Mani Mani was one of the most prominent Tengulings, and looking back I'm pretty close to certain 'she' was Tengu Man himself. She claimed a vague semi-girlfriend-of-Tengu status, and her writing style is close to identical to his own. She vanished at the same time he did, never to be seen again.Mani Mani was out checking her mail (not email, snail mail) when she noticed a strange letter in the mailbox. The return address was simply "Starmen.Net". Curiously she opened it and read.
"Come join the First Annual Starmen.Net Gathering! We've missed you the past couple of days, so here's a little reminder. We've already had an SSB tournament and a dance, but the fun's just started! So hurry and join us!"
There was a little gray button on the side of the letter that said 'Press Me'. As Mani reached to press it, she groaned. She'd missed all that already? And especially a dance? She was disappointed that she'd missed the opportunity to dance with some nice (and possibly cute) gentlemen.
Tengu was good at flirting. Particularly with himself. Never mind...Well, someone must have been looking out for her to send her that letter. She smiled a little as she pressed the button. Instantly she vanished, and reappeared - right in a palm tree on the Eagleland island.
"ACK! I hate heights!!" she yelled, hanging on to the trunk for dear life. She saw people on the beach laughing and having a good time, as well as building sandcastles. "Ugh...I hate the beach almost as much as heights. Oh well." She tried to figure out how she was going to get down...
i.e., someone is supposed to come and help me down, and thus start a plotline.
Post #177, by Chris
While Juliana started work on the main castle, Chris began carving out a moat. What he thought would be truly interesting is having a moat run from the castle to the ocean.
Good luck with that. Are you aware that filling a moat carved on the beach is a bitch of a task, since the sand just keeps on absorbing the water?Chris found a pair of small shovels, and gave one to Juliana. He then started digging along, first around the hexagon base of the castle, then starting on towards the moonlit ocean.
After building the moat around the castle, Chris decided to get a bigger shovel to dig the route to the ocean. It was about a distance of twenty feet, but it only took him 20 minutes or so to do.
If you're 20 feet from the ocean and it's late evening/early morning, you have about 45 minutes before the tide puts your whole enterprise underwater.When he returned from building the drain route, he found Juliana was putting a hose in the main moat, so that there could be water constantly flowing through it.
Clever. I assume she has one of MacGyver's generators handy, or else has somehow run plumbing all the way down from the hotel."Great idea, Juliana. Now, let's see about finishing the castle."
Meanwhile, others were also working on their own castles, trying to defeat the two administrators...
Did I mention Chris is an administrator? ...I'm sure I did.
Post #178, by Gauntlet Wizard
"A sandcastle contest! I can't miss this after I've already missed the Smash Brothers tournament!" Siris exclaimed. He rushed toward the beach, where everyone was hard at work building sandcastles. "I'll show them a sandcastle!"
The Siris saw the notice. "No PSI powers allowed," Siris read. "I wonder if that includes magic..."
Hey, doesn't PSI322 wielding a shovel count as PSI power?Two-point-four-three minutes later,
I don't know what was with him and the number 2.43.Siris was building his castle (without using magic ).
I've participated in various role-playing forums, and my own opinion, and I don't really care if the whole world disagrees with me, is that 95% of the time the use of magic by ACs is the realm of the lazy."The dodecahedrons all around should impress all of 'em!" Siris laughed. He glanced at Chris's and Juliana's castle. "Oh geez," he muttered. "I'm gonna have to pick up the pace if I want any chance..."
At Juliana?
By the way, where's Luna been?
Post #179, by Little Yoshi
Tim, after being healed, thought of what to do.
"Well, I could build a sand castle, judge the sand castles, practice my sword skill, blast monsters, swim-wait, no I couldn't, no good swiminng gear, or I could um, do something else.
Tim decided to hop in his boat in search of monsters, in case any would be out.
*shrug*
Post #180, by Earth Bound Ranger
Mark saw everyone making sand castles, but was too tired and scared out of his mind to make one. After the jump into the insanely fast moving coaster car, Mark was still a little shaken up. So instead, Mark just lounged in the sun with his sword by his side (my most prized posession).
Compensating for something?He was getting himself ready for the swimming competition and mabey for judging the sand castles (As he didn't take part in them).
What makes people who don't build sand castles think they're qualified to judge them?Mark really enjoyed swimming (Can hold his breath for 5 minutes under water),
File that under 'mildly useful skills that are not likely to impress any women out of their pants'.and couldn't wait to have some chalenge from someone who could actually swim just as good, or better than him.
SPOILERS: All competitions between ACs are, by rule, unwinnable and therefore pointless, as every AC is the best in the world at anything the author wants.But for now he just enjoyed basking in the sun. It was then that he saw it. It was...
Not a bad end-of-post hook, actually. Given which people are active in the story right now and their relative likelihood of picking up this hook, I'd handicap about an 80-85% chance it turns out to be something silly (15-20% chance it's something serious, at least in the sense that it will result in violence and/or plot movement).
[as much as I like to make a joke or two about myself here, this post is actually gonna have to be serious. :\]
ReplyDeleteSigh, now I'm really wondering if IP scanning/indentification was available on your copy of the Gathering IF that you're using for this. I have it feeling it wasn't though now.
I say this because even though I was notorious for some dumb, retarded things in the past. I honestly don't remember ever using multiple accounts in this IF.
Now, I will admit, I did have a second forum name[i.e. duplicate account] at one point in the distant past I'd use for stupid reasons [and maybe I did use it in ONE IF early on, but I honestly forget], but I think it was removed or taken off of the forum when it was found out, before this IF started.
And if it was, I certainly wouldn't have tempted fate by making more duplicate accounts. I might have been a boisterous, trouble causing fool with a rebellious streak, but believe it or not, being banned was not a priority on my list at any point I was on EB.net or SM.net. I liked it there back then, as much as I do now. The staffers who were on my case about my last stunt made it pretty clear to me not to use any more dupes else I'd get squashed by the mighty banhammer. D:
In other words, there was only that one account I ever used as a duplicate. Anyone else who might be assumed to be just me with another name probably really were their own person. I openly admit I spoke with many of these people, usually on AIM, but they're still unique people, not copies of me.
Now, whether some of them were different from EACH OTHER though, I couldn't tell you for sure. I know Rockwell and Mani were unique from each other and myself for sure. I don't honestly remember much about WotE, and I only vaugely remember people like NessJeff too.
So yeah, all joking in good fun we're probably having here, this is one of the reasons I'm probably going to turn out very hard on myself later on into this blog of posts, because my idiocy probably made some skeptical of others who I was friends with of the time, making them think my old friends were just a myriad of alt-names I used to control IFs. I feel bad in particular for Mani on that, seeing she got unfairly treated because of the way I acted, and some think she was just my old self with an alternate account, when she actually ended up parting ways with me not long before I pretended to "disappear". [I still have her AIM name, which hasn't changed, but I haven't bothered her in years and don't plan to]
So yeah, sorry for this super elongated post of crap, and hopefully I won't have to go back into serious, explaination mode much more as I read over this. I'm even worse with absurb post length when I am. That's one thing about me that HASN'T changed much I'm afraid. :P
Haha... well, she DID sound so much like you it was/is kind of easy to assume.
ReplyDeleteAnd actually (I did break my usual rule about not looking ahead to confirm this) you DID use Roll Buster quite a bit later on in this story.
I did? Well then crap, I was wrong about the alt-name not being used. I honestly thought I was discovered for that before this and given some mighty strict warnings. I still know I had no honest intent on being banned.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, continuing on a somewhat-serious enough tangent. As much as you might have been strict towards me, your constant nagging of me did help me grow out of that horrible shell I had. It just didn't happen immediately. I think it was a delayed reaction. So yeah, I thank you sincerely, guruzeth. :)
I can't remember... did you end up getting banned eventually?
ReplyDeleteNo, I was never banned as far as I honestly remember. I might have been given an ultimatium of sorts however that might have gave birth to my idea to shed the "Tengu Man" based personas and appear to go for a while and then become a lurker.
ReplyDeleteI did try to make one attempt at IF in a sort of "middle" phase between the Tenguian and Misfitian eras. One of the new forums opened and I took the name "Maxwell Labs" and had some kind of part in I think it was Zenith actually. I played someone's dog. I think the character's name was Emilio[nothing to do with the artist]. Somewhere in the middle of the story, I came to realize that I still had a bit growing up to do. I silently dropped out of the story, but I did inform Anthadd about it, and told him my past identity, to which he said he wouldn't tell anyone about me still being around unless I asked him or I flat out decided to reveal it. That's when he told me he though I was important to IF, btw.
Then I suppose sometime after 2001 came around [I got hit in the head with the maturity tree around Jan 2001, and suddenly went super serious in real life, and eventually molded that way on the internet] I finally reemerged on another reboot of the forums, coming with with "Cecil", as in the Final Fantasy 4 character, for reasons you can probably understand in the meaning of the character himself.