In the tail end of my teen years I ventured into writing fiction and self publishing. After that was a spectacular failure, I took a scant ten years off to cry about it. Now that modern technology has made failing creatively a lot more affordable and accessible, I decided to try again. I wrote a humorous novel about Superheroes called The Starlight Sentinels which is on Amazon.com. I did a fanfic that completely rewrites The Walking Dead Game: Season 2 called Young and Young at Heart. You can find it on FFNet, AO3, and Wattpad. I'm currently working on a sequel to my first fanfic. It's called Three Orphan Pilgrimage, and you can also find it on FFNet, AO3, and Wattpad.
Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.
Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.
All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.
After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.
It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.
And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.
The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.
Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.
ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.
Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.
*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.
If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.
In memorial of (former) Senator Lindsey Graham, who literally died because his heart was too hard and shriveled to pump blood, which he laughed off when informed of by his doctors because "I can't die now" as he then listed off all the other horrible things he still had to do in service of the modern American Hitler's agenda.
Rest in piss you vile sack of shit.
need everyone to know that the artist who created this iconic artwork:
is STILL creating wolf art TO THIS DAY. TEN YEARS LATER. proof that the world is beautiful. her username is wolfroad! you can find her art right here, and here are a few of her more recent pieces that I absolutely adore:
checked her page today and I think this might be because of everyone who saw this post and went to support her and show her art some love. the power of spotlighting an artist!! if you know an underappreciated artist, telling people about them could mean the world. [:
Ebola is still spreading in several countries in central Africa. How did the outbreak manage to spread so far and infect so many people without being detected? This guy!
This guy, in violation of Congressional funding allocation, withdrew tons of international aid. The end of USAID was orchestrated without warning, without a wind-down plan, leaving critical infrastructure to simply collapse.
So I was scrolling and saw this image in an article about the European heat wave,
And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.
And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?
But nope, that's not the case:
Africa is struggling with heat waves and many countries on the continent lack the resources rich economies have to deal with rising temperat
Some selections from the article:
"The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases they’ve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africans’ ability to withstand them.
“Africa is seen as a sunny and hot continent,” said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “People think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.”
"The Sahel, for instance, has been heating at a faster pace than the global average despite being hot already. Burkina Faso and Mali, both in West Africa’s Sahel, are among countries that are set to become almost uninhabitable by 2080, if the world continues on its current trajectory, a UK university study found. Its people are especially vulnerable due to shrinking resources, such as water, and poor amenities, and a dearth of trees and parks means there are few options for places to cool off."
One time I was leaving a friend's place and an older lady with basically no English came up to me and communicated that she was very cold and needed a ride. She pointed to tell me where to go.
I got there and her daughter or granddaughter came out and was like omg her phone died we were worried
And then the older lady said something and the younger lady translated.
"She knew she could trust you because you have pink hair"
I thought it was funny at the time. But when I think back on it I think she was basically saying "you had a visible sign of not vibing with the system I was afraid of"
Originally The "Festival" Was Chapter 4 and the "Church" Was Chapter 5 of Deltarune
So after binge playing Chapter 5 of Deltarune and ruminating on it for a few days, I can’t get it out of mind this entire “festival” chapter was clearly intended to be chapter 4 and the “church” chapter that is currently 4 was originally planned to be chapter 5.
I’ll break it down below the cut.
SPOILER WARNING FOR DELTARUNE CHAPTERS 1-5:
So when the plan was chapters 3-5, I think the story was loosely like this:
The gang does the TV World adventure, a light-world segment follows (ironically set at night) where you can go back to Castle Town. Back home, Chief Undyne shows up and makes a racket looking for whoever cut Toriel’s tires and the story ends on a scene involving Noelle, either asking or being asked by Susie to go the festival outside her house after coming out to see the commotion.
Kris, Susie and Noelle go the festival and a jealous Kris makes a new dark world to once again create an adventure for them and Susie. The gang reaches Asgore, who reveals he’s been trying to discover the true nature of the dark worlds. The knight appears, beats the gang and kidnaps Asgore. Susie follows them out of the dark world and to the shelter where she discovers the Delta Rune symbol on a keypad.
Going to church with Toriel and Kris, Susie realizes the code for the shelter could be somewhere inside. They don’t discover much but Susie asks Noelle if they can come over to “study” once she realizes her mom is the mayor. Eventually Carol comes home and angrily kicks Susie out. Now raining and without a way to get back in the house, Kris and Susie go back to the church to discover a new dark world they enter to save Toriel from the knight and end up fighting a Titan that they beat with Gerson's help.
I think when Toby made the decision to shift from selling chapters 3-5 to just 3 & 4, he moved the script for chapter 5 up to be chapter 4 so the first paid version of Deltarune didn’t end on a major cliffhanger he’d know would take at least a year to resolve, then moved elements around to have the new 3 & 4 combo form a complete story beat.
And I think those were good changes if that’s what he did. Moving up the knight’s appearance to chapter 3 contrasts the light-hearted antics and drives home dark worlds aren’t just games in-context. It also creates urgency that carries into the church and keeps the chapters from being too predictable, with 3 ending abruptly with no time in the light world and 4 having much more light world time.
The issue is the festival script wasn’t well-adapted when moved to what’s now chapter 5. Because it's another “fun and games” segment that now comes awkwardly after TWO major escalations in stakes that are almost entirely ignored.
"Let's turn around and watch the sun, before it goes down completely." is a nice pitch but it's not what we got. This is just basking in the sun until we remember it already set two chapters ago. Also, the sun sets and the the knight appears just as it becomes night? Kind of obvious this was originally when the knight would show up for the first time, instead of the THIRD.
Here’s a list of story gripes I have with chapter 5 that largely wouldn’t be an issue if it came between the TV World and Church chapters and the knight only debuted at the end of the festival chapter.
-The knight’s sudden reappearance at the very end, in which it hastily repeats the same scene from chapter 3 of one-shoting the dark world boss and kidnapping one of Kris’s parents. It succeeds this time instead of grabbing a random cop and just is forgotten immediately. Nobody even seems to care all that much Asgore was just kidnapped.
-The urgency fueling Susie during the church is completely absent in chapter 5. Things have only gotten more dire, with them narrowly beating a Titan WITH Gerson’s help, seeing the prophecy ends in tragedy, are are no closer to opening the shelter. Yet the only mention of the knight is a couple of tacked on lines acknowledging the danger before promptly ignoring it for the rest of the run time. There’s no mention of the possibility of the knight making a second Titan or any lingering dread from the prophecy's predicted tragedy.
-Everyone is bizarrely chill with Flowery effectively kidnapping Asgore and keeping everybody from him, the thing that had Susie rightfully pissed at Tenna over two chapters ago when he did the same thing with Toriel, and that was BEFORE the knight appeared. She gripes a LITTLE bit but it’s a far cry from what had been a growing pro-active streak over the last two chapters.
-The festival itself is incredibly underwhelming. I can’t chalk that in itself up to chapter 5 being a repurposed chapter 4 script, but I think the placement after the church chapter, which makes a bigger deal about something we’ve heard about since chapter 2 created bigger expectations vs what it was originally written to be: a small town fall festival put on by volunteers with a few rides.
-Kris impulsively making a new dark world when the last one they made ended with someone being kidnapped… now they make one with their dad in it, who get kidnapped like Undyne. Maybe they’re evil or dumb or both, we’re STILL not given much insight into their motivations. But even if they’re working for the knight or whatever, this clearly wasn’t planned and really only makes sense if them making dark worlds had remained consequence free.
-Carol got a memorable introduction in the last chapter then is barely mentioned and only calls Noelle for a family emergency during chapter 5. She doesn't appear at all in the town’s (not so) big festival of which she’s the mayor. Also, the Japanese themed dark world doesn’t even have Carol, the person who uses katanas in the REAL WORLD stumble into it? We weren't supposed to see her yet and that detail was only to be revealed after the knight showed up to make us think she's the knight.
-On the Ferris wheel, Susie insists darkeners are real. I agree with her but I thought we were long past that? She acts like we just learned about this. We met a lightner resurrected as a darkner. Flowers being atypical lighters given much different forms by the dark was meant to set the stage for the bigger implications of how the dark world changes lightners. But we already met a dead lightner resurrected in a dark world, so this reveal isn’t all that gripping.
-Susie mentions Ralsei is more talkative than Kris thinks. Again, we know cause he had a lot to say in the church chapter. It also always felt strange Ralsei casually kills the messed up Gerson statue when they so rarely attack in or out of gameplay. This chapter was clearly meant to show him becoming more assertive and willing to act on his own cause that’s how he is already acting in most of the church chapter.
-Susie saying they don’t need to wait for Kris to tell them to act during an action scene, as if she just realized that. In the church, they all took the knights hits for each other without being asked and in dealing with the Titan, Ralsei is giving out attack orders and Susie is the one who figures out how to beat it. There's a huge emphasis on them becoming a well-balanced team but the festival treats it like they're mostly only following Kris until near the end.
-Ralsei holding back info is covered with a few lines stating Susie is cool with that. The flowers not being able to survive in castle town feels sensible since their existence as lighters radically changing in the dark is confusing. Less so for Ralsei not mentioning he's always had powerful OFFENSIVE magic. Geez, that would have been helpful against the TITAN where violence is the ONLY option.
-No one ever mentions the dangers of the knight showing up to the flowers, just vague warnings about "the roaring", as if they hadn't seen the knight yet. Flowery's talk about the gang just wanting their fantasy over his falls flat cause we've seen the knight can and does use the dark worlds to horrible effect. I suspect also when we finally learn what the prophecy's "final tragedy" is, it's going to make even less sense. If it's the dark and light worlds are permanently sealed from each other, then it really doesn't even matter who's fountain is sealed first.
-Susie acknowledges the shelter codes on the way out of the school, saying this stuff with Noelle will give them another chance to get the one at her house. They’re not mentioned again, not even at the church. You think the festival would be a good excuse to look for them since people are coming and going and are are paying less attention to kids doing things. Instead, Susie lucks out and one was under Flowery in the light world. That’s good cause she sure as Hell wasn’t looking for them anymore.
-Susie's awkward speech at the end of the chapter about how these can’t just be her and Kris’s personal adventures anymore cause people are getting hurt, as if the last two chapters didn't make that obvious. Again, no mention of the Titan they fought or the tragedy they learned from the prophecy. This one feels lifted right from her very similiar speech at the beginning of chapter 4, which also followed the knight showing up from nowhere and kidnapping someone.
It’s not worth the mental energy to justify all these glaring issues that clearly the writer overlooked or only added the bare minimum of dialogue to acknowledge when reordering the story's chapters. It's far easier to just imagine them in a different order and moving the biggest event of TV world to the festival chapter, which is also easy to do cause an almost identical scene happens in "chapter 5".
Also there’s some theming and gameplay oddities that would make sense in the order I laid out (TV World -> Festival -> Church).
The festival chapter is heavily biased towards “act only” especially the bosses where most of them have auto-max heals and in the final boss fight, Ralsei and Susie will just heal Flowery if you dare harm him. Which is a bit crazy since the first chapter established violence does not equal killing your enemies. You can kick the crap out of Tenna and he’s fine afterward.
As is, this chapter follows two chapters emphasizing you will have to FIGHT certain opponents. The knight in chapter 3 can only be fought with violence, “ERAM” too even if it’s within a (haunted) game within a game. In the church, Gerson’s fight gives you mercy by ATTACKING him and the Titan can’t even understand mercy. You MUST kill it and for the first time this isn’t an optional encounter.
Doesn't mean we needed another mandatory-violent fight for the festival chapter, but that violence is so aggressively denied as option feels like originally this would be a bait and switch of making players think like Undertale you never need attack until the knight appears and that's your only option. It worked doing that by having the knight in chapter 3 but they didn't alter this chapter to reflect the change in expectations that and church chapter has created.
A lot of the asymmetrical elements between the TV world and the church chapters can probably be chalked up to edits to put them together. No knight in chapter 3 means you could have a light world segment, and ERAM is already a literal bonus boss with its own dedicated sidequest like the other 4 official bonus bosses. ERAM even mentions SHADOW CRYSTALS, something few characters are even aware of. Whenever it was the actual "bonus boss" or a prelude to who was hiding behind it, I can't say.
Chapter 4 also has THE longest light world segment, with TWO unique locations that are plot mandatory AND two sizable optional character scenes; going to the diner with Susie and having a tea party with Ralsei, and later you can have a SECOND one with Gerson in the dark world. I actually love chapter 4 for these elements, but after seeing how bare bones the festival was, the church chapter was likely cannibalizing light world segments from both chapter 3 and probably the festival chapter too even.
Just shooting from the hip, Susie and Kris can take Tenna and the other TV world stuff to the school (the door is never locked…), there they could have the tea party with Ralsei, which is a scene of Susie (and optionally with Kris) encouraging Ralsei to stop being a servant and enjoy themselves, which is nice in any context but feels most apt immediately following Ralsei saying he's not even real.
When they get back, Undyne could be at Kris's house looking for not only whoever slashed Toriel’s tires but who stole their TV as well, but Noelle is up from the noise and they spend a bit of time at her until Undyne leaves. There’s no shelter codes known yet in this what if, so it could be something smaller outside her house.
The “northern light" references for Chapter 3 always confused me since the ice segment of the creepy pasta game is 100% optional and the big Christmas Tree near the door is baffling as there doesn't seem to be a light world counterpart for it. But later seeing Noelle's house is permanently Christmas themed makes me think we were intended to visit it in chapter 3. It's got (fake?) snow and a bunch of lights and Santa lives at the north pole, so it fits the "northern lights" reference.
The weird route of all things reveals Kris DID see Noelle off-screen between chapters 3 and 4, which she even said was “last night”, which confused me cause when did Kris find the time to slip off after Susie dragged them to shelter, visit Noelle, THEN go back home to seal the fountain in their house? Excise the knight and there's no urgency and it’d fit. It's also implied a variation of this happens even in the normal route since Noelle's watch you can steal in chapter 2 goes missing after chapter 3, which the weird route stated Kris gives it back to her.
On the other hand, teasing us about the shelter in the creepy pasta game only to just have the chapter END THERE seemed pretty superfluous as foreshadowing, especially since a decent chunk of players won't even see it because it's locked behind getting S-ranks on both boards. It's not necessarily a contradiction but I assumed we wouldn't learn much about the shelter until the final few chapters. Instead, we get that AND see there's a dark world in it all in chapter 3... and really nothing new since then. Pacing wise, it feels like that was intended to be a tease for later that's now overshadow by a reveal.
I also kind of wonder if the chapter flip is why Ralsei hasn't learned a single new spell all game? The "tease" for him knowing fire spells was in the festival chapter, but since the church was moved before it he can't have them yet. He literally uses fire magic for his act against the incense enemies and there's an emphasis on having to fight FROM Ralsei directly. Feels like that was the time to have it happen, especially after promising Susie he'll tell her anything he can and him admitting sparing everyone was him hoping it'd change the prophecy, which doesn't seem to be happening. If nothing else, no one suggests sparing the Titan so why not light it up with everything riding on the line?
Then there's the Kris/Soul dynamic. It was teased at the end of the first chapter and increasingly implied in the subsequent chapters what we do with the Soul and what Kris wants are completely separate, but it wasn't until the church chapter Kris actively fights against the soul, by extension us and even Susie since it's also her goal to find the codes.
But there's no escalation from that reveal, instead we get an almost exact repeat of what we saw at the end of chapter 2. Which is frustrating because it feels like the next natural step is us removing ourselves from Kris to work against them in some way. Probably will happen in chapter 6 since the scene in Noelle's house was originally written for what was meant to be the fifth chapter.
There's a lot of things in chapter 5 that are repeats of things we already know and saw in previous chapters with almost no variation or distinction. Either cause those elements (like the knight's sudden appearance) were copy and pasted from the festival chapter, or the festival chapter now has to acknowledge things from the church chapter that originally was set after it.
And the tragic part is it need not be like that. "Let's turn around and watch the sun, before it goes down completely. Let's have one more fun adventure." Isn't a bad idea in itself. It's a bit awkward since it felt like Chapter 3 ended up being that already, but since there are TWO worlds in this setting, it could still work, just have the final fun adventure be in the LIGHT WORLD.
Chapter 5's dark world feels incredibly bloated, with so many gimmicks, two new currencies and SEVEN main characters PLUS Asgore and so on. It just ended up feeling like a slog for me. After the Titan fight it's really hard to accept an ENTIRE chapter's dark world as carefree fun and games. There can be moments, like Gerson's tea party, but not the WHOLE THING. It ends up feeling like filler at this point in the story.
The light world stuff however worked cause although it is at peril, the knight seems to NEED the fountains to do anything (they rage quit again when Susie pointed that out). So as long as there's not a new one, we could be as carefree as we want. And this chapter's light world gimmick is a FESTIVAL. I'm guessing the bloated dark world is cause they wanted to give us "more" to make up for the delay and since the festival is now chapter 5, it needed to be bigger.
But if that's what happened, they went about it completely backwards. They should have put the extra effort into expanding the town's festival and add as many fun and silly things they could to it. Every building (except the shelter obviously) should have had some goofy activities. They don't have to be deep or have hidden plot threads, just entertaining. And every character should be getting in on the festivities.
I don't know if there's some hidden plot reason Toriel doesn't even leave her yard but it's jarring she doesn't even come to the festival at all. Especially since I feel like her Kris and have plenty to talk about (she seems to have forgotten somebody slashed her tires two nights ago). It'd also be much better symbolism than a literal sunset background that keeps rising to sink again cause these segments drag on too long.
Have the sun set on the town's most festive day before we plunge into the dark, preferably a shorter and more focused dark with less pink coins to collect in really annoying spring sections. Can't say those made me smile. =P
