully it takes cards, because I only have enough cash for one taxi so don't want to spend it until I can get more. But there isn't the convenience store-alike like on the other side of security, so your options are far more limited.

brooding in the darkest corner of the tim horton's; classical edgelord behaviour

I have been hanging out in the Moncton airport (which contains this Tim Horton's, a bar on the observation deck, and an airport-standard convenience store -- only one, and it's on the pre-security side.) for Four Hours. And I still have 2 hours remaining. There is one bus per day from Redactedville. It arrived at 1:30. My flight has been delayed until 7:45. I couldn't even check in and drop off my bag until 4:30, so I sat in the convenience store's seating area for 3 hours with my suitcase.

The other flight to Toronto leaves at 6:30 in the morning, so I guess this is better than staying overnight in Moncton with my suitcase, but ugh. This is one of many reasons why I intend to get the hell out of Redactedville and move to an actual city once my semester is over in April.

Also, re: how I ended up looking at ICE again last night...according to ICE, Max was insistent that something be done about the MySpace beef that led to Michael Cook's death, so Ronnie valiantly stepped in to do his dirty work for him.

According to Max, as early as 2008, he never actually WANTED his honor defended to begin with, was trying to smooth things over the whole time, and Ronnie decided against his will to choose violence despite his and the rest of the band's wishes.

Seeing as one of these people still threatens people with physical fights over "pointless band beef" now (last documented instance I recall is Sanguisugabogg in 2024), without his boyfriend involved, and the rest of their relationship is Max running damage control, guess who I believe?

They both claim that "Max had been talking to that kid's mom" the whole time, which Ronnie paints as betrayal and his playing both sides, but makes more sense with Max's explanation that he was trying to de-escalate (behind Ronnie's back because Ronnie had already chosen violence so would screw things up if allowed to intervene).

in Soviet Russia, ronnie radke fucks YOU (except sorry honey, Alex terrible isn't interested)

gods I sure hope that search engines are obeying my no-index head tags

I Can Explain is completely insufferable on rereading any part of it, but it is the most detailed source we have and there's so much weird shit in there. I'm glad that I bought it when I did, especially given its continued absence. I've probably done the most helpful thing for the Falling In Reverse fanbase since folks recorded the streams with unreleased songs from 2020-21, even if no one knows it was me because they wouldn't be nice to my weirdo they/them snakeboy ways.

ronnie's claims about scene fashion here are 110% false; you see similar looks from AFI among others well before him, but here's my citation that his claim of any beef with MIW before 2022 is BS, since they are mentioned in the same breath as one of his senpais and his Max replacement (p. 56, 58 in the PDF)

I was not looking for this, but figured I'd screenshot it because I've referenced it before. I was trying to find an anecdote which I'm, like, 90% sure is in ICE about Ronnie's at the time girlfriend suggesting he needed to get clean and his responding by throwing a full slushie at her, but it did not turn up, nor was it in my summary. If anyone wants to scroll through the PDF to find it, that would be appreciated. I think it's from around the DIYLF era, so between chapters 5 and 9 or so. I may be misremembering, but I'm almost certain it's in there, since it's too weirdly specific to be from anywhere else. However, this book is utterly insufferable so I find it difficult to scroll through again.

Not sure how I did it in 2024, but I was comparatively innocent back then. Popular Monster (2024) aged the me who has a relationship with FIR 10 years, and I'm already a 90s kid whose birth year starts with a 2.

what hath god wrought

https://file.garden/ZvBqN3lQEnLVuczj/fashionably%20late%20ravers%20in%20the%20uk.mp3

I deliberated with the monologue for about a half an hour straight over whether "AI" mashup generators were ethically okay. I decided they were, as long as I wasn't posting it on a searchable platform and taking away traffic from actual mashups which require artistic effort or passing it off as my own. The curiosity got the better of me, and this is the only FIR dream concept I've ever had that I can actually HEAR, since it isn't a nonexistent song with Ronnie's vocals / in his style.

The site I used (EditPaw) doesn't contain any generative features and works with pre-existing files so avoids the emissions problems and isn't forging work in someone else's style, is from a set of tools specifically for audio manipulation hence doesn't use the large models and avoids their fascism problems, all of the tasks are things I could do myself; they'd just be tedious (syncing BPM, isolating instruments / vocals, and layering them), and this sucks and I don't care enough to commission someone for it so I'm not taking money away from actual artists.

Also, this contains no transitions whatsoever, which is the artistic part of real mashups. It's literally just Fashionably Late's vocals on Ravers In The UK's beat, with no effort to sync up beats or key. I could have made this myself with Audacity and a vocals / instrumentation isolator (which predate generative "AI") and it would be just as bad.

Also, Ravers In The UK (Manian), one of my OG faves, is sure enough from 2009, so I think I've cracked the code. Nightcore hit its peak of popularity in 08-09, hence the "Nightcore Canon" is basically the 50 most popular Eurodance-adjacent and 50 most popular scenemo-adjacent songs as of 09. Hence the prevalence of Hollywood Undead and Get Scared's first albums, and the absence of Ronnie. DIYLF would be old news, having been overtaken by crunkcore and more put together descendants (e.g. Get Scared), and FIR wouldn't exist yet.

That being said, while this "mashup" is AWFUL, it honestly does sound like something that would have made it into my Soundcloud likes, or that I would have made myself with those pre-"AI" music editors (which I think similar mashup / DJing programs existed back in '16-17) and uploaded. Which is the vibe I wanted.

Here's the original mashup pre-Audacity 1.25 speed, and a pure (1.25 speed / pitch) Nightcore of Fashionably Late. (I originally tried using Nightcores of both songs in the generator, but it didn't work because it wasn't in the range it recognized as "vocals". Even then, you can see that its vocal isolation is deeply flawed with Ronald.)

https://file.garden/ZvBqN3lQEnLVuczj/mashup-aimashupmaker-1766421054673152054.mp3

https://file.garden/ZvBqN3lQEnLVuczj/fashionablylate_1.25.mp3

This bullshit isn't going to replace actual artistically crafted mashups any time soon.

I would put the Nightcore album right behind Hard Bourbon (2025) as the second most plausible FIR dream concept. Arguably, Hard Bourbon predicted All My Women, in being an All My Life sequel, but Ronnie getting prostate cancer would be much better than Bad Girls Club With Puppets.

The subconscious not only intimately understands Ronnie, it intimately understands each ERA of Ronnie, and assigns sound, release timing, and hairstyle accurately. Hence why Fashionably Late is so...prolific, but every new song with a release date vs. uncovery date after 2020 has been a single.

We never got to hear this album, since I woke up before checking out from the CDs and nerd paraphernalia store. Probably for the best. If my subconscious can not only perfectly imitate Ronnie, but perfectly imitate him at 1.25 speed and pitch, I would be a little scared.

If this is in the same universe as the dream from 2023 or so about 10 bonus tracks from Fashionably Late, all of which were awful (my concern was "how do I make Goatlings for these???"), then evidently FIR tried even harder to make Fetch happen than in OTL.

Also, the dream was accurate in that I saw it in a rack of used CDs and my response was "oh no, this is horrifying. I must have it."

Which...yeah. Frankly, despite how I don't know what I would DO with any of them, since I got my rips and liner note scans and have no desire to listen to them as albums, I would almost be hard pressed not to pick up an FIR album I encountered in the wild. Either feeling the need to rescue it, hence why I own an Out Of The Shadows vinyl despite finding vinyls of digitally recorded albums to be an inherently pointless concept, or to rescue some kid searching for discs by font who doesn't know any lore FROM it.

Horrifying FIR Release from a Dream #N+1: Fashionably Late - the Official Nightcore Album. Originally released as a Claire's exclusive.

Official Nightcore Albums exist in real life, although usually from much smaller artists. Like, "Nightcore is the only format that survives" artists. The basis is presumably "if this is going to happen anyway, I may as well get royalties from it". This one seems to be mashups of FL with iconic Nightcore Canon Eurodance-adjacent songs, then themselves edited to Nightcore proportions. The licensing would be a problem, but again, eminently plausible. This is contemporary with Punk Goes Pop and out of genre covers / mashups being very much part of the scenemo canon zeitgeist. Ronnie hates anime as of the 2020s, but if you ask him, in ICE and literally nowhere else (including that this does not seem to exist on the album), Fashionably Late has Japanese influences.

Now, Nightcore has literally nothing to do with anything authentically Japanese. Its origins are with Eurodance before spreading into scene-adjacent rock via the Internet, which both use anime imagery but that's it. Still, plausible and I hate it. In that even dream me was worried it would actually make Alone / Champion / Rolling Stone / Game Over / BGC / etc. likeable.

It legitimately baffles me why FIR is not part of the 50 or so songs that make up standard Edgy Nightcore Canon. Hollywood Undead and Get Scared are, and Get Scared would be FIR in one AU removed from ours (where Ronnie was kicked out of EtF but didn't go to prison in 08). Game Over is frankly perfect. My only theory is that FIR is too late. The roughly 3 digit total number of Nightcore canon songs all have release dates in or before 2009 or so, and that seems to be about when it peaked. TDIMIY in 2011 may have been a little too late to make it into the core Nightcore set of songs that have been passed around every music sharing platform and streaming service since 08-09. (Which is the release and popularity point of Get Scared and HU's first albums.)

Also in terms of plausibility, if you look on Wikipedia, FL had an absurd number of different release versions with weird bonus tracks, hence why its 3 months late 10th anniversary vinyl, unlike TDIMIY, contained no new songs -- there weren't any. Also, since Bad Girls Club, Alone, and Game Over made it in, and the first two were music video flagship singles, the threshold for inclusion was pretty generous. A remix / mashup album of some sort COULD exist, and this is the only era when Ronnie was involved enough in "the scene" (see: Bury the Hatchet slash everyone / Epitaph covering for the Sally Watts case...) to do collabs and covers regularly.

Thankfully, either Just Like You didn't get a 10th anniversary vinyl / merch drop (it would have been due for one this year) or it wasn't advertised, because Ronnie was too busy destroying himself and selling his kitchen appliances on Whatnot.

WHATverse Pronunciation Guide:

Most of the WHATverse's characters were originally Neopets, and weren't created by me, so their character names are their pet names. Back in 2017-20 when I was working on the proto-WHATverse on Neopets, my favorite kind of names were like Pacoro, Huricksu, Xelner, Zanethor, or Xiampe -- pronounceable and short, but don't quite use letter / sound combinations akin to human names. A lot of standard "VWN" pets for me just feel like unnatural distortions of human names. So, their names are pronounced how I decided they were pronounced from the pets.

WHATverse characters and phenomena who weren't originally Neopets are named via either of two means: I have a secret list of "conlang" word roots that I made back in 2020 which things get named as pretty literally (e.g. Naemua wood from Xiampe's intro story translates to "not burned"), or I keysmash, add vowels until it's pronounceable, and if it sounds too much like a recognizable word, try again.

Dragga - DRAH-ga (soft A)

Draggian - DRAG-gi-an (hard A)

Eyendaru - eye-en-dar-oo

Sluslis (plural Sluslan) - sloos-liss / sloos-laan

Viperiv - vee-fair-iv (like in "give")

Xinonix - zee-naan-iks

Likoa - lee-ko (like in coal)-ah. That being said, she doesn't have a true "name", mythologically speaking. Likoa is just her title in Old Draggan. "The Degenerate" or "The Destruction" is a roughly literal and polite translation. "That asshole" is closer in connotation.

Xiampe - zee-omp (like in chomp)-ay

Researchy - I am not a linguist, but I decided when coming up with my list of word roots for naming things that Draggian Common can be mostly approximated with English phonetics, but uses the merged Japanese R/L, doesn't have "ch" as its own sound so loanwords containing it are pronounced with a soft "sh" or a hard "k", and uses the Spanish Ñ as an additional phoneme along with an English-like N.

Researchy would therefore pronounce her own name as something like lee-sir-kay, but since she named herself after the English word, not knowing what it meant, English pronunciation isn't wrong.

Sayendrix - sae-end-ricks

Hurika - hurr-EEK-ah

Pacoro - pack-ore-oh

Elixsha - el-EEK-shah

Also, there are very few Pokemon other than dragon-types who use energy that isn't their own type; this card would be pretty much useless in any type deck. And the damage numbers are terribly unrealistic for their energy counts. But those are both common problems in fake TCGs, so I won't count it against them. The problems with Ronnie Lore and how they're assigning Pokemon type incorrectly are much more relevant.

My mother sent me this from TikTok (original poster unknown), and I'm literally the most qualified person on the planet to comment on it. I'm not impressed.

Number 1, the mic stands happened roughly 6 years before "cancel culture" was a made up problem. Number 2, I don't think Fighting is an appropriate type, even in TCG terms. Fighting types are shonen hero martial artists. Ronnie is not. No matter how much he wants to be a Ninja Turtle. Rock and Ground types also get lumped in with Fighting in the TCG, but he's too scrawny to be either of those.

Dark is the most appropriate, not because of any coolness or edge factor, but because he doesn't fight fair, and also Dark gets lumped in with Poison in modern TCG (at least in pocket), and he's toxic in many capacities. Dark-type attacks are either fighting dirty (which I still think is unfair to assign Bite / Crunch Dark when used by animals, even if they are dirty moves for humans) or concentrated negative emotions / bad vibes, both of which he is and does. If it's a version of the TCG where Poison is Dark (it seems to be nowadays, but sometimes Poison is Psychic because purple), then it also encapsulates the oozing slime and bragging about how bad he smells. (Which dates back to MySpace.)

When I came up with a Pokemon team for him, it ended up being mostly Dark, save some adjustments for thematic appropriateness (namely, Midnight Lycanroc and Galarian Slowking.) I assume he's dual type fire because of WTWB / Ronald? Radkid -> Radkief -> Radking, my Canceled Buddy Pokemon, is Dark / Fire, so that's reasonable. I wouldn't assign Fire to Ronnie IRL, though, which this seems to be, vs. his sona.

Art by me. Will be added to Neocities whenever Terrence gets a page.

unsure what the stage 1 is if ronald is a stage 2 from ronnie. presumably escape the fate ronnie, but I don't know what else you would call him.

C-, your understanding of both the Pokemon TCG and Falling In Reverse is lacking. see me after class

The only file organization needed is sorting music back into albums, so maybe the original goal of getting everything back in order before leaving is still doable, although seeing as every session has taken 4+ hours and I forgot to eat again, setting up programs on my Linux partition again may wait until after I get back.

Of course, I find sorting and cleaning up files to be inherently satisfying, hence WHY I can spend 4+ hours doing it and not get bored...very autism stereotype of me, but an accurate one, and also I'm reminded of some blog post I saw once regarding "men only clean / organize things they care about".

Someone I was doing in-class group work with looking at my laptop screen once complimented me on how organized my files were, and that's probably one of the best compliments I have ever gotten.

File organization update: Photos have been sorted by year and duplicates removed. Old art by others has been sorted by character. Everybody but XP and EE may get reposted one day. XP and EE are forever retired, since they are both obsolete sonas, EE is canonically dead for good reason, and XP unfortunately lived long enough to become an "aesthetic".

I hated vaporwave back in 2016 when it mainstreamed, and I hate Frutiger Aero even more. Having a Windows XP personification character and rejecting the promise of progress with Win10 was unique in 2015-16. It's a standard Neocities aesthetic now, including from people who never actually used the software. Fuck Frutiger Aero and fuck "Gen Z culture". And fuck the whole concept of "aesthetics", really. Also, XP had little to no actual characterization TO reupload, being an obsolete sona to the point that I tried to get people to call me that but no one did.

It was my special interest first. You commodified it into an algorithmic bastardized "aesthetic" despite claiming to be anti-social media, and I WANT IT BACK. Also, don't speak to me of the Windows XP or 95 aesthetic if you don't recognize Courtney, Microsoft Plus packs, or Microsoft Bob. Posers get off my lawn.

Here's some gross old art screenshotted with its properties to cite that I did indeed originate this character in 2015, WAY before Windows XP was deemed a cool, somehow defiant and politically leftist (no.) thing for folks to like. This was the Escape from XP era. Don't fuck with me. I have forgotten more than you will ever know, and I have been through it.

I don't know why the files are labeled as being created after they were modified. They've been through 4 operating systems, several reinstalls of those OSes, and deletion recovery. I'm impressed they still even have metadata at all.

That being said, old art I got from requests / trades does make me smile, especially since a lot of these trades are far above the skill level of what I was putting out at the time, so it's heartwarming to see folks going out of their way to make something I would like and to be nice to me.

The distinction between "personification of current fixation" and "sona" is very blurry. And speaking of which, Black (the emoboi UC Darigan Hissi who has remained relatively unchanged, but became the OC fixation in 2017-18) was totally a sona, even if at the time, I rationalized him as my ideal guy in an attraction way.

basically, if you got my user lookup themed after you at any point, you were a sona whether I admitted it or not

You know, old art by ME of my sona gives me the ick due to some combo of dysphoria and art style ick, but old art by others doesn't, even with the ancient Faerie Hissi version. Perhaps I'll put it up on my sona's page for historical purposes, with strict instructions to NOT DRAW THESE. I'm also reclaiming EE's old commissioned moodboards from FR for my own, since while her character / design has been retired, the base moodboard concepts still align with my sona. Which makes sense given my canon backstory of having killed her, absorbed her powers, and inherited the position as Demon King of Edge.

Of course, it might be that the oldest form of my sona's ref was a not-especially-gendered chibi from an adoptable dress up petpage because I couldn't draw humans, and I didn't draw myself with breasts in human form until the 2020 revamp which literally gave me a dysphoria breakdown while drawing it so was very short-lived. This was in October, and had a corresponding story on EE's page which is just dripping with "yeah, you knew. You had known since 2018. Just took you until January '21 to admit it."

I've also realized that I actually really like Elaphe's old outfit, so now that I'm cool with Team Instinct again, I may make her an alternate / revamped ref using the turtleneck, just with the modern hairstyle and tail and stuff.

Her current ref is also from 2022, and how I draw humans has VASTLY improved since, although it contains every essential aspect so it isn't a priority to revamp. Still, though, I like the updated outfit, but the 2018-20 Instinct turtleneck is great too.

I reinstalled Pokemon Go, even though I haven't been playing, because

(a) I'm going to be on a trip to a more interesting city with my folks, and my mom enjoys playing it with me

(b) an online friend wants to remote trade with me now that it's possible, and it takes 60 days of gifts to do that

(c) I can't "Degoogle" anyway, since I need a Canadian phone number for government services / my bank and Talkatone is kinda the only not terribly sketchy individual option, and way cheaper than getting a second phone plan. And I don't want to give up my real phone number. Talkatone is not emulatable, has no desktop version, and won't work without Play services.

(d) FOSS fandomites are unhelpful and uncool anyway.

Anyway, I was looking through some old art while doing drive backups today, and actually got nostalgic for Elaphe's OG outfit (well, OG as of 2018 or so -- before then, they just had the yellow version of the default), and the one I really associate with Elaphe as a character, since they didn't have a clear identity distinct from me until 2018 / the black outfit, when they really got the edgy cyberpunk enforcer who goes too far in their pursuit of Team Instinct ideals concept. So I decided to reinstate it. Seems appropriate for the impending 10th anniversary.

The characterized version has been through two revamps since then, and my player character / me as a person no longer has any relation, but maybe I'll draw the dystopian-enforcer all black Instinct turtleneck outfit again and reupload her old art by others to -cities, along with the player character outfit at least for a bit. (Although I do love the Giratina hat and Eternatus jacket with the glowy effects and the tail.)

Without having to worry about boobs on the avatar anymore, I don't have to dress my player character up solely in dysphoria hoodies anymore, which is why I ditched the turtleneck along with dysphoria-by-proxy slash trauma issues with Team Instinct (the male avatar also made me dysphoric back in the day, and had way less cool wearable options. same reason my X and Y / Sun and Moon player characters remained female even when I wasn't), and it is a damned cool outfit, especially with the coordination from the liquid leggings.

The visor, skull face paint, and Giratina wings were required, though, as were the modern spiky gloves. Nostalgia only goes so far against the sacred cause of Edge.

---

File maintenance needed (sorted by priority):

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• Remove duplicates from photo folders

• Accurately (to the best of our ability) split Google Photos dumped photos into the appropriate years (they are all date modified 2021-09-27 but actually stretch from 2018 until 2021)

• Move camera videos from camera pictures folder into videos

• Sort music by album, remove duplicates

• Merge together recovered files with what is already on SSD, copy to Linux partition

---

below this point is not "required"; can be done after mint boot is back set up

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• Sort "old art by others" by character, at least for Neopets who still exist

• Fix / normalize file names and metadata on music -- they should all, where applicable, be entitled "X. Title" with the artist and album in metadata (in a normalized numbering format), without any YouTube nonsense.

• Reshuffle drive partitions, because Windows 10 doesn't need 500 gigs of space if all I do is draw / occasionally download and tag music and the Windows 7 partition can be wiped because it doesn't work on this computer

okay, I just don't think that EE's final (lasted less than a month before I decided to kill her off for good and delete all public record) version of the page from neocities with the essay was ever saved

sicarian mindscape was too powerful I guess, because I KNOW it was in my backups starting from 2023 and yet none of my scans have found it

gaps in records (mostly photos) have been filled in via scans of the 64 gigabyte flash drives I used to use for backups before I got the SSD

so I think I might be done recovering files, although organization is still a problem and I haven't even updated my computer's boot order so the linux mint reinstall comes up as an option

getting the file system back in order and Mint to Just Work before I leave for the holidays on the 23rd is an...optimistic goal, let's say that

esp since I need to pack and the sum total of what I've eaten today is two cookies and two apples...

I know that there is no point in continuing to care since I posted my review and know not to call him again, but I'm still thinking about Richard at MonctonTattooDotCom and how it doesn't make much sense from an art commissioning standpoint -- maybe tattoos, especially in a small town, you tend to get people who already know you and have a Favorite Shop, but my experience with commissioning art, for both game currencies and USD, is that it is to be expected that if there is a specific piece you want, even beyond looking at portfolios, you are going to talk to several artists before any currency is exchanged, to make sure that who ends up getting your money is the one best suited for what you need and when you need it. That's a standard part of business? So, if your system doesn't allow cancelling consults any less than 72 hours before, then my getting a response from another shop faster and choosing to book with them isn't me being disrespectful of your time. I shopped around and eventually booked with someone who could provide the product I wanted. I would have cancelled if I could, so he had the slot for something else.

I consider sending texts, or a 30 minute consult, to be the equivalent of me posting my ref on your forum thread and asking "can you do this?", since no currency has been exchanged yet and no date is committed.

I can only assume that either he didn't think I was serious, that there was a glitch somewhere with the first call so he thought I didn't show versus vice versa, or that he's accustomed to folks who are committed to Him Specifically, which probably isn't unreasonable for someone doing specialized work in a small town. Or he's just an asshole. Given how he responded on the phone, the latter seems plausible.

"Thanks for wasting my time; never call me again" while actively sounding mad at me and blaming ME for "you did this twice now" as opposed to my explanation (which was in the notes) that I rescheduled because there seemed to be a glitch with the first call doesn't correspond to the other theories.

I can understand not allowing cancellations with less than 72 hours for actual stabbing appointments, but consults are in the preliminary stage, so I feel like folks looking at multiple shops is to be expected.

I'm just hoping that it'll find the two documents I want, but that were missing from the first scan it did looking for everything. Clearly it's finding stuff that didn't turn up the first time, since it's claiming more "documents" (word, text, etc....I sure hope it thinks HTML counts) exist than total files it pulled up last time.

Now, it does seem to overestimate. It claimed there were over a million files found when I scanned for everything, but the number of ACTUAL files it slotted up for me to recover was only, like, 500,000.

I was hoping that searching by file type would be faster. Evidently not. Deep scans on a 1 TB drive are just slow.

All of the files I requested did seem to recover, hence all the deleting I had to do (despite the scan claiming they were "unrecoverable") and every file I have opened, on purpose or accident, is intact including metadata. (Although for some reason, Explorer isn't letting me edit MP3 tags, but TigoTago is better for that anyway.)

I had to do all the deleting because I told Recuva to attempt to recover EVERY instance of a file if it found one I cared about, figuring that hopefully at least one would work. I didn't realize that they all would.

I feel like even if we're counting several layers deep of deleted files and backs up, and even if we count automatically generated text files from programs, there's no way I've generated the over 1,100,000 documents it's claiming exist.

But there is redundancy; some files on my first run through had 5+ copies, hence all the deleting I had to do with my gamepad. If this works, then it's potentially promising for retrieving omitted / did not appear on the first round pictures, music, etcetera, at the cost that I need to wait roughly 24 hours for the scan to finish.

I decided to run another Recuva scan on the drive in hopes of retrieving some documents I noticed were missing.

How is it finding MORE files when told to just scan for documents (with a "deep scan" because the standard scan didn't work) than when I told it to look for everything?

new years resolution is to stop going on flight rising discussion / general discussion, but it isn't the new year yet

to the person comparing posting art on social media to being in an abusive relationship...please go outside.

fuck it, I'm gonna use this platform to complain about customer service. if for whatever reason, any of you are in the market to get tattooed in NB, do not pursue MonctonTattoo.com.

I tried to book a free 30-minute consult with them on Tuesday. I waited 20 minutes after my scheduled time on the Google Meet call and Richard didn't show up, so I tried to book another appointment and it got automatically cancelled for no reason. So finally, I booked one for today at 4:00...which I would have cancelled if I could, because I basically asked every shop in Moncton if they could get the date I wanted, and when I found someone who did, I booked with them. I would have cancelled my consult, but couldn't because the online platform they use doesn't let you cancel with any less time before than 72 hours.

So, I answered the phone call to explain that I had found another shop who could do what I wanted on the date I wanted and no longer needed services, and was told (direct quote) "Well, thanks for wasting my time. You did this twice now. (because YOU DIDN'T SHOW UP and then your system booted me). Never book with me again."

Gladly. Fuck you, Richard.

At least Ronnie's birthday / winter holiday season seems to be going better for him than the past 2 years, since he isn't completely breaking down.

I've noticed that FIR is unique among their peers in that they don't acknowledge the holiday season at all. Even overtly horror and/or Satanic themed bands pretty regularly do dark-humor Xmas shirts or covers. Ronnie doesn't, and hasn't. The drop with the Canceled Buddy in it was technically a "holiday drop" per the URL, but contained no themed merch, nor does FIR do anything holiday-related in online marketing. There was a very brief "Christmas vacation" tour during the Fashionably Late / Just Like You era, but that's it.

This is an unusual absence, in that it's eminently profitable to do holiday-themed merch drops, so my best conclusion is that Ronnie refuses to acknowledge Christmas out of a sustained childhood beef over its overshadowing his birthday. Which is totally valid. I have some minor birthday-related beef with Christmas, and being born on December 15 and raised overtly Christian would be even worse.

I'm very proud of the Christmas Carol parody story from last year, because this is a PERFECT 2e kid exchange. (from the Ghost Of Ronnie-Mas Past showing him himself at Sunday school.)

"So, that's the story of the Nativity and why we celebrate Christmas every year! Does anybody have any questions? Yes, Ronnie?"

"Uh, Pastor Brown? How do we know Jesus was born on December 25th? If the shepherds were watching their flocks, wouldn't they not be doing that in winter?"

"Well, uh, Ronnie, we don't, but it doesn't really matter what day Jesus was born on because the point is to celebrate what he's done for humanity."

"So he's hijacking my birthday for no reason?"

Tonight's file organization goal has been accomplished -- all music has been sorted into folders by artist, or at least by what it was tagged as, and music from my phone has been merged in. Tomorrow, I'll sort documents into broad categories and get rid of irrelevant or redundant ones -- sorting songs by album again, fixing weird metadata, and removing duplicates without identical filenames will be more complicated. My goal is to get my files back in order and my Linux install back up and running with programs and stuff (and figure out what, if any, combo of configuration settings and drivers lets me run Signal and FreeTube at the same time without crashing, which I could do before the 9th) before I leave on the 23rd, so things will Just Work once my semester starts. My frivolity device should not be a source of stress, after all.

Pictures are sorted, basically, although they need some subdivision, especially with photos. Documents are still all in loose save my original separation by file type. Videos I see no need to sort beyond camera vs. Ronnie Tiktoks because there are so few of them.

Egypt Central (assessed June 2023) also has a lot of stuff absent. I think I got that SSD over winter break in 2023? So I suppose that records being inconsistent from before it existed for a while, but fine for files older than 2022 or so makes a degree of sense. I don't understand what file recovery is, or how the internals work. All my pre-2022 files (that I bothered to keep) are intact, or as intact as they ever were, with (correct) dates modified going back to 2012. (The folder of camera pictures claimed to be modified in 2008 is incorrect; presumably the date on the digital camera was set wrong.)

Some of my oldest files from XP Draggyslair are a little odd in the metadata front, on grounds of having gone through at least 4 different operating systems depending on how you count.

I haven't the slightest idea why, since pictures and documents don't have this problem, but there is absolutely no music between December 2022 and May 2023, and records aren't complete / consistent with my memories until 2024 dates modified. (E.g. I know that Voices In My Head and Last Resort Reimagined should have had downloads from before the Popular Monster CD rip and don't.) So, that explains who's absent and why -- concert assessments from 2023 / the earliest days of the scene spreadsheet, and everybody who was studied for Rockzilla, are absent. Good news is that the tracks I care about are copied from my phone, and now that I know what's missing, I know what to replace if I feel the need. And music is replaceable, since it isn't original to me.

My theory is that either music was affected by when I got the drive, my having to reinstall Windows in March-ish 2023, or possibly that it was the first to get overwritten, being large quantities of tiny files that didn't change much.

Or possibly there are other files missing, but I didn't notice because other than some parts of my music library, I don't have my files memorized, but pictures / documents look complete and non-school documents and art would have all gone on Neocities at that point. Class assignments I didn't even bother copying because I don't need 75 gigs of essays and powerpoints from a school from which I already graduated, and I already abandoned everything from high school and before as completely irrelevant. They are neither interesting nor creative, and I have other professional writing samples. Nor have I...ever needed an essay / Powerpoint / other such academic writing sample at all recently.

I had to jettison some files due to the recovered drive being bigger than my partition space. I decided class assignments from schools I am no longer attending, music I hadn't touched in 5+ years (RIP to my Nightcore collection), and old art requests / trades I made for people (all on Imgur / Photobucket etc. which I have backed up by their very nature, I trust if anyone WANTS something I drew for them in Scratch in 2016 they saved it, and they aren't my OCs.) could go.

Or older files that hadn't changed might have been more likely to get overwritten as stuff got deleted from the drive, even if they should have been in every full backup folder. Who knows. At least most of my library is there, and for artists who exist on YouTube, albums are relatively easy to replace.

I also think I deselected some files specifically because I knew I had them on my phone and was trying to avoid redundancy, hence the merging from my phone library. It's probably some combo thereof.

In This Moment, I See Stars, and Ice Nine Kills also are missing the bulk of their tracks, and what they all have in common is that I think I assessed them before I got that external drive.

Don't worry, all Falling In Reverse songs (at least that were on CD) are preserved with perfect metadata because of the CDs I bought on eBay over summer.

Also, albums are pretty easy to download and sort, at least on Windows where FreeTube, 4k, and TigoTago work, so as long as the bulk of the library is present, I can fill in gaps if I feel the need. Or wait to acquire CDs of my most favoritest folks for completion and give them the same refined quality versions FIR got.

I See Stars' first album (3D) is one of the major ones I really want on CD, because all of its streaming versions got put through the WRINGER to get onto YouTube back in 2010 and are so compressed as to be physically painful, so I think a CD is the only way to get listenable tracks.

My music library apparently did not get restored completely. Get Scared is the artist from whom I am noticing the most absences. Good news is that the majority of it did, and all songs I actually care about were copied to my phone. So I can just copy the phone music directory into my newly made "music sorted by artist" directory to merge the files and reclaim anything I care about that slipped through the SSD restore. And Windows is smart enough to merge folders and files with the same titles.

Along with everything else about my tech opinions and practices, you can blame my dad for why I call folders "directories" in the year of our lord 2025.

I have set a goal of getting all the duplicates purged and my basic directory structure re-established before I leave for my trip on the 23rd. Discovering that the gamepad works has filled me with determination, since it makes the mass delete process faster and more ergonomic and also makes this edgy and fun, aesthetically speaking. Well, file organization is inherently fun, but now it's even more so!