Paradoxical

Libraries are so cool. I had a writer's question that I sent to both the two local library systems, LINCC and Multnomah county, which was: Can a homeless kid get a library card? I provided some details like he and his mom live in their van, and they have a PO box. This is because one of the characters of book 7 is a homeless witch named Raven.¹ I was fully expecting the answer to be No or similar, but I was pleasantly surprised by the answer. For the Multnomah county system, which he would be most likely to be using, they've got a student connect thing where if he has a student ID for the area, he can get a library card that way. But they did also say a PO box is enough to get a card.

The librarian for LINCC -- the Clackamas county library system -- said "Yes, we would work with the patron to make sure they could use the library. Typically, we would provide a temporary card if they did not have proof of address and photo ID. So that would allow them to check out 5 books and use the other library services. In most cases, if someone is houseless and is in shelter or has a PO box, we would work with them to give them a full access card which would allow up to 80 checkouts.  We have a lot of options for patrons that are houseless to access services in the library."

I don't know if the numbers are the same in Multnomah county; I asked in a reply and am still awaiting a response. But still... neat.

And like sure, Fae Springs is a school of magic. But it canonically has a website on the mundane Internet AND is on the website for the US Department of Education. Mainly because of mundane parents of magical kids.


1 = His mom is a 'middle spectrum' witch, IE not powerful enough of a witch to be able to use magic for much of anything. Chooli is also in the middle spectrum, but zee can see spirits and talk with ghosts. Raven's mom cannot. Her magic is very weak and she never got much past first or second year level spell-work. Basically she's barely a witch at all, and works two mundane jobs: one at Walmart and another at Safeway.

I hate it when I forget to put important notes in the character file. A character of mine has two gators as pets, and I know they have names, but I didn't write them down anywhere I can easily find. And it apparently hasn't come up in the story itself yet.

One of my submissions made it on an "As The Raven Dreams" video about glitches in the matrix! (The better of the two I submitted.) (Starting around 3:09) Story 7 is also mine!

So I bought "Sonic Frontiers" on Steam because it was on sale for less than $12 (used to be like $50 or $60), despite the fact it's a modern 3D Sonic game, and I'm an old-head who grew up on 2D Sonic games. Hell, I have the first three Sonic games, "Sonic And Knuckles," and Sonic CD on Steam, with over 140 hours logged on it. (All five games packaged under one "game" on Steam, called Sonic Origins.)

Now, I'm not entirely inexperienced with 3D Sonic games. I played "Sonic 3D" back in the day, though not much, because it was being rented. I remember being frustrated with it, but I think that was more due to the stupid fucking little "flickies" birds that the game made players collect and hold onto until the ends of levels. But yeah, the transition from 2D side-scroller to 3D game was a challenge as well, partially helped by the fact that in Sonic 3 and "Sonic And Knuckles," the special stages to find the chaos emeralds were in 3D. But it's been at least a couple decades since I last played "Sonic 3D."

"Sonic Frontiers" being 3D has been a learning curve for sure, especially as spin dash doesn't seem to be a thing, and Sonic has a bunch of different powers. There's a homing attack for when you want to actually hit things, he can kick and punch, there's the "speed boost" function, double jump, a kick-slam attack, and he can do attack combos. And you can collect skill points that drop when you kill one kind of the bad guys, the corrupted robots of the Ancients, to unlock new powers. (Robotnik's robots in the "digital realm" levels don't drop skill points.) The only extra power I've unlocked so far, the one time I've played it since buying and installing the game yesterday, is this thing where you make Sonic create a circle of light that is some kind of strong bonus attack that attacks everything in the circle all at once.

It's very fun, but again, learning curve. I gave up on the sky platforms and other things to collect or fight in the sky areas because I keep falling off and into the water around the island because I'm still getting used to the 3D and because there's a move I keep accidentally making because the people who designed the game seemed to think it was a good idea to use the same control for moving forward regularly and for making a short forward dash, so sometimes I get on the platform fine, and other times I accidentally zip forward, falling into the ocean.

Another issue is that at least one of the few sky platform parts that is nowhere near the ocean and therefore a lot safer, there's one of the platforms I just can't get to no matter how hard I try because every single time I almost get on the one platform, Sonic starts soaring through the air right past it. Doesn't help that that's right by the beginning of the tower boss, so it keeps pausing the movement to inform me that the tower boss is ahead.

I played 106 minutes, and my fingers got so sore from button mashing on the tower boss level that once I defeated that boss, I gave up for the day. My po wittle finnies is still sore. The button mashing was from a mix of combo attacks and that light-circle attack thing. The tower boss has like six stages of damage to get through; it's a tough nut to crack, but I cracked it.

I still only have like a quarter of the map collected, and last I looked, I apparently wandered into a part of the island I don't have on the map yet. I suspect that I was supposed to go somewhere else to fight lesser bosses before the tower boss, but each level is an open world sort of place.

One of my favorite little things I love about my Ravenstone series is scenes wherein Vedya's anti-bullying network, the Chalikar, are shown to be doing their job and helping others in various ways. While primarily being an anti-bullying organization, they do other helpful things as well. In book 7, in the chapter I'm currently writing, the readers find out the Chalikar runs a year-round program to provide various things for needy students. In this case, providing suitable formal attire for students whose family was either too poor or just didn't provide it for some reason. But it's mentioned they also provide shoes, other clothes, books, and other things as needed. Funded largely by the Ravenstones, but not entirely by them.

Now that I think about it, I might have the Chalikar run a fund-raiser for the program.

Apparently, I've lost weight. Used to be 260, now I'm 235. Nobody is more surprised than I am. I was fully convinced I couldn't lose weight.