We have Diana to thank for this theme. I started planning in October for an A to Z Challenge with 12 contributors. It worked. The way we did it was I picked a few topics we write about often, invited some of my geeky friends to take those topics, and once we had enough of them nailed down to be sure we could do this, I invited the other contributors to take the letters that were left.
Once the topics were in, I set about reverse-engineering a theme. Then I asked the group privately what they thought of it, and we had a conversation. The original theme I came up with was “Pop Culture Potpourri,” but my beautiful sister, who happens to be one of Stormy’s Sideckicks, dropped this line on the thread:
Quaint Jeremy’s thoughts has a contributed post today, “Nerdy is the New Cool,” from Candice of Carving out a Space. If you have a second or two, head on over there and chime in on how you feel about the epidemic of nerdery in media and pop culture, and the subculture itself becoming more socially acceptable.
The Leather Library and Taylor Grace, Author both posted Very Inspiring Blogger Award nominations yesterday. If you looking for a big bunch of new blogs to follow, you should check out their posts and check out some of the blogs they’ve nominated. Thanks, Taylor, for nominating me as the proprietor of Just Gene’O.
Our longtime contributor Jeremy DeFatta, also known as @quaintjeremy, kicked off his own blog, QuaintJeremy’s Thoughts, earlier this month. Since we celebrated the six-month anniversary of his weekly Batman series this week, and he has a few nice original posts up, this seems a good week to say “Hey! follow Jeremy!” 😉
Meet Jeremy
Jeremy’s contributions to Sourcerer are one of the biggest reasons we’ve been so successful this year. Jeremy is consistently our most popular blogger in terms of views, and he is the author of five of our 10 most-viewed posts. It’s telling that this blog really took off the month Jeremy started contributing. That says to me that he’s a blogger you might enjoy keeping up with.
He has a great feature called “Thoughts,” which are short, pithy and frequently entertaining. Things like:
Jeremy’s talented, he’s personable, he REALLY knows his comics, and he loves beer. He also has a very pleasing sense of humor. If you like nerdy things and beer, you’ll love QuaintJeremy’s Thoughts.
I’ve been on sort of a Dark Souls kick lately. I can’t say why. The game doesn’t make any sense unless you use the wiki or have an IQ of 160. Everything is so cryptic. The game is hard, and it fills me with anxiety. It’s one of the best games I’ve ever played.
Video games are so tame these days. They try to be like movies—they don’t want you to fail, they want you be able to move forward and see all the gorgeous textures and polygons they’ve crammed onto the disk. Dark Souls doesn’t care about polygons. Nothing.
At the beginning of the game there’s a boss fight. You die fighting an Asylum Demon, pictured above. Don’t forget to light the bonfire before going in. You’ll be tossed into Dark Souls Limbo if you don’t rest at a bonfire before dying here. After dying two or three times fighting the Asylum Demon, just try running around the room a bit until you find an opening. Pass through the opening and a wall of bars will fall down. Don’t stand next to the bars wagging your tongue at the Asylum Demon, because he’ll hit the bars with his big stick and you’ll die. Rinse and repeat, if so.
Run up to the top of the asylum, and you’ll encounter a wall of fog. Pass through the fog and you’ll fall down on the Asylum Demon. Do this as many times as it takes. Sometimes, you’ll win a boss fight, and get points and new items.
When you get out of the Asylum, you’ll have a few more boss fights. I find that the key to success in this game is desensitization. Pretty soon, you’ll be addicted to losing.
I think it’s best to play the game without an internet connection. Sometimes you need to reverse hollowing (become a human) in order to summon helpful NPCs to aid you in boss battles. But when you’re human, you run the risk of getting invaded by dark phantoms, which are neckbeards that are a lot better at the game than you. The folks at Bandai and Software have written a lore that makes online play more. . . realistic. It’ll make sense. Other people will just seem like terrible monsters to you. Don’t talk to strangers.
Anyway, you fight a bunch of bosses. Then you fight this zombie king, whose sword is on fire. I find it’s best to circle the area for about thirty minutes, shooting him in the face repeatedly with crossbow bolts. Cheating is a gameplay mechanic in Dark Souls. Don’t be afraid to exploit various loopholes, or else you’ll never get anywhere in life. When you finish the game, it starts over on a harder difficulty, thankfully.
That’s about all I have to say about this game. Dark Souls II comes out in March. Here’s a neat video that’ll help you get through tough times.
Once the topics were in, I set about reverse-engineering a theme. Then I asked the group privately what they thought of it, and we had a conversation. The original theme I came up with was “Pop Culture Potpourri,” but my beautiful sister, who happens to be one of Stormy’s Sideckicks, dropped this line on the thread:
