@landonhere

I have secured my copy, and have played it for 2.5 hours. I was going to share a description of its perfect prologue execution, but I feared it was too spoiler-y, so I will share this minimally descriptive and spoiler-free opinion instead:

*clears throat*

weep woop. peep peep. oooooooooo.

Icelandic Waters #1: “Hoo boy . . . I sure do love it when my timewarp powers get out of hand. I didn’t expect to stay trapped three minutes past my dinnertime . . . and my bathtime! At least I found another ‘black dragon’.”

Icelandic Waters #2: “We need to get our hands on The Watcher ASAP. Not because I’m jealous, but because I’m afraid of spoilers. I can’t just isolate myself from the Rain World community if I intend to stay away from spoilers. I’ve already had ONE name and TWO hints about the whole world spoiled, and I will learn the rest by myself if it’s the last . . . thing . . . I . . . DO!”

Icelandic Waters #3: “How about we lock you in a trunk containing a bucket, a horse harness, and an empty sack, and ship it to Timbuktu? That’ll solve the problem of distancing yourself from spoilers.”

Icelandic Waters #4: “I noticed something about the swingy row in our planned charting of Touch-Tone Telephone: you don’t need to tutorialize it; you can just pass it off as a Connectifa Abortus-infected row. The normal pattern would be !.!.!.!.!.!.*, while the infected pattern is !..!!.!.!..!*.”

Icelandic Waters #5: “I really want to research the chronicle of the donkeys. Not just to figure out how it worked, but also to learn whether it was part of the original story, or something weird thrown in to the film adaptation.”

Icelandic Waters #6: “DANGER: GIBLETS. DANGER: GIBLETS. DANGER. GIBLETS. DANGER GIBLETS DANGER GIBLETS danger giblets danger giblets…”

I can’t stand this! First, I get the idea to spend an hour in a digital landscape that reeks of Marketland vibes, which hit my tipping point when it encroached on possible Grapevine infringement. Then I get out my second laptop and launch Rain World, only to discover that Rain Meadow is down, hundreds of mods are broken, the members of my group chat are gossiping spoilers, and the Remix menu is hawking the DLC despite the fact that I don’t even have it! WAWAWAWAWAWAWAAAA!!

Okay, end of tantrum. I’ll take a few minutes to see if I can downgrade my version to get Rain Meadow working again. And if I can’t, I’ll go play something else to get my mind off this.

This was supposed to be a reference to the fact that Rain World: The Watcher gets released tomorrow. In completely unrelated news, those magazines that I searched didn’t have the content I was looking for. They did contain a classified advertisement for a related product, but not the two-page spread containing the GL/E4 list that I so vividly remember. Also, DO NOT eat ice cubes left in unlabeled cups . . .

Icelandic Water Dragon: *sigh* “Working with physical archival materials never really was my strong suit, no matter how interesting they are.”

Cantiviler: “Are you sure that it's safe to let <7653666> further adhere to the Grapevine? After all, it would be impossible to let it fully adhere without breaking secrecy. Besides, Lillian and Lakkatura’s reasons for wanting in on it have virtually no-”

Icelandic Waters: “-no. These are archival materials from the late 2000s, the era of the 3DS, Wii and the birth of modern 3D renderings! Who wouldn't want to study media from that era?”

Cantiviler: “. . . me, if it keeps a pipe dream off the Grapevine.”

Hey, did you notice that there's an extremely charismatic lion on your front lawn?! I didn't know he could sparkle; maybe he ate a certain blue sheep with sea urchin-related behavioral issues . . .

*crickets*

. . . Just joking! I was trying to stop you from noticing the slug hiding under a bush in your backyard, and just to confuse you in general. Heehee!

I just realized how deep the Minecraft climate-based mob variant iceberg goes. It started with the frogs, back in the Wild Update. Then it spread to the wolves with the Armored Paws drop. And now it's spread to the common animals! As much as I'd like to dramatize about how far this could go, it's probably come to a head at this point.

vynnyal: i am
vynnyal: mildly lost
vixellMeow: i was in that region once and i skipped it with detools bc i was on Gourma
vynnyal: skskksksks
Ya Boi: go left, thats all you gotta do really
Kat_With_Internet_Access: reaalll
noelly09: u follow me, i know this place fr
vixellMeow: nd and i dont like his gameplay
Kat_With_Internet_Access: YEEK YAYY
Ya_Boi: i read that as "yeek haw" like a cowboy
FinnedFrontier was slain by a Blue Lizard.
noelly09: LMAO
FinnedFrontier: heeeeeheeeee

- Rain Meadow chat log, transcribed through OCR

REMINDER: Minecraft Live is going live in 30 minutes.

Aside from a particularly rough case of insomnia last night (possibly induced by eating food too late at night), I’m doing great! I found a work-in-progress evolution-themed game. It seems reasonable so far, but I haven’t played it enough to give a confident verdict on it.

Paid game = cannot access without the assistance of someone with banking details = cannot use without breaking secrecy = requires consent from someone with the full capacity to snitch on you = only do this if you have done the deepest research you can on the subject and/or that unreliable person has also seen it giving you plausible deniability = generally no

. . . Does anyone else have trust issues like these, or am I just being a over the prospect of being told no?

I just finished watching a video on the subject of those mindless beasts who practically feed on the helpless caterwauling of their captive dragons. Unfortunately, it was about the fandom as a whole, not about the in-universe injustices surrounding it. They touched on a film about how those psychopaths are fighting a losing war, but they concluded that its allure originates from a combination of deep-seated fears and humor. But what's humorous about “researching” the creatures under your foot?

Thankfully, I preceded that video with one about the dynamics and history of having empathy for “monsters”. In the words of one of Godzilla’s creators, “Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too strong, too tall, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy.” As a matter of fact, this is a truth that I discovered myself, and described as “a massive black dragon forlornly staring at a tiny music box”. On top of that, there's the fact that evil is taught rather than born. Relative evil manifests through ignorance and fear. Take the binary premise of the Divergence Exchanges axiom and look at it this way: if you see every other faction turning red, consider looking in the mirror.

Oh well, that wraps up another evening of musing on the topic of those . . . *90 seconds of silence* . . . upside-down 2s. I probably have things ahead of me, so I'll be off now. Remember, the garden is the Serpent’s place!

https://trainyard.ca

This is my definition of a liminal space. Nobody has touched this place in a decade, and yet it remains. It's kind of a sad place, considering the great nostalgia it has. The creation held there has since vanished, but I'm sure that it still lingers somewhere in one of my older devices. I'm considering making a tribute to it in the form of a stylized Rhythm Doctor level . . .

This brings interesting insights to their motives. This thing undisturbed metaphorical dragon is mostly harmless, and seems like it wouldn't be too panic-inducing among the public. What's stopping them from just saying “this thing exists, acknowledge it and don't worry about it”? In Solanum’s own words, nature has no malevolent will; it simply is.

The answer, of course, is fear! I don't know where they started, but they've clearly committed themselves to their cynical lifestyle. Their primary classification system revolves entirely around how it reacts when contained, and says nothing about how it acts in the open. They did tack on classification systems later to cover those, but it's already too late.

Part of me suspects that they're lying to themselves and bending their own rules, if not breaking them entirely. The “shouldn't exist” criterion has plenty of potential for abuse; what's stopping them from erasing other extremely dangerous creatures? (Answer: the fact that we already know about them.) It's also possible that they're using their cynicism to justify the “defies the laws of nature” criterion; in the words of the song that I'm currently listening to, “WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO KNOW?”

Whew! It's fun to write these sentiments from different states of mind. Stay open-minded, empathetic, and fighting for the truth; burn the house down, if you will! The garden deep ocean is the Serpent’s place!