Oh dear, you've found the secret slime cave lair of Enforcer @ Draggian Universe where they put their awful little thoughts. Get out while you can. Established June 2024 as somewhere to put my angsty thoughts about how Falling In Reverse sucks other than the void and annoying my friends.
Enter at your own risk; this is where I put spur of the moment random nonsense, angst, and opinions to get them out of my brain. When I say slime, I mean slime. And possibly full on possession. There will be no content warnings.
The 50 most recent thoughts are being shown. A curated selection of old thoughts I thought were useful, funny, and/or interesting can be found here.
Good news is that my files are recovered. Bad news is that, uh...
https://files.catbox.moe/3d6ruo.mp4
I did kinda hedge my bets; if the drive thought it had a given file in more than one place, I told it to try to do all of them because I figured that way I raised the odds that at least ONE would work. I tried to deselect stuff that was redundant with my Neocities / internal program files / etc, but didn't get everything, evidently.
So, my agenda:
Go the heck to bed. This problem has been downgraded from Existential Nightmare to Technical Annoyance.
Delete duplicate files.
With freed up space, recover files I didn't the first time around (e.g. non-edge music, Agnes Scott assignments)
Attempt to reclassify everything into directories in a way that makes sense. Good news is that I think the majority of the files are MP3s, and they did preserve metadata by album / artist / etc?
I was very conservative with the hundreds of thousands of files the backup utility found. Right now, I only have 40,000 to go through...
But they do all seem to be working and intact. They are disorganized and there are in some cases 5+ of the same file which don't need to be there, but my records are recovered. I can probably delete all the duplicates quickly via searching for "_1" etc. That is a problem for tomorrow, though.
I'm literally neurodivergent and I'm just a little guy; give me a fucking break.
So maybe TOMORROW I can finally set up my file system again and actually get to installing programs on the new Linux install, and figuring out what combo of config settings and drivers allows me to run FreeTube and Signal at the same time without crashing, which I could do before December 9th and is all I wanted and I still don't understand how it went this wrong.
Perhaps I will take the oft-repeated advice of putting my /home directory and my OS on separate partitions, so I don't have to worry about losing personal files if I need to reinstall Mint again. And I should shuffle around my partitions anyway, since Windows 7 doesn't work and ergo doesn't need its own space, and I really don't need 500 gigs for the Windows 10 sector when literally all it does under normal circumstances is draw things that go immediately onto Neocities. These are not normal circumstances, so I have been logged into Windows for the past several days since it doesn't care what happened on the other half of the drive and also all the file recovery utilities are windows based.
I have been having a terrible horrible no good very bad time basically
I ended up spending over 4 hours unchecking files in the backup, because I needed to get it down to a point that it FIT ON MY WINDOWS PARTITION before being able to attempt to recover anything.
Because I had several complete backups of my entire library on that drive, there's a lot of redundancy, but I think I took out the redundancy while selecting everything I care about? It thinks most of my files are "unrecoverable", but it also remembers their filenames and paths so seems worth trying.
This is going to be a complete mess if it works, but better a complete mess of redundant files than having nothing at all.
...and now I haven't done my dailies or eaten dinner and I need to go to bed.
in order of preference, I want to see if one of the following is available for my Werewolf Appointment when I do my consult tomorrow
i fucking hate redactedville i am getting out of here via transferring to a more urban campus asap but that ain't until summer:
Evening / night on the 22nd (after the bus arrives at 2:30 and I can drop off my stuff at a hotel)
Evening / night on the 1st (after the plane lands at 1:30 and I get my baggage / can drop off my stuff at a hotel)
Early on the 2nd (I need to be done before the bus leaves at 5:30, and probably need to be able to run back to the hotel, grab my stuff, and get an aircab to the train station unless I want to take my backpack and suitcase to the tattoo shop with me.)
After the bus arrives on the 21st (would require 2 nights)
Also, I am booked for a video consultation with a tattoo shop in Moncton for tomorrow (the only one I could find who had a portfolio / professional communication outside of Metainstafacebook, but they also look pretty damned good portfolio-wise and their base price is reasonable) so hopefully I can get my werewolf appointment on either side of winter break.
Yes, my using the phrase "werewolf appointment" in much the same way as OTL Ronnie's Weird Science Medical Care / HRT That Makes You A Werewolf appointment in "a ferocious diagnosis" is intentional.
I may not be able to physically be my various nonhuman IDs in real life, and I have concerns about the long-term safety of theoretical more intensive body mods, but I can make them permanent parts of my body and simultaneously make myself a stronger Anti-Ronnie and I think that's Neat.
91% through file recovery...hopefully it finishes before I go to bed tonight / we hit the 24 hour mark. But it thinks it's found millions of files, so that strongly suggests that hopefully the important parts of at least one backup will be recoverable.
well, 91% through FINDING the files on the drive. Who knows how long the rest of it will take.
I am tentatively booked for the Pokemon anniversary tattoo for May 28th, which is the earliest available. Guess I should look for phone numbers in Moncton to try to get something on either side of winter break.
If they actually grew spines and admitted that his bigoted nonsense was actively interfering with his job, then we wouldn't have...this.
Ronnie I can almost kinda feel bad for on grounds of recognizing myself in him, although he has no excuse to continue to be That when he clearly knows it's making him miserable and has the means to stop.
The fans are both willfully ignorant and actively preying on a deeply mentally ill man for entertainment. Which doesn't justify his preying on them, but still. They also incessantly make sexual comments to someone who isn't interested. Which, that is part of his job, but...Ronnie I can understand WHY he's like that, even if he is objectively worse. The fans have no excuse, and are inextricable from how he has worsened.
Ronnie is objectively a terrible human being that the world would be better without, but I can't fully hate him because I recognize that somewhere in there is a closeted, undiagnosed 2e kid who's mostly dysphoria by volume and has learned that he's going to be called evil no matter what he does so there's no point in not being.
(I might have gone through my photos from Messenger between 2018 and 2021 while trying to do backups last night. Even without the text, it was not a fun time.)
I am hoping my drive recovery works, since I honestly wasn't expecting that to turn into a full existential crisis of "I no longer have any historical record of myself, and what I do have is from the era I least want to remember." Since my Actually Pretty Okay period only starts in 2022, which was solely on this DL.
I want to shop for a nice external HDD (the spinny kind), since those are better for long term static storage than SSDs and I can get more space for cheaper. That way I have whatever I could recover in two places, and maybe I can use the SSD for a live backup.
This is your reminder that literally everyone in the Falling In Reverse ecosystem is some combination of evil, duped, and incompetent and it's destructive to everyone involved.
I would feel bad for his fans, but...I don't. Their constant enabling is why FIR got this bad, so they dug this grave and might as well fucking lie in it.
Merry first day of Ronnie-mas, I guess. I hope it goes better for him than the last 2 years. Not that the events of 2023 and 2024 weren't entirely his own fault, but having an RSD spiral on your birthday is no fun.
Max, I noncritically wish the best.
I have no idea how these sorts of things work when clearly that information isn't on the drive because it isn't full and new things could be copied to it. Witchcraft, I guess.
Yeah, I'm gonna be leaving Draggyslair to sit overnight with my recovery drive (told him not to fall asleep while plugged in, which has worked before) because it STILL thinks there's 10 hours left and is only 25% done. Good news is that the recovery utility has supposedly found over 400,000 files, which strongly suggests that at least one full backup can be reclaimed.
Estimated time left, 10 hours, and it thinks it's found 50,000+ files, so this is promising? I'll leave it to sit and might just leave DL awake but turn off my monitors and go to bed.
OK, Recuva is running, and I'm just going to let that sit for a while, and do my dailies on my phone. Maybe even overnight.
Even if it can't find the Linux backup file, I had a full Windows-formatted personal files backup from September when I first switched OS which would have all the stuff I want save the most recent music, and it was standard manually copied folders. I deleted it because I THOUGHT the single file would work and the drive was getting full.
And if it can't find the stuff that got deleted / vanished mysteriously off my external drive, then I cut my losses. At least I have old art by others as of 2021 for when I make my Neopets archive on my site, and my most important post-2021 work / the past year of photos / all songs I actually listen to regularly in between Neocities, other online hosts, and my phone. And what I need for work and classes is safe on a different device.
I forgot about Windows' autogenerated scanned documents folder and how unless you get rid of the ones in My Documents, you will have two copies of everything you have ever scanned if you logically save from scans to images. And since I had two scanners, I have a Scanned Documents folder on the backup drive with parallel Image(N) for most N -- one from 2017-ish, and one from 2019-20ish. That actually fills in some solid non-posted online art gaps, since personal art that didn't go on Neo was more likely to be traditional and I didn't yet have a unified website for everything I creatively did.
The 2021 folder also contains a full documents backup from Windows XP Draggyslair, most of which I probably don't want. I see no need to copy ancient assignments, pastebins, and borderline seizure inducing Scratch projects.
Honestly, most of the Windows 7 DL files I don't want. Just the creative stuff.
Now, I do wish this flash drive would stop disconnecting at random while copying files...
The only stuff from my personal life I have left besides the stylized Enforcer stuff from Neocities is what I want to remember least.
I know it's just random chance in historical record, but gods it's depressing.
Maybe I should listen to Sanity Is For The Weak while doing this just so I'm not alone with my memories.
I found a full backup of My Documents from January 2021 in my bag of thumb drives, which includes the PetpageBackups directory and pretty much covers art by others from before my Neocities, as long as the images hotlinked in the HTML still exist.
Art by me from after 2016 is backed up. Art by others I want, because that even if I remembered usernames, I have no way to contact, and i care about it even if I no longer have the OCs.
I will also try a file recovery utility on my external SSD to see if some of the 2021-2025 content is recoverable. What I want is some WIPs / personal writing that didn't go online, at least the Pixel and Stylus era photos, my collection of Ronnie Tiktoks because those vanish (although the most important are on Neocities), and the rest of my music library, although 4,000 songs on my phone is totally respectable I GUESS. But if I lose all of those, I guess it doesn't matter. The most important stuff was elsewhere.
My other thumb drives are as follows, apparently:
A windows 10 boot stick.
A Linux Mint boot stick.
Two Windows 7 boot sticks -- one standard, and one with Windows 7 in Windows 10's packaging from when I was trying to get it to install on Laptop DL, unsuccessfully because even though W7's supported SPECS are futureproof, what graphics cards it understands are not, so laptops from after 2020 or so are out.
A Windows boot stick, but I don't know for what.
The stuff I copied to my work computer in August.
Nothing but a password database from 2022, and a BitLocker key from 2024.
literally just a redundant ZIP file of my full Imgur image archive and nothing else.
The 2021 drive also has a full backup of my Facebook messages including photos. I do not want the text content of the messages. I deleted that intentionally because it made me feel awful. But it does have some selected photos from in between 2018 and 2021, like baby pictures of my cat. That is pretty much the absolute worst time in my life, during which EE was actively attacking me, so...
Found the dinosaur comic about why fuck simulationism, because it's equivalent to "what if we're in a book" but relies on Ooh, VR Is Magic and that's the only reason anyone takes it seriously.
"Hey, Jet, we're gonna pull Zane out of the vat in a couple days. Want to help with the delivery?"
"What, because I'm a woman, I'm just supposed to be inherently good with babies?!"
"No. You helped build the incubator and Ted's out sick. We need 3 people, really, for it to go smoothly: someone to keep track of readings, someone to disconnect the cord, and someone to pull the kid out and get them the crucial right after birth skin contact. And Spark doesn't want Ronnie doing any of those."
"What's in it for me? After all, I can't officially get paid for this or put it on my CV since it's violating both the human subjects policy and the one about not using grants for personal use..."
"Cloning Pokemon is something admin's been interested in re-establishing for decades."
"Yeah, and what about your test case being a kid with your Pokemon League husband?"
"...3 additional days off, paid, in 2025, no questions asked."
"Sold."
"Also, aren't you just a little bit curious to see what a baby Ronnie looks like?"
"Well, I guess I can finally know if he really did come out with horns and 666 stamped on his forehead..."
"Nah, the forehead came later. I'm halfway expecting tattoo sleeves, though."
plus i am a lil mean on account of the apparition of ronnie who sits on my shoulder so 
god i fucking love the neopets smilies
feels a lil mean to be on the thoughts webring and not be linking to it but i kept using other folks' thoughts.pages for rumination / doomscrolling / to find things that pissed me off so that's why i removed it
this is where i scream into the void and there is no escape except through me
this is what my canonical self-ID as a conceptual embodiment / incarnation / deity / spirit / demon ultimately means re: how I think of my relationship to my SIs and self concept which are fundamentally inseparable; I am as much or more of a philosophical being as I am physical and this is the means through which I express that (although I also do the best I can at presenting as an Edgy vampire snakeboy IRL with pretty good success)
or less poetically I'm a stack of special interests in a trenchcoat shambling about in a rough approximation of a man, and my "real" life is just providing fuel for the conceptualization and a backdrop to sustain my physical body
Monologue tried to make an accusation out of how I have more photos / video, and a more detailed record, from what I've put together between my various filehosters, of Ronnie than of myself. My response to it is as follows:
Opsec. I don't post pictures of my face or personally identifiable information online or host them in "the cloud".
Philosophically speaking, while transitioning has achieved vibes congruence and I feel like I effectively embody the self I want to be now, I consider my special interests and my creations / analysis to be a more accurate and relevant representation of what matters about me than the play by play of my mundane life or pictures of my face. Ronnie and myself are different people despite the monologue's (and the apparition that speaks in his voice and sits on my shoulder's) confusion in that regard, and none of my OCs are a direct 1:1 representation of me in my entirety, but that mythology / creative output / dividing time by fixation is more relevant imo philosophically to my core self concept and how I have continuity with myself than any of my photos. And my Neocities is the unified hub for that since 2021, and that is intact.
I'll miss some of my old, not posted online creative writing and art, but in between my Neocities for 2020-21 and later and the backups of various former and current file hosters, the important history and memory joggers are there. And my art / writing from before 2020 and after I was sentient embarrases me to look at, so...
(Also, Ronnie has a lot more reason and motivation to be photographed than I do. Even with the dysphoria pretty much eliminated, I just don't really like having my picture taken and it takes a pretty exceptional outfit or new tattoo or something for a selfie to make sense.)
Programs I need on Mint reinstall:
Definitely needed:
Geany (notes / HTML)
Librewolf (browser)
multi-account containers
stylus
darkreader
adnauseam
keepass tusk
leechblock; copy blocklists from phone
Signal (tell it to launch in terminal if graphic issues persist)
KeePass DX
Android File Transfer Linux (test if works), if phone isn't recognized via USB
Proton VPN
NAPS2
Would be nice, but run on Windows (and FreeTube is the reason I lost everything coupled with my shitty drivers to begin with...):
FreeTube
HTTrack (I also think the Windows version is faster)
Don't see good reason to download until I need to do their thing / situational (and I don't trust graphics anymore / they also run on Windows):
Aseprite
OBS
Programs that have to run on Windows:
Zune software (I will be VERY surprised if Android File Transfer Linux actually works on it)
Photoshop (pirate 2025 because elements download doesn't work for some reason)
Clip Studio Paint
4k YouTube to MP3 + crack
TigoTago
Wacom Tablet
Abuela is at the birth. No one has posted anything online. Cliff and Sierra don't even know what was in the basement. Candela wasn't told because if she objects to Shadow Pokemon on principle, she'd definitely go ballistic about Arlo growing a human in his basement.
Everyone blames OTL for blabbing.
Candela objects to both Arlo playing god and Ronnie on principle. Arlo growing a baby Ronnie in his basement, surrounded by shadow residue, is basically the most offensive to her personally thing he could do.
The most logical chain of events is that something somehow got to Craig and then from that to Abuela because everyone in Orre talks, but OTL insists he didn't do anything, and if he was gonna tell, why MABBITT?! (Although trying to poke the bear by saying he's a better dad does seem plausible.)
Having a kid and not telling anyone is one of those quintessentially stupid and deeply plausible Ronnie things, and an example of Arlo and Ronnie's ADHD bouncing off each other to maybe bad results. It aligns with previous continuity and characterization better than a baby shower does.
Also, the whole point of the RRverse is that it puts my guys in situations that can't happen in the main continuity. It's literally wish fulfillment fanfic of my fanfic, or possibly Arlo doing wish fulfillment in-universe. Zane being able to be produced so cute kid stuff can happen even though that would be a terrible idea for Spark and Arlo's jobs "IRL" is an acceptable adjustment.
The reason Professor Grandpa Willow doesn't show up at the baby shower is that legally, he can't know and let Spark remain employed, so that's an established worldbuilding reason re: the TGR tech for Spark not to be open about it.
Cliff finds out what's going on and proposes a baby shower, but is shot down by all 3 dads for different reasons. Frankly, the whole idea of Zane is sort of poorly thought out with the Team Rocket tech, but they were just so excited. Nor is there any good worldbuilding way to get them a kid other than Team Rocket's canon cloning ability, and I want to tell cute baby Ronnie stories. No one would ever let Spark and Arlo adopt, they don't know anyone who's willing to carry (and I know surrogates who aren't people you know theoretically exist, but that is not interesting storytelling nor do I want to introduce an OC whose only role is "baby mama"), and part of what I like about the pairings with Arlo and his male love interests is that none of them are substantially feminized. So I refuse to get anyone pregnant, and also, OTL is zoologically dubious to start with. The others aren't in the same sense.
Well, there may still be the story where Ronnie has to crossdress for a music video because Mandy Murders got sick last minute and they're spending too much to cancel, but still. I don't feel like anyone is that feminized in their relationship dynamics, and I want to avoid the stereotypical boys' love setup which does that
Arlo doesn't even comprehend why just casually mentioning that he grew a baby in a vat with no prior announcement would be disturbing to his social circle...
Well, Jet and Ted knew because they were monitoring the vat when Arlo had to do takeovers. cliff and Sierra don't care what happens in the basement.
I like this way better than the elaborate baby shower. That's OOC for any version of Ronnie, or really for Arlo; he's fixated on the science of it all and Spark doesn't want to publicize that Team Rocket can create life and he helped. And it makes Spark and Ronnie having to explain how they acquired a kid to their respective parents all the juicier.
OTL Ronnie's first known kid announcement was "sup losers fashionably late is gonna be delayed because I procreated", so there's historical basis for him just forgetting to bring it up until eventually telling his dad "oh, by the way, I have a son now."
(Paraphrased. I am also pretty sure the kid announcement came from the FIR socials and not him, in that it was way more professional than him. There are no clearly documented pictures of him with Willow until age 1, and very little until 2020, so the notion that he was there to support her mom [on whom he openly cheated and who may or may not be who "sorry about fucking all your friends" refers to but there is no citation of that besides random reddit comments] is probably also incorrect.)
Ronnie ends up stuck with a pre-sentient Zane so has to abruptly cancel a show, and this is the first anyone in his timeline knows of them...
...and honestly, this is Arlo and Ronnie. Them just creating a baby and forgetting to tell anyone HOW that happened, maybe even until the kid is born, seems more in character and also funnier. They remembered to plan out who's doing what, the name, and the nursery colors...but not to tell anyone. And Spark certainly isn't going to be public about the evil tech he's using against his contract for personal purposes.
(A phone call from Spark to his parents would be funny, though, as would 06 trying to explain how he has a kid to Mr. Radke Senior. Maybe I'll replace the baby shower with that.)
Okay, Zane's unveiling is way too complicated and has too many people in it, and Saraya and Willow showing up has no purpose other than making fun of OTL, with concepts re: Saraya that are outdated anyway. I'm thinking in the interest of getting In Which Zane Is Produced out on time and streamlining the story's effectiveness, I might pare down the unveiling to just the parents and biological material providers (so, OTL is present) and then if I get inspired by the extended unveiling, that is a separate story. But it's long, has a lot of character interactions, and doesn't actually accomplish anything. I don't need thousands of words of "haha it's a baby Ronnie and no one likes OTL".
It also doesn't actually make much logistical sense for there to be the big baby shower party right after Zane is born. Especially since they are coming out somewhat immunocomprised, and even without having to pull him out of a body and clean off all the blood and stuff, there are more important logistical things to do. Generally speaking, people don't have the party right after the kid is born, and not that many people go to attend a birth.
There's no point in having a solid chunk of the story being "haha Saraya despises Ronnie and wants to replace him with more birds" when at the time it releases, they will have been broken up for over a year. And honestly, I'm not sure if there's any way for a theoretical single room with the majority of named characters in my cast all present to be at all coherent with multiple chains of dialogue.
This is a Cute Story About Spark / Arlo / Ronnie doing cute couple things. OTL is a distraction.
I don't need everyone in my cast coming to an Everyone Hates Ronnie party. Nor is it at all realistic for Spark, Arlo, and 06 to want to socialize that much right after Zane is born. It's still stressful and a lot of work even if no one is physically going into labor.
The only reason Saraya, Willow, and the Zapdos are there is to make fun of OTL. Nor does it really seem in character for him to invite Saraya and Willow to do...anything with him. Every time he has socialized with Saraya outside of a scripted show, she clearly dragged him with her.
Candela, Blanche, Spark's bio parents, OTL, and MAYBE Abuela are the only people other than the parents who have a good in character reason to be there. Everyone else is clutter. We already know everyone in the cast hates Ronnie, and there are more organic ways to show that people find the idea of Spark and Arlo having kids unnerving. And honestly, we got the requisite Abuela Despises OTL content in In Which OTL Gets Pregnant, so does she really need to be there?
Also, it's way funnier (and makes more sense for Arlo given his concerns about op-sec) if no one actually knows HOW Zane came to be. Maybe there wasn't even a baby shower; the kid just...appears.
This may be a cute family story set in an idyllic future where Arlo is head of research, but that is still proprietary TGR tech so he isn't going to go bragging about how he grew an evil baby in it.
So the only sections needed that are absolutely essential to In Which Zane Is Produced, a story that is mostly important in that it is a required prerequisite for Zane to exist, are the boys discussing names / nursery colors / other such gender stuff, and the actual uncorking.
TLDR, the new version of In Which Zane Is Produced will cut off at their production, with only their parents present. Perhaps a baby shower will be a separate story, but it does not need to happen; the award show is more important as far as RRverse character development and laying out the cast for future-set stories.
It isn't even really about the computer stuff. None of it is. It's just one in a long chain of bad events, and this one isn't resolvable.
The good news is that I basically do have all future stuff backed up, because what I create personally is for my Neocities, and that my most important stuff was elsewhere. I lost a couple thousand songs I didn't listen to regularly, old writings and WIPs that didn't go online, and photos of my face / identifiable RL stuff, but none of those matter in the grand scheme of things. Continuity between previous versions of me and now doesn't live in any file.
I just want something to go right for once. I feel like I graduated and got top surgery in May, and it's all been downhill from there. I had such high hopes for moving. Maybe they'll be preserved in an actual city.
I have realized that I haven't eaten since breakfast or gotten dressed today. I'll go to the pizza place once my phone folders are done downloading. Reinstalling all my programs on Mint and copying back / reorganizing what I could preserve is a problem for tomorrow. Hopefully I will be able to open FreeTube without it crashing. That's all I wanted. If it doesn't, then I give up and just accept that anything in that ilk happens on Windows or my phone.
damn it, I lost my extensive archive of downloaded Ronnie videos! and tiktoks vanish so...although I guess the most relevant ones from June 2024 onward are on my thoughtspage and the old Ronnie / Max stuff is on yewchube...
I mean, maybe having no photos of me or non-Neo documents outside of work from before 2021 (or really before 2023) is not a bad thing, seeing as they don't stop being dysphoria inducing until around 2022-23 when I get a binder that fits, and that eliminates all possible rumination potential and most docs using my deadname
grabbed all the relevant ronnie stuff and photos of me from signal I could; phone also has some from 2023-24-25 I found useful and can copy off (through Mega.NZ because it won't sync via USB anymore)
there is no longer a real person here
there is only the enforcer
this is all that exists
i do not have a history
i have always looked like this
after all that's the only fucking documentation that remains
if ANYONE gives me any kind of tech advice and attributes this to it being my fault and me not having ThE rIgHt PrAcTiCeS I will actually fucking kill you
look at this, motherfuckers. this is an external SSD that is completely separate from my computer. I copied shit to it yesterday, which I verified was there, and today it wasn't there.
that's what I get for using the system backup utility DESIGNED FOR THIS PURPOSE instead of copying everything manually
besides, what do I have better practices FOR? My Neocities? Because that's all I fucking have left! The past 10 years of photos and personal documents are now completely nonexistent.
It's not like it matters. Can't look at them without getting dysphoric anyway.
If I keep telling myself I don't care, one day I'll believe it.
at least post-2022 neopets art is on and can be backed up from my petpages there. should also save my flight rising dragons' art by others again just in case of future image host failure.
everything I use day to day was either on another device or online somewhere, so it isn't "lost forever". what is lost forever is my personal documents, photos, etcetera that I didn't share anywhere, but maybe I'm better off without those.
oh, forgot to put that on thoughts.page, basically, I reinstalled Mint because the crashing was persisting and had gotten worse to the point that I was unable to successfully boot. I thought, and knew for a fact as of yesterday, that I had a full backup of my /home and applications on my external drive, so I deleted my other backups from there to save space.
After reinstalling, despite how I know I didn't move or delete it, the backup folder was gone. I don't believe in the cloud, and I deleted my other backups to save space, so I just lost everything for all intents and purposes. At least the most important creative work is on my Neocities, what I need for school / work / government stuff is on my work computer (as is my KeePass database so I can get back into my site etc.), and my music and recent photos are on my phone.
Copying my website now, from Windows because of course the reinstall doesn't want to talk to my dock, like last time. Windows device manager thinks my display adapter has a driver error. I'll deal with that after my files are copied. Or not, because at least it fucking boots.
And copying my music and photos from my phone, but going through mega.nz because of course DL doesn't want to recognize it as a device.
I got my fonts, password manager, and most important files off of my work computer. Art WIPs are on Windows, 4thewords is cloud based in itself, and the final Reverse Mode III draft is on either 4thewords or file garden. So it doesn't affect my site operations. I guess it doesn't really matter because all the music I actually listened to is on my phone anyway...
Maybe if I tell myself I don't care about losing what is essentially the only cohesive record of my life up until this point enough times, I'll believe it.
I should go eat lunch and maybe take a nap. This is going to take a while.
The bass pro was not itself emo. It was just a store that was both, with bizarre transitions. The bass pro was standard. It just shared the building with an absolutely massive Subject Debate.
The one set of visuals I remember was one wall of nonexistent in OTL My Chemical Romance shirts...with the wall next to it being fishing lures. And the whole visual design of the store changed, too, so you would walk 5 feet through a door and it would go from all black everything to trying to look outdoorsy and back.
And the Hot Topic part was HUGE because this was a standalone building the size of a standard Bass Pro.
I had a dream last night about a combo Hot Topic and Bass Pro Shop, and I'm not sure what to make of that. Dream me explained that "if you think about it, Bass Pro is also aesthetic subcultural paraphernalia", which...yes? But I'm not sure if I like it. Anyway, I acquired some DIYLF 20th anniversary merch which could never exist in real life due to custody issues.
Unsurprisingly since nothing has changed on FT's end since the 9th, the problem is on my end, but I don't know from what because I don't remember installing any updates. So I am hoping the kernel updates / graphics stuff I had due will fix it?
I opened signal via a terminal, which worked, and the terminal showed some messages about WebGL failure which suggests a driver issue. Maybe system info / FreeTube / signal were crashing because something graphically weird happened with the graphical launcher which the terminal doesn't have? I decided to install my due updates since I have a system restore point, full backup, and boot stick if they don't work and they included some webgl / graphics stuff. Maybe I'll see if FreeTube works with terminal launch tomorrow.
I ended up looking at my original Reverse Mode III revamp idea document on my phone's notes this morning and it said that the dream sequences and such were going to be "lightened and softened"...haha, no. I just made them more realistic and less FIR-flavored save in an accurate symbolic special interest way. And the ending is a lot nicer and legitimately cute. Still, the rest of the story is Dead Pidove, Do Not Eat. Much like how I've just started listing "OTL Ronnie Nonsense" as a general warning vs. identifying every kind of bigotry he displays, I may forego a content / trigger warning section and just say outright that the whole point of this story is Arlo having a realistically portrayed mental breakdown, then list the most intense / unusual for the Dudesverse bits by chapter. That's what I did for Ronnie Redux due to sheer length and fluctuations in narrative atmosphere, and this one may warrant it due to chapters having strongly differing tones and so it doesn't have a comically long TW list.
I didn't intend to write 8,000 words today. I just started with the Blanche exposition and found myself unable to talk. So, Reverse Mode III is done. It's gotten some substantial reworking since its conceptualization in 2023, but I'm really quite satisfied with and proud of this version. Even added in some sneaky Changing Scales arc foreshadowing, since the Meteor Falls story is the ultimate conclusion to this character arc concept...
https://file.garden/ZvBqN3lQEnLVuczj/Reverse_Mode_III.docx
Pokemon Dream Radar is a real canonical thing, sort of. It's from a DS store side game that went with Pokemon Black and White 2, and the version here has nothing much to do with it save having something to do with dream worlds. As a neuro / biopsych person, I refuse to attribute brain or mind operations, and especially not mental health issues, to supernatural causes or present "going inside someone's brain" to meet little people in there as a viable option unless I have a damned good worldbuilding reason. But I also think that mental worlds, alternate selves, and demonic possession are all cool, so...the animum-brain axis is kind of intentionally vague, but it makes sense to me, and well, a lot of bio and psych IRL is similarly vague because bodies are Weird. And animum science is an incredibly recent field; it couldn't clearly be identified and measured as A Thing That Can Be Understood until 2015. (yes, my notion of animum and Pokemon science as fields is very informed by being a bio major with a lot of psych / neuro background, why do you ask?)
There's no coherent way to include hex codes in an in-character dialogue, and coloring text in an HTML story is tacky, but the color of Arlo's opened door to the heart (and his animum core, although animum is not usually visible; the color is how scanners show frequency of pulses for human convenience) is this. Hex code C30B4E. Carmine is his canon color / Pokemon trainer name, being a red pigment made from crushed up insect scales, and it varies in terms of red to magenta ratio. Magenta being the fusion of red and purple which doesn't actually exist on the light spectrum but is undeniably visible and A Thing, so it's pretty great symbolically for all his Shadow Pokemon and "I escaped / made my own fate" concepts.
gods I wish I had scales
I know that it doesn't work like that, but if there were a medically safe means to acquire ichthyosis, or, like, make my skin produce more keratin in places so I could grow pigmented scales, I would totally fucking do it. but sadly that is not a thing and I do not want to deal in any body mods that don't have research on their long-term side effects, so I'll have to suffice for tattoos which are also pretty neat
(looked up visual refs for ichthyosis for a fanfic reason -- namely, that I needed a plausible description for a still as far as he knows human with ambiguous scales -- and couldn't help but think "gods, I wish that were me")
Apparently I also can't reliably open Signal without crashing anymore. Or the system info dialogue. (At least I can get my OS version from terminal.) I can run my web browser. That's about it.
I have no idea why because this wasn't a problem until a couple days ago and I'm not running out of memory. I'm scared to install driver / kernel updates because at least I can boot and do my dailies / write, and I am worried that will break if I update or reinstall so don't want to until I can no longer boot.
I know you can't do anything about this and I'm probably annoying you with my extremely privileged tech complaints. I just feel like everything is falling apart or failing for arbitrary reasons I can't meaningfully do anything about because no one's telling me what the problem is / there isn't documentation.
Theme is 90% by Enforcer; the rest is thoughts.page default. Kick ass, take names, fuck Ronnie Radke (not literally).
