Behold my profile.
There's, uh, nothing here right now. Someday I should probably find a balance between the old text wall, and...this. (she drew my avatar you know!)

The bean, it must be found. For MHD's Fairytales contest.

I have no idea why I wrote this. All I can say in my defense is that it seemed like a good idea at the ti--wait no that's a lie, I said, repeatedly that this was stupid and shameful every time I mentioned working on it.

The truth is I needed to publish something before the end of the year and there is CLEARLY a burning need for wolf stories in the psyche of children using the internet. But then they write them badly, or make their wolves behave like clans of cats. So here is a simple straightfoward story of a young wolf leaving his pack in search of a better life. Maybe no one will ever feel the need to write another one now, or if nothing else maybe this will give them ideas for how to do it in slightly more minimum-standards-meeting ways.

Final conclusion however is that writing about some dumb animal with no agency is not something I'd recommend.

If you don't know what this is for, then it isn't for you.

So would you say that Sikhism's gonna be sick, bro?

Glad somebody finally figured out the science behind that to bring an end to the Greek religion.

Islam comes from the same source as Christianity and Judaism, yeah, so afaik they've got the Old Testament stories that are almost identical, and they even believe in Jesus's performance of miracles and raising of the dead and being raised. The contentious point on Jesus is of course whether he was created or eternally existed as part of the Trinity, but there have been sects of Christians who believed differing things on that too (and tbf it's not necessarily the clearest thing in the text too when you have Jesus actually praying to God as though to a separate being). That was a large part of why the Nicene Creed came about to officially define the faith on those points anyway. Whateve the differences I always do feel like it's pretty significant that half the planet recognizes the same God and has been for a very long time...if you happen to believe in an actual evil force out there trying to sow strife and deceive people, then it seems like they've done a pretty good job creating this level of hate and infighting among people who have the same core beliefs. It's been interesting discussing Hinduism with RK a bit too, because even they have sort of a notion of a trinity with their major gods containing a Creator, a sustainer and nurturer of life, and then a destroyer, all representing different facets of the universal god that's in everything. Hinduism since it doesn't have a unifying scripture or organization and has evolved organically without any top down pressure for so long is probably the closest significan still practiced thing to ancient paganism (disclaimer: I know fuck all about Hinduism and obviously other people could go way more into this). A pretty notable thing there though is how different the details can be by culture or region or even just family to family even with it all being under the same pretty recognizeable umbrella...but then of course you saw the same thing with Biblical Hebrews too, and they HAD unifying laws spelled out for them that they spent thousands of years of their recorded history not really doing at all in specifically that way. (Lots of examples of cultural variance across the years in Judges, a lot of details in Samson's story come to mind.) Anyway, I don't have any cohesive conclusion to all of this, I'm just rambling to avoid my storygame.

Forgot you were blessed enough to miss the Fluttershy saga. Basically around this time last year a very prolific author of mediocre fanfic known for (as you might guess from the name) being a shameless brony went full schizoid on us and received many grand and elaborate relevations about the dangers of "acoustic" versus written communication and the Greek gods being demons. This was all explained via a 30k word storygame he wrote in a week which he presented as being the most significant thing ever written to upend all previous ideas of science, religion, and philosophy...basically a linear text dump about being whisked away by Merlin to be given all his conclusions in dense bullet point lists, with the grand conclusion that "the last stand of Christianity" was My Little Pony, Star Wars (the prequels and originals only), the Lord of the Rings movies. Not the books of course, the fucking movies. But anyway then a little later he deleted it along with half a million words of unrelated fanfic to protect it from being read by Satan, aka Malk.

When you see someone in that jacket and those shades you should come with them if you want to live, man they really teach you kids nothing important these days huh.

You'd have to try a little harder than that, there are just a handful of women and two transwhatevers on this list, and they're all significantly younger than us. Getting good at art would be a better disguise.

Okay, no idea if this will be useful to anybody next year, at least a couple of them were a little too dependent on specific interactions with people rather than broadly available forum info, but my thought process on guesses, from the top: Ace's gifter: Gryphon, it's obviously Gryphon lol, look at the comment on it, and his eternal Eternal review. Anthraxus: It's glued to a Canva template and references a word I've seen attached to Anthraxus's name. Now of course I don't know what an "ambling" is usually about (I don't read the Gazette) but it's obviously the work of a Gayzetteer, and other than Anthraxus himself there was only one bastard sick enough to turn in an extended Dad joke - Milton. Avo: I'm sure everyone got this one. Beefhotpot: Wasn't immediately sure of this one, but it was obviously written by a very articulate adult woman (just look at the way of phrasing what is essentially another "LMAO, ME PROCRASTINATE MUCHLY" type of clue, and there were other possibilities the writing style ruled out for me.) Finally I went with Cat because I checked back over the story and saw British spelling. Cat: Again, wasn't immediately sure of this one, but it said "literate female who is not an artist" to me and process of elimination made it Wildblue, who has shown a lot of interest in the Thunderdome. Cavus: The review itself sounded like it was written by someone older and really confident with the language, while not having any insane novel length or formatting markers that might point to someone else. The clue pinpointed Anthraxus from the general group I'd narrowed it down to. Chris: the clue was "I like the number 11", the initial little poems just felt like they were followed by a loud belch, and Ogre did a detailed review of one of Chris's games right before the deadline. Clayfinger: this was mainly me remembering Ace using the phrase "I'm officially an unc now" about his birthday lol. But I might have gotten it even without that, I did know he had a young sister and a review felt like the kind of gift he was most likely to leave. (Especially one that managed to pad out its length talking about other things besides the story >.> ) DBNB: yeah i had no idea here lol, can't even remember who I eventually picked. It was a nice review, I didn't have much else to go on. Enterpride: food related clue, and I've seen a couple of Yummy's drawings. Fabrikant: another one I missed, I would have assumed that art would have come from Liminal. (And well, of course it kind of also did...) Goodnight - THAT CLUE NARROWS DOWN NOTHING!! And as I've said we really have too many capabLollle artists now to keep up with them, that wasn't the style I was used to seeing from Hotpot either. Gryphon - Already discussed in another post, but this one has to take the win for leaving me the most utterly stumped. Curse that Clayfinger and his total lack of an Indian accent while singing. Liminal - I WANT UD TO EXPLAIN HIS "CLUE" BEFORE I STRANGLE HIM. But I knew he did pixel art, and it seemed to be the same pixel artist handing out the other gifts. MHD - Only RK goes around getting this excited about Earthsea all the time. MILTON - The clue was the big giveaway, DB has only ever had that same avatar his whole time here. MIZAL - Lol, Sent wasn't even trying to hide it. Spork reference, and I am very familiar with his art style. (Especially when it pertains to kobolds.) Ogre - The gift was a comment saying "I reviewed all your games." Well, the site happens to automatically attach usernames to people who do that. Considering how prolific Ogre has been, that was a seriously impressive gesture from one 11 to another. RK - I know exactly two things about the state of Nebraska: In the late 19th century a photographer named Solomon Butcher documented thousands of Nebraskan homesteaders living in literal holes in the ground, and at some point in more recent years, Chris lived there in a literal hole in the ground. I've never seen a drawing by Chris but it was also a DC character, so... Sent - I haven't seen much art from Sherb, but the clue that sounded like an injoke, and especially the comment referencing equal amounts friendship and slander pointed to only Sherb. Sherbet - Whoops! I really thought this one might be Suranna. I had no idea that Cavus did 3D modeling, but it seemed entirely plausible that the first reference to Suranna was some kind of Mormom joke. Suranna - Hmmmm. No idea? Unescapable - Avo was the remaining unassigned person who had claimed to enjoy pixel art, and the comments section was full of the gifter repeatedly going 'sorry'. Wildblue - This one took some narrowing down and was one of the last ones I decided on. They sounded older and familiar with Eastern European literature though, and I thought the clue might be a reference to the submarine game. I had no idea Fabrikant was an artist however. Will - I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS ONE. SHUT UP. Yummy - I realized belatedly that I really should've guessed this one. Not for the oddly flirty poem which was just a drunk Enter winning the disguise game at all cost, but the damn bird that I actually looked up before dismissing as irrelevant has a youtube video listed prominently in the results that points to a zoo in the Nertherlands! I also had realized well before that point that I had absolutely no idea where Enter's gift was, as none of them seemed to be a particularly vicious review.

You better be, YOU GORMLESS FREAK.

Oh, what use it is to UD is irrelevant, we're in Battle of the Autists mode now.