grimzag

Title: The Inferno
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Genre(s): Drama
Word Count: 2500
Rating/Warning(s): R. Strong adult themes, violence
Character(s)|Pairing(s): America, Japan
Other Entries in this Series: The Jungle, The Darkness

( Japan prepares for his last stand )

Title: The Darkness

Title: The Jungle( Read more... )

I've been working on this during downtime when I haven't been feeling like playing video-games.  I hope you guys enjoy it. 



( Part 1 )

 So yeah, Russians have the best marches.  Ever.  Especially Soviet ones, furthering my theory that the more oppressive the government, the more awesome the music is.

So here are some Soviet era marches, for your listening pleasure.  Some of these are folksongs as well.


National Anthem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLcc19mt4eA&feature=PlayList&p=774C7A75FFB72A57&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=23
National Anthem in English, Stalin Era: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtU3vUOa2sw&feature=PlayList&p=774C7A75FFB72A57&index=24
Volga Boatman's Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUOKD-c47mc&feature=related

The Red Army is Strongest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2qvfLaOa10&feature=related

The Red Cavalry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQs4jaD8GPw
Le Chant Des Partisans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-0IywQne0E

The Sacred War: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSaimLTQafg

March of the Soviet Tank-men: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE2f5Q2GIn0

Farewell to Slavianka: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqFISER9fVE

The Artillerists March: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DA1y_s2D5M

 So today I tried to cook Swedish meatballs from a mix.  I had originally intended to cook them on Sunday, but had bought regular meatballs instead of ground meat, only to discover that the recipe needed actual ground meat and had everything necessary to make the meatballs out of it already included.  On my way home, I picked up some ground meat, so I thought I was all set.

But no, it turned out I did not have enough milk to make the recipe (soy/rice milk), so i had to go back to the store, AGAIN, and pick some up x.x

But this wasn't the worst of it.  So the package for the mix is actually two packets, one for the meatballs and one for the sauce.  The directions said to open up the sauce packet, set it aside, and then open up the meatball seasoning and mix it with the meat.  Thinking that I would save myself from having to clean an extra dish, I opened up the seasoning half of the packet.

It was only after the color of what was pouring out suddenly changed that I realized that, in fact, the seasoning and sauce mixes were only separated by a thin piece of paper and that it was actually one packet which was compartmentalized, not two packets stuck together.  AT this point, the sauce mix had already gotten in the water and the meat, so either I had to throw out everything or plow forward and hope for the best.  Being cheap, I did the latter.

Of course, when I got to the sauce making step, I had no thickener, and of course, being as it is bulky and messy, I have no flour or corn-starch with which to thicken the sauce, nor did I have the right kinds of seasoning to flavor it.  However, I did have some easy-mac.  SO, in desperation, I began adding easy-mac to the milk and meatballs in the hopes of salvaging some kind of sauce out of it.

Suprisingly, it did not turn out too bad.  It's greasy as hell, the meatballs are over-seasoned, and the sauce is liquidy, but the easy-mac and swedish meatball seasoning actually go suprisingly well together.  I never want to go it again, mind, but at least it's palatable.

So yeah, not buying that brand again if its a double-pack.

 So, a funny thing happened to me character in D&D today...

Our DM is running a Legend of Zelda themed campaign, and I decided to play as the Old Man from the first game.  We started with 0 rupees, so we decided to try to get some more by exploring the graveyard in Castle Town.  After annoying Dampe the Gravekeeper for a while and realizing that there was no money to be had, we decided to return at night to see if anything changed.  A large number of crows had taken over the place, and were eyeing us greedily.  After a brief fight with one near a gravestone, we decided to attack a group of them on top of a tomb to try to get some money.  Our tank was not there.  Me and our Sorceror blasted a group of them, who then attacked first another party member, who had money and ran, and then  the Sorceror, whom they downed.  They then turned on me.  Four of them attacked me at once.  In one turn, they knocked me unconcious.  The Bard then healed me.  They then all attacked me again, before I could even get up, and literally killed my character.

So yeah, first encounter of the first session, and already my character is dead, and since we have no money, nobody can resurrect him x.x

Thankfully the DM felt sorry for me and allowed me to revive the character, especially since I had spent so much time and effort making him, but yeah, in future, I'd appreciate that he mention that the crows are the size of small children BEFORE we start fighting them, and next time we don't go into the graveyard at night without the tank...

 So today I purchased and finished Batman: Arkham Asylum.  Here are my thoughts.

( My Review )

I have a place in my heart for military marches, especially those that date to the 18th century.  I like to imagine lines of musketmen standing across the battlefield, in battle order, gracefully blowing each other to bits while the music plays in the background.  There's just something oddly striking about that mental image... call it the pagantry of war.  Anyways, I have been collecting these marches on my youtube account, and since quite a few of you seem to be interested in the period as a setting for Hetalia fics, I figured I might post them as inspiration.


Arthur Kirkland:
  +Arthur has a goodly amount of his own military and patriotic music, but borrows some from his subjugated siblings
The British Grenadiers, fife and drums (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLc-bvcdNTw)
Men of Harlech, Medieval and Welsh, vocal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf_Fj4-MO9o)
Scotland the Brave, Scottish (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mor3EI91dhY)
Rule Britannia, vocal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUZv2sj9PvA&feature=related)
  +not really a marching song, but it is from the period

Roderich Edelstien:
Prince Eugen Marsch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYWBnTqoYvU)

Gilbert Weillschmidt:
Hohenfriedberger Marsch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnNaY4ZXcHQ)
Hohenfriedberger Marsch with lyrics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkhOxFtj7Eo&feature=related)
   +This march is especially important to Prussia, because it was written by Fredrick the Great himself.
Altpreussischer Parademarsch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5ab0Bgb1zU&feature=related)
Dessauer Marsch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXxqZbYfAqg&feature=related)

Ludwig:
  +Germany being a younger country, most of his marches are much newer.  While he loves a good march, he owes a lot of his military marching tradition to Gilbert and Roderich
Yorckscher Marsch, Napoleonic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow5BbhGd5Mw&feature=related)
Königgrätzer Marsch, Romantic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4PwSVW5Aak&feature=related)

Ivan Braginski:
Imperial Russian March, i do not know the name (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_4_RHSxgdY)
Preobrajensky March (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12nF0Bgcp4M&feature=related)
Preobrajensky March, vocal version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h46kcNqZce4)

Francis Bonnefoy:
Jolie Tambour, pre-revolutionary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgxzbWQ4w_Q)
Sambre et Meuse, Revolutionary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxuvTB-HCYQ)
Salut des Aigles, Napoleonic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqaCwIuodtQ&feature=related)
La Charge, Napoleonic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P00SdxiGE9Q&feature=related)
La Grenadier (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rs2Lwwk8yg&feature=related)

Sadiq Annan:
Attack March (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWpwOX-md6k&feature=related)

Feliciano and Lovino:
Some Italian march, sounds like it may be 19th century (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rxGvRod0Ek&feature=related)

Berwald Oxenstierna:
Narvamarschen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enuqz4E9ZP8)

Tino Vainamoinen:
  +These marches aren't from the period, but I thought they were cool
Jaakarimarssi, modern (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbd517ebm5U&feature=related)
Porilaisten marssi, modern (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw4xuoP8eZ4&feature=related)

It's surpisingly hard to find these marches :P  Hope you all enjoy them.


Bonus Track: Ivan versus Berwald in The Great Northern War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24gQKRF9aJ0&feature=related

edit: added more tracks.

 Title:  The Sins of Empire: Born in Blood

Fandom:  Axis Powers Hentalia
Genre(s): Drama
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence 
Characters and Pairings:  Turkey (as the Ottoman Empire), Northern Italy (as Venice and Genoa), Greece, Ghengis Khan, Osman I (Mongol Empire, Byzantium, Timurid Empire and Serbia are discussed but do not directly appear)
Summary:  The story of how Sadiq rose from a small, insignificant principality into the terror of Europe.

( Read more... )

Orc Marching Song

Where there's a whip,
There's a way,
Where there's a whip,
There's a way,

We don't wanna go to war today,
But the Lord of the Lash says nay, nay, nay!
We're gonna march all day, all day, all day!
For where there's a whip there's a way,

Where there's a whip,
There's a way,
Where there's a whip,
There's a way,
Where there's a whip there's a way,
Left, right, left, right, left
Where there's a whip there's a way,
Left, right!

A crack on the back says,
we're gonna fight!
We're gonna march,
all day all night, 
and more!
For we are the slaves,
of the dark lord's horde!
Left, right, left, right

Where there's a whip,
There's a way,
Where there's a whip,
There's a way,

We don't wanna go to war today,
But the Lord of the Lash says nay, nay, nay!
We're gonna march all day, all day, all day!
For where there's a whip there's a way,
Left, right, left, right, left, right....


Just felt like it :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXQJS3Yv0Y

 Title:  The Sins of Empires

 So recently I have decided to begin making a minatures wargame system and setting. Why? Well, I like wargames, but have always felt a bit dissatisfied with the ones I have played (cheifly with how expensive they have been to keep playing). Moreover, I simply enjoy creating games.

But a big part of it is that I love creating settings. I wish I enjoyed writing fiction more than I did, because I love coming up with settings, characters, locations, history, geography and even culture and laguage of fantastic worlds. The problem is that I don't really enjoy writing stories set in them about specific individuals. I would rather make the world and then give it to someone else to play with and interact with, though I would very much enjoy writing the history of it. It is for this reason that I like being a Game Master in rpgs, and it is also for this reason why I like creating wargames. One I enjoy for the personal aspect, the second for the geo-political aspect.

So while I am making the mechanics of my wargame system, another task I very much enjoy, I thought I might share my world-building aspects here for you guys to critique and enjoy, and perhaps so i can get some inspiration from you guys when I get stuck.

So here's a preview of the world I'm currently making, taken from what will be the core rulebook.  I would greatly appreciate it if you shared your thoughts.


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 So I invented a new drink:

1.5 oz American Dry Gin (I used Bluecoat)
4.5 oz Martinelli's Apple Juice

Serve the Apple juice chilled.  Pour the ingredients into a lowball glass, no ice, and enjoy.

 So the mod is complete.  Well, at least complete enough to be played, and almost complete enough to be released.  Due to the limited religions I had access to while building it, I had to make some unsavory design choices (like having the Aztecs be able to found Judaism and having almost every civilization outside of Asia found Free Masonry instead of Taoism, when I don't even like Free Masonry as a religious option).  I really need to get more religions from somewhere.  Apparently, there is a mod called "rapture" which has 94 religons, so I may try to steal from that once I can get it to download properly.  It's cool, but with some many religions I could be using, it could be much, much better.

For now I shall delay release until I can get a good look at the rapture mod, and more than that until I get the modders and artists' permission to use their graphics.  I plan to market this (as much as one can market something that's free) as a graphical enhancement compilation mod, since it has no effect on gameplay and may take graphics from a multitiude of sources to work, none of which will be graphics created by me.

I would also like to modularize it better.  Right now, to be integrated into a mod the modder has to add two lines of code into a file they may have already altered or changed.  They may also have to alter the python file I ship with the code if they have custom religions they want to use, custom civilizations they are using, or if they have changed which techs found which religions.  Ideally, they should not have to alter any lines of code in any circumstance, but this is probably impossible.  For now, I'll say the level of modularization is satisfactory.

At any rate, the next order of business is trying to aquire additional religions to fill the gaps that cropped up during the design phase, and perhaps make every civ's religious tech tree more of less unique.  Once I'm satisfied with the results, I will ask permission from the modders whose graphics and code I took (as a courtesy more than anything else, this is open source work after all) and then post the thing up.

 Great Success!

So asking for help on the forum paid off.  A user by the name of EmperorFool mentioned that I might find the code I needed in a different file, called CvGameUtils.py.  See, the file I was editing, CvEventsManager.py only deals with what happens after an in-game event occurs.  CvGameUtils, on the other hand, has functions that allow you to replace what the game does on default, though it took some guessing to figure out how it did it.

Basically, in this file is a function called doHolyCityTech or something along those lines which usually reads a list of arguments into variables and then immediatley returns false (that is, whatever asked it to do something is given back the value false).  When I changed this value to true, it caused the game to delay a turn before founding a religion, which i theorised meant that the function is supposed to return false if it does nothing and true if it does something, and that the system will alter it's behavior depending on what is passed back.

Turns out I was right.  When I altered the function to found Taoism when the technology meditation was researched, a tech which normally founds Buddhism, it instead founded Taoism, without founding Buddhism anywhere else.  Of cours,e this is the short hand of what i did.  First, I told the fucntion to found taoism whenever a tech that founded a religion was reached, which caused an insane glitch which allowed the players to choose what religions they founded when they reached certain techs.  I then changed it so that it would only do the swap on meditation and would only return true when someone was the first player to reach meditation and false otherwise.  This seems to work, though there might always be glitches I don't know about.

Finally, I removed most of my code from CvGameUtils and put it into a file of my own creation so that it would be easier to merge my mod with other mods.  By doing this, only two lines of code need to be added to CvGameUtils for everything to work properly.

Now, I start the much longer, much more arduous task of finding religions to add to my mod and figuring out which replaces which religion for whom.  This may take time, but the hard part, figuring out how to do what I want to do, is more or less over.  Now it's just about obtaining graphics.

I'll be updating on an as I do things basis rather than a daily basis, as I might have to wait to get permission to use other people's art.

 Well, it now appears I was completely wrong about this idea being unfeasable, as today I more or less got the code to do what I wanted it to, albiet with a few nasty hiccups I am going to have to address.

So I woke up this morning with the sudden idea that, perhaps, instead of trying to make this work simply by adding religions to the game, I could make this work by creating triggers that would force the game to do it anyways.  For those who aren't code monkies, triggers are segments of code that fire when certain things happen, in this case when a new religion is founded.  Turns out, adding powerful triggers is actually pretty easy in civilization 4, as most of the event code is written in a scripting language called Python.

That is to say, it is easier than writing the engine from scratch or making a new game, but it is still fiddling with source code in a real, industrial strength programming language (in this case a scripting language), and in this instance one I have never written any code in.

Thankfully, the Python syntax was easy to figure out given my familiarity with other, similar languages.  The problems I encountered today where not so much a difficulty with the language as they were with the complete lack of documentation on the part of the developers.  See, while they made all the code easy to modify, they neglected to write any easy-to-browse documentation for it, and while I found out later it is possible to glean some understanding of what functions are available from the headers of the C++ source code (I don't actually know C++, I just know how to read headers), the only real documentation I could find was a user made api site, which hasn't been updated since the last expansion pack ><

So this caused some problems.  First, I think I accidentally screwed up a ')' somewhere, because the event code for the whole game got completely messe dup and I had to start from scratch after 2 hours of mulling over it.  Then one of the functions I heavily needed to rely on required arguments the documentation did not mention and I ahd to guess what values belonged in it, which could possibly come back to haunt me later, then I had to search the code to find classes of data that weren't mentioned in the api etc.

But I got it working, sort of.  I managed to alter the game such that when Buddhism was founded, it would be immediatley unfounded and Taoism would be founded instead.  This may sound like a dirty hack, but it is basically what i want to happen in the mod, because the religions that are going to be excluded do need to be founded to prevent them from being re-founded later, and it might make an interesting game mechanic to have unwanted religions drifting about.  The only problem left, however, is that while the mechanics are fine in what I am doing (I think), the player and his opponents are still notified that Buddhism has been founded, even though there is no sign of it in the game.  I can't figure out where in the code these notifications are sent to the player, so I'm not sure how to handle it.  I posted a thread on a civ4 modding forum about it, and I'm going to give myself a rest from modding until tomorrow.  Hopefully I can figure out how to finish this off, and then all I have to do is test it thoroughly and then start adding religions and identical triggers to my heart's content.  That part will take time, but this is by far the most difficult part of the mod to do, and I seem to be a good part of the way done, though it is still possible the messages cannot be blocked or that I might have to change the way I am doing things to stop them.

It is also unfortunate that, presently, my mod isn't well written for integration with other mods.  I know what I need to do to remedy that, but don't yet know how to do it.  But that is secondary to getting this to run.  The alterations I'm making are small enough that enhancing integration should not be too painful.

 Okay, so to keep myself busy this summer, I think I'm going to try my hand at modding Civilization 4.  I've glanced over the code, and it looks fairly easy to do, so I think if I steal all my artwork from other people I might be able to make something halfway decent.

To keep me from slacking off, I'm going to try keeping a developer's blog to articulate my ideas and make myself feel accountable to someone so I keep working on the project, even though it's likely that none of the people who will be reading it are familiar with Civilization 4.

So yesterday I did some concept designing.  The idea for the mod is to alter the game so that different civilizations found different religions if they are the first to reach a agiven technology.  For example, I always felt that it was weird for the Greeks to become Hindu if they discovered Polytheism first, though Hinduism overall is a much more relevant religion for the game than Hellenism.  I think I will call the mod the Ethnic Religions Mod, at least as a working title, and I am designing it for Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword version 3.19.

Today, I am mainly focusing on feasability.  My first goal is to take the basic game and add a religion to it, either by removing a given religion and replacing it (Buddhism would be the one replaced for testing purposes) or allowing it to be accessed in-game by enabling the "choose religions" feature.  The next goal will be to allow this religion to replace buddhism for one civilization or culture group without replacing it for another.  

The ultimate goal would then be to create a unique set of religions for every culture group, perhaps adding a few alternates for specific civilizations (the byzantine empire founding orthodox christianity rather than just christianity, for example, or allowing India to still found Islam when they research Divine Right rather than founding Shintoism, which is currently planned to replace Islam for the east-asian culture group).

The idea afterwards is to take this mod and add it to existing cultural diversity mods which make ethnic unit artwork for different civilizations (the best mod I've found for this is the Wolfhanze mod, which is also included in the Legends of Revolutions mod, which has unique art for almost every unit for every civilization).

So now what I am doing is taking a tutorial on modding in Civ 4, to try to get an idea of how to do this.  I have a sneaking suspicion it might be somewhat difficult in terms of the game logic.

I'm also a little frustrated right now, because a promising mod I wanted to try out, called the Just Another Religions Mod, is not functioning properly.  I can still try to rip the artwork from it, though.

The Mind's Eye


A dark and endless hall,
Cold, metallic, twisting,
No sound but your breathing,
Heavy, labored, panicked,
To breach this cruelest night.

Fearfully you tremble,
shaking, sobbing, cringing,
Eyes moving back and forth,
Darting, scanning, searching,
Looking for your hunter.

Unmentionable things,
Indistinct, shadowy,
Writhing in the nether,
Slithering, shuffling,
Make you scream silently.

Horror unimagined,
Needs not move to terrify,
Quiety intimidates you,
Lets the distance, gaping like a maw,
Swallow you.

The blackest void,
The darkest crevice,
The deepest pit of hell,
Knows no Fear,
Like that I make for myself.

 Our western society has a tendency to create stark, black and white dialectics.  Is or is not.  True or false.  As a computer scientist, I am all too familiar with the usefulness of dialects, of having decisions come down to a simple determination of 0 or 1.  Such a clean, simplistic world-view allows for quick, guiltless decisions that flow smoothly and logically with little consideration to the nature of the determination or it's consequences.

Yet in the process of creating this abstraction, data is lost, and with it the underlying truth of the situation.  Information deemed unnecessary for classifying a given event or object is discarded in order to keep the model simple.  To label an action good or evil requires the elimination of whatever content of the opposite nature is present in the action.  So society pigeon holes us, trying to give everyone a neat little cubby so everyone knows where everyone stands. 

And, of course, with any creation of society, there comes expectations.  Not only are we given boxes, we are expected to find a way to fit into them.  Upon receiving our labels, we are gradually pressured to fulfill them.  When rejecting "prep" society, you are lead to change your habits to fit into so called "goth" society in order to display his dissatisfaction with the social norm.  Even the so call counter-culture follows the tracks the culture it counters has set forth.


So to the topic, purity.  Purity and impurity is just such a dialectic.  One is either clean or dirty.  Either you act like sex is completely unimportant to you, or you act like it is the most important thing in existence.  We associate purity here in america with ideas like innocence, perhaps naivety, cleanliness, the straight an narrrow, marriage, chastity, and even with godliness.  Impurity is the opposite: being jaded, wordly, dirty, sexually active, the dark path, whorishness, and satan.

But this is merely one of our dialectic abstractions, a stereotyped image.  Why must purity go with chastity?  Why must sex be dirty?  Why do people have to loose their innocence in order to have relations with another person?

They don't.  And, in truth, these associated personality traits are not necessarily correlated.  Yet our society drives us to conform to these ideas.  Too often, I see people become jaded to the point of exaggeration, or innocent to the point of ignorance, because they fit into one group or another and are driven to feel this way.  To be clean or to be dirty.  People express disgust at your sexuality, or contempt for your perceived immaturity.  

And so you are forced to cling to groups that may not be a good fit for you.  But at least then you have someone to complain to.