Torn City: Faction Recruitment
I recently had to make the difficult decision to step away from Torn MMO. More accurately, I had to step away from my long-time faction Natural Selection. I’d been with the specific faction (NS4) since they were the failed revive faction Waste Management so this wasn’t an easy decision, but work and life balance inadequacies were making it difficult to log in multiple times a day. Meanwhile, the faction family, and NS4 itself continues to grow and do greater things. I wasn’t willing to hold them back. This is, overall, the result of some positive changes in my life. However, positive changes have required more time invested into my real…
On The Asterisk (I’m 42 Today)
I’m 42 today. Not celebrating until the weekend because I’m broke, but posting this because I have thoughts. In Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe” there is a long-running bit of commentary/joke about how the answer to “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” as figured out by the Super Computer Deep Thought is “42.” The author stated this was meant as a bit of a joke, and commentary on how the beings that asked the question didn’t really understand it. Fans have put their own spin on the answer, pointing out that among other things that the number 42 is the ASCII number for the asterisk, which…
Two Friends and I Complete Palace of the Dead: Floors 1 to 100 in FFXIV
Why should you play Palace of the Dead? You shouldn’t. Unless you’re with friends. Fun fact: this is my longest video to date. It taught me a lot about editing, and how much more I need to learn.
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk – True Ending, Post Game Dungeon Scenes, and Final Ending
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is a frankly underrated dungeon crawling jRPG put out by Nippon Ichi Software. The gameplay can feel quite convoluted, which is a shame because the story is deep and the lore of the world is well thought out. Not a lot of players are aware that there is a “true ending” that leads to a proper end-game, as opposed to a simple New Game Plus. Unlocking this requires fighting 7 optional bosses before taking on the assumed final boss. After a change in cut scenes, the player is shown an alternative future of sorts and given 9 additional maps they need to conquer. Each…
Exploring Parks of Billings, MT: Joel’s Park
Joel’s Park is a beautiful 17 acre park hidden behind Scheels in the Shiloh Crossing area of Billings, MT. I was fortunate enough to catch it in the early morning. While the park is probably best known for its bass fishing and its bird watching (as its a known habitat for osprey nests), it is hard to deny the location has a certain call to it. Bonus, it is near several other parks in the area, such as the Shiloh Conservation Area walking path. The park is named after Joel Long, a prominent Billings businessman perhaps best known for the creation of JTL Group (which is now known as Knife…
Twenty Twenty Fore
I believe it was the great Christian philosopher Aleister Crowley who once said “You’ll be fine. Just avoid cheap whiskey and cheap hookers…” Or something like that. 2023 was a year in which I didn’t accomplish everything I intended to, but in a way that’s okay because for the first time in a while I was reach for the sky instead of just surviving. I moved into my own housing after a perilous amount of time in transitional housing. I continued on my journey to improve my mental health, successfully completing counseling and finding a combination of medication that clearly works for me – not a silver bullet, mind, but…
The Fire Persists – And So Do I
Rumors of my death have been surprisingly accurate. Those same rumors do little to shine light on my rebirth. The real question is, will I be a zombie which has found himself in reasonable circumstances that I am destined to desecrate… or some sort of bird with flames that does the resurrection thing. In the last year, my life has changed significantly. I have moved my family from a 2 star hotel to a program for homeless families that allowed me to eventually get into my own apartment. I have gone through significant therapy, allowing me to address some short comings and some significant trauma. I have found employment that…
Torn City – This Game Needs a Seat Item
In Torn City, as the advertising goes, you can be anything. Except both female and unharassed. Yet to address that statement, I need to fill anyone reading this in on a bit of backstory: I have been playing Torn for a few years at this point. I have terrible stat growth (I’m level 99 and yet only have about 5M stats total, which means lower level people are attacking me all the time.) I offset this by having stats where it matters (an ever-improving karma score; 32 weapons at 100% and counting.) None of those stats seem to matter more than my Gender stat, which is currently female. But, I…
Review – Isekai Park, A Whimsical Slice-of-Life LitRPG
Do you like dungeon core stories? Do you like theme park games? Have you ever found yourself asking out loud “I sure wish there was a dungeon core story about a main character who was a manager of a theme park in a realm between Earth and the spirit realms that had a sense of adventure and solid progression but also wasn’t afraid to laugh at itself now and again?” Do you want a story that is a solid mixture of cute and adventure? If you answered any of those questions, why are you talking to yourself? Also, why aren’t you reading Wolfe Locke’s newest story, Isekai Park? Consider purchasing…
THIS BEAUTIFUL WORLD IS SAFE AND IT’S ALL THANKS TO YOU
It would probably help if I updated my website more than once a year. Truth be told, part of the reason I haven’t been active on this website is because a lot of my writing energy has been placed on my Kindle Vella Story “Gods Cannot Pray” which is a stat-heavy Progression Fantasy LitRPG I’m becoming more and more excited about. Vella is Amazons’ serialize content website, and while it is likely most popular for its romance stories it certainly does have its fans among the fantasy fiction crowd. The plan is to continue to update my story chapter by chapter, keep it up for about a month when the…
